My How the Tables Have Turned

 

Richard Nixon was wrong, as wrong as wrong can be. He utilized the investigative powers of the Federal Government, the FBI, Justice Department, IRS and whatever might have aided his reelection, against his opponent, anything and anyone was a target, forging a theft which was his downfall. This was criminal in every way and President Nixon was fortunate to only have to resign and not spend many months or years in prison. His reputation was in tatters with everything positive he had accomplished now tarnished. His actions resulted in half a century of more and more liberal policies and culture taking over America. Now the tables have turned and the shoe is on the other foot and a million other trite sayings.

 

The questions now revolve around where will the investigation lead and who will be held culpable. Some of the names tossed about range from lesser known until the recent political free-for-all while others are household names. Who had heard of Mueller, Comey, Clapper, Steele, Brennan and other names which will become all too familiar in the near future, as everything plays out? Then there are the two names which we all are already very familiar with, former Secretary of State, Senator for New York and First Lady Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama. The same questions from the Nixon era will be heard all over again. Questions such as how high did it go, who knew and when did they know and a host of others will be thrown around and featured in article after article. Then there will be the big question, who, if anyone, will fall on their sword to save those above them who actually gave the orders. This was done and bartered into making himself into a folk hero of an odd sort when Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North in full uniform took total responsibility for the Iran-Contra Affair. His standing at attention while taking the oath and taking his valiant responsibility clearing President Reagan of any accountability.

 

Mueller, Comey, Clapper
Brennan, Steele

 

Now we have heard reports that former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied in their testimony given to Congress. This is a crime, obviously, defined by U.S. Code sections 1621 and 1001 of Title 18. These crimes could result in a maximum five-year prison sentence and potential fine. Both men are highly unlikely to actually face anything more than fines, especially if they are willing to give testimony leading to indictments of what are often called bigger fish. The truth should be sought over making the entire affair into some kind of vendetta. But there is a larger question involved this time around; is it worth the time, effort and attention for the Trump Administration to expend when the same efforts can be used to accomplish the Trump and the nation’s agendas.

 

This is what we will attempt to predict. President Trump is unlikely to seek convictions of his former opponent, Hillary Clinton, or of former President Barack Obama. What the FBI and other agencies desire may be something of a different matter. The FBI and CIA will likely desire to clear their agencies of any hints of corruption and could turn on their former heads which might not fare well for James Comey and John Brennan. These two disgraced their agencies and these are not agencies which can stand for politics entering into their lairs as these are investigatory agencies whose reputation is for providing administrations of both parties with equal diligence. But as far as Clinton and Obama, they will probably not face any serious difficulties, well; Obama will not likely be facing any charges. Hillary Clinton may face some charges for her handling of classified information while Secretary of State but will get a pass in sentencing if the charges are even pursued. The one thing is this might prove to be an interesting circus to watch while the antics are filling the three rings with the media doing its finest job at making molehills out of mountains. In the meantime, the media will be making mountains out of absolutely nothing over the presumed Trump-Russia collusion fantasy. The mainstream media has become so unfortunately predictable.

 

The main driving force in these investigations will probably be completely independent of President Trump and his closest team members. Coming from the business world, President Trump probably looks at the moves and machinations which were used to attempt to defeat his election as a done bad deal and in business; you move on from such difficulties and simply hope to never need to deal with such people again. President Trump is more forward looking and wants to get things accomplished, not dwell on things he would rather simply ignore and forget. President Trump has plans which he wants to get done and knows that looking back is counter-productive to getting everything accomplished as quickly as possible. President Trump probably has some long term plans which he realizes will take a second term, and he knows a second term is not a guarantee. This means he has a driving force to get as much accomplished as quickly as possible. This has been evident to anybody who has watched the blizzard of Executive Orders he issued almost as soon as he returned to the White House after the Inauguration. Things have slowed somewhat as much of what he desires to accomplish requires Congress, and Congress is a problem for Presidents, something Prime Ministers are unfamiliar with facing. A Prime Minister has the support of his coalition until he doesn’t, and then he has a problem which is called a new election. Presidents know when their next election is, they just are never quite sure if Congress will work with him, even if his party is in the majority. President Trump has realized that in spades.

