RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324178904578340261147214252.html?mod=opinion_newsreel

Hillary Clinton circled the globe 40 times in four years as secretary of state. But what did all this on-the-go diplomacy accomplish?

Hillary Rodham Clinton was the best secretary of state in U.S. history—if the amount of travel abroad is the criterion by which we judge the success of America’s top diplomat. Mrs. Clinton logged a million miles flying around the world during President Barack Obama’s first term. It’s a remarkable number: The Earth is 25,000 miles in circumference, so the secretary circled the globe 40 times in four years. Even more remarkable is that one can’t think of a signature accomplishment from all this on-the-go diplomacy.
As the BBC’s State Department correspondent, Kim Ghattas accompanied Mrs. Clinton on some 300,000 of those miles and interviewed her at least 15 times. In “The Secretary: A Journey With Hillary Clinton From Beirut to the Heart of American Power,” Ms. Ghattas wants to paint an intimate, on-the-job portrait of her subject during a period that began with broad outreach by Washington to old and new enemies, that encompassed many setbacks, including the fracturing of the American order in the Middle East, and that ended with an ambassador’s murder in Benghazi, Libya.

The material has world-historical heft, yet the treatment rarely carries weight. Ms. Ghattas clearly enjoys the access that her job entails and deems no detail of life in the State Department press corps too insignificant to share. There are seemingly endless anecdotes about the “chewy chocolate chip cookies” at the air bases that service the secretary of state’s plane; the chicken-salad dinners aboard the plane; the press packets handed out by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing; the “Bulgari hand fresheners” inside the Saudi king’s tent. Did you know that one time Mrs. Clinton’s plane almost took off without “Arshad Mohammed from Reuters, who had overslept”?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324128504578344620552736516.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez is dead. But chavismo, the military government that he fashioned with the help of Cuba over his 14-year rule, lives on. Restoring democracy in the oil dictatorship won’t be easy, even without the caudillo in the red beret fomenting hatred on a daily basis. Meanwhile, Venezuelans will endure even deeper hardship […]

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2867/green_agenda_in_meltdown

THE alarmist agenda has been relentlessly unhelpful. Not that you’d know it if your trust is in the mainstream journalistic integrity of the BBC or New York Times.

We could start with the data-driven fact that there’s been no global warming whatsoever for over 16 years. But this would be churlish as even the head of the UN IPCC and Moonbat Guardianistas have been forced to admit that particular game is up. But the devil is in the detail, right? Okay, so let’s check out the detail on key green fronts when it comes to news that may have drifted under your personal news radar.

First up, solar activity. In 2009 a key consensus of the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel was that a “solar minimum” occurred in December 2008 with a “solar maximum intensity” predicted for May 2013. In layman’s terms, the Sun’s activity would promote global warming this year. Wrong.

Now NASA is reporting that in 2013, the year of the predicted solar maximum, the Sun isn’t playing ball. It turns out that solar activity this year is well below the expected level. And less Sun activity equates with a cooler, not a warmer, planet. Once again, a key science consensus melts away.

As Doug L. Hoffman points out, “The botched solar forecast not only has implication for our understanding of the physical processes inside the Sun, it has possible links to future climate change here on earth”. And a cooler planet is way more of a threat to us all than a slightly warmer one.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2873/norwegian_mp_concerned_over_norway_s_indirect_funding_of_palestinian_terrorism Norwegian state-owned NRK TV is continuing its investigation into Norway’s financial support of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) budget. The PA uses its budget to pay the salaries of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails for security offences, including those serving multiple life sentences for murder, according to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). Some prisoners, it is […]

http://q4j-middle-east.com A friend of mine passed away several years ago who was a great, old fashioned “Liberal.” In many ways, many of us could fall into that same category when you really think about it. But things today just ain’t what they used to be. For one thing, somehow I just can’t see Jews as […]

http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2013/03/06/fashionable-anti-semitism-on-campus/ wonder how many charitable Jewish alumni and parents of current students know that Columbia, Barnard and NYU are hosting presentations for Israeli Apartheid Week, commencing March 11th. At Columbia/ Barnard, the topic is “Colonialism from the US to Palestine,” an interesting choice considering the recent expose of Islamist enforced slavery in Mauritania, not to […]

  http://m.weeklystandard.com/blogs/michelle-obama-and-john-kerry-honor-anti-semite-and-911-fan_706547.html Michelle Obama and John Kerry to Honor Anti-Semite and 9/11 Fan | The Weekly Standard On Friday March 8, Michelle Obama will join John Kerry at a special ceremony at the State Department to present ten women the Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Award. The award, says the press release, is […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3614/europe-hezbollah The recent cases in Bulgaria and Cyrus provide irrefutable evidence that Hezbollah is highly active in Europe, where it raises funds, launders money, traffics drugs, recruits operatives and plots attacks with impunity The main objective of Israeli President Shimon Peres’s week-long state visit to Brussels, Paris and Strasbourg March 5-12 is apparently to persuade […]

Don’t cry for him Venezuela. Exactly sixty years after the death of Stalin, his political spawn Hugo Chavez will join him in hell. Will Kevin Spacey, Danny Glover and Sean Penn and Michael Moore be pallbearers?

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/342198/fossil-fuel-divestment-part-3-stanley-kurtz The fossil-fuel divestment campaign now sweeping America’s college campuses is a window onto much that is wrong with our culture and our politics. The fate of America’s free-enterprise system — long the engine of our prosperity and security — now hangs on a generation increasingly skeptical of the system’s premises. Surely doubts about capitalism […]