RUTHFULLY YOURS

Stratfor’s George Friedman published an interesting article on September 1, “ Pondering Hitler’s Legacy,” to mark the 76th anniversary of the beginning of World War II. The first outcome of Hitler’s war, he says, was that it destroyed Europe’s hegemony over much of the world and its influence over the rest:

Within 15 years of the end of the war, Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands lost their empires . . . By the end of the war they had lost the will, the energy and the wealth to maintain their power. After half-hearted and doomed attempts to resist, these countries willingly participated in the dismantling of what they had once thought of as their birthright . . . After the war, Europe faced the task of rebuilding buildings. The ambition to rule had been exhausted.

This assertion is disputable. The dusk of European hegemony started in the aftermath of the First World War. The wealth was largely gone by 1918. A financially crippled Britain abandoned the gold standard in 1931. France was even more severely damaged: the ravages of war on her soil exceeded 100 percent of her 1913 GDP; the national debt rose from 66% of GDP in 1913 to 170% in 1919. High inflation caused the franc to lose half its value against the British pound.

After mosquitoes, chiggers, ticks, fleas, flies and other tiny disease-carrying insects that seem to exist solely to cause human misery and pain and which are otherwise expendable, the cicada is the next most useless creature in the animal kingdom. Ants and worms aerate the soil. Bees distribute pollen.

The cicada, however, does nothing. It doesn’t even transmit a disease. It’s also so ugly it resembles an alien life form. I’m surprised that no independent film producer has shot and released “The Attack of the Flesh-Eating Cicadas From Planet Xylophone.” It’s noisy. The mating call of the American cicada, as anyone who has ever heard one (or a forest full of cicadas) can testify, is a shrill, high-pitched, compressed clicking similar to the sound of a car’s gears being stripped. Or a DVD player spinning its wheels. Or a badly designed alarm clock. It can outshout the mating call of a tree frog.

I’d rather listen to a forest full of crickets. That can be deafening, too, but at least I know the crickets are not coming after me.

Basically, the cicada provides an “ecological” service to everyone and everything by just dying. It is basically a parasite. It doesn’t even feed on other parasites. Like the equally useless bagworm, It sucks on tree fluids, becomes an adult, reproduces, and dies. It is only good for being mulched in soil after it dies, or being consumed by ants and other insects, and by squirrels, birds, and other animals when they’re desperate.

All the websites on the cicada say that it is a nutrient-rich delicacy. There are actually cicada recipes. No, thank you. I have a hard time picturing people chowing down on chocolate-covered ants and snails.

One can’t say about the cultural cicadas that make a lot of noise on Netflix that they’re “nutrient-rich.” These movies and TV series are not nutrient-rich – at least not for one’s souls – and are otherwise useless as esthetic and/or moral experiences. They are not produced for “uplift.” They do not provide what novelist Ayn Rand called “emotional fuel” for one to pursue one’s values. They are a hybrid cicada, and can burrow into one’s mind and soul to lay eggs. They are produced, consciously or unconsciously, to inculcate an enervating epistemological and metaphysical drone that life is pointless, that happiness is random and arbitrary, and that existence is just one long sentence of spiritually eviscerating numbness with no chance of relief or commutation.

Here is how the pro-Israel theater works.

Every other country has its American embassy in its capital. Except Israel. Every few years, Congress would bring up a bill or a resolution calling or even mandating that the embassy be moved to Jerusalem. Even politicians not known for their great love of the Jewish State would vote for it.

Some like Biden or Kerry would even sponsor them.

The bill would have a loophole allowing a president to waive it in the interests of national security, which he always did, even when he had promised to move the embassy to Jerusalem in his campaign.

The politicians were happy. The pro-Israel lobby got to justify its budget. Some Jews however were baffled why the embassy never seemed to get moved.

Senator Casey has just announced his support for the Iran Nuclear Deal.