 

That brings us to what President Trump is probably most concerned with over the coming six months, the mid-term elections. He is about to attempt what most Presidents have found very difficult, increasing his party’s numbers in both houses at their first mid-terms. Sitting a mere 9,387 kilometers, or 5,833 miles, from Washington D.C., we must rely on articles to get a feel for the electorate and information on the tricky Senate where only one-third of the Senators are up for re-election at any election cycle. From what we have read, the predictions are all over the place with some predicting the Republicans gaining three to five seats while others predict the Democrats taking control of the Senate gaining as many as seven or eight seats. We are glad we will not be in the business of predicting the outcome of the thirty-five seats up for election, apparently there are a couple of special elections making it more than the normal thirty-three seats. Perhaps when the coverage becomes somewhat more informative closer to the election and we will know who made the biggest gaff or posted a disturbing Tweet we will be bold enough to take a stab at a prediction. The only prediction we can make now is that President Trump will probably work hard to retain the House of Representatives and try very hard to increase his majority in the Senate by at least three seats giving him a better advantage at accomplishing his legislative agendas. This will mean much more to President Trump than wasting efforts on gaining conviction against people for past grievances. That he will leave up to the wheels of justice which move ever so slowly that we often forget what the crime was when politicians face prosecution for past misdeeds.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Lapid Using Liberman to Shoot for the Stars

 

Everybody knows the worst kept secret in Israel, Yair Lapid has designs of replacing Bibi as soon as he can get elections and then he is aiming to replace the Heavenly Choir. Yair Lapid thinks very highly of himself and his silver tongue which has gotten him far in life. His ability to set dulcet tones to the lyrics written on his teleprompter should remind people of another great speaker whose heart was cold and calculations have placed the Middle East in jeopardy by strengthening Iran. That sweet talker was President Obama, the still revered leftist who used Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals to take the already radical Iran and use an injection of Russian military airpower to reinstate al-Assad and Iran in a power position in Syria and with Hezballah in Lebanon while allowing Hamas to reunite their ties with Iran who are looking like the strong horse. These also emboldened Turkey to attempt and solve their Kurdish problem with another genocide which will be denied while it is occurring. All the wrong players in the Middle East are now playing more powerful positions and Russia is stuck in the quicksand.

 

Where would Yair Lapid fit into this formula? He would be the next installment in what next can go wrong. Lapid is very talented at telling everybody what they wish to hear. He will tell much of Israel that he is strictly a Zionist and stands to the right of Netanyahu. He will tell the university crowd that he strongly supports all versions of individual rights and the Two State Solution is the central spine of his Middle East policies. He tells the labor union that he stands one-hundred-percent behind Histadrut and supports stronger worker mediations. Basically he is the chameleon who stands before any crowd and adopts their greatest hopes and fears into reality and instantly becomes their best hope. Lapid only really believes in three things, his visceral distaste for everything religious, especially Jewish; his belief that he can find a gift so worthy that he will found two states for two people even if both those people will end up as Arab states and the Jews vanquished, and Lapid believes in Lapid and would claim to be the Messiah if he believed in the Messiah. All in all, the three things are all actually just ways for aggrandizing the last one, Yair Lapid.

 

Yair Lapid Enticing Avigdor Lieberman into Challenging Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu

 

Lapid is also very good at wrapping people into his plans by making them promises, some which he would actually keep. Currently Yair Lapid wants one thing and only one thing, a means to replace Bibi Netanyahu as Prime Minister. His plan is so painfully obvious; it would take a deaf, dumb and blind man not to see it. Currently, Lapid is planning to drive a wedge between Yisrael Beytenu leader, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman and his boss, Prime Minister Netanyahu. The weapon is the Haredi draft bill which has been laboriously hammered out to almost everyone’s satisfaction. Lapid has been whispering into Lieberman’s ear telling him of all the power he will bestow upon him when he makes his coalition after new elections. Unfortunately for Bibi, Lieberman has been soaking the praise and lauding up like a schoolboy receiving praise from his favorite teacher. The fact that Lieberman and his party share much of Lapid’s dislike for the religious is not a secret but this new draft law was drawn up extracting almost everything possible from the religious parties and is actually a fair and tough bill. But Yair wants elections and is willing to do anything to get them and to get them now. So why is it so important to get elections immediately?

 

That is an easy one to answer. Currently Bibi is, as usual, under a myriad of investigations and has been recommended for being brought to trial once more by the police who never tire of rejections. They were unable to get a single charge leveled against Bibi with a far more leftist Attorney General in the past and they are now facing a serious and strict law abiding Attorney General who will not take kindly to having his office used or his time wasted. Lapid knows that if he can force elections, then he can go to the police, who already have him as their main witness for at least one of their cases against Netanyahu, and drop a few well-timed “bombshells” and they can add that to their attempt to have the Prime Minister arraigned, and that could seal the deal. If an arraignment can be timed to coincide with new elections, Lapid can sue in the Supreme Court to have Netanyahu barred from seeking the office of Prime Minister which would weaken the power of Likud and as his party is polling number two, he sees himself as naturally replacing Likud with his party, Yesh Atid. He has even gone so far as to file bills to dissolve the Knesset in conjunction with Meretz. Meretz Party has no chance to lead a coalition and thus is filing purely to help Lapid. If filing with Meretz does not show his true alignment to the world, and Israel particularly, nothing will and his con just might work. The main part of the Lapid coup is to have Bibi arraigned and new elections so the Supreme Court can take Bibi out of the picture making Yair Lapid, as he sees it and us fear, the next Prime Minister. That is a frightful scenario which we would hate to watch occur.

 

The problem here is that Lapid is trying to pull down the coalition while working to have the Prime Minister prevented from defending himself through elections and will do whatever it takes to become Prime Minister and impose his cleverly concealed leftist principles and love of the Two State Solution in his attempt to win a Nobel Peace Prize even if that requires the destruction of Israel as the Jewish State and homeland to the Jewish People. Everything Yair Lapid does is for the aggrandizement of Yair Lapid. He views himself as a larger than life, anointed by the fates, and infallible man of principle. We view him as utterly lacking that final quality, flawed in many ways, and hope he is fated to never hold power of Prime Minister of Israel. We foresee his attaining that dreamed of position leading to placing Hamas backed completely by Iran and armed similarly to Hezballah into Judea and Samaria after agreeing to remove all the Jewish communities from beyond the Green Line. Did we mention he hates them as well though would promise them he would protect them to their faces, redividing Jerusalem, removing all border checkpoints, destroying the terror barrier on his way in full retreat and pulling every last IDF and other force and all intelligence operatives from beyond the Green Line and expect the Arabs to remain an unarmed state. Of course as soon as the Palestinian Authority has been overthrown and Hamas, or worse, Hezballah, replaces them with all the officials still seen as belonging to anything other than a fully religious theocratic terror state supporter removed from any position of power and possibly violently removed, Iran will arm the area and ready it for an attack on Israel. For Iran and both Hezballah and Hamas, being a nationalistic terror state supporter would be inadequate as only pure religious fanaticism will be accepted once Iran gets into the act. This would leave only the Jordan and the Sinai Peninsula left before Israel would be encircled by Iran on every land border.

 

It has been known that the Syrian leader, Bashir al-Assad, and his father before him, have always had designs on rejoining Jordan to Syria as they see Jordan and Israel as parts of Southern Syria and have designs on militarily reestablishing their Syrian hegemony. Any Syrian hegemonic interests would merely be serving the hegemonic obsessions of Iran. Iran would hardly need but blink in order to overwhelm the Jordanian forces and take Jordan. That would be an easy task except for two small items, Jordan has long been allied with the United States and Britain plus Israel is well aware that it is in their interests to prevent such a takeover. During the Black September attempted coup by Yasser Arafat and the PLO in 1970, Syrian forces dressed as Fedayeen crossed the border with air support. The Syrian efforts ended fairly quickly as they met more formidable resistance than they expected and their PLO allies were being decimated and were fleeing to Lebanon. Syria gave up on that attempt to reunify Jordan into southern Syria. That lesson was given Bashir’s father, he may require his own lesson before he learns plus he has Iran whispering in his ear. Another difference is that Jordan and Israel have a signed peace agreement and the United States has a rather unpredictable President in Trump. President Trump has pretty much steered clear of much in the Middle East beyond strongly backing Israel and recognizing the obvious by announcing that the United States will move its embassy to the Israeli capital of Jerusalem.

 

Syria has already fired into Israel sufficiently and been sternly blunted by IDF responses. When Syria and Iran invaded Israeli airspace with a military drone, not only was the drone quickly destroyed, but the command and control center which sent the drone and other similar installations were destroyed in response with Israel losing one aircraft as a response. Attempting at testing Israel through attacking Jordan may not be the wisest course of action, but we are talking of the Assad Regime which has never shown much of a propensity for wisdom guided actions. Let it rest that the Middle East is dangerous enough and does not need Yair Lapid as Prime Minister of Israel; it requires a strong and dependable Israel ready to act as necessitated. That would, for the present, mean Bibi Netanyahu at the very least until the end of this government’s legal term and elections on November 5, 2019. After that many expect that Bibi would either allow a new person to lead Likud or announce that this would be his final time serving as Prime Minister and start to groom a new leader for his party. It would be wise for that to begin immediately and there are a number of contenders, but that should wait for another time.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Media Assault Plus Corruption Probes to Depose National Leader

