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Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes on the Muslim Brotherhood.
‘Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” So goes the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood.
What’s extraordinary about this maxim is the succinct way that it captures the political dimension of Islam. Even more extraordinary is the capacity of these five pillars of faith to attract true believers. But the most remarkable thing of all is the way the Brotherhood’s motto seduces Western liberals. …
Jeff Jacoby says the assault on Lara Logan was not a one-off.
PERHAPS THE most shocking thing about the despicable sexual attack on CBS correspondent Lara Logan in Cairo’s Tahrir Square is that to those who know Egypt, it wasn’t shocking at all.
“Why is sexual harassment in Egypt so rampant?’’ asked the headline of a story written by CNN’s Mary Rogers in November. A veteran producer and camerawoman who has lived in the country since 1994, Rogers reported that the experience of being publicly molested unites women across Egypt’s social spectrum.
“Young, old, foreign, Egyptian, poor, middle class, or wealthy, it doesn’t matter,’’ she wrote. “Dressed in hijab, niqab, or Western wear, it doesn’t matter. If you are a woman living in Cairo, chances are you have been sexually harassed. It happens on the streets, on crowded buses, in the workplace, in schools, and even in a doctor’s office.’’ Rogers discovered the ugly reality soon after her arrival in the country, when, as she was walking home from work, a stranger “reached out, and casually grabbed my breast.’’ After repeatedly enduring such obnoxious harassment, Rogers stopped walking to and from her office.
In a swath of the globe notorious for mistreating women, Egypt is particularly infamous. According to a survey conducted in 2008 by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights, 83 percent of native Egyptian women and 98 percent of women visiting from abroad have experienced some form of public sexual harassment. More than half the Egyptian women reported being molested every day. And contrary to popular belief, most of the victims were wearing modest Islamic dress. …
Robert Samuelson wants to know when the AARP will stop running the government.
The great question haunting Washington’s budget debate is whether our elected politicians will take back government from AARP, the 40 million-member organization that represents retirees and near-retirees. For all the partisan bluster surrounding last week’s release of President Obama’s proposed 2012 budget, it reflects a long-standing bipartisan consensus not to threaten seniors. Programs for the elderly, mainly Social Security and Medicare, are left untouched. With an aging population, putting so much spending off-limits inevitably means raising taxes, shrinking defense and squeezing other domestic spending – everything from the FBI to college aid.
Power is the ability to get what you want. It suggests that you control events. By these standards, AARP runs government budgetary policy, not presidents or congressional leaders. Obama says we must “win the future,” but his budget (and, so far, the Republicans’, too) would win the past and lose the future. The massive federal debt would continue to grow because, without restraining retiree spending, there’s no path to a balanced budget. The aging infrastructure (roads, airports) wouldn’t get needed repairs. The already-stressed social safety net for the poor would be further strained. We would cut defense while China’s military expands. All this is insane. It’s not the agenda of a country interested in its future. …
Thomas Sowell beats up high speed rail.
Nothing more clearly illustrates the utter irresponsibility of Barack Obama than his advocacy of “high-speed rail.” The man is not stupid. He knows how to use words that will sound wonderful to people who do not bother to stop and think.
High-speed rail may be feasible in parts of Europe or Japan, where the population density is much higher than in the United States. But, without enough people packed into a given space, there will never be enough riders to repay the high cost of building and maintaining a high-speed rail system. …
Michael Barone likes Daniels and Christie.
… Christie was less elegant and even more blunt than his Hoosier colleague. Drawing on his struggles with New Jersey’s public employee unions over pensions and benefits, he turned to national issues.
“My children’s future and your children’s future are more important than political strategy,” he began.” You’re going to have to raise the retirement age for Social Security. Whoa, I just said it, and I’m still standing here. I did not vaporize.
“We have to reform Medicare because it costs too much and it is going to bankrupt us. Once again lightning did not come through the windows and strike me dead. And we have to fix Medicaid because it’s not only bankrupting the federal government, it’s bankrupting every state government.”
Obama, he said, was offering “the candy of American politics” — high-speed rail, plug-in cars — and congressional Republicans so far haven’t offered much more. If those he campaigned for don’t, he said, “the next time they’ll see me in their district is with my arm around their primary opponent.” …
George Will says Wisconsin’s Scott Walker gives a lesson in leadership to the kid president.
Hitherto, when this university town and seat of state government applauded itself as “the Athens of the Midwest,” the sobriquet suggested kinship with the cultural glories of ancient Greece. Now, however, Madison resembles contemporary Athens.
This capital has been convulsed by government employees sowing disorder in order to repeal an election. A minority of the minority of Wisconsin residents who work for government (300,000 of them) are resisting changes to benefits that most of Wisconsin’s 5.6 million residents resent financing.
Serene at the center of this storm sits Republican Scott Walker, 43, in the governor’s mansion library, beneath a portrait of Ronald Reagan. Walker has seen this movie before. …
Tony Blankley thinks polls will show the Dems are on the wrong side of history with their Wisconsin posturing.
… While we do not have reliable polling on the Wisconsin controversy, it was a telltale sign over the weekend when the head of the teachers union urged the teachers to go back to work. Public unions are in a justifiably low standing with the public.
And after three years of private-sector firings, plus 9 percent unemployment, salary cuts, home-mortgage crises and 401(k) shrinkage – the 91 percent of the American work force employed in that private sector (53 percent in small businesses with even lower benefits) is entitled to feel little sympathy for Wisconsin schoolteachers receiving an average of $89,000 in salary and benefits and contributing zero to their pension plan and only 5 percent to their medical insurance while the average private-sector employee contributes 29 percent.
The president’s strong support for the public-worker union lines up – at least for the time being – both a state and federal policy debate that may well yield needed deficit-education legislation and dangerous political waters for the Democratic Party. The Democrats seem to be prepared to defend the idea of not dealing with the deficit crisis. Have the party strategists, including those in the White House, really thought through the electoral implications of that decision?
Of course, huge, good news for America on an unrelated topic may break out somewhere – although probably not in the Middle East, Mexico, Europe or Asia – and I hope it does. But if deficits and debt continue to be the defining issues of American politics for the next 18 months – and if the Democrats from the White House to the statehouses stay in their current head-in-the-sand posture – they may be approaching a nasty electoral meltdown of their party in November 2012.
Jennifer Rubin wonders why the left misbehaves.
Charles Lane observed over the weekend that in Madison, Wis., “anger and vilification are once again the order of the day — and the incivility emanates from the progressive end of the spectrum, including, no doubt, many of the same people who blamed right-wing vitriol for creating a climate of violence in Arizona.” The tactics of those on the left — threatening officials in their homes, forcing a shutdown of the state legislature and providing phony doctor’s notes to defraud the state (allowing protesting teachers to collect sick pay) — confirm the inherent anti-democratic nature of the protest, and indeed, of public-employee unions. …
Liberal Wisconsin cartoonist sides with the governor. Of course we have samples of his work. Disrupt the Narrative.com has the story.
Cartoonist Phil Hands of the Wisconsin State Journal newspaper has this to say…
“This debate over Gov. Scott Walker’s budget bill has been difficult for me. I have progressive values. I believe in gay marriage, I believe in mass transit, I believe in global climate change, I believe in abortion rights, I believe in urban planning and I believe in a single payer health care system. But on the issue of public employee compensation and the role that their unions play in our government, I find myself siding with conservatives.” …