RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/343128/two-sides-rand-paul-andrew-c-mccarthy

After listening to Rand Paul speak at National Review’s Washington office, Bob Costa concludes that the senator is leading one side of what is “nothing less than a fight for the soul of the GOP on foreign policy.” Let’s hope so.

Whether what emerges is also a conservative foreign policy depends as much on which Senator Paul wins as on whether he wins. If it is the Rand Paul who perceived the common hegemonic denominator between Soviet totalitarianism and Islamic-supremacist totalitarianism in a provocative speech at the Heritage Foundation last month, there is cause for optimism. Not as hope-inspiring is the Rand Paul portrayed in Bob’s NRO report. It is already clear, though, that Senator Paul’s agitations serve conservative ends more consistently than does the erratic adventurism of his opposite numbers in the GOP’s intramural brawl: John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

Bob describes these Beltway establishment figures as “the foreign-policy grandees in the Senate Republican conference,” standard-bearers of what is said to be “the Bush-Cheney approach to foreign policy.” The latter claim is not entirely fair, particularly to the Cheney component of the ledger; but that is a story for another day. For now, the point — mine, not Costa’s — is that Senators McCain and Graham are not conservatives. They are progressive-lite populists who bend with the wind, an occupational hazard of service to a fuzzy global-stability agenda rather than to vital American interests pursued within a constitutional, limited-government framework.

Paul proudly claims the conservative tag that seems to embarrass the media-manic McCain except during those dolorous primary seasons when even a maverick must appeal to the GOP base. And once Paul outmaneuvered them (and the Obama administration) in the recent dust-up over U.S. drone-missile strikes, McCain and Graham became strident in their efforts to marginalize the Kentuckian — branding Paul “ill-informed” and a “wacko bird” of the Right. But Paul is far from a “wacko” — or, for that matter, the “extremist” I once made the mistake of describing him as. I was referring to a libertarian position he took against indefinite detention for American citizens suspected of being enemy combatants. The “extremist” descriptor did not fit the man, and it exaggerated the position he’d taken, which extended discussion showed to be less detached from wartime exigencies than it initially seemed.

In the senatorial name-calling, one senses a certain desperation, a fear on the part of McCain and Graham that the ground beneath them is shifting. There’s good reason for that.

Another Tack: Out of the box, Obama If our soon-to-arrive visitor, US President Barack Obama, truly fancies himself the harbinger of new tidings to this region – as he has tirelessly promoted himself in the past – then it’s high time for him to take the truly bold tack and think out of the box. Had […]

BREAKING: Obama White House Describes West Bank as Part of Israel In describing President Obama’s itinerary during his trip to Israel and Jordan next week, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes conceded that the Jewish connection to the West Bank is as strong as it is to Israel, and indeed, spoke of the two interchangeably: […]

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=306330

Ever since I was born I could hear the waves of hatred and prejudice pouring upon Jews for unexplained reasons, but apparently associated with the Arab-Israeli conflict, which Somalia was not a part of.

During Siad Barre (Somali dictator from 1969 to 1991), there was an Arabization program in Somalia that entailed the hatred of Jews as part of a standardized process of Arabization of our formerly non-Arab country.

When crisis erupted in Somalia and the lights went out in the 1990s, it became obvious that Somalia had been abandoned; no country acted to alleviate the Somalis’ enormous suffering.

Somalia has received various kinds of aid over the years, from various sources, but in the post-Cold War era, as Somalia’s strategic importance to the great world powers has waned, the country has effectively been left to rot. Its healthcare infrastructure, for example, is damaged to a degree which seems irreparable. Somalis seeking urgent medical care thus must often cross the border into Ethiopia, or seek treatment further abroad.

I am not a doctor by profession, but have served for many years as an interpreter for Somalis seeking medical care in Ethiopia. It was in this capacity that Special Adviser to the President of Somalia Dr. Omar Dihoud and I met with Mohammed Mohamud and Farah on March 4 at the Nati Hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, prior to their 9 p.m. departure for Tel Aviv.

It was a remarkable occasion for all of us.

The two young men were overjoyed, but also a little shocked; they hadn’t expected anything other than rejection from the Israelis they had been taught all their lives to consider “immortal enemies.”

“When we were told Israeli embassy in Addis Ababa had granted us the visas, it blew our minds!” said “We’re grateful to the Hadassah organization that offered us to treat us. We’ve life threatening injuries and yet no money” to go to Germany for similar treatment, added, explaining that “[the treatment] costs a minimum of $100,000 for each of us.”

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ AND MARRIAGE FOR ALL… Aside from all the usual speeches, CPAC predictably became Ground Zero in the Meghan McCainization of the Conservative movement. Aside from the Amnesty pitches, we are now being subjected to another round of dishonest arguments on gay marriage. Republicans made a fundamental tactical error by accepting civil unions as an […]

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ A CONSERVATISM OF PRINCIPLES Robert Spencer has written an article, “Why I am not a conservative” after his CPAC mistreatment. I appreciate his feelings, but I think it’s a mistake to define conservatism in terms of personalities. Conservatism cannot be defined by Romney or Norquist, or for that matter by any politician. Floridians have […]

http://newtown.patch.com/articles/newtown-officials-put-money-for-armed-school-security-in-budget?ncid=newsltuspatc00000001

Officials at a Monday Board of Finance meeting voted to add $420,000 to the town’s contingency fund — an amount chosen to allow Newtown to staff armed police at all seven public schools, including elementary schools, if it chooses.

It’s not final — on Thursday, per charter, the budget will move to the Legislative Council, who have the power to cut the budget. But since that body can’t add money, the Board of Finance decided to act now.

“Our primary goal is to get a number, and that number has to be more than enough for when the council gets the budget,” said Finance Chair John Kortze. “It would allow for some version of an armed police officer in each of the schools — and make sure we don’t have the issue of time.”

First Selectman Pat Llodra’s initial proposal called for $400,000. The board decided to add extra to allow “the conversation to continue” once the budget reaches the Legislative Council.

“We can take it back, but if we don’t add it now and more information comes out, that can’t happen,” said Kortze.

The addition would cover the hiring of 4.3 new officers — the .3 serving to provide a full blanket of security at Reed Intermediate School, whose current School Resource Officer also serves as the town’s Youth Officer. In addition, Llodra said when the Board of Selectmen made their request, they didn’t know Monroe would apply for a grant to provide an officer at Sandy Hook Elementary School, based at Monroe’s Chalk Hill School since the Dec. 14 shooting.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=306497
A crucial intellectual battle has begun, to strip the Jews of their political independence and national sovereignty.
The very idea of a Jewish state is undemocratic, a violation of the self-determination rights of its non-Jewish citizens, and therefore morally problematic.
– Joseph Levine, “On Questioning the Jewish State,” The New York Times, March 9.

The nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things… constitute this soul or spiritual principle.One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present-day consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received.
– Ernest Renan, “What is a Nation?” 1882

Well there you have it. The mainstreaming of the once-unthinkable is now upon us… courtesy of the “paper of record.”

In an over 2,000-word opinion piece, published last Saturday in the Times, Joseph Levine, a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, disputes the rights of Jews to national self-determination, the exercise of political sovereignty and a nation-state of their own – even within the Green Line.

This is the first of a two-part response to this perniciously poisonous piece – in which I will show why for Israel to be democratic it is imperative that it be Jewish.

Asinine analysis

Over the years, we have learned that when it comes to the topic of Israel and the Mideast conflict we should expect the asinine rather than the astute to be the paper’s standard fare.

It seems nothing is too outrageous, outlandish or out of touch with reality for the Times to refrain from subjecting its readers to it. Being manifestly misinformed, blatantly biased, deliberately distortive – even deceptive – has never been an obstacle to publication in the “Gray Lady’s” opinion section, so long as the sentiments conveyed do not diverge from some prevailing politically correct paradigm.

But even given the cavalcade of the harebrained and the hallucinatory that have (dis)graced the opinion pages of the paper, Levine’s hapless harangue stands out as a real doozie.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/eric-burns/the-bedouin-rebellion-against-israel/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=119de2ccdf-Mailchimp_FrontPageMag Various Bedouin tribes are waging a full-scale rebellion against Israel. Negev Bedouin tribes are refusing to settle in designated areas developed by Israel’s government, and stealing Jeeps and other equipment from nearby IDF bases. They use the Jeeps to smuggle drugs and other contraband into Israel, from the Sinai. In central Israel and the […]

http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/48071 THIS TIME IT IS THE ISRAELIS WHO WILL BOW….TO PRESSURE….RSK After six weeks of intense negotiations, a new Israeli coalition has emerged to greet President Obama when he arrives in Jerusalem on March 20th. It is a product of an obsessive democracy with diverse backgrounds and conflicting views on practically everything. . . The […]