RUTHFULLY YOURS

Republicans Subsidize Mansions

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/284101
The GOP is missing its chance to stand for limited government.
Almost two weeks ago, when they figured no one was watching, the Republican-dominated House of Representatives, by an overwhelming 292–121 margin, voted to increase funding for the Federal Housing Administration. Just as government debt hit $15 trillion, edging closer to 100 percent of GDP, these self-proclaimed scourges of spending decided Uncle Sam should continue subsidizing mini-mansion mortgage loans — up to nearly three-quarters of a million dollars.
Given the straits that the mortgage crisis has left us in, to say nothing of the government’s central role in getting us there, one might think Republicans would be asking whether the government should be in the housing business at all. “Stop out-of-control spending and reduce the size of government” — that is what Boehner, Cantor, & Co. promised in big bold letters during the 2010 campaign. That was in the snippets of text that occasionally interrupted the gauzy photo spread they called their “Pledge to America.”
Instead, here we are a year later, careering toward the cliff. We ought to be doing everything in our power to tee up the 2012 election as a high-noon showdown between Obama’s insatiable Leviathan and a GOP vision of fiscally sane, constitutional conservatism. So how do Republicans respond to their moment? How do they propose to “stop out-of-control spending and reduce the size of government”? Why, by putting taxpayers on the hook for shaky loans on luxury homes — sure to add prodigiously to the already $142 billion (and counting) housing bailout attributable to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Not housing for the poor, mind you, nor even for the middle-class — luxury homes. The real-estate market is so depressed at the moment that the median sale price of a single-family home is less than $170,000. Even in high-cost areas like Los Angeles, the Wall Street Journal reports, it has plunged to less than $325,000. Yet the Republican House — installed by the Tea Party in a sea-change election to be the antidote to Obamanomics — decided the taxpayers should guarantee FHA loans up to $729,750. Had they not acted, the public obligation would have been reduced to “only” $625,500 per FHA loan — couldn’t have that, right?

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/284111
I see Andrea True died earlier this month. The late disco diva enjoyed a brief moment of global celebrity in 1976 with her ubiquitous glitterball favorite:

More More More
How do you like it?
How do you like it?
More More More
How do you like it?
How do you like it?

In honor of Andrea’s passing, I have asked my congressman to propose the adoption of this song as the U.S. national anthem. True, Miss True wrote the number as an autobiographical reflection on her days as a porn-movie actress but, consciously or not, it accurately distills the essence of American governmental philosophy in the early 21st century: excess even unto oblivion.
When it comes to spending and the size of government, only the Democrats are officially panting orgasmically, “More More More, How do you like it?” while the Republicans are formally committed to “Less less less.” This makes for many dramatic showdowns on the evening news. In the summer, it was the “looming” “deadline” to raise the debt ceiling. In the fall, it was the “looming” “deadline” for the alleged supercommittee to agree $1.2 trillion of cuts. The supercommittee was set up as a last-minute deal for raising the debt ceiling. Now that the supercommittee’s flopped out, “automatic” mandatory cuts to defense and discretionary spending are supposed to kick in — by 2013. But no doubt, as that looming deadline looms, the can of worms will be effortlessly kicked down the room another looming deadline or two.

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2011/11/25/obama-admin-wants-egyptian-elections-to-be-free-of-what/

Obama Admin Wants Egyptian Elections to be Free of What? Posted By Bryan Preston

Isn’t this ironic.

“The United States strongly believes that the new Egyptian government must be empowered with real authority immediately,” the statement said.

“We believe that Egypt’s transition to democracy must continue, with elections proceeding expeditiously, and all necessary measures taken to ensure security and prevent intimidation.”

Right. President Obama hails from an ACORN group called Project Vote, which he has rebadged to become a part of his 2012 campaign. That group existed in part to degrade election security.

Former Democratic Rep. Arthur Davis recently said that his party uses voter fraud to maintain control. The Democrats fight every attempt to increase election security by requiring photo ID.

As for wanting elections free of intimidation…Obama’s own DOJ dropped the case against this intimidating guy and his pals, after winning it.