Here are quotes from his Senate office Issues: “Senator Casey has supported the continued use of economic and diplomatic pressure to impel Iranian regime to halt its pursuit of a nuclear weapon. For example, Senator Casey co-sponsored the Iran Freedom and Counter-Proliferation Act of 2012. This amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act enhances sanctions imposed with respect to Iran. The act increases sanctions on the Iranian energy sector as well as its port, shipping, and shipbuilding sectors. It also places new restrictions on Iran’s ability to get insurance for these industries. In December 2012, Senator Casey joined Senators Menendez of New Jersey, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and 70 other Senators in sending a letter to President Obama regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The letter expresses the urgency in addressing the security threat posed by Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons capability. It also calls on the Obama administration to fully implement all existing sanctions and to adopt new, stronger sanctions.”

Support for Israel
Israel is one of the United States’ most trusted allies. A stable and secure Israel is in our national security interest and has been a cornerstone of our foreign policy for more than half a century. The United States benefits enormously from cooperating with Israel on counter terrorism, intelligence and defense. Israel has shared innovative technology and equipment with the U.S. military, helping to protect our service members in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. . In April 2013, Senator Casey visited Israel where he met with President Peres and Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss security issues facing our countries, including Iran’s nuclear program and unrest throughout the Middle East.

Obama claimed that ISIS was only a “jayvee” team even as it was capturing Iraqi cities. Now he wants us to believe that Iran is just another “jayvee” team even as it’s taking over Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Like the rest of his Iran deal talking points, the one about Iran’s tiny military budget is false, and not only is it false, but his claim about how small Iran’s military budget keeps changing.

A few weeks ago, in a speech at American University, he was claiming that “The defense budget of the United States is more than $600 billion. To repeat, Iran’s is about $15 billion.”

“Iran’s defense budget is $30 billion. Our defense budget is closer to $600 billion. Iran understands that they cannot fight us,” Obama had told the New York Times in April.

Just now, he told the Forward, “As I pointed out repeatedly, Iran’s annual defense budget is about $15 billion.”

What is Iran’s military budget? Read Obama’s lips. It’s either $15 billion or $30 billion.

I am so sick and tired of pundits explaining what we can “learn” from Donald Trump. Do they not listen to Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina to channel anger properly. Peter Wood explains this free floating anger in his very prescient book:” A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now” Jan 4, 2007

Donald Trump is the angry man of the hour. He joins a long list of people who in the last half century have made their mark by bursting the confines of civility to say aggressively rude and obnoxious things. Vein-popping, vitriolic anger displayed in public is an art form — of sorts. It is a performance art, and it is a new thing — new, at least, in the yardstick of lifetimes and centuries. Donald Trump’s antics would have been unthinkable in the era of Eisenhower, let alone FDR.

It was not that people in such past generations didn’t get angry, didn’t sometimes express their anger in awkward ways, or didn’t sometimes become publicly known for their bluster. We’ve had our Huey Long–style politicians who have made pyrotechnic anger their trademark. But beginning in the aftermath of World War II, the nation began a transition from believing that an easy or too frequent resort to anger is a weakness to a belief that anger is empowering and that expressing it vigorously is healthy and good.

The shift from self-control to self-expression didn’t happen all at once, and at first it was confined to artists, writers, and intellectuals. Think of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (1955) as one of the early expressions of self-actualizing rage. But Ginsberg was howling in a beat dive in San Francisco. How did we get from there to Mr. Trump howling on stage?

Thom Tillis defeated liberal incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan in 2014……He ran on defeating Obamacare, ending big government and EPA regulations…..rsk

The United States entered negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran in an undeniable position of strength. Sanctions on Iran were working as intended: causing the Iranian currency to crumble, wreaking havoc on Iran’s financial sector, and dramatically cutting Iran’s oil exports. Iran’s economy was teetering on the verge of collapse. As President Obama noted earlier this year, the United States imposed “the toughest sanctions in history” that “helped bring Iran to the negotiating table.”

During the final presidential debate in October 2012, the president outlined his necessary condition for a deal, declaring: “The deal we’ll accept is they end their nuclear program. It’s very straightforward.”

However, once at the negotiating table, it was clear that President Obama wasn’t motivated to strike the best deal possible to end Iran’s nuclear program. Instead, he was intent on striking any deal — even a bad one.

