RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=65556The Left sees it as a disease; the Right sees it as a symptom.

Democrats are revving up for a huge national “conversation” on income inequality. This is in no small part because the Obama administration and congressional Democrats would rather talk about anything other than Obamacare.

But it would be unfair to say this is all a cynical effort to gain partisan advantage. For instance, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio is certainly sincere in his desire to take “dead aim at the Tale of Two Cities” in the Big Apple. He and his team want to fix the distribution of income in New York by distributing it differently.

This in itself points to the different perspectives on the left and right when it comes to income inequality, perspectives worth keeping in mind if you’re going to try to follow the conversation to come.

As a broad generalization, liberals see income as a public good that is distributed, like crayons in a kindergarten class. If so-and-so didn’t get his or her fair share of income, it’s because someone or something — government, the system — didn’t distribute income properly. To the extent conservatives see income inequality as a problem, it is as an indication of more concrete problems. If the poor and middle class are falling behind the wealthy, it might be a sign of declining or stagnating wages or lackluster job creation. In other words, liberals tend to see income inequality as the disease, and conservatives tend to see it as a symptom.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=65550Around 2007, I gave a lecture at the Defense Department. One of the attendees presented a scenario suggesting that the “problem of Islam” was not political but a problem of verbiage.

There was a secret debate happening in the Defense Department and the CIA in which some people thought that all Muslims were a problem, some believed that only al-Qaeida was a problem, and still others thought the Muslim Brotherhood was a problem.

The main problem, however, was that all Islamism was a political threat, but it was the second position that eventually won over the Obama administration. Take note of this; since 2009, if you wanted to build your career and win policy debates, only al-Qaeda was a problem. The Muslim Brotherhood was not a threat; after all, it did not participate in September 11. This view was well-known in policy circles, but it was easy to mistake this growing hegemony as temporary.

Actually, it only got worse.

A Muslim Foreign Service officer recounted how some U.S. officials were trying to persuade the powers that be that al-Qaeda was split from the Muslim Brotherhood. Imagine how horrified he was. Still other officials told me that there was heavy pressure and there were well-financed lobbyists trying to force officials into the idea that al-Qaeda was the only problem. Some high-ranking Defense Department officials — for example, one on the secretary of Defense’s level — were pressured to fire anti-Muslim Brotherhood people. I know of at least five such incidences.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=65547Now that he’s been re-elected by a landslide, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is gearing up to run for President, and right behind him comes the scrutiny. That’s why his handling of a blooming scandal about political payback by his staff against Fort Lee, New Jersey’s Democratic mayor has national resonance.

In September a series of lane closures slowed traffic onto the George Washington Bridge, a main commuter artery from New Jersey into New York City. The Governor’s appointees at first said that the lanes were closed as part of a bungled traffic study. Mr. Christie, for his part, alternated between dismissing the story and joking about it.

Now emails subpoenaed by New Jersey’s Democratic-led Assembly suggest that the closures were intended simply to create problems in the town that sits on the Jersey side of the Hudson River crossing. “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” a top Christie aide wrote in August to a Christie ally at the Port Authority, which controls the bridge. “Got it,” he responded.

Once the delays began the following month, Mr. Christie’s appointees emailed each other to confirm that Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich’s urgent phone calls would not be returned. The mayor had declined to endorse Mr. Christie for re-election.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=65543One scholar says being denied access to the West Bank violates her ‘rights as an American citizen.’ Huh?

Save for some college students refusing to buy Israeli hummus, the “boycott, divestment and sanctions” movement against the Jewish state has had very few successes over the past decade. That changed last month when the American Studies Association voted to boycott Israeli academic institutions. Now the Modern Language Association (MLA), a far more prominent group, is poised to condemn Israel at its annual meeting in Chicago. Anyone interested in academic freedom should pay attention.

Scholars at academic conferences are expected to offer original research and analysis in their presentations. That certainly can’t be said of one MLA session this Thursday, called “Academic Boycotts: A Conversation about Israel and Palestine.”

