RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2014/03/fine-paper-retracted/
Michael Kile is author of the Devil’s Dictionary of Climate Change. He is a graduate of the University of Western Australia and two other universities.

The University of Western Australia’s Stephan Lewandowsky, scourge of climate sceptics, likened “deniers” to moon-landing conspiracy buffs. Now that his, er, research has been withdrawn, the catastropharian chorus reckons he’s the real victim

Carmen Lawrence’s speech last Friday to University of Western Australia Convocation alumni in defence of the Academy was impressive – except for one word and a revealing sentence. Winthrop Professor Lawrence, director of the Centre for the Study of Social Change in UWA’s School of Psychology, spoke on “An avalanche of change: Will universities as we know them survive the onslaught?”

Universities, argued Lawrence, have developed a blind spot over the past three decades or so. By embracing managerialism and its tick-box performance reviews, the academy was becoming a soulless bureaucracy. It was churning out fewer graduates capable of asking the “big questions” — and too many anxious conformists.

“Universities should be crucial players in the issues of the day”, not merely “technical fixers”. The obsession with technology, speed and efficiency was eroding the university’s traditional roles: valuing knowledge for its own sake and providing civilising institutions that encouraged imagination, tolerance, self-governance, and so on. Broader scholarship was being undermined by a focus on specialist research, she continued,often sidelining teaching quality. There were some “very unfortunate practices in the new Church of Measurement” too. Lawrence was especially concerned about the mis-measurement of science, which was producing “serious distortions in research”.

Paradoxically, given the context, Carmen Lawrence then made an aside that probably puzzled many – and worried more than a few:

“Stephan Lewandowsky just emailed to advise he is [still] being pursued by climate deniers in an extravagant way.”

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

There is a delicious irony in that the same people who would ban the sale of a legal smoking product in drug stores, for health reasons, would promote the sale of an illegal smoking product, for health reasons. It has become non-pc to accept money from lobbyists for tobacco companies, but it is okay to take dollars from those promoting the legalization of marijuana. In fact, once Democratic politicos realized how much money they could get from trial lawyers for encouraging plaintiffs to sue tobacco companies, there was no need to help tobacco companies that had kept Southern Democrats in pocket change and in office for generations. Let it never be said that politicians do not know on which side of the bread butter has been spread. Politicians, who can bob and weave with the best, move in a straight line when it comes to money.

In February, CVS Caremark announced they would stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco products, a decision our smoker-in-chief Barack Obama characterized as a “powerful example.” The decision will cost CVS about $2 billion in annual sales, not really significant in a company that generates $126.7 billion in annual revenues, but still enough, possibly, to cost a few jobs. Of course, CVS may simply have anticipated what appears will become a “fait accompli.” San Francisco and Boston banned the sale of cigarettes in drug stores five years ago. And now Attorney Generals from 28 states are urging pharmacies in their states to follow CVS’s example.

Forgotten in the rush to cleanse the American consumer from the hazards of smoking is that it is not incidental to our economy. World-wide, tobacco sales are about $600 billion. If tobacco were a country, it would be a little larger than Sweden. Somewhere between 1.8 and 3.1 million jobs are in fields related to tobacco. The lower number is provided by the American Economics Group and the higher – not surprisingly – by the Tobacco Merchants Association. In the U.S., tobacco is grown on 10,000 farms in 16 states and, in 2011, contributed $17.8 billion to the coffers of states and the federal government. In 2011, they spent $8.4 billion in advertising and generated about $35 billion in profits. On the other side of the ledger – or perhaps not, depending on whose ledger one is reviewing – it is alleged that the annual economic cost of tobacco runs about $70 billion, in direct medical care and lost productivity. The former, of course, adds to the income of doctors and hospitals, while the latter is at best a guess. And tobacco has kept trial lawyers flush for decades.

http://nypost.com/2014/03/25/shake-it-up-baby-2/

In the course of admitting he didn’t have a good reason for taking a good school away from kids in Harlem, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that to fix a “broken” city school system, we have to “shake the foundations.”

Today, some 1,500 students and teachers from Success Academy charter schools will be doing that at the Armory on the Hudson. They are holding a giant pep rally as they head into next week’s tests. It’s called “Slam the Exam!” And it’s a terrific example of how to “shake the foundations” of a public school system mired in low expectations and even lower performance.

