RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Let Democrats try to explain to Jewish supporters why they oppose telling jihadist Iran that it must accept Israel; let Democrats try to explain to the country why they want to accommodate — on nuclear weapons, of all things — a totalitarian theocracy that remains a lifeline for anti-American terrorism.”

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417808/corker-bill-will-not-block-obamas-iran-deal-andrew-c-mccarthy

Republicans’ effort to do something is born of frustration.

I’m in Gomorrah by the Potomac this weekend at the National Review Institute’s Ideas Summit. As you’d expect, one of the ideas coming in for a good deal of scrutiny is the Corker bill — the legislation proposed by Senator Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) that purports to give Congress an opportunity to review President Obama’s imminent, disastrous nuclear deal with Iraq.

As a New Yorker, I have as my default setting: stay out of Washington. But defaults are made to be broken. From a comfortable remote, it is too easy a thing to dismiss this place as a lost cause for conservatives. From up close, though, it is plain to see that many of the bad ideas that come out of Washington — which often seems like a bad-idea assembly line — result from the frustration of doing battle, day in and day out, with both a destructive presidential administration and a Democratic party that has been commandeered by the hard Left. The Corker bill is one of those bad ideas.

As I recount in Faithless Execution, the framers had a prescient fear of ideological factions. They understood that factions would be more intent on acquiring power and imposing their pieties than on preserving the Constitution’s meticulous separation of powers, the design that guards against accumulation of tyrannical power by any single governmental component. To function properly, the officials in each separate branch must defend their powers from encroachments by the other branches — a legislator, for example, must be incentivized to defend the institution of Congress from executive usurpations. The movement Left, however, is most interested in imposing its agenda; it thus shifts power to whatever branch has the best potential to do that — which is the presidency when it is held by a leftist.

While the Obama Administration continues their pressure on Israel [2], for at least Joe Biden, it is not the first time that there has been animosity with an Israeli leader. The reality is that while some of the names change, this conflict is about Israel’s refusal to surrender to a Palestinian Arab enemy who seeks to destroy the Jewish nation.

The United States is wrong to pressure Israel – yet, this too shall pass.

History often repeats itself.

“Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”

How can any Israeli just not be charmed by good ole’ Joe Biden? Time and again, especially when courting Jewish voters or when appearing on behalf of his boss Barack Obama before Jewish audiences, America’s Vice President has ebulliently let us know that some of his best friends are Zionists.

He has even famously stated: “I am a Zionist.” He instantly then added straight-faced: “You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist.” We might never have grasped this elusive truth, had he not enlightened us.

Bernie Sanders’s wife involved in real estate scam?March 27th, 2015

Socialism, as they say, works until you run out of other people’s money. That appears to have happened to Jane Sanders, the wife of Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders.

The story is banal. A woman who has her job because of her husband’s clout finagles a credulous state agency into accepting bogus financial documents. Real estate is purchased. The fraud is discovered. The wife of the powerful man is paid a lot of money to leave. Everyone else is ruined.

Movie Concept and Treatment for a screenplay. The Mobs have taken over the World. The leaders of the World have caved in, surrendered.

We never know who The Mobs are, never see them, but hear them trampling across the globe, people of all shapes and colors expressing their grievances from country to country through acts of the most unspeakable violence. There is no one around to stop them.

Cops have been told to “stand down,” to retreat before The Mobs. (As in real life in real Baltimore.)

TIGHT on President Tom Hanks. He is in LA, speaking at The Academy Awards, but also addressing the world.

Hanks: “The Mayor of Baltimore did not misspeak. She was correct. What happened is not her fault.”

http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2015/05/01/10-books-to-celebrate-the-socialist-holiday-of-may-day/

May 1 marks what is known as May Day, a celebration of international workers chosen by the socialists and Communists of the Second International to recognize the Haymarket affair in Chicago’s Haymarket Square of May 1886.In order to ring in the holiday, we thought it apt to share 10 books on socialism and Communism and their impact on mankind.

1) The Marx-Engels Reader by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

This book contains the core works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which provide the intellectual basis for socialism and Communism.

2) The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek

One of the most powerful arguments against all forms of collectivism, Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” is in many ways the foil to Marx and Engels, showing the disasters of central planning, and illustrating how finding a “middle path” with statism inevitably drags a people all the way there. We would also recommend Frédéric Bastiat’s “The Law” and Ludwig von Mises’ “Human Action,” among countless other titles.

3) The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression by Various authors

The definitive compendium of atrocities committed worldwide under Communism from Stalin’s Russia to Mao’s China and everywhere in between, prior to the 21st century.

4) The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn

“The Gulag Archipelago” gave the West a comprehensive look into the dehumanizing slavery of the concentration camps known as the gulags of the Soviet Union.

5) Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro’s Gulag by Armando Valladares

For those wondering what life was and to a degree still is like under Castro’s Cuba, Valladares’ “Against All Hope” shows the tyranny of the Communist regime and the unimaginably cruel treatment of its political prisoners. We excerpted one of the most sobering portions of Valladares’ book here.

6) Witness by Whittaker Chambers

An American Communist turned staunch conservative, Chambers’ “Witness” was one of the key texts in the ideological battle against Communism of the Cold War. “Witness” is incidentally one of TheBlaze’s Buck Sexton’s three favorite biographies.

7) Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

As we have written about previously, “Doctor Zhivago” was viewed as so important in discrediting the Russian Revolution of 1917 that the CIA used it as part of a plot to undermine the Communist cause, flooding the Soviet Union with copies of it during the throes of the Cold War.

8) Disinformation by Ion Pacepa and Prof. Ronald Rychlak

We have written about “Disinformation” numerous times at TheBlaze Books, but suffice it to say if you want to understand how Communists have successfully waged ideological warfare and its great impact on society to this day, you need to read this book.

9) Stalin’s Secret Agents by M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein

The late M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein show just how effective the Communists were in infiltrating the highest levels of power during the President Franklin Delano Roosevelt era, based upon their study of recently released shocking intelligence documents. You will also want to check out Evans’ “Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies.”

10) American Betrayal by Diana West

Building on the efforts of M. Stanton Evans and others, Diana West’s “American Betrayal” — of which we have written favorably in the past — seeks to explain how it could be that there is a government-wide effort in her view to whitewash jihadism, along with a willful blindness to and even complicity with jihadist elements at the highest levels of our political system.

West finds this precedent — along with remarkable parallels — in President Roosevelt’s sympathy with and willful blindness towards the Communist threat during the World War II era. West boldly documents how damaging this was to the nation. ”American Betrayal” is an eye-opening piece of revisionist history — and we do not mean that in a pejorative sense — that has caused an unprecedented level of controversy among conservative anti-Communists.

Ms. West shared with us her own reading recommendations on these topics here.

10a) Dupes by Paul Kengor

Author Paul Kengor – he of “11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative” (reviewed here and more here) — has written the book on the manipulation of progressives in America by socialists and Communists from the early 20th century to present. This is a chilling but crucial must read that will change the way you view our nation’s history.

Note: The link to the book in this post will give you an option to elect to donate a percentage of the proceeds from the sale to a charity of your choice. Mercury One, the charity founded by TheBlaze’s Glenn Beck, is one of the options. Donations to Mercury One go towards efforts such as disaster relief, support for education, support for Israel and support for veterans and our military. You can read more about Amazon Smile and Mercury One here.

–

Turkey’s stealth Islamism and authoritarian practices are no longer stealth.

It is a powerful analogy showing how theoretically “democratic” Turkey is moving in the same direction as Germany’s Weimar Republic did after 1933, in passing unconstitutional legislation.

“That [Turkey] sounds to me like the late Weimar Republic. So I would have no difficulty at all in agreeing that the logics of certain possibilities are being put together in ways that seem very reminiscent to the broader context of right-wing thought in Weimar Republic, especially after 1930.” Thus commented Geoff Eley, a British-born historian whose early work focused on the radical nationalism in Imperial Germany, and, in Italy, fascism.

It is a powerful analogy showing how theoretically “democratic” Turkey is moving in the same direction as Germany’s Weimar Republic did after1933.

Historians often refer to Germany’s federal republic and semi-presidential representative democracy, which in 1919 replaced imperial rule, as the Weimar Republic.

After a period of relatively liberal democracy, President Paul von Hindenburg in 1930 assumed dictatorial emergency powers to back the administrations of three German chancellors, and finally Hitler.

The year 1933 would mark the ascent to power of the Nazi Party; its immediate measures would include unconstitutional legislation. This would be the beginning of the Third Reich.

Every member of a delegation of Iraqi minority groups has been granted visas to visit Washington for official meetings — except one. An Iraqi nun, who is a representative of the Nineveh Christians who have been forced to flee Iraq or be slaughtered by ISIS, has been barred from entering the United States by the Obama administration.

*Sister Diana Momeka was hoping to have a chance to tell Americans about the devastation Christians have suffered at the hands of ISIS, but the only Christian member of a delegation that includes Turkmen Shia and Yazidis is not welcome.

The State Department’s reasoning, according to National Review’s Nina Shea, is completely specious.

She told me in a phone conversation that, to her face, consular officer Christopher Patch told her she was denied because she is an “IDP” or Internally Displaced Person. “That really hurt,” she said. Essentially, the State Department was calling her a deceiver. The State Department officials made the determination that the Catholic nun could be falsely asserting that she intends to visit Washington when secretly she could be intending to stay. That would constitute illegal immigration, and that, of course, is strictly forbidden.

(Ms. Shea was being sarcastic there — in case you missed it.)

Last week, two Muslim members of Congress, Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Andre Carson (D-IN), sent a letter to the State Department requesting that they deny a visa to Dutch politician Geert Wilders. Wilders was coming to Washington, D.C. for a Capitol Hill event sponsored by Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Steve King (R-IA).

Unsuccessful in their attempts to have Wilders banned, Ellison, Carson and their associates from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) tried to disrupt a press conference on free speech with Wilders, Gohmert, and King in front of the U.S. Capitol yesterday. Ellison promoted their actions on Twitter:

Given America’s experience with hundreds of urban riots and the ensuing calls for “domestic Marshall Plans” to heal the wounds, recent events in Baltimore are, as Yogi Berra, once said, déjà vu all over again. The president himself kicked off this rerun with his condemnation of community neglect, disinvestment, joblessness, the need for better funded early education and additional job training, plus updating the city’s infrastructure (also here). That hundreds of billions have already been squandered on similar Great Society-like nostrums to no avail is irrelevant — we have to do something and even if these programs fail, and they will.

Let me shed some light on the awaiting disappointments in Baltimore and why failure may be inescapable. In blunt terms, the quandary is one of uplifting a poor, often violent and occasionally lawless black underclass. This is partially cultural: modern schools with well-qualified teachers, multiple job training programs, and all the rest assigned to this uplift task are pointless unless program recipients willingly avail themselves of the provided opportunities. For education to succeed, for example, you must show up, learn the lesson and not disrupt others. It’s the old “you can take a horse to water but….” problem.