RUTHFULLY YOURS

The article Warshal: President Obama and the defense of Israel brings to focus the question of how Jews can have opposing views of President Obama’s support for Israel. Is he pro-Israel or anti-Israel? But the question is not just a Jewish question. Is President Obama pro or anti-Christian? Is he pro-freedom or pro-Muslim Brotherhood? Is he for Iran getting nukes or not getting nukes? Why do these questions even exist? How can he appear to be opposite things to different people with the same interests? Here is a quote from Rep. Gary Ackerman of (D) New York:

“Enough is enough. The president is far from perfect and criticizing him is legitimate. But the lies and smears and spit-flecked hostility that have emerged in some parts of our community’s debate are a disgrace to a people that regularly asks in prayer for divine assistance to ‘guard my tongue from evil speech and my lips from speaking lies.'”

Poller responds:

Rabbi Warshal talks about lashon hara (evil tongue). He does not address another Yom Kippur lesson: Sins of Omission and Sins of Commission. This applies to all of us including the Rabbi and President Obama.

This begins to explain why my immediate family thinks Obama is anti-Israel while my still-liberal relatives think he is pro-Israel. (Liberal and Conservative are really inadequate and incorrect terms but convey an accepted message.)

It starts with Obama himself: Mr. Obama is an introspective candidate, and perhaps the best analyst of his own political style. “I serve as a blank screen,” he wrote in “The Audacity of Hope,” “on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

We project our views onto President Obama and believe he thinks as we do. We omit the things he does that are contrary to our ideology.

Indicators of President Obama’s ideology are his friends. Here, again, we have contradictions. He numbers amongst his friends Jews like David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel. But far more numerous are his anti-Israel and/or anti-Semitic friends:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/06/20/anne-bayefsky-the-uns-twisted-human-rights-agenda/

http://www.eyeontheun.org/

The UN’s top human rights body, the UN Human Rights Council, opened its current session in Geneva this week with some Canada-bashing. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, ran down a list of human rights issues around the world that in her view were particularly pressing: Syria for crimes against humanity, a military coup in Mali, torture and summary executions in Eritrea, political prison camps and public executions in North Korea – and human rights in Quebec.

The only human rights issue Pillay described as “alarming” were “moves to restrict freedom of assembly,” and the only alarming instance she could summon up were restrictions in Quebec. The only issue about which she said she was “disappointed” was the law in Quebec. And the only specific concern she had with the violation of “freedom of association” anywhere the world over was in Quebec.

What’s behind her preposterous move?

http://israel21c.org/environment/pushing-back-the-desert-with-ancient-wisdom Israel’s Jacob Blaustein Institute for Desert Research shows farmers in many countries how to use a 2,000-year-old water retention method. Prof. Pedro Berliner at Wadi Mashash, one of the areas in the Negev Desert using the updated ancient system for conserving floodwater. Ancient Jewish prayers still recited today include special mention of dew in […]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/20/muslims-accused-planned-jews-attack

A Muslim couple were assembling components of a home-made bomb to attack Jewish neighbourhoods after becoming radicalised by al-Qaida propaganda on the internet, a court heard on Wednesday.Mohammed Sajid Khan, 33, and his wife, Shasta, 38, from Oldham, Greater Manchester, bought substances and equipment from supermarkets to assemble an improvised explosive device to launch a terrorist attack after carrying out visits to potential Jewish targets in Manchester, the city’s crown court heard.

Bobbie Cheema, the prosecutor, at Manchester crown court, said: “Perhaps it can be summarised this way: it was jihad at home. Between them they acquired substances, common or garden, that can be purchased in supermarkets, equipment and information of use that would help them to make explosives, and began the process of assembling an improvised explosive device.”

The couple also carried out “multiple reconnaissance” trips to Jewish areas of Salford or Manchester, it was alleged.

Behind their “apparent normality of daily life”, Khan, an unemployed car valeter, and his wife, a hairdresser, planned to carry out “jihad at home”, Cheema told the court.

The couple were only stopped by chance after a minor domestic row led to police being called to their home in Oldham.

Shasta decided to inform the police after her brother told officers went to the house: “I think he’s a home-grown terrorist.”

