op ed review 8/22

THIS WEEK’S NEWS

Independents who embraced President Barack Obama's call for change in 2008 are ready for a shift again. Only 32 percent of those citing no allegiance to either major party say they want Democrats to keep control of Congress in this November's elections.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jRwrWSTLhypT4emby1sxKD4QdA9wD9HJTUFO0

Obama approval sinks to 42 percent in Gallup’s daily tracking poll. Obama only has the support of 31 percent of Americans when it comes to his handling of the budget deficit and just 29 percent when it comes to immigration.

http://tinyurl.com/39aswnh

Your share of the US Government debt: $44,000 per citizen.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Figures-on-government-apf-4133802810.html?x=0&.v=2

Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and deficit and instead stressing a promise to "improve it." “…Democrats are acknowledging the failure of their predictions that the health care legislation would grow more popular after its passage….”

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/video-sen-kay-hagan-dressed-down-voter-concerned-about-rationing

Sci Fi Giant Ray Bradbury Slams Obama’s Era of Big Government “I think our country is in need of a revolution. There is too much government today.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2010/08/ray-bradbury-is-sick-of-big-government-our-country-is-in-need-of-a-revolution-.html

The GOP blueprint for winning control of the House is rapidly coming into focus, with the National Republican Congressional Committee readying a $22 million TV ad blitz aimed at a handful of powerful, long-serving incumbents and several dozen of the most junior members of the Democratic majority. The Republican campaign arm will invest in 40 districts around the nation in its first wave of television commercial reservations.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41143.html

The first KING 5 Senate poll for the 2010 general election shows Republican Dino Rossi is actually ahead of Patty Murray (D-WA), 52% to 45%.

http://www.king5.com/news/politiking/First-general-election-poll-puts-Rossi-ahead-confirms-competitive-race-101199184.html

A new poll shows Marco Rubio slipping ahead of Gov. Charlie Crist in the Florida Senate race for the first time.

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/aug/14/141822/crist-losing-ground-in-senate-race-poll-shows/news-politics/

California goes to pot? Voters will decide whether to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes for adults over 21. The California Chamber of Commerce released a legal analysis that shows Proposition 19 would lead to more workplace accidents by forcing employers to let workers smoke pot on the job.

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/politics/Group-Prop-19-Would-Mean-Pot-Smoking-at-Work-100625869.html

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) said the Democratic Party's strong ground game could stave off midterm losses and warned Republicans not to underestimate Democrats this fall.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/114827-delay-gop-shouldnt-count-on-big-wins-this-year-due-to-dems-organization

The Ground Zero mosque controversy has reawakened concerns about some Islamic Centers in the United States and their funding sources…..we really don’t know where Feisal Abdul Rauf found $100 million to fund his mega-project in lower Manhattan.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/who-funding-alexi-giannoulias

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to investigate those who are PROTESTING the building of the Mosque.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/08/nancy_pelosi_calls_for_investi.html

Meanwhile, a leader of the Hamas terror group endorsed the plan, insisting Muslims "have to build" it there.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/hamas_nod_for_gz_mosque_cSohH9eha8sNZMTDz0VVPI

“Liberals who two years ago abandoned their humdrum lives to become career alarmists about Sarah Palin’s Pentecostalism now wish to be taken seriously as misty-eyed champions of America’s tolerance of diverse faiths.”

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/greenwald/344651

What’s wrong with unions? The fight to keep GM's huge Indianapolis stamping plant open reached a dead end Sunday after defiant autoworkers meeting in a union hall shouted "no" to discussion of pay cuts. With workers dug in, General Motors looks likely to go ahead with closing plans and post a timeline as early as Tuesday for taking out the dies and machinery.

http://www.indystar.com/article/20100816/LOCAL1804/8160324/Autoworkers-shout-down-wage-cut-plan

Religious leaders warn that if an Aug. 6 ruling by a federal judge on same-sex marriage is upheld, it could wind up putting a gag on Christians speaking out about homosexuality – a gag that a top Southern Baptist leader says his denomination will not accept. In U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision, he found that “Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.”

