RUTHFULLY YOURS

This statement is so apposite to the pseudo campaign of Donald Trump….and the appeal of Carson and Fiorina….rsk

“Mr Corbyn has spent his political life as an unofficial leader of what Mark Steyn once called the National Coalition Against Anything That Works. Now he is obliged to offer proposals that have to work. Instead, all we are hearing are platitudes about “making the world a better place”. It is time to make the case for professional politics, but for that to be credible, the professionals will have to stop behaving like a confederacy of rule-bending opportunists. ”

Self-serving, rule-bending MPs have a lot to answer for after the rise of Jeremy Corbyn Disgust with our political class made the new Labour leader’s ‘authenticity’ the be-all and end-all of his insurgent campaign.

When exactly did “professional” become a term of abuse for politicians? Or, put that another way: why is running the country the only job in which being unprofessional is considered to be a virtue?

The opposite of “professional” is “amateur”. Would you really want an amateur prime minister presiding over an amateur government that ran an amateur economic policy and an amateur system of national security? I doubt it. Maybe you would trust a doctor who crowdsourced his diagnoses and asked laymen to offer possible treatments. Again, I doubt it. Perhaps you would consider handing over your worldly affairs to a lawyer or a financial adviser who appealed to the public for solutions to your problems. I’m inclined to think not.

Of course, democratic politics is different from the learned professions – or even the skilled trades. It is not supposed to be an arcane expertise in which only the initiated can participate. The power over how people are governed should belong to them, and that power should not require specialist qualifications or technical knowledge. That principle is, supposedly, what Jeremy voice-of-the-people Corbyn’s brand of party leadership is about. This can have a kind of plausibility.

http://jamieglazov.com/2015/09/19/daniel-greenfield-on-the-real-meaning-of-allahu-akbar-on-the-glazov-gang-2/

One of the Glazov Gang’s most popular episodes was joined by Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the editor of Frontpage’s blog, The Point.

Daniel discussed The Real Meaning of ‘Allahu Akbar’, explaining why you should be suspicious of the translation the media provides after every Jihadi attack.

Daniel also focused on Why Jihadists Lust for Their Own Death, How Islam is Different, Why Obama is Helping Iran Get the Bomb, What’s Behind Obama’s Bullying of Israel, Measuring Obama vs. Putin, and much, much more.

Did you miss this BLOCKBUSTER episode?

Here it is below:

I like Jake Tapper, but I already was ready to punch him in the ear over the “let’s you and him fight” structure of the debate questions last week when he abandoned all pretense of adulthood and asked the candidates what they’d like their Secret Service codenames to be. It was a low, cringe-inducing moment, and the candidates made it lower and cringier with their answers. (“Trueheart”? “Justice Never Sleeps”? Ergh.) Marco Rubio just barely acquitted himself with “Gator,” but the correct answer was: “That’s a dumb question, Jake, and I am not going to answer it. Now, back to Iran . . .”

Here’s my question, which nobody ever really asks: “Given that a small number of federal expenditures — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, national security, and interest on the debt — typically constitute about 80 percent of all federal spending, and given that we not going to cut non-defense discretionary spending to zero, there is no mathematically plausible way to balance the budget without: 1) cutting spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and/or national security; and/or 2) raising taxes. So, what’s it going to be: spending cuts in popular programs, higher taxes, or deficits forever? And before you give your answer, I’d like you all to know that standing behind each of you is a man with a Taser and instructions to use it on the first person whose answer relies on the Growth Fairy — lookin’ at you, Jeb — or the Waste, Fraud, and Abuse Fairy. Go.”

I have had the opportunity to put that question privately to a fairly large number of Republican grandees, including some on that debate stage, and I have never received a truly persuasive answer. If any of the 2016 gang would like to provide one, I am sure that National Review would love to see it.

The State Department has made a number of pledges of transparency lately. What’s mainly clear so far is that these pledges don’t actually translate into much in the way of … well, transparency.

In my previous post, [1] that observation applied to State’s appointment of a “Transparency Coordinator,” a move apparently meant to cope with the rigors of officially revisiting Hillary Clinton’s emails. This time, the non-transparent pledge of transparency involves a State Department briefing on the Iran nuclear deal.

Some background on background briefings: One hallmark of the nuclear negotiating process , as the Iran talks dragged on for almost 17 months, past three extended deadlines, was the ritual of anonymous U.S. senior administration officials providing background briefings to the press. Of course the reporters on the scene were privy to who those officials were, but to be admitted to such briefings you must play by the rules — and the rules were that the public was not to be told who those officials actually were.

It’s been an unusual week for Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old high-school freshman from suburban Dallas who aspires to be an engineer. On Monday, as the Dallas Morning News reports, he brought to school a digital clock he’d built himself:

He showed it to his engineering teacher first thing Monday morning and didn’t get quite the reaction he’d hoped for.

