op ed review 1/12
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
2013 ends with weakest job growth in years
People Not In Labor Force Soar To Record 91.8 Million;
Participation Rate Plunges To 1978 Levels
A Youth Misery Index that measures young Americans’ woes has
skyrocketed under President Obama and hit an all-time high.
Any guess how this will end?
The Justice Department selected an avowed political supporter of
President Obama to lead the criminal probe into the IRS targeting of tea party
groups.
From his $4M Hawaii Christmas vacation, Obama blasted
Republicans who ´Went Home for the Holidays´
“Obama, Kerry surrender Syria and the Middle East to Iran…..This
administration’s capacity for appeasement,
weakness and dysfunction with regard to foreign policy...seems to know no limits."
weakness and dysfunction with regard to foreign policy...seems to know no limits."
Scandal involving Gov. Chris Christie, “bridgegate”? “Most New Jersey
voters think it’s likely Governor Chris Christie was aware of the Fort Lee traffic lane closures before they happened and
should resign if this is proven. But voters in the state still think the
governor is doing a better job than President Obama.”
“(Christie) was, he said, heartbroken. Embarrassed. Sad.
Disappointed. Humiliated. By the end of an extraordinary and exhaustive 107-minute
news conference, Chris Christie had transformed himself from a belligerent
chief executive, famed for ridiculing his detractors, into a deeply wronged
father figure, shaking his head, whispering his words and verging on tears.”
The Big Three networks, in a frenzy over Gov. Christie´s
traffic headache dubbed “Bridgegate,” have devoted a whopping 34 minutes and 28
seconds of coverage to the affair in just the last 24 hours. By comparison,
that´s 17 times the two minutes, eight seconds devoted to President Obama´s IRS
scandal in the last SIX MONTHS.
Jay Leno: ‘Now That Christie Is Denying Everything He Sounds
Even More Presidential’
Action-movie star Steven Seagal says he is considering a run
for Arizona
governor. The actor has had a talk about the bid with Sheriff Joe Arapaio, “America’s
Toughest Sheriff”
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday put same-sex marriages in Utah
on hold, granting the state’s request for a stay while it appeals a ruling that
laws banning such marriages are unconstitutional.
Rising conservative star, Ben Sasse of Nebraska: a
conservative college president running for the open Nebraska Senate seat, is
featured on the cover of the new issue of National Review.
Forty-two percent of Americans, on average, identified as
political independents in 2013, the highest Gallup has measured since it began conducting
interviews by telephone 25 years ago. Meanwhile, Republican identification fell
to 25%, the lowest over that time span. At 31%, Democratic identification is
unchanged from the last four years but down from 36% in 2008.
Socialized medicine:
“Stroke patients are being left permanently disabled after having to
wait more than a day for vital brain scans at (UK) hospitals.”
In an unprecedented show of opposition to abortion,
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is delaying the start of
the party’s annual winter meeting so he and other committee members can join
the March for Life on the Mall. Mr.
Priebus, a plain-spoken Greek Orthodox lawyer from Wisconsin,
will join members of his party’s national committee and thousands of other
abortion opponents in the annual right-to-life march scheduled for Jan. 22, the
anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
“President Obama
today will officially launch his latest assault on income inequality. Fresh
from weeks of Hawaiian recreation, Obama is expected to harangue Republicans
for their resistance to a $6.4 billion welfare package to give aid to those who
have exhausted state unemployment insurance.”
ObamaCare is driving millions of people into Medicaid, a
program we now know does nothing to improve health and actually drives
emergency-room use higher. A central premise of ObamaCare was that vastly
expanding Medicaid would ultimately save health care dollars. The millions of
uninsured gaining access to Medicaid would no longer crowd costly emergency
rooms looking for care, the thinking went. And that improved access would keep
them healthier. Turns out that neither of those claims is true.
One in five Democrats now opposes ObamaCare, a record high..
And more than one in six Democrats now say they want it repealed, another new
high.
