RUTHFULLY YOURS

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I AGREE WITH BRET STEPHENS, AS I HAVE STATED BEFORE…..THE LENGTH AND SEVERITY OF POLLARD’S INCARCERATION DESERVES SCRUTINY AND OPPOSITION….BUT, HE IS NO HERO AND TO NAME ANYTHING IN ISRAEL FOR HIM IS INSULTING AND OUTRAGEOUS…AND TO LINK ANY MORE APPEASEMENT FROM ISRAEL TO HIS RELEASE IS PERVERSE….RSK

A spy who betrayed his country and his people is nobody’s hero.

What is the essence of a diseased politics? When the fringe captures and brands the center, rather than the other way around.

You can think of any number of examples of the phenomenon, from the disarmament obsessives (including the young Barack Obama) who made the Democratic Party unfit to hold the presidency throughout the second half of the Cold War, to the anti-immigration obsessives who are doing likewise to the Republican Party today.

What’s true about American politics writ large goes also for any number of political causes writ small. I was reminded of this on Monday when I was abruptly disinvited from delivering a keynote to a charitable pro-Israel organization for the sin of opposing, in my last column, the release of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard.

And that was just the icing on the blizzard of opprobrium—”scurrilous,” “unbelievable,” “arrogant and callous,” “it is anti-Semitic not to free him,” and so on—that piled into my inbox from people whose most fervent political identity is their support for Israel. One writer named Giulio Meotti went so far as to accuse me of committing not one, but two, “blood libels” against Pollard. I last heard from Mr. Meotti a few months ago when he apologized for plagiarizing from an old column of mine. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

Two points need making here.

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Don’t be fooled by the latest jobs numbers. The unemployment situation in the U.S. is still dire.

The Great Recession is an apt name for America’s current stagnation, but the present phase might also be called the Grand Illusion—because the happy talk and statistics that go with it, especially regarding jobs, give a rosier picture than the facts justify.

The country isn’t really advancing. By comparison with earlier recessions, it is going backward. Despite the most stimulative fiscal policy in American history and a trillion-dollar expansion to the money supply, the economy over the last three years has been declining. After 2.4% annual growth rates in gross domestic product in 2010 and 2011, the economy slowed to 1.5% growth in 2012. Cumulative growth for the past 12 quarters was just 6.3%, the slowest of all 11 recessions since World War II.

And last year’s anemic growth looks likely to continue. Sequestration will take $600 billion of government expenditures out of the economy over the next 10 years, including $85 billion this year alone. The 2% increase in payroll taxes will hit about 160 million workers and drain $110 billion from their disposable incomes. The Obama health-care tax will be a drag of more than $30 billion. The recent 50-cent surge in gasoline prices represents another $65 billion drag on consumer cash flow.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3036/another_pallywood_propaganda_fail_as_boy_with_hurt_leg_gets_arm_bandaged The insistence on using children as pawns in the propaganda war leading to basic errors on behalf of the Palestinian misinformers… Make your own mind up from the sketchy and chopped up footage being circulated by ‘pro-Palestinian’ groups on Twitter. Even Hamas has seen fit to help distribute this video, but the evidence is […]

Science has become a political football to be controlled to stage-manage advocacy for a pre-set agenda. We can’t afford it to be

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3037/a_week_in_junk_science

On March 18th, case number CV 12-5168-JGB,, James E. Enstrom vs. The Regents of University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), came before the US District Judge, the Honorable Jesus G. Bernal.

Dr. James Enstrom, an employee of UCLA for nearly 40 years, was allowed to proceed with his case by Bernal since it was alleged his rights were violated under the First and Fourteenth amendments. He has not received a salary for a year and his research funds have been confiscated.

Why? Well, after his long slog as a Research Professor of epidemiology at the university, he was fired since his “research [was] not aligned with the academic mission.”

It seems Enstrom’s main problem is that he produces honest science.