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/103576/the-cold-wars-arab-spring?all=1 Stolen Kremlin records show how the Soviets, including Gorbachev, created many of today’s Middle East conflicts The dominant narrative of modern Middle East history emphasizes the depredations visited upon the region by European colonization and accepts as a truism that the former colonial powers prioritized the protection of their material interests—in oil, above all—above […]

Islamic Radicalization in America — on The Glazov Gang
by Frontpagemag.com
Dr. Nancy Bonus, Eric Allen Bell and Karla Moxley battle it out on the extent of the danger we face.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/06/21/islamic-radicalization-in-america-on-the-glazov-gang/

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3122/women-rights-arab-spring In a propaganda trap doubtlessly intended to cripple one politically – like so many others of its kind, such as “racist” – if a woman speaks in ways expected of a woman she is considered an inadequate leader; if she speaks in ways expected of a leader she is considered an inadequate woman. If […]

G-20 Speed Dating in Los Cabos

The obstacles to global growth are clear and need to be addressed in national capitals, not a resort town.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303703004577474390989961840.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#top

With global growth precariously slow, the two-day G-20 summit this week—the diplomatic equivalent of speed dating—did little but drain more money from deeply indebted nations. Greece’s Sunday election strongly endorsing the euro did more to promote global economic growth than anything that happened in Los Cabos.

Despite the announcement of the “Los Cabos Growth and Jobs Action Plan,” which mostly commits Europe’s struggling economies to still more government control, Group of 20 leaders have fundamental disagreements on practically every key economic topic—high taxes or low, larger or smaller central bank bond portfolios, more government or less.

The clearest decisions that came out of the summit promoted governments, not private sectors, pointing to even more deficit spending, an IMF expansion led by China and another expensive G-20 meeting next year in Russia. The outcome raises fundamental doubts about the G-20’s value in furthering free markets, strong private economies and global living standards.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/303523/executive-privilege-congress-andrew-c-mccarthy

As you would expect, my buddy Shannen provides an excellent outline of the law of executive privilege. I do not take issue with what he explains, because it very accurately conveys the privilege as it has evolved over time. My dispute is with the underlying assumptions about the privilege, particularly with respect to the “deliberative process” aspect of it, which, as Shannen observes, rests on less solid footing than the “presidential communications” aspect.

Just as there are two species of executive privilege, so there are two species of governance within the executive branch. The first involves the president’s constitutional duties. These are broadly laid out in Article II. They involve powers of the presidency that derive directly from the Constitution. Congress may not repeal, reduce, or subject them to regulation or “oversight” that thwarts the president’s ability to carry them out.

That is why I agree the “presidential communications” aspect of executive privilege is the stronger one — and why, for example, I argued that Congress had no power to compel Karl Rove to testify during the controversy over fired U.S. attorneys. Karl was a senior advisor to President Bush, a member of the White House staff whose position was not subject to Senate confirmation or otherwise dependent on Congress. He served at the pleasure of the president to facilitate the performance of the president’s constitutional duties. In this sense, he was an appendage of Pres. Bush, and Congress could no more compel him to testify than compel the president. The president is a peer, not a subordinate, of Congress; Congress does not have the power to demand testimony from the president or his confidants — at least not on matters that involve presidential communications in the execution of the president’s constitutional duties.

http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2012/06/20/the-plot-thickens-obama-asserts-executive-privilege-to-block-fast-furious-disclosures/

The Obama administration has a narrative about Fast & Furious. The Wall Street Journal obligingly reported it this morning, as follows:

The gun-walking tactics in Fast and Furious turned up in earlier ATF cases, during the Bush administration. When they were uncovered by Justice officials in the Obama administration, a top Justice official raised concerns with ATF officials, according to Justice documents released last year. But the officials never alerted Mr. Holder, didn’t do enough to prevent similar cases and weren’t aware the operation was under way until months later, according to Justice documents.

Mr. Holder, in a letter last week to Mr. Issa, said, “The record in this matter reflects that until allegations about the inappropriate tactics used in Fast and Furious were made public, department leadership was unaware of those tactics.”

There are a variety of reasons to be skeptical of this version of events. To name only two:

(a) there were wiretaps in the F&F investigation, and when the government seeks a wiretap, federal law requires it to explain what investigative tactics have been used in the case, an explanation that is vetted by top DOJ officials because the government cannot apply for the wiretap without the approval of the attorney general or his designee (a high Justice Department official) — it seems highly unlikely, assuming DOJ complied with wiretap law, that top Justice Department officials did not know about the gun-walking tactic until late in the game; and

(b) the gun-walking tactic — which in F&F involved providing well over a thousand firearms to violent criminals — was shocking, and it is hard to believe that if “Justice officials” knew enough to raise their concerns with the ATF brass, they failed to alert Attorney General Holder or follow through to make sure ATF and the U.S. attorney’s office — both arms of the Justice Department — stopped the tactic.