RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303680404579143343379804228.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

“Eventually Mrs. Sebelius will have to make a real accounting of this government failure to someone other than the TV comic Jon Stewart, and perhaps she can also explain why the people who can’t build a working website also deserve the power to reorganize one-sixth of the U.S. economy. For now, the Administration that styles itself as the most transparent in history won’t reveal the truth—perhaps because it is afraid of what the public will find.”

The Affordable Care Act’s botched rollout has stunned its media cheering section, and it even seems to have surprised the law’s architects. The problems run much deeper than even critics expected, and whatever federal officials, White House aides and outside contractors are doing to fix them isn’t working. But who knows? Omerta is the word of the day as the Obama Administration withholds information from the public.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is even refusing to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in a hearing this coming Thursday. HHS claims she has scheduling conflicts, but we hope she isn’t in the White House catacomb under interrogation by Valerie Jarrett about her department’s incompetence.

The department is also refusing to make available lower-level officials who might detail the source or sources of this debacle. Ducking an investigation with spin is one thing. Responding with a wall of silence to the invitation of a duly elected congressional body probing the use of more than half a billion taxpayer dollars is another. This Obama crowd is something else.

What bunker is Henry Chao hiding in, for instance? He’s the HHS official in charge of technology for the Affordable Care Act, and in March he said at an insurance lobby conference that his team had given up trying to create “a world-class user experience.” With the clock running, Mr. Chao added that his main goal was merely to “just make sure it’s not a third-world experience.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/361678/print

According to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, it’s his colleagues, more than anyone, who should be blamed for the failure of the defund-Obamacare campaign — and he expects conservatives to remember come primary season.

“Unfortunately, rather than supporting House Republicans, a significant number of Senate Republicans actively, aggressively, and vocally led the effort to defeat House Republicans, to defeat the effort to defund Obamacare,” Cruz says, in an interview with National Review. “Once Senate Republicans did that, it crippled the chances of this effort, and it caused the lousy deal.”

When pressed to cite specific Republican senators who may face primary trouble, Cruz refuses — “I’m not interested in a battle of personalities.” But he strongly urges conservatives to hold those lawmakers “accountable.”

“As with every decision elected officials make, the consequences of those decisions are up to the American people,” Cruz says. “But I will say this: From Day One in office, I’ve urged the American people to hold every elected official accountable, and far too many elected officials are not listening to the American people. . . . when you’ve got 10 to 20 Senate Republicans going on television, day after day after day, saying, ‘we cannot win, this is a fool’s errand, we will lose, nothing will happen, we will surrender,’ and blaming Republicans every step of the way, it eliminates the ability to get a positive outcome.

“Now, I have publicly said it is likely that I will stay out of all incumbent primaries,” he continues. “But every elected official has to make the case to the grassroots in his or her state on why he or she is effectively fighting for them.” When asked whether using the word “likely” means he’s leaving room to back a challenger, Cruz repeats the line, saying it’s “likely” he’ll stay out.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4269/a_bad_fit_islam_and_democracy_at_home_and_abroad

“Democracy presupposes a pre-political order, a set of preconditions, without which democratic elections will not work to produce what we understand as a democratic society.Islam is different. Islam does not recognise a distinction between the religious and the secular. Islamic law, sharia, is a code that regulates all areas of social and personal life and is founded in divine command, not on secular authority.”

Can Egypt, or indeed can any Muslim state ever embrace democracy as we understand and practise it in the West? For many years now, a defining feature of Western foreign policy has been the promotion of democracy as a solution to political conflict throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

This is understandable as Western democratic states have shown remarkable peace and stability over the past 60 years. If Egypt and other Muslim societies were to become Western style democracies, the reasoning goes, they too would become stable societies. So the West supports the “Arab Spring” and democratic elections throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

The problem with this reasoning is that elections are not the basis of democracy. It is a common belief that elections define democracy. But in fact democratic elections are only the by-product, so to speak, of complex historical social values and institutions that are a prior necessity for elections to work. In other words, democracy presupposes a pre-political order, a set of preconditions, without which democratic elections will not work.

Islamic societies do not appear to have these preconditions. The most important difference in terms of political governance between Islam and the West is the historic recognition in Western culture of a distinction between the religious and the secular. As the New Testament has it, Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.

This important distinction has resulted in the gradual development in the West of our secular law and institutions. The Christian West has always (sometimes with more than a little difficulty) acknowledged the legitimacy of a separate non-religious authority. Western secular governments can, and do, legislate to permit behaviour of which the Christian churches disapprove.

This secularisation of society has happened throughout Western history, particularly with the Reformation, and has today resulted in the universal authority of the democratic secular state. This means that all legislation in the West today is a matter of state, with the church (usually) a legal subject of the state and religion essentially a private matter.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/10/were_talking_while_theyre_acting.html Churchill’s dictum, “Jaw-jaw is better than war-war,” is a concept without application in much of the world.  Western-style negotiations seek common ground and compromise, while others seek only to “jaw” while the work of war goes on.  The West vests the process itself with value, providing our adversaries with instant leverage when they value only their […]

HOME Antarctic Ice Sets New All Time Record For Growth In October: ‘What makes the new record so astonishing is that it was set in October, on the 1st. Climatologically, the maximum extent is reached on 22nd September, so it is most unusual for the ice still to be growing 10 days later’ Antarctica Set […]

http://www.cfact.org/about/

The Earth may not have warmed since the nineties, but CFACT’s Climate Depot is on fire!

When Marc Morano reported that the U.S. is experiencing a very low year for extreme weather and so far has the least number of 100 degree days in a century, social media went wild. Matt Drudge picked up both stories and ran them on the Drudge Report.

One of the oddest thing about the global warming folks has always been the way they issue wild pronouncements about things that layman can easily check for themselves.

Thirteen years have gone by since David Viner of Britain’s Climate Research Unit declared that “snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.” Well, is it?

Similarly when Al Gore led a chorus of warmists in declaring that increased extreme weather is the new normal, we again ask, well is it? Scientific observation of the record shows that there is nothing extreme about recent weather and that 2013 has so far been particularly mild.

http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2013/10/john-locke-and-liberty.html “Thus in the beginning all the world was America….” I was inspired by the numerous references to John Locke in Denise Spellberg’s Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: The Founders and Islam and by my review of that disreputable attempt to affiliate Jefferson with Islam to republish here my original essay on John Locke as a form […]

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com  http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS   A device to give diabetics freedom.  Israel’s Insuline has developed InsuPad – a device that warms the body after diabetics inject themselves – even after meals. The pad helps less insulin absorb much quicker and reduces hypoglycemic incidents. J&J Lifescan has just signed an agreement to market InsuPad in […]

I confess to being a total ignoramus about economics and I usually rely on David Goldman or David Malpass to explain things to me. On the shutdown I have wondered what really happened? Was anyone hurt? Restaurants and movies and theaters were full; cars were on the road; traffic lights worked and to my knowledge no ambulances or garbage trucks were halted. Did we save any money while the government was shut down? Well Daniel Greenfield sums it up.
3 Weeks of Government Shutdown Cost 2.5 Days of Government Spending

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/3-weeks-of-government-shutdown-cost-2-5-days-of-government-spending/

The latest media talking point is about the “cost” of the shutdown.

It’s ironic that the allies of an administration that triggers constant fiscal showdowns over its refusal to stop spending insane amounts of money that we don’t have are now pretending to be concerned about the cost of something.

Their latest revelation is that the shutdown may have cost… get ready for it… up to $24 billion.

That’s right. A whole $24 billion. In some pre-Obama universe that was maybe a lot of money. But in the Obama Era, that’s 2.5 days worth of government spending.

Every day, the U.S. government takes in $6 billion and spends $10 billion. This means that every day the federal government spends $4 billion more dollars than it has.

Three weeks of government shutdown cost 2.5 days of government spending. Six days of deficit spending.

If the government had actually shut down, we would have saved a ton of money. But we didn’t. And that’s just depending on which balance sheet we use.

Here’s what the naked shutdown really looked like.

According to the Daily Treasury Statement for Oct. 2, which was released yesterday at 4:00 p.m., the Treasury spent a total of $63.262 billion in the first two days of fiscal 2014. At the same time, it took in $25.681 billion in tax revenue.

In 2 days, more money was stolen than the whole “cost” of the shutdown. More money was spent at a deficit in the first two days of the government shutdown than the cost of the shutdown.

And more than twice as much money was spent.

That $24 billion? It wouldn’t even count as pocket change to an administration that treats a trillion dollars as play money. Obama’s 2012 budget was nearly 4 trillion dollars. To put that into perspective. Imagine that 24 billion dollars is actually just 24 bucks. Then Obama’s demented 2012 budget was 4,000 dollars.

While Obama blows trillions, the media suddenly pretends to care about a measly 24 billion dollars even as defends his right to spend unlimited amounts of taxpayer money and debt.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/rob-eshman-and-his-endorsement-of-saul-alinsky?f=puball

Following what must have been an onslaught of protest from the American public, Rob Eshman issued the following statement to serve as an apology for a vile cartoon comparing Tea Partiers with Islamic terrorists in the Oct. 11th edition of the Los Angeles Journal. While defending cartoonist Steve Greenberg he stated

“”At the same time, we are especially sensitive to the impression many have that the cartoon somehow trivializes the horrific, real suffering wrought by Islamic terrorists. That is clearly not Greenberg’s intention– and I offer my apology to anyone who sees the cartoon exclusively in that light. I agree that even in the context of a political cartoon, this one was insensitive, and I apologize to those we have offended.”

He further stated:

“The Jewish Journal, meanwhile, is committed to presenting a multiplicity of thoughtful voices on issues that matter to all Americans. We are guided not by what are perceived as narrow ‘Jewish’ interests, but by the larger Jewish value of vigorous debate leading to mutual understanding. Satire is part of that debate.”

Clearly, Eshman does not comprehend the message. We are offended not only because it trivializes the suffering of those wrought by Islamic terrorism, but because it also equates the mission of Tea Partiers with the mission of terrorists. And for all his protestation, the Jewish Journal under Eshman’s watch has not been a forum for a multiplicity of voices. Instead it has served as a Leftist indoctrination arm of the values held dear by Marxists, Communists, and today’s term de jour, Progressives.

Similar to many Jewish newspapers across the country, the voice is primarily of the Left and its influence upon Jewish life is dismal. The recent 2013 Pew Research Center reports that only 40% of American Jews believe that G-d gave the land of Israel to Jews as compared to 82% among white Evangelicals who believe the same.