RUTHFULLY YOURS

“First, do no harm” sounds nice, but contrary to legend, it is not part of the Hippocratic Oath, one of the oldest binding documents in history. Hippocrates invoked the medical deities Apollo and Hygeia for physicians to treat the ill to the best of their ability; to respect privacy; to teach the next generation; to guard the ill from harm and injustice; to remember obligations to all infirmed regardless of their soundness of body and mind. This oath is still sacred to the medical profession, and, in general, it is adhered to by physicians throughout the world.

Although FIMA, the International Federation of Islamic Medical Associations states, “Islamic Medicine is defined as the art of practice of medicine in the service of humanity under Islamic guidelines as ordained in the divine book al-Qu’ran and taught by the Prophet Muhammad.” ….and In discussing Islamic medical ethics: “a physician derives his conclusions from rules of Islamic laws (Shar’iah) and Moslem medical ethics.” The site goes on to state their four basic principles: respect for the autonomy of the patient; beneficence; no malfeasance and “distributive justice.”

Oh well that has not come to America yet.

However if you follow the dots on Obamacare, the bureaucrats have taken the hypocritical oath. The irony is that the subsidies for insurance will provide a form of “Medicaid”- the choice will be to pay higher rates or be herded into programs that will send patients back to the bad old days that prompted Medicare- hospital emergency rooms which will turn away most patients except those brought in an ambulance; “triage” where receptionists will decide who gets medical treatment; perfunctory ward care by understaffed and under qualified and under paid staffers; lack of access to costly but critically needed laboratory and high tech diagnostic testing.

Seniors beware! The worst is still to come.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/fact-democrats-and-the-jfk-legend/print/ The mythologizing of John F. Kennedy in the 50 years since his death has verified the adage in John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” The JFK legend recycled all these years is of a liberal icon, the glamorous martyr whose violent death has validated and sanctified big government, redistributive economic polices, […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/when-obama-said-hes-sorry/

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by an All-Star Cast: Ann-Marie Murrell, National Director of PolitiChicks.tv, Basil Hoffman, a Hollywood Actor (“The Artist”) and Monty Morton, a Conservative Entrepreneur.

The Gang gathered to discuss The Haunting Design of ObamaCare, shedding light on the president’s true morbid objectives in implementing his health care plan.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4061/spain-military-islamic-radicals An investigation initiated by the American CIA and FBI in 2009 revealed that at least 100 Islamic extremists had infiltrated the U.S. military, and that some of these individuals had been in touch with Islamic radicals who had infiltrated military units in Spain, as well as Britain, France and Germany. The military is an […]

http://pjmedia.com/blog/obamas-poll-panic/?print=1 For the White House, November has been the cruelest month, with increasing worry among Democrats that a year from now could mean another midterm electoral disaster, similar to the results in 2010 when Republicans picked up over 60 House seats to gain control and netted six Senate seats as well. Each day produces a […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/364506/ghosts-november-mark-steyn

Aside from the music, I haven’t anything to say about the Kennedy anniversary I haven’t said on previous anniversaries. A decade ago, I wrote:

History is selective. We remember moments, and, because that moment in Dallas blazes so vividly, everything around it fades to a gray blur. So here, from the archives, is an alternative 40th anniversary from November 1963:

8 a.m. Nov. 2: Troops enter a Catholic church in Saigon and arrest two men. They’re tossed into the back of an armored personnel carrier and driven up the road a little ways to a railroad crossing. The M-113 stops, the pair are riddled with bullets and their mutilated corpses taken to staff HQ for inspection by the army’s commanders. One of the deceased is Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of South Vietnam. The other is Ngo Dinh Nhu, his brother and chief adviser.

Back in the White House, President Kennedy gets the cable and is stunned. When Washington had given tacit approval to the coup, the deal was that Diem was supposed to be offered asylum in the United States. But something had gone wrong. I use “gone wrong” in the debased sense in which a drug deal that turns into a double murder is said to have “gone wrong.”

Kennedy had known Diem for the best part of a decade. If he felt bad about his part in the murder of an ally, he didn’t feel bad for long: Within three weeks, he too was dead. Looked at coolly, there seems something faintly ridiculous about cooing dreamily over the one brief shining moment of a slain head of state who only a month earlier had set in motion the events leading to the slaying of another head of state.

Two presidents died that November, but the mawkish parochialiasm of the Camelot cult has obliterated the fact that the second bore responsibility for the death of the first. No “eternal flame” for Diem, just an unmarked grave. He’s the Mary Jo Kopechne of the autumn of 1963, unhelpful to the myth: “What goes around comes around” doesn’t have quite the same ring as “one brief shining moment.”