“Walmart health plan is cheaper,
offers more coverage than Obamacare”
A federal judge has potentially opened a new market to gun
dealers after ruling as unconstitutional Chicago
ordinances that aim to reduce gun violence by banning their sale within the
city’s limits.
Amid the relentless push for more gun control in 2013, there
were 21,093,273 background checks for firearm purchasers…..the number of 2013
background checks is nearly two million more than the previous record –
19,592,303 in 2012 – and it far exceeds the 14,033,824 background checks
performed during Obama´s first year in office.
_______________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Brent Bozell 12/28
Let's assess the winners and losers in American culture for
2013. Our first obvious winner is "Duck Dynasty" and its Phil
Robertson. He's a winner for standing by his Christian principles after some
offensive remarks about homosexuality.
A&E suspended him and put out the usual statement that
they are "champions" of the gay agenda -- and proceeded to start
running "Duck Dynasty" marathons. Mark Steyn put it just right: The
gay-left blacklisters insist "espousing conventional Christian morality,
even off air, is incompatible with American celebrity." Robertson has
successfully shattered intolerance of the anti-Christian left.
Winner: Universal Pictures, for "Despicable Me 2."
This cartoon feature came in third at the box office ($367 million) in 2013,
beaten only by two other much-anticipated sequels, "Iron Man 3" and
the second "Hunger Games" film. But in December, it shattered records
for DVD sales of an animated picture, grossing an amazing $80 million in its
first week of release. The previous record was held by ... the first "Despicable Me."
There were three animated family films in the top 10 hits, with G-rated
"Monsters University" in fifth ($263 million) and "Frozen"
in 10th ($204 million after five weeks and climbing).
Loser: Universal Pictures, for "Kick-Ass 2." The
ultraviolent first installment, which features the 12-year-old "Hit Girl
implausibly killing tons of villains at a time," grossed $48 million at
the box office, a figure that shouldn't inspire a sequel. The second edition
grossed only $28 million. Entertainment Weekly found the immoral thrill of
actress Chloe Grace Moretz killing and swearing like a sailor had vanished. At
16, she "can't manufacture the same that's-so-wrong jolt she managed the
first time around. Back then, it was hilariously taboo to see a little girl
spout arias of profanity." Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr nailed it:
"Kick-Ass 2 is a special kind of crap: the kind smart people make for
audiences they think are stupid."
Winner: Rockstar Games, the makers of the video game
"Grand Theft Auto 5," which smashed six world sales records,
including the highest revenue generated by an entertainment product in 24 hours
and the fastest entertainment property to gross a billion dollars. It sold over
11 million copies in its first 24 hours and hit a billion in sales within three
days.
Loser: "Grand Theft Auto 5" is a perfect example
of the amoral and ultraviolent products that are never, ever advertised as
such. Chris Suellentrop of The New York Times, fan of the game, explains that
the latest version is "still an action game about hoodlums and thieves; we
start with an extended bout of cop killing and proceed to a series of increasingly
ambitious heists." There are three villains you can choose to become, like
"Trevor, an oddly lovable psychopathic meth dealer and gun runner."
This is not "Breaking Bad," a series aimed at an adult audience. This
is a game bought by children.
Winner: Melissa McCarthy. This comic actress led the year's
highest-grossing R-rated movie, "The Heat" (alongside Sandra
Bullock), bringing in almost $160 million, and "Identity Thief,"
which grossed over $134 million. It is unfortunate that her humor needs to be laced
with so many profanities (they counted 269 in "The Heat") the ratings
cops felt forced to give it an R.
Loser: Miley Cyrus. The former star of Disney's "Hannah
Montana" turned 20 and became the star of a series of MTV-promoted
outrages. Her antics are a grotesque perversion of her former innocence. She is
disgusting.
Speaking of losers, Cher told USA today she would have supported
Cyrus if she'd come out naked and performed well, but "It just wasn't done
well. She can't dance, her body looked like hell, the song wasn't great."
