A friend- a retired professor in Virginia has developed a real cure for the insomnia that plagues so many adults and seniors. It is in the process of being copyrighted and prepared for market, but he has given me leave to share this with Ruthfully e-pals.
He has put together all John Kasich’s speeches in one disc. Those who have tried it claim they slept like babies….rsk
The Rafah border crossing is the Gaza Strip’s single opening to Egypt and the rest of the Arab world. That border crossing is where the real suffering of the Palestinians has been taking place.
The Gaza Strip could be a livable environment if the Egyptians opened the Rafah terminal to allow the world to come and help the Palestinians living there.
As Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and other organizers of the campaign have clearly stated in recent weeks, the Palestinian protests are aimed at thwarting US President Donald Trump’s yet-to-be-announced plan for peace in the Middle East.
The weekly demonstrations along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, which are scheduled to enter their sixth week this Friday, will undoubtedly continue to attract the attention of the international community and media.
Meanwhile, no one will pay attention to what is happening on the Gaza Strip’s other border with Egypt, which has been closed for most of the past 10 years.
The demonstrations near the border with Israel are being organized by Hamas and other Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip as part of the “March of Return” — a six-week campaign of protests that is expected to reach its peak on “Nakba Day” (“The Day of Catastrophe”), the term used by Palestinians to describe the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
The Arab countries at the time opposed the creation of a homeland for the Jewish people and sent their armies to attack Israel, but lost — a result that should probably be taken into consideration before one attacks. Since then, the Palestinians and Arabs have been commemorating their loss by holding anti-Israel protests and voicing their refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
There are, of course, no demonstrations planned along Gaza’s border with Egypt to protest the continued closure of Gaza’s better-known border crossing, Rafah — its crossing to Egypt.
What do college presidents mean by “academic rigor”? Good “judgment” in the classroom? Making the campus “inclusive”? Recent developments on the campus of Hamilton College after the visit of Paul Gottfried, Horace Raffensberger Professor of Humanities Emeritus, Elizabethtown College, provide clues.
Gottfried was invited to speak to two classes by Robert Paquette, Executive Director of the nearby Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. As I described at the AHI’s website, Gottfried on October 25, 2017, discussed conservatism in the United States in “Modern Conservative Politics” in the Government Department, and then gave a lecture based on his recent book, Fascism: The Career of a Concept, in a history course, “Nazi Germany.” Although he was greeted by students holding signs accusing him of racism, Gottfried gave two informed performances and responded to questions, including hostile ones, with intelligence and courtesy.
Nevertheless, his visit inspired campus-wide denunciations in a letter from the Government Department, editorials in the student newspaper, and a letter from the college president.
Two days after the visit, students, faculty, and administrators received the following proclamation:
We the undersigned full-time members of the Government Department would like to speak out regarding Paul Gottfried’s visit to one of our courses. We are still learning about what transpired on Wednesday. . . . However, we have already heard multiple complaints from students about racist remarks allegedly made by Gottfried. We unequivocally condemn any and all such racist remarks. . . .
Similarly, the student newspaper vaguely claimed that Gottfried was “espousing hateful opinions” and therefore should not have been allowed on campus. It took until December 4 for President David Wippman to reply, which enraged student Katherine Barnes who wrote “Too little, too late, too tolerant: President Wippman fails to condemn Gottfried.”
Ronald Reagan famously quipped that the trouble with liberals “is not that they’re ignorant. It’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” Reagan’s words aptly describe former President Barack Obama. Obama was an intelligent, well-educated, articulate man. He could woo crowds with soaring rhetoric and pacify True Conservative™ “intellectuals,” like David Brooks (who voted for Obama partly on the basis of the perfect crease in his trousers).
Obama was not only a scion of the American political class, he was also a new kind of leader: the first black president in history and one of the youngest.
With Obama, though, we were getting an incredibly manipulative individual who bought into the most dangerous and destructive left-wing academic theories. Obama was the ultimate “intellectual-yet-idiot.” Examples of his folly are plentiful, but there are perhaps no better illustrations of the disconnect between Obama’s intellectual prowess and his practical political judgment than the disastrous Affordable Care Act and the terrible nuclear agreement with Iran. Both were highly controversial, very unpopular, deeply secretive, and painfully naïve. They were also, it turns out, extremely harmful to the American people who voted for Obama.
