TOM BLUMER: 43 MONTHS OF DEPRESSING MISERY

http://pjmedia.com/blog/43-months-of-depressing-misery/ I was briefly tempted to take a tiny bit of pity on the Obama administration after Friday’s awful employment report [1]. After all, one can make a pretty strong case based on the raw (i.e., not seasonally adjusted) figures that the number of jobs added after seasonal adjustment should have been at least 50,000 […]

DANIEL GREENFIELD: NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
At the climax of the Yom Kippur services, and the conclusion of the Jewish High Holy Days, some two weeks from now, millions of Jews around the world will cry out, “Next Year in Jerusalem”, expressing their hope for a final redemption.

There is a similar faith at the heart of the DNC’s amended platform which states, “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations.”

Like the Jews praying for Jerusalem, the DNC’s platform supports a Jerusalem as Israel’s capital that is not a material Jerusalem, but a spiritual Jerusalem, a place that will come into being only when the messiah of the peace process has come and the terrorists have put down their guns and after twenty or two thousand or twenty thousand years have agreed to some final status agreement that falls short of making full territorial claims on the capital of Jerusalem.

The DNC’s platform is a properly devout expression of faith, not in G-d and not in the rights of Israelis, but in the peace process. After twenty years of peace and terror, next year the peace process will finally culminate in a final status agreement. And that expression of the DNC’s faith in the goodwill of terrorists is hardly reassuring to Israelis or American Jews.

VIDEO PICKS AT FAMILY SECURITY MATTERS

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/blog/

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CBS’ Norah O’Donnell Compares Paul Ryan’s Marathon Misstatement to Al Gore’s Internet Claim
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CNN’s Don Lemon Challenges Wasserman Schultz on DNC’s God, Israel Platform Changes
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CA Dem. Senator Feinstein Walks Out of TV Interview
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Do liberal celebrities think we’re idiots?
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New report on wasteful health care spending
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Canada cuts ties with Iran, closing embassy in Tehran
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George Will: ‘Everyone except the American State Department knows that the capital of Israel is Jerusalem’
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Concern over disrespectful behavior at 9/11 memorial
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White House on defensive over economy
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You didn’t build that!
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‘Last Ounce of Courage’ actor Marshall Teague defends ‘invisible’ Clint Eastwood

Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/#ixzz263olITuB
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

JAMES DELINGPOLE: WIND FARMS CURE CANCER, SAVE KITTENS AND CREATE WORLD PEACE SAYS THEIR REPORT

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/wind-farms-cure-cancer-save-kittens-create-world-peace-says-new-wind-industry-report?f=puball

Wind energy is great says a new report commissioned by the Labour think tank Institute For Public Policy Research.

Among the report’s findings are that large scale industrial wind farms can:

* Boost GDP growth by up to 3,000 per cent
* Cure all known forms of cancer
* Rescue drowning kittens from sacks in canals and lead them to secure, happy homes where they are well cared for in handcrafted wicker baskets with lovely, snuggly faux-sheepskin blankets for them to purr on and little saucers of organic Jersey cream designed by Cath Kidston.
* Treble the beauty of the landscape.
* Engender social justice.
* Bring about lasting world peace.
* Mean that if you’re an ordinary, struggling working class landowner like Earl Spencer, the Duke of Gloucester, Lord Gisborough, the Earl of Moray or the Duke of Roxburghe – not forgetting our old friend Sir Reginald Sheffield Bt – you won’t after all be forced to sell your third-favourite Raphael cartoon in order to make ends meet, you just stick up a ruddy great wind farm instead and Bob’s your uncle: problem solved!

THE REAL STORY: THE SIMPSON BOWLES COMMISSION AND PAUL RYAN

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443864204577623332790836376.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

One of the many ways Paul Ryan scandalized the media-political class in his Tampa convention speech was to criticize President Obama for walking away from the report of his own 2010 deficit commission co-chaired by Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson.

How dare the upstart Republican blister Mr. Obama when Mr. Ryan himself refused to endorse the final product! Mr. Ryan even had the impudence to say that Mr. Obama “did exactly nothing” as a result of Simpson-Bowles or Mr. Ryan’s own budget proposals or any others, “nothing except to dodge and demagogue the issue.”

Media elites are now using this to absolve Mr. Obama and suggest that Simpson-Bowles would have succeeded if not for the all-powerful House Budget Chairman. This rewrites history, so allow us to remind readers what really happened to the Obama deficit commission.
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Mr. Obama created the panel in February 2010, without a trace of irony, after he had raised federal spending to post-World War II highs. His political goal was to blunt attacks on his overspending, while also trying to lure Republicans into becoming tax collectors for his agenda in the name of a balanced budget. Mr. Simpson is the kind of Republican who had fallen for this in the past.

So it was a pleasant surprise when Messrs. Simpson and Bowles instead endorsed a more efficient and competitive tax code. Their draft swapped fewer brackets and lower rates for fewer loopholes and “tax expenditures.” The appeal for Democrats is that tax revenue would grow with a faster-growing economy, and Republicans would have to accept a net tax increase reaching 21% of GDP. That’s far higher than the historic average between 18% and 19% and above the modern high of 20.9% in 1944.

The political myth is that Mr. Ryan was the spoiler because he’s an anti-tax purist. His real objection at the time was that the Simpson-Bowles Democrats refused to offer an equal trade on spending. Their non-negotiable demand was that ObamaCare was off the table and there could be no structural reforms in Medicare and Medicaid.