This Empire is centrally organized, overly bureaucratic and failing 85 percent of our black and Latino students.

Yet it has its defenders. Look at Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña. She’s already made clear that charter children are not her concern. So what does she tell principals of the children who are her concern? Not to go overboard on “test preparation.” Hmm. Wonder if that’s the approach in Singapore or South Korea, whose students score well above ours in reading, math and science.

Fariña worries about “stressing” students. She should go to the armory today. These kids believe they can compete with the best of them, and that tests give them an opportunity to prove it. So their approach to testing is simple: “Bring it on.”

Then there’s Mayor de Blasio’s idea of shaking it up, which is to take away good schools for kids if they are charters and keep failing schools open if they are traditional schools. That’s the instinct of the old guard who put the teachers union above student performance.

THIS SHOULD BE TITLED MALICE IN ARABIA….SAUDI ARABIA HAS BEEN SPARED EXPOSURE FOR DECADES….IN 1981 FORMER AMBASSADOR JOHN C. WEST FORCED CANCELLATION OF A BRITISH DOCUMENTARY “DEATH OF A PRINCESS”- THE STORY OF A 19 YEAR OLD GIRL WHO WAS BEHEADED FOR ADULTERY ON THE ORDERS OF HER GRANDFATHER, A MEMBER OF THE SAUDI ROYAL FAMILY….AND EVERY SINGLE U.S. ADMINISTRATION AVOIDED MENTION OF THE HARSH SHARIA LAWS IMPOSED BY THE TYRANTS OF THE GULF OIL STATES….RSK

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/374228/alice-arabia-and-foul-idiocy-censorship-tom-rogan

Under pressure, ABC cancels a show that might have told the truth about women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.

Cry insult and let loose the enemies of freedom.

Late last week, following days of media clamor, ABC Family canceled a pilot for Alice in Arabia. The show was to have centered upon a young American woman as she attempted to escape from family kidnappers in Saudi Arabia.

To be sure, ABC’s critics were vociferous, both in volume and in number. But they should never have been able to succeed.

At a basic level, consider the hyperventilating banality that defined the censorship crew’s arguments. BuzzFeed’s Ayesha Siddiqi scoffed at the comparison of Saudi Arabia to Wonderland. In the Guardian, Raya Jalabi declared that “the very premise of the pilot is deeply problematic — not least because it carries the very real potential for perpetuating negative stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) echoed this sentiment, claiming that Alice in Arabia might lead to “things like bullying.” Coincidentally, CAIR receives quite a lot of money from Riyadh.

In an ironic twist of prejudice, Rega Jha insinuated that, as a former Arabic linguist in the U.S. military, the writer of Alice in Arabia was inherently racist. The corollary implication: that U.S. military personnel kill innocent Muslims (try the opposite). Time’s Rabia Chaudry ranted that Alice in Arabia bears similarity to lynching narratives.

Facing this sea of anger, one could easily, like Alice, have become lost.

Luckily, however, Lily Rothman was on hand to elucidate censorship’s beneficence — why ABC is lucky to have those who know, to tell them what to speak. But Rothman’s summation also tells us something else.

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/374217/print

If you have not seen the biopic of Dr. Carson- “Gifted Hands”…do so….He is an amazing man with an amazing biography….rsk

While the media have been focused on the missing Malaysian aircraft, massive alterations of the world’s geopolitical terrain are underway simultaneously.

The annexation of Crimea by Russia should not have been a surprise for anyone who suspects that Russian president Vladimir Putin is trying to reestablish a powerful Soviet-style empire. When he aggressively attacked Georgia in 2008 — after both Georgia and Ukraine failed to obtain NATO admission at the Bucharest Summit – we should have realized that his goals were not limited to one territory. I suspect he is now calculating an excuse to occupy the easiest regions of Ukraine first and then the whole country over time.

The United States encouraged Ukraine to give up its nuclear arsenal and to deemphasize its military complex, but in its moment of dire need for tangible support, will we have the courage and fortitude to help stop Russian aggression, which ultimately could lead to another Cold War or worse?

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/03/25/obama-on-ukraine-scuffles-history-has-a-funny-way-of-moving-in-twists-and-turns/

President Obama used the word “scuffles” to describe the invasion of Ukraine while maintaining that his No. 1 security concern is a rogue nuclear weapon detonating inside the U.S. instead of Russia.

