http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/142371/sec_id/142371
Municipal elections were held in The Netherlands on March 19th and in France on March 23rd. While a minority of registered voters cast ballots in each country, the results appeared to indicate that the Euro skeptic parties may be on the rise. Bloomberg Business Week commented in a mid-February 2014 article on the results of the Swiss anti-immigration referendum that these parties might be in contention to take upwards of 150 of the 751 seats in the May 22nd to 25th European Parliamentary Elections. The Swiss People’s Party referendum on immigration control passed by 19,000 votes. The Economist called Marine Le Pen’s first round municipal election results on Sunday, March 23rd, a veritable “triumph.” Perhaps indicating that her National Front party would do well in the second round on March 30th in France. It trumpeted the devastation of France’s media and President Hollande:
FOR Libération, it was a “slap in the face”. For Le Monde, another daily newspaper, it was an “earthquake”. The first round of voting in French municipal elections on March 23rd was a clear snub to François Hollande, the French president, whose Socialist Party did worse than polls had predicted in several towns. If there was a symbolic victor ahead of the second round of voting on March 30th, it was Marine Le Pen, the leader of the populist National Front.
The leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, Nigel Farage, given current trending opinion polls, may be poised to surpass the Labor party. It alleged in a UK Telegraph report that Lady Thatcher’s unofficial biographer considers Farage’s immigration and EU stands “closely aligned” with her views. A decade ago this writer was on a weekly international Radio America panel with Farage where as the lone UKIP Member of the European Parliament he boosted these views. These opinion polls prior to the May European Parliamentary elections reflect the ascendency of the anti-immigration Euro skeptic parties in many EU countries.
In a November 2013 Iconoclast post we wrote glowingly about the prospects of the Euro skeptic alliance led by Le Pen and in The Netherlands by Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party (PVV).
I am so obsessed with Congress and 2014 I almost forgot that New York State has a gubernatorial election in November. Governor Andrew Cuomo(D ) is running for reelection and his major challenger is Rob Astorino (R)a splendid man who has been a successful Westchester County Executive. He deserves higher office and will obtain it…but not in this election….the numbers just don’t add up.
The mystery is why Andrew Cuomo is running on some very conservative issues- a better budget and significant cuts in taxes. Does he get what’s blowing in the wind- a general conservative trend nationally? Is he just rehearsing for a Presidential bid?
New York State has had mediocre governors…Andrew’s father among them. Mario Cuomo was, like Adlai Stevenson,- lofty rhetoric masquerading mediocrity even at being mediocre. And George Pataki?
In any event Andrew Cuomo is aggressive, ambitious and sharp.
Why not put his feet to the fire and ask about fracking which will restore New York’s economy significantly? New York State is magnificent- endowed with mountains, rivers and parks- great state colleges and universities- excellent hospitals and medical schools…..and badly in need of help.
Will Andrew Cuomo step up to the task? Ask him.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/protecting-hillary-trumps-benghazi-investigation?f=puball
No matter how many times it is called “phony” or the administration blames Fox News for keeping the scandal alive, the issue of Benghazi and the September 11, 2012 attacks remains alive and well. And this fact is damaging to presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State under President Barack Obama. A recent Pew Research Center/USA Today poll ranked the death of those four Americans that night in Benghazi as the “worst thing about the career of [Hillary] Clinton,” followed by her husband’s affair, according to Bloomberg this March.
The Democratic establishment has started to complain that this is Republican politicking because of Clinton’s unannounced, but presumed, candidacy. But the issue cuts both ways: the Democratic establishment has a glaring conflict of interest when it comes to finding out the truth about the Benghazi attacks because they don’t want some of their own tarnished in the process.
“The total cost of compliance with Benghazi-related congressional requests sent to the department and other agencies is estimated to be in the millions of dollars,” stated the Pentagon in a March 11 letter, according to the Associated Press.
“Congressional Republicans have been relentless in investigating the attack, arguing that the Obama administration misled the American people about a terror attack during the heat of the presidential campaign,” reports the Associated Press. “The GOP is determined to press ahead, especially since the assault on the mission occurred during Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.” This manufactured public relations framework is aided by the fact that the House GOP established a website dedicated to the investigation into the Benghazi attacks, and has released a number of reports that are authored by the House majority without input from their increasingly alienated minority Congressional partners.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/teddy-roosevelts-real-views-on-immigration
Last Thursday, Vice President Joe Biden quoted Theodore Roosevelt out of context while delivering the keynote address at a meeting of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Biden was pushing the Obama Administration’s desire to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants by citing the alleged views of a great and iconic American President who was also a Republican. Immigration “reform” is currently blocked in the GOP House. Biden’s quote of TR (unacknowledged from 1908) went as follows, “Americanism is not a question of birthplace or creed or a line of descent. It’s the question of principles, idealism, and character.” Teddy Roosevelt did believe this, but he also championed an immigration policy much more in line with the current conservative position than with the Obama White House. Biden asserted that based on TR’s “standard, 11 million undocumented persons are already Americans, in my view.” This was such a gross distortion of the record that it went well beyond the Vice President’s well-known gift for gaffes. It was a blatant attempt to mislead the public by claiming a false endorsement.