Obamacare Fail
Obama believes in socialized medicine, more or less. Most Americans, even many Democrats, never would have supported a scheme that was honest about aiming toward that end. So just as Obama’s healthcare policy adviser (and former architect of the failed “Romneycare” plan in Massachusetts), Jonathan Gruber argued, Obama had to lie to the American voters about what his plan actually entailed.
Lag Ba’Omer (ל”ג בעומר) is celebrated on the 33rd day following the first day of Passover (in Jewish numerology: ל=30, ג=3). It commemorates the victory of Shimon Bar-Kokhbah over the occupying military force of the Roman Empire; the death of Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai (a key supporter of the Bar Kokhbah revolt), who commanded his disciples to rejoice on his memorial days; and the end of the plague, which took the lives of 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva’s disciples (who were, allegedly, engaged in bad-mouthing each other, which is one of the worst offenses according to Judaism). Lag Ba’Omer is the only day of happiness during the 50 days of soul-cleansing between Passover (commemorating the liberation from the Egyptian Bondage) and Shavou’ot/Pentecost (receiving the Torah and the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai).
Lag Ba’Omer is celebrated in the same week when the reading of the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) highlights the Jubilee – the Biblical core of liberty – which is celebrated every 50 years and inspired the Early American Pilgrims and the Founding Fathers of the 50 States in the US. Hence, the inscription on the Liberty Bell: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land and unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10).
The Hebrew meaning of Bar-Kokhbah (בר כוכבא) is the son (בר) of star(כוכב), reflecting his leadership and heroism, which produced – ostensibly – a short-term military victory, but it highlights (like a shining star) the long-term victory of the ancient Jewish people and values over the vanished Roman Empire.
The 132-135 AD Shimon Bar-Kokhbah revolt, against the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, is known as the Third Jewish-Roman War. It followed the First Jewish-Roman War (the Great Revolt), which took place from 66-73 AD, involved the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD and ended with the fall of Masada. The Second Jewish-Roman War (the Kitos War) lasted from 115-117 AD, when Jewish warriors rebelled against the Roman Empire in Cyrenaica, Cyprus, Mesopotamia and Egypt.
The Bar-Kokhbah revolt erupted in response to the desecration of Jerusalem by Hadrian, who was determined to erase Judaism from human memory. Therefore, he erected a new city, Aelia Capitolina, on the ruins of Jerusalem, naming it after himself (Aelius Hadrian) and the chief Roman god, Jupiter (Jupiter Capitolinus). He erected a pagan Temple to Jupiter on the site of the Jerusalem Jewish Temple and outlawed Jewish prayers, the celebration of Jewish holidays and the performance of Jewish rituals, such as the B’rith (circumcision of eight-day-old male babies) that dates back to Abraham, the Patriarch.
Making the click-through worthwhile: Iran deal defenders insist they always knew Tehran was lying all along; some overheated arguments about masculinity and books for kids; how most of the people making the loudest arguments in public discourse didn’t bother to do the homework; and a really strange and implausible accusation against Mitch McConnell.
Wait, Why Did We Ever Trust the Iranians Again?
Fans of the Iran deal scoff at Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu’s presentation about the long and sordid history of Iran’s secret nuclear program: “There was nothing we didn’t already know.” “Everything he said was already known.” “There is nothing new in Bibi’s presentation.”
I don’t quite get how “hey, everybody always knew the Iranian regime lies all the time” is such a sterling defense of the Iran deal. I mean, is that we’re so confident in the limited inspections that we don’t think Iran would cheat by doing things at military sites? You can’t argue, “Oh, we never trusted their word” and “That’s why we have to keep trusting them” in the same breath.
Our new secretary of State:
“I know there are people talking about these documents not being authentic,” Pompeo added. “I can confirm for you that these documents are real; they’re authentic.”
Pompeo said that the files “spell out the scope and scale of the program that they undertook there, and I think makes – I think makes very clear that, at the very least, the Iranians have continued to lie to their own people. So while you say everyone knew, the Iranians have consistently taken the position that they’ve never had a program like this. This will – this will belie any notion that there wasn’t a program like this.”
Leakers and lawbreakers rewarded with Clinton-administration jobs — and the American public none the wiser about deep-state corruption
There are lots of possible counterfactuals to think about had Hillary Clinton won the presidency as all the experts had predicted.
The U.S. embassy would have stayed in Tel Aviv. “Strategic patience” would likely still govern the North Korea dilemma. Fracking would be curtailed. The — rather than “our” — miners really would be put out of work. Coal certainly would not have been “beautiful.” The economy probably would be slogging along at below 2 percent GDP growth.
