http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/343140/axis-torpor-mark-steyn I greatly enjoy the new Hollywood genre in which dysfunctional American families fly to a foreign city and slaughter large numbers of the inhabitants as a kind of bonding experience. Liam Neeson takes his estranged wife and their teenage daughter for just such a vacation in Taken 2, in which the spectacular mountain of […]
http://markdurie.blogspot.com/ Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders’ recent speaking tour in Australia brought him to my home town of Melbourne. I have been pondering his message since his visit, and this is the first of a series of blog posts which engage with it. Wilders came to warn Australians about Islam: “I am here to tell you […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/03/coolidge_a_politician_uncannily_deserving_of_respect.html “Debt takes its toll.” So begins Coolidge, the magnificent new biography of the 30th president of the United States by bestselling author and free-market journalist Amity Shlaes. No writer is perhaps better-suited to write a biography of the fiscal sentinel Calvin Coolidge, and this biography is indeed a prequel to her masterpiece, The Forgotten […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/343128/two-sides-rand-paul-andrew-c-mccarthy
After listening to Rand Paul speak at National Review’s Washington office, Bob Costa concludes that the senator is leading one side of what is “nothing less than a fight for the soul of the GOP on foreign policy.” Let’s hope so.
Whether what emerges is also a conservative foreign policy depends as much on which Senator Paul wins as on whether he wins. If it is the Rand Paul who perceived the common hegemonic denominator between Soviet totalitarianism and Islamic-supremacist totalitarianism in a provocative speech at the Heritage Foundation last month, there is cause for optimism. Not as hope-inspiring is the Rand Paul portrayed in Bob’s NRO report. It is already clear, though, that Senator Paul’s agitations serve conservative ends more consistently than does the erratic adventurism of his opposite numbers in the GOP’s intramural brawl: John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
Bob describes these Beltway establishment figures as “the foreign-policy grandees in the Senate Republican conference,” standard-bearers of what is said to be “the Bush-Cheney approach to foreign policy.” The latter claim is not entirely fair, particularly to the Cheney component of the ledger; but that is a story for another day. For now, the point — mine, not Costa’s — is that Senators McCain and Graham are not conservatives. They are progressive-lite populists who bend with the wind, an occupational hazard of service to a fuzzy global-stability agenda rather than to vital American interests pursued within a constitutional, limited-government framework.
Paul proudly claims the conservative tag that seems to embarrass the media-manic McCain except during those dolorous primary seasons when even a maverick must appeal to the GOP base. And once Paul outmaneuvered them (and the Obama administration) in the recent dust-up over U.S. drone-missile strikes, McCain and Graham became strident in their efforts to marginalize the Kentuckian — branding Paul “ill-informed” and a “wacko bird” of the Right. But Paul is far from a “wacko” — or, for that matter, the “extremist” I once made the mistake of describing him as. I was referring to a libertarian position he took against indefinite detention for American citizens suspected of being enemy combatants. The “extremist” descriptor did not fit the man, and it exaggerated the position he’d taken, which extended discussion showed to be less detached from wartime exigencies than it initially seemed.
In the senatorial name-calling, one senses a certain desperation, a fear on the part of McCain and Graham that the ground beneath them is shifting. There’s good reason for that.
Another Tack: Out of the box, Obama If our soon-to-arrive visitor, US President Barack Obama, truly fancies himself the harbinger of new tidings to this region – as he has tirelessly promoted himself in the past – then it’s high time for him to take the truly bold tack and think out of the box. Had […]
BREAKING: Obama White House Describes West Bank as Part of Israel In describing President Obama’s itinerary during his trip to Israel and Jordan next week, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes conceded that the Jewish connection to the West Bank is as strong as it is to Israel, and indeed, spoke of the two interchangeably: […]
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=306330
Ever since I was born I could hear the waves of hatred and prejudice pouring upon Jews for unexplained reasons, but apparently associated with the Arab-Israeli conflict, which Somalia was not a part of.
During Siad Barre (Somali dictator from 1969 to 1991), there was an Arabization program in Somalia that entailed the hatred of Jews as part of a standardized process of Arabization of our formerly non-Arab country.
When crisis erupted in Somalia and the lights went out in the 1990s, it became obvious that Somalia had been abandoned; no country acted to alleviate the Somalis’ enormous suffering.
Somalia has received various kinds of aid over the years, from various sources, but in the post-Cold War era, as Somalia’s strategic importance to the great world powers has waned, the country has effectively been left to rot. Its healthcare infrastructure, for example, is damaged to a degree which seems irreparable. Somalis seeking urgent medical care thus must often cross the border into Ethiopia, or seek treatment further abroad.
I am not a doctor by profession, but have served for many years as an interpreter for Somalis seeking medical care in Ethiopia. It was in this capacity that Special Adviser to the President of Somalia Dr. Omar Dihoud and I met with Mohammed Mohamud and Farah on March 4 at the Nati Hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, prior to their 9 p.m. departure for Tel Aviv.
It was a remarkable occasion for all of us.
The two young men were overjoyed, but also a little shocked; they hadn’t expected anything other than rejection from the Israelis they had been taught all their lives to consider “immortal enemies.”
“When we were told Israeli embassy in Addis Ababa had granted us the visas, it blew our minds!” said “We’re grateful to the Hadassah organization that offered us to treat us. We’ve life threatening injuries and yet no money” to go to Germany for similar treatment, added, explaining that “[the treatment] costs a minimum of $100,000 for each of us.”
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ AND MARRIAGE FOR ALL… Aside from all the usual speeches, CPAC predictably became Ground Zero in the Meghan McCainization of the Conservative movement. Aside from the Amnesty pitches, we are now being subjected to another round of dishonest arguments on gay marriage. Republicans made a fundamental tactical error by accepting civil unions as an […]
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ A CONSERVATISM OF PRINCIPLES Robert Spencer has written an article, “Why I am not a conservative” after his CPAC mistreatment. I appreciate his feelings, but I think it’s a mistake to define conservatism in terms of personalities. Conservatism cannot be defined by Romney or Norquist, or for that matter by any politician. Floridians have […]
http://newtown.patch.com/articles/newtown-officials-put-money-for-armed-school-security-in-budget?ncid=newsltuspatc00000001
Officials at a Monday Board of Finance meeting voted to add $420,000 to the town’s contingency fund — an amount chosen to allow Newtown to staff armed police at all seven public schools, including elementary schools, if it chooses.
It’s not final — on Thursday, per charter, the budget will move to the Legislative Council, who have the power to cut the budget. But since that body can’t add money, the Board of Finance decided to act now.
“Our primary goal is to get a number, and that number has to be more than enough for when the council gets the budget,” said Finance Chair John Kortze. “It would allow for some version of an armed police officer in each of the schools — and make sure we don’t have the issue of time.”
First Selectman Pat Llodra’s initial proposal called for $400,000. The board decided to add extra to allow “the conversation to continue” once the budget reaches the Legislative Council.
“We can take it back, but if we don’t add it now and more information comes out, that can’t happen,” said Kortze.
The addition would cover the hiring of 4.3 new officers — the .3 serving to provide a full blanket of security at Reed Intermediate School, whose current School Resource Officer also serves as the town’s Youth Officer. In addition, Llodra said when the Board of Selectmen made their request, they didn’t know Monroe would apply for a grant to provide an officer at Sandy Hook Elementary School, based at Monroe’s Chalk Hill School since the Dec. 14 shooting.
