Who Needs the Family? http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ For most of human history the family was the basic social unit of the species. Family was a way of passing down genes, beliefs and wealth. It was a retirement plan that you paid into by keeping your children alive long enough for them to grow up and support you. […]
http://www.radicalislam.org/analysis/interview-diana-west-saudi-influence-fox-news
In the following interview, RadicalIslam.org National Security Analyst Ryan Mauro speaks to Diana West, a nationally syndicated conservative American columnist and author, about the impact of the partial ownership of Fox news by Saudi Prince Alwaleed.
Ryan Mauro: You have devoted a lot of your time towards covering Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal. Can you tell us about him and why he warrants this attention?
Diana West: Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is usually described as a billionaire Saudi businessman, but he is also a senior member of the Saudi monarchy. He is the nephew of the Saudi dictator, King Abdullah, and the first cousin of the Saudi interior minister, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. He is also the largest stakeholder in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. outside the Murdoch family.
We may not realize it, but most of us first heard about Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in the immediate aftermath 9/11. That was when a “Saudi prince” — it was Alwaleed — became infamous for having donated $10 million to the Twin Towers Fund only to have then-mayor Rudy Giuliani return the check.
Why did Giuliani return the check? It became clear the prince wasn’t making a donation but rather a political statement. After presenting the money, the prince issued a press release blaming the 9/11 attacks on American support for Israel — while, as Alwaleed’s statement read, “our Palestinian brethren continue to be slaughtered at the hands of the Israelis.”
As the San Francisco Chronicle reported at theNY City Mayor during the 9/11 attack Rudolph Giuliani time, Giuliani hadn’t seen see this press release when he initially accepted the Saudi check among others from government and private industry leaders. In a separate letter Guliani did read, Alwaleed had expressed only condolences for “the loss of life that the city of New York has suffered,” while condemning “all forms of terrorism.” The Saudi prince wrote: “In doing so I am reiterating Saudi Arabia’s strong stance against these tragic and horrendous acts.”
That was fine. It was the press release attached to the letter that was not fine. This statement, also in Alwaleed’s name, sought to blame U.S. policy on “the Palestinian cause” for the attack. It said:
“However, at times like this one, we must address some of the issues that led to such a criminal attack. I believe the government of the United States of America should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause.
“Our Palestinian brethren continue to be slaughtered at the hands of Israelis while the world turns the other cheek.”
The Chronicle report continued:
http://cotton.house.gov/about
A sixth-generation Arkansan, Tom Cotton was born and raised in Dardanelle on his family’s cattle farm. Tom graduated from Dardanelle High School and went on to graduate with honors from Harvard College and Harvard Law School.After completing law school, Tom clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals and then entered private practice, where he concentrated in labor, employment, and constitutional law in cases at all levels of state and federal court.
Yet ever since the September 11 attacks, Tom had felt called to serve his country in uniform, and he ultimately left his law practice to join the Army. Tom declined offers for a direct commission as an Army JAG, volunteering instead to serve as an infantryman. Tom spent five years on active duty. He deployed to Baghdad in 2006 as a platoon leader with the 101st Airborne. In Baghdad, Tom was responsible for a 41-man air-assault infantry platoon and planned and led daily combat patrols.
Following his Iraq deployment, Tom was assigned as a platoon leader at The Old Guard at Arlington National Cemetery, where he was responsible for conducting military honors funerals for veterans from World War II to today’s war. In 2008, Tom volunteered to return to the front lines and deployed to eastern Afghanistan as the operations officer of a provincial reconstruction team, where he planned and resourced daily counterinsurgency and reconstruction operations for an 83-member joint and interagency team. Tom’s military decorations include the Bronze Star Medal, Ranger Tab, Combat Infantryman Badge, Parachutist Badge, Air Assault Badge, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, and Iraq Campaign Medal.
http://cotton.house.gov/issues/defense-and-national-security
The foremost responsibility of the federal government is to provide for the common defense. I am an Army Ranger and a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. I have fought on the front lines to protect our country, and I will fight in Congress to keep America safe through a strong national defense and leadership in the world.
I volunteered to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I believe those wars are just and necessary. As a veteran, I want to bring our troops home as much as anyone, but I want to bring them home victoriously. I don’t believe in exit strategies; I believe in victory strategies. In Congress, I will stand up to President Obama, whose short-sighted and politically motivated decisions threaten the lives and money that America has invested in these wars.
I strongly support the many critical fronts in our global war against Islamic terrorists. We must continue to track and monitor our enemies through terrorist-surveillance programs. We should target these terrorists aggressively through the use of drone technology wherever possible. We should employ our special-operations forces and intelligence professionals where feasible. When we capture terrorists, they should go to Guantanamo Bay for vigorous interrogation—not to a civilian court in America. And we must stop the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical technology, because the world’s most dangerous men cannot be allowed to obtain the world’s most dangerous weapons.
http://cotton.house.gov/issues/energy
America has the world’s largest fossil-fuel reserves in the world. I view our fossil fuels as a valuable asset to be used, not an embarrassing liability to be restrained. In Congress, I will support policies that unleash our energy producers, put America on the path to energy independence, and reduce our dependence on unreliable and hostile countries.
We must open federal lands and the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to more exploration and production. The oil-and-gas reserves in the Gulf of Mexico, the Arctic Ocean, and federal public lands in the West and Alaska are a tremendous untapped source of economic growth. Greater exploration and production will increase the reliability of our supplies and reduce prices, create high-paying jobs that can’t be sent overseas, and reduce the deficit through higher lease and royalty payments. In Congress, I will work not only to open these lands and the OCS, but also to ensure that regulators act on drilling and production permits in a timely, responsible manner.
I strongly oppose all forms of a “cap and trade” schemes, which are nothing more than a massive new tax on energy. Cap and trade would handcuff our economy and make America less competitive in the world, because emerging markets like China and India will never adopt such a destructive tax. Manufacturers will move to those countries, which will also cost American jobs. I will fight tirelessly against cap and trade, both in Congress and against the EPA’s abusive use of the Clean Air Act to implement cap and trade unilaterally.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/dear-father-dear-son-two-lives-eight-hours-on-the-glazov-gang/
Don’t miss this special episode of The Glazov Gang in which Larry Elder, a New York Times best-selling author and nationally syndicated radio talk show host, and Dwight Schultz, a Hollywood actor who played Murdock on NBC’s The-A-Team, discuss Why the Left Hates to Admit that Dads Matter. The inspiration for the dialogue was Larry’s new riveting memoir, Dear Father, Dear Son: Two Lives… Eight Hours. [To read Larry Elder’s Frontpage interview about Dear Father, Dear Son, click here.]
Watch both segments of the two-part Glazov Gang series below:
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/first-ayaan-now-fiamma/print/
Another courageous European parliamentarian departs Europe.
When she walks down the streets in Italy, passersby shout greetings to her, addressing her as onorevole. “In a few days,” Italian Parliamentarian Fiamma Nirenstein said to me the other day in a long, energetic, and remarkably openhearted phone call from Rome, “I will not be onorevole anymore.”
Nirenstein, one of the most prominent members of the Italian Parliament, has chosen not to run for office again. More than that, she has chosen to leave Italy for Israel. She is Jewish. She is making aliyah. And she is leaving politics to return to journalism.
She has mixed feelings about the change. “As a journalist, you’re read. By some. But when you’re an onorevole, all you have to say is that you’re angry about something and a whole lot of people in the press will write about it. And you can write a law, and spread the word, and win support, and get it passed.” In many regards, Fiamma is like former Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, not only because both women have made use of their political positions to vigorously challenge Islam and defend its victims, but because both ended up having to be accompanied everywhere by armed guards – and also because Fiamma, like Ayaan before her, is a top-rank European hero of our time who has decided that she has no alternative other than to leave Europe.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obamas-most-dishonest-state-of-the-union-address/
In 1986, at the closing session of the Communist Party shindig in the Karl Marx Theater in Havana, Castro had declared, “Let no one think that what I have here is a lengthy speech; it is the party’s program.” He then went on to speak for 7 hours and 10 minutes.
Obama’s ridiculous 6600-word marathon is also not a lengthy speech; it is the party’s program. The professional flatterers and fawners in the media have long since given up describing the teleprompter-in-chief as a talented speaker. These days Obama gives speeches that not only sound like they were read from a teleprompter, but also written by a teleprompter.
The obscene performance began with a celebration of an economic recovery that exists only in Washington, D.C., which has grown fat on the money that its corrupt political interests have stolen from the rest of the country, and ended by comparing a woman waiting in line to vote for him with a police officer who risked his life to stop a mad gunman.
And in between these two cynical and ugly bookends was a dog’s dinner of out of control spending, class warfare and more bad ideas than even Castro could have come up with in seven hours.
As out of touch with the rest of the country as if he were speaking at the Karl Marx Theater in Havana, Obama claimed that spending was under control, the national debt was no longer a problem, the war in Afghanistan had been won, the economic recovery was here, unemployment was fading and Al Qaeda was a shadow of its former self.
Obama described the “sequester” that he had come up with as “a really bad idea” and blamed it on Congress. He took credit for the oil production that he had fought every step of the way and blamed Hurricane Sandy on global warming; a claim that even few global warming researchers are willing to make.
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/340499
COOLEST CAL
Product Details
Coolidge by Amity Shlaes (Feb 12, 2013)
‘Even when small, the boy saw politics firsthand,” Amity Shlaes writes of Calvin Coolidge. “At town meetings, it was his father who worked or spoke; Calvin sold apples and popcorn at the meetings, as his father had before him. The villagers noticed early that Calvin was always quiet; when someone played the violin, he would not dance, but was always observant.” Good thing he discovered early on that “politics somehow afforded distraction from loneliness,” because that diligence would serve the 30th president of the United States well. Shlaes, author of the new book Coolidge, talks to National Review Online about Coolidge and what we might learn from him.
KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: What’s so cool about Coolidge?
AMITY SHLAES: Today we care about budgets more than anything. Our American future hangs on the ability of government to cut budget.
Coolidge cut the budget, and even better, cut it during peace and prosperity. He left a federal budget lower than the one that greeted him when he arrived in office. He managed to freeze or cut the budget over more than five years in office. If you look at charts of presidents — Nixon, Ike, and Reagan — you see them failing on this score.
What else is cool? Coolidge was a pragmatist. He didn’t start out with a tax theory. But he observed over time that lower tax rates sometimes brought in extra revenue. The success of his and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon’s experiment with rate cuts has been obscured by our modern history books. But that success was real, and it was fun to get close to it. A book to read after Coolidge? Taxation: The People’s Business, by Mellon.
LOPEZ: What drew you to him?
SHLAES: First: Coolidge is the forgotten president, and this book is the prequel to my book on the 1930s, The Forgotten Man. If Coolidge were a stock, he’d be a buy. The experts have historically ranked Coolidge in the bottom quartile or bottom half of all presidents. But his economic performance and his statesmanship suggest Coolidge belongs in the top quarter of presidents. The disparity between the Coolidge price and Coolidge value is huge. So revision is warranted.
Second: The economics. We know that the economic theory of those days was different. Then, bankers, business people, teachers, journalists, and, yes, even some farmers believed that money must be stable, and that the individual mattered more than the aggregate. Macroeconomic theory didn’t really exist, and if people like Calvin Coolidge had heard about it, they would have been suspicious. Their theories yielded some pretty good results: There was strong growth under the gold standard, as studies at the Bank of England have shown. But making the case for pre-Keynesian economics would be dry work. So instead I tried to convey what they knew through someone from their time, a president. Coolidge is an economic bildungsroman — “The Education of Calvin Coolidge.”
Third: Coolidge was the pre-incarnation of Robert L. Bartley, the late editorial-page editor of the Wall Street Journal. Both had that combination of political wisdom, city wisdom, and farmer wisdom. Coolidge was from Vermont; Bartley from Ames, Iowa. Both rationed their words. But both had a wonderful sense of humor: As far as I can tell, Coolidge even cackled like Bartley. Since I worked for Bartley for 17 years, meeting Coolidge on paper or video was a shock. Here was a man I already knew.
While writing Coolidge, I discovered that Clarence Barron, one of the founders of the WSJ, backed Coolidge strongly, even cheering him up when he worried over unions. “Wall Street doesn’t care about the coal strike,” Barron told Coolidge. The WSJ’s obit for Coolidge is stunning. And Barron led the fund drive for Coolidge’s favorite non-profit post presidency, his wife’s charity, the Clarke School for the Deaf.
LOPEZ: Is Calvin Coolidge a political model for our day?
SHLAES: Yes. In a way, he’s better than Reagan. His tax rates were lower, and he cut budgets.
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/340481 A Speech Worthy of Booker T. Washington Benjamin Carson’s and Barack Obama’s differences are about more than policy. In an earlier era, Benjamin Carson’s speech before the National Prayer Breakfast last week would have been a really big deal rather than mere fodder for a brief squall on Twitter and cable news. Born in […]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323696404578300680529770600.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
The President’s Plans
Obama offers an agenda aimed at electing a Pelosi House.
The big question of President Obama’s second term is whether he wants to forge bipartisan compromises in the next two years, or whether he wants to spend these years campaigning against Republicans to regain Democratic control of the House in 2014 and then finish his Presidency with another liberal crescendo. Judging by his inaugural address and Tuesday night’s State of the Union, we’re guessing he’s going for Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Mr. Obama’s second inaugural was a clarion call to “collective action,” as he put it, and Tuesday’s speech showed what he thinks that should mean in practice. “The American people don’t expect government to solve every problem,” he said, while proceeding to offer a new government program to solve every problem.
Not enough job creation? Have the feds set up 15 new “manufacturing hubs” where business can get government advice.
Decaying public works? How about a “Fix-It-First” plan to pay the unemployed to repair roads and bridges? Thus do the “shovel-ready” stimulus projects of the first term become the “most urgent repairs” of the second.
Lousy K-12 results? Have the feds finance pre-school for “every child in America.” A government study only recently found that any benefits from the current pre-school program, Head Start, wear off by third grade. But he’d still make it a universal entitlement.
Not enough money to subsidize electric cars or more Solyndras? Create a new Energy Security Trust, funded by taxing oil and gas companies.
Not all women earn as much money on average as men? Pass the Paycheck Fairness Act so government can unleash the trial lawyers to enforce equal pay.
