Let Francis Shepherd http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/343224 Rome — “May God forgive you.” That’s Cardinal Dolan’s translation of a joke Pope Francis toasted the College of Cardinals with a day after being elected the 267th pontiff. Having watched the prayerfulness of some of the cardinals going into the papal conclave that would elect the Argentine cardinal Jorge Mario […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/343180 According to a new study jointly produced by three liberal organizations — the Center for American Progress, the Stimson Center, and the Center for Climate and Security — global warming may be destabilizing the Arab world. Entitled “The Arab Spring and Climate Change,” the study was given prominent publicity by New York Times columnist […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/03/mia_love_readies_herself_for_another_run_for_congress.html
What’s Mia Love, the Mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, up to these days?
After her one point loss to Democrat Jim Matheson, the woman who wowed the GOP convention in Tampa kept a fairly low profile. But this past week, she was at CPAC and made a major announcement.
Roll Call:
In preparation for a bid, Love has hired former state GOP Chairman Dave Hansen, who was widely heralded last year for successfully managing the re-election campaign of Sen. Orrin Hatch.
Love and Hansen sat down with CQ Roll Call for an interview Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where she was scheduled to speak.
“We are looking at it very seriously,” Love said. “We are trying to get people engaged and going, and let them know that we have to start early so that we are not starting from behind.”
Love is reaching out to donors now, some 20 months before the election, and putting in place a campaign team far earlier than last cycle. Love didn’t formally enter the wide, 4th District Republican field until January 2012. She shocked Republicans by emerging from the April state party convention with the nomination in hand.
“Getting that message out takes a lot of effort, a lot of funds, so we want to make sure that we are defining ourselves before the opposition does,” Love said.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324077704578362701947035938.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read
Argentines who want their country to be the next Venezuela see Francis as an obstacle.
Argentines celebrated last week when one of their own was chosen as the new pope. But they also suffered a loss of sorts. Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a tireless advocate of the poor and outspoken critic of corruption, will no longer be on hand locally to push back against the malfeasance of the government of President Cristina Kirchner.
Argentines not aligned with the regime hope that the arrival of Francis on the world stage at least will draw attention to this issue. Heaven knows the situation is growing dire.
One might have expected a swell of pride from Argentine officialdom when the news broke that the nation has produced a man so highly esteemed around the world. Instead the Kirchner government’s pit bulls in journalism—men such as Horacio Verbitsky, a former member of the guerrilla group known as the Montoneros and now an editor at the pro-government newspaper Pagina 12—immediately began a campaign to smear the new pontiff’s character and reputation at home and in the international news media.
The calumny is not new. Former members of terrorist groups like Mr. Verbitsky, and their modern-day fellow travelers in the Argentine government, have used the same tactics for years to try to destroy their enemies—anyone who doesn’t endorse their brand of authoritarianism. In this case they allege that as the Jesuits’ provincial superior in Argentina in the late 1970s, then-Father Bergoglio had links to the military government.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324532004578362593064526174.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion Pfc. Bradley Manning is charged with espionage. Why not Julian Assange? It looks as if Pfc. Bradley Manning and Julian Assange will go down in history as outliers, not trend setters. There have been no copycat leaks of massive quantities of diplomatic and intelligence documents, despite how easy the Internet makes it to leak […]
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/
“Rand Paul’s dramatic 13-hour filibuster of the Brennan nomination, the attacks on his position from established Republican leaders like Senator John McCain, and the conservative applause Sen. Paul received afterward had many talking about a sea change in Republican foreign policy — and that was before he won the CPAC straw poll. Were the isolationists and America-Firsters coming back from the margins, led by the younger and more telegenic Paul? Could Patrick Buchanan style thinking be returning to the mainstream of an anti-engagement, ignore-Israel Republican Party?”
It’s often said that Republicans are the Daddy Party in American politics, while the Democrats stand in for Mom. Mom is about putting nice meals on the table, pushing us to do well in school and teaching us to be kind to other kids; Dad worries about the budget, enforces the rules, teaches us to be self reliant, and is the one you look to when bullies or criminals threaten.
Naturally in these enlightened times we reject all such sexist rhetoric; we are all Coneheads now with interchangeable, unisex parental units instead of mothers and fathers. Still, the old description has some merit, and Moms nationally do lean towards the Democrats, while Dads tend to go GOP.
Our problem these days is that neither parent is really doing its job. Like a couple of addled narcissists too busy with midlife crises to tend to the kids, both parties are falling down on the job. The Mommy Party has messed up the schools, the pensions, the post office, healthcare and local government, but unless you think the Iraq War was a strategic masterstroke and brilliantly executed to boot, the Bush administration often looked more like Homer Simpson than John Wayne.
At Via Meadia we keep a close eye on the mess in Mom’s kitchen; it’s a time of real crisis. The traditional methods and institutions of the 20th century progressive state are less and less able to deliver what people need in the contemporary world, and the wholesale renovation and reform of the American social model is an urgent and inescapable task.
