RUTHFULLY YOURS

When one thinks of mass murder, Hitler comes to mind. If not Hitler, then Tojo, Stalin, or Mao. Credit is given to the 20th-century totalitarians as the worst species of tyranny to have ever arisen. However, the alarming truth is that Islam has killed more than any of these, and may surpass all of them combined in numbers and cruelty.

The enormity of the slaughters of the “religion of peace” are so far beyond comprehension that even honest historians overlook the scale. When one looks beyond our myopic focus, Islam is the greatest killing machine in the history of mankind, bar none.

The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. — Will Durant, as quoted on Daniel Pipes site.

Conservative estimates place the number at 80 million dead Indians.

According to some calculations, the Indian (subcontinent) population decreased by 80 million between 1000 (conquest of Afghanistan) and 1525 (end of Delhi Sultanate). — Koenrad Elst as quoted on Daniel Pipes site

80 Million?! The conquistadors’ crimes pale into insignificance at that number. No wonder Hitler admired Islam as a fighting religion. He stood in awe of Islam, whose butchery even he did not surpass.

Over 110 Million Blacks were killed by Islam.

… a minumum of 28 Million African were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East. Since, at least, 80 percent of those captured by Muslim slave traders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave market, it is believed that the death toll from 1400 years of Arab and Muslim slave raids into Africa could have been as high as 112 Millions. When added to the number of those sold in the slave markets, the total number of African victims of the trans-Saharan and East African slave trade could be significantly higher than 140 Million people. — John Allembillah Azumah, author of The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue

On June 10, the Knesset will elect President Shimon Peres’s successor. As he departs the President’s Residence at the end of June, the media will provide saturation coverage of his final days and tell us over and over that Peres is the greatest statesman in Jewish history. His personal gravitas is Israel’s single most important asset in the world, they will say as they warn of our bleak future without him.

The upcoming Peres-is-a-Superhero festival will just be the latest of the narcissistic, tasteless celebrations of this man, always choreographed expertly by Peres and his retinue of media groupies.

Like his 80th and 85th birthdays, Peres’s 90th birthday celebration went on for a month. As the serving president, his last two monthlong benders cost the taxpayers millions of shekels and broke the budget of the President’s Residence.

All were replete with international celebrity guests like Nelson Mandela, Bono and Bill Clinton whom the press drooled over.

Hyperventilating reporters paused between drinks to mournfully note that after Peres leaves office, the parties will end and the A-listers will stop visiting.

And that’s the problem with Peres’s showboating. It’s always been all about him, never about us.

Peres’s popularity among the jet-setters never translates into international support for the State of Israel. Israel is but a prop for him – a means of securing the continued support of the beautiful people.

Actually, it’s worse than that. Peres’s international popularity has always grown in indirect proportion to Israel’s. The more Hollywood stars he adds to his collection, the worse Israel’s international isolation.

American banking authorities are threatening to slap a 10 billion dollar fine on France’s top bank, BNP Paribas, accused of handling transactions in dollars from 2002-9 for customers from Iran, Cuba, and Sudan, in violation of an American embargo. What does this have to do with the Front National? Would an anti-Islamization party be shocked by the Iranian ties of our flagship bank? Or perhaps the Front National, sworn enemy of Big Finance, will be pleased to see a money-grubbing bank get its fingers slapped and its stockholders deprived of one year’s dividends?
Probably not. Marine Le Pen accuses the United States of imposing sanctions to prevent French companies from trading with Iran the better to allow American companies to prepare a bright commercial future there. At the same time she accuses France of joining the US in a veritable war on Iran.
Aymeric Chauprade has been Marine Le Pen’s foreign policy advisor since she became party president in 2011. Elected this month EU deputy from the district that includes Paris, he is expected to pilot the Group that Le Pen is striving to put together. Chauprade is eminently presentable, handsomely academic, poised and soft-spoken. He calls himself a “dissident,” replacing the Soviet Union with oppressive Western democracies. His carefully constructed discourse has all the marks of the accomplished geostrategist with a solid academic background and broad international experience. Except that it veers off into riffs about the machinations of the “Atlantico-Zionist conspiracy” alternating with lyrical passages in praise of Vladimir Putin. As he spins his fascinating tale about the real forces at work in our world, the balance of power, the sources of conflict, the causes of violence, the historical realities—e.g. Islamic jihad and its scriptural foundations—are metamorphosed into marionettes manipulated by imperialist America.
Keeping in mind that Marine Le Pen needs 2 more allies to form a 7-nation Group at the European Parliament, we may justifiably extend our inquiry into the words and deeds of her foreign policy advisor, Aymeric Chauprade. To what extent are his policies acceptable to the leaders of the four parties already allied with the Front National—Geert Wilders, Harald Wilinsky, Gerald Annemans, and Matteo Salvini?
Revelations about the Front National are often but not always found in media that could be labeled “leftwing” or “anti-fascist.” The anti-jihad discourse adopted by Marine Le Pen at the beginning of her presidential campaign led to uncritical acceptance of the Front National by thinkers and activists concerned with the dangers of 21st century Islamic conquest. Many, if not the great majority of these people were awakened to this issue by the 9/11 jihad attack against the United States. They do not appreciate being rejected as right wing racist xenophobic Islamophobes. Is the triumph of the Front National good news for them?

