RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/167114/can-israels-leaders-be-great?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=84f7cf04f5-3_30_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-84f7cf04f5-207022537
Today’s Israeli Leaders Lack the Very Qualities That Made Its Founders Great

And none embodied the biblical worldview more, or had more political agility, than Menachem Begin, who has no real heirs
Israel’s founding generation is disappearing. In January, Ariel Sharon, who left an indelible mark on Israel’s map and history, finally passed away after spending eight years in a coma. Earlier this month, Meir Har-Zion, the fearless and controversial soldier who helped create the Sayeret Matkal, died at 80. And this coming summer, Shimon Peres, now 90 and the last surviving member of David Ben Gurion’s inner circle, will retire from Israel’s presidency and, presumably, begin to step back from public life.

Certainly there are politicians who can still claim direct connection to the founders’ generation, most notably Isaac Herzog—known as Buji—whose grandfather Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog was Israel’s first chief rabbi and whose father Chaim Herzog, a disciple of Ben Gurion, was the country’s sixth president. But in a sense, we are already living in a post-founder era: There is no meaningful way in which Israel’s current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, head of the Likud, can be called an heir to the party’s founder, Menachem Begin.

The inexorable disappearance of those who lived through—and shaped—the heroic period of Israel’s establishment virtually begs us to ask: Why is it that no one in today’s generation of leaders, who of course are all deeply committed to the state of Israel and to the Jewish people, can truly claim the mantle of those who went before?

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

I find myself increasingly out of sync, not only in cultural terms like being mystified by Gwyneth Paltrow’s and Chris Martin’s “conscious uncoupling” (a consequence of an unconscious coupling perhaps?), but in behavior. Unionizing student-athletes is totally foreign to my understanding of college and athletics. It is well known that college athletes in sports like basketball and football generate significant revenue for their universities. It is equally well known that those revenues allow colleges to offer non money-making athletics like squash or rowing. All athletes put in long hours, because of the love of the sport, their joy in being a team-member or, in the case of a small number, because it may lead to professional contracts.

Schools bear part of the responsibility that led former Northwestern quarterback Kain Colter, with backing from the College Athletes Players Association, to get NLRB regional director Peter Ohr to rule that student-athletes at private colleges have the right to unionize. For years, colleges have turned a blind eye toward the hours required of students to play sports like football, especially knowing that only a small percent will make it to the pros. They have paid too little attention to the long-lasting nature of injuries. Many show little concern as to whether their student-athletes get an education, not to mention a degree. They covet the money with little regard to the human consequences. Northwestern’s football program raised an estimated $30 million last year against expenses of $22 million. The latter includes $2.2 million paid to head coach Pat Fitzgerald. In their quest for dollars, these universities created the problem. As it says in Hosea 8:7 – “They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.”

What is most important for any student is education. There are 125 college and universities in NCAA Division 1 Football Bowl Subdivision. Combined, they include 10,625 team members. A September 2012 study, conducted by the NCAA, found that only 253 were drafted, or 2.4%. So, if they are not there for an education, either the students are wasting their time or the college is abusing that of the students. Obviously there are a few who see college as a time to refine one’s craft, to make one’s self more attractive to recruiters and who succeed in the pros. But 97.6% of Division 1 college football players have to find other means of making a living.

yeoldecrabb.com.

It must have been a shock to its “right-nick” listeners. But even government-subsidized National Public Radio [NPR] had a commentator last week declaring that the so-called Israel-Palestine “Peace Process” is going anywhere. And, more importantly, he noted, the rest of the Middle East at the moment doesn’t care all that much about the issue. That’s quite an admission for the increasing anti-Israel lobby which now counts The New York Times and NPR among its brightest stars.

