Tag Archives: National Review

Stacking The Audience

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In case you wondered how a President who has presided over the worst economic recovery in American history manages to draw such favorable audiences, the following story might be a clue.

Today the National Review reported that at yesterday’s speech at the University of Central Missouri, students who held tickets but were wearing Tea Party, patriotic, or other clothing deemed to be Republican inspired were not admitted to the speech. Despite the fact that the students held tickets to the event, the students were turned away due to ‘security’ concerns.

The article suggests:

I’d like to offer a helpful tip to all College Republicans who hope to attend an Obama speech in the future: Odds of admission improve if you wear a Che Guevara t-shirt, an “I Heart Kim Jong Un” campaign button, and/or a ballcap displaying the slogan “Obama Girl” prominently above the brim.

We are currently being governed by thugs who specialize in propaganda.

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At Some Point The Republicans Need To Realize That They Are Not Playing TiddlyWinks

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Yesterday National Review Online posted an article about the House Oversight Committee hearings on the Internal Revenue Service last week. The article focused on the attacks on Inspector General (IG) J. Russell George. This is the political equivalent of a defense lawyer attacking the District Attorney because he does not want to deal with the evidence against his client.

I am a registered Republican only because there is no real Conservative Party at this time. Generally I can go along with most of what the Republicans do, but if they don’t wake up and smell the coffee, they will be permanently known as the Stupid Party.

The attacks on the IG were designed to change the subject. Unless some Republicans start speaking up, the attacks will have served their purpose.

Scott Johnson at Power Line also posted an article about last week’s hearings. In his article he pointed out that none of the mainstream reported that the attack on the IG was unwarranted and false.

The Democrats‘ claim is that the IG neglected to mention that progressive groups were targeted as well as Tea Party groups. That probably has something to do with the fact that the claim is false.

The story at National Review states:

The accusations contradict the obvious facts: The 14 BOLO lists Levin released, though they contain the term “Progressive,” instruct IRS screeners to treat the applications of progressive organizations differently from those of tea-party groups. In George’s words, the “Progressive” entry “did not include instructions on how to refer cases that met the criteria,” whereas tea-party cases were automatically sent to higher-ups in the agency for coordination with Washington, D.C. The “Occupy” entry to which Cummings refers instructs screeners to send cases to the same group processing tea-party applications. The head of that group, though, told Congress that when she received applications from liberal groups, she sent them back to “general inventory.” George on Thursday told the House panel that, of the 298 cases scrutinized for political activity, zero fell under the “Occupy” rubric. The “Progressive” and “Occupy” listings may be problematic — it is not clear why the terms were added to the list — but the political activity of liberal groups simply was not put under the microscope.

The use of the IRS for political purposes is wrong. It is also dangerous to our republic. It becomes even more dangerous with all the information the IRS will be overseeing under ObamaCare. What was done with the targeting of Tea Party groups is a threat to our republic. If this abuse continues, our elections will be neither free nor fair.

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Is The Government Really That Naive?

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Yesterday National Review posted an article about one aspect of the delay in putting the employer mandate in place that has not received a lot of attention. Since the paperwork involved in the employer mandate was to be used in determining the eligibility for government subsidies to employees in ObamaCare, there is now no way of confirming a person’s eligibility.

The article reports:

Many if not all of the state exchanges, and presumably also the federally-run exchanges, were planning to use the required employer reports to facilitate the eligibility reconciliation that you have to do at tax filing time when people receive advanceable tax credits like those set to be offered in the exchanges. If employers weren’t required to provide reports for 2014, the process of confirming eligibility (that is, confirming that people receiving subsidies had in fact not been offered affordable insurance coverage at work) would become more difficult to pull off, since it’s not really clear what other data sources the exchanges would have, and the exchange subsidy system would therefore become that much more difficult to manage.

The article explains the government’s solution to the lack of confirmation which will result from the delay in the employer mandate:

In 2014, applicants can more or less be deemed eligible for subsidies in the state-run exchanges if they say they are eligible. If it has no external sources of information regarding what insurance employers offer, the rule states, “the exchange may accept the applicant’s attestation regarding enrollment in an eligible employer-sponsored plan and eligibility for qualifying coverage in an employer-sponsored plan for the benefit year for which coverage is requested without further verification.” In fact, the exchanges are not only released from the obligation to verify whether applicants are eligible for employer coverage, they are also released from the obligation to confirm applicants’ statements regarding their household incomes before providing them with what is supposed to be an income-based benefit.

So is this actually about? In order to work at all, ObamaCare needs Americans to enroll in their state’s healthcare exchanges–this is the government-run healthcare program. If the penalties for employers for not providing health insurance are dropped, theoretically employers will begin to drop health insurance as a benefit. This forces people to seek health insurance elsewhere (as the personal mandate to carry health insurance is still in place). If the exchanges are set up with built-in subsidies based on income and you don’t have to verify your income, getting your health insurance through the exchanges while claiming an income within the range of subsidies is like free money.

It is my hope that Americans would not lie about their income in order to save money, but that is a hope–I’m not that naive. However, the government is.

