op ed review 12/30
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
“During eulogy for war hero senator, Obama refers to
himself 63 times...”
An attorney for Hobby Lobby Stores said Thursday that the
arts and crafts chain plans to defy a federal mandate requiring it to offer
employees health coverage that includes access to the morning-after pill,
despite risking potential fines of up to $1.3 million per day.
Socialist French President Hollande suffered a new setback
when France's
highest court threw out a plan to tax the ultrawealthy at a 75 percent rate,
saying it was unfair.
On January 1, regardless of the outcome of fiscal cliff
negotiations, Americans will be hit with a $1 trillion Obamacare tax hike.
Fathers disappear from households across America
In the UK,
a 'dad' is the tenth most popular Christmas list request for children.
“Obama Claus Gives You 90 More Days To Collect Your $50,000
Reparations Check”
Sen. Feinstein: “All Gun Owners Should Be Registered,
Fingerprinted”
A global activist group is targeting two large hotel chains
because they give discounts to members of the National Rifle Association.. The
group is pressuring "Wyndham Hotels Worldwide – which owns Ramada, Days
Inn, Wingate and Super 8 – and Best Western" because both organizations
are listed as "friends of the NRA" on the NRA´s website.
CNN anchor Piers Morgan isn’t benefiting from much Christmas
cheer, at least according to one measure: The number of signers on a petition
urging the White House to deport Morgan has skyrocketed by late Tuesday
afternoon to nearly 66,000 names. The petition had 65,887 supporters around 5
P.M. Tuesday and is posted on the White House’s official petition site. It
slams Morgan for comments he has made regarding gun control in the wake of the
shootings at Sandy Hook
Elementary School that
killed 20 children and six adults.
“Blogger Creates Interactive Map of Employees Homes of Paper
Which Published Names and Addresses
of Pistol Permit Holders”
of Pistol Permit Holders”
“David Gregory and Piers Morgan have both met the Alinskyite
Right, and progressives in positions of power should take note. Both men are
the targets of digital petition drives aimed at holding them to their own
standards, and ridiculing them, invoking Rules 4 and 5 from Rules for Radicals….This may be one of the
first signs of the direction the conservative movement will take in President
Obama's second term, and I take heart from the development.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/12/here_comes_the_alinskyite_right.html#ixzz2GGpFrS5N
“….even as Gregory mocked the NRA for the idea (to put armed guards in schools), he seems to see nothing wrong with sending his own kids to a school that has armed security guards each school day.
“….even as Gregory mocked the NRA for the idea (to put armed guards in schools), he seems to see nothing wrong with sending his own kids to a school that has armed security guards each school day.
President Obama sends his kids to a school where armed
guards are used as a matter of fact. Sidwell
Friends School
in Washington, DC, has 11 security officers and is seeking
to hire a new police officer as we speak.
A New Jersey
suburb is getting ready to station a full-time armed police officer in each of
its nine schools come January 2. Marlboro
Township will reportedly become the
first district in the U.S.
to have guns in every school
500th homicide in Chicago
The four officials supposedly out of jobs because of their
blunders in the run-up to the deadly Benghazi terror attack remain on the State
Department payroll — and will all be back to work soon, The Post has learned.
Boston Herald editorial, “The lying continues..”
Prospects for the revival of cap-and-trade legislation in
the upcoming Congress as a tonic for global climate change appear to be going
up in smoke. Democrats anticipate that some package addressing greenhouse gas
emissions from the nation’s coal-fueled power plants will likely emerge next
session. But getting any proposal through the Republican-controlled House is
dubious and it’s extremely unlikely that lawmakers will specifically reconsider
cap-and-trade.
Pope Benedict used his annual Christmas message to denounce
gay marriage, saying that it destroyed the “essence of the human creature.” In
one of his most important speeches of the year, the Pope stressed that a
person’s gender identity is God-given and unchangeable. As a result, he sees
gay marriage as a “manipulation of nature.”
