http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/314030/cairo-packs-egypt-s-media-elliott-abrams The recent sacking of all of Egypt’s top military officials by its new Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohammed Morsi, was met with considerable approval in the West, including the United States. After all, the argument goes, he was elected, and don’t we all favor civilian control of the military? Why call this a Brotherhood power […]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444318104577587322446430152.html?mod=opinion_newsreel
America’s real interests, he understands, come from our deepest values.
Last summer, the chairman of the House Budget Committee made a foray into foreign-policy land with a speech to the Alexander Hamilton Society in Washington, D.C. About 100 people showed up, and it got next to no coverage. That should now change—and not just because Paul Ryan’s views on America’s role in the world are no longer a matter of one Wisconsin congressman talking.
Here, in CliffsNotes form, is what the speech tells us about Mr. Ryan. First, that he’s an internationalist of the old school; in another day, he would have sat comfortably in the cabinets of Harry Truman, Jack Kennedy or Ronald Reagan. Also, that he believes in free trade, a strong defense, engagement with our allies—and expectations of them. Also, that he wants America to stay and win in Afghanistan. Furthermore, that he supports the “arduous task of building free societies,” even as he harbored early doubts the Arab Spring was the vehicle for building free societies.
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Columnist Bret Stephens provides an update on the Syrian civil war and military shake-up in Egypt. Photos: Associated Press
It tells us also that Mr. Ryan has an astute understanding of the fundamental challenge of China. “The key question for American policy makers,” he said, “is whether we are competing with China for leadership of the international system or against them over the fundamental nature of that system.”
What Mr. Ryan’s speech really tells us, however, is that he knows how to think.
Most foreign-policy speeches by American politicians take the form of untidy piles of verities and clichés. Here, for example, is Barack Obama on China: “As we look to the future, what’s needed, I believe, is a spirit of cooperation that is also friendly competition.” Here he is on the U.N.: “The United Nations can either be a place where we bicker about outdated differences or forge common ground.” Here he is to the British Parliament: “The time for our leadership is now.”
Mr. Ryan doesn’t have the president’s reputation for eloquence. Nor do his speeches ride on the windy drafts of “Yes We Can.” But unlike Mr. Obama, his speeches communicate ideas and arguments, not pieties and emotions.
Thus this speech begins not with a cliché but with a contention: “Our fiscal policy and our foreign policy are on a collision course.” It proceeds, briefly, to demonstrate the point quantitatively: Defense spending in 1970 consumed 39% of the federal budget but takes only 16% today. In the proverbial guns-to-butter ratio, our veins are already clogged.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444184704577587144261496760.html?mod=WSJ_article_MoreIn_Opinion The level of economic commentary during the presidential campaign has not been high. Democrats have accused Mitt Romney of the crime of shipping jobs abroad while at Bain Capital, and Mr. Romney has responded by denying the charge. No one takes the economically appropriate position for a job outsourcer: “Yes, I shipped some jobs […]
http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2012/08/14/holder-racial-preferences-needed-for-national-security/?print=1
The Eric Holder Justice Department has filed this brief in the United States Supreme Court defending racial preferences at the University of Texas. (Texas, by the way, is also vigorously defending the racial preferences.) Abigail Fisher, who is white, is challenging race preferences that cost her a slot at the University of Texas law school. Because the racial spoils go to Obama’s most loyal political constituency, people of color, naturally Eric Holder’s Justice Department is defending them by spending your tax dollars paying lawyers to write the brief.
None of that is a surprise. What is surprising is the argument the Justice Department makes in the brief — that racial preferences are vital to national security:
It is a pressing necessity in an era of intense competition in the global economy and ever evolving worldwide national-security threats. The government, moreover, has a vital interest in drawing its personnel — many of whom will eventually become its civilian and military leaders — from a well-qualified and diverse pool of university and service-academy graduates of all backgrounds who possess the understanding of diversity that is necessary to govern and defend the United States.
This might mark the first time the ideologues in the administration have placed national security topmost among their priorities — even if it is a phony argument.
Let’s consider one of the lawyers who signed the brief. Thanks to PJ Media’s Pulitzer-nominated/submitted Every Single One series, we know a great deal about the radical backgrounds of well over 100 new hires in the Justice Department. Sharon McGowan is a new Holder career civil service hire in the Appellate Section of the Civil Rights Division.
Sharon McGowan
Hans von Spakovsky at PJ Media:
Sharon McGowan: Prior to joining the Section, Ms. McGowan spent six years as a staff attorney at the ACLU, working on its Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) & AIDS Project. Her claim to fame there was that she brought a lawsuit against the Library of Congress on behalf of a Special Forces veteran who was denied a job after announcing his/her intention to transition from male to female. The case resulted in a dubious ruling by a hard-core liberal Clinton appointee (James Robertson, who mercifully has since retired from the bench) that Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination also protects individuals who are undergoing sex-change operations. Judge Robertson’s decision notwithstanding, I’m fairly confident that’s not what Congress had in mind when it passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Mia Love: The GOP’s Rising Star in Utah’s 4th Congressional District By Tom Thurlow
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/08/mia_love_the_gops_rising_star_in_utahs_4th_congressional_district.html
The Republican Party has a rising star in Utah’s newly created 4th congressional district: Tea Partier and former Saratoga Springs, Utah mayor Mia Love. If elected, the 36-year-old mother of three will be the GOP’s first black female member of Congress.
As with other Tea Party candidates, Love is not enamored with the out-of-control spending and economic mismanagement of the Obama administration. “I am laser-focused on getting our fiscal house in order and getting people back to work,” she told me in a recent e-mail exchange. “My pet issues are attacking the debt, reducing spending and fixing the economy.”
Love’s website is filled with strong conservative positions. “Washington does not have a revenue problem; it has a spending problem. Balancing the budget is only part of the solution. We must cut federal spending to begin to restore America’s economic strength and citizen liberties.”
If elected, Love plans on opposing the regulations of the Environment Protection Agency, known for its recent rules that will shut down much of the coal industry and throw millions out of work. The Departments of Energy and Education are also on her opposition list. “We must rein in some regulatory agencies and eliminate others,” she added.
Love has also pledged that if elected to Congress, she will join fellow black Republican Allen West as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, which she hopes to “change from the inside out.” She recently told ABC News, “I told Congressman West to hang in there; reinforcements are coming.”
“I believe fiscal discipline, limited government, and personal responsibility are vital to a stronger America,” Love said. “Nowhere is this message more important than among the lawmakers who profit from promoting an unsustainable entitlement system rife with failed poverty programs that perpetuates the culture of government dependency and discourages self-reliance among black Americans. This is the antithesis of Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream.”
Paul Ryan recently appeared in Utah to campaign for Love before his pick as vice presidential nominee. He told a local newspaper that “we need people who are sincere reformers who will do what it takes to get the country back on track. I see that kind of person in Mia — a real leader with natural leadership skills, who’s not afraid to make tough calls and do what needs to be done to save the country from a debt crisis.”
Love would know about managing public money and making tough decisions. Her website recounts how as councilmember and later mayor of Saratoga Springs, Love oversaw extreme growth followed by economic retrenchment that meant having to cut city services. After examining the city’s needs, Love and the city council made the necessary cuts to keep essential city services and keep taxes low. Following her election, one of Love’s first acts as mayor was to reduce the property tax. She points out that while many cities saw their credit ratings cut, the City of Saratoga Springs, Utah, was one of the few municipalities that weathered the financial crisis and kept its highest-possible rating with Standard and Poor’s.
Love is the proud daughter of Haitian immigrants who came to the United States with only $10, hoping to achieve the American dream. While her mother cleaned houses and worked at a nursing home, her father worked for a painting company and drove school buses and cleaned toilets for a local school.
“I am a product of that hard work,” she told Yahoo News, “a product of the American dream.”
President Obama’s recent comments about successful people not succeeding on their own struck a nerve with her. “Entrepreneurs are the backbone of the U.S. economy,” Love told me. “Obama basically said that success is not about individual effort and that is ridiculous. My dad scrubbed toilets. He did it himself. Obama didn’t scrub toilets for him.”
Recently Love was campaigning, and she came across an owner of a bar-be-que restaurant who was also incensed about Obama’s comments. “He told me that this election is not political for him; it is completely personal. His small business affects everything in his life. He told me, ‘having you walk into my business and ask how I am doing and what we can do to make it better is important to me.'”
Understandably, liberals are getting nervous. In a recent analysis of the race, The Daily Kos called Mia Love a “token black Republican” and said that she was “one of the two African Americans in Utah not playing for the Jazz [basketball team].”
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/08/13/Egypt-Refusing-All-Contact-With-Israel-Post-Government-Shakeup
With a large Egyptian military buildup ongoing on the Sinai Peninsula, and coup-like consolidation of power to the Muslim Brotherhood over the weekend, Egypt is now refusing to speak to Israel. After last week’s attack on the Israeli border by Islamist militants operating out of the Sinai, Israel agreed to ease the restrictions of the 1979 peace treaty on Egyptian military operations in the Sinai, hoping Egypt would be able to bring the increasing lawlessness on the peninsula under control.
“It is too early to say what will happen because everything is evolving in Egypt, but we are following what is happening there with great concern”, said an Israeli government official. “Military cooperation is more necessary than ever to re-establish order along the border and in Sinai. The new leadership in the Egyptian army knows that, but the question is what does the Egyptian leadership want? This question has not yet been answered because the new Egyptian government is refusing all contact with Israel”.
http://times247.com/
Michelle uses cancer scare on campaign trail
Who knew that cancer would emerge as a leitmotif of the Obama campaign? First Lady Michelle Obama is the latest to invoke cancer on the campaign trail, but she did so to tout Obamacare rather than attack Mitt Romney directly.
“But this election is also a choice about the health of our families,” Mrs. Obama said at a fundraiser this evening. “We all know these stories — the grandparents who couldn’t afford their medications; the families going broke because a child got sick; the woman dying of cancer whose insurance company wouldn’t cover her care. And let me tell you something, that’s what kept Barack going day after day.”
Moments later, she asked (without naming Romney), “Do we want these reforms to be repealed? Because there are those who do. Or do we want the people we love to have the care they need? That’s the choice we face.”
Read more: http://times247.com/articles/flotus-gop-would-repeal-law-that-saves-women-from-dying-of-cancer#ixzz23bqF0KBn
Romney reaps over 40 percent of key youth vote
For the first time since he began ru…
Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz23bqUXRh3
State workers forced to attend Democratic dinner
The Gateway Pundit
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Blogs
State workers forced to attend Democratic dinner
Whistle-blower documents reveal that Illinois state employees were forced to attend a Jesse Jackson Jr.-Nancy Pelosi dinner on the taxpayer dime. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz23bqtvXhD
Ryan rips Obama on Keystone, energy policy
Los Angeles Times
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
News
Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan riled the crowd of a Colorado high school Tuesday by criticizing President Obama’s energy policies and pledging to lift regulations and open the Keystone Pipeline, a promise that went over well with an exuberant crowd here. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz23brBSs4m
Islamists named editors of Egypt state-run media
Investigative Project on Terrorism
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
News
A controversy has erupted over the appointment of Islamist editors for Egypt’s state-run media, reports Al-Masri Al-Youm’s English language website, the Egypt Independent. The move allows Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood to translate political dominance to media monopolization. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz23brU2AXC
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
When Muslim terrorists broke into a Egyptian Army checkpoint, stole an armored vehicle and a truck, loaded the latter with explosives and tried to launch an attack on Israel, before being blown away by Israeli forces; there was a general agreement on who was to blame.
While Morsi was somewhat more discreet, the Muslim Brotherhood announced, “this crime may well be the work of Israel’s Mossad” as part of an international conspiracy to destabilize their revolution. On the other side of the border, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh offered a more open-ended explanation. “Israel is responsible, one way or another.”
One way or another, Israel usually ends up being responsible for everything. Meanwhile Egypt has quietly asked Hamas to turn over a few of its terrorists who might have been involved. Because, while Israel is responsible for everything in the philosophical sense of being an omnipotent force of evil, when 16 Egyptian soldiers are killed, it becomes necessary to find the people who actually did it.
Turkey’s Islamist rulers who are facing the threat of an independent Kurdish nation rising out of the ruins in Syria and Iraq also have an explanation for the situation. Turkey’s Interior Minister stated that most Kurdish PKK guerrillas are not Turkish citizens and that quite a few are actually Israelis. So in between somehow recruiting multiple Egyptian Muslims willing to die for Israel, Avi and David took a trip to Kurdistan to take potshots at Turkish soldiers.
Western journalists try not to report on such embarrassing outbursts because it makes their favorite Islamists look like loony bigots who can’t deal with a problem without finding some byzantine way to blame it on their least favorite minority group. The Islamists in Cairo and Ankara know better, but their ideology makes it impossible to fight other Muslims without first declaring them to be heretics or pawns of heresy.
http://beforeitsnews.com/press-releases/2012/08/islamic-intimidation-triumphs-in-michigan-school-sale-2459322.html
The following press release should be getting more media attention as it exposes the growth of Muslim organizations capitalizing on the American court system and using it as a weapon of intimidation to sue for religious discrimination.
The Thomas More Law Center boldly exposes the Ann Arbor, Michigan Farmington Public School District and their superintendent’s back-door deal to sell the Eagle Elementary school to the Islamic Cultural Center without allowing bids from other interested religious groups.
What we have here is the potential for an Islamic takeover of American real estate by Islamic groups for use as so-called ‘Islamic Cultural Centers’ because Americans are too frightened that they will be hurt by public sentiment as well as financial expenses. This is how the American Democratic system works and this is how it will work against Americans.