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Common Sense From Thomas Sowell

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Thomas Sowell posted an article at National Review today about the recent Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearings. First of all, I would like to state that I was not even aware that there was a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Secondly, I would like to state that I suspect they are much more active when the Senate and the White House are held by different parties. Since that is not currently the case, I was a bit surprised by one of their recent hearings.

Apple CEO Tim Cook was called before the Committee and publicly chastised for the fact that Apple ‘does not pay enough taxes.’ According to Mr. Sowell, Apple pays $16 million a day in taxes. It seems to me that would be enough for anyone.

The article points out that Apple is not doing anything illegal–they are simply following the tax code and taking advantage of the tax breaks they are entitled to in the tax code. At this point it might be a good idea to remember who writes the tax code–Congress!

The article notes:

Apple CEO Tim Cook was denounced for contributing to “a worrisome federal deficit,” according to Senator Carl Levin (D., Mich.) – one of the big-spending liberals in Congress who has had a lot more to do with creating that deficit than any private citizen has.

Therein lies the problem–it is easier to blame a successful businessman for the deficit than to take actual steps to correct the spending addiction of Congress and the current President.

The article points out:

What is a tax “loophole”? It is a provision in the law that allows an individual or an organization to pay less in taxes than they would be required to pay otherwise. Since Congress puts these provisions in the law, it is a little much when members of Congress denounce people who use those provisions to reduce their taxes.

If such provisions are bad, then members of Congress should blame themselves and repeal the provisions. Words like “gimmicks” and “loopholes” suggest that people are doing something wrong when they don’t pay any more in taxes than the law requires.

Are people who buy homes and deduct the interest they pay on their mortgages when filing their tax returns using a “gimmick” or a “loophole”? Or are only other people’s deductions to be depicted as somehow wrong, while our own are OK?

Next year when you fill out your tax return, think about your own ‘loopholes’? Is your home mortgage deduction a ‘loophole’? If you live in a state with a substantial personal income tax that you deduct, is that a ‘loophole’?

What happened in the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations was a example of the government publicly  bullying a law-abiding citizen. That is not a good direction for the country to be heading.

The article concludes:

No American government can take away all our freedoms at one time. But a slow and steady erosion of freedom can accomplish the same thing on the installment plan. We have already gone too far down that road. F. A. Hayek called it “the road to serfdom.” How far we continue down that road depends on whether we keep our eye on the ball — freedom — or allow ourselves to be distracted by predatory demagogues like Senator Carl Levin.

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Another Gun Confiscation And American Citizen Forced To Go To Court To Defend His Constitutional Rights

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Today’s National Review posted a story about a soldier in Texas arrested for “rudely displaying” his weapon. Yes, you read that right.

The article describes the incident:

“We live out in the country in Texas, near Temple,” he told me. “My son and I were on a ten-mile hike so that he could earn his hiking merit badge – it’s the last badge he needs to become an Eagle Scout.” But half way into the hike, Grisham said, “a police officer pulled up.” Initially, he was “cordial” and he “asked what we were doing.” Grisham told him. “Then he looked at my rifle. I carry a rifle any time I walk around because there are feral hogs and cougars and things like that.” 

From here, things took a turn for the worse.

“‘Where you going with that rifle?’ he asked me. I said, ‘does it matter? Am I breaking any laws?’” Then, he says, the officer “grabbed the rifle without telling me – but it was attached to me. My immediate reaction as a combat veteran was to grab it back and then take a step back. I asked him what he was doing. So he pulled his gun on me. Then I thought about my son, so I put my hands off my gun and he told me to move over to the car. Luckily my son had the video camera to document the hike for his merit badge. I told him to turn it on.”

There is a video of the incident included in the article. I suggest you watch the whole thing. This is clearly unconstitutional.

The soldier’s concealed-carry permit was taken along with his guns. The article notes that historically what happens next is that the prosecutor will offer to drop the charges if the soldier gives up his guns. It is a very subtle form of gun confiscation.

Evidently this is not an isolated incident. The obvious question here is, “Why are the police wasting their time on legal gun owners when there are so many illegal guns out there?” If the police had been half as diligent in “Fast and Furious” as they are at harassing legal gun owners, a lot a people would be alive today who are no longer with us.

UPDATE: Evidently there are some questions about whether or not Mr. Grisham set up this encounter. However, even if this were the case (and we don’t know if it was), confiscating someone’s guns without proper legal procedure is a serious violation of the Constitution. The fact remains that it will cost Mr. Grisham a lot of time, money, and energy to get those guns (which are rightfully his) back. If I come across further information on this story, I will post it.

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While We Were Focused On Sequestration

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The Obama Administration has a habit of focusing our attention on ‘the crisis of the moment’ while they do something significant behind the scenes, hoping we won’t notice. Well, they’ve done it again.

Andrew McCarthy posted an article at the National Review today about the upcoming trial of Sulaiman Abu Ghayth, the son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, in New York City. Sulaiman Abu Ghayth was captured in Turkey last month, and rather than being sent to Guantanamo to face a military tribunal, he was transported to New York to stand a civilian trial.

