RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/06/14/obama%e2%80%99s-presidency-and-the-pathologies-of-progressivism/print/

Obama’s presidency has failed miserably, but it has accomplished one thing: it has revealed for all to see the lethal pathologies of progressive ideology. This doesn’t mean progressivism will go away. We thought the New Democrat Bill Clinton had put progressive ideas to rest when he said that the era of big government was over, and then reformed welfare and cut government spending from 23.5% of GDP to 19.5%. Yet despite the success that followed his rejection of failed liberal policies, here we are in the fourth year of Obama’s term, saddled with $5 trillion in new debt, a stalled economy, a National Labor Relations Board carrying water for the unions, a blatantly politicized Department of Justice, and rapidly metastasizing entitlement programs. Meanwhile the president indulges in class-warfare rhetoric young a century ago, and calls for even more redistributionist deficit spending to benefit his political cronies and clients.

The worst economic recovery since World War II that Obama and the Democrats midwifed has exposed the failure of the notion that the government can create economic growth and wealth rather than merely expropriating it from the creative and productive, and that centralized planning and regulating by “experts” can more efficiently allocate resources than the free market does. But more important is the underlying idea of progressivism that Obama’s policies is predicated on: Perfect justice, prosperity, and equality are possible if enlightened elites are given the power to organize and run society according to “scientific” knowledge about human nature and behavior. For two centuries this hubristic idea has led to failure, misery, and murder on a vast scale, yet progressives continue to increase government power in order to create this impossible utopia. Obamacare is just the latest iteration of this frequently demonstrated fallacy that complex human behavior, which reflects the unpredictable free will of millions of unique individuals, can be organized, controlled and regimented in order to achieve some dream-world utopia. That progressives still cling to this exploded idea despite the evidence of history and a disintegrating E.U. shows just how reactionary and blinkered they are.

http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/ In my post over the weekend about the folly of pushing for a special prosecutor on the Obama administration’s intelligence leaks to the New York Times, I argued that holding the president politically accountable is far more important than indicting the leakers; therefore, Congress should do its job and shine intense light on this […]

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/06/11/homeland-security-funded-study-on-the-hunt-for-tea-party-terrorism/?singlepage=true

In an era of agenda-driven academic research, who watches the watchers? Or more accurately, who gets to designate and categorize the “objective” data? This is the question raised after examining a study and related dataset recently published by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland.

START was launched in 2005 with a $12 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security, and is recognized by DHS as one of its “Centers for Excellence.” In December, DHS announced it had renewed START’s funding to the tune of $3.6 million.

A recent START study titled “Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1970 to 2008” puts the “excellence” description in question. A press release announcing the report states the study concluded that nearly a third of all terrorist attacks between 1970 and 2008 occurred in just five major metropolitan areas. The study was based on a START database called “Profiles of Perpetrators of Terrorism in the United States,” and both the report and database are supported by the DHS Science and Technology Directorate’s Human Factors/Behavioral Sciences Division.

Reading through the study, some baffling issues arose. In Table 4 (p. 22), titled “Hot Spots of Religious Terrorism by Decade”, three “hot spot” areas — Los Angeles, Manhattan, and Wasco, Oregon (former home of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) — are identified: But there seems to be some data missing when it comes to known Islamic terrorist incidents in New York City and Los Angeles. The study shows no religious terrorism in Manhattan during the 1990s. How about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing? Or the 1994 Brooklyn Bridge Jewish student van shooting by Rashid Baz that killed 16-year-old Ari Halberstam after Baz heard a fiery anti-Jewish sermon at his local mosque? Or the 1997 Empire State Building observation deck shooting by Ali Abu Kamal that killed one tourist and injured six others before Kamal took his own life?

http://pjmedia.com/blog/eric-holder-slides-into-the-depths-of-race-politics/?print=1 The nation has seen more than a few odd attorneys general over the years. Among them have been the eccentric John Mitchell, Richard Nixon’s man at the Justice Department; Bill Clinton’s peculiar Janet Reno; and the personality-challenged John Ashcroft, who served under George W. Bush. Personal oddness or political partisanship is one thing, but […]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/13/obama-trade-document-leak_n_1592593.html

WASHINGTON — A critical document from President Barack Obama’s free trade negotiations with eight Pacific nations was leaked online early Wednesday morning, revealing that the administration intends to bestow radical new political powers upon multinational corporations, contradicting prior promises.The leaked document has been posted on the website of Public Citizen, a long-time critic of the administration’s trade objectives. The new leak follows substantial controversy surrounding the secrecy of the talks, in which some members of Congress have complained they are not being given the same access to trade documents that corporate officials receive.

“The outrageous stuff in this leaked text may well be why U.S. trade officials have been so extremely secretive about these past two years of [trade] negotiations,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch in a written statement.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has been so incensed by the lack of access as to introduce legislation requiring further disclosure. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has gone so far as to leak a separate document from the talks on his website. Other Senators are considering writing a letter to Ron Kirk, the top trade negotiator under Obama, demanding more disclosure.

