http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2759/So-Thats-Why-Bush-Wanted-to-Prevent-Israel-From-Attacking-Iranian-Nukes.aspx The Washington Post’s Walter Pincus has extracted some other items of interest from Robert Gates’ book, Duty (noted earlier here). These include the forgotten fact that the Bush administration discussed withdrawing the “surge” in Iraq even as it was getting underway, much as the Obama administration would do more emphatically vis a vis Afghanistan. […]
NO URL: SYDNEY WILLIAMS IS AN E-PAL WHO IS DEVELOPING A BLOG….I AM FORTUNATE TO GET HIS DAILY POSTINGS….RSK
More than anything, the State of the Union is a chance to see and be seen. Even those on the Republican side of the aisle vie for seats on the aisle, so their constituents can see them shaking hands with the President they have vowed to oppose. It is an opportunity for this President to use the soaring rhetoric, which is his greatest strength, and to bask in the applause of those who fervently admire him, as well as from those who despise him, but who do not to appear small-minded.
The Constitution, in Article II, Section 3 states: “He [the President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” The founders would be appalled at the imperial extravaganza that annual message now entails. In the last few decades this event, of a republican country, has assumed the trappings of the royal Court at Versailles in the years just preceding the French Revolution.
Mr. Obama is fond of his voice, so he speaks for a long time, giving little consideration to the overweight and out-of-shape Congressional members and others who are required by custom to be there, and who must leap from their seats every minute or so, exhausting themselves as though they had been in a spinning class. They look like the teenage girls who once did the same thing for Frank Sinatra and the Beatles. The difference is that the girls’ enthusiasm was real, while what we see from our comfortable seats in our homes is often feigned.
We live in a in a pluralistic country. New York State, with a population of about 19.6 million people encompasses people from across the political, economic, social and religious spectrums. Governor Cuomo acted like an elitist and nativist when he said that “extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay…have no place in the state of […]
Moral Obtuseness Baroness Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Vice President of the European Commission, issued a statement on January 27 marking international Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was commendable that the EU at all chose to note the day, but what Ashton said on its behalf was surreal. She managed […]
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/01/29/obamas-sotu-remarks-and-irans-negotiations-jihad/?singlepage=true
Note: Andrew Bostom’s forthcoming monograph, Iran’s Final Solution for Israel, will be published next month.
During last evening’s (January 28, 2014) State of the Union speech, President Obama not only claimed “American diplomacy” had somehow “halted the progress of Iran’s nuclear program,” he peevishly threatened,
[L]et me be clear: if this Congress sends me a new sanctions bill now that threatens to derail these talks, I will veto it.
His comments represented the apotheosis of a surreal tragicomedy of U.S. diplomatic failure that has unfolded over the past two months.
Less than three weeks after the November 24, 2013 announcement of an interim agreement between Iran, the U.S., and five other world powers, during an interview which aired December 11, 2013, Iranian Middle East analyst Mohammad Sadeq al-Hosseini, provided a candid assessment of the negotiations. El-Hosseini, a former political advisor to both Iran’s alleged reformist ex-President Khatami, and the Khatami regime’s erstwhile Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Ata’ollah Mohajerani (also deemed a “moderate”), underscored the ancient Islamic doctrinal bases for the contemporary Iranian theocracy’s geo-politics. Invoking the armistice “Treaty of Hudaybiyya” agreement between Muhammad and the 7th century pagan Quraysh tribe of Mecca, which Islam’s prophet-warrior unilaterally abrogated as soon Muhammad’s jihadist forces achieved the military superiority needed to vanquish his Meccan foes, el-Hosseini declared:
http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2014/01/29/the-gop-and-social-issues-another-perspective/ On the question whether the Republican Party ought to de-emphasize social issues, I find myself more in the Bryan Preston camp than in Roger Simon’s. That’s ironic because, though I’m drawn to the logic of Bryan’s “Where do the surrenders end?” argument, the brute fact is: the political divide in the country has almost […]
Even though it is difficult to understand, Islamic fanatics consider themselves at war with all non-Muslims as well as the entire United States. Understanding ones enemy is important to having any hope of defending one’s self, specifically when the enemy does so many odd and illogical things. In Saudi Arabia, according to a spokesperson of […]
They are the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians.