Obama was eager to stay on the nuke topic at a press conference with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte after the conclusion of the Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague. Foreign and American media alike, though, wanted to talk Russia after the G-7 met on the sidelines of the conference to take their caucus down by one member.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov showed up for the class photo at the end of the summit, but stood rows away from Obama.

Obama said he was “less interested” in President Vladimir Putin’s motivations for taking control in Eastern Europe than “the facts and the principles that not only the United States, but the entire international community are looking to uphold.”

“I don’t think that any of us have been under any illusion that Russia has been very interested in controlling what happens to Ukraine. That’s not new. That’s been the case for years now. That’s been the case dating back to the Orange Revolution,” he added.

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/03/25/investigating-justice-department-corruption-while-giving-thousands-to-obama-campaign/
Rooting out unethical behavior inside DOJ is not as important as advancing the latest leftist narrative.

A key ethics investigator at Eric Holder’s Justice Department has contributed $6,100 to Barack Obama’s election campaign even though she has participated in high-profile investigations of political misconduct at the Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility.

Mary Aubry is an attorney in the Office of Professional Responsibility. The office has investigated a wide range of politically sensitive matters including the dismissal of the New Black Panther voter intimidation case, terrorist interrogation techniques, and the “investigation” into the firing of United States attorneys who served at the pleasure of President Bush.

After Hans von Spakovsky drew attention to Aubry’s political contributions in this 2011 article, she was removed from investigation into the New Black Panther dismissal. Years after Aubry’s OPR office issued a bungled report on the New Black Panther dismissal, DOJ’s independent inspector general revealed in a subsequent report the deep involvement of political appointees in the matter.

Von Spakovsky:

The investigation of the New Black Panther Party case has dragged on for more than a year and a half. OPR had to remove the lawyer initially assigned to investigate the case (Mary Aubry) after it became public that she had made thousands of dollars of political contributions to Barack Obama, other Democratic candidates, and the Democratic National Committee, with the latest contribution to the DNC coming as recently as July 13, 2010.

More recent FEC data show that Aubry didn’t stop her political participation after von Spakovsky’s 2011 story revealed her thousands in contributions. According to the FEC, Aubry made four more contributions to Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign after von Spakovsky’s article was published, all of them listing her employer as the “U.S. Dept. of Justice.”

http://pjmedia.com/blog/epa-unveils-largest-expansion-of-authority-to-regulate-private-property/

Clean Water Act rule ropes in streams that only fill when it rains, ornamental landscape features, anything deemed to affect downstream waters.

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency today unveiled its proposed rule to bring natural and man-made bodies of water big and tiny under the purview of the Clean Water Act, sparking accusations that the administration has embarked on an unprecedented breach of private property rights without scientific basis.

This launches a “robust outreach effort” to gather input in shaping a final rule over the next 90 days, the EPA said, maintaining that the rulemaking isn’t groundbreaking but a clarification effort needed to clearly define streams and wetlands protection after Supreme Court decisions in 2001 and 2006.

Even though the definition of waters protected under the Clean Water Act will reach everywhere from drainage ditches to creeks on private property under the proposed rule, the EPA says “it does not protect any new types of waters that have not historically been covered under the Clean Water Act.”

“We are clarifying protection for the upstream waters that are

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/61971

That master of falsehoods, fabrications and breathtaking mendacity, Saeb Erakat, is at it again.

Ambassador, Alan Baker, who is the Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and who served as Israel’s ambassador to Canada, penned an article titled, “Changing the Historical Narrative: Saeb Erekat’s New Spin”

Erakat, who is the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator in the delusional “peace talks” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, has yet again made the hoary old claim that the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians are descended from the extinct Canaanites.

Lewis Carrol who wrote about Alice in Wonderland and her strange descent down the rabbit hole would have been highly impressed at Erakat’s fantasies during his own descent into wonderland.

