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Harsanyi: The Comforting Fictions of Obama’s Farewell Speech

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Watching President Barack Obama’s soaring 2008 Democratic National Convention speech in Denver, I never imagined the kind of turmoil his presidency would incite. Almost everything has changed in the subsequent years, and yet his farewell speech to the nation was brimming with the same brand of haughty lecturing.

Obama loves to conflate progressivism and patriotism, pitting the forces of decency and empathy — his own — against the self-serving profiteers and meddling reactionaries who stand in the way. All of it is swathed in phony optimism.

The president’s central case for government’s existence rests on the notion of the state being society’s moral center, engine of prosperity, and arbiter of fairness. Obama speaks of government as a theocrat might speak of church, and his fans return the favor by treating him like a pope. This was true in 2008. And it’s true now. Just check out liberal Twitterdom.

And for the most part, nothing is his fault.

“When Congress is dysfunctional,” Obama explained, “we should draw our districts to encourage politicians to cater to common sense and not rigid extremes.” For the president, a dysfunctional Congress is a Congress unwilling to pass progressive legislation. That is not the definition of dysfunctional, I’m afraid. Nor is it the definition of extreme.

There is nothing in the Constitution instructing legislators to acquiesce to the president. In the near future, the Republican Congress will be passing tons of legislation, and I can assure you neither Obama nor his many fans in the media will be celebrating the fact that Congress is finally “getting stuff done” or “doing its job.” Progress will no longer be measured in the number of bills signed.

And it shouldn’t be. After all, if voters were displeased with the way legislators treated Obama’s agenda, they had the ability to replace these obstinate lawmakers with more cooperative ones. They did not. That’s because gridlock was created by a party that fooled itself into believing it could rule unilaterally. Also, after Democrats passed their massive health care law — and certainly, there were other reasons — Republicans kept expanding their majorities, and not only in Congress.

Americans voted for equilibrium in Washington, D.C. Congress was working exactly as it was intended. And it has nothing to do with gerrymandering or voter suppression or fake news or any of the other excuses liberals keep concocting to explain their troubles.

Moreover, the idea that Congress is catering to some “rigid extremes” because elected officials oppose policies that were passed in 2010 might be the prevailing opinion on the Left, but it has no basis in reality. Republican positions — like them or not — are well within the boundaries of normal American attitudes. Most of them were mainstream liberal positions not that long ago.

That brings me to this nugget: In his farewell address, Obama warned, “Our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted” (Because we don’t talk about politics enough, apparently!) and urged Americans to help rebuild “our democratic institutions.”

Our democracy isn’t in trouble. We just had an election, in which every citizen permitted to vote — and motivated — could do so. Our Electoral College, part of a broader system that most fairly embodies the will of voters in the nation’s 50 states, also worked exactly as intended.

Maybe Obama means we must rebuild our belief in the separation of powers and the Constitution, since his administration displayed far more creativity in executive power than it ever did in attempting to build coalitions to pass legislation.

He regularly ignored norms of governance, consistently losing cases before the Supreme Court, entering into international agreements without the Senate, creating immigration policy for millions without Congress and using the administrative state to legislate environmental policies that couldn’t even pass when Democrats controlled both houses. Those abuses were not normal.

Obama offered Americans a revisionist history of his entire presidency, casting himself as a resilient truth-teller and champion of democracy. The reality is quite different. (For more from the author of “Harsanyi: The Comforting Fictions of Obama’s Farewell Speech” please click HERE)

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Obama’s Strange Pattern of Concessions to Cuba’s Communists

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There seems to be something about Cuba’s military dictators that really fascinates our 44th president. Cuba was the first item President Barack Obama mentioned when he enumerated his foreign policy “achievements” in his farewell address; and with just a week to go, he has rushed anew to make concessions to the communists in Havana.

The concessions this time was to end what has been inelegantly known as “wet-foot, dry-foot.” This was a Clinton era amendment to LBJ’s 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act that allowed Cuban escapees who touched U.S. dry land to stay, but turned back to Havana those caught at sea.

Ending wet-foot, dry-foot doesn’t end the Adjustment Act, but it does renders it moot in most ways. The Act allows Cubans who have been in the U.S. for a year to receive permanent residency, while the Clinton amendment granted those who arrived through rafts or by crossing border a one-year temporary parole to wait for the Act to kick in.

