op ed review 4/29
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
Mitt Romney won five more primaries in New
York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut,, Rhode Island and Delaware, and turned a famous Democratic slogan against by President Obama
by telling his opponent that Americans would not be diverted by peripheral
issues this November: ‘It’s still the economy…and we’re not stupid.’
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for
Wednesday shows Mitt Romney earning 49% of the vote, while President Obama attracts
support from 44%.
“President uses $180,000-an-hour Air Force One to fly to
fundraisers” Is the taxpayer funding
Obama's re-election campaign?
“Michelle Obama's $500,000 shopping trip: Huge taxpayer bill
for First Lady's Spanish beach getaway revealed.”
“Falling home prices drag new buyers under water”
U.S.
Homeownership Hits Decade Low
Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum says
he expects to endorse Mitt Romney.
A video of a top EPA official saying the EPA’s “philosophy”
is to “crucify” and “make examples” of oil and gas companies - just as the
Romans crucified random citizens in areas they conquered to ensure obedience.
Roman Catholic leaders are calling for two weeks of public
protests against President Obama's policies as they intensify their argument
that the administration is engaged in a war on religion.
http://times247.com/articles/bishops-call-for-unprecedented-aggressive-attack-against-obama-policies
Supreme Court justices took a dim view of the Obama
administration’s claim that it can stop Arizona
from enforcing immigration laws, telling government lawyers during oral
argument Wednesday that the state appears to want to push federal officials,
not conflict with them. “It seems to me the federal government just doesn’t
want to know who’s here illegally,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said at
one point.
Democrats are already preparing for a potential loss by
saying they’ll try to pass legislation stripping states of the power to enact
their own immigration rules.
Bank of America no longer wants to do business with the
McMillan Group International. Why?
Because of the nature of the business: guns. “McMillan told TheDC that he plans
to move his company’s account to “a more Second Amendment-friendly bank” as
soon as it can be done. He recalls telling the bank executive that he planned
to tell the National Rifle Association, Safari Club International, and his
other gun-loving friends “that Bank of America is not
firearms-industry-friendly.” “You have to do what you must” was the reply. “We
have to assess the risk of doing business with a firearms related industry.”
http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/20/anti-gun-bank-of-america-tells-gun-company-to-find-another-bank/#ixzz1suQhTrpo
http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/20/anti-gun-bank-of-america-tells-gun-company-to-find-another-bank/#ixzz1suQhTrpo
In an email announcing the new AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch
website, the leader of the nation’s largest union organization encourages
members to fight excessive executive salaries. But in doing so, he risks
training fire on his own impressive pay package.
A national atheist organization is demanding that a Rhode Island city remove
a cross from a 91-year-old memorial honoring hometown soldiers who paid the
ultimate sacrifice for their county.
Yet another new survey shows that Republican supporters know
more about politics and political history than Democrats. On eight of 13
questions about politics, Republicans outscored Democrats by an average of 18
percentage points, according to a new Pew survey “Partisan Differences in
Knowledge.” The Pew survey adds to a wave of surveys and studies showing that
GOP-sympathizers are better informed, more intellectually consistent, more
open-minded, more empathetic and more receptive to criticism than their fellow
Americans who support the Democratic Party.
_______________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Dennis Prager 4/24
“Why America is Still the Best Hope”
Does it break some
unwritten rule for a columnist to bring his readers' attention to his own book?
If so, I ask your indulgence. But, after
nearly a thousand columns and twelve years since my last book, I hope readers
will forgive me for noting that today, April 24, 2012, HarperCollins is
publishing the culmination of a lifetime of thinking and years of the most
challenging writing of my life.
The book is
"Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to
Triumph." It is an argument on behalf of the moral superiority -- and
universal applicability -- of American values.
There are three big
ideas, or religions, if you will -- competing for humanity's allegiance:
Leftism, Islamism, and Americanism. I argue that the American value system --
what I call "the American Trinity" -- is the best system ever devised
for making a good society.
The problem is that
most Americans cannot identify these values, and therefore cannot fight on
their behalf. In the meantime, the alternatives, Leftism and Islamism, have
been spreading like proverbial wildfire, largely because their adherents know
exactly what they are fighting for.
I do not fault Americans
for not knowing their distinctive values. No one taught them what they are. And
the problem is not new. Even the so-called "greatest generation," the
World War II generation, had not been systematically taught these values.
