RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/01/its_hillarys_turn_to_cry.html

“For me, this is not just a matter of policy. It’s personal,” said a verklempt Hillary Clinton choking back the tears at Wednesday’s Benghazi hearing. “I stood next to President Obama as the Marines carried those flag-draped caskets off the plane at Andrews. I put my arms around the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, and the wives left alone to raise their children.”

Hillary may well have been sincere, but with the Clintons you never know. A classic maudlin moment during Bill Clinton’s presidency occurred immediately after a 1996 memorial service for Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. Brown, a sworn enemy of the Clintons in his final days, died in what the U.S. Air Force called an “inexplicable” plane crash in Croatia.

As Clinton and the Reverend Tony Campolo were walking back to the White House from the service, they were discussing, as Campolo later told me, the typically joyous black funerals they had attended in the past, and the conversation turned mirthful.

As Clinton leaned back to laugh, he suddenly locked on to an ABC News camera and reflexively downshifted to a funereal gear, dropping his head in seeming sadness and wiping an imagined tear from his eye. Campolo attributed the mood switch to a shift in conversation, claiming he confronted the president with the issue of the partial birth abortion bill recently passed by Congress. As I pointed out to Campolo, however, he kept on talking and laughing. Rush Limbaugh’s commentary on this video is a hoot.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/01/23/Abbas-Zionists-Collaborated-With-Nazis Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, speaking on a Hezbollah-linked television station, claimed that Zionists worked with Nazis before World War II, spouting: “I challenge anyone to deny the relationship between Zionism and Nazism before World War II.” If anyone needs to do penance for collaborating with Nazis it would be the Palestinians, since their […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323539804578260001044674348.html?mod=opinion_newsreel
‘What Difference Does It Make?’
Mrs. Clinton finds herself in a familiar, if ironic, role.

Hillary Clinton is ending her tenure as secretary of state in fiery fashion. “You really get the sense that [Mrs.] Clinton barely managed to restrain herself from dropping an F-bomb there,” remarks New York magazine’s Dan Amira. He refers to an exchange between the secretary and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing this morning.

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Associated Press

Mrs. Clinton at the Senate this morning.

Johnson pressed her about the administration’s conflicting explanations for the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which killed the ambassador and three other Americans. “With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans,” said the secretary snappishly to the senator. “Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.”

So it’s “our job to figure out what happened” but it doesn’t make a difference what happened? Huh? What would we do without rhetorical questions? We suppose we’d answer them, as Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin does:

The answer to her question is clear. An administration that sought, for political purposes, to give the American people the idea that al-Qaeda had been “decimated” and was effectively out of commission had a clear motive during a presidential campaign to mislead the public about Benghazi. The fact that questions are still unanswered about this crime and that Clinton and President Obama seem more interested in burying this story along with the four Americans that died is an outrage that won’t be forgotten.

Especially if she runs for president in 2016. As we watched this exchange, it occurred to us that Mrs. Clinton was back in a familiar role, and an ironic one for someone who is supposed to be a feminist icon. Once again, she was helping the most powerful man in the world dodge accountability for scandalous behavior.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323539804578259891423926414.html?mod=opinion_newsreel
Hillary Pitches a Benghazi Shutout
‘What difference, at this point, does it make?’

In five hours of Congressional testimony Wednesday, Hillary Clinton took “responsibility” for the mishandling of the terrorist attacks on U.S. diplomats in Benghazi without ever saying she was responsible for much of anything. If nothing else, it was bravura blame-avoidance.

Though hailed as a tireless Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton blamed the “failure” to ensure security at the diplomatic mission on “the assistant secretary level or below.” She said she wasn’t aware of the cables from the late Ambassador Chris Stevens about deteriorating security. Nor about her department’s refusal for security reinforcements: “It was not brought to my attention.”

Mrs. Clinton did stay at State that evening to oversee the response to the anti-American protests in Cairo and later in Benghazi and stayed in phone contact with other officials. But she phoned President Obama only “later in the evening,” she said. The attack in Libya began after 3 p.m. Washington time and the standoff there and at a nearby CIA annex lasted another seven hours. No military help came. Mr. Stevens and three other Americans were murdered.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323485704578258172660564886.html?mod=hp_opinion Fear-mongering exaggeration about effects of global warming distracts us from finding affordable and effective energy alternatives. In his second inaugural address on Monday, President Obama laudably promised to “respond to the threat of climate change.” Unfortunately, when the president described the urgent nature of the threat—the “devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, […]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/23/north-korea-goes-ballistic-over-uns-new-sanctions/

North Korea reacted angrily Wednesday to a U.N. resolution that condemns its recent rocket launch and imposes new sanctions, hinting that it may conduct another nuclear test.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry warned that Pyongyang “will take steps for physical counteraction to bolster the military capabilities for self-defense, including the nuclear deterrence, both qualitatively and quantitatively.”

