RUTHFULLY YOURS

Many conservatives are applauding the recent Supreme Court Schuette decision upholding the right of the citizens of Michigan to ban racial preferences. As Charles Krauthammer writes, the 2003 Grutter decision, which like Schuette did not ban racial preferences altogether, was correct: “The people should decide. The people responded accordingly. Three years later, they crafted a referendum to abolish race consciousness in government action. It passed overwhelmingly, 58 percent to 42 percent. Schuette completes the circle by respecting the constitutionality of that democratic decision.”

This approval of Schuette, however, ignores 2 problems. The first is that a state’s ban on racial preferences doesn’t end racial preferences; it just spurs universities to find more creative and subtle ways to take race into account. Second, it leaves in place the duplicitous, ideological, and incoherent doctrine of “diversity” that ever since the 1978 Bakke decision has been the “compelling state interest” justifying taking race or sex into account.

In November of 1996 the voters of California passed Proposition 209, the Civil Rights Initiative, which amended the state constitution to forbid the state from “discriminat[ing] against or grant[ing] preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.” Yet despite the clear-cut legal prohibition, race-based preferences and policies live on in California higher education.

Take, for example, the process of hiring faculty in the California State University system. Despite the “end of affirmative action,” every hiring committee still must have an “affirmative action” representative, which after Proposition 209 was renamed the “Equal Employment Opportunity designee.” Despite the name change, the EEO designee performs the same function based on the same assumptions the voters supposedly rejected. The purpose of this representative is not to make sure the most qualified and suitable person is chosen for the position regardless of race, sex, or any factor forbidden by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The EEO designee can be from any department on campus, and so in most cases will not have much awareness of the qualifications required for the position. Yet despite this lack of knowledge, no hire can go forward without the EEO representative’s approving signature at every step of the process, in order to make sure no qualified minority candidate has been unjustly passed over. But by definition the only “qualification” that matters to the EEO designee will be race or sex.

For the Democratic Party, history began and ended with the election of George W. Bush. Nothing had happened before him. Every world crisis began with him and would only come to an end when the Democratic Party finally squeezed one of its own into the White House.

If there was a problem, Bush had caused it. If another country hated America, it was Bush’s fault. Bush alienated Europe, Russia, Asia, the Middle East and even parts of Antarctica.

It was all his fault, the media, academia and angry Trotskyite grandmothers marching for peace and tyranny in San Francisco agreed. Books were written and movies were made. Cartoons were scrawled and songs were written.

It was all Bush’s fault.

It never occurred to the Democrats, even as they were making excuses for every tyrant from Saddam to Putin to Ahmadinejad, that the sum of all evil might not be George W. Bush.

When Hillary Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with a misspelled Reset Button, it wasn’t the Russian end of the arrangement that was being reset.

Putin had been running the country through various offices all along. Despite his change of title, nothing significant was going to change in Moscow. It was the United States that was being reset.

The Obama campaign was a giant reset button. Among all its other resets, resetting the economy, resetting welfare, resetting the ocean levels and resetting the military, it was also going to reset America’s relationship with the world. Obama promised to “rebuild” American alliances in keeping with the leftist theme that everything wrong with the world could be blamed on President Bush’s alienation of the international community by riding through Baghdad like a unilateral cowboy on a pale horse.

Tyranny with a Smile

How Russia, Hezbollah, and Iran sell their message to the world

George Galloway, the far-left British parliamentarian, is an expert politician. When one district gets sick of him, he simply stirs up hatred and runs again someplace else.

But Galloway isn’t just a politician. He’s a Western puppet for tyranny’s propagandists.

Today, Galloway has three TV news shows: Comment on Press TV (the Western propaganda arm of the Iranian government), Sputnik on RT (the Western propaganda arm of the Russian government), and A Free Word on Al Mayadeen (a propaganda arm of Hezbollah and Iran).

These shows claim to provide original, objective explorations (hence the name “Sputnik”) of important issues. The reality is a little different.

Consider Galloway’s standard fare.

