RUTHFULLY YOURS

It became clear to me on a recent trip that I was declining many offers to participate in various activities because of the inordinate demands of my hair. I either had to wash it, set it, fix it, or re-do it – so much so, that a friend suggested it was like travelling with an extra person. That revelation struck home: my hair was behaving like a moody adolescent and I not only had to tolerate it but accommodate it and give in to its bi-polar attitudes. On warm, sunny days, it simply sat down and refused to cooperate. On humid, windy days, it chose to give me that petulant frizz – the kind of spiteful behavior that mocks you with its arbitrariness. It said: I know there’s no reason for me to do this except to show that I can and you can’t do anything to stop me. And then sometimes, especially indoors in the evening, it was totally compliant and as easy to be with as an affectionate puppy who wants desperately to please. Of course I could choose to ignore it and often I did, only to come back to my hotel later to see it sitting on top of my head like a smashed slice of hair pie – with lumps and bumps where none had been noticed earlier. “Ignore me at your peril,” it said and laughed out loud.

It was on a day that I was determined to be the adult in this relationship that I arrived in Malta and chose to spend an hour sitting in the center of Valetta watching the local Malteds go about their quotidian tasks. It was some sort of school holiday and a constant stream of young mothers pushing strollers ambled by, sometimes accompanied by an older replica of the young woman – her mother. It soon became apparent that there was a prevailing body type on this island and that was a short legged, wide-midriffed endomorph with enormous pendulous breasts. They all seemed confident and comfortable in their skin. But wait a minute, I thought – What about the Mediterranean diet ?

Israel’s Economy Minister Bennett Schools CNN’s Amanpour Over Use of Term ‘Occupied Territories’ (VIDEO) Israel’s Economy Minister Naftali Bennett took CNN’s Christiane Amanpour to task in a tense television interview on Monday, objecting to the anchor’s insistence on referring to “occupied territories,” to which the leader of Israel’s Jewish Home party responded flatly, “One cannot occupy […]

CFACT unleashed its secret weapon today at the UN global warming conference in Warsaw, as Apollo Astronaut Walt Cunningham went toe-toe with global warming alarmists.

Walt was lunar module pilot on Apollo VII, the first manned Apollo mission. Along with Wally Schirra and Donn Eisele, he orbited the Earth 163 times. Interestingly, Walt won an Emmy award for making the first human television broadcast from space.

The professional warming crowd pitches a false consensus. They want the public to believe that the scientific debate is over and that all great minds think alike. CFACT readers know exactly the opposite to be true. The Astronauts who brought America to the moon took part in one of the pinnacles of human achievement. The selection process which vetted them, their courage, experience, training and precision are legendary. When they speak, attention must be paid.

CFACT held an official UN press briefing today at COP 19 featuring a powerful one-two punch. After Executive Director Craig Rucker made introductions, Marc Morano, who publishes CFACT’s Climate Depot news and information service, led off with Walt Cunningham batting cleanup.

Marc took dead aim at all the idle talk going about the COP raising the Philippines typhoon as a rationale to support the climate treaty. “Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda was not the most powerful typhoon to hit the Philippines in recent history,” Marc said, “it was the seventh worst.” 1970’s Typhoon Sening averaged 24 mph more powerful. The typhoon which hit the Philippines was not caused by the lavish lifestyle of ordinary Americans. As CFACT has asked before, “how high would the carbon tax have to have been to have prevented the typhoon?” That’s nonsense. Marc Morano released a Climate Depot special report which thoroughly debunks the typhoon-warming link.

The World Bank has a reputation for integrity and objective professional analysis which it’s new report calls into question.

When Israel vacated Gaza American Jewish donors had bought more than 3,000 greenhouses from Israeli settlers in Gaza for $14 million dollars and transferred them to the Palestinian Authority. Former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, who brokered the deal, put up $500,000 of his own cash. To show their gratitude and their commitment to peace, the Arabs looted, ransacked and destroyed evey single farm including seeds, tents, state of the art agricultural equipment and dwellings….rsk

A newly-released report issued by the World Bank’s office for the “occupied Palestinian territories” charges that “Israel’s occupation costs the Palestinian economy $3.4 billion each year.” That claim has certain logic. The more the PA gets, the greater their wealth; one side’s gain is the other’s loss. Tel Aviv would be better, but that also doesn’t belong to them.

The purpose of this report seems to be to raise economic and financial claims against Israel which imply deceit and theft, thereby shifting blame for the PA ’s problems to Israel.

To understand why the new report was issued, one must compare it with a more comprehensive World Bank report issued in 2012 which described the PA ’s economy as a failure, “unsustainable” – not so much because of Israeli security restrictions, but due to inherent flaws and rampant corruption within the PA itself.

The 2012 report, Towards Economic Sustainability of a Future Palestinian State: Promoting Private Sector-Led Growth, analyzed the PA economy critically, upsetting Palestinians and their supporters, and challenging their portrayal as victims of Israeli policies.

Who is Fethullah Gulen, and why does he want to teach San Diego’s kids? That’s a question some in the wake of a recently submitted application by Gulen’s followers to open their second public charter school in San Diego.

“Think of a combination of the Scientologists, the Moonies, and the Mafia. That’s what the Gulenists are like,” says Sharon Higgins. “They’re shady, nebulous, and very secretive. Very few Americans know that they’re behind all of these taxpayer-funded charter schools.”

Higgins, a former public school parent and self-described “parent activist” who lives in Oakland, has crafted a quasi-career tracking and chronicling the domestic activities of this Turkey-based group. She lays out the details: Over the past few years, the Gulen movement, an Islamic group that melds religion and politics, has succeeded in a stealth campaign to infiltrate the American educational system via the portal of the charter school. Among their goals, according to Higgins and other Gulen watchers, is fundraising for the Gulen movement in Turkey and the recruitment of future members.

Critics allege that Gulen public charter schools reject qualified American teachers, instead importing Turkish men via H-1B visas, which allow Americans to employ foreigners in “specialty” occupations. These non-union teachers are then paid salaries characterized as “inflated,” and are expected, in turn, to donate a substantial portion to the Gulen movement via a network of “charitable” foundations. There are also charges of sweetheart deals with local Gulen-owned businesses. Gulen U.S.A., say some, is no less than an intricately woven Turkish rug of deceit.

Operating under all-American monikers like “Magnolia Public Schools” and structured as tax-exempt not-for-profit entities, there are nearly 150 Gulen charter schools operating now in America, with around a dozen in California, including one in San Diego: Momentum Middle School in San Carlos. If the Gulenists have their way, San Diego Unified School District will host another Turk-centric schoolhouse when the Fall 2014 semester opens.

http://www.jta.org/2013/11/19/news-opinion/united-states/makovsky-joins-states-peace-team

David Makovsky, a scholar at a think tank with close ties
to the U.S. and Israeli governments, was named to the U.S. State Department’s
burgeoning Israeli-Palestinian peace-brokering team.

The news of Makovsky’s appointment was broken Monday by Al-Monitor, a Middle
East news website, and then confirmed by his employer, the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy, and a State Department official.

Makovsky will be a senior adviser to Martin Indyk, who leads the team.

He will be on leave from the Washington Institute, an influential outfit
that employs as experts top officials from past Republican and Democratic
administrations. The institute also has hosted an array of top Israelis as
guest scholars, as well as some from other Middle Eastern countries.

Indyk has expanded his team from two, when he assumed the post of top Middle
East negotiator in July, to eight.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/steven-plaut/the-kennedy-doctrine-vs-the-obama-doctrine/ When November comes around, it is hard not to remember the days of the John F. Kennedy administration, especially this year, the 50th anniversary of the assassination. But there now is an even more important reason why it behooves us to think back to those days. It is in order to understand the differences […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4059/athens-mosque

Opponents of the mosque argue that Greek taxpayers should not be footing the bill for this project at a time when their massively indebted country is dependent upon foreign aid just to stay afloat. The Greek government appears to be worried about thinly veiled threats of violence by thousands of residents in Athens who have been pressuring government ministers to meet their demands to build a mosque or face an uprising.

“It is a very big tragedy for us Muslims that there is no mosque here. Greece produced democracy and civilization and the respect of religion, but they don’t respect our Muslims to provide us with a regular, legal mosque.” — Syed Mohammed Jamil of the Pakistan-Hellenic Society

The Greek government has awarded a tender to build the first taxpayer-funded mosque in Athens, one of the few remaining capitals in the European Union that lacks a state-funded mosque.

The Ministry of Infrastructure, Transport and Networks said on November 14 that it had finally chosen a consortium of four construction companies to build the mosque. Four previous tenders had failed due to a lack of interest amid mounting public opposition to the mosque.

Construction of the 600 square meter (6,50…..

Opponents of the mosque argue that Greek taxpayers should not be footing the bill for this project at a time when their massively indebted country is dependent upon foreign aid just to stay afloat. The Greek government appears to be worried about thinly veiled threats of violence by thousands of residents in Athens who have been pressuring government ministers to meet their demands to build a mosque or face an uprising.

“It is a very big tragedy for us Muslims that there is no mosque here. Greece produced democracy and civilization and the respect of religion, but they don’t respect our Muslims to provide us with a regular, legal mosque.” — Syed Mohammed Jamil of the Pakistan-Hellenic Society

The Greek government has awarded a tender to build the first taxpayer-funded mosque in Athens, one of the few remaining capitals in the European Union that lacks a state-funded mosque.

The Ministry of Infrastructure, Transport and Networks said on November 14 that it had finally chosen a consortium of four construction companies to build the mosque. Four previous tenders had failed due to a lack of interest amid mounting public opposition to the mosque.

Stop worrying whether the president’s statements conform to ossified standards of truth.

What is the common denominator of the Obama administration’s serial scandals — the Justice Department’s spying on AP, the IRS targeting of conservative groups, the NSA surveillance, the lies about Benghazi and the ACA — and much of the White House damage-control rhetoric? In a word: the advancement of postmodern notions of justice at the expense of traditional truth.

By the 1980s, in law schools, university social-science departments, and the humanities in general, the old relativist idea of Plato’s noble lies was given a new French facelift. Traditional morality and ethics were dismissed as arbitrary constructs, predicated on privileged notions of race, class, and gender. The new moral architecture did not rely on archaic abidance by the niceties of “truth,” which simply reinforced traditional oppressive hierarchies.

Instead, social justice by definition transcended the sham of traditional ideas of truth and falsity. The true became the advocacy of fairness, while the real lie was the reactionary adherence to a set of oppressive norms. All this was faculty-lounge fluff, but soon it filtered out into the larger culture.

In this regard, it was understandable that the New York Times characterized the president’s not telling the truth on over 20 occasions as cases of “misspeaking.” Translated, that means he lied but his lies were really true: Misspeaking means that Obama was not sensitive enough to those of us still mired in calcified definitions of true and false. The privileged still cross t’s and dot i’s; their victims have no such luxury.

Earlier, Obama himself had falsely claimed that he had never stated that Americans would not lose either their health insurance or their doctors, and would not pay more for their new coverage (e.g., “If you had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed” [emphasis added]). But so what?

What does it matter whether Obama had never once added the qualifier “if it hasn’t changed since the law passed,” so long as he (or rather “we”?) had wanted to say it, and if saying it now enhances a progressive program? What difference does it make whether the president of the United States has lied about his earlier lies — given his consistently noble intent?

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/27-democratic-senators-who-promised-you-could-keep-your-health-coverage http://washingtonexaminer.com/27-democratic-senators-who-promised-you-could-keep-your-health-coverage/article/2539245 President Obama has taken a lot of heat for promising that if Americans liked the health coverage that they had before Obamacare, they would be able to keep it under the new law. But the president wasn’t the only Democrat in Washington who made that false promise. Many, many other Democratic officeholders said […]