Joel B. Pollak - Page 294

If you still wonder why our nation’s politics are so divided, look no further than Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank’s half-witted attempt to accuse Republicans—and Israelis—of hypocrisy in opposing the Iran deal. The same neocons and Likudniks who opposed any Iran deal, Milbank says, now want to stick with the interim deal, or argue for a “better deal” than the one President Barack Obama is proposing. Conclusion: they are liars, warmongers, and above all, Obama-haters.

President Barack Obama met on Monday with a group of Jewish leaders at the White House in an effort to win their support for the Iran deal–and for passing that deal without approval from Congress. The details of the meeting were not posted, but The Hill reports that the Obama administration sees the outreach as a key part of its effort to prevent the Corker bill, which would require congressional approval of an Iran deal, from reaching the two-thirds majority threshold.

A series of polls makes the case that voters support President Barack Obama’s Iran deal, despite the objections of Republicans in Congress. The latest is the Quinnipiac swing state poll, which finds that voters in Colorado, Iowa and Virginia support a deal with Iran by a 3-to-1 margin. They also support letting Congress decide by a 3-to-1 margin, so the case against the administration’s position is solid. But the poll’s support for the deal is entirely dependent on bad wording that covers up what is actually going on.

Russia announced Monday that it will sell Iran advanced S-300 surface-to-air missiles. The decision, which ends an embargo dating back to 2010, shows that President Barack Obama is rapidly losing control of the international consensus on Iran.

Hollywood executives are opening their checkbooks–and new Super PACs–for Hillary Clinton as she makes a second run at the presidency. Ted Johnson and James Rainey report for Variety that Hollywood is far more unified behind Clinton than they were in 2008, when Barack Obama successfully split the liberal donor base. This time, heavyweights such as Jeffrey Katzenberg are joining Clinton loyalists like Haim Saban to provide the big money to fuel her 2016 campaign.

California Governor Jerry Brown has received support from an unusual source as he defends the state’s farmers from the charge that they overuse water. The Wall Street Journal editorial page defended California’s farmers in a weekend editorial that takes both liberals and conservatives to task for using agriculture as a “scapegoat.” Brown, meanwhile, visited with farmers north of Sacramento this weekend in a show of solidarity with farmers against accusations of water-wasting.

In its lead editorial Sunday, the New York Times plays the race card, accusing Republicans of criticizing President Barack Obama’s foreign policy because he is black. The editors, like many on the left, refuse to acknowledge that it is Obama’s own radical policies,

The Castro brothers haven’t survived in power without being canny politicians as well as ruthless tyrants. And they have President Barack Obama pegged: they know that his ego trumps all other priorities, and are willing to flatter him to win concessions. Raúl Castro used his country’s debut at the Summit of the Americas to deliver an hour-long rant against the U.S. role in the region–then excused Obama: “I apologize to him because President Obama had no responsibility for this.”

Iranians living in California are deeply skeptical of the emerging nuclear deal announced last week by the Obama administration. Many fled Iran for Southern California during and after the 1979 revolution–some after suffering human rights abuses, and many leaving property and relatives behind in uncertain circumstances.

The left has a convenient explanation for California’s severe drought: climate change. Though scientists have yet to make a direct connection, and have suggested instead that the drought is the result of a wind anomaly not related to overall global warming, that has not prevented politicians from putting on their lab coats and declaring their conclusions, demanding not only (sensible) water restrictions but also (irrational) controls on the use of fossil fuels, as if less coal equals more rain.

A war of words–and fundraising emails–has erupted between Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) over the Iran deal. The fight began when Schakowsky objected to Kirk’s remark to Politico that “Neville Chamberlain got a lot of more out of Hitler than [U.S. negotiator] Wendy Sherman got out of Iran.” Schakowsky said it was “appalling” for Kirk to “equate the Obama administration’s diplomacy with Nazi appeasement.” Kirk then used her attack in a fundraising email.

The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act appears to be the most effective way for Congress to stop President Barack Obama from appeasing the Iranian regime with a bad nuclear deal. The “Corker-Mendez-Graham” bill, or the “Corker Bill,” would require President Obama to submit the final Iran deal to Congress. Yet the text of the bill now before Congress would actually make an Iran deal easier to approve–and would do so by gutting the Senate’s constitutional power over treaties.

