op ed review 10/14
In an election marked by dramatic defections from the Democratic Party, older voters swung hardest. Voters over 65 favored Republicans by a 21-point margin after flirting with Democrats in the 2006 midterm elections and favoring John McCain by a relatively narrow 8-point margin in 2008.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44802.html
There are nine House races that have still not yet been called, and a few are almost certainly headed for recounts. All the seats are currently held by Democrats. Republicans lead in five. The GOP made historic gains of 60 seats on Election Night -- the most in a midterm since World War Two. That number could jump to somewhere in the neighborhood of 65 seats if current tallies hold.
Florida's first black Republican congressman since Reconstruction credited the Tea Party with standing up against allegations of racism from the left in supporting his successful candidacy.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the Republicans "owe it to the American people" to try to repeal health care reform. "
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/07/ftn/main7031682.shtml
A group of Senate conservatives issued an early challenge to their Republican colleagues, calling on them in an open letter to support a ban on earmarks — a stance the House GOP embraced earlier this year.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/nov/9/gop-senators-ask-colleagues-to-back-ban-on-earmark/
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Wednesday he intends to take commercial flights home when he moves up to speaker in the new Congress. “Over the last 20 years, I have flown back and forth to my district on commercial aircraft, and I am going to continue to do that,” he told reporters.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44943.html#ixzz14zN0Nr2H
Longtime Seattle talk radio host Kirby Wilbur confirmed today that he will challenge Luke Esser for the chairmanship of the state Republican Party in 2011.
http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20101109/BLOG13/101109787
Workers' compensation premiums could go up by an average 12 percent next year under a proposal from the Washington Department of Labor and Industries. The initiative 1082 campaign would have liked to know about this, but L&I postponed the announcement until after the election.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2013380140_workerscomp09.html
The Obama administration reiterated its support for repealing the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) worked to strip language repealing the ban from the annual defense authorization bill
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/08/AR2010110806593.html
What a concept. In the UK, plans to “stop handouts for up to three years to jobless who refuse work, in the biggest shake-up in the history of the welfare state.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101111/wl_uk_afp/britainpoliticssocietywelfare
A charming account in which Michelle Obama tells Indian children who eat garbage and sleep in the street that she knows about poverty.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/11/the_further_adventures_of_mich.html
The number of federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has soared tenfold in the past five years and doubled since President Obama took office, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-11-10-1Afedpay10_ST_N.htm
Seven of the nation's 10 richest counties surround Washington DC.. Virginia's Loudoun County takes home the top spot, with its median household income exceeding $114,000 per year.
http://wtop.com/?nid=25&sid=2115275
"Iran has its sights set on putting an astronaut on the moon by 2025, after becoming the first Islamic nation to put its own payload into space last year.”
http://www.space.com/news/iran-space-launch-capabilities-101109.html
China is studying a rocket engine four times as powerful as its current equipment, while also working on reusable space launchers. China will launch 14 satellites this year. Next year it will launch 20.
Meanwhile, President Obama “acknowledges decline of US dominance”
With one in every eight workers unemployed and empty state coffers, California is borrowing $40M per day from the federal government to pay unemployment insurance.
http://nation.foxnews.com/unemployment/2010/11/08/ca-borrows-40m-day-pay-unemployment
A Clinton appointed federal district judge has issued a temporary restraining order blocking an amendment approved by 70% of the voters that would prohibit state courts from considering international or Islamic law when deciding cases.
George W. Bush says that information extracted from terrorist suspects by waterboarding “helped break up plots to attack American diplomatic facilities abroad, Heathrow airport and Canary Wharf in London, and multiple targets in the United States.”
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/article2800028.ece
Sarah Palin used baked goods Tuesday night to attack the “nanny state.” Palin brought dozens of cookies to a speech at the Plumstead Christian School in Plumsteadville, Pa., amid news reports that Pennsylvania’s State Board of Education is looking at ways to limit sweets at classroom parties. Palin called the plan an example of the “nanny state run amok” and said that she brought the cookies in order to “shake things up.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44936.html
Pope Benedict XVI strongly defended traditional families and the rights of the unborn, directly attacking Spanish laws that allow gay marriage, fast-track divorce and easier access to abortions.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101107/ap_on_re_eu/eu_pope
Pope Benedict XVI has also issued what Catholic pro-life advocates are calling an unprecedented request for prayers worldwide from all pro-life people against abortion.
http://www.lifenews.com/2010/11/11/int-1681/
Harley-Davidson, the iconic American motorcycle brand with a cult-like following, has announced it will build its second assembly plant ever outside the United States in India.
Your federal tax dollars at work: $700,000 to study “cow burps” that threaten the planet.
