http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/344598 My column last weekend dealt with the travesty of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s apology to Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, under great pressure from President Obama, for Israel’s self-defense against Turkey-based jihadists who attempted to break its lawful blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza. Netanyahu not only apologized but added to the humiliation by agreeing to Erdogan’s […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/344469/ascent-man-mark-steyn Re that New York Times notice regretting its “mischaracterization” of “the Christian holiday of Easter”, Michael Walsh is right to point out that the “correction” is equally idiotic. As Michael says, what does “resurrection into heaven” even mean? How could any expensively credentialed J-school grad type those words? Where I think Michael understates the […]
http://pjmedia.com/blog/trusted-travel-status-for-country-that-produced-most-of-911-hijackers/ THIS ONE HANGS ON THE NECK OF GEORGE BUSH AS WELL…NOT ONLY WERE ALL SAUDIS GIVEN EXIT WITH NO SERIOUS QUESTIONS ASKED, BUT ONLY MONTHS AFTER 9/11 HE INVITED THE WAHHABI DESPOT TO HIS RANCH AND PROMOTED THE LATTER’S SO CALLED PEACE PLAN FOR YOU KNOW WHO…..JUST ANOTHER WAY OF BOWING TO THE THUGS….RSK […]
http://pjmedia.com/blog/march-mayhem-mayor-never-waste-a-crisis-oversees-chicago-free-fall/ It had been an unusually cold month of March in Chicago, but with the first 50 degree day in weeks, about 500 African American teenagers heated up [1] Chicago’s Gold Coast on Saturday night. By the time the mayhem ended, 28 had been arrested [2], two women had been beaten badly on a CTA […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/04/its_almost_3_am_and_north_koreas_calling.html
President Obama has a situation on his hands where charisma and media support do him no good. He is dealing with a nuclear-armed regime with a history of military attacks, provocations as a means of extortion, and brutality. Now they have announced they are restarting a reactor that produces enough plutonium to make a bomb a year — a reactor that had been shut down before as part of a previous deal in which the North Koreans got things of value in exchange for shuttering it.
Worse yet, the dictatorship is now in the midst of a possible power struggle. Kim Jong Un is a man barely thirty, if that (we don’t really know for sure), advised by his aunt Kim Kyong Hui and her husband, Jang Song Thaek, reportedly taking power from military factions and giving lucrative sources of income, including drugs and counterfeiting, to party factions. Gordon Chang writes:
Every year, Pyongyang makes bombastic threats before the U.S.-South Korea military exercises. Then, the North Koreans go quiet when the drills begin. This year, however, the tantrum has continued and the words have become increasingly dire. This month, for instance, Pyongyang abrogated the armistice ending the Korean War and threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes on the United States. The one-a-day rhetorical blasts suggest something is terribly wrong inside the North Korean regime.
Chang explains what he believes is happening inside the power circles of Pyongyang:
Jang has stripped the military of much of its coveted revenue streams from illicit activities. About 70% of North Korea’s foreign currency business was conducted by the flag officers under Kim Jong Il. Kim Jong Un, under Jang’s tutelage, has set about gaining control of that business. The new leader, for instance, shuttered Taepung International Investment Group, which has been described as the military’s conduit for investment abroad.
Jang is also said to have been behind the shutting of the notorious Room 39, the “slush fund” that was the center of disreputable activities, such as drug smuggling, the counterfeiting of U.S. currency, and the making of fake Viagra. This is not to say the Kim regime is exiting illegal activities. As the Korea Times reports, “Experts say the developments may shift responsibility for attracting outside money to the party, which has been refurbished after gathering cobwebs under Kim Jong Il.”
Moreover, Kim and Jang have sacked top flag officers, most notably Vice Marshal Ri Yong Ho, the respected chief of the General Staff. Some analysts believe there was a shootout between forces opposing Ri and those loyal to him when he was deposed last July. Whether or not these rumors are true, it has become clear that Kim’s removal of the popular Ri did not sit well with front-line commanders. In a further sign of turmoil, Ri’s successor, Hyon Yong Chol, was subsequently demoted.
It is bad enough that China Is Taking Steps. According to a report by Bill Gertz of the Washington Free Beacon:
China has placed military forces on heightened alert in the northeastern part of the country as tensions mount on the Korean peninsula following recent threats by Pyongyang to attack, U.S. officials said.
The Mad Zionist Imagine an English officer who enjoyed walking around as naked as on the day he was born, happily munched away on raw onions, wrote blistering reports on his colleagues, defied his superiors, ran roughshod over his subordinates, ridiculed authority and rules, and was careless in his manners and impatient with mediocrity. Now […]
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
All politics are the politics of the future. The one cause that we all champion, regardless of our political orientation, is the cause of the future. All that we fight for is the ability to shape the future.
