RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303460004579190131236643954?mod=Opinion_newsreel_2

So the national embarrassment known as Healthcare.gov and the 36 federal ObamaCare exchanges won’t be fixed by the end of November after all, notwithstanding a month of assurances from the White House.

In updates for reporters on Thursday and Friday, the Affordable Care Act’s lead repairman Jeff Zients more or less conceded that the website three years in the making won’t work until sometime after the end of this month. He explained that every problem that is resolved and taken off the “punch list”—already several hundred items long—reveals new problems that the tech people didn’t know about. “Where we are is not where we want to be,” he said.

The tech squeeze is apparently so bad that chief U.S. technology officer Todd Park is too busy to testify before Congress. The House Oversight Committee is probing what went wrong in the development process, but Mr. Park can’t attend the Wednesday hearing because he’s “occupied full time on the critically important work of improving the website,” according to a White House letter rebuffing the invitation.

Is Mr. Park personally rewriting code? Chairman Darrell Issa issued a subpoena compelling him to appear, and maybe he can also address the emerging problem of ObamaCare fraud. That includes the way the law was sold and rolled out, but especially the profusion of identity thieves and scam-artist pages that are now pretending to be Healthcare.gov and are tricking people into divulging sensitive information or buying fake products. Important consumer warning: If an insurance shopping website is usable, it’s not the federal government’s.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303482504579180471671106630?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

President Obama recently announced the long-overdue nomination of Jeh Johnson, the former general counsel of the Defense Department, as the fourth secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. If confirmed, Mr. Johnson will immediately face a major obstacle: Over 40% of the department’s senior leadership positions are either vacant or have an “acting” placeholder. This means that nearly half of the top positions at the third-largest agency in the U.S. government aren’t filled—a problem that has impaired its operations and speaks volumes about this administration’s commitment to homeland security.

The positions didn’t become vacant all at once. The problem has snowballed as the Obama administration has failed to fill open spots in various parts of the department for many months, and in some cases for years.
Despite the president’s claims that the “border is secure,” Customs and Border Protection—the DHS agency responsible for securing the border, regulating international trade and immigration—has not had a Senate-confirmed commissioner during the entire Obama presidency. After a recess appointment expired at the end of 2011, the president waited more than a year and a half before nominating someone in August. Customs and Border Protection now has its fourth acting leader of the Obama presidency.

The situation at Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not much better. When Director John Morton resigned this summer, he was replaced by John Sandweg on an acting basis. Mr. Sandweg is a former political operative with no law-enforcement experience. Since his installment, the administration has not announced a nominee, leaving one of the largest federal law-enforcement agencies without credible, confirmed leadership.

Perhaps the most dire leadership vacuum at DHS is the lack of steady, long-term management in cyber and national security. While rogue nations continue to target everything from Wall Street to our energy industry, and terrorist groups continue to plot against the U.S., both the assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications and the undersecretary for intelligence and analysis have been under acting leadership for nearly a year.

The vacancies extend to DHS financial management. Undersecretary for Management Rafael Borras, who is now acting deputy secretary, is currently without a chief financial officer. Earlier this month, Chief Financial Officer Peggy Sherry left DHS for the IRS. The department’s antiquated financial systems need modernization, and this turnover will hamper progress and waste more money.

http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2013/11/when-the-lights-went-out/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=c5f7eab716-Mosaic_2013_11_11&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-c5f7eab716-41165129 Journalist Max Hastings has been skillfully educating readers and television viewers about military history for more than four decades now, and his latest effort—Catastrophe 1914, which covers the origins of the First World War and the first months of fighting—is a terrific crescendo to a series of books that has covered World War II, the […]

A Secular Palestinian Leader Who Admires and Supports Israel — on The Glazov Gang
Mudar Zahran denounces Islamists and daringly points to the Palestinian homeland in Jordan.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/putins-ruthless-power-an-ex-kgb-agent-on-the-glazov-gang/

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

Apologies, like postcards and encyclopedias, are another of those elements of our past being left behind in the detritus of the old twentieth.

Obama’s non-apology apology “I’m sorry that you’re unhappy” is typical of the passive aggressive apology of the twenty-first. What was once character has become branding. What was once manners has become damage control.

In the peculiar “I feel” grammar of the twenty-first century, “Sorry” has become ubiquitous and meaningless, it’s the new “Eh” or “Is that so.” The ubiquitous sorry assumes that everyone else is constantly being subjected to a torrent of grievances and acknowledges that while taking no responsibility for it.

To the millions of Americans kicked out of their health plans, Obama was offering an “Is that so”; not an admission of guilt or a confession of fault.

They had relied on his assurance, he conceded, and he was sorry that they had. But he was not sorry for causing anything. Merely he was sorry that they felt that they had been misled. As he said this, his spokesmen were busily explaining why no one had been misled at all. If any of the victims of ObamaCare were under the impression that they had received an apology, it was instantly withdrawn by a gaggle of talking heads. Like their health plans.

