oe review 12/28
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
New York City Police Officers Turn Their Backs on Mayor After Shooting . “A cold, silent and seething rage greets New
York's Marxist mayor.”
President Obama has engaged in “propaganda” encouraging
people to “hate the police,” former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R)
charged a day after two New York City police officers were shot and killed in
their patrol car by a man who posted anti-police messages to his social media
account. “We’ve had four months of propaganda starting with the president that
everybody should hate the police,” Giuliani said during an appearance on Fox
News early Sunday. “The protests are being embraced, the protests are being
encouraged….”
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie declined to back former
New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani after he suggested that President Obama and
Al Sharpton were responsible for creating an anti-police sentiment that led to
the murders of two NYPD officers.
A Jacksonville firefighter was wounded Tuesday evening
during an apparent drive-by shooting when someone opened fire at a fire truck
refueling outside a firehouse on the city's Southside.
Bomb Threat Tweeted to Jet Blue After Offer to Send Police
to NYPD Officers’ Funeral
A Surge of Support for Police: Rocker Jon Bon Jovi donned a New York Police
Department T-shirt on stage. Well-wishers delivered home-baked cookies by the
hundreds to police in Cincinnati. In Mooresville, North Carolina, police and
sheriff's officers were treated by residents to a chili dinner. At a time when
many in the nation's police community feel embattled, Americans in cities and
towns across the country are making an effort to express support and gratitude.
New illegals pouring into shelters:
An Obama appointed federal judge threw out Arizona Sheriff
Joe Arpaio’s immigration suit against President Obama.
Homeless shelters cite legal pot as part of Denver’s rise in
homelessness.
Since January, Hillary Rodham Clinton has seen the
percentage of Democrats and Democratic leaning independents who would vote for
her in a primary or caucus drop by 10 points, according to a new Washington
Post-ABC News poll. Then again, she still has a 47-point lead over her nearest
competitor, Vice President Joe Biden.
France quietly waves goodbye to the 75 percent super-tax on
the rich. "The (tax) clearly
damaged France's reputation and competitiveness,"
The Obama administration is cramming like a college student
trying to study for a final exam, publishing more than 1,200 new regulations in
the last 15 days alone.
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THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
John Merline
“Scrooge Was A Liberal, Studies Show”
12/23
Just about every year at this time, "A Christmas Carol'
shows up somewhere on TV, as do headlines about how one Republican or another
is the modern equivalent of the tale's greedy miser, Ebenezer Scrooge.
"The GOP's sad Scrooge agenda." "GOP Protecting
Ebenezer Scrooge." "Maher Likens Republicans to Ebenezer
Scrooge." "Republicans play the role of the stingy Scrooge." You
have to wonder if these folks have actually read "A Christmas Carol"
or spent any time pondering what Scrooge actually says and does. Because if you
do, you come to realize that Scrooge more closely resembles a modern liberal
than a conservative.
A major clue comes early in the story, when two men
collecting for charity arrive at Scrooge's office. After asking Scrooge for a
donation to help the poor and needy, Scrooge responds: "Are there no
prisons? And the Union workhouses? Are they still in operation? The Treadmill
and the Poor Law are in full vigor?" He goes on to say, "I help to
support the establishments I have mentioned -- they cost enough; and those who
are badly off must go there."
Modern translation: I pay taxes to support the welfare
state, why should I give money to you? Turns out, that's a decidedly liberal
viewpoint.
Studies have consistently shown that big-government liberals
donate far less money to private charities than conservatives. In his book
"Who Really Cares," Arthur Brooks notes that households headed by
conservatives give 30% more to charity than households headed by liberals.
Another study found that even poor conservatives donate more than rich liberals
.
There are other facets to Scrooge's character that line up
better with modern liberals. During that same conversation, Scrooge says it
might be better for the poor who are unwilling to go on welfare to die "and
decrease the surplus population." Cold and heartless, yes. But which side
is always bemoaning overpopulation? From Paul Ehrlich in the late 1960s to
environmentalists today, it's been a fixation of the left, not the right. Al
Gore, for example, once urged making "fertility management ubiquitously
available" to fight the scourge of carbon-producing people.
