Presidential characters

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s presidential characters, not character.

It occurs to me that one of the things people really like about Trump is that he is a character—flamboyant, unpredictable, colorful, one of a kind. We haven’t had too many of them in the White House (at least in recent years). And although that’s probably a good thing, it gets boring.

In my lifetime, the president Trump reminds me of the most in those particular respects—flamboyant, unpredictable, colorful, one of a kind— was LBJ. Not the public LBJ that we knew from his speeches, but the real LBJ, the private LBJ we only came to know much later. That LBJ was a tremendously eccentric and larger-than-life character. But that was hidden from America while he was president, just as JFK’s sexual escapades and the extent of FDR’s physical handicaps were.

When LBJ was president, he seemed a big drawling yawn of a guy (“Mah fellow Amerrrrcans”) but he was anything but. For example, he was a man who had a habit of—well, of this:

President Johnson did not mess around. He was constantly on the telephone, making dozens of calls every day, and was known for using more than one phone at a time. Apparently he wanted to get some serious talking done, because nowhere was off limits for conversation. Rather than put a conversation on hold, he would have reporters and aides follow him into the bathroom where the dialogue was supposed to continue. Needless to say this often inspired discomfort.

Johnson is reported to have had conversations while exposing his genitals, urinating in the sink, and sitting on the toilet, but as far as the observers could tell, it never caused him any embarrassment. Some presume that his actions stemmed from a desire to show his power and to put others in an awkward position so that he could better control the conversation. Possibly he simply didn’t want to stop talking.

But surely the President wouldn’t behave this way in front of women or influential people . . . right? Wrong. Presidential historian and former White House aide Doris Kearns Goodwin remembers not only regularly accompanying him to the restroom, but also his criticism of his National Security Advisor’s response when asked to accompany him in a similar manner. Apparently extremely uncomfortable with the situation, McGeorge Bundy stood in the farthest corner of the bathroom with his back toward Johnson. The president, dissatisfied with the speaking arrangements, said, “Come closer, come closer.” Bundy complied, and Johnson later remarked, “I thought he was going to sit on my lap! Hasn’t that guy ever been in the Army?”

Now, I’m not suggesting that Trump does anything of the sort, or ever would. But I am suggesting that both LBJ and Trump are sui generis, bold, and unafraid of considerations of taste and decorum that might give other people in their positions pause. This is why we both hate them and like them—there is something transgressive about them.

Trump is also, or at least has been in the past, a womanizer. LBJ shared that particular trait, in abundance:

Johnson had “an unfillable hole in his ego,” Moyers says. Feelings of emptiness spurred him to eat, drink, and smoke to excess. Sexual conquests also helped to fill the void. He was a competitive womanizer. When people mentioned Kennedy’s many affairs, Johnson would bang the table and declare that he had more women by accident than Kennedy ever had on purpose.

A while back I compared Trump to Ross Perot. I still think there’s something to that, including the fact that Perot himself was another character.

On the technicalities of the Iran deal and the bigger picture

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve spent countless hours reading about and trying to understand the technical parts of the Iran arms deal—the details of the proposed inspections, what that actually means, and whether it all would be adequate in terms of stopping Iran from duplicitously evading the deal’s requirements or of stopping Iran from having the capacity for nuclear weapons very soon (a short “break-out time”) even if it complied completely with the inspection requirements.

But I find myself coming up against the stumbling block of scientific complexity. This is true whether we’re talking about inspections concerning future actions by Iran, or concerning past actions (Parchin and the “side deal”). I try to learn before I write, but there’s a limit to what I can learn, and there are time pressures. After all, I’m not writing a book, or even a magazine article. I’m writing a blog.

For example, I learned a lot yesterday researching this post I wrote on Parchin. I found some supposed experts about nuclear arms development who wrote the equivalent of “don’t worry about it, it’s fine, and so are the regular inspections under the deal.” That doesn’t change a host of other things not of a technical nature about the deal, of course, such as the lifting of sanctions and the intent of the Iranian regime and the keeping of the four prisoners, for example. Nor does it address the competence of the IAEA to do what it says it will do. It doesn’t even tell us who these experts are and what their political agenda is, something I’ve learned can be very very important in evaluating things.

