RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://nationalreview.com/node/359148/print

This is the United States of America,” declared President Obama to the burghers of Liberty, Mo., on Friday. “We’re not some banana republic.”

He was talking about the Annual Raising of the Debt Ceiling, which glorious American tradition seems to come round earlier every year. “This is not a deadbeat nation,” President Obama continued. “We don’t run out on our tab.” True. But we don’t pay it off either. We just keep running it up, ever higher. And every time the bartender says, “Mebbe you’ve had enough, pal,” we protest, “Jush another couple trillion for the road. Set ’em up, Joe.” And he gives you that look that kinda says he wishes you’d run out on your tab back when it was $23.68.

Still, Obama is right. We’re not a banana republic, if only because the debt of banana republics is denominated in a currency other than their own — i.e., the U.S. dollar. When you’re the guys who print the global currency, you can run up debts undreamt of by your average generalissimo. As Obama explained in another of his recent speeches, “Raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt.” I won’t even pretend to know what he and his speechwriters meant by that one, but the fact that raising the debt ceiling “has been done over a hundred times” does suggest that spending more than it takes in is now a permanent feature of American government. And no one has plans to do anything about it. Which is certainly banana republic-esque.

Is all this spending necessary? Every day, the foot-of-page-37 news stories reveal government programs it would never occur to your dimestore caudillo to blow money on. On Thursday, it was the Food and Drug Administration blowing just shy of $200 grand to find out whether its Twitter and Facebook presence is “well-received.” A fifth of a million dollars isn’t even a rounding error in most departmental budgets, so nobody cares. But the FDA is one of those sclerotic American institutions that has near to entirely seized up. In October 1920, it occurred to an Ontario doctor called Frederick Banting that insulin might be isolated and purified and used to treat diabetes; by January 1923, Eli Lilly & Co were selling insulin to American pharmacies: A little over two years from concept to market. Now the FDA adds at least half-a-decade to the process, and your chances of making it through are far slimmer: As recently as the late Nineties, they were approving 157 new drugs per half-decade. Today it’s less than half that.

But they’ve got $182,000 to splash around on finding out whether people really like them on Facebook, or they’re just saying that. So they’ve given the dough to a company run by Dan Beckmann, a former “new media aide” to President Obama. That has the whiff of the banana republic about it, too.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/09/israels_bright_future.html Israel is undoubtedly one of the most hated countries on Earth.  Hatred against Israel is deeply rooted in the Arab world and in the Muslim world at large.  It has also progressed quickly in Europe over the last decades.  Although less common in North America, it is gaining ground, especially in universities, and “anti-Zionist” […]

FROM JANET LEVY:
The Islamists of the Al Qaeda affiliate, al-Shabaab, that stormed an upscale Israeli-owned shopping mall today armed with grenades and AK-47s are still in a standoff with security personnel. So far, they’ve killed 59 people and injured a couple of hundred.
The jihadists reportedly told Muslims to leave the facility and said that non-Muslims would be targeted. Shoppers were asked their religion and some were asked to name Mohammed’s mother.
(It may not be relevent for the next attack but memorize this: Aminah Bint Wahb is Mohammed’s mother).
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/horror-in-kenya-alshabaab-claim-responsibility-as-nonmuslims-targeted-in-terror-attack-on-nairobi-shopping-centre-8831413.html
Nairobi attack: Death toll rises to 59 as shots are fired on troops preparing hostage rescue operation

Kenyan minister says ‘we have access to CCTV and are in complete control’, adding more than 1,000 people have been rescued from the Westgate shopping centre since the terrorists started shooting

The Kenyan military are preparing to storm the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi where terrorists are holding an unknown number of hostages, following an attack yesterday which the Interior Ministry now says killed at least 59 people.

Gunmen armed with grenades, AK-47s and ammunition belts opened fire inside the affluent mall during a children’s cooking competition, with witnesses saying the terrorists numbered up to 10 men – some of whom looked as young as 18.

Reinforcements arrived this morning, according to the ministry, with armoured vehicles bringing more soldiers to join in the rescue operation. At approximately 11am (9am BST), fresh barrages of gunfire were heard from within the shopping centre, reportedly as security forces ran in a line and crouched along the front of the building.

Speaking to reporters today, Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku said the police and army were in complete control of the situation, and that they now had remote control of the shopping centre’s CCTV systems.

Mr Lenku said the official number of injured had increased to 175, but he added that he was thankful for the fact that they had been able to get more than 1,000 people out of the mall safely.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/09/20/sexual-jihad-tunisian-women-return-syria-pregnant-rebels_n_3960370.html

Huffington Post UK

Tunisian women are travelling to Syria to partake in a “sexual jihad” by comforting rebel fighters, a minister has claimed.

“They have sexual relations with 20, 30, 100 militants”, Interior Minister Lofti Bin Jeddou reportedly told members of the National Constituent Assembly on Thursday.

“After the sexual liaisons they have there in the name of ‘jihad al-nikah’ (sexual holy war), they come home pregnant,” he added in quotes provided by AFP.

While he did not put a figure on the number of women allegedly partaking, Bin Jeddou claimed 6,000 Tunisians had been banned from travelling to Syria since March, and that 86 individuals had been arrested on suspicion of forming “networks” to send them there, Al Arabiya reports.

Hundreds of Tunisian men have also gone to join the ranks of jihadists fighting to overthrow the regime of President Bashar Assad.

Sexual jihad fatwas typically allow armed members to have sexual intercourse with women as part of a temporary contract. It also allows women to sleep with more than one man a day, Fars News explains.

It is considered by some hardline Sunni Muslim Salafists as a legitimate form of holy war.

It emerged the practice was occurring in Syria some months ago.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Former Mufti of Tunisia Sheikh Othman Battikh complained in April that 13 Tunisian girls were “fooled” into traveling to Syria to offer sexual intercourse to rebel fighters, in order to create an army strong enough to topple the regime.

The origins of these “temporary marriages” have been attributed to Saudi Arabian scholar Sheikh Mohammed al-Arifi, Iranian channel Press TV reported in December last year.

Al-Arifi was claimed to have issued a fatwa permitting militants to engage in short-term marriages with Syrian women as young as 14 to “satisfy… their sexual desires and boost their determination in killing Syrians.”

According to CNS.News, al-Arifi later disowned the fatwa, though some Arab commentators are sceptical, with one source telling Al-Bawaba in March: “Then again, one might backtrack, standing accused of selling young innocents to militant Muslims.”

Al-Arifii has sparked controversy with previous fatwas, including one which demanded daughters do not wear revealing clothing or sit alone with their fathers, lest they incite his lust.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ We are not a violent society. We are a society sheltered from violence. No one in Rwanda spends time wondering what kind of man would murder people. They probably live next door to him. If your neighborhood is diverse enough, you might be unfortunate enough to live next door to war criminals all the […]