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November 2015

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Pick one thing and fight like hell By Carol Brown ****

By on November 4th, 2015

The dismantling of America leaves one breathless as we face of an avalanche of horrors. We’ve been dealing with a long roll out of evil with more to come. It shocks the mind trying to absorb it all. What can citizens do to stop the fundamental transformation of our nation? How can we function effectively to save our country? And how do we do so in a leadership vacuum?

I have no magic answers. Just a few humble thoughts.

First, a bit of context.

It’s hard to maintain the will to fight when we lose so many battles. It’s frustrating to be thwarted at every turn. And it’s especially disheartening (if not also terrifying) knowing the stakes are so high. In the face of all of this, how does one ward off cynicism and apathy?

These are some of my thoughts.

For starters, I think we are inundated with more information than we can possibly absorb. And because we are patriots, many of us feel compelled to act. (At least I hope that’s true.) But in the face of a dizzying array of assaults against us and against our constitutional republic, it’s difficult to know where to turn and/or what to do. And, as already noted, it’s hard to believe one’s voice or actions will matter. No doubt many feel that taking action is foolish and a waste of time. It’s easy to run sound bites in our head that absolve us of responsibility. “It’s over.” “We’re passed the tipping point.” “R.I.P. America.”

And so, perhaps, we do nothing.

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The DOE is now in the High School Girl’s Shower By Larry Creech

By on November 4th, 2015

For more than two decades Americans have become desensitized to the arrogance, hubris and general incompetence of Washington insiders. Each succeeding administration has seemingly tried to outdo the previous administration in outrageous conduct, whether it be in creative tax burdens or reasons for sending young Americans to other countries to fight and die. Every day brings another revelation causing Americans to roll their eyes, shake their heads, and wonder what, if anything, can be done to a government that seems to pay no attention to its citizens whatsoever.

Consider one recent headline in the morning newspaper: “Illinois District Violated Transgender Student’s Rights, U.S. Says.” The headline in and of itself did not sound an alarm. Gender identity as well as other gender-related issues are societal issues in the news frequently now. However, the extent of the intrusion by the U.S. Department of Education (DoE), makes it clear that Secretary Arne Duncan is going to make one last reach and grab for everything the ideology-obsessed far left have asked him for.

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Obama’s Syrian Illusions The U.S. says it has Putin and Assad right where it wants them.

By on November 4th, 2015

“Mr. Obama will do none of this. Instead he will send out Messrs. Kerry and Blinken to assert that U.S. retreat is really success, that Russian advances are really defeat, and that five years of war will soon yield to peace because Mr. Obama believes against all Syrian evidence that the arc of history bends his way.”

So the U.S. government that was surprised by Vladimir Putin’s takeover of Crimea, surprised by his invasion of eastern Ukraine, surprised by his plan to sell S-300 missiles to Iran, and surprised by his intervention in Syria now thinks the Russian strongman will sue for peace in Syria on U.S. terms and oust Bashar Assad.

“Russia’s intervention is a powerful example of the law of unintended consequences,” said Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a security conference in Bahrain this weekend. “It will have two primary effects. First, it will increase Russia’s leverage over Assad. But second, it will increase the conflict’s leverage over Russia. And that in turn creates a compelling incentive for Russia to work for, not against, a political transition.”

Secretary of State John Kerry’s right-hand man even used a Vietnam War-era word to describe Mr. Putin’s supposed predicament: “The quagmire will spread and deepen, drawing Russia further in.”

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Third World America The Keystone beating shows political risk is a major U.S. problem.

By on November 4th, 2015

One difference between the developed and developing worlds is honest, transparent government that treats investors fairly. By that standard, the Obama Administration’s handling of the Keystone XL pipeline shows the U.S. is sliding closer to Third World politics than Americans would like to admit.

On Monday TransCanada Corp. asked the State Department to stop its review of the proposed pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast that has been held hostage to liberal politics for seven years. The company said it wants a pause to give Nebraska time to finish its review of the pipeline route.

That may be true, but everyone knows that TransCanada’s bigger problem is the State review that President Obama has dragged out to the end of his term. The company’s reasonable fear is that Mr. Obama will reject the permit in the weeks before the global climate-change fiesta in Paris in December. He would then use this as a chit to prod other countries to sign onto bigger CO2 reductions.

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The Next Climate Scandal? House Republicans hunt for evidence that temperature records are politicized. By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

By on November 4th, 2015

With their latest subpoena to the Obama administration, House Republicans risk descending into a rabbit hole, albeit a useful one.

Lamar Smith, the Texas GOPer who runs the House science and technology committee, has been seeking, voluntarily and then not so voluntarily, emails and other internal communications related to a study released earlier this year by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The study, by adjusting upward temperature readings from certain ocean buoys to match shipboard measurements, eliminated the “pause” in global warming seen in most temperature studies over the past 15 years.

Let’s just say, without prejudging the case, gut instinct has always indicated that, if there’s a major global warming scandal to be discovered anywhere, it will be found in the temperature record simply because the records are subject to so much opaque statistical manipulation. But even if no scandal is found, it’s past time for politicians and the public to understand the nature of these records and the conditions under which they are manufactured.

