It's worth clicking through this link to see the headline in the ordinarily staid Foreign Policy Magazine.
Perhaps the key sentence is this: “His lack of conventional
real-world experience of the kind that normally precedes responsibility
for the fate of nations — like military or diplomatic service, or even a
master’s degree in international relations, rather than creative
writing — is still startling.”
Rhodes comes off like a real asshole. This is not a matter of
politics — I have voted for Obama twice. Nor do I mind Rhodes’s contempt
for many political reporters: “Most of the outlets are reporting on
world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27
years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around
political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
But, as that quote indicates, he comes off like an overweening little
shmuck. This quotation seems to capture his world view: “He referred to
the American foreign policy establishment as the Blob. According to
Rhodes, the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and other
Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the
collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.”
Blowing off Robert Gates takes nerve.
I expect cynicism in Washington. But it usually is combined with a
lot of knowledge — as with, say, Henry Kissinger. To be cynical and
ignorant and to spin those two things into a virtue? That’s industrial
strength hubris. Kind of like what got us into Iraq, in fact.
Rhodes and others around Obama keep on talking about doing all this
novel thinking, playing from a new playbook, bucking the establishment
thinking. But if that is the case, why have they given so much foreign
policy power to two career hacks who never have had an original thought?
I mean, of course, Joe Biden and John Kerry. I guess the answer can
only be that those two are puppets, and (as in Biden’s case) are given
losing propositions like Iraq to handle.
Fact check: Obama’s hasn’t been an original foreign policy as much as it has been a politicized foreign
policy. And this Rhodes guy reminds me of the Kennedy smart guys who
helped get us into the Vietnam War. Does he know how awful he sounds?
Kind of like McGeorge Bundy meets Lee Atwater.
Feel the Bern: 'Israel killed 10,000 innocent people in Gaza'
Greetings from a British Airways lounge somewhere in Central Europe on a cloudy, rainy, dreary day (yes, it's travel day yet again). What an appropriate time to talk about Democratic Socialist Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' claim that Israel killed 10,000 'innocent people' in Gaza. This is from Daniel Greenfield.
Bernie Sanders is wrong. This isn't even in dispute.
Sanders:... my recollection is over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right?
Daily News: I think it's probably high, but we can look at that.
Sanders: I don't have it in my number...but I think it's over 10,000.
Even assuming
that every Hamas terrorist and accessory was "innocent", that's four
times the number of total people killed in the last conflict.
But while the 10,000 figure is the banner headline, the real story seems
to be an incoherent interview which reveals that Bernie Sanders knows
little about what's going on and has no actual policy. Trump gets
blasted for this often enough while Sanders gets a pass when he quotes
imaginary figures and really seems not to know what he's talking about.
I have criticized Bernie Sanders for being anti-Israel, and there's a
dose of that in the interview, but mostly it's dominated by a kind of
'meh-ness'. Bernie isn't interested in foreign policy and it shows. In
some ways he seems less interested in pressuring Israel or having any
kind of plan than some Republicans.
Does anyone recall another Presidential candidate who seemed uninterested in foreign policy? How has that worked out? Bernie is far less competent than Hillary Clinton, but he's at least as dangerous.
[I]n practice, Bernie Sanders wants to forcibly evict Israeli Jews from
their homes, but leave it up to Israel whom to evict? This is
borderline incoherent. And it doesn't get any better...
Daily News: I was talking about something different, though.
Expanding settlements is one thing; coming into office as a President
who said as a baseline that you want Israel to pull back settlements,
that changes the dynamic in the negotiations, and I'm wondering how far
and what you want Israel to do in terms of pulling back.
Sanders: Well, again, you're asking me a very fair question, and if I
had some paper in front of me, I would give you a better answer. But I
think if the expansion was illegal, moving into territory that was not
their territory, I think withdrawal from those territories is
appropriate.
Daily News: And who makes the call about illegality, in your mind?
Sanders: Well, I think that's based on previous treaties and ideas. I happen to think that those expansions were illegal.
