RUTHFULLY YOURS

The focus should be on the seriously ill. At a gathering in New Hampshire last Monday, Hillary Clinton announced that mental health will be a big part of her campaign. That could be a disaster for those with serious mental illness. To understand why, look back to January 25, 1993, when President Bill Clinton created a President’s Health Care Reform Task Force charged with developing a national health-care plan. While Bill is not Hillary, he appointed her to head the task force.

Hillary’s task force created a Working Group on Mental Health headed by Tipper Gore, wife of Vice President Al Gore, who had a degree in psychology, suffered from depression, and had strong connections to Mental Health America. Mental Health America is not focused on helping the most seriously mentally ill. It is a trade association with the very expansive agenda of “helping all Americans achieve wellness by living mentally healthier lives.” The key issue facing the task force was whether government funds should be used to “help all Americans live mentally healthier lives,” or be limited to helping those who are so severely mentally ill that they genuinely need government aid. This is still a key issue today. It is the seriously ill, not the worried-well, who are overcrowding our jails and shelters and living a hellish existence encased in psychotic delusions. The working group rounded up all the usual mental-health trade associations and naturally concluded that the national plan should cover all mental-health services for everyone.

Washington, D.C. — The annual White House Correspondent’s Dinner is indeed — as President Obama put it last night — “where Washington celebrates itself.” Little real news is ever made, but Beltway media, politicians, and consultants attend in such large numbers that you can get a sense of the current conventional wisdom.

Cecily Strong, the Saturday Night Live comic who followed President Obama on the podium, was so blatantly in Hillary’s corner that it was jarring. But what was striking about last night’s dinner was that many people have come to the conclusion that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is in deep trouble and she is no longer as inevitable as people once thought. Working reporters who cover her and other Democratic politicians wouldn’t go on the record, but you heard the same thing from several of them:

“It’s not that she’s too old — she just can’t relate to younger generations.” “A couple more scandals, and you’ll wonder if they will start to define her campaign.” “Younger women know a female will become president in their lifetime; many of them don’t think it has to be or even should be Hillary.” “How can she possibly distance herself from the Obama administration she served for four years, but whose policies increasingly alienate independent voters she needs?”

That last comment goes to the heart of her problem with Democratic insiders. Publicly, they praise Hillary as a candidate of exceptional experience in government and one who is likely to harvest bushels of votes from people eager to elect the first female president. Privately, they fret about a recent Quinnipiac poll in which 54 percent of Americans say Clinton is not honest or trustworthy. Among independents, that number hits 61 percent. “Candidates distrusted by that many people can win the White House, but it leaves no margin for error or another big scandal,” one Democratic former officeholder admitted to me.

Revelations of donations to the Clinton Foundation after Hillary Clinton joined the Obama administration in January 2009, invite a second look at her decisions as Secretary of State.

In early January 2011 U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was en route to the Gulf region with planned visits to Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Her office announced that she will discuss “regional security issues including Iraq, the Middle East peace process, Lebanon, Yemen…and Iran….”She’ll want to take stock of where we are on the sanctions regime.” The growing tension in Egypt was not on her agenda.

But on February 11, 2011, violent clashes between demonstrators and security forces in Egypt led to President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation and transfer of his powers to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Next, violent protests, the first major Libyan protests in years against Gaddafi rule, erupted in Benghazi, Libya.

Gaddafi’s days were then numbered when on 25 February the U.S. flew its diplomats out of Libya. Within minutes of their departure the Obama administration, citing numerous human rights violations, announced it had imposed sanctions on the Gaddafi family and the Libyan regime. President Obama stated, “We will stand steadfastly with the Libyan people in their demand for universal rights, and a government that is responsive to their aspirations. Their human dignity cannot be denied.”

The next day the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to impose sanctions on Libya. And with events moving rapidly, on 27 February the rebels announced the formation of Interim National Council. The INC, later termed the Transitional National Council had its base in eastern Libya. It survived because it was protected by the West and its ranks were fed by Islamists, some freed from jails in Egypt. What was then dubbed the ‘Arab Spring,’ was happening.

The Clinton Foundation’s finances are so messy that the nation’s most influential charity watchdog put it on its “watch list” of problematic nonprofits last month.
The Clinton family’s mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid.
The group spent the bulk of its windfall on administration, travel, and salaries and bonuses, with the fattest payouts going to family friends.
On its 2013 tax forms, the most recent available, the foundation claimed it spent $30 million on payroll and employee benefits; $8.7 million in rent and office expenses; $9.2 million on “conferences, conventions and meetings”; $8 million on fund-raising; and nearly $8.5 million on travel. None of the Clintons are on the payroll, but they do enjoy first-class flights paid for by the Foundation.
In all, the group reported $84.6 million in “functional expenses” on its 2013 tax return and had more than $64 million left over — money the organization has said represents pledges rather than actual cash on hand.
Some of the tens of millions in administrative costs finance more than 2,000 employees, including aid workers and health professionals around the world.

