RUTHFULLY YOURS

Mark Tapson is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Last Friday, as the week downshifted into the Memorial Day three-day holiday, the official Twitter account of the Democratic Party wished the country a “Happy Memorial Day weekend, everyone!” and tweeted [2] a pic of – whom else? – President Obama lapping at an ice cream cone while media lapdogs zoomed their cameras in to capture the photo op. CNN anchor Jake Tapper injected a note of perspective by tweeting [3] back, “Respectfully, @TheDemocrats, this is not what Memorial Day weekend is about.”

Indeed it is not, but for Barack Obama, of course, everything is about Barack Obama. And for the Democratic Party, everything is about selling the American people a crock of big-government idolatry, and so they followed up the Obama photo with tweets about a 15% off holiday sale at their website store – because nothing memorializes the men and women of our armed forces who paid the ultimate price for their country quite like a discounted “I Heart O’bama” Shamrock Lapel Sticker [4] or a “Like a Boss” POTUS t-shirt [5].

It has been said that nature abhors a vacuum. The Obama administration’s policies around the world have created power vacuums with severe and often deadly consequences. These vacuums are profoundly impacting the Middle East and the rampage of ISIS and other terror organizations.

Today my focus will be on the massive numbers of refugees fleeing the chaos and violence of the Middle East and what this is likely to mean for the United States from a number of perspectives.

Millions of people are quite literally running for their lives and are heading to countries around the world. Make no mistake, this is a humanitarian crisis that pulls at people’s heartstrings, and rightfully so. As the grandson of a woman who was slaughtered in Poland during World War II, I understand how important it is for countries around the world to try to save lives.

Our primary concern, however, must be on how any actions to address this will impact the United States and its citizens. We will begin by considering the impact large numbers of refugees would likely have on American workers, particularly focusing on a proposal for the resettlement of 50,000 Syrian refugees in Detroit, Michigan.

The latest round of Israel scandals began on March 17, which was Israel’s election day, when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu wrote in a Facebook post: “The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls. Left-wing organizations are busing them out.”

It sounded bigoted toward Arab voters. It was atypical of Netanyahu, and just a few days later he apologized [2] to representatives of the Israeli Arab sector at his Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem, saying, “I know the things I said several days ago offended some of Israel’s citizens, hurt the Arab citizens. This was never my intent. I apologize for this.”

We all know Bush’s Iraq War, but we don’t know much about Obama’s Iraq War. Republicans fight wars. Democrats engage in police actions, impose No-Fly Zones and provide security for humanitarian missions. They don’t do anything as vulgar as fight wars. That would be warmongering.

Even by the war-shy standards of Democrats, Obama’s word games with war have been something else.

Obama’s wars are complex shell games. When he goes to war, he claims that it was at the request of a third party, which was actually fulfilling his request to file a request that it later takes back, based on a pretext that turns out to be false, to carry out a mission that turns out to be a pretext for regime change.

At least that’s how it happened in Libya.

The Thugs of India ingratiated themselves with trusting travellers and strangled them to honour the goddess Kali. If only writers and politicians of the Victorian Age had been less judgmental, more inclined to focus on un-radicalised Thugs, how much more kindly might we remember them?
In a parallel universe, someone who resembled the Earthbound Sir Robert Peel explained to the British Parliament in early 1835 that it was wrong to blame peaceful Thuggees for the actions of a few. Radical Thuggees, who might be called Thugs for short, he suggested, were the problem. Hence the word thugs entered the lexicon.

I was thinking of this piece of pseudo-historical trivia when reading Wikipedia on the topic of Thuggees. Here is an excerpt:

There was a time, now fading from memory, when laws were made by legislatures. Today, look not to elected representatives for the setting of laws, but to the judges whose keen eye for identifying formerly unrecognised “rights” would appear to be boundless
For a considerable time, judicial power in Britain has been expanding at the expense of legislative and executive powers, and promises to continue to do so. But if this is to continue – and there are powerful reasons why it should not – it should be brought about not just by changes in the thinking of legal elites such as academics and judges, but with the understanding and assent of the public, or at least of those elected to represent the public. Furthermore, they must possess the knowledge needed to decide whether to assent or to oppose the change. This lecture is intended to provide some of that knowledge by describing recent developments and setting them within a broader philosophical and comparative context. This should be of interest elsewhere in the Anglosphere, wherever parliamentary government and the common law have grown from the same British stock.

While I will sometimes speak critically of judges expanding their own powers, I do not intend to impugn their motives. Decisions that have expanded judicial power have always been motivated by the laudable goal of promoting justice or the rule of law, and often with success. It should be acknowledged that the philosophical and political issues I will discuss are difficult ones, about which well informed and reasonable minds can and do disagree. On the other hand, it is this very fact – the existence of reasonable disagreement – that underpins the case for substantial constitutional change being brought about only through democratic reforms, and not by unilateral judicial innovation.

