RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

Few figures in American political life have been as consistently wrong as often as John Kerry. The former Senator bet on every Communist leader and Middle Eastern tyrant he could find only to watch the wheels of history roll over his mistakes. And now as Secretary of State, Kerry is at it again.

In between peddling a Syrian peace process that no one but him believes in, he took a break to peddle the even more discredited peace process between Israel and the terrorists.

In a speech to the American Jewish Committee, Kerry invoked the litany of failures, “Madrid to Oslo to Wye River and Camp David and Annapolis”, but urged his audience not to pay attention to history and “give in to cynicism”.

“Cynicism has never solved anything,” he said. But then again neither has the Peace Process. And while cynicism isn’t likely to usher in an era of peace or grow money on trees, it offers you the power to extract yourself from bad situations instead of taking refuge in more of the same wishful thinking that got you into them.

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/373135/print

Many phenomena, real and imagined, have been attributed to global warming. From rising ocean levels to increased agricultural yields to tornadoes to polar vortices to droughts to rapes to car thefts, global warming now stands as the cause of just about anything. And because of current political dogma, man is ultimately blamed for all these evils (and occasional goods).

Now a recent study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences argues that there is a correlation between increasing global temperatures and the rise of the Mongolian empire. According to “Pluvials, droughts, the Mongol Empire, and modern Mongolia,” the “dramatic increase in temperature and precipitation in the 13th century” increased grassland production, favoring the formation of Mongolian power, which was predominantly reliant on horses.

For global-warming alarmists, there’s one problem: The Mongolian empire, fueled by a “dramatic increase in temperatures,” grew to power in the early 1200s, over 500 years before the first Industrial Revolution, when man began pumping large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.

The scientific facts of the study are clear, even if the researcher’s sociopolitical conclusions are debatable. Annual tree-ring records show a warming period through the 12th and 13th centuries, which yielded “persistent moisture unprecedented in the last 1,000 years” correlating with the rise of the Mongolian empire. Much like the Medieval Warm Period of the 10th to 13th centuries, which warmed the North Atlantic region, this hot spell contradicts those few who contend that global warming is purely man-made. Furthermore, according to the study, this pre-industrial global warming was significant enough to cause the rise of the largest land empire in the history of mankind.

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/373121/print

The House of Representatives came one step closer Tuesday to holding former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress.

As Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) prepares to call a committee vote on the matter, the body released a report intended to build the case that Lerner has obstructed the work of Congress by providing false and misleading information to the committee and refusing to testify before it.

If the Oversight Committee votes to hold Lerner in contempt, House speaker John Boehner could move the matter to the full Congress. His previous comments suggest he would do so. “At some point, she has to testify or she should be held in contempt,” Boehner told reporters Wednesday.

The 141-page report makes the case that Lerner’s testimony is critical to the Oversight Committee’s investigation and that she has obstructed the panel’s work by providing it with inaccurate information. Without Lerner’s testimony, the report says, “The committee will never be able to fully understand the IRS’s actions. Lerner has unique, firsthand knowledge of how and why” the IRS decided to scrutinize conservative applicants for tax exemption.

Lerner has twice invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to answer questions from lawmakers. The committee voted in June that she waived that right by making a voluntary opening statement at a May hearing. Lerner retired from the IRS in September.

The report charges that Lerner, the former director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations division, misled Congress on four occasions. In a February 2012 briefing with the Oversight Committee, the report notes, she denied that the criteria for evaluating applications for tax exemption had changed. In fact, according to an inspector general’s report released last May, Lerner ordered that the criteria be broadened in June 2011. According to a colleague, she was concerned that current criteria, which included terms such as “tea party” and “patriot,” were “too pejorative.”

