UPDATED: Essential Reading

The Ying and Yang of it all...

The SPIN: Conservatives draw knives against Ron Paul from The Washington Examiner.

Ramesh Ponnuru, Senior Editor at National Review, echos his colleague in a Bloomberg News column giving readers a primer on Paul's radical political history before concluding, "the notion that he will be the Republican nominee is too absurd to spend a moment contemplating."

 The TRUTH: Why the Beltway Libertarians Are Trying to Smear Ron Paul from Justin Raimondo, writing in January of 2008 in Taki's Magazine.

It’s no mystery, really: Ron Paul is, in many ways, the exact opposite of the Beltway fake-“libertarians.” He’s a populist: they suck up to power, he challenges the powers-that-be; they go along to get along – he has never gone along with the conventional wisdom as defined by the arbiters of political correctness, Left and Right. And most of all, he’s an avowed enemy of the neoconservatives, whom he constantly names as the main danger to peace and liberty – while the Beltway’s tame “libertarians” are in bed with them, often literally as well as figuratively.


In short, the Beltway fake-libs are in bed with the State, and all its works, while contenting themselves with the role of court jester and would-be “reformer” of the system. As long as they don’t challenge anything too fundamental to the continuation of the Welfare-Warfare State, the pet libertines of the neocon-led GOP “coalition” are deemed “urbane” and “cosmopolitan,” the highest compliment the Georgetown party circuit can bestow. Once they begin rocking the boat, as Paul insists on doing, they become fair game for the Smearbund.

SPIN: Obama and ‘the fourth-best president’ in context from The Washington Post.

It was Kroft who earlier said Obama had “some impressive accomplishments” that were “more than a lot of presidents who manage to get reelected.” It was the president who made clear later that he was talking about his “legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years” compared to those of other presidents. If Obama is guilty of anything, it’s that he took the bait to compare himself with giants when it is history that will be the final arbiter.

The TRUTH: ‘When the Legend Becomes Fact, Print the Legend’ by Victor Davis Hanson.

The notion that there was anything in Obama’s past or present temperament to suggest a political reformer was mythological to the core. Almost all his prior elections relied on a paradigm of attacking his opponents rather than defending his own record, from the races for the legislature to the U.S. Senate. He shook down Wall Street as no one had before or since — and well after the September 2008 meltdown. He was the logical expression of the Chicago/Illinois system of Tony Rezko, Blago, and the Daleys, not its aberration — from the mundane of expanding his yard to melting down opponents by leaking sealed divorce records.

 



The SPIN: Life after the Arab spring from The Guardian.

Commentator Firas al Attrachi refers to it as "a new social contract". He states that "events in Tahrir Square, to some extent in January/February and more so in the past week, have forced the foundation of a new social contract along the lines of how nations were formed during the Greek city-state era", redefining the relationship between people and government, and the very meaning of citizenship in the country.

The TRUTH: Welcome to Cairostan from Y Net News.com.

It was barely mentioned in the Israeli and global media, but the following event pertains to the whole of Western civilization: Last Saturday, violent groups of Islamic-Salafi radicals burned the famous scientific institute established by Napoleon in Egypt after its first encounter with the West. Some historians consider it the start of modern times in the Middle East.

UPDATE:  This article from the Mail Online, The Salafist party's plan for the Pyramids? Cover them in wax, makes the author of "Welcome to Cairostan" above seem quite prophetic!