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/71107

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco wisely put a hold on application of Judge Walker's ruling against California's Proposition 8.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/California_s-bumbler-in-a-black-robe-512779-100929474.html

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deported 298,410 illegal aliens in fiscal 2009, only 2.98 percent of the 10 million people it estimated were in the United States illegally. The number of deportations in fiscal 2009 was far less than the 400,000--or 4 percent--that the assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said his agency was capable of deporting each year.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/71179

“Afghanistan was dubbed ‘Obama’s War’ last night after it was revealed that as many American soldiers have died in the conflict during his presidency as during George Bush’s entire time in office.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1303963/Obamas-War-Same-number-US-troops-die-Afghanistan-Bush-years.html

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee leads the field of potential GOP presidential candidates in Iowa, the state that will provide the first real test of the 2012 campaign. Mr. Huckabee received 22 percent of the vote and was followed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who received 18 percent.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/16/poll-huckabee-romney-very-early-leaders-iowa/

Social activists and civil rights leaders are planning marches and demonstrations on Aug. 28 to coincide with a rally organized by Fox News personality Glenn Beck. Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally, with former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin among the scheduled speakers, will take place on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, 47 years to the day after Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech there.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/16/AR2010081605042.html?hpid=topnews

The city of Cleveland OH plans to make sure residents are recycling -- and fine them $100 if they don't. New “eco-snitch” trash and recycling carts will be embedded with radio frequency identification chips and bar codes. The chips will allow city workers to monitor how often residents roll carts to the curb for collection.

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/08/city_of_cleveland_to_use_high-.html

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THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN

Pat Buchanan 8/13

If you would know where the heart of the Obama party is today, consider. In the dog days of August, with temperatures in D.C. rising above 100, Nancy Pelosi called the House back to Washington to enact legislation that could not wait until September. Purpose: Vote $26 billion to prevent layoffs of state, municipal and county employees whose own governments had decided they had to be let go if they were to meet their constitutional duty to balance their books.

Workers their own governments thought expendable, Congress decided were so essential, it borrowed another 26 thousand million dollars from China to keep them on state and local payrolls. A nation whose national debt is approaching the size of its gross national product, that goes abroad to borrow money to keep non-essential workers on government payroll is a nation on the way down and out.

And anyone who thinks this Obama party is ever going to cull the armies of tens of millions of government workers or scores of millions of government beneficiaries to put America's house in order is deluding himself.

As long as this Congress and White House remain in power, a U.S. default on its national debt is inevitable. The only question is when.

Nor is this the first time the Obama administration has rushed to save workers whom their own state, city and county governments were prepared to let go. Among the reasons the $800 billion stimulus failed is that so little of it was directed to firing up the locomotive of the economy, the private sector, and so much of it was spent to ensure that government workers did not have to share in the national sacrifice. Why Pelosi & Co felt compelled to return to D.C., to ensure that state and local government payrolls were not pared, is not hard to understand.

Which party does the American Federation of Teachers; the National Education Association; and the American Federation of State, Municipal and County Employees usually contribute to, work for, vote for? At which of the two party conventions are teachers and government employees hugely over-represented? Consider, too, the states deepest in debt and facing the largest cuts in employee ranks, pay and benefits: California, Illinois, New York. In these states, public employees earn at least $10,000 per year more in pay and benefits than the average America worker, who is bailing them out.

Hence, we have a situation where private sector workers in Middle America are being taxed, their children being driven ever deeper into debt to China, so government employees who have greater job security than they do, and earn more in pay and benefits than they will ever earn, can stay in Fat City. And folks wonder why so many Americans detest government.

