op ed review 3/22
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
Rand Paul has done something his father never did - top the
list of potential Republican presidential candidates in a national poll.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/03/16/cnn-poll-rand-paul-goes-where-his-father-never-went/
“Rand Paul is the most intriguing — and for Democrats,
perhaps the most frightening — figure in today’s Republican Party….”
Conservative Nebraska Senate candidate Ben Sasse, who has
been surging since being labeled the anti-Obamacare candidate, has released a
"Constitutional Madness" bracket to highlight the lawlessness of the
Obama administration.
A Tea Party candidate became the first ever state senator in
Pennsylvania
to win as a write-in candidate on Tuesday in a special election that showed how
dissatisfied voters are, even at the local level, with both organized political
parties.
Hollywood’s
largest fellowship of conservatives and right-of-center independents, Friends
of Abe, has finally been granted non-profit status by the Internal Revenue
Service, about three years after it first sought the designation.
First Amendment enthusiasts are thrilled that Mike Adams, a
criminology professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, won his
lawsuit against administrators who denied him a promotion because of his
conservative, Christian views.
Anatomy of a Democratic Midterm Freakout
President Obama is so toxic to Democrats that even his own
one-time sycophantic aides are saying, “Who?” In fact, the Great Orator who
promised to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet has all but
disappeared on the campaign trail, lost for words that can stop the tsunami set
to surge over his Democratic Party.
A U.S. District Court judge ruled that Arizona
and Kansas
can require anyone registering to vote to prove their citizenship and the
federal Election Assistance Commission cannot block them. The ruling is a boost
for states’ rights and marks a setback for President Obama and other liberals
who fought stiffer voter ID checks with an argument that they reduce voter
turnout.
You can’t make this up…Obama-appointed judge says a border fence may be discriminatory and have a
´disparate impact´ on minorities.
“The Netherlands
Tells Immigrants to Learn Dutch or Get Out”
Russia
takes control of Crimea; Russia’s
deputy prime minister laughs at Obama’s ‘sanctions’, calling him a prankster”.
A leading anchor on Russian state television on Sunday
described Russia as the only
country capable of turning the United
States into "radioactive ash".
Kasparov: ‘Carter looks like Churchill in comparison’ to
Obama”
Romney: The price of
failed leadership. The President's
failure to act when action was possible has diminished respect for the U.S.
and made troubles worse.
“I wonder, after the successful campaign of handing over the
Crimea, will Barack be promoted to a colonel?”
That was the question Tweeted by the newly elected prime minister of Crimea….The Russian-language Tweet was accompanied by a
Photoshopped picture of Barack Obama wearing a Russian uniform.
“In what was described as a major ramping up of sanctions,
Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Tuesday that the United States had
frozen Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Netflix account, effective
immediately. “Unless and until Mr. Putin calls off the annexation of Crimea, no
more ‘House of Cards’ or ‘Orange
Is the New Black’ for him,” Mr. Kerry said. “The United States will not stand by and
reward the annexation of another sovereign nation with a policy of streaming as
usual.”
A new study has found that 38 percent of employers will lay
workers off if the minimum wage is increased as President Barack Obama has
proposed.
What’s this got to do with aeronautics and space??? NASA study recommends “reducing economic
inequality.”
Texas
leads nation in job growth, adding
322,400 workers in last year
In the state of New
York, hundreds gathered near Sarasota Springs in a
fiery act of civil disobedience aimed at gun control lawmakers. According to
the Post Star, “nearly a thousand gun registration forms were turned into ashes
Sunday.”
_______________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Socialism Isn’t Charity
John Nantz, 3/20
Isn't a little bit of socialism a good thing? During the
2008 presidential campaign, President Obama was confronted by an average
American, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher (aka “Joe the Plumber”), who posited a
simple question, "Your tax plan is gonna tax me more isn't it?" Obama
responded flippantly, "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's
good for everybody." Isn't that the epitome of charity? Shouldn't those
who have more, who have "been lucky" share their surplus with those
made less fortunate by life's vagaries? Obama's statement is epitomic—of a
sterile socialism.
One of progressivism's most significant victories is the
redefinition of what it means to be a charitable citizen. Most people want to
feel as though they are basically decent and that urge is usually fulfilled by
acts of charity. Progressives have captured the popular notion of this virtue
and have reforged it in the fires of statism, reshaping it on the anvil of
humanism, and have produced a monstrosity. Charity is conflated with social
responsibility, safety nets, and notions of redistribution.
