---
Does Big Foot reside in The White House?
I know I pick on Obama a lot but it does appear to me that putting your feet on furniture that is historical shows a degree of disrespect and/or indifference I find offensive.
I am not suggesting Obama, or any president, should not have quiet down time but putting your feet on furniture? I don't do that in my home but then I bought and paid for our possessions. Maybe that is the difference.
---
Liberals are confused about how to respond to Islamist aggressiveness. (See 1 below.)
---
An analysis of the alleged Palestinian desire for peace and is it bankable? History would suggest no.
Meanwhile, a large Congressional delegation meets with Netanyahu who briefs them on Iran's involvement. Ga's Rep. Tom Price is part of the group.(See 2 and 2a below.)
---
A Pyrrhic victory in Libya? Happy to give Obama some credit but am perplexed as to why he withdrew our participation and left NATO out on a limb and thus, it took over 5 months and many deaths to get rid of a two bit dictator .We still do not have a good idea who will emerge as leading that nation into the 21st Century, which could take years and more revolutions. Friend or foe?
Time will tell. (See 3 below.)
---
Former head of American Express responds to Warren Buffet. (See 4 below.)
---
If at first you don't succeed just keep piling on costs and creating exasperation. That's Obama's economic program and, it would appear, he has not learned a thing. Perhaps his goal really is to cripple our capitalistic system so we can follow the European model. (See 5 below.)
---
Dick
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)Liberal intellectuals are frightened of confronting Islam's honour-shame culture
By Richard Landes
Politeness is not saying certain things lest there be violence; civility is being able to say those certain things and there won’t be violence.
A recent series of polls indicate that European public opinion is substantially concerned by the increasingly aggressive Islam that their substantial immigrant populations have taken to expressing. To quote Soeren Kern, Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Strategic Studies Group:
The findings – which come as Europeans are waking up to the consequences of decades of mass immigration from Muslim countries – point to a growing disconnect between European voters and their political masters regarding multicultural policies that encourage Muslim immigrants to remain segregated rather than become integrated into their host nations.
The survey results mirror the findings of dozens of other recent polls. Taken together, they provide ample empirical evidence that scepticism about Muslim immigration is not limited to a “right-wing” political fringe, as proponents of multiculturalism often assert. Mainstream voters across the entire political spectrum are now expressing concerns about the role of Islam in Europe.
The disconnect referred to in the article constitutes one of the most worrying developments in Western culture over the last decade: between a elite that controls much of the discussion in the public sphere (journalists, academics, talking heads, mainstream politicians) and who fear being called Islamophobes and racists more than they fear Islamist racists, and a population of people who, whenever they voice concern about the behavior of the Muslim neighbors, are told not to be Islamophobic racists. The problems are knotty and painful to disentangle. Here’s my outline of an approach. (For a longer version of the following essay, see my blog, The Augean Stables.)
Honour-shame and Islamism:
In an honour culture, it is legitimate, expected, even required to shed blood for the sake of honour, to save face, to redeem the dishonoured face. Public criticism is an assault on the very “face” of the person criticised. Thus, people in such cultures are careful to be “polite”; and a genuinely free press is impossible, no matter what the laws proclaim.
Modernity, however, is based on a free public discussion, on civility rather than politeness, but the benefits of this public self-criticism – sharp learning curves, advances in science and technology, economic development, democracy – make that pain worthwhile.
But such a system represents a crucible of humiliation for alpha males, especially those who believe that the social order depends on the honour of ruling elite, like the anti-Dreyfusards around 1900, ready to sacrifice a single man for the honour of Army and Church.
This is particularly true for Islamic religious culture. In Dar al Islam, a Muslim’s contradiction/criticism of Islam was punishable by death, a fortiori did this hold true for infidels. Modernity has been a Nakba (psychological catastrophe) for Islam, and Islam in all its variegated currents has yet to successfully negotiate these demands of modernity.
On the contrary, the loudest voices in contemporary Islam reject vehemently the kind of self-criticism modernity requires. Criticism constitutes an unbearable assault on the manhood of Muslims.
Indeed, global Jihad and the apocalyptic prophets who nourish it with genocidal rhetoric, represent a particularly virulent form of abreactive modernity, in which the powers of modern society (especially technology) are turned to the task of destroying a modern culture of public, free debate about what is fair.
Secularism demands more maturity, it requires that religions be civil, that they not use force (the state) to impose their beliefs on others. Religious communities have to give up their need to be visibly superior as a sign of being right/true. This involves high levels of both self-confidence and tolerance for public contradiction.
