RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

THE MACHINE

The most impressive thing about RNC 2012 was the smoothness of the entire thing. If the 2008 RNC stumbled, but ran on enthusiasm, the 2012 edition was a polished frictionless machine, except for one awkward moment with Eastwood, and even that seemed geared to give the critics something petty to pick apart that would not reflect badly on Mitt Romney and the Republican Party.

Mitt Romney is a machine politician, but not a politician of the political machine. He appears to excel at building a smoothly running machine around him. It’s not high praise and yet it’s not counter to the impression that he gives. It reflects his message that he takes charge and builds things that work.

Behind all the speeches and showpieces, RNC 2012 is a reflection of Romney’s whole campaign, it is the precisely calculated work of people who know what they are doing, who don’t always get it right, but have ability, ambition and even some guts.

Romney’s people went into this understanding that Obama and his allies would run on destroying him as a man, on making him into an ugly caricature, a running joke, a bad human being. And they worked to make that pitch as hard as possible to sell. They knew that the Democrats would focus on the white female vote, so they beat them to it. It’s not a new game, Reagan played it too, but it’s gone up to a new level.

Some wanted this event to hit Obama much harder. But it hit him hard enough. What it really did was make Romney much harder to hit. Romney’s people understand that common sense is on their side and that their mission is to defang the negative attacks from the media that will make people feel bad or guilty about following their common sense. And they did a pretty good job of that tonight.

And the guts kicked in when they picked their battles. It would have made sense for Romney to dodge Bain and for Ryan to avoid Medicare, instead they turned around, picked up both issues and ran on them, and rammed them back into Obama’s teeth. It’s gutsy, but there’s also a common sense element to it. If you’re going to get attacked remorselessly on an issue, then you might as well own the issue and use it to send a message to your opponent that the attacks will hurt him as much as you.

That’s what RNC 2012 did.

Romney ran in the primaries as the most electable candidate, not by virtue of any special ability, but on determination and competence. RNC 2012 reflected that. It’s the work of people who are determined to win and who play hard. That may not be enough, but it’s a harder run for his money than Obama got last time around.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/315661/dog-whistling-past-graveyard-mark-steyn
Are there any words left that aren’t racist?

American racism is starting to remind me of American alcoholism. At the founding of the republic, in the days when beer was thought of as “liquid bread” and a healthy nutritional breakfast, Americans drank about three to four times as much as they do now. Today the United States has a lower per capita rate of alcohol consumption than almost any other developed nation, but it has more alcoholism support groups than any other developed nation — around 164 groups per million people. France, which drinks about 50 percent more per capita than America, has one-twentieth the number of support groups. The French and Italians enjoy drinking, the English and Irish enjoy getting drunk, and Americans enjoy getting drunk on ever more absurd stigmatizatory excess. At Walmart they card you if you “appear to be under” — what is it up to now? 43? 57? And the citizenry take this as a compliment: Well-preserved grandmothers return from failed attempts to purchase a bottle of wine with gay cries of, “I was carded at Costco! They’ve made my weekend!”

And so it goes with American racism: The less there is, the more extravagantly the racism-awareness lobby patrols its beat. The Walmart carding clerks of the media are ever more alert to those who “appear to be” racist. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews declared this week that Republicans use “Chicago” as a racist code word. Not to be outdone, his colleague Lawrence O’Donnell pronounced “golf” a racist code word. When Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell observed that Obama was “working to earn a spot on the PGA tour,” O’Donnell brilliantly perceived that subliminally associating Obama with golf is racist, because the word “golf” is subliminally associated with “Tiger Woods,” and the word “Tiger” is not so subliminally associated with cocktail waitress Jamie Grubbs, nightclub hostess Rachel Uchitel, lingerie model Jamie Jungers, former porn star Holly Sampson, etc., etc. So by using the word “golf” you’re sending a racist dog-whistle that Obama is a sex addict who reverses over fire hydrants.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/315493/cair-censor-or-free-speech-champion-andrew-c-mccarthy

Breaking news: CAIR, perennial agitator for language purges and “hate speech” regulation, is suddenly the champion of First Amendment free expression. It proves, once again, that Islamists and leftists are just like defense lawyers.