Today I will be visiting Oklahoma City to meet with some of the leaders of America’s energy revolution. Developments in shale-oil production such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have opened up new and exciting possibilities for a secure energy future for our nation. Yet this week, President Obama traveled to Alaska to talk not about seizing our energy potential, but about limiting that potential through environmental policies that grow government and raise costs. I believe this is an outrageous misalignment of priorities.

It is hard to think of a single industry that has a more direct impact on Americans’ financial well-being than the energy industry. Our energy resources truly sustain our human resources. Our businesses need to be able to operate affordably and efficiently in order to create jobs and grow our economy. Our families need reasonable gas and electric bills in order to reach financial security. Working moms and dads need to be able to commute to work without breaking the bank.

Yet despite the importance of this industry, our outdated government has made energy one of the most politicized and regulated aspects of our economy. It picks winners and losers through subsidies and higher taxes. And while some of the environmental concerns influencing regulations are legitimate, others are seriously overblown. A small but vocal minority, with some very highly paid lobbyists, has successfully pushed for restrictions that result in higher prices and fewer jobs for our people in exchange for minimal environmental benefits.

I believe that the vast majority of Americans — both Democrats and Republicans — are very reasonable when it comes to balancing ecology with the economy. And I believe it is conservatives, not liberals, who ultimately have the more sustainable and forward-looking agenda. This is because the true path to an economically and environmentally secure energy future is not through regulation, but through innovation. And innovation comes from less government involvement, not more.

The Blaze picks up a story flagged by Joe Scarborough, who expressed astonishment on Morning Joe on Tuesday at an e-mail exchange in which then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton appeared to berate one of her top aides, Jacob Sullivan, for his reluctance to send Clinton classified information by e-mail.

The subject line of the February 10, 2010, e-mail exchange is “Insulza.” The exchange is about a speech, apparently by a foreign official. Perhaps the subject line refers to José Miguel Insulza, a Chilean politician who has been secretary general of the Organization of American States since 2005. In any event, the U.S. government’s internal reporting on the speech has clearly been classified (not surprising in light of what Shannen Coffin and yours truly explained earlier: foreign government information is presumptively classified). This is clearly very irritating to Secretary Clinton, who is anxious to read the speech.

Editor’s Note: A version of this article appeared in the June 22, 2015, issue of National Review.

The 950 residents of King Cove, Alaska, have been trying to build an emergency road to nearby Cold Bay. They have been trying to build the road for 40 years.
King Cove is near the western tip of the Alaskan Peninsula; a few miles west begin the Aleutian Islands. King Cove has a school and two churches and a Chinese restaurant, and its economy is buttressed by the presence of PeterPan Seafoods, one of the largest commercial fishing operations in North America, whose seasonal employees constitute about one third of the local population. But like most towns in the Alaskan bush, it has only a small clinic and no full-time physician. For everything from minor surgeries to delivering a baby, residents must venture to a proper hospital — 625 miles away, in Anchorage.

Rarely can that be done directly from King Cove. The town’s 3,500-foot gravel airstrip, built in 1970 in the Delta Creek Valley north of town, cannot accommodate large aircraft, and the single- and twin-engine aircraft that use it are particularly vulnerable to King Cove’s weather and geography — which are, to put it lightly, forbidding. The airstrip is situated between two volcanic peaks, which funnel into the valley winds that regularly reach 70 mph. And while clear, calm days do visit King Cove, bad weather — thick fog, lashing rain, driving snow — is Mother Nature’s curse on King Cove a third of the year, sometimes more.

So getting to Anchorage requires first getting to next-door Cold Bay, a hamlet of 100 people, mainly transient state and federal employees, that happens to be home to a 10,000-foot, all-weather airstrip capable of handling the long-distance flight to the state’s largest city. (Why tiny Cold Bay has such an outsized role in King Cove’s story is something of a historical accident: Cold Bay Airport was built in World War II, when this distant patch of the Alaska Territory became a strategic outpost against a possible Japanese invasion. The site chosen, Army engineers agreed then, and locals agree now, was the only one in the area suitable for an airstrip of such size.)