op ed review 10/14
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
In a shocking one-month swing, Mitt Romney stormed into the
lead over President Barack Obama in a new Pew Research poll conducted after
Romney's consensus victory in the first presidential debate. The poll finds an
11-point swing among likely voters.
The crowds tell the story. As
Election Day nears, Mitt Romney is drawing large and excited throngs.
Romney’s lead widened to 5 points from 2 points on Tuesday,
as he continues to chip away at key Obama support.
Romney opens up a decisive 7 percentage point lead in Florida.
Romney edges Obama in Colo.,
narrows gap in Wisconsin
In 2008, President Barack Obama won the independent vote
over John McCain by a margin of eight points, 52-44. A new Battleground Poll
has Mitt Romney massacring Obama among indies by a whopping 16 points, 51-35.
Romney even sliced eight points off Obama’s lead in California.
Romney has a 40-point lead over President Obama among active
and reserve service members, according to a new poll from the Military Times.
Mitt Romney met
Thursday with Rev. Billy Graham, and the aging evangelist pledged to do
"all I can" to help the GOP nominee win the presidency.
“The Obama campaign is struggling to respond to mounting
criticism of Vice President Joe Biden's bizarre behavior during last night's
debate with Rep. Paul Ryan. Biden not only interrupted Ryan frequently--82
times, --but frequently laughed, smirked, and snorted at serious moments,
showing contempt for his opponent and disturbing even friendly observers. A CNN
poll conducted after the debate, which handed Ryan a narrow 48%-44% victory,
also showed that Ryan had beaten Biden by an even wider margin when it came to
"likeability."
“Biden looked like The Joker -- Nicholson not Ledger.”
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops released a
statement Friday saying that Vice President Joe Biden falsely described
Obamcare's contraception and abortifacient mandate
Former President George W. Bush "wrote personal letters
to the families of every single one of the more than 4,000 troops who died in
the service of their country under his watch." By contrast, President Obama sends out identically
worded, typewritten form letters.
The DNC has terminated one of their field directors after
she was caught on camera calling voter fraud “cool” and “so funny” while
advising a presumably-liberal voter how to vote twice.
President Obama marked Columbus Day by issuing a
proclamation that reflected “on the tragic burdens tribal communities bore”.
“Absolutely everything we were told by our government about Libya
was 100% wrong. Not to put too fine a point on it, but they lied…”
??? DNC Chair Wasserman Schultz: “Wrong Statements About Libya Doesn't
Mean They Were False”
At the same time State Department officials were cutting
security for our diplomatic stations in Libya,
they were increasing the budget for our embassy in Austria in order to purchase
Chevrolet's electric powered Volt to help “save the planet.”
“Democrats frustrated by Obama's "Big
Bird" campaign turn”
The actor who
waddles around in the Big Bird costume gets $300,000/yr. (that makes Big
Bird a "1 percenter")
A wireless company profiting from the “Obama phone” giveaway
program is run by a prominent Democratic donor whose wife has raised more than
$1.5 million for the president since 2007. “Program to aid the poor lining the pockets
of wealthy democrats.”
The world’s richest man is also getting a piece of
the action with the “Obamaphone”
On September 28, the Office of Management and Budget
issued a “guidance” letter that assures defense contractors that the federal
government will pay for any legal damages incurred for failing to issue layoff
notices before election day (as required by federal law). In other words, the White House is telling
defense contractors that the American taxpayer will compensate them for any
liability incurred for violating federal law.
President Obama has appointed a man who has praised Hamas
and Hezbollah, and blamed Israel
for 9/11, to be the United
States’ representative at a European human
rights conference.
A prominent Democratic donor with ties to the Red Chinese
government may be implicated in the Obama campaign’s flouting of federal
campaign finance law, according to a bombshell investigative report.
“Hugo Chávez vows to keep Venezuela 'on socialist path' after
re-election yesterday.” “Today, the
White House is congratulating Venezuela
on that outcome.”
