RUTHFULLY YOURS

Dear folks,
A bit of humor may help in this post-election time:
Only 7% of San Franciscans voted for Romney. There were lots of ballot issues—both local and statewide. Everywhere Californians voted to raise taxes!

A minor victory here took place here ten days ago. The Board of Supervisors (akin to the New York’s City Council) voted 6-5 against public nudity. However, it explicitly stated that public nudity is still legal where it is “appropriate,” like public parades!
The fight was led by one of the few supervisors, Scott Weiner, who is sane. He was able to get a statute passed a while ago that people sitting naked in restaurants had to put a towel on the seat before sitting down. He is now being harassed by the lunatic fringe of the lunatic fringe here.

I like him, and think he has a future in politics, e.g., S.F mayor and possibly governor. He is Jewish and gay.

http://times247.com/
Clinton’s departure leaves a legacy of caution
Guy Taylor

Like many other Republicans, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton says U.S. strategic interests have undergone a significant regression during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure.
Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2GLvm4aZl
Kim calls for stronger North Korea rockets
Associated Press
Thursday, December 27, 2012
News
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called for the development of more powerful rockets after last week’s successful launch of a satellite into space. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2GLvuGqdA
Iran health minister dismissed for disloyalty
Associated Press
Thursday, December 27, 2012
News
Iranian state TV is reporting the country’s president has dismissed the health minister after her ministry put out a statement criticizing authorities for not providing money to import medicine. Read more…
U.S. again on hook for one-fifth of U.N. budget
CNSNews.com
Friday, December 28, 2012
News
In one of its last actions of the year, the United Nations General Assembly on Christmas Eve agreed to extend for another three years the formula that has U.S. taxpayers contributing more than one-fifth of the world body’s regular budget. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2GLw427BQ

The Israeli Constituent – Realism over Wishful Thinking
Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative”
“Israel Hayom”, December 28, 2012, bit.ly/V8NQRj

On the eve of the January 22, 2013 Israeli election, the Israeli constituent demonstrates more realism than Israeli politicians. Israelis highlight security imperatives when responding to reality-driven polls, which pose questions based on the stormy Arab Winter and not on the mirage of the Arab Spring.

Increasingly, Israelis recognize that – in the Middle East – bolstered security constitutes a solid base for survival and for the pursuit of peace. They realize that the pursuit of peace, by lowering the threshold of security, could jeopardize survival, as well as the slim chance for peace.

Notwithstanding the overwhelmingly dovish Israeli media and academia,most Israelis – Right, Center and Left – have concluded that security-driven peace supersedes peace-driven security.

A December, 2012 most thorough and detailed poll was conducted by one of the deans of Israeli pollster, Mina Tzemach, on behalf of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. The poll demonstrates that Israelis respond to real local and regional developments – more than to wishful thinking – when shaping positions on the peace process, security requirements, land for peace, the two-state-solution and Iran. Such positions are directly impacted by the 20-year track record of the 1993 Oslo accord: an unprecedented Israeli gesture met by unprecedented Palestinian hate-education, terrorism and non-compliance. Israeli opinions are also influenced by the current turbulence, unpredictability, unreliability, treachery and instability on the Arab Street. The Israeli state of mind is also shaped by the violent Palestinian response (thousands of missiles launched at Israel) to the 2005 Israeli “Disengagement” – a tormenting, painful concession of uprooting 25 thriving Jewish communities.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/336532/let-s-be-gone-wind-john-fund

Why subsidize an industry that kills millions of birds and has no environmental benefit?

President Obama likes to talk about making sure “the biggest corporations pay their fair share.” Treasury secretary Tim Geithner calls for tax reform to close loopholes and subsidies. Budget hawks say federal spending must be curbed. Congress and federal environmental regulators claim they are doing everything they can to save endangered species. By doing nothing and waiting for December 31 to pass, all of those folks could strike a blow in support of each of these policies. All they have to do is let the federal production tax credit (PTC) for wind energy expire on schedule this coming Monday.

