RUTHFULLY YOURS

“I gain no confidence from Obama or Kerry. Netanyahu gives me confidence. Those men in the Misav Am Kibbutz give me confidence as do the 26-year-old fighter pilot, the 20-year-old tank commander, the 21-year-old second lieutenant, and the young woman regular soldier who we met. And to echo Churchill in saying in 1899 that science had saved Christendom from Muslim conquest, Israel science might help save Israel. Those Nobel Prizes say something about Jewish ingenuity.In a sense Israel stands alone. It is not America Alone, as Mark Steyn argues. It is Israel alone because of the clarity that being on the front line brings. They understand the threat not only to Israel but to the world.”

It is easy, all to easy, for Obama and John Kerry to spout platitudes about the quest for peace in the Middle East. On the ground in Israel, surrounded by enemies and barraged by threats and promises of genocide, delusion is a luxury an encircled nation cannot afford to indulge.

I’m socially reticent except where dancing is concerned. Show me people dancing and I have an irresistible urge to join in. Artlessly it is true but not in a shy way. The sun sets on Friday evening in front of the Western Wall (Wailing Wall) in East Jerusalem. Shabbat begins as does the joyous dancing and singing. Young soldiers with M16s slung over their shoulders are part of the revelry. Circles form, arms on shoulders. I’m invited in. No need to ask twice.

I take time out to pray against the Wall. I’m a Christian. It doesn’t matter. I’m praying to the same God, in the same vicinity, as did Jesus.

If anyone is delusional enough to think that Israel will give up any part of Jerusalem they should visit the Wailing Wall on Shabbat. There is no chance of Israel ever giving up a square foot. This realty underscores my theme of ‘clarity in extremis’, informed by a visit to Israel organised by Shurat HaDin.

Shurat HaDin is a non-profit Israeli law group, directed by (the lovely and resolute) Nitsana Darshan-Leitner. They follow the money and use legal action, often in American courts, to degrade the funding of Islamic terrorism. More generally, they use the courts to combat efforts on the part of the left (and assorted useful idiots) to undermine Israel. They are active in combating the disgraceful and disingenuous BDS campaign. (Refer, for example, to their case against Professor Jake Lynch of Sydney University.) And, in 2011, they successfully ‘torpedoed’ the intended second Gaza flotilla.

A seven-day mission in Israel, however intensive and instructional, does not an expert make. Nevertheless, you would have to be extremely obtuse — John Kerry comes to mind — not to recognise a problem without a solution when it’s been laid bare time after time; negotiation after negotiation. Yet, Kerry is not alone. The pie-in-the-sky two-state solution is still the common currency of discourse among politicians and commentators in the world outside of Israel. The disconnection between this solution and the facts on the ground is stark.

I feel a flush of schadenfreude…rsk
After 27 Years at CNN, News Host Who Meddled in the 2012 Elections to Protect Obama is Out of a Job

By Jennifer Van Laar

After 27 years with the network, Candy Crowley is out at CNN.

After the 2012 Presidential Debate she moderated between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, the State of the Union host was roundly criticized for seeming to take sides.When Romney questioned Obama’s claim that he had called Benghazi an act of terror in a Rose Garden ceremony the day after the attack, as opposed to blaming it on a spontaneous demonstration, Crowley said, “He did, in fact.”

Later, Crowley told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Romney “was right in the main. I just think he picked the wrong word.” According to The Wrap, in a memo they obtained,

CNN President Jeff Zucker said of Candy:

To say she lives and breathes politics is more than an understatement. She has an innate ability to sense its nuance, push its limits, and ask questions that others won’t. She is beloved in Washington even by those that she so skillfully takes to task on Sunday mornings. And she’s an award-winning journalist – taking home everything from a Peabody and Emmys to an Edward R. Murrow award. She is a television news icon.

Thus, it is with mixed emotions, that I wanted to let you know that Candy has let us know that she has made the decision to move on, so she can embark on the next chapter of her already prolific career.

A replacement has not been named, though The Wrap mentioned Jake Tapper and John King as strong contenders. Tapper would be an interesting pick, as he is one of the few traditional media journalists whom conservatives respect.

Tony Blair got it right. When asked about the consequences of the West’s intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, Britain’s former Prime Minister, once again reiterated “the reason it was tough in Iraq and tough in Afghanistan is the reason it is tough today…. It’s tough because terrorism is deep-rooted and it’s got very strong causes within the religion of Islam,” he is quoted saying. Earlier this year, Blair pointed out that radical Islam destabilizes “communities and even nations. It is undermining the possibility of peaceful co-existence”. And Blair does not only refer to the Sunni ISIS, or the Taliban, but also warns against allowing Iran the capability to produce nuclear weapons.

