RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-bawer/the-islamization-of-copenhagen/print/

In recent years, life in the city of Copenhagen has hardly been free of, shall we say, problems related to Islam. But for the most part, the worst of it has been confined to Muslim neighborhoods such as Nørrebro. And residents of Copenhagen have at least been able to console themselves that conditions in their city were nowhere near as bad as those right across the Øresund Bridge in the now notorious Swedish burg of Malmö.

Well, as an editorial in Jyllands-Posten acknowledged last week, “conditions such as those in Malmö…are beginning to appear in Copenhagen.”

In a news story that appeared on the same day as the editorial, Jyllands-Posten reported the latest example of these “conditions”: both the Israeli ambassador to Denmark, Arthur Avnon, and the head of Copenhagen’s Jewish community are now advising Jews in that city to stop wearing yarmulkes and Stars of David and speaking Hebrew loudly in public – even in neighborhoods that they think of as “safe.” Asked about this advice, Police Commissioner Lars-Christian Borg told Jyllands-Posten that Jews – and gays, too – should stay away from parts of the city where there is a recognized “risk of clashes and harassment.” (Nice euphemism for “Muslim neighborhoods,” that.)

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/ari-lieberman/obama-cabinet-picks-bode-poorly-for-u-s-israeli-relations/print/ In March 2012 during a discussion about U.S.-NATO missile defense, President Obama informed his Russian counterpart, President Medvedev that he needed some “space” and would have more “flexibility” after his election. Medvedev, understanding the obvious implication gleefully responded, “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.” The conversation, meant for Medvedev’s ears only, […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/fraud-and-racketeering-at-cair/print/ 35,000 Pakistanis have been killed in Muslim terrorist attacks since September 11. The death toll in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, which mostly consist of Muslim-on-Muslim violence, is swiftly rising through the tens of thousands. While it’s obvious that Islamists victimize non-Muslims, it’s not always noted that they victimize Muslims first. The first goal […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/oliver-stones-left-wing-agitprop/print/ Editor’s note: The following is an introduction written to a series of articles Frontpage will be running in the days ahead in response to Oliver Stone’s revisionist documentary series, “The Untold History of the United States,” currently airing Mondays on Showtime. Frontpage will be reviewing each episode of the Stone series, exposing the leftist […]

http://www.njkidsonline.com/blog.php?id=1191 It could have been any town right here in New Jersey. Newtown looks like my town – tree lined streets, a quaint downtown, a community with roughly 26,000 people, where everyone is a friend or a friend of a friend. It’s the sort of town where you arrive a few minutes early at school […]

shttp://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2012/12/16/sharia-thirsty-take-solid-first-round-lead-in-egypts-constitutional-referendum/ A female Morsi supporter ( “Fatima” Cousin Itt ?) holds aloft a placard that reads: “yes to the constitution” Al-Ahram is reporting the ten individual governorate [2] and pooled final [3] results, noting that all these unofficial tallies, are from governorates’ presiding judges, except Cairo’s, which are from the tallies of the Freedom and […]

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/12/17/preventing-school-massacres It’s three days since the horrific Newtown, Connecticut school massacre, and talking about it isn’t getting any easier. Like every event on the list of mass murders it joins, the Newtown murder spree has evoked another round of debate on gun control. But like the shootings at Columbine high school, the Aurora movie theater, […]

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/reading_riting_and_race_HuOzG2iaw6tOmSHkdzo8mI

Is arithmetic racist? Are English and science and art?

These might seem like stupid questions, but — speaking of stupid — a federal judge says the answer is yes, they are, and slapped New York City with a judgment that could cost the school system hundreds of millions.

The case involves a 16-year-old lawsuit, a handful of unqualified teachers who tried to cast their own failures as a civil-rights violation — and the lefty lawyers who have abetted their cause.

Would-be teachers in New York must pass a state exam called the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test, or LAST, to demonstrate a basic grasp of English, math, history and science.

They have four hours to answer 80 multiple-choice questions, which feature short passages, graphs, pictures and poems — and they must also write a coherent essay.

It’s not asking much. Teachers only have to score 67 percent on the multiple-choice portion, and the questions are absurdly easy. As a former city teacher told The Post, the exam is “high-school level, so anyone with a high-school [diploma] should be able to pass it, regardless of race.”

But that hasn’t been the case. Back in the 1990s, whites passed at far higher rates than blacks and Hispanics.

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/335767

President Obama said the federal government has to do something meaningful to prevent future shootings, like the recent massacre of 26 children and adults at a school in Newtown, Connecticut. Here is what the federal government can do to prevent violence related to mental illness:

1. Start demonstration projects of Assisted Outpatient Treatment (e.g. Kendra’s Law in New York, Laura’s Law in California) throughout the country. AOT allows courts to order individuals with mental illness to stay in treatment as a condition of living in the community. It is only applicable to the most seriously ill who have a history of violence, incarceration, or needless hospitalizations. AOT is proven to keep patients, the public, and police safer. The Department of Justice has certified AOT as an effective crime-prevention program. But mental-health departments are reluctant to implement AOT because it forces them to focus on the most seriously ill. Demonstration projects would help mental-health departments see the advantage of the program. (For why some people with serious mental illness refuse treatment, see this. See also how Assisted Outpatient Treatment laws (Kendra’s Law in NY and Laura’s Law in CA) keep patients, the pubic and police safer

2. Write exceptions into the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) so parents of mentally ill children can get access to medical records and receive information from their children’s doctors on what is wrong and what the children need. Right now, for reasons of “confidentiality,’ doctors won’t tell parents what is wrong with their kids or what treatment they need, even as they require parents to provide the care. As a result, when a child goes off treatment, the parents’ hands are tied. They have all the responsibility to see the person is cared for, but none of the information or authority to see it happens. We have to change the patient confidentiality laws so parents can help prevent tragedies rather than become a punching bag for the public when something horrific happens.

http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2012/12/chuck-hagel-for-defense-secret.php?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Chuck+Hagel+for+Defense+Secretary+-+Bring+it+On%21&utm_campaign=20121217_m114705123_Chuck+Hagel+for+Defense+Secretary+-+Bring+it+On%21&utm_term=Continue+reading___
Many in the American Jewish community are aghast to discover that President Obama is planning to appoint former Senator Chuck Hagel to serve as Defense Secretary. If you want the skinny on how Hagel has come to be known as one of the few ferociously anti-Israel senators in the past generation, Carl from Jerusalem at Israel Matzav provides it.

Meantime, all I can say is I don’t understand how anyone can possibly be surprised. Shortly after word came out that Hagel is the frontrunner for the nomination, I read a quaint little blog post written by a conservative leaning commentator voicing her belief that Obama wouldn’t want to risk his relations with Israel’s supporters by appointing Hagel. But as Powerline pointed out today, this is the entire point of the nomination. Obama isn’t stupid. He picks fights he thinks he can win. He hasn’t always been right about those fights. He picked fights with Netanyahu thinking he could win, and he lost some of those.

But he is right to think he can win the Hagel fight. The Republican Senators aren’t going to get into a fight with Obama about his DOD appointee, especially given that it’s one of their fellow senators, even though many of them hate him. The Democrats are certainly not going to oppose him.

Obama wants to hurt Israel. He does not like Israel. He is appointing anti-Israel advisors and cabinet members not despite their anti-Israel positions, but because of them.

Some commentators said that Susan Rice would be bad because she was anti-Israel and they hoped that Obama would appoint someone pro-Israel. But John Kerry is no friend of Israel. And as far as I was concerned, we would have been better off with Rice on the job.

Unlike Kerry, Rice is politically inept. She walked into Sen. John McCain’s office with the intention of convincing Sens. McCain, Lindsey Graham and Oympia Snowe that she was competent to serve as Secretary of State despite the fact that she deliberately misled the public on what happened at the Sept. 11 jihadist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi.

But she failed. In commenting on the meeting, all three senators said they were more concerned after speaking with Rice than they were before they did. That is, they said she was a political incompetent. Can there be any doubt that Sen. Kerry will be able to play the politics of Capitol Hill far more effectively than Rice?

And what reason does anyone have to believe that Assad’s great defender will be any more supportive of Israel than Rice would have been? But with him in the driver’s seat now, instead of having a political incompetent whom no one can stand serving as the spokesman for Obama’s anti-Israel foreign policy, in Kerry we will have a competent, reasonably popular politician on the job.

It’s time for people to realize the game has changed. Obama won.

Obama won with 70 percent of the Jewish vote despite the fact that his record in his first term was more hostile to Israel than any president since Jimmy Carter. No one can expect him now, after his victory, to feel even slightly constrained in his desire to weaken the US relationship with Israel.

So far, he has made clear that he feels no constraints whatsoever. Take the Palestinians at the UN for example. Obama enabled the Palestinians to get their non-member state status at the UN by failing to threaten to cut off US funding to the UN in retaliation for such a vote.

Both Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush issued such threats during their tenures in office and so prevented the motion from coming to a vote. Given that the Palestinians have had an automatic majority in the General Assembly since at least 1975, the only reason their status was only upgraded in 2012 is because until then, either the PLO didn’t feel like raising the issue or the US threatened to cut off its financial support to the UN if such a motion passed. This year PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas said he wanted to have a vote and Obama responded by not issuing a threat to cut off UN funding. So the Palestinians got their vote and, as expected, it passed overwhelmingly.

Seeing the upgrade as a Palestinian move is a mistake. It was a joint Palestinian-American move.

And Obama made that move and no one balked. Indeed some New York Jews applauded it.

Let there be no doubt, Obama will get Hagel in at Defense. And Hagel will place Israel in his crosshairs.

The only way to foil Obama’s ill intentions towards Israel even slightly is to be better at politics than he is. And he’s awfully good.

Moreover, one of his strongest advantages is that Israel’s supporters seem to have never gotten the memo. So here it is: Obama wants to fundamentally transform the US relationship with Israel.