Begun 20 years ago to spur the construction of wind-energy facilities that could compete with conventional fossil-fuel power plants, the tax credit gives wind an advantage over all other energy producers. But it has mostly benefited conventional nuclear and fossil-fuel-fired electricity producers. The biggest user of the tax credit is Florida-based NextEra Energy, the nation’s eighth-largest power producer. Through skillful manipulation of the credits, NextEra from 2005 to 2009 “paid just $88 million in taxes on earnings of nearly $7 billion,” Businessweek reports. That’s a tax rate of just 1.25 percent over that period, when the statutory rate is 35 percent.

Wind power has had two decades to prove itself with federal subsidies. Last year, wind power represented a third of all new electric-generating capacity, because taxpayers foot the bill for more than half of wind power’s cost. In addition, lobbyists for wind power have convinced 30 states to set mandates requiring that a certain percentage of electricity come from renewable sources — which guarantees the wind industry a market.

The subsidies directed toward wind dwarf the subsidies of other energy sectors. Robert Bryce, energy analyst for the Manhattan Institute and an NRO contributor, reports that subsidies to wind are “at least twelve times greater than those provided to the oil and gas sector and 6.5 times greater than those provided to the nuclear industry,” on a per-unit-of-energy-produced basis.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/thomas-friedman-goes-to-bat-for-chuck-hagel/print/

Just as news has surfaced that President Obama may be reconsidering his controversial nomination of Chuck Hagel as secretary of Defense, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman advises us to “Give Chuck A Chance,” advocating for the former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to replace out-going Secretary Leon Panetta. ”I am a Hagel supporter,” Friedman wrote. “I think he would make a fine secretary of defense – precisely because some of his views are not ‘mainstream.’”

Friedman thinks it is “disgusting” that Hagel has been criticized for snidely labeling Israel’s many supporters in the United States as the “Jewish lobby.” Friedman also argues that just because Hagel has been unwilling to go along unswervingly with everything the Israeli government decides to do, including its expansion of settlements, it doesn’t mean that Hagel cannot still be a friend of Israel (albeit a friend with tough love).

No wonder Friedman did not have any trouble with Hagel’s “Jewish lobby” remark. Last year, in another of his columns, Friedman himself said that the only reason Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received a standing ovation during his address to a joint session of Congress was that the “ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.” Friedman couldn’t conceive of the fact that maybe the ovation was in appreciation for the courageous leader of our closest ally in the Middle East, who is trying to preserve a modern day democracy in a neighborhood of regressive nihilists bent on his country’s destruction.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/jamie-glazov/see-no-unholy-alliance-hear-no-unholy-alliance/print/

To know everything you ever wanted to know about the Left’s Islamist odyssey, visit DiscoverTheNetworks.org, the website that describes and exposes the networks and agendas of the political Left.

As Islamic Jihad, including its “stealth” variety, is rapidly succeeding in destroying our civilization, the Left continues its shameless and bizarre denial — not only about the threat of Islamic Jihad, but also about its own complicity with our enemy and its war on our society.

The latest example of the Left’s Jihad-Denial concerns me personally: it involves an intriguing post, written by Brian Tashman in RightWingWatch.org, titled: Beware: Human-Hating Liberals and Islamic Extremists Seek to Build Shariommunism. The post ridicules my recent appearance on CBN’s “Stackelbeck on Terror” in which I discuss the Unholy Alliance between the radical Left and radical Islam, which David Horowitz has masterfully documented in his masterpiece Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left and that I have analyzed in United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny and Terror.

The ingredients of Right Wing Watch’s attack on me are pathological not just in how they deny blatant reality, but also in how they in and of themselves substantiate the very realities they are denying.

Below, I will demonstrate and deconstruct the pathology in these assaults. It is more crucial than ever to expose the nature of the Left’s duplicity, lies and inner contradictions, since the Unholy Alliance’s malicious and destructive war on our civilization is now making more dangerous inroads than at any previous time.

[A]

In the first sentence of its attack on my appearance on Stakelbeck, I am ridiculed for believing that “progressives and radical Islamists are secretly working together.” First of all, I never said anything about this alliance being a “secret,” basically because there is nothing really secret about it. They are screaming it from the roof tops. Leftist author Naomi Klein isn’t hiding who she is rooting for when she writes “Bring Najaf to New York,” an article in the Nation in which she yearns for Muqtada Sadr’s killing fields to come to America. Noam Chomsky doesn’t ask the cameras to be turned off when he embraces Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon.

