RUTHFULLY YOURS

Last August 14 the Wall Street Journal reported that, in July, after Israel had launched Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, Washington had surprised Israel by turning down an Israeli request for “a large number of Hellfire missiles.” Hellfires are an important air-to-surface precision weapon, suited to the kind of warfare Israel was waging against Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza.

But as Amir Rapaport, a veteran Israeli military-affairs writer and editor of the Israel Defense site, now reports:

The full truth…is much more severe: apparently, during Operation Protective Edge, the USA had completely stopped all connections with Israel’s defense procurement delegation based in the USA. For days, no item whatsoever could be shipped. The expected airlift of US ammunition had never even arrived at its point of departure.

The crisis began about ten days into Operation Protective Edge, pursuant to allegations that the percentage of uninvolved civilian deaths in the Gaza Strip was extremely high (IDF admitted that about one half of all Palestinian deaths were probably civilians who had not been involved in the fighting).

At that stage, the Israeli defense establishment submitted to the USA a request for various types of munitions, including Hellfire missiles, to replenish the dwindling inventories of IDF….

The order to stop the processing of all Israeli requests came from a senior echelon—probably the White House, among other reasons, because Israel had ignored the initiatives of Secretary of State John Kerry and preferred to end the operation through a direct channel with the Egyptians. The State Department had been annoyed with Israel for several months, since it was revealed that Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon had referred to Kerry as “Messianic” in closed sessions.

No less than three reasons are given here for Washington’s ire toward Israel. Regarding the first—the allegedly high Palestinian civilian casualties—an ongoing study by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Information Center has found, so far, that the death rate was indeed about 50%-50% between Palestinian combatants and civilians. This compares favorably with ratios of three civilians killed for every one combatant in Afghanistan, and four civilians for every one combatant in Iraq and in Kosovo.

The Obama administration may be planning to issue 34 million work visas and green cards in coming weeks without the required legal authorization from Americans’ elected representatives in Congress, according to a recently uncovered government procurement order.

If 34 million individuals were amnestied the U.S. population would grow by more than a tenth. The U.S. Census Bureau currently estimates the nation’s population at a little over 319 million. There is no official count of illegal aliens present in the United States but 11 million is one widely circulated estimate. Some studies put the figure as high as 38 million.

The procurement order is a smoking gun suggesting that President Obama intends to plunge the nation into a grave constitutional crisis after Election Day by using executive orders to unilaterally enact an amnesty affecting millions of undocumented aliens now unlawfully present in the United States. The prospective amnesty could also impact aliens who have yet to arrive in the country.

Congress has repeatedly refused to grant the amnesties that Obama seeks, but the president refuses to take no for an answer, pressing on regardless of how much damage he inflicts on the country.

A large-scale amnesty would be a profoundly cynical move that would reward lawbreaking and beget future immigration amnesties. It would also spell electoral death for the Republican Party in coming years because Latinos, who are believed to comprise the bulk of the illegals, have traditionally shown a strong preference for the Democratic Party and its left-of-center public policies.

The amnesty that Obama promised his radical political base had been widely expected to take place after Labor Day last month but in the summer the president took significant political heat over the plan and the still-ongoing invasion of the southern border by illegal aliens –many of them unaccompanied minors and gang members — from Central America. Obama then apparently decided to delay the executive action until after next month’s elections in hopes of not sabotaging Democrats’ efforts to hang onto control of the U.S. Senate.

Obama’s scheme came to light when Breitbart News uncovered a draft request for proposals that appears to provide broad outlines of the president’s extra-legal amnesty scheme two weeks before congressional elections that may place both chambers of Congress in the hands of Republicans.

Oil Rigs Support Biodiversity
Ironically, it is the “green” technology of wind and solar farms that helps wipe out endangered species.

Never let it be said that Mother Nature doesn’t appreciate irony. A new study led by researchers at Occidental College and the University of California at Santa Barbara has found that the oil platforms dotting the California coast are fantastic for sea life.

