Monday, January 23, 2012

POLITICAL DIGEST 01/23/2012 CONSERVATIVE

I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree (or disagree) with every—or any—opinion in the posted article. Help your friends and relatives stay informed by passing the digest on. In some cases I post things sent to me by readers I might not have posted on my own, to get ideas circulating.

Excerpt: Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords announced on her website Sunday that she will resign from Congress this week to continue her recuperation from the brain injury she suffered when shot just over a year ago.

Libya could fall into 'bottomless pit', leader warns
Excerpt: Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the head of Libya's ruling National Transitional Council, warned on Sunday the country could be heading towards a "bottomless pit" after protesters stormed a government office in Benghazi when he was inside. A crowd demanding the resignation of the Libyan government smashed windows and forced their way into the NTC's local headquarters late on Saturday, in the most serious show of anger at the new authorities since Moammar Gadhafi was ousted. (The busting things up is easy and fun. The building of a modern nation based on values that allow advancement, like free institutions and property rights, is very hard. We were very lucky after our revolution to have men who believed in freedom. [Even now, protecting property rights, the basis of economic prosperity, is an on-going challenge for us.] No Arab nation has been able to do it. Eventually an autocrat will emerge. The only question is, how actively Anti-American will he be. ~Bob.)

Gingrich Wins SC … Media Help Big Time by Bernard Goldberg
Excerpt: You might figure Newt Gingrich was in a heap of trouble in South Carolina when his ex-wife Marianne told ABC News that he once said he wanted an open marriage. After all, South Carolina is a conservative state with a lot of evangelical Christian voters, who don’t go for that kind of thing. And he might have been in trouble, except CNN’s John King came to the rescue.

The Z-Word By Jay Nordlinger
Excerpt: A few weeks ago, a Labour MP in Britain, Paul Flynn, expressed displeasure with his country’s ambassador to Israel. “I do not normally fall for conspiracy theories,” he said, “but the ambassador has proclaimed himself to be a Zionist.” What Britain needs in Israel, according to Flynn, is “someone with roots in the U.K.” who “can’t be accused of having Jewish loyalty.” (Simple answer to anti-Zionists of whatever stripe. Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. There perhaps is no greater right to a country in the history of the world, than Israel for the Jewish people. Leftists will object, but will not be able to argue the lingo. To Jihadists, say that the Koran is a bizarro riff on the Bible, honoring the life of a liar, misogynist and pederast. Come on, Muhammad, who otherwise is known never to have left the Hijaz area of Arabia, somehow flew to Jerusalem on a horse? To the polite American anti-semites, who feel that Israel stole Arab land, ask whether the house they live in has clear title or whether it is land expropriated from Indian tribes whose treaties were summarily abrogated. Except for the Chinese, the only documented three millennium title to any land title in the world is the title of the Jewish people to Israel. The Z-Word. Cordially, Larry Greenberg. I think I already linked to this, but thought worth repeating with Larry's comment. ~Bob.)

Canadian Talk Show Host Destroys Obama Over Keystone Decision

The Week That Was: 2012-1-21 (January 21, 2012)
Excerpt: In praising the decision, an editorial in the New York Times stated that the government should focus on renewable and alternative energy. Typical for the environmental industry and its advocates, the Times misled its readers by failing to state that oil produces less than one percent of the electricity in the US, mostly on site, such as emergency generation for hospitals when the electrical grid fails. Electricity from wind and solar is not a substitute for oil. Biofuels are a substitute for oil, but as of now require vast amounts of land, drive up food prices, and would not be economically viable without mandates (the subsidies were phased out at the end of 2011). (As always, there are many good articles in TWTW. For a change, though, the most important part may be the summary by Ken Haapala at the beginning (that’s where the excerpt is from). Ron P.)

Taking the Fizz Out of Obama's Bubbly
Excerpt: By November, it might be only the economy. In spite of more personal baggage than a jumbo jet, Gingrich beat endangered front-runner Mitt Romney because most Republicans in South Carolina think he can beat Obama and because the economy outweighed, by far, any other issue on the table, according to exit polls. (This, from center-left National Journal. The NLRB’s suit against the Boeing factory probably played in this, as well. I’m not in love with either Gingrich or Romney, but I could live happily with either rather than another four years of Obama’s policies and cronies. But, not everyone feels that way. My wife hates what Obama has done to the country, but won’t vote for Romney. “He’s too plastic,” she says. “If there was a President doll in the Barbie collection, it would look just like Romney. I voted for him for Governor, but I’ll stay home before I vote for him again.” Don’t ask me to explain it, I’m just reporting her opinion. But, it IS the first time I've ever heard of someone losing out for being TOO good looking. Ron P. Well, I lost a LOT of vote because I was so good looking, Ron. ~Bob.)

