Blessings We Have Found in Israel

 

Israel gets some bad public relations if one depends on the news, editorials, talk radio and just about any mass media, even movies and other entertainment. Living in Israel very quickly dispels all the lies. Are there a few choice people who might make one take a less than superb view, but such are rare and even they warm with time. Needless to say, not knowing or speaking the language causes some difficulties but there is almost always somebody there to lend a translating hand. There was the time we were at a McDonalds and the woman at the counter spoke no English and two what had to be young High School age girls came in and realizing the communication problem immediately became our translators without being asked. Generally there are those who willingly offer to give directions to whatever place you need to find in ten minutes to make the appointment and it is your first time in the city and you got off the bus where you thought was the closest stop. That time we only missed by one or two stops and had to walk about a mile or so, you get used to walking in Israel because so much living is city center style European life, an initial system shock after life in the outer suburbs in the United States.

 

Our friends, acquaintances and relatives are quite surprised when we relate the ease and general atmosphere in Israel. When we tell them that we have found Israel more accommodating and generally having a softer and more easy and comforting nature they tend to express great surprise. One might expect that in Israel life would have an edge on it with the constant threats from virtually any direction and the added unpleasant surprise with the Iranian nuclear threat and President Obama and his team’s animosities and threats thrown at Israel but they would be quite wrong. Probably the best description we could give as a true barometer of Israel and Israelis would be to take everything ever attributed to Israel and her people by the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Human Rights Commission or virtually any other United Nations agency etcetera and take it all and place the initials of the United Nations in front of them but in small letters and then read the entirety as one word. An easy example would be if some United Nations commission claimed Israelis harbored a genocidal hatred then all one need do is take the two words and place the letter un in front giving you ungenocidal and unhatred and you would produce an honest appraisal. Sure it would take ignoring your spellcheck and do some translations where ungenocidal would become accepting of others people who are different and unhatred would become lovers making the entire accusation translate into accepting and caring for peoples who differ from Jews and accepting, caring and considerate of people who are of any other stereotypical, racial, religious or nationality different from Israeli or Jewish. A closer inspection of Israeli actions around the world will better exemplify this example.

 

When Haiti was struck by that devastating earthquake, the Israelis were amongst the first to have responders on the ground evaluating any special needs. Israel had the first field hospital which was equipped with X-ray equipment, a gynecological unit, a neonatal unit, burn center, surgical rooms, prosthetics and physical therapy, emergency room, and virtually every department and specialists which was on the ground and set up within six days of the earthquake. This hospital remained on the ground even after the search and rescue units had stood down. Israel also opened clinics in areas where urgent care not requiring the abilities of a full hospital were present and when the Israelis left Haiti a number of these clinics remained completely equipped with diagnostic, monitoring and other equipment and Israel had trained people in the area such as orphanage, school or other personnel who would be capable of offering care after the Israelis had left.

 

When Typhoon Haiyan spread destruction throughout much of the Philippines, Israel arrived with an one-hundred-forty-eight person team, including search, rescue and medical services and a fully functioning field hospital with one-hundred tons of aid. Making rescue and aid assistance even more difficult was when the typhoon struck, the region was still reeling from the Bohol earthquake in October before. One of the more interesting reports on the Israeli presence at the time was on television news where an on the scenes reporter had been directed to a small village not on one of the main Islands by the Philippine government when she requested assistance in reaching the “most remote village” to report on how they were coping with the aftermath of the storm. Imagine her surprise to find a clinic operated by Israelis already set up and operating while training the local villagers on how to treat people for emergency aid and familiarizing them with the equipment which the Israelis would leave behind as well as the clinic itself with one Israeli aid worker to remain behind and work for the next six months or so with the villagers to assure that they have received whatever training might arise.

