“This is slavery, not to speak one's thought.” ― Euripides, The Phoenician Women
Friday, September 27, 2013
Al Gore's Brookings Hate Speech Made Me Quit Email List
Tell NY City Council to Save New York Public Library!
Dear Library Supporter,
MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD AT A CITY COUNCIL HEARING ON THE FUTURE OF OUR LIBRARIES!
On Monday, Sept 30, 2013, at 1:00 p.m. at 250 Broadway, 16th Floor Committee Room, a very important Public Hearing about Capital Construction Needs and Potential Disposal of Libraries in NYC will take place. The Agenda can be found online here:
The City Council’s Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries, and International Intergroup Relations is holding the hearing.
It’s very important that as many people testify as possible against the Central Library Plan and the sale of public libraries, and on behalf of the needs of library users all over the city. We need to take advantage of this unique opportunity to testify. If you don’t want to testify you can still show your support just by being there. There is strength in numbers!
Please arrive a half hour early (12:30 pm) to go through security, and bring valid photo ID with you.
For more information, see "The Truth About the Central Library Plan": www.savenypl.org/the-truth-about-the-central-library-plan/
The Committee to Save the New York Public Library
232 East 11th Street
New York, NY 10003
info@savenypl.org
www.savenypl.org
facebook: Save NYPL
on twitter @saveNYPL
This message was sent by Committee to Save the New York Public Library using the Change.orgsystem. You received this email because you signed a petition started by Committee to Save the New York Public Library on Change.org: "Anthony W. Marx: Reconsider the $350 million plan to remake NYC's landmark central library." Change.org does not endorse contents of this message.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Sen. Ted Cruz, Still Speaking...
YouTube channel, here: http://www.youtube.com/user/SenTedCruz
Senate office, here: http://www.cruz.senate.gov
Official Senate bio:
About Ted
In 2012, Ted Cruz was elected as the 34th U.S. Senator from Texas. A passionate fighter for limited government, economic growth, and the Constitution, Ted won a decisive victory in both the Republican primary and the general election, despite having never before been elected to office.Propelled by tens of thousands of grassroots activists across Texas, Ted’s election has been described by the Washington Post as “the biggest upset of 2012 . . . a true grassroots victory against very long odds.”National Review has described Ted as “a great Reaganite hope,” columnist George Will has described him as “as good as it gets,” and the National Federation of Independent Business characterized his election as “critical to the small-business owners in [Texas, and], also to protecting free enterprise across America,”Ted’s calling to public service is inspired largely by his first-hand observation of the pursuit of freedom and opportunity in America. Ted’s mother was born in Delaware to an Irish and Italian working-class family; she became the first in her family to go to college, graduated from Rice University with a degree in mathematics, and became a pioneering computer programmer in the 1950s.Ted’s father was born in Cuba, fought in the revolution, and was imprisoned and tortured. He fled to Texas in 1957, penniless and not speaking a word of English. He washed dishes for 50 cents an hour, paid his way through the University of Texas, and started a small business in the oil and gas industry. Today, Ted’s father is a pastor in Dallas.In the Senate, Ted serves on the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; the Committee on Armed Services; the Committee on the Judiciary; the Special Committee on Aging; and the Committee on Rules and Administration.Before being elected, Ted received national acclaim as the Solicitor General of Texas, the State's chief lawyer before the U.S. Supreme Court. Serving under Attorney General Greg Abbott, Ted was the nation’s youngest Solicitor General, the longest serving Solicitor General in Texas, and the first Hispanic Solicitor General of Texas.In private practice in Houston, Ted spent five years as a partner at one of the nation’s largest law firms, where he led the firm’s U.S. Supreme Court and national Appellate Litigation practice.Ted has authored more than 80 U.S. Supreme Court briefs and argued 43 oral arguments, including nine before the U.S. Supreme Court. During Ted’s service as Solicitor General, Texas achieved an unprecedented series of landmark national victories, including successfully defending:
- U.S. sovereignty against the UN and the World Court in Medellin v. Texas;
- The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms;
- The constitutionality of the Texas Ten Commandments monument;
- The constitutionality of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance;
- The constitutionality of the Texas Sexually Violent Predator Civil Commitment law; and
- The Texas congressional redistricting plan.
