And at Telegraph UK, "Steven Spielberg 'honoured' to meet Royals."
I saw 'War Horse' over the weekend. I liked it, although it I had some unexpected thoughts about it.
I'll update on this later. It was a magnificent movie.
Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education - from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, facing tighter U.S. sanctions and rising tensions in the Persian Gulf, will turn to his diminished group of allies in Latin America for support this week.More at the link.
Ahmadinejad arrived in Venezuela yesterday to kick off a four-nation tour to push investment projects such as a hydro- electric power plant in Ecuador. He’ll be joining forces with leaders like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Raul Castro in taking shots at the U.S. in its own backyard, defying attempts to isolate Iran over its nuclear activities.
Iran’s Latin American allies shouldn’t expect too much in return. Iran has yet to fulfill pledges made by Ahmadinejad on previous trips -- he’s made five since 2005 -- to build a port in Nicaragua and an oil refinery in Ecuador. Unlike during his last regional tour in 2009, he won’t visit Brazil, where President Dilma Rousseff has shown little interest in deepening ties forged by her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
“The promises of aid and investment have not been kept,” Cynthia Arnson, Latin America program director at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, said in a phone interview. “This is clearly a political solidarity tour to reinforce relationships with a small number of allies.”
After holding talks with Chavez today, Ahmadinejad will travel to Nicaragua to attend the swearing-in ceremony tomorrow of President Daniel Ortega, who was re-elected to a second consecutive term in November. He’ll also visit Cuba and Ecuador during the five-day tour.
A fusillade of attacks on front-runner Mitt Romney presages what is likely to be at least a month of internal warfare among Republicans as the presidential candidates head for the South, the heart of the GOP's restive base.The problem, of course, is that the sharpening attacks on Romney simply set the table for the extreme left's impending jihad against the Mormon "predatory capitalist" nominee --- that is, if and when Romney clinches the nomination.
The campaign's longtime dynamic shifted forcefully Sunday, as several trailing candidates tried to take down Romney before he more firmly grasps the Republican presidential nomination. He's a heavy favorite in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, but immediately ahead is South Carolina, where his foes are already on the ground and beaming new, more corrosive charges over the airwaves.
Some of what is powering the increasing acrimony among the candidates is personal disdain. But it also reflects profound differences between sectors of the Republican Party.
"This is a more doctrinaire Republican base than we had seen in the last 25 years," said Andrew Kohut, president of the independent Pew Research Center. "It is much more hard-core than in the past."
In particular, he said, highly energized elements on the GOP right "are looking for a rebellious kind of candidate," as reflected in polls and initial voting results that show a majority of Republicans unwilling to fall in line behind button-down Romney.
DENVER — Tebow Time met overtime, and overtime had no chance. Neither did the Pittsburgh Steelers.Continue reading.
Tim Tebow, who had engineered comebacks from fourth-quarter deficits to win five games since becoming the starter this season, completed a short pass that Demaryius Thomas turned into an 80-yard touchdown on the first play from scrimmage in overtime, giving the Denver Broncos a stunning 29-23 victory Sunday in their A.F.C. wild-card game. It was the first overtime game since the N.F.L. established rules last year that would allow overtime to end with just one team possessing the ball only if that team scored a touchdown.
Fittingly, Tebow, who has defied conventional wisdom and the best intelligence about how football is meant to be played, turned the rule on its head. He pulled the trigger. And pulled off another Tebow miracle. Now the Broncos can prepare to visit the New England Patriots next Saturday. The Patriots went into Denver on Dec. 18 and defeated the Broncos, 41-23.
The wicked way that WHDH-TV's Andy Hiller asked a question -- in effect, what have you done for gay people lately? -- put Romney in the odd position of delivering a clarion call for compassion toward gays and lesbians.
"If people are looking for someone who will discriminate against gays or will in any way try and suggest that people that have different sexual orientation don't have full rights in this country, they won't find that in me," Romney said.
A commendable sentiment, many might say. But it is also the kind of statement that has a way of finding its way onto leaflets on car windshields outside churches in places like, say, South Carolina; it's not a message that's going to resonate well with many of the evangelicals who vote in Republican primaries.
But the attacks on Romney's role at Bain Capital, the investment firm he co-founded, may prove even more damaging. By portraying the company as a job-destroying malefactor of Wall Street greed, fellow Republicans are laying a foundation upon which the Obama campaign will eagerly build.
