RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/371997/print

But the Pentagon has chosen a path that may buy some time.

Far-called our navies melt away —
On dune and headland sinks the fire —
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget — lest we forget!

— Rudyard Kipling, “Recessional” (1897)

Kipling lamented the decline of British power, a decline that contributed to the outbreak of World War I. But the decline of British power was not intended. In contrast to the British case, the Obama administration appears to be intentionally pursuing a policy of American decline. Unlike his predecessors from both parties since World War II, President Obama has embarked on a grand strategy that seems to relegate the United States to the status of just “one among many.” The president has firmly rejected the idea of American exceptionalism and the status of the United States as the “indispensable nation” that must provide the “public good” of security. His actions with regard to the domestic economy have also made it difficult, if not impossible, for the United States to increase defense spending in the future if such a response becomes necessary. This is a radical shift and a dangerous one.

The foreign-policy failures of the Obama administration are legion: the risible Russian “reset” that has enabled Vladimir Putin to strut about as a latter-day czar; the betrayal of allies, especially in Central Europe, not to mention Israel; snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq by failing to achieve a status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) that would help to keep Iraq out of the Iranian orbit; the muddled approach to Afghanistan; our feckless policy — or lack of policy — regarding Iranian nuclear weapons, not to mention Libya and Benghazi as well as Syria.

President Obama has said that he was elected to end wars, not to start them, as if wars were ends in themselves, not means. But ending wars is no virtue if the chance for success has been thrown away, as it was in Iraq.

Now comes the latest defense budget to validate the view that President Obama seeks nothing less than American decline. The Department of Defense has absorbed substantial reductions in recent years. In an attempt to preempt defense-spending cuts that did not reflect strategic considerations, former secretary of defense Robert Gates initiated some $900 billion in reductions.

During his recent visit to Indonesia, Secretary of State John Kerry delivered 5,957 words on so-called “global warming.” As he told students at Jakarta’s American Cultural Center on February 16: “Terrorism, epidemics, poverty, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction — all challenges that know no borders — the reality is that climate change ranks right up there with every single one of them.” Kerry added, “Climate change can now be considered another weapon of mass destruction, perhaps even the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.” He continued: “The science of climate change is leaping out at us like a scene from a 3D movie.”

Meanwhile, in the nation that Kerry represents, snow coated 49 of the 50 United States, including Mount Mauna Kea in Hawaii; only Florida escaped. The morning of February 18 brought snow to the sidewalks of New York, which were already icy from a February 15 snowstorm — the sixth in one week. That blizzard, in turn, arrived barely a day after the previous blast, which dumped snow from Georgia to Maine, toppled power lines, left at least a half million Americans in the dark, and killed 25 people.

After six feet of snow pounded mountains in Colorado in recent days, three avalanches have devoured four people. These snow slides have been “breaking trees that have been there a long time,” the Colorado Avalanche Information Center’s Brian Lazar told the Washington Post. “This is a good indication that avalanches are running bigger than they have.” So far this winter, avalanches have killed 15 individuals.

Two polar vortices lately have made New Orleans feel like Chicago with flying beads. The Great Lakes are now 85 percent frozen. “Average ice cover at this point in the season is 35 percent,” the Michigan Daily reports. “The current levels are the highest since 1979, when the lakes were almost 95 percent covered.” Lake Erie already is at that level; Lake Huron is nearly 96 percent frozen.

Cold rain and snow have cancelled some 87,000 flights since December 1. That’s a record since the Transportation Department started tracking scrapped airline departures in the winter of 1987.

Americans who awoke on cold airport floors probably ground their molars as they looked up and saw Kerry pontificating on TV screens near their departure gates. It must have been equally galling for Americans to shovel their snowy driveways and then hear Obama declare in drought-ravaged Los Baños, Calif., on February 14: “Unless and until we do more to combat carbon pollution that causes climate change, this trend is going to get worse. And the hard truth is even if we do take action on climate change, carbon pollution has built up in our atmosphere for decades.” Obama ominously added: “The planet is slowly going to keep warming for a long time to come.”

