RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/344840

Those clamoring for American intervention in Syria — I should say, even more American intervention in Syria — have a lock on two influential drivers of conservative opinion, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages. They are also bedfellows on this issue with our Muslim Brotherhood–enthralled president, even if Mr. Obama’s skittishness about going all in has them a bit testy.

All of this puts the media wind at their backs. Repeated often enough and reported uncritically enough, the interventionists’ shallow story has thus become the narrative. And so we have: The Vacuum.

The Vacuum theme goes like this: The Middle East may be in flux, but our threat environment remains frozen in time — a Nineties warp in which Iran, singularly, is the root of all evil. In Syria now, we have a golden opportunity to hand the mullahs a crushing defeat. All we need to do is commit to toppling their client, Bashar al-Assad. Media spin thus suggests that Assad’s minority Alawite regime is responsible for each of the 70,000 killings and half a million displacements that Syrians have endured since the civil war began — as if the Sunni majority, led by the local Brotherhood affiliate with al-Qaeda as the point of its spear, were not carrying out reciprocal mass murders and an anti-Christian pogrom.

Alas, misadventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya have left the Obama administration gun-shy about leaping with both feet into another Muslim mess. The president thus prefers to “lead from behind” the Sunni supremacist governments of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. This failure of American will has created The Vacuum: a leadership lacuna in the anti-Assad opposition. Into this purported breach, Islamic supremacists — seemingly out of thin air — have rushed in to hijack the forward march of freedom.

As a result, the narrative continues, untold legions of Muslim moderates, secular democrats, and religious minorities who would otherwise be charting Syria’s democratic destiny are being elbowed aside. Even worse, by failing to intervene forcefully — meaning, to fuel the jihad with high-tech combat weapons and an aerial campaign to soften up Assad’s remaining defenses — the administration is frittering away the opportunity to strike up pragmatic alliances with the Vaccum-filling Islamists. Sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought — eager to help the Brotherhood, but too concerned about arms falling into terrorist hands — Obama is forfeiting our chance to influence the outcome.

Right. I mean, look at how ably our decade of heavy investment has steered Iraq and Afghanistan in a pro-American direction. And behold how they love us in Benghazi!

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/

The world’s central banks are playing leapfrog, each trying to ease faster than the other. Since 2008, the world’s central banks have expanded their balance sheets by a staggering $4.7 trillion. The Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing forced the hand of the Bank of Japan, which earlier this week announced that it would double its rate of securities buying, pushing the 10-year Japanese government bond yield down to an all-time low of 0.43%. The Fed’s easing reduced the U.S. dollar’s exchange rate and boosted U.S. exports, largely at the expense of Japan and Europe. With some of Japan’s top export names at risk of bankruptcy, Japan responded with aggressive easing to reduce the value of the yen. Europe is the big loser, and the European Central Bank this week indicated that it might follow suit.

The central banks have been working straight from the playbook that John Maynard Keynes devised in the 1930s, and it has been a dismal failure. They are competing for a stagnant volume of world trade. Quantitative easing has shifted the pain around the world, but it hasn’t restored growth. Once again, the world has to learn the hard way that Keynesian economics fails. It’s disheartening that no major political party anywhere in the world has articulated a clear alternative.

Many conservatives bought into the market consensus, namely that Fed easing would boost asset prices, asset prices would boost consumption, and higher consumption would drive the overall economy. There was an element of self-consolation in this credulity: if the U.S. economy was indeed recovering, it “explains” the Obama victory last November and takes the Republican leadership off the hook for a devastating defeat. The alternative view — that Obama crushed Romney despite a very weak economy — puts the blame on Republican leaders. The fact is that Obama wasn’t lucky. We did a bad job.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/04/resistance_movement_growing_to_islamization_of_france.html

Europe as a continent made up of multicultural nations is at the precipice of obliteration. This may sound melodramatic, but it is exactly what the members of a new French political youth movement called “Generation Identitaire” fear and they are willing to stand up and unite across Europe to stop it.

France was introduced to this group on October 20th, 2012 when about 100+ members made their way to the roof of a mosque in Poitiers, France and hung a huge banner in view of the Minaret that clearly read: “Immigration, building of mosques REFERENDUM!” along with the number “732.”

