RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
As I write this the sun has set, the shadows crawling up and down the grid of America’s first truly planned city. There was a time when it was thought that the Potomac extended across the continent and the city of government would lie at the opening of an interstate aquatic highway. That was not to be. And like so many other dreams of government, the Washington City Canal has seen better days.

Washington D.C. is America, as many of the men and women who work in government envision it. It is a place of great wealth and great poverty. Incomes continue to rise for those in government. D.C. and its bedroom communities hold some of the greatest reserves of wealth in the the country, but its poverty level hovers just below 20 percent. And nearly a third of the children of the capital of our government live in poverty.

Gun control is very much on the minds of the government elite these days, and it should be, working in a city with a higher murder rate than Mexico City. African-Americans only make up half the population of D.C. but black males account for 80 percent of its homicide victims. The black murder rate in D.C. is 37.7 per 100,000 people. The white murder rate however is less than most of the rest of the country. Guns are used in the vast majority of these killings.

1 in 8 households in D.C. struggle with hunger. D.C. public schools have a 56 percent graduation rate for students in general and 41 percent for black males. This is what the city that runs the country that runs the world looks like. This is where the great planners make their plans while just out of sight lies another great urban failure where plans go to die.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/OA23Ak02.html Denial, it turns out, really is a river in Egypt. I refer not to the world’s longest waterway, but the world’s largest outpouring of pious expressions of confidence in Egypt by American and European politicians. Infusions of real cash, to be sure, could delay Egypt’s deterioration into a failed state, but not by long, […]

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3290 One of the regular skits on the new season of the popular satire program “Eretz Nehederet” (“A Wonderful Country”) takes place in a beauty salon. Two Russian-speaking pedicurists are conducting a fierce political argument. The punch line is that, when asked for whom they will be voting, they both answer, “Lieberman.” This is the […]

Buttons comes to the ‘Post’ When Housing Minister Avraham Ofer committed suicide on the third day of 1977, I was already a political reporter, with a good few years in the profession behind me. Yet when I was sent out to cover his funeral and arrived at City Hall, where the body lay in state, I […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/338290

Mindful of Kathryn’s observation that even NR types are resisting “the urge to rain on the president’s parade today,” I thought I’d nevertheless venture a wee bit of criticism — not of the speech, which was true to form, but of the overall vibe of the event, which seemed to me big but empty. The ceremonial lunch (I caught Nancy Pelosi speaking as the Obamas, Biden, Boehner, and Mrs. Clinton looked on) seemed especially reductive of this great nation, but Chuck Schumer as Friar’s Club emcee, and that poet from hell, and Beyoncé and Kelly Clarkson all contributed to the general pseudo-monarchical tinniness.

I see that if not quite raining I’m certainly drizzling. So let me cite my favorite presidential “inauguration.” I’ve written before about how much I enjoy visiting the Calvin Coolidge homestead in Plymouth Notch, Vt., and how it embodies the republican ideal of the citizen-executive. It’s very moving to stand in the small, humble sitting room where, just before 3 in the morning, Colonel John Coolidge, a notary public, administered the oath of office to his son by kerosene lamp. The character of the place and its moment in history are as far away from the palaces of mighty emperors as you could get, and uniquely American in their spirit. Granted, Coolidge assumed the presidency in very different circumstances, but I don’t think he’d have missed Kelly Clarkson or the poem guy — and I wish there were a little room for that spirit amid all the celeb-stuffed bombast.

THE INIMITABLE MARK STEYN IN 2007

The other day I took my kids over to the Coolidge homestead in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, and with the aid of snowshoes we scrambled up the three-foot drifts of the village’s steep hillside cemetery to his grave. Seven generations of Coolidges are buried there all in a row – including Julius Caesar Coolidge, which is the kind of name I’d like to find on the ballot next November (strong on war, but committed to small government). The President’s headstone is no different from those of his forebears or his sons – just a simple granite marker with name and dates: in the summer, if memory serves, there’s a small US flag in front, but if there’s one there now it’s under a ton of snow and only the years of birth and death enable you to distinguish it from the earlier Calvin Coolidges in his line.

