RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://melaniephillips.com/why-iran-will-not-come-to-its-senses War with Iran is a truly fearsome prospect.

YES..THE WEST’S CULTURAL HUBRIS INCLUDES THE FAILURE TO RECOGNIZE THAT ISLAM IS ON AN INEXORABLE MARCH TO CONQUER AND SUBDUE…IT IS NOT ONLY IRAN…..RSK
“What really threatens to bring the west to its knees is its own cultural hubris. Refracting everything in the world through the prism of its unshakeable faith in universal reason, it is incapable of recognising or understanding religious fanaticism – and insists instead upon treating the fanatic as a rational actor. Ironically, it is this belief in reason which has led the west to behave so irrationally in refusing to acknowledge the evidence of the mortal threat to itself posed by Iran — and that there is no alternative to force if it is to be stopped. And now, alas, we’re about to discover the consequences.”

Its likely consequences would include attacks on US air bases from thousands of Iranian missiles, the unleashing of terrorist attacks within the US and Europe, the rocketing of Israeli towns from the tens of thousands of missiles trained on Israel from Lebanon, the closing of the Straits of Hormuz thus paralysing western oil supplies, and doubtless other horrors.

But however fearsome this prospect, that of a nuclear-armed Iran is worse. The consequences are simply insupportable.

http://news.yahoo.com/un-nuclear-inspection-gets-under-way-iran-114616187.html

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — U.N. nuclear inspectors began a critical mission to Iran on Sunday to probe allegations of a secret atomic weapons program amid escalating Western economic pressures and warnings about safeguarding Gulf oil shipments from possible Iranian blockades.

The findings from the three-day visit could greatly influence the direction and urgency of U.S.-led efforts to rein in Iran’s ability to enrich uranium — which Washington and allies fear could eventually produce weapons-grade material. Iran has declined to abandon its enrichment labs, but claims it only seeks to fuel reactors for energy and medical research.

The International Atomic Energy Agency team is likely to visit an underground enrichment site near the holy city of Qom, 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Tehran, which is carved into a mountain as protection from possible airstrikes. Earlier this month, Iran said it had begun enrichment work at the site, which is far smaller than the country’s main uranium labs but is reported to have more advanced equipment.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/289549/myth-gop-stinginess-andrew-c-mccarthy
The Myth of GOP Stinginess
Obama is driving off the cliff, but Republicans filled the tank.

Mitch McConnell wanted you to know he was livid on Thursday. The Senate was about to Greece the wheels for adding yet another trillion and change to President Obama’s yet-again tapped-out credit card. “More spending, more debt,” brayed the minority leader. “That’s what we’ve gotten from this administration.” Well, no, Senator, that’s what we’ve gotten from you.

Yes, I know, Obama is the one driving us off the cliff. But as McConnell and his fellow Republicans are well aware, he couldn’t have filled his tank without them — and they are the guys who got us halfway up the summit before handing the president the car keys. No one is falling for this week’s debt-increase “disapproval” charade, the stage for which was set by last summer’s sleight-of-hand, when Republicans agreed to borrow another $2.4 trillion. As if to prove that Obama has not cornered the market on cynicism, the GOP apparently feels the need to insult your intelligence while it helps our latter-day Robin Hood take from the unborn to give to the insatiable.

For the record, it was Republicans who nearly doubled the national debt during the Bush years — increasing it by almost $5 trillion dollars. Some context: It had taken the nation over 200 years to accumulate roughly the same amount of debt rung up from 2001 through 2008 — a time during most of which, besides holding the White House, Republicans held the Senate (with McConnell in the leadership, first as whip and later as leader) and the House (with now-speaker John Boehner in the leadership, first as a committee chairman, then as leader).

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/289543/state-our-union-broke-mark-steyn
The State of Our Union Is Broke
Obama calls for more of the unaffordable same.

Had I been asked to deliver the State of the Union address, it would not have delayed your dinner plans:

“The State of our Union is broke, heading for bankrupt, and total collapse shortly thereafter. Thank you and goodnight! You’ve been a terrific crowd!”

I gather that Americans prefer something a little more upbeat, so one would not begrudge a speechwriter fluffing it up by holding out at least the possibility of some change of fortune, however remote. Instead, President Obama assured us at great length that nothing is going to change, not now, not never. Indeed the Union’s state — its unprecedented world-record brokeness — was not even mentioned. If, as I was, you happened to be stuck at Gate 27 at one of the many U.S. airports laboring under the misapprehension that pumping CNN at you all evening long somehow adds to the gaiety of flight delays, you would have watched an address that gave no indication its speaker was even aware that the parlous state of our finances is an existential threat not only to the nation but to global stability. The message was, oh, sure, unemployment’s still a little higher than it should be, and student loans are kind of expensive, and the housing market’s pretty flat, but it’s nothing that a little government “investment” in green jobs and rural broadband and retraining programs can’t fix. In other words, more of the unaffordable same.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view.bg?articleid=1399069&format=text

Who’s Mitt Romney hiring as his top advisers — Hugo Chavez and Kim Jong Un?

