RUTHFULLY YOURS

“There is no more rule of law.” — Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s prime minister for 22 years.

The essential dynamics of the Islamist polity do not much vary from one Muslim-majority country to another: Corrupt, authoritarian leaders who have no respect for ethnic or religious plurality or dissent of any kind, who crack down on the press and legitimize their corrupt governance by frightening Muslims masses with a made-up threat of the clandestine Jew.

A flight from Kuala Lumpur to Istanbul will usually take around 11 hours. All the same, politically, Turkey and Malaysia are not so distant. The Turkish-Malaysian political parallels are crucial in understanding political Islam.

Back in 2013, President (then Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s chief advisor, Yigit Bulut, said that he would be “willing to die for Erdogan.” He added: “There are millions like me.” The statement was not shocking news in a country where Erdogan fans had the habit of walking around in shrouds — in expression of their willingness to die for the supreme leader.

When is this sad farce going to end? Since she began her campaign for the presidency last spring, we’ve seen defiant Hillary, aloof Hillary, regretful Hillary, warm and fuzzy Hillary, comedienne Hillary and now this very morning, “visibly angry” Hillary.

Via Business Insider:

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unloaded on Congress’ Benghazi investigation during a Monday morning interview on the “Today” show.

A visibly angry Clinton tore into the Republican-led Select Committee on Benghazi when she was asked how she would react to hypothetical GOP leaders facing scrutiny over their own government email use.

“Look at the situation they chose to exploit, to go after me for political reasons: the death of four Americans in Benghazi. I knew the ambassador. I identified him. I asked him to go there. I asked the president to nominate him,” she said.

A casual glance at the BI comment section shows that even the readers of that left-leaning website are not impressed or fooled by her latest contrived performance.

Coons: “We can expect them to use some of the proceeds of sanctions relief to try and fund terrorist organizations.”

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said Congress should expect the Iranians to cheat under the nuclear agreement.

“I think the Congress has a critical role to play in the oversight of the implementation of this deal. As I’ve said both at the University of Delaware and the Carnegie Endowment, after coming to a decision to support the deal, it’s with some real concerns. I think there are some real challenges in the short term, the middle term and the long term in how this deal plays out if in fact it’s fully implemented. We can expect the Iranians to cheat,” said Coons at the Washington Ideas Forum.

“They have a long history of cheating both in flagrant ways and marginal ways. We can expect them to use some of the proceeds of sanctions relief to try and fund terrorist organizations in the region and to promote destabilizing activities. We can foresee in 10-15 years their having industrial-scale enrichment capability that is significantly threatening to the stability of the region and the world,” he added.

Coons stressed that Congress must remain engaged in the situation with Iran over a long period of time to restrain or deter harmful actions.

Growing organic crops, which means avoiding even safe insecticides, has a down side. According to a notice from Michigan’s Department of Agriculture, a potentially serious threat to food production has been detected in the Mitten State. At risk is the state’s crops of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and related food plants. The pest, known as the Swede midge (Constarinia nasturii) has been detected in the state for the first time five organic production fields in Sanilac County, which borders Lake Huron. The above plants belong to a family called Brassicaceae (also called Cruciferae or crucifers).Widely cultivated, with many genera, species, and cultivars being raised for food production such the above-mentioned, as well as garden cress, bok choy, and brussels sprouts. The alternate name for the family (Cruciferae, New Latin for “cross-bearing”) is derived from the shape of their flowers, whose four petals resemble a cross. Ten of the most common cruciferous vegetables eaten by people, known colloquially as cole crops,[1] are in a single species (Brassica oleracea).

The larvae of the pest cause swelling and severe distortion of young plant tissues, resulting in the death of the growing tip or the development of blind or multiple heads in cruciferous plants. Secondary bacterial infections are common. The Swede midge is a threat to both conventional and organic growers, but organic growers may be at greater risk because they lack effective chemical control options.

This is bad news:

New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, announced Monday morning that she will challenge first-term US Senator Kelly Ayotte in 2016, setting up what will likely be next year’s most competitive Senate race in New England and the most high-profile Senate race among two women in US history.

For months, polls have shown a hypothetical matchup between Ayotte and Hassan to result in a statistical tie. Democrats must win a net of at least five US Senate races in 2016 to take control of the Senate.

Hassan has twice won the governorship. Dems were working her hard to get her to go for this race. Hassan’s husband is the headmaster at Phillips Exeter.

The US House races in New Hampshire regularly turn over from one party to the other (the GOP tends to win in off years). There is not a huge advantage to incumbency for Ayotte.

Few Western foreign policy analysts have taken seriously Vladimir Putin’s radical reorientation of Russia from communism back to Russian Orthodox Christianity.

Putin is perhaps uniquely qualified to discern that his nation’s identity has been for centuries within a spiritual, distinctly Christian narrative and that a violent rending of Russia’s historically religious roots led to utter disaster for the Russian peoples.

Son of a militant atheist and a pious mother, Putin lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resurgence of capitalism as defined in Russian terms. Though raised a secularist, he is now a devout Christian in the Russian Orthodox tradition and has devoted himself to the advancement of Christianity and the repudiation of what he sees as Western decadence. While some may be dismissive of Putin’s Christian beliefs, there is no doubt that Christianity informs the way he now chooses to shape his own narrative and the story of his country.

