Back to the future with the Gipper
Excerpts from President Reagan’s Labor Day message, 1981
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Monday, September 1, 2014
Back to the future with the Gipper
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/31/editorial-back-to-the-future-with-the-gipper/#ixzz3C4qWNMxj
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Despite centuries of dire predictions, Russia isn't going anywhere.
September-October 2014
RUSSIA, IT IS often said, is a country that is barely able to stumble out of bed and put on matching socks in the morning. In the lead-up to the Winter Olympics in Sochi and continuing during the Games, the U.S. media declared open season on the nation. Americans were told that Russia is a country just about bereft of functioning elevators or toilets. Or even a national food, “except perhaps bad sushi.” Its people “hardly know who they are anymore” and its essence is defined by copyright infringement and “all-encompassing corruption.” All in all, Russia is “a country that’s falling apart,” as a New Republic cover story in February put it.
It’s a hardy theme. It’s also a completely bogus one. But that hasn’t stopped the media from reviving it again and again.
Thirteen years ago, for example, theAtlantic published a cover story, “Russia Is Finished,” on “the unstoppable descent of a once great power into social catastrophe” and ultimately “obscurity.” That was a particularly bad year to predict Russia’s demise, as an economic revival was starting to take hold. And these days, Russia is proving itself to be anything but “finished” as a geopolitical actor, with its aggressive seizure of Crimea and its arming of pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine—who appear to be responsible for the July shooting down of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet as it flew over rebel-held territory. Nor is Russia’s determined and so far successful backing of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and its nascent alliance with China based on a historic energy pact, suggestive of a nation that is no longer a consequential player on the world stage. Russia remains a risk-taking nation—and as questionable, even reckless, as its gambles may be, as in its support for the rebels in eastern Ukraine, this is not the behavior of a country destined for insignificance. And while there is a great deal that is second-rate about Russia, from its sagging transportation infrastructure to its shoddy health-care system, such blemishes, common to many nations, including the United States, are hardly evidence of a fatal malaise.
The interesting question, then, is what lies behind this unbalanced mind-set—what might be called the “Russia Is Doomed” syndrome. What is the source of such stubbornly exaggerated thinking—and why is Russia chronically misdiagnosed in this fashion?
IT FEELS right, as a first line of exploration, to call in Dr. Freud. Maybe the strange idea that “the drama is coming to a close,” as theAtlantic piece prematurely declared of Russian history, is actually a wish of the collective Western subconscious—the silent urge of the id. The Freudian recesses can subtly affect our political desires, after all, and our twenty-first-century nervousness about Russia can be traced to long-standing European anxieties about despotic Russia as a kind of repository of the primitive in the human condition—dangerously and infuriatingly resistant to higher and hard-won European values. In his popular and bigoted early nineteenth-century travelogue, the French aristocrat Marquis de Custine said that in Russia “the veneer of European civilization was too thin to be credible.” His dyspeptic view of Russia has lived on ever since.
Russia was indeed less developed than Europe—according to standards of modernity such as science, technology and industry—but there was a self-serving element of power politics as well as cultural hauteur behind such disparagements. It is no surprise that the notion of Russia and Russians as representing an Other—as in, apart from “us Westerners”—was strikingly prevalent in nineteenth-century Victorian England. That was the time of the Great Game—the competition between Britain and Russia for influence and spoils in a swath of Asia stretching from the Indian subcontinent to the Black Sea.
The Crimean War of the 1850s, pitting both the French and the British against the Russians, sparked an especially intense British animus against a marauding Russian bear, pitted against the regal British lion, as the political cartoonists of the day had it. (Or a meek lion, as some illustrators sketched the scene. In one such cartoon, a massive bear, a Russian soldier’s cap on its head, sits atop a prostrate Persian cat, a lion looking on helplessly in the background.) Negative images of Russia seeped into British literature. George Stoker wrote an anti-Russian travelogue, With the Unspeakables, drawn from the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–1878. That book, in turn, may have supplied an impetus for his older brother, Bram, who later wrote of a pair of fantastical novels,Dracula and The Lady of the Shroud,that can be read as conjuring an “Eastern” or Slavic threat to England. In the end, of course, Count Dracula has his throat slashed and is stabbed dead in the heart.
Granted, the British Empire was a promiscuous slanderer of its motley rivals—consider the aspersions regularly cast toward the French. Still, British feelings toward Russia were notably raw. The historian J. H. Gleason, in his 1950 book The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain,characterized the nineteenth-century English public’s “antipathy toward Russia” as the “most pronounced and enduring element in the national outlook on the world abroad.” The sentiment, Gleason concluded, was concocted by a manipulative, imperial-minded elite—and was off base, anyway, since Britain’s foreign policy was actually “more provocative than Russia’s” in this period. Others concur. “The world champion imperialists of modern history, the British, were in a permanent state of hysteria about the chimera of Russia advancing over the Himalayas to India,” Martin Malia observed in his 1999 book Russia under Western Eyes.