This is where those who confuse science with religion, and scientists with priests, take umbrage. Unfortunately, NOAA has proved itself pliable to the propagandizing urge. Witness its steady stream of press releases pronouncing the latest month or year the “warmest on record.” It always falls to outsiders to point out that these claims often rest on differences many times smaller than NOAA’s own cited margin of error. Case in point: When President Obama declared in January that 2014 was the warmest year on record, it had only a 38% chance of being hotter (by an infinitesimal margin) than other hottest-year candidates 2010, 2005 and 1998.

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Houston Equal Rights Ordinance Rejected by Voters Known as HERO, the measure would have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, race and a dozen other categories By Dan Frosch

By on November 4th, 2015

HOUSTON—In a victory for social conservatives, voters in the nation’s fourth-largest city on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure to extend nondiscrimination protections to gay and transgender people.

Known as the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, or HERO, the measure would have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, race and a dozen other categories. It was backed heavily by Houston Mayor Annise Parker and a cadre of national Democratic political figures, and proponents poured more than $3 million into the push to pass it.

Supporters conceded defeat on Tuesday evening shortly after the Associated Press called the election in favor of opponents. Roughly 61% of voters opposed the measure and 39% backed it, with 96% of precincts and early voting totals tallied.

The defeat of the bitterly contested ordinance represents a rare recent win for social and religious conservatives, four months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage. Opponents of the measure had argued that the ordinance would infringe on businesses’ religious freedoms. In placards and advertisements, they asserted that it would allow people born as men to freely enter women’s bathrooms.

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Britain’s New Racism by Douglas Murray

By on November 4th, 2015

The most predictable and worrying result of Jeremy Corbyn’s election was always the effect it was going to have on the growing anti-Semitism and anti-Israel activism in the UK.

For someone such as Jeremy Corbyn, an elevation to a position of leadership is a vindication of those years in the wilderness, not an opportunity to find an ideological replacement.

One of the reasons Hamas supporters spend so much time speaking to university students is because they hope such students will demonstrate a naïveté about them and their goals that might be unusual elsewhere in society.

What happens when a pro-Hamas speaker is confronted by an anti-Hamas speaker? The anti-Hamas speaker may rightly say that Hamas is an extremist organisation. The pro-Hamas speaker or naïve student might easily come back by asking how an organization can be deemed extreme if the leader of Her Majesty’s opposition is a friend and supporter of the group. This certainly makes it easier to depict its terrorists as tolerable and its racism as acceptable.

The British left, under Corbyn’s leadership, now harbour the proponents of the greatest racism of our time.

It was never hard to predict the effects of the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the British Labour party. Although some people wondered whether the candidate of the far-left might soften some of his opinions once in power, most observers never doubted that someone who had cherished such opinions almost alone on the backbenches for three decades was hardly going to change them overnight just because he had become party leader. For someone such as Corbyn, an elevation to a position of leadership is a vindication of those years in the wilderness, not an opportunity to find an ideological replacement.

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RUTHIE BLUM: THE DOUBLESPEAK OF (SIMPLE) SHIMON PERES

By on November 4th, 2015

Because the wave of stabbing attacks committed by Palestinian terrorists against innocent Israeli soldiers and civilians is coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the Rabin assassination, a tired old meme about the “murder of the peace process” has been revitalized.

Yes — liberals love to parrot — it was not only Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin who was killed by an extreme right-winger; the heinous act constituted a metaphor for the death blow dealt to Israel’s aspirations for genuine coexistence with the Palestinians.

This “truism” is so false that even its punctuation marks wouldn’t pass a lie-detector test. But it serves a purpose beyond national breast-beating. Indeed, it is used as a political weapon against a specific perpetrator. Not the actual assassin, Yigal Amir, mind you, who was arrested at the scene of his crime in 1995, then tried, convicted and imprisoned for life.

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2,000-year-old fortress unearthed in Jerusalem after century-long search

By on November 4th, 2015

One of the ‘great archaeological riddles in the history of Jerusalem’ is solved.
Acra fortification, built by Hanukkah villain Antiochus IV Epiphanes, maintained Seleucid Greek control over Temple until its conquest by Hasmoneans in 141 BCE.In what archaeologists are describing as “a solution to one of the great archaeological riddles in the history of Jerusalem,” researchers with the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Tuesday that they have found the remnants of a fortress used by the Seleucid Greek king Antiochus Epiphanes in his siege of Jerusalem in 168 BCE.

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Understanding Russian Strategy by Shoshana Bryen

By on November 4th, 2015

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s visit to Moscow last month appears born of the confidence that no one would depose him in his absence.

It completes Vladimir Putin’s cycle of Middle Eastern visitors: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, plus Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a NATO partner; Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, a long-time American partner; and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, president of Egypt, which has not had Russian interlocutors since the Yom Kippur War.

After his meeting with Assad, Putin called Erdogan, King Salman of Saudi Arabia, and el-Sisi, as well as King Abdullah II of Jordan to update them.

It is unsurprising that Arab leaders and Israel, traditional American allies, are listening carefully to Putin. Even Afghanistan and Pakistan are making overtures to the Kremlin and requesting military hardware.

It behooves the American government to understand Russia’s strategy – not to agree with it, not necessarily to cooperate with it or with him, but to understand the logic behind it, which is not altogether contrary to American interests.

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