DANIEL GREENFIELD: THE WEEK THAT WAS PART 2
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2013/03/friday-afternoon-roundup-senator-from.html
THE ROUNDUP
Rusty at The Jawa Report has a comprehensive and well thought out piece on the strategy for Obama and Rand Paul. I don’t agree with all of it, but it’s well worth a read.
Since the majority of the American people have not actually read the Holder memo on drone strikes, they simply do not know that the Administration never asserted a right to assassinate Americans on US soil.
Rand Paul knows this.
What he’s asking the Administration to do is prove that they don’t believe something which they never claimed they believe.
I can’t believe that even he believes the slippery slope argument that he’s making. I’m also not sure the political game he’s playing or what he thinks he’ll get out of this. He’s certainly getting a lot of attention and a lot of support from the Right.
…
Which is why Holder’s answer is so puzzling. If the administration wanted to clear the air why didn’t they just tell Sen. Ryan, “No, we can’t do that”?
Isn’t the answer simple? They don’t want to clear the air. They want to keep this political maelstrom going. They want to distract the American people from, well, everything!
$16.5 trillion in debt.
The worst recovery in US history — ever!
Millions of people unemployed or underemployed.
And no end in site of the economic misery. Obama’s failures are simply the new normal.
But, look kids, the Republicans are so nutty!
Rand Paul may be scoring some personal political points by trying to drag this thing out for as long as possible. It may help him with several elements in the base.
Sure. Politicians play to their base. It’s a careerist game. The real story isn’t in what they say, it’s in what they do. Don’t read their lips. Read their votes.
Lisa Graas, a Kentuckian who has been a big proponent of three legged stool conservatism has her own comments on the Rand Paul circus.
I’m sure many will claim this means I don’t care about civil liberties. To the contrary, what I see is a lot of people making an argument that (whether true or not) is going to have the opposite effect that you desire.
Remember back in olden times when most people who identify as conservative understood human nature and acted as such? Good times. Good times.
A HUG FOR EL DIABLO
Hugo Chavez’s grand Bolivarian Revolution, his answer to Kim Jong Il’s Juche, Ceauşescu’s Systematization and Oceania’s Newspeak has halted in its second phase, as the sovereign territory of El Comandante’s indigenous biological reservations was overrun by a capitalist invasion that Cuba’s Socialist medicine was unable to fend off.
The Bolivarian Revolution have been preempted by a meeting with an important revolutionary leader known only as El Diablo.
Chavez, who has built alliances with Iran’s Ahmadinejad and Cuba’s Castro, is reportedly hoping to sway El Diablo to his point of view, but initial reports, based on all the screaming and burning smells, suggest that the negotiations between the two revered Socialist leaders are not going well.
El Comandante Chavez, Wraps Up Bolivarian Revolution, Meets El Diablo
A SWING
Washington. D.C. — President Barack Obama, injured during a golfing mishap, died Tuesday afternoon after a struggle with an aneurism complicated by a stroke, the government announced, leaving behind a bitterly divided nation in the grip of a political and economic crisis that grew more acute as he languished for three days, silent and out of sight, as American and Cuban doctors worked day and night to bring the president back to consciousness.
Michelle Obama, the First Lady, told reporters on Martha’s Vineyard that it wasn’t her fault that her much-beloved husband died so quickly after what sources said was a severe tongue-lashing of her husband after the golfing incident, and denied any responsibility for aggravating what was already a serious medical condition
… no, no. It’s just a satirical piece from Edward Cline on Rule of Reason
WHILE THE FILIBUSTER RAGED, THE REAL STORY WAS UNFOLDING
Even as government officials applauded the arrest of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law and an al-Qaida spokesman, his transport to the United States stirred a debate among lawmakers who appeared caught by surprise by the news.
Abu Ghaith was apprehended, transported to New York and charged with conspiracy to kill Americans, according to court documents unsealed Thursday. Abu Ghaith appeared alongside his father-in-law in a 2001 video in which they took responsibility for the 9/11 attacks and warned of more.
Abu Ghaith’s trial will be one of the first prosecutions of senior al-Qaida leaders in the United States. Upon taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama said more foreign terror suspects should be charged in American federal courts, as part of his goal to close Guantanamo Bay.
Republicans in Congress would like to keep Guantanamo open and have strongly opposed bringing terror suspects on U.S. soil.
“And when we find somebody like this, this close to bin Laden and the senior al-Qaida leadership, the last thing in the world we want to do, in my opinion, is put them in civilian court. This man should be in Guantanamo Bay,” Ayotte said.
THE RED SCREEN
The American movie theater industry is largely in the hands of a small number of companies. Half the movie screens in America are controlled by only four companies, Regal, AMC, Cinemark and Carmike.
AMC is the second largest theater chain in the country and it owns around 22 percent of the movie theater screens in the country. And it has been sold to China’s Dalian Wanda Group.