Blair is being mocked by the British and American leftist media which has been very careful not to blame Islam for violence and terrorism. Even the Royal family’s love affair with Saudi royals and Gulf Emirs, matched until recently only by the British Foreign Office, is being undermined by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Saudis, who first banned the Brotherhood and later designated it as terrorist, have, like many others, underestimated the organization’s real influence and were surprised when Sir John Jenkins, a former British ambassador to Riyadh, concluded last September that the special commission he headed found no indication that the Muslim Brotherhood was involved in terrorism.

The same thing happened last week, when Barack H. Obama dismissed hundreds of thousands of American petitioners to designate the Brotherhood. Instead, the White House issued this statement: “We have not seen credible evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood has renounced its decades-long commitment to non-violence.”

“No evidence”?

Apparently, no one at the White House has seen on live television the Muslim Brothers leading the violence in Cairo and elsewhere, or newspaper headlines and pictures taken in Tahrir Square (or in London, or in Paris) of Muslim Brothers holding signs calling for the killing of the offenders of Islam.

Stand with Hillary PAC released this masterpiece supporting Hillary Clinton’s potential campaign for president in 2016. (Stand with Hillary via YouTube)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfU3hI8ML30#t=101

“I’ve been thinkin’ about one great lady like the women in my life
She’s a mother, a daughter, and through it all, she’s a lovin’ wife
Oh, there is something about her, this great lady, caring, hard-working, once a First Lady
She fights for country and my family”

Sure, it has inspired less than favorable reviews:

http://jezebel.com/oh-my-god-this-song-for-hillary-clinton-is-beyond-awfu-1666728236

https://hotair.com/archives/2014/12/04/video-nothing-says-authentic-like-a-country-song-about-hillary-clinton-running-for-president/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/12/04/this-hillary-clinton-song-is-really-terrible-video/

But no review can do this work of art justice, neither the hathos ( aesthetic term denoting the sensation evoked by finger nails dragging across a blackboard) nor the “Attention Wal Mart shoppers” condescension and utter contempt for the audience. You must experience the depths of horribleness for yourself. So listen to the whole thing—I dare you.

For those who would like to savor the libretto:

VERSE 1:

Lookin’ back in time, learnin’ hindsight’s always right

We came together in a way

A defining moment we all can celebrate

And now it’s 2016 and this time I’m a thinkin’

Guys put your boots on, and let’s smash this ceiling!

(YouTube / Stand With Hillary)

CHORUS:

I’ve been thinkin’ about one great lady like the women in my life

She’s a mother, a daughter, and through it all, she’s a lovin’ wife

Oh, there is something about her, this great lady, caring, hard-working, once a First Lady

She fights for country and my family, now it’s time for us to stand up

*BOOM BOOM CLAP*

*BOOM BOOM CLAP* With Hillary

Hillary!

Stand up

With Hillary

(YouTube / Stand With Hillary)

VERSE 2:

Don’t matter if you’re livin’ across this great land in a red or blue state

‘Cuz our American Dream is at stake

And there’s some Hard Choices that need to be made

We’re needing a leader who is tough and ready Who’s got vision

For me it’s Hillary

And that’s my final decision!

CHORUS:

I’ve been thinkin’ about one great lady like the women in my life

She’s a mother, a daughter, and through it all, she’s a lovin’ wife

Oh, there is something about her, this great lady, caring, hard-working, once a First Lady

She fights for country and my family, now it’s time for us to stand up

*BOOM BOOM CLAP*

*BOOM BOOM CLAP* With Hillary

Hillary!

Stand up America

With Hillary

The government argues that the new powers—intended to prevent British jihadists from fighting abroad and to stop them from returning if they do—are necessary to keep Britain safe.

Civil liberties groups counter that the measures are “draconian” in scope and represent a dramatic expansion of government surveillance powers, ones that are ripe for misuse if they are not matched by strong safeguards.

A key provision of the new law would authorize the government to seize the passports of terror suspects traveling to Iraq, Syria and other jihadist battlegrounds.

The British government has unveiled sweeping new counter-terrorism measures which—if approved by Parliament—would give the United Kingdom some of the “toughest powers in the world” to fight Islamic terrorism.

The government argues that the new powers—intended to prevent British jihadists from fighting abroad and to stop them from returning if they do—are necessary to keep Britain safe.

Civil liberties groups counter that the measures are “draconian” in scope and represent a dramatic expansion of government surveillance powers, ones that are ripe for misuse if they are not matched by strong safeguards.

