op ed review 11/30
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
Former President Ronald Reagan has edged out Franklin D.
Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy as the nation’s greatest president in over a
century, and President Obama was rated the biggest failure by a sizable margin
over George W. Bush, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, according to a new poll.
“Obama Approval Falls
to 50 Percent in Home State, Collapses in Ohio”
If voters had been aware last year that they might lose
their health-care plans when Obamacare went into effect, Republican President
Mitt Romney would be sitting in the White House today, according to a poll
released Friday.
Almost 80 million people with employer health plans could
find their coverage canceled next year because they are not compliant with
ObamaCare, several experts predicted.
With the roll out of Obamacare being as disastrous as
possible for the Obama administration, one group was given a $1 million grant
to gather “success stories” of Americans dealing with Obamacare and distribute
them to the media who often refer to them as an “independent” group.
“Obamacare Event Hands Out Free Condoms as Prizes….The
condom give-away was a training event with young Democrats.”
“Cancer Patient Who Spoke Out Against
ObamaCare Now Being Audited”
Boy with cancer loses coverage after Obamacare launch……Bureaucrats
won't help unless he is 'pregnant or an illegal alien'”
“For the first time in nearly a decade we have halted parts
of Iran’s nuclear program”
announced a jubilant Barack Obama after the news of the just-signed Geneva
six-month interim agreement with Iran. But the American goal for the
accord was that the Iranians not “advance their program” of building a uranium
nuclear bomb (and perhaps a plutonium bomb too); the apparent deal exactly
permits such advancement, plus sanctions relief to Tehran worth about $9 billion. This wretched
deal offers one of those rare occasions when comparison with Neville
Chamberlain in Munich
in 1938 is valid.
John Bolton: “Abject
Surrender by the United
States”
Elliot Abrams: “This
agreement rewards Iran for a
decade of lying to the IAEA and hiding its nuclear program, because it
essentially accepts Iran’s
enrichment program.”
For many of the Americans who were held hostage at the start
of the Iranian revolution, "It's kind of like Jimmy Carter all over again.”
National Labor Relations Board lawyers okayed a major
union's practice of paying people to protest against Walmart in a legal
memorandum earlier this month. The federal labor law enforcement agency said
the practice of paying workers $50 apiece to join protests “did not constitute
unlawful … coercion of employees.” the NLRB lawyers determined that the UFCW's
offer of $50 gift cards to anyone who showed up to protest “was a non-excessive
strike benefit.”
The Supreme Court agreed to referee another dispute over
President Obama's health care law: whether businesses may use religious
objections to escape a requirement to cover birth control for employees.
In Colorado,
efforts to recall a third anti-gun politician ended with the news that Senator
Evie Hudak will resign. Hudak apparently decided that the election, which if
lost could have flipped control of the state’s senate, was not worth the risk.
Actor Richard Dreyfuss: "The
NRA is Not the Enemy, They Should Be
Thought of as Heroes" saying that they are best group to turn to for
solutions on gun violence while noting they are experts and were founded in
order to education people about firearms.
Happy holidays from the Obama administration. Federal
agencies are currently working on rolling out hundreds of environmental
regulations, including major regulations that would limit emissions from power
plants and expand the agency’s authority to bodies of water on private
property.
http://dailycaller.com/2013/11/27/epa-preparing-to-unleash-a-deluge-of-new-regulations/#ixzz2ly1wcRqH
Seattle goes to pot……On the
first anniversary of legal weed in Washington
State, Seattle
will permit a big pot party on the site of Seattle
Center’s old Fun Forest
amusement park. “…..a free, adults-only
event, open to the public….light music, light catering and outdoor pot smoking
by up to 500 people behind a double fence…”
_______________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Investors Business Daily
11/27
After spending three years promoting ObamaCare lies, the
media elite now scramble to get out of the way of a train wreck they helped
cause. Their backpedaling would be funny if so many lives weren't at risk.
As the redistributive mechanics of ObamaCare rear their ugly
head, the president's propaganda puppets are suddenly sounding like
conservative critics. Take the New York Times. In a fit of candor, it now
agrees with what we've said all along — "redistribution of wealth lies at
the heart of" the Affordable Care Act.
The paper reported that "economic justice" was
Obama's real goal in taking over a sixth of the economy. But to make his plan
"palatable" to "middle-class voters," he had to mislead
them into thinking nothing would be taken from them. He had to assure them, in
a "semantic sidestep," that ObamaCare was a win-win for all
Americans, when in fact it created "losers as well as winners" — tens
of millions of losers, as it turns out.
"Hiding in plain sight behind that pledge — visible to
health policy experts but not the general public — was the redistribution
required to extend health coverage to those who had been either locked out or
priced out of the market," the Times said. "Now some of that
redistribution has come clearly into view."
Of course, it was visible to Times correspondents as well.
