RUTHFULLY YOURS

A quarter-century after the Berlin Wall fell, Putin is building his own Russian Bloc.

In November 1989 I watched on television as the Berlin Wall was being torn down, and my eyes welled up with tears. Once again, I was incredibly proud to be a citizen of the United States. The whole world was expressing its gratitude to this great country for its four decades–plus of successful Cold War against the Soviet empire. “Communism is dead,” people shouted. Indeed, Soviet Communism is dead as form of government. But the Kremlin’s science of dezinformatsyia is on the rise again, and few people are paying attention.

I was with Nikita Khrushchev when the idea of erecting the Berlin Wall germinated in his head. He had landed in Bucharest on October 26, 1959, to solicit Romania’s political support for seizing West Berlin, which had become the escape-hatch through which millions of East Germans were fleeing westward, draining East Germany’s already shabby economy. At the time I was running Romania’s intelligence station in West Germany, and as the country’s “German expert,” I attended most of the discussions.

“No power on earth can stop us,” Khrushchev spat out. President Eisenhower did stop him, however. On August 13, 1961, Khrushchev made the humiliating decision to close off East Berlin with a barbed-wire fence that later became the Berlin Wall, and he proclaimed that a major victory.

On December 26, 1989, Leonard Bernstein conducted a magnificent concert before the toppled Berlin Wall, which for so many years had “protected” tyranny from freedom. His centerpiece was Beethoven’s Ninth, containing Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” but with the word joy (Freude) changed into freedom (Freiheit). The orchestra and choir were from both East and West Germany, as well as from the United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States. That concert celebrated the fall of the Soviet empire.

After a couple of years, the Russians had stopped seeing their government as a boon bestowed from on high, and Socialist Russia had collapsed. On the evening of December 25, 1991, the flag of the Soviet Union was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time. The next day, the U.S.S.R. was dissolved, and Russia’s old tricolor banner was raised again over the Kremlin. The world watched in amazement as the Russian people, armed only with a fierce desire for freedom, brought down one of the most repressive forms of government known in history.

Post-Soviet Russia has been transformed in unprecedented and positive ways. The barriers the Kremlin spent 70 years erecting between Russia and the rest of the world, as well as between individual Russians, are coming down. The freedoms of religion and assembly have been restored. Commerce and communication with the rest of the world have become a daily reality. Russian culture is reviving, and private ownership of property is now gradually being institutionalized.

ELECTIONS ARE COMING AND SPEAKING OF IOWA MEET LT. COL. JONI ERNST****
http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2014/04/23/elections-are-coming-and-speaking-of-iowa-meet-lt-col-joni-ernst/
APRIL 2014
JONI ERNST IS RUNNING FOR THE SENATE IN IOWA SHE IS A SOLDIER, MOTHER, GRANDMOTHER AND CONSERVATIVE…THESE ARE HER ISSUES

“Faced with a younger, positive, appealing Republican candidate who avoids gaffes and runs not on amnesty and entitlement reform, but on a platform aimed at middle-class families and working-class whites, there is no telling how Hillary Clinton would look, how she would perform, what choices she would make. And if she slips and falls, who’s going to rescue her? David Brock?”

The 2014 election was a disaster for Hillary Clinton. Why? Let us count the ways.

She will have to run against an energetic and motivated Republican party. If the GOP had failed to capture the Senate, the loss would have been more than demoralizing. It would have led to serious discussion of a third party. Donors would have reconsidered whether their spending was worth the reputational cost. Candidate recruitment efforts would have stalled. Republican voters would have asked why they bother to show up. The Republican circular firing squad, always a problem, wouldn’t use conventional weapons. They’d use ICBMs.

Clinton would have loved to capitalize on this scenario. It would have enabled her to prolong strategic decisions such as how and when and to what degree she breaks from Obama. She would have claimed partial credit for saving the Senate. She would have promised to build on Democratic success. You would have been able to see her aura of inevitability for miles.

But she has been denied. Instead she must calculate how to salvage the wreckage of 2014. She must convince Democrats that their savior is a grandmother who lives in a mansion on Massachusetts Avenue. It is her party that is shell shocked, not the GOP. Trust me: You don’t want to be in that position.

The results also showed that the electorate looks forward rather than backward. Clinton’s 2016 argument will be based in part on recollection. Her message: If you liked the 1990s, the last period of broad-based growth and full employment, put my husband and me back in the White House.

