This is a collection of Ed Cline’s recent columns on Rule of Reason and edwardcline.blogspot.com., chiefly on the subject of Islam’s incursions on the West and especially in the United States. The incursions are made possible mainly at the invitation of corrupt, cravenly cowardly, and reality-denying dhimmis in Europe and in America. Other guilty parties have as their conscious goal the subjugation and destruction of the West. Not all of the essays discuss or are even remotely related to Islam. I have included a handful of pieces on political correctness and the decrepit state of our culture. There really isn’t that much anymore that can be regarded as “good news” or encouraging.Stay tuned for the print edition coming soon….rsk
At a time when the American Jewish community organizes annual marches in support of Israel, it is important to remember that marches are a fairly new phenomenon. The Rabbis March on Washington D.C. on October 6, 1943 was the only public demonstration by American Jews to highlight the issue of rescue.
After the Bermuda Conference in April 1943 failed to solve the refugee crisis, rescue became a major concern for the American Orthodox Jewish community. The U.S. and British arranged the conference seemingly to address the crisis of wartime refugees, but this was a pretense to appease those demanding action.
Dressed in long, dark rabbinic attire, the rabbis walked from Union Station to the Capitol Building. There, Rabbis Eliezer Silver, Israel Rosenberg and Bernhard Louis Levinthal led a recitation of Psalms. Peter Bergson (Hillel Kook), who was head of the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, introduced them to Vice President Henry Wallace and a number of Congressmen.
Bergson enlisted the rabbis and the American Jewish Legion of Veterans for the march. He expected the American clergy would join, but none did. Only the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada, the Union of Hassidic Rabbis and a commander of the Jewish Legion participated. The modern Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America sent Rabbi David Silver, Rabbi Eliezer Silver’s son.
White House adviser Judge Samuel Rosenman told the president that those “behind this petition” were “not representative of the most thoughtful elements in Jewry.” The “leading Jews” Rosenman knew opposed the march, but he admitted failing to “keep the horde from storming Washington.”
A number of Jewish congressmen had attempted to dissuade the rabbis from marching. This backfired when Congressman Sol Bloom, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, argued that, “It would be undignified for these un-American looking rabbis to appear in the nation’s capital.”
At the Lincoln Memorial, the rabbis—who had declared a fast day—prayed for the welfare of the armed forces and the Jews of Europe and a quick Allied victory. Then they walked to the White House and prayed outside the gates. Though they expected to meet with the President, they were told he was unavailable. Later they learned he went to Bolling Field Air Force Base for a minor ceremony to avoid meeting them.
William D. Hassett, Roosevelt’s correspondence secretary, claimed that the newspaper correspondents, who left the march to accompany the president, deprived the rabbis of publicity. The Yiddish press disagreed.
The Trump campaign should be throwing thank-you bouquets at Hillary’s minions for unearthing an 11-year-old video of the businessman speaking raunchily about women to Hollywood Access host Billy Bush. Why?
1. It demonstrates the sheer panic the Hillary campaign is in at the devolving internal-poll numbers that show the ailing candidate barely keeping her [involuntarily] bobbling chin above the water line of decisive failure.
2. It highlights the startling absence of the MIA candidate, who has not been seen since a campaign appearance in Ohio on October 3, leaving surrogates to speak in her stead. This strange absence, just weeks away from the vote for president, tends to confirm the suspicion that Hillary’s frequent symptoms of illness––spasmodic coughing fits, seizure-like head jerking, inability to ascend stairs without men gripping her arms, a left eye that turns involuntarily inward, episodes of freezing in mid-sentence––utterly disqualify her from the office she seeks, which demands top-notch physical strength and mental acuity.
3. Speaking of acuity, we already know that Hillary’s judgement is gravely impaired. Who else uses private servers that are sieves for our national security secrets; lies repeatedly and compulsively to camouflage her disastrous foray into Benghazi; was a central player in facilitating a deal, through the Clinton Foundation slush fund, that gave Vladmir Putin overwhelming control over the global uranium supply chain; and who chooses Sen. Tim Kaine as a running mate?