For RT, Galloway portrays Putin’s invasions as self-defense. For Press TV, he offers ludicrous anti-Israeli theories about Ukraine. For Al Mayadeen, Galloway hosts fanatics who take cheer from U.S. hesitancy and assert Putin’s conquests as acts of moral generosity. Regardless of the rank hypocrisy — Al Mayadeen’s sponsor, Hezbollah, self-identifies as a resistance against foreign occupations — these channels must not be underestimated.

These are powerful agents of anti-Americanism.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar on the “Good Koran” vs. the “Radical Koran” — on The Glazov Gang
A leading scholar analyzes the phenomenon of Jihad-Denial and the reluctance to recognize the true threat we face.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jamie-glazov/dr-mordechai-kedar-on-the-good-koran-vs-the-radical-koran-on-the-glazov-gang/

When I was editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal, I once presented the hundredth-anniversary copy to President Ronald Reagan. “Great,” he said. “Something older than I am in the Oval Office.” Yes, this little anecdote acknowledges Reagan’s spontaneous self-deprecating wit, but it also shows that at one time the president of the United States would take time in his busy schedule to salute America’s oldest women’s magazine. That’s because Ladies’ Home Journal, which will cease monthly publishing with its July issue, was then considered America’s premier women’s publication, with a circulation of 6 million.

So it’s a sad ending for the publication that was launched in 1883 by Cyrus Curtis, who also started the Saturday Evening Post. LHJ developed out of the popular women’s page in Curtis’s first publication, a periodical for farmers. His wife was the first editor, and the second, a Dutch immigrant named Edward Bok, was the editorial genius who transformed the Journal into a mass magazine for millions.

Early in the 20th century, Bok had great insight about what would interest “modern” readers. In every issue he featured the celebrities of the day, including Civil War generals, actresses, presidents, and members of the British royal family. He also crusaded against popular patent medicines — distillations of alcohol and opium — which addicted many middle-class women at the time. And he wrote shockingly straightforward editorials warning women about sexual diseases such as syphilis. Yes, Bok seemed to know, celebrities, sex and addiction would become basic subjects for the popular press.

Through the decades, reflecting the nation’s economy, the magazine had its ups and downs; however, many consider the 1940s and ‘50s to be the golden age for LHJ and the other large-circulation women’s service magazines, known as the “seven sisters.” Then at the helm was a husband and wife editing team, Beatrice and Bruce Gould, who published serious news about World War II for wives and mothers on the home front and launched the Journal’s best-known and longest-running feature, “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” as a way to teach couples about the value of marriage counseling. The magazine was so prestigious, in fact, that Marilyn Monroe complained to Edward R. Murrow that while she had appeared on many magazine covers, she was unhappy because she had never been on the cover of the Ladies’ Home Journal.

In the 1970s, a group of feminists believed that LHJ was not acknowledging the importance of the incipient women’s movement and the changes happening in women’s lives. They staged a sit-in at the office of editor-in-chief John Mack Carter. Carter agreed to publish their manifesto. Afterwards he said he did it because he was afraid the women were not going to let him go to the bathroom. The Journal’s readers were not enthusiastic about the feature that was published.

I came to be editor of LHJ in the beginning of the 1980s, when the magazine was, once again, in quite serious trouble. It was up for sale only a short time after I arrived, and no major publishing company wanted to buy it. An entrepreneur finally took it over with hardly any money changing hands. But he was supportive of the editorial changes I made. I knew that LHJ was best when it was the most journalistic of women’s magazines. I sent reporters to work with Mother Theresa, locate the injured children of Chernobyl, and interview Margaret Thatcher, Marina Oswald, and Mary Jo Kopechne’s bitter parents. With the help of a talented editorial staff, a strong advertising team, and the appearance of Princess Diana, who frequently graced the cover, the magazine suddenly grew popular and profitable again. The entrepreneur sold the magazine after only a few years to the Meredith Corporation for $90 million.

‘Everyone is in favor of free speech,” Winston Churchill once wrote. “Hardly a day passes without its being extolled.” And yet, he added dryly, “some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.”

This aphorism, generally applicable as it is, could easily have been issued to describe the attitude of one Michael E. Mann, a climate scientist and opponent of free inquiry who is currently suing National Review for libel.