Putin’s religious values are rooted in Russian Orthodoxy and personal religious experiences, including his wife’s car accident in 1993 and a life-threatening house fire in 1996. Just before a diplomatic trip to Israel, his mother gave him a baptismal cross. He said of the occasion, “I … put the cross around my neck. I have never taken it off since.”

By his own testimony, Putin has had the personal conversion experience so often ridiculed by the communist regime in which he was embedded for so many years. He now is putting his recently found faith to work in Russia and abroad.

Perhaps nothing more powerfully symbolizes Putin’s attempt to transition back to Russia’s religious heritage than the recent installation of a huge bronze statue of Vladimir the Great on Borovitskaya Ploshchad, right next to the Kremlin and the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

It is by now beyond dispute that the Environmental Protection Agency went rogue when it halted Alaska’s proposed Pebble Mine project. And yet, there’s more.

The more comes via an independent report that criticizes the agency for its pre-emptive 2014 veto of Pebble, a proposal to create the country’s largest copper and gold mine in southwest Alaska. Under the Clean Water Act, the Army Corps of Engineers evaluates permit applications for new projects. The EPA has a secondary role of reviewing and potentially vetoing Corps approval. Here, the EPA issued a veto before either Pebble could file for permits or the Corps could take a look.

Pebble CEO Tom Collier didn’t take this lying down. He filed a lawsuit. Then he asked former Senator and Defense Secretary William Cohen to conduct an outside investigation. Mr. Cohen agreed, as he writes, “on conditions of independence. I would follow the facts wherever they may lead, and any conclusions would be mine alone.” His 346-page report, released to be Tuesday, is a straightforward yet withering takedown of EPA’s conduct.

Oh puleez!!! Jimmy Dhimmi has become the poster boy of Israel bashing, appeasement of Islam, and general leftist policies…He was stripped of his title of worst US President in 2008. The man is superannuated and ill but he learned nothing from his mistakes. The only thing I could praise him for is that he brought about the landslide election of Ronald Reagan….rsk
“I think of Jimmy Carter as the good old days.”

The speaker was the American Enterprise Institute’s John Bolton. A veteran of the Reagan, Bush I and Bush II administrations, Mr. Bolton was in New York last week for the United Nations General Assembly. He was responding to a newsman who’d asked him if he thought Barack Obama was as bad as Jimmy Carter.

Over the years, Mr. Carter’s name has become a synonym for American weakness abroad and decline at home, the former represented by the Iranian hostage crisis that plagued him until his last moments in office, and the latter by an economy that introduced American working families to words such as “stagflation.” Not until Ronald Reagan succeeded Mr. Carter did Americans see policies that would unleash the U.S. economy and eventually bring down the Berlin Wall.

Even so, there’s a serious point in Mr. Bolton’s quip. Mr. Carter may indeed be the gold standard for fecklessness and malaise. But toward the end of his tenure, President Carter proved himself capable of something that still eludes President Obama: a willingness to learn from mistakes and reconsider options.

Maintaining and preserving existing nuclear energy in this country is vital to achieving our clean energy and carbon-pollution reduction goals.

Robert Bryce is spot on when he notes that existing nuclear energy is one of the most important factors in helping the U.S. reduce carbon pollution yet doesn’t get the credit it deserves (“How to Lower U.S. Living Standards,” op-ed, Sept. 22). The fact that nuclear energy is carbon-free is especially important in light of the Environmental Protection Agency’s recently finalized Clean Power Plan and the broader national focus on transitioning to a clean-energy future. And, as Mr. Bryce points out, this should not be a partisan or political issue. As I’ve said many times, it is inconsistent for someone to be concerned about cutting carbon pollution and not support existing nuclear power. I should know; I used to be against nuclear power but changed my stance after realizing that without it we will likely fall short of our carbon-pollution goals.

In 2014 existing nuclear power accounted for just under 20% of this country’s electricity supply but was responsible for nearly two-thirds of all the carbon-free electricity we generated. The bottom line is that maintaining and preserving existing nuclear energy in this country is vital to achieving our clean energy and carbon-pollution reduction goals, and to do so we must start to value the low-carbon benefits it offers today.

Carol M. Browner

David Petraeus testified last month to the Senate Armed Services Committee on U.S. policy in the Middle East. Regarding Syria, the former general and CIA director urged a credible threat to destroy Bashar Assad’s air force if it continues to bomb its own people. He also recommended “the establishment of enclaves in Syria protected by coalition air power, where a moderate Sunni force could be supported and where additional forces could be trained, internally displaced persons could find refuge, and the Syrian opposition could organize.”

But Barack Obama does not agree. At his Friday press conference, the president described such views as “mumbo-jumbo,” “half-baked ideas,” “as-if” solutions, a willful effort to “downplay the challenges involved in the situation.” He says the critics have no answers to the questions of “what exactly would you do and how would you fund it and how would you sustain it.”

America’s greatest living general might as well have been testifying to his shower drain for all the difference his views are going to make in this administration.

So it is with this president. It’s not enough for him to stake and defend his positions. He wants you to know that he thinks deeper, sees further, knows better, operates from a purer motive. His preferred method for dealing with disagreement is denigration. If Republicans want a tougher line in Syria, they’re warmongers. If Hillary Clinton thinks a no-fly zone is a good idea, she’s playing politics: “There is obviously a difference,” the president tut-tutted about his former secretary of state’s position, “between running for president and being president.”