http://www.think-israel.org/sharpe.counterfeitarabs.html
They are indistinguishable from those Arabs who live in the surrounding artificial states such as Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia or the other entities throughout the Middle East created by the colonial powers, France and Britain. Both powers were victorious after the Ottoman Turkish Empire lay defeated at the end of World War 1.
Both of these European powers carved artificial borders across the corpse of what had been Turkey’s empire in the Middle East, and both France and Britain have left a resulting legacy of war and violence ever since. One such territory, previously occupied by Ottoman Turkey for 400 years, was the geographical entity known sometimes as Palestine.
But there is no such thing as a Palestinian people; no such thing as a Palestinian history; and no Palestinian language exists. There has never been any independent, sovereign Palestinian state in all of recorded history — let alone an Arab independent state of Palestine.
You will search in vain for Palestinian Arab coinage or Palestinian Arab archaeological artefacts specifically related to any Palestinian Arab king or ancient leader. But what you will find are coins, pottery, ancient scrolls, all providing conclusive, empirical and millennial evidence of Jewish civilization dotting the land known correctly as Israel — not Palestine.
http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=6952
A liberal arts education was once a gateway to wisdom; now it can breed ignorance and arrogance.
The humanities are in their latest periodic crisis. Though the causes of the ongoing decline may be debated, everyone accepts the dismal news about eroding university enrollments, ever fewer new faculty positions, the decline in majors, and the lack of jobs for humanities graduates. Less than 8% of current BA degrees are awarded to humanities majors. The New York Times recently reported that while 45% of the undergraduate faculty at Stanford teach in the humanities, only 15% of the students major in them.
Of course, the numbers of humanities majors have been in decline since the 1970s. But what seems different today is that the humanities are less sacrosanct in the university. Literature, philosophy, and art are no longer immune from budget cuts by virtue of their traditional intrinsic value to the university. Either humanities professors can no longer make the case for the traditional role of their subjects or no one cares to listen to what they have to say.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/01/29/216301/how-does-obama-stack-up-on-womens.html#emlnl=Afternoon_Newsletter
NOTE FROM E-PAL JHA:
The left-of-center McClatchy news service makes another point on the false
generalization brought up by Obama on sex discrimination in pay….
It is also true that in the pre-marriage and pre-child-rearing age of their
20’s, women across all jobs, using the same broad generalization used by Obama ,
make more than men of that age…
JHA
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama calls it “wrong” and an “embarrassment” that women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes, saying women deserve equal pay for equal work.
“At a time when women make up about half of the workforce, but still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns – we’ve got to finish the job and give women the tools they need to fight for equal pay,” Obama said Wednesday in Maryland, calling for an end to “workplace policies that belong in a ‘Mad Men’ episode.” His remarks echoed what he said the night before in his State of the Union address, and which he’s said before, always to applause.
But a McClatchy review of White House salaries shows that when the same calculations that produced the 77 cents is applied to the White House, the average female pay at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is less than the average male pay. When counted the same way that produced the 77-cent figure, the analysis found, women overall at the White House make 91 cents for every dollar men make. That’s an average salary of $84,082 for men and $76,516 for women.
Asked about its own payroll, the White House said Wednesday that it should be measured by how it pays men and women in the same jobs, but not the kind of broad brush that compares overall male and female pay.
White House aides said that overwhelmingly, the president’s employees with the same position make the same money: all press assistants make $42,000 regardless of gender; most presidential assistants, including Press Secretary Jay Carney and Lisa Monaco, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, make $172,200.
