RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-world-trade-center-site-fiasco

For as long as I can recall the Port Authority has been a mystical institution with enormous responsibility and with an overhang of patronage and soft money allegations. In a recent audit the Port Authority was described as dysfunctional and running up billons in cost overruns. Most significantly, the audit spoke to “insufficient cost controls” and “a lack of transparent and effective oversight.”

None of this should be a surprise. For more than a decade the World Trade Center site has been a hole in the ground lending support to the claim of a radical Muslim victory after 9/11. Pataki, Patterson and Corzine couldn’t agree on a direction and when they did, the funding plan was inadequate and lacking any serious perspective. In fact, every politician in New York and New Jersey got caught in the centrifugal force of economic conditions they didn’t understand or were too naïve to face directly.

This 50 page audit report by Navigant also outlines the role of comptrollers, like Carl McCall, who were seemingly incapable of coming to grips with the financial demands of rebuilding the WTC site. Even now there are insufficient funds to complete the Freedom Tower, the presumptive linchpin of the project that stands two-thirds complete and one-third exposed, a testament to the failure of Port Authority planning.

Obama Funds Terrorists Posted By Daniel Greenfield

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/05/01/obama-funds-terrorists/print/

NEVER AGAIN SHOULD THIS MAN BE ELECTED…..RSK

On April 23rd, Obama stopped by the Holocaust Memorial Museum where he mouthed the words, “Never Again” and two days later he issued a memorandum waiving restrictions on funding to the terrorists of the Palestinian Authority, which routinely calls for the murder of Jews, and for its president who has described the Holocaust as a “fantastic lie.”

It took Obama a day to disavow his commitment to a united Jerusalem. It took him a little longer to disavow his commitment to “Never Again.”

In his memorandum, Obama certified the 192 million dollar aid package as “important to the national security interests of the United States” and White House spokesman Tommy Vietor claimed that it would ensure “the continued viability of the moderate PA government.” That same moderate government which has tried to form a pact with Hamas and whose high ranking officials have repeatedly engaged in terrorism.

The Palestinian Accountability Act, which Obama waived with a flourish of the pen, was one in a series of attempts to stem the flow of taxpayer money to the terrorist corruptocracy in Ramallah. The Act mandated that no funds may be made available to the Palestinian Authority until it ends its terrorist activities and an independent audit is conducted of its finances. Rather than complying with the bill, Obama dismissed it by resorting to the transparently fraudulent claim of national security.

So where is that money really going?

According to the Palestinian Authority, its budget crisis was caused by the funding that it provides to Hamas run Gaza at a rate of 120 million dollars a month. If we take these figures as actual, then its 1.3 billion dollar budget deficit is almost entirely composed of Gaza expenditures.

Another 60 million dollars a year is paid out to convicted terrorists in Israeli prisons. Obama’s generous waiver would cover a month’s worth of expenses for Hamas run Gaza and a year’s worth of salaries for the imprisoned murderers and bombers. Including members of Hamas. Then there are the infrastructure projects, like homes for released terrorists built by the Palestinian Investment Fund.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

“Israel is not an accident, it exists because of those who fought and strived for it, who built and labored for a Jewish State, who sang the Hatikvah because it represented their mission. A mission that is at odds with the “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Israel” agenda of the left to hollow out the country, destroy its sense of purpose, its heritage and its identity, and leave it with a flag, an anthem and a state that no longer stands for anything at all.”

In times past the Forward newspaper celebrated the fast of Yom Kippur with a feast and in keeping with that tradition it celebrated Israel’s Independence Day by rewriting its anthem to remove the word “Jew” from it. The linguistic purge from the notoriously anti-Israel paper was meant as a way to help Muslims feel better about singing the Israeli national anthem.

The yearning of the Jewish soul becomes the yearning of the Israeli soul and the eyes turned east no longer long for Zion, but the generic “our country”. The proposal made by a self-proclaimed linguist seems rather devoid of understanding when it comes to the origin and meaning of words. Purging Jewish souls from the anthem and replacing them with Israeli souls doesn’t actually solve anything.

Jews are Judeans, dating back to the Kingdom of Judah, contrasted with the breakaway Kingdom of Israel and its tribes. The Jews are also Israelites, being sons of the patriarch Israel, a category that still does not encompass Muslims. Rewriting Jewish soul as Israeli soul still leaves one with Jews, and as the Forward has discovered, Jews are rather hard to get rid of. Shoot them, gas them and write them out of their own anthem and they still pop back up.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/297322/chris-christie-s-islam-problem-daniel-pipes

A Quinnipiac poll in April showed Chris Christie as the most popular potential Republican vice-presidential candidate, thanks to his budget cuts and standing up to government employees’ unions. But the governor of New Jersey has a problem, specifically an Islam problem, that can and should get in the way of his possible ascent to higher office. Time and again he has sided with Islamist forces against those who worry about safeguarding American security and civilization.

