Saturday, March 3, 2012

Political Digest for March 3, 2012

The Old Jarhead Blog: Bringing you news and information the MSM is too busy covering American Idol, celebrity affairs and sensational missing person cases to cover. Please forward to friends who need to be informed.

I’ll be out of pocket Saturday, so no Political Digest on Sunday, but I will leave the March “Random Thoughts” to keep you bemused. ~Bob.

Charities I support

23rd 5-star Collapse review posted on Amazon:
The ONE book every AMERICAN should read!
Jessep (Jack Nicholson): You want answers?
Kaffee (Tom Cruise): I think I'm entitled to them.
Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I want the truth!
Jessep: You can't handle the truth!
From: A Few Good Men, written by Aaron Sorkin

If we can handle the truth, then this book is definitely well worth the relatively short time it takes to read it. I recommend it without reservation!

As Mr. Hall notes in the book, it will not likely be thoughtfully read by "transnational progressives, central statists, Trotskyite dreamers from academia, or garden-variety Leftists who believe intentions matter far more than the results of their policies."

However, for those able to do a bit of critical thinking (which requires an educated and open mind), it puts into one easily accessible package a clear synopsis of the ugly story of our country's (national, state, and municipal) financial mess.....and, just in case our own fiscal state is not scary enough, it factors in our illegal immigration problem, narco-terrorism on our southern border, international Islamic terrorism, middle-east turmoil, the coming Muslim majority in Europe, China's ascendance, ..., and on, and on -- things of which we all should be more aware [if we are not already].

Mr. Hall describes a few possible scenarios he sees coming as a consequence of the western world's fecklessness in managing its economic resources and its misguided politically correct policies. We are currently speeding down a path that plays into the hands of malevolent forces seeking to destroy everyone and everything not aligned with their vision for the world.

As a recent [legal] domestic immigrant to California, my fellow CA state-citizens and I may become part of the leading edge of a debt induced tsunami that is set to inundate the whole country.....IF we don't figure out somehow to do something to stop it or get it to shrivel into a mere devastating flood.

Robert Hall is not a crank or a Chicken Little. He describes the problems and offers suggestions (painful though they may be) for us on what we might do to help prevent this looming collapse.

For all of this, his book should be read all across the nation and he should get our deeply felt thanks for writing it. -- Fredric G. Stewart

Comment on the March 1, Political Digest blog post
Hi there, Sir. I am an Iranian man living inside Iran and can tell you that the Iranian people love the United States of America. Your website was recently linked on an site of my local party. We the Iranian people are not Muslim, many youth in Iran especially turn irreligious and Christianity is very popular in Iran. I must personally use proxy to visit 90% of the net due to my governments restrictions. As a member of SUMKA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUMKA) I wish to teach you about Iran. You must know that the Iranian people do not belong to the Arab ethnicity, they belong to the Persian ethnicity, and unlike Jews and Arabs, are not Semitic, but rather Indo-European (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_people) and as well speak an Indo-European language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_language). Iran is not currently run by its Persian majority, but rather Muslim Semitic snakes of Arab (Ahmadinejad for instance), Turkic (Khamenei) and other ethnicities. Iran is a beautiful nation with 6 millenniums of cultural history and civilization, sadly it has been taken over by Semitic non-Persian snakes. I am a proud right-wing racist and Neo-Nazi, I have spoken to many Americans online who despise the Negroes and the Jews and respect Iran. Our enemies are not Americans or Europeans, our enemies are simply Arabs, Turks, and Jews. We consider Semitic religion (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) our enemy as well. I am a proud Zoroastrian. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5--7MjqFqE. God bless America and the American people! HH! Hail Victory! 88!

Dear “Hail Victory”
I hope your comment is a joke, because you've got the wrong idea here. True Americans do not despise Jews, Blacks, Iranians, Arabs, Muslims, Turks or other people because of the group they belong to. We do despise individuals who are bigoted, who oppress others, who seek to deprive others of their political and economic freedom, who harm others for gain or pleasure. We do not hate or discriminate against people because of their race, gender, religion, sexuality or ethnicity. I have friends who are black, Jewish, Muslim, female, Gay, Hispanic and those who disagree with me sharply on politics--but we don't try to kill each other over it. We are tolerant of differences, intolerant of those who oppress and hate on group identity. If you are all Iran has to offer in opposition to Ahmadinejad, may God help your poor country. And, by the way, we are busy killing Jihadists now, and in my youth killed a lot of Communists, but you might recall we were pretty adapt at killing Nazis in living memory. Pretty much any monster can come into our sights. I know a lot of black and Jewish Marines who are as good as the boys who gave the Persians hell at Thermopylae and beat you badly at Marathon, Salamis, Plataea and Mycale. ~Bob

