Displaying posts published in

2016

A Wake-Up Call for Congress on Mental-Health Reform The incident at the Capitol involving a clearly troubled man is the latest reminder: Lawmakers need to act. By E. Fuller Torrey

http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-wake-up-call-for-congress-on-mental-health-reform-1459291136

Another shooting at the U.S. Capitol. This time, in an incident on Monday, 66-year-old Larry Dawson, a Tennessee man known to U.S. Capitol Police for his erratic behavior, was shot and wounded by a police officer when he pulled out what sources later said was a pistol-like pellet gun.

What is going on? One possible answer was offered earlier this month by 30-year-old Kyle Odom, who was arrested March 8 after throwing a letter to President Obama over the White House fence. The letter warned the president that there are at least 50 members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, who are Martians. Then, in a 21-page manifesto released to the media, Mr. Odom provided the names of these congressional Martians and described how they live “deep underground here and inside the moon.” Law-enforcement officials say that two days before the White House incident, Mr. Odom shot and critically wounded an Idaho minister, believing that the clergyman also was a Martian.

Kyle Odom had not always believed in extraterrestrials. He served four years as a decorated Marine, graduated from the University of Idaho with honors, and was accepted into a prestigious Ph.D. program in genetics. Then he developed delusions and auditory hallucinations, classic symptoms of schizophrenia. Like many with this disease, though, he apparently has had no awareness of his own illness.

Mr. Odom joins a long line of individuals with untreated mental illness who have come to the attention of Congress. In 1998 Russell Weston, with untreated schizophrenia, shot his way into the Capitol building, killing two guards before finally being stopped as he entered the office of then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay. In response, Congress vowed to do something about untreated mental illness but did nothing.

In 2011 Jared Loughner, with untreated schizophrenia, severely wounded then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Ariz., and killed six others. In response, Congress vowed to do something but did nothing. Then in 2013 Miriam Carey, seriously mentally ill, was killed by U.S. Capitol Police on the Capitol grounds, causing a lockdown of the building. During these same years there have been at least 20 widely publicized mass shootings by individuals with serious mental illness that was not being treated. CONTINUE AT SITE

Trump Is Obama Squared Two epic narcissists who see themselves as singularly suited to redeem America. Bret Stephens

http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-is-obama-squared-1459207095

Donald Trump is Barack Obama squared. Not as a matter of rhetorical style, where the president is glib and grammatical, while the developer is rambling and coarse. Not as a matter of economic instincts, where Mr. Obama is a social democrat while Mr. Trump is a mercantilist.

And not as a matter of temperament. Mr. Obama is aloof and calculated. Mr. Trump loves to get in your face.
ENLARGE
Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Image

But leave smaller differences aside. The president and The Donald are two epic narcissists who see themselves as singularly suited to redeem an America that is not only imperfect but fundamentally broken. Both men revel in their disdain for the political system and the rules governing it. Both men see themselves not as politicians but as movement leaders. Both are prone to telling fairy tales about their lives and careers.

And both believe they are better than everyone else.

“I think I’m a better speech writer than my speech writers,” Mr. Obama told an aide in 2008. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m . . . a better political director than my director.” Compare that to Mr. Trump earlier this month, when asked on MSNBC who he turns to for foreign policy advice. “My primary consultant is myself.” CONTINUE AT SITE

The Always Reliable United Nations By Elliott Abrams

The United Nations, always fully reliable when it comes to hating Israel, has done it again. On March 14, I wrote at National Review Online about the coming selection at the U.N. Human Rights Council of a new “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” The selection has now been made, and the honor — as it were — goes to a Canadian named Michael Lynk.

Now, in the U.N., these hate-Israel jobs are important. You cannot take the risk that a selectee will be fair or balanced or unbiased. So you go for someone like Lynk.

For example, Lynk is a member of the advisory board of the “Canadian–Palestinian Education Exchange” (CEPAL), which promotes the “Annual Israeli Apartheid Week.” Three days after 9/11, he blamed the attacks on “global inequalities” and “disregard by Western nations for the international rule of law.” He signed a 2009 statement condemning Israel for alleged “war crimes” in Gaza. At the Group of 78’s annual policy conference in 2009, he said, as summarized in the group’s report, that he “used to think the critical date in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict was 1967, the start of the occupation.” Now he thinks that “the solution to the problem must go back to 1948, the date of partition and the start of ethnic cleansing.” In other words, Israel should not exist and its mere existence is a harbinger of ethnic cleansing and other crimes.

Another Terrorist Strike, Another Obama Lecture The president knows that the U.S. could defeat Islamic State outright, but he lacks the political will to lead the fight. Jason Riley

http://www.wsj.com/articles/another-terrorist-strike-another-obama-lecture-1459291616

President Obama’s weekly radio address on Saturday was his latest attempt to reassure the country that the U.S. is making significant progress in the fight against Islamic terrorism, notwithstanding the Brussels airport attack last week and the Paris massacre in November. Alas, it didn’t take long for reality to contradict the soothing rhetoric. The very next day, a Taliban splinter group inspired by Islamic State bombed a crowded park in Lahore, Pakistan, killing more than 70 people, mostly women and children.

