Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is in Salt Lake City today to call on the man who might derail his hopes of a presidential bid, Mitt Romney. The NYT was first to report the sit-down, and as Fox News heard from aides to both men, the meeting was initially scheduled as a friendly get-together before Romney announced he was exploring the possibility of a third White House bid. The session remained on the calendar as Bush and Romney have turned into rivals. Bush’s purpose when he first asked for the meeting was presumably to get the blessing of the party’s 2012 nominee – the kind of courtesy calls that Romney himself paid to party elders in 2008 and 2012. But as a contender rather than a influencer, Romney will be a very different host for Bush.
[“… Romney will deliver the keynote address and receive an honorary degree at Jacksonville University’s Spring Commencement on April 25, the University announced.”] -Fox News
[The Hill: “President nObama is tapping Brian Deese, the deputy director of his budget office, to replace veteran aide John Podesta when he departs the White House next month.]
(weeklystandard.com) - When House speaker backstabber John Boehner invited Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress in the coming weeks, the reaction from the White House was swift. In background interviews with reporters, top nObama administration officials made clear that they considered the invitation itself an affront and the acceptance of it a breach of protocol.
Please.
This is the same White House that last week had British prime minister David Cameron making calls to Capitol Hill to lobby lawmakers against more sanctions on Iran. It’s the same administration that had to apologize to Senator Marco Rubio and others for violating its pledge to “consult Congress” before making any unilateral changes to U.S. policy on Cuba. This is the same president who has boasted repeatedly of his ability and willingness to ignore the legislative branch and use his “pen and phone” to do what he wants. And this is the same administration that used the cover of anonymity to call Netanyahu “chickenshit” in a recent interview.
So spare us the whining about prerogatives and propriety and protocol. In a functioning capital—with a White House that understands the enemy is Iran and not the Republican Congress—it’d be better for Congress and the White House to coordinate efforts. But that’s not Washington today. Consider the section on Iran in President nObama’s State of the Union. It took up just 172 words of his 6,500-word address. It reads, in its entirety:
Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran, where, for the first time in a decade, we’ve halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material. Between now and this spring, we have a chance to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that prevents a nuclear-armed Iran, secures America and our allies, including Israel, while avoiding yet another Middle East conflict. There are no guarantees that negotiations will succeed, and I keep all options on the table to prevent a nuclear Iran.
But new sanctions passed by this Congress, at this moment in time, will all but guarantee that diplomacy fails—alienating America from its allies; making it harder to maintain sanctions; and ensuring that Iran starts up its nuclear program again. It doesn’t make sense. And that’s why I will veto any new sanctions bill that threatens to undo this progress. [Applause] The American people expect us only to go to war as a last resort, and I intend to stay true to that wisdom.
This is delusional. The United States hasn’t “halted” Iran’s nuclear program. A week before that claim, Iran announced it would build two more reactors. During this diplomacy, it has made progress on its plutonium program and continued enriching. It was supposed to freeze centrifuge activities at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz, but the IAEA reported last fall it was feeding uranium hexafluoride gas into the IR-5 centrifuge there.
The fact that the nObama administration still insists Iran hasn’t violated the terms of its interim agreement with the United States and its allies says more about the administration’s eagerness to continue diplomacy than it does about Iran’s behavior.
Even as the nObama administration has demonstrated its determination to give the Iranian regime every benefit of the doubt, the president reflexively questions the motives of anyone who has a different view. In comments at a press briefing with Cameron, nObama implied that Congress—not Iran—would be at fault if military conflict erupted. And at a recent meeting with congressional Democrats, nObama accused Senator Bob Menendez of bowing to the interests of campaign contributors when the New Jersey Democrat expressed concern about never-ending negotiations without consequence.
When backstabber Boehner announced his Netanyahu invitation, he accused nObama of downplaying the Iranian threat in the State of the Union. “There is a serious threat that exists in the world,” he said, “and the president last night kind of papered over it.”
backstabber Boehner is correct, of course. And he was right to invite Netanyahu to address Congress and the American people.
The State Department lists Iran as the foremost state sponsor of terror in the world. According to a former top U.S. military official, the Iranian regime is responsible for more than a third of American troop deaths in Iraq. The regime talks openly about eliminating Israel.
It’s long past time for a serious discussion of the threat posed by Iran. Let’s have one.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/author/stephen-f.-hayes
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A Bright New Look
The eBook, nObama Nation II: Judgment Day, is a critical review of nObama's presidency and the predictions Jerome Corsi made in his 2008 bestseller, The nObama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, that stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for a month in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election.
Dr. Corsi's goal in writing nObama Nation II is to restore America to the limited government of checks-and-balances its Founding Fathers intended to create in the Constitutional Republic Americans were bequeathed. It is the authors hope that, in rejecting the nObama presidency as an exercise in unconstitutional government, Americans will reject once and for all the imperial presidency that grew in power through the 20th century to the heights we see today.
The eBook is available exclusively on nObamaNation2.com
Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D., is coauthor of Unfit for Command and author of The nObama Nation, both #1 New York Times bestsellers. Since 2004, Dr. Corsi has written six New York Times bestsellers on subjects including presidential politics, the economy, and Iran. He has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, and MSNBC, as well as in hundreds of Radio interviews. Dr. Corsi received his Ph.D. from the Department of Government at Harvard University in 1972, and is a senior staff reporter with WND.com.
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