RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-bawer/goodbye-to-gore-vidal/

A CRACKPOT BITES THE DUST

He was born at West Point to a prominent family, served his country in World War II, was made famous by his first novel (published at age twenty), and a couple of years later alienated book-review editors with his third novel, which, for 1948, was that most scandalous of things – a gay love story. Unwelcome in the New York publishing world, he proceeded to bang out TV plays, tinker with scripts at MGM, churn out pseudonymous potboilers, and get a couple of plays produced on Broadway – the grating, now impossibly dated Visit to a Small Planet and the well-made but preachy The Best Man (which, as it happens, is at this very moment back on The Great White Way for the third time).

His series of novels about American history – from Washington, D.C. (1967) to The Golden Age (2000) – help make him rich and led him to brag that he was America’s foremost historian, but these bulky, inert productions might fairly be described by borrowing a few words of criticism that his nemesis, Truman Capote, once directed at the work of one of Vidal’s sometime bedmates, Jack Kerouac: “That’s not writing, that’s typing.” Even worse, perhaps, than his history novels were his more off-beat fictional works, notably Myra Breckenridge (1968), which at the time passed for naughty and sensational but which has long since come to be recognized as an embarrassing, godawful bore.

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/netanyahu-to-panetta-time-running-out-on-iran/ “Will Israel attack Iran’s nuclear program?” is a parlor game played by numerous people who don’t have enough information to know the answer. It may be that there still is no definite answer; on Tuesday night Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu openly told a national TV audience that he still hadn’t […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-tapson/caroline-glick-israel-on-the-eve-of-u-s-elections/print/

Monday night I attended an insightful presentation entitled “Israel on the Eve of the U.S. Elections,” given by Caroline Glick for the Los Angeles-based organization Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.

Glick is the adjunct senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy in Washington D.C., and recently was appointed as the Director for the Israel Security Project at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. The author of Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad, she served as Assistant Foreign Policy Advisor to Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu in 1997-98, and regularly briefs administration officials and Congress on issues of joint American-Israeli concern.

Glick began her presentation with her perspective on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s recent visit to Jerusalem. It was very, very well-received, she said; in fact, he was “a breath of fresh air” – not because he made a candidate’s usual extravagant promises of support for Israel, but because “he lives in the real world,” where we acknowledge that the Middle East is extremely dangerous and the radiant “Arab Spring” is actually a much bleaker Islamic Winter.

Romney’s reassuring statements in Israel, such as his assertion that Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish state, were in stark contrast to those of the Obama administration for the last three and a half years, Glick said. Obama has shown that he believes that the way to mollify the Muslim world is to put distance between the United States and Israel, deny that Jerusalem is the capital, take the Palestinians’ side in various issues, use the media to deter Israel from attacking Iran, and cozy up to the Muslim Brotherhood.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/07/31/Sec-Napolitano-Terrorists-Are-Crossing-Our-Southern-Border-From-Time-to-Time
Border enforcement has always been a sticking point for the Obama administration. Following the administration’s partial victory against Arizona’s SB 1070, it became an even bigger point as Obama announced DHS deportation policies would no longer be applicable in Arizona.

But now, concerns over the border have hit new levels, as Secretary of Homeland Defense Janet Napolitano has admitted that terrorists intending to do harm to this country are entering via our southern border “from time to time.”

Napolitano was responding to a question from Rep. Ron Barber (D-AZ), who asked: “Is there any credible evidence that…terrorists are, in fact, crossing our southern border with the intent to do harm to the American people?” To this question Napolitano answered: “There have been…from time to time, and we are constantly working against different and evolving threats involving various terrorists groups and various ways they may seek to enter the country.”

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/07/30/Muslim-Brotherhood-in-America
It has been said that the truth offends those who don’t have it. It would appear Senator John McCain and Speaker John Boehner do not have the truth and the facts showing the danger the Muslim Brotherhood’s Movement in America’s government poses today. Americans should be very concerned about this.

In letters dated June 13, 2012, five Members of Congress – Representatives Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Tom Rooney (R-FL), Trent Franks (R-AZ), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) — requested that Inspector Generals from the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice and State, as well as the IG from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, investigate the penetration of senior Muslim Brotherhood operatives into our national security decision-making apparatus in America.

