RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/284886

I am at a loss to understand the sudden outrage on the Right, shared by my colleagues in this morning’s editorial, over the fact that Donald Trump is slated to moderate a GOP candidates’ debate, to be held for an audience of about eleven people (i.e., two days after Christmas on an obscure cable station).

I carry no brief for Mr. Trump, who is something of a carnival act, and I join the editors in commending Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman, and whoever else among the candidates has the good sense to send his or her regrets. But just to recap, here is a list of just some of the left-leaning moderator/sponsors of the debates — those that have occurred to date, and others scheduled to occur between now and March 19, 2012: CNN (7 times), NBC News (including CNBC and MSNBC) (5 times), Politico (2 times), Bloomberg, the Washington Post, CBS News, the National Journal (2 times), ABC News (2 times), the Des Moines Register, PBS Newshour (2 times), Google, the St. Petersburg Times, and NPR.

Moreover, by my quick scan of a Wikipedia entry, it appears that about 22 of the 50 states will have primaries or caucuses that are “open” to some degree — meaning registered Democrats and self-proclaimed independents will be invited to help choose the Republican candidate. Given that President Obama is unopposed, so there is no reason to vote in the Democratic primaries, there will be many more of these voters than usual in the GOP primaries. Most of them will be working against the GOP in the general election. Therefore, their obvious incentive as primary voters will be to elect not the most worthy GOP candidate but the candidate Obama would be most likely to beat.

So to sum up, we are having debate after debate moderated by left-wing media organizations that, under the guise of objective journalism, actively promote Obama’s policies and are, for all practical purposes, an adjunct of the president’s reelection campaign. Their charade is more damaging by leaps and bounds than anything Donald Trump could dream of pulling off. Trump, who has been pretty vigorously anti-Obama, at least in the last two years, is an eccentric whose antics are laughed off by most people. In contrast, the reach of these mainstream-media outlets is prime-time limitless, and we are giving them a license not merely to promote themselves but to destroy our candidates even as they suppress meaningful inquiry into Obama’s background and sympathetically spin his record as president. Then, once the media get through softening up the GOP contestants, the very close race will be substantially influenced by non-Republican voters who seek the nomination of the candidate most likely to lose to Obama.

The Trump thing is a sideshow. What should appall us is the fact that the overall process is designed to produce a weak (or at least weakened) candidate. I wish we were as whipped up about that as we are over a sure-to-be insignificant debate moderated by Donald Trump — as opposed to a series of prime-time, nationally televised debates moderated by, say, Democratic strategist George Stephanopoulos or the same CBS News division that fabricated the Bush Air National Guard documents.
PERMALINK

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/05/obama-administrations-three-pronged-attack-on-israel/

Obama Administration’s Threefold Slap in Israel’s Face Posted By P. David Hornik

Worried about losing some of the Jewish vote for 2012, President Obama has been sweet-talking American Jews lately and making some staunchly pro-Israel statements. In September he told the UN General Assembly:

Let us be honest with ourselves: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, look[s] out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile and persecution, and fresh memories of knowing that six million people were killed simply because of who they are. Those are facts. They cannot be denied.

Strong stuff—the kind of stuff really pro-Israel people really say, and think.

But no one should be fooled. In recent days, statements by two very senior officials and one lesser official have shown that this administration remains relentlessly anti-Israel in some of its basic attitudes.

http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2011/12/three-anti-israel-stooges-of-obama.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+YidWithLid+%28YID+With+LID%29

This past week, Jack Rosen the head of the American Jewish Congress hosted a fundraiser for President Obama at his home in NYC. With a straight face Obama explained

“I try not to pat myself too much on the back, but this administration has done more for the security of the state of Israel than any previous administration,” Obama said. “We don’t compromise when it comes to Israel’s security … and that will continue.”

Joining in on the fun, Rosen added that:

“America has never been as supportive of the state of Israel as President Obama and his administration.”

One would expect President Obama to support his administration’s anti-Israel policies, but for the head of a Jewish organization such as the AJCongress to voice his support is nothing short of fraudulent. Just look at the past few days where three Stooges of the Obama administration spoke out against the Jewish State.

