RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/782/the_rise_of_atheism_in_pakistan

An increasing number of young Pakistani’s are adopting Atheism and openly questioning the existence of a God. Many analysts have attributed this trend to the rise of Islamist militancy in Pakistan as well as access to social media and other technological tools that allow people to share and explore new ideas.

A Facebook group called ‘Pakistani Atheists and Agnostics’ was launched a few months ago and has already attracted over 800 members. I caught up with the founder of this group, a young Pakistani Technologist operating under the pseudonym ‘Hazrat Nakhuda’, in order to discuss this new phenomenon.

EDITORIAL: Obama cooks the unemployment books Don’t believe bureaucrats, unemployment is really 11.4 percent
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/9/obama-cooks-the-unemployment-books/The White House has trumpeted recent rosy employment figures, but in their guts Americans know things aren’t getting better. They should trust their instincts.

Jobs are the No. 1 issue going into the 2012 election, which makes the unemployment rate a particularly important indicator. Lately, the trend seems to be favoring the White House. The December unemployment numbers showed a drop to 8.5 percent, down 0.2 percent from the previous month and over half a percentage point from August. In the “jobless recovery,” small moves like that take on outsized significance.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the last 12 months, a net of 1.5 million more Americans found work. This sounds like good news, but the civilian non-institutional worker population increased by 1.7 million over the same period, and the raw percentage of Americans working has basically flatlined at 58.5 percent. To the extent there are new jobs, it has more to do with the fact that there are more people creating more demand, not with any fundamental expansion in the economy.

Top Stories Lew to replace Daley as White House chief of staff White House Chief of Staff Bill Dale… Read more… China cautions U.S. on Asia-Pacific defense policy China’s Ministry of defense warned t… Read more… Santorum, Paul detail Israel, Iran policies Seth McLaughlin In one of the sharper, more substantive debates of the GOP […]

Marco Rubio & Allen West Forging Political Alliance? | The Shark Tank

Is a political alliance between Senator Marco Rubio and Congressman Allen West just around the corner? Considering the partisan divide and lack of cooperation between the two Houses of Congress over the past year that has stalled efforts to pass legislation that would aid our economic recovery, such an alliance could help shift some momentum that helps to break the legislative logjam that presently exists.

According to West, the House of Representatives has passed at least 30 pieces of legislation that would aid our economy recovery and eliminate harmful regulations, but these bills are sitting dormant over at the Senate at the orders of Majority Leader Harry Reid.

West has previously said that he was “very appalled “with the Senate’s two- month payroll tax extension because it wasn’t “good policy,” and was simply a short-term political gimmick. When asked if he had reached out to members of the Senate, namely Senator Marco Rubio, West stated he had not yet spoken to the Senator, and added that, “We have not had that discussion, but that is something that needs to happen.”

http://www.prudenpolitics.com/index.php/pruden/full_column/obama_is_how_you_spell_relief
“In fact, the only way Mr. Obama can make mediocre economic news look good, observes Investors Business Daily, is to set expectations “so low that even a tiny step forward seems like a giant leap.” That’s not much of a strategy.”
Conservatives are fractured, split and mad at each other, brawling like Democrats. There’s only one man who can unify the movement. Fortunately for the Grumpy Old Party, Barack Obama is available, ready and eager.
By mid-March, we’ll have muddled through most of the primaries and caucuses (cauci?), and by then the Republicans will know who their nominee will be, even if he won’t be crowned until the party meets in convention assembled in Tampa in late August.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/151565
PA TV Marks Fatah Founding, Praises Coastal Road Massacre
The Palestinian Authority has again praised the perpetrator of the worst terrorist attack in Israeli history, the Coastal Road Massacre.

The Palestinian Authority has again praised the perpetrator of the worst terrorist attack in Israeli history, this time during television broadcasts to mark the 47th anniversary of the Fatah faction.

The videos were broadcast over PA TV (Fatah) on December 30 and 31, 2011 and January 1, 2, and 4, 2012.

In 1978, Dalal Mughrabi led a terrorist cell in hijacking a tourist bus and murdering 37 Israeli civilians, including 13 children. The operation, which later became known as the Coastal Road Massacre, is regularly glorified on official PA TV, with broadcasts of two music videos honoring the terrorists — in particular, Dalal Mughrabi.

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http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0112/cia_spy_on_iran.php3

A serious split is developing within Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard, with one faction favoring the overthrow of the dictatorial regime. This presents a window of opportunity for the West to support regime change before the Islamic Republic successfully tests nuclear weapons. Once the regime has those nuclear bombs, that opening will be much narrower.

