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October 2015

POLITICS Comments turned off

Donald Trump and Ben Carson Gain Strength in Poll of Republicans Jeb Bush continues to lose ground and Marco Rubio emerges as leading contender from GOP establishment wing By Janet Hook

By on October 20th, 2015

Donald Trump and Ben Carson continue to broaden their appeal among Republican primary voters and have widened their lead over former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and many other more-experienced candidates, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds.

Mr. Bush, once considered the GOP’s likely nominee, is also lagging behind his onetime protege, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who is emerging as a leading contender to rally the party’s establishment wing against the rise of insurgent outsiders such as Messrs. Trump and Carson.

The new poll, conducted Oct. 15-18, underscores the durability—even the gathering strength—of anti-Washington candidates who had long been viewed as likely to be flash-in-the-pan political phenomena.

The poll also tested opinion on another aspect of the Republican Party’s internal struggles, the question of who will succeed Rep. John Boehner (R., Ohio) as House speaker. GOP primary voters in the survey said it was more important to find a successor who would stand up for principles rather than seek compromise, even if that meant less work would get done, by a 56% to 40% split.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Trump’s 9/11 Truthing Does he know anything about the history of al Qaeda?

By on October 20th, 2015

Donald Trump is running for the Republican presidential nomination, but sometimes it’s hard to tell. On national security the businessman often sounds closer to Bernie Sanders than he does to the GOP policy of active global leadership that has prevailed since the 1950s.

Mr. Trump’s latest walk on the wild left side is his attempt to rewrite the history of 9/11. In his campaign against Jeb Bush, the New Yorker is blaming George W. Bush because the hijackers struck during his Presidency. “The World Trade Center came down during his reign,” Mr. Trump said Friday, adding a day later that, “Do I blame George Bush? I only say he was the President at the time, and you know, you could say the buck stops here.”

Recall that during the last debate Jeb Bush received the biggest applause line of his campaign when he defended his brother’s antiterror record by saying “he kept us safe.” Mr. Trump is now trying to blunt that rebuke by distorting the truth about the hijackers and the Osama bin Laden era.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Our Brothers’ Keepers The histories of Judaism and Christianity suggest that words alone won’t pacify Islam. Its transformation will be long and bloody. By William Saletan

By on October 20th, 2015

From Asia to Africa, Islamic militants are slaughtering fellow Muslims. In Europe, they’re fomenting anti-Semitism. Through the Internet, they’re spreading hatred and winning recruits. We can’t defeat this enemy with weapons, money or liberal platitudes. We need a man of God.

Into this role steps a most unlikely candidate: Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of Britain. Mr. Sacks believes that Islamic violence, like Jewish and Christian violence, flows from a misunderstanding of sacred text. In “Not in God’s Name,” he illuminates a wiser faith and a gentler God. It’s a perceptive, poignant and beautifully written book. But its analysis of history suggests a darker conclusion: Words alone won’t pacify Islam. There will be a lot more killing.

The problem isn’t Islam: Mr. Sacks points out that Jewish and Christian scriptures have also been invoked to justify violence. It’s human nature. We’re tribal creatures. We bond with our kinsmen against outsiders. Tyrants and demagogues exploit this tribal propensity by feeding us religious doctrines that blame our suffering on enemies: infidels, Crusaders, Jews. This “pathological dualism,” as Mr. Sacks describes it, corrupts societies by deflecting internal scrutiny and impeding reform. And it dehumanizes the putative enemy, facilitating mass murder.

So why do Muslims, Christians and Jews kill one another? Because we’re sibling rivals. As children of Abraham, we claim the same holy land. Each of the three communities sees itself as the people of God. Mr. Sacks says we’re all wrong: God’s love is infinite. “To insist that being loved entails that others be unloved is to fail to understand love itself.”

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Dan Rather, Still Wrong After All These Years The movie ‘Truth’ is as bogus as the original attempt to smear George W. Bush’s wartime service.By Dorothy Rabinowitz

By on October 20th, 2015

Combine every speech about the nobility of the journalistic endeavor in every film glorifying reporters intrepidly searching out truth, and you still won’t come close to grasping the level of treacle—there are other words—bubbling up out of “Truth.” Compared with which, “All the President’s Men” (1976)—about the triumphant adventures of Woodward and Bernstein, with Robert Redford portraying Bob Woodward—was a veritable model of shrinking modesty.

Mr. Redford has come a long way since to his latest, namely the role of CBS’s Dan Rather, former network star and anchor of “60 Minutes II,” and the story of how Mr. Rather was ultimately forced out of the company thanks to the scandal in September 2004 after the airing of a segment called “For the Record.”

The creative minds behind “Truth”—based on a book by the CBS report’s producer, Mary Mapes—have wrapped Mr. Rather and Ms. Mapes in a glow of heroic martyrdom so impenetrable there’s hardly a line not put to its service. When, toward the end, all involved in the report face firing, the film’s fatherly Dan Rather asks a young producer what made him want to go into journalism.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

In Defense of Christendom Having ignored its inheritance, Europe wonders why its house is falling apart. Bret Stephens

By on October 20th, 2015

The death of Europe is in sight. Still hazy and not yet inevitable, but nevertheless visible and drawing nearer—like a distant planet in the lens of an approaching satellite. Europe is reaching its end not because of its sclerotic economy, or stagnant demography, or the dysfunctions of the superstate. Nor is the real cause the massive influx of Middle Eastern and African migrants. Those desperate people are just the latest stiff breeze against the timber of a desiccated civilization.

Europe is dying because it has become morally incompetent. It isn’t that Europe stands for nothing. It’s that it stands for shallow things, shallowly. Europeans believe in human rights, tolerance, openness, peace, progress, the environment, pleasure. These beliefs are all very nice, but they are also secondary.

What Europeans no longer believe in are the things from which their beliefs spring: Judaism and Christianity; liberalism and the Enlightenment; martial pride and capability; capitalism and wealth. Still less do they believe in fighting or sacrificing or paying or even arguing for these things. Having ignored and undermined their own foundations, they wonder why their house is coming apart.

What is Europe? It is Greece not Persia; Rome not Carthage; Christendom not the caliphate. These distinctions are fundamental. To say that Europe is a civilization apart is not to say it is better or worse. It is merely to say: This is us and that is you. Nor is it to say that Europe ought to be a closed civilization. It merely needs to be one that doesn’t dissolve on contact with the strangers it takes into its midst.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Justin Trudeau Elected Prime Minister of Canada Canadians vote to unseat Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper; Liberal Party wins a majority of Parliament’s 338 seats By Paul Vieira

By on October 20th, 2015

OTTAWA—Canada’s Conservative leader was ousted in a national vote Monday after almost a decade in power, as voter discontent and a souring economy helped the son of long-serving Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau sweep into the top office.

Justin Trudeau’s centrist Liberal Party was headed for a majority government, with his party leading in or elected in most districts across the country, after a hard-fought contest with incumbent Stephen Harper. Mr. Harper said last night that he would step down as party leader, after conceding to Mr. Trudeau.

Results from polls in the country’s most-populated regions, Quebec and Ontario, and from Canada’s Eastern Seaboard and the Pacific Coast city of Vancouver, showed a wave of Liberal red, marking an impressive victory in Mr. Trudeau’s first campaign as leader. The win represents the first Liberal majority in 15 years. The Conservatives maintained their bedrock support in the resource-rich western provinces, as well as in the bulk of rural Canada.

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ANTI-SEMITISM, MEDIA Comments turned off

Ira Sharkansky:The spread of fervent nationalism from Palestinian neighborhoods to the New York Times

By on October 20th, 2015

The New York Times should do better than Jodi Rudoren. Her screed, presented as a lead article, deals with the suffering of Palestinians in East Jerusalem. It meets the elemental demands of balance by virtue of noting the violence directed by Palestinians at Israeli Jews, but its tilt is heavily in the direction of poor suffering Arabs, badgered, discriminated against, and killed by Israel’s Jews.

The headline begins her message, “East Jerusalem, Bubbling Over with Despair.”
She describes East Jerusalem to “the emotional heart of Palestinian life.”
She highlights the good people living in Arab neighborhoods, inconvenienced and insulted by Israeli security measures..
Their neighborhoods are the “neglected stepchild” of the municipal government, and 320,000 residents suffer from poor services as well as other indications of discrimination.
There’s a fear of an Israeli takeover of the Muslim holy site in the Old City.
“Even as they benefit from Israel’s robust economy, many seethe as they pump gas or stock shelves for better-off Jewish peers.”
Palestinians died in a fire because it took a while for personnel and equipment to come from a distant Palestinian neighborhood, while there were closer facilities in a Jewish neighborhood.
Many more Palestinians than Jews have been killed in the recent violence.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Palestinian society abuses its children, teaching them to kill and be killed Eli Hertz

By on October 20th, 2015

Countless Palestinian parents support, encourage and praise the sacrifice of their children in suicide bombings, stabbings and other terrorist attacks.International law prohibits using children to fight. Article 38 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (adopted in 1989) condemns the recruitment and involvement of children in hostilities and armed conflictsA criminal Palestinian Arab leadership, along with cowardly and intimidated Palestinian parents on the West Bank and Gaza, exploit their children to engage in armed conflict – in opposition to values held by the rest of the civilized world and in flagrant violation of international law and common decency.There is no excuse for sacrificing the youth of any society for political gain and tactical advantage. If this is to stop, the culpability must be put squarely on the shoulders of Palestinian society and others, who legitimize, support and “understand”such child sacrifice.UN Security Council Resolution 1377 reaffirms its unequivocal condemnation of all acts, methods and practices of terrorism as criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, in all their forms and manifestations, wherever and by whomever committed……please read this article from 2009

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BOOKS Comments turned off

A Death Cult’s Terror Against Israelis – on The Glazov Gang

By on October 20th, 2015

http://jamieglazov.com/2015/10/20/a-death-cults-terror-against-israelis-on-the-glazov-gang/

This special edition of The Glazov Gang was joined by Dr. Anna Geifman, the author of Death Orders: The Vanguard of Modern Terrorism in Revolutionary Russia. She unveils the new phase of the old war – and who is behind it.

Don’t miss it:

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Could Iran Get Ex-Im Loans? By Christine Brim ****

By on October 20th, 2015

Voting to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank could allow floods of U.S. taxpayer money to reach Iran’s terrorist government.

On October 9, 218 House lawmakers, including 42 Republicans, signed a discharge petition to bring the Ex-Im Bank reauthorization back from the dead. The petition, which Republicans initiated, has resulted in a scheduled October 26 vote to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, that 80-year-old relic from the days of the New Deal.

Conservative Republicans in both the House and Senate have opposed reauthorizing the Ex-Im Bank, accusing it of crony capitalism, ongoing corruption, conflicts of interest, and accounting methods that hide the actual market risk of its loans (the risk that the loans won’t be paid back).

Here’s another reason to question reauthorizing the Ex-Im Bank: specific language in the Obama administration’s Iran deal that ends prohibitions on Ex-Im bank financing for sales to Iran, including sales to businesses the Iranian government owns.

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