The National Law Journal has called Ted “a key voice” to whom “the [U.S. Supreme Court] Justices listen.” Ted has been named by American Lawyer magazine as one of the 50 Best Litigators under 45 in America, by the National Law Journal as one of the 50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America, and by Texas Lawyer as one of the 25 Greatest Texas Lawyers of the Past Quarter Century.From 2004-09, he taught U.S. Supreme Court Litigation as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law.Prior to becoming Solicitor General, he served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, as Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, and as Domestic Policy Advisor on the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign.Ted graduated with honors from Princeton University and with high honors from Harvard Law School. He served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court. He was the first Hispanic ever to clerk for the Chief Justice of the United States.Ted and his wife Heidi live in his hometown of Houston, Texas, with their two young daughters Caroline and Catherine.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
The DiploMad 2.0: Religion of Peace Recap
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Israel's Yom Kippur War--40 Years after 1973: A Memoir by Eliyho Matz
Andrew C. McCarthy: US Support for Syrian Terrorists Illegal
Under the pertinent provision of the act, the prohibitions against military aid to a country are not limited by its government’s history of promoting particular terrorist groups. That is to say, even if it were correct that Hezbollah alone was responsible for the AECA’s application to Syria, this would not narrow transactions prohibited under the statute to those by which the Assad regime could benefit Hezbollah. (As it happens, Hezbollah is far from the only terrorist entity abetted by Syria; the Assad regime’s patron is Iran, the world’s numero uno terrorism promoter; Syria, furthermore, has a history of supporting and providing safe harbor for Hamas — the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian terrorist branch, which happens to be allied with the “rebels” in the Syrian civil war.)In point of fact, AECA prohibitions apply to countries, not regimes that govern countries — i.e., they apply here to Syria, not just Assad. There is good reason for this. If a government with a history of supporting terrorism is on the brink of collapse or overthrow, there is even more risk than usual that any weaponry and other military aid we provide will fall into the hands of terrorists. This is not just abstract logic; we know it from our own very recent experience: Since the regime fell in Qaddafi’s Libya — thanks to Obama’s unauthorized war — weapons distributed to and purloined by jihadists have fueled al-Qaeda’s operations in North Africa and may well have contributed to the Benghazi massacre, in which four American officials were murdered and several others seriously wounded.In any event, once the AECA applies to a country, the provision of military and other aid outlined in the statute is prohibited. The president’s power to waive this prohibition is very limited. It is not good enough for the president to say the aid is in U.S. interests. A waiver is valid only if the aid in question is “essential” to U.S. “national security” interests. The interests of Syrians are irrelevant under the law’s plain terms.It is inconceivable that supplying materiel to Syrians, including equipment that protects people from chemical weapons, could be essential to American national security. Obviously, if American national security were actually at risk, we would be invading Syria with our own forces, not arming the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda.In fact, in the case of Syria, it is more likely true that withholding protective equipment and arms is essential to American national security. There are, after all, reports — from Turkey, Iraq, and Syria — detailing chemical-weapons manufacturing, procurement, and use by al-Qaeda-affiliated groups that are systematically incorporated into the operations of the Syrian opposition. The Obama administration and Republican leaders are in high dudgeon over Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons, but they seem to have a frog in their throats when it comes to the “rebels.”
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Parent arrested at forum after protesting use of common core
Parent arrested at forum after protesting use of common coreWhen Small started speaking, Dance told him that he believed his question would be answered, but Small continued to talk. After a couple of minutes, a security guard confronted Small, saying, "Let's go. Let's go."
Small, 46, asked him if he was an officer and the security guard, an off-duty Baltimore County police officer, showed him a badge. The officer grabbed Small's arm and pulled him toward the aisle. The audience gasped and some people sitting nearby got out of their seats.
As he was being taken out, Small said, "Don't stand for this. You are sitting here like cattle." Then he said, "Is this America?"
The officer pushed Small and then escorted him into the hall, handcuffed him and had him sit on the curb in front of the school. He was taken to the Towson precinct and detained. Small was charged with second-degree assault of a police officer, which carries a fine of $2,500 and up to 10 years in prison, and disturbing a school operation, which carries a fine of $2,500 and up to six months.
