RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=16717

Have the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks reached a dead end? Barney Breen-Portnoy, Steve Ganot and Ruthie Blum discuss the crisis in the negotiations, as well as the prisoner release issue and the fate of imprisoned Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.

With once-optimistic U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry expressing frustration over what seems to be the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, is there any hope left for the talks?

Columnist Ruthie Blum and Israel Hayom editors Barney Breen-Portnoy and Steve Ganot discuss the ramifications that may follow the failure of the talks, including the possibility of blame being placed on Israel and the chances of another U.S. peace effort being made.

If negotiations do go forward, what place does the prisoner release, specifically the release of Israeli Arabs, have in a future peace deal? Is releasing prisoners a slippery slope to a precedent that Israel should avoid, or is it simply a necessary part of negotiations?

Finally, is the offer to release imprisoned Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard a sign of American desperation to save the peace talks?

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Hornswoggle is a word I have always liked. It is a verb meaning to bamboozle or to dupe. While its origin is considered “unknown,” the word is generally thought to be native to America. The word is said to date to the early 19th Century, but it does not appear in the 1828 Webster’s Dictionary. A man or a woman with an unfaithful spouse can be described as having been hornswoggled. It was the kind of colorful word we liked in New Hampshire, where we never trusted city folk who tried to sell us something we didn’t want or need. We suspected their motivation. We didn’t mind being the hornswoggler but we didn’t want to be the hornswogglee.

Glancing through the “Summary for Policymakers” just published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the word ‘hornswoggle’ came to mind. While the IPCC, according to its own principles, is a policy-neutral organization, its head Rajendra Pachauri, in an interview last September, said, “Humanity has pushed the climate system to the brink.” He added, “We need to transition away from fossil fuels.” With the release of the document a week ago, and sounding just a mite less patronizing, he said, “Adaption alone is not going to solve the problem and we need mitigation at the global level.”

In some respects the IPCC has become its own worst enemy. The problem with government (and non-government) bureaucracies is that they develop lives of their own. Jobs and careers, in the case of the IPCC, depend on man-made influences on climate change being the principal cause. Such agencies also serve as vehicles for politically correct politicians.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

We are not a violent society. We are a society sheltered from violence. No one in Rwanda spends time wondering what kind of man would murder people. They probably live next door to him. If your neighborhood is diverse enough, you might be unfortunate enough to live next door to war criminals all the way from Eastern Europe to Africa.

Guns are how we misspell evil. Guns are how we avoid talking about the ugly realities of human nature while building sandcastles on the shores of utopia.

It’s not about the fear of what one motivated maniac can do in a crowded place, but about the precariousness of social control that the killing sprees expose. Every murder tears apart the myth that government is the answer.

The gun control issue is about solving individual evil through central planning in a shelter big enough for everyone. A Gun Free Zone where everyone is a target and lives under the illusion that they aren’t. A society where everyone is drawing peace signs on colored notepaper while waiting under their desks for the bomb to fall.

That brand of control isn’t authority, it’s authority in panic mode believing that if it imposes total zero tolerance control then there will be no more shootings. And every time the dumb paradigm is blown to bits with another shotgun, then the rush is on to reinforce it with more total zero control tolerance.

FAMILY SECURITY MATTERS IS PRESENTING A COMPLETELY UNBIASED SERIES. THE FOLLOWING IS MY OWN LIST. I INCLUDE, WHERE AVAILABLE CANDIDATE’S RATING BY THE ARAB AMERICAN INSTITUTE…..MY CHOICES ARE UNDERLINE AND IN RED….

RSK

Filing Deadline (Federal Candidates): May 2, 2014 Please note that filing is still open for challengers.Primary August 26, 2014

To see the actual voting records of all incumbents on other issues such as Foreign Policy, Second Amendment Issues, Homeland Security, and other issues as well as their rankings by special interest groups please use the links followed by two stars (**).

School fliers announcing church Easter egg hunt have Muslims up in arms

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/school-fliers-announcing-church-easter-egg-hunt-have-muslims-up-in-arms?f=puball

A Muslim parent is upset over fliers his two elementary school-aged children received advertising an Easter egg hunt in Michigan.

The papers were passed out to students at three Dearborn, Mich., elementary schools, according to the Detroit Free Press. Headlined, “Eggstravaganza!” the fliers announced an April 12 egg hunt, relay race and egg toss at Cherry Hill Presbyterian Church.

“It really bothered my two kids,” parent Majed Moughni said of his children, aged 7 and 9. “My son was like, ‘Dad, I really don’t feel comfortable getting these flyers, telling me to go to church. I thought churches are not supposed to mix with schools.’ ”

A 9-year-old understands the concept of church-state separation?

Moughni said he doesn’t agree with “using school teachers paid by public funds … to pass out these flyers that are being distributed by a church.”

