http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/crashing-burning-2013/ Recent polls suggest Barack Obama has become a turn-off. Why? In part, all presidents wear on Americans. Their presence has become as ubiquitous in our lives as the busts of the emperor Augustus dotting the Mediterranean world. So who wouldn’t annoy after speaking and appearing on our screens 24/7 for five years? But in […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/12/the_solar_swindle.html
Solar electricity is growing, promoted, and most importantly, heavily subsidized. The promoters of solar electricity claim that it is close to being competitive with conventional sources of electricity. That is a fantasy.
Solar electricity is expensive and impractical. If it weren’t for government subsidies, some explicit and some disguised, the solar industry would collapse. The many claims of competitiveness are always based on ignoring subsidies provided to politically correct renewable power, ignoring the costs associated with unreliability, and ignoring the cost of backup fossil fuel plants.
An example of a hidden subsidy is the California Renewable Portfolio Standard that mandates utilities to obtain 33% of their energy from so-called renewable sources by 2020. This mandate forces utilities to contract for expensive sources of energy, such as solar. The cost is passed on to the utility customers with the connivance of the government. Although the motivation behind the California scheme is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, politically incorrect sources of CO2-free electricity, such as nuclear and large-scale hydroelectric, can’t be counted as renewable.
People whose knowledge of electricity production ends at their wall outlet are dictating national energy policy. Magical thinking by hopelessly ignorant political activists permeates the alternative energy universe.
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/an-open-letter-to-st-james-church-london/
A true story…
“And it came to pass that in December 2010, two Palestinian shepherds left their little town near Bethlehem and set out to walk ten miles across the Judean Hills. There in the forest, they kept watch by night. The following day, at about the 6th hour (3pm) the shepherds saw two women walking along the Israel National Trail. With great fervour they took out their knives and attacked the women. Their serrated blades glinted int he sun, shining all around as the shepherds held the girls and pinned them to the ground. With knives to their throats, the women dare not move.
“‘Fear not,’ said the men – for mighty dread had seized the women’s troubled minds – ’we bring you good news that will cause great joy for our people.’ What could these glad tidings be? Rape, a robbery, a beating? Anything was better than death the women pondered in their hearts. And so it came to pass that near the seventh hour, the shepherds said, ‘behold, let us go forth and kill these Jews like Allah has told us to do.’
“The shepherds gagged the women, removed their shoes and bound their hands. They forced one woman to her knees, covered her head and pushed her neck forward. The woman knelt, and prepared herself to be beheaded. Suddenly she saw a great light – the blade of his knife glinting in the sun. The Jewish woman whispered, ‘Hear Oh Israel.’ The Islamic host cried, ‘Allah HuAkbar,’ and the Christian screamed ‘Jesus,’ the name of a Jew born in David’s town.
“Thirteen times the shepherds thrust their knives into the women, breaking bones, tearing flesh, even impaling one to the ground. As the Jew played dead, she watched her Christian friend hacked to death before her very eyes. The shepherds returned home glorifying and praising Allah for all that they had seen and spread the word of what had they had done. ‘Today near the town of David two Jews have been slaughtered,’ they declared. They plotted and schemed, boasting to their neighbours, ‘this will be a sign, they will find two of their own, all meanly wrapped in bloody clothes and in the bushes laid.’”
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/bonnie-kaye/2013/12/30/books-of-excellence
Subject: Books of Excellence Radio Show – Jack Engelhard Special Guest
We are ending the year 2013 with a very special guest and friend, author and journalist Jack Engelhard. Jack has an amazing life that started in Toulouse, France. His family consisting of his parents and sister escaped when the Nazis invaded France realizing that the Jews were be part of Hitler’s extermination plan. The family tried to come to America but instead settled in Canada because America closed its doors to Jewish refugees. Ten years later, his family was granted permanent residence and become citizens of the United States.
Most people know Jack from his novel-turned-major motion picture Indecent Proposal. This film is remembered years after it debuted with Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Ironically, when I first spoke to Jack last year, I think I was the only person in this country who hadn’t seen the movie which is why I was excited about reading his book. I never expected to be so impacted by a story like I was by this one. The movie was commercialized but the book was the pure tale. The book made me think–maybe too much–about how one moment can change your life forever.