The meaning was clear to the French. Poitiers was the place that on October 25, 732, a Muslim invasion was defeated by Charles Martel which stopped Arab expansion into Western Europe. This demonstration was a symbolic statement by ‘Generation Identitaire’ who are declaring a war on immigration and committing themselves to be the front lines in the peaceful protection of their national identity and their families. Video of the Poitiers demonstration below:

Europe is becoming a place where the national identity of many nations is being challenged by the growing influence of Muslim immigration and political correctness. This is undoubtedly happening in France with a population of 6-11 million Muslims and it is leading the way to French extinction.

On Sunday, March 24, a protest took place with hundreds of thousands of young French men, members of several organizations who share the same concerns, including Generation Identitaire. This event was an appeal for all generations of Europeans to produce “identity activists” who will be in the forefront defending the family and families, a protest that the participants hope was reminiscent of the famous French Protests in May 1968. 2

The establishment of this new movement can be attributed to the downfall of the French economy with 25% youth unemployment; Frances’ unsustainable benefits to its massive immigration; the street intimidation by Muslim gangs; and the French identity being threatened by a “Global Village” approach.

The essence of their demands is the end of non-European immigration and the construction of any new mosques on French soil. They claim that the mass immigration that began in the ’70’s has radically transformed their country with 43% of 18-50 year olds in the area of Paris being immigrants. They believe that “A people can lift itself out of economic crisis or a war, but not out of the replacement of its population. Without the French, France no longer exists.”

http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/gay-502852-don-homosexual.html

Much of the progressive agenda – on marriage, immigration, and much else – involves not winning the argument but ruling any debate out of bounds.

He who controls the language shapes the debate: In the same week the Associated Press announced that it would no longer describe illegal immigrants as “illegal immigrants,” the star columnist of The New York Times fretted that the Supreme Court seemed to have misplaced the style book on another fashionable minority. “I am worried,” wrote Maureen Dowd, “about how the justices can properly debate same-sex marriage when some don’t even seem to realize that most Americans use the word ‘gay’ now instead of ‘homosexual.'” She quoted her friend Max Mutchnick, creator of “Will & Grace”:

“Scalia uses the word ‘homosexual’ the way George Wallace used the word ‘Negro.’ There’s a tone to it. It’s humiliating and hurtful. I don’t think I’m being overly sensitive, merely vigilant.”
For younger readers, George Wallace was a powerful segregationist Democrat. Whoa, don’t be overly sensitive. There’s no “tone” to my use of the word “Democrat”; I don’t mean to be humiliating and hurtful: it’s just what, in pre-sensitive times, we used to call a “fact.” Likewise, I didn’t detect any “tone” in the way Justice Antonin Scalia used the word “homosexual.” He may have thought this was an appropriately neutral term, judiciously poised midway between “gay” and “Godless sodomite.” Who knows? He’s supposed to be a judge, and a certain inscrutability used to be part of what we regarded as a judicial temperament. By comparison, back in 1986, the year Scalia joined the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Warren Burger declared “there is no such thing as a fundamental right to commit homosexual sodomy.” I don’t want to be overly sensitive, but I think even I, if I rewound the cassette often enough, might be able to detect a certain tone to that.

Nonetheless, Max Mutchnick’s “vigilance” is a revealing glimpse of where we’re headed. Canada, being far more enlightened than the hotbed of homophobes to its south, has had gay marriage coast to coast for a decade. Statistically speaking, one third of 1 percent of all Canadian nuptials are same-sex, and, of that nought-point-three-three, many this past decade have been American gays heading north for a marriage license that they’re denied in their own country. So, gay marriage will provide an important legal recognition for an extremely small number of persons who do not currently enjoy it. But, putting aside arguments over the nature of marital union, the legalization of gay marriage will empower a lot more “vigilance” from all the right-thinking people over everybody else.

Mr. Mutchnick’s comparison of the word “homosexual” with “Negro” gives the game away: Just as everything any conservative says about anything is racist, so, now, it will also be homophobic. It will not be enough to be clinically neutral (“homosexual”) on the subject – or tolerant, bored, mildly amused, utterly indifferent. The other day, Jeremy Irons found himself musing to a reporter on whether (if the issue is unequal legal treatment) a father should be allowed to marry his son for the purpose of avoiding inheritance taxes. The vigilance vigilantes swung into action:

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Into-the-Fray-Obama-in-Israel-the-sinister-subtext-308723
It is difficult to know which is more troubling: Whether Obama actually meant what he said in his speech to students in Jerusalem; or whether he didn’t.