What defines illegality? Bernie Sanders has no idea. Treaties? At some
point his advisers will tell him the UN and then it will get truly
messy. Bernie Sanders is against "illegal settlements", which are
actually just Jews living in territory conquered by Muslim invaders in
'48 and liberated by Israel in '67, but has no idea what they are or
what defines Israeli territory.
Daily News:
Okay, so if we were to find Israeli settlements, so-called settlements,
in places that has been designated to be illegal, you would expect
Israel to be pulling them back?
Sanders: Israel will make
their own decisions. They are a government, an independent nation. But
to the degree that they want us to have a positive relationship, I think
they're going to have to improve their relationship with the
Palestinians.
Except of course Israel hasn't
been allowed to make its own decisions and there's no way to fix that
relationship with terrorists.
For those of you who think Bernie won't be the nominee anyway, he won the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday. And the US isn't Israel and generally finds a way to stop candidates who have been indicted from running. Another Clinton scandal may be on the way.
This is perhaps a good summary of the Democratic race as seen by supporters of Israel:
Hillary Clinton will certainly be on a "Get Israel" mission. Bernie
Sanders is signaling more anti-Israel views, but ones that he isn't
committed to or especially invested in. This is the Democratic Party
now. Stick your hand in the box. Find the lesser of two evils.
That's true. The problem is that on the Republican side, Donald Trump doesn't exactly seem to have a coherent policy either.
New PAC ad destroys Obama-Clinton 'Leading from Behind' foreign policy
If you want to know how to attack Hillary Clinton and blame her for the Obama administration's decrepit foreign policy (blame that is well-deserved), look no further than this video from the America Rising PAC.
Video: Matt Lee owns new State Department spokesperson John Kirby on Jerusalem
John Kirby just became State Department spokesperson last month and I can already tell you that he's no better than Marie Harf.
Watch him squirm as he tries to figure out US policy on Jerusalem while under questioning from @APDiploWriter Matt Lee about Monday's Supreme Court decision that Congress overstepped its bounds in trying to require the State Department to register Jewish children born in Jerusalem (like four of mine) as having been born in Israel.
Let's go to the videotape.
Keep making them feel uncomfortable Matt! They'll find a policy one of these days.
The court ruled 6-3 that Congress overstepped its bounds when it
approved the law in 2002. It would have forced the State Department to
alter its long-standing policy of not listing Israel as the birthplace
for Jerusalem-born Americans and listing only "Jerusalem."
The policy is part of the government's refusal to recognize any
nation's sovereignty over Jerusalem, until Israelis and Palestinians
resolve its status through negotiations.
Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion that the
president has the exclusive power to recognize foreign nations, and that
the power to determine what a passport says is part of this power.
"Recognition is a matter on which the nation must speak with one voice. That voice is the president's," Kennedy wrote.
The ruling ends a 12-year-old lawsuit by a Jerusalem-born American, Menachem Zivotofsky, and his U.S. citizen parents.
Justice Antonin Scalia read a summary of his dissent from the bench,
saying the Constitution "divides responsibility for foreign affairs
between Congress and the president." Chief Justice John Roberts and
Justice Samuel Alito joined the dissent.
Justice Clarence Thomas agreed with the outcome of the case, but on narrower grounds.
If the Republicans win the White House, we will have some hope that this opinion becomes solely academic. But while this ruling was expected, it is certainly disappointing.
The “sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq” that Barack Obama and
Joe Biden hailed as one of Obama’s “great achievements” in 2014 has
regressed into chaos as a result of Obama’s premature withdrawal of
American troops. But it isn’t just Iraq. Syria is the closest thing to
Hell on Earth. Iran is working away on nuclear weapons and delivery
systems. Yemen has fallen to Iran’s proxies. Saudi Arabia is looking for
nuclear weapons to counter Iran’s. ISIS occupies an area the size of
Great Britain. Libya, its dictator having been gratuitously overthrown
by feckless Western governments that had no plan for what would follow,
is a failed state and terrorist playground.
It seems as though things couldn’t possibly get worse, but they
almost certainly will. We are seeing the fruit of a set of policies that
were based on the false premise that problems in the Middle East are
mostly the fault of the United States. Not only were such policies
misbegotten, they have been executed incompetently. The resulting
collapse is occurring with sickening speed.
John doesn't even mention that none of these hotspots is President Obama's priority for the Middle East. Indeed, the President's priority for the Middle East - indeed for all his foreign policy - is the creation of a 'Palestinian state,' which he apparently sees as a panacea for all his foreign policy miscues. He has gone so far as to threaten the new Netanyahu government with the withdrawal of support for Israel at the United Nations.
That'll stop Islamic State, clean up Syria and convince Iran not to develop nuclear weapons....
Former Vice President Dick Cheney goes on the war path against the foreign policy of Barack Hussein Obama, calling Obama the 'worst President' evah on foreign policy (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
Former Vice President Dick Cheney says President Barack Obama is the
worst commander in chief the United States has ever had, in view of the
recent Iranian nuclear agreement.
Asked about the deal by
conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday, the former vice
president said the Iranian regime is “one of the most radical” in
history and that “Obama’s about to give them nuclear weapons.”
“I vacillate between the various theories I’ve heard, but you
know, if you had somebody as president who wanted to take America down,
who wanted to fundamentally weaken our position in the world and reduce
our capacity to influence events, turn our back on our allies and
encourage our adversaries, it would look exactly like what Barack
Obama’s doing,” Cheney said when asked whether he thought the president
is naïve or something else.
“I think his actions are constituted in my mind those of the worst president we’ve ever had,” he said.
Cheney
also said “it’s a mark of the weakness” of Obama that he would
criticize Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker for saying he would get
rid of the deal with Iran on his first day in the White House.
"We need to provide ISIS with good paying jobs"
-- Spokesperson Marie Harf
There should be at least 1 available today at the State Dept.
— WH PRESS SECRETARY (@weknowwhatsbest) February 17, 2015
MATTHEWS: How do we stop this? I don’t see it. I see the
Shia militias coming out of Baghdad who are all Shia. The Sunnis hate
them. The Sunnis are loyal to ISIS rather than going in with the Shia.
You’ve got the Kurds, the Jordanian air force and now the Egyptian air
force. But i don’t see any — If i were ISIS, I wouldn’t be afraid right
now. I can figure there is no existential threat to these people. They
can keep finding places where they can hold executions and putting the
camera work together, getting their props ready and killing people for
show. And nothing we do right now seems to be directed at stopping this.
HARF: Well, I think there’s a few stages here. Right now what we’re
doing is trying to take their leaders and their fighters off the
battlefield in Iraq and Syria. That’s really where they flourish.
MATTHEWS: Are we killing enough of them?
HARF: We’re killing a lot of them and we’re going to keep
killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians.
They’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing
them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to
longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these
groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs, whether —
MATTHEWS: We’re not going to be able to stop that in our lifetime or
fifty lifetimes. There’s always going to be poor people. There’s always
going to be poor muslims, and as long as there are poor Muslims, the
trumpet’s blowing and they’ll join. We can’t stop that, can we?
HARF: We can work with countries around the world to help improve
their governance. We can help them build their economies so they can
have job opportunities for these people…
Many things about this story trouble me. I suppose the most troubling
thing is that she started her career in DC as a Middle East analyst for
the CIA. Let that sink in.
Two comments:
1. Who's more dangerous to the Western civilization? Marie Harf or Wendy Sherman?
Sherman is a total incompetent who is in way over her head. In fact, one
has to wonder whether the real reason that Kerry rushed to Geneva last
weekend was because the administration has no confidence in Sherman, who
is nothing but a hack. Here's Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week.
In 1988, the former social worker ran the
Washington office of the
Dukakis
campaign and worked at the Democratic National Committee. That
was the year the Massachusetts governor carried 111 electoral votes to
George H.W. Bush's
426. In the mid-1990s, Ms. Sherman was briefly the CEO of
something called the Fannie Mae Foundation, supposedly a charity that
was shut down a decade later for what the
Washington Post
called "using tax-exempt contributions to advance corporate interests."
From
there it was on to the State Department, where she served as a point
person in nuclear negotiations with North Korea and met with
Kim Jong Il
himself. The late dictator, she testified, was "witty and
humorous," "a conceptual thinker," "a quick problem-solver," "smart,
engaged, knowledgeable, self-confident." Also a movie buff who loved
Michael Jordan
highlight videos. A regular guy!