A major donor to Democrats and “progressive” causes
in Washington State got a big favor from the state Department of Revenue, when
the state tax agency failed to send a $2 million assessment on his private
plane until after the “clock ran out” on the bill. “It wasn't until after the
statute of limitations had expired that the agency decided that the airplane
was taxable”
"According to the Tax Foundation, the United States
gets 45 percent of its total taxes from the top 10 percent of tax filers,
whereas the international average in industrialized nations is 32 percent. America’s rich carry a larger share of the tax
burden than do the rich in Belgium
(25 percent), Germany (31
percent), France (28 percent),
and even Sweden
(27 percent)."
A California
school district has cancelled production of a stage version of Charles Dickens’
1843 classic, “A Christmas Carol.” The reason: “concerns about the
inclusiveness of material, and the desire of the district to respect the
cultures of everyone.”
________________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Investor’s Business Daily
10/08
Mitt Romney was blasted last month for warning about the
intractable nature of chronic government dependency. But Venezuela's election Sunday, which
Hugo Chavez won handily, shows how right he was.
Against all odds in a normal democracy, Chavez won
re-election to a fourth term against a strong opponent Sunday. The margin was
55% to 44%, putting Chavez in line to become the third longest ruler in the
history of the hemisphere, outmatched only by Paraguay's
Alfredo Stroessner and Cuba's
Fidel Castro, if he survives the six-year term.
It was a curious thing, given that Chavez is a colossal
failure as leader — his radical Marxist program serving up shortages, crime,
incompetence and corruption, and his alliances with the world's rogue states
and terrorists making Venezuela
a pariah state.
It was even sadder because his rival, Henrique Capriles
Radonski was a credible, fresh-faced challenger who ran a disciplined, sharp
campaign, vowing to align Venezuela
along the path of neighbors such as Brazil. Yet Chavez's 11-point
margin was higher than any poll or exit poll, and while it's true he tilted the
playing field by dominating the airwaves, flinging cash for votes and playing
dirty tricks with the ballot itself — placing Capriles' picture by a party not
affiliated with his political alliance — it wasn't quite outright fraud, as far
as is known. Tellingly, Capriles' team knew all this and still thought it could
win.
It didn't. What brought Chavez victory was an unexpectedly
high 80% turnout, which amounted to favors called in because of his culture of
dependency, making it easy for Chavista redshirts to round up votes from both
the slums and from Venezuela's
government workers. That's about 43% of the electorate, his base, that'll vote
for him no matter what.
Which brings up Mitt Romney's description of the toxic
effect of government dependency on democracy.
"There are 47% of the people who will vote for the
president no matter what," Romney told a Florida fundraiser last May. "There are
47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they
are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them,
who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you
name it."
That describes well not just why Chavez won, but why it's
all but impossible to dislodge him once he's in. Chavez is entering his fourth term — tired, cancer-stricken, in
power 14 years, and vowing to accelerate his socialism even more. And Venezuelans may never be able to
get rid of him, short of death, or maybe a Pinochet-like military takeover
followed by free-market reform, if they are lucky.
They can't win against, in Chavez's case, raising government
spending 23% — on everything from hiring bureaucrats to promises of new homes,
TVs and even washer-dryers. With a system like this, with the vast majority of
the population dependent on government for all their needs — and not called on
to make anything of themselves — the culture of dependency and the culture of a
dictator form an unbreakable bond.
That's a lesson for America — the Chavez lesson.
Colorado Springs
Gazette: “We must choose between two men
with vastly different visions. President Obama sees a country forged by the
force of central government. Gov. Romney sees a country with governance that
protects life, liberty and individual pursuits of happiness. Obama’s vision
won’t work. Romney’s will, and we believe he will make an extraordinary
president.”
_____________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
“To discuss (Libya)
is apparently to "politicize" it and to distract from the real issues
the American people are concerned about. For example, Obama spokeswoman Jen
Psaki, speaking on board Air Force One on Thursday: "There's only one
candidate in this race who is going to continue to fight for Big Bird and Elmo,
and he is riding on this plane." She's right! The U.S. is the
first nation in history whose democracy has evolved to the point where its
leader is provided with a wide-body, trans-Atlantic jet in order to campaign on
the vital issue of public funding for sock puppets.”
-Mark Steyn
“George Washington called government 'a dangerous servant
and a fearful master.' Thomas Paine called it 'a necessary evil.' For Obama,
government is the thing we all belong to, the thing that 'made this country
great.' Four more years of Obama will not make this country great, but it will
ensure that we belong to government to an unimaginable extent. Obama's message
is: 'You and everything you own belong to me.'"
-Jeffrey Folks
"The average national unemployment rate in the previous
administration was 5.2 percent. The average in Mr. Obama's presidency is 9
percent. The budget deficit totaled $1.18 trillion over the last four years of
George W. Bush's presidency. Mr. Obama's four deficits have added $5 trillion
to the national debt. When Mr. Obama was sworn into office on Inauguration Day
2009, regular gas was selling for about $1.90 a gallon. Today, under Mr.
Obama's energy policies, it is approaching $4 a gallon. Mr. Obama says that
'we're making progress.' This is the 'new normal.' We're moving forward, not
backward. Just what kind of Orwellian compass is he using?”
-Donald Lambro
"Vice President Biden is laughing. Are you?"
–RNC ad
_____________________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
A bus driver told a 12 year-old student that he should have
been aborted because his family had a Romney-Ryan sign in their yard.
“The past is never dead,” William Faulkner said, “it’s not
even past.” The progressives’ fury over Obama’s meltdown in last week’s debate,
and their desperate efforts to get him reelected by any means possible, have to
be understood in the context of the long history of the left’s attempt to
impose its ideology on the United States. Though successful at capturing the
universities, schools, popular culture, and most churches the left still lusts
for the presidency, where the real power lies to change America in line with their
ideology.
____________________________________________________________________________
BOOKS, FILM
A book about presidential perks recently revealed that
taxpayers spend about $1.4 billion paying for the staffing, housing,
transportation and entertaining of President Barack Obama’s White House. Now
another author, John F. Groom, explains in “The 1.4 Billion Dollar Man: Costs
of the Obama White House” exactly how researchers came up with that $1.4
billion estimate.
http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/08/how-it-costs-taxpayers-1-4-billion-a-year-to-fund-the-white-house/
Atlas Shrugged II starts this weekend.
“Who's the Fairest of Them
All?: The Truth about Opportunity, Taxes, and Wealth in America” by Stephen
Moore “reveals some interesting
information about how much the top ten percent of income earners in the United
States pay in federal income taxes as opposed to any other industrialized
nation in the world. According to Moore,
these earners pay almost half (45 percent) of the country's total taxes. This
conclusion flies in the face of the liberal concept that top earners in the U.S. are not
paying their "fair share" in taxes.
_____________________________________________________________________________
GLOBALONEY
For many years, climate realists have pointed to expanding
ice in Antarctica as a counter to the claim that decreasing ice in the Arctic is necessarily proof of anthropogenic global
warming. The folks at the Associated Press came up with an unbelievable answer
to that in an article unbelievably titled "Experts: Global Warming Means
More Antarctic ice"…."It’s the new kind of ice which is created by
heat, rather than cold."
“What people don’t understand is sometimes we have to step
outside the boundaries of the Constitution to get things done,” Paula Hern, a
board member with Community for Clean Water Air and Earth, told the ABQ
Journal. “Laws are made to protect corporations and we need laws that protect
Mother Earth”
Isn’t this special?... Obama's Energy Department has some
helpful suggestions for carving pumpkins:
"..the U.S. Energy Department offers downloadable pumpkin-carving
patterns on its website. The 'Energy-ween' designs include a windmill, solar
panel, and compact fluorescent light bulb."
___________________________________________________________________
ACTIVISM
“A new poll reports that Rep. Allen West is now
trailing his liberal opponent by nine points!
West was Nancy Pelosi’s top target of 2012. It seems the relentless and overwhelming
deluge of negative ads is taking a toll on Allen's campaign. The Democrats are
absolutely determined to destroy every single black conservative running for
office this year. We must fight back hard and do it NOW!”
Make or break time:
reach into your pocket:
____________________________________________________________________________
ISLAM
“The terrifying world of child brides:
Devastating images show girls young
enough to be in pre- school who are
married off to older men.”
The U.S.
should go on the ideological offensive against Islam as it did when it
inaugurated the Voice of America (VOA) and beamed its radio programs into Russia and the communist-dominated states of Eastern Europe.
___________________________________________________________________________
ELECTION
“Governor Romney’s speech today at Virginia Military
Institute is important because it begins to sketch the Romney doctrine — and
will vanquish any doubts on where he stands in respect of foreign policy. It
was both an eloquent and substantive statement, delivered at an inspiring
institution. In tone and substance it was strong but not swaggering. It
reminded us of Reagan’s foreign policy vision, which the man who became the
40th president articulated against, in Jimmy Carter, a faltering president who
reminds us increasingly of Barack Obama.”
RCP electoral map
Obama’s lock is down to only ten states.
CEO Steve Wynn says he’s sitting on his thumbs with over a
billion dollars tied up because he’s unsure what government program the Obama
administration will unveil next. “I’m afraid of the president,” said Wynn.
“I have no idea what goofy idea, what crazy, anti-business program this
administration will come up.……every business guy I know in the country is
frightened of Barack Obama and the way he thinks.”
As Mitt Romney continues to make gains in swing state polls
in the wake of his dominant debate performance last week, it’s becoming
increasingly possible that Americans could wake up on Nov. 7 to a 269-269
Electoral College tie. In such a case, Romney would almost surely win the
presidency, according to analysis by the Washington Examiner. Under the U.S.
Constitution, in the event of an Electoral College tie, the presidential race
is turned over to the House of Representatives .
____________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
He's not running for office. He's not part of a super
PAC. He's not lobbying for or against any
ballot measures. But billionaire Thomas Peterffy is spending millions on
television ads this election season with one cautionary message: Avoid
socialism. "I grew up in a socialist country and I have seen what
that does to people. There is no hope, no freedom, no pride in
achievement," he says with a soft Hungarian accent in the ad. "The
nation became poorer and poorer, and that's what I see happening here."
Peterffy told CNN he expects to spend $5-$10 million on the ad buy, depending
on its effectiveness. The spot will run on CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, and test
markets in Ohio, Wisconsin,
and possibly Florida.
Jack Welch: “Imagine
a country where challenging the ruling authorities—questioning, say, a piece of
data released by central headquarters—would result in mobs of administration
sympathizers claiming you should feel "embarrassed" and labeling you
a fool, or worse. Soviet Russia
perhaps? Communist China?
Nope, that would be the United
States right now, when a person (like me,
for instance) suggests that a certain government datum (like the September
unemployment rate of 7.8%) doesn't make sense.”
Kudlow: “The S&P
fell for the fourth day in a row on Wednesday, as investors ran for the exits,
fearing a rough market ahead. However, if you’re among those sellers running
for the sidelines, you may be making a big mistake. For the first time, I feel
comfortable enough tell you that Governor Romney is going to win big. And I
firmly believe Mitt Romney is about to usher in a new era — a Reagan-like
economic growth revolution.”
________________________________________________________________________
NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
The first NRA ad for Mitt Romney.
Worlds largest online collection of info about the Vietnam
War
Patriotic band sings the Star Spangled Banner
_______________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
"The natural
cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is
a change of men."
-Alexander Hamilton
________________________________________________________________________
LATE NITE:
Leno: Astronomers
have discovered a planet that is twice the size of earth and made of diamonds.
President Obama says the planet may be inhabited by aliens not paying their
fair share……. The good news for the White House is that unemployment has dropped
to 7.8 percent, right where it was when President Obama took office. So Obama
has gone from "Change you can believe in" to "Can you believe
there's no change."
posted by gary at
8:04 AM
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