Sowell on intellectuals and race. (See 1 below.)
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Obma is a pain and is interested only in bringing pain in the hope that voters will continue to blame Republicans for the nation's ills.
Is he wearing thin and beginning to overplay his hand? I believe so but time will tell. (See 2 below.)
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If true, and it is being reported as such, then we truly have a disconnect between the governed and the elitists. Certainly Obama's efforts to appoint people in arrears is not new and demonstrates his utter disregard for those not even paying much less their 'fair share'whatever the hell that means. (See 3 below.)
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New York Times op ed journalist on Rand Paul! (See 4 below.)
This is what we have come to expect from CNN reporters. (See 4a below.)
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Inconsistancy? Thou name is Obama! (See 5 below.)
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Maybe David should run for President - seems to have a lot of hot air in him! Perhaps he uses a powerful vacuum - shades of HOOVER!
At least he might make our deficit disappear if only in an illusory manner.
One of the greatest Illusions Ever: David Copperfield will blow you all away and just when you figure how he has wires to assist, wait until you see how he shoots that idea down......just simply AMAZING!!!!!
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Dick
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1
Intellectuals and Race
There are so many fallacies about race that it would be hard to say which is the most ridiculous. However, one fallacy behind many other fallacies is the notion that there is something unusual about different races being unequally represented in various institutions, careers or at different income or achievement levels.
A hundred years ago, the fact that people from different racial backgrounds had very different rates of success in education, in the economy and in other endeavors, was taken as proof that some races were genetically superior to others.
Some races were considered to be so genetically inferior that eugenics was proposed to reduce their reproduction, and Francis Galton urged "the gradual extinction of an inferior race."
It was not a bunch of fringe cranks who said things like this. Many held Ph.D.s from the leading universities, taught at the leading universities and were internationally renowned.
Presidents of Stanford University and of MIT were among the many academic advocates of theories of racial inferiority -- applied mostly to people from Eastern and Southern Europe, since it was just blithely assumed in passing that blacks were inferior.
This was not a left-right issue. The leading crusaders for theories of genetic superiority and inferiority were iconic figures on the left, on both sides of the Atlantic.
John Maynard Keynes helped create the Cambridge Eugenics Society. Fabian socialist intellectuals H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw were among many other leftist supporters of eugenics.
It was much the same story on this side of the Atlantic. President Woodrow Wilson, like many other Progressives, was solidly behind notions of racial superiority and inferiority. He showed the movie "Birth of a Nation," glorifying the Ku Klux Klan, at the White House, and invited various dignitaries to view it with him.
Such views dominated the first two decades of the 20th century. Now fast forward to the last few decades of the 20th century. The political left of this era was now on the opposite end of the spectrum on racial issues. Yet they too regarded differences in outcomes among racial and ethnic groups as something unusual, calling for some single, sweeping explanation.
Now, instead of genes being the overriding reason for differences in outcomes, racism became the one-size-fits-all explanation. But the dogmatism was the same. Those who dared to disagree, or even to question the prevailing dogma in either era were dismissed -- as "sentimentalists" in the Progressive era and as "racists" in the multicultural era.
Both the Progressives at the beginning of the 20th century and the liberals at the end started from the same false premise -- namely, that there is something unusual about different racial and ethnic groups having different achievements.
Yet some racial or ethnic minorities have owned or directed more than half of whole industries in many nations. These have included the Chinese in Malaysia, Lebanese in West Africa, Greeks in the Ottoman Empire, Britons in Argentina, Indians in Fiji, Jews in Poland, and Spaniards in Chile -- among many others.
Not only different racial and ethnic groups, but whole nations and civilizations, have had very different achievements for centuries. China in the 15th century was more advanced than any country in Europe. Eventually Europeans overtook the Chinese -- and there is no evidence of changes in the genes of either of them.
Among the many reasons for different levels of achievement is something as simple as age. The median age in Germany and Japan is over 40, while the median age in Afghanistan and Yemen is under 20. Even if the people in all four of these countries had the same mental potential, the same history, the same culture -- and the countries themselves had the same geographic features -- the fact that people in some countries have 20 years more experience than people in other countries would still be enough to make equal economic and other outcomes virtually impossible.
Add the fact that different races evolved in different geographic settings, presenting very different opportunities and constraints on their development, and the same conclusion follows.
