h/t Instapundit
"The deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top," Hillary Clinton has warned us, and she ought to know. Having been "at the top," or close enough to it, since 1976, when her husband was elected attorney general of Arkansas at age 30--not the biggest job ever, but one with a whole lot of power to play with--she has leveraged every ounce that it held to bring to them ever and ever more money and power, until at this moment, 14 years after leaving the White House, she and Bill sit on a mile-high mountain of both. Their wealth is immense and their power unlimited, at least in their party. The very few viable national candidates left after the two midterm wipeouts that decimated Democratic ranks in the reign of Obama are so afraid to risk the Clintons' wrath that she is cruising unopposed to the nomination for the first time since no one knows when. How did two penniless kids living in roughly 1,000 square feet in Fayetteville, Arkansas, reach such heights? Let us look back and see.
#3
g(r)om, I don't think that's quite what Spengler was saying here.
What he was saying is that the foreign policy establishment is so screwed up that only someone who is smart and very confident, (like Ronald Reagan) of his analysis can possibly get anything positive done.
There are many words that you can use instead of arrogance, some with negative connotations and some with negative. Which you choose is more a factor of your own belief rather than the subject's attitude.
#4
Yea, well, AC. In 30+ years in Academia, I've seen dozens of brilliant students get tenure and produce sh*t. You're looking for new Ronald Reagan, look at Walker.
#5
I would just be happy with a President that told the state department it works for him and anyone that doesn't like it can go fuck themselves and get new jobs in selling bullshit.
I've not been in academia for 30 years but have seen a fair amount of the world in the 50+ yrs I've been paying attention. Cruz has yet to prove himself in all ways but he's on the right path.
I also like what I see of Walker so far, as does Spengler, but he doesn't have the foreign policy experience yet and that's the area of concern in the article.
To me the most important issue in the political arena is how a candidate relates to the philosophy and limitations of the constitution. Second is how, within those principles, the Oligarchy will be constrained.
Most succinct way to say it is will a candidate work to dismantle the current idea of "Socialize risk and privatize profit". Noting wrong with private profit as long as it's your own skin in the game.
#9
Elected in 2012 as a Republican, he is the first Hispanic or Cuban American to serve as a U.S. Senator from Texas. He is the chairman of the subcommittee on the Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He is also the chairman of the subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, U.S. Senate Commerce Committee.
Between 1999 and 2003, Cruz was the director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, an associate deputy attorney general at the United States Department of Justice, and as domestic policy advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush on the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. He served as Solicitor General of Texas from 2003 to May 2008, after being appointed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. He was the first Hispanic, the youngest and the longest-serving solicitor general in Texas history.
Cruz was the Republican nominee for the Senate seat vacated by fellow Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison. On July 31, 2012, he defeated Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst in the Republican primary runoff, 57%–43%. Cruz defeated former state Representative Paul Sadler in the general election on November 6, 2012. He prevailed 56%–41% over Sadler. Cruz openly identifies with the Tea Party movement and has been endorsed by the Republican Liberty Caucus. On November 14, 2012, Cruz was appointed vice-chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Cruz's father was born in 1939 in Matanzas, Cuba, and as a teenager, he joined Fidel Castro's guerrilla groups to fight against the regime of Fulgencio Batista. He left Cuba in 1957 to attend the University of Texas. Rafael Cruz became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2005. Cruz's father eventually left the oil business to become a minister, and he is now a pastor in Carrollton, Texas, a Dallas suburb.
Cruz attended high school at Faith West Academy in Katy, Texas, and later graduated from Second Baptist High School in Houston as valedictorian in 1988. During high school, Cruz participated in a Houston-based group called the Free Market Education Foundation where he learned about free-market economic philosophers such as Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Frédéric Bastiat and Ludwig von Mises. The program was run by Rolland Storey and Cruz entered the program at the age of 13.
Cruz graduated cum laude from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1992. While at Princeton, he competed for the American Whig-Cliosophic Society's Debate Panel and won the top speaker award at both the 1992 U.S. National Debating Championship and the 1992 North American Debating Championship. In 1992, he was named U.S. National Speaker of the Year, as well as Team of the Year, with his debate partner, David Panton. Cruz and Panton represented Harvard Law School at the 1995 World Debating Championship, making it to the semi-finals, where they lost to a team from Australia. Princeton's debate team later named their annual novice championship after Cruz.
After graduating from Princeton, Cruz attended Harvard Law School, graduating magna cum laude in 1995 with a Juris Doctor degree. While at Harvard Law, he was a primary editor of the Harvard Law Review, and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and a founding editor of the Harvard Latino Law Review. Referring to Cruz's time as a student at Harvard Law, Professor Alan Dershowitz said, "Cruz was off-the-charts brilliant." At Harvard Law, Cruz was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics.
