http://www.nationalreview.com/article/370563/heading-right-nevada-betsy-woodruff Ron Paul is not the president. He was never going to be the president. He was never even going to be the Republican party’s 2008 nominee for president. This is not disputed. But it’s also true that his perennial and perennially ill-fated presidential bids changed America’s political topography in ways that East Coast political […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/370564/print
YES! DEROY MURDOCK IS RIGHT….. IN CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGNS HEALTHCARE IS NOW SEEN AS A PRIORITY….AND “REPEAL AND REPLACE” IS THE MANTRA GUIDING THE BEST CONSERVATIVE INCUMBENTS AND CHALLENGERS……RSK
Obamacare continues to unravel, even more thoroughly than its harshest critics could have hallucinated. Now, rather than chop the GOP in two by enacting comprehensive immigration reform, House Republican leaders should divide Democrats by scheduling incremental votes on pro-patient ideas to replace Obamacare.
Just this week, the Congressional Budget Office reported that Obamacare’s disincentives to hire and incentives not to work will reduce the U.S. work force by the equivalent of 2.3 million jobs by 2021.
Meanwhile, HealthCare.gov lurched into another wall. Some 22,000 Americans have completed seven-page-long appeals after they incorrectly were denied coverage or overcharged for Obamacare. Unfortunately, as the Washington Post revealed, “The part of the computer system that would allow agency workers to read and handle appeals has not been built.” Not built? The $677 million website premiered on October 1!
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/370552/print It’s only February, but it’s already my favorite word — or phrase, I guess — of the year. (Who knows, by December it may be shortened to “joblock.”) It’s not euphonious or edgy, but it does offer insight into the unreality of the Democrats’ predicament. The Congressional Budget Office issued a politically explosive report […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-enduring-requirements-of-deterrence-principals-to-keeping-the-peace?f=puball
On November 8, 2013, Franklin Miller, Principal in the Scowcroft Group, underscored in his remarks, at the Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Georgia, entitled “Sustaining the Triad: The Enduring Requirements of Deterrence in the 21st Century,” that the current radical campaign of Global Zero to undo the deterrent principals of the past three-quarters century was largely based on faulty assumptions and dangerous recommendations. Miller noted that the deterrent equation of the 21st century may indeed have to resemble that of the 20th century, not because anyone wants to return to the “Cold War”, but because those deterrent qualities worked and preserved the peace between the nuclear armed powers of the globe. Global war which had engulfed humankind twice in the first half of the 20th century was avoided. Remarkably as well, the average number of deaths from warfare dropped significantly from 2% of the world’s population per year to less than .2%, a drop of 90%, a not inconsequential achievement, a point made by the former Commander of the US Strategic Command, Admiral Ed Mies. Here are Franklin Miller’s remarks.
MR. FRANKLIN MILLER: I want to thank the Camden Partnership, the Camden Kings Bay Council of the Navy League and the Camden Country Chamber of Commerce, and Peter Huessy, for inviting me to appear at this breakfast. And my goal this morning is to start your day off right. Peter Huessy is surely an unsung hero in our campaign to keep our nuclear deterrent. In the current public debate in Washington on our nuclear deterrent is completely unbalanced and intellectually empty.
Last year’s report by the Global Zero organization was built on faulty assumptions, questionable if not downright incorrect assertions, and dangerous recommendations. But you can’t find a mainstream publication which ever seriously analyzed it. We are routinely subjected to stories sneeringly referring to our existing deterrent posture as Cold War-like. But no one steps forward to explain why, just maybe why, the nuclear deterrence equation in the 21st century may have to resemble that of the 20th century. But Peter, by keeping his speaker’s series going, provides a forum where some small degree of balance can be introduced into the debate. So thank you for that, Peter.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/some-issues-with-counter-terrorism-the-right-approach-and-solutions?f=puball
Three important points need to be emphasized here:
1) It is accurate that Carter was naive about Khoumeni’s goals as a religion leader. However, the fact that the Shah refused to give Carter’s cronies some contracts in Iran was a significant part of the equation.
2) The Russian position vis a vis Islam is nuanced and not a clear case of doing what is necessary to fight terrorism. Former KGB officer Konstantin Preobrazhensky maintains that the Russians privilege Muslim citizens in the service of regaining territory that was part of the former Soviet Union. See his white paper: Made in Moscow Terrorism: The Hidden Hand of the KGB. – Click Here
3) It is very important to distinguish between terrorist groups as, at times, it is expedient to forge a temporary alliance with one side over the other. Such is the case with the current relationship between Saudi Arabia and Israel to fight the soon-to-be-nuclear Shias in Iran. In 2012, the Saudis abandoned the Muslim Brotherhood after a six decade relationship. When the Brotherhood took control of Egypt with the election of Morsi, the Kingdom switched its allegiance to the Egyptian military. Essentially, the Saudis broke with the MB to protect their domestic grip on power.
Janet Levy, Los Angeles
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/obama-and-his-media-loyalists-still-spinning-benghazi The media and Obama administration are at it again, trying to defend their earlier actions on Benghazi. For weeks following the September 11, 2012 attacks, President Obama and his colleagues blamed them on a spontaneous demonstration inspired by protests in Cairo, a position that has been repeatedly found to be patently untrue. But Obama […]
http://sarahhonig.com/2014/02/07/another-tack-we-feel-the-earth-move/
Decades ago singer-songwriter Carole King gave voice to her dread:
I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down
I feel my heart start to trembling…
That was sort of how some of us felt last weekend when US Secretary of State John Kerry delivered a thinly disguised ultimatum to little Israel – sacrifice your most vital interests or be pronounced a pariah among the nations.
