RUTHFULLY YOURS

STANLEY KURTZ: What is the purpose of an election campaign? Supposedly, elections allow voters to decide who and how they want to run the country. The candidates explain their positions, debate the merits of the issues and then the voters choose.

You might remember a little thing called the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Well, nothing like that is happening these days. Let’s review. In 2008, Americans elected a president who advertised himself as a post-partisan unifier, a fellow who was famous for saying that there weren’t red states or blue states, only the United States. And a lot of Americans, even some Republicans, believed him. Yet, the man they elected turned out to be the most partisan, the most intentionally polarizing and the most leftist president in the history of the United States.

The people in this audience, I would wager, weren’t fooled by any of this, but, on the whole, the people of the United States were fooled. And the question now is are we, as a people, about to be fooled again?

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington in July 2010, he met with representatives of the National Jewish Democratic Council and the Republican Jewish Coalition at Blair House. After the two delegations quietly entered the dimly lit brocaded dining room, they sat down at a large elliptical table, the Democrats to Netanyahu’s left and the Republicans to his right. But the calm was shattered as the Democrats and Republicans began shouting at each other and pounding the table until they were told to cool it. “The chastised representatives fell silent and finally acknowledged Netanyahu’s presence, but their near brawl demonstrated that Washington’s political schizophrenia also split American Jews” — or so the former Israeli ambassador to the United States and current Knesset member Michael B. Oren reports in his remarkably frank new memoir, “Ally.”

Haaretz, the paper of the Israeli left, has spent the past few weeks running a series of shrill attacks on former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren over his book Ally, which complains about Israel’s treatment by Obama. The New York Times has tried to top them by bringing in former New Republic man and National Interest editor Jacob Heilbrunn, still atoning for his ideological sins by denouncing the “neo-cons” to pen an even shriller screed about Oren.

Even though Jacob Heilbrunn’s rant is technically a review, the first half of it doesn’t talk about the book, but instead condenses every single attack on Oren as if providing a Media Matters reading list.

The administration threatens to walk away from talks — but the world has seen Obama’s “red lines” before.

Barack Obama has repeatedly compared himself to Ronald Reagan as a transformative president. But labels mean nothing. Obama could demonstrate that he learned something meaningful from the Reagan legacy by showing some backbone in his nuclear negotiations with Iran. He should order his Secretary of State John Kerry to walk away this week if Iran does not immediately concede on such vital points as allowing unfettered international inspections “anywhere at anytime,” including inspections of any military sites where suspected nuclear-related activities may have taken place in the past. Moreover, Obama should instruct Kerry to walk away if Iran continues to reject phased sanctions relief tied strictly to verifiable proof of Iran’s compliance with each stage of its obligations under the terms of a final deal. If Obama were to do so, taking full advantage of the leverage afforded by tight economic sanctions imposed on Iran, he would be following in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan, not Neville Chamberlain.

What will the Millennials do? What are the Millennials thinking? Every liberal media article likes to use the word “Millennials,” which is code for hip youngsters who are with the times – supporting illegal aliens, championing government control (for our own good), teaching gay sex to toddlers, etc.

So, given the media’s placement of importance on Millennials, I will take my lead from them and talk about Millennials, too! Given how we are told (it must be true!) how in sync Millennials are with the Democratic agenda, who do you think is in a better position to appeal to them: Hillary or Bernie?

Bernie, at only 73 years old, is the exact same age at which Ray Charles died. And James Brown, and Pat Morita (from The Karate Kid). And Bernie is only three years older than Hans Christian Andersen, Gene Roddenberry, Stanley Kubrick, and Bob Denver were when they died.

“It seems God-bashers tend to believe in global warming, the power of government to right societal ills, gay marriage, open borders and every other flawed cause that stirs inner-city hearts to gales of sanctimony. I don’t think that is a coincidence.
I am reminded of the aphorism attributed to G K Chesterton, “He [she] who doesn’t believe in God will believe in anything.”

I have the complete works of Shakespeare on my bookshelf. I no longer have a typewriter, but let’s say there are 40 keys. And let’s avoid the problem of the shift key. There are, I very roughly calculate, six million discrete key strokes required to compile the complete works. So the odds of a monkey in front of a typewriter producing the complete works is about six million raised to the power of 40 to one. ‘Not very likely’ is somewhat of an understatement.

What are the odds of other intelligent beings existing outside of Earth in our universe? Well I don’t know because I don’t know what the odds are of life emerging by chance from inanimate matter and then, through random mutation and natural selection, going on to form intelligent life. The fact that there are apparently 100 billion stars in our galaxy and 100 billion other galaxies doesn’t help me. One hundred billion times 100 billion is a very small number when compared with 6 million raised to the power of 40. And just maybe the odds of intelligent life emerging are much, much longer than the chance of a monkey typing the complete works? If that were the case, the chances of intelligent life existing elsewhere would be remote. But wait! Infinity is the new God.

Flanked by the nation’s top generals, including the leaders of CENTCOM and AFRICOM, as well as the secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, President Obama acknowledged “we’re going to have to pick up our game” to prevent attacks from ISIS.

But, Obama stressed, “we’ll constantly reaffirm through words and deeds that we will never be at war with Islam while fighting terrorists who distort Islam and whose victims are mostly Muslims.”

Looking down at the podium in the Pentagon briefing room frequently as he was reading off a prepared speech without the benefit of a teleprompter, Obama said the “larger battle for hearts and minds” to defeat ISIS “is going to be a generational struggle. It’s ultimately not going to be lost or won by the United States alone.”

“We’re going to work day and night with allies and partners to disrupt terrorist networks and thwart attacks and to smother nascent ISIL cells that may be trying to develop in other parts of the world. This also includes remaining vigilant in protecting against attacks here in the homeland,” the president said. “Now I think it’s important for us to recognize the threat of violent extremism is not restricted to any one community. Here in the United States, we have seen all kinds of home-grown terrorism and tragically recent history reminds us how even a single individual motivated by a hateful ideology with access to dangerous weapons can inflict horrendous harm on Americans.”

The Greeks have their Bernie Sanders. What they need is their Chris Christie.

The Greek people spent part of the weekend in the streets celebrating their status as international deadbeat. They spent the rest of the weekend hoarding food, fuel, and medicine in preparation for the manmade disaster they have inflicted upon themselves.

Greek referendum voters overwhelmingly rejected bailout terms offered them by their European patrons. Greece’s leftist prime minister, Alexis Tsipras — think of him as Europe’s answer to Senator Sanders, but with enough discipline to be dangerous — insisted that a popular rejection of the bailout terms would put him in a stronger negotiating position. The European Central Bank (ECB) immediately began to disabuse the Greeks of that notion: The first order of ECB business on Monday was — if you’ll forgive me for eliding the financial gobbledygook — choosing a larger sledgehammer with which to jack up Greek financial institutions should Athens fail to sober up sufficiently for Tuesday’s emergency negotiations. The ECB is imposing larger losses on Greek banks, not smaller ones, and may yet discontinue its emergency support entirely, in which case: lights out.

In Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court used its power of judicial review to legalize gay marriage throughout the nation. In one fell stroke, five Justices short-circuited the democratic process, which was gradually removing barriers to gays, and swept aside the Constitution’s reservation of family-law matters to the states. Even while they may disagree on gay marriage, most Americans believe they must obey Obergefell because the separation of powers gives the Supreme Court the ultimate authority to interpret the Constitution.

Prominent defenders of traditional marriage, however, have gone beyond the usual criticism of a mistaken judicial decision to attack the Supreme Court as an institution. “I will not acquiesce to an imperial court any more than our Founders acquiesced to an imperial British monarch,” said Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas and GOP presidential candidate. “We must resist and reject judicial tyranny, not retreat.” Fellow candidate and Republican senator Ted Cruz has proposed constitutional amendments not only to overturn Obergefell, which other candidates support, but to subject Supreme Court justices to periodic elections.

Discussions of racial problems almost invariably bring out the cliché of “a legacy of slavery.” But anyone who is being serious, as distinguished from being political, would surely want to know if whatever he is talking about — whether fatherless children, crime, or whatever — is in fact a legacy of slavery or of some of the many other things that have been done in the century and a half since slavery ended.

Another cliché that has come into vogue is that slavery is “America‘s original sin.” The great Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that a good catch phrase could stop thinking for 50 years. Catch phrases about slavery have stopped people from thinking for even longer than that.

Today the moral horror of slavery is so widely condemned that it is hard to realize that there were thousands of years when slavery was practiced around the world by people of virtually every race. Even the leading moral and religious thinkers in different societies accepted slavery as just a fact of life.