op ed review 10/21
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
New Gallup
poll: Romney 52%, Obama 45%
Romney takes a lead for the first time in the Electoral
College tally.
Romney has finally cleared what many
aides have long seen as his biggest hurdle: A majority of voters now like him.
Romney is ahead of Obama by a point, 50 percent to 49
percent. That is a stunning turnaround from March, when Obama's favorable
rating was 55 to Romney’s 29 percent.
A new poll shows Romney leading in Pennsylvania, a state
that Republicans had all but written off just weeks ago.
“Is the Obama Campaign Abandoning
Four Key Swing States?”
Romney Receives Endorsement of Orlando Sentinel. Four years ago they endorsed Obama.
Romney receives endorsement from Ross Perot.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2012/oct/16/ross-perot-endorses-mitt-romney/#ixzz29VS4f2QV
Romney gets endorsement from Rev. Billy Graham in ads appearing in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and other newspapers. "As I approach my 94th birthday, I realize this election could be my last…..I urge you to vote for those who protect the sanctity of life and support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and a woman. Vote for biblical values this November 6, and pray with me that America will remain one nation under God."
Romney gets endorsement from Rev. Billy Graham in ads appearing in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and other newspapers. "As I approach my 94th birthday, I realize this election could be my last…..I urge you to vote for those who protect the sanctity of life and support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and a woman. Vote for biblical values this November 6, and pray with me that America will remain one nation under God."
Dr. Martin Luther King’s niece: “Blacks should vote God’s way — against Obama. Conscience, not skin color, must prevail….”
President Obama’s big endorsement this week was from Honey
Boo Boo.
The National Rifle Association, jumping
on President Obama's new and firm support for a Clinton-style assault weapons
ban, is stepping up its attack on the president in Ohio, Virginia, Florida and
Wisconsin with a new "we told you so" theme.
The expanding food stamp program that now "feeds"
nearly 47 million Americans is rife with fraud, abuse and cronyism, according
to a new study: Understaffed food stamp
fraud prevention units and lax anti-fraud security on Electronic Benefit
Transfer (EBT) cards have created a thriving underground market where food
stamp recipients illegally sell and trade their taxpayer-funded benefits, often
using online websites like Backpage.com, Craigslist, or social media.
The government spent approximately $1.03 trillion on 83
means-tested federal welfare programs in fiscal year 2011 alone — a price tag
that makes welfare that year the government’s largest expenditure.
Welfare spending has grown 32% over
the past four years, more than Social Security, basic defense spending or any
other single chunk of the federal government.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/18/welfare-spending-jumps-32-percent-four-years/#ixzz29exO7500
Violent crime jumps 18 percent in 2011, first rise in nearly 20 years
Violent crime jumps 18 percent in 2011, first rise in nearly 20 years
Feds have more than 1,900 investigations open into alleged
stimulus fund fraud and wrongdoing.
What planet does she live on? Michelle Obama declares: ‘We Are in the Midst
of a Huge Recovery’
President Obama,
during an interview on Comedy Central, responded to a question about the Benghazi attack by saying:
'If four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal.’ Obama's response sparked outrage among
Republican commentators and prompted a backlash from the Twitter community.
If a republican president had said this he’d be flame
broiled by media. The mother of one of
the diplomats killed during the raid is outraged. 'My son is not very “optimal” - he is…very
dead.'
Last week Joe Biden said that Planned Parenthood “under law
cannot perform any abortion.” ??
Planned Parenthood itself has published fact sheets indicating that it
performed 985,731 abortions in just the three years from 2008 through 2010.
A former aide to President Obama is rushing to apologize
after Drudge quoted her: “The truth is,
Obama doesn’t call anyone, and he’s not close to almost anyone. It’s stunning
that he’s in politics, because he really doesn’t like people……My analogy is
that it’s like becoming Bill Gates without liking computers.”
Another black eye for the Obama-Clinton State Department: Last December, they issued a student visa to
the Bangladeshi man arrested this week for trying to blow up the Federal
Reserve building with what he thought was a 1,000-pound bomb.
Weekly applications for U.S. unemployment benefits jumped
to the highest in four months. Last week, California
reported a large drop in applications, pushing down the overall figure…This
week, it reported a significant increase as it processed applications delayed
from the previous week.
Surprise! The secretary of the California agency that under-reported
unemployment claims last week is a big Obama supporter.
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney had some harsh
words for the media at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner Thursday.
