RUTHFULLY YOURS

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni is losing her grip. Though her arch party rival, disgraced former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, is now out of her way for good, there is another political figure threatening to put a wrench in her relevance: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Livni may be a government minister with a heavy-duty portfolio, but the only real job she cares about is the one that she envisioned would culminate in a three-way handshake on the White House lawn, and perhaps a shared Nobel Prize with her partner in fantasy, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Indeed, it is as chief Israeli negotiator for peace talks with the Palestinians that she is best known, both at home and abroad. And it is this capacity that she has been as tireless as she is tiresome in her pursuit of a “two-state solution.”

Unfortunately for her, Abbas is not on the same page. While his playing a game of hard to get may have earned her nearly as many frequent flier miles as Kerry, it has not been conducive to her efforts to persuade the Israeli public that a peace treaty with the PA is possible. Other than with Hamas, that is.

As more and more evidence emerges that Abbas is no more interested in making a deal with Israel than his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, Livni and her peace-camp compatriots respond by putting the onus on Israel.

This takes two forms: one is to criticize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for announcing that housing expansion in Jerusalem will continue, claiming that it is a provocation that causes Abbas to resort to violent rhetoric; the other is to warn that Israel cannot remain both Jewish and democratic unless a Palestinian state is established.

In other words, even if the PA is at fault — even if its aim is to destroy Israel, not to live alongside it in peace — Israel has to do anything and everything it can to delineate borders between the two peoples. This means, of course, that Israel has to evict and relocate massive numbers of Jews from their homes and put itself at existential risk, without receiving anything in return but bloodshed.

…So said Jay Carney about his aloof boss President Barack Obama on Sunday. Curiously, those were the same words used by Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki, in testimony before the Senate Veteran’s Affairs Committee last week. General Shinseki indicated he was mad at the allegation, that if “they are true, they’re completely unacceptable to me, to veterans.” If? Where has the General been? Come to think of it, Mr. Obama used the qualifier “if” when he spoke to reporters on Wednesday. Where’s the outrage!

This is an Administration supposedly led by the “smartest guy in the room” and is allegedly comprised of Washington’s version of Master’s of the Universe.” Yet, the whole crowd bears remarkable resemblance to Alfred E. Neuman who chose not to worry because he chose not to know. It is amazing how Mr. Obama has learned of each scandal from the press, whether Fast and Furious, the IRS, the NSA and now the VA. (The White House created the Benghazi cover-up, so Mr. Obama would have a hard time convincing people that he learned of that scandal from the press.) Like all Presidents, Mr. Obama is kept insulated, but, as President, he sets the ethical tone.

Problems at the VA did not originate under Mr. Obama, and he certainly did not just learn of them last month from CNN, as claimed. In 2008, his transition team was alerted to scheduling and wait-time problems, and Mr. Obama promised to improve conditions. On Tuesday, Fox News reported the American Legion found a 2010 memo from a top VA official referring to “inappropriate scheduling practices” as “gaming strategies.” In 2012, a “Wildly Important Goals” program was implemented at the VA, which assured veterans needing medical care they would receive an appointment within two weeks of a request. Since the stated goal could not be achieved, hospital administrators created a paper system that had veterans wait 6-20 weeks before their name would be entered as having requested an appointment. Once the calendar was freed up, the patients name was entered electronically into the queue, creating a record indicating that the actual appointment was within two weeks of having been requested. It was a scam that was unethical in its intent and dangerous to patients. Typical of this Administartion, the purpose was to high-light goals achieved regardless of means employed.

Israel’s tiny navy led the Western world into the naval missile age, and it hasn’t lost its capacity to innovate. In time, its saga is sure to embrace more chapters, but as the future has yet to unfold we must end our survey just as we began it—with mere glimpses.

[Read Part I here].

