http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/339963/enhanced-argumentation-techniques-jonah-goldberg Zero Dark Thirty, the film about the hunt for and killing of Osama bin Laden, got a fresh infusion of buzz over the weekend when outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta confirmed again that enhanced-interrogation techniques aided the effort to find bin Laden. “Some of it came from . . . interrogation tactics that […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/340023/mission-new-congress-mario-loyola Congress needs to mind its own business, and let the states mind theirs. As the March 1 sequester deadline looms, congressional conservatives should wake up to the fact that an agenda focused solely on spending cuts is a losing agenda, one that wouldn’t help matters much even if it prevailed. Our very system of […]
http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=47498a2e1ad97dd3d09ae19c5&id=09d104b9db&e=ce445aaf82 In the early biography of Muhammad written by Ibn Ishaq there are many fascinating and intriguing incidents. One unforgettable story tells how Huwayyisa came to embrace Islam: The apostle said, ‘Kill any Jew that falls into your power.’ Thereupon Muhayyisa b. Mas’ud leapt upon Ibn Sunayna, a Jewish merchant with whom they had social […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/340012/will-senate-confirm-cia-director-who-denies-existence-what-secretary-state-called-glob
Will the Senate Confirm a CIA Director Who Denies the Existence of What the Secretary of State Called “the Global Jihadist Threat”?
In observations conveniently made on the way out the door, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged that the United States faces “a spreading jihadist threat,” led by al Qaeda. [For those who may have forgotten, that would be the jihadist network the Obama administration heretofore told us had been crushed thanks to the president’s steely resolve.] Again and again, Madame Secretary told a senate committee that the administration was now gravely concerned about this growing “jihadist threat” — worried that Syrian chemical and biological weapons could “fall into the wrong hands, jihadist hands”; worried about migrant al Qaeda operatives “who are in effect affiliates, part of the jihadist syndicate”; and worried about the “complicated set of allegiances between jihadist groups.”
Sounds like a huge national security challenge, no? Only problem is that President Obama’s nominee to head the nation’s premier intelligence agency denies that there is a jihadist threat.
Our enemies, John Brennan insists, “are not jihadists, for jihad is a holy struggle, an effort to purify for a legitimate purpose, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing holy or pure or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children.” In fact, Brennan, the White House counterterrorism czar through the first Obama term, maintains that the president agrees with him on this point:
President Obama [does not] see this challenge as a fight against jihadists. Describing terrorists in this way, using the legitimate term ‘jihad,’ which means to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal, risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve.
Brennan’s confirmation hearing is today. As Steve Emerson recounts in a comprehensive post on the dreadful nomination, Brennan has repeated the trope that there is no violent jihad numerous times. In shaping Obama’s national security policy, his top agenda item has been to deny the palpable nexus between Islamic doctrine and Islamist brutality, and thus to blind our intelligence community to the ideological underpinnings of the threat against our nation, the West and Israel. Say what you will about Obama’s other nominations, including the hapless Chuck Hagel. Never has there been a more monumental mismatch between man and mission than Brennan and CIA director.
As I have explained here and elsewhere, Brennan’s meanderings about jihad are frivolous. On their face they are silly because Islam and the West do not have a single, consensus value system. In fundamental ways, we don’t agree on what a “legitimate purpose” is.
Even those who buy into the revisionist attempt to evolve the concept of jihad into a personal struggle to “purify oneself” or attain “a moral good” must, if they are being honest, concede that Muslims mean “purity” and “morality” as determined by sharia, Islam’s societal framework. To sharia-compliant Muslims, “purifying” oneself or one’s community might include demanding the killing of apostates and homosexuals, or demanding the suppression of speech that exposes some of the other draconian and iniquitous elements of Islamic doctrine. We in the West would regard these as morally monstrous … but that they are sharia desiderata cannot be credibly denied. A “personal struggle” to achieve them would thus be a legitimate “jihad,” even under Brennan’s interpretation.
http://reagan2020.us/speeches/To_Restore_America.asp
Good evening to all of you from California. Tonight, I’d like to talk to you about issues. Issues which I think are involved–or should be involved in this primary election season. I’m a candidate for the Republican nomination for president. But I hope that you who are Independents and Democrats will let me talk to you also tonight because the problems facing our country are problems that just don’t bear any party label.
In this election season the White House is telling us a solid economic recovery is taking place. It claims a slight drop in unemployment. It says that prices aren’t going up as fast, but they are still going up, and that the stock market has shown some gains. But, in fact, things seem just about as they were back in the 1972 election year. Remember, we were also coming out of a recession then. Inflation had been running at round 6 percent. Unemployment about 7 [percent]. Remember, too, the upsurge and the optimism lasted through the election year and into 1973. And then the roof fell in. Once again we had unemployment. Only this time not 7 percent, more than 10. And inflation wasn’t 6 percent, it was 12 percent. Now, in this election year 1976, we’re told we’re coming out of this recession just because inflation and unemployment rates have fallen, to what they were at the worst of the previous recession. If history repeats itself, will we be talking recovery four years from now merely because we’ve reduced inflation from 25 percent to 12 percent?
