RUTHFULLY YOURS

Well, it’s that time of year again – the State of the Union! Here are my traditional thoughts on the occasion – after which we’ll deal with the peculiar circumstances of tonight’s festivities:

Strange how the monarchical urge persists even in a republic two-and-a-third centuries old. Many commentators have pointed out that the modern State of the Union is in fairly obvious mimicry of the Speech from the Throne that precedes a new legislative session in British Commonwealth countries and continental monarchies, but this is to miss the key difference. When the Queen or her viceroy reads a Throne Speech in Westminster, Ottawa, or Canberra, it’s usually the work of a government with a Parliamentary majority: In other words, the stuff she’s announcing is actually going to happen. That’s why, lest any enthusiasm for this or that legislative proposal be detected, the apolitical monarch overcompensates by reading everything in as flat and unexpressive a monotone as possible. Underneath the ancient rituals — the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod getting the door of the House of Commons slammed in his face three times — it’s actually a very workmanlike affair.

After the curtain went up on the Leftist street theatre in Paris calling itself a “unity” march following the Charlie Hebdo-Jewish market massacre, there was a point at which the mask dropped.

While spectators might have been trying to figure out what, if anything, the march was showing “unity” for or against — besides being against Marine Le Pen, who was not invited, and against Benjamin Netanyahu, who, we later discovered, was urged not to come — marchers lifted their voices to accompany loudspeakers blasting “Imagine.” The face of “unity” was visible for all to see.

I’m referring, of course, to John Lennon’s “Imagine,” that maudlin pop-anthem to global Marxian negationisn.

” …Imagine there’s no countries … nothing to kill or die for … no religion too … no possessions … no need for greed or hunger … Imagine all the people/Sharing all the world…”

With this anthem, the symbolic message of the march becomes unmistakable. Accordingly, it made perfect sense for the French Socialist powers-that-be to fail to invite Front National leader Le Pen, whose party is supported by over 25 percent of the French electorate, and also to urge Prime Minister Netanyahu to stay home in Israel. These two leaders would have ruined the “Imagine ” message.

The U.S. Consulate’s determination to provide the trappings of Palestinian statehood to the Palestinian Authority outside the negotiating process should come under scrutiny.

What plan do we have if the Palestinian army attacks the IDF in the future — instead of its presumed enemy, Hamas?

It is revealing that the U.S. appears determined to provide the Palestinian Authority with an army while it is still at war with our ally, Israel.

Last week, officials from the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem attended a Palestinian protest over Israel’s removal of olive trees illegally planted in the West Bank. Coordinated with the Palestinian Authority [PA] but not Israel, the Consulate personnel ended up clashing with Israelis living nearby. It was, perhaps, the quietest international almost-incident you never heard of.

This week, with the focus off Paris, the Middle East Quartet (the U.S., EU, Russia & the UN) plans to meet. The U.S. Consulate’s determination to provide the trappings of Palestinian statehood to the PA outside the negotiating process should come under scrutiny.

Politics is in large part a numbers game, and Jews are at a numerical disadvantage.

In the wake of the terrorist attack on a kosher market in Paris, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked French Jews to come home.

I don’t particularly like that advice. I think it would be a tragedy if centuries of Jewish French culture had to die out because Jews were chased out by Islamist thugs. The French government agrees — for now at least — and has posted armed soldiers everywhere Jews live and gather.

Still, what Netanyahu understands is that there is strength in numbers. The more Jews there are in Israel, the stronger Israel will be. The flip side is that the fewer Jews there are in France — or Europe or America — the weaker Jews as a whole will be.

FOR MORE ON REP. CLAWSON PLEASE VISIT http://www.curtclawson.com/economicplan/
Curt Clawson, Straight ShooterA tea-party favorite steps into the limelight.
By Andrew Johnson

Representative Curt Clawson (R., Fla.) wanted a chance to face off against President Obama one-on-one. While it’s not in the setting he initially proposed, Tuesday night may be as close to that match-up as he will get.Last week, it was announced that Clawson, a former college basketball standout and retired auto-parts executive, will deliver the Tea Party’s response to Obama’s State of the Union. Like Joni Ernst, the Iowa freshman senator picked to give the official Republican rebuttal, Clawson is a fairly new face on Capitol Hill: He was just elected to his first full term in Congress, after five months in the seat he captured in a special-election last June. With newcomer status and limited name recognition, Clawson is just as “shocked” as anyone to get the speaking slot, but feels he’s up to it.

“When they called us up, we were pretty surprised,” he tells National Review Online, admitting that he was initially hesitant to accept the invitation since he wasn’t looking for the limelight.

“Coming to Washington, you learn to have a thick hide,” Clawson explains in his consistently brash-but-upbeat tone. “You do something like this, you’re going to get whacked, and that’s not particularly pleasant, but we come to serve and put ourselves out there.”

