http://frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/will-obama-confront-abbas-on-palestinian-terror-surge/print/ President Obama will be arriving in Israel on Wednesday, and on Thursday he’ll be taking a break from meeting Israeli leaders and visiting Israeli sites to go to Ramallah and meet with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. In this rundown of the president’s itinerary, U.S. deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes says that in […]
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
Time and time again, the liberal defenders of government power have attacked any call for reform as a plot by the wealthy. Even now New York Times editorialists pound their keys about the “Concentration of Wealth”, invoking presidents from Andrew Jackson to Theodore Roosevelt. But in our America, the “Concentration of Wealth” is not found in the hands of a few billionaires. It is found in the hands of the government.
The editorialists talk about the income gap and how much wealth is held by the top 1 percent of the country, but they are leaving something out. Their statistics deal with individuals, not institutions. And it is institutions which threaten our liberties, not individuals.
The top 10 wealthiest men and women in America barely have 250 billion dollars between them. That sounds like a lot of money, until you look at annual Federal budgets which run into the trillions of dollars, and the country’s national debt which approaches 15 trillion dollars. And that’s not taking into account state budgets. Even Rhode Island, the smallest state in the union, with a population of barely a million, has a multi-billion dollar budget.
As the 10th richest man in America, Michael Bloomberg wields a personal fortune of a mere 18 billion dollars, but as the Mayor of the City of New York, he disposes of an annual budget of 63 billion dollars. In a single year, he disposes of three times his own net worth. A sum that would wipe out the net worth of any billionaire in America. That is the difference between the wealth wielded by the 10th wealthiest man in America, and the mayor of a single city. And that is the real concentration of wealth. Not in the hands of individuals, but at every level of government, from the municipal to the state houses to the White House.
While liberal pundits pop on their stovepipe hats, fix their diamond stickpins and cravats, and trade in 19th century rhetoric about the dangers of trusts and monopolies– the power in 20th century America lies not in the hands of a few industrialists, but with massive monopolistic trust of government, and its network of unions, non-profits, lobbyists and PAC’s. The railroads are broken up, offshore drilling is banned, coal mining is in trouble and Ma Bell has a thousand quarreling stepchildren– now government is the real big business. How big?
The 2008 presidential campaign cost 5.3 billion dollars. Another 1.5 billion for the House and the Senate. And that’s not counting another half a billion from the 527’s and even shadier fundraising by shadowy political organizations. But that’s a small investment when you realize that they were spending billions of dollars to get their hands on trillions of dollars.
Do you know of any company in America where for a mere few billion, you could become the CEO of a company whose shareholders would be forced to sit back and watch for four years while you run up trillion dollar deficits and parcel out billions to your friends? Without going to jail or being marched out in handcuffs. A company that will allow you to indulge yourself, travel anywhere at company expense, live the good life, and only work when you feel like it. That will legally indemnify you against all shareholder lawsuits, while allowing you to dispose not only of their investments, but of their personal property in any way you see fit.
Let Francis Shepherd http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/343224 Rome — “May God forgive you.” That’s Cardinal Dolan’s translation of a joke Pope Francis toasted the College of Cardinals with a day after being elected the 267th pontiff. Having watched the prayerfulness of some of the cardinals going into the papal conclave that would elect the Argentine cardinal Jorge Mario […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/343180 According to a new study jointly produced by three liberal organizations — the Center for American Progress, the Stimson Center, and the Center for Climate and Security — global warming may be destabilizing the Arab world. Entitled “The Arab Spring and Climate Change,” the study was given prominent publicity by New York Times columnist […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/03/mia_love_readies_herself_for_another_run_for_congress.html
What’s Mia Love, the Mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, up to these days?
After her one point loss to Democrat Jim Matheson, the woman who wowed the GOP convention in Tampa kept a fairly low profile. But this past week, she was at CPAC and made a major announcement.
Roll Call:
In preparation for a bid, Love has hired former state GOP Chairman Dave Hansen, who was widely heralded last year for successfully managing the re-election campaign of Sen. Orrin Hatch.
Love and Hansen sat down with CQ Roll Call for an interview Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where she was scheduled to speak.
“We are looking at it very seriously,” Love said. “We are trying to get people engaged and going, and let them know that we have to start early so that we are not starting from behind.”
Love is reaching out to donors now, some 20 months before the election, and putting in place a campaign team far earlier than last cycle. Love didn’t formally enter the wide, 4th District Republican field until January 2012. She shocked Republicans by emerging from the April state party convention with the nomination in hand.
“Getting that message out takes a lot of effort, a lot of funds, so we want to make sure that we are defining ourselves before the opposition does,” Love said.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324077704578362701947035938.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read
Argentines who want their country to be the next Venezuela see Francis as an obstacle.
Argentines celebrated last week when one of their own was chosen as the new pope. But they also suffered a loss of sorts. Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a tireless advocate of the poor and outspoken critic of corruption, will no longer be on hand locally to push back against the malfeasance of the government of President Cristina Kirchner.
Argentines not aligned with the regime hope that the arrival of Francis on the world stage at least will draw attention to this issue. Heaven knows the situation is growing dire.