On the same day as Rosen’s little house party, the US Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman, spoke to a EU conference on Antisemitism and after saying how wonderful Obama is for the Jews, he said Israel and the Middle East conflict was a major reason for hatred against Jews.

http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/39371#CurDomainURL#/blog.cfm The New York Times report in today’s edition about the missile test site explosions, “Explosion Seen as Big Setback to Iran’s Missile Program” underlines what we had written about Iran’s progress on silo-hardened solid fuel ICBMs, especially the 2,000 KM Shelj-2i and 3,500 KM MB-25 obtained from the North Koreans – see The Iranian […]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ML06Ak01.html

Israel’s immigration ministry stopped running television ads exhorting Israelis living in America to come home after American Jewish organizations complained, the New York Times reported December 2:

One video advertisement shows a Jewish elderly couple distraught that their Israeli granddaughter in the United States thinks Hanukkah is Christmas. Another shows a clueless American boyfriend who does not get why his Israeli expatriate girlfriend is saddened on Israel’s memorial day. A third shows a toddler calling “Daddy! Daddy!” to his napping Israeli expatriate father, who finally awakens when the child switches to Hebrew: “Abba!”

“While we recognize the motivations behind the ad campaign,” the Jewish Federations remonstrated in a December 1 statement, “we are strongly opposed to the messaging that American Jews do not understand Israel. We share the concerns many of you have expressed that this outrageous and insulting message could harm the Israel-Diaspora relationship.” The Jewish organizations complained after a liberal blogger, Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic Monthly, denounced the ads.

http://spectator.org/archives/2011/12/05/the-eus-big-kazoo

As Europe insists on still more socialism as a solution to its ill, the U.S. Fed is doing its best to help out — in deep secrecy, of course.

Europe has no time for clichés, so Europe’s currency crisis has skipped two cycles. Instead of allowing one cycle of history to complete itself before it is repeated — first as tragedy and then as farce — the Eurozone nations have decided to pass by the end of the current course, skip tragedy, and go directly to farce.

France’s President is pressing hard on the trigger to fire the EU’s “big bazooka” but he can’t fire because Germany’s PM has her finger stuck behind the trigger and isn’t budging. Meanwhile, Mr. Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s Foreign Minister, last week demanded German intervention to save Poland (and the euro). Sikorski said, “I demand of Germany that, for its sake and ours, it help the Eurozone survive and prosper. Nobody else can do it. I will probably be the first Polish foreign minister in history to save this, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear its inactivity.”

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=955 Three slaps and you’re out? It has been a unique week in U.S.-Israeli relations. After first trying to kill a bipartisan Senate sanctions bill directed against Iran’s Central Bank, U.S. Administration officials decided to “work” with the two Senate leaders on the legislation – Bob Menendez and Mark Kirk – to “improve” the bill. […]

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ Leon Panetta, fresh from a stint as CIA director and off to his new job as Secretary of Defense, did his best to  butch up in the usual way of DC hacks “daringly” delivering the same utterances that have been current in the capital for generations. When Panetta, the man who looks like everyone’s […]

First Panetta, now Ambassador Gutman: When it Comes to US Policy towards Israel, Listen to what its Representatives Say, Not to the President’s Promises Posted By Ron Radosh URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2011/12/04/first-panetta-now-ambassador-gutman/   First it was Leon Panetta, and now it’s Howard Gutman. President Barack Obama, who just last week told Jewish groups that he […]

Obama’s Middle East Policy: A Unified Field Theory Posted By Barry Rubin

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/12/05/obamas-middle-east-policy-a-unified-field-theory/

Summary: Muslims good; Islamists moderate; No peace? Israel’s fault; ears closed. Have a nice day!

In the history of physics, the “unified field theory” was an attempt to bring together an understanding of all forms of energy in a single explanation. Albert Einstein tried and failed to discover this. I don’t know much about physics but I know about Middle East policy.

So here’s an effort to bring together all of Obama’s regional policy into a single analysis and explaining everything in 1100 words.

The first point is that the Obama Administration’s behavior must be divided into two phases. They overlap and feature the same kind of thinking but they are also quite separate.

Phase One, from January 2009 until December 2011 was characterized by an emphasis on Israel-Palestinian peacemaking. Obama’s Administration believed that it was possible to make rapid progress toward peace and also thought that this was essential to achieve anything else in the Middle East.