“He was like, ‘That’s really nice,’ ” Ahmed said. “‘I would advise you not to show any other teachers.’”

He kept the clock inside his school bag in English class, but the teacher complained when the alarm beeped in the middle of a lesson. Ahmed brought his invention up to show her afterward.

“She was like, it looks like a bomb,” he said.

“I told her, ‘It doesn’t look like a bomb to me.’ ”

The teacher kept the clock. When the principal and a police officer pulled Ahmed out of sixth period, he suspected he wouldn’t get it back.

They led Ahmed into a room where four other police officers waited. He said an officer he’d never seen before leaned back in his chair and remarked: “Yup. That’s who I thought it was.”

The cops interrogated him, handcuffed him, took him to a juvenile jail, fingerprinted him, and released him to his parents’ custody. The school suspended him for three days. Dan Cummings, the principal of MacArthur High, issued a statement to parents that “said Irving police had ‘responded to a suspicious-looking item on campus’ and had determined that ‘the item . . . did not pose a threat to your child’s safety.’ ”

By Wednesday, Ahmed was famous. The hashtag #IStandWithAhmed trended on Twitter, and the young man received invitations to visit the headquarters of Google, Facebook and the executive branch of the U.S. government. “Cool clock, Ahmed,” tweeted Barack Obama. “Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.”

Well, good for Ahmed. The teachers at MacArthur High and the Irving police certainly deserve criticism for overreaction and heavy-handedness. But the story has also been put into the service of a pernicious myth about “Islamophobia.” From the Morning News article:

While the Middle East remains a hotbed for terrorists, we’ve got our own jihad training compounds set up in rural areas across the United States. They are run by an organization called Muslims of America (MOA). Law enforcement describes these compounds as “classically structured terrorist cells.”

If you visit the MOA website, you’ll get a hefty dose of taqiyya. The home page has an image of a large American flag along with a banner advertising one of their offshoot organizations called the United Muslim Christian Forum. The goal of this bogus group is to find common ground between Muslims and Christians, including mutual hatred of Jews. The web site also features a slick 16-minute propaganda video.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from what the MOA is publically peddling is the non-taqiyya version of who they are. Otherwise known as the truth.

Let’s start with the founder: El Sheikh Gilani. Prior to MOA, he founded Jamaat ul-Fuqra, a Pakistani terror organization. MOA is the American version of ul-Fuqra.

Gilani is also the man Daniel Pearl had set out to interview on that fateful day when Pearl was kidnapped. (May Daniel’s soul rest in peace.)

There can be no doubt that Americans are fortunate enough to be governed by a brilliantly conceived Constitution drafted by remarkable, intelligent men. Unfortunately, too many Americans are utterly ignorant of what it contains and how it impacts on their lives. Voter ignorance on this and so much else contributes to the ease with which the media manipulates public opinion into believing things which are not so. In this they play into the hands of a childishly narcissistic president who despises the values upon which our country was based, a man who repeatedly pokes our allies and us in the eyes to show that he can deeply offend without penalty.

1) The appalling ignorance of American voters.

A recent survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania found that a majority of Americans are unaware of what is considered basic knowledge of the Constitution.

This information, which was released Wednesday, comes on the cusp of the 228th anniversary of Constitution Day (Sept. 17).

Here are some of the most surprising findings from the survey

• 1 in 3 Americans believe the Bill of Rights guarantees the right to home ownership.

• 1 in 4 Americans believe the Bill of Rights guarantees “equal pay for equal work.”

• 1 in 3 Americans (31 percent) could name all three branches of the U.S. government and 32 percent could not identify a single branch.

• 1 in 4 Americans (28 percent) believe a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling is sent back to either Congress for reconsideration or to the lower courts for another decision.

• 1 in 10 Americans (12 percent) believe the Bill of Rights guarantees the right to own a pet.

• 25 percent of respondents agreed that “it might be better to do away with the court altogether” if it started making a lot of rulings most Americans disagreed with.

• 26 percent said when Congress disagrees with the Supreme Court’s decisions, it should pass legislation saying the court can no longer rule on that issue.

• 26 percent favored requiring a person to testify against himself in court.

Renowned New York attorney Sandor (Sandy) Frankel, one of four trustees of the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, was in Israel earlier this month to look at additional philanthropic options and to observe the progress of those endeavors already funded – to the tune of multi-millions.

Frankel, who recently joined the prestigious Park Avenue law firm Otterbourg P.C., met with Israeli politicians and other bigwigs to get a sense from them about which projects in the country need the most attention.

