RUTHFULLY YOURS

GOP presidential candidate would eliminate mandates, provide tax credits based on age
Scott Walker’s proposal to replace President Barack Obama’s signature health-care law would set up a system that eliminates a host of federal mandates and provides tax credits for the uninsured based on age, not income or family status.

The Wisconsin governor and GOP presidential candidate says the plan wouldn’t add to the federal deficit and would completely repeal and dismantle the Obama administration’s health-care law. Mr. Walker says his plan would give more control to the states, overhaul Medicaid and do away with tax credits based on income. It would also toss out the law’s requirement that insurers offer plans that cover essential health benefits such as maternity care and mental-health services.

Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American; Chairman, Conservative Campaign Committee

My wife and I were a very nervous and excited young couple purchasing our first home. Our homebuilder was a dear friend of my parents. Upon going to closing, there were numerous odds and ends the builder had not completed. He vowed to complete my home asap and asked that I sign a paper for the bank stating that he completed all the work on my home.

My mom cautioned me not to sign the paper. Mom said, “Eaten bread is soon forgotten.” I ignored Mom’s counsel. Sure enough, after my builder received his check from the bank, I had to chase him for over a year to complete my home.

Just as my builder said whatever necessary to get paid, politicians make voter-pleasing promises on the campaign trail. After they are elected, they forget their promises. Therefore, the final Jeopardy question is: Which GOP presidential contender would keep his word if elected? Having been burnt so many times, trustworthiness, character and backbone must be paramount in selecting our nominee.

In this primary season, we have witnessed honorable conservative candidates dialing back their original comments or apologizing due to pressure from the mainstream media and the candidate’s handlers. This raises concerns in me about how these candidates would holdup under world-class attacks once they are in the WH.

Leftists (mainstream media, Democrats and liberals) viciously insulted and accused president Ronald Reagan of every nasty thing imaginable. It takes a rare human being to stand firm in the midst of 24/7 relentless character assassination. Thus, my question. Which GOP contenders would follow through with their conservative promises?

At the top of my list is Senator Ted Cruz. On several issues, Cruz seems to always end up on the opposite side of the GOP establishment and Leftist Democrats; in-sync with We the People. Cruz never follows the crowd. Eagles fly alone.

Our society is under attack, not from Russia or radical Islam, but from heterophobes.

Okay, I made the term up…sort of. But if a homophobe is a person who fears or hates homosexuals, then what else can we call gays who hate straights? Yep, surprise, there are not-so-nice people on both sides. I know, I’m an unforgivable homophobic creep for pointing this out, but since the rest of the country seems to be in some sort of trance, I feel obliged.

Gays say they just want to have normal lives. But for the LGBT movement, this is patently false. They’ve come out of the closet, and good for them. But they didn’t stop there; they have taken over American’s living rooms, kitchens, and yes, even bedrooms. And now that they’re in possession, they want to shove heterosexuals, especially Christians, back into that closet they just vacated.

LGBT’s hate campaign fired an opening salvo back in June 2012, when the Chick-fil-A CEO was revealed as a Christian against same-sex marriage. Gasp! That couldn’t stand. You let one guy start spouting his opinion, and soon the whole country will think they can do it.

Before Obama restored ties to Cuba, he ended an inventive U.S. effort to promote freedom.

There was an odd sight over John Kerry’s shoulder as he stood in the Havana sun Friday. At a flagpole in front of him, U.S. Marines were raising the Stars and Stripes to mark the return of a U.S. embassy to Cuba after 54 years. Choreographed and solemn, that was the scene that U.S. and Cuban leaders wanted the world to see.

Behind Secretary of State Kerry, though, was a peculiar sea of other flagpoles, tall and empty, steel spires rising from nowhere. These were visible in photographs splashed across world news but little noted. Which is unfortunate. Because those steel poles are a reminder of an unusually creative and bold chapter in recent U.S. diplomacy—and one the Obama administration ended.

In 2006 the U.S. faced a challenge. For nearly 30 years it had been operating a quasi-embassy in Havana, known as an Interests Section, from the same building that housed the U.S. Embassy before the 1961 break in formal diplomatic ties. The Bush administration wanted to support liberalization by aiding the victims of the Castro regime, including labor activists and journalists and those punished for trying to worship, work or travel freely. But U.S. officials were largely confined to the Interests Section, barred from freely meeting the public or communicating through the state-controlled media.

The Pentagon is ready to upgrade Kiev’s radar, but White House authorization isn’t forthcoming.

