RUTHFULLY YOURS

Coming Apart, Coming Together Posted By Daniel Greenfield

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/04/11/coming-apart-coming-together/

“Things fall apart, the center cannot hold,” Yeats wrote in his famous poem. In Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010”, it is America itself that has come apart and his work chronicles the undoing of a virtue-based national exceptionalism.

“Coming Apart” would not be as shocking if it were not for a political and academic establishment that is unable to speak about the problems of the working class except in terms of class warfare and racial discrimination. Murray boldly upends the formula that social problems arise from economic problems and that these can only be solved with more social welfare programs. Instead of holding the upper classes accountable for not paying enough into the system that subsidizes the welfare state, he instead holds them accountable for disrupting national values, while maintaining them communally.

While the class warfare model links social ills to an economic deprivation practiced by the rich on the poor, Murray looks instead at a values deprivation which has led to statistics such as a marriage rate of 83 percent for the white upper middle-class and only 48 percent for their working class contemporaries. This has created Two Americas divided not by wealth, as defined by John Edwards in the economic realm, but divided socially by the segregation of communities and the stratification of values.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/cheap_natural_gas_heralds_an_energy_revolution.html

All bets are off for the future of energy in the United States and, indeed, the world, as the price of natural gas plummets to ever-lower values — thanks to the development of technology that can access gas and liquids trapped in hitherto inaccessible shale rocks. In 2011, shale gas accounted for a quarter of U.S. natural gas production. But this seemingly bright future may depend on a court decision (expected in June 2012) and, of course, on the outcome of the November elections.

The Economics of Natural Gas

Consider the history of natural gas prices just in the last few years. In mid-2008, the spot price (at Henry Hub) reached a peak of $13 per mcf (1,000 cubic feet, with a heat value of 1 million Btu — denoted as 1 MMBTU) — having doubled since mid-2007. Since then, the price has decreased sharply, dipping to $2 in mid-March, and it now stands at $2.30. If prices decline further, natural gas will be cheaper than the average steam coal, which up until now has been the lowest-cost fuel on a heat basis.

How realistic is such a price path? Operators drilling for gas are also extracting large quantities of natural gas liquids (NGL) as well as crude oil. As pointed out by Richard Trzupek, the profit potential lies in these liquids, as natural gas becomes simply a byproduct. It reminds me of the situation in the early 1970s, 40 years ago, when “associated gas” was so cheap, only pennies per mcf, that it was flared at the well-head. The problem then was the lack of pipelines to convey the gas to consumers in major cities.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/arab_riots_then_and_now.html

On March 30 in Israel, Arab anti-Israel demonstrations turned violent, and the security forces had to suppress the violence with crowd control measures. Dozens of Palestinians were hurt in the West Bank and Gaza Strip while marking Land Day protests with fierce riots and clashes with IDF soldiers. Palestinian sources reported that one man was killed and thirteen others injured by IDF fire in Gaza after attempting to breach the border fence and infiltrate Israel near the Erez Crossing. This year, the Land Day observances coincided with an ambitious Palestinian plan to organize a global march to Jerusalem to protest Israel’s Judaizing of the country’s capital. Aside from the Gaza protester who was shot dead, another thirty Palestinians were wounded in the fracas.

The riots lasted for a day and then burned themselves out.

The IDF soldiers, as well as the other security personnel, were very well prepared for any possibility of extreme violence from the part of the protesters[.] … I believe that this deterrence also worked and kept them away, at least in trying to keep their amount of violence on the low side. And I also think that we also improved ourselves in a few issues since last year. (IDF Lt. Col. Avital Liebovitch, commenting on the March 30 riots)

The Muslim Brotherhood Wants Chaos in Egypt Posted By David P. Goldman

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/04/10/the-muslim-brotherhood-wants-chaos-in-egypt/

From the Muslim Brotherhood’s actions of the past week–especially its decision to scuttle a desperately-needed $3 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund–it seems clear that Egypt’s dominant political organization is acting like a Leninist or Nazi vanguard revolutionary party, in what it evidently sees as a pre-revolutionary situation. The Brotherhood knows and says that Egypt’s economy is headed over a cliff, but wants to blame the crisis on the military the better to seize power

Kofi Annan’s Rendezvous with Tehran Posted By Claudia Rosett

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/kofi-annans-rendez-vous-with-tehran/

Iran welcomes a visit from the incompetent leader who does business with dictators.

The United Nations and the Arab League recently added a new layer of trouble to the agony and dangers of the Middle East by appointing as their joint special envoy to Syria none other than former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

The charitable view: Annan’s appointment represented the triumph of amnesia over experience. During the heyday of Annan’s signature UN scandal — the Oil-for-Food program for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq — I spent a lot of time trying to figure out whether Annan was corrupt or simply incompetent and indifferent to his own failures. Given the staggering dimensions of the graft-permeated, multi-billion dollar trainwreck of the Iraq relief program for which Annan was the chief administrator, there was really no third way, apart from perhaps some mix of crookedness and ineptitude. And given that the UN’s own “independent inquiry” into the program reported finding no evidence of corrupt dealings by Annan, we must consider him officially exonerated on that front; this leaves the conclusion that he was long ago promoted far beyond his real level of competence. Indeed, the UN’s own probe reached findings that he had done a lousy job: he had failed to provide “adequate oversight” of his handpicked staff; he had failed to ensure the basic aims of the sanctions on Iraq; and his performance “fell short of the standards that the United Nations Organization should strive to maintain.”

