Prager University – Do You Pass the Israel Test?

Prager University
"In a new video from Prager University, George Gilder explains how you pass or fail."
 

 

Course Description

Would you believe us if we said that the best litmus test of any society’s success is its attitude towards Israel? Well, it’s true. As George Gilder explains, whether a society envies and resents Israel’s success or celebrates and tries to replicate it is indicative of that society’s progress. Countries that “pass” the “Israel Test” tend to rise. Those who don’t tend to sink. So, does your society pass the “Israel Test”? In five minutes, find out.

Original article here.

Every Obama Speech in Just Over a Minute

American Glob
"If you’re anything like me, I know you’re just dying to hear another Obama speech. Luckily for us, the fine folks at the Washington Free Beacon have summarized all of Obama’s speeches in one short video."
 

 

That brings to mind this video by Troels Jørgensen:

 

Six Californias Measure Seems Headed For 2016 Ballot

Weasel Zippers

 

"The conservative parts of California will need a border fence.

"Via San Jose Mercury News

Once easily mistaken for political satire, venture capitalist Tim Draper’s “Six Californias” ballot measure to tear the Golden State asunder seems bound for the November 2016 ballot.
Draper, who has shelled out $4.9 million on his oft-mocked and maligned campaign, announced he’ll submit petition signatures for the measure Tuesday and hold a news conference in Sacramento.
“California needs a reboot,” said a news release issued Monday by his committee. “Six Californias is our opportunity to solve the many problems we face today. … Six states that are more representative and accountable. Six states that embrace innovation and strive to improve the lives of residents.”

.."Silicon Valley would become the nation's richest state while Central California would become its poorest, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office found.. "

 Keep reading...

Did Archie also invent a cure for global warming before taking a bullet?

Legal Insurrection

 

"TPM reports, ‘Archie’ Will Die Saving Gay Friend In Comic Book:

Archie Andrews will die taking a bullet for his gay best friend.
The famous freckle-faced comic book icon is meeting his demise in Wednesday’s installment of “Life with Archie” when he intervenes in an assassination attempt on Kevin Keller, Archie Comics’ first openly gay character. Andrews’ death, which was first announced in April, will mark the conclusion of the series that focuses on grown-up renditions of Andrews and his Riverdale pals.
“The way in which Archie dies is everything that you would expect of Archie,” said Jon Goldwater, Archie Comics publisher and co-CEO. “He dies heroically. He dies selflessly. He dies in the manner that epitomizes not only the best of Riverdale but the best of all of us. It’s what Archie has come to represent over the past almost 75 years.”

"Mediaite notes how loaded the ending storyline is with political correctness:

All of the hot topics of today are involved in the storyline: the death takes place in a future where Archie, Betty, Veronica, and everyone else are all adults, and Kevin Keller, the first openly gay character in the comics, is now a US Senator fighting for gun control.

"There’s so much that could have been done with this.
Why didn’t Archie, on his last day on this earth, invent a cure for global warming?
Or maybe he did.  We’ll have to wait and see when it’s published.
I think I’ll miss it.  Just like I missed every other Archie story."
[Featured Image: Final Archie Cover]
 

Sending your kids off to college? Questions from a Concerned Parent

Mike Adams

 

"A parent wrote to me last week asking for my honest assessment of my university. His reason for writing is that his son is enrolling at UNC-Wilmington in the fall. He directly asked whether I would send my own son to the university where I teach. He also asked some other pointed questions. I thought my answers would make an informative column for parents who are about to send their Christian children to secular universities like UNCW. So here goes. His unedited questions and my responses follow:" ... 

 

Mike Adams is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and author of Letters to a Young Progressive: How To Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don't Understand.

 

Progressive Illiberalism

NRO

 

"Consider, for a moment, how we arrived at the current state of the Hobby Lobby controversy: Ages ago, members of Congress, including a large majority of Democrats, came to believe that the justices of the Supreme Court, notably Justice Antonin Scalia, were taking too narrow a view of the religious liberties secured by the First Amendment. So Congress passed, with overwhelming bipartisan support and the signature of President Bill Clinton, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which requires that when the federal government significantly burdens the exercise of religious liberties, it must do so in the least intrusive fashion.

 

"Along comes the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a massive transfer of power to the unelected bureaucracies, which empowered the Obama administration to issue regulations that burdened a religious liberty..."

 

... There is an ongoing debate on the right about what to call our antagonists on the left. “Liberal” is the traditional word, and one that we still employ out of habit, but the Left is anything but liberal — in the matter of contraception as in the matter of free speech, it is fundamentally and incorrigibly illiberal.

While we're on the subject....
Pew Poll: 77% of Conservatives Back Israel, Support Falls To Just 39% For Liberals…

She Was Tired of Being Photoshopped, So Here’s What She Did About It.

{LIFE}BUZZ   "Grammy Award-winning, singer-songwriter Colbie Caillat released her new EP, Gypsy Heart Side A. Her album’s lead single “Try” makes a powerful statement about beauty ideals."

 

Obama says he'd be seen as moderate Republican in 1980s

 

The Hill    ... "Conservatives frequently raise concern that Obama has turned the U.S. toward socialism, pointing to Obama's healthcare law and the stimulus bill the president championed shortly after taking office. 

"After Obama won reelection, former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Fox News said his win would be catastrophic for the U.S. economy because "Obama's socialist policies" will "destroy America's working class as he outsources opportunities."

"Obama made the latest comments in response to a question about why he did well in the election with Cuban-American voters in Florida who could be concerned about the U.S. moving toward socialism because of their experiences with Fidel Castro.

" 'I don't know that there are a lot of Cubans or Venezuelans, Americans who believe that," Obama said."...  Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/finance/272957-obama-says-his-economic-policies-so-mainstream-hed-be-seen-as-moderate-republican-in-1980s#ixzz37Y52OGvM

Swarm! Swarm! Swarm!

Israel PM Netanyahu accepts Egyptian ceasefire proposal

Many Arab-wise analysts look on this as  nothing more that a Hudna, a muslim trick to stop the fighting when they're getting their tails handed to them. This allows them to regroup and make better preparations for the next round of fighting.

... "As for Hamas, they have proven time and again their commitment to a tactical hudna — replenishing their strength during the quiet periods, then returning with increased deadliness. As recently documented by The Washington Institute, Hamas agreed to no less than ten ceasefires in the past ten years, and after every single one returned freshly armed for terror. Hundreds of Israeli citizens have paid for these hudnas with their lives." ...

Legal Insurrection   "Egypt has offered a cease fire proposal, as reported by Haaretz at its live blog (times are Israel time):" ...

10:29 P.M. Sources in the Egyptian Foreign Ministry say Egypt has proposed a cease-fire outline to Israel and Gaza: The cease-fire will start at 9 A.M., meaning Israel will stop aerial, naval and ground operations against the Gaza Strip and promise not to engage in a ground offensive or harm civilians. At the same time, all the Palestinian factions will hold their fire...
...

"This presents an obvious problem for Hamas.

"There are differing assessments of how much pressure its leadership is under, hidden beneath apartment buildings and hospitals it knows Israel will not bomb. Regardless, Hamas will have failed to score any damaging blows to Israel, but will have caused the deaths of almost 200 Palestinians dead and a thousand terrorist locations destroyed.

"Also, Hamas made demands for a ceasefire, including the release of terrorists released in the Shalit deal but subsequently rearrested. If those demands are not met, Hamas’ inevitable claims of victory will be hard to play."  
...
"For the ceasefire to take effect, all the Palestinian terrorist groups would have to hold their fire. Who even knows if that could happen.

"What’s in it for Israel?

"For one, it avoids a ground invasion which almost certainly would have brought international condemnation upon it. For the first time the international community mostly sat this one out for the past week — remarkable actually. It reflects the understanding that Hamas and other terrorist factions started the conflict, and the isolation of Hamas from Egypt and other Arab countries.

"Israel didn’t achieve it’s goal of crushing Hamas, but it inflicted serious damage. Invading and holding Gaza again really is not an option.

"But no one should think this is the last of it."

The Conservatives Who Deserve Blame for the Border Breakdown

I believe the motives of those who passed this law in 2008 were un-sordid and more honorable that I feel today's Democrat objectives are. Nevertheless:

John T. Bennett   "The conservative commentators who advocated a “path to citizenship” after the 2012 election bear partial blame for the current wave of illegal immigrants from Central America. Many of those who advocated for amnesty following the 2012 election are now complaining that people indeed came expecting that amnesty. But there is also an unbelievably bad policy at the root of the problem.

"The William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 is the awful piece of legislation that is allowing tens of thousands of illegal aliens to be released and remain in America while awaiting “deportation hearings” that we all know are a sham.

"It is not ironic at all that that a law intended “to combat human trafficking” has facilitated human smuggling. It is
not ironic because this is precisely the outcome we should expect from immigration policy designed by multicultural elites. Our inept and corrupt political class, with their utter disregard for our sovereignty, simply does not seem to care about the consequences of the laws they pass.

John Bennett is a writer whose work has appeared in The Daily Caller, Townhall.com, World Net Daily, Human Events, Liberty Unyielding, Accuracy in Media, and FrontPage Magazine, among others.  He has appeared as a featured guest on the Laura Ingraham, Jerry Doyle, and Lars Larson programs

Having said all that, Michael Barone's point is "that was then, this is now":

Obama pays price for inaction on immigration law   ... "The second thing that led to the flood of underage illegals was Obama’s declaration in June 2012, five months before the election, that he would not enforce immigration laws against so-called “dreamers,” young adults brought over the border illegally as children who also met certain conditions." ...

Gaza Situation Report

STRATFOR  ... "From a purely military standpoint, the issue has been Hamas's search for a deterrent to Israeli operations against Gaza. Operation Cast Lead in late 2008 and early 2009 disrupted Gaza deeply, and Hamas found itself without any options beyond attempts to impose high casualties on Israeli forces. But the size of the casualties in Cast Lead did not prove a deterrent. 

"Hamas augmented its short-range rocket arsenal with much longer-range rockets. The latest generation of rockets it has acquired can reach the population center of Israel: the triangle of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. However, these are rockets, not missiles. That means they have no guidance system, and their point of impact once launched is a matter of chance. Given these limits, Hamas hoped having a large number of rockets of different ranges would create the risk of substantial Israeli civilian casualties, and that that risk would deter Israel from action against Gaza.

"The threat posed by the rockets was in fact substantial. According to senior Israeli Air Force officers quoted on the subject, Israel lacked intelligence on precisely where the rockets were stored and all the sites from which they might be launched. Gaza is honeycombed with a complex of tunnels, many quite deep. This limits intelligence. It also limits the ability of Israeli airborne munitions from penetrating to their storage area and destroying them. " ...Read more: Gaza Situation Report | Stratfor
 

"Gaza Situation Report is republished with permission of Stratfor."