RUTHFULLY YOURS

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The Obama Campaign, that strange 4 year marriage of Generation X hipsters, inner city bosses, suburban college educated boomers longing for racial healing, Big Green businessmen and shady Saudis, appears to be finally sinking beneath the waves. It isn’t going out in a blaze of glory, but with mumbles of trending topics.
Obama was always a petty man and his campaign has descended into pointless pettiness, into Team Big Bird, binders full of women and bayonets and horses. Like so much hipster culture, it exists so that the participants can entertain each other with something that no one else thinks is funny or clever. And that elitism is precisely the point. It’s the last resort of losers who hide from their lack of taste behind walls of exclusivity.

Abandoning mass appeal, Obama is getting back to his roots of entertaining upper middle class college kids with his ‘hipness’; both actual college kids and the overgrown middle aged variety that make up the professional class of the mediacracy who treat the rest of the country the way that they treated the natives on their Peace Corps assignments.

The Obama Campaign was never serious, but it once aspired to an Oprah level of seriousness, to the dignity of the self-help sections where trite observations are recited with great solemnity so that they sound like they must mean more than they do.

For the Northeastern New York Times reader, Obama held out the promise of atonement for the country’s grave racial sins. For the San Francisco wind farm executive, he offered the prospect of a presidency that would be one long endless TED talk with plenty of subsidies for the cunning Greenvestor. And the college student would finally have a president who watched the same shows, listened to the same music and got the same jokes making him the perfect Resident Adviser for the country.

http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2012/10/23/video-reporter-asking-questions-threatened-by-eric-holders-bodyguard/?singlepage=true After a visit by Attorney General Eric Holder to the Justice Department Voting Section yesterday, a reporter attempting to ask Holder questions about the visit was threatened by one of Holder’s bodyguards. Holder was visiting the Voting Section of the DOJ to pose for photographs with the attorneys who will be enforcing federal election […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204425904578075041463410864.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Barack Obama won the Presidency in 2008 as the anti-George W. Bush and in 2012 he’s been trying to win again as the anti-Mitt Romney, without elaborating much of a second-term agenda. Two weeks before Election Day, we now know why. His new ambitions look a lot like his old ambitions, except stuck on repeat.

On Tuesday Mr. Obama finally tried to give the future more definition with a new plan, except it isn’t new and barely qualifies as a plan. “I’ve laid out a plan for jobs and middle-class security,” he claimed in Delray Beach, Florida, brandishing a 20-page brochure titled “A Plan for Jobs and Middle-Class Security” and going on to invoke his “plan” another dozen-odd times. “I won’t be running the okey doke on you,” he added.

Voters may okey doke themselves if they believe this document, which is heavy on backward-looking and discredited factoids and light on economic specifics. For example, Mr. Obama wants to spend money to hire 100,000 math and science teachers for public schools. Isn’t that what happened in 2009? And didn’t his own Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, say that class size barely matters to education outcomes?

The President says he’ll use community colleges to train another two million workers “for good jobs that actually exist,” perhaps to distinguish these from the jobs he said the 2009 stimulus would create but actually didn’t. And he says he’ll create a million new manufacturing jobs by 2016 via a new temporary tax credit for U.S. companies that expand domestic hiring.

All of this is merely a kind of Junior Achievement version of the stimulus, trying to create jobs with more government spending that isn’t affordable, or temporary tax favors that fail because they are, well, temporary. Businesses hire based on total employee costs, not one-off tax benefits. Since 2009 the country has lost 610,000 net manufacturing jobs, despite such preferences.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/1899/leaving_america_weaker_in_a_more_dangerous_world efending President Obama’s foreign policy track record is no easy task. After almost four years of his presidency, not only is America’s standing in the world weaker, the world is also more dangerous than before. Obama has not made his view of America’s role in the world a secret. As The Heritage Foundation has […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/10/thank_you_for_re-electing_obama.html As a soldier, I want to thank you for ensuring that I will have less than adequate protection in a field of military action now that the president has reduced military expenditures. In fact, “Aerospace Industries Association, a trade group, released a study that projected the sector would lose in the neighborhood of 350,000 […]

QATAR IS PRONOUNCED “GUTTER”…WHAT’S IN A NAME HUH?….RSK
Qatari emir visits Gaza in boost to Hamas rulers By IBRAHIM BARZAK

http://news.yahoo.com/qatari-emir-visits-gaza-boost-hamas-rulers-102725060.html

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — The emir of Qatar received a hero’s welcome in Gaza on Tuesday, becoming the first head of state to visit the Palestinian territory since the Islamist militant Hamas seized control of the coastal strip five years ago.

