RUTHFULLY YOURS

Let Andrzejewski Open the Books in Illinois Governor-elect Rauner must appoint a comptroller. Adam Andrzejewski is the right man for the job.

Bruce Rauner’s triumph as the new Republican governor of Obama’s home state was the icing on the GOP’s national victory cake on Election Night. The cherry atop that frosting would be for Rauner to appoint open-government advocate Adam Andrzejewski as Illinois comptroller.

Rauner’s unusual and invaluable opportunity springs from tragedy.

Former comptroller Judy Baar Topinka died December 10, soon after suffering a stroke. She was 70. The veteran Republican officeholder’s unexpected departure allows Rauner to name someone to fill the four-year term to which Topinka, ironically, won reelection on November 4.

Adam Andrzejewski is the right man for this job. The 45-year-old resides in Hinsdale, a Chicago suburb, with his wife of 14 years and their three daughters. From 1997 to 2007, Adam and his younger brother, Abe, managed American Marketing and Publishing, the country’s largest producer of hometown telephone books. As the company reached 165 employees, 240 communities served, and $20 million in sales, Adam sold his shares, pocketed his winnings, and pivoted to public service.

Adam ran a conservative campaign for governor in 2010 and secured the endorsement of none other than Lech Walesa. The Cold War hero and post–Iron Curtain president of Poland flew to Chicago to campaign for Adam. The Nobel laureate declared: “I see the same qualities in Adam Andrzejewski as I saw in my friend Ronald Reagan.” Alas, the liberal local media largely overlooked these accolades, despite their newsworthy source. Adam ultimately lost the GOP primary.

Adam Andrzejewski receives the endorsement of Solidarity founder, Lech Walesa.

Undeterred, Adam used his own money to launch a non-profit called “For the Good of Illinois” and another, Open the Books. OTB has lived by its slogan: “Every dime, online, in real time.”

‘No Labels” seems like a dodge to me. Or at least it used to.

I’m referring not so much to the No Labels group as to its idée fixe. The group was established in 2010 by an array of moderate Republicans and what we used to think of as “New Democrats.” Describing itself as a “movement” — the better to suggest a grassroots surge rather than a Beltway-insider gambit — No Labels devotes itself to making Washington “work”: to transcending partisan and ideological branding, to finding the common ground needed to solve the nation’s problems.

But what if Washington is the nation’s problem? Not the much-touted dysfunction of our central government but the very conceit that the problems of 320 million people are suitable to being solved by a Beltway political elite whose lives are increasingly remote from those of the people they nominally represent?

To say that “no labels” is a dodge is to use too loaded a word. No Labels members are deeply concerned about our country, particularly our security. Their desire to fix what ails us is genuine. To my mind, though, they are hearkening to a time more fondly imagined than actually lived — a time when political adversaries put their differences aside and addressed challenges cooperatively. Presuming their good faith, as I do, it is better to say the project is ill-conceived.

Our political divide is about principles, not labels. Labels have always been given to sets of principles, but principles and politics have never been mutually exclusive. The practice of politics in a constitutional democracy is, after all, the repetition of a calculation about principle: Knowing that everyone does not agree with me but that I have opportunities to convince them over time, how much can I afford to compromise today such that my principles can advance in the short run and prevail in the long run?

Still, the No Labels people do have a point when they argue that labels hinder effective governance. I don’t think, though, that this is because the labels make us intransigent. It is because the labels make ever less sense. Their main effect today is to obscure the real scrimmage line in our politics.

THE ONLY EXPERT IS YORAM ETTINGER WHO WINS THE DEBATE HANDS DOWN….PAL-ARABS HAVE BEEN INFLATING THEIR NUMBERS IN RISIBLE FORM…..”REFUGEE” STATUS IS NOW INHERITED FOR FOUR GENERATIONS…..ARAB DOMICILES TRIPLE THE NUMBER OF “RESIDENTS” IN THEIR HOME…. AND IN SPITE OF ALL THE CON MEN IN THE ARAB NUMBERS RACKET, ETTINGER’S STUDY DEBUNKS THE SO CALLED “DEMOGRAPHIC TIME BOMB”…..RSK

On eve of 2015, Israel’s population hits 8.3 million

Data predicted equal Jewish, Arab population in Israel and territories by 2016.

Israeli experts vigorously disagree over the accuracy of a new Palestinian report predicting that the number of Palestinians living in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza would equal the number of Israel’s Jews by 2016.

Some criticized the report, claiming there were political motivations behind the numbers and that they were meant to scare Israel into making concessions to the Palestinians.

Others disapproved of the criticism, describing it as politically motivated and un-academic.

The report released this week by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics summarized data from 2014, determining that the projected number of Palestinians in the world is approximately 12.1 million, of whom 4.62 million live in the West Bank and Gaza, 1.46 million live in Israel, 5.34 million are in Arab countries, and some 675,000 reside in foreign countries.

The number of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and Jews in Israel will total about 6.42 million each in 2016 if current growth rates remain constant, predicted the bureau. It determined that, by the end of 2020, the number of Palestinians in those areas would total 7.14 million, compared to 6.87 million Jews.

Kobi Michael, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies and a senior lecturer at Ariel University, wrote a strategic assessment in October regarding the importance of the demographic factor in government policy toward the Palestinians.

“The demographic issue has become a source of profound controversy in Israel. Many see the demographic processes as a threat to the future of Israel as a state that is both Jewish and democratic, thereby necessitating rapid disengagement from the Palestinians, whether by means of a negotiated settlement or unilateral steps. Others dispute the need for panic, pointing instead to data indicating much more moderate trends: the Jewish majority will continue and even grow, both in the State of Israel proper and in the whole of the western land of Israel, certainly if the Gaza Strip is excluded….

“…In 2013 the Institute for Zionist Strategies published an updated, comprehensive study…. The most significant differences [from the “demographers of doom”] indicate that the number of Palestinians in the PA is lower by 0.7-1.3 million than the number presented by the more alarmist approach and the data of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Moreover, the data shows a Jewish majority in all of [the area west of the Jordan River] today and a more significant majority in the coming two decades, especially if the Gaza Strip is excluded from the equation.

“This study contends that despite the forecasts of a demographic disaster, the Jewish population of the land of Israel has grown significantly over the last 120 years. According to the report, in 2012 the population in western Israel reached 10,755,000 (differing from Prof. DellaPergola’s 12 million), which included a greater Jewish population of 6,332,900 (i.e., those who are eligible for Israeli citizenship according to the Law of Return though not necessarily Jewish according to religious law, or individuals unaffiliated religiously who nonetheless align themselves with the Jewish people); 4,109,000 Muslims (2,726,000 in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank); 181,000 Christians (52,000 in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank); and some 132,000 Druze. The rate of the expanded Jewish population is 59.14 percent of the total population of the western land of Israel [and a 66% Jewish majority in the combined area of Judea, Samaria pre-1967 Israel]….

Al Sharpton’s notoriety stems not only from his repellent bigotry, but also from his skill for practicing extortion on corporations for “donations.”

Having had my stomach full of news about Al Sharpton, the card sharp of racism, I decided to search the Internet for more information on him. Quite by chance in the course of my search I happened upon a few articles which detailed how Adolf Hitler was able to persuade so many German businesses and industries to support the burgeoning and noisy NSDAP (the National Socialist German Workers Party, or the Nazi Party) from the 1920’s on up through his accession of the Chancellorship in 1933 . I read many of these articles and book reviews, suspecting, and as it turned out, rightly, that Al Sharpton’s methods of garnering public and not-so-public support and money for his National Action Now (NAN) organization, emulated those of Hitler and the Nazis.

A black “NSDAP,” or, if you will, a National Socialist Black Workers Party (NSBAP)? Or, just plain NAN? Sharpton professes much interest in and anger over the plight of the “economically oppressed and exploited” black man. If there is any truth to Sharpton’s rants, it is that the Democratic Party and its economic policies are responsible for black unemployment and also its “social” policies of keeping blacks dependent on government largesse (aka, handouts and entitlements). Or, as some pundits would have it: Keeping them on the welfare state plantation. But this is something Sharpton will never recognize or permit. Manumitting blacks from Democratic possession and thralldom would liberate them from him and from government dependency.

Hitler’s addresses to German businessmen were, to put it mildly, preliminary shakedowns. Later, after he seized power in 1933, would come the arm-twisting, openly soliciting the “cooperation” of big business – or else face nationalization and/or a one-way trip to a concentration camp.

Reading up on how Hitler cajoled, persuaded, and subtly threatened German business executives and tycoons to support the Nazi Party with financial donations or at least to speak well of it or not actively oppose it concerning the Party’s vision and plans for economic recovery, I noted that Sharpton’s extortionate methods differ not a whit from Hitler’s.

On Wednesday, the Jewish Agency and the Absorption Ministry released their aliyah figures for 2014. The numbers show a 10-year high, with 26,500 new immigrants settling in Israel.

According to Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, the statistics also constitute “a historic shift: For the first time in Israel’s history, the number of immigrants who came to Israel from the Free World is greater than that of immigrants fleeing countries in distress.”

Indeed, of the 26,500 total new immigrants, 3,870 are from the United States and 8,640 from Western Europe, mostly from France.

What Sharansky and other optimists failed to point out, however, is the dark side of this otherwise shiny coin. While it is true that more Jews are opting to leave affluent societies in the West to settle in Israel, they are not simply cheerful pioneers, packing their bags to join their fellow Zionists in the Holy Land.

No, what they are doing is fleeing countries of origin which are becoming increasingly hostile to Jews.

There is nothing wrong with this from an Israeli perspective. On the contrary, the point of the Law of Return was to allow anyone considered a Jew — and persecuted as such by anti-Semites — to seek refuge in the homeland and state of the Jewish people.

What is alarming is the rising need for that refuge, including from countries in which Jews had been safe for decades after the Holocaust.

But it was bound to happen, given the global climate.

The explosion of radical Islamism, coupled with leftist apology for Third World barbarism on the one hand and fear of Muslim accusations of discrimination on the other has enabled old-style anti-Semitism to re-emerge in “polite society.”

· Israeli scientists have developed the basis for an artificial retina.
· Israeli paramedics saved a Palestinian Arab baby who suffered a heart attack.
· Per-capita, Israel is the world’s largest contributor to the fight against Ebola.
· An Israeli startup has developed a portable solar power generator.
· Israel has made large reductions to the prices of electricity, water and gasoline.
· Low cost airline easyJet is starting a Paris to Tel Aviv service.
· 2014 saw 26,500 new immigrants to Israel – the highest in a decade.

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Breakthrough in development of artificial retinas. Scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University have developed a wireless, light-sensitive, flexible implantable film that mimics the function of the photosensitive cells in the retina. It could potentially form part of a device to replace a damaged retina.
http://new.huji.ac.il/en/article/24287

Cell analysis system makes first discovery. Professor Itai Yanai of Israel’s Technion developed the CEL-Seq cell analysis method in 2012, identifying the on-off status of each of the 20,000 genes in a cell. It has just been used to determine embryonic development sequences and could help in understanding how cancer develops.
http://www.technion.ac.il/en/2014/12/animal-evolution-mystery-solved/

3D compass in the brain. Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have demonstrated that brains of mammals (including humans) contain a 3D compass. Microelectrode recordings revealed that certain neurons activate only when the head is at a particular 3D angle. It explains conditions such as vertigo and disorientation.
http://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/3d-compass-in-the-brain#.VKgjBckpqSo

Parkinson’s treatment trials success. Israel’s NeuroDerm has announced positive results for its Phase II trials of ND0612H, intended for severe Parkinson’s disease patients. The results indicate that ND0612H may provide an effective alternative therapy to current treatments requiring surgery.

Like a kiddies’ party conjurer, Maria Bhatti uttered some magic words and pulled a peace-loving, tolerant, community-building Muhammad out of her rhetorical hat. Enough to impress the children who now edit The Age and SMH, adults won’t have missed the bloody dagger being palmed from view.

Maria Bhatti, an Australian-Muslim lawyer, writes in The Age: “There are countless sayings of Muhammad (hadith) encouraging people to build community ties, and promoting love service, kindness, humility and other virtuous traits for a more meaningful life. In his last sermon, Muhammad left the following message for humankind: ‘An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over a black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action.’”

Given the carnage, persecution and intolerance perpetrated by Muslims, under the claimed guidance of Muhammad and Allah, just how much of this soft-soap (however innocently and naively conjured) is it possible to swallow without throwing up? I must admit to having just returned from the bathroom. My limit had been reached and breached. Allah said:

Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by his Messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low. (Koran, 9:29, Pickthall version)

Now call me a paranoid unbeliever if you like but I don’t get the sense of universal fraternity here. True, it matters not whether I am black or white, which is some comfort for us lily-whites, but as a Christian, I am to be fought against, finding acceptance only by paying the tribute and being brought low. Was Allah mistaken in saying this? Did He really mean it? Muhammad’s last message seems so inclusive. It was probably an oversight that he didn’t mention people of different faiths or no faith. Or, men and women? Back to Allah:

Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other… good women are obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded…those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them…(4:34)

I don’t want to go on with this quoting from the Koran. There is a lot of intolerance to be found. Alexis de Tocqueville claimed to have studied the Koran. “I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad,” he wrote. Messages of peace and goodwill dripping from the lips of moderate Muslims don’t do it for me; particularly when I see the intolerance in the Koran being preached and acted out pretty well wherever Muslims form large numbers. Of course, most Muslims are not radicals. However, it seems to me that only radical Muslims have any knowledge of Islamic scripture. So, never the twain meets. The moderates mouth platitudes based on their own imaginings while the radicals accurately follow their scripture.

Michael Ledeen ends another year touting the allegedly Good “opposition” movement of former Iranian prime minister Mousavi, the “Green Revolution” leader under house arrest since 2009.

Ledeen concludes:

If we had a foreign policy team worthy of us, we’d be supporting the Iranian opposition, but Obama has proven that he prefers Khamenei to Mousavi.

I was baffled by this same sentiment back in 2009, and remain so today.

How might it be “worthy” of the United States to back a man who wants to turn Iran, as Mousavi declared in 2009, “to the pure principles of the Islamic revolution”? Lest there be any doubt, that “Islamic revolution” would be the Khomeini revolution of 1979. Mousavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, meanwhile, is the perfect sharia-state-mate. Author of the hejab-boosting “Beauty of Concealment and Concealment of Beauty,” Mrs. Mousavi “had a major role in forming `Gasht-e Khaharan-e Zeinab,’ the female street police units that harass women to enforce `Islamic behavior.’ ”

The facts suggest that what we were looking at in Iran then and and are looking at now is just another power struggle among competing Islamic blocs — not the romantic struggle, as our most prominent pundits have insisted, for a Western concept of liberty that literally does not exist within Islam.

But there is something in the Mousavi case that is even more disturbing. How is it possible to imagine that a man almost certainly involved in the 1983 truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut is now or ever a candidate for US support?

Back in 2009, Robert Baer wrote in Time magazine:

Before we go too far down the road cheering the forces of Iranian democracy, let’s not forget that its public face, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, has American blood on his hands. He was Iran’s Prime Minister during most of the 1980s, a time when the country was waging a terrorist campaign against the U.S.

There’s an old Cold War joke — pre-pantyhose — that to defeat communism we should empty our B-52 bombers of nuclear weapons and instead drop nylons over the Soviet Union. Flood the Russians with the soft consumer culture of capitalism, seduce them with Western contact and commerce, love bomb them into freedom.

We did win the Cold War, but differently. We contained, constrained, squeezed, and eventually exhausted the Soviets into giving up. The dissidents inside subsequently told us how much they were sustained by our support for them and our implacable pressure on their oppressors.

The logic behind President Obama’s Cuba normalization, assuming there is one, is the nylon strategy. We tried 50 years of containment and that didn’t bring democracy. So let’s try inundating them with American goods, visitors, culture, contact, commerce.

It’s not a crazy argument. But it does have its weaknesses. Normalization has not advanced democracy in China or Vietnam. Indeed, it hasn’t done so in Cuba. Except for the U.S., Cuba has had normal relations with the rest of the world for decades. Tourists, trade, investment from Canada, France, Britain, Spain, everywhere. An avalanche of nylons — and not an inch of movement in Cuba toward freedom.

In fact, one could argue that this influx of Western money has helped preserve the dictatorship, as just about all the financial transactions go through the government, which takes for itself before any trickle-down crumbs are allowed to reach the regime-indentured masses.

My view is that police-state control of every aspect of Cuban life is so thoroughly perfected that outside influences, whether confrontational or cooperative, only minimally affect the country’s domestic trajectory.

So why not just lift the embargo? After all, the unassailable strategic rationale for isolating Cuba — in the Soviets’ mortal global struggle with us, Cuba enlisted as a highly committed enemy beachhead 90 miles from American shores — evaporated with the collapse of the Soviet empire. A small island with no significant independent military capacities, Cuba became geopolitically irrelevant.