Absent the one-year parole, it is harder for the special concession granted those who escaped from the communist island to kick in.

Wet-foot, dry-foot was ripe for reform. It was replete with perverse incentives. For example, it enticed thousands of Cubans to take to rafts to Central America, undertake a perilous journey through unstable countries, and then be smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Such is the desire to leave Castro’s “Socialist Paradise” that over 46,500 made across the Rio Grande in the last fiscal year, which ended September 30. A smaller number undertook a dangerous voyage across the shark-filled 95-mile Florida isthmus on rafts sometimes even made out mattresses.

But the blanket approach that Obama took, as well as his decision to once again deal in secret with Havana, most probably through his deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, a Svengali-like figure at the White House, once again disappoints.

The fact of the matter is that the 85-year-old dictator Raul Castro knew more about this policy change just as it was about to be announced that members of Congress or of Obama’s own State Department.

Obama also terminated the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, which allowed Cuban doctors sent overseas to apply for U.S. asylum in these third countries. Havana exploits its doctors and nurses, sending them abroad so the communist government can collect convertible currency on their behalf, a practice that has long been deplored.

But Castro hated it, because it gave his doctors a chance at freedom, so Obama obliged him. And that’s the thing about Obama: his apparent desire to please the octogenarian American-hater in Havana is only matched by his obvious disregard for the Cuban people’s legitimate desire for freedom.

He seems to forget that they are trapped inside an authoritarian military dictatorship. In his announcement he once again said that “the future of Cuba should be in the hands of the Cuban people”—as if they lived in Ohio or the south of France.

There doesn’t seem to be any clear way that those persecuted for their political or religious beliefs can find a haven here.

Everything regarding Cuba that Obama announced not just Thursday but for the past two years can be rescinded come this Friday by President Donald Trump—along with much of the Obama legacy.

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who poured scorn on Obama with his reaction to the announcement, made that clear by stating:

I had the opportunity to discuss this issue with Vice President-elect [Mike] Pence this evening, and I am heartened by the fact that in a week we will have a new administration committed to discarding the failed Cuba policy of the last two years.

(For more from the author of “Obama’s Strange Pattern of Concessions to Cuba’s Communists” please click HERE)

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Obama, Biden Made Aware of Dubious Dossier of Trump Allegations before Leak

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Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that he and President Barack Obama were informed about the unverified allegations about President-elect Donald Trump by intelligence officials.

Biden said in an interview with the Associated Press that neither he nor Obama asked U.S. intelligence agencies to try to corroborate the unverified claims that Russia had obtained compromising sexual and financial allegations about Trump.

“I think it’s something that obviously the agency thinks they have to track down,” Biden said. He added later, “It surprised me in that it made it to the point where the agency, the FBI thought they had to pursue it.”

Biden added that the briefing he and Obama received from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and others, there were “no conclusions drawn” from the leaked dossier, which was produced in August and then released publicly this week by the media. Biden said it was “totally ancillary” to the purpose of the meeting, which was to brief Obama on a report he ordered documenting Russian interference in the U.S. campaign.

“As a matter of fact, the president was like, ‘What does this have anything to do with anything?'” Biden said. He said intelligence leaders responded by saying “Well, we feel obliged to tell you, Mr. President, because you may hear about it. We’re going to tell him,” referring to Trump. (Read more from “Obama, Biden Made Aware of Dubious Dossier of Trump Allegations before Leak” HERE)

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13 Inconvenient Truths About Obama’s Legacy

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According to President Barack Obama, the last eight years have been just swell. But his rendition of history leaves out a few important facts about the state of America following his two terms as president.

In two videos, we run through 13 facts about his administration’s domestic and foreign policy record he conveniently ignores.

On the domestic front, the national debt has almost doubled on his watch. He is responsible for an unparalleled expansion of the job-killing regulatory state. And his signature policy, the Affordable Care Act, has proven to be anything but affordable for many Americans.

His foreign policy and national security record also paints a bleak picture. By any objective measure, transnational terrorist threats are far greater today than when Obama took office in 2009. His policy of appeasement toward hostile regimes in Iran and Cuba have not made Americans safer or the Cuban people freer. And his refusal to adequately fund the U.S. military has threatened the readiness of our country’s armed forces.