There are some interesting implications of doing this:

Because Abu Ghayth was not detained at Gitmo, he was not subject to the statutory prohibition against using government funds to transfer enemy combatants into the U.S. So, while no one was paying attention, the administration whisked him into lower Manhattan, where his indictment in civilian court was promptly announced. He thus promptly received legal representation — so much for interrogation — and is enjoying all the protections of the Bill of Rights.

…Moreover, as Attorney General Holder must know, by proceeding with this civilian prosecution in New York at the very moment when  KSM and the other 9/11 defendants are facing a military commission at Gitmo, he has given KSM & Co. an exquisite legal argument that proceeding with their military commission would be arbitrary and unjust in light of the grade-A due process Abu Ghayth is getting. That is, the government is virtually inviting the federal courts to invalidate military commissions — which was a top goal of many Obama administration lawyers back when they were in private practice, volunteering their services to terrorist detainees.

Snookered again by the snookerer-in-chief. Unfortunately, this move prevents the officials at Guantanamo from collecting intelligence from this man, and it creates massive legal problems for those attempting to carry out the military tribunals. This move makes Americans less safe.Enhanced by Zemanta

What Voter Fraud ?

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I will repeat this for the sake of anyone who has not been reading this blog for a while–I don’t think President Obama was reelected because of voter fraud. However, I do think that voter fraud is a problem in this country and we need to do a better job of keeping our elections honest.

The Corner at National Review posted a story today about voter fraud in Ohio. It seems that one of the poll workers Hamilton County, Ohio, may have voted six times. That seems a little excessive to me.

The article reports:

Three other absentee ballots in the names of different people were submitted to the Board of Elections from Richardson’s address on Nov. 1. Officials say the handwriting on those ballots is similar and that they were all received together, on the same day that Richardson’s absentee ballot arrived at the office. Richardson maintains that some of the other voters live at her house.

Attempts by Fox News to reach Richardson were unsuccessful, but she claimed to the local station that the votes were “absolutely legal votes.”

It gets better. The article concludes:

The local news report below includes an interview with Richardson, who is set to appear before Ohio’s Hamilton County Board of Elections on Friday, as well as footage from the testimony of five other Ohio voters accused of voting, or attempting to vote, twice. One individual revealed she was unaware that it was illegal to vote twice, while several reported confusion caused by absentee ballots. 

The article includes a video:


Please watch the video. It is amazing. It is scary to think these people vote at all–they don’t seem to know how voting works.Enhanced by Zemanta

The Next Cultural Revolution

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Wesley Smith at the National Review posted an article today about the next cultural fad–polyamory. The Scientific American posted an article on Valentine’s day entitled, “New Sexual Revolution: Polyamory May Be Good for You.” The subtitle of the article was, “What swinging couples and committed polyamorists can teach monogamists about love.” Now in case you are wondering why I am posting this, there is a very simple reason. This is the type of article introduced at the beginning of a push to change a societal norm. I am sure if you go back a number of years, you will find the same sort of article about homosexuality. Unfortunately, I suspect we will soon begin to see articles of this sort of pedophilia.

The article in the Scientific American states:

“People in these relationships really communicate. They communicate to death,” said Bjarne Holmes, a psychologist at Champlain College in Vermont. All of that negotiation may hold a lesson for the monogamously inclined, Holmes told LiveScience.

“They are potentially doing quite a lot of things that could turn out to be things that if people who are practicing monogamy did more of, their relationships would actually be better off,” Holmes said. [6 Scientific Tips for a Successful Marriage]

Heterosexual monogamy is the foundation of our society. We need to be suspicious of anyone who tries to undermine that. Remember, when you take away the foundation, the building falls down.

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Speeches And Reality

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Last night Victor Davis Hanson posted his comments on President Obama’s State of the Union address at National Review last night.

Mr. Hanson listed what he considered the five major points of the speech:

1. After stating the good news and taking credit for it, the President then lists the bad news and begins to blame others for it. Mr. Hanson reminds us, “In the new math, not having one month below 7.8 percent unemployment (in comparison with the prior administration’s not having one month above that figure) means after “shedding jobs for more than ten years, our manufacturers have added 500,000 jobs over the past three.” Adding some jobs matters; losing more of them doesn’t.”

2. President Obama engaged in his usual class warfare again reminding us of Warren Buffett‘s secretary, although not by name. I am tired of the President demonizing success in order to push his agenda. Enough is enough.

3. The speech was full of inaccuracies. Mr. Hanson sights one, “The Congress is responsible for sequestration rather than Obama who thought it up in the first place.” The Obama Administration has been repeating this lie for a while and will probably continue to do so.

4. The President blamed superstorm Sandy on climate change and used that as a premise to fund more Solyndras. Let’s talk about superstorm Sandy. By the time Sandy arrived in New York, it was a category 1 hurricane. Unfortunately, it was a very large, slow moving storm that hit a very densely populated area. That was the problem. We have had superstorms and severe hurricanes before–Hurricane Andrew in 1992 was a Category 4 and 5 hurricane when it hit Florida. “The Perfect Storm,” immortalized in the book and movie, occurred in 1991. We have had hurricanes and storms forever. One of the most devastating hurricanes ever to hit New England occurred in 1938. Actually, in recent years we have had fewer hurricanes–not more.

