RUTHFULLY YOURS

When I first read that Hillary Clinton said we should have “empathy” [1] for our enemies, my first thought was — is she senile? Who is she talking about? Empathy for Hitler? Pol Pot? Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? Surely if we only empathized with the ISIS leader a bit more, they wouldn’t be slicing off as many heads or placing as many women in sexual slavery, not to mention shooting large groups after having had them dig their own mass graves, Nazi-style. All that business about global jihad and caliphates and “see you in New York” would go away with a little sympathy. (Cue Mick Jagger [2].)

Yes, I know sympathy is often defined as “feeling for” someone and empathy “feeling into,” but let’s not get bogged down in minor distinctions. It’s hard for anyone with basic morality to have empathy or sympathy for ruthless transnational mass murderers motivated by extreme religious fanaticism. On Fox News Sunday, even Hillary’s normally complaisant supporter Jane Harman seemed repelled. George Will [3] rose to her defense (sort of) by explaining Hillary’s peculiar word choice by saying Clinton employed “gaseous new-age rhetoric” about respect and empathy. True enough, and witty, but I suspect it’s more than that. Why would her mind even go in that direction?

Hillary, as most know now, is not a master of the English language in general She misspeaks herself frequently or simply reacts, as in the “what difference does it make?” outburst about Benghazi. In this way she is following in the footsteps of Bush 43 and Obama, neither of whom could be mistaken for Demosthenes [4], although Obama had some Greek pretensions in his scenic design [5] preferences.

Bush stumbled with words because of weak linguistic facility he often joked about. For Obama it was something considerably worse, almost always to do with deception. He frequently lies and almost never speaks with candor, so ultimately the normal reaction is to tune him out, as most have at this point.

For Hillary, the problem is she no longer knows what she thinks — an absolute prescription for filling a void with “gaseous new-age rhetoric.” These days, it’s the first thing that comes to mind. You can almost see the wheels grinding when asked a question:

There is some blame to go around in nearly all racial confrontations. Why the body of Michael Brown was left in the street for hours seems inexplicable. The apparent chokehold that contributed to the death of Eric Garner, with the benefit of video hindsight, does not seem to square with the de facto exoneration of the officer involved. In contrast, there has been absolutely no credible evidence that the unfortunate shooting of Michael Brown was not in self-defense.

Instead, most of the protests about Ferguson are based on untruth and the lessons are therefore surrealistic. Indeed, the reductionist messages of Ferguson from the street, the media, and the Justice Department seem to appear twofold. In hindsight, Officer Darren Wilson apparently made two postmodern mistakes. One, when he saw Michael Brown strangely walking down the middle of the street — and collated that behavior and his appearance with breaking information of a suspect on the loose who had just strong-armed a clerk and robbed the store — he stopped to investigate. Had Wilson simply waved and passed Brown by — and ignored the prior possible felony act and the misdemeanor that he was watching in progress — then Brown would never have had an opportunity to assault him. Brown would not have been shot. And the Ferguson chain of events would never have been jump-started on that particular day.

Some of the public may think that the lessons of Michael Brown — and Trayvon Martin — are that it is unwise to commit a crime and then assault an officer, or confront a stranger in the rain and slug him in the head and get into a tussle, given that such targets may be armed and may respond with deadly force. But I think critics would privately respond that in Al Sharpton’s America both cases instead advise to take the beating [1] and do not dare use a firearm for self-protection from assault on the chance the attacker is unarmed. In retrospect, Zimmerman might have preferred to have been “whoop-assed,” [2] or Wilson preferred being slugged than to become lifelong targeted pariahs [3].

Willing to be endlessly open and hospitable, Britain finds itself at a loss when that hospitality is neither respected nor returned.

It is worth asking why British Muslims should have their scripture represented in the coronation of the new monarch, when many will not even pray in their mosques for the well-being of that monarch. Including passages from the Quran in the coronation is a mistake because of the old problem of reciprocity — and at the same time as no Christian (let alone a Jew) can even set foot in Mecca. Then what about also representing Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and atheists?

In synagogues in the UK, British Jews every week in their service have a prayer for the long life and happiness of the Queen. It is a moving and heartfelt moment, not to mention a clear signal that Jews in Britain are utterly loyal to the state. So why should British mosques not have a similar prayer? Because many Muslims in Britain simply do not share the good Lord Harries’s kindness, tolerance, inclusivity or indeed liberalism.

