RUTHFULLY YOURS

The GOP may have found its own candidate for the age of fluidity represented—and accelerated—by the presidency of Barack Obama.

Margaret Thatcher famously said that her greatest success as a politician was the rise of Tony Blair to lead a party he called New Labour: “We forced our opponents to change their minds.” As yet, Barack Obama can make no similar boast. Just the opposite: He radicalized his Republican opponents, and empowered most those who agreed with him least. With the presidential campaign of Jeb Bush, Obama can finally glimpse Thatcher-style success. Here, at last, is an opponent in his own image.
What can the son and brother of a president, grandson of a senator, and great grandson of the founder of the Walker Cup have in common with the son of a failed Kenyan politician? Look beyond the biography to the psychology.
Unlike his more guarded elder brother, Jeb Bush talks openly and candidly about himself. Of course, there are limits to candor. Jeb Bush has spent almost all of the past 20-plus years either in public office or in pursuit of it. He understands self-presentation and is adept at it: There is artfulness in his artlessness.
Yet when a man speaks for the record as often as has Jeb Bush, he deposits there enough material to learn something interesting about the man he is, rather than the boy he was.

Jeb Bush will tell you that, thanks to his marriage to his Mexican-born wife, he is bicultural. Here he is speaking at New York’s 92nd Street Y in November 2013:
I’m bicultural—maybe that’s more important than bilingual. For those who have those kinds of marriages, appreciating the culture of your spouse is the most powerful part of the relationship. Being able to share that culture and live in it has been one of the great joys of my life. We chose Miami to live because it is a bicultural city. It’s as American as any, but it has a flair to it that is related to this bicultural feeling. I wanted my children to grow up in a bicultural way.

Neither King Abdullah of Jordan, nor the new King of Saudi Arabia, nor any other Mideast tyrant has “renounced” Islam. They simply repeat what Western politicians and the MSM have been saying ad infinitum and what Islamic spokesmen in the West have been telling the West, that ISIS’s actions and barbarity have nothing to do with Islam. They deny it even when the perpetrators quote Koranic chapter and verse to sanction their actions. I do wish people would stop being so desperate to see some forthright action against ISIS that they’re willing to see what isn’t there. Abdullah’s actions have a three-fold purpose: to salvage Islam in the eyes of the world by making a false distinction between his version of Islam and that practiced by ISIS, when in fact the distinction is illusory; to engage in an Arabic “blood feud,” a practice that goes back at least 14 centuries or more; and to save his kingdom from ISIS, which menaces his reign.

Scott Walker is the only ambidextrous candidate in the Republican field. He appeals equally to the Republican establishment and the Tea Party/evangelical wingers.

All other candidates fit neatly in one or the other box. While Jeb Bush’s record in Florida used to make him the most attractive member of his family to conservatives, he has blown that accolade with his strong support for immigration amnesty and Common Core.

Chris Christie was never the darling of conservatives, but his appeal to establishment Republicans is obvious.

Neither Bush nor Christie is a switch-hitter.

On the right, Ted Cruz’s views fit the Tea Party like a glove but his brand of fiery politics may be too much for establishment ears. He is so effective and so on target that he scares the cautious GOP establishment to death. Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum have perfect pitch in appealing to evangelicals, but, perforce, are too out there for the more establishment types.

Mycorrhiza is a secret sauce that can help many crops thrive. An Israeli firm has developed a way to use it more effectively
Among humans, “fungus” is a scary word, but in the plant world, fungi are more than welcome — particularly mycorrhizae, “good” fungi that attach themselves to the roots of plants and help them grow and thrive.

Modern agricultural methods have not been kind to mycorrhizae: Pesticides kill them off; and modern methods of tilling and harvesting uproot them.

Which is a shame, according to Israeli agritech start-up Groundwork BioAg. Mycorrhizae, say company researchers, effectively extend plant roots using long microscopic filaments called hyphae, increasing the root-system surface area by a factor of up to 1,000. This “secondary root system” absorbs valuable nutrients (and water) that otherwise are simply unavailable to the plant. Restoring the mycorrhizae, according to the start-up, will help to increase yields, to restore depleted soil, and even to reduce the need for pesticides.

Ruthie Blum is the Web editor of Voice of Israel radio (voiceofisrael.com).
When the video of Jordanian pilot Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh being burned alive in a cage appeared on the Internet on Tuesday, Jordanian King Abdullah II happened to be in Washington on a previously scheduled trip.

A few hours after the clip began circulating — the most recent example of the prurient interest Westerners have been taking in Islamic State pornography — Abdullah arrived at the White House for a private meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama. The tete-a-tete was arranged at the last minute, because Abdullah had to cut his trip short.

Unlike Obama, whose response to the beheading of American captives by the same Islamic State behemoths was to resume playing golf and assert that none of their actions had anything to do with Islam, Abdullah was in a hurry to return home to exact revenge.

After the meeting, White House spokesman Alistair Baskey stated: “The president and King Abdullah reaffirmed that the vile murder of this brave Jordanian will only serve to steel the international community’s resolve to destroy ISIL.” (Obama remains among a minority who still refer to the Islamic State terrorists as ISIL, rather than ISIS, a distinction worthy of note.)

Has the Arab World found the real enemy after all?

