RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2013/08/22/obamas-dependency-agenda/?print=1

“ObamaCare is not a train wreck waiting to happen. It is a train wreck that is happening now. Sally Pipes has some very good ideas about applying some effective first aid for ObamaCare in her new Encounter Broadside on the subject [2]. We should instantly adopt her proposals.”

It’s the little things that get you. Yesterday, our former paper of record published a story about the decision by UPS [1], the big package-delivery company, to restrict or eliminate health care coverage for spouses of its white collar workers. It is thus, the Times reports, “joining an increasing number of companies that are restricting or eliminating spousal health benefits.”

This fact, and the trend it represents, puts the Times in something of a bind. The paper has been one of the most conspicuous boosters for everything Obama, with the result that it has, like the monkeys in the story, adopted a policy of “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” when it comes to the president’s many failed policies and initiatives. Benghazi? It happened because of an anti-Muslim internet video. Trayvon Martin? Murdered by a “white Hispanic” in a fit of racial hatred. The use of the IRS as a political weapon to intimidate and punish conservatives? Has that even been reported on in the Times? ObamaCare? What, do you want to deny health care to the poor?

(Pardon us while we disable the non sequitur buzzer . . .)

http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/shocked-shocked-by-the-axis-of-chemical-weapons/ Out of Syria come reports alleging the worst chemical weapons attack yet. From the United Nations and the U.S. come the stock promises “to investigate this as soon as possible” (the UN) and “do our due diligence and get all the facts and determine what steps need to be taken” (the U.S.). Fine — […]

http://pjmedia.com/blog/putin-is-the-victor-in-egypt-as-obama-stumbles/?print=1 Putin Is the Victor in Egypt as Obama Stumbles We can legitimately debate whether there ever was such a thing as American exceptionalism, but today, it would be difficult to argue that there is not such a thing as American irrelevance.  Favoring the Muslim Brotherhood and speaking in patently naïve and platitudinous rhetoric calling […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/itamar-marcus/palestinian-jihad-teaching-children-to-be-murderers/print/ Reprinted from Palestinian Media Watch. Fatah’s official Facebook page continues to promote and glorify violence and terror for children. In one post, young Palestinian boys are shown holding rifles with the text: “The children of Palestine – this is how they celebrated their holiday.” [Facebook, “Fatah – The Main Page,” Aug. 9, 2013] In […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/feminist-hijab-solidarity/print/ Europe is awash in dhimmitude, but Sweden is a case unto itself. There’s something desperate and demented about the levels of dhimmitude on display in Ikea-land. In no other European country, moreover, is there so little pushback in the media. As I wrote just yesterday, Sweden has the highest percentage of rapes in the […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/a_tale_of_two_climate_hockeysticks.html

The false “hockeystick” graph with which (in 2001) the UN climate panel claimed that current surface temperatures are “unprecedented” in a millennium is at odds with hundreds of scientific papers and with their own previous position. There is nothing unusual about today’s temperatures; the world was warmer in the Middle Ages. However, the “hockeystick” graph showing a rapid increase in 20th century CO2 concentration is genuine.

The Third Assessment Report (2001) of the UN-sponsored IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) espouses a temperature history over the last thousand years that resembles a ‘hockeystick’ (HS). The ‘shank’ is the smooth decline of temperature from 1000 to 1900AD, followed by an apparent sharp rise in the 20th century (forming the ‘blade’ of a hockeystick). IPCC-AR3 promoted this rise as definitive evidence of human influence on climate; emission of carbon dioxide was supposed to cause the 20th century warming. But this temperature history is fake; it is contradicted by much other evidence.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/08/arab_mks_sharia_blasphemy_demand_on_israel.html

HELLO MR. HARROD! THE ARAB WAR AGAINST THE JEWS AND ISRAEL HAS ALWAYS BEEN A JIHAD….NOT A LOCAL DISPUTE ABOUT BOUNDARIES, AND IT IS A FACT THAT OBTAINS THROUGHOUT THE MUSLIM WORLD, THE MORE ONE APPEASES, THE HIGHER THEY RATCHET THEIR DEMANDS….RSK

This past May, Muslim Arab Member of the Knesset (MK) Ibrahim Sarsour introduced a bill in Israel’s parliament that would prohibit blasphemous speech. Sarsour’s demand on Israel, a model of liberal democracy, to subject herself to sharia blasphemy laws is dubious. Further, Sarsour’s own provocative, even hateful, statements against fellow Israelis is further evidence that Islamist sensitivities entail no reciprocity for other groups.

Sarsour described his bill, first introduced in an earlier version in 2008, as prohibiting “any offense in any form” against “religious sentiments.” This would include cursing, defaming, and depicting religious books and figures such as Muhammad, Moses, and Jesus. Sarsour cited as motive a future possibility in Israel of derogatory Muhammad caricatures and soccer game chants offensive to Muslims. Concerning free speech concerns, Sarsour discerned a “clear difference between… opinions and harming religious sentiment” as a “red line” having “no justification to cross.”

Sarsour stated that current Israeli law in this area is not strong enough. Section 173 of Israel’s Penal Law, according to one English translation, imposes up to a year’s imprisonment for spoken or written words “liable crudely to offend the religious faith or sentiment of others.” Sarsour’s bill would eliminate “crudely” from the law and add the aforementioned specific applications.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323477604579001263134291446.html?mod=opinion_newsreel President Obama and his political allies have dismissed as “phony scandals” mounting evidence that the Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies hindered and punished conservative advocacy groups. Meanwhile, efforts are under way to impose even more regulation on core political speech. The government’s abuses are very real, but the scandal’s lessons are not […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324619504579028920138950330.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

Al Gore isn’t even honest about his own movie.

In case you’ve forgotten, “Al Gore was vice president of the United States from 1993-2001.” The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein delivers that news in setting up an interview with Gore, who is known these days mostly as an alarmist advocate of global warmism.

Gore uses the interview to claim vindication for his 2006 “documentary,” “An Inconvenient Truth”: “You mentioned my movie back in the day. The single most common criticism from skeptics when the film came out focused on the animation showing ocean water flowing into the World Trade Center memorial site. Skeptics called that demagogic and absurd and irresponsible. It happened last October 29th, years ahead of schedule, and the impact of that and many, many other similar events here and around the world has really begun to create a profound shift.”

The reference is to Hurricane Sandy, a Category 2 storm when it struck the Northeastern U.S., flooding parts of New York and New Jersey, including downtown Manhattan. (Sandy peaked in the Caribbean as a Category 3 storm. By comparison, 2005’s Hurricane Katrina went as high as Category 5 and made landfall at Category 3.)

But if we roll the film–which is less than scintillating, but the clip lasts less than 2½ minutes–we find that what Gore predicted in “An Inconvenient Truth” was something far direr than a storm and a flood. He predicted that lower Manhattan–along with vast and heavily populated swaths of Florida, California, the Netherlands, China, India and Bangladesh–would be permanently submerged owing to higher sea levels.

  http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/57373 I wrote an article once titled: Lies, Damned lies, and Palestinian Propaganda in Descending Order. That title paraphrased 19th century British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli’s aphorism: Lies, damned lies, and statistics in descending order. Few have mastered the art of dissimilitude more than long time Palestinian Arab spokesman, Saeb Erakat, who continues to […]