RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.mererhetoric.com/2012/05/25/contentions-roundup-iranian-and-israeli-intentions/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MereRhetoric+%28Mere+Rhetoric%29

A roundup of recent Commentary Contentions posts on Iran, its nuclear program, and what the Israelis seem prepared to do about it:

Viewing Iran: Optimism or Annihilation?

German Paper: North Korea Tested Nuclear Warhead for Iran

Left Tries to Spin Israel Poll-Part One

Left Tries to Spin Israel Poll-Part Two

http://times247.com/articles/muslim-brotherhood-takes-lead-in-egypt-voting

Muslim Brotherhood takes lead in Egypt voting
Breaking_news
Associated Press
by: Maggie Michael

Muslim Brotherhood takes lead in Egypt voting
An Egyptian woman casts her vote during the first day of the presidential election in a polling station, May 23, 2012. Photo Credit:AP

Partial results from Egypt’s first genuinely competitive presidential elections announced Friday showed the candidate of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood leading with a narrow edge in a five-way race.

This is likely to bring Mohammed Morsi to run-off elections scheduled for June 16-17 but leaves the question wide open as to whether he will win. Egyptians voted Wednesday and Thursday to choose their first president after last year’s popular uprising that ousted ruler Hosni Mubarak.

Contending for second place are Mubarak’s last prime minister Ahmed Shafiq, moderate Islamist Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh and leftist Hamdeen Sabahi, whose surprise last-minute surge brought a new element to a contest that looked like it was going to pit Islamists against former regime officials.

Read the original article at Associated Press
EDITORIAL: Sin City showdown
The Washington Times
05/24/2012
EDITORIAL: Sin City showdown
General Services Administration employees aren’t the only ones living it up in the shadow of the Las Vegas Strip. Public servants who serve themselves on the public’s dime have drained state, municipal and federal coffers nationwide. As the money runs out, showdowns over spending levels are inevitable. That’s what’s happening right now in North Las Vegas. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz1vsm2MGcA
Fistfight erupts in Ukraine parliament
IOL News
Friday, May 25, 2012
News
Lawmakers in the Ukrainan parliament exchanged blows during a debate over a proposed law that would make Russian an official language in much of the country. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz1vsmD6dZY
allies. Read more…
Muslim solider found guilty in Texas bomb plot
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Friday, May 25, 2012
News
A federal jury convicted a Muslim soldier Thursday on six charges in connection with a failed plot to blow up a Texas restaurant full of Fort Hood troops, his religious mission to get “justice” for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz1vsmPu2B5

Read more: http://times247.com/articles/muslim-brotherhood-takes-lead-in-egypt-voting#ixzz1vslA5XCL

http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/19815-Kesler-Fought-Corporate-Welfare,-Won,-Then-Lost-To-Obama.html If you don’t think that a little ‘ol blogger like me can take on and win against a trillion-dollar industry’s corporate welfare scheme and its political allies, then read on. I won through careful research and persistence. Then I lost once the allies of the giants of the tourism industry came to power in […]

http://newmediajournal.us/indx.php/item/5694

“That no more qualifies someone to be president than being a plumber.” That’s what Vice President Joe Biden said about the private equity experience as it relates to qualifications for being the President of the United States. As the politically aware look on in stunned silence, one has to wonder if good ol’ Joe didn’t go rogue from the Obama campaign approved teleprompter script. Why else would he bring up the subject of qualifications, a subject on which President Obama is intensely vulnerable?

The subject of qualifications for the office of President of the United States is a contentious one, if not one that must be addressed from two vantage points: the legal qualifications set forth by the United States Constitution and the practical knowledge vantage point; the amassed experience of any given candidate. And where one is enshrined in the Founding Documents, the other is open to debate.

Constitutionally, the qualifications are clear, at least to those who choose not to politicize the document. Article II, Section 1, states:

“No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”

And while there are some who point to this section of the Constitution when speaking of President Obama’s qualifications, I would point out two poignant issues related to the issue.

First, the definition of “natural born citizen” is one that has been politicized, by that I mean that politicians have taken it upon themselves to craft different definitions throughout history for the phrase. Until a definition for the purposes specific to Article II, Section 1 are enshrined in the Constitution via the amendment process, the definition will always be subject to nefarious forces.

