RUTHFULLY YOURS

With flu raging through 46 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is taking center stage, advising the public and physicians. But the agency increasingly isn’t up to its task.

Until last year, polls showed the CDC to be the most respected federal agency. But then it bungled its response to Ebola.

That was a wake-up call, because the CDC has been fumbling its most important jobs for several years. The agency has a severe case of mission confusion.

Domestic preparedness: After the 9/11 attacks, Congress instructed the CDC to launch a State and Local Preparedness program and build a Strategic National Stockpile to prepare for bioterrorism or a disease outbreak.

Contrary to persistent claims by environmentalists, Methane is not an important greenhouse gas (GHG); it has a totally negligible impact on climate. Attempts to control methane emissions make little sense; the just-announced [Jan 14] White House plan to reduce emissions by 40 to 45% by 2025 ignores well-established ‘text-book’ science.

Methane (chemical formula CH4) is the main component of natural gas. It may technically be defined as a greenhouse gas since it absorbs strongly in some portions of the infrared spectrum; but its impact on climate is insignificant. Its atmospheric level has been increasing because about half of the methane is produced by processes related to human activities, such as cattle raising, rice agriculture, landfills, and the production of oil and natural gas; it is also released in coal mining and from leaky natural gas pipelines. The major non-human sources include swamps and bogs.

Yes we do…and we should read :

The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History by by Andrew G. Bostom and Ibn Warraq Written in 2008 when the pundits were all talking about a “religion of peace” hijacked by a teeny, tiny meanie minority….rsk

Even articles about Muslim Anti-Semitism rarely want to talk about Muslim Anti-Semitism. In the aftermath of the Kosher supermarket massacre in France, articles about the Muslim persecution of Jews in Europe nervously hover around the subject before swerving away to discuss the European far-right.

An article about Muslim anti-Semitism in France inevitably becomes an article about the National Front, which is not actually shooting Jews in supermarkets. Broader European pieces obsessively focus on the Jobbik party in Hungary which for all its vileness has not actually killed any Jews.

(The endless articles about Jobbik characterize it as a far-right European Christian party, but in fact it’s a pan-Turkic organization whose chairman had told a Turkish audience, “Islam is the last hope for humanity.” Its actual identity is based on a broad front of ethnic solidarity by identifying Hungarians as a Turkic people. Its anti-Semitism is anti-Zionist. Jobbik hates Jews because it identifies with Muslims.)

The usual treatment of Muslim anti-Semitism is cursory. History books acknowledge its existence while asserting that European anti-Semitism was worse. Modern media coverage takes the same approach by finding a useful distraction in the European far-right.

The Leftist media and Islamic supremacist groups have been doing a victory dance ever since Saturday night, when Fox News issued an apology for statements made on the air by terror expert Steve Emerson and others about Muslim no-go zones in Britain and France. However, the apology doesn’t say what it has widely reported as saying – and there is considerable evidence that Muslim areas in both countries are a growing law enforcement and societal problem.

Fox Report host Julie Banderas stated:

Over the course of this last week we have made some regrettable errors on air regarding the Muslim population in Europe, particularly with regard to England and France. Now, this applies especially to discussions of so-called ‘no-go zones,’ areas where non-Muslims allegedly aren’t allowed in and police supposedly won’t go.

To be clear, there is no formal designation of these zones in either country and no credible information to support the assertion there are specific areas in these countries that exclude individuals based solely on their religion.

The brutal jihadists now control 20,000 square kilometers, and they’re intent on building a caliphate.

Twitter hashtags cannot defeat terrorists.

Last April, hundreds of Nigerian school girls were kidnapped. The concerted international response? #BringBackOurGirls and an array of sad-faced celebrity photos, most famously that of a pouty Michelle Obama. But then the world forgot. And in central-west Africa, a particularly despicable terrorist group, Boko Haram, has taken advantage of the world’s short attention span.

The product of joined-up evils, Boko Haram blends Salafi-Jihadism with Mad Max–style criminality. Though less famous than the Islamic State, Boko Haram shows a penchant for brutality that equals anything seen in Iraq and Syria. Boko Haram — whose name is loosely translated as “Western education is forbidden” — believes, like many jihadists today, that freedom is a mortal sin against God. To emphasize this belief, Boko Haram soldiers like to lock young students in burning buildings, and then they slit the throats of those who escape.

To the anti-war Left’s chagrin, Chris Kyle is a cultural phenomenon.

Clint Eastwood’s new movie, American Sniper, marks the return of the American war hero.

Heroism on the battlefield had never gone away, of course, far from it (witness the Medals of Honor awarded for acts of extraordinary valor in Iraq and Afghanistan). But the classic war hero is more than just brave or fierce. He is famous and almost universally acclaimed. On top of his battlefield exploits, he is a cultural phenomenon.

That is what American Sniper unquestionably makes of Chris Kyle. The late Navy SEAL sniper had already written a best-selling memoir and was known as “The Legend” within the military for his record number of confirmed kills during four tours in Iraq. The success of the movie, where he is played by Bradley Cooper, also means he will be remembered as a larger-than-life figure. Such is the power of the silver screen.

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

I was reminded of this quote while reading about the ongoing diaspora of France’s Jewish community. Though French Prime Minister Manuel Valls says that if 100,000 Jews leave France, the country will be “a failure” and “France will no longer be France,” that once-inconceivable outcome now seems entirely likely.

Following the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris this month, White House spokesman Josh Earnest briefly became an Islamic theologian. At issue was why U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, unlike the leadership of France, wouldn’t describe the murderers as adherents to “radical Islam.”

Pressed by NPR’s Mara Liasson, Earnest explained to reporters that the terrorists tried to “invoke their own deviant, distorted view of Islam in order to justify” the attacks.

It’s easy to see the absurdity in saying that men who shout “Allahu Akhbar” before they murder Jews, cartoonists and French policeman are not radical Muslims. But Earnest was not freelancing, he was articulating a longstanding U.S. policy, not only for Obama but also his predecessor, George W. Bush. Both administrations have said repeatedly since Sept. 11, 2001, that radical Islam is not Islamic.

Did somebody say ‘trickeration’?

John Roberts was right: of course Obamacare was a tax. And not just a tax, but a massive new welfare program balanced on the backs of the kulak middle class in the guise of “health care reform.” Like all modern Democrat-led expansions of government, it came as a wolf in sheeple’s clothing, a nasty measure passed by stealth with malevolence aforethought. Hello, suckers!

Those Americans who didn’t get health insurance last year could be in for a rude awakening when the IRS asks them to fork over their Obamacare penalty — and it could be a lot more than the $95 many of them may be expecting.

The Affordable Care Act requires those who didn’t have insurance last year and didn’t qualify for one of the exemptions to pay a tax penalty, which was widely cited as $95 the first year. But the $95 is actually a minimum, and middle- and upper-income families will actually end up paying 1 percent of their household income as their penalty. TurboTax, an online tax service, estimated that the average penalty for lacking health insurance in 2014 will be $301.

Sunday a week ago, the French government sponsored a solidarity rally featuring an array of foreign leaders and all domestic political parties joining together in a “sacred union” (a term recalling World War I) against the massacres at Charlie Hebdo magazine and the kosher market.

Make that all the political parties except one — the National Front (NF) headed by Marine Le Pen, ostensibly excluded because it does not subscribe to “republican values.” In reality, it was barred because, uniquely among French political parties, it opposes immigration; and other politicians fear that the NF gains in the aftermath of the massacres. Likewise, the government yesterday forbade a demonstration by the secularist Riposte Laïque organization that called for “Islamists out.”