RUTHFULLY YOURS

This week, the hero of the Democratic Party’s liberal activists — Elizabeth Warren — forced the resignation of Robert Litan, a distinguished scholar from the center-left Brookings Institution. Her actions deserve attention because they suggest the tactics she might employ if she were to become the Democratic presidential nominee — or the president. Her hardball moves also underline just how intolerant of opposing views many liberals now are. Litan, who had been affiliated with Brookings for more than 40 years, is no conservative, but his failure to sign on to the Warren crusade against financial institutions turned him into a casualty. Previously, Warren had blocked investment banker Antonio Weiss from becoming a top Treasury official and Larry Summers from becoming Federal Reserve chairman. She has real power. But is she misusing it?

In the Litan case, Warren and her allies are angry about the growing opposition to a proposed Obama Labor Department rule that would increase disclosure requirements for financial advisers. In fact, that opposition now includes half of all House Democrats and virtually all Republicans in Congress. Ninety-six House Democrats signed a letter this month calling on President Obama to make major changes in the rule. “We continue to hear from constituents, academics, providers, and investors that there are specific provisions of the Rule that may cause market disruptions and limit the ability of segments of the market to reasonably access advice,” the lawmakers’ letter said.

It’s a moment Republican onlookers always knew would come, though they did not know precisely when: The long-simmering tension between former Florida governor Jeb Bush and his one-time protégé, Florida senator Marco Rubio, has become a public spat. It was Bush who made it one.

Until this week, the two presidential rivals had exchanged veiled barbs. Bush had claimed, without naming Rubio, that he is the only candidate in the race with enough experience to clean up the mess in Washington. Rubio had said, without naming Bush, that the time is ripe for a new generation of leadership.

But on Wednesday, Bush began naming names, comparing Rubio, a man he once urged Mitt Romney to select as his running mate, to Barack Obama — not the inspirational leader who has helped to remake the Democratic coalition, but the neophyte executive who has left many conservatives angry and dispirited.

It’s Bush’s latest attack against an adversary he clearly considers a threat, and it comes as the governor is feeling pressure from skittish donors to break out in debates and in the polls. First, in what appeared an attempt to make the GOP contest a two-way race, came sallies in early September against the businessman Donald Trump, who had assailed Bush as a “low energy” candidate. The polls didn’t budge, and Trump’s charge stuck. Now, with his super PAC beginning a $24-million ad buy, Bush is turning his sights to Rubio, who has risen in the polls and who many say is threatening to steal his former mentor’s position as the party’s establishment favorite. Whether the ads persuade and the attacks land will do much to determine Bush’s fortunes.

President Obama’s attitude and policies of appeasing the Islamic Republic have reached an unprecedented level. After the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, lashed out at the United States and Israel at the United Nations General assembly, President Obama’s response was intriguing: He continued to apply additional appeasement policies. He pointed out to the world leaders gathered at the U.N. General Assembly that the “United States is prepared to work with any nation, including Russia and Iran, to resolve the conflict.”

Basically, President Obama’s words granted critical global legitimacy to Iran, projecting Iran as a powerful state in fighting terrorism and resolving conflicts, projecting the United States as desperate, weak on the global stage, and in need of Iran. More fundamentally, Obama’s statement placed Iran on the right side of the equation: Iranian leaders are the “good folks” battling terrorism.

How can the US work with Iran while the Islamic Republic is the major sponsor of terrorism in the region? The Quds force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps is militarily operating more freely than before in several countries in the region including Yemen, Syria, Iraq, etc. Iranian leaders are boasting about occupying four Arab capitals: Sanaa, Beirut, Damascus, and Baghdad.

Mere hours after a young, mixed-race religion-hater fatally shot at least nine apparently Christian victims at an Oregon college, President Obama tried to harangue Americans into supporting fresh restrictions on guns, the most severely regulated consumer goods in America.

The shooter has been identified as 20-year-old Chris Harper-Mercer. Police say in mid-morning they received reports of a gunman walking around Umpqua Community College (UCC) near Roseburg, Ore. As is the case in all or perhaps nearly all mass shootings at schools, UCC was a gun-free zone.

Wearing body armor, the man reportedly entered a classroom where an English and writing class was being conducted and demanded that those present state their religion.

Those who indicated they were Christian were fatally shot. Those who refused to answer were reportedly shot in the legs. Harper-Mercer apparently died during a shootout with responding police but at time of writing it was unclear if he killed himself or was shot by the officers.

http://jamieglazov.com/2015/10/01/the-unknown-understanding-the-islamic-republic-through-the-quran/

In this new episode of The Unknown, Anni Cyrus helps us in Understanding the Islamic Republic Through the Qur’an.

Why is the Islamic Republic so viciously oppressive of women? Anni connects the dots:

And make sure to watch below the BLOCKBUSTER first episode, The Day I Was Called a Woman by Islam, that launched this series.

(The second edition, My Nightmare as an 11-Year-Old Girl in an Iranian Prison, can be seen HERE; the third edition, My Islamic Court Date and No Way Out, can be seen HERE.

“May they rest in peace, and let Netanyahu prepare for war.”

On Thursday night, Eitam and Naama Henkin were killed in cold blood by Palestinian terrorists who drove by their car and riddled them with bullets. The incident would have caught the attention of the Israeli public in any case. But the fact that the couple was gunned down in front of their four children — aged 9 and under, with the youngest being a 6-month-old baby — made the attack that much more heart-wrenching.

Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s voice cracked slightly while issuing an official statement on the tragedy, in which he expressed deep sorrow for the orphans. This was mere hours after he addressed the U.N. General Assembly in New York and said he was “prepared to immediately, immediately, resume direct peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority without any preconditions whatsoever.”

Turning to the Palestinian Authority leader, whose own speech, delivered the day before, was a tirade of threats to renege on all agreements signed with Israel, Netanyahu said, “President [Mahmoud] Abbas, I know it’s not easy. I know it’s hard. But we owe it to our peoples to try, to continue to try, because together, if we actually negotiate and stop negotiating about the negotiation, if we actually sit down and try to resolve this conflict between us, recognize each other, not use a Palestinian state as a stepping stone for another Islamist dictatorship in the Middle East, but something that will live at peace next to the Jewish state, if we actually do that, we can do remarkable things for our peoples.”

Jesus was quite specific: Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. A political entity as much as a religion, Islam makes no such distinction. That is why, while the Prophet’s nominal followers might be trusted with high office, devout believers never should
Contender for the US Republican presidential nomination Ben Carson made the politically incorrect statement some days’ ago that Islam was inconsistent with the American Constitution and, ‘controversially’, that he wouldn’t support a Muslim becoming president. Oh, verily, did the progressives bring down their scorn upon him. If they were not such a bunch of atheists they would have willed God to strike him down. But the operative word Dr Carson used was ‘Muslim’. I will explain.

Take so-called ‘Christians’ who don’t believe that Christ was divine, was crucified and physically rose from the dead on the third day. There are, in fact, such ‘Christians’. John Shelby Spong, the retired American Episcopal bishop, is a prime and prominent example. He’s an outlier, but others head in his direction.

John Shepherd, the then-Dean of St George’s Anglican Cathedral in Perth, made the physical Resurrection an optional extra in his Easter message in 2008:

Well, what I do believe is that, to be a Christian, to be a member of the Christian Church, it is not necessary to believe that the Resurrection of Jesus was an extraordinary physical event which restored to life Jesus’ original, earthly body. The resurrection of Jesus need not be understood as a restored physical reality, but as a new spiritual reality.

What is now being called Europe’s “migrant crisis” is far more than that. It is in fact a crisis of European thought and of political leadership. At the heart of this crisis are the irreconcilable feelings of the European publics, the problems of a European political class trying to found policies based on those contradictions and a continent-wide unwillingness to think this crisis through beyond short-term emotionalism to any of its logical endpoints.The first of those problems — the contradictions of the public — has been most evident in recent weeks. In late August, in the eastern German town of Heidenau, there were protests outside a refugee centre and an arson attack on a facility to be used by migrants. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, announced that Germany would accept around 800,000 refugees (about 1 per cent of the current German population) this year. When she subsequently appeared in Heidenau, Merkel was roundly booed and heckled by the crowds. This was, understandably, not the image that many other Germans wished to give to the world. Only days later, as refugees flowed across the borders of Germany, there were almost euphoric scenes as people lined the way, clapping, doling out toys and in some places throwing what appeared to be a carnival for their new arrivals. Yet these two groups of people are not wholly separate entities but rather represent a confusion which goes through the heart of many Europeans.

It is better to be presumed an idiot than to speak and remove all doubt. This moron was almost President? …..rsk

“Democracy has been hacked. Capitalism is in need of reform – serious reform. The short-termism that has been bemoaned by some of the leaders of the bigger firms in global markets is really hampering the success of capitalism in building value and reaching its goals,” Gore said during a discussion at the Washington Ideas Forum.

“The repeat and increasingly frequent crises now radiate globally and much more frequently because of the emergence of the earth and really an interconnected global economy. The ignoring of central factors like failure to measure the negative externalities – like pollution and the depletion of natural resources. Positive externalities like investment in public goods, inequality of wealth and incomes,” he added.

Gore, chairman of The Climate Reality Project, cited recent financial reports that showed “GDP has gone up 3.5 percent” but also revealed median income has gone down by the same amount.

“Pollution has gone way up. Depletion of resources has gone way up and inequality has gotten out of control and there is a dearth of investment in public goods like education and healthcare and environmental protection. And this is true everywhere the dominant version of democratic capitalism is being pursued – that needs to be changed and in the capitalism part of that, it’s really important to adopt the kinds of reforms that more and more people are seeing are greatly needed,” he said.

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson encouraged members of the media to stand “on the side of the people,” saying if the nation goes off the fiscal cliff, reporters are going along with it.

“I am just so tickled with the media. I mean, these guys, they just don’t get it and the interesting thing is the media is the only business in America protected by the United States Constitution. And there was a reason that they were protected; it was because they were supposed to be on the side of the people,” Carson said at the Values Voter Summit in Washington.

“They weren’t supposed to pick and choose which side they were on because that distorts the entire system. And we should hope and pray that one day they come to understand that if the nation goes off the cliff they’re going off with it. Maybe they will wake up and begin to understand what is going on,” he added.

The retired neurosurgeon explained that the media twisted his answer to a question about whether or not he would support a Muslim for president.

Carson said he recently went back and forth with an unnamed commentator who told him, “But you said that someone who was of Islamic faith and a Muslim could not be president of the United States.”

In response, Carson told the commentator to re-read the transcript of the full interview.

“I said anybody of any faith of any belief system who comes to America, becomes an American citizen, embraces our American values and principles, and is willing to subjugate their beliefs to our Constitution is somebody I have no problem with,” Carson said. “Anybody that doesn’t fit in that category, I don’t care who they are, they can be a Christian, if they don’t fit in that category I’m not going to advocate they be president of the United States. It’s as simple as that.”