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/murder-suicide-is-heavy-price-of-an-overextended-military

The nation’s attention-deficit disorder is best measured by the media’s swiftness in pivoting from shocked headlines back to the usual news feed.

On Wednesday, it was more than March Madness unleashed at Fort Hood, Texas, an unwelcome reminder that there is an unhealed wound in today’s military. We swiftly learned that the troubled Iraq war veteran was a former Puerto Rican National Guardsman being evaluated for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

President Obama paused to offer customary condolences: “We’re heartbroken something like this might have happened again.” Then he returned to his fundraising activities.

The entire military family greatly appreciates the sympathies of the president as our commander in chief. However, his words of condolence might have considerably more weight had his secretary of defense not recently announced that the Army is again being slashed – now to levels not seen since World War II.

This is the very same Army that has been deployed to hell and back ever since Sept. 11, 2001. Unlike previous conflicts, the war against terrorism has affected only our troops and their families. The nation as a whole remained at peace, summoned to return en masse to the shopping malls and college campuses rather than offer their blood, toil, tears and sweat.

http://www.capsweb.org/blog/how-why

As Americans, we need to more frequently ask our political leaders “How?” and “Why?”

When politicians say, in unison and virtually by rote, “Comprehensive Immigration Reform would help the U.S. economy,” we need to ask, “How?” Each year, $100 to $200 billion is wired out of the United States to the home countries of both legal and illegal foreign workers in the U.S. Clearly, this has an impact on the economy. Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) would increase these remittances and increase the deficit by more than a half trillion dollars.

When politicians tell us that adding unknown millions of authorized foreign workers to a labor pool of unemployed and unemployed American workers would magically enable those struggling American workers and their families to find work, we need to ask, “How?”

Today, one in five American children lives in poverty and goes to bed hungry at night. Tragically, they may later turn to crime to escape poverty because they have no opportunities. Yet, politicians blithely say that educating foreign students and granting them visas so they can work here would help lift Americans out of poverty. We need to ask them, “How?”

CIR would significantly increase the number of H-1B visas for high-tech workers. Politicians who support the claim that admitting many more high-tech foreign workers would help desperate unemployed and underemployed highly educated American workers need to be asked, “How?”

http://americanthinker.com/assets/3rd_party/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/04/when_israel_supporters_use_the_language_of_delegitimization.html

When US Secretary of State, John Kerry, said it was a “mistake” for Israel to demand recognition as the Jewish State it shows how deeply the language of delegitimization has been adopted by even the most ardent of Israel supporters.

Another example of this was New Jersey Governor, and potential Republican presidential candidate, Chris Christie. In front of a crowd of Jewish Republican fund-raisers in Los Vegas, hosted by Sheldon Adelson, a close friend of Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Christie said, “I took a helicopter ride from the occupied territories and felt personally how extraordinary that was to understand the military risk that Israel faces every day.”

When challenged by the head of Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein, Christie apologized saying his remark was not meant as a statement of policy. Didn’t he know that Israel has legitimate claims to this land?

The UJA-Federation of New York decided this year to allow organizations such as New Israel Fund, which promote the boycott of Israel, to march in the annual Israel Day Parade. How misguided and wrong can that be? They permit groups that assist in the delegimitization of Israel in an event that should be affirmatively pro-Israel.

We increasing see well intentioned, powerful and influential people, who have the close attention of the media, make misplaced statements that feed into the adoption of a viewpoint that Israel has no legitimate right to be where it is.

The misuse of language and deed is an indicator not only of the general public’s views, it also displays how pro-Israel influential voices are chasing a narrative that is driven by the Palestinian side of the conflict.

One perfect example of terminology drift can be seen with the area once known as Judea & Samaria becoming “disputed territory,” then the West Bank, and now “illegally occupied Palestinian land.” Any staunch Israeli, or dispassionate neutral, would argue that it is neither illegal, nor occupied, and certainly not Palestinian land according to international law and binding resolutions going back as far as the League of Nations Mandate of 1922. All this has not stopped the flow of terminology becoming accepted language.

How did this state of affairs come about? Well, it boils down to two major factors;

1) A highly successful pro-Palestinian publicity campaign.

2) A dereliction of duty by consecutive Israeli governments and prime ministers.

Some say the demonization and delegitimization of Israel began at the infamous 2001 UN Conference on Racism at Durban in South Africa which produced the hateful “Zionism is Racism” slogan, and gave birth to the accusations of an apartheid Israel. However, the refusal to accept Jewish rights to an independent state was forcefully demonstrated back in 1947 when the Arab nations violently rejected UN Resolution 181 which called for recognition of a Jewish state. They unsuccessfully launched major wars against the nascent Jewish state which led them in anger, following yet another defeat in 1967, to gather in Khartoum and declare three “No’s” against Israel. No peace, no negotiations, no recognition. This was reconfirmed by the Arab League as recently as March 25, 2014, when Arab leaders again declared that they will never recognize Israel as the Jewish state. So much for the Arab Peace Initiative!

