RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/our-achilles-heel

The United States possesses the most powerful military on earth; by virtually any standard one can name, the U.S. armed forces rank at or near the top in capability, global presence, force projection, fighting power, technology and other measures. They are also combat-experienced after a decade of unrelenting operations. Despite the fact that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has closed the gap considerably in recent years, U.S. defense spending still dwarfs that of the PRC. Indeed, the annual U.S. defense budget is larger than the next ten nations combined; for fiscal year 2011, U.S. defense outlays totaled $739.3 billion USD, while the next ten nations spent slightly less than $500 billion USD. The next-largest military budget was that of China, which spent $89.8 billion dollars.

In addition to its structured military, the armed citizenry of the United States comprise one of the largest de facto militia forces on earth. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack, once observed (perhaps apocryphally) that it would be folly to invade the United States, “You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.”

While Americans have just cause to be proud of their military and national security accomplishments, we should not become complacent. Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military theorist, once said, “So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong, and strike at what is weak.” Our adversaries, military and non-military alike, know that we are very strong militarily and thus prefer not to challenge us in this sphere of conflict. Instead, they will seek to attack us where we are weak, or where they are not expected. Therefore, in securing our nation, communities and homes, it is important that we should ask “Where are we weak?” It is also vital that we expect the unexpected, and at least attempt to see ourselves as our competitors and adversaries do. The following discussion concerns itself with one such weakness, a seam or loophole in our system of governance and national security.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/how-white-guilt-cripples-assessment-of-first-black-president America was very proud of itself in November 2008 when it elected its first black (or at least half-black) president, Barack Obama. Liberal media outlets (excuse the redundancy) framed this event as one of our greatest national cathartic exercises of democracy. They worked directly with Obama and his media manipulators to elevate his presidency […]

Why Is the Pentagon Listening to Hamas-Linked CAIR? http://pjmedia.com/blog/why-is-the-pentagon-listening-to-hamas-linked-cair/?print=1 Our politically correct political establishment is surrendering to Islamic supremacists. Recently the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) asked the Defense Department to drop yet another counter-terror trainer: the Iranian ex-Muslim Reza Kahlili. Surprisingly enough in this hyper-politically correct age, when it seems as if the […]

http://pjmedia.com/blog/left-wing-activists-admit-allen-west-terrifies-them/?print=1

]Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) is the activist Left’s number one congressional target this election cycle because he poses an existential threat to progressivism, a prominent professional left-wing organizer suggests.

West is “a national rising star in the Tea Party,” Becky Bond explained during a panel discussion at the Campaign for America’s Future’s recent Take Back the American Dream confab in Washington, D.C.

The famously outspoken retired Army lieutenant colonel with the special talent for getting under Democrats’ skin “is going to start to define” what the Republican Party stands for, said Bond, president of the well-funded Credo SuperPAC.

A super PAC is a kind of political action committee that may raise and spend unlimited funds from corporations, unions, associations, and individuals to overtly advocate for or against a candidate. Credo SuperPAC is an outgrowth of Credo Mobile, the wireless reseller that donates part of its profits to leftist groups such as the George Soros-funded Media Matters for America, ACORN-affiliated Project Vote, Color of Change, and the Sierra Club Foundation.

The danger, as Bond sees it, is that if West’s brand of politics catches on nationwide, American politics may shift rightward.

“And he’s a freshman,” Bond said. “If we don’t take him down now, he’s raising millions of dollars, and he’s going to set what the new normal is for the Republican Party.”

Bond bragged that her group is harassing West (“bird dogging him at every attempt,” in her words) in order to waste his campaign’s resources. “We’re getting to [West and Tea Party-backed congressmen] at every level.”

It is not hyperbole to say that liberals loathe the solidly conservative first-term congressman with the fire of a thousand suns. Credo SuperPAC calls West “racist, sexist, anti-science, hypocritical and downright crazy.”

Under the words “Beyond Crazy,” Credo SuperPAC’s website links to articles online that trumpet West’s various heresies against political correctness. Unlike most on the Left, West is unapologetically pro-Israel and pro-life, positions that probably helped get him maligned as “racist” and “sexist.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/312807/burn-down-suburbs-stanley-kurtz

President Obama is not a fan of America’s suburbs. Indeed, he intends to abolish them. With suburban voters set to be the swing constituency of the 2012 election, the administration’s plans for this segment of the electorate deserve scrutiny. Obama is a longtime supporter of “regionalism,” the idea that the suburbs should be folded into the cities, merging schools, housing, transportation, and above all taxation. To this end, the president has already put programs in place designed to push the country toward a sweeping social transformation in a possible second term. The goal: income equalization via a massive redistribution of suburban tax money to the cities.

Obama’s plans to undercut the political and economic independence of America’s suburbs reach back decades. The community organizers who trained him in the mid-1980s blamed the plight of cities on taxpayer “flight” to suburbia. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Obama’s mentors at the Gamaliel Foundation (a community-organizing network Obama helped found) formally dedicated their efforts to the budding fight against suburban “sprawl.” From his positions on the boards of a couple of left-leaning Chicago foundations, Obama channeled substantial financial support to these efforts. On entering politics, he served as a dedicated ally of his mentors’ anti-suburban activism.