If anyone assumes that all will be forgotten -- Romney won New Hampshire! He's vetted! None of that matters! -- it helps to recall:
In 1988, it was not Republicans but a Democrat -- Al Gore -- who first raised the issue of weekend furloughs for convicted killers, which helped destroy the presidential hopes of another former Massachusetts governor, Michael Dukakis. The subject came up during a Democratic debate ahead of the New York primary; it did Gore little good -- he lost badly -- and did nothing to slow Dukakis' march to the nomination.
In the fall, however, Republicans seized on the case of Willie Horton, who raped a woman and stabbed and pistol-whipped her boyfriend while on weekend release, and used it to devastating effect against Dukakis.
If Bain proves to be Romney's bane, you won't know it from what happens here in New Hampshire. It will be clear only when, and if, he wins the nomination and faces Obama and his team of bruisers in the fall.
CONCORD, N.H. — Mitt Romney’s opponents, seizing upon what could be one of their last opportunities to blunt his accelerating momentum toward the GOP presidential nomination, trained their fire on the front-runner Sunday morning in their final joint appearance before Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.More at Legal Insurrection, "“Pious Baloney” is the word."
One by one, Romney’s opponents took the parts of his résuméthat he touts as strengths and portrayed them as evidence that he lacks authenticity, conviction and consistency.
“Can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney?” former House speaker Newt Gingrich asked Romney, after the former Massachusetts governor once again portrayed himself as a career businessman with a disdain for lifelong politicians.
“The fact is, you ran in ’94 and lost. That’s why you weren’t serving in the Senate,” Gingrich said. “You had a very bad reelection rating [as governor]. You dropped out of office. . . . You were running for president while you were governor.”
Gingrich added: “Now you’re back running. You have been running consistently for years and years and years. So this idea that suddenly citizenship showed up in your mind, just level with the American people. You’ve been running for — at least since the 1990s.”
When Romney touted his record cutting taxes and balancing budgets as governor, former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.), who fought him to a virtual tie in last week’s Iowa caucuses, retorted: “If you didn’t want to even stand before the people of Massachusetts and run on your record, if it was that great, why did you bail out?”
And where Romney had cited his 1994 Senate bid against the late Edward M. Kennedy as a heroic and quixotic challenge to “the policies of the liberal welfare state,” Santorum said Romney’s loss resulted from a failure of spine.
“He wouldn’t stand for conservative principles,” Santorum said. “He ran from Ronald Reagan. And he said he was going to be to the left of Ted Kennedy on gay rights, on abortion, a whole host of other issues.”
And former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, defending himself against Romney’s barbs about Huntsman’s service as President Obama’s ambassador to China, suggested that Romney puts partisanship and ambition above country.
“He criticized me, while he was out raising money, for serving my country in China, yes, under a Democrat, like my two sons are doing in the United States Navy,” Huntsman said, in an oblique reminder that none of Romney’s five sons has ever been in the military. “They’re not asking who — what political affiliation the president is. I want to be very clear with the people here in New Hampshire and this country: I will always put my country first.”
Huntsman’s struggling campaign is looking for a breakout in New Hampshire. He did not compete in Iowa so that he could stay in this state and compete for the votes of independents, who are allowed under the state’s open system to vote in the GOP primary. Meanwhile, Santorum, Gingrich and Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) are attacking Romney from the right.
Still, in the latest polls, Romney has been maintaining a more than 20-point lead over his rivals.
The Left endlessly trumpets its “empathy.” President Obama, for example, has said that what he looks for in his judges is “the depth and breadth of one’s empathy.” As he told his pro-abortion pals at Planned Parenthood, “we need somebody who’s got the heart — the empathy — to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom.” Empathy, empathy, empathy: You barely heard the word outside clinical circles until the liberals decided it was one of those accessories no self-proclaimed caring progressive should be without.RTWT.
Indeed, flaunting their empathy is what got Eugene Robinson and many others their Pulitzers — Robinson describes his newspaper column as “a license to feel.” Yet he’s entirely incapable of imagining how it must feel for a parent to experience within the same day both new life and death — or even to understand that the inability to imagine being in that situation ought to prompt a little circumspection.
The Left’s much-vaunted powers of empathy routinely fail when confronted by those who do not agree with them politically...
GOFFSTOWN, N.H. — A relaxed and self-assured Mitt Romney sailed above the fray at a crucial debate on Saturday night as his Republican rivals engaged in a spirited fight to determine which of them would emerge as his most formidable opponent when the party’s nominating contest moves past New Hampshire.More at the link.