True, the Golden State has been cursed with scarce rain lately (and, conversely, blessed with toasty sunshine that allowed one to bike comfortably in shorts and then enjoy Christmas dinner in Los Angeles while wearing a Madras shirt). But the Endangered Species Act has aggravated matters.

Congress should deter Iran’s nuclear ambitions by authorizing, now, the president to use military action.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/371512/authorize-force-now-robert-p-george-michael-stokes-paulsen

The six-month “interim” agreement between Iran and the U.S. and other nations on Iran’s further development of its nuclear capacity has now gone into effect. Many Americans of both political parties believe it is a bad deal — one that will not lead to a suspension of Iran’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. The Israelis and the Saudis agree with them. We too have grave doubts.

What if the skeptics are right? We had better think that possibility through very carefully — and do it now. President Obama and key leaders in Congress have stated that the acquisition of nuclear arms by Iran is unacceptable. The president has assured the public, and our allies, that he will not let it happen. If the president is speaking truthfully on this matter, then the possibility of the failure of the “interim” deal means that the United States must be prepared to deploy military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear-development sites.

No American wants that to become necessary. Yet is there any reason to suppose that, if it does, the constitutional debates over presidential authority to take military action will be any more helpful than the embarrassment attending President Obama’s “red-line-already-crossed,” on-again, off-again handwringing over the use of military force against the Assad regime in Syria this past September? Can anyone fail to imagine Iran’s leaders chortling at the sight of America’s Congress debating a resolution authorizing the use of military force, all the while that Iran takes advantage of the time to prepare to defend its weapons against a U.S.-led attack?

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/371961/print

When entrenched interests face competition, wealth and opportunity can skyrocket.

Down with stakeholders.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has come out against affordable health care for kids. Retail medical clinics — at drugstores, Walmarts, etc. — are cropping up across the nation, thanks in part to the expected longer waiting times and out-of-pocket expenses stemming from Obamacare. And the pediatricians don’t like it. “While retail clinics may be more convenient and less costly, the AAP said they are detrimental to the concept of a ‘medical home,’ where patients have a personal physician who knows them well and coordinates all their care,” reported the Wall Street Journal. You say “medical home,” I say locked-in customers. Tomayto-tomahto.

The pediatricians have a point, albeit a weak one. You can’t say the same about teachers’ unions, whose top priorities are to take care of their members, even when such care comes at the expense of students. In New York City, the passion from teachers’ unions is all aimed at pay raises, killing charter schools, and keeping rules that make it harder to get rid of incompetents, criminals, and even, occasionally, sexual predators.

In Michigan, until reforms from Republican leaders kicked in, the Service Employees International Union, with the help of state Democrats, claimed parents of disabled kids were “union members” just so the union could skim “dues” from Medicaid payments to parents who served as their kids’ healthcare providers.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/372007/why-republicans-need-tea-party-david-horowitz

Can the marriage between the Tea Party and the GOP survive?

My answer is: It better. The White House is occupied by a lifelong anti-American radical who has done more to bankrupt this nation’s economy, take us down as a military power, and destroy individual liberty than anyone would have thought possible in January 2009 when he took office. And it’s worse than that. Obama is the head of a Democratic party that has moved so far to the left over the last 46 years that it has become anti–free market, anti-individualist, anti-constitutionalist, and unready to defend America’s sovereign interests at home and abroad. We cannot afford to let such a party run our government for another four or eight years. The world cannot afford it.

So how do we hold together the conservative coalition opposing this national suicide? How do we make this marriage survive? First of all, by recognizing that the basic difference between the Tea Party and the Republican party is a matter of tactics and temperament, not policy and ideology. To understand what I mean by this, one has to go back to the flashpoint that has made the possibility of a Republican schism a topic of the day: the famous alleged government shutdown by tea-party hero Ted Cruz. I probably should acknowledge here that I am a huge fan of what the Tea Party represents, though not always what it does. I believe the emergence of the Tea Party is the most important political development in conservatism in the last 25 years, and is possibly the last best hope for our country.