According to NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, a “top Romney adviser” says that if Mitt loses Florida on Tuesday, “we’re going to have to try to reinvent the smoke-filled room which has been democratized by all these primaries and come up with someone as an alternative to Newt Gingrich.”

Finally — a Republican campaigning against the scourge of democracy! First we’ll go back to the good old days of the “smoke-filled room,” then we’ll bring back Prohibition and get rid of women’s suffrage, too!

Personally I can’t think of a better way to be perceived as an entitled elitist than to have your supporters announce that, unless you win, the voting shouldn’t count. And it’s not just Romney’s team.

Establishment Republicans are in “full panic mode,” as Newt called it yesterday, filling the press with hopeful speculation about a “brokered convention.” That’s when no candidate has won a majority of delegates at the ballot box and the GOP insiders get to pick who they want.

Smearing Newt: Taking Names for 2016
http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/

I never thought I’d see so many purported conservative writers, and once proud conservative websites, shilling for Mitt Romney. Michael Graham of WTKK-FM in Boston certainly isn’t one of them. He has “Smoke Gets In Mitt’s Guise” in today’s Boston Herald:

After the electoral fiascoes of ’06 and ’08, it wasn’t the Washington GOP that turned things around. It was the conservative base and the Tea Party. They helped elect Sen. Scott Brown here and handed the House back to the GOP.

And now party bosses wonder why the base refuses to take our “Mitt medicine” and do as we’re told. Maybe it’s because we’re tired of losing.

That’s the real message Republican voters are trying to send. No more losing politely with some moderate squishy candidate who cares more about what East Coast elites think of him than conservative voters do.

You really want to stop Newt? It’s simple. Dump Mitt. Stop whining about Gingrich winning, stop flogging the GOP’s “designated establishment loser of 2012″ and back someone else.

Graham predicts that if Romney is nominated, he will lose. Which brings me to the taking names part.

Obviously if Romney wins the nomination, only the irrational wouldn’t prefer a Romney presidency to an even more radicalized second Obama term. But if Graham is right, that Romney can’t beat Obama, then we need to hold those in the conservative movement accountable that shilled so. . . demonically for Mitt. We need to remember who they were, and hold them accountable.

Holding them accountable means ignoring them the next time.

It won’t be hard to find them. Elliot Abrams can top the list. There are many many more. Keep the list handy in 2016. When we hear from the Dole-over-Gramm crowd the next time, or the McCain-over-Huck corner, we can check to see if they were part of the Mitt-over-Newt establishment panic of 2012, and appropriately disregard them in 2016.

Of course it is not too late to disregard them now, particularly those who cling to an obsolete linear political model from a generation ago. A candidate does not become more electable the closer they are to the center. Favorable coverage on NBC Nightly News no longer swings elections. In today’s polarized political landscape, the opposite may be true. A candidate that creates no excitement, even if nicely positioned in the non-offensive middle, cannot win. It is a lesson some conservatives have yet to learn, particularly inside the Beltway.

Tolerant Dutch eye burqa ban The Associated Press Friday, January 27, 2012 News The Dutch Cabinet moved a step closer Friday to banning the burqa, making good on an election promise that is largely symbolic but has broad public support. Read more… Read more at: http://times247.com/ Syria too violent for Hamas leader Reuters Friday, January 27, […]

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=255347

Israel’s diplomatic reaction to recent charges that its water policy is racist exposes a preference for passivity over preemption. Water reveals a new apartheid in the Middle East. The 450,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank use as much or more water than some 2.3 million Palestinians… even if only a few dare to use the word, all indications are that the Middle East is the scene of a new apartheid…. And in this situation, water is a particular element of conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. – Excerpt from the French parliamentary report on “The Geopolitics of Water”

My most recent columns have been devoted to analyzing Israel’s public diplomacy, the reasons for its manifest ineptitude, and the mechanisms that produce this abysmal performance.

Last week, by coincidence, an illustrative example, underscoring precisely what I have been trying to convey, broke into the headlines.

It came in the form of a French parliamentary report on Israel’s water policy, authored by Jean Glavany, a Socialist member of the National Assembly, and accusing Israel of using water as an instrument of apartheid and oppression against the Palestinians.

The U.S. view of Israel’s Supreme Court http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1276 Much of the Israeli Left – including cultural and political leaders, journalists and academics – have in the last several months engaged in hyperbolic, defamatory claims that the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to destroy Israel’s democracy through proposed legislation, such as that aimed at […]

http://bigpeace.com/stzu/2012/01/27/penn-state-hosts-conference-promoting-campaign-to-boycott-divest-and-sanction-israel/

The University of Pennsylvania is the home of the 2012 “National Conference of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement” (BDS), whose origins lie in the actions of nations and groups including Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah. The three-day event will take place on the U Penn campus February 3-5 and feature a variety of speakers with antisemitic, extreme views, such as Ali Abunimah, who has stated, “none of the European and American leaders who constantly lecture about Holocaust denial will dare to admonish Netanyahu for his bald lies and omissions about Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.”