Congregation Berith Sholom of Troy, NY, the Empire State’s oldest continually occupied synagogue. Credit: Paul Foer. http://jewishvoiceny.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5290:travel-to-upstate-ny-the-oldest-synagogue-in-the-state-awaits-you&catid=117:travel&Itemid=30 The city of Troy, NY (population 50,129), is just a few miles upriver from the state capital of Albany and is known as the birthplace of Sam Wilson, a meatpacker on whom the iconic image of “Uncle Sam” […]
http://pjmedia.com/blog/pjm-exclusive-watching-syrias-civil-war-from-the-israeli-border/ Last week I took the opportunity to travel to the Golan Heights with Israeli strategic intelligence analyst Avi Melamed [1] (listen to my podcast with Avi [2] from last week) to get an up-close view of the Syrian civil war from the Israel/Syria border in the Golan. There were only modest security concerns, although mortars and […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/fact-fiction-faith-and-fighting-terror-the-need-for-knowledge?f=puball “You’ll fold like a bad soufflé,” sharia scholar Stephen Coughlin wittily analogized in discussing the “main battle” by Islamists to undermine an enemy “in the preparation stage” before an attack. Coughlin was speaking in the Canon House Office Building at the panel “What Has Gone Wrong with American Mideast Policy?” hosted by the Endowment […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/obamacare-will-question-your-sex-life
Be careful about sharing your medical secrets with Uncle Sam.
Are you sexually active? If so, with one partner, multiple partners or same-sex partners?”
Be ready to answer those questions and more the next time you go to the doctor, whether it’s the dermatologist or the cardiologist and no matter if the questions are unrelated to why you’re seeking medical help. And you can thank the Obama health law.
“This is nasty business,” says New York cardiologist Dr. Adam Budzikowski. He called the sex questions “insensitive, stupid and very intrusive.” He couldn’t think of an occasion when a cardiologist would need such information – but he knows he’ll be pushed to ask for it.
The president’s “reforms” aim to turn doctors into government agents, pressuring them financially to ask questions they consider inappropriate and unnecessary, and to violate their Hippocratic Oath to keep patients’ records confidential.
Embarrassing though it may be, you confide things to a doctor you wouldn’t tell anyone else. But this is entirely different.
Doctors and hospitals who don’t comply with the federal government’s electronic-health-records requirements forgo incentive payments now; starting in 2015, they’ll face financial penalties from Medicare and Medicaid. The Department of Health and Human Services has already paid out over $12.7 billion for these incentives.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/why-syrias-chemical-weapons-agreement-will-succeed
Much of the current debate on Syria centers on whether Assad will in fact give up his chemical weapons. Not to worry. The chemical weapons agreement will be a resounding success.
This is not because all or most of the weapons themselves will be found and destroyed. The odds are high that critics are right in suspecting Assad will lead inspectors on a dance similar to that pioneered by Saddam Hussein. It will be a success because it is in the interest of all parties to the agreement to pretend that it is. Obviously it is in Russia’s interest, since Putin presides over the entire scheme, at the center of the world stage like Jimmy Carter who knocked heads together to cobble together the Camp David agreement. It is in Assad’s interest to appear compliant because while the U.S. focuses on chemical weapons, he is free to pursue the war (with growing Iranian help on the ground) by conventional means.
Now that Assad is signing the Chemical Weapons Convention, there is a new party to the agreement, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The OPCW is charged with implementing the Convention and its Executive Council will have its own interests in claiming that everything possible is being done. (There seems to be general agreement that it is virtually impossible for Syrian stockpiles to be destroyed by the middle of 2014, as the agreement stipulates.) Investigative journalist Claudia Rosett points out that Iran, Assad’s determined ally, holds a seat on the Executive Council and on all three of its main subsidiary bodies and Iranians are on the staff of the OPCW. While the OPCW is not part of the UN, Rosett notes drily that it replicates many of that body’s failings.
Above all, it is in the interests of the Obama administration, the supposed monitor of plain dealing – “this is not a game,” says Secretary Kerry sternly – to claim the agreement is working. Obama declares “If diplomacy fails the United States and the international community must be prepared to act.” But Putin has already declared force is off the table at the UN even if Syria fails to comply so the “international community” won’t be acting. (Even Obama’s chief ally Francois Hollande now talks of “sanctions” if Syria fails to comply.) And the last thing Obama wants to do is to go back to Congress for authorization to strike without UN backing. Putin rescued him at the last moment from humiliating defeat in the House of Representatives and perhaps in the Senate as well. And now that Obama has gone to Congress, to strike without its authorization is even more problematic.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/president-obamas-new-pen-pal/print/ After vacillating for weeks on what to do regarding his red line for the use of chemical weapons in Syria and ultimately retreating, President Obama laid down yet another of his meaningless red lines for Iran. “My suspicion is that the Iranians recognize they shouldn’t draw a lesson that we haven’t struck [Syria] to […]
http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2013/09/anti-semitism-watch/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=fe3bdd19cd-Mosaic_2013_9_18&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-fe3bdd19cd-41165129 Some words cannot be translated….mishugas is one of them….rsk Two years ago, I, a practising Jewish spiritualist, was sent a friend request on Facebook by a tarot card reader and healer. She seemed pleasant enough and in the world of New Age spiritualism it is always good to expand connections. A few days later […]
http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2013/09/still-blaming-the-jews/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=fe3bdd19cd-Mosaic_2013_9_18&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-fe3bdd19cd-41165129 When regimes in the Middle East feel threatened by their own people, they immediately seek to blame the insurrection on Israel or ‘the Jews’ Forget the massacre of thousands in Syria and Egypt, whether by chemical weapons or more conventional methods of mass slaughter. The Middle Eastern issue galvanising some of our musical mega-stars […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/michellemalkin/warning-our-government-is-a-threat-to-public-safety/ Forget gun control. America needs government control. Have you noticed the common thread among several mass killings and homeland security incidents lately? Time and again, it’s the control freaks in Washington who have fallen down on their jobs, allowing crazies, creeps and criminals to roam free and wreak havoc while ignoring rampant red flags. […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-roots-of-obamas-indecision/ General McChrystal, Obama’s choice to run the War in Afghanistan, described him as “uncomfortable and intimidated” by the military men at their first meeting. That made McChrystal’s firing inevitable. General McKiernan, the first commander of the war that Obama fired, had embarrassed him by pressing for a decision on increasing troop numbers. It was […]