The Israeli leadership would do well to bear in mind that commitment to the principle of democratic governance is not a suicide pact.

Incredibly, today, except for detail in nuance and tone, the formal positions of the major “right-wing” faction, the Likud, has become indistinguishable from positions expounded by the far-left Meretz faction.

In terms of political affiliation, 51 percent of respondents said they were right-wing, 22% said they were in the Center and 27% defined themselves as left-wing. Among young people, a greater percentage called themselves right-wing than left-wing

– Recent opinion poll, “Israel today – the state of the nation,” Ynetnews, May 5.

At first glance, the findings of the poll conducted over the last week of April should be cause of great encouragement and satisfaction for the political “Right.” That is until you examine political realities and take a long, hard look at the political “Right’s” performance over the past two-and-a-half decades.

Organizational victory, ideological defeat

According to the survey, over half the population holds views presumably compatible with what might be expected of “right-wing” political platforms – almost double that found for what presumably might be expected of the political platforms of its “left-wing” rivals. No less significant, the “Right” enjoys greater support than the “Left” among the young.It seem the younger the age group, the stronger the support for the “Right.”

All of this seems to bode a rosy future for the “Right” in Israel. This, however, would be a highly simplistic – even deceptive—take on Israeli political realities. For the political outcomes that have taken place in the past, and seem probable in the future, provide a very different picture.

Although it is true that there has been serious erosion in the electoral strength of the “Left” and of its representation in the Knesset, the ideology it embraced has totally eclipsed that of its “right-wing” rivals.

After all, since the early 1990s, political realities in Israel have clearly shown that electoral victory has little bearing on the policies resultant governments will pursue.

Quite the reverse.

As I have pointed out in previous columns, the official ideology adopted by the allegedly “right-wing” Likud is demonstratively far more concessionary than that embraced by the post-Oslo Labor Party under the Nobel peace laureate Yitzhak Rabin. Yet any Israeli leader who were to adopt Rabin’s prescription for a permanent settlement with the Palestinians would be immediately dismissed as an unrealistic extremist.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/nebraska-2014-candidates-for-congress-where-they-stand?f=must_reads

Primary: May 13, 2014

To see the actual voting records of all incumbents on other issues such as Foreign Policy, Second Amendment Issues, Homeland Security, and other issues as well as their rankings by special interest groups please use the links followed by two stars (**).
U.S. Senate

Deb Fischer (R) Next election in 2018
Mike Johanns (R) Is retiring in 2014
Ben Sasse (R) Challenger
https://www.sassefornebraska.com/
ISSUES
HEALTHCARE He opposes ObamaCare not just because:
it was passed by a dishonest legislative gimmick
it is based on a premise that Government can successfully plan 18% of our economy
it puts bureaucrats between patients and doctors
it infringes on religious liberty and forces people of conscience to pay for abortion
its information technology systems won’t work, and will likely lead to massive data leaks of Americans’ confidential financial and health data
…though all those things are true.

He’s also against it for a much more basic reason: Ben opposes ObamaCare because he rejects the worldview underlying it. It’s a worldview that says:

“If there’s a problem, only the Federal Government can solve it.”