Following the brutal execution of a captive Jordanian pilot at the hands of ISIS, this would be the perfect time for sensible Arab leaders to realize that all along they’ve been mistaken. The enemy was never the Jews. The enemy came from within their tents, and it was always so.

Think of the benefits if they would only smarten up to that unassailable fact. We would all be in the same fight.

Blaming the Jews – for everything – is a convenience and luxury the world can no longer afford. It is getting late.
While they armed and warred against Israel, ISIS happened.

We have it no less than from the United Nations that “the Islamic State group is systematically killing, torturing and raping children and families in Iraq.” The report cites “several cases of mass executions of boys, as well as beheadings, crucifixions of children and burying children alive.”

That’s only Iraq.

Okay, the king is putting on a good show against Isis, but fawning and rewriting the history of Jordan is wrong…..Here is a column about the Hashemites from 2011, when the Arabs were “springing” …

The Hashemites in Palestine: A Royal Scam That Keeps On Scamming by Ruth King

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-hashemites-in-palestine-a-royal-scam-that-keeps-on-scamming

News from the Middle East is full of the threat of Arab revolts “springing” up in Jordan and challenging the rule of King Abdullah II, son of the late King Hussein. The throne in Amman is depicted as the “ancient” Hashemite Dynasty of Jordan. It’s a royal historical scam. There has never, repeat never, been an ancient Hashemite legacy in Palestine, unless 1922 is “ancient” history.

That year the British deeded 82% of Mandated Palestine to the Arabs. King Feisal got Iraq and his kid brother Abdullah Senior (great-grandpa to the present Abdullah) had to be mollified so they gave him Trans Jordan. He was assassinated and his grandson King Hussein, known as “Al-Malik Al-Insan (“The Humane King”), succeeded his father who was Talal the insane, who ruled only for a few months.

Again, check out the family tree which derails the spin of the ancient Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Please note that the family tree is detailed in small print in Arabic, but the English translation has been removed. The Hashemite clan ruled over parts of the Hijaz region of Arabia from 967 to 1925 in unbroken succession. Moreover, the late King Hussein’s branch of the Hashemite family ruled the holy city of Mecca from 1201 until 1925. When Abdullah (the First) took over Jordan, the local nomadic Arab population was totally indifferent. Calvin Coolidge could have been made king and it would not have created much of a stir.

What is really amazing is the number of Jordanian and Hashemite sites that speak of the Arab “restoration” of Jerusalem. In fact, under Hashemite control east Jerusalem was restored to rubble. Jewish shrines and cemeteries were sacked, torched, and defiled and access to Jews was forbidden and severely restricted for Christians.

But there is no surprise here. The west swallowed the lie whole and the Israelis except for the now somnolent Ariel Sharon did not promote the truth. Some excuse this lapse as a way to accommodate what was the crypto friendship of Israel and the late King Hussein after his humiliating defeat in 1967, but the cover-up of history now comes back to bite them as Arabs and their enablers agitate for independence without recognizing that Jordan is a Palestinian Arab state, occupied and ruled by a Hashemite minority.

What do you call the two Islamic terrorists whom Jordan hanged on Wednesday? A good start.

Wherever legally possible, radical Islamic terrorists who currently are imprisoned should be dispatched. Henceforth, every country on earth should declare militant Islamic terrorism a capital crime and require prompt execution for anyone convicted of committing or enabling such butchery.

Radical Muslim terrorists should be killed in action. When they are captured, however, they should be interrogated. As soon as their intelligence value is depleted, they promptly should be tried. If convicted, they should be executed the next dawn.

One of the reasons that Romney lost is that he failed to take on the media. The ultimate lost opportunity came when CNN’s debate moderator Candy Crowley directly inserted herself into the argument between Obama and Romney to declare her favorite right and Romney wrong.

Romney had won the Republican primaries, but had failed to absorb the lesson of his most tenacious opponent. Newt Gingrich did not treat the media as a neutral moderator, but as a debate opponent, challenging its premises and agendas. And so Romney was left unprepared for Crowley’s attack.

On the road to 2016, the latest crop of candidates appears to have learned nothing from Romney’s failure. In response to the media blowing up his vaccine comment, Christie issued a sensible clarification that provided more fuel for the media narrative. And the media narrative is what most people know.

They know that Christie was behind Bridgegate even though the Democrats pushing the story provided zero evidence of it. They know that Congressman Steve Scalise spoke at a Neo-Nazi event even though that never actually happened. But what they know is the story that the media tells them. Not the facts.

The New York Times claims that the vaccine controversy we’re all talking about raises important questions about “how to approach matters that have largely been settled among scientists but are not widely accepted by conservatives.”

Well, here’s another question: How do we deal with the false perception that liberals are more inclined to trust science than conservatives? Also, how do we approach the media’s fondness for focusing on the unscientific views of some conservatives but ignoring the irrational — and oftentimes more consequential — beliefs of their fellow liberals?

Though outing GOP candidates as skeptics of science may confirm the secular liberal’s own sense of intellectual superiority, it usually has nothing to do with policy. However, if you walk around believing that pesticides are killing your children or that fracking will ignite your drinking water, or if you hyperventilate about the threat of the ocean’s consuming your city, you have a viewpoint that not only conflicts with science but undermines progress. So how do we approach matters that have been settled among scientists but are not widely accepted by liberals?