RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/03/11/wasserman-schultz-says-dem-loss-in-special-election-shows-gop-weakness/

Republican David Jolly won the special election to fill the House seat left vacant by the death of his former boss, Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.).

With nearly all of the votes counted Tuesday night, Jolly had 48.5 percent of the vote to Alex Sink’s 46.7 percent. Libertarian Lucas Overby had 4.8 percent.

Sink lost the 2010 governor’s race to Rick Scott. The Democratic Party sunk extensive ad funding into the congressional battle, and DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) tried to paint the loss as a positive.

“Republican special interest groups poured in millions to hold onto a Republican congressional district that they’ve comfortably held for nearly 60 years. Tonight, Republicans fell short of their normal margin in this district because the agenda they are offering voters has a singular focus – that a majority of voters oppose – repealing the Affordable Care Act that would return us to the same old broken health care system,” Wasserman Schultz said in a DNC rapid response statement.

“While tonight Democrats didn’t win, we are proud of Alex and the race she ran based on a vision of opportunity for all and an agenda that would grow the middle class and protect Florida’s families,” she said.

“Hashomer” is now available. You can see it directly via the following link:

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“Hashomer,” or “The Watchman,” was a group of young men, mainly from Russia, who took upon themselves the defense of the Jewish settlements in Palestine. To its members, self-defense was intimately linked to the idea of Jewish national restoration. In the words of one:

“Hashomer was a political movement. The intention was to create a national army. Socialist. Revolutionary.”

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http://www.americanthinker.com/assets/3rd_party/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/03/obamacare_meets_kafka.html

In Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law,” so ably recorded by Orson Wells here, a reader learns of the tribulations of a man who seeks access to the law. But over the span of his lifetime, he is never permitted admittance as a single doorkeeper will not allow it. Thus, the doorkeeper laughs and says

If you are so drawn to [the entrance to the gate] just try to go in despite my veto. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the doorkeepers. From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last…

And yet the man cannot fathom that one would not have access to the law for:

…he thinks, [the law] should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone.

But seeing the power of the doorkeepers, he “decides that it is better to wait until he gets permission to enter.” And there “he sits for days and years.”

Yet the man is intrepid and “makes many attempts to be admitted and wearies the doorkeeper by his importunity.” To add insult to injury, the doorkeeper even remains cordial “asking him questions about his home and many other things, but the questions are put indifferently, as great lords put them.” For ultimately, the man is never allowed access.

The man “curses his bad luck” and fixes all his attention on the first doorkeeper who “seems to him the sole obstacle preventing access to the Law.”

And in one final stab of hope, the man questions the doorkeeper and asks:

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2014/03/obama-first-post-american-president/

Those who thought it more important to have a black president than a competent one were entirely untroubled by the prospect that a cliche-sprouting “community organiser” might be found wanting in a crisis. Vladimir Putin suffered no such delusions

obama empty suitDuring the 2012 presidential debates, Obama scorned Mitt Romney for having identified Russia as one of America’s geo-political adversaries: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.” Obama used to be a funny man, or at least the guy who wrote his one-liners was funny. But the joke is over and America needs a new Ronald Reagan more urgently than ever.

Reagan’s resolve in the 1980s to station Cruise and Pershing II missiles in the Federal Republic of Germany put paid to Brezhnev’s SS-20 prospective game-changer. A few years later Mikhail Gorbachev was signing off on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), all but conceding defeat in the Cold War. That’s how fast things can move when you have the absolutely right – or totally wrong – person pulling the levers of power.

There is the temptation to argue that if only Obama possessed a bit more spine then, just maybe, Putin would be more circumspect about Crimea (plus everywhere else), let alone risk a Second Cold War with the USA. And yet that is not the real problem. Carter was a weak and vacillating leader but he did perform something of a foreign policy U-turn in 1979 after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. There has been nothing weak or vacillating about the current President’s faith in the progressive-utopian internationalism. A foreign policy U-turn on the part of Obama will require him dumping a lifetime of post-modern, post-colonial, post-reality academic baggage.

Leftist sophisticates never understood Russia. Standard academic orthodoxy – which informs everything about the 44th President – blames poor old Harry Truman for starting the Cold War. The warmonger Eisenhower torpedoed Nikita Khrushchev’s proposals for peaceful co-existence, or so goes the leftist fantasy. Moreover, JFK grew wise to the military-industrial complex but the shadowy figures running America assassinated him Dallas before he could bring down the curtain on the Cold War. And Reagan, so say the progressives, did not destroy the Soviet Union but nearly destroyed the planet with his right-wing ravings about evil empires.

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/peter-smith/2014/02/statistics-dummies-warmists/

These breathless reports about the planet never being hotter, take them with a truckload of salt. How can anyone place the slightest credence in claims being advanced by people who fail to grasp, or refuse to grasp, the simple truth about trend lines and temperature

“Read all about it! Read all about it! It’s the hottest year on record — except for another five hotter years!” A new twist can be put on the aphorism attributed to Benjamin Disraeli. It is now clear that there are lies, damn lies, and the interpretation of climate statistics.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported that last year (2013) tied with 2007 for the sixth-hottest year on record – i.e. since 1850. “This is confirmation of the trend of global warming of the planet,” according to WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. In case you missed the import, Mr Jarraud added that thirteen of the fourteen warmest years on record have occurred in the 21st Century.

The latest version of the Hadley Centre’s global surface temperature series HadCRUT 4 shows a trend rise of about 0.8 degrees Celsius between 1850 and 2013. This upward trend steepened between around 1910 and 1940 and, following a period of becoming negative between 1940 and 1975, steepened somewhat more acutely between around 1975 and 2000 before leveling.

