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November 2015

POLITICS Comments turned off

The Truth About Ben Carson and West Point Bad actors in the media, imprecise statements from Carson.By J. Christian Adams

By on November 7th, 2015

The opposing waves of response to the Politico story are a reminder that sometimes the truth is somewhere in between. Some are defending Ben Carson from Politico, and most every mainstream news organ is turning him into wood pulp. The truth about his West Point saga might be somewhere in between.

But whatever the truth is, the incident reveals a recurring and perhaps unrecoverable trait of candidate Carson. He just doesn’t seem to know what he is talking about, whether it be Cuba, the Voting Rights Act, or how West Point works.

First, the easy truth. The heart of the Politico story is this line from Carson’s book, courtesy of Dave Weigel’s snippet of it:

Later, I was offered a full scholarship to West Point.

There you have it. Now things get foggy. To a teenage Ben Carson, this might mean he thought he heard some authority figure tell him he should go to West Point and it wouldn’t cost him anything. That figure might be General William Westmoreland. Carson isn’t clear who offered the “scholarship.” But maybe to a young Ben Carson, that’s what he honestly thought was on the table.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

George Will drew first blood By Colin Flaherty

By on November 7th, 2015

That was his first mistake. And Bill O’Reilly was about to make him pay for it with a dressing down rarely if ever seen between two conservative superstars on a major prime time news show.

The clash began with George Will’s evisceration of O’Reilly’s new book, Killing Reagan. O’Reilly documented how Reagan’s health was much worse than most knew. So bad, that staffers prepared a memo instructing Reagan’s chief of staff, Howard Baker, what to do if it was discovered the President was no longer able to carry out his duties.

Will did not like that on two counts. One, it was untrue. Two, it was unkind. Will’s attack began with the Washington Post headline: “Bill O’Reilly Slanders Ronald Reagan.”

The rest of the review was reminiscent of Mary McGrory quote of Lillian Hellman: “Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.”

A few one liners should capture Will’s unusually pugilistic approach:

“Unsubstantiated assertions.”

“Fiction (refuted by minute-by-minute records in the Reagan Library.)

“Pretense of scholarship.”

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Palestinians: A World of Lies, Deception and Fabrications by Bassam Tawil

By on November 7th, 2015

The only astonishing thing is that Abbas and the Palestinian leaders continue to refer to their wave of terrorism and bloodbath as a “peaceful, popular uprising.”

The terrorists were doubtless inspired by their president’s words. It is this kind of officially-sanctioned rhetoric that encourages young Palestinians to stab the first Jew they see.

This is not only a mountainous lie; it is an attempt on the part of the Palestinian Authority leadership to deceive the world into believing that Israeli security forces killed these poor innocent terrorists who were merely part of a peaceful protest. These “innocent” Palestinian men and women were “merely” in the process of trying to stab people to death.

The world in which Abbas and the Palestinian leadership live is a world of lies, fabrications and deception aimed at demonizing Israel and murdering Jews. The goal is not only to murder as many Jews as possible, but also to force Israel to its knees so that it will vanish as soon as possible.

Welcome to the world of the Palestinians, where we lie and then believe our own lies. And then want the rest of the world to believe them, too.

Sadly, the Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders are continuing to bury their heads in the sand and lying to everyone — from their people to the international community.

The current wave of Palestinian terrorism has entered its fourth week, but our leaders, above all the PA President Mahmoud Abbas, are continuing to talk about a “peaceful, popular uprising” against Israel. This wave of Palestinian stabbings, shootings and vehicular ramming has been anything but either “popular” or “peaceful.”

President Abbas and his top PLO and Fatah leaders have yet to explain to us what is peaceful and popular about stabbing an 80-year-old lady named Ruti Malka in Rishon Lezion, and a 70-year-old Jewish woman Jerusalem.

Instead of denouncing the terror attacks perpetrated by his people, Abbas continues to attack Israel for shooting the knife-wielding assailants to stop them. He has not missed one opportunity in the past four weeks to make false and libelous accusations against Israel. These include claims that Israelis are carrying out “summary executions” of “innocent” Palestinian men and women. In reality, these “innocent” Palestinian men and women were “merely” in the process of trying to stab people to death.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

‘The 33’: A Movie About the Trapped Chilean Miners Antonio Banderas stars in ‘The 33,’ about the Chilean miners trapped underground for 69 days By Don Steinberg

By on November 7th, 2015

Along with a billion or so other people, actor Antonio Banderas watched live in 2010 as 33 Chilean miners were miraculously pulled from a hole in the ground, after 69 days trapped 2,300 feet below the surface.

“I was watching the television and said, ‘Somebody’s gonna make a movie out of this,’” he recalls. Five years later he’s starring in it, playing a miner named Mario Sepulveda. “The 33” opens on Nov. 13.

The mine collapse became a media sensation almost the instant it became a catastrophe. It wasn’t exactly the circus that Billy Wilder depicted in “Ace in the Hole” (1951), in which an opportunistic reporter played by Kirk Douglas turns a poor sap trapped in a cave into a scoop and tourist attraction. But world-wide media flocked to Chile, especially 17 days into the ordeal when rescuers drilled a narrow hole, and miners sent up a handwritten note saying “Estamos bien.” (“We’re OK”). While engineers worked to drill a wider hole to get the miners out, the trapped workers got media offers via the mail they were receiving via a small tube.

“Mario had a film offer while down there. Some of them were getting offers to do gigs, to do interviews with Japanese television or go to Spain for a talk show,” says Héctor Tobar, a Los Angeles journalist who wrote the authorized book, “Deep Dark Down: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free.”

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

A Poetic Morality Tale That Still Haunts Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ is told by a sailor roaming the world in a perpetual state of contrition. By David Lehman

By on November 7th, 2015

The scariest great poem in the English language was written by a young genius of limitless potential who turned into an opium addict, was besotted by German metaphysical philosophy, and was plagued by ill health and a loveless marriage. Though he considered himself a slothful failure, Samuel Taylor Coleridge left us a portfolio of astounding poems that includes not only “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” but “Kubla Khan” (which he characteristically denigrated as a mere “fragment”). He also produced a prose masterpiece (“Biographia Literaria”), invented the conversation poem (“This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”), and was present at the creation of a major literary movement.
One of Gustave Doré’s celebrated engravings illustrating the poem. ENLARGE
One of Gustave Doré’s celebrated engravings illustrating the poem. Photo: Art Resource

With William Wordsworth, Coleridge was co-author of “Lyrical Ballads” (1798), the book that launched the Romantic revolution in English poetry. The first and longest poem in the book—one of only four by Coleridge (his collaborator had 20)—is the immortal “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

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BOOKS Comments turned off

SHAME ON THE WALL STREET JOURNAL FOR PUBLISHING THIS LIBEL ABOUT ISRAEL….SEE NOTE PLEASE

By on November 7th, 2015

The Palestinian People Ask: Where Is Israel’s F.W. de Klerk? If a two-state solution fades away, Israel will consolidate apartheid across all of Palestine.By Saeb Erekat

This is specious and gratuitous libel- calling Israel an apartheid state, and by referencing de Klerk equating Israel with formerly apartheid South Africa. Saeb Muhammad Salih Erekat is the PLO Committee Chairman who most recently threatened to yank “recognition” of Israel .He is a member of the Fatah party which canonizes terrorists and reveres the memory of arch terrorist Arafat. And by the way, readers should take notice that after de Klerk ceded control, South Africa did not become a “peaceful democracy” but descended into mob rule, endemic corruption, usurpation of white owned farms and property and general chaos. One can only imagine what would become of the “two state dissolution” if Erekat and his genocidal minions got their way….rsk

“The only way to stop the deteriorating situation in Israel and occupied Palestine is to address the root causes. Israeli leaders, however, stubbornly reject this approach, instead choosing to blame, attack and incite against the people they oppress for refusing to submit to inhumane discriminatory treatment decade after decade.

Years of systematic violation of Palestinian rights, allowed by an unprecedented culture of impunity, have led to a situation whereby an unarmed, and very young, generation is willing to confront the region’s strongest military.

