RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/novelists-view-world/2013/jan/16/salinger-roth-hemingway-and-wilderness-writing/#.UPc42p3yzX0.facebook

WASHINGTON, DC, January 16, 2013 – Philip Roth has quit writing and nobody knows exactly why though I can guess. Salinger wrote only for himself, for his own pleasure, and considered getting published a nuisance, a bother and an intrusion. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last royalty check amounted to something like six dollars and change. He said, “Why am I doing all this writing. No one’s reading me.”

Hemingway was so unimpressed with his Pulitzer, his Nobel, his wine, his women, his fame, his books waiting to get written, that he committed suicide.

John Kennedy Toole (“A Confederacy of Dunces”) won his Pulitzer too late. He kept getting rejected and answered right back with his own suicide.

Dear world…How’s that for rejection!

Both a doctor and an auto mechanic (people I admire) marveled at the fact that some of us can turn emotions into prose.

I explained that we are all geniuses at something. The trick is to find out what it is.

Writing novels, as I do, is fun, and more than that, once the inspiration kicks in there is nothing compared to the exhilaration when the words begin to flow, and there is no stopping us once we get started. There is no choice but to write and as I have said plenty of times, you don’t choose writing, writing chooses you.

But that’s the writing itself that I’m talking about, and in that period when the going is good and the words (from above?) keep coming so fast that even the keyboard can’t keep up – in that period we are charmed and blessed. At these moments, as we write and lose track of time, we create a universe and discover continents. We become gods and kings.

In the publishing we turn ourselves over to our readers and trust that we will get a fair hearing. We don’t ask our readers to love us, only to understand that a novel is tender and precious and easily broken when trashed. We worked long and hard to get it done and deserve leniency for the effort alone – and for having the guts to stick our necks out where there may be multitudes waiting to do us harm.

This is an especially tricky time for writers. We find ourselves squarely into the teeth of a technology that permits anyone to comment on our work without telling us who they are, so that by remaining anonymous they enjoy a tyranny. Bygone writers faced their accusers.

All around I have been lucky with reviews though we don’t know what a new day will bring, but on getting published it has been a drag from day one, and yet there have been some astonishing successes, which only recently I have come to appreciate. I keep saying that every work of art is a failure because we never get it exactly right, but even so, sometimes we click and our books get praised, become bestsellers and get made into movies…and for that much I can vouch.

But generally all true writers – all true artists – are failures. We are dependant on the mercy of strangers.

I even wrote a novel about a novelist, his triumphs yes, but oh brother the rejections, the hardships, the bills. I knew what I was talking about.

I am reading the biography of David Lean the great director of “Lawrence of Arabia” and am astonished at his feelings of inadequacy even after scoring success after success. Even at the height of his fame Hemingway had trouble getting a press pass to cover World War II. Even after “The Catcher in the Rye” Salinger had to keep proving himself at The New Yorker. (Read Kenneth Slawenski’s fabulous bio on this.)

Today I have begun writing a new novel and I wonder if it’s worth the trouble. I keep hesitating as I consider my predecessors and about their weariness and despair and the uselessness of it all. Fitzgerald in “The Crack-Up” extended King Solomon’s despair in Ecclesiastes. All is futile and futility.

Readers will misunderstand, as is to be expected, but some will misunderstand the work purposely and viciously.

Once the work has been done and is out of your hands you have no say. Onward your readers become gods and kings. They, not you, interpret your work, and this is their duty in this, the final act of intimacy, more intimate than sex, this give-and-take between writer and reader.

Israel’s Response to Obama’s Criticism? Keep on Building by Annie Lubin http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/164253 It seems like the Israeli government responded in kind to a scathing report which circulated Tuesday about Washington’s frustration over construction in Judea and Samaria. The message they sent – keep on building. Sources close to Binyamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that the Prime […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3545/al-jazeera-extremism The Emir of Qatar, an absolute ruler, and Al Jazeera, have not covered the “Arab Spring” to advance democracy, but to support the Muslim Brotherhood, which is aligned with the Qatari regime. Al Jazeera has as its chief goal Muslim Brotherhood domination. Many Arab liberals and reformers were shocked by the sale of former […]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/15/a-world-without-america/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly declared that “a world without America is not only desirable, it is achievable.” While that sentiment won’t be embraced in President Obama’s inaugural address next week, all other things being equal, it seems likely to be the practical effect of his second term. Of course, Iran’s regime seeks […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/john-perazzo/people-for-the-american-way-smears-michele-bachmann/print/

To read and order Frank Gaffney’s pamphlet, The Muslim Brotherhood in the Obama Administration, click here.

Last June, Rep. Michele Bachmann and four Republican colleagues sent letters to the Inspectors General at the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and State, asking them to investigate whether the Muslim Brotherhood—the ideological wellspring from which such terrorist outfits as al Qaeda and Hamas first emerged—might be gaining undue influence over high-level U.S. government officials. One letter, for instance, noted that Hillary Clinton‘s closest aide, her deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin, “has three family members … connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations.”

