Monthly Archives: August 2010

BEckWARE OF FALSE PROPHETS

BY JOHN FEEHERY

Reprinted from the Feeherytheory.com

The good news coming in over the weekend is that Glenn Beck announced that he wasn’t running for President.  The bad news is that he seems to think of himself as some sort of a religious prophet, and a lot of people seem to agree with him.

Beck proved that he wasn’t completely delusional when he admitted that he would be unelectable should he decide that he was running for the nation’s highest office.  On that, I assume he is correct, but then again, you never know.

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Random Thoughts

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

Election-Year Distractions

            Have you noticed where the focus of the traditional media is just nine weeks ahead of the mid-term elections?  While there seem to be only two driving concerns in this election – the economic condition of the country and the role of government in fixing it – the media is fixated on noise.  Just look at the news that’s been dominating the front pages of the newspapers and the evening news broadcasts. 

            The focus of attention is on the anniversaries of Social Security, the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream Speech (partly because of the provocation of infotainer Glen Beck’s Restore America rally that same day).   There’s also continued coverage of the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill, gay marriage and the sexuality of former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman; the politics of race, the religious affiliation of President Obama and, of course, the pack-journalism story of the decade, the development of an Islamic cultural center in Manhattan.

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Tragedy of Our Time: Immigration

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

Reprinted from washingtonexaminer.com

Carlos Martinelly Montano is an illegal immigrant from Bolivia. On August 1, he was allegedly driving drunk on a Prince William County, Virginia, road and slammed into another car, killing Sister Denise Mosier and injuring two other Catholic nuns.

There’s nothing that makes you think more soberly and seriously about the illegal immigration crisis in this country than a senseless human tragedy in your own back yard.

The tales run the gamut. There are seemingly endless horror stories of brutal killings along the Mexican-American border spawned by trafficking in drugs, guns and human beings, up against the story of the young student at Harvard, also here illegally, but on the precipice of becoming a valued member of American society.

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Summertime Blues

BY TONY BLANKELY

Reprinted from Townhall.com

With apologies to George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward and their 1935 classic song, “Summertime” (and the living is easy):  


Summertime,
And the living is queasy
Taxes jumpin’
And foreclosures are high

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The Mosque in Manhattan

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from mullings.com

I’m a little uncomfortable about this because my instinct – my strong instinct – is to stay far, far away from religious issues.

But, this business about the proposal to build Mosque in lower Manhattan has become big enough so that the Washington Post made it a front page story in its Sunday edition. Here was the lede:

One day after President Obama defended the freedom of Muslims to build an Islamic complex near New York’s Ground Zero, he offered a less forceful version of that position on Saturday: Yes, Muslims have that right, Obama said – but that doesn’t mean he believes it is the right thing for them to do.

Doesn’t exactly qualify President Obama for a chapter header in a new edition of “Profiles in Courage,” does it?

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Andy Griffith a Government Huckster?

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

I just heard for the first time the government-sponsored  commercial for Medicare starring Andy Griffith.  Remember him? Mayberry Sheriff Andy Taylor?

In the ad, Ole Andy harkens back 1965, when, he says, a lot of good things happened – like Medicare.   That’s not how I remember 1965, but I digress. 

Andy’s sitting in an easy chair petting a dog.  He says:  “This year, like always, we will have our guaranteed benefits and with the new law, more good things are