Saturday, December 8, 2012

op ed review 12/9



THIS WEEK’S NEWS
The federal government borrowed 46 cents of every dollar it has spent so far in fiscal year 2013, which began Oct. 1, according to the latest CBO data.

Treasury Secretary Geithner´s opening bid to Speaker John Boehner, a demand for $1.6 trillion in new taxes, was not meant as a serious offer. It was an ultimatum couched in an insult. Translation: "We won the election. We have the whip hand. Not only are you going to sign on to higher tax rates and higher tax revenues, we are going to rub your Tea Party noses in your coming capitulation”

President Obama wants a new stimulus package to fight the drag on the economy that his tax increases on the wealthy will create.

“Unemployment Plunges to 3.8% for Government Workers; Government Adds 35,000 Jobs in November, 544,000 Since July.”

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who shocked Washington on Thursday with the announcement that he would resign his Senate seat in January to become president of the Heritage Foundation, sent a parting shot at Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) over the “fiscal cliff” negotiations. “I’m not with Boehner…This government doesn’t need any more money, this country needs less government…..Speaker Boehner’s $800 billion tax hike will destroy American jobs and allow politicians in Washington to spend even more, while not reducing our $16 trillion debt by a single penny,”

House Speaker John Boehner is under fierce attack from conservatives in the blogosphere and on Twitter over his “purge” of several conservatives from top congressional committees, as well as for his offer to fend off the fiscal cliff.

With President Obama´s final election behind him, gun-control advocates said they expect the White House to begin pushing through an assortment of gun restrictions in coming months.

Imagine spending your life savings to design your dream home, only to discover your blueprint was too small to fit all your furniture and family. That's essentially what the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration did, leaving taxpayers with a jaw-dropping bill and nothing to show for it yet. “For spending a half billion dollars designing a building that turned out too small for its needs, the NNSA wins this week's Golden Hammer.”

“Your federal tax dollars are being used to prepare for the zombie apocalypse”

In an audacious flex of political muscle, Republicans in a single day reached the brink of a goal that for years has seemed an all-but-impossible dream: making the labor bastion of Michigan a right-to-work state. The GOP majority used its superior numbers and backing from Gov. Rick Snyder to ramrod legislation through the House and Senate on Thursday, brushing aside denunciations and walkouts by helpless Democrats and cries of outrage from union activists who swarmed the state Capitol hallways and grounds. At one point, police used pepper spray to subdue demonstrators who tried to rush the Senate chamber. The bill would prohibit making payment of union fees a condition of employment. A victory in Michigan, a cradle of organized labor, would give the right-to-work movement its strongest foothold yet in the Rust Belt, where the 2010 election and tea party movement produced assertive Republican majorities that have dealt unions one body blow after another.

The House voted Friday to cancel the annual diversity visa lottery and give those immigration visas to high-tech foreign-born who earn advanced degrees from American universities, as Republicans powered through their chamber the first major immigration bill since the election.
A United Nations human rights treaty that drew broad ire from conservative groups was rejected by a slender margin on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon. The vote was 61 for to 31 against, six “aye” votes shy of the two-thirds majority necessary to pass a treaty.

Businesses and Senate Republicans forced a courtroom showdown with President Obama on Wednesday, asking a federal appeals court to invalidate his surprise appointments to a labor board in January.

Final results from a battleground state this week are the latest evidence, if any more were needed, of the important role that early voting played in President Obama’s re-election victory. The official numbers from Iowa show that Republican nominee Mitt Romney “won” election day, by taking a majority of the votes cast there that day. But Obama carried the state. That’s because, in the weeks leading up to the election, Obama had banked a big cushion of early votes, a total of 137,000 more than Romney got. (Union ‘knock and drag’ efforts paid off)

In a story that’s been largely buried by the media for years upon years, the New York Times is now reporting that US-approved arms that were supposed to go to Libya rebels went to Islamist terrorists. Even more importantly, the Obama administration knew about it before, during, and after the Benghazi attacks.

The vast majority of faculty and staff members from the nation’s top Catholic universities donated to President Obama’s campaign over Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s this cycle, according to a new report. Ninety-one percent of the employees at 23 different Catholic schools gave to Obama, according to FEC data.