Alberto Nisman, the Argentinean prosecutor who indicted top Iranian regime officials for the July 1994 AMIA Jewish Center bombing in Buenos Aires, was found dead by gunshot in his apartment on Sunday night, in what initially was called a suicide.

Nisman was scheduled to address members of parliament the next day to reveal new information about alleged efforts by Argentinean President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her foreign minister, Hector Timerman, to cover up the responsibility of the Iranian regime in the AMIA bombing that killed 86 people some twenty-one years ago.

Just days before his murder, Nisman publicly accused the President and her foreign minister of taking “the criminal decision to fabricate Iran’s innocence to save Argentina’s commercial, political and geopolitical interests.”

Police found arrayed on a desk in his apartment documents relating to his allegations, but no suicide note.

Nisman issued his initial 801 page indictment in the AMIA case in on October 25, 2006. He asked Interpol to issue international arrest warrants against eight current and former Iranian government officials, including then president Hashemi-Rafsanjani, his foreign minister, the intelligence minister, and the head of the Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Amongst the wheat fields of Iraq’s Fertile Crescent, the battle for the nation’s future and the safety of the Kurdistan regional capital of Erbil, continues to rage.

In this sector of the 650-mile Kurdish front Against ISIS (or its Arabic acronym- DAESH, as it is referred to locally) the fight is close quarters, intimate, and fought between relatively small groups of men. The terrain is wide, open, and grassy with features Americans would associate more with the state of Nebraska than with Iraq.

Just a few days ago this area was completely under the control of DAESH militants. They had taken over peoples homes, held local women captive for months, and implemented their own brand of Sharia Law. That just changed due to the brave actions of the Kurdish Peshmerga (with the help of closely coordinated US airstrikes) who liberated the town of Makhmour and several neighboring villages.

I met with the commander of Peshmerga forces in the area, General Najad, who candidly explained the situation from the Kurdish point of view. Holding a BA in political science and his masters in Foreign Policy, the general spoke (in English) with an air that was as much statesman as it was field commander. He was understandably busy; men under his command just retook 6 villages each with 25-30 ISIS fighters in them over the last 48 hours.

When asked if US airstrikes were helping his forces on the ground, his leathered and serious face produced a child like grin. “They have taken out their heavy weapons.” He went on to explain that DAESH has proven to be deadly accurate with artillery, armor, and mortars alike. Is that because some of its members had specialized military training or had experience from foreign armies? He simply replied, “I don’t know, no prisoners have been taken.”

A speech made up of shameless lies, crazy lies and evil lies.
Obama’s previous State of the Union address claimed last year would be a “breakthrough year.” In this year’s State of the Union address he announced that he would turn the page.

Turning the page on last year’s grandiose and dishonest claims is what Obama does with each new address. Each year terrorism has been permanently defeated and the economy has recovered; Al Qaeda is on the run, unemployed dentists from Poughkeepsie are learning to install solar panels and illegal aliens from Los Angeles are teaching sex ed to kindergarteners.

And then next year he comes out to announce once again that the country has recovered from the crisis that he had already announced that it had recovered from last year.

And everyone applauds.

What exactly is Obama turning the page on? Two lost wars and the lowest employed population since 1977… under his predecessor Jimmy Carter?

About mid-way through a desultory conversation [7] with two Muslim apologists for jihad [8], Bill O’Reilly opined (beginning at 3:34 [7]), emphatically:

I don’t believe the prophet Muhammad wanted a world war to impose Islam on everybody. I don’t believe that.

This Islamophilic sentiment was endorsed by the two apologetic mediocrities O’Reilly hosted, and the thoroughly unenlightening January 16, 2015 discussion [7] soon drew to a merciful end.

But O’Reilly’s entirely counterfactual statement [7] about Islam’s prophet and prototype jihadist—no matter how self-assuredly believed—demands a corrective if there is any hope of restoring rationality and clarity to the public airwaves’ discourse about the impetus for the murderous contemporary global scourge of jihad [8] (i.e., nearly 25,000 jihadist attacks [9] since 9/11/2001, and counting).

Islamists set the time machineto the Dark Ages. Putin dreams of czarist Russia. A common enemy: America.

The recent terror attacks in Paris at the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, and at a kosher supermarket, leaving 17 people dead, represented the latest offensive in a struggle that most people, even many of its casualties, are unaware is even taking place.

Globalization has effectively compressed the world in size, increasing the mobility of goods, capital and labor. Simultaneously this has led to globalization across time, as the 21st century collides with cultures and regimes intent on existing as in centuries past. It is less the famous clash of civilizations than an attempt by these “time travelers” to hold on to their waning authority by stopping the advance of the ideas essential to an open society.