This is a reasonable request, since a massive amount of factual evidence exists which specifically identifies individuals and organizations which are a part of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement in America directly involved in key positions inside our security agencies.

Yet, American political leaders from both parties continue to disparage this request in personal terms, giving clear indication they are completely ignorant of the facts in this matter. The latest blast came from leaders in the GOP, publicly defending a senior advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff to the U.S. Secretary of State, Huma Abedin. This individual’s immediate family founded a Muslim Brotherhood front group which, at a minimum, raises questions about Abedin’s position inside the government. If her parents were in leadership positions in organizations the U.S. government knew were fronts for the KGB or Chinese Intelligence, we would not be having this discussion. But because it is the Muslim Brotherhood, which many American leaders have either coddled, worked with, or ignored, these five Members of Congress who are abiding by their oaths of office and asking for a legitimate investigation into this potentially damaging espionage issue, are being attacked by Senator McCain and Speaker Boehner. Shoot the messenger.

As a point of reference, three years ago Congresswoman Sue Myrick (R-NC) called on the Department of Justice to brief all members of Congress on the implications of the US v. Holy Land Foundation trial, which revealed many of the prominent Islamic organization in America today, including the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), are a part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Jihad here. DOJ never fulfilled this request.

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/08/what_al_qaeda_decline.html

The Reuters headline is “Al Qaeda decline hard to reverse after Bin Laden killing: U.S.” The story leads with this sentence.

“Osama bin Laden’s death sent al Qaeda into a decline that will be hard to reverse, the United States said on Tuesday in a report that found terrorist attacks last year fell to their lowest level since 2005.”

In Reuters’ defense, it is summarizing a State Department report.

The death of Usama bin Ladin, al-Qa’ida’s founder and sole leader for the past 22 years, highlighted a landmark year in the global effort to counter terrorism… The loss of bin Ladin and these other key operatives puts the network on a path of decline that will be difficult to reverse.”

The message is simple: Obama killed Osama, and now terrorism is dead. All hail Obama.

However, the numbers do not bear that out at all. We can go directly to the 2011 report and the

http://pjmedia.com/blog/senate-turns-focus-to-planning-for-extreme-global-warming-events/?singlepage=true
Senate Turns Focus to Planning for Extreme Global-Warming Events
But with such a contentious issue on the table for the first time in years, at a hearing chaired by Barbara Boxer, the hearing turned into a debate on climate change itself.

The first Senate hearing on climate change in years centered around an attempt to tie extreme weather — from the derecho that knocked out power this summer in the D.C. area to the drought ravaging the Midwest — to global warming.

But with such a contentious issue on the table at a hearing chaired by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), senators barely touched on the stated hearing purpose of determining how communities could steel themselves against calamitous acts of Mother Nature.

“Last month at Washington Reagan National Airport, a US Airways regional jet became stuck in on the tarmac when temperatures over 100 degrees melted the asphalt. There was a D.C. Metro train derailment just up the road last month after tracks buckled in the extreme heat,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said at this morning’s Environment and Public Works hearing.

“We need to adapt our water infrastructure, our transportation infrastructure, and our electrical grid” for the coming “consequences of climate change,” Cardin added. “We need to help our farmers to adapt so that our food supply – and that of the world – remains reliable. We need to adapt our coastal regions and prepare for the sea-level rise that is already beginning to threaten some of our coastal communities. We need to improve our public health infrastructure to deal with the heat-related illnesses that result from these extreme temperatures.”

As the hearing came on the heels of Monday sparring on the Senate floor between two committee members over global warming — Ranking Member James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — the debate over whether the science supports climate-change models took center stage.

Sanders kicked off the week by taking to the floor to counter Inhofe’s assertion that global warming is a hoax. “Many who take climate science seriously dismiss Sen. Inhofe. I believe that is a huge mistake,” Sanders said. “For better or worse, when Sen. Inhofe speaks, the Republican Party follows. And when the Republican Party follows, it is impossible to get real work done in the Congress.”

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/08/01/lessons-from-the-red-terror-about-islamist-organizations-an-interview-with-prof-anna-geifman/?print=1

Prof. Anna Geifman’s 2010 book Death Orders examines mass political terrorism in pre-revolutionary Russia as a precedent for today’s Islamist terrorism. Geifman’s study of the Russian communist terror that prepared the 1917 revolution has enormous value for students of contemporary Islamist organizations.