“Fake budget projections are fine, it’s OK to hide the truth from the American people because “DC knows what America needs and the ends justify the means”

“The Executive branch has the authority to just fill in parts of the law that are unfinished, grant special waivers to politically connected friends, and change parts of the law that are politically inconvenient.”

“The American people need Government to care for them and permanent dependency isn’t just an acceptable outcome, it’s a goal of this Administration.”

This does not work. Republicans must be ready with conservative solutions to the crisis Obamacare has caused. Otherwise we will be forced into a single-payer system.
Real health care reform can only be achieved through patient-centered health policy solutions, not more bureaucracy. The health care sector was a mess before Obamacare-not because we didn’t have enough government, but because we already had too much.
JOBS AND ECONOMY Ben knows that the government does not create jobs – businesses and local communities create jobs. The way to get a real economic growth agenda is by rolling back the regulatory state and letting job creators go to work. One area where over-regulation has been most obvious is the energy sector. The Keystone XL pipeline should have been approved years ago. Ben believes that we need an all-of-the-above energy policy. This approach would lower energy prices, create as many as three million jobs, and reduce our dependence on the Middle East.
When government gets out of the way, America can compete – and win – in any industry. We’ve got the people; we’ve got the talent; and most of all we have the work ethic – the will to create something lasting for our families and our neighbors- if we can just get the federal government out of the way, and let our people build.
IMMIGRATION The Federal Government’s primary responsibility is to protect Americans from enemies foreign and domestic. The American people are not safe unless we know who is entering and leaving our country. Neither Party has been willing to get serious about border security, dating back to the mid-80s when a Republican president agreed to amnesty in exchange for promises of securing the border later. It never happened.

President “You can keep your doctor” Obama refuses to lead on this issue because he is more concerned about turning Texas into a Democrat state than he is about solving the problem. Republicans must not make a deal with President Obama. We must secure the border. End of story.
FOREIGN POLICY A strong America is a more prosperous and secure America, and American leadership makes for a safer and more peaceful world. But President Obama’s policies have done more to weaken our nation than anyone since Jimmy Carter. Under the Obama Administration, America’s global standing has deteriorated to dangerous levels. Our adversaries don’t fear us and our friends don’t trust us. Russia’s attack on Ukraine shows the folly of President Obama’s naive, liberal worldview that international aggression is out of date. Dictatorships like China and North Korea have become emboldened by Obama’s lead-from-behind weakness. His passivity on Syria has led to a dramatic increase in the number of jihadist terrorists, and on his watch Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon than ever before. Restoring America’s credibility means strengthening our alliances, deterring our enemies, and leading the world from the front.

Dave Domina (D) Challenger
http://www.davedomina.com/

District 1

Jeff Fortenberry (R) Incumbent
http://www.supportfort.com/wpmain/ http://fortenberry.house.gov/#dialog
http://www.ontheissues.org/house/Jeff_Fortenberry.htm**
Rated -3 by AAI, indicating anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record. (May 2012

ISSUES

NUCLEAR LEADERSHIP
American nuclear leadership: America’s role as the leading enforcer of the norms and laws guiding the global nuclear security order.orMaintaining a strong American deterrent: Making the right investments to ensure a strong and affordable U.S. deterrent to combat 21st century threats, including the role of missile defense, Global Strike, and cyberspace.
Preventing nuclear terror: Preventing dangerous regimes or sub-state actors from acquiring or advancing nuclear ambitions and capabilities.
Securing global nuclear materials: Advancing efforts to secure nuclear materials worldwide
Safe civilian nuclear power: Ensuring that responsible nations can utilize nuclear power without increasing nuclear proliferation.

ENERGY Voted YES on opening Outer Continental Shelf to oil drilling.
Voted YES on barring EPA from regulating greenhouse gases.
Voted NO on enforcing limits on CO2 global warming pollution.
Voted for construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline without limiting amendments.