#10
Cruz joined the George W. Bush presidential campaign in 1999 as a domestic policy adviser, advising then-Governor George W. Bush on a wide range of policy and legal matters, including civil justice, criminal justice, constitutional law, immigration, and government reform.
Cruz assisted in assembling the Bush legal team, devising strategy, and drafting pleadings for filing with the Supreme Court of Florida and U.S. Supreme Court, the specific case being Bush v. Gore, during the 2000 Florida presidential recounts, leading to two successful decisions for the Bush team. Cruz recruited future Chief Justice John Roberts and noted attorney Mike Carvin to the Bush legal team.
Cruz has authored 70 United States Supreme Court briefs and presented 43 oral arguments, including nine before the United States Supreme Court. Cruz's record of having argued before the Supreme Court nine times is more than any practicing lawyer in Texas or any current member of Congress. Cruz has commented on his nine cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court: "We ended up year after year arguing some of the biggest cases in the country. There was a degree of serendipity in that, but there was also a concerted effort to seek out and lead conservative fights."
In 2003, while Cruz was Texas solicitor general, the Texas Attorney General's office declined to defend Texas' sodomy law in Lawrence v. Texas, where the U.S. Supreme Court decided that state laws banning homosexual sex as illegal sodomy were unconstitutional.
In the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller, Cruz drafted the amicus brief signed by the attorneys general of 31 states, which said that the D.C. handgun ban should be struck down as infringing upon the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Cruz also presented oral argument for the amici states in the companion case to Heller before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
In addition to his success in Heller, Cruz successfully defended the constitutionality of the Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds before the Fifth Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court, winning 5–4 in Van Orden v. Perry.
In 2004, Cruz was involved in the high-profile case, Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, in which he wrote a U.S. Supreme Court brief on behalf of all 50 states. The Supreme Court upheld the position of Cruz’s brief.
After President Bush took office, Cruz served as an associate deputy attorney general in the U.S. Justice Department and as the director of policy planning at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
This and the previous comment are a few excerpts from Wikipedia.
[DAWN] THE "scourge of terrorism is taking its last breath", and Wednesday's atrocity in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... exposed the "desperation of the terrorists", President Mamnoon Hussain told a gathering in Islamabad on Thursday.
Unfortunately, Mr President, the reality appears far grimmer. If anything, the massacre of close to 50 Ismaili Shia Moslems in the metropolis is reflective of the calculated, methodical brutality of the bully boys. The killers knew exactly what they were doing, had done their homework and carried out the outrage with impunity.
As opposed to this, it is the state that appears to be at sea. Considering the revulsion the attack has created within Pakistain and abroad, the government is putting on a brave face and trying to talk the talk. But the key question is: will this latest tragedy spur long-lasting counterterrorism action, specifically in Karachi?
Both the military and civilian arms of the state have made numerous references to the involvement of foreign intelligence agencies in destabilising Karachi. Solid evidence needs to be produced on this count and thereafter, the matter needs to be taken up through diplomatic channels.
The state has also pledged to intensify the Karachi operation; at a high-powered meeting on Thursday attended by the army chief and DG ISI, along with the Sindh governor and chief minister, it was decided that action in the metropolis would be taken against violent elements of all stripes.
The operation, initiated in September 2013, till now has produced less than stellar results. While Karachi did indeed experience a brief period of relative calm, assassinations have resumed, while the bus attack is a stark reminder that the bully boys' infrastructure in the city is very much undisturbed.
It is hoped the state will examine the flaws in its strategy thus far and attempt to rectify them. For example, as per the optics -- especially of the last few months -- it appears as if action has largely been directed at one political party.
Will the dragnet be expanded to include sectarian and jihadi groups that, on paper, are banned or on the watch list, but openly and defiantly display their street power?
Will the state be able to resist the pressure tactics of the extreme right when suspects are probed? These major questions need to be answered by the captains of the operation in Sindh in a transparent manner if a sustained campaign to rid Karachi of militancy of all shades is to have any chance of success.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/17/2015 00:00 ||
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[9 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[DAWN] Our generals say India's spy agency RAW is up to its nasty tricks again. No evidence provided but, okay, we'll buy the story for now. There are two good reasons. First, it's safer not to question the wisdom of generals. Second, they speak from deep experience, having long played the spy-versus-spy game across borders.
So let's provisionally assume that India's spies have engineered the odd kaboom here and there, and send occasional gifts to the BLF or other krazed killer Baloch movements.
But RAW's alleged antics are pinpricks compared to the massive and irreversible brain damage that Pakistain's schools, colleges, and universities inflict upon their students.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
05/17/2015 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
Imagine that some devilish enemy has perfected a super weapon that destroys reasoning power and makes a population stupid.
Imagine too that it started in the 7th Century by a violent pedophile
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/17/2015 9:00 Comments ||
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[DAWN] The number of asylum seekers Pakistain has been producing since 2010 has risen phenomenally. But the government seems least interested in arresting the trend and is, intentionally or unintentionally, trying to obscure the factors compelling more and more Paks to leave their country each year.
