RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/caruba/131108The outcomes of elections allows us to pick through the detritus in an effort to “make sense” of the choices voters made.

I will begin with a prediction that, before this century is over, Colorado will split into two states as momentum builds for its northern counties to revisit the secession vote that failed. I predict that California will break into several smaller states as well.

I always strive to be optimistic, but it is getting harder and the November 5 elections suggest a slow slide toward continued moral and cultural decline, and that is never a good thing.

About the only good news of the evening was the reelection of New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie. It was a no-brainer because, as a lifelong resident, I can tell you that he is tremendously popular. He’s had his successes, but hardcore conservatives will probably never be happy with him. In a race against Hillary Clinton in 2016, however, they would vote for him, having learned the lessons of the 2012 election that reelected Obama.

Almost no one expected Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli would win the governorship, but the narrowness of his loss suggests that the unpopularity of Obamacare will loom large in 2014 and 2016. Cuccinelli would have won if the Democrats didn’t underwrite a third party Libertarian campaign that drew off sufficient votes; a large portion of which were from younger, less sophisticated, more idealistic voters. Moreover, Cuccinelli was heavily outspent and did not get much help from the Republican establishment that still sees the Tea Party as its enemy.

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/korol

’The Kristallnacht was started by one individual,’ she said, referring to Hershel Grynszpan, a 17-year old German-born Polish Jew who assassinated Ernst von Rath, a German diplomat stationed in Paris. “It shows how a minor event in history can lead to mass destruction.” Cleveland Jewish News, Nov. 1, 2013.

Roni Berenson, a Holocaust survivor, was interviewed about Kristallnacht in the Cleveland Jewish News (CJN). Born in Berlin, she remembers being pulled out of school on the day after the violence, and she and her parents boarded the next-to-last ship that left Europe. Berenson blames the events of Kristallnacht on Herschel Grynszpan, himself a Jewish victim of the Nazi menace.

Herschel Grynszpan, was a seventeen-year-old German-born, Jewish refugee of Polish parents. He had been sent to an uncle in Paris to escape persecution, but now his parents were among many thousands of Polish Jews expelled and abandoned at the German-Polish border only to be refused entry and sanctuary in their native land. Perhaps distraught over their situation and his own, and fearful of the future, Grynszpan bought a gun and shot Ernst von Rath, a low-level German embassy official assigned to assist him. And it was this minor incident, this shooting that would be termed an assassination, that the Nazis used to justify Kristallnacht and the unspeakable brutality to follow.

History shows that German journalist, Wilhelm Marr, coined the term “antisemitism” in 1879, in his published pamphlet, “The Victory of Judaism over Germanism,” pronouncing it a science rather than the more precise Judenhass, or Jewish-hatred. After his next pamphlet in 1880, “The Way to Victory of the Germanic Spirit over the Jewish Spirit,” he founded the League of Antisemites, the first German organization dedicated to oppose the alleged Jewish threat to German culture, and force the Jews from Germany.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/363538/obamas-massive-fraud-andrew-c-mccarthy

If he were a CEO in the private sector, he’d be prosecuted for such deception.

‘If you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period.” How serious was this lie, repeated by Barack Obama with such beguiling regularity? Well, how would the Justice Department be dealing with it if it had been uttered by, say, the president of an insurance company rather than the president of the United States?

Fraud is a serious federal felony, usually punishable by up to 20 years’ imprisonment — with every repetition of a fraudulent communication chargeable as a separate crime. In computing sentences, federal sentencing guidelines factor in such considerations as the dollar value of the fraud, the number of victims, and the degree to which the offender’s treachery breaches any special fiduciary duties he owes. Cases of multi-million-dollar corporate frauds — to say nothing of multi-billion-dollar, Bernie Madoff–level scams that nevertheless pale beside Obamacare’s dimensions — often result in terms amounting to decades in the slammer.

Justice Department guidelines, set forth in the U.S. Attorneys Manual, recommend prosecution for fraud in situations involving “any scheme which in its nature is directed to defrauding a class of persons, or the general public, with a substantial pattern of conduct.” So, for example, if a schemer were intentionally to deceive all Americans, or a class of Americans (e.g., people who had health insurance purchased on the individual market), by repeating numerous times — over the airwaves, in mailings, and in electronic announcements — an assertion the schemer knew to be false and misleading, that would constitute an actionable fraud — particularly if the statements induced the victims to take action to their detriment, or lulled the victims into a false sense of security.

http://www.danielpipes.org/13591/obama-turns-on-israel Barack Obama’s March 2013 trip to Israel had a too-good-to-be-true feel about it. While barely pressuring on Israel, he instructed Palestinians not to set preconditions for negotiations and admonished them to “recognize that Israel will be a Jewish state.” It felt out of character, suggesting a price to be paid later. Well, that price […]

A phrase that gained currency during the Cold War has been revived for budget negotiations—to the usual lack of success.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303936904579177770995050960?mod=Life_and_Culture_newsreel_6

When budget talks opened late last month between congressional Republicans and Democrats, the two sides couldn’t agree on much, but they did share one sentiment: The talks would yield no “grand bargain”—no comprehensive deal on taxes, spending and entitlements.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, for instance, said that suggestions of a “grand bargain” were mere “happy talk.” Perhaps it’s just as well, because the phrase “grand bargain” has, historically, been something of a curse. When potential deals acquire that name, they almost always seem to fall apart.

The phrase “grand bargain” first gained currency during the Cold War, when accords between the Soviet Union and Western powers were hard to come by. In 1961, an editorialist for the British newspaper the Observer noted that, while President Kennedy never “imagined the Cold War could be ended by one grand bargain,” he was nonetheless open to talking to his counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev.