The Fukushima Question: How close did Japan really get to a widespread nuclear disaster?
Excerpt: Cohen goes on to spin a scenario of a gasoline spill resulting in out-of-control fires, a disease epidemic, and, eventually, nuclear war. Cohen concludes his fantastical thought experiment by saying, “I have frequently been told that the probability doesn’t matter—the very fact that such an accident is possible makes nuclear power unacceptable. According to that way of thinking, we have shown that the use of gasoline is not acceptable, and almost any human activity can similarly be shown to be unacceptable. If probability didn’t matter, we would all die tomorrow from any one of thousands of dangers we live with constantly.” (The first anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami at Fukushima is 11 Mar. Recently, the NYT ran a story claiming ultimate disaster was averted only by good luck. PBS also ran a story that was far less intimidating. This article is rebuttal to both. Ron P.)

I love happy endings: Springville man shoots, kills home intruder
Excerpt: A Springville man shot and killed an intruder who was breaking into his home early Thursday, police said. Footprints in the snow show the intruder broke into a duplex at 800 South 475 East after trying to get into about 20 other houses in the neighborhood, said Springville police Lt. Dave Caron. … "The suspect thought he was going to get his wallet, but instead he grabbed his handgun," Caron said.

Editor-In-Chief Joel Pollak On CNN: Breitbart Was A ‘Happy Warrior’

English Defence League (EDL) Peacefully Protest in Hyde Park
Excerpt: “The Muslims that killed – and they did kill, Charlene Downs [whose body, "bones and all," was put through a mincing machine] are still running the same chicken shop. OK. They are still running it. This is orchestrated, criminal, paedophile gangs that are targeting, through their kebab shops, our girls and it’s about time Britain stood up to them. And two nights ago I watched and I listened and I read, that British were standing up to them. And that’s what we’ll do.”

What Happened To My Grandfather After the Titanic Sank
Excerpt: No one has ever told the story of what happened after the Titanic sank. It is more shocking than any of the events that led to the foundering of the great liner. Jock's pay, along with the rest of the crew, was stopped at 2.20 am. Two weeks later, before his parents had been informed of his death, they received a bill for the brass buttons on his bandsman's tunic. Later still, when it was confirmed that Jock's body was among only 328 recovered from the sea, they were told that "normal cargo rates" would apply if they would like his body to be brought home to Scotland. ... And The Band Played On begins where the other books and films all end:

Excerpt: Leaving aside whether the “Keynesian” analysis and prescription were correct in the 1930s (or indeed whether that was the argument Keynes actually made), it is worth pointing out a number of big differences between the events of the last four years and those of 1929–32. Most important, we have not seen the kind of decline in prices that took place then; indeed there have been short-term spikes in a number of prices, notably food and fuel. Furthermore, and fortunately, there has not been the kind of dramatic collapse in economic activity and employment that we saw in the entire world in the early 1930s.

Dying to be Green by Daniel Greenfield
Excerpt: Some 8,000 people die in the UK every year due to what is being called “fuel poverty” or, more simply, when it costs too much to heat your home. Naturally the left is already on the case, staging “die-ins” outside energy companies and demanding that carbon credits be used to make homes “super-energy efficient.” Left out of the equation is that rising fuel prices can in no small part be attributed to the environmental mania which is at the heart of the movement. (Obama promised that under his plan, energy costs would necessarily skyrocket. The poor will die, the rich greenies will feel fine. ~Bob.)

Disparate Impact
Excerpt: The facts say this: African-Americans make up 10 percent of the House, but as of the end of February, five of the sitting six named lawmakers under review by the House Ethics Committee are black. The pattern isn’t new. At one point in late 2009, seven lawmakers were known to be involved in formal House ethics inquiries; all were members of the Congressional Black Caucus. An eighth caucus member, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois, had also been under investigation, but his probe was halted temporarily while the Justice Department undertook an inquiry of its own. (…) Those are the facts, as Cleaver said. The question is why so many African-American members have been in the ethics spotlight. (This is the kind of in-depth article I used to read newspapers hoping to find. Ron P. It’s not PC to suggest as some writers have that many blacks grew up in a culture where putting things over on “The Man,” like the tax man, were considered ethically acceptable, a legacy of slavery days when it was considered ethical [and I agree] for slaves to do as little work as possible, and to steal from or sabotage the Master. ~Bob.)

