RUTHFULLY YOURS

Trompe l’oeil is defined as a style of painting in which things are painted in a way that makes them look like real objects. Another more apposite definition is : something that misleads or deceives the senses. That defines Donald Trump. Read this column by Rich Lowry about a real conservative alternative for those who seek a “political outsider.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/423539/print
Ben Carson, A Superior Outsider By Rich Lowry

While Jeb Bush feuds with Donald Trump and others kowtow to him, only one candidate is seriously gaining on him.
Ben Carson is now tied with Trump in one Iowa poll and is close in others. His rise suggests that it’s possible to catch the populist wave roiling Republican politics and yet not be an obnoxious braggart. Ben Carson is a superior outsider to Donald Trump.
He is more gentlemanly and more conservative, with a more compelling life story. He is a man of faith who, despite his manifest accomplishments, has a quiet dignity and winsome modesty about him. Ben Carson is a throwback, whereas Donald Trump is a boldfaced name straight out of our swinish celebrity culture.
What they have in common is that they are political neophytes who are memorable communicators precisely because they speak and carry themselves so differently from other candidates. Although the similarities stop there — Carson is what Trump calls “low energy.” And yet Carson makes it work.
Few politicians have ever wielded soft-spokenness to such rhetorical effect. Carson aced the Fox debate when in his closing statement he didn’t puff himself up and attempt to soar like candidates always do but gently said a few nice things about his background as a surgeon, with a touch of humor. It was a hit.
If you like your outsider not to favor higher taxes, not to have once opposed the ban of partial-birth abortion, not to speak favorably of socialized medicine, and not to have been an erstwhile booster of Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, Ben Carson (or Carly Fiorina) is a much better bet than Donald Trump.
And Carson is altogether a more sympathetic figure. He rose from nothing; Trump took over the family real-estate business. Carson’s mom was one of 24 kids, had a third-grade education, and worked as a domestic; Trump’s father amassed a fortune of about $300 million.

Among “elite” circles Zionism is a dirty word these days. When American Jewish reggae star Matisyahu was barred from performing [1] at a Spanish music festival, it was on grounds that he was a “Zionist.” It was only after the Spanish government condemned this blatant case of discrimination that the festival reinvited [2] the singer.

Blackballing Zionism, though, is not only a European phenomenon. Republican pollster Frank Luntz has been warning Israel that it is rapidly losing support among Democratic “opinion elites.” Almost half of them, he says, consider Israel a racist country. And as The Times of Israel reports [3]:

Still more drastically, Luntz said the word “Zionism” could play no part in messaging designed to repair relations with US Democrats. There has to be an “end to the [use of the] word Zionism,” he said. “You can’t make the case if you use that word. If you are at Berkeley or Brown and start outlining a Zionist vision, you don’t get to make a case for Israel because they’ve already switched off.”

So, Zionism is that bad?

As Congress is on the verge of giving President Obama his Iran Deal, including a payoff of $150 billion dollars to Iran’s terror regime, they might do well to contrast our founding fathers with the current occupant of the White House.

In the Ramadan speech in which he declared his support for the Ground Zero Mosque, Obama returned to a favorite theme of his:

Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America. The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan—making it the first known Iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago.

You would think Obama would keep his mouth shut about this particular chapter in American history.

Yes, Mr. President, Islam was part of American history. The brutal, barbarous Islamic states of Tripoli (Tunisia), and Morocco terrorized the Mediterranean with their ‘Barbary Pirates.’ They kidnapped, enslaved and tortured Western seaman. At one time 20,000 seamen were in captivity in Algiers. Those with money bought their freedom. Seaman without money were sold as slaves who were worked to death in mines and galleys.

Hillary Rodham Clinton and her family personally paid a State Department staffer to maintain the private e-mail server she used while heading the agency, according to an official from Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The unusual arrangement helped Clinton retain personal control over the system that she used for her public and private duties and that has emerged as an issue for her campaign. But, according to the campaign official, it also ensured that taxpayer dollars were not spent on a private server that was shared by Clinton, her husband and their daughter as well as aides to the former president.

That State Department staffer, Bryan Pagliano, told a congressional committee this week that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination instead of testifying about the setup.

