BloggeRhythms

While the media spends most of it’s time covering the presidential campaigns, other quite serious issues receive minimal coverage in the news. Yet, they’re critically important to the U.S. and its allies. 

According to Arthur MacMillan @yahoo.com: “Iran conducted multiple ballistic missile tests Tuesday in what it said was a display of "deterrent power," defying U.S. sanctions imposed earlier this year aimed at disrupting its missile programme. 

“State media announced that short-, medium- and long-range precision guided missiles were fired from several sites to show the country's "all-out readiness to confront threats" against its territorial integrity.” The armaments used had ranges of 300 kilometres (190 miles), 500 km, 800 km and 2,000 km. 

Fresh sanctions on its missile program were enforced back in January, 24 hours after separate sanctions related to Tehran's nuclear activities had been lifted under a landmark deal with world powers. 

Presently: “The latest tests, during an exercise named "The Power of Velayat", a reference to the religious doctrine of the Islamic republic's leadership, were undertaken by the Revolutionary Guards and its Aerospace wing. 

Major General Ali Jafari, the Guards' top commander, and Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, spoke about the tests on television, with the latter downplaying the effect of US efforts to disrupt its activities. 

"Our main enemies, the Americans, who mutter about plans, have activated new missile sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran and are seeking to weaken the country’s missile capability," Hajizadeh said. 

"The Guards and other armed forces are defenders of the revolution and the country will not pay a toll to anyone... and will stand against their excessive demands." 

Asked before the missile sanctions were announced how Iran would react to fresh measures against it, Rouhani said: "Any action will be met by a reaction." 

Thus, evidence continues to grow that it’s likely the Iran nuclear deal was a major mistake. Reader Son 12, put it this way: “You drop sanctions on a country(Iran) that threatens to wipe Israel off the map and calls America the great Satan and furthermore the White House unfreezes 150 billion to these radical extremists leaders in Iran who are going full steam ahead toward developing a nuclear bomb what does the White House expect........” Precisely correct. 

And then, according to FoxNews.com: “The Obama administration said Monday that it was "surprised" to learn that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had canceled a planned visit to Washington later this month, and denied an Israeli media report that claimed the White House was unable to arrange a meeting between President Obama and Netanyahu.  

“Netanyahu's visit had been planned to coincide with the American-Israel Political Affairs Committee's annual conference. The White House said Israel had proposed for the two leaders to meet on either March 17 or 18 and the U.S. had offered to meet on March 18.  

"We were surprised to first learn via media reports that the Prime Minister, rather than accept our invitation, opted to cancel his visit," National Security Council spokesman Ned Price told reporters Monday. "Reports that we were not able to accommodate the Prime Minister's schedule are false." 

In this case, the administration has firmly established that Iran has taken Israel's place as the major ally in the Middle-East. And, as far as Prime Minister Netanyahu’s concerned, he’s been snubbed by Obama before. So he’s used to it. 

But, more importantly, it’s just as probable that Netanyahu expects the U.S. to have a Republican president quite soon. And if it’s anyone other than Trump, the odds are that Israel and the U.S. will go back to its formerly very close relationship. Which means that Netanyahu will start showing up here often again in the future.  

 Moving on, a FB friend posted the following yesterday: 

Bringing us to today’s update on Bill Clinton’s wife.

Jim Swift @weeklystandard.com, writes: “Romanian hacker Marcel Lazăr Lehel -- better known as Guccifer -- is being extradited to the United States, say news reports.

“The hacker has scored many notable victims in recent years, including Hillary Clinton shadow adviser Sid Blumenthal.

Guccifer once bragged to PANDO that "I used to read [Clinton's] memos... and then do the gardening."

As the Daily Caller has previously reported, Guccifer's hacking has played a role in the Clinton email scandal: “Sidney Blumenthal emailed Hillary Clinton at least two intelligence reports about Libya which were not included in the trove of 296 emails released by the State Department on Friday.

“Clinton has claimed that in December she turned over all official government emails she sent or received from her personal account while in office. In turn, the agency has claimed it turned all Clinton emails related to Libya or Benghazi over to the House Select Committee investigating the Benghazi attack.

“But a screenshot of Blumenthal's email inbox, which the Romanian hacker Guccifer published in March 2013, shows two reports about Libya emailed to Clinton which were not released in Friday's batch.

“It's not known whether Guccifer's extradition is in any way connected to the investigation into Clinton's private email server.”

At present, no one knows specifically why Guccifer’s been brought here now. But, one would have to assume that after all these years, the current interest in him must have something to do with confirming his claims of successful hacking into her unauthorized computer.

Which means that in the not too distant future, Bernie Sanders will probably have to hold debates with her from the visitor’s side of the bars. 

Raising the ongoing question once again: Joe Biden, Mayor Bloomberg, Jerry Brown, and Starbuck’s chairman and CEO, Howard Schultz, are you guys reading this?   

That’s it for today folks.       

Adios