Friday, September 20, 2013
Charles Krauthammer: Lock Up Paranoid Schizophrenics
Save the New York Public Library from Criminal Anthony Marx & His Gang!
Dear Library Supporter,
THE COMMITTEE TO SAVE THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY urges you to come to a meeting of the NYPL Trustees!
LET THEM KNOW YOU ARE WATCHING
WHERE: COUNTEE CULLEN LIBRARY - NYPL
104 West 136th Street near Malcolm X Blvd. (Lenox Ave.)
135th St. stop on the 2 or 3 train
135th St. stop on the B or C train
WHEN: Wednesday, September 25
Meeting at 4pm - open to the public
Rally at 5pm
Stop the destruction of a great research library
Stop the sell-off of public libraries
Let NYPL know libraries should grow - not shrink
Take action to stop the Central Library Plan and save the 42nd Street Library!
Come to the NYPL trustees meeting and let them know you are watching as they plan to spend taxpayer money on their wasteful, destructive plan. Then, come to the rally afterwards in front of the Countee Cullen Library 104 West 136th Street in Central Harlem. The meeting starts at 4pmand rally starts at 5pm, so please be on time! We want to have a strong presence at the meeting. If you can't make it at 4:00, join the rally after work at 5pm and greet the Trustees on their way out.
The Central Library Plan (CLP), at enormous cost to New York City and its taxpayers, would gut the 42nd Street Research Library – one of the world’s great reference libraries and a historic landmark. The CLP would demolish the library’s historic book stacks, install a circulating library in their place, and send 1.5 million books to central New Jersey. The new circulating library would be a reduced-size replacement for the Mid-Manhattan Library (at 40th and 5th Avenue) and SIBL (Science, Industry, and Business Library, at 34th and Madison), which will both be closed and sold off.
For more information about the Central Library Plan and its potential negative impacts on both the 42nd Street Library and the circulating libraries it would replace, go to www.savenypl.org
CLP is part of a larger effort by New York City’s public library systems to shrink their capacity and sell off valuable real estate, which started with the controversial sale in 2008 of the beloved Donnell Library to real estate developers. The rally is cosponsored by our friends at Citizens Defending Libraries.
The Committee to Save the New York Public Library
232 East 11th Street
New York, NY 10003
info@savenypl.org
www.savenypl.org
facebook: Save NYPL
on twitter @saveNYPL
This message was sent by Committee to Save the New York Public Library using the Change.orgsystem. You received this email because you signed a petition started by Committee to Save the New York Public Library on Change.org: "Anthony W. Marx: Reconsider the $350 million plan to remake NYC's landmark central library." Change.org does not endorse contents of this message.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
My bottom line on Washington Navy Yard Massacre...
Monday, September 16, 2013
Washington Post: Chief of Naval Operations Fled Navy Yard
Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, the chief of Naval Operations, was evacuated from his residence at the Navy Yard complex shortly after the first report of shots fired, Navy officials said. Greenert, a four-star admiral and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was safely evacuated to the Pentagon along with his wife, Darleen, said Cmdr. Ryan Perry, a Navy spokesman.Whatever happened to "a Captain goes down with the ship?"
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Wikipedia's Definition of "American Exceptionalism"
American exceptionalism is the theory that the United States is "qualitatively different" from other nations.[2] In this view, America's exceptionalism stems from its emergence from a revolution, becoming what political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset called "the first new nation"[3] and developing a uniquely American ideology, "Americanism", based on liberty,egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism, populism and laissez-faire.[4] This ideology itself is often referred to as "American exceptionalism."[4]Although the term does not necessarily imply superiority, many neoconservative and American conservative writers have promoted its use in that sense.[4][5] To them, the United States is like the biblical shining "City upon a Hill", and exempt from historical forces that have affected other countries.[6]The theory of exceptionalism can be traced to Alexis de Tocqueville, the first writer to describe the United States as "exceptional" in 1831 and 1840.[7] The term "American exceptionalism" has been in use since at least the 1920s and saw more common use after Soviet leaderJoseph Stalin chastised members of the Jay Lovestone-led faction of the American Communist Party for their heretical belief that America was independent of the Marxist laws of history "thanks to its natural resources, industrial capacity, and absence of rigid class distinctions". American Communists started using the English term "American exceptionalism" in factional fights. It then moved into general use among intellectuals.[8][9]
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Asia Times: Sen. Lugar, Nunn-Lugar, Obama, Putin & Syria
M K Bhadrakumar writes in the Asia Times:
Now, as a young senator, Obama regarded himself as a protege ("pupil") of Lugar; he had served in the Nunn-Lugar program (which took him on his only visit to Russia before becoming president).In fact, the 20th anniversary of the Nunn-Lugar Program was one of the first public functions that Obama attended on December 3 last year after getting re-elected. He made a remarkable speech on that occasion in Washington where he hailed the track record of the Nunn-Lugar "far beyond the old Soviet Union". Obama said,
Nunn-Lugar is the foundation for the vision that I laid out, once I was elected president, in travel to Prague - where nations come together to secure nuclear materials, as we're doing with our Nuclear Security Summits, where we build on New START and continue to work to reduce our arsenals; where we strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and prevent the spread of the world's most deadly weapons; where, over time, we come closer to our ultimate vision - a world without nuclear weapons.
Suffice to say, Putin factors in that disarmament is a key policy agenda for Obama. Putin cannot be oblivious of the potential of the Russian plan on Syria going far beyond the resolution of the immediate conflict situation at hand in the Eastern Mediterranean.It could be Syria today that Russia is working on alongside the Obama administration. But it could as well be on Iran tomorrow. And incrementally, Obama also would need to think about addressing Russia's core concerns - missile defense, for instance.A paradigm shiftWorking with the Obama administration as "equal partner" has always been Putin's core Russian foreign-policy objective and any constructive cooperation over Syria can possibly change the entire alchemy of Russian-American relations.The pro-western Russian elites who dominate policymaking in Moscow whole-heartedly welcome Putin's working relationship with Obama. For the majority of Russian people, at the same time, Putin's brilliant handling of the Syrian crisis has enhanced the country's image and international standing.To be sure, an interesting paradigm shift is taking place as the Russian leadership identifies with American public opinion, with which Obama also instinctively empathizes, as his speech on Tuesday revealed.
Sen. Lugar Proposed US-Russian Syrian Solution on August 8, 2012...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/world/europe/senator-richard-lugar-urges-united-states-and-russia-to-rid-syria-of-chemical-weapons.html?_r=1&
Mr. Lugar’s proposal comes at a delicate time, with Russia steadfastly resisting entreaties by the United States and other countries to authorize more forceful intervention in Syria, which has been locked in a conflict that is now a civil war for 17 months.In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Lugar said his idea had been initially rebuffed by Russian officials, who noted that Syria had never joined an agreement to eliminate such arms, the Chemical Weapons Convention, which was signed by 188 countries.“The initial response,” Mr. Lugar said, “was that Syria was not a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention — which is true — and we, that is, the United States and Russia, do not own these weapons, and that’s true. But it’s also true that it’s not really clear in the course of events who is going to own them, if anybody; who will be responsible; whether any party really will be a part of the convention.”Yet, Mr. Lugar added, most countries see the weapons in Syria “as influencing very adversely the potential for peace and stability in the Middle East.”Mr. Lugar, the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, is in Moscow this week to press for an extension of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, an effort that began in 1991 to safeguard and dismantle nuclear and chemical weapons in the former Soviet Union.The effort is credited with deactivating 7,500 nuclear warheads and overseeing the end ofnuclear weapons programs in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus. It is named for Mr. Lugar and former Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia, who helped a reluctant Congress provide financing, and it also led to the construction of a facility in Siberia that has been working to destroy two million Soviet chemical weapons containing nerve agents and other poisons.Mr. Lugar said the suggestion was his own, not the Obama administration’s. “The threats might be to both of our countries from elsewhere,” he said. “That’s what I am suggesting as maybe a new chapter in our cooperative threat reduction — that we think about our abilities really to be helpful to each other, but also the rest of the world.”