RUTHFULLY YOURS

A new poll’s disturbing findings on the growing antipathy toward Israel

First, the good news. Recent polling conducted in February by Gallup suggests that Americans are overwhelmingly supportive of Israel and by wide margins. Seventy percent of Americans rate Israel very or mostly favorably. By contrast, only 17% of Americans rate Palestinians favorably. When asked if they sympathize more with Israel or the Palestinians, 62% of the respondents said they sympathize with Israel while only 16% said they sympathized with the Palestinians. The remainder sympathized with neither side or had no opinion on the matter

When broken down along party allegiance however, the disparity between Republican and Democratic Party members becomes more pronounced. An astounding 83% of those who sympathized more with Israel were Republicans, 59% were Independents and only 48% were Democrats.

The “sanctuary city” movement that gave illegal aliens permission to rob, rape, and murder Americans is the product of decades of concerted collusion by radical groups like the ACLU to get cities to pledge to violate laws that protect U.S. national security.

Cheered on by the Left, sanctuary cities frustrate immigration enforcement efforts and shield illegal aliens from federal officials as a matter of policy.

The Obama administration is fine with that. President Obama has made America a sanctuary country, rolling out the red carpet for illegal aliens, especially those from Mexico, to come to the U.S. and depress labor markets while they suck the nation’s welfare state dry.

Stanley Kurtz predicted all this in his book which I reviewed in 2012:

Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities (Interview with Stanley Kurtz) by Ruth King
Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/spreading-the-wealth-how-obama-is-robbing-the-suburbs-to-pay-for-the-cities-interview-with-stanley-kurtz#ixzz3fOA1jGBO

Today, HUD Secretary Julian Castro announced the finalization of the Obama administration’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule. A front-page article preemptively defending the move appears in today’s Washington Post. The final rule is 377 pages, vastly longer than the preliminary version of the rule promulgated in 2013.

AFFH is easily one of President Obama’s most radical initiatives, on a par with Obamacare in its transformative potential. In effect, AFFH gives the federal government a lever to re-engineer nearly every American neighborhood — imposing a preferred racial and ethnic composition, densifying housing, transportation, and business development in suburb and city alike, and weakening or casting aside the authority of local governments over core responsibilities, from zoning to transportation to education. Not only the policy but the political implications are immense — at the presidential, congressional, state, and local levels.

Global warming hysterics wonder why so many people don’t take them–or their cause–all that seriously.

Case in point, an unintentionally hilarious column in The Guardian shouting that we are all going to die from global warming. From, “It’s Too Late to Save Our World,” by Stewart Lee:

Everything will die soon, except for cockroaches, and Glastonbury favourite the Fall, who will survive even a nuclear holocaust, though they will still refuse to play their 80s chart hits.

Everything? Really? Yes.

The destruction of all life on Earth is inevitable if fossil fuel use continues unabated.

Quite a large number seem to learn little of any lasting value, according to Arum and Roksa in Academically Adrift. That’s bad enough, but some students appear to be absorbing some truly cancerous ideas on campus. They’re learning how to use raucous protest and administrative procedures to harass and silence anyone who dares to disagree with their preconceived ideas. What they seem to expect college to do is to reinforce their beliefs rather than challenge them.

That is the argument FIRE president Greg Lukianoff makes in his chapter in a splendid new book The State of the American Mind, edited by Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow. In this week’s Pope Center Clarion Call, I write about this growing problem.

In the end, it would have made no difference which way Greece voted. The country is bankrupt, not only financially, but morally and politically. They are proof that you cannot go on spending more money than you take in. Greece is a manifestation that redistribution policies, whether from Socialism or an overly generous welfare state, do not work. No matter the form of government, its costs fall on the backs of the people. In a democracy, the people can vote for change, but when the majority receives more than they give, the end game heaves into sight.

The problem for the West with Greece is less the economic consequences, or even the ideological ones, than the geo-political changes that could evolve. Of particular concerns are the possibility of a return to authoritarianism – either from the right or the left – and, second, the relationship of Greece to Russia. Keep in mind; crises are not wasted by opportunists, and Putin is an opportunist.

Last week’s shooting death on San Francisco’s Pier 14 should finally oblige officials from so-called sanctuary cities to seriously reflect on their reckless and irresponsible alien-harboring policies. It’s hoped they now appreciate that, yes, providing “sanctuary” from federal immigration enforcement can have negative consequences. With major media now finally reporting on killings committed by illegal aliens, the pressure may be mounting on enablers like San Francisco mayor Edwin Lee to put an end to the immigration anarchy in their cities.

The term “sanctuary cities” generally refers to places that, through an act, ordinance, or policy, limit their police forces in assisting federal immigration authorities seeking to apprehend and remove illegal aliens. Even though these policies are illegal under federal law, hundreds of municipalities have adopted such measures.

When local jurisdictions shield aliens wanted by the feds, the aliens can commit more crimes.

The Kathryn Steinle murder case in San Francisco is a tragic but textbook example of the public-safety problems that are created when local governments obstruct immigration enforcement by adopting so-called sanctuary policies. The man who has admitted killing Steinle, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, is an illegal alien who has been deported five times and racked up seven felony convictions. ICE had started the deportation process, but San Francisco asked for custody of Sanchez to pursue prior drug charges. These were dropped, and in early April, instead of turning him back over to ICE for deportation, the San Francisco sheriff’s department released Sanchez, in keeping with the city’s longstanding sanctuary policies, without notification to ICE. Less than three months later, Sanchez shot and killed Kathryn Steinle.

This tragedy was not an isolated incident; sanctuary policies are one of the most serious challenges facing ICE. More than 300 jurisdictions now refuse to turn over criminal aliens to ICE.

According to ICE records, from January 1 to August 31, 2014, more than 8,100 deportable aliens were released after arrest in approximately 300 local sanctuary jurisdictions, even though ICE had issued a detainer seeking custody in advance of deporting them. Some 62 percent of these offenders had a prior criminal history, like Sanchez. Roughly 3,000 were felons, as was Sanchez.

Barbarians at the gate usually don’t bring down once-successful civilizations. Nor does climate change. Even mass epidemics such as the plague that decimated sixth-century Byzantium do not necessarily destroy a culture.

Far more dangerous are institutionalized corruption, a lack of transparency, and creeping neglect of existing laws. All the German euros in the world will not save Greece if Greeks continue to dodge taxes, featherbed government, and see corruption as a business model.

Even obeying so-called minor laws counts. It is no coincidence that a country where drivers routinely flout traffic laws and throw trash out the window is also a country that cooks its books and lies to its creditors. Everything from littering to speeding seems negotiable in Athens in a way not true of Munich, Zurich, or London.

The New York Times is very keen that somebody, anybody, “lend” Greece more money so that it can stay in the eurozone a bit longer.

I put scare quotes around the word “lend” because, as everyone knows, any money that is shoveled into Athens’s coffers will be spent and not repaid. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” advised Polonius, “for loan oft loseth both itself and friend, and borrowing dulleth the edge of husbandry.” Shakespeare is not popular by the Piraeus.

No, Greece faces what the economist Steve Moore, writing yesterday in the Wall Street Journal [1], called “financial oblivion.” There are about 11 million Greeks. They owe some $350 billion.