RUTHFULLY YOURS

Coburn, a True Statesman, Steps Down The only problem with the Senate’s “Dr. No” is that he’s retiring.

Dozens of members of Congress will be retiring next month, and some should be missed. But there is only one Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma senator the Christian Science Monitor has dubbed “a rabble-rousing statesman.”

Those two qualities together are rare in politicians, but they found a happy union in the 66-year-old obstetrician who is leaving the Senate early next month to battle prostate cancer. On the one hand, Coburn never retreated on his core values: He is staunchly pro-life, for traditional marriage, and resistant to all manner of fads from climate-change regulation to mindless intervention overseas. As the Senate’s “Dr. No” from 2004 to today, he held up hundreds of special-interest boondoggles and end-runs around common sense. At the same time, he maintained a standard of honest dealing and integrity that many more in Congress should aspire to.

This month, he took to the Senate floor to make his farewell remarks. He reminded his colleagues that they take an oath to “protect the United States of America, its Constitution, and its liberties.” What’s not included in that oath, he warned, is any mention that senators have a duty to provide benefits to their state.

“It’s nice to be able to do things for your state, but that isn’t our charge,” he said. “Our charge is to protect the future of our country by upholding the Constitution and ensuring the liberty that’s guaranteed there is protected and preserved.”

It was that desire that drove Tom Coburn to first run from an Oklahoma House district in 1994 that had never elected a Republican. A physician, he continued to deliver babies while in office and forced the Ethics Committee to back down from its contention that such outside work was against House rules. Although wildly popular back home, Coburn retired in 2000 after three terms because he feared he might succumb to “Potomac Fever” if he stayed longer. He joked that many of his former colleagues are suffering from an addiction. “Power is like morphine,” he wrote in his book Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders into Insiders. “It dulls the senses, impairs judgment, and leads politicians to make choices that damage their own character and the machinery of democracy.”

North Korea supposedly hacked Sony and exposed hundreds of embarrassing behind-the-scenes e-mails, humiliating the company into giving in to blackmail by delaying for a time the release of its new film Interview. Perhaps the murderous North Korean thugocracy thought that, by revealing the innermost illiberal thoughts of the global corporate elite, it might win adulation commensurate with that accorded the liberal crusader Julian Assange — the heartthrob hacker who exposed U.S. government secrets and the private musings of the ruling American hierarchy.

Kim Jong-un’s hackers were supposedly displeased by the Sony Corporation’s unkind depiction of North Korea’s nightmarish dystopia. For a while at least, Hollywood backed down and acceded to the new reality that a foreign country can dictate the scope of artistic expression to U.S. residents.

Now another nuclear power, Pakistan, is angry at Hollywood. According to Pakistani diplomats, Showtime’s series Homeland failed to note the supposedly liberal, humanitarian, and compassionate nature of the Pakistani government. American filmmakers were faulted for making no effort to highlight the lush greenery and general upbeat atmosphere of underappreciated, tony Islamabad.

Unlike crazy North Korea, Pakistan is not necessarily just blowing smoke. For years, elements of the Pakistani intelligence services have worked hand-in-glove with al-Qaeda–affiliated terrorists to thwart American efforts to build consensual government in neighboring Afghanistan. It was no accident that Osama bin Laden lived with impunity for years right under the noses of Pakistani authorities.

Not to be left out, Egypt’s junta is likewise furious at another new Hollywood film, Exodus. In fact, the junta just banned Exodus from Egypt. Apparently, the censors believe that the movie is an effort by Jewish movie moguls to unduly glorify the ancient Jews and deprecate the pharaohs — as part of a Zionist plot to champion Israel at the expense of its Islamic neighbors. Not long ago, Egypt and other Arab countries banned Noah, on the grounds that its portrayal of Noah, whom Islam considers a prophet, was blasphemous.

Having continually offered reports including eyewitness dispatches about the ever-receding tide of Western civilization, I think I probably owe a little escape – or, better, escapism – to readers, some respite from reality. At least until the end of the holidays.

After sorting through the vaults for some diverting holiday fare, here is a festival’s worth of A-list movies set in some of the great cities of the world – those same places that often serve as a backdrop to the ongoing multi-pronged war on the West that, alas, characterizes our era. But enough of that for now.

Given the gloom, some parameters. First, freshness. While these movies are what you could certainly call Cinema Antique, some of them may well prove to be new discoveries. In other words, no “It’s a Wonderful Life” or “Casablanca” here – although “Casablanca” wouldn’t make this particular cut because of my second criterion: total uplift.

There are no world wars brewing in these pictures, no bad cases of rotten luck. And no poignant states of marginal truth.

