The Resistance - By Hal Lindsey -
In today's political climate, at almost any public venue in America, a speaker can instantly divide the audience into distinct camps with just two words ... Donald Trump.
That name can be incendiary in churches, families, businesses, schools, and whole communities. The President's detractors see him as destructive to all that makes America great. Meanwhile, his proponents think he's going to "make America great again." A recent report on viewer ratings for cable news, showed Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow dominating. Hannity defends and promotes Trump with all his might day after day. Maddow attacks as hard as she can.
We are a divided nation.
But certain facts seem unassailable. First, Donald Trump is the President of the United States. Second, there is only one United States. Third, we only have one President at a time. Fourth, a weakened head of state weakens a nation. Fifth, a weakened United States makes the whole world a more dangerous place.
A true representative republic will have vigorous political debate. But recent rancor has gone far beyond politics. Early in the Trump presidency, comedian Sarah Silverman tweeted, "Wake up & join the resistance. Once the military is w(ith) us fascists get overthrown. Mad king and his handlers go bye bye."
A few days later, Entertainment Weekly ran this headline; "Sarah Silverman walks back call for coup against Trump." It's hard to imagine. A popular entertainer had to "walk back" her call for a coup d'état in the United States of America. But, as far as I can see, she's as popular now as ever.
Even though Silverman walked back the most extreme part of her statement, "the resistance" that she mentioned has become a real thing. In May, Hillary Clinton said, "I'm now back to being an activist citizen and part of the resistance."
I don't like the term "the resistance" because it evokes images of guerrilla warfare, such as with the French Resistance to the Nazis in World War II. But military terminology has so permeated political rhetoric that it has become a waste of time to complain about it.
In general, I agree that politicians, and most other citizens, should lawfully resist policies they see as hurtful or unfair. We hope for politicians who will off positive solutions, but there's also a place for resisting the other side.
Notice that I said, "most other citizens" should lawfully resist. There are at least two professions that must leave political advocacy, and resistance, to the privacy of the voting booth - active military personnel, and journalists. I'm not talking about editorial writers, columnists, or commentators. It's their job to give their opinions. I'm talking about beat reporters whose job it is to give the facts, as opposed to making their personal opinions sound like facts. A high percentage of Washington beat reporters now see themselves as part of "the resistance."
Hannity and Maddow are not reporters. They make no claim to impartiality. They host opinion shows that reflect their own views. That's okay. When you read these columns, or watch me on television, you know that I am giving commentary. But Maddow also serves as anchor of MSNBC convention and election coverage. Once upon a time, no network would even think of having a commentator anchor coverage of a straight news event.
There is not even a pretense that Rachel Maddow is an unbiased observer. Before the Republican convention, she compared Donald Trump to Hitler, and worried that America might be taking a turn like that of Nazi Germany. That's an extreme point of view. Yet, she anchored election coverage for MSNBC. Let her give her opinions, but as a commentator, not a straight reporter.
Over at CNN, things have become strange indeed. They act as if they see themselves in a life-or-death struggle to bring down the President. They believe the Trump campaign treasonously colluded with Moscow during the election. With that as their context, even seemingly insignificant meetings take on an aura of great importance. It's possible that some of the conjecture now being passed off as news, could turn out to be true. I don't know, and that's the point - neither do they.
This year, the White House Correspondents' Association spent a long portion of their high-profile annual dinner, honoring famous Watergate reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. In popular culture, they are seen as the men who brought down Richard Nixon. They happened to be honored at the first correspondents' dinner of the Trump presidency. That's not a coincidence. That's a message to Donald Trump.
Shortly after Trump became president, Woodward and Bernstein's old paper, the Washington Post, added a new line to their masthead - "Democracy Dies in Darkness." It seems to be a response to the President's criticism of the media. But the truth is, democracy does need light.
Our constitution divides government into three branches in order to have internal checks and balances on power. The First Amendment guarantees a free press. That's supposed to provide an external check on power.
But it works only when the press shines an unbiased light on government activities. Unbiased means, don't join "the resistance." Report the news, then trust the public to make up their own minds. If the media were to begin trusting the people with the straight news, the people might begin to trust the media.
The Iran-Deal Swindle - By Elliot Kaufman -
We thought we were the ones buying time.
Two years on, the Iranian nuclear deal is a failure.
Some will surely protest that this cannot be; on Monday, the Trump administration just indicated that it plans to certify Iranian compliance to Congress. But that certification does not mean what it may seem to.
It certainly does not indicate that Iran has been in perfect compliance with the deal. Iran has already exceeded its limits on uranium enrichment and production of heavy water on several occasions. Furthermore, a series of recent German intelligence reports discovered Iranian efforts to procure technology that "can be used to develop plutonium for nuclear weapons." One report concluded there was "no evidence" of the "complete about-face in Iran's atomic policies" that had been hoped for.
But of course there's no evidence of that. This was the central flaw of the Iran deal: There was never any reason to suspect that the nature or aims of the Iranian regime had changed. Iran of course has scaled back its nuclear advances, but the Supreme Leader and his cronies still seek to obtain a nuclear weapon to fortify their regime, advance Iranian regional hegemony, and threaten Israel. Until this changes, the Iranians can safely be expected to use any deal to better pursue those aims. This is why it matters when H. R. McMaster, director of the National Security Council, explains that Iran has violated the spirit of the agreement.
