RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/292496/it-s-pity-somebody-has-win-andrew-c-mccarthy
It’s a pity that they can’t both lose. But if they have to savage someone, better each other than us.

We have no national interest in overthrowing Assad.

Asked about the Iran-Iraq war that stretched for eight ghastly years after breaking out in 1980, Henry Kissinger is said to have quipped, “It’s a pity they both can’t lose.”

The pity is that we have lost that exquisite wisdom concerning our national interest, despite a two-decade road to hell paved by good intentions — at least compassionate intentions — from Kosovo to Kandahar. If that isn’t clear enough from the latest killings of American soldiers stuck like sitting ducks between the Afghan Taliban and other Afghan Islamists, all doubt is removed by Elliott Abrams, the longtime Republican foreign-policy solon who served as a top National Security Council official during the heady days of the Bush “Freedom Agenda.” “Can there be a group anywhere in the world today more disappointed in United States foreign policy than those fighting the Syrian regime?” Abrams, a distinguished public servant whom I admire, asked this week in a post on the Corner.

Yeah: How about the American people?

Our entanglement in Afghanistan is now reduced to pleading with Taliban decapitators to come to the negotiating table while the Afghan forces our soldiers train and the Afghan civilians our soldiers protect kill our men and women — and while officials of the government we prop up echo their clerics’ exhortations to violent jihad until our infidel forces vacate the country.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/292510/die-die-foreigners-mark-steyn

Say what you like about Afghans, but they’re admirably straightforward. The mobs outside the bases enflamed over the latest Western affront to their exquisitely refined cultural sensitivities couldn’t put it any plainer:

“Die, die, foreigners!”

And foreigners do die. USAF Lieutenant Colonel John Loftis, 44, and Army Major Robert Marchanti II, 48, lost their lives not on some mission out on the far horizon in wild tribal lands in the dead of night but in the offices of the Afghan Interior Ministry. In a “secure room” that required a numerical code to access. Gunned down by an Afghan “intelligence officer.” Who then departed the scene of the crime unimpeded by any of his colleagues.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/03/02/obama_likens_himself_to_gandhi_and_nelson_mandela.html

GEEZ…NEXT HE’LL SOLVE THE MIDDLE EAST BY PARTING THE RED SEA…..RSK

Obama Likens Himself To Gandhi And Nelson Mandela

“The civil rights movement was hard. Winning the vote for women was hard. Making sure that workers had some basic protections was hard,” President Obama said at a fundraiser while talking about how difficult it is to bring about “change” in politics.

“Around the world, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, what they did was hard. It takes time. It takes more than a single term. It takes more than a single president. It takes more than a single individual,” Obama said.

“What it takes is ordinary citizens who keep believe, who are committed to fighting and pushing and inching this country closer and closer to our highest ideals. And I said in 2008, ‘that I am not a perfect man and I will not be a perfect president.’ But I promised you, but I promised you, I promised you back then that I would always tell you what I believe. I would always tell you where I stood,” he also said at a fundraiser in NYC.

Holder Wants Race Preferences and Benefits . . . Forever URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2012/03/02/eric-holder-wants-race-preferences-and-benefits-forever/ Eric Holder has gone all-in supporting race-based hiring preferences and race-based benefits.  Given that the majority of Americans despise this rot, surely the presidential candidates will pounce. In a little noticed interview at the “World Leaders Forum,” Holder makes statements that […]

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ RECYCLING THE PROPAGANDA Moreover, Syrian Christians have until now been overwhelmingly supportive of the regime, fearing that if the regime collapses, then Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood would rise to power and focus on marginalizing the Christians. The scenarios in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Iraq and Morocco have not been encouraging. While the older […]

A LONG TALE…. ARIEH O’SULLIVAN

The first time I met Arieh O’Sullivan was in the predawn darkness of a winter morning in Jerusalem in 1997, when he came to pick me up in a jeep emblazoned with the Confederate flag on its spare tire.I was just starting out as a journalist and working as a cub reporter at The Jerusalem Post, and O’Sullivan, a veteran of The Associated Press, was the Post’s seasoned military correspondent. I thought O’Sullivan had one of the coolest jobs in the world, and it turned out that this diminutive Jew with an Irish name and a Southern accent was a pretty cool guy, too……READ IT ALL

CHRIS CHRISTIE AUDITIONS FOR HOLDER’S JOB

Gov. Chris Christie tonight laid into the New York Police Department for spying on New Jersey Muslims, saying he doesn’t know if the actions were “born out of arrogance, or out of paranoia, or out of both.”

At a briefing Thursday, the governor wouldn’t weigh in on whether he thought civil rights were violated, saying that wasn’t his job and that he would leave that to any agencies investigating the NYPD’s intelligence operations.

