RUTHFULLY YOURS

If you believe Hillary Clinton, her email scandal happened because she couldn’t figure out how to do what every American of working age knows how to do; juggle a work and personal email account.

The Clinton vaporware bridge to the 21st century turned out to be a private email server that kept out the media, but not foreign spy agencies. When Hillary finally had to turn over some emails, she printed out tens of thousands of pages of them as if this were still the 20th century.

But like the rest of her party, Hillary is very much a 20th century regulator, not a 21st century innovator.

Despite claiming to have invented the internet, the Democratic Party isn’t very good at technology and doesn’t like technology. Everything from the Healthcare.gov debacle to the VA death lists happened because this administration was completely incompetent when it came to implementing anything more complicated than a hashtag. The success rate for exchanges managed by its state allies isn’t much better. The only databases it seems able to handle are for its incessant election fundraising emails.

Robin Shepherd is a British-born political commentator and analyst. He is Director of International Affairs at the Henry Jackson Society.

Most Westerners have no clue about the Israeli elections, unsurprisingly given the propaganda from outlets like the BBC. The truth is, Israelis are mainly voting on economic and social matters, the Palestinians will reject genuine peace whoever is elected, and Israel will continue to be demonised in the West regardless.

To much of the Western world, Tuesday’s Israeli elections are about one thing: will those pesky upstarts get rid of that awful Mr. Netanyahu and finally elect a prime minister who is serious about getting a two-state solution with the poor, beleaguered Palestinians.

In Israel, and among those who have the courage to see things as they really are, it’s about something quite different, two things in fact.

First, like their British counterparts facing an election in May, the main issues for Israelis centre on the general cost of living crisis, real wages, jobs, and the astronomical and exclusionary cost (even for people with good jobs) of buying a house.

Israel, though living in a very abnormal region, is a normal democracy in which voters have normal concerns.

Apparently the White House switchboard still can’t get a line to Israel, but Obama’s not the only one with hang-ups on election calls. The media are also taking Netanyahu’s re-election badly. Who said this?

Harper Backs Netanyahu’s Controversial Israel Victory

And who said this?

“Over a million Arabs take part in Middle East’s most democratic elections today”; “The Arabs in Israel are the only Middle East Arab group that practices true democracy”…”Israel is the world’s most vibrant democracy.”

The first is the reaction of The Globe And Mail, Canada’s newspaper of record. The second is Ghanem Nuseibeh, a Palestinian supporter of the Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog. It comes to something when the Palestinians sound less unhinged about Netanyahu’s victory than the western media do.

What’s “controversial” about the Israeli election result other than that it’s not the one The Globe And Mail wanted?

Isn’t there anything a wee bit “controversial” about the Palestinian election? Oh, that’s right: They haven’t held any for a decade or so – Abbas and his fellow Fatah kleptocrats in the West Bank because they want to continue bulking up their Swiss bank accounts with generous Euro-American subsidies, and Hamas in Gaza because they regard democracy as Erdogan in Turkey put it, merely a train you ride until it gets you to where you want to go. Which it did back in 2006.

“The growing wave of anti-Semitism in Holland forces Jews to be careful and hide any symbol that would give away their identity.”

“I don’t think anti-Semitism is growing in the Netherlands. It is just getting more visible now on a daily basis. Twenty or forty years ago it never happened that people call me ‘a dirty Jew,’ but today it’s normal, it happens frequently. It’s not safe for me to take the train, especially in the evening,” says Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs, in this exclusive interview.
“It’s too easy to put the blame on Muslim immigrants only, but I believe that native Dutch people are also susceptible to anti-Semitism.”

The Rabbi noted that people from the region surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, such as Moroccans and Tunisians are more spontaneous in their behavior and expressions, he said. “And it is quite risky to wear a yarmulke and walk in neighborhoods where lots of Muslims are living.” The Rabbi pointed out, “Arabs can walk around freely in Israel, and that’s great, of course! But if would put one step in Gaza, I can guarantee you that they will kill me instantly.”

Following their enthusiastic support for the replacement of Common Law by Sharia, the geniuses at the State Department’s “Think Again, Turn Away” social media campaign have now issued another brilliant Tweet:

“People worldwide promise online to vacation in Tunisia in defiance of deadly terrorist attack”

Beneath it are the usual selfies of persons holding up bits of cardboard, which these days seems to be the only form of resistance fin de civilisation westerners know. I expect we’ll all be standing around selfie-sticking our #UnitedAgainstNukes hashtags when the mullahs drop the big one.