HEALTHCARE Rep. Jeff Fortenberry wants to retain portions of the Affordable Care Act while moving to a new health care reform model that combines catastrophic care coverage with expanded use of individual health savings accounts.
August 8, 2013-Nebraska Republican Jeff Fortenberry was pressed at a town hall in his district this week about the many votes the House GOP has taken to repeal or dismantle parts of Obamacare.
Fortenberry called the 40 votes the House has taken on the health care law “theatrics,” the Columbus Telegram reported on Thursday. “Some people are beginning to ridicule us for that. To be honest, some of it is theatrics. You keep doing this over and over and over again and it doesn’t get anywhere. It is theatrics,” Fortenberry said according to the paper. He said he remains opposed to the law, but was supportive of some of the more popular provisions like allowing children to stay on their parent’s health plan until they turn 26.

Dennis Crawford (D) Challenger
http://denniscrawford2014.com/

ISSUES

CREATING JOBS My top priority will be to work across party lines to pass legislation that will create jobs. That’s why I support government investments in infrastructure. We need to upgrade our aging highways, bridges and electrical grid. Currently, the infrastructure in the U.S. is ranked 14th in the world and is declining. As recently as 2008, our infrastructure was ranked 7th. In 2011, a jobs bill was introduced in the Congress that would have invested in infrastructure and cut the Social Security payroll tax. This legislation – if enacted – would have created almost 2 million jobs while reducing the unemployment rate by 1 percentage point. It was supported by both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO. As both AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said: “[W]e hope that Democrats and Republicans in Congress will also join together to build America’s infrastructure.” Unfortunately, the bill has never been granted an up or down vote. This is yet another example of how Washington’s dysfunction is hurting the economy and the people of Nebraska CD 1.
MAKING GOVERNMENT WORK The government shutdown that Jeff Fortenberry supported and voted for on September 20th, 2013 is unacceptable. It cost our economy $24 Billion and 120 thousand jobs. I plan to reach across party lines to arrive at solutions that are beneficial to the people of CD1. We need a farm bill and a jobs bill. I’m running because I want my children and their generation to have the same kind of opportunities my wife and I had when we were growing up.
EXPANDING CLEAN ENERGY Every time I drive down I-80 through Iowa, I marvel at all of the wind turbines. We need to do the same thing here in Nebraska. We have great potential here in Nebraska to produce great amounts of wind energy. That is why I support investments in renewable sources such as solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal. The development of renewable energy is a great job creation tool as well as a way to reduce America’s dependence upon oil from unstable parts of the world. The development of renewable energy sources has the potential to bring about the same kind of positive technological and economic spin offs that we saw from the interstate highway system and the space program in the 1950s and 1960s. The production of more renewable energy will also reduce the amount of green house gases emitted into the atmosphere. This is truly a win-win proposition for everybody in Nebraska CD1. If I’m elected, I would make this one of my top priorities.
PROTECTING ELECTION INTEGRITY We need to begin to take steps to reverse the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. That decision made it possible for well-heeled special interests to pour large amounts of anonymous money into political campaigns. An activist majority on the U.S. Supreme Court created a new, dysfunctional campaign finance system that is now one dollar, one vote. We need to get special interest money out of campaigns and restore the voices of the middle class and working people by overturning Citizens United.

District 2

Lee Terry (R) Incumbent
http://leeterry.com/ http://leeterry.house.gov/
http://www.ontheissues.org/house/lee_terry.htm**
Rated -2 by AAI, indicating a anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)

