op ed review 4/6
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
The good news: Conservatives
are still the overwhelming majority of Americans, as every single Battleground
Poll in the last fifteen years has shown: 56% of Americans are “conservative,”
while 40% are “liberal,” and “moderate” and “don’t know” are the piddling
remainder. The bad news: The latest Battleground Poll shows the
percentage who describe themselves as “conservative” dropping at the same time
as the percentage of women, minorities, and young adults are increasing.
“CNN Hits New Low In Ratings, Fox News On Top Again For 49th Time, MSNBC Down”
The Supreme Court overturned
aggregate campaign finance limits, freeing wealthy Americans to give to as many
federal candidates as they want — though the justices left in place the cap on
how much can be given to any one person. Still, the 5-4 decision further erodes
the system of campaign finance restrictions written by Congress, but that
already was teetering under the weight of its complexity and previous court
decisions.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/2/supreme-court-strikes-down-limit-campaign-giving/#ixzz2xpuvYAe1
“Justice Clarence Thomas’s influence was on full display in the Supreme
Court’s landmark decision to strike down a key campaign finance restriction. And
it’s just one in a string of cases in which Thomas could be dragging the court
toward his way of thinking.”
Obamacare will cost large companies between $4,800 and
$5,900 more per employee and add hundreds of millions to their overhead,
according to a new survey.
An unpublished RAND Corporation study on ObamaCare
enrollment has been kept under wraps and it's not hard to see why. While the
White House trumpeted meeting its goal of 7.1 million enrollees this week, RAND
says the number actually enrolled -- having paid their premium -- could be as
few as 858,000. Just 23% of the enrollees were previously uninsured, the others
were kicked out of their existing plans.
“A local couple called 10News concerned after they received
an envelope from the state's Obamacare website, Covered California. Inside was
a letter discussing voter registration and a registration card pre-marked with
an "x" in the box next to Democratic Party.”
“Gov’t Spent $700 Million Promoting Obamacare”
Imagine if a former Republican presidential candidate and
U.S. senator had called a current Republican president a delusional liar whose
programs are wasteful. Would the mainstream media not be all over the story?
Well, there is such a person but because he is a Democrat saying these things
about President Obama, we can expect him to become an MSM nonperson.
The liberal media
are trying to ignore his arrest, but California State Senator Leland Yee is
such an amusing piñata of liberal hypocrisy that even his home town liberal
newspaper is joining in the mockery fun. http://americanthinker.com/blog/2014/04/the_poster_boy_for_liberal_hypocrisy_ignored_by_national_media_but_outrages_san_francisco.html
Report: Obama administration released 68,000 convicted
criminal aliens last year
Air Force removes Bible from POW-MIA display
The Obama administration wants to spend $400,000 on a camel
sculpture for a new embassy building in Pakistan.
_______________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Thomas Sowell
3/19/14
At a time when polls
show public opinion turning against the Democrats, some Republicans seem to be
turning against each other. Even with the prospect of being able to win control
of the Senate in this fall's elections, some Republicans are busy manufacturing
ammunition for their own circular firing squad.
A Republican
faction's demonization of their own Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, is
a classic example. If you listen to some of those who consider themselves the
only true conservatives, you would never guess that Senator McConnell received
a lifetime 90 percent ranking by the American Conservative Union -- and in one
recent year had a 100 percent ranking. Ann
Coulter -- whose conservative credentials nobody has ever challenged -- points
out in her column that Mitch McConnell has not only led the fight for
conservative principles repeatedly, but has been to the right of Ted Cruz on
immigration issues.
Someone once said
that, in a war, truth is the first casualty. That seems to be the case for some
in this internal war among Republicans. As the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan
said, "You are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own
facts."
Why should those of
us who are not Republicans be concerned about any of this?
Fortunately or
unfortunately, we have a two-party system in this country. And -- very
unfortunately -- we are at a crucial point in the history of America, and
perhaps approaching a point of no return. The unfolding disaster of ObamaCare is only
the most visible symptom of a far deeper danger from a lawless administration
in Washington that unilaterally changes laws passed by Congress. President
Obama has nearly three more years to continue doing irreparable damage to the
fundamental basis of American government and Americans' freedom.
Only Republican
control of the Senate can rein in the lawless Obama administration, which can
otherwise load up the federal courts with lawless judges, who will be
dismantling the rule of law and destroying the rights of the people, for
decades after Barack Obama himself is long gone from the White House.
Once that happens,
even a future Republican majority, led by people with the kind of ideological
purity that the Republican dissidents want, cannot undo the damage. The Senate's power to confirm or not confirm
presidential nominees to the federal courts is the only thing that can prevent
Barack Obama from leaving that kind of toxic legacy in the federal courts,
including the Supreme Court.
