RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.steynonline.com/

Round about this time in the election cycle, a presidential challenger finds himself on the stump and posing a simple test to voters: “Ask yourself – are you better off now than you were four years ago?”

But, in fact, you don’t need to ask yourself, because the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances has done it for you. Between 2007 and 2010, Americans’ median net worth fell 38.8 percent – or from $126,400 per family to $77,300 per family. Oh, dear. As I mentioned a few months ago, when readers asked me to recommend countries they could flee to, most of the countries worth fleeing to Americans can no longer afford to live in.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – JUNE 15: U.S. President Barack Obama responds to a question from Neil Munro of the Daily Caller after he interrupted the president during his remarks about the Department of Homeland Security’s recent announcement about deportation of illegal immigrants in the Rose Garden at the White House June 15, 2012 in Washington, DC. With the DREAM Act unable to gain traction in Congress, Obama announced that his administration would stop deporting some young people who came to U.S. as children of illegal immigrants.

Which means we’ll just have to fix things here. How likely is Barack Obama to do this? A few days ago he came to Cleveland, a city that is a byword for economic dynamism, fiscal prudence, and sound government. He gave a 54-minute address that tried the patience even of the most doting court eunuchs. “One of the worst speeches I’ve ever heard Barack Obama make,” pronounced MSNBC’s Jonathan Alter, as loyal Democrat attendees fled the arena to volunteer for the Obamacare death-panel pilot program. In fairness to the president, I wouldn’t say it was that much worse, or duller, or more listless and inert than previous Obama speeches. In fact, much of it was exactly the same guff he was peddling when Jonathan Alter’s pals were still hailing him as the world’s greatest orator. The problem is the ever-widening gulf between the speech and the slough of despond all about.

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2012/6/18/main-feature/1/catholics-jews-and-jewish-catholics/e

Jews and Catholics in the English-speaking world have so much in common that they ought to make common cause more often than they actually do. The friction between them that sometimes catches fire is, as often as not, based on mutual ignorance and mistrust. On the Jewish side, the mistrust is hardly surprising. For nearly two thousand years, the Church preached anti-Judaism in theory and practice. Only after the Holocaust did a small group of Catholic thinkers—most of them converts from Judaism—have any success in persuading the Church to rethink its anti-Jewish doctrine.
The State of Christianity Elliot Jager, Jewish Ideas Daily. Strangely enough, what’s “good for the Jews”—and the Jewish state—is to see Christianity thriving. SAVE

It was a process that culminated in 1965’s Nostra Aetate (“In Our Age”), the declaration of the Second Vatican Council that definitively repudiated the ancient accusation against the Jews of deicide. Further, the Council stated that God’s covenant with the Jews remained valid, that they should not be presented as “rejected or accursed by God,” and that the Church “decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed at the Jews at any time and by anyone.” Breaking with the theology of supersession, Nostra Aetatereminded Catholics of their debt to the Jews, summed up in “the words of the Apostle [Paul] about his [Jewish] kinsmen: ‘theirs is the sonship and the glory and the covenants and the law and the worship and the promises; theirs are the fathers and from them is the Christ according to the flesh.'” Thus the Church, which had always seen itself as the new Israel, at last gave the people of Israel its due place in the history of salvation: the duty of Catholics to “Abraham’s sons” was not conversion but reconciliation.

This dramatic and disturbing story forms the subject of John Connelly’s remarkable new book, From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933-1965. Connelly, who teaches history at Berkeley, has mastered a vast and obscure literature, much of it hitherto unpublished and most of it in German, in order to establish the contours of what he aptly characterizes as a “revolution” in mid-20th-century Catholic thought.

