RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3248/liberal-democrats-who-support-israel

Let me begin by categorically stating that no president has ever completely satisfied me with regard to his policies toward Israel. Every single president, Republican and Democrat alike, has refused to do the right thing when it comes to recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. There may be room for disagreement about some parts of Jerusalem that were captured by Israel during its defensive war with Jordan, but there is no room for disagreement about the status of West Jerusalem, where the Knesset, the Israeli Supreme Court, the Prime Minister’s office, and the President’s residence have always been located. I have been and will remain critical of any president who wrongly believes that recognizing West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and placing our embassy there will make it more difficult to achieve peace.

I have also disagreed with presidents, both Republican and Democrat, who have suggested that Israel’s settlement policy is the major barrier to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The major barrier has always been, and remains, the Palestinians’ unwillingness to recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, to renounce their absurd claim to a so-called “right of return,” and to accept reasonable offers from Israel regarding the borders of the West Bank. Though I have long been opposed to Israel’s settlement policy on humanitarian and democratic grounds, I insist that the continuing occupation is largely the result of Palestinian refusal to accept the reasonable compromises offered by Prime Ministers Barak and Olmert. If the Palestinians had been prepared to accept such reasonable compromises, the occupation would end, as would the concerns over humanitarian and democratic issues. The same might be true if the Palestinians were now prepared to negotiate a two-state solution with no preconditions. At bottom, therefore, this dispute is more about land than it is about human rights, because the Palestinians can secure their human rights by being willing to compromise over land, as the Jews did both in 1938, when they accepted the Peel Commission Report, and in 1948 when they accepted the UN Partition Plan.

There have been better and worse presidents when it comes to Israel; some of the best have been Republicans, as have some of the worst. Some of the best have been Democrats, as have been some of the worst. No president has been perfect, and no president has been perfectly bad. (Though Eisenhower may have come close.)

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3250/anti-semitic-ioc

The official OIC biography does not make a reference to Count Baillet-Latour as an organizer of the Nazi games. The OIC honors him as one of the great figures of the Olympic Movement. In 1936, after the games, the Count became an honorary member of “Freude und Arbeit,” the Nazi sports organization of propaganda minister Goebbels. The Count’s wife congratulated Hitler when he annexed the Sudetenland, and in 1940, when Germany invaded her home country, thanked him “for bringing Nazi ideology to Belgium”.

During the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, Count Jacques Rogge, the Belgian who is the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), refused to hold a minute of silence for the eleven Israeli Olympic athletes murdered forty years ago at Munich. Instead, a week before the official opening of the Games, the Belgian aristocrat held a minute of silence during a minor ceremony in the Olympic village.

Count Rogge has announced that he will also attend a ceremony in London today, Monday August 6, organized by the Israeli embassy and the London Jewish community, and that he will speak at a ceremony in Munich on September 5. Critics of Rogge claim that the Count was afraid to mention the murdered Israelis in the opening ceremony of the London Games because he feared that this would upset member states of the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC). Fear of the OIC made the IOC cower.

Normally, when an athlete dies, as in the case of a Georgian athlete two years ago during the Winter Olympics, the IOC President expresses his condolences during his official speech, while the Olympic flags are flown at half-staff.

The families of the 11 murdered Israeli sportsmen declared that they were “very hurt” by Rogge’s decision. Ilana Romano, widow of weightlifter Yossef Romano, said that the Count had let “terror win.” Ankie Rekhess, widow of fencing coach Andre Spitzer, said that Rogge was using the upcoming Munich ceremony as an excuse not to hold the minute of silence and questioned his motives for attending the Munich event. “If they cannot do the right thing at home, in the Olympic ceremony, why come?”

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3253/will-egypt-muslim-brotherhood-orient-to-saudi

Depending on whom you believe, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood will ally with Saudi Arabia (according to Fouad Ajami) or Iran (according to former Indian diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar. These are mutually exclusive scenarios given the extreme enmity between Riyadh and Tehran, intensified by Syria’s civil war. I don’t believe either scenario, but both of them are worth reading as gauges of the complexity of the Middle East’s descent into chaos. >First, Ajami, the tireless cheerleader of the Arab Spring and true believer in Arab democracy (in Tablet last week):

It should have come as no surprise that Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi, made his first official foreign visit to Saudi Arabia. Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood man, went to Arabia last month for both religious and political reasons: He prayed in Mecca, and then there was a formal summit in Jeddah with the Saudi monarch and his crown prince. There was nothing concealed—the summiteers announced that theirs would be an alliance of “moderate Sunni Islam.” There was no need to mention Iran and its tributaries, the embattled Syrian regime, and Hezbollah in Beirut: For Saudi Arabia, this is the most natural of alliances, a return to the time of Hosni Mubarak when the Saudi-Egyptian axis held sway.

