RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/13/10-ways-obama-has-made-war-more-likely/print/

Wars begin in a thousand ways. Some begin with lies, others with truth. Some with aggression and others with appeasement. But behind those many beginnings are some familiar qualities. Arrogance, incompetence, ignorance and cowardice.

Those qualities should be familiar because we can hardly go a day without seeing them displayed behind the teleprompter in its familiar place in Washington D.C. or on the endless road trip to the Muslim world that is the Obama Doctrine. We have seen them in Istanbul and Cairo, and we can see their consequences in Tehran and Tunis. In a world where America has kept the peace, they are swiftly leading us to war.

Bombs Away in North Korea

The words “North Korea” and “diplomacy” are a running joke even in diplomatic circles, and seeing a headline like “Clinton hails North Korea food deal” doesn’t give you enough information to determine whether you are seeing a news story from 2011 or 1994. Sadly, the answer is 2011, as the Hope and Change crew have put their faith in their own diplomacy, rather than in history or common sense.

North Korea is more than just a Communist mafia with nuclear weapons; it’s the starting point in the supply chain for any Muslim country that wants its own nuclear weapons. Its ability to blackmail the West encourages nations like Iran to push for their own nuclear programs to be able to have their own atomic blackmail card… and brings us closer to the day when a bankrupt North Korea decides that America really is a paper tiger and our soldiers find themselves fighting a second Korean War.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/293261/costly-united-nations-brett-d-schaefer

WHY DON’T THEY JUST CLOSE IT, SEAL IT AND HANG OUT A SIGN….”CLOSED FOR ALTERCATIONS” ???
Behind schedule and over budget — and still the U.N.’s Capital Master Plan (CMP) is getting high grades. “The first major renovation of the 60-year-old headquarters has been slowed by extra security measures,” the Associated Press reports, noting that “The final cost will be nearly $2 billion — about 4 percent over the original budget.” Still, the article leaves the general impression that the CMP has done a heckuva job of cost containment.
Really?
That 4 percent overrun amounts to real money — more than $80 million. But that’s chump change compared to the real stakes in this story.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/293274/holder-s-identity-problem-rich-lowry

For Attorney General Eric Holder, life must present a hellish vista of pervasive racist practices.

Wherever he goes, people are required to show identification. When cashing a check. When signing up for a library card. When boarding a plane. When entering certain office buildings. When checking into hotels. When (in the case of the youthful-looking) buying a beer or cigarettes, or entering a bar. The tyranny of the photo ID is so all-encompassing that people can’t enter Holder’s own Justice Department without showing one.

Holder is outraged that in a nation where requests for photo ID are ubiquitous, more and more states are requiring that people show them when they vote. In a speech last year, Holder characterized these voter-ID laws as an assault on the voting rights that Congressman John Lewis — the hero of Edmund Pettus Bridge — fought for in the mid-1960s. Back then, blacks in the South had to fear for their safety if they showed up at the courthouse to try to register to vote. Now, states are merely asking everyone, regardless of race, to show identification that is readily available to all, regardless of race.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/nicky-larkin-israel-is-a-refuge-but-a-refuge-under-siege-3046227.html
Nicky Larkin: Israel is a refuge, but a refuge under siege Through making a film about the Israeli-Arab conflict, artist Nicky Larkin found his allegiances swaying.
Nicky Larkin: Israel is a refuge, but a refuge under siege

I used to hate Israel. I used to think the Left was always right. Not any more. Now I loathe Palestinian terrorists. Now I see why Israel has to be hard. Now I see the Left can be Right — as in right-wing. So why did I change my mind so completely?

Strangely, it began with my anger at Israel’s incursion into Gaza in December 2008 which left over 1,200 Palestinians dead, compared to only 13 Israelis. I was so angered by this massacre I posed in the striped scarf of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation for an art show catalogue.

Shortly after posing in that PLO scarf, I applied for funding from the Irish Arts Council to make a film in Israel and Palestine. I wanted to talk to these soldiers, to challenge their actions — and challenge the Israeli citizens who supported them.

I spent seven weeks in the area, dividing my time evenly between Israel and the West Bank. I started in Israel. The locals were suspicious. We were Irish — from a country which is one of Israel’s chief critics — and we were filmmakers. We were the enemy.

Then I crossed over into the West Bank. Suddenly, being Irish wasn’t a problem. Provo graffiti adorned The Wall. Bethlehem was Las Vegas for Jesus-freaks — neon crucifixes punctuated by posters of martyrs.

These martyrs followed us throughout the West Bank. They watched from lamp-posts and walls wherever we went. Like Jesus in the old Sacred Heart pictures.

But the more I felt the martyrs watching me, the more confused I became. After all, the Palestinian mantra was one of “non-violent resistance”. It was their motto, repeated over and over like responses at a Catholic mass.

Yet when I interviewed Hind Khoury, a former Palestinian government member, she sat forward angrily in her chair as she refused to condemn the actions of the suicide bombers. She was all aggression.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/03/the_necessity_of_anti-sharia_laws.html
The Necessity of Anti-Sharia LawsBy Robert Spencer

Louisiana, Arizona ,and Tennessee have already passed legislation restricting the use of foreign law in state courtrooms, and twenty-one other states are considering similar laws. These statutes are designed to halt the use of Islamic law, sharia, by American judges — a measure that many see as necessary, since sharia has already been involved in cases in twenty-three states. Many see this as an alarming encroachment upon First Amendment protection of religion; however, anti-sharia laws do not actually infringe upon religious freedom at all, and they become more urgently needed by the day.