President Obama’s latest round of appointments includes the head of a nonprofit that gave tens of thousands of dollars to a group run by a convicted domestic terrorist.

With a fawning press, Benghazi didn’t hurt Hillary Clinton a bit:  “Fifty-seven percent in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say they’d back a run by Clinton to succeed Barack Obama, vs. 37 percent opposed.”

This is not good:  A Pew Research post-election poll found that a majority of young voters 18-29 years of age preferred bigger government. According to the survey, 59% of young voters said “government should do more to solve problems” while only 37% felt “government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.” Naturally, as a result of these views, young voters not only were more likely to back President Obama, they were also more likely to identify themselves as “Democrats” and “liberals” than older voters

Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio, two potential 2016 presidential candidates, laid out policy prescriptions on Tuesday night for their Republican party, nudging a party still smarting from Mitt Romney´s loss to President Barack Obama to reach out to a broader audience.

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THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Peter Ferrera, The American Spectator, 12/5

Stop that cringing! I can already see the light at the end of the tunnel. And it's not pretty for today's neo-Marxist Democrat party.

The man you see before you as your President today bears a striking resemblance to the main character in a Greek tragedy. He so reeks of hubris. Every word that drops from his lips speaks a haughty derision of the lesser beings not benighted to be a cog in his political machine. All witness Obama the Magnificent, the conqueror of America, which was the world hyperpower, but is now the Sick Man of the 21st Century, en route to terminal illness.

Middle class beware. Did you not hear four years ago Obama the Magnificent bewail that America with 4 percent of the world's population consumes 25 percent of the world's resources? So unfair, you know, the magic incantation of the Obama Regime. He told us that "we just can't keep driving our SUVs, eating whatever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of whether we live in the tundra or the desert, and keep consuming 25% of the world's resources with just 4% of the world's population, and expect the rest of the world to say you just go ahead we'll be fine." The sloppiness in El Primo's thinking there is revealed by the phrase "the world's resources." But America in reality never consumed any of the world's production. It always only consumed 100% of America's production (including what it traded some of that production for).

That is why previous American Presidents would have said, you got a problem with the American standard of living, you just address your complaint to the Seventh Fleet. But under Obama, America does not even have a Seventh Fleet anymore. We barely even have a First Fleet, and that is doomed to the sequester budget guillotine, on the same road as America's formerly dominant nuclear deterrent. So much for America's former morally embarrassing global military dominance. And Obama has the same solution for America's former morally embarrassing overconsumption. Reduce America with 4 percent of the world's population to consuming just 4 percent of the world's resources, a decline of 84 percent from its former standard of living. That would be fair, in Obama's eyes. Richard Trumka, call your office.

Conservatives who want to fight back should start with Obama's Second Inaugural Address and his 2013 State of the Union. These will be grand pronouncements of neo-Marxist principle and strategy. Books should be written unwinding them. They will be monuments to the Obama tactic of Calculated Deception, i.e., taking advantage of what he is sure a majority of Americans do not know, and what he calculates the Democrat party-controlled media won't tell them.

But in his hubris, and self-deception, Obama will plant the seeds of his own demise in the words of those addresses. Every paean to the middle class should and will be written in stone and compared to subsequent performance. Every promise to the poor and working people will be stored for future reference as the impact of Obamanomics on the poor and working people unfolds.

At about the same time, the first shoe will drop -- the 2014 Obama Budget proposal. This will outline what America's socialist future will look like under the Grand Vision of the Great Marxist, as the numbers crunchers effectively force Obama to confess that he wants higher taxes to pay for higher spending, which is what the budget will show. Check out in particular CBO's long-term projections of federal spending, and the national debt. They will show Obama is proposing the so-called Swedish socialism of the government taking and spending more than half of the entire GDP. (Even the Swedes have grown past Swedish socialism.)

Since the end of World War II, two-thirds of a century ago, federal spending has been remarkably stable at around 20 percent of GDP. But in his budget, Obama will propose doubling and even tripling that over the long run, as CBO's long-term projections will show. His budget will also propose national debt spiraling well beyond even what has trashed and ruined Greece, as CBO's projections will also show. In other words, Obama's hubris will lead to worse than a Greek tragedy.