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/   The best antidote for economic doldrums is more rapid growth. President Obama was handed a unique opportunity, in terms of an explosion in the production of oil and gas that was just getting underway when he was inaugurated in January 2009. Unfortunately, he let ideology dictate his response. Nevertheless, in spite of Mr. […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/373129/print

Sorry to disagree…This is minor jousting with no real winner and no real foreign policy. Neither Cruz (Whom I prefer) nor (g)Rand (standing) Ron can claim to be Reagan’s heir. Have they even mentioned North Korea, or resurgent Islam and Jihad, or gone beyond the requisite blather of “we cannot allow Iran to build nukes” ???? Reagan was the ideological heir to Barry Goldwater who revived a conservative agenda. Cruz comes closer but Rand is soooo far behind with his libertarianism…..rsk
2016: The Battle to Be Reagan’s Heir
Paul and Cruz each try to win the base by channeling the Gipper. By Jonah Goldberg

It’s on! Ostensible allies for the last couple of years, senators Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Rand Paul (R., Ky.) have commenced the battle for the unofficial title of conservative front-runner. That’s no surprise, but what is remarkable is their choice of weapons: foreign policy. For the last several years, there has been a lot of overblown hype about how the GOP, particularly the party base, is becoming isolationist. So it’s interesting that Cruz would seek to get to Paul’s right on the issue.

The first round began in earnest less than 24 hours after Paul — to no one’s surprise — won the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll by a country mile. (Ron and Rand Paul have always overperformed in such contests, and Rand has his father’s machine working for him.)

Stay tuned to the election series at Family Security Matters….. (http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/)

In Florida the deadline for filing is not until May and the primary is not until August…..but a special election was held yesterday for the seat of Rep. C.W. “Bill Young (Republican) who died in October 2013. David Jolly will be the Incumbent in the election in November 2014. Read what the issues are that propelled his victory versus Alex Sink a popular Democrat. This is from the election series on FSM that has already posted Alaska, Alabama, Arizona, Texas (primary completed) and will feature Arkansas tomorrow and California next week…..rsk

DISTRICT 13-

C.W. “Bill” Young (R ) Died in office in October 2103

A special election for Florida’s 13th congressional district will be held on March 11, 2014 to elect a member of the United States House of Representatives, following the death of incumbent Republican Congressman Bill Young on October 18, 2013.

DAVID JOLLY (R) Won a special primary held on January 14, 2014 and won against Alex Sink (D) in a the special election on March 11, 2014 to fill Rep. Young’s seat until December 2014

http://davidjolly.com/

http://davidjolly.com/issues

HOT BUTTON ISSUES

HEALTHCARE

Main campaign promise to repeal Obamacare

Obamacare has hurt Pinellas families and businesses, driving up premium prices for many, leading to cancelled policies for many, and burdening small businesses with additional costs that ultimately deter future hiring and reduce jobs in our community. It should be repealed now, and then Congress and the Administration should begin to consider private sector solutions that address very specific problems in the health insurance industry. A government take-over of approximately 1/6 of our nation’s economy is the wrong answer, and ultimately one that will reduce the quality of care for everyone. Government has never shown an ability to improve service and reduce costs; only the private sector can achieve that.

IMMIGRATION

We need to secure our borders. To discuss comprehensive immigration reform while we continue to have a porous border where more people can continue to enter our country illegally ultimately ignores the very basic principle that people in our country illegally should not be given special treatment over those who have been patiently waiting in their country of origin to enter our country legally.

ALEX SINK (D)

http://www.alexforcongress.com/

HOT BUTTON ISSUES

HEALTHCARE

Improving the Affordable Care Act: Keep the Good, Fix the Bad

The rollout of the website and problems that have arisen with the implementation are unacceptable: The Obama Administration needs to be held accountable to get the website running, and making any necessary changes to fix any problems with the law. If these changes cannot be made in a timely way, then components of the law should be delayed until these issues are addressed.

But we cannot go back to a time when individuals with pre-existing conditions were denied care, seniors were forced to pay more for medicine, or insurance companies could do whatever they wanted – including kicking families off their plans because they got sick.

What is not helpful in Congress’ conversation about America’s healthcare was the government shutdown, or the gridlock in Washington that is holding Republicans and Democrats back from working together to get results and solutions – and it’s exactly this culture of dysfunction that I’m running to change.

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/03/11/wasserman-schultz-says-dem-loss-in-special-election-shows-gop-weakness/

Republican David Jolly won the special election to fill the House seat left vacant by the death of his former boss, Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.).

With nearly all of the votes counted Tuesday night, Jolly had 48.5 percent of the vote to Alex Sink’s 46.7 percent. Libertarian Lucas Overby had 4.8 percent.

