RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/….THE GOLDBERG FILE

‘You know, I actually believe my own bull****.”That’s what President Obama once told a reporter. If the man ever uttered a statement that spoke more to his approach to politics, I haven’t heard it.”

Always Running for a Job He Already Has

The only thing Barack Obama knows how to do is be Barack Obama. He thinks that’s his job, like a king whose only real responsibility is to be kingly. The problem is that the one person (who matters, at least) who doesn’t understand this is Barack Obama. As he once said, Obama believes his own bull***t. (

Charlie offers some good examples of Obama’s own Olympian self-regard. For instance:

“I think I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Obama told him. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Though I immediately thought of this bit from New York magazine:

Emanuel’s ad-hocracy, meanwhile, didn’t faze Obama. The president’s friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett sometimes pointed out that not only had he never managed an operation, he’d never really had a nine-to-five job in his life. Obama didn’t know what he didn’t know, yet his self-confidence was so stratospheric that once, in the context of thinking about Emanuel’s replacement, he remarked in all seriousness, “You know, I’d make a good chief of staff.”

Those overhearing the comment somehow managed to suppress their laughter.

Obviously, Obama always has a healthy ego, in the same way Godzilla had a healthy physique and the sun has a healthy mass. But part of the problem stems from the fact that he cannot see the difference between campaigning and governing. That would be bad enough, if it were not for the fact that Obama seems to think that he ran his campaign. As I noted the other day in the Corner, here’s Obama’s response to the charge that Sarah Palin had more executive experience than he did:

http://www.investigativeproject.org/

THE AMERICAS
GENERAL SECURITY, POLICY

1. Report: Iran may be month from a bomb
Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium to build a nuclear bomb in as little as a month, according to a new estimate by one of the USA’s top nuclear experts.
Oren Dorell, USA TODAY 8:20 a.m. EDT October 25, 2013
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/10/24/iran-bomb-one-month-away/3181373/
IPT NOTE: The cited report is posted at http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/Breakout_Study_24October2013.pdf, and summary at http://www.isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/Breakout_Study_Summary_24October2013.pdf
Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium to build a nuclear bomb in as little as a month, according to a new estimate by one of the USA’s top nuclear experts. The new assessment comes as the White House invited Senate staffers to a briefing on negotiations with Iran as it is trying to persuade Congress not to go ahead with a bill to stiffen sanctions against Iran. “Shortening breakout times have implications for any negotiation with Iran,” stated the report by the Institute for Science and International Security. “An essential finding is that they are currently too short and shortening further.” David Albright, president of the institute and a former inspector for the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, said the estimate means that Iran would have to eliminate more than half of its 19,000 centrifuges to extend the time it would take to build a bomb to six months…

Rift widens on Iranian nuclear deal as Israel, Arabs warn against allowing enrichment
By Joby Warrick, Washington Post Published: October 23 | Updated: Thursday, October 24, 8:53 AM
http://www.investigativeproject.org/ext/11123
Correction: Earlier versions of this article, including the Thursday print edition of The Washington Post, misstated one of the conclusions of an independent analysis released Wednesday. The study calculated that Iran is now capable of producing enough weapon-grade uranium to fuel an atomic bomb in less than six weeks, using the equipment and know-how it already has. The Obama administration on Wednesday acknowledged a widening gulf with key Middle Eastern allies over nuclear talks with Iran, as Israeli and Persian Gulf Arab leaders pressed for drastic cuts to Iran’s atomic infrastructure that Tehran has insisted it will never accept. The differences came into stark relief as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to lecture Secretary of State John F. Kerry at a joint news conference, warning against a “bad deal” that would allow Iran to retain any capability to make enriched uranium. Iran, which last week began a new round of nuclear talks with the United States and five other world powers, says it will never agree to give up its right to make uranium fuel for peaceful nuclear energy…

2. Nuclear officers napped with blast door left open
By Robert Burns-Associated Press Wednesday, October 23, 2013
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/23/nuclear-officers-napped-blast-door-left-open/
WASHINGTON (AP) — Air Force officers entrusted with the launch keys to long-range nuclear missiles have been caught twice this year leaving open a blast door that is intended to help prevent a terrorist or other intruder from entering their underground command post, Air Force officials said. The blast doors are never to be left open if one of the crew members inside is asleep — as was the case in both these instances — out of concern for the trouble an intruder could cause, including the compromising of secret launch codes. Transgressions such as this are rarely revealed publicly. But officials with direct knowledge of Air Force intercontinental ballistic missile operations told The Associated Press that such violations have occurred, undetected, more times than in the cases of the two launch crew commanders and two deputy commanders who were given administrative punishments this year. The blast door violations are another sign of trouble in the handling of the nation’s nuclear arsenal… READ IT ALL