Christianity faces being wiped out of the “biblical
heartlands” in the Middle East because of
mounting persecution of worshippers, according to a new report. The study warns
that Christians suffer greater hostility across the world than any other
religious group. And it claims politicians have been “blind” to the extent of
violence faced by Christians in Africa, Asia and the Middle
East. The most common threat to Christians abroad is militant
Islam, it says, claiming that oppression in Muslim countries is often ignored
because of a fear that criticism will be seen as “racism”.
Three churches in the Austrian town of Amstetten (pop: 21,000) were burned this
morning. All of the indications point to arson.
_____________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
PJ O’Rourke:
“Dear Mr. President”
…..the worst thing that you've done internationally is what
you've done domestically. You sent a message to America in your re-election
campaign…..The message is that we live in a zero-sum universe.
There is a fixed amount of good things. Life is a pizza. If
some people have too many slices, other people have to eat the pizza box. You
had no answer to Mitt Romney's argument for more pizza parlors baking more
pizzas. The solution to our problems, you said, is redistribution of the pizzas
we've got—with low-cost, government-subsidized pepperoni somehow materializing
as the result of higher taxes on pizza-parlor owners.
In this zero-sum universe there is only so much happiness.
The idea is that if we wipe the smile off the faces of people with prosperous
businesses and successful careers, that will make the rest of us grin. There is only so much money. The
people who have money are hogging it. The way for the rest of us to get money
is to turn the hogs into bacon.
Mr. President, your entire campaign platform was redistribution. Take
from the rich and give to the . . . Well, actually, you didn't mention the
poor. What you talked and talked about was the middle class, something most
well-off Americans consider themselves to be members of. So your plan is to
take from the more rich and the more or less rich and give to the less rich,
more or less. It is as if Robin Hood stole treasure from the Sheriff of
Nottingham and bestowed it on the Deputy Sheriff.
But never mind. The
evil of zero-sum thinking and redistributive politics has nothing to do with
which things are taken or to whom those things are given or what the sum of
zero things is supposed to be. The evil lies in denying people the right, the
means, and, indeed, the duty to make more things.
Or maybe you just
find it easier to pursue a political policy of sneaking in America's back
door, swiping a laptop, going around to the front door, ringing the bell, and
announcing, "Free computer equipment for all school children!"
However, domestic
politics aren't my first concern here. The question is whether you want to
convince the international community that zero-sum is the American premise and
redistribution is the logical conclusion. I would argue that the world doesn't need more
encouragement to think in zero-sum terms or act in redistributive ways. Western Europe has done such a good job redistributing
its assets that the European Union now has a Spanish economy, a Swedish foreign
policy, an Italian army, and Irish gigolos.
Redistributionist
political ideologies, in decline since the fall of the Soviet bloc, are on the
rise again. Will you help the neo-Marxists of Latin
America redistribute stupidity to their continent?
The Janjaweed are
trying to redistribute themselves in Darfur.
The Serbs would like to do the same in Kosovo. The Chinese have already done it
in Tibet.
Al Qaeda offshoots are doing their best to redistribute violence to places that
didn't have enough. And Russia
and China
would like the global balance of power to be redistributed. Since China has plenty of money to lend and Russia
has plenty of oil to sell, your debt and energy policies should go a long way
toward making the balance of power fairer for the Russians and Chinese.
While
redistribution—or "plagiarism," as we writers call it—is a bad idea,
zero-sum is even worse. Zero-sum assumptions mean that a country that doesn't
pursue a policy of taking things from other countries is letting its citizens
down. That's pretty much the story of all recorded history, none of which needs
to be repeated. It has taken mankind millennia to learn that trade is more
profitable than pillage. And we don't have to carry our plunder home in sacks
and saddlebags when we're willing to accept a certified check.
The Chinese don't
seem to understand this yet. They think trade is a one-way enterprise, the
object of which is for China
to have all the world's money. They've got most of ours already. Mr. President,
validating China's
economic notions isn't a good thing.
A zero-sum faith in
getting what's wanted by taking it can extend to faith itself. In some places
there is only one religion. If other people have a religion of their own they
must be taking away from my religion. Give up that faith, infidels.
