RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/12/you_cant_be_pro-obama_and_pro-israel.html

Neil Snyder is a chaired professor emeritus at the University of Virginia. His blog, SnyderTalk.com, is posted daily.His latest book is titled If You Voted for Obama in 2008 to Prove You’re Not a Racist, You Need to Vote for Someone Else in 2012 to Prove You’re Not an Idiot.

Since the day he took office, President Obama has been anti-Israel.

Barack Obama has failed to achieve the bipartisan results that he promised to seek while running for office. In fact, he has created a chasm between the political left and right in this country that is wider than it has ever been.　

The president’s tendency to shove his agenda down people’s throats regardless of the merits, the biting partisan rhetoric that he aims at political opponents, the condescending way that he talks down to legislators with more experience and better ideas, the “this is not about me” mantra that he uses repeatedly to insult anyone who dares to challenge his ideas, and his incessant posturing are huge parts of the president’s problem. President Obama has even managed to alienate the far left in his own party. Some say that’s because he’s too centrist, but anyone who calls Barack Obama a centrist has to ignore his long and sordid history of leftist positions on a broad range of issues and his radical far left friends and advisors.　

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/12/rick_perry_and_sharia_and_robert_spencer.html

Robert Spencer posted an attack against me on this site regarding a series of articles I wrote last summer debunking the meme that Governor Rick Perry foisted “pro-Sharia” classroom materials on children in Texas schools. Although I hadn’t planned to revisit the Perry/Sharia debate, the sheer nastiness of Spencer’s attack has, in the words of Michael Corleone, “pulled me back in.”

As I’m a guest here on AT, I can’t be as verbose as I am on my own site. What I’ll do, though, is provide a brief overview of this manufactured controversy.

In 2008, Perry inked a deal with the Aga Khan Foundation to create the Muslim Histories and Culture Project (MHCP), the goal of which was to help Texas teachers create classroom lesson plans about Islam. It was a voluntary program in which teachers would attend a series of MHCP seminars, the end result of which would be the creation of lesson plans. The Aga Khan Foundation represents Ismaili Muslims, who follow a moderate, peaceful interpretation of Islam (a fact confirmed by experts on Islamic extremism from Daniel Pipes to Spencer himself).

In August, Salon’s Justin Elliott ran a piece which claimed, with no factual backing, that the Perry/Khan deal suggests that Perry is the “pro-Sharia candidate.” Elliott had previously accused Perry of being a “pro-porn candidate.” These articles were nothing more than provocations — attempts by a liberal to create friction among conservatives. And immediately, Pamela Geller took the bait. Within days, she was breathlessly proclaiming that Perry was introducing pro-Sharia materials into Texas schools. Geller offered no evidence beyond the Salon piece.

The 94-Year-Old Frenchman Behind ‘Occupy’ Posted By Michel Gurfinkiel

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-94-year-old-frenchman-behind-%e2%80%98occupy%e2%80%99/

A little more than 13 months ago, a left-wing French publishing house specializing in Third World advocacy published a very short (32 pages) and very cheap (three euros) political brochure titled Indignez-vous! [1] (Time for Outrage!).

The author was nonagenarian Stephane Frederic Hessel: a Nazi camp survivor, a former ambassador, and a regular French talk show guest. The booklet was an instant bestseller: one million copies in the first ten weeks, 1.5 million in the first year.

It still remains, as of today, the number one book on French bestseller lists.

The reasons for such a stunning success were quite obvious. Those people who read a bit, but not much, were thrilled to buy what passed for a serious essay by an important person for less than the price of a magazine. They were even happier to find out that Hessel’s philosophy was a perfect fit for their own intellectual and ethical size.

The Great Old Man urged contemporary youth to get “outraged” about poverty and injustice and to fight for a better world, just as he had done seventy years earlier as a member of the anti-Nazi Resistance. Who on Earth would contend with that, especially when the enemy was not the Third Reich, but benign modern democracies?

Moreover, the villain Hessel repeatedly mentioned and attacked was Israel — the country most people in France love to hate already.