Watch the videos:

(For more from the author of “13 Inconvenient Truths About Obama’s Legacy” please click HERE)

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4 Ways Obama’s Final Speech Was a Load of Crap

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Tonight, in Chicago — the nation’s murder capital, Barack Obama boasted of his self-styled achievements as president, and gave a preview of his future as the nation’s first activist former president. The setting provided a bitter irony for Obama’s self-praising. Chicago is both where Obama honed his activist chops, and is one of the places most negatively affected by his policies. A perfect allegory for a failed presidency.

In the final year of the Obama presidency, under the guidance of his former chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel, Chicago’s murder rate has spiked. This is directly the result of president Obama’s war on cops. Rather than put themselves in danger through aggressive policing, Obama’s friends in the Black Lives Matter movement have made their neighborhoods more dangerous, with police just staying out of certain neighborhoods.

Chicago is Obama’s legacy. Tonight he tried to put a shine on his legacy. But the facts tell a different story.

Obamacare

Obama once again touted success with Obamacare. He crowed about millions more now insured. That may be true, but at what cost? He even, with no hesitation, said that health costs are growing at their “lowest rate in 50 years.” As CR’s Daniel Horowitz recently explained Obamacare is more expensive than if nothing had been done … especially when it comes to Medicaid.

The cost of covering an individual in the subpar Medicaid program was $3,247 per individual in 2011 before Obamacare was enacted. In 2015, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services, the cost of enrolling an individual in Medicaid doubled to $6,366 per individual. And that is only for the second year of implementation. The cycle of regulation, public funding, overutilization, and lack of ability to peg the cost to the service has created a circuitous death spiral of unaffordable costs and unsustainable subsidies.

But it’s not just that. Millions of middle class Americans now have coverage they can’t afford to use. Before the election Bloomberg highlighted the problem:

Harris is one of many people with Obamacare plans that feature high out-of-pocket costs that can put health services out of reach. That’s because the insurance coverage Harris and others like her have purchased is designed not to kick in until patients have spent thousands of dollars.

She’s not alone. While the Affordable Care Act has pushed the uninsured rate in the U.S. near a record low, a Commonwealth Fund study this year found that about four in 10 adults in ACA plans aren’t confident they could afford care if they got sick.

Obamacare has also been a drag on the overall economic outlook for millions of Americans. The full-time employer mandate has meant more people are working part-time and in need of multiple jobs. The CEO of Carl’s Jr., a Trump supporter, said in January of 2015 that ‘Obamacare has caused millions of full-time jobs to become part time.” A statement that even Politifact had to rank as “half true” — a moniker they use when the facts buttress an argument but the editors of Politifact don’t like the outcome.

Oh and about that lowest health cost claim, CNNMoney reported in September of 2016 that healthcare costs rose the most in 32 years. Speaking of Politifact, they gave a similar claim by Hillary Clinton during the campaign a rating of FALSE.

National Security

Obama told the nation that we are safer because of his presidency. He touted that no foreign terrorist organization has attacked American soil. Of course, he is parsing words. As the Daily Wire wrote in December of 2016, many of the jihadi attacks in America have been inspired by jihadi organizations or the jihadis were trained by those organizations.

The list compiled by the Daily Wire reports on “the major, verifiable radical Islamic attacks over the last eight years.” The Daily Wire further explains that there have been other attacks in which jihad is suspected but not verified. The thirteen attacks highlighted include the Little Rock military recruiting station attack, the Fort Hood attack, the Boston Marathon bombing and subsequent firefight, a beheading in Moore Oklahoma, a Queens hatchet attack, the execution-style murders of two cops in Brooklyn, the Garland draw Mohammed attack, the Chattanooga recruiting station attack, the San Bernardino Christmas party attack, the Orlando night club attack, the St. Cloud mall attack, the New York/New Jersey bomber, and the Columbus Ohio State University attack.

“Climate Change”

Obama also took credit for his climate change agenda. Something he has always believed poses a greater threat to world peace than radical Islamic terrorism. Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE, explained on CNBC why Obama’s focus on climate change has hurt the nation as a whole.

Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric, said Thursday the Obama administration’s heavy focus on combating climate change is “radical behavior” that’s holding back the economy.

A longtime GOP supporter, Welch told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” the priority on preventing climate change spills over into “all kinds of policies throughout the different agencies.”

The result, he said: “You get an economy that won’t move. You get ozone regs that are wacky.”