Kaine is a man who writer Scott McKay describes in “The Kaine Scrutiny” as:
…having “a history of anti-American radical leftism…for nearly 40 years,”
…being a friend and ardent follower of “a violent Communist lunatic…”
…having a “complete lack of business or private-sector experience…[having] never signed the front of a check”
…being a typical phony liberal who on the one hand apologizes for slavery and then institutes a Project Exile program which led to the “mass incarceration of a disproportionately black cohort of perpetrators”
…having “a history of selling himself out to the Muslim Brotherhood,” which has poured huge money into his coffers
…bringing “the stench of corruption with him, something that seems inescapable with any Clinton minion”
After all of the time spent by many people, including myself, explaining the tactics of Saul Alinsky and how today’s Progressive-Left has turbo-charged them, it is stunning – in fact, incredulous – that Conservatives and Republicans are falling for the Clinton deflection con. The complete acquiescence to this tactic is, sadly, proving the Progressives right. Maybe the Right isn’t that smart at all.
The proof in the pudding is the self-righteous outrage being leveled against Donald Trump for an audio recording that exposes a private, “boys-will-be-boys” locker room conversation in which he is braggadocios about his sexual prowess. In every corner of the Conservative world, from social media to the halls of Congress, people are tripping over themselves to castigate Trump for talking like almost every guy has at some point I his life. If you are a guy and you refute that statement you are an unmitigated liar.
And at a time when the self-righteous Right is vomiting invective against the “crass” and “lewd” statements made over a decade ago by Trump, Wikileaks is revealing that this was Hillary Clinton’s plan all along. To promote someone that many would consider “extreme” and then to control the narrative to destroy him or her, leaving her pathway to the Oval Office unencumbered.
In 2015, FOX News reported, the Clinton campaign strategized about ways to elevate Donald Trump and other “extreme” Republicans as “Pied Piper” candidates. These candidates would ultimately be so “unpalatable,” that smearing them into oblivion would be easy and, in the end, the distaste the public had for the candidate would help Clinton win. These “Pied Piper,” Wikileaks revealed, candidates also included Ted Cruz and Ben Carson.
Now, if you bothered to read Rules for Radicals, something I have been saying is an absolute must if you care to protect the Republic from the Progressive movement, you know that they have executed a few rules right out of the textbook. If you read Rules for Radicals, then you also recognize that the anti-Trump crowd has been duped into falling for these Alinsky tactics once again.
Alinsky Rule No. 4 states:
“‘Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.’ You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.” Alinsky continues, “This is a serious rule. The besieged entity’s very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.”
Does this sound familiar? It should. It is exactly what the Clinton team and their Progressive lapdogs in the mainstream media have dangled in front of unwitting Conservatives to fracture the cohesiveness of the vote just 30 days out from Election Day.
Alinsky Rule No. 5 reads:
“‘Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.’ There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.”
Two weeks of atrocity management over Aleppo indicate that the Deep State is still intent on intervening in Syria. Most Americans don’t want another Middle Eastern war, but if Hillary Clinton wins on November 8 it is looks incresingly likely that they will get it.
Writing in Consortiumnews.com on October 5, Robert Parry warned that official Washington’s political/punditry class has developed a new “group think” on Syria that is even more dangerous than the one preceding the Iraq war. Like the “frenzied war fever of 2002-2003,” this new consensus is based on “a mix of selective, dubious and false information,” while excluding from the public forum all discordant voices:
Most notably, there are two key facts about Syria that Americans are not being told: one, U.S. regional “allies” have been funding and arming radical jihadist groups, including Al Qaeda terrorists, there almost since the conflict began in 2011 and, two, the claim about “moderate” Syrian rebels is a fraud; the “moderates” have served essentially as a P.R. cut-out for the U.S. and its “allies” to supply Al Qaeda and its allies with sophisticated weapons while pretending not to… The neocons and their liberal-hawk sidekicks only talk about stopping the “barbarism” of the Syrian government and its Russian allies as they try to finally wipe out Al Qaeda’s jihadists and their “moderate” allies holed up in eastern Aleppo.
