Valerie Jarrett: The Power Behind the Throne, Part 1-The Early Years

Jarrett 1I just worry a lot. I’m a worrier. Michelle and Barack are really dear to me. I mean, I love them. And I don’t want to see them get hurt. Just the nature of politics is hurtful. So every time they are hurt, I get hurt. It’s a lot to ask of people, and it’s a lot to see your friends go through. It’s hard not to get emotional. – Valerie Jarrett

Every American who has paid any attention at all to the goings-on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, knows who Valerie Jarrett is.

Valerie Jarrett was born in November 1956 to American parents in Shiraz, Iran, where her well-known physician father ran a children’s hospital. When Valerie was five, her family moved to London for one year before arriving in Chicago’s elite Hyde Park neighborhood in 1963.

Jarrett’s maternal grandfather was a Chicago Communist named Robert Taylor, who was involved in the 1940s with the Communist Organizations, the American Peace Mobilization and the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee.  Also a member of these groups was Frank Marshall Davis.

Frank Marshall Davis (1905 – 1987) was an author, liberal activist, Stalinist agent, and self-admitted pedophile (Would you let your children hang around him?) . Davis was involved in Chicago’s South Side Community Art Center, “a meeting place for young African-American writers and artists during the 1940s”. Coming out of the New Deal Federal Art Project, the Art Center was a hangout for the “Culture Group,” a circle of Communist Party members and sympathizers including Richard Wright, Margaret Burroughs, Marion Perkins and Arna Bontemps.

Jarrett’s mother (Robert Taylor’s daughter) is early childhood education author Barbara Taylor Bowman. She was a co-founder of a Chicago-based graduate school in child development known as the Erikson Institute, named after the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. Back in 1950, Erikson became a hero to the Radical Left when he resigned from professorship at the University of California, rather than submit to sign an anti-communist loyalty oath as the school required.

Additional evidence of the Erikson Institute’s Radical Left political orientation is the make-up of  its board of trustees, which has included, along with Bowman, Tom Ayers (father of Marxist Bomber Bill Ayers (the man Obama called “just a guy in the neighborhood”) and Bill Ayer’s wife, Bernardine Dohrn. Bill Ayers referred to Bowman as “a neighbor and friend” in his 1997 book “A Kind and Just Parent”, in which he wrote that his neighbors also included Louis Farrakhan and “writer Barack Obama”.

Jarrett received a B.A. in psychology from Stanford University in 1978, and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981. In 1983, she married Dr. William Robert Jarrett, son of the Chicago Sun-Times reporter Vernon Jarrett. Vernon Jarrett was a pioneering black journalist who in the 1940s wrote columns for the communist-influenced Chicago Defender extolling Communist poet Langston Hughes and lifelong Stalinists W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson. Also in the 1940s, Mr. Jarrett was a leader of the Chicago chapter of American Youth for Democracy—youth wing of the Communist Party USA. He also served on a publicity committee for the Packinghouse Workers Union, a Chicago-based entity dominated by the CPUSA.  During his time with each of these Communist Organizations, Mr. Jarrett had close contact with Frank Marshall Davis.

The plot sickens.

Jarrett worked as a Freelance Writer at Kansas City’s The Call from 1954-58, then returned to Chicago to become the first nationally syndicated black columnist for the Chicago Tribune, before going to write for the Chicago Sun-Times. Mr. Jarrett once sat on a union publicity committee (for the communist-controlled Packinghouse Workers Union) with Frank Marshall Davis. When Vernon Jarrett died in 2004, he was saluted in the pages of People’s Weekly Worker, the house organ of the Communist Party USA.

Valerie Jarrett began her political profession by jumping into Chicago politics in 1987. She accepted a position as Deputy Corporation Counsel for Finance and Development in the administration of Harold Washington, the city’s first African-American mayor. Jarrett’s father-in-law, whom The Washington Post called “a key influence in [Harold] Washington’s decision to run for the Chicago mayoralty,” is rumored to have been the “Kingmaker” responsible for Valerie’s rise through Chicago’s political ranks.

Following Mayor Washington’s death in 1987, Valerie Jarrett worked for his successor, Richard M. Daley, as his Deputy Chief of Staff. In 1991, Jarrett and her colleague Susan Sher recruited to Chicago’s City Hall Michelle Robinson (the future Michelle “Mooch” Obama), who was engaged to Barack Obama. Jarrett quickly became a trusted confidante of both the Obamas.

SIDE NOTE: ***In the summer of 1988, while still at Harvard, Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) landed a job as an intern in the Chicago office of the influential law firm of Sidley Austin. ( How does a first-year law student get an internship at such a prestigious law firm?)  He was dating Michelle Robinson, a young lawyer from a working-class family in the South Shore area of the South Side.  She also just happened to be his mentor at the firm. The lovebirds got married in 1990, and settled in the Hyde Park neighborhood on the South Side along the lakefront.  Built around the University of Chicago, both black and white  affluent families lived among the middle class and the poor.  Hyde Park boasts a strong base of independent voters who are committed to political reform, which influenced Obama’s political message.***

Jarrett was Commissioner of the Department of Planning and Development from 1992 through 1995. After that, she chaired the Chicago Transit Board from 1995 to 2005.  Then, from 1995 to 2008, she was the CEO of The Habitat Company, a real estate firm headed by Daniel Levin (cousin of Senator Carl Levin and Representative Sander Levin of Michigan). Marilyn Katz, an activist/public-affairs consultant with close ties to City Hall (and a former Students for a Democratic Society radical) introduced Jarrett to Daniel Levin.

During the years 2000 to 2007, Jarrett was a board member of the Chicago Stock Exchange. She still serves as Chairman of the University of Chicago Medical Center’s Board of Trustees; Vice Chairman of the University of Chicago’s Board of Trustees; a Trustee of Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry; and a Board of Directors member of USG Corporation, a Chicago-based building-materials company.

In 2008, Jarrett was the co-chair of the Obama-Biden Transition Project.

In appreciation of her hard work (and the fact that she was a “bud”), she was appointed to the position of  Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs in the Obama Administration.

Jarrett swiftly became one of President Obama’s (and Mrs. Obama’s) closest and most trusted advisers. According to what an Obama 2008 campaign official told the New York Times,

If you want [Barack Obama] to do something, there are two people [he’s] not going to say no to: Valerie Jarrett and Michelle Obama.

Also in 2008, Susan Sher, who had helped Jarrett recruit Michelle Obama to the Chicago Mayor’s Office in 1991, made a point to emphasize “how incredibly instrumental [Jarrett will] be in virtually everything” in the White House.

Barack Obama thinks that Valerie Jarrett hung the moon and stars.

In July 2009, Obama informed New York Times reporter Robert Draper that,

I trust her completely … She is family.

Obama trusts Jarrett “to speak for me, particularly when we’re dealing with delicate issues.”

The president readily admits that he runs every decision by her.

Concerning her relationship with President Obama, Jarrett says that

We have kind of a mind meld. And chances are, what he wants to do is what I’d want to do.

***The information contained in Today’s Blog may be found at Discover The Networks and “The Great Disconnect: The Whole Ugly Truth About Barack Hussein Obama”***

Next : Part 2 – The White House Years

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

 

The War Against Christianity: Would I Be Willing to Die For Christ?

American FreedomI have written in the past that American Christians are fighting a war against an effort to undercut our faith, severely limiting our practice of it in everyday life.

