http://www.nationalreview.com/article/352009/gops-immigration-debacle-jonah-goldberg I don’t know how Democrats do it. The immigration-reform proposal wending its way through the Senate is tearing the Republican party to pieces. Poor Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), once the golden boy of the Tea Party and the conservative movement, is being treated like a guy who wants to leave a gang but […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/352025/obamas-radical-climate-agenda-editors
t is remarkable that when the scientific consensus on global warming is at its weakest state in years, President Barack Obama has decided to make the issue a new focus of his troubled presidency — and, indeed, that he intends to use the issue as the launching pad for a radical extension of federal power even more significant than his health-care takeover.
President Obama campaigned as a man of science, though he himself has no scientific training. He lambasted his critics as being anti-science Luddites and even enjoyed an endorsement from Bill Nye the Science Guy, who allowed his name to be associated with dishonest and unfair attacks on Republicans. Barack Obama, of course, is not a science guy. For example, he has flattered far-left conspiracy theories about common vaccinations, saying, “The science right now is inconclusive,” which is a position about as scientifically defensible as claiming that the dinosaurs went extinct because Fred Flintstone ordered too many bronto-burgers.
Global warming, contrary to the predictions of the best climate models, is not accelerating. It is slowing, and some estimates show it having been reversed. The warmest year on record was 1998, and there has been significantly less warming in the last 15 years than there was in the 20 years before that. The Economist, which supports measures to control greenhouse-gas emissions and has been a reliable hotbed of warming alarmism, conceded: “There’s no way around the fact that this reprieve for the planet is bad news for proponents of policies, such as carbon taxes and emissions treaties, meant to slow warming by moderating the release of greenhouse gases. . . . They will become harder, if not impossible, to sell to the public, which will feel, not unreasonably, that the scientific and media establishment has cried wolf.”
If only President Obama simply had cried wolf. Instead, the president announced that, on behalf of “all of humankind,” he is in effect directing the EPA to take over the American economy. New power plants will be subject to emissions controls, and existing plants will have to be retrofitted to comply with new standards. New restrictions on heavy trucks will affect the movement of freight and goods across the country. New subsidies will be handed down for politically connected energy firms, and federal lands will be set aside for their use. New federal impositions will affect the construction of factories, commercial buildings, and private homes. The president says that this is all enabled by the “overwhelming judgment of science.”
It certainly has not been enabled by something so mundane as the law. We rather suspect that the overwhelming judgment of Congress would be against the president’s program of regimenting the entire American economy under the management of a newly empowered EPA. But the president has made it clear that he intends to act largely through administrative fiat, subverting the democratic process and the people’s elected representatives. Unhappily, the Supreme Court has abetted this ambition by misconstruing the Clean Air Act as a warrant of action on global warming.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/06/memo_to_snowden_they_shoot_people_like_you_in_cuba.html A few days ago, I was willing to cut Mr Snowden a little slack and see him as a principled individual who opposed the NSA’s program. I’m not defending his “leak” but was willing to believe that he did it out of some concern for our privacy rights. Today, I see him as […]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324637504578565352740739148.html
Taliban Guns Send a Message About Obama’s Peace Process
Last week, the U.S. cheered the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar. On Monday, their fighters attacked in Kabul.
While much of the world is focused on the indignities being heaped on the United States by Russia, China and Ecuador in the fugitive Edward Snowden affair, the Taliban on Monday demonstrated their own contempt for the Obama administration.
Last week, U.S. officials celebrated what they regarded as a diplomatic breakthrough. They had persuaded the Taliban to open a political office in Doha, Qatar—and now America hopes it has the peace-negotiating partners the Obama administration covets as the U.S. plans its escape from Afghanistan. On Monday, the Taliban attacked the presidential compound in Kabul. The daylight gunbattle left at least eight Taliban and three guards dead.
The Afghan government—and the majority of Afghans—were not happy about the Doha news. The Taliban had immediately begun flying its flag and posting signs declaring the office as an outpost of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. President Karzai announced that he would not join peace negotiations with killers who had been so legitimized by the U.S., and he suspended talks with the U.S. about a long-term security arrangement.
The Taliban didn’t take long to prove his point. Or to expose Washington as a receding and tired presence in Afghanistan, desperate to leave.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323683504578567533647032380.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
President Obama’s climate speech on Tuesday was grandiose even for him, but its surreal nature was its particular hallmark. Some 12 million Americans still can’t find work, real wages have fallen for five years, three-fourths of Americans now live paycheck to check, and the economy continues to plod along four years into a quasi-recovery. But there was the President in tony Georgetown, threatening more energy taxes and mandates that will ensure fewer jobs, still lower incomes and slower growth.
Mr. Obama’s “climate action plan” adds up to one of the most extensive reorganizations of the U.S. economy since the 1930s, imposed through administrative fiat and raw executive power. He wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17% by 2020, but over his 6,500-word address he articulated no such goal for the unemployment rate or GDP.
***
The plan covers everything from new efficiency standards for home appliances to new fuel mileage rules for heavy-duty trucks to new subsidies for wind farms, but the most consequential changes would slam the U.S. electric industry. These plants, coal-fired power in particular, account for about a third of domestic greenhouse gases.