In a 15-year study, researchers found that the ecosystems that build up around artificial rigs host 1,000 percent more fish and other sea life than natural habitats such as reefs and estuaries. The California rigs outstripped even famously rich ecosystems such as the coral reefs of French Polynesia.

Now, as a big fan of artificial reefs, I think this is exciting news. There are many who oppose the idea of improving on God’s — or, if you prefer, Gaia’s — design. This strikes me as crazy, given the fact that virtually all of the food we eat and the clothes we wear are the products of human innovation. When humans ran out of gazelles or bison to hunt, they had the great idea of catching a few and raising a renewable supply. When picking wild seeds and berries no longer fed the tribe, it dawned on humans to plant their own.

Fish pose a special problem, however, because many species are difficult to farm. And even when fish are adaptable to aquaculture, there are special risks and costs involved. As a result, the oceans are still being overfished, thanks in no small part to the tragedy of the commons. (Since no one owns the ocean, fishing fleets often grab as much as they can.)

According to Jeremy Claisse, the lead author of the study, the reason rigs are particularly beneficial stems from the fact that they’re so tall. A skyscraper from seafloor to surface apparently lends itself to a very rich ecosystem. The fact that it’s an oil rig is, of course, irrelevant.

The recent questionably unconstitutional moves by the Houston city council to subpoena the sermons of five area ministers, as well as internal correspondence dealing with social issues, should have the American Civil Liberties Union and everyone else who believes in free speech and religious freedom up in arms.

We as Americans must guard every aspect of our Constitution and recognize when it is being threatened. One of the great dangers in America today is extreme intolerance in the name of tolerance.

For example, in this Houston case, it is presupposed that the pastors in question may have said something that was objectionable to the homosexual community. In order to prove that we are tolerant of the homosexual lifestyle, we as a society allow gays to be intolerant of anyone who disagrees with them in any way.

Of course, gays should be able to live in any manner they choose as long as it does not infringe on the rights of anyone else. And of course, ministers should be able to preach according to the dictates of their conscience as long as they are not forcing others to listen. This concept of “live and let live” is an essential ingredient of harmonious living in a diverse society. We cannot single out the side we want to castigate for intolerance while letting the other side get away with it without comment.

Perhaps it is time for Americans to take an honest look at what it means to live peacefully in a diverse society composed of people with many different points of view. This requires true tolerance, which includes being capable of listening to people with views that might differ from yours.

Black-ish, and the never-ending “honest conversation.”

‘A long-awaited invitation to begin an honest, calm national dialogue about race,” was how the Chicago Tribune described President Barack Obama’s speech in response to the Jeremiah Wright scandal. “Can an honest conversation about race be inoffensive?” Conor Friedersdorf wondered in The Atlantic. A recent book from the University of Virginia Press promised “an honest conversation on race, reconciliation, and responsibility.” Whitney Dow, the documentarian behind “The Whiteness Project,” also desires “an honest conversation about race.” Sensing the moment with its usual acuity, the Onion reported: “Open Dialogue Two Americans Having about Race Pretty Hilarious.” In that intellectual environment, Black-ish, Kenya Barris’s new ABC sitcom — just not a sitcom but a “black sitcom,” according to Wikipedia — has about it a feeling of inevitability. And of course it raises “more serious conversations about race,” according to CNN.

Black-ish is the story of Andre Johnson Sr., a successful Los Angeles advertising executive who with his mixed-race physician wife, Rainbow, is determined to give his children all of the advantages and opportunities that he himself did not enjoy growing up, but who is worried that his family’s life of affluence and security has somehow rendered them less authentic. “I’m going to need my family to be black, not black-ish,” he declares over the dinner table at his “spectacular” Southern California home. He is unhappy that his elder son is going by “Andy” rather than “Andre” and wants to play field hockey rather than basketball, that his young twins do not identify with the only other black child in their class or even consider her blackness relevant, and that his popular elder daughter does not seem to have any sense of uniquely black identity.

There have been many moments in recent American history at which it has been undeniably obvious that black Americans and white Americans in the main inhabit separate emotional and intellectual universes. This divide is not as dramatic as the O. J. Simpson verdict or the Rodney King riots, but another brick in that wall of racial separateness is the fact that it has never occurred to me, a conservative, white, middle-aged man from Texas, to meditate for a moment on the question of whether I am living a life of sufficiently authentic whiteness. I have of course been aware that the issue is a pertinent one among black Americans, aware at least in the vague and seldom-considered way that whites tend to be aware of those things. I was skeptical about whether the premise could sustain a single episode of a sitcom, must less provide the organizing basis for a series.

If Hillary Had a Daughter She Would Look Like Monica Lewinsky By Paula Bolyard

Monica Lewinsky spoke recently to young entrepreneurs and achievers at Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia about her sex scandal with the President of the United States and about how her life was forever altered by the experience.

Sixteen years ago, fresh out of college, a 22-year-old intern in the White House — and more than averagely romantic – I fell in love with my boss in a 22-year-old sort of a way. It happens. But my boss was the President of the United States. That probably happens less often.

Now, I deeply regret it for many reasons. Not the least of which is that people were hurt. And that’s never okay.

But back then, in 1995, we started an affair that lasted, on and off, for two years. And, at that time, it was my everything. That, I guess you could say, was the golden bubble part for me; the nice part. The nasty part was that it became public. Public with a vengeance.

Lewinsky, now 40, wrote in Vanity Fair in May that although the affair was consensual, nothing could have prepared her for the aftermath, when attacks came from seemingly every direction:

Sure, my boss took advantage of me, but I will always remain firm on this point: it was a consensual relationship. Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position. . . . The Clinton administration, the special prosecutor’s minions, the political operatives on both sides of the aisle, and the media were able to brand me. And that brand stuck, in part because it was imbued with power.

Monica’s bad and immoral decision – every salacious detail of it – was published on the internet:

Now, my brother – and all his fraternity brothers – were privy to my most intimate details. As were my dad and his fellow doctors. And my stepdad, and his World War 2 war buddies. My stepmom and her knitting circle. Even both my grandmothers, then in their 80s, knew about the internet. My whole family. My friends. My friends’ parents. My parents’ friends.

The Democrat mantra that voting fraud is rare takes another blow today with the stunning story of a GOP candidate unable to vote for himself in Cook County Illinois. The Illinois Political Review reports:

Admitting his confidence in Cook County ballot integrity is shaken, State Representative Candidate Jim Moynihan (R-56), was shocked today when he tried to cast a vote for himself and the voting machine cast it for his opponent instead.

“While early voting at the Schaumburg Public Library today, I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent,” said Moynihan. “You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.”

While using a touch screen voting machine in Schaumburg, Moynihan voted for several races on the ballot, only to find that whenever he voted for a Republican candidate, the machine registered the vote for a Democrat in the same race. He notified the election judge at his polling place and demonstrated that it continued to cast a vote for the opposing candidate’s party. Moynihan was eventually allowed to vote for Republican candidates, including his own race. It is unknown if the machine in question (#008958) has been removed from service or is still in operation.

Well, they don’t call it Crook County for no reason.

In the recent months, I have been engaged in political debates with liberals mostly under the age of 40 (I am over the age of 40). These debates have taken place in person, via email and political discussion blogs. In each occurrence, I was contacted or confronted by the individuals who wanted to engage in discussions with me. I was personally contacted and invited to participate in discussions on a blog that repost some of my articles. However, after each round of discussions, I am saddened with the realization that our great country is in deep trouble if today’s young liberals are America’s future.

The first thing that is quite evident is that the liberal institutions have done a good and thorough job in indoctrinating our young people. The liberal professors have taught them to view America through the lens of the past rather than the present. This trick has caused these individuals to be filled with anger at an America that does not exist (an America that they themselves were not alive to experience). Every issue that is discussed is based on the false premise that every negative thing that happened in past (slavery, Jim Crow, The Southern Strategy) is influencing everything that is happing in the present (i.e. Voter ID laws, Ebola). However, there is never any mention of all the positive things that happened in the past that continues to make America great today. It is as though they believe that the American people are programmed robots void of the ability to think or make decision for themselves based on current issues.