Iran has tried hard to show strength in the face of sanctions aimed at pressuring Tehran to quit its suspected nuclear-bomb and missile development programs. Iranian leaders are now flexing their military muscles in the strategic waterway, the Strait of Hormuz, threatening to shut it down and choking off a major part of the world’s oil supply.

The regime has long tried to scare the West from taking any action against it, by threatening the world’s security and stability. However, behind its mask of strength and unity, big cracks are beginning to show.

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/01/09/what-are-you-prepared-to-do

How far will congressional Republicans retreat to avoid a confrontation with Barack Obama?

“We now know Obama is willing to exercise unconstitutional power. The only unanswered question is whether congressional Republicans can rediscover their courage and push back.Since the Nixon administration, whenever a Republican president tried to exercise his constitutional powers, the Democrats and their amen chorus in the media have been in full cry about the dangers of the “imperial presidency.” Now we really have one and they are, predictably, compliant.It’s up to the Republican leaders in the House and Senate to restrain our imperious president. What, gentlemen, are you prepared to do?”

President Obama has made clear his path to re-election. He plans to run against Congress and — by seizing unconstitutional powers — go about governing this year with or without the legislative action required by the Constitution. He’ll issue executive orders, have his bureaucracy regulate as may please his ideology, and generally do whatever else he can get away with.

Obama apparently thinks he can get away with a lot, and judging by the response of the Republican congressional leaders to his actions last week, he’s probably right.

Did Bill Clinton run a surplus? Plus: Our Titanic Moment Posted By Roger Kimball
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/01/09/did-bill-clinton-run-a-surplus-plus-our-titanic-moment/

The stars must be aligned to foist the constellation anaticula into the Zeitgeist: for the Duck, otherwise known as “the canard” casts its ghoulish light over our sublunary world. Four times in the past week someone has written to inform me that (I pick one formulation of the falsum anaticula) “when Bill Clinton left office there was a government surplus, it was the Bush administration that turned that into a deficit . . .”

This is a canard one hears almost as frequently as this election- year staple: that Newt Gingrich, heinous fellow, asked a former wife for a divorce while she languished in hospital, dying of cancer. What a terrible man, eh? Except that the story isn’t true, as even the most cursory research (e.g., The Gingrich Divorce Myth [1]) would show.

But research, even the cursory sort, isn’t as much fun as simple repetition, especially when there’s a reputation to ruin, smugness to be enjoyed, or a political point to score.

So it is with “Clinton delivered a surplus to George Bush in 2000” canard. You can discover this by going to the monthly statements [2] published by the U.S. Treasury. “But wait,” you say, “that chart linked shows a surplus of more than $200 billion! It’s right there in black-and-white: $236 billion and the word ‘surplus.’ So there.”

Not quite “there,” actually. That $236 billion is only one part of a larger puzzle, the bottom line of which is the total national debt, which grew every year under Clinton. Talk of a “surplus” is possible only because of accounting legerdemain. The economist Craig Steiner has put the case more clearly than anyone I know in a series of articles: “The Myth of the Clinton Surplus [3],” “The Myth of the Clinton Surplus, Part II [4],” and “The True Federal Deficit [5].” In the second article, Mr. Steiner casts his beady eye upon that $236 billion and explains how the national debt is calculated:

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/1994/Operation-Enduring-and-Unexamined-Dementia-Contd.aspx

US Army and Afghan Army play volleyball in southwestern Kandahar in 2011. On Sunday, a similar match in Zabul province turned deadly when an Afghan Army member shot and killed one American, wounding three.

It would be most helpful for at least one of the GOP candidates to think long and hard about what is going wrong with the Bush-Obama Afghanistan War and share his thoughts with his fellow citizens. A good place to start would be with examining — noticing — the serial murders of ISAF soldiers by Afghan Army members, particularly given the fact that the Bush-Obama strategy is to train the Afghan security forces (at exhorbitant US taxpayer cost) as the supporting pillar of our so-called Exit Strategy. As George W. Bush used to say about Iraq, as they stand up, we stand down. And that worked out so well.

In the last three months the murder count in five separate attacks by uniformed Afghan security forces inside the wire includes:

Three Australian Diggers killed and ten wounded; four non-specified NATO troops wounded; two members of France’s elite 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment killed; and, most recently, one US soldier killed and three wounded–while playing volleyball.

Excluding the Australian losses, the remaining attacks occurred in the past three weeks.