Last year the Environmental Protection Agency released “new source performance standard” regulations that are effectively a moratorium on new coal plants. The EPA denied that similar rules would ever apply to the existing fleet, or even that they were working up such rules. Now Mr. Obama will unleash his carbon central planners on current plants.
http://philassie.blogspot.com/2013/06/same-old-first-hand-accounts-from-48-61.html?m=1
“Robert F. Kennedy, martyred liberal icon, was a reporter for the Boston Globe in 1948 and was dispatched to Mandatory Palestine to cover the lead up to the British withdrawal. He wrote this of the Arabs living in Mandatory Palestine in 1948, days before israel’s independence:
“The Jews point with pride to the fact that over 500,000 Arabs in the 12 years between 1932 and 1944, came into Palestine to take advantage of living conditions existing in no other Arab state. This is the only country in the Near and Middle East where an Arab middle class is in existence.” (Emphasis throughout is mine).
RFK also points out that “many Palestinian Jews fought as volunteers with Allied troops throughout the world and still others were dropped by parachute into German-held territory as espionage agents. They were perhaps doing no more than their duty, but they did their duty well.”
This tidbit about the 1948 war proves that Jews faced murderous hostility from ordinary Palestinian Arabs, not just militants or Arab leadership:
Crucial: Fascinating First Hand Accounts from 48-61 Show Israelis Right; Roots of Palestinian Propaganda
There is a narrative war raging, where Zionists claim that the Arabs — largely recent immigrants drawn to Zionist industry and prosperity — after rejecting partition in 1947, embarked on an openly genocidal war against hugely outnumbered and outgunned Jewish forces in order to erase the Jewish presence in the Holy Land. In the ensuing melee, according to Israel, hundreds of thousands of local Arabs fled, encouraged to do so by their leaders. The Arabs on the other hand claim that young Israel was heavily supported by the British, was the aggressor in 1947, and expelled countless peaceable Arab peasants from their ancient communities.
While doing research for some new memes, I stumbled across a number of extremely interesting primary historical sources, i.e., reports on the ground from 1948 and subsequent years. Why go to history books written decades later when interviews and records from the period in question are readily available? Indeed, proximity to events necessarily means greater accuracy in their reporting. And what the sources find is a unanimous confirmation of Israel’s version of events. Propaganda can destroy many things, but it cannot change the documented past.
I urge you to read this extended piece, and to share it.
________
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/two_bad_votes_rFRLpkmfyrEjmOWDSwQHCL
As early as today, the City Council will vote on two bad bills that threaten the ability of our police force to do its job. It says something about where New York City is today politically that both bills will not only pass, they will likely do so handily.
The first bill is supported by Speaker Chris Quinn. It creates an inspector general for New York’s Finest. The job of this inspector general will be to micro-manage policies (most notably, stop, question & frisk) and in effect create a rival authority to the actual police commissioner.
The bill comes even after a highly publicized federal trial on stop-and-frisk in which the top witnesses failed to demonstrate that cops are racially profiling.
Gabriella Bass
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly
Which only makes the second bill even more nefarious. This one would allow individuals to sue the city if they suspect a specific stop was racially motivated. In other words, a welcome mat for trial lawyers. The only question is whether this bill will have the veto-proof majority we expect on the legislation for an inspector general.
Whether the handcuffs on police come from a federal court imposing an independent monitor or a City Council imposing an IG — or both — the city is in for big changes in its policing. Something that will make it much harder for the next mayor and police commissioner to be as successful on crime as Bloomberg & Kelly.
http://www.nypost.com/ By now, everyone knows: NSA leaker Edward Snowden, who left Hong Kong last week for Moscow, never boarded the plane he was expected to take yesterday to Cuba. His exact whereabouts were unclear. It’s the latest of many Obama administration fumbles in trying to catch this guy — while the Russians and Chinese […]
http://www.idfblog.com/2013/06/25/startup-soldiers-from-the-idf-to-high-tech-success/
The Israeli military’s ranks have included future politicians, celebrities, journalists and many other success stories. Some of the high-tech geniuses who have changed the world also wore the IDF uniform.
Technology and business experts worldwide rave about the successes of Israel’s entrepreneurs. Israel has produced a huge range of startup companies, some of which have transformed our technological world.
Behind almost every Israeli startup is an accomplished innovator who calls Israel home. But before setting out on the road to success, most of these brilliant minds served as IDF soldiers. Here we remember their roles in the IDF – and the accomplishments that followed.
Waze founder Uri Levine
Uri Levine got his start as a developer in the IDF. Levine even chose to go beyond his required length of service, serving for five years instead of three. After his release from the military, he applied the ingenuity he developed in the IDF to become an entrepreneur.
In 2008, Levine founded Waze, perhaps the world’s most successful GPS software. The interactive smartphone application not only provides users with driving directions; it also lets them share information about what is in the area – such as traffic, accidents and police.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Isaiah-Nation-317730 Grounded in the vision of Isaiah, the State of Israel can be a mechanism that imbues life with holiness, a shining “light unto the nations.” The State of Israel has many achievements to its credit. It has provided a refuge for persecuted Jews, has proverbially “made the desert bloom” and has contributed many scientific […]
