RUTHFULLY YOURS

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This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by superstars Basil Hoffman, a Hollywood actor (“Rio, I Love You”), Ann-Marie Murrell, the National Director of PolitiChicks.tv and Ernie White, a Civil Rights Activist.

The Gang discussed Holocaust-Denial Assignments for American Children, analyzing how Stealth jihad and Jew-hate have now entered our public schools (starting at the 20:30 mark).

The discussion occurred with the context of The Cancer of Common Core, in which the guests discussed how Islam is a big investor in the Left’s new educational concept, how Mao’s Cultural Revolution has now reached America’s public schools, how individualism is being crushed in the new “raising of standards,” and much, much more:

Occasionally someone pranks an unwitting MSNBC panelist or a bunch of teenagers by asking them to name a single Hillary accomplishment. Even though Hillary has piled up more awards than Charles de Gaulle, nothing comes to mind. An editorial in the Chicago Tribune has the writer asking a group of Chicago leaders the same question about Obama’s foreign policy.

Silence follows.

Obama and Hillary don’t just suffer from a shortage of accomplishments. They’re also burdened with a surplus of failures. Benghazi worries so many Hillary supporters because there is nothing to balance it against. There is no, “But look at all the good she did.” Hillary didn’t do any good. She didn’t do much of anything except tour countries and pose for photos.

As a Secretary of State she made a perfectly adequate First Lady.

Obama talks the teleprompter talk, but when you look at the results they’re universally awful. Whether it’s the things that he only pretends to care about, like the VA, or the things he does care about, like Obamacare, after the splashy ribbon cutting ceremony comes the disastrous mess.

Like every other summer blockbuster, it’s great marketing for a terrible product. And just like the summer blockbuster, Obama’s policies are treated as disposables to be forgotten about. Scandal management consists of Obama making a serious face and promising to take this serious problem very seriously before heading out for a round of serious golfing.

Don’t cry for Hillary and don’t write off Obama. Achievement of the old kind is overrated. It’s not about how high your GPA is but how many politically correct extracurriculars you have. In politics, just like in college, diversity and style increasingly count for more than achievement.

Post-American politics are also post-achievement politics. The morality of progressivism is more important than the substance of progress.

From the Sociology major who keeps thinking that she should volunteer at a soup kitchen to the most powerful man in the country who keeps saying that he wishes he could do something about all these problems, the left thinks that wanting to do something is what makes you a good person. It doesn’t matter if what you’re doing does any good. It doesn’t matter if you succeed.

The politics of the left are narcissistic. Its members are less concerned with changing the world than with being good people by wanting to change the world. That’s what Obama received his premature Nobel Peace Prize for, not for what he did, but for what he talked about doing.

It’s not the things that Obama has done that the left loves him for. It’s his empty talk, his worthless words and his teleprompter visions.

There are two Obamas. One is the real politician. The other is the imaginary Obama of 2007; a figment of David Axelrod’s imagination layered over with bizarre art and visions that transformed him into a superhuman being of light before he ever set foot in the Oval Office.

This Obama can never fail because he doesn’t really exist. It’s this Obama who makes the public appearances on the front pages while the other Obama’s policies are discussed somewhere in the meatier parts of the paper. The imaginary Obama shows up on American Idol while the other Obama sends vets to cemeteries. And to millions of Americans, the imaginary Obama is more real than his destructive real life counterpart. The idea of Obama is more real than his policies.

The imaginary Obama has his counterpart in a reimagined Hillary.

DAVID HORNIK ONE OF ISRAEL’S MOST ASTUTE AND ARTICULATE JOURNALISTS, WHOSE MOST RECENT BOOK IS “CHOOSING LIFE IN ISRAEL”- ECHOES THE WORDS OF VLADIMIR ZEEV JABOTINSKY WHO IMPLORED THE JEWS OF EASTERN EUROPE TO GET OUT BEFORE AN IMPENDING DEBACLE…..RSK

The Anti-Defamation League created a stir last week by releasing the results of a global survey of antisemitism, the most comprehensive ever.

These results are considered shocking by many. Actually, for those who bother to keep up with reality, they contain no surprises.

