RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/what-the-ryan-choice-means-for-november/

Last week’s poll numbers seemingly confirmed the doubts about democracy’s viability expressed in last week’s column. After a barrage of outrageous smears fired off by the Obama campaign, which accused Romney of killing a woman with cancer and failing to pay any income tax, Obama is leading Romney by 7-9 points. Coming on top of the continuing approval of Obama’s economically disastrous, class-envious assault on the “rich,” the success of patent lies in improving Obama’s numbers makes one think that democracy’s critics may be right: most people lack the ability to see past their selfish, short-term interests and make electoral decisions that benefit the state as a whole.

But let’s not give up on democracy yet. Mitt Romney’s pick of Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential candidate should give us hope that maybe a critical mass of Americans will rise above petty self-interest and do what must be done to keep the United States from morphing into California on its way to becoming Greece on steroids.

Judged solely on political expediency, Romney’s choice seems a disaster. According to “one of the country’s most prominent and influential conservatives,” as the Huffington Post claims of its anonymous commentator, Ryan is too much like Romney, a wonky white guy too polished and detached from the average American. Ryan, this unknown Solon continues, can’t deliver any electoral votes, is too obsessive about the deficit, has been tarred by his zeal to reform Medicare, and fails the “3 A.M. crisis call” test. No wonder some Democrats are happy about the choice. “Democrats are gleefully united in bashing Rep. Paul Ryan,” Politico’s John Bresnahan writes, “blasting him as the author of the controversial ‘Ryan budget,’ claiming his proposals ‘end Medicare,’ and warning that his policies will return the country to the ‘trickle-down economics’ of the 1980s and the presidency of George W. Bush.”

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/not-for-conservatives-only-on-the-brewster-gang/ On this week’s Brewster Gang, Eric Allen Bell, Dwight Schultz and Susan Olsen gathered to discuss Not For Conservatives Only. The discussion focused on why mostly conservatives are confronting the truth about Islamic totalitarianism — while the Left shows complete indifference. Below is Part I of a three part series. We will run Part […]

http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2012/08/11/egypt-there-goes-the-free-media/?print=1

So can you write “Arab Spring,” “free elections,” “democracy in Egypt,” and such things 100 times? This just might be somewhat in contradiction to the fact that:

Muslim Brotherhood President al-Mursi has just removed the two commanding generals of the Egyptian military. Does he have a right to do this? Who knows?There’s no constitution. That means all we were told about not having to worry because the generals would restrain the Brotherhood was false. Moreover, the idea that the army, and hence the government, may fear to act lest they lose U.S. aid will also be false. There is no parliament at present He is now the democratically elected dictator of Egypt. True, he picked another career officer but he has now put forward the principle: he decides who runs the army. The generals can still advise Mursi. He can choose to listen to them or not. But there is no more dual power in Egypt but only one leader. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces which has run Egypt since February 2011 is gone. Only Mursi remains and Egypt is now at his mercy.

Oh and to put the icing on the cake, Mursi will apparently decide who will be on the commission that writes the new Consttitution.

Behind the scenes note: Would Mursi dared have done this if he thought Obama would come down on him like a ton of bricks? Would the army give up if they thought America was behind it? No on both counts.

This is a coup. Mursi is bound by no constitution. He can do as he pleases unless someone is going to stop him. And the only candidate–the military–is fading fast, far faster than even we pessimists would have predicted.

http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/

A witch hunt to track down whistleblowers has commenced at Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security. Sources tell PJ Media that DHS policy drafts regarding amnesty programs have been pipelining to Republican congressional offices. As a result, political appointees at DHS are feeling the heat and have commenced a witch hunt to track down the sources of the leaks – conducting interviews bordering on interrogations.

One such policy draft sent straight to GOP congressional offices included a memo titled “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.” A July draft of the document shows an effort by DHS political appointees to suspend laws against illegal aliens remaining in the United States. Another source tells PJ Media that DHS doesn’t want robust standards to establish the actual identities of the illegal aliens. They have been instructed to overlook inconsistent tax records and other red flags about the actual identity of the aliens.

The DHS amnesty draft also reveals embarrassing errors, such as not labeling Hawaii as part of the United States.