Second, no enforcement mechanism related to Article II, Section 1 exists in the US Constitution. By this I mean that there is no constitutionally mandated protocol, no set process, by which first-source documentation of a candidate’s qualifications can be verified. Further, short of impeachment, there is no method to remove a sitting President should he be found out to be in violation of Article II, Section 1, and with the jadedly polarized political atmosphere in Washington today, impeachment would be next to impossible.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/arabic_mandatory_at_city_public_UdLomjOOnZNfjDfs6YQrUN

Arabic mandatory at city public school By SABRINA FORD

An upper Manhattan public elementary school will be the first in the city to require that students study Arabic, officials said yesterday.

Beginning next semester, all 200 second- through fifth-graders at PS 368 in Hamilton Heights will be taught the language twice a week for 45 minutes — putting it on equal footing with science and music courses.

One reason Principal Nicky Kram Rosen selected Arabic — as opposed to more common offerings, such as Spanish or French — is because it will help the school obtain a prestigious International Baccalaureate standing.

Principal Kram Rosen hopes the Arabic taught by Mohamed Mamdouh earns worldwide prestige for PS 368. “She proposed this to the parent association. They were very supportive,” said Angela Jackson, CEO of the Global Language Project, which is backing the initiative.

“Arabic has been identified as a critical-need language,” she said, citing students’ future “career trajectories.’’

“It means they can spin the globe and decide where they want to work and live.”

http://townhall.com/columnists/dianawest/2012/05/24/book_explains_clearly_why_us_shouldnt_kowtow_to_islam

Every time I see Dutch Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders interact with America, I am struck anew by how deeply he confounds us. We aren’t used to hearing the truth, particularly about Islam, expressed by a politician — of all people! — who not only says what he’s found to be true, but also acts on it.

For this same reason, however, by Islamic decree (Fatwa), Wilders has been “marked for death,” which is the title of his terrific new book. “Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me” (Regnery Publishing, $27.95) informs and inspires in an elegantly concise but also comprehensive volume. Including an excellent foreword by Mark Steyn, “Marked for Death” is the best single book on Islam and its impact on the West — a book every American should read.

After all, Wilders, a Dutchman with great affection and admiration for the USA (especially the First Amendment and Ronald Reagan), has written this book for us. Many chapters open with an epigraph on liberty by an American president, almost as if Wilders wants to explain his devotion to liberty in our own terms, while gently reminding us to be true to our best ideals.

More instructively, Wilders, for eight years a political prisoner of Islam requiring round-the-clock security to avoid assassination, quotes from the anti-Islamic writings of our presidents John Quincy Adams and Teddy Roosevelt. Both men warned against the dangers that Islam poses to liberty and Christianity. These writings will jolt the postmodern reader, alerting us that we are reading something society outlaws as taboo: criticism of Islam.

In 1916, Roosevelt observed: “Wherever the Mohammedans have had a complete sway, wherever the Christians have been unable to resist them by the sword, Christianity has ultimately disappeared” (ditto Judaism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism …). Roosevelt rejected as “naive” the notion that “all religions are the same.” Some religions, he explained, “give a higher value to each human life, and some religions and belief systems give a lower value.” Our “social values,” including equality before the law, exist “only because the Christians of Europe (did) what the Christians of Asia and Africa had failed to do — that is, to beat back the Moslem invader.”

COMMENT FROM AN E-PAL M.F.— “Long but worth reading. Greece is a microcosm of what happens when both the Left and Right fail to govern realistically. However, the Communist Left is more organized and more willing to use force against anyone or anything that stands in their way. That is why they are winning in Europe and in the streets of America. When someone or group stands up to their thug tactics, and physically takes them on in the streets, then you will see a new, pragmatic movement arise, but there will be blood before there will be stability.”

ANOTHER COMMENT WORTH READING:

