op ed review 2/1
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
It will cost the federal government – taxpayers, that is –
$50,000 for every person who gets health insurance under the Obamacare law, the
Congressional Budget Office revealed on Monday.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2927348/Obamacare-program-costs-50-000-American-gets-health-insurance-says-bombshell-budget-report.html#ixzz3Q2FFA3Tk
The Congressional Budget Office now says ObamaCare will push 10 million
off employer-based coverage, a tenfold increase from its initial projection.
Mitt Romney has wisely decided not to run for president
again: 'I've decided it’s best to give
other leaders in Party opportunity to become our next nominee'...”
In a poll taken this week, Hillary Clinton can’t get to 50%
against any Republican challenger paired against her, even Romney: The
automated poll of nearly 900 registered voters, conducted last week by Public
Policy Polling, found that 48 percent of respondents had an unfavorable opinion
of Clinton, compared to 43 percent who viewed the former secretary of State
favorably.
Is this legal? The
Obama campaign team has deployed operatives to Tel Aviv to try to unseat
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu through an organization that receives
taxpayer grants from the U.S. Department of State.
Thousands of illegal immigrants will remain in the United
States for at least five more years after the Justice Department moved their
deportation hearings to 2019–at the earliest.
Waste, fraud, and abuse identified in the Obamaphone
program:
Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was released by the Taliban last
year in exchange for five prisoners, is being charged with desertion, according
to Pentagon insiders.
But the Obama Administration is "Pressuring The Army To Whitewash"
Bergdahl Fiasco.
The U.S. military and intelligence community now suspect
that one of the five Taliban detainees traded for Bergdahl last year has
attempted to return to militant activity (killing Americans).
Islamic State militants have threatened to behead Barack
Obama and turn the U.S. into a Muslim province in the latest gruesome video to
emerge from their self-styled caliphate.
Obama’s attorney general nominee: “Right To Work Is Shared By Everyone In This
Country Regardless Of Immigration
Status”
Watch Obama Refer to Himself 133
Times in a 33-Minute Speech
The entire state of California public education system is to
begin grading students on matters a teacher cannot possibly know or evaluate
objectively. In a sign of descent into full indoctrination camp mode, the
Common Cores standards adopted by the state are calling on teachers to grade
students on their “grit, gratitude, and sensitivity to others.”
A California high school declared Jan 28 to be official
“Hijab Day” and asked female members of the faculty and staff, and students as
well to wear a muslim hijab. The article
has school contact info if you feel the need to communicate your opinion.
Former President Bill Clinton took a romantic jaunt in 2002
to convicted pedophile pal Jeffrey Epstein’s “orgy island” with “two young
girls” from New York, according to a shocking new interview.
Smart GOP governors and stupid GOP governors: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) delivered a fiery
speech in Iowa , wowing the conservative crowd with a passionate argument for
small government and his own lengthy resume.
Ohio Governor John Kasich (R) defended his support for
Obamacare by quoting Bible verses. “Matthew 25 includes a call for more
entitlement spending and provides biblical justification for Obamacare, or so
says Ohio Gov. John Kasich.”
Sarah Palin embarrasses
herself.
Union Membership Rate Falls to 100-Year Low
The Obama administration treats investigative journalists
and their sources like “enemies of the state,” a former CBS News reporter told
a Senate panel Thursday. “The job of getting at the truth has never been more
difficult.”
U.S. Spies on Millions of Drivers…..DEA Uses License-Plate
Readers to Build Database for Federal, Local Authorities
In an attempt to shame residents of their city, a new
Seattle law will levy a fine on homes that do not properly sort food out of
their garbage. Emblazoned with a red citation tag, violators will start to be
fined anywhere from $1-$50 in July. For now, Seattle residents will be publicly
shamed by the ‘Scarlet Letter’-like tags.
__________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Robert Knight 1/25
Fresh from offering “free” health care, “free” phones and
“free” food to the masses, (Obama’s) upped the bribery to “free” community
college tuition and “free” child care. Since someone has to pay for these
expensive, new entitlements to the Free Stuff Army, Mr. Obama has proposed yet
another “tax the rich” scheme that, if enacted (which is unlikely) would
eventually plunder working-class families. To liberals, that’s what tax
“reform” is all about.
