Click here: Veterans’ Votes Lean Heavily To Romney – Maggie’s Farm http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/20783-Veterans-Votes-Lean-Heavily-To-Romney.html The VFW Magazine for October 2012 has an interesting article about the veterans vote. Veterans alone make up some 13% of the population and historically they register their opinions at the ballot box. In 2008, they accounted for 15% of all voters, a […]
http://securityinformationproject.blogspot.com/
Why Bangladesh Matters
The 1971 Bangladesh War of Liberation is best known to America’s baby boom generation as having resulted in the record album “The Concert for Bangladesh” featuring music by George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and others. It was a landmark event that set the precedent for Live Aid and subsequent rock music centered international charity programs. However the nation of Bangladesh, with more than 120 million inhabitants, is today an important regional power that is trying hard to escape from a legacy of mass poverty and tyrannical rule.
After Bangladesh successfully broke away from Pakistan for years it resembled a typical Third World state, mired in corruption and dictatorship. Yet, since the military dictator General Mohammed Ershad was overthrown in a fairly bloodless revolution in 1990 Bangladesh has been a lively, imperfect, tumultuous and violent democracy.
As a sympathetic American wrote in 1993 “For Bangladeshis not only watch politics the way American watch the Superbowl; they imbibe it. It is the race for power that fascinates – perhaps because it’s a contest that truly draws blood, as scores of candidates, supporters, students, and others are murdered each year in political or quasi – political battles in the cities, in the countryside, and on university campuses.”It should be remembered that throughout history, few democracies ever evolved peacefully. American political history, for example cannot be said to have been free of riots, arson and murders.
One important and unique aspect of Bangladeshi democracy has been the idea of a “caretaker government” run by the Supreme Court that takes power in the 90 days leading up to a general election. This helps insure that the balloting will be reasonably open and fair. Even with the “Caretaker” governments in place; elections in Bangladesh have never been peaceful or free of voter fraud, but the concept has helped keep problems more or less under control.
http://www.meforum.org/3358/american-jewish-left
In early September 2012, many in the pro-Israel camp were disturbed by a series of events at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. First, the committee drafting the party platform eliminated traditional language recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Next, the party elders chose to restore the language and called for a pro forma voice vote from the delegates in support of this amendment. Instead, what looked and sounded like an angry majority of the delegates voted against recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
This hostility should not have come as a surprise. For many years, the liberal base of the Democratic Party has been steadily turning against the Jewish state. So much so that for the first time since 1948, one of America’s two major parties has begun to abandon its commitment to Israel. This trend has less to do with the behavior of President Obama or other national party leaders than with the far more troubling phenomenon of changing opinions at the grassroots. The Jerusalem flap at the Democratic convention was not a warning sign. It was the final bell.
Click here: Hillary Doesn’t Get Obama Off The Hook – Maggie’s Farm
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/20785-Hillary-Doesnt-Get-Obama-Off-The-Hook.html
Hillary Clinton says the buck stops with her. Not so fast. The buck stops with President Obama:
STATEMENT BY SENATORS McCAIN, GRAHAM AND AYOTTE ON SECRETARY CLINTON’S COMMENTS THIS EVENING ON BENGHAZI ATTACK
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) today released the following statement on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s comments this evening regarding the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012:
“We have just learned that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has claimed full responsibility for any failure to secure our people and our Consulate in Benghazi prior to the attack of September 11, 2012. This is a laudable gesture, especially when the White House is trying to avoid any responsibility whatsoever.
Anti-Semitic propaganda is disseminated, in the most crafty manner, by Iran Press TV, in English. The libels are ever so more insidious, and are increasingly becoming one of the greatest threats to the Jewish people and the State of Israel.
Who are those American “experts” on Israel and Jews staring on Iran’s TV programs? What exactly they accuse Israel of? How damaging what they say is to Israel?