A defense lawyer who has a good case can be very persuasive. If the defendant really is innocent, or if the prosecution’s case really is flawed, defense counsel can take one main line of defense and pound away at it relentlessly. That is how doubt is sown, which is the defense lawyer’s objective. A credible story that the prosecutor cannot completely refute is the roadmap to acquittal.

This, however, is not the lot of most defense lawyers. In the vast majority of cases, the client really is guilty, and the state really does have ironclad proof. So defense counsel becomes the charlatan for whom every trial day is a new day. On Monday, he tries a false-identification theory, suggesting that the defendant was not even at the scene of the crime. When that doesn’t fly, on Tuesday he runs with, “Well, maybe he was there, but he didn’t know the three guys he was with.” Once that blows up, Wednesday’s gambit is: “Well, sure, he knew them, but he didn’t know they were going to rob the bank.” By Thursday, it’s: “Well, maybe he said he’d help them, but one was a government informant, so he must have been entrapped.”

Our defense lawyer is put in this untenable position because his true objective is fundamentally different from his lofty pretense. He purports to be on a quest for justice, but the only thing he really cares about is getting the defendant off, by any means that might work. Thus, he tries all means he can think of, even if they are contradictory — even if positing the first defense undermines the next, ultimately destroying his overall credibility as an advocate.

Although it does more than its share of litigating, the Council on American-Islamic Relations operates mainly in the court of public opinion. CAIR is the Muslim Brotherhood bullhorn created to cheerlead for sharia, for Hamas, and for sundry other jihadists — all under the guise of “civil rights.” In unison with its “social justice” collaborators on the left, CAIR is most often found campaigning against “Islamophobia.” This is a term strategically created by the Brotherhood to slur as “defamation” or “incitement” (collectively, “hate speech”) any criticism of Islamic supremacism. That includes the ideology’s undeniable roots in Muslim scripture; its vow to destroy the West from within; and its promotion of terrorism against legitimate sovereign authority, spun as “resistance” against “occupation.”

It is farce. CAIR has no real interest in hate speech per se. Indeed, it has no real interest in civil rights — no proponent of sharia could. Its sole actual imperative is Islamic supremacism: promoting any cause that increases Islamic influence and protesting any effort either to reduce Islamic influence or to subject Islamic-supremacist doctrine to scrutiny. Consequently, CAIR’s precious fretting over hate speech extends only so far as Islam is advanced or imperiled.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/08/31/israeli-paper-a-shouting-match-took-place-between-israeli-pm-and-us-ambassador-over-iran/#

“A shouting match” allegedly took place between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro during a visit by Congressman Mike Rogers (R-MI), Chair of the House Intelligence Committee earlier this week, the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronot reported Friday.

Under the banner headline “The Conflict”, correspondent Shimon Shiffer, claims that during the meeting with Rogers, who was accompanied by Ambassador Shapiro, Netanyahu blamed Obama for not doing enough to stop the Iranian nuclear program and trying to block Israel from acting independently, and as a result, “time has run out”. At this point, Shapiro intervened to protest that the PM was misrepresenting Obama’s position, “ignoring the President’s commitment to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons”.

According to the report, when the Prime Minister responded, “sparks flew” and the meeting ended on a confrontational note. Shiffer claims that during the whole exchange, Congressman Rogers “was watching from the sidelines, stunned”. The article ends by quoting an unnamed political source who claims that “if Obama wins, Netanyahu will have to look for safe shelter from the President’s vengeance”. The Algemeiner has not independently confirmed the accuracy of this story.

The US Embassy in Tel-Aviv declined to comment on the report, and Susan Phalen, Communications Director at the House Intelligence committee, did not immediately respond the The Algemeiner’s request for comment.

http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/31/the-russians-are-coming-the-russians-are-coming/?print=1

In 1966, a Soviet captain ran his submarine aground on a Massachusetts beach in a comedy film titled “The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming.” In 2012, a Russian captain took his submarine into the Gulf of Mexico and did not run it aground. Instead, he proved the United States could neither detect nor deter him, and then sailed home. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) did not think it was a comedy.

According to press reports, the Russian navy sent a stealthy Akula nuclear submarine into the Gulf of Mexico on a month-long patrol in June and July. With his eye on 624 miles of Texas Gulf coastline, Senator Cornyn wrote to the chief of naval operations, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, and demanded a detailed report on the incursion.

