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Suspected Iranian Agent Bungles Bombing in Bangkok
Today's Headlines
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Page 4: Opinion
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7 21:43 Pappy [336081] 
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Page 1: WoT Operations
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2 19:40 Redneck Jim [336069]
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Page 6: Politix
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Europe
Round-up: Greece faces death by a thousand cuts unless it leaves the euro
Lucas Papademos was suitably apocalyptic. If the terms of the second Greek bailout were not approved, the Greek prime minister warned over the weekend, there would be a "disorderly bankruptcy that would create conditions of economic chaos and social explosion.

Greece won't see a cent of the great bail-out
MPs in Athens may have voted for austerity, but the reality is that default is looming.

Greek economy spirals down as EU forces final catharsis
A Greek default and traumatic ejection from the euro moved a step closer last night after eurozone finance ministers cancelled a crucial meeting, accusing Athens of failing to flesh out austerity cuts.
Posted by: tipper || 02/14/2012 15:56 || Comments || Link || [336083 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The 'true' reality is that the Greek default is ongoing, and Euro movers and shakers are trying to conceal this in order to save the banks and to leave Europeans holding the bag of bad debts.
This is more of what's been going on for many months now.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 02/14/2012 16:45 Comments || Top||

#2  The solution to 100% of the fiscal problems of 100% of Western democracies is: end 100% of triple and quadruple pension "dipping." 80% of non-governmental US workers will receive only 1 pension. 100% of them would want pension receipts limited to 1% for each year of service (max: 45%), and would base receipts on the basis of the average of the 6 highest years of earning. If that average was $50K then the pension would be 22.5K, plus the government pension. California is shelling out half million pensions to retired chiefs of police. Can't afford it; and it was gained by extortion and cozying up to corrupt politicians. LA cop pensions equal 90% of wages.

Would anyone here deny a teacher who works 40 years, a pension equal to 40% of the allowed income average? I wouldn't.
Posted by: Hupeagum Wheamp5986 || 02/14/2012 18:29 Comments || Top||

#3  Forgot to mention that many second-pension Americans receive peanuts for the 2nd. I know someone who gets a private pension of $12 per month. Civil service workers rake in huge sums, if they move from one package to another. I know someone who receives 5
Posted by: Hupeagum Wheamp5986 || 02/14/2012 18:31 Comments || Top||

#4  Would anyone here deny a teacher who works 40 years, a pension equal to 40% of the allowed income average? I wouldn't.

I would. If self-funded 401k plans and IRAs are good enough for the private sector they're damn well good enough for the public sector as well. Let them exist on Social Security, Medicare & whatever they can accumulate in their private self-funded retirement accounts just like the rest of us.
Posted by: AzCat || 02/14/2012 18:51 Comments || Top||

#5  Would anyone here deny a teacher who works 40 years, a pension equal to 40% of the allowed income average? I wouldn't.

Make it two. In addition to AC's point, of the teachers I've seen with 40 years, 90% should have been gone after 20 years and probably 50% after 10. Teaching is a hard job, not a sinecure. Teachers burn out. They should not stay in a job after they destroy the joy of learning for youngsters just because they need the pension. Pay them market rate, get rid of the union, and no life time employment. Like the rest of us.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble || 02/14/2012 19:32 Comments || Top||

#6  I would too.

Let them have a visible pay and let teachers decide what fraction to put towards a pension.

Better yet, get teaching away from the state.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 02/14/2012 21:15 Comments || Top||


Home Front: WoT
What's the opposite of a Fifth Column?
A Second Look at 'The Third Jihad'
By Jeff Jacoby

Did the New York City Police Department use "terrible judgment," as Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, when it showed a documentary about Islamist extremists -- The Third Jihad -- to more than 1,400 officers undergoing counterterrorism training?

You might think so if you took your cues from a New York Times editorial calling the documentary a "hate-filled film about Muslims," or from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which declared that it "defiled our faith and misrepresented everything we stood for."

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser fervently disagrees.
We've been following Dr. Jasser's exploits here at Rantburg for some time. Click on his name to go to his personal Rantburg archive.
Jasser is a former US Navy officer and a past president of the Arizona Medical Association. He is also an observant Muslim, a Wisconsin-reared son of Syrian immigrants deeply grateful for the freedom and tolerance his parents found in America. Ever since 9/11, he has been fighting the Islamist extremists whose goal is to destroy that freedom and tolerance.

"As a devout Muslim I saw it as my responsibility to expose the radicals," Jasser says in The Third Jihad, which he narrated. "I resented that they were exploiting the religion I love."

After al-Qaeda's murder of 3,000 Americans, Jasser recalls in the film, "I had expected to see Muslims in America taking to the streets and protesting against [Osama] bin Laden. Instead, in the years that followed, we saw many Muslim leaders standing up to defend or support the radicals." So he launched the American Islamic Forum for Democracy to defend American values, promote the separation of mosque and state, and expose the Islamist agenda behind certain influential Muslim organizations.