 

When Nepal recently had their massive earthquake, once again Israel was amongst the first to respond and the operation was much like the one in Haiti with one exception which was remarkable; Israel took care to the most remote of places, some of which had rarely if ever seen support even from the Nepalese government where Israel set up satellite care units often referred to as clinic in a backpack, though we would hate to have to carry such a backpack, they are quite heavy (pictured below). These remote aid clinics provided urgent and critical care close to the, and often on the, mountain slopes treating climbers and vacation goers as well as native Nepalese citizens. They also operated as a remote triage for when victims were stabilized and given what treatment was available at the clinic and once the patients were stabilized for transport having them taken to the main Israeli or other field hospital.

 

 

The Israeli and Nepalese medical staff who operated the IsraAID mobile clinic in the village of Tar, ten hours northeast of Kathmandu. (Photo credit: Melanie Lidman/Times of Israel)

 

 

Israel has sent aid groups to other areas struck by natural calamities with teams having gone to Japan after their earthquake and tsunami disaster, Myanmar after the tsunami, Turkey after they suffered an earthquake and offered assistance to the United States after hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans and destroyed entire fishing towns along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and reportedly one of a very remote few to offer assistance to the United States. When one considers the Save a Child’s Heart program and how it saves children of all ages who have debilitating if not life-threatening heart problems as well as setting up entire departments in hospitals around the world and training their staff and physicians on how to diagnose and treat these children including training the heart surgeons on how to perform these sensitive and vital surgeries, Israel leaves all the equipment the staff was trained on with the hospital.

 

And the Israelis you meet, see, work with and just generally run across are some of the most patient people and really do try to help in their own manner. They may sometimes have difficulty in expressing things in English but many are actually happy and anxious to use their English and respond well when one states the words in the correct syntax as that is important to them. Sentence structure in Hebrew is different than in English and thus literal word for word translations quite often makes for what at first one takes as Yoda speak from Star Wars, perhaps it was direct translation of Hebrew to English that was the basic transference used to make Yoda syntax. Our Hebrew is embarrassingly inadequate to even make a scheduled appointment and get the day of the week correct not to mention the time as some places use a twenty-four hour clock which reminds all of military times.

 

Then there is a tight knit group of what are referred to as Anglos, basically English speakers, and we have events, trips, sightseeing, Torah, Talmud and Bible classes for men and women and we have found our level of social activities is vastly more active and on a level of friendliness equal to our best of times and friends back in the United States. Another thing which leads to such is that Israel is a rather small nation, approximately the size of New Jersey, though that is misleading as the southern two-fifths, or forty-percent, of Israel is made up of the Negev Desert which is rather sparsely populated. Where New Jersey has a population of nine-million, Israel’s population is just over eight-million. Of course there are some groups who pretty much stick to their own group of like-minded and religious viewpoints such as the Haredi. In much of Israel where there is a mix of Arab and Jewish populations there is no evident difference in the treatment and the interactions are natural and as normal as humanly possible. In the area we reside there are Arab and Muslim stores and employees in larger stores or other places of employment are seamless as to their fitting into the society as a whole. At the regional hospital there are Muslim and Arab nurses, physicians, technicians and all positions and everything functions, as we said, seamlessly. The street signs are all written in Hebrew, Arabic, and English with some towns sporting French or Spanish or Russian, though we have yet to see one which had more than four languages and usually just the three required languages. What is always amusing is when a store has its name actually an English name but the letters on their sign is in Hebrew. What gets confusing is that when you read some of these signs you try to think what the prefixes and suffixes are as Hebrew has many words result only in a letter prefix or suffix. Some examples of prefixes are the ‘v’ which means ‘and’ along with an ‘h’ which means ‘the’ while the suffixes often give one the gender of the word as well as if it is singular or plural or includes the speaker or listener in the plural group and so on. Over half of learning Hebrew are the prefixes and the gender and singular versus plural of the words. Someday we will get a reliable translation program for our phones, or should we call them what the phones have become, life assistants and general applications from pictures to recordings, getting e-mail, surf the Web, record our every move and change of mood on Facebook, well, not quite, and most important movie or still camera and recorder.

