RUTHFULLY YOURS

On the night of his 2012 re-election triumph, following his victory speech, President Obama walked off the stage and made separate phone calls to Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic campaign chairman Steve Israel . He told them he would spend the next two years helping Democrats retake the House in 2014, and he pledged to raise $50 million and devote his 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina to the task.

Two years later we know how that turned out. The Republicans on Tuesday defeated at least four incumbents to take control of the Senate and are adding to their majority in the House. Add the GOP sweep of most of the close races for Governor, including in states Mr. Obama won twice, and the vote is a major repudiation of the President’s governance.

That 2012 episode, reported at the time by the Washington Post, speaks volumes about the reason. Mr. Obama has consistently put liberal policy demands and partisanship above the goals of economic growth and compromise. Far from cementing a Democratic majority, his political posture has helped the GOP make a comeback. The question now is whether he will change enough to salvage his last two years as President.

Former Senior White House Advisor Karl Rove on the likelihood of a Republican Senate majority. Plus, his predictions for House, gubernatorial and state legislative races. Photo: Getty Images

Liberals are busy discounting Tuesday’s results as meaningless, a “Seinfeld” election about nothing, and it’s true that Republicans failed to offer much of a unified policy agenda. Yet the one issue that has been on the ballot everywhere this year is President Obama and his record.

The main common Republican theme has been linking incumbent Democrats to Mr. Obama and his 42% approval rating. In left-leaning Colorado they have moved the polls by charging that Mark Udall had voted with the President “99% of the time,” and in other states it was 96% or 98%. Mr. Udall lost.

Those Democrats in turn studiously avoided appearing with Mr. Obama, much less having him campaign for them, and the Senate challenger in Kentucky famously wouldn’t even say if she’d voted for him. Georgia Democrat Michelle Nunn identified herself explicitly with George H.W. Bush. Mr. Obama was consigned to campaigning in heavily Democratic states, like Maryland.

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama hoped the midterm elections would help break the capital’s gridlock. Instead, they became a referendum on his presidency.

Voters went to the polls Tuesday deeply frustrated with the political system and handed Republicans a decisive victory. Mr. Obama was a central figure in key races where Republicans criticized his leadership.

Most Democratic Senate candidates refused to appear with Mr. Obama on the campaign trail, trying to distance themselves from an unpopular president. Democrats tried to keep the focus on policies of particular importance in their states.

Mr. Obama campaigned with just one Democrat running for the Senate—at a rally last weekend in Michigan, where his party’s nominee was widely expected to win. Mr. Obama said during the campaign season that while he wasn’t on Tuesday’s ballot, his policies were.
Republicans sought to make their races about both Mr. Obama and his policies. The president’s health-care law was the top issue in pro-Republican television ads run in four of 11 competitive Senate races this cycle, according to an analysis of Kantar Media/CMAG data by the nonpartisan Wesleyan Media Project.

In a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released this week, 67% of registered voters said they want to see Mr. Obama change the direction he is leading the country “a great deal” or “quite a bit,” while just 42% approved of the job he is doing.

The president now finds himself seeking to rebound with a public that, however they voted Tuesday, is deeply dissatisfied with his leadership.

Other presidents have made significant changes after midterm elections. George W. Bush replaced his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld , after Republicans lost control of Congress in 2006 midterm elections that were dominated by deep voter disapproval of the Iraq war.

Obama’s pressure only begins with Iran
In the last few days, it has become clearer that the Obama administration’s ‎obsession over turning Iran into an ally, or at least no longer a foe, is the single ‎highest foreign policy objective for the White House. This new engagement with ‎the Iranians has included cooperation in the current fight with the Islamic State group in Iraq and ‎Syria, and the continuing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. The ‎importance of Iran to the administration became more evident when Deputy ‎National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes was caught on tape telling a group of ‎progressive advocates invited to the White House that a nuclear deal with Iran was ‎as big a deal for President Barack Obama in his second term, as passage of Obamacare was for the ‎first term. ‎

‎”Bottom line is, this is the best opportunity we’ve had ‎to resolve the Iranian issue diplomatically, certainly ‎since President Obama came to office, and probably ‎since the beginning of the Iraq war,” Rhodes said. “So ‎no small opportunity, it’s a big deal. This is probably ‎the biggest thing President Obama will do in his ‎second term on foreign policy. This is health care for ‎us, just to put it in context.”‎