Only Republican
control of both houses of Congress can repeal, or even seriously revise,
ObamaCare. And only Republican control of both houses of Congress plus the
White House can begin to reverse the many lawless, reckless and dangerous
policies of the Obama administration, at home and overseas. This year's elections and the 2016
presidential election may be among the most important elections in the history
of this country, and can determine what kind of country this will be for years
-- and even generations -- to come.
Those Republicans
who seem ready to jeopardize their own party's chances of winning these two
crucial elections by following a rule-or-ruin fight against fellow Republicans
may claim to be following their ideals. But headstrong self-righteousness is
not idealism, and it is seldom a way to advance any cause.
Politics, like war,
is a question of power. If you don't have power, you can make fiery speeches or
even conduct attention-getting filibusters, but that does not fundamentally
change anything. And it has accomplished nothing in this case. No doubt there can be legitimate differences
of opinion about tactics and strategy on particular issues. But, if you don't
have power, these are just empty clashes over debating points.
Certainly there has
been much for which the Republican leadership has deserved to be criticized
over the years -- and this column has made such criticisms for decades. But,
when the question is whether Mitch McConnell is preferable to Harry Reid as
Majority Leader in the Senate, that is not even a close call. If the rule-or-ruin faction among Republicans
ends up giving the Democrats another Senate majority under Harry Reid, not only
the Republican Party but the entire nation, and generations yet unborn, will
end up paying the price.
“….when looking at the current Democrat Party and election
cycle, there is no group agitating against DINOs – Democrats In Name
Only. And that’s because they recognize that the Democrat
coalition would be unable to win elections if it broke ranks. Where
government largesse is critical, these coalitions form through all the
payoffs and entitlements that are expanded to ensure conformity to the party
standards, whatever those may be. The disparate groups
-- African-Americans; Hispanics; single (unwed) mothers; LGBTs; Hollywood;
environmentalists; and true liberals all form the core constituents of the
Democrat Party. Yet with this diverse crowd, nary a peep comes forward
during election cycles. The Democrat incumbents only defend themselves
against Republicans……..So today, we find angry attacks against incumbent
Republicans not from the left, but from the right. RINO hunting becomes the
call to arms. But what the tea party seems to miss is that those
Republicans, with all their failings, will at least talk with us. They
are after all aligned with the tea party and conservatives through the
Republican Platform, if not perfectly through their representation. And
that’s the point. Instead of hunting RINOs and elephants, we should be
slaughtering jackasses!.....Now before you raise your objections, I am not
calling for violence against Democrats, but I am calling for political attacks
against all Democrats. They are the real problem facing the tea party
movement.”
________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
“[T]here have been recent calls to end the ban on women in
combat units, but there’s no mention of the Army’s sexist physical fitness
test. For a male 17-21 years of age to pass, he must do 35 pushups..and run 2
miles in 16 minutes, 36 seconds. His female counterpart, who receives the same
pay, can pass the fitness test by doing a mere 13 pushups..and running 2 miles
in 19 minutes, 42 seconds. How can anyone who values equality and self-respect
tolerate this gross discrimination? You say, ‘Williams, what’s your solution?’
I say we should either force women to come up to the physical fitness standards
for men or pass men who meet the female standards of fitness. Maybe we should
ask our adversaries which is better – raising female fitness standards or
lowering those of males.”
-Walter Williams
“According to the 2013 Annual Report to Congress on White
House Staff, the White House has its very own gender pay gap. Its 228 female
employees received a median annual salary of $65,000 that year, while the 231
male staffers earned a median annual salary of nearly $73,729. That amounts to
a 12 percent, or 88 cents on the dollar, disparity. If such an inconvenient
reality appears very much in alignment with another cherished progressive value
– as in ‘do as I say, not as I do’ – that’s because it is.”
-Arnold ahlert
_______________________________________________________________________
GLOBALONEY
White House looks to regulate cow flatulence as part of
climate agenda
It’s official – Chicago experienced the coldest four months
ever on record
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/01/its-official-chicago-experienced-the-coldest-four-months-ever/
If the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had
been set up to investigate an apparent fall in global temperatures it is not
hard to guess what its latest report would assert: falling temperatures will
lead to mass starvation, millions of deaths from hypothermia, the smothering of
northern cities with ice sheets. I have long come to realise how environmental
science works: it starts from the premise that everything in the natural world
is under threat, that mankind is to
blame and that only drastic changes can save it. It is bad news if temperatures
rise, bad news if they fall…..
If the world doesn't cut pollution of heat-trapping gases,
the already noticeable harms of global warming could spiral "out of
control," the head of a United Nations scientific panel warned Monday.