“My view, politicians shouldn’t be involved in that. Leave it to law enforcement,” Christie said. “If there were any violations of law by the NYPD, I am sure the attorney general will take whatever steps he deems appropriate.” READ IT ALL

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203986604577257321601811092.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
The Man Vladimir Putin Fears Most
Alexei Navalny, the rising star of Russia’s opposition, on his political strategy and why the latest czar is ‘trapped’ by power.

The outcome is a foregone conclusion. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Russia’s paramount ruler since 2000, will reclaim his old job as president in Sunday’s elections. The drama comes in the aftermath.

Anticorruption blogger and activist Alexei Navalny will be in the middle of it—as he has been over the past three months of Russia’s unexpected political awakening. By the tens of thousands, Russians shed their fear and apathy to protest December’s fraud-ridden parliamentary elections and Mr. Putin’s hold on power. From a crowded stage of opposition figures, Mr. Navalny has emerged as the charismatic and fresh face of the movement.

The next phase will test him and the opposition. The series of large demonstrations after December exposed the shallowness of support for Mr. Putin in the large cities and public frustration with the political stagnation and lack of accountability in Russia. Yet the rallies forced no notable government concessions. Though weakened, Mr. Putin gets a new term and possibly energy to reverse his slide or to crack down.

FBI powerless to track its own GPS trackers
The Supreme Court outlawed the warra…
Read more…
Israel announces missile test ahead of U.S. talks
The Guardian
Friday, March 2, 2012
News
Israel is to test an advanced anti-ballistic missile system in the coming weeks, inevitably fueling speculation about preparations for a possible military confrontation with Iran. The announcement that the first test of the Arrow 3 interceptor system would be performed “in the near future” was made as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to North America ahead of a crucial meeting with President Barack Obama at which Iran will top the agenda. Read more…

Read more at: http://times247.com/

Feds want disabled-employee quotas for contractors
The Daily Caller
Friday, March 2, 2012
Commentary
The Labor Department proposed requiring disabled employees to make up at least 7 percent of a contractor’s work force. Trouble is, it’s illegal for employers to ask job applicants whether they’re disabled. Read more…

Read more at: http://times247.com/
West to Obama: ‘Stop with the Osama bin Laden line’
The Blaze
Friday, March 2, 2012
News
Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., said Friday that President Obama needs to stop touting the death of Osama bin Laden, saying it was Navy SEALs — not the president — who killed him. Read more…

Read more at: http://times247.com/

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1467

The bone in Joubran’s throat

This week, Supreme Court Justice Salim Joubran broke protocol. Following the swearing-in ceremony of incoming Supreme Court President Asher Grunis, the attendees did what is customary at public events such as these: They stood and sang the national anthem.

Joubran, the first Israeli Arab to have a permanent appointment to the country’s highest court, kept silent. Hatikvah, after all, is a song about the “Jewish soul” yearning to be a “free nation in the land of Zion and Jerusalem.” And though Joubran, like all of his counterparts in the Palestinian territories (and many of his fellow Arabs with Israeli citizenship) may have designs both on Zion and on Jerusalem, he is not a Jew. Therefore, he didn’t feel right about joining the choir.

Joubran’s abstaining from singing the anthem, written as a poem by Naphtali Herz Imber in 1878, was as much his legal right as it was his personal prerogative. That’s the beauty of living in a pluralistic democratic society; a citizen can express himself as he pleases, as long as he is inflicting no harm on anyone else. And, despite claims to the contrary on the part of ill-wishers, Israel is the epitome of such a society. That Joubran is among the cream of its crop, occupying a place on the bench of the most politically powerful judiciary in the Western world, is but one example of the Jewish state’s true nature.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=260125

Unavoidably, as frustration with the two-state principle increases, the quest for alternatives will begin.
Anti-Israel hatred on campus crests each year during an event called “Israel Apartheid Week.” With this ominous name and programs that thrive on ignorance and blind disregard for the facts, tens of thousands of college students are urged to rise up against Israel
– Dore Gold, February 23, 2012

Israel is completely outclassed and outmaneuvered on a battleground it doesn’t even understand it is on
– Melanie Phillips, January 9, 2011

Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) is once again upon us. Described on its official website as “an annual international series of events held in cities and campuses across the globe,” its aim is “to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns as part of a growing global BDS movement.”

Traditionally, IAW includes events (lectures, films, rallies, poetry readings, art exhibitions and so on) spanning anything from 60 to 90 cities from Albuquerque to Zurich.

This year, however, a new condiment has been added to spice up the noxious brew of deceit, distortion, and disinformation on the IAW menu.