RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/372652/obama-denial-russia-jonah-goldberg

Things are moving far too fast in Kiev, Moscow, and Crimea to write about events there. But the past isn’t going anywhere. Though you wouldn’t know that from the way the Obama administration talks about it.

Throughout this crisis — indeed, throughout all of Barack Obama’s presidency — the White House has been eager to insist that our long, unpleasant history with the Russians is behind us.

Obviously, every administration wants a fresh start with long-time rivals. That’s why there have been four “resets” with the Russians since 1991, including George W. Bush’s famous soul-searching gaze into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and Hillary Clinton’s comic effort to give the Russians a “reset” button (that actually said “overcharge” on it).

Fresh starts are fine. But when Obama came into office, his administration implicitly blamed our poor relationship with Russia on Bush, as if Russia’s misdeeds were provoked by America.

In 2012, Obama mocked Mitt Romney for his claim that the Russians are our “No. 1 geopolitical foe,” and scoffed: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303369904579421624193271010?mod=Opinion_newsreel_5
The Endangered Senators Rule HHS delays another ObamaCare mandate to rescue Democrats.

Maybe the White House figures that if it rewrites ObamaCare enough times, the media will stop paying attention. On Wednesday it ordered one more delay of the mandates for individuals and small business—in time to give a political reprieve to Senators vulnerable in the midterm election.

The mass insurance cancellations that hit last fall were merely the first wave, and the market is still replete with health plans that have so far managed to evade ObamaCare’s onerous benefit requirements. These policies were due to be terminated starting in October, which has Democratic Senators like Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark Udall of Colorado scrambling to avoid the TV ads and political blame they deserve.

When the last ObamaCare tornado destroyed the insurance neighborhood, the Health and Human Services Department suddenly announced an ex post facto delay of the mandates in November, but the political damage was done. HHS learned its lesson and late on Wednesday announced a new pre-emptive rule that extends the mandate suspension until 2016. This may give insurers enough lead time to preserve existing coverage and avert a 2013 reprise at, er, a politically sensitive moment.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303369904579421171476596640?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop&mg=reno64-wsj

Air-dropping himself into Kiev Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the Russian seizure of Crimea is “not 21st-century, G-8, major-nation behavior.” He said Mr. Putin should allow “international observers” to enter Crimea.

International observers?

This calls to mind Humphrey Bogart’s Fred C. Dobbs facing the gang of Mexican bandidos in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”:

Dobbs: “If you’re the police, where are your badges?”

Chief bandido: “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges!”

We may assume Mr. Putin would say the masked Russians patrolling Ukrainian Crimea are “international observers.”

As of this week, it’s official. Vladimir Putin has turned Barack Obama totally into Jimmy Carter.

We may quibble over the timeline. Some might say it began when Mr. Obama whispered to then-Russian president Dmitry Medvedev he’d have “more flexibility” after the 2012 election; others that it set in when the U.S. president took Mr. Putin’s offer to let Bashar Assad escape the bombing of his airfields for using WMD against his own people.

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/03/05/hilarious-hillary-supporters-cant-name-a-single-worthy-or-interesting-thing-she-has-done/

CNS News captured this video during the DNC’s winter meeting. It speaks for itself: Democrats say they’re ready for Hillary Clinton to be president, despite the fact that none of them can point to anything she has done to deserve the office.

If you listen carefully, a couple of the Democrats who were questioned do come up with reasons to support Hillary: She is married to Bill Clinton, and was picked by Barack Obama. So, her leading qualifications derive from two men, not from her own record.

To no one’s surprise, none of the Democrats mention Benghazi or the failed “reset” with Russia.

Based on this video and the Democrats’ nominating Barack Obama twice, that Democrats don’t really care about candidates’ real qualifications for the U.S. presidency. How’s that working out for the country right now?

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/dnc-vows-to-increase-voter-rolls-fight-voter-id-in-run-up-to-midterms/

WASHINGTON – Members of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) resolutions committee approved a series of platform points at the annual winter meeting, including a measure on voter ID with an eye to upcoming midterm elections.

Hundreds of members from all around the country converged in D.C. last week to debate resolutions and rules as well as organize their “ground game” ahead of November elections.

Among the resolutions approved were those in support of some of the major issues on the Democrats’ agenda, including women’s rights, immigration reform, and the minimum wage.

The resolutions committee approved a measure to promote and protect what they see as eroded voting rights.

The measure cites language from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent to the Shelby County v. Holder decision in which she defined “second-generation barriers” to the ballot box as indirect efforts to diminish the impact of minority voters.

The DNC resolution defines second-generation barriers as “an ever growing number of restrictive voting laws such as requiring limited photo identification, proof of citizenship, increasing regulation of third party voter registration drives, and limiting early voting and same day registration opportunities.”