Firstly, in 2003, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) peer-reviewed and published his paper, co-written with Dr. Geoffrey Kabat, “Environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality in a prospective study of Californians, 1960-98.” The research was paid for, between 1960 and 1997, by anti-smoking money and the data of 118,094 adults was supplied by the evidently anti-smoking American Cancer Society (ACS).

By 1997 the results were assembled. But, despite the obvious bias and intended mission to prove that environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) caused lung cancer and heart disease in non-smokers, Enstrom and Kabat honestly concluded that “The results do not support a causal relationship between ETS and tobacco related mortality.” Oh dear.

http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/4058/israel-demographic-miracle “The word ‘miracle’ in Hebrew does not possess the connotation of the supernatural,” Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik once wrote. “Miracle describes only an outstanding event which causes amazement.” Whether the term applies to Israel’s demographics is a question for higher authority, but the Jewish State’s population characteristics stand out as unique in the developed […]

http://www.jinsa.org/fellowship-program/david-p-goldman/when-it-comes-iran-energy-market-shows-world-believes-us-bluffing The Obama administration has utterly failed to convince the world that it is serious when it says the U.S. would attack Iran if it does not halt its nuclear weapons program. Analysis of energy markets reveals that crude oil is trading today with no greater risk than stocks and currency. Even China, notoriously conservative […]

http://www.nypost.com/Page/Uuid/6e26bd28-9449-11e2-9ea1-1499282d03fe

Hillary Clinton managed to convince most of the chattering class that she was not only a good secretary of state, but a great one. Some of this stems from the media’s own desire to rush to her aid and to fawn over her purported achievements.

Part of this stems from political reporters who know little about foreign policy drooling over atmospherics and Clinton’s daunting travel schedule. But much of her free ride owes to the time delay between errors and consequences.

In the case of Benghazi, she didn’t quite make it out the door unscathed. Her plaintive cry in response to queries about the phony cover story for the attack in Libya (“What difference does it make?“) might be answered: “It matters to your legacy, for one thing.”

And with each passing week since her departure, more and more consequences of her entirely reactive and ineffectual tenure come to light. Take the pledge she continually reiterated that the Obama team would “restore” U.S. stature in the world.

The Pew poll reports, “Confidence in Obama in Muslim countries dropped from 33% to 24% in his first term. Approval of Obama’s policies declined even further, from 34% to 15%. And support for the United States in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Pakistan is lower today than it was in 2008 in the closing year of George W. Bush’s administration.”

Stop Using the Inaccurate Term “Two State Solution” Prior to President Barack Obama’s trip to Israel, he, Secretary of State John Kerry and others reiterated their commitment to a “two-state solution.” We strongly oppose the use of this term – and not for political reasons. One should stop using this term even if one believes […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-obamacare-sting?f=puball In the Academy Award winning movie “The Sting,” the characters played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford set-up a fake betting parlor and racetrack broadcast to “reel in the whale.” The “sting,” or the con game, was set-up from the very start to play out exactly as planned; the winner was predetermined: the con […]

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In Praise of the Truth-Tellers on CPAC’s “Uninvited” Panel — on The Glazov Gang »
by Frontpagemag.com

James Patrick Riley, Morgan Brittany and Ann-Marie Murrell pay tribute to our heroes who won’t surrender to Islamic blasphemy laws.

This week’s Glazov Gang had the honor of being joined by James Patrick Riley, the CEO & Founder of Colony Bay Entertainment, Morgan Brittany, a TV and Movie star (“Katherine Wentworth” in “Dallas”) and Ann-Marie Murrell, the National Director of PolitiChicks.tv. The Gang members gathered to discuss: In Praise of the Truth-Tellers on CPAC’s “Uninvited” Panel. The dialogue occurred in Part I and focused on the courageous truths that Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and other heroes dare to say about Islamic Jihad. In Part II, the panel discussed Islamic Blasphemy Laws in the U.S., Andrew Klavan on German Philosophy, Sex and Hollywood and Obama’s Abbas Romance on His Visit to Israel. To watch both parts of the two-part series, see below: