RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Obama’s decision to reference the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., during a United Nations speech on foreign affairs Wednesday raised eyebrows, and not just because the investigation is ongoing.

After spending the bulk of his remarks discussing the ethnic and religious disputes that fuel so much of the world’s terrorism, the president mentioned the Ferguson shooting and then added, “So, yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions” and “like every country, we continually wrestle with how to reconcile the vast changes wrought by globalization and greater diversity with the traditions that we hold dear.”

Politico reported that it was “unusual” for the president to reference “domestic U.S. shortcomings during a speech devoted to international issues.” Asked for an explanation, a White House official said the president wanted to acknowledge that the U.S. is “not perfect.”

Well, neither is Mr. Obama’s analogy.

Tensions between the police and low-income black communities are not based on race or ethnicity. They are based on the fact that blacks commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime in America—almost all of it directed at other blacks. Police don’t go into these communities to shoot blacks; they are there, by and large, to stop blacks from shooting each other. They are there because that is where the 911 calls originate. And for their troubles they now have the president of the United States all but comparing them to terrorist groups.

This is the latest example of the president exploiting Ferguson to rile up black voters, whom Democrats fear will stay home in November. It is of a piece with the multiple, redundant federal investigations into the shooting. The Obama administration knows full well that Bull Connor doesn’t run the Ferguson police department, but it will to pretend that’s the case to score political points with the president’s base.

This week’s United Nations anticarbon summit featured more than the usual share of political fun like drum troupes and a Wall Street rally with the official slogan of “Stop Capitalism.” But the most amusing gesture may have been Mayor Bill de Blasio’s pledge to chop New York City emissions by 80% by 2050.

“We know humanity is facing an existential threat,” Mr. de Blasio said at the Turtle Bay event, giving even Al Gore competition for climate calamity. “No one is spared. And our mutual need to survive should instill in us a kind of unity we so rarely experience.”

The city will no doubt need unity, not to mention a few spare trillion dollars of capital spending. Most of greater New York’s emissions are the result of energy consumption by the city’s office and residential buildings. Mr. de Blasio plans to get started by retrofitting city-owned property such as public housing to be more energy efficient, such as installing better insulation and solar panels on the roof. Private real-estate owners are merely encouraged to go green for now, but the Mayor promised at a press conference that “if we don’t see progress, we will certainly move to mandate.”

The carbon levels Mr. de Blasio favors were probably last seen in New York around the time of the Civil War or before, given that the region was until recently home to so much 20th-century heavy industry. On present trend, metro emissions will reach 55.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent by 2050. Mr. de Blasio favors 10.2 million tons, which in today’s world is equal to the annual energy use of about 3.4 million average homes. Barring a technology miracle, the mayor will have to stop not merely capitalism but the laws of thermodynamics.

Such antirealism is the hallmark of the climate lobby, but the irony is particularly thick in the case of Mr. de Blasio, whose main theme is income inequality and New York’s “two cities.” Who does he think is going to pay for his green utopia? It won’t be the Manhattan rich but the poor and middle class.

For logic-minded Americans still genuinely puzzled as to how it could be that our presidents and secretaries of state and generals and pundits keep hammering home the big lie that Islam has nothing to do with jihad, that the religion of conquest is a “religion of peace,” I have a special warning. Such widespread, politics- and mass-media-driven brainwashing is nothing new.

Just as today’s opinion-makers seek to divorce Islam from its impact — for example, brutal conquest, forced conversion, religiously sanctioned sex slavery, beheadings — past opinion-makers worked equally hard to divorce communism from its impact — for example, brutal conquest, forced collectivization, concentration camps (Gulags), mass murder.

It worked. Unlike Nazism, communism has never been judged guilty or even held responsible for the carnage and suffering it has caused. On the contrary, it remains a source of “liberal” statist ideas such as Obamacare. My book “American Betrayal” delves deeply into this dangerous double standard. In short, it not only enables collectivist policies to strangle our remnant republic, but also explains why American students can find a drink called Leninade, emblazoned with a hammer and sickle, for sale on a college campus. It is also why silkscreens of Warhol’s Chairman Mao, history’s top mass murderer, are sought-after items for the homes of the wealthy.

There are no such trendy portraits of Hitler, and who would want them? Who would want to swig a bottle of Hitlerpop, decorated with a swastika? So, why Leninade? Not only does the stench of death not follow the Communist murder-cult, the brand lives.