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2014/03/05/legal-weed-governor-moonbeam-grows-up/?print=1 I smoked pot in Jerry Brown’s house. I know you’re thinking that’s just a showoff lede (and it is), but it happens to be true. It was back in the 1970s when Jerry had a place in L.A.’s Laurel Canyon. I went to a party there that was pretty wild and virtually everyone was […]

Glick’s plan is liberal, democratic, and it provides the best chance of a good life for the greatest number of people who live in the area, whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian.

http://www.jewishpress.com/news/glick-wrote-the-alternative-jewish-democratic-one-state-israel/2014/03/05/0/

For three hours on Monday, March 3, Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met in the Oval Office with U.S. President Barack Obama. Obama has been carrying the torch for the so-called “Two State Solution,” which he inherited from his predecessors. He made it clear, as he has repeatedly in the past, that he wants Netanyahu to get with the program. If Netanyahu “does not believe that a peace deal with the Palestinians is the right thing to do for Israel, then he needs to articulate an alternative approach,” Obama said. “It’s hard to come up with one that’s plausible.” Not really. Caroline Glick, the journalist and deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post has articulated precisely that. And right on cue, too. Glick’s book, “The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East” (Crown Forum 2014) was released on Tuesday, March 4, and this Jewish Press reporter sat down with her that afternoon in a mid-town delicatessen in New York City, to talk about the book. Glick wrote the book, she said, because she realized that the vast majority of pro-Israel Americans think the only way to support Israel is to support the option of the so-called “Two State Solution.” They believe that because it is the only thing they hear from their leadership. “But after twenty years of abject failure, of nothing but death and destruction in the wake of the Two State effort, surely it is time to begin a discussion about alternatives. My book is meant to be the starting point for that discussion,” Glick said. “And I can’t thank President Obama enough for providing me with the perfect invitation!” Glick’s credentials for writing such a book are comprehensive.

http://sarahhonig.com/2014/03/05/worthless-guarantees/

Ultra-popular in cyberspace these days is a cartoon showing Vladimir Putin as a shrewd strategist executing moves on a chessboard, while a laid-back Barack Obama incongruously plays a single checkers piece and yells “Bingo!”

We may agree or disagree with this depiction but such is the widespread perception of the Ukrainian crisis and the invasion of Crimea. The Russian leader is regarded as having handily outmaneuvered the American president and with him the entire West.

For Israelis, though, this is no laughing matter. We aren’t mere spectators on the sidelines. This sad spectacle couldn’t be more relevant to Israel. The implications to our own predicaments are compelling and quite inescapable.

From our vantage point there are no saints in this scenario. Our sympathies aren’t clear-cut. Ukrainians are recalled in Jewish history as the second-greatest-ever mass-murderers of Jews – directly after the Germans (with whom many Ukrainians avidly collaborated during the darkest days of the Holocaust).

And yet there’s a key element in the current Ukrainian travails that is particularly pertinent to the complexities and pressures which Israel faces.

http://www.jpost.com/Experts/Israeli-strategy-in-the-case-of-a-new-Cold-War-344372?prmusr=W%2b55kjX%2f%2b8zBI%2bk%2fLwFHuiHfBDd5eKTl4a1v0s45AJ%2bbvwwZBQlSKluZMeE84zjw In the fashion of every other state, the state of Israel would exist more or less precariously, amidst the hardening animosities of a new Cold War. Photo by: REUTERS At first glance, whatever happens in the Ukraine ought not to have any obvious impact upon the Middle East, least of all upon Israel’s strategic […]

‘How We Die’ author Sherwin Nuland passes, aged 83 Jewish medical ethicist was critical of profession’s obsession with prolonging life when treatment was futile

DR. NULAND ALSO WROTE A SPLENDID BOOK ON MAIMONIDES IN 2008

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Maimonides (Jewish Encounters) by Sherwin B. Nuland (Aug 26, 2008)

HAMDEN, Connecticut — Dr. Sherwin Nuland, a medical ethicist who opposed assisted suicide and wrote an award-winning book about death called “How We Die,” died at age 83 on Monday.

He died of prostate cancer at his home in Hamden, said his daughter Amelia Nuland, who recalled how he told her he wasn’t ready for death because he loved life.

“He told me, ‘I’m not scared of dying, but I’ve built such a beautiful life, and I’m not ready to leave it,’” she said Tuesday.

Sherwin Nuland was born Shepsel Ber Nudelman in the East Bronx neighborhood of New York in December 1930 to a pair of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from what is today Moldova and Belarus.

He taught medical ethics at Yale University in New Haven. He was critical of the medical profession’s obsession with prolonging life when common sense would dictate further treatment is futile. He wrote nature “will always win in the end, as it must if our species is to survive.”