op ed review 9/23
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
American diplomats were warned of
possible violent unrest in Benghazi
three days before the killings of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three
members of his team, Libyan security officials say.
After claiming all week that “the movie made them do it”, a
top Obama administration official (finally) admitted that the U.S. consulate in Benghazi
was in fact "a terrorist attack" and the U.S. government has indications
that members of al Qaeda were directly involved, http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/09/19/obama_official_benghazi_was_a_terrorist_attack
It is already 9/20,
a full ten days after the Muslim mob tortured and murdered the American
Ambassador and three other American personnel in Libya; and still, the loyal and
avid NYT’s reader is being told that it was an “anti-Islam video that
set off attacks against American embassies and violent protests in the Muslim
world.”….the Arab language media reported that Ambassador Stevens had been
gang-raped before he was mob-murdered……Nothing has changed in the
region. Barbarism still reigns. Israel
is an island under siege.”
More Americans are being added to food stamps rolls than are
finding jobs.
The Social Security Administration has released new data
revealing that 8,786,049 American workers are collecting federal disability
insurance payments in September. That sets yet another record for the number of
Americans on disability.
Sunday will mark the start of the 100-day countdown to
“Taxmageddon” – the date the largest tax hikes in the history of America will
take effect. They will hit families and
small businesses in three great waves on January 1, 2013:
In contrast to other recent surveys, a new Pennsylvania poll
commissioned by the Republican State Committee shows Mitt Romney trailing in
the state by just one percentage point,
Mitt Romney has cleared the 50% mark again in the
battleground state of North Carolina
despite the presence of the Democratic National Convention there little over a
week ago.
President Obama's approval rating in Gallup's rolling survey has plunged 6 percentage
points in two weeks, a troubling sign that puts him on shaky historical ground
for re-election.
President Obama’s latest fuel-efficiency decree means
consumers will have to turn in their SUVs and pickup trucks for tiny,
European-style city cars within the next few years.
"Nearly 6 million Americans -- significantly more than
first estimated -- will face a $1200 tax penalty under President Obama's
health-care overhaul for not getting insurance" according to analysts for
the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That's 50 percent higher than the
2010 prediction -- when ObamaCare was passed.
Americans' distrust in the media hit a new high this year,
with 60% saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the
news fully, accurately, and fairly.
Monica Lewinsky is promising to reveal secret love letters
to Bill Clinton and his penchant for kinky sex in a new tell-all about her days
as his favorite intern. Lewinsky, who
turns 40 next year, is out for “revenge” and ready to air bombshell details
from her Oval Office trysts with the former Horndog-in-Chief in a $12 million
memoir, according to friends.
Breitbart News is doubling its
reward--to $100,000--for one of the missing pieces of Barack Obama’s past,
which may be the key to understanding his collapsing Middle
East policy: the “Khalidi tape,” a video kept under wraps by the
Los Angeles Times since April 2008. The Khalidi tape shows Obama at a 2003
farewell party for radical Palestinian academic and activist Rashid Khalidi,
and reportedly features vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric.
The controversial “P*** Christ”
artwork Sen. Alfonse D’Amato once branded as a “deplorable, despicable display
of vulgarity,” is coming back to New
York. Andres
Serrano’s work — a “photograph of the crucifix submerged in the artist’s urine”
— first ignited controversy in 1989 when D’Amato complained to the US Senate
that it was an “outrage,” an “indignity” and a “piece of trash” that had been
funded by taxpayers. Serrano had won a $15,000 prize for his work, backed in
part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Clark County Washington Republican Headquarters
vandalized. Boulder thrown through the window. “We’ve been attacked four times…this is the
worst I’ve seen it” said office manager Anna Miller.
One day after being sued over a controversial ballot box
citizenship question, Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson said there are
an estimated 4,000 noncitizens on Michigan's
voter rolls.
The media is reporting this as some kind of scandal, even
though it’s true: During a private
reception with wealthy donors this year, Mitt Romney described almost half of
Americans as “people who pay no income tax” and are “dependent upon
government.” Those voters, he said, would probably support President Obama
because they believe they are “victims” who are “entitled to health care, to
food, to housing, to you name it.”