“Members of the Christian community who were celebrating Easter today were our prime target,” a Taliban spokesman told NBC News. And the women and children weren’t collateral damage, mind you, they were the targets, according to Lahore’s police chief. Americans argue over whether hardened jihadists should be waterboarded, while the terrorists prey on the softest of targets.

Pakistan is a country of 190 million people, and 97% identify as Muslim. Christians make up less than 2% of the population but are under constant attack from Islamic terrorists. More than a dozen people died in two church bombings in Lahore last April, and some 80 people were killed in a 2013 church bombing in the city of Peshawar. Yet Mr. Obama spent the second half of his radio address lecturing Americans on the importance of religious tolerance. CONTINUE AT SITE

“Excuses” for Terrorists by Douglas Murray

The facts show is that all these “excuses” for terrorism are incorrect. Israel is not, for instance, carrying out the “war crimes,” “apartheid” or “genocide,” which propagandists have persuaded Europeans that Israel is engaged in. Israel is, quite the contrary, fighting an enemy that breaks every rule of armed conflict, and responds in a manner so precise and so moral that allied nations are concerned that they will not be able to live up to the Israeli military’s moral standards the next time they go to war.

Well, what a shock the rest of the world will one day have to undergo. Because if you allow an “excuse” for one false narrative of Islamic extremists, you will then have to allow it for the others. You will, for example, have to accept the word of ISIS that Belgium is a “crusader” nation, deserving to be attacked because it is involved in a “crusade.”

The question is not why it took over 24 hours for the UK to find Belgian-colored lights to project in solidarity, but why after 67 years of terror, it still has not found the simple blue and white lights to project the flag of Israel onto any public place.

The day after the Brussels terror attack, landmarks in the UK were lit up in the colors of the Belgian flag. Portions of the press in Britain excoriated the country on this. Why, they asked, had the now-traditional, mawkish ceremony occurred the day after the attacks rather than on the evening of the attacks themselves? Why were we a day late with our lights when other cities had managed to do their “solidarity” gesture straightaway? Such are our times. And such are our questions.

BDS: Helping Palestinians or Promoting Hate? by Sima Goel

Sadly, university students, unions, and those in show business who believe they are lending their energy in support of the Palestinian people might take a moment to understand that they are supporting politicians — both from the Palestinian territories and from terrorist sponsors — who are, in fact, using the Palestinian people as pawns in a game of chess where oil, money and power are the rewards.

Rather than promote boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), well-meaning idealists might consider how best to assist the Palestinians, whose own leaders siphon off aid money they receive from other countries. Students might consider how to establish industries to improve the Palestinian job market, instead of boycotting Israeli companies that employ thousands of Palestinians. They might make an effort to understand the real situation and work towards promoting a lasting peace, instead of misguidedly worsening the plight of Palestinians.

Peace requires empathy; the BDS movement, with its secret aim of destroying a free and democratic nation, promotes nothing but resentment, division and hate.

The boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is busy promoting anti-Semitism, with universities leading the charge.

Sadly, university students, unions, and those in show business who believe they are lending their energy in support of the Palestinian people might take a moment to understand that they are supporting politicians — both from the Palestinian territories and from terrorist sponsors — who are, in fact, using the Palestinian people as pawns in a game of chess where oil, money and power are the rewards.

Yes, you feel the pain of the Palestinians; yes, you understand their plight. But you also have seen how students can be used by political agencies. During the late 1970s, when the Shah of Iran ruled, like any dictator, he protected his own power at all costs. Freedom of expression and debate was nonexistent, causing intellectuals and university students to revolt, shouting “long live freedom.” University students are young and idealistic; they support the perceived underdogs, wherever they believe them to be.

The regime that replaced the Shah, however, was even more repressive. Every aspect of the life of every Iranian was controlled and decided by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iranians were betrayed and used. Many innocent people had lent their voices to a group that had no respect for them, but regardless used their voices to advance their own political agenda.

In Iran, students protested the Shah in the name of freedom and inadvertently helped bring Ayatollah Khomeini to power. When Khomeini imposed the hijab on all women, even Christians, Jews and others had to wear it. He controlled every aspect of every life. It was only later that so many Iranians realized they had been used, and after the fraudulent elections of 2009, gave their lives, either by imprisonment or death, trying to protest the regime they had brought into being.

While Palestinian politicians are trying to win the public relations battle, the Palestinians are the ones continually suffering.

ZIONISM 101- A VERY WORTHY CAUSE

A close friend, David Isaac, is calling for funds to finish his documentary film series on Zionism. He’s started a crowdfunding campaign toward that goal.

I’ve seen the films he’s produced. He’s doing a magnificent job and they are top-notch. He’s made 37 films so far and needs to finish just 10 more to complete the project. The films are designed to be watched online and used in schools. He’s already partnered with an organization that operates an online course in over 25 Jewish Day Schools. They’ve made use of his films for the past two years and have expressed great satisfaction with the results. So the film series is making an impact.