For Immediate Release: August 14, 2012
Contact: Kathleen L. Lynch, (734) 827-2001
Farmington Public Schools Discovers New Reason for Selling School to the Islamic Cultural Association —It was Intimidated
ANN ARBOR, MI – Farmington Public Schools (FPS) came up with a new, never before mentioned reason, for its secret back room, no bid sale of Eagle Elementary school to the Islamic Cultural Center (ICA). In a letter to Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette dated August 8, 2012, school superintendent Susan H. Survalec claimed the District was afraid of being sued by the Islamic Cultural Association.
“Rejection of the ICA offer on the basis of religious affiliation could also have exposed the District to liability under the federal statute prohibiting land use regulations on the basis of religious denomination.”
[Click here to read entire letter]
Unbelievably, FPS is now defending its refusal to consider several other potential buyers, including a Christian church and Jewish learning institution, on the grounds it did not want to be sued for religious discrimination by the Muslim buyer—the Islamic Cultural Association.
FPS’s latest contortion is in response to the Thomas More Law Center’s request that the Michigan Attorney General empanel a Citizens Grand Jury to pierce the fog of corruption that has descended on the back room manipulated sale of Eagle Elementary school to the ICA.
[Click here to read the Law Center’s letter to the Attorney General]
Reacting to the latest FPS explanation of its secret dealings with the ICA, Richard Thompson of the Thomas More Law Center observed: “If this wasn’t such a serious matter, their new reason is laughable. It reminds me of Saturday Night Live character Tommy Flanagan, played by Jon Lovitz. Every time Flanagan got caught in a lie, he would construct a new one using the catch phrase, ‘Yeah! That’s the ticket!’”
Only in Israel: How I View the Media Since Making Aliya
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Author.aspx/1019
Reality for Beinart is from behind a desk at City University of New York where he hasn’t seen a rocket’s red glare through the night in 200 years.
The writer is a former Research and Teaching Fellow at Harvard University where he received his doctorate. He served in the administrations of three U. S. Governors, is Managing Director of a business marketing and development company, and consults on education and community development matters, will be teaching at Jerusalem College of Tech in the fall.
I grew up with American television beginning in 1951, glued to children’s shows like Howdy Doody and Clarabelle the Clown. We got the news from Dave Garroway’s morning news and entertainment show.I became a news hound, but now I see American news reports seldom offered the rest of the story.
In Israel, you get other perspectives watching Russian television news, the BBC, French, Arab, Chinese, and Israeli news shows (in English) supplemented today with the Internet – making sure to read Arutz Sheva, of course, to get the real story of what is happening in Israel.
The Daily Beast sports a Vox Box, a collection of themed packages from as many as nine authors. Only one, Open Zion/Zion Square, focuses on the government and actions of another country. The keeper of the Beast is Newsweek, read the world over. They assail Israel, and seldom enlighten their readers to the violent operations of the Palestinians, and their declarations to destroy the Jewish State. They characterize Israel as an occupier, neighborhood bully, and the cause of America’s security problems.
Their leading opinion maker, Andrew Sullivan, has a death wish for the little State. Utilizing the Internet as his primary medium, Sullivan sets the tone for the Churchill adage, “In the time that it takes a lie to get halfway around the world, the truth is still getting its pants on.”
The Beast’s, Vox Box, ZionSquare, A New Conversation About Israel, Palestine, and the Jewish Future, acts if it is the repository of all intellectual capital for the Israeli-Palestinian denouement. ZionSquare, recently renamed OPEN ZION, is edited by Peter Beinart.
Lara Friedman, Director of Policy and Government Relations for Americans for Peace Now, Hussein Ibish, a Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, and a blogger who moved to the States, so her boys will not serve in the IDF-and she’s not even Charedi, are regulars.
They strike out at the Israeli police, settlers, and IDF. Beinart’s own religion and intellectual status add gravitas to Israel haters with whom he has joined in a call to boycott Israeli goods. Other Jewish and Muslim contributors live in Israel also write with varying critical intensity, and despite their claims of love for the country, are guilty of collaborating with their editor’s duplicity.
The Daily Beast does not sponsor a forum on Islamist extremism, and its threat to world order. The Beast does not sponsor a blog on the Arab Spring and its iniquitous impact on life in Arab countries; the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood takeover to Arab women’s rights. The Beast offers no daily forum on Latin and South America, and the impact of drug cartels. Their tentacles reach into the boardrooms of the world’s largest banks and finance companies like HSBC, American Express, and others that launder the money.