Mr. Romney, who had been bracing for an onslaught of attacks, brushed aside a critique about job losses during his time buying and selling companies at his investment firm. He defended his record as Massachusetts governor with ease, fielding only occasional questions about the similarities between his state health care law and the national version championed by President Obama.
Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania painted himself as the one candidate on the stage with the credentials to provide a pure, conservative case against Mr. Obama. He warned Republicans that Mr. Romney’s pedigree would make it more difficult to push back against the income equality argument that is a central theme of the president’s re-election strategy.
“I was not ever for an individual mandate. I wasn’t for a top-down, government-run health care system. I wasn’t for the big bank of Wall Street bailout, as Governor Romney was,” Mr. Santorum said. “We’re looking for someone who can win this race, who can win this race on the economy and on the core issues of this election.”
Representative Ron Paul of Texas, who did not rule out a third-party run if he failed to win the Republican nomination, attacked Mr. Santorum and Newt Gingrich. Both of them, he said, had profited from promoting the agendas of corporations to their old colleagues in Congress.
“I mean, he became a high-powered lobbyist in Washington, D.C., and he has done quite well,” Mr. Paul said of Mr. Santorum, who, like Mr. Gingrich, had corporate clients after leaving government but did not register as a lobbyist. “We checked out Newt, on his income. I think we ought to find out how much money he has made from the lobbyists as well.”
In one of the most personal clashes of the evening, Mr. Paul and Mr. Gingrich fought over military service. Mr. Gingrich said he was married and had a child, so he did not join the military as a young man. Mr. Paul said that he, too, had children, and when he was drafted, “I went.”
The candidates gathered on the campus of St. Anselm College, just outside Manchester, three days before the New Hampshire primary moves the Republican Party one step closer to selecting a nominee to challenge Mr. Obama. The evening unfolded with far more civility than many previous debates, with a battle for second place emerging as the storyline in a central moment of the campaign.
Cary Singletary is 6-foot-2, an ex-boxer who once worked nightclub security, alternating coffee and water to stay alert through the small hours. Now, encamped on the streets of downtown Santa Ana, he's the unofficial sentry for what he calls "my people," a group of homeless whose wary existence is now shadowed by a new peril: a serial killer.Continue reading at the link.
"Hopefully, they'll get the sick-minded coward," said Singletary 52, speaking of the string of stabbing deaths of middle-aged homeless men in Orange County that began just before Christmas. Singletary stood in a parking lot Thursday night clutching a safety kit — a whistle and flashlight, both donated by the Orange County Rescue Mission.
Singletary said he fears that the killer, who has attacked in neighboring Anaheim, Placentia and Yorba Linda, might strike next in Santa Ana. So he is up all night, drinking coffee, keeping watch for strangers. For company, he listens to R&B on his headphones. He sleeps in two-hour shifts on the public bus.
"If that serial killer wants to come at us, he'll have his hands full," said Singletary, who has been homeless for six months. "We've got some soldiers out here. I'm just one of them. If that whistle goes off, you'll have a whole army of homeless on him."
Across the county, at the urging of authorities, many of the homeless are seeking beds at emergency shelters, or making sure to sleep in groups outdoors, and taking pains to make themselves less conspicuous on the streets and riverbeds. Many say it is just another version of a skill they have practiced for years — survival — in a dangerous milieu. In some cases, efforts to help are complicated by mental illness, paranoia and a deep-seated fatalism.
Political Islam, especially the strict version practiced by Salafists in Egypt, is thriving largely because it is tapping into ideological roots that were laid down long before the revolts began. Invented in the 1920s by the Muslim Brotherhood, kept alive by their many affiliates and offshoots, boosted by the failures of Nasserism and Baathism, allegedly bankrolled by Saudi and Qatari money, and inspired by the defiant example of revolutionary Iran, Islamism has for years provided a coherent narrative about what ails Muslim societies and where the cure lies. Far from rendering Islamism unnecessary, as some experts forecast, the Arab Spring has increased its credibility; Islamists, after all, have long condemned these corrupt regimes as destined to fail.The implications of this are pretty dire, actually. Islamism is a destabilizing force for international relations. It rejects the legitimacy of the status quo and will work to topple it.