I admit I have become an “Engelhard Junkie.” Before reading Indecent Proposal, I first read his Escape From Mount Moriah based on his family’s escape from Nazi France and the obstacles they faced as new immigrants to North America. I could see why one of the short stories in the book was made into a short film selection for Cannes Film Festival. There are 18 short stories about the families story from riches to rags and learning to adapt in a strange world in the midst of poverty. There were many humorous parts in the book, but it also showed how hard it is for people to lose everything and have to start over. My only complaint about this book is that it ended. I wanted to read more. I couldn’t put this book down until I finished it. This is a short book that is a quick read, but every word flows so beautifully.
https://www.embooks.com/blog/single/a-church-of-hate
An open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Justin Welby.
Dear Archbishop,
I read with interest your Christmas Day sermon, in which you said:
‘The Christian meaning of Christmas is unconditional love received, love overflowing into a frequently love-lost world.’
I wonder how you reconcile this with the fact that that one of your churches, St James’s Piccadilly, chose Christmas to turn itself into a church of hate?
As I am sure you know only too well, this church spent eight months preparing its Christmas stunt, the erection of an 8 metre-tall, 30 metre-long replica of the Israeli ‘wall’ that it claims surrounds Bethlehem and imposes ‘desperate hardship’ on the town’s inhabitants.
Although the church acknowledges in passing that the original purpose of this ‘wall’ was ‘to protect Israeli citizens from terrorism’, it suggests instead that its only result has been to oppress and harass innocent Palestinians. The inevitable effect of this wholly mendacious and malevolent travesty will be to incite hatred against Israel and all who support its defence against the war of extermination being perpetrated against it.
St James’s has put out a pious statement that it
‘… opposes all forms of racism including antisemitism and supports the right of the State of Israel to exist with secure internationally recognised borders’.
http://bit.ly/1h67mML
The Palestinian refugee issue has been dramatically misrepresented, distorting circumstances and numbers, in order to de-legitimize the Jewish state.
The Root Cause Then and Now
According to the German Middle East expert, Fritz Grobba (Men and Powers in the Orient, pp. 194-7, 207-8, Berlin, 1957), the 1948 Palestinian leadership, headed by the Grand Mufti, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, wanted to apply Nazi methods to massacre Jews throughout the Middle East. In1941,the Mufti drafted a proposal requesting that Germany and Italy acknowledge the Arab right to settle “the Jewish problem” in Palestine and the Arab countries in accordance with national and racial Arab interests, similar to the practice employed to solve “the Jewish problem” in Germany and Italy. On Nov. 24, 1947, Acting Chairman of the (Palestinian) Arab Higher Committee, Jamal Al-Husseini, threatened: “Palestine shall be consumed with fire and blood,” if the Jews get any part of it. On April 16, 1948 Jamal Husseini told the UN Security Council: “The representative of the Jewish Agency told us yesterday that they were not the attackers, that the Arabs had begun the fighting. We did not deny this. We told the whole world that we were going to fight.”
THANKS JOAN S….. http://www.aish.com/sp/so/48932037.html?s=mpw I was born in Honduras, 23 years ago, the oldest of four children. I lived in a neighborhood with all my cousins, on a street named after my mother’s ancestors. We attended a church that is non-denominational, but with a strong evangelical bent. When I was three years old, I fell […]
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/novelists-view-world/2013/dec/29/londons-st-james-church-chooses-hitler-its-savior-/ Maybe it is time for British Jews to start packing again. Surely there are millions of Muslims ready to replace them. Hundreds of churches and synagogues throughout Britain and the rest of Europe are already being supplanted by mosques. This certainly ought to gladden the leadership at St. James Church, Piccadilly. They chose Christmas […]
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/florida-jewish-journal/news/palm-beach-county-news/fl-jjps-dershowitz-1225-20131223,0,331082.story
By Randall P. Lieberman, Staff Writer
Professor Alan M. Dershowitz, 75, considered “Israel’s single most visible defender in the United States,” gave an optimistic assessment of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations during a Dec. 17 appearance at Congregation B’nai Israel in Boca Raton as part of the synagogue’s inaugural speaker series.
Dershowitz said late summer of 2014 will be a critical period in Israeli history.
“There’s no better time for Israel to make a deal with the Palestinians,” said Dershowitz, who recently returned from Israel where he had face-to-face meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders.
Dershowitz continued: “Hamas has never before been weaker. It’s in Israel’s best interest to resolve the Palestinian issue by making a generous offer. Imagine what a ‘peace dividend’ that would bring.”