The newly leaked document is one of the most controversial of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. It addresses a broad sweep of regulations governing international investment and reveals the Obama administration’s advocacy for policies that environmental activists, financial reform advocates and labor unions have long rejected for eroding key protections currently in domestic laws.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/review-nothing-less-than-victory

The last engaging book I read on the means and ends of warfare before John Lewis’s was a 2009 abridged version of Winston Churchill’s The River War, originally published in 1899. Its original, full title included An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan. The term “reconquest” was misleading, because the Sudan had never before been “conquered” by the British, but was under the jurisdiction of Egypt, then a protectorate of Britain. Egypt was unable to deal militarily with the Dervish forces that meant to conquer it. It fell to Britain to extinguish the Mahdist or Islamic threat, which, unchecked, could well have spread from Egypt to the rest of North Africa and the Middle East.

General Herbert Kitchener was tasked with that formidable project. Churchill describes the meticulous and determined campaign he waged, which was not just a matter of sending an army into the desert wastes to fight fanatical tribesmen. It meant reforming the corrupt and ineffectual Egyptian government, rebuilding the Egyptian army and its Sudanese levies, building a railroad into enemy territory, and mastering the stupendous logistics of supplies and men. The stated objective was to erase the Mahdist regime as a military and political threat in the whole region. The climax of the campaign was the Battle of Omdurman in September 1898, in which the Dervish army was utterly decimated and routed.

In the end, over a year later, the successor of Mahdi Muhammad Ahmed, Abdallah ibn Muhammad, was killed and the remnants of his forces routed at the Battle of Umm Diwaykarat.

The Sudan Campaign had clear military and political objectives. The British government then had the will to take the necessary actions to destroy an enemy and discredit the ideology that moved it.

Churchill noted in The River War that, “The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.”

In short, Islam, like the Nazi, Fascist, and Shinto ideologies which compelled Germany, Italy, and Japan to invade other countries, must be repudiated by the aggressor and cease to be regarded by its adherents and converts as a feasible and desired ideology that fosters “peace.” This comports with the main theme of John David Lewis’s seminal work on the efficacious “warfighting” policies of the past, Nothing Less Than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History (Princeton University Press, 2010). That “great power” comes in many disguises. Lewis tackles some of them.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/from-russia-with-death

The low point of the American presidency over the past half-century wasn’t Watergate, which is almost trivial compared to the corruption of the Obama administration, from treasonous leaks of classified material to the Justice Department’s assault on honest elections. No, my fellow Americans, the lowest point of the presidency occurred a few months back when President Obama, caught by a microphone he didn’t know was hot, told Russia’s then-president, now prime-minister, Dimitry Medvedev to relay to strong-man Vladimir Putin a request for patience. Essentially, Obama said he needed time to fool the American people until the November elections then he could cut the deals that Putin wanted.

When an American president trusts Russia’s leaders more than he trusts our country’s voters, things in the Oval Office are rotten to a degree far beyond a bunch of clumsy burglars breaking into a campaign office. This is a betrayal that would have been unthinkable even to Bill Clinton.

Now we see the fruits of the poisonous seeds Obama planted yet again: Despite public pleas from Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, Moscow not only won’t help stop the slaughter in Syria, but is now supplying the Assad regime with additional attack helicopters-perfect weapons to employ against civilian neighborhoods that have no self-defense capabilities. Unlike our own attack helicopters, which emphasize precision, Russia’s helicopters, old and new, are built to maximize destruction.

http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2012/06/12/mohammed-zuhdi-jassers-koran/

THE GREATLY HOPED FOR MOSLEM “REFORMATION” WILL NEVER WITHOUT UNVARNISHED TRUTH AND HONEST APPRAISAL. JASSER DISSEMBLES TOO MUCH OF THE TIME TO BE A REAL “REFORMER.”RSK

Ignorant or Deceitful Regarding the Koranic Doctrines of Jihad and Dhimmitude?

Mohammed Zuhdi Jasser has just released his first book [2] with the understated title, A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith.

Dr. Jasser’s egomania aside, the striking disingenuousness which characterizes the book is epitomized by his summary comments [2] on the Koran which glibly dismiss multiple verses that sanction the jihad conquest of non-Muslims, including their subjugation and justified humiliation for a myriad of so-called “offenses.”

The Qur’an…is not actually a text that was written with the idea of conquering those of other faiths. Throughout the Qur’an, the debt to Christians and Jews, for their teachings and prophets, is acknowledged over and over again in their common origin from the God of Abraham.

First, Koran 3:67 and its classical exegesis (interpretation) thoroughly debunks Jasser’s uninformed or mendacious claim about ecumenical Islamic “indebtedness” to the shared Judeo-Christian ancestry of the Biblical Abraham. The seminal Koranic commentary Tafsir Al-Jalalayn [3] of Suyuti (and al-Mahalli), provides this definitive gloss on verse 3:67—notwithstanding Jasser’s ecumenical burbling—which affirms Islam’s triumphant supersessionism, vis a vis both Judaism and Christianity:

http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/13/china-owes-america-billions/?print=1 Neither President Obama nor Speaker John Boehner have said a word about the hundreds of billions of dollars that China owes America. Don’t they know about it? They arm-wrestle over the budget, the deficit and the debt ceiling, but they ignore a quick fix: get communist China to pay its debt to American citizens […]

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_print=1&x_context=2&x_outlet=54&x_article=2254 On Friday, June 8, 2012, The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed by Maen Rashid Areikat, “The Time for a Palestinian State Is Now,” so replete with falsehoods that it rightly could be called a work of fiction. According to the code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, “Analysis and commentary should […]