Happily, he is not fighting alone. During the recent furor over the film, New York City Councilman Robert Jackson, a Muslim, refused to toe the CAIR line. "I initially thought from reading about it that it cast a negative image on all Muslims," he said. "In my opinion it does not. It focuses on the extreme Muslims that are trying to hurt other people." Similarly, the American Islamic Leadership Coalition issued a strong statement defending The Third Jihad as "factually accurate and important."

You needn't take their word for it. Watch the film for yourself at TheThirdJihad.com, and gain crucial insight into one of the central struggles of our time: the war of ideas within Islam.
Posted by: trailing wife || 02/14/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || [336073 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Sixth column?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 02/14/2012 1:35 Comments || Top||

#2  One fifth column? Negative fifth column? I dunno....
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 02/14/2012 2:04 Comments || Top||

#3  Hawaii Five-Oh?
Posted by: no mo uro || 02/14/2012 5:57 Comments || Top||

#4  Opposite of Fifth Column is a patriot. The media should be holding this guy up as an example that not all Muslims are against us rather than vilifying him in defense of the indefensible.

I don't know if the media is blind to the threat, or if they just hope they'll get eaten last.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 02/14/2012 7:59 Comments || Top||

#5  rjs,

The media takes their orders from the Left/Dems. The idea of a patriotic Muslim doesn't fit the narrative anymore than a patriotic, conservative black does.

They have to a) hype the crisis and b) hype that it is all our fault. That way they can clamor for more power and control over everyone and everything.
Posted by: AlanC || 02/14/2012 9:25 Comments || Top||

#6  That explains the tactic, but still doesn't answer if they are blind to the threat or ignoring it.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 02/14/2012 10:08 Comments || Top||

#7  Schwartz,

If you study the Russian Revolution, you find out thr "useful idiots" are executed FIRST.
Posted by: Bill Clinton || 02/14/2012 10:09 Comments || Top||

#8  The fourth estate is the same as the fifth column these days. I don't know what the opposite is. Patriot would be a good opposite.
Posted by: JohnQC || 02/14/2012 10:58 Comments || Top||

#9  This is a very important development. While it does not (advisedly) get a lot of press, there is a growing movement in Islam to reinterpret its doctrines away from barbarity, violence and primitiveness, to modernity and coexistence.

This type of religious reform didn't start to happen in Christianity in earnest until the 18th Century and the Age of Enlightenment. However, it is likely to happen much faster in Islam, because it has the western model to work from.

Efforts to avoid modernity with self imposed isolationism, ghettos, and that sort of thing is much harder to pull off if society as a whole is not segregationist. All it takes is the realization that "If I go 'over the wall', I can live in peace and not have to put up with this primitive b.s. any more."

This is why right now there are so many 'honor killings' in the west, because with just one look, smart kids decide the prefer modernity, and their parents cannot deal with that.

Eventually, the kids will figure out that if they leave home, there is no going back. But that is just one more factor in the equation. If they are willing to accept that, they are home free.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 02/14/2012 11:52 Comments || Top||

#10  #9 ROTFL
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 02/14/2012 12:49 Comments || Top||

#11  This type of religious reform didn't start to happen in Christianity in earnest until the 18th Century and the Age of Enlightenment. However, it is likely to happen much faster in Islam, because it has the western model to work from.
You left something very important out of your history capsule -- the Euro religious wars from about 1517 to whenever the Enlightenment started, where hundreds of thousands were either murdered or executed in an overflow of religious zeal and a good percentage of the population of what is now modern Germany was exterminated. An a-historical quote from the movie "The Last Valley" summarizes it best: "We killed God at Magdeburg."
Islam has always been more bloodthirsty than Christianity has been about matters like apostacy, blasphemy, heresy.
Certainly it is in the interest of the rest of the world to be aware of the downside of Islam, and to encourage reformers like Zuhdi Jasser (who is under a death sentence just from what he has said so far). I think the Spenglerian prediction is the most accurate: America will prevail, provided the Muslim world does not take us down with it first.
p. 96 How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam is Dying Too)
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 02/14/2012 14:14 Comments || Top||

#12  Bill Clinton, why did you add a t to my name?
Posted by: rjschwarz || 02/14/2012 14:45 Comments || Top||

#13  Anguper Hupomosing9418: While aware of the internecine conflict in Christianity, it was a fight internal to Christianity. And indeed, such an internal brawl can very well happen within Islam. That is, a Sunni and Shiite fight.

However, Islam is surrounded by "not Islam", and that is less a doctrinal fight than a Darwinian struggle of natural selection. While Islam is focused on fighting infidels, however, it also has a fight on its hands with Muslims who are only Muslims because they are *imprisoned* within the ummah.

For example, Africa is now being split, because blacks who formerly *had* to be Muslims now have a choice, mostly to become Anglicans. And Islam is hemorrhaging in the region because of it.

And that situation could expand to many places, where Muslims could abandon Islam, without fear that other Muslims will track them down and kill them. And that is a grave threat to Islam.