The Counter Terrorism and Security Bill was introduced to the House of Commons (the lower house of Parliament) by Home Secretary Theresa May on November 26. The bill is being fast-tracked through Parliament and could become law as early as the beginning of 2015.

A key provision of the new law would authorize the government to seize the passports of terror suspects traveling to Iraq, Syria and other jihadist battlegrounds.

A loophole touted as a way for employers to wiggle out of the Affordable Care Act’s insurance mandate has been closed. What happened?
Officials got wind that some employers planned to bypass the mandate by giving their workers bonuses, asking them to decline company-sponsored insurance and sending them to the Obamacare marketplaces to buy subsidized policies. Nudging sick workers, in particular, onto the exchanges could save employers’ health plans money and shift the cost onto publicly subsidized plans. The Labor Department published new guidelines in November to explicitly forbid that practice.

Why did employers think they could get out of a federal mandate?
“Brokers were running around selling this idea that employers could give everybody a raise and say, ‘Go, get the tax credit, knock yourselves out,’ and they wouldn’t pay a penalty. Go figure—the IRS got wise to that,” says Keith McMurdy, a partner in the employee benefit division at Fox Rothschild, a law firm in New York City.

Hasn’t there been confusion around the employer mandate in general?
That probably hasn’t helped. Under the Affordable Care Act, so-called large employers—those with more than 50 employees—were supposed to offer insurance or pay penalties starting this year. But the Obama administration pushed that deadline back repeatedly after the bungled rollout of health insurance exchanges in late 2013. In fact, those delays are being challenged in the Republicans’ recent lawsuit against the administration.

Here’s a little-told success story: Israeli Arabs, women in particular, have made huge strides over the past decade at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, better known as Israel’s answer to MIT. Among both men and women, Arabs’ share of the Technion student body is now equal to their share of the overall population, an impressive achievement considering that more than half of Israeli Arab children live below the nation’s official poverty line.

I spoke today with Yosef Jabareen, an Arab professor of urban planning who spearheads the Technion’s effort to recruit and graduate Arab students. He shared a recently updated report he’s done and explained what he called “a dramatic change” in outcomes for Arab students. “For me, as an Arab professor, it’s fantastic,” said Jabareen. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Technion, completed his education in the U.S. with a master’s from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (America’s answer to the Technion), then returned to his alma mater and five years ago was named assistant to the senior vice president for minorities.In 2001, as this slide shows, Arabs accounted for only 11 percent of undergraduates at the Technion. The percentage rose steadily to 18 percent last year and jumped three percentage points more to 21 percent this year, which is the same as Arabs’ share of the population of Israel (not counting the West Bank or Gaza, of course). Jabareen says that in 1990 Arabs’ share of the student body was only 5 percent to 7 percent. So it’s at least tripled in a quarter-century.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/documents-reveal-obama-hhs-paid-182129786-for-four-months-housing-of-illegal-alien-children?f=puball

– Judicial Watch announced today that on September 9, 2014, it received documents from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) revealing that the Obama administration paid Baptist Children and Family Services (BCFS) $182,129,786 to provide “basic shelter care” to 2,400 “unaccompanied alien children” (UAC) for four months in 2014. The BCFS budget included charges for $104,215,608 for UACs at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and an additional $77,914,178 for UACs at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.

The start date of BCFS’s contract was October 1, 2013, but it was signed on June 27, 2014. The project’s end date of September 30, 2016, suggests that the Obama administration anticipates that the “surge” will continue until near the end of his presidency.

According to the documents obtained by Judicial Watch, the cost to the American taxpayer was $86,846.34 per illegal alien child at Ft. Sill, for a total to $104,215,608 for 1,200 UACs from June 12 to October 18. The bill also included $2,648,800 in compensation for 30 members of the BCFS “Incident Management Team” (IMT), for a total to $88,293 per IMT member for the four-month period.

The $77,914,178 to care for 1,200 children at Lackland AFB amounted to a cost to the taxpayer of $64,928 per illegal alien child from May 18 to September 18. The Lackland bill included $20,000 for a “cable television screen/projector set up” and 20 shower stalls at $1,000 each.

Judicial Watch obtained the documents in response to an August 1, 2014, Freedom of Information Act request seeking BCFS applications for funding, correspondence between the HHS Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and BCFS, and correspondence within ACF relating to BCFS. The records obtained by Judicial Watch from the HHS Administration for Children and Families include the “Budget Information and Project Narrative portions of the BCFS applications funded in calendar 2014” for both the Ft. Sill and the Lackland AFB facilities.

Just like the House of Commons a bit earlier, on December 2 the French National Assembly voted for a seemingly significant but in reality inconsequential resolution calling for the recognition of the state of Palestine.

