RUTHFULLY YOURS

SALINAS, Calif. — Angie Esteban hadn’t heard of Bruce Jenner before the gold medal Olympian’s “coming out” as a transgender woman on national television.

Now she and Jenner, a television celebrity and stepfather of the reality TV Kardashian sisters, have something in common.

Angie has had her own coming out. It’s taken place over the course of the past few years, an arduous, personal journey — a girl shedding her male skin. It began slowly in middle school and gained speed as a freshman at Salinas High School.

“We cannot bivouac, educate, medicate, and translate for thousands of noncitizens from afar. We cannot provide incomes for them. We cannot hire them, at the expense of the ailing economy and our 50-plus million unemployed and underemployed citizenry.”

A couple of days ago, in the wake of the 7.8 magnitude temblor and some 100 aftershocks in Nepal affecting thousands of ancient structures, temples, and homes, senior statesman Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) dropped some happy-talk to listeners.

(NB: We were fortunate to have visited this once-isolated, Buddhist/Hindu/animist civilization well before the current earthquake, and our memories are still firm in evoking its splendors and naïve beauty. We ‘summated’ Base camp Everest, too, before we turned around.)

‘Why don’t we bring a few thousand of these displaced persons over here from Kathmandu, and when their city is up and running again, they can go back…?’ Schumer wanted to know. His amen minions applauded prettily, not querying the deeply ignorant premises of this suggestion.

Hillary Clinton: We knew her as a grim, charmless harridan; a pear-shaped harpy. Now, after reading Peter Schweizer’s new book, Clinton Cash (HarperCollins, New York, May 2015), we see the ultimate Hillary, one of the world’s truly scary women. Think Lady Macbeth, Messalina, Evita. Add Bill to the sordid picture and you have Bonnie and Clyde– elected to high office, and lionized all over the world.

We know about Hillary’s thousands of missing e-mails and unaccountable donors. What may be less known is how the Clinton double-scam works. Take, first of all, the so-called Clinton Foundation, whose stated purpose is “to strengthen the capacity of people throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence,” whatever that means. Founded in 2001, when Bill had just left office, it boasts a staff of 350, mostly Clinton cronies and insiders.

Once liberated from the White House, Bill hit the lecture circuit, collecting $105.5 million dollars through 2012 and raising hundreds of millions of dollars for the Clinton Foundation. Significantly, his biggest payments came not from sources in the United States but from foreign investors, businesses and governments…hungry for access to the corridors of American power.

The next deadline for an agreement between the P5+1 nations and Iran over its ‎nuclear program is June 30. As with prior deadlines, the next one can be extended ‎a few days to iron out “final” details as occurred with the prior March 31 deadline, ‎or rolled over a few more months if significant gaps remain. This was what ‎occurred with earlier rounds of the talks, and may well describe what occurred ‎after the last round of talks concluded, despite the happy talk from both sides as ‎they left Switzerland. In any case, the actions of the Obama administration, the U.S. ‎Congress, and Iran in the five weeks since the last round of talks ended, make it ‎fairly clear that the dynamic in place since the talks began has not been ‎fundamentally altered.

The term “suspension of disbelief” – coined in 1817 by the philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge – refers to a willingness to suspend one’s critical faculties and believe the unbelievable; sacrificing reality, common sense, doubt and complexity on the altar of a pretend reality, convenience and oversimplification; infusing a semblance of truth into an untrue narrative.

Suspension of disbelief characterized the 1977-79 President Carter policy toward Iran, energizing Ayatollah Khomeini, ignoring or underestimating his track record and his radical, supremacist and violent worldview. The betrayal of the Shah transformed Teheran from “the US policeman in the Gulf” to the worst enemy of the US.

Currently, the suspension of disbelief undermines the US posture of deterrence and vital US national security and commercial interests. It was demonstrated by President Obama, who – irrespective of Middle East reality – referred to the brutally-intolerant, terror-driven, anti-US, anti-infidel, repressive, tumultuous Arab Tsunami as the Arab Spring “casting off the burdens of the past,” “a story of self determination,” “a democratic upheaval,” “a peaceful opposition,” “rejection of political violence” and “a transition toward (multi-sectarian, multi-ethnic) democracy.”

YATIR FOREST, Israel — As Californians struggle with an ever-worsening water shortage caused by a historic drought, they might look east for a solution — to the Middle East.

Israel, subject to intermittent droughts for decades, has pioneered a number of water-saving techniques. It long ago figured out how to grow crops in the desert and for decades has advised the developing world on how to manage scarce water resources.

Now, Israel is eager to share its latest know-how with drought-ridden states like California. These helpful techniques include water quotas, desalination plants and the reuse of household wastewater.

Six years ago when Israel was in the grips of its own dire drought, the government actually considered shipping in water from Turkey — more than 1,000 nautical miles away. Instead, the country embarked on a coordinated effort of recycling used water, desalination and education.