Disarray?, Establishment Elites Are Losing, Iran Deal Illegal, Media Manipulation

Friday, October 9, 2015

Disarray?

Virtually every media outlet is declaring the Republican Party to be in a state of disarray, crisis or chaos. But what the media call disarray is just competition and debate about which leader is best able to fashion a strategy for dealing with a president who is willing to do almost anything to enact his agenda -- with or without Congress.

Reports today indicate that Obama is preparing to use executive actions to bypass Congress in order to further restrict Second Amendment rights.

If journalists want to write about disarray, the focus shouldn't be what happens over the next week or two in the House. Instead, they should look at the country's domestic and foreign policies.

"Disarray," "crisis" and "chaos" pretty well sum up Obama's foreign policy. How about the White House being shocked and puzzled about Russia's intervention in Syria?

If disarray is your thing, how about spending two years negotiating with Iran, getting a terrible deal, followed immediately by Iran stepping up its aggression and refusing to talk anymore?

How about a Veterans Administration that allowed our heroes to die waiting for treatment? That's what you get with government-run, rationed health care.

Establishment Elites Are Losing

The competition in the House mirrors the competition in the Republican presidential primary, where three outsiders (Trump, Carson and Fiorina) command more than 50% support. In contrast, three prominent establishment insiders (Bush, Kasich and Christie) have 14% combined.

The presidential race and the House competition for speaker have nothing to do with the media's favorite narrative of "radical extremists trying to control the GOP."

Here's proof: A recent Fox News poll found that 62% of Republican voters felt "betrayed" by congressional Republicans and 66% said the GOP Congress had "failed to do all it could" to fight the left.

It is highly unlikely that overwhelming majorities of Republican voters feel betrayed and let down because their party has been "too conservative."

This much is clear: The establishment elites are losing control of the Republican Party. Even one Washington Post columnist sees it: "There is a revolution happening within the Republican Party right now. The establishment's hold on power is more tenuous than it has been at any time in recent memory."

Iran Deal Illegal

A new analysis of the Iranian nuclear agreement indicates that at least one part of the agreement, dealing with the foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies, is illegal.

Obama's agreement with the ayatollah supposedly allows U.S.-owned foreign companies to do business with Iran. But federal law currently prevents that, and Obama's agreement does not trump federal law. Consider this excerpt:

"As the Iran deal is an 'executive agreement' and not a treaty . . . legal analysts inside and outside of the Obama Administration have concluded that the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] is vulnerable to challenge in the courts, where federal case law had held that U.S. statutes trump executive agreements in force of law."

No doubt many of you will recall Senator Tom Cotton's public letter regarding the Iran deal. Cotton correctly observed that because the deal was merely an executive agreement and not a formal treaty, it lacked the full force of law and was not binding on the next administration.

For stating the obvious, the left-wing media accused Senator Cotton of treason.

Senator Cotton was right. Perhaps he should write another public letter addressed to every American CEO warning them that it remains illegal for their foreign subsidiaries to do business with Iran.

Media Manipulation

Remember Ahmed Mohamed? He was the Texas teenager who supposedly made a clock that looked a lot like a bomb, took it to school and got arrested. The politically correct media ran wild with the story.

During a press conference with representatives of CAIR, his father, Mohamed Elhassen Mohamed, defended Ahmed, saying that he just likes to fix things. "But because his name is Mohamed and because of Sept. 11, I think my son got mistreated," he added.

Speaking of 9/11, it seems that the elder Mohamed is a "9/11 truther." In other words, he doesn't believe Islamists attacked us on 9/11, but that George W. Bush attacked us.

Kudos to Breitbart's investigative journalism for uncovering this. Of course, the liberal media, heavily invested in the Muslim-as-victim narrative, will never mention it.