GOP Headwinds
Excerpt: My personal view had been that the most likely Senate outcome in November would be somewhere between a Republican gain of three seats, turning the chamber’s current makeup of 53 Democrats and 47 Republicans into a 50-50 proposition (with the majority resting on the outcome of the presidential race) and a six-seat net gain for the GOP, flipping the Senate to 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats. The most likely outcome seemed to be a Republican gain of four or five. In recent weeks, my gut has told me that I should drop the possibility of a six-seat gain and just say a gain of three to five seats for the GOP. With Snowe’s seat in Maine now in play, that seems very prudent. The only question is whether to drop the floor to two seats, saying two to five, compared with my three-to-six view in past weeks. (This is NOT good news for us. Cook may personally favor the Democrats, but that seldom influences his reading of the landscape. It also squares with the new-found energy I’ve noticed in the Democrats I see. We have work to do. Ron P. To have any hope of turning the country around, we need the WH, Senate and House. Then it will be a very long shot. ~Bob.)

The Cruelest Month: Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum won primaries in February, but the real winner was Barack Obama.
Excerpt: With apologies to T.S. Eliot, February was the cruelest month for Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Republicans’ hopes of ousting President Obama. In the tumultuous four weeks since Romney seemingly sealed the nomination in Florida, momentum in the GOP race has careened between the buttoned-up former Massachusetts governor and the voluble former senator from Pennsylvania, who displaced Newt Gingrich as Romney’s principal challenger. But even many Republicans privately agree that the past month’s one consistent winner was Obama.

Illinois inmates sue over soy food
Maybe they need more lead in their diets. ~Bob. Excerpt: Food made from one of Illinois’ top exports has become the focus of a federal lawsuit that could head to trial in the coming year. Five current and former Illinois prison inmates are suing the state, claiming the amount of soy in their diets while behind bars has caused “irreparable, actual harm,” including allergic reactions, heart problems, gastrointestinal distress and thyroid dysfunction.

NightWatch: Japan Challenges China at Sea
The sections on North Korea and Iran are worth reading. Ron P. Excerpt: For starters, the North Korean announcement contains no mention of nuclear weapons or South Korea. The US did not negotiate as a member of an alliance and did not negotiate to suspend the nuclear weapons program. The agreements are bilateral and thus do not bind South Korea. To put the agreement in context, since the time of Kim Il-sung the North always has tried to drive a wedge between the Allies, to deal with them separately and thus undermine the strength of unified Alliance negotiating positions. This agreement is a triumph of North Korean diplomacy because it represents precisely what the North has failed to do for almost 50 years: get a strategic deal with the US without South Korea.

Obama's Hidden Tax Hikes
Excerpt: It could be said that President Obama has never seen a tax hike he doesn't like -- whether it's letting the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire, insisting on higher taxes for job creators, and yesterday calling on Congress to raise taxes on the oil industry. But as much as the President wants to raise taxes, Heritage has discovered that are even more tax hikes hidden in his budget, adding up to a total of $2 trillion in higher taxes. In a new report, Heritage's Curtis Dubay uncovers Obama's hidden tax hikes and finds that the President's proposed $1.561 trillion tax increase over 10 years is much bigger than advertised. In fact, the President wants to raise taxes by $1.689 trillion -- that's $128 billion more than was reported by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the President's FY 2013 budget proposal.

Military and Militants Clash in Pakistan
Excerpt: Gunfights, military airstrikes and a large suicide bombing on Friday killed as many as 70 people in the tribal agencies bordering Peshawar, the provincial capital of northwestern Pakistan, in some of the worst violence in months in a strategic corner of the country.

Don’t shake your head. They would like to make “insulting Islam” a crime in the US. Already is in parts of Europe. ~Bob. Excerpt: Egypt has jailed a Christian man for 6 years on charges of showing contempt of religion and insulting the Prophet Mohamed, the country’s state-owned al-Ahram newspaper reported on Thursday.

Dearborn Pays $100,000 In Lawsuit By Evangelists
excerpt: The city of Dearborn has paid $100,000 in legal fees to attorneys for a Christian evangelist whose free-speech rights were violated at a popular
Arab-American street
festival. Dearborn has a large Muslim population and one of the nation’s biggest concentrations of people with roots in the Arab world.

Danish Muslim ghettos: Nine times higher crime rate, hostility towards the surrounding community
Excerpt: Recently a German police chief said that places like Wedding in Berlin, a Muslim ghetto in the German capital, are as dangerous for policemen to work in as Afghanistan. Call them parallel societies, Muslim ghettos, Sharia colonies, lawless areas, lost territories, failed multicultural experiments -- or whatever. … The areas are characterized by strong Islamic social control, especially of women. Inlets to Islamic courts, child brides, polygamy.

