RUTHFULLY YOURS

By all accounts, the Pope is a man who cares deeply for the world’s poor. But he is less sound when it comes to matters of history and economics.

Like any vocation, capitalism is a pyramid, with a few successful people at the top. It is like an army or a ship, where there is one commander. It is similar to sports and entertainment. Just as there is only one CEO at a company, there is only one Kobe Bryant and one Taylor Swift. There is only one Pope. By definition, success reflects inequality – in aspiration, talent, effort and luck. Equality of opportunity is a worthy goal. Equality in outcomes is not possible. It cannot be otherwise. Those on the left who scream loudest about inequality are themselves often at the pinnacle of a career – a success they would not have had in a flat society.

“Inequality” is a political “hot-button” word. It plays well in societies addicted to sound-bites and with people who lack perspective. What exactly do the words “inequality” and “redistribution,” and the phrase “fairness economy” really mean? Humpty Dumpty provided an answer when he said to Alice, “When I use a word it means exactly what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” Humpty Dumpty was referring to “glory,” but one may substitute any number of words whose definitions, in their ambiguity, are convenient for hedging politicians and moral relativists.

Last year, Barack Obama ordered that five bloodthirsty terrorist masterminds be traded to the Taliban for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, whose desertion and possible traitorous activity had been known by the White House prior to the exchange. The White House staged a photo-op at the White House with Bergdahl’s parents and sent Susan Rice out to the media to portray Bergdahl as a soldier who served with honor and dignity.

Monday, the White House signed a controversial nuclear deal with the Iranian regime that Obama celebrated as a historic achievement (Munich was historic; Pearl Harbor; 9/11 were all historic, too). Left behind were 4 innocent American hostages imprisoned by the regime for years. On Wednesday, CBS White House correspondent, Major Garrett asked about them. Barack Obama, the snarkiest most thin-skinned president in American history lashed out — not at the Iranians but at the temerity of Garrett for daring to ask him the question.

More important than planning for combat is planning for the strengthening of democracies.

We cannot make democracies out of Iraq or Libya or Syria, but when democratic countries are united, the world becomes a safer place for all.

“In a volatile region so vital to the U.S., where other states cannot be relied upon, it would be foolish to disengage — or denigrate — an ally such as Israel. The war against terrorists and the states that harbor and support them will be long and hard, and success will depend in no small measure on the allies who stand with us and with whom we stand.” — JINSA

Perhaps you think the war is over. Perhaps you think that if Iran becomes a “friend” of the United States and the possibility of an American-led war against the Islamic Republic recedes, the need for a militarily capable ally such as Israel also recedes. Maybe the U.S. doesn’t want to associate with the “militaristic” Jewish State. That’s quite possible from the vantage point of July 2015 and if you think the only reason to befriend anyone is for the military advantages it brings to the relationship.

File this under “it doesn’t make much difference bu it’s nice to know”….as a mother of two sons who love The Yankees….rsk

With the 2015 baseball season hitting the mid-way point, the Ledger takes its annual look at how the Jewish boys of summer are faring on the field this year. (Statistics are as of July 12, 2015).

1.Scott Wynne Feldman (p)
Houston Astros – DL 5/27/2015
Born: February 7, 1983
Birthplace: Kailua, Hawaii
Team: Houston Astros
Position: Starting Pitcher
Number: 46
Bats: Left
Throws: Right
Season ERA: 4.80
Season SO: 37
Season Record: 4-4
Career ERA: 4.49
Career SO: 709
Career Record: 63-72
Experience: 10 Years
Feldman ended the 2014 season with the lowest ERA of his career at 3.74. He won the 2014 Darryl Kile Good Guy Award voted by the Houston Baseball Writers Association.

2.Joc Russell Pederson (of)
Los Angeles Dodgers
Born: April 21, 1992
Birthplace: Palo Alto, CA
Team: LA Dodgers
Position: CF
Number: 31
Bats: Left
Throws: Left
Season Avg: .230
Season HR: 20
Season RBI: 40
Career Avg: .223
Career HR: 20
Career RBI: 40
Experience: 1 Year
Joc was drafted in the 11th round of the 2010 draft by the Dodgers. His father Stu also played for the Dodgers in 1985. In 2013 he played for Team Israel in the qualifying rounds of the World Baseball Classic. While in the minors in 2014, he was voted the MVP of the Pacific Coast League. He made his major league debut on September 1, 2014. When the Dodgers traded Matt Kemp, Joc became their center field starter. He was selected to the 2015 MLB All Star Game and finished second in the Home Run Derby. He replaced Matt Holliday as the starting center fielder in the All-Star Game. He was the first Dodgers rookie to start in an All-Star Game.