ISSUES
HEALTHCARE The cost of health care poses the greatest single threat to the fiscal health of the United States, threatening our economic stability in the future. Today, the U.S. spends more on health care per person than other country in the world, yet it ranks 37th in overall quality according to the World Health Organization. Clearly, there are problems with our system and they need to be addressed, before they do serious damage.
That’s why I voted against the President’s health care reform plan. It’s already proven that more money and new government programs won’t solve our health crisis in American; but rather we need to reform our health care delivery system.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) that President Obama signed into law raises taxes; increases the nation’s deficit; and, fails to address the problems of rising health care costs and insurance premiums. The end result threatens access for millions of Medicare beneficiaries and that is something that cannot be accepted.
Another reason I voted against PPACA is because it created the Independent Payment Advisory Board that puts Medicare payment decisions in the hands 15 unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats. Over three years later, evidence indicates that the new health care law is failing America’s health care system. A growing number of employers include those I’ve spoken with in Nebraska’s Second District are considering eliminating employer sponsored coverage and forcing their employees to go to an exchange. These new taxes and mandates are hurting small businesses and their ability to hire new employees.
Another way to rein in health care costs is permanent fixing Medicare’s sustain growth rate (SGR) that sets the formula for how doctors are reimbursed for their services. The SGR is an antiquated policy that it was meant to control how much Medicare pays for physician services, but it simply doesn’t fit our nation’s 21st century health care needs. Evidence of this is how many times Congress has had to pass a temporary patch for the SGR, or “doc fix.” We cannot expect Medicare patients to go year-to-year or month-to-month hoping that Congress will continually fix this broken formula. I am happy that my committee has taken the lead on addressing this major issue and I believe that rather than reimbursing doctors for the quantity of services, we need to explore ways to reward them for the quality of patient outcomes.
ENERGY Terry Reaction to State Department Delay of Keystone XL Pipeline – Washington, Apr 18 | 2014 Congressman Lee Terry (R-NE) released the following statement after today’s announcement by the State Department that they will delay making a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline:
“Yesterday, the President had the audacity to stand at the podium at the White House press office and lecture Republicans in Congress about the need to make tough decisions. But today, he punted a tough decision in the name of political expediency.
“It’s shameful that as we begin spring construction season, that hundreds of my constituents will be denied an opportunity to go to work on a project that will help secure America’s energy future solely because the President wants to placate his political base in an election year.”
IMMIGRATION Congress must act on this important issue. We have lost control of both our northern and southern borders. Our maritime border is porous and anyone with the most innocent or worst of intentions can walk or drive into and assimilate into our communities. This illegal immigration must be stopped. Securing our border is the proper first step. I support authorizing more border patrol agents, who are properly equipped with modern technology to monitor those coming into our country. More needs to be done to properly secure our ports of entry along our east and west coasts and our northern and southern borders. This is a very large, but very important task.

Employers must be provided better means to information, allowing them to determine whether or not the potential hire is properly documented. If employers fail to seek information about a potential employee, the full force of the law should be brought against them. Once the borders are secure from illegal immigrants we must reform our current, archaic immigration laws. We must develop sensible, labor-based non-amnesty guest worker programs.

Brad Ashford (D) Challenger
https://www.facebook.com/AshfordForOmaha

District 3

Adrian Smith (R) Incumbent
http://www.joinadrian.com/ http://www.ontheissues.org/house/adrian_smith.htm**
http://adriansmith.house.gov/
Rated -4 by AAI, indicating a anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)

ISSUES
ENERGY Smith Statement on Keystone XL Pipeline Study, Jan 31, 2014 , Congressman Adrian Smith (R-NE) issued the following statement after the State Department released its final environmental impact study on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. The final study concluded the pipeline would pose minimal environmental risk.
“The State Department has once again confirmed the Keystone pipeline would be safe and in the best interest of our nation. Protecting the natural resources of Nebraska and our nation has always been a key factor in considering this project. With today’s technology, we can transport energy safely while protecting our environment. “With the environmental review now complete, it’s time to move forward with this project which would improve our energy security, create jobs, and spur economic growth.
“I encourage the President to follow the science and facts, and approve this project.”
HEALTHCARE More Evidence Obamacare is Hurting Americans – New Report Predicts Millions of Job Losses, Fewer Insured – Feb 4, 2014 Issues: Congressman Adrian Smith (R-NE) made the following statement today after a new report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office predicted the President’s health care law will reduce the number of full-time workers by roughly 2.3 million people, and the online exchanges will insure 1 million fewer people this year than previously estimated:
“This new report is just the latest evidence of what Nebraskans have told me all along: Obamacare makes our health systems worse, not better, and the law discourages economic growth and job creation.
“House Republicans have offered hundreds of ideas to make health care more affordable and accessible in America. Earlier today, I joined my colleagues on the Ways and Means Committee in approving two bills to prevent part-time workers, volunteer firefighters, and other emergency workers from being hurt by the Obamacare employer mandate. “I hope this report will encourage President Obama and Senator Reid to consider these and other Republican solutions instead of continuing to block the process. As the report indicates, we can and must do better.”

