http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/01/obamas-permanent-campaign-can-he-use-his-reelection-playbook-to-change-washington/272587/ No president has ever pulled off what Obama now hopes to do — move Congress by mobilizing a standing grassroots army. A week ago, President Obama launched his second term with a set of lofty goals — climate change legislation, immigration reform, and gun control among them. Around the same time, Obama’s former campaign […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/339157/soldier-girl-blues-jonah-goldberg What if, during the presidential campaign, Mitt Romney had accused President Obama of wanting to let servicewomen serve in combat? After all, Obama had hinted as much in 2008. What would Obama’s response have been? My hunch is that he would have accused Romney of practicing the “politics of division” or some such and […]
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
The story of Islam is a murder mystery. It’s not the kind of murder mystery where you wonder who did it, but when it will end. The detective peering with his magnifying glass at a scrap of fiber left behind on the carpet or a curly piece of hair caught in the door isn’t really trying to sort out who did it. He knows who did it. The great mystery that consumes him is how to make the killer stop.
This isn’t a story about right and wrong. Right and wrong aren’t serious propositions in the arid deserts where the murderer comes from. Right is power. Wrong is not having power. A man is right because he has power. A woman is wrong because she doesn’t. A Muslim is right because he has power. A Christian is wrong because he doesn’t.
When a woman has power and a man doesn’t, then the man has been dishonored. When a Christian has power and a Muslim doesn’t, then the Muslim has been dishonored. There is only one answer for dishonor, death. Kill the one who has dishonored you so that you can feel powerful again. The men with the magnifying glasses will call it extremism, but it’s much simpler and much more complicated than that.
The powerful need not compromise. They have honor. Those who have no power but do not compromise also have honor. The extremist does not compromise whether in power or out of it. Therefore he always has honor. The extremist is willing to die for the power and honor of Islam.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/obamas-economy-the-excuses-begin/?print=1
Just days [1] after the November presidential and congressional elections which gave President Barack Obama a non-mandate of 50.6% of the popular vote [2] and the demonstrated supported of less than 27% [2] of all U.S. adults, NBC’s Brian Williams actually told viewers [1]:
With the election now over, it is once again safe to talk about the economy and jobs. Now that it is not a campaign issue, it’s back to reality.
Still in Democrat-supportive campaign mode, Williams then introduced a report [3] by correspondent Harry Smith about how “the idea that manufacturing in America is dead … is an outright falsehood.” Mary Andringa, president and CEO of Iowa manufacturer Vermeer Corporation [4] and then-board chair [5] at the National Association of Manufacturers, told Smith:
What’s really outstanding is the fact that in 2010, the U.S. had an output of $4.8 trillion of manufactured goods. That was up from $4.1 (trillion) in 2000 — and we’ve been through two recessions in the past decade.
That is undoubtedly an impressive achievement which should not be discounted. But then Smith delivered the kicker:
Five million manufacturing jobs were lost in the U.S. in the last decade. But new jobs have been created too, and believe it or not, many manufacturers in the U.S. are looking for help.
This highlights two problems. The first, which is that our educational system and culture are not preparing enough people for the jobs which need to be filled, is self-evident to anyone with open eyes.
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/01/29/governor-perry-returns-money-to-taxpayers-touts-education-reforms/ Fresh from delivering his State of the State address, Texas Gov. Rick Perry spent more than half an hour on a conference call with state bloggers. Perry hailed bloggers as “pioneers of the new media” as he described his take on current issues. Texas’ longest-serving governor could go down in Texas history as the […]
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/01/25/the-gatekeepers-keeps-information-from-viewers/?print=1
PLEASE ALSO READ:
WILL THEY GIVE OSCARS FOR BASHING ISRAEL? LORI LOWENTHAL MARCUS
http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/will-they-give-oscars-for-bashing-israel-lori-lowenthal-marcus.html
The Gatekeepers — currently Oscar-nominated for Best Documentary, opening February 1 in New York and Los Angeles — is a movie that could only have been made in Israel.
Six former heads of Shin Bet, the Israeli agency dealing with domestic terrorism, each spent 12-15 hours in filmed conversations with Israeli filmmaker Dror Moreh, who spliced excerpts into a 97-minute film dramatized with archival footage and animated recreations. At the end, Moreh shows some of the “gatekeepers” saying Israel is winning battles but losing the war; that the use of force can never be wholly successful and eventually degrades those who use it; and that Israel is in danger of becoming “a Shin Bet state.”
It is a well-made, thought-provoking film, but the conclusions in the last two minutes are not entirely supported by the 95 minutes that precede them. In significant ways, they are in fact contradicted by at least one of the “gatekeepers” — Avi Dichter, who served under Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon from 2000 to 2005. Dichter summarizes Moreh’s apparent position: if we use force against the Palestinians, they will use force against us; and if we stop using force, they will stop using force. Dichter tells him the first part of the equation is true, but that the second is not.
In another exchange, recounted by Moreh at a recent screening, Dichter recalled receiving a 5 a.m. call with intelligence that a terrorist would bomb a bus later that morning, while Israelis were commuting; someone was found who fit the description of an alleged accomplice, but he was unwilling to talk; you have two hours, Dichter said, to find a person on his way to perpetrate a mass murder. So what do you do? At the screening, Moreh did not hazard an answer; and the non-response reflects the lack of easy answers to the issues in the film.
The film’s press materials claim that “for the first time ever,” the former Shin Bet heads are sharing their insights publicly, and Moreh says he was “startled” they agreed to talk to him. But in fact they have spoken publicly before — in a two-hour joint interview in 2003, published at the time in Israel’s largest newspaper, Yedioth Aharonoth, in which the “gatekeepers” expressed the same conclusions. The 2003 interview was instrumental in influencing Ariel Sharon to withdraw from Gaza — with results different from those confidently predicted at the time. But the 2003 interview goes unmentioned and unaddressed in the The Gatekeepers.
http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/5847/features/raider-of-the-lost-knish/?print I took the knish for granted; then it was gone. More than latkes, matzah or the chopped-apple-and-walnut haroset that crowned the seder plate, knishes were our religion. My family went on Brooklyn-Queens Expressway pilgrimages to Mrs. Stahl’s Knishes of Brighton Beach and harbored the findings in our freezer. My parents ushered knishes into the […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/i-feel-like-a-stranger-where-i-live?f=puball
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9831912/I-feel-like-a-stranger-where-I-live.html
As new figures show ‘white flight’ from cities is rising, one Londoner writes a provocative personal piece about how immigration has drastically changed the borough where she has lived for 17 years
by JANE KELLY
“When you go swimming, it’s much healthier to keep your whole body completely covered, you know.” The Muslim lady behind the counter in my local pharmacy has recently started giving me advice like this. It’s kindly meant and I’m always glad to hear her views because she is one of the few people in west London where I live who talks to me.
The streets around Acton, which has been my home since 1996, have taken on a new identity. Most of the shops are now owned by Muslims and even the fish and chip shop and Indian takeaway are Halal. It seems that almost overnight it’s changed from Acton Vale into Acton Veil.
Of the 8.17 million people in London, one million are Muslim, with the majority of them young families. That is not, in reality, a great number. But because so many Muslims increasingly insist on emphasising their separateness, it feels as if they have taken over; my female neighbours flap past in full niqab, some so heavily veiled that I can’t see their eyes. I’ve made an effort to communicate by smiling deliberately at the ones I thought I was seeing out and about regularly, but this didn’t lead to conversation because they never look me in the face.
I recently went to the plainly named “Curtain Shop” and asked if they would put some up for me. Inside were a lot of elderly Muslim men. I was told that they don’t do that kind of work, and was back on the pavement within a few moments. I felt sure I had suffered discrimination and was bewildered as I had been there previously when the Muslim owners had been very friendly. Things have changed. I am living in a place where I am a stranger.
I was brought up in a village in Staffordshire, and although I have been in London for a quarter of a century I have kept the habit of chatting to shopkeepers and neighbours, despite it not being the done thing in metropolitan life. Nowadays, though, most of the tills in my local shops are manned by young Muslim men who mutter into their mobiles as they are serving. They have no interest in talking to me and rarely meet my gaze. I find this situation dismal. I miss banter, the hail fellow, well met chat about the weather, or what was on TV last night.
More worryingly, I feel that public spaces are becoming contested. One food store has recently installed a sign banning alcohol on the premises. Fair enough. But it also says: “No alcohol allowed on the streets near this shop.” I am no fan of street drinking, and rowdy behaviour and loutish individuals are an aspect of modern British ”culture’’ I hate. But I feel uneasy that this shopkeeper wants to control the streets outside his shop. I asked him what he meant by his notice but he just smiled at me wistfully.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/not-understanding-whats-going-on-in-iran-obama-croons-war-is-not-the-answer About two-thirds the way through U.S. President Barack Obama’s second inaugural speech, he echoed words spoken almost 75 years earlier by another world leader; words that would soon ring hollow for all who heard them. In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned to London after meeting with Germany’s Adolf Hitler in Munich. A […]
http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/black-bloc-must-die-say-jihad-and-jama-al-islamiya Black Bloc must die, say Jihad and Jama’a al-Islamiya The Islamist party of the Jihad Organization and Jama’a al-Islamiya has said the ways of dealing with banditry specified in the Quran must be applied to Black Bloc members, which means they must be killed. “God orders us to kill, crucify or cut off the […]