China would be delighted, as would Iran. But most important, there would be no collusion narrative — neither one concerning a defeated Donald Trump nor another implicating a victorious Hillary Clinton. In triumph, progressives couldn’t have cared less whether Russians supposedly had tried to help a now irrelevant Trump; and they certainly would have prevented any investigation of the winning Clinton 2016 campaign.
In sum, Hillary’s supposedly sure victory, not fear of breaking the law, prompted most of the current 2016 scandals, and her embittering defeat means they are not being addressed as scandals.
For example, why would FBI director James Comey have been so foolish as to ask for a FISA warrant request without fully informing the judge of the compromising details of the Steele–Fusion GPS dossier? Or why would Attorney General Loretta Lynch have been so reckless as to meet with Bill Clinton in a stealthy jet rendezvous on an Arizona tarmac when her department was concurrently investigating his spouse?
Here are some articles and stories that are minimally reported, if at all, because they do not fit the agenda that humans, fossil fuels, and CO2 are causing disastrous global warming and climate change.
From the Detroit News:
April on track to be the coldest in 143 years
No, you’re not crazy. It has been the coldest April in more than 140 years.
A year ago today, on April 19, 2017, it was 78 degrees and sunny, while Thursday’s expected high is 48 degrees, said National Weather Service meteorologist Trent Frey.
As of Thursday, the average temperature for April is 38.3 degrees, slightly warmer than April 1874, the coldest on record at 37.6 degrees.
From the Chicago Tribune:
More spring snow in Chicago, and forecasters call April’s start among coldest in 130 years
The first half of April marks the second-coldest start to the month since 1881, about when the weather service started keeping records, said Mott of the weather service.
From Watts Up With That:
Some Major U.S. cities headed for coldest April in recorded history
Some major U.S. are on track to be part of a record cold April. “Some cities in the east are experiencing temperatures a full 10 to 15 degrees F colder than normal, says meteorologist Jaclyn Whittal. Those cities include Buffalo, Chicago and Detroit. Those in the northern tier of the U.S. either graciously accept winter[.]
There are three big drivers of weather for any place on Earth: the latitude, the local environment, and solar system cycles.
The biggest weather factor is latitude – are you in the torrid, temperate, or frigid zone? These climatic zones are defined by the intensity of heat delivered to Earth’s surface by the sun.
In the Torrid Zone, the sun is always high in the sky. It is generally hot, often moist, with low atmospheric pressure, muggy conditions, and abundant rain and storms, some severe. Places close to the Equator get two summers per year (just one long summer) and very little winter. Farther from the equator, there are two seasons: “The Wet” and “The Dry.” The Torrid Zone produces many equatorial rainforests and also contains some deserts. Most people dream of vacations or retirement in the warm zone.
The Temperate Zone is cooler, with more distinct seasons and sometimes severe droughts and floods. The granaries of the world lie within it. But the belt of sub-tropical high-pressure zones also produces most of the world’s great deserts.
The Frigid Zone has low humidity and high atmospheric pressure, with just two seasons (one cool, with a sun that never sets, followed by a long, cold, dark, sunless winter). Only a few foolish people long for expansion of the frigid zone.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/01/indiana-senate-republicans-messer-rokita-braun-560708
GOP Reps. Luke Messer and Todd Rokita — personal and political rivals going back to their college days — have been locked in a bitter two-way fight for more than a year for the right to take on one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats seeking reelection this fall.
Then along came Mike Braun.
The self-funding businessman emerged seemingly out of nowhere last fall and is now on the brink of dispatching Rokita and Messer by portraying them as a pair of interchangeable D.C. swamp creatures. Powering Braun’s effort is nearly $6 million of his own money that he’s loaned or given to his campaign to capture the nomination to face Sen. Joe Donnelly in the fall.
If Braun prevails next week — he is seen as the nominal favorite and has vastly outspent his opponents — it would stand as one of the first real surprises in a Republican primary this election cycle. It would also serve as a blunt demonstration of how anti-Washington, anti-incumbent sentiment could shape the outcome of the November elections.
“There’s not a lot of daylight between any of them on the issues,” GOP pollster Christine Matthews, who served as a strategist for former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, said of the three candidates. “What Braun has been able to do is say, ‘The difference with me is I’m not a professional politician.’”
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