Romney defended himself and said Obama's "approach is
attractive to people who are not paying taxes because, frankly, my discussion
about lowering taxes isn't as attractive to them and therefore I'm not likely
to draw them into my campaign as effectively as those who are in the
middle."
The DNC has already apologized for using a photo of four
Soviet-era Russian warships in a giant stage backdrop at their convention intended
to illustrate the party’s support for military personnel and veterans. That
huge image also depicted a synchronized formation of jet aircraft that
convention-goers assumed were American fighter planes. But the F-5 fighter
planes in the photo were Turkish, a
nation whose government is now jailing journalists and establishing Islam as a
state religion.
Great moments in socialized medicine: “More than four in 10 patients undergoing
abdominal surgery at one hospital in the UK die within 30 days, according to
figures described as "shocking" yesterday.”
________________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Mitt Romney,
USA Today, 9/20
Since our founding, America has promoted personal
responsibility, the dignity of work and the value of education. Those values
made our nation the hope of the earth and our economy the envy of the world.
Efforts that promote hard work and personal responsibility
over government dependency make America
strong. When the economy is growing and Americans are working, everyone
involved has a shared sense of achievement, not to mention the basic sense of
pride that comes with the paycheck they earn.
However, over the past four years, those kinds of
opportunities have been in short supply. We're experiencing the worst recovery
since the Great Depression. Unemployment has been above 8% for 43 straight
months; 47 million Americans are on food stamps. Nearly one in six Americans
now live in poverty.
Under President Obama, we have a stagnant economy that
fosters government dependency. My policies will create a growing economy that
fosters upward mobility.
Government has a role to play here. Right now, our nation's
citizens do need help from government. But it is a very different kind of help
than what President Obama wants to provide.
My experience has taught me that government works best when
it creates the space for individuals and families to pursue success and achieve
great things. Economic freedom is the only force that has consistently
succeeded in creating sustained prosperity and lifting people out of poverty.
It is why our economy rose to rival those of the world's leading powers -- and
has long since surpassed them all.
The dreamers and the entrepreneurs, not government, built
this economy, and they can once again make it strong.
My course for the American economy will encourage private
investment and personal freedom. Instead of creating a web of dependency, I
will pursue policies that grow our economy and lift Americans out of poverty.
My five-point plan will deliver the economic recovery we've
all been waiting for and the jobs millions of Americans still need. This can be
more than our hope; it can be our future. And it can start this November with
your vote.
Mitt could use some help:
_____________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
"There are some very serious issues at stake in this
year's election -- so many that some people may not be able to see the forest
for the trees. Individual issues are the trees, but the forest is the future of
America
as we have known it. The America
that has flourished for more than two centuries is being quietly but steadily
dismantled by the Obama administration, during the process of dealing with
particular issues. For example, the merits or demerits of President Obama's
recent executive order, suspending legal liability for young people who are
here illegally, presumably as a result of being brought here as children by their
parents, can be debated pro and con. But such a debate overlooks the much more
fundamental undermining of the whole American system of Constitutional
government. The separation of powers into legislative, executive and judicial
branches of government is at the heart of the Constitution of the United States
-- and the Constitution is at the heart of freedom for Americans."
-Thomas Sowell
"If we want to keep our nation's secrets a 'SECRET'
then we should store them where President Obama stores his college transcripts
and birth certificate."
-Mike Huckabee
_____________________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
The gap between the way the media characterizes the presidential
race and what is actually happening is growing larger by the day. In
particular, we see a systematic emphasis on news items that favor the president
and a discounting of evidence that disfavor him…..even though Obama’s bounce
was modest by historical standards, and he still could not pull above 50
percent nationwide or in the key swing states, the mainstream media dutifully
declared not only that Obama was winning, but that the Romney campaign was in
utter disarray.
Soros Resumes Donations to Help Democratic Candidates
One of the New York Legislature’s leading backers of
“hydrofracking’’ for natural gas has received death threats from what he
believes are environmental radicals opposed to the controversial drilling
technique.
If you tuned into the Democratic National Convention earlier
this month and were momentarily confused as to whether C-SPAN was actually
covering a huge abortion rally, you are not alone. The high-profile roles given
to Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, NARAL Pro-Choice America
President Nancy Keenan, Sandra Fluke, and Caroline Kennedy are the capstone of
a two-decade-long effort to eradicate anti-abortion Democrats from the party. It
is an effort that is nearly complete. An event hosted by Democrats for Life
during the convention failed to attract a single politician currently in
office.
