Thursday, December 29, 2016

Obama Throw Israel under the bus Cartoons





Trump assures Israel, blasts Obama over 'roadblocks'


President-elect Donald Trump blasted President Obama on Wednesday over his administration’s treatment of Israel, accusing him of making “inflammatory” statements and putting up “roadblocks” that are hampering the transition.
The incoming president took to Twitter to assure Israel that his administration will bring a new approach, in advance of a speech on the Middle East peace process by Secretary of State John Kerry. The already-turbulent relationship between the Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu governments has lurched into its rockiest stretch yet in the final days of the Obama administration, after the U.S. abstained on an anti-settlement resolution before the U.N. Security Council, allowing it to pass.
Trump tweeted: “We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect.”
And in a swipe at the outgoing president after a period of relative peace between the two, he wrote, “Thought it was going to be a smooth transition - NOT!”
The Israeli government has turned to President-elect Trump’s team for support in recent days, openly saying they look forward to working with the next president amid fraying ties with the outgoing administration.
Netanyahu has described the U.S. abstention that allowed the U.N. resolution to pass as an “ambush,” and his government has gone on to accuse the U.S. of playing a hand in orchestrating the vote.
In the hours before Kerry’s speech, the Netanyahu government took another shot at the U.S., with Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan calling Kerry’s speech a “pathetic step.”
He told Israel Army Radio that “Kerry's intention is to chain President-elect Trump."
The White House has pushed back on claims that the Obama administration helped craft and push the resolution – and on Wednesday morning, denied another report in Egyptian media claiming Kerry and National Security Adviser Susan Rice discussed the U.N. resolution with a top Palestinian official nearly two weeks before Friday’s Security Council vote.
Ned Price, spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, called the reports a “fabrication” and said the “meeting never occurred.”
The State Department’s own website reflects that Kerry was scheduled for a meeting with the Palestinian official at the State Department on Dec. 12, around the time of the reported discussions. The official website, however, offers no details on what was discussed.