“You [also] get a reduced military,” he added — saying the U.S. needs to rebuild its national defenses to combat the threat from the so-called Islamic State terrorist group. “You can’t be sitting here with the real threat of a caliphate and ISIL … and talking about climate change.”

The Obama focus on ‘climate change’ has led to a weaker, less prosperous, and less safe America. Hardly an accomplishment to crow about. Not to mention that now some scientists think we are headed into a new ice age.

Jobs

Obama also once again tried to paint the nation’s employment picture as rosy. He boasted about how he “unleash[ed] the longest stretch of job creation in our history.” While it may be factually correct, it belies the type of job growth and the stagnant rate of growth.

Because of Obamacare, there have been a disproportionate number of part-time jobs created. The labor force participation rate is still anemically low.

CR’s John Gray has blown a hole in Obama’s jobs record. Back in 2015 he laid out the case, which hasn’t changed much.

Obama Touts This. Currently at 5 percent, the unemployment rate is at the lowest level since Obama became president. In addition, the president has “created” about 8.1 million net new jobs since 2009 – a little less than the 8.7 million that were lost during financial crisis in 2008 and 2009.

But Not This. Those rosy unemployment numbers fail to factor in millions of people only marginally attached to the workforce, or those who would like to work, but have quit looking for employment out of frustration at the lack of opportunities. When those workers are factored in, the real unemployment rate, otherwise known as the underemployment rate is now 9.9 percent – nearly twice the rate of the “official” metric.

More importantly, a growing share of the population is no longer participating in the workforce altogether. The labor force participation rate has dropped to 62.4 percent, or nearly 94 million American not in the labor force; labor force participation has not been this low since 1977. Those are just a few of the areas that Obama tried to take “credit” for improving. He then went on to talk about areas he would be judging President-elect Trump on, signaling that he would not step aside quietly to let his successor govern, as is the precedent with past presidents.

Tonight’s speech was a powerful reminder of how much better the nation will be when the ink in Obama’s pen runs dry, and his government cell phone contract is dropped. Then all he’ll have is a soapbox, where he can utter “just words.” (For more from the author of “Named and Shamed: Tom Cotton Calls out Cory Booker’s Disgraceful Sessions Chicanery” please click HERE)

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Despite Controversies, Holder Had Easier Road to Confirmation Than Sessions

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President Barack Obama’s first attorney general pick skated through Senate confirmation hearings, but top Democrats have indicated that President-elect Donald Trump’s selection may have a tougher time getting through.

Ahead of the confirmation hearing Tuesday for Trump’s attorney general designee, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, brought up issues that prevented Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., from becoming a federal judge three decades ago.

“Now that he is nominated to be attorney general, we will see if the same person is still too extreme for Republicans,” Leahy said in a Boston Globe op-ed Sunday, later adding, “Sen. Sessions has repeatedly stood in the way of efforts to promote and protect Americans’ civil rights.”

It’s a departure from what Leahy said of Sessions in 2009, when both men voted to confirm Obama’s controversial nominee, Eric Holder, to be attorney general.

“Sen. Sessions is also a former U.S. attorney and knows what one goes through in that regard, and we’ve relied on him for that experience,” Leahy said to his colleague during the Holder confirmation hearing in January 2009, according to the Washington Examiner.

In June 2010, Leahy called Sessions “wonderful to work with,” the Examiner reported.

The Sessions confirmation hearing could shape up differently from the Holder hearing of eight years earlier. Despite a controversial legal career in the public and private sector, Holder had a smooth ride to office, gaining the support of most Republicans.

By contrast, the confirmation process for Sessions has been rocky even before the first day of hearings.

Much Democratic opposition to Sessions is based on his conservative record in the Senate. However, it also extends to comments or jokes regarding race Sessions allegedly made while serving as a U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Alabama in the early 1980s, even as he was known for helping to prosecute multiple civil rights cases. These were the allegations that sunk his 1986 nomination to be a federal judge.

Two former Justice Department lawyers, one who continues to be a Sessions critic today, recanted a 1986 allegation used to stop the judicial nomination.

Witnesses opposing Sessions are scheduled to include David Cole, the legal director of American Civil Liberties Union; NAACP President Cornell Brooks; and Amita Swadhin, founder of the Los Angeles-based Mirror Memoirs, an LGBT group.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said that Sessions is one of the eight nominees that Democrats will seek to delay confirmation votes on into March. The Senate confirmed Holder in early February 2009.

