op ed review 1/2
President Obama spent more than $1.5 million on a sunshine break in Hawaii while many Americans are still struggling in the aftermath of the economic meltdown.
The evening news programs on the three major networks featured 527 stories about Christmas during the 2007 and 2008 holiday season. Of those, seven mentioned God or the birth of Jesus.
http://www.toledoblade.com/article/20101225/NEWS10/12240390
American voters believe free market competition will protect Internet users more than government regulation and fear that regulation will be used to push a political agenda. The latest Rasmussen survey finds that only 21% of Likely U.S. Voters want the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate the Internet as it does radio and television.
The House of Representatives is preparing to open the 112th United States Congress by reading aloud the Constitution.
http://www.nysun.com/editorials/getting-set-for-a-reading-of-the-constitution/87176/
Christmas bomb plot: “nine men remanded over plan to 'blow up Big Ben and Westminster Abbey'” Police searches are said to have uncovered two issues of the al Qaeda extremist magazine Inspire, which is published in English in Yemen and is aimed at a Western audience. An article in issue one was entitled “How to make a pipe bomb in the kitchen of your mom”, while issue two included “What to expect in jihad” and “Tips for our brothers in the US”.
In New York City, “….union bosses ordered that snowplow drivers "not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner." in order to “make the mayor pay for the layoffs.” The result was two deaths, because emergency workers couldn't get through snowbound streets. One was a baby born in the lobby of a Brooklyn building.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/558328/201012301905/Bloody-Snow.htm
So how bad is it for NYC sanitation workers? City workers enjoyed steady employment through the recession, killer benefits and a generous pension package. Then there's the pay. 315 sanitation workers earned over $100,000 in 2009. The top guy, John Doherty, earned $205,180.
A teacher in New York was permanently removed from the classroom in 1997 after he was accused of sexually molesting a sixth-grade girl at PS 138 in Brooklyn. But since then, he has continued to receive full pay and fringe benefits, including health, pension and vacation. He’s now 75, receives $97,101 a year, refuses to leave the job, and can’t be fired.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/rubber_room_dirty_old_man_t4OA6Bw25idPYynCnVJHyO
France braces for what authorities say has become an annual "sweepstakes" of disaffected youth competing to see who can burn the most cars.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101231/wl_nm/us_france_newyear
“Antisemitism is coming into fashion again, and anti-Israel bus ads had been set to start running on twelve buses in Seattle this Monday. The ads featured the hateful slogan, “Israeli War Crimes: Your Tax Dollars at Work.” But two days after my organization….announced that we would be running king-sized pro-Israel ads on Seattle buses to counter their hate ads, King County Metro Transit folded: Transit officials issued a statement Thursday saying that they would be refusing the anti-Israel, antisemitic ads. They were “changing their policy.”
When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1. Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment. Congressional supporters of the new policy, though pleased, have kept quiet…..
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/us/politics/26death.html
The British universal health care system is cutting more and more services…..everyone's right to health care is becoming the right to no care because Great Britain cannot afford its current level of demand for health care. Services already deleted or to be cut include heart surgery over the age of 65, kidney dialysis over 55, much hospice care, many cancer treatments, and most nursing homes.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/the_right_to_health_care_can_b.html
Remember Ken Starr? He’s now the 14th president of Baylor University.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/122610dnentstarr.c033b9.html
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THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN (Hat tip to reader Karl H.)
One of the fastest growing industries in the world is based on a pyramid of frauds and its inevitable collapse will be worse than the sub-prime crash.
The Global Warming Industry is now fed by billions of dollars from western taxpayers and consumers. It is based on the unproven and now discredited claim that man's production of carbon dioxide causes dangerous global warming.
The basic fraud is this:
There is no evidence that carbon dioxide controls world temperature – just a theory and the manipulated results from a handful of giant computer models that very few people have checked or understand.
But there is clear evidence from historical records of atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature that carbon dioxide does not control temperature. Rather the reverse – as solar or volcanic heat warms the oceans, the waters expel carbon dioxide. Global warming causes an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, not the reverse.
Moreover, every day provides more evidence that current temperatures are not unusually high. Over the past 2000 years there have been two previous eras of warming ("the golden ages") separated by two mini ice ages ("the dark ages"). Both the Roman Warming and the Medieval Warming were warmer than today and there was no human industry causing that warming.
The next fraud, invoked as the first fraud started to falter, is the claim that carbon dioxide is a pollutant in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is the food for all plants and thus the food source for all life on earth. It is not poisonous at any level likely to be experienced in the atmosphere and there is clear evidence that more carbon dioxide makes plants grow faster and bigger, and makes them more tolerant of drought, heat and salinity. Current levels are below those optimal for life.
A related scientific fraud is the claim that grazing animals increase atmospheric carbon. Any competent biologist can debunk this fraud by explaining the carbon food cycle.
Built on these frauds are the fraud-riddled carbon credit and carbon trading empires. The revelations of massive fraud in European carbon credits and the collapse of carbon trading on the Chicago Climate Exchange are harbingers of crises yet to surface. Carbon credits have no intrinsic value – they are dependent on political support, and this will always evaporate in time.
The next level of fraud is the alternate energy industry. Despite decades of subsidies and tax breaks the wind/solar power industry cannot survive unless the handouts continue, and their coal competitors are taxed heavily. To call these activities "industries" is a fraud – they are corporate mendicants.
Finally, those who waste millions on projects designed to prove the feasibility of burying carbon dioxide are committing a fraud on taxpayers and shareholders. There are no benefits of burying atmospheric plant food from any source. With zero benefits and huge costs CCS can never be "economic" and it is fraudulent to pretend it can ever be otherwise.
The global warming industry is a huge pyramid of financial and political fraud resting on a quasi-scientific foundation of quicksand.
http://jimunro.blogspot.com/2010/12/time-to-topple-pyramid-of-frauds.html
Another must-read this week, Charles Krauthammer: “Most people don't remember Obamacare's notorious Section 1233, mandating government payments for end-of-life counseling. It aroused so much anxiety as a possible first slippery step on the road to state-mandated late-life rationing that the Senate never included it in the final health-care law. Well, it's back - by administrative fiat…….It was all nicely buried amid the simultaneous release of hundreds of new Medicare rules. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), author of Section 1233, was delighted. "Mr. Blumenauer's office celebrated 'a quiet victory,' but urged supporters not to crow about it," reports the New York Times. Deathly quiet. In early November, his office sent an e-mail plea to supporters: "We would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your lists . . . e-mails can too easily be forwarded." They had been lucky that "thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it. . . . The longer this [regulation] goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it." So much for the Democrats' transparency - and for their repeated claim that the more people learn what is in the health-care law, the more they will like it. Turns out ignorance is the Democrats' best hope. And regulation is their perfect vehicle - so much quieter than legislation.
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GLOBALONEY
Columbia, S.C., had its first significant Christmas snow since weather records were first kept in 1887. Atlanta had just over an inch of snow—the first measurable accumulation on Christmas Day since the 1880s.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9KBLRDG0&show_article=1
Phoenix-area residents report snow falling across Valley
BRITAIN’S winter is the coldest since 1683 and close to being the chilliest in nearly 1,000 years.
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/view/169577/Winter-may-be-coldest-in-1000-years/
So the global warming fear mongers have to come up with an explanation, “How can we reconcile this (with global warming)? The not-so-obvious short answer is that the overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes…”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26cohen.html?_r=2&ref=opinion
Until this week, the most-read story in the online edition of the Independent was the Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past, the one from March 2000 in which top expert Dr David Viner of the top-rated Climatic Research Unit at the famed University of East Anglia used his superbly honed predictive powers to make this now legendary warning: “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”
British meteorologist Piers Corbyn appeared on Fox and Friends to not only celebrate his accurate prediction of a bone-chillingly cold winter, but to also share his disgust with what he believes to be the “failed science” behind global warming. Despite it often being mentioned that the consensus in the scientific community is that global warming is undisputedly occurring, Corbyn proudly goes against the grain and advocates for his hypothesis of the coming global cooling.
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LEFTIST WATCH
Liberal Star Blogger Ezra Klein: “Constitution Has No Binding Power on Anything’…it’s confusing…..over 100 Years Old”
“For most of the last two decades, Supreme Court conservatives led by Justice Antonin Scalia dominated the debates during oral arguments. They greeted advocates for liberal causes with sharp and sometimes caustic questions, putting them on the defensive from the opening minute. But the tenor of the debate has changed in recent months, now that President Obama's two appointees to the court, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, have joined the fray and reenergized the liberal wing. Gone are the mismatches where the Scalia wing overshadowed reserved and soft-spoken liberals…”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-arguments-20101226,0,7823061,full.story
“We'd like to offer a last-minute nomination for the nitwittiest idea of the year: GiveItBackForJobs.com. This is the cognitive elite's version of a tax revolt, made all the more comical because it is the product of two of America's top universities. (They are Yale and Cornell, so that our Harvard readers have reason to feel even smugger than usual today.) When normal people stage a tax revolt, it is because taxes are too high. These geniuses are upset that taxes are too low…”
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ISLAM
“Rigler Public Grade School Provides Students With Bibles, Gives Kids Special Chapel in School to Pray During Math Class…..Oh, wait, I'm sorry, I got it all wrong…..Wrong religion. Nothing to see here. Go about your business Muslim students at Portland's Rigler Elementary School are given their own school provided prayer room, prayer rugs, helpfully stored in the prayer room by the school, and let out of class five times a day to pray to Allah. Did I mention this is during school hours?”