These will be simple indicators of the socialism that has taken over the modern Democrat party. But if you want a simple indicator of why Obama is indeed a Marxist, you can find that in what he repeatedly says about his own tax policies. In a world where, according to official IRS data, the top 1 percent of income earners pay 39 percent of all federal income taxes, three times their 13 percent share of income, and where the middle class, the middle 20 percent of income earners, pays less than 3 percent of all federal income taxes, while earning 15 percent of income, Obama wants to raise all income tax rates on "the rich," so that they will pay what he sees as their fair share.

To a normal person, the fair share of federal income taxes for a top 1 percent earning 13 percent of income is 13 percent of the taxes. For a Marxist, the top 1 percent earning 13 percent of the income while paying only 39 percent of the income taxes is unfair because it is only fair for the top 1 percent to pay most of the income taxes by themselves. A normal person would see that policy as social theft. But a born and bred Marxist would see that as social justice, because it is unfair for the top 1 percent of income earners to even exist. Their income and wealth is not earned in the Marxist view, but stolen from The People. So it is only fair that the people steal it back……..The more Obama raises tax rates on the rich, the more will flee to Buffett's tax shelter, which protects investors from precisely the capital gains taxes, and taxes on dividends, that Obama is raising the most. Buffett is laughing all the way to the bank, but if you are middle class, or poor, the joke is on you, as we will see…..

And that is what next year will bring with renewed, double-dip, recession. Unemployment will soar back into double digits, above even the prior post-Depression peak of 10.8 percent. The deficit will break new world records, soaring past $2 trillion. The national debt will spiral further out of control, bringing the lifestyle of Greece to America. Poverty will set new post-Depression records. Wages and incomes for the middle class and working people will plummet further.

Where will it all end? The same place it ended last time. Reagan gave us Peace Through Strength. Obama will give us what his idol Roosevelt gave us, War Through Weakness. America won World War II by driving up the national debt to an all time American record of 109 percent of GDP. But Obama in his second term will have run up the national debt beyond that, even without any war, while he unilaterally disarms our nuclear deterrent, which the American people have now empowered him to do as our Commander in Chief.

I am consequently predicting that America's foreign enemies, seeing America has trashed its defenses, and cannot even finance a war to defend itself, will be tempted beyond resistance to attack the American homeland. The result will make 9/11 look like a mere skirmish. The Great Marxist will then politically have turned into The Great Pumpkin. Thank you, "Progressives." You will then really have transformed America.



Edited from a longer column, read the whole thing here:

More important reads this week:

Ann Coulter explains the “tipping point” theory::  “With blacks, Asians and Hispanics voting 93 percent, 73 percent and 71 percent for Obama, Republicans have to do more than just win the white vote. They have to run the table. Romney got a larger percentage of the white vote than Reagan did in 1980. That’s just not enough anymore. Ironically, Romney was the first Republican presidential candidate in a long time not conspiring with the elites to make America a dumping ground for the world’s welfare cases. Conservatives who denounced Romney as a “RINO” were the ones doing the bidding of the real establishment: business, which wants cheap labor and couldn’t care less if America ceases to be the land of opportunity that everyone wanted to immigrate to in the first place.”

Star Parker  12/2    Although Mitt Romney took flak for his statement that he lost the election because President Obama bestowed "gifts" on key parts of the electorate, what he said is basically true. We're stuck in a deadly spiral where economic growth is retarded because the economy is larded with enormous and ever increasing government spending and debt. Yet, more and more Americans want the lard. President Obama got re-elected by promising to continue to serve it up. Romney's failure, and the failure of the Republican Party, is not that Obama is pulling this off but that they can't get their act together to explain the problem to enough Americans to stop it.
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FROM OTHER COLUMNS
"I have several pet peeves, and one of them is the idea that when Americans get to keep their own money, it somehow 'costs' the government."
                     -John J. Miller

"[T]he message coming out of Washington, especially from our leftist politicians and the news media, is that we solve our budget problems by raising taxes on the rich. If Americans were more informed, such a message would be insulting to our intelligence. There are not enough rich people to satisfy Congress' appetite."
                     -Walter E. Williams

