op ed review 10/30
Businessman Herman Cain is now atop the field of Republican White House hopefuls, squeaking past former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the latest CBS News/New York Times poll. Cain garnered 25 percent support of Republican primary voters in the poll released on Tuesday, compared to Romney's 21 percent.
“President Obama sought to revive his reputation as the champion of America's poor on Monday, before heading to Hollywood to collect crucial re-election donations from millionaire supporters.”
So who has President Obama named as his new senior campaign adviser: a longtime Wall Street lobbyist.
This is worrisome, but consider the source: A new TIME magazine poll shows Hilary Clinton defeating the major Republican candidates, were she somehow to become the 2012 Democratic nominee.
The Occupy Wall Street organizers have invited support from Muslim groups, and on Friday, their camp in New York City played host to an Islamic group with ties to Islamist anti-Semites, radicals and terrorists. “As required by Islamic rules, the women sat in the back and wore head coverings, as the prayer leader cried out “Allahu Akbar.”
http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/23/islamic-group-joins-with-occupy-wall-street/
One of the loudest demands by the Occupy Wall Street protesters is for forgiveness of the nearly $1 trillion worth of student loans, but Americans strongly oppose forgiving that debt. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 21% of American Adults think the federal government should forgive the nearly $1 trillion in student loans it made or guaranteed.
Stimulus money for college students: President Obama has a plan to put more money in the pockets of some of the nation’s 36 million student loan recipients. Example: If Suzy Creamcheese gets into George Washington University and borrows from the government $212,000 to obtain an undergraduate degree, her repayment schedule will be based on what she earns. If Suzy then takes a job as a city social worker earning $25,000, her payments would be limited to $1,411 a year and she would only have to pay back $28,220 of the original $212,000 loan.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/26/obama-taps-taxpayers-for-student-stimulus/#ixzz1bzbdcLnX
The former New York office for ACORN, the disbanded community activist group, is playing a key role in the self-proclaimed “leaderless” Occupy Wall Street movement, organizing “guerrilla” protest events and hiring door-to-door canvassers to collect money under the banner of various causes while spending it on protest-related activities, sources tell FoxNews.com.
A U.S. Border Patrol agent has been sentenced to two years in prison for improperly lifting the arms of a 15-year-old drug smuggling suspect while handcuffed — in what the Justice Department called a deprivation of the smuggler’s “constitutional right to be free from the use of unreasonable force.” The suspect carried a pack containing 150 lb of marijuana, but he was given immunity to testify against the border patrol agent.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/25/border-agent-jaile-arrest-teen-drug-smuggler/
President Obama’s decision to pull all U.S. forces out of Iraq by Dec. 31 is an “absolute disaster” that puts the burgeoning Arab democracy at risk of an Iranian “strangling,” said an architect of the 2007 troop surge that turned around a losing war
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/23/key-general-calls-iraq-pullout-plan-a-disaster/
One in eight of the UK rioters who were arrested in August were on disability benefits.
And they were from 44 different countries.
California is a great place to be a state employee. Jean Keller earned $269,810 last year working as a nurse at a men’s prison by tripling her regular pay with overtime hours, a prison doctor cashed out more than $590,000 of vacation time when he retired, a computer specialist got $61,905 in overtime on top of his $71,560 salary, a psychiatrist received $97,700 in extra-duty pay and the head of the state gambling commission banked $169,623 in unused holiday pay.
The total of U.S. state debt, including pension liabilities, could surpass $4 trillion, with California owing the most and Vermont owing the least.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/45019599
The Second Amendment has rebounded in the last half-century as support doubled since 1959, the Gallup poll reported. Nearly 3 out of every 4 Americans now opposes a ban on handguns — only 1 in four are for banning possession of a handgun. In 1959, 60% of Americans favored banning handguns — and only 36% opposed such an affront to the Second Amendment.
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/45111
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THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Doug MacKinnon 10/24
As the Republican primary process continues, there is no doubt that the establishment GOP is winning and the Tea Party is losing. Worse, as we accelerate toward the first votes finally being cast, many who believe in the simple and powerful message of the movement -- myself included - believe it now looks more and more foolish and naïve as it bounces from one flavor-of-the-month candidate to another.
First the Tea Party lined up behind Michele Bachmann. Whoops. Maybe not so fast. Next the Tea Party liked Rick Perry. Oh, oh. He didn’t do so well in the debates to date so now the Tea Party has moved on to Herman Cain. Really? So much for doing solid research on the candidates and then supporting one based on principle.
