http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ A candle is a brief flare of light. A wick dipped in oil burns and then goes out again. The light of Chanukah appears to follow the same narrative. Briefly there is light and warmth and then darkness again. Out of the exile of Babylon, the handful that returned to resettle and rebuild the […]
http://www.leebsmarketforecast.com/content/the_complete_investor/amazon-goes-postal The bride was gorgeous; the groom was old and arthritic, and everyone agreed they were an odd match. When Amazon married the United States Postal Service for its new Sunday package delivery service, who got the better deal? Most people probably would pick USPS, the quasi-government agency operating with all the fiscal sanity of […]
http://spectator.org/articles/56325/why-america-cant-keep-its-own-secrets AMERICA’S DEFENSE AND intelligence communities have gotten into a bad habit of late. We’ve been trusting some of the most untrustworthy people with our nation’s most closely guarded secrets. We’re not talking about real spies, recruited to betray their country, trained in their tradecraft, successful at hiding within our system for years. Edward Snowden […]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/us-embassy-vatican-moved-not-closed_n_4344756.html The United States will move its freestanding Vatican embassy into a larger government compound that includes the U.S. Embassy to Italy, a shift that has drawn criticism from former U.S. envoys. Security and cost savings were behind the move, as the State Department estimates it will save $1.4 million a year by moving from […]
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303281504579222202405206972
When we got up this morning, there was an email on our BlackBerry from “Barack Obama.” We assumed that, like all the other emails we get from “Obama,” it was a fundraising pitch from Organizing for Action, the 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization that sells access to the president. We began reading:
Dear the American People,
Things are tough for me at the moment; as you may know, the website for my health care plan had a big glitch.
If I were my predecessor, I’d order a full-scale attack on Webistan. Fortunately Webistan doesn’t exist, so I’ve just had to deal.
Dealing is hard. But I know in my heart that despite this glitch, and even if there are additional glitches, we will one day in this country have a health care system even better than Cuba’s.
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/364908/print
There is sad irony in the fact that Newtown, Ct. had a wonderful hospital for the mentally ill. Inmates were housed according to their security threats as well as needs. The buildings looked like Ivy League dorms, and the surrounding park was lush and planted. Treatment was humane, medications were correctly dosed and given to patients. They had sports, gardening of flowers as well as vegetables, and were given vocational training. Fairfield Hills was closed as part of the institutionalization trend which left thousands without homes, treatments or security….rsk
The report released by Connecticut yesterday on Adam Lanza’s massacre of 20 schoolchildren and six adults in Newtown makes clear how well we protected his civil rights.
The report details his “mental health issues,” which in reality were strong evidence that he had developed a severe mental illness. He had been afflicted with an autism-like syndrome since childhood and had been formally diagnosed with Asperger’s disorder. This diagnosis by itself is not associated with an increased propensity for violent behavior. However, in recent years, Lanza had developed symptoms of a more severe mental illness, which occurs in approximately 5 percent of individuals who have autism-like symptoms or mental retardation in childhood. This mental illness, which has psychotic features and is similar to schizophrenia, is associated with an increased propensity for violent acts if not treated. It includes delusional thinking, including a belief that others are trying to control your mind or hurt you. Adam Lanza’s bizarre behavior, including covering his bedroom windows, is consistent with such beliefs.
Adam Lanza was clearly in need of evaluation and treatment. Forty years ago, he would have been admitted to Fairfield State Hospital, which was located in Newtown, close to his home, and given a trial of antipsychotic medication to improve his symptoms. If he responded and continued to take his medication, he might have led a useful life, maybe as a computer programmer or in a similar job.
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/365022/print
Despite its obvious weaknesses, and undaunted by the usual hyperbole of the Obama administration and its bearers, beaters, and apologists, led by John (“unbelievably small”) Kerry, I think the Geneva agreement over the Iranian nuclear program is progress. Habitual readers will recall that I had effectively given up on this administration doing anything except, to conflate phrases of FDR and Mao Tse-tung, “stand idly by with folded arms” while the ayatollahs seeded the topography of Iran with launchers loaded with nuclear-tipped missiles. Of course, this would have led to similar arms in the hands of the Saudis, Egyptians, and Turks, which, with Iran, Pakistan, and Israel, would have made the Middle East a dense forest of nuclear missiles aimed heavenwards on their launchers, but angled at each other. At that point, a nuclear exchange would be practically inevitable, even if it were initiated by one of the Muslim countries in the region tacitly allowing a terrorist group to deliver a suitcase bomb in a container ship and then unctuously claiming not to have known anything about it (much as Mullah Omar, then the ruler of Afghanistan, did after the 9/11 attacks). The failed state is the refuge of the enemies of civilized, or even just powerful, countries, as it affords the world’s most odious people the excuse of claiming no direct responsibility for the outrages launched from such places, e.g., terrorism in Sudan or piracy in Somalia.
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/364929/print It’s not often that 60 Minutes, the high church of television journalism for over four decades, becomes late-night comedy fodder. But that’s what happened earlier this month when Saturday Night Live’s cold open featured 60 Minutes correspondent Lara Logan (Kate McKinnon) giving a sympathetic hearing to disgraced Toronto mayor Rob Ford (Bobby Moynihan). “I’m […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/364937/hail-panderer-chief-jonah-goldberg ‘I’m not a particularly ideological person,” President Obama told an audience of donors in Seattle over the weekend. He added (in Reuters’s words) that “pragmatism was necessary to advance the values that were important to him.” This is an old refrain of Obama’s. As he said in his first inaugural, “The question we ask […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/iran-secrets-and-betrayal?f=puball Telltale clues to identify ally betrayal…..Here’s how to tell: 1. Conduct secret negotiations with your ally’s mortal enemy, based upon wrongly presumed common interests & hence goals, including back-channel talks going back five years, even one found to be conducting one or another form of war on you & your ally, on a matter […]
