RUTHFULLY YOURS

For even the most heinous crimes, juries are very reluctant to impose the death penalty.

Unless the federal court indulges last-ditch efforts by the defense for further delay, the least interesting aspect of the case against accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will begin this week: the determination of guilt or innocence.

That is the backwards nature of a capital case. In ordinary trials, a jury is there only to decide the question of guilt. When the death penalty is involved, though, the jury also imposes the sentence, usually the task of the trial judge. A death-penalty case is thus a bifurcated trial, and it is the later sentencing phase that really matters.

Despite the partnership between the terrorist organizations Hamas and Fatah (the new name for Arafat’s PLO), some Europeans nations are demanding that Israel immediately accede to Hamas/Fatah demands or they will proceed in the UN to declare a Palestinian State. The U.N. will impose on Israel conditions that will not only strip her of her capital, Jerusalem, but place Israelis in instant jeopardy from rockets launched against her from this newly-declared state abutting Israel. Like Gaza before, this newest Arab Palestinian state will become a terrorist state and a proxy of Iran.

Knowing that Fatah and Hamas will get a better deal pushing for a Palestinian state unilaterally declared by the U.N. rather than sitting for serious negotiation with Israel, Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of Fatah and a well-known denier of the Holocaust, has deliberately made negotiations impossible and dangerous for Israel by setting pre-conditions that are suicidal to Israel, conditions to which no sane Israeli government concerned about survival can yield.

Thus, Israel has been placed in a no-win situation. If it agrees to Abbas’s negotiation demands it has to (1) relinquish historic Jerusalem, (2) uproot almost 500,000 of its citizens from neighborhoods the Arabs demand be Juderein (free

Daniel Greenfield on “The Top Stories of 2014 and Predictions for 2015″ — on The Glazov Gang
The good, the bad and the ugly.
http://jamieglazov.com/2015/01/05/daniel-greenfield-on-the-top-stories-of-2014-and-predictions-for-2015-on-the-glazov-gang/

To paraphrase Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a people in economic straights will search for a scapegoat. With Europe – six years after the financial crisis – still mired in economic difficulties, the rise of extremism is a consequence of that behavior. And there is little question that the fringe that represents extremism is broadening.

Even though a dozen European countries have communist parties, it is telling that when one Googles ‘European extreme political parties,’ the only ones that show up are those on the right. It reflects the media bias, and that those on the left fear only right-wing autocracies. Conservatives, on the other hand, dislike ‘big’ government in any form; thus are concerned about totalitarianism no matter whether it emerges from the right or the left.

It was interesting that Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a New Year’s Day speech, denounced Europe’s far-right parties, slamming the organizers of recent anti-Islam protests in Germany. She described them as having “hearts often full of prejudice, and even hate.” Her attack on right-wing populism was echoed by France’s François Hollande and Italy’s retiring president, the 89-year old Giorgio Napolitano. While xenophobia in any form is to be reviled, it is curious that all three ignored the anti-Semitism that has been emerging from, among other places, Europe’s elite (generally Leftist in their political philosophy), but perhaps most frightening, from Muslim communities – the fastest growing segment of Europe’s population. The speeches ignored left-wing populism, which are every bit as ubiquitous and virulent as that from the right. Evil knows no political bounds. If Hitler was Beelzebub, Stalin was Mephistopheles. It would appear that ignoring anti-Semitism is politically acceptable in Europe, while denouncing Islamophobia is politically correct.

“The government, which has Tomahawk missiles and Apache and Lakota helicopters, used the code name ‘Geronimo’ in the attack that killed bin Laden but objects to the name of the Washington Redskins.” – George Will

The new Republican Congress should move full speed ahead to repeal and replace Obamacare. It would be unwise to wait for the Supreme Court to perform this service for the American people.

With GOP command of Capitol Hill starting tomorrow, Republicans should use their hard-won mandate to obliterate Obama’s medical Godzilla. A record 58 percent of registered voters want to junk Obamacare, according to a December 10 Fox News survey. As well they should. Among other recently revealed shortcomings — according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Employer Health Benefits, 2014 Annual Survey (“Employee Cost Sharing” chapter) — the average deductible for individual plans has climbed from $826 in 2009 to $1,217 in 2014. This is an average annual increase of approximately 8.1 percent on Obama’s watch. Also, a Commonwealth Fund survey discovered that 40 percent of working-age adults have skipped medical treatments because they cost too much.