Americans Must Change America Back to America if We Hope to have a Future
Excerpt: Barack Obama promised to “fundamentally change the face of the nation,” and he did. Now Americans are faced with the task of changing America back to America. Obama’s messianic promise of “Hope and Change” insinuated he could do everything from walk on water to resurrecting a dying economy.

Can America Turn It Around? by Matt Patterson
Excerpt: Pessimism is permeating our national atmosphere. Newsweek may as well publish an article titled “We Are All Declinists Now,” for if there is one thing the left and the right, from Occupy Wall Street to the Tea Party, seem to agree on, it is that things are not going well in this country and appear to be getting worse. This crisis of confidence is not unique to America, of course — across what was once quaintly referred to as “Western Civilization,” economies of entire nations are either suffering in stagnation or teetering near total collapse. Falling or stagnating living standards and birthrates portend a considerably older and poorer West in the not-so-distant future.

Unreasonable Risk and Ill-Conceived Combat Missions!
Excerpt: During an exchange with a Senatorial Aide, I received from him the link to a piece written by a Colonel Tony Pfaff, USA. The piece is entitled, 'RISK, MILITARY ETHICS AND IRREGULAR WARFARE'. In this piece the Colonel details the problems encountered in asymmetrical combat, the unwieldy and artificially established parameters thrust upon not only unit field leaders but upon individual combatants as well.

‘God’-awful OWS mob steals sacred item from church
Pretty naive to let the Occu-poopers in in the first place. What did he expect? ~Bob. Excerpt: There’s no longer room at the inn at a Manhattan church that’s sheltering Occupy Wall Streeters after a holy vessel disappeared from the altar last week. ... In Brooklyn, at another church housing OWS protesters, an occupier urinated on a cross, according to Rabbi Chaim Gruber, who has angrily abandoned the OWS movement.

William Tucker: Environmentalism And The Leisure Class
Excerpt: You can be anti-business as a union member trying to claim higher wages but you can also be anti-business as a member of the aristocracy who believes "trade" and "commercialism" are crass and not attuned to the higher things in life. Environmentalism is born from the latter, not the former. It has spent decades trying to pretend it has common cause with the working people. With the defeat of the Keystone Pipeline, this is no longer possible. (Especially see the fourth paragraph (it starts “In 1977....”) for a quick reminder of when and how this movement began. This was when “conservatives” and “conservationists” went separate ways; prior to the 70s, they were often the same people, and I was one of them. It seemed like overnight, most of the conservationists turned into “Environmentalists”—with a capital E—who exalted “nature” and excoriated humans and human endeavor. Conservatives realized “humans” ARE part of nature. Ron P.)

MPs From All Parties In Bid To Halt Costly Wind Farms
Excerpt: A NEW cross-party campaign group is to be set up in Westminster to demand the Government drops its support for thousands more wind farms. Backbench MPs from all parties will brand heavily subsidised onshore wind farms inefficient, expensive and a major blight on the landscape. They will urge Ministers to re-think a policy which will add £280 to the annual energy bill of hard-pressed homeowners by 2020.

Newt Vs. Mitt After South Carolina: What The Inside The Beltway Crowd Misses By John Hawkins
(Scroll down. ~Bob.) Excerpt: The biggest problem that Mitt Romney has is that the arguments in favor of his candidacy have been paper thin and largely circular. He’s the “most electable” candidate because his supporters keep saying he’s the most electable. He’s “inevitable” because his supporters say he’s inevitable. “He’ll be conservative in office” despite governing as a moderate because his supporters say he’ll be conservative in office.

Gingrich Looking Churchillian In Political Comeback
Excerpt: A great debater. Politically polarizing. Prone to great error, but also prone to spectacular success. Steeped in history. Politically brilliant. Unorthodox. Audacious.
All these qualities were once used to describe Winston Churchill. Today, you might use the same words to describe Newt Gingrich. Sound absurd? Not when you think about it.

Fracking: The Radical Left's Latest Weapon of Fear
Excerpt: In 1977, President Jimmy Carter warned Americans of a pending "national catastrophe" in a prime time nationally televised speech. "The Oil and natural gas we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running out." Resources were being depleted so fast that the world "could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade," Carter said. Rather obviously, Carter's end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it prediction didn't happen.

“I can’t change the Hadith that calls for killing Jews…”
Excerpt: Sheikh Muhammad Hussein says he was only quoting a passage in the Hadith that calls for killing Jews, not calling for it himself. ... Responding to the allegations of incitement on Israel Radio Sunday, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein denied inciting the murder of Jews, saying he was just quoting the Islamic text. "I can't change the Hadith," he added. (But if non-Muslims quote them, you are charged with Islamophobia. ~Bob.)


--
Robert A. Hall

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