On Wednesday, David Horovitz, the liberal editor of the Times of Israel called the emerging Iran deal: “A bad deal. Far, far worse than no deal at all.” Also on Wednesday, the liberal editorial board of the New York Times called the Iran framework “a very serious and potentially groundbreaking deal,” and claimed that Israel had offered “offers no workable options.” In order to arrive at that conclusion, however, the Times had to rely on a different set of facts from Horovitz–facts it invented.

Rand Paul may be “closest to Obama in his view on foreign policy,” as Dr. Charles Krauthammer put it on Tuesday, but he is facing stiff competition from Jeb Bush in that category.The former Florida governor praised Obama’s initial negotiating efforts with Iran on Tuesday, telling an audience in Denver that “we need to give him credit” for “bringing other people along and making it tougher.” The puzzling statement suggests the influence of James A. Baker III on the Bush campaign.

The judge presiding over a case involving billionaire and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein has thrown out accusations against lawyer Alan M. Dershowitz, who once represented Epstein but was not named in the lawsuit brought by Bradley Edwards and Paul Cassell on behalf of “Jane Doe #3.” The judge cited Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(f), which allows a court, on its own volition, to strike portions of pleadings that are “redundant, immaterial, impertinent, or scandalous.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who is a candidate to succeed retiring Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) as Senate Minority Leader, has reiterated his support for a bipartisan proposal to require President Barack Obama to submit to Congress any nuclear deal with Iran. Because President Barack Obama has promised to veto the legislation–known as the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act–Schumer’s position is seen as a rare moment of dissent. However, there may be less here than meets the eye.

President Barack Obama has granted an interview to National Public Radio in an attempt to sell the Iran “framework” to a skeptical public. In the process, he compares the agreement to a real-estate deal–a poor analogy for a man who called his own last property purchase deal “boneheaded” after involving indicted (now convicted) bag Chicago man Tony Rezko. Obama also provided at least five big reasons that Congress–whose opposition is growing–should reject the Iran deal.

For days, lefties like Chris Matthews of MSNBC and Jonathan Chait of the New Republic have been fuming that conservative critics of the Iran “framework” have referred to it as the sequel to the Munich agreement of 1938—the deal that defined “appeasement.” Yet President Barack Obama proved his critics correct on Monday when he rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s suggestion that Iran be required to accept Israel’s right to exist as a condition of a final deal.

California Governor Jerry Brown warned Americans on Sunday morning that California’s drought was a sign of climate change. However, in his appearance on ABC News’ This Week, with guest host Martha Raddatz, Brown also defended California farmers from charges that they are overusing water, arguing that they feed the rest of the country.

If Arnold Schwarzenegger could travel back in time, as he did in the Terminator movies, and stop himself from vetoing gay marriage in 2005 and 2007, then perhaps he could have saved his political career from its later, near-complete devastation. However, the Silicon Valley techies haven’t yet invented a time machine. So Schwarzenegger must content himself with an op-ed in the pages of the Washington Post, lecturing fellow Republicans about the evils of Indiana’s religious freedom law.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with his cabinet on Friday, who unanimously opposed the framework Iran deal reached Thursday in Lausanne, Switzerland, and said that any final deal must include Iran’s recognition of Israel.

In the wake of the Iran “framework” agreement Thursday, President Barack Obama celebrated–but the Iranian regime pushed for more concessions, disputing the White House’s “fact sheet” on the deal and insisting the parties had agreed to end sanctions immediately. Iran’s reaction was a clear sign that between now and the end of June, an already-bad deal is going to get worse as the Iranians see just how much Obama wants an agreement, and use that to make new demands.

Left-wing Israeli writer Ari Shavit, an ardent advocate of Israeli concessions to the Palestinians, has blasted President Barack Obama’s “framework” deal with Iran, saying that Obama is making the same mistakes for peace that George W. Bush made for war. Just as Bush launched an invasion of Iraq with no clear idea of the strategic consequences, Shavit says, Obama does not realize the deadly results of a bad deal with Iran, including a nuclear Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey.