Liberalism in 19th-century Europe, and Islamism in the Arab world today, are like channels dug by one generation of activists and kept open, sometimes quietly, by future ones. When the storms of revolution arrive, whether in Europe or the Middle East, the waters will find those channels. Islamism is winning out because it is the deepest and widest channel into which today’s Arab discontent can flow.
With supporters like these, Paul hardly needs detractors. I can’t think of a single thing a Paul supporter has done that has made me more inclined to see his candidate in a favorable light. Paul supporters are the ones who won’t stop talking to you on airplanes. They show up at caucuses and ramble on at length about finding the bones of giants in the earth. They comment indignantly on your blog posts and link you to conspiracy Web sites.You think?
Stop doing this! You’ve crossed the line from self-parody into campaign liability.
Reporting from Goffstown, N.H.— Rick Santorum's new status in the top tier of the Republican race for president has also raised the profile of gay marriage as a major issue. In tonight's debate, the candidates largely agreed in favoring a narrow definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.Also at The Hill, "GOP debate: No love for gay marriage."
The first question posed to the candidates dealt with how same-sex couples should go about recognizing a committed, long-term relationship if marriage was not an option available to them.
Newt Gingrich said marriage was a "sacrament" long recognized in history as being between a man and a woman.
"It is a huge jump from being understanding and considerate and concerned, which we should be, to saying we therefore are going to institute the sacrament of marriage as though it has no basis," he said. "It's something worth protecting."
Santorum was asked what should happen to couples who have married in New Hampshire since it became state law. Santorum said marriage was a federal issue.
"We have to have one law. We can't have someone married in one state and not married in another. Once we are successful in establishing that, then this issue becomes moot," he said.
Mitt Romney said he'd support domestic partnership benefits for gay couples, but stopped short of gay marriage or even civil unions.
"To say that marriage is something other than the relationship between a man and a woman, I think, is a mistake," he said. "The reason for that is not that we want to discriminate against people or to suggest that gay couples are not just as loving and can't also raise children well. But it's instead a recognition that, for society as a whole, that the nation presumably would be better off if children are raised in a setting where there's a male and a female."
If anyone is going to take it to Mitt Romney, it might as well be now.Continue reading.
The slowly diminishing field of GOP presidential candidates, as odd as it may seem, has two debates that will begin within 12 hours of each other, just a couple of days before the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary.
Saturday evening’s debate, sponsored by ABC and Yahoo, will be held at St. Anselm College in Manchester; the Sunday morning tilt, co-sponsored by Facebook, will be held in Concord and shown live on MSNBC and then later on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Together, they represent a chance -- perhaps one of the few remaining ones -- for the other GOP contenders to dent Romney’s growing momentum.
Polls show Romney with a sizeable lead in New Hampshire ahead of Tuesday’s primary and a new CNN-Time poll has him in the lead in South Carolina as well, raising the possibility that the question of the GOP standard bearer could be settled sooner, not later.
Romney felt confident enough about his chances in New Hampshire that he took time out this week to make a quick stop down in South Carolina before returning. It’s expected he’ll try to stay above the fray and keep his sights set on the economy and President Obama, leaving the other participants, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman Jr. and Rick Perry, to come after him.
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Five former ambassadors to the Vatican endorsed Mitt Romney on Saturday, choosing a Mormon over two Roman Catholic rivals in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.Bah.
In a statement showcased by Mr. Romney’s campaign, the ambassadors said they “are united in our wholehearted support for the candidacy of Mitt
Romney for the Presidency of the United States because of his commitment to and support of the values that we feel are critical in a national leader.”
Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are both Catholics and often talk about their religion and values on the campaign trail.
The endorsements could also help blunt any under-the-radar attacks by religious conservatives who oppose Mr. Romney because of his religion. Last year, some evangelical leaders called Mormonism a cult.
That might be especially helpful to Mr. Romney in South Carolina, even though it has only a small number of Catholics. Religious conservatives there have traditionally played a large role in the primary where tough, negative campaigning is the norm.
In the statement, the ambassadors cited what they said was Mr. Romney’s commitment to “traditional values” and said that because of his “outstanding record in defense of marriage and the family, we are confident that he understands the importance of strong families as pillars of a vibrant economy and a flourishing polity.”