 

Basically, virtually everything UNcomplimentary about Israel are UNtrue. Contrary to popular belief they are not contrarians. Israelis are like all peoples, there are the great, the good and the we wish they were nicer types. Many fall all over themselves attempting to make our lives as stress free as possible which had to be stressing on them. Of course it might be that as the ancient Hebrew scholars made a point of hammering into our stories and writings, people will only treat you as well as you treat them and life can be like a mirror to one’s soul which is revealed by ones actions when it appears nobody is watching, because, as we are taught in Judaism and is likely taught though with a slight difference, there is always somebody watching us from on High and nothing escapes that view as our innermost thoughts to our most expressed emotions. We can also count that such observations tell whether we’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake. Still, there is something else which permeates through the society at large. There is an air of optimism and hopefulness. You feel a vigor for living life and finding meanings where other places simply ignore and accept things as is. In Israel there is this striving to be better as a people and as individuals. There is also a level of acceptance which makes one more comfortable simply being themselves as all will be just fine in the end. There are more young children than we were used to in the United States. This too adds to the optimism as a society with declining populations is what is destroying Europe right before our eyes. They are dancing their last dance in Europe and if things continue as has been the scenario we in Israel will become all the more isolated and an Island of freedom and democracy in a sea of misfortune. There is still hope for Europe but only if they turn their ship of state around and rediscover what gave them the impetus to live life to the fullest and explore the world, that spark of life which made passing their ideas and ideals on to the next generation, something difficult to do when there are so few children born to the indigenous Europeans. Israel will only grow stronger as the Jews of Europe make their final decision and that plague may soon prove to be a prophesy for the United States though that need not be their future written in stone. The United States has a far better opportunity to reverse the slipping trend before the slope becomes too steep and wet for any traction and down becomes the only direction. We are both glad we have come to Israel and Israel has proven to be a wellspring of optimism and life, a future of light and enlightenment, more than a completion as it is an opportunity to grow with such splendor and a kaleidoscope of choices each colored so vividly and vibrant. It is really hope eternal or as close as we have seen on Earth. It is great to be at home, the home which was destined and a good, no, great home it is and will grow from there. Needless to say, but we do not expect the United Nations to understand as they are the people of ‘UN’ and that sums them up in total.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

How to React When Your Societal World is Threatened

 

More often than not, when one finds their world under existential threats, the society under threat attempts to mollify the perceived grievances; if one were to be completely honest, something such societies are often found to be in short supply, the perceived grievance is their existence and the fact that the targeted society considers itself more enlightened and one that is superior often because it is so accommodating to the other, to almost every other even attempting to be accommodating to those who wish to supplant them. In the society under threat there will be those who will propose that the only way to survive is to be as ruthless and barbaric as those who wish to destroy everything they have. These people will be rejected and accused of being boorish brutes who are uncultured and have no ability to reason and that they are the reason the threat exists and if only they would tone down their alarmism and allow those with minds deal with the problems and find a solution where both sides get what they desire and both can then live in comfort and equality where both sides would enjoy enlightened lives in relative peace and understanding. How one is met halfway if their starting point is the eradication of one society’s way of life and entire social structure is beyond my meager intellect to compute exactly how much of the one society can be sacrificed that will allow those who are the destroyers to be satisfied that they have destroyed a sufficient amount of the other society that they are satisfied and no longer desire to destroy the entirety of the other society. Would allowing the destruction of one third do or must it be a fifty-fifty split or perhaps the others are truly energized and really hate the society and will only be satisfies with three-quarters of that society destroyed. If their intended goal is your total destructions, then guess what, only your total destruction will quench their blood lust. And this does not mean just the creature comforts and advanced luxuries and the trappings of your society, they probably also want everybody from your society dead or subjugated into servitude under their cruelest of conditions and little short of that will do to end their drive to smash everything you have built in a blood curdling frenzied lust for destruction of every last vestige of those structures and intricacies and comforts your society had afforded you.