With the present Administration spearheading the effort, Christian Americans are being marginalized , and our faith ridiculed and attacked as being against “diversity”, as the First Lady alluded to in her speech at a Topeka, Kansas Graduation Ceremony, which I wrote about yesterday.

As bad as things are getting in our country, Christians are not facing the choice of whether to renounce Jesus Christ as our Savior or die a martyr…yet.

On May 15th, in front of a judge in a Sudanese court, Meriam Yahia Ibrahim forthrightly declared that she was still, and always will be, a follower of Jesus Christ. The judge at the Public Order Court in El Haj Yousif Khartoum then confirmed her sentence of 100 lashes for adultery and death by hanging for apostasy.

Ibrahim told the judge after a Muslim scholar spent 40 minutes persuading her to recant,

I am a Christian, and I have never been a Muslim.

In response, the judge told her,

The court has sentenced you to be hanged till you are dead.

The sentence is to be carried out two years after her second child’s birth later this month.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported that the death sentence in the case, which is drawing international attention, and called the ruling a “violation of the Sudanese Constitution and of international conventions to which Sudan is party.”

According to Middle East Concern, Ibrahim’s lawyer is appealing the ruling. Ibrahim’s American husband was also not permitted to witness the hearing, and has been denied visitation rights to see his wife and son while they are detained in prison.

Ahead of the hearing on the 15th, Amnesty International condemned Ibrahim’s death sentence and called for her immediate release. According to Manar Idriss, Amnesty International’s Sudan researcher:

The fact that a woman could be sentenced to death for her religious choice, and to flogging for being married to a man of an allegedly different religion is abhorrent and should never be even considered. ‘Adultery’ and ‘apostasy’ are acts which should not be considered crimes at all, let alone meet the international standard of “most serious crimes” in relation to the death penalty. It is flagrant breach of international human rights law.

In July 2012, Saeed Abedini, an American pastor who is a dual Iranian-American citizen, went back to Iran to visit family and continue his work on a government approved orphanage. While in that  Radical Islamic county, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps placed Saeed under house arrest without charge. He was then sent to Evin Prison in September 2012.

In January, Saeed was sentenced to eight years in prison. He was charged with preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Saeed is not guilty of breaking any Iranian law. However, he was convicted of endangering national security because of gathering with other believers in private homes.

While in prison, Saeed has suffered internal bleeding from beatings and endured solitary confinement in an effort to make him recant his faith.

Although he has been denied medical attention, Saeed’s faith remains as strong as ever, as he has led 30 people to Christ while in prison.

Saeed’s family in Iran gets to visit him once a week at Evin Prison. His beloved wife, Naghmeh, and their children have not seen Saeed in over a year. During his most recent time in solitary confinement, Saeed said he felt many people praying and the time in solitary was a time of intimacy with God. When he came out, the other prisoners said he was glowing. In fact, Saeed said he was filled with more joy and peace after solitary than going in.

In a letter to Naghmeh, Saeed shared how he has hope despite the daily beatings he endures.

I heard that the persecution, my arrest and imprisonment has united churches from different denominations, from different cities and countries that would never come together because of their differences. That the churches have united together in prayer to put one request (my freedom) on one day (Pentecost) before God. You don’t know how happy I was in the Lord and rejoiced knowing that in my chains the body of Christ has chained together and is brought to action and prayer.

Would I be willing to die for my Savior?

Believe it or not, I have actually been asked that question by other Americans before by non-believers, both young and old, who could not fathom a faith comprised of unconditional love, supplied by a Triune God, who accepts his imperfect children, just as we are, without one plea. Bring a Love that will not let me go, no matter how many times I stumble, no matter how many times I fall, He always picks me back up, and helps me to continue to walk in faith, hope, and love. But, the greatest of these is love.

There is a “libertarian” (actually, a Liberal) who makes fun of believers on a Conservative Facebook Page I post on, by posting the words, “Onward Christian Soldiers”, attempting to point out Christian Hypocrisy…or something.

This “self-proclaimed genius” evidently has neglected to read the lyrics of this great old hymn

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
with the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
forward into battle see his banners go!
Refrain:
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
with the cross of Jesus going on before.

2. At the sign of triumph Satan’s host doth flee;
on then, Christian soldiers, on to victory!
Hell’s foundations quiver at the shout of praise;
brothers, lift your voices, loud your anthems raise.
(Refrain)

3. Like a mighty army moves the church of God;
brothers, we are treading where the saints have trod.
We are not divided, all one body we,
one in hope and doctrine, one in charity.
(Refrain)

4. Crowns and thrones may perish, kingdoms rise and wane,
but the church of Jesus constant will remain.
Gates of hell can never gainst that church prevail;
we have Christ’s own promise, and that cannot fail.
(Refrain)

5. Onward then, ye people, join our happy throng,
blend with ours your voices in the triumph song.
Glory, laud, and honor unto Christ the King,
this through countless ages men and angels sing.
(Refrain)

I pray that God will open this unbeliever’s eyes one day. However, until He does, this unbeliever and his fellow travelers will be oblivious to the fact that the war Christians fight is not against flesh and blood, but instead against “Princes and Principalities”.

And, to answer the question I raised earlier….

Yes. 

On Christ the Solid Rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand.

May God continue to the strengthen these two brave Christians and may He continue to hold them and  their loved ones in the Hollow of His Hand.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Ukraine and Iran: Peace…err…Nuclear Proliferation in Our Time

nuclear bomb 2As if the situation in Ukraine was not bad enough, it may be about to go nuclear.

According to usatoday.com,

Ukraine may have to arm itself with nuclear weapons if the United States and other world powers refuse to enforce a security pact that obligates them to reverse the Moscow-backed takeover of Crimea, a member of the Ukraine parliament told USA TODAY.

The United States, Great Britain and Russia agreed in a pact “to assure Ukraine’s territorial integrity” in return for Ukraine giving up a nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union after declaring independence in 1991, said Pavlo Rizanenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament.

“We gave up nuclear weapons because of this agreement,” said Rizanenko, a member of the Udar Party headed by Vitali Klitschko, a candidate for president. “Now there’s a strong sentiment in Ukraine that we made a big mistake.”

His statements come as Russia raised the possibility it may send its troops beyond the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea into the eastern half of Ukraine.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said lawlessness “now rules in eastern regions of Ukraine as a result of the actions of fighters of the so-called ‘right sector’ with the full connivance” of Ukraine’s authorities.

Rizanenko and others in Ukraine say the pact it made with the United States under President Bill Clinton was supposed to prevent such Russian invasions.

The pact was made after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 and became Russia, leaving the newly independent nation of Ukraine as the world’s third largest nuclear weapons power.

The communist dictatorship that was the Soviet Union had based nuclear missiles in republics it held captive along its border with Europe, and Ukraine had thousands. World powers urged Ukraine to give up the arsenal but its leaders balked, expressing fear they needed the weapons to deter Russia from trying to reverse Ukraine’s independence.

To reassure the Ukrainians, the United States and leaders of the United Kingdom and Russia signed in 1994 the “Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances” in which the signatories promised that none of them would threaten or use force to alter the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.

Yeah. That worked. Didn’t it?

This new nuclear wrinkle in the Ukrainian Situation reminds me of another “nuclear promise”, which the present Democrat in office brokered.

It’s not going very well, either, as foxnews.com reports…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the international community’s “self-deception” regarding Iran as defense officials unveiled an arsenal of weapons the Islamic Republic is accused of trying to smuggle into Gaza.