Analysts interpreted the statement as a sign that North Korea will conduct another nuclear test.

“Based on their previous behavior and today’s statement, it is quite possible that North Koreans may conduct another nuclear test sooner or later,” said Seong-ho Sheen, an associate professor at Seoul National University. “When it comes to the nuclear issue, the new leader, Kim Jong-un, seems to have unchanged determination to keep a nuclear deterrence capability for his own regime’s survival.”

In 2006 and 2009, North Korea responded with nuclear tests to U.N. sanctions punishing rocket launches.

“I think they very well could be ready to test a uranium weapon, but we do not know for sure whether they have enough highly enriched uranium to do that,” said Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based analyst with the International Crisis Group.

“If they do test a uranium bomb, then it would disclose that they have mastered the technology to enrich uranium and have been doing it long enough produce significant quantities,” he added.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived back in the Senate, after dodging a few falling safes, multiple banana peels and an ornery dog named Henry, to give a carefully prepared histrionic rant which can be summed up, “I do care a lot” and “None of this was my fault” and “What difference at this point does it make?”

The last isn’t a sarcastic restatement. It’s what she actually said.

It might make a difference to a Coptic Christian whose trailer was blamed by the leader of the free world for a series of Al Qaeda attacks against American diplomatic facilities and who was sent to prison on the orders of members of the administration.

That fellow of many names, now serving a year in prison, is the only one to actually get locked up. The ringleader of the attack walks the streets of Benghazi freely. A drone could make short work of him, but no drones are coming his way. Instead a car bomb, planted by Libyan enemies nearly took him out. Some of the other Benghazi attackers were killed by the Algerian military during the siege; doing the work that Obama won’t do. If the Benghazi terrorists finally die, it will most likely be at the hands of the French, the Syrian army or Libyan rival militias.

Benghazi, Obama said, during his appearance with Jon Stewart, the man of many grimaces, was a bump in the road. And that’s all it was. The Obama campaign bus drove over four bodies and reached its destination in an armored parking garage somewhere in D.C. An irritated Hillary Clinton, who is prepping for her own bus tour in 2016, has every reason to demand to know what difference it makes now to discuss who lied about what and who failed to secure the Benghazi mission.

The election is over, and her testimony was delayed until after the fat lady held up her talking points at the debate and sang. Al Qaeda is dead, except for the parts of it rampaging across Syria, Iraq, Mali, Libya, Algeria and Pakistan, and a decade of war is coming to an end or just beginning. It makes no difference now which one of those it really is, just as it makes no difference, whether, as Clinton said, it happened “because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans?”

Dead is dead. The Benghazi four are dead. Stability in the Middle East is dead. Hope is dead. Victory is dead. It’s time to discuss the serious stuff. Like finding the right title for Hillary’s next biography, ghost-written and set for release around 2015, right after the Dems suffer a Congressional setback from angry NRA voters and just before the next election to position her as the new voice of hope.

“Bumps in the road” is one option. It really communicates that Hillary has been through a lot and driven over a lot of hard roads full of potholes and people who were only there because the Republicans refused to fully fund her infrastructure and outreach programs. But “What Difference Does It Make?” best captures the zeitgeist of the time. That sense that nothing matters once you’ve won.

What Difference Does It Make?: Hillary Clinton in Peace and War” will show up on shelves with a cover of her in some distant country looking out at the exotic landscape or surrounded by properly foreign children. It will be packaged along with a public speaking tour of colleges as Hillary promises to teach the leaders of tomorrow how they too can make a difference her way. The tour will use up Hillary’s store of funny and inspiring stories from her meetings with foreign leaders and human rights activists, most of which will be made up, but what difference does it make?

Everyone will pretend to be inspired by her. Suddenly it will be of paramount importance (circa 2015) that young women have a president of their own to look up to. It’ll all be fake, like her career, but what difference does that make. The real campaign slogan, at this point, might as well be, “Hillary, why not?” and “You know it’s going to happen anyway.”