Raymond Ibrahim: The Historical Reality of the Muslim Conquests
Excerpt: Because it is now almost axiomatic for American school textbooks to whitewash all things Islamic (see here for example), it may be useful to examine one of those aspects that are regularly distorted: the Muslim conquests. Few events of history are so well documented and attested to as are these conquests, which commenced soon after the death of the Muslim prophet Muhammad (632) and tapered off circa 750. Large swathes of the Old World—from the India in the east, to Spain in the west—were conquered and consolidated by the sword of Islam during this time. (The much-maligned Crusades may be viewed as a defensive reaction to Muslim imperialism. ~Bob.)

If deficits aren't important, then why have anybody pay any taxes at all?

U.S. probe of Koran burning finds 5 soldiers responsible, officials say; clerics demand trial
Excerpt: Military investigators have concluded that five soldiers were involved in the incineration of a pile of Korans in Afghanistan last week, according to U.S. military officials who have been briefed on the inquiry. The burning of the Muslim holy books — which U.S. officials say was accidental — incited a week of protests that left 30 Afghans dead. The burnings also were cited as motivation for at least some of the six fatal attacks on U.S. soldiers that have occurred in Afghanistan in the last eight days.

The Hadiths
Excerpt: The Hadiths is a canon of books which house a collection of the “prophet” Mohammed’s sayings and to Muslim are as Holy as the Qur’an. The Hadiths are vast and even more violent that the Qur’an.

Chicago Police Dept. Embraces Hamas Front
Excerpt: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is exploiting recent criticism of the New York Police Department's surveillance of a Muslim students group and some mosques to acquire legitimacy and intimidate police departments to promise not to investigate Islamic groups. CAIR has been described as a front for Hamas by federal law enforcement. After a meeting Tuesday, CAIR's Chicago chapter announced that Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy will speak Saturday night at CAIR-Chicago's annual fundraising banquet. In their meeting, McCarthy reportedly said surveillance by Chicago police would not be used in intelligence gathering as it was in New York.

Why CAGW theory is not “settled science”
Though written by a scientist (Prof. Robert Brown, Duke University Physics) for other scientists—but, not necessarily ones familiar with his specialty—this is surprisingly clear and bordering on brilliant. I highly recommend it. --Ron P. Excerpt: You compare the predictions of their “catastrophic” theory five, ten, twenty years back to the actual data. If there is good agreement, it is at least possible that they are correct. The greater the deviation between observed reality and their predictions, the more likely it is that their result is at least incorrect if not actual bullshit. That’s all. Accurately predicting the future isn’t proof that they are right, but failing to predict it is pretty strong evidence that they are wrong.

Killing Babies No Different from Abortion, "experts" say - Stephen Adams, Telegraph UK
Excerpt: “We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.” As such they argued it was “not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense”. The authors therefore concluded that “what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled”. (and killing ten-year-old not much different than babies. And killing granny not…~Bob.)

Iranian Carnival (aka “elections”) Redux
Excerpt: The Iranian regime, given its remarkable capacity to screw up most everything (above all the country itself, which vies with the Soviet Union at its worst for a wrecked system), every now and then fails to get it right and some real votes get counted. That’s what happened in June 2009, when Mir Hossein Mousavi — the leader of the Green Movement — got more votes than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the regime had to scramble to produce results that gave the victory to Ahmadinejad. They did it so ham-handedly that everybody saw what was happening, and months of demonstrations followed.

U.S. Jet contract decision "surprised" Brazil government
Election Year! ~Bob. Excerpt: A decision by the United States to cancel a $355 million defense aircraft contract with Brazilian planemaker Embraer (EMBR3.SA) has surprised the government of Brazil which had hoped for the development of a bilateral defense program, Brazil's Foreign Affairs Ministry said on Thursday. The ministry said in a statement that the government was "surprised" with the cancellation "especially with the way that it happened and the timing." The U.S. Air Force earlier this week called off the purchase of 20 Embraer's Super Tucano jets due to problems with documentation.

Auto Industry Cartoon
Too true. ~Bob.

VIDEO: Grateful Lybian People Thank Britain For Their Liberation From Gadaffi (NOT) - James Delingpole, Telegraph UK

Obama In Full Pandering Mode: Too Odious For Words –The Guy Can’t Even Pander Right
Excerpt: Yes, it’s an election year, and no, he’s not the first president to pander to the press, but his predecessors did it with more subtlety. But then, they were more serious, more intelligent and had more politically savvy advisers. What has he done, now, you ask?