Israeli Defense Forces unloaded the cargo of the Panamanian-flagged ship that its commandos boarded last week off the coast of Sudan, displaying 40 M-302 missiles with a range in excess of 100 miles, 181 mortar shells and 400,000 AK-47 bullets.

“The goal was to have rained down on the heads of Israel’s citizens,” Netanyahu thundered from the port of Eilat, where the Klos C was towed after being boarded in the Red Sea.

Netanyahu noted that the assorted rockets, mortars and other munitions could have reached Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and even Haifa. He accused the international community of ignoring Iranian support for militant groups and being deluded by Tehran’s claims to be willing to tame its nuclear weapons program.

“Iran, a brutal regime, has not abandoned its deep involvement in terrorism, its systematic efforts to undermine peace and security throughout the Middle East and its ambition to destroy the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said. “What is new is not Iran’s deeds or its lies, but the desire of many in the international community to bury their heads in the sand.

“Just as Iran hid its deadly missiles in the belly of this ship, Iran is hiding its actions and its intentions in many of its key installations for developing nuclear weapons,” he continued.

“My message today is simple: those engaged in self-deception must waken from their slumber, we cannot allow Iran to continue building nuclear weapons,” he continued.

The tough comments threatened to further strain Netanyahu’s already tense relations with the European Union and the White House.

Israel believes that Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon, saying a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a threat to the existence of the Jewish state. It cites Iranian calls for Israel’s destruction, its development of long-range missiles and its support for hostile militant groups on Israel’s borders. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

And, if you believe that, I’ve got a copy of the “Rosie O’Donnell Diet Plan” to sell you.

So now, thanks to President Barack Hussein Obama and “Smart Power”!, we not only face the imminent threat of Iran exercising its nuclear capability, the volatile Ukrainian Situation could escalate into a Nuclear Armageddon.

The greatest United States President in my lifetime, Ronald Wilson Reagan, coined the saying, “Trust, but, verify” based on a Russian folk proverb. Reagan was a master of the one-liner, and he knew that this phrase summed up the appropriate way to negotiate Foreign Policy Accords with America’s historical enemies.

When a United States President attempts to negotiate with a tyrannical society, he is immediately at a disadvantage because dictatorships are untrustworthy by nature, as their day-by-day governance is maintained through brutality and distrust. Tyrants don’t trust their own people. Therefore, the chance that they will trust an enemy nation is as slim as the chance that Michelle Obama will pay for her next vacation. It is not a matter of if one of these rogue nations, like Iran will cheat on a negotiated agreement, it is a matter of when.

Unfortunately, when you have a naive, petulant community organizer, instead of an actual American President, as is the situation our country finds itself in today, leading the negotiations, that increases the danger of a nuclear outcome, because our enemies will soon figure out that he is negotiating from a position of inexperience and weakness.

To quote the great Fred Thompson, in his role as Admiral John Painter, “The Hunt for Red October”:

This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.

God protect us.

Until He Comes,

KJ

The Ukrainian Invasion: The Collapse of “Smart Power!”…A Return From Fantasyland

obamaputincartoonThe Russian Bear, Vladimir Putin, continues his quest to reclaim the former Soviet Bloc nation of  Ukraine, while Barack “Urkel” Obama continues to warn him against doing what he has already done.

The Washington Times reports that

President Obama warned Russia on Monday of possible U.S. sanctions over its military land grab in Ukraine, but Moscow brushed aside international threats, tightening its stranglehold on Crimea and calling audaciously for a national unity government in Kiev.

In Washington, Mr. Obama said the world is “largely united” against Russia’s military action and he is considering economic and diplomatic steps that would gradually isolate Russia. He criticized the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin for being “on the wrong side of history.”

“What cannot be done is for Russia with impunity to put its soldiers on the ground and violate basic principles that are recognized around the world,” Mr. Obama said. “Over time, this will be a costly proposition for Russia.”

But the U.S. and European Union floundered for solutions — while global markets panicked over the prospect of violent upheaval in the heart of Europe. Fears grew that the Kremlin might carry out more land grabs in pro-Russian eastern Ukraine, or elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, adding urgency to Western efforts to defuse the crisis.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry was heading to Kiev in an expression of support for Ukraine’s sovereignty, and the EU threatened a raft of punitive measures as it called an emergency summit on Ukraine for Thursday. In Congress, lawmakers prepared to move on an aid package for Ukraine.

But it was Russia that appeared to be driving the agenda.

China, Iran, North Korea…why are America’s enemies now so bold?

Lt. Col. Allen B. West has served our country proudly and honorably, both in our military and as a Representative in the United States Congress. He made the following interesting observation on his website, allen bwest.com, yesterday…

Russian troops are invading Ukraine and we have no response. I suppose the Pentagon has more important things to worry about – like hair and makeup for our gay military.

According to World Net Daily, “Almost seven decades after being the scene of one of the most ferocious and protracted battles of World War II – a site of legendary valor and sacrifice on the part of American soldiers – some U.S. service personnel stationed in Okinawa today are treating the world to another kind of display: Gay and lesbian service personnel performing in drag, to raise funds for their activities, to a sellout audience.

Openly homosexual service members at Okinawa’s Kadena Air Base took to the stage and performed as “drag queens” and “drag kings” Saturday on a military installation in support of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender troops.

In September 2011, on the implementation of the repeal of the Clinton-era Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, President Obama said: “I was proud to sign the Repeal Act into law last December because I knew that it would enhance our national security, increase our military readiness, and bring us closer to the principles of equality and fairness that define us as Americans.” However, the latest reports show that the rate of sexual assaults, and especially male-on-male sexual assaults, in the U.S. military has skyrocketed.

It’s obvious what defines “vital national security interest” in the Obama administration. A week ago Obama announced the decimation of our military – maybe that’s why these troops got their groove on.

I am kinda at a loss for words, but quite sure there are those of you who can fill in the blanks.

The Godfather of Conservative Talk Radio, Rush Limbaugh, was not at a loss for words yesterday. He sums up this whole ugly never-ending Benny Hill Chase Scene (to the background theme of “Yakety Sax By Boots Randolph) rather succinctly:

These are scary, scary times — and one of these days, Putin is gonna figure out that American public opinion does not have the same impact today that it had back in the seventies and eighties. He’s gonna figure out, if he doesn’t already know, that American public opinion has been dumbed down and refocused. America’s now focused on, “Should we be penalizing players 15 yards or kick ’em out of the game for using the N-word in the NFL?” The American people are focused on, “Can gay couples buy a cake from a non-gay baker or not?”

In fact, you probably have heard this by now. Sarah Palin, back in 2008, predicted and warned that Russia was gonna take Ukraine. She was laughed at. She was mocked and made fun of because, of course, that was the narrative. Sarah Palin never said was she an expert on the Soviet Union ’cause she could see it from her backyard. Tina Fey said that in a comedy sketch. Palin never said it, yet it was attributed to her.

Romney, I remember this in a presidential debate like it was yesterday. Probably the second debate, Romney is warning of Russia as our number one geopolitical enemy, and Obama is sitting there and mocking him and laughing at him and making fun of him like he can’t believe what he just heard and everybody knows it’s Al-Qaeda. And look at what’s happening here. All the people who’ve been insulted as dumb and stupid and idiotic and don’t know what they’re talking about are being borne out. There were people — I’ll leave myself out of this — there were people eight years ago warning that Putin existed to rebuild the Soviet Union. The Washington establishment hemmed and hawed and huffed and puffed and laughed, said nothing could be further from the truth. The best and the brightest had no clue.