Nor was Pres. Barack Obama likely to have heard much about the Israel-Palestine schmoozle in his peripatetic travels including trying to put a band aid on worsening Washington-Riyadh relations. True, the Arab League – which has more differences among its members than the United Nations Security Council –recently did come out against “a Jewish state”. But the Arab League has become less and less a spokesman for the Arabs. Its anti-Israel screeds are all that’s left of what broke away from British tutelage with Gama Nasser’s overthrow the British protected Egyptian monarchy in the early 50s.

Indeed, the list of issues is long facing the Arab world, and Muslim majority nations in general, and the Western powers ostensibly led by the U.S. in the Middle East. It is fraught with so many other threats that the problem of Israel’s relations with the Arabs pales in comparison. Nor does anyone believe the myth held among Pres. Obama’s Arabist coterie that “solution” of the Israel-Palestine problem would be an open sesame to solving all the Middle East myriad difficulties.

Foremost now, for the Sunni Arab regimes – and even those nominally secular such as Egypt’s new military rule – is the specter of the growing regional power of the mullahs in Tehran. That’s exemplified for the Saudis by the growing evidence that the bloody Syrian Dictator Basher Assad relies on Iran for life support. The Saudis publicly keep reminding Obama and the Europeans they had promised to eliminate him. Instead, there is even the prospect that Assad may negotiate his way into some sort of permanence through, ironically, Washington-sponsored peace talks.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4239/european-elections

In Britain as in France, voters have evidently become disillusioned with a political establishment responsible for open-borders policies, Islamization and the transfer of national sovereignty to supranational organizations such as the European Union. Soon these voices will be heard in national parliaments, too.

The municipal elections in France resulted in a huge victory for the Front National of Marine Le Pen. For the first time since 1995, France will again have FN mayors. Marine Le Pen also succeeded in maneuvering her party into pole position for the European elections on May 25th. France has 74 seats in the European Parliament. FN is expected to win up to 20 or more.

Marine Le Pen is one of Europe’s greatest political talents. Her strategy to rid the party, which she inherited from her anti-Semitic father, from most of its extreme-right elements is paying off. While Le Pen’s international policies are dangerously flawed and her economic proposals border on socialist protectionism, she has succeeded in turning the FN into an acceptable alternative for millions of ordinary Frenchmen from the Left as well as the Right.

Le Pen has also cleverly avoided making any political mistakes. She did not give in to provocations of political opponents and she did not fall into the trap of giving her enemies opportunities to reinforce hostile perceptions about her party.

The result is that France’s political system is no longer a two-party system dominated by the Socialist PS of current president François Hollande and the Conservative UMP of former president Nicolas Sarkozy. With the Front National, a third player of equal status has emerged. Moreover, as the anger of the voters at the two established parties is growing, Le Pen’s momentum is far from over.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4237/patriotic-energy-policy

An unchecked national debt will profoundly damage our country, its future and the fate of our allies.

Just two states, Utah and Colorado, hold approximately 3 trillion barrels of oil in shale deposits which would provide us with the means to release domestic energy resources that would add jobs and re-industrialize our nation.

Oil exporters like Venezuela and the Arab Emirates are understandably nervous about losing those American petrodollars. It is not a surprise that they have underwritten Hollywood films attacking fracking as an environmental threat…and that they will continue to use their wealth and influence to try to short circuit America’s pursuit of accessing domestic energy resources.

As the White House slashes America’s military budget and our influence proves irrelevant in Ukraine and other hot spots around the globe it is clear our economic policies have failed to grow our economy to create jobs and generate much needed revenue. This failure has resulted in budget deficits, increased debt and a loss of military strength. Our national debt has increased from approximately $11 trillion to $17.4 trillion over the last 5 years, and it’s getting worse. Congress has just voted to lift the debt limit so that, together with our ongoing budget deficits, our nation will confront an $18 trillion debt within a few months.

This fiscal burden is so massive many observers and commentators have struggled to find words that allow us to understand its enormity. Some have described the national debt as going through the stratosphere, but it’s far beyond that. It requires an astronomical calculation to reveal the magnitude of the crisis, computing the debt as a Light Year scientists use to measure the vast distances of outer space.