RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/09/27/an-economic-primer/?singlepage=true

Consider these Americans:

Our first case is one of five million Americans unemployed for more than 27 weeks:

A second American is part owner of a $20 trillion investment fund.

A third American is terrified that her pension fund will go bust (as the Illinois teachers’ fund will some time during the next ten years, among many others).

The $20 trillion fund squirrels away its money in safe, low-yielding assets. It won’t invest in the kind of risky investments that put bricks on top of mortar and hires workers.

Because American #2 at the $20 trillion investment fund won’t take risks, American #1 can’t find a job. And because low-risk investments now pay very little — investment-grade corporate bonds and mortgage-backed securities with federal backing yield barely 3% — pension funds can’t earn enough to meet their obligations to prospective retirees, and American #3 won’t have enough retirement income to live on.

All these Americans could well be the same individual, and probably are members of the same family.

Pension and retirement funds in the United States control $16 trillion in assets. That’s more than double the total assets of the whole U.S. banking system, and more than five times the total assets of hedge funds world-wide. The retirement savings of ordinary Americans dominate the capital markets, not the sort of fat-cats caricatured in the press. Add another $4 trillion in life insurance assets, which mainly reflect the retirement savings of the middle class, and the middle class investment fund now stands at $20 trillion.

Americans won’t take risks on each other. That’s our problem. A decade ago, at the peak of China’s investment in American securities, I quipped that a rich Chinese won’t lend money to a poor Chinese, unless the poor Chinese moves to America. That’s starting to change. China’s huge trade surplus has shrunk to nearly zero as the Chinese consume more at home. The problem now is that middle-class Americans won’t invest in themselves.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/western-courts-bend-to-islamic-practices/ Judges’ consideration of Shari‘a [1] when deciding cases may be the most alarming avenue by which Islam influences Western legal systems, but it is not the only one. With increasing regularity, Islamic practices sway the administration of courtrooms, affecting when sessions are held, who must rise, and what attire is permissible. This trend should […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/09/advice_for_romney_from_national_reviews_editors.html

Hooray for J.Robert Smith…..Romney should just shut out the cacophony of whining from his erstwhile supporters….the vapors of Peggy Noonan, the sob sister, and the Weekly Standard bearers who used to root for the Arab “spring”…..rsk

On Thursday morning, National Review’s editors offered a surefire way of putting Mitt Romney over the top with “swing” voters. Call it a circular firing squad. Or just mush.

The NR editors’ advice: ladle out a share of blame to George W. Bush for the nation’s economic mess. No. Wait. Don’t blame the former president. Instead, indict Republican governance before Barack Obama assumed the presidency.

But no, come to think of it, don’t do that.

Of course, you know swing voters — that 5% to 8% of the electorate that Romney and the Republicans are handling gingerly like porcelain figurines. Establishment Republicans and their conservative cohorts have tied themselves into pretzels to convince everyone and his brother that Romney needs to run a non-campaign campaign lest the former governor turn off undecideds. So the Romney campaign serves out heaping-helping spoonfuls of Gerry Ford tapioca, George H. Bush cream puffs, and Bob Dole pabulum. Not always, but alarmingly, all too routinely.

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/09/wake-up_jews.html No doubt, it’s hard for people to give up their lifelong attachments and identity. But there are moments in history when a turning point arrives, and those with eyes to see and ears to hear recognize it. Many Jews have made political liberalism their religion and personal identity and the Democrat Party their unexamined […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444620104578012281306687070.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop The industry that gave us stents, replacement joints and defibrillators will get a dose of bad fiscal medicine. The Supreme Court decision in June upholding the Affordable Care Act leaves in place a tax on medical devices that threatens thousands of American jobs and our global competitiveness. It will also stifle critical medical innovation […]

http://newmediajournal.us/indx.php/item/6960 While many concerns face those on the Right side of the aisle who are politically aware – concerns like the misapplication of voter demographics in the polling used to score the presidential race, the exploding deficit, the enflamed tensions in the Middle East, and/or the honesty deficit displayed by the Obama Administration, among many […]

