RUTHFULLY YOURS

A funny thing happened in the “war on women” — Mia Love and Joni Ernst won, Wendy Davis and Sandra Fluke lost. The representative who will be the youngest woman ever to have served in Congress, Elise Stefanik, is a Republican who won a formerly Democratic seat — not in Oklahoma or Texas but in New York. Senator-elect Ernst is a 21-year veteran of the Army Reserve and National Guard who served overseas during the Iraq war; Representative-elect Love, a daughter of Haitian immigrants who came to the United States fleeing the Tonton Macoutes, is a former city councilman and mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah.

The difference could not be more dramatic: The Democrats’ vision of an American woman’s life was best expressed in the Obama campaign’s insipid “Julia” cartoons, in which a faceless, featureless woman at every crossroads in her life turns to the federal government, as personified by Barack Obama, for succor and support. From negotiating a salary to managing her pregnancy, Julia cannot do anything for herself — at every turn, she is reminded that she enjoys political patronage “under President Obama,” in the campaign’s psychosexually fraught and insistently reiterated phrase. So much for the Democrats. And the Republican women of 2014? They helped fight wars and made new lives for themselves on foreign shores. They were women who ran for office on policy platforms, not on their uteruses.

Wendy Davis came to national prominence after filibustering a Republican-backed bill that would have enacted some restrictions on abortion in Texas. Fighting such modest restrictions has become a leading “women’s issue,” even though American women, like American men, broadly support policies such as restrictions on late-term abortions. Some 80 percent of Americans believe that third-trimester abortions should be illegal — but only 19 percent of Americans say that they could only support a candidate who shared their views on abortion, while 28 percent say that abortion is not a major issue to them and about half say that it is one important issue among many. Which is to say, for most Americans — including American women — abortion is not a make-or-break issue, and most Americans — including American women — hold views on the subject that are much closer to George W. Bush’s than to Wendy Davis’s. But Wendy Davis is a women’s champion for attempting to conscript women into support for a position that few of them actually hold.

Democrats believe that women have a congenital duty to support Democrats, as though being in possession of ovaries should naturally make a human being more eager to submit to Harry Reid. (One would think the opposite would be the case.) Jessica Valenti, writing in the Guardian, makes this line of thought explicit: “In a way, female Republicans almost bother me more than their male counterparts. I can almost understand why a bunch of rich, religiously conservative white men wouldn’t care about the reality of women’s day-to-day lives — they’ve never had to. But throwing other women under the bus? For what? Lower taxes? Three minutes on Fox News in the 3 p.m. hour?

James Baker’s venom was well known and his animus to Israel dated back to his Princeton thesis where he called recognition of Israel in 1948 a major mistake. Furthermore, in 2010, the pomaded Baker also accused Obama of “caving in to Israel” on settlements.

Baker Accuses Obama of “Caving In” on Israel-Palestine: http://www.lobelog.com/baker-accuses-obama-of-caving-in-on-israel-palestine/

Former US Secretary of State James Baker says insult fly frequently between Israel and Washington, noting a 1990 incident when Netanyahu was banned from state office building.

WASHINGTON – Insults fly frequently between Israel and the US – at least, between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his American colleagues, former secretary of state James Baker said.

“These kinds of things happen all the time,” Baker told CNN on Sunday, responding to a spike in tensions between Washington and Jerusalem after an unnamed US official was quoted insulting the prime minister.

As head of the State Department under president George H.W. Bush in 1990, Baker said that Netanyahu, then deputy foreign minister, was barred from the building after saying American foreign policy in the Middle East was “based on lies and distortions.”

“I barred him,” Baker said. “That may not be widely known.”

The annual ritual to commemorate the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin that took place last Saturday night in the square in Tel Aviv which now bears his name, was a bizarre affair. It was a shameful – and shameless – endeavor to wring the last few drops of political mileage from the abuse of the fraying fabrication of Rabin’s “legacy.”

Act I: Remembering the Real Rabin

As if in a parallel universe…

The rally, dubbed “Returning to the Square and Bringing Back Hope,” was organized by the Israeli Peace Initiative, a group purportedly promoting regional peace, co-founded by Rabin’s son, Yuval.

Regional peace. Hmmm – doesn’t that sound eerily reminiscent of a previous “vision” – now widely discredited and largely discarded – of the Peresian delusion of a New Middle East? (It has always been a source of puzzlement to me whether these “regionalists” have ever actually looked at a map of the war-torn, blood-drenched region before attempting to resurrect the demonstrably daft delusion of regional peace – but that is a topic for another column.) The rally’s organizers proclaimed that the event was meant to urge the government (the Israeli one of course, not, heaven forfend, the Palestinian one) to promote a “peace initiative.”