It also fails to answer questions about what the experts leave out of their explanations. For example, when I did my research I could find no attempt in the pro-deal literature to respond to an important point made by Senator Menendez in his speech, when he wondered why the administration, in allowing Iran control over soil samples etc. in the side deal, chose to forego getting reliable forensics to find out something about Parchin that has been the goal of the international community for years: “to determine how far along [the Iranians] were in their nuclear weaponization program so that we know what signatures to look for in the future”¦it makes a difference if you are 90 percent down the road in your weaponization efforts or only ten percent advanced.”

And so today when I saw this post by Josh Marshall it seemed relevant. In it, Marshall (a liberal/left guy) tells us:

The opponents of the Iran nuclear deal are doing fairly well in the media-pundit-sphere. But they’ve had an extremely difficult time making substantive arguments against the deal because according to almost all technical experts it is about as tight and comprehensive and total a surveillance regime as we’ve ever seen. Ever. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon under any circumstances for 10 to 20 years. Unless they choose to cheat. And if they do, the U.S. and the international community will almost certainly catch them and catch them before they’re able to weaponize. But here’s the problem ”” that’s only the opinion of people who actually know what they’re talking about…

Let me share with you a deep truth: The nuclear stuff is complicated.

Indeed it is complicated in the technical scientific sense (at least, to those of us who aren’t scientists). And although that’s relevant, nowhere near all the objections to the deal are either technical and scientific (I’ve already listed some that aren’t; there are others). Among other things, one gets into the realm of wondering why we should trust a couple of experts whose politics and biases we know nothing about, and who although expert are hardly error-proof. Experts have been proven wrong time and again (in another passage in his speech, Menendez addresses that fact). Experts also might be naive in terms of their imaginative powers concerning how they might be deceived and in what creative ways a determined group of people can do so.

People can be forgiven for not trusting those experts who have proven wrong in many ways. People can be forgiven for thinking that no inspection regime, no matter how supposedly rigorous, can stop an enemy bent on evading it or even on merely defying it and saying “So, what are you going to do about it?” People can be forgiven for believing that Iran means exactly what it says when it repeatedly calls America the Great Satan and screams for its death (and for the death of the Little Satan, Israel, and celebrates a special holiday dedicated to its obliteration).

Omri Ceren discusses a different set of problems with the Parchin side deal, the lies that have been told so far:

The Obama administration spent the last two years telling lawmakers and reporters that any deal with Iran would require the Iranians to provide International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors robust access to the Parchin military base, where the Iranians conducted hydrodynamic experiments relevant to the detonation of nuclear warheads. The IAEA needs the access to determine how far the Iranians got as a prerequisite to establishing a verification regime. Here’s Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman in 2013: the Joint Plan of Action requires Iran to “address past and present practices… including Parchin”; Sherman in 2014: “as part of any comprehensive agreement… we expect, indeed, Parchin to be resolved”; State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf in 2015: “we would find it… very difficult to imagine a JCPA that did not require such [inspector] access at Parchin”; etc…

White House officials and validators continued to declare that in no way would the IAEA ever agree to that kind of arrangement, since it would preclude the agency from securing a chain of custody over the evidence. But the administration refused to transmit the side deal to Congress””which would have resolved the debate””and instead claimed that the U.S. couldn’t get the text because it was a confidential Iran-IAEA bilateral agreement. Business Insider confirmed that in fact U.S. diplomats can call for the agreement at any time because Washington sits on the IAEA’s Board of Governors. Nonetheless Kerry told Congress that not only did the U.S. not have the text, but that he hadn’t even seen the final wording, though he added that maybe “Wendy Sherman may have” (she subsequently clarified she hadn’t either).

Thursday the AP revealed that its reporters had””in contrast””seen a draft reflecting the final language, and that they were in a position to confirm the concessions made to Iran…

On a political level, that absurdity will confirm suspicions that the IAEA has been pressured by parties who want to put aside substantive concerns over the viability of the nuclear deal in order to preserve it at all costs.

Those are the sorts of considerations that are ignored by the “experts” and by Josh Marshall in his piece suggesting that we should just trust that they are doing what’s in our best interests, and that we are too stupid to know better.

Great early photos

The New Neo Posted on by

Here are some fabulous pictures from the dawn of photography.