The worst case and best known is Greece, and that train wreck just keeps on crashing.Greece got on the Euro, and slowly but steadily progressed further into socialist practices and abuses than anyone else in Europe. (Although some of what they were into is also what Spain, Italy, Portugal, etc, got into, and they have their own major problems.)
We’re talking retirements at 50, total security and generous paychecks and benefits for all gov’t employees and all major unions. In a nation where cheating on taxes is the major national hobby, and there was very little enforcement of tax penalties even though everyone knows the cheating is widespread and intensive.
Basically, the Greek governments have been spending a lot more than they took in for 15+ years, and the debt finally became impossible to conceal and impossible to deal with.
This is why the Germans, who are the hardworking and frugal people of Europe, are really ticked, since it’s their loans that have keep Greece going, and they are very tired of it. (They don’t have any of the radical benefits of the Greeks, and they have to pay their taxes.)
Greek society has grown so accustomed to living on other people’s money that they think it’s their right, and they just threw out the politicians who were just talking about austerity, to put in a party that says absolute NO to austerity. How that’s going to work out will be interesting. If they don’t shape up, they’ll have to go off the euro and back to the drachma, and then they’ll find out what austerity is like because they won’t be able to buy much of anything in world markets with the drachma.This is another example of people doing incredibly stupid things, but somehow getting away with it for a very long time. However, as I always say, sooner or sometimes very later, reality comes up behind you with a baseball bat and WHAM, you’re in the hospital with a cracked noggin. What is hard to predict is just what is going to happen in Greece in the next year or two. Personally, I think it extremely likely that there will be some sort of disaster/collapse, and things will get very, very messy for a while. After which the scale of living for most Greeks will be taking a sharp downturn. Time will tell.
Maybe the other nations in deep trouble will learn something and do better in avoiding their own disasters.And here is an article about Greek universities that will help understanding of a lot of what goes on there.It appears in the British Times Higher Education Supplement, which is generally left-leaning, reflecting the world view of most academics. It tells you what is wrong with Greece, as seen from a particular sector where the Left is dominant.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=420077

It may be the birthplace of the academy, but Greece’s now-dysfunctional higher education system is on its knees and in desperate need of reform, argues George Th. Mavrogordatos. However, the country’s politique du pire and its organised violence threaten the possibility of progress.

In the midst of crisis, Greece needs its universities now more than ever – but Greek universities cannot serve their country. With a new university law in limbo, they are decaying, increasingly paralysed, barely operating. Ideally, they should be spearheading an effective response to the debt crisis, primarily by educating qualified, self-confident and productive young people. Instead, the universities actually look like the most hopeless component of the Greek crisis.

http://173.201.45.43/index.php/pruden/full_column/the_dark_arts_of_race_baiting

Race-baiting is an ugly art. But a struggling candidate is often tempted to practice the dark arts. We’re doomed to see a lot of those dark arts between here and November.

Barack Obama and his friends in the mainstream media, so called, can’t believe that anyone could vote against someone as wonderful as he is (and they are). Only a bigot would vote against such a wonderful president. We’re getting a scary preview of the wrath to come in the reaction to this week’s presidential primary results in Arkansas and Kentucky.

No one has ever suggested that “as Arkansas goes, so goes the nation,” but you might think the 42 percent of the Arkansas primary vote that Mr. Obama didn’t get has rocked the foundations of the republic. That 42 percent in Arkansas is similar – indeed, almost identical – to the vote against Mr. Obama in Kentucky and earlier in West Virginia. Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist, says it’s the result of “race, resentment and fear.” The Klan is coming! The Klan is coming! With tar, feathers and rope.

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2012/5/25/main-feature/1/shavuot-the-stopping-point/e

SUCH A SAD HISTORY….SO MANY HOLIDAYS….BUT WE ARE STILL HERE…..HAPPY SHAVUOT (PRONOUNCED SHVUES IN THE BRONX OF YORE) TO ALL…..RSK

There is always something going on in the Jewish festival calendar. From the fast of the 10th of Tevet (January 5th this year) through Hanukkah (which ends on December 16th) right around to the next fast of the 10th of Tevet on December 23rd, it’s hard to go more than four or five weeks in a row without finding some special day to be observed.
But it wasn’t always so. The Jewish holidays described explicitly in the Torah are not scattered through the year, but occur in just two distinct periods. The key to understanding this is found in the rabbinic name of the festival that begins on Saturday night. We call it Shavuot—in English, it’s the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost—but in rabbinic literature it goes by the name Atzeret.

Colloquially one might translate this name as “stopping.” Rashi, the 11th-century French commentator, in his note to Leviticus 23:36, explains it as meaning “detention.” God, as it were, says to the Israelites, “I have detained you with me,” like (says Rashi) a king who invites his children to feast with him for a certain number of days. When the time comes for them to leave, he says, “Children, please. Stay with me for one more day. I hate to see you go.” But the straightforward explanation is a bit more complicated, and it has to do with the fact that the major festivals are related to one another.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/300864/what-iran-s-rulers-want-clifford-d-may ONE MAY SUBSTITUTE THE WORDS EGYPT, LIBYA, SYRIA, SAUDI ARABIA, YEMEN AND ALL THE ARAB/MOSLEM COUNTRIES FOR IRAN…..   IT’S THE DRIVING FAITH FOR JIHAD….RSK It’s no longer possible to pretend we don’t know the intentions of Iran’s rulers. They are telling us — candidly, clearly, and repeatedly. Most recently last Sunday: Addressing a gathering […]