Mark Sullivan (D) Challenger
http://marksullivan2014.com/
ISSUES
I will fight to preserve Social Security, Medicare, and the family farm.
I’m going to work hard for deficit reduction and job growth.
To balance our budget we need a careful, balanced , and fair approach to fiscal security. Spending cuts and Revenue increases must necessarily be equally employed to successfully deal with our deficit. This great endeavor must involve shared sacrifice. Americans have never shrunk from a challenge if they are sure they are united in their efforts and sacrifices!
To promote jobs I would encourage improving infrastructure. We need to maintain and improve our broadband services, highways, railroads, and electrical power grid. Spending on infrastructure is an investment in our nation’s future.
We must defend our nation in the most effective way possible. New technology should be employed to make our country safe, save lives, save money, and put less boots on foreign soil. We owe our citizens a strong defense, but we can’t bankrupt our nation and risk our soldier’s lives. We need to follow Theodore Roosevelt’s advice to, “speak softly and carry a big stick.” Steady diplomatic pressure and financial sanctions will continue to give us better results than gunboat diplomacy.
We must develop a comprehensive energy program. We need to expand and promote new renewable and sustainable energy sources, such as solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal. While we work on these sources we must continue to utilize our existing resources. Improved efficiency, conservation, and environmental safety should be of the highest priority. A big cash bank balance could seem very insignificant if our children and grandchildren inherit a nation with polluted air, undrinkable water, and eroded soil.

Last week, before embarking on a three-day visit to Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and Israel, Pope Francis stated that his trip would be “strictly religious.” A key reason for his short sojourn, he said, was to “pray for peace in this land that has suffered greatly.”

After arriving, however, he spent less time engaged in prayer than in politics.

This would have been completely appropriate had the bishop of Rome and the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church addressed the religious nature of the Islamist war being waged against Christians and Jews. It would have befitted the head of the Holy See to stand at the believed-to-be sites of Jesus’ birth and baptism and bemoan the fate of his flock at the hands of Muslim fanatics bent on subjugating all “infidels.” It would have been in keeping with his mission to reassure the world’s Christians that good will prevail over evil.

Sadly, this is not how the pope’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land panned out. Though he did mention the plight of his people when in Amman last Saturday, it was to praise Jordan’s “climate of serene coexistence” between Muslims and Christians.

“I thank the authorities of the kingdom for all they are doing,” he said, while meeting with King Abdullah II and Queen Rania at their palace. “And I encourage them to persevere in their efforts to seek lasting peace for the entire region. This goal urgently requires that a peaceful solution be found to the crisis in Syria, as well as a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

On Sunday, the pontiff went to Bethlehem. There he met with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, whom he called “a man of peace.”

As always, Abbas and his cronies put their best lies forward, undoubtedly denying Christian flight in droves from Palestinian-controlled areas on the one hand, while blaming Israel for the phenomenon on the other.

The remaining tiny Christian minority in Bethlehem was then treated to a mass delivered by the pope at Manger Square. But his words were drowned out by the muezzin of the Omar Mosque calling Muslims to prayer and blasting “Allahu akbar” (God is great) into a loudspeaker.

The cult of Obama has entered laughingstock territory. The West Point graduates who stayed seated when a standing ovation was attempted were far too polite to openly laugh at the president, but the behavior yesterday of reporters at the State Department indicated their scorn with less restraint.

During a press conference, Jen Psaki, the State Department’s official spokeswoman, claimed at a news conference yesterday, “I would argue the president doesn’t give himself enough credit for what he’s done around the world, and that’s how the secretary feels too.”

The response from the reporters gathered there was laughter.

Keep in mind that these are mostly reporters assigned to the State Department beat, who are knowledgeable about foreign affairs, and who are well used to diplomatic language being used for evasion and puffery.

The follow-on questions were sarcastic:

Q: But isn’t this a potential mission accomplished situation?

PSAKI: Absolutely not.

Q: Jen, you would argue the president doesn’t give himself enough credit? How much credit would you give him?

PSAKI: Well, I think what I’m — I would give him more than he has given himself. That’s what I just said.

Q: What, like, 200 percent credit?

PSAKI: So would the secretary.

Q: So — and for — and for –

Its climate-change policies set up the administration for a fall on Election Day.