As the Tea Party pin-balls from candidate to candidate the establishment types in Washington, DC who have bet their insider futures on Mitt Romney are not only pointing fingers and saying “We told you the Tea Party was amateur hour,” but are looking to bury the movement…forever.
Make no mistake, if Mitt Romney secures the nomination, the Tea Party almost assuredly suffers a mortal wound. As Newt Gingrich just said, while Romney is an exceptionally nice person and a very hard worker, he is also a Rockefeller Republican. As their standard bearer going into battle with Barack Obama next fall, do Republican primary voters really want the person who drew up the blueprint for Obama-care?
Worse, do Republican primary voters really want the person who the out-of-control job and freedom killing Obama EPA looked to for some of its most draconian ideas? As reported in the conservative blogs Moonbattery and HOTAIR; “the Romney administration in 2005 essentially did what Barack Obama’s EPA wants to do now. He imposed CO2 emission caps — the “toughest in the nation” — in an effort to curtail traditional energy production.
“Not only did Romney impose these costly new regulations, he then imposed price caps to keep power companies from passing the cost along to the consumer. As we have seen in Romney-Care, regulation and price controls eventually drive businesses into bankruptcy or relocation.”
More chilling than that bit of socialist nanny-state big government interference is who Romney looked to for advice regarding the plan. As reported by these two conservative sites, it was none other than Obama’s Chief “science” adviser, John Holdren.
Are you kidding me? Is anyone in the GOP paying attention to what is going on here? Is the Republican establishment so desperate to hold on to its power that it will continually look the other way as a chameleon-like candidate not only dreams up the ideas used by far-left Obama White House, but praises one of the people most reviled by the conservative movement?.....
“In 2004, Governor Romney announced the Massachusetts Climate Protection Plan, which laid out a coordinated statewide response to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the climate.” You can’t make this up. Something that sounds as if it was drafted in the bowels of the Obama EPA was actually part of a memo released with great fan-fare by Governor Romney on December 7, 2005.
As the Tea Party embarrassingly hops from candidate to candidate, the GOP establishment is excitingly getting ready to crown a candidate who serves as the idea-lab for the Obama White House.
Wow. A plot so unbelievable any fiction editor would reject it out of hand, is in reality happening right before our eyes. Good luck with that.
http://townhall.com/columnists/douglasmackinnon/2011/10/24/the_idea-lab_for_obama/page/full/
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FROM OTHER COLUMNS
“The longer a person is unemployed, the harder it is for him to find a job, as job skills erode and potential employers question whether it might be more prudent to hire someone else without big gaps in their work history. Mr. Obama's solution involves having the federal government declare the long-term unemployed a legally protected class. His American Jobs Act would subject businesses to frivolous lawsuits if they decide against hiring someone who has been jobless for an extended time. Doing so would serve as one more disincentive for companies to hire or hold interviews for open positions, making it even harder for the jobless to find work. ... Ultimately, Americans will not find their pocketbooks thickening so long as Uncle Sam strangles entrepreneurs with regulatory red tape. Companies need to have certainty that they will be able to keep the proceeds of their investments in the future before they will start hiring again and pay their employees more."
-The Washington Times
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BOOKS
“The Secret Life of Barack Hussein Obama” by Mondo Frazier. Frazier takes what he calls The Obama Narrative™, the crowd-pleasing myths perpetrated by Team Obama and the mainstream media to market and sell their Messianic savior, and fearlessly rips it to shreds.
Says Frazier in this article, “There are so many things the public does not know about the man who sits in the White House…..In my search to find out the answers I embarked on a journey that has lasted three years and counting -- and nearly made my head explode.” One example: “In the summer of 1981, 20-year-old Barack Obama embarked on a two-week trip to Pakistan…….Obama clearly gave the impression in (his book) that he was this penniless, somewhat confused young man, in search of an identity. ….Yet he somehow managed to find the cash to finance a two-week trip to Pakistan…..once there he somehow financed two weeks in the Lahore Hilton. In addition, Obama was introduced to the future prime minister and president of Pakistan -- and went bird-hunting with him……who arranged all of this?....”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/who_is_barack_obama.html
“Red Army: The Radical Network That Must Be Defeated to Save America” by Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott. “For decades, a radical socialist movement has been quietly infiltrating the major institutions of American power: our schools, our military, our economy, our media, and Congress itself. This progressive Red Army is an organized network consisting of numerous specialized groups that target specific policy areas while cooperating more broadly in a concerted decades-long campaign to transform America. Now, for the first time, investigative reporters Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott not only expose the key players, organizations, and relationships in this radical network but chart their spheres of influence, their nefarious objectives, their role in shaping Barack Obama’s agenda, and their long-term plans for the nation.’
http://www.amazon.com/Red-Army-Radical-Network-Defeated/dp/0062069241/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_2
Thomas Sowell reviews “Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department”. “This is an enormously eye-opening book which makes painfully clear that, where racial issues are concerned, the Department of Justice has become the Department of Payback. A post-racial society is the last thing that Holder and Obama are pursuing.”
http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2011/10/11/reverse_racism
“This Is Herman Cain!: My Journey to the White House” “Herman Cain’s rise is the embodiment of the American dream. His parents, Luther and Lenora Cain, made a living the only way black people could in the ’40s and ’50s. Luther held down three jobs, including being a chauffeur; Lenora cleaned houses. They had two big dreams: to buy a house and to see their sons graduate from college. With dedication and hard work, they made both these dreams come true. In this thrilling memoir, Herman Cain describes his past and present . . . and the future he is determined to create, a future that will put our country back on track. His message resonates because he describes the American reality, and his down-to-earth personal tale of hope and hard work is both unforgettable and inspirational.”
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ISLAM
Victorious rebels in Libya won’t need to martyr themselves to win an adoring harem of virgins -- one of their governing council’s first orders of business was lifting restrictions on men having multiple wives. “
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/marry_men_of_libya_Woe5EY1gz0bhNgMluFEVIP
“How is it that intelligent people cannot see the lesson of history when Sharia enters a non-Islamic society, step by step?”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/sharia_uber_alles_versus_western_justice.html
Egypt's state media says a Cairo court has sentenced a man to three years in prison for postings on Facebook deemed to be inciting sectarianism and in contempt of Islam.
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GLOBALONEY
“Earliest New York City snow predicted since the Civil War, Snow already falling in Massachusetts, Parts of Connecticut could get a foot of snow this weekend, Since record keeping began NYC has never had an inch of snow in October.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2054719/North-east-braces-October-snow-inches-predicted-areas.html#ixzz1c8NE09QR
The White House’s green technology revolution is sitting in an auto lot in Butler, Pa., and nobody is buying. “Nobody comes in to ask, nobody comes in to look … The American people are smarter than the government — they’re not buying that car,” said Republican Rep. Mike Kelly, who owns the auto lot where one of General Motors’ combined electric-and-gasoline powered Volt autos sits unwanted, unsold and unused.
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LEFTIST WATCH
“President Robespierre” Doug Schoen, the longtime professional pollster and Democrat, an adviser to the Clintons, took the moment to send his polltakers down into the Occupy Wall Street camp in New York's Zuccotti Park. Here's his piece in the Wall Street Journal. "The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies……Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn't represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.” Coming in at about the same time was a poll taken of one hundred of the Occupiers by New York Magazine which found an unnamed number wanted to "burn it [Wall Street] down" and that 34 percent believed the United States government was "no better than, say, Al Qaeda." Must read:
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/10/25/president-robespierre/print
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THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE
Sobering read: : “Why President Obama and His Advisers Are Absolutely Convinced He Will Be Re-elected In 2012”
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/10/28/why-president-obama-and-his-advisers-are-absolutely-convinced-will-be-reelected/#ixzz1c7WkuEMw
On the other hand: “Experts begin to doubt Obama’s re-electability”
http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/28/experts-begin-to-doubt-obamas-re-electability/
“Pretending that Romney is the real frontrunner, the pundits and the press contend that the 2012 GOP presidential contest will be a re-run of the GOP 2008 race: the establishmentarian who is next in line will win. This is a prejudice masquerading as an insight. Yes, that’s been the Republican pattern, arguably, since 1968. (but) the conventional analysis ignores a giant fact: A new force swept into American politics in 2009 and its influence continues to climb…. So why do the analysts act as if this new force is absent from presidential politics?......This is the power of the new force. It can grab a third-tier candidate by his lapels and put him on top. And the new force is seeking the most electable radical it can find, not the pol patiently waiting in the wings. They want a 21st century reformer who will take on the mid-20th century entitlement state, not a tinkerer trying to keep alive a consensus formed before many of them could vote. That new force is the Tea Party. It is challenging and changing the rules of how the GOP establishment picks it presidential nominee.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardminiter/2011/10/24/why-herman-cain-has-the-potential-to-win/2/
Ben Shapiro: “The stars are aligned for Mitt Romney. In every Republican debate, he has been left relatively untouched by the moderators and by every candidate save Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. He continues to ride high in the national polling, holding steady at near one quarter of the likely Republican primary voters. The Republican Party bigwigs, including key funders on Wall Street, are throwing their support to him. There's only one problem:….He'll lose the general election for a very simple reason: Nobody in the conservative base is excited about him. While the so-called GOP opinion leaders wax on about how super-electable he is, they fail to recognize that it is precisely that logic that gave us the unelectable John McCain. Turnout wins elections these days, not appeals to the independent voter.
http://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2011/10/05/the_tea_party_vs_the_establishment
In a stinging comparison that is sure to leave a mark, on Sunday’s This Week With Christiane Amanpour, George Will said the rise of Herman Cain had a lot to do with Republicans coming to the realization that Mitt Romney is their Michael Dukakis. “A technocratic Massachusetts governor running on competence, not ideology,” Will observed.
James Lewis: Herman Cain has real roots, not ghostwritten, made-up, far-left fantasies. You can feel Cain's realness in your bones. You don't even have to look at his spectacular resume. He's a guy we could be proud of at the helm of state. His very being and achievements are an answer to all the left's phony moaning about this country. What the left hates about this country is its spectacular success, not its times of failure. We'll have plenty of opportunity to debate Cain's political positions, his 9-9-9 proposal (it's not a plan yet, certainly not legislation, but it's a clear signal of his political philosophy, which is what we can look for at this point in the race). We don't know Cain well enough yet to have a complete sense of the man. We'll find out more. In my mind, in case you didn't notice, he's way ahead of the pack.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/cain_is_the_real_thing.html
The presidential election next year is important, Newt Gingrich said, real important. “2012 is the most important election in this country since 1860,” Gingrich said. “Next year we will decide whether the disastrous policies of class warfare, bureaucratic socialism, radical judges and bureaucrats who treat as subjects rather than citizens will be continued or not…”…. Simply put, Gingrich was on fire. The crowd interrupted his address with at least two standing ovations and storms of large applause. “We will have a dramatically better Christmas in 2012 if it is the Goodbye Obama Christmas,” he said in one big-applause line.
Parade magazine. “Straight talk from Gov Perry.”
http://www.parade.com/news/2011/10/23-rick-perry-hates-to-lose.html
Steve Forbes has endorsed Rick Perry for president.
http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/10/steve-forbes-makes-his-endorse.html
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ARTICLES
Juan Williams: It has taken twenty years on the Supreme Court for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to strip away the political filth that nearly buried him. In 1991 his left-wing critics created a public image of Thomas as a monster. They trashed him as an Uncle Tom, Anita Hill’s harasser and the vote on the Supreme Court that would end legal abortion in America. Today Thomas is one of the two most powerful black men in government, second only to President Obama. And at 63, relatively young compared to his brethren on the court, he is established among the elite of American conservative legal thinkers with the possibility of another 20 years on the court ahead of him. He is already the nation’s leading black conservative. Thomas is also the best-known Justice on the entire Supreme Court, according to polls. His autobiography was a national best seller. A 2006 poll found that nearly half of the nation, 48 percent, now views him favorably as compared to 36 percent who have an unfavorable opinion. And he operates in a world where Gallup polling finds more black Americans self-identify as conservatives, 29 percent, than liberal, 24 percent. Fifty years after the heart of the civil rights movement the bulk of black America, 43 percent, labels itself as moderate. But for all those trends shifting his way, Justice Thomas remains a man to be scorned by the nation’s liberals. The same left-wing that gave license to assaulting a bright but Republican and conservative young black man’s reputation 20 years ago still dominates the black political, media and civil rights establishment. And they still hate Clarence Thomas
In the age of Obama, we see articles like this: “America needs to manage its decline”
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/0c73f10e-f8aa-11e0-ad8f-00144feab49a.html#axzz1bzdIJ43c
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NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
Great video courtesy of Bill Whittle and Iowahawk: “Eat the rich”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=661pi6K-8WQ
12 Awesome Things You Never Knew About Herman Cain
More Iowahawk, skewering moderate republicans. This man is a genius at satire.
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/10/together-i-shall-ride-you-to-victory.html
RNC web video, assailing President Barack Obama’s trip to the West Coast. Titled “His Job,” the 30-second spot takes aim at the president saying he cares more about his own future than the American people. “For every million dollars Obama raises…6,400,000,000 dollars are added to our national debt,”
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LATE NITE:
Leno: According to USA Today, 74 percent of Americans plan to hand out candy this Halloween. Although President Obama thinks it should be just the top 1 percent…….We had President Obama on the show last night. I think the president enjoys visiting NBC because we're the only place that has lower numbers than he does.
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WISE WORDS
"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it."
-Benjamin Franklin
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