http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/hating-the-flag/print/ Every year on May 17, Norway celebrates Constitution Day. In towns across the country, folks in traditional costumes walk around with little (or not so little) Norwegian flags. In Oslo, the royal family stands on the palace balcony for hours while thousands of schoolchildren march by, dipping their tiny flags in respect as they […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/bloombergs-banana-republic/ Spring is in the air, which in New York means that it’s time to launch the bike-share program. The bike-share program, which stacks racks of bikes out in the street in the hope that everyone will stop driving cars and rent bikes instead, failed in Paris, Melbourne and Montreal. But Mr. Bloomberg is not […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/347150/print
THE SPECIAL ELECTION IN MASSACHUSSETTS: GABRIEL GOMEZ (R) VS MARKEY (D) : KATRINA TRINKO
The best advantage Gabriel Gomez has in the Senate race in Massachusetts is timing.
After Scott Brown’s loss to Elizabeth Warren last fall, few Republicans in Massachusetts hold much hope that a Republican candidate could emerge the winner in a regular election, particularly one that coincides with a presidential election. But the June 25 special election — in which turnout will likely be low — is a different matter.
“Any time a Republican runs for statewide office, it’s an uphill climb, but they have better chances in off-year elections and in special elections than they do in presidential years,” says Ryan Williams, a GOP consultant who worked for Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. “It is virtually impossible as a Republican to win statewide office during a presidential year, given the turnout.”
There is no doubt that Gomez, who won the GOP primary Tuesday, is the underdog. His Democratic rival, 20-term congressman Ed Markey, raised significantly more money than Gomez did and has the advantage in blue Massachusetts. Markey received more votes in the Democratic primary than did all the candidates on the Republican side. Republicans are clear-eyed about the formidable numbers. “We have to win probably 60 to 70 percent of independents, and we have to win 10 to 20 percent of the Democrats,” estimates Brad Dayspring, communications director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
But Republicans are hoping that Gomez can pull off a surprise victory. Eric Fehrnstrom, who advises a super PAC backing Gomez, describes the race as “between Ed Markey, who’s a government insider who’s never really had a job outside of politics, and Gabriel Gomez, a fresh-faced reformer with a compelling personal story and a plan to change Washington.” In Fehrnstrom’s mind, Gomez’s private-sector background (he is a private-equity investor) and military past (he was a Navy SEAL) may help give him an edge on economic and national-security issues, with the latter being fresh in voters’ minds after the bombing at the Boston Marathon.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/347108/irrelevant-middle-east
Thanks to oil discoveries elsewhere, the region is losing its geostrategic clout.
Since antiquity, the Middle East has been the trading nexus of three continents — Asia, Europe, and Africa — and the vibrant birthplace of three of the world’s great religions.
Middle Eastern influence rose again in the 19th century when the Suez Canal turned the once-dead-end eastern Mediterranean Sea into a sea highway from Europe to Asia.
With the 20th-century development of large gas and oil supplies in the Persian Gulf and North Africa, an Arab-led OPEC more or less dictated the foreign policy of thirsty oil importers like the United States and Europe. No wonder U.S. Central Command has remained America’s military-command hot spot.
Yet the Middle East is becoming irrelevant. The discovery of enormous new oil and gas reserves along with the use of new oil-recovery technology in North America and China is steadily curbing the demand for Middle Eastern oil. Soon, countries such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iran are going to have less income and geostrategic clout. In both Iran and the Gulf, domestic demand is rising, while there is neither the technical know-how nor the water to master the new art of fracking to sustain exports.
The recent Boston bombing reminded the West that nearly twelve years after 9/11, most terrorism still follows the same old, same old script, acted out by angry young men with Muslim pedigrees claiming to act on radical Islamist impulses, without much popular rebuke from the Muslim world.
