Friday, May 6, 2016

op ed review 5/8



THIS WEEK’S NEWS
The Republican primary is effectively over. After Donald Trump’s victory over Ted Cruz Tuesday night, absent a particularly well-timed act of spontaneous human combustion, the unthinkable has happened: Trump will be the GOP nominee facing off against Hillary Clinton in November 2016.
Anti-Trump Groups Spent $75.7 Million on 64,000 Negative Ads to Take Down Trump – It Wasn’t Enough.

Trump proposes to help business by removing regulations.
Americans are adopting a foreign policy much closer to Republican Donald Trump than Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, saying in a new survey that they want an "America First" focus that fixes the U.S. before other countries.

Trump leads Hillary in one new Rasmussen telephone survey.
London Telegraph:  “Can Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton? Yes he can ….”
Chinese analysis: “Trump could beat Hillary Clinton with toned down rhetoric say experts”
CNN contributor and former Obama aide Van Jones put out a warning to his fellow Democrats on Friday: Donald Trump is probably going to win the White House.
Limbaugh:  “My gut: Trump beats Hillary in landslide”
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry – who once referred to Donald Trump´s candidacy as a ´cancer´ – is now endorsing his party´s presumptive nominee. “He is not a perfect man. But what I do believe is that he loves this country and he will surround himself with capable, experienced people and he will listen to them,”

Norman Lear calls on Hollywood to unite behind Hillary Clinton
Rob Reiner says Trump supporters are racist.
Media mogul Barry Diller calls Trump “evil”.

While the budget for deportations has grown substantially over the past four years, the number of actual removals has plummeted.
Illegal immigrant numbers skyrocket at Mexican border.
Obama budgets $17,613 for every new illegal minor (undocumented future democrats), more than Social Security retirees get…

Sheriff Joe Arpaio defeats immigrant groups in court; Arizona ID theft law upheld.
Citizen groups like “Border Keepers” are forming with the stated goal of preventing drugs and people from passing illegally through the border with Mexico. Critics call them vigilantes and racists.  Supporters call them patriots and heroes, intent on doing the job Border Patrol agents have trouble doing alone--enforcing the law.

The infamous Romanian hacker known as “Guccifer” claimed he easily – and repeatedly – breached former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal email server in early 2013.

President Obama has issued an order prohibiting federal agencies from asking candidates about criminal history when applying for federal jobs.
Obama Justice Department decides it won’t call people ‘felons’ or ‘convicts’ because it hurts their feelings. (!!!)
Obama Justice Department warns North Carolina not to prohibit transgender people from using whatever bathroom they want.

Muslim elected mayor of London
Sadiq Khan apologizes after calling moderate Muslims “Uncle Toms”.
Muslims in the UK top 3 million, some parts of London almost 50% Muslim

Does the University of Missouri have a death wish? In the wake of capitulating to race grievance demonstrators, Mizzou is already experiencing a decline in applications so severe that it is closing four dorms, and a drop in donations that is causing a financial crisis.

Not a single one of the 72 members of the White House press corps is a Republican.
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COLUMN OF THE WEEK
Cal Thomas 5/5
Given its track record, one wonders why socialism is gaining in popularity in the U.S. and what appeal it has to a generation that, apparently, knows little about it.

A recent survey from Harvard University has found that 51 percent of young people between the ages of 18 and 29 do not support capitalism. Just 42 percent support the economic system that has allowed even the poorest American to live better and to have more opportunity for advancement than most of the rest of the world. Thirty-three percent of those surveyed support socialism.

Why does socialism receive such strong support among the young? I think it's partly due to what is being taught in too many public schools and universities and it is partly due to ignorance and human nature, which would rather get a check than earn one. Three quotes about socialism sum up both its false promise and its danger.
-- "Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." -- Winston Churchill
-- "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." -- Margaret Thatcher
-- "The goal of socialism is communism." -- Vladimir Lenin

There are many modern and older examples of socialism's failures. A modern one is found in Venezuela, a country rich in oil, but politically and economically poor. It's funny how spreading the wealth around, which is socialism's major appeal, didn't trickle from the corrupt and incompetent Caracas government to the Venezuelan poor.  Under the presidency of the late Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's gross domestic product has dropped to an all-time low and the country's misery is continuing under his successor, Nicolas Maduro. It's gotten so bad the government has taken drastic steps. Unfortunately, none include repudiating socialism.