While engaged in discussions, I have learned that liberals do not read. When commenting on my articles, liberals have accused me of saying things that are not in the article or they will question something that is answered in the article. How is it possible to make angry comments about something that you have not read? This reveals to me that they probably do not read anything that they believe goes against the liberal narrative. Maybe liberals would learn something if they would just read. It is as though they read titles and then go straight to the comment section. This also happens in dialog on the discussion blog. I will reply to a question that someone has posted and in that individual’s response, he or she will ask me the same question again. The same thing happens in email conversations, I end up responding by rewriting the same thing.

Kobani Became too Symbolically Important to Lose

In public, the Obama administration argued for weeks that Kobani wasn’t strategically vital to the air campaign against Islamic State extremists. Behind the scenes, however, top officials concluded the Syrian city had become too symbolically important to lose and they raced to save it.

As the U.S. role rapidly evolved, U.S. and Syrian Kurdish commanders began to coordinate air and ground operations far more closely than previously disclosed. A Syrian Kurdish general in a joint operations center in northern Iraq delivered daily battlefield intelligence reports to U.S. military planners, and helped spot targets for airstrikes on Islamic State positions.

In contrast to the lengthy legal debate over U.S. aid to rebels fighting the Syrian regime, U.S. airdrops of weapons to Kobani got a swift nod from administration lawyers—a sign of its importance to the administration.
The change in thinking over the fate of one city, described by U.S., Kurdish, Turkish and Syrian opposition officials, shows how dramatically U.S. war aims are shifting. After Islamic State made Kobani a test of its ability to defy U.S. air power, Washington intervened more forcefully than it had initially intended to try to stem the group’s momentum.

In doing so, the U.S. crossed a Rubicon that could herald a more hands-on role in other towns and cities under siege by Islamic State at a time when some U.S. lawmakers question the direction of American strategy and warn of mission creep.

“This is a war of flags. And Kobani was the next place Islamic State wanted to plant its flag,” a senior U.S. official said. “Kobani became strategic.”

The U.S. now is relying on two separate, stateless Kurdish groups in Iraq and Syria as ground forces to back up its air campaign against the extremists.

Handling epidemics isn’t the World Health Organization’s forte—unless fighting against sugary drinks counts.

The Ebola outbreak has again revealed an international health system that lacks the plans and capabilities to fight an epidemic or pandemic. Atop the pyramid of this health system sits the United Nations’ World Health Organization, whose 1948 charter gives it “directing authority” for “international health work.”

In lieu of another round of incremental reforms at the WHO and another appeal for budget increases, it is time to try something else. We need a new organization within the international health system to prevent, detect and verify outbreaks—and respond rapidly to them.

The WHO’s record of handling epidemics over 30 years reveals a health system that is getting worse, not better. On at least four occasions the U.N. organization has failed to deal with major outbreaks of communicable disease.

In the 1980s, the WHO underestimated the scale of the AIDS epidemic and was plagued by infighting and poor coordination. The U.N. Economic and Social Council concluded in 1994 that the AIDS crisis was beyond the WHO’s capabilities to coordinate, so the U.N. created a new entity, the Joint U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS, or Unaids. Although the WHO opposed the new program, history has shown that Unaids, with its clear, narrowly defined mission, has been more effective in addressing the AIDS epidemic.

In 2009 the World Health Organization was slow to address the H1N1 flu pandemic. It later commissioned an expert panel to investigate its mishandling of the crisis. The report released in 2011 slammed the WHO for making crucial errors, including a lack of transparency, poor external communication, management conflicts, and a “needlessly complex” definition of pandemic and its phases. H1N1 ended in 2010 and we were fortunate the strain had a lower mortality than initially feared. Notably, the panel concluded that the world isn’t ready to handle a major health disaster.