op ed review 9/27

THIS WEEK’S NEWS

Glenn Beck and the Evergreen Freedom Foundation at Safeco Field, Sat. Sept 24th

http://glennbeckseattle.com/

Time Magazine asks “Is Glenn Beck Bad for America?”

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1924348,00.html

Apparently, this is somewhat of a retread for Time, for back in 1995, the magazine asked more positively on its January 23 cover, "Is Rush Limbaugh Good for America?" The sub-headline read, "Talk radio is only the beginning. Electronic populism threatens to short-circuit representative democracy."

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/09/19/time-mag-flashback-1995-rush-limbaugh-good-america

The talk-radio host and Fox News personality is under attack this week, with the liberal establishment's favorite weapon, a Time magazine cover: "Mad Man: Glenn Beck and the angry style of American politics." This continues a long tradition of weekly newsmagazine covers demonizing conservative figures like Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich.

http://spectator.org/archives/2009/09/23/secret-protocols-of-becks-legi

Reps Barney Frank and John Conyers have called for an investigation, not of ACORN, but of the ACORN sting operation. “…they ask the CRS to look into…the federal and state laws that could apply to such videotaping and distribution of conversations without the consent of all parties."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204488304574429383616613404.html

Sure enough, on Wednesday ACORN sued the young conservative activists who shot hidden-camera videos of ACORN employees advising them how to cheat on taxes and loan applications.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/24/acorn-sues-bretibart-pimp-hooker-duo/?source=newsletter_must-read-stories-today_more_news_carousel

Likely voters are giving former TV anchor Susan Hutchison the edge over King County Council chair Dow Constantine, 47 percent to 44 percent. But with a margin of error just over four percent, and with ten percent of voters undecided, any outcome is possible. Hutchison has expanded her lead on Constantine among Republicans, 77 percent to 12 percent, and conservatives, 80 percent to 11 percent. She also leads among independents and moderates.

http://www.nwcn.com/statenews/washington/stories/NW_092209POB-king-county-executive-poll-TP.1a63a42b8.html

The Tea Party Express, whose cross-country caravan of anti-big government rallies culminated in a demonstration at the Capitol earlier this month, will hit the road again in October to keep its political movement energized and at the center of upcoming legislative battles. The Sacramento, Calif.-based organization said Tuesday that its second coast-to-coast road trip will run Oct. 25 through Nov. 11.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/23/tea-party-movement-to-roll-in-october/

The former eBay executive Meg Whitman formally declared her candidacy for governor of California on Tuesday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/us/23whitman.html

The $787 billion economic recovery package also is stimulating growth in the federal government which increased by more than 25,000 employees, or 1.3%, since December 2008. During that time, the ranks of the nation's unemployed increased by nearly 4 million.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-09-23-stimfed_N.htm

Despite being in the minority in Congress, Republican campaign committees outraised Democrats by $1.7 million in August as they have aggressively collected political cash amid the rancorous debate over health care.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-09-24-party-money_N.htm

Sarah Palin has more than 850,000 “friends” following her every statement closely on Facebook, Palin trails only President Obama as the most popular politician on the site.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27344.html

Former Gov. Palin, in what was billed as her first public-speaking engagement outside North America, described her political philosophy as a "common-sense conservatism," and said the free-market policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher should be guides for how to get out of the current economic situation.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125368057547633229.html

A Huntsville, Alabama woman who owns her own defense contracting business won an EBay auction to have dinner with former Gov. Palin. Cathy Maples, president of R&D Electronics, bid $63,000 to be donated to Ride 2 Recovery, a program that supports wounded veterans. "I thought it was an extremely good cause, and also I'm a big advocate for Sarah Palin.”

http://blog.al.com/breaking/2009/09/huntsville_woman_wins_online_a.html

Although terrorist emeritus Bill Ayers claims not to have met Barack Obama until the mid-1990s, there is reason to believe that he not only knew Obama much earlier, but that he helped get him into Harvard Law School.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/did_ayers_help_obama_get_into.html

And more evidence Bill Ayers actually wrote Obama’s book Dreams From My Father

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/09/andersen_book_blows_ayers_cove.html

More “dear leaderish” every day: A video posted on YouTube appears to show a New Jersey elementary school class being taught to sing praises of the "great accomplishments" of President Obama. The video shows nearly 20 young children taught a song overflowing with campaign slogans and praise for "Barack Hussein Obama," repeatedly chanting the president's name and celebrating his accomplishments, including his "great plans" to "make this country's economy No. 1 again.”

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/24/elementary-school-students-reportedly-taught-songs-praising-president-obama/

Since passing tort reform in 2004, Mississippi has seen the number of medical malpractice claims plummet by 91 percent from its peak. The state's largest medical liability insurer dropped its premiums by 42 percent, and has offered an additional 20 percent rebate each year since tort reform went into effect.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Heres-your-demonstration-project-Mr-President----its-called-Mississippi-59990137.html

The Islamic community hopes to have 50,000 Muslims surrounding the U.S. Capitol for Jummah prayer this Friday, September 25. The main organizer of the event, Hassen Ibn Abdellah, was, according to the New York Times, the "most aggressively combative of the lawyers" representing the terrorists who staged the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/fischer/090924

Federal authorities have tied as many as a dozen people to a suspected Al Qaeda-linked bomb plot on U.S. soil.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-terror-arrests22-2009sep22,0,5320039.story

Al-Qaida on Tuesday released a new 106-minute long video predicting President Barack Obama's downfall at the hands of the Muslim world.

http://www.seattlepi.com/national/1107ap_ml_al_qaida_video.html

New congressional poll: Democrat lead over GOP is smallest in five years; doubts about Obama continue to grow

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/New-poll-Democrat-lead-over-GOP-is-smallest-in-five-years-doubts-about-Obama-continue-to-grow-60630522.html

While they still believe Congress will not succeed in passing a healthcare reform package shaped the way the president and Democrats want, opponents of government-run healthcare are laying the groundwork for lawsuits to stall and eventually kill any Democratic legislative victory—just in case. A broad group of conservatives has begun to explore how to file such lawsuits, who would file them, etc.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/2009/09/22/conservatives-say-they-will-sue-to-stop-healthcare-reform.html

Where nanny government leads: Report: The Scottish government has taken away a couple's children, saying the kids are too fat.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,554061,00.html

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THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN

Stephen Moore 9/23

If you want to know why Americans are so fearful of a government takeover of the health-care system, take a look at the results of a new Gallup poll on government waste released Sept. 15. One question posed was: "Of every tax dollar that goes to Washington, D.C., how many cents of each dollar would you say is wasted?" Gallup found that the mean response was 50 cents. With Uncle Sam spending just shy of $4 trillion this year, that means the public believes that $2 trillion is wasted.

In a separate poll released on Monday, Gallup found that nearly twice as many Americans believe that there is "too much government regulation of business and industry" as believe there is "too little" (45% to 24%).

Perhaps most significantly, in both of these polls Gallup found that skepticism about government's effectiveness is the highest it's been in decades. "Perceptions of federal waste were significantly lower 30 years ago than today," say the Gallup researchers. Even when Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 with the help of the antigovernment revolt of that era, Americans believed only 40 cents of every dollar was wasted, according to Gallup.

These results are in some ways surprising because voters just elected a president who promised expensive government expansion almost across the board—from health care to foreign aid to housing to energy policy. Mr. Obama was the first president elected since Lyndon Johnson who didn't even pretend to want to cut the size of government.

Now there's a powerful voter backlash against the Bush-Obama agenda of bailouts, stimulus plans and trillion dollar-plus deficits. The rage began with the bank bailouts last fall. It grew with the $787 billion stimulus bill, which was little more than a refill of the budgets of every left-wing program Democrats have wanted to throw money at for 40 years. The nearly $100 billion bailout of General Motors and Chrysler—some $300,000 for every auto job saved—was a bridge too far for debt-weary voters. When Mr. Obama then released his 10-year budget plan—which even he admitted would double the national debt with $9 trillion of new borrowing over the next decade—he was lighting a match in a munitions factory.

There are several political lessons we can learn from the Gallup results. One is that Republicans' strategy of creating a unified bloc of "no" votes to Obama spending initiatives like government-run health care and the cap-and trade-energy bill is in line with where voters are. The Washington establishment is dead wrong: Americans don't want bipartisan cooperation in supersizing the government right now. Pollster Frank Luntz tells me that Republicans can kill ObamaCare by relentlessly hammering home one message: This is a government takeover of health care. "Americans hate that idea," he says.

But the polling suggests something even bigger: Americans are in the mood for a radical shrinking of government in order to reduce debt and waste. Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats should be talking nonstop about how to achieve this goal.

First, they should push for a 15% cut in every federal agency budget before the debt cap is raised later this year. Given that most agencies saw their budgets expand by more than 50% in the past year, according to the House Budget Committee, this is hardly going to throw programs into the poor house.

They should also propose an immediate freeze on federal pay and benefits until the budget is balanced—even furloughs of federal workers to save money. A new report from the Cato Institute shows that federal pay packages are nearly twice as generous as those in the private sector for jobs that require similar skill levels. They should call for the elimination of hundreds of useless and obsolete agencies like the Legal Services Corporation. Finally, they should demand that every penny of TARP money repaid by banks should go into a fund to reduce the debt—rather than allow the Obama administration to create a new slush fund for pet projects.

Over the last decade, the federal government has become bloated and inefficient. Voters are on to the scam. Mr. Obama keeps calling federal spending an "investment," but Americans apparently feel this is the worst investment they've ever made. They've come to regard Washington as a $2 trillion Bridge to Nowhere. They are right.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204488304574424750482799212.html

Another good read: Victor Davis Hansen

“If you are confused by the first nine months of the Obama administration, take solace that there is at least a pattern. The president, you see, thinks America is a university and that he is our campus president. Keep that in mind, and almost everything else makes sense…Obama went to Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard without much of a break, taught at the University of Chicago, and then surrounded himself with academics, first in his stint at community organizing and then when he went into politics. It shows. In his limited experience, those who went to Yale or Harvard are special people, and the Ivy League environment has been replicated in the culture of the White House…….For many in the academic community who have not worked with their hands, run businesses, or ventured far off campus, Middle America is an exotic place inhabited by aborigines who bowl, don’t eat arugula, and need to be reminded to inflate their tires. They are an emotional lot, of some value on campus for their ability to “fix” broken things like pipes and windows, but otherwise wisely ignored. Professor Chu, Obama’s energy secretary, summed up the sense of academic disdain that permeates this administration with his recent sniffing about the childish polloi: “The American people . . . just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act.” Earlier, remember, Dr. Chu had scoffed from his perch that California farms were environmentally unsound and would soon disappear altogether, “We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.”….It is the role of the university, from a proper distance, to help them, by making sophisticated, selfless decisions on health care and the environment that the unwashed cannot grasp are really in their own interest — deluded as they are by Wal-Mart consumerism, Elmer Gantry evangelicalism, and Sarah Palin momism. The tragic burden of an academic is to help the oppressed, but blind, majority…….”

http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=NTA4OWRmZTM3MmQwNzJlZWMyMDc4MTY1ZGE5NWMzODM=

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FROM OTHER COLUMNS

"In a sense, the health care debate and the foreign policy debacle are two sides of the same coin: For Britain and other great powers, the decision to build a hugely expensive welfare state at home entailed inevitably a long retreat from responsibilities abroad, with a thousand small betrayals of peripheral allies along the way. A few years ago, the great scholar Bernard Lewis warned, during the debate on withdrawal from Iraq, that America risked being seen as 'harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.' In Moscow and Tehran, on the one hand, and Warsaw and Prague, on the other, they're drawing their own conclusions."

