op ed review 8/19
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
Mitt Romney used a
tough new campaign speech to personally blast the Obama campaign, saying
comments earlier in the day from Vice President Biden are "what an angry
and desperate presidency looks like." "Mr. President, take your
campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago,"
Romney said while campaigning in Ohio.
Romney was responding to Biden's suggestion that the GOP ticket's economic
policies would “put y’all back in chains."
“Economic recovery is weakest since
World War II”
Over 400 independent economists signed a statement at the
website Economists for Romney in support of what they call the Romneys
"bold economic plan for America.",
including Five Nobel laureates. “We
enthusiastically endorse Governor Mitt Romney’s economic plan to create jobs
and restore economic growth while returning America to its tradition of
economic freedom.”
For the first time since he began running
for president, Mitt Romney has the support of over 40 percent of America's youth
vote, a troubling sign for President Obama who built his 2008 victory with the
overwhelming support of younger, idealistic voters.
Is Mitt Romney an Eagle Scout? No, but three of his Sons are. He has
sat on the Executive Board of Boy Scouts of America for over 10 years.
A former four-term Democratic congressman from Alabama and one time
strong supporter of President Obama will campaign for Mitt Romney Wednesday.
A group of former U.S. intelligence and Special
Forces operatives is set to launch a media campaign, including TV ads, that
scolds President Obama for taking credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden and
argues that high-level leaks are endangering American lives.
A Pennsylvania
judge refused to stop a tough new voter identification law from going into
effect, which Democrats said will suppress votes among President Barack Obama's
supporters.
Gov. Chris Christie, has been tapped to deliver the keynote
address at the republican national convention.
Lynyrd Skynyrd lead singer Johnny Van Zant is supporting
Mitt Romney’s presidential bid, and will be on hand at the Republican National
Convention where the band is slated to perform alongside Trace Adkins and Kid
Rock....
More than 1.7 million illegal immigrants could become
eligible for tentative legal status when President Obama’s non-deportation
policy goes into effect. Immigrant
advocates are urging young immigrants to sign up.
As young illegal immigrants celebrated the start of a new
federal program allowing them to apply to stay and work in the United States,
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer issued an executive order telling state agencies not to
grant driver's licenses to program participants.
Gingrich: “Romney should run
as the ‘paycheck president’ to Obama’s
‘food stamp president’”
________________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
The Childishness of
the American Left
By Steve
McCann
The American left is
the most self-indulgent, arrogant, and spoiled group of people on the face of
the earth. They live in a nation facing national bankruptcy
and societal upheaval -- a country presently subsisting on the residue of past
economic achievements. Yet the only
things that matter to them are their lifestyles and imposing their
self-determined superiority on rest of the American people.
The true
indebtedness of the United
States now exceeds $222 trillion. Appearing on National Public Radio in August
of 2011 Professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff of Boston University said: “If you add
up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, and subtract
all the taxes we expect to collect, the difference is
$211 Trillion. This is the fiscal gap. That is our true indebtedness.”
Since that
interview, the indebtedness has increased by another $11 trillion. Yet these estimates do not include the full
impact of ObamaCare, which could add another $17+ trillion. On the other side of the ledger: the annual
Gross Domestic Product (the value of all economic activity in the U.S.) is $15.6
trillion. The indebtedness to GDP ratio
is a staggering 14.2 to 1 and guaranteed to further accelerate if Barack Obama
is re-elected.
The United States
is not facing bankruptcy, it is bankrupt. The primary factor that has kept the nation
afloat over the past four years is that the dollar, albeit temporarily, remains
the world's reserve currency, thus allowing the Federal Reserve to print
enormous sums of money to cover the Obama budget deficits and flood the global
market with near worthless cash. Today
it requires $100.00 to purchase the same goods $10.00 purchased in 1950.
As a further comparison, the total annual GDP of all the countries on
earth is $70 trillion. The American
indebtedness alone exceeds that amount by a factor of 3 -- which contributes
mightily to a world drowning in debt and facing an inevitable debt crisis and
financial collapse, which will trigger a massive global depression.
Currently, just
58.4% of the civilian population is employed, as compared to 64.3% twelve years
ago….This failure is a byproduct of a tsunami of government regulations,
mandates, and taxes which has nearly destroyed the innovation and business and
job-creation that made the American economy so vibrant over the latter part of
the 20th century. That
innovation has now moved overseas, along with over 7.5 million high-paying
goods-producing jobs since 2000.