“Truth and reason are eternal,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to Rev. Samuel Knox in 1810. “They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail…” Jefferson was wrong. As the current media pack coverage of the 20th anniversary of the “Srebrenica massacre” indicates, his belief that “error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it” was somewhat naive.

It is noteworthy that “Srebrenica” in the mainstream media discourse is no longer a geographic location that needs to be preceded by a noun (“the massacre in…”). It has been developed into a stand-alone term that denotes horror, on par with “Auschwitz,” “Katyn,” or “Hiroshima.” In reality, unlike those very real horrors, it is a postmodern myth based on a distortion of facts and their willful omission.

The uncensored truth about why Sharia is devouring a civilization.

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Ingrid Carlqvist, Editor-in-Chief of Dispatch International, and Nima Gholam Ali Pour, a Sweden Democrat Politician. They discussed how Muslim immigration and the West’s willful blindness are defeating a continent.

To watch the video:

http://jamieglazov.com/2015/07/14/how-islam-is-conquering-europe-on-the-glazov-gang/

During Obama’s sales pitch for the Iran deal, he lost his place, lost his temper and lost an opportunity to convince those who were not with him.

After the thunderstorm of criticism launched almost immediately after the Iran deal was announced on Tuesday, July 14, President Barack Obama held a press conference the next day, in an effort to quell the storm and sell the deal.

It did not really work.

For one thing, after a brief, assertive pitch in which Obama relayed “yesterday’s historic, comprehensive” deal, accomplished with “our allies…and partners” – more on that word* below – the deal “cuts off all pathways to Iran’s nuclear weapons program.” The president reiterated the same points he made at the press conference announcing the deal, and then he opened it up to selected media representatives for questions.

If you’ve been reading the NY Times for the past month, you’d be forgiven for believing that transgender people have been living in North Korea instead of in America. There has been little or no mention of the numerous transgender people who are doctors, teachers or professors living solid upper middle-class lives with little distinction from the lives they lived prior to their sex change.

The poster girl the Times picked for their nearly full-page editorial – “The Struggle of Transgender Workers,” (july 9th) is a masculine Puerto Rican man dressed as a woman in what looks like a Halloween fright wig and a dreadful dress. The Times mentions that Elaine Mendus, as she calls herself, studied at Indiana University in Pennsylvania but not that she has a degree, so the fact that she has difficulty in finding a job is understandable on many levels. If a hetero man without a college degree chose to wear a tee shirt and jeans when he went for job interviews, we wouldn’t classify his failure to get hired as discrimination. Similarly, a man who has not begun any medical transitioning, dressed as weird-looking woman might not be hired even by a transgender employer who took pride in her own appearance and that of her employees. An employment coach gave Ms. Mendus good advice to go on interviews as a man using the name that corresponded with her other papers; somehow this is reported as if it showed a lack of insight instead of a constructive attempt to be helpful.

The Obama administration has just reached an agreement with a jihadist, aspiring nuclear nation that is in an unofficial state of war with the United States, granting that nation massive, nearly immediate economic benefits without ending either its jihad or its nuclear program. This is what President Obama calls victory. History will likely view it as a catastrophe.

Make no mistake, the current Iranian regime has been waging a nearly continual, low-intensity military conflict with the United States since 1979, when it seized the American embassy in Tehran and held more than 50 Americans hostage for 444 days. Since then it has engineered terror attacks in Beirut and Saudi Arabia that killed hundreds of Americans, engaged in open hostilities against American warships in the Persian Gulf, and planned and directed deadly attacks on American troops in Iraq. Its unstinting support for the Afghan Taliban continues unabated to this very day.

“This is more than a bad deal. President Obama has betrayed the American people by agreeing to the kind of agreement with an enemy of the United States that he said he would not agree to. It is vital that Congress hold the president to his original promises by rejecting this agreement on a strong bipartisan basis and send a signal to the world that if a Republican is elected president in 2016, this deal will be declared null and void on his or her first day in office.”

There’s a confusing debate underway on the merits of the new nuclear agreement with Iran announced today. The Obama administration and its supporters are praising the accord as a historic achievement for world peace. The president’s critics claim it is a terrible agreement that will bolster the nuclear program of a state sponsor of terror. Both sides are throwing around nuclear terminology, timelines, and minutiae about the agreement.

How to make sense of this? I believe best way is to judge this agreement against President Obama’s own statements.

In 2007, when he was beginning his run for president, Senator Obama told a conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that “the world must work to stop Iran’s uranium-enrichment program.”