I’ve seen a lot of old photos and daguerreotypes. In fact, I own a lot of old photos and daguerreotypes, many of ancestors whose names have been lot in the mists of time and probably will never be recovered. I’m not sure what to do with those; I’m loathe to throw them out but loathe to save them when I’m pretty sure they won’t mean a thing to those who come after me.

But the photos at the link are especially arresting. Unlike a lot of old photos where the subjects seem to have glazed, blank eyes from sitting around and posing statuelike for too long, quite a few of these people seem modern in their expressions. You get the idea they could walk off the computer screen and you could talk to them quite easily. The gulf does not seem very wide at all.

There’s also the first selfie:

selfie

Carly Fiorina: blue diaper baby

The New Neo Posted on by

Hugh Hewitt has a good interview with Carly Fiorina that focuses mainly, but not hardly exclusively, on Hillary Clinton’s problems with her server and her explanations about it.

The following portion of the interview interested me in particular, however. You know the expression “red diaper baby,” for people who were raised by leftist parents and steeped in their philosophy (I know an awful lot of those myself)? Well, Fiorina might be called a “blue diaper baby” (blue having been the original color for the right, and red for the left):

HH: I learned recently ”“ and I did not know this ”“ that you are the daughter of Judge Sneed.

CF: I am.

HH: One of the great ”“ I had no idea, I served with his colleague George MacKinnon and Roger Rob on the D.C. Circuit as their clerk and Judge Sneed was a hero ”“ so obviously you have a conservative judicial temperament and if I ask you what kind of judges you would appoint I imagine you would say judges like Judge Sneed (laughs).

CF: That’s correct. My dad was a great conservative jurist. I watched him on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ”“ obviously one of the most liberal courts in the land ”“ stick to his principles. He wrote many, many, many, many dissenting opinions and was very proud of the fact that when the Supreme Court reversed the 9th Circuit ”“ which happened frequently ”“ that they would just as frequently cite his opinions. So I’ve been asked a lot what kind of justices I would appoint to the Supreme Court and the answer is men and women like my dad. And I also will say, Hugh, because you asked me, that it’s hard to be a conservative jurist. Humility and restraint are required if you are a conservative. You have to be humble enough and restrained enough that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. And in many cases, the humility and restraint to say “You know what, I may not like that the law is this way, but my job isn’t to decide what the law should be. My job is to decide what the law is. I may wish the Constitution were different, but the Constitution is what it is, and our job is to honor and uphold the Constitution. That takes humility and restraint. And I do believe that when we think about the character of our leaders, whether they are presidents or Secretaries of State or Supreme Court justices, we ought to be looking truthfulness ”“ of course ”“ and capability ”“ certainly ”“ and courage is important as well. But I think humility and restraint are undervalued virtues.

I heard another interview in which she discusses learning conservative values at her father’s knee, and how he used to read the Times every day and rail at it. I don’t have time to locate the quote now, but I’m fairly sure it was part of this interview she did at Ace’s.

That Parchin side deal: what’s it about?

The New Neo Posted on by

Even for those of us long inured to the multiple betrayals and lies of the Obama administration, the news yesterday was shocking: the AP story that they had seen documents attesting to an alleged “side deal” in which the UN’s IAEA will allow Iran to do its own inspections of the Parchin nuclear site. This is an agreement the US signed off on but to which it was not party:

The agreement in question diverges from normal procedures by allowing Tehran to employ its own experts and equipment in the search for evidence of activities it has consistently denied ”” trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Olli Heinonen, who was in charge of the Iran probe as deputy IAEA director general from 2005 to 2010, said he could think of no similar concession with any other country. and then report to the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency.

The White House has repeatedly denied claims of a secret side deal favorable to Tehran. IAEA chief Yukiya Amano told Republican senators last week that he was obligated to keep the document confidential…

…wording suggests that ”” beyond being barred from physically visiting the site ”” the agency won’t get photo or video information from areas Iran says are off-limits because they have military significance.

But Reuters reports that the IAEA chief Amano has denied it. Or, sort of denied it. See what you think of this careful language:

“I am disturbed by statements suggesting that the IAEA has given responsibility for nuclear inspections to Iran. Such statements misrepresent the way in which we will undertake this important verification work,” IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano said in an unusually strongly worded statement on Thursday…

“I can state that the arrangements are technically sound and consistent with our long-established practices. They do not compromise our safeguards standards in any way,” Amano said.

The U.S. State Department said on Thursday the IAEA would “in no way” hand over responsibility for nuclear inspections to Iran. “That is not how the IAEA does business,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.

“The U.S. government’s nuclear experts are confident in the Agency’s technical plans for investigating the possible military dimensions of Iran’s former program,” he said.

So, Amano is denying that the IAEA “has given responsibility” to Iran for inspections. State Department spokesman Kirby echoes that “responsibility” wording. They all say they are bound to keep the agreement confidential. And the head of the IAEA says to trust the IAEA and that everything’s great. John Kerry has already said in his testimony that he has not even seen the side agreement, which was negotiated between Iran and the IAEA. And Senators have been complaining for quite some time that they have not been given enough information on it.

One of the things that’s frustrating about all these articles is their incompleteness. For example, why should we care about inspections at Parchin in particular? Why would the arrangements there for inspections be secret and separate from the other sites? In other words, what’s Parchin about?

Business Insider reports that Aaron Stein, an expert on nuclear proliferation, has said that Parchin is an old site, a “red herring,” and “They won’t find anything there [anyway]”” it’s completely stripped of anything of value.”

In addition, ten days ago this piece appeared in the WaPo from another nuclear expert, David Albright, who said:

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said over the weekend that my organization, the Institute for Science and International Security, was spreading lies when we published satellite imagery that showed renewed, concerning activity at the Parchin military site near Tehran…But…the Iranians chose to deny the visible evidence in commercial satellite imagery. Iran’s comments would be mirthful if the topic were not so serious.

Here’s a related report from a few days earlier, indicating the same thing. This renewed “activity” may be an effort to cover up evidence of past activity there, but the effort to sort it all out is headache-inducing. This article in Haaretz, a leftist Israeli paper, is actually quite informative, including a long quote from the Obama administration by Ned Price, National Security Council spokesperson, who points out that the inspections of Parchin deal solely with past activities. Haaretz reports on what it sees as the most troublesome aspects:

The Iranians would supply the UN inspectors with still photographs and video footage of several locations within the Parchin compound where components for the production of nuclear weapons are suspected to have been tested. The Iranians may use their own equipment, which will be examined by UN inspectors only to make sure it is in working order.

Even though Iran has been given widespread authority to inspect the site, they are still resisting an inspecting of the entire Parchin compound, terming several locations in it “out of bounds” – meaning no photographs or any other information about them would be handed over to UN inspectors.

Another troubling clause in the draft determines that even though Iranian scientists would be those who sample the soil and the air in Parchin, this activity would be limited, and UN inspectors would receive only seven soil and air samples from the building in which Iran is suspected of having tested the nuclear weapons components.

That quote goes a long way, I think, towards explaining Amano’s language re “responsibility.” As best I can piece it together, IAEA officials will have final “responsibility” but in many cases Iranians will give them the data and the evidence.

This may actually be the most informative article of all, because it describes the history of Parchin and why it matters to the Iran deal. The summary paragraph is this:

Knowing what happened at Parchin more than a decade ago remains key to ending the nuclear crisis because the accord reached last month in Vienna stipulates that sanctions can only be lifted if Tehran resolves all of the IAEA’s concerns over the possible military dimensions of its nuclear program — both past and present.

But it actually was the speech the other day by Senator Menendez (text here) that was most helpful to me in explaining the significance of Parchin. It’s a long speech, but well worth reading in its entirety. Here’s the most relevant excerpt:

The goal that we have long sought, along with the international community, is to know what Iran accomplished at Parchin — not necessarily to get Iran to declare culpability — but to determine how far along they were in their nuclear weaponization program so that we know what signatures to look for in the future…it makes a difference if you are 90 percent down the road in your weaponization efforts or only ten percent advanced. How far advanced Iran’s weaponizing abilities are has a significant impact on what Iran’s breakout time to an actual deliverable weapon will be…

With so much at stake, the IAEA — after waiting over ten years to inspect Parchin, speak to Iranian nuclear scientists, and review additional materials and documents — are now told they will not have direct access to Parchin…

For me, the administration’s willingness to forgo a critical element of Iran’s weaponization — past and present — is inexplicable.