There can be no apology without responsibility. And responsibility is as dead as the fountain pen.

no…it is not in Sweden or Hungary or Indonesia…..   The swastikas, the students recalled, seemed to be everywhere: on walls, desks, lockers, textbooks, computer screens, a playground slide — even on a student’s face. A picture of President Obama, with a swastika drawn on his forehead, remained on the wall of an eighth-grade social […]

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Pollards-fate-331098

Former CIA director James Woolsey says he would tell US President Obama to
forget that Pollard is a Jew and just release him. Indeed.

Recent revelations of unbridled American espionage against its Western
allies have exposed the hypocrisy and injustice that have kept Jonathan
Pollard in prison for nearly three decades.

Washington has always presented Pollard’s unprecedented life sentence,
including seven years in solitary confinement, as a reasonable response to
Israel’s unmitigated gall for running a spy in the US. Successive American
administrations have consistently maintained a morally superior posture,
posing as the injured party, insisting on perpetuating the excessive
punishment of Israel’s agent.

From: Alan Baker, Attorney, Ambassador (ret’),Former legal counsel of Israel’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs,Former ambassador of Israel to Canada,

Director, Institute for Contemporary Affairs, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,Director, International Action Division, The Legal Forum for Israel

Dear Secretary Kerry,

After listening to you declare repeatedly over the past weeks that “Israel’s settlements are illegitimate”, I respectfully wish to state, unequivocally, that you are mistaken and ill advised, both in law and in fact.

Pursuant to the “Oslo Accords”, and specifically the Israel-Palestinian Interim Agreement (1995), the “issue of settlements” is one of subjects to be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations. President Bill Clinton on behalf of the US, is signatory as witness to that agreement, together with the leaders of the EU, Russia, Egypt, Jordan and Norway.

Your statements serve to not only to prejudge this negotiating issue, but also to undermine the integrity of that agreement, as well as the very negotiations that you so enthusiastically advocate.

Your determination that Israel’s settlements are illegitimate cannot be legally substantiated. The oft-quoted prohibition on transferring population into occupied territory (Art. 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention) was, according to the International Committee Red Cross’s own official commentary of that convention, drafted in 1949 to prevent the forced, mass transfer of populations carried out by the Nazis in the Second World War. It was never intended to apply to Israel’s settlement activity. Attempts by the international community to attribute this article to Israel emanate from clear partisan motives, with which you, and the US are now identifying.

The formal applicability of that convention to the disputed territories cannot be claimed since they were not occupied from a prior, legitimate sovereign power.

The territories cannot be defined as “Palestinian territories” or, as you yourself frequently state, as “Palestine”. No such entity exists, and the whole purpose of the permanent status negotiation is to determine, by agreement, the status of the territory, to which Israel has a legitimate claim, backed by international legal and historic rights. How can you presume to undermine this negotiation?

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4049/arafat-polonium-poisoning Palestinians renewed their allegations that Israel was responsible for the “assassination” of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. But a thorough reading of the Swiss scientists’ report shows that their findings are inconclusive. Russian scientists who also examined the remains have said there was insufficient evidence to support the claim that Arafat may have died in […]

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/nothing-new-under-the-sun-slaves-of-the-revolution-revisited/

The other day, my wife finally got me to go through some old cartons in our storage room that I had managed to not disturb for more than a decade and a half. While sifting through the boxes I found copies of old articles I had written and published back in the 1980’s. One column in particular struck me that was originally published in The Jerusalem Post on January 27, 1985, entitled “Slaves of the Revolution.” After reading it again after more than a quarter of a century, I realized, sadly, that I could have written the same article today with very few changes and minor updates. For your edification I reproduce said article below.

“Slaves of the Revolution”

“We are still faced with the task of training our youth to rebel against ‘servility within the revolution’ in all its forms – beginning with those Jews who were so much the slaves of the Russian Revolution that they even distributed proclamations calling for pogroms in the name of the revolution, and including the Palestine Communist Party (Jews) of our day, which is acting in alliance with the pogromists (Arabs) of Hebron and Tzefat.”

( Berl Katzenelson: Revolution and Tradition, 1934)

Berl Katzenelson was one of the central figures of Socialist Zionism of the group that spawned the likes of David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. One wonders how he would react were he alive today – in light of above stated views – to Peace Now demonstrators in the center of Hebron demonstrating against the Jews there and for today’s pogromists? How would he react to hearing major leaders of his own Labor Party declare that the fault of a Jew brutally murdered in Hebron lies, not with the Arab pogromists, but with the Jewish victim for having the chutzpa to “provoke” the descendants of the Arab pogromists of 1929 by being in Hebron in the first place?

One wonders how he would perceive the actions of a Jewish Defense Minister who orders Jewish soldiers to prevent, physically if necessary, the public lighting of a Chanukah menorah (Chanukia) on the site of ancient Jewish Shechem in order to avoid the possibility of Arab sensibilities being disturbed – Jewish sensitivities be damned? And what would Berl Katzenelson do today were he to see and hear members of his own Labor Party denounce a lone Jew for maintaining a vigil against the idea of Jews being summarily stoned on the roadways of Eretz Yisrael becoming an acceptable concept?