op ed review 9/4
August 2012 was the first time since 1945 that the government has reported a net monthly job change of zero.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44370462/ns/business/#.TmDoy134sdU
“Five NASCAR Drivers Decline President Obama's White House Invitation”
Obama's approval rating has plummeted to 38 per cent - an all time low. The news came after it emerged whites and women are a re-election problem for Obama, along with his traditional base of younger voters and liberals.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2031247/Obama-approval-rating-hits-time-low-39-cent.html
But he’s doing just fine with 56% of American Muslims.
http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/08/30/idINIndia-59043020110830
One in four Democrats wants to dump Obama
http://nation.foxnews.com/president-obama/2011/08/29/one-four-democrats-wants-dump-obama
President Obama’s Labor Secretary Hilda Solis signed "partnership" agreements with ambassadors from a group of Latin American nations aiming to protect the labor rights of illegal migrants working in the United States.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/administration-partners-foreign-gov-s-pr
To show her support for American workers, Secretary Solis, has purchased a new Chevrolet Equinox to ride around Washington in. The problem: the crossover SUV is made in Canada.
The White House is going into the petition business, giving Americans "a direct line to the White House on issues and concerns that matter most to them." Not to be overlooked, the effort also will allow the White House to collect email addresses of potential Obama supporters going into the 2012 election.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/click-here-white-house-creating-web-site
House GOP leadership outlined plans to delay or kill a suite of environmental rules in coming months. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), in a memo to GOP members, outlined a legislative schedule for thwarting “job-destroying” regulations that includes a number of Environmental Protection Agency rules.
Facing fierce resistance from congressional Republicans, industry and some local officials, President Obama abruptly pulled back proposed smog standards Friday that would have compelled states and communities nationwide to reduce local air pollution or face federal penalties. (and would have cost $Bs)
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/129170368.html
House Republicans are planning to introduce legislation that seeks to force major changes at the United Nations, using as leverage the U.S.’s 22 percent contribution to the world body’s operating budget
President Obama's long-lost "Uncle Omar" has been arrested for alleged drunk-driving outside Boston and detained as an illegal immigrant. President Obama's Auntie Zeituni, was discovered several years ago, living as an illegal immigrant in Boston public housing.
“Uncle Omar” has had a valid Social Security number for at least 19 years, despite being an illegal immigrant ordered to be deported back to Kenya.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1362374
'Uncle Omar' had been living in a nice house, hosted popular backyard barbecues and worked at a local liquor store. “How do you acquire that kind of house, host frequent neighborhood barbecues and, apparently, own a late-model SUV by working at a liquor store?”
Riding high in the polls, Gov. Rick Perry rode into Iowa on Saturday with tough talk on President Obama, the economy and foreign policy and a declaration that Social Security is not only a Ponzi scheme but a "monstrous lie" for younger people. "If you're for the status quo in America, I'm not your guy," Perry told an overflow crowd .
Statements like the one above scare “GOP Insiders”, according to the National Journal. “Many Republican Insiders acknowledged Perry's appeal to conservatives but questioned his ability to win over independent voters.”
http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2011/09/insiders-gop-wo.php
But wait, a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows Perry beating Obama 44% to 41%.
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/41550
America in decline? China may buy the LA Dodgers.
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-dodgers-mccourt-sale-20110902,0,3026247.story
NASA says astronauts may need to abandon the International Space Station this fall.
The federal government seized wood, guitars and electronic records from Gibson Guitar’s Nashville warehouses in 2009. “…..representatives of the US government told Gibson that their legal issues would disappear if they used Madagascar labor instead of American labor.”
http://www.kmj580.com/pages/landing?blockID=546848
President Obama will nominate Princeton’s Alan Krueger to be chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Krueger designed the "cash for clunkers" program and has also advocated the creation of a 5% national sales tax.
New York mayor Bloomberg has banned all clergy and all prayer from the upcoming 9/11 memorial service.
