RUTHFULLY YOURS

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.—Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton sharply attacked one of the top Republicans in the presidential race, saying Jeb Bush’s “Right to Rise” slogan is empty given his policy positions.

“I don’t think you can credibly say that everybody has a ‘right to rise’ and then say you’re for phasing out Medicare or for repealing Obamacare,” she said Friday morning. “People can’t rise if they can’t afford health care. They can’t rise if the minimum wage is too low to live on.”
Her remarks came at a conference for the National Urban League, a group that advocates on behalf of African-Americans, shortly before Mr. Bush addressed the same audience. Mrs. Clinton enjoys strong support from African-American voters, but Mr. Bush is working to expand his support among minorities and to put himself forward as ready to broaden the Republican Party’s tent.

“I’m working for every vote,” Mr. Bush told the group. He didn’t reply to Mrs. Clinton’s critique, but a spokeswoman called her comments “more false, cheap political shots” meant to distract from Mrs. Clinton’s lack of accomplishments.

The Obama Administration insists there’s nothing secret about the Iran nuclear deal, even as it claims not to have read two crucial side deals Tehran has struck with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). “Confidential agreements, but no secrets” is the way top U.S. negotiator Wendy Sherman describes the deals, which are thought to concern the military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programs.

Try parsing that distinction. And while you’re at it, consider that there might be additional separate agreements we haven’t heard about. We raise the possibility after speaking with Rep. Mike Pompeo, the Kansas Republican who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, and who more-or-less stumbled on the two side deals when the deputy director of the IAEA disclosed their existence to him and Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) in a meeting in Vienna.

There’s nothing like a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to keep body and soul together while one is having visions about changing the world. I wouldn’t know the pleasure.

Powell’s Books is an Oregon bookstore chain with an affiliated store in Chicago. Its main store is in Portland. It is New York City’s Strand Bookstore of the West. Each of these stores boasts miles and floors of new and used books. It is easy to spend a whole day in one of these stores, once lured inside. I visited the Portland store once, but spent many happy hours in The Strand.

Powell’s recently posted a promotional ad on its site, “25 Women to read before you die.” The list was prefaced with:

Below you’ll find our list — compiled following lively debate by Powell’s staff — of 25 women you absolutely must read in your lifetime.

Climate-change ‘deniers’ are accused of heresy by true believers. That doesn’t sound like science to me.

Are there any phrases in today’s political lexicon more obnoxious than “the science is settled” and “climate-change deniers”?

The first is an oxymoron. By definition, science is never settled. It is always subject to change in the light of new evidence. The second phrase is nothing but an ad hominem attack, meant to evoke “Holocaust deniers,” those people who maintain that the Nazi Holocaust is a fiction, ignoring the overwhelming, incontestable evidence that it is a historical fact. Hillary Clinton’s speech about climate change on Monday in Des Moines, Iowa, included an attack on “deniers.”

The phrases are in no way applicable to the science of Earth’s climate. The climate is an enormously complex system, with a very large number of inputs and outputs, many of which we don’t fully understand—and some we may well not even know about yet. To note this, and to observe that there is much contradictory evidence for assertions of a coming global-warming catastrophe, isn’t to “deny” anything; it is to state a fact. In other words, the science is unsettled—to say that we have it all wrapped up is itself a form of denial. The essence of scientific inquiry is the assumption that there is always more to learn.

Samuel “Sandy Stocking Stuffer” Berger is a cur…from 2004WASHINGTON – Former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger – under criminal investigation for sneaking top-secret documents out of the National Archives in his pants legs and, possibly, his socks – abruptly quit yesterday as an adviser to John Kerry.

http://nypost.com/2004/07/21/stocking-stuffer-berger-quits-kerry/

A former national security adviser to President Bill Clinton wrote an email to Hillary Clinton in 2009 advising the then-secretary of state how to deal with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he continued to “be the obstacle” in negotiations with Palestinians.

The email from Samuel Berger advised Clinton on how to navigate the waters with Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Abu Mazen.