Later Ms. Sherman was to be found working
for her former boss as the No. 2 at the Albright-Stonebridge Group
before taking the No. 3 spot at the State Department. Ethics scolds
might describe the arc of her career as a revolving door between
misspending taxpayer dollars in government and mooching off them in the
private sector. But it's mainly an example of failing up—the
Washingtonian phenomenon of promotion to ever-higher positions of
authority and prestige irrespective of past performance.
This
administration in particular is stuffed with fail-uppers—the president,
the vice president, the secretary of state and the national security
adviser, to name a few—and every now and then it shows. Like, for
instance, when people for whom the test of real-world results has never
meant very much meet people for whom that test means everything.
2. Harf at least has the excuse that she's blonde - Sherman's hair is white so you can't really tell what it used to be. Heh.
How much of this will end up in Hezbullah's hands?
Another brilliant idea from the Obama administration - providing $25 million in advanced weapons to Lebanon, a country where Hezbullah is part of the government.
New term enters our lexicon: 'Post-Congressional foreign policy'
A new term has entered our lexicon: The 'post-Congressional foreign policy.' It refers to Czar Barack's circumvention of Congressional approval of his termination of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran by calling it a suspension. And he's betting that Congress cannot or will not do anything about it (Hat Tip: Memeorandum). Or about several other breaches of Congressional oversight authority.
Only Congress can permanently lift the sanctions--which it’s unlikely
to do even if Democrats hold on to the Senate—but the deal could be
structured in such a way that this wouldn’t happen until Iran meets
certain internationally verified benchmarks. In other words, it could be
years.
It’s not unusual for presidents to look abroad in search of monsters
to destroy late in their terms, as they have more authority to conduct
foreign as opposed to domestic policy independently of Congress. But
even by historical standards, the Obama administration seems to be
particularly interested in freezing Congress out.
Given that it’s virtually impossible to get any multilateral treaty ratified by the Senate—some
obscure fishing regulations are the exception that proves the rule—the
administration’s plan for a long-awaited climate change deal will
involve “politically binding” commitments rather than legally binding
ones, which Congress would have to approve.
In the case of what’s been dubbed “Operation Inherent Resolve,” the
campaign of airstrikes to counter ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the
administration never sought congressional approval.
The 60-day deadline, after which Congress must authorize military
action under the War Powers Resolution, has long passed. (Obama did
issue a letter to Congress in September informing them of the operation
and noting, somewhat vaguely, “I appreciate the support of the Congress
in this action.”)
Yale Law professor and constitutional scholar Bruce Ackerman has described
the operation against ISIS as “a decisive break in the American
constitutional tradition” that outdoes anything attempted by the Bush
administration. But interestingly, congressional Republicans who
normally jump on any chance to accuse the administration of imperial
overreach, have been fairly blasé about these strikes. House Speaker John Boehner says
that Congress should debate the use of military force against ISIS but
only after the newly elected legislative body convenes in January—a
lifetime in terms of a fast-moving military operation like this one.
Read the whole thing. As Israelis say, maybe there are things that Obama (who was opposed to unilateral Presidential actions in the foreign policy field under Bush) didn't see from there that he sees from here. On the other hand, I am very opposed to any weakening of the Iran sanctions regime....
More Americans want a more engaged foreign policy, but...
In the run-up to the US Presidential election, Hillary Clinton has been arguing for a more engaged foreign policy while Rand Paul has been arguing for isolationism. The American people would like a more engaged foreign policy. That would seem to favor Clinton, but in fact it may ensure that neither candidate is his or her party's nominee.
The percentage of the public saying the country does too little has
almost doubled since November, from 17 to 31 percent. Thirty-nine
percent say the U.S. does too much.
Democratic former Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton has been arguing for a more engaged in U.S.
presence in the world ahead of a possible presidential run, in contrast
to possible opponent Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and, to some extent,
President Obama.
Despite the overall increase in those saying
they want the U.S. to do more, however only 24 percent of Clinton's own
party say the U.S. does too little, compared to 36 percent who say too
much. For Republicans, the numbers are reversed, with 46 percent saying
too much and 37 percent too little.