The Obama administration wants you to think of the government as “your federal family.” In the approach and aftermath of Hurricane Irene, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has repeatedly used the phrase “federal family” when describing the administration’s response to the storm.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/storm/femas-use-of-term-federal-family-for-government-1808751.html
California is pushing through its own “Dream Act” to allow illegal immigrants to obtain state-funded financial aid for college. The California state Senate passed the measure Wednesday on a 22-11 party-line vote, with Democrats in support and Republicans opposed.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/62459.html
An important meta-analysis published in the prestigious British Journal of Psychiatry shows that nearly 10% of mental health problems in women are directly attributable to abortion. "….women with an abortion history have an 81% increased risk of mental health problems and 155% increased risk of suicide.”
Neither President Obama nor Vice President Biden managed to attend the Veterans of Foreign Wars' annual conference this year, a perceived slight that has gravely offended the organization. The VFW national commander, called the absence of Obama and Biden “an insult of the highest magnitude,” and the first time the organization has been so snubbed in its history.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2011/08/31/vfw_livid_over_historic_snub_from_obama
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THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Arnold Ahlert, 8/7
Comedians Penn and Teller have a show call “Bulls**t!” which runs every so often on the Showtime cable network. The purpose of the show is to expose fraudulent ideas or thinking in an amusing way. The one I watched was about organic vegetables and whether or not they were any better than non-organic ones. The show, using both anecdotes and scientific evidence demonstrated pretty convincingly that they’re not. But the anecdotes revealed something profound about the way people think—or more accurately how some people allow feelings to completely over-ride reason.
First it should be noted that most organic food costs considerably more than non-organic food does. In the overwhelming majority of economic transactions, a higher price for something can be assumed to mean one of two things: a higher degree of scarcity, or a superior degree of quality. In terms of the former, the show blew a big hole in the cherished idea that “community” farms were the only ones producing organic vegetables. Turns out Big Agra knows a market when it sees one, and such “evil” corporations are more than willing to cash in. Also, 20 percent of organic food is grown in China, a country famous for their “quality” control.
In terms of the latter, an equally large hole was blown in the idea that organic foods were healthier, or that their methods of production were more “earth-friendly.” Not only that, but it was revealed that if organic farming methods were adopted worldwide, two billion people would starve.
But all of the science paled in entertainment value to the taste test segments of the show. That’s the part where the dedicated “save the earth” crowd was asked to choose between two plates of vegetables or fruit and tell the presenter which one was organic. Time after time, people convinced organic foods were better, chose non-organic foods as their preferred choice in terms of looks and more importantly taste, by an 80-90 percent margin. Yet when asked by the presenter if this new information would cause them to re-consider their buying habits, virtually every one them said they would continue to buy organic products.
But it gets even better. In one hilarious segment, the presenter cut a banana in half, told people one half was organic and asked people which half tasted better. One woman who claimed her entire diet consisted of raw fruit and vegetables, was especially effusive regarding how much better the organic half of the banana tasted. When the truth was revealed, the tester asked the woman if she still thought organic food was superior. She answered yes—and somewhat belatedly admitted such feelings might be “psychological.” In other words, facts be damned, I just like feeling good about what I believe in.
You wanna know why I’m a conservative? Because the above anecdotes represent the essence of progressive thinking.
For progressives, it doesn’t matter that the country’s economy is going to hell in a handbasket, that we’re borrowing forty cents of every dollar we spend, that we’ve just upped the ante on the national debt from $14 trillion-plus to $16 trillion-plus, or that we’re headed for national bankruptcy. It doesn’t matter that our soldiers are fighting wars with one hand tied behind their backs in order to “win the hearts and minds” of people who despise us, or that we’re sitting on top of more energy than any other country on the planet, even as we send billions of dollars to the very same people who despise us. It doesn’t matter that we’re well on our way to making the nuclear family extinct, or that we’re allowing millions of people who snuck into the country to live among us like they’re entitled, or that the housing market was destroyed when government forced banks to lend money to people who would never pay it back.
Those are the facts, and facts be damned. Progressives just like feeling good about what they believe in.
Thus, it completely eludes progressives why companies refuse to hire, or ship jobs overseas at every opportunity. In prog-world, companies exist primarily to re-distribute wealth, not make a profit or turn out a product. In prog-world, every business owner is suspect until proven otherwise, even as thousands of rules and regulations must be substituted for common sense and common decency.
In prog-world, those with a “superior” sense of insight, aka government bureaucrats, academic “intellectuals,” and self-aggrandizing media hacks must over-ride the sensibilities of millions of Americans acting in their own self-interest. Self-interest which is characterized as mean-spirited, thoughtless, cruel or religiously “fanatic.”