“Having run his numbers, this son of Zionist pioneers can’t help marveling at the success—or “miracle,” as he writes—of the Jewish national project.”Zionism’s goal,” he concludes, “was to transfer a people from one continent to another, to conquer a country and assemble a nation and build a state and revive a language and give hope to a hopeless people. And against all odds, Zionism succeeded. If a Vesuvius-like volcano were to erupt tonight and end our Pompeii, this is what it would petrify: a living people. People that have come from death and were surrounded by death but who nevertheless put up a spectacular spectacle of life.”

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304527504579167770239619540?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

In the spring of 1897 a steamer carrying a delegation of 21 British Jews left Port Said, Egypt, for Jaffa—the last leg of its journey to the Holy Land. Leading the pack was Herbert Bentwich, an affluent London lawyer and Zionist leader and the great-grandfather of Ari Shavit, a columnist for the Haaretz newspaper and one of Israel’s most influential political commentators.

In “My Promised Land,” his first book in English, Mr. Shavit charts Israel’s history partly through the lives of his pioneering forebears: His grandfather, Herbert’s son, was a Cambridge-educated pedagogue who helped develop Israel’s education system, while his father was a chemist at the eye of Israel’s nuclear program. The result is roughly equal parts personal and family memoir, Israeli history, and prophecies for the land’s future. It is one of the most nuanced and challenging books written on Israel in years.

Each chapter of “My Promised Land” is a portrait of a time and place (Lydda, 1948; the Alon Shvut settlement, 1975; Gaza Beach, 1991). Mr. Shavit writes of the Bentwich delegation’s fateful journey, of its members touring their hoped-for homeland in white safari suits and cork hats. “Is this colonialism?” he asks. “If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck.” Even so, he goes on, “these pilgrims do not represent Europe. On the contrary. They are Europe’s victims.”

Much of the book is told from the perspective of Mr. Shavit himself, from his childhood in the university town of Rehovot through his service as a paratrooper, his headlong jump into Israel’s peace movement and then his partial decampment from it.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/putins-ruthless-power-an-ex-kgb-agent-on-the-glazov-gang/

On this week’s Glazov Gang, Ex-KGB Agent Konstantin Preobraszhensky unveiled Putin’s Ruthless Power. He also tells a disturbing tale about The Betrayal of American POWs in Russia:

Don’t miss this week’s other BLOCKBUSTER episode with Mudar Zahran, a secular Palestinian Leader who admires and supports Israel. He daringly points to the Palestinian homeland in Jordan, denounces the Islamists and calls out the western media for being Israel haters and not caring about the Palestinians:

http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=330928 On Wednesday, after the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court cleared Avigdor Liberman of corruption charges, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that the not-guilty verdict “ends a persecution that has lasted years.” The state prosecution first announced it was investigating Liberman for alleged graft in 1996. Since then, he was placed under open-ended investigation after open-ended investigation […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/jamie-glazov/john-kerry-and-saudi-women-driving/print/

For the Left, all cultures are equal, but some cultures are more equal than others.

For instance, in the world of the Left, the West never has a right to say what is right or wrong — when dealing with an adversary culture and regime, that is.

If it’s Israel, you can start shooting right away.

For example, when it comes to Israelis getting out of line and engaging in monstrous behavior like building houses and apartments on their own territory, they must be denounced immediately for that — and pressured relentlessly to desist from such unconscionable activity.

When Israelis have the audacity to imprison Palestinian terrorists who have massacred Israeli innocent civilians, something has to be done fast. And that’s why, on April 24, 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry and the Obama administration demanded that Israel release a number of Palestinian terrorists from its prisons — to make the Palestinian Authority happy of course. (P.S.: The P.A. was not pressured to stop its mosques, schools and media outlets from teaching that Israel has no right to exist or that Jews are descended from apes and pigs.)

If Kerry were asked what he thinks of apartheid-era South Africa, which Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has compared Israel to, one just dares to presume that he would say it was a bad thing that blacks were considered second-class citizens — which of course it was. He would, in other words, apply a universal standard of human rights on South Africa and declare that a society that marginalizes and disempowers a certain group of people based on skin color is an inferior society and must civilize itself. And that would be a legitimate position.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-tapson/ending-the-war-on-terror/print/

“Calling an end to the “war on terror” is not a solution, because terror is not the enemy – Islamic supremacism is, and it has been a threat to the west for many centuries and isn’t going away overnight, particularly not with Barack Obama in the White House.”

In a piece last week in The Atlantic entitled “Terrorism Could Never Threaten American Values—the ‘War on Terror’ Does,” James Fallows says it’s high time that President Obama shows he understands the truth of that article’s title, and calls to put a stop to the “open-ended ‘Global War on Terror.’”

Fallows, a longtime national correspondent for The Atlantic, has argued at least as far back as 2006 that we had al Qaeda on the run, and that even though its “successor groups in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere will continue to pose dangers… its hopes for fundamentally harming the United States now rest less on what it can do itself than on what it can trick, tempt, or goad us into doing.”

There is some undeniable truth to this. All one has to do is look at how Shoe Bomber Richard Reid, who wasn’t even successful in his attempt to bring down Flight 63 from Paris to Miami twelve years ago, transformed our air travel experience into a tedious, massively bureaucratic and intrusive TSA nightmare, detrimentally impacting our economy in the process (in a succinct summation of Fallows’ argument, famed atheist Richard Dawkins recently tweeted his irritation over what he deemed the pointless idiocy of airport security extremes: “Bin Laden has won.”). And of course, one could look at how terrorist acts have resulted, even more intrusively, in the surveillance state that emerged under George W. Bush and which has metastasized exponentially under Barack Obama.

“But if it saves a few lives…” goes the seemingly reasonable rationale for