http://yeshaviews.blogspot.co.il/2012/09/the-gauntlet.html

My e-pal Marc is probably the best guide to Israel….also

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Join AFSI for the next Chizuk trip to Israel, Nov 7-15 2012.
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The holiday season in Israel is readily noticed also by the increase of tourists arriving here. Indeed many even make their way out to Judea and Samaria, not only the biblical heartland, but where we actually started here in Israel, from Abraham onward. Always noticeably missing are the secular Jewish tourists, Jews who hail from Conservative and Reform congregations. They are in Israel, in fact there are always “missions” here, but their leadership makes sure to keep them away from the Jewish Heartland. Often claiming “too politically charged”, “dangerous” and many other pitiful excuses.

Funny how we can always find mainstream US Jewish “leadership” in Ramallah, but a visit to Shilo, Beit El and more, simply out of the question. Gd forbid they visit sites directly connected to their own history. Sites that would strengthen their own identity and connection, their congregations identity and connection, stated challenges they face in keeping their respective flocks at home. Why would they wish to keep their people disconnected and ignorant to their history? Why would they deny them the chance to walk in the steps of their forefathers? What are they afraid of?

I am not talking politics, simply the chance to visit these places that are so important to us as a people. They all claim to be so “pro-Israel”, so why should these places be so different.

Federations and so on, will always visit Jewish sites in other countries on “Heritage” tours, but to see their own heritage in Israel, to be denied them by their own leadership??? Seems suspicious.

http://dispatch-international.com/content/now-playing-washington-more-lies-tariq-ramada
WASHINGTON, DC. When I read that Tariq Ramadan would be speaking at a local bookstore in Washington, DC on September 11, the juxtaposition gave me a jolt. Was Ramadan – the world-famous and Left-celebrated Muslim “intellectual” banned from France for six months in the 1990s for alleged terror ties, and later from the US for six years (2004-2010) for reasons said to include charitable donations to HAMAS – really an appropriate choice for this darkest of anniversaries? But there was something intriguing about the prospect. What message would this scion of the Muslim Brotherhood deliver to the largely liberal upper middle class masses who would throng the bookstore to hear him?

I had never before seen Ramadan in action, but I knew his reputation for glibness, “doubletalk”, and contradiction. From these waves of words, as I would see, listeners seem to extract what is most shiny and appealing, and, as I would watch, nod their heads in recognition.

Never mind that among his favorite Muslim philosophers is Mohammed Rashid Rida, whom Islamic expert Andrew Bostom has described as a “full-throated, public supporter of the political aspirations of Ibn Saud’s Wahhabism”. Never mind that Ramadan, grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, unequivocably states there is “nothing is this heritage” that he rejects.

The Muslim Brotherhood, a shadowy organization with violent offshoots (including al-Qaeda) is best summed up by its motto: “Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” But not to worry: Tariq Ramadan says he isn’t a member. Here in the bookstore, he repeatedly emphasized “dignity, justice and freedom” as the goals of so-called Arab Spring. People nodded. I doubt many realized these are the English-language buzz words of the Muslim Brotherhood, too.

Another thrill-and-spill Of late, Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority appears to be staging recurrent verbal thrills-and-spills extravaganzas. It’s almost as if, when nothing else works, generating headlines constitutes a viable alternative to actual policy and governance. And so the latest bombshell Abbas attempted to toss was the suggestion that Ramallah might abrogate the Oslo Accords with […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444032404578006101784283218.html?KEYWORDS=DAVID+Goldman+BOOK+REVIEW By DAVID P. GOLDMAN Overall returns to American venture capital have lagged behind public markets since the late 1990s, Henry Kressel and Thomas Lento note in “Entrepreneurship and the Global Economy,” and a quarter of venture-capital firms have earned all the profits. Why have results been so lopsided? Globalization is a big part of […]