Ben & Jerry raise cool 'Occupy' cash and get cold shoulder from Occupiers
Excerpt: Responding to an activist who asked how to submit a proposal for financial support, [Ben & Jerry's Jerry] Greenfield responded, “We are not Occupy Wall Street. We are working in a way that’s different, and we want to integrate values and ideals to the degree that we can, but we are not committed to consensus decision making.” That slap to the sensibilities of the Occupy movement, known for its leaderless and sometimes interminable committee meetings, made several activists visibly angry. (So...she gets it that the wealthy design, create, build and retain control over the fruits of their labors...but she doesn't get it? - Kate in LA)

Allen West to Obama: Quit Bragging About Killing Osama bin Ladan
Excerpt: Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) said Friday that President Barack Obama needs to stop boasting about killing Osama bin Laden, saying that it was Navy SEALS who killed the terrorist leader, not the president. "Please stop with the Osama Bin Laden line, U.S. Navy SEALS double-tapped that rascal," the freshman lawmaker posted on his Facebook page Friday morning. Obama regularly touts taking out bin Laden at his campaign events.

AUDIO: Mark Levin on Obama: "It's the condom president." - Jeff Poor, Daily Caller
Excerpt: Levin went on to explain how to take the conservative message and sell it to younger audiences, which have been exposed to “years and years of propaganda and indoctrination.” “Look, if you’re confronted with 10 young people who are not politically involved … and you’re not sure how to address them, the first thing you do is you change the situation — the them against me to me talking to two or three of them at a time, if that helps. And you go step by step by step by step and you ask them questions. ‘Well, what do you mean you’re a liberal? What does that mean?’

Wikipedia Vandals Attack Rolling Stone Blogger Who 'Couldn't Be Happier' About Andrew Breitbart's Death
Excerpt: On Thursday, the Wikipedia page describing the career of liberal “Rolling Stone” blogger Matt Taibbi was vandalized on more than a half-dozen separate occasions, apparently by readers angry about an article in which he castigated the late Andrew Breitbart. Taibbi wrote, among other things, that he “couldn’t be happier” Breitbart died suddenly Wednesday night. Cue the Wikipedia vandals. (Taibbi is vile, but better just to expose his vileness than to use these tactics. ~Bob.)

Insufferable Portland
Excerpt: Still, that doesn’t adequately explain why Portland looms so large in the imagination of the [New York Times]. Things reached the point in 2009 that a columnist for the Oregonian actually wrote a Dear John letter to the Gray Lady, announcing, “Sorry, NYT, we’re just not that into you”: Look, we know you have strong feelings for us. We can telllike the rest of the English-speaking worldby your incessant need to write about us.

James Q. Wilson, 1931 - 2012 - by William Kristol, The Weekly Standard
Excerpt: Whether they know it or not, most people are intuitive Aristotelians. They know that character is important, that it is formed by the routine activities of family and village life, and that having a good character is in the long run the only route to such happiness as people can achieve through their own efforts. Many people are, of course, more than Aristotelians; they are also Christians, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, or whatever, but though faith often adds much to this ancient view, it rarely subtracts much.

Turning the Tables on Big Brother: Now Internet Users Can Watch Who Is Spying on Them in Blow Against Google's New Spying Policy
Excerpt: Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has unveiled a new add-on for the popular web browser that gives web users an instant view of which companies are 'watching' them as they browse. The move comes the same week that Google pushed ahead with its controversial new privacy policy, built to provide even more data for Google's $28 billion advertising business - despite concerns that the massive harvesting of private data might be illegal in many countries.

The Climate Wars
Excerpt: The problem the alarmists had, was that there was never anything substantial to hit back at. They had the equivalents of the big guns and the massive air support but there never was a skeptic HQ to be pounded, no big central organisation, no massed ranks of skeptic soldiers or even any third-party backing the resistance. Every one of the skeptics was a lone volunteer guerilla fighter, who needed absolutely no logistical support of any kind to continue the fight indefinitely. The alarmists never understood this, preferring to think that there simply had to be some massive hidden organisation orchestrating the resistance. While they wasted time and effort attacking targets that only existed in their head, each of the guerillas chewed on them mercilessly in their own particular way.

Volt production on hold for 5 weeks
Obama’s green economy strikes again. ~Bob. Excerpt: General Motors has told 1,300 employees at its Detroit Hamtramck that they will be temporarily laid off for five weeks as the company halts production of the Chevrolet Volt and its European counterpart, the Opel Ampera.

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