Aside from the usual economic impact of such a move, Dalian Wanda Group is now in the position of controlling what movies are shown in American theaters.
Communist China’s Hollywood Takeover
BETTER RED AND DEAD
If you wake up each morning wondering which Che t-shirt to put on today and your only non-Che t-shirt says, “I went to see the embalmed corpse of Communism’s Third-Greatest Mass Murderer and All I Got Was This T-Shirt”… boy does Venezuela have a great tourist destination for you.
The good news is that at least Latin America has some pyramids, even if they had a different purpose, so when the next shlock filmmaker wants to reenact Night of the Chavez, they can just bundle up the dead dictator inside one of them and film the story of a bunch of explorers looking for Chavez’s buried 2 billion dollar fortune only to experience the Curse of the Dead Socialist Economic System.
If You Liked Lenin’s Tomb, You’ll Love Chavez’s Tomb
IF ONLY SHE HAD BEEN WEARING HER HIJAB
An Islamic mufti in Copenhagen, Shahid Mehdi, has sparked political outcry from the left-wing Unity List and right-wing Danish People’s Party, after stating in a televised interview that women who do not wear headscarves are “asking for rape.”
“Women are not entitled to respect when they walk around without a Hijab. They are to blame for it when they are attacked,” Imam Shahid Mehdi said.
Now, however, he is accused of pulling his penis out and chasing a 23-year-old woman around in a park in Malmö in August 2012, according to the court in Malmö.
During the interrogation he refused to plead guilty and believes that the accusation is based on racism because he has Pakistani roots.
Muslim Imam Claims Women Who Don’t Wear Hijabs are “Asking to be Raped”, Arrested for Trying to Rape Woman
HOW MANY DOES IT TAKE?
According to a study by the Congressional Research Service, nearly 47,000 illegal aliens flagged for deportation between 2009 and 2011 were instead released by the Obama Administration, and 16% of them went on to commit further crimes, including 19 murders, 3 attempted murders and 142 sex crimes
Since this time only a few thousand are being released, they probably won’t commit more than a dozen rapes.
How Many Women Will Obama’s Freed Illegal Detainees Rape?
HOW ROBERT SPENCER WON AND ‘LOST’ A CPAC AWARD
I was surprised and honored that Jihad Watch was among the nominees for the People’s Choice Blog Award, sponsored by Right Wing News and TheTeaParty.net, to be awarded at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) 2013.
As you can see from the vote above, Jihad Watch won decisively, getting over 50% of the vote in a field of fifteen. And I received confirmation of the victory from one of the organizers of the CPAC blog awards when I asked him when voting officially ended:
But as time went by and no announcement was made of this victory, and the voting continued despite my having been told that it officially ended last Friday night and that I had won, and the promised links and other placement promised to the winning blog didn’t materialize, I started to wonder. So I contacted the organizer who had written me telling me I won and asked him what was going on.
The positive outcome of this is that Robert clearly won showing that his work and his importance can’t be suppressed.
CPAC can keep Robert Spencer out of a hotel, but they can’t shut down what he has to say even now.
KNIFE MEET BACK
Hillary Clinton and Richard Holbrooke, the eternal Secretary of State in waiting, another Clinton man, are the heroes, and the White House and Obama are the villains.
The purpose here is to disengage Hillary Clinton from the upcoming disaster in Afghanistan in preparation for her 2016 run. As in Benghazi, the theme is that it isn’t her fault. It’s Obama’s fault. It’s the fault of the military, the CIA and the White House.
The Clinton Gang were right on every single issue, from opposing the Afghanistan surge to opposing an Afghanistan deadline, to supporting negotiations with the Taliban at the right and not at the wrong time and supporting the takedown of Bin Laden… while Obama’s people were always wrong.
Hillary Clinton Already Shifting Blame to Obama for Afghanistan Disaster
IT’S OBAMA’S WORLD, WE JUST LIVE IN IT
Obama’s Brother Accused of Beating his 12 Wives While Running for Office
The U.S. health care system is ramping up to implement a massive new coding system called ICD-10. It’s a bland name for a system capable of coding thousands of colorful injuries. A full 68,000 to be exact, as opposed to the 13,000 under the current ICD-9.
Take these, straight from ICD-10:
Hurt at the opera: Y92253
Stabbed while crocheting: Y93D1
Walked into a lamppost: W2202XA
Walked into a lamppost, subsequent encounter: W2202XD
Submersion due to falling or jumping from crushed water skis: V9037XA
Reason #41 Health Care is So Expensive: Medical Codes for Being Struck by a Turtle at the Opera
Are Islamists Trying to Drive Christians Out of Benghazi?
Obama Claims Al Qaeda Defeated, Al Qaeda Claims It Has Scud Missiles
Is MSNBC Using Chinese Spam Bots to Trend on Twitter?
