http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2013/04/11/margaret-thatcher-rip/?singlepage=true I have been out of town in a semi-secure, undisclosed location and have not had occasion to weigh in on the death of Margaret Thatcher. I happened to be with some close friends of hers when the news came, so I’ve been kept abreast of the currents of opinion. Much of the commentary, as […]
http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2013/04/11/goodbye-to-blighty/?print=1
It’s revolting to watch the outpouring of morbid glee at the death of Baroness Thatcher from the British left–not from Occupy Wall Street fringe elements, but from trade union leaders and senior Labor MPs. London’s Daily Mail today reports:
Paul Kenny, general secretary of the GMB union, said: ‘Mrs Thatcher will be remembered by many for the destructive and divisive policies she reigned over which in the end, even in the Tory Party, proved to be her downfall. Her legacy involves the destruction of communities, the elevation of personal greed over social values and legitimising the exploitation of the weak by the strong.’
Labour shadow pensions minister Gregg McClymont came under fire for ‘condoning’ an inflammatory tweet about the former Conservative prime minister. He was accused of being ‘extremely foolish’ when he described a university student’s political views as ‘spot-on’ following a reference to Lady Thatcher a ‘f***** witch’.
Dancing on the grave of one’s political opponents is unthinkable in American terms. In part this is because any American president bears the dignity of the office of head of state, while a British prime minister is a servant of the sovereign. But that does not explain the eruption of hatred against a dignified, intelligent, and principled woman who led her country longer than any 20th-century prime minister–almost as long as Franklin Roosevelt led the United States. This eruption of hatred is inexcusable. But it is not entirely inexplicable.
The victory of the West in the Cold War would have been impossible without her. The book to read is The President, the Pope and the Prime Minister, by her close adviser and friend John O’Sullivan (I reviewed it when it first appeared in 2007).
Baroness Thatcher was a great woman, one of the few political leaders to change a country’s direction for the better. During the 11 years of her ministry the compound annual growth rate of per capita real national income was 2.5%, compared to just 1.9% during the preceding 11 years of (mainly) Labour governments. She believed in free markets and unleashed a wave of creative destruction that reshaped much of England.
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/345338 Analysts agree that “the erosion of the Syrian regime’s capabilities is accelerating,” that it continues to retreat step-by-step, making a rebel breakthrough and an Islamist victory increasingly likely. In response, I am changing my policy recommendation from neutrality to something that causes me, as a humanitarian and decades-long foe of the Assad dynasty, to […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/345373 America’s tax code is a 74,000-page unintentional comedy. As the Monday, April 15, tax-filing deadline mercilessly approaches, millions of Americans will cry as they calculate what they owe Washington and then fork it over. But amid those tears there will be plenty of laughs. The U.S. Tax Code is so tangled and twisted that […]
http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/
“Why does the Church of England hold Jews in contempt?” asked the prominent Anglican blogger Archbishop Cranmer last year, following the General Synod of the Church of England’s endorsement of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), which he powerfully characterised as
“nothing but an insidious front for a pro-Palestinian campaign to propagate the partisan lie that, while Israel is besieged by child killers, infiltrated by suicide bombers, surrounded by Islamist propagandists and endures almost daily missiles launched at civilian areas, she is the aggressor, the terroriser, the occupying force.
The declared vision of the EAPPI is to bring ‘internationals to the West Bank to experience life under occupation’. Its mission is to ‘accompany Palestinians and Israelis in their non-violent actions and to carry out concerted advocacy efforts to end the occupation’. They ‘support acts of non-violent resistance’ in order to achieve this and, since Israel is the ‘occupying force’, it stands to reason that the EAPPI’s raison d’être is to criticise and delegitimise Israel, a country which contends daily with concerted efforts to wipe its people off the face of the earth.
The EAPPI creed is very simple: Palestinians are victims; Israelis are aggressors; Zionists are evil; the IDF are terrorists. It was spawned by the World Council of Churches which, over the years, has passed motions calling for ‘an international boycott of goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories’; lauded Yassir Arafat as a hero for ‘bringing the Palestinian people together’; and called for ‘the right of return of Palestinian refugees’, despite this posing an existential threat to the Jewish homeland. The WCC unashamedly declares: ‘The EAPPI is a central element of the Ecumenical Campaign to End the Illegal Occupation of Palestine.’