The memo obtained by PJ Media inartfully states:

The centers, which are located throughout the United States and its outlying territories to include Hawaii, Guam, and Saipan, facilitate the capture of fingerprints and biometric data.

The policy draft specifically allows some illegal aliens to remain in the United States even if they are convicted of a crime – as long as the crime was punishable by five days or less.

http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/the-un-file-let-us-now-thank-sudan/?singlepage=true

Sudan’s regime is not, as a rule, a venture that inspires thank you notes. Sudan is a sinkhole of repression, violence, and even slavery. Its president, Omar al-Bashir, is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide. Its security forces are notorious for arbitrary arrests, rape, and torture, which, as the U.S. State Department notes, they usually commit with impunity. And, courtesy of Amnesty International, you can read here about the case of 23-year-old Layla Ibrahim Issa Jumul, who just last month, convicted in Sudan of adultery, was sentenced to be stoned to death.

Now, as UN Watch notes, “It’s Official: Genocidal Sudan Running Uncontested for U.N. Human Rights Council Seat.” Word of this, first reported by UN Watch, had been circulating for weeks. The UN General Assembly, which oversees the Human Rights Council, and votes on who fills these seats, had coyly refrained until this past week from posting Sudan’s candidacy on the web site for the Human Rights Council elections. But here it is, the official site, where Sudan now shows up as one of five African nations running for five seats allotted in this election to Africa. In other words, Sudan’s run is uncontested. Unless competition materializes before the election takes place this November, it’s highly likely that Sudan will win a seat on the UN Human Rights Council.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/no-future-in-france-dire-times-for-french-jews/?print=1

“Any time young people approach me in order to get married, I ask them various questions about their future. Eighty percent of them say they do not envision any future in France.” This is what one rabbi in Paris told me last week. I heard similar statements from other French rabbis and lay Jewish leaders: “We have a feeling the words are on the wall now,” one leader in the Lyons area confided to me. “It is not just our situation in this country deteriorating; it is also that the process is much quicker than expected.”

Even the chief rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, may be sharing that view now. A philosopher (holding a prestigious French agrégation degree in philosophy), a graduate of the French Rabbinical School in Paris, and a former student at some of the most orthodox yeshivoth (Talmudic academies) in Jerusalem, Bernheim was until recently very eager to reconcile traditional Judaism with Europe’s “open society.” He has just devoted a book to France as a nation and how Jews can contribute to France’s public debates (N’oublions Pas De Penser La France [1]), and in 2008, the year he was elected chief rabbi, he coauthored a book on Judeo-Christian dialogue (Le Rabbin et le Cardinal [2]) with Cardinal Philippe Barbarin.

Despite all that, Bernheim suddenly warned Jewish leaders a few weeks ago about a growing “rejection” of Jews and Judaism in France, something he linked to the global passing of “Judeo-Christian values” in French society as a whole.

The immediate reason for Jewish pessimism in France and for Bernheim’s change of heart may be the Toulouse massacre [3] last March: the murder in cold blood of three Jewish children and a Jewish teacher by Mohamed Merah, a Muslim terrorist, on their school’s premises. This crime, instead of instilling more compassion and understanding towards the Jewish community, has actually generated more anti-Jewish violence and hate talk, as if Merah was not seen as a vile thug but rather as a model by parts of the population.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/313785/return-mediscare-editors

On CNN yesterday, Obama strategist David Axelrod claimed that “most of the experts who have looked at this” have said that Paul Ryan’s plan to reform Medicare would put the program “in a death spiral” and “would raise costs on seniors by thousands of dollars.” A day earlier — as Representative Ryan was preparing to accept Mitt Romney’s offer to join his ticket — Obama campaign manager Jim Messina had said the plan involved “shifting thousands of dollars in health-care costs to seniors.”

None of this is true. Any expert who looks at Ryan’s plan — any intelligent and fair-minded person, really — can tell you the actual worst-case scenario for how much more it could make beneficiaries pay: $0.

The claim Axelrod and Messina are making is based on a hostile interpretation of an earlier version of Ryan’s proposal. Ryan has changed the proposal over the last year, however, and Romney has endorsed the new version. The Democratic criticism, applied to the new plan, is indisputably false.

