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http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

“Who can count the dust of Jacob or number the seed of Israel.” Numbers 23:10

The sun sets above the hills. The siren cries out and on the busy highways that wend among the hills, the traffic stops, the people stop, and a moment of silence comes to a noisy country. Flags fly at half mast, the torch of remembrance is lit, memorial candles are held in shaking hands and the country’s own version of the Flanders Field poppy, the Red Everlasting daisy, dubbed Blood of the Maccabees, adorns lapels. And so begins the Yom Hazikaron, Heroes Remembrance Day, the day of remembrance for fallen soldiers and victims of terror– Israel’s Memorial Day.

What is a memorial day in a country that has always known war and where remembrance means adding the toll of one year’s dead and wounded to the scales of history. A country where war never ends, where the sirens may pause but never stop, where each generation grows up knowing that they will have to fight or flee. To stand watch or run away. It is not so much the past that is remembered on this day, but the present and the future. The stillness, a breath in the warm air, before setting out to climb the slopes of tomorrow.

Who can count the dust of Jacob. And yet each memorial day we count the dust. The dust that is a fraction of those who have fallen defending the land for thousands of years. Flesh wears out, blood falls to the earth where the red daisies grow, and bone turns to dust. The dust blows across the graves of soldiers and prophets, the tombs of priests hidden behind brush, the caverns where forefathers rest in sacred silence, laid to rest by their sons, who were laid to rest by their own sons, generations burying the past, standing guard over it, being driven away and returning each time.

On Memorial Day, the hands of memory are dipped in the dust raising it to the blue sky. A prayer, a whisper, a dream of peace. And the wind blows the candles out. War follows. And once again blood flows into the dust. A young lieutenant shading his eyes against the sun. An old man resting with his family on the beach. Children climbing into bed in a village beneath the hills. And more bodies are laid to rest in the dust. Until dust they become.

In this land, the Maker of Stars and Dust vowed to Abraham that his children would be as many as the dust of the earth and the stars of heaven. In their darkest days, they would be as the dust. But there is mercy in the numberless count of the dust. Mercy in not being able to make a full count of the fallen. In remaining ignorant of that full measure of woe. Modern technologies permit us terrible estimates. Databanks store the names of millions, village by village and city by city. Terrible digital cemeteries of ghosts. But there is no counting the dust. And when we walk the length and breadth of the land, as the Maker told Abraham to do, it the dust that supports our feet, we stand upon the shoulders of giants. We walk in the dust of our ancestors.

Some new countries are built to escape from the past, but there is no escaping it in these ancient hills. IDF soldiers patrol over ground once contested by empires, tread over spearheads and the wheels of chariots buried deep in the earth. The Assyrians and the Babylonians came through here in all their glory. Greek and Roman soldiers and mercenaries pitted themselves against the handful of Judeans who came out of the Babylonian exile. The Ottoman and the Arab raged here, and Crusader battering rams and British Enfield rifles still echo in the quiet hills.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/media-working-hand-in-glove-with-democrats-on-gun-legislation?f=puball Why do the media consider the filibuster a strong, principled stance under Democrat leadership, but an obstructionist tool when used by Republicans? This media double standard has been used consistently during the current and past administration, and is currently being used to shame Republicans on the gun control debate. “For a party who is […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/mohammed-now-one-of-the-most-popular-baby-names-in-minnesota?f=puball

Mohamed has made the list of most popular baby boy names in Minnesota, according to the Social Security Administration (SSA).

Mohamed was the 98th most popular boy’s name in 2011 in the state. The SSA says Minnesota parents named 73 boys after the founder of Islam in that year.

This is the first time the name has appeared on the list the SSA releases each year.

Are you surprised Mohamed is now one of the 100 most popular boys names? Are you surprised it wasn’t on the top 100 list prior to 2011?

Mohamed’s place on the list is not surprising considering some recent statistics.

“The name, in its several variations, is one of the most popular worldwide for Muslim parents,” according to the Star Tribune. “It has risen on Minnesota’s list as the state’s population has rapidly changed. From 2000 to 2010, the number of residents of color grew 55 percent, and Minnesota’s fast-growing Somali population is the largest in the United States.”

There are 317 people who practice Islam per 100,000 in Minnesota, according to a 2010 study by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB). That means the state has the 18th largest Muslim population in the United States and the District of Columbia, behind nearby Illinois (first) and Michigan (sixth).

The population of Minnesota is approximately 5.38 million, according to the latest census estimate. The Muslim population in the state could range from “20,000 to 130,000,” according to a story by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

The most popular names for boys in 2011 in Minnesota were Mason, William and Jacob. The most popular girls names in that year were Olivia, Sophia and Emma.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/james-madison-vs-frank-nitti

Daniel Greenfield, in his Sultan Knish column, “The Chicagoization of America” (April 11th), remarked about the workings of urban machine politics:

In 2012, tribal politics became national politics. The country was divided and conquered. A campaign run on convincing a dozen separate groups to be afraid of each other and of the majority made all the difference, not in some urban slum, but from sea to shining sea. The country had at last become the city. And considering the state of the city… the state of the union does not look good.

His column featured a photograph of Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals and other Democracy for Dummies and Democrats tracts that serve as hands-on instruction manuals for liberals, leftists, and out-and-out communists and socialists in how to acquire power and disenfranchise everyone but their patrons. In other words, elective gangsters. Such as Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, who admired Alinsky and his “community organizing” philosophy so much she wrote her Wellesley senior thesis on them and even interviewed Alinsky.

Greenfield does not mention Alinsky in the column, which is about how “democracy” has become a game and tactic of criminal politicians who manipulate contentious voting blocs and vested interests. He did not need to. Alinsky’s face and that photograph in particular are too familiar. Alinsky boasted that he befriended and fraternized with Chicago gangsters. That is entirely appropriate, given the state of Chicago and American politics as described by Greenfield.

Here is an anecdote in Alinsky’s own words about how cozy he was with Frank Nitti, Al Capone’s “enforcer.” Nitti liked Alinsky and allowed him to look over the criminal’s books:

Once, when I was looking over their records, I noticed an item listing a $7500 payment for an out-of-town killer. I called Nitti over and I said, “Look, Mr. Nitti, I don’t understand this. You’ve got at least 20 killers on your payroll. Why waste that much money to bring somebody in from St. Louis?” Frank was really shocked at my ignorance.

“Look, kid,” he said patiently, “sometimes our guys might know the guy they’re hitting, they may have been to his house for dinner, taken his kids to the ball game, been the best man at his wedding, gotten drunk together. But you call in a guy from out of town, all you’ve got to do is tell him, ‘Look, there’s this guy in a dark coat on State and Randolph; our boy in the car will point him out; just go up and give him three in the belly and fade into the crowd.’ So that’s a job and he’s a professional, he does it. But one of our boys goes up, the guy turns to face him and it’s a friend, right away he knows that when he pulls that trigger there’s gonna be a widow, kids without a father, funerals, weeping — Christ, it’d be murder.”

Such was the wisdom imbibed by Saul Alinsky, amoral and pragmatist tactician and organizer of other criminal mobs, otherwise known as the Left. For what is the Left but a loose alliance of ideological gangsters who rationalize and sanction force, but who pose as “humanitarians” sensitive to the feelings of others? Gangster government, indeed.

But, in this column we will not be “going there.” I don’t think it’s necessary to compare Alinsky’s foul character with that of James Madison. That would be an insult to Madison. This column will dwell on a species of wisdom not possible to Alinsky, Frank Nitti, or even to any contemporary politician. Here, in speeches, separate correspondence and in his Federalist Papers, are some excerpted thoughts and cogitations of Madison, one of our Founders, defending and explaining the workings of the federal Constitution after it had been framed in 1787 Philadelphia. The document had been sent out to all the states for debate and ratification. A multitude of objections to it, some valid, some specious, were cropping up and distracting everyone’s attention. Madison felt obliged to defend the document and to refute all the criticisms of it that came his way. Originally, he questioned the wisdom of including a “bill of rights” that would specifically obstruct federal incursions on specific realms of individual liberty.

But in June of 1789, he submitted a bill of rights to a Congress embroiled in other issues. He became known as the “father” of the Bill of Rights -rights which Congress today is contemplating their suspension or nullification.

http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/north-korean-mythologies/?print=1 Much of what is written about the North Korean crisis seems to me little more than fantasy. Let us examine the mythologies. 1)      China is a responsible partner in checking North Korea and, of course, does not want war. It may well be true that China’s communist apparat wishes to avoid a war, or […]

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/04/14/rubio-explains-why-immigration-deal-is-not-amnesty/?print=1

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) set the stage for this week’s anticipated rollout of the Group of Eight’s immigration reform deal with a busy Sunday on the morning shows.

On Fox News Sunday, Rubio said the plan’s expected pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants is “not amnesty.”

“Amnesty is the forgiveness of something. Amnesty is anything that says, ‘Do it illegally. It’s going to be cheaper and easier.’ Here’s what people need to understand. Under the existing law today, if you are illegally in the United States, you are not prohibited from getting a green card and ultimately getting citizenship. The only thing is you have to go back to your home country, you have to wait 10 years and then you can apply for it. And all we’re saying is we’re going to create an alternative to that,” Rubio said.

“That will still be in place, but we’re going to create an alternative that says, ‘OK, you want to stay here? You’ll have to wait more than 10 years, you’ll have to pay this fine, you’ll have to pay this registration fee, you’ll have to be gainfully employed, you won’t qualify for any federal benefits and, then after all that, you don’t get into apply for anything until the enforcement mechanisms are in place. And I would argue to you that it will be cheaper, faster and easier for people to go back home and wait 10 years than it will be to go through this process I’ve outlined. That’s why it’s not amnesty,” he continued. “And bottom line is we don’t award anything. You have to qualify and apply for it, and that’s the key distinction. If somehow being in this country is cheaper, easier and quicker than doing it the right way, I wouldn’t support that.”

On CNN’s State of the Union, Rubio argued that the bill won’t result in a replay of the 1980s immigration reform that resulted in a new flood of illegal immigration.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/exiled/?print=1

“It is impossible for those outside of literature departments to understand how weird such departments have become. You can see the evidence from without, but only within can you drink deep of our Stalinism Lite.” – Prof. Scott Herring, in Exiled.

Investigations of academia by David Horowitz [1], Bruce Bawer [2], and the California Association of Scholars [3] have all pinpointed the massive shift to the left — and the corresponding decline in scholarly rigor and balance — that has occurred in the professoriate at North American universities. More such studies are needed, for the takeover of higher education has in many cases been almost entirely unimpeded and even unnoticed or denied — or made to seem natural and unintentional. Liberal academics, priding themselves on their tolerance, routinely downplay conservative concerns about bias, claiming that the leftist influence is exaggerated or has already passed its peak. Where leftist dominance is admitted, it is claimed to be the innocent result of career self-selection: liberals are, according to the common wisdom, more intellectually curious and creative than conservatives, and therefore naturally drawn to the academic life, just as conservatives — rule-bound and money-obsessed — are naturally drawn to business, police work, or engineering. If leftists do dominate, so the story goes, their presence is benign.

A new book edited by Mary Grabar paints a much darker picture of academic life, showcasing the overt and covert ways that conservative intellectuals are marginalized or excluded. In a series of witty and engrossing narrative essays with the deliciously cheeky title Exiled: Stories from Conservative and Moderate Professors Who Have Been Ridiculed, Ostracized, Marginalized, Demonized, and Frozen Out [4], the collection provides first-hand accounts of what happens to those who flout the protocols of correct belief or pursue research outside the parameters of approved scholarship. They are indeed “exiled,” if not from academia itself — though some are — then at least from the company of the blessed in their departments and research communities. The pains of such exile range from personal shunning to insurmountable career roadblocks, but worst of all, perhaps, to the recognition that propaganda is being disguised as knowledge in thousands of university classrooms.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/04/how_barack_obama_is_using_health_care_to_balkanize_america.html Last week, adjunct faculty at a local college were asked to sign a petition to the White House to “explore options to prevent colleges/universities from cutting adjunct and contingent faculty hours to circumvent [the] PPACA,” better known as ObamaCare.  This is in response to the massive assault on the livelihood of adjunct faculty who […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/the-cultural-intifada-and-temple-denial-on-the-glazov-gang/

This week’s Glazov Gang had the honor of being joined by Lela Gilbert, author of Saturday People, Sunday People, actor Dwight Schultz (DwightSchultzFansite.tv) and Ann-Marie Murrell, the National Director of PolitiChicks.tv.

The Gang members gathered to discuss Israel Through the Eyes of a Christian Sojourner. The dialogue occurred in Part I and focused on Lela Gilbert’s book, Saturday People, Sunday People: Israel through the Eyes of a Christian Sojourner. Ms. Gilbert shared what brought her to Israel, the Israelis’ warm reception of her, and why, as Dr. Gabriel Barkay imparted to her, “Temple Denial is more dangerous and serious than Holocaust Denial.” The Gang therefore reflected on The Cultural Intifada and Temple Denial, a dialogue which dealt with Islamists’ gambit to de-Judaize the Jewish state.

Part II also mostly focused on Saturday People, Sunday People, shedding light on the dire lessons of Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005, the trauma that Israeli citizens, including children, have suffered from Palestinian terror, Jimmy Carter’s Jew-Hate, and the world’s blind spot: the forgotten exodus of 900,000 Jews expelled from Arab and Muslim countries.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324100904578404580119306900.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
The White House Brain Initiative Hits a Tax Hurdle
While the president launches an exciting initiative to map the brain, a new tax hurts the very innovation it seeks.

Step into any operating room where neurosurgery is being performed, and there is a good chance that the surgeon is viewing the brain through a camera. Technology today is saving lives by enabling surgeons to see what the naked eye cannot. As archeologists use advanced radar technology to examine sensitive sites before excavating, neurosurgeons use advanced imaging technology to get a clear picture of the brain before operating. The data are then loaded into microscopes that guide surgery, providing a safer path through the brain’s intricate wiring, where one wrong cut risks paralyzing the patient.

Over the past two decades, these breakthroughs in scanning technology have led to dramatic improvements in the rates of survival and recovery from brain surgery. The next generation of imaging technology—being developed in labs from Massachusetts to California to the National Institutes of Health—promises to create an even more profound window into the human brain.

These efforts could be greatly accelerated by President Obama’s recent announcement of a new initiative to map the brain’s activity in unprecedented detail. Aiming to “do for the human brain what the Human Genome did for genetics,” the $3 billion “Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative” gives hope to those suffering from conditions like Alzheimer’s, autism, stroke and traumatic brain injury.

But here’s the bad news: The brain initiative is already being undermined by a new Washington policy that went into effect on Jan. 1. Under regulations passed as part of the Affordable Care Act of 2010, the medical-technology industry is now subject to a $30 billion annual tax on medical devices.