Traditionally, charity was understood as an act of
compassion, derived from an individual's expression of religious conscience,
and most often carried out discretely. Every notion that we have inherited from
our Judeo-Christian heritage follows the model of individuals acting in
response to the need of less fortunate individuals. The individual acts,
prompted by the specific need of another individual, to meet needs that were
understood to be real and immediate. In one Christian example, people of faith
voluntarily formed a private religious community (not a civil authority) to
minister to the needs of their brothers and sisters, keeping all things in
common. In another well known example, the Good Samaritan acted on his own
accord to provide for the desperate and immediate need of another.
Interestingly, two quasi-government officials, a priest and a Levite, passed
the man in need, leaving him to die.
Biblical charity is always an act initiated by an individual
to meet the need of another. Charity is never the product of state action. The
state can only confiscate and redistribute. Governments do not create wealth
and prosperity only exists in proportion to the economic liberty enjoyed by its
citizens. Government is merely a necessary evil in a corrupt world, and it is
only legitimate when exercising the few powers granted to it by providence: “to
establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense,
promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty.”—Preamble to
The Constitution of the United
States of America
Safety nets, social security, income inequality, The
Affordable Health Care Act--these are all euphemisms designed to obfuscate,
confuse, and distract from the reality of these programs. Far from being
charitable, they are statist mechanisms for the redistribution of resources by
an incapable few for the enrichment of a kleptocracy. They are lies from their
inception and rely on inertia, deception, and the inexorable passage of time to
conceal their development to maturity. Initially, social security was supposed
to provide benefits to widows and orphans. Now, its decrepit carcass has
swollen to unsustainable proportions and functions as a slush fund for a
political class corrupted by ambition and avarice. All of these government
programs are tainted with a fatal flaw, they attempt to replace a duty
incumbent on all of us, as individuals, to be our brothers keeper. When
governments presume to play God the result is always catastrophic.
There is no such thing as a little bit of socialism. Just as
there is no such thing as a little bit of leprosy. The malignancy spreads until
the host is consumed. The doctrines contained in the Bible condemn socialist
attitudes and commend individuals who act in accordance with their conscience
to meet the needs of others. Prior to the rise of progressivist ideas in America,
charitable private and religious institutions flourished, enriching those in
need as well as those who gave. As the statist chains are tightened around our
necks, the American people continue to be the most charitable among the leading
nations. However, a people must be prosperous to be widely charitable and the
less free we are, the less prosperous we will be. President Obama was wrong.
His government can only confiscate. We, the people, are the ones who create and
give. Obama's socialism isn't good for everybody, it's only good for a covetous
few.
“5 Ways Socialism Destroys Societies”
________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
"Arguing with liberals...it's like
playing chess with a pigeon; no matter how good I am at chess, the pigeon is
just going to knock over the pieces, crap on the board and strut around like
it's victorious."
-Anonymous
"If you can somehow force a liberal
into a point-counterpoint argument, his retorts will bear no relation to what
you’ve said — unless you were in fact talking about your looks, your age, your
weight, your personal obsessions, or whether you are a fascist. In the famous
liberal two-step, they leap from one idiotic point to the next, so you can
never nail them. It’s like arguing with someone with Attention Deficit
Disorder."
-Ann Coulter
_______________________________________________________________________
BOOKS, FILM
Prager: “Next week,
the film "Noah" opens. Having taught the Torah (the Five Books of
Moses) from the Hebrew for more than 40 years (hundreds of hours are available
by download through my website), I consider the biblical flood story one of the
world´s most profound moral teachings.”
________________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
Left wing Radio Pacifica slides into the abyss:”We
desperately need adult supervision.”
Ellen Sucks Up to Obama: “Obamacare 'Doing Very, Very
Well...I Think Everyone's Very Grateful You Did This'”
“Washington
Post Falls
For Left-Wing Fraud, Embarrasses Itself”
A panel of judges in New
York ruled that teachers shouldn’t be fired for
having sex with one another in their classrooms. The Manhattan appellate judges declared that “The
penalty of termination is shockingly disproportionate.”
