RUTHFULLY YOURS

Stop worrying whether the president’s statements conform to ossified standards of truth.

What is the common denominator of the Obama administration’s serial scandals — the Justice Department’s spying on AP, the IRS targeting of conservative groups, the NSA surveillance, the lies about Benghazi and the ACA — and much of the White House damage-control rhetoric? In a word: the advancement of postmodern notions of justice at the expense of traditional truth.

By the 1980s, in law schools, university social-science departments, and the humanities in general, the old relativist idea of Plato’s noble lies was given a new French facelift. Traditional morality and ethics were dismissed as arbitrary constructs, predicated on privileged notions of race, class, and gender. The new moral architecture did not rely on archaic abidance by the niceties of “truth,” which simply reinforced traditional oppressive hierarchies.

Instead, social justice by definition transcended the sham of traditional ideas of truth and falsity. The true became the advocacy of fairness, while the real lie was the reactionary adherence to a set of oppressive norms. All this was faculty-lounge fluff, but soon it filtered out into the larger culture.

In this regard, it was understandable that the New York Times characterized the president’s not telling the truth on over 20 occasions as cases of “misspeaking.” Translated, that means he lied but his lies were really true: Misspeaking means that Obama was not sensitive enough to those of us still mired in calcified definitions of true and false. The privileged still cross t’s and dot i’s; their victims have no such luxury.

Earlier, Obama himself had falsely claimed that he had never stated that Americans would not lose either their health insurance or their doctors, and would not pay more for their new coverage (e.g., “If you had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed” [emphasis added]). But so what?

What does it matter whether Obama had never once added the qualifier “if it hasn’t changed since the law passed,” so long as he (or rather “we”?) had wanted to say it, and if saying it now enhances a progressive program? What difference does it make whether the president of the United States has lied about his earlier lies — given his consistently noble intent?

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/27-democratic-senators-who-promised-you-could-keep-your-health-coverage http://washingtonexaminer.com/27-democratic-senators-who-promised-you-could-keep-your-health-coverage/article/2539245 President Obama has taken a lot of heat for promising that if Americans liked the health coverage that they had before Obamacare, they would be able to keep it under the new law. But the president wasn’t the only Democrat in Washington who made that false promise. Many, many other Democratic officeholders said […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/class-warfare

For the new class of self-proclaimed progressives there is a tale of two cities, one privileged and one underprivileged. This dichotomous model comes right out of the Marxist playbook. However, despite its simplicity and repudiation of human nature, it continues to have appeal as President Obama and Mayor Bill de Blasio can attest.

The tale of two cities appeals on several levels. It plays into the psychology of guilt-riddled individuals who feel they may have been responsible for the condition of the downtrodden. It also appeals to those who are indeed downtrodden by suggesting their condition will improve if you can redistribute resources from the rich and give it to them.

Of course history demonstrates that you cannot make the poor rich by making the rich poor. But most people ignore empirical evidence. It is the narrative that counts. Hence Marxism’s appeal, even if it is now progressivism or another euphemism. Taking from Peter to give to Paul always satisfies Paul.

The tale of two cities is a tale of tails for the actual distribution of the wealthy, those earning over $300,000 annually, is about five percent and the poor, those earning or living on $20,000 for a family of four or more, is about 15 percent. In other words, this tale is one of extremes that leaves 80 percent out of the equation.

One might assume that any theory or narrative that ignores the bulk of the population would be rendered useless. But this narrative has vitality because it is what many choose to believe. Nuance hasn’t any standing. In fact, a progressive tax of the kind the U.S. has, does take disproportionately from the rich (nationwide one percent of the population pays 40 percent of the taxes) and has yielded trillions over the last four decades to the poor in welfare payments, public housing, Medicaid, food stamps, etc. However, the percentage of the poor remains largely unchanged.

Last week, people in the U.K. got to take a break from worrying about the Islamization of their country. Instead they were offered a fresh chance to ponder the massive influx into the scept’red isle of Eastern European gypsies – or, to use the politically correct term of the moment, Roma. First, Labour Party MP and former Home Secretary David Blunkett, in a rare departure from the usual see-no-evil establishment rhetoric, acknowledged the “frictions” between gypsies and natives and worried aloud that it would eventually kindle riots. “We have got to change the behaviour and the culture of the incoming community, the Roma community, because there’s going to be an explosion otherwise,” Blunkett said. “We all know that.” The next day fellow Labourite Jack Straw, also a former Home Secretary, agreed, admitting that he and his colleagues in government had made a “spectacular mistake” in 2004 when they permitted unrestricted labor immigration from new EU member states in Eastern Europe. (The only other countries to do the same were Sweden and Ireland.) Straw & co. thought that only 13,000 people would come; the number turned out to be more than a million, with a quarter million immigrants arriving in 2010 alone. Alas, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of Poles, Czechs, and others who moved to Britain in sincere search of work, there was a small army of gypsies who came to beg, steal, and freeload.

