op ed review 7/13
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
Obama locks in his “transformation of America” by
encouraging border meltdown: The deluge
of 290,000 illegals — so far — are exploiting legal loopholes that allow them
to get temporary permits to stay in the United States. Experts say that
President Obama’s administration has failed to close the loopholes and is
unlikely to deport more than a small percentage of the illegals, despite the
high unemployment rates among American Latino, African-American and white
youths, and the strapped budgets of many cities and towns. The Central American
parents of the 50,000 youths and children are using a 2008 law to ensure their
children are transported to them for free by a relay of border patrol and DHHS
officials. The youths are delivered to the border patrol by smugglers in
exchange for several thousand dollars. Half of the 50,000 Central American
youths were delivered by taxpayer-funded employees directly to their parents
now living in the United States, and another third were delivered to people who
said they were close relatives…
It may be part of a secret deal: “Honduran President Vows To Keep Dumping
Illegal Alien Children On U.S. Border Until His Friend President Obama Says To
Stop….”
Texas Gov. Rick Perry repeated an accusation that
undocumented children coming to the U.S. from Latin American countries might be
a result of “ulterior motives” from President Obama. “I don’t believe he
particularly cares whether or not the border of the United States is secure.”
Obama seeks brisk passage of border children funding
bill. The bill would subsidize
schooling, health care and lawyers for illegal immigrants
Noonan: Is a nation
without borders a nation?
Protests spread:
Michigan residents protest plans to house illegal immigrants
Chicago Inner City Blacks Turn Against Obama Over Illegal
Immigration “Worst President Ever”
According to Border Patrol sources, violent MS-13 gang
members are using the Nogales processing center in Arizona as a recruitment hub
and transfer point for gang members to get into the United States.
An illegal immigrant from Guatemala is currently being
treated for active tuberculosis (TB) at the University Medical Center (UMC) of
El Paso.
United Nations officials are pushing for many of the Central
Americans fleeing to the U.S. to be treated as refugees displaced by armed
conflict, a designation meant to increase pressure on the United States to
accept tens of thousands of people currently ineligible for asylum.
“Obama Skips Border Chaos, Will Fundraise in Austin with
Director of Pro-Illegal Immigration Film”
A Fourth of July parade float that
depicted a figure standing outside an outhouse labeled the “Obama Presidential
Library” has caused a stir. The U.S. Department of Justice is now
investigating the incident.
Obama’s highest approval rating is with Muslims (72%)
Just as the IRS tea party targeting scandal was erupting, Lois
G. Lerner warned colleagues to “be cautious” about what information they put in
emails because it could end up being turned over to Congress.
Weakness: The People's Republic of China now believes
it can successfully prevent the United States from intervening in the event of
a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or some other military assault by Beijing.
After a disappointing primary season, the Tea Party is
getting set for a revival going into the fall general elections with one of the
nation´s leading movement representatives, the 2.5 million member
TheTeaParty.net, bringing back its top strategist to run the organization. On
Tuesday, the Washington-based group announced the appointment of Niger Innis as
executive director, a prominent black conservative and civil rights activist.
Support For Hillary Drops 11 Points—Among Democrats.
Coming to Washington:
“More Colorado drivers in fatal crashes positive for pot, study says”
Capping off a months-long lobbying effort, Cleveland has
been selected to host the 2016 Republican National Convention.
______________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Peggy Noonan 7/11
What is happening at the southern border is a true and
actual crisis. News accounts justly use words like chaos, collapse and
breakdown. They feature images of children—toddlers, 4- and 5-year-olds—being
shuffled to warehouse holding centers, sleeping crowded at night on what look
like pallets, covered only in Mylar blankets. "I never thought we'd have
refugee camps in America," said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, "but that's
what it's appearing."
All this gives normal people a feeling of besiegement and
foreboding. Is a nation without borders a nation? Washington's leaders seem to
recognize what's happening as a political problem, not a real problem. That is,
they betray no honest alarm. They just sort of stand in clusters and say
things.
There seem only two groups that view the situation with
appropriate alarm. One is the children
themselves, dragged through deserts to be deposited here. ……The other group
feeling a proper alarm is normal Americans, who are seeing all this on TV and
who judge they are witnessing a level of lawlessness that has terrible
implications for the country. This is
how I think normal people are experiencing what is happening:
It's like you live in a house that's falling apart. The roof
needs to be patched and there are squirrels in the attic, a hornet's nest in
the eaves. The basement's wet. The walkway to the front door is cracked with
grass growing through it. The old boiler is making funny sounds. On top of that
it's always on your mind that you could lose your job tomorrow and must live
within strict confines so you can meet the mortgage and pay the electric bill.
You can't keep the place up and you're equal parts anxious, ashamed and angry.
And then one morning you look outside and see . . . all these
people standing on your property, looking at you, making some mute demand.
Little children looking lost—no one's taking care of them. Older ones settling
in the garage, or working a window to the cellar. You call the cops. At first
they don't come. Then they come and shout through a bull horn and take some of
the kids and put them in a shelter a few blocks away. But more kids keep
coming! You call your alderman and he says there's nothing he can do. Then he
says wait, we're going to pass a bill and get more money to handle the crisis.
You ask, "Does that mean the kids will go home?" He says no, but it
may make things feel more orderly. You call the local TV station and they come
do a report on your stoop and then they're gone, because really, what can they
do, and after a few days it's getting to be an old story.
No one's in charge! No one is taking responsibility. No one
who wants to help has authority, and no one with authority is helping. America is the house that is both falling
apart and under new stress. Those living within it, those most upset by what
they're seeing, know America has big problems—unemployment, low workforce
participation, a rickety physical infrastructure, an unsound culture, poor
public education. And of course discord of all sorts—a lot of mad squirrels
running around the attic. They know America can't pay its bills. They fear
we're living on the fumes of greatness. They want us to be strong again.
Watching our border collapse doesn't look like a harbinger of progress.
Here it must be said that those who live comfortable lives
can afford to roll with the historical punches. But people who are not affluent
live closer to the ground, and closer to the country's deterioration. The
rougher America becomes, the more they feel the abrasion. They're not
protected. And they know no one wants to be in charge, wants to seize this
thing and take responsibility. The mind-boggling fact is that everyone in
charge more or less suggests they're powerless to do anything. And the children
keep coming.
The latest border surge has been going on for at least two
years. Children and others are coming because they believe that under the
president's leadership, if they get here they'll get a pass to stay. (They're
probably right.) This was predictable. Two years ago Texas Gov. Rick Perry
wrote the president that the number of unaccompanied children was spiking
sharply. He warned that unless the government moves, other minors would attempt
the journey and find themselves in "extremely dangerous situations."
The generally agreed-upon number of those who've come so far this year is
50,000. Now government estimates are rising to at least 90,000 by year's end. Meanwhile
some in the conservative press call the president incapable, unable to handle
the situation. But he is not so stupid he doesn't know this is a crisis. He
knows his poll numbers are going to go even lower next month because of it……There
is every sign he let the crisis on the border build to put heat on Republicans
and make them pass his idea of good immigration reform. It would be
"comprehensive," meaning huge, impenetrable and probably full of
mischief. His base wants it. It would no doubt benefit the Democratic Party in
the long term.
The little children in great danger, holding hands, staring
blankly ahead, are pawns in a larger game. That game is run by adults. How cold
do you have to be to use children in this way?
________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
“Does an act that’s
clearly immoral when done privately become moral when it is done collectively
and under the color of law? Put another way, does legality establish morality?
For most of our history, Congress did a far better job of limiting its
activities to what was both moral and constitutional. As a result, federal
spending was only 3 to 5 percent of the gross domestic product from our
founding until the 1920s, in contrast with today’s 25 percent. Close to
three-quarters of today’s federal spending can be described as Congress taking
the earnings of one American to give to another through thousands of handout
programs, such as farm subsidies, business bailouts and welfare. … [S]pending
is not our basic problem. We’ve become an immoral people demanding that
Congress forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another. Deficits
and runaway national debt are merely symptoms of that larger problem.”
-Walter Williams
“House Speaker John Boehner is threatening to sue President
Obama for using executive actions to create laws, instead of going through
Congress first. Then Obama shrugged and made a new law that you can’t sue the
president.”
-Jimmy Fallon
_______________________________________________________________________
BOOKS, FILM
Costco Wholesale has
issued an order to remove all copies of Dinesh D’Souza’s bestselling book,
“America: Imagine the World Without Her,” from the shelves of its stores
nationwide. The book, in this midterm election year, is a strong
rebuttal of the progressive ideology behind President Obama’s policies, which
have been supported by Costco co-founder and director Jim Sinegal, a major
Democrat donor and a speaker at the 2012 DNC convention that nominated the
president. At Amazon.com, D’Souza’s book, released June 2, is ranked No. 5
overall and No. 1 in Political Commentary and Opinion.
David Limbaugh: “Do
we conservatives really mean it when we say that we need to promote our ideas
in the popular culture through books, movies and other media? If so, we need to
support people like Dinesh D´Souza and his latest movie and book, America:
Imagine a World Without Her. I saw the movie, and I loved it. D´Souza is a
passionate patriot who "chose this country" and loves it with every
fiber of his being. Like many of the rest of us, he recognizes that America is
under assault, and he is doing all he can to save it.”
Order the book here:
_________________________________________________________________________
GLOBALONEY
Recycling is authoritarian, demeaning and an unutterable
waste of time, energy and money. No surprise, then, that the European Union is
planning to force its vassal states to do much, much more of it. Last week, the
European Commission proposed its most draconian waste disposal legislation yet:
a plan requiring 70 percent of all municipal waste and 80 percent of packaging
waste to be recycled by 2030; a total ban of the landfill of recyclable waste
by 2025, aiming "to virtually eliminate landfill" by 2030.
“Global warming computer models confounded as Antarctic sea ice hits new record high with 2.1 million square miles more than is usual for time of year”
Australian city hits coldest temperature in 103 years.
Al Gore ramps up warnings about global warming.
Voters strongly
believe the debate about global warming is not over yet and reject the decision
by some news organizations to ban comments from those who deny that global
warming is a problem. Only 20% of Likely
U.S. Voters believe the scientific debate about global warming is over,
according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/general_lifestyle/july_2014/only_20_think_debate_about_global_warming_is_over
___________________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
President Obama has quietly promised Massachusetts Sen.
Elizabeth Warren complete support if she runs for president — a stinging rebuke
to his nemesis Hillary Clinton. Publicly, Obama has remained noncommittal on
the 2016 race, but privately he worries that Clinton would undo and undermine
many of his policies. There’s also a personal animosity, especially with Bill
Clinton, that dates from their tough race six years ago. A former Harvard law
professor and administration aide, Warren would energize the left wing of the
Democrat Party just as Obama did against Clinton in 2008.
Just in time for Independence Day, an old lefty teacher has
trotted out a bunch of tired canards about the American Revolutionary War.
Writing for a website called The Zinn Education Project, the teacher, Bill
Bigelow, also manages to criticize American firework displays on the Fourth of
July because “the United States is waging war with real fireworks around the
world.”
The Left rewards its own:
University of North Carolina School of Law’s Professor Gene Nichol is a
real opponent of income inequality. That’s why he gets paid $205,400 to teach
one class, plus more to run the Poverty Center at the school. Nichol’s noble
opposition to income inequality puts him in a class with other great academic
class warriors like Elizabeth Warren, who was paid $350,000 by Harvard Law to
teach a single course and Clinton’s former Labor Secretary turned inequality
campaigner Robert Reich who pulls in $235,791 a year from a public university
at UC-Berkeley to teach a course on “Wealth and Poverty”.
President Obama’s aggressive and controversial Climate
Action Plan grew out of a draft proposal from one of America´s richest
environmental activist groups, The Natural Resources Defense Council, which
spent $41 million of its $210 million nest egg last year pushing for changes in
energy policy, circulated a 110-page document in 2012 that outlined what would
become the president´s latest salvo in the global-warming wars.
“…..even absurdity has its limits, and the National
Organization for Women has surpassed it in the wake of the Supreme Court´s
decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. As part of its full-throated defense of
ObamaCare´s contraception mandate, NOW has a list of what it calls "The
Dirty 100" ….. Almost square in the
middle of the list…..are the Little Sisters of the Poor.”
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees said it will no longer partner with or raise funds for the United
Negro College Fund (“A Mind is a
Terrible Thing to Waste”) because the UNCF accepted a $25M grant from the Koch
brothers.
The Democrat narrative for the midterms: For most of 2014, the Democrats looked on the
looming congressional elections with considerable dread. All of the standard
indicators portend an unhappy outcome for their party…..Then came last week’s
Hobby Lobby ruling. In that imminently sensible Supreme Court decision, the
Democrats found an unhoped-for opportunity for shameless demagoguery. Indulging
their gift for Orwellian rhetoric, they declared that the Court had re-opened
hostilities in the fabled “war on women.”……Millions of American women, they
thundered, will now be denied access to birth control because five male
justices sided with the closet theocrats who own Hobby Lobby.
____________________________________________________________________________
ISLAM
A story about a woman stabbing a schoolteacher to death in
front of a class of five and six-year-olds occurred in the southern French town
of Albi; the victim was a 34-year-old mother of two. But a certain bit of
information is conspicuously missing from virtually all the reportage. The Mother – get the digitalis and hold on
to your hat – is “Moroccan-born.” …..Now, come on, lamestream media, you can do
it. Say, “Mus…lah…” That’s it, come on, concentrate. “Musl…l…l…ugh…”
Shootings, beheadings, hangings and crucifixions continued
in ISIS-controlled Iraq over the holiday weekend.
Shocking moment ISIS militants take sledgehammers to Mosul
tomb of the Prophet Jonah……”Rebels believe special veneration of tombs is
against teachings of Islam.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2685923/Shocking-moment-ISIS-militants-sledgehammers-Mosul-tomb-Prophet-Jonah-50-blindfolded-bodies-massacred-south-Baghdad.html#ixzz36yxt5R5n
Evil terror boss Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi came out of the
shadows for the first time today – in a dramatic video in which he glorifies
the slaughter of innocent people. The warlord whose jihadi militants are behind
hundreds of brutal killings in Syria and Iraq delivered a chilling sermon to
fanatics. His 15-minute rant was filmed at the grand mosque in the captured
city of Mosul, northern Iraq. Surrounded by henchmen and rows of Kalashnikovs,
al-Baghdadi’s eyes appeared lifeless. But his words were laced with hatred as
he called on all Muslims to rise up and kill those who oppose him. “Allah likes
us to kill his enemies and make jihad,” he bellowed.
Hamas’ Interior Ministry has ordered residents of the Gaza
Strip to remain in their houses if they are about to be bombed by the Israelis,
a move that effectively turns citizens into human shields and is intentionally
meant to boost the casualty rate.
Israel: ‘We Use
Missiles to Defend Civilians, Hamas Uses Civilians to Defend Missiles’
_____________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
“There comes a point where the Left’s calumnizing of
conservatives, its endless quest to delegitimize ordinary words, and its
determination to criminalize religious expression all combine to make me want
to offend as many leftists as I can, in response, just for fun. But not only
for fun: Deliberately choosing to offend them, and thus trying to shred their
ideological straitjackets, is occasionally a necessary endeavor. We on the
right must show that we need not cower; we can and must fight back. In that spirit……..”
Glenn Reynolds: Life
is hard. It´s harder still when an entire class of people with their hands out
stands between you and success. Unfortunately, that´s increasingly the problem,
all around the world. A recent New York Times piece tells the story of a Greek
woman´s efforts to survive that country´s financial collapse. After losing her
job, she tried to start a pastry business, only to find the regulatory
environment impossible. Among other things, they wanted her to pay the
business´s first two years of taxes up front, before it had taken in a cent.
When the business failed, her lesson was this: "I…..learned that I would
be at the mercy of public employees who interpreted the laws so they could
profit themselves."
An obscure, chicken-sized bird best known for its mating
dance could help determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the U.S.
Senate in November. The federal government is considering listing the greater
sage grouse as an endangered species next year. Doing so could limit
development, energy exploration, hunting and ranching on the 165 million acres
of the bird´s habitat across 11 Western states. Apart from the potential
economic disruption, which some officials in Western states discuss in tones
usually reserved for natural disasters, the specter of the bird´s listing is
reviving the centuries-old debates about local vs. federal control.
“Who is Steve Scalise?”
“Scalise is a rare breed — a genial fighter. He will charge at his
goals, and then not back off, like a bulldog. But, to borrow a line from Mike
Huckabee, he knows how to be a conservative “without being mad about it…….nobody
will outwork him, and nobody can claim anything other than that he is the most
conservative member in the top three of House Republican leadership since Dick
Armey.
Sarah Palin: 'It's Time to Impeach' President Obama
Maybe not the best strategy just before the midterm
elections. “For Republicans hoping to
avoid the kind of drama that might derail what looks to be a very good midterm
election year, this kind of call is both a nuisance and a trend.”
_________________________________________________________________________
WEBSITES
“21 Conservative Writers To Read
At The Beach”
_________________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
"Patriotism is as much a virtue as justice, and is as
necessary for the support of societies as natural affection is for the support
of families."
-Benjamin Rush (1773)
posted by gary at
1:20 PM
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