Unless you’re a Vietnam scholar, you won’t remember the pros and cons of an anti-Diem coup as argued in Washington through the summer and fall of 1963. They barely made sense at the time, and Kennedy’s bewildered reaction to the Buddhist unrest earlier that year sums up the administration’s grasp of the situation: “Who are these people?” he said. “Why didn’t we know about them before?” “Big Minh,” the general who led the coup, lasted two months before he was overthrown by another general. He moved to Thailand, where the American taxpayer picked up his tab, including for some expensive dental work.

As Ho Chi Minh observed, “I can scarcely believe the Americans would be so stupid.” There was certainly a presidential-assassination conspiracy afoot in the US in the fall of 1963. In Washington. But all that drivel about Dallas-the-city-of-right-wing-hate is more flattering to American liberalism’s self-image.

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/364568/print If the Republicans can’t fight wars and the Democrats stink at socializing medicine, what good are they? That would not be an altogether unreasonable question for a typical American today. No doubt spokesmen for the respective political parties would offer all sorts of objections to that summation. And many of those objections would be […]

Unprovoked attacks by youth looking to do nothing except inflict pain have become an urban tradition.

As a 78-year-old woman walked down the street in Brooklyn, carrying her purse and bags, a young black male, about 20 years old, punched her in the head as hard as he could and ran away. The man said nothing and didn’t steal a single item.

This is one of the latest instances of “Knockout,” a “game” of evidently increasing popularity. Young people — sometimes female but usually male, predominantly black, in their teens to early 20s, in groups or alone — approach unsuspecting strangers and punch them in the head as hard as possible with the intention to knock them unconscious with a single blow. Sometimes the aggressors will rob the victim, but usually violence itself is the purpose of the attack. Some of the attackers have even recorded videos of their exploits.

At various times and places, the “game” has been called “Knockout,” “Knockout King,” “One-Hitter-Quitter,” “Pick ’Em Out and Knock ’Em Down,” “Knock ’Em and Drop ’Em,” and “Polar-Bear Hunting” (most likely in reference to whites). The attacks are unprovoked and often happen in broad daylight.

They can be deadly.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304644104579190040605212378?mod=Opinion_newsreel_6
God Delivered the Pilgrims—and My People
Thanksgiving always had particular resonance for one group of religious freedom-seekers.

The once-in-a-lifetime convergence of Thanksgiving Day with the first day of Hanukkah has inspired culinary fusions like deep-fried turkey, song parodies and clever T-shirts. One enterprising lad has even invented the “Menurkey”: a menorah (candelabrum) in the shape of a turkey. Humor aside, one group of American Jews—the members of New York’s Congregation Shearith Israel —have reason to find in this year’s calendrical happenstance a source both of institutional memory and of profound pride. Of all American synagogues, Shearith Israel has been celebrating both Hanukkah and Thanksgiving from the very beginning.

As with the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, the origins of Shearith Israel trace back to a small group of religious freedom-seekers and a treacherous ocean passage to the New World. In September 1654, 23 Jews set sail from Recife, Brazil, where the Portuguese Inquisition had made practicing Judaism impossible. Intending to return to Europe but captured by pirates mid-voyage, they gave themselves up for lost—until, as a congregational history puts it, “God caused a savior to arise unto them, the captain of a French ship arrayed for battle, and he rescued them out of the hands of the outlaws . . . and conducted them until they reached the end of the inhabited earth called New Holland.”

Once arrived safely in New Holland, better known as New Amsterdam, the refugees formed the first Jewish community in North America. From the start, they remained loyal to their faith: praying together, ensuring the availability of kosher meat, and observing their holidays. For these individuals, the symbolism of lighting the Hanukkah candles in the dark of winter must have been especially resonant, at one with the dawning presence of Judaism in the New World.

At the beginning of the 18th century, Shearith Israel—the name means “the remnant of Israel”—was importing its clergy from Europe. But by 1768, it was ready to hire its first American-born minister, Gershom Mendes Seixas. And it is here that the story of Shearith Israel becomes forever intertwined with the story of Thanksgiving—and of America.

The ‘Spy’ Who Fooled the EPA
Under deep CIA cover at the Office of Air and Radiation.

The Environmental Protection Agency wants to be the nation’s super-regulator, though it might first try to regulate its own employees. At least the ones pretending to be James Bond.

The Department of Justice in late September announced a plea agreement with John C. Beale, until recently a senior career employee at EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. Beale, 64, has admitted to devoting most of his 23-year career to bilking taxpayers of some $900,000 in pay and expenses. “Saturday Night Live” couldn’t come up with this story.

Information released by law enforcement, and details from an investigation by Louisiana Senator David Vitter, show that the fraud began when Beale stated in his 1989 EPA job application that he’d worked for the U.S. Senate, though there is no record of such employment. By 1994 Beale was claiming he was a CIA operative to justify prolonged absences. Apparently this raised no eyebrows at EPA.