Yet the idea that differences in outcomes are odd, if not sinister, has been repeated mindlessly from street corner demagogues to the august chambers of the Supreme Court.
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2)Obama Resists Simple Fixes for Sequestration Cuts
The little secret of sequestration is that the Obama administration could fix much of the problem pretty quickly. But it doesn't want to.
Congress tells executive branch agencies how much money they can spend and how they should spend it. Sometimes the instructions are broad, and sometimes they are quite detailed. Cabinet secretaries and lower-downs are bound to work within those congressional directives.
But if Cabinet officers want to spend the money differently, there is a long-established process for doing so: They ask Congress for permission. It happens all the time, with lawmakers routinely giving the executive branch the OK to spend money in different ways than originally planned.
That could be happening now. All those Obama administration officials complaining about across-the-board cuts dictated by sequestration could come up with plans to make the same amount of cuts in ways that would create fewer problems for federal workers and services. Then they could ask Congress for permission to do so. Lawmakers would say yes, and things would be fine.
But it's not happening. And the fault is not with Congress.
In recent weeks, House Republicans have been virtually begging administration officials to ask for permission to move money around. If one program could be more easily cut than others, those Republicans say, just ask us, and we'll let you do it.
"We sent out on Feb. 28 a letter to every Cabinet officer asking them what changes they'd like to have -- pluses, subtractions and so on -- to give them an opportunity to show us at least one program they would like to have cut, which would then save on sequestration," Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said in an interview recently. "We did not receive a single answer."
Issa explained that Congress can allow Cabinet officials to "reprogram" money to ease the burden of sequestration. For example, the sequester requires the Department of Transportation to cut $2 billion from its budget.
"If they were to come up with, for example, $500 million in cuts, their remaining sequestration would drop by 25 percent," Issa said. "If they were able to come up with $2 billion worth of things they wanted to drop altogether or reduce, then they would have no sequestration."
In other words, Obama Cabinet officials, if they chose, could have an enormous amount of flexibility in making the required budget cuts. They just don't want to. "We've had zero answers," repeated Issa.
At a recent committee hearing, Rep. Jim Jordan asked officials from the Transportation and Education departments a simple question. Since they've known about sequestration for a long time and also know they have the ability to ask Congress to reprogram money, why haven't they responded to Issa's letter offering help?
The officials had no answers. "Those wheels are turning," said the man from the Education Department, indicating that, whatever crisis sequestration presents, the bureaucracy will take its time to respond.
It turned out that the officials had done little or no preparing for sequestration and instead focused on drastic measures -- things like closing down one of the two air traffic control towers at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport -- to deal with it.
"I would think that most public servants would want to do what's in the best interest of the taxpayers and the public, and not try to do things for political gain," Jordan said in an interview later. "But let's be honest. Some of the statements we've heard from the administration run counter to what we hope public officials would do."
In the meantime, the administration continues to advertise new job openings for decidedly nonessential positions. (For example, why is the Federal Aviation Administration looking for a couple of "community planners"?) "What's going on is total tone-deafness from the administration," says one frustrated Senate GOP aide. "They are posting for new, low-priority jobs while announcing furloughs. If they have money to make new hires, why not use those funds to prevent furloughs? It's absurd."
Sequestration is still in its early stages. There is still time for the Obama administration to have a change of heart and try to enact cuts in the least dramatic, least obtrusive way. Certainly, Rep. Issa remains ready to go. Congress can move very quickly on something like this, he said, making an open offer to the administration: "If you find programs that you can cut altogether or programs that you can combine, the authority for it would be only hours away."
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3)
40 Obama White House Aides Owe the IRS $333,000 in Back Taxes
President Obama has done a lot of talking the last year about Americans paying their fair share of taxes.
Apparently he means, Do as I say, not as my staff does.
A new report from the Internal Revenue Service has just revealed that 40 of Obama’s White House aides owe their employer, the federal government, a total of $333,485 in back taxes.
This is the third straight year that the chief executive of the United States has been unable to get his own staff members to keep up with a citizen’s legal income tax obligations. to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes owed. All this while Obama has made such rhetorical hay about corporations and the wealthy paying their fair share.
In its previous report the annual IRS audit accounting found that 36 of the Democrat’s White House aides owed $833,000 in back taxes. The year before it was 41 Obama staff members owing $830,000. In the past year Obama’s teleprompter has been on automatic pilot with oft-repeated demands that Americans and profitable corporate giants pay their fair share of taxes.