Your state tax dollars at work at Evergreen State College: “Is operating a center for anti-Semitism an essential government service?” "When my Jewish friend goes into a rest room and is confronted by SS logos and swastikas," Rosen said, "there's something wrong there."
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THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
God Bless the Tea Party
Michael Novak, National Review 11/8
I doubt that what happened in the United States on November 2 could have occurred in any European country. In fact, it was almost unprecedented in the United States.
No president in American history has ever been so thoroughly discredited after two years as Barack Obama. When Pres. Bill Clinton’s party lost 54 seats in 1994, that number was shockingly high. But in 2010, the Democrats have lost at least 60 seats in the House (the branch closest to the people) and six in the Senate. Counting as allies some conservative Democrats, the Senate Republicans, while slightly less numerous than Democrats, might emerge with a working majority, though not the two-thirds necessary to override a veto.
In his first two years, the president convinced many millions of Americans that he wants to make the U.S. more like European welfare states. The American people hate the very idea, and they simply rebelled.
What is most striking about this election is the rising up of a huge popular movement with virtually no visible national leader — a movement spontaneously arising out of the refusal to lose the country our Founding Fathers (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the others) built solidly on certain fixed, eternal principles: firm principles about the dignity and responsibility before God of every woman and man, about the freedom of the economy from State management (but not from necessary State regulation), and about the universal opportunity of every citizen to rise as far as their talents and hard work will take them.
President Obama pays obeisance to these principles, but his heart is not in it. He mainly trusts government, national government, one powerful central government. The record of his two years in office is repellent — and many, many Americans simply refuse to march in that direction. The Democrats have controlled everything for two years, and their leadership, with too much left-wing enthusiasm, allowed President Obama to take the bit into his mouth and run pell-mell toward the European model.
He could not get all that far, in this deeply whig country. “Whig” is a way of saying “the party of liberty,” the party of personal responsibility, the party of economic opportunity and personal creativity, the party fiercely committed to the defense of liberty (whence the eagle as our national symbol, the eagle with seven arrows in one claw and a large olive branch in the other). The whig tendency in America has always been suspicious of government (as the source of most abuses of human rights, as inefficient, as a breeding ground of corruption). The Whig party, transformed into the new Republican party after 1856, became the party that abolished slavery, and is alive and well today in the Tea Party movement. It is the party of the individual — not the atomized individual, the individual alone, but the civic individual in free cooperation with other individuals.
In recent years, I have wondered how much longer God would continue to bless America, that country so favored by Providence for so long. The mass-media culture of America, its movies, its glitzy magazines, and its public speech (even in churches) are becoming more and more decadent, less and less under the sway of personal moral responsibility, more relativist, less under the self-control of reason. That “superculture” of the media hangs over the nation like a miasma of moral smog. Below it, thank God, there are still tens of millions willing to resist it.
That is the hope of America today. It rises up from the people not yet incapacitated by the moral decline of our elites. The election of 2010 signified a moral revolution, a cultural revolution, much more profoundly than a political revolution. We will see how long it can endure and grow from strength to strength — or whether it will self-destruct, as so many movements do.
God, if You can no longer bless the whole nation, please bless the Tea Party movement.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/252720/god-bless-tea-party-michael-novak
MORE IMPORTANT READS:
Sarah Palin “Now that the dust has settled on the 2010 midterm elections, it’s slowly becoming clear just how monumental the results really are. We saw an extreme left-wing agenda suffer a crushing defeat. At the ballot box, voters took Obamacare and the stimulus and wrapped them right around the necks of those same House members and senators who had arrogantly dismissed the concerns voiced in countless town halls and Tea Party rallies up and down the country…….I hope that commonsense patriots will join me in applauding the real heroes of this election year: the Tea Party Americans. In 2008, we were told that we had to “move beyond Reagan.” Well, some of us refused to believe that America chose big-government European-style socialism. American voters elected a politician who cloaked his agenda in the language of moderation. Once the mask was removed, Americans rejected his “fundamental transformation.” The Tea Party reminded us that Reaganism is still our foundation. I think the Gipper is smiling down on us today waving the Gadsden Flag.
“Why I quit... Desert Storm vet explains decision to leave Air Force after 22 years”
http://www.dailyinterlake.com/article_dbcfb820-e9f6-11df-9f3f-001cc4c002e0.html
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FROM OTHER COLUMNS
"On Tuesday voters rejected President Obama's attempt to remake America in the image of an imploding Europe -- not just by overwhelmingly electing Republican candidates in the House, but by preferring dozens of maverick conservatives who ran against establishment Washington. Why the near-historic rebuke? Out-of-control spending, unchecked borrowing, vast new entitlements and unsustainable debt -- all at a time of economic stagnation. So what is next? Like the recovering addict who checks himself into rehab, a debt-addicted America just snapped out of its borrowing binge, is waking up with the shakes, and hopes there is still a chance at recovery. It won't be easy. Obama and his Democratic Congress ran up nearly $3 trillion in new debt in just 21 months -- after running a disingenuous 2008 campaign that falsely promised to rein in the fiscal irresponsibility that had been rampant during the spendthrift Bush administration. So the voters intervened and sent America in for rehab treatment. In our three-step road to recovery, we, the sick patient, must first end the denial, then accept the tough medicine, and finally change the entrenched habits that caused the addiction."
-Victor Davis Hanson
“'We can't afford it' still rings in the ears of those old enough to remember what parents or grandparents said when we asked for an expensive toy as a child, or a car at 16. That Puritan ethic remains in the DNA of many Americans. It is now up to Republicans to get it out and remind us of what fiscal and personal responsibility can do to restore financial solvency. It may take a while and there will be some discomfort and even pain involved. But in the end, we will all be better off than we are now and much better off than we will be if we fail to reduce our unsustainable debt."
-Cal Thomas
“Mr. Obama doesn't recognize this America. In place of liberty, he substitutes redistributionist notions of social justice. Rather than a single American nation, he institutionalizes differences for political gain. Instead of patriotism and pride, he promotes internationalism and guilt. America's decline is not the result of historical forces out of our control, but of condemning the history that brought the United States to its position of leadership. America will only resurge when it recaptures the moral image of the country as a land of individualism, opportunity and patriotism. That is an America Mr. Obama would rather do without.”
-Washington Times
"Unlike the Democrats today, [John F.] Kennedy never pretended he was poor or even middle class; he let us know he was upper crust. And if you doubted it for a second, he'd put Jackie on display with her very expensive designer fashions. Today, kazillionaire politicians like Boxer, Feinstein, Bloomberg, Kerry, Clinton, and even a schmuck named Rockefeller, want us to believe they're just a bunch of regular folks who carry their lunch in a paper bag and shop at Walmart."
-Burt Prelutsky
"Republican landslides are apparently inevitable whenever Democrats try to turn our health care over to the Department of Motor Vehicles."
-Ann Coulter
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BOOKS, FILM, TV
Media Malpractice, John Ziegler’s 2009 film that turned the media narrative of the 2008 election on its head. Two years (and one midterm election) later, an updated version of Ziegler’s film is set to be re-released to retail stores, and will be available on demand to 80 million cable subscribers.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/media-malpractice-filmmaker-john-ziegler-on-films-wide-re-release/
“Leadership and Crisis” by Bobby Jindal. ….from the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster to Hurricane Katrina, he’s shown an astounding ability to beat the odds (and beat the bureaucrats) to get things done. Then again, Jindal is not your typical politician. The son of Indian immigrants, a Christian convert from Hinduism, and a Rhodes Scholar, Jindal presided over Louisiana’s healthcare system at age 24, headed the University of Louisiana system at 27, became a U.S. congressman at 33, and was elected governor of Louisiana at 36.
“American Heroes in Special Operations” by Col. Oliver North. ….an in-depth look into the hearts, minds, and operations of our elite heroes. It's easy as a observer to idolize these heroes who sacrifice everything, but this book gave me a deeper perspective and appreciation of those sacrifices.
“Intimate portraits of 'Mama Grizzly' with her cubs in Alaska…She….shrugged off recent comments by Republican political strategist Karl Rove who said that making a reality TV show diminished her credentials as a serious contender for high political office. 'I'd like Karl Rove to come up to Alaska and see me being in a man's world,' Palin told People magazine.
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LEFTIST WATCH
President Obama was glad to meet the Indian communist party leader this week. “I am glad to meet an Indian communist. I am told that communists have been part of the (Indian) political mainstream,” Obama told Politburo member Sitaram Yechury.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/glad-to-meet-an-indian-communist-said-obama-65314
“Big Green leader warns House GOP to forget popular will, do what enviros tell them to do. Or else.”
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Big-Green-leader-warns-House-GOP-to-forget-popular-will-do-what-enviros-tell-them-to-do-106964143.html#ixzz14oZNu2k9
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GLOBALONEY
“More and more details are emerging on the greatest fraud in the history of science, the manufacturing of pseudo-scientific theories and data intended to panic the world into carbon control, empowering the leviathan of government to regulate all human activity. Doug Ross presents 12 photos taken and annotated by David Evans of official temperature monitoring stations obviously sited in order to show higher temperatures than in surrounding areas, near air conditioner exhausts, on concrete or asphalt surfaces that absorb and radiate heat, and near car or airplane exhaust flows.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/11/inside_the_climate_fraud.html
Global warming-inspired cap and trade has been one of the most stridently debated public policy controversies of the past 15 years. But it is dying a quiet death. In a little reported move, the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) announced on Oct. 21 that it will be ending carbon trading – the only purpose for which it was founded – this year.