The Balfour Declaration reflected a historical trend that was already underway, but it did not launch the Jewish return to Eretz Israel. This return was a product of the national will of a people which Shaath and his colleagues still refuse to recognize, thereby perpetuating the conflict with Israel to this day. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cnzcVMjwPXU/UmptO8pfkdI/AAAAAAAA8Ig/6LKMl0iZjWo/s1600/The+Balfour+Declaration+-+The+British+recognition+of+a+pre-existing+right.jpgDore Gold.. Last […]

A fiasco for the governmental ages….http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/obamacare-roll-out-bombs Begin with ObamaCare’s latest humiliation statistic: more people have signed up to go to Mars when technology permits, than have signed up at the federal government’s health care website. At a time of record public distrust of government and their leaders, this happens. As for the president’s telemarketing pitch […]

http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2013/10/freedom-vs-compulsion-bramwell-vs_25.html Reading through the 1,092-page Oxford Book of English Prose as a respite from current events (published in 1925, it is little less  than an inch thick, and probably weighs less than two ounces), I came upon an essay by the Tory lexicographer, Samuel Johnson, and was struck by one of his comments. Writing in […]

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6107
Much ado about Adelson

There is nothing like a few racy quotes from billionaire philanthropist Sheldon Adelson to get the liberal media in a tizzy. With all the carry-on surrounding statements he made on Tuesday evening at Yeshiva University in New York, one would have thought that he had the ear of U.S. President Barack Obama and the power to shape American foreign policy.

This is as laughable as the media frenzy that ensued over the casino magnate’s comments, made in the course of a forum on “Iran, Assimilation and the Threat to Israel and Jewish Survival.”

In the first place, Adelson’s highly publicized backing of Republican contenders to prevent Obama’s election in 2008 and reelection in 2012 failed. His current level of influence on the administration in Washington, then, is nil.

Secondly, the 80-year-old businessman and ideologue — who makes a habit of literally putting his money where his mouth is — has never made a secret of his political positions, however abhorrent they may be to his left-wing detractors. So, none of his public remarks should come as a surprise, least of all when they relate to issues closest to his heart and about which he is happily vocal. Tuesday night’s forum, moderated by “America’s Rabbi” Shmuley Boteach (best-selling author of “Kosher Sex” and other books on marital relations), covered three such topics.

The right-leaning, predominantly Jewish audience came to hear Adelson, Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens and Yeshiva University president Richard Joel discuss the pressing matters of the day from a conservative viewpoint. They were not disappointed.

WWW.HEBRON.COM

MAY THIS COMMUNITY OF ZIONISTS AND PIONEERS GROW AND PROSPER IN THE FIRST CAPITAL CITY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE…..RSK

A few days ago, speaking to a group of young adults, one of the people asked me what’s my motivation to live in Hebron. My answer contained a few elements.

Usually my first stop on tours is Tel Rumeida, a great place to start. Because this neighborhood is actually ancient Tel Hebron. If Ma’arat HaMachpela is where the Patriarchs and Matriarchs are buried, this is where they lived. Two walls, one 4,500 years old, dated to the era of Noah, and another, 3,700 years old, from the times of Abraham and Sarah, ensconce a stairwell, over 4,000 years old. We are almost 100% sure that our Forefathers walked these stairs.

Today, the stairs reach the only road accessing this neighborhood. Archeologists have explained to us that under that road, at the end of the stone stairs, are probably the Gates to the ancient city of Hebron.

This site is, for me, probably one of the most important places, not only in Hebron, but in all of Israel, and in the world. Why? Tomorrow, together with literally tens of thousands here in Hebron and Kiryat Arba, we will read in the Torah how Abraham, almost 4,000 years ago, purchased the Caves of Machpela for us, his children. TheTorah states twice, specifically, exactly where this transaction occurred, when he paid 400 silver shekels (today valued at $700,000) to Efron the Hittite. That place is, the gates to the city.

Why Oslo Failed There are many specific and readily identifiable reasons for the failure of “Oslo,” a term that – though originally signifying the accords signed twenty years ago between Israel and the Palestinians – has become a commonplace shorthand for the Middle East peace process. Most obvious, perhaps, is the plainly unacceptable Palestinian insistence […]

www.geraldahonigman.com

Now, I’m not complaining, mind you…

There’s an expression, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” I get it. But it doesn’t make what I’m about to share with you any less aggravating.

Just within the last few weeks, while engaged in several different programs on the Middle East, I had three men come up to me with their explanation of all of the region’s woes.

All were intelligent individuals. I assessed this after long conversations with them.

Their conclusion…

It’s all Israel’s fault.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Are-settlements-worth-it-329689 Conflating security and defense costs with assistance to settlements distorts reality and masks more serious economic problems. Opponents of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria (“settlements”) charge that they drain our economy, diverting funds that should be spent within the 1949 Armistice (“Green”) Lines. They accuse the government of giving settlers unwarranted discounts and […]