The Romney-Ryan proposal — which has the support of liberal Democratic senator Ron Wyden of Oregon — would let senior citizens choose a coverage plan provided either by the federal government or by a private company. The government would defray the cost of purchasing the plan selected. The providers would submit bids showing the premiums they would charge to cover the benefits Medicare has traditionally offered. The second-lowest bid would set the amount the government would provide for each beneficiary.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/313764/thank-you-ray-kelly-deroy-murdock

As an American and a New Yorker, I have just two words for Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and the New York Police Department, which he leads: Thank you.

Gratitude towards Kelly and the NYPD is surprisingly rare these days, especially regarding the enormous success that Gotham’s cops have enjoyed in preventing America’s largest city from enduring Islamic terrorism in the years since al-Qaeda’s mass murder on September 11, 2001. Rather than salute the NYPD for averting hundreds or even thousands more deaths, critics slam the law-enforcement professionals who successfully have guarded one of the War on Terror’s most active fronts.

“The FBI considers the NYPD’s intelligence gathering practices since 9/11 not only a waste of money but a violation of Americans’ rights, “Newsmax’s chief Washington correspondent, Ronald Kessler, reveals in his new book, The Secrets of the FBI, published Tuesday. “The NYPD has been sending undercover operatives to political meetings,” one FBI official complains to Kessler. “We are not engaging in that kind of aimless intelligence gathering on mosques or political meetings without a predication that terrorist activities might be involved.”

The FBI’s jealousy and turf-mindedness aside, it often is tough to develop “predication” without “aimless intelligence gathering.”

Last May, Congressman Rush Holt (D., N.J.) sponsored an amendment to condemn law-enforcement agencies that practice religious, racial, or ethnic profiling. As the New York Post noted, Holt also demanded that the Justice Department investigate “a pattern of surveillance and infiltration by the New York Police Department against innocent American Muslims in the absence of a valid investigative reason.”

This liberal attack on the NYPD’s counterterrorism activities was defeated 193 to 232 on a mainly party-line vote, with Democrats largely supportive and Republicans opposed.

Similarly, the Associated Press this April won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for highlighting “the New York Police Department’s clandestine spying program that monitored daily life in Muslim communities.” Responding in the June Commentary, however, Mitchell D. Silber — the NYPD’s former director of intelligence analysis — argues that these AP articles are “rife with inaccuracies” and “confuse events and policies in ways that are misleading and cast the tale they are telling in the worst possible light.”

As an American and a New Yorker, I have just two words for detractors of Commissioner Kelly and the NYPD: Back off.

The NYPD’s foes ignore two pivotal realities:

First, Kelly and the NYPD have broken no laws.

Since 1985, the NYPD has operated under the Handschu Guidelines. These rules shield political protesters from overzealous cops. Post 9/11, the NYPD asked a federal court to modify Handschu, given the need to battle terrorism. The court eventually agreed, and now the NYPD follows Handschu, as amended.

Handschu acknowledges a truism that escapes most cop bashers: “In its effort to anticipate or prevent unlawful activity, including terrorist acts, the NYPD must, at times, initiate investigations in advance of unlawful conduct.”

Yes, Virginia: Sometimes cops try to stop crime, rather than react to it. This is doubly true of Islamic terrorism, given its lust for widespread bloodshed.

Handschu further states: “The NYPD is authorized to visit any place and attend any event that is open to the public” and “to conduct online search activity and to access online sites and forums on the same terms . . . as members of the public.”

As Commissioner Kelly declared March 3 at Fordham Law School, “Anyone who intimates that it is unlawful for the Police Department to search online, visit public places, or map neighborhoods has either not read, misunderstood, or intentionally obfuscated the meaning of the Handschu Guidelines.”

For his part, White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan backed Kelly in a visit to One Police Plaza in April. Brennan said: “I have full confidence that the NYPD is doing things consistent with the law, and it’s something that again has been responsible for keeping this city safe over the past decade.”

Second, neither prizes nor prose can obscure the fact that the NYPD has led or supported counterterrorist efforts that repeatedly have scuttled conspiracies to commit mass homicide against innocent New Yorkers and visitors from across the country and around the globe.