Let’s kick off this cinematic tour in celluloid New York City with “Easy Living” (1937), an especially carefree A-list romantic comedy written by Preston Sturges about what happens when career girl Jean Arthur crosses paths with a Wall Street millionaire (who never heard of subprime “toxic paper”) played by Edward Arnold. Ray Milland portrays the handsome son. And if you haven’t seen “The Band Wagon” (1953), an all-time best musical with songs by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz and starring Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Jack Buchanan and Oscar Levant (who built a comedic career on his neurosis), it will lend a high note to any holiday. And speaking of holidays, New York City and escape (at least to Connecticut), “Holiday Inn” (1942) combines all three as Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Virginia Dale and Marjorie Reynolds sort out their tangled stage careers and love lives with help from Irving Berlin songs and comic relief from Astaire’s agent Walter Abel.

Americans are the only people in the world who go to see movies in which they are the villains.

Russians stayed away from Jack Ryan Shadow Recruit with its Slavic villains (though Chinese audiences liked it well enough). And movies with Chinese villains can’t get made because the People’s Republic has more devastating penalties for offending studios than a mere hacking. Instead of leaking private emails, the studios simply aren’t allowed to release their movies in the world’s second biggest film market.

Hollywood’s titans take a break from patting themselves on the back for their commitment to freedom of expression and eagerly rush to work with the censors of the Chinese Communist Party to make their movies acceptable to China.

Muslim villains can’t appear in movies at all since September 11. The last time a movie had a villain named Mohammed, the filmmaker ended up hauled out of his home and tossed into jail. Hillary Clinton, Hollywood’s choice, had assured grieving Benghazi family members that instead of punishing their son’s killers, she would “have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video.”

With script control like that, it’s no wonder that you don’t see many Muslim movie villains. Not when Hillary is planning her presidential victory tour.

What does all that leave Hollywood scriptwriters with? Aliens, comic book villains and North Korea.

North Korea is a perfect villain because it isn’t a film market. Even possession of an American film can mean death. You can’t release the next weepy melodrama or comic book movie there which makes it fair game. And so a small nasty country with no sense of humor became the favorite movie villain of a gutless entertainment industry.

James Bond took on North Koreans in Die Another Day, the North Koreans invaded the White House in Olympus Has Fallen (or rather a radical faction of North Koreans, even before the Sony hack Hollywood was staking out a cautious position) and took over America in the Red Dawn remake.

After cop-hating lynch mobs got what they were chanting for – the execution of two New York police officers – there was widespread disgust and anger among decent, sane Americans. Among others, there was indifference, amusement, and even celebration.

Brandeis University student Khadijah Lynch, for example, an undergraduate representative for the Department of African and Afro-American Studies, took to Twitter to express that she found the murders of NYPD officers Rafael Ramos, a Latino father of two, and Wenjian Liu, an Asian-American newlywed, to be hilarious: “lmao, all i just really dont have sympathy for the cops who were shot. i hate this racist f**king country,” read the junior’s illiterate tweet.

Fellow Brandeis student Daniel Mael, a Horowitz Freedom Center student leader and TruthRevolt reporter, took to TruthRevolt.com to publicize Lynch’s tweet and others of hers like it, such as these:

“i have no sympathy for the nypd officers who were murdered today”
“what the f**k even IS ‘non-violence’”
“ya’ll out here waiting for a white messiah, im waiting for Malcolm X to return.”
“the fact that black people have not burned this country down is beyond me”
“I am in riot mode. F**k this f**king country”
“I need to get my gun license. asap.”

My compatriots Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have inflicted more damage on the reputation of Michael E Mann’s global-warming hockey stick than anybody else on the planet. So, when one finds oneself being sued by the litigious Dr Mann, a prudent person pays close attention to anything the Messrs Mac have to say about the case. Steve McIntyre listened to the oral arguments in the DC Court of Appeals a month ago, and was not happy with what he heard. He has now written an extensive post on the subject, which I highly recommend, except for the first sentence:

I have an audio copy of the oral argument in Mann v Steyn…

Not to be pedantic but in fact it was Mann vs Everybody But Steyn. A year ago, my co-defendants National Review, Rand Simberg and the Competitive Enterprise Institute decided to appeal Judge Weisberg’s me-too of the previous judge Combs Greene’s denial of their anti-SLAPP order. I declined to join them on the grounds that, as the previous impenetrable sentence suggests, the DC court system had made such a procedural train wreck of the case that we might as well get on with the trial the fraudulent Mann claimed to want, and be done with it. The District of Columbia’s new anti-SLAPP law had clearly failed on its first significant outing, but, given that once this case is over I intend never again to set foot in that hellish metropolis, that’s hardly my problem.

So my three co-defendants went ahead without me, and at the end of November the troika of DC judges finally got around to hearing oral arguments on the matter. Steve McIntyre was not impressed:

One of the things often under-estimated by those readers (especially at WUWT) who are bloodthirsty for litigation as a means of settling scores is that it’s not easy for litigation lawyers to fully assimilate a complicated history. In the oral argument of the anti-SLAPP motion, both the lawyers and judges seem too often to be playing blind man’s bluff with the facts, making a decision both unpredictable and probably somewhat random.