_______________________________________________________________________
ISLAM
A Muslim family from Long Island slapped the owners of the Empire State
Building Tuesday with a $5 million
lawsuit that claims that Islamic prayer is not being accommodated on the
observation deck of the Empire
State Building.
______________________________________________________________________
OBAMACARE
Americans buying health insurance outside the new Obamacare
exchanges are being forced to swallow premiums up to 56 percent higher than
before the health law took effect because insurers have jumped the cost to
cover all the added features of the new Affordable Care Act.
Some of America's
best cancer hospitals are off-limits to many of the people now signing up for
coverage under the nation's new health care program.
RNC Chairman:
“Obamacare turns four this Sunday, and it´s never looked worse. For
months, the news has not been kind. A broken promise, a broken website. Lost
plans, lost doctors. Rising prices, rising frustration. Shrinking paychecks, a
shrinking workforce. Unsecure data, insecure Democrats. The few Democrats
willing to talk about Obamacare publicly struggle to defend the law on merits….”
The War on Julie Boonstra . . .
and other Obamacare cancer victims. The Dexter, Mich., leukemia victim lost her coverage
last fall and now stars in a devastating ad fingering Obamacare for her
resulting distress. In an extraordinary media counterstrike, Boonstra, a
schoolteacher, has come under assault from Democrats and their media allies decrying
her as a liar and an ignoramus for failing to embrace her new, Obamacare-approved
plan.
Obamacare leaves Las
Vegas man owing $407,000 in doctor bills
A pastor recently diagnosed with cancer, and who is covered
under Obamacare, tells a local Iowa
reporter that there's "no compassion in the Affordable Care Act."
We completely overhauled American health care — to insure
4.2 million people? The number bounced around for years — 46 million. President
Obama said it in August 2009: “I don’t have to explain to you that nearly 46
million Americans don’t have health insurance coverage today. In the wealthiest
nation on Earth, 46 million of our fellow citizens have no coverage.”….But last
week came word that with just 15 days left for people to enroll for federal
coverage, just 4.2 million had. The math is simple: That’s just 9 percent of
the supposedly 46 million uninsured.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/16/curl-we-completely-overhauled-american-health-care/#ixzz2whdUv2PJ
________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
Is Barack Obama simply too busy to be Chief Executive of the
United States?
Apparently. One of the primary functions of the president is to keep the nation
safe, to preserve it from its enemies. To do that effectively, one would
actually have to maintain something of a consistent level of attention to the
moving pieces that directly influence how future events will unfold. None other
than the truly sycophantic thinks for a second that President Obama cares a
whit for anything that does not involve fundamentally altering the social
composition of this country. Or golf.
Published in 1989,
After the Ball is a seminal work which laid out a comprehensive plan to
establish the “normalcy” of gays and lesbians and secure broader acceptance and
rights. It is subtitled, How America Will conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays
in the 90s…..The ambitious plan…..could (now) be repackaged and sold as a
History book, presenting a very accurate picture of what we have all witnessed
happening over the last quarter century….”
“The Most Obvious Conspiracy in the History of the World”
For eight years, the media envisioned Dick Cheney as the
‘evil genius’ behind the Bush White House, but few in the media have wanted to
take a long look at the ‘evil genius’ behind the Obama White House.
Marco Rubio is smack in the middle of the current polls for
the 2016 presidential primary. But he may be the early frontrunner when it
comes to offering a realistic conservative agenda for reforms that address the
economic challenges of modern America.
And whether or not he pulls the trigger on a White House run, the U.S. senator from Florida is already helping to refashion the
GOP once again into the Party of Ideas.
It is now clear that a finely-tuned plan to soften-up
opposition to Hillary Clinton rolling into the Oval Office is being executed
through willing proxies.
Lloyd Marcus: “I had
an extraordinary telephone conservation with my 86-year-old black dad, a
lifelong Democrat and huge Obama fan. He called to ask me, “Is Obama
anti-Christian?” Dad has been a Christian pastor for over 50 years. I said,
“Dad, I have been telling you about Obama´s anti-Christian policies for the
past five years.” Dad replied, “And I have not been listening.” Dad confessed
that he simply could not bring himself to go against a black man in the White
House….”
___________________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny
exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be
better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The
robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be
satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without
end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences."
-C S Lewis
"God who gave us
life gave us Liberty.
Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that
these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I
reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever."
-Thomas Jefferson
posted by gary at
12:30 PM
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