5. The last section of Mr. Hanson’s analysis of President Obama’s speech is called, “Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better.” It deals with the total lack of logic in some of the President’s statements. One problem was the President taking credit for increased gas and oil production while limiting gas and oil production on federal lands. Another was claiming that Al Qaeda was on the run. The article at National Review lists an entire array of illogical or dishonest claims of success.

Mr. Hanson concludes:

After five years of these soaring hope-and-change speeches, there are the same three themes I think will keep reverberating: Obama’s soaring rhetoric bears not much resemblance to the reality of the present tough times here and abroad; no one in the administration or the media will go back to see whether last year’s similar utopian ideas ever worked or even saw implementation; and the majority of listeners to the speech either probably believed every word — or were angry at anybody who did not.

Hopefully Congress will be able to stop some of the more damaging ideas proposed in the President’s State of the Union address. Otherwise we can expect more unemployment and higher taxes for everyone who works.  

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The Pope Resigns

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Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, resigned today. The National Review posted an article reporting his resignation and the questions that arise from that resignation. The article points out that the demands of the office of Pope are such that a man suffering from some of the ailments of old age may not be suitable to remain in the position. Another question that arises from Pope Benedict’s resignation is how much input a living Pope should have in the choice of his successor.

The writer of the article describes Pope Benedict as the Church’s “doctrinal watchdog.” He compares him to Pope John XXIII:

Both were very aware that secularization has been a mounting tide. Both tried to shape the Church for dealing with it, not by focusing on its evils and condemning them, but by promoting a more effective proclamation of the Gospel.

…One can see Pope John XXIII’s deep faith and his desire to engage with modernity in Humanae Salutis, the apostolic constitution by which he formally convoked Vatican II on Christmas Day 1961. These same concerns animated his interventions during the Council. In my judgment, the strategy evident in that document, which is so dependent on solid faith and hope, has been the strategy of the Popes since John, perhaps especially of John Paul II but not least of all Benedict.

It is a wise man who knows when it is time to step aside and let someone else lead.

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Some Perspective You May Not Have Heard

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On Sunday John Fund posted an article at the National Review that provides a slightly different perspective on the murders in Connecticut on Friday. The first thing Mr. Fund points out is that mass murders are not becoming more frequent–their frequency has actually declined.

The article reports:

In fact, the high point for mass killings in the U.S. was 1929, according to criminologist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century.

The chances of being killed in a mass shooting are about what they are for being struck by lightning.

Until the Newtown horror, the three worst K–12 school shootings ever had taken place in either Britain or Germany.

Obviously the statistics do not mask the horror of what happened, but we do need to put this in perspective. I don’t think it helps that every newscast has at least three stories about the shooting or that a lot of the information being put out is false.

Mr. Fund mentions the two aspects of this tragedy that are not being widely discussed–how we treat the mentally ill and the fallacy of creating gun-free zones.

Mental illness has played a major role in many of these shootings. The article reports:

First, the mental-health issue. A lengthy study by Mother Jones magazine found that at least 38 of the 61 mass shooters in the past three decades “displayed signs of mental health problems prior to the killings.” New York Times columnist David Brooks and Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson have both suggested that the ACLU-inspired laws that make it so difficult to intervene and identify potentially dangerous people should be loosened. “Will we address mental-health and educational-privacy laws, which instill fear of legal liability for reporting potentially violent mentally ill people to law enforcement?” asks Professor Jacobson. “I doubt it.”

There will always be a danger of someone being wrongly committed to a mental institution, and there will always be an issue about how institutions treat the mentally ill and how much room is available at these institutions. A blog called “The Anarchist Soccer Mom” posted an article on Friday entitled, “Thinking the Unthinkable.” The writer states her challenges and fears in dealing with her own teenage son who has threatened to take her life and his own. She states that she is unable to have him committed until he actually follows through on his threat.

The article also reports on the failure of gun-free zones:

Gun-free zones have been the most popular response to previous mass killings. But many law-enforcement officials say they are actually counterproductive. “Guns are already banned in schools. That is why the shootings happen in schools. A school is a ‘helpless-victim zone,’” says Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff. “Preventing any adult at a school from having access to a firearm eliminates any chance the killer can be stopped in time to prevent a rampage,” Jim Kouri, the public-information officer of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told me earlier this year at the time of the Aurora, Colo., Batman-movie shooting. Indeed, there have been many instances — from the high-school shooting by Luke Woodham in Mississippi, to the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo. — where a killer has been stopped after someone got a gun from a parked car or elsewhere and confronted the shooter.

Please read the entire National Review article by John Fund. The article cites many of the facts that the media seems to have ignored.

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Something To Think About Concerning Benghazi

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Yesterday Bing West posted an interesting article at National Review. The title of the article is “First, Aid the Living.” The article points out that President Obama’s national security team was listening to the phone calls from the Americans under attack and watching real-time video from a drone circling overhead. Why didn’t they send help?

The article reports:

Our diplomats fought for seven hours without any aid from outside the country. Four Americans died while the Obama national-security team and our military passively watched and listened. The administration is being criticized for ignoring security needs before the attack and for falsely attributing the assault to a mob. But the most severe failure has gone unnoticed: namely, a failure to aid the living.