Nowhere does Prof. Ajami mention what the casual reader of any newspaper knows, namely that the Saudis hate and fear the Muslim Brotherhood as much as they hate and fear Iran, because the Muslim Brotherhood is the only force with the potential to overthrow the Saudi monarchy. This remarkable lapse identifies the article as prescriptive rather than descriptive, that is to say, more of Ajami’s wishful thinking. He adds:

The People vs. The Democratic Party — on The Brewster Gang
by Frontpagemag.com
Eric Allen Bell, Michael Walsh and Evan Sayet discuss Walsh’s new booklet that puts the Democratic Party on trial.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/the-people-vs-the-democratic-party-on-the-brewster-gang/

Olympic Hypocrisy: Jokes and Jews Need Not Apply Written by Selwyn Duke http://www.thenewamerican.com/reviews/opinion/item/12324-olympic-hypocrisy-jokes-and-jews-need-not-apply It’s hard to beat the comic hypocrisy of the United Nations, which condemns Israel while having let nations such as Cuba and Libya sit on its human-rights council. But Western Olympic committees are giving it a run for its money. Some have […]

http://www.jewishjournal.com/rosnersdomain/item/guest_post_can_jews_believe_kyrsten_sinema_20120805/

Guest post: Can Jews believe Kyrsten Sinema?Posted by Shmuel Rosner

This guest opinion piece by Jay K. Footlik follows a Rosner’s Domain expose on Arizona Congressional hopeful Kyrsten Sinema’s statements about Israel. You can find the original piece here, and Sinema’s response here. Additional reading, from Commentary, is here.
One of the great features of America’s Jewish community is our ideological diversity. On just about every issue, foreign and domestic, you can find American Jews taking opposite positions. We argue about everything.
Yet we, as a community, do unite around certain core concepts and principles. Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, there is a consensus on some very basic things. The importance of religious freedom. The value of every life. The vital contribution of Judaism to civilization. And, of course, Israel’s right to exist as a secure state.
Anyone who seeks to receive the community’s support must agree to these core principles. This does not mean ideological conformity. Far from it. Some American Zionists feel that Israel can afford to do more at the peace table to assure its security. Others say it should do less than it has done or promised to do. But that Israel should be a homeland for the Jewish people, secure in its borders, is beyond debate. Anyone disagreeing with that idea places themselves outside the community.

Which raises the question of whether American Jews should support the candidacy of Kyrsten Sinema, one of two leading candidates for Congress in Arizona’s new ninth district.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/opinion/friedman-why-not-in-vegas.html?_r=1

“I’ll make this quick. I have one question and one observation about Mitt Romney’s visit to Israel. The question is this: Since the whole trip was not about learning anything but about how to satisfy the political whims of the right-wing, super pro-Bibi Netanyahu, American Jewish casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, why didn’t they just do the whole thing in Las Vegas? I mean, it was all about money anyway — how much Romney would abase himself by saying whatever the Israeli right wanted to hear and how big a jackpot of donations Adelson would shower on the Romney campaign in return. Really, Vegas would have been so much more appropriate than Jerusalem. They could have constructed a plastic Wailing Wall and saved so much on gas.”

http://www.halloran2012.com/the-issues/

Who is Dan Halloran? He is running for Congress in Queens against Grace Meng who will be just another Pelosi rubber stamp. He has a great record on national security issues, Israel and was the solitary voice in the city council against the ground zero mosque.We need Dan Halloran in Congress!!!

Create Jobs

We’re in the grips of the greatest job crisis since the Great Depression. And President Obama and the Democrats have failed miserably at creating jobs and getting our economy back on its feet.

Small businesses are the engine that drives our economy. I’m a former small business owner. I know what it takes to get people back to work. We need to cut taxes on middle-class people and cut the regulations that make it so difficult to start a business and make payroll. From fees to overticketing, the federal and local governments have stymied the efforts of countless Americans to get our economy back on track.

