RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) returned from the campaign trail to vote for the bill. Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) were absent for the vote.”

The Senate approved new sanctions on North Korea 96-0 while the White House remained mum about its thoughts on the legislation, which is opposed by China.

“Four nuclear tests, three Kims, two violations of United Nations Security Council Resolutions and one attempt by North Korea to transfer nuclear technology to Syria later — it is clearly time for the United States to start taking the North Korea challenge seriously,” said co-sponsor Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), a top Dem on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the panel’s former chairman.

“With today’s overwhelming bipartisan vote, we have taken a major step forward in creating a new policy framework that combines effective sanctions and effective military countermeasures that can stop North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and bring some sanity back to the political calculus,” Menendez said. “This new framework leaves no doubt about our determination to neutralize any threat North Korea may present – with robust, realistic diplomacy toward the clear goal of a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.”

Hey, Sanders kids, relax. The fix is in.

Politico reports the delegate count arising out of the New Hampshire vote.

Among the 712 superdelegates, Hillary had a 45-to-1 margin a few months ago, in the 80% the Associated Press was able to reach to survey.

There’s a cloud of malaise worthy of Jimmy Carter that has settled over the nation’s military. The man who should be able to clear away the cloud, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, won’t be able to do anything about it.

The causes of this malaise are plainly evident, lying by the side of the political road like burned-out cars. They are the accumulated wreckage of seven years of failed policies, indecision and inaction.

Begin with President Obama’s strategy that called for American troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan by now. Later, it was supposed to be by the end of 2016. As of two weeks ago, our military leaders had reportedly given up on Mr. Obama’s strategy to pull out of Afghanistan and were predicting that we would have to have troops there indefinitely — for decades to come at least — if the Kabul government was to have any chance of surviving rapid overthrow by the Taliban.

The military has no appetite for more decades of nation-building wars, nor should it. Having compounded President George W. Bush’s mistakes in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama evidently intends to kick that can down the road so that his successor will have to deal with it. Which leaves the military — from the grunts on the ground to the generals in the Pentagon — wondering what their mission in Afghanistan is and whether anyone cares if they succeed. The same is true for Syria and Iraq.

On Jan. 20, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joe Dunford said that Russian airstrikes have stabilized the Bashar Assad regime in Syria. What that means is that Russia — and its ally, Iran — have won the war in Syria. Those two nations have struck out at the anti-Assad forces, not the Islamic State, or ISIS. The accompanying failures of desultory U.S. airstrikes to destroy ISIS and Saudi and other Arab forces to evict Mr. Assad combine to leave our military wondering what they are trying to accomplish and how anyone plans for them to succeed.

Is there anyone in the United States whose personal information has not been stolen, yet? Hard to tell. The government agencies seem slow in detecting such breaches, slower in reporting about them, and very slow in resolving problems arising from such thefts.
Take today’s Internal Revenue Service’s announcement of the latest breach. The agency said it will send notifications to those affected by last month’s breach into taxpayers’ accounts. According to the agency the hackers used “personal data stolen elsewhere outside the IRS.” Maybe.

In 2010, the Obama administration, spent about $12 billion on cyber security, said the General Accounting report. And a good chunk of that was spent on employees. So it comes as no surprise that President Obama’s 2017 budget proposal of more than $19 billion for federal security programs includes the hiring of new personnel. Accordingly, the new Cybersecurity National Action Plan (CNAP), will be presided by a new federal chief information security officer and new hires.

Over the past 10 or so years, I’ve followed the writings of author Joan Swirsky. Although we’re separated by many miles, many States and have never met face to face, we’ve established an e-mail and telephone friendship.

A few months ago, Joan told me that she was completing her new book about a subject that is relevant to every human being on the planet. I asked if she’d like me to interview her as soon as the book was published. That day has, finally, arrived. The book is out! The interview below is Joan’s in-depth discussion on her book and a few other subjects that should be of interest to all.

BIO: Joan Swirsky is the the recipient of numerous Long Island Press Awards, has written health, science and feature articles for The New York Times Long Island section for over 20 years, as well as for many regional and national publications. A former obstetrical nurse, Lamaze teacher and psychotherapist, Joan is the book-and-lyric writer of four musicals, one of which, “Oh Baby!” – about three couples facing parenthood – was produced in New York City in 1983.

Joan is a clinical nurse specialist (R.N., M.S., C.S., C.E.) and NY-State-certified psychotherapist. She was awarded a Nurse of Distinction Award by the New York State Legislature in 1991, received the Master’s Faculty Leadership Award from Adelphi University, and is a member of Sigma Theta Tau Nursing Honor Society.

She was also the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of REVOLUTION -The Journal of Nurse Empowerment from 1990 to 1995. The national quarterly magazine received First Prize for Editorial Excellence from the prestigious national media Folio Awards in 1994. In addition, for 15 years, she was the founding editor of The Caucus Current, a monthly magazine on conservative Jewish political issues.

For 15 years, Joan wrote a monthly column on pregnancy and childbirth for Newsday’s Parents & Children Magazine and for Long Island Parent. She was also a political writer for Newsmax.com and Newsmax Magazine. To this day, she writes for numerous conservative websites.

It was almost comforting to hear the Republican candidates try to outdo each other on Saturday night, saying they’d pour money on the problems of our military to solve them. As if that solution ever worked. One of the biggest problems we have is that we’re doing some really dumb things.

Some are so dumb it beggars the imagination. Other things are so costly — and dumb — that they are going to beggar the Pentagon budget for decades. We’re buying the wrong stuff.

Three examples prove this theory. First is President Obama’s recent executive order to the Army directing it on how to buy a rifle to replace the old M-16. Second is the continued machinations of the Air Force and Navy to justify buying the combat-ineffective F-35. And third is the Navy’s insistence on buying more of the Littoral Combat Ships (“LCSs,” aka the “little crappy ship”) which can’t survive in combat.