“Since 9/11, New York City has been targeted by terrorists in 14 different plots,” Kelly said at Fordham. “Thanks to the work of the Police Department, the FBI, and a good deal of luck, none of these plots have succeeded. In fact, while the city saw terrorist attacks in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, no attack has taken place in the past ten years.”

After staying mum on the specifics of these plots for years, the NYPD finally released a list of these conspiracies. Often in conjunction with domestic and international security agencies, the NYPD has stymied or helped thwart most of these efforts to spill blood on the sidewalks of New York. Details of these plots should remind Americans of the severe danger that terrorists still pose.

1. Subway cyanide plot: As Ron Suskind reported in his book The One Percent Doctrine, “Al-Qaeda terrorists came within 45 days of attacking the New York subway system with a lethal gas similar to that used in Nazi death camps . . . the U.S. learned of the plot from a CIA mole inside al-Qaeda.” In early 2003, U.S. intelligence discovered this conspiracy on the laptop of a Bahraini terrorist caught in Saudi Arabia. The computer contained plans for a hydrogen-cyanide gas-dispersal device nicknamed mubtakkar, or “inventive” in Arabic.

“In the world of terrorist weaponry,” Suskind wrote, “this was the equivalent of splitting the atom.” The plan was to place several of these mechanisms on Gotham subway cars. For reasons still unclear, however, al-Qaeda’s No. 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, canceled the assault at T minus 45 days.

2. Garment District plot: The Pakistani-born Uzair Paracha, according to the NYPD, “discussed with top al-Qaeda leaders the prospect of smuggling weapons and explosives — possibly even a nuclear device — into Manhattan’s Garment District through his father’s import-export business.”

The Justice Department states that this permanent resident alien worked with Majid Khan and Ammar al-Baluchi, both members of al-Qaeda. Paracha helped Khan “obtain a travel document that would have allowed Khan to re-enter the United States to commit a terrorist act,” Justice explained. “Khan intended to carry out an attack on gasoline stations.”

Paracha posed as Khan in order to build a legend of Khan as a visitor to America, even though Khan was in Pakistan. This included Paracha’s masquerading as Khan before U.S. immigration officials and agreeing to use Khan’s credit card domestically. Paracha and his father had discussed with Khan and al-Baluchi their receiving a $200,000 fee for this material support.

Uzair Paracha was arrested on March 28, 2003, and convicted on November 25, 2005, on all five terror-related charges that he faced. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison on July 20, 2006.

U.S. Attorney Michael J. Garcia said: “The FBI Joint Terrorist Task Force’s ability to interdict and prevent [Paracha’s] plan from succeeding does not mitigate the seriousness of the offense, and more than justifies the sentence imposed.”

3. Brooklyn Bridge plot: On October 28, 2003, Iyman Faris — a 34-year-old Kashmiri native also known as Mohammad Rauf — received a 20-year federal prison sentence for “providing material support and resources to al Qaeda,” the Justice Department stated. The naturalized U.S. citizen traveled to an al-Qaeda terror camp in Afghanistan in late 2000, where he met Osama bin Laden.

“The al Qaeda leader spoke with Faris about destroying a bridge in New York City by severing its suspension cables, and tasked Faris with obtaining the equipment needed for that operation. The leader also explained that al-Qaeda was planning to derail trains, and asked Faris to procure the tools for that plot as well.” Faris researched “gas cutters,” which he would use to sever the Brooklyn Bridge’s suspension cables.

Before his arrest, Faris transmitted a coded message that his scheme might fail. The NYPD believes that its robust deployment of officers, dogs, and checkpoints prompted a frustrated Faris to report to his supervisors: “The weather is too hot.”

4. New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup-headquarters plot: The Indian-born, British-reared Dhiren Barot converted to Islam with a vengeance. According to CBS News, he began his terrorist training in 1995 at camps in Pakistan, Kashmir, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Barot made two reconnaissance trips to the U.S. in August 2000 and March 2001. On his second visit, he videotaped the World Trade Center. His footage of the Twin Towers includes a male voice imitating the sound of an explosion.