The Middle East and North Africa come out worst, with 74 percent among population groups qualifying as antisemitic according to the poll’s 11-question index. The most antisemitic political entities in the world? The West Bank and Gaza, coming in at 93 percent. (Yes, those same Palestinians with whom Israel is always under pressure to “make peace.”)

The next worst region is Eastern Europe, with 34 percent scoring as antisemites. But not too far behind is Western Europe—the home of multiculturalism, advanced environmental awareness, bevies of human rights NGOs, and so on—at 24 percent.

The West European countries scoring highest for antisemitism were Greece with a whopping 69 percent, France at 37 percent, and Spain at 29 percent. Germany did itself proud by coming in above the West European average at 27 percent—a bit over one-quarter antisemitic seven decades after the Holocaust.

Over the weekend the European Jewish Association (EJA), along with other European Jewish organizations, held a briefing on the survey in Brussels for EU ambassadors and officials.

One of the agency’s own regional offices and a panel of EPA judges have ruled that the policy is too expensive.

With great fanfare, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule last fall that would require all newly built coal-fired power plants in the U.S. to install an expensive new technology called carbon capture and storage, or CCS. Although the technology has never been installed on a large-scale power plant anywhere in the world, it theoretically will separate the primary greenhouse gas—carbon dioxide—from the plant’s exhaust and pump it to underground reservoirs for storage.

The proposal instantly set off controversy. Many technical experts (including Burton Richter, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist at Stanford) believe that CCS isn’t ready for prime time. EPA’s proposal claims it is adequately demonstrated and can be installed at a reasonable cost. The Clean Air Act requires the agency to establish both of these factors before forcing plants to install a particular technology.

That’s when things got weird.

Shortly after the proposal was released in September, EPA administrator Gina McCarthy defended carbon capture and storage in a highly publicized interview on PBS, describing it as a “technology that we believe is available today.” Then, on Nov. 25, the EPA regional office in Texas did an about-face when it decided that Exxon Mobil would not have to install the technology in its planned chemical plant (such plants emit carbon dioxide) in Harris County, because it would be prohibitively expensive.

Enter the Sierra Club, which challenged the EPA’s Exxon Mobil decision on Dec. 26. Last week, three administrative law judges on the agency’s Environmental Appeals Board upheld the Texas office’s decision not to require CCS. Why? Because the EPA regional office found, and the judges agreed, that the “addition of CCS would increase the total capital project costs by more than 25%.”

At this writing, the Veterans Administration scandal has engulfed 16 states and 26 hospitals. In Atlanta, widespread mismanagement caused the preventable deaths of at least three veterans. In Columbia, S.C., six vets died because of delayed colorectal-cancer screenings. And in Phoenix, some severely ill vets urinated blood and endured searing pain from cancer. At least 40 of them dropped dead before getting life-saving treatment.

But this single-payer savagery is not just a monumental tragedy; nor is it merely a cautionary tale of bureaucratic incompetence. If this outrage simply involved the fatal bumbling of the Keystone Klinicians, it would be awful enough.

Instead, hospital officials allegedly doctored appointment books to “comply” with VA scheduling rules, maintained secret wait lists that confirm this deception, and destroyed this evidence when the watchdogs barked. This ugly picture quickly devolves from lassitude into lawlessness. VA hospitals have become crime scenes.

VA “employees in Fort Collins, Colo., were directed to manipulate the books to conceal evidence of lengthy wait times for appointments,” according to an American Legion report on this disaster titled “Epidemic of VA Mismanagement.”

In Cheyenne, Wyo., a VA staffer’s e-mail “details specific instructions for ‘gaming the system’ to ‘get off the bad boys list.’”

A Chicago VA social worker said, “Scheduling wait times are manipulated in order to protect pay bonuses.”

In Phoenix, two VA employees secured documents “alleging that there was a systematic effort underway at the hospital to shred documents to eliminate evidence of the waiting list cover-up.”

The enthusiasm among Clinton loyalists doesn’t translate to the general electorate.

Hillary Clinton is in a pickle. She’s a shoe-in for her party’s presidential nomination because of Barack Obama’s failures. But those failures might keep her from getting the job. Her husband’s “law of politics” is that elections are always about the future, but she’s stuck in the past.

In 2008, Obama pandered to liberal hopes while Clinton appealed to their good sense. Obama promised miracles and magic. Clinton promised more homework.

“Cynicism” was Obama’s real opponent, he explained. And he used Clinton as a stand-in for it. She played her part, pointing out that the Civil Rights Act got through Congress because of LBJ’s hard work, not Martin Luther King’s speeches. She insisted that politics was toil, not performance art.

And, as we have learned from a president who so often thinks giving a speech is a substitute for solving a problem, she had the better argument. One need only look at the reaction from Democrats to President Obama’s handling of the VA scandal to see that even they would trade some inspirational claptrap for a bit more old-fashioned competence.

That attitude helps Clinton immensely. Burned by disappointment, many liberals want to vote with their heads, not their hearts, this time around.

And the Hillary-Industrial Complex is ready to exploit that sentiment. The HIC is the vast network of loyalists, retreads, activists, pols, hacks, fans (in and out of the press), Friends of Bill, and, of course, Friends of Hillary who want to see a Clinton restoration. They are waiting for her to run like 19th-century land speculators anticipating news that the railroad will go past their lots. Would you want to be left with 500,000 “Ready for Hillary” bumper stickers in your garage? (It’s a solid rule of business that you’ve made a poor investment if a Hillary Duff comeback is your Plan B.)

Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN, was very forthright about his media priorities at a Society of Professional Journalists dinner in New York City on Monday.

He told Bill Carter of the New York Times: “Climate change is one of those stories that deserves more attention, that we all talk about. But we haven’t figured out how to engage the audience in that story in a meaningful way. When we do do those stories, there does tend to be a tremendous amount of lack of interest on the audience’s part.”

Americans hold views on climate change that are encouraging to environmentalists: In a Pew poll last year, 69 percent believed the arth was warming. But only 33 percent said it was a “very” serious problem, and when Pew asked respondents what issues should be a “top priority” for the federal government, dealing with global warming came in dead last, with only 28 percent holding that view. There is a real basis for such a stance: Global temperatures haven’t risen appreciably in about 15 years.

More and more people in the middle of America — both geographically and culturally — have come to believe either that global warming is manageable or that extraordinary efforts to slow the economy to combat it aren’t worth the cost. But that “doesn’t faze the bicoastal urban media elite,” says Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. These elites, he adds, “have become more hysterical in their treatment of the issue, blaming everything from drought to wildfires to hurricanes on climate change.” It doesn’t matter that there is clear evidence such phenomena are cyclical, and that — for instance — while California is experiencing a severe drought, Florida residents have recently experienced some of the quietest hurricane seasons in decades.

So even as public concern about climate change declines, the media continue to give airtime and space to global-warming alarmists. Everyone from Al Gore to Joe Biden touts the “fact” that 97 percent of all scientists are part of a consensus on the serious nature of climate change.

But that number hides some important facts. Anyone who dissents from the climate-change orthodoxy is dealt with ruthlessly.

In 1938 Dorothy Thompson, known for being the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany, penned the following: “Write it down that the democratic world broke its promises and its oaths, and capitulated, not before strength, but before terrible weakness, armed only with ruthlessness and audacity.” Thompson’s words echo much of what is currently occurring in the world today.

In 1939 Thompson was recognized by Time magazine as the second most influential woman in America next to Eleanor Roosevelt. In Thompson’s Let the Record Speak, one is hard pressed not to see certain similarities today with what occurred a mere 76 years ago in the world. The players may be different but the fascist urge — be it Nazism, Marxism, Communism, or radical Islam — is still quite evident. Thus, Thompson wrote

The world has been treated to a display of brute force which is entirely in harmony with the Nazi Weltanschauung. Exactly what has happened has been predicted for years by independent students and reporters of National Socialism. The whole program could have been charted by any one of us. And that the procedure should be bolstered by egregious lies might also have been predicted. Still, the leaders of the Third Reich evidently believe that there is no limit to the credulity of the human race [emphasis mine].

Consequently, we have a President of these United States who impotently stands by as President Putin annexes the Crimea while the White House “repeatedly insists that Russia’s move is illegal and won’t be recognized.”