Okay, that last sentence doesn't sound right, does it? So I went to the source:
Republicans, Democrats and independents all are more likely to say the
U.S. does too little to solve world problems, but the shift among
Republicans has been striking. Last fall, 52% of Republicans said the
U.S. does too much to help solve global problems, while just 18% said it
does too little. Today, 46% of Republicans think the U.S. does too
little to solve global problems, while 37% say it does too much.
Oh yeah, and then there's this:
Obama gets his best rating for handling race relations; nearly half
approve of how he is handling race relations (48%) compared with 42% who
disapprove. His ratings for handling other issues – including policy
toward Israel (37% approve), the situation involving Russia and Ukraine
(35%) and the situation in Iraq (35%) – are more negative than positive.
But The Hill doesn't mention that.
Oh, and by the way, Pew says that a majority of Americans thinks Obama isn't tough enough on foreign policy. What a surprise....
Obama’s approach to foreign policy continues to be viewed as not tough
enough: 54% say Obama is not tough enough in his approach on foreign
policy and national security issues, while 36% say his approach is about
right and just 3% say he is too tough.
Are Americans waking up to the disaster Obama has wrought? We can only hope.
Here's Jonathan Schanzer discussing Qatar's financing of Hamas.
Let's go to the videotape.
US officials have made it clear that they consider Hamas a terrorist organization? In what way? Does the Obama administration really consider Hamas a terrorist organization? If yes, why are they still trying to prod Israel into negotiating with the 'Palestinian' unity government?
The Hill reports that Arabs in Arab countries are 'warming' to President Obama.
Since 2011, opinions of Obama’s policies have grown exponentially in
Egypt (from 3 percent to 34 percent), in Jordan (from 3 percent to 25
percent) and in the UAE (from 8 percent to 38 percent).
Views of Obama in Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Lebanon have also increased between 7 and 24 percentage points.
Saudis,
Emiratis and Egyptians gave the administration the highest scores, but
ratings in each country remain well below 50 percent.
Those surveyed
said the Obama administration has been the most effective in ending the
U.S. presence in Iraq, after troops pulled out in 2011, and working to
end Iran’s nuclear program.
The administration has been the least
effective in improving relations with the Muslim world and handling the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Arab Spring, according to the poll.
Talk about framing the questions to get the results you want in a poll. Obama has been most effective in ending US presence in Iraq because he just ended it and let the consequences be damned. He's been totally ineffective at ending Iran's nuclear program (look at the news from Geneva), but is still 'effective' because US 'intelligence agencies' tied Bush's hands from trying in 2007. None of this actually makes Obama popular.
Strong majorities in each country support U.S. policies to spur a
negotiated solution to the civil war in Syria, and favor the U.S.
providing more assistance to its refugees. Majorities in all countries
oppose any form of U.S. military engagement in Syria.
Most of the
countries strongly support U.S.-led negotiations to curb Iran’s nuclear
program, but they have little confidence the talks will succeed.
On
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, strong majorities in every Arab
country surveyed said they aren’t confident the U.S. has been
even-handed in its approach to negotiating peace. More than half of
Palestinians, for instance, felt that way.
'Of course we're still interested in the peace process'
The White House is denying that President Obama's decision to leave the 'peace process' out of a major foreign policy address means that the United states is no longer interested in the 'peace process.'
"This was a speech focused primarily on security issues," the official
said. "The fact that the president wasn’t able to mention every single
issue the United States is involved with doesn’t mean that the issue
isn’t important."
In September, Obama referred to the Middle East peace process as one
of his two greatest foreign policy priorities going into his final three
years as president.
...
His speech on Wednesday, at the United States
Military Academy in New York, was an attempt by the president to lay out
a broader US foreign policy moving forward.
"We continue to
believe a lasting peace is in the interest of the United States, Israel,
and the Palestinians. The door is open if the parties demonstrate a
willingness to come back and address the difficult issues," the official
said.
US 'changing its position' on Hamas-Fatah unity deal?