It was in this vein that co-founder Rabin Jr. addressed the crowd in a speech so detached from reality it could well have been made in a parallel universe where Islam is really the “religion of peace.” He informed PM Benjamin Netanyahu that he “no longer has the strength to hold his tongue,” and felt morally compelled to demand a “daring diplomatic initiative” that blithely ignored “the Iranian threat at our doorstep and ISIS [Islamic State], Hamas and Hezbollah who threaten to destroy us.”

Depressing display of denial and dishonesty

One hundred years ago November 9th 1914 – Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler was born in Vienna. She became a Hollywood Star, and a co-inventor of critical technology

Although better known for her Silver Screen exploits, Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr (born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) also became a pioneer in the field of wireless communications following her emigration to the United States. The international beauty icon, along with co-inventor George Anthiel, developed a “Secret Communications System” to help combat the Nazis in World War II. By manipulating radio frequencies at irregular intervals between transmission and reception, the invention formed an unbreakable code to prevent classified messages from being intercepted by enemy personnel.

Lamarr and Anthiel received a patent in 1941, but the enormous significance of their invention was not realized until decades later. It was first implemented on naval ships during the Cuban Missile Crisis and subsequently emerged in numerous military applications. But most importantly, the “spread spectrum” technology that Lamarr helped to invent would galvanize the digital communications boom, forming the technical backbone that makes cellular phones, fax machines and other wireless operations possible.

As is the case with many of the famous women inventors, Lamarr received very little recognition of her innovative talent at the time, but recently she has been showered with praise for her groundbreaking invention. In 1997, she and George Anthiel were honored with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Award. And later in the same year, Lamarr became the first female recipient of the BULBIE™ Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award, a prestigious lifetime accomplishment prize for inventors that is dubbed “The Oscar™ of Inventing.”

Proving she was much more than just another pretty face, Lamarr shattered stereotypes and earned a place among the 20th century’s most important women inventors. She truly was a visionary whose technological acumen was far ahead of its time.

http://inventionconvention.com/americasinventor/dec97issue/section2.html

Ironically, her real life, one of unusual twists and turns, is truly the stuff that movies are made of. Born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, she grew up in Vienna, Austria and married millionaire Friz Mandl, a Nazi sympathizer who dealt arms to Hitler. During her four year marriage to Mandl, she listened and learned about advanced weaponry when he took her to all his business meetings as his showpiece wife.

She grew to hate the Nazis as well as her husband and escaped to London, where she met Louis B. Mayer. He brought her to the United States and gave her a shot in Hollywood by giving her a movie contract, a new name, and a new life – though she never forgot about the war that was brewing back in Europe.

According to Haaretz, Gen. Martin Dempsey, U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made some helpful and conciliatory comments toward Israel. The nation’s top military officer lauded Israel for going to “extraordinary lengths” to avoid civilian casualties during the latest round of fighting with the Palestinians.

Dempsey’s comments come after unknown figures within the Obama administration blasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “chickensh*t” and a coward. Relations between the U.S. and its ally, already shaky, were made shakier by those comments, and by the administration’s refusal to investigate who made the comments and reprimand them.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki was asked to react to Dempsey’s diplomatic comments during today’s press conference, by the AP’s Matt Lee. Psaki had the choice of agreeing with Gen. Dempsey, refusing to offer an opinion, or disagreeing with him — the latter, carrying the possibility of opening up another argument with Israel.

Psaki chose the latter.

Lee asked Psaki to comment on whether the Obama administration believes that the Israelis lived up to their own “high standards” on civilian casualties.

Psaki undiplomatically replied, “It remains the broad view of this administration that they could’ve done more. And they shouldv’e taken feasible precautions to prevent more civilian casualties.”

Such as?

Obama Flashback: ‘If you don’t like my policies, go out there and win an election.’

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/11/06/obama-flashback-if-you-dont-like-my-policies-go-out-there-and-win-an-election/

On October 17, 2013, President Obama said: “You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election. Push to change it. But don’t break it. Don’t break what our predecessors spent over two centuries building. That’s not being faithful to what this country’s about.”
Obama’s threat to carry out a unilateral amnesty for millions of illegal aliens threatens the system that he claimed to defend just over a year ago. And he is well aware of that.

How to Implement the IPCC Program
Accepting the climate change plan would necessitate the elimination of 90% of the world’s population. How could that be done?

Last weekend, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a new report. [1] According to the IPCC, the total cumulative future human production of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels must be limited to no more than one trillion tons, or the Earth will be ruined.

“With this latest report, science has spoken yet again and with much more clarity. Time is not on our side,” said UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. “Leaders must act.”

If the IPCC is correct, the situation is indeed dire. Humanity today produces about 33 billion tons per year of CO2 from fossil fuel use. So, at our current rates, held level, we have 30 years of fossil fuel utilization left to us. But if ongoing modest global economic growth is factored in, our current fossil-fuel powered civilization has only twenty years left during which it can be allowed to exist. That’s it. After 2034, no one anywhere can be allowed to use any fossil fuel: No coal, no oil, no natural gas, nothing.