It seems clear, based on both the surface and satellite records, that since around 2000/’01 — that is, for the last 12 or 13 years — temperatures have plateaued. I don’t really buy the 17-year cessation being bandied about. I think there is too much noise created by the sharp rise in temperature in 1998 to draw firm conclusions until just after the beginning of this century. But form your own conclusions. Data can be sourced from the excellent and universally well-regarded web site woodfortrees.org.

Marks Could Be Hurdle for Democrats in November Amid Broad Dissatisfaction

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304250204579433533118580224?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories&mg=reno64-wsj

President Barack Obama is struggling to overcome widespread pessimism about the economy and deep frustration with Washington, notching the lowest job-approval ratings of his presidency in a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

The results suggest Mr. Obama could weigh on fellow Democrats in midterm elections this fall, particularly in the conservative states that will play a large role in deciding whether his party retains its Senate majority.
View Graphics

Mr. Obama’s job approval ticked down to 41% in March from 43% in January, marking a new low. Some 54% disapproved of the job he is doing, matching a previous high from December, when the botched rollout of his signature health law played prominently in the news. The latest survey also showed the lowest-ever approval in Journal/NBC polling for Mr. Obama’s handling of foreign policy.

The findings come amid dissatisfaction with all elected leaders in Washington and low regard for the Republican Party. Roughly a quarter of those polled view the GOP positively, with 45% harboring negative views, weaker numbers than for the Democratic Party.
Still, the GOP leads slightly when the public is asked which party should control Congress.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-lefts-fantasies-of-cultural-ghettos/print/

American diners eternally immersed in the 50s where Elvis is always on the jukebox dot the world from London to Tokyo. Rockabilly is bigger in Japan and Germany than it is in America. Replicas of the Statue of Liberty are scattered all over China and a generation of Asian filmmakers influenced by American films has come to Hollywood to make movies that are then redistributed around the world.

America has always been a machine for mixing and remixing cultures. Americans have Greek, Jewish and French first names, music that combines Celtic and African influences, and movies where British directors hire Australian actors to portray ordinary Americans. Any group trying to untangle that mix and patent their “contribution” would have as much luck as a divorcing couple trying to sort out their individual belongings after sixty years of marriage.

To whom does the lowly hamburger belong? To the Germans whose urban name it carries, the Mongols who invented it, the Russians who introduced it to the Germans or the Wisconsin man who began selling it that way? It doesn’t really matter. What really matters is how the burger tastes.

If the Jews and Greeks began calling in all their cultural debts, we would all be poorer for it.

In recent years, cultural protectionism has gone from being the obsession of beleaguered European states doling out millions in absurd cultural grants to another weapon wielded by professionally outraged minority activists who lay exclusive claim to what they consider their culture.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/kenneth-levin/jeffrey-goldberg-jackson-diehl-and-obamas-targeting-of-israel/print/
In his recent hour-long White House interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, President Obama once more unleashed a biased, dishonest attack on Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu. Goldberg, like all too many high-profile writers and commentators, gave the president a pass on his anti-Israel riff and even seconded it. A striking contrast, demonstrating incisive, reality-based coverage of Obama’s anti-Israel slant and its inevitable negative consequences, has been provided over the past five years by the Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl.

Goldberg’s interview received wide attention for the president’s warnings to Netanyahu that he must quickly reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians or Israel could face dire consequences from a world impatient with the Jewish state’s supposed foot-dragging in ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, now in the tenth year of a four-year term, the president had only positive things to say, including definitively characterizing him as ready for a peace deal.

The Goldberg interview, broadcast on Bloomberg News, was wide-ranging, touching extensively on Iran and Syria as well as Israel, and Goldberg has been praised by some for his handling of the hour. Elliot Abrams, on The Weekly Standard website, wrote: “… kudos to Goldberg; he pressed Obama repeatedly, challenging vague formulations and seeking clarity. Goldberg pushed Obama hard, especially on Iran and Syria.

But on Israel Goldberg pushed Obama not at all, even when the president made assertions untethered from reality.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/putins-contempt-for-obama-on-the-glazov-gang/

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Igor Melcuk, a Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Montreal and Member of the Royal Society of Canada. A scientist and “reluctant” Soviet dissident, he left the Soviet Union in 1977 after being expelled from the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences because he defended Andrei Sakharov​ in a letter published in The New York Times​.

Prof. Melcuk joined the Gang to discuss Putin’s Ukraine Gamble. The discussion occurred in the context of Putin’s Contempt for Obama. Prof. Melcuk explained why the Russian president laughs in the Radical-in-Chief’s face, what he is really after, what he really fears, and what dangers he poses:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/lois-lerners-lies-and-cover-up-revealed/print/

Former IRS mandarin Lois Lerner orchestrated an unprecedented crackdown on Tea Party and conservative groups and then attempted to scapegoat those nonprofits, blaming them for the harsh treatment they received at her instigation, according to a damning report released yesterday by congressional investigators.

The report came out six days after Lerner appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee under subpoena and for a second time refused to testify about IRS targeting of right-of-center 501c4 nonprofit advocacy groups during the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. (The full report is available in PDF form at the committee’s website.) At the March 5 hearing, which was a continuation of a hearing started last year, Lerner again opted to invoke her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

President Obama has claimed that there was not even “a smidgen of corruption” in the IRS affair but anyone with eyes knows the Obama administration has been stonewalling and intimidating witnesses who know the ugly truth about these Third World banana republic-style tax abuses.

Democrats correctly view Tea Party groups, that is, right-wing populist groups, as an existential threat to the Left. These nonprofits tend to be Republican-leaning organizations and they have been successful so far in derailing, or at least slowing, parts of President Obama’s ongoing transformation of America. Many left-wingers don’t believe such groups are legitimate and don’t want them granted official recognition and tax-exempt status by the IRS.