Mann, a professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University, rose to prominence for his “hockey stick,” a graph that purports to depict global temperature trends between the years a.d. 1000 and 2000. The graph takes its name from its shape, which shows a mostly flat line of temperature data from the year 1000 until about 1900 (the handle of the hockey stick), followed by a sharp uptick over the 20th century (the blade). Based on this graph and related research, Mann has built a noisy public career sounding the alarm over global warming — a plague, he argues, that has been visited upon the Earth as a result of mankind’s sinful penchant for fossil fuels.

In the course of his evangelizing, Mann has shown little tolerance for heretics. A recent op-ed he penned for the New York Times is illustrative. “If You See Something, Say Something,” the headline blares, mimicking New York subway warnings and suggesting a not-so-subtle parallel between the dangers of global-warming “denial” and the murderous terrorism that brought down the Twin Towers. In the opening paragraph of the piece, Mann castigates his critics as “a fringe minority of our populace” who “cling[] to an irrational rejection of well-established science.” These aristarchs, Mann contends, represent a “virulent strain of anti-science [that] infects the halls of Congress, the pages of leading newspapers and what we see on TV, leading to the appearance of a debate where none should exist.” Alas, such comparisons are commonplace. In the rough and tumble of debate, climate-change skeptics are routinely recast as climate-change deniers, an insidious echo of the phrase “Holocaust deniers” and one that has been contrived with no purpose other than to exclude the speaker from polite society.

Secure as he appears to be in his convictions, Mann has nonetheless taken it upon himself to try to suppress debate and to silence some of the “irrational” and “virulent” critics, who he claims have nothing of substance to say. To this end, Mann has filed a lawsuit against National Review. Our offense? Daring to publish commentary critical of his hockey-stick graph and disapproving of his hectoring mien.

Ostensibly, Mann’s litigation against National Review is the product of a blog post written by Mark Steyn back in 2012, in which Steyn provided commentary on a separate article (written by Rand Simberg and published on the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s blog) that had drawn a crude analogy between Mann and Jerry Sandusky, the convicted child molester and former assistant football coach at Mann’s employer, Penn State. Steyn quoted a passage in which Simberg had stated, “Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.” Distancing himself from the Sandusky analogy, Steyn averred that he was “not sure I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr. Simberg does.” “But,” Steyn continued, “he has a point.” After all, “Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change ‘hockey-stick’ graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus.” (This “tree-ring” remark refers to Mann’s reliance on controversial “proxy” data to gauge historical temperatures — about which more below.)

This is the best memorial of the Holocaust- a home and a haven for Jews who are oppressed anywhere in the world. Israel is the absolute emblem of Jewish will to survive and thrive….rsk
The first three months of 2014 saw a rise in aliyah—Jewish immigration to Israel. A 312% increase from France, 70% increase from Ukraine, 100% increase from Brazil. The absolute numbers are not huge; if the current rate continues, the total for this year will be about 20,000—compared to, for instance, much higher numbers of former-Soviet Union Jews who came to Israel in the 1990s.

The present uptick, though, appears likely to continue and could accelerate. Amid rising antisemitism, about two-thirds of French Jews are considering emigrating, and half of those are considering Israel. Similar, if somewhat less dramatic, numbers are reported among Jewish communities elsewhere in Europe.

I read such reports with elation, as if reading that I personally had won some prize or had some other good fortune coming my way. This is rather interesting in light of the fact that I’ll soon have been living in Israel for 30 years. More than enough time, of course, to get over romantic visions, to be inducted into the many dimensions of ordinary, flawed human reality that constitute Israel as they do other societies.

And yet, after almost 30 years, nothing—essentially—has changed the feeling I had when I came to live here on September 6, 1984. That this is the true home, that no other place where Jews live can come close to it.

About a year ago the Grand Canyon Mall opened in Beersheva about a 15-minute walk from where I live (the name is a play on kanion, the Hebrew word for mall). The publicity proudly trumpeted that it had taken its place as the largest mall in Israel. Its three floors have it all—boutiques, shoe stores, bookstores, toy stores, electronics stores, candy stores, cafes, fast-food joints, a drugstore, a supermarket, you name it.

Thirty years ago there were few, relatively small malls in Israel, and I would have found the Grand Canyon depressing. What, the same chase after material goods? Now, walking to the Canyon almost every day for a reading break in a café, I find the place exhilarating. Yes, the same chase after material goods—so what?

