RUTHFULLY YOURS

The annual White House tradition of sparing the life of a turkey on Thanksgiving by way of a “presidential pardon” may seem peculiar to people who did not grow up in the United States.

It is a gesture that provides a few minutes of comic relief to Americans of all stripes, regardless of political affiliation. This year, U.S. President Barack Obama elicited laughter when he quipped about giving amnesties to two turkeys named Mac and Cheese. This was a veiled reference to his controversial move last week to wave his wand and legalize 5 million undocumented immigrants.

Still, while journalists may have been chuckling, members of Congress, now dominated by Republicans generally appalled at the president’s repeated abuse of his executive powers, were not amused.

As an expat American living in Israel, for whom the issue of illegal aliens in the U.S. is as abstract as celebrating Thanksgiving is distant, I have a different bone to pick (no pun intended) with Obama right now. But it involves Turkey the country, not the bird.

On Thursday, while families across America were cooking yams and pouring cranberry sauce, Israel’s Shin Bet security service announced that it had uncovered an extensive Hamas terror network in Judea and Samaria, and had thwarted a plan to carry out a series of coordinated terrorist operations against Israelis. These operations were to include abductions of Israelis at home and abroad; car-bomb detonations; roadside shootings, and a mass attack on Teddy Stadium, Jerusalem’s 34,000-seat soccer arena.

For this blessing of prevention, all Israelis owe a prayer of thanksgiving.

Following last Tuesday’s jihadist massacre of four rabbis and a police officer at the Bnei Torah Kehillat Yaakov synagogue in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ordered law enforcement bodies to act immediately to destroy the homes of the two terrorist murderers who carried out that attack. He also directed them to destroy the homes of the terrorists who carried out the three other recent attacks in Jerusalem.

The following day, police destroyed the home of one terrorist murderer. Two more homes were supposed to be destroyed in short order.

But then the EU-funded radical leftist NGO Hamoked – Center for the Defense of the Individual petitioned the Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, opposing the orders.

Wednesday the court issued an injunction prohibiting state authorities from carrying out the house demolition orders.

In directing law enforcement officials to carry out the home demolitions, Netanyahu argued that the move serves as a deterrent to future would-be terrorists. Whether or not he is correct is a matter of debate. But certainly the Supreme Court can’t determine the effectiveness of the move better than the IDF can. And the IDF’s official position is that destroying the homes of terrorists deters potential terrorists from attacking.

And yet, rather than recognize the limitations of their own wisdom, Supreme Court justices acted on the behalf of an EU-funded radical organization that represents no significant constituency in Israel, and overruled the democratically elected government, curtailing its power to take the measures it deems necessary to protect the public.

This of course was just the latest move by the court to arrogate to itself the powers duly conferred on the public’s elected representatives in the government and the Knesset.

Nidra Poller

“Now look what they’ve done!” That sums up the reaction, in certain quarters, to the November 18th slaughter at Kehilat B’nei Torah. They who? Palestinians? Israeli Arabs? Terrorists? Mujahidin? Activists? Résistants? No. The Jews. Israel = the Jews, look at what they’ve done now. Will they never learn?

The massacre is condemned, that’s the first step. Then the condemnation makes a U-turn and aims at Israel. like one of those killer cars unleashed since… when? Since the Protective Border operation pushed back the all-out attack from Gaza, leaving Hamas with phony victory celebrations in the rubble and Israelis with a hollow feeling in the pit of the stomach. The cease fire in Gaza was directly followed by a new double-pronged phase of the ongoing assault on Jews in their State: random assassinations and a “diplomatic” campaign to create a fake Palestinian State that can be used as a real weapon.

But that isn’t enough. Because there is something so atrocious about attacking men in prayer with a meat cleaver, knives, and a gun, there is something so unbearably eloquent in the sight of thick red blood on prayer books and tallit, there is something so barbaric about smashing into a synagogue to butcher pious rabbis, that certain commentators feel a need to defend themselves from accusations of bias. The campaign to create a cardboard Palestinian State is buffered by a communications offensive. Media coverage? It’s faultless, they say, and we are tired of your complaints. The creation of a Palestinian State by European parliamentary fiat is the appropriate response to “lone wolf” attacks by hopeless Palestinians, they opine, in unison with lawmakers, leaders, and anointed specialists. Extremists on both sides are spinning this political & territorial conflict into a religious war, they warn, and that must be nipped in the bud.

A virgin is worth $100 on the slave market; a mother only $10 • Women are forced to convert to Islam and then turned into sex slaves • Thousands of Kurdish and Yazidi women held by Islamic State are learning that modern slavery is alive and kicking.Every evening, silence reigns in the Khanke refugee camp, close to the Kurdish city of Dohuk in northern Iraq. Winter has already arrived, bringing with it rain, mud and cold.

Although a fire has been lit for warmth, it is potentially dangerous. A Yazidi family — men, women, elderly people and children — is crowded into each tent. The tents afford no protection from the rain, and if any should catch fire, they would immediately turn into death traps. About 60,000 Yazidis — adherents of an ancient faith that contains elements of Sufism, Kharijism and Zoroastrianism and Kurdish by culture and language — live in this camp. Last summer they managed to survive and escape from Mount Sinjar, which had been taken over by the Islamic State group. Every person at the camp knows someone who has been killed or wounded or is missing. Every person has a sister, wife or daughter who was kidnapped and raped.

Some of them have already seen the video footage on YouTube showing the modern slave markets in Syria and Iraq and the women who have fallen into bondage. According to these video clips and the accounts that are trickling out of Raqqah, the caliphate’s capital in Syria, and from Mosul, its stronghold in Iraq, the women are sold at auction to the highest bidder. Prices vary — virgins are worth $100, while women who have borne children fetch roughly $10. The members of Islamic State, fanatical jihadists who base themselves on texts from the Koran, regard the Yazidis as idol-worshippers who may be bought and sold like sheep.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/confronting-the-muslim-brotherhood-in-the-american-heartland-on-the-glazov-gang-2-1/

The Muslim Brotherhood is now gaining a strong foothold in Omaha, Nebraska, having infiltrated “The Tri-Faith Initiative” through its Islamist front groups that pose as Muslim “civil rights” organizations.

In response to this Muslim Brotherhood invasion of the American Heartland, Frontpage is running the Glazov Gang‘s feature interview with Dr. Mark Christian, the President and Executive Director of the Global Faith Institute. He is the son and nephew of high ranking leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in his home country of Egypt. After his conversion from Islam to Christianity, Dr. Christian dedicated his life and work to the proposition that “the first victims of Islam are the Muslim themselves.”

The angry rioter is a sacred figure in the progressive pantheon of social justice. The shirtless men in bandanas carting away cell phones are so outraged by injustice that they are willing to take to the streets and do what progressive hipsters taking social justice selfies of themselves in souvenir t-shirts plastered with the face of the latest victim of “white supremacism” can only dream about.

But the saint of the looted convenience store is as mythical a figure as the selfless community organizer. The race riot isn’t a bubbling stew of outrage out of which wounded souls emerge to cry out for justice. It’s a complicated criminal conspiracy in which the perpetrators rarely suffer any consequences.

Here’s how a race riot is actually put together.

3. Riots aren’t fed by outrage, but by opportunism.

The rioters aren’t outraged, they’re usually bored young men, frustrated and lacking in empathy. Many of them have gang ties or a criminal record stretching back to kindergarten.

They’re the same people who commit crimes in any other non-outraged context.

The rest are there to get some attention while providing them with protective colorati

The president dismantles immigration law that he finds incompatible with his own larger agenda.

There is a humane, transparent, truthful — and constitutional — way to address illegal immigration. Unfortunately, President Obama’s unilateral plan to exempt millions of residents from federal immigration law is none of those things.

Obama said he had to move now because of a dawdling Congress. He forgot to mention that there were Democratic majorities in Congress in 2009 and 2010, yet he did nothing, in fear of punishment at the polls.

Nor did Obama push amnesty in 2011 or 2012, afraid of hurting his own re-election chances.

Worries over sabotaging Democratic chances in the 2014 midterms explain his inaction from 2012 until now. He certainly wouldn’t have waited until 2015 to act, because Republicans will then control Congress.

Given that he has no more elections and can claim no lasting achievements, Obama now sees amnesty as his last desperate chance at establishing some sort of legacy.

Obama cited empathy for undocumented immigrants. But he expressed no such worry about the hundreds of thousands of applicants who wait for years in line rather than simply illegally cross the border.

Any would-be immigrant would have been far wiser to have broken rather than abided by federal laws. Citizens who knowingly offer false information on federal affidavits or provide false Social Security numbers would not receive the sort of amnesties likely to be given to undocumented immigrants.

Obama has downplayed Americans’ worries about social costs and competition for jobs, but studies show illegal immigration has depressed the wages of entry-level American workers while making social services costly for states and burdensome for U.S. citizens.

Millions of moms and dads will celebrate this Thanksgiving break with their kids. Alas, Michael Brown’s parents will mark this holiday without their late, world-famous son. That is a sad fact, whatever one thinks about the blazing controversy that has engulfed Ferguson, Mo.

Jermaine Jones’s family, too, will not share turkey and gravy with their son. On October 18, Jones, 29, stood with a few friends on a street in Berkeley, Mo., adjacent to Ferguson. Police say an unknown black male opened fire, killing Jones and wounding three other black men near him. (Strangely, Jones’s sister, Margaree Dixson, was shot fatally a half-mile away, just three hours earlier. In her case, too, police suspect yet another unidentified black man.)

“There’s too much violence going on,” Nicole Rice, Jones’s sister, told KTVI. “I can’t sleep. I can’t think. I can’t work. I can’t do anything wondering if my son will be a victim to the streets.”