As my pal Rowan Scarborough reported last week in the Washington Times, Obama issued a January executive order directing the Army to design the needed replacement for the M-16 rifle (and the derivative M-4 carbine, which is famous for its malfunctions) not to make it more lethal but to make it safer. That is, less likely to accidentally discharge and to make it harder for an “unauthorized” person to fire the weapon.

his was an interesting panel on the Obama administration’s foolish ideas of trying to make a friend out of Iran’s Islamic Republic.

https://philosproject.org/obama-iranian-nuclear-agreement/

“It’s a fiasco,” Hudson Institute analyst Michael Doran said bluntly, as he assessedPresident Barack Obama and his Iran policy. Doran and his fellow panelists at the Hudson Institute presented the stark dangers involved in the administration’s naïve hopes that Iran’s Islamic Republic can reform and become a reliable Middle East regional partner for a weakening America.

According to Doran, officials in the Obama Administration “believe that they are domesticating the Iranians; that they are showing them that a partnership is possible and elevating those more pragmatic and defensive elements in Iranian society.” He argued that, as it confronts a volatile Middle East, the Obama Administration is “looking at this mess stretching from Baghdad to Beirut and it looks over at Teheran and it sees a big, stable country that behind closed doors talks the language of regional stability. [The administration] thinks, ‘Wow. If we could just incorporate the Iranians into the security architecture, then they will work with us to stabilize the region.’”

Guiding the president and his advisors is a “deep aspect of American thinking about international politics to believe in the gradual, moderating influence of international markets.” Doran added that the administration officials “want to create conditions in Iran that will bring about the same kind of change of calculus” that has made China leery of confronting its major trading partner, America. Those individuals have argued that – as with a post-Marxist China – no Iranian leaders really believe in the Islamic “revolutionary rhetoric” left over from the 1979 revolution.

While Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif and other Iranians “present themselves to the Americans as consummate players of realpolitik,” Doran pointed out that in reality, the Islamic Republic remains a radical danger. The Islamic Republic leaders have specified that they desire an international revolution in the Middle East, “in the sense that they want the American-dominated system that existed to disappear, and a new system [to arise] in which they are the central player. The Iranians play this game of being both the arsonist and the fireman in Middle East conflicts, and develop instruments to blow things up. And they tell you, ‘If you work with us we won’t blow it up.’”

Leftist movements begin with rebellion and end with conformity. No Utopian movement can tolerate rebels for long because there is no room for dissent in paradise. An ideal society, the goal of leftist political movements, not only has no room for war, racism, greed and all the other evils the conformist paradises of the left hope to eliminate, it also has no room for disagreement.

The perfect society and its perfect ideology are also the perfect tyranny. Against this Utopian collectivism, which promises paradise and delivers a prison, is the traditionalist rebel who finds virtue in the acknowledgement of human flaws rather than in the unthinking pursuit of an unchanging perfection.

The traditionalist rebel is not seeking perfection, but humanity. He is a skeptical idealist who is interested in character rather than movements. He is above all else an individualist with an instinctive distrust of any movement that requires him to abandon his rights for the greater good.

The traditionalist rebel is the snake in the liberal Eden because he does not have faith in the noble motives of the bureaucratic activists who claim to be the gods of this Eden. He knows enough of human nature to reject the fallacy that the right ideology makes men so righteous that they can be trusted with absolute power without absolute corruption following in their wake. He knows that socialists have not risen above the crimes of selfish self interest that they condemn mankind for.

The Hebrew Bible is shaped by two extended portraits, of Moses and David. Of the two stories, Moses’ is better known, but the narrative of David is more psychologically complex and dramatically vivid. As they divide the great mountains (Sinai and Zion) and two dominant terrains (desert and land) between them, Moses and David represent, respectively, the giving of the law and the attaining of ultimate redemption through the line of the Messiah.

The story of David is less familiar, partly due to its placement in the book of Samuel instead of the Pentateuch. David’s story is intricate, incident-packed, and follows several different strands. Fascinating in all its parts, it requires some thought and time to weave it together. In some ways, therefore, David’s life is ripe for a novel. Skillful novels unfurl complicated stories and run a strong narrative line through them, helping the reader to understand their shape. Novels can also alter or supplement the original to help the reader understand its essential shape. Here, in Geraldine Brooks’s skillful and eloquent account of the life of David, rather than hint at the apparent hostility David’s brothers bear him, she has one of them accuse him of bestiality. There is no warrant for this in the biblical text, but it certainly does fix the animosity in the reader’s mind.

Last week publishers, copyright experts and other supporters filed amicus briefs petitioning the Supreme Court to hear the copyright-infringement case against Google brought by the Authors Guild. The court’s decision will determine how and whether the rights and livelihood of writers are protected in the future.

If you type, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” into Google’s search box, the text and author will be identified for you in a matter of seconds. This is not because Google has ranks of English majors waiting at the ready, but because, over a decade ago, Google made an agreement with a number of great libraries to make digital copies of every book they owned.

In 2004 Google sent its moving vans to the libraries and carted off some 20 million books. It copied them all, including books in copyright and books not covered by copyright. It asked no authors or publishers for permission, and it offered no compensation for their use—although in compensation to the libraries Google gave them digital copies of the scanned books.

The Authors Guild challenged what Google was doing in Authors Guild v. Google, the copyright-infringement case first brought in 2005 and recently decided on appeal to the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. In October the court ruled that Google was protected by the doctrine of fair use when it copied the books—partly because it only made limited samples from copyright material available to the public, and partly because the court found that making the books available to an electronic search was “transformative.”