Ted Cruz, like Senator Barry Goldwater in the sixties has ignited a return to conservative policies and values. He is perfect for the GOP now….and even a shill for all Democratic candidates like Jeff Toobin recognizes it…..rsk

Ted Cruz, the Republican junior senator from Texas, has heard the line about how the Party needs to become more moderate to win Presidential elections. “It is amazing that the wisdom of the chattering class to the Republicans is always, always, always ‘Surrender your principles and agree with the Democrats,’ ” he told me. “That’s been true for my entire lifetime. The chattering classes have consistently said, ‘You crazy Republicans have to give up on what you believe and become more like Democrats.’ And, I would note, every time Republicans do that we lose.” Cruz then offered a short history of recent Presidential politics. Richard Nixon ran as a conservative, twice a winner; Gerald Ford, moderate, loser; Ronald Reagan, also twice a winner. “President George Herbert Walker Bush ran as a strong conservative, ran to continue the third term of Ronald Reagan, continue the Ronald Reagan revolution,” Cruz went on. “Then he raised taxes and in ’92 ran as an establishment moderate—same candidate, two very different campaigns. First one won, second one lost. In 1996, you got Bob Dole; 2000 and 2004, you have George W. Bush; 2008, John McCain; 2012, Mitt Romney. And what does the entire D.C. Republican consulting class say? ‘In 2016, we need another establishment moderate!’ Hasn’t worked in four decades. ‘But next time will be the time!’ ”

FROM: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11561629/Top-scientists-start-to-examine-fiddled-global-warming-figures.html

Top scientists start to examine fiddled global warming figuresThe Global Warming Policy Foundation has enlisted an international team of five distinguished scientists to carry out a full inquiry….Should be titled TOP SCIENTISTS WAKE UP….RSK Paul Schnee, my e-pal wrote this in 2009

Global Warming or Hot Air? by Paul Schnee:

When many of the supplicants, on the way to their devotions at the Global Warming summit in Copenhagen, were delayed by a heavy snow storm it struck several of us as being hilariously ironic. The faithful who made it all the way to freezing Denmark were able to hear Barack Obama declare : “The time for talk is over….”. This is an old liberal tactic. If you can’t prove your point then just end the discussion. There would be a benefit to this, of course, if talking ceased in the White House thereby drastically reducing the amount of C02 constantly belching forth from its portals and polluting the atmosphere on an hourly basis. Within days the carbon footprint of the United States would shrink to the extent that the only thing we would have to worry about would be how to control the amount of toxic air spewing indiscriminately from Hugo Chavez. Resolving this one vexed issue could well be the subject of many more inconclusive summits or the task of just one strategically aimed cruise missile. But I digress.

The Islamic State militants kidnapped around 30 women from neighbourhoods of Mosul on April 20th.

Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) official from Mosul Saed Mamuzini told BasNews that the militants kidnapped the women because they refused temporary marriage (Nikah) with the jihadists.

The women are from the Wadi Ikab, Hail Tanak and Tamouz 17 neighbourhoods of Mosul and their current whereabouts is unknown.

Mamuzini explained, “IS insurgents had selected the women for temporary marriage with the jihadists, and kidnapped them when they refused.”

“The women are aged between 20 and 35, single and married.”

IS militants used their women’s brigade, al-Khansa, to investigate, arrest and kidnap women under their authority.

The jihadists have kidnapped thousands of young girls and women since they took control of areas in Syria and Iraq, forcing them into temporary marriage .

Reports from IS strongholds in Iraq confirm that the militants regularly use women as sex slaves and sell them in markets.

IS is also responsible for the kidnap of over 5,000 Yazidi women when they attacked Sinjar, northern Iraq last year

The genocide of Armenian Christians by Ottoman Muslims was very real, so was the appalling torture. Women were raped and crucified, people had horseshoes nailed to their feet as they were marched through the streets. Unspeakable atrocities were perpetrated. Yet almost no-one in the Islamic world, and too few in the West will acknowledge it even happened.

As the world continues to look on in dismay at the barbaric atrocities committed against Christian minorities by the Islamic State — the self-proclaimed new “caliphate” — today, April 24, marks the genocide of Armenian and other Christian minorities by Turkey’s Islamic Ottoman Empire, the last caliphate.

While Barack Obama is busy telling Americans that Islam has been “woven into the fabric” of America since its founding, police in Spain have just arrested eleven members of a jihadist cell that, woven into the fabric of Spain, was plotting to bring ISIS-style beheadings to a western city near you.

As Soeren Kern notes in an important and depressing post at the Gatestone Institute web site, police have accused the cell of planning to bomb various public and private buildings in and around Barcelona and of—this is especially nice—plotting to kidnap and behead a random person. I’m not sure that the Muslim presence in Spain has gotten the attention it deserves here, but as Kern points out Catalonia not only has the largest Muslim population in Spain, it also has the largest concentration of radical Islamists in Europe. “The cell’s primary objective,” Kern reports, “was to show that terrorist attacks such as those perpetrated by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria could be carried out in the West.”

As always, Winston Churchill said it best. Here he is on March 24, 1938, less than two weeks after the Anschluss, the Nazi annexation of Austria:

For five years I have talked to the House on these matters—not with very great success. I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf. It is a fine broad stairway at the beginning, but after a bit the carpet ends. A little farther on there are only flagstones, and a little farther on still these break beneath your feet. .  .  . That is the position—that is the terrible transformation that has taken place bit by bit.

Churchill didn’t resign himself to this transformation: “Now is the time at last to rouse the nation. Perhaps it is the last time it can be roused with a chance of preventing war.” But the nation was not roused. Six months later was Munich. A year later, war.

This week, for the first time since President Obama abandoned the bipartisan and international policy of pressuring Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program, the Senate will have a sustained debate on the administration’s Iran policy. For the first time! The op-ed pages and the journals have been full of arguments about the path the administration has gone down. A remarkable number of serious observers, including many sympathetic to the notion of a negotiated deal with Iran, have been critical of the administration’s repeated cascades of concessions.