op ed review 10/27
The Obama administration has ordered massive reductions in military forces, resulting in many officers who are near retirement being involuntarily separated without retirement or medical benefits. “157 Air Force majors will be terminated prior to retirement, without the opportunity to complete the 20 full years of service necessary to qualify for retirement pay.”
President Obama says America has gotten a "little bit lazy".
President Obama pardons drug dealers.
President Obama told an Occupy group: “You are the reason I ran for office.”
NASCAR Crowd Boos Michelle, then Chris Matthews questions whether the president is deserving of a second term in a brutal interview with MSNBC's Alex Witt:
President Obama's standing among Democrats, and in particular among blue-collar Democrats, appears to have dropped, according to a new national survey.
President Obama should abandon his run for a second term and turn over the reins of the Democratic Party to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, two one-time Democratic pollsters wrote in Monday's Wall Street Journal.
Sen. Patty Murray’s deficit reduction supercommittee has failed. Naturally President Obama blamed Republicans for not being more flexible on tax increases.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/21/us-usa-debt-obama-idUSTRE7AK2KH20111121
The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday downgraded its estimate of the benefits of President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package, saying it may have sustained as few as 700,000 jobs at its peak last year and that over the long run it will actually be a net drag on the economy.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/22/cbo-stimulus-hurts-economy-long-run/
A west Georgia business owner has posted signs on his company's trucks, for all to see: "New Company Policy: We are not hiring until Obama is gone."
http://www.11alive.com/news/article/214228/3/Company-Policy-We-are-not-hiring-until-Obama-is-gone
The American Bar Association has secretly declared a significant number of President Obama’s potential judicial nominees “not qualified,” slowing White House efforts to fill vacant judgeships — and nearly all of the prospects given poor ratings were women or members of a minority group, according to interviews.
A national poll released Tuesday shows surging former House Speaker Newt Gingrich now at the front of the pack, with Mitt Romney running second.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/22/surging-gingrich-claims-top-spot-new-gop-poll/
Rep Nancy Pelosi whines about Catholics having “this conscience thing”
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/11/21/pelosi-whines-about-catholics-having-this-conscience-thing/
Senator John Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz’s stock portfolios show almost perfectly timed pharmaceutical stock trades during the Obamacare debate, which fattened their already enormous personal fortune.
http://biggovernment.com/whall/2011/11/18/exclusive-documents-the-kerrys-curious-stock-trades/
Spain's voters have thrown out their ruling Socialists, giving conservatives their most decisive victory since the nation's return to democracy in 1978. “Unlike, say, California's voters, Spain's voters knew enough to stop digging when the hole got too deep.”
A new Rasmussen poll shows that only 48% of Americans believe Social Security is a good deal for working Americans today. 33% say it is not a good deal. 20% are unsure.
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/46714
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is disappointed with the Obama administration's decision to delay construction of TransCanada Corp.'s $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. The delay is designed not to ruffle environmentalist’s feathers before next year's election. Harper says Canada will start selling more of its energy products to Asia instead.
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2011/November/Canada-Looks-to-Asia-after-Oil-Pipeline-Delay-/
EU officials have decided that producers of bottled water cannot claim that drinking water prevents dehydration. Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the order. “This is stupidity writ large. “The euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are: highly-paid, highly-pensioned officials worrying about the obvious qualities of water and trying to deny us the right to say what is patently true.”
The European Union also demanded the right to dictate national budgets.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/eu-launches-bid-rewrite-eurozone-budgets-032511566.html
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THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Paul Rahe
On Thanksgiving, it is customary that Americans recall to mind the experience of the Pilgrim Fathers. This year, it is especially appropriate that we do so — as we pause, in the midst of an economic maelstrom, to count our remaining blessings and to reflect on the consequences of our election of a President and a Congress intent on “spread[ing] the wealth around.”
We have much to learn from the history of the Plymouth Plantation. For, in their first year in the New World, the Pilgrims conducted an experiment in social engineering akin to what is now contemplated; and, after an abortive attempt at cultivating the land in common, their leaders reflected on the results in a manner that Americans today should find instructive.
