RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Missouri crybullies got their way, purging administrations for not taking their whininess seriously fast enough (thereby making them feel unsafe). And then they turned on the media which had been churning out their propaganda with more bullying and crying.

The Yale crybullies are still whinging on because the administrators who suggested that maybe they should grow up instead of whining about other people’s Halloween costumes still haven’t been fired.

Why haven’t they been fired yet? The Yale crybullies feel so unsafe. They need kitten pictures. They can’t even sleep now.

Jencey Paz, whinged that, “I have friends who are not going to class, who are not doing their homework, who are losing sleep, who are skipping meals, and who are having breakdowns.”

Another student howled at an administrator,

“In your position as master,” one student says, “it is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students who live in Silliman. You have not done that. By sending out that email, that goes against your position as master. Do you understand that?!”

“No,” he said, “I don’t agree with that.”

It seems like every week there’s a new horror story of political correctness run amok at some college campus.

A warning not to wear culturally insensitive Halloween costumes sparked an imbroglio at Yale, which went viral over the weekend. A lecturer asked in an e-mail, “Is there no room anymore for a child to be a little bit obnoxious . . . a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?”

Students went ballistic. When an administrator (who is the lecturer’s spouse) defended free speech, some students wanted his head. One student wrote in a Yale Herald op-ed (now taken down): “He doesn’t get it. And I don’t want to debate. I want to talk about my pain.”

Washington Post columnist (and Tufts professor) Daniel Drezner was initially horrified by the spectacle but ultimately backtracked. Invoking Friedrich Hayek’s insights from “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” Drezner cautions outside observers that “there is an awful lot of knowledge that is local in character, that cannot be culled from abstract principles or detached observers.”

As a Hayek fanboy and champion of localism, I should be quite sympathetic. But this time, I think Drezner’s initial reaction was closer to the mark. The notion that the Yale incident is an isolated one defies all the evidence.

During his meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House yesterday, President Obama stated that the “security of Israel is one of my top foreign-policy priorities.” Of course, this sentiment might have been slightly more believable had President Obama a) said those words in something other than a lethargic tone, or b) not listened to Netanyahu’s statement with the humor of a human death star

Although Netanyahu claims that the meeting was productive, major problems continue to corrode U.S.-Israeli relations.

Front and center is President Obama’s flawed approach to dealing with Israel. On crucial issues, the White House continues to treat Netanyahu’s government disdainfully and as irrelevant to its Middle Eastern policy. The Obama administration has long acted grumpily toward Israel. Consider former Middle East adviser Dennis Ross’s perspective on the idiotic accusation of racism Susan Rice lobbed against Netanyahu. According to Ross, Rice believed that “the Israeli leader did everything but ‘use the N-word in describing the president.”

While Mr. Netanyahu’s conduct has not been perfect — he deserves criticism for his spokesman’s anti-Obama rant — Israel’s emotion at the American president’s perceived lack of interest is understandable. After all, facing an international plague of anti-Israel boycotts, Western delusions about Gaza, and an Iran armed with nuclear weapons, Israel worries that its American support is perishing and that it will soon stand alone. And while Israel’s worries reflect a broader dysfunction of President Obama’s diplomacy (one that is also indirectly fueling sectarian paranoia in the Middle East), Israel’s concern has an obvious historical foundation — the Holocaust. Sadly, however, President Obama believes he can paper over this widening chasm with the false elixir of increased aid and the inexcusable prisoner release of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.

How, in the midst of alarmists’ tireless headline-grabbing, can common folk form a considered view? The truth is that we can’t. We are all in the hands and at the mercy of the political elite. That should make us all feel safe in our beds
I find it taxing to discuss the climate with those who are unabashed global warmists (GWs). I don’t mind disagreements per se but, I am sorry, most GWs are muddled-headed wombats when the matter proceeds beyond the notion that the planet is warming to what should be done about it, the practicalities and the cost. I want to help.

Categorisation is a helpful tool to make sense of complicated situations. In this case it might help to set down a broad classification of beliefs. Now any broad classification involves a fair degree of fudging. Bear that in mind.

I will go in just six steps; from the extreme GWs to the sceptics. Attributions are indicated in brackets.

On my way back from David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend in Charleston, I opened up the Post and Courier newspaper to Section D, entitled “Faith & Values.” What struck me was an article on the second page reporting that the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) had adopted a resolution supporting transgender rights. The resolution calls for congregations and camps to have gender-neutral bathrooms, use gender-neutral language, and train religious school staff on gender issues.

I have no idea what any of this gender identity noise really means, but I have concluded that this whole movement (together with the delegitimization of Israel, the legalization of marijuana, demonizing those who are offended by Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue trade, push for single-payer health care, and prosecution of those who question the scientific basis of man-caused global warming) is just one giant progressive wave to further supplant Judeo-Christian values and alter the moral fabric of our society.

