op ed review 4/7
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
U.S.
sees highest poverty spike since the 1960s.
People “Not In Labor Force” Soar By 663,000 To 90 Million,
Labor Force Participation Rate At 1979 Levels
The government in Britain recently did something
interesting. It asked everyone receiving an "incapacity benefit" to
submit to a medical test to confirm they were too disabled to work. A third of
recipients (878,000 people) didn´t even bother and dropped out of the program
rather than be examined. Of those tested, more than half (55%) were found fit
for work and a quarter were found fit for some work.
This is not an April Fools joke: : President Barack Obama, who has increased the
national debt by $53,377 per household, has proclaimed April “National
Financial Capability Month,” during which his administration will do things
such as teach young people “how to budget responsibly.”
“$423,500 Stimulus Program on 'Correct Condom Use' Yields
Zero Jobs “
It’s easier to apply for green card than fill out an Obamacare
Application: new health exchanges
include 61 pages of instructions.
President Obama is eager to build public support for
Obamacare but waning enthusiasm from Democrats threatens his effort right out
of the gate. Two-thirds of Democrats now believe Obama´s health care reforms
will either hurt them personally or have no effect on their daily lives, a Quinnipiac University poll shows.
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz has called for the complete
legislative repeal of ObamaCare and its replacement by comprehensive healthcare
reforms that actually increase patient choice, decrease the role of government
bureaucrats and disconnect health insurance from employment. "If you lose
your job," Cruz said, "you don´t lose your house, life or car
insurance. They go with you wherever you go." It should be the same for
health insurance. In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with IBD´s weekly
M&M podcast, the Texas
freshman said, "Our first priority is repealing ObamaCare and repealing it
in its entirety.”
Foreign Policy magazine has made a stark pronouncement about
Texas Senator Ted Cruz. According to FP´s Erica Grieder, Cruz is "the most
hated man in the U.S. Senate." In a March 29 piece, Grieder made this
extreme judgment based on the new Senator´s outspoken positions on many issues,
as well as on how irksome he is to old guard Senators who imagine that
first-year colleagues should be seen and not heard. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/04/03/Foreign-Policy-Mag-Maligns-Ted-Cruz-as-Most-Hated-Man-in-the-Senate
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) doubled down in his opposition to
expanding Medicaid under President Obama´s healthcare law, even though opposing
it could cost his state $90 billion. At a press conference where he was flanked
by other conservatives, Perry argued expanding the health insurance program for
the poor would make Texas
“hostage” to the federal government.
President Obama doesn’t like being : ‘Constrained By A System
That Our Founders Put In Place’
Of all places…..A Salt Lake City School Board is booting Cub
Scouts out of elementary schools because of the Boy Scouts of America policy
prohibiting "avowed homosexuals" from holding Scout leadership
positions.
Media Bias: It´s no coincidence that a major mainstream wire
service is banning the term "illegal immigrant" just as immigration
reform gathers steam in Congress. The "P" in AP must stand for
"Politicized." Jay Leno described it best, on Tuesday´s "Tonight
Show." The comic noted that "the Associated Press, the largest
news-gathering outlet in the world, will no longer use the term ´illegal
immigrant.´" Instead, "they will now use the phrase ´undocumented
Democrat.´" In getting political agendas enacted into law, winning the war
of words is crucial.
Obama is blocking out reporters and wrapping himself in a bubble so he can exercise ultimate control of his public image
There was something missing from President Obama´s Wednesday
speech in Denver
about gun violence. He focused almost exclusively on passing gun-control laws,
and not at all on one of the nation´s biggest promoters of violence: the
entertainment industry.
Here we go again: Obama administration pushes banks to make home loans to
people with weaker credit
Obama Senior Adviser Complains That The Drudge Report 'Hurts
What We're Trying To Do'
A contingent of liberal Democrats in Congress is proposing a
new federal gun control idea: mandatory liability insurance for gun owners.
A federal judge in Brooklyn
has ordered the FDA to make the morning-after birth control pill available over
the counter to people of any age without a prescription, overturning a decision
by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to require a
prescription for girls under 17 years old.
The Student Government Association at Johns Hopkins
University has denied
official recognition to a group of pro-life students, and one SGA leader
privately equated them with white supremacists.
The Big Three networks´ morning and evening newscasts still
haven´t covered the murder trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell as of Monday morning.
ABC, CBS, and NBC have maintained their coverage blackout despite the graphic
witness testimony and the in-your-face courtroom antics of Dr. Gosnell´s defense
attorney during the first two weeks of the proceedings. The Philadelphia physician is charged with
murdering seven newborn children at his decrepit abortion facility. This
glaring omission by the broadcast networks would have continued, if Peggy
Noonan hadn´t provided the first mention of the murder trial on Sunday´s Meet
the Press on NBC.
_____________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Investor’s Business Daily 4/3
As the president began the first year of his second term,
the U.S.
poverty rate rose to a level not seen since the 1960s. What we have here is a
colossal failure of government policy.