By 4:30 p.m. Washington time, the main consulate building was on fire and Ambassador Stevens was missing. In response, the embassy in Tripoli launched an aircraft carrying 22 men. Benghazi was 400 miles away.

It seems to me that the responsibility for sending (or not sending) aid rests with the Commander-in-Chief, the President.

The article further reports:

It is bewildering that no U.S. aircraft ever came to the aid of the defenders. If even one F18 had been on station, it would have detected the location of hostiles firing at night and deterred and attacked the mortar sites. For our top leadership, with all the technological and military tools at their disposal, to have done nothing for seven hours was a joint civilian and military failure of initiative and nerve.

Secretary of State Clinton has said the responsibility was hers. But there has been no assertion that the State Department overruled the Pentagon out of concern about the sovereignty of Libyan air space. Instead, it appears passive groupthink prevailed, with the assumption being that a spontaneous mob would quickly run out of steam.

Remember the 3 am phone call that was talked about during the last Presidential campaign? Unfortunately four people are dead because this administration didn’t think the call was important.

Don’t Go To Planned Parenthood For Your Mammogram

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Yesterday the National Review posted the following statement made by President Obama during the debate on Tuesday:

When Governor Romney says that we should eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood, there are millions of women all across the country who rely on Planned Parenthood for not just contraceptive care; they rely on it for mammograms, for cervical-cancer screenings. That’s a pocketbook issue for women and families all across the country, and it makes a difference in terms of how well and effectively women are able to work.

Well, there are some problems with that statement.

The article reports:

But Planned Parenthood, with few exceptions, does not provide mammograms. To test the president’s statement in the real world, I called several Planned Parenthood offices in the New York City area today to ask about scheduling a mammogram. “We actually don’t offer that here,” one office told me. “You might want to call 311, they actually have lists of places you could go to.” When I asked, “You don’t provide them like the president said?,” I was told “No.”

The article details the phone calls the author made to five offices of Planned Parenthood asking about mammograms, and the author includes tapes of those calls. The bottom lines here is simple–we are being lied to.

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The Purchase Of Thomson State Prison In Illinois

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Andrew McCarthy posted an article at National Review today about the government’s  purchase of Thomson State Prison in Illinois. Mr. McCarthy believes that the prison is being prepared to house the inmates currently at Guantanamo.

The article reports:

As the 9/11 Families point out, the Justice Department’s court filing on the purchase of the state prison took pains to keep open its option to transfer Gitmo prisoners there. DOJ declares that the purpose of the acquisition includes “provid[ing] humane and secure confinement of individuals held under authority of any Act of Congress, and such other persons as in the opinion of the Attorney General of the United States are proper subjects for confinement in such institutions.” The Gitmo detainees are being held under the authority of acts of Congress — in particular, the 2001 authorization for the use of military force. And Attorney General Holder has been insistent that, in his opinion, civilian federal prisons are fitting holding facilities for enemy-combatant terrorists captured in wartime.

As with many other things (the release of the Blind Sheik, the nasty parts of Obamacare, the crackdown on fracking, etc.), it is a safe bet that there will be no transfers of Guantanamo prisoners there until after the 2012 election.

What is the problem with moving Guantanamo prisoners there? Housing prisoners in the United States rather than on an island makes them easier for terrorists to access or to create hostage situations near the prison. Because the prisoners are actually on United States soil, it is only a matter of time before lawyers will get involved and find a legal loophole to let the prisoners loose on American streets. Generally, housing terrorists on American soil is just a bad idea.

This is another illustration of the need for a new administration in Washington.

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I Obviously Have Pursued The Wrong Career

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National Review Online posted a story today about Harry Reid‘s wealth and some of his investment history. Harry Reid was a law student who worked part time to put himself through law school. He has been a public servant for all be two years of his work history. His current salary is $193,400, basically higher than it has been during his working life. Harry Reid’s current net worth is between 3 and 10 million dollars. Obviously, this man is an investment genius–he should be on Wall Street.

When Harry Reid began his career in the Nevada legislature in 1982, he was worth between 1 and 1 1/2 million dollars.

The article at National Review details some of Senator Reid’s strategies for acquiring wealth. They involve such things as questionable land deals and insider stock trading. The land deals are clearly at the edge of legality; the insider trading, although legal at the time for Congress, is now illegal.

The Democrats have attacked Mitt Romney for being rich. He has been accused of everything from soup to nuts. However, no one is disputing the fact that he made his money honestly through hard work and intelligence. It is also to his credit that he started from scratch–he did not inherit his father’s wealth. It is amazing to me that an honest, successful businessman would be so strongly attacked while the source of the Senate Majority Leader’s wealth is overlooked.

One of the things I would like to see happen in November is to have the voters elect a Congress that is interested in the prosperity of American citizens–not using the office to line Congressional pockets.

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The End Of Welfare Reform

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Yesterday the welfare reforms of the 1990’s ended. There was no note, there was no trumpet fanfare, and I haven’t seen it on the news. What happened? An executive order by President Obama cut out the heart of the welfare reform bill passed during the Clinton Administration.

The Corner at National Review reported:

The welfare reform law was very successful. In the four decades prior to welfare reform, the welfare caseload never experienced a significant decline. But, in the four years after welfare reform, the caseload dropped by nearly half. Employment surged and child poverty among blacks and single mothers plummeted to historic lows. What was the catalyst for these improvements? Rigorous new federal work requirements contained in TANF.

Contrary to some perceptions, the formula that made welfare reform a success was not giving state governments more flexibility in operating federally funded welfare programs. The active ingredient that made the difference was requiring state governments to implement those rigorous new federal work standards.

The article explains how the work requirement was changed:

…the Obama administration issued a dramatic new directive stating that the traditional TANF work requirements will be waived or overridden by a legal device called a section 1115 waiver authority under the Social Security law (42 U.S.C. 1315).

Section 1115 allows HHS to “waive compliance” with specified parts of various laws. But this is not an open-ended authority: All provisions of law that can be overridden under section 1115 must be listed in section 1115 itself.

The welfare reform bill was vetoed by Bill Clinton twice before he signed it.

The article concludes:

Obama’s new welfare decree guts sound anti-poverty policy. The administration tramples on the actual legislation passed by Congress and seeks to impose its own policy choices — a pattern that has become all too common in this administration.

The result is the end of welfare reform as we know it.

This is another example of executive overreach. All this does is create more government dependency, increase the size of government, and change a policy that was successful. It is time to elect a new President.

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How Much Have You Heard About OCDETF ?

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Andrew McCarthy was the man who led the prosecution of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (the “Blind Sheik”) after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. At that time he was the Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. His service as assistant United States attorney in that state gives him a unique and very insightful perspective on some of the more obscure aspects of operation Fast and Furious.

Mr. McCarthy posted an article today at the National Review Online with some insight into one aspect of the Fast and Furious operation that I had not been aware of.

The article reports:

OCDETF stands for the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. It was created during the Reagan administration to throw the coordinated muscle of Justice’s component investigative agencies — especially the FBI and the DEA — at domestic and international organized crime, a scourge that had been dramatically exacerbated by unprecedented drug-trafficking millions.

I was working at the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan at the dawn of OCDETF — which at DOJ is referred to as if it were a word, “Osedef.” In those days, with New York City both the notorious capital of La Cosa Nostra and the target market of Colombian drug cartels, I was fortunate to be assigned to some of the original “Osedef cases.”

The reason Mr. McCarthy brought up the existence of OCDETF is to illustrate how OCDETF cases (of which Operation Fast and Furious would have to be one for reasons explained in his article) involve a degree of communication and authorization in the Executive Branch of our government that ordinary Justice Department operations do not have.

Please read the entire article at National Review. It clearly explains the implications of Fast and Furious in relation to OCDETF.

Mr. McCarthy points out:

In fact, Fast and Furious was an OCDETF case. That made it a Main Justice case, not the orphan Arizona debacle of media portrayal.

…The website (DOJ Website) goes on to explain that the “OCDETF strategy” is implemented “under the direction of the Deputy Attorney General” — second in command to Holder at DOJ (and, in fact, the position Holder himself occupied in the Clinton/Reno Justice Department). With the coordinated effort of numerous investigative agencies and U.S. attorneys under Main Justice’s leadership, OCDETF is depicted as not only “disrupt[ing] the drug market” but “bolster[ing] law enforcement efforts in the fight against those terrorist groups supported by the drug trade.” Main Justice annually develops a “Regional Strategic Plan” for the country by requiring OCDETF participants to “identify major Regional Priority Organizational Targets.” And it has established an “OCDETF Fusion Center” as “the cornerstone” of its “intelligence-driven law enforcement, an essential component to the OCDETF program.”

The Fast and Furious controversy is not political–this operation was clearly well outside the authority of the Justice Department. Aside from the number of people who have died as a result of this operation, the risk of an international incident caused by this operation also has to be considered.

 

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Is The Mainstream Media Planning To Vet Both Candidates ?

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Stanley Kurtz posted a story at National Review Online today that included proof of President Obama’s membership in the New Party during the late 1990’s. The New Party was ACORN’s (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) political arm.

The article reports:

The documents reveal that the New Party’s central aim was to move the United States steadily closer to European social democracy, a goal that Mitt Romney has also attributed to Obama. New Party leaders disdained mainstream Democrats, considering them tools of business, and promised instead to create a partnership between elected officials and local community organizations, with the goal of socializing the American economy to an unprecedented degree.

When Stanley Kurtz reported in 2008 that then-candidate Obama had been a member of the New Party, the charge was denied.

The article reports:

The Fight the Smears website quoted Carol Harwell, who managed Obama’s 1996 campaign for the Illinois senate: “Barack did not solicit or seek the New Party endorsement for state senator in 1995.” Drawing on her testimony, Fight the Smears conceded that the New Party did support Obama in 1996 but denied that Obama had ever joined, adding that “he was the only candidate on the ballot in his race and never solicited the endorsement.”

We’ve seen that this is false. Obama formally requested New Party endorsement, signed the candidate contract, and joined the party. Is it conceivable that Obama’s own campaign manager could have been unaware of this? The notion is implausible. And the documents make Harwell’s assertion more remarkable still.

I don’t know if the press will do any better at reporting on President Obama’s ties to the New Party during this election than they were in 2008. Whether the press reports it or not, it is rather obvious by the decisions being made by President Obama that he sees America in a different light than the majority of Americans.

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What Should We Do In Syria ?

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Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at National Review today about the situation in Syria. It is entitled, “The Bad-Good Idea of Removing Assad.” That pretty much says it all.

The Bashar Assad dictatorship murders its own people, aids and arms Hezbollah, and targets Israel. This is not a dictator that America can do business with. However, what happens if he is ousted?

The article states:

But intervention, even if by air or through stealthy military assistance, requires some sort of strategy, and right now the United States does not seem to have any coherent one. We expected that post-Qaddafi Libya, and an Egypt without Hosni Mubarak, would be far better. They might be some day. But right now, emerging Islamic republics are hardly democratic. Some seem every bit as anti-American as were the dictatorships they replaced — and they could be even more intolerant of women, tribal minorities, and Christians. 

The point is not that we should support only idealists who promise an Arab version of Santa Monica, but that we do not oust one monster whom we are not responsible for only to empower one just as bad whom we would be responsible for. 

Our success in overthrowing tyrants in the Middle East is not matched by any success in what the dictatorships were replaced with. Sharia Law is enshrined in the constitutions of both Iraq and Afghanistan and will be in the Egyptian constitution. All we have done is replace one bad ruler with another bad ruler. That is not what America has done in the past, nor should it be what America does in the present.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. Mr. Hanson brings remarkable insight into the question of what we should be doing about the slaughter that is currently going on in Syria.

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Would You Let These People Manage Your 401K ?

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Logo of General Motors Corporation. Source: 20...

Logo of General Motors Corporation. Source: 2007_business_choice_bro_en.pdf (on GM website). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

John Lott posted an article at National Review today about what has happened to the money used to bail out General Motors.

The article reports:

Three years ago his administration invested more than $100 billion in taxpayer money to bail out General Motors. On Tuesday, the entire company, not just what the government owns, was worth less than $34 billion. By anyone’s definition, that investment is a glaring failure. Yet over the last few days the Obama campaign, in a $25 million marketing blitz, has flooded the airwaves with ads in battleground states, claiming the bailout should be counted a rousing success.

The contrast between the facts and the campaign ads is amazing.

Another thing conveniently not mentioned in the campaign ad is the number of automobile dealerships that were put out of business in the General Motors and Chrysler bailouts.

The article reminds us:

The only real winners from the GM bailout were unions, which were protected from pay cuts, from losing their right to overtime pay after less than 40 hours a week, and from cuts to their extremely generous benefits. They faced only minor tweaks in their inefficient union work rules.

As for “hundreds of thousands of new workers,” the truth is closer to a tenth of that.

Having just $34 billion to show after a $100 billion-plus investment would get a chief executive of any private company fired. Unfortunately, Obama does not seem to understand how this money has been wasted.

Would you let these people administer your 401K account?

 

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Acceptable Assualt and Battery ?

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Andrew McCarthy posted a story at National Review Online today about some recent events in Australia.  A 25-year-old Moroccan named Canan Kokden was assaulted, abducted and nearly killed by her brother-in-law, Ismail Belghar, a 36-year old Muslim. The reason for the assault–she had taken her older sister, Belghar’s wife, to the beach without his permission. Things got worse when Mrs. Belghar’s shoulders showed signs of sunburn–indicating that she had therefore “displayed her body.”

The article reports:

In the usual endearing family way, Belghar telephoned his sister-in-law to convey that he was a tad rankled: “You s**t, how dare you take my wife to the beach!” Afterwards, happening upon Ms. Kokden at a shopping mall in New South Wales, he angrily confronted her, slapped her face, and dragged her to the railing of an over-ground parking lot. As he seemed ready to hurl her to the traffic below, her brother (Kokden’s chaperone at the mall) finally stirred himself to intervene, tackling the assailant. Belghar was charged with attempted murder, among other crimes.

As night follows day, Belghar’s defense counsel argued that his client could not get a fair trial because Australians are too Islamophobic: Once informed about the nature of the allegations and the fact that he is a Muslim, jurors would surely leap to the crazy, bigoted conclusion that Belghar was probably guilty of this “honor beating” — which, in fact, he was. Just as he was, precisely, motivated by his Islamic beliefs.

That is what Sharia Law looks like. Notice that Ms. Kokden was at the shopping mall with her chaperone–thank goodness–that is the only reason she is alive today! The article points out that Mr. Belghar has not adapted to the culture of Australia–he is still functioning under the rules of the country (and religion) of his country of origin. The question is, “How accommodating should western countries be to Sharia Law?” I guess part of the answer to that may depend on whether you are a man or a woman!

The Muslim attempt to bring Sharia Law into the legal systems of western countries is called “cultural jihad.” Sharia Law is incompatible with true democracy (it does not allow for religious freedom for anyone or personal freedom for women). There have been a number of attempts to impose Sharia Law in America, please read the entire article at the National Review to see how these cases were handled.