 

There are numerous signs that such difficulties are headed your way as these things are rarely a complete surprise no matter how well you managed to ignore the signs, they were there and there were those who were screaming out warnings but the majority simply preferred to ignore the warnings and claim that this too will pass. When it is pointed out that these adversaries are talking of world conquest the majority of your society will laugh and chortle that nobody dreams of world conquest any more. Where that may be true in your all so egalitarian society where learned and studious men discuss the great moral debates of the day and all conflicts are mediated and violence is just so distasteful, world conquest went out with the two great world wars and died when the Soviet Union fell. Well, that did not end the numbers of people who dreamed of world conquest. There are still active Communist ideologues who believe in a world existing in a Communist Utopia run by, who else, them, of course. The Islamic Republic of Iran dreams of a Shiite Islamic world where all surrender before their rule and obey their edicts and nothing other than the Quran and the Sharia rule men’s lives and men rule all women’s lives and Allah rules all lives as they interpret the will of Allah and they who wear the robes and sport the longest of beards with the wild look in their eyes are to be obeyed as they are the ones who control the necks which fall before the executioners axe for the crimes of heresy. Even Kim Jong Un believes his version of Communist enslavement will eventually rule over all that remains of the world after North Korea amasses sufficient numbers of nuclear warheads and the ICBMs with which to deliver them over the entirety of the globe starting with the United States then Europe and on until he is stopped or all else have been vanquished. If you believe that there are none who believe they were chosen by heaven to rule the world you need read no further than the Hamas Charter and founding documents to realize even they believe they have been chosen by Allah to bring Sunni Islam to the world and be those who will be chosen and blessed to be in the catbird’s seat and be the ultimate deciders of everyone’s’ fates. The exact same dream is at the core of Islamic State (formerly ISIS), the Wahabbists, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, Islamic State of Iran, the Saudi Royals and probably countless others some of which would surprise many people including those who thought they knew the person and never suspected they held delusional thoughts that they were destined for world conquest.

 

There are always those who will claim they did not see it coming and will be upset that nobody sounded an alarm or warned of the dangers coming. These people have a long line of predecessors. There were those who claimed that the Norsemen who had boarded their ships and gone a Viking and had already raided the eighth village up the coast and then the seventh and then the sixth and suddenly the village is all up and arguing that the Norsemen gone a Viking would tire before reaching our village and they continued to claim this and even passed laws arresting those who would sew panic by building ramparts and digging ditches to aid in defending from an invasion which these leaders kept claiming would never reach their village as they were a safe distance up the river and that would protect them. These are the same leaders who will be pushing those who had warned and even been locked away for attempting to fortify the village and were released and sent to lead the defense against the men gone a Viking as they disembarked and were heading straight for the village. There was a similar disease called disbelief in the Middle East and eastern Europe claiming that the Mongols would bypass their city as their walls were too thick, too high or that their town held too little treasure or any of a myriad of reasons but when the dead bodies of the plague victim who were still alive when the trebuchet or catapult heaved them over those very same unsurmountable obstacles defending the city and the panic struck with people screaming and crying to those same incompetent leaders to save them and the leaders hid so as not to be thrown out the gates carrying as much of the city’s wealth in a futile attempt to appease the Mongols, but alas that never worked as the Mongols wanted more than the gold and jewels, they wanted the pleasure of conquest, the blood lust of battle, and the prizes won in the pleasures of the terrified women and the subservient men groveling at their feet begging for their lives, they were the first butchered as those who stood caught in their futile attempt to stay the Mongols or who rode out in defiance choosing what could possibly be called a good death as is it not better to die on one’s feet than on one’s knees?