Rick Santorum has zero chance of winning the Republican presidential nomination. Not only is Santorum a sick and twisted homophobe, he’s even too sick and twisted for the majority of Republicans. His focus on these issues in his campaign is all about his own psychosis and has nothign to do with what is good for the country or what the country needs.Actually, it's homosexual relations that are sexually deviant, but standing up for moral decency and tradition gets you attacked for "sexual deviance" in our right is wrong, up is down world of radical progressive totalitarianism.
I’m afraid if an aggressive questioner asked Santorum to rank priorities for the US, his first ten or more would all have to do with sexual issues. He must have had one screwed up childhood.
Which is more important, Rick, gay marriage or climate change?
Which is more important, Rick, corrupt bankers or two women kissing?
Santorum is not your every day, run-of-the-mill Republican thug. Unlike his fellow candidates, he isn’t simply a bad person dressed in expensive clothing advocating for the rights of the rich over all else. Nope, Rick, needs psychiatric help. Instead of four years in the White House, I’d suggest a lengthy stay in a mental facility that specializes in sexual deviance.
TILTON, N.H. — After preparing for a drawn-out nominating battle that would stretch well into the spring, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign is now quietly shifting gears in an effort to steamroll his underfunded opponents — and lock up the Republican nomination by the Florida primary at the end of this month.Continue reading.
Buoyed by a narrow win in the Iowa caucuses and his commanding lead in the New Hampshire polls, Romney has turned his attention to South Carolina, where he is dispatching a slew of high-profile surrogates and relocating some staffers ahead of the Jan. 21 primary. Looking further ahead, Romney has begun a massive advertising blitz in Florida and launched an aggressive outreach program to early voters in the state.
Romney campaign advisers insist that they are moving forward one state at a time and not taking any contest for granted. Yet Republican observers see Romney executing an ambitious strategy that would quickly maximize his momentum and try to quash any further surges by his rivals.
“If Romney wins the first four states, he’ll be the de facto nominee of the party,” said Steve Schmidt, a senior strategist on Sen. John McCain’s 2008 GOP campaign who is unaffiliated in the current race. Ed Rogers, another unaffiliated Republican strategist, said the notion that Romney may wrap up the nomination by Jan. 31 is “perfectly plausible.”
NEWPORT, N.H. — Newt Gingrich charged that remarks he made about food stamps and African-Americans were taken out of context and twisted to sound racially insensitive.By "some bloggers," eh?
“I went back and pulled up the exact language of the text,” Mr. Gingrich told reporters on Friday. “I think you’d have to be nuts’’ to interpret the words as critical of blacks.
He accused the Democratic National Committee of being behind the misinterpretation, which echoed through the left-leaning blogosphere on Thursday, and was then covered by the national news media.
Asked if his linkage of blacks and food stamps was meant to evoke stereotypes with white conservatives, Mr. Gingrich attacked liberal policies that, he said, had failed the poor.
“Just as happened with Moynihan,” he said, referring to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Democratic senator from New York whose writings on poverty stirred controversy in the 1960s, “if you in fact talk openly and honestly about the failure of liberal institutions and the way they hurt the poor, there comes a sudden frenzied herd of people running over screaming racism, racism.”
On Thursday, Mr. Gingrich, in a variation on a campaign theme, said that if he were the Republican nominee, he would run against President Obama in part by visiting minority communities to pitch his supply-side recipe for job creation.
“So I’m prepared,” he said in Plymouth, N.H. “If the N.A.A.C.P. invites me, I’ll go to their convention, talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.”
The comment was criticized by some bloggers as invoking racial stereotypes.
A Navy destroyer rescued 13 Iranian fishermen held hostage by Somali pirates in the Arabian Sea only days after Tehran warned the United States to keep its ships out of the nearby Persian Gulf.
Sailors from the guided-missile destroyer Kidd boarded the Iranian dhow Thursday and detained 15 Somalis after one of the fishermen was able to reveal in a radio communication that his vessel's crew was being held captive.
Seeing a publicity windfall at a time of growing tension with Iran, Pentagon public affairs officers quickly swung into action, setting up a conference call for reporters with Navy commanders in the region.
Among those briefing journalists was Rear Adm. Craig S. Faller, who commands the John C. Stennis aircraft carrier strike group, which conducted the rescue and includes the Kidd. Faller later received a congratulatory telephone call from Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, the Pentagon said in a statement.
"When we get a distress signal, we're going to respond," Pentagon spokesman George Little quoted Panetta as saying.
The Stennis is the ship that Gen. Ataollah Salehi, head of Iran's army, advised Tuesday not to return to the Persian Gulf after the carrier had passed through the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic choke point that Iran has threatened to close in response to economic sanctions by the United States and its allies.