So why does Trump plan to certify compliance? One debilitating weakness of the Iran deal is that there are no punishment mechanisms short of re-imposing sanctions, at which point Iran can reasonably argue that the deal is dead and it is free to pursue whatever nuclear advances it wants.
The deal provides a process whereby America can allege misconduct and force the U.N. Security Council to vote on a resolution. This resolution would maintain the deal's suspension of sanctions, so any veto - including the U.S.'s own - would trigger the reestablishment of the legal basis for sanctions. But there are several hurdles to getting the sanctions to "snap back" as promised.
As Eric Lorber and Peter Feaver wrote in Foreign Policy, "An effective sanctions regime consists of a legal basis, the institutional capacity to implement the sanctions, and the political will to carry it through. This course of action only provides for the first." Indeed, if the sanctions are rejected by Russia or opposed by European allies eager to continue trading with Iran, both of which are likely in the absence of truly flagrant Iranian violations, the sanctions regime will not be effective. It might not even get off the ground and certainly will fail to pressure Iran the way our previous sanctions regime, which took a decade to ratchet up, did. That's why formally alleging Iranian misconduct is extremely risky: It would unleash Iran and offer only weak and disunited sanctions.
This means that incremental Iranian cheating will likely continue to go unpunished. The best we can do is remain neutral, neither certifying compliance nor alleging noncompliance. But even with this meek third route, declined by the Trump administration this time, the deal leaves us helpless to stop Iran from slowly - never radically - preparing itself to push for a nuclear weapon once the deal's restrictions wear off in ten and 15 years.
That's why the deal will be certified. But why is it a failure? Some might say that pushing back a confrontation with Iran by ten or 15 years is a major accomplishment. We've bought ourselves time, claimed the deal's advocates, over and over again.
Philip Gordon and Richard Nephew, two of the Obama-administration officials who negotiated the Iran deal, now repeat this mantra in The Atlantic. The deal was supposed to "buy time for potential changes in Iranian politics and foreign policy," they write. But have we actually bought ourselves time?
What if it is Iran that has been buying time, using the sanctions relief to put itself in a stronger position for an eventual confrontation? What if, at the end of the Iran deal, Iran is stronger economically, geopolitically, and domestically, while we find ourselves with less power in the region and bereft of an international sanctions coalition?
Then, you might say, we got swindled.
In 2015, the Iranians were weak. Years of sanctions had decimated the Iranian economy, putting pressure on the regime at home. Iran was also facing an impressive and unified American-led international coalition dedicated to halting its nuclear program.
By the time the deal expires, Iran will be in a position of strength. Pocketing the money from the deal and once more able to export oil, the Iranian economy is recovering. Should oil prices ever rise, expect to see a boom. Iran has also quickly re-integrated itself into the global economy. Iranian exports to Germany, for instance, rose 26 percent in 2016. Germany's Chamber of Commerce and Industry expects trade to rise to 5 billion euros by 2020. Do you think Germany will be eager to punish Iranian cheating and re-impose sanctions? Of course not.
It will be nearly impossible to reassemble a unified international coalition against Iran in the near future. Our allies will have been coopted by Iranian oil and money. Already Iran has locked in large contracts with major American and European companies including Boeing, Airbus, Total, Peugeot, Danieli, and Saipem.
The same story holds in geopolitics. Iranian influence is advancing through the Middle East. Iranian-controlled Shia militias are gaining power through their victories against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Hezbollah, Iran's proxy in Lebanon, has amassed hundreds of thousands of missiles with which to attack Israel. New reports show that Iran is now manufacturing missiles in fortified, underground facilities in Lebanon. It is also continuing to improve its ballistic-missile program, testing out medium-range missiles on ISIS. These missiles will soon be able to target Riyadh or, if placed further afield, Jerusalem.
This is all allowed under the nuclear deal, as its advocates continue to remind us. But that is the problem. Without violating our agreement, Iran is putting itself in position to seriously damage our allies should we try to stop it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Indeed, one of Iran's first actions after the removal of sanctions was to purchase advanced S-300 air defense missiles from Russia. With each year, it will become tougher and tougher, more and more costly to intervene in Iran.
All of this points toward a frightening conclusion: Economically, internally, militarily, and geopolitically, Iran is now in a stronger position than it was before the deal. Iran is more ready for a confrontation in the future. It is better prepared to challenge the international community and build nuclear weapons. The deal didn't buy us time, it turns out - it bought Iran time to recover from sanctions, coopt our allies and businesses, and advance across the Middle East.
It is worth recalling that Iran refused to sign any deal that would surrender its right to enrich uranium. It refused to be pushed beyond a one-year "breakout time," the time it would need, given its allowed capacities, to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon. It ensured that the most important provisions of the deal would begin expiring after eight, ten, and 15 years. Why? Because Iran has never given up on its ambition to possess nuclear weapons. It merely agreed to delay its final nuclear push in order to get into a more secure position. Consequently, when the deal expires, Iran will be ready to pounce.
