RUTHFULLY YOURS

ttp://bizcatalyst360.com/5-easy-steps-maximizing-social-media/

Charles (Chuck) Brooks serves as Vice President/Client Executive for DHS at Xerox. Chuck has served as the first Director of Legislative Affairs for the Science & Technology Directorate within the Department of Homeland Security, where he was responsible for advocacy for the Directorate with Capitol Hill. He has been an Adjunct Faculty Member at Johns Hopkins University, and has previously spent 6 years on Capital Hill as a Senior Advisor to the late Senator Arlen Specter where he covered national security, defense, foreign affairs, and technology issues. Chuck also served as President of Brooks Consulting International, leveraging extensive experience in executive management, government relations, and R&D in the public and private sectors

SOCIAL MEDIA is booming in the business community. The medium has become integral to marketing, sales, public relations, policy and strategy. The impact it has had on how we conduct business has become so transformational that the protocols are still evolving. Whether you are a veteran of digital communication, or a newbie to the world of instant and perpetual content sharing, there are some fundamental steps to follow on social media to make your presence more effective for you personally and/or for your company.

1) Join: as the analogy with playing the lottery states, “you cannot win if you don’t play.” There are a multitude of excellent social media forums to consider joining and playing in. The key ones from my personal perspective are: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Pinerest, and FedScoop because they all offer professional outlets to learn, participate, and contribute to discussions relating to my business and social interests. I particularly enjoy LinkedIn because of its business and public policy orientation.

2) Establish a Social Media Profile: It is important to create profiles on the various sites that are accurate, interesting, and representative of your core interests and capabilities. As the Founder of the Internet, Google’s Vint Cerf noted recently, on the Internet there is no such thing as privacy. Expect your profile to be seen and make sure it portrays the public face you desire. A good idea is to search prominent leader’s profiles in the areas of your business or professional interest to see how they word, format, and describe their passions.

The State Department spokesperson suggested, although this was deleted from the official transcript, that Israel is the party which raised the Pollard release.

I think that Pollard’s sentence is unfairly long and harsh since so many real traitors are now free. However, it is unconscionable to link his release to suicidal concessions by Israel….rskn Tuesday’s daily press briefing conducted by the State Department spokesperson Marie Harf, several members of the media insinuated that it was Israel that raised the issue of Jonathan Pollard’s release from prison, as a condition for continuing the U.S. mediated “peace process” negotiations currently underway.

In fact, in a briefing that lasted less than 35 minutes, more than a third of the time was spent on the issue of Jonathan Pollard, and every one of the questions asked by the State Department press corps appeared to be an effort to convince the State Department that what they all characterized as an Israeli effort to get Pollard released was an outrage.

It was the first set of questions that was raised, it was the penultimate set of questions, and the questions were raised by no fewer than five different journalists, representing media outlets from across the globe.

Throughout the questioning, Harf maintained a solid line of no comment. She refused to comment on whether Pollard’s release was a matter under discussion during the “peace talks.”

The one definitive statement made repeatedly by Harf was “the President has not made a decision to release Jonathan Pollard.”

But several extraordinary things happened during the press conference, that is, extraordinary in addition to what seemed to be a united front by the journalists who were cross-examining the State Department spokesperson as to why would the U.S. buckle under a demand from Israel to release a convicted spy.

First, a significant comment made by Harf was deleted from the official transcript. That deletion specifically appeared to confirm for the journalists that Israel was the party which had raised the release of Pollard, rather than, as was the general sense in the Israeli media, that it was the U.S. who raised the issue in a desperate attempt to keep the “peace talks” alive.

Reproduced below, is the first relevant section of the transcript of Tuesday’s briefing. Even before this question, it should be noted, the journalist asking this first series of questions claimed that it was Abbas who cancelled the meeting with Secretary of State Kerry, not the other way around, as it has been generally reported.