Now, by the way, Russia and the ChiComs are aligning. They have discovered geopolitical interests that meld together and one of those geopolitical interests is opposition to us. Then you’ve got the ChiComs and the Japanese on the verge of a major conflict. I don’t think too many people are aware of that. So these are heavyweight times, and we’ve got a lot of people dazed and confused and just, in addition to dazed and confused, entirely misinformed. They happen to be our leaders at the moment.

Yes sir. These are “heavyweight  times”.

And, we have a lightweight sitting in the Oval Office as “the Leader of the Free World”.

Yesterday, even Obama’s sycophants, The Washington Post, had to admit that Obama’s “Smart Power!” is a work of fiction:

FOR FIVE YEARS, President Obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he thinks the world should operate than on reality.

Unfortunately for our nation, Obama’s Fantasy Land, where “Smart Power!” reigned, has led to a failure of Foreign Policy, and the birth of a Nightmarish Reality of a purposefully-weakened national image and cross-dressing military.

God Protect Us.

Until He Comes,

KJ

While Being Ignored By Putin, Obama Seeks to Lecture Netanyahu

americanisraelilapelpinAs if Putin’s “unwanted excursion” into the Ukraine wasn’t enough for Obama to bungle, today he meets with Israel Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu concerning Obama’s wishes that Israel give have of its country to the nomadic tribe known as the Palestinians, returning Israel to where it was before the 1967 War, and to attempt to assure Netanyahu that Obama’s “deal” with Iran, will not result in the nuclear annihilation of Israel.

Fox News reports that

President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet Monday with the major topics expected to be a potential Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement and international efforts to freeze Iran’s nuclear program.

The leaders will meet on the sidelines of the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference in Washington.

Ahead of the meeting, Obama had some tough words for the Israeli leader, saying that if Netanyhau “does not believe that a peace deal with the Palestinians is the right thing to do for Israel, then he needs to articulate an alternative approach,” Bloomberg News reported.

Before leaving for the United States, Netanyahu said the two leaders would discuss the Iranian issue and the diplomatic process for mapping out a peace agreement, but said he’d be “steadfast” in defending Israel.

“I will stand steadfast on the State of Israel’s vital interests, especially the security of Israel’s citizens,” he said.

Netanyahu has for years appealed to the U.S. and other allies to stop Iran’s purported efforts to build a nuclear weapon — arguing that achieving that goal is within the grasps of the neighboring, rival country.

Iran has agreed to a deal, opposed by Netanyahu, to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for some easing of international sanctions.

Republicans have led a congressional effort to enact more sanctions — against the wishes of the Obama administration — should Iran fail to fulfill its end of the deal.

APAIC, the powerful pro-Israel lobby group, had supported the sanctions but now opposes them.

The group recently backed efforts by New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to halt the largely GOP Senate effort, saying the timing isn’t right for the upper chamber to vote on the sanctions. The bipartisan bill is co-sponsored by Menendez.

Netanyahu is also scheduled to meet this week with Secretary of State John Kerry and congressional leaders and deliver the APAIC keynote address Tuesday.

Obama is expected to ask Netanyahu to agree to a framework for the so-called “final status” peace agreement.

Kerry has set a goal of April 29 for getting the sides to agree on the final deal, after getting them back to the negotiating table this past summer. However, the Obama administration says such an agreement could take nine more months.

Back in November, when Obama’s “historic deal”,  it was met with less than thunderous applause.

John Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 2005-06. He says that it is nothing but “abject surrender”.  He posted this article at the Weekly Standard:

This interim agreement is badly skewed from America’s perspective. Iran retains its full capacity to enrich uranium, thus abandoning a decade of Western insistence and Security Council resolutions that Iran stop all uranium-enrichment activities. Allowing Iran to continue enriching, and despite modest (indeed, utterly inadequate) measures to prevent it from increasing its enriched-uranium stockpiles and its overall nuclear infrastructure, lays the predicate for Iran fully enjoying its “right” to enrichment in any “final” agreement. Indeed, the interim agreement itself acknowledges that a “comprehensive solution” will “involve a mutually defined enrichment program.” This is not, as the Obama administration leaked before the deal became public, a “compromise” on Iran’s claimed “right” to enrichment. This is abject surrender by the United States.

In exchange for superficial concessions, Iran achieved three critical breakthroughs. First, it bought time to continue all aspects of its nuclear-weapons program the agreement does not cover (centrifuge manufacturing and testing; weaponization research and fabrication; and its entire ballistic missile program). Indeed, given that the interim agreement contemplates periodic renewals, Iran may have gained all of the time it needs to achieve weaponization not of simply a handful of nuclear weapons, but of dozens or more.

Second, Iran has gained legitimacy. This central banker of international terrorism and flagrant nuclear proliferator is once again part of the international club. Much as the Syria chemical-weapons agreement buttressed Bashar al-Assad, the mullahs have escaped the political deep freezer.

Third, Iran has broken the psychological momentum and effect of the international economic sanctions. While estimates differ on Iran’s precise gain, it is considerable ($7 billion is the lowest estimate), and presages much more. Tehran correctly assessed that a mere six-months’ easing of sanctions will make it extraordinarily hard for the West to reverse direction, even faced with systematic violations of Iran’s nuclear pledges. Major oil-importing countries (China, India, South Korea, and others) were already chafing under U.S. sanctions, sensing President Obama had no stomach either to impose sanctions on them, or pay the domestic political price of granting further waivers.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s earlier warning that this was “the deal of the century” for Iran has unfortunately been vindicated. Given such an inadequate deal, what motivated Obama to agree? The inescapable conclusion is that, the mantra notwithstanding, the White House actually did prefer a bad deal to the diplomatic process grinding to a halt. This deal was a “hail Mary” to buy time. Why?

Buying time for its own sake makes sense in some negotiating contexts, but the sub silentio objective here was to jerry-rig yet another argument to wield against Israel and its fateful decision whether or not to strike Iran. Obama, fearing that strike more than an Iranian nuclear weapon, clearly needed greater international pressure on Jerusalem. And Jerusalem fully understands that Israel was the real target of the Geneva negotiations. How, therefore, should Israel react?

Most importantly, the deal leaves the basic strategic realities unchanged. Iran’s nuclear program was, from its inception, a weapons program, and it remains one today. Even modest constraints, easily and rapidly reversible, do not change that fundamental political and operational reality. And while some already-known aspects of Iran’s nuclear program are returned to enhanced scrutiny, the undeclared and likely unknown military work will continue to expand, thus recalling the drunk looking for his lost car keys under the street lamp because of the better lighting.

…Undoubtedly, an Israeli strike during the interim deal would be greeted with outrage from all the expected circles. But that same outrage, or more, would also come further down the road. In short, measured against the expected reaction even in friendly capitals, there is never a “good” time for an Israeli strike, only bad and worse times. Accordingly, the Geneva deal does not change Israel’s strategic calculus even slightly, unless the Netanyahu government itself falls prey to the psychological warfare successfully waged so far by the ayatollahs. That we will know only as the days unfold.

Israel still must make the extremely difficult judgment whether it will stand by as Iran maneuvers effortlessly around a feckless and weak White House, bolstering its economic situation while still making progress on the nuclear front, perhaps less progress on some aspects of its nuclear work than before the deal, but more on others.

And what can critics of the Geneva deal, in Washington and other Western capitals, do? They can try to advance the sanctions legislation pending in the Senate over administration objections, for the political symbolism if nothing else. Unfortunately, they’re unlikely to succeed over the administration’s near-certain opposition. Tehran judges correctly that they have Obama obediently moving in their direction, with the European Union straining at the bit for still-more relaxation of the sanctions regimes.