On June 2, the Environmental Protection Agency is going to announce new rules for existing coal-fired power plants, most likely a 20 percent reduction in allowable carbon dioxide emissions. The only way this will be possible will be by upgrading almost all combustion units, and the ultimate cost of the upgrades will make coal noncompetitive with much-less-expensive natural gas–fired facilities.

EPA’s proposed new greenhouse-gas regulations are a campaign promise come true. In 2008, Senator Barack Obama announced that, if elected, his climate policies would “necessarily bankrupt” anyone who wanted to build a new coal-fired power plant.

Public comments on EPA’s proposal to do just that closed on May 9, and there is no chance that the president will renege — or that this policy will have any detectable effect on global temperature.

The EPA’s own model, ironically acronymed MAGICC, estimates that its new policies will prevent a grand total of 0.018ºC in warming by 2100. Obviously, that’s not enough to satisfy the steadily shrinking percentage of Americans who think global warming is a serious problem.

MAGICC tells us that the futility of whatever Obama proposes for existing plants will be statistically indistinguishable from making sure that there are no new coal-fired ones. In fact, dropping the carbon dioxide emissions from all sources of electrical generation to zero would reduce warming by a grand total of 0.04ºC by 2100.

This is hardly going to stop the crescendo of global-warming horror stories, perhaps best summarized by the government’s recently released “National Assessment” of the effects of climate change on our country.

For example, the assessment tells us that global warming will increase mental illness in our nation’s cities. The obvious implication is that people in Richmond are crazier than they are in Washington, 100 miles to the north. Or that people must really be loony in Miami.

Should we really police all discourse for fear of the reaction of a microscopic minority?
Can we please stop holding the country hostage to crazy people?

Every year a tiny number of mentally ill people go on horrific killing sprees. It just happened in California. I won’t name the person, because I think the media attention lavished on these horror shows encourages some of these young men — and they are almost all young men — to seek fame or validation through bloodshed.

In an entirely human response, we get spun up into a frenzy of finger-pointing. In the aftermath of the Gabby Giffords shooting, many of the country’s leading journalists and politicians suggested the former congresswoman was shot because of the “violent” political rhetoric of Sarah Palin, Representative Michele Bachmann, and other tea-party-affiliated politicians. It was beyond stupid and slanderous. It was also utterly devoid of evidence. (The culprit was a severe paranoid schizophrenic who abused drugs.)

In 2012, at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colo., another mentally ill young man allegedly murdered twelve people. Because he had dyed his hair orange and booby-trapped his home the way the comic-book villain the Joker might have, many speculated that he was motivated by the Batman movies to kill.

After the particularly horrifying mass murder in Newtown, Conn., many speculated that the mentally ill killer was at least partially driven to kill by violent video games.

In the wake of the recent murder spree in California, Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday tried to lay some of the blame on romantic comedies:

“I have a dreadful feeling in my bones that future historians may write of the May 2014 elections: ‘This was the wake-up call from which Europe failed to wake up.'” — Timothy Garten Ash, The Guardian.

Anti-establishment parties from both the left and the right won big in the 28-nation European Parliament elections that ended on May 25.

Riding a wave of voter discontent over the existing political order in Europe, the electoral victories—especially those by euro-skeptic politicians in major EU countries such as Britain, France and Germany—mark a clear turning point in the debate over the future of the European Union.

The surge of anti-EU parties represents an important blow to the legitimacy of plans by the European establishment to transform the continent into a United States of Europe.

Europe-wide, nearly 150 representatives from anti-establishment parties won seats in the European Parliament. This is up from around 60 seats in the 2009 election. Established pro-EU parties will remain in control of roughly 70% of the 751-seat parliament, which manages the EU’s €143 billion ($200 billion) annual budget and passes EU-wide laws that affect more than 500 million citizens.

Moreover, Europe’s ruling elites are unlikely to allow these or any other election results to derail their quest to build a European superstate. Although European voters have sent an unmistakable message, efforts are already underway to discredit euro-skeptics by branding them as extremists.

Anti-establishment parties are also divided among themselves on many issues, a weakness that, if not overcome, will blunt their effectiveness in the European Parliament.

In summary, the euro-skeptics face a daunting set of long-term challenges to stop the seemingly relentless march toward European federalism. In the near term, however, the greatest impact of their electoral victories will be felt at the local and national levels.