But voters are not retrospective. They judge based on the conditions of the moment. In 2010, Democrats tarred Rob Portman as a former Bush official. In 2014, they tried something similar with congressional candidate Elise Stefanik. Both Portman and Stefanik won.

Iowa’s new senator-elect has other duties before she heads to Washington.

Des Moines — A day after winning one of the most contested Senate seats in the country, Joni Ernst reported for duty at her National Guard base. Ernst, a lieutenant colonel, started two days of training with the 185th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion on Thursday.“Not many folks know she is in uniform on Thursday and Friday,” Ernst’s husband Gail tells National Review Online, “She does it without fanfare.”

A spokesman for the Iowa National Guard, Greg Hapgood, says soldiers don’t “punch the clock.” “We serve regardless of our situations and Colonel Ernst doesn’t want to be treated any differently.”

Ernst, a ferocious campaigner, had just finished a 24-hour straight campaign sweep of Iowa two days before reporting for duty. Her victory in the race also sealed the Senate for the GOP majority.Hapgood admits that Ernst’s is a unique situation and the Guard will have to work with the senator-elect to find a balance. “She is going to be a soldier when on duty and a senator when off duty,” Hapgood predicts.

An Ernst campaign source says the National Guard has already been accommodating Ernst’s unique circumstances. “She was supposed to drill last weekend but was able to reschedule until after the election,” according to the source.

The senator-elect cannot do interviews while on duty, but those in close contact with Ernst say she is doing great and is happy to be back with her unit. According to Hapgood, Ernst’s duties this weekend as a senior officer will include working with her team on how to best serve the logistical needs of Iowa’s National Guard. “She’s working to make sure our units are totally combat ready,” he says.

Taking time off for National Guard duty is nothing new for Ernst. The then-candidate took time off the trail this summer to serve a week. While she was serving, a number of high-level GOP names visited the state to fill in at campaign events and the Twitter hashtag #ondutyforJoni was started.

There is high anxiety over President Obama’s impending unilateral amnesty order for millions of illegal aliens. How many millions? The estimates vary. On the low end, 3 to 8 million, assuming some correlation to the potential beneficiaries of the president’s already existing amnesty decrees (including DACA or Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals). On the high end, as many as 9 to 34 million, factoring in likely categorical expansions of amnesty and their ramifications over the next several years.

The anxiety stems from a remorseless truth that no one — most especially Mr. Obama’s most ardent detractors — wants to confront. It is the truth I have addressed, to much groaning and teeth-gnashing, in Faithless Execution, my recent book on presidential lawlessness.

It is this: The nation overwhelmingly objects to Obama’s immigration lawlessness, but it has no stomach for the only effective counter to it — the plausible threat of impeachment.

To hear the demagogue-in-chief tell it, the controversy over how to deal with the approximately 12 million illegal aliens currently in the U.S. is a Manichean debate between enlightened humanitarians and vulgar xenophobes. (To be fair to the president, he is far from alone in peddling this smear.) But objections to Obama’s reckless immigration policies — indeed, to his policies in general, as this week’s historic election reaffirmed — cut across party and philosophical lines.

To be sure, the most intense protest is heard in “restrictionist” circles and among those for whom rule-of-law and national-security concerns trump sympathy for the plight of legions of decent but unlawfully present non-citizens (some of whom were brought here as children and are blameless for their illegal status). There are also, however, many enthusiasts of immigration amnesty — the euphemism is legislative “reform” — who recognize that the president’s sweeping, dictatorial approach is angering the public. That damages not just the cause but the career prospects of those who’ve made the cause their own.

So, on immigration, the president has managed to unite much of the country . . . against him — who says he’s divisive? Nevertheless, Obama made clear again this week that he intends to push ahead with massive amnesty by executive order. Further infuriating the public with his cynicism, he has strategically but quite openly delayed his directive until after the election, as if to say, “The rubes are too stupid to grasp what I’m doing even when I make no secret of it!”

Dear Reader (particularly those of you who will buy me a drink on the Lido Deck next week),

In Men in Dark Times Hannah Arendt says, “Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it . . . it brings about consent and reconciliation with things as they really are.”

This, naturally, brings to mind that great episode of the Brady Bunch “Adios, Johnny Bravo.” This YouTube video summarizes the tale expertly, but since you might be at work and are reluctant to get caught watching Brady Bunch videos (again) at the office, I will summarize. Greg Brady, scion of House Brady, is offered a contract from a record label. At first he is reluctant to sign on because he’s a loyal member of his family band. But the record producers convince him that he owes it to himself to be all he can be. They want him to become the new smash-hit sensation “Johnny Bravo.”