And here’s another excellent point he makes about our own track record in monitoring nuclear development:

The U.S. track record in detecting and stopping countries from going nuclear should make Kerry more modest in his claims and assumptions. The U.S. missed the Soviet Union, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. Washington underestimated Saddam’s program in 1990. Then it overestimated his program in 2003 and went to war to stop a nonexistent WMD program.’…

It is precisely because of this track record that permitting Iran to have the size and scope of an industrialized nuclear program, permitted under the JCPOA is one of the great flaws of the agreement.

It’s also well worth reading this WSJ piece on what’s wrong with the inspections that are supposed to be so foolproof and rigorous according to the administration—the ones about future activity, not past ones at Parchin.

In summary, I’ll just add this quote from Menendez about the entire deal (not just Parchin):

The deal enshrines for Iran, and in fact commits the international community to assisting Iran in developing an industrial-scale nuclear power program, complete with industrial scale enrichment. While I understand that this program will be subject to Iran’s obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, I think it fails to appreciate Iran’s history of deception in its nuclear program and its violations of the NPT.

Its “history of deception” is exactly what the American public has been reacting to. And not just Iran’s history of deception; that of the Obama administration, too.

And then there’s the relationship between Iran and the IAEA:

Should a nuclear accord be signed this time [this was written July 1, not long before the accord was announced], it will aim to primarily constrain, not permanently roll back or “dismantle,” Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure. In that case””in which Iran is still left with significant nuclear capacity””an accurate and comprehensive Iranian declaration of all its nuclear undertakings to the IAEA is essential for reliable monitoring and verification. Absent this complete declaration, including the oft-cited “Possible Military Dimensions” (PMD), IAEA inspectors can neither assemble a clear picture of Iran’s nuclear program, nor set a reference point against which to monitor it and verify there is no violation or diversion.

Iran has a long history of failing to report critical elements of its nuclear activities.

Please read the whole thing.

Obama to world: it’s okay to violate sanctions

The New Neo Posted on by

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, there’s this news:

Sens. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) disclosed in the letter to the State Department that U.S. lawmakers have been shown copies of several letters sent by the Obama administration to the Chinese, German, French, and British governments assuring them that companies doing business with Iran will not come under penalty.

The Obama administration is purportedly promising the foreign governments that if Iran violates the parameters of a recently inked nuclear accord, European companies will not be penalized, according to the secret letters…

“These letters appear to reassure these foreign governments that their companies may not be impacted if sanctions are re-imposed in response to Iranian violations of the agreement,” [Kirk and Rubio] claim [in the letter]. “While Administration officials have claimed that this is not the case, we think it is important for the American public to be able to read your assurances to foreign governments for themselves as their elected representatives review this deal in the coming weeks.”

“The conditions under which foreign investment in Iran would proceed under the nuclear agreement remain unclear,” Kirk and Rubio wrote. “On July 23, 2015, Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that companies that have invested in Iran would ”˜not be able to continue doing things that are in violation of the sanctions’ if sanctions snap back.”

“Foreign investment in Iran will involve long-term contracts in many cases, however, and some interpretations of the Iran agreement indicate these contracts might be protected from the snap-back of sanctions by a so-called ”˜grandfather clause,’” they write.

There’s more in there, but that’s the gist of it.

One of the big arguments Obama and Kerry have used for the Iran deal is that the sanctions were falling apart anyway. However, they were falling apart even before the deal because the US was signalling it would be abandoning them soon, and was desperate to make such a deal. So Obama/Kerry used the fruits of their own abandonment of sanctions to justify lifting sanctions.

One of the other ways in which Obama/Kerry argued for the deal has been the “snap-back” clause, which would revive sanctions in case of Iranian violations. But that’s a horse that’s very difficult to get back in the barn once let out. Now we know they weren’t even going to try.

This is how you deal with hecklers: Cruz

The New Neo Posted on by

Watch it; I’m in awe of Cruz here:

Very impressive. In the end, they had nothing to say.

