op ed review 6/17
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
The next time President Obama hits the links, it will be his
100th round of golf since coming to the White House. That’s quite a milestone
in just 3 1/2 years. As it takes him about six hours to drive to the greens and
complete 18 holes, Mr. Obama has spent the equivalent of four months’ worth of
work time golfing. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy has been stuck in a
sand trap.
President Obama’s statement Friday that the private
sector is “doing fine” drew so much ridicule that he was forced to backtrack
hours later. But it’s clear that Obama and many other Democrats see job
problems — and solutions — starting and stopping with government employment. A
quick look at payroll stats shows that’s not the case.
Americans’ wealth plummeted 40
percent from 2007 to 2010, according to the Federal Reserve. That puts Americans roughly on par
with where they were back in 1992.
The U.S.
government posted a budget deficit of $125 billion in May, more than twice the
level registered in the same month last year.
Vice President Biden Says the 'Great' Cities Are in China, Not America.
Two new polls out suggest that the road to reelection is
getting tougher for President Obama. In the most significant, Gallup found that union member support for
the president is getting weaker.
Democratic loyalists are beginning to panic about President Obama’s
re-election prospects, according to this report in the Washington Post.
Romney gains momentum
A prominent conservative lawyer and high-ranking Republican
national committeeman, is helping tea partyers influence the official GOP 2012
platform. Bopp, a former vice chairman of the RNC, is among those tasked with
writing the platform and is using his expertise to advise FreedomWorks, a well-financed
conservative advocacy organization that has taken on the tea party mantle. ...
The Senate Farm Bill should be renamed the Food Stamp bill.
A document released by the Congressional Research Service, shows that a
staggering 78 percent of the $995 billion of the bill's budget authority over
10 years is dedicated to food stamps and nutrition program spending.
The US Department of Justice announced Monday it will sue Florida to stop the
state from purging ineligible voters from its voter rolls.
House Republicans released more documents that expose the
collusion between the health-care industry and the White House that produced
ObamaCare, and what a story of crony capitalism it is. If the trove of emails
proves anything, it's that the Tea Party isn't angry enough.
The New York City Board of Education is defending a
principal who banned the song “God Bless the USA” from being performed at a
kindergarten graduation ceremony reportedly because “it might offend other
cultures.”
Five classes spent months learning the patriotic song, which
skyrocketed in popularity after the 9/11 attacks and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It was to
be the rousing finale of their musical show at the June 20 commencement. The
kids, dressed up for their big day, would wave tiny American flags — which, as
the lyrics proclaim, “still stand for freedom.” But the principal marched in on
a recent rehearsal and ordered a CD playing the anthem to be shut off, staffers
said. She told the teachers to drop the
song from the program.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul broke ranks with his father's
political army this week and endorsed Mitt Romney as the Republican Party
presidential nominee, setting off a firestorm of outrage in the Ron Paul
Universe.
Two studies released Sunday may act like brakes on popular
social-science assertions that gay parents are the same as — or maybe better
than — married mother-father parents. “The empirical claim that no notable
differences exist must go,” University of Texas sociology professor Mark Regnerus said
in his study in Social Science Research. “[C]hildren appear most apt to succeed
well as adults when they spend their entire childhood with their married mother
and father, and especially when the parents remain married to the present day,”
he wrote.
Parents in a small Washington State
community are infuriated after their 11-year-old children were given graphic
descriptions of oral and anal sex during a sex education class led by an
elementary school principal.
Lawmakers are working to block an unprecedented power grab
by the Environmental Protection Agency to use the Clean Water Act (CWA) and
control land alongside ditches, gullies and other ephemeral spots by claiming
the sources are part of navigable waterways. “Never in the history of the CWA has federal
regulation defined ditches and other upland features as waterways…”
Your tax dollars at work:
Senate Republicans are demanding to know why President Obama's acting
budget director permitted health officials to sign a $20 million public
relations contract to promote the glories of Obamacare.
_______________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Investor’s Business Daily
6/11
An incoherent press conference and contradictory explanation
show that if the president thinks the answer to job-killing federal policies is
boosting state and local governments with borrowed money, we're really in
trouble.
'Tone deaf" fails to describe President Obama's
statement at Friday's press conference that "the private sector is doing
fine," when median income is down 10% in three years, family net worth has
plunged 39%, 23 million Americans are out of work and the official unemployment
rate tops 8% for the 40th month in a row, the longest sustained period at that
level since the Great Depression. Mitt Romney's charge that the president is
"out of touch" might be more accurate, but we would prefer
"clueless."
Then came the walk-back at a later press event: "It is
absolutely clear that the economy is not doing fine. That's why I had a press
conference," Obama explained to those who were wondering, and as if the
two statements did not contradict one another. Cognitive dissonance has been
redefined. Lost in the commotion caused by the dueling teleprompters was the
president's suggestion that, aside from job-killing ATMs, the economy was in
the tank because state and local governments weren't big enough and spending
enough.
He opined that the "weaknesses in our economy have to
do with state and local government — oftentimes, cuts initiated by governors or
mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the
federal government and who don't have the same kind of flexibility as the
federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in." In other
words, they can't print money. Yet they really don't have to, since state and
local revenues have gone up 6% in the past two years. What they have to do is
rein in state spending by severing the incestuous relationship between
public-sector unions and the government that feeds them at taxpayer expense.
That's what GOP Gov. Scott Walker did in Wisconsin
and what voters in San Diego (the nation's
eighth largest city) and San Jose
(the 10th largest) tried to do when they overwhelmingly approved big cuts to
city workers' retirement benefits.
The answer is not to borrow money from China and send it to states that have done their
best to become America's Greece.
It's Obama's public-sector political base that's doing just
fine. As the Heritage Foundation notes, federal employment has grown nearly 12%
since the end of 2007, and while the country suffers from 8.2% unemployment,
the jobless rate for government employees is just 4.2%. What Obama proposes now is what the patron saint of cowboy poetry
funding, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D—Nev., was pushing in a $35 billion bailout
for state and local governments last fall. "It's very clear that
private-sector jobs have been doing just fine," Reid argued.
Fact is, America
succeeds when the private sector is unburdened by punitive taxes and
regulations, when the successful are not demonized and when the public sector
is as inconsequential in our lives as possible. It succeeds when the private
sector picks winners and losers, and when the winners are allowed to keep and
reinvest their profits, and the losers are allowed to fail.
It's no coincidence
that the public sector and the unions that support it form a key part of
Obama's dwindling political base. The federal Treasury and taxpayers' wallets,
however, are not a bottomless campaign slush fund.
The private sector
is not fine, Mr. President, largely because the behemoth government you've
built and supported has sucked all the economic oxygen out of the room.
_____________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
"[N]ew federal data show the rate of business startups
continues to fall in this recovery. According to the Census Bureau, the startup
rate, measured as a share of all firms, has plunged to 7% from 9% in 2008 and
from 11% in 2006. The pace, moreover, is almost half the 1980s' peak of 13%. Of
all the negative trends tracking this administration, this may be the most
disturbing…….Based on a ranking of regulations, it's now easier to start a
business in Slovenia, Estonia and Hungary -- three former Iron Curtain
countries -- than in America.
-Investor’s Business Daily
“They’re leaving us swiftly now, dying at the rate of
800 every day, the last of the 16 million men who put on the khaki to march to
the sound of the guns. Not much notice of the day was taken this year.
President Obama forgot to say anything about their heroics and sacrifice. Maybe
he was too busy, flying off to Hollywood
to crack suggestive smutty jokes about Michelle and Ellen DeGeneres, and
collecting campaign cash from a party for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and
Transgendered Leadership Council. Even Michelle, who has lately been talking a
lot about helping military families, was busy raising money in New
York City and Philadelphia.
Homage to sacrificial courage has gone out of fashion in certain circles. The
new World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington,
a favorite of veterans, their families and everyone else, is derided for its
“triumphalism.” One critic likens it to something Mussolini could have built in
Rome. Another
sneers at the idea of preserving “the memory of something that ripped up half
the planet, killed millions of people and took six years to run its course.” Not
so long ago a triumph of American arms was something for everyone to celebrate.
“America
hates losers,” Gen. George S. Patton said in the dreary early days of the war
when nothing was going right, “and that’s why we’re going to win this war.”
Nothing was more important than triumph, and no triumph was more remarkable or
more complete than the triumph of the allies on the five invasion beaches of Normandy.
-Wes Pruden
___________________________________________________________________________
BOOKS
If you're considering reading “Heresy: Ten Lies They Spread
About Christianity” by Michael Coren, you'll be well-suited to consider your
personal biases. If you're a conservative and a Christian (and particularly if
you're a Catholic), this book will go down like sweet, delicious candy. If
you're a liberal and/or an atheist, on the other hand...well, it might feel
rather like something else. The point of Heresy is as bitingly straightforward
as Coren's writing style: the West is replete with innuendos, fabrications, and
outright malicious lies about Christianity and Christians, and it's time to set
the record straight.
__________________________________________________________________________
GLOBALONEY
Hilarious James Delingpole: “An open letter to the Rt Rev Michael
Langrish, Bishop of Exeter, on the subject of his foiled wind farm scheme”
___________________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), “Everybody knows that
government creates jobs.”
Joy Behar, Al Gore's new employee at Current TV, said Tuesday
"I’d like to see (Ronmey’s) house burn, one of his millions of houses
burning down."
The U.S. Military has revoked its approval of a series of
military-themed Bibles, reportedly over trademark issues. Now, the Military
Religious Freedom Foundation is demanding that all remaining versions of the
Bibles be removed from base exchanges — calling them a “threat to national
security.”
____________________________________________________________________________
ELECTION
Job growth has
stalled, the Democrats have been humiliated in Wisconsin, the attorney general
is facing a contempt-of-Congress citation, talks with Pakistan have broken
down, Bill Clinton is contradicting Obama, Mitt Romney is outraising him,
Democrats and Republicans alike are complaining about a “cascade” of
national-security leaks from his administration, and he is now on record as saying
that the “private sector is doing fine.” Could it get any worse? Early Monday morning, Obama learned that it
could. His aides delivered the news to him that his commerce secretary had been
cited for a felony hit-and-run after allegedly crashing his car three times
over the weekend. In one incident, the previously obscure Cabinet officer
apparently rear-ended a Buick, spoke to the car’s occupants, then hit the
vehicle again as he left.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/car-wreck-at-the-white-house/2012/06/11/gJQAl8MpVV_print.html
President Obama is rapidly losing support
among African-American voters in North
Carolina, a new poll out today from the
Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling shows.
Why Obama's coalition is unraveling: In
2008, Barack Obama won by assembling what has been called an “Upstairs
Downstairs” coalition. Wealthy whites and lower-income minority voters brought
Obama first across the finish line. Four years later, Obama’s 2008 coalition
does not appear to be holding. The question is whether it will implode by
Election Day.
“Suddenly, Many
Ways For Romney to
Reach 270 Electoral Votes”
Nearly four years after enthusiastic younger voters poured
into polling booths to help push Barack Obama over the finish line and into the
Oval Office, their hope has turned to fear and pollster John Zogby says that
they are ready to give up on politics.
Panic is setting in among the people who ran the Democratic
Party prior to the miraculous arrival on the scene of Barack Hussein Obama and
the perfect storm of events that propelled him into the White House….
1. Obama has energized his opposition. Despite throwing
everything they could into the game, the turnout effort in Wisconsin was handily beaten by those Tea
Party nobodies and an RNC head who is actually up to the job.
2. Obama has alienated hugely important constituencies. Labor unions, utterly essentially to the
ground game in November, feel betrayed, and are starting to focus more on their
own survival than the success of the Obama re-election campaign. The antiwar
left feels betrayed over Gitmo, drones, rendition, domestic surveillance, and a
host of other issues. They turned out in San
Francisco picketing his fundraisers, and spoke of not
voting. His Bain Capital attacks are verging into a repudiation of
capitalism, so Wall Street and the finance sector are getting alarmed, and the
essential flow of political contributions to Democrats from them is drying up.
3. The economy is a disaster, and Obama is doing all the
wrong things. The administration is reduced to making implausible claims of
spending moderation based on an internet post….
4. Obama is out for himself, and himself only. He has even
thrown national security under the bus, allowing the leaking of critical
information to the press about intelligence operations and cyber-warfare, and
feigning outrage in Friday's presser over the idea that he would do such a
thing….
5. A wave election is shaping up. Democrats could be swept
out of office in Congress, and on down to statehouses, city halls, and dog
pounds. With the left flank threatening to stay home, union funds and
enthusiasm depleted, and Obama offering nothing but negativity, while Tea
Partiers mobilize nationally as never before seen on the GOP side, the
electorate will skew so far right that the GOP could end up as dominant in 2013
as the Democrats were in 2009. It's already leaking into the smarter corners of
the media world: Obama is killing the Democratic Party. The tipping point is
here.
But we should worry about this: “On the sixth floor of a sleek office
building here, more than 150 techies are quietly peeling back the layers of
your life. They know what you read and where you shop, what kind of work you do
and who you count as friends. They also know who your mother voted for in the
last election. The depth and breadth of the Obama campaign’s 2012 digital
operation — from data mining to online organizing — reaches so far beyond
anything politics has ever seen, experts maintain, that it could impact the
outcome of a close presidential election. …..Launched two weeks ago, Obama’s
newest innovation is the much anticipated “Dashboard” , a sophisticated and
highly interactive platform that gives supporters a blueprint for organizing,
and communicating with each other and the campaign. In addition, by harnessing
the growing power of Facebook and other online sources, the campaign is
building what some see as an unprecedented data base to develop highly specific
profiles of potential voters. This allows the campaign to tailor messages
directly to them — depending on factors such as socio-economic level, age and
interests. The data also allows the campaign to micro-target a range of dollar
solicitations online depending on the recipient. In 2008, the campaign was the
first to maximize online giving — raising hundreds of millions of dollars from
small donors. This time, they are constantly experimenting and testing to
expand the donor base.”
___________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
“President Obama: The Biggest Government Spender In World
History”
In Wisconsin: "The media wanted Norma Rae, and got On
the Waterfront, instead."
“The Chinese Kleptocracy Is Like Nothing Ever Seen In Human
History, And This Is How It Works”
Bozell: “You'd think
the largest legal action in American history in defense of religious liberty
would be a major news story. But ABC, CBS and NBC don't judge news events by
their inherent importance as relates to the future of our freedoms. They
deliver the news according to a simple formula: Does it or doesn't it advance
the re-election of Barack Obama?.... This is the worst example of shameless
bias by omission I have seen in the quarter-century history of the Media Research
Center…..This is not an
honest mistake. It was not an editorial oversight by the broadcast networks. It
did not occur too late for the evening deadline. This was a deliberate and
insidious withholding of national news to protect the "Chosen One"
who ABC, CBS and NBC have worked so hard to elect and for whom they are now
abusing their journalistic influence.
____________________________________________________________________________
LATE NITE:
Leno: In New Orleans, the daily
newspaper has eliminated 84 newsroom jobs. But the publisher said those
positions could be reinstated if this whole Internet thing turns out to be a
fad…… The White House softball team played the pro-marijuana lobbyists' team
and lost 25-3. Still no word yet on which side President Obama played for.... Pundits
are saying that President Obama is starting to lose support among his own
party. To give you an idea of how bad it's gotten, today Jimmy Carter compared
him to Jimmy Carter….. Guantanamo
Bay is getting millions
and millions of dollars of upgrades and renovations. In fact, they're not even
calling it a detention camp anymore. It's now a gated community…….Guantanamo Bay is now undergoing millions of
dollars worth of renovations, including a new soccer field, cable TV, and
better housing. Which is kind of ironic. The only people who say they're better
off today than they were four years ago are the inmates at Guantanamo Bay.
____________________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
"The care of
human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only
legitimate object of good government."
-Thomas Jefferson
posted by gary at
11:27 AM
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