RUTHFULLY YOURS

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“January is here, with eyes that glow,A frost-mailed warrior Striding a shadowy steed of snow.” Edgar Fawcett (1847-1902)
The first of January can be seen as the day to celebrate the American Bar Association’s (ABA) “Full Employment Act.” Fifty-five tax breaks expired at the end of December, but lawyer-lobbyists will of course be out in force getting them re-instated. New taxes went into effect on January 1, including a flat 2% tax on all health insurers, which is expected to raise $8 billion to help offset costs of ObamaCare. There was a $2.00 per policy fee that will fund a new federal bureaucracy called the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute and a 3.5% user fee to sell health plans on the HealthCare.gov website. These taxes and fees will be passed on in the form of higher premiums. The 40% tax on the so-called Cadillac plan (higher cost health plans) will not go into effect until January 1, 2018, when the current occupant of the White House is elsewhere.

An estimated 40,000 new laws, both state and federal, were added to the roles on the first day of the year, providing additional income to needy lawyers. The new laws include such critical rules as making bathrooms in California schools available based on “gender identity,” the banning of sharkskin soup in Delaware, and making it illicit, in many states, to stock incandescent light bulbs. And people wonder why morals are dissipating and the economy has been so anemic! Does anyone think that the President and his wife would find it okay if the Sidwell Friends School opened the girls’ bathrooms to fifteen year-old boys who had decided that for the moment they were gender confused? Are there not bigger problems facing America than 60-watt light bulbs?

http://www.cbn.com/tv/embedplayer.aspx?bcid=1509282970001

http://spectator.org/articles/57633/debbie-does-usaf Poor Deborah Lee James. She’s only been Secretary of the Air Force for about six weeks but she’s been handed the problems of a huge cheating scandal, a $400 billion fighter aircraft that can’t fly in combat and an air force that not only has made some enormous mistakes in the past decade, but […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4151/palestinians-recognition-israel-jewish-state

The core of the problem is that Palestinian recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish People would not only end the dream of the return to Palestine, but also of the destruction of Israel currently being implemented through the incitement and terrorist campaign waged by the Palestinian People in their institutions, mosques, schools, terrorist organizations and foreign propaganda centers. Their strategic intention is to perpetuate the conflict, not end it.

The real reason Mahmoud Abbas wants control of the bridges and crossings, and refuses to leave them in Israeli hands, is to duplicate the terrorism of the Gaza Strip — to smuggle in arms and establish terrorist squads. Crossings left in Israel’s hands would mean greater security for Jordan as well.

The world watches while the Palestinian Authority is actively promoting a campaign for an academic boycott and economic sanctions to be imposed on Israel, evidently backed by veiled threats from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

First, every Muslim knows that the Jews in Israel are the descendants of the ancient Hebrew nation known as the Israelites, we also recognize the fact that the Jews have been connected to the blessed land of Palestine for thousands of years, even before the Romans conquered Judea and changed its name to Palestina, as attested to by history. The ties of the Jews to the Holy Land have been documented by all the sacred books, including the Holy Qur’an.

http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/middle-east-north-africa/197159-iran-sanctions-backers-give-up-search-for-60th#ixzz2sFvZIxJQ

Proponents of Iran sanctions have all but abandoned their search for a highly symbolic 60th co-sponsor who would give their bill a filibuster-proof majority and reverse the push against immediate action.

The number of Democrats and Republicans on the bill has been stuck at 59 for more than three weeks, with the White House effectively locking up the Democratic Caucus with a threat to veto a bill it says could doom nuclear talks and precipitate war.

The momentum has instead been going the other way, with at least four co-sponsors – Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) – saying they’re OK with waiting.

The bill’s champions profess not to be worried. They say they can always count on the Iranians to say or do something so outrageous that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will have no choice but to bring the vote to the floor, where they expect it to pass overwhelmingly.

David Singer is an Australian Lawyer, a Foundation Member of the International Analyst Network and Convenor of Jordan is Palestine International – an organisation calling for sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza to be allocated between Israel and Jordan as the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine. Previous articles written by him can be found at www.jordanispalestine.blogspot.com.

‘US Secretary of State John Kerry has missed his own deadline of 31 January by not releasing his eagerly anticipated framework agreement designed to help end the 130-years-old Jewish-Arab conflict. It will now be released by 21 February according to US Envoy Martin Indyk.

Whilst speculation is rife as to its contents, it appears certain that there will be one crucial omission – that any Palestinian State created must be democratic – which could doom any further negotiations.

A democratic Palestinian state finds its genesis in the 2003 Bush Roadmap – the foundation which underpins the current negotiations. The Roadmap stated:

“A two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only be achieved … through Israel’s readiness to do what is necessary for a democratic Palestinian state to be established,

A settlement, negotiated between the parties, will result in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbours.”

The full text of the Roadmap was presented to Palestinian and Israeli leaders by the Quartet mediators – the United Nations, European Union, United States and Russia – indicating strong international support for a democratic Palestinian State as the end game to success.

By 27 November 2007 – when negotiations under the Bush Road Map were non-existent – President Bush assembled the following star-studded list representing their designated countries and organisations to announce that negotiations were set to commence in December:

Sad news. Professor Barry Rubin, one of Israel’s most astute journalists and commentators has died after a courageous struggle with lung cancer. May his memory be a blessing.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/370088/lone-star-insurgent-patrick-m-gleason When Mike Ditka canceled a speaking engagement last month at the annual conference hosted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, organizers of the sold-out event were fortunate to find someone else from the NFL to fill in on short notice. As it happened, their last-minute substitute ended up giving the most talked-about speech at […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/370143/abcs-slime-time-news-eliana-johnson Did flashy reporting go too far when it stirred up hysteria over a common beef product? By Eliana Johnson On March 21, 2012, NBC led the nightly news with reporting about the Trayvon Martin case. CBS led with a report that the NFL was imposing unprecedented sanctions on a team for a scheme that involved […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2014/02/the_stealth_carbon_tax.html Using Executive Order 12866 (Regulatory Planning and Review, issued by President Bill Clinton back in 1993), the White House Office of Management and Budget (WH-OMB) has published numerical estimates for the ‘Social Cost of Carbon’ (SCC).  In Public Comments, we have challenged these OMB numbers in three respects: use of outdated climate science; internal […]