It takes a Jew (US Diplomat)…to blame Jew Hatred on Jewish State
WWW.ZSTREET.ORG
HAS ANYONE READ ANDREW BOSTOM’S “THE LEGACY OF ISLAMIC ANTI-SEMITISM” WHICH PAINSTAKINGLY DETAILS IN CHAPTER AFTER CHAPTER THE LONG HISTORY OF MUSLIM ANTI-SEMITISM FROM THE TIME OF THE PROPHET MOHAMMAD? …..HOWARD GUTMAN IS AN IGNORAMUS…..RSK

How many non-Jews would dare to raise the outrageous charge that it is the fault of the Jewish State, Israel, that Muslims hate Jews? And yet, perhaps if uttered by a Jew the hope is that it might gain some traction.

When the US Ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, (a Jewish name, a Jewish face…) said at a conference in Brussels this week that “Muslim anti-Semitism ‘stems from the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians,” we have to wonder whether that was an official statement of this US administration.

Because if it were not, this administration must fire Mr. Gutman for his calumny of the Jewish State. And if Gutman is merely representing the position of his employer, this US administration, then we must ask every voter in America whether that represents their views. Already the Emergency Committee for Israel has, in no uncertain terms, condemned Gutman’s remarks and called for his dismissal, as has the Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Z STREET is adding its voice to the call. As any casual student of the Middle East surely knows, Muslim hatred of Jews far precedes the rebirth of the Jewish State in 1948, and in fact dates all the way back to the time of Mohammed, the father of Islam. How Gutman could be so undiplomatic is hard to fathom. Whether this Administration allows Gutman to continue playing diplomat is worth asking. If you don’t think it should, as we don’t, contact President Barack Obama and let him know.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

“People like that do exist, though they can be hard to find. Florida found a former lieutenant colonel who in the normal state of affairs would probably never have run for office. Once upon a time California found a former movie star. There are people like that all around us outside the political class. They have talents, they can speak and they have firm beliefs that they can communicate. But many of them have never thought of running for office. If the Tea Party or any conservative grass roots movement is to be effective, it will need to find those people and support them. That’s not an easy task, the last two years remind us that not everyone who speaks well or says the right things or is a political outsider is also going to be a good candidate… but that is also part of the process.”

What the 2010 elections and the 2012 primaries both tell us sharply is that having a vibrant grass-roots is not the same as having political leaders. Often when the base is boiling, that’s when the party is unable to bring anyone to the table except the halfwits and leaders so uninspiring that no amount of hair pulling cognition can make you understand how they made it to the endgame.

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/1969/US-Military-Ban-on-Bibles-at-Walter-Reed-Revealed-and-Rescinded.aspx

C.W. Callahan, chief of staff for Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, who set the September 14, 2011 guidelines prohibiting visitors to “wounded, ill, and injured partners in care” from giving away or using Bibles in the hospital.

Who advised him?

—

From Todd Starnes, Fox News and Commentary:

Walter Reed National Military Medical Center said they are rescinding a policy that prohibits family members of wounded military troops from bringing Bibles or any religious reading materials to their loved ones.

The decision to rescind the ban on Bibles came exactly one day after a Republican lawmaker denounced the policy on the House floor and called on President Obama to publicly renounce the military policy.

“The President of the United States should address this and should excoriate the people who brought about this policy and the individual who brought it about should be dismissed from the United States Military,” Rep. Steve King (R-IA) told Fox News & Commentary.

Frank’s sneering insults won’t be missed

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/10808/frank-sneering-insults-wont-be-missed

BARNEY FRANK may be the only member of Congress who has ever made headlines for not acting like a jerk.

When the longtime Massachusetts representative found himself last year facing — for the first time in decades — a surprisingly strong Republican challenge, journalists noticed something strange: He wasn’t being as nasty as usual. He wasn’t responding to questions with his trademark put-downs. He wasn’t condescending to critics with quite as much sneering contempt.