 

Depending on where you live, this title has a different target. In Israel, it has been the decades’ long probes into the Netanyahus, covered maliciously by a hyperventilating media seemingly in heat, or at least fevered excitement. In America, it has been the year of unending accusations from the leftist media, politic and enraged public factions known as #Resistance and their unceasing assault against President Trump. In both nations, the previous election was polled to be a walkover for the leftist candidates ending the time for Prime Minister Netanyahu in office and sending candidate Donald Trump back to his real estate business. In both elections, the left was shocked when Donald Trump was elected President and Netanyahu retained and gained seats in the Knesset giving him a somewhat more comfortable hold on power. Since each man has taken office, they have been investigated, and investigated, and investigated with an indictment coming at any moment. Over the years, the Israeli police, whose leadership has a definitively leftward leaning, have investigated the Netanyahu’s ice cream bill, his wife’s hair styling costs, and now his receiving cigars and champagne as gifts from friends who came for dinner. Perhaps they should have requested less expensive dinner gifts, perhaps a goldfish, puppy, kitten or snake (the media would ask why the pet snake was not venomous). Trump is being investigated for collusion with the Russians to win the election.

 

In the most recent investigation into Prime Minister Netanyahu it is very interesting that the main witness against Netanyahu is Yair Lapid, the leader of an opposition party who fashions himself the best replacement for the position of Prime Minister should Netanyahu be removed. One has to wonder how strong a case you have when you are depending on the subject of the whole investigation’s primary rival for office. In the investigation against President Trump the main evidence apparently came from a piece of fiction produced by his election rival Hillary Clinton’s paid investigation where her campaign colluded with Russians to produce dirt on Donald Trump. As a layman, one can only wonder how strong the evidence or charges could possibly be when the person investigated is facing charges produced or provided by their political rival. Still, this has not and will not prevent these investigations from having an impetus with media and public demands from the left demanding charges, removal from office by impeachment for Trump and resignation for Netanyahu. Yair Lapid supporters are convinced that should a new election be forced, then his party will be chosen to form a coalition, as they will gain more mandates (seats in the Knesset) than Netanyahu’s Likud Party. Many of the Hillary Clinton supporters mistakenly believe that should Trump be forced from office by resignation or impeachment and Russian collusion be proven in the election, then Hillary Clinton will be swept into the Oval Office by some miraculous decision from on high, we just have no idea how high as such would be against the line of succession and completely unprecedented.

 

Trump, Netanyahu, Clinton, Lapid

 

So, what can we say and learn from these two cases? The obvious call is that the left side of the political spectrum believes that they and they alone are the supreme chosen to lead their respective nations and anybody else must be hounded and forced from office. They appear to believe that their visions for the future are the sole prescription for the continued survival and health of human societal structures and individuals. Their prognostication over climate change; which historically included the predictions of a coming ice age in the 1970’s which became global warming by the late 1980’s and finally to include any and every change, global climate change currently, is the only valid explanation and any disagreement is a sure sign of a devious desire to make obscene profits while risking the lives of humankind. Their designs for fiscal survivability are the one means of sustaining the health of the planet and sustaining the economy. They are the wise leaders who are aware that the reason their ideas have failed is simply because insufficient investment has been made. Their idea for unfettered immigration is the best prescription for the health and diversity of the population and that all who enter their nation are deserving of citizenship. They know that their ideas of reducing military capability and the removal of their nation’s nuclear arsenals is the best means of leading by example and will lead to peace. Basically stated, they are the least corrupt no matter how much corruption is found as they only do these things to bring about the best for everyone. Their being the sole people permitted to rule is also the best possible for everyone. The only reason their ideas have failed was because just when they were about to show fruit the conservative right wing lunatics took over and ruined everything. They must prevent those right wing conservatives from ever taking or keeping power if their ideas are ever going to work to fruition. This is why they are fighting with such fervor to remove Trump and Netanyahu and replace them with their rivals, Lapid and Clinton. Oh, and do not try and reason with them as you are wrong even before you start and the sooner you realize this, the better off you will be in the end. After all, if you simply come around and see everything as they do, then you will not be required to be placed into a reeducation center.

 

Beyond the Cusp