Despite the persistent campaign to paint them as their faith’s renegades, the ISIS fighters could not be more Islamic if they tried A rogue, rapist and murderer, Man Haron Monis was mad by any mainstream definition, but he was one with his comrades Iraq and Syria in doing the Prophet’s bidding.

I have lost count of the times we have been assured Man Haron Monis’ actions were un-Islamic, an outrage perpetrated by a lone wolf of dubious sanity. Mad or not, the Lindt hostage-taker insisted he was acting in support of ISIS in Syria, and he requested an ISIS flag to demonstrate that commitment to a national and international audience. This was the propaganda moment ISIS had demanded. The clear motive was to intimidate Australia and other Western nations into butting out of Syria, and since the political and religious motives of Islam are identical, the religious aspects cannot be ignored.

While we have heard much about the supposedly un-Islamic nature of ISIS, surely it cannot be a coincidence that every action, strategy and tactic followed by ISIS is modeled almost exactly on the same tactics, strategy and actions employed by Mohammad in his seventh-century campaigns of conquest. The forced conversions, the beheadings, the rapes, the executions, the selling women into slavery were Mohammad’s stock in trade. The Agenda of the Caliphate is Mohammad’s agenda. ISIS appears to be strictly following Islamic precedents, as set out by the Prophet himself. Since Mohammad is regarded as the “perfect man”, nothing could be more Islamic than following his example, both in daily life and war.

Further, no less an authority than Allah Himself, writing in the Qur’an, addresses the duty of the good Muslim to take up the sword.

The scene around midtown Manhattan during the holidays is something of a madhouse—in a good way. Tens of thousands of tourists, including families, descend on Rockefeller Center to see the tree, Radio City to see the shows, and Fifth Avenue to see the department store windows, culminating in the New Year’s Eve balldrop in Times Square.
It’s hard to believe now, but there was a time when the scenes were different. There were tourists, but fewer and far fewer families. Times Square was the squalid home of sex shops and random robberies, not hotels and chain restaurants. Bryant Park on 42nd Street was a drug market, and criminals stalked the subways.

We recalled that era, as recent as the early 1990s, when we read Monday’s headline in the New York Post: “Police Give Arrests a Rest: Wary officers letting minor crooks slide.” The story reported that more of New York’s Finest are refusing to pursue routine violations, or even to take risks to pursue major violators, for fear that they won’t be supported if they run into trouble.

“My guys are writing almost no summonses, and probably only making arrests when they have to—like when a store catches a shoplifter,” one NYPD supervisor told the Post. For those who want to understand the rancorous divide between the police and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio , this is the heart of the matter. And it is ominous for social order in America’s largest city.

This gets to the debate over “broken windows” policing, in which cops don’t ignore small offenses like subway turnstile jumping or “squeegee men” who extort drivers for cash in return for washing their windshields at traffic lights with a dirty cloth. As New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and criminologist George Kelling recently explained on these pages, the point is that prosecuting small offenses rids the streets of those most likely to commit larger crimes. It also makes the streets more livable.

Tumbling oil prices have sent repressive regimes around the world reeling. Liberals should rejoice.

Christmas came early for the world’s liberal democracies this year, with news in mid-December that repressive regimes from Russia to Venezuela and from Iran to Belarus are tumbling down an economic spiral. Who or what should we thank for this geopolitical yuletide? The neocons? Pro-democracy protesters? George W. Bush and Tony Blair ?

No. Thank instead American shale producers. The shale-gas and hydraulic-fracking revolution is lighting a figurative bonfire under the world’s petrocracies. Dictatorships that for years blackmailed the West in the knowledge that we would come crawling back for the black stuff are now catching a glimpse of a bleak future.

As the American people and companies shift more of their consumption to cheaply produced domestic energy, the geopolitical leverage of oil-rich autocrats diminishes. A barrel of crude on Monday sold for less than $60, down nearly 50% since June when it went for $115. Take that, ayatollah.

This is a price drop made in the shale-rich heartlands of the U.S. Between 2007 and 2012, shale production in America jumped by more than 50% a year. In that time the shale share of total U.S. gas production rose to 39% from 5%. Last year the U.S. overtook Russia as the world’s leading energy producer; next year America is projected to overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest producer of crude oil.

http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001503.html

CONTENTS

1. Syria: Government News Agency features Israeli containers at port
2. Turkey: As Arabs shun Hamas, Meshaal and Erdogan cozy up
3. Iran: Hamas leader Meshaal to visit Tehran
4. Egypt prepares to destroy Palestinian 1,200 homes next to Gaza
5. “Israelis ask Egyptians to redraw border a bit”
6. Sinai: Militant attacks continue
7. Gaza: Explosion hits beauty salon