For Islam this is a particularly difficult challenge. For Islam’s formative period, it dominated. Dhimma laws spelled out the principles: infidels were “protected” from violence and death at the hands of Muslims as long as they accepted a visibly humiliating, inferiority. And among the key demands made on dhimmis, was that they not challenge, criticise, or in any way “insult” Islam or Muslims.
Contemporary manifestations of Islamic revival tend to handle the infidel “other” poorly. The peril to contemporary Christians and Jews in Muslim majority nations is mirrored in the behavior of Muslims in the expanding European enclaves, those zones urbaines sensibles, or Sharia zones, where the state’s writ no longer runs.
Thus, Islam’s – Muslims – relationship with the “other” (kufr, infidel, lit. one who covers [the truth]), is the great problem to resolve in this coming generation, and at the heart of that problem lies the ability of Muslims to tolerate criticism from outsiders.
We in the modern (and post-modern) West, who first forged these remarkable rules of self-restraint and created so rich, so variegated, so tolerant a culture, have a right to demand that Islam adopt these rules, certainly those who live in and benefit from the civil polities we have created. Indeed, if we treasure these values of tolerance, and freedom, and generosity towards the “other,” we owe it to ourselves and to the Muslims in our midst, to make this demand. Anything else, including the fantasy that this is not a problem, is cultural suicide.
And yet, so far, we are doing very badly, mostly because we avoid dealing with the problem. The “thin skin” of Muslims is proverbial, and much public, diplomatic, and even academic discourse tacitly acknowledges and placates that cultural reality. When Western positive-sum principles (we do everything we can to “get to yes,” win-win) meets Arab zero-sum principles (they can only win, if we lose), we most often lose (Oslo “Peace” Process).
In the last decade this has gotten much worse. The behaviour of the self-identified “progressive” “left” – traditionally the bastion of stinging public criticism of abuse of power, misogyny and belligerence – has been overwhelmingly placatory towards touchy Muslims. Repeatedly, as in the case of Pope Benedict, they step in to prevent anyone (fellow infidels), whom they smear as Islamophobes, from saying something that might bruise Muslims feelings. Indeed, they seem more worried about “us” provoking Muslim violence than about exploring the sources of Muslim violence. And often they attack those defending democratic principles with a shrill and contemptuous tone that they would never dream of using with Muslims.
Which brings us back to the “disconnect.” Our journalist and academic talking heads are subject to a different kind of Islamophobia: an inordinate fear of criticising Islam. And as a result they betray their own real constituencies, those of us committed to the rules civil polities. We cannot defend modern, tolerant, liberal political culture with such fearful people dominating the public sphere.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)It's only that they don't want peace with Israel. The Middle East conflict, in 1,000 words or less
By George Jonas
The Palestinian Authority proposes to become the 194th member of the United Nations by a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state in September. Those who complain that such a declaration undermines the peace process with Israel don't understand that that's the declaration's purpose.
If "Palestine 194" were designed to coexist with the Jewish State, it wouldn't have to be declared unilaterally. Since it's designed to replace it, it has no other choice. If the Palestinian state comes about as a result of negotiations, it legitimizes the Jewish state.
It isn't that Palestinians don't want peace. They want peace, all right; it's only that they don't want peace with Israel.
The Middle East conflict started in Europe over a hundred years ago when a Budapest-born playwright was covering the Paris trial of a French officer for a Viennese newspaper. Like the defendant, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, Theodor Herzl was an assimilated Jew. After Dreyfus was innocently convicted of treason, it occurred to Herzl that assimilation wasn't enough. To escape anti-Semitism, Jews needed to have a home of their own. Political Zionism debuted with Herzl's pamphlet "The Jewish State" in 1895.
Many Arabs say that the Jews stole "the land." They didn't, but some Jews did have the idea of buying "the land" -- not from the Arabs, who didn't own it, but from the Turks, who did.
In those days most nations and territories belonged to the dynasties that ruled them. Palestine, the biblical homeland of the Jews, was a possession of the Ottoman dynasty, ruled by the sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid II. In law and in fact, Palestine was Abdul Hamid's land, along with a good chunk of the rest of the Middle East. Arabs and Jews living in Palestine were his subjects.
Herzl, a subject of the Habsburg emperor, Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary, hoped to persuade the Hohenzollern emperor, Wilhelm II of Germany, to support an approach to the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II, to let a consortium put together by the House of Rothschild make him an offer for a homeland in Palestine for the Jews. Buying a country sounds impossible today, even somehow wrong, but it didn't then, and Herzl lived then, not today. The German emperor saw Herzl during a visit to the Holy Land, and although he never dismounted from his horse while listening to the Jewish journalist's petition before the gate of Jerusalem, he seemed sympathetic. The Sultan had financial woes. It was conceivable he might consider an offer for his arid possession.