Several years ago, two professors co-wrote a book, The Israel Lobby, that repackaged Zionist conspiracy theories in the respectable garb of academic prose. The authors, Stephen M. Walt of Harvard and John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, claimed that Israel, through its network of American supporters, pushed the U.S. to go to war with Iraq and were about to do the same with Iran. On Thursday, President Barack Obama gave his endorsement to that theory.

The P5+1 powers have, as expected, reached a “framework agreement” on a nuclear deal with Iran. And, as suspected, the agreement allows Iran to retain its enrichment facility at an underground bunker. It also allows Iran to maintain a small amount of enriched uranium, and will offer the regime sanctions relief as soon as it can show it is keeping its end of the bargain. As to information about possible military dimensions of Iran’s program, there is nothing but an agreement to talk further.

As talks over a nuclear deal with Iran continued past self-imposed deadlines, Israel’s intelligence minister has warned that the military option is on the table–and noted that Israel does not need U.S. cooperation to carry out a pre-emptive strike.

Once, Robert Malley was too radical for the Obama campaign, or for the White House. The Middle East scholar, widely seen as anti-Israel, reportedly met with the terrorist group Hamas and encouraged the United States to do the same. Then, in February, President Barack Obama appointed Malley as a senior director at the National Security Council. Today, Malley is advising Secretary of State John Kerry in Lausanne, Switzerland as he negotiates with Iran over a nuclear deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized President Barack Obama directly on Thursday evening, telling him that the new framework agreement on Iran’s nuclear program “threatens the survival of the State of Israel.” The two leaders spoke by telephone to discuss the preliminary deal that negotiators from the P5+1 nations reached with Iran at talks in Lausanne, Switzerland that extended past the original Tuesday deadline.

On Wednesday, California Gov. Jerry Brown made national headlines by announcing that he had “signed an executive order requiring the State Water Resources Control Board to implement measures in cities and towns to cut the state’s overall water usage by

Once again, the Iran deal confirmed by diplomats in Lausanne, Switzerland has failed to materialize. And the only thing more pathetic than the repeated collapse of the talks is the spectacle of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry staying on, even after diplomats from China, Russia, France and Germany have packed their bags and gone home. He is simply unwilling to admit failure. But the Iranian regime is happy to entertain his illusions, and so their delegation has stayed behind, too.

Now that Harry Reid has admitted he was lying about Mitt Romney failing to pay taxes in order to help Barack Obama win re-election, the media are pretending to be shocked. But they were complicit, too, giving Reid’s claim more air time than it possibly deserved. And the Obama campaign backed Reid’s efforts, pushing his lies in their own words. The worst offender was Jen Psaki, who was later rewarded with plum communications posts at the State Department and the White House.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the emerging Iran deal on Wednesday, calling it “unconscionable” that world powers were about to sign an agreement with the “murderous” regime even as it continued to vow to destroy Israel.

After a marathon negotiating session that stretched into the wee hours of Wednesday morning, April 1–hours after the official deadline–the parties gathered in Lausanne, Switzerland reached a tentative deal on Iran’s nuclear program.

Trevor Noah had barely endured 12 hours of conservative criticism about his past Twitter comments when the left began to voice its outrage, as well. Liberal critics focused in particular on Noah’s jokes about women. Yet while both left and right seized on Noah’s Twitter feed, the spirit of criticism was not quite the same for each.

Diplomats meeting Tuesday in Lausanne, Switzerland to hammer out the framework agreement for a deal on Iran’s nuclear program missed their deadline of March 31, and resolved to continue their negotiations for an additional day, expecting to complete an agreement on April 1st, otherwise known as April Fool’s Day.

San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer, the only Republican mayor of a major U.S. city, joined the “Boycott Indiana” bandwagon, banning city travel Monday to the state over its recent Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which critics have called anti-gay. “We’ve directed the City’s Chief Operating Officer to take the necessary actions to restrict publicly funded travel by city employees to Indiana if the law is not amended or repealed by next week,” said Faulconer’s spokesperson.