Erakat will, alas, no doubt attract so many in the world who are only too pleased to deny the Jews any history or legitimacy. So they will flock to repeat ad nauseum his canard that the “Palestinian Arabs” are the “true” indigenous people of the area and predate by millennia the emergence of the Jewish people around the year 1,750 BC.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/colorado-2014-candidates-for-congress-where-they-stand

Democrat Senator Mark Udall is now facing a stiff challenge…..stay tuned!! The views on my blog do not represent the non partisan Family Security Matters….rsk

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 (**).
Michael Bennet (D) – Next Election in 2016
Mark Udall (D) Incumbent

http://www.markudall.senate.gov/

http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/Mark_Udall.htm **

RATED +1 BY AAI INDICATING AN ALMOST NEUTRAL POSITION ON ISRAEL/ARAB AFFAIRS, ALOTHOUGH UDALL DISPLAYED VIGOROUS SUPPORT FOR ISRAELO DURING THE GAZA BLOCKADE IN 2012

HOT BUTTON ISSUES

ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT http://www.markudall.senate.gov/?p=issue&id=2 Reducing our reliance on foreign oil and curbing the effects of climate change have long been priorities of mine, and I’m working in the Senate to create a plan to tackle these important goals. To do so, we will need an all-of-the-above strategy that includes all of our energy sources, with a special emphasis on those that are clean and domestic. That means focusing on everything from renewable energy and energy efficiency to natural gas and safe nuclear power. This approach will help diversify the sources of energy we depend on, which will stabilize prices, create new jobs and make our country more secure.

HEALTHCARE http://www.markudall.senate.gov/?p=issue&id=3 The Affordable Care Act is meant to put Coloradans in charge of their own health care, provide a sense of stability and security, and ensure individuals can choose their coverage plan and their health care provider. The goal is to finally start reducing the ever-increasing costs for consumers, small businesses and the government by taking critical steps to address the runaway growth in health care costs, which are the biggest driver of our spiraling federal deficit.

HUNTING FISHING AND SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS http://www.markudall.senate.gov/?p=issue&id=61 We need to respect and protect the land while also ensuring that the public can enjoy the resources and recreational opportunities it provides. Interacting with the land is a way of life in the West, whether it’s through hunting, fishing, boating, hiking, skiing or any other kind of outdoor recreation. That’s why it’s important to support these activities as we consider issues involving wildlife management or conservation of our natural environment. Responsible gun-ownership is also an integral part of our Western heritage. The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is an individual right, and I’m committed to protecting the rights of citizens to own firearms for personal protection, hunting, collecting and for other legal purposes.

IMMIGRATION http://www.markudall.senate.gov/?p=issue&id=18 Any solution to fix our immigration system must ensure that employers hire only those who are legally authorized to work in the United States, make our country safer by preventing drug-traffickers and terrorists from entering the United States, and improve the legal channels to enter our country.
Cory Gardner (R-District 4 ) Tea Party Challenger *****

RATED -3 BY THE ARAB AMERICAN INSTITUTE INDICATING A PRO ISRAEL VOTING RECORD
Cory Gardner leaving his seat to run for Senate against Senator Mark Udall
http://gardner.house.gov/

http://www.ontheissues.org/house/Cory_Gardner.htm **

HOT BUTTON ISSUES

IMMIGRATION http://gardner.house.gov/issue/immigration The solution to the problem isn’t for the Justice Department to file a taxpayer-funded lawsuit against the Governor of Arizona for responding to a law enforcement crisis. It isn’t giving amnesty to the 12-20 million illegal immigrants in this country, or giving those people benefits that will only encourage more illegal immigration.

The time has come to enforce the rule of law and end illegal immigration. To that end, I will support legislation that ensures employers only hire people who are here legally and that guest workers are here temporarily. The technology exists to accomplish this in a sensible way, and it is time that we implement that technology.

ENERGY http://gardner.house.gov/issue/energy As a member of Congress, I have passed two pieces of legislation out of the House that will tap American energy resources and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. The Jobs and Energy Permitting Act would streamline the permitting process for drilling in the Alaskan Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). Production in the OCS could provide a million barrels of oil a day – comparable to what we currently get from Saudi Arabia.

The other piece of legislation I have passed out of the House is the Strategic Energy Production Act, which would link a drawdown of America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to increasing access to domestic land for oil production. In the event that the SPR is tapped, my bill would trigger the Secretaries of Energy, Agriculture, and the Interior to develop a plan to increase the percentage of federal lands leased for energy production by an amount equal to what is depleted from the nation’s stockpile of oil. Currently, only three percent of federal land is leased for oil and gas production.

HEALTHCARE http://gardner.house.gov/issue/health As a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, I will be at the forefront of the effort to outline replacement legislation. At the top of this list has to be tort reform. I believe that capping medical malpractice damages is one important way to lower the cost for doctors and patients.