Early Zionists took it for granted that Palestinian Arabs would welcome their plan. The Arabs were tenants, not owners of the land; surely they would prefer a progressive Jewish democracy to an inefficient and corrupt Ottoman overlord. In fact, by then Arabs were looking for mastery in what they viewed as their own homes, not a new and better landlord, but most early Zionist leaders never saw this. In Herzl's 1902 novel about an Israeli utopia, Old New Land, the Zionists' chief ally in realizing the Jewish dream is an Arab engineer, Reshid Bey.
As it turned out, the Sultan wouldn't sell, which was just as well because no funds were raised sufficient for the purchase of a country by the Rothschilds or anyone else. Herzl soon died, and before long the Ottoman empire -- the sick man of Europe, as it was called -- also collapsed.
The victorious European powers, essentially the French and the British, split up the Sultan's possessions, meaning to manage them for their own benefit as well as the benefit of their inhabitants, Arab and Jewish. For a mixture of reasons, not all selfish, but unwise all the same, the British turned their Palestinian mandate into the powder keg of the Twice Promised Land. When the dust settled, about 80% of the Balfour Declaration's Jewish homeland had become the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, with the 1937 Peel Commission inviting the Palestinians and the Zionists to split the remaining 20% between them.
The Jews, though unhappy, said yes to Lord Peel. The Arabs said no. They said no again 10 years later when the United Nations voted for partition in 1947. Israel declared itself a state on May 15, 1948, and within about five hours the "rejectionist" Arab states attacked it. That is the war that continues to this day. It's a conflict the Arab world can afford to lose over and over again. Israel's first loss would be its last.
It follows that peace is the only way Israel can win, and peace is the only way the Arab side can lose. Under such circumstances, Israelis would be fools not to give land for peace, while Arabs would be fools to give peace for land. Neither side are fools.
Last year, the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, named a promenade along the River Seine after David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel. Shimon Peres, Israel's president, at 88 probably the only Israeli politician still active from Ben-Gurion's generation, was among the dignitaries attending.
"For Ben-Gurion, the most realistic thing was the vision," Peres said. "He used to say that a realistic person must believe in miracles."
From an 1895 pamphlet to a 1948 statehood in 53 years was indeed miraculous for Israel. Creating a Palestinian state following a unilateral declaration wouldn't require a miracle in the current ambiance of the UN, so by the logic of the Middle East, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas doesn't have to be a realistic person to believe in it.
It's hard to say whether Abbas believes in the unilateral Palestinian state or not. Perhaps he just believes in retiring with a bang rather than a whimper. This would be quite realistic and I'd give it a 50-50 chance. The only thing that has no chance in the Middle East is peace.
2a)'Just as Iran threatens us, so too it threatens US'
By GREER FAY CASHMAN AND JPOST.COM STAFF
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with 25 Republican members of the US House of Representatives on Monday, and thanked them for their support of Israel.
"Those who fire missiles at Israel are supported by Iran with weapons, money and training. They constitute a forward Iranian post on our borders," Netanyahu told them. "Just as Iran threatens us, so too it threatens the US."
The prime minister also spoke about the Iron Dome's effectiveness in intercepting missiles and his intention to station additional batteries.
The delegation was led by Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Policy Committee Chairman Tom Price.
Prior to a meeting with President Shimon Peres Cantor told journalists that the three congressional delegations totaling 81 people that came to Israel this month collectively represent the largest ever congressional delegation to visit this country.
The members of the delegation are interested in the promotion of peace progress and freedom which is what Israel stands for, said Cantor.
Cantor voiced the most strenuous objections to the recognition of the Palestinian Authority as a state at the United Nations. He also warned that if the Palestinians realized their objective, their funding will be in jeopardy. "It essentially obviates all agreements of the past" said Cantor who also expressed his serious objection to the Palestinian Authority alliance with Hamas.
Asked how America would react to a barrage of rockets such as the onslaught against Israel, Cantor replied "America would not tolerate rockets being launched against our citizens."
Cantor said he was totally in favor of the action taken by the IDF to thwart attacks against Israel and was also very impressed with the efficiency of the Iron Dome program.