"I recognize that they have their job to do, and I have my job to do. My
job is to lay out a positive vision for the future of the country, and their
job is to make sure no one else finds out about it"
Fidel Castro has suffered a stroke and may be headed for a
very hot place soon.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/18/3056621/fidel-castro-suffered-a-stroke.html#storylink=cpy
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/18/3056621/fidel-castro-suffered-a-stroke.html#storylink=cpy
The deep internal contradictions of liberal race dogma have
reached their logical, horrifying conclusion at the hands of the Florida State
Board of Education, which has passed a plan that sets goals for students in math
and reading based upon their race.
At Tuesday’s presidential debate, President Obama and Mitt
Romney duked it out over pay equity for women.
While Obama made the empathetic case for his single mother and his
belief in equal pay, he did not address reports this year that demonstrated
that his own White House pays women less than men.
________________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Victor Davis Hanson
10/16
The Obama narrative is that he inherited the worst
mess in memory and has been stymied ever since by a partisan Congress — while
everything from new ATM technology to the Japanese tsunami conspired against
him. But how true are those claims?
Barack Obama entered office with an approval rating
of over 70 percent. John McCain’s campaign had been anemic and almost at times
seemed as if it was designed to lose nobly to the nation’s first
African-American presidential nominee……
Rarely does a president enter office with a majority
in both the House and the Senate. Not only did Obama do so, but his soaring
ratings put enormous pressure on the Republican minorities to join the
Democratic majorities. Liberals were talking about a new era of Democratic
political dominance.
No prior president had such a supportive media.
Sometime in mid-2008, the New York Times, the Washington Post,
the Los Angeles Times, Time, Newsweek, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN,
PBS, NPR, AP, Reuters, and hundreds of other mainstream voices had decided that
Barack Obama was not just a liberal Democrat whom they would tilt toward, but a
messianic figure for whom they gladly sacrificed the last ounce of
disinterested coverage.
The financial collapse was four months in the past
when Barack Obama took the oath of office, and its immediate aftershocks had
been addressed with the October 3, 2008, TARP stabilization protocols……
The stock market had mostly stopped falling before
Obama took office. In other words, Obama entered office with all the blame for
the bad economy going to his predecessor and with the end of the deep recession
in sight….
Most Americans believed Obama when he made the
argument that our current problems abroad had mostly started with George Bush
and would end when he left. Iran
and Syria
were said to be hostile only because they had been gratuitously alienated by
Bush. Ditto Putin’s Russia.
Our battles with the U.N. were said to be over, as multilateralism was
trumpeted as the new cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy — a loud boast
sure to win even more goodwill both from allies and from neutrals that had been
turned off by the twangy Texan Bush…
Obama had the luxury of enjoying the security
benefits that had accrued from George Bush’s controversial protocols like Guantanamo, renditions,
military tribunals, preventive detention, intercepts, wiretaps, and drone hits,
while not having his own signature upon them. The result was surreal, as Obama
embraced or expanded all of what he had earlier blasted as unconstitutional or
superfluous — to the sudden quiet of a once-raucous civil-libertarian Left.
Somehow Obama managed to blame Bush for providing him with the vital measures
that he damned even as he utilized them.
Even stranger was a revolution in oil and gas
exploration that seemed to coincide with the Obama inauguration. Obama had the
best of both worlds: He took office when gas was below $2 a gallon — saving the
nation billions of dollars — and when the novel techniques of fracking and
horizontal drilling had just tripled known U.S. reserves and promised to offer
a godsend of new energy on federal lands.
In other words, the future seemed to be all Barack
Obama’s. Bill Clinton’s second term offered an easy blueprint of what
bipartisan centrism might achieve. Balance the budget and create jobs, and the
nation will forgive anything, from lying under oath to romancing an intern in
the Oval Office.
And what happened?
Barack Obama chose to ram down the nation’s throat a
polarizing, statist agenda, energized by the sort of hardball politics he had
learned in Chicago.
Rather than bring the races, classes, and genders together, he gave us an
us-versus-them crusade against the “1 percenters” and the job creators who had
not “paid their fair share,” accusations of a Republican “war on women,” and
the worst racial polarization in modern memory.
Statesmanship degenerated into chronic blame-gaming
and “Bush did it,” as he piled up over $5 trillion in new debt. Financial
sobriety was abandoned in favor of creating new entitlement constituencies, and
job creation was deemed far less important than nationalizing the health-care
system.
And so here we are, three weeks before the election,
with a squandered presidency and a president desperately seeking reelection not
by defending his record, but by demonizing his predecessor, his opponent — and
half of the country.
What, then, was Obama’s first term?