Barring a groundswell of common sense, I predict that Islam, the brand, will most likely remain separate in the public mind from the violence and repression it causes and has caused for more than a millennium. That’s certainly the direction leaders from both political parties have been relentlessly herding us in for over a decade, insisting against all reason — against all sacred Islamic texts — that “Islam is peace.”

This means that not only must we contend with this cycle of expansionist jihad — a recurrence that should be familiar from Islamic history were it, too, not subject to whitewash — we must simultaneously withstand a campaign of lies designed to subvert our understanding of how Islam, in fact, has everything to do with beheadings and other violence both in the Islamic world and in the West.

They arrived on five hundred and fifty diesel-polluting buses and carbon dioxide emitting planes. Three hundred thousand paraded in the streets of New York in a People’s Climate March that was organized by Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org. It was a rally against man-caused climate change, but also included those who were demonstrating against fracking. (Keep in mind, it has been lower natural gas prices, a consequence of fracking, which has allowed the U.S. to take the lead in reducing emissions.)

Among the marchers were celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio. Mr. DiCaprio, taking time out from yachting with Arab oil sheiks, arrived on his private plane. His jet, of course, emits more tons of carbon dioxide in one trip than the average person does in two months. While carrying signs indicating their commitment to the environment (one of which read: “clean water is a right, not a luxury”), they saw nothing hypocritical in littering the street with at least one hundred tons of garbage. Like their political antecedent, Occupy Wall Street, they see no connection between creed and behavior.

Like Canute, naïfs are convinced that nature can be tamed by eating organic foods, driving a Prius, and getting electricity from wind farms, with little care or understanding of the costs. At the other end of the climate spectrum, extremists like Al Gore and Naomi Klein are simply charlatans. They publically endorse the message: “Climate change is the symptom; capitalism is the disease; socialism is the cure,” while privately using the venue to accumulate personal wealth.

In spite of the angst generated by debates over climate change, there are at least two “facts” on which all people should agree: One, we know that the earth’s climate is in constant flux; it always has been and always will be. Two, it is a given that man has had an impact, principally through greenhouse gasses that are released into the earth’s atmosphere via emissions from the conventional use of fossil fuels. The debate is about the percentage of greenhouse gasses that are in the atmosphere, which are man-caused. Steven Koonin is the director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University and former undersecretary for science in the Energy Department in President Obama’s first term. Writing in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, he stated, “…human additions to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by the middle of the 21st century are expected to directly shift the atmosphere’s natural greenhouse effect by only 1% to 2%.” The climate is changing, but man is not the main cause.

Yesterday President Obama presented a junk science laundry list to the UN General Assembly.

The President attributed naturally occurring floods, wildfires, hurricanes, drought and sea level rise to climate change, apparently ignorant of the fact that all of the above have been occurring at historically normal, to even below normal rates.

I wonder if President Obama knows that there has been no warming this century?

Dr. Caleb Rossiter, on the other hand, is a liberal Democrat who understands that science is science — no matter what your political persuasion.

Dr. Rossiter granted an exclusive interview to Marc Morano for CFACT’s Climate Hustle film project in which he told Marc:

http://cfact.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=87b74a936c723115dfa298cf3&id=73644e44cf&e=552053f981“My blood simply boils too hot when I read the blather, daily, about climate catastrophe.”
“Obama has long been delusional on this issue.”

“Anyone who believes we are in a climate catastrophe I think is deluding themselves.”

For daring to present his findings about the climate, Professor Rossiter was booted out of a 23 year association with the Institute for Policy Studies. This is the kind of retaliation academics who speak honestly about the climate have come to expect. The global warming campaign is well aware of the chilling effect such actions have on the debate.http://cfact.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=87b74a936c723115dfa298cf3&id=614b450a16&e=552053f981

Marc has extensive excerpts from the interview and background at Climate Depot.

AT had a chance to catch up with Steven Emerson, head of The Investigative Project on Terrorism, and hear his assessment of the ISIS threat here on American soil. Emerson runs the country’s top data center on Islamic terror groups in the United States, working like a man possessed, and accomplishing the work of thousands on sheer guts and determination to protect our country.

Wherever the bad guys have been caught and prosecuted successfully, you will find Emerson working quietly behind the scenes as an invaluable ally of the FBI and Homeland Security. Because he accepts no money from the government, Emerson has been free of the diktats of the Obama administration that have forbidden the FBI to train their sights on Muslim terrorists. (That means The Investigative Project needs your help to continue its work.)