Last week the Anti-Defamation League released a chilling report. It lists and provides countless examples of methods Iran is using to propagate anti-Semitism and deny the Holocaust: ADL Report: Iranian Government’s Press TV Promotes Anti-Semitism To Global Audience – http://www.adl.org/PresRele/ASInt_13/6403_13.htm
It starts with Iran’s TV English channel, Press TV, that, since its founding in 2007, regularly promotes anti-Semitic positions about Israel and Jews. This is done through interviews with “commentators” and “experts.” These “pundits effortlessly attach to each news’ event libels against Israel. It may not matter to any of us but Press TV is broadcasting these atrocious reports in English, via satellite, that allows viewing these programs of hate and vilification of Israel in the US, Canada, Europe, parts of South America, and parts of Africa.
But it does not end there. The slander of Israel and Jews continues through Iranian anti-Semitic bloggers, many are “public servants” in the Ayatollah’s regime, who propagate in the network “proven theories” about Jews and Israel’s involvement in worldwide conspiracies.
http://www.aim.org/guest-column/confronting-the-addictive-charm-of-charisma/
Review: The 12-Step Guide for the Recovering Obama Voter, by Craig S. Karpel
BROADSIDE BOOKS, An Imprint of HarperCollins, www.broadsidebooks.net [1].
Winston Churchill was a great speaker, but he really grabbed his audience with the power of his ideas, not good looks or personal charisma.
Churchill knew that charisma and superficially seductive arguments could undermine democracy, and he noted that democracy was an imperfect system but still better than any other.
One assumes that Churchill had in mind not only the mistakes of his own country, Britain, but also of Germany. Hitler came to power in a democratic setting, while Britain had elected the amoral Stanley Baldwin (who hid Nazi Germany’s rearmament) and the clueless Neville Chamberlain. Churchill could forgive Chamerlain, but he never forgave Baldwin.
When asked to eulogize Chamberlain, Prime Minister Churchill graciously agreed, but when told of Baldwin’s death, he said “Burn him, bury him, take no chances.” Churchill could never forgive the way Baldwin had cynically betrayed his own people and the democratic system.
Like Churchill, Sigmund Freud analyzed the power and danger of group psychology and mass movements in his late work, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Some of us could not help thinking of his work while watching crowds chanting, “Yes we can,” as some members of the audience fainted with emotion in the 2008 presidential campaign.
We Americans became intoxicated with a young African-American politician a few years ago, imbibing his charms. Four years later, we are having a hangover. His name was Barack Obama.
“Supporting Obama was like any other addiction: It felt good at the time, but we’ve been in agony ever since,” says author Craig Karpel. He describes the classic symptoms in this funny but penetrating account entitled The 12-Step Guide for the Recovering Obama Voter [2].
“Obamania had the classic initial features of addiction: the buzz, the rush, the flash, the high, the euphoric contentment,” says Karpel, adding, “and now we’re experiencing the inevitable comedown: the crash, the craving when the addiction isn’t satisfied, the misery of withdrawal.
Craig Karpel’s writing has its own seductive humor, but it is deeper than the speech of a charismatic leader. His analysis is rooted in the deep historical and cultural insights of that great observer, Alexis De Tocqueville, who wrote: “the great privilege enjoyed by the Americans is not only to be more enlightened than other nations but also to have the chance to make mistakes that can be retrieved.”
The author wants us to take a sober look—yes, sober is exactly the right word—at the choice of Barack Obama, and then to decide if we are happy with what we chose: yes, what we chose. It was our choice, and we should not blame Obama if we are disappointed.
“For us to blame Barack Obama for his presidency,” writes Karpel, “is in the same category as stubbing a toe on a rock and blaming the rock. It’s up to us to look where we’re going.”
Karpel’s method is structured along the lines of the AA—Alcoholics Anonymous—method that makes the alcohol addict admit his/her mistakes in a sober and honest way. This could have been tedious, but Karpel carries it off in a manner that has the reader laughing out loud.
The author walks a tightrope between keeping us laughing and his dead-serious objective of getting us to choose leaders in a sober—yes, there is that word again—manner.
