op ed review 5/24
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
After successfully bringing more than 30% of the U.S.
economy — the health care and financial services industries — under political
control during his first term, President Obama made it clear last week that a
priority of his second term is to go after the energy sector — another 10.5%.
The purpose of the White House´s orchestrated release of the National Climate
Assessment on May 7 was to set the stage to drive energy markets and fossil
fuels under the heel of more government regulation.
Forty-seven percent of unemployed say “I’ve completely given
up on looking for a job,” according to a new poll from Express Employment
Professionals, the nation’s largest franchised staffing company.
Republicans’ hopes of taking back the Senate received a big
boost in primary elections Tuesday, with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.)
easily winning and other candidates favored by the party establishment beating
back tea party challengers. After years of intraparty turmoil that cost
Republicans key races, voters this year are coalescing around the GOP’s
strongest candidates ahead of November’s general election, when control of the
Senate during President Obama’s final two years in office will be up for grabs.
Health insurance companies are poised to have access to
billions of taxpayer dollars in what Republicans are calling an Obamacare
´bailout.´ In a little-noticed regulation issued late last week, the Department
of Health and Human Services authorized massive payments to insurers that lose
money because of the Affordable Care Act´s requirement that they cover even the
oldest and sickest Americans.
Undercover journalist James O’Keefe released his latest
video featuring a sting operation to expose Hollywood environmentalists. The
video features an undercover journalist from Project Veritas posing as
"Muhammad,” a member of a Middle Eastern oil family, offering $9 million
in funding to American filmmakers to fund an anti-fracking movie. He was joined
by a second undercover activist posing as an ad executive. O’Keefe entraps actor Ed Begley Jr., actress
Mariel Hemingway, and director Josh Tickell, who agree to the film while
promising to hide the source of the funds.
Pennsylvania's ban on gay marriage was overturned by a federal
judge Tuesday who declared that biblical notions of marriage are obsolete and “it
is time to discard them into the ash heap of history." Regrettably, the judge is a Bush appointee.
The Defense Department said it is looking at expanding its
application pool by letting some young illegal immigrants join the military, in
what could be another tool for an Obama administration seeking unilateral steps
to take on immigration reform.
A nonprofit group hopes to award a $1 million bounty to
anyone who can provide “smoking gun” evidence to implicate IRS leadership or
members of the Obama administration who purposefully targeted conservative and
tea party-affiliated groups, TheBlaze has learned.
The director of the Phoenix VA hospital where 40 veterans
died while waiting for care received an $8,500 bonus last month.
President Obama’s transition team was warned in 2008 that
repeated audits showed the Veterans Affairs Department was misreporting wait
times for medical treatment, including one audit revealing delays nearly 10
times worse than the department was officially acknowledging.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/21/obama-transition-team-told-about-3-audits-showing-/#ixzz32SELvR8K
India´s voters dealt a crushing blow to socialism Friday
with the "Modislide" victory of the pro-free market BJP party and its
top governor, who has already brought prosperity to his Gujarat state.
This represents a repudiation of the Congress Party, the
heir to the Gandhi-Nehru semi-socialist political machine that has ruled India
virtually since independence. While the American mainstream media has virtually
ignored this embrace of free markets and anti-jihadism, the Obama administration
will soon be forced to back-peddle and deal with a man it has barred from
receiving a visa to visit the United States. “The world´s most populous
democracy--our ally--has just seen a watershed election as important as
Reagan´s victory in 1980.”
Middle School Cancels Honors Night Because It’s Too
“Exclusive”…
Parents of students at a school in Michigan, have reportedly
been informed that all students are “winners,” therefore the “competitive ‘urge
to win’ will be kept to a minimum” at the school’s annual field day.
A relatively new student group at the University of Notre
Dame formed to defend traditional marriage has been denied official recognition
as a campus club at the Catholic institution.
Nintendo has been forced to apologize for not allowing same-sex
marriage in one of its simulation games after online and social media campaigns
criticized the company for “alienating sexual minorities.”
“Trey Gowdy Stuns The Media Into ‘Deafening’ Silence With
Some Hard-Hitting Questions About Benghazi”
______________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Dr. Ben Carson, National Review 5/14
“Unfit for Office”
The recent
escalating arguments over whether there should be further congressional
hearings on Benghazi are troubling. The fact that there are substantial numbers
of people who feel that there is nothing more to investigate when four American
lives were lost and no one has answered for this crime provides an indication
of how far our sense of justice has slipped.