What is the answer? Perhaps bit more kindness, a bit more generosity, the offering up of a few more of our treasured traditions. That will do it, we think, surely?

The tradition of liberal tolerance, fostered in Britain, was one of the greatest gifts this country gave to the world. That inclusive tradition of John Locke and John Stuart Mill, however, always leaves itself open to abuse by people willing to use liberalism’s flaws — not least its tolerance of intolerance — to end liberalism.

The Church of England, in its time, has often been far from liberal. In the nineteenth century, it ended the careers and livelihoods of liberal theologians as adamantly as did the Church of Rome. But in the twentieth century, the story changed. Partly spurred by the loss of confidence caused by diminishing church attendance, by the late twentieth century the Church of England had dropped its reputation as “the Conservative party at prayer,” and became something more like “the Liberal party at prayer.” No accommodation seemed too extreme. No public expression of doubt seemed too disconcerting. For some years now, the Church of England has been led by its members — not thanks to, but in spite of, the embarrassing public doubts of its leadership.

Reprinted from madworldnews.com.

While some continue to believe the false narrative that Islam is a religion of peace and condemn those who speak the truth as being either “bigots” or having a case of “Islamophobia,” one group has decided to take the streets of America to expose this “religion” to all who will hear.

The group called the Counter Jihad Coalition is spreading their message to proclaim their message to shoppers, taking quotes straight from the Qur’an to expose the religion’s violent teachings and radical agenda. One of the locations this group frequents is the shopping center known as the Promenade in downtown Los Angeles, which is a very popular shopping location for Muslims in the area, where men with full beards and hijab-wearing women are often seen.

Dr. Jamie Glazov is one of the warriors who spends many of his weekends at the Promenade in order to expose Islam and bring attention to the Counter Jihad Coalition’s work. The following video features one of Glazov’s videos from his website called The Glazov Gang. The video shows a clip of Louis Lionheart of TruthDefenders.com, who works alongside the Counter Jihad Coalition, and things quickly become violent after one Muslim isn’t too amused by his message.

At minute-mark 4:46, you can see it become violent:

As Louis Lionheart takes to the streets, you can see him physically attacked by a Muslim woman, after he tells the crowd how Mohammed was a pedophile who married a little girl (Aisha) who was just 9-years-old.

I commend these brave individuals. If we do not bring attention to Islam and the true intentions that these Muslims have for taking over our the entire globe, how will we ever be able to prepare ourselves to fight their radical agenda which is infiltrating every facet of our government agencies and our nation’s leadership?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may demonstrate foolishness regarding a great many things in public life, but no one ever accused him of demonstrating foolishness with regard to his own electoral prospects. His enemies are suddenly foaming at the mouth. In response to the remarkable jump in Likud popularity in the polls, they claim, Bibi has decided to pull a fast one and has decided to take the undemocratic decision of holding elections. That Netanyahu’s rivals claim it is undemocratic when elections are held is only the tip of their problems. What really has them worried is that the Israeli electorate is about to sic itself against most of the non-Likud parties.

To a large extent, the real factor behind the dismemberment of the government coalition and the calling of new elections is the military operation against Gaza from this past summer. The events surrounding those battles shook up the Israeli electorate and reshuffled the political deck.

The Gaza war made the Likud very popular. The Jewish public almost unanimously supported the operation against the Hamas barbarians. Israelis do not think that too many Gazans were killed but rather that too few were. The main complaint from Israeli Jews was that the Likud did not go far enough and ended the military incursions there too soon.

But the Gaza war also decimated the political base for the Likud’s opposition. In Gaza, Israel had carried out to the letter every “idea” of the Israeli Labor Party and its allies. It had evicted the entire Jewish population of Gaza, removed every single Israeli soldier and military asset, turned the area over to the “Palestinians,” ending every single vestige of “occupation.” The result was the raining down of thousands of rockets upon the Israeli civilian population fired from Gaza, some hitting Tel Aviv and some landing near the airport, plus the terror tunnels built to carry out large-scale massacres of Jews. The Hitlerjugend on Western campuses may be marching around chanting that Jews are subhumans whose lives not worthy of being defended and protected, but no one is going to get very far in Israeli politics mouthing such a platform. The huge bulk of Israelis see the Labor Party and the “center-Left” as directly responsible for turning Gaza into one huge rocket launching pad and putting almost the entire Israeli civilian population at risk, all in the name of “the need to end occupation.” Israelis now understand that Arab terrorism is not caused by Israeli occupation but by the ending of Israeli occupation.