Instead, those opposing Obama’s “Munich moment” in Geneva (to borrow a Kerry phrase from the Syrian crisis), should focus on the larger and more permanent strategic problem: A terrorist, nuclear Iran still threatens American interests and allies, and almost certainly means widespread nuclear proliferation across the Middle East. A nuclear Iran would also be essentially invulnerable, providing a refuge that al Qaeda leaders hiding in Afghan and Pakistani caves could only dream of.

So in truth, an Israeli military strike is the only way to avoid Tehran’s otherwise inevitable march to nuclear weapons, and the proliferation that will surely follow. Making the case for Israel’s exercise of its legitimate right of self-defense has therefore never been more politically important. Whether they are celebrating in Tehran or in Jerusalem a year from now may well depend on how the opponents of the deal in Washington conduct themselves.

Given the disastrous track record of Obama and Kerry’s “Smart Power!”, with the ongoing Middle East Bonfire known as “Arab Spring”, Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine, and Obama’s undeserved and dangerous trust of the Rogue Nation of Iran, I don’t blame Prime Minister Netanyahu one bit.

I would not trust President Barack Hussein Obama on anything, much less Foreign Policy, any further than I can throw him.

United States President Barack Hussein Obama has proven himself to be more concerned about America’s Enemies than our Allies…and, more concerned about reaching out to Muslim Radicals than demanding the release of Christian American Pastor Saeed Abedina, who has been held captive by Iran since the summer of 2012.

Obama, Kerry, and the rest of his Liberal Dhimmi Cabal has shown where their loyalties unequivocally lie, with their braggadocio over this Chamberlain-esque “deal”. 

And, they are not with our allies nor the safety of the citizens of the United States.

Either due to naivete or simple over-reliance on the part of Obama and his Administration, in regards to their “superior intellect”, to quote Fred Thompson, as Admiral Josh Painter, in the great movie “The Hunt for Red October”…

This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.

Until He Comes,

KJ

A State of the Union Address You Will Not Hear Tonight [A KJ Political Parody]

ObamalyingMy fellow Americans (as far as you know)…

I come to you tonight after 5 long years of the worst presidency in American History. I ran on the promise of “Hope and Change”. And now, thanks to my incompetency, your hope has been diminished and there’s no change left in any of your pockets.

It probably should have given you suckers a clue when I called all of you” bitter clingers”. But, because you wanted to be in on something historic, the naive among you elected me as your first black President of the United States.

So here I stand, 5 years later, reelected by 47% of the population, who do not care that I am a socialist, as long as they do not have to get up off the couch and will continue to receive their “benefits”.

Since this is, after all, the State of the Union address, I will summarize the present state of the United States of America under my leadership.

Of course, I could do it in one word, but there are children present.

Regarding the Economic Depression which our nation still finds itself in, I have one thing to say: IT’S NOT MY FAULT!

It is the fault of my predecessor. Nevermind, that my party has been in control of Congress since 2007. It also does not matter that I have spent more of your money than any president in history. For those of you who have lost their jobs and are having trouble surviving, just relax and think of your situation,  as I have told you before, as a “fun-cation”. Uncle Sugar will take care of you.

Next, please allow me to speak a few words about my signature legislation:  Obamacare.

I realize that five million of you have lost your health insurance because of Obamacare. However, just as has been the case during the building of every other socialist paradise, some sacrifices have to be made for the greater good.  After all, from each according to his ability to each according to his need.

Oh, and by the way, don’t worry about not being able to see your favorite doctor anymore. That guy was a quack anyway.

On the subject of Amnesty, I want to assure you “bitter clingers” out there that these new citizens will not be taking your jobs away from you. There are no jobs left to take.

Regarding the assertion that I and my fellow Democrats are buying their votes, but not their loyalty to America, let me reassure you that they will be just as patriotic as I am.

Concerning the issue of “gay marriage”, I believe that every American has the right to be as miserable as I am. Err…ummm… I meant as happy as I am. Isn’t that right, Reggie…err… Michelle?

By redefining the word marriage, we are making things fair and equal for all Americans.

Pay no attention to what those haters, the Christians, say. The antiquated notion that the traditional family unit is the “backbone of our nation” is nothing but a bunch of poppycock. For example, look at how well our nation’s black population is doing in coping with a 75 percent illegitimate birth rate. I mean it’s not like there’s a nationwide gang problem, or anything.

And, all this horrible weather that we are experiencing in our nation is structly a coincidence.

Concerning the legalization of marijuana, as I recently stated, I believe that marijuana is no more harmful than the effects of alcohol..and when you drive your car after smoking a bowl, you are no more dangerous to the public at large, than if you just left your local bar at closing time. Oh…and according to my own National Drug Control Policy ,  it’s a Gateway Drug that will leave your lungs as black as tar , cause brain damage, and lower your IQ.  But, hey…that’s a small price to pay for a good buzz, huh? And, besides, you don’t need to think anyway. I will do that for you.

On the subject of Foreign Affairs, please allow me to reassure you that America is safe. We will not be nuked anytime soon. The Mullahs in Iran have given me their word on it.

I mean, its not like they would kidnap any of our people and hold them for 144 days. Why,that could never happen. The next thing you’ll be telling me is that the Muslim Brotherhood is a Terrorist Organization.

And, regarding that little incident at the Benghazi Compound in Libya, that evil YouTube Video Maker is still safely in jail, so our new Muslim friends have no reason to get “agitated”, again.

As far as Syria and the rest of the Middle East is concerned, I am certain that as Arab Spring continues, the transition of power from Moderate Muslim Governments to governments supported by the Muslim Brotherhood, will go just as smoothly as it did in Egypt.

In summary, as you may have heard, I recently announced that I was going to use my Authority as President to rule by diktat, err, write Executive Orders, to bypass Congress, if they did not pass legislation that I wanted them to.

An ABC/Washington Post poll released yesterday, shows that 63% of you do not trust me to make sound decisions. In response to that, I say BIG HAIRY DEAL!

I have never listened to you before. Why should I now?

Besides… look at how it has worked out so well so far.

For me and my family that is, not so much for you guys.

Thank you for your support…all 38% of you. Good night.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama, Israel, and Iran: Iran + Nuke = Boom!

americanisraelilapelpinIsrael exists; it has a right to exist in peace behind secure and defensible borders; and it has a right to demand of its neighbors that they recognize those facts. I have personally followed and supported Israel’s heroic struggle for survival, ever since the founding of the State of Israel 34 years ago. In the pre-1967 borders Israel was barely 10 miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel’s population lived within artillery range of hostile Arab armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again. – U.S. President Ronald Wilson Reagan, Speech on United States Policy for Peace in the Middle East, September 1, 1982

It is well known, through his words and actions, that America’s current (P)resident Barack Hussein Obama, cares more for Israel’s enemies, than he does for God’s Chosen People. If it were up to Obama, Israel would be forced to give the nomadic people known as Palestinians, half of the land that the nation of Israel sits on. Not only that, but he and his talking horse, (at least he has the face of one) Secretary of State John F. Kerry,”negotiated”, and I use the term loosely, an agreement with the Mullahs of Iran, to stop building a nuclear bomb, in exchange for allowing them to continue their Uranium Enrichment, an agreement which makes about as much sense as Pee Wee Herman starring in the title role in the next “Terminator” movie.

