op ed review 4/11

THIS WEEK’S NEWS

Americans' favorable rating of the Democratic Party dropped to 41% in a late March USA Today/Gallup poll, the lowest point in the 18-year history of this measure.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/127262/Democratic-Party-Image-Drops-Record-Low.aspx

A CBS News poll shows that ObamaCare's popularity has fallen off dramatically since the day of its passage. It appears that Americans aren't as inclined to reward politicians for defying them as the Democrats had hoped. The CBS News poll shows that ObamaCare is now 10 percentage points less popular than it was on the day of its passage. On March 22, Americans opposed ObamaCare by 11 points (48 to 37 percent). Now they oppose it by 21 points.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/can-republicans-read-polls-obamacare

More than a quarter of Americans describe themselves as supporters of the Tea Party movement, and the demographics of this group generally mirror the demographics of the national population.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/63744

Democrats’ efforts to tar the tea partiers as crackpots and racists don’t seem to be paying off. Pollster Scott Rasmussen reports that 48% of voters say that tea partiers’ views on major issues are closer than those of Barack Obama to their own views.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Tea-partiers-outpoll-Obama-89914277.html

Americans are more likely to say the U.S. should prioritize development of energy supplies than to say it should prioritize protecting the environment, the first time more have favored energy production over environmental protection in this question's 10-year history.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/127220/Americans-Prioritize-Energy-Environment-First-Time.aspx

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), sold out, now he’s bailing out. Stupak has decided not to face the voters for reelection. Without Stupak on the ballot, the seat becomes an immediate pickup opportunity for Republicans.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35585.html#ixzz0kcPNFDK7

The Internal Revenue Service could tap individual tax returns to collect fines against people who fail to buy health insurance as required under recently enacted healthcare legislation

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/irs-will-just-take-obamacare-penalties-out-of-your-tax-refund-89989772.html

For most of human history, across all societies, a 26-year old has been considered an adult, and not starting out but well into it. Not someone who remains a dependent of his parent. With Obamacare, however, your 27th birthday marks the point at which a boy becomes a man and moves out of his parents’ health insurance agency.

http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/3129/28/

U.S. President Barack Obama is anti-Israel and “is willing to throw Israel under the bus in order to please Muslim nations," former New York City Mayor Ed Koch charged.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/136845

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) is trailing in the latest Pennsylvania Senate poll. Public Policy Polling (D) has released its first survey of the race and found the Republican candidate, former Rep. Pat Toomey, beats both Specter and Specter's primary opponent, Rep. Joe Sestak (D), in a general election matchup.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/90759-sen-specter-trails-in-latest-pennsylvania-poll

President Obama’s revamping of American nuclear policy is the mark of an “inept” leader intent on living a “left-wing dream,” says Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City. “A nuclear-free world has been a 60-year dream of the Left, just like socialized health-care. This new policy, like Obama’s government-run health program, is a big step in that direction……President Obama thinks we can all hold hands, sing songs, and have peace symbols,” says Giuliani.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDI0MDViMDEzMjA5MGIyYzM5NTEzNjI5ZGM3MWI4ZWM=

The Federal Communications Commission does not have the legal authority to slap Net neutrality regulations on Internet providers, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20001825-38.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

After a year's struggle, a group of students at the University of Virginia have successfully placed a class on conservatism in their school's catalogue, and they expect the 40 seats available to quickly be filled. "The idea originally came about when we found out that our university annually sponsors a class called Modern Liberalism," said a student activist leader. "We thought, 'Why not balance the spectrum and have a class devoted to Modern Conservatism as well? '"As news of the course spread on campus, the student planners received responses from 11 professors eager to support their endeavors. The class is currently scheduled to seat 40 students, but based on early interest the limit may be raised to 100.

http://www.vagazette.com/articles/2010/04/09/news//doc4bbf357a24e68634899622.txt

The busybodies at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) say you are not reading the back of the box properly, so they will soon require nutritional information on the front of food packages.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/63959

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THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN

Michael Barone 4/1/10

Over the past 14 months, our political debate has been transformed into an argument between the heirs of two fundamental schools of political thought, the Founders and the Progressives. The Founders stood for the expansion of liberty and the Progressives for the expansion of government.

It's an argument that has been going on for a century but was largely dormant over the quarter-century of low-inflation economic growth that followed the Ronald Reagan tax cuts. It's been raised again by the expand-government policies of the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders.

Those policies, thoroughly in line with the Progressive tradition, have been advanced by liberal elites in government, media, think tanks and academia. The opposition, roughly in line with the Founders tradition, has been led by the non-elites who spontaneously flocked to tea parties and town halls. Republican politicians have been scrambling to lead these protestors.

The conservative rebellions of the late 1970s and middle 1990s were focused on taxes. The tea partiers are focusing on the expansion of government -- and its threat to the independence of citizens.

The first mention of tea parties came in February 2009 from CNBC's Rick Santelli on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, when he asked "if we really want to subsidize the losers' mortgages. How many of you people want to pay your neighbor's mortgage, that has an extra bathroom and can't pay their bills?" Then he called for a Chicago tea party.

This struck a chord. Tea partiers began to dress in 18th century costumes -- political re-enactors -- and brandished the "Don't tread on me" flag. They declared their independence by opposing Progressive policies that encourage dependence on government.

The Progressives have always assumed that people needed safety nets and would welcome dependence on government. The public's clear rejection of the Democratic health care bills has shown that this assumption was unwarranted. Americans today prefer independence to dependence on government, just as they did 200 years ago.

All this was supposed to have been consigned to the past long ago. The Progressives of the early 1900s -- Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, New Republic founder Herbert Croly -- argued that in an industrial era of mass production and giant businesses, ordinary people were helpless and needed government's guiding hand. It would be more efficient, they argued, for centralized, disinterested experts to administer national institutions than to let chaotic markets operate freely and to observe the Constitution's horse-and-buggy limits on government power. The Founders were out of date.

The Progressives had their way for much of the 20th century. But it became apparent that centralized experts weren't disinterested, but always sought to expand their power. And it became clear that central planners can never have the kind of information that is transmitted instantly, as Friedrich von Hayek observed, by price signals in free markets.

It turned out that centralized experts are not as wise and ordinary Americans are not as helpless as the Progressives thought. By passing the stimulus package and the health care bills, the Democrats produced expansion of government. But voters seem to prefer expansion of liberty.

The Progressives' scorn for the Founders has not been shared by the people. First-rate books about the Founders have been bestsellers. And efforts to dismiss the Founders as slaveholders, misogynists or homophobes have been outweighed by the resonance of their words and deeds.

The Declaration of Independence's proclamation that "all men are created equal" with "unalienable rights" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" has proved to be happily elastic. It still sings to us today, thanks to the struggles and sacrifices of many Americans who gave blacks and women the equality denied to them in 1776.

In contrast, the early Progressives' talk of an "industrial age" and an outmoded Constitution sounds like the language of an age now long past. Their faith in centralized planning seems naive in a time when one unpredicted innovation after another has changed lives for the better.

Polls and recent election results tell us that racial minorities and the so-called "educated class" -- the people who expect their kind will administer centralized institutions -- still take the side of the Progressives. Most Americans, however, are rejecting the path of dependence and are intent on declaring their independence once again.

http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelBarone/2010/04/01/tea_partiers_embrace_liberty,_not_big_government?page=full&comments=true

You’d better read this also:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/04/the_rape_of_america_1.html

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FROM OTHER COLUMNS

"A few weeks ago, The New York Times ran an editorial noting the amazing fact that, by the middle of this year, there will be an estimated 6.8 billion people on Earth -- and 5 billion will have cell phones! ... How did that happen without a Democrat president and Congress using bribes, parliamentary tricks and arcane non-voting maneuvers to pass a massive, hugely expensive National Cell Phone Reform Act? How did that happen without Barney Frank and Henry Waxman personally designing the 3-foot-long, 26-pound, ugly green $4,000 cell phone we all have to use? How did that happen without Obama signing the National Cell Phone Reform bill, as a poor 10-year-old black kid who couldn't afford to text-message his friends looked on? The reason nearly everyone in the universe has a cell phone is that President Reagan did to telephones the exact opposite of what the Democrats have just done with health care. Before Reagan came into office, we had one phone company, ridiculously expensive rates and one phone model. Reagan split up AT&T, deregulated phone service and gave America a competitive market in phones. The rest is history. If you can grasp how inexpensive cell phones in a rainbow of colors and wonders like the iPhone could never have been created under a National Cell Phone Reform Act, you can understand what a disaster ObamaCare is going to be for health care in America."

-Ann Coulter

"Far too many Americans are already willing to trade integrity for 'free' health care, a 'government modified' mortgage, or a host of other carrots held in front of them by a federal government whose resemblance to a pimp grows sharper every day. Much of human nature is about taking the path of least resistance -- which is why it is so important to resist such instincts, especially when they're portrayed as virtues."

-Arnold Ahlert

"This week the DNC group Organizing for America offered a commemorative certificate to supporters who helped pass the health care bill. The certificate said, 'We achieved the dream of generations -- high-quality, affordable health care is no longer the privilege of a few, but the right of all.' The privilege of a few? It is widely accepted that about 85 percent of all Americans have health care coverage, and the overwhelming majority are happy with it. There's simply no way anyone could plausibly claim that health coverage is the privilege of a few. "

-Byron York

"Half a century ago, Khrushchev and Nixon had what was dubbed the kitchen debate. Nixon predicted that the Russians would become capitalists, while Khrushchev insisted that socialism would bury us. Who would ever have guessed that they would both be right?"

-Burt Prelutsky

"Whereas you [Ronald Reagan] are remembered for, 'Tear down this wall,' Obama may be remembered for, 'Tear down this country.'"

-Doug Gamble

"The legendary King Midas was given the gift of the golden touch; everything he touched would turn to gold. Excited at first, he learned the price of greed when the food he tried to eat turned to gold and when he even turned his own daughter into a hunk of gold. King Obama, twentieth century America, has a magic touch, too. Everything he touches turns to ... well ... donkey dust ... owl hockey ... bull shavings ... bunny pellets ... that sort of thing."

-Tony Gallardo

"This is my favorite story of the week. The Republican National Committee is in trouble after spending nearly $2,000 at a bondage club in Hollywood. You know what I call a Republican that spends a lot of money in a strip club? A Democrat."

-Jay Leno

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GLOBALONEY

The Department of Energy announced new and higher energy efficiency standards for several classes of appliances. “What's actually going to happen is that anyone who tries to sell their home is going to need to replace that perfectly good water heater, and lots of other electrical devices in their homes in order to legally sell their home.” After spending billions of dollars, the reduction in carbon emissions for this effort will be 1.5 billionths of 1% of the total carbon in the atmosphere every year.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/04/onerous_new_doe_regulations_he.html

A national campaign was launched today to get public schools that have shown Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" to give equal time to the opposing view of global warming.

http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/12460

The level of coverage in America regarding questions raised by the Climategate scandal and other related revelations is a scandal. The Euro-media has been on the story from the beginning and surprisingly, is telling the story in a mostly objective manner. Spiegel Online has an exhaustive, 8-page review of events and discoveries since the Climategate emails were revealed. It shows a climate science community in near chaos and dispirited over the fact that so much data was fabricated or deliberately ignored.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,686697,00.html

Few adults may know it, but kids across the country are about to celebrate a holiday: Earth Day, which is April 22. Schools will take a break from normal instruction to discuss the importance of preserving the environment. That may sound like a harmless activity, but too often Earth Day becomes a platform for pushing an ideological brand of environmentalism. Parents need to pay attention and ask their children's teachers what their plans are for Earth Day. Unlike most holidays, Earth Day expressly focuses on youth.

http://townhall.com/columnists/CarrieLukas/2010/04/05/pay_attention_parents_its_almost_earth_day!?page=full&comments=true

How many more must perish in coal mines before the green lobby ends its opposition to a safer energy source? More than 100 Americans have died in coal mines since 1984. Over that same period, not one American has died in a nuclear energy accident. In fact, no American has ever been killed in an atomic energy accident.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=529510

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NEWS FROM THE ISLAMIC WORLD

A Dubai appeals court upheld a one-month prison sentence for a British couple convicted of kissing in a restaurant. Last month an Indian couple was sentenced to three months in jail for exchanging steamy text messages.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100404/D9ES6SM80.html

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ACTIVISM

This is an attempt by Patty Murray’s Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to smear Dino Rossi. Right now Dino is not even an announced candidate, so this webpage attacks a private citizen.

http://www.dirtydealsdinoforsenate.com/

This is Dino’s response, a letter sent to Sen. Murray.

http://www.blog.orbusmax.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Murray-Letter.pdf

Tell Sen. Murray this is why she will soon be unemployed.

http://murray.senate.gov/email/index.cfm

mailto:info@dscc.org

The “Day of Silence” sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), will take place in most public schools on April 16. Thousands of public high schools and increasing numbers of middle schools will allow students to remain silent throughout an entire day-even during instructional time-to promote GLSEN's agenda. Here’s what you can do:

http://www.doswalkout.net/

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BOOKS

“The Marketing of Evil” is the title of one of the most important books of our day. When David Kupelian wrote it several years ago he caused many to understand that the breakdown of the family, the toxic culture, the slow chipping away at the moral fabric of our nation do not happen by accident. They happen because there are those who are intent on destroying a Judeo-Christian worldview and the goodness that goes along with it. As we face this ugly truth, the good news is that Kupelian has written a sequel.

http://townhall.com/columnists/RebeccaHagelin/2010/04/06/the_marketing_of_evil

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LEFTIST WATCH

"I don't worry about the Constitution on this. ... What I care more about, I care more about the people dying every day that don't have health care."

-Rep. Phil Hare (D-IL)

"It's a simple proposition to us: Everyone is entitled to adequate medical health care. If you call that a 'redistribution of income' -- well, so be it."

-Joe Biden

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka denounced conservative talk show hosts as “apostles of hatred.” He accused Glenn Beck and those supporting the Tea Party crowd of being a “similar movement” to the “Nazi-style” fascism of the 1930s with its “racial hatred and political violence.” A labor leader disturbed by possible “political violence”? That’s a switch.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view.bg?articleid=1245821

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WHAT CONSERVATIVES ARE SAYING

Newt Gingrich: "The most radical president in American history has now thrown down the gauntlet to the American people: 'I run a machine. I own Washington and there's nothing you can do about it,'" Gingrich said. He urged his fellow Republicans to stop what he called Obama's "secular, socialist machine."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100409/ap_on_re_us/us_republicans_gingrich

Rush Limbaugh: “We don't know the exact date of our country's future bankruptcy, but we just know that it is a certainty under Obama's direction and the help of Democrats in Congress and the government-run media. America is being administered statist-assisted suicide. Obama is Dr. Kevorkian. Forget Obama and Kevorkian's intentions. The patient's going to die if Obama isn't stopped, politically, if he's not stopped, if these policies are not reversed, that much is clear.”

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_040810/content/01125106.guest.html

Sarah Palin is hammering President Obama for putting unprecedented limits on the use of U.S. nuclear weapons, comparing him to a kid in a playground who is asking for a punch in the face.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2010/04/palin-says-obamas-nuke-stance-is-like-a-kid-who-says-punch-me-in-the-face-.html

Liz Cheney told 3,500 conservative activists and donors gathered for a conference that there are three prongs to the president's foreign policy: "apologize for America, abandon our allies and appease our enemies…..The Obama administration is putting us on the path to decline.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20002093-503544.html

In a preview of his book “Conservative Victory—Defeating Obama’s Radical Agenda,” due to be released Monday, Sean Hannity said of the policies President Barack Obama has been pursuing: “If you look up the dictionary definition of socialism, this is it.”

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/63316

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ARTICLES

"Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, three giant entitlements, are out of control….Exploding costs will drive our federal government and national economy to collapse…Today, Medicare is $38 trillion short of its promised benefits….in five years, the hole will grow to $52 trillion. Your family's share of this gap is $458,000....”

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/The-president_s-popularity-plunge-89874577.html#ixzz0kFtJMM7F

A warning from the online edition of Pravda: “It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people…..These past… weeks have been the most breath taking of all….”

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-0/

How much are we regulated?

http://article.nationalreview.com/430684/there-oughta-be-a-law/shannen-w-coffin

“Dr. Galt” On strike: a Florida doctor has told patients who voted for Barack Obama that they should seek care elsewhere. His is a noble one-man fight against the soft tyranny of the federal takeover of the health care sector.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=529344

“Obamacare's doctorless world”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/04/obamacares-doctorless-world/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_must-read-stories-today

Dennis Prager: “When a town in Iowa seeks to rename Good Friday “Spring Holiday,” you know America has problems.”