A few days ago, when Bachmann was reassigned to the House Select Committee on Intelligence, the left-wing activist group, People For the American Way (PFAW)—which had originally launched an unsuccessful petition drive to have the congresswoman removed from that Committee last year—decided to revive that effort. By PFAW’s telling, some 178,000 people have signed the petition thus far.

According to PFAW president Michael Keegan, Rep. Bachmann’s warnings amount to nothing more than a “smear campaign” of “baseless conspiracy theories” designed to ruin “the reputations of honorable public servants.” PFAW spokesman Drew Courtney accuses Bachmann of engaging in “reckless extremism” aimed chiefly at “making headlines and pandering to the Tea Party.” And PFAW’s online strategy manager, Ben Betz, derides Bachmann’s “Islamaphobic fear mongering” and her “disregard for honesty.” These accusations are entirely consistent with PFAW’s previous claims that “right-wing anti-Muslim activists,” filled with “anti-Muslim paranoia,” routinely “demoniz[e]” and “vilif[y]” members of the Islamic faith in an effort to stoke Americans’ “irrational fears.” Such conservative activists, says PFAW, “sanction and encourage [the] persecution” of Muslims while aiming to “prevent” them from “freely worshiping and practicing their religion.”

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/oliver-stones-distortion-of-the-eisenhower-era/print/

Editor’s note: The following is the fifth installment of a series of articles Frontpage is running in response to Oliver Stone’s revisionist documentary series, “The Untold History of the United States.” Frontpage will be reviewing each episode of the Stone series, exposing the leftist hateful lies about America and setting the record straight. Below is a review of Part 5 of the series.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower is responsible for transforming America into the imperialist global bully it supposedly is today, according to radical Hollywood fabulist Oliver Stone.

In the fifth episode of his multi-part revisionist assault on modern American history, Untold History of the United States, Stone argues that Eisenhower was a willing tool of greedy U.S. corporations and a warmonger who refused to make deals with a Soviet Union that was suing for peace.

Stone blames Eisenhower, the popular former five-star general who led the U.S. and its allies to victory in World War Two, for creating “a permanent war economy.” Essentially, Ike turned America into a high-tech modern-day Sparta, Stone claims, by permanently ramping up military expenditures. Of course to the extent that Eisenhower promoted high levels of defense spending he was only carrying on the policies of President Franklin Roosevelt. The Communist-loving director, known for palling around with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, could never forgive Eisenhower for deploying nuclear weapons that were aimed at Stone’s beloved USSR.

“Nuclear bombs were now the foundation of America’s empire and provided the new emperor, its president, with a mystical power that required more and more suffocating secrecy even if those powers went far beyond the original limits of executive power defined in the Constitution,” Stone says.

Of course the United States has never been an empire, but Stone’s Marxist worldview clouds his perception. Apart perhaps from its pursuit of “manifest destiny” and a few military adventures in the 1800s, when the U.S. has projected its power beyond its home territory it has eventually pulled back.

The U.S., unlike so many world powers, does not conquer other countries: it liberates them and then goes home. This has, understandably, given the U.S. a special moral standing in the community of nations and it certainly does not make the American president an emperor.

But Stone’s unpatriotic rant continues. America’s nuclear arsenal and the pricey infrastructure supporting it allowed the imperialistic U.S. to dominate the world for decades, he insists. “And although the bombs themselves were not expensive, the huge infrastructure was, requiring bases in the U.S. and abroad and enormous delivery systems by bomber, missile, aircraft carrier, and submarine.”

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/disarming-americans-arming-terrorists/print/ While the White House was busy drafting proposals to ban assault rifles, the last of the regulations imposed on Saudi travel to the United States after September 11 were being taken apart. While some government officials were busy planning how to disarm Americans, other officials were negotiating the transfer of F-16s and Abrams tanks […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/337798 ‘He was much more liberal than his presidential campaign let on,” Charles Kesler writes of Barack Obama in 2008. You can say that again. “Liberals like crises, and one shouldn’t spoil them by handing them another on a silver salver. The kind of crisis that is approaching . . . is probably not their […]

http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2013/01/13/seven-crappy-products-from-the-green-movement/

In the good old days, consumers got what they wanted. Supply and demand governed product design and manufacturing, not causes or ideology. That’s why we have great American icons like the 1969 Chevy Camaro, the charcoal burning Weber grill, and DDT.

But things have changed. The Green Movement’s worship of scarcity has changed the consumer landscape for the worse. Instead of big, powerful, and most importantly, effective products, in 2012 consumers must suffer with pansy products. Sure, they are designed to save energy and make you feel good. But they just don’t work as well as the old, and usually cheaper, versions.