In return, a new poll suggests that most Israelis trust “The Leader of the Free World” about as far as they could throw Moochelle.

According to new poll, a huge majority of Israelis do not trust President Obama with regard to Iran, and believe Obama will allow Iran to go nuclear. Only 22 percent of Israeli voters believed that Obama would “ensure that Iran does not achieve a nuclear weapon.”

Almost two-thirds of Israelis thought that statement was untrue, and 15 percent gave no answer. President Obama has just a 33 percent favorable rating in Israel, as opposed to a 50 percent disapproval rating. Even those who favor Obama are split evenly on whether or not he will prevent Iran from going nuclear.

That distrust of Obama is shared by Israel’s Prime Minister.

The Jerusalem Post reports that

The Iranian interim agreement that went into effect on Monday does not prevent Iran from implementing its intentions to create nuclear weapons, Prime Minister Netanyahu said in the Knesset.

Netanyahu, in a speech welcoming visiting Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to the Knesset on Monday, said that the international community’s goal – one that has not yet been achieved — must be stopping the Iranians from gaining the capacity to build a nuclear weapon.

The prime minister likened the manufacturing of the fissile material needed to make a bomb to a train that must pass through three stops: the first stop of enriching uranium to 3.5 percent, the second stop of enriching uranium to 20 percent, and the final step of enriching uranium to 90 percent.

“The agreement in Geneva did away with the 20% stop, but left the train on its track and enables Iran to upgrade the locomotive by developing new centrifuges, so that when the day comes it can leap in a very short time to the final stop on an express track without stopping at an intermediary stop,” he said.

The final agreement that the world powers negotiates with Iran must take the “Iranian nuclear train off the tracks,” Netanyahu said, adding that Iran must not be allowed to have the capability to manufacture a bomb.

Netanyahu also said that the international community should be demanding of Iran – at a time when it is relieving sanctions and giving Teheran legitimization – that it end its calls for the destruction of Israel, and the arming of terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.

Fat chance, Bibi. Remember, these same Barbarian Nations who threaten your nation’s existence, are on the UN’s Security Council.

So, how much of Iran’s boasting about their ability to bult a nuke is fiction and how much of it is fact?

Olli Heinonen is the former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

He was asked Sunday on Aaron Klein’s WABC Radio show about the timeframe in response to statements from Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, who boasted last week that Tehran can nix its deal with the West and resume enriching uranium to 20-percent levels within one day if it so desires.

Heinonen responded that if Iran wanted it would currently take the country “two, three weeks to have enough uranium hexafluoride high-enriched for one single weapon.”

He told Klein: “If [Iran] in reality [abrogates the deal] tomorrow, they still have quite a substantial stock of uranium hexafluoride, which is enriched to 20 percent. … And then technically, when Iran has committed to this month to certain parts of the processes in such a way these tandem cascades are not anymore connected with each other, you can indeed put them back in one day’s time.

“So if this all happens in the next, let’s say, weeks, this is really true. They can start to produce 20-percent enriched uranium,” he said. “Now, in order to go fast for Iran, it actually needs to make several such tandem cascades. Not just those in Natanz and Fordow [nuclear plants]. They have to put perhaps some 6,000 centrifuges to work in this kind of a mode.”

Continued the former IAEA director: “If they do that, which they can technically do, it will take certainly a little bit more than one night to do. But then once they have sorted it out, it would take about two, three weeks to have enough uranium hexafluoride high-enriched for one single weapon.”

On May 22, 2011, President Obama said,

A strong and secure Israel is in the national security interest of the United States not simply because we share strategic interests … America’s commitment to Israel’s security flows from a deeper place — and that’s the values we share.

A deeper place? As in piled higher and deeper?

Mr. President, if something happens to Israel, or Iran gets taken out by a preemptive strike from Israel, that blood is on your hands. 

And, if this treatment of God’s Chosen People continues, I am afraid we are going to find out why America is not mentioned in The Book of Revelation.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama Lauds Negotiation “Victory” Over Iran…Goes on Hawaiian Christmas Vacation…American Pastor Remains in Iranian Jail.

PastorSaeedAs President Barack Hussein Obama and his family enjoy their $4,000,000 Hawaiian Christmas Vacation, ON OUR DIME, an American Pastor sits, abandoned to die, in Iran’s most horrible prison, ignored by an Administration who would rather proclaim “victory” after negotiations with those same barbarians, which ended with Obama and his Administration making Former British PM Neville Chamberlain look like Gen. George S. Patton, in comparison.

Fox News reports that…

Naghmeh Abedini, whose husband, Saeed Abedini, is serving an eight-year prison term in Iran after being arrested more than a year ago while visiting his homeland, told FoxNews.com she felt betrayed when she later learned U.S. diplomats were negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran even while claiming nothing could be done for her husband.

“Initially, when I went to the U.S. government, they said we don’t have a direct relationship with Iran,” Naghmeh Abdeini said, moments after telling a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee her husband’s health is failing in prison. “Here we were sitting across table from Iran. It was our best leverage. It should have been a precondition.”

The Boise, Idaho, mother of two said her husband’s relatives in Iran have been able to meet with him sporadically, and have given her grim news about his condition. She said the imprisoned American’s father saw Abedini 10 days ago and reported that has internal bleeding from repeated beatings at the hands of guards and fellow inmates and was covered with lice.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who chairs the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations, said “time is running out” for Abedini, who experts believe would be unlikely to survive eight years in Iran’s brutal prison system. Smith said Abedini and two other Americans being held in Iran should have been the first order of business when U.S. and Iranian diplomats sat down for talks, sometime earlier this year.

“You begin every conversation with it; it should be center of every conversation and every conversation should end with it,” Smith told FoxNews.com. “How can we have a discussion with any regime when they are torturing our citizens?”

Earlier, lawmakers on the panel heard the distraught wife detail her fears for her husband and the heartbreak she and their two children feel due to his absence.

“His condition has worsened and the kids and I fear his life,” she said, before holding up a photograph of her children on their first day of school. “Tears were streaming down my face as I got the kids ready for school with their father missing.”

Abedini “went to Iran to build an orphanage for Iranian children last year” and “remains in an absolute hell-hole prison,” Smith told the committee.

A U.S. State Department official.

“We continue to have serious concerns about the fate of a dual national U.S.-Iranian detained in Iran Saeed Abedini,” the official said. “As we noted previously, President Obama raised Mr. Abedini’s case in his Sept. 27 phone call with President [Hassan] Rouhani and we continue to urge the Iranian government to release Mr. Abedini so that he may be reunited with his family.

“We have been repeatedly clear that we are calling on Iran to release all detained U.S. citizens and we will continue our efforts until Saeed Abedini, Amir Hekmati, and Robert Levinson all return home,” the official added.

On the night of November 24th. President Barack Hussein Obama spoke to the nation concerning the fabulous, toothless deal which he and the Haughty One, Sec. of State John Kerry had acquiesced to with the Mad Mullahs of Iran….

On our side, the United States and our friends and allies have agreed to provide Iran with modest relief, while continuing to apply our toughest sanctions. We will refrain from imposing new sanctions, and we will allow the Iranian government access to a portion of the revenue that they have been denied through sanctions. But the broader architecture of sanctions will remain in place and we will continue to enforce them vigorously. And if Iran does not fully meet its commitments during this six-month phase, we will turn off the relief and ratchet up the pressure.