In all likelihood, the Senate will confirm Sessions as attorney general given the Republican Senate majority. He’s also known for having strong relationships with Senate Democratic colleagues, and will get at least some crossover support. But it appears he is not as likely as Holder to gain overwhelmingly bipartisan support.

After his election, Obama announced he would nominate Holder to run the Justice Department. Holder was a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration under Attorney General Janet Reno. Republicans and conservative groups highlighted Holder’s record in the No. 2 spot.

Holder played a role in President Bill Clinton’s pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich, which the outgoing president granted on his final day in office. Before becoming a Democrat later that year, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania raised issues about Holder’s role in the controversial 1993 federal siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.

Republicans also raised questions about Holder’s role in Clinton granting clemency to 16 members of a Puerto Rican militant nationalist group in 1999. Specter further criticized Holder for ignoring the advice of career Justice Department prosecutors to appoint an independent counsel in 1997 to investigate alleged Democratic violations of campaign finance laws.

Issues also surfaced about Holder’s time in private practice at the prestigious Washington law firm of Covington & Burling, which represented terrorism suspects detained at Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. Holder has said the government should close Guantanamo.

Holder also vocally opposed the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation tactics, such as waterboarding.

While at the firm, Holder wrote a brief in favor of the District of Columbia, arguing that granting the individual right to bear arms, “opens the door to more people having more access to guns, and putting guns on the streets.”

Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court held in the 2008 case of District of Columbia v. Heller that the Constitution guarantees the individual right to own a firearm.

Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2009, asserted the Holder nomination should move quickly. Leahy said on Jan. 15, 2009:

I would hope that we would have a prompt confirmation so he can restore morale and purpose throughout the Justice Department, it is important that the Justice Department have its senior leadership in place without delay. The attorney general is the top law enforcement officer in the country; he is a key member of the national security team.

The Senate largely heeded Leahy’s advice. The Judiciary Committee voted 17-2 on Jan. 28 to confirm Holder. Only Republicans Sen. John Cornyn of Texas and then-Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma voted “no.” The full Senate confirmed Holder with a bipartisan 75-21 on Feb. 2, with Sessions and Specter voting for him both times. (For more from the author of “Despite Controversies, Holder Had Easier Road to Confirmation Than Sessions” please click HERE)

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Conservative Groups Warn of Obama’s ‘Midnight Litigation’ Against US Business

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Conservative and pro-business groups warn that the Obama administration may pursue legal action to enforce some of its thousands of new “job-crushing” regulations before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn into office.

Regulations promulgated in “the waning days” of President Barack Obama’s lame-duck administration could constrain the new Trump administration, the coalition of groups warned Vice President-elect Mike Pence in a letter dated Dec. 28.

“Because of this concern, Congress enacted the Congressional Review Act, which provides Congress procedural tools to disapprove expeditiously these last-ditch midnight regulations,” the letter says.

The Congressional Review Act could address regulations put in place by the Obama administration since June 3. However, the law can’t prevent so-called “midnight litigation” launched by the executive branch to enforce those regulations.

The Obama administration issued 3,852 new federal regulations during 2016, according to a new analysis by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, first reported Friday by the Washington Examiner.

The letter from conservative activists and business leaders says:

It has come to our attention that a number of departments and independent agencies are working furiously behind closed doors to bring significant, legally tenuous litigation against American business interests before Jan. 20, 2017. Doing so will saddle the Trump administration with having to litigate cases based on job-crushing liberal legal theories.

Inauguration Day, when Trump is sworn in as president, is Jan. 20.

Signers of the letter include Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform; Ken Blackwell, chairman of Constitution Congress; and Clyde Wayne Crews, vice president for policy at Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The signatories represent 29 organizations, including Frontiers of Freedom, the Heartland Institute, and Liberty Counsel.

The letter warns Pence, a former congressman and governor of Indiana who is well-liked by conservatives, that the new administration should review any litigation to enforce the recent regulations.

“Should the Obama administration bring nonroutine, last minute, legally unorthodox midnight litigation, your administration should not hesitate to withdraw immediately from that litigation,” the letter to Pence states.

Such last-minute litigation could hurt job growth, the letter says.