Egyptian Protesters Accuse Kerry of Muslim Brotherhood Membership
Code Pink Stages Massive Anti-Israel Rally Consisting of 4 People, 8 Cardboard Boxes
CRAFTSMANSHIP
This is from the New York Times and from David Brooks, neither of which are recommendations, and while there is nothing new here, it’s interesting to see the in-crowd slowly waking up to the new Jewish reality.
Nationwide, only 21 percent of non-Orthodox Jews between the ages of 18 and 29 are married. But an astounding 71 percent of Orthodox Jews are married at that age. And they are having four and five kids per couple. In the New York City area, for example, the Orthodox make up 32 percent of Jews over all. But the Orthodox make up 61 percent of Jewish children. Because the Orthodox are so fertile, in a few years, they will be the dominant group in New York Jewry.
Pomegranate looks like any island of upscale consumerism, but deep down it is based on a countercultural understanding of how life should work.
Those of us in secular America live in a culture that takes the supremacy of individual autonomy as a given. Life is a journey. You choose your own path. You can live in the city or the suburbs, be a Wiccan or a biker.
For the people who shop at Pomegranate, the collective covenant with God is the primary reality and obedience to the laws is the primary obligation. They go shopping like the rest of us, but their shopping is minutely governed by an external moral order.
Meir Soloveichik, my tour guide during this trip through Brooklyn, borrows a musical metaphor from the Catholic theologian George Weigel. At first piano practice seems like drudgery, like self-limitation, but mastering the technique gives you the freedom to play well and create new songs. Life is less a journey than it is mastering a discipline or craft.
For the record, I set foot in the Pomegranate supermarket once. And that was it. I don’t much care for Whole Foods or any version of it that make conspicuous consumerism trendy. And the loss of Friedman’s on 13th Ave, a genuinely good all-around supermarket, left a real hole in the neighborhood, much like the loss of Kosher Plaza a decade earlier.
COALITION GAMES
I was too disgusted with the EY election and the subsequent coalition games to write anything on the subject. And while I do sympathize with the Haredi situation, let me just say a few things.
1. The Haredi willingness to vote for any horror for other people so long as their yeshivas get paid is at the root of many of Israel’s problems. If it wasn’t for their corruptibility and for Shas, the entire mess of accords and agreements, the murder of countless Jews and the destruction of thousands of Jewish homes would have never happened.
2. With that in mind, the Haredi high horse in regard to Yeshivas has very little moral backing. When you are willing to destroy other people’s houses to get money for your schools, it’s open to question whether your Mosdos deserve to survive.
3. Any threats to boycott settlements should be considered very carefully in light of the amount of money that Haredi institutions receive from Modern Orthodox donors in the United States. Yatza schara be’hefsedoh.
4. The other sides are hardly clean, but the Haredi world never seems to perform any communal chesbon hanefesh. Individuals do, but communities never, and that is a major problem because how can you practice, al telech aherei rabim lehatos, if you never question your own rabim?
A RETURN TO CATALONIA
The aristocracy is, of course, our coastal elite, the five or six million high earners who live near the Pacific Ocean from the Bay Area to San Diego. They are more likely to administer both our inherited and natural wealth, symbolized by everything from top universities, Hollywood, and state government to Silicon Valley, Napa Valley, and California finance and natural resources. Their children, if industrious and motivated, are prepped at Stanford and Berkeley, interned at proper law firms and government bureaus, and usually inherit enough of their patrimony and early enough to afford the $1,000 per square foot price that a Newport or Atherton keep costs — along with its flocks of attendant nannies, gardeners, neighborhood security guards, and maintenance people.
The middle is still shrinking. They are mostly the over three million who have left California for no-tax Nevada or Texas, or crime-free Idaho, or sane Wyoming and Utah. High-paying jobs in manufacturing, construction, and energy are disappearing. The aristocracy, whose religion is the green government, believes that to extend the conditions of its own privilege to millions of less well-educated and less correct-thinking others (e.g., build new affordable condos alongside interstate 280, open up the Malibu hills to low-income development, start drilling for oil and gas in the Monterey Shale formation, build some more dams to ensure irrigation water, widen the 99 and 101 to three lanes from northern to southern California) is to destroy the hallowed lord-serf system altogether.
The aristocracy sails in the summer, not powerboats. In winter, it tends to ski, not use snowmobiles. Its SUVs are Volvo and Mercedes, not second-hand Tahoes and Yukons. Ideally, its kids go to UC, Stanford, or USC, not to CSU campuses in Turlock, Fresno, or Bakersfield. The aristocracy believes in noblesse oblige, but it is a funny sort of one: shutting down a quarter-million acres of farmland is good for all of us, especially for a three-inch bait fish, and even for the farmworkers and managers who must lose their jobs for a just cause. Keeping derricks out of the coastal panorama is wonderful for rich and poor — and really, who would want a smelly job anyway out on a nauseous oil platform?
…from the great Victor Davis Hanson’s Beautifully Medieval California
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