But that’s just standard-issue witlessness. What takes it to the next level is that, at the same time the US State Department is urging everyone to defy the terrorists and support Tunisian tourism, it’s urging State Department employees to steer well clear of Tunisian tourism. Here’s State Department honchette Jen Pskai just one hour before the above Tweet:

The Embassy remains open and is located 10 miles from the museum. All – excuse me – employees have been accounted for, informed of the situation, and urged to avoid the museum and surrounding vicinity.

That would be the tourist area.

Gotcha. The State Department says Tunisian tourist sites are far too dangerous for State Department employees to go anywhere near, but you and your gran’ma should book your tickets today.

This is the most lavishly funded and entirely moronic foreign ministry on the planet.

The leading Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee told Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken this morning that “there really can’t be any marginalization of Congress” on Iran nuclear negotiations.

“Any attempts to sidestep Congress will be resisted on both sides of the aisle,” Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.

Engel also announced that lawmakers have crafted another Iran letter and are ready to send it to the president — signed by 360 members. It began circulating around Congress earlier this month.

He and chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) are hoping to get “a prompt response from the White House.”

The letter to Obama notes that “of the 12 sets of questions that the International Atomic Energy Agency has been seeking, Tehran has answered just part of one. Just last week, the IAEA reported that it is still concerned about signs of Iran’s military related activities, including designing a nuclear payload for a missile.”

In the Israeli elections on Tuesday, an Arab party whose voters were primarily Arab Israelis won 13 parliamentary seats out of 120. The other 107 seats were divided among primarily Jewish Israeli voters.

Of those 107 seats, 24 went to Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni’s left-wing Zionist Camp, five to the far-left Meretz, and 11 to Future (Yesh Atid), a center-left party—for a total of 40 votes for the left-wing camp.

The other 67 votes all went to right-wing and center-right parties, with Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud far ahead of the pack at 30 seats.

In other words, among the predominantly Jewish voters, the right beat the left 67-40. This is known as a landslide.

It’s a particularly dramatic landslide for a couple of reasons. One is that Netanyahu had already served two consecutive terms, as well as a term in the late 1990s. The conventional wisdom was that Israelis were “tired of him” and looking for a change.

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2015/03/19/marco-rubio-shreds-obamas-treatment-of-israel-video/?print=1 Whatever misgivings some have about him, Rubio’s foreign policy chops are strong and getting stronger. Article printed from The PJ Tatler: http://pjmedia.com/tatler URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2015/03/19/marco-rubio-shreds-obamas-treatment-of-israel-video/

Perhaps the biggest, most persistent and successful lie about Barack Obama is that he’s a nice guy who cares.

He isn’t.

He doesn’t.

But the last place one expects to hear this myth eviscerated is the New York Times.

Mr. Obama’s strained association with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, who has clashed with other American presidents as well, has been difficult from the start. But the absence of any real connection between them underscores the rule, not the exception, for Mr. Obama, who has only occasionally invested time in cultivating foreign leaders.

Even his opponent in the last presidential race bought into the lie, choosing to label Obama as nice, but incompetent. Mitt Romney apparently convinced many. Among voters who most valued a candidate who “cares about people like me,” 8-in-10 picked Obama in 2012. Majorities of people who prioritized a candidate who “shares my values,” “is a strong leader,” or “has a vision for the future” all voted for Romney.

If there’s one area of the president’s job where being a “nice guy who cares” matters most, and holds the greatest consequences for failure, it’s international diplomacy. Building trusting relationships with allies requires personal engagement, concern about the needs of others, and genuine warmth. The mythical Obama that we were sold embodies all of these qualities.

On Sunday, March 15, as Christian churches around the world were celebrating morning mass, two churches in Pakistan were attacked [1] by Islamic suicide bombers. At least 17 people were killed and over 70 were wounded.

The two churches (located in Youhanabad, Lahore’s Christian quarter) were St. John’s Catholic Church and Christ Church (Protestant). The Taliban claimed responsibility. It is believed that the group had hoped for much greater death tolls, as there were almost 2,000 people in both churches at the time of the explosions.

According to eyewitnesses, two suicide bombers approached the gates of the two churches and tried to enter them. When they were stopped — including by a 15-year-old Christian who blocked them with his body — they self-detonated. Witnesses saw [2] “body parts flying through the air.”