[Clinton: We obviously paid for those services]

The private employment of Pagliano provides a new example of the ways that Clinton — who occupied a unique role as a Cabinet secretary who was also a former and potentially future presidential candidate — hired staff to work simultaneously for her in public and private capacities.

Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff, and Huma Abedin, a close confidant who served as deputy chief of staff, both spent time working for the State Department, the Clinton Foundation or the Clintons personally.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

An app to detect ADHD. (TY SDM) Researchers at IBM Israel have developed a prototype app that can detect attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms. Subjects trace an imaginary rectangle ten times and the app analyzes the hand movements. ADHD sufferers have difficulty with continuous motor activity. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4694706,00.html

Link between Leukemia and HIV. Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have discovered similarities between Leukemia and HIV. Dr. Ran Taube is convinced that his team’s discovery is key to finding a clinical solution that can prevent infection with HIV and destroy the deadly virus.
http://aabgu.org/similarities-between-leukemia-and-aids-discovered/

High-pressure Oxygen to treat fibromyalgia. I reported previously on Israel’s Hyperbaric Oxygen treatment here and here. Now a study by 13 Israeli researchers has proved that the high-pressure Oxygen treatment reduces or eliminates medication needed for sufferers of the chronic pain condition fibromyalgia.
http://www.israel21c.org/high-pressure-oxygen-for-fibromyalgia/
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127012

Calming autistic children. Israel’s Association for Children at Risk has developed an Autism and Resiliency Program aimed at soothing frayed nerves of the 1,000 Israeli children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The program relieved trauma during Operation Protective Edge but is now being adapted to everyday needs.
http://www.israel21c.org/new-approach-to-soothe-autistic-kids/

Two Israelis in prestigious MIT list. Two Israelis have made MIT’s prestigious “35 Innovators Under 35” list for 2015. Cigall Kadoch, 30, holds a doctorate from Stanford where her expertise is cancer research. Gilad Evrony, 33, from Harvard Medical School, made a major discovery advancing research into brain disorders.
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=27991

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Israel’s wild wheat can feed the world. Video to accompany my previous article about how Israel’s NRGene mapped out the genome of wild Emmer wheat, with its promise of new hardy and resistant strains. Emmer wheat – the ancestor of modern wheat – was discovered in 1906 by Aaron Aaronsohn in pre-state Israel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iye4YeKwvU8

Skylake – Intel Israel’s next generation chip. The Israeli-developed Intel Skylake is another huge advance in microprocessor technology, with more than double the performance, triple the battery life, and 30 times better graphics than most computers in use today. It consumes just 3 watts of power – current chips use 30-45 watts.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/intels-game-changing-tech-another-haifa-milestone-says-firm/

Doubling students of advanced math. Education Minister Naftali Bennett, former President Shimon Peres and Israeli high-tech companies have launched “Give 5” – a program to double to 18,000 the numbers studying for advanced (5-point) math matriculation exams. It includes more teachers, resources and hi-tech lecturers.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/200083#.VeREGPTn-YA
http://www.timesofisrael.com/skills-panic-prompts-new-government-effort-in-math-education/

Hillary Clinton’s decision to wipe clean her email server has already done enormous damage to US intelligence efforts. The logic is so clear and compelling that it is amazing to me that only now, and only via an email to the blog Powerline, has the extent of her reckless (at best) action become clear. Scott Johnson passes along this, from reader he terms “knowledgable”:

I saw your note on Clinton emails. You and everyone else are missing the real problem and scandal. It is not the emails she saved and turned over to the State Department. It is the erased server, but not for the reasons most people are talking about.

A Secretary of State has broad SCI clearances which means she has access to sources and methods. We know now that HC had classified information on her email server because of what she turned over. What we don’t know is what she didn’t turn over. This creates a massive Counter-Intelligence (CI) problem.

The CI community knows she managed to jump the “air gap” on some information but because she erased the server they do not know the full extend of the jump. If she had turned over the server to the proper authorities the CI community could calibrate the extent of the potential damage. Now, barring a recovery of server data, they cannot. This means that CI has to treat all sources and methods to which the Secretary of State (and others potentially) was exposed as compromised.