Generally speaking, the Republicans are doing some interesting things on the Mommy side these days. With fewer ties to the vested interests that want to fight change in domestic institutions, the Republicans have led the way on some promising education initiatives and government reforms. There’s something of an intellectual ferment on the GOP side these days as politicians and wonks hunt around for ideas that might reduce the “Mom gap” and make voters trust Republicans more on some domestic governance issues. It’s a start, though much more needs to be done.
But where Republicans are falling down on the job these days seems to be in the realm of foreign policy – a traditional GOP strength. Between the annual CPAC meeting and the intra-party struggle over Senator Rand Paul’s drone filibuster, it’s clear that the GOP has some big unresolved questions to ponder.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/wrong-battle-wrong-enemy/?print=1 WRONG BATTLE, WRONG ENEMY Ever since the election, there has been something of a battle going on within the Republican Party, as conservatives look for someone to blame for the loss. You can see some of this criticism here at PJ Media, such as Mark Stuertz’s complaint about Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) [1], or […]
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/03/10/4-old-dreamy-songs/?print=1
FOR THE SENIOR GENERATION….THE WORLD WAR 2 SONGS EVOKED THE LONELINESS AND THE DREAMS OF A WHOLE NATION…CLASSICS SUCH AS “I’LL WALK ALONE”…OR “I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS”…OR “ALWAYS”….SONGS WITH GENTLE AND TOUCHING LYRICS…..RSK
My main solace and support during an unhappy adolescence was my radio. I remember it as good-sized and rectangular with a wood finish. It sat on the little night table by my bed, and was always set to the same channel — WRPI, the station (still in existence) of the nearby Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, staffed and run by college students.
WRPI played what was then called progressive rock — rock songs that were outside the Top 40 hits that the commercial stations played. These could be songs, available only on albums, by performers who had Top 40 hits, or songs by performers considered esoteric or “experimental” enough that they were outside the Top 40 sphere altogether. Among other things, “progressive rock” offered me more introspective, poetic music that knew something about the deeper world of my feelings.
Since then my tastes have expanded, from ultra-introspective Mahler and Bruckner to wildly joyous Sonny Rollins and much in between (I also attempt my own contribution). The advent of YouTube some years back led me, in a sort of hushed curiosity, to search and find songs that in some cases I hadn’t heard since those distant days of adolescence. And in some striking cases I discovered that a song had not lost—or had even gained—power over me compared to back then.
All of the four songs I’ve picked below use only voice and acoustic guitar. All are from the late sixties; my WRPI-listening years were 1969-1972.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/bloomberg-bans-breathing-and-death-to-battle-global-warming?f=puball New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced at City Hall today that the city’s Board of Health has instituted a ban on both breathing and death in order to combat the crippling effects of global warming. The ban will go into effect in May of this year, giving city residents time to figure out […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/us-national-security-document-will-omit-references-to-islamic-extremism-and-jihad?f=puball
In what appears to be another victory for the US Muslim Brotherhood, Associated Press is reporting that “religious terms” such as Islamic extremism and Jihad will be removed from the document known as the National Security Strategy. According to the AP report:
President Barack Obama’s advisers will remove religious terms such as “Islamic extremism” from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said. The change is a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war and currently states: “The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.” The officials described the changes on condition of anonymity because the document still was being written, and the White House would not discuss it. But rewriting the strategy document will be the latest example of Obama putting his stamp on U.S. foreign policy, like his promises to dismantle nuclear weapons and limit the situations in which they can be used. The revisions are part of a larger effort about which the White House talks openly, one that seeks to change not just how the United States talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education. That shift away from terrorism has been building for a year, since Obama went to Cairo, Egypt, and promised a “new beginning” in the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world. The White House believes the previous administration based that relationship entirely on fighting terror and winning the war of ideas.
The AP report also identifies a little known White House office that appears to have played a major role in the language change:
“You take a country where the overwhelming majority are not going to become terrorists, and you go in and say, ‘We’re building you a hospital so you don’t become terrorists.’ That doesn’t make much sense,” said National Security Council staffer Pradeep Ramamurthy. Ramamurthy runs the administration’s Global Engagement Directorate, a four-person National Security Council team that Obama launched last May with little fanfare and a vague mission to use diplomacy and outreach “in pursuit of a host of national security objectives.” Since then, the division has not only helped change the vocabulary of fighting terror but also has shaped the way the country invests in Muslim businesses, studies global warming, supports scientific research and combats polio. Before diplomats go abroad, they hear from the Ramamurthy or his deputy, Jenny Urizar. When officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration returned from Indonesia, the NSC got a rundown about research opportunities on global warming. Ramamurthy maintains a database of interviews conducted by 50 U.S. embassies worldwide. And business leaders from more than 40 countries head to Washington this month for an “entrepreneurship summit” for Muslim businesses.