I honestly believe that if any Israeli parent sat down with those [Palestinian] kids, they’d say I want these kids to succeed.– Barack Obama, Jerusalem, March 21, 2013

I hope you will walk the same path we took and God willing, we will see some of you as martyrs.– Wafa al-Biss, young female terrorist, to dozens of Palestinian schoolchildren who came to welcome her home after her release from prison

Because I love my son, I encouraged him to die a martyr’s death for the sake of Allah…Allah be praised, my son has attained this happiness.– Maryam Farahat a.k.a. Umm Nidal a.k.a. Mother of Martyrs, rejoicing at her son’s death in a terrorist attack in which he murdered five Israeli teenagers

Now that the dust is beginning to settle, the spin subside and the fanfare fade, it is perhaps easier to make a more sober assessment of Barack Obama’s visit to Israel and to evaluate the impact it is liable to have on regional developments.

Improved acoustics and aesthetics

Even the most vehement critics of the US president’s policy toward Israel have to concede that, prime facie, the visit did appear to produce a number of encouraging rhetorical elements. It is difficult to deny that from a pro-Israel standpoint, things were certainly made to look and sound far better than before.

As Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin, who has often expressed acerbic disapproval of Obama’s attitude to Israel, remarked, “… one thing has undoubtedly changed in the aftermath of the presidential visit to Israel: Barack Obama’s image as an antagonist of the Jewish state.”

Obama appeared to firmly endorse the notion of the Jewish people’s aboriginal rights and historic ties to the Land of Israel, and that the State of Israel should be a Jewish, declaring: “Palestinians must recognize that Israel will be a Jewish state.”

Moreover, he seemed to have backpedaled on the issue of settlements.

Although he designated their ongoing construction “counterproductive to the cause of peace,” he rebuffed the Palestinian demand that further negotiations be contingent on a renewed settlement freeze. In an apparent reversal of US policy, characterized by The Washington Post as a “stinging rebuttal” of Mahmoud Abbas, Obama sided with Israel’s position, declaring that talks toward a “broad agreement” should resume without preconditions.

Premature diagnosis?

Of course, none of this should be dismissed as inconsequential. However, I would counsel caution before breaking out the champagne.

For despite an apparent pro-Israel metamorphosis in his approach to the Jewish state, it is premature to adopt the upbeat assessment of some conservative columnists who feel that Obama’s “defenders have been… vindicated and his critics chastened, if not silenced.”

Israel and its supporters would do well to recall that in the past, strong statements of support from Obama have had staggeringly short shelf-lives.

For example, his rousing pledge at the 2008 AIPAC conference that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided,” endured barely 24 hours before backpedaling began, and “clarifications” were issued that the word “undivided” was poorly chosen, leaving us to puzzle over what would have constituted a judicious choice. “Re-divided”?

Four years later, at the 2012 AIPAC conference he boldly reassured the audience: “There should not be a shred of doubt by now… I have Israel’s back.”

But here, too, almost immediately, another “clarification” was forthcoming, which effectively stripped this declaration of any operational value, stating: “It [having Israel’s back] was not a military doctrine that we were laying out for any particular military action…. What it means is that, historically, we have always cooperated with Israel… just like we do with Great Britain, just like we do with Japan.”

Clearly, given the great divergence of existential threat-levels faced by Israel, on the one hand, and by Great Britain and Japan, on the other, the clarification, and the alacrity with which it was made, can hardly have been a source of comfort to Israeli policy-makers or the Israeli public.

http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2013/04/05/the-company-you-keep-a-review/

There are two big problems with Robert Redford’s new film about the 60’s Weathermen who became fugitives from justice. The first is the casting of himself as someone just three decades removed from that period of time; sadly, Redford has aged quickly and badly and looks every minute of his actual late 70’s which would have made him a student activist in his mid 40’s. Even Brendan Gleeson, never a matinee idol, would have been a more logical choice for the main character of Nick Sloan, a man with an assumed identity, a career as a lawyer in Albany and a pressing responsibility as a recent widower who is now the sole parent of an 11 year old daughter. Since there are far too many close-ups of the strawberry-blonde septuagenarian, we can’t escape the essential hole in the story – how to believe that grandpa was just a young idealist (or radical ideologue) only thirty years before.