Anyone who challenges such wisdom? The prog word du jour is “terrorist.”…..A terrorist is a person who looks at the carnage wrought by the socialist/marxist societies throughout the course of history and doesn’t understand that the only reason such carnage occurred was because the wrong people were in charge.
Who are the “right” people? The folks who fervently believe that one half of the same banana is better than the other one. I’ve got a hot flash for the banana-heads: the “terrorists” have no interest in underwriting your socialist utopia. They have no interest in substituting good feelings for hard truths. And while there may be many things you can force someone to do, one of them isn’t starting a business, or expanding one already in existence. Not that it hasn’t been tried. Every totalitarian society that ever existed yoked men to labor. And every one of them discovered coerced labor produces dismal results.
America’s wealth-producing class is essentially on strike. And they’re more than likely to remain so as long as progressives continue to insist that the stoking of envy, class warfare and guilt is a viable substitute for providing people with incentive. It is not and it never will be. Those are the facts. And all the self-righteous feelings in the world won’t change them……
Here’s two ideas, Mr. President: one, give up the ghost on your tedious and ultimately destructive allegiance to re-distributionist Marxism, masquerading itself as Keynesian stimulus. It hasn’t “created or saved” anything other than government budgets and public sector unions. Those priorities demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that getting re-elected, rather than fixing the economy, is your first priority. Second, show Tim Geithner the door. His credibility, highlighted by his assurance in April that the U.S. would never get a ratings downgrade, is completely gone. He should be completely gone as well. Perhaps he can get a job selling organic vegetables.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/39238
Another good read on healthcare by President Obama’s cousin, a board certified radiologist who opposes Obamacare.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/fling-welfare-state_576909.html?nopager=1
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FROM OTHER COLUMNS
“If you really want to light the fuse of a liberal Democrat, compare Barack Obama's economic performance after 30 months in office with that of Ronald Reagan. It's not at all flattering for Mr. Obama. The two presidents have a lot in common. Both inherited an American economy in collapse. And both applied daring, expensive remedies. Mr. Reagan passed the biggest tax cut ever, combined with an agenda of deregulation, monetary restraint and spending controls. Mr. Obama, of course, has given us a $1 trillion spending stimulus. By the end of the summer of Reagan's third year in office, the economy was soaring. The GDP growth rate was 5% and racing toward 7%, even 8% growth. In 1983 and '84 output was growing so fast the biggest worry was that the economy would 'overheat.' In the summer of 2011 we have an economy limping along at barely 1% growth and by some indications headed toward a 'double-dip' recession. By the end of Reagan's first term, it was Morning in America. Today there is gloomy talk of America in its twilight. My purpose here is not more Reagan idolatry, but to point out an incontrovertible truth: One program for recovery worked, and the other hasn't."
-Stephen Moore
"The Obama State Department has just released its annual terrorism report…..Once again, the Taliban is not included in State's listing of Foreign Terrorist Organizations ... the Taliban whose terrorism and safe haven for al Qaeda are the justification for continuing to have our troops fight and die in Afghanistan. ... [W]hat's the chance that we will be clear about who the enemy is if the administration can't even bring itself to say the Taliban is a terrorist organization? Of course, if the Obama administration were encouraging negotiations with the Taliban (it is) and even anticipating a settlement in which the Taliban were brought into the Afghan government (ditto), the State Department wouldn't want to complicate that by naming the Taliban as a terrorist organization, right? So we are putting our forces in harm's way in the War on Terror to fight an outfit that we won't call 'terrorists' and that we actually see as part of the future Afghan government we are building. Great."
-Andrew C. McCarthy
“…given today's terrible economy, Barack Obama cannot run in 2012 on the theme of hope, as he did in 2008. With his record, he'll have to run on fear -- that is, on convincing voters that Republicans are just too scary to elect.”