I only came to realize
what these values are in the way medical researchers sometimes happen upon a
major discovery -- by chance. One night, as I emptied my pockets, I stared at
the coins I had removed, and, lo and behold, there they were: America's
values. The designers of all of America's
money -- paper and coin -- had been telling me and every other American for
well over a century what America
stood for. And I hadn't noticed:
"Liberty," "In God We Trust," and "E Pluribus Unum" ("From Many, One"). No
other country has proclaimed these three values as its primary values.
"Liberty" means the
individual must be as free as possible. And this is only possible when the
state and government are as small as possible. The freer the state is to do
what it wants, the less free the citizen is to do what he wants. In sum, the
bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.
"In God We
Trust" means that a good society is only possible when the great majority
of its citizens feel morally accountable to a God that is morally judging and a
religion that is morally demanding. If men are to be free, they must control
themselves. And if a moral religion doesn't control them, the state will try
to. If men are not God-fearing, they will be state-fearing. And, as I show
repeatedly in the book, every American founder believed that. Even the
so-called "deists." This is one reason why, as America and Europe
have become more and more secular, the state has become more and more powerful.
"E Pluribus
Unum" means that whatever one's race or ethnicity, everyone who becomes a
citizen of America
is to be regarded first and foremost as a fellow American. This explains why America has
assimilated people of every background more rapidly and successfully than any
other country in the world. Because E Pluribus Unum means that race and
ethnicity don't matter.
The "unum"
also means that all Americans embrace their American identity. Ethical
nationalism -- a nationalism that is rooted in liberty and God-based morality
-- is part of the American values system -- and it is eminently exportable. We
who believe in American values not only want other nations to retain their
national identity, we want them to celebrate it. The more Australian
Australians feel, the better. That so many young Brits no longer strongly identify
as British is one of the reasons for Britain's decline.
These magnificent
American values are applicable to virtually every society in the world. But
Americans cannot export values they do not themselves know or believe in. And
that is why I have devoted so many years to writing "Still the Best
Hope." Because Abraham Lincoln was right when he said that America
is the "last best hope of earth." It was true in 1862. And it is true
today.
http://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2012/04/24/why_america_is_still_the_best_hope/page/full/
_____________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
“But as powerful as the indictment of Barack Obama’s
first four years may be, Mitt Romney must get his message out before the Obama
money machine defines Mr. Romney before he can. This requires dollars in the
millions. That’s why money is the mother’s milk of politics. “If you’ve got a
bad record,” says Haley Barbour, the former governor of Mississippi, former chairman of the
Republican National Committee and present-day raiser of millions for Republican
candidates, “you want to try to disqualify your opponent to make him
unacceptable. And the easiest time to do that this time is when Mitt Romney
doesn’t have much money or access to much money, and the Democrats do.” At the
end of March, the Obama campaign reported $104 million on hand. The Romney
campaign had only $10 million. “Obama is sitting on a stack of money so high a
show dog couldn’t jump over it,” Mr. Barbour says. But in the first two days
after this week’s primaries, one anonymous Romney fund-raiser tells The Hill,
the Capitol Hill daily, “people are coming out of the woodwork [with their
money].” Now everybody can get down to the real business of democracy.
-Wes
Pruden
“Leftists are to be judged only by a promised future, never
by the present or by what has been delivered.”
-Mark Alexander
__________________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
The self-described “Catholic” group protesting Rep. Paul
Ryan’s ... speech at Georgetown
University Thursday has
ties to the Obama administration and left-wing advocacy groups funded by
liberal billionaire George Soros. The protest, which aims to critique Ryan’s
“attacks on the poor” and will feature a 50-foot banner reading “Were You There
When They Crucified The Poor?” is part of a broader effort to portray the
Republican budget as a fundamentally anti-Catholic document heading into the
2012 election season. ...The Soros-funded Tides Foundation has given $65,000 to
the organization since 2007, and has given nearly $200,000 to the affiliated group
Catholics in Alliance
for the Common Good. Another Soros-funded group, the Open Society Institute,
has given $450,000 to Catholics in Alliance
for the Common Good since 2005.
Subprime Scandal: The radicals who caused the mortgage
crisis by shaking down banks for risky loans now demand they forgive those
loans.
Google, which sits atop more data than anybody outside the
NSA, is presenting Bill Ayers as the author of Barack Obama's purported first
autobiography, Dreams from My Father. Follow this link and see it while you
can. If it is gone by the time you read this, a screen shot of the page, and a
close-up on the Dreams entry are provided for posterity. Google knows so much
about us already that privacy activists are alarmed. What data are its
algorithms sifting through to come to the conclusion that yes, the stylistic
parallels to Ayers' other books are formidable
President Obama's election campaign is recruiting an army of
determined community organizers to walk the streets of the nation's cities this
summer and autumn in the footsteps of a young Chicago community organizer named Barack
Obama. Recruits would gather other volunteers, register new voters, run phone
banks and campaign events and knock on millions of doors to track voters'
preferences and encourage supporters of the president's reelection. The
massive, cross-country organization is called Obama Fellowships. It involves
many thousands of unpaid volunteers,
__________________________________________________________________________
GLOBALONEY
“Green
Activists Trash
Park on Earth Day”
“Like many liberal causes that have gone mainstream powered
by partisan media, Earth Day had some very rad- ical beginnings. First, it’s on
April 22, the birthday of the ruthless Russian communist leader Vladimir Lenin.
If you think that’s a coincidence, and it might be, let’s learn more about one
of Earth Day’s founders, Ira Einhorn. Einhorn was a leftist leader who cheered
on the Viet Cong in the 1960s, hoping for a United States defeat. Then he
adopted environmentalism……Einhorn is serving a life sentence in a federal
prison. That’s because he murdered and “composted” his estranged girlfriend…”.
__________________________________________________________________________
ISLAM
Obama embraces Islamist parties in Egypt. “No matter what the source of the delusion,
no political movement that exalts the Koran can peaceably coexist with the
concept of freedom at the root of Western governance…..To anyone who believes
in the Western concept of freedom, Islamism by its nature cannot be legitimate.
The White House needs to answer the question: If Islamism is a legitimate
political movement, should it come to America, and if so, how soon?
What kind of a civilization is this? “Egyptian husbands will soon be legally
allowed to have sex with their dead wives - for up to six hours after their
death. The controversial new law is part of a raft of measures being introduced
by the Islamist-dominated parliament. It will also see the minimum age of
marriage lowered to 14 and the end of women's rights of getting education and
employment.
Iran is
recruiting a hacker army to target the U.S.
power grid, water systems and other vital infrastructure for cyberattack in a
future confrontation with the United
States, security specialists will warn Congress
Thursday.
___________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
“This Week’s exploding cigar: Obama the Dog Eater” Obama's crack campaign stuff has --with the
aid of their media lapdogs-- set up a series of diversions, each of which is
exploding in Obama's face like Wile E. Coyote's Acme exploding cigars. This week, the campaign, aka Acme Cigar Corporation,
decided it was time again to try to paint Mitt Romney as personally dislikeable
by trotting out a 30 year old tale about his putting the family dog in a
carrier on the family station wagon for a trip. Seamus, the dog, protected by a
jerry built wind screen, survived, but the story was touted once again by
Acme and its press buddies in the belief that as history proved, one can with
media helpers knock out Republican candidates on silly externals. Play
the race game (Trayvon), the Women's Rights charade (Rosen and Fluke) and the
animal lovers' heart strings (Seamus), and in that way pick up piece by piece
the blocs of independents they so sorely need to prevail.”
Detailed article on Zimmerman and the problems in the condo
project leading up to the Trayvon Martin incident. He bought a gun because he and his wife were
menaced by a neighborhood pit bull.
Now that Mitt Romney is the presumptive Republican nominee
for president, the names of people he might appoint to the U.S. Supreme Court
are starting to roll off the tongues of conservative activists, lawyers and
former Republican administration aides.
Here are the top ten:
Seven Of The Most Disturbing Quotes From Members Of The
Obama Administration. Here’s an
example: “…animals should be permitted
to bring suit……to prevent violations of current law.”
_____________________________________________________________________________
NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
Your stimulus dollars at work. AFP wasteful spending ad:
Breitbart is here: the video.
Nancy Pelosi's top 10 gaffes
“The hardest job in the world is the best job in the
world. Thank you moms!” This Procter & Gamble commercial honors
everything that all moms do.
New website:
______________________________________________________________________________
LATE NITE:
Leno: It now appears
that as many as a dozen members of the Secret Service were involved in that
Colombian prostitution scandal. Now six of the agents have been reassigned. The
other six are now party planners for the GSA…….Have you been watching this John
Edwards trial? I don't know what kind of president John Edwards would have
been, but I'm pretty sure he would have gotten along really well with the
Secret Service…..
____________________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
"Charity is no
part of the legislative duty of the government."
posted by gary at
7:29 PM
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