The deeper problem is that the movie shifts course from a discussion of the essence of the Weathermen’s cause, with its diatribe about the sins of Amerika, ruled by evil corporations and the military-industrial complex and the radical group’s accompanying murder of innocents as justification of its goals – to a movie about an innocent man who was never even present at the scene of the crime. This is what is known as an old-fashioned cop-out, only exacerbated by the sanctimonious ending in which we are asked to believe that two of the important characters exhibit a total reversal of their previous behavior after a heart to heart talk with Nick. What a wasted opportunity, particularly at a time when Kathy Boudin’s faculty appointment at Columbia Law School has been circulating on the internet, once again raising the specter of our own update of the sixties’ fascination with radical chic and moral bankruptcy.

The young reporter who activates the plot by uncovering Nick Sloan’s identity, is played by Shia la Boeuf whose performance is sorely compromised by a screenplay that has him invading people’s homes, family dinners and social dates without being summarily dismissed and ejected. Perhaps if he had been played by Ryan Gosling we might have accepted that at least the young attractive woman might have wanted him to linger for a while, but as a scruffy young boor, he loses all credibility. The usually luminous Julie Christie still has her moments, particularly lit by firelight, but has no opportunity to show the uncanny sensitivity she displayed a few years back in “Away From Her.” And the biggest waste of talent is the failure of Redford to have used some appropriate music in the closing credits to be sung by Jackie Evancho, the operatic prodigy who plays Redford’s young daughter in the film and who in reality has become a musical sensation after becoming a finalist on America’s Got Talent at the age of 10. If you want to be moved by sheer genius, go to Youtube.com and click on Jackie singing the aria “Nessun Dorma” – then shake your head at Redford’s gaffe, knowing how much “The Way We Were” lingers in our memories because of Barbra Streisand’s haunting rendition of the title song. There’s also a simulated duet on Youtube of Barbra and Jackie singing Somewhere from “West Side Story” – another worthwhile number that will provide the frisson that is missing from “The Company You Keep” and make you yearn for someone to build a movie that allows this young girl to become the superstar she is destined to be.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/9974397/Global-warming-time-to-rein-back-on-doom-and-gloom.html All right, I accept that this Arctic April may seem an incongruous time to address global warming. But there are important, and possibly hopeful, developments in the complex, contentious world of climate science that might finally give us all a sense of spring. For some recent research suggests that climate change might not be […]

http://www.jdjournal.com/2013/04/04/melvyn-weiss-arrested-for-dui-faces-more-jail-time/#

Melvyn Weiss Arrested for DUI; Faces More Jail Time

Melvyn Weiss, a securities attorney who has spent more than one year in prison after he pled guilty to charges that his firm paid kickbacks to lead plaintiffs, could be sent back to prison after an arrest for drunken driving in Florida, according to The National Law Journal.

Weiss is the founder of what is known now as Milberg LLP. He was arrested on December 19 in Boynton Beach, Florida for driving under the influence. Weiss was scheduled to complete his three years of supervised release on February 5.

U.S. District Judge John Walter in Los Angeles has ordered that Weiss return to court on May 3.

“He could be incarcerated for violating the terms of his release,” said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles. “Under the supervision of a probation officer, and pursuant to that release, you agree you will not violate the law while on release. The allegations made by the [U.S.] Probation Department are in fact he did violate the law by driving while intoxicated in Florida.”

In his plea agreement from 2008, Weiss agreed not to commit crimes while on probation. “Defendant understands that if defendant violates one or more of the conditions of any supervised release imposed, defendant may be returned to prison for all or part of the term of supervised release,” the document says.

The arrest report from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office said that Weiss was pulled over on December 19 after his vehicle was seen swerving and driving in two lanes at once while on Interstate 95. Interstate 95. The vehicle was trailed for one mile prior to stopping. Speeds reached 90 MPH at times.

“When I made contact with the driver I could detect a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage on his breath and he appeared to be impaired,” one of the officers said in an affidavit.

“The driver’s speech was slurred and his eyes were red and glossy,” the arrest report says.

Weiss could not balance while walking a painted street line and could not properly recite the alphabet.

“The defendant stated he had a law degree when I asked his level of education,” the arrest report says. “The defendant correctly recited the alphabet from ‘A’ to ‘F.’ He then said ‘H,I,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,S,X,U,V,W,S,I,C.’ He then said ‘my mind is not as good as it was.’ The defendant appeared confused during the alphabet and tried several times to correct himself.”