The stern photo of revolutionary Che Guevara taken by
Alberto Korda in 1960 is one of the most reproduced images on the planet,
appearing on posters, flags, postcards, T-shirts, and even bikinis. Sadly, the
ubiquitous appearances of Che — hailed today usually by his first name only —
demonstrate the near-total failure to educate people about the blood-soaked
cruelty he really represented. But there are, thankfully, some limits to the
use of Che’s famous image — if people complain.
___________________________________________________________________
ACTIVISM
“On November 6th, Americans will make a choice about what's
right and what's wrong," Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer told the conservative
Values Voters summit in Washington
on Saturday. "Wrong is President Obama accumulating more debt than any
president in our history," Brewer said. "Wrong is the fact that
millions of Americans are unemployed. Wrong is supporting a change in the
longstanding definition of marriage. "Wrong is appointing federal judges
who fail to protect life and the unborn. Wrong is our president apologizing for
America
when he travels abroad. Wrong is not supporting Israel 100 percent….”
U.S. Senators Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Jim Inhofe
(R-OK) on Tuesday introduced the Military Religious Freedom Act (S.3525).
Specifically, the bill would (1)
prevent military chaplains from being forced to perform a marriage ceremony if
the chaplain objects for reasons of conscience and (2) prohibit marriage or
marriage-like ceremonies at military facilities that are not a union between
one man and one woman.
____________________________________________________________________________
GLOBALONEY
“Today, the world is in the grip of the madness of
climatism. Our president and 191 other world leaders of the United Nations
continue to pursue futile policies to stop global warming. Universities preach
"sustainable development." Companies tout their "green"
programs. Schools teach our children that if we change light bulbs, we can save
polar bears. But an increasing body of science shows that the theory of
catastrophic manmade warming is nonsense. Climate change is natural, and car
emissions are insignificant.”
“Regulatory Tsunami
To Hit Business If Obama Wins Second Term “
______________________________________________________________________________
ISLAM
Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia
is hosting a global conference in Australia entitled Khilafah
Conference 2012: “Muslims Rise – Caliphate Imminent.”
___________________________________________________________________________
BOOKS, FILM
“The Destructive President” by Paul M.
Fick. “…..exposes the truth of Obama’s psychological makeup and
explains why the president is on a mission to destroy America and her
traditional institutions. For the first time, Americans learn who Obama is and
why he is psychologically driven to “transform” America into a nation that causes
patriots to shudder.
Citizens United has struck a deal with a dozen television
stations to run its hour-long film featuring voters disaffected with President
Barack Obama, sending the Republican critique of the incumbent into tens of
millions of homes in the lead-up to Election Day.
“Dedicated to restoring our government to citizen’s
control”
___________________________________________________________________________
ELECTION
Forget the Republican doom and gloom drumbeat peddled
elsewhere in the media this week. A new Gallup Poll out this morning finds
President Obama's convention bounce fading and the 2012 presidential race
reverting to its previous tight margin. What a bummer for the preferred media
narrative of recent days! The poll, of 1,096 registered voters in 12 key swing
states, finds Obama and Mitt Romney virtually tied at 48% for the Democrat and
46% for Romney with less than seven weeks to go.
Dick Morris: Republicans
are getting depressed under an avalanche of polling suggesting that an Obama
victory is in the offing. They, in fact, suggest no such thing! Here’s why: 1. All of the polling out there uses
some variant of the 2008 election turnout as its model for weighting
respondents and this overstates the Democratic vote by a huge margin. 2. Almost all of the
published polls show Obama getting less than 50% of the vote and less than 50%
job approval. A majority of the voters either support Romney or are undecided
in almost every poll. But the fact is
that the undecided vote always goes against the incumbent. So, when the
published poll shows Obama ahead by, say, 48-45, he’s really probably losing by
52-48!
“As Obama's national security strategy lies in smoldering
ruins (just like the Benghazi consulate), his outreach to the Muslim world a
dismal failure, the media claim that the biggest story of the day is Mitt
Romney noting that nearly half of the country pays no income tax, that they are
not likely to find high taxes a problem, and that a similar number are
dependent on the government.”