Hispanic affairs adviser to 3 presidents has high hopes for Trump


As Donald Trump’s campaign sought to court minority voters amid accusations from the left that his base lacked diversity, little did he know one of the earliest minority trailblazers in the White House was firmly in his corner.
Decades removed from West Wing meetings, private jets and consultations with Latin American politicians, Fernando De Baca, 78, plastered his hometown of Albuquerque with Trump signs and helped publicize rallies in the Democratic stronghold of New Mexico.
Once someone who walked the halls of the White House as a Hispanic Affairs adviser to presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, De Baca is excited these days just to snag tickets to Trump’s inauguration -- and view it from the outside.
“Trump reminds me of Ronald Reagan,” De Baca told FoxNews.com. “[My wife and I] supported Trump from the day he announced. … We believed in him, believed that he had the right message.”
De Baca, who led the newly created Office of Hispanic Affairs under Gerald Ford and served in multiple Republican administrations, offers a unique perspective. Looking forward, in an interview with FoxNews.com, he cut against the narrative that Trump’s election is a step backward for minorities and voiced optimism for the future – while lamenting the state of race relations under President Obama.
He suggested part of the problem has been identity politics.
“It’s a totally different world we live in today compared to when I was advocating,” De Baca said. “People were stable, hard-working and were Americans first and Hispanics second.”
A time capsule of sorts, De Baca is part of a dwindling group of Cold War White House advisers who worked directly with American presidents – in his case, at a time when the country was working to alleviate racial strife and launch some of the first government programs to help blacks and Hispanics in the workforce.
But De Baca said years of leftist policies promoting victimization and entitlement over positive messages of equality have caused America to regress.
Road to Washington
It was 1968 and De Baca had just returned from serving in the Vietnam War as a major in Army special intelligence. He was tapped to head New Mexico’s Department of Motor Vehicles. After two years on the job, he met Nixon advisers who recruited him for the president’s new “16 Point Program for Spanish Speaking Americans” – an effort to identify and recruit more Hispanics for federal jobs.
“I was introduced as the head of the program and I met President Nixon for the first time,” De Baca said. “He said, ‘Well, I’ve announced this program and you’ve been selected to head it up and I’m serious about bringing in more Hispanics to the federal government. They must be qualified.’”
De Baca flew across the nation and to Puerto Rico, setting up satellite offices in big cities to aid in the hiring process. Soon, he had recruited thousands of Hispanics to fill civil service jobs. Nixon noticed and promoted De Baca to Western regional chairman of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
De Baca was later promoted again to special assistant to the president for Domestic Policy. The day he was to report: Aug. 9, 1974, which later became the day Nixon resigned and left office.
“I report in the morning only to be ushered over to the south lawn where Nixon was departing and I saw him board the Air Force One helicopter,” De Baca said. “I had been following the news and knew his departure was imminent. I felt really bad about it, just as a human being, because he got embroiled in Watergate and the cover-up.”
De Baca continued on under Ford, working with some of the most famous figures in political history.
“The minute I reported in, I had to meet with the chief of staff Alexander Haig – he was pretty domineering figure. He ran a real tight ship,” De Baca recalled. He also remembered sharing an office with Alan Greenspan, who was writing speeches and worked as an economic adviser, and meeting Secretary of State Henry Kissinger “who was very nice and a bit reserved.”
Soon, De Baca was handling any issue that arose with the Hispanic community. One of his biggest tasks was traveling to military bases around the world ensuring Hispanics were properly represented.
When the Ford presidency ended and Jimmy Carter entered the White House, De Baca returned to New Mexico. He had just married another New Mexico native who was in Washington D.C. working at Jobs for Progress, a Hispanic nonprofit advocacy group.
De Baca had long and strenuous hours, so his wife Cecilia did not regret leaving Washington.
“He would come home at 11 at night and was always up and out by 7:30,” she said. “He lived it. In that era, it was public service. You give your life. You believe in it. It’s a calling.”
But when Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1981, De Baca once again was called upon as a senior adviser. The tone had switched from big government to pumping up the private sector and Reagan wanted De Baca to ensure the role of Hispanics in manufacturing.
The job would soon turn somber. De Baca attended a meeting with the president on March 30, hours before he was shot in an assassination attempt. De Baca was about 10 feet behind Reagan and witnessed the entire event.
He offers one critique of the late president, in hindsight -- over his decision to grant amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants. What was meant as a one-time solution that would culminate with strong border control has instead become a license for millions more to enter the country illegally with little repercussion, De Baca said.
“He probably should never have done what he did,” De Baca said. “I think [Reagan] was dreaming. There was no enforcement. Then you have Obama coming in with protecting them instead of stopping them at the border. ... He has turned out to be a real sad state of affairs.”
‘Fortitude and Strength’
After his decades of working to advance fellow Hispanics in the workforce, De Baca looks upon current racial strife in America and says his former bosses would be disappointed. Years of leftist policies, he said, have fostered a type of anti-patriotism with millions of school children being taught an abbreviated version of history that leaves out core values.
He voiced concern that welfare policies are becoming the draw for immigrants to America, rather than a desire to “work” and “assimilate” here.
The De Bacas voiced optimism, though, for the Trump administration.
While critics have described the incoming president’s calls for deporting criminal illegal immigrants and building a border wall as intolerant, and his rhetoric as xenophobic, Mr. De Baca said Trump has the “fortitude and strength to face this [immigration] issue head on.”
“We are a country, we’ve got to have borders,” he said. “The law is the law. I fought for that flag in actual combat. … And it’s worth it because our flag is still standing for our country.”

TX Rep Drafting Bill to Defund UN: 'They Don't Need Our Money to Be Anti-Semitic'


Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert (R) told Kimberly Guilfoyle he is drafting a bill that will halt all US funds to the United Nations until they rescind a resolution condemning Israeli settlements.
Gohmert said his bill will also prevent American money from assisting any foreign government that recognizes Palestine as an independent state.
People have questioned Gohmert as to whether the UN would ever consider nullifying the resolution, he said.
"Fine. They don't need our help to be anti-Semitic," Gohmert said.
He added that a trend within the Obama administration is to support "bullies over victims", citing their reaction to the resolution and eagerness to make a deal with Iran.
Israel is "the only place Muslims have complete freedom in the Middle East," he remarked.

Huckabee: Defund UN; Use Money to Help US Veterans




Mike Huckabee suggested, in the aftermath of the United Nations resolution condemning Israeli settlements, that the United States pull its portion of the international body's funding.
He said the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars could be better allocated to serve American veterans.
Eric Bolling reported that United States funds account for 22 percent or about $600 million of the UN's operating budget, while we have spent as much as multiple billions of dollars on peacekeeping and other UN initiatives.
"We should eliminate it," Huckabee said of the UN's presence in the federal budget.
We get "zero benefits" and are often "embarrassed by its actions," he said.
Bolling remarked that the land the UN's complex sits along First Avenue in Manhattan's Murray Hill neighborhood would be prime real estate for the government to sell.

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