He feels a “kinship” with the Jewish state. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/347151/rand-paul-and-israel Rand Paul is describing an episode from his trip to Israel in January: “I went to a Shabbat,” he tells me, “it was the first time I’ve ever done that, and I had a wonderful time. I went to the yeshiva, and all the young men […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/347070/government-accomplice-murder The Gosnell trial is winding down, and the pro-abortion crowd’s line seems to be that yes, this guy was an unfortunate outlier but he’s of no broader significance. This conveniently overlooks the fact that he couldn’t have done what he did without the assistance of government. Gosnell’s “clinic” went uninspected for 17 years — that’s […]
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/1/cia-women-who-hunted-bin-laden-in-the-spotlight/
The look at those who hunted Osama bin Laden begins with the sisterhood — a collection of female CIA analysts who became somewhat obsessed with al Qaeda and its leader.
They now are talking on camera for the HBO documentary “Manhunt,” which debuted Wednesday night, two years after the terrorist mastermind was killed and weeks after another jihadist attack on America at the Boston Marathon.
The film, which HBO is showing throughout May, is not about the raid that killed bin Laden but the inside story of the CIA’s bin Laden hunters — their frustrations, guilt, joy and, for one, a violent death.
“The night of the raid, I just had this gut feeling that there was a deeper, darker, richer story other than just the story of the raid itself,” said Greg Barker, a journalist and the director of “Manhunt.” “It’s about an intelligence story that spoke to the decisions made in secret inside our government that led us to Abbottabad.”
Appearing on camera are Susan Hasler, who edited the daily intelligence brief to the president; Cindy Storer, who tracked bin Laden after the CIA opened a special off-site base; Nada Bakos, who ended up focusing on Abu Musab Zarqawi, the most ruthless al Qaeda killer in Iraq; and Jennifer Matthews, who appears hauntingly only in photographs.
“Manhunt” is stark, devoid of voice-over narration or final judgment. Viewers who want condemnation of the CIA for not stopping the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. or for conducting “enhanced interrogations” of senior al Qaeda members will not find it here.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/1/white-house-denies-any-benghazi-muzzling/ The White House denied Wednesday that State Department officials are muzzling would-be whistleblowers about last year’s terrorist attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi by blocking security clearances for their attorneys. “These allegations are part of an unfortunate pattern of spreading misinformation and politicizing this issue,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said. […]
http://pjmedia.com/spengler/
Just after Obama’s re-election we heard Republican leaders explain that Obama had just gotten lucky — the economy was in the recovery phase of a normal business cycle, and Obama caught the right wave. As the stock market rallied through the first four months of 2013 and regained its old peak, the story seemed credible — until a couple of weeks ago, that is.
We’ve had one depressing economic report after another. Employment is barely growing, according to the ADP survey, which showed just 119,000 new jobs created in April and 118,000 in May. The April purchasing managers’ index for manufacturing fell sharply from 54.6 to 52.1 (50 is dead in the water).
The Shadow Government Statistics website calculates the true unemployment rate — the proportion of the working-age population that can work but doesn’t — at 23%. That includes so-called “long-term discouraged workers” not included in the labor force. Even the government’s own broad measure of unemployment still stands at almost 15%, twice the pre-crisis level.
On a GDP basis, the economy grew at an 0.8% rate in the fourth quarter of 2012 and at a 2.5% in the first quarter. That’s just 1.5% without counting inventories. Investment in industrial equipment actually fell during the quarter. It’s an economy that is flying barely above stall speed.
No, Obama didn’t win re-election because the vote happened to occur at the cusp of a normal business cycle recovery. The economy really is that bad. So is Obama. Sadly, so was the Republican ticket.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/how-american-muslims-radicalize/?print=1 If radicalized means self-segregated, embittered, and angry enough to be ambivalent about the mentorship of jihadists, then America needs to pay close attention to neighborhood Islamic centers. There is a nexus between disaffected Muslims and those who graduate to violence, and two [1] studies [2] point to the American mosque. Now that another plot has been executed […]