Indeed, the resolution won by a large margin: 339 to 151. But there is very little substance about it, either in constitutional or political terms. It may even accelerate a pro-Israel reaction both in France and in the European Union at large.

The constitutional angle is clear enough. As Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, observed a few days before the vote, “the policy of France,” including its foreign policy and the recognition of foreign States, “is determined and conducted by the Government” under the Fifth Republic Constitution of 1958, article 20. Moreover, according to a constitutional custom tracing back to General Charles de Gaulle, the Fifth Republic’s first president from 1959 to 1969, it is the president’s exclusive prerogative to make decisions in matters of defense and international relations.

The French executive — President François Hollande as well as Prime Minister Manuel Valls and diplomacy chief Fabius — has definitely made up its mind about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. It sticks to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process as defined by the 1993 Oslo accords and subsequent agreements. Accordingly, it opposes the recognition of the state of Palestine under the present circumstances, since such a move would wreck the Oslo accords for good. However, in order to revive and accelerate the peace process, France is prepared to hold a peace conference in Paris with Israel, the Palestinians, and the powers or international organizations that may have been involved at one point or another (the United States, Russia, the EU, the UN, etc).

Given that context, a French National Assembly resolution calling for the recognition of the state of Palestine carries no more weight than a United Nations General Assembly resolution. It has no binding power whatsoever.

The political angle is a bit more complex. Still, it leads to the similar conclusion that the resolution is a non-starter. It has been essentially supported by the current Left majority in the National Assembly (a coalition of socialists, quasi-socialists, neocommunists, and Greens, who hold 343 seats out of 577). The conservative opposition (225 seats) opposed it or abstained. However, the legitimacy of the Left-dominated National Assembly is eroding at a smart pace. According to a CSA/Le Figaro poll that was coincidentally released on the very day the assembly voted on Palestine, new elections, if held now, would be an unprecedented triumph for Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative party and its centrist allies.

Americans remember December 7 as Pearl Harbor Day, but most Americans have never even heard of the “Little Pearl Harbor,” which occurred in Bari Harbor, Italy, on December 2, 1943. More than 100 Luftwaffe bombers mounted a surprise attack on Allied ships moored in the harbor. Their bombs sank or rendered inoperable 28 of these ships. Nearly a thousand Allied troops were killed or wounded. along with hundreds of civilians.

Unbeknownst to those in the port, one of the ships carried liquid death in its belly. The American freighter John Harvey was secretly carrying mustard agent, in violation of international agreements that banned its use. President Franklin Roosevelt had covertly ordered the shipment of 100 tons of mustard agent to Italy for retaliation in the event that the Germans used chemical warfare against the Allied troops. The incident was covered up and remained a secret for decades.

When the German bombs hit the John Harvey, the ship’s hold immediately exploded with devastating violence, killing all those who knew about the mustard. Deadly liquid and gas flew high into the air and then slowly settled back down into the harbor, coating everything and everyone in the vicinity. Casualties would mount over the coming days and weeks as the agent slowly and painfully claimed the lives of many who had survived the initial attack.

Among those who survived in the harbor that day were some of America’s first SEALs, the men of the OSS Maritime Unit. Their ranks included Jack Taylor, a former dentist from Hollywood, and Sterling Hayden, one of Hollywood’s leading men. Their stories are captured for the first time in a new book titled First SEALs: The Untold Story of the Forging of America’s Most Elite Unit.

Hayden recalled the drama: “We were trapped on the end of a dock, and eighty partisans from Yugoslavia went right on with what they were doing in spite of the commotion, loading ammunition, blankets, and high-octane gas into a pair of wooden schooners. The leader of the Yugoslavs, a man named Stipanovitch, fired at the low-flying German planes with a machine pistol. ‘Bloody fucking buggers!’ he yelled over and over again in a deep voice that boomed through a broad mustache.”

Fortunately for the OSS, the Luftwaffe bombers targeted the Allies’ more impressive warships and failed to sink the Maritime Unit’s ragtag fleet, which included a former fishing vessel known as the Yankee. As the OSS men cleaned up Bari and attempted to save civilians and seamen alike from the damage caused by the bombs and the lethal mustard gas, they also prepared the Yankee for one of the most daring and dangerous rescue missions of World War II.

A couple of weeks earlier, a C-53 Skytrooper transport plane carrying 26 American nurses and medics had crashed behind enemy lines in German-controlled Albania. That war-torn country was occupied by the Germans, but it also held a variety of armed insurgent groups and militias who were fighting the Germans. In a high-profile operation authorized by President Roosevelt himself, the first SEALs would attempt to rescue the American medical personnel.