This program could be difficult to implement. Eliminating fossil fuels will send the world economy back to its productivity circa 1700, when it could only support about 700 million people, barely one-tenth of the current number. So ninety percent of humanity will need to be eliminated. That might be unpleasant. But science has spoken, and the imperative for decisive action has been placed before us by Ban Ki Moon himself, which is to say, right from the top.

So the question is: how can we get the job done?

One way that readily suggests itself is nuclear war. We have enough nuclear weapons to wipe out humanity several times over, or so we have been told for decades. Why not finally put our long dormant arsenal to work, and use it to save the planet?

Ernst ran as a Tea Party conservative, very issue oriented and focused campaign even as the media tried to portray her as a “hog castrating, gun toting farm girl.” That gave her name recognition but she ran on issues and won in spite of Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama who touted he opponent…..rsk

WASHINGTON – Sen.-elect Joni Ernst’s (R-Iowa) campaign image as a hog-castrating, gun-toting farm girl helped her win Iowa’s open Senate seat, but what she will do as a lawmaker in the U.S. Senate’s new GOP majority is anyone’s guess.

Ernst became the first woman to represent Iowa in the U.S. Senate when she beat her Democratic opponent handily in the first competitive race in the Hawkeye State in more than a decade.

The Republican defeated Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa), a four-term congressman and former trial lawyer, in a race that came down to the wire and helped the GOP retake the Senate majority.

The candidates were vying to replace retiring Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who held onto the seat for 30 years.

Final polls showed the race was close, with Quinnipiac University’s poll [1] showing Ernst with a four-point advantage and a Loras College poll [2] giving Braley a one-point lead. Quinnipiac’s last poll [3] Monday had both candidates in a tie.

By the time 80 percent of precincts had reported Tuesday night, things were not quite as close, with Ernst earning 51 percent of the vote. With 100 percent of precincts reported, Ernst won Iowa’s Senate race by 8.5 percentage points.

Ernst won in a state that Obama took by 6 points over Mitt Romney in 2012 and by nearly 10 percent in 2008 against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

As with all competitive Senate races this year, the Iowa contest was affected by the widespread frustration with President Obama, who has a 39 percent approval rating in the state.

The Braley campaign made a push in the last months of the race to portray Braley as a better choice for female voters in Iowa. In a late October poll, Braley led among women by eight percentage points.

There are no women’s rights in Islam; there are no women’s rights in most Muslim countries. And there is no freedom of expression in these countries; people have become virtually voiceless.

To make a positive change in Muslim countries, we need to be able to speak openly, without putting one’s life at risk, and tell the (too-often criminalized) truth about what Islamic teachings and traditions actually contain.

If one is called “racist” or “Islamophobe,” the answer is that these are the accusations bullies always use to silence those who disagree with them. The real Islamophobes are those who degrade, abuse and kill their fellow Muslims.

If oppression of women is rooted in the culture, shouldn’t one be asking, ‘what makes a culture that misogynous?’

There is a situation even more frightening. It now seems to be difficult to speak openly about fundamentalist Islam even in Western countries. The worst thing any Western progressive or feminist can do is to stay silent.

The loudest voices in the West now seem to come from many progressives who say that criticizing of Islam is racist, intolerant, bigoted and Islamophobic. Injustices, they claim, take place all around the world, not just among Muslims or in Muslim countries. The criticism, they go on, comes from wrong interpretations of Islamic teachings. They say that Islam respects women, and that there are good and bad Muslims, just as there are good and bad people in all religions.

In just seven years, however, between 2002 and 2009, the rate of murdered women in Turkey has increased by 1400 percent.[1]

There are also more than 181,000 child brides in Turkey.[2]

When those figures are provided by state authorities, they are based on factual statistics. But when they are expressed in a critical manner by Canan Arin, a lawyer and women rights activist, they are, apparently, a “crime.”

Canan Arin, 72, is a feminist lawyer who has dedicated her life to women’s rights struggles in Turkey.[3]

The Antalya Bar Association, in December 2011, invited her to its newly founded Women’s Rights Enforcement Centre to give training to the lawyers on violence against women. There, she delivered a speech about early and forced marriages, and gave two examples — one from the 7th century, the other from the 20th century — to clarify her point.

The News Media also got trounced.

Along with trashing the Democrats, voters on Tuesday also dumped on the news media for failure to communicate.

For failure to deliver the truth, Elite Media were snubbed by a citizenry that said keep your opinions to yourselves. This time we’re going it alone.

Never mind your sly front pages and your cunning editorials. We are on to your tricks.

…not once did The New York Times run a headline or an opinion piece critical of the president.
Throughout the land, The Majority pushed buttons or pulled levers to register their disgust with corrupt journalism and to declare their disdain for reportage that for years, by hook or by crook, kept Americans in the dark. Americans voted No to the bellyful of deceit that came through airwaves and by newsprint.

From ballot to ballot, Americans said, “We don’t trust you either.”