In Washington, I will fight for the small business owners and job creators by cutting taxes and fees, balancing our budget, and promoting the pro-growth policies that made America the world’s leading economy.
Cut Gas Prices

Gas costs over $4 per gallon right now in New York City. We’re heading toward the summer of $5 gasoline, and that will crush our already-overburdened middle class families and small businesses. It’s time for a new direction.

President Obama and the Democrats are married to the old way of doing things that has gotten us into this mess. I want to wean our country of the oil that funds dictators in the Middle East and expand domestic and alternative energy production. I want to build the Keystone Pipeline so that we’re buying gas from Americans, not from the leaders of countries that hate us. Until we lower the price of gas, the American middle class will continue to feel the pinch at the pump.
Defend America and Israel

September 11, 2001 was just eleven years ago. New York City remains the principle target of terrorists who wish to attack our country. They’re still out there – and they still hate our freedom and our way of life. Sadly, many politicians in Washington have forgotten this.

I lost my cousin, FDNY Lt. Vincent Halloran, in the Towers on 9/11. Like all New Yorkers, I will never forget. When I am in Congress, I will prioritize our national defense.

The American military is the world’s greatest force for peace. We must wield our influence in a way that spreads freedom and democracy. If, for example, the Afghan people can choose between free markets on one hand and growing poppy for warlords on the other, I know they will choose freedom, and this in turn will make for a safer world.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

The transformation of Chick Fil A from a fast food place that most liberals had never even heard of into the “Enemy of the People” is a reminder of the speed at which progressivism travels forward and backward in time. A few months ago the CEO of Chick Fil A would have done nothing worse than echo a consensus so mainstream that it was adopted as a campaign position by the leftiest Democrat to sit in the White House. A few months later that same position is so outrageous that it leads to mass boycotts, threats of violence and mayors of dysfunctional urban centers threatening to drive the reactionary chicken franchise out of their cities.
One of the wonderful things about progressivism is that it defies the laws of physics and history. When the Democratic Party, a once notable national party that has been turned into a red shill for the sort of people who used to hang out in cafes and plot to blow things up in between free verse recitals, adopts a progressive position, that position instantly travels backward in time to alter history and create an entirely new past.

For example when the Democratic Party decided that its future lay not with racist white gerrymandered districts but racist black gerrymandered districts, its adoption of civil rights, formerly a Republican position that good Democrats had fought tooth and nail, actually traveled back in time transforming our nation’s history.

When the Democrats belatedly decided that black people were human beings, or at least a better bet for votes than Southern white men who were in danger of deciding that they didn’t have much in common with a party of corrupt Northern elites being painted by a corrupt Northern media as saints, the energy from this decision transformed Lincoln into a Democrat, segregation into an idea that Ike and Dick came up with in between dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the Trail of Tears, and turned the Community Organizers who had been busy torching black orphanages and Republican newspapers in New York City and Boston as part of an organized wartime campaign to defeat the Union, into a lost page of history.

The culture of economic development

Poor ol’ George Romney! He forgot politicians are supposed to cater to the media. And when he spoke truth to power of the leftwing comme il faut Anglo-American journalist mob, they came down on him like the proverbial ton of bricks.

And so what were all those uncommon observations labeled “gaffes”– which might have been travel notes by a 19th century visitor — setting off another fusillade in the boisterous presidential campaign?

Romney said our British cousins seemed to be making a balls up of their Olympics preparations. By any criteria it was true — just as early stages of the 2002 Salt Lake City winter games which he allegedly “rescued”. And who else would the Salt Lake worthies have chosen for the clean-up other than a successful Mormon entrepreneur! Not that the Olympics in Montreal, Athens, and a half dozen other places over the last half century haven’t been total economic disasters. [You ain’t seen nothing yet – wait for the Russians’ Sochi winter Olympics 2014!]

Even less controversial – if equally uncomfortable for his critics – was Romney’s suggestion the Palestinians might look to their Israeli neighbors for notions on how to build the economy of their hoped for future state. That too was hardly earthshaking
In the early post-colonial days, before bilateral and multinational aid agency bureaucrats took over “development”, scholars assumed culture was indivisible from economic progress. Remember Max Weber’s iconic “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”, required reading for an earlier generation?