Perry notes that these calls for a U.S. military action against the Syrian government – and implicitly the Russians – are coming from some of the most enthusiastic advocates of the war in Iraq, such as Sen. John McCain, Washington Post’s chief editorialist Fred Hiatt, and New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman. He did not name some other influential names urging intervention, such as ex-CIA director and former U.S. Cenral Command chief David Petraeus, Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Ashton Carter’s likely successor at the Pentagon if Hillary Clinton wins, Michele Flournoy.
Specific options are actively under consideration. According to a Reuters report of September 29, discussions were being held at “staff level,” and “include allowing Gulf allies to supply rebels with more sophisticated weaponry, something considered more likely despite Washington’s opposition to this until now. Another is a U.S. air strike on an Assad air base, viewed as less likely because of the potential for causing Russian casualties…”
As for the first option, the unresolved problem is that in today’s Syria there are no “vetted moderates” to whom such “more sophysticated weaponry” (presumably including man-portable ground-to-air missiles, MANPADS) can be safely delivered. On the same day the Wall Street Journal warned that some of Syria’s major rebel factions were “doubling down on their alliance with an al Qaeda-linked group, despite a U.S. warning to split from the extremists or risk being targeted in airstrikes.”
Syrians were slated to be settled in Vermont town with connivance of the mayor.
The mayor, Christopher Louras of Rutland, Vermont ran his on secret Syrian refugee resettlement plan without letting anyone know. Working with various Federally funded resettlement organizations, they collude to keep the public from knowing what was happening. They did not want the public coming out of the woodwork and messing up their program. Even the city aldermen did not know what was going on. Only after the aldermen opened an investigation with the State Department did the truth emerge. So much for government transparency in Vermont, eh?
As Written and Reported by Judicial Watch:
‘If we open it up to anybody and everybody, all sorts of people will come out of the woodwork’ — Amila Merdzanovic, executive director, Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program
Second Group Helping to Resettle Syrian Refugees in Rutland, Vermont Received 91% of its Funding from Government Grants
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released 128 pages of documents it obtained from the mayor of Rutland, Vermont, showing a concerted effort by the mayor and a number of private organizations to conceal from the public their plans to resettle 100 Syrian refugees into the small southern Vermont town.
The documents include an April 14, 2016, email from Amila Merdzanovic, executive director of the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program, to Mayor Christopher Louras, in which she wrote:
I want to share with you the concern my HQ has about holding a public forum. If we open it up to anybody and everybody, all sorts of people will come out of woodwork. Anti-immigrant, anti-anything. They suggest that the forum be invite only but make it as wide as possible. Work with faith leaders, United Way, etc… Perhaps, we could go back to the Congregational Church and continue the conversation there.
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTShttp://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/
Fighting bacteria with decoys. Scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have discovered how bacteria bind with immune system receptors to cause an immune storm, leading to sepsis or fatal toxic shock. The scientists have designed new peptides that act as decoys, stopping the bacteria from binding with the receptors.
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=168666&CultureCode=en
Preventing painful operations. The US FDA has just approved the Aqueduct 100, from Israel’s Aqueduct Medical. The device alleviates the pain and potential complications that millions of women experience from cervical dilation prior to intrauterine procedures. It avoids anesthesia or an operating room environment.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-aqueduct-gets-fda-nod-for-cervical-device/ http://www.aqdmedical.com/
Europe approves suturing system. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Gordian Surgical received CE clearance for its TroClose1200™, an innovative system for inserting surgical instruments into the abdomen and for the stitching of abdominal wall incisions during keyhole surgical procedures.
http://trendlines.com/gordian-surgicals-troclose1200-receives-ce/
Israelis win Columbia U’s Horwitz prize. Columbia University’s 2016 Horwitz Prize goes to Howard Cedar and Aharon Razin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and America’s Gary Felsenfeld for their work on how molecules can regulate the structure, behavior, and activity of DNA. Their research formed the epigenetics field of biology. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/217497
http://newsroom.cumc.columbia.edu/blog/2016/09/06/pioneers-epigenetics-awarded-horwitz-prize/
Echocardiogram project wins research award. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s DiaCardio and South Carolina’s VidiStar have won a South Carolina-Israel research and development award. They will jointly develop a fully-automated echocardiogram (echo) examination and reporting system.