Dershowitz reminded the audience of the viewpoint of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the great American Orthodox rabbi, during the Six Day War in 1967: “Rabbi Soloveitchik said our traditions tell us that not one single Jewish life is worth re-capturing the Kotel (Western Wall). We don’t substitute lives for places and land.”
Dershowitz said that Israel has enough land, even without the West Bank settlements.
“Israel shouldn’t make this decision based on land,” he said. “Israel’s major resources are its intellectual capital and work ethic. No country in the history of the world has ever contributed more in a 65-year span. It’s in the spirit of Herzl and the spirit of Ben-Gurion to make a deal.”
Dershowitz said that Israel should deal with the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank and not worry about Hamas and the Gaza Strip. He said the Palestinians would overthrow Hamas after there is a West Bank peace treaty.
FROM DR. JOHN A: The corollary to the article (see link below) in regard to taking care of the truly poor and unfortunate in a free market, small government economy is —- reinstate the authentically liberal, classical education values ie private charity, altruism , courtesy, civics, moral fibre, self pride, honour, duty, noblesse oblige, shame, chivalry, community volunteerism, competition, team spirit, etc…
And eliminate statism — victim psychology, utopianism, egalitarianism, central control, sometimes (benignly intended) totalitarianism — all the ‘feel-good’, ‘guilt and self-hatred assuaging’, but ‘dont-work’ ideologies behind socialism, mixed with its waste, inefficiency, corruption, crony capitalism abuses, gaming the system, and, above all, the potential for the insidious growth of a police state…JA
If you have a taste for Schadenfreude (and who doesn’t, especially in this holiday season?), you’ll enjoy Anemona Hartocollis’s article in the New York Times of December 14. Here’s the opening paragraph:
Many in New York’s professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama’s health care plan. But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others are learning that their health insurance plans are being canceled and they may have to pay more to get comparable coverage, if they can find it.
The article goes on to detail the Obamacare-induced travails of members of New York’s “creative classes” (a phrase the Times fails to put in quotation marks) and concludes:
“We are the Obama people,” said Camille Sweeney, a New York writer and member of the Authors Guild. Her insurance is being canceled, and she is dismayed that neither her pediatrician nor her general practitioner appears to be on the exchange plans. What to do has become a hot topic on Facebook and at dinner parties frequented by her fellow writers and artists.
“I’m for it,” she said. “But what is the reality of it?”
Ms. Sweeney’s statement-and-question says it all. It’s the voice of liberalism in the age of Obama. She’s for Obamacare, but didn’t know what it was. Now, Ms. Sweeney realizes (sort of) that she’s been mugged by reality. But she’s not quite ready to come to grips with reality. She’s not quite ready to press charges against Obama, or against liberalism.
But at least she’s asking a reality-based question.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/author/william-kristol#
In 2014, it’s the job of conservatism, and of the Republican party, to answer Ms. Sweeney’s question. It’s the job of conservatives and Republicans to explain the reality of Obamacare—that it’s bad for health care, bad for jobs, and bad for freedom. It’s the job of conservatives and Republicans to offer escapes from Obamacare, to the extent possible (see the piece by Jeffrey H. Anderson and Spencer Cowan in this issue). It’s the job of conservatives and Republicans to set forth workable alternatives to Obamacare for the future, as Paul Ryan and others intend to do early in the new year.
And it’s the job of conservatives and Republicans to press charges. It’s their job to make the case against Obamacare on the broadest possible terms, as an example—as the example—of unintended-consequences-producing, rule-of-law-undermining, freedom-denying, big-government, liberal social-engineering. Obamacare embodies liberalism’s fatal conceit. It’s the job of conservatives and Republicans to make it liberalism’s fatal overreach.
So, to answer Ms. Sweeney’s question: The reality of it is that Obamacare is a disaster. And it’s a disaster because, as Margaret Thatcher put it, “The facts of life are conservative.”
If conservatives and Republicans can explain the facts of life in a language intelligible to contemporary Americans, the year 2014 could be an inflection point in the saga of modern American liberalism, modern American conservatism, and modern American politics. It could be a moment of genuine hope and positive change. Perhaps, to adapt a rhetorical flourish, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when the rise of the nanny state began to slow and our nation began to heal. It could be the moment when we regain our footing and find our way back to the always difficult but ultimately rewarding path of individual liberty, honorable self-government, and national greatness.