This should not be a
partisan issue, because the implications of ignoring or prevaricating about the
underlying mistakes will have far-reaching consequences. The United States has
diplomatic establishments throughout the world, and if they can be attacked
without consequences, it greatly diminishes our influence despite any
protestations to the contrary.
What does it say
about our judgment if we have diplomatic establishments for which we make
inadequate provisions for protection? This is especially disturbing because it
was revealed that requests by the diplomatic facility in Benghazi for more
protection were refused. There had been attacks on the facility not long before
the fatal attack, and hostile actions had been taken against the British, which
they were wise enough to react to appropriately.
Even more
confounding was the decision to abandon our personnel at the facility because
someone decided that our military forces could not reach them in time to effect
a rescue. How could such a decision be made when no one knew how long the
hostile action would last?
When our top
officials make decisions to abandon our own people because they feel the
situation is hopeless, they also abandon the concept of American exceptionalism
and create doubt in the minds of all future military participants about the
intention of their superiors to expend maximum effort to preserve their lives
when they have sacrificed everything for our nation.
Making mistakes is
part of being human, but the ever-increasing deception that is necessary to
cover those mistakes when honesty is abandoned is evil. Those willing to ignore
evil for political reasons should question their fitness for leadership of our
nation. In this case, a blatant falsehood was promoted — namely that the Obama
administration had international terrorist activity directed at America under
control and that the Benghazi incident was a spontaneous action resulting from
the outrage of locals who had viewed an offensive anti-Islamic video. Undue
importance was placed on promoting an image of U.S. strength during the weeks
immediately preceding the presidential election of 2012.
Again, I must
emphasize that if we, the American people, the American press, and the American
political class, participate in the cover-up or ignore such an important story,
we contribute to the demise of honesty and truth as pillars of our governing
structure. In the book of Proverbs, King Solomon put it this way: “If a ruler
listens to lies, those who serve him will be wicked.”
We also should be
concerned about the attempt by some to ignore or downgrade the significance of
the Internal Revenue Service scandal. The fact that something this contrary to
the concept of freedom can happen in a country based on constitutional values
and be characterized as a “phony scandal” by people who supposedly have the
best interests of this country at heart again points to the danger of placing
partisan politics above truth and honesty.
When politicians
huddle and try to figure out ways to defend their leader or their party and
ignore the well-being of their nation, the people must take notice and do
everything within their power to make sure they are represented by those who
share their beliefs, and not by those who are simply party loyalists.
Obviously, the IRS
was used in inappropriate ways, or Lois Lerner would not have pleaded the Fifth
Amendment. It is more than disturbing that the president of the United States
and many in his party feigned outrage when the inappropriate actions of the IRS
initially were exposed but now cannot lend support to a full and unfettered
investigation of activities that threaten the very liberty of the American
people.
A bipartisan group
should investigate both Benghazi and the IRS scandal in a transparent manner.
If wrongdoing is discovered, those responsible must face consequences, and
procedures must be established to ensure that such abuses never occur again.
Most important, the
people must awaken and look objectively at the actions of both Democrats and
Republicans and not simply accept what party leaders say. Freedom is not free,
and vigilance in responsible voting is necessary to preserve it.
________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
"A government that fails to secure its borders is
guilty of dereliction of duty. A government that fails to care for our men and
women on the frontlines is guilty of malpractice. A government that puts the
needs of illegal aliens above U.S. veterans for political gain should be prosecuted
for criminal neglect bordering on treason."
-Michelle Malkin
: "On Wednesday, it finally happened -- the pivot to
Asia. No, not the United States. It was Russia that turned East. In Shanghai,
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed a
spectacular energy deal -- $400 billion of Siberian natural gas to be exported
to China over 30 years. ... The contrast with President Obama's own vaunted
pivot to Asia is embarrassing. He went to Japan last month also seeking a major
trade agreement that would symbolize and cement a pivotal strategic alliance.
He came home empty-handed. ... His pivot to Asia remains a dead letter. Yet his
withdrawal from the Middle East ... is a fait accompli. The retreat is compounded by Obama's
proposed major cuts in defense spending ... even as Russia is rearming and
China is creating a sophisticated military soon capable of denying America
access to the waters of the Pacific Rim. Decline is not a condition. Decline is
a choice, Obama's choice. And it's the one area where he is succeeding
splendidly."
-Charles
Krauthammer
_______________________________________________________________________
GLOBALONEY
Research which heaped doubt on the rate of global warming
was deliberately suppressed by scientists because it was “less than helpful” to
their cause. In an echo of the infamous “Climategate” scandal at the University
of East Anglia, one of the world’s top academic journals rejected the work of
five experts after a reviewer privately denounced it as “harmful”.
