http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-totalitarians-of-new-york/ New York City mayors excel at banning everything from salt to carriages, but they are not very good at cleaning up the streets after a snowstorm. There are two ways of looking at any major city; as a mechanical problem of buildings, streets and sewers whose infrastructures need to be maintained or as a […]
Eric Holder reopened investigations targeting CIA operatives without reading the memos describing why they had been closed. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303802904579334850751092042?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion John Rizzo spent 34 years as a lawyer at the Central Intelligence Agency. This memoir of his service between 1976 and 2009 is emphatically a book for anyone who cares about the security of this country and […]
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/01/20/McCarthyism-by-the-Numbers#disqus_thread
The orchestrated attack on Diana West’s important book, American Betrayal, has been brutal and unseemly, but in one respect at least it has served a useful purpose.
This lone positive angle–counter-intuitive at first glance–is that her iconoclastic Cold War history has sparked a barrage of charges about “McCarthyism” and the senator from Wisconsin who gave his name to a decisive epoch in America’s long death struggle with the Kremlin.
As is well-known, “McCarthyism” was an alleged focus of political evil in the 1950s: accusations of Communist taint, without any factual basis; bogus “lists” of supposed Communists who never existed; failure in the end to produce even one provable Communist or Soviet agent, despite his myriad charges of subversion.
Such is the standard image of “McCarthyism” set forth in all the usual histories and media treatments of the era. Such is the image relied on by the critics of Ms. West to discredit her book and dismiss her as a crackpot and “conspiracy theorist.” By arguing that pro-Red elements in our government exerted baleful influence on US policy to suit the aims of Moscow, it is said, she becomes “McCarthy’s heiress,” reprising the evils of the fifties.
All of which, from my standpoint, has one beneficial feature–though it doesn’t make things less unpleasant for Ms. West. It pushes the issue of McCarthy and McCarthyism to the forefront, where it ought to be, and where it is now possible to view his cases in ways not feasible years ago when the relevant data were not open to the public.
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/51709 INTRODUCTION BY WOFF BACHNER Perhaps no recent incident illustrates the unrestrained bias towards the Jewish people better than last week’s shameful actions by UNESCO, when Director-General Irina Bokova cancelled a major exhibit about Jewish history in Israel; “People, Book, Land – The 3,500-year relationship of the Jewish People with the Holy Land.” After 22 […]
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.570071 Israel’s foreign ministry hopes to nix clause that might complicate renewal of scientific cooperation agreement. The German government is conditioning continued grants to Israeli high-tech companies, as well as the renewal of a scientific cooperation agreement, on the inclusion of a territorial clause stating that Israeli entities located in West Bank […]
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/white-house-misstated-irans-position-we-wont-dismantle-anything/2014/01/23/ Iran’s Foreign minister insists that the White House has misrepresented a major issue in the agreement between the P5+1 and Iran. VIDEO In a televised interview on Wednesday, Jan. 22, Iran’s foreign minister said that a fact sheet distributed by the White House mischaracterized what Iran agreed to do in the Interim Nuclear Agreement. […]
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4139/european-jihadists-syria European security officials say that in recent weeks they have noticed an “alarming acceleration” in the number of European jihadists traveling to Syria to obtain combat experience with Islamist groups linked to al-Qaeda. “France, Germany and the U.K. may have the largest foreign fighter contingents in Syria, but Denmark, Norway, Belgium and Austria have […]
http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/topic/politics/
Though chutzpah has successfully migrated into the English language intact, saichel, the Yiddish word for innate common sense has not fared as well. You can be an educated person, but without saichel, you’re bound to mess up. We need it badly – both the word and its extended connotations. Considers today’s story about the Hasidic storekeepers who were issued a fine for putting up notices regarding the dress code in their shops: “No shorts, no barefoot, no sleeveless, no low-cut neckline allowed.” Apparently, the NYC Human Rights Commissioner, a woman with not enough real violations to occupy her attention, considered this discriminatory against women and non-Jewish men. Though Williamsburg has become the newest neighborhood for trendy millenials, the stores involved in this sweep were a kosher butcher, grocer, baker and purveyor of clothes for Hasidic men. Despite the zero likelihood that these signs would offend any of their target demographic, the storekeepers were fined and predictably, they objected. The matter was scheduled for trial until a judge wisely settled it by eliminating the fines but insisting that the Hasidim add a postscript to their signs, reassuring the public that their dress code was not intended to be discriminatory. The Hasidic customers will undoubtedly be oblivious to seeing this spelled out in English and New Yorkers can scratch their heads as they ask how else the city can waste taxpayers’ money.
They won’t have to wonder for long because our mayor remains insistent that the only way to pay for pre-K education is not by a budget allotment as the governor has generously offered, but by taxing New Yorkers who earn a minimum of $500,000 annually. We know that his newly appointed chief of staff for his wife’s fiefdom will be earning a salary of $175,000 for a job whose specifications haven’t yet been spelled out. If she has a spouse or partner with a job equal to or better than hers, she might be in that 1% category, along with Carmen Farina, the new school chancellor who is currently double-dipping, getting paid both her salary and her pension simultaneously, coming to over $412,000 just for her. If Mr. Farina earns only $88,000 more, they’d be among the wealthy families that de Blasio is out to get. One out of five on the mayor’s staff earns more than $100,000 a year and these are civil servants who also get health benefits, pensions and other perks that haven’t been factored in to the real value of their annual income. New Yorkers reputedly get more govt aid per capita than residents of any other state; in 2010, NY spent close to $3,000/pp on Medicaid compared with Nevada which spent a frugal $666/pp. Current estimates claim that more than half of all Americans get govt assistance – has the mayor stopped to consider how much worse off the city will be when working families who pay their taxes head for NJ and Connecticut when they’re slapped with another punishing tax hike?
