RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s got nothing to do with American principles and everything to do with partisanship

David Harsanyi is a Senior Editor at The Federalist
Israel is a liberal nation—in the best sense of the word—but it’s not a leftist one. And for increasing numbers of Democrats, the center-right consensus of Israeli politics is unacceptable, immoral and bigoted— incompatible with their conception of American values. Or so they say.

This is bad news, because Likud looks like it’s going to win around 30 seats. If the numbers hold, Benjamin Netanyahu, despite the best efforts of the president and his allies, will likely remain prime minister. Bougie Herzog will, no doubt, have a bright future in the opposition.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Paul Krugman had already declared Likud’s impeding fall was all about inequality. (What isn’t, right?) Slate proposed that Likud’s looming death would be about housing, or maybe it was racism. Mostly, though, Netanyahu was going to lose because he has a nasty habit of challenging the progressive worldview of Barack Obama, which offends many people, according to the New York Times. And really, is there any bigger sin?

The Obama White House is enlisting all its allies to make its case for the bad nuclear deal with Iran that, say administration allies, is better than no deal. The alternative, they claim, is war. And to what purpose? Many nuclear experts, Middle East analysts, and journalists argue, after all, that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would set the program back only two to three years. Indeed, Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, asserted last week that setting Iran back “only a couple of years” is “the best-case scenario.”

However, it’s not entirely clear where that assessment—a couple years, or a few years, or two to three years—comes from. “When U.S. government officials have given specific estimates, like two to three years, these are for an Israeli attack on Iranian facilities,” says Matthew Kroenig, a former Pentagon official. “They’re not talking about a U.S. attack, which would obviously be more than what an Israeli strike could accomplish.”

Even then, says Kroenig, author of A Time to Attack: The Looming Iranian Nuclear Threat, these estimates regarding American strikes are based on worst-case scenarios. “That is, if after a strike Iran decides to rebuild immediately, encounters no significant difficulties, and is able to get whatever it needs in the international marketplace. But that’s hard to imagine.”

Iran is an opportunity, not a threat; it’s a potential partner, not an enemy.

For more than six years, this view of the Islamic Republic has guided the decisions made by Barack Obama. The president has repeatedly declared his eagerness to welcome Iran into the community of civilized nations. His words sometimes suggest that Iran has a choice to make, that their acceptance into this mythical community depends in some way on their behavior. But there’s little over those six years to indicate that he means it. Instead, Obama has made clear that in his eagerness to salvage anything from his tattered foreign policy legacy he is willing to gamble the security of the United States on a blind and irrational hope that Iran will someday change for the better.

To this end, he has abandoned more than three decades of bipartisan U.S. policy towards Iran—on its nuclear weapons program, on its regional ambitions, and on its support for terrorism.

These are radical departures. The Obama administration’s goal in nuclear talks is no longer preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons at all costs, but managing the process by which Iran becomes a nuclear state. The Obama administration no longer seeks to thwart Iran’s expansionist aims in the region and in many respects is now facilitating its aggression. On terrorism, the Obama administration has cast aside inconvenient realities about Iran’s support for jihadists of all kinds and has chosen instead to pretend that to the extent there any longer exists a war on terror, Washington and Tehran are on the same side.

Tough topics demand a special degree of adroit evasion by those who would prefer unfortunate truths be swept from view. If we are ever to scotch, say, bloody jihad’s appeal to a disconcerting number of Muslim youths, those clouds of obfuscation must be blown away.

Let us begin thus:

Blacks in the US are about six times more likely to be murdered than whites. Over ninety percent of blacks murdered are murdered by blacks.

Evil people are intent on persuading disaffected young people to become radical Islamists. Disaffected young Muslims are falling prey to Islamic radicalisation.

If you were to focus only on the first sentence in each of the above two paragraphs you might miss some vital information. And no help is likely to be forthcoming from most of the commentariat. Their interest is not so much in presenting the objective truth as it is pushing a post-modern political agenda. I am at a loss to know their innermost passions. I have previously speculated that they are victims of alien body snatchers. But I have no hard evidence for that.

George Orwell in “Politics and the English Language” postulated that the language had become “ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish”. Perceptively, he also thought that the poor state of the language made it easier to have foolish thoughts. ‘A vicious circle,’ comes to mind, to use a cliché he might have deplored. Ugly and inaccurate language wasn’t the end of it. Dishonesty was also in his sights. He gave examples of statements in his day that were “almost always made with intent to deceive”. He proposed improving the use of the language as a “necessary first step towards political regeneration”.