Some examples:

2008: When serving as U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Christie embraced and kissed Mohammed Qatanani, imam of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, and praised him as “a man of great goodwill.” He did this after Qatanani had publicly ranted against Jews and in support of funding Hamas, a U.S. government–designated terror organization, and on the eve of his deportation hearing for not hiding an Israeli conviction for membership in Hamas. In addition, Christie designated a top aide, Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles McKenna, to testify as a character witness for Qatanani.

2010: After Derek Fenton burned three pages of a Koran at a 9/11 memorial ceremony, his employer, New Jersey Transit, got Christie’s approval to fire him. Protecting Islam at the expense of the constitutional right to free speech, Christie endorsed Fenton’s termination: “That kind of intolerance is something I think is unacceptable. So I don’t have any problem with him being fired.” The American Civil Liberties Union successfully represented Fenton to get his job back.

2011: Christie appointed an Islamist, Sohail Mohammed, to the New Jersey state superior court. Mohammed’s record includes serving as general counsel to the American Muslim Union (which has stated that a “Zionist Commando Orchestrated The 9-11 Terrorist Attacks”), acting as spokesman for Muslim prisoners who went on a hunger strike after being jailed during Ramadan, defending Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Sami Al-Arian (his indictment, Mohammed said, was “nothing but a witch-hunt”), and helping Qatanani’s legal defense. Mohammed established himself not just as the Islamists’ lawyer but as one of them.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304050304577375851104232184.html?mod=opinion_newsreel
Did you loathe and detest the Bush administration? If so, you’d probably say its ideas were horrible and their execution worse. Did you not loathe and detest the Bush administration? In that case, you might say its ideas were pretty good—only the execution often left something to be desired.Now the person who did much of the executing tops a list of names to be Mitt Romney’s running mate. A mid-April CNN poll finds that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has unmatched name recognition and a favorable rating of 80% among GOP voters. She’s also the person Republicans would most like to see on the ticket, with 26% to runner-up Rick Santorum’s 21%. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio tie for third place at 14%.The political appeal of Romney-Rice is obvious. Here are two seasoned and reassuring presences who seem to complement each other in all the right ways. He’s the business whiz; she’s the foreign-policy wonk. His government experience is in the statehouse; hers in Washington and foreign capitals. He’s the un-Obama; she’s the un-Palin. He’s the world’s whitest white man; she isn’t. That could even count for something if President Obama decides to dump Joe Biden for Hillary Clinton.There’s only one problem. Ms. Rice was a bad national security adviser and a bad secretary of state. She was on the wrong side of some of the administration’s biggest internal policy fights. She had a tendency to flip-flop when it came to the president’s core priorities and her political misjudgment more than once cost Mr. Bush dearly. She was a muddler of differences at the national security council. Her tenure at State was notable mainly for the degree to which the bureaucracy ran her, not the other way around.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303916904577374552546308474.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Dwight Eisenhower is famous for having penned a statement to be issued in anticipation of the failure of the Normandy invasion that reads in relevant part: “My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”A week later, when the success of the invasion was apparent, Eisenhower saluted the Allied Expeditionary Forces: “One week ago this morning there was established through your coordinated efforts our first foothold in northwestern Europe. High as was my preinvasion confidence in your courage, skill and effectiveness . . . your accomplishments . . . have exceeded my brightest hopes.

Eisenhower did mention himself at the end: “I truly congratulate you upon a brilliantly successful beginning. . . . Liberty loving people everywhere would today like to join me in saying to you, ‘I am proud of you.'”

Such examples are worth remembering every time President Obama claims bin Laden bragging rights.”

It’s hard to imagine Lincoln or Eisenhower claiming such credit for the heroic actions of others.

The first anniversary of the SEAL Team 6 operation that killed Osama bin Laden brings the news that President Obama plans during the coming campaign to exploit the bragging rights to the achievement. That plan invites scrutiny that is unlikely to benefit him.

Consider the events surrounding the operation. A recently disclosed memorandum from then-CIA Director Leon Panetta shows that the president’s celebrated derring-do in authorizing the operation included a responsibility-escape clause: “The timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral McRaven’s hands. The approval is provided on the risk profile presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought back to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go in and get bin Laden and if he is not there, to get out.”

Which is to say, if the mission went wrong, the fault would be Adm. McRaven’s, not the president’s. Moreover, the president does not seem to have addressed at all the possibility of seizing material with intelligence value—which may explain his disclosure immediately following the event not only that bin Laden was killed, but also that a valuable trove of intelligence had been seized, including even the location of al Qaeda safe-houses. That disclosure infuriated the intelligence community because it squandered the opportunity to exploit the intelligence that was the subject of the boast.