Over the next six months, we will work to negotiate a comprehensive solution. We approach these negotiations with a basic understanding: Iran, like any nation, should be able to access peaceful nuclear energy. But because of its record of violating its obligations, Iran must accept strict limitations on its nuclear program that make it impossible to develop a nuclear weapon.

In these negotiations, nothing will be agreed to unless everything is agreed to. The burden is on Iran to prove to the world that its nuclear program will be exclusively for peaceful purposes.

… The world is united in support of our determination to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Iran must know that security and prosperity will never come through the pursuit of nuclear weapons — it must be reached through fully verifiable agreements that make Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons impossible.

As we go forward, the resolve of the United States will remain firm, as will our commitments to our friends and allies –- particularly Israel and our Gulf partners, who have good reason to be skeptical about Iran’s intentions.

Ultimately, only diplomacy can bring about a durable solution to the challenge posed by Iran’s nuclear program. As President and Commander-in-Chief, I will do what is necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. But I have a profound responsibility to try to resolve our differences peacefully, rather than rush towards conflict. Today, we have a real opportunity to achieve a comprehensive, peaceful settlement, and I believe we must test it.

Negotiations? More like surrendering to the enemy. Where has the State Departments vaunted “Smart Power!” been concerning Saeed Abedini?

Pastor Abedini converted from Islam to Christianity over 10 years ago, and was previously sanctioned for evangelizing in Iran. However, according to the 34-year-old father of two, he had only returned to Iran to help establish an orphanage when authorities yanked him off a bus in August of 2012 and tossed him into the notorious Evin prison in Tehran.

They got around to a “trial”, eventually, and sentenced him to eight years. He has since been moved to Rajai Shahr Prison in Karaj, a prison that houses Iran’s most violent criminals. His supporters report that he has been beaten and tortured in the prison. It is reported that Rajai Shahr Prison was built to accommodate 5,000 inmates, but at present houses about 22,000. This over-population has led to severe overcrowding and inhumane conditions.

Evidently, President Barack Hussein Obama values sucking up to a Radical Muslim Country which supports Terrorism, and is working on a Nuclear Bomb, with which to destroy “The Great Satan” (America), more than he does securing the freedom of a Christian American Pastor, being held in barbaric conditions, by Obama’s “new friends”.

Actions speak louder than words.

Priorities…priorities.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama to Close Vatican Embassy. “Security Concerns” or Petulant Payback?

obamabillofrightsAfter We Win This Election, It’s Our Turn. Payback Time! – Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Barack Hussein Obama

Just when you think that Obama and his minions have pulled all of the dirty tricks that they possibly can….they surprise you…and pull another one.

Or, as Bullwinkle J. Moose said to Rocket J. Squirrel,

Hey, Rocky…wanna see me pull a rabbit out of my hat?

Rocky:  Again?

The Holy See is the diplomatic representative of the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope with its headquarters in Vatican City. The United States maintained a presence in Rome throughout the nineteenth century. The United States at different times had a Minister to the Papal States, Minister to the Pontifical States, and finally, a Minister to Rome from 1848 until Kingdom of Italy conquered Rome in 1870. Throughout much of the twentieth century, successive U.S. Presidents sent a Personal Representative to the Holy See.

The United States Embassy to the Holy See is located on the Aventine hill in the beautiful Villa Domiziana, a private residence, built in 1953. In 1994 the United States government bought the property and turned it into the new chancery for the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See.

Formal diplomatic relations with the Holy See were begun in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II. The mission works in partnership with the Holy See on global issues including HIV/AIDS, world hunger, religious freedom and human rights.

However, the 44th President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, wants to close the Vatican Embassy.

According to the National Catholic Reporter

Plans to move the U.S. embassy to the Vatican onto the grounds of the larger American embassy to Italy, though in a separate building and with a distinct entrance, are drawing fire from five former American envoys despite the tacit consent of the Vatican itself.

Justified primarily on the grounds of enhanced security, the move is described by former U.S. Ambassador James Nicholson, who’s also a former Secretary of Veterans Affairs in the Bush administration and a former chair of the Republican National Committee, as a “massive downgrade” in U.S./Vatican ties.

“It’s turning this embassy into a stepchild of the embassy to Italy,” Nicholson said.

“The Holy See is a pivot point for international affairs and a major listening post for the United States,” he said, “and to shoehorn [the U.S. delegation] into an office annex inside another embassy is an insult to American Catholics and to the Vatican.”

Nicholson, who spoke in an interview Wednesday with NCR, joins former Bush envoys Francis Rooney and Mary Ann Glendon as well as Raymond Flynn, the first Clinton ambassador, and Thomas Melady, who served the first President Bush, in objecting.

“In the diplomatic world, if you don’t have your own separate space, you’re on the road to nowhere,” said Rooney, who served as ambassador from 2005 to 2008. He’s author of The Global Vatican, a new book on U.S./Vatican relations.

While the move has not yet been publicly announced, a contract for renovations to the new facility has been awarded, and it’s tentatively scheduled to open in January 2015. The embassy is presently located in a building near Rome’s Circus Maximus, roughly 3 miles away from the other American diplomatic facilities in the city.

Although the Vatican traditionally has insisted that countries maintain embassies in distinct locations as a way of underscoring its autonomy, signals in this case suggest it won’t protest the relocation.

On background, a senior Vatican official told NCR on Monday that safety is a “real concern,” especially in the wake of a lethal June 2012 assault on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that claimed the lives of an American ambassador and three other officials. A U.S. State Department report after that assault recommended consolidating facilities wherever possible.

The all-encompassing excuse of “security concerns” is a catch-all in this case. The Obama Administration has been attempting to marginalize the Catholic Church in America for quite a while now.

Obama and his Adminstration expect Catholic Institutions to go against their faith, in deference to what they perceive to be a “higher power”: Obamacare.

The Catholic League shot back in January of 2012…with both barrels.

The following was our response to the announcement of the Obama administration’s edict mandating coverage of sterilization and contraceptive services in most healthcare plans:

Secretary of HHS Kathleen Sebelius said that aside from houses of worship, all other religious agencies and organizations will be required to provide sterilization and contraceptive services, including abortifacients, in their employee healthcare plans; none will be allowed to charge co-pays or deductibles. The policy goes into effect in August 2013 for these entities.

Sebelius explained how her directive applies to non-church religious entities such as Catholic hospitals and universities: “Employers wishing to take advantage of the additional year must certify that they qualify for the delayed implementation. This additional year will allow these organizations more time and flexibility to adapt to this new rule.” She also said, “I believe this proposal strikes the appropriate balance between religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services.”

That this edict was being announced in an election year indicates both contempt for the First Amendment and plain stupidity.

Things have not gotten any better in this “strained relationship”. 

In fact, in a related note, the Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will hear arguments concerning the requirement that employers offer access to contraception coverage. The two case being presented are both private companies, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties whose owners are Christians who refuse to provide free contraception coverage, as that practice would go against their Christian Faith.

I find it quite revealing that, while Obama is requiring nothing from the murderous, barbaric country of Iran, and deemed his Nuclear Negotiations a “success”, he is not willing to negotiate with Christian Americans,who are simply standing for Christ, in defense of their faith and their right to Religious Freedom.

Priorities…and petulance.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama “Surrenders”. Israel Prepares.

americanisraelilapelpinIn yesterday’s post, I wrote about the Obama Administration’s Deal of Appeasement, struck with the barbaric, radical Muslim Leadership of the Iranian Government.

John Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 2005-06. He says that it is nothing but “abject surrender”.  He posted this article, over the weekend at The Weekly Standard.