Of course, this technique might not work the same way with a really huge group of protesters. But this assortment seemed large enough and loud enough to cause quite a commotion, and look what happened. Cruz showed how to remain calm and respectful and yet surprise them in a sort of jujutsu move:

“JÅ«” can be translated to mean “gentle, soft, supple, flexible, pliable, or yielding.” “Jutsu” can be translated to mean “art” or “technique” and represents manipulating the opponent’s force against himself rather than confronting it with one’s own force. Jujutsu developed to combat the samurai of feudal Japan as a method for defeating an armed and armored opponent in which one uses no weapon, or only a short weapon. Because striking against an armored opponent proved ineffective, practitioners learned that the most efficient methods for neutralizing an enemy took the form of pins, joint locks, and throws. These techniques were developed around the principle of using an attacker’s energy against him, rather than directly opposing it.

Practitioners of martial arts may find something to quarrel about in my characterization, but I think the similarities are clear.

The only drawback I see is that if protesters get wind of it, that fact could draw more of them in order to be able to take the stage. On the other hand, I doubt many would be eager to go the way of these two protesters when up against Cruz’s debating skills.

One of the Iran “side deals”

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, this is certainly encouraging:

We already knew a “secret deal” had been drafted between the IAEA and Tehran; and while it is standard operating procedure for the IAEA to make inspection arrangements with individual nation states, it is not SOP for the United Nations to cede its investigative authority””especially when they’re dealing with a hostile government that is notorious for waxing uncooperative with international inspectors.

This is unprecedented. Under this agreement, Tehran will be allowed to employ its own experts and equipment to search for evidence, the existence of which they have repeatedly and enthusiastically denied.

What does this mean for the future of the Iran deal in Congress? I have no idea””but there’s no ignoring the fact that Democrats who have come out in support of this deal have either been totally snookered, or are (however unlikely) somehow in the know and thus complicit in this blatant precursor to a war crime.

I believe that the side deal could have been revealed to be that the US would supply the Iranian government with atomic weapons and the ICBMs to deliver them—“the rope with which we will hang them“—and the Democrats in Congress would still not be able to muster enough votes for an Obama override. That’s profoundly cynical and depressing, but that’s what I believe. I hope I’m wrong (which I notice I’ve been saying a lot lately, haven’t I?).

Obama has been planning this for a long, long time. Perhaps the best thing I can say about Hillary Clinton is that I have a feeling (it’s just a hunch) that she was not totally on board, and one of the reasons she left was because of that, which gave room for Obama to find the absolutely perfect instrument for his plans, John Kerry. Do I blame them? Of course. But it could not have be accomplished—and this is key—without the belief that enough Democrats in Congress would stick by them.

[NOTE: And no, Republicans did not cede their right to treaty approval by passing Corker-Menendez. I’ve discussed that in depth before and I may discuss it again, but if you do a search on the blog you can find many posts about it. If you only have time for one, look at this. There’s also this.

Obama found a flaw in the treaty-approval system and he attacked in that soft and vulnerable spot. Corker-Menendez was a desperate attempt to create a tool with a chance of stopping him.]

Presidential candidates: minority and special interest groups

The New Neo Posted on by

We all know that Hillary Clinton is the first female frontrunner candidate of a major party. At least, she’s long been the frontrunner, and remains the frontrunner, although who knows how long that will continue.

Personally, I believe that the only thing that will stop Clinton would be an indictment, or the entry of Elizabeth Warren into the race. That’s how shallow the Democratic bench is and how much the public (especially Democrats) seems to thirst for another “first” such as Obama. The first woman president is the next logical step for them, and Hillary seems (or seemed) to fit the bill.

That’s one of the reasons Carly Fiorina is an especially good foil for her. I don’t doubt, however, that if Carly were to rise in the polls, the attacks on her as “not a real woman,” or some sort of traitor woman because she’s a conservative, would become the opposition’s drumbeat.

Isn’t it interesting that this year we also have two—count ’em, two—major presidential candidates who are Hispanic? I don’t recall even one major candidate who was Hispanic in previous years, although it’s possible I’m forgetting someone. But do we hear any paeans of praise for Cruz’s or Rubio’s minority status in the MSM or from liberals? Of course not; don’t be silly. They are Republicans. Cruz in particular is an arch conservative, and Rubio only somewhat less so. In the eyes of the MSM that de-Hispanicizes them. And Cruz, of course, is only half-Hispanic—just as Obama is only half-black, which you don’t hear much about from the left, unless it’s the left that thinks he’s not leftist enough.

