op ed review 12/23
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
Thursday night 13 conservative House Republicans defeated
the Rule for the vote on Speaker Boehner’s highly controversial “Plan B.”
Larry Kudlow: “I
don’t blame John Boehner. His idea is the best compromise currently available.
Or put another way, it’s the least-bad option out there. It was even backed by
Paul Ryan and Grover Norquist.”
As Republicans sift through the wreckage of the presidential
election and Democrats brace for the 2014 midterms, there is one clear point of
agreement between them: Independent voters no longer decide elections. In 2012,
Mitt Romney became the first presidential candidate in recent history to
decisively win the independent vote — yet just as decisively lose the election.
Pollsters and campaign strategists — particularly Republicans — are scrambling
to understand what happened — and more important, what it means for future
campaign strategies.
Abortion rights activists have reached a new level of
depravity. Apparently, as everyone indulges in the holiday spirit, the
pro-choice camp decided to create abortion ornaments – or ´abornaments´ – to be
part of the commemoration of the birth of Christ.
Pope Benedict XVI has weighed in on a heated debate over gay
marriage, criticizing new concepts of the traditional family and warning that
mankind itself was at stake. "In the fight for the family, the very notion
of being – of what being human really means – is being called into
question," the Pope said in Italian during an end-of-year speech. He cited
feminist gender theorist Simone de Beauvoir's view to the effect that one is
not born a woman, but one becomes so – that sex was no longer an element of
nature but a social role people chose for themselves. "The profound falsehood of this theory
and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious," he
said. The defence of the family, the
Pope said, "is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is
denied, human dignity also disappears."
On Monday, the Vatican's
newspaper described laws on gay marriage as an attempt at a communist-like
"utopia"….
Government announces GM 'exit strategy';...
taxpayers to lose billions…..
Starting next month,
Americans in 25 states will have Republican governors and Republicans in
control of both houses of the state legislatures. They aren't all small states,
either. They include about 53 percent of the nation's population. At the same
time, Americans in 15 states will have Democratic governors and Democrats in
control of both houses of the state legislatures. They include about 37 percent
of the nation's population.
The number of young black men who cast a vote for the
Republican presidential candidate in 2012 tripled that of 2008. Hearing this
statistic, one commenter quipped, “Is this one of those situations where three
times nothing is still nothing?” No. “Nearly 20 percent of black males under 30
voted for Romney, more than three times what McCain got.” That according to Ann
Coulter, who gets her information from Pew Research. How? Why? Is there a
growing number of young black conservatives?
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) announced Monday that
she will appoint Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) to the Senate. Sen.-designate Scott,
47, will become the only African-American currently serving in the Senate and
the first black Republican to serve in the upper chamber since the 1970s. He
will also be the first black senator from the South since Reconstruction. “Scott
made sense for “….his ties to both the conservative base and the party
establishment.”
The Obamacare abortion-drug, contraception, sterilization
mandate gets a slapdown in Federal Court.
In examining documents
made public by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), it
becomes apparent that race plays a disturbingly large role in the medical
student application process. White students applying to medical school with a
GPA in the 3.40-3.59 range….had an 11.5% acceptance rate…..minority students with
the same GPA..had a 42.6% acceptance rate.
The “hot dog guy” is getting new digs. Clinton Tarver, the
owner of Clint’s Hot Dog Cart and Casual Catering, saw his small business
thrust into the national spotlight when his supplies were destroyed at a
pro-union protest against right-to-work legislation in Lansing, Mich. Violent
demonstrators tore down a tent where Tarver was serving his dogs, he said,
prompting a staff member for a local lawmaker to create an online fundraiser
for the 63-year-old downtown fixture. As of Friday, more than $33,000 had been
donated.
The next big issue in the national debate over guns - whether
people have a right to be armed in public - is moving closer to Supreme Court
review.
Socialized medicine: A
seriously ill baby was forced to wait in an Accident and Emergency ward for
more than 12 hours because there were no suitable beds available anywhere in
the UK.
_____________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Cal Thomas
11/22
Conservatives have been dreaming that a political
reincarnation of Ronald Reagan would lead them to an electoral promised land. I
never put my faith in such a possibility, because the past is a dangerous place
in which to live. Reagan never lived in the past, though he learned from it. Yet among the contemporary political figures
that closely represent the substance and style that made Ronald Reagan who he
was is Senator Marco Rubio, Florida Republican.
At a fundraising event for Iowa Governor Terry
Branstad last Saturday, Rubio touched all the Reagan bases and focused on
solutions, not just a recitation of well-known problems. Probably his best line
of the evening was, "The way to turn our economy around is not by making
rich people poorer. It's by making poor people richer." In this, he
resembled Reagan's favorite president, Calvin Coolidge, who said, "Don't
expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong."
Rubio also seemed to suggest that conservatism is
larger than the Republican brand, which has become tainted in some minds. He
said, "This is not about the Republican Party. This is about limited government
conservatism." While he said the Republican Party "is the home of
that movement," he seemed to suggest that it is not necessarily its
permanent residence.
Rubio also displayed the self-deprecating humor that
was a hallmark of Reagan when he said the reason he went to college in nearby Northwest Missouri is because no other college would
allow him to play football. Were it not for his "lack of size, speed and
talent," he said, he might have played in the National Football League.
Rubio spoke of the middle class, which President
Obama constantly referred to during the campaign. He said a major reason why
the poor are having difficulty moving into the middle class is because the
economy has stagnated. That, he said, is due to the record debt, uncertainty
that has kept businesses from hiring and a lack of skills needed in a global
economy.
Some Republicans are again suggesting the party would
perform better if it divorced itself from social conservatives and their
issues. Rubio addressed that directly and rejected it: "The breakdown of
the American family has a direct impact on our economic well-being. The social
and moral well-being of (our) people is directly linked to their economic
well-being. You can't separate the two." While praising "heroic" single
mothers, Rubio said, "They would be the first to tell you how difficult it
is." He added, "A two-parent home gives kids advantages," and he
said "the great gift my parents gave me" was staying together and
loving him and his siblings.
Rubio was not judgmental, but merely appealed to a
higher standard. He is not the angry moralist putting others down. He is a
political evangelist showing there is a better way. The difference is subtle,
but it is in contrast to Mitt Romney's remark about a nation in which 47
percent are "takers."
The way one delivers a message in the TV age is as
important as the substance of that message. John Kennedy said, "We can do
better." Like Kennedy and Reagan, Rubio is good at turning a phrase so you
instantly remember it. Consider this one: "Big government doesn't help
people who want to make it; it hurts them." Then there is his call to
patriotism from an American born of Cuban immigrants who regularly expresses
gratitude to a nation that offered him opportunity: "I can never do more
for this country than what this country has done for me." It's followed by
a warning: "If America
declines there is nothing to take our place."
Rubio has the message the Republican Party needs.
It's a long way to 2016 and there are many good potential presidential
candidates, but Marco Rubio could be the one candidate conservatives have been
waiting for: the second coming of Ronald Reagan.
Two more good reads:
Phyllis Schlafly:
“The notion that the main reason Hispanics vote Democratic is their
support of amnesty for illegal aliens and their resentment against Republicans
who oppose it is a big political lie. The reason Hispanics vote Democratic is
that two-thirds of Mexican immigrant families, although they are hard workers,
are in or near poverty, and 57 percent use at least one welfare program, which
is twice the rate of native-born non-Hispanic households. That's not a
constituency for whom promises of amnesty for more poor immigrants would
persuade them to vote for the party that is branded as supporting tax cuts for
the rich, limited government and spending reductions. Nor does it mean that
Hispanics are a voting bloc eager to vote for a white Cuban, Marco Rubio,
instead of the party that is offering them cash, health care and other benefits……”
Investor’s Business
Daily: “The president says
right-to-work laws mean "the right to work for less money." So how
does he explain the fact that incomes are up in RTW states while forced
unionism is a proven job killer?........looking at the hard numbers, becoming a
right-to-work state is a direct line to the top. According to Michigan's
Mackinac Center……private-sector, inflation-adjusted employee compensation in
right-to-work states increased by 12% between 2001 and 2011 compared with just
3% over the same period in forced-unionization states…..Employment in
right-to-work states expanded 2.4% over the same stretch vs. a 3.4% decline in
non-right-to-work states. Ironically, Obama is taking credit for jobs created
in RTW states……right-to-work states (excluding Indiana,
which passed a RTW law in early 2012) "were responsible for 72% of all net
household job growth across the U.S.