This has no parallel with the religious wars of Christianity. And remember, that while Islam has to contend with this, it also has to contend with the rest of the non-Muslim world.

And their purpose in doing so is to defend barbarity against modernity and civilization. Dictatorship against democracy. Whimsical, cruel and corrupt theocratic rule against good government. Controlling people who do not want to live that way.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 02/14/2012 16:39 Comments || Top||

#14  Rantburg?
Posted by: swksvolFF || 02/14/2012 17:58 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
Can the federal government seize state revenues to pay for Medicaid?
Posted by: DarthVader || 02/14/2012 12:09 || Comments || Link || [336067 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The thinking behind the original article is so limited & partial, it's pitiful.
Just what allows the feds to order individual firms to supply goods for free simply because government officials believe that these services are essential?
Beats me, but EMTALA has been the law of this land since about 1986. It basically requires hospitals supplying emergency care to supply FREE emergency services to whosowhatever needs it. The level of controversy about this 'taking' by the government is ZERO. The only ways around this are for hospitals to supply no emergency care to anyone and/or not to accept Medicare payments.
Whatever anyone wants to say against Medicaid and Obamacare must first be reconciled to current law on Medicare, but this is almost never done.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 02/14/2012 14:05 Comments || Top||

#2  ..that's why so many 'Emergency Rooms' have disappeared across America while 'Urgent Care' store fronts have opened. Different regulations. It's also why today most Emergency Rooms are located in state or state university facilities.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 02/14/2012 14:48 Comments || Top||

#3  The 'third rail' of American politics is the question everyone studiously avoids: "What government (and government-mandated) expenditures are we willing to tax ourselves to pay for?"
Until this question becomes one of the most important ones in US political discourse, things will continue to go from bad to worse, perhaps ending in collapse.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 02/14/2012 14:54 Comments || Top||

#4  Yah, affordability never forms part of the equation.
Posted by: Hupeagum Wheamp5986 || 02/14/2012 18:19 Comments || Top||


Fox News - Left Oblique March, Forward March
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 02/14/2012 11:19 || Comments || Link || [336081 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Once a Saudi Sheik took a big stake in them - this was expected and they proved themselves to be whores too.
Posted by: Water Modem || 02/14/2012 13:50 Comments || Top||

#2  The article comes from Politico. they've got one guy who went from Fox to CNN because he claims they are more balanced? Nonsense all around.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 02/14/2012 14:47 Comments || Top||

#3  The article comes from Politico

Speaking of Left Oblique March...
Posted by: Pappy || 02/14/2012 16:33 Comments || Top||

#4  The article comes from Politico.

That does not mean that Fox News hasn't performed a Left Oblique maneuver.
Posted by: Black Charlie Phinelet7572 || 02/14/2012 16:44 Comments || Top||

#5  Just because they have commentators who favor Romney does not mean they've gone lefty. It means they have commentators who have opinions. Some retarded, some worthwhile. That's how punditry works. Don't blame the channel, just keep track of which pundits are shown to have questionable judgement for future reference.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 02/14/2012 20:47 Comments || Top||

#6  I can believe that Politico found a person that is sick of hearing Fox. They were outstandingly lucky to find anyone willing to tune in CNN. I am one miserable dude when I am trapped in an airport and forced to listen to their broadcast. Katie Couric and George Stephanopolis are worst by a factor of ten, but Redneck Wedding is better TV than the Situation Room.
Posted by: Super Hose || 02/14/2012 21:42 Comments || Top||

#7  That does not mean that Fox News hasn't performed a Left Oblique maneuver

Didn't say that. I said Politico has also gone left.
Posted by: Pappy || 02/14/2012 21:43 Comments || Top||



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Two weeks of WOT
Tue 2012-02-14
  Suspected Iranian Agent Bungles Bombing in Bangkok
Mon 2012-02-13
  Israel says bombs target embassies in India, Georgia
Sun 2012-02-12
  Uzbek man in US pleads guilty in Obama murder plot
Sat 2012-02-11
  Arrests in Quetta Related to Rabbani Assassination
Fri 2012-02-10
  Zawahiri says Somalia's Shebab Joined al-Qaida
Thu 2012-02-09
  Badar Mansoor Dronezapped in North Wazoo
Wed 2012-02-08
  German Police Arrest Lebanese, Syrian for Spying for Damascus
Tue 2012-02-07
  Blasts Rock N. Nigeria, Police Station Attacked
Mon 2012-02-06
  36 Civilians, 28 Troops Killed in Fresh Syria Violence
Sun 2012-02-05
  Expel Syrian Envoys, Says Arab League Official
Sat 2012-02-04
  Libya's ex-envoy to France dies in custody
Fri 2012-02-03
  Britain Appoints First Ambassador to Somalia in 21 Years
Thu 2012-02-02
  Three top terror leaders killed in the Philippines
Wed 2012-02-01
  US raids kill 15 militants in Yemen
Tue 2012-01-31
  12,000 BNP, Jamaat men charged with violence

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