Saturday, January 9, 2010

op ed review 1/10

THIS WEEK’S NEWS

Democratic Leaders Plan Secret Health Reform Deliberations, excluding Republicans.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/peter-roff/2010/01/04/democratic-leaders-plan-secret-health-reform-deliberations.html

Eight video Clips of Obama Promising Public Televised Healthcare Negotiations

http://www.breitbart.tv/the-c-span-lie-did-obama-really-promise-televised-healthcare-negotiations/

Look for more of this in the future: Bartell Drugs announced Thursday it would discontinue filling Medicaid prescriptions at some of its stores, saying it simply can't afford to do so.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010737739_bartells08m.html

Thirteen state attorneys general have sent a letter to Congress threatening legal action against health care reform unless a provision in the Senate bill given to Nebraska is removed. The provision is known as the “Cornhusker Kickback,” because it gives Nebraska a permanent exemption from paying for Medicaid expenses that would be required of all the other states.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/59268

Under the proposed health care legislation, the IRS will get another assignment: checking to see whether you have health insurance.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Obamacare-expands-IRS-authority-may-cause-greater-tax-non-compliance-80644757.html

Better late than never? The State Department revoked the U.S. visa this week for the suspected Nigerian underwear bomber. “That will show him that the Obama administration really means business.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/01/nigerian-underwear-bomber.html

President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser defended the administration’s decision to try in federal court the Nigerian underwear bomber (he has now lawyered up) and indicated that he would be offered a plea agreement (i.e. leniency) to persuade him to reveal what he knows about al-Qaeda operations in Yemen.

http://biggovernment.com/2010/01/04/detroit-bomber-to-be-offered-plea-agreement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BigGovernment+(Big+Government)

At least a dozen former inmates released from Guantánamo Bay have rejoined al-Qaeda to fight in Yemen.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6975971.ece

The top official in charge of analyzing terror threats could not be bothered to cut short his ski vacation after the underwear bomber nearly blew up an airliner on Christmas Day.

http://threatswatch.org/rapidrecon/2010/01/mission-first/

The special election for Ted Kennedy’s senate seat is less than two weeks away. It represents the only electoral threat to 60 that Democrats will face until November. Republican Scott Brown is mounting a surprisingly strong bid, trailing Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley by only 9 points in the latest Rasmussen poll. Should he win, it could make it all but impossible for Harry Reid to get 60 votes for the current version of Obamacare — and he’ll almost certainly need to meet that threshold at least one more time. In short, Scott Brown is the man who could pull the brake on this train right before it gets fully out of the station.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MjA4Y2NlMTc2NDIwNmZjM2E0ZThjMTNjN2ZmZWRmOWQ=

This is Scott Brown’s website where you may contribute, eroding at least one of Coakley’s key advantages.

https://www.icontribute.us/scottbrown

The increased conservatism that Gallup first identified among Americans last June persisted throughout the year, so that the final year-end political ideology figures confirm Gallup's initial reporting: conservatives (40%) outnumbered both moderates (36%) and liberals (21%) across the nation in 2009.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/124958/Conservatives-Finish-2009-No-1-Ideological-Group.aspx

An already difficult situation for Democrats in Congress is worsening as the 2010 political season opens.

http://www.dailydemocrat.com/guestopinions/ci_14132077

Veteran political analyst Charlie Cook says retirements are creating a “vicious circle” for Democratic politicians. For the first time, he sees a significant risk that Democrats could lose the House this year if trends continue. (Somebody alert RNC Chairman Michael Steele – he denied this recently).

http://blogs.investors.com/capitalhill/index.php/home/35-politics/1131-cook-dems-could-lose-the-house

“Democrats are Dropping Like Flies”

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2010/01/democrats-are-dropping-like-flies.html

You will hear more about this: the next way for terrorists to conceal a bomb on an airline. “Try bending over for a TSA worker wearing green surgical gloves.”