Suspend your reality for Godzilla: It’s an
anti-global-warming alarmism smash
___________________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
Democratic congressman says “We’ve proved that Communism
works.”
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) became the latest Democrat to
suggest that people who oppose ObamCare do so because…they’re racist:
_______________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
Frank Gaffney: “This
week, the House Armed Services Committee is poised to set in train a
legislative process that could well translate into the suicide of the
Republican Party. The committee will consider – and, all other things being
equal, may actually adopt – a controversial amendment to be offered by Rep.
Mike Coffman of Colorado to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It
would allow illegal aliens brought here as minors – so-called “Dreamers” – to
serve in the U.S. military and, thereby, obtain American citizenship. Should that
happen, proponents of a broader amnesty for those here illegally would likely
try use the House-Senate conference on this “must-pass” legislation to secure
as much as possible of the “comprehensive immigration” bill adopted last year
by the upper chamber. Sixteen retired flag and general officers have just written
the Armed Services Committee’s chairman urging him not to permit his panel’s
principal legislation to be misused in this fashion.
Obama Makes It Clear That Amnesty Will Help Democrats. After releasing tens of thousands of
criminal aliens, President Obama urgently asks law enforcement officials to
lean on Republicans to pass amnesty. Will the GOP deport itself out of victory
this year? Congressman Lamar Smith called it "the worst prison break in
American history, except it was sanctioned by the president and perpetrated by
our own immigration officials."
From the Free Speech Movement to
the No Speech Movement
Howie Carr: The Politically Correct narrative of the Boston
Marathon bombing is sinking faster than Barack Obama’s poll numbers. Remember
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, aka Speedbump. The Boston Globe tearfully informed its
moonbat readers that Speedbump was “a stay-at-home dad.” When he died at the
age of 25, Speedbump was a “person of interest” in seven murders in
Massachusetts, so apparently the stay-at-home dad got out of his (Section 8)
house every once in a while.
An Iowa woman jokingly calls it "Satan´s
handiwork." A California mom says she´s broken down in tears. A
Pennsylvania parent says it "makes my blood boil." What could be so
horrible? Grade-school math. As schools
around the U.S. implement national Common Core learning standards, parents
trying to help their kids with math homework say that adding, subtracting,
multiplying and dividing has become as complicated as calculus. They´re stumped
by unfamiliar terms like "rectangular array" and "area
model." They wrestle with division that requires the use of squares,
slashes and dots. They rage over impenetrable word problems….
“The IRS’s Media
Firewall” After the full House of
Representatives cited former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) official Lois G.
Lerner for contempt of Congress, the Washington Times fittingly made it the
lead story. Over at the Washington Post, however, print readers had to go 19
pages deep to “The Fed Page,” a union-style newsletter for federal employees.
If the Post had buried the story any deeper, it would have been wedged into the
classifieds or crumpled up in a backyard mulch barrel.
A dozen politically active pastors came here for a private
dinner Friday night to hear a conversion story unique in the context of
presidential politics: how Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal traveled from Hinduism
to Protestant Christianity and, ultimately, became what he calls an
“evangelical Catholic.”
___________________________________________________________________________
WEBSITES
The big debate in electoral politics these days is not
whether the national environment will be bad for Democrats this November but
rather how bad it will be. A new chart put together by Public Opinion
Strategies, a Republican polling firm, suggests things could be worse for
Democrats than even recent wave elections from 1994 through 2010
10 Reasons Why John Kerry Deserves A Magna Cum Laude In Climate Pseudo-Science
_________________________________________________________________________
HUMOR
Conan: A new report calls Venezuela the most miserable
country on Earth. After hearing this, Kim Jong Un said, “What do I have to do?”........A
New Hampshire court says a man has the right to have a license plate saying:
“Cops Lie.” The man also has the right to get pulled over 18 times a day………A
Texas town plans to recycle toilet water and use it for drinking water. Dogs
said, “How are you only thinking of this now?”
_________________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
"I have no illusions about
what little I can add now to the silent testimony of those who gave their lives
willingly for their country. Words are even more feeble on this Memorial Day,
for the sight before us is that of a strong and good nation that stands in
silence and remembers those who were loved and who, in return, loved their
countrymen enough to die for them. Yet, we must try to honor them -- not for
their sakes alone, but for our own. And if words cannot repay the debt we owe
these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and
with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice."
-Ronald Reagan
posted by gary at
3:18 PM
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