“Voting sobriety,” says author Karpel, “means never again casting a ballot in a presidential election without carefully examining the background, character, career, and plans of each candidate.”
One can almost hear Karpel poking fun of the famous line from Eric Segal’s Love Story—“Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Karpel is saying, “never having to say you’re sorry” for whom you voted means “not falling in love” but making a sober assessment.
“Voting sobriety means never again casting a ballot in a presidential election for a candidate who doesn’t have a compelling record of numerous, specific, significant accomplishments—not just a high-concept life story and a drop-dead résumé.”
Karpel shows beautifully that many Americans voted for Obama by suspending their usual skeptical and healthy sense of disbelief in all politicians and instead treated Obama as a kind of national healer or messiah whose very election would prove that America had atoned for earlier sins, such as slavery or racism.
That is the telling image: Change we can believe in, a leader we can believe in, a faith healer.
http://www.prudenpolitics.com/newsletter
Mitt Romney should think of the betrayal in Benghazi as gout in Barack Obama’s left big toe, and step on it hard at every opportunity. The president will feel it, and the memory of Ambassador Chris Stevens deserves no less.
Making foreign policy an issue is usually hard to do, since most voters think a foreign affair is a naughty weekend in Paris. But this foreign affair is different.
The betrayal in Benghazi – and that is exactly what it was – was tragic for Mr. Stevens and his family, and it went beyond tragedy for the rest of us. The ambassador, watching the security arrangements dissolving over a period of weeks, had begged Washington for additional help. The White House answered with silence, not even sparing a little gas money for the 1936-vintage DC-3, a lumbering old airplane with a legacy of service in a half-dozen wars, assigned to American diplomats in Libya. The plane was insurance for a quick getaway. There was, however, $108,000 available to install a charging station for a fleet of Chevy Volts at the embassy in Vienna. It was a question of green priorities.
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3397/saving-solar-energy It would be better if some of the money could be directed away from subsidies to businesses. To put it bluntly, the US government would have to give up on “crony capitalism, as exemplified by Solyndra, and go back to funding scientific research. When government steps out of its legitimate role supporting basic scientific […]
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/14/colonels-class-on-radical-islam-leaves-career-in-l/?page=all#pagebreak
When ArmyLt. Col. Matthew Dooley last year began teaching a class to fellow officers on the dangers of radical Islam, he seemed to have landed in a perfect spot.
A highly rated armor officer who saw combat in Iraq, Col. Dooley planned to instruct for several years at the Joint Forces Staff College within the National Defense University, then seek command of a combat battalion — a ticket to better postings and higher rank.
Today, Col. Dooley finds himself at a dead end while being targeted for criticism by American Islamic groups, at least two of which are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, which advocates universal Islamic law.
More important, Col. Dooley’s critics include ArmyGen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In a news conference with Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta in May, Gen. Dempsey, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer, publicly excoriated Col. Dooley’s training materials as being unfair to Islam and “academically irresponsible.”
A month after Gen. Dempsey’s rebuke, a general on his Pentagon staff ordered Col. Dooley to be removed as an instructor “for cause.”
As a result, regulations called for Marine Lt. Gen. George Flynn to order the National Defense University to produce a negative officer evaluation report on Col. Dooley — a career ender.
Richard Thompson, president of the nonprofit Thomas More Law Center, is representing Col. Dooley in an appeal against the negative report. He said the Pentagon is trying to appease the Muslim Brotherhood.
“What happened here was this whole idea of political correctness deterred the ability of our military to speak frankly about the identity of the enemy,” Mr. Thompson said in an interview. “Once you allow political correctness to overwhelm our military, then we are really going to have an impact on our national security.”
http://melaniephillips.com/the-liverpool-killing-pathway For relatives anxious about a frail loved one in hospital, few things could surely sound more reassuring than a ‘care pathway’. It sounds like a well-worked-out schedule for providing the best possible approach to treating a patient. Accordingly, when relatives have been asked to sign up to the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), that’s precisely […]