The comparison of the Iranian track with the administration’s “all-in” commitment ‎to securing congressional approval for his health care reform legislation, is an ‎ominous sign. Within the administration, some of the savviest voices with long ‎experience in working with Congress, such as then-Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, ‎urged the president not to gamble on a big health care reform package in 2009-‎‎2010. The proposed Affordable Care Act was already drawing enormous political ‎fire from Republicans and the newly formed tea party movement, and major ‎elements of the bill seemed to be unworkable or unduly complex. But the president ‎decided, based it seems on the advice of others more ideologically attuned to his ‎politics (e.g., White House adviser Valerie Jarrett), to “go big,” and to try to be more ‎‎”transformative.” In the end, the legislation passed, but the electoral fallout in 2010 ‎proved a disaster for Democrats in the congressional midterms.

By now, everyone knows of the attacks by Islamists in our midst, against citizens in New York City, Oklahoma City, Ottawa, Ontario, and the planned beheadings by jihadists of citizens in Sydney, Australia. Well, almost everyone. President Obama insists it is simply “workplace violence, or lone wolf violence, or disgruntled and senseless violence.” So to, do many liberals who’ve made multiculturalism their non-thinking idol.

Unknown to most, there was another case of jihad, one the media was able to keep under wraps since it did not have the sensational elements of the ones mentioned above. In West Orange, New Jersey, a lovely middleclass suburb, an American jihadist, Ali Mohamed Brown, shot and killed a promising 19-year-old right on the street corner because, as he boasted to police, he was “looking to find an American to kill in retaliation for Moslem deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.” The killing took place this past June 25.

Young Brendan Tevlin, beloved in his Irish Catholic community, was murdered precisely because he was American, by a jihadist roaming our suburban streets hunting down Americans. Mohamed called it a “just killing.” Identifying as a Moslem and not as an American, he took “revenge” against his fellow countrymen.

The media hasn’t covered the story, just as they never mentioned the jihadi motives behind the Muhammad/Malvo “Beltway” shooting spree at cars on I-95 a few years ago, the shooting by a jihadist at a Little Rock army recruitment center, the terrorist act in Seattle, the terrorist act in LAX, or, years ago, the terrorist act atop the Empire State Building.

Why the media silence? Contrast this to the recent wall-to-wall Ferguson, Missouri coverage and the relentless conclusions of “racism” heaped on a situation many believe was simply self-defense by a police officer. Yet, we hear nothing from the mainstreamers when it comes to home-grown Islamic killings of Americans, done in the name of Islam.

It has become apparent that the mainstream media does not report on the important news as much as they select news items that affirm their liberal templates, primarily portraying whites in America as racist and hostile to minorities, including Moslems, even though, worldwide, Moslems number 1.4 billion. The Ferguson case fits right into their concocted template of pervasive white-on-black racism, whereas American jihadists acting brutally against fellow Americans does not.

Undisclosed Information About Ebola By Marilyn Penn

Tucked inside the first section of today’s WSJ (11/4) on page 7 is the followng headline: “For Ebola Survivors, Sex Carries Added Risk.” In the article we discover that the virus can live in sexual fluid for as much as 90 days after people are cured of the disease. We learn that Doctors Without Borders warns discharged patients to use condoms and other African clinics give survivors certificates that emphasize NO SEX FOR 90 DAYS in capital letters. Apparently, here in our own country the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention has issued similar warnings. Why has the general public not heard of this? The NYTimes devotes two full pages to a discussion of ebola in its Science Section today – not a mention of this topic; nothing about it on the tv talk and magazine shows.

It never came up when it was revealed that Dr. Spencer had had conjugal relations with his fiancee; it never was discussed when the public reaction to the need for quarantine was compared with the “hysteria” that accompanied the initial reaction to AIDS. It certainly was avoided in coverage of the reaction of state governors to the need for a more rigorous quarantine than suggested by the federal government. President Obama emphasized the need to focus more on honoring the heroic health workers who travel to Africa to fight the disease at its source and cautioned against any reactions not strictly based on science. Yet there is empirical evidence that the ebola virus remains alive and transmittable more than three times longer than has been suggested for safe quarantine. Is it not a proper scientific concern to determine whether this is accurate, and if it is, to make the appropriate changes in our course of treatment and prevention of this disease?

