RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.melaniephillips.com/a-fearful-symmetry

What is happening in American politics is simply astounding. Here is an incumbent President whose approval ratings are rightly dire. He is the most far-left, dangerous and damaging President the US has ever known. In office, he has amply fulfilled the worst fears of those like myself who warned well before he was even elected that his agenda was to neuter America’s influence abroad and to extend the reach of the state into people’s lives at home.

In foreign policy, he has made the world an immeasurably more dangerous place by strengthening America’s enemies and dumping on its allies (even vitiating the sacrifice of America’s own soldiers in Iraq, now poised to descend into world-threatening anarchy because of the militarily illiterate and defeatist withdrawal of US forces from there). With the US economy tanking so disastrously, one might think that such a President offered an open goal for the Republicans. Yet the amazing fact is that the Republicans just have not got a credible candidate. One after the other, they have been exposed as either embarrassingly third rate or off-the-wall or both.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/22/us-newyork-security-idUSTRE7BL21820111222

Nearly half of extremist plots in NYC aim at Jewish targets

(Reuters) – New York City police boost security at synagogues during the holiday season because nearly half the plots to attack the city in the past 20 years were aimed at Jewish targets, law enforcement sources said on Thursday.

Since al Qaeda militants flew hijacked airliner attacks into New York’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the city considers itself a prime target and authorities traditionally increase security during the busy holiday season.

While law enforcement sources said there was no information to indicate New York would be targeted this holiday season, authorities are still wary after a Nigerian man tried to bring down a Detroit-bound passenger plane on Christmas Day in 2009 with a bomb hidden in his underpants.

New analyses from the New York Police Department (NYPD) Intelligence Division showed that since 1992, eight of 18 plots to attack the city targeted Jewish institutions or Jewish people in New York, law enforcement sources said.

The intelligence analyses also found that New York City had at some point been home to 44 extremist militants since 2002.

Of those, 43 were captured, while Samir Khan, editor of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s Inspire magazine, was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen in September.

In the past decade New York City has developed extensive intelligence and counterterrorism divisions. In response to the new intelligence reports, New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said: “Fortunately the NYPD has gotten close to (the extremists) without their knowledge.”

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Jerry Norton)

Dear e-pals: The death of North Korea’s dictator has evoked a flurry of predictions and suppositions. How about a little historical perspective?

“On July 27, 1953 the 38th parallel remained the front line of both north and south and a final armistice was signed. The Americans whose determination and military prowess had decimated and dispirited North Korea, had the ability and will to “roll back Communism” but instead, they rolled back the war.

July 27th, 2011 was the 58 th anniversary of that armistice which ended a war that resulted in the deaths of 54,229 American troops, with 103,248 wounded, 8,200 missing in action, and roughly 4,000 captured. The devastation in South Korea included 227,800 killed, 717,100 wounded, 43,000 missing, and an untold number captured and turned over to China.”

please read http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.257/pub_detail.asp

Exclusive: The Legacy of an Unfinished War

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

There is one fundamental element that is absolutely necessary for an isolationist foreign policy. Isolation. Isolationism without physical isolation is as much good as belligerence without an army to back it up.

American isolationism might have been feasible during WW1 when its neighbors were either friendly or no threat, there was no danger from the Pacific and a fleet crossing the Atlantic seemed unlikely. Though it wasn’t so unlikely even then.

As far back as 1897 and long before any American involvement in Europe, Operational Plan Three called for shelling New York and seizing parts of Virginia, as a staging base for attacks on Washington and Baltimore. Plans were drawn up in Germany for the occupation of Boston and Philadelphia.

Vice-Admiral August Thomsen wrote, “At the moment every thinking German officer is occupied with the consequences of a belligerent conflict between Germany and the United States of America.”

IN THE BRONX “BUSHWA” WAS THE POLITE WAY TO SAY BULL…IT….AND IN THIS COLUMN MAY, AFTER PRESENTING THE FACTS AND THE HISTORY, JUST RECYLES THE SPOOR….IF ONLY THEY BEHAVE AND PROMISE TO BE NICE TO ISRAEL THEY CAN HAVE A STATE…..JUST LIKE GAZA….?….RSK
“What would be an alternative? To say straightforwardly to the Palestinians: “If you want to develop as a nation and live in a state of your own, we will help you. But our support is not unconditional: You must be willing to compromise. You must be willing to make peace with the Israelis, who will be your neighbors.”

The Case for Palestinian Nationalism Do Palestinians really support a two-state solution?
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/286446

http://news.yahoo.com/militant-hamas-moves-join-plo-umbrella-110943864.html

CAIRO (AP) — The Hamas militant group has agreed to join the Palestine Liberation Organization — a key step toward unifying the long-divided Palestinian leadership.

Hamas’ leader Khaled Mashaal on Thursday joined a committee that will prepare for elections to the PLO leadership.

Those elections are likely years away but Mashaal’s move means he will work with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, head of the rival Fatah party.

The PLO is the umbrella group of the Palestinian independence movement.

Thursday’s development is an important step toward reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah — which have been split since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.

Separate elections in the West Bank and Gaza for a unified parliament are tentatively set for next year.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/12/on_the_holiness_of_jerusalem_in_judaism_and_in_islam.html

“These days, the never-ending cry for a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital surely contains a trace of the claim that the city is holy in Islam. But, essentially, the historic record shows that the actions and circumstances on which the claim is based aren’t very holy at all. In fact, by any standard of religious values in any society in the world, artificially imbuing a place with holiness, through wordplay and administrative sleight of hand, constitutes the very opposite of holiness.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204552304577112761003972028.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
It seemed improbable that the best-known American propagandist for our enemies could be near the top of the pack in the Iowa contest, but there it is.

Ron Paul’s supporters are sure of one thing: Their candidate has always been consistent—a point Dr. Paul himself has been making with increasing frequency. It’s a thought that comes up with a certain inevitability now in those roundtables on the Republican field. One cable commentator genially instructed us last Friday, “You have to give Paul credit for sticking to his beliefs.”

He was speaking, it’s hardly necessary to say, of a man who holds some noteworthy views in a candidate for the presidency of the United States. One who is the best-known of our homegrown propagandists for our chief enemies in the world. One who has made himself a leading spokesman for, and recycler of, the long and familiar litany of charges that point to the United States as a leading agent of evil and injustice, the militarist victimizer of millions who want only to live in peace.

http://times247.com/articles/new-epa-plant-rules-to-cost-9-6-billion
Obama’s new EPA rules carry $9.6 billion price tag

Read more at: http://times247.com/articles/new-epa-plant-rules-to-cost-9-6-billion

The Obama administration on Wednesday unveiled the first-ever standards to slash mercury emissions from coal-fired plants, a move aimed at protecting public health that critics say will kill jobs as plants shut down. …

The [EPA] rules will cost utilities about $9.6 billion annually.

Scott Segal, a lobbyist at Bracewell & Giuliani, said the rules will result in the loss of more than 1.4 million jobs by 2020 as utilities are forced to shut old coal-fired power plants. Read the original article at Reuters

U.S. could top Saudis, Russia as world’s top energy producer
It may surprise Americans who’ve lived through many years of dependence on foreign fuels, but in less than a decade the United States could pass its 1970s peak as an oil and natural gas producer. Read more…

Read more at: http://times247.com/
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http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11096/pub_detail.asp   “Go ask Osama bin Laden” has become the latest rally call for part of Barack Obama’s re-invented self. During the 2008 election, campaigning on a tough national security footing was too inconsistent with the liberal, anti-war, anti-Bush themes of “change” and “working with the international community.” In 2012, however, with little record to […]