John R. Smith, the chairman of BIZPAC, the Business Political Action Committee of Palm Beach County, wrote in an op-ed for BizPac Review:

The lame-duck Obama administration has launched a mad scramble to throw up as many hurdles, and to plant as many last-minute landmines as possible against the new American president. In his final days of office, Barack Obama has initiated a major flurry of new executive orders, directives, and regulations, thousands of them, that he is piling into the federal books.

Frontiers of Freedom, a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to promoting traditional American values, circulated the letter.

“Everything should be suspect,” George Landrith, president of Frontiers of Freedom, told The Daily Caller News Foundation, referring to the Obama administration’s final gush of regulations. (For more from the author of “Conservative Groups Warn of Obama’s ‘Midnight Litigation’ Against US Business” please click HERE)

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Obama’s Land Grab Will Not Stand. I Will Fight It.

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When I questioned Interior Secretary Sally Jewell at her confirmation hearing, she promised me President Barack Obama would not designate a national monument unless there was widespread support from the local population.

Unfortunately, Obama ignored that promise and designated a monument in San Juan County yesterday.

But this is no time despair. This is a time to double our efforts and make San Juan County great again.

I pledge to you today that I will do everything I can to work with Congress and the incoming Trump administration to undo this monument designation.

But I am not going to stop there. I am then going to do what I can to repeal the Antiquities Act so that future President Obamas can not do this to rural communities ever again.

But I am not going to stop there. I am then going to continue our fight to return power back to the American people. Everyone suffers when we allow power to accumulate in the hands of the few.

This is not the end. This is just the beginning. We will fight this battle together, and we will win. (For more from the author of “Obama’s Land Grab Will Not Stand. I Will Fight It.” please click HERE)

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Obama and Israel, From 2008 to 2016: A Story of Betrayal and Reversal

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In June, 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama gave a stirring speech to AIPAC, making strong commitments to the Jewish people and Israel. In December, 2016, President Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry delivered an important policy speech that directly contradicted some of candidate Obama’s words. The contrast is striking, unnerving, and downright hypocritical.

To be fair, there is some consistency between the speeches, as both advocate a two-state solution, among other parallels. And on a certain level, President Obama has kept some of the commitments he made to Israel, including massive defense contracts and military aid. And it is true that, until last week, Obama had not allowed the UN Security Council to pass any anti-Israel resolutions.

Still, reading Obama’s 2008 speech in light of the last 8 years is a real shocker. Consider the following.

In 2008, candidate Obama pledged:

As president, I will work to help Israel achieve the goal of two states, a Jewish state of Israel and a Palestinian state, living side by side in peace and security. And I won’t wait until the waning days of my presidency. I will take an active role, and make a personal commitment to do all I can to advance the cause of peace from the start of my administration.

Ironically, he has done the opposite, not only failing to move the peace process forward but rather, in “the waning days of [his] presidency,” taking aggressive steps to undermine the peace process and to betray Israel. (It’s even possible that before the transfer of power, he will lash out at Israel once more.)

Dividing Jerusalem

In 2008, Obama declared that, “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

This week, John Kerry declared that a peace agreement would “provide an agreed resolution for Jerusalem as the internationally recognized capital of the two states, and protect and assure freedom of access to the holy sites consistent with the established status quo.”

He added, “Most acknowledge that Jerusalem should not be divided again like it was in 1967, and we believe that.” But, he continued, “At the same time, there is broad recognition that there will be no peace agreement without reconciling the basic aspirations of both sides to have capitals there.”

Well, here’s a note from Jerusalem to our Secretary of State and President: You cannot have it both ways. Either Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel or it is the divided capital of Israel and Palestine. And if Jerusalem is to be the undivided capital of Israel, then Mr. Kerry has no reason to protest strongly the relocation of our embassy to Jerusalem, which he did this week as well.

Joel Pollack also points out that “through the Obama administration’s acceptance of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 last Friday,” America now “regards the Israel presence in East Jerusalem as ‘settlements’ that are in ‘flagrant violation of international law.’” This means that, “Effectively, the Obama administration has allowed the Palestinians to claim East Jerusalem as their own, with the option of negotiating that claim away. The starting point of negotiations is now a division of Jerusalem ‘like it was in 1967.’”

Dealing with Iran, Endangering Israel

Getting back to 2008, while pledging to work diplomatically with Iran rather than militarily against Iran, candidate Obama was very clear about the danger Iran presented, stating, “There is no greater threat to Israel — or to the peace and stability of the region — than Iran.”