QUESTION: (at 2:55) Do you want to give us some kind of readout on how it was that the Pollard release was put back up on the table? I know there’s been a lot of conflicting information over the last week, when these reports first surfaced in the Israeli press. We’d like a little clarification on exactly when and why and how, and whether or not Pollard’s release is still on the table, given that Abbas looks like he – that is what’s making him negative on the process right now. (at 3:23)

MS. HARF: (at 3:24) Well, a few points on that. First, the President has not made a decision to release Jonathan Pollard. I want to be very clear about that. Jonathan Pollard was convicted of espionage and is serving his sentence. I don’t have any further update on his status to provide today. In terms of this being a topic, (at 3:38)

THIS IS WHERE THE AUDIOTAPE OF THE PRESS CONFERENCE AND THE TRANSCRIPT DIFFER DRAMATICALLY. WHAT HARF SAID AS REVEALED IN THE AUDIOTAPE, THOUGH IT DOES NOT APPEAR IN THE TRANSCRIPT AT ALL, IS:

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/illinois-2014-candidates-for-congress-where-they-stand?f=must_reads

The primary was held on March 18, 2014. This is the final slate of incumbents and challengers from the major parties for the election in November.

FAMILY SECURITY MATTERS IS STRICTLY NON PARTISAN…..THESE ARE MY CHOICES UNDERLINED IN RED. FURTHERMORE, I INCLUDE THEIR RANKING BY THE AMERICAN ARAB INSTITUTE, http://www.aaiusa.org/

AND THE YALLAH VOTE http://www.aaiusa.org/pages/yalla-vote-2013/: Their goal is to promote Arab American Candidates and to rate how incumbents voted on key issues like civil liberties, Israel-Palestine, and US-Arab relations.

To see the actual voting records of all incumbents on other issues such as Foreign Policy, Second Amendment Issues, Homeland Security, and other issues as well as their rankings by special interest groups please use the links followed by two stars (**).

ILLINOIS 2014

The primary was held on March 18, 2014. This is the final slate of incumbents and challengers from the major parties for the election in November. Filing Deadline for Third Party Candidates is June 23, 2014.

U.S.SENATE

Mark Kirk (R ) Next election 2016

Richard (Dick) Durbin (D) Incumbent

http://www.dickdurbin.com/

http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/richard_durbin.htm **

http://www.durbin.senate.gov/public/

Rated +5 by AAI, indicating pro-Arab pro-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)

Keynote speaker at CAIR gala, on March 15, 2014…..

HOT BUTTON ISSUES

IMMIGRATION

STRONG SUPPORT FOR THE DREAM ACT

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/18/Dick-Durbin-s-Dreamer-F-Israel-Ex-Congressional-Staffer-LIKE

Alaa Mukahhal, the “Dreamer” who has been praised on the floor of the Senate by Dick Durbin (D-IL) as an activist “in the finest American tradition,” wrote a short and obscene assessment of Israel and its supporters on her Facebook page

HEALTHCARE

The Illinois health insurance marketplace is open and ready to help get you and your family covered. This marketplace was created by the Affordable Care Act and will expand coverage to more than 1.4 million in Illinois who currently are uninsured while adding important consumer protections to those already have insurance.Because of this law, insurance companies can no longer discriminate against you and your family for a pre-existing condition. They can’t drop you from coverage when you or someone in your family gets sick. And they can no longer place caps what they’ll cover for your care. Practices like these have caused millions of families to fall deep into debt and helped push the cost of health care higher and higher.So we said enough and worked to rein in costs while expanding coverage and protections for all Americans.

ENERGY

VOTED NO ON KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE

Jim Oberweiss(R ) Challenger

http://www.jimoberweis.com/

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-white-house-is-defeating-the-us-military

I began March with a look at the way President Obama is undermining the U.S. military and did not think I would have to return to this topic for a while. I was wrong.

A March 25 article in The Washington Times was titled “Obama to Kill Navy’s Tomahawk, Hellfire Missile Programs in Budget Decimation” and on March 21, The Wall Street Journal published a commentary, “America’s Incredible Shrinking Navy.” When you add those to The New York Times February 23 article, “Pentagon Plans to Shrink Army to Pre-World War II Level”, you’ve got sufficient reason to begin to realize something very ominous is occurring.

This concerned is heightened by the way dozens of high ranking officers are, in the view of some observers, being purged. A number of retired generals are speaking out about it. One of them, retired Army Major General Paul Vallely has charged that Obama is “intentionally weakening and gutting our military and reducing us as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged.” Retired Army Major General Patrick Brady agrees saying, “There is no doubt he is intent on emasculating the military and will fire anyone who disagrees with him.”

The world, over the course of human civilization, has always been a dangerous place. Much of the history of mankind is a history of wars, large and small. In the last century the U.S. military was involved in two world wars, a Korean conflict, a war in Vietnam, and the Gulf War to drive out Hussein’s Iraqi forces after he invaded Kuwait.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/is-president-obama-in-touch-with-reality

Critics have suggested that President Obama’s foreign policy is “feckless.” Some have argued the president is insouciant, a relative innocent, incapable of responding to the challenges that confront him. I see it somewhat differently.

In April 2009 in Prague, President Obama promised to lead a crusade to rid the world of nuclear weapons with treaties and the power of America’s moral example. This is a position he has long held. As a Columbia student, he wrote a piece in the Spectator in which he called for unilateral disarmament, noting that the American example would precipitate a dramatic shift to denuclearization. It was a sophomoric article in my judgment lacking any historical context, but then again it was written by a twenty year old with limited experience.

However, the Obama position hasn’t been altered. His belief that documents, assurances, negotiations, speeches can maintain stability is without historic precedent. “Soft power” of the kind he espouses works when military power stands behind it. When assurances are called into question by hostile forces and a military reaction – either threat or deployment – is unavailable, the world is put at risk.

In fact, the president’s denuclearized dream is likely to result in the very proliferation he opposes. Why? If the nuclear umbrella of the United States is unreliable, nations will seek their own nuclear deterrent. It is not surprising that Saudi Arabia has been in discussion with Pakistan for the purchase of nuclear weapons as a direct reaction to the U.S. rapprochement with Iran over its enrichment of uranium and pursuit of its own bomb.

http://news.yahoo.com/second-grader-revenge-against-common-core-math-day-141806961.html

This second grader’s revenge against Common Core math will make your day

The litany of frighteningly stupid Common Core math worksheets never ends. Perhaps now, though, kids are starting to fight back in satisfyingly creative ways.

An alert reader sent The Daily Caller this image of her seven-year-old son’s perfectly reasonable homework answer. The boy attends a public elementary school in San Jose, Calif. He is in the second grade.

The math curriculum used by the school is GO Math! The publisher of GO Math! is produced by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

The parent who sent the homework question to TheDC noted that the curriculum aligns with the Common Core math standards.

“If you look closely under the math question, you will be able to see the Common Core standards in a blue-colored print that aligns to that particular question,” she explained.

The constantly burgeoning inventory of sad and hideous Common Core math problems is very long.

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade…” Charles Dickens (1812-1870)“Great Expectations” 1861

March is said to enter like a lion and exit like a lamb. Well, it roared in like a lion with ten degree temperatures on the first, with a snow storm the next day. Thirty-one days later, at the New Haven railroad station, it was snowing and the platform was slick with ice. It has been a winter that fits Shakespeare’s description, as one of discontent. Can spring be far behind?

The biggest story of the month was the one in Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula. Without firing a shot, Russia’s army absorbed the Peninsula. Freedom and the rule of law were put to the test, and the people of Crimea lost – at least the first battle. It was not only the hubris shown by Putin, but it was the enfeebled and waspish response of the West that has generated feelings of unease. President Obama, with seemingly no understanding of geo-politics, seemed aghast that a world leader in the 21st Century (even one from a “regional” power) would harbor dreams of regaining a lost 19th Century empire. Institutions may change, but men do not. Weakness is quickly perceived by tyrants and used to their advantage. Mr. Obama’s equivocation in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Iran did not go unnoticed, while Europe comes across like Monster Inc.’s “Sulley,” a gentle giant who doesn’t want to hurt anyone.

Despite its regional nature and smaller size, Russia has intimidated the West. The combined GDP numbers for the U.S. and Europe’s four largest countries are thirteen times that of Russia. The combined defense spending is almost ten times that of Russia. In terms of population, we outnumber them four to one. Nevertheless, Putin threatens and the West trembles.

http://www.steynonline.com/6211/twerking-your-way-through-college

Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs has a new academic discipline for America’s scholars:

The course, called The Sociology of Miley Cyrus: Race, Class, Gender and Media, is a 251-level special topics course taught by Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology Carolyn Chernoff. The professor encourages students to look past the colon in her course title and see what the class is really about.

In the photograph at right, it’s actually not that difficult to see past the colon.

Skidmore junior Layla Lakos, a sociology/philosophy major, first heard about the new Miley course on Facebook. Lakos laughed, but was intrigued all the same.

“You can study a lot of things based on Miley,” she said. “She represents how transient wealth and fame can be, and shows how possible it is to change your image.”