Jimmy Carter’s ends justifying Richard Nixon’s means.
_____________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
“The betrayal in Benghazi – and that is exactly what it was –
was tragic for Mr. Stevens and his family, and it went beyond tragedy for the
rest of us. The ambassador, watching the security arrangements dissolving over
a period of weeks, had begged Washington
for additional help. The White House answered with silence, not even sparing a
little gas money for the 1936-vintage DC-3, a lumbering old airplane with a
legacy of service in a half-dozen wars, assigned to American diplomats in Libya. The
plane was insurance for a quick getaway. There was, however, $108,000 available
to install a charging station for a fleet of Chevy Volts at the embassy in Vienna. It was a question
of green priorities.”
-Wes Pruden
“Not since the days of
slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to what other people
have produced as there are in the modern welfare state, whether in Western
Europe or on this side of the Atlantic.
Economist Edward Lazear has cut through all of Barack
Obama’s claims about “creating jobs” with one plain and inescapable fact —
“there hasn’t been one day during the entire Obama presidency when as many
Americans were working as on the day President Bush left office.” Whatever
number of jobs were created during the Obama administration, more have been
lost.”
-Thomas Sowell
_____________________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
Broken windows at four banks and a drug store appear to be
the work of a few dozen Occupy Portland members. The vandalism spree took place
Thursday night. Police were called and some suspects were detained but no
arrests have been made yet. On Thursday night a group of about 40 people was
seen congregating in the parking lot of Umpqua Bank in Portland. Police were called and while still
en route learned the crowd was roving to other banks, smashing windows as they
went. Eventually four banks--Umpqua, Chase, Wells Fargo, US Bank--had smashed
windows along with a Walgreens drug.
HBO’s Bill Maher: ‘The Planet Is
Too Crowded and We Need to Promote
Death’ HBO “Real Time” host Bill Maher
says he’s “consistently pro-death” – and “not one of those people who thinks
all life is precious.”
Letters signed by Barack Obama 25 years ago and obtained by
The Daily Caller, show the future president approaching Chicago’s then-mayor
Harold Washington in 1987 about a community organizing project whose advisory
board would include his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright; the controversial leftist
Catholic priest Father Michael Pfleger; and the brother of Weather Underground
terrorist Bill Ayers.
The Pentagon’s war on the American dream: “…..a slide on socioeconomic privilege, “also
known as classism or elitism,” features a picture of a happy-looking white
family of four outside a middle-class home. In another context, this photo
might be used to illustrate a positive concept such as the American dream.
According to the institute, the “ideology of the American dream” is simply a
manufactured idea used to keep the underclass in its place. It is part of the
“myth of meritocracy,” which is the misguided “belief that people get out of
the system what they put into it based on individual merit.” Only suckers fall
for that one, according to this taxpayer-funded outfit that does diversity
training for the Pentagon.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/11/the-pentagons-war-on-the-american-dream/#ixzz29NcoPHuD
Disappeared from the DOD website, but this is the course:
Disappeared from the DOD website, but this is the course:
____________________________________________________________________________
GLOBALONEY
The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago,
according to new “quietly released” data released last week. The figures,
which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the
beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate
global temperatures. This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming
has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures
rose, 1980 to 1996.
A123 Corporation , which received a $249.1 million federal
grant in 2009 to build a U.S.
factory for hybrid car batteries, has file for bankruptcy.
___________________________________________________________________
ACTIVISM
For the future of America: give till it hurts
____________________________________________________________________________
ELECTION
Mitt Romney leads
President Obama by four percentage points among likely voters in the nation's
top battlegrounds, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, and he has growing enthusiasm
among women to thank. As the presidential campaign heads into its final weeks,
the survey of voters in 12 crucial swing states finds female voters much more
engaged in the election and increasingly concerned about the deficit and debt
issues that favor Romney. The Republican nominee now ties the president among
women who are likely voters, 48%-48%, while he leads by 12 points among men.
A group of conservative Catholics led by a former George W.
Bush campaign staffer is engaging in a highly-targeted effort to turn out
regular Mass attendees in swing states on Election Day.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82410.html#ixzz29PXSEeJd
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82410.html#ixzz29PXSEeJd
Direct account of what happened in Benghazi: While this was going on, Barack Obama was
jetting off to Las Vegas
for a fundraiser.” Anyone who said this
happened because of a video lied.
“It still goes through Ohio, and the climb remains steep, but the
Republican challenger has momentum on his side for the first time in months. If
nothing else changes between now and Nov. 6, I see a narrow win for Romney and
early retirement for President Barack Obama. If that happens, Obama will have
no one to blame but himself. Perhaps he was following the advice of campaign
gurus when he played the role of Clint Eastwood's empty chair during the first
debate with Romney early this month.”
“…..liberals across America need to adjust to the idea
that Mitt Romney might just win this thing. Hippies had better start
stockpiling medical Marijuana. Peaceniks, brace yourselves for the draft! And
as for the Occupy crowd--you kids might want to try looking for a job. Come
January 2013, Wall Street will be occupying you…”
____________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
Prager: “For at least the last
hundred years, the world's most dynamic religion has been neither Christianity
nor Islam. It is leftism. Most people do not recognize what is
probably the single most important fact of modern life. One reason is that
leftism is overwhelmingly secular (more than merely secular: it is inherently
opposed to all traditional religions), and therefore people do not regard it as
a religion. Another is that leftism so convincingly portrays itself as solely
the product of reason, intellect, and science that it has not been seen as the
dogma-based ideology that it is. Therefore, the vast majority of the people who
affirm leftist beliefs think of their views as the only way to properly think about life.”
With President Obama
expected to use his second-chance debate this week to portray Mitt Romney as an
uncaring rich guy, a new analysis of the GOP candidate's wealth shows that the
millionaire was so generous that he kept just 42 percent of his income. Obama's
team has mocked the 14.1 percent tax rate that Romney is in as shirking his
responsibility. But Charlottesville, Va.-based Marotta Wealth Management, which
pens a widely-followed research blog, found that when Romney's tax burden and
charitable gifts are included, he paid out 57.9 percent of his income.
PBS' documentary last week "presenting the definitive
portraits of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney" was so partial to Obama it
fortifies Romney's case to end PBS subsidies. The two-hour,
"in-depth" documentary — "The Choice 2012" — was purported
to get at what makes the presidential candidates tick. But it spent more time
focusing on how Romney developed his political ideology, which allegedly
centers around money and "privilege." Obama, on the other hand, has
no ideology other than an indefatigable concern for "the poor,"
according to the "Frontline" special, which was heavily promoted by
the Obama propaganda network, MSNBC.
Study: Black Americans Feel Less Empowered Under Obama Than
They Once Did. The study found that
while the election of Obama initially boosted feelings of political empowerment
among black Americans, those sentiments significantly faded in the years that
followed—especially among conservative and religious blacks.
These two groups make up a large segment of the black
population, with 56 percent of blacks identifying as "born again,"
and 39 percent of blacks as "somewhat conservative," according to the
study.
________________________________________________________________________
NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
A new chart from the minority side of the Senate Budget
Committee details the fact that, since January 2009, for every person added to
the labor force, 10 have been added to those not in the labor force. Here's a
chart showing the dwindling labor force:
Amazing video
_______________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
"The principle of spending money to be paid by
posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large
scale."
-Thomas
Jefferson
________________________________________________________________________
HUMOR
Mitt Romney jokes at the Alfred E. Smith dinner at which
President Obama also appeared: “I was
hoping that President Obama would bring Joe Biden along, because he'll laugh at
anything…….We were chatting pleasantly this evening as if Tuesday didn't
happen…….Usually when I get invited to gatherings like this, it's just to be the
designated driver…….We're down to the final months of the president's term……. I
have my beautiful wife Ann, he has Bill Clinton.
Romney, referring to St. Peter, says skeptics will say "if you've got a Church, you didn't build that."
Romney says Obama's new campaign slogan is "you're better off now than you were four weeks ago."
Romney: The president's remarks tonight are brought to you by the letter O and the number 16 trillion.
Romney says headlines will say "polls show Obama leading from behind."
Romney, referring to St. Peter, says skeptics will say "if you've got a Church, you didn't build that."
Romney says Obama's new campaign slogan is "you're better off now than you were four weeks ago."
Romney: The president's remarks tonight are brought to you by the letter O and the number 16 trillion.
Romney says headlines will say "polls show Obama leading from behind."
________________________________________________________________________
LATE NITE
Conan: Endorsements
are rolling in. The Atheist Party has endorsed Obama for president. When told
the news Obama said, "Thank God."
Ferguson: It's not a
great day for the ladies of "The View." Barbara Walters announced
this morning they were snubbed by Mitt Romney. He was scheduled for an
interview, but he canceled at the last minute. Barbara said, and I quote,
"you do not cwoss me, Mitt Womney. I will have my wevenge."
posted by gary at
8:12 PM
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