That means that everyone knows that at the very first electoral opportunity, the Israeli voter will exact his revenge against those who turned Gaza into Hamastan. That means the Labor Party and Tzipi Livni’s “Tnuah” party, what is left of the once large Kadima bloc.

As the shocking allegations of a fraternity party gang rape at the University of Virginia come unraveled, progressives whose cause is to condemn America for a so-called “rape culture” have chosen to double down in defense of the apparent falsehood. The Washington Post even ran an astoundingly un-American piece that suggests we should believe rape accusations, regardless of whether they are true.

Rolling Stone, the music and politics magazine that can stay relevant only by sexualizing everyone (including terrorists – remember its dreamy cover photo of Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev?), broke the lurid story only to have it fall apart thanks to unconscionably sloppy journalism. But progressives cannot let the truth get in the way of the agenda, so Zerlina Maxwell rushed to fill the breach with the aforementioned WaPo piece initially entitled “No matter what Jackie said, we should automatically believe rape claims” (“Jackie” is the victim’s pseudonym).

The thrust of Maxwell’s piece is that “the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist.” She begins by saying that many people

will be tempted to see [the collapse of the UofV gang-rape allegation] as a reminder that officials, reporters and the general public should hear both sides of the story and collect all the evidence before coming to a conclusion in rape cases. This is what we mean in America when we say someone is “innocent until proven guilty.” After all, look what happened to the Duke lacrosse players.

Exactly – look at what happened to them. But then she goes on to reject that reasonable restraint: “In important ways,” she wrote, “this is wrong. We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says” [emphasis added] – after all, false accusations are “exceedingly rare,” she claims. But then she quotes an FBI statistic that 2-8% of allegations are false; that is not “exceedingly rare.”

In any case, it wouldn’t matter if the figure were only 1% – in this country we don’t suspend the presumption of innocence just “to offer our hand of support to survivors.” Maxwell disagrees: “The time we spend picking apart a traumatized survivor’s narration on the hunt for discrepancies is time that should be spent punishing serial rapists.”

While in most countries immigration moves the electorate to the left, in Israel immigration moved the country to the right. In the United States the left is counting on demographics to make it easier for them to win elections, but in Israel demographic shifts have made it easier for the right to win.

But the biggest problem for the Israeli left is that it’s tethered to its own version of ObamaCare in the form of the Palestinian Authority which won’t make peace, won’t stop funding terrorism and won’t stop playing the victim. As with ObamaCare, the Israeli left teeters between running on the disastrous peace process that everyone hates and pivoting away from it toward economic bread and butter issues.

For Obama and European leaders, Israel is reducible to the peace process. And the Israeli left depends on the support of foreign governments for its network of foreign funded non-profit organizations. The Israeli left can’t let go of its exploding version of ObamaCare because the left is becoming a foreign organization with limited domestic support. Its electorate isn’t in Israel; it’s in Brussels.

The Israeli left is short on ideas, both foreign and domestic, and its last remaining card is Obama.

Escalating a crisis in relations has been the traditional way for US administrations to force Israeli governments out of office. Bill Clinton did it to Netanyahu and as Israeli elections appear on the horizon Obama would love to do it all over again.

There’s only one problem.

The United States is popular in Israel, but Obama isn’t. Obama’s spats with Netanyahu ended up making the Israeli leader more popular. The plan was for Obama to gaslight Israelis by maintaining a positive image in Israel while lashing out at the Jewish State so that the blame would fall on Netanyahu.

That was what Obama’s trip to Israel had been about. While his approval ratings in Israel briefly picked up, they clattered down again over his attitude during the recent Hamas war. Polls show that the majority of Israelis don’t trust him to have their back on Islamic terrorism or Iran. And that’s bad news for him and for an Israeli left that needs to sell the image of a good Obama and a bad Netanyahu.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/m-reed-hopper-and-todd-f-gaziano-watch-out-for-that-puddle-soon-it-could-be-federally-regulated-1417990935?mod=hp_opinion

TO THE WALL ST. JOURNAL…

If you don’t have regulations, people to write them, people to enforce them, people to interpret them and people to punish those who break said regulations, then you will have massive unemployment in the ranks of Democratic supporters.

