Rubin Reports

We must understand how Clinton's mind and that of a large portion of the Western elite works.

This may be a cautionary lesson about how the fear of seeming to be a 'racist' or 'Islamophobe' can be manipulated to fool people into forgetting law and logic.

America, this is not the Victorian age of dark satanic mills and brutal capitalists who laugh while watching children starve.

While foreign policy did not figure large in the second presidential debate, the Middle East again emerged as the overwhelmingly main international issue. In the beginning of the debate, President Barack Obama claimed that he put a high priority on energy independence, an assertion well refuted by Governor Mitt Romney. A president who wanted energy independence, from the unreliability of Middle East supplies, could easily expand oil drilling on federal land; the use of new technology to produce oil and gas; a major pipeline from Canada; and the continued production and use of coal for generating power. To do none of these things and put his effort into restricting traditional energy sources and push hard for untested, long-term, and failed “green energy” schemes subverts energy independence. But the main emphasis in the debate was on the Benghazi assassinations.

A large part of the problem with Obama’s policy is that he not only treated enemies as friends and did not pressure supposed friends that acted like enemies, he joined them.

If they could have pressed a button and Israel would have disappeared, almost none of them would have hesitated.

Especially remarkable is the behavior of Esther. Warned of Haman’s plan, Esther wants to do nothing lest she place herself at risk.

This story brought home to me that to do one’s task rightly, to bear witness honestly, and to face the consequences without flinching should be the hallmarks of my field.

Smart people can make bad judgments; regular people with common sense often make bad judgments less often. But stupid, arrogant people with terrible ideas are a disaster.

People don’t want to be told to sacrifice, especially because they suspect that the elite isn’t doing so and that this same elite is responsible for the mess. So they can be—easily?—manipulated into voting for those who tell them to eat, drink and be merry, with a minimal tax on billionaires and millionaires paying off the caterer.

What can the Copts do except resign themselves to continued persecution?

The Palestinian Authority has received more aid money per person than anyone else in history and yet the results have been remarkably unimpressive. The Western taxpayers give the money, the PA leaders steal or use the money for political purposes, and the average Palestinian suffers more from this situation than from the largely extinct "Israeli occupation."

Despite Obama's disastrous Middle East policy, in practice, there have been no real, material, or huge problems in direct U.S.-Israel relations.

Is there no one who remembers this recent history?

As the Turkish PM continues to undermine Turkish democracy, throw hundreds of moderates into jail, destroy the nation’s institutions, support Iran, throw hysterical tantrums about how much he hates Israel, promote Islamism in the region, and is fresh from yet another meeting with Hamas leaders, Obama continues to use Erdogan as his guru.

Obama, a man who has spent a few hours in Israel and has no empathy with it, dares to say that he knows better what that country needs than does Prime Minister Netanyahu.

I want to discuss three articles that I basically agree with to point out how they miss the key issue and thus are somewhat misleading. I’m glad to see these three articles being published but it’s a case of -to quote Lenin- two steps forward, one step back.

The new Middle East strategic battle is heating up and this is only the start. It has nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with two more serious lines of battle: Arabs versus Persians and Sunni versus Shia Muslims.

Yasir Arafat is dead. I sat across from him in his Gaza office. He even had a copy of my history of the PLO on his book shelf so he must have been of sound mind at the time. But it’s not my fault. I told him to start jogging and cut down on sweets.But he didn’t listen.

If the US cannot depend on its new “allies,” despite the supposed popularity of Obama and its policies in those places, then how can they be said to be allies at all?

When the Obama Administration, to quote Bush's phrase, gets "to choose what side we are on," it picks the wrong one. It argues, again to quote Bush, that Ameica "should be content with supporting...flawed leaders...in the name of stability.” But these new Islamist dictators would deliver internal stability only at the price of freedom and will dismantle regional stability altogether.

Moynihan was one of the first people to try to deal with the lurch leftward of the liberal and Democratic streams that is now so dangerously dominant in America.

The Obama Administration plan is very simple, assuming that everything goes smoothly–which of course it will not.

This is all a tragedy for the poor victims in the Middle East and a farce for the well-paid, much-honored careerist opportunists and ideologues in the West.

With the Obama Administration leading from behind and stressing the need for a UN consensus to do anything, it is now stuck with a passive stance on the Syrian civil war.

This was the mainstream of democracy and democratic opinion: The "vital center."

Once the rebels start consolidating rule, as happened in Egypt, there will be increasing examples radical Islamist control which the West will ignore.

How to respond to the misinformation and fear that makes a potential Romney voter a soft-core Obama supporter.

Does anyone notice that the Palestinians keep demanding more preconditions, Israeli concessions but never come to the table?

Moderate Muslims have been neglected and isolated by this project which has helped the radicals, Islamists, and pro-terrorists.