William Bradford, Governor of the Plymouth Colony, reports that, at that time, he and his advisers considered “how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery.” And “after much debate of things,” he then adds, they chose to abandon communal property, deciding that “they should set corn every man for his own particular” and assign “to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end.”
The results, he tells us, were gratifying in the extreme, “for it made all hands very industrious” and “much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.” Even “the women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”
Moreover, he observes, “the experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years . . . amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients applauded by some of later times . . . that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing.” In practice, America’s first socialist experiment “was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.”
In practice, “the young men, that were most able and fit for labor and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labors and victuals, clothes etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it.”
Naturally enough, quarrels ensued. “If it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men,” Bradford notes, “yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them. And [it] would have been worse if they had been men of another condition” less given to the fear of God. “Let none object,” he concludes, that “this is men’s corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them.”
The moral is perfectly clear. Self-interest cannot be expunged. Where there is private property and its possession and acquisition are protected and treated with respect, self-interest and jealousy can be deployed against laziness and the desire for that which is not one’s own, and there tends to be plenty as a consequence.
But where one takes from those who join talent with industry to provide for those lacking either or both, where the fruits of one man’s labor are appropriated to benefit another who is less productive, self-interest reinforces laziness, jealousy engenders covetousness, and these combine in a bitter stew to produce both conflict and dearth.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/11/paul-rahe-americas-first-socialist-republic.php
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FROM OTHER COLUMNS
“The first object of government, wrote James Madison in Federalist Paper No. 10, was to protect the American people from deep turkey fryers. Oh, wait. That was Janet Napolitano, who this week had her Department of Homeland Security release a two-minute video highlighting the incredible danger to Homeland Security posed by these kettles of horror. "We recently tested several models of deep fat turkey fryers," a bureaucratic-looking fellow wearing a hardhat tells the camera, "and find that this method of cooking can be very hazardous....Undoubtedly, the American people must be protected from the scourge of misused turkey fryers. If we burn ourselves on Thanksgiving dinner, the terrorists will have won.”
-Ben Shapiro
“(Obamacare )is already speeding the ruin of U.S. health care, increasing costs and reducing competition. It is easily the most unpopular major reform in decades and the most unpopular entitlement expansion ever. ... These are issues involving the nation's core understanding of the citizenry's relationship to its government. Voters should have the chance to include the (Supreme) Court's verdict on the law when they go to the polls in 2012."
-The Wall Street Journal
“An America in which Washington can require the citizenry to do its bidding in all things is no longer a free republic -- though some might argue that freedom and our republican style of government have been crumbling for decades. If Washington can force Americans to buy health care insurance, then Washington can do whatever it wants. Old limits will be gone. A soft tyranny will replace the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. It's impossible to overstate the magnitude of this case."
-Investor's Business Daily
“Herman Cain alleged the sexual harassment accusations against him were set up by the Democratic Party machine. How is that possible? Everyone knows that for Democrats sexual misconduct is not a disqualifier for public office, it's a requirement.”
-Argus Hamilton
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BOOKS
“Core of Conviction: My Story” by Michele Bachmann. Michele Bachmann is one of the most compelling leaders in America. But despite all the magazine covers and cable television stories, most people don’t know who she really is, where she comes from, or what she believes. So she decided to tell her own story and let the reader decide. As you’ll learn in this fascinating memoir, Bachmann wasn’t the type of kid who started dreaming about the White House in elementary school. She grew up in Iowa and Minnesota as a typical midwestern girl, grounded by her family and her faith. She was raised to believe in the American dream: that anyone could succeed if they worked hard and took advantage of this country’s boundless opportunities. She followed her dreams to college and law school, pursued a career as a federal tax attorney, started a successful business with her loving husband, raised five great kids and (over time) twenty-three foster children. By her early forties she was very happy as a full-time mom and homemaker and was a leading education reform advocate in Minnesota. Then she became what she calls “an accidental politician.”