Russian proxies in occupied eastern Ukraine shelled Ukrainian-government positions over the weekend and on Monday. The artillery barrage killed two civilians and wounded several others in Sartana, near the Sea of Azov. It’s one of the larger-scale escalations of the conflict since a winter cease-fire. Meanwhile, the Obama Administration continues to withhold a radar upgrade that would allow Ukrainian forces to protect against shelling.

Hillel CEO tries to speak about common position against BDS, J Street U students want him to say “occupation” is the reason for BDS.

Lots of campus organizations have their retreats in the summer. It’s a time for energizing the members before they return to campus in the fall.

J Street U, the campus arm of J Street, is having its Summer Leadership Institute this week, just outside of Washington, D.C.

On Monday, Aug. 17, Hillel International’s CEO Eric Fingerhut addressed the organization that claims to be pro-Israel. Fingerhut was looking to stake out common ground. The only issue the J Street U students wanted Fingerhut to discuss, however, was the Israeli “occupation” of the Palestinian Arabs.

Fingerhut was invited to address J Street’s SLI back in June, when he met with J Street’s leadership to discuss ways the two organizations could work together. The June meeting took place after Fingerhut, who originally agreed to speak at J Street’s annual conference, pulled out of that commitment.

The only way a Democrat can defeat Mrs. Clinton is by making an issue of her Nixon-like character.

At least since 1968, Democratic campaigns for the party’s presidential nomination have been loud and raucous affairs. This is in marked contrast to the Republicans, who have traditionally operated more like the Elks, bestowing their nomination on some distinguished elder whose “turn” it is to run—whether Bob Dole in 1996 or John McCain in 2008.

Today the parties appear to have switched. Now it is Democrats who look set to nominate their elder, Hillary Clinton, in what has so far been the wimpiest nomination fight in history.

The switch is particularly baffling given that each new day brings new headlines quoting Democratic insiders panicked by what the growing scandal over Mrs. Clinton’s handling of classified information means for the party. Thus the whispering campaign, here floating Joe Biden or Al Gore or John Kerry as an alternative; there noting the turnout for Bernie Sanders; here again watching the FBI seize Mrs. Clinton’s email server and fretting about a nightmare scenario where she enters the 2016 election under federal indictment or investigation by a special prosecutor.

An an interview with Fareed Zakaria, Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer said Prime Minister Netanyahu has more support from Israelis in opposition to the Iran deal than Moses had from Israelites during the Exodus.\Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, said on Sunday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has more support in the Jewish state for his opposition to the Iran nuclear deal than Moses had when he led the Israelites out of Egypt.

Dermer’s comment was made in an interview with CNN‘s Fareed Zakaria in response to a question on whether it was prudent policy for Israel to oppose the Obama Administration on the Iran deal, given the importance of Washington’s support for Israel’s security.

Among the lamentably small coterie of Jewish intellectuals and academics who defend Israel against the anti-Zionist tirades of its legions of liberal and leftist Jewish critics Edward Alexander ranks high. His new collection of essays, Jews Against Themselves (Transaction Publishers), displays sweeping intellectual range and abiding Jewish passion as he hones in on the targets of his analytical scrutiny. A proud and committed Jew who spent years teaching in Israel, Alexander writes with insight, precision and, at time, scathing scorn.

Amid the rising waves of anti-Semitism that course through Europe and surge in the Middle East, Alexander focuses on “the new forms taken by Jewish apostasy in an age when Jewish existence is threatened more starkly and immediately than at any time since the Nazi war against the Jews.” Comprising those who hate Israel, defame other Jews for supporting the Jewish state, and “Israelis against themselves,” they join the roster of Jews, stretching back into the Middle Ages, who have “defamed, abandoned, and harmed their own people.” He exposes and eviscerates Jewish self-hatred, the liberal betrayal of Zionism, the “moral failure of American Jewish intellectuals,” and – as only an academic could – the rampant anti-Semitism that infests American universities and how it came to lodge there.

“Oren reminds us that upon taking office, the newly elected president removed the statue of Winston Churchill from the White House. Oren does not need to explain the act. Churchill saved the West precisely because he was committed, as he said so famously, to defending “our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.That commitment to protecting the West and its values at all cost, Obama implied by removing the statue, would be anathema to his administration.”

The coming weeks will reveal whether the American Jewish community still has a sense of historic responsibility.

Some dramatic historic events have the capacity to remain stunning even if they are not surprising. This week’s accord between Iran and the P5+1 is a case in point. It is a stunning error, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has correctly noted, but it is not a surprising one.

The agreement was unsurprising not only because the parties were so close to a deal for so long, but because the United States was hell-bent on reaching a deal. President Barack Obama wanted a deal no matter what compromises he had to make, no matter how much danger the deal represented for Israel, ostensibly the US’s ally.