RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4342/obamanomics_and_the_vanishing_american_worker

The Department of Labor has issued its monthly employment report and the item that will attract the most attention is that the unemployment rate marginally increased to 7.3 percent.

That number is worthy of some attention, but I think it distracts attention from a far more important set of data. What we should be more worried about is the overall supply of employed workers.

I don’t want to sound like a boring economist (is there any other kind?), but our economic well being is a function of what we produce, and and what we produce is a function of the amount of labor and capital that is being productively utilized. We economists use jargon about “factors of production,” but what we’re really trying to say is that our living standards depend on good jobs and wise investment.

Which is why the most depressing bit of data from the Labor Department isn’t the unemployment rate. We should be far more worried about the employment-population ratio.

Here’s a chart based on DOL data showing the percent of the working-age population that is employed (click here to see the Labor Department’s explanation of this variable). As you can see, that key number used to be close to 63 percent. Now it’s down close to 58 percent.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4341/plight_of_europe_s_jews_revealed_in_new_survey
Plight of Europe’s Jews revealed in new survey
Without a sea change on the part of European political and intellectual elites, it appears as if Europe is about to become a dark continent of anti-Jewish persecution once again

Europe’s Agency for Fundamental Rights has just released a major new survey, perhaps the most extensive of its kind, documenting the realities of anti-Semitism across Europe. The picture is bleak.

The findings of this survey reveal a continent in which racism against Jews is widespread, on the rise, practiced openly, underreported and seemingly unrelenting in scope.

The survey, which covers eight European countries; Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Hungary and Latvia features the responses of 5,847 Jewish individuals. It includes an incredibly wide ranging amount of information about anti-Semitic activity in Europe, who is perpetrating it, where it is taking place and what effects its having.

Not surprisingly, the survey also establishes quite definitively the link between incitement against Israel and attacks on Jews living in European countries.

There is no longer any hiding for those who have endlessly demonised the Jewish State in the most vicious ways while attempting to claim, that they personally, feel nothing but good will towards Jews generally. That claim always sounded unconvincing and now this study shows how the fruits of the campaign against Israel have been borne out in the form of incitement and bigotry directed at all Jews, Zionist or not.

Also worthy of note is the fact that this survey further exposes just how much of Europe’s anti-Semitism emanates from both the Left and hardline Islamic elements.

This will hardly come as news to anyone who has been following this issue honestly or closely in recent years. Yet, it demonstrates as false the ongoing belief that the Conservatives and the Right are the enemies of Jews, and the survey further shows how, despite claims to the contrary, the Church is simply not the primary perpetuator of Jew hatred anymore.

Should you be fearful of someone, who demands you convert to his religion or he will kill you? What if there were 100’s of such fanatics demanding you convert or they will kill you? What if you learned that they have killed thousands who refused to convert?

There were thousands of people who took the fanatics’ demand too lightly.

Below, are a handful of typical scary statements made by Islamic leaders. Read their words. Their words are similar to those spoken by many around the world. Then consider the possibility that they mean and intend to do what they say. Everyone, must become a Muslim, or else.

A British Imam, Anjem Choudary, said “One day the flag of Islam will fly over the White House.” He also said. “Freedom and democracy must be destroyed and replaced with obedience to Allah.”

Minister Louis Farrakhan, leader of The Nation Of Islam here in America, told an Iranian Newspaper “God will destroy America by the hands of Muslims.”

An Egyptian Cleric, Mazen Al-Sarsawi, said “We ask a person nicely to convert, But If he refuses and do not pay the Jizya (non Muslim) tax, we fight him.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/363531/drift-toward-despotism-mark-steyn

Too many of our rulers and their enforcers reflexively see the citizenry as a threat.

At a time when over 4 million people have had their health insurance canceled, it’s good to know that some Americans can still access prompt medical treatment, even if they don’t want it. David Eckert was pulled over by police in Deming, N.M., for failing to come to a complete halt at a stop sign in the Walmart parking lot. He was asked to step out of the vehicle, and waited on the sidewalk. Officers decided that they didn’t like the tight clench of his buttocks, a subject on which New Mexico’s constabulary is apparently expert, and determined that it was because he had illegal drugs secreted therein. So they arrested him, and took him to Gila Regional Medical Center in neighboring Hidalgo County, where Mr. Eckert was forced to undergo two abdominal X-rays, two rectal probes, three enemas, and defecate thrice in front of medical staff and representatives of two law-enforcement agencies, before being sedated and subjected to a colonoscopy — all procedures performed against his will and without a valid warrant.