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GLOBALONEY
“Once again, Prince Philip has performed an invaluable national service by tilting at windmills--or to be more precise in this case, wind turbines. In private remarks that found their way into the Press, he apparently said wind turbines were ‘absolutely useless’, completely reliant on subsidies and that those who claimed they were one of the most cost-effective forms of renewable energy believed in ‘fairytales’. The Prince’s outburst may have been impolitic but many will be cheering his words. Indeed, he understated his case. For the Government’s promotion of wind-farms is simply off-the-wall crazy from every conceivable point of view.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2064081/Hurrah-Philip-Wind-power-ruinous-folly-age.html
The same group that brought us the email dump last year from the East Anglia Climate Research Center have done it again. Through a few blogs, they have made public about 5000 more emails from the warming advocates - and the emails show they are more than scientists in this regard - that reveal more attempts to hide bad news, more attempts to discredit critics and skeptics, and more arrogant assumptions that have dubious scientific value.
Global temperatures could be less sensitive to changing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels than previously thought, a study by Oregon State University researchers suggests.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15858603
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LEFTIST WATCH
“If the Occupy L.A. protesters will just leave their tent city at City Hall, officials promise to supply them with offices. And a farm. And a place to live, for the homeless demonstrators who have drifted over to the encampment from skid row. And, er, how about a pony? Would you guys leave if we gave you a pony? Jim Lafferty, an attorney who has been negotiating with the city on behalf of the demonstrators, revealed the details of the city's offer Monday night, to wildly mixed reviews among the Occupy crowd, a leaderless group.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-occupy-20111123,0,2260548.story
“…there is a genuine government conspiracy right now to demonize, scapegoat and shake down the nation's banks. The war against the financial sector is no accident. Rather, it was carefully planned over decades as part of a social crusade to wipe out what the left calls "financial apartheid." Starting in earnest in the 1990s, coat-and-tie radicals gathered in Washington and conspired to use banks to "democratize" credit. They socialized the mortgage industry after declaring traditional underwriting standards "racist." Bankers were ordered to "reinvest" in unprofitable areas, and reallocate capital to people who posed credit risks. When those risky loans went bad, radicals blamed "greedy" bankers and "predatory" lenders. Today, they want to punish bankers and lenders by forcing them to "repair the damages" that they themselves caused. And they don't care if it drives many of them out of business…..This financial disaster didn't just happen. It was engineered. It was designed by people with radical agendas to redistribute credit and, ultimately, your wealth. And they are just getting started.”
http://news.investors.com/Article/592861/201111251803/us-govt-conspires-against-banks.htm
Unleashing forces of hate, making it personal, unions roll out heavy artillery in their all-out war against their declared enemy, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Union devotees will need about 540,200 signatures on petitions in 60 days to trigger a special recall election targeting the besieged rookie governor.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/the_union_war_on_wisconsin_governor_walker.html
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ISLAM
The Palestinian Authority has embarked on a campaign to expunge Jewish history by relabeling Jewish holy sites as Muslim ones. But this battle over the religious identity of holy sites deserves more Western attention than it has gotten, because it’s a perfect example of why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has remained unsolvable for decades: The Jews are willing to share, but the Arabs aren’t.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/11/22/holy-sites-jews-share-arabs/
What hath President Obama wrought in Libya? In a chilling possible foretaste of what awaits Libya, the flag used by Al Qaeda has been flown by the leaders of the revolution there backed by Obama. "Flying Proudly Over the Birthplace of Libya's Revolution, the Flag of Al Qaeda".
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/obamas_new_libya.html
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THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE
“Newt Gingrich was simultaneously a winner and a loser of tonight’s Republican presidential debate. He was a winner because he consistently showed himself as the equal, and at times, better, of Mitt Romney as the candidate best able to take on Barack Obama in next year’s presidential debates. He’s knowledgeable, decisive and nimble, and he delivered the kind of debate performance that has helped him rise to the top of polls in Iowa and nationally. Gingrich, however, lost much of the ground he gained when he argued for making it possible for illegal immigrants to become legal residents. He said he doesn’t believe Americans will be prepared to break up families and expel neighbors who have been living among them for 25 years or more. “I’m prepared to take the heat for saying let’s be humane in enforcing the law,” he said.
http://caucuses.desmoinesregister.com/2011/11/22/debate-newt-gingrich-wins-and-loses/
Newt Gingrich has failed to land any lawmaker endorsements since he’s risen to the top of the polls, a sign that those who worked with the former Speaker in Congress aren’t warming to him. In contrast, Mitt Romney has announced several congressional endorsements in recent days, including Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Rep. Charlie Bass (R-N.H.).