The Census Bureau says that 50 million Americans, roughly
one in six — almost 17% — are living below the poverty line, which is defined
as earnings of less than $23,021 a year for a family of four. Apparently 20% of
the nation's children are living in poverty. We learn this not from a screaming
New York Times or Washington Post headline. Nor have we learned it from any of
the networks or major dailies that are relentless cheerleaders for Barack Obama.
This news is found in an Associated Press story carried by the British Daily
Mail that is more focused on alleged shrinking aid for the poor than it is on
the grim data.
Of course this is what we'd expect, given that the
mainstream press is so busy praising Obama that it misses — probably willfully
— the disastrous economy over which he's presided. The 50 million Americans
living below the poverty line aren't lone markers of Obama's failure.
Since the economy began its tentative recovery just a few
months into his first term, the unemployment rate has been nothing but ugly. It
sits now at 7.7%, down from its peak of 10% in October 2009. While that might
seem an improvement, it's not. As we noted a month ago, "just 58.6% of
Americans work today, down from 60.6% when Obama took office." If the
labor force participation rate were the same as it was when Obama was
inaugurated, the unemployment rate would be higher than 12%.
Another sorry marker is annual GDP growth. Obama's average
has been less than 2% per quarter, annualized. In the last quarter of 2012, it
was an almost invisible 0.4%. For all of 2011, GDP growth was 1.8%, in 2012 it
was 2.2%, well below the 2.5% to 3% pace that most economists believe is the
norm. And, by the way, the White House had forecast 4% growth in each of these
years.
Again, bear in mind that the recession lifted in June 2009,
before Obama's policies could have had a positive impact on the economy. The
economic stagnation and our jobless recovery have occurred after the
implementation of his policies — the nearly $1 trillion stimulus, tax hikes,
ObamaCare, hyper-regulation — and during the heat of his class-division
rhetoric that has obsessed on government-enforced fairness. And don't forget,
appropriate to the news about growing poverty, that a congressman once
congratulated Michelle Obama for her husband's stimulus bill, calling it
"the best anti-poverty bill in a generation."
Maybe that lawmaker should revise and extend that remark, as
congressmen do when they've made outrageous statements on the record. Under
Obama, the poverty rate grew from 14.3% in 2009 to 15.1% in 2010, then fell to
15% in 2011 before jumping to today's sorry rate. A man who has promoted
himself as a defender of the poor and middle class should have a better record.
But as long as he refuses to give up on failed left-wing policies, he never
will.
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/040313-650383-media-dont-cover-disastrous-obama-economy.htm#ixzz2PmkID7f3
_____________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
"There is this very vocal, very litigious minority of Americans
willing to legally attack anybody who dares utter a phrase or even a name that
they don't agree with. In a twisting of logic, they insist on silencing the
religious in the cause of tolerance. Now I ask you, where is the tolerance in
that?"
-Texas Governor Rick Perry
"They want to shut us up completely, and that's why the
attacks against me have been so vicious. I represent an existential threat to
them. They need to shut me up, they need to get rid of me. They can't find anything
else to delegitimize me, so they take my words, misinterpret them, and try to
make it seem that I'm a bigot."
-Dr. Ben Carson
"I offer the single most politically incorrect
statement a modern American -- indeed a modern Westerner, period -- can make: I first look to the Bible for moral guidance
and for wisdom. I say this even though I am not a Christian (I am a Jew, and a
non-Orthodox one at that). And I say this even though I attended an Ivy League
graduate school (Columbia),
where I learned nothing about the Bible there except that it was irrelevant,
outdated and frequently immoral. I say this because there is nothing -- not any
religious or secular body of work -- that comes close to the Bible in forming
the moral bases of Western civilization and therefore of nearly all moral
progress in the world."
-Dennis
Prager
__________________________________________________________________________
GLOBALONEY
News is breaking out all over: global warming stopped 20
years ago. A political earthquake has resulted from a feature story in the
Economist magazine because the Economist used to be a consistent cheerleader
for global warming activism. Doubts about global warming used to be censored by
its London
editors, one reporter confided to Stephen Hayward. So what will voters do to
Democrat candidates in 2014 and 2016 when the former realize that the
Democratic Party was lying to them? Is it time to run away from the issue for
Democrats, journalists, and Hollywood
personalities?
There are few things sadder than the “climate denier.” He
ignores the data and neglects the latest science. His rhetoric and policy
proposals are dangerously disconnected from reality. He can’t recalibrate to
take account of the latest evidence because, well, he’s a denier. The new
climate deniers are the liberals who, despite their obsession with climate
change, have managed to miss the biggest story in climate science, which is
that there hasn’t been any global warming “Over the past 15 years air
temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions
have continued to soar,”
So where’s the warming? Where are the gondolas pulling up to
the Capitol? Where are the encroaching seas in Florida? Or anywhere? Where is the climate
change which, for 33 years, has been just around the corner? A generation and a
half into climate change, née global warming, you can’t point to a single place
on earth where the weather is noticeably different from what it was in 1979. Or
1879, for that matter. I don’t know what subliminal changes would be detected
by precise instruments, but in terms of the human experience of climate, Boston is still Boston, Cairo is still Cairo, and Sydney is still Sydney.