This is a very comprehensive article….Nonetheless, among my favorite compositions are all the Wagner Overtures…and especially Rienzi which still gives me goosebumps….Ars Vincit Omnia?…rsk
Two centuries after the great composer’s birth, his anti-Semitism remains a bitterly contested issue. Perhaps that’s because neither his defenders nor his detractors have come to grips with its, or his, true nature.

In 2013, as the classical-music world lurched from crisis to crisis, with orchestras on strike and opera companies vanishing into thin air, the bicentennial of the birth of the towering German composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883) offered a brilliant exception to the prevailing gloom. Productions of his operas filled houses from Seattle to Buenos Aires, and the great companies of Europe and the United States vied to present ever grander stagings of the colossal 15-hour cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. At a time when so many preeminent musical institutions are collapsing into bankruptcy or labor disputes, Wagner is one institution that seems to endure.

Yet Wagner’s powerfully continuing appeal in terms of dollars spent and seats filled is only a part, and the less important part, of his enduring significance. Wagner has always been remarkable not only for the breadth but for the depth of his impact, a depth that can be measured both by the intensity of the devotion that his works inspire and by the fact that his devotees have included many of the intellectual and political elite of Western society. When his fame was at its zenith in the latter part of the 19th century, his most fervent admirers were as varied as the young Friedrich Nietzsche, the poet Charles Baudelaire, and King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who helped to bankroll Wagner’s great festival in the northern Bavarian town of Bayreuth.

The Iranian clerical regime has repeatedly vowed to erase Israel from the map, but American publisher HarperCollins actually did it.
The company released an atlas of the Middle East for English-speaking students in the Persian Gulf region, and Israel isn’t on it. The West Bank and Gaza are on it, which is entirely appropriate since they exist and are not part of Israel, but Israel itself is just…absent.

The Tablet newspaper in Britain originally reported the story, and HarperCollins has since recalled the atlases and promises they will be pulped. Executives at the company headquarters are embarrassed and say they sincerely apologize.

Lower level employees, however, thought they did the right thing.

Collins Bartholomew told The Tablet that putting Israel on the map would have been “unacceptable” in the Middle East and that “local preferences” had to be respected.

You have to ask what’s more nauseating? Al Sharpton’s threats to cry “racism” at corporations who don’t ante up or the corporations themselves who meekly acquiesce to the Reverend’s bullying tactics?

Sharpton has a lot of pull with New York state and local government officials and he has traded that influence for large sums of cash from companies who seek to avoid being labeled “racist.”

The mafia couldn’t run a shakedown operation this efficiently.

New York Post:

Want to influence a casino bid? Polish your corporate image? Not be labeled a racist?

Then you need to pay Al Sharpton.

For more than a decade, corporations have shelled out thousands of dollars in donations and consulting fees to Sharpton’s National Action Network. What they get in return is the reverend’s supposed sway in the black community or, more often, his silence.

Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal met with the activist preacher after leaked e-mails showed her making racially charged comments about President Obama. Pascal was under siege after a suspected North Korean cyber attack pressured the studio to cancel its release of “The Interview,” which depicts the assassination of dictator Kim Jong-un.

Pascal and her team were said to be “shaking in their boots” and “afraid of the Rev,” The Post reported.

No payments to NAN have been announced, but Sharpton and Pascal agreed to form a “working group” to focus on racial bias in Hollywood.

On Tuesday the Palestinians tried to get the UN Security Council to adopt a draft resolution to shrink Israel down to indefensible borders.

They failed to get the nine votes from the 15-member council that they needed. Even if they had, the U.S. had promised to veto the resolution. But the Palestinians would have succeeded in painting Israel as a country almost friendless, hanging by the thread of U.S. support.

The draft resolution demanded that Israel and the Palestinians wrap up all their disputes and reach an agreement within one year; that a Palestinian state be set up along Israel’s 1967 borders; and that Israel withdraw all forces from the West Bank by the end of 2017.

In other words, this would be a slightly prettified version of what Israel tried in Gaza in 2005: a full unilateral withdrawal. Since then over eleven thousand rockets have been fired [2] at Israel from Gaza, and Israel and Gaza terrorist organizations have fought three wars.