 

The truth is that the leaders rarely see such troubles coming and it is not because they are honestly blind to the threat but because to address such troubles would assure they would be thrown from office and they are accustomed to the comforts for as long as it will last. Leaders are not those who seek challenges except in rare instances such as Churchill who seeing the buildup of the Nazi German war machine knew what lie ahead sooner or later thus he attempted to warn the people and the leaders. Anyone remember what happened to Churchill for all the warnings he attempted to provide? No, not leading Britain during the war but before war became thrush upon an unready British Isles? He was drummed out of office being called a warmonger and an old fool and virtually every other horrific name one could heap upon a man who had simply attempted to warn a people of the coming challenge and steel them for the war that was sure to come, it was only a matter of when and to what degree the Germans would have prepared. When the Germans rolled across the remainder of Czechoslovakia they would still have been easier to defeat than after they swarmed across half of Poland and sealed their eastern border with a treaty with an anxious Stalin who was not prepared for a war with Germany. Churchill’s final verbal fusillade to his noble members of the British Parliament after Chamberlain returned from signing the Munich pact with Herr Hitler which was straight forward, to the point and true as he told them, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.” There was far more indelible historical record of a man choosing the path of honor when those around him chose to ignore the threat and whose words are familiar to any student of ancient history or the study of war where the two famous quotes came at the shores of Thermopylae. When the Persian officer stood before the three-hundred Spartans and three to five thousand assorted Greek volunteers and demanded that King Leonidas and his men give up their arms and they would be allowed to live, his reply was simply, he exclaimed disdainfully and grinning without a doubt, “Molon Labe” or, “Come and take them.” Also, when Dienekes, a Spartan soldier, was informed that the “Persians would fire arrows so numerous as to block out the sun,” his reply reflected the bravado of his King stating, “So much the better as then we shall fight our battle in the shade.”

 

Molon Labe When Demanded the Greek Spartans Surrender Their Arms King Leonidas Replied Molo Labe __ Come and Take Them

 

 

In this day there are very few who have the metal or bravado of King Leonidas or Winston Churchill though there are a few and one is also a great friend and supporter of Israel as praises her efforts and survival as being on the front line in the generational clash of civilizations which too many throughout the western world are in complete denial that there be such a problem and the real problem is their leader in the White House. The gentleman in question is retired Lieutenant Colonel and former United States Congressman Allen West who can be heard from his recent Times Square Speech below.

 

After these quotes from some of the bravest of men to have ever lived and after hearing a man who did everything to protect his men in Iraq even to the point where he committed an act that he knew as he did so that it would likely cost him his career if the commanders above him did not stand behind him, they did not. Lieutenant Colonel Allen West commanded the 4th Infantry Division in Iraq where he was losing men to IED (improvised explosive device), which work a lot like mines, at a rate he knew was unsustainable and starting to affect morale. One of the terrorists responsible for these devices and who Lieutenant Colonel Allen West knew had knowledge of where his men would be ambushed with an IED and the location of those making the explosive devices but he refused to respond to his interrogators. Lieutenant Colonel Allen West entered the interrogation tent and ordered everybody out of the tent leaving him alone with the captured terrorist where Allen West decided to try a new form of special interrogation and took his sidearm from its holster and raked a round into the chamber and discharged a round into a sand-bucket used to assure that weapons were not loaded during interrogations. The terrorist decided that he would rather not test Lieutenant Colonel Allen West’s patience further and provided all the information desired. Lieutenant Colonel Allen West returned to his office and called his superior and informed him of his actions. He then calmly briefed his commanders and they devised tactics and actions for the next day. Lieutenant Colonel Allen West in very short order was relinquishing his sidearm and his command and was soon forced from the service after twenty-two years’ service. He will always have the respect of his men and many other patriots and some, myself included, would follow him in an assault on hades if that were necessary. Lieutenant Colonel Allen West was elected to the United States Congress in Florida but when his district was joined into another with the advice of his own party, he lost a clearly rigged primary as he was not what one might call a party man who could be counted upon to vote the party line as he only would vote his conscience, and we cannot have such people in Congress as what might come next, integrity?