According to British prosecutors, Barot’s handwritten notebook envisioned a “memorable black day for the enemies of Islam.” He planned to stuff three limousines with gas cylinders, explosives, and nails, and to detonate them in parking garages under London’s Ritz and Savoy Hotels. He hoped to bomb a London subway train beneath the River Thames, which would “cause pandemonium . . . explosions, flooding, drowning,” Barot wrote.

Barot also targeted the Citigroup building and the New York Stock Exchange in Manhattan, Prudential’s New Jersey headquarters, and the World Bank’s offices in Washington, D.C.

Barot was arrested in London on August 3, 2004. He pleaded guilty to terror charges in August 2009.

“You planned to slaughter hundreds, if not thousands, of wholly innocent men, women, and children,” said British judge Neil Butterfield on September 10, 2009 — before giving Barot life in prison. “You were planning to bring indiscriminate carnage, bloodshed and butchery — first in Washington, Newark, and New York, and then London.”

Barot’s seven conspirators, in what the British call Operation Rhyme, are jailed in the U.K. for terms ranging from 15 to 26 years.

5. Herald Square subway station plot: Shahawar Matin Siraj and James Elshafay were arrested on August 27, 2004. According to the Justice Department, they “plotted to plant explosive devices at the Herald Square subway station in order to disrupt commerce and transportation in New York City and damage the economy.” Herald Square is one block from Madison Square Garden, where the 2004 Republican National Convention commenced the morning after Siraj and Elshafay were detained.

As Justice explained, “Siraj and Elshafay drove to the subway station on August 21, 2004, entered and inspected the station, and then returned to their car and drew diagrams of the location in order to help them later place a bomb.” Elshafay reportedly decided to plant the bomb while dressed as a Hasidic Jew, as he put it, “’cause they know Jews aren’t the ones doing it.”

Siraj earned a 30-year prison sentence. Elshafay received five years on March 2, 2007.

Federal prosecutor Roslynn R. Mauskopf, according to Justice, “praised the outstanding work of the New York City Police Department and, in particular, the courageous work of the Intelligence Division’s undercover detective known only as ‘Kamil Pasha’ who testified at trial.”

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/money-down-a-rathole-college-healthcare-housing?f=puball

Households are dumping trillions in hard-earned income down ratholes with marginal returns: costly higher education, healthcare and housing.

What happens when households dump huge percentages of their stagnant incomes down marginal-return ratholes? They get less wealthy, which is exactly what we’re seeing. The average American household has been persuaded that pouring money into costly higher education, healthcare and housing are all “investments” that offer high yields.

Sadly, the opposite is true: the returns on these stupendously costly investments is marginal or negative. Let’s start with higher education, a topic I have discussed at length numerous times.

In essence, a college degree has lost its scarcity value, and in an era of labor arbitrage (a.k.a. offshoring and international competition), automation and relentless pressure to lower costs, even advanced degrees in law, science and business management that once were perceived as guarantees of secure high-paying employment no longer have scarcity value: the number of people with advanced degrees far exceeds the number of open positions.

Meanwhile, the education cartel has raised prices at a rate that is three times the rate of inflation. The credulous “buyers” of expensive higher education continue to pay absurdly inflated prices for degrees that have marginal value in the real-world marketplace.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/for-the-marxists-ye-have-with-you-always?f=must_reads

I was involved in a revealing exchange yesterday. Something I had Tweeted – a diffident question about whether pushing more and more people into university was necessarily desirable – prompted a series of responses along the lines of ‘Typical: like all capitalists, you don’t like poor people’.

The criticism came in such a blizzard that I felt some sort of reply was in order, so I took to the keyboard again: ‘I love all these “capitalists don’t like poor people” Tweets. It’s true: we want to turn them into rich people. It’s socialists who need their client groups.’

What happened next got me thinking. One after another, the Lefties on Twitter lined up to argue that capitalism couldn’t survive without poverty, that its essence was the widening of inequality, that it concentrated more and more power in the hands of fewer and fewer plutocrats, that its days were numbered. I won’t bore you by quoting them all. One – from the prolific Labour blogger Sunny Hundal – might stand for many: ‘In fact capitalism (by definition) needs more poor people and prefers poor bargaining rights and gross inequality’.