The Patriot Post® · Some Enemy Lists Are More Equal Than Others

By Arnold Ahlert ·
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/33914-some-enemy-lists-are-more-equal-than-others-2015-03-17

Anyone still remember the left’s apoplexy when they discovered Richard Nixon had an enemies list? Last week, I named three people I suspected might be on Barack Obama’s equally contemptible equivalent. They were Hillary Clinton, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. One week later that educated guess is looking like a stone cold winner.

Let’s begin with Hillary and the email scandal that threatens to derail her presidential ambitions. The reliably useful idiot James Carville is once again manning the ramparts. Fresh off last last week's assertion that Hillary was the victim of a press corps that has swallowed “right-wing talking points,” Carville is promoting the laughable nonsense the same press corps “has one standard for covering everyone else in public life, and another standard for the Clintons.” No doubt it’s pure coincidence that Carville’s spew has been published by Media Matters, whose founder David Brock not only assured us it was Republicans who “try to breathe new life into an old scandal,” but that the Clintons “are held to a double standard when it comes to media scrutiny.” That coincidence has one more twist to consider: Brock has hired Carville as a regular columnist. Apparently the noble effort of repeating a lie often enough it becomes the truth is a job that requires more than one propagandist.

Enter Sunday’s New York Post, with a story that requires more vetting because of its source. But if it is accurate, Carville, Brock and every other Hillary defender blaming the GOP for her travails are about to have their collective world rocked. The title of Clinton hater/biographer Ed Klein’s article says it all: “Obama advisor behind leak of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal.”

“Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett leaked to the press details of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail address during her time as secretary of state, sources tell me,” writes Klein. “But she did so through people outside the ­administration, so the story couldn’t be traced to her or the White House.”

Klein further reveals that Jarrett was behind orders given to the State Department “to launch a series of investigations into Hillary’s conduct at Foggy Bottom, including the use of her expense account, the disbursement of funds, her contact with foreign leaders and her possible collusion with the Clinton Foundation.” He further insists six separate investigations of Clinton’s conduct are ongoing, the email scandal was timed to coincide with Clinton’s soon-to-be announced run for the presidency, and that there is “more to come.”

Jarrett’s ire allegedly stems from the reality that Democrats running in the 2014 avoided Obama like the plague, and she blames the Clintons for “turning congressmen, senators, governors and grass-root party members against Obama by portraying him as an unpopular president who was an albatross around the neck of the party.” Perhaps Jarrett fails to remember it was Obama himself who told voters, "I am not on the ballot this fall. Michelle’s pretty happy about that. But make no mistake: these policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them.“ It was those policies that got hammered. Nonetheless Jarrett vowed "payback.”

Onto Menendez and the the Justice Department’s “announcement” that the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be indicted for corruption charges relating to his relationship with Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen, who has a been major campaign contributor since 1992. A series of stories about Menendez’s relationship with Melgen was published by the Daily Caller in 2012, addressing a scandal involving underage prostitutes, meaning the story is at least three years old. A federal grand jury in Miami began a formal investigation in March 2013, meaning the investigation itself is two years old.

Why the announcement now? No doubt is has absolutely nothing to do with Menendez’s “blasphemous" assertion that President Obama’s talking points regarding his feckless pursuit of a deal with Iran "come straight out of Tehran,” and that they feed “the Iranian narrative of victimization when they are the ones with original sin – an illicit nuclear weapons program, going back over the course of 20 years, that they are unwilling to come clean on.”

Note the word announcement, used two times here, one with quotations. That is no accident. You see, the DOJ hasn’t formally indicted Menendez. What they’ve actually done is contacted their media toadies at CNN and used them to announce that they’re going to announce criminal charges against Menendez.