 

As any of the heroes from above would have advised, when somebody claims over and over year in and year out that their primary aim is to kill you and destroy your way of life that only fools and politicians refuse to believe their threats. Iran has been chanting for over thirty-five years, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” and they continue to do so every Friday rain or shine. Despite that the political leaders in too many parties and places claim that these chants are made for domestic consumption and the Ayatollahs would never make good on these threats as they realize that by doing so they would be inviting their nation’s destruction. In all honesty, they will eventually try to make good on these threats and the deal recently reached set the clock ticking down to the inevitable date when they will finally have the ability to fully follow through on these threats. As Lieutenant Colonel Allen West stated, in the near future the deal just made by President Obama will make Iran an economic power and within five to ten years they will become a military power and between ten to fifteen years they will become a nuclear power and beyond that all bets are off and both Israel and the United States will be facing an Iranian monster capable of fulfilling those threats. Does the western world really desire playing Russian Roulette with Iran because if they do, I have news for them, they will be going first and in this game Iran is insisting they use an .45 cal. semi-automatic pistol which makes going first a guaranteed losing proposition. But still there are those in the western world who will be eager to join the Ayatollahs at the table and pick up that weapon and the obvious will result and the Ayatollahs will gladly continue to load one bullet into the .45 cal. semi-automatic pistol and handing it to their adversary from the west and allowing them the privilege of going first. If the leaders are as big the fools as many we have currently, they will gladly oblige. Unfortunately they will be taking all too many of us with them, so choose your votes carefully as your life does depend upon this.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Obama Iran Ploy is Working and We’re the Fools

 

Almost daily we can read any number of articles from all parts of the Western nations and even at times in Asian and Middle Eastern news services proclaiming how President Obama is such a rube and a fool allowing himself to be led by the nose down the primrose path to oblivion. Many of these articles also point out what fools his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have been for not insisting that President Obama wake up and smell the nuclear weapons. Now where I may agree heartily that Secretary of State John Kerry is one of the grandest fools to ever walk out onto the world’s stage for all to assess, I am a little more reluctant to claim the same of Hillary Clinton though I will agree that she is an opportunist and knew that crossing President Obama would have been political suicide if she was going to ever gain his support in her quest for the White House. Her foolishness was believing he would ever stoop to assisting anybody where it serves him not. So, now on to President Obama who is without a doubt the grand architect and even has Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani (from here on to be referred to as the ‘Smiling Cheshire Man’ after the cat from Alice in Wonderland that after its gone its oddly wicked smile remained to charm the unsuspecting {see picture below}) both believe they are playing the American President for the fool. It serves President Obama to have his detractors believing and calling him an idiot who is unable to see the forest for the trees as this forces the Democrats and leftists who support President Obama and tout him as the most brilliant man to ever grace the Oval Office to line up and defend him and placing the majority of the left wing media, and especially the New York Times to support his craftiness in that he is drafting an agreement with numerous little technical details which will deviously prevent the Iranians from reaching a breakout point on nuclear weapons for the rest of eternity. So, who is right and why?

 

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani smiling for report on how he and Iran charmed the world reminding all of the evil laugh as the Cheshire Cat faded away leaving only his wicked smile and it just fit calling him the ‘Smiling Cheshire Man’

 

 

A quick aside we had to include about Iranian President Rouhani and the quotes we caught right before press time and just felt had to be distributed to our friends and readers. The Iranian President Rouhani the ‘Smiling Cheshire Man’ was quoted by Nasim news agency stating, “Even if the nuclear talks fail, our diplomacy showed the world that we are logical. We never left the negotiation table and always provided the best answer.” Further, the ‘Smiling Cheshire Man’ stated, “Twenty-two months of negotiation means we have managed to charm the world, and it’s an art.” Well Mr. Smiling Cheshire Man, we have some news for you, we have not been charmed and know you for the jovial, familial, back stabbing, confidence grabbing, lying, betrayer of trust, sinister evil Smiling Cheshire Man that you are.

 

Believe it or not both sides are right and for the wrong reasons. Those calling President Obama the fool are wrong though they are correct that only a President of the United States who was a fool would allow these negotiations to have dragged on and be giving away the store as each deadline approaches before extending the talks one more time. The Democrats are close to right when they claim that President Obama is a smart man but are wrong that he is designing an agreement which will trick the Iranians preventing them from developing nuclear weapons as quickly as they are able. What most people are overlooking, likely because to even think it is considered treasonous even if it becomes known as true is that President Obama has been aiming the entire time to give Iran the cover, the funds and the freedom from inspections and the ability to do as they please precisely because his aim is for Iran to join the nations of the nuclear club and at the same time facilitate the Russian bear, a.k.a. President Putin, to flex his bare chest and retake control over whatever he feels bold enough to take and to provide China the wherewithal of claim all of the South China Sea as their private bathtub and the control over all the islands and atolls they can reclaim and/or build in the remaining time he is in office. Still, the crown in President Obama’s crown will be the hegemonic rise of Iran with their taking control of the southern Shia provinces of Iraq, defeat ISIS and impress their rule on all of Syria and possibly Lebanon as well placing them on the northern border of Israel and closer to Hamas to supply them through military convoys through the Israeli blockade, a confrontation he would condemn in the most serious terms while sliding them a private note congratulating them on their bold strategies. If I were Saudi Arabia I would be very wary of any Shiite uprisings in the northeast territories, especially the oil field lands and I cannot give serious enough warnings to King Abdullah II ibn al-Hussein of Jordan as his lands would stand between the Ayatollahs and their desired conquest of the Arab Palestinian lands in Judea and Samaria giving them fronts against Israel on three sides and nearly encircling the Jewish State. Where Iran would tout being on Israel’s borders as their greatest achievement and opportunity, they would eventually rue the day they strove to accomplish that feat in order to attack Israel directly.

 

Meanwhile, President Obama sits back in the White House, or out on the golf links, reveling in his brilliant handling of the United States media, his fooling the right into believing he was merely incompetent and not treasonous thus avoiding possible impeachment. Imagine how fast the House would bring up charges of impeachment and the Senate find the President guilty if it ever became known that he was actually planning the neutering of the United States’ ability to project power beyond her shores, leave the nuclear weapons stores in such disrepair as to possibly render over half the American nuclear arsenal beyond retrievable repair through not funding inspections and cancelling critical maintenance, rendering the United States military to a state of lacking in readiness rivalling their state right before World War II. And President Obama has further worked on souring relations with the most vital of allies starting with his disrespect shown the British Queen, Prime Minister and the entire British Isles with his thoughtless and insulting gifts when they first met, the disrespect of actually touching the Queen when they first met as Michelle Obama did and on top of all this having called on the British Embassy for them to come and remove the bust of Winston Churchill during his first few days in office. Then moving on to the barrages of insults thrown at Israel and her Prime Minister being refused press meetings as was the norm and having him enter through a back door of the White House and leaving him to, as stated to Netanyahu’s face, go have dinner with his family and for the Israelis to reconsider their position and send for him should they decide to be more reasonable and even arranging to meet Israeli President Peres in the Blair House rather than in the White House as is customary between heads of state. Additionally, his disregard of the Saudi Arabian Royal Family as well as his treasonous interference in Egyptian politics in a bald-faced attempt to place the Muslim Brotherhood as rulers in Egypt and retain them there even against the will of the Egyptian people. What else does he need to do, go to Paris and ask President Hollande if he has any clean white flags he can borrow as he forgot his handkerchief?

 