The Chomsky-Nasrallah love-fest in Lebanon in 2006

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-bawer/losing-our-sons-2/print/

THIS IS A POWERFUL DOCUMENTARY WHICH I HAVE WATCHED OVER AND OVER AGAIN….IT IS AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE AND VIEWING IN MANY VENUES….SEE IT AND PROMOTE IT….RSK

It is, in my view, the defining exchange of our time. It took place, not inappropriately, on Pearl Harbor Day of 2011, at one of the joint House-Senate hearings called by New York Congressman Peter King and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman to examine the radicalization of American Muslims. As seen in the You Tube video, Congressman Dan Lungren of California poses a simple, straightforward question to a witness, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Stockton. “Secretary Stockton,” he asks, “are we at war with violent Islamist extremism?”

What follows is several minutes of the most grotesque and extraordinary dodging, as Stockton, despite unrelenting pressure from Lungren, repeatedly refuses to admit any connection between Islam and the “war on terror”: “We are at war with al-Qaeda, its affiliates and adherents….al-Qaeda are murderers with an ideological agenda…al-Qaeda is a violent organization dedicated to overthrowing the values that we intend to advance…” After a couple of minutes of proding, Stockton explains his dodging: “Al-Qaeda would love to convince Muslims around the world that the United States is at war with Islam. That’s a prime propaganda tool, and I’m not going to aid and abet that effort to advance their propaganda goals….I don’t believe it’s helpful to frame our adversary as Islamic, with any set of qualifiers that we might add. Because we are not at war with Islam.”

At this point, Lungren takes a slightly different tack: according to the Defense Department, it’s important to keep an eye out for certain “behavioral indicators” that can signal an individual’s turn to radicalism. Lungren notes that the Fort Hood jihadist identified himself on a calling card as a “Soldier of Allah.” Would that sort of thing, Lungren asks, be considered a “behavioral indicator”? If he were a soldier, would it be appropriate for him to report such a thing as a “behavioral indicator”? Stockton, though in a roundabout way, finally says yes – implicitly acknowledging something that every American already knows but that the government, perversely, is determined not to say straight out.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/saudi-arabia-arrests-41-people-for-plotting-to-celebrate-christmas/print/

Merry Mohammedmas from the homeland of Mecca and Medina, the Guardians of the Holy Places in the blood pact between Saud and Wahhab, oil and terror, not to mention America’s bestsest allies in the War on Terror.

Saudi religious police stormed a house in the Saudi Arabian province of al-Jouf, detaining more than 41 guests for “plotting to celebrate Christmas,” a statement from the police branch released Wednesday night said.

The host of the alleged Christmas gathering is reported to be an Asian diplomat whose guests included 41 Christians, as well as two Saudi Arabian and Egyptian Muslims. The host and the two Muslims were said to be “severely intoxicated.”

The kingdom, which only recognizes Islamic faith and practice, has in the past banned public Christmas celebrations, but is ambiguous about festivities staged in private quarters.

Saudi Arabia’s religious police were feeling so many of their oats that they stormed a private diplomatic residence and arrested the guests attending a private Christmas party. And why should they worry? Saudi Arabia faced no consequences for its part in 9/11 or any of the terror since then. Arresting a few guests at a diplomat’s party for celebrating Christmas is small potatoes.

The Saudi Lobby, backed by countless domestic Muslim groups in every country, is above the law.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/how-obamas-policies-led-to-benghazigate/ It took some 22 hours for American help to arrive in Benghazi after all the t’s had been crossed and the i’s had been dotted, and the body of America’s ambassador to Libya had been dragged through the streets by “rescuers” stopping along the way to pose for cell phone pictures with his corpse. […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/12/john_kerry_at_state_a_disaster_for_israel.html Moshe Phillips is the president of the Philadelphia Chapter of Americans For A Safe Israel (AFSI). The chapter’s blog can be found at http://phillyafsi.blogtownhall.com, and Moshe tweets at http://twitter.com/MoshePhillips. President Obama’s decision to nominate Senator John Kerry as his next secretary of state will prove to be a disaster for Israel. The choice of […]