Shattered Consensus: The Rise and Decline of America’s Postwar Political Order by James Pierson may be one of the best books ever written on American political history. It traces the evolution of both political parties from the aftermath of World War I to the present. What is especially interesting is how, following the death of John F. Kennedy, the Democratic Party turned away from traditional liberalism, when Democrats still believed in American exceptionalism. JFK would have been considered a raging conservative today, as he believed in lower taxes, a strong national defense, and the pre-eminence of the United States’ place in the world as a force for good.

Liberalism is no longer merely a philosophy of government, as it was during the Progressive Era, but rather an integral part of modern government itself, which is why it cannot be killed by its policy failures, lost arguments, or even lost elections.

Democrats believed back then that progress (“the Progressive Era”) was meant for everyone to get ahead in life through hard work within the American capitalistic system. They also believed, as did the Republicans, in social safety nets just for the very poor. Kennedy, however, was initially ambivalent about Civil Rights legislation (that actually began being promoted by his predecessor Eisenhower, a Republican). Kennedy opened up to it out of political pressure and expediency.

President Obama’s legacy to America: a Middle East in chaos, radical Islam ascendant, a nuclear Iran with a $150 billion dollar terror fund, Israel demonized as a warmonger, Europe flooded with Muslims. This Iran Deal is so bad, so dangerous, so traitorous, it is hard to believe. That is one reason the Democrats can get away with it. Their loyal voters assume their party leaders and beloved first black President would not do something this traitorous.

Have no doubt this “deal” is a national security disaster. In an unprecedented move, motived by alarm and a sense of their responsibility, 245 (and the number is growing daily) retired generals and admirals, including the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Clinton and the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the Gulf War, have written a stiff letter that was hand delivered to every member of Congress.

Their message to Congress: kill the Iran Deal.

Western nations are not merely ignoring Muslim persecution of Christians in the Middle East, they are actively supporting it by sponsoring “moderate” rebels who in reality are as “radical” and anti-Western as the Islamic State.

“Why the federal government has failed to take steps to expedite such reunification in cases where family and religious leaders are willing to vouch for and help those seeking asylum here… remains an unfathomable mystery.” — East County Magazine, San Diego.

Such “unfathomable mysteries” are reminiscent of the U.S. State Department’s habit of inviting Muslim representatives but denying visas to Christian representatives. Since the start of 2015, 4,205 Muslims have been admitted into the U.S. from Iraq, but only 727 Christians. For every Christian granted asylum, the U.S. grants asylum to five or six Muslims — even though Christians, as persecuted “infidel” minorities, are in much greater need of sanctuary.

“Most European governments, especially those that are Christian explicitly or implicitly, are failing in their duty to look after their fellow Christians in their hour of need.” — Lord Weidenfeld.

When persecuted Christian minorities manage to flee the Islamic State and come to the West for asylum, they are imprisoned again. All the while, Muslims — in the Mideast and in the West — are being empowered and welcomed in the West with open arms.

Egypt is increasingly unnerved by overt Turkish activity to support the Muslim Brotherhood politically, and covert Turkish activity to support alleged subversion.

Erdogan’s obsessive shadow-fighting with the Egyptian regime in the hope of rebuilding a Muslim Brotherhood regime in the former Ottoman “Khedivate” is bad news: it undermines any Western effort to stabilize — relatively — the turbulent Middle East.

In August, possibly the first cheerful news containing the words “Turkey” and “Egypt” hit the headlines in the Turkish press since July 2013, when Egypt’s army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi spearheaded a coalition to remove Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Turkish chargé d’affaires in Cairo (Turkey and Egypt withdrew their ambassadors after a row) married an Egyptian actress and former beauty queen on August 2. Their wedding was by attended by Turkish, Egyptian and foreign diplomats at a Turkish embassy residence in Giza.

At the wedding ceremony, the Turkish groom, Alper Bosuter, said that Turkey’s relations with Egypt have been tense but would eventually return to their normal course. The Egyptian bride, Inci Abdullah, said she wished their marriage to have a positive effect on the two countries’ relations.

Best wishes. But not so fast, given Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s obsession about building a Muslim Brotherhood regime in Cairo.