In the March issue of First Things, law professor Robert K. Vischer equates anti-sharia laws with recent intrusions upon the religious freedom of Christians, such as laws that now require “pro-life pharmacists to dispense the morning-after pill” and “Christian adoption agencies to place children with same-sex couples, and religious entities to pay for their employees’ contraceptives.” He asserts that “[t]he recent spate of ‘anti-Sharia’ initiatives is just the most politically popular example of such threats” to religious freedom.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/215379-specter-says-obama-ditched-him-after-he-provided-60th-vote-to-pass-health-law
Specter says Obama ditched him after he provided 60th vote to pass health reform
By Alexander Bolton – 03/12/12 05:30 AM ET

Former Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) writes in a new book that President Obama ditched him in the 2010 election after he helped Obama win the biggest legislative victory of his term by passing healthcare reform.

Specter also claims that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did not uphold his promise to grant him seniority accrued over 28 years of service in the Senate as a Republican.

Specter, who rocked Washington’s political establishment and made headlines around the country when he left the Republican Party to join Democrats in April of 2009, has kept quiet about these slights until now.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/free-speech-vs-islamists-worldwide-west-is-losing/?singlepage=true

Recently, Salman Rushdie did not attend a literature festival in India after Indian authorities warned him he was a potential target of assassins, and after numerous protests by various Islamist groups. This is not the first time that Mr. Rushdie found himself at odds with Islamists over his free speech. In 1988, he published his book The Satanic Verses, whose “blasphemous writings” first resulted in death threats to Mr. Rushdie from Islamists — including a fatwa against him by Ayatollah Khomeini — and first alerted the world to the problems Islamists had with free speech concerning Islam-related topics.

After initially trying to apologize to appease his Islamist censors, Rushdie was forced to go underground under protective detail. In 2012, almost a quarter of a century from when he first found himself enmeshed in the struggle for free speech, Mr. Rushdie faced a similar threat and once again was forced to back down.

Unfortunately, the Rushdie example is all too representative of how things are going in the Western struggle to protect speech from Islamist thugs. In other words, not well. Things are probably getting worse.

http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2012/03/12/derrick-bells-love-for-new-black-panther-party-founder-and-white-house-counsel/?singlepage=true

Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell praised the anti-Semitic founder of the New Black Panther Party. Another strong supporter of Bell was eventually Obama White House counsel Cassandra Butts, the White House lawyer when the New Black Panther voter intimidation case was dismissed.

Powerline has the story of Derrick Bell praising the venomous anti-Semite Khalid Muhammad, former head of the New Black Panther Party. The dots that Powerline connected are the dots between Derrick Bell, Khalid Muhammad and the New Black Panther Party. But White House counsel Cassandra Butts was also involved in the now-famous Harvard Law School rally for Bell. Butts helped organize the rally supporting Bell and escorted him to be introduced.

Butts, nearly 20 years later, may have played a role in the dismissal of the New Black Panther voter intimidation case according to multiple reports.
As a member of the DOJ team that brought the case against the New Black Panther Party, it staggers the imagination that Barack Obama’s beloved law professor Derrick Bell had anything positive to say about this radical racist anti-Semite. This is simply disheartening. You would think “esteemed” Harvard Law professors wouldn’t say nice things about a man who called for the murder of white women and children:

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

The alleged attack on Afghans by an American soldier in Kandahar, where 91 soldiers have been murdered last year alone, is already receiving the full outrage treatment. Any outrage over the deaths of those 91 soldiers in the province will be completely absent.

There will be no mention of how many of them died because the Obama Administration decided that the lives of Afghan civilians counted for more than the lives of soldiers. No talk of what it is like to walk past houses with gunmen dressed in civilian clothing inside and if you are fired at from those houses, your orders are to retreat.

Air strikes are for days gone by. The American soldier in the ISAF is expected to patrol and retreat, to smile and reach out to Afghans while they shoot him in the back. After risking his life to hold back the Taliban, he is expected to take it calmly when his government announces that it is trying to cut a deal with the Taliban. As he waits out the final months until withdrawal, seeing his friends lose their limbs and their lives, knowing that the enemy has won, that he has been betrayed and is being kept senselessly on the front line for no objective except the diplomatic position of a government that hates him, that is taking away his health care, his equipment and his job; how does he feel?

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/03/13/MJ%20Rosenbergs%20Flimsy%20Apology

There is good news and bad news. First, the good news: on his Media Matters blog MJ Rosenberg has promised he will no longer use the antisemitic term “Israel firster” to describe Americans who support Israel.The bad news is that he defended his use of the term and launched into his usual hateful prose directed toward Israel and Jewish Americans:

But I will do so without using the term “Israel Firster.” The term was coined in 1960 by the late Abram Leon Sachar, founding President of Brandeis University, and a renowned Jewish historian (his son Howard Morley Sachar remains the greatest historian of contemporary Jewry) and was first used by the elder Sachar in a speech he delivered that year to a Zionist organization.

This is a typical MJ Rosenberg half-truth. He is correct when he says Sachar used the term “Israel firster,” but he didn’t use it the same way MJ and his MMfA buddies throw it around. For Sacher the term represented the tension between the American Jewish Community and Israeli Jewish Community in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Sacher’s “Israel firsters” were mostly Israeli Jews who felt the Jewish people could never have a fulfilling life outside of Israel. It was never used by Sacher to impugn Jewish Americans as being some how less than loyal to America.