During that same time, Russian bombers intruded into restricted California airspace in a replay of Cold War tactics. By sending a submarine into the Gulf of Mexico and flying bombers into California airspace, the Russians demonstrated that the United States is vulnerable to close-in cruise missile attack from the sea and air. Perhaps Russia flexed its muscles to back up a statement by Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov that, “A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens,” a reference to U.S. plans to deploy missile defenses in Europe.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has long made it clear that he wants the United States to remain permanently vulnerable to Russian missiles, and must not use its technological superiority to defend the American homeland. In a March 26th meeting with the then-Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, President Obama promised that after his re-election he would have more “flexibility” regarding Russian objections. The open microphone also picked up the phrase, “particularly missile defense.” In 2010, President Obama proposed canceling missile defense programs like the Airborne Laser, the Multiple Kill Vehicle, and the Kinetic Energy Interceptor and cutting Defense Interceptors in Alaska and California. But no one knows whether President Obama has already made secret deals with Moscow.

During the Cold War, carrier groups defended America’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts from Soviet submarines. The defenses included a very long-range underwater listening system, long-range patrol aircraft, and attack submarines. Soviet submarines approaching American shores were detected, tracked, and, in many cases, forced to the surface. That vigorous defense was justified when it was discovered that Soviet submarines carried cruise missiles with nuclear and biological warheads. Today’s Russian submarines also carry cruise missiles with electromagnetic pulse (EMP) warheads, capable of destroying the entire American electrical infrastructure. Unlikely?

http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/comment-washington-doesn-t-get-it-iran-just-wants-the-bomb-1.6925?trailingPath=2.169%2C2.225%2C2.227%2C

THIS PRESCIENT COLUMN WAS PUBLISHED THREE YEARS AGO…..RSK

Leaving Iran to the unpersuasive U.S., UN sanctions could bring Israel to the outer limits of survival.

Over the summer, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden boldly asserted that Israel, “as a sovereign nation,” has the right to protect itself against a nuclearizing Iran. In law, the precise protective action that Biden had in mind is called “anticipatory self-defense.” Now, however, official Washington is offering Jerusalem much less audacious “advice” than undertaking a permissible preemption. In essence, the current and still plainly futile message is “tougher sanctions.”

On several occasions, the “international community” has imposed “serious” sanctions against Iran. Nonetheless, uranium enrichment has only accelerated in that country. At no time, in fact, has Tehran shown even the slightest inclination to value a promised proper place in the world higher than simply getting “the bomb.” Once again, Washington just doesn’t get it.

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understands, of course, that his country can rely on its Arrow anti-missile system for only a very limited measure of active defense. Israel’s ballistic missile defense network can never provide the Jewish state with adequate security from a nuclear attack on its civilian population. Recently, Defense Minister Ehud Barak affirmed this essential understanding, stating explicitly three times that all preemptive options must remain on the table.

No country can be expected to cooperate in its own annihilation. Leaving Iran to the manifestly unpersuasive sanctions of the United States, and/or of the United Nations, could bring Israel to the outer limits of survival. If U.S. President Barack Obama already understands this, and if he also cares about Israel’s survival, he would not now be demanding that Netanyahu hew obsequiously to a discredited and banal policy of contradictory Iran options.

http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2012/08/31/the-reckoning-cia-interrogation-investigation-closed-without-further-charges/

With the nation’s eyes fixed on Tampa, the Obama Justice Department quietly announced the closure of its much heralded investigation into purported torture, murder, and other war crimes that the Bush-deranged Left alleged were committed in carrying out the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program.

Attorney General Eric Holder issued a statement Thursday afternoon, reporting that the investigation was being terminated without charges.

Most of the allegations had been investigated during the Bush years — not by political appointees but by career prosecutors, who after diligent scrubbing determined that there were no prosecutable cases. The 2008 Obama campaign nevertheless accused Bush officials of war crimes. No one was louder on the subject than then-campaign spokesman Holder, who stoked Obama’s base in a speech at the leftist American Constitution Society:

Our government authorized the use of torture, approved of secret electronic surveillance against American citizens, secretly detained American citizens without due process of law, denied the writ of habeas corpus to hundreds of accused enemy combatants and authorized the use of procedures that violate both international law and the United States Constitution.