Because, as you may have heard him claim, Obama so wants to protect the middle class and we really need to pay down the national debt that he’s done so much to grow by 60% to $16.6 trillion in just the 1,511 days he’s been spending.
“America succeeds when everyone does their fair share,” Obama asserted in more than one speech, “when everyone plays by the same rules.” Uh-huh.
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4)What Hath Rand Paul Wrought?
By ROSS DOUTHAT
THE Republican Party built an advantage on foreign policy across generations, and then began demolishing it 10 years ago this month. What the cold war made, the invasion of Iraq largely unmade: beginning in 2003, a party that had long promised — and mostly delivered — peace through strength became identified with an intelligence fiasco, a botched occupation and the squandering of American resources, credibility and lives.
Two Republicans running for president in 2012, Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul, seemed to have some grasp of what Iraq had done to their party’s reputation. But they were both niche candidates who spoke to small constituencies (libertarians in Paul’s case, journalists in Huntsman’s). Paul’s isolationism was hectoring and eccentric, with a “we had it coming” view of terrorism that the Republican electorate was never likely to embrace. Huntsman’s attempt to rehabilitate foreign policy realism was as passionless and flat-footed as his entire campaign. Neither had much influence on Mitt Romney, whose foreign policy rhetoric left the impression that his party had learned nothing from the Bush era.
But where Huntsman and Paul the elder mostly failed, Rand Paul has been enjoying remarkable success. The Kentucky senator’s recent ascent to prominence, which achieved escape velocity with last week’s 13-hour filibuster delaying the confirmation of President Obama’s nominee to lead the C.I.A., hasn’t just made the younger Paul one of the most talked-about politicians in Washington today. It has offered the first real sign that the Republican Party might someday escape the shadow of the Iraq war and enter the post-post-9/11 era.
Officially, Paul’s filibuster was devoted to a specific question of executive power — whether there are any limits on the president’s authority to declare American citizens enemy combatants and deal out death to them. But anyone who listened (and listened, and listened) to his remarks, and put them in the context of his recent speeches and votes and bridge-building, recognized that he was after something bigger: a reorientation of conservative foreign policy thinking away from hair-trigger hawkishness and absolute deference to executive power.
Exactly where such a reorientation would take the party is unclear. Depending on the context, Paul can sometimes sound like a libertarian purist, sometimes like a realist in the Brent Scowcroft mode and sometimes like — well, like a man who was an ophthalmologist in Bowling Green, Ky., just a few short years ago.
But if his ideas are still evolving, his savvy is impressive. Paul has recognized, as a figure like Huntsman did not, that to infuse new ideas into a moribund party you need to speak the language of the base, and sell conservatives as well as moderates on your proposed course correction. (There’s a reason his
recent foreign policy speech was delivered at the Heritage Foundation — normally a redoubt of Cheneyism — and his two big interviews after his filibuster were with Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.) And he’s exploited partisan incentives to bring his fellow Republicans around to his ideas, deliberately picking battles — from the Libya intervention to drone warfare — where a more restrained foreign policy vision doubles as a critique of the Obama White House.
Those incentives, rather than an intellectual sea change on the right, explain why his filibuster enjoyed so much Republican support. (Most of the senators who gave him an assist were just looking for a chance to score points against a Democratic White House.) But if Paul hasn’t won the party over to his ideas, he’s clearly widened the space for intra-Republican debate. And if he runs for president in 2016, that debate will become more interesting than it’s been for many, many years.
There’s a lesson here for his fellow Republican politicians — though that lesson is not, I repeat not, that they should all remake themselves as Paul-style libertarians. One can appreciate the Kentucky senator’s evolution away from his father’s crankiness without completely trusting that it’s genuine, and on domestic policy a swing to libertarian purism is something the present Republican Party doesn’t need.
Rather, the lesson of Paul’s ascent is that being a policy entrepreneur carries rewards as well as risks — and that if you know how to speak the language of the party’s base, it’s possible to be a different kind of Republican without forfeiting your conservative bona fides.
This is something that the party’s other ambitious officeholders have been slow to recognize. Since the 2012 election, a number of prominent Republicans — Eric Cantor, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, and so on — have given speeches that tiptoe toward new ideas, new policies, new visions of what their party might stand for and support. But ultimately they’ve all stopped short of actually breaking with the policy consensus that sent Romney down to defeat.