The latest is a reduction in the workweek to two days, Monday and Tuesday, at least until the end of May. It's supposed to save energy and electricity, which are in short supply. Surgical sutures are either unavailable, or of poor quality when they can be found. Food shortages are common and the food that is available often requires one to wait in line for many hours to buy even small amounts. In what could be the ultimate shortage, the Cato Institute reported in 2015 that the country had even run out of toilet paper. Hotels were asking guests to bring their own, as well as their own soap. Bigger hotels reportedly were able to secure these essentials on the black market, but they were charged up to six times the normal price.

It isn't hard to understand the attraction of socialism in the U.S. No one has had to live under it. College students, who are supposed to be smart, must not be learning real history in classes taught by tenured professors who are often leftovers from the '60s hippie movement. Capitalism and its political sister, democracy, offer opportunity, not guaranteed outcome. Socialism is mutually shared poverty. It is the ultimate liberal fantasy and is built on envy, a sense of entitlement and greed.

Alexis de Tocqueville captured the essential difference between the two conflicting systems when he wrote: "Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."

This is the rotten fruit being sold to the Venezuelan people and it is what's being peddled by Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who is only slightly to the left of that party, a party that appears to be increasingly trending socialist.

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FROM OTHER COLUMNS
“Trump has knocked the stilts out from the GOP establishment and crushed the pretensions of a battalion of political commentators on both the Left and Right. Portraying him as a vile racist, illiterate boob, or the end of civilization as we know it hasn’t worked because his growing supporters are genuinely motivated by rational concerns about border security and bad trade deals. Whether Trump, with his erratic impulses and gratuitous crudities, can morph toward statesmanship remains to be seen.”
           -Camille Paglia

“(Regulatory) costs never show up in any federal budget as a cost of government. They just get hidden in higher prices, lower take home pay, more unemployment, less opportunity.” The best stimulus the government can give the economy is to tame the behemoth monster known as Regulation U.S.A.”
                  -Investors Business Daily

“It isn’t hard to understand the attraction of socialism in the U.S. No one has had to live under it. College students, who are supposed to be smart, must not be learning real history in classes taught by tenured professors who are often leftovers from the ‘60s hippie movement. Capitalism and its political sister, democracy, offer opportunity, not guaranteed outcome. Socialism is mutually shared poverty. It is the ultimate liberal fantasy and is built on envy, a sense of entitlement and greed. Alexis de Tocqueville captured the essential difference between the two conflicting systems when he wrote: 'Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.’ This is the rotten fruit being sold to the Venezuelan people and it is what’s being peddled by Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who is only slightly to the left of that party, a party that appears to be increasingly trending socialist.”
                      -Cal Thomas
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LEFTIST WATCH
The attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands is targeting dozens of conservative and libertarian organizations in a racketeering lawsuit against climate change skeptics that has been widely described as an effort to silence political opponents.

Venezuela should be rich. Instead it’s becoming a failed state.
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ARTICLES
Well, it is game on. This will be an election unlike any other in the modern era. Two wildly flawed candidates for president will try to convince voters that the other is the one more unfit for the office. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both have their baggage, but along with his problems, Trump does have a couple of things going for him. Trump’s first big problem is obvious: He’s wildly unpopular. Specifically, he’s unpopular with two critical voter groups, women and Hispanics. He needs to earn support from these groups, but all the evidence suggests it will be very difficult

Immigrants are supposed to be beneficial to the U.S. — so much so that federal law requires them to prove they won’t end up on the public dole if they are legally admitted. But it’s a stricture honored more in the breach than in compliance, according to statistics obtained by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which found that of the millions of legal immigrants living in the U.S. and collecting welfare or other public benefits, only a single person was kicked out of the country over the last three years for becoming a public burden. Half of immigrant-led households collect welfare as admission rules go unenforced

Obamacare is teetering on the edge of the abyss. Enrollment is well below expectations, not enough young people are signing up, insurers are failing or dropping out of the program, and, by all appearances, premiums are set to spike even higher than last year. Even Democrats are growing restive with ObamaCare, with 25% of Democrats now saying they have an unfavorable view of the law, up from 19% last month.
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WISE WORDS
“As I watch government at all levels daily eat away at our freedom, I keep thinking how prosperity and government largesse have combined to make most of us fat and lazy and indifferent to, or actually in favor of, the limits being placed on that freedom.”
                       -Lyn Nofziger (1924-2006)

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