Holder promised a “reckoning” for Bush’s “needlessly abusive and unlawful practices” that not only offended “the Constitution and the rule of law” but “made us less rather than more safe.” Having thus passed the audition with flying colors, Holder was named Obama’s attorney general and assured the Senate panel considering his nomination that the CIA had surely committed “torture” in the interrogation program by waterboarding three — count ‘em, three — high-value al-Qaeda detainees (with the knowledge of bipartisan congressional leadership, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi).

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/ad-lib/2012/aug/29/no-muslim-prayers-democratic-convention-cardinal-d/
IS THIS LAST MINUTE HOUSEKEEPING BY THE DNC? THE JUMAH PRAYER WAS LISTED ON THE DNC SITE AND THEN SCRUBBED….RSK
No Muslim prayers at Democratic Convention, but Cardinal Dolan will give closing prayer

WASHINGTON, August 29, 2012 — Enough of the nonsense. Enough of the outright lies and distortions.

Here are the facts:

* Cardinal Timothy Dolan will give the closing prayer at the Democratic Convention, just as he is doing at the Republican Convention.

* There will be no Muslim prayer led by any radical Islamists at the Democratic Convention.

Here is the truth despite Right Wing blogs and misreporting by various media:

Just as he did at the Republican Convention, Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, accepted the Democrats’ invitation to close their convention with a blessing. Even though he has often been at odds with Democrats on social issues, the Cardinal will be there as he was at the GOP event as a pastor. In a statement released by the Cardinal’s spokesman, Joseph Zwilling, to the Catholic journal Commonweal Magazine, the Catholic prelate made clear his role:

“Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, has accepted an invitation to deliver the closing prayer at next week’s Democratic National Convention. As was previously announced, he will also be offering the closing prayer at the Republican Convention on Thursday of this week.

“It was made clear to the Democratic Convention organizers, as it was to the Republicans, that the Cardinal was coming solely as a pastor, only to pray, not to endorse any party, platform, or candidate. The Cardinal consulted Bishop Peter Jugis of the Diocese of Charlotte, who gave the Cardinal his consent to take part in the convention that will be taking place in his diocese.”

That should end the ridiculous rumors about Democrats snubbing the Cardinal, disinviting him, or in any way disrespecting him.

As for the Muslim distortions that have gone viral, there will be no Jumah prayers at the Democratic Convention by the Bureau of Indigenous Muslim Affairs. There will be a gathering of Muslims on Friday, August 31 at Marshall Park in Charlotte for an open-air prayer, and other events are planned for around the city as well. It is, however, only one of the 1,000 non-official events that are occurring in Charlotte over the next week.

As the Charlotte Observer noted, these events are timed to coincide with the Convention but are not part of the convention unless they have the Democratic Convention logo. The Jumah Congregational Prayer does not have a DNCC logo.

Some of the other events planned for the week of convention, and not endorsed by the DNCC, include a NASCAR event, an Alabama Gospel brunch, A CarolinaFest (celebrating the Carolinas and the South), Texas Exes Happy Hour, Financial Football, Zumba/Cardiofunk Dance Fitness, and Bend the Arc Jewish Action breakfast to name only some of the events swirling around the main event of the Convention itself.

To fact check this further, go to Snopes, a website that investigates and debunks rumors that have no basis in fact.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=283307

Into the Fray: The Right must revert to the traditional Zionist perception of “reality” as malleable rather than immutable.

In this two-part sequel to my columns analyzing “What’s wrong with the Right,” I set out the components of a comprehensive approach to what is usually termed the “Palestinian problem.”

This will include not only the measures that should be undertaken to dissipate – rather than resolve – the problem per se, but those that must be undertaken to render them feasible.

To recap briefly

Over the past two weeks, I took the Right to task for its poorly thought through proposals for alternative policy paradigms to the two-state-solution (TSS) proposal, which even if implemented would, in all likelihood, eliminate few of the threats to Israel’s security, and exacerbate many.

I criticized what I saw as the intellectual surrender by the Right in failing to acknowledge, or, at least, failing to clearly articulate acknowledgement of the inevitable conclusion that, to sustain itself as the nation-state of the Jewish people, Israel must address two imperatives:

a. The geographic imperative, which implies it cannot make any significant territorial concessions in Judea and Samaria; and

b. The demographic imperative, which implies it cannot incorporate large segments of the Palestinian Arabs, resident in this area, as enfranchised citizens within its sovereign territory.