No Attention for Daylight Highway Stabbing in Alabama Posted By J. Christian Adams

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2012/04/10/no-attention-for-daylight-highway-stabbing-in-alabama/

A black motorcycle gang attacks a white truck driver. No arrests, no media. See also: The Birmingham News now finds the story newsworthy

A frightening event happened March 28 on an Alabama highway. The event has received no national attention apart from a lone story in the Macon Beacon in Macon, Mississippi. Not only was the event frightening, but the response — or lack thereof — by Alabama law enforcement authorities was almost as frightening. The local media, including the Birmingham News, failed to cover the shocking attack. With the flurry of national media attention the Trayvon Martin killing has received, why hasn’t the daylight stabbing of Nick Stokes received any attention?

Your first guess might be right.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11769/pub_detail.asp
In many ways, the worst aspect of environmentalism is why Greens not only feel free to terrorize children with doomsday scenarios, but feel compelled to do so.

I have been reviewing books for some fifty years and with the publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in 1962 and books such as Paul Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb” have been offering scenarios intended to move people and governments to take action that, in retrospect, were based on bad “science” and absurd doomsday predictions.

If you were fooled by global warming, they are counting on you to be fooled again by “sustainability,” their reworking of Marx’s communism in the form of a grandiose scheme to control all of the Earth’s bounty. In June the United Nations will hold a Rio+20 conference that will declare that governments exist to ensure “sustainable well-being and happiness.” The Declaration of Independence offers the opportunity to pursue happiness. It does not guarantee it, nor does it suggest that it is government’s job to provide it.

A key element of the Green’s endless indoctrination schemes has been to reach children, the most vulnerable among us and for this reason our schools have been turned into Green prisons where their version of the Earth is pumped into the minds of children here and around the world.

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11. Pope marks Easter with call for end to violence in Syria

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Why We Need Voter-ID Laws Now – Voter fraud is a scandal, and the attorney general can’t look away anymore.
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American Universities Infected by Foreign Spies Detected by FBI
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Obama administration diverts $500M to IRS to implement healthcare reform law
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Woof: R.I. Democrat Introduces Lap-Dog Legislation
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Extradition of Abu Hamza and four others for terrorism offences can go ahead
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Another GSA official placed on leave in spending controversy

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11766/pub_detail.asp
On June 30, 1973, Dwight Elliott Stone, a 24- year-old plumber’s assistant, became the last man conscripted into the United States Army. With the Viet Nam War winding down, President Richard Nixon ended the draft after years of complaints over its inequities. The all-volunteer force that followed has kept this nation supplied with manpower for almost 40 years, through almost 30 years of peace and ten years of war.

Ask any high ranking American military officer if they are in favor of reinstating a national military draft and the answer would probably be “No thank you.” The common thread is that there are enough challenges training and motivating troops in the face of extended deployments in two protracted wars. Dealing with some conscripts who don’t want to be there at all only adds to their already impressive workload. And it’s hard to argue with success. The nation’s all-volunteer service has given the United States perhaps the most motivated, effective and professional military in its 235-year history.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

A few days after September 11 I saw a quote from Gunter Grass on a Manhattan lamppost. In those dark days, the lampposts and walls that weren’t covered in missing persons posters were decorated with the hysterical pamphleteering of the left urging us to blame ourselves for the attacks. The quote has long since been lost to memory, buried under smoke and ash, a green parrot perched on an empty staircase and crowds thronging on foot across the bridge.
The quote itself, like the latest Grassian screed, does not matter. Grass, like Gandhi and King, was one of the favorite go-to guys for the left’s sticky sheets of paper. When you want to write a suicide note, then you reach for a line from Sylvia Plath or Emily Dickinson, but when you want to write a national or civilizational suicide note, there’s always Gunter Grass.

As a writer, Gunter Grass is a blacksmith, hammering together graceless and shapeless lumps that aren’t good for much except hitting people over the head. Take his latest masterpiece which has for a brief shining moment gotten people outside Germany and Sweden to mention his name in conversation. You don’t have to know German to recognize that, “Es ist das behauptete Recht auf den Erstschlag der das von einem Maulhelden unterjochte” is not exactly Die Lorelei. In a fitting irony the author of the Tin Drum has a tin ear.

Like Die Lorelei’s protagonist, Gunter Grass writes about being filled with unnameable emotions, but instead of seeing water nymphs combing their hair while ship captains ram their boats into the rocks, Grass is attempting to impress audiences with his bold struggle against Jewish accusations of bigotry to forewarn us about the threat of the Jewish state.

Netanyahu does not look much like a Rhine Maiden, but there is something about the Jewish state that drives European leftists to crash their ships against the rocks more reliably than any water nymph. No sooner does Israel buy a German submarine, than Gunter Grass leaves off staring at the Rhine Maidens to write a screed denouncing the Jews and their submarines.

Grass is a worse poet than Hitler was a painter and in an asymmetrical competition, the Fuhrer would have to edge out Gunter. But as writers they are both equally bad. “Was Gesagt Werden Muss” is a sort of compressed Mein Kampf, chronicling Gunter Grass’ own Kampf in a more concise form. It reeks of the same stylistic inadequacies, the stench of self-righteousness mingled with self-pity. Like Hitler’s postcard paintings, it is exactly the sort of tacky art that a Nazi would make.