About one-fifth of the world's oil exports pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
Rick Santorum first came to Congress from western Pennsylvania in 1990 after waging a grass-roots campaign against an opponent he labeled a Washington insider for buying a house in a fancy suburb of the capital.Continue reading.
But during four years in the House and 12 in the Senate, Santorum became an insider himself. He brought home earmarks that his competitors are now criticizing. He helped lead Republican outreach to K Street lobbyists. And despite his campaign promises, Santorum established his family's home in an affluent Washington suburb while charging his children's school tuition to Pennsylvania taxpayers.
The shift from conservative insurgent to a man considered a cunning Capitol player dogged Santorum in his 2006 Senate race, in which his Democratic challenger, Bob Casey, branded him beholden to Washington interests. Santorum lost his seat in a double-digit rout.
Since leaving the Senate, Santorum has quietly built a comfortable life, following a path that has become well-worn for former members of Congress. He doubled his net worth with lucrative contracts with Fox News and Washington lobbying and consulting firms.
Now his squeaker second-place finish behind GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses has brought renewed scrutiny to the former senator's record. Santorum's campaign did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Santorum started his political career with an upset, unseating seven-term Democrat Doug Walgren by a 2-point margin. Santorum relentlessly criticized Walgren for living in "the wealthiest area of Virginia," hundreds of miles away from the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh that he represented. Walgren said in an interview this week that the residency issue was "the key" to the election.
"He made a lot of absolute promises that he would never live in Washington, that his residence has always been in Pittsburgh," Walgren said.
But four years later, when he was elected to the Senate, Santorum and his family settled into a home in Herndon, Va., and then moved to a larger house, purchased for $643,000 in affluent Leesburg.
"He found out that [keeping his family in Pittsburgh] was not something that he wanted to do," Walgren said. "He accused me of doing something that he said was wrong and then just went right ahead and did it himself."
Santorum has told Pennsylvania reporters that his pledge not to live in Washington applied to his service in the House. "The Senate is a very different place," he said, according to the York (Pa.) Daily Record.
On Capitol Hill, Santorum at first took an anti-establishment tack, joining other GOP freshmen to expose the fact that more than 350 representatives, Democrats and Republicans alike, had written thousands of overdrafts on the now-defunct House bank.
As his tenure went on, Santorum went from needling the establishment to becoming the establishment, ascending the ranks to be the third-highest Republican in the Senate. From that position, he worked on legislative successes, including passage of a massive welfare reform bill during the Clinton presidency.
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Riding a bump in national polls after his strong showing in Iowa, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum sought Thursday to erode rival Mitt Romney's substantial lead by drawing distinctions in policy and background for GOP voters here and nationwide.Continue reading.
Mr. Santorum cast himself as an advocate for blue-collar workers and their economically troubled communities, hoping to capitalize on differences with Mr. Romney, a wealthy former private-equity investor and son of a Michigan governor, in a GOP field reshaped by Iowa's caucuses.
Two national polls have registered a substantial bounce for Mr. Santorum. A Gallup survey that included Wednesday, the day after he lost to Mr. Romney in Iowa by a razor-thin margin, showed Mr. Santorum spiking to 11% support and fourth place in the race, compared to 3% in late December. A Rasmussen survey Wednesday showed Mr. Santorum in second place, with 21%, behind Mr. Romney's 29%.
As he campaigned in New Hampshire, which holds its GOP primary Tuesday, Mr. Santorum spoke of plans to revive blue-collar communities. His speeches were peppered with memories of his coal-miner grandfather, along with details about his plans to revive U.S. manufacturing. For many voters, it added a new dimension to a candidate known as an opponent of abortion and gay marriage.
"A lot of blue collar workers have been left behind in America," Mr. Santorum said Thursday in Manchester. Later, at a campaign event in Tilton, he said his family and his friends' families had worked in factories. To a man who asked about manufacturing workers "sitting at home,'' Mr. Santorum replied: "My plan is 'Made in America.'"
To be clear, Santorum’s offensive and circuitous responses are all meant to reject the natural desire of two same-sex individuals to join in a union and enjoy the same rights as heterosexual couples.Actually, there is no "natural desire" such as this. Homosexuality is a deviant form of sexual relations and has become a "right" only at the whip end of progressive campaigns of recrimination and terror against traditionals. These are the points that Santorum needs to raise. Hold the evidence on the radical gay push for homosexual polygamy for later.