The reaction of the
self-described progressives to this dire scenario? Sweep the facts under the rug or ignore them
completely, as it appears that the most important things in their lives are the
legalization of gay marriage, free contraceptives and abortifacients,
worshiping at the altar of extreme and discredited environmentalism, mocking
and undermining all organized religion (except Islam), and telling the American
people what they can eat, where they can live, what may be taught in their schools,
how they must operate their businesses, and what health care they can access.
To the true
believers on the left, re-electing Barack Obama is not a matter of what is or
is not good for the country; rather, for the majority on the left, the primary
motivation is geared solely toward defeating their sworn enemy: conservatives
and Republicans, whom many falsely believe are a right-wing horde determined to
create a theocracy and impose old-fashioned morality. But what they fear most from the right is a determination
to reinstitute unfettered individual freedom and concomitant economic growth,
which would relegate the American left to the back bench of American society.
Thus, to them, what
the policies of Barack Obama and his radical minions are doing to the long-term
fate of nation is immaterial as long as Obama regurgitates his support for the
various causes that are near and dear to the coalition that makes up the
left. There are two common threads to
the belief system of American progressives: 1) an omnipotent central government
controlled by them, and 2) an assumption that there is a bottomless pit of
money to be siphoned from an equally bottomless pit of wealth. But this is not the same nation that
experienced unprecedented prosperity from 1946 to 2007. It is not the same nation in which these
narcissists on the left grew up, never knowing national adversity or trauma….
It is time to grow
up and understand that the America
that could absorb all the excessive spending, promises, and left-wing fun and
games is no more. This nation cannot
survive on its present course, and if that course is not dramatically reversed,
those on the left will suffer as much as if not more than the bulk of the
American people they are trying to rule. History has shown repeatedly that when an
overwhelming political and social catastrophe strikes a nation, the people turn
against the ruling class, often with a vengeance. In the United States, that ruling class is
presently dominated by the American left.
_____________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
“An administration that constantly talks about voter
disenfranchisement appears unconcerned that a study by the nonpartisan Military
Voters Protection Project found that in 2008 less than 20% of 2.5 million
military voters successfully voted by absentee ballot. In 2010, participation
shrank to a scandalous 5%. ……the Obama administration has shown a disregard for
military voters who, studies show, tend to vote Republican. ... Of course, this
reluctance to promote and support military voting -- while dead voters are
allowed to remain on the rolls and cast ballots, and while the right of felons
to vote is championed -- has nothing to do with the fact that John McCain won
54% of the military vote in 2008 or that a May 2012 Gallup poll showed Mitt
Romney pulling 58% to President Obama's paltry 34%."
-Investor's Business Daily
"Often as not,
the qualification for receiving stimulus funds is the absence of work or
income--such as banks and companies that fail, solar energy companies that
can't make it on their own, unemployment benefits and the like. Quite simply,
government taxing people more who work and then giving more money to people who
don't work is a surefire recipe for less work, less output and more
unemployment. Yet the notion that additional spending is a 'stimulus' and less
spending is 'austerity' is the norm just about everywhere."
-economist Arthur
Laffer
"Whether it's
the academic community, the media elite, stalwarts of the Democratic Party or
organizations such as the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, Green for
All, the Sierra Club and the Children's Defense Fund, there is a great
tolerance for the ideas of socialism -- a system that has caused more deaths
and human misery than all other systems combined. Today's leftists, socialists
and progressives would bristle at the suggestion that their agenda differs
little from those of Nazi, Soviet and Maoist mass murderers. One does not have
to be in favor of death camps or wars of conquest to be a tyrant. The only
requirement is that one has to believe in the primacy of the state over individual
rights."
-Walter E. Williams
"Liberals are always eager to ban guns, but even
after the Oklahoma City
bombing, you didn't hear them talk about banning fertilizer. That's probably
just as well because sane people would have then been forced to point out that
manure doesn't kill people; people kill people."
-Burt Prelutsky
_____________________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
The man who shot a security guard at the Family Research
Council (FRC) on Wednesday was “given a license” to do so because of groups
like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) that have labeled the FRC a “hate
group,” said FRC President Tony Perkins. The conservative Christian group is
posted on a “Hate Map” on the SPLC’s Web site. There are 13 groups listed for
the District of Columbia
on the “Hate Map,” and the Family Research Council is among them, according to
the SPLC, because of its support for traditional marriage and Christian
morality.
The liberal Southern Poverty Law Center equates organizations
opposing gay marriage to neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
____________________________________________________________________________
ISLAM
“Al-Qaeda posts ‘suicide bombers wanted’ ad: Job offer on closed Internet forum seeks
applicants who are utterly committed to completing their mission
The Arab Spring takeover of Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood has
run amok, with reports from several different media agencies that the radical
Muslims have begun crucifying opponents of the new president against trees.