Sunday, August 31, 2014
Obama: ISIS 'Doesn’t Immediately Threaten the Homeland'
Obama: ISIS 'Doesn’t Immediately Threaten the Homeland'
on Sat, 30 Aug 2014
At a fundraiser last night in Newport, Rhode Island, President Obama played down the threat from the terrorist army ISIS. "We have to be vigilant," he told the group of donors, "but this doesn’t immediately threaten the homeland."
Obama also claimed to be "seeing a change in the order in the Middle East." He called it "scary."
The comments come after American journalist James Foley was beheaded by ISIS.
"[I]nternationally, we’re going through a tumultuous time. And I don’t have to tell you, anybody who has been watching TV this summer, it seems like it is just wave after wave of upheaval, most of it surrounding the Middle East. You’re seeing a change in the order in the Middle East. But the old order is having a tough time holding together and the new order has yet to be born, and in the interim, it’s scary," Obama said.
"The good news is that we actually have a unprecedented military capacity, and since 9/11 have built up a security apparatus that makes us in the here and now pretty safe. We have to be vigilant, but this doesn’t immediately threaten the homeland. What it does do, though, is it gives a sense, once again, for future generations, is the world going to be upended in ways that affect our kids and our grandkids."
Rogers: Obama’s inertia on Syria-Islamic State part of foreign policy plan empowering rivals
Rogers: Obama’s inertia on Syria-Islamic State part of foreign policy plan empowering rivals
FoxNews.com
Published August 31, 2014
Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said Sunday that President Obama’s inertia on whether to launch airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Syria is part of an overall foreign policy failure that is empowering China, North Korea, Russia and other rival nations.
“It’s all related,” Rogers, R-Mich., told “Fox News Sunday." “The world sees the United States as withdrawn.”
Rogers said the president’s apparent disengagement or slow response is the reason China has engaged U.S. pilots and Russian President Vladimir Putin has moved into eastern Ukraine without fear of consequence.
“U.S. foreign policy is in free fall,” he said. “Traditional allies are saying maybe the United States is not the best to lead us.”
The president faces a big test later this week when he travels to Europe for a NATO summit where he hopes to build a coalition to stop Islamic State, the terror group formerly known as ISIS, and other militant groups in the Middle East.
Rogers told Fox News he doesn’t believe White House Press Secretary Josh Ernest when he said last week that military options are “still being developed.”
Ernest's remarks followed the president saying the U.S. still doesn't have a strategy for Islamic State and Syria.
Rogers said the president was presented with a range of military options at the start of the 2011 uprising in Syria to overthrow the regime of President Bashar Assad, a movement that gave rise to Islamic State.
“There have been plans on the table,” Rogers said. “The president just didn’t want to get engaged. That is a decision. That is foreign policy.”
Rogers also said the surprising and powerful surge of Islamic State -- across the Syrian border and into northern Iraq -- reached a critical point longer before the group earlier this month beheaded American journalist James Foley.
He said the president’s plan to build a coalition isn’t “wrong,” just “late” because the U.S. now has fewer, safer options in the efforts to stop Islamic State before it strikes on American soil.
Rogers estimated that “hundreds” of Americans have already traveled or trained with Islamic State at least once.
Senior House Democrat: 'You don’t just come in and bomb' without a plan
Senior House Democrat: 'You don’t just come in and bomb' without a plan
By Martin Matishak - 08-31-14 09:29 AM EDT
By Martin Matishak - 08-31-14 09:29 AM EDT
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee on Sunday said President Obama will hammer out a long-term plan for fighting Islamist militants operating in Syria.
“We want to do whatever we need to do to stop” the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) said on CNN's "State of the Union." “You don’t just come in and bomb” without a plan, he added.
His comments come days after Obama said the U.S. didn’t have a strategy yet for combating fighters with the group in Syria.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said the key question confronting the administration is “are we going to contain ISIS or are we going to crush ISIS?”
Kinzinger said it was “unfortunate” Obama said the U.S. didn’t have a strategy because of the perception it sent to the terrorist group.
Ruppersberger, however, said it was extremely important the U.S. doesn’t “rush in.”
“if we’re going to go in, we’re not going to go in to drop some bombs,” Ruppersberger said. However, he hedged on if the U.S. would send troops or other military assets into Syria.
He added that the president shouldn't launch a campaign just because of media reports.
Ruppersberger predicted that U.S. allies, including some on the Middle East, would take some form of action against ISIS “this week.”
Feds to Advertise Settlement Allowing Deported Illegals to Return
Feds to Advertise Settlement Allowing Deported Illegals to Return
As part of a legal settlement that will allow some illegal immigrants who deported themselves from Southern California to return to the United States, the federal government has agreed to advertise the settlement on various Mexican and Spanish-language media outlets.The ACLU filed a class-action lawsuit last year on behalf of eleven illegal immigrants who deported themselves. The settlement reached on Wednesday will only cover "longtime California residents with relatives who are U.S. citizens and... young migrants whose parents brought them into the country illegally" who deported themselves between 2009 and 2013. An ACLU official has indicated that there were nearly 250,000 people who were "deported voluntarily from Southern California between 2009 and 2013" and estimated to the Los Angeles Times that the "number of repatriations could reach into the hundreds or thousands."
