RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/01/08/Book-Review-High-Noon-for-America-The-Coming-Showdown

PLEASE ALSO READ: RUTH KING: INTERVIEW AND REVIEW OF HIGH NOON FOR AMERICA-THE COMING SHOWDOWN

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/a-review-of-high-noon-for-america-the-coming-showdown-by-jamie-glazov
With Obama now heading into his second term and clearly intent on giving the Middle East away to Islamists and allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate his own administration, a new book has arrived to diagnose this dire situation and offer potential remedies that Americans can apply.

Dr. Jamie Glazov’s High Noon For America: The Coming Showdown dissects how and why this administration is severely undermining American national interests and leaving us vulnerable to penetration and attack. In so doing, High Noon is an extremely relevant read, since it underscores exactly what is flawed with Obama’s foreign policy and what policies must be adopted for America to regain its security.

It is not often that one comes across a book like High Noon, consisting solely of symposia. And it is rarer still to find a work of this kind that contains so many absorbing, profound and thought-provoking ones. But Dr. Glazov, who serves as the editor of David Horowitz’s Frontpagemag.com, has accomplished this feat in this, his latest tome. In High Noon, there are 28 symposia, divided into eight sections. They cover topics ranging from the war in the Middle East and Islamic radicalism to the former Soviet Union and its current incarnation, the question of America’s decline, and even a discussion on faith. Soon after opening the book, the reader perceives that it is permeated with an undercurrent and concern for freedom, both for societies and individuals. And like a philosopher-journalist, Glazov guides these profound discussions with a sure touch as the symposia’s moderator, skilfully handling an immense mass of detail.

Besides his position as FrontPage editor, which keeps him in constant connection with the critical and ominous issues facing America, as well as Western civilization today, Glazov’s other qualifications make him well-suited for producing a work of such admirably conceived and deeply interesting symposia. He holds a Ph.D in history with specialties in U.S., Russian and Canadian foreign policy. He is also the author of the critically-acclaimed United In Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny and Terror, in which he documents the Western Left’s alliance with radical Islam. And lastly, as regards High Noon’s undertone of freedom, as the son of Soviet dissidents who fled to safety to the United States, Glazov possesses an instinctive understanding of this unassailable virtue (in the book’s acknowledgements, Glazov writes poignantly about how the family’s flight to America saw him, at age 5, cut off forever from his beloved grandmother).

As attractive as the topics are, the real strength of this singularly important book, and its chief selling point, lies in the outstanding and independent-thinking intellectuals, many of them experts in their fields, that Glazov has assembled to dissect the important and relevant issues presented. Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky and Lt. Gen. Ion Pacepa, a top security official in Ceausescu’s Romania before defecting to the United States, Nonie Darwish and Robert Spencer, both acknowledged experts on Islam, and Robert “Bud” McFarlane, Ronald Reagan’s national security advisor, to name only a few, all help make High Noon For America an intellectually stimulating book of high order and a work of substance.

In ‘The Shadow of the KGB’ symposium, for example, Pacepa succinctly describes the political process in Russia after 1991 that led to the appearance of Putin’s KGB regime as “…like democratizing Germany with Gestapo officers at its helm.” Continuing on that theme, David Satter, a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute, warns that a KGB-dominated Russian government will not only lead “to an aggressive and unpredictable Russian foreign policy,” it will cause “an intellectual and moral stagnation that makes Russia the scene of possible future horrors.”

http://www.american.com/archive/2013/january/we-are-the-98-percent/
The only way to finance a big European-style state is to have it paid for by massive taxation of everyone, mostly the middle class. Right now, we are avoiding honest debate on this fact.
The central issue of our time is the debate over the size and scope of government. Two unpleasant but undeniable mathematical truths limit the feasible policy choices. The recent sound and fury of the fiscal cliff follies in the end signified nothing because the resolution was in fact just a denial of both truths.

The first truth is that the current tax rates cannot support the promises made to middle-class Americans. The most unaffordable items in fiscal projections are Social Security for everyone and government-sponsored health care for the middle class. You cannot preserve these even with Draconian slashing of military, infrastructure, welfare, education, and other expenditures.

The second truth is that you cannot pay for the Life of Julia, or any vision of a cradle-to-grave welfare state, without massive and increasingly regressive middle-class taxes. The poor don’t have the money to pay for a European-style welfare state, and the rich, rich as they are, don’t have anywhere near enough.

Not only that, it’s easy to tax middle-class assets and transactions — things like payrolls, sales, and real estate — but soaking the rich means taxing investments. Investments are complicated and can be restructured to minimize taxes. Also, investments are the lifeblood of economic growth. Raising significantly more taxes from the rich also requires higher marginal tax rates — and their rates are already quite high. High marginal rates distort the economy and yield less revenue than anticipated because they increase the rewards for legal and illegal tax avoidance.

That’s not to say it’s impossible to get more money from the rich, but it’s tricky and past attempts have typically been less effective than forecast and often counterproductive. Moreover, even under the most optimistic assumptions, taxes on the rich — or taxes on businesses, financial transactions, or anything else aimed at the rich (and often hitting others) — will still not cover a large fraction of the costs of a European-style welfare state. Ask the Europeans — they’ve tried it all and failed.