Until recently, to be sure, things didn’t seem as dicey in Britain as in France, where gypsies have established sprawling encampments in and around major cities, all of which have turned, in no time at all, into ordure-suffused, rat- and lice-infested trash heaps. And whenever officials, if only out of concern for the public health, have tried to get the situation in hand, the media have served up sob stories like one put out by the Associated Press last year: “The camps weren’t much to begin with….Rats ran rampant and fleas gnawed on young and old alike….But they were home – and they were better than the new reality for thousands of Gypsies who have been forced into hiding after France launched its latest campaign this week to drive them from their camps.” Rarely, it seems, do the journalists responsible for this sort of drivel ever ask the gypsies questions like: “Um, if you’re going to live in this place, why can’t you at least try to keep it sanitary?” No, it’s almost always either implied or stated outright that, if the gypsies live in such filth, it’s because they’re poor and oppressed; virtually never is it acknowledged that this way of life is a fundamental element of gypsy culture.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/when-obama-said-hes-sorry/

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by an All-Star Cast: Ann-Marie Murrell, National Director of PolitiChicks.tv, Basil Hoffman, a Hollywood Actor (“The Artist”) and Monty Morton, a Conservative Entrepreneur.

The Gang gathered to discuss Hassan Rouhani: Obama’s BFF? The discussion occurred in Part II (starting at the 14:30 mark) and focused on the administration’s the Radical-in-Chief’s search for “Peace In Our Time” with the Mullahs. The discussion was preceded by a dialogue on the disastrous ObamaCare meltdown.

Don’t miss Part I, which shed light on When Presidents Lie and weighed Nixon’s, Clinton’s and Obama’s falsehoods — on the scales of damage to the American people. The segment also dealt with When Obama Said He’s “Sorry”, the myriad ingredients and consequences of the ObamaCare nightmare, the president’s true morbid objectives in implementing it, and much, much more:

SORRY DAN, BUT THIS IS TOO HARSH ON THOSE OF US THAT STILL DOUBT THE OFFICIAL STORY….HOW DID JACK RUBY JUST HAPPEN TO BE ARMED WHEN OSWALD WAS BEING TAKEN AWAY. FURTHERMORE, TOO MUCH IS SEALED FROM THE PUBLIC…FOR EXAMPLE… THE WHOLE CHAPPAQUIDDICK INCIDENT AND SENATOR KENNEDY; THE SUICIDE OF MARILYN MONROE AND THE BROTHERS KENNEDY- JACK AND TRIBOROUGH; THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF JAMES COLBY WHO LEFT HIS HOT BREAKFAST AND DECIDED TO GO OUT ON A CANOE; THE SCHOOL RECORDS OF A MAN NAMED BARRY SOETERO; THE SUICIDE OF VINCE FOSTER AND THE SWEEPING UP OF HIS OFFICE BEFORE THE MEDIA WAS ALERTED…..ONE COULD GO ON AND ON…..RSK

Sometimes a conspiracy theory exposes a conspiracy. Sometimes the conspiracy theory is the conspiracy.

JFK assassination plots are the only conspiracy theories to be widely accepted by the general public. The moon landing filmed in a studio, the Lincoln conspiracy or the World Trade Center being blown up by lasers from outer space never gained much credence because they lacked mainstream backing. Conspiracy theories ordinarily remain on the margins. The JFK theories were too important to the liberals who were really running things to allow them to die out.

There are probably more Americans who could tell you the ins and outs of the “magic bullet” than can recite the Bill of Rights from memory. More books have been sold about the Kennedy assassination than about any of the real government abuses taking place today.

The 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination brings with it the usual weighty tomes, speculative articles and nostalgic reminiscing about the utopia that might have been. The political messianism of JFK was as doomed as that of any other liberal savior. Unlike Obama, it conveniently ended in a martyrdom which excused a generation of liberal failures.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3657/che_guevara_was_no_hero_he_was_a_racist

“The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink” – Do these sound like the words of a left-wing hero?

When Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., chastised celebrity couple Jay-Z and Beyonce in a TV interview for their recent trip to Cuba, he especially criticized Jay-Z for his adoration of Che Guevara.

“I think Jay-Z needs to get informed,” Rubio said. “One of his heroes is Che Guevara. Che Guevara was a racist. Che Guevara was a racist that wrote extensively about the superiority of white Europeans over people of African descent, so he should inform himself [about] the guy that he’s propping up.”

Jay-Z, Carlos Santana, and Johnny Depp — who have all been spotted in Guevara t-shirts in the last decade — have, as Rubio correctly noted, largely ignored the issue. Yet, some leftist defenders of Guevara do occasionally deal with Guevara’s views on race. A blogger named Faraji Toure at “Afro-Punk” notes a troubling passage from Guevara’s 1952 diary:

“The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the Portuguese.”

“The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations.”

