RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.prudenpolitics.com/newsletter

“President Obama is trying to sell some of his own moonshine, distilled in the White House basement from corn grown in Michelle’s back-yard garden, to get Chuck Hagel through the Senate. He will need Mr. Hagel and his heroic war record as cover for the evisceration of the U.S. military he must get through Congress. Mr. Hagel says the Defense Department is “bloated” and the Pentagon should be “pared down.”

Nobody wants rain on Inauguration Day. For the partisans among us – and that includes approximately half of us, give or take a few hundred thousand – it’s a day for celebration of the nation and its history, the continuity of its institutions, and the promise of the future.

For the celebrating pols, it’s a day to celebrate not having to go home and get a job, and to mark the promise of another four years at the public trough.

For Barack Obama, it’s a celebration of his agenda, both the one seen and the other unseen. We’ll see soon enough what’s in the unseen, and how much he can get through a divided House and a soft and compliant Senate.

The big fight is one he’ll lose if the Republicans in Congress remember why they’re in Washington and who sent them here. He should win the other big fight, over whether to confirm Mr. Obama’s choice to be the secretary of defense. Presidents nearly always get the assistants they want.

Imitation messiahs can’t imagine why anyone should think they need advice and counsel from mere mortals, but Mr. Obama got a little good advice over the weekend from Bill Clinton. It’s not likely this White House will take it, but somebody in the West Wing should write it down and post it next to James Carville’s famous message to Stupid that elections are about the economy.

http://politicalmavens.com/

The newest Jewish commemorative institution scheduled to open in Europe this year is The Museum of the History of Polish Jews, built on the site of the Warsaw Ghetto According to Barbara Kirshenblatt Gimblett, the director of its Core Exhibition, the museum will honor the memory of those killed during the holocaust and other pogroms by remembering how Jews lived in Poland for 1,000 years. The governments of Warsaw and Poland have contributed much of the funding for this venture but Jewish philanthropists have given many millions of dollars to this 200 million dollar project and luminaries such as Elie Wiesel have affirmed its importance as an exposition of the full and varied lives lived by Polish Jews throughout the centuries.

For most people, Poland remains the primal scene of the extermination of Europe’s Jews. The word Auschwitz alone is emblematic of all Nazi death camps and the ready cooperation of Polish citizens with the Nazis in the goal of ridding their own country of Jews has been well and often documented. At the beginning of World War 11, Poland had the largest Jewish population in Europe, over 3 million people, 90% of whom were slaughtered during the war. For the remaining stragglers who made it back to their hometowns, there were incidents such as the pogrom in Kielce in which 80 Jews were killed and more than 50 wounded, and later government sponsored anti-semitic incidents in 1956 and 1968. The extermination of 6 million European Jews, half of whom were Polish, did little to abate the long-standing anti-semitism of the Polish people. After the war, 1,000 delegates of the Polish Peasants Party passed a resolution thanking Hitler for annihilating the Jews and urging the expulsion of those who had survived.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324624404578255330637047510.html While France gets bogged down in Mali, far more dangerous extremists have entrenched themselves in eastern Libya. Mapping out drone strikes over the past year would be one way to understand U.S. policy toward al Qaeda and the war on terror. Unrelenting missile attacks in Yemen and Pakistan, compared with near-inaction against al Qaeda […]

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2013/01/21/israels-choices-and-americas-failure/?print=1 A number of commentators have drawn a parallel between Israel’s national elections on Tuesday and the formation of a national unity government just prior to Israel’s preemptive attack on Egypt in June 1967. Despite stern warnings to the contrary from the Johnson administration and being at mortal risk, Israel won the Six-Day War. The […]

Read it here http://www.seraphicpress.com/jew-without-a-gun/

Robert Avrech is an Emmy Award winning screenwriter, also an observant Jew, a religious Zionist, a conservative Republican, and a member of the NRA who has been writing and producing in Hollywood for over twenty-five years.

I am republishing my three-part series about the Los Angeles Riots of 1992 in which Karen and I and the children were trapped for several frightening hours. We were unarmed, helpless save for our wits. The police were conspicuously absent and the bad guys, frequently armed with heavy weapons, owned the streets. It was a defining moment in my life.