Also like most liberals today, Scrooge was clearly a
religious skeptic and not a churchgoer. In fact, Dickens points out that one of
the first things Scrooge does on the Christmas morning after his visits by the
spirits is get on his knees and pray, and then go to church.
A 2012 study in Social Psychological and Personality Science
concluded that "religious individuals tend to be more conservative."
A Gallup survey found that 55% of conservatives, but just 27% of liberals, are
"frequent" churchgoers. And a Social Capital Community Benchmark
Survey found that religious conservatives outnumber religious liberals in
America nearly four to one.
Scrooge was also unhappy, a mood found more frequently on
the left. Pew Research, for example, found that conservative were 68% more
likely to say they were "very happy" than liberals, and that this
"happiness gap" has existed since 1972.
The fact that Scrooge was single and childless puts him on
the left side of today's political spectrum. Writing in the New York Times, Brooks
notes that 53% of conservatives are married, vs. 33% of liberals, "and
almost none of the gap is due to the fact that liberals tend to be younger."
Conservatives also have more kids than liberals.
Finally, lest you think Scrooge was intolerant -- the one
sin the left still abhors -- consider how he instructs his nephew on the
virtues of tolerance. "Keep Christmas in your own way," he tells
Fred, "and let me keep it in mine." QED.
http://news.investors.com/blogs-capital-hill/122214-731441-ebenezer-scrooge-was-a-liberal-studies-show.htm#ixzz3MdlIlLHM
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FROM OTHER COLUMNS
“It turns out most of the nations of the world see the
climate change issue as merely a shakedown opportunity to leverage more aid
money from American taxpayers. … In less than one month, Barack Obama’s ‘epic
deal’ with China president Xi Jinping to reduce greenhouse gas emission
standards has been exposed as a sham. … Su Wei, China’s lead climate negotiator
admitted in Lima: ‘we do not have any clear road map of meeting [emissions]
target for 2020.’ Well, isn’t that reassuring. … The lesson of Lima is that the
rest of the world is not going to cut its carbon emissions. Period. … Mr. Obama
has agreed to an historic climate change deal with… himself. America will give
up jobs and money (eventually trillions) and pay higher energy prices and in
exchange the rest of the world will do nothing. In the climate change racket,
we are being played for fools.”
-Stephen Moore
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LEFTIST WATCH
We shouldn’t have been surprised to see that the current
demonstrations in New York against the police are being led by the Communist,
pro-terrorist group International A.N.S.W.E.R.
(This organization) embodies within itself the seeming
contradiction between the far left and Islamic extremism: it enthusiastically
supported both Kim il Jung and Saddam Hussein, and is directed in part by the
Muslim Student Association. A.N.S.W.E.R.
is close to unique, in that it advocates for pretty much every form of evil in
the world. Who pays for it, what masters it serves, remains unknown.
The NYPD Cop-Killing: The Chickens Come Home to Roost. When Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley murdered NYPD
Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu as they ate lunch in their patrol car
last Saturday, the only people who could possibly have been surprised were
those who have not realized how assiduously Leftist and Muslim activists have
worked – long before the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner — to demonize
the NYPD and law enforcement in general. The advent of the killer was only a
matter of time.
Leftists in government are not concerned with the welfare of
urban blacks in general, but one particular class of blacks, distinct and
separate from all others -- black criminals. Activists, both in government and
media, desire to decriminalize black lawlessness. They wish to put black
criminals beyond the reach of the law. They seek gangbangers unbound. When this
occurs, the left will once again have its black proletariat to manipulate as it
sees fit…..Since the 1960s, black riots have generally been limited to mass
tantrums which burn their own neighborhoods, and destroy their own businesses.