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/04/hey_jay-z_-_obama_didnt_know_about_fast_and_furious_either.html
The Jay-Z story took another silly turn yesterday.
First, Jay-Z decided to release a song about his trip to Cuba. The lyrics are incredibly stupid but no one ever said that Jay-Z had a Masters in English or an ounce of common sense:
“”I done turned Havana into Atlanta,” he rapped. “Boy from the hood, but got White House clearance.”
He continued: “Politicians never did s— for me except lie to me, distort history, wanna give me jail time and a fine. Fine, let me commit a real crime. … Obama said, ‘Chill you gonna get me impeached.’ You don’t need this s— anyway, chill with me on the beach.'” (Fox)
Second, The White House is claiming that they didn’t know anything about the couple’s “special considerations” to travel to Cuba. Even Jay Carney got into it with a reporter.
Maybe President Obama did not know that Mr and Mrs Carter were traveling to Cuba to celebrate their 5th wedding anniversary. However, are we supposed to believe that anyone can walk into the Treasury Dept and get special consideration to travel to Cuba?
I think that we are learning again that “hope and change” has “tourist” and “first class” seats. Just check out all of those high rent Democrats who got government loan guarantees for Solyndra, et al.
“Yes we can” is a lot easier when there is cash in the envelope!
The point is that travel to Cuba is hard. This is why many Americans fly to Mexico or Jamaica and hop over without having their passports marked by the Cuban authorities.
A couple of years ago, a friend in Dallas went to Cuba to take some bibles on a purely humanitarian mission. He told me that Treasury put him through “hoops” to prove that it was not a pleasure trip and purely “educational”.
The Jay-Z affair is not “Fast & Furious” or “Benghazi” but it is amazing how the Obama administration plays the dumb card and gets away with it!
My guess is that most Americans find this whole episode somewhere between hilarious and stupid. However, we Cuban-Americans are not laughing at all, especially those of us who had a family member in a political prison for 14 years without a trial (my dad’s cousin Ignacio). I won’t tell you how the families of executed political prisoners feel about seeing some ignorant clown walking on the streets of Havana with a Che T-shirt!
It is offensive, to say the least. It is also ignorant given what Che said about black people! Read the quotes and tell me if you don’t think that Jay-Z checked his intelligence at the airport hangar when he went to Cuba.
Perhaps Jay-Z should release another song and call for artistic freedom and the release of Allan Gross, the US citizen in a Cuban prison for no reason at all. It will be deeply appreciated by the Gross family and the musical community on the island.
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/04/kim_jong_uns_shoes.html If you can mentally put yourself in Kim Jong-un’s shoes, once you are aware of the constraints he faces you will understand why the South Koreans aren’t getting terribly worried about how the current round of threats will end. Far from being crazy, KJU is acting rationally for someone in his position, and he’s […]
http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/04/11/Senate-Dems-Blocking-Resolution-To-Honor-Margaret-Thatcher
Senate Democrats are hesitating to honor the former prime minister of Great Britain who, along with President Reagan and Pope John Paul II, tackled communism.
This is particularly galling in light of the fact that 16 Republicans crossed the aisle to vote for cloture on the Democrats’ gun control bill, today.
Heritage Action reports:
A Senate resolution to honor Lady Thatcher was supposed to pass last night. However, per well placed sources on the Hill, Democrats have a hold on the resolution.
To refuse to honor a woman of such great historical and political significance, who was deeply loyal to the United States, is petty and shameful. One truly has to wonder, what is it about Lady Thatcher that gives them pause? Her unfaltering commitment to freedom? Or perhaps the way she fought for individual liberty and limited government?
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3229/justice_in_guatemala_44_years_later Justice in Guatemala: 44 years later John Gordon Mein’s death, like that of Chris Stevens, remains uninvestigated, his murderers unidentified and unpunished. 44 years later, it’s time to put that right August 28th, 1968 was a hot day in Guatemala City when U.S. ambassador John Gordon Mein drove towards the U.S. Embassy. Within minutes, […]
http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2013/04/08/the-warriors-call-to-duty/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-warriors-call-to-duty It has been nearly eight months since jihadists attacked U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed, and many more were badly injured. And that is pretty much all we know for sure about an incident that has – let’s face it – been subjected to the most […]