Over the course of the last seven years or so, the Helmsley Trust has donated in the ballpark of $145 million in grants (out of overall assets of over $5 billion) to works in and related to the Jewish state. Among these are: a joint grant to the Technion and the Weizmann Institute for alternative-energy research ($15 million); multi-million-dollar grants to the Weizmann Institute for stem-cell research and a sophisticated MRI for Crohn’s disease diagnosis; a new blood bank for Magen David Adom ($8 million); a grant to Haifa University for a Mediterranean Sea research center ($7 million); funding for an underground facility that converts a parking garage at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa into a 2,000-bed, bomb-proof facility for war-time ($5 million); the Jerusalem Press Club facilities in Mishkenot Sha’ananim; Birthright trips; and a grant for a robotics project at Ben-Gurion University in the Negev ($6.3 million).

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Liver cancer treatment gets on the fast track. The FDA has granted fast track designation to the CF102 treatment from Israel’s Can-Fite BioPharma for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common form of liver cancer. A CF102 trial is about to start on 78 patients with Child-Pugh Class B cirrhosis, who failed the only FDA approved treatment on the market – Nexavar.
http://biotuesdays.com/2015/09/17/can-fite-gets-fda-fast-track-for-liver-cancer-drug/

A smarter bed. Israel’s EarlySense is launching its “smart bed” solution myEarlySense. The “under the mattress” sensors record data on how you are sleeping, such as tossing, turning, waking, sleeping, breathing and heart rates. It can also turn on heaters and make the coffee.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/smart-bed-lets-you-sleep-better-and-makes-coffee-too/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZPRv6BAeJs

South Africa buys Israeli virus testing system. Israel’s Ilex Medical has won a tender issued by the South African National Blood Service (SANBS) for its Panther blood testing systems to detect and identify viruses.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-ilex-medical-wins-huge-south-african-tender-1001068697

IBM and Teva team up to find chronic treatments. IBM Israel has granted Israel’s Teva access to its Watson supercomputing Health Cloud program. Teva plans to use the global technology platform to design treatments for millions of people who suffer from chronic conditions like asthma, migraine, and pain.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-teva-ibm-partnership-to-seek-big-data-health-solutions-1001068493

Opening up a new strategy for HIV. Technion scientists have discovered that when the HIV virus encounters resistance, it looks for detours. It then mutates and replicates itself, like a Trojan horse, exploiting redundancy in the DNA of host cells. http://www.technion.ac.il/en/2015/08/new-strategy-for-hiv/

Detecting cancer using nanopores. Further to a previous (15 Mar 2015) newsletter, scientists from Israel’s Technion are the only team working for European research consortium BeyondSeq on early diagnosis of cancer. They are using tiny silicon “nanopore” scanners to detect molecular DNA biomarkers in cancer cells.
http://pard.technion.ac.il/2015/09/09/researchers-use-nanopore-scanners-to-find-early-signs-of-cancer/
http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/193312_en.html

Genetic test for BRONJ. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Micromedic Technologies, has identified several new genetic markers for predicting BRONJ (necrosis of the jawbone). BRONJ is a side effect of intravenous treatments in cancer and osteoporosis patients.
http://www.bio-light.co.il/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/BRONJ-PR-clean-updated.pdf
http://biotuesdays.com/2015/08/31/biolight-unit-identifies-bronj-genetic-markers/

Microneedles deliver vital vaccines. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s NanoPass Technologies is supplying its MicronJet600 microneedle system to US-based Immune Design who will use the system to deliver vaccines to cancer immunotherapy patients.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nanopass-technologies-to-supply-micronjet600-device-to-immune-design-for-use-in-zvex-based-oncology-immunotherapy-products-525620521.html

Israel ranks 6th in Healthy Life Expectancy. (TY Atid-EDI) The World Health Organization (WHO) ranks Israel 6th in the world, with the average Israeli living without a terminal illness to age 71.5. Israeli men have the world’s fourth longest total life expectancy of 80.2 years. For women, Israel is ranked tenth with a total life expectancy of 84 years. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4696329,00.html

IBM Haifa’s diagnostic apps. More about the app developed by IBM Haifa to diagnose ADHD sufferers (see Sep 6 2015 newsletter). It won top prize at the Brain Inspired Technology for Education (BITE) Hackathon at Israel’s Technion Institute. Also describes IBM Haifa’s dementia early-detection app (Aug 9 2015 newsletter).
http://www.israel21c.org/diagnostic-apps-for-adhd-dementia/

SENATORS UP FOR RE-ELECTION IN 2016

DEMOCRATS

Michael Bennet (Colorado)
Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut)
Barbara Boxer (California) retiring in 2016
Patrick Leahy (Vermont)
Barbara Mikulski (Maryland) retiring in 2016
Patty Murray (Washington)
Harry Reid (Nevada) retiring in 2016
Brian Schatz (Hawaii)
Charles Schumer (New York)…..Voted against the Iran Nuke Deal, but against an amendment that would have required Iran to recognize Israel and release Americans held in Iran before getting sanctions relief from the United States.
Ron Wyden (Oregon)