-Mark Steyn

"President Obama scrapped the missile defense system designed to protect Poland from Russian attack Thursday on the seventieth anniversary of Russia's invasion of Poland. This explains why Obama removed the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office and sent it back to the British Embassy. He wanted one of Neville Chamberlain."

-Argus Hamilton

"The fall season is a little different this year -- even squirrels are distancing themselves from ACORN. Because of all these scandals, the executive director of ACORN said she will fire any employee who's 'too stupid to understand they're not reaching professional standards.' Why can't we get this rule for Congress?"

-Jay Leno

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GET INVOLVED

On Saturday September 26, Take the Field with Glenn Beck at Safeco Field in Seattle. Organized by the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. Lunch will be followed by a book signing for Glenn's soon-to-be-released book, "An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems."

tickets are available at www.GlennBeckSeattle.com.

http://www.mynorthwest.com/?nid=137&sid=205806

Right now our American liberties are under attack from the Left like never before – both in Washington DC and in Olympia – out of control spending – higher taxes – ballooning regulations – weakened family values – less respect for human life – anti-gun proposals – and government control of our very healthcare – by increasingly unrepresentative politicians. As conservatives, we must stand and defend our heritage of liberty or it will be lost. On October 10^th, concerned conservatives from across Washington State will gather at the Bellevue Westin for a full day of learning the latest on the key issues we face, planning the best solutions and setting a strategy on how to best win back our state in 2010 and protect our freedoms for us and future Washingtonians. We ask you to join us at the Evergreen Leadership Conference “Advocating Liberty and Limited Government” and help win back Washington.

http://evergreenconference.org/

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BOOKS

Hoover Institution research fellow Peter Schweizer has a potential blockbuster of a new book hitting the shelves Oct. 6 entitled "Architects of Ruin: How Big Government liberals wrecked the global economy and how they will do it again if no one stops them."

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Architects-of-Ruin-gives-hint-of-why-Obama-disses-medical-malpractice-caps---60787722.html

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GLOBALONEY

Czech President Vaclav Klaus sharply criticized a U.N. meeting on climate change on Tuesday at which U.S. President Barack Obama was among the top speakers, describing it as propagandistic and undignified. "It was sad and it was frustrating," said Klaus, one of the world's most vocal skeptics on the topic of global warming. Klaus said there were increasing doubts in the scientific community about whether humans are causing changes in the climate or whether the changes are simply naturally occurring phenomena. But politicians, he said, seem to be moving closer to a consensus on climate change. "The train can't be stopped and I consider that a huge mistake.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE58L6ID20090922

Environmental groups say extra soft toilet paper is destroying the planet. “It's a menace…and a dark-comedy example of American excess

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/23/AR2009092304711_pf.html

To hear world leaders and others addressing the United Nations Summit on Climate Change, the threat could not be more real and the need more urgent to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. But in stark contrast to the earnest statements is the carbon footprint associated with their gathering. It happens every autumn: midtown Manhattan becomes the motorcade capital of the world. Each foreign leader in town has a convoy of vehicles. Some of them, like President Obama's motorcade, are 20-to-30 vehicles in length. It's so long - it seems that when the front of it reaches the U.N., the back end is still back at his hotel.

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/09/22/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5329380.shtml

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LEFTIST WATCH

President Obama's diversity czar at the Federal Communications Commission: 'White People' need to be forced to 'Step Down' 'So Someone Else Can Have Power'

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/seton-motley/2009/09/23/fccs-diversity-czar-white-people-need-be-forced-step-down-so-someone-0

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ARTICLES

“It was the worst thing that the American government could do. This decision was announced on 17th September, when Poland was commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion Day, when the Soviet Union allied with Nazis and stabbed our country in the back. On the same day, 70 years later, Obama bowed to the Kremlin.”

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/did_america_betray_us_or_it_wa.html

“There’s starting to be some speculation that Republicans might recapture a majority in the House in 2010. That would require them to gain 40 seats—the exact number they needed to gain in 1994, the last time they recaptured a majority from the Democrats.”

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Can-the-Republicans-win-the-House-in-2010-60766582.html

Across the country, amid the heat swell of the ongoing health care debate, many of the nation's gray panthers have a new fire growing in their bellies, attending town halls, writing letters, and shifting the balance of political power as polls show them moving to the GOP. They are not just making themselves heard on their key issues of Medicare and insurance, but giving their legislators a piece of their mind that a way of life is slipping away. "I'm doing this for my kids," says one.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/21/health-care-debate-energizes-seniors/?source=newsletter_must-read-stories-today_photo_feature

“When enemy action kills our troops, it's unfortunate. When our own moral fecklessness murders those in uniform, it's unforgivable. In Afghanistan, our leaders are complicit in the death of each soldier, Marine or Navy corpsman who falls because politically correct rules of engagement shield our enemies. Mission-focused, but morally oblivious, Gen. Stan McChrystal conformed to the Obama Way of War by imposing rules of engagement that could have been concocted by Code Pink: Unless our troops in combat are absolutely certain that no civilians are present, they're denied artillery or air support. If any civilians appear where we meet the Taliban, our troops are to "break contact" -- to retreat.”

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_rules_murdering_our_troops_u935ECKNWXpLK8C5D96pdN

One of the subplots to the health care debate I've been following is the cozy relationship between AARP and the Obama administration, as the group has thrown its full-throated support behind the Democrats' health care push even though their membership comes from the age group most opposed to Democratic health care proposals. Today, House Republicans have issued a report providing evidence that AARP is in a position to receive tens of millions. “AARP is ACORN for seniors. Quit now and save Andrew Breitbart's faux hooker/pimp team a trip.”

http://spectator.org/blog/2009/09/22/gop-report-charges-aarp-gettin

Rich Lowry: “President Obama yesterday did his best impression of a high-school sophomore participating in his first Model UN meeting, retailing pious clichés he learned from his pony-tailed social studies teacher… Has an American president ever expressed such implicit hostility toward his own nation's pre-eminence in world affairs? Or so relished in recalling its failings….”

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/prez_comes_across_as_gullible_sap_iThpnFL1g7RTYvQyCZjvQP

He is hybrid journalist, content wrangler, glib analyst. But most of all, Andrew Breitbart relishes running against the grain. For starters, he is an unabashed political conservative in a Hollywood dominated by liberals. The man has moxie. When he became convinced that the traditional news media didn't have the courage to investigate how the controversial liberal advocacy group ACORN spent its federal dollars, there was little doubt in his mind what to do….

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/20/breitbart-a-conservative-rebel-with-a-cause/

Well before the videos became a national sensation and conservative rallying cry - the fresh-faced O'Keefe and Giles connected with a pair of Washington conservative institutions that boast programs training ideological journalists.

Now, due to coordinated promotion of the undercover sting footage by influential players in the conservative media, Giles and O'Keefe have gone from part of the pack to movement superstars. Giles, a 20-year-old sophomore at Florida International University, spent the summer on a $1,200-a-month internship with the National Journalism Center, a training organization whose alumni include conservative commentator Ann Coulter. Immediately after graduating Rutgers University in 2006, O'Keefe, 25, was paid to set up magazines and newspapers on university campuses for the Leadership Institute, which recruits potential conservative public policy and media stars. O'Keefe and Giles insist that no one helped them conceive, execute or finance their video project, which with remarkable speed has devastated the activist community service group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, commonly known as ACORN. They have said a shoestring $1,300 budget was all it took to shoot video in at least five ACORN offices.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090924/D9ATEBE00.html

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NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES

MUST SEE: Rev Wayne Perryman sets the record straight: “Tea party racism?…enough is enough”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThzM22US-Jo

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WISE WORDS

"The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it."

-James Wilson, 1790

"If you ever injected truth into politics, you would have no politics."

-Will Rogers