While in the back of the patrol car, Weiss said, “Why are you doing this to me, what did I do that was so wrong?” and “You know I am on probation.” Weiss fell asleep in the patrol car. His blood alcohol level was between 0.13 and 0.14.

http://send.hadavars.com/index.php?action=message&l=2096&c=17279&m=15782&s=a317a26441993bdd8f740ee9a6c71bce

Anyone suggesting that Jews are doomed to become a minority west of the Jordan River is either dramatically mistaken or outrageously misleading.

On March 21, 2013, President Obama stated at the Jerusalem Convention Center: “Given the demographics west of the Jordan River, the only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realization of an independent and viable Palestine.”

President Obama was misinformed by his advisors. The suggestion that Israel should concede Jewish geography, in order to secure Jewish demography, ignores demographic trends in Israel, in the Muslim world in general and west of the Jordan River in particular. These trends reaffirm that time is working in favor of Israel’s Jewish demography.

In 2013, in sharp contrast with projections issued by the demographic establishment, there is a 66% Jewish majority (6.3 million Jews) in the combined area of Judea, Samaria (1.66 million Arabs) and pre-1967 Israel (1.65 million Arabs), compared with a 40% Jewish minority in 1948 and a 9% Jewish minority in 1900. The Jewish majority benefits from a robust tailwind of fertility rate and migration, which could produce an 80% Jewish majority by 2035.

The 66% Jewish majority of 6.3 million (including 350,000 Olim not yet recognized as Jews by the Rabbinate) exposes the systematic errors of leading demographers. In 1898, the leading Jewish demographer/historian, Simon Dubnov, projected a meager 500,000 Jews in the Land of Israel by the year 2000. In 1944, the founder of Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics and the guru of contemporary Israeli demographers and statisticians, Prof. Roberto Bacchi, projected only 2.3 million Jews in Israel by 2001, a 34% minority. On October 23, 1987, Hebrew University’s demographer Prof. Sergio DellaPergolla, told Yediot Achronoth that no substantial Aliya was expected from the USSR, but, one million Olim arrived. In a September, 2006 article, Prof. Sofer projected that by 2011 there would be 4.5 million Arabs in Judea and Samaria, double the number published in 2011 by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics – 2.6 million. And, in fact, the Palestinian number was inflated by one million Arabs: 400,000 overseas residents; a double count of 300,000 Jerusalem Arabs, who are counted as Israeli Arabs and as West Bankers; etc.

In defiance of demographic projections, Israel’s Jewish fertility rate of three births per woman is higher than any Arab country other than Yemen, Iraq and Jordan. The modernity-driven downward trend of Muslim demography is highlighted by Iran’s fertility rate of 1.8 births per woman, Saudi Arabia’s 2.3 births and Syria’s and Egypt’s 2.9 births per woman. The Westernization of the Muslim fertility rate was triggered by the unprecedented expansion of education among women, urbanization and family planning. The surge of Israel’s Jewish fertility rate was triggered by high level optimism, patriotism, collective responsibility, the stable economy and attachment to roots.

Because I moved to a new apartment, I had to register to vote in my new location. I sent in the required evidence of a move and have been patiently waiting for my new registration. I am particularly anxious to do this so that I can vote to replace Bloomberg in the upcoming mayoral election.

Yesterday, after an interminable wait I received a fat, bulging envelope from the Board of Elections. My heart sank…..was it another interminable and redundant questionnaire? Yes….but…..the reason the envelope bulged was that it contained identical forms in Spanish, and three forms entirely in what I assume to be Chinese, perhaps Japanese (?) and Arabic with nary a word or letter in English. I assume the text is identical although in English it is addressed to “Dear Voter” but in Spanish it is addressed to “Esteemed Voter.” In addition to the forms, there is a handbook of instructions, again, in five languages.

Now, why should anyone be given the privilege of voting in America without a functional knowledge of English? One has to live here for five years to become a citizen and vote. That is enough time to learn the language. Millions upon millions of immigrants, from every corner of the earth with disparate languages and alphabets learned our national language without this senseless expense and coddling.

I find it outrageous.

As for evidence of qualifications, again in five languages, a driver’s license will do….notwithstanding the fact that any resident can get a driver’s license without problems. They do inquire if you are a citizen with the cavil that a negative answer will preclude the right to vote…and you do have to swear in writing that you are telling the truth.

Oh, and by the way, affixed to the forms, again in five languages, is an optional form for donating organs. Brains are not transplant-able.