Alas, Mr. Eckert’s body proved to be a drug-free zone, and so, after twelve hours of detention, he was released. If you’re wondering where his lawyer was during all this, no attorney was present, as police had not charged Mr. Eckert with anything, so they’re apparently free to frolic and gambol up his rectum to their hearts’ content. Deming police chief Brandon Gigante says his officers did everything “by the book.” That’s the problem, in New Mexico and beyond: “the book.”

Getting into the spirit of things, Gila Regional Medical Center subsequently sent Mr. Eckert a bill for $6,000. It appears he had one of what the president calls those “bad apple” plans that doesn’t cover anal rape. Doubtless, under the new regime, Obamacare navigators will be happy to take a trip up your northwest passage free of charge. That’s what it is, by the way: anal rape. The euphemisms with which the state dignifies the process — “cavity search” — are distinctions that exist only in the mind of the perpetrator, not the fellow on the receiving end. Fleet Street’s Daily Mail reports that this is at least the second anal fishing expedition mounted by local authorities. Timothy Young underwent a similar experience after being fingered by the same police dog, Leo, who may not be very good at sniffing drugs but certainly has an eye for a pert bottom. At the time of Mr. Young’s arrest, Leo’s police license had reportedly expired a year-and-a-half earlier, but why get hung up on technicalities?

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Into-The-Fray-My-billion-dollar-budget-330947

Perhaps the most important lesson the pro-Zionist advocates of today should learn from the Palestinians is this: “If you will it, it is no fantasy.”
I met with one of the Israeli UN representative ambassadors some time back. The condescending, sleepy replies he gave when – in plenum with leading professors present – I asked him: “Why so slow from Israeli state and diplomacy when it comes to counter the war on info?” shows the lack of interest in the war of information. They just don’t get the point and don’t see the urgency. – Norwegian author, Hanne Nabintu Herland, a concerned Facebook friend.

[Israel’s] enemies are so ridiculous, corrupt, unreasonable, perverse that it would be an ad man’s delight to make them into figures of worldwide opprobrium, and sarcastic humor. The world reprobation at corrupt behavior, at child abuse, and sexual perversion can be easily used against Arab [adversaries]. Israel is just so incompetent. The mind boggles. – Jonathan Engel, a perplexed Facebook friend, Paris

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. – Plato

Readers will recall that I have criticized the abysmal performance of Israeli public diplomacy (PD) and its failure to present its case assertively and articulately to the world.

To recap briefly

I likened the effects of this failure to those of the HIV virus that destroys the nation’s immune system, leaving it unable to resist any outside pressures no matter how outlandish or outrageous. Given the gravity of the threat, I prescribed that, as prime minister, my first order of business would be to assign adequate resources to address the dangers precipitated by this failure.

To this end I stipulated that up to $1 billion should be allotted for the war on the PD front, and demonstrated that this sum was eminently within Israel’s ability to raise, comprising less than 0.5 percent of GDP and under 1 percent of the state budget.

Given the crucial importance of this issue it would be ludicrous to suggest that the required resources could not be procured – especially in light of the diplomatic devastation left by the display of impotence and incompetence, reflected – among other things – by the hopelessly inadequate amounts assigned to the PD endeavor in the past.

Home On the first day of the second round of negotiations in Geneva between Iran and the P5+1, the U.S. offering of a “reverse sanctions program” in return for the suspension of part of Tehran’s uranium enrichment has been leaked.  Described as a process of steps towards total abandonment of Iran’s bomb ambitions, this would […]

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/caruba/131108The outcomes of elections allows us to pick through the detritus in an effort to “make sense” of the choices voters made.

I will begin with a prediction that, before this century is over, Colorado will split into two states as momentum builds for its northern counties to revisit the secession vote that failed. I predict that California will break into several smaller states as well.

I always strive to be optimistic, but it is getting harder and the November 5 elections suggest a slow slide toward continued moral and cultural decline, and that is never a good thing.