While Israel revamped its fleet, Egypt embarked on the so-called War of Attrition (1969-1970) with the intention of breaking Israeli morale by causing a steady stream of casualties through artillery actions along the Suez Canal. Notwithstanding its new equipment, Israel’s navy fulfilled its role in this conflict not with missile boats but with old-fashioned Palyam-style raids and Navy-IDF combined amphibious operations. Following its subpar performance in the Six Day War, Flotilla 13 had undergone a complete overhaul under the leadership of its new commander, Ze’ev Almog—a converted infantryman who had joined the naval commandos in 1954.1 Later to obtain a Master’s Degree at the U.S. Naval War College (1972) and to serve as Israel’s naval Commander-in-Chief (1979-1985), Almog was famous at this juncture for accosting senior officers, map in hand, with an unsolicited plan for a raid.2 Under his tutelage naval commandos were trained for combined diving activity/ground raiding and outfitted with specialized webbing gear appropriate for action on land and in the water. Thanks to Almog’s persistent lobbying, the new gear was finally put to use on June 21, 1969, when Flotilla 13 commandos swam a third of a mile from rubber dinghies and stormed ashore at Adibiyah, destroying an Egyptian monitoring station and inflicting heavy casualties. The attack, says Almog, “proved [Flotilla 13’s] ability to execute an infantry assault from the sea.”3

In July 1969, Flotilla 13 and the IDF’s special commando unit Sayeret Matkal undertook a combined operation against heavily garrisoned “Green Island” in the Gulf of Suez—a position so “unassailable” that its Egyptian defenders dubbed it the “Rock of Gibraltar.”4 The raid required twenty Flotilla 13 commandos to arrive simultaneously at the landing site after a half-mile swim—something that had never been done. To facilitate the task, the swimmers formed a “human centipede”—ten swimmers (swimming one behind the other) on one side of a central cord paired with ten swimmers on the other side. Each pair of swimmers was attached to the central cord by a contact rope to avoid separation from the group.5 Once ashore the commandos successfully secured the assigned “grip area,” from which the Sayeret Matkal commandos were to press forward to subdue all resistance. As the Sayeret Matkal force had not yet landed, however, the naval commandos pressed ahead with successful attacks on both flanks, with the unfortunate consequence that an Egyptian grenade felled two of their number.6

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/holocaust-denial-assignments-for-american-children-on-the-glazov-gang/print/

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by superstars Basil Hoffman, a Hollywood actor (“Rio, I Love You”), Ann-Marie Murrell, the National Director of PolitiChicks.tv and Ernie White, a Civil Rights Activist.

The Gang discussed Holocaust-Denial Assignments for American Children, analyzing how Stealth jihad and Jew-hate have now entered our public schools (starting at the 20:30 mark).

The discussion occurred with the context of The Cancer of Common Core, in which the guests discussed how Islam is a big investor in the Left’s new educational concept, how Mao’s Cultural Revolution has now reached America’s public schools, how individualism is being crushed in the new “raising of standards,” and much, much more:

Occasionally someone pranks an unwitting MSNBC panelist or a bunch of teenagers by asking them to name a single Hillary accomplishment. Even though Hillary has piled up more awards than Charles de Gaulle, nothing comes to mind. An editorial in the Chicago Tribune has the writer asking a group of Chicago leaders the same question about Obama’s foreign policy.

Silence follows.

Obama and Hillary don’t just suffer from a shortage of accomplishments. They’re also burdened with a surplus of failures. Benghazi worries so many Hillary supporters because there is nothing to balance it against. There is no, “But look at all the good she did.” Hillary didn’t do any good. She didn’t do much of anything except tour countries and pose for photos.

As a Secretary of State she made a perfectly adequate First Lady.

Obama talks the teleprompter talk, but when you look at the results they’re universally awful. Whether it’s the things that he only pretends to care about, like the VA, or the things he does care about, like Obamacare, after the splashy ribbon cutting ceremony comes the disastrous mess.

Like every other summer blockbuster, it’s great marketing for a terrible product. And just like the summer blockbuster, Obama’s policies are treated as disposables to be forgotten about. Scandal management consists of Obama making a serious face and promising to take this serious problem very seriously before heading out for a round of serious golfing.

Don’t cry for Hillary and don’t write off Obama. Achievement of the old kind is overrated. It’s not about how high your GPA is but how many politically correct extracurriculars you have. In politics, just like in college, diversity and style increasingly count for more than achievement.

Post-American politics are also post-achievement politics. The morality of progressivism is more important than the substance of progress.

From the Sociology major who keeps thinking that she should volunteer at a soup kitchen to the most powerful man in the country who keeps saying that he wishes he could do something about all these problems, the left thinks that wanting to do something is what makes you a good person. It doesn’t matter if what you’re doing does any good. It doesn’t matter if you succeed.

The politics of the left are narcissistic. Its members are less concerned with changing the world than with being good people by wanting to change the world. That’s what Obama received his premature Nobel Peace Prize for, not for what he did, but for what he talked about doing.

It’s not the things that Obama has done that the left loves him for. It’s his empty talk, his worthless words and his teleprompter visions.

There are two Obamas. One is the real politician. The other is the imaginary Obama of 2007; a figment of David Axelrod’s imagination layered over with bizarre art and visions that transformed him into a superhuman being of light before he ever set foot in the Oval Office.

This Obama can never fail because he doesn’t really exist. It’s this Obama who makes the public appearances on the front pages while the other Obama’s policies are discussed somewhere in the meatier parts of the paper. The imaginary Obama shows up on American Idol while the other Obama sends vets to cemeteries. And to millions of Americans, the imaginary Obama is more real than his destructive real life counterpart. The idea of Obama is more real than his policies.

The imaginary Obama has his counterpart in a reimagined Hillary.

DAVID HORNIK ONE OF ISRAEL’S MOST ASTUTE AND ARTICULATE JOURNALISTS, WHOSE MOST RECENT BOOK IS “CHOOSING LIFE IN ISRAEL”- ECHOES THE WORDS OF VLADIMIR ZEEV JABOTINSKY WHO IMPLORED THE JEWS OF EASTERN EUROPE TO GET OUT BEFORE AN IMPENDING DEBACLE…..RSK

The Anti-Defamation League created a stir last week by releasing the results of a global survey of antisemitism, the most comprehensive ever.

These results are considered shocking by many. Actually, for those who bother to keep up with reality, they contain no surprises.

The Middle East and North Africa come out worst, with 74 percent among population groups qualifying as antisemitic according to the poll’s 11-question index. The most antisemitic political entities in the world? The West Bank and Gaza, coming in at 93 percent. (Yes, those same Palestinians with whom Israel is always under pressure to “make peace.”)

The next worst region is Eastern Europe, with 34 percent scoring as antisemites. But not too far behind is Western Europe—the home of multiculturalism, advanced environmental awareness, bevies of human rights NGOs, and so on—at 24 percent.

The West European countries scoring highest for antisemitism were Greece with a whopping 69 percent, France at 37 percent, and Spain at 29 percent. Germany did itself proud by coming in above the West European average at 27 percent—a bit over one-quarter antisemitic seven decades after the Holocaust.

Over the weekend the European Jewish Association (EJA), along with other European Jewish organizations, held a briefing on the survey in Brussels for EU ambassadors and officials.

One of the agency’s own regional offices and a panel of EPA judges have ruled that the policy is too expensive.

With great fanfare, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule last fall that would require all newly built coal-fired power plants in the U.S. to install an expensive new technology called carbon capture and storage, or CCS. Although the technology has never been installed on a large-scale power plant anywhere in the world, it theoretically will separate the primary greenhouse gas—carbon dioxide—from the plant’s exhaust and pump it to underground reservoirs for storage.

The proposal instantly set off controversy. Many technical experts (including Burton Richter, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist at Stanford) believe that CCS isn’t ready for prime time. EPA’s proposal claims it is adequately demonstrated and can be installed at a reasonable cost. The Clean Air Act requires the agency to establish both of these factors before forcing plants to install a particular technology.

That’s when things got weird.

Shortly after the proposal was released in September, EPA administrator Gina McCarthy defended carbon capture and storage in a highly publicized interview on PBS, describing it as a “technology that we believe is available today.” Then, on Nov. 25, the EPA regional office in Texas did an about-face when it decided that Exxon Mobil would not have to install the technology in its planned chemical plant (such plants emit carbon dioxide) in Harris County, because it would be prohibitively expensive.

Enter the Sierra Club, which challenged the EPA’s Exxon Mobil decision on Dec. 26. Last week, three administrative law judges on the agency’s Environmental Appeals Board upheld the Texas office’s decision not to require CCS. Why? Because the EPA regional office found, and the judges agreed, that the “addition of CCS would increase the total capital project costs by more than 25%.”

At this writing, the Veterans Administration scandal has engulfed 16 states and 26 hospitals. In Atlanta, widespread mismanagement caused the preventable deaths of at least three veterans. In Columbia, S.C., six vets died because of delayed colorectal-cancer screenings. And in Phoenix, some severely ill vets urinated blood and endured searing pain from cancer. At least 40 of them dropped dead before getting life-saving treatment.

But this single-payer savagery is not just a monumental tragedy; nor is it merely a cautionary tale of bureaucratic incompetence. If this outrage simply involved the fatal bumbling of the Keystone Klinicians, it would be awful enough.

Instead, hospital officials allegedly doctored appointment books to “comply” with VA scheduling rules, maintained secret wait lists that confirm this deception, and destroyed this evidence when the watchdogs barked. This ugly picture quickly devolves from lassitude into lawlessness. VA hospitals have become crime scenes.

VA “employees in Fort Collins, Colo., were directed to manipulate the books to conceal evidence of lengthy wait times for appointments,” according to an American Legion report on this disaster titled “Epidemic of VA Mismanagement.”

In Cheyenne, Wyo., a VA staffer’s e-mail “details specific instructions for ‘gaming the system’ to ‘get off the bad boys list.’”

A Chicago VA social worker said, “Scheduling wait times are manipulated in order to protect pay bonuses.”

In Phoenix, two VA employees secured documents “alleging that there was a systematic effort underway at the hospital to shred documents to eliminate evidence of the waiting list cover-up.”

The enthusiasm among Clinton loyalists doesn’t translate to the general electorate.

Hillary Clinton is in a pickle. She’s a shoe-in for her party’s presidential nomination because of Barack Obama’s failures. But those failures might keep her from getting the job. Her husband’s “law of politics” is that elections are always about the future, but she’s stuck in the past.

In 2008, Obama pandered to liberal hopes while Clinton appealed to their good sense. Obama promised miracles and magic. Clinton promised more homework.

“Cynicism” was Obama’s real opponent, he explained. And he used Clinton as a stand-in for it. She played her part, pointing out that the Civil Rights Act got through Congress because of LBJ’s hard work, not Martin Luther King’s speeches. She insisted that politics was toil, not performance art.

And, as we have learned from a president who so often thinks giving a speech is a substitute for solving a problem, she had the better argument. One need only look at the reaction from Democrats to President Obama’s handling of the VA scandal to see that even they would trade some inspirational claptrap for a bit more old-fashioned competence.

That attitude helps Clinton immensely. Burned by disappointment, many liberals want to vote with their heads, not their hearts, this time around.

And the Hillary-Industrial Complex is ready to exploit that sentiment. The HIC is the vast network of loyalists, retreads, activists, pols, hacks, fans (in and out of the press), Friends of Bill, and, of course, Friends of Hillary who want to see a Clinton restoration. They are waiting for her to run like 19th-century land speculators anticipating news that the railroad will go past their lots. Would you want to be left with 500,000 “Ready for Hillary” bumper stickers in your garage? (It’s a solid rule of business that you’ve made a poor investment if a Hillary Duff comeback is your Plan B.)

Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN, was very forthright about his media priorities at a Society of Professional Journalists dinner in New York City on Monday.

He told Bill Carter of the New York Times: “Climate change is one of those stories that deserves more attention, that we all talk about. But we haven’t figured out how to engage the audience in that story in a meaningful way. When we do do those stories, there does tend to be a tremendous amount of lack of interest on the audience’s part.”

Americans hold views on climate change that are encouraging to environmentalists: In a Pew poll last year, 69 percent believed the arth was warming. But only 33 percent said it was a “very” serious problem, and when Pew asked respondents what issues should be a “top priority” for the federal government, dealing with global warming came in dead last, with only 28 percent holding that view. There is a real basis for such a stance: Global temperatures haven’t risen appreciably in about 15 years.

More and more people in the middle of America — both geographically and culturally — have come to believe either that global warming is manageable or that extraordinary efforts to slow the economy to combat it aren’t worth the cost. But that “doesn’t faze the bicoastal urban media elite,” says Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. These elites, he adds, “have become more hysterical in their treatment of the issue, blaming everything from drought to wildfires to hurricanes on climate change.” It doesn’t matter that there is clear evidence such phenomena are cyclical, and that — for instance — while California is experiencing a severe drought, Florida residents have recently experienced some of the quietest hurricane seasons in decades.

So even as public concern about climate change declines, the media continue to give airtime and space to global-warming alarmists. Everyone from Al Gore to Joe Biden touts the “fact” that 97 percent of all scientists are part of a consensus on the serious nature of climate change.

But that number hides some important facts. Anyone who dissents from the climate-change orthodoxy is dealt with ruthlessly.