The alliance endures. One of Obama’s original trainers, Mike Kruglik, has hived off a new organization called Building One America, which continues Gamaliel’s anti-suburban crusade under another name. Kruglik and his close allies, David Rusk and Myron Orfield, intellectual leaders of the “anti-sprawl” movement, have been quietly working with the Obama administration for years on an ambitious program of social reform.

In July of 2011, Kruglik’s Building One America held a conference at the White House. Orfield and Rusk made presentations, and afterwards Kruglik personally met with the president in the Oval Office. The ultimate goal of the movement led by Kruglik, Rusk, and Orfield is quite literally to abolish the suburbs. Knowing that this could never happen through outright annexation by nearby cities, they’ve developed ways to coax suburbs to slowly forfeit their independence.

One approach is to force suburban residents into densely packed cities by blocking development on the outskirts of metropolitan areas, and by discouraging driving with a blizzard of taxes, fees, and regulations. Step two is to move the poor out of cities by imposing low-income-housing quotas on development in middle-class suburbs. Step three is to export the controversial “regional tax-base sharing” scheme currently in place in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area to the rest of the country. Under this program, a portion of suburban tax money flows into a common regional pot, which is then effectively redistributed to urban, and a few less well-off “inner-ring” suburban, municipalities.

The Obama administration, stocked with “regionalist” appointees, has been advancing this ambitious plan quietly for the past four years. Efforts to discourage driving and to press development into densely packed cities are justified by reference to fears of global warming. Leaders of the crusade against “sprawl” very consciously use environmental concerns as a cover for their redistributive schemes.

The centerpiece of the Obama administration’s anti-suburban plans is a little-known and seemingly modest program called the Sustainable Communities Initiative. The “regional planning grants” funded under this initiative — many of them in battleground states like Florida, Virginia, and Ohio — are set to recommend redistributive policies, as well as transportation and development plans, designed to undercut America’s suburbs. Few have noticed this because the program’s goals are muffled in the impenetrable jargon of “sustainability,” while its recommendations are to be unveiled only in a possible second Obama term.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/hillary_clinton_americas_worst_secretary_of_state.html The scene could hardly have been more bizarre: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s motorcade was pelted with rotten tomatoes and shoes as she was being driven to the opening of a U.S. Consulate General in the ancient Egyptian city of Alexandria. The mob chanted “Monica, Monica” to taunt the former first lady with […]

http://www.steynonline.com/5072/street-sign-statism I’ve spent the last few weeks tootling round various parts of Britain and Europe, and, as always, it takes me a couple of days to acclimatize to local driving norms. I quickly appreciate being on a country lane and able to see the country, as opposed to admiring rural America’s unending procession of bend […]

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/1475/bds_movement_forcing_brits_to_pay_more_for_medicines_
Anti-Israeli activists are once again lobbying against Israeli industry. This time to the detriment of European citizens too

In the economic climate currently plaguing Europe, one would expect elected officials (and perhaps in particular, members of the Labour Party) to be among the first to support an initiative which has the potential to contribute to easing the strain both on government budgets and the purses of ordinary citizens – especially those with lower incomes.However, it seems that for some UK MEPs, political posturing is far more important than the well-being of their constituents.

The European Union – Israel Agreement on Conformity, Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products (ACAA) was approved by the European Council of Ministers in March 2010 and then sent on to the European Parliament for ratification. The European Parliament has delayed that process for over two years – supposedly as a reaction to the May 2010 flotilla incident in which nine Turkish political activists were killed after having attacked Israeli soldiers.

As the wheels of that process begin to turn again, anti-Israel activists are once more trying to scupper the ACAA; among them Labour Party member and Scottish MEP David Martin, who spoke against the agreement in the European Parliament, had a letter of objection published in the Guardian and wrote about the subject on his blog.

If ratified and enacted, the ACAA will mean that European pharmaceutical companies will be able to purchase Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) and medicines from Israeli companies at lower costs as the need for additional testing in Europe will in many cases be significantly reduced or even no longer exist.

That of course will bring about lower manufacturing costs for European drug companies, ultimately resulting in savings for the European governments which provide their citizens with healthcare, as well as cheaper medications for European citizens paying for certain products out of their own pockets .

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/romneys_apology_tour.html Mitt Romney’s recent triumphal tour of Britain, Israel, and Poland struck me as a much-needed and most welcome apology tour for Barack Obama’s abject abandonment and humiliation of our most loyal and trusted allies. Finally, here is an apology tour that Americans can get behind. It was a triumph. The enemedia says otherwise, of […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/08/the_palestinian_culture_of_slapping_israel.html Mitt Romney is being castigated for praising the culture that has allowed a democratic, (mainly) free market Israel, operating under the rule of law, to thrive amid decades of threat and periodic open warfare and a heavy defense burden. Actually, he’s being castigated for what his praise of Israel implies or says outright about […]