She seemed to miss the point. Cyrus went viral precisely because her
performance was an ugly train wreck.
Loser: "The Fifth Estate." Disney executives bit
on this picture glorifying leftist WikiLeaks creep Julian Assange. It cost $28
million to make and grossed only $3.2 million. How bad was it? Its opening
grossed only $1.7 million from 1,769 theaters -- the worst opening of the year
for a movie showing in more than 1,500 theaters. Maybe this will save us from
Hollywood following its "progressive" heart and making an Edward
Snowden-glorifying "The Fifth Estate 2."
Loser: Robert Reich. He's no Al Gore or Michael Moore in the
documentary sweepstakes. His socialist lecture/film "Inequality for
All" grossed only $1.19 million, despite Reich calling it an
"'Inconvenient Truth' for the economy" and touting that it won an
award at a film festival in Traverse
City, Mich. Reich
told The Boston Globe: "This is the last hurrah. If this doesn't educate
the public, I give up." Was that a
threat or a promise?
________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
"In a study for
the National Center for Policy Analysis, David
Henderson found that there is a big difference between families in the top 20
percent and bottom 20 percent of the income distribution: Families at the top
tend to be married and both partners work. Families at the bottom often have
only one adult in the household and that person either works part-time or not
at all: In 2006, a whopping 81.4 percent of families in the top income quintile
had two or more people working, and only 2.2 percent had no one working. By
contrast, only 12.6 percent of families in the bottom quintile had two or more
people working; 39.2 percent had no one working. ... Having children without a
husband tends to make you poor. Not working makes you even poorer. And there is
nothing new about that. These are age old truths. They were true 50 years ago,
a hundred years ago and even 1,000 year ago. Lifestyle choices have always
mattered."
-John Goodman
"It is always hard to repeal an elaborate program after
it has gone into effect. But Prohibition was repealed, even though it was a
Constitutional Amendment that required super-majorities in both houses of
Congress and super-majorities of state legislatures to repeal. In our two-party
system, everything depends on whether the Republicans step up to the plate and
act like responsible adults who understand that ObamaCare represents a historic
crossroads that will determine what kind of people we are going to be, for this
generation and generations yet unborn -- citizens or subjects. This means that
Republicans have to decide whether their top priority is internal strife among
the different wings of the party -- another circular firing squad -- or whether
either wing puts the country first. A prediction on how that will turn out in
the new year would be far too hazardous to attempt."
-Thomas Sowell
"The next item on
Gesture Liberalism's agenda is to raise the minimum wage for the 23rd time. ...
Raising the minimum is a gesture of devotion to 'equality.' As is Obama's
support for universal preschool, the centerpiece of the agenda of New York City's new
mayor, Bill de Blasio. When, in Obama's first Inaugural address, he vowed to
'restore science to its rightful place,' he evidently meant to exclude social
science: There is much discouraging data about the efficacy of universal
preschool. It will, however, mean billions for hiring more members of teachers
unions, whose dues will help elect the likes of Obama and de Blasio. So this
component of Gesture Liberalism is more than just a gesture.
-George Will
"As a broad generalization, liberals see income as a
public good that is distributed, like crayons in a kindergarten class. If
so-and-so didn't get his or her fair share of income, it's because someone or
something -- government, the system -- didn't distribute income properly. To
the extent conservatives see income inequality as a problem, it is as an
indication of more concrete problems. If the poor and middle class are falling
behind the wealthy, it might be a sign of declining or stagnating wages or
lackluster job creation. In other words, liberals tend to see income inequality
as the disease, and conservatives tend to see it as a symptom."
-Jonah Goldberg
________________________________________________________________________
BOOKS
In a new memoir, former defense secretary Robert Gates
unleashes harsh judgments about President Obama’s leadership and his commitment
to the Afghanistan
war, writing that by early 2010 he had concluded the president “doesn’t believe
in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all
about getting out.” Leveling one of the more serious charges that a defense
secretary could make against a commander in chief sending forces into combat,
Gates asserts that Obama had more than doubts about the course he had charted
in Afghanistan.
