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November 2013

What The $17 Trillion Debt Really Means — on The Glazov Gang

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/to-lie-for-obamacare-on-the-glazov-gang/

The Glazov Gang was joined by titans Mell Flynn, a Hollywood actress and the president of the Hollywood Congress of Republicans, Kai Chen, a former basketball star on the Chinese national team and the author of One in a Billion, and Monty Morton, a Conservative Entrepreneur and walking Encyclopedia of Economics.

The Gang gathered to discuss What The $17 Trillion Debt Really Means. The discussion occurred in Part II (starts at the 3:55 mark) and focused on the frightening catastrophe the Obama administration is cooking up for us. The segment also shed light on ObamaCare’s Dirty Little Secret, Mao’s Kitchen in Los Angeles and Sean Penn’s Call for Ted Cruz and Tea Party Members to be Institutionalized:

Part II:

DANIEL GREENFIELD: MAX BLUMENTHAL GOES MAD OVER ISRAEL

“What Max Blumenthal brings to the table in Goliath is not journalism, but uncompromising hatred for Israel. In a media environment where every fake “Jew Stones Dog” story goes to the top of the heap, the fake journalists like Max can only distinguish themselves by setting aside the pretenses of journalism.”

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/max-goes-mad-over-israel/print/

In 1948, The Nation featured a column about the growing conflict between Israel and the Arab powers which warned that “The strength of the [Arab] league is based on the suppression of all progressive movements and civil rights at home”

That was then.

Now The Nation Institute has decided to publish Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, a book which the magazine’s own reviewer, Eric Alterman, no friend of Israel, wrote could have been published by the “Hamas Book-of-the-Month Club.”

But not all the reviews were bad.

Glenn Greenwald, who defended Hamas, called it, “eye-opening and stunningly insightful.” Stephen Walt, who claimed that the Jews controls America (in a thesis he originally published in the house organ of the Saudi Lobby), wished Blumenthal could write for the New York Times.

Charles Glass, who once wrote that “Gaddafi could learn much about crowd control from Israel’s security forces”, praised it; as did Charles H. Manekin, who has written that boycotting the Jewish State “may be the best hope for liberal Zionists who haven’t given in entirely to ethnic loyalties.”

Goliath should be recommended to liberals who haven’t “given in” to their shameful ethnic loyalties and know that Israel is worse than Gaddafi, Hamas and Assad put together and must be boycotted to within an inch of its life (a policy popularized by the Arab League and Saudi Lobby). It not only makes a great Nakba present, but can also be wrapped in a brick and tossed through the window of a Jewish store.

The perfect target audience for Goliath would be The Finkler Question’s Merton Kugle who “had ruined his spine and all but worn out his eyes” searching for racist Israeli goods at the supermarket to boycott and had taken to shoplifting Israeli produce and carrying it around in his coat pockets until it rotted.

Kugle may be fictional, but his real-life counterparts make up most of the small numbers of protesters denouncing Israel, alongside younger recruits from various campus Communist societies. Their academic careers create the illusion that they represent some larger consensus outside their airless rooms where they debate how to best destroy a country that they know, despite their hate, will outlive them.

MATTHEW VADUM:YES VIRGINIA! THE GOP ESTABLISHMENT RUINED CUCCINELLI’S CHANCES

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/11/yes_virginia_the_gop_establishment_did_stick_a_shiv_in_ken_cuccinelli.html

Reagan conservative Ken Cuccinelli lost his bid for the Virginia governorship because the patrician, turf-protecting Republican Party establishment in his state wanted him to lose.

It’s really that simple.

Cuccinelli campaign strategist Chris La Civita suggested on election night Tuesday that the federal government’s partial shutdown last month may have hurt his candidate in parts of Virginia where many federal employees and contractors live.

He also suggested that Cuccinelli could have won if he had received more money from national GOP sources, which he said dried up as of Oct. 1.

“There are a lot of questions people are going to be asking and that is, was leaving Cuccinelli alone in the first week of October, a smart move?” La Civita said. “We were on our own. Just look at the volume [of ads].”

Cuccinelli lost by a mere 2.5 percentage points in a state that until somewhat recently had been solidly Republican. Even with Cuccinelli’s various tactical mistakes (and there were many), it is still very difficult to believe that the GOP machine couldn’t have gotten another fifty-odd thousand voters to the polls to support him if it really wanted to.