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160830005791/en/S.C.-Israel-Award-Announced
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkhCp_ror5c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzB6nViBJl4
Recognizing autism in the genes. Researchers at Ben-Gurion University have discovered that autism genes have the distinct characteristic of being exceptionally long. The study provides a tool to help identify additional autism genes, and from there hopefully to be able to diagnose autism earlier.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/study-brings-grasp-of-autism-gene-a-step-closer/
Mayo Clinic and IDC entrepreneur program. US nonprofit medical practice and research center Mayo Clinic is joining forces with the IDC Herzliya to develop new medical technologies. The one-year full-time IDCBeyond graduate program includes studies in technology, biomedicine, globalization and sustainability.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/herzliyas-idc-mayo-clinic-join-forces-for-new-medical-tech/
Treating selective mutism. (TY Chani) The charity Ezer Mizion organized a workshop into the subject of selective mutism – where children refuse to speak or only with their immediate family. Hundreds of parents, teachers and therapists attended, hearing from experts who achieve results using unique or tailored methods. http://www.ezermizion.org/blog/selective-mutism/
This week, the 127-year-old American Dialect Society voted the plural pronoun “they,” used as a singular pronoun, their Word of the Year. Reporting the story, the Washington Post illustrated the new use of “they” with the mystifying sentence “everyone wants their cat to succeed,” the old way having been “everyone wants his cat to succeed.”
Trying to depluralize “they” is an asinine effort, stemming from a stupid misunderstanding made by stupid people whom the ADS has chosen to indulge rather than to correct.
The misunderstanding is best illustrated by a Washington Post copy editor who was quoted in the Post’s “singular they” piece. He describes the “singular they” as the “the only sensible solution to English’s lack of a gender-neutral third-person singular personal pronoun.”
But English does have a gender-neutral third-person singular personal pronoun – it’s “he.” Per the dictionary of record, Webster’s Second International Unabridged, the primary definition of the pronoun “he” is “the man or male being previously designated.” The meaning of “male being” is self-evident, but the meaning of “man” has been forgotten by many badly educated people. The first definition Webster’s gives for “man” is “a member of the human race.” Webster’s gives a quote from Hume by way of illustration, “All men, both male and female.” “A male human being” is the second-given, secondary definition.
“Woman” always refers to a female human being, but in the abstract, “man” is neuter (or “gender-neutral,” as the Post says); likewise, “she” always refers to a previously designated female, but in the abstract, “he” is neuter. Just as an actress always refers to a female actor, whereas the abstract “actor” refers generally to both female and male actors. The Academy Awards give an Oscar to the “best actress,” while the Screen Actors Guild gives a SAG Award to outstanding actors, “male actors” and “female actors.”
Surely the American Dialect Society is aware of this. Certainly, they out to say so. You might ask why it matters one way or the other. Aside from being wrong, and sounding wrong, using “they” as a singular steals precision from the language. It is destructive. It makes horseshoe throws of sentences that would previously have been bull’s-eyes. English lost precision when “you” replaced “thou.” Ideally we’d still use “thou” as the familiar for an individual. But at least that change had a good reason; “you” caught on as the more polite form of address, as its equivalents remain in so many other languages (“tu” and “vous,” “tú” and “usted”).
And the same word-blind stupidity is spreading to our armed forces. As of last week, the U.S. Navy is dropping all job titles that include the word “man.” A chief yeoman will become just a chief. “Fire Controlmen” will become nondescript “Petty Officers.” To avoid insult, “sailors will no longer be identified by their job title,” says the Navy Times; the titles “airman, fireman, constructionman and hospitalman” will be “replaced by job codes”; “B320” or “B450” or some other colorless non-word.
All this because no one has told Navy secretary, Ray Mabus, that the suffix “man” does not necessarily mean male.