Israel's existence is an "insult to all
humanity," Iran's
president said Friday.
Iran
not only has WMDs but has armed its terrorist proxies with them.
A prominent Saudi Arabian religious cleric declared that the
Holocaust is an “exaggeration” and that Jewish people consume the blood of
children during a wide-ranging interview with an Arabic television station.
______________________________________________________________________________
SO WHO IS PAUL RYAN?
Serving in Congress
since 1999, Paul Ryan is a conservative Republican whose ideology was shaped early
on by thinkers who extolled individualism and free markets, warned of an
overweening state and promoted tax-cutting "supply-side" economics. His
intellectual heroes include the economists Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises
and Friedrich Hayek, author of "The Road to Serfdom," Ayn Rand,
author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead," and
former New York congressman and vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp, for whom
Ryan once worked.
Representative Paul D. Ryan is idolized by young
conservatives in the House, who see him as a role model and a polished
spokesman for their vision of America.
Many Republicans come across as dour budget cutters with contempt for
Democrats. Mr. Ryan shares the politics of his conservative colleagues, but
appears instead as an optimist who relishes the opportunity to debate policy
with Democrats
He can rouse large crowds to giddiness, ascend private jets
two steps at a time, and catch a baseball with one hand, sign it, and throw it
back to an adoring fan. Can Paul D. Ryan leap tall buildings in a single bound?
Democrats' nerves start to fray as Ryan fires up
conservative voters
Ryan has the gift of being able to explain formidable
economic issues and make them clearly understandable. He has excellent command
of the facts and figures at the heart of America’s current economic peril.
Rep. Paul Ryan schools President Obama on ObamaCare in this
video. The White House is known to loathe Ryan because of his performance in
this debate. The breezy president who handed the details of his own signature
legislation to Nancy Pelosi got schooled by a young congressman who knew what
was in the bill. It was an embarrassing moment for the thin-skinned president
and he hasn’t forgotten it. Paul Ryan is capable of destroying his opponents in
a debate without ever coming across as unpleasant. Watch him wreck DNC Chairman
Debbie Wasserman Schultz in March 2010.
“I admit to some surprise. Presumably Mitt Romney doesn’t
think that the Milwaukee
suburbs are the key to the White House, or the Eagle Scout demographic will
swing the election. So the only explanation is that Romney wants the most
competent ticket possible. When was the last time we had a national ticket with
this much mathematical skill, or knowledge of finance? Probably never. So
Romney wants to contrast the serious guys who are out to save the country with
the buffoonish and dishonest political hacks, Obama and Biden. Well, the
contrast is real.”
In choosing Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his running mate Saturday, Mitt
Romney tapped someone who has the power to energize the Republican Party’s base
– and the Democratic Party’s, too. The presence on the GOP ticket of Ryan,
whose plan to cut taxes, reduce spending and revamp Medicare is regarded as a
Republican Party road map, ensures that two very different visions of the role
of the federal government in America will be front and center in this fall’s
presidential campaign.
Michael Gerson: “Some headlines announcing the Paul Ryan
vice-presidential pick have pronounced him a “tea party favorite” — shorthand
that misunderstands both Ryan and the tea party. In the past, I’ve drawn a
distinction between Rejectionist Conservatism and Reform Conservatism. The
Rejectionists — including tea party activists and libertarians — generally want
to undo the modern state on the shortest possible timeline. The Club for Growth
and a number of tea party-allied politicians opposed the Ryan budget because it
does not balance within 10 years or abolish whole departments of government. Ryan is the undisputed leader of Reform
Conservatism, which seeks to modernize the federal government instead of
abolishing it. Ryan argues that public-sector inefficiency is a long-term
threat to the social safety net — that rising health costs in particular will
make unreformed entitlement programs unsustainable while imposing a burden that
will consume every other purpose of government. Ryan’s vision of entitlement
reform is more politically realistic than the symbolic purity of the tea party
— but also more threatening to liberalism, precisely because it is politically
realistic. Ryan’s critics will attempt to make him out as the second coming of
Michele Bachmann. In fact, they fear him more, because he is infinitely more
serious. He represents not the inchoate frustration and nostalgia of the tea
party but a developed, thoroughly modern conservative approach to governing. Who
would have thought that Mitt Romney would fully embrace this bold ideological
alternative? Now that he has, the stakes of the election rise significantly. A
Romney win would not only be the victory of a pragmatic problem-solver. It would
be the triumph of a comprehensive conservative substitute for modern
liberalism, at least when it comes to entitlements. That increases Romney’s
political degree of difficulty, increases the intensity of his liberal
opposition — and gives his candidacy an unexpected historical significance.”
____________________________________________________________________________
ELECTION
Mitt Romney finally caught up with the rest of us via a
fiery speech in Ohio
on Tuesday where he proclaimed three simple truths that frame Barack Obama:
"Intellectually exhausted, out of ideas, and out of energy." Those
lines are still too charitable; Obama has been intellectually barren from the
beginning. Yet it is irrefutable… that
Obama's idea inventory consists of the expired date-stamped perishables of the
collectivist state -- tax, confiscate, redistribute, and impoverish.
“In the first week since Paul Ryan joined Mitt Romney on the
Republican ticket, something subtle yet fundamental has happened to the country--something
not yet reflected in poll numbers or punditry: the mantle of leadership has
shifted.”
Charles Krauthammer: I think the Democrats are discovering
that they stepped on a land mine with Medicare. The fact is that Medicare was
raided for Obamacare and here's why.
Rudy Guiliani:
“I think the vice president of the United States has become a laugh
line on late night television. I mean, he — I’ve never seen a vice president
that has made as many mistakes, said as many stupid things. I mean, there’s a
real fear if, God forbid, he ever had to be entrusted with the presidency,
whether he really has the mental capacity to handle it.”
___________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
“How Did Harry Reid Get Rich?
His career in public service has ended up being
remarkably lucrative.”
“A few days ago I received a call from a man I recently met
named George. He was a bit flustered,
and soon informed me that his young son was sick with a chest condition. He pleaded with me to send him $1,000 to
cover the medical bills. Since George
was at the hospital I asked him to let me speak to a nurse, and she confirmed
that George’s son was indeed ill. So I
agreed to send George the money through Western Union. He was profusely grateful. But before I hung up I asked George, “Why are
you coming to me?” He said, “I have no
one else to ask.” Then he said something
that astounded me, “Dinesh, you are like a brother to me.” Actually, George has
a real life brother who just happens to be the president of the United States. (George Obama is the youngest of eight
children sired by Barack Obama Sr.) George’s
brother is a multimillionaire and the most powerful man in the world. Moreover, George’s brother has framed his
re-election campaign around the “fair share” theme that we owe obligations to
those who are less fortunate. One of Obama’s favorite phrases comes right
out of the Bible: “We are our brother’s keeper.” Yet he has not contributed a penny to help
his own brother. And evidently George does not believe, even in times of
emergency, that he can turn to his brother in the White House for help. So much for spreading the wealth around….”
Weakness: : So what
did President Obama's Russian "reset button" buy us? Russian attack
subs capable of taking out a U.S.
aircraft carrier patrolling our sea lanes without our knowledge. Hello? Who's
minding the store? Tuesday's report from the Washington Free Beacon about a
Russian Akula-class nuclear submarine, armed with long-range missiles, sniffing
around our Caribbean coast ought to give America — and every freedom-loving
nation in the area — pause. It wasn't an odd lost-boat incident, but part of a
series of strategically planned provocations this summer that also involved
Russian bombers breaching U.S. airspace near Alaska and California,
Obama hails NASA's Mars rover program
as he's cutting it 40%
________________________________________________________________________
NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
“The Obama
administration, to its everlasting shame, has eagerly leaked sensitive national
security information to advance its own partisan political interests….a bunch
of special forces operators and intelligence professionals got together to
protest against the Obama administration’s irresponsibility. The result is this
video, titled “Dishonorable Disclosure.” It is dynamite: the production values
are excellent, and the message is overpowering. The video is 22 minutes long,
but trust me: it is riveting, and goes fast. You should watch the whole thing,
to appreciate how dishonorable the Obama administration is when it comes to
national security.”
Joe Biden’s greatest gaffes, going back thirty years.
____________________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
"This war against our Constitution is not being fought
way off in Madagascar or in Mandalay. It is being
fought here -- in our schools, our colleges, our churches, our women's clubs.
It is being fought with our money.... It is being fought twenty-four hours a
day -- while we remain asleep."
-Sen. William Jenner (1908-1985)
"The gun has been called the great equalizer, meaning
that a small person with a gun is equal to a large person, but it is a great
equalizer in another way, too. It insures that the people are the equal of
their government whenever that government forgets that it is servant and not
master of the governed."
-Ronald Reagan
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9:16 AM
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