The president was “skeptical if not outright convinced it would fail,” Gates
writes in “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.”
The insights of Charles Krauthammer are reviewed from his
new book.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds has a new book “The New School: How
the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself“:
_______________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
Deep Green Resistance (or DGR) is a US radical
environmental organization that advocates, among other things, the forcible
dismantling of industrial civilization.
“France
is dying a slow death. Socialism is killing it.”
The author of the widely disputed New York Times article on Benghazi repeatedly posed naked as a Princeton
student. Far from the moderate journalist pose he strikes now, David D.
Kirkpatrick was a prominent campus progressive and activist. Kirkpatrick was arrested
for lewd conduct, advocated for classes on pornography, and even posed for
Playgirl. “Kinky” Kirkpatrick had a “rather unusual habit of disrobing for
photographers in public places,” reported The Daily Princetonian in January 22,
1990. “I’ve never been afraid to drop trou when it seemed like the right thing
to do,” Kirkpatrick said.
The Girl Scouts recently promoted Texas gubernatorial candidate and
pro-abortion advocate Wendy Davis as an "incredible" woman who
deserved to be on a 2013 "women of the year" list.
Bill de Blasio is not the only red coming to power in New York City. He will
also be joined by a "progressive" majority City Council.
“As a mask for power lust, progressivism begins with a
quandary unknown to genuine political philosophies, namely an inability to
ground itself in human nature as observed through the ages. It must
therefore refute history and
inherited experience in order to remain tenable. This is why the first
step in progressive theory is always an attempt to disprove or debunk the
premises of all prior civilization. Communism, fascism and socialism all
justify themselves with the proclamation that humanity has hitherto lived under
a net of delusion and systemic injustice, whereas now, through collective
submission to unlimited state authority, we may finally create an authentically
human way of life.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/01/the_denaturalization_of_america.html#ixzz2pXZhcpwe
________________________________________________________________________
GLOBALONEY
Central Park in New York City broke a 118-year old record on
Jan. 7 when the temperature dropped to 4 degrees.
http://www.myfoxny.com/story/24374113/polar-vortex-deep-freeze#ixzz2pj9COC3Y
“Chicago Extreme Cold: Weather in 'Chiberia' Colder Than South Pole” It was also colder than Novosibirsk, a city in southwest Siberia, which was only 6 degrees below zero.
“Chicago Extreme Cold: Weather in 'Chiberia' Colder Than South Pole” It was also colder than Novosibirsk, a city in southwest Siberia, which was only 6 degrees below zero.
18 degrees in Hawaii
Niagra Falls
freezes over
Earliest the Great Lakes
have frozen over since the thirties.
“Global warming devastates America”
"Excessively high temperatures"
are "already" harming public health nationwide, Pres. Obama declared
on Nov. 1, 2013, two months before today's assault by record low temperatures.
MSNBC's Politics Nation featured a lab
coat-wearing Al Sharpton pontificating about global warming. Instead of
using real facts, the racial-agitator turned faux-scientist tried to exploit
the "everybody believes it's real" argument to attack those who
disagree with the anthropogenic global warming theory.
Climate Change Groups Seek New Leadership as Green Movement
Loses Momentum
Over geologic time, within a fluctuation of a few degrees,
the Earth´s climate has been moderate and stable. The climate has long been
similar to today´s despite the fact that, in the past, carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere has typically been very much greater than it is today. Why is this
so? No one knows. That is what scientists should be trying to discover……The
fundamental mistake made consistently by almost all global warming advocates is
that carbon dioxide induces net positive feedback.
________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
The list of eight
things liberals do to avoid having an honest debate.
1. Ad Hominem
(Name-Calling aka “You’re a Racist!” etc.)
2. Distracting (aka
“Pivoting” aka “Changing the Subject”)
3. Somebody Else Did
It Before (aka Two Wrongs Make a Right)
4. Obama Doesn’t Know
What’s Going On (Or Did I Do That?)