This interim agreement is badly skewed from America’s perspective. Iran retains its full capacity to enrich uranium, thus abandoning a decade of Western insistence and Security Council resolutions that Iran stop all uranium-enrichment activities. Allowing Iran to continue enriching, and despite modest (indeed, utterly inadequate) measures to prevent it from increasing its enriched-uranium stockpiles and its overall nuclear infrastructure, lays the predicate for Iran fully enjoying its “right” to enrichment in any “final” agreement. Indeed, the interim agreement itself acknowledges that a “comprehensive solution” will “involve a mutually defined enrichment program.” This is not, as the Obama administration leaked before the deal became public, a “compromise” on Iran’s claimed “right” to enrichment. This is abject surrender by the United States.

In exchange for superficial concessions, Iran achieved three critical breakthroughs. First, it bought time to continue all aspects of its nuclear-weapons program the agreement does not cover (centrifuge manufacturing and testing; weaponization research and fabrication; and its entire ballistic missile program). Indeed, given that the interim agreement contemplates periodic renewals, Iran may have gained all of the time it needs to achieve weaponization not of simply a handful of nuclear weapons, but of dozens or more.

Second, Iran has gained legitimacy. This central banker of international terrorism and flagrant nuclear proliferator is once again part of the international club. Much as the Syria chemical-weapons agreement buttressed Bashar al-Assad, the mullahs have escaped the political deep freezer.

Third, Iran has broken the psychological momentum and effect of the international economic sanctions. While estimates differ on Iran’s precise gain, it is considerable ($7 billion is the lowest estimate), and presages much more. Tehran correctly assessed that a mere six-months’ easing of sanctions will make it extraordinarily hard for the West to reverse direction, even faced with systematic violations of Iran’s nuclear pledges. Major oil-importing countries (China, India, South Korea, and others) were already chafing under U.S. sanctions, sensing President Obama had no stomach either to impose sanctions on them, or pay the domestic political price of granting further waivers.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s earlier warning that this was “the deal of the century” for Iran has unfortunately been vindicated. Given such an inadequate deal, what motivated Obama to agree? The inescapable conclusion is that, the mantra notwithstanding, the White House actually did prefer a bad deal to the diplomatic process grinding to a halt. This deal was a “hail Mary” to buy time. Why?

Buying time for its own sake makes sense in some negotiating contexts, but the sub silentio objective here was to jerry-rig yet another argument to wield against Israel and its fateful decision whether or not to strike Iran. Obama, fearing that strike more than an Iranian nuclear weapon, clearly needed greater international pressure on Jerusalem. And Jerusalem fully understands that Israel was the real target of the Geneva negotiations. How, therefore, should Israel react?

Most importantly, the deal leaves the basic strategic realities unchanged. Iran’s nuclear program was, from its inception, a weapons program, and it remains one today. Even modest constraints, easily and rapidly reversible, do not change that fundamental political and operational reality. And while some already-known aspects of Iran’s nuclear program are returned to enhanced scrutiny, the undeclared and likely unknown military work will continue to expand, thus recalling the drunk looking for his lost car keys under the street lamp because of the better lighting.

…Undoubtedly, an Israeli strike during the interim deal would be greeted with outrage from all the expected circles. But that same outrage, or more, would also come further down the road. In short, measured against the expected reaction even in friendly capitals, there is never a “good” time for an Israeli strike, only bad and worse times. Accordingly, the Geneva deal does not change Israel’s strategic calculus even slightly, unless the Netanyahu government itself falls prey to the psychological warfare successfully waged so far by the ayatollahs. That we will know only as the days unfold.

Israel still must make the extremely difficult judgment whether it will stand by as Iran maneuvers effortlessly around a feckless and weak White House, bolstering its economic situation while still making progress on the nuclear front, perhaps less progress on some aspects of its nuclear work than before the deal, but more on others.

And what can critics of the Geneva deal, in Washington and other Western capitals, do? They can try to advance the sanctions legislation pending in the Senate over administration objections, for the political symbolism if nothing else. Unfortunately, they’re unlikely to succeed over the administration’s near-certain opposition. Tehran judges correctly that they have Obama obediently moving in their direction, with the European Union straining at the bit for still-more relaxation of the sanctions regimes.

Instead, those opposing Obama’s “Munich moment” in Geneva (to borrow a Kerry phrase from the Syrian crisis), should focus on the larger and more permanent strategic problem: A terrorist, nuclear Iran still threatens American interests and allies, and almost certainly means widespread nuclear proliferation across the Middle East. A nuclear Iran would also be essentially invulnerable, providing a refuge that al Qaeda leaders hiding in Afghan and Pakistani caves could only dream of.

So in truth, an Israeli military strike is the only way to avoid Tehran’s otherwise inevitable march to nuclear weapons, and the proliferation that will surely follow. Making the case for Israel’s exercise of its legitimate right of self-defense has therefore never been more politically important. Whether they are celebrating in Tehran or in Jerusalem a year from now may well depend on how the opponents of the deal in Washington conduct themselves.

Iran has always been, since the ouster of the Shah, a rogue nation. They are a threat to every nation who stands in the way of their crazed Political Ideology disguised as a “religion”.

Just as a dog with rabies threatens the whole community, so do the crazed mullahs of Iran threaten the entire Middle East with nuclear annihilation.  And, it’s funny how a common enemy can bring together countries that do not always see eye to eye…

Israeli personnel in recent days were in Saudi Arabia to inspect bases that could be used as a staging ground to launch attacks against Iran, according to informed Egyptian intelligence officials.

The officials said Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and other Arab and Persian Gulf countries have been discussing the next steps toward possible strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites.

The officials said the U.S. passed strong messages to Israel and the Saudis that the Americans control radar capabilities over the skies near Iran and that no strike should be launched without permission from the Obama administration.

It was unclear whether the purported visit to Saudi Arabia by Israeli military and intelligence officials signals any real preparation for a strike or if the trip was meant to keep pressure on the West amid Israeli fears about the current deal with Tehran.

The trip came prior to the announcement today of the deal with Western powers that aims to halt key parts of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

At a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed what he called a “bad” and “dangerous” deal, while affirming that Israel will not allow Iran to go nuclear.

“Israel is not obligated by this agreement,” Netanyahu said. “I want to make clear we will not allow Iran to obtain military nuclear capability.” “Today the world became a much more dangerous place because the most dangerous regime in the world made a significant step in obtaining the most dangerous weapons in the world,” he said.

The deal reportedly halts the installation of new centrifuges, but allows Iran to keep current centrifuges used to enrich uranium.

The agreement caps the amount and type of enriched uranium Iran can produce and opens many nuclear sites up to daily inspections. However, Israel is warning that even the low-grade uranium allowed in the agreement can be used to eventually assemble a nuclear weapons capability.

United States President Barack Hussein Obama has proven himself to be more concerned about America’s Enemies than our Allies…and, more concerned about reaching out to Muslim Radicals than demanding the release of Christian American Pastor Saeed Abedina, who has been held captive by Iran since the summer of 2012.

Obama, Kerry, and the rest of his Liberal Dhimmi Cabal has shown where their loyalties unequivocally lie, with their braggadocio over this Chamberlain-esque “deal”. 

And, they are not with our allies nor the safety of the citizens of the United States.

Either due to naivete or simple over-reliance on the part of Obama and his Administration, in regards to their “superior intellect”, to quote Fred Thompson, as Admiral Josh Painter, in the great movie “The Hunt for Red October”…

This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.

Until He Comes,

KJ