The U.S. government, through ad buys online, in print, on billboards, and on radio stations, will hope to reach "friends and family of the affected class" in Southern California and Mexico. According to the settlement, the federal government will advertise on television channels like Univision, ESPN Deportes, MundoFox, El Universal, and the Univision Deportes Network. They will also partner with People en Espanol and even the Mexico National Football Team in addition to placing billboards "in high population Mexican border cities of Tijuana, Tecate and Mexicali, as well as focusing placements near border crossings."
U.S. officials will also place "radio ads :60 in length... on top Spanish speaking radio stations near the Mexico/U.S. border." Those who search for "Lopez Case," "Lopez Class Action," "Voluntary Return to Mexico," "Rights for Detainees," "Detained by ICE," and "Returned to Mexico by ICE" will also be targeted with information about the settlement.
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Today, as we set our minds to a new season of work, we begin what I hope will be a new age of the American worker, an age in which all of us again are free to prosper.
Together, we’ve swept away many government-created obstacles to our prosperity. In our fight against inflation and high interest rates, we enacted the largest budget cuts ever considered by the Congress. We produced the first real tax cut for working men and women in nearly 20 years. We slowed the pace of federal rule-making. We saw to it our money supply followed a pattern of slow, stable growth.
These dramatic changes in economic policy are the dynamic result of millions of individuals coming together, committed to preserving a society where we can each seek our own goals, assured of the freedom to climb as high as our own drive, ambition and talent can take us.
Let me make our goal in this program very clear: jobs, jobs, jobs and more jobs … .
We built this great nation, built it to surpass the highest standards ever imagined, through the hard work of our people. I would match the American worker against any in the world. The people whose labor fuels our industry and economy are among the most productive anywhere.
But too many Americans don’t have a job, and too many Americans who do, don’t have the tools they need to compete. Past, stagnated policies have made it too difficult to modernize and too risky to expand. Our people, our workers, have cried out for change, and in the last seven months have achieved a historic reversal of the failed policies of an era gone by. We returned to the principles that made us great.
Legislation now in effect has dawned a new age for American workers, an age in which once again we are free to achieve all that we can … .
All of us must take advantage of the incentives for savings, investment and hard work that have been restored. I urge American workers who traditionally saved to make their families secure to do so again. I urge American investors who traditionally took risks to make a profit to do so again. I urge American workers to save and invest, because I believe that when our economic program takes full effect, Americans again will be rewarded for working extra hours or assuming more responsibility.
Today, as we set our minds to a new season of work, we begin what I hope will be a new age of the American worker, an age in which all of us again are free to prosper.
Together, we’ve swept away many government-created obstacles to our prosperity. In our fight against inflation and high interest rates, we enacted the largest budget cuts ever considered by the Congress. We produced the first real tax cut for working men and women in nearly 20 years. We slowed the pace of federal rule-making. We saw to it our money supply followed a pattern of slow, stable growth.
These dramatic changes in economic policy are the dynamic result of millions of individuals coming together, committed to preserving a society where we can each seek our own goals, assured of the freedom to climb as high as our own drive, ambition and talent can take us.
Let me make our goal in this program very clear: jobs, jobs, jobs and more jobs … .
We built this great nation, built it to surpass the highest standards ever imagined, through the hard work of our people. I would match the American worker against any in the world. The people whose labor fuels our industry and economy are among the most productive anywhere.
But too many Americans don’t have a job, and too many Americans who do, don’t have the tools they need to compete. Past, stagnated policies have made it too difficult to modernize and too risky to expand. Our people, our workers, have cried out for change, and in the last seven months have achieved a historic reversal of the failed policies of an era gone by. We returned to the principles that made us great.
Legislation now in effect has dawned a new age for American workers, an age in which once again we are free to achieve all that we can … .
All of us must take advantage of the incentives for savings, investment and hard work that have been restored. I urge American workers who traditionally saved to make their families secure to do so again. I urge American investors who traditionally took risks to make a profit to do so again. I urge American workers to save and invest, because I believe that when our economic program takes full effect, Americans again will be rewarded for working extra hours or assuming more responsibility.
In a few short months, we’ve accomplished much. But merely signing legislation is not going to bring about an instant cure. We’re only beginning a recovery that will take many long months. We’re only beginning to emerge from an economic crisis still gripping the rest of the world … .
As President Eisenhower told us once: A crisis can be deadly when inert men are smothered in despair. But a crisis also can be the sharpest goad to our creative energies, particularly when we recognize it as a challenge and move to meet it in faith, in thought and in courage. We must act today in the name of generations still to come.
As we work to solve our economic problems, let us tap that well of human spirit. For too many years now, we’ve trusted numbers and computers. We’ve trusted balance sheets, organizational charts, policies and systems. We’ve placed trust in rules, regulations and government dictates. I think it’s about time that we placed trust in ourselves and in each other.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/31/editorial-back-to-the-future-with-the-gipper/#ixzz3C4qe2y00
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