This is what occurred in Ferguson. But the next step will be to take the
violence and destruction to white neighborhoods. This will come once the police
are disarmed, with officers fleeing or hiding in their vehicles, overcome by
thoughts of George Zimmermann and Darren Wilson. Throw in a few Jay Nixons
unable to bring themselves to order the National Guard into action (reportedly
on the advice of one Barack Obama), and you have a formula for the type of
social cataclysm the left has been yearning after for a century or more.
Time Magazine warned of a growing threat to cops nationwide
in September 2010. The nationally renowned publication argued that sinister
individuals would launch targeted attacks against police officers and even
ambush them in their patrol cars. Time alerted readers that these groups and
individuals have a disturbing hatred of cops and that there was a real threat
of “lone-wolf” attacks. Who are these groups that present such a threat to
police? Right-wing militias, of course..
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GLOBALONEY
Christmas has come a couple of days early for climate
sceptics, in what may well prove to be one of the biggest blows to the Global
Warming religion since Climategate.
Ice in the Arctic and Antarctic is 'not melting', says
global warming expert
People who swallow global warming alarmism almost never know
anything about the Earth’s climatic history. Next time one of your friends or
relatives starts giving you the global warming routine, ask him or her to graph
the temperature history of the last 500,000 years. Or 20,000 years. Or 2,000.
Trust me: the supposed climate expert won’t be able to do it. Yet putting the
modest temperature increase of the latter half of the 20th century into
historical context is the first prerequisite of any intelligent evaluation.
_______________________________________________________________________
ISLAM
The Islamic State (IS) is turning Christian churches in
Syria and Iraq into torture chambers and selling stolen holy artifacts on the
black market in the process,
The German PEGIDA movement held its largest meeting yet last
night to protest what they call the ‘Islamisation of the Western World’,
despite stiff opposition from all sections of Germany’s elite including
politicians, media, and the arts. “Apparently
dismayed that 17,500 people had turned out in bad weather to sing Christian
carols, the Protestant Bishop of Dresden said PEGIDA were trying “to exploit a
Christian symbol and a Christian tradition” for political ends.” Huh?
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ARTICLES
Making sense of the Christmas Story.
“My youngest daughter just joined the ever-increasing number
of Americans who have lost their health coverage due to Obamacare. She received
a letter from her insurance carrier indicating that the individual policy with
which she was eminently satisfied, and that she could more or less afford,
would no longer be available after the end of the year. In its place, the
insurer offered a plan whose premiums will be nearly double what she has been
paying for the cancelled policy….”
Liberals were in a near euphoric state on Wednesday after
President Obama announced that the United States and Cuba are on a path to
normalizing relations between the two nations, a move that will pave the way
for a U.S. Embassy in Havana, and may eventually lead to lifting a 50-year-old
American trade embargo. I mean sure, the Castro brothers are oppressive to their
own people. So they’ve killed an untold number of political dissidents or
imprisoned them in forced labor camps. So they don’t allow “freedom of speech,”
or “freedom of the press,” or “the right to assemble.” Yeah sure, they’re a
“state sponsor of terrorism.” However, to their credit, they don’t support the
Koch brothers. That would be a real crime. Ask Harry Reid.
P.J. O’Rourke highlights the special gifts to taxpayers in
the $1.1 trillion “cromnibus” spending bill.
Walter Williams “America Is In A Post-Constitutional Age,
And It´s Americans´ Own Fault”
It’s profoundly irresponsible to stoke hatred of the police,
especially when the fuel used for doing so is a set of lies. Hatred of the
police among blacks stems in part from police brutality during this country’s
shameful era of Jim Crow-laws and widespread discrimination. But it is naïve
not to recognize that criminal members of the black underclass despise the
police because law enforcement interferes with their way of life. The elites
are oblivious both to the extent of lawlessness in the black inner city and to
its effect on attitudes toward the cops. Any expression of contempt for the
police, in their view, must be a sincere expression of a wrong.
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WISE WORDS
“Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.”
-Ronald Reagan
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