For Teddy Roosevelt, not all immigrants were the same; they did not all have the attributes cited in the quote misused by Biden. As he said in his annual message to Congress as President in 1905, “We cannot have too much immigration of the right sort and we should have none whatsoever of the wrong sort….The prime need is to keep out all immigrants who will not make good citizens. The laws now existing for the exclusion of undesirable immigrants should be strengthened, Adequate means should be adopted, enforced by sufficient penalties, to compel steamship companies engaged in the passenger business to observe in good faith the law which forbids them to encourage or solicit immigration to the United States.”
His views did not change over the course of his career. As early as 1888, he said in a speech in New York City, “I wish Congress would revise our laws about immigration. Paupers and assisted immigrants of all kinds should be kept out; so should every variety of Anarchists….We must soon try to prevent too many laborers coming here and underselling our own workmen in the labor market; a good round head tax on each immigrant, together with a rigid examination into his character would work well.”
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304886904579473532432749404?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop&mg=reno64-wsj
Suddenly ObamaCare is a roaring success, happy days are here again and liberals are euphoric, or claim to be. There are more than a few reasons to doubt this new fairy tale, not least the behavior of Senate Democrats running for re-election this year.
In the Rose Garden Tuesday, President Obama reported that 7.1 million people had signed up so far, confirming a Monday night White House news leak. “That doesn’t mean all our health-care problems have been solved forever,” he conceded with customary modesty. The government appears to have tapped heretofore-unknown reserves of bureaucratic efficiency by releasing numbers timed to this campaign-style pep rally.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/pelosi-founding-fathers-wanted-obamacare/print/
Every day, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi engage in a close race to see which of them can say the craziest thing.
Pelosi won today. Tomorrow, Reid might claim that the Koch Brothers are the cause of the Syrian Civil War.
“It is really so heart warming for those of us who worked so hard [to make sure] many more people in our country would have access to healthcare,” she told reporters at the stakeout position just outside the West Wing portico.
“There are those critics, bumps in the road, but they’ve only been turbulence. They have not been an obstacle to the American people having healthier life that our that our founders wanted for them,” she said.
Those founders wanted “life — a healthier life — liberty and the freedom to pursue their happiness, not [be] job-locked, but having benefits that having health-care policies that are portable, they could be self-employed, be a photographer — they could start their own business, they could change jobs, they could reach their aspirations,” she declared.
All along we thought that the Founders wanted liberty. But no, apparently they wanted the freedom to force everyone to buy worthless health insurance.
The Founders wanted to separate health insurance from employment, an issue that didn’t exist at the time, so that people could become photographers, a profession that didn’t exist at the time. Also they were deeply concerned about the ozone layer, opposed the death penalty and were big fans of Common Core.
Just ask Nancy. Now if only someone would unlock her job.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/pollard-and-the-last-ditch-effort-to-save-the-peace-talks/print/
Secretary of State John Kerry hopped over to Israel from Brussels on Monday and left Tuesday morning. The mission: rescue what is known as the peace process, which has been tottering at the brink of collapse.
His game was to offer both sides inducements that, he hoped, they couldn’t refuse. To the Palestinians: 426 freed prisoners including 26 convicted murderers, along with a partial Israeli building freeze in Judea and Samaria (but not in East Jerusalem). In return for those favors, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas was supposed to agree to keep talking with Israel until the end of this year, and not to go to UN bodies to wage diplomatic warfare against it.
To Israel: Jonathan Pollard. In return for that favor, the Israeli government was supposed to—once again—swallow the lopsided terms and agree to keep up the pretense of the talks.
For Israel the terms were still worse than that may sound. Four hundred of the freed Palestinian prisoners were supposed to be minor offenders whom Israel would choose, and who would be released gradually over the course of the year. But of the 26 convicted terrorists (they would be the fourth such group to be released by Israel since last summer), 14 were supposed to be Israeli Arabs.
For Israel that carries a special sting. As president of the Palestinian Authority, Abbas has no authority over Arab citizens of Israel, and his demand for the release of the 14 is a particularly brazen slap to Israel’s judicial autonomy—one that, once again, he appeared to be getting away with.
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/04/01/the-media-wont-cover-leland-yees-alleged-gun-running-because-theyre-democrat-operatives-with-by-lines/?print=1
The only thing I can do with this Glenn Reynolds column is endorse every single word of it. It is absolutely right.