In the words of U.S. Representative Pete Hoekstra, Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence:

The Investigative Project on Terrorism is critical to our nation’s security. There is no other non-governmental group that has better intelligence or data on the threat to the United States and our allies. Making do with a bare bones budget, the IPT is a national treasure whose influence and achievements are unparalleled.

It is not an exaggeration to say that because of Democrat political correctness hamstringing our FBI agents, they could not combat the Islamists in our midst without Steven Emerson. Oliver “Buck” Revell, former head of FBI Investigations and Counter-Terrorism, said as much in these words: “The Investigative Project has been one of the most important sources of accurate and timely information on the real goals and objectives of the wide spread and powerful Islamist movement.”

The FBI turns to Emerson to find out what is happening. So does AT. This is what Emerson told us:

Isis is Al Qaeda 3.0. They are already in the United States and the only reason there has not been a terror attack is that they have not decided to do it yet.

Like everyone else I knew in the Forest Hills of my boyhood, my parents were the American–born children of immigrants from Eastern Europe. But my grandparents, who left Russia and Romania in their desperate quest for freedom, opportunity and children who would become genuine Americans, always remained foreigners. They spoke Yiddish, brewed tea in samovars schlepped from Odessa, and shrieked hysterically – doubtlessly reminded of the Czar’s army – when my beloved uncle was drafted during World War II.

Their allegiance to the United States was pledged every four years when, like the overwhelming majority of American Jews of their generation, they voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt. During my childhood I believed that Roosevelt’s first name was “President”; he was the closest thing to a Savior that our brand of Americanized Judaism permitted. We listened to his “fireside chats” and during the 1944 presidential campaign my mother dragged me to Queens Boulevard in pouring rain to cheer his passing motorcade. I vividly remember glimpsing his delightful dog Fala, but not the President. At my father’s suggestion, I even wrote to the White House to ask him to buy a war bond to support our school’s patriotic campaign.

Six months later, the impact of his death registered only with the arrival of Life magazine. It displayed the photograph of a mournful black accordionist, weeping as he played “Going Home” when Roosevelt’s body left Warm Springs for burial in Hyde Park. That image ranked in memory – and still does – with the Jewish boy in Warsaw, my age exactly, raising his arms in terror as he confronted Nazi soldiers; and with the first horrific Life photos of emaciated survivors in the extermination camps.

All those memories were rekindled while I watched “The Roosevelts,” Ken Burns’ new documentary. As a professional historian, mentored by one of the commentators, I had long ago come to realize that FDR hardly was the saint that my parents, extended family, and virtually every American Jew outside privileged German Jewish circles, had worshipped. So I took with many grains of salt, but rising anger, the whitewash of FDR’s indifference to the plight of European Jewry that I was witnessing, even though I knew that disgraceful story all too well.

But not until I read (or reread) some of Roosevelt’s most despicable statements about Jews, extensively documented in a series of on-line commentaries by Rafael Medoff, founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, did the depths of Roosevelt’s loathing for Jews, and refusal to lift a finger (which, unlike his legs, was not paralyzed) to rescue them, fully penetrate. As far back as 1920, when FDR was the Democratic party candidate for vice president, he had proposed that “the greater part of the foreign population of the City of New York” should be “distributed to different localities upstate” so as to feel pressure to “conform to the manners and customs and requirements of their new home.” As a member of the Harvard board of directors he supported a Jewish admissions quota.

Adam Andrzejewski is the founder of OpenTheBooks.com a project of American Transparency 501(c)3. a unique organization that sheds light on fraud and corruption. Visit the site and interactive map….rsk

Salary spending is up 2.5 times with additional billions of dollars spent on a building binge, but IL student enrollment is flat since 2000. Is this a higher educational system or a jobs farm and patronage pool?

Here is what’s wrong with higher ed.

Over thirteen years, Illinois colleges and universities vastly increased the size of their payrolls, spent lavishly on salaries and benefits, and expended billions on construction, but have yet to see a measurable increase in students. Since 2000, enrollments are up just one third of one percent annually (4.28% total).

With tuition rates becoming unaffordable for lower and middle class students, high property taxes forcing homeowners into foreclosure, and student loan debt headlining the national news, many are wondering, “what’s the matter with higher education?”

Here are some of our findings from the Land of Lincoln:

Student enrollment flat. Enrollment was 542,450 (2000) and 566,198 (2012)- a slight .3367% average annual increase (1/3 of 1 percent per year). Source: OpenTheBooks.com
Employment explosion. 51,439 system wide employees (2000) to 90,589 employees (2013)- employment outpaced enrollment by 17x.
Gross salary spike. $1.817 billion total payroll (2000) vs. $4.4 billion in total payroll (2013)- payroll grew 36x faster than enrollment. Click here to see annual totals by institution.
Binge Building boom. Net assignable square footage was 14.756 million (2000) vs 18.144 million (2012) for community colleges and 37.176 million (2000) vs 45.085 million (2009, last year available) for universities – that’s more than 6x the pace of enrollment. Source: Illinois Community College Board and Illinois Board of Higher Education.

Spending abuse: at College of DuPage (COD), an Illinois community college, watch a video tour of their wine cellar within their upscale French restaurant. Enrollment is down over 5,000 students over the last 14 years.

The big foreign policy debate now is whether we should ally with Sunni or Shiite Jihadists to defeat ISIS.

The pro-Iranian camp wants us to coordinate with Iran and Assad. The pro-Saudi camp wants us to arm the Free Syrian Army and its assorted Jihadists to overthrow Assad.

Both sides are not only wrong, they are traitors.

Iran and the Sunni Gulfies are leading sponsors of international terrorism that has killed Americans. Picking either side means siding with the terrorists.

It makes no sense to join with Islamic terrorists to defeat Islamic terrorists. Both Sunni and Shiite Jihadists are our enemies. And this is not even a “the enemy of my enemy” scenario because despite their mutual hatred for each other, they hate us even more.

The 1998 indictment of bin Laden accused him of allying with Iran. (Not to mention Iraq, long before such claims could be blamed on Dick Cheney.) The 9/11 Commission documented that Al Qaeda terrorists, including the 9/11 hijackers, freely moved through Iran. Testimony by one of bin Laden’s lieutenants showed that he had met with a top Hezbollah terrorist. Court findings concluded that Iran was liable for Al Qaeda’s bombing of US embassies. Al Qaeda terrorists were trained by Hezbollah.

While Shiite and Sunni Jihadists may be deadly enemies to each other, they have more in common with each other than they do with us. Our relationship to them is not that of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” That’s their relationship to each other when it comes to us. In these scenarios we are the enemy.

The pro-Saudi and pro-Iranian factions in our foreign policy complex agree that we have to help one side win in Syria. They’re wrong. We have no interest in helping either side win because whether the Sunnis or Shiites win, Syria will remain a state sponsor of terror.

It’s only a question of whether it will be Shiite or Sunni terror.

Speaking at the United Nations on Wednesday, President Obama performed the signal feat of cramming his head so far up his own ass that his head actually emerged from his mouth again, thereby creating the first human Escher loop. His speech at the United Nations was chock-full of moronic platitudes, internal contradictions, and morally disgusting sentiments.

Here are the top fifteen:

“Together, we have learned how to cure disease, and harness the power of the wind and sun.” Which is, of course, why disease remains rampant in Africa – so much so that Obama is sending 3,000 troops there to combat Ebola virus – and why America garners a whopping 4.13 percent of her electricity from wind and 0.23 percent from the sun. But the Godking hath reined global forces to his chariot, and shall ride the moonbeams!

“We are here because others realized that we gain more from cooperation than conquest.” Well, no. We are here because civilized nations banded together to defeat Nazis and then communism, not because of some global revelation about the power of cooperation. This is a third grade rendition of history.

“We believe that right makes might – that bigger nations should not be able to bully smaller ones; that people should be able to choose their own future.” If Obama believes this, he has the mental capacity of a chipmunk. Obviously, right does not make might. If it did, millions of Jews would still be living in Germany and Poland, the Soviet Empire never would have risen, and the Yazidis would be decimating ISIS. We actually believe that it is the duty of right to grow its defense capacity and then fight for its principles – both notions foreign to President Obama.

“While small gains can be won at the barrel of a gun, they will ultimately be turned back if enough voices support the freedom of nations and peoples to make their own decisions.” Again, no. Millions of voices have cried out for freedom in North Korea and China for decades, to no avail. It isn’t about raising voices. It’s about strategically outflanking evil nations and crippling their capacity to continue functioning.

“My message to Iran’s leaders and people is simple: do not let this opportunity pass. We can reach a solution that meets your energy needs while assuring the world that your program is peaceful.“ Iran’s mullahs are still laughing at this one.

“America is and will continue to be a Pacific power, promoting peace, stability, and the free flow of commerce among nations. But we will insist that all nations abide by the rules of the road, and resolve their territorial disputes peacefully, consistent with international law.” The Chinese politburo is still laughing at this one.