from June 2009 through September 2012." This is why people vote with their
feet and move to these states….If unions satisfied workers, one would expect
their membership to at least remain constant. But between 2000 and 2010, union
membership declined by 9.5% in non-RTW states and 9.2% in RTW states. The only
growth was in government unions. Michigan's
right-to-work law is a positive blow for worker freedom and economic growth and
an example, as in Wisconsin and Indiana, of how
conservatives can win and are winning in states led by GOP governors.”
_____________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
"An industry devoted to serving the public's right to
know gives twisted and evil men the means of becoming known. This problem is
not obviously amenable to a solution, and it certainly is not amenable to a
legal one. A regime of media regulation that would be both effective at
preventing mass shootings and consistent with the American Constitution
is no easier to imagine than a regime of gun regulation that would meet the
same criteria."
-James
Taranto
"So people are acting pretty set on gun control, but
all their ideas are things that do nothing but pester law abiding gun owners.
... So idea: Let's just pretend to pass gun control. The people who most want
it won't know the difference between an actual law being passed and absolutely
nothing being done, so can't we just say we passed a bunch of laws and pretend
everyone is safer? We'll call it the 'Super Deadly Gun Ban Act' and it will ban
fully-automatic bolt action shotguns and armor piercing hollow points and any
magically enchanted guns. And then all the dumb people will cheer, 'We is
safer!' So it's the same result as an 'assault weapon' ban, but no enforcement
costs and no petty intrusions on liberty. If people want useless things done to
make us all feel safer, can't we all just play along?"
-Frank
J. Fleming
______________________________________________________________________________
BOOKS
“Watermelons: How the Environmentalists are Killing the
Planet, Destroying the Economy and Stealing Your Children's Future” by James Delingpole. “….the
part scientists disagree on is not the "forcing" effects of CO2-induced
warming – but the "positive" or "negative" feedbacks which
might arise from it. The alarmists, whose views have dominated the debate these
last few decades, have long insisted that these feedbacks – mainly created by
additional clouds and water vapor – have a "positive", amplifying
effect. New data shows there is no
amplifying effect, no “tipping point.”
Energy: As the U.S.
changes the balance of power by exporting some of its abundant natural gas
resources, a Hollywood propaganda film debuts
claiming the technology making it possible will poison America´s small towns. ´Promised Land," a film that does nothing to
alter Hollywood´s stereotype of businessmen, particularly energy industry
executives, as greedy plunderers of the planet, opens this week in selected
theatres. The anti-fracking film is based on a not-true story about well
contamination in a small Pennsylvania
town with a healthy dose of junk science.
____________________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
Liberals always say they don’t want to take away guns. But
give them an awful tragedy like the Newtown,
Conn. shooting and they get
bolder and more honest.
Liberal activist and filmmaker Michael Moore says the mass
murder of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. is
representative of “who we are” as Americans. “I hate to say it, but killing is
our way. We began America
w/ genocide, then built it w/ slaves. The shootings will continue-it´s who we
are..”
__________________________________________________________________________
GLOBALONEY
Cooling Down the Fears of Climate Change : “Evidence points to a further rise of just
1°C by 2100. The net effect on the planet may actually be beneficial.”
Russia
is enduring its harshest winter in over 70 years, with temperatures plunging as
low as -50 degrees Celsius.