Finally, what is America doing with the time that we supposedly bought? We are watching as our coalition splinters, as Iran fortifies itself and its proxies gain power in other lands. We are watching as the North Koreans, surely able to transfer technology and know-how to Iran, advance their nuclear program. In doing so, we make the benefits of nuclear capabilities crystal clear to the Iranians.
The Obama administration signed a deal to kick the can down the road. But the crucial variable was always what would await us down that road. Right now, it looks like an ambush.
Don't be a Doomer - Bill Wilson -
If you listen to or read the news, there is no doubt it can have an impact on you. Americans are bombarded day in and day out about the horrible condition of our country. We see, hear or read story after story about how bad our President is, how bad Congress is, how bad God is, how bad the things that we always knew as good and right are. It was difficult, for example, for me to find one good news story this morning as I perused my news sources. If you start believing all this, it will have a very negative impact on your life's outlook. It will affect your mentality. It will affect your relationships. It will change the way your brain processes information. And that's the game of Satan, which the media and leftists are playing.
There has been a great increase in the number of emails I receive saying in various ways that America is doomed. These emails, with good documentation, point to stories and statistics that, at least in their writer's minds, point to the demise of America. The moral condition of our nation; the hatred that is espoused by those claiming anyone who disagrees with them are haters; the appearance that those who are seeking the obstruction and overthrow of the Constitutional basis of America are in the majority and they are winning; the lack of the "Church" to focus on spreading the gospel and it's tremendous life-living instruction-all these things point to an America in decline. Yes, they do. We live in perilous times.
A few days ago, Chris and I visited Jamestown, Va., one of the first colonial settlements in our country. These men came to America on a 4 � month journey packed like sardines in small "ships." They carved out a civilization through hard work, facing tremendously negative elements. The pilgrims on the Mayflower had it even rougher a little more than a decade later. The French Huguenots in Florida actually faced execution by the Spanish for their religious beliefs. I'm sure there were times when these courageous people thought the world was ending, but they kept on, having enormous faith in God. The Jamestown settlers were required to attend prayer services twice a day. Point is, they were bloomers, not doomers.
America is an ideal, even more than it is a country. Being American means that you are free to do and be, to worship, to speak, to enjoy the fruits of your labor, to dream and to invent, to lead or to follow. Yes, our country is facing a terrible time. If we, however, face these times as doomers, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. For me, so long as there is God, there is hope. Remember Elijah after the miracle on Mt Carmel became filled with fear and told the Lord in 1 Kings 19:10, "and I, even I only, am left: and they seek my life to take it away." He, having little hope, thought he was the only prophet of God left alive, but God had preserved 7,000 who had not bowed to Baal. America is going through a rough time, but it has before. It's the remnant of good people who need to focus on God's work and once again turn the world upside down.
Socialist healthcare and socialists - Bill Wilson -
The on-again, off-again repeal, replacement, re-whatever of the socialist healthcare tax system, which was not supposed to be a tax and was supposed to be voluntary, is now again stalled in the US Senate. That a supposed "conservative" majority of the Senate cannot get this unaffordable and detrimental healthcare system repealed is a testimony to the hypocrisy and lies among Republican Party senators. The Grand Old Party has a majority in the Senate, yet can't muster enough votes to get rid of socialist healthcare, which costs more, provides less, and is a detriment to the free market system. Why? Bottom line: it's because too many Republican Senators are also socialists.
Think about it. If conservative Senators are having a hard time swallowing the so-called "repeal and replace" of socialist healthcare, its because it doesn't repeal or replace the current horrible system-a system that was jammed down America's throat by a majority Democratic Senate and House without one Republican vote in 2009. The Republican Senate Leadership is so worried about getting Democrat votes, that it doesn't have the collective will to get rid of the second-worst example of failed socialism in American History (only because the veterans healthcare system is the worst example). This is simple. Republicans have the majority. Repeal the law with or without the Democrats. Then fix things.
So now, the Senate Republican leadership says it will offer up the House version of the bill calling for a repeal with a two-year delay to provide ample transition to what they say is a "patient-centered" healthcare system. Wow. Patient-centered? We can only assume that the current system they are having such a difficult time getting rid of is a "government-centered" system. This is confirmed by the IRS trying to collect on those who did not sign up for socialist healthcare by sending out letters saying things like, "Our records show that you have unpaid shared responsibility payment for tax year ended December 31, 2016." Even though the President has instructed the IRS to back off, it is trying to collect, plus interest.
"Shared responsibility payment", really? This doesn't have anything to do with healthcare. It is the money the government is siphoning off of the healthcare system. This system is broken. Congress needs to fix it. But there are too many in Congress who agree with socialism to get the job done. Americans need to remember this and fix it themselves by allowing the system to die its natural death through non-participation, AND getting rid of the socialists in Congress. They have made healthcare unaffordable and unreliable. This tax places an unjust burden on Americans. Ecclesiastes 3:13 says, "that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labor, it is the gift of God." Government is not God. Its time for Congress to understand that and do the right thing.
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