Even under the most optimistic assumptions, taxes on the rich will still not cover a large fraction of the costs of a European-style welfare state.

To be in our political center today, you have to deny both these truths and pretend that if we sharpen our pencils and make a bunch of wildly optimistic assumptions, we can close a few tax loopholes, cut some waste from spending, and maybe nudge upper-income tax rates up a little, and continue merrily on the same big-and-growing-bigger government path without unfortunate consequences. This is a “balanced approach,” as it ignores both mathematical truths equally, but the denial of clear reality means this approach is doomed to fail.

Surprisingly, many progressive pundits are moving away from their traditional complaint that America’s tax code is too regressive, favoring the rich. They are starting to tell us, albeit only after an election mainly contested on these issues, the truth: to fund the European-style social welfare state which they advocate, we must tax everyone more.

For example, Ezra Klein, blogging for the Washington Post on December 7th, writes, “The need for tax receipts to grow underscores the necessity of finding an efficient way to collect them. Experts say that should include tax reform and new tax sources that take the pressure off the income tax, such as a value added tax or a carbon tax.”

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3194 The Democrats control the U.S. Senate, having increased their majority in the 2012 elections from 53-47 to 55-45. Twelve of the 55 Democrats are Jewish, including Brian Schatz, recently appointed by Hawaii’s Governor to complete the term of the late Senator Daniel Inouye. That number stands to rise as former Congressman Barney Frank of […]

Rayburn House Office Building
Room B-338

January 17th, 12 p.m-1:30 p.m

The Endowment for Middle East Truth invites you to join us for a deep-dive into the geopolitics of the Middle East and Israel’s security, as Mark Langfan presents, “A Helicopter Ride Over Israel and Her Neighboring States, Without the Helicopter.” Mark Langfan, an expert on Israeli security needs, will present his renowned 3D topographical map of Israel and the neighboring region, and discuss how the geography of the land, including elevation, location of water resources, population locations and density, and other crucial elements informs the reality of the Arab-Israel conflict.

Additionally, Mark will discuss the current status of Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons, and the role played by Iran’s hegemonic ambitions in a changing Middle East.

Mark Langfan is a noted security analyst who in 1991 created a 3 dimensional topographic raised-relief map system of Israel. Viewing the 3D Israel map one can easily and quickly be informed of many of the underlying resource and security issues involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict such as West Bank water resources and Israeli ‘defensible’ borders. Over the past 20 years, Mark has briefed many Congressional and Senate offices, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Israel Desk, and the New York Times Editorial Board using his topographic map of Israel. Mark wrote and published seminal articles concerning the Israeli/Middle East region including the 1992 “Demilitarization Risks” warning of future Palestinian Katyusha rocket barrages from vacated Israeli territory, the 1995 “US Troops on Golan Quicksand” warning of the unique topographic dangers of deploying US Troops to the Golan Heights, and the 2006 “Iran: The 4th Reichastan” exposing the Iranian arming of Iraqi Insurgents against US forces, and of Iran’s other regional and strategic goals.

http://www.climatedepot.com/a/19066/Claims-of-Warmest-Year-For-Continental-US-Less-than-2-of-Earths-Surface-Ignore-Global-Temperature-Trend
Leading German Daily Declares: ‘Global Warming Has Stopped’, Questions IPCC Models It took them 15 years to notice it: CO2 is not driving the climate’
NOAA Claim: 2012 was warmest year ever for US, second most ‘extreme’

Reality Check: Meteorologist Joe Bastardi: ‘If you used the stations used in 1930s — in other words –measured temps today with what we used in 1930s, it is not warmest year on record’ –‘We have many more stations and so many, many more records that can be broken over shorter time spans. US is only 2% of the globe that’s only .04 above’

Meteorologist Joe Bastardi: ‘Since we are going to tout US warmth ( 2% of globe) lets look at that global temp trend shall we?’

Dr. Judith A. Curry said 2012 GLOBAL avg. temps will not set a record — 2011 will probably be 8th warmest. ‘Natural variability continues to dominate the occurrence of extreme weather events’

New Report: ‘Extreme Weather Report 2012’: ‘Latest peer-reviewed studies, data & analyses undermine claims that current weather is ‘unprecedented’ or a ‘new normal’

Leading German Daily Announces: ‘Global Warming Has Stopped’, Questions IPCC Models It took them 15 years to notice it: CO2 is not driving the climate — ‘German online daily Hamburger Abendblatt here has a story titled: Global Warming Takes A Break, citing the leaked copy of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, which is due to be released in September, 2013’

UK Daily Mail: ‘GLOBAL warming is NOT as bad as feared’: Met Office under fire as it claims Earth’s temperature is rising more slowly than first thought (and could even have stalled) — ‘Global warming is not causing temperatures to rise as quickly as previously feared, the Met Office has claimed. Today the weather agency released its revised forecast which was quickly seized upon by climate change skeptics who used the data to claim global warming has stopped’