________________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
Google celebrates leftist leader Cesar Chavez, not Easter,
on religious holiday as some Christians call for boycott.
“Many American White Men Worship
Guns Because of Sexual Insecurity, Entitlement, and Profit” That´s the headline of a
commentary piece at the website Buzzflash which is a blog from the far left,
radical Truthout publication. At first I thought it was an April Fool´s joke -
something The Onion would pull, so over the top it is. But this unintentionally
hysterically funny screed is what passes for deep thought on the left these
days. Here are some choice excerpts for your reading pleasure…….
Former Weather Underground radical
Kathy Boudin — who spent 22 years in prison for an armored-car robbery that
killed two cops and a Brinks guard — now holds a prestigious adjunct
professorship at Columbia University’s School of Social Work,
Letterman & Maddow Rip Gay Marriage
Opposition: ‘Absolute Stupidity,’
‘Beyond Embarrassing,’ ‘Case Closed’
____________________________________________________________________________
CONSERVATIVE STRATEGY
Soon after Texas Republicans notched another round of
lopsided wins last November, the state GOP sent notice to its local chapters:
Please stop holding party meetings in country clubs. Other advice followed.
Please consider hosting Republican recruiting tables at naturalization
ceremonies. Word spread among state GOP lawmakers to back off on bills
targeting illegal immigrants in the legislative session. In no state is the
Republican grip at once so firm, and under such challenge from Democrats, as it
is in Texas.
And nowhere is that grip of more consequence to the fortunes of the national
GOP.
The Great State of Indiana is about to test statewide school
choice on a meaningful scale. This a major victory that has attracted little
media attention at a time when the MSM narrative is focused on same sex
marriage splitting the Republicans, and the inevitable tide of history sweeping
away the evangelical wing of the GOP into the dustbin of history, or at least
out of the its status as the party´s reliable base.
In a revelation that may have Colorado
voters rethinking their state’s push on gun control, court documents revealed
that the mass shooting in Aurora
that killed 12 and injured 70 more could have been prevented by law
enforcement. The psychiatrist for suspect, James Holmes, had warned campus
police that Holmes was dangerous and homicidal a month before the shooting took
place.
_________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
If America
were a bus, Deneen Borelli would be the new Rosa Parks. Borelli is the very
model of a human being, an African American and a woman who is just plain tired
up to here at all of the back of the bus treatment dished by liberals — black
and white alike — to conservatives who happen to be black. Ms. Borelli has in a
figurative sense, as Rosa Parks did in the original and literal sense, sat down
in a seat reserved for liberals at the front of the American bus. She won’t get
up, she isn’t moving.
Announcements by potential 2016 candidates, Hillary Clinton
and Rob Portman, that they now approve of gay marriage made headlines as
predicted. Never once discussed, however, by advocates is how this issue has
anything to do with the economic state of the nation today. Legalizing gay
marriage will not improve the economy nor is it really that important to the
average homosexual. Celebrity nuptials and endorsements may garner news
coverage stressing it as a civil rights issue but ironically these come from a
wealthier than average demographic.
George Will: The real
vocation of some people entrusted with delivering primary and secondary
education is to validate this proposition: The three R’s — formerly reading,
’riting and ’rithmetic — now are racism, reproduction and recycling. Especially racism. Consider Wisconsin’s Department of Public
Instruction. It evidently considers “instruction” synonymous with “propaganda,”
which in the patois of progressivism is called “consciousness-raising.” Wisconsin’s DPI, in collaboration with the Orwellian-named
federal program VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America; the “volunteers” are
paid), urged white students.”to wear white wristbands “as a reminder about your
privilege…..After criticism erupted, the DPI removed the flyer from its Web
site and posted a dishonest statement claiming that the wristbands were a hoax
perpetrated by conservatives.
___________________________________________________________________________
NOTEWORTHY LINKS
The Great DHS Ammunition Stockpile Myth. Here are the facts.
Mark Alexander’s classic Essay: “Gender Identity, The
Homosexual Agenda and The Christian Response”
__________________________________________________________________________
LATE NITE
Leno: And in a
groundbreaking move, the Associated Press, the largest news gathering outlet in
the world, will no longer use the term ‘illegal immigrant.’ That is out. No
longer ‘illegal immigrant.’ They will now use the phrase ‘undocumented
Democrat.’
______________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
"Marriage is ... in its origin a contract of
natural law. ... It is the parent, and not the child of society; the source of
civility and a sort of seminary of the republic."
-Justice Joseph Story
posted by gary at
3:41 PM
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