You can reach his campaign page at this link:

http://jewcer.com/project/zionism-101-the-documentary-series

Iran keeps bluffing with same hand: Richard Baehr

As the multiyear talks between Iran and the P5+1 nations carried on toward an interim agreement, and eventually the unsigned final deal that one side (ours) hailed, the Iranians played a card that they continue to play today. That card was the bluff that they would walk away if unsatisfied with the concessions offered by the U.S., other permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany. The Iranians caught on that President Barack Obama was legacy-obsessed and would always concede rather than risk them walking away.

In his first two years in office, blessed with a huge majority in the House of Representatives and a filibuster-proof 60 Senate seats, Obama’s Democratic Party was able to push through health care reform (the Affordable Care Act), financial reform (the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act) and a near trillion dollar stimulus package to tackle the economic downturn caused by the real estate and related Wall Street collapse. Then in the 2010 midterm elections, the evil empire struck back (if one was to believe America’s mainstream media). Tea party Republicans provided the energy for an enormous political shift that gave the House of Representatives back to the Republicans and greatly reduced the Democrats’ Senate advantage. The nation was in for four years of political gridlock.

After Republicans had another successful midterm elections triumph in 2014, capturing control of the Senate following Obama’s re-election in 2012, Obama’s strategy shifted. To become a significant president, he needed to accomplish things that the Republican-controlled Congress could not thwart in his final two years in office. This led to executive orders on immigration (effectively not to enforce the nation’s immigration laws) and continued lawmaking by executive branch agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Democratic-controlled National Labor Relations Board and the Federal Communications Commission. Most significantly, it led in foreign affairs to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the Iran nuclear deal) and the initiative to restore relations with Cuba.

UN names democratic Israel as world’s #1 human rights violator Anne Bayefsky

According to the United Nations, the most evil country in the world today is Israel.

On March 24, 2016, the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) wrapped up its annual meeting in New York by condemning only one country for violating women’s rights anywhere on the planet – Israel, for violating the rights of Palestinian women.

On the same day, the UN Human Rights Council concluded its month-long session in Geneva by condemning Israel five times more than any other of the 192 UN member states.

There were five Council resolutions on Israel. One each on the likes of hellish Syria, North Korea and Iran. Libya got an offer of “technical assistance.” And countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia and China were among the 95% of states that were never mentioned.

No slander is deemed too vile for the UN rights bodies that routinely listen to highly orchestrated Palestinian versions of the ancient blood libel against the Jews.

In Geneva, Palestinian representative Ibrahim Khraishi told the Council on March 24, 2016: “Israeli soldiers and settlers kill Palestinian children. They shoot them dead. They will leave them to bleed to death.” And in New York, Palestinian representative Haifa Al-Agha told CSW on March 16, 2016: “Israel…is directing its military machinery against women and girls. They are killing them, injuring them, and leaving them bleeding to death.”

The B.D.S. Movement and Anti-Semitism on Campus By Eric Alterman see note please

This is from the New York Times- the paper of dreckord on Israel….rsk

Anti-Semitism is no doubt a problem on many college campuses. And the boycott Israel movement — which has inspired these arguments — is tainted with it. I have long been a vocal B.D.S. opponent at CUNY and helped to found a national organization of academics to fight it, and I’ve experienced the nastiness firsthand. Still, as obnoxious as some of its followers can be, the boycott movement on campus is thriving not because of, but in spite of, the anti-Semitism of some of its adherents.

Indeed, it is filled with young Jews. The pro-boycott group Jewish Voice for Peace is perhaps the fastest-growing Jewish organization on campuses nationwide. And many liberal Zionists share the movement’s complaints about the brutality and self-defeating nature of Israel’s nearly 50-year occupation, even if they believe B.D.S. language and tactics to be counterproductive to the goal of a peaceful, two-state solution — to say nothing of the movement’s contravention of principles of free expression.

This is what happened to CUNY, with that surprise session initiated by Republicans in the State Senate. As was the case with the California regents, a single Jewish organization was behind the anti-CUNY campaign. In California, it was the Amcha Initiative, one of whose founders was quoted in this newspaper over the weekend explaining that “B.D.S. is in virtually all of its aspects anti-Semitic.” With CUNY, it was the far-right Zionist Organization of America making the same argument. These accusations of anti-Semitism were then magnified by conservative columnists and repeated by the Republican state senators.

But contrary to what the state senators claimed, CUNY administrators did not ignore the accusations. They hired two former federal prosecutors to examine the complaints of anti-Semitism and “recommend appropriate action.” CUNY has also established a working group to go over its policies relating to the boundaries of acceptable speech. Abraham Foxman, the former director of the Anti-Defamation League and an alumnus of CUNY, has praised the university’s handling of these isolated incidents. And, to borrow a phrase, when it comes to anti-Semitism, if Abe Foxman is not worried, I’m not worried.