__________________________________________________________________________
CONNECTICUT
SCHOOL SHOOTING
Charles Krauthammer: “Every
mass shooting has three elements: the killer, the weapon and the cultural
climate. As soon as the shooting stops, partisans immediately pick their
preferred root cause with corresponding pet panacea. Names are hurled,
scapegoats paraded, prejudices vented. The argument goes nowhere… Monsters shall always be with us, but in earlier
days they did not roam free. As a psychiatrist in Massachusetts in the 1970s, I committed
people — often right out of the emergency room — as a danger to themselves or
to others. I never did so lightly, but I labored under none of the crushing
bureaucratic and legal constraints that make involuntary commitment infinitely
more difficult today. Why do you think
we have so many homeless? Destitution? Poverty has declined since the
1950s. The majority of those sleeping on grates are mentally ill. In the name
of civil liberties, we let them die with their rights on……We live in an
entertainment culture soaked in graphic, often sadistic, violence. Older folks
find themselves stunned by what a desensitized youth finds routine, often
amusing. It’s not just movies. Young men sit for hours pulling video-game
triggers, mowing down human beings en masse without pain or consequence. And we
profess shock when a small cadre of unstable, deeply deranged, dangerously
isolated young men go out and enact the overlearned narrative.”
Thomas Sowell: “Must
every tragic mass shooting bring out the shrill ignorance of “gun control”
advocates? The key fallacy of so-called gun control laws is that such laws do
not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law-abiding citizens, while people
bent on violence find firearms readily available. If gun control zealots had
any respect for facts, they would have discovered this long ago, because there
have been too many factual studies over the years to leave any serious doubt
about gun control laws being not merely futile but counterproductive.”
“….everything
has been turned over and looked at every which way — except for one: The question I find myself asking each time
is: What the hell happened to fatherhood?........no amount of legislation is going to change what has gone wrong in
the U.S.
What is needed is a rebuilding of the cracked pillars on which a liberal
society rests. But these pillars — personal responsibility and the celebration
of the difference between men and women — have been on the chopping block for
decades. This has been a boon to deadbeat dads. And unless it is rectified, the
spate of senseless killings is bound to continue.
The official Chinese government news agency, Xinhua, has demanded
the US immediately adopt
stricter gun control measures to reduce the number of firearms the US populace is
permitted to possess.
CNN´s Piers Morgan has been on a rabid anti-gun rant since
July´s Aurora, Colorado, shootings that has gotten even more venomous after
Friday´s massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. On Tuesday, he rudely and
disgracefully tore into guest Larry Pratt, the Executive Director of Gun Owners
of America, calling him "an unbelievably stupid man" who´s
"dangerous," concluding the interview by saying, "You shame your
country"
“We protect our Mayors with men
with guns; we protect our Governors with men with guns; We protect the House
and the Senate and President, with men with guns; We protect our courts, our
banks, our jewelry stores, our sports arenas, and our pawn shops, all with men
with guns....However, Our most precious possessions, our children we protect
with a piece of paper and a sign(Gun Free Zone).”
“Gun Free Zones are hunting preserves for innocent people.”
The head of the National Rifle Association said that armed
guards in schools are needed to protect our children from the “genuine
monsters” walking among us during a press conference interrupted twice by
protesters. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with
a gun,” said NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre
The NRA has registered an average of 8,000 new members a day
since the tragedy.
John Hinderaker demolishes the New York Times editorial
calling for more gun control. “The Times
Embarrasses Itself on Guns–Again!”
Though Adam Lanza may have committed one of the most heinous
crimes in history, had he survived his rampage and been convicted in court, he
would not have been sentenced to death. In April of 2012, Gov. Dannel Malloy (D)
and the Democrat-led Connecticut
legislature repealed the death penalty on a party-line vote.