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/the-butt-bomb

Huh? Documents produced by the Department of Homeland Security indicate that in fiscal 2010 the department is planning to catch only 26 percent of travelers committing major criminal violations while seeking to enter the United States through international airports.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/59213

A [Department of State] employee says that despite statements from the Obama Administration, suspicious behavior by Muslims was flagged and given higher priority during the Bush Administration, but that since the changeover “we are encouraged to not create the appearance that we are profiling or targeting Muslims.”

http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/12197

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circus Court of Appeals has ruled that imprisoned felons in Washington Stateshould be allowed to vote to ensure that racial minorities are represented under the Voting Rights Act. The lawsuit was filed by Muhammad Shabazz Farrakhan of Bellevue. He contended that because minorities make up such a large percentage of the prison population in our state, they reduce the actual minority vote tallies if they’re not allowed to vote.

http://www.mynorthwest.com/?nid=76&sid=265657

President Obama has named a “transgendered” person to be a Senior Technical Advisor to the Commerce Department.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/01/president-obama-names-transgender-appointee-to-commerce-department.html

The Democrats have officially killed a successful private school voucher program, banishing more than 3,300 low-income children back to the DC schools they so desperately wanted to escape.

http://www.heartland.org/full/26506/DC_School_Choice_Leaders_Blast_Appropriators_Decision_to_Kill_School_Voucher_Program.html

Clint Didier, who played in three Super Bowls with the Washington Redskins, will formally launch his campaign against incumbent U.S. Sen. Patty Murray next week. Didier, a Republican businessman and farmer, will hold rallies and fundraisers Jan. 11 in Everett and Spokane and Jan. 12 in Pasco.

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20100104/NEWS01/701049827/-1/RSS02

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THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN

Charles Krauthammer 12/11

In the 1970s and early '80s, having seized control of the U.N. apparatus (by power of numbers), Third World countries decided to cash in. OPEC was pulling off the greatest wealth transfer from rich to poor in history. Why not them? So in grand U.N. declarations and conferences, they began calling for a "New International Economic Order." The NIEO's essential demand was simple: to transfer fantastic chunks of wealth from the industrialized West to the Third World.

On what grounds? In the name of equality -- wealth redistribution via global socialism -- with a dose of post-colonial reparations thrown in. The idea of essentially taxing hard-working citizens of the democracies in order to fill the treasuries of Third World kleptocracies went nowhere, thanks mainly to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (and the debt crisis of the early '80s). They put a stake through the enterprise.

But such dreams never die. The raid on the Western treasuries is on again, but today with a new rationale to fit current ideological fashion. With socialism dead, the gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the newest religion: environmentalism.

One of the major goals of the Copenhagen climate summit is another NIEO shakedown: the transfer of hundreds of billions from the industrial West to the Third World to save the planet by, for example, planting green industries in the tristes tropiques.

Politically it's an idea of genius, engaging at once every left-wing erogenous zone: rich man's guilt, post-colonial guilt, environmental guilt. But the idea of shaking down the industrial democracies in the name of the environment thrives not just in the refined internationalist precincts of Copenhagen. It thrives on the national scale too.

On the day Copenhagen opened, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency claimed jurisdiction over the regulation of carbon emissions by declaring them an "endangerment" to human health. Since we operate an overwhelmingly carbon-based economy, the EPA will be regulating practically everything. No institution that emits more than 250 tons of CO2 a year will fall outside EPA control. This means over a million building complexes, hospitals, plants, schools, businesses and similar enterprises. (The EPA proposes regulating emissions only above 25,000 tons, but it has no such authority.) Not since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service has a federal agency been given more intrusive power over every aspect of economic life.

This naked assertion of vast executive power in the name of the environment is the perfect fulfillment of the prediction of Czech President (and economist) Vaclav Klaus that environmentalism is becoming the new socialism, i.e., the totemic ideal in the name of which government seizes the commanding heights of the economy and society.

Socialism having failed so spectacularly, the left was adrift until it struck upon a brilliant gambit: metamorphosis from red to green. The cultural elites went straight from the memorial service for socialism to the altar of the environment. The objective is the same: highly centralized power given to the best and the brightest, the new class of experts, managers and technocrats. This time, however, the alleged justification is not abolishing oppression and inequality but saving the planet.

Not everyone is pleased with the coming New Carbon-Free International Order. When the Obama administration signaled (in a gesture to Copenhagen) a U.S. commitment to major cuts in carbon emissions, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb wrote the president protesting that he lacks the authority to do so unilaterally. That requires congressional concurrence by legislation or treaty.

With the Senate blocking President Obama's cap-and-trade carbon legislation, the EPA coup d'etat served as the administration's loud response to Webb: The hell we can't. With this EPA "endangerment" finding, we can do as we wish with carbon. Either the Senate passes cap-and-trade, or the EPA will impose even more draconian measures: all cap, no trade.

Forget for a moment the economic effects of severe carbon chastity. There's the matter of constitutional decency. If you want to revolutionize society -- as will drastic carbon regulation and taxation in an energy economy that is 85 percent carbon-based -- you do it through Congress reflecting popular will. Not by administrative fiat of EPA bureaucrats.

Congress should not just resist this executive overreaching, but trump it: Amend existing clean air laws and restore their original intent by excluding CO2 from EPA control and reserving that power for Congress and future legislation.

Do it now. Do it soon. Because Big Brother isn't lurking in CIA cloak. He's knocking on your door, smiling under an EPA cap.

http://townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2009/12/11/the_new_socialism?page=1

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FROM OTHER COLUMNS

"The president's health care monstrosity is an even more unwieldy government effort than Homeland Security. Its goals are more various and vaguer. Its protocols are already in chaos. The lesson the president should have learned from last week's 'systemic failure' is that government is a very imperfect instrument. A government that takes over 16 percent of our economy promising to bring us good health at a reasonable cost is an instrument doomed to failure and at a catastrophic cost."

-R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.

"For its part, the Obama administration should frankly acknowledge that the 'war on terror' wasn't a Bush-Cheney construct to scare and manipulate the American public. The same Napolitano who initially portrayed the near-miss on Christmas as a vindication did her utmost to avoid even uttering the word 'terror' at a congressional hearing earlier this year, preferring the absurd neologism 'man-caused disaster.' That's a phrase best applied to the shoeless shuffle at the airport security lines, not the heinous acts of war plotted by Abdulmutallab and his inevitable successors."

-Rich Lowry

Sometimes she gets it right: "If we can't catch a Nigerian with a powerful explosive powder in his oddly feminine-looking underpants and a syringe full of acid, a man whose own father had alerted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a traveler whose ticket was paid for in cash and who didn't check bags, whose visa renewal had been denied by the British, who had studied Arabic in Al Qaeda sanctuary Yemen, whose name was on a counterterrorism watch list, who can we catch? We are headed toward the moment when screeners will watch watch-listers sashay through while we have to come to the airport in hospital gowns, flapping open in the back."

-Maureen Dowd

"And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the term 'war on terror.' It's over -- that is, if it ever existed. Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately al-Qa'ida has not. Which gives new meaning to the term 'asymmetric warfare.' ... More jarring still were Obama's references to the terrorist as a 'suspect' who 'allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device.' You can hear the echo of FDR: 'Yesterday, December 7, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- Japanese naval and air force suspects allegedly bombed Pearl Harbor.'"

-Charles Krauthammer

"President Obama was ripped Tuesday for responding slowly to the failed airline bombing. He did everything he could. When word got to him on the fifteenth hole that the country had been attacked he asked the next three groups if he could play through.”

-Argus Hamilton

"In response to a Nigerian Muslim trying to blow up a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, the government will now prohibit international travelers from going to the bathroom in the last hour before the plane lands. Terrorists who plan to bomb planes during the first seven hours of the eight-hour flight, however, should face no difficulties, provided they wait until after the complimentary beverage service has been concluded.”

-Ann Coulter

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GLOBALONEY

This article in The Guardian serves as just one more piece of proof that proponents of Anthropogenic Global Warming will take any weather phenomenon whatsoever and explain it in terms of Global Warming -- including the cold.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Too-cold-Blame-global-warming-80573572.html

Britain is bracing itself for one of the coldest winters for a century with temperatures hitting minus 16 degrees Celsius, forecasters have warned.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/6921281/Britain-facing-one-of-the-coldest-winters-in-100-years-experts-predict.html

At least 17 people died as towns and cities in India's northern states were hit by cold weather, officials said on Friday.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=126&art_id=nw20100101113458666C113855

Nearly the entire eastern half of the United States is enduring bitterly cold temperatures not experienced since 1985. Even Florida, which has been hovering around freezing levels overnight recently, is also feeling the almost-nationwide chill.

http://www.accuweather.com/news-weather-features.asp?partner=&traveler=0&date=2010-01-04_1701&month=1&year=2010

In the UK, ‘a large number’ of elderly customers are snapping up hardbacks (books) as cheap fuel for their fires and stoves.

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/807821-pensioners-burn-books-for-warmth

"We're a solid 30 degrees below normal," said Jeff Johnson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100103/NEWS/1030352/-1/SiteMap/Feeling-cold?-We-re-at-30-below-normal

Seoul residents slogged through the heaviest snowfall in modern Korean history after a winter storm dumped more than 11 inches (28 centimeters) Monday, forcing airports to cancel flights and paralyzing traffic in South Korea's bustling capital. The snowfall, which continued through Monday afternoon, was the heaviest in a single day since Korea began conducting meteorological surveys in 1937.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100104/ap_on_re_as/as_asia_storms

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LEFTIST WATCH

MSNBC host Chris Matthews exclaimed that radical community organizer organizer Saul Alinsky is one of his heroes.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/18621

The name of Obama funder and terrorist sympathizer Jodie Evans turns up twice in recently released White House visitor logs. The logs show that a ‘Jodie Evans’ met with Buffy Wicks, the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement (OPE) on June 19, 2009. The meeting came just days after Evans’ group, Code Pink, visited the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza from May 28th to June 14th.

http://biggovernment.com/2010/01/08/obama-funder-jodie-evans-name-in-white-house-visitor-log-days-after-code-pink-hamas-trip/#more-56930

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THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW

"We will have a public, uh, process for forming this plan. It'll be televised on C-SPAN.... It will be transparent and accountable to the American people."

-Barack Obama, November 2007

"That's what I will do in bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are, because part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process."

-Barack Obama, January 2008

"[T]hese negotiations will be on C-SPAN..."

-Barack Obama, January 2008

"We're gonna do all these negotiations on C-SPAN so the American people will be able to watch these negotiations."

-Barack Obama, March 2008

"All this will be done on C-SPAN in front of the public."

-Barack Obama, April 2008

"I want the negotiations to be taking place on C-SPAN."

-Barack Obama, May 2008

"[W]e'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who is, who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies."

-Barack Obama, August 2008

"We will work on this process publicly. It'll be on C-SPAN. It will be streaming over the Net."

-Barack Obama, November 2008

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ARTICLES

“This is what Republicans should do in 2010: Write in simple words what the Republican Party will do if given power…..If kept, that promise can be the beginning of a new revolution. This 2010 Midterm Platform should be very short, very clear, and very definite. It should be small enough to fit in a short letter. It should be easy enough for nearly every American to understand. It should be a solemn pledge that must be kept (as the each specific term of the Contract With America was kept). Let Democrats stumble through thousand-page congressional bills which no one has read and which are changed in the middle of the night to win wavering votes. This is what Republicans should promise…..”

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/a_brief_2010_republic_midterm.html

Victor Davis Hansen: September 11 taught us many lessons. To our peril, we have forgotten them. Let us review them one more time:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTk4ZmJkYWU5MjljY2VhOGNlNDYxYzdlYzNlNzgwYmM=&w=MA

Ken Blackwell: “Two ongoing trends I chronicled during 2009 highlight an ironic situation: Leftists remain tough on their domestic political opponents, while lax when it comes to our real common enemies. As we recently saw with the Christmas airplane-bombing attempt, leftists seem bent on treating terrorists with kid gloves, insisting they receive rights normally reserved for U.S. citizens (even when this means failing to extract timely information that might save lives)”

http://biggovernment.com/2010/01/05/the-left-goes-to-war-against-science-surrenders-on-terror/

Michael Steele: “Within our own party, we need to make it clear that from now on there will be a price to pay for abandoning conservative principles. The grassroots – activists from tea parties to town halls – have sent a message: now more ‘fake-it-until-you-make-it’ conservatives. The days of merely espousing conservative principles and then, once elected, governing or legislating without principle, are over.”

http://biggovernment.com/2010/01/04/exclusive-book-excerpt-right-now-a-twelve-step-program-to-defeating-the-obama-agenda/#more-54990

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NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES

“American Thinker turns six today.”

http://www.americanthinker.com

This Republican could win Ted Kennedy’s senate seat and end up blocking the health care bill.

http://www.brownforussenate.com/

Another two-ton ice sculpture of former Vice President Al Gore is back in front of a Fairbanks liquor store.n "Frozen Gore" is a dig at Gore's beliefs about climate change. The first statue went on display last year. This year's version is hooked up to the exhaust of a pickup truck to make it appear Gore is spouting hot air.

http://www.compeaus.com/

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