You didn't really think that a little thing like a pact with the devil was going to stop President Hussein Obama from talking to the 'Palestinians' did you?
Abu Marzouk also revealed that Hamas recently held talks with the European Union (EU) and an unofficial American representative.
Hamas officials "sensed a change in the American position," he said - hinting that the US is becoming more open to the idea of a Hamas-led "unity" Palestinian Arab government. A senior US administration official had said last month that the United States would have to reconsider its assistance to PA if Fatah and Hamas form a government together.
Hamas officials, meanwhile, continue to debate over how the unity
pact will affect the "struggle against the Occupation." Abu Marzouk
stated that "there is a need to diversify" Hamas's approach to the
"Palestinian problem," but Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh disagrees.
Haniyeh stressed over the weekend that an armed struggle is the only relevant answer to establishing a Palestinian Arab state.
"Reconciliation comes only to strengthen and maintain the armed
struggle to deter the ongoing occupation, and the crimes that harm our
people," Haniyeh claimed, in a speech Saturday to a Gaza mosque. He
reiterated Hamas's commitment to "restore the liberation of Jerusalem
from the taint of occupation."
If it wasn't obvious in 2012 that Mitt Romney was a far superior candidate to Barack Hussein Obama on foreign policy, this piece in the Wall Street Journal ought to make it obvious (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
Why, across the world, are America's hands so tied?
A large part of the answer is our leader's
terrible timing. In virtually every foreign-affairs crisis we have faced
these past five years, there was a point when America had good choices
and good options. There was a juncture when America had the potential to
influence events. But we failed to act at the propitious point; that
moment having passed, we were left without acceptable options. In
foreign affairs as in life, there is, as
Shakespeare
had it, "a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood
leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in
shallows and in miseries."
When protests
in Ukraine grew and violence ensued, it was surely evident to people in
the intelligence community—and to the White House—that President Putin
might try to take advantage of the situation to capture Crimea, or more.
That was the time to talk with our global allies about punishments and
sanctions, to secure their solidarity, and to communicate these to the
Russian president. These steps, plus assurances that we would not
exclude Russia from its base in Sevastopol or threaten its influence in
Kiev, might have dissuaded him from invasion.
Months
before the rebellion began in Syria in 2011, a foreign leader I met
with predicted that Assad would soon fall from power. Surely the White
House saw what this observer saw. As the rebellion erupted, the time was
ripe for us to bring together moderate leaders who would have been easy
enough for us to identify, to assure the Alawites that they would have a
future post-Assad, and to see that the rebels were well armed.
The
advent of the Arab Spring may or may not have been foreseen by our
intelligence community, but after Tunisia, it was predictable that Egypt
might also become engulfed. At that point, pushing our friend
Hosni Mubarak
to take rapid and bold steps toward reform, as did Jordan's king,
might well have saved lives and preserved the U.S.-Egypt alliance.
The
time for securing the status-of-forces signatures from leaders in Iraq
and Afghanistan was before we announced in 2011 our troop-withdrawal
timeline, not after it. In negotiations, you get something when the
person across the table wants something from you, not after you have
already given it away.
Able leaders
anticipate events, prepare for them, and act in time to shape them. My
career in business and politics has exposed me to scores of people in
leadership positions, only a few of whom actually have these qualities.
Some simply cannot envision the future and are thus unpleasantly
surprised when it arrives. Some simply hope for the best. Others succumb
to analysis paralysis, weighing trends and forecasts and choices beyond
the time of opportunity.
There's a temptation to attribute President Obama's foreign policy faux pas to his inexperience. That's not the case. If Hillary Clinton could be said to not have sufficient experience to be Secretary of State, the same cannot be said about John Kerry. This is design. Obama's intent is clearly to degrade the United States' standing in the international community. Obama is actually quite successful. The problem is that his actions are against American interests.
Marco Rubio explains the difference between Reagan and Obama, and outlines a post-Obama foreign policy
Here's Marco Rubio speaking at CPAC on Thursday about the difference between Ronald Reagan and Barack Hussein Obama. In the speech, Rubio outlines a vision of a post-Obama foreign policy, and explains Obama's delusion that he can change the world with the force of his personality.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