This leads to the inescapable deduction that if Israel is to be secured as the permanent Jewish nation-state, the only non-coercive option is the relocation of the Palestinian Arabs, induced primarily by generous economic incentives.

Recognizing realities

Effective policy invariably requires one to acknowledge existing realities. But acknowledging reality does not mean accepting it. Indeed, to successfully change reality, one has first to recognize it.

In this regard, it must be admitted that – mainly due to decades of dereliction of diplomatic duty – Israel has allowed the international discourse on the Mideast conflict in general, and the Palestinian component of it in particular, to gel very disadvantageously for it. It has permitted the TSS-concept to become deeply engrained in the international psyche as the only option available to Israel that will allow it to exist as a Jewish democracy and prevent it from becoming either an undemocratic Jewish ethnocracy – imposing minority Judeo-centric rule on an Arab majority – or a non-Jewish state-of-allits- citizens.

In other words, the currently entrenched (mis)perceptions are that Israel must choose between the risk of becoming geographically unviable, or the certainty of becoming demographically unviable. Intellectual allegiance to this misplaced dichotomy between a TSScompliant Jewish democracy on the one hand, and non-democratic/non-Jewish alternatives on the other, has come to dominate not only the content of the international debate, but the cultural codex of its conduct.

To challenge its validity – no matter what the substantive basis for such dissent – is to risk being marginalized professionally and ostracized socially, at least as far as mainstream institutions are concerned.

It will not be easy to shatter this political reality, which due to a noxious mix of neglect, naïveté and nefariousness has, over more than two decades, hardened into the “received wisdom” on the Judeo-Arabic conflict in the Middle East.

However, within the constraints of the faux framework of artificially imposed dictates that comprises current conventional wisdom, there is no viable policy-paradigm that can sustain Israel, in the long run, as the nation-state of the Jews.

Accordingly, despite the daunting difficulties, prising loose the debilitating stranglehold it has in defining the conceptual space of the discourse is an essential precondition for the promotion – and eventual implementation – of any Zionist-compliant TSS-alternative.

Unless this is grasped – and perceived as both possible and imperative – pursuit of such alternatives is futile.

Radical revision required

To accomplish this objective requires a radical revision of how the nation relates to diplomacy – particularly public diplomacy (a.k.a. hasbara) – as a crucial element in the design of the strategic arsenal required to sustain Jewish sovereignty in the modern era.

MY FRIEND AND E-PAL SAW THINGS DIFFERENTLY….AND I ALWAYS APPRECIATE HIS TAKE ON THINGS…..RSK

A number of people sent me messages to the effect that this speech or that speech didn’t cover a particular topic, particularly the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into our government.The speeches weren’t made for us – we are already against Obama and we know the hidden problems like the Muslim Brotherhood.

The speeches are aimed at the people who undecided or who are wavering in their support of Obama. As such, they have to hit the problems that people are having in their day-to-day lives. To emphasize the Jihadi problem would make it difficult to persuade many voters to come to the Romney side.

Foreign policy certainly was not the emphasis of the convention but it was not neglected. Quite a few speakers did mention Obama’s abandonment of Israel. They mentioned the loss of respect for the U.S., the diminishment of our power. Most of us are aware of Condi Rice’s positions on the Mideast and we don’t like them. But Condi’s speech wasn’t about foreign policy. Her speech was about the ability of a Black woman, raised in Jim Crow Alabama to rise up through the ranks of the Republican Party to become Secretary of State. She accomplished that. She gave that whole speech from a few notes and no teleprompter.

In this instance, we have to put aside her personal views. We have to consider how much she contributed to the fight against Obama.

The same themes, that minorities can succeed in America, that they can succeed in the Republican Party and that they can make difference permeated all the speeches by minority men and women. Another consistent theme was that Republican governors have taken terrible state financial conditions and turned them around.

What the campaign had and has to do is convince a few percent of voter here, a few percent there to support Romney instead of Obama. That Israel was mentioned by name by so many speakers is an attempt to increase Jewish support for the ticket. Already Jewish support for Obama has dropped from 78% to the low 60’s. Maybe it can drop down to the 50’s.

We will only know how successful these efforts were after the election.

Jan

PS: The irony of this campaign is the number of anti-Racist, non-Racist people who voted for Obama because of his race.