Could it be that the failure to raise this issue was a political decision meant to forestall any association of ebola with AIDS? Whatever the reason, now that this has been openly revealed as an additional source of anxiety, we need a firm and unequivocal statement from the CDC and the president who has already insinuated himself into the proper handling of this disease. NOW.

Just when it looked like it couldn’t get worse, with the world imploding around us from the Mideast to Ukraine to West Africa, it has managed to get worse. An al-Qaeda affiliate has struck the latest blow, decimating America’s few moderate allies in Syria and capturing their American weapons.

Obama has taken America on a downward spiral in the Mideast and the world at large, by his active policies of promoting the Muslim Brotherhood and by his passive policies of withdrawing American power and avoiding victories by military means.

Never have the terrible lessons of the 20th century been more clearly shown to be right: When America removes its power, it pulls the plug on every part of the world order. The demons come of the woodwork. It does not take long for the consequences to come home.

Fighting a war as if we prefer to lose: It is a recipe for catastrophe, and that is what is happening now in Syria and Iraq.

Here is what the Washington Post reported in its lead article on Monday morning:

U.S.-backed Syria rebels routed by fighters linked to al-Qaeda

BEIRUT — The Obama administration’s Syria strategy suffered a major setback Sunday after fighters linked to al-Qaeda routed U.S.-backed rebels from their main northern strongholds, capturing significant quantities of weaponry, triggering widespread defections and ending hopes that Washington will readily find Syrian partners… Fleeing rebel fighters said they feared the defeat would spell the end of the Free Syrian Army.

Further on, we find the consequences of Obama’s “leading from behind” and not wanting to win militarily:

“When American airstrikes targeted al-Nusra, people felt solidarity with them because Nusra are fighting the regime, and the strikes are helping the regime,” said Raed al-Fares, an activist leader in Kafr Nabel, in Idlib.

“Now people think that whoever in the Free Syrian Army gets support from the U.S.A. is an agent of the regime,” he said.

In today’s foreign-relations climate, even a Jimmy Carter would seem like a godsend.

A weak, lame-duck Barack Obama, who has now eroded a once exuberant Democratic party, will be even weaker in the next two years.

If Democratic senators who had been his stalwart supporters — voting with him over 97 percent of the time — campaigned on not wanting any connection with Obama, one can imagine what our enemies abroad think of him. If Obama adopted policies of neo-appeasement when he enjoyed a 65 percent approval rating in 2009, one can imagine his approach when his positives dip below 40 percent. But there is no need for imagination when Ali Younesi, the senior adviser to the Iranian president, bluntly dismisses Obama as “the weakest of U.S. presidents” and sums up his six years in office as “humiliating.”

What is dangerous about Younesi’s cruel dismissal of Obama is not that an Iranian high official despises an American president, but that such venom follows an extraordinary effort by Barack Obama to reach out to Tehran. Obama ran in 2008 on a promise to hold face-to-face talks with the Iranian theocracy. He kept mum in the spring of 2009 when a million anti-Khomeini Iranians hit the streets. He leaked occasional unhappiness at any Israeli idea of preempting the Iranian nuclear program. He ignored his own serial “deadlines,” demanding that Iran stop further uranium enrichment. He lifted the comprehensive sanctions to stop enrichment. And he is now stealthily courting Iran as a de facto ally in the American war against the Islamic State.

Given Obama’s ending of the special relationship with Israel (has a high Obama-administration official ever dubbed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Vladimir Putin, or Kim Jong-un “a chickens—” or trashed any of them in an open-mike putdown?), there is little likelihood that any state will move to preempt the Iranians’ effort to develop a bomb (for the politically obsessed Obama there would be no political upside any longer, given that after today there will be no more general elections during his tenure).

Accordingly, it is more than likely that in the next two years Iran will become a nuclear power. That fact will immediately change the Middle East. Iran’s getting a bomb will ensure that Iraq and Lebanon become its clients, encourage radical Shiite movements in the Gulf, and push Gulf monarchies and other Sunni “moderates” into even more openly supporting radical terrorist Sunni groups, as they pool resources to obtain their own nuclear deterrent.

On Thursday, Sweden finally solved all the problems in the Middle East by recognizing the State of Palestine.

It was a plan so crazy that it was bound to either work or kill a lot of people. Mostly it’s done the latter.

But our leaders kept the faith. The White House’s Middle East coordinator insisted that Israel’s obstinate refusal to create a Palestinian State, against the wishes of the unelected president of the Palestinian Authority who refuses to negotiate one or to stop the terrorism, was causing instability in the region.

Secretary of State John Kerry had denied that ISIS was Islamic, but blamed Israel for ISIS recruitment.

But it wasn’t John Kerry who saved the Middle East from instability. Instead Sweden did it by recognizing a terror state whose leaders stopped bothering with the onerous duty of holding elections once they realized that the Eurocrats and Obama would keep shoveling money at them even if they chose their unelected terrorist leaders by playing Russian Roulette.

Sweden’s new Palestine not only dispensed with elections, routing the business of governance through its core PLO organizations, but also has no economy, instead employing an army of people who are paid not to run a country that doesn’t exist with money sent over by America, Europe and Japan.

Some would call that a scam, but it’s remarkably similar to how the European Union works.

In addition to lacking such luxuries as an elected government and an economy, the State of Palestine also doesn’t control Gaza, which is run by another terrorist group, Hamas. The international community has been ignoring that minor problem because it wouldn’t do for a bankrupt terrorist state which happens to be our last best hope for stability in the Middle East to be disqualified just because it’s actually two quarreling bankrupt terrorist states.

One terrorist state can’t help but bring stability to the Middle East. Two terrorist states sound downright unstable. If the Arab Muslim settlers in the West Bank and Gaza can’t stop fighting each other long enough to peacefully unite under the banner of one anti-Israel terrorist group, all hope for peace is lost.

New evidence has just emerged that man-made climate change (aka global warming) is a fraud, potentially the greatest scam of the modern era.

You may be interested to read my 2012 book, Global Warning: Trials of an Unsettled Science, available for purchase at www.amazon.ca and www.amazon.com

In this short and comprehensive study, I provide a readable survey of the latest research, indicating all my sources clearly so that you can follow up for yourself.

The evidence I cited in that book is now being widely recognized by such experts as Canadian scientist Tom Harris and John Casey, climate change researcher and former NASA consultant, among others.

PLEASE READ RAEL ISAAC’S REVIEW:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rael-jean-isaac/global-malarkey/

Tuesday marks the 19th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. As has been the case every year since that awful evening on November 4, 1995, the event that rocked Israel to its core is commemorated across the country at various venues, most prominent among them at the actual site of the murder.

Yes, it is in the Tel Aviv square next to City Hall (which came to be named after Rabin) where politicians, celebrities, intellectuals and anonymous peace-camp adherents gather annually to mourn.

The ostensible purpose of these vigils is twofold: to denounce the cold-blooded murder of the late leader at the hands of a Jewish Israeli who opposed his policies, and to keep the victim’s legacy alive. Their real aim, however, is to bash Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu specifically, and anyone in general who does not share the false view that Israel is to blame for the absence of peace.

The fervor and attendance of these memorials has waned somewhat over the years. This is only partly due to the passage of time, and the fact that an entire generation was born after the assassination.

The other reason for the ebb runs deeper. When the political-religious fanatic Yigal Amir pulled the trigger on Rabin, he granted the Israeli Left the much-coveted moral high ground. At the time, anyone who was against the Oslo process, which magically transformed arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat into a legitimate “peace partner,” was accused of war-mongering and told to engage in “soul-searching.”

Never mind that Arafat was openly calling for the annihilation of Israel and the killing of Jews. He had stopped doing so in English, and that was good enough for the peace fantasists. Reserving his jihadist speeches for Arab-speaking audiences — you know, the ones who were being called to take up arms — Arafat learned that all he had to do to get the world on his side was to camouflage his rifle with an olive branch, and all would be forgiven.

Unlike then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Rabin’s longtime nemesis, Rabin was not so much a peacenik as a leader who had been beaten down by the beautiful people and international pressure. His response was to drink the Kool-Aid and go for the Nobel Prize. The only thing that must have put a damper on his pact with the devil was to have to share this holy grail with Peres and Arafat, to whom he also had an aversion.