http://article.nationalreview.com/430410/abolishing-good-friday/dennis-prager

They've been called Oreos, traitors and Uncle Toms, and are used to having to defend their values. Now black conservatives are really taking heat for their involvement in the mostly white tea party movement—and for having the audacity to oppose the policies of the nation's first black president. "I've been told I hate myself. I've been called an Uncle Tom. I've been told I'm a spook at the door," said Timothy F. Johnson, chairman of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, a group of black conservatives who support free market principles and limited government.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9ETR1380&show_article=1

Glenn Reynolds: "If no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?" -- President Reagan, Jan. 20, 1981. Economist Friedrich Hayek explained in 1945 why centrally controlled "command economies" were doomed to waste, inefficiency, and collapse: Insufficient knowledge. He won a Nobel Prize. But it turns out he was righter than he knew. In his "The Use of Knowledge In Society," Hayek explained that information about supply and demand, scarcity and abundance, wants and needs exists in no single place in any economy. The economy is simply too large and complicated for such information to be gathered together…..no matter how deceptively simple and appealing command economy programs are, they are sure to trip up their operators, because the operators can't possibly be smart enough to make them work.”

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Sunday_Reflections/Progressives-can_t-get-past-the-Knowledge-Problem-89780997.html

“Hey moonbats of Massachusetts - why won’t you pay more taxes? You’re always lecturing the rest of us how taxes are an investment in the future, the price we pay for civilization, etc., etc. But when given the option of personally paying your fair share, hey, come back here, you pony-tailed trust-fund recipient you. Put your hands up and step away from the Prius - slowly. What about the children? As the deadline for filing 2009 state income taxes nears, once again the Beautiful People of Massachusetts are proving that while they enjoy talking the talk, walking the walk is another thing altogether.”

http://bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view/20100404moonbats_wing_it_when_it_comes_to_paying_more_taxes/

President Barack Obama's advisers plan to remove terms such as "Islamic radicalism" from a document outlining national security strategy and will use the new version to emphasize that the U.S. does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terrorism.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/63838

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DESERVING OF YOUR SUPPORT

One of our fellow OER readers, Elizabeth Scott, is running for state representative in Washington’s 21^st district, position 2. She is a member of the Washington State Farm Bureau, the Snohomish County Chapter of the Citizens' Alliance for Property Rights, the National Rifle Association, and Evergreen Freedom Foundation's Citizen Action Network. Endorsements by Rob McKenna, Rev. Wayne Perryman, and Kirby Wilbur, among others. She could use your support. Volunteer or contribute here: 206-330-1066

http://www.elizabeth4state.com

The Thomas More Law Center has filed a motion in a federal district court for a preliminary injunction on the enforcement of the individual mandate provision of the newly enacted health care reform act, the Ann Arbor-based law firm announced Tuesday. The government has 21 days to respond. "If Congress can use the Commerce Clause to force people to purchase insurance based on the mere fact that they exist or face federal penalties, then there is no limit to the power of Congress," said Richard Thompson, president and chief Counsel for TMLC.

http://www.thomasmore.org/default-sb_thomasmore.html?206204650

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NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES

Kirby Wilbur has joined Americans for Prosperity as the director of the Washington State chapter.

http://americansforprosperity.org/030510-afp-launches-washington-state-chapter

They’re sponsoring tea parties on April 15^th. Attend one near you.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AgdE4OXyxIv-dFFLeU1uV09MUXd6T09HSGxBM0JkRGc&hl=en

CampusReform.org is designed to provide conservative activists with the resources, networking capabilities, and skills they need to revolutionize the struggle against leftist bias and abuse on college campuses.

http://www.campusreform.org/

iPad vs the oPad

http://mommylife.net/archives/2010/04/ipad_vs_opad_-.html

Top ten low-pass flybys:

http://shock.military.com/Shock/videos.do;jsessionid=32E539AAFF2B7A9E629ADE321BCB43F5?displayContent=212576&ESRC=dod.nl

Just prior to the start of the Air Force-BYU football game, Sept. 22, 2009, this video was broadcast in the BYU stadium in Provo, Utah. Later, the USAF Academy Superintendent, LtGen Gould, showed this clip to the faculty and staff. He was clearly moved by it, as were those who watched it. BYU is a class act. (hat tip to reader Jack Clark)

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=72OhOWFMf84

The 7 wonders of the world: great photos

http://7wonders.org/

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WISE WORDS

"It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect."

-James Madison