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/195427-lawmakers-not-flocking-to-gingrich
At the Iowa family forum Saturday evening, Newt Gingrich took aim at the Occupy Wall Street movement: The movement "starts with the premise that we all owe them everything," said Gingrich. And the movement's sense of entitlement is a "symptom how much the left has collapsed as a moral system in this country, and why you need to reassert something as simple as saying, 'Go get a job right after you take a bath,'".
Almost immediately upon Sarah Palin's announcement that she would not seek the Republican nomination for president, the phone calls from almost all of the GOP candidates began pouring in. They wanted her endorsement. While Palin has characteristically kept her cards close to her chest, advisers suggest that the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee is likely to endorse before someone emerges as the inevitable nominee -- and that Newt Gingrich appears to be best-positioned to secure her support.
http://caucuses.desmoinesregister.com/2011/11/22/debate-newt-gingrich-wins-and-loses/
You probably have heard this one before: Newt Gingrich walks into his first wife’s hospital room and — as she is either suffering with or dying from cancer — serves her with divorce papers. The story, in various versions, has been around for three decades. But in exclusive interviews Friday with the New Hampshire Sunday News, the former House speaker and one of his daughters, who was present at the time, say that it is not true.
http://www.unionleader.com/article/20111120/NEWS0605/711209963&source=RSS
Michael Medved argues for Mitt Romney: “The notion that ideologically pure conservative candidates can win by disregarding centrists and magically producing previously undiscovered legions of true-believer voters remains a fantasy. It is not a strategy…….Most political battles are won by seizing the center. Anyone who believes otherwise ignores the electoral experience of the last 50 years.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204224604577030482569015376.html
Cain’s foreign policy experience: One of the digs at Ronald Reagan before he was president was that he lacked a keen grasp of foreign policy. The former actor and California governor had never had to grapple with those questions firsthand. Surely, critics argued, he couldn’t match the abilities of people with real-world experience like George H.W. Bush or John Connally. Once in office, Reagan demonstrated that principle and vision could more than make up for inexperience.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/24/cains-foreign-policy/
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ARTICLES
“My disillusionment with Democrats in particular, and liberal thought in general, didn't make me a Republican, but it did make me realize that "progressive" America had somehow become regressive at its best and suicidal at its worst. The Democratic Party had been hijacked by a very weird coalition of domestic entitlement shills and foreign policy appeasers. When the American academy and the political Left came to the defense of indefensible Islamism after the 9/11 attack in 2001, my metamorphosis was complete. To my mind, the American Left, with the assistance of milquetoast Republicans, had become a threat to solvency at home and an enabler of our worst nightmares abroad.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/the_democrats_were_not_for_me.html#ixzz1eM2ozVzY
“The Bell Tolls for Obamacare”. “I am predicting that the Supreme Court will strike down the entire Obamacare law on a 5-4 ruling. That starts with the individual mandate, which the Court will find unconstitutional because it has reiterated several times in recent cases that it will enforce some limit on the Commerce Clause as justification for federal regulation, reserving the role of police power to regulate for the general public good to the states.”
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/11/23/the-bell-tolls-for-obamacare
President Obama left someone out of his Thanksgiving message
http://news.investors.com/Article/592809/201111251822/Obama-Thanksgiving-message-omits-God.htm
Lloyd Marcus: Conservatism 101 for Those Not Paying Attention
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/conservatism_101_for_those_not_paying_attention.html
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NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
The 20 Most Influential Conservative Women in Politics. Rep Cathy McMorris-Rogers (R-WA) is at #5.
http://rightwingnews.com/john-hawkins/the-20-most-influential-conservative-women-in-politics/
Interactive graphic: What countries owe what to whom?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15748696
Must see: Catvertising!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IkOQw96cfyE
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WISE WORDS
"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
-Ayn Rand
"It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors."
-George Washington, Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1789
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