Again, its a (far more reliable) New York Post columnist who cuts right to the heart of this calibrated b.s. “It’s now been 10 days since every major news organization reported that anonymous sources in the Justice Department said the New Jersey Democrat would be charged with corruption, yet no charges have been filed," writes Michael Goodwin. "The time lag adds to the suspicion that the rumors aimed to punish Menendez for opposing President Obama’s feckless Iran policy and to scare off senators who might join him. If there is a criminal case against Menendez, let’s see it now. If there isn’t, then Barack Obama really is Richard Nixon.”

Last up, Benjamin Netanyahu. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is conducting a bipartisan probe of the OneVoice Movement, a Washington-based nonprofit group. They created a subsidiary group known as Victory 15, an Israel-based organization run by Jeremy Bird, who was Obama’s National Field Director during his successful presidential campaigns. Victory 15’s mission? To replace the current government of Israel.

OneVoice has received $350,000 from the State Department, and the probe is centered around their subsequent funding of Victory 15, based on the highly reasonable suspicion that the Obama administration is at least indirectly responsible for an attempt to manipulate the Israeli election. State Department officials insist that funding for OneVoice stopped last November, prior to the announcement of the Israeli election, but a Fox News investigation reveals that OneVoice's 2014 Annual Report stated that its Israel-based subsidiary would be “embarking on a groundbreaking campaign around the Israeli elections.” The same report states that Victory 15 is “promoting popular resistance, state-building and the Arab Peace Initiative, while advocating for an end to the conflict and a two-state solution along the 1967 borders.”

The Jerusalem Post’s Barry Shaw underscores the gargantuan hypocrisy that attends this revelation. “Obama’s excuse for not meeting with Netanyahu in Washington was that he couldn't be seen interfering in the Israeli election process," he writes. "But the White House and the State Department is now exposed as seriously interfering in Israeli politics with the Obama team, financed by the Obama Administration, working to unseat Benjamin Netanyahu and his party in Israel’s upcoming election.”

OneVoice denies any impropriety has occurred. A letter sent to IRS director John Koskinen by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Lee Zeldin (R-NY) requesting information regarding how OneVoice can maintain its tax-exempt status even though it has engaged in the kind of political activity prohibited by that status. The letter follows an inquiry made in January when both men asked Secretary of State John Kerry about OneVoice’s funding. A statement released by Cruz reveals Kerry is slow-walking the info at best, and since the letter to Koskinen was dated Mar. 3, it is apparent the IRS isn’t willing to respond in a timely manner either. “While we still don’t have complete answers from Sec. Kerry, OneVoice’s actions raise significant questions about whether it has violated its tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(3) organization,” Cruz’s statement explained.

Netanyahu and his Likud Party are polling behind the left-of-center Zionist Union, headed by Labor leader Isaac Herzog. The election takes place today and will likely be turned one way or the other by the 20 percent of Israelis who remained undecided heading into it. Yair Lapid, former news anchor and TV host who leads the centrist, secular Yesh Atid party (“There’s a Future”) believes Netanyahu’s time is over “not because security issues don’t matter but because social and economic issues are dominating the agenda,” he explained.

Perhaps so – until the next attack occurs.

And so, as of this writing, Hillary flounders, Menendez squirms and Netanyahu’s fate may have been sealed by Obama’s campaign allies. And the see-no-Obama-evil American media maintains its calculated disinterest because they are as invested in Obama’s deal with Iran – and the self-aggrandizing nonsense about achieving a “historical legacy” that accompanies it – as the Obama administration itself is.

Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton has other ideas. “The president coddles the Iranian ayatollah and attacks his own countrymen and our closest allies over this deal,” Bolton said Saturday. “The danger we hope to avoid is now imminent. This is just one example of how the President doesn’t care about America’s national security.”

That is undoubtedly true. But the bigger picture is the one that has always attended this contemptible administration: They will do whatever they want, by any means necessary, and they dare anyone to stop them. Those who try will undoubtedly make themselves as targetable as Clinton, Menendez and Netanyahu. That’s because Barack Obama, as Goodwin points out, is Richard Nixon.

On steroids.

© Copyright 2015 The Patriot Post