Monthly Archives: December 2016
December 30, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Ammo Grrrll has a MEDITATION ON MEDITATING. She writes: Well, New Year’s has come around again in a startlingly short time. About the time I get used to writing 2016 on my checks, it’s time to get it wrong again for a few weeks. So it’s time for some resolutions for self-improvement. Jews also get Rosh Hashanah (literally, the head of the year) in September or October or whenever it
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December 29, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Evidence that the Obama administration is being dishonest regarding the anti-Israel U.N. resolution continues to emerge. This article by Adam Kredo in the Washington Free Beacon shows there is good reason to believe that, contrary to the administration’s claims, Team Obama was a major architect of and driving force behind the condemnatory resolution. Kredo cites the following: * There is evidence from multiple sources that Joe Biden phoned Ukraine’s president
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December 29, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Donald Trump has issued a brief statement about President Obama’s decision to take retaliatory measures against Russia in response to its alleged hacking of DNC and John Podesta email accounts. Trump said: It’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things. Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to
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December 29, 2016 — John Hinderaker
Yesterday Donald Trump gave a very brief press conference at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, and spoke again with the press later in the day. If the reaction by reporters and editors is any indication, we are in for a long four years. Trump said that Sprint announced it will move to the U.S., or create in the U.S., 5,000 new jobs. He noted that OneWeb would bring another 3,000 jobs to
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December 29, 2016 — Steven Hayward
One of the most unexpected developments in recent years is the number of environmentalists who have done a 180 degree turn and now support nuclear power. They are the realists who understand that modern civilization needs lots of baseload electricity that intermittent, land-hogging wind and solar power just can’t supply in requisite amounts, and hence nuclear power looks like the best source of carbon-free energy if you’re obsessed with climate
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December 29, 2016 — John Hinderaker
Today, while on vacation in Hawaii, President Obama announced mild sanctions against Russia, which he attributed to Russia’s alleged meddling in the U.S. presidential election, and also to unspecified harassment of U.S. diplomats. The Associated Press reports: In a sweeping response to election hacking and other meddlesome behavior, President Barack Obama on Thursday sanctioned Russian intelligence services and their top officials, kicked out 35 Russian officials and closed down two
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December 29, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Raqqa is headquarters for ISIS’ shrinking caliphate. It is where the ISIS terrorists say they planned major attacks on Paris and Brussels, and where new attacks against the West undoubtedly are being hatched. The fall of Raqqa wouldn’t mean the end of the threat ISIS poses. Due to the Obama administration’s obliviousness and indifference, ISIS had time to spread its tentacles and its influence. Nonetheless, expulsion from its seat power
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December 29, 2016 — Steven Hayward
Having written a book more than 10 years ago making the case that Jimmy Carter was America’s worst ex-president, I’ve been pondering the near metaphysical certainty that Barack Obama will easily eclipse Carter’s turpitude, and preparing the first take on the idea. But Karl Rove beat me to the punch in the Wall Street Journal this morning, with “A Preview of Obama’s Post-Presidency.” (Try this link to work around the
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December 29, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Michael Ramirez (@Ramireztoons) carefully observed John Kerry’s rant against our friend and ally Israel at the State Department yesterday. President Obama’s public relations minions are on their prevarication tour to defend the betrayal of Israel by the United States in the United Nations. Kerry’s rant at State was a key stop on the tour. In his cartoon on Kerry’s rant Ramirez homes in on the Obama doctrine as applied in
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December 29, 2016 — Scott Johnson
The Claremont Institute has sent out a year-end message highlighting “the best of 2016” from the Claremont Review of Books. I thought readers who missed these pieces the first time around might enjoy them as we turn the corner to the new year. I am going back to these pieces with the benefit of hindsight as I bide my time in the penalty box. The CRB has also separately compiled
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December 28, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Donald Trump is an inveterate trash talker, and I’m old-fashioned enough to consider this a bad thing in a president-elect. But even assuming that Trump keeps talking trash as president (a fair assumption, I think), he will not bear primary responsibility for this latest manifestation of civic decline. Primary responsibility for “normalizing” trash talk from the White House falls instead on President Obama. Obama’s latest display consists of his claim
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December 28, 2016 — John Hinderaker
I haven’t paid a lot of attention to the Democrats’ whining about “fake news,” since it appears to be just another feeble excuse for losing. Still, I was interested to see that the Associated Press undertook to fact-check a fake news story yesterday. I assumed this must be a particularly important instance of the genre, for the AP to bother. The headline was, “AP FACT CHECK: Ex-agent didn’t write book
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December 28, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Today, John Kerry delivered his “much anticipated” (by the media) oration on the Middle East. It was long and it was timeworn. Herb Keinon of the Jerusalem Post reports: What a tired-looking, hoarse Kerry did for more than an hour was pretty much compile the “greatest hits” from numerous speeches he and US President Barack Obama have given over the last number of years on the Mideast. He talked about
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December 28, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Secretary of State John Kerry spoke at what seemed like Castroite length in defense of the infamous UN Security Council resolution that passed with the abstention of the United States this past Friday. The text of Kerry’s speech is posted here. Elliott Abrams capably parses it here. Prime Minister Netanyahu responded to Kerry’s speech in Hebrew (accessible in the video posted here) and in English. The brief excerpts of Netanyahu’s
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December 28, 2016 — John Hinderaker
Barack Obama is taking abuse from many quarters for his betrayal of Israel in the United Nations, all of it deserved. Michael Ramirez joins in, depicting Obama as Pontius Pilate. Click to enlarge: Never to be explained, I suppose, is why, if Obama thought the anti-Israel resolution was justified, he didn’t vote for it rather than abstaining.
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December 28, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
The Jerusalem city planning committee was scheduled today to vote to permit the building of 618 new housing units in East Jerusalem, an area populated mostly by Palestinians. However, with John (“Foghorn”) Kerry about to deliver an oration about his vision of “peace” in the Middle East, the planning committee postponed the vote. Members of the committee said it delayed the vote at the request of Prime Minister Netanyahu. According
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December 28, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Michael Oren is the former Israeli ambassador to the United States during the first term of the Obama administration. We interviewed Oren about the memoir of his tenure as ambassador Ally: My Journey Across the American Israeli Divide in the Power Line podcast posted here. It is a highly illuminating memoir. Oren currently serves as Israel’s Deputy Minister for Diplomacy. He is first and foremost a prominent historian, certainly the
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