http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/why-the-senate-shouldnt-give-john-kerry-a-pass/print/ In nominating John Kerry for Secretary of State and Chuck Hagel for Defense, Barack Obama has highlighted both men’s combat service in Vietnam. In doing so Obama repeats the common fallacy that combat experience necessarily qualifies someone to make decisions about when, why, and how to conduct a war, decisions that in our political […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/337581 Myrtle Beach, S.C. — Tim Scott, the newest member of the U.S. Senate, got a hero’s welcome from the groups meeting here for the South Carolina Tea Party Convention this weekend. Scott, who replaced Jim DeMint as South Carolina’s junior senator this month, has had a meteoric rise in politics. Five years ago he […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/337578
Our Sort-of War on Terror
Either by design or through incompetence, the Obama administration’s war on terror has become indefinable. In fact, to the degree that there are identifiable policies, they seem either internally contradictory or at odds with other administration policies.
THE INHERITED PROTOCOLS
What is the current Obama position on the so-called Bush-era war-on-terror protocols? Are they still useful in stopping terrorists, irrelevant, toxic, or sort of all three? The administration has never given us an explanation of its attitude toward the continued operation of Guantanamo Bay, the use of military tribunals, the exact status of renditions, the use of preventive detention, and the employment of the Patriot Act, especially wiretaps and intercepts.
To the extent that anyone could define the present anti-terrorism policy, it might be paraphrased along the following lines: “We rejected these protocols when, as outside critics, there was partisan advantage in doing so. But after assuming office, we found them useful, embraced most of them and even expanded some, preferred to ignore that about-face, assumed that the global and the domestic Left would not object any longer — given that their opposition was more to Bush than to his policies per se — and wish to continue these measures even as we keep quiet about them.”
THE EUPHEMISM WAR
Simultaneously with the flip-flop over the Bush inheritance, the administration also waged an ancillary war of euphemism. Jihad was not to be defined as an Islamist holy war against the West, but was to be officially regarded as a sort of Deepak Chopra personal struggle to achieve spiritual purity. The words Islamist and Islamism fell out of use. “The War on Terror” was rightly derided as a war against a tactic, but the phrase was wrongly not replaced with a more honest and accurate “War on radical Islamists, jihadists, and Salafists.” Absurdities, like “overseas contingency operations” and “man-caused disasters,” followed and yet were not seriously employed for more than a week even by those who coined them. According to the Department of Defense, “workplace violence” best explained Major Hasan’s butchery of 13 of his fellow soldiers at Ford Hood — an act whose real significance was the possible harm to the military’s vaunted diversity program.
Eric Holder pontificated about trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as a civilian in a New York federal court but then, given the popular outrage, quietly tabled that foolhardy idea. Support for the proposed Ground Zero mosque was likewise supposed to offer proof of administration outreach to Muslims, and likewise backfired. There was talk of ensuring Miranda rights for foiled foreign terrorist suspects — and then that too was quietly dropped. There were also loud threats of trying former CIA interrogators for their supposed use of torture — and then that was too quietly tabled. Apparently, the point of these missteps had been to placate possible liberal critics by painting a civil-libertarian veneer over the substantial continuation of the Bush war on terror. Or was there any idea at all, as policies were as haphazardly proposed as they were dropped and forgotten?
THE DRONE KILLINGS
From 2005 to 2008 the U.S. may have killed between 200 and 700 enemy combatants or suspected terrorists through some 50 or so strikes by pilotless drones. Originally, the program was either used in close support of U.S. troops fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan — drones being more or less equivalent to manned bombing missions or missile or mortar strikes — or employed against suspected al-Qaeda terrorists on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Such strikes were, nonetheless, often criticized by the Left as leaving the theater of war and entering the realm of contract assassination.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323442804578231870322045866.html?mod=lifestyle_newsreel
Japan, Israel and Britain are facing big problems of their own just as the U.S. needs their help
THIS IS THE HEADLINE THAT I WISH JABOTINSKY COULD SEE…..AMAZING …..RSK
There are three big unfolding stories for international politics and the global economy: The next stage of China’s rise, the continuing turmoil in the Middle East and the redesign of Europe. The three countries with the most to lose from these trends are, respectively, Japan, Israel and Britain. They also happen to be America’s most reliable allies in the world’s three most important regions. As 2013 unfolds, the special relationships that these countries enjoy with Washington won’t protect them from the worst effects of these sweeping changes. That is also bad news for U.S. foreign policy.