So, the Obama administration claims to want things in Egypt’s elections that it clearly does not want in American elections.

Article printed from The PJ Tatler: http://pjmedia.com/tatler

Looting the Egyptian Currency: Democracy in Action Posted By David P. Goldman

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2011/11/25/looting-the-egyptian-currency-democracy-in-action/

The ugly denouement of the so-called Egyptian Spring is visible in the collapse of Egypt’s stock exchange (down 11% in the first three days of this week) and the impending collapse of the Egyptian pound, as residents and foreigners flee to hard currency. A unique sort of brutality characterizes Egypt’s currency crisis: banks cannot meet the demand for currency because it is impossible transport bank notes. Mobs hijack the armored cars, as Al Ahram reported today:

“Demand on the dollar increased by 100 per cent since Saturday,” said Bilal Khalil, deputy head of the exchange division of the Federation of Egyptian Chambers of Commerce (FCC).

Khalil went on to say that many people prefer to convert pounds to dollars in times of crisis. “The exceptionally high demand on the American dollar resulted in a shortage of supply and a higher cost,” he said.

Promoting Moderate Islam: An Interview with Holland Taylor Posted By Ruthie Blum Leibowitz

http://pjmedia.com/blog/promoting-moderate-islam-an-interview-with-holland-taylor/?print=1

“Our goal is to marginalize, discredit and defeat the ideology of radical Islamism,” says C. Holland Taylor, the chairman and CEO of the LibForAll Foundation, “and to transform the understanding that Muslims have of their religious obligations.”

Taylor is a Christian-turned-Universalist — a South Carolinian expert in Islam residing in Indonesia — who left the cushy corporate world for more spiritual pastures. These involve “helping ensure the global triumph of a pluralistic and tolerant understanding of Islam, at peace with itself in the modern world.”

This, he argues, is the only way that the West and Muslims themselves will be able to eradicate the evil of those who have been politicizing and exploiting Islam for pernicious aims at global hegemony.

A close friend of Abdurrahman Wahid, the late president of Indonesia and leader of the world’s largest Muslim organization, Taylor believes that the West has been dropping the ball where confronting the Wahabbi-Muslim Brotherhood lobby is concerned. Rather than making a distinction between its false agenda and the true nature of Islam as a religion, Taylor claims, both the West and Muslims are being seduced into its orbit and lulled into submission.

Indeed, argues Taylor, radical Islam is a “danger to all of humanity.” And the only way to counter and conquer it is for Muslims and non-Muslims to join forces.

To this end, the LibForAll Foundation, established in 2003, is working to educate these forces in what Taylor asserts is the true pluralistic and spiritual nature of Islam versus the totalitarian ideology of the extremists. One project the foundation undertook was the publication — and translation into English — of The Illusion of an Islamic State, a book exposing the infiltration of Islamist extremists into Indonesia. The book was a sensation there and derailed the candidacy of the Muslim Brotherhood vice presidential contender in the 2009 elections. Another is the establishment of the International Institute of Qur’anic Studies — a global network of top Muslim scholars and leaders working to initiate a systematic reform of Qur’anic studies that “promotes freedom of thought, conscience, and religion in the Muslim world.”

BLUM: Is it not the task of Muslims to behave in such a way that others will have a “tolerant understanding” of Islam? Is it not the duty of their own religious leaders to “transform their understanding of their religious obligations,” to extricate themselves and the rest of us from the Wahabbi-Muslim Brotherhood ideology?