“Just like there wasn’t room for both sides in the Middle
Ages when we were debating whether the sun revolved around the earth or not,
there is an ever-constricting circle of silent hell for so-called climate
change “deniers” in our society. Don’t take it from me; consider the policy of
the Los Angeles Times, which recently announced that it won’t publish letters
that challenge the scientific orthodoxy that humans are causing climate change.”
_______________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
Senator Murray claimed that “What’s at stake in this case
before the Supreme Court is whether a CEO’s personal beliefs can trump a
woman’s access to free or low-cost contraception under the Affordable Care
Act.”
Nonsense. Not one word in the Affordable Care Act guarantees
health plans will cover birth control products. There is no right. President
Obama and his Secretary of Health and Human Services added that requirement by
regulation. Women have a constitutionally protected right to use birth control,
but nothing guarantees that they can get it from an employer. It was shocking
to hear Justice Kagan make the same spurious claim — that women are entitled to
employer provided contraceptives — during oral argument: “Congress has made a
judgment and Congress has given a statutory entitlement and that entitlement is
to women and includes contraceptive coverage.” Wrong, Justice Kagan. Did you also forego reading the law, like most
members of Congress? The distinction between a regulation and a law is no small
matter. As Hobby Lobby’s lawyer stressed in his closing statement, a statute,
in this case Congress’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, trumps a
regulation…..“Look for a likely 6-3 ruling that if you like your god, you can
keep your god, even if you also have to make a living.”
Charles Koch: “I’m
Fighting to Restore a Free Society….Instead
of welcoming free debate, collectivists engage in character assassination…..I
have devoted most of my life to understanding the principles that enable people
to improve their lives. It is those principles—the principles of a free
society—that have shaped my life, my family, our company and America itself. Unfortunately,
the fundamental concepts of dignity, respect, equality before the law and
personal freedom are under attack by the nation's own government. That's why,
if we want to restore a free society and create greater well-being and
opportunity for all Americans, we have no choice but to fight for those
principles. I have been doing so for more than 50 years, primarily through
educational efforts. It was only in the past decade that I realized the need to
also engage in the political process….”
Harry Reid calls Koch brothers ‘un-American’ for opposing
Obamacare
The new American Totalitarian State: Imagine going to work one day only to be, in
effect, fired—not because of anything you did or didn’t do at your job, but
because of something you did in your personal life. Something religious. Or maybe, something
political. That’s exactly what happened
to Brendan Eich, a highly-respected tech guru in Silicon Valley and co-founder
of Mozilla Corporation, after he was appointed CEO in late March. In less than
a week, he was forced out of this position for no reason other than that he had
a made a $1000 contribution to the Prop 8 initiative in 2008.
Mozilla is getting flak over Eich’s forced resignation from
a company he helped co-found. That decision angered many of Mozilla’s
customers, and they didn’t hold back on their criticism, pelting Mozilla’s
website with a surge of negative feedback. On Friday, 94 percent of the
sentiments registered on the site were “sad,” while six percent were “happy.”
Biden Unchained: A survey of Joe’s rhetorical grandiosity
since January
“I don’t think Barack Obama was born in Kenya. But is he a Manchurian?”
_________________________________________________________________________
NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES & INFO
Intrepid reporter Jack Cashill: “Ron Brown's House of Cards”
____________________________________________________________________________
YOU MIGHT BE A LIBERAL IF YOU
...still have an “Obama 2012”
bumper sticker on your car—right next to your “Obama 2008” bumper sticker.
...believe that achieving a
record low percentage of Americans working, and record high percentage of
Americans on food stamps and other “public assistance,” are indicators of a
successful economic recovery model.
...feel that voter fraud is a
form of “social justice.”
...are certain that any
criticism of Obama is rooted in racism.
...believe Bill Maher and Jon
Stewart are “journalists,” and everything on MTV and in the New York Times is
“journalism.”
...look like “a deer in the
headlights” if anyone mentions our Constitution because that is just
“right-wing rhetoric.”
... rail against racial discrimination but staunchly support
Affirmative Action.
...feel the grassroots Tea Party Movement is a collection of
ignorant racists, but the "Occupy Wall Street" movement is a
coalition of thoughtful and principled reformers.
...believe CNN and The New York Times are objective, but Fox
News and The Wall Street Journal are biased.
___________________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
"[T]he success of the usurpation will depend on the
executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to
the legislative acts; and in a last resort a remedy must be obtained from the
people, who can by the elections of more faithful representatives, annul the
acts of the usurpers."
-James
Madison, Federalist No. 44
posted by gary at
1:48 PM
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