The further expansion of China’s political, economic and military power leaves Japan in an increasingly tough spot. The broadening and deepening of China’s consumer market creates critical opportunities for Japanese companies, but Beijing’s new assertiveness, particularly on territorial disputes involving Japan, is fueling nationalist anger inside both countries. The risk isn’t that the two countries will exchange fire but that emerging frictions will undermine the exchange of everything else, reversing the momentum in a commercial relationship that has become especially important for the buoyancy of Japan’s economy.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324081704578235871445728366.html?mod=lifestyle_newsreel
The Word Naked Is Hot in Advertising; Synergy With Sunscreens, Natural Foods?
The American Association for Nude Recreation is on a bare hunt.
The nation’s largest nudist association is looking for corporate sponsors, and leaders think this might be their moment in the sun. Now that the organic food movement has given the word naked a wholesome new meaning—suggesting natural and free of preservatives—the word is popping up in all kinds of product names: Naked Pizza, Bear Naked granola, the Naked Grape Chardonnay and more than one naked lager.
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American Association for Nude Recreation
Executive Director Jim Smock says the group has targeted natural products.
Since October, the group has sent about 100 query letters. They have written to the makers of “naked” products and to companies selling items their members use a lot, such as Hawaiian Tropic and BullFrog sunscreens. And they have also targeted companies they think should be interested because their advertising has gone au naturel in a fun or artful way. Those include Geico, Nike, NKE +1.05% Reebok, Dove and Delta Faucet.
“We’re hoping we’ll give the association greater exposure,” says the association’s Executive Director Jim Smock, adding a difficult to believe, “no pun intended.”
The response has been skimpy. So far, he has received three letters of regret, and a case of E. & J. Gallo Winery’s Naked Grape wine.
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Jim Smock
The nudists remain hopeful. The group has commissioned a demographic analysis of its members and is offering potential sponsors a peek at the markets they could reach. “We know we have something to offer,” says Susan Weaver, president of the Kissimmee, Fla., group.
The pitch: The typical member is a college-educated empty-nester who has disposable income and likes to travel. The nonprofit group has an annual budget of about $1.5 million, 34,000 dues-paying members in the U.S. and Canada, and 266 affiliated Nakation spots (clubs, resorts, bed-and-breakfasts and RV campgrounds).
But the association, which lobbies for better enforcement of anti-lewdness laws rather than the creation of anti-nudity laws, is trying to cast a wider net. Consider, the group’s leaders say, the popularity of skinny-dipping. About 15% of American leisure travelers say they are interested in a resort that offers clothing-optional recreation, according to a survey by the travel marketing firm MMGY Global. And 12% say they would like to go to a nude beach.
Nevertheless, the group faces a significant hurdle. Though the 82-year-old organization has made strides in gaining social acceptance and legal protections, many people still find nudism off-putting.
Wooing major brands could be a heavy lift, given the risk of backlash and the association’s relatively small membership, branding experts say.
Their advice: The association should first give itself a face-lift, a sleeker website, a revamped logo and maybe a stripped-down name.
Karen Post, author of “Brand Turnaround: How Brands Gone Bad Returned to Glory and the 7 Game Changers that Made the Difference,” says the association’s tagline—”The credible voice of reason for nude recreation since 1931″—has got to go.
Ms. Weaver says she is proud of that tagline, developed with the help of a focus group seven years ago, but conceded that the group’s brand and website could use some spiffing up. She says it is one of the things she hopes to do with any money the association raises from corporate sponsors, along with expanding its education campaign.
Hers isn’t the first group to try to turn a negative image on its head.