The role of Johnny Bravo comes complete with a sensational matador-themed costume and a rented gaggle of winsome young ladies ready to tear it off on command (very much like the job of senior editor here at National Review). The producers promise that he won’t simply be in the Top 20, he’ll be the Top 20. “Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride,” they tell him. It would be a tempting offer for any young man.

After much soul-searching, Greg agrees to become Johnny Bravo. That is, until he finds out that the producers don’t much care about his musical talent. Through the wizardry of music production — long before the advent of AutoTune — they twist his vocal stylings to what the market wants, not what Greg’s muse has on offer. “That’s not the way I sound!” Greg protests.

The producer retorts, “You? Now c’mon baby, don’t get caught up on an ego trip. I mean who cares how you sound? We’re after the sound.”

If you don’t care about my sound, what do you need me for? Greg asks.

“Because you fit the suit,” another producer responds.

Putting the O in BravO
Forgive me for committing the error of defining my meaning. But Barack Obama fits the suit.

I recently found a 1984 edition of Comprehensive English by Harold Levine. An Amsco publication, it was meant to “help students pass the New York State Comprehensive Examination with distinction.” At the time, the examination contained a listening test, a reading comprehension test, the literature test, and the composition test.

I have serious doubts as to whether my current crop of college students could pass this examination In the course of teaching, one develops some theories about classroom discipline and the ability to reach students. My “theory of threes” used to mean that if there were three troublesome students in a class – i.e., class clown, disruptive individual, pupil outwardly resistant to reasonable demands – it was going to be a rough class to teach. Thus, creative strategies were devised to reach those three without adversely affecting the other students, who were eager to learn and who expected the teacher to control a class and teach.

Things have changed radically. If I have three students in a class who are eager to apply critical thinking skills, I consider it a lucky break. What more instructors are faced with is a classroom of bored students who would rather stare into space than actually tackle the lesson at hand. And remember that for financial aid purposes, “D” and “D-” are passing grades.

I have had to pepper the blackboard with “Ban Mental Lethargy” just to get their attention. But then again, they do not know what lethargy means, even though their ever ready cell phones have a dictionary function.

The last time that I asked if students were attending school because of a love for learning, I was greeted with undisguised guffaws.

In an effort to maintain class size, one school is pushing students to “earn bucks just by enrolling in weekend classes.” Thus, a student can “earn $50 per credit for Friday classes that start after 3:30 p.m. and for Saturday classes that start before noon.” For “Saturday classes that start after noon, one can earn $100 per credit.” These bucks can then be used at the university bookstore and the campus food outlets, including Starbucks.

Each semester becomes more dispiriting than the previous one. At one school, the readings center on the topic of marriage. Mostly concerned with the breakdown of traditional marriage and the upswing in gay marriage, there is little that promotes marriage and its concomitant joys. Thus, in an (unedited) recent piece, one student wrote:

In my culture legal marriage does not happen that much. Once the woman becomes pregnant then she is supposed to go live with her boyfriend and live together as if they were married. There are a few couples who do get legally married. I believe a couple should be legally married if they are already living together and in love. Why not? Isn’t this the goal when starting a relationship?

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker on his brawls with public unions and the key to conservative governance in a state with populist liberal traditions.

‘Wow. First off, I want to thank God for his abundant grace and mercy. Win or lose, it is more than sufficient for each and every one of us,” Scott Walker said, taking the podium on Tuesday night at the Wisconsin state fair grounds after being re-re-elected for governor. It was a curious register, given that Mr. Walker’s religious faith, even though his father was a pastor, has never seemed central to his economic and political identity. But then maybe the intervention of a higher power is as good an explanation as any for the commanding victory that unions and liberals went all-out to prevent.

Mr. Walker suggests a more secular reading: “People actually saw, they saw with their own eyes,” he says. “Once they got past the myths and the half-truths and sometimes the outright falsehoods, they could see in their own families, in their own homes, they could see in their own workplaces and towns and cities and villages and counties that life was better.” In a word, despite the political convulsions of his first term, his reforms worked, and voters rewarded him for the results.

In a wide-ranging phone interview from Madison on Thursday night, Mr. Walker sounded exhausted but joyful after his third statewide election since 2010. The governor laid out how he thinks center-right reformers can succeed among Democratic-leaning bodies politic—Wisconsin hasn’t broken for a Republican presidential candidate since 1984, when he was in high school—and why he doesn’t think the same trend is inexorable in like-minded states in 2016.