Over in Cairo, leading senators visited Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood President, Mohammed Morsi and tried to explain to him that ranting about Jews being the bloodthirsty spawn of apes and pigs who must be driven out of the Middle East is “inappropriate” if he expects to be considered a force for stability in the region. In response, Morsi told the senators that he respects all religions and that the only reason the New York Times belatedly mentioned the story a month later is because the apes and pigs control the media.

Afterward Senator McCain called for $480 million in economic aid to the Morsi regime and Obama sent him a bunch of tanks and jets, because really what difference does it make?

http://ipa.org.au/publications/2147/false-dawn:-the-arab-spring In a sense, the so-called Arab Spring can be said to have begun on 26 December 2010 in the Tunisian hinterland township of Sidi Bouzid, where a 26-year-old impoverished vegetable seller and father of eight, Mohamed Bouazizi, immolated himself in protest at the umpteenth confiscation by local police of his vending cart. Bouazizi’s story […]

http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/23/pussy-riot-members-say-they-have-no-regrets/

“Asked whether she wants to say something to Putin, she answered bluntly: “No, honestly speaking, for me he doesn’t exist. He is just a blank spot for me.”

MOSCOW (AP) – The imprisoned members of the Pussy Riot feminist punk band say they feel no regrets about the irreverent “punk prayer” against President Vladimir Putin in Moscow’s main cathedral that landed them behind bars for two years.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina offered a vivid, but stoic, description of their harsh prison conditions in interviews published Wednesday in the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper. They said they don’t expect clemency from authorities.

Tolokonnikova, who works at a sewing machine like most female prisoners in Russia’s prison colonies, was quoted by the paper as saying she has had her fingers punctured by the needle but has picked up speed and experience and can now meet her quota of making lining for 320 jackets a day.

Like other prisoners, she bathes once a week and uses cold water to wash the rest of the week.

“I am not paying much attention to living conditions,” she said in an interview filmed last month. “I’m ascetic, and living conditions matter little for me.”

Tolokonnikova said she meditates to prevent her spirit from being dulled by the monotonous labor. She added that the main thing she misses at her prison colony is the ability to read freely; prison conditions leave little room for reading the Bible and philosophy books.

Three members of Pussy Riot were found guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred in August after they raucously prayed to the Virgin Mary for the deliverance from Putin at Christ the Savior Cathedral. One of them, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was later released on appeal, but Tolokonnikova and Alekhina were sent to prison colonies last fall.

Tolokonnikova argued that their protest wasn’t aimed at religion. “It was an ironic, cheerful and bold act, a political outcry, so to speak,” she said, adding that the Russian state media interpretation of it as a blasphemous action was deliberately wrong.

She said she wants to go to a prison church to talk to its priest and attend the service, although she added she has no intention of being baptized just yet.

She said that she had been warned about likely harassment by other prisoners who felt insulted by the band’s act, but there was nothing like that at her prison colony in Mordovia, a province in western Russia about 350 kilometers (217 miles) southeast of Moscow.

http://blogs.jpost.com/content/now-some-serious-trading

“ISRAEL- I WOULDN’T TRADE IT FOR THE WORLD” Michael Ordman

The Israeli elections are over and we are now into the period of horse-trading that inevitably is required to build a new coalition for governing the country. Excluding the politicians, however, most Israelis are going about their regular business. The country’s many forward-thinking entrepreneurs continue building new enterprises or expanding their current ones, which will undoubtedly bring huge benefits to the world.

Those living in, or traveling to, far-off locations will definitely appreciate the innovations from first two Israeli companies featured. Starting on dry land, Israel’s Alvarion is deploying its fast wireless broadband service for the benefit of the 7500 residents and workers on the North Slope of Alaska – one of the remotest and harshest places on earth. We then cast off to hear about Station 711 – part of Israel’s RRsat Global Communications Network – which has just launched the latest version of its mobile communications for ships. Its Fleetbroadband gives crews a commercial, operational and personal link to the rest of the world while at sea.
We need to keep moving in order to appreciate Israel’s number one position in the market for Gesture Technology – the latest feature that lets you communicate with your personal computer by waving your hands in front of the built-in camera. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Israeli companies PointGrab and eyeSight revealed their latest deals; PointGrap’s with Samsung’s smart TVs and eyeSight’s with AMD’s new graphics chip. We now increase the speed in order to catch up with the new Chevy Corvette C7 Stingray sports car. The new model is much lighter and stronger than similar vehicles, thanks to the very same dense plastic composite material that protects US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. The material is manufactured by Plasan Sasa, which is based at Kibbutz Sasa in Northern Israel.