All the scheduled panelists are outspoken supporters of the boycott Israel movement: University of California, Riverside Prof. David Lloyd, Wesleyan Prof. Richard Ohmann, University of Texas Prof. Barbara Harlow, and Omar Barghouti, who has compared Israeli policies to those of Nazi Germany. Even the moderator, University of Texas Prof. Samer Ali, is a boycott supporter. In essays and public statements I have read, their message was clear: Israel, the worst human-rights violator on the planet, deserves to be made a pariah among nations.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/the-ny-times-benghazi-myths-on-the-glazov-gang/

This week’s special edition of The Glazov Gang was hosted by Superstar Ann-Marie Murrell and joined by Titans Morgan Brittany, Dwight Schultz and Michael Chandler.

The Gang gathered to discuss The Hidden Fees of ObamaCare. The discussion occurred in Part II and focused on how, step by step, Americans are now learning that, surprise, surprise, Obama’s health care plan isn’t really free. The segment also included a discourse on Dennis Rodman’s Kim Jong-Un Romance.

Part I dealt with Obama and The Muslim Brotherhood, The NY Times’ Benghazi Myths and A Day in the Life of Saeed Abedini.

Don’t miss both parts of this Blockbuster 2-part episode below:

Part I:

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=65538Reprinted from JewishPress.com.

Pennsylvania state senator Anthony Williams (D-8) is condemning as anti-Semitic the American Studies Association’s recent decision to boycott Israeli academics. Williams introduced a resolution into the Pennsylvania legislature on Tuesday, Jan. 6, in which he calls out the ASA and calls on all colleges and universities in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania to reject antisemitism and refuse to participate in the ASA’s boycott of Israel.“I’ve been greatly disappointed by recent actions taken by people lauded as ‘scholars,’ and particularly offended by them as someone who fights for equal justice for all. The only glimmers of hope I’ve seen in this debacle are the rigorous and principled retorts and rebukes of the ASA boycott by academic leaders in our area, across Pennsylvania and across the country,” Williams said in a statement released to the public on Jan. 6.“The rationale offered for this boycott is flimsy at best; intellectually dishonest at worst, and seems to indicate an encroaching anti-Semitic sentiment that was shameful a century ago, but even more so as we enter 2014. Intolerance will not lead to acceptance or understanding. An exchange of ideas, even conflicting ones, will bring us closer to that desired outcome, which once was the goal of higher education. Let’s hope it will be again.”In Williams’ Pennsylvania Senate Resolution 279, the background of and the backlash to the ASA Israel boycott is laid out clearly. Important facts, such as that a mere 16 percent of the ASA’s membership voted in favor of the boycott, and that so many presidents of leading universities and academic associations have condemned the ASA boycott, are spelled out.

To date, 145 college and university presidents have condemned the ASA boycott, including the president of every Ivy League institution and nearly all of the top ranked schools in America.

What is emphasized most strongly in the Resolution is that Israel is a Jewish democratic nation which promotes academic freedom and free speech and educates students from around the globe.

The Resolution Williams introduced concludes that the “practical effect of the American Studies Association Israeli boycott is a resurgence of anti-Semitism.”

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=65535In 2008, Senator Obama wrote an op-ed for the New York Times laying out his plan for Iraq. “I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda,” he wrote to explain his opposition to the Iraq War.

Obama’s plan for Iraq consisted of the obligatory Bush-bashing combined with the Democratic Party’s favorite counterintuitive talking point of the time claiming that, “only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation.”

It was a talking point that Obama would repeat over and over again in the Senate and on the campaign trail. And the more he repeated it, the less sense it made.

Why would the Sunnis and Shiites be more likely to reach an accommodation if American troops were no longer present in Iraq, with Iran leaving over the shoulders of the Shiite majority and Al Qaeda making a comeback as the defenders of the Sunni minority?

Obama never did get around to answering that question. During the Democratic primaries, he insisted that the best way “to pressure Iraq’s leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year – now.”

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=65532It’s Colder? Hotter? Blame Climate Change

When Fargo is 25 below zero, Baton Rouge 24 above, and nearly the entire nation is in the grip of a record-breaking frigid spell, one’s thoughts naturally turn to global warming — or, rather, make that climate change.

The former term — “global warming” — as it turned out, was too specific; to believe that global warming was a real threat required…well, that global warming actually occur. That did not happen, as the data have proven, and for once Al Gore was right: truth can be so inconvenient, because the fact that the globe failed to heat up as advertised not only swelled the ranks of doubters, but also tarnished the global warming brand. A new label was needed.

Some people claim that the phrase “climate change” better expresses the complexity of what is happening weather-wise.

But others among us believe that the purpose of replacing the old, discredited label was to keep the climate crisis pot boiling and bubbling, in order to maintain the flow of funds pouring into the coffers of environmental groups, politicians, academics, and businesses dependent on a zeitgeist of climate crisis.

And some of us believe that even more nefarious actors are at work, perpetuating the empowerment of that perfect storm of interests on the left that seek to overturn the traditional order and impose their visions of utopian conformity, via regulatory salvation from certain death by CO2. Any propagandist worth his salt will tell you: if the old narrative fails, create a new one.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=65529
It seems in modern times that the post-colonial history of Muslim societies has been over-determined by violence in the name of religion.

Bangladeshis, despite significant internal opposition from militant Muslims supported from the outside, have shown a preference for their secular culture, based on language and not religion.

Islamic solidarity, then as now, meant support for the architects of genocide, not for the victims.

Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, is in the news. Forty-two years after the country won its freedom, the nation witnessed the first of several convicted war criminals executed. The death by hanging of Abdul Quader Molla, a senior member of the Jamaat-i-Islami [JI], on December 12, 2013 was a cathartic moment for the long-suffering people of Bangladesh, and an event almost unique in the annals of Muslim history.

Since 9/11, there seems genuine concern in the West and among non-Muslims about the nature of Islam and of Muslim history. Violence is neither unique to Islam nor among Muslims, but it seems in modern times that the post-colonial history of Muslim societies has been over-determined – again not uniquely – by violence in the name of religion.

There also seems genuine concern in the West about the role of religion in politics. World history, as Hegel noted, is a world court; and the evidence in this court discloses that the fusion of religion and politics has held for the longest time. As politics is about power, religion has undeniably been used as the most potent instrument of power.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=65526Last month was a bloody one in Russia. On December 29th and 30th, two suicide bombings in the southern city of Volgograd killed a combined total of 34 people and injured many more. In the process, they shone a rare spotlight on the true state of Russia’s counterterrorism policy.

The picture isn’t pretty. Some two decades after it was ignited by the USSR’s breakup, the Islamist insurgency in Russia’s troubled North Caucasus regions has proven to be remarkably resilient. In its most recent Country Reports on Terrorism, the State Department noted that 182 terrorist incidents, resulting in 659 casualties, took place in Russia just in the year 2012 (the last for which complete statistics are available). The overwhelming majority of these attacks took place in the North Caucasus.

Moreover, this state of affairs persists despite the overwhelming military force marshaled over the past two decades by the Russian government, first in Chechnya and subsequently in adjoining regions (in particular Dagestan and Ingushetia). In fact, although the number of terrorist incidents in Russia has declined significantly from an all-time high of nearly 800 in 2009, the past several years nonetheless have seen a number of major attacks — including the 2010 bombing of the Moscow subway, the 2011 attack on Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, and three separate suicide bombings in Volgograd last year. In other words, despite Russian president Vladimir Putin’s declaration several years ago that the country had turned a corner in its fight against what Russians generally term “Wahhabism,” Islamic extremism in Russia is still very much alive and kicking.