RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3945

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Israel for his third trip to the region since he took office on Feb. 1, and for the second time in the span of two weeks. The impetus for these visits is the urgency he feels in the face of the “clock ticking” toward a point of no return.

Too bad the deadline he has set for himself has nothing to do with the Iranian nuclear program. No, on that score, he is confident that his boss, President Barack Obama, has everything under control.

“All options are on the table,” Kerry reiterated on Monday, following his participation in the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day ceremony at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. But diplomacy, he stressed, is still the preferred route.

He’s right about one thing: Diplomacy is certainly Iran’s preference, particularly in light of North Korea’s military muscle-flexing, which is testing the waters for a buoyed Tehran.

In fact, the reason for Kerry’s country-hopping is to reignite peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. To this end, first he flew to Istanbul on Sunday, where he made an appeal to the Turkish government to “play a role” in pushing the process forward.

To say that this is delusional would be to diminish the depth of its derangement. Turkey has been making overtures to Hamas in Gaza and remains hostile to Israel, in spite of Obama’s brokering a restoration of ties between the two countries during his own visit to Jerusalem last month. And though a group of Israeli diplomats is scheduled to go to Ankara in the near future, the purpose of the delegation is to discuss the multi-millions of dollars in compensation to be paid to the families of the Turkish radicals who were killed during the “Free Gaza” flotilla raid in 2010.

Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu made it clear to Kerry that Israel would have to meet a stringent set of preconditions before Turkey would agree to kiss and make up. These include lifting the naval blockade of Gaza.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/gun-control-is-doa-in-congress When I was a teenager I was a magician performing at birthday parties and before local clubs whose adults enjoyed legerdemain as much as the kids. The essence of magic is diversion, distracting the audience to watch the right hand while the left is setting up the illusion. It was a lesson I never […]

HOW APPOSITE THIS IS….MERYL STREEP PLAYED THE ROLE OF MARGARET THATCHER….AND HAD THIS TO SAY:

“Meanwhile, because Streep portrayed Thatcher in the film “The Iron Lady,” she was sought out as an expert on her legacy, and criticized her economic policies: “Her hard-nosed fiscal measures took a toll on the poor, and her hands-off approach to financial regulation led to great wealth for others.”

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matt-hadro/2013/04/08/cnn-quotes-meryl-streep-gerry-adams-legitimate-critics-margaret-thatcher

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/leaving-the-totalitarian-left-on-the-glazov-gang/

This week’s Glazov Gang had the honor of being joined by actor Basil Hoffman (The Artist), Ari David, Podcast Host of The Ari David Show and Czech Defector Borek Volarik.

The Gang members gathered to discuss the big issues of our time, which include: Why Leftists Make Good Actors. The dialogue occurred in Part II during a discussion with Basil Hoffman about his book, Acting and How to Be Good at It. The segment also focused on the recent black mob violence in Chicago – highlighting Colin Flaherty’s book White Girl Bleed a Lot, which documents black mob violence across the country and the media’s silence about it. The segment ended with a reflection on Senator Dianne Feinstein’s hypocrisy on gun control.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/an-anatomy-of-indoctrination/ If you’re on the lookout for first-class ideological indoctrination in America today, there’s plenty of it to be found, of course, at such sprawling, internationally famous universities as Harvard, Columbia, and Berkeley. As a rule, however, these places are so big that there’s room for pockets of dissent. They’re so big that they can’t […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/none-dare-call-it-islamism/print/

PLEASE READ: DIANA WEST “YOU CALL IT ISLAMIST, I CALL IT ISLAMIC”…..RSK

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2462/On-Language.aspx

The Associated Press, after putting up a brief defense of the English language, ceded the term “gay marriage,” then “illegal immigrant” and finally “Islamist.” The left has a long history with political language and the media, so these latest triumphs were only a matter of time.

“Don’t tell me words don’t matter,” Obama once said, while insisting that they meant the opposite of what we thought they meant. The left believes that words matter because they allow people to communicate the wrong sort of ideas. Change the words and you change the ideas.

Islamism is one of those ideas. The idea is that people ought to live under Islam. This was thought to be a bad idea, back in those dark days before we learned that Islamism is as American as Mom, Other Mom and Apple Pie.

Now we know that Islamism is actually the best defense against Islamism so long as it’s the good kind of Islamism that involves terrorist groups winning elections and shooting their people in the streets instead of the bad kind of Islamism which involves terrorist groups shooting people in the streets without first running for office.

The Muslim Brotherhood used to be the bad kind of Islamists that set off bombs and shot people in the streets, but then they disavowed violence, ran for office, shredded what was left of the law and began torturing and killing their opponents who protested the shredding.

Opponents of Islamism, the word not the idea, warn that if we associate Islamism with Islamist terrorist groups, then Muslims will get the idea that Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood are the same thing. The only argument that they present in favor of them not being the same thing is that the media always calls the Muslim Brotherhood a moderate group. And if they’re a moderate group, they clearly can’t be torturing and killing their opponents, even if the same news stories that call them moderate also report that they are torturing and killing their opponents.

http://pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh/2013/04/08/john-mccain-useful-idiot/?singlepage=true

Here’s everybody’s favorite “conservative Republican” senator, John McCain, once again showing why he’s the most overrated man in Congress, and why it’s long past time for him to resign and leave the country he’s served so poorly in peace:

“I don’t understand it,” said McCain on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “The purpose of the United States Senate is to debate and to vote and to let the people know where we stand.”

“What are we afraid of? Why would we not want… if this issue is as important as all of us think it is, why not take it to one of the world’s greatest deliberative bodies – that’s one of the greatest exaggerations in history by the way – but you know why not take it up, an amendment and debate. The American people will profit from it,” said the Arizona senator.

“I don’t understand why United States senators want to block debate when the leaders said we could have amendments,” McCain added.

Stop right there and back up, senator: The “purpose” of the U.S. Senate is to debate and vote and let the people know where you stand? Um, no. The purpose is for you to do what the people of your state tell you to do. And in McCain’s case, that would be the people of Arizona. (Repeal the 17th Amendment!) And the people of Arizona have already stated, loud and clear, where they stand on the Second Amendment:

“The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself or the State shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain, or employ an armed body of men.”

Arizona State Constitution, Article 2, Section 26.

I understand that McCain thinks of himself as a national figure, the Guy Who Ran for President (and was handily defeated by a no-name freshman colleague from the ultra-corrupt Chicago Machine), but the fact remains that like his pal Chuck Schumer in the video above, the Senator from Keating has a glorified view of himself and his own imaginary moral rectitude.

Adding insult to injury, at practically the same time McCain was snuggling up next to a figure of almost comic malevolence in Schumer, the man who beat him in 2008 was gratuitously insulting the very state of Arizona McCain supposedly represents:

All the arm chair generals….left and right….are demanding action in Syria….”something has to be done”…but no one is sure exactly what has to be done. Andrew McCarthy has it just right. Don’t intervene in Syria is his message. This column should remind us of the wages of interfering in a civil war where they are all evil….like choosing between smallpox and cholera.

Iraq’s al-Qaida Merges With Syria’s Militant Group

http://news.yahoo.com/iraqs-al-qaida-merges-syrias-militant-group-085916438.html

CAIRO (AP) — The leader of al-Qaida in Iraq says it has merged with Syria’s extremist Jabhat al-Nusra, which has sided with the rebels fighting President Bashar Assad’s regime.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, says the two groups will rally under the same al-Qaida flag. His announcement came in a 21-minute audio message posted on militant websites late Monday.

Al-Baghdadi says the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s Jabhat al-Nusra will be known as the “Islamic State in Iraq and Sham.”

Sham is a name for Syria and the surrounding region.

The development is likely to raise concerns among foreign backers of Syria’s opposition.