5. It’s a Far-Right
Conspiracy (Or The Koch Brothers Did It)
6. You Heard That on
Faux News
7. Argumentum Ad
Misericordium (Or “Do it for the Children”)
8. It’s Bush’s Fault
“In 2008, America elected a president from a broken home
whose mother was sympathetic to communists; who as a youngster had formative
relationships with a transgender nanny chosen by his mother and a bisexual
communist pornographer "mentor" chosen by his grandfather; whose
teenage friends were so devoted to drug use that they gave themselves a
nickname derived from this habit, and developed their own vernacular related to
methods of pot smoking; and whose chums as a young adult were Marxist
professors and activists, a liberation theology preacher, and domestic
terrorists. This could have worked out all right -- we all have a few
weird associations. Five years later,
aside from irredeemable debt, the tyrannical micromanagement of individual
lives, and the bureaucratic obliteration of the last vestiges of private
property, perhaps the most conspicuous aspect of America's fundamental
transformation is the speed with which a latent emasculation, achieved over
generations, has spiraled into an open assault on the very idea of
"traditional gender roles." The sheer unreflective suddenness
of this plummet into chaos would be alarming were it not so predictable…..The
denaturing of the normal, and the naturalization of the abnormal -- twin
processes that have slowly eaten up most of the Western heritage -- are now,
under the supervision of the Obama administration, making a quick dessert of
the erstwhile land of courageous frontiersmen and rugged individualists.”
In direct contradiction of the First Amendment, which
forbids the establishing of a state religion, the Obama administration is
busily doing just that. Meanwhile, it is attempting forced conversion of the
reluctant, all the while targeting Christians and Orthodox Jews as people who
are continually violating the establishment of religion clause. Just what
religion is our current administration establishing in direct violation of the
Constitution of the United
States? It is establishing the faith of
secular statism, a religion currently characterized by the tenets of radical
progressivism. Statism is rapidly becoming the only faith in America allowed to
operate with complete freedom…….When the U.S. government demands nuns sign a
paper that is against their religious beliefs, such an action is also
iconoclastic as well as repressive. It amounts to an overriding of the
conscience so severe that it is actually a repudiation of the nuns' faith.
It is a forced confession that they no longer adhere to their religious
convictions but now accept the new state religion. To put it another way,
signing the paper amounts to forced conversion and an acknowledgement that the
State has the right and power to override the sisters' religious convictions.
“In the wacky world
of American politics, if you as an employer have a religious objection to
paying for your employees’ contraceptives, it is you who is contemptuous of
religious freedom. As the New York Times editorial board lectured a judge who
thinks otherwise, “the threat to religious liberty comes from employers trying
to impose their religious views on workers.” You read that correctly. Refusing
to pay for other people’s birth-control products — more specifically, opposing
a government mandate to pay — is equivalent to imposing your religious views.”
___________________________________________________________________________
REPUBLICAN CIVIL WAR
Former Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH), now the head of the
GOP establishment outfit The Main Street Partnership (MSP), may be engaged in
illegal activity. LaTourette is “one of
the top generals in the establishment Republicans’ war against the Tea Party.”
Rush Limbaugh warns GOP leaders will cave to big business on
amnesty
__________________________________________________________________________
NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
Top 10 Revelations From Robert Gates’s Memoir
America's
15 best Tex-Mex chain restaurants
The Koch brothers, reviled by the left, defend themselves
________________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
"Our present
financial condition is without a parallel in history. ... This almost necessarily
gives birth to extravagant legislation. It produces wild schemes of expenditure
and begets a race of speculators and jobbers, whose ingenuity is exerted in
contriving and promoting expedients to obtain public money. The purity of
official agents, whether rightfully or wrongfully, is suspected, and the
character of the government suffers in the estimation of the people."
-President James Buchanan
"You and I are
told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such
thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old
dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to
the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their
humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have
embarked on this downward path."
-Ronald Reagan
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