“What we are in the midst of witnessing right
now is a complete, Fukushima-style meltdown of the mainstream media. Without
these slobbering lap dogs, President Obama never would have been elected in the
first place. And now they are his only hope for staying in office amid all the
global violence, a morbidly paralyzed economy and a national crisis of confidence
so profound that the American Dream has become nothing more than quaint fiction
for millions.”
“Recently I received
an email from a very worried senior citizen. She forwarded a poster to me and
asked me, "Can this really be true?" The poster was of Obama saying,
"Some people say I'm Stupid. Really? Here's how stupid I am: "I was hired by over 69 million voters
who didn't even do a routine background check on me. I'm doing a lousy,
stinking job, with a record number of people out of work. I gave guns to
Mexican drug gangs, I kill innocent people all over the world with drone
strikes, and I decide which laws I'm going to enforce and which ones I won't. I've doubled the deficit. I've ruined our
health care system. And yet I still stand an excellent chance of being rehired.
That's how stupid I am. Now, How Stupid Are You?"
“……growing evidence
that new voter-outreach programs funded by conservative groups could give GOP
nominee Mitt Romney an edge if the race is close. In the key battleground
states, Obama’s celebrated network of organizing experts and neighborhood
captains is being challenged by a conservative coalition that includes the
National Rifle Association, the billionaire-backed Americans for Prosperity and
a newly muscular College Republicans organization with a $16 million budget.
The conservative groups “are fully funded and ready for hand-to-hand combat,”
Obama: 'I ACTUALLY BELIEVE IN REDISTRIBUTION'...
Romney: 'We believe in free
people and free enterprise, not redistribution'...
http://thehill.com/video/campaign/250183-romney-pushes-new-audio-of-old-obama-redistribution-comment
____________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
“My husband and I left the USSR in 1980.
We were 30 years old and had no idea what was ahead. We were not looking for a
paradise; we were running from the hell of a government-controlled society,
where people are helpless against government power. The 2012 Democratic Party
convention was a surreal sight for us: a parade of speakers, full of the
arrogant assumption that others are not smart enough to accomplish anything
without government guidance and intrusion…..”
Spengler: Some
very original thinking on the middle east:
VDH: “Discussions of
the pernicious effects of endemic tribalism, misogyny, statism, anti-Semitism,
fundamentalism, religious intolerance, xenophobia, and anti-modernism (in the
Islamic world) are taboo. So there is never serious reflection about
self-induced pathologies that keep fostering a Saddam Hussein, Muslim
Brotherhood, and Ba’ath Party, or the preconditions that throughout much of the
20th century made the Arab world so susceptible to Hitlerism, then
Soviet communism, then Baathism, then Western authoritarianism, then
authoritarianism, and, then, or rather always back to, Islamic radicalism. The Middle East is not fascist, communist, Baathist,
pan-Arabist, or Islamist, so much as it is screwed-up-ist and blame-them-ist. If
all these -isms did not exist, we would have to invent them and others as well
to find scapegoats for self-induced misery.”
________________________________________________________________________
NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
Send this link to friends:
“Special Report: The Obama you
don’t know”
Some think that Frank Marshall
Davis is Obama’s real father. “An
Expert Photoshop Analyst reports that the photo below, officially released by
Barack Obama on his personal Facebook page, is a forgery…. Is this photo part of a pattern of document
forgery by President Obama to hide his biological and ideological relationship
to Communist Frank Marshall Davis?”
In the photo his mother Ann Dunham stands with her father in
what looks like the Honolulu
Airport. Between them are
a chubby Barry and his half-sister Maya. Tucked under Barry's arm is a
hand. It is not Ann's hand. It appears to be that of a black male. There is additional
evidence that someone was airbrushed out and replaced by Ann.
_______________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
"Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other
views but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other
views."
-William F. Buckley Jr.
________________________________________________________________________
LATE NITE:
Leno: Mitt Romney is
predicting that as president, he will create 12 million jobs in his first term.
Well, President Obama says a Romney presidency would result in lost jobs. Yeah,
his and Biden's……According to the Labor Department, unemployment fell from 8.3
percent to 8.1 percent last month. But that's because 368,000 Americans gave up
looking for work. Today, President Obama said that's a step in the right
direction, and he is encouraging more Americans to give up looking for work.
posted by gary at
8:35 AM
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