Coffee, Tea, or an ‘Honest’ Conversation about Race? Jonah Goldberg

Starbucks’s new campaign is yet another sign of the relentless politicization of American culture.
Starbucks is easy to make fun of on its best days, what with the pretentious names for everyday items, never mind the ridiculously high prices for those same everyday items. Even the cashiers have fancy monikers — “barista.” The snootiness is by design, of course. And you can make fun of it all you want; it’s worked. Using many of the same techniques realtors have employed to hawk borderline tenements as unique gateways to the urban experience, Starbucks has managed to educate the consumer that it’s okay to pay through the nose for what used to be a “cuppa joe.” Even that slightly burnt taste is spun as a feature, not a bug. We’re subtly informed, “That’s the way it’s supposed to taste, you philistine.”
Now, Starbucks has decided to lean into the mockery. Howard Schultz, the company’s CEO, is launching a new initiative called “Race Together.” Starting March 20, baristas will be encouraged to write “Race Together” on coffee cups “to facilitate a conversation between you and our customers” about their “race journey.” It’s ironic. The Obama years were supposed to usher in an era of racial harmony. That didn’t happen — which presumably is why Schultz feels the need to help mend our racial wounds. What has happened, however, is that hordes of college graduates, unable to find jobs suitable to their degrees, have ended up toiling away at places like Starbucks. It’s kind of ingenious. Since sociology majors can’t find relevant jobs, Schultz is making the jobs they have relevant to their majors. If this becomes a trend, maybe my dog walkers will start reciting Proust in French on their perambulations. As a business decision, I find the whole thing bizarre. If I don’t have my coffee in the morning, I get a headache that feels like a Hell’s Angel is trying to press his meaty thumb through my forehead. This is not the most propitious moment to engage me in a conversation about my “race journey.”

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/03/starbucks_fights_racism_racism_fights_back.html#ixzz3UvORhaeW

Starbucks Fights Racism. Racism Fights Back. By Colin Flaherty

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2015/03/19/time-for-a-national-conversation-about-why-starbucks-coffee-is-disgusting/?print=1

Time for a National Conversation About Why Starbucks Coffee Is Disgusting By David P. Goldman

Megyn Kelly: “Let’s import more followers of sharia law” By Pedro Gonzales

Megyn Kelly is an attorney – smart, articulate, and excellent in a debate. But how would she look in a burka? The question may be relevant, given our current immigration patterns, especially if Megyn Kelly gets her way.

Megyn Kelly went head to head with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) Wednesday night over his efforts to ban the immigration of Muslims who promote radical Islam.

On Fox News’ “The Kelly File” Wednesday night, Jindal clarified that his comments only referred to “radical Muslims,” like those who “treat women as second-class citizens.”

“Why would I want to allow people who want to kill Americans to come to America?” he said.

Kelly responded that she thought is [sic] was “controversial” for the Governor to discriminate against anyone who believes in Islamic Sharia law.

If you believe Hillary Clinton, her email scandal happened because she couldn’t figure out how to do what every American of working age knows how to do; juggle a work and personal email account.

The Clinton vaporware bridge to the 21st century turned out to be a private email server that kept out the media, but not foreign spy agencies. When Hillary finally had to turn over some emails, she printed out tens of thousands of pages of them as if this were still the 20th century.

But like the rest of her party, Hillary is very much a 20th century regulator, not a 21st century innovator.

Despite claiming to have invented the internet, the Democratic Party isn’t very good at technology and doesn’t like technology. Everything from the Healthcare.gov debacle to the VA death lists happened because this administration was completely incompetent when it came to implementing anything more complicated than a hashtag. The success rate for exchanges managed by its state allies isn’t much better. The only databases it seems able to handle are for its incessant election fundraising emails.

Robin Shepherd is a British-born political commentator and analyst. He is Director of International Affairs at the Henry Jackson Society.

Most Westerners have no clue about the Israeli elections, unsurprisingly given the propaganda from outlets like the BBC. The truth is, Israelis are mainly voting on economic and social matters, the Palestinians will reject genuine peace whoever is elected, and Israel will continue to be demonised in the West regardless.

To much of the Western world, Tuesday’s Israeli elections are about one thing: will those pesky upstarts get rid of that awful Mr. Netanyahu and finally elect a prime minister who is serious about getting a two-state solution with the poor, beleaguered Palestinians.

In Israel, and among those who have the courage to see things as they really are, it’s about something quite different, two things in fact.

First, like their British counterparts facing an election in May, the main issues for Israelis centre on the general cost of living crisis, real wages, jobs, and the astronomical and exclusionary cost (even for people with good jobs) of buying a house.

Israel, though living in a very abnormal region, is a normal democracy in which voters have normal concerns.

Apparently the White House switchboard still can’t get a line to Israel, but Obama’s not the only one with hang-ups on election calls. The media are also taking Netanyahu’s re-election badly. Who said this?

Harper Backs Netanyahu’s Controversial Israel Victory

And who said this?

“Over a million Arabs take part in Middle East’s most democratic elections today”; “The Arabs in Israel are the only Middle East Arab group that practices true democracy”…”Israel is the world’s most vibrant democracy.”

The first is the reaction of The Globe And Mail, Canada’s newspaper of record. The second is Ghanem Nuseibeh, a Palestinian supporter of the Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog. It comes to something when the Palestinians sound less unhinged about Netanyahu’s victory than the western media do.

What’s “controversial” about the Israeli election result other than that it’s not the one The Globe And Mail wanted?

Isn’t there anything a wee bit “controversial” about the Palestinian election? Oh, that’s right: They haven’t held any for a decade or so – Abbas and his fellow Fatah kleptocrats in the West Bank because they want to continue bulking up their Swiss bank accounts with generous Euro-American subsidies, and Hamas in Gaza because they regard democracy as Erdogan in Turkey put it, merely a train you ride until it gets you to where you want to go. Which it did back in 2006.