Jabhat Al-Nusra has taken an increasing role in Syria’s conflict, claiming several large suicide bombings. The U.S. has designated it a terrorist organization.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204520204577249312904834768.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Margaret Thatcher had more impact on the world than any woman ruler since Catherine the Great of Russia. Not only did she turn around—decisively—the British economy in the 1980s, she also saw her methods copied in more than 50 countries. “Thatcherism” was the most popular and successful way of running a country in the last quarter of the 20th century and into the 21st.

Her origins were humble. Born Oct. 13, 1925, she was the daughter of a grocer in the Lincolnshire town of Grantham. Alfred Roberts was no ordinary shopkeeper. He was prominent in local government and a man of decided economic and political views. Thatcher later claimed her views had been shaped by gurus like Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek, but these were clearly the icing on a cake baked in her childhood by Councillor Roberts. This was a blend of Adam Smith and the Ten Commandments, the three most important elements being hard work, telling the truth, and paying bills on time.

Hard work took Miss Roberts, via a series of scholarships, to Grantham Girls’ School, Somerville College, Oxford, and two degrees, in chemistry and law. She practiced in both professions, first as a research chemist, then as a barrister from 1954. By temperament she was always a scholarship girl, always avid to learn, and even when prime minister still carried in her capacious handbag a notebook in which she wrote down anything you told her that she thought memorable.

Margaret Thatcher: Death of a political colossus Margaret Thatcher was a great citizen of the world. Quite an epitaph for anybody’s time on Earth http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3197/margaret_thatcher_death_of_a_political_colossus In an era of political pygmies, whose greater concern is for opinion polls and dubious consensus politics, it is hard not to look back with nostalgia to a very different […]

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

“Thatcher and Reagan convinced millions that they were fighting for the good life. And they delivered. The damning sin that the left cannot forgive them for is that their policies, at home and abroad, succeeded more often than they failed. But they didn’t convince with mere empty words, with the same tired slogans that stood for nothing and opposed nothing and advocated nothing. They did not skulk in on the heels of consultants who made them seem as nonthreatening as possible. Instead they made it clear that they were here to fight against the forces of decay, the ideologies of terror and the sense of morality that comes to every great nation in the hour of its decline.
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan are dead now, but in life they won a victory over the seeming deaths of their nations. They came in the hour of twilight and they stepped down with the sunrise. Their victories were temporary but they showed that leaders can stand against decline and breathe new life when most of the experts believe that all is lost and that we must learn to accept that. They showed us that with conviction and courage we can resist the inevitable.”

Modern politics is often fought on the battlefield of the 19 inch or the 50 inch screen with grim bursts of image artillery directed by experts and consultants. But for all the experts and consultants, it is the ability of the politician to communicate what he feels and believes is true that trumps everything else.

Margaret Thatcher’s death has touched such a nerve because her passing takes place in the shadow of mediocrities like David Cameron who talk a great deal but say nothing at all, whose preferred form of communication is to avoid controversy. Likewise so many American conservatives turn to memories of Reagan because when they turn toward the marble mecca of D.C., all they see from their party are former conservatives scurrying to evolve into blithering idiots in time for the next election.

The missing element is conviction. When conservatives remember Thatcher and Reagan, they hear the echoes of clear and principled messages. Neither of them were perfect as politicians, but their rhetoric was perfect because they knew what they believed, said it clearly and colorfully and enjoyed themselves doing it.

Modern conservative parties eschew that kind of plain talk. They flee from principle selecting candidates who speak as indirectly as possible and mean as little of what they say as they can get away with. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But no cause is advanced in the course of these evolutions from communication to obfuscation.

Conservatism never wins. It loses. It comes to be associated with slick empty men and women who smile a lot and lie a lot. And that in the long run is far more devastating than the occasional senate candidate who says something horrible or idiotic. Candidates like Mitt Romney are more damaging than a hundred Todd Akins because they fix the image of a soulless party that cares about nothing and no one.