Jews are being stabbed, run over, and shot on streets across Israel on a daily basis; they are fleeing Europe en masse as anti-Semitic attacks have become common place; and BDS (the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement) is flourishing across the globe as the number of hate groups continues to grow and their influence continues to be peddled. The streets of American cities are becoming unsafe, as Jews become victims of attacks with Molotov cocktails and knives, our college campuses have become anti-Semitic centers of pro-Palestinian/pro-Hamas hate including violence and intimidation by members of Muslim hate groups, and liberal American Jews, including mainstream Jewish establishments, welcome anti-Israel groups into their open tents.

By all means, read Bill McKibben’s victory proclamation on Keystone XL posted by the New Yorker, first for its infantile analysis.

• He sees Keystone as a harbinger, which it surely is: President Obama waited seven years to kill the pipeline, then did so when he no longer had to face voters and when gasoline prices are near an all-time low in real terms. If abundant fossil fuels is what it takes to afford Mr. McKibben such victories, well, you can see the paradox.

• He celebrates the divestment movement as if it means anything. But buyers will always materialize for profitable businesses. Anyway, 80% of the world’s fossil-fuel reserves are not held by publicly traded businesses, but by state-run companies—run by states that have never shown interest in anything but revenue maximization.
• He thinks solar is somehow changing the energy picture, but for every additional unit of solar the world consumed in 2014, it consumed 325 additional units of fossil energy.

• He is fooled by warnings from the BlackRock investment house and Mark Carney of the Bank of England about fossil-fuel reserves becoming “stranded assets,” as if energy shares are priced in the expectation that 100% of hydrocarbon reserves will be produced.

Missouri, Yale, and America’s Cultural Revolution

The pathological narcissism of American college students has found a potentially devastating new source of power in the sports-industrial complex. University of Missouri president Timothy Wolfe resigned Monday morning in the face of a threatened boycott by black football players of an upcoming game. Wolfe’s alleged sin was an insufficient appreciation for the “systematic oppression” experienced by students of color at the university. Campus agitators also alleged that racial slurs had been directed at black students and feces had been smeared in the shape of a swastika in a dormitory.

The university’s board of overseers had convened in emergency session to discuss the football boycott;Wolfe resigned before meeting with them, issuing the standard mea culpa: “I take full responsibility for this frustration, and I take full responsibility for the inaction that has occurred.” According to the New York Times, the university could have lost more than $1 million had it forfeited its football game with Brigham Young University on Saturday. A group called “Concerned Faculty” had walked off the job in solidarity with the student activists and was calling on other faculty to join them.

“When our student societies decide they want to put on events, they ask ‘do you think there is any particular risk, or do you think that there is any reason to think that any student would feel threatened or unsafe at inviting a particular speaker’?” Those Orwellian words were spoken by the president of Students Union at Leeds University in England to David Aaronovitch of the London Times. They could, however, have been spoken by campus leaders, administrators or professors at any U.S. university or college.

We should all subscribe to the concept of diversity. Typically, we think of it in terms of race, religion, place of national origin, sexual preference, socio-economic backgrounds and/or the physically and mentally challenged. We ignore, however, diversity of opinion. The word implies tolerance for those different from ourselves. There is no question that diversity strengthens us as individuals and as a nation. Arthur Brooks wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed, “Scholarly studies have piled up showing that race and gender diversity in the workplace can increase creative thinking and improve performance.”

Right before Monday’s meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, the two leaders gave perfunctory opening statements to the press.Due to their famously strained relations, which hit rock bottom when Netanyahu addressed Congress in March, the much-touted tete-a-tete has been leading the news in Israel for reasons beyond the aid package and Palestinians.

To sweeten the pot for Netanyahu detractors gleefully awaiting another Obama hissy fit, a pre-trip scandal erupted over the appointment of Ran Baratz as public diplomacy czar. Netanyahu’s selection of Baratz to fill this role caused an international stir when it emerged that the person about to make Israel’s case to the world had spent years posting very undiplomatic diatribes on Facebook against both U.S. and Israeli officials.

So, when Obama and Netanyahu exchanged pleasantries and spoke a few scripted lines prior to meeting privately, everyone — myself included — was hanging on their every nuance for clues. And leave it to Obama to provide a whopper of a glimpse into the workings of his mind.

Jerusalem – I want to explain why I am in Israel.

I am here with 450 American (and a German and a Canadian) listeners to my radio show. About 400 are non-Jews.

We are here on a “Stand with Israel” tour organized by the syndicator of my radio show, the Salem Radio Network. I am accompanied by my wife, my producer Allen Estrin and his wife, and my radio colleague Mike Gallagher.

#ad#​People frustrated with the direction of America and the direction of the world regularly ask: “What can I do to make any difference?”

Here is one of the best answers I know: visit Israel. And do so especially when there are terror attacks.

If every time there were a spate of attacks on Israel, few people canceled their trips to Israel in response or — if I may imagine a much better world than the one we live in — tourism to Israel actually increased, three huge things would be achieved.