Taylor: During WWII, the United States and the United Kingdom were fighting against a national socialist ideology; during the Cold War, we were opposed to a totalitarian, Marxist-Leninist international ideology. Each was relatively easy to confront, because the Nazi ideology was tied to German racial supremacy, and the Communist ideology was tied to atheism and materialism.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ ROMNEY, GINGRICH, PERRY AND IMMIGRATION One reason I never spent much time taking Perry to task on immigration is that none of the candidates were very good on it. And that’s true of the recent list of Republican presidents as well. Perry was worse than most but unfortunately none of them are much good […]

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGING There was a time long ago when Americans were sad and unhappy, when the world hated us, people were forced to work for a living and there were no inspiring leaders. But today in this wonderful age of free health care, free mobs and freedom for Islamists, there […]

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=246925 The underpinnings of Israeli democracy are being imperiled by those purporting to be its staunchest defenders. Religion, nationalism and a people’s complex of ethical habits and customs have traditionally been interpreted as obstacles to the establishment of successful democratic political institutions. But the truth is considerably more complicated, for the success of liberal politics […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204630904577055863900368528.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Amid the slaughter, a quiet house was singled out, solely because the residents were Jewish.

Three years ago this weekend, believers of two religions came face to face, with horrific results. It is remembered as the Mumbai Attacks. Over the course of four days, 10 terrorists from the Islamic group Lashkar-e-Taiba perpetrated coordinated attacks on 10 different locations across India’s financial capital. In addition to three hotels, a cinema, and a hospital for women and children, four of the terrorists traveled to the Nariman House, which served as the city’s Chabad Jewish community center.

In all, 164 people were killed in Mumbai and 308 were wounded. What stands out in the horror of those days is the particular viciousness of the attack on the defenseless people inside Nariman House. The Holtzbergs—a young couple, emissaries from the Chabad-Lubavitch movement—along with four other Jewish visitors were all killed. But Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his pregnant wife Rivka were first tortured, the details of which are too gruesome to recount. (Their 2-year-old son was rescued by his Indian nanny, who grabbed the blood-spattered child and ran outside when the attackers weren’t looking.)

Why did the attackers specifically target Chabad and why with such viciousness? Lashkar-e-Taiba, or the Army of the Pure, is South Asia’s largest and most militant terror network. It is based in Pakistan, where it reportedly received planning assistance for the Mumbai operation from Pakistan’s secret service agency. The group’s founding aim was to reclaim the disputed Kashmir region for Muslims, but in recent years Lashkar has expanded to global scope, with particular animus toward India and Israel, declaring Hindus and Jews to be enemies of Islam.

Hence the attack on Nariman House, one of 3,000-plus Chabad Houses around the world that provide assistance, religious services, food, lodging and Torah study to local and visiting Jews. “Chabad,” an acronym for the Hebrew “wisdom, understanding, knowledge,” is another name for the Lubavitcher movement, named after the city in Russia where this particular movement of Orthodox Jewish Hasidism was founded in the 18th century.

Chabad would probably be unknown to the outside world had it not been for Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, its charismatic leader from 1951 until his death in 1994. Known as the “Rebbe” to his followers, he took a small group ravaged in the Holocaust and electrified it with a vision. Based in its new home of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the Jewish movement grew rapidly, and today there are Chabad Houses from Morocco to Cambodia to Santa Fe.

While the Rebbe was a great Talmudic scholar, he was also an electrical engineer who studied at the Sorbonne and did work for the U.S. Navy during World War II. Perhaps because of his varied background, the Rebbe infused the Lubavitchers with entrepreneurialism. “This was not a man who was interested in creating followers,” says Jonathan Sacks, the chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth. “This was a man who was passionate about creating leaders.”

Sending out emissaries was part of the program from the start, in 1951. “These extraordinary people could have achieved enormous personal gain in business or as professionals, but instead dedicated their lives to a higher purpose,” says Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, chairman of the movement’s educational and social services arms.

Chabad’s model sounds more like that of Christian missionaries than what most people expect of Jews. But Chabad couples are not sent out to proselytize. They are meant to act as role models for other Jews, in order to create a better world. Lubavitchers believe that every mitzvah (commandment) performed—whether it is helping someone in need or lighting the Sabbath candles—brings us all closer to the coming of the Messiah. “Love of God, of Torah and of every Jew—all three are really one and they cannot be separated,” said the Rebbe upon assuming leadership of the movement in 1951…..READ MORE AT SITE

“Civilization and profit go hand in hand.” “Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.” “Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.” “Economy is the method by which we prepare today to afford the improvements of tomorrow.”

Calvin Coolidge