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The Friday Night Document Dump

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The Friday night document dump is not unique to the Obama Administration–it has become an American tradition during the last twenty years. It usually includes something that the administration involved hopes the major media will not notice. Sometimes that works; sometimes it doesn’t.

Last nights Friday night document dump included some interesting information about how American taxpayer money is being spent. Andrew McCarthy at the National Review posted an article today stating that President Obama has authorized sending $192 million to the Palestinian Authority despite Congress’s freeze on PA funding. The funding to the PA was cut off after President Abbas attempted to declare statement unilaterally last September, in violation of the PA’s treaty commitments.

The article reports:

White House spinmeister Tommy Vietor stated that President Obama made the decision to pour American taxpayer dollars into Palestinian coffers in order to ensure “the continued viability of the moderate PA government.” He added the claim that, as the report puts it, “the PA had fulfilled all its major obligations, such as recognizing Israel’s right to exist, renouncing violence and accepting the Road Map for Peace.”

The PA has not recognized Israel’s right to exist–the article further reports the comments of Adil Sadeq, a PA official writing in the official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida:

(Israelis) have a common mistake, or misconception by which they fool themselves, assuming that Fatah accepts them and recognizes the right of their state to exist, and that it is Hamas alone that loathes them and does not recognize the right of this state to exist. They ignore the fact that this state, based on a fabricated [Zionist] enterprise, never had any shred of a right to exist…

Andrew McCarthy suggested how we deal with the President’s ignoring the wishes of Congress–cut the State Department’s budget. That will give the President less money to give to those who are friends of neither Israel or America.

 

 

 

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The Sound Of Crickets Chirping

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The sound of crickets chirping is what you hear when you ask President Obama what his plans for lowering the deficit are. Mark Steyn wrote a wonderful article in the National Review today encapsulating the current budget debate. He points out that the Buffett Rule the President keeps touting will balance the budget in 514 years. Wow! Fiscal responsibility at its best!

The article gives us some perspective on the amount of the federal debt and what the Buffett Rule would accomplish:

.,..For what Obama’s spending, there aren’t enough of them, or us, or “the rich” — and there never will be. There is only one Warren Buffett. He is the third-wealthiest person on the planet. The first is a Mexican, and beyond the reach of the U.S. Treasury. Mr. Buffett is worth $44 billion. If he donated the entire lot to the government of the United States, they would blow through it within four and a half days. Okay, so who’s the fourth-richest guy? He’s French. And the fifth guy’s a Spaniard. Number six is Larry Ellison. He’s American, but that loser is only worth $36 billion. So he and Buffett between them could keep the United States government going for a week. The next-richest American is Christy Walton of Walmart, and she’s barely a semi-Buffett. So her $25 billion will see you through a couple of days of the second week. There aren’t a lot of other semi-Buffetts, but, if you scrounge around, you can rustle up some hemi-demi-semi-Buffetts: If you confiscate the total wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans it comes to $1.5 trillion, which is just a little less than the Obama budget deficit for a year.

The article reminds us that President Obama has been saying horrible things about the Paul Ryan budget. The President’s budget was defeated in the House of Representatives by 414 to 0. Where is his alternative plan?

Please follow the link to the National Review to read the entire article. Mark Steyn has a very entertaining way of explaining where we are in terms of spending and taxing and what we need to do about it.

 

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It’s Been A Bad Week For Football

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Tim Tebow, a player on the Denver Broncos Amer...

Tim Tebow, a player on the Denver Broncos American football team. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I like football. I’m a Jets fan (except when they play the Patriots, at which time I am thoroughly conflicted). I like Mark Sanchez–he is young, but I think he has great potential if he stays healthy. I have children who are Saints fans. It’s been a bad week.

Football is a rough sport. There is no need to make it rougher by giving out bonuses to hurt opposing players. The punishment levied against the New Orleans Saints’ coaches was appropriate. If there are other coaches doing the same thing, they should also be chastised. If you can’t win honestly, you don’t deserve to win.

About Tim Tebow. The best article I have seen on the Jets trade was posted yesterday at National Review. The article is entitled, “Tebow to Gomorrah.” I think that is probably appropriate.

The article sums it up:

Tebow is a force for capital-g Good in a sport filled with too much bad. And he’s a proven winner who routinely plays at the edge–and beyond–of his athletic ability. The Jets are a sad-sack organization with a Big-Blue chip on their shoulders, run almost entirely on bluster and bad behavior. Their marriage is far likelier to dull the former than sharpen the latter.

Don’t get me wrong. As a pure football move, I don’t think it’s terrible. Tebow would have been a nice piece in any offense–a versatile player (some scouts still think he should be converted into a tight end) who can do a lot of things in the backfield. The cost (a fourth and a sixth-round draft pick for Tebow and a seventh-rounder) was a little high, considering the Jets are in need of young depth, but liveable.

My understanding of Rex Ryan is that he would rather have a football team that runs instead of passes. Are we going to see Tim Tebow become part of a running offense to round out Mark Sanchez’s passing offense? That would be nice. At any rate, for a gang of New Yorkers, the Jets haven’t been very offensive lately, and I would like to see that change.

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