Below are seven crappy products we must endure, courtesy of the Green Movement.
1. Low Water Toilets

Any article with the headline above must start with low water toilets. Many of you will remember an age before the government decided water was scarce, when toilets could be counted on. In 1992, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, and President George Bush signed it. It mandated a maximum flush capacity for toilets. Naturally, the 1992 version of the Green Movement was behind the law, and behind the Republican sponsor – Representative Philip Sharp of Indiana. Since Bush signed Sharp’s legislation, plunger sales have sky-rocketed. Sharp’s bad idea has caused some of the most embarrassing moments of people’s lives, especially when they are visiting someone else’s home.

Beware, the freaks next want to eliminate water in your toilet, as well as toilet paper.
2. Mercury-Filled Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs

We have learned a number of things in the last few years. First, the new environmentally friendly light bulbs, aren’t. When one breaks, mercury spills into your home environment. And even if they don’t shatter, they still spew out cancer-causing chemicals when you turn them on. They are expensive. The Green Movement tells us they last longer. Poppycock. I started writing down the installation date on the bulbs to see how long they really last. And the longevity is comparable to the old style bulbs, the ones that cost a third as much.
3. The Boeing 787

I love air travel. I flew over 110,000 real miles last year. I couldn’t wait to get on a new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Not anymore. A series of mishaps has exposed a frightening problem with the plane – electrical components are catching fire. This is no ordinary glitch that Boeing can easily sort out. Boeing has introduced an entirely new design paradigm which causes the problems on the 787, a paradigm that makes the Green Movement happy. Instead of using mechanical energy to power aircraft systems, the 787 uses stored electricity. Electricity is stored in high-capacity lithium ion batteries, freeing the engines from burning fossil fuel. Boeing jettisoned efficient copper wires, replacing them with lighter aluminum wiring. At the FAA’s urging, it reduced the punch of the batteries because they were known to explode and burn – bringing down at least one 747 that carried them in cargo. The new Boeing design paradigm is a light, electrical, fuel-efficient jet that uses less energy. Sound familiar? Boeing boldly trumpets this new paradigm.

The Boeing engineers are some of the smartest people in the world. So odds are they will sort out the problem, hopefully quickly enough. Until then, I’ll ride on fuel inefficient MD-80s or 737s.
4. Front-Loading Clothes Washers

Here is the dirty secret about energy-efficient front loading clothes washers: they suck. Before I owned one, a friend warned me, “they really don’t get clothes clean.” I didn’t believe her, but she was right. Front loaders utilize a technology still used to clean clothes on the banks of the Ganges in Bangladesh – small amounts of water and soap are used to beat damp clothes on rocks. Instead of rocks, American front loaders use a rough drum. The clothes gently swirl, then rest and thump in a puddle of soapy water. Sure they use less energy, but who cares when clothes stay dirty? And the mandatory “HE” detergent you must buy also costs more. The Green Movement hated the top loaders that cleaned clothes efficiently. In those good old days, clothes sat submerged in several gallons of water filled with detergent. Lots of electricity agitated the clothes to pure, clean beauty. So don’t be fooled by the neighbor or salesman who tells you front loaders are the way to go. Get yourself a big, wasteful, but effective top-loader before the government bans them.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/standing-up-for-our-future/

Prior to joining PJ Media, Congressman Allen West served 22 years in the U.S. Army before being elected to the House of Representatives by the constituents of Florida’s 22nd district. Throughout his time in Congress, West consistently stood for policies that would make the United States prosperous, strong and free, even when speaking up was not easy. In January 2013, he joined PJ Media as the Director of Next Generation Programming where he is leading the effort to develop new Internet TV shows and other media that can be viewed onNextGeneration.TV starting in February 2013. Congressman West received his Bachelor’s degree while at the University of Tennessee and later went on to earn a Master’s degree from Kansas State University, both in political science. He also holds a Master of Military Arts and Sciences from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff Officer College in political theory and military operations.

Today I’m excited to announce that I have joined PJ Media, LLC, as director of its Next Generation programming. I am truly honored to be a member of the PJ Media and PJTV team and to continue to be a voice advocating for principled, pragmatic solutions to the issues affecting our constitutional republic.
I enjoyed my time serving as a member of the 112th Congress. However, those who think losing a congressional race defines me and ends my service to my country fail to realize what drives my patriotism and passion for America. True leaders do not need a title, just a conviction, a cause, and the character enabling them to make a stand.

My parents taught me a simple maxim, “A man must stand for something or else he shall fall for anything.” And that is why I took this course for the next phase in my life — to be the leading voice for the Next Generation program, and to stand up for our nation’s future. I know there were so many trying to predict the direction I would take, and one thing everyone needs to recognize is that I do not often do the predictable. PJ Media will give me the freedom to explore a multitude of topics and relate them to our next generation in a non-conventional manner.