Why has Jones’s death not unleashed riots and looting? Simple: Jones was killed by a fellow black man. Therefore, his death and his loved ones’ agony generate silence.

As a St. Louis County grand jury ruled Monday, Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, 28, lawfully shot Brown, 18, in self-defense last August 9. This decision has fueled widespread chaos, including arson in several cities and infernos in Ferguson that cremated 25 local businesses. The national outrage still is at full boil over this white cop shooting an unarmed black man who acted very aggressively after stealing cigars from a convenience store.

But one can hear birds chirp while listening for public outcry over the deaths of black citizens killed by black perpetrators. Somehow, these black lives don’t seem to matter.

Ferguson is within the St. Louis metropolitan area. The FBI’s latest homicide-rate data ranked St. Louis as America’s fourth deadliest city. Its 38 killings per 100,000 residents in 2013 put it behind only Nos. 1 to 3, Detroit, New Orleans, and Newark.

RAEL ISAAC EXPOSES THE REAL AGENDA OF THE CLIMATEERS AND PSEUDO ENVIRONMENTALISTS IN A SHORT, CONCISE BOOK…READ IT!
Roosters of the Apocalypse: How the Junk Science of Global Warming is Bankrupting the Western World (new, revised…Oct 15, 2013
Highway to the Danger Ozone As Obama rewrites the law, Congress and the courts begin to push back.

The afterparty of President Obama ’s immigration rewrite is a year-end blowout of anticarbon regulation that is also contemptuous of the rule of law and democratic consent. The better development is that the two other branches of government aren’t amused by the festivities and may impose some accountability for the damage.

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the Environmental Protection Agency released a 626-page proposal (plus a 575-page appendix) to regulate ozone. Like so many other such rules, this one twists decades-old air pollution laws to restructure the U.S. energy industry and gradually ban fossil-fuel-fired power. Coal is the first target but natural gas is next.

The ozone rule requires power plants, heavy manufacturers and agriculture operations to limit smog in ground-level ambient air. About a third of the country is out of compliance with the current standard of 75 parts-per-billion, and the EPA wants to take it to 65 ppb. The agency is also taking comments on a 60 ppb standard that would leave 95% of the country out of compliance.

This entirely discretionary rule could cost as much as $17 billion a year in return for ever-more-minuscule gains in public health—by the agency’s own calculation. Footnote: EPA estimates are always wrong by at least an order of magnitude.

This ozone ploy is especially notable because the EPA first attempted to impose it in 2011. Mr. Obama’s former regulatory chaperone Cass Sunstein prevailed on his boss ahead of the election to yank the rule, in the name of jobs and business investment. With his re-election behind him, Mr. Obama has reverted to go-for-broke green politics.

If the White House climateers are making up for lost time, and then some, they are ignoring warnings from the Supreme Court to, well, obey the law. On Tuesday the Justices agreed to hear a challenge to a separate EPA rule, which nominally limits mercury emissions but is intended as another cartridge in the anticarbon chamber.

I am an admirer of C. S. Lewis- for his writing, but, above all for his defense of faith. In an era when coercive atheists deride and ridicule religion, and there is almost contempt for orthodoxy, whereas cults and trends are praised, C.S. Lewis defended faith….what would he say today of the assaults on Christianity throughout the Moslem world?…rsk

This is a notable month for fans of C.S. Lewis : He was born on Nov. 29, 1898, and left the world on the 22nd of the same month in 1963. The passing of this major figure in Christian thinking thus became a footnote to the day of President Kennedy’s assassination.

Lewis deserves to be remembered as one of the great lights of English academics for his scholarship on Medieval and Renaissance literature. But he is deservedly best known as a spokesman for Christianity. If anything, Lewis’s work is more widely read now than during his lifetime, thanks in part to the Hollywood films based on his landmark fantasy series, “The Chronicles of Narnia.” A fourth movie, based on “The Silver Chair” in Lewis’s Narnia series, is poised for production and scheduled for a 2016 release.

His nonfiction books—such as “The Screwtape Letters,” in which devils discuss how to corrupt a well-meaning human—have broad appeal because they defend Christian belief by answering questions that a doubting public might be struggling with. Author Anthony Burgess once wrote that “Lewis is the ideal persuader for the half-convinced, for the good man who would like to be a Christian but finds his intellect getting in the way.”
Lewis grappled with crisis and struggle, and he came down on the side of faith. It was his honesty and intellectual rigor in describing his trials that help make him so compelling.

The crises that Lewis faced were substantial—his mother’s death when he was 9; being sent to a series of boarding schools that he detested; fighting and being wounded in World War I; living through the Great Depression and World War II; caring for his alcoholic brother; and, finally, the death of his wife, Joy.

How did he work through those crises? His son-in-law, Douglas Gresham, comments on Lewis’s response to Joy’s death, “He did what he always did under extreme stress. He sat down at his desk, and looking into himself and carefully observing what was happening deep in his mind where we keep our inmost secrets, he picked up his pen and an old exercise book and began to write.”