RUTHFULLY YOURS

Huge news – Senator Jim DeMint and the Senate Conservatives Fund has endorsed our campaign for United States Senate here in Wisconsin!
Will you join Senator DeMint and help me too?

I’ll let Senator DeMint speak for himself:
“When I look at what Mark Neumann did when he came to the house, he was legendary…for standing up to the Republican leadership about their spending and about what they were doing. We need people like Mark Neumann who we know is not afraid of Republicans or Democrats or anyone and that’s who I want standing next to me when we go into the next session.”

“We now have Ron Johnson here who is a real leader…I know Mark Neumann will be the same type of fighter for us. In Wisconsin, Mark Neumann is far and away the choice.”

Make no mistake: I am not going to the Senate so that I can blend in with the curtains. I’m heading there to dismantle what the Obama Administration has done to this country – and get Americans back to work.

Let me explain what we’re up against in Wisconsin: Our state has been rocked by protests, sit ins and recalls for the last year. The Unions took out two Republican state Senators, and now they’re going after Scott Walker. The Unions and the Left have made this seat their top priority.

We’re taking on one of President Obama’s favorites – Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin of Madison. Last year she was rated “Most Liberal” Member of Congress by National Journal. Baldwin voted for the stimulus, cap and trade, and ObamaCare. The only time she breaks with President Obama is when she thinks he isn’t being liberal enough.

Contrast that with my 25 years running a business and creating hundreds of private-sector jobs. Newt Gingrich called me a “prophet of balancing the budget” when I was with him in the ’94 Congress. That’s one name you’ll never hear anyone call Tammy Baldwin.

Baldwin has a huge war chest and every dime of it is going to be spent destroying me. Can you help me defeat her?

This election won’t be a choice between a couple of squishy moderates. This is an ideological face-off between the Most Liberal Congressman and the Most Conservative Congressman in America. This election will be center-stage in deciding who controls the Senate: those who agree with President Obama’s radical liberal agenda, or those who stand with true conservatives like Senator DeMint.

As I said at earlier, this is the most important week of our campaign so far. The reason for that is that this is the end of the quarter when we have to show how much money we’ve raised.

This is a very important metric that the media, our opponents, and other potential supporters look at to gauge the strength of our campaign. I’m going to beat Tammy Baldwin and Barack Obama, but I need you to help me do it.

Can I count on you to help us finish this week off the right way?

For America,

Mark Neumann

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,814915,00.html

DID YOU KNOW? BAHRAIN’S AMBASSADOR TO THE US IS A JEWISH WOMAN NAMED HOUDA NONOO…RSK

Bahrain’s king has appointed a Jewish woman as the country’s envoy to the United States.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7426806.stm
‘Arab Spring? That’s the Business of Other Countries’

One year ago, Arab Spring protests briefly gripped the tiny Gulf country of Bahrain. Just as quickly, however, they were crushed. SPIEGEL spoke with Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa about the need for reform, whether democracy is right for his country and what exactly a king does.

It was exactly one year ago, on Feb. 14, 2011, that a few thousand demonstrators gathered in the Bahraini capital of Manama to demand more popular participation and political reform. It was the first sign that the “Arab Spring” was spreading to the Gulf region. From the very beginning of the protests, Bahraini security personnel used violence in their attempts to clear demonstrators from Pearl Square.

On March 15, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa announced a state of emergency. One day earlier, tanks from the Peninsula Shield Force, a kind of rapid reaction force assembled by the six Gulf monarchies, had rolled into Bahrain from Saudi Arabia. In no other place were Arab Spring protests so rapidly and thoroughly crushed as they were in Bahrain. Forty-six people, including police officers and immigrants, died in the demonstrations, five of them as a result of torture. Some 3,000 people were arrested and 700 of them were still behind bars at the end of the year. More than 4,000 people lost their jobs as a result of participating in the demonstrations.

Shiites are in the majority in Bahrain, but the Sunni Al Khalifa royal family has held power there for over 200 years. Shiites are largely excluded from the military and from the police force. Until February 2011, the kingdom of King Hamad had been seen as a model country in the region.

Great Scott Stephen F. Hayes

http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/great-scott_626645.html

Throughout the 2012 election cycle Republicans have pined for a bold, conservative reformer—a leader courageous enough to make difficult choices and articulate enough to explain them to a skeptical public. The good news is they have such a candidate. The less good news: Scott Walker isn’t running for president. He’s running to hang on to his job as governor of Wisconsin.

Walker is the target of a recall effort funded by national labor unions. Why? Reforms he made to balance the budget have dramatically diminished the influence of public employee unions. If not reversed, these reforms will inspire similar efforts across the country, and the outsized power of public sector unions will finally be reined in.

The election in Wisconsin—which will happen in late spring or summer—could have a profound impact on the 2012 presidential race, with the winning side emerging from the battle organized and energized in one of the most important swing states this November.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/obama_budget_shell_game_9qhKQw7k6R76w6AqpeoZRK A British politician once noted, “A lie can be halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on.” He could have been talking about President Obama’s latest whopper. Unlike so many others, this presidential prevarication isn’t limited to a single anecdote or speech. This one runs to more than 2,000 pages […]

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/889/will_we_have_the_guts_to_back_a_military_strike_on_iran_

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic revolution that, “In the coming days the world will witness Iran’s announcement of its very important and very major nuclear achievements.”
In dealing with fanatical, potentially genocidal, Islamist extremists (not a word you will now be allowed to hear from the BBC, we recently learned) it is always difficult to determine what counts as bluster and what counts as something we should truly be worried about.