I do believe it’s the coolest grave of any head of state I’ve ever stood in front of. “We draw our presidents from the people,” said Coolidge. “I came from them. I wish to be one of them again.” He lived the republican ideal most of our political class merely pays lip service to.

Afterwards, we stopped at the cheese factory his son John owned until 1998 and bought a round of their excellent granular curd cheese.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323485704578255593489895424.html

THIS POLICY IS BI-PARTISAN…..EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION ENCOURAGED THE HUNGARIANS TO REVOLT AGAINST COMMUNISM AND RUSSIA….PROMISING SUPPORT. THE HUNGARIANS DID SO AND FOUGHT BRAVELY UNTIL THE RUSSIAN TANKS ENTERED THE STREETS OF BUDAPEST AND SLAUGHTERED THE PARTISANS….THE US DID NOT LIFT A FINGER TO HELP.PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S ADMINISTRATION ENCOURAGED AND HELPED TRAIN CUBAN EXPATS FOR AN INVASION OF CUBA AND PROMISED AIR SUPPORT. WHEN CASTRO’S THUGS BUTCHERED THE FIGHTERS IN THE BAY OF PIGS, THERE WAS NO AIR SUPPORT WHATEVER FROM THE UNITED STATES.BOTH OF THESE BETRAYALS ENCOURAGED THE SOVIET UNION AND CONVINCED THE HOSTAGE NATIONS OF EASTERN EUROPE THAT THEY COULD NEVER COUNT ON US SUPPORT…..RSK

Isn’t it fitting that, as a final order of business in President Obama’s first term, the United States would haggle with France over the federal equivalent of a $2.15 check?

Last week, the Journal reported that the administration was asking the French to pay for the limited logistical support—mainly cargo flights and aerial refueling—that the U.S. had agreed to provide the French mission to Mali.

“French officials said they were particularly ‘perplexed’ last week when the U.S. . . . insisted on getting reimbursed for the costs,” the Journal’s Adam Entous and David Gauthier-Villars reported Sunday. “Other countries including Canada have offered to transport French military equipment and troops to Mali free of charge, according to French, European and Canadian officials. As a result, France is considering not using the U.S.”

By week’s end, however, the administration had agreed to cover the costs, estimated at around $600,000 a flight for 30 flights. Considering that the federal government spends just over $10 billion a day, or $115,000 a second, we’re talking about less than three minutes’ worth of the government’s time.

Is the effort worth it? “France expects the U.S. to do more to fight militants who have vowed to hit at Western interests and conducted an attack in Algeria that left at least 23 hostages dead, including at least one American citizen,” French officials told the Journal. Considering that, before France’s intervention, the local branch of al Qaeda was on the verge of overrunning a country larger than Texas and California combined, one might think the French had a point.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324624404578256300074805728.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop Perhaps you’ve heard that “the tide of war is receding,” except apparently where it isn’t, which seems to be much of the world. The latest flash points are in North Africa and the Western Pacific, both of which implicate America regardless of President Obama’s second-term wishes. The hostage death toll from the four-day terrorist […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/01/diversity_and_racism.html On January 18, 2013, Rush Limbaugh had a caller who explained that she was “going to school to become a teacher … and from the first class that [she] took in education[, she and the other prospective teachers] were being taught as teachers that [they] are racists.” She explained:   We are inherently racist […]

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2504/krugman_japan_and_the_definition_of_insanity Krugman, Japan and the definition of insanity The belief in Keynesian stimulus spending is the perfect example of Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity ecently the beleaguered government of Japan announced they would be embarking on a programme of fiscal stimulus totalling the equivalent of £72 billion. It is hoped this new programme of government […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/338278 Were Barack Obama reelected, I predicted two months before the November 2012 presidential vote, “the coldest treatment of Israel ever by a U.S. president will follow. Well, the election is over and that cold treatment is firmly in place. Obama has signaled in the past two months what lies ahead by: Choosing three senior […]