“When Obama took office, federal, state and local government jobs were 33 percent of all employment. Government jobs now constitute 39 percent of all employment, and Obama wants to grow that number to more than 50 percent with additional "stimulus spending," irrevocably socializing the American economy…”
                            -Mark Alexander

"With a chip on his shoulder larger than his margin of victory, Barack Obama is approaching his second term by replicating the mistake of his first. Then his overreaching involved health care -- expanding the entitlement state at the expense of economic growth. Now he seeks another surge of statism, enlarging the portion of gross domestic product grasped by government and dispensed by politics. The occasion is the misnamed 'fiscal cliff,' the proper name for which is: the Democratic Party's agenda."
                          -George Will

"[T]he most frightening aspect of the White House proposal is that it wasn't an error. Perhaps the proposal was thoroughly calculated. This suggests a president who doesn't care about the outcome of the cliff negotiations -- who thinks that he wins politically no matter what. He's betting that either the GOP will be far more responsible than he is and do anything to avert a crisis, or that the cliff gives him the tax hikes his partisans are demanding."
                        -Kimberly Strassel

"House Republicans [need to] get a grip. They are the majority. They're not the minority. They don't need to cave in to Obama; they don't need to form a 'Surrender Caucus.' So my number one bit of advice to the congressional Republicans is simple: Back out of all of this negotiating with Obama. The president is overwhelmingly dominant in the news media. [If] you start setting up the definition of success [as] finding an agreement with Obama, you just gave Obama the ability to say to you, 'Not good enough.'"
                          -Newt Gingrich

"We do not require government control or benefits in order to prosper. Nor do we need guaranteed health care or even abundant leisure time. Instead, we need the freedom to pursue our aspirations; to own property and to act on our initiative and profit from it; to have access to markets, capital, and resources; to live by the rule of law that is fairly and consistently applied; and to enjoy physical security in our persons and homes….Liberty is indispensable for a good and prosperous life. But freedom is never free."
                            -Kim Holmes, Ph.D.
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BOOKS, FILM
Gerald Molen, the Oscar-winning producer of Schindler’s List, notes that the documentary movie he produced this year isn't up for an Oscar, even though that film, 2016: Obama’s America, made more money at the box office than the combined earning of the 15 films the Academy deemed eligible.
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ISLAM
Khaira Arby, one of Africa’s most celebrated musicians, has performed all over the world, but there is one place she cannot visit: her native city of Timbuktu, a place steeped in history and culture but now ruled by Islamic extremists. One day, they broke into Arby’s house and destroyed her instruments. Her voice was a threat to Islam, they said, even though one of her most popular songs praised Allah. “They told my neighbors that if they ever caught me, they would cut my tongue out,” said Arby, sadness etched on her broad face.
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LEFTIST WATCH
“President Barack Obama met with several MSNBC hosts this afternoon at the White House to discuss tax rates, according to Huffington Post reporter Jennifer Bendery. The reporter wondered if an "MSNBC love fest" was going on at the White House.”

A progressive foundation and a labor union have combined to pour millions of dollars into a “racial justice” group that was hostile to voter ID laws during the 2012 campaign season.

Rep. Corrine Brown (D- Fla.) says that entitlement programs prevent the United States from being a third world country.

California Teachers Union Video Features ´Rich ´Urinating On ´Poor´
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GLOBALONEY
The UK Environment Minister warns that “if we don’t pay for windmills in Africa we’ll end up in more wars”

Former Thatcher advisor Lord Monckton was evicted from UN climate summit after challenging global warming -- 'Escorted from the hall and security officers stripped him of his UN credentials' 
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ARTICLES
As a potentially toxic combination of steep tax hikes and deep spending cuts draws nearer Republicans are consistently being outmaneuvered by President Obama. Disillusioned Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell counsels that this wonkish back-and-forth over the finer points of marginal tax rates is not the hill that Republicans should die on. The GOP doesn’t even grasp the underlying political dynamics now in play, he says.

Nationally, Obama won the popular vote by 4,452,910 -- but because 4,516,701 of those came from California and New York, Romney and the GOP can reasonably argue that he won the rest of the country by just about 64,000 votes…..What's going on is that big numbers from a relative handful of precincts can swing statewide totals to democratic presidential and senatorial candidates despite widespread popular support for GOP policies in congressional and other district races. Overall, Romney won about two thirds of the county-level contests in the country, but he lost state wide counts to high turnouts and virtual unanimity in precincts where decades of redistricting have combined with the Democrat tendency toward self-ghettoization to create conservative no-go zones.