Sink lost the 2010 governor’s race to Rick Scott. The Democratic Party sunk extensive ad funding into the congressional battle, and DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) tried to paint the loss as a positive.

“Republican special interest groups poured in millions to hold onto a Republican congressional district that they’ve comfortably held for nearly 60 years. Tonight, Republicans fell short of their normal margin in this district because the agenda they are offering voters has a singular focus – that a majority of voters oppose – repealing the Affordable Care Act that would return us to the same old broken health care system,” Wasserman Schultz said in a DNC rapid response statement.

“While tonight Democrats didn’t win, we are proud of Alex and the race she ran based on a vision of opportunity for all and an agenda that would grow the middle class and protect Florida’s families,” she said.

“Hashomer” is now available. You can see it directly via the following link:

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“Hashomer,” or “The Watchman,” was a group of young men, mainly from Russia, who took upon themselves the defense of the Jewish settlements in Palestine. To its members, self-defense was intimately linked to the idea of Jewish national restoration. In the words of one:

“Hashomer was a political movement. The intention was to create a national army. Socialist. Revolutionary.”

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http://www.americanthinker.com/assets/3rd_party/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/03/obamacare_meets_kafka.html

In Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law,” so ably recorded by Orson Wells here, a reader learns of the tribulations of a man who seeks access to the law. But over the span of his lifetime, he is never permitted admittance as a single doorkeeper will not allow it. Thus, the doorkeeper laughs and says

If you are so drawn to [the entrance to the gate] just try to go in despite my veto. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the doorkeepers. From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last…

And yet the man cannot fathom that one would not have access to the law for:

…he thinks, [the law] should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone.

But seeing the power of the doorkeepers, he “decides that it is better to wait until he gets permission to enter.” And there “he sits for days and years.”

Yet the man is intrepid and “makes many attempts to be admitted and wearies the doorkeeper by his importunity.” To add insult to injury, the doorkeeper even remains cordial “asking him questions about his home and many other things, but the questions are put indifferently, as great lords put them.” For ultimately, the man is never allowed access.

The man “curses his bad luck” and fixes all his attention on the first doorkeeper who “seems to him the sole obstacle preventing access to the Law.”

And in one final stab of hope, the man questions the doorkeeper and asks:

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2014/03/obama-first-post-american-president/

Those who thought it more important to have a black president than a competent one were entirely untroubled by the prospect that a cliche-sprouting “community organiser” might be found wanting in a crisis. Vladimir Putin suffered no such delusions

obama empty suitDuring the 2012 presidential debates, Obama scorned Mitt Romney for having identified Russia as one of America’s geo-political adversaries: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.” Obama used to be a funny man, or at least the guy who wrote his one-liners was funny. But the joke is over and America needs a new Ronald Reagan more urgently than ever.

Reagan’s resolve in the 1980s to station Cruise and Pershing II missiles in the Federal Republic of Germany put paid to Brezhnev’s SS-20 prospective game-changer. A few years later Mikhail Gorbachev was signing off on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), all but conceding defeat in the Cold War. That’s how fast things can move when you have the absolutely right – or totally wrong – person pulling the levers of power.

There is the temptation to argue that if only Obama possessed a bit more spine then, just maybe, Putin would be more circumspect about Crimea (plus everywhere else), let alone risk a Second Cold War with the USA. And yet that is not the real problem. Carter was a weak and vacillating leader but he did perform something of a foreign policy U-turn in 1979 after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. There has been nothing weak or vacillating about the current President’s faith in the progressive-utopian internationalism. A foreign policy U-turn on the part of Obama will require him dumping a lifetime of post-modern, post-colonial, post-reality academic baggage.

Leftist sophisticates never understood Russia. Standard academic orthodoxy – which informs everything about the 44th President – blames poor old Harry Truman for starting the Cold War. The warmonger Eisenhower torpedoed Nikita Khrushchev’s proposals for peaceful co-existence, or so goes the leftist fantasy. Moreover, JFK grew wise to the military-industrial complex but the shadowy figures running America assassinated him Dallas before he could bring down the curtain on the Cold War. And Reagan, so say the progressives, did not destroy the Soviet Union but nearly destroyed the planet with his right-wing ravings about evil empires.