op ed review 7/22
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
In 2005, Congress closed loopholes in welfare legislation
that qualified bed rest, personal care activities, massage, exercise,
journaling, and other activities as "work," over the objections of
then-Sen. Obama. Now, Obama has walked back the 2005 legislation, using his
Department of Health and Human Services to unilaterally waive those work
requirements Activities such as motivational reading, housework, weight loss
and journaling will now count as "work" for the purposes of
collecting welfare..
President Obama has weakened the
economy through an unprecedented rash of high-cost regulations that cater to
his “environmental or union allies” but kill jobs, according to a new report
from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“For the First Time, Canadians Now Richer Than
Americans.” The average Canadian
household is worth about $40,000 more than their American counterparts. Yes, you read that right.
Another solar plant closes:
“The Amonix solar manufacturing plant in North Las Vegas, heavily financed under an
Obama administration energy initiative, has closed its 214,000-square-foot
facility 14 months after it opened.”
President Obama told a Cincinnati
audience on Monday that he does not make the same mistake more than once.
Minutes later, he told the same crowd he would continue spending federal
dollars on green energy.
Energy Dept. 'Unable to Locate' $500,000 in Equipment Bought
With Stimulus Money.
The Obama administration is partnering with the Mexican
government to boost food stamp participation among “Mexican nationals and
migrant communities in America.”
President Obama told supporters in Roanoke, Virginia, “If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build
that. Somebody else made that happen.” If you own a business, President Obama has a message for you.
“The president’s “you didn’t build that” statement has not only
framed the race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney exactly as Romney needed,
it has transformed Romney’s campaign….I’ve now watched Romney’s speeches
yesterday and today centering on the remark and its meaning, and what I’m
seeing is a Mitt Romney come alive—or at least, a Romney new to me.”
“Romney Knocks It Out of the Park. By all accounts, Mitt
Romney was sensational today in Pennsylvania.
His theme was Barack Obama’s revelatory “you didn’t build that” speech….Twitter
was burning up with commentary from those who were watching Romney’s speech
live. The commentary was unanimously euphoric. Romney spoke without
teleprompter or notes, something Obama rarely does without getting into
trouble. He was, everyone agreed, passionate and articulate. It seems that
Obama’s attack on entrepreneurs and job creators, and his baldly stated
conviction that everyone owes everything to government, was the spark that
Romney needed…..the NRCC has released this very good ad, which blasts Obama’s
“you didn’t build that” oration and is titled “He Doesn’t Get It.”
“Now, what will you
do, Mr. President? The Obama campaign’s attempt to portray Mitt Romney as the
villainous Bane from “The Dark Knight Rises” appears to be a big flop. And the
problem for Obama is, he really doesn’t have a Plan B. The latest New York
TimesCBS poll shows the $100 million worth of attack ads against Romney’s Bain
Capital tenure haven’t moved many voters. And that was before Obama insulted
voters by telling them they never built a business on their own. There’s an air
of desperation in the Obama camp right now.”
“Romney edges ahead in latest national poll, most blame Obama for economic downturn “ Charles Krauthammer: "You Didn't Build It Should Be Hung Around Obama Until End Of His Presidency"
The Obama campaign
is teaming up with Microsoft and Facebook to make sure the youth of America, who
voted in droves for Obama in 2008, don’t forget to vote in 2012. Facebook
approached Microsoft about a new app that would enable Washington state voters to register via
Facebook, and Microsoft eagerly agreed.
If there's an American tragedy, within hours you can always
expect our corrupt media to feast on the corpses of the victims in order to
push their left-wing political agenda. As we saw with the horrifying Tucson murders a couple
of years ago, where within an hour the media was blaming Sarah Palin for the
killings, these are awful people who can never stop proving how awful they are.
Case in point, CNN's Piers Morgan who is already exploiting 12 deaths and
dozens injured to push for gun control:
On Wednesday, Denver’s
Catholic community will officially welcome Samuel Aquila as its new archbishop.
Aquila vows to uphold Catholic values on social issues – like opposing civil
unions here in Colorado.
After a confidential
two-year review, the Boy Scouts of America on Tuesday emphatically reaffirmed
its policy of excluding gays, ruling out any changes despite relentless protest
campaigns by some critics.