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mukasey

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/

Tens of millions of young Chinese now study classical music, including an estimated 36 million pianists. Nothing builds attention span and analytic fortitude like classical music, and a nation that combines a vast amateur music culture with academic ambition will overwhelm the world with qualified and ambitious young minds. China may fail; it might even descend into political chaos, to be sure–but then again, it might not. China’s massive and enthusiastic adoption of Western classical culture just might give it a world-dominating edge. There’s a difference between an engineer, and an engineer who plays Bach. Higher mathematics as we know was incubated in music theory to begin with, as I explain in an essay in the April issue of First Things, “The Divine Music of Mathematics” (subscription required).

Asian dominance of classical music is nearly matched by the Asian presence in America’s top art schools. India does not give us classical musicians, but seems to aspire to dominate English fiction. What Americans deprecate as “highbrow culture” has become a mass presence in the lives of aspiring Asians on a scale that would have baffled the European elites who had an audience of thousands rather than millions. Our Philistinism could turn out to be our demise. America thrived in part because other countries failed and sent us their best minds along with their tired and poor. That’s not the sort of thing we should count on to happen in the future.

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/

Norway is widely considered the most antisemitic country in Europe, and compounding that unenviable reputation are the views of Johan Galtung, an octogenarian sociologist who founded the international Peace Research Institute in Oslo.

This leftist is on record as characterising Islam by “two words: togetherness and sharing” and speculating that Freemasonry might have played a role in Anders Breivik’s decision to commit mass murder:

“Not the Freemasons as an organization, but I’m thinking of the loyalty oaths. He probably has a number of solidarity, loyalty networks that are very obscure and very hidden. Being well versed in history, making his mistakes, but knowing more than many, many people in Norway do, he has links to Judeo-Christian history, to the Crusades.”

He’s also speculated that the Mossad might have been involved,and made other judeophobic assertions,including hints at overweening Jewish power in American academic life: “seventy percent of the professors at the 20 most important American universities are Jewish”.

“The Jews control U.S. media, and divert for the sake of Israel,” he has alleged.

“Six Jewish companies control 96% of the media,” he has written, adding that although Rupert Murdoch is not Jewish,many of Murdoch’s employees are, and that “Many of them are fanatically pro-Israel.”

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/04/30/romneys-reflexes/print “The problem for Romney isn’t reacting to Obama’s attacks, which Romney inevitably will do. It’s about changing the focus of the campaign from the “Bin Laden is dead and GM is alive” mantra launched a few days ago by Joe Biden. It’s about fighting politically in a way that will weaken Obama and force […]

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2012/5/1/main-feature/1/find-fix-finish/e

“The recent outrage over the New York City Police Department’s surveillance program shows that Americans have yet to learn this lesson; and, despite recognition by intelligence and law enforcement officials of the breadth of the threat, high-level U.S. leadership remains publicly fixated on al-Qaeda and bin Laden. The Obama administration is willing to extinguish Islamist terrorists using drones or special forces but will not declare that the threat is a global Islamist insurgency. Attorney General Eric Holder refuses to say the words “radical Islam.”

What is the threat? Al-Qaeda? “Terrorism”? “Violent religious extremism”? Israeli analysts call it “global jihad,” but U.S. leadership has carefully circumscribed it as “al-Qaeda” or, even more narrowly, personified it as Osama bin Laden and his minions, hijackers of planes and Islam. The ideologies motivating individuals from bin Laden to Toulouse gunman Mohammed Merah are rarely examined publicly. This failure to be specific and honest about the definitional question has hampered American understanding of the problem and the proper means to address it.
But Find, Fix, Finish, a new book by U.S. counterterrorism professionals Aki Peritz and Eric Rosenbach, shows that the United States may be catching up to Israel in experience and understanding. “Find, fix, finish” is a military exhortation: Use intelligence to locate enemies, then employ the vast array of U.S. firepower to fix them in place. The problem, of course, is finishing them. The book reflects U.S. policymakers’ customary focus on the “al-Qaeda” brand but shows that the American response to the Islamist wars has been global, often brutal, and surprisingly successful, sometimes in spite of itself. Many Israeli approaches to counterterrorism and low-intensity conflict have been adopted by the United States, but on a global scale.

The story begins with al-Qaeda’s late-20th-century attacks on America—the World Trade Center in 1993, the Khobar Towers in 1996, and the USS Cole in 2000. The Clinton administration responded weakly, in part out of fear of causing increased Islamic extremism. But the weakness merely convinced bin Laden that the United States was frail. Peritz and Rosenbach describe the subsequent risk aversion, bureaucratic turf wars, failure of information sharing, and legal uncertainties that contributed to the catastrophe of September 11, 2001.