One of the easiest ways to understand how transient wealth is is to invest a six-figure sum in Twerk State University. The Atlantic reports on “the least valuable colleges and majors in America”:

The self-reported earnings of art majors from Murray State are so low that after two decades, a typical high school grad will have out-earned them by nearly $200,000.

~Since we’re talking about The Atlantic, a few years ago, back when I was the magazine’s obituarist, a New Hampshire neighbor of mine called me up and said they were considering mortgaging the family homestead because their daughter wanted to go to Columbia Journalism School. Her ambition was to be an editor at The Atlantic and, as I wrote for the magazine, they thought I might have some useful advice for her. I don’t have a degree from Columbia Journalism School or even Murray State University; I don’t have a high-school diploma. Apparently, that’s fine if you want to write a column for the magazine, but to copy-edit the same column, and to correct any Canadian spellings I may have slipped in, your parents need to mortgage the home your family’s lived in for the last two-and-a-quarter centuries.

Where is the Iranian anti-nuclear “fatwa” that Obama is so fond of quoting? asks Iranian analyst
Barack Obama is fond of referring to a “fatwa” against nuclear weapons issued by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to justify his trust in the nuclear deal. Trouble is, no-one has ever seen it and Iranian mullahs quote Obama as the source!

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4843/where_is_the_iranian_anti_nuclear_fatwa_that_obama_is_so_fond_of_quoting_asks_iranian_analyst

President Barack Obama has frequently referred to a religious fatwa against nuclear weapons issued by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as evidence that his deal with Iran for a peaceful resolution of its alleged plans to acquire the bomb is not rooted in naivety, as the president’s opponents in America and beyond habitually claim.

However, a top Iranian analyst writing in the English edition of Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper has thrown a spanner in the works that could prove highly embarrassing.

“The trouble is that no one has actually seen the fatwa, although many people comment on it. In a bizarre twist, some mullahs even quote Obama as the source that confirms the existence of the fatwa,” analyst, author, and columnist Amir Taheri said, according to MEMRI (The Middle East Media Research Institute) in a recent dispatch.

As evidence of the extraordinary notion that the source of the alleged fatwa may be Obama himself, Taheri quotes Ayatollah Mahmoud Yussefwand as telling the official Iranian news agency IRNA:

“Our Supreme Guide has issued a fatwa against the use of nuclear weapons, as confirmed by the President of the United States.’

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4849/the_anti_israel_campaign_in_germany

Vijeta Uniyal is an Indian-born analyst based in Germany. He is a Contributing Editor to The Commentator and Fellow at the Lawfare Project. He tweets @iUniyal
The boycott campaign against Israel is trying to make inroads in Germany by wooing the political Left and employing underhand tactics such as “Lawfare”. Its practitioners rely on the inaction of the German people who willingly will have no part in this

Omar Barghouti is a busy man, crisscrossing Europe and North America to shore up support for his worldwide campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel.

While the rest of the Middle East is up in flames, Barghouti and his band of professional agitators are obsessed with what they call the inequities of Israel, the only stable democracy and functional multi-ethnic and multi-religious society in the region.

Barghouti is a darling of the European far-left, but he still has an uphill task when it comes to dealing with wider public opinion in Germany.

A seasoned tactician, he understands the power of imagery. Picketing and obstructing shops that sell Israeli products generates imagery eerily similar to the German Stormtroopers outside Jewish businesses in the run up to the Holocaust.

The German public is still sensitive to such historical analogies.

This concern has not stopped Barghouti’s die-hard agitators from showing up at offices, shopping malls and trade fairs — blockading businesses and harassing shoppers. They were up to such antics recently, putting on a “show” at the international tourism convention ITB Berlin, erecting a fake ‘apartheid’ wall and this time calling for a boycott of Israel as a tourist destination.

With the radical Islamist bloc in Germany standing solidly behind his agenda, Barghouti is busy wooing German academia and the political Left.

He presents himself as the harbinger of the Good News to the “Marx-forsaken” arm-chair revolutionaries of Germany, who haven’t had a serious revolutionary “bash” since the late 60s.

In just one revolutionary package deal he offers the opportunity to fight “corporations”, “capitalism”, “racism”, “militarism”, “Western hegemony” and just about everything else that bothers this perpetually dissatisfied lot in the West.

The fact that these issues have nothing to do with Israel doesn’t dampen the mood of this one big inclusive anti-Israel slug-fest – where radical feminists, Flower-Power pacifists and militant anarchists get to march under the “exotic” flag of Hezbollah.