He continued:

The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists. Its president denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat.

I doubt that anyone listening to his speech in 2008 would have imagined that he would end up striking such a disastrous deal with Iran, one that not only rewarded the Iranians with billions of dollars, some of which would be used to fund terrorism — Kerry himself admitted to this explicitly — but one which also gave them a clear path to nuclear development in the coming years. Is this not the height of betrayal?

But there’s more. In 2008, then Senator Obama said:

I have long understood Israel’s quest for peace and need for security. But never more so than during my travels there two years ago. Flying in an [Israeli Defense Forces] helicopter, I saw a narrow and beautiful strip of land nestled against the Mediterranean. On the ground, I met a family who saw their house destroyed by a Katyusha rocket. I spoke to Israeli troops who faced daily threats as they maintained security near the blue line. I talked to people who wanted nothing more simple, or elusive, than a secure future for their children.

Yet in 2011, President Obama briefly suggested that Israel return to its totally indefensible pre-1967 borders, which would reduce this “narrow and beautiful strip of land” to as few as 9 miles wide, thereby committing national suicide. And in 2015, it was reported that “President Barack Obama is considering agreeing to a United Nations Security Council resolution ‘embodying the principles of a two-state solution that would be based on the pre-1967 lines between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip and mutually agreed swaps,’ a senior administration official has told the New York Times.”

Will something like this be the last element in the president’s parting shots against Israel?

Obama Teams with Palestinians for the Anti-Israel UN Security Resolution

Making things even worse is the very strong evidence that the Obama administration worked directly with Palestinian leadership to craft and advance the recent UN Security Council resolution, despite the administration’s denials. Evidence includes: 1) discussion months in advance by political pundits that this was one of the options being discussed by the administration (how did they know this?); 2) Prime Minister Netanyahu stating unequivocally that America was behind the resolution, which he would hardly do without “rather ironclad information”; and 3) an Egyptian paper releasing transcripts of a purported meeting between Kerry and Palestinian officials from early December, planning out the strategy.

This is just part of what makes President Obama’s final actions so shameful and why Rabbi Shmuley Boteach was right to say that has Obama “demonized Israel little by little.”

So much for the man who said in 2008 that he spoke “as a true friend of Israel,” explaining, “And I know that when I visit with AIPAC, I am among friends. Good friends. Friends who share my strong commitment to make sure that the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable today, tomorrow and forever.”

As the old saying goes, with friends like these, who needs enemies? (For more from the author of “Obama and Israel, From 2008 to 2016: A Story of Betrayal and Reversal” please click HERE)

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Out of Control: Obama Seizes yet Another 1.65 Million Acres of American Land for the Feds

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In a bold rebuke of Utah’s entire congressional delegation, President Obama seized nearly 1.35 million acres of land in southeastern Utah to create the Bears Ears Monument in San Juan County, Utah, this week. Obama also claimed 300,000 acres in Clark County, Nev., as the Gold Butte National Monument.

For months, Senator Mike Lee, R-Utah (A, 100%), and Congressmen Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah (C, 76%) and Rob Bishop, R-Utah (D, 65%) were vocal in their opposition to President Obama unilaterally designating over a million acres of their state’s land as a national monument, without any input from any elected officials.

“He’s doing this despite open opposition from every elected official from San Juan County … and with the open opposition of all six members of Utah’s congressional delegation, and with the open opposition of every statewide elected official in the state of Utah,” Senator Lee said on Facebook Live shortly after President Obama’s announcement.

Rep. Chaffetz pointed out that the White House announcement of the Bears Ears land grab unwittingly showcases a picture of Arches National Park, which is a completely separate area.

The combined seizure of 1.65 million acres in Utah and Nevada this week means that President Obama has seized 553 million acres under the 1906 Antiquities Act. But Obama has seized more land and water than any other American president for the federal government — ever.

Sen. Lee, Rep. Chaffetz, and Rep. Bishop are vowing to fight Obama’s Bears Ears National Monument designation in Congress and with the Trump administration next year.

“If there’s one thing we learned about the 2016 election cycle, it’s that the American people are tired of having things simply dictated to them from people in Washington, D.C.,” said Sen. Lee on Wednesday, stating the top-down government control over the American people is nothing less than “chilling.” (For more from the author of “Out of Control: Obama Seizes yet Another 1.65 Million Acres of American Land for the Feds” please click HERE)

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