How is that a real compromise? Everyone agrees that Medicare and Medicaid are growing too fast for revenues to keep up. Mr. Obama himself told the 2010 House GOP retreat that “The major driver of our long-term liabilities, everybody here knows, is Medicare and Medicaid and our health-care spending. Nothing comes close.” The fiscal reality is that if health care is off the table, then the only possible not-so-grand bargain is permanent tax increases that chase an explosion of federal spending.

THE AMERICAN HOSTAGE IN HAVANA:Mauricio Claver-Carone

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443324404577594870481241852.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Since December 2009, American development worker Alan Gross has been imprisoned by the Castro regime for trying to help Cuba’s Jewish community connect to the Internet. For that Mr. Gross—who was in Cuba as a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development—was arrested, convicted in a sham trial and sentenced to 15 years.

The White House and State Department have repeatedly called for Alan Gross’s “immediate release.” The Gross family’s legal team urged the family to keep a low profile, thinking it could negotiate his release. (The family ended that representation earlier this year.)

But Fidel and Raúl Castro don’t typically react to discretion and haven’t felt much U.S. pressure on this case. Even after Mr. Gross was seized, the administration sought rapprochement with Havana and continued talks in 2010 and 2011. It also has continued to ease U.S. sanctions on Cuba.

Mr. Gross’s sister, Bonnie Rubinstein, recently led a protest in front of the Cuban Interests Section—a de facto embassy—in Washington, D.C., seeking her brother’s release. She feels “he’s being ignored” and says, “Alan does not want to be forgotten. He doesn’t want to be left there. He wants people to know about him.”

It’s easy to understand her concern. In April 2009, the Obama administration eliminated all restrictions on Cuban-American travel and remittances to Cuba, which became the centerpiece of our nation’s new “Cuba policy.” Those actions predated Mr. Gross’s arrest. However, after Mr. Gross was seized in December of that year and throughout 2010, while he was being held without trial, the administration took various steps that, collectively, seem incomprehensible.

DID YOU KNOW?SEN. DICK DURBIN…THE MAN WHO INTRODUCED OBAMA AT THE DNC ONCE LIKENED U.S. TROOPS TO NAZIS? JAMES TARANTO’S RECAP

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444273704577637430305876586.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

In 2005, as we noted at the time, Durbin took to the floor of the Senate and said this:

When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here [in the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba]–I almost hesitate to put them in the [Congressional] Record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report:

“On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. . . .. On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.”

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime–Pol Pot or others–that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.

The comparison is wildly over the top; using uncomfortable temperatures and loud music to extract intelligence from terrorists is in no way comparable to mass murder and torture of dissidents and other innocent people. As we wrote at the time: “We are fighting an enemy that murdered 3,000 innocent people on American soil 3½ years ago and would murder millions more if given the chance–and according to Dick Durbin, our soldiers are the Nazis.”

Having Durbin introduce the president at a support-the-troops-themed convention seems as odd as running John Kerry, who began his career slandering fellow veterans, as a “war hero.” Though to his credit, Durbin “offered a tearful apology” several days after his reductio ad Hitlerum, as the Washington Post noted. Kerry has yet to apologize, more than 40 years on.

JACK CASHILL: TIME TO ASK OBAMA ABOUT THAT SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/09/time_to_ask_obama_abut_his_social_security_number.html I have been communicating with the intrepid Ohio private investigator, Susan Daniels, for some time. A few weeks ago, I got to meet Daniels. She is smart and sincere, and she understands her subject matter thoroughly. The left-wing “rebuttals” of her data, to this point, have ranged from the inept to the absurd. More […]

500 Lashes, Death by Stoning: Women in Islam by Khaled Abu Toameh…..See note please

Yes Ms. Fluke….these are the people that you idol President Obama bowed to….rsk

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3326/islam-lashes-stoning-women

Saudi authorities have sentenced Najla Yehya Wafa, a 35-year-old Egyptian woman, to 500 lashes. Her family says she was arrested after a business dispute with a Saudi Princess. Leila Jamul, a 23-year-old Sudanese woman, was sentenced last July to death by stoning for adultery. She is being held in prison, meanwhile, with her six-month-old baby.

A Pakistani girl and an Egyptian woman have become the latest victims of Muslim extremists who hide behind Islam’s Sharia laws.

In countries where Sharia laws are enforced, women have often found themselves subjected to various forms of persecution and intimidation.

In the first case, Rimsha Masih, a 14-year-old , mentally damaged, Christian girl from a poor suburb outside Islamabad, Pakistan, was arrested two weeks ago after her neighbors complained that she had burned documents containing verses from the Quran.

This is a “crime” punishable by life sentence in Pakistan. Rimsha was arrested after a local Muslim community leader and his followers exerted pressure on the Pakistani authorities to take action against her.

24/7 NEWS AND BUZZ

http://times247.com/

Iran, say hello to Israel’s electromagnetic friend
The Times of Israel
Sunday, September 9, 2012
News
Israel could destroy Iran’s electric network with a specially designed electromagnetic bomb in the event of a military conflict between the countries, The Sunday Times reported on Sunday. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz263fdz4gz

IMF director warns world of U.S. fiscal cliff
U.S. tax increases and spending cuts…
Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz263en9FpJ
Hustler publisher offers $1m for Romney records
CNN
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Blogs
The publisher of Hustler magazine, Larry Flynt, is offering the sum of $1 million for the skinny on GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s financials, the magazine announced. Read more…

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz263f8MSgu