The race Mr. Walker won this week was close-run and became a referendum on his first term. His opponent, Mary Burke, a former executive of Trek Bicycle Corp., ran as a not-Walker. The governor calls her “almost the bionic candidate,” in the sense that her intelligence, business experience, gender and noncommittal up-the-middle platform were focus-group-tested as the perfect foil for his agenda and his track record of the past few years.

In June 2012, Mr. Walker became the only governor in American history to survive a recall election—initiated to reverse his enormously controversial 2011 budget-repair bill, Act 10, which limited the collective-bargaining powers of public-employee unions, as well as automatic dues collection and health and pension benefits. Big Labor and national Democrats returned this year to avenge their loss, though the irony was that Ms. Burke declined to relitigate Act 10 or even take a coherent position. The election turned on competing accounts of economic progress under Mr. Walker, such as job creation and rising household incomes.

David Rubin is former mayor of Shiloh, Israel. He is founder and president of Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund and the author of several books, including Peace for Peace and The Islamic Tsunami.

In June of 1967, at the climax of the Six Day War, Israel’s paratroops commander Motta Gur, somewhat out of character, emotionally announced the words that still resonate to this day, “The Temple Mount is in our hands.” Shortly thereafter, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, fearing the potential Islamic and international outcry, shamefully robbed Israel of at least part of its great victory, by handing over the keys of the holiest place in Judaism to the Muslim Wakf of Jordan.

For those who are unaware, this holy site is the plateau on which the two Temples of Israel had stood for hundreds of years. Below it, at its western retaining wall, Jews had shed bitter tears for centuries. For that reason, it was known to many as the Wailing Wall. Since that miraculous week in 1967, when all of eastern Jerusalem fell back into Israel’s hands, it is known to all as the Western Wall. Now that Jerusalem had been liberated, there was no more need to cry.

Despite the fact that the Western Wall has become somewhat of a shrine for the Jewish people and all visitors from around the world, the Temple Mount above it has remained the ultimate symbol of Israel’s former unified sovereign kingdom, with its capital in Jerusalem.

In recent weeks, we have witnessed massive rioting and violent vandalism by Muslims in Jerusalem, coupled with a spate of terror attacks, including the killing of a young baby and others, as well as the very symbolic murder attempt on Yehudah Glick, whose only “crime” was his public activism on behalf of the right of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount. Israel’s political leadership quickly responded to that blatant act of targeted terrorism by temporarily closing the Temple Mount to all, an act of pathetic political weakness that encouraged the Arab nations, including the British-appointed illegal country on the other side of the Jordan River, to cry foul, complaining that no Muslim prayer rights should be restricted, even though Jews have not been allowed to pray on the Mount since its liberation forty-seven years ago.

Given this background, it is actually quite shocking that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has responded to the subsequent Jordanian threats by promising King Abdullah that Israel will protect the status quo on the Mount. Such a feckless arrangement panders to the Muslim threats and encourages more violence, riots, and terrorism on Israel’s citizens. Sadly, and despite his tough image outside of Israel, Netanyahu has been known to often cringe under pressure, quickly caving in when the nations of the world launch their unfair attacks on Israel’s sovereignty.

Hamas announced the creation of a “popular army” in Gaza on Friday, AFP reports, saying it was ready for any future conflict with Israel, particularly over the Al-Aqsa mosque compound.

At a ceremony at the Jabaliya camp in northern Gaza, a spokesman for Hamas’s “military wing”, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, said 2,500 recruits would form “the first section of the popular army for the liberation of Al-Aqsa and of Palestine”.

Mohammed Abu Askar, a Hamas official, said those older than 20 could sign up “to be prepared for any confrontation” with Israel.

Abu Askar said the new force had been established “at a moment when the Al-Aqsa mosque is subject to serious Israeli violations”.

Another Al-Qassam spokesman said “the people, arms and the tunnels are going well”, in reference to Hamas’s network of underground passages, hundreds of which have been destroyed by Israel and Egypt to prevent arms smuggling.

The new “popular army” and the Hamas threats come amid continuing tensions in Jerusalem in general and particularly on the Temple Mount, fueled by Arab riots in the capital.

Violent Arab rioting on the Temple Mount on Wednesday forced police to enter the Al-Aqsa mosque as rioters barricaded themselves inside.

Nevertheless, it is Israel that has been blamed for the violence, with Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas warning Jews against ascending the Temple Mount and claiming that the “break-ins by the settlers and Jewish extremists” to the Al-Aqsa ,osque are a violation of Muslim feelings.