Thanks for Nothing!

One is allowed to speculate about the collapse of  the Hanoi summit with Km Jong Un. My take is that Kim saw Trump as besieged because of the Cohen hearings and thought our president was desperate for a deal ... and concluded he could get a weakened Trump to drop the sanctions.

He was wrong ... and a golden opportunity was sacrificed on the alter of internecine American politics.

Thanks Elijah Cummings and the many spittle-flecked myopic House Democrats who elevated Cohen in this shameful stunt! You have likely traded a huge long-term international win for your short-term petty political advantage.

Snub Hub

The leaders of four Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, have snubbed President Obama's Mideast summit at Camp David tomorrow ... instead sending ministerial-level representatives ... see: BBC Story. Other than Saudi Arabia, the leaders of Bahrain, Oman, and the UAE will not be there. Only the leaders of Kuwait and Qatar will be attending.

The surmised reasons for these snubs has been that these countries disapprove of President Obama's dealings in his nuclear talks with Iran and his lack of follow-through in his missile-strike threat to Syria in 2013.

However, there might be two other possible motivations for these snubs:

1) These oil-rich countries may be doing an end-zone victory dance after effectively crippling the oil shale industry in the United States ... see: CNBC Story.

2) There might be considerable resentment among some of these players about not getting their money's worth with their hefty donations to the Clinton Foundation,

Letter of the Law

Forty-seven Republican Senators sent a letter to the Ayatollah in Iran last week that undermines President Obama's negotiating position vis-a-vis the current nuclear talks ... only insofar as it pointed out the obvious Constitutional issue. And that is ... if the Obama administration strikes an executive deal with Iran to try to rein them in relative to acquiring atomic weaponry, that this deal does not have the binding status of a treaty unless 2/3rds of the United States Senate ratifies it.

And clearly, if this is a bad deal, then there is no chance that the Senate would so vote. This is the law of the land ... and a hard fact that the executive branch of the U.S. government seems to be ignoring in its infatuated dealings with the criminal regime in Tehran ... dealings so starry-eyed and desperate that a bad deal seems highly likely.

This letter unleashed a Democrat and fellow-traveler firestorm ... accusing these letter-signers of treason and sedition. The unfortunate part of this dust-up between the Democrats and Republicans is that, if these negotiations come up empty, then most of the media will once again blame the Republicans ... rather the naïveté of our Secretary of State John Kerry and the fecklessness of the current administration. Apart from this, my major issue with this letter is that not all 100 Senators endorsed it ... even after the fact. That would have been a noble and defining moment ... finally pointing out to Emperor Obama that we have a government of checks and balances.

And there is a parallel incident of an Obama executive nullification that all of these media talking heads (with their hair on fire) seem to have forgotten. That was when our fearless leader went back on the agreement that George W. Bush had struck with Poland and the Czech Republic to place anti-missile shields on their lands ... shields that would have helped to protect Europe and the United States against Russian and Iranian ICBM's. Alas, what short and convenient memories our lefty media always seems to have.

Mock Attack

Rudy Giuliani, the mayor who brought New York City back from the brink, was just on television asking how we can be negotiating with Iran over nuclear weapons at the same time it is bombing a mock-up of a United States aircraft carrier ... see: CBS News Video. He went on to say that if Secretary of State John Kerry, representing the United States in these talks, didn't walk out as a consequence, he should be fired.

Funny how clear thinking has a way of cutting through the Obama administration's cerebral clutter.

Humiliated

To no one’s surprise outside of the administration, the last four-month extension to the talks with Iran about constraining its nuclear program has concluded with another seven-month extension without an agreement … see: Reuters Article . I claim no unique insight in my pessimism about this process … see: Foot Dragging, but this result was just as I and thousands of other thinking people had predicted.

Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama are clearly suffering romantic agony in their attempt to woo Iran into abandoning its quest for atomic weapons. Kerry is so whipped that he allows the Iranian negotiator, Javad Zarif, to bombast him with tirades during their “discussions” … see: Free Beacon Story ... without any consequence. I’m reminded of that great “Animal House” hazing scene where the pledge being paddled says, “Thank you sir, may I have another?”

I think that Iranians must get their jollies by humiliating America and Americans. Remember how they treated the American embassy hostages back in 1979 through 1981? And somehow weak American presidents, like Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, must feel that their public frailty somehow benefits them and their country. Ronald Reagan knew better.

I will again go out on another limb and predict that nothing good will come out of this next extension of these talks with Iran … at least nothing good for Israel and the United States.

Billets Doux

I have opined in the past that President Obama’s sympathies mostly lie with the Shiite sect of Islam. Now we discover that Obama has once again covertly courted this sect. Apparently our President has written at least four secret personal missives to Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei about thawing our relations with Iran and about the United States cooperating with Iran in the battle against the ISIS insurgents … see: Wall Street Journal Article. These are billets doux if you will.

As we are told in the above reference, Obama did not inform Israel and other Mideast allies about the contents of at least this latest letter, nor did he consult with Congress … but clearly these contacts with Iran are primarily attempts to sweeten the ongoing nuclear talks with Iran which are heading for a November 24^th deadline … see: Foot Dragging and Kicking the Can. Humiliatingly enough, it also appears that the Ayatollah has not responded or even acknowledged any of these White House epistles.

I can understand that our government might need to have back-channel communications with Iran … but four personal presidential valentines? And what if these highest level attempts at a secret deal bare fruit? President Obama has proven himself such a  poor negotiator and so supremely untrustworthy to boot, that I sincerely doubt that any agreement he could reach with Iran would be acceptable to Congress and/or the American people. His efforts are therefore Pyrrhic at best and subversive at worst.

Kicking the Iran Can

Iran wants the atomic bomb … and I have long been of the belief that the United States government (in its current form) wants Iran to have the atomic bomb … no matter what its snively pronouncements. After all it’s not fair that Israel has such a weapon and Iran doesn’t … independent of the fact that Israel would surely only use one defensively while Iran has sworn to use one offensively.

In March of this year we had unilaterally caused the lifting of some international sanctions against Iran which were beginning to bite … in exchange for vague promises out of Iran that they would somehow abandon its nuclear quest. One deadline in July passed for an agreement and now another is looming on November 24. If a deal is forthcoming, it is likely to be so lopsided that the Obama administration may try to circumvent Congressional ratification … see: NY Times Story … since such approval would be exceeding unlikely to happen unless there were stringent constraints on Iran’s nuclear ambitions … which are also exceeding unlikely to happen.

So what will happen later this month? Come on, we all know exactly what will happen … either a thinly-cloaked capitulation by the United States will occur … or no satisfactory agreement will be reached and we will kick the can a little further down the road. I’m betting on the latter.

Cat and Mouse

The recent negotiations in Geneva between the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran over a nuclear deal have broken down … see: Breitbart Story.  This is not really a surprise considering that the United States has already given Iran much of what it was seeking – a pullback from the severe sanction that we had been imposing ... see: The Daily Beast Story.  Let me see … we know that Iran is the archetype of duplicity … yet we are surprised when they are duplicitous. Wouldn't it be wonderful if President Obama were as tough on Iran as he is on the on the American people?

And finally who is the cat and who is the mouse in this game?

Afterward: For another surprising take on why these talks broke down see; Powerline Blog.

After-afterward: There are always three sides to every story ... now Kerry says that Iran walked away from a deal (surprise! surprise!) ... see: UK .Telegraph Story