“Barney Frank reinvents himself as a nice guy,” wrote Jonathan Strong in a story for The Daily Caller. The Boston Herald’s Margery Eagan, “bracing to get hammered” when she asked Frank some questions, was amazed when, instead of insulting or berating her, he answered her questions “almost diplomatically.”

But Frank’s unwonted restraint vanished on election night. In what may have been the most graceless victory speech in US congressional history, he savaged the Herald, accused Republicans of engaging in “vituperation [and] anonymous smears,” and proclaimed his re-election “a victory for a concept of government which eschews anger and vitriol.”

Which was quite a proclamation, coming from someone who is as renowned for his invective and browbeating as for his liberalism and smarts. When Frank eventually goes to his eternal reward – and I wish him many more years of activity and good health – it’s safe to assume that the words “He eschewed anger and vitriol” will not be engraved on his monument.

Frank said last week that he plans to retire when his current term ends at the end of next year. That made him the 24th House incumbent to announce that he won’t seek re-election. But only in Frank’s case did the media coverage include printing roundups of his “oftentimes acerbic comments,” or collecting tweets from “the many journalists who have felt his wrath,” or posting a greatest-hits reel of Frank on the House floor, belittling and excoriating his Republican colleagues.

Politics and passion have always gone together, and all other things being equal, a quick-witted congressman with strong views and the ability to defend them is preferable to a colorless drudge. No one has ever doubted Frank’s intelligence or wit, and it isn’t only liberals who could appreciate his gift for wry retorts. (“My colleagues on the other side have decided to adopt a Marxist idea,” he said during one House debate. “The Marx in question, of course, is Chico.”)

But it’s one thing to be a quotable curmudgeon. It’s something quite different to be a bully.

www.myrightword.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/content/green-lined

In response to the recent criticism of Israel by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, today the chairman of the Emergency Committee for Israel, William Kristol, issued the following statement:
www.committeeforisrael.com/?p=1484

“Nobody believes President Obama when he claims, as he did last week, that he ‘has done more for the security of the state of Israel than any previous administration.’ That’s because he hasn’t — and because President Obama and his administration keeps acting to weaken the security of the state of Israel.

“For example: as reported in the Israeli press, the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman — a top Obama fundraiser in 2008 — told a conference in Brussels this week that Muslim anti-Semitism ‘stems from the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.’ Pardon us for retaining our belief that Muslim anti-Semitism in the Middle East predates 1967, and even 1948 — and in any case is the fault of the anti-Semites, not of the Jews.

“At another conference, this one in Washington, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta surveyed the Middle East and discovered that at every turn, the Jewish state is to blame for problems in the Muslim world. Are there Arab uprisings that are bringing Islamists to power and endangering peace with Israel? Israel must placate the radicals. Are there constant provocations and taunts from Turkey’s Islamist government? Israel must beg for better treatment. Do Palestinians refuse to negotiate? ‘Get to the damn table,’ Panetta thundered twice – as if Israel was refusing to talk, instead of the reverse.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-02/islamists-electoral-rise-due-to-failed-secularism-pankaj-mishra.html

SUCH WISHFUL THINKING AND NOT A WORD ABOUT THE KORAN OR SHARIA OR JIHAD OR THE BARBARIC TREATMENT OF WOMEN…..IT’S JUST SECULARISM GONE SOUR……RSK

“As Ebrahim Yazdi, one of the leaders of Iran’s Green Movement, put it in an open letter to Ghannouchi last week, there is reason to be “seriously concerned about the long range outcome.” He continued: “Our people, Muslims of every nation, struggle for the restoration of their basic rights, liberty, and sovereignty. But we do not have sufficient experience with democracy … We fight and overthrow dictators, but not dictatorship itself.”

Furthermore, the ideological oppositions that arouse many laptop warriors in the West — liberal democracy versus Islamism, secularism versus theocracy — bleach out the mundane but more significant social and economic factors behind the Arab Spring: For instance, the fact that welfare-statism in Tunisia followed by a globalized and apparently successful economy produced a latent middle class whose high expectations, fueled by the entertainment media, turned out to be impossible to fulfill.