Paul, by contrast, has actually challenged that consensus in a substantive and constructive way. And far from being excommunicated for it, he’s been rewarded with greater prominence and increased conservative support.
For those with ears, let them hear.
4a)CNN's Erin Burnett on Monday asked former first lady Laura Bush a truly disgusting question.
In a segment about the George W. Bush Institute's Women's Initiative Fellowship Program and its involvement with a group of Egyptian women, Burnett asked Mrs. Bush if the United States needs to "accept" anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism "when we want to make change" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
ERIN BURNETT, HOST: An Egyptian woman, her name's Samir Ibraham, and she's done a lot of things, courageous things. She's also been criticized for sending tweets that are anti-Semitic, anti-American. Does the U.S. need to accept that when we want to make change. You have to support people that do those things - financially in term of awards, in terms of all these things - because it pays off in the end? Is that a trade-off we have to make?
Those not watching the video should be advised that when Mrs. Bush answered, there was a bit of a startled laugh when she said "No":
LAURA BUSH: No, I don't think so, not necessarily. But I do think it's really important that we do support women in any way we can in the U.S. And I know American women want to do that. It's easy for us to recruit the mentors, the American women mentors for our class of Egyptian fellows because American women are interested in women around the world. And they want to see women succeed.
Burnett should be advised that tolerating anti-Semitism is never an acceptable trade-off for it leads to awful treatment of Jews.
Maybe she's forgotten what happened during World War II.
She might also ask herself whether she'd ever consider racism directed at minorities here in America acceptable under any Machiavellian circumstances.
One quite imagines she wouldn't.
Yet despite the long history of tragic anti-Semitism on this planet, the end justifies the means when Jews are the victims.
Why might that be?
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5)
The Obama Credo
By Stella Paul
I believe that a child who pretends his pastry is a gun poses an imminent danger, but 5,000 criminal illegal aliens released from jail enhance public safety.
I believe that New Yorkers must be protected from the risk of drinking 16 ounces of soda, but exposed to the risk of bringing Osama bin Laden's son-in-law for a civil trial blocks from Ground Zero.
I believe that every American child deserves to be loved and cherished, except for certain 16-year-olds who deserve to be killed by drones.
I believe that a Muslim woman who applauds 9/11 and admires Hitler deserves a State Department award for her courage, at least until someone reads her tweets.
I believe that the federal government should confiscate guns from law-abiding Americans, but give thousands of guns to Mexican drug gangs to kill our Border Patrol agents.
I believe the president should stay up late partying with Jay-Z and Beyonce, but hit the sack when our Libyan consulate is under attack and our Ambassador is missing.
I believe that plastic bags are a menace to the earth, but Iran's nuclear weapons are no big deal.
I believe that mankind controls the weather, but is helpless to get a job.
I believe that Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and CIA Chief John Brennan are fair-minded statesmen, and if you don't agree, you're a Jew-loving Zionist who's under the thumb of the Israel Lobby.
I believe the First Lady should always announce the winning picture at the Oscars, accompanied by military personnel, and if you don't like the Academy's choice, you should be shot.
I believe that American children must be educated by government teachers about the danger of sexual predators, and fondled by government inspectors every time they board a plane.
I believe that America is rich enough to arm the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt with 16 F-16 fighter jets and 200 Abrams tanks, but too broke to give White House tours.
I believe that government should keep its "Hands off my body," with the one exception of ObamaCare's 160new government agencies that control my medical care.
I believe that Bob Woodward is a hero for exposing the lies of Nixon, and a scoundrel for exposing the lies of Obama.
I believe that women are the most capable people on earth, but helpless to pack healthy lunches for their kids without the First Lady.
I believe that Attorney General Eric Holder, who's in contempt of Congress, is trustworthy when he promises Congress not to kill us with drones, because his word is gold.
I believe that Al Gore is a sincere spokesman for the planet, who only sold out to Al Jazeera for 100 million bucks because he needed to pay the fuel bills in his 10,000-square-foot mansion.
I believe that male politicians must respect women, and so I voted for Robert Menendez, Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards, Bill Clinton, John Kennedy, Anthony Weiner, David Wu, Kwame Kilpatrick, Antonio Villaraigoso, and the irreplaceable conscience of the Senate, Ted Kennedy.