Paul Roderick Gregory reminds his readers that “[c]ivilized countries understand that wars over territories threaten the foundation of world peace. Apparently Putin does not.” Thus, …” [a]n agreement between nations, freely reached, can change a border. But no state may use force or threat to compel another to surrender any part of its territory. Territorial integrity thus takes territorial conflict off the table and removes what, in the long course of history, has been far and away the most frequent cause of war.”

Random and sporadic vandalism against mosques and churches in Israel is anathema; vandalism against the IDF is different.

The phenomenon of “pricetag” vandalism presents a challenge to Israeli society to look at itself. But there has been confusion about what it represents and why it persists. Clearly, there is enough information to prove that (1) Israeli authorities take the issue seriously; and (2) it is not condoned.

To understand the problem, however, a distinction must be made between two kinds of vandalism: one is anti-Muslim and anti-Christian; the other is a response to IDF-related destruction of Jewish homes and communities.

A third category generally ignored in discussing the controversy involves attacks by Arabs against Jews.

Random and sporadic vandalism against mosques and churches in Israel is anathema. It has been thoroughly repudiated by Israeli society; not a single Israeli political or religious leader supports it. Tolerance is a Jewish and Israeli value, and anyone who denies this is either ignorant, or a bigot. Yet, politicians, the police and media accuse “settlers” and “hilltop youths.”

After arresting many of them, however, the phenomenon continues.

In some cases, the perpetrators were found to be local Arabs and criminals seeking revenge and in one case, a secular Jewish youth whose mother is a judge. The reason it continues is the same for every other country in which it occurs.

Vandalism against the IDF is different.

The first hour of “The Immigrant” is stunning in its cinematography that’s both gritty and glowing, its set-up of the plot, its immediate insights into the main characters and its perfect rendition of the look and texture of the lower east side of New York in 1921. Marion Cotillard plays Ewa, a young Polish woman escaping to America with her consumptive sister and hoping to be met at the ship by her aunt and uncle. Instead, the sister is remanded to the Ellis Island infirmary for six months, no one shows up to greet them and Ewa is scheduled for a hearing prior to being deported for low moral behavior on the ship. Cotillard is an actress whose face, even in repose, conveys all sorts of emotional undertones and this is a part that gives her free rein to express the full range of human responses – disappointment, gratitude, fear, anger, shame, love and forgiveness. She manages to do all this with unusual restraint, considering the drama of her situation. Joaquin Phoenix plays Bruno Weiss, an oversized character who is both burlesque impressario and pimp, and though he isn’t averse to using his stable of women, he also genuinely cares for them and pays them a fair share of their earnings. He first appears at Ellis Island and rescues Ewa from the line for rejects, paying off the immigration agents to remand her to him and bringing her into the double-edged quagmire of protection at the price of degradation.

Ewa has the face of an angel but she has witnessed the murder of her parents and undoubtedly many other grotesque events in Poland and she is capable of making quick adjustments to the exigencies of her unexpected situation; she is smart enough to also make demands for greater compensation. A nightmarish rebuff by the family she was searching for tightens the vise around her, narrowing her options and leaving her hostage to the life of a prostitute, albeit one who is adored by her pimp. Even the bit parts are perfectly cast and Marion Cotillard’s Polish is a fluent and well-accented tour de force.

With the graceful, balletic entrance of Jeremy Renner as an incomparable magician, the movie ups the ante, creating a rival for Ewa’s attention and pushing Joaquin Phoenix down a too-familiar road of histrionic violence and impending explosive actions. He’s melted down in so many recent movies that it now ceases to frighten us and instead, turns the movie into melodrama with a predictable outcome. More back-stories are revealed regarding the relationship between Renner and Phoenix and the jealousy between the prostitutes until the ample frame of the original plot becomes overladen with too many sidebars that simply weigh it down.

Despite this cavil, this is a serious movie that reminds us of how difficult the adjustment was to the realities of emigrating, how very far it was from the dream of new beginnings in a country envisioned with gold-paved streets, and how much courage it took for millions of ordinary people whose stories often became as extraordinary as this one.