I’m reposting this series as a cautionary tale because the Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre has sharpened the claws of the statist utopians, whose ultimate aim is to disarm law-abiding American citizens.

Just as Obamacare has nothing to do with health, and cap and trade has nothing to do with so-called global warming, anti-gun laws have nothing to do with saving children’s lives.

It’s just another opportunity for the left to centralize power.

Part One: Hollywood Is Burning

Part II: The Getaway

Part III: The Gauntlet

www.jewishledger.com Chuck Hagel isn’t really the person being nominated for Secretary of Defense. Nor is John Brennan the man who will run the CIA. Likewise John Kerry will not be the person serving as Secretary of State. They are being pushed forward into those positions so that President Obama can validate his own ideas in […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/caroline-glick/the-lefts-new-campaign-to-destroy-a-friend-of-israels-michele-bachmann/ To sign the Freedom Center’s petition to stop the witch-hunt against Rep. Michele Bachmann, click here. And please spread the word about this petition far and wide! Israel has many passionate supporters on Capitol Hill, particularly on the Republican side of the aisle. These are men and women who are deeply committed to Israel […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3550/egypt-morsi-ideology Key to “managing relations” with Morsi is ignoring almost everything related to the Muslim Brotherhood and everything Morsi does that defies democratic norms. The F-16s will be delivered and aid will go forward. For days now, the twittersphere and even the mainstream media have been agog at the anti-Semitism spewing in a now-viral video […]

http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21567205-abe-karem-created-robotic-plane-transformed-way-modern-warfare Abe Karem created the robotic plane that transformed the way modern warfare is waged—and continues to pioneer other airborne innovations “I WAS not the guy who put missiles on the Predator,” says Abe Karem, the aerospace engineer behind America’s most successful and most feared military drone. “I just wanted UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) to […]

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2380/Reliance-on-the-Trusted-Traveler.aspx

Saudi interior minister Prince Mohammed bin Naif. This first cousin of Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was last noted in this blog for ordering the arrest last month of a Saudi novelist, Turki al Hamad, for tweeting that Islam required a “correction.” Al Hamad now faces the death penalty for apostasy.

–From Al Arabiya (hat tip Ruthfully yours and http://www.whsroundtable.org/):

Saudi Arabia and the United States have signed a “Trusted Traveler” agreement to facilitate and accelerate the trusted passenger screening on the principle of reciprocity in both Saudi and U.S. airports.

Yes, you are going mad.

The Saudi state agency reported that Minister of Interior Prince Mohammed bin Naif and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano “signed an agreement on arrangements relating to the implementation of a program of the ‘Trusted Traveler’ between the two countries.”

There is something extra grotesque in the newspeak, Mr.-Rogers-style.

According to the agreement U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s trusted traveler program, Global Entry, will be implemented. Global Entry streamlines the screening process at airports for trusted travelers, allowing customs authorities to focus on those travelers they know less about, in order to more effectively identify potential threats and keep our borders and country secure.

I wonder how such a program might have affected Hazma Kashgari’s flight for asylum last year to the West? It ended when Saudi religious police, under orders from King Abdullah (both Alwaleed and Naif’s uncle), caught up with him in Malaysia and dragged him back to Saudi Arabia for “tweeting” an imaginary conversation with Mohammed. He remains in jail.

“I am proud of the bond between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and today’s meeting marks another major step forward in our partnership,” said Secretary Napolitano.

Proud?

“By enhancing collaboration with the Government of Saudi Arabia, we reaffirm our commitment to more effectively secure our two countries against evolving threats while facilitating legitimate trade and travel.”

Why is the US government “proud” of a “bond” with this repressive dictatorship that denies freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and equality before the law — while fomenting civilization jihad on the not-so-QT?

Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Naif and Secretary Napolitano also released a joint statement affirming ongoing cooperation on cybercrime, maritime security and infrastructure protection, and cooperation on cyber security, which is critical to both nations’ economic competitiveness and national security.

Does “cybercrime: include “tweeting”?