One might have expected a swell of pride from Argentine officialdom when the news broke that the nation has produced a man so highly esteemed around the world. Instead the Kirchner government’s pit bulls in journalism—men such as Horacio Verbitsky, a former member of the guerrilla group known as the Montoneros and now an editor at the pro-government newspaper Pagina 12—immediately began a campaign to smear the new pontiff’s character and reputation at home and in the international news media.
The calumny is not new. Former members of terrorist groups like Mr. Verbitsky, and their modern-day fellow travelers in the Argentine government, have used the same tactics for years to try to destroy their enemies—anyone who doesn’t endorse their brand of authoritarianism. In this case they allege that as the Jesuits’ provincial superior in Argentina in the late 1970s, then-Father Bergoglio had links to the military government.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324532004578362593064526174.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion Pfc. Bradley Manning is charged with espionage. Why not Julian Assange? It looks as if Pfc. Bradley Manning and Julian Assange will go down in history as outliers, not trend setters. There have been no copycat leaks of massive quantities of diplomatic and intelligence documents, despite how easy the Internet makes it to leak […]
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/
“Rand Paul’s dramatic 13-hour filibuster of the Brennan nomination, the attacks on his position from established Republican leaders like Senator John McCain, and the conservative applause Sen. Paul received afterward had many talking about a sea change in Republican foreign policy — and that was before he won the CPAC straw poll. Were the isolationists and America-Firsters coming back from the margins, led by the younger and more telegenic Paul? Could Patrick Buchanan style thinking be returning to the mainstream of an anti-engagement, ignore-Israel Republican Party?”
It’s often said that Republicans are the Daddy Party in American politics, while the Democrats stand in for Mom. Mom is about putting nice meals on the table, pushing us to do well in school and teaching us to be kind to other kids; Dad worries about the budget, enforces the rules, teaches us to be self reliant, and is the one you look to when bullies or criminals threaten.
Naturally in these enlightened times we reject all such sexist rhetoric; we are all Coneheads now with interchangeable, unisex parental units instead of mothers and fathers. Still, the old description has some merit, and Moms nationally do lean towards the Democrats, while Dads tend to go GOP.
Our problem these days is that neither parent is really doing its job. Like a couple of addled narcissists too busy with midlife crises to tend to the kids, both parties are falling down on the job. The Mommy Party has messed up the schools, the pensions, the post office, healthcare and local government, but unless you think the Iraq War was a strategic masterstroke and brilliantly executed to boot, the Bush administration often looked more like Homer Simpson than John Wayne.
At Via Meadia we keep a close eye on the mess in Mom’s kitchen; it’s a time of real crisis. The traditional methods and institutions of the 20th century progressive state are less and less able to deliver what people need in the contemporary world, and the wholesale renovation and reform of the American social model is an urgent and inescapable task.
Generally speaking, the Republicans are doing some interesting things on the Mommy side these days. With fewer ties to the vested interests that want to fight change in domestic institutions, the Republicans have led the way on some promising education initiatives and government reforms. There’s something of an intellectual ferment on the GOP side these days as politicians and wonks hunt around for ideas that might reduce the “Mom gap” and make voters trust Republicans more on some domestic governance issues. It’s a start, though much more needs to be done.
But where Republicans are falling down on the job these days seems to be in the realm of foreign policy – a traditional GOP strength. Between the annual CPAC meeting and the intra-party struggle over Senator Rand Paul’s drone filibuster, it’s clear that the GOP has some big unresolved questions to ponder.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/wrong-battle-wrong-enemy/?print=1 WRONG BATTLE, WRONG ENEMY Ever since the election, there has been something of a battle going on within the Republican Party, as conservatives look for someone to blame for the loss. You can see some of this criticism here at PJ Media, such as Mark Stuertz’s complaint about Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) [1], or […]
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/03/10/4-old-dreamy-songs/?print=1
FOR THE SENIOR GENERATION….THE WORLD WAR 2 SONGS EVOKED THE LONELINESS AND THE DREAMS OF A WHOLE NATION…CLASSICS SUCH AS “I’LL WALK ALONE”…OR “I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS”…OR “ALWAYS”….SONGS WITH GENTLE AND TOUCHING LYRICS…..RSK
My main solace and support during an unhappy adolescence was my radio. I remember it as good-sized and rectangular with a wood finish. It sat on the little night table by my bed, and was always set to the same channel — WRPI, the station (still in existence) of the nearby Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, staffed and run by college students.
WRPI played what was then called progressive rock — rock songs that were outside the Top 40 hits that the commercial stations played. These could be songs, available only on albums, by performers who had Top 40 hits, or songs by performers considered esoteric or “experimental” enough that they were outside the Top 40 sphere altogether. Among other things, “progressive rock” offered me more introspective, poetic music that knew something about the deeper world of my feelings.
Since then my tastes have expanded, from ultra-introspective Mahler and Bruckner to wildly joyous Sonny Rollins and much in between (I also attempt my own contribution). The advent of YouTube some years back led me, in a sort of hushed curiosity, to search and find songs that in some cases I hadn’t heard since those distant days of adolescence. And in some striking cases I discovered that a song had not lost—or had even gained—power over me compared to back then.
All of the four songs I’ve picked below use only voice and acoustic guitar. All are from the late sixties; my WRPI-listening years were 1969-1972.