So when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday – the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic revolution – that, “In the coming days the world will witness Iran’s announcement of its very important and very major nuclear achievements,” there will be some who will tell us not to be overly concerned.

Ahmadinejad was merely playing to the gallery, they will say. He simply delivered the kind of goading, aggressive rhetoric that would be appreciated by people who responded with chants of “Death to Israel”, and “Death to America”.

But as Larry Haas recently argued in these pages, one of the lessons the world should have learned from the 1930s is that when ideologically driven fanatics issue threats, we’d be well advised to take them at their word:

“Hitler ranted, but the world scoffed,” said Haas. “Few imagined that Hitler could be serious about his plans, even as the Third Reich increasingly institutionalized Jew hatred in law; later, few believed the reports emanating from Germany in the 1940s that Hitler was systematically slaughtering the Jews.

“Today, Iran’s leaders are pursuing nuclear weapons while threatening to wipe out Israel, referring to the Jewish state in the vilest terms. Most recently, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, endorsed a doctrine that explains why it’s “legally and morally justified” to eliminate Israel.”

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/

“This Despicable Vitriol Is Left Unchallenged”: Aussie Parliamentarian Highlights The Greens’ Moral Bankruptcy Regarding Israel and Iran
Clearly, O’Dwyer is Golden, while Silence is Green. For what a magnificent speech by Australian legislator Kelly O’Dwyer, Liberal member for Higgins, in yesterday’s debate in the House of Representatives concerning Human Rights (or rather, the lack of them) in Iran.

All praise to to her for highlighting so ably and comprehensively the unconscionable hypocrisy of the Greens:

“In Australia during this time one must ask the questions ‘Who stands conspicuously quiet? Who stands silent while these human rights are abused?’ …. It is … the Greens, those people who suggest that they are the champions of human rights and the keepers of the moral chalice, those professed keepers of all that is right and ethical. Where, I ask you, is Senator Brown in condemning these actions? Where is Senator Hanson-Young on her soapbox demanding justice? Where is the member for Melbourne, Adam Bandt, in this chamber supporting this motion? Where are the Greens protests in the streets? Most importantly, given all that we have learned about the Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions scheme that grew from the Greens’ local council movement in Marrickville, where are the calls for the boycotts of Iranian companies or even of Syrian ones, to be truly consistent? No, all that is simply reserved for Israel.

Turkey’s Siren Song on Iran Posted By Kenneth R. Timmerman URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/15/turkeys-siren-song-on-iran/ Turkey’s foreign minister came to Washington on Friday, trying to push another fake “peace in our time” deal with Iran. Given the Obama administration’s track record with Iran to date, they may take it – with disastrous consequences. Ahmed Davotoglu hectored […]

Democrats Richer Than Romney Posted By Daniel Greenfield

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/15/democrats-richer-than-romney/

Democrats who have been a bit too obscenely eager to damn Mitt Romney as Mr. Moneybags may want to reconsider. The media has spent a great deal of time touting the claim that Romney would be the richest president in half a century. But Romney’s net worth of approximately 200 million dollars would not even make him the richest senator. Senators Kohl, Warner and Kerry all beat out Romney in the wealth sweepstakes. And they’re all Democrats. For all the news stories about his wealth, if Romney ran for Congress, he wouldn’t even make it as the wealthiest member of the House of Representatives.

If the Democrats really believe that wealth is a disqualification for public office, why do they keep selecting some of the wealthiest senators in the country? If Romney wins then he may become the wealthiest president in half a century, but if Kerry had won the honor would have gone to him.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21468-hurricanes-deliver-fatal-blows-to-wind-turbines.html?full=true&print=true

* Updated 11:38 14 February 2012 by Chelsea Whyte

Gone with the wind? Hurricanes could destroy the offshore wind farms the US is planning to build in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico.

The US Department of Energy set a goal for the country to generate 20 per cent of its electricity from wind by 2030. One-sixth is to come from shallow offshore turbines that sit in the path of hurricanes.

Stephen Rose and colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, modelled the risk hurricanes might pose to turbines at four proposed wind farm sites. They found that nearly half of the planned turbines are likely to be destroyed over the 20-year life of the farms. Turbines shut down in high winds, but hurricane-force winds can topple them.

In 2007, Texas granted a multimillion-dollar lease for a wind farm site near Galveston, Texas. Rose found it was “the riskiest location to build a wind farm of the four locations examined”.

Each wind farm may cost $175 million. “We want these risks to be known now before we start putting these wind turbines offshore,” says team member Paulina Jaramillo. “We don’t want any backlash when the first one goes down and it costs a lot to replace.”

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1111769109

http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2012/02/13/obamas-dilemma-how-will-it-deal-with-the-differences-with-israel-over-what-the-u-s-will-do-to-stop-iran-getting-a-nuclear-bomb/?singlepage=true

At present, foreign policy is not playing a part in the campaign. But with a looming crisis coming with Iran over the state of its nuclear capabilities, it will not be on the back burner for long. Soon, both President Obama and the Republican candidates for the nomination will have to make clear specifically how they would handle events. There is simply no escaping that formidable task.

In the important dispatch that is the cover of Newsweek International this week (but not the American edition of the magazine, whose editors evidently think it is too serious and will not sell copies), reporters Daniel Klaidman, Eli Lake, and Dan Ephron discuss the various impediments that might interfere with Barack Obama dealing meaningfully with the mullahs’ program to give Iran a nuclear weapon. The major problem remains differences on the issue with Israel, for whom an Iranian bomb is a real existential threat, not one that can easily be overlooked on the belief that if Iran gets the bomb, it will adhere to the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, as did the Soviet Union during the Cold War.