At the meeting with the delegation, Peres also mentioned the Iron Dome and said that Israel would not have been able to acquire it without America's assistance. Peres estimated that in recent days the Iron Dome program had helped saved more than one million lives, including those of women and children
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)Qaddafi regime falls in Tripoli. Fighting in town center and Bab al-Aziziyah
The end of the Qaddafi regimeMuammar Qaddafi's regime fell in Tripoli just before midnight Sunday, Aug. 22. The rebels advanced in three columns into the heart of the capital after being dropped by NATO ships and helicopters on the Tripoli coast. Except for pockets, government forces did not resist the rebel advance, which stopped short of the Qaddafi compound of Bab al-Aziziyah.
After one of his sons Saif al Islam was reported to be in rebel hands and another, Mohammad, said to have surrendered, Qaddafi's voice was heard over state television calling on Libyans to rise up and save Tripoli from "the traitors." Tripoli is now like Baghdad, he said. For now, his whereabouts are unknown.
Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said 1,200 people had been killed in the 12 hours of the rebel push towards the capital. As he spoke, Libyan rebels, backed by NATO, seized control of the capital. After holding out for six months, the Qaddafi regime was to all intents and purposes at an end.
Still to be answered are seven questions raised here by debkafile's analysts:
1. Where are the six government special divisions whose loyalty to the Libyan ruler and his sons was never in question? None of the 15,000 trained government troops were to be seen in the way of the rebel advance into the capital. The mystery might be accounted for by several scenarios: Either these units broke up and scattered or Qaddafi pulled them back into southern Libya to secure the main oil fields. Or, perhaps, government units are staying out of sight and biding their time in order to turn the tables on the triumphant rebels and trap them in a siege. The Libyan army has used this stratagem before.
2. How did the ragtag, squabbling Libyan rebels who were unable to build a coherent army in six months suddenly turn up in Tripoli Sunday looking like an organized military force and using weapons for which they were not known to have received proper training? Did they secretly harbor a non-Libyan hard core of professional soldiers?
3. What happened to the tribes loyal to Qaddafi? Up until last week, they numbered the three largest tribal grouping in the country. Did they suddenly melt away without warning?
4. Does Qaddafi's fall in Tripoli mean he has lost control of all other parts of Libya, including his strongholds in the center and south?
5. Can the rebels and NATO claim an undisputed victory? Or might not the Libyan ruler, forewarned of NATO's plan to topple him by Sept. 1, have decided to dodge a crushing blow, cede Tripoli and retire to the Libyan Desert from which to wage war on the new rulers?
6. Can the heavily divided rebels, consisting of at least three militias, put their differences aside and establish a reasonable administration for governing a city of many millions? Their performance in running the rebel stronghold of Benghazi is not reassuring.
7.Military and counter-terror sources suggest a hidden meaning in Qaddafi's comment that Tripoli is now like Baghdad. Is he preparing to collect his family, escape Tripoli and launch a long and bloody guerrilla war like the one Saddam Hussein's followers waged after the US invasion of 2003 which opened the door of Iraq to al Qaeda?
If that is Qaddafi's plan, the rebels and their NATO backers, especially Britain and France, will soon find their victory wiped out by violence similar to – or worse than – the troubles the US-led forces have suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4)y Response To Buffett And Obama
Before you ask for more tax money from me, raise the $2.2 trillion you already collect each year more fairly and spend it more wisely.
By HARVEY GOLUB
Over the years, I have paid a significant portion of my income to the various federal, state and local jurisdictions in which I have lived, and I deeply resent that President Obama has decided that I don't need all the money I've not paid in taxes over the years, or that I should leave less for my children and grandchildren and give more to him to spend as he thinks fit. I also resent that Warren Buffett and others who have created massive wealth for themselves think I'm "coddled" because they believe they should pay more in taxes. I certainly don't feel "coddled" because these various governments have not imposed a higher income tax. After all, I did earn it.
Now that I'm 72 years old, I can look forward to paying a significant portion of my accumulated wealth in estate taxes to the federal government and, depending on the state I live in at the time, to that state government as well. Of my current income this year, I expect to pay 80%-90% in federal income taxes, state income taxes, Social Security and Medicare taxes, and federal and state estate taxes. Isn't that enough?
Others could pay higher taxes if they choose. They could voluntarily write a check or they could advocate that their gifts to foundations should be made with after-tax dollars and not be deductible. They could also pay higher taxes if they were not allowed to set up foundations to avoid capital gains and estate taxes.
What gets me most upset is two other things about this argument: the unfair way taxes are collected, and the violation of the implicit social contract between me and my government that my taxes will be spent—effectively and efficiently—on purposes that support the general needs of the country. Before you call me greedy, make sure you operate fairly on both fronts.