Unlike anti-Israeli sentiment based on ignorance of history ... you don’t stand a chance of persuading bigots by using facts, logic, or reasoning, because their attitudes are irrational, deep-seated, and often unconscious.
Education may help with the factually-ignorant. With the deep-seated anti-Semite, nothing will succeed.
When you encounter such a person, I recommend minimizing contact — indeed, if you can, cutting off contact entirely.
Life is too short to subject yourself to an unrepentant bigot, no matter how charming or attractive he or she may appear to be in other respects. I’m with Moses Seixas and George Washington on this: “give bigotry no sanction.” None.Progressives hate Jews. And the Occupy Wall Street movement has been driven throughout by anti-Zionism and exterminationist attacks on the Jews. And of course the very denials of these facts are themselves despicable and f-king reprehensible expressions of anti-Semitic bigotry. These people are the pestilence destroying democracy in the West.
Diane Abbott, Labour’s shadow health minister, has faced calls to resign after claiming that white people “love to divide and rule”.Abbott's Twitter feed is here.
Miss Abbott was engulfed by criticism from political opponents who said her remarks were “racist” and would never have been tolerated had they been made about black people.
Initially, the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington refused to say sorry for her comments, which she claimed had been taken “out of context” and interpreted “maliciously”.
However, after a “difficult” phone call with her party leader, Ed Miliband, Labour headquarters issued a statement in which Miss Abbott apologised “for any offence caused”.
Miss Abbott, the first black female MP in the Commons, made her comments in response to a commentator who said she disliked the “lazy” and “monolithic” use of the term “black community” during coverage of the Stephen Lawrence murder trial.
Bim Adewunmi, a freelance journalist, wrote on Twitter that she found many black “leaders” shown in the media to be out of touch with the people they purported to represent.
Miss Abbott responded to say the comments were “playing into a 'divide and rule’ agenda” that is as “old as colonialism”. She said black people should not “wash dirty linen in public”.
In her most inflammatory message, posted after midnight, she added: “White people love playing 'divide & rule’. We should not play their game,” appending the reference tag: “tacticasoldascolonialism”.
BAGHDAD — It was one of the deadliest insurgent groups in Iraq in recent years, an Iranian-backed militia that bombed American military convoys and bases, assassinated dozens of Iraqi officials and tried to kidnap Americans even as the last soldiers withdrew.Way to go Democrats!
But now the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is welcoming the militant group into Iraq’s political system, a move that could tilt the nation’s center of gravity closer to Iran. The government’s support for the militia, which only just swore off violence, has opened new sectarian fault lines in Iraq’s political crisis while potentially empowering Iran at a moment of rising military and economic tensions between Tehran and Washington.
The militant group, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, broke away from the fierce Shiite militia commanded by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who has strong ties to Tehran. The American military has long maintained that the group, led by a former spokesman for Mr. Sadr, Qais al-Khazali, was trained and financed by Iran’s elite Quds Force — something that Iran denies.
Since the American military withdrawal last month, Iraq has been convulsed with waves of attacks that have raised concerns about its political stability. On Thursday, bombings killed at least 68 people, including 44 Shiite pilgrims in a single attack in the southern deserts near Nasiriya. With that backdrop of violence, the Iraqi government can plausibly claim that its overtures to the group are an earnest attempt to make peace with a powerful armed foe while nudging the country closer to a much-needed national reconciliation.
Thousands of other militants, both Sunni and Shiite, have cut deals with the government to stop fighting, and few officials see a meaningful peace in Iraq that does not include reconciling with armed groups. On Thursday, Asaib Ahl al-Haq made another conciliatory gesture, saying it would release the body of a British bodyguard, Alan McMenemy, who was kidnapped in 2007 with four others, only one of whom was released alive.
Yet, critics worry that Mr. Maliki, facing fierce new challenges to his leadership from Sunnis and even his fellow Shiites, may now be making a cynical and shortsighted play for Asaib’s support. They say Mr. Maliki may use the group’s credentials as Shiite resistance fighters to divide challengers in his own Shiite coalition and weaken Mr. Sadr’s powerful bloc, which draws its political lifeblood from the Shiite underclass.
Leadership: A spokesman says the president "can't wait for Congress to act" and promised that he's "going to take action." This is the president who was "ready to rule" in 2008. Is he an elected chief executive or an emperor?Continue reading.