But, to go back in time, out of Egypt came Yasser Arafat to cloak himself in the mantle of Palestine. Initially, he saw himself as the spearhead of the Pan-Arabic aggression against Israel. As he said in a 1970 interview with Italian journalist Arianna Palazzi, “The question of borders doesn’t interest us. Our nation is the Arabic nation. The PLO is fighting Israel in the name of Pan-Arabism. What you call Jordan is nothing more than Palestine.”

This hatred of Israel conglomerated into what is known as the Palestinian cause. By portraying Israel as a colonialist, powerful, aggressive, oppressive, racist, occupier of a poor, defenseless, weak, indigenous Palestinian people a picture is painted that, to the impressionable, inevitably leads to a negative opinion of an Israel accused of the worst examples of war crimes and human rights abuses, and a sympathy for the weak Palestinians. That is the perception today.

It leads to the ridiculous, but dangerous, situation where church leaders gather in Bethlehem to accuse Israel of abuses, and they do this in a once-Christian town where their co-religionists have been driven out and persecuted not only by the non-Christian Palestinians who have taken over their homes and businesses, but also by officials of the Palestinian Authority including Arafat himself who confiscated the Greek Orthodox mission to make it his official Bethlehem residence.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/375161/marco-rubios-jeb-problem-eliana-johnson

Marco Rubio’s Jeb Problem Would a presidential run by his mentor lock Rubio out of the race? By Eliana Johnson

A decision by Jeb Bush to jump into the 2016 race would presumably make him, in an instant, the establishment front-runner. It could also have an enormous impact on his fellow Floridian Marco Rubio, whose political career Bush has nurtured from its inception.

A Bush run would create both personal and political obstacles for Rubio. It would either force him to defer a 2016 run entirely or put him in the uncomfortable position of campaigning against a longtime friend and political mentor.

Several Republican political analysts say they have difficulty imagining that Rubio will launch a presidential bid if Bush decides to enter the race. That’s something that, according to a recent Washington Post report, many of Mitt Romney’s major donors are urging Bush to do. If Jeb gets in the race, “then I think Rubio does not,” a top Republican strategist tells me. A Bush run, says another, “would complicate things for Rubio pretty severely.” Ana Navarro, a GOP strategist and a friend of Bush’s and Rubio’s, is more direct: “I cannot see Jeb and Marco running against each other.”

Some say that, if Bush decides to run, the Republican establishment will put pressure on Rubio to wait his turn. “This is the one window of opportunity for Governor Bush, and Senator Rubio will have many windows of opportunity in the future,” says American Conservative Union (ACU) president Al Cardenas, who served two terms as chairman of the Florida GOP when Bush was governor and Rubio was a state representative.

Others, though, including some who know them both, say the men will make their decisions independently. “I don’t think Jeb’s decision is going to hinge on who else is running,” Navarro says. “I suspect the same is true for Marco. The decision has to come from within them.”

Greg Abbott’s Spine of Steel- The Texas gubernatorial candidate talks about his disability. By Daniel Allott

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/375171/print

Greg Abbott is attorney general of Texas and the Republican nominee for governor. He spoke with Daniel Allott about his life as a politician with a disability.

ALLOTT: Can you talk about how you sustained your injury, and how it affected your choice of profession? Were you planning a career in politics? If so, did you think that you’d have to change those plans in the immediate aftermath of your injury?

ABBOTT: Twenty-nine years ago, I faced a challenge that made it highly improbable that I would be running for governor today. While I was jogging, a huge oak tree suddenly crashed down on me, crushing my spinal cord and leaving me unable to walk.

The immediate aftermath of my accident was, naturally, a very painful and difficult time — both physically and spiritually. I was extremely blessed to have faith, family, and friends — especially the steadfast support of my wife, Cecilia — to help me through this tough time and help me come out of it a stronger person.

A lot of candidates say they have a spine of steel, but I like to point out that I’m the only one out there who actually has a spine of steel!

ALLOTT: You’ve mentioned before that being paralyzed makes you more empathetic toward others, especially people who use wheelchairs. Does it inform your policy positions or political priorities?

ABBOTT: The accident that put me in this wheelchair has helped me to understand the challenges that people in Texas and across this country face every day. After my accident, I realized our lives aren’t defined by how we’re challenged. Instead, we define our lives by how we respond to challenges. I believe that the best way to help all Texans is to fight for policies that ensure greater prosperity and economic freedom. Everyone deserves the opportunity to overcome adversity and achieve success.