RUTHFULLY YOURS

Polling has always been as much art as science, as David Cameron’s decisive victory in Britain’s general election reminds us. For months polls had shown a dead heat between the incumbent Prime Minister and his Labour Party challenger. Yet Mr. Cameron emerged Friday with the first Tory majority in Parliament since John Major was swept from office in 1997.

This is a political opportunity for Mr. Cameron, who was forced into an unwieldy coalition with the left-of-center Liberal Democrats when he came to office in 2010. This time Conservatives took 331 seats in the 650-seat parliament, a gain of 28. Labour lost 25 seats, and the Lib Dems were left politically for dead, losing all but eight of their previous 57 seats. The night’s only other winner was the Scottish National Party, which won 56 seats by routing Labour from its old northern strongholds.

Pressures against non-Muslims in Turkey are actually empowered, motivated and even led by state policies.

There also does not seem to be any interest or pluralistic mentality in enforcing non-Islamic laws.

To understand the root cause of social intolerance and institutionalized violence, it is important to look more closely at how Islamic scriptures refer to non-Muslims. These labels and lies, fed to Muslims from earliest childhood, apparently do not go away easily in the minds of indoctrinated Muslims.

The Constitution is not a suicide pact—except maybe in Illinois. On Friday the Illinois Supreme Court struck down modest pension reforms as a violation of the state constitution in a decision that tees up state taxpayers for years of tax increases.

The court ruled unanimously that pensions are inviolable under the plain text of the state constitution, which holds that “Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.”

SALINAS, Calif. — Angie Esteban hadn’t heard of Bruce Jenner before the gold medal Olympian’s “coming out” as a transgender woman on national television.

Now she and Jenner, a television celebrity and stepfather of the reality TV Kardashian sisters, have something in common.

Angie has had her own coming out. It’s taken place over the course of the past few years, an arduous, personal journey — a girl shedding her male skin. It began slowly in middle school and gained speed as a freshman at Salinas High School.

“We cannot bivouac, educate, medicate, and translate for thousands of noncitizens from afar. We cannot provide incomes for them. We cannot hire them, at the expense of the ailing economy and our 50-plus million unemployed and underemployed citizenry.”

A couple of days ago, in the wake of the 7.8 magnitude temblor and some 100 aftershocks in Nepal affecting thousands of ancient structures, temples, and homes, senior statesman Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) dropped some happy-talk to listeners.

(NB: We were fortunate to have visited this once-isolated, Buddhist/Hindu/animist civilization well before the current earthquake, and our memories are still firm in evoking its splendors and naïve beauty. We ‘summated’ Base camp Everest, too, before we turned around.)

‘Why don’t we bring a few thousand of these displaced persons over here from Kathmandu, and when their city is up and running again, they can go back…?’ Schumer wanted to know. His amen minions applauded prettily, not querying the deeply ignorant premises of this suggestion.

Hillary Clinton: We knew her as a grim, charmless harridan; a pear-shaped harpy. Now, after reading Peter Schweizer’s new book, Clinton Cash (HarperCollins, New York, May 2015), we see the ultimate Hillary, one of the world’s truly scary women. Think Lady Macbeth, Messalina, Evita. Add Bill to the sordid picture and you have Bonnie and Clyde– elected to high office, and lionized all over the world.

We know about Hillary’s thousands of missing e-mails and unaccountable donors. What may be less known is how the Clinton double-scam works. Take, first of all, the so-called Clinton Foundation, whose stated purpose is “to strengthen the capacity of people throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence,” whatever that means. Founded in 2001, when Bill had just left office, it boasts a staff of 350, mostly Clinton cronies and insiders.

Once liberated from the White House, Bill hit the lecture circuit, collecting $105.5 million dollars through 2012 and raising hundreds of millions of dollars for the Clinton Foundation. Significantly, his biggest payments came not from sources in the United States but from foreign investors, businesses and governments…hungry for access to the corridors of American power.

The next deadline for an agreement between the P5+1 nations and Iran over its ‎nuclear program is June 30. As with prior deadlines, the next one can be extended ‎a few days to iron out “final” details as occurred with the prior March 31 deadline, ‎or rolled over a few more months if significant gaps remain. This was what ‎occurred with earlier rounds of the talks, and may well describe what occurred ‎after the last round of talks concluded, despite the happy talk from both sides as ‎they left Switzerland. In any case, the actions of the Obama administration, the U.S. ‎Congress, and Iran in the five weeks since the last round of talks ended, make it ‎fairly clear that the dynamic in place since the talks began has not been ‎fundamentally altered.

The term “suspension of disbelief” – coined in 1817 by the philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge – refers to a willingness to suspend one’s critical faculties and believe the unbelievable; sacrificing reality, common sense, doubt and complexity on the altar of a pretend reality, convenience and oversimplification; infusing a semblance of truth into an untrue narrative.

Suspension of disbelief characterized the 1977-79 President Carter policy toward Iran, energizing Ayatollah Khomeini, ignoring or underestimating his track record and his radical, supremacist and violent worldview. The betrayal of the Shah transformed Teheran from “the US policeman in the Gulf” to the worst enemy of the US.

Currently, the suspension of disbelief undermines the US posture of deterrence and vital US national security and commercial interests. It was demonstrated by President Obama, who – irrespective of Middle East reality – referred to the brutally-intolerant, terror-driven, anti-US, anti-infidel, repressive, tumultuous Arab Tsunami as the Arab Spring “casting off the burdens of the past,” “a story of self determination,” “a democratic upheaval,” “a peaceful opposition,” “rejection of political violence” and “a transition toward (multi-sectarian, multi-ethnic) democracy.”

YATIR FOREST, Israel — As Californians struggle with an ever-worsening water shortage caused by a historic drought, they might look east for a solution — to the Middle East.

Israel, subject to intermittent droughts for decades, has pioneered a number of water-saving techniques. It long ago figured out how to grow crops in the desert and for decades has advised the developing world on how to manage scarce water resources.

Now, Israel is eager to share its latest know-how with drought-ridden states like California. These helpful techniques include water quotas, desalination plants and the reuse of household wastewater.

Six years ago when Israel was in the grips of its own dire drought, the government actually considered shipping in water from Turkey — more than 1,000 nautical miles away. Instead, the country embarked on a coordinated effort of recycling used water, desalination and education.

The notion that a rape victim deserved to be raped because she was wearing a tight outfit lights up all our red lights.This is the case first and foremost because it absolves the rapist of responsibility for his crime.

We are also disgusted by attempts to blame the victim for her victimization because they are substantively false. If men are more likely to rape women in tight clothing then rape should be all but non-existent in traditional Islamic societies. Yet the opposite is the case. Rape and sexual abuse are endemic to such societies. According to the UN, a whopping 99.3 percent of Egyptian women report having suffered sexual abuse.
There is a third, more general reason that we recoil from the thought of blaming rape victims for their suffering. One of the foundations of liberal societies has always been that victims of aggression are not to blame for their attackers’ behavior.

Over the past few days, we have witnessed a dangerous erosion of this principle among American elites.
Last Sunday two Islamic terrorists armed with assault rifles tried to massacre participants at a Muhammed cartoon drawing contest in Garland, Texas.