RUTHFULLY YOURS

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Rapidly becoming the most over-used trope in movies is the image of a male hunter shooting a graceful deer. In “The Queen,” “The Hunt,” and now “Prisoners” – the shot is both shorthand for man’s intrinsic violence and an ominous portent of retributive trouble ahead. In “Prisoners,” there is the heavy-handed addition of a Christian hunter reciting a prayer – we should know from the start that no good will come his way. Hugh Jackman stars as Keller, a religious man who is a millenialist, storing canned food in the basement for the ever-possible apocalypse. He is the ur-father who must protect his family from harm and at the same time, a tightly wound former alcoholic waiting to explode. The trigger for this is the abduction of his young daughter and her close friend on Thanksgiving Day – some sophomoric irony for the especially dense viewer.

Jake Gyllenhall plays the detective on the case – the only cop in movie history to never have a partner or call for backup. We know he’s sensitive because he has an eye twitch that headlines his vulnerability. His main activity is following Hugh Jackman who manages to elude him, eventually to his heavily-foreshadowed detriment. Paul Dano plays the prime suspect, a tall moon-faced, retarded man whose taciturn nature may be hiding his guilt or his anguished background. Orphaned at a young age, he has been raised by a caring aunt who lost her own son to cancer and is the model of patience and Christian virtue.

Torture ensues with a full panoply of grisly makeup that would made Bud Westmore shiver in his grave. The movie is very long so more suspects turn up, including an alcoholic priest who has a skeleton in his closet – actually, it’s in his basement – more anti-Christian fodder that would never pass muster if it were anti-Muslim in pc Hollywood. Snakes and bloody props soon follow along with the requisite number of red herrings. Without spoiling the whodunit reveal, I can say that the motive for the crime was a war against the Christian god; hmmmm, the pile-on of these sentiments couldn’t be any thicker than if the movie had been made by the Taliban.

http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/09/22/israel-leper-or-light-unto-the-nations-part-8-jerusalem-dig-strikes-rare-gold/

This year Israel received a wonderful New Year’s (Rosh Hashanah) gift from a team of archeologists led by Eilat Mazar.

She announced that, at the foot of the Temple Mount, the team had found a large gold medallion, “remarkably well kept and glittering,” with reliefs of a seven-branched menorah, a shofar, and a Torah—timeless fundaments of Judaism well familiar in Israel and much of the Jewish world today.

The medallion was in a fabric bag; along with it was another fabric bag containing 36 gold coins and other artifacts.

Mazar assessed that the medallion and coins were abandoned in 614 CE, the year of the Persian conquest of Jerusalem. She added:

The position of the items…indicates that one bundle was carefully hidden underground, while the second bundle was apparently abandoned in haste and scattered across the floor. …

[T]he most likely explanation is that the findings were earmarked as a contribution toward the building of a new synagogue at a location that is near the Temple Mount. …

What is certain is that their mission, whatever it was, was unsuccessful, and its owners couldn’t return to collect it.

Mazar believes the medallion was an ornament for a Torah scroll, which would make it “the earliest such archeological find in history.” As for the coins, an Israeli expert said they “can be dated to the reigns of different Byzantine emperors, ranging from the middle of the 4th century CE to the early 7th century CE.”

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2013/10/01/letting-obama-force-a-constitutional-crisis-is-the-best-republican-choice/ It’s worth considering the risks and rewards in the budget standoff, which is first and foremost a battle for control of the Republican Party and the shape of the 2014 and 2016 primaries. The Republican Party of John McCain and Mitt Romney lost two presidential elections, the second to a weak candidate in a […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/maturity-deferred-the-death-of-the-grown-up?f=puball

This book review was originally written in 2008 for another publication, some time after Diana West’s book debuted. The editor of that publication – who shall remain nameless, as well as the publication itself – had the hubris to edit my original review out of recognition. I withdrew the submission and am belatedly publishing it now.

The trouble with most conservatives who write cultural critiques is that invariably they get it only half right, or just backwards. Diana West’s The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development is Bringing Down Western Civilization is not a salutary instance of that failing. West is not your typical “conservative.” She has analytical and observational skills that surpass those of the typical conservative. She is acutely intelligent and a superb writer. Most average “conservatives” I have dubbed “CINOs” – Conservatives in Name Only – because like many political conservatives, they invariably endorse or side with the liberal/left welfare statists, in spite of their religious bent or allegiance to “traditions.”