President Obama still has to tread his near treasonous path at the very least until the fall of next year though he will probably be permitted great amounts of latitude as the Republicans appear almost fearful of protesting President Obama’s actions too vehemently afraid they may be accused of being racist while the Democrats, at least those completely in the tank for the President, seem all too eager to use that label on anybody who dares to challenge the greatness and brilliance they appear to hold Obama as possessing. Meanwhile, President Obama can simply continue and carry on in much the same manner as he has to this point with possibly a few extra rounds of golf thrown in thus aiding in the belief that he is unconcerned with the pressures and responsibilities of the office. Of course the Presidency has appeared to have drawn an extra decade or more off of his life judging by the greying of his hair and other certain differences in his appearance and mannerisms (though I have often suspected that since Richard Nixon Presidents have dyed their hair greyer rather than to cover the grey). Most Presidents, as with President Obama, tend to become more deliberate and slow down in the meter of their speech and become more soft spoken as the office has likely taxed them and struck them with some very unexpected and, as they were unappreciated, sleepless nights and shocking revelations and forced the meeting of threats beyond those we are ever aware of and perhaps that is for the better. A sure sign that there has been collusion between the American Administration and the Iranians will be if come next fall the two parties are still negotiating a mutually agreeable parting gift that President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry can cheerily grant the Iranians virtually everything they could possibly have dreamed to have had included. Negotiations being handed off to the next President is near completely impossible as the Iranians would not tempt the following administration being anywhere near as accommodating as has the Obama administration. It would be doubtful that President Obama would want to have the negotiations continuing during the lead-up to the elections as it would play into the hands of a Republican campaigning on foreign policy disasters such as the Iran negotiations and having it hurt the Democrat candidate. The one thing that has been so troubling about the Iranian nuclear program negotiations was who in the State Department thought having pretty much the same team members from the failure that were the North Koran nuclear negotiations that resulted in North Korea testing their first nuclear weapon within a year of completing negotiations now negotiating for the United States with Iran unless the desired end is identical to those results. Would it beyond probability that should President Obama sign an agreement with the Iranians mere days, or even weeks, before the end of his term in office and after the elections have determined the next President might actually lead to an investigation into possible irregularities and even collaboration between President Obama, certain high members of his administration and high officials in the State Department be investigated as a credible investigation could be useful in setting the record straight and alleviating suspicions which would be sure to arise.

 

There are many other suspicious events and seeming collusions to foil the regular systems and critical checks and balances through the two terms of the Obama Presidency which have given witness either to a level of competence by the administration or a level of collusion which would be extremely troubling should it be proven true. The original passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), Obamacare, which was not supported by a single Republican vote but still required party discipline beyond normal enforcement yet this is exactly what was achieved. Then the two separate reviews by the Supreme Court, both of which many had predicted would cripple the entirety of the program as should either case have struck down vital and necessary implementations and interpretations would have mortally wounded the legislation and potentially caused a crisis which could have caused the complete rollback of all of the many tentacles of Obamacare throughout the healthcare industry and forced a reset back to the systems which existed previous to the passing of Obamacare. There have been reports of irregularities with elections which have exceeded previous levels in scope and severity which could be relegated to better tracking abilities using computers and predictive software as well as possible party politics. The record increases in people receiving food stamps, welfare, disability payments and other government relief payments which have come under scrutiny but still there has not been irrefutable evidence of collusion by the White House beyond pressing changes in policy attitudes, a change which within the prerogatives of any Administration and are not outside of party politics. Still, it would seem that we have been bombarded with a seemingly unending and ever building torrent of such reports and suspicions which may also be another result of the widening distance between the two extremes in the political arena where candidates who just a decade or so past would have easily been considered mainstream in each party are now looking at their party which seemingly have slid ever further to the extremes making agreement and cooperation nearly impossible or at least highly improbable. Perhaps President Obama’s terms in office may be the harbinger of a new normal where whichever party is out of control of the White House will be critically hyper-scrutinizing every single word, policy, spokespersons, advisors or any other iota of data all seeking any crack in the armor to launch a partisan attack in an attempt to wound and weaken the President and thus impair their ability to get their agenda accomplished. In all honesty, if this results in near paralysis in domestic policies and forces future Congress sessions to each be even less productive each term, then this just could be to the benefit of the American people as there are already more laws and regulations than any law abiding person could ever comply with and not be in contradiction of the law almost hourly if not at least daily. At some point the people need to honestly ask when does a society become too litigious, when does a government be found to be passing laws to justify their positions and salaries? By the time such discussions reach the general public it is way past time to turn things around and there will never be an end in sight through the existing systems, so once it becomes an issue the issue has already passed by and the evidence will soon permeate that society. Such a question can never be discussed too early and yesterday will always have been preferable to tomorrow to breach such a discussion.

 

Beyond the Cusp