Unemployed Democrats are ugly. They riot, steal, burn, loot and assault people.

Where else are over educated know nothings going to find work?

You’re not very compassionate, do you really want Democrats to have to find work in physically hard, thinking, uncomfortable environments? What are you thinking?…Burns Matkin

The EPA wants to redefine ‘the waters of the United States’ to mean virtually any wet spot in the country.

Earlier this year the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers proposed a rule redefining the “waters of the United States” that are subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act. The two agencies recently finished collecting public comments on their draft rule and are deciding how to proceed. Their best course is to abandon the rule or anything like it. Here’s why:

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy wrote in Huffington Post in March that the draft rule would clarify the meaning of the relevant terms in the law without expanding federal jurisdiction and promised it would “save us time, keep money in our pockets, cut red tape, [and] give certainty to business.” None of this is true.

The Clean Water Act of 1972 prohibits discharges into “navigable waters” without a federal permit, defining “navigable waters” as “waters of the United States.” Initially the Army Corps and EPA interpreted waters of the U.S. to mean those that could be used as channels of navigation for interstate commerce. This reading is logical and necessary because the Clean Water Act is authorized by Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce—which as Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), includes the transport of passengers and goods across state lines but not the commercial or noncommercial activity within a single state.

Within a few years, however, the two agencies claimed regulatory authority over wetlands and other nonnavigable waters that had no significant connection to interstate commerce. The Supreme Court has twice rejected these claims.

In SWANCC v. Army Corps of Engineers (2001), the court forbade the Army Corps from regulating “isolated water bodies” that were not connected to traditional navigable waters. Nevertheless, the Army Corps and EPA have largely ignored or circumvented the ruling with new interpretations. They claimed that they could regulate anything with a “hydrological connection” to traditional navigable waters—including normally dry-land features such as arroyos in the desert as well as ditches and culverts hundreds of miles from traditional navigable waters.

The payment system is forcing doctors to sell out to hospitals. The trend, and the law, will be unstoppable without reform.

Dr. Gottlieb, a physician and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is a member of the Health IT Policy Committee that advises the Department of Health and Human Services. He also invests in and advises health-care companies.

Here’s a dirty little secret about recent attempts to fix ObamaCare. The “reforms,” approved by Senate and House leaders this summer and set to advance in the next Congress, adopt many of the Medicare payment reforms already in the Affordable Care Act. Both favor the consolidation of previously independent doctors into salaried roles inside larger institutions, usually tied to a central hospital, in effect ending independent medical practices.

Republicans must embrace a different vision to this forced reorganization of how medicine is practiced in America if they want to offer an alternative to ObamaCare. The law’s defenders view this consolidation as a necessary step to enable payment provisions that shift the financial risk of delivering medical care onto providers and away from government programs like Medicare. The law’s architects believe that doctors, to better bear financial risk, need to be part of larger, and presumably better-capitalized institutions. Indeed, the law has already gone a long way in achieving that outcome.

A recent Physicians Foundation survey of some 20,000 U.S. doctors found that 35% described themselves as independent, down from 49% in 2012 and 62% in 2008. Once independent doctors become the exception rather than the rule, the continued advance of the ObamaCare agenda will become virtually unstoppable.

Local competition between providers, who vie to contract with health plans, is largely eliminated by these consolidated health systems. Since all health care is local, the lack of competition will soon make it much harder to implement a market-based alternative to ObamaCare. The resulting medical monopolies will make more regulation the most obvious solution to the inevitable cost and quality problems.

A true legislative alternative to ObamaCare would support physician ownership of independent medical practices, and preserve local competition between doctors and choice for patients.

First, Congress should remove the pervasive biases in ObamaCare that favor hospital ownership of medical practices. Payment reforms that create incentives for the coordinated delivery of medical care (like Accountable Care Organizations and payment “bundles”) all turn on arrangements where a single institution owns the doctors. They’re biased against less centralized engagements where independent doctors enter into contractual relationships among themselves.