University
of Texas sociologist Mark
Regnerus published a study that found children of homosexual parents have
significantly more social and mental health problems than children of
heterosexual parents. Now he is being investigated by the University of Texas
for “scientific misconduct” after numerous complaints from gay activist groups.
Lawmakers were livid to discover that the United States’ Olympic team uniforms were made
in China.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) even suggested “they should take
all the uniforms, put them in a big pile and burn them and start all over
again.” The company who designed the uniforms, Ralph Lauren, has received less
scrutiny. Few outlets have noted that Ralph Lauren himself is a prominent
contributor to President Obama and the Democratic Party.
A new Mason-Dixon poll of Florida
voters found an overwhelming majority (82%) of Floridians support laws that
require voters to present Photo IDs at the polls and a majority (54%),
including 60% of Hispanics, favor Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s plans to purge
non-citizens from the Sunshine
State's voter rolls.
Investigators for an Arizona sheriff's volunteer posse have
declared that President Barack Obama's birth certificate is definitely
fraudulent.
With 34 Republican senators now opposing a United Nations
effort to regulate international waters, the Law of the Sea treaty effectively
has no way forward in the U.S. Senate.
_______________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Investor’s Business Daily
7/17/12
Obama's Socialist Mantra: Risk Takers Are Free Riders
In his war on American exceptionalism, President Obama has
turned his sights on exceptional Americans. If you've built a successful
business, it wasn't your dream or your sweat — somebody else made it happen.
The unbridled disdain President Obama has for the
entrepreneurs who work hard and risk everything was made plain when he told
supporters in Roanoke, Va.: "If you've got a business — you
didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."
This was stunning news and a colossal slap in the face to
the millions of small-business owners who get up every day and by the sweat of
their brow and the drive of their ambition still pursue the American dream in
spite of the obstacles and hurdles this administration has put in front of
them.
In Obama's collectivist world view, we are all ants on a
socialist ant farm. We are sheep being led by a government shepherd. Wealth, as
we now know, is not to be created but to be redistributed in the manner of the
Marxist slogan — to each according to his need and from each according to his
ability. Your success, Obama says, is not your own. There "was a great
teacher somewhere in your life," he tells us, and that somebody
"invested in roads and bridges."
Is it a coincidence that virtually the only people President
Obama gives credit to for anything are teacher and construction unions? And,
with apologies to Al Gore, we are told: "Government research created the
Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet." So
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, the founders of Google, Facebook and Twitter, are all
parasitic pretenders.
Without government, there would have been no Mac computer or
iPad? Michelangelo didn't paint the Sistine Chapel, you know. Credit must be
given to the folks who built the scaffolding and the inventor of paint.
Of course, this is the president who, in a speech delivered
at a high school in Osawatomie, Kan., last December, argued while a limited
government that preserves free markets "speaks to our rugged
individualism," such a system "doesn't work" and "has never
worked" and that Americans must look to a more activist government that
taxes more, spends more and regulates more.
Free-market capitalism and limited government took us from a
colonial backwater to an economic and military superpower that could defeat
Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the Soviet
Union and then put men on the moon simply because we wanted to. Now
we have an administration that says the American people are helpless without it
while it outsources space travel to the Russians.
Forget Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell, the
Wright Brothers and the risk-taking dreamers still among us. They have a harder
time these days, shouldering the highest tax and regulatory burdens in the
world and beset by bureaucrats, regulators and environmentalists. President
Obama, the community organizer who never ran a business or met a payroll, wants
to increase their energy and health insurance costs. The president's plan to
raise taxes on earnings above $200,000 ($250,000 for joint filers) would hit
1.2 million small-business employers who pay their taxes through the individual
income tax.
This condemnation of rugged individualism and the
entrepreneurial spirit comes from a leader who has been dubbed the "food
stamp president" and who has done more to increase dependence on
government than any other. Let us see your college transcripts, Mr. President.
And who helped you on your way besides Saul Alinsky and Bill Ayers?
If risk-takers succeed, Mr. President, they do so in spite
of government, not because of it. You want to take credit for everything and
responsibility for nothing. Look at the wreckage of your policies, sir, and
take the blame instead.
_____________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
"The Obama
theory of entrepreneurship is that behind every successful businessman, there
is a successful government. Everyone is helpless without the state, the great
protector, builder, and innovator. Everything is ultimately a collective
enterprise. Individual initiative is only an ingredient in the more important
work when 'we do things together.'"
-Rich Lowry
"[Obama's]
apologists will say his remarks were taken out of context, but I'm afraid
that's not the case. Though no one can deny Obama's assertion that all
successful people have benefited from others -- teachers and other mentors --
the thrust of his remarks was directed at crediting government with having an
indispensable role in the success of businesses. ... He referred wistfully to
the Clinton
years as a period of unbridled economic growth -- and he attributed that growth
to tax increases on the 'wealthy.' He said that during those years, 'we created
a lot of millionaires.' We? Created? In other words, government created a lot
of millionaires; it wasn't their ingenuity, and it certainly wasn't their 'hard
work'.... This is Obama's orientation. This is his mindset."
-David Limbaugh
"Under Obama's formulation ... private success
is nonexistent. There is only the glory of the state, as expressed through
collective action. The ditch digger and social worker share equally in the
success of the small-business owner and the tycoon. Therefore, they deserve an
equal, or at least much larger, share of the fruits of the entrepreneurs'
labor. This is the thinking of a man who views businesses as entities to be milked
for the good of the collective."
-New Hampshire
Union Leader
"Obama wants you to know that if you're rich and
successful, it's not because you're smart and hard working, it's because
government helped you out. So why isn't government helping me be rich? What is
it with Obama and his lazy stupid government making so few people rich these
days? I pay my taxes; make me rich, Obama. I'm waiting. Oh! I got something
from Obama in the mail! I bet it's about making me rich... No. It's just food
stamps."
-Frank J. Fleming
“The Republican-led,
Clinton-era welfare reform of the mid-1990s freed almost four million adults
and three million children from the welfare plantation, halving welfare
caseloads and childhood hunger while slowing out-of-wedlock childbirths. With
this most recent welfare policy change, however, those days are effectively
over. Witness now the return of the "Good Old Days," where virtually
anyone is eligible for welfare handouts from an unlimited funding source, the
U.S. Treasury (read: your tax dollars). Why would the president do this? To
make more people dependent on government, of course. Those dependents are
thereby more likely to elect those who see government as the solution to every
problem and who eschew individual freedom and initiative. Practically, this new
edict means virtually anything amounts to "work" for the purposes of
meeting able-bodied-work prerequisites under the program -- including bed rest
and hula dancing (we wish we were kidding) -- thus entitling the qualifying
recipient to endless welfare largesse.”
-Mark Alexander
"During a recent speech, Vice President Joe
Biden said 'I believe this election will come down to character, conviction and
vision.' I agree. Biden is a 'character,' Holder just got 'convicted' by the
House, and none of them have the 'vision' to see what's about to happen to them
in November."
-Fred Thompson
___________________________________________________________________________
GLOBALONEY
According to multiple GM
executives “there is
little or no profit being made on each Volt” built at a present cost of around $40,000.
Furthermore, the $700 million of development that went into the car has yet to
be recouped.
____________________________________________________________________________
BOOKS
Important article, important book: David Gelernter, the Yale professor of
computer science, and target of the Unabomber, has an alarming yet cautiously
exuberant book out, “America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture
(and Ushered In the Obamacrats)” He
tells us where we are and how and why we got here, and gives readers a pep
talk, encouraging them to be the light (not “lite”) we need. He talks about it
all with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean
Lopez. “American culture had its throat
slit and bled to death at our feet…..The blood is only metaphorical, but to the
40 percent of [all] infants [who are] born to single mothers this year, the
consequences will be real. In a piddling few decades, the world’s most
powerful, influential cultural establishment happened to get demolished and
rebuilt from the ground up. What had been basically a Christian, patriotic,
family-loving, politically moderate part of society became contemptuous of
biblical religion, of patriotism, of the family, of American greatness. The
American cultural elite used to resemble (more or less) the rest of America.
Today it disdains the rest of America.
That’s a revolution.”
More Gelernter: “Post-religious thinkers don’t even live on the same spiritual planet as
Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish Americans. Old-time atheists struggled with biblical
religion and rejected it; modern post-religious thinkers struggled with
nothing. Since the Bible and biblical religion underlie the invention of America, it’s hard (unsurprisingly) for
post-religious people to understand America
sympathetically…….Expecting post-religious, Bible-ignorant thinkers to grasp America
is like expecting a gerbil to sing Pagliacci.”
____________________________________________________________________________
ACTIVISM
Fighting political correctness, the Boy Scouts of America
(BSA) reaffirmed its longstanding policy of protecting youth by not allowing
homosexuals to serve as volunteer leaders. 
An
11-member special committee, formed discretely by top Scout leaders in 2010,
"came to the conclusion that this policy is absolutely the best policy for
the Boy Scouts.” The Boy Scouts have
been bullied relentlessly by homosexual activist groups since 2000, when the
Supreme Court ruled the organization could set its own rules regarding
leadership. Send
your letter of support directly to the Boy Scouts of America national office
here:
An
11-member special committee, formed discretely by top Scout leaders in 2010,
"came to the conclusion that this policy is absolutely the best policy for
the Boy Scouts.” The Boy Scouts have
been bullied relentlessly by homosexual activist groups since 2000, when the
Supreme Court ruled the organization could set its own rules regarding
leadership. Send
your letter of support directly to the Boy Scouts of America national office
here:
____________________________________________________________________________
ELECTION
“Mitt Romney has fighting clothes in his
closet, after all. He has taken them out twice over the past fortnight and his
new duds have made a difference already. If his new aggressiveness lasts, it’s
a sign of good things to come in November. Defense wins football games, but
only offense wins elections. Republicans, who instinctively prefer drawing-room
niceness, often have trouble getting their heads around that.”
“…why so much
worry in Obamaland? ..President Barack Obama’s campaign has spent nearly $100
million on television commercials in selected battleground states so far,
unleashing a sustained early barrage designed to create lasting, negative
impressions of Republican Mitt Romney before he and his allies ramp up for the
fall.” Think of it like the Confederacy’s artillery barrage on the third day of
Gettysburg
before Pickett’s charge — you have to in essence disable the other side before
the charge begins or its curtains. Virtually
all of the ads were viciously negative, and judging from the number of
Pinocchios they’ve racked up, continually and materially false. But it didn’t work. Romney and
Obama are still deadlocked.”
President Obama’s bizarre marriage-theme fund-raising scheme
— where he asks couples to request campaign donations from their guests in lieu
of wedding gifts — has been a total flop.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) for VP? “….with all the talk of Condi and the perils
of 2008, I think it’s unfair to cast Palin as the death knell in considering
female candidates for VP. I still feel we should look more closely at a
woman for the number two spot this year. We all know conservative women.
They’re tough. Hence, why I think the gentlelady from Washington State
would be a good choice for Mitt Romney.”
Former Navy SEAL Launches PAC To Fight Obama: “The President has failed and he is
jeopardizing the safety of our troops, their families and our National security
for political gain. Obama has exposed the identity of special operations units,
leaked classified information, and limited the rules of engagement of forces on
the ground…For those who have taken an oath to defend the Constitution against
all enemies, both foreign and domestic, it is a call of duty to take back
America from a Commander-in-Chief that is incapable of understanding the
sacrifices that have been made for the values that have made America great.”
“Special Operations for America”
Boston
— Two blocks west of Mitt Romney’s headquarters here, his campaign has opened a
new front. Since clinching the Republican nomination two months ago, Romney
advisers have significantly stepped up their digital campaign, hoping to catch
up with President Obama in an arena he dominated in 2008. Romney has hired data
analysts and mobile-app developers from places including Google and Apple,
unwilling to concede the traditionally liberal-leaning Silicon
Valley talent pool.
As President Obama was attacking Mitt Romney for supposedly
“outsourcing” jobs when he ran Bain Capital (a charge disputed by The
Washington Post’s fact checker), tens of thousands of Americans were fleeing
the Obama economy to find work in Canada. Government figures show
that Canada
issued 34,185 temporary work permits to Americans last year,
___________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
“In the opening
pages of Socialism, Ludwig von Mises's monumental 1921 critique of that
system, the great free market apostle presents a quote from V.I. Lenin in which
the ‘Great Leader of the Future That Works’ explains that all there is to
running a business is keeping the accounts and adding up the profits as they
come in. Lenin, said Von Mises, had "the errand boy's view of what
business is about." Obama has approximately the same view, spritzed up
with a little faculty-room chatter. His is the assistant law instructor's view.
"If you've got a business - - you didn't build that. Somebody else made it
happen." After all, we make the laws. That's what makes a business
possible. The difference between them and us has nothing to do with being smart
or ambitious. It's just that some people get lucky or are more willing to take
advantage of others. After all, that's what business is about, isn't it? What
Obama really embodies is the college professor's resentment that even though
he's always been the smartest guy in the room….there are still people out there
much less smart who are making more money. You can see it right there on the
page. "I'm always struck by [business] people who think, well, it must
be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there."
Ah yes, I wonder who we're talking about here?”
“Obama presents us with the basics of a social democratic view of life.
Individual success is only possible – even or desirable – in so far as the rest
of the community flourishes. And the flourishing of the community is measured
in dollars taxed and dollars spent. Obama confirmed this philosophy on Sunday
when he added, “The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government
research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off
the Internet.”…..Obama and Gore share the vision of government not as
society’s lubricant but as its engine. It’s a dream more commonly found among
Europeans and it hasn't served us particularly well.”
Contrast Obama’s “Kinsley gaffe” (defined as when a
politician inadvertently blurts out the truth) with Roark’s famous defense
speech from the 1949 movie starring Mr. All-America himself, Gary Cooper. You
don’t have to be a Randian to cheer sentiments like these: “The creator stands
on his own judgment. The parasite follows the opinions of others. The creator
thinks; the parasite copies. The creator produces; the parasite loots. The
creator’s concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite’s concern is the
conquest of men… The parasite seeks power. He wants to bind all men together in
common action and common slavery. Look at history. Everything we have, every
great achievement has come from the independent work of some independent mind.
Every horror and destruction came from attempts to force men into a herd of
brainless, soulless robots… It is an ancient conflict. It has another name: the
individual against the collective.” So
there it is, Election 2012 in a nutshell: the individual vs. the collective. We
know which side the president is on. Which side are you on?
___________________________________________________________________________
CHILLING
Examples of Obama executive orders:
EO 10990 allows the Government to take over all modes of
transportation and control of highways and seaports.
EO 10997 allows the government to take over all electrical
power, gas, petroleum, fuels, and minerals.
EO 11000 allows the government to mobilize civilians into
work brigades under government supervision
EO 11002 designates the Postmaster General to operate a
national registration of all persons.
EO 11003 allows the government to take over all airports and
aircraft, including commercial aircraft.
EO 11004 allows the Housing and Finance Authority to
relocate and establish new locations for populations.
EO 11005 allows the government to take over railroads,
inland waterways, and public storage facilities.
Are we beginning to see a pattern here? We're being prepared
for a national emergency…..
___________________________________________________________________________
NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
“Political payoffs and middle class layoffs”
Another great ad: “If you can’t understand what drives our
economy, Mr. President, how can you expect to fix it?”
Donate $20 to the Romney campaign and get an American
Entrepreneur T-Shirt “I built my business Mr. President!”
As the chart shows, between April-June 2012, an estimated 246,000
Americans were added to Social Security's disability insurance program. In that
same time period, only 225,000 American jobs were created.
Mexican Drug Cartels Have Infiltrated All Of These US
Cities, including Seattle (Tijuana cartel)
More great stuff from James O’Keefe: Undercover reporters posing as "Earth
Supply and Renewal" -- group dedicated to digging holes and filling them
back in, meet with Labor Bosses.
“My newly released report examines the metadata and object
code of Obama's long-form birth certificate PDF file and explains how this
information corroborates the claim that Obama's PDF file never originated as a
paper document, but rather was born in cyberspace or was -- to put it another
way -- digitally manufactured. Obama's PDF file, like everything else from
this administration, is a composite.”
____________________________________________________________________________
LATE NITE:
Leno: Federal Reserve
chairman Ben Bernanke told a congressional committee the economic recovery is
weakening. But the good news is most Americans will not be affected because
they had no idea there was a recovery…….Jobless claims rose again by 35,000
last week. Not good. But it does show that if you're unsuccessful in this country,
you didn't do it on your own. You had help. Thank you, President Obama.
____________________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
"I am concerned
for the security of our great nation, not so much because of any threat from
without, but because of the insidious forces working from within."
-General Douglas MacArthur
posted by gary at
7:55 AM
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