Speaking of infidel
faiths, Mr. President, please consider the message of this Christmas week—a
message of giving, not taking. And consider your prominent position as a
messenger of peace on earth and goodwill toward men. When you embrace a belief
in the zero-sum nature of what's under the Christmas tree and propose to
redistribute everything that's in our Christmas stockings, you're asking the
world to go sit on the Grinch's lap instead of Santa's.
_____________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
“Given the alternatives that are being bandied about in Washington, there can be
no doubt that, from a policy perspective, going over the fiscal cliff is the
far superior option. Temporary extensions of tax cuts don’t do much for the
economy; temporary extension of unemployment benefits retards job-seeking; and
the whole grab-bag of accounting gimmicks allows Congress to avoid owning up to
the true scale of the budget deficit, a budget deficit that will get cut in
half if we go over the cliff. The most common conservative rejoinder to these
arguments is political: that Republicans will be blamed if we go over the
cliff, and that will cost them in the next election. I don’t agree with that
argument, as I’ve written previously, for two reasons: (1) the next election is
as far away as an election can be; (2) Republicans will never be able to build
a political case for less spending if most Americans are insulated from the cost
of that spending……Americans cast their ballots for big government. Now it’s
time to pay for it…..How can we expect people to care about the growth of
government if it doesn’t cost them anything?”
-Avik Roy
“Some Republicans are dead set
against (raising taxes on anyone). Some Republicans would be open to the
change, but would only want to give up their position in return for serious
spending concessions from the administration. And some Republicans would be open to giving
in on top-earner tax rates in order to get a deal done now, and worry about
spending later. It appears that it is the last group, working with Democrats
and the White House, that will prevail. But the bottom line is that the fiscal
cliff fight will not end happily for Republicans. They will have given in
on what was an article of faith — that taxes should not be raised on anybody,
poor or rich — in return for essentially nothing. All they will have is a plan to fight again,
soon.”
-Byron York
“The decision of a newspaper in New
York’s Westchester
County to publish an
interactive map that allowed readers to discover the names and addresses of
owners of legal guns is generally being debated as one about whether the
Gannett-owned Journal News showed good judgment. It didn’t, but the
problem goes a lot deeper……..this was about the desire on the part of some in
the liberal mainstream media to stigmatize legal gun ownership and to whip up
sentiment for not just tighter controls but an eventual ban. This makes it
easier to understand why the National Rifle Association fiercely resists even
the most reasonable gun control measures. If even those who have jumped through
the not inconsiderable hoops erected by the authorities to gain a legal gun
permit in New York are now to be treated as if they were the moral equivalent
of sex offenders, it’s clear the goal of the anti-gun media is not just to
focus discussion on assault weapons and large ammunition clips but to ban
individual gun ownership altogether. “
-Jonathan Tobin
______________________________________________________________________________
BOOKS
Michael Medved: ‘Les
Miz’ on Screen Sends Misleading Messages……The magnificent movie version of
Victor Hugo’s classic novel exalts the spirit of revolution at the expense of
the virtues of its hero, a hardworking middle-class small-town mayor. But as
grand entertainment with a passionately personal focus, the movie version of Les
Miserables almost entirely ignores historical context while glorifying the
revolutionary inclination, regardless of results.
____________________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
Sam Donaldson goes after the Tea Party. During a discussion
about 2012's biggest game changers on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show,
Donaldson said, "The greatest slogan that I hated during this last
campaign was 'We want to take back our country.' Guys, it's not your country
anymore - it's our country..”
“You really would need to have a heart harder than the
five-pence piece in the Christmas pud not to feel sorry at present for
Professor Richard Dawkins. Christmas must be such a terrible trial for the
planet’s most celebrated--and angriest--atheist. All that cheerfulness and
pleasure associated with Christianity’s main celebration seems to drive him
simply nuts. Indeed, just a few days ago he lunged into yet another wild
denunciation of religious faith. This time, the Chief Inquisitor of Unbelief
declared that raising a child as a Catholic was worse than subjecting it to
sexual abuse”
__________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
Few things animate the ire of liberals more than the right
to bear arms. Liberals loathe the Second Amendment and when horrific tragedies
like the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut
rear their ugly head, they are quick on the draw to call for more gun control.