A common sociology links the Russian terrorists and the Islamists: Russia’s “urban populace swelled from around 9 million people in the mid-19th century to about 25 million in 1913, with inhabitants of most major Russian cities increasing four- or five-fold,” leading to a “breakdown of social values.” All of Europe experienced political upheaval associated with urbanization; but, “Less prepared for the advent of modernization, the Russians were vulnerable to an even greater degree,” according to Geifman, “increasingly prone to take an opportunity to release the bottled-up rage, especially when external circumstances stimulated the expression of distress.”

I interviewed Prof. Geifman for PJ Media this week by email. The transcript of our discussion follows.

PJM: In Death Orders, you document the worst epidemic of terrorism in modern history, namely the Red terror in the dozen years that preceded the Bolshevik revolution. Few people are aware of its scope: can you cite a few key facts to set this terror wave in context?

Geifman: Late imperial Russia was one of the birthplaces of modern terrorism, which is a new type of political violence. Subversives and insurrectionists had killed their adversaries as far back as 11th century , of course, but the terror campaign to which I am referring was essentially different from assassinations that had occurred elsewhere. A hallmark of this new kind of terror, which has escalated over the past 100 years, is that its objectives have shifted from the punishment of individual adversaries and the privileged, to indiscriminate cruelty carried out en masse. And it was Russia where we first saw terrorism that expressed modern and political fanaticism, with the intentional use of violence against civilian targets for the sake of ideological purposes.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/raoul-wallenbergs-legacy-for-americas-patriots?f=puball The Colorado movie massacre was a tragedy and the worst mass shooting in US history. It’s still in the news. Every commentator and so-called social science authority has a theory and root cause analysis. Worst of all, people are politicizing the issue. New York Mayor Bloomberg, along with his call for banning super-sized sugary […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/romneys-right-brits-americans-are-joint-heirs-to-anglo-saxon-liberties?f=puball

Americans take justified pride in their successful assimilation of newcomers. Millions have been drawn to their country, from every continent and archipelago, determined to become American.

What do we mean by becoming American? When we break it down, there are three irreducible elements. First, accepting the values encoded in the US Constitution: free speech, the division of powers, religious toleration and so on. Second, understanding the unwritten codes bound up with those values: civic engagement, open competition, private contract. Third, speaking English.

And where do these characteristics have their roots? In Anglo-Saxon civilization. When a Romney aide told this newspaper that the US and Britain shared an ‘Anglo-Saxon heritage’, he or she was stating the obvious. Those Lefties pretending to be upset – the Obama campaign called the remark ‘stunningly offensive’ – know perfectly well that the reference was cultural rather than racial. When the French talk of ‘les anglo-saxons’ or the Spanish of ‘los anglosajones’, they don’t mean Cerdic and Oswine and Æthelstan. They mean people who speak English and believe in small government.

It hardly needs saying that the United States is not genetically Anglo-Saxon. Nor is the United Kingdom: it’s full of people with non-Saxon surnames such as Hannan. And nor, for that matter, is England. Recent DNA tests have confirmed what place-name studies have been insisting with increasing stridency for the past century, namely that the English are descended as much from the pre-fifth century population as from the settlers who came after the departure of Rome’s legions. The notion of mass population displacement comes largely from one later and tendentious source: Gildas’s De Excidio Brittonum. It’s odd, in retrospect, that historians ever took it seriously.

If Anglo-Saxon is of limited value as an ethnic category, though, it is of huge value as a cultural denominator. Until the mid-twentieth century, most historians traced the notions of personal freedom, the rule of law and representative government to the Anglo-Saxon period. A free people, ran the story, governed by a folkright of common law, and ordering their affairs increasingly through popular assemblies – folkmoots – found themselves subjected to feudalism by the Normans.

Nor was the idea confined to historians. Six centuries after the Conquest, during English civil war, parliamentary soldiers told themselves that that they were fighting to ‘throw off the Norman yoke’. The idea of recovering the native liberty of the Anglo-Saxons, suppressed by an alien aristocracy, was very real to them.