For example, Speaker of the House John Boehner is a CINO, because other than being well-dressed, and wearing an American flag pin on his lapel, he is a closet liberal. Being well-dressed and flaunting a flag pin are traditions, not principles.

By half right I mean that Boehner, for example, will make a trenchant observation with which one can agree, but then, either explicitly or implicitly, his observation will be grounded on a religious norm or premise, or on tradition, or custom, or just an established and wholly secondary, often arbitrary “social rule,” and not on any rational criterion. In short, on a non-fundamental. Boehner said, about the bill sent to the Senate that would delay implementation of Obamacare for one year:

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/dc-dem-mayor-grants-cair-its-wish-proclaims-october-islamic-heritage-month?f=puball
WELL SEPTEMBER WAS ISLAMIC JIHAD MONTH IN AFRICA….RSK
D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gary issues proclamation honoring October as America’s Islamic Heritage Month

District of Columbia, October 1, 2013: America’s Islamic Heritage Museum (AIHM) announced, The Mayor of the District of Columbia issuing a Proclamation honoring the month of October as America’s Islamic Heritage month. This year is the eighth annual celebration of October as America’s Islamic Heritage month in the District. This year’s theme is “Connecting People Using Culture and History.”

The Mayor calls upon all the residents of this great City to join him in celebration and recognition of the history and contributions of the Islamic Community.

The Muslim communities throughout our region are encouraged to host open houses and educational events that highlight our diversity, contributions, and history. Our public schools are encouraged to learn about America’s rich Islamic history, to teach tolerance and understanding, and to visit AIHM museum.

H/T: Weasel Zippers

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/honey-they-shrunk-my-job ‘They said this would be a disaster in terms of jobs,” President Obama shouted on Thursday. “There is no widespread evidence that the Affordable Care Act is hurting jobs.” At least 30,377 Americans would beg to differ. During their new, Obamacare-generated non-working hours, they might observe that “no widespread evidence” is hardly a categorical […]

The appeasement policies of the 1930s were wildly popular at the time and for much the same reasons as appeasment of Syria and Iran are popular today. But the outcome was disaster http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4217/iran_and_the_lessons_of_chamberlain_s_appeasement The democratic countries of the world today may be heading towards a recurrence of a policy of appeasement — concessions made to […]

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4206/increasingly_bizarre_belarusian_dictator_now_bans_schoolchildren_from_clapping

Harvard University recently awarded the dictator of Belarus an alternative Nobel prize for mad dictatorial behaviour. That was before he banned school kids from clapping as a “dissident” activity

Fresh from receiving a Harvard University “idiocy” award, as the beleaguered Belarusian opposition billed it, for extraordinary behaviour, the dictator of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has gone one better, this time in a decree against schoolchildren.

Earlier in September, Harvard gave Lukashenko the so called Ig Nobel Prize for prosecuting a one-armed man for clapping disrespectfully against the regime.

Dissidents and student groups opposed to the regime have taken to using ostensibly legal means to express their dissatisfaction so as to avoid jail. This has included Facebook organised group clapping exercises as well as eating ice cream in public places. Both types of activities have attracted violent reprisals from the secret police, still known in the former Soviet republic as the KGB.

Thus far, this has only applied to adults.

However, according to the semi-independent news agency Belapan and opposition sources, last Friday schoolchildren in the town of Zhlobin were given strict instructions, against the threat of arrest, by the KGB not to clap during an end of Harvest Festival parade, for fear of offending Lukashenko who was due to visit the town the next day.

Belapan reported that KGB agents and riot police had taken up residence ahead of the event in classrooms which had been cleared of children. The children were allowed to wave Belarusian flags and the event passed off without incident.

Lukashenko, long decribed as Europe’s last dictator, has murdered numerous political opponents and imprisoned thousands more.

Harvard’s Ig Nobel Prizes are parodies of the originals, with Ig standing for “ignoble.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/10/putin_vs_the_arctic_sunrise.html Following the pattern established by the USSR, the despotic regime of proud KGB spy Vladimir Putin has declared war on every aspect of society that does not conform to Putin’s bland, homogenized orthodoxy. Homosexuals, artists, opposition political leaders, and environmentalists have all been jailed following disgraceful neo-Soviet show trials designed to purge Russia of […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/serving-our-government-masters/print/ There was a time when even the highest government officials lived simpler lives. President George Washington made do with Tobias Lear, who not only served as his secretary, but also doubled as a diplomat and even measured his body for burial. President Thomas Jefferson made do with Meriwether Lewis as his personal secretary and […]