The fact is, we’ll never build a lasting economic recovery by going deeper into debt at a faster rate than we ever have before. It took this nation 166 years until the middle of World War II to finally accumulate a debt of $95 billion. It took this administration just the last 12 months to add $95 billion to the debt. And this administration has run up almost one-fourth of the total national debt in just these short 19 months.
Inflation is the cause of recession and unemployment. And we’re not going to have real prosperity or recovery until we stop fighting the symptoms and start fighting the disease. There’s only one cause for inflation— government spending more than government takes in. The cure is a balanced budget. Ah, but they tell us, 80 percent of the budget is uncontrollable. It’s fixed by laws passed by Congress. Well, laws passed by Congress can be repealed by Congress. And, if Congress is unwilling to do this, then isn’t it time we elect a Congress that will?
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/print/a-nation-of-pill-takers
I AGREE WITH THIS ARTICLE ON THE FACT THAT SO MANY CHILDREN TODAY ARE MEDICATED INTO SUBMISSIVENESS BY DOCTORS WHO FORGOT THE SIMPLE WORD “BRAT”….TO COVER ALL FORMS OF DISTRACTED AND DISOBEDIENT BEHAVIOR…..HOWEVER, THERE ARE VERY EFFECTIVE DRUGS FOR THE TREATMENT OF REAL MENTAL ILLNESS WHICH SHOULD NOT BE CONFUSED WITH THESE…..RSK
Why is it that our Nation is stricken time and time again with mass shootings? What can be done to counter and prevent future tragedies? In that discussion two central issues arise: gun control and mental health. I won’t touch the issue of guns here; instead I want to focus on the latter. There is a gaping flaw in our mental health system that needs to be addressed.
In way to many cases, when a person has some mental ailment, or is just in a really bad mood, doctors and psychiatrists put them on medication as quickly as possible. Amongst the most popular and commonly prescribed types of medications are SSRI’s (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor). Serotonin is a chemical in the brain which when is not produced in balanced amounts can lead to things like depression, anxiety disorders, and OCD symptoms. Some notorious examples of SSRI’s include Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft, and Celexa. This is not Tylenol or aspirin we’re talking about here; SSRI’s carry with them some serious side effects. Here’s a quote from www.drugwatch.com:
“Prozac is one of the few antidepressants approved for the treatment of depression in youths. Unfortunately, however, studies on children have linked the drug to increased suicidal thoughts and behavior. As a result, the FDA issued a public warning in October 2004, and two years later extended the advisory to include young adults as old as 24. In 2007, the FDA took an even stronger stance. The agency required antidepressant manufacturers to update existing black-box warnings about the increased risks of suicidal thoughts and behavior during initial treatment, which the FDA defined as the first one to two months.”
The big problem is that these drugs are prescribed without any sort of tests to see if the patient really needs them. In most situations, before a doctor prescribes something – like say insulin – they run a blood test for said substance before coming to the conclusion that the patient needs that particular chemical worked on. Why isn’t the same happening for these drugs? There are so many risks to just stuffing chemicals into the body without knowing all the details. What if for instance, one has normal levels of Serotonin in their brain, and now they are getting even more? I don’t know the technicalities, but I’m sure nothing good or even safe will come of it.
http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2013/02/06/eat-less-egypts-government-tells-its-people/?print=1 Eat Less, Egypt’s Government Tells Its People “Even Islamists have to eat,” I wrote under the headline “Food and Failed Arab States” in February 2011. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government takes a different view, the Washington Post reported yesterday. The trouble, the government says, is that Egyptians are eating too much. In a separate report, […]
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/02/06/hello-sequestration-ships-deployment-postponed-because-of-budget-fears/ The effects of the looming sequestration are already being felt at the Pentagon as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta delayed the deployment of two ships to the Persian Gulf region. The supercarrier USS Harry S. Truman and the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg were scheduled to leave Norfolk, Va., for the U.S. Central Command area of […]
http://pjmedia.com/blog/chris-christie-gops-next-crummy-nominee/ Sensible conservatives have had to put up with a lot since Ronald Reagan left the White House — and to be clear, Reagan also had a few very weak moments [1]. But expecting us to get enthusiastic about the sadly realistic prospect of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie becoming the Republican Party’s next presidential […]
http://pjmedia.com/blog/argentinas-betrayal/ Last week, Argentina and Iran jointly agreed to establish a “truth commission [1]” that will investigate the 1994 Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) bombing. Imagine if Franklin Roosevelt had partnered with the Japanese to investigate the truth about Pearl Harbor. Or if George W. Bush had partnered with al-Qaeda to investigate the truth about […]