In the same week Congress came back to prevent AFSCME from taking a haircut, the Wall Street Journal reported that, in 2009, only three of 52 metro areas with over 1 million in population saw "net earnings and the broader measure of personal income both rise." Are you surprised to learn Washington, D.C., was among the three? That same day, USA Today had a startling report on how, during the last decade, U.S. Government workers, like Wall Street bankers, left their fellow Americans in the dust.

"Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade. "Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation. ... The Federal compensation advantage has grown from $30,415 in 2000 to $61,998 last year."

Remarkable. U.S. government workers, who enjoy the greatest job security of any Americans, now earn twice as much in pay and benefits as the average American. This is not the D.C. some of us grew up in. Nor is this all Obama's doing. For most of the fat years of the federal work force came while Washington was being run by a Congress of Big-Government Conservatives and a White House of Bush-Cheney Republicans. No wonder the tea party is targeting both parties.

Nevertheless, it is impossible to believe that the Obamaites, who intervened twice and massively with bailouts to prevent minor layoffs of local and state government employees, have the stomach to do the major surgery needed to cut the federal monolith down to size. For the vast majority of the tens of millions of government workers vote Democratic, as do the vast majority of the scores of millions of beneficiaries of federal, state and local programs.

What Pelosi & Co. were saying with that $26 billion bailout this week is, "We are going to protect our own." Which is why either Obama, Pelosi, Reid & Co. go, or we are gone.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=38536

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FROM OTHER COLUMNS

"Why is it a good idea to build a fancy new mosque just two blocks from the site of an act of mass murder that was committed in the name of Islam? Ask this question, and the response is almost certain to be some combination of verbal abuse ('Bigot! Un-American!') and airy abstractions about freedom of religion. No one seems to have a real answer to the question."

-James Taranto

“(President Obama) and Congress remain wedded to an outdated economic model that replaces the private sector's animal spirit and dynamism with the dead hand of government bureaucrats and their unions as the main economic forces in our country. That's what last week's $26.1 billion state 'bailout' was all about. We were told it was to keep teachers from being laid off and 'for the children.' In reality, it was a cynical taxpayer-funded payback to teachers' unions, which gave Obama and his party enthusiastic support and millions in donations in the last election. This is Obama's New America -- a government-run economy, with special benefits for unions and plenty of government jobs, but few private ones."

-Investor's Business Daily

"Which is to be master, indeed? That is the question facing the people of the United States of America today. Will they be ruled by a constitution whose words have objective, propositional meaning or will they be ruled by judicial despots who strip the words of their meaning and twist them to accomplish a social agenda never envisioned by the Founding Fathers and not sanctioned by the American people?"

-Ken Connor

"Obama's slogan, were he to have been honest during the 2008 presidential campaign: 'I've got what it takes to take what you've got.'"

-Rush Limbaugh

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LEFTIST WATCH

President Obama bragged to a Hollywood fundraiser that he and congressional Democrats have “passed the most progressive legislation in decades.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/114569-obama-boasts-of-most-progressive-accomplishments-in-decades

The root causes for the 2008 financial panic were sown some 40 years ago when the Institute for Policy Studies, the notorious "Think Tank of the Left," held socialist seminars geared toward undermining the American capitalist system.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/15/the-cloward-piven-strategy/

A new TV ad from MoveOn.org goes after Target Corp. for making a political campaign donation to a Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota. “The company has apologized for the donation and promised to review future political giving.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/08/17/ap/business/main6780625.shtml

The leftie group EMILY’s List is targeting Sarah Palin and the 49 candidates she has endorsed so far in the 2010 midterms with the launch of a new campaign, www.SarahDoesntSpeakForMe.com..

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/08/17/emilys-list-targets-sarah-palins-mama-grizzlies/

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BOOKS

“The Left’s Lust for Black Gangstas:” Fox correspondent Erik Rush has just published a book, “Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal - America's Racial Obsession” A biracial conservative, Rush decries the Left’s slobbering love affair with blacks. Like necrophilia, liberals’ obsession with black people is a sick and creepy fetish.”

http://frontpagemag.com/2010/08/15/the-lefts-lust-for-black-gangstas/

http://www.amazon.com/Negrophilia-Pedestal-Americas-Racial-Obsession/dp/1935071823/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

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ARTICLES

“Today is national Cost of Government Day—the day, as calculated by Americans for Tax Reform, the average American finally stops working to pay for all the expenses of government at all levels, including regulatory burdens.” Besting last year’s dubious honor, this year’s COGD falls later than any year since it was first tracked in 1977……it takes 231 days out of the year for the average worker to meet all the costs imposed by government. Given that “stimulus” funding is still ongoing and the passage of health care “reform” earlier this year, is it any wonder the cost of government consumes a staggering 63.41 percent of national income? This includes 104 days just to pay for federal spending, 52 days just to pay for state and local government expenditures, and 74 days to cover the costs of government regulations.

http://www.libertylive.org/blog_main/post.php?post_id=2258

“Just How Smart is Obama?”

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/just_how_smart_is_obama_1.html

“The Cook Political Report Feels the Ground Shift Beneath Its Feet”

http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/244016/cook-political-report-feels-ground-shift-beneath-its-feet

“The booming Mars Hill Church recently bought University Baptist's building for $2.5 million, underscoring a surprising trend away from liberal congregations in Seattle.”

http://crosscut.com/2010/08/17/religion/20069/A-tale-of-two-churches:-Mars-Hill-vs.-University-Baptist/

Eight percent of babies born in U.S. hospitals in 2008 had mothers who were illegal aliens. Such newborns bring significant societal costs. Because their parents are poor, the families contribute little in taxes while at the same time relying heavily on government services. Second, our overly generous welfare state provides financial incentives for people to leave Mexico and come to the United States.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/13/anchor-babies-away/

The decision by congressional Democrats to not try to pass a major energy bill in this Congress, while receiving a modest amount of media attention, actually constitutes one of the sharpest rebukes to a sitting president in recent memory.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41254.html

“On behalf of all Hispanics, let me just say this: Muchas gracias, Harry Reid. These days, many Americans are pressed for time. So I was glad to hear that the Senate majority leader is willing to relieve me and every other Hispanic in the United States of the crushing burden of having to think for ourselves and make our own political decisions. No more slogging through the mundane work of reading up on issues, attending candidates' debates and having to reach our own conclusions. Reid is kindly offering to do all the heavy lifting for America's largest minority and decide whether we should vote Republican or Democrat. And, to make things easier, as far as the Nevada Democrat is concerned, there is only one choice for Hispanics. Guess who? The Democratic leader of the Senate is trying to win re-election by courting Hispanics in his home state. But instead of flowers and chocolates, Reid showed up at their door offering only insults and condescension. Harry Reid can wonder all he wants about why any Hispanic could be a Republican. I've been wondering something myself: In light of such flagrant condescension and an obvious lack of regard, why would any self-respecting Hispanic - in Nevada or anywhere else - support Harry Reid?”

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/08/15/harry_reid_misreads_hispanics_106753.html

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NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES

Feel good video: (Guess which president hasn't done this yet.)

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

Music video from the Iranian top 40.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSQQ5bS5-3A

EFF informed voter guide for Washington State:

http://www.effwa.org/files/pdf/informedvoterguide.pdf

A new Republican spoof video shows congressional Democrats running from President Obama by bailing out of Air Force One - using the emergency slide.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCG1PD4cirE

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LATE NITE

Jay Leno: The economy is so bad, the Obamas are thinking about taking their next vacation in the United States……..The White House is defending President Obama's sports activities over the past week, saying that everyone needs leisure time. Thanks to these economic policies, 9.5 percent of Americans have all the leisure time they need."

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WISE WORDS

"The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience."

-Albert Camus

"[A] wise and frugal government ... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."

-Thomas Jefferson