-Byron York
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BOOKS
You just know this is going to be a hatchet job: An upcoming movie about Karl Rove before he got to Washington will be called "College Republicans".
http://washingtonscene.thehill.com/in-the-know/36-news/11527-judy-kurtz
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LEFTIST WATCH
A top lawmaker in the Congressional Black Caucus says tea partiers on Capitol Hill would like to see African-Americans hanging from trees and accuses the movement of wishing for a return to the Jim Crow era.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/62396.html#ixzz1WcLrVDBq
Actor George Clooney says President Obama is nicer, more compassionate, and “smarter than almost anyone you know..”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/31/clooney-obama-having-impossible-time-governing/
The United States does not have a short-term debt problem, just a “jobs crisis” that can be solved with greater government stimulus spending, according to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/afl-cio-head-sees-no-short-term-debt-cri
During a Democratic fundraising event in San Francisco late last month, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D- Calif.) declared Republicans are ‘hijacking’ the deficit issue in order to ‘destroy the public space’ and wondered aloud “Do their children breathe air, do they drink water?”
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/pelsoi-gop-wants-destroy-government-wond
A number of states have recently passed voter-ID legislation — among them, Texas, Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island. Two others, Georgia and Indiana, implemented such laws years ago. This trend has the Left hyperventilating. From former president Bill Clinton to NAACP head Benjamin Jealous, irresponsible cries of “Jim Crow” have been uttered in a losing attempt to sell Americans a great lie: that requiring someone to authenticate his or her identity at the polling place by showing a government-issued photo identification is anything like the despicable discrimination that once existed in the South.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/275069/not-race-card-hans-von-spakovsky?page=1
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GLOBALONEY
A solar panel manufacturer abruptly ceased operations on Wednesday and immediately laid off all 1,100 of its workers. The shutdown marks a high-profile collapse of a company that received more than $1.6 billion in federal and private funding in recent years.
http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_18795739?nclick_check=1
President Obama made the company a centerpiece of the Obama administration’s economic stimulus effort. “Solyndra was a poster child of the utopian future envisioned by the Obama administration when oodles of green jobs would relieve the nation’s unemployment rate, generate clean energy, and help the environment.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/31/obamas-solar-stimulus-snafu/
The fantasy that electric cars are right around the corner doesn’t survive even the most cursory reality check……consumers simply won’t pay a $20,000 premium for a vehicle that doesn’t go very far, isn’t very convenient, and runs out of juice as soon as you turn on the air conditioner…..Consider hybrids. After a decade on the market, they’ve captured only 3 per cent of sales……Here’s another catch: Electric cars aren’t necessarily green at all. Electric vehicles require large amounts of electricity – so much that Toronto Hydro chief Anthony Haines says he doesn’t know how he’d get it. “If you connect about 10 per cent of the homes on any given street with an electric car, the electricity system fails,” he said recently.
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THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE
“Is Rick Perry dumb?” “The political graveyard in Texas is buried full of people who have underestimated Rick Perry……We had a U.S. senator who did that and she didn’t even make the run-off. Sooner or later, they’re going to figure out that he’s not just lucky, he’s good.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/62214_Page5.html#ixzz1WQkj1YxZ
Is Barack Obama smart enough to make it as an Air Force pilot?
“Rick Perry Is A Lot Closer To The 2012 GOP Presidential Nomination Than You Think….. Once Labor Day has passed, there will be five debates, in quick succession, on the GOP presidential candidates' calendars. These will be important tests for Perry. If at the end of two or three, it's clear that he's every bit the equal of Mitt Romney on matters of policy and politics, then the Perry juggernaut becomes all but unstoppable. Romney's "I'm the only electable one" argument will vanish and the party's base will nominate one of their own. If Perry stumbles badly in the debates, Romney's campaign gets a second wind…. Knowing that the only things standing between Perry and the GOP nomination are a couple of "good enough" debate performances, the GOP "establishment" faces a choice: they can cross their fingers and hope for the best or mount a sustained negative campaign to destroy Perry with the party's base. It is likely that, after Labor Day, a sustained negative campaign against Perry will be launched.”
The Republican race for the White House is about to accelerate dramatically, with a series of debates and events testing whether Rick Perry has staying power and Mitt Romney can keep focusing on the president instead of his GOP rivals. September also may settle the field for good, with Sarah Palin perhaps deciding at last whether to run. That opening debate "will be most critical" for Perry because "it will be his first time out."