The landmark visit by Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani handed the ruling Hamas — branded terrorists by the West and isolated by an Israeli blockade — its biggest diplomatic victory since taking power. It was also a strong sign of the rising power of oil-rich Qatar, and the mounting influence of Hamas’ parent movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, since last year’s Arab Spring uprisings.

While Gazans celebrated the emir’s arrival, the rival Palestianian government of Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank was less enthusiastic.

Hamas wrested control of Gaza from Abbas’ Fatah forces in 2007, and West Bank officials fear the emir’s visit will give the Iranian-backed Hamas a lift in their feud and make the split between the two territories more permanent.

While Abbas has welcomed Qatar’s plans to deliver hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to impoverished Gaza, he also stressed in a phone call with the Qatari leader this week that he is the internationally recognized leader of the Palestinians.

Israel, which brandishes Hamas as terrorist for its suicide bombings and strikes on Israeli civilian targets, denounced the visit.

“It is quite strange that the emir of Qatar should take sides with Hamas, that he will favor Hamas over Fatah that he would even decide to take sides in the Palestinian internal conflict,” said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Yigal Palmor. “This is more than strange, especially since Hamas is internationally recognized as a terror group … by hugging Hamas publicly, the emir of Qatar has thrown peace under the bus.”

In Gaza, white and maroon Qatari flags flapped in the streets and a song called “Thank you, Qatar” played on the radio and on TV. In the border area, Hamas set up a large, carpeted greeting tent, reminiscent of a luxurious desert camp and staged an honor guard ceremony after the emir crossed into the territory from Egypt.

Thousands of cheering and waving Palestinians lined the main road to Gaza City to greet the emir, who rolled down the window of his armored car to shake hands with dozens of people. Women on balconies threw flowers and rice on his convoy.

“This man is bold. I like him. At least he came and visited us, and didn’t play games promising like the others,” said Majed Tawel, a 33-year-old teacher. “Hamas has won a new victory today and (Abbas) lost.”

The emir was received by Gaza’s Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, who said the visit sent a powerful message.

Gaza rockets draw Israeli strikes; 2 Gazans die By AMY TEIBEL

http://news.yahoo.com/gaza-rockets-draw-israeli-strikes-2-gazans-die-091042915.html

JERUSALEM (AP) — Dozens of rockets and mortars from the Gaza Strip pummeled southern Israel early Wednesday and an Israeli airstrike killed a Palestinian militant, in a sharp escalation of violence following a landmark visit to Gaza by Qatar’s leader. Another Gaza man died Wednesday of wounds sustained in an Israeli air attack the night before, a health official said. The deaths bring to four the number of Palestinians who have died in strikes on Gaza in the past two days.

Several foreign workers in Israel were wounded in the rocket fire Wednesday, and a number of militants were injured in the Israeli air attacks, Israeli and Palestinian health officials said. Hamas security forces were ordered to evacuate their facilities for fear they would become targets of Israeli airstrikes, and some schools in southern Israel and Gaza canceled classes.

Crossings between Gaza and Israel were shut down following the exchanges of fire.

Hostilities have been simmering for weeks, and Israel’s defense minister vowed that his country would not reconcile itself to attacks from Gaza.

http://www.rightsidenews.com/2012102417262/editorial/rsn-pick-of-the-day/christian-just-war-v-islamic-jihad.html

Christian Just War V. Islamic Jihad By Col. Tom Snodgrass (Ret.), Right Side News

In the World War II Pacific Theater, our Japanese enemy’s disregard for any human or Judeo-Christian standard of morality made the application of normally acceptable jus in bello criteria absolutely impossible and therefore inapplicable. Are we in a similar situation fighting against Islamic jihad?

Opposing morality codes

The jus ad bellum [Latin for “right to wage war”] criteria are (1) ‘just cause’ in terms of self-defense and protection of innocents; (2) ‘right intention’ to bring justice and peace; (3) ‘proper authority’ and ‘public declaration’ meaning that the declaration of war is executed only by heads of state within a legal framework; (4) ‘last resort’ after other options have been seriously considered, although not necessarily tried; (5) ‘probability of success’ to block violence which is going to be futile; and (6) ‘macro proportionality’ which weighs expected universal good to accrue from its prosecuting the war against the expected universal evils that will result. The jus in bello [acceptable justifications to use various methods of warfare] criteria are (1) ‘micro proportionality’ that weighs the use of a particular weapon or tactic to determine that it is proportional to the threat; and (2) ‘discrimination between combatants and non-combatants.’
– Christian Just War: jus ad bellum and jus in bello criteria

“The way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.”
– Bushido: Japanese (Tokugawa) Way of the Warriors

“Do not live in shame as a prisoner. Die, and leave no ignominious crime behind you.”
– The Japanese Military Field Service Code issued by General Tojo in 1941

The Portuguese Dreyfus In 1894, the Jewish Captain Alfred Dreyfus was wrongly convicted of treason by an anti-Semitic French military court. It took 10 years before that injustice was rectified. The world remembers Dreyfus. It should also remember the Jewish military officer Artur Carlos de Barros Basto, wrongly convicted by an anti-Semitic Portuguese military court […]

http://www.jidaily.com/74143?utm_source=Jewish+Ideas+Daily+Insider&utm_campaign=bd7dec8431-Insider&utm_medium=email

FIRST: MORT ZUCKERMAN CARES DEEPLY ABOUT ISRAEL…I AM NOT BEING FACETIOUS….HE HAS PUT HIS GREAT WEALTH AND INFLUENCE INTO DEFENDING AND SUPPORTING ISRAEL….BUT…..PULEEZ…HAS HE LEARNED NOTHING FROM HIS OWN INVOLVEMENT AND EXPERIENCE? ALTHOUGH IN THIS COLUMN HE WRITES: “Gaza has made the idea of a unilateral pullout widely scorned in Israel. No wonder. Within two years of Israel’s 2005 withdrawal, the Palestinian Authority there was overrun by Hamas militants, who then used Gaza as a launching pad for thousands of rocket attacks on southern Israel. A million Israelis had to go into bomb shelters. Israel was remarkably restrained.”

WHAT HE DOESN’T GO INTO IS HIS ROLE IN THAT FIASCO…HE AND A FEW OTHER MILLIONAIRES BOUGHT THE FLOURISHING AND HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE FARMS AND HOMES AND STATE OF THE ART EQUIPMENT FROM JEWISH SETTLERS OF GAZA TO ENTICE THEM TO LEAVE AND GIFTED THEM TO THE LOCAL ARABS. THEY RETURNED HIS LARGESSE BY TRASHING, DESTROYING EVERY SINGLE HOME, EVERY SINGLE FARM, EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF EQUIPMENT INCLUDING HARVESTED SEEDS…..RSK
Mitt Romney has put the Middle East back into the election debate on foreign policy, which is where it deserves to be. His speech at the Virginia Military Institute last week was more considered than the off-the-cuff remarks at the notorious 47 percent dinner where he saw “no way” for there to be a peace settlement with the Palestinians. This time he promised to “recommit America to the goal of a democratic, prosperous Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace and security with the Jewish state of Israel.” But how to get there?

In fact, an intriguing new proposal has been floated by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the former prime minister. The leadership of Israel has long understood that it is in its supreme interest to promote a peace process with the Palestinians, and Barak has pushed the objective one step further. He agrees with Romney that there is a low probability that a permanent status arrangement can be reached in a negotiation with the Palestinians and that even an interim agreement is dubious. If that proves so, Barak proposes withdrawal from the West Bank and at the same time recognizing the Israeli settlements there as an integral part of Israel. As he put it, “If there is no partner, we have to converge to within settlement blocs, to remove dozens of settlements, and to allow residents who do not want to leave their homes to consider remaining there as residents of the Palestinian Authority.”

The settlement blocs, housing 80 to 90 percent of the 320,000 people, are mostly located near the frontiers of Israel proper. These people, now behind settlement fences, would stay within Israel, and the Palestinian entity would begin on the other side of the fence. The Israelis are determined that their citizens can live in a democratic state where the Jews are the majority and have the Palestinians live in a state with an Arab-Muslim majority. In other words, two states for two people.

Barak understands that fundamental differences would remain to be negotiated. There are the issues of Jerusalem, the right of return of Palestinian refugees who have fled to the West Bank—and cast-iron security arrangements would be vital. Israel would have to maintain a military presence in the Jordan Valley and the Samarian hilltops overlooking Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport.