Disrupting the Narrative of the New Left, its allies in Academia, Hollywood and the Establishment Media, and examining with honesty the goals of cultural Marxism and the dangers of reactionary and abusive political correctness.
THE NARRATIVE AND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
“Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.”-George Orwell
Showing posts with label Keystone Pipeline. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Keystone Pipeline. Show all posts
2016 Presidential hopeful Chris Christie is no longer in the top tier of GOP candidates. Find out what led to a drop in support. Plus President Obama vetoes the Keystone Pipeline Bill.
According to Bishop Shyrokoradiuk, more than 18 million people live in his diocese, including about 60,000 Roman Catholic Christians.
"We are a missionary Church," he said. "Twenty years ago, we didn't have a single parish; today there are more than 50. The faithful have Ukrainian, Polish, Russian as well as Vietnamese roots."
The parochial work of the diocese is focused on pastoral as well as social and humanitarian tasks: "We receive shipments of relief supplies and medicine from Western Europe. We need this help, Christian solidarity, but also political aid," said Bishop Shyrokoradiuk.
He is worried about the rising tide of refugees from the war zones, estimating there are more than 20,000 in Kharkiv at this time.
"We are trying to help where we can. Just a few weeks ago, we were at least able to give 300 pairs of shoes to children."
But Bishop Shyrokoradiuk's influence is limited. To his knowledge, the aid intended for people in the self-proclaimed People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk does not reach those in need.
In western Ukraine, Bishop Vitaliy Skomarovsky of Lutsk also sees the consequences of the battles in the East.
"The war may seem far away. But in reality, many young men from the western part of the country have joined the war. Just recently, a row of fir trees was felled in the cemetery of Lutsk to bury 13 young soldiers."
Other cities have also buried soldiers killed in the line of duty. According to Bishop Skomarovsky, the Church is taking care of the bereaved as well as those families whose fathers have gone East as soldiers.
"The war is ever-present. We notice that financial resources are being used for it; many things in the social sector have been stopped. However, people are now doing a lot more on their own initiative, solidarity is growing among the people," Bishop Skomarovsky said.
Warm clothing, among other things, has been collected because many soldiers in the East are inadequately equipped and feel as though they have been abandoned.
With 35 parishes and 25,000 faithful, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lutsk is the smallest in Ukraine. Until World War II, it was part of the Polish territory of Volhynia. Ukrainian nationalists carried out a number of massacres of the predominantly Polish population in the region, beginning in mid-July 1943. These were tolerated by the German occupying force. More than 50,000 people were killed.
As a result of the massacres, many Catholic parishes are still deserted today...
The Senate voted to move forward with a bill approving the Keystone XL pipeline Monday night, but the chamber did not garner enough Democratic votes to block a White House veto.
A bipartisan bill introduced by Sens. John Hoeven of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia to approve Keystone XL got 63 votes, enough to overcome a filibuster and move forward. The legislation attracted nine Democrats, but failed to get enough liberal lawmakers to block a presidential veto should the bill pass.
"We have everything to gain by building this pipeline, especially since it would help create thousands of jobs right here at home and limit our dependence on foreign oil," said Manchin, a Democrat. "Every state – including West Virginia – would benefit economically from this activity. It is my sincere hope that we can once and for all move forward with this important project."
A Nebraska court ruling last week took out one of the last flimsy excuses the Obama administration had for delaying Keystone approval.
But what if the White House saw the fight over Keystone as an opportunity for a larger deal? Keystone XL is one of the few G.O.P. priorities in which the philosophical gulf between Obama and congressional Republicans is relatively narrow. In private, Obama has been dismissive of environmentalist claims that building Keystone XL would significantly affect climate change, and his State Department, with some caveats, came to the same conclusion in an environmental-impact statement. In U.S. and Canadian diplomatic circles, officials regularly discuss whether there could be some kind of a deal between the two countries. For example, Canada might make a more ambitious pledge to reduce carbon pollution in return for U.S. approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.
So why doesn't Obama have that discussion with Congress instead? What would the G.O.P. be willing to trade to get Keystone approved? A carbon tax? A large infrastructure project? Codifying the E.P.A.'s climate regulations into law? From the White House's perspective, the Keystone XL pipeline should be an ideal policy to give away in a trade: it's a major issue that Republicans care a great deal about but one that Obama seems to view as a sideshow. (And if world oil prices remain low, Keystone may be entirely moot because production in the expensive-to-develop Canadian oil sands might not be economically viable.)
This is what a rational president who is at all engaged in the process would conclude. That would be a smart move. Give a rather small ideological concession on a smallish piece of legislation that is popular with Americans in exchange for a less popular, bigger ideological win. For that reason, it probably won't happen. This is the president who does not pivot, and there's little evidence he recognizes such opportunities. He just missed the no-brainer that was marching for free speech with the rest of the world in Paris. He's not gonna hit anything that's not sitting on tee at this point in his presidency.
The Republican Party of Iowa's governing board will vote on [the Ames Straw Poll's] future at 11 a.m. Saturday, but GOP insiders said the decision will almost certainly be to proceed with planning for an event in August as usual.
Just think, Republican aspiring presidents, with enough time, money, and effort, you can follow the path of past Ames Straw Poll winner Michele Bachmann, who went on to spend $15 million and finish with 5 percent in the Iowa caucuses! Or 2007 winner Mitt Romney! Or 1995 co-winner Phil Gramm! Or 1987 winner Pat Robertson! Or 1979 winner George H. W. Bush!
(You may have noticed that none of those figures went on to win the nomination, nor even the Iowa caucus the following year.)
Okay, every once in a while, the straw-poll winner goes on to win the nomination: co-winner Bob Dole in 1995, George W. Bush in 1999.
The straw poll, in fact, proved to be a substantial drain on candidates' finances. In addition to the fees paid to the party, candidates spent big bucks on food, entertainment and transportation. Pawlenty dropped nearly $27,000 on Famous Dave's barbecue to feed the straw poll crowd before finishing third and exiting the race the next day. Bachmann spent more than $40,000 renting buses to transport supporters to the poll — and another $7,000 on golf carts to shuttle folks around the grounds.
There are now at least twelve confirmed dead in the terrorist attack carried out by at least three jihadist gunmen against the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo. While it practices equal-opportunity satire, lampooning Islam has proved lethal for the magazine, just as it has for so many others who dare to exercise the bedrock Western liberty of free expression. Charlie Hebdo's offices were firebombed in 2011 over a caricature of Mohammed that depicted him saying, "100 lashes if you don't die from laughter."
The cartoon was obviously referring to sharia, Islam's legal code and totalitarian framework. Don't take my word for it. Just flip through Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law, the authoritative sharia manual. You will find a number of offenses for which flagellation is the prescribed penalty.
To take just a couple of examples, "the penalty for drinking is to be scourged forty stripes," although the caliph (the Islamic ruler) is authorized to increase this to 80 stripes — although he must pay an indemnity if death results. . . . Pretty moderate, right? (Reliance, p. 617, sec. o16.3.) For adultery "the penalty consists of being scourged one hundred stripes" — and that's if the adulterer "is not considered to have the capacity to remain chaste" (e.g., if she "is prepubescent at the time of marital intercourse)." "If the offender is someone with the capacity to remain chaste, then he or she is stoned to death." (Reliance, p. 610, sec. o12.2.)
What Charlie Hebdo has satirized is a savage reality. That reality was visited on the magazine again today. As night follows day, progressive governments in Europe and the United States are already straining to pretend that this latest atrocity is the wanton work of "violent extremists," utterly unrelated to Islam.You are to believe, then, that François Hollande, Barack Obama, David Cameron, and their cohort of non-Muslim Islamophiles are better versed in sharia than the Muslim scholars who've dedicated their lives to its study and have endorsed such scholarly works as Reliance.
Let me repeat what I have detailed here before: Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State did not make up sharia law. Islam did. We can keep our heads tucked snug in the sand, or we can recognize the source of the problem.
Reliance is not some al-Qaeda or Islamic State pamphlet. It is a renowned explication of sharia's provisions and their undeniable roots in Muslim scripture. In the English translation, before you get to chapter and verse, there are formal endorsements, including one from the International Institute of Islamic Thought — a U.S.-based Muslim Brotherhood think tank begun in the early Eighties (and to which American administrations of both parties have resorted as an exemplar of "moderation"). Perhaps more significantly, there is also an endorsement from the Islamic Research Academy at al Azhar University, the ancient seat of Sunni learning to which President Obama famously turned to co-sponsor his cloyingly deceptive 2009 speech on relations between Islam and the West...
Jim and Greg like Tom Cotton's new ad, groan at Debbie Wasserman Schultz's defense of the latest Keystone delay, and rip Charlie Crist's flip-flops on abortion.
Allow me to say right off the bat that I was wrong. Mea culpa. I predicted that the Obama administration would finally approve the Keystone pipeline project sometime this fall, tossing a political bone to vulnerable Democratic Senators who've been begging the president to stop dragging his feet. As we learned over the holiday weekend, Mary Landrieu and friends won't get their wish. The White House is again hunkering down and postponing a decision until early 2015, and possibly beyond -- leaving thousands of American workers in the lurch.
During his obnoxious Obamacare press conference last week, the president said that Washington must stop debating the health law, and move on to more pressing matters like jobs and the economy (fronts on which Obamacare is inflicting damage, incidentally). He even called for additional "investments" in American infrastructure, which he said would "improve our economy for the long term." Literally the next day, he swatted down a hugely popular job-creating infrastructure project. As Dan wrote earlier, MSNBC's Morning Joe crew seemed perplexed by the move, which liberal host Mika Brzezinski called "hard to defend." The Wall Street Journal's editors agree, but they aren't puzzling over what happened. Follow the money...
