op ed review 9/14
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
Political analyst Stu Rothenberg sees a wave election
upcoming for Senate Republicans in November. In a Roll Call column published
Monday, the electoral expert said he is expecting Republicans to gain at least
seven seats in the Senate and earn a November victory more dramatic than
several pollsters have suggested. “I am now expecting a substantial Republican
Senate wave in November, with a net gain of at least seven seats,” he said.
“But I wouldn’t be shocked by a larger gain.”
Polling avalanche: GOP leads in eight races for Democrat-held Senate seats
Gallup: “The
Republican Party has expanded its historical edge over the Democratic Party in
Americans' minds as being better able to protect the U.S. from international
terrorism and military threats. At this point, 55% of Americans choose the GOP
on this dimension, while 32% choose the Democratic Party. This is the widest
Republican advantage in Gallup's history of asking this question since 2002.”
American voters disagree with President Obama that the
economy is in better shape today than in 2008. Most are unhappy with ObamaCare.
And optimism about the future of the country is down. With only 54 days until
Election Day, these sentiments are pretty well baked into the cake -- boosting
Republican candidates in a new Fox News poll.
By a wide margin of 52-42%, voters see President Obama as a
failed president.
Nancy Pelosi says civilization is ‘In Jeopardy’ If GOP Takes
Senate.
Obama losing the confidence of women?
Bowing to political concerns,
President Obama will not announce any plans to take executive action to change
immigration policy until after the November elections.
In the NEW YORK TIMES! “Obama’s Betrayal of the
Constitution……Nothing attempted by his predecessor, George W. Bush, remotely
compares in imperial hubris.”
Is it a “safety net” or a
hammock? . On the average day, an
unemployed American is more likely to be shopping—for things other than
groceries and gas---than to be looking for a new job, according to data from
the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “An unemployed person—on the average day—was
more likely to spend time on shopping, sports and recreation, socializing and
leisure, than they were searching for and interviewing for a new job, according
to BLS.”
Secretary of State John Kerry refused to say we are at war
with ISIS.
That’ll show ‘em! State Department fights ISIS by making videos.
“White House, Pentagon contradict Kerry, say US ‘at war’
with ISIS”
Gaffes 1: A senior
Obama administration official declared in a press release that “Saudi Arabia
has an extensive border with Syria.” (It doesn’t)
Gaffes 2: The
third-ranking House Democrat, recently told a C-SPAN caller that “sexting” is
an important tool for organizing voters.
Senate Republicans are preparing an agenda for their first
100 days in power next year in case they win majority control of the upper
chamber. The agenda includes authorizing the long-delayed Keystone XL oil
pipeline, approving “fast-track” trade authority, rolling back new
Environmental Protection Agency regulations and repealing Obamacare’s unpopular
tax on medical devices.
Welfare recipients can’t use their EBT cards at liquor
stores but they can at marijuana dispensaries in states such as Colorado that
have legalized pot, Sen. Jeff Sessions revealed Tuesday.
The Obama administration announced that their court case
against the Little Sisters of the Poor will continue. The Little Sisters of the Poor provide care
for the elderly poor, regardless of their religious affiliation.
An Illinois woman tried to used the popular crowdfunding
website GoFundMe to raise money for a late term abortion so she can continue to
party. The funding page, “Bailey’s Abortion Fund” has been taken down, but Life
Site News reported Friday that 106 people had already donated $1,654 towards
the woman’s goal of $2,500. “The page was written by Bailey’s current
boyfriend, Lücifer Ryzing.” ??
During a California gubernatorial debate against Republican
Neel Kashkari, California Governor Jerry Brown (D) revealed that nearly 30% of the state's schoolchildren
are either illegal immigrants or do not speak English.
Greta Van Susteren admitted Friday “Off the Record” that she
was called by the Obama White House and told to push FOX reporter Jennifer
Griffin to drop her Benghazi investigation.
A Pennsylvania county council has voted 8-6 against posting
the national motto, "In God We Trust," in its chambers. Allegheny
County Executive Rich Fitzgerald had threatened to veto the measure, which he
called "a movement by the right-wing evangelical Christians across the
country basically to impose Christianity" in public buildings. Fitzgerald
is a Democrat, as are the eight council members who opposed the display, which
would also have included Pennsylvania's state motto "Virtue, Liberty and
Independence" and another U.S. motto, "E Pluribus Unum."
_________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Thomas Sowell 9/13/14
While we talk about
democracy and equal rights, we seem increasingly to let both private and
government decisions be determined by mob rule. There is nothing democratic
about mob rule. It means that some people's votes are to be overruled by other
people's disruptions, harassments and threats.
The latest examples
are the mobs in the streets in cities across the country, demanding that
employers pay a minimum wage of $15 an hour, or else that the government makes
them do so by law. Some of the more gullible observers think the issue is
whether what some people are making now is "a living wage." This
misconstrues the whole point of hiring someone to do work. Those who are being
hired are paid for the value of the work they do.
If their work is
really worth more than what their employer is paying them, all they have to do
is quit and go work for some other employer, who will pay them what their work
is really worth. If they can't find any other employer who will pay them more,
then what makes them think their work is worth more?
As for a
"living wage," the employer is not hiring people in order to acquire
dependents and become their meal ticket. He is hiring them for what they
produce. Are some people not able to produce much? Absolutely! I know because I
was once one of those people.
After leaving home
as a teenager, I discovered that what I could earn would only enable me to rent
a furnished room about 6 by 9 feet. Instead of a closet, it had a nail on the
back of the door -- which was completely adequate for my wardrobe at the time. It
became painfully clear that there was no great demand for a high school dropout
with no skills and no experience. My choices were to get angry at my employer or
to acquire some skills and experience -- and try to pick up some more
education, while I was at it. Even to a teenage dropout, that choice was a
no-brainer. There was no one around to confuse the issue by telling me that I
was somehow "entitled" to what other people had produced, whether at
the expense of the taxpayers or the employer.
There was a minimum
wage law, even back in those days. But it had been passed ten years earlier,
and inflation had raised both prices and wages to the point where it was the
same as if there were no minimum wage law. Thank heaven! The unemployment rate
among black teenagers back then was a fraction of what it would become in later
years, after "compassionate" politicians repeatedly raised the
minimum wage rate to keep up with inflation.
In 1948, the year I
left home, the unemployment rate among black 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds was
9.4 percent, slightly lower than that for white kids the same ages, which was
10.2 percent. Over the decades since then, we have gotten used to unemployment
rates among black teenagers being over 30 percent, 40 percent or in some years
even 50 percent. Such is the price of political "compassion." Whatever
the good intentions behind minimum wage laws, what matters are the actual
consequences. Many people have ideological, financial or political incentives
to obfuscate the consequences.
Labor unions are the
biggest force behind attempts to raise the minimum wage, not only in the United
States but in other countries around the world. That may seem strange, since
most union members already earn more than the minimum wage. But the unions know
what they are doing, even if too many gullible observers do not. Low-skill
workers with correspondingly low wages compete in the labor market with higher
skilled union members with correspondingly higher wages. Many kinds of work can
be done by various mixtures of low-skilled workers and high-skilled workers.
Minimum wage rates
that are higher than what most low-skilled and inexperienced workers are worth
simply price those workers out of the job markets, leaving more work for union
members. All the unions have to do is camouflage what is happening by using
rhetoric about "a living wage," or "social justice" or
whatever else will impress the gullible.
Life was tough when
all I could get were low-paying jobs. But it would have been a lot tougher if I
couldn't get any job at all. And a tough life made me go get some skills and
knowledge.
________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
“Welfare caseloads aren’t falling in part because this
administration doesn’t want them to. Times sure have changed. Bill Clinton
boasted about the reduction in welfare caseloads in the 1990s. What’s most
important as a first step toward restoring self-reliance is to at least
acknowledge as a nation that when there are 109 million Americans collecting
some form of welfare, we have a crisis on our hands. It’s partly the economy,
but partly cultural. The poverty lobby has worked hard to erase any negative
stigma attached to welfare benefits. In some cities in America food stamps are
like a parallel currency. By the way, in 2012 there were 51 million Americans
on food stamps. One possible approach has been suggested by Rep. Paul Ryan. He
would turn many of the welfare programs, like food stamps, back to the states
so they can find ways to expeditiously move people swiftly back into work. What
is for sure is that the feds have failed in replacing welfare with the dignity
of work. Or worse, they haven’t even tried.”
-Stephen Moore
________________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
Washington D.C. Public Schools homework assignment asks 6th
graders to compare Bush to Hitler.
The Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Montana last month
dodged questions about her ties to a group that explicitly advocates the
abolition of capitalism in the United States. “That sounds like contemporary
communism,” said Montana Public Radio reporter Edward O’Brien of the Industrial
Workers of the World, a labor group for which Montana legislator Amanda Curtis’
husband is a representative.
Free money for everyone! Arguments for a universal basic
income (UBI) — in which everyone without exception would receive an equal
stipend — have flourished in policy-centric areas of the internet
NY Mayor Bill de Blasio does not have security clearance to
get classified information from the feds — unlike his two predecessors — and
he has never even bothered to apply for it.
A law enforcement source said that if he does apply for clearance, he
will have to endure an arduous vetting process that would include questions
about his 1991 trip to Communist Cuba and support of the Marxist Sandinista
regime during his visit to Nicaragua in the 1980s.
“Gwyneth Paltrow to
host October fundraiser for President
Obama at her Los Angeles home.” Taxpayers
get to pay his travel expenses, but “he simply can´t stay away from
California´s famously deep-pocketed Democratic donors.”
___________________________________________________________________________
GLOBALONEY
“Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change
is real, man-made and dangerous." The "97 percent" claim is an
utter nonsense. This report released today by the Global Warming Policy
Foundation explains exactly why.
This is $1B that won’t be used for education. The University
of California, keeping pace with the state government’s obsession with climate
change, is proposing to invest $1 billion over five years in companies and
researchers that are seeking solutions solving climate change.
Global warming??
“Rapid City SD sees earliest snowfall since 1888”
____________________________________________________________________________
BOOKS
Despite the administration´s claim, the CIA operatives who
fought for their lives and others´ from a rooftop say that a stand-down order
may have cost four Americans their lives while their ignoring it saved others.
….There was even a second stand-down order, according to the trio in their
book, "13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in
Benghazi," written with Mitchell Zuckoff. After Tiegen insisted they had to
leave right away, "Bob" told them to "hold up" because
"we´re going to let the local militia handle it." It was an
incredible order, one telling Americans not to rescue Americans.
______________________________________________________________________
ISLAM
Ray Ibrahim: “To
understand why the Islamic State not only decapitates its “infidel” captives,
but also mutilates and mocks their corpses—and all to sadistic laughter—one
need only turn to the Koran and deeds of the prophet Muhammad………pious Muslims
are so full of zeal for Allah’s cause that the only way their inflamed hearts
can be at rest is to see those who oppose Allah and his prophet utterly
crushed—humiliated, mutilated, decapitated.
Then the hearts of the believers can be at ease and “healed.” This is
surely one of the reasons behind the Islamic State’s dissemination of gory
videos and pictures of its victims: the new “caliphate” is trying to heal the
hearts of every believer inflamed for the cause of Allah……If this sounds too
farfetched, consider the following picture of a decapitated “infidel” from the
Islamic State’s websites. The Arabic
caption to the left says “healing for hearts”—a clear reference to the
aforementioned Koran verse…”
Former Muslim Nonie Darwish:
“Obama does not want to go down in history as the one who destroyed and
extinguished the dream of resurrecting the Islamic State. That was never his
intention. In fact, Obama’s plan when he took office was exactly the opposite:
to end American supremacy as the one and only most powerful superpower in the
world…..If Obama annihilates ISIS, he will turn into infidel enemy number one
of Islam -- one who supported Muslims in their dream of the Caliphate by
looking the other way, only to later crush it. Obama’s dream has turned into an
unexpected nightmare…..Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries are paralyzed……Could
there be a hidden reason to explain why Arabs do not want to destroy ISIS but
would rather give the job to America? Could fighting and killing the ISIS
jihadists be a violation of Sharia Islamic Law? I think that is the reason
Saudi Arabia is desperately trying to convince Obama to destroy ISIS for them.
´Sharia Police´ Patrolling Streets
in Germany
Imagine a sex scandal centered on a small area, involving
decades of abuse, with hundreds of children raped, assaulted and prostituted.
Authorities suspected or knew of the crimes but did nothing, preferring to
protect the abusers than aid their victims or see justice done. If that city
were in, say, Ireland, and the abusers Catholic priests, the U.S. networks
would report it immediately and continuously. And rightly so. But move that
city to northern England, and make the perpetrators Muslim men? Don’t look to
ABC, NBC or CBS for details.
At least THREE young Minnesota women have traveled to Syria
to aid ISIS jihadis
You won’t hear about it in the mainstream media but
a Jihadist serial killer has been traveling across America. Ali Muhammad Brown, a “devout Muslim” has
murdered at least four random men as an act of Islamic jihad.
How do Islamic extremists fire up the troops? Poems about
virgins, of course.
___________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
Charlie Daniels: (yes, THAT Charlie Daniels) “Hidden things have a habit of coming to
light after a while. This is especially true when the hidden thing is an
exposed lie, propagated by more lies and cover ups, and involves the lives of
four Americans, Ambassador Christopher Stevens, U.S. Foreign Service Manager
Sean Smith and two former Navy SEALs, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, who were
left alone to die at the hands of Islamic fanatics with no attempt at rescue on
September 11, 2012. The issue was supposedly laid to rest by a congressional
hearing, but only to the satisfaction of partisan politicians, lapdog
journalists and those who think Obama is incapable of mistakes and downright
wrongdoing.”
Five things that could go horribly wrong with Obama's action
in Iraq
“I could have sworn we were going to war against the Islamic
State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).But the president, a well-known theologian, has
informed us that despite what the Muslims of ISIS say, the Islamic State “is
not Islamic.” So I guess we’re in a war against SIS — the State of Iraq and
Syria. But it still is a war, isn’t it, Mr. Secretary Kerry?“I think that’s the
wrong terminology,” he sniffed yesterday. “What we are engaging in is a very
significant counterterrorism operation.” Does that make it … a police action?
Head Start, the federal preschool
program for low-income kids, is a politician’s favorite. They regard the sum of
the money poured into Head Start as the measurement of the depth of their
concern “for the children.” No wonder it’s costing $8 billion a year. There’s
no limit to the concern the right-minded have “for the children.” For all that
money, we’re not getting much. This is the conclusion in a working paper by the
National Bureau of Economic Research. The bureau is unable to find lasting
benefits for the 900,000 children enrolled in the program. When children who
attend Head Start begin.
__________________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
"There is a rank due to the United States, among
nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of
weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we
desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising
prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war."
-George
Washington
posted by gary at
9:15 AM
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