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ARTICLES
“The Left considers itself the undisputed champion of “science,” but there are scads of issues where they take un-scientific points of view. The idea that conservatives are anti-science is self-evident and self-pleasing liberal hogwash. I see no reason why conservatives should even argue the issue on their terms when it’s so clearly offered in bad faith in the first place.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/275903/re-anti-science-smear-jonah-goldberg#
“..the Democratic strategy for the presidential and Congressional elections will be "down and dirty." "It's not going to be a 'Morning in America' campaign; it's going to be a darkness at midnight campaign about the Republicans.”
“Will Clarence and Virginia Thomas succeed in killing Obama’s health-care plan?”
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/29/110829fa_fact_toobin#ixzz1WReB6gBc
The implications of Thomas’s leadership for the Court, and for the country, are profound. Thomas is probably the most conservative Justice to serve on the Court since the nineteen-thirties. More than virtually any of his colleagues, he has a fully wrought judicial philosophy that, if realized, would transform much of American government and society. Thomas’s views both reflect and inspire the Tea Party movement, which his wife has helped lead almost since its inception. The Tea Party is a diffuse operation, and it can be difficult to pin down its stand on any given issue. Still, the Tea Party is unusual among American political movements in its commitment to a specific view of the Constitution—one that accords, with great precision, with Thomas’s own approach. For decades, various branches of the conservative movement have called for a reduction in the size of the federal government, but for the Tea Party, and for Thomas, small government is a constitutional command.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/29/110829fa_fact_toobin#ixzz1WRdwmcGo
“President Obama has enlarged and shaped the missions of agencies across the federal government to his own purposes, in pursuit of the "fundamental change" he promised voters. The resulting agency creep is creeping me out. Totalitarians have a history of recasting representative governments into reflections of their own personal madness. Whether in the case of Communists, Fascists, or modern liberals, day-to-day government is retooled into an incarnation of their dear leader's obsessions and justified by a vain and unsupportable assertion of higher intelligence. This time is no different, as is demonstrated by the multiple cases of agency creep we are witnessing in the executive branch. We have recently been treated to internationalist game wardens, eco-warrior accountants, interfaith astronauts, and politicking professors…..Why is the US Wildlife and Fisheries raiding Gibson Guitar, the SEC examining hydraulic fracturing fluids, NASA seeking to build bridges with Muslims, and the Department of Education attacking Rick Perry?.......The president's now ample comments already indicate that he represents some of us more than others, and the mere fact that these new initiatives would not survive a legislative hearing is a sufficient indicator of their lack of representative merit. Such hyper-personal backroom governance is the antithesis of democracy. It is installment plan dictatorship by way of bureaucracy, one crazy misdirected program at a time.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/09/obamas_creepy_agency_creep.html
Conservatives yearn for a big, clarifying electoral victory in November of 2012, but they’re already winning decisively whenever Americans vote with their feet--or their moving vans. New Census numbers show citizens fleeing by the millions from liberal states and flocking in comparable numbers to bastions of rightwing sentiment. Call it the Great Political Migration. Between 2009 and 2010 the five biggest losers in terms of ''residents lost to other states'' were all prominent redoubts of progressivism: California, New York, Illinois, Michigan and New Jersey. Meanwhile, the five biggest winners in the relocation sweepstakes are all commonly identified as ''red states''
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NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
New bumper stickers: “Honk if I’m paying your healthcare”
http://www.cafepress.com/+honk_if_im_paying_hour_health_care_sticker,370991429
NObama.com
http://shop.cafepress.com/anti-obama
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HUMOR
“Whenever anyone wants to prove that millions of Americans are either dumb or just plain nuts, they mention that 12% of the population is convinced that a badly scarred James Dean is living as a hermit and a 450-pound Elvis Presley is working at a 7/11 outside Nashville. I say that doesn't prove anything beyond wishful thinking. A far more convincing case can be made by pointing out that even now 40% of Americans believe that Barack Obama is doing a bang-up job. In a saner world, it's Obama who would be a hermit or working at a 7/11 in Chicago."
-Burt Prelutsky
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WISE WORDS
"When a business or an individual spends more than it makes, it goes bankrupt. When government does it, it sends you the bill. And when government does it for 40 years, the bill comes in two ways: higher taxes and inflation. Make no mistake about it, inflation is a tax and not by accident."
-Ronald Reagan
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