I believe that Arabs blowing up Israeli families are expressing justifiable rage, but Jews building homes in Jerusalem can never be forgiven.
I believe that Hillary Clinton was the greatest Secretary of State since the dawn of time, and if you don't agree, what difference at this point does it make?
I believe that we must practice sustainability for our children's future, and that every beautiful new baby should be born $54,000 in debt.
I believe that the Constitution is an outmoded document written by dead white males, and Shariah is a timeless expression of important cultural values.
I believe in free speech, so why don't you shut the **** up.
I believe the Koch Brothers are greedy, conniving hate-mongers, and that convicted felon and Nazi collaborator George Soros is a selfless patriot.
I believe that Obama has elevated us to a new age of multicultural harmony, and that's why his Department of Homeland Security just ordered 450 million rounds of hollow point bullets.
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6)Al Qaeda forms volatile 1,000-km chain from Baghdad to Damascus
)Israel’s Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz rated war as a “low risk” for the foreseeable future, but credited the risk of escalation as “very high,” in a lecture he delivered Monday, March 11 at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Institute for policy and strategy. “Almost every week, some incident occurs that could drag the region into a conflagration,” he warned.
Military sources: Gen. Gantz’s distinction between “war” and “conflagration” stems from the differentiation Israel’s senior policy-making and military circles have begun making of late to support a misconception that a full-blown war is no longer on the cards at present. They support this rationale by arguing that full-scale war can only be fought by large regular armies, while a “conflagration” or “escalation” entails smaller units and less terrain.
The Egyptian army, which would be the key to a major conflict, is held up in this regard as being in no state to go to war, given their country’s disastrous political and economic plight. The generals, according to this theory, would take into account the low state of their units and lack of logistical preparedness and simply decline to issue any order to embark on war against Israel.
So when Gantz talked about a conflagration, he was thinking in terms of the Islamist militias in Syria, Hizballah in Lebanon and the Salafists allied with al Qaeda cells in Sinai – none of which are capable of launching war on the classical dimensions of the past.
What this kind of thinking omits to take into account is that, while the regular Arab national armies which attacked Israel in the past are indeed crumbling, the militias in their countries are mushrooming dangerously. They are bursting out of their national boundaries, nourished with arms, manpower and funding from distant sources in and beyond the Middle East.
AGAIN military sources point to the example of the Syrian army’s 17th Reserve Division, whose recent defeat in the battle for the Euphrates River in eastern Syria established a regional landmark. It removed the last gap in the 1,000-kilometer long chain of command formed by Islamist forces identified or associated with al Qaeda, which now runs contiguously from the northern outskirts of Baghdad to the eastern fringes of Damascus. The Syrian Golan, since it fell to the Islamist militias fighting with Syrian rebels, forms part of that chain. The Battle for the Euphrates was a landmark event in that it opened the way for al Qaeda to conduct itself as a transnational force in combat. And indeed, in a recent encounter, al Qaeda in Iraq claimed victory over Syrian military units which, having crossed the border into that country, lost the battle at the cost of 48 soldiers and 9 agents dead.
Therefore, any “conflagration” in Syria, for instance, could quickly spread to Lebanon, Iraq or the Golan; and a violent incident in Egypt may emanate from or spill over into Libya, Israel or Algeria.
This eventuality was intimated in another part of the Gantz lecture: “The only permanent factor we are seeing in the last two years is that nothing is permanent. Egypt, too, which underwent a revolutionary process, has not achieved permanence; old and familiar arenas are changing and are being replaced by newer, weightier, ones,” said the chief of staff. “The threats have not gone, only assumed new shapes and when we encounter them in the future, will demand of us enhanced strength.”
Gantz went on to say: “True, we aren’t preparing to fight a regular army, but when next challenged, we shall still have to crawl through the burrows of Gaza and reach every building in Judea and Samaria.”
The general omitted reference to Iran. This may have been because a nuclear Iran represents the prospect of all-out war with a national army and is therefore the exception to the theory embodied in his lecture.
Regarding Syria, he said: “The situation in Syria has become exceptionally dangerous and unstable. Although the probability of a conventional war against the Syrian army is low, the terrorist organizations fighting Assad may next set their sights on us. The Syrian army’s tremendous strategic resources may well fall into terrorist hands.”
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