Islamic “Honor” Killings in America — on The Glazov Gang by Jamie Glazov Dr. Nancy Bonus, Eric Allen Bell and Karla Moxley battle it out on Frontpage’s television debate program. http://frontpagemag.com/2012/06/18/islamic-honor-killings-in-america-on-the-glazov-gang/

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/06/the_islamic_kingdom.html Islam is a brutal, tribal warrior cult that glorifies jihad and martyrdom. The Quran is replete with acts of murder, terrorism, and genocide. Let us look at some explicit provisions of the Quran: * Islam is misogynist. Men are superior to women. Women are to obey men and are to be beaten when they […]

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/magdi-cristiano-allam-has-seen-the-future-and-it-looks-to-be-islamist.premium-1.436582

Magdi Cristiano Allam has seen the future, and it looks to be Islamist Egyptian-born Italian politician warns Israel: Prepare for the worst.

For nearly a decade, Egyptian-born Italian politician Magdi Cristiano Allam has been advocating for Israel from every possible stage, portraying it as a frontline bastion in the struggle against what he calls Islamic terror’s threat to Western civilization. “We haven’t learned anything from history,” the 2006 Dan David Prize laureate says, referring to the legacy of the Islamic revolution in Iran. In his opinion, the blame lies firmly with the West.

Last week Allam made a quick visit to Israel for the world premiere of “To Davide,” a vocal fantasy composed and conducted by Nili Harpaz, based on a poem written by Allam in 2007 to celebrate the birth of his third child, Davide. He also attended the annual reception in celebration of Republic Day – Italy’s national holiday, on June 2 – at the Ramat Gan residence of Ambassador Luigi Mattiolo, in the presence of Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar.

The gentle and reserved Allam looks younger than his 60 years. He was born and raised in Egypt to a Muslim family and arrived in Italy at age 20. Over the years he became a journalist and an author engaged with matters of the Middle East. During the past decade, he has been one of the loudest voices in Europe speaking out in support of Israel and in condemnation of Islamic terror. For these views Hamas passed a death sentence on him in 2002. Since 2003 he has been surrounded by bodyguards 24 hours a day and has not visited his native land.

“This is the least evil option for continuing to express my opinions,” he says. Allam visited Israel in the week when the Egyptian court sentenced former President Hosni Mubarak to life imprisonment for his part in the deaths of protesters during last year’s uprising. According to Allam, the decision is “not humane and does not take into account his status, his age and his poor state of health.” The ruling in Mubarak’s case is “another sign of the barbarization now underway in the country,” which, he says, has already become Islamist: “The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis now have an absolute majority in the parliament and it is almost certain that the Muslim Brotherhood candidate for the presidency, Mohamed Morsi, will be the next president.”

Illegals From Afar June 17, 2012 Nurit Greenger I do not live in Israel and thus my perspective on the illegal infiltration of natives from the African continent is based on what I read and see on the screen. However, as my understanding of the situation goes, the way Israel found itself swarmed and swamped […]

Al Qaeda Threatens a “Scorching Summer” The organization has called upon its operatives and supporters to carry out fire attacks as part of its struggle against its enemies Shaul Shay 17/6/2012 http://www.israeldefense.com/?CategoryID=483&ArticleID=1385 While Israel awaits the State Comptroller’s report concerning the Mount Carmel fire, al Qaeda is threatening and preparing for a “forest jihad” – […]

http://newmediajournal.us/indx.php/item/5932 President Obama’s move to provide not only ipso facto amnesty to the children of illegal immigrants but work permits as well, signals that he has come to grips with the notion that he very well may not achieve re-election. It also signals that for the remainder of his tenure he will be pushing through […]

http://www.shmuelkatz.com/ A recent article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Israelis Cling to Faith in Peace Treaty,” reports that many Israeli officials “are finding solace in the view” that the peace pact with Egypt will hold despite the advent of the Muslim Brotherhood. This is startling given the September 2011 ransacking of the Israeli embassy […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/302987/stay-out-syria-andrew-c-mccarthy Like all long-suffering fans of the New York Mets, I am on Cloud Nine courtesy of Johan Santana, whose recent no-hitter — in the team’s 8,020th game, during its 51st season — was the first in Mets history. My enthusiasm did not ebb, not by a fraction of a quark, when Hugo Chávez briefly […]