Stories about World War II have been a major part of American popular culture for decades. From the Warner Bros. war films of the 1940s to Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and beyond, there is a consistent magnetism towards America’s Greatest Generation and the war they fought against totalitarianism. Many people have relatives who were in the war or have met veterans that have made an impact on their life. Without question, WWII vets are a special, unique group whose stories deserve to be shared.

In The Fight in the Clouds, author James P. Busha organizes the many interviews he conducted with WWII fighter pilots over the years into one volume. Busha, a pilot himself, is also editor of EAA Warbirds of America, EAA Vintage Aircraft Association publications, and contributing editor for Flight Journal. The book opens with specifications about the P-51 Mustang that will be helpful to those new to the topic.

These pilots, like their planes, were tough as nails. The only accepted defeat was death. The tales range from fun practice runs, harrowing fights into enemy territory, and postwar musings. The Fight in the Clouds begins with a powerful introduction about the story of 2nd Lt. James Des Jardins and his brother, who both lost their lives serving our country in World War II. Their story is told, in part, through primary documents in the form of Western Union telegrams. Reading the words of the time always presents a unique and often influential response. This book, according to Busha, was written for those “who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country as they laid their lives on the line to ensure that future generations would enjoy the freedoms and liberties that have been bestowed upon us.”

One of the many stories that stuck out to me was that of Capt. Clayton “Kelly” Gross, who was in a dogfight with “one of Hitler’s wonder weapons,” a Messerschmitt Me 262:

“And his critics? Most make the usual necessary ideological adjustments. Al Sharpton — former FBI informant [18], provocateur of lethal rioting, homophobe, anti-Semite, character assassin, deadbeat tax delinquent — is not shunned, although his bigotry is central to his career, but rather embraced by Hillary Clinton [19] and given his own MSNBC show [20]. The NAACP is slated in May to recognize Sharpton with a “Person of the Year” award — and had planned to give Donald Sterling a “Lifetime Achievement Award.” When public servants in positions of vast power like the attorney general reference blacks as “my people” or a Supreme Court justice spouts off neo-eugenicist riffs, they must be contextualized and explained as off-the-cuff musings not comparable to the felonious biases of an obscure private cowboy on the Nevada range.

Spare us the bottled piety.”

Cliven Bundy spouted off racist generalizations [1] the other day as reported by a New York Times journalist, stereotyping blacks in negative fashion, with unhinged referencing to slavery — and after that in an ad hoc talk generalizing about Mexican immigrants in positive condescension.

Does that outburst prove Bundy’s resistance to a bullying Bureau of Land Management is racially driven? Or that his cattleman’s existence on the Western range is now tainted?

What are the general rules about assessing issues when the involved parties voice odious creeds?

The difference between a private life and a public career matters. If cowboy Cliven Bundy were organizing a formal resistance to the federal government by emphasizing racist doctrines, then he would be dangerous in the way Rev. Jeremiah Wright was scary in spouting racist diatribes [2] to thousands in his congregation [3] and on his CDs — including to the future president of the United States.

President Obama is on the final legs of his Asian tour that included a two-night weekend stop in the increasingly prosperous Muslim-majority nation of Malaysia. So it’s a shame that Mr. Obama pointedly chose not to meet with opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who nearly won last year’s election even as he appeals a second suspicious conviction on sodomy charges.

“The fact that I haven’t met with Mr. Anwar in and of itself isn’t indicative of our lack of concern, given the fact that there are a lot of people I don’t meet with and opposition leaders that I don’t meet with,” Mr. Obama said at a joint news conference on Sunday with Prime Minister Najib Razak. “And that doesn’t mean that I’m not concerned about them.” The opposition leader met instead with White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice.

Mr. Obama doesn’t meet with every opposition leader, but he was happy to meet with the leader of Angela Merkel’s opposition, German Peer Steinbrueck, and his former campaign adviser David Axelrod is advising British Labor Party leader Ed Miliband. Malaysia wants to join the ranks of rising middle-income states and be considered a full-fledged democracy, yet its ruling party has never lost an election. Mr. Anwar won an appeal of his first conviction but then faced a second indictment as he prepared to fight an election in which his party won 51% of the vote but only 40% of the seats.