After two major national election failures, it’s time for some diversity and change in the Republican Party, says former congressman J.C. Watts. It may be time for a run at the RNC (Chairmanship), he tells Lloyd Grove. “I think by any fair and reasonable standard, given the money that we as Republicans have spent, it’s the worst return on investment in any election cycle in the history of the United States of America,” says the former congressman from Oklahoma.

The First Lady:  “Talking Like Mme Defarge, Living like Marie Antoinette”

GOP rising star Sen. Ayotte offers an influential new voice

“The Fantasy of a 91% Top Income Tax Rate.  A liberal article of faith that confiscatory taxes fed the postwar boom turns out to be an Edsel of an economic idea.”

Mark Steyn: “Obama aims to finish the work of FDR and LBJ to create ‘a big Sweden’.

According to a Gallup poll conducted November 18-19, more than half of Democrats (53%) approve of socialism, which isn’t surprising, but almost one-quarter of Republicans (23%) also do. What the poll reveals is that there is a significant difference between the reality of what voters approve and their reactions to terms that represent those realities. For example, Democrats favor the “federal government” over “capitalism” by 20 percentage points, yet they approve of “small business” almost unanimously, at a 94% level. When asked about big business, Democrats approval rate drops all the way to 44%.

The FBI records the emails of nearly all US citizens, including members of congress, according to NSA whistleblower William Binney. In an interview with RT, he warned that the government can use this information against anyone.
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CHRISTMAS UNDER ATTACK
Residents in a California senior apartment complex are protesting an order from management to remove their beloved Christmas tree from the community room because, they were told, “it's a religious symbol.”

Illinois: The village of Alsip stopped displaying a cross on its water tower, something they've been doing every Christmas for some forty years.
California: After sixty years of displaying a Nativity scene in one of its public parks, the city of Santa Monica has been forced to discontinue this blameless custom. Surprisingly, the atheists did not sue to have the word "Santa" removed from the city's name.
Michigan: The village of Warren had a Nativity scene since 1945, but they don't have it anymore. That's right, another atheist lawsuit.
Virginia: Attempting to compromise, Loudon County supervisors have decided to allow both Christians and atheists to set up seasonal displays this year on the courthouse lawn. Atheist displays in the recent past have included a skeleton in a Santa Claus suit, nailed to a cross.
Florida: Cottondale Elementary School replaced a Nativity scene with Frosty the Snowman.
Rhode Island: Gov. Lincoln Chafee has replaced the state's "Christmas" tree with a "holiday" tree.
Hawaii: Mitch Kahle, founder of the Hawaii Citizens for the Separation of State and Church threatened a lawsuit against the Moanalua High School orchestra for performing in a church. In response, the school canceled its planned Christmas concert altogether.

“Our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom and Liberty Counsel stand ready to offer legal representation to communities and schools against anti-religious zealots who wish to destroy all public displays of Christmas. Keep these numbers handy and be ready to contact”
Alliance Defending Freedom, 15100 N. 90th Street, Scottsdale, AZ 85260, 1-800-835-5233
Liberty Counsel, PO Box 540774, Orlando, FL 32854, 1- 800-671-1776
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NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
New 3D blue-red map:  “Many Republicans seem ready to agree to Obama´s demands for tax increases -- after all, elections have consequences, and he won, right? Maybe, but before agreeing to anything, the GOP should probably look a little more carefully at just who elected Obama.”

The cities that never sleep: NASA's stunning images of the world at night highlight our 24-hour existence
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WISE WORDS
"Christmas is a state of mind. It is found throughout the year whenever faith overcomes doubt, hope conquers despair, and love triumphs over hate. It is present when men of any creed bring love and understanding to the hearts of their fellow man. ... Let us resolve to honor this spirit of Christmas and strive to keep it throughout the year."
                   -Ronald Reagan

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.”
                   -Winston Churchill

"The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife."
                    -Thomas Jefferson

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