But they're just now getting around to informing voters, after flooding them
with pro-ObamaCare stories during the 2012 campaign. Time magazine has had its
own miraculous conversion. After defending ObamaCare, its senior political analyst,
Mark Halperin, now agrees with Sarah Palin that ObamaCare does in fact contain
"death panels." Appearing on Newsmax TV's Steve Malzberg Show,
Halperin said death panels are "built into" ObamaCare as part of the
Independent Payment Advisory Board.
Malzberg: The death panels will
be coming, call them what you will. Rationing is part of it.
Halperin: I agree. It's going to
be a huge issue, and that's something else about which the president was not
fully forthcoming and straightforward.
Malzberg: Alright, so you believe
there will be rationing, aka death panels?
Halperin: It's built into the
plan.
Oh, now you tell us. Just this past September, his magazine
said Palin was wrong about the death panels and even insisted IPAB won't ration
care. No doubt chastened by colleagues, Halperin clarified his remarks on White
House propaganda arm MSNBC. "I said something imprecisely," he said.
Although he pointed out he never actually used the words
"death panels," he reiterated that the government will have a role in
deciding how much end-of-life care people get. "ObamaCare does that,"
Halperin said.
Such media honesty is likely just a temporary spasm.
White House-tied groups already have been paid to find and
feed positive ObamaCare stories to the national media. Judging from past
behavior, they'll report them unfiltered.
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-obama-care/112713-680989-media-belatedly-inform-electorate-of-obamacare-flaws.htm#ixzz2ly4UTIzw ________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
"The real solution to America's healthcare problems can
be reduced to two ideas: liberty and free-market capitalism. We need a
patient-centered system where the patient-doctor relationship comes first, not
last. The ability of Americans to maintain health savings accounts on their
own, to pick and choose what they want any insurance policy to cover, and the
elimination of laws that prevent insurance companies from selling policies
across state lines. We need a system in which a 900 page bill, and 11,000 pages
of regulations -- not one word of which talks about tort reform -- is
tossed on the ash heap of history. That's a viable beginning. I have no doubt
there are experts in the field who can couple these ideas with a system in
which people with chronic and/or pre-existing conditions can access the kind of
safety net Americans would be more than happy to underwrite. One based on
genuine need -- and genuine virtue."
-Arnold
Ahlert
_______________________________________________________________________
BOOKS
Star Parker: I have lined up my Christmas presents this
year for President Obama and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen
Sebelius. I will send them both a copy of the last book written by one of
greatest economists of the last century, and winner of the Nobel Prize in
economics in 1974, F.A. Hayek. The book is called The Fatal Conceit: The
Errors of Socialism. (Hayek) noted
the critical importance that we know what we don’t know. Thinking you know what
you don’t and can’t know, the illusion that men can plan, organize, and control
things far beyond their understanding is the “fatal conceit” of socialism.
________________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
Eighty million Americans are losing health insurance, and 26
million are jobless. But lefty Rep. Linda Sanchez has made oppression of gay
and transgender Latinos her priority. Seems the smaller the cause, the better.
At a field hearing attended by all of 20 people in Los Angeles on Monday, the California
Democrat bemoaned all the time spent on matters such as the slow economy,
runaway government spending, the millions losing their insurance under
Obama-Care and the 7.8% unemployment rate. Such issues, the congresswoman
believes, are diverting attention from problems experienced by lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender Latinos and Latinas.
___________________________________________________________________________
ISLAM
Fifty-six women have been killed in Pakistan this
year for giving birth to a girl rather than a boy, human rights activist IA
Rehman said at a symposium here on Monday
___________________________________________________________________________
ACTIVISM
AFA is calling for a limited one-month boycott of Radio
Shack over the company's censorship of the word "Christmas." For years, Radio Shack has refused to use
the word Christmas on its website, in television commercials, newspaper ads and
in-store promotions, despite tens of thousands of consumer requests to
recognize Christmas and in spite of repeated requests from AFA to do the same.
“Religious liberty is front and center on the nation´s
Thanksgiving table. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Sebelius v.
Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. The family-owned craft store company is intrepidly
challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare´s abortion coverage mandate.
Hobby Lobby´s faithful owners deserve our thanks and praise as they defend
freedom of conscience for all Americans.”
_______________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
Interesting ideas from the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson: “Mr Johnson, who last week called for the ten
biggest taxpayers to be handed knighthoods, acknowledged that growing
inequality was creating ‘resentment’.
He said ministers needed to do more to promote social
mobility. ‘Though it would be wrong to persecute the rich, and madness to
try and stifle wealth creation, and futile to try to stamp out inequality, we
should only tolerate this wealth gap on two conditions. ‘One, that we help those who genuinely
cannot compete; and, two, that we provide opportunity for those who can.’ Delivering the annual Margaret Thatcher Lecture
– staged by the Centre for Policy Studies think-tank – he insisted the rich had
a duty to help the poor and embrace philanthropy. And he urged the Government
to do much more to help bright children from poor homes to get a good
education.”