The government shutdown was the alleged result of Senator Cruz’s filibuster of a continuing resolution to fund the government. In fact, the House had passed a resolution to fund the government but not Obamacare. In the Senate, however, Majority Leader Harry Reid stripped the Obamacare-funding ban from the bill. Cruz conducted a one-man filibuster to express his opposition, both to Reid and to the Republicans who voted to fund Obamacare rather than join him. And so Republicans attacked each other instead of the real culprits.

Ignorance or Enlightenment: The Islam-Israel Conflict

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/61370

The Arab and Muslim total war against Israel appears to be a war without end. This is why it is not accurate to describe it as the Arab-Israel conflict, nor is it correct to label it the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It is, in reality, the Islam-Israel conflict and, like the seventeenth century Thirty Years War, it waxes and wanes but is nevertheless devastating and has ground on for far longer.

The irrevocable Islamic and Koranic injunction upon all Muslims is to wage relentless war against any non-Muslim nation state that exists within what Islam decrees as the Dar al-Islam (the House of Islam). Wherever the Muslim foot has trod triumphal in the name of Allah, that territory is considered eternally Islamic land. If it is lost, then it enters the Dar al-Harb (the House of War) and must be retaken and the population either forcibly converted to Islam or exterminated.

It is not only Israel, the Jewish state, that is warred and aggressed against by the followers of the “religion of peace” but all lands that have been lost to erstwhile Muslim invasion and occupation: They include, Spain, Portugal, Sicily, parts of France, Hungary, Austria, the Balkans, Greece, southern Russia – all lands considered to be in the Dar al Harb.

It is not by chance that much of Europe is slipping and sliding under the orbit of Islamic Sharia law for vast numbers of Muslim immigrants, allowed through slavish adherence to the twin gods of diversity and multiculturalism into Europe, are the present day Islamic advance guard for the re-conquest of much of the European continent.

http://www.d-intl.com/2014/02/23/hollande-government-chokes-on-gender-theory/?lang=en
Hollande government chokes on gender theory
The French government’s attempts to have old-fashioned pink and blue sexual stereotypes replaced with a basket of new kinky stereotypes celebrating same-sex parents, homosexuals, transvestites and the like – have run into trouble.

PARIS. France’s Socialist Hollande government, mired in unprecedented depths of unpopularity, was caught red-handed with its latest social engineering experiment: a pilot project in some 600 kindergartens based on gender theory. The issue had been stewing ever since the passage last spring of the same-sex marriage law that granted homosexuals the right to marry and raise children in wholesome families. Adoption rights are extended, children born in previous heterosexual relationships can be cuddled in recomposed matrimonially united 2-mother or 2-father families.

The implied promise of normalization of children brought into the world with the help of artificial insemination and womb rental and the eventual legalization of these methods in France rounded out the package. But widespread opposition to the indoctrination of male-female equality, starting with day care centers and kindergartens, has blocked the “social progress” momentum.

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/
The S&P 500 Index closed at 805.22 the day Barack Obama was inaugurated as President. On Friday the Index closed at 1836.25, for a gain of 128% over the past five years, reflecting an annual compounded gain of 18%. Why, then, do so many, including me, feel his policies are bad for the economic well-being of the country?

Over the same time frame – the five years of the Obama Administration – the prices of other asset classes rose as well. Gold (a harbinger of concern) is up 55%, crude oil (which we have in abundance) has risen 164% and copper has doubled. The CBOE Index has more than doubled. Corporate bonds have done exceptionally well, with the yield on High Yield bonds being roughly one third what they were on January 20, 2009. Somewhat contradictorily, the yields on Treasury Bills are half of what they were when Mr. Obama took the oath of office in January 2008. The principal culprit for the rise in asset prices has been interest rates that have been kept exceptionally low by an accommodative Federal Reserve. The consequence is a schizophrenic market, with a mixture of worry and speculation manifested in the rise in the prices of stocks, high yield bonds, gold and oil, while risk aversion is also very much alive, reflected in the exceptionally low yields on short term Treasury Bills.

We all know, of course, that the economic recovery has been feeble and that federal debt is considerably higher than it was five years ago – $5 trillion (or 30%) more today than it was at the end of fiscal 2009. The biggest problem for the economy has been a lack of jobs. While the stated unemployment rate has declined, the more meaningful number, as it actually reflects people working, is the labor participation rate, which has declined from 65.7% in January 2009 to 63% in January 2014, according to the BLS. Each one percent reflects about 1.5 million workers. Average incomes are lower than they were before the recession began. Total employment, as mentioned above, has declined, and income and wealth gaps have widened.

http://americanthinker.com/blog/2014/02/rep_john_conyers_honors_farrakhan_after_denouncing_his_anti-semitism.html
Rep. John Conyers honors Farrakhan after denouncing his anti-Semitism
Thomas Lifson
Rep. John Conyers, one of the founders of the Congressional Black Caucus and widely considered the dean of the African-Americans in Congress, bestowed a great honor on Louis Farrakhan over the weekend, by attending a three hour sermon before a crowd of 18,000 people in Detroit, sitting behind him and thereby implicitly endorsing his hateful message.

Conyers was already well-acquainted with Farrakhan’s hateful messages, having last year publicly condemned him. Caroline May writes in the Daily Caller:

Last May, Conyers attended another Farrakhan speech at the Fellowship Chapel in Detroit where the black nationalist leader said President Obama “surrounded himself with Satan,” talked about “Satanic Jew,” the “Synagogue of Satan,” and the like. Conyers ended up having to condemn his remarks.

“Last Friday, I attended a speech by Minister Louis Farrakhan at Fellowship Chapel in Detroit, Michigan. During this speech, Minister Farrakhan made unacceptable racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic statements, which I condemn in the strongest possible terms,” Conyers said at the time, adding that he believed the Nation of Islam Leader would be focused on Detroit revitalization efforts.

“The fact that Minister Farrakhan has engaged in important charitable work aimed at expanding economic opportunities for underserved communities does not excuse these statements,” he added. “I sincerely offer my apologies to my constituents and others who also may have been offended by the minister’s words.”

But hey, what’s a little Jew-hatred between friends? All is forgiven, to the extent that Conyers was willing to be pictured seated behind Farrakhan as he unleashed his message, less than a year later.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303880604579405450058012742#printMode

John Dingell announced on Monday that he plans to retire from the House of Representatives at the end of this Congress, and his initial parting shot came with unusual ill-grace. “I find serving in the House to be obnoxious,” the 87-year-old told the Detroit News. “It’s become very hard because of the acrimony and bitterness, both in Congress and in the streets.”

The Democrat from southeastern Michigan was first elected in 1955 and never served in the minority until after the GOP sweep of 1994. He was among those who, Congress after Congress, steadily built the modern administrative state with its vast powers to redistribute income and regulate to punish or reward companies.

In his political heyday as Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee in the 1980s, Mr. Dingell liked to boast that his writ extended to every corner of the American economy. He wasn’t far off. Yet when all economic and cultural questions become political, is it any wonder that politics becomes more acrimonious?

Mr. Dingell may have intended his “obnoxious” barb at the tea party and Americans angry with Washington, but most of those people don’t know how to maneuver through the corridors of power. They can’t afford to hire someone from “the Dingell bar,” the name adopted with an almost civic pride by the Washington lawyers who were well paid for representing businesses caught in the Dingell investigative cross-hairs. Many were his former staffers.

The “Dingell method,” another phrase from the era, was to conduct an investigation, selectively leak what his staff found to a newspaper and TV network (double the media points), then haul the poor business targets for a public grilling before the cameras. The journalists would win prizes for the appearance of enterprise. The CEOs would be advised by the Dingell bar to be obsequious and remorseful whether guilty or not. The acrimony was one-sided.