Over a few decades, the U.S. government has morphed into a
gigantic income-redistribution machine, the ultimate mugger. Since the New
Deal, the only serious challenge to the mentality of plunder in both major
parties came during the Reagan administration. To true believers like Mr. Obama,
the Reagan years were a speed bump on the way to transforming America, and
something to pretend to admire to keep the suckers ignorant.
Government is necessary because men are not angels. Its
legitimate role is to secure justice by punishing evildoers, and to protect
property and individual rights. Government does other things, such as
delivering mail and public works — things like roads, water and sewage.
But its main focus has become redistribution of wealth in
the name of “compassion” and “equality.” Its sheer growth and trillions of
dollars of debt coincides with the rise of the Free Stuff Army, whose ranks
have swelled exponentially with Mr. Obama’s edicts and economic malaise.
In 1850, faced with a tide of sentiment toward socialism,
French legislator Frederic Bastiat confronted the left’s claims of government
superiority with a timeless critique, “The Law.” In fact, after the Bible, C.S.
Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters,” and Shakespeare, “The Law” is arguably the most
penetrating analysis of human nature.
Bastiat began by echoing truths about God and man that
animated America’s Founders: “[G]ifts from God precede all human legislation,
and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men
have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and
property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”
Add marriage to that list.
He then explained why governments inevitably fall into
redistribution: “Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by
the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is
the origin of property. But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his
wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This
process is the origin of plunder.
“Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain — and
since labor is pain in itself — it follows that men will resort to plunder
whenever plunder is easier than work. When they can, they wish to live and
prosper at the expense of others. This is no rash accusation. Nor does it come
from a gloomy and uncharitable spirit. The annals of history bear witness to
the truth of it.”
As such, it is easy to succeed by promising something for
nothing — the politicians’ mantra. A modern, liberal fiction is that government
officials are somehow immune to human foibles such as greed. They are nicer
than we are — as long as other people pay for it. The system they have built is
functionally Marxist, deploying government force to extract “from each
according to his ability to each according to his needs.”
Armed with an accurate view of human nature, America’s
Founders did their best to ensure that man’s worst tendencies would not lead to
tyranny and that man’s God-given talents could flourish. Still, they apparently
underestimated the power of something for nothing.
The forces cultivating personal responsibility are the
church, the family and the American spirit of liberty, all of which liberals
have targeted in a relentless culture war. If you still think the drive to
legalize same-sex “marriage” is about marriage, you haven’t been paying
attention to the leftists’ war on normalcy, privacy, religion and — ultimately
— freedom. Not satisfied with plundering our wallets, they are plundering
society’s moral capital.
If the Supreme Court does the dirty deed and
institutionalizes a counterfeit, it will force tens of millions of Americans to
lie. More power will accrue to those who expand the enforcement machinery of
“equality” into all areas of life. Resistance to big government will cost far
more than it does now. Leading the charge in this radical remaking of America
is Barack Obama, general of the Free Stuff Army, which grows as the moral
foundations crumble.
Bastiat perhaps had someone like him in mind when he wrote
165 years ago: “There are too many ‘great’ men in the world — legislators,
organizers, do-gooders, leaders of the people, fathers of nations, and so on, and so on. Too many persons
place themselves above mankind; they make a career of organizing it,
patronizing it, and ruling it.”
_______________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
"The Iranian bomb is a national security issue, an
alliance issue and a regional Middle East issue. But it is also a uniquely
Jewish issue because of Israel's situation as the only state on earth overtly
threatened with extinction, facing a potential nuclear power overtly
threatening that extinction. On the 70th anniversary of Auschwitz, mourning
dead Jews is easy. And, forgive me, cheap. Want to truly honor the dead? Show
solidarity with the living -- Israel and its 6 million Jews. Make 'never again'
more than an empty phrase. It took Nazi Germany seven years to kill 6 million
Jews. It would take a nuclear Iran one day."
-Charles
Krauthammer
________________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
The chairman of the National Committee of the Communist
Party USA says that American Communists are eager to work with the Democratic
Party to advance the many goals they have in common.