But let’s not paint a target on our back with “greed is good”: “Conservatives clearly must defend free
markets against the fatal conceit that big government knows best — that
collectivism and redistribution are somehow more moral alternatives.
History proves they are not. But in the process of defending capitalism, we
must also avoid even the appearance of a “greed is good” mentality — both in
our hearts and in our rhetoric. This begins at home. Just as we have a
corporate responsibility, as individuals we must strive to be generous and
compassionate. And while I don’t want to blame the victim, but the truth is
that some of the liberal overreach has been invited by conservative people of
faith who haven’t always acted according to their values.”
It’s no secret that President Obama was behind the push to
end the filibuster as a means of blocking nominees for U.S. appeals
court judgeships. At a fundraiser earlier this month, he told liberal donors
that he is “remaking the courts.” Recognizing that the filibuster stood in the
way of a full radical makeover, Obama personally lobbied three Democratic
Senators who were undecided about whether to eliminate it. Obama reportedly
told them “how important this was to him and our ability to get anything done
for the rest of the term.”
Larry Elder: The
"knockout game" -- and the media underreporting of it -- combines the
breakdown of the family with the media's condescending determination to serve
as a public relations bureau for blacks…..Both National Public Radio and The
New York Times say these reports of the "knockout game" being
widespread are overblown and do not represent a trend. Really? According to Colin Flaherty, author of
"White Girl Bleed A Lot: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How
the Media Ignore It," the knockout game has gone national. He describes
"knockouts" in Philadelphia, Atlantic City, St. Louis, Birmingham,
Chicago, Charlotte, Milwaukee, Denver, Minneapolis, Georgetown, New York City,
Greensboro, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Kansas City, Miami, Cleveland, Nashville,
Peoria, Seattle, Saratoga Springs, Atlanta and a host of others towns and
cities…..From a distance, the media can spot some lone idiot holding up an
offensive sign at a tea party rally. But when it comes to black perp/white
victim crime, there is a very different attitude. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/11/28/the_knockout_game_--_nytnpr_say_no_big_deal_120802.html#ixzz2ly0nCTCt
Remember the crowd at the Democrat convention booing Jerusalem? Obama is
lifting sanctions on Iran
for them. He wants to give Democrats a happy feeling over their morning cup of
coffee, instead of another stomachache reading about those 5 million people who
have lost their health care and will be voting Republican in 2014. With the
fracking revolution bringing down the worldwide price of oil, Iran was
finally feeling the economic pinch from sanctions, and facing a restive
population. By lifting sanctions, Obama has saved the mullahs, without getting
a halt to their nuclear weapons program in return.
Push for minimum wage hike led by localities, Democrats…….Supporters
and opponents of the $15 proposal in SeaTac, Wash., spent more than $2 million
on advertising, mailings and polling — in a city with just 12,106 registered voters.
The measure passed by 77 votes out of just more than 6,000 cast, meaning
supporters and opponents spent about $327 per vote.
“A health care lemon” by Dr Ben Carson
___________________________________________________________________________
NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
MyCancellation.com is a new website devoted to collecting
health insurance cancellation notices and stories from Obamacare’s victims.
Thanksgiving 2013: ObamaCare Talking
Point Survival Guide
A newer conservative website, run by insiders but with an
outsider appeal, has rocketed past its better-known competitors in traffic by
aiming intensely at social sharing and taking advantage of a massive and
accelerating shift toward Facebook as the key source of traffic to publishers.
10 Spectacular Images That Could Change the Way You Look at
Snowstorms
__________________________________________________________________________
LATE NITE
Leno: When President
Obama was in Los Angeles,
he visited the DreamWorks Studios. Now don't confuse DreamWorks with Obamacare
— that was a dream that didn't work….. President Obama's approval rating is at
37 percent, the lowest point of his presidency. Here's how bad it is. You know
the Thanksgiving turkey he's pardoning this week? The turkey said: No pictures.
It didn't want to be seen.
________________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
"[I]t is
appropriate that we recall the first thanksgiving, celebrated in the autumn of
1621. After surviving a bitter winter, the Pilgrims planted and harvested a
bountiful crop. After the harvest they gathered their families together and
joined in celebration and prayer with the Native Americans who had taught them
so much. Clearly our forefathers were thankful not only for the material well being
of their harvest but for this abundance of goodwill as well. In this spirit,
Thanksgiving has become a day when Americans extend a helping hand to the less
fortunate. Long before there was a government welfare program, this spirit of
voluntary giving was ingrained in the American character. Americans have always
understood that, truly, one must give in order to receive. This should be a day
of giving as well as a day of thanks. ... Let us recommit ourselves to that
devotion to God and family that has played such an important role in making
this a great Nation, and which will be needed as a source of strength if we are
to remain a great people."
-Ronald Reagan
posted by gary at
9:29 AM
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