But just don’t ask liberals to practice what they preach. Senator Dianne
Feinstein of California
is readying legislation to re-introduce a ban on assault weapons. Yet, as Mark
Levin pointed out, Feinstein owned a concealed firearm. She said, “If somebody
tries to take me out I’m going to take them with me.” When NRA President Wayne
LaPierre called for armed guards to be placed in schools late last week, an
irate David Gregory derided the idea during his interrogation of LaPierre on Meet the Press. Yet Gregory’s
children attend the same school in Washington,
D.C. as President Obama’s
daughters. And yes, Sidwell Friends, a Quaker school, employs armed guards.
For unbridled bias, ignorance and animus, this Reuters story
on firearms has to be read to believed. Let’s start with the headline: Gun
enthusiasts pack shows to buy assault weapons.
In case you’re slow on the uptake, the story contains no fewer than
thirteen uses of the word “assault,” all of them used incorrectly. The idea is
to get the reader to think that enraged gun nuts all across America are lining
up to buy machine guns in order to “assault” a particular target of their ire.
Riveting article. “I
carried a gun in New York City for more than a
decade -- back when there were thousands of murders a year and the Bronx led the nation in killings. On at least four
occasions, that gun saved my life, and in a couple of instances, the lives of
people who were with me at the time.”
Hugh Hewitt:
“President Obama used the six weeks after his election to remain in full
campaign mode and attack the GOP relentlessly with the intent of marginalizing
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, as an effective leader of the Republican
opposition. He succeeded. Decisively. And thus defined his second term as a
bitter grind before it even began, just as he signaled to the Republicans that
there is zero upside to negotiating with this most partisan president.”
“It's an old story by now, this venomous lashing-out at
blacks and other minorities who embrace conservative or Republican values. It
especially infuriates the Democratic left to see the enthusiasm black
conservatives inspire among Republicans. Far from celebrating the fact that
minorities can demonstrate appeal across the political spectrum, the left whips
out the race card. The rise of black Republican leaders, they say, is just a
thin disguise for GOP racism. Yet if Republicans oppose a black Democratic
leader, they call that racism too.
Perhaps historical guilt feelings explain this reflexive
racial demagoguery. For a very long time the Democratic Party was a bulwark of
American racism – it was the party that defended slavery; that fought the 13th,
14th, and 15th Amendments; that founded the Ku Klux Klan; that
enacted Jim Crow segregation; that opposed anti-lynching laws. Could it be the
psychological weight of such a record that leads so many Democrats and their
allies today to promiscuously impute racism to their political opponents? Above
all, to their black political opponents? “
Story behind Mitt Romney loss: Rich Beeson, the Romney political
director…..said that only after the election did he realize what Obama was
doing with so much manpower on the ground. Obama had more than 3,000 paid
workers nationwide, compared with 500 for Romney, and hundreds of thousands of
volunteers. “Now I know what they were doing with all the staffs and offices,”
Beeson said. “They were literally creating a one-to-one contact with voters,”
something that Romney did not have the staff to match. Republicans, as it
happened, had lost track of their own winning formula. Democrats said they
followed the trail blazed in 2004 by the Bush campaign which used an array of
databases to “microtarget” voters and a sophisticated field organization to
turn them out. Obama won in part by updating the GOP’s innovation. But losing
seemed a remote and unlikely prospect when Romney gathered advisers in Boston and planned the
campaign they all believed would put him in the White House.
________________________________________________________________________
NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
Making it easy to understand: “US budget for dummies”:
The authentic story of the redeeming power of the Christmas
message is nowhere more vividly illustrated than in the incredible life of an
English slaver named John Newton.
The lost churches of Russia: Haunting images of
abandoned wooden buildings crumbling to dust in remote forests
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2252364/The-lost-churches-Russia-The-abandoned-wooden-buildings-left-forgotten-forests.html#ixzz2FtJBtv4i
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