http://victoriataftkpam.blogspot.com/2010/12/pdxs-rigler-public-grade-school.html
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BOOKS
“365 Ways to Drive a Liberal crazy” by James Delingpole. “Start every day off RIGHT! Try one of our 365 ways to drive a liberal (even more) crazy. Whether you quote from the Constitution (what, that old relic?) or point out the facts about global warming (as in, the planet has been steadily cooling for the past decade)—this is one sure-fire way to get under a lefty’s (thin) skin.” Examples: On Easter day, as you're driving to church, call out to your slobovian, atheistic, liberal neighbor sitting on his porch: "Happy Easter! Our Savior liveth! Sorry yours won't get reelected!" Or Tell a joke: Q: How do you starve an Obama supporter? A: Hide his food stamps under his work boots.
http://www.hebookservice.com/products/BookPage.asp?prod_cd=C7685
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ARTICLES
Ignore the revisionist hype in sections of the liberal media about President Obama staging a (mythical) political comeback--this is a presidency with an approval rating of 45 percent, that presides over a nation where just 27 percent of voters think the country is moving in the right direction, and which just 29 percent of Americans think will be returned to power in 2012. The White House may be claiming a couple of political wins in the dying embers of the lame duck Congress after expending a great deal of political capital
“Like Sarah Palin, Early Feminists Were Pro-Life……..2011 will be the first time in 25 years the overall number of women taking office will not increase. But that doesn’t mean the voice of women in governance is fading…..In the House, the 112th Congress will see a 70 percent increase in the number of pro-life women representatives and a 16 percent decrease in the number of pro-abortion women. Republican Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire will fill the void of a pro-life woman’s voice in the Senate. At the state level, we’ll see a four-fold increase in the number of pro-life women governors.
“The question that that we find ourselves thinking about is how was Mrs. Palin able to see this issue (death panels) when others weren’t. Is she just smarter than the (New York Times) editors and the Congress? Or does she just have more life experience? Is it that her religion gives her a framework for learning all this stuff? Or is it that her sensitivity was heightened by making of her own decision to bring Trig into the world? Or is it something about the Alaskan spirit?...”
http://www.nysun.com/editorials/sarah-palin-scoop-artist/87175/
More than half of family households in parts of the District of Columbia and Prince George's County are run by single parents, a home life that experts say increases their children's chances of following in the same footsteps.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/dc/2010/12/dc-home-most-single-parent-households
“Roll Back the Hippie Damage”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/01/roll_back_the_hippie_damage.html
The fact that the lame-duck Congress balked at endorsing "cap-and-trade" legislation didn't deter California from approving its own version of the extreme green scheme for restricting industrial emissions. The move bolsters the state's reputation as the left coast's home for ideas out of left field. Soon Americans will witness what happens when global-warming hysteria worsens an already sick economy. ) The estimated cost of permits purchased by California businesses ranges between $3 billion and $58 billion by 2020.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/27/californias-cap-and-trade-escapade/
Government on steroids: California is getting 725 new laws, effective Jan 1, 2011. Here’s the list:
http://lamesa.patch.com/articles/there-outta-be-a-law-californians-getting-725-new-ones-in-2011
Larry Elder: “$5 Gas Predicted Under Obama -- What, No Pitchforks?”
Ann Coulter looks at the charitable giving of those who “champion the poor”:
http://townhall.com/columnists/AnnCoulter/2010/12/29/liberals_give_til_it_hurts_you/page/1
Who's doing the most to hobble the productive power of the U.S. economy, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson or Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar? President Obama's top two Cabinet appointees on environmental issues are running neck and neck in their race to see who can issue the most job-killing, growth-suffocating bureaucratic edicts.
When conservative activist and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer scans the potential 2012 Republican field, not much excites him. "All the obvious frontline names have all the usual pluses and minuses," Mr. Bauer says. But in considering one candidate, Mr. Bauer sees only qualities that he likes. Indiana Rep. Mike Pence is a military and fiscal hawk who frequently plugs his Christian credentials. To some, he's the potential candidate best able to unite two wings of the Republican Party—its fiscal conservatives and social conservatives. "He is definitely the guy to watch…”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703548604576037961132253974.html?mod=ITP_pageone_1
Kudzu: A Lesson in Big Government Failure
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/12/kudzu_a_lesson_in_big_governme.html
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NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
Good blog:
"Jihad Bells, Jihad Bells, Jihad all the way” The “Palestinian Minister of Uncontrollable Rage,” Tawil Fadiha, acts as Santa Claus before being unmasked and singing “a heartfelt message” to the Christian world... “Oh what fun with a knife or gun, a Christian guy to slay….”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/news.aspx/141346
10 Ways to Get the Most Out of Technology
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/technology/personaltech/30basics.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general
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WISE WORDS
"One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one."
-James Madison
posted by gary at
10:10 AM
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