This is history….the tired old party is realigning by splitting elites from the vox populi…..and whatever the outcome of the election this will be tectonic….This is the culmination of the dissatisfaction that started with the Tea Party….stay tuned! rsk
UPDATE — 10:30 p.m. ET: Ohio Senator Rob Portman is the latest Republican to climb aboard the anti-Trump bandwagon. Portman, who is cruising to reelection in the Buckeye State, released a statement Saturday night withdrawing his support of Trump — and announcing his intention of writing in Pence’s name for president. “I thought it was appropriate to respect the millions of voters across the country who chose Donald Trump as the Republican Party nominee. While I continue to respect those who still support Donald Trump, I can no longer support him. … I will be voting for Mike Pence for President.” Portman’s announcement brings the overall count of anti-Trump Republicans — among congressmen, senators, and governors — to 55.
UPDATE — 7:30 p.m. ET: The ranks of anti-Trump Republicans continue to swell. Of the GOP’s 331 total congressmen, senators, and governors, 54 of them — or 16 percent – have now publicly stated their opposition to the Republican nominee. That tally, according to the expert whip-counter @Taniel, includes two dozen Republicans who withdrew their support after the release of Friday’s video in which Trump can be heard making extremely vulgar comments about women. Some have rescinded their endorsements, while others have gone further in calling on Trump to step aside and allow Mike Pence to replace him as the party’s nominee.
That group of 24 includes several Republicans who are facing competitive reelection fights. One of them is John McCain, the GOP’s 2008 presidential nominee, who issued the following statement Saturday afternoon: “I have wanted to support the candidate our party nominated. He was not my choice, but as a past nominee, I thought it important I respect the fact that Donald Trump won a majority of the delegates by the rules our party set. I thought I owed his supporters that deference. But Donald Trump’s behavior this week, concluding with the disclosure of his demeaning comments about women and his boasts about sexual assaults, make it impossible to continue to offer even conditional support for his candidacy.”
THIS WAS BEFORE supermarket tabloids helped dictate political coverage and before the Internet or Matt Drudge. Back when a Bill Clinton lie didn’t really matter much to the entire world, there was one taped conversation. The Star had the tape of Clinton and Gennifer Flowers and there was sex talk on it. Clinton was a liar even then. This was in New Hampshire in January 1992. Clinton, then seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, walked into a prosperous silkscreen company on Route 38 in Salem. Teenage girls with shopping mall faces stood outside the factory. Clinton had been heard on the tapes calling Gov. Mario Cuomo a Mafia gangster. Everyone initially wanted to believe the tapes a lie, but Clinton apologized. Cuomo accepted the apology and now Clinton apologizes, to the country. What was one lie has become a warehouse of boxed lies.
FROM ACCURACY IN MEDIA
Earlier this year the Star, a tabloid newspaper, published some 2,000 words of transcripts of telephone conversations between Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and Gennifer Flowers, a woman who asserts she had a 12-year sexual affair with the prospective Democratic presidential nominee.
Our media decided you didn’t have the right to read these transcripts. The Washington Post published a meager 59 words. The Associated Press, the wire service which supplies news to most American dailies, transmitted only 24 words. The New York Times, arguably the most influential paper in the country, ran two sentences, both pertaining to derogatory remarks Clinton was heard making about Gov. Mario Cuomo. (The Washington Times and the New York Post are the only papers we’ve seen that published sizable portions of the transcripts; neither paper, unfortunately, has mass circulation in national terms.)
Why the media censorship? Eleanor Clift, who covers politics for Newsweek, wrote in that magazine on Feb. 10, 1992, after the Flowers revelations, “Gary Hart would have given anything for the support Clinton got last week. Truth is, the press is willing to cut Clinton some slack because they like him — and what he has to say.” Steven Stark, a columnist for the liberal Boston Globe, wrote on March 16 that “the question is whether the coverage, as a whole, has become so one-sided that the mainstream press is not giving the public the whole truth. That has clearly happened. Why have so many baby-boom reporters boosted Clinton? In part, it’s because they identify strongly with a liberal, semi-hip contemporary who seems to share their values.” Let us give liberals Clift and Stark credit for honesty: at least they are up front about their shameless admiration for Bill Clinton.
