op ed review 9/6

THIS WEEK’S NEWS

Obamanomics: The federal government will have to borrow nearly 40 percent of its total expenditures in 2010, a level not seen since World War II.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/53246

The unemployment rate rose this week to a 26-year high.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/US-sheds-216000-jobs-in-rb-1733516447.html?x=0&.v=4

The Rasmussen daily tracking poll on President Obama: 41% Strongly Disapprove; 30% Strongly Approve, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of minus 11.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

A majority of independent voters now disapprove of how Obama is handling his job as president.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjdhYTM2ZjlmYjhjNmNkZDkzMTU3Yjc1Y2UyMTQzZWU=

Gallup has been polling on the public's attitude to Labor Unions since the 1930s. They report public support of unions is at an all time low: fewer than half of Americans approve of labor unions, down from 59% a year ago.

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

If they could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, just 25% of voters nationwide would keep the current batch of legislators. A new Rasmussen survey finds that 57% would vote to replace the entire Congress and start all over again.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/august_2009/57_would_like_to_replace_entire_congress

President Obama's plan to inspire the nation's schoolchildren with a video address next week erupted into controversy Wednesday, forcing the White House to pull out its eraser and rewrite a government recommendation that teachers nationwide assign students a paper on how to "help the president."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/02/wh-withdraws-call-students-help-obama/?source=newsletter_must-read-stories-today_headlines

School districts from Maryland to Texas are fielding angry complaints from parents opposed to President Obama’s back-to-school address Tuesday – forcing districts to find ways to shield students from the speech as conservative opposition to Obama spills into the nation’s classrooms.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/26744.html

In New Rochelle, N.Y., elementary students were given an in-class assignment to color in drawings of Obama -- including a picture of a campaign button. It gets more "Dear Leaderish" by the day.

http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2009/09/02/obamas_classroom_campaign_no_junior_lobbyist_left_behind?page=full&comments=true

Former Vice President Dick Cheney slammed the Obama administration's probe of aggressive interrogation of terrorists. "It's an outrageous political act that will do great damage, long-term, to our capacity to be able to have people take on difficult jobs, make difficult decisions, without having to worry about what the next administration is going to say,"

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/30/cheney-slams-obamas-politicized-probe-cia-interrogations/

The AFL-CIO reportedly is promoting a proposal to tax every single stock transaction, and it's gained some support among Democrats.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/02/report-afl-cio-pushes-tax-stock-transactions/?test=latestnews

The United States Mission to the United Nations has a new look online. If you check out the redesigned site, you see it’s decked out in United Nations blue, with the U.N. logo prominently displayed. But where is the United States flag?

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWRjMDI3NmM3YmRkMDQ2NDBmZDU1MzQ2M2UzMDJiMzU=

The mayor of Mount Vernon WA has made it official: he will give the key to his city to conservative talk show host Glenn Beck on September 26. The Skagit County Young Democrats are not happy.

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/56662302.html

Ben and Jerry's has changed the name of one of its best-selling ice creams to Hubby Hubby, in celebration of the legalization of gay marriage in its home state of Vermont.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6125277/Ben-and-Jerrys-renames-ice-cream-Hubby-Hubby-in-celebration-of-gay-marriage.html

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is offering Dinner with Sarah as part of a charity auction on eBay for the Ride 2 Recovery program, which supports wounded veterans through cycling programs. The 10-day auction starts Tuesday.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/04/dinner-palin-auctioned-ebay/

Republican challengers across the country have found a new way of capitalizing on the roiling emotions surrounding the congressional health care debate: candidates in state after state are holding their own health care town halls — and getting good publicity.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/26491.html

Can a day go by without the British producing another story highlighting the disaster of their government-run system? In the latest installment, we find that care for the dying might be a cause of death. The benignly named Liverpool Care Pathway is not a death panel, but a group of experienced British doctors says it works like that.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=336869168429529

Patients in UK Health Service hospitals are far more likely to go hungry than criminals in jail, scientists warned. Frail and elderly patients do not get the help they need with meals, and nobody checks whether they get enough to eat. Despite years of Government promises to tackle poor hospital nutrition, food still arrives cold, and patients often miss out.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1210109/Prisoners-better-diet-Health-Service-hospital-patients-scientists-warn.html

Diana might have been saved, had her accident been in the US.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/HealthCare/story?id=8437560

The British government decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to send the Lockerbie bomber back to Libya to a hero’s welcome. “Gordon Brown’s government made the decision after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had hit difficulties.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6814939.ece

BP has made another giant oil find in the Gulf of Mexico. “We're not running out of oil. Our government just doesn't want us to look for it.”

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=336869598898259

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THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN

Dennis Prager 9/1

Those of us who oppose a massive increase in the role the national government plays in health care ("ObamaCare") do so because we fear the immense and unsustainable national debt it would incur and because we are certain that medical care in America would deteriorate. But there is a bigger reason most of us oppose it: We believe that the bigger the government becomes, the smaller the individual citizen becomes.

Here are five reasons why bigger government makes less impressive people.

1. People who are able to take care of themselves and do so are generally better than people who are able to take care of themselves but rely on others. Of course, there are times when some people have absolutely no choice and must rely on others to take care of them. Life is tragic and some people, despite their best efforts and their commitment to being a responsible person, must have others support them.

Even if one believes, as the left does by definition, that the ideal society is one in which the state takes care of as many of our needs as possible, one must acknowledge that this has deleterious effects on many, if not most, citizens' moral character. The moment one acknowledges that the more one takes care of oneself, the more developed is his or her character, one must acknowledge that a bigger state diminishes its citizens' characters….

2. The more people come to rely on government, the more they develop a sense of entitlement -- an attitude characterized by the belief that one is owed (whatever the state provides and more). This is a second big government blow to character development because it has at least three terrible consequences: First, the more one feels entitled, the less one believes he has to work for anything. Why work hard if I can look to the state to give much of what I need, and, increasingly, much of what I want? Second, the more one feels entitled, the less grateful one feels…Third, the more entitled and the less grateful one feels, the angrier one becomes. The opposite of gratitude is not only ingratitude, it is anger. People who do not get what they think they are entitled to become angry.

3. People develop disdain for work. One of the effects of the welfare state on vast numbers of European citizens is disdain for work. This is in keeping with Marx's view of utopia as a time when people will work very little and devote their large amount of non-working time writing poetry and engaging in other such lofty pursuits. Work is not regarded by the left as ennobling. It is highly ennobling in the American value system, however.

4. People become preoccupied with vacation time. Along with disdain for work, one witnesses among Western Europeans a preoccupation with not working. Vacation time has become a moral value among many Europeans. There have been riots in countries like France merely over working hours. In Sweden and elsewhere, more and more workers take more and more time off from work, knowing they will be paid anyway. In Germany and elsewhere, it is against the law to keep one's store open after a certain hour, lest that give that store owner an income advantage and thereby compel a competing store to stay open longer as well. And, of course, Americans are viewed as working far too hard.

5. People are rendered more selfish. Not only does bigger government teach people not to take care of themselves, it teaches them not to take of others. Smaller government is the primary reason Americans give more charity and volunteer more time per capita than do Europeans living in welfare states. Why take care of your fellow citizen, or even your family, when the government will do it for you?

This preoccupation with self includes foreign policy: Why care about, let alone risk dying for, another country's liberty? That is the view of the world's left. That is why conservative governments are far more supportive of the war efforts in Iraq or Afghanistan than left-wing governments of the same country. The moment the socialists won in Spain, they withdrew all their forces from Iraq. The new center-left government in Japan has promised to stop helping the war effort in Afghanistan.

Of course, there are fine idealistic individuals on the left, and selfish individuals on the right. But as a rule, bigger government increases the number of angry, ungrateful, lazy, spoiled and self-centered individuals. Which is why some of us believe that increased nationalization of health care is worth shouting about. And even crying over.

Edited for length, read the original here:

http://townhall.com/columnists/DennisPrager/2009/09/01/the_bigger_the_government,_the_smaller_the_citizen?page=full&comments=true

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FROM OTHER COLUMNS

"After the lionization [of Ted Kennedy] is over; the casket is removed from the Capitol Rotunda, and the senator is laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery next to his brothers, the Democrats at the prodding of Rahm 'never waste a crisis' Emanuel will come out with a revised health care plan in honor of the late and 'great' Ted Kennedy. As Thomas Paine once wrote, 'these are the times that try men's souls', our elected Republican representatives in Congress are going to be tested. Will they be able to stand up to the vitriol sure to come if they oppose TeddyCare? Will they be able to overcome the wave of emotion during the Teddy hero-worship that will no doubt come from the Democrats and their public relations firm, the mainstream media? The Republican Party will no doubt crumble under the pressure if we the people are not there to man the ramparts of their crumbling spines. We conservatives are going to have to be the badge of courage our Republican Cowardly Lions are going to need in the days ahead."

-David Jeffers

“I never dreamed I would see an administration try to disavow all the things that have made this country different from all others.”

-Sen. James Inhofe

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BOOKS

Conservatives are resuming their historically dominant position atop the New York Times and Amazon.com bestsellers lists after a short hiatus that coincided, not coincidentally, with George W. Bush's tenure in the White House. While the mainstream media raved about a new era of leftist intellectual supremacy during the liberal ascendance on the bestsellers lists, the return of conservative books to the tops of those lists seems to be going unnoticed.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/lachlan-markay/2009/09/01/media-ignoring-conersavtive-dominance-new-york-timess-bestsellers-pa

High on the Amazon list: Glenn Beck’s “Common Sense”, Michelle Malkin's “Culture of Corruption”, Ron Paul's “End the Fed”, Mark Levin's “Liberty and Tyranny”, and Dick Morris and Eileen Mcgann's “Catastrophe”

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GLOBALONEY

A supercomputer in the UK, designed to predict climate change, is one of Britain's worst polluters. … It is capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second to feed data to 400 scientists and uses 1.2 megawatts of energy to run - enough to power more than 1,000 homes. “….the Met Office's HQ has now been named as one of the worst buildings in Britain for pollution - responsible for more than 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. It says 75 per cent of its carbon footprint is produced by the super computer meaning the machine is officially one of the country's least green machines.”

http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2009/08/global_warming_computer_spews.php

A series of violent refrigerator explosions in the UK is believed to have been caused by leaks of 'environmentally-friendly' coolant. “The problem appears to result from a widespread switch to 'Greenfreeze' technology..”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1210334/Alert-new-wave-exploding-fridges-caused-environmentally-friendly-coolant.html

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LEFTIST WATCH

Former CBS anchor Dan Rather will speak at a $200-a-person fundraising event for the far-left Nation magazine in New York on September 23.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2009/08/30/dan-rather-headline-200-person-fundraiser-nation-magazine

Among the many controversies swirling around the White House's "green czar," none is more disturbing than his plan to use the green movement to socialize the economy. Van Jones, a special adviser to the president, revealed his Trojan-horse strategy during a 2008 interview on leftist Uprising Radio in Los Angeles. "The green economy will start off as a small subset" of a "complete revolution" away from "gray capitalism" and toward "redistribution of all the wealth," he said. "And we are going to push it and push it and push it until it becomes the engine for transforming the whole society." A self-described "communist," Jones caught heat recently for calling Republicans "a**holes." He's also a 9/11 "truther" as it turns out, one of many red flags in a radical past that, remarkably, didn't disqualify him from shaping domestic policy in this White House.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=336955414712813

"Who's the real terrorists? Uncle Sam." That according to a record put out by Freedom Fighter Music, a label created by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which Van Jones founded. There are a number of different voices on the record, including that of convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal and Van Jones himself. One of the voices accuses the United States government of "..bombing babies in the night."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/09/van_jones_joins_the_global_struggle_against_america.asp

As of 9/4: Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0, Washington Post: 0, NBC Nightly News: 0, ABC World News: 0, CBS Evening News: 0.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/The-Van-Jones-non-feeding-non-frenzy-57271402.html

The president of the United Nations General Assembly bestows official hero status on a trio of Marxists: Bolivian President Evo Morales, the first president of Tanzania Julius Nyerere, and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Morales is officially "the maximum exponent and paradigm of love for Mother Earth." Castro is "World Hero of Solidarity." The late Nyerere is "World Hero of Social Justice."

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=342574&CategoryId=14919

The Obama message to schoolchildren: “to "pledge to be of service to Barack Obama . . . to be a servant of our president and all mankind." The video was produced and directed by noted thespian and liberal scold Demi Moore and her husband Ashton Kutcher..”

http://townhall.com/columnists/KathrynLopez/2009/09/04/rage_against_the_obama_propaganda_machine?page=full

William Ayers, former leftie terrorist and friend of Barack Obama, will speak at Purdue University.

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009909050352

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ACTIVISM

Here's your chance to let the media know where the people stand on our faith in God, as a nation. NBC is presently taking a poll on "In God We Trust" to stay on our American currency.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10103521/

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ARTICLES

Ah, remember the good old days, when people on the Left flipped out and lied about a program to monitor communications from overseas to known and suspected Islamic terrorists without a warrant? Remember when the left pitched hissy fits over the Bush administration gathering information about phone call patterns from the telecoms, which included simply names? …Oh, how times change. The new White House has a plan to hire a technology vendor to harvest personal information on millions of Americans from social networking websites. The targeted sites include Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others - any space where the White House "maintains a presence." This is the solicitation:

http://www.nlpc.org/sites/default/files/RFQ_WHOS090003.pdf

Conservatives are taking too much solace in the precipitous drop in Barack Obama's approval ratings, and too many of us are overconfident that his administration is merely a replay of the hapless presidency of Jimmy Carter that was easily swept out in a landslide election. Today's situation is far different, far more conducive to our political adversary's political power, than that which faced Carter.

http://spectator.org/archives/2009/09/03/tk

4 Problems That Could Sink America

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnews/20090902/ts_usnews/4problemsthatcouldsinkamerica

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison is at the center of an intra-GOP Armageddon that has the national Republican Party holding its head in its hands and ambulances down home lining up to haul the wounded off the internecine battlefields of a state that the party needs to keep reliably red. The Hutchison-Perry race already resembles the plot line of the 1989 vicious-divorce flick "The War of the Roses." Republican angst aside, it will be a great show, if only because you have a former University of Texas cheerleader, Hutchison, challenging a former Texas A&M yell leader, Perry. So, for some Texans, this is serious stuff, verging on blood sport.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/War-of-the-Roses-in-Texas-8160181-55417817.html

Rep. Brian Baird intentionally keeps the date, time, and call-in info for his “tele-town halls” secret. Indeed, you might say his calls amount to taxpayer funded private focus groups. Under intense criticism for a series of mis-steps, Baird is desperately trying to control his image and avoid further scrutiny. But it doesn’t appear to be working. Over the weekend, the Centralia Chronicle issued a sharp rebuke to the Congressman and his liberal allies in an editorial: “Left Leaning Groups Pushing for Town Hall Dominance.” The editorial notes that a liberal Seattle group allied with Baird is trying to pack his upcoming town hall in Lewis County:

http://nwdigest.com/politics/08-31-2009/baird-backs-out-of-town-hall/

Paul Kengor: Shortly after the announcement of Ted Kennedy's death, I had already received several interview requests. I declined them, not wanting to be uncharitable to the man upon his death. Since then, I've seen the need to step up and provide some clarification. The issue is a remarkable 1983 KGB document on Kennedy, which I published in my 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/kgb_kennedy_the_ted_kennedy_i.html

Senator Edward Kennedy was, and will remain, an outstanding example of a champagne socialist. Sociologically speaking, the type has been well recognized for quite some time… Such people are exploiting their privileged position in society to curry favor with those less privileged, and so find the way to continue being privileged while also being applauded for it. Clever, or what?

http://pryce-jones.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YzVkN2U3ZjM2NjdmYjY3ZTFlMTZmN2NkOWEyOTFlMDc=

“You can bet your grandma's iron lung that under ObamaCare neither she nor you nor I will receive the end-of-life care provided to Sen. Kennedy..”

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

Story of an amazing dog: “Endal could follow 200 commands. He could put washing into the machine for Allen and take it out when it was clean, and fetch his hat or razor. When his owner went to the supermarket, Endal grabbed goods off the shelves in his teeth and put them in his basket. And if Allen needed money, Endal could put his card in the machine and retrieve the card and cash.”

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/2009/09/03/movie-tribute-to-endal-the-wonder-dog-86908-21644831/

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NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES

You’ll like this:

http://www.jeffhead.com/thestorm/

“ObamaCare - the Musical”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ_tAe87ELo

This is the video the Obama administration wants to force-feed our kids: “I pledge to be a servant to our President”.

http://lucianne.com/article/?pageid=is_this_apolitical

Pollster.com has some interesting charts. Here’s Obama’s job approval rating with independents trended over the last 7 months.

http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/jobapproval-obama-inds.php

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HUMOR

From the editor of Scrappleface.com: “A draft copy of President Barack Obama's planned September 8 address to America's public school children, tells students that "If you want to grow up to be like me, you should beg your parents to put you in private school, right now."

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Obama-will-urge-kids-to-go-to-private-school-8193824-56976522.html

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WISE WORDS

"Now more than ever it is vital that the United States not back down from its efforts to develop and deploy strategic defenses. It is technologically feasible, strategically necessary and morally imperative. For if our nation and our precious freedoms are worth defending with the threat of annihilation, we are surely worth defending by defensive means that ensure our survival."

-Ronald Reagan