In a sense, veteran anti-Israel journalist/activist Robert Fisk is too easy a target. But as an illustration of his delusional mindset, this is priceless

In the shape of columnist Robert Fisk, Britain’s liberal-Left Independent — poor relation to The Guardian — can still claim to have in its possession one of the star performers in recent decades among the massed ranks of the country’s demonisers of Israel.

The trouble with Fisk, like all such characters, is that once you’ve tried everything to discredit the Jewish state, where do you go next? In his latest article, Fisk gives us an answer: the real reason for the failure of a peace was that Yasser Arafat, the Godfather of modern terrorism, was just too generous and trusting:

“He made so many concessions to Israel – because he was growing old and wanted to go to “Palestine” before he died – that his political descendants are still paying for them. Arafat had never seen a Jewish colony on occupied land when he accepted the Oslo agreement. He trusted the Americans. He trusted the Israelis. He trusted anyone who appeared to say the right things.”

Well he certainly trusted in the thousands of terrorists he unleashed against Israeli men, women and children in a blood thirsty second Intifada that came as he bluntly rejected two-state solution agreements brokered by President Clinton in 2000 and early 2001. But that doesn’t get a mention, of course.

Fisk’s delusion is actually the same as the delusion that has dogged the Palestinians for decades — the delusion of eternal victimhood.

“The moral of this story is to know what your children are being taught at school. Unfortunately, the Common Core train has left the station and reversing course will be difficult and will take time. In the meantime, if your children are under the influence of this curriculum, you may need to spend a significant amount of time debriefing them after school. Not only that, you may find you need to teach very basic skills that the schools are no longer teaching. Of course, Common Core or not, parents should always have this mindset when sending their kids to public school. They alone — not the schools — are ultimately responsible for the education of their children.”

Now that school is in session, parents have begun sharing on Facebook and other social media outlets some of the Common Core homework assignments their children are bringing home. Below are ten really bad ones that will give you an idea of the direction education is going under Common Core. All of these assignments were shared recently on social media sites dedicated to informing parents about Common Core.
1. Star citizen: quiet, sitting, neat

This paper came from a Rhode Island first grade classroom. One mother commented, “I went to elementary school in Poland during communism. This is exactly what I was forced to learn.” It’s a step in the right direction for those who want a compliant, obedient citizenry. That said, this is not new to schools and we shouldn’t necessarily blame Common Core. Children — boys in particular — have been taught for decades that being “good” means being quiet and compliant. The link to good citizenry is something I haven’t seen before, however.
2. It’s not about the right answer — it’s about the journey.

This poor Florida first grader thought she was following instructions by coloring in all seven segments of the bar to “make 7.” Unfortunately, she was supposed to divine that an equation was required. In Common Core, the journey is more important than the correct answer, it seems.
3. The Supreme Court “says if laws are fair.”

An Iowa second grader brought this assignment home. The mother disagreed with the teacher’s call on whether or not the “government settles disagreements” — and after the recent events related to the budget, almost no one would disagree with her! (And obviously, the undefined use of the term “government” implies that the government is a monolithic body that rules over us.)

But even more problematic is the matching question at the top of the page. “The Supreme Court — says if laws are fair.” If by “fair” they mean “constitutional,” I might be inclined to agree. However, in the context of a “government” that makes laws and settles disagreement, I suspect they mean “fair” in the way most 2nd graders would interpret the word — everyone gets an equal amount of ice cream after dinner.

The Palestinian Authority was created by the Israeli Labor Party in 1994. The Labor Party believed that, with the breakup of the Soviet Union and America’s ringing defeat of Iraq in the Gulf War, radicalism had essentially become a losing proposition and the Palestinians knew they had no choice but to work out peaceful coexistence with Israel.

Since then the idea of Israeli-Palestinian peace has been an obsessive theme of international politics. For a time it also sharply divided Israel into two camps of believers and nonbelievers; today, after two decades of terrorism and rocket fire, all polls show that the nonbelievers are by far the dominant camp.

For those who bother to inform themselves about the Palestinian Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza—their education, culture, politics, religion—the ongoing insistence of U.S. and European establishments that Israeli-Palestinian peace is the order of the day, with Israel as the party that stymies it, is surreal almost beyond belief.

Palestinian schools, media, and mosques entirely negate Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state, and systematically deny any Jewish connection to the Land of Israel and Jerusalem. They also honor and glorify Palestinian terrorists in every possible way, from stipends and ceremonies for living ones to the naming of streets, public squares, sporting events, and children’s camps after deceased terrorists. Glorification is especially lavished on those who killed large numbers of Israelis in mass attacks.

For about six years, what used to be the unitary Palestinian Authority has been divided into what are essentially two entities—the remaining Palestinian Authority on the West Bank and Hamas-run Gaza. The latter is an Islamist statelet openly sworn to Israel’s destruction; the U.S. and even the European Union officially outlaw Hamas as a terrorist organization.

The Palestinian Authority, however, with its relatively secular Fatah leadership, continues to be regarded as a force for peace. The problem with that view is that it is an inversion of the truth.