In November 2008, shortly after Barack Obama was elected president, Valerie Jarrett, co-chair of his transition team, appeared on "Meet the Press." She told host Tom Brokaw that "Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one."
Shouldn't someone who had reached the political heights that Jarrett had reached know that kings rule but presidents are elected to serve and are accountable to Congress, the courts and the voters?
One would think that she and the rest of the administration are aware of a president's legal limitations, but simply aren't interested in respecting them.
A little more than three years after Jarrett declared Obama's majesty, his spokesman Jay Carney warned on the day of the Iowa caucuses that "if Republicans choose the path of obstruction rather than cooperation, then the president is not going to sit here . .. he's going to take the actions that he can take using his executive authority."
Within a day, Obama made good on the threat. On Wednesday, he bypassed the congressional approval process and named Richard Cordray as head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The appointment, made while the Senate is in a pro forma session and not in recess, came after that chamber blocked Cordray's confirmation last month.
Not only is Obama trampling precedent that says recess appointments are to be done only after the Senate has been out of session for 10 days or more, he's also trying to circumvent legislation.
Southern California should experience another day of warm weather Thursday as temperatures are expected to climb into the 80s.More at the link.
The National Weather Service issued a high-surf advisory for late Thursday afternoon into Saturday for Los Angeles and Ventura counties. A strong storm system in the central Pacific produced breakers up to 15 feet high, weather service officials said.
High swells could bring high tides, coastal flooding and potentially dangerous rip currents, the National Service warned.
The summer-like heat and high swells sent surfers flocking to local beaches.
The new military strategy includes $487 billion in cuts over the next decade. An additional $500 billion in cuts could be coming if Congress follows through on plans for deeper reductions. The announcement comes weeks after the U.S. officially ended the Iraq War and after a decade of increased defense spending in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.More at the link.
In the new COMMENTARY, I write that the coming election will determine the future of America’s defense spending–and hence of our standing as a great power able to shape events around the world in ways conducive to our security interests. Today’s press conference at the Pentagon only makes the choice even more stark. President Obama unveiled a strategy documents whose title I can only assume is ironic: “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense.” In fact, the $450 billion worth of cuts that will be spelled out in the coming weeks pose a serious threat to America’s ability to sustain our global leadership; if an extra $600 billion or so of cuts is added, as a result of the failure of the sequestration process, then America’s days as a superpower truly will be numbered....Continue reading.
The details of what this strategy document will mean for the armed services will emerge slowly, but already one piece of news has suffered–the army, currently at 569,000 active-duty personnel, will fall to 490,000. This was entirely predictable–the ground forces are being sacrificed to maintain air and naval forces to operate in the Pacific even though the major aircraft that will sustain American deterrence in the 21st century, the F-35, is also slated for cutbacks.
No doubt the president will argue–and the army leadership will faithfully repeat–the line that the army will still be a bit bigger than it was pre-9/11 when the active-duty strength was 480,000. That is hardly reassuring, however, because after 9/11 we quickly discovered the army was much too small to fight the wars of Afghanistan and Iraq. The lack of force size made it almost impossible to stabilize those countries after the deposal of their dictators and practically guaranteed that soldiers and Marines would pay a heavy price to regain lost momentum. Is this really the model we want to follow in the future?
Apparently so, because of the fantastical belief current in Washington today that somehow we will not have to fight another major ground war ever again. The same illusion was popular before almost every one of our major wars–and each time we paid heavily in the early battles for our unreadiness. Today, looking around the world at hotspots from North Korea to Pakistan, Iran to Somalia and Yemen, who can confidently predict we will not face a situation that will necessitate the dispatch of substantial ground forces? Indeed, by not having sufficient forces at the ready we make another ground war more, not less, likely.
"Sympathy for the Devil "
Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit "AND THE ROLE OF EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN WILL BE PLAYED BY…: Liberals’ Knives Come Out for Nate Silver After His Model Points to a Trump Victory..."
R.S. McCain, "'Jews Are Dead, Hamas Is Happy, and Podhoretz Has Got His Rage On ..."
Ace, "Georgia Shooter's Father Berated Him as a "Sissy" and Bought Him an AR-15 to 'Toughen Him Up'..."Free Beacon..., "Kamala Harris, the ‘Candidate of Change,’ Copies Sections of Her Policy Page Directly From Biden's Platform..."