His insolence was underscored by the irony that he issued his cynical warning to the Jewish state from German soil – more specifically from Munich where appeasement-minded democracies once signed a perfidious “peace agreement” that in no time plunged the world into its blackest nightmare.
But, despite keenly orchestrated leftwing panic-mongering, we shouldn’t have been so shocked. We had already been slapped before with Kerry’s every single earth-shaking admonition. Last November 6, for instance, Kerry was interviewed jointly by Israel’s Channel-2 and Palestinian TV. What he said then wasn’t meant as a private off-the-record caution. It was literally broadcast for all to hear and be awed.
Just as now, Kerry then too depicted Israel as obstructionist and obdurate. Without much ado, he imparted the message that Israeli intransigence is the one outstanding obstacle to global peace and prosperity. If his pet project – the so-called peace talks – fails, it will be our fault and we will reap the whirlwind. We will only have ourselves to blame for the calamities we bring on ourselves.
“The alternative to getting back to the talks is the potential of chaos,” Kerry threatened three months ago. “I mean does Israel want a third Intifada?” He added overbearingly: “I’ve got news for you. Today’s status quo will not be tomorrow’s… Israel’s neighbors” will “begin to push in a different way.”
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4286/an-exercise-in-indoctrination A University of California, Berkeley professor is requiring 100 students to create Twitter accounts and post comments about “Islamophobia,” anti-Islamist Muslim activist Tarek Fatah reports. In his Toronto Sun column Wednesday, Fatah, a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, describes the “panicked message” he received from a Berkeley student taking a class taught by […]
http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=47498a2e1ad97dd3d09ae19c5&id=6ee8d9fb57&e=ce445aaf82
Dr Mark Durie is a theologian, human rights activist and pastor of an Anglican church. He has published many articles and books on the language and culture of the Acehnese, Christian-Muslim relations and religious freedom. A graduate of the Australian National University and the Australian College of Theology, he has held visiting appointments at the University of Leiden, MIT, UCLA and Stanford, and was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1992. at the University of Leiden, MIT, UCLA and Stanford, and was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1992. He also is a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Response to A GUIDE TO REFUTING JIHADISM – Critiquing radical Islamist claims to theological authenticity
The Henry Jackson Society had just launched a guide to rejecting jihadi theologies in Islam, A Guide to Refuting Jihadism by Rashad Ali and Hannah Stuart. There are also forewords by two Sheikhs, including one from Al-Azhar University, and endorsements from other Muslim leaders.
Although the appearance of this guide as a welcome acknowledgement that jihadi violence is theologically motivated, its use of Islamic sources is flawed and convincing, and there are risks for secular governments in embracing its arguments.
It is good that the theological motivations for jihadi movements are being acknowledged and engaged with by peaceable Muslims.
This is not a new strategy. It is necessary and the strategy has long been used by authorities as a counter to jihadi movements. For example the British empire extracted fatwas from Mecca and Istanbul in the 19th century to declare that British India was not ‘Dar al-Harb’ [House of War], but Dar al-Islam [House of Islam]’, which meant that it was forbidden for Muslims to engage in insurgencies against the British. Muslim leaders have always asked their scholars to produce such rulings to counter violent rebellions. This is also a traditional Islamic technique for controlling the undeniable tendency that Islamic theology has to generate violent rebel movements.
This project is also helpful because it acknowledges what is often denied – that the credibility of radical jihadism relies upon religious, theological claims. It claims Islamic legitimacy and uses this to gain converts. It is true that to counter this religious legitimacy it is necessary to use theological arguments.
http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/02/05/thomas-friedmans-new-york-times-colleagues-call-him-an-embarrassment/
Many more vehement and shorter words come to mind in describing the porcine Friedman….but I would think he fits right in with the NY Times bias…..rsk
Jewish New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, often criticized for expressing anti-Israel views, was slammed by his own colleagues in an expose published on Tuesday by the New York Observer. The article came as another Friedman-penned Op-Ed in The Times on Wednesday riled the Jewish community.
The Observer said it interviewed some two-dozen current and former NYT staffers about the split between the news team and the editorial pages, run by Andrew Rosenthal, son of former NYT editorial leader AM Rosenthal, who publishes work by Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner. The staffers’s concerns, as embodied in The Observer headline, ‘The Tyranny and Lethargy of the Times Editorial Page,’ were that, as one put it, the Op-Eds are “completely reflexively liberal, utterly predictable, usually poorly written and totally ineffectual,” and that the editorial page was frequently trounced by crosstown rival, the Wall Street Journal. Most of The Observer article criticizes Rosenthal’s vision and ability to manage a team that has grown to 14 employees, plus assistants, but staffers reserved plenty of venom for Friedman’s role in destroying The Times editorial page.
The Observer quoted a former Times writer, now working elsewhere, who said, “I think the editorials are viewed by most reporters as largely irrelevant, and there’s not a lot of respect for the editorial page. The editorials are dull, and that’s a cardinal sin. They aren’t getting any less dull. As for the columnists, Friedman is the worst. He hasn’t had an original thought in 20 years; he’s an embarrassment. He’s perceived as an idiot who has been wrong about every major issue for 20 years, from favoring the invasion of Iraq to the notion that green energy is the most important topic in the world even as the financial markets were imploding. Then there’s Maureen Dowd, who has been writing the same column since George H. W. Bush was president.”