Cruz and Rubio don’t appear to be emphasizing their Hispanic origins all that much (Jeb Bush seems to be going further with his status as an honorary Hispanic). But just imagine for a moment if either Cruz or Rubio were liberals. You know what a wonderful thing their candidacies would be.

Same for Bobby Jindal, first person of Indian extraction to be a viable candidate for the presidency. And Romney, who was the first Mormon nominee for president, was not lauded for that fact, either (he wasn’t the first Mormon major candidate; I believe that honor may have belonged to his father George). Mormons, of course, are most definitely not a liberal special interest group, although they certainly are a minority group in terms of numbers.

Interestingly enough, you also hear very little from liberals about the fact that Bernie Sanders is Jewish, because being Jewish is not considered by the left to be a selling point and Jews are not considered to be oppressed; au contraire. Nor is Sanders the first major candidate who’s Jewish. We even had a previous Jewish vice-presidential nominee, back in 2000 (what now seems like centuries ago), when Joe Lieberman was the VP nominee of the Democratic Party. Not long after that he became a party pariah when the Scoop Jackson wing was banished and foreign policy hawks were disallowed.

One other note—back in 1960, John Kennedy became the first Catholic president. It was a big, big deal at the time, almost as big a deal as Obama years later. That seems hard to believe, but I was there and I remember. What’s more (although this seems hard to believe as well), 55 years later he remains the only Catholic president.

Menendez comes out against the Iran deal

The New Neo Posted on by

That is no surprise. Menendez is a Democrat from New Jersey, and his opposition to Obama’s policy on Iran has been vocal and strong for a long, long time. Along with his opposition to Obama’s Cuba policy, this has caused him to be under indictment by the DOJ for campaign financing violations (read about that here).

It’s worthwhile to look at the speech Menendez just gave on why the Iran deal is so very bad:

I recall in the early days of the Administration’s overtures to Iran, asking Secretary of State, John Kerry, at a meeting of Senators, about dismantling Arak, Iran’s plutonium reactor. His response was swift and certain. He said: ”˜They will either dismantle it or we will destroy it.’

“I remember that our understanding was that the Fordow facility was to be closed ”“ that it was not necessary for a peaceful civilian nuclear program to have an underground enrichment facility. That the Iranians would have to come absolutely clean about their weaponization activities at Parchin and agree to promise anytime anywhere inspections.

“We now know all of that fell by the wayside. But what we cannot dismiss is that we have now abandoned our long-held policy of preventing nuclear proliferation and are now embarked ”“ not on preventing nuclear proliferation ”“ but on managing or containing it — which leaves us with a far less desirable, less secure, and less certain world order. So, I am deeply concerned that this is a significant shift in our nonproliferation policy, and about what it will mean in terms of a potential arms race in an already dangerous region.

“While I have many specific concerns about this agreement, my overarching concern is that it requires no dismantling of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and only mothballs that infrastructure for 10 years. Not even one centrifuge will be destroyed under this agreement. Fordow will be repurposed, and Arak redesigned…

“This deal does not require Iran to destroy or fully decommission a single uranium enrichment centrifuge. In fact, over half of Iran’s currently operating centrifuges will continue to spin at its Natanz facility. The remainder, including more than 5,000 operating centrifuges and nearly 10,000 not yet functioning, will merely be disconnected and transferred to another hall at Natanz, where they could be quickly reinstalled to enrich uranium.

“And yet we, along with our allies, have agreed to lift the sanctions and allow billions of dollars to flow back into Iran’s economy. We lift sanctions, but — even during the first 10 years of the agreement — Iran will be allowed to continue R&D activity on a range of centrifuges ”“ allowing them to improve their effectiveness over the course of the agreement.

Oh, just read the whole thing.

The gist of the arguments against Menendez’s points seem to be this: (a) there are no alternatives other than war, and (b) if we’re kind to the Iranian leaders and help Iran financially, this will empower the moderate faction there over time, and Iran will enter the community of nations as a peaceful rational actor.

Neither appears to be true, however. But if this deal stands, I certainly hope I’m wrong about the latter.

[ADDENDUM: I also wanted to call your attention to this sentence that occur towards the very end of Menendez’s speech, in case you didn’t get that far:

I have looked into my own soul and my devotion to principle may once again lead me to an unpopular course, but if Iran is to acquire a nuclear bomb, it will not have my name on it.]