Yee told an FBI agent that, in exchange for $2 million in cash, he’d fill a shopping list of weapons, which he took personal responsibility for delivering, according to the indictment. He also allegedly “masterminded” a complex scheme bring illegal weapons into the country, agreeing to “facilitate” a meeting with an illegal arms dealer to arrange for the weapons to be imported via Newark, N.J. In arranging all of this, the indictment said, Yee relied on connections with Filipino terrorist groups who could supply “heavy” weapons, including the Muslim terrorists of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Yee allegedly noted that the Muslim terrorists had no reservations about kidnapping, extortion and murder.
This all sounds like news. You’ve got charges of huge bribes, rampant hypocrisy, illegal weapons and even a connection with foreign terrorists — and from a leading politician in an important state.
But — and here’s the part Hollywood would miss — outside of local media like San Francisco magazine, the coverage was surprisingly muted.The New York Timesburied the story as a one-paragraph Associated Press report on page A21, with the bland dog-bites-man headline, “California: State Senator Accused of Corruption.” This even though Yee was suspended, along with two others, from the California state senate in light of the indictment.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/republicans-catch-on-that-negative-advertising-works/?print=1
People who knew Mitt Romney, or worked with him in business or government, in many cases considered him one of the most decent people [1] they ever knew. But starting in the early spring of 2012, months before Romney had officially secured his Party’s nomination for President, many millions of dollars of attack ads were running in key states such as Ohio, Virginia, Florida and Colorado suggesting that Romney was a despicable, greedy Wall Street banker. He was accused of buying up companies, firing the workers, then closing or selling the companies off, getting very rich in the process. He was also accused [2] of causing people to die of cancer after workers lost their health insurance and were presumably denied treatment.
One might think that Romney’s Bain Capital had discovered a formula where he could get rich more quickly through the failure of the businesses in which he invested, than from their successes. People who have spent their lives outside the private sector and have nested within the Democratic Party, seem to assume that private equity companies mostly invest in businesses that are already winners and if they invest in struggling companies, they should be able to turn them into winners 100% of the time. If some investments go bad, then it must be because the private equity companies make more money by destroying healthy companies than rebuilding them. To be fair, Newt Gingrich, had launched a similar demagogic campaign against Romney when his fortunes began to sink after the early primaries in 2012, though he did not go so far as to accuse Romney of causing cancer patients to die without insurance, and his attack ads did not run in many states.
Even before the first Republican Party primary in Iowa, in the fall of 2011, left wing groups had created a campaign known as “Occupy Wall Street” designed to highlight the 1% (especially the Wall Street variety) versus the 99%. One does not need to be a cynic to believe that the Obama campaign team fully expected Romney would be their opponent in the fall of 2012. The Occupy Wall Street campaign was an easy AstroTurf exercise [3] to change the subject — from the glaring failures of their first term to the inequality in America, symbolized by a rich white guy like Mitt Romney.
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2014/04/01/are-there-moderate-muslims-how-about-moderate-jews-and-christians/?print=1
As my friend Daniel Pipes wrote some days ago at National Review, the Middle East Forum is debating whether one can speak meaningfully of “moderate Muslims,” with Dr. Pipes defending the affirmative and Raymond Ibrahim the negative thesis. I respect both Pipes and Ibrahim, but I am not satisfied with the content of the debate. The first issue to be settled is what moderation might mean in the case of adherence to a religion, which is after all not a list of positions but an existential stance towards life. One can speak of a moderate Communist (e.g. Gorbachev) or moderate conservatives, but not quite as simply about moderate faith. Below is an essay I published on the subject in Asia Times in 2006 that attempts to set a theological context for the question.
The West in an Afghan mirror
By Spengler
Death everywhere and always is the penalty for apostasy, in Islam and every other faith. It cannot be otherwise, for faith is life and its abandonment is death. Americans should remove the beam from their own eye as they contemplate the gallows in the eye of the Muslims. Philistine hypocrisy pervades Western denunciations of the Afghan courts, which were threatening to hang Christian convert Abdul Rahman until the case was dropped on Monday.
Afghanistan, to be sure, is a tribal society whose encounter with the modern world inevitably will be a train wreck. The trouble is
that the West has apostatized, and is killing itself. There turned out to be hope for Rahman, but there is none for Latvia or Ukraine, and little enough for Germany or Spain. That said, I wish to make clear that I found the persecution of Rahman deplorable.
The practice of killing heretics has nothing to do with what differentiates Islam from Christianity or Judaism. St Thomas Aquinas defended not just the execution of individual heretics but also the mass extermination of heretical populations in the 12th-century Albigensian Crusades. For this he was defended by the Catholic philosopher Michael Novak, author of learned books about the faith of the United States of America’s founding fathers (see Muslim anguish and Western hypocrisy, November 23, 2004).