This young Palestinian generation, the Oslo generation, was promised freedom when the agreement was signed on the White House lawn 22 years ago. This generation was raised with the hope that the brutal Israeli occupation would soon come to an end. But it did not. The Palestinian people continue to endure humiliation; they cannot travel freely, their studies and work are impeded by checkpoints, and they cannot even marry across the Green Line without severe restrictions on where they may live. At every turn, Israel continues to demand our submission to its occupation, oppression and apartheid policies.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Healing the Brains of American GIs By William McGurn

By on November 7th, 2015

Intrepid Centers are making remarkable progress against the ‘signature wounds’ of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

When Arnold Fisher mustered out of the U.S. Army in 1954 after a stint in Korea, he left as a corporal. But he didn’t leave the service.

Through his day job at the family real-estate business, Mr. Fisher long ago made his mark on the New York City skyline by building several high-profile office towers. Now he is in his eighth decade, and this Veterans Day will find the Fisher Brothers’ senior partner aiming much higher than skyscrapers. Today his obsession is the human brain—specifically, how Americans can help our warriors who return from the battlefield with injuries few understand.

“You take a guy who’s missing half an arm or in a wheelchair and everyone can see what he needs,” says Mr. Fisher, sitting in a midtown Manhattan office whose knickknacks include a personal letter from George W. Bush and a knighthood signed by Queen Elizabeth. “But when a guy comes back and looks normal but doesn’t act normal, we don’t know what to do. And we’ve got hundreds of thousands of these people.”

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Sorting the GOP Candidates on Immigration. By Mortimer Zuckerman….see note please

By on November 7th, 2015

Mr. Zuckerman has often mentioned that either George Bush or Hillary Clinton would be good presidents. I will stick with Marco Rubion and Ted Cruz….rsk

Carson speaks about it in moral terms, while Trump takes the low road. Bush has the most rational plan.

I was born in Canada, a country I love, but entered the United States for education and stayed for a career. I have rejoiced at the opportunities, openness and friendliness of this society, and I became an American citizen many years ago. That is why I have looked on with perplexity and some astonishment at the way candidates for the Republican presidential nomination have approached immigration.

The retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson has made an unlikely vault into the front of the Republican presidential pack with a weird mix of ideas—and an apparently shaky grasp of his own biography. But the gentle political novice’s appeal is easy enough to understand: He dares to talk about morals, including in reference to immigration, in an age when that has gone out of fashion. “Is it moral for us,” he wrote in “America the Beautiful,” his 2012 book, “to take advantage of cheap labor from illegal immigrants while denying them citizenship? I’m sure you can tell from the way I phrased the question that I believe we have taken the moral low road on this issue.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Tombstone Pipeline Obama kills thousands of jobs for climate-change symbolism.****

By on November 7th, 2015

“Maybe Keystone can be revived in the next Administration, assuming a Republican wins the Presidency and the TransCanada company hasn’t written off America as too politically risky. For now, workers and the economy will have to suffer for Mr. Obama’s green illusions.”

President Obama personally killed the Keystone XL pipeline on Friday, dismissing the project as a mere “symbol” that “has occupied what I, frankly, consider an overinflated role in our political discourse.” The irony is that the pipeline’s benefits would be tangible, while the symbolism and overinflation are entirely political.

A President more invested in the real economy would have long ago welcomed Keystone’s contribution to North American energy development. But on Friday Mr. Obama emerged, seven years into both his Presidency and multiple State Department reviews of the pipeline, to declare that Keystone is not in the national interest of the United States.

This position is—to borrow his phrase—well outside the bipartisan political center. Mr. Obama would have been more honest if he’d admitted that he is bowing to the interests of the green-left fringe and the Democratic donors who oppose all forms of carbon energy.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Obama Administration Rejects Keystone XL Pipeline, Citing Climate Concerns President says project wouldn’t lower gas prices, improve energy security By Amy Harder And Colleen McCain Nelson

By on November 7th, 2015

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline Friday ends a seven-year saga with a declaration that the project is not in the national interest and would undermine U.S. global leadership in fighting climate change.

The permit denial, which was cheered by environmentalists and lambasted by the energy industry, capped a politically charged review of the oil project that had escalated into a broader debate on climate change, energy and the economy. In the end, the administration’s decision likely will not have much impact on the industry’s operations, and the White House said the rejection was important to bolster the country’s credibility as the U.S. urges other countries to confront climate change.

President Barack Obama, who had signaled deep misgivings about the project as he pursued an expansive agenda aimed at combating climate change, said the pipeline ultimately took on an overinflated role in the country’s political discourse.

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