In the aftermath of the Shoah, horrified Europeans wanted to turn over a new leaf. Yet, as the Yad Vashem professor of Holocaust studies ruefully observed, the modern left tirelessly updates and amplifies all the ancient blood libels under the guise of ‘anti-Zionism’
Robert Wistrich, who died of a heart attack on May 19, 2015, was arguably the most important public intellectual of the past twenty-five years. He was, fittingly, about to address the Italian Senate on the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. I met him only once, in January 12, 2012, when he addressed a group of twenty-three Australian educators at the International School for Holocaust Studies in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. The first part of his two-and-a-half hour presentation was titled “The Intellectuals and Rise of Modern anti-Semitism in Europe – 19th and 20th Centuries”, and that was followed by “Reflection on the Phenomenon of anti-Semitism in the Modern World (focus on Europe)”.

Wistrich would not be especially impressed by the “public intellectual” moniker, given that he placed much of the blame for modern-day anti-Semitism on – I quote from his lecture – “intellectuals, ideologues and second-rate journalists”, not excluding Wilhelm Marr, who first coined the term “anti-Semitism” in 1879 to differentiate his new-style anti-Jewishness, as outlined in The Victory of Jewry over Germandom, from traditional Christian anti-Judaism. In fact, Wistrich reminded us that the “intellectuals, ideologues and second-rate journalists” of almost every imperial, universalist or millennialist movement have identified “the Jewish problem” as an impediment to their would-be emancipatory projects. Each new rebellion and revolution in Europe, from Luther to Voltaire to Marx and beyond has somehow managed to “reproduce all the stereotypes of medieval Europe”.

These dyed-in-the-wool liberal critics of Israel’s policies are actively working to rally American Jewish opinion against Israel by stepping up their condemnations of the prime minister.

I am watching with increasing concern the abandonment of the Zionist dream by so many American Jews as a result of the recent elections in Israel, as if that community can ever feel safe absent the existence of Israel.

Frankly, I never thought that I would live to see the day when the likes of Peter Beinart and Jeremy Ben-Ami, among others, would urge American Jews to act against Israel and/or to actively lobby the US government to “reset” its traditional support for its only democratic and reliable ally in the Middle East. This is the same US government that, under the current administration, has been guilty of a failed foreign policy which has turned America into a non-trusted partner about whom the Arab world’s leaders makes jokes.

Hillary Clinton is an artful dodger when it comes to taking positions on lots of issues, but last Friday she opened a clear gap between herself and virtually every possible GOP presidential candidate.

Breaking with sincere progressives such as Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, Hillary went out of her way to endorse the Export-Import Bank, a little-known government agency that guarantees loans so that American corporations can sell products overseas. Its charter is set to expire on June 30 unless Congress rescues it from critics who have long opposed its record of funneling the vast majority of its loans to mega-companies such as Boeing, General Electric, and Caterpillar — all of which can easily secure trade financing on their own.

But Hillary appears to have no trouble embracing such corporate welfare. While secretary of state she shilled for the Ex-Im Bank. In 2009, she appeared in Moscow with officials of the Russian airline Rosavia to tout its pursuit of Ex-Im funding. This is how she put it: “This is a shameless pitch for Rosavia — I’ve said what you wanted me to say, Sergey — to buy Boeing aircraft. Right? The Ex-Im Bank would welcome an application for financing from Rosavia to support its purchase of Boeing aircraft, and I hope that on a future visit I’ll see lot of new Rosavia-Boeing planes when I land in Moscow.”

After all the speechifying yesterday on Memorial Day, this ongoing scandal at the VA is truly appalling and one can only salute and support the ongoing efforts of OpenTheBooks.com.for exposing it….rsk
Adam Andrzejewski is the founder of OpenTheBooks.com. The mission is to post ‘every dime online in real time’ of all federal, state and local public spending. This editorial is based on the data collected and posted within our data commons.

Bonuses at the most troubled VA facilities run virtually unabated

Last year, it took a courageous whistleblower, Dr. Sam Foote at the Phoenix Veteran’s Administration facility, to focus national attention on a ‘cook-the-books’ wait-times bonus scandal. At the Phoenix facility alone, Dr. Foote suggested that up to forty veterans died while waiting to see a doctor and up to 1,300 veterans had to wait up to six months for an appointment.

Although the Phoenix facility was the touchstone, the scandal was national: Memphis, Hines-Chicago, Biloxi, Albuquerque, Miami, Gainesville, Central Alabama and many other facilities were cited as ‘troubled.’

Yet, during and after the worst scandal in Veterans Administration history, not only did the VA continue the practice of doling out bonuses, but nearly half the bonuses in 2014 were paid to the exact same employees as the previous year. Where’s the accountability?