Today, top earners—the 250,000 people who earn $1 million or more—pay 20% of all income taxes, and the 3% who earn more than $200,000 pay almost half. Almost half of all filers pay no income taxes at all. Clearly they earn less and should pay less. But they should pay something and have a stake in our government spending their money too.
In addition, the extraordinarily complex tax code is replete with favors to various interest groups and industries, favors granted by politicians seeking to retain power. Mortgage interest deductions support the private housing industry at the expense of renters. Generous fringe benefits are not taxed at all, in order to support union and government workers at the expense of people who buy their own insurance with after-tax dollars. Gifts to charities are deductible but gifts to grandchildren are not. That's just a short list, and all of it is unfair.
Governments have an obligation to spend our tax money on programs that work. They fail at this fundamental task. Do we really need dozens of retraining programs with no measure of performance or results? Do we really need to spend money on solar panels, windmills and battery-operated cars when we have ample energy supplies in this country? Do we really need all the regulations that put an estimated $2 trillion burden on our economy by raising the price of things we buy? Do we really need subsidies for domestic sugar farmers and ethanol producers?
Why do we require that public projects pay above-market labor costs? Why do we spend billions on trains that no one will ride? Why do we keep post offices open in places no one lives? Why do we subsidize small airports in communities close to larger ones? Why do we pay government workers above-market rates and outlandish benefits? Do we really need an energy department or an education department at all?
Here's my message: Before you "ask" for more tax money from me and others, raise the $2.2 trillion you already collect each year more fairly and spend it more wisely. Then you'll need less of my money.
Mr. Golub, a former chairman and CEO of American Express, currently serves on the executive committee of the American Enterprise Institute
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5)Obama: Circling back to the iceberg
By Ralph R. Reiland
Only 26 percent of the public approve of President Barack Obama's handling of the economy in the latest Gallup poll, conducted Aug. 11-14, while a whopping 71 percent disapprove.
That's down from Obama's previous low point of 35 percent approval on this top issue.
The public's growing dissatisfaction shouldn't be surprising. Going back to 1890, reports the National Bureau of Economic Research, the only U.S. president with a worse record than Obama in job creation in his first two-and-a-half years in office, measured in terms of percentage change, was Herbert Hoover, presiding over the emergence of the Great Depression.
"Official unemployment is 9.1 percent," stated a New York Times editorial on Aug. 15, decrying the nation's jobs picture, "but it would be 16.1 percent, or 25.1 million people, if it included those who can only find part-time jobs and those who have given up looking for work."
"Keeping the economy going and making sure jobs are available is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning," Obama said back in March. "It's the last thing I think about when I go to bed each night."
Now, nearly six months later, the White House reports that Obama is working on a new strategy for job creation that will be unveiled after he returns from vacation.
The task of coming up with a jobs plan that works shouldn't be all that terribly difficult. All Mr. Obama has to do is reverse what he's done and change what he thinks.
First, by the government's own numbers, small businesses have created 64 percent of the net new jobs in the U.S. economy over the past 15 years.
In fact, that understates the role of small business, since the vast majority of America's medium-sized and large businesses began as small businesses. The Heinz corporation began when 16-year-old Henry Heinz grated piles of horseradish at home, using his mother's recipe, and sold the bottled product door-to-door in Sharpsburg out of a wheelbarrow.
Yet since Obama took office, employment at federal regulatory agencies has jumped 13 percent while private-sector jobs shrank by 5.6 percent.
Second, 39 percent of small-business owners said in a Chamber of Commerce survey in July that ObamaCare was either their greatest or second-greatest obstacle to new hiring.
The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Dennis Lockhart, concurs, stating that "prominent" among the obstacles to hiring is the "lack of clarity about the cost implications" of ObamaCare.
"We've frequently heard strong comments," reported Lockhart, "to the effect of, 'My company won't hire a single additional worker until we know what health insurance costs are going to be.'"
Additionally, 84 percent of small business owners in the survey said the economy is on the wrong track, 79 percent view the current regulatory environment as unreasonable, and 79 percent believe Washington should get out of the way of small business, rather than offering a helping hand (14 percent).
In its first 26 months, reports The Heritage Foundation, the Obama administration imposed new regulatory rules that will cost the private sector $40 billion. In July alone, reports Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., federal regulators imposed a total of 379 new rules that will add some $9.5 billion in new costs.
Bottom line: What's required from Obama is a complete about-face, the shelving of his flawed economic philosophy and a reversal of his counterproductive policy prescriptions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment