http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/288108/right-wrong-and-romney-andrew-c-mccarthy
Right, Wrong, and Romney By Andrew C. McCarthy
After Rudy Giuliani, my old boss, dropped out of the 2008 GOP presidential sweepstakes, I supported Mitt Romney. That was not a difficult choice for me. The former Massachusetts governor is a good man and he loves the country as is. That I wish he were more conservative is not a deal-breaker for me. I wished the same thing about Rudy. Mitt, like Rudy, would make a fine chief executive.
More to the point, the choice in a nomination contest is not candidate A versus one’s ideal nominee. It is candidate A versus candidates B, C, D, et al. On that score, the contest was no contest — Mitt was easily, in my mind, the best remaining in the field.
He may still be. He also may not. I’m not any less favorably inclined toward him than I was four years ago. It is silly, though, to portray as hypocrisy, or at least inconsistency, a reluctance to endorse today the same candidate one was happy to back the last go-round. This time around, B, C, D, and the rest are different. Not necessarily better, but different — most combining ringing positives with steep drawbacks, signal achievements with weighty baggage.
Allen West on the Marines Incident: ‘Shut Your Mouth, War Is Hell’ Daniel Halper
http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/blogs/allen-west-marines-incident-shut-your-mouth-war-hell_616699.html
Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a former Army lieutenant colonel, sends THE WEEKLY STANDARD an email commenting on the Marines’ video, and has given us permission to publish it.
“I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.
“All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq?
“The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.
“As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.”
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2002/Incoming-from-Ourselves.aspx
Granted, it’s not civil, palace etiquette, or, more important, U.S. military doctrine to urinate on battle-killed enemy fighters – in this case, three dead Taliban in Afghanistan. But could we just move on?
That’ll be the day. Get set for Abu Ghraib 2, a national wallow in a wholly manufactured and inflated evil, the kind of masochistic frolic our twisted elites, safe on their sound stages, find so extremely pleasurable. Get set for the exclusion of any and all context related to heat-of-battle conditions, battle fatigue or Taliban depredations. We have met the enemy and he is us, again – and thank God. Or is that thank Allah?
David Axelrod Tries to Re-Wright History Posted By Tom Blumer URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/david-axelrod-tries-to-re-wright-history/ President Barack Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, wants America to take the two-decade relationship between Obama, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and the Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC) on Chicago’s south side off the electoral issues table in the 2012 […]
An e-pal bltaverna reminds me:
Day in history
13 January 1898
Acting on behalf of Alfred Dreyfus, French influential novelist Emile Zola issued his famous “J’Accuse” letter in Clemenceau’s paper L’Aurore condemning the French establishment in the Dreyfus Affair.
In 1894 French Captain Dreyfus was falsely accused of spying for Prussia and convicted of treason in 1895. He was publicly degraded at the Military School Honour Court in front of 20,000 people and deported to Devil’s Island.
The conviction was exposed as an anti-Semitic plot by activists such as Zola.
Finally, in 1906, Dreyfus was exonerated of his charges and allowed back in the army.
http://www.ejpress.org/digest/news/
An Interview with Author Craig Shirley
In an interview last month with Accuracy in Media, historian Craig Shirley described how the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and World War II marked a transition for this country, and in doing so, he offered insights that are very relevant today.
“This is a story about a country that goes from being a country of the past to becoming a country of the future, and all the things that spring out of it, big and small,” said Shirley. “The big, obviously, is that we become a permanent internationalist country. We never again retreat to isolationism, as we did after the Spanish-American War, and as we did after World War I. After we defeat Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan, we then rebuild them and make them into allies under the Marshall Plan and Douglas MacArthur. We establish military bases around the world—that was unthinkable five years before, that we would have military bases all around the world. We had military bases in the Philippines, and several other locations, but those were the exceptions, not the rule.”
One Sinai – complete By David Isaac
http://shmuelkatz.com/wordpress/?p=849&Source=email
Message from High Commissioner for Palestine Herbert Samuel. Will Israel receive one Sinai – complete?
When the first High Commissioner for Palestine, Herbert Samuel, took over the administration of Palestine from Sir Louis Bols of the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration, he signed a note which read: “Received from Major-General Sir Louis J. Bols K.C.B. — One Palestine, complete.”
Now that the Islamists are set to dominate Egypt’s legislature, will Israel receive one Sinai – complete? That’s the question Caroline Glick asks in a recent Jerusalem Post column. The Egypt-Israel treaty “is effectively null and void,” she writes. “Will the U.S. act in accordance with its role as guarantor of the peace and demand that the new Egyptian government give Sinai back to Israel?”
U.S. guarantees, as the past shows, are not worth the paper they’re written on – when they can find the paper, that is. As Shmuel writes in “The world is full of empty promises” (The Jerusalem Post, April 30, 1993):
In June 1967, when the neighboring Arab states prepared for their again-advertised plan of genocide against the still tiny and vulnerable Israel … U.S. president Johnson could not find the 1957 document which recorded a pledge to aid Israel if Egypt closed the Tiran Straits, which it had done on May 23. …
In her day, Prime Minister Golda Meir said (in reply to the suggestion of guarantees by an American diplomat): “Guarantees? You speak of guarantees? By the time you got here, we wouldn’t be here.”
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1769/pub_detail.asp 1. VIDEO: Obama Plays Footsies with Our Enemies! 2. VIDEO: Brave Afghan Girls Take to Gym, Practice Boxing in Defiance of Taliban Threats 3. VIDEO: Al Gore: Global Warming Not Being Campaign Issue Puts ‘Civilization At Risk’ 4. How many have to die? With Syria toll rising, Obama’s choice to stay out is arbitrary […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11222/pub_detail.asp
In yet another “lone wolf” Islamic extremist attack, a young man claiming to be a Muslim allegedly shot and broke the windows of businesses in Gadsden, Alabama, Sunday morning. The motive for the vandalism was to ambush any and all responding police officers, killing as many of them as possible
Twenty-One year old Luis Ibarra-Hernandez, a resident of Albertville, Alabama, was officially charged in court on Tuesday with attempted murder, according to a report released by the Gadsden Police Department.
Gadsden police officers had responded to the Sunday morning alarm calls for glass breakage after the glass doors shattered from the suspect’s gunshots.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11223/pub_detail.asp
http://newmediajournal.us/indx.php/item/4174)
A little publicized political story, if played out to the satisfaction of California Democrats (read: Progressives), would not only set the stage for a politically motivated raid on the US Treasury, it would afford President Obama, his administration and political operatives plausible deniability in any “coincidental” benefit to Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign. And if you don’t think that has David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett and David Plouffe salivating, you haven’t been paying attention for the past three years.
According to a report by The Hill.com:
“A long list of California Democrats is urging President Obama to name a new housing regulator using a controversial recess appointment.
“In a letter to the president, more than two dozen House members said the temporary head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Edward DeMarco, simply hasn’t done enough to help struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure. The lawmakers are pushing the president to name a permanent director ‘immediately.’