Responding to a question by Senator Muhammad Talha Mehmood in the upper house of parliament, the government on Tuesday shared with the Senate members only the number of Paks who have sought asylum in Germany, the United States and Serbia during the last five years.
"The nature of asylum requests restricts the host government from sharing information. As such, the full information on such cases is not available," the standard reply given to the senators on behalf of the minister of foreign affairs (who happens to be Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... ) and posted on the Senate's website stated.
The reasons given in the answer for the increasing number of Paks leaving the country of their birth are also quite sketchy. "Asylum is mostly sought claiming political persecution and denial of civil rights and liberties," it says. It doesn't acknowledge religious persecution and growing violence and attacks against non-Moslems and the Shias as a factor, forcing hundreds of families to flee the country for fear of life.
"It appears as if the government wants to conceal rather than reveal the true causes of this surging trend," notes an immigration lawyer, speaking on condition of anonymity ... for fear of being murdered... . "Its reluctance to dilate on the reasons is understandable as no government or country wants to be embarrassed publicly on such matters."
The spike in the number of Pak asylum seekers is in line with the global trend, confirms a study -- Asylum Trends 2014: Levels and Trends in Industrialised Countries -- by the United Nations ...an organization which on balance has done more bad than good, with the good not done well and the bad done thoroughly... High Commissioner for Refugees.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/17/2015 00:00 ||
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[10 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Saudi Arabia
ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, paints a gripping and disturbing picture of this new “caliphate” in the Levant and Mesopotamia. In the most comprehensive account to date, the authors chronicle ISIS’s roots as the Iraqi franchise of al-Qaeda under its founding father, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, its near defeat at the hands of Americans and Iraqi militias in Anbar Province, its rebirth during the Syrian civil war, and its catastrophic return to Iraq as a conquering army last summer.
The book is personal for both authors. Hassan was born and raised in the Syrian border town Al-Bukamal, right in the center of ISIS-held territory. Weiss is an American journalist who reported from the Aleppo suburb of al-Bab, back when it had a burgeoning democratic civil-society movement and wasn’t the “dismal fief ruled by Sharia law” it is today. Anger and disgust are at times palpable on the page, but emotion never distracts from the richly detailed narrative—based in part on interviews with ISIS commanders and fighters—that forms the backbone of their book.
It is all the more heartbreaking, therefore, to read now that the Islamic State—AQI’s successor organization—has seized the government center in Ramadi. Islamic State extremists detonated a series of suicide car bombs on Thursday to punch their way through fortifications protecting the government headquarters. Reports were that, after the headquarters fell, black-clad fanatics were going to door-to-door, executing tribal fighters who opposed their onslaught. Government security forces and many civilians were fleeing in panic. As Michael Auslin of the American Enterprise Institute points out, it’s as if the Marines, having taken Iwo Jima, had abandoned it and the Japanese had lowered the stars and stripes on Mount Suribachi.
Just a month ago, when the ISIS offensive against Ramadi began in earnest, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tried to reassure the world that it was no big deal. Ramadi, he claimed, “is not symbolic in any way…. I would much rather that Ramadi not fall, but it won’t be the end of a campaign should it fall.”
We can only watch and wait to hear what spin General Dempsey—who has increasingly defined his role as telling the president what he wants to hear, not what he needs to hear—will put on this latest catastrophe. It is, in fact, unspinnable. The fall of Ramadi is a sign of the abysmal failure of the misnamed Operation Inherent Resolve launched by President Obama in August 2014 to “degrade” and ultimately to “destroy” ISIS. Operation Uncertain Resolve is more like it.
#2
"We knew this day would come. We've known it for some time. But still there is something profound about the end of a war that has lasted so long. It's harder to end a war than begin one. Everything that American troops have done in Iraq - all the fighting, all the dying, the bleeding and the building and the training and the partnering, all of it has landed to this moment of success."
#4
Some would argue defeat was always his goal. His difficulty was making it look like he cared.
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/17/2015 8:35 Comments ||
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#5
For Obama and Democrats - this is Victory.
The DEMOCRATS have always wanted to Iraq to be the new 'Vietnam'. They have had wet dreams of reliving their glory days of the Fall of Saigon.
From Reid's "The War is Lost" to M-F Murtha to Pelosi to Obama and Hillary; from the Media's refusal to report any good news, to Andrea Mitchell's orgasmic glee while reporting on Americans killed in Iraq. They have been working for this ever since they went into the war in Iraq.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/17/2015 20:24 Comments ||
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#8
Dempsey, you've lost *another* city?
he claimed, “is not symbolic in any way…
No, it's not symbolic at all. It's harsh facts on the ground - the enemy has taken a city. Spin it however you want, but the enemy controls more territory and you just lost a node in your network.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