Predictably, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who won re-election comfortably on Tuesday, refused to lift a finger to help his vulnerable fellow Republican in Virginia. Even with mountains of cash, Christie had no electoral coattails, which is not exactly a resume-builder for a presidential candidate.

THE WORST IS YET TO COME: JAMES TARANTO

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303763804579181924168682210?mod=trending_now_2

There probably isn’t time to mitigate the ObamaCare debacle.

The ObamaCare debacle carries the name of the president and the face of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the highest-ranking official subject to congressional oversight. Sebelius was on Capitol Hill again today, testifying before the Senate Finance Committee. She assured the Democrat-run panel that “repairs are under way on the most serious [technical] problems” afflicting the federal insurance exchange, The Wall Street Journal reports. Such problems, she claimed, number “a couple of hundred.”
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Little Miss Disaster Associated Press

The exchange was supposed to be functional at the beginning of October. The administration now promises it will be by the end of November. Sebelius’s assurances strained the credulity even of Chairman Max Baucus, who cast the deciding vote to pass ObamaCare in December 2009. “It has been disappointing to hear members of the administration say they didn’t see problems coming,” Baucus told Sebelius today. “We heard multiple times that everything was on track. We now know that was not the case.” In April Baucus famously told Sebelius “he saw ‘a huge train wreck coming down,’ ” a statement that proved to be an outrageous slander against train wrecks.

The administration’s decision to cut itself two months’ slack raises two questions: Can it keep the new promise, and what happens in December?

The Problem with Pay-As-You-Go Social Programs: They’re Ponzi Schemes Charles Hugh Smith

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-problem-with-pay-as-you-go-social-programs-theyre-ponzi-schemes

Ignoring the facts won’t help us address the insolvency of pay-as-you-go social programs.

I was fortunate enough to be invited back on Max Keiser’s Keiser Report for a wide-ranging discussion of Peak Retirement, currency wars and more. Since the topics Max raises are profound and not always that easy to summarize (if there is another media host who covers complex topics in such profusion and with such a diverse range of guests, he/she is unknown to me), I’m devoting the next few blog entries to offer context for the topics Max and I discussed.

Max’s first question related to my entry on Peak Retirement (October 15, 2013) in which I showed that the ratio of full-time workers to Social Security beneficiaries has dropped to 2-to-1.

Canada’s Growing Islamic Radicalization a Warning Sign by ABIGAIL R. ESMAN

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/canadas-growing-islamic-radicalization-a-warning-sign#ixzz2jxCm69PW

The man who calls himself Abu Muslim sits with his fellow fighters, members of the group Katiba al Muhajireen, and raises his rifle for the camera. He has come to Aleppo to fight, he tells the man who has come to interview him for Britain’s Channel 4. A Muslim convert, he – like some 100 others joining the jihad in Syria’s civil war – has left his family at home. In Canada.

The United States’ neighbor to the north is experiencing a radicalization problem, according to a confidential report by the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS). Made public earlier this year through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Canada’s National Post, the report confirms that “Islamist extremists are now radicalizing Canadians at a large number of venues,” ranging from mosques to dinner parties and even the family home.

“Parents have radicalized children, husbands have radicalized wives (and some wives have radicalized or supported their husbands,” the study’s authors contend, “and siblings have radicalized each other.”

Indeed, according to one assessment cited by the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), “with the exception of the United States, there are more terrorist groups active in Canada today than in any other country in the world.” And while most of their activity is based abroad, a study published earlier this year by the International Institute for Counterterrorism (IIC) shows that 25 individuals have developed or been involved in four plots against Canadian targets since 2006. Of these, eight were Canadian born; three were converts to Islam; and 20 – nearly all – were between the ages of 18 and 35. Most were affiliated with al-Qaida. Among them:

VICTOR SHARPE: OBAMASCARE-A LAMENTATION

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/obamascare-a-lamentation-for-the-beloved-land?f=must_reads “Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, is obsolete. “It has existed in the past, it is here in the present, and will, alas, be there in the future. “The all-powerful state is not a new world that has never existed before. On […]

EXCELLENT ANALYSIS OF HILLARY CLINTON’S “CREDENTIALS” BY DICK MORRIS

http://turnovertherock.livejournal.com/125227.html

AN ANALYSIS WORTH READING:
by Dick Morris, former political adviser to President Bill Clinton

If you happen to see the Bill Clinton five minute TV ad for Hillary in which he introduces the commercial by saying …
he wants to share some things we may not know about Hillary’s background . .
beware as I was there for most of their presidency and know them better than just about anyone, I offer a few corrections;

Bill says: “In law school Hillary worked on legal services for the poor.”
The facts are: Hillary’s main extra-curricular activity in law school was helping the Black Panthers, on trial in Connecticut for torturing and killing a federal agent.
She went to court every day as part of a law student monitoring committee trying to spot civil rights violations and develop grounds for appeal.

Bill says: “Hillary spent a year after graduation working on a children’s rights project for poor kids.”
The facts are: Hillary interned with Bob Truehaft, the head of the California Communist Party.
She met Bob when he represented the Panthers and traveled all the way to San Francisco to take an internship with him.

Bill says: “Hillary could have written her own job ticket, but she turned down all the lucrative job offers.”
The facts are: She flunked the DC bar exam, yes, flunked, it is a matter of record, and only passed the Arkansas bar.
She had no job offers in Arkansas , none, and only got hired by the University of Arkansas Law School at Fayetteville because Bill was already teaching there.
She did not join the prestigious Rose Law Firm until Bill became Arkansas Attorney General and was made a partner only after he was elected Arkansas Governor.

The Emerging Identity of Israeli Philanthropy by Frayda Leibtag

http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/the-emerging-identity-of-israeli-philanthropy/?utm_source=Wed+Nov+6&utm_campaign=Wed+Nov+6&utm_medium=email

[This article is the first in a series on Israeli philanthropy. The series will cover topics including Israeli initiatives to promote a culture of giving, corporate philanthropy and trends in Israeli philanthropy.]

by Frayda Leibtag

The good news is that Israeli philanthropy is gaining momentum and is on the rise. The bad news is that giving in Israel is still very low compared to global standards. According to a 2011 study conducted by the Center for the Studies of Philanthropy in Israel at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, philanthropy in Israel represents 0.74% of the GDP, compared to 2.1% in the United States. The proportion of Israeli philanthropy from households and businesses rose from 33% in 2006 to 38% in 2009 and the proportion of philanthropic funds from abroad (primarily the United States) declined from 67% in 2006 to 62% in 2009. Along with the decrease in Diaspora giving came a challenge from Diaspora philanthropists to wealthy Israelis to give more and an expectation that Israeli nonprofits should raise more money in Israel and from Israelis. Yet in 2011, only 4% of donations in Israel were from affluent Israelis giving more than NIS 100,000 out of their own pockets, out of an estimated 10,000 individuals with the means to do so.

Historically and culturally, Israelis are not “givers,” at least not in the classic philanthropic sense. Israel was founded on a socialist ethos, according to which the government was expected to take care of citizens’ needs. The Zionist enterprise was largely built with funding from abroad, with the expectation that the Israelis would roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty while Diaspora Jews would write the checks. These legacies have an enormous impact on the type of giving occurring in Israel today.

In the United States, giving is encouraged through generous tax benefits. In comparison, in Israel, there is a lack of philanthropy-conducive tax incentives combined with high individual and corporate taxes. Alongside the financial incentives for giving in the U.S. is the reality that many American philanthropists are the second and third generations of affluent families who have been raised with the ethic that with wealth comes the responsibility to give back. They were born into an American culture of philanthropy that is based on tradition and professionalism. In contrast, much of Israel’s economic elite is newly wealthy and the culture of giving is not prevalent among the affluent. Many Israelis have simply not been educated to give. Compulsory army service and the high income taxes in Israel also leave many citizens with the feeling that they have already paid their dues to the country.

Islam: The Foundation of the Middle East Conflict by Jerrold L. Sobel

  As we approach the 4th month and 14th meeting between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), the latest round of U.S. pressured negotiations seem hopelessly deadlocked.  What else is new?   Secretary of State Kerry arrived in Jerusalem yesterday to try and resuscitate the perpetually moribund peace talks between Israel and the PLO.  According […]