The fundamental political question is, “Do you believe things are getting better or worse?” Ruling parties tend to answer, “Better”, opposition parties tend to answer, “Worse”. The deeper answer to that question though lies in our perceptions of the past and the future.
The left tends to view the past negatively and future shock positively. It wants change to disrupt the old order of things in order to make way for a new order. It hews to a progressive understanding of history in which we have been getting better with the advance of time, the march of progress mimics evolution as a means of lifting humanity out of the muck and raising it up on ivory towers of reason through a ceaseless process of change.
The right often views the past positively, it sees change as a destroyer that undermines civilization’s accomplishments and threatens to usher in anarchy. It fights to conserve that which is threatened by the entropic winds of change. The conservative worldview is progressive in its own way, but it is the progress of the established order. It sees progress emerging from the accretion of civilization, rather than from the disruption of revolution.
Where the left tends to be unrealistically optimistic about the future, acting like a child running to the edge and jumping off, without remembering all the bumps and bruises before, the right tends to be pessimistic about the future. It tends to be wary of change because it is all too aware of how dangerous change can be.
Youth who do not understand the value of what is around them rush to the left. As they achieve a sense of worth, of the world around them and of their labors, they drift slowly to the right. Age also brings with it a sense of vulnerability. Knowing how you can be hurt, how fragile the thin skin of the body, the fleshy connections and organs dangling within, brings with it a different view of the world. Once you understand that you can lose and that you will lose, then you also understand how important it is to defend what you have left.
The vital mantra of the left is do something for the sake of doing something. Change for the sake of novelty. Action for the sake of action. This carnival drumbeat loses its appeal when you come to understand how dangerous change can be. Personal history becomes national history becomes personal history again as you live through it. Seeing what a mistake change can be as you watch politicians disgraced, causes revealed as fool’s errands and crusades fall apart, is a great teacher of the folly of change for the sake of change.
Reagan’s question, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” is the fundamental challenge of the conservative that asks whether the change was really worth it. It is the question at the heart of the struggle between the right and the left.
http://www.prudenpolitics.com/newsletter?utm_source=P&P%20Auto%201&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6774
NORTH KOREA IS THE BEST EXAMPLE OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF AN UNFINISHED WAR…..EISENHOWER WAS INTIMIDATED BY A PUBLIC OUTCRY AGAINST THE WAR AND FINISHED IT WITHOUT A REAL VICTORY OR SURRENDER OR UNIFICATION OF THE NATION….THAT LEFT THE VILE DYNASTY OF KIM IN FIRM CONTROL OF THE NORTH. ALL THE SMILEY VISITS OF MADELEINE HALFBRIGHT, THE IDIOTIC CONCERT OF LORIN MAAZEL, THE PATHETIC EFFORTS OF CONDI RICE AND HILLARY CLINTON HAVE DONE NOTHING TO THWART THE DEVELOPMENT OF NUKES, THEIR MEDDLING IN THE MIDDLE EAST ARMS, AND THEIR THREATS AGAINST A DISARMED AMERICA…..RSK
A boy with his first gun can be as deadly as a sharpshooter with a fruit salad of ribbons across his chest, and President Obama and his generals are treating North Korean crackpottery as a genuine threat to peace and good order. But they’re within their rights to get a kick out of Kim Jong-un’s little-boy tantrums, too.
Kim, even with a large inventory of rusty sabers to rattle, at 29 or 30 still looks like a boy in his first pair of long pants, and with all their wealth and pelf the Kims, grandfather, father and son, should find either a better barber or a bigger bowl. It’s hard for anyone to take seriously a kid with a haircut that bad. (When the satirical newspaper Onion called him “the sexiest man alive,” thousands cheered.)
The North Koreans have a talent for making deadly mischief, blowing up civilian airliners, capturing gunboats, shelling South Korean offshore islands and once, in 1983, dispatching agents to Burma to plant three bombs that exploded and killed 17 visiting South Koreans, including 4 cabinet ministers. Their actual target, the president of South Korea, might have been killed, too, but his motorcade was delayed in traffic and he missed laying a ceremonial wreath. So the little dictator with the jarhead haircut is probably capable of starting a war.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/04/educators_and_college_administrators_enemies_no_more.html As the proverbial offal hits the fan, adjunct instructors and their union leaders are understandably panic-stricken as they finally realize the impact of ObamaCare on their livelihoods. Union representatives are now sending their members letters stating that “the Affordable Care Act [aka ObamaCare] has defined full time as anyone working over 30 hours a […]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323415304578370910199546982.html?mod=hp_opinion The question of how to fairly and equitably tax capital gains has been a political problem since the modern personal-income tax was adopted in 1913. Actually, this question has been one of the drivers transforming the tax code from its original 14 pages to its current Bibles-long mess. One of the complications, a cause […]