Michael Moore can’t stop. No, not eating, attacking the late
Chris Kyle and the movie “American Sniper”. Moore appears to be on a personal
crusade to turn Oscar voters off to the film because it is pro-American and
shows the military in a positive light.
Bill Maher calls Chris Kyle a “psychopath patriot”
A shadowy Bermudan company that has funneled tens of
millions of dollars to anti-fracking environmentalist groups in the United
States is run by executives with deep ties to Russian oil interests and
offshore money laundering schemes involving members of President Vladimir
Putin’s inner circle.
Thousands March Against Socialist President in Venezuela
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/thousands-march-socialist-president-venezuela-28455387
Won’t be able to do that anymore: “Venezuelan Army Can Shoot Protesters, Effective Immediately”
________________________________________________________________________
GLOBALONEY
2010s officially the snowiest decade in the east coast in
the NOAA record – surpassing the 1960s
A year ago the New York Times was warning us that global
warming would lead to the “end of snow”.
On Sunday, President Barack Obama released an anti-oil
drilling environmental video shot aboard Air Force One–an aircraft that has a 53,611
gallon fuel capacity.
_______________________________________________________________________
FILM
American Sniper is on pace to become the top-grossing war
film of all time. As much as the left would like you to believe it, Chris Kyle
was not a bloodthirsty warmonger; he was a noble warrior who fought to
defend his fellow troops, watched over the lives of his brothers, and advanced
the cause of (eventual) peace. This is where the true success of “American
Sniper” comes to light. “(It) isn’t a pro-war film. It’s a pro-warrior film.”
What American Sniper Gets Right American Sniper is easily the most
authentic looking and sounding movie that Hollywood has made about American
troops at war since Black Hawk Down. You can tell within minutes of its
beginning that the filmmakers cared to get the details right, that their
military consultants weren’t the usual Vietnam veterans that the studios often
turn to, and that Clint Eastwood and his team actually listened to what their
advisers had say.
______________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
At The New York Times, it seems, some key facts are just not
fit to print when they don’t fit the liberal narrative. That appears to be the
case with Charles Blow’s column in Monday’s edition of the paper. It was about
how his son, a student at Yale, had been “accosted by a campus police officer,
at gunpoint!” Blow, who is black, described his horror at learning how the
officer questioned his son, Tahj, who’s also black, with gun drawn — presumably
because of his son’s race……in the entire 867-word piece Blow omitted a key
fact: The officer who drew his gun is also black.
Why Israel rankles Europeans so much. “The EU’s ruling ideology is
supra-nationalism. Its founders detested the national principle, which they
regarded as one step away from fascism and war…. Israel represents the most
vivid vindication of the national principle that humanity has witnessed. A people
who were stateless for 2,000 years never lost their aspiration to nationhood…..Then,
extraordinarily — providentially, even — they fulfilled it. To a Briton or an
American, it’s a heartening story. But it strikes at the Euro-integrationist's
entire worldview.”
Alicia Colon: “Once again the MSM is stirring up an
imaginary rift in the GOP by articles like, "Republican Woman Derails
Abortion Ban"; and Proof of the GOP War on Women. Renee Ellmers of North
Carolina withdrew her support for a bill banning abortion….One of the biggest
flaws in the pro-life movement is its inability to understand how the non
religious electorate views the abortion issue. This faction doesn´t care a whit
about the unborn and no amount of photos of dismembered fetuses will persuade
them from their self-centered support of the abortion industry…..”
There’s fury brewing in Alaska. The Obama administration’s
plan to designate 12.2 million acres of the state’s public land as pristine
wilderness sounds nice, but the vast parcel also happens to contain Alaska’s
richest oil and natural gas prospects on the Arctic coastal plain. While
environmentalists celebrate and Interior Dept. Secretary Sally Jewell calls the
gorgeous land “one of the nation’s crown jewels,” the state’s Republican
lawmakers and governor are not disguising their disgust. The decision, they
say, will have long lasting impact on Alaska’s economy and energy security.
___________________________________________________________________________
NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
The prettiest streets in Britain
_________________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
"The world is in a constant conspiracy against the
brave. It's the age-old struggle -- the roar of the crowd on one side and the
voice of your conscience on the other."
-Gen. Douglas McArthur
posted by gary at
12:21 PM
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