____________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
Rich Lowry: Listening to Democrats and the media, you
could be forgiven for thinking the point of a deal over the looming “fiscal
cliff” wouldn’t be to reduce the deficit so much as to reduce the influence of
one man, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. Known to one and all
simply as Grover, he is the keeper of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge signed by
almost all Republicans committing themselves not to raise taxes. For this
offense, Grover is deemed the enemy of all that is right and just…..Grover has three insights that
are absolutely correct: 1) Revenues from tax increases will almost invariably
be spent…2) The typical structure of the Washington budget deal is tax
increases now in exchange for promised spending cuts over time that don’t
materialize. 3) The Republican brand is dependent on its status as the anti-tax
party. These aren’t alien beliefs foisted on the Republican party, but
represent GOP orthodoxy. Nonetheless, everyone acts as if Grover is the
instrument of the party’s Babylonian captivity. If only the dastardly Norquist
didn’t make Republicans say they won’t raise taxes — and put it in writing —
the party could fulfill its role in the “good governing” of Washington, namely
joining Democrats to raise taxes……whenever a Republican says he won’t
abide by Grover’s pledge, the media act like a choir of angels celebrating
another saved soul.
Stephen Moore:
“Republicans in need of encouraging signs for the new year need look no
further than Tim Scott. He was appointed by Gov. Nikki Haley on Monday to
succeed Jim DeMint as U.S.
senator from South Carolina.
Mr. Scott is a charismatic and principled economic and social conservative from
the Deep South. He owes his rapid political
rise in part to the tea party movement. Oh, and he is black.”
The first black Republican senator in three decades will be
a spokesman for Tea Party conservatism and a proud member of the party that was
founded to fight slavery and made the civil rights revolution possible. Though
he´ll inevitably be dismissed as a "token" or worse, Rep. Tim Scott,
the next Republican senator from the former slave state of South
Carolina, and the first black GOP senator since Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, shatters
once again the stereotype of the GOP as a party of racists and sexists.
Must read: “Obama
has stated that he prioritizes "fairness" over growth (as he told Joe
the Plumber), but it seems he is getting neither. Blue states with green
regulations drive down the stock of affordable housing. The blue states' bluest
cities, whose traffic he ties up when he flies in for fundraisers, have
staggering chasms of income disparity, with the estates that are home to his
donors in close proximity to ghettos and slums. Not so in the red states.
Liberals are shocked at their lower level of benefits, but the people who are
rushing to move there don't seem to mind it at all. It seems that they'd rather
have jobs. Americans, who voted
twice for Obama for president, have also voted with their feet against his
agenda, fleeing California for places like Texas; vacating the
states that give him huge margins for those that are purple or red.
Mysteriously, Republicans have failed to tie these together. They have not
explained that California is Obama's agenda,
and that if his policies come through to fruition, California is what we will have. Republicans
should run on the facts, and against the proven failures that Obama's ideas
produce when put into effect.”
The truth being, as
this column has often said, that present levels of public spending and
government intervention in the US,
Britain and Europe are unsustainable. The proportion of GDP which is
now being spent by the governments of what used to be called the “free world”
vastly exceeds what it is possible to raise through taxation without destroying
any possibility of creating wealth, and therefore requires either an
intolerable degree of national debt or the endless printing of progressively
more meaningless money – or both. How on
earth did we get here? As every sane political leader knows by now, this is not
just a temporary emergency created by a bizarre fit of reckless lending: the
crash of 2008 simply blew the lid off the real scandal of western economic
governance. Having won the Cold War and succeeded in settling the great
ideological argument of the 20th century in favor of free-market economics, the
nations of the West managed to bankrupt themselves by insisting that they could
fund a lukewarm form of socialism with the proceeds of capitalism.
________________________________________________________________________
NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
The highest resolution picture ever taken of Mount Everest, gigapixels, 360 degree view.
______________________________________________________________________
LATE NITE
Leno: As you know,
the Mayans said the world will end tomorrow, and like everybody else, they
blame Bush…..As we get closer to Christmas, these Christmas tree lots try to
rip you off because they know you're desperate. They know you need a tree. I
was at a lot last night. I went to buy a tree. Needles sold separately. I
couldn't believe it……A Michigan lawyer has been arrested for manufacturing
crystal meth in his office. I hope the fact that this guy's a lawyer doesn't
send the message that somehow all meth dealers are sleaze balls…….Animal
control officers have now shut down a rat-breeding business here in California
due to animal neglect. That's when you know things are bad — when your business
is too unsanitary for rats.
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