BBC: A new global temperature forecast ‘has scaled back projections of the amount of warming they expect’ — ‘The UK Met Office explained that the leveling off of global temperatures that we were experiencing can be expected at time periods of a decade or less, because of the computer models internal climate variability. But intriguingly, the research ruled out zero trends for time periods of 15 years or more. The new projection, if correct, would mean there will have been little additional warming for two decades despite rising greenhouse gases’

The other big story today: BBC forced to admit global warming ‘static’: ‘Forecast for warming revised downward’ — ‘The UK Met Office has revised one of its forecasts for how much the world may warm in the next few years’

Dr. David Whitehouse of Global Warming Policy Foundation on global temps: ‘We are at the point where the temperature standstill is becoming the dominant feature of the post-1980 warming’ ‘…and as such cannot be dismissed as being unimportant even when viewed over 30 years. ‘It is time that the scientific community in general and the IPCC in particular acknowledged the reality of the global temperature standstill and the very real challenge it implies for our understanding of climate change and estimates of its future effects’

AP warmist reporter Seth Borenstein cranks the hype meter to 12: In describing an average temperature of 55.32 degrees F, uses words like ‘superhot’ and ‘roasts’

Meteorologist discovers U.S. government announcing records before all data analyzed; ‘warmest ever’ July not true — Meteorologist Anthony Watts announced on Sunday that he has discovered serious inconsistencies in the temperature data released to the public by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of NOAA. This finding is important since it reveals that the widely-reported assertion that July 2012 was the hottest month in the instrumental record for the contiguous U.S. is wrong’

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/steven-plaut/why-lifting-the-israeli-occupation-wont-stop-violence/ There seems to be a wide misconception that the Middle East conflict is complicated. In fact it is really rather simple. Indeed, one can basically summarize and explain the entire conflict within the context of the words “occupation” or “occupied territories” and with respect to beliefs about the effects of such “occupation.” Let me […]

http://www.mythsandfacts.org/article_view.asp?articleID=253 To whom did the Obama administration grant permission to fly the Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO] flag in Washington D.C.? The answer: Palestinian Arabs – A society whose overwhelming majority nurtures a blind hatred of Israel, and has created a cultural milieu of vengeance, violence and death. This organization, which has been directly responsible for […]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/opinion/chuck-hagel-under-attack-in-vietnam-and-on-capitol-hill.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130109&pagewanted=all

HAGEL’S IS A PERSUASIVE STORY OF COURAGE UNDER FIRE AND FAMILY LOVE…..BUT HOW MANY ARE THE DISASTROUS POLICIES ENFORCED BY MEN BRAVE IN BATTLE BUT POOR IN POLICY….THE GENERALS IN ISRAEL….RABIN AND BARAK SHEPHERDED THE DISASTROUS APPEASEMENT IN ISRAEL’S HISTORY…..GENERAL EISENHOWER AS PRESIDENT ENDED THE KOREAN WAR ON A STALEMATE THAT LEFT THE NATION DIVIDED AND HIS SPUTTERINGS ABOUT A “MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX” LED TO THE LARGEST DISARMAMENT LEAVING US VULNERABLE TO SOVIET AMBITIONS…AND THEN THERE IS JOHN McCAIN….ENOUGH SAID…..RSK

IT was a Frank Capra story with a Vietnam War twist. In 1968, a 21-year-old squad leader was riding shotgun on an armored personnel carrier when the Vietcong detonated a land mine. The soldier was on fire, his face a bubbling mass, his eardrums shattered and bleeding. Yet he instinctively reached for the unconscious 19-year-old turret gunner caught in the burning steel cage.

Frantically, he pulled out his comrade, who lay comatose, blood pouring out of his ears. The squad leader tugged at the dead weight and managed to throw him off, jumping down to shield him before the vehicle blew up. Later, at the field hospital, the squad leader asked about the soldier he had brought in, who only months before had saved him when he was felled by flying shrapnel.

“Your brother is alive,” the medic said, “on the bunk next to you.” In an amazing fluke, Chuck Hagel and his brother Tom fought side by side in a unit of 12. At times, because of casualties, the squad was reduced to just the two brothers and four other men. Now Mr. Hagel, a Republican former senator from Nebraska whom President Obama has nominated to be secretary of defense, faces another battle — as a maverick who was once a foot soldier in the conservative Congressional ranks. Attacks have come from hawkish former colleagues, pro-Israel advocates angered that Mr. Hagel once referred to them as “the Jewish lobby,” and gays offended by a 1998 reference to an ambassadorial nominee as “openly, aggressively gay,” a comment for which Mr. Hagel recently apologized.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3535/hagel-no-nukes-global-zero Generally it means that even the severely reduced number of warheads deployed in our arsenal would not — if they were needed in a crisis — be available for use. If that in fact took place — with countries hostile to the US having arsenals in excess of the US force — it would […]

www.TheEttingerReport.com Brennan and Hagel – Bolstering or Weakening US National Security? Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative” “Israel Hayom”, The US Senate vote on the nomination of John Brennan and Chuck Hagel to the positions of CIA Director and Defense Secretary, respectively, will shape US power projection and posture of deterrence, global […]