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ISLAM
A U.S.-born radical Yemeni cleric has called for the killing of Americans in a new video message posted on radical web sites Monday. Anwar al-Awlaki said Americans are from the "party of devils" and so don't require any special religious permission to kill.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/11/08/born-radical-cleric-calls-killing-americans-new-video/
A Christian woman and mother of 5 was sentenced to death in Pakistan 'for blasphemy'.
“Radical Muslims Celebrate Veterans Day in London With ‘British Soldiers Burn in Hell’ Signs”
And banners saying “Islam will dominate” and “Our dead are in paradise, your dead are in hell”.
http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/3222753/Sick-protesters-torch-poppy.html
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ACTIVISM
Let your congressman know that during the "lame-duck" session you:
Do not want repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell"
Do not want taxes increased on anybody
Do want progress on defunding and repealing ObamaCare
http://www.capwiz.com/afanet/issues/alert/?alertid=19306536
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ARTICLES
Nile Gardiner in the UK Telegraph: “The decline and fall of Barack Obama: five key factors that drove the midterm revolution 1. America is a conservative nation 2. US voters are unwilling to accept the idea of American decline 3. The Tea Party sparked a political revolution 4. The liberal elites dramatically lost influence 5. The Obama presidency has behaved in an imperial fashion
Bob Beckel is one Democrat who makes no attempt to sugarcoat, or otherwise spin, the defeat that the Democratic Party suffered on Tuesday. As he quipped to me last week, “Did you get the license-plate number of the truck that ran over my party?” Yet at the same time, he makes an astute point about the politics of 2010 that should challenge the confidence of any Republican, as well as any Democrat. The Internet, Beckel says, is on its way to trumping both political parties. The Internet has, indeed, created a new organizing mechanism….
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/11/08/republicans-democrats-bigger-foe-tea-party/
As he promised it would be, Barack Obama's presidency has been transformative, but not as he intended. Whether it lasts two or six more years, it is an exhausted volcano because its biggest consequence may already have happened: It has resuscitated the right, making 2010 conservatism's best year in 30 years - since the election of Ronald Reagan.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/10/AR2010111005499.html
President Barack Obama seems more concerned with appeasing environmental extremists in his administration than he is with the lost jobs of poor Americans. He’s letting the environmentalists run wild with long pent-up schemes to force a change in the American way of life that includes small cars, small apartments and, for many, a return to an idealized 19th century lifestyle. It’s not China that’s responsible for American job losses; it’s Washington’s fault for shutting down whole industries and preventing new jobs from being created.
http://reason.com/archives/2010/11/10/job-killing-environmentalists
Michelle Malkin: “Bush nostalgia: Let’s not get carried away, ok?”
The United States got a grilling last week at the UN Human Rights Council, where its unmatched accomplishments went on trial before a jury of killers, er, peers. You see, in the upside-down world of the UN, countries like China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are recognized as defenders of human rights -- holding coveted seats on the council. President Bush refused to join this farce, but the Obama gang naturally jumped right on board.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/judgment_of_jackals_NlWRTYXpghZtDv1qxbumcM
Ben Shapiro: “Barack Obama's Secret History”
http://townhall.com/columnists/BenShapiro/2010/11/10/barack_obamas_secret_history/page/full/
George Bush's critics will never understand that torture is part of the language of war. “given the choice between inflicting a relatively small amount of harm on a wrongdoer and saving an innocent person, it is verging on moral indecency to prefer the interests of a wrongdoer.”
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NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
Dedicated the US Marine Corps. Semper Fi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sam4lq2WHos
Here’s to the heroes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPTbLhNl0oE
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LATE NITE
Jay Leno……President Obama is still out of the country but he's keeping in contact with Vice President Joe Biden to find out when it's safe to come back home……Nancy Pelosi is throwing a party to celebrate her time as speaker of the House. If you would like to get her a gift, she's registered at Bed, Bath and Don't Blame Me……..I'm not sure what kind of a party it will be, but I think we can rule out a tea party……Nancy Pelosi says she will seek to become the House minority leader. Who better to be the minority leader than the person who led their party to become the minority?
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WISE WORDS
"Can we solve the problems confronting us? Well, the answer is an unequivocal and emphatic 'yes.' To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I did not take the oath I have just taken with the intention of presiding over the dissolution of the world's strongest economy. In the days ahead I will propose removing the roadblocks that have slowed our economy and reduced productivity. Steps will be taken aimed at restoring the balance between the various levels of government. Progress may be slow -- measured in inches and feet, not miles -- but we will progress. It is time to reawaken this industrial giant, to get government back within its means, and to lighten our punitive tax burden. And these will be our first priorities, and on these principles, there will be no compromise."
-Ronald Reagan
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