About the only good news of the evening was the reelection of New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie. It was a no-brainer because, as a lifelong resident, I can tell you that he is tremendously popular. He’s had his successes, but hardcore conservatives will probably never be happy with him. In a race against Hillary Clinton in 2016, however, they would vote for him, having learned the lessons of the 2012 election that reelected Obama.

Almost no one expected Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli would win the governorship, but the narrowness of his loss suggests that the unpopularity of Obamacare will loom large in 2014 and 2016. Cuccinelli would have won if the Democrats didn’t underwrite a third party Libertarian campaign that drew off sufficient votes; a large portion of which were from younger, less sophisticated, more idealistic voters. Moreover, Cuccinelli was heavily outspent and did not get much help from the Republican establishment that still sees the Tea Party as its enemy.

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/korol

’The Kristallnacht was started by one individual,’ she said, referring to Hershel Grynszpan, a 17-year old German-born Polish Jew who assassinated Ernst von Rath, a German diplomat stationed in Paris. “It shows how a minor event in history can lead to mass destruction.” Cleveland Jewish News, Nov. 1, 2013.

Roni Berenson, a Holocaust survivor, was interviewed about Kristallnacht in the Cleveland Jewish News (CJN). Born in Berlin, she remembers being pulled out of school on the day after the violence, and she and her parents boarded the next-to-last ship that left Europe. Berenson blames the events of Kristallnacht on Herschel Grynszpan, himself a Jewish victim of the Nazi menace.

Herschel Grynszpan, was a seventeen-year-old German-born, Jewish refugee of Polish parents. He had been sent to an uncle in Paris to escape persecution, but now his parents were among many thousands of Polish Jews expelled and abandoned at the German-Polish border only to be refused entry and sanctuary in their native land. Perhaps distraught over their situation and his own, and fearful of the future, Grynszpan bought a gun and shot Ernst von Rath, a low-level German embassy official assigned to assist him. And it was this minor incident, this shooting that would be termed an assassination, that the Nazis used to justify Kristallnacht and the unspeakable brutality to follow.

History shows that German journalist, Wilhelm Marr, coined the term “antisemitism” in 1879, in his published pamphlet, “The Victory of Judaism over Germanism,” pronouncing it a science rather than the more precise Judenhass, or Jewish-hatred. After his next pamphlet in 1880, “The Way to Victory of the Germanic Spirit over the Jewish Spirit,” he founded the League of Antisemites, the first German organization dedicated to oppose the alleged Jewish threat to German culture, and force the Jews from Germany.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/363538/obamas-massive-fraud-andrew-c-mccarthy

If he were a CEO in the private sector, he’d be prosecuted for such deception.

‘If you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period.” How serious was this lie, repeated by Barack Obama with such beguiling regularity? Well, how would the Justice Department be dealing with it if it had been uttered by, say, the president of an insurance company rather than the president of the United States?

Fraud is a serious federal felony, usually punishable by up to 20 years’ imprisonment — with every repetition of a fraudulent communication chargeable as a separate crime. In computing sentences, federal sentencing guidelines factor in such considerations as the dollar value of the fraud, the number of victims, and the degree to which the offender’s treachery breaches any special fiduciary duties he owes. Cases of multi-million-dollar corporate frauds — to say nothing of multi-billion-dollar, Bernie Madoff–level scams that nevertheless pale beside Obamacare’s dimensions — often result in terms amounting to decades in the slammer.

Justice Department guidelines, set forth in the U.S. Attorneys Manual, recommend prosecution for fraud in situations involving “any scheme which in its nature is directed to defrauding a class of persons, or the general public, with a substantial pattern of conduct.” So, for example, if a schemer were intentionally to deceive all Americans, or a class of Americans (e.g., people who had health insurance purchased on the individual market), by repeating numerous times — over the airwaves, in mailings, and in electronic announcements — an assertion the schemer knew to be false and misleading, that would constitute an actionable fraud — particularly if the statements induced the victims to take action to their detriment, or lulled the victims into a false sense of security.

http://www.danielpipes.org/13591/obama-turns-on-israel Barack Obama’s March 2013 trip to Israel had a too-good-to-be-true feel about it. While barely pressuring on Israel, he instructed Palestinians not to set preconditions for negotiations and admonished them to “recognize that Israel will be a Jewish state.” It felt out of character, suggesting a price to be paid later. Well, that price […]