RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3737/british_mp_caught_on_camera_you_look_like_a_bloody_jew

Tory MP Patrick Mercer, who has now resigned the Conservative whip following lobbying allegations, was caught on camera expressing anti-Semitic and sexist comments about a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces

Former Conservative Party Member of Parliament Patrick Mercer, who has now resigned his party’s whip following lobbying allegations, was caught on camera expressing anti-Semitic and sexist comments about a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces.

Watch as Mercer describes his encounter with a female IDF soldier, and says of her, “You don’t look like a soldier to me. You look like a bloody Jew.”

Saudi cleric who raped and killed daughter receives small fine An Islamic cleric in Saudi Arabia has paid just £31,500 in ‘blood money’ after reportedly raping, torturing, and killing his 5-year-old daughter http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2636/saudi_cleric_who_raped_and_killed_daughter_receives_small_fine Saudi Arabian media sources have reported that an Islamic cleric who raped, tortured and killed his 5-year-old daughter, has been let off […]

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3736/iran_s_barbaric_new_laws Iranian lawmakers have legislated stoning as part of the new Islamic penalty law. The decision, taken by the Guardian Council after nine months’ examination of the draft proposal, means that stoning has now moved from Islamic to State law. The criminal law had been discussed over the past six years inside various state institutions. […]

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/still-epic-fail-73-climate-models-vs-measurements-running-5-year-means/

HAT TIP: ANDY BOSTOM

STILL Epic Fail: 73 Climate Models vs. Measurements, Running 5-Year Means

In response to those who complained in my recent post that linear trends are not a good way to compare the models to observations (even though the modelers have claimed that it’s the long-term behavior of the models we should focus on, not individual years), here are running 5-year averages for the tropical tropospheric temperature, models versus observations (click for full size):
CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT-5-yr-means
In this case, the models and observations have been plotted so that their respective 1979-2012 trend lines all intersect in 1979, which we believe is the most meaningful way to simultaneously plot the models’ results for comparison to the observations.

In my opinion, the day of reckoning has arrived. The modellers and the IPCC have willingly ignored the evidence for low climate sensitivity for many years, despite the fact that some of us have shown that simply confusing cause and effect when examining cloud and temperature variations can totally mislead you on cloud feedbacks (e.g. Spencer & Braswell, 2010). The discrepancy between models and observations is not a new issue…just one that is becoming more glaring over time.

It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out in the coming years. I frankly don’t see how the IPCC can keep claiming that the models are “not inconsistent with” the observations. Any sane person can see otherwise.

If the observations in the above graph were on the UPPER (warm) side of the models, do you really believe the modelers would not be falling all over themselves to see how much additional surface warming they could get their models to produce?

Hundreds of millions of dollars that have gone into the expensive climate modelling enterprise has all but destroyed governmental funding of research into natural sources of climate change. For years the modelers have maintained that there is no such thing as natural climate change…yet they now, ironically, have to invoke natural climate forces to explain why surface warming has essentially stopped in the last 15 years!

Forgive me if I sound frustrated, but we scientists who still believe that climate change can also be naturally forced have been virtually cut out of funding and publication by the ‘humans-cause-everything-bad-that-happens’ juggernaut. The public who funds their work will not stand for their willful blindness much longer.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323844804578529453560695068.html A little perspective is in order on the news, reported in London’s Guardian by Glenn Greenwald, that “the National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.” The “secondary order,” issued by […]

http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/a-job-from-hell-what-awaits-samantha-power-at-the-un/ For the moment, I’ll leave it to others to sift through the credentials of Samantha Power, President Obama’s nominee to become the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Let’s talk about what awaits a new ambassador at Turtle Bay. In terms of creature comforts, there is plenty to enjoy. The UN is completing a […]

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2013/06/06/israel-day-6-face-to-face-with-the-enemy-soft-of/?print=1 I’ve been in Jerusalem the last few days engaging in a combination of traditional tourism and what you might call political tourism (others might call it research, but I’m being honest, or trying to be). Traditional tourism in Jerusalem has always been fascinating, but it has reached another level in the intervening twenty years […]

http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2013/06/06/kerrys-embarrassing-peace-process-obsession/?print=1 There’s an old saying: it’s better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt. This is Secretary of State John Kerry’s problem. Remarkably — in just a matter of weeks — Kerry has painted himself into a corner by staking his term as secretary of state on […]

http://sarahhonig.com/2013/06/07/another-tack-a-very-israeli-story/

Over the years I have translated to English some of the Hebrew poems I found most evocative and/or meaningful to me personally. Among them are quite a number by Fania Bergstein. Her name most likely means nothing to most Israelis, although so many know her rhymes by heart. They just aren’t aware of who wrote them, who enriched our childhood, whose lines became cherished household staples.

Amazingly, Fania Bergstein faded into undeserved anonymity. But she’s important to understanding our Israeli identity, why we are here, what moves and motivates us.

She died young, at age 42, some 17 years before the Six Day War to which she is tragically connected. There is relevance to remembering her these days when we mark another anniversary of that 1967 showdown, which has increasingly become yet another occasion to besmirch our self-defense, demonize us as land-grabbing imperialist ogres and castigate us for having inconsiderately emerged victorious.

Fania provides context and connections to who we really are. Hers is a quintessentially Israeli story – not only figuratively so. Israeli was her married surname.

I was a toddler when I first encountered her but her name didn’t sink in. Her verses did, however. By my third birthday, I had memorized all the stanzas in her book Bo Elai Parpar Nehmad (come to me pretty butterfly). My mother taught me to recite them with “feeling” and my father caught a butterfly for me, let me hold it for a moment and then release it – as in the title poem:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/can_you_hear_over_now_good_it_nothing_qgHME9HiVwERzgXlofcIoO First off, let me assure you that the Obama administration isn’t interested in your phone calls. You’re interested in your phone calls. Your mother is interested in your calls — especially if she’s not getting enough of them. If you’re lucky, the people on the other end of your calls are interested, though that […]