The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws has helped shift public opinion enough to win legalization of medical marijuana in 18 states and recreational use in two. Condom makers reinvented the product’s image as a symbol of public health. And the American Association for Justice, formerly known as the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, launched a campaign in November to change negative perceptions about filing lawsuits.
Tom Mulhall is an association member and owner of the Terra Cotta Inn, a nudist resort in Palm Springs, Calif. If he were making the appeal to corporate executives, he says, he would speak to their bottom line. “Nudists are where the gay community was back in the ’60s. A lot of people are still in the closet,” he says. “It’s a much bigger market than people really realize.”
The association already has several sponsors, among them Toronto’s Tilley Endurables, whose sun-shielding hats are popular among members.
“We jokingly call ourselves the official uniform,” says Tilley spokeswoman Susan Laspa. “It’s a natural fit for us.”
Tilley sponsors the association’s annual convention, takes out ads in its publications and sends the group more than 50 hats a year. In 10 years, Tilley has never experienced a backlash for supporting the nudist group, Ms. Laspa says.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324374004578219640180937224.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion The intelligence service made famous by James Bond used to be ruthless in pursuit of British interests. These days, it seems to have succumbed to political correctness. Easily the most pervasive and dangerous of all the modern conspiracy theories is the one claiming that President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair […]
http://pjmedia.com/blog/leftism-and-the-dangers-of-modernity/ Humans have been inventing things that save and improve lives for a while, but we now realize these items of modernity can also hurt and kill us, and they therefore need to be controlled. Stuff like guns, subways, large sodas, and supermodels. Two people were murdered by subway trains in New York City recently, […]
http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-boxthorn-tree/
THE PERFECT LITERARY STORM….A BRILLIANT ISRAELI WRITER AND COMMENTATOR REVIEWS A BOOK BY A BRILLIANT CANADIA ESSAYIST AND COMMENTATOR……RSK
Some of the most eloquent and impassioned pro-Israeli essays in existence are to be found in The Boxthorn Tree, David Solway’s new collection. Solway — who somehow also manages to write erudite essays on a wide variety of other topics, as well as poetry — shows a masterful conversance with Israel’s history and current dilemmas, along with a sweeping command of the issues facing the Jewish people in general in a world that retains much of its age-old inimicality toward them.
This collection, which along with polemical essays offers book reviews, accounts-settlings with individual intellectual opponents, parodies, and fables, is written throughout in a dazzlingly urbane, virtuosic, sparkling prose that harks back to earlier literary tradition while remaining firmly attuned to our own morally compromised era. Much of the book is, indeed, a searing indictment of the West’s often cynical and defamatory treatment of Israel, even as it stands on the “frontline…in the war against militant Islam” and “raises…the torch of both dignity and survival.”
One by one Solway takes on the standing calumnies that pervade most of today’s media coverage of the Jewish state: that it is an “occupier” building “illegal settlements” (handily demolished with a historical and juridical overview in “Occupied Israel”); that its security fence is a cruel monstrosity (playfully and brilliantly refuted in “Loving the Wall” and “A Short Meditation on Walls”); that it is the party responsible for derailing the peace process (summarily dispatched in “Is Peace Possible in the Middle East?”); and — most absurd of all — that it is the Middle Eastern country that mistreats Christians (a brazen inversion of the truth definitively trounced in “Israel’s Oppressive Treatment of Christians?”).
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/01/advice_on_the_second_amendment.html Pravda, Guns & America (AT, Jan. 11) quoted a Russian who advises: Americans: Never Give Up Your Guns, citing the bloody and tragic result of the Communists’ confiscation of arms after they came to power in 1917. The quotation has been echoing around the Internet, so here are more ringing defenses of the importance […]
—http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/your-tax-money-pays-to-expand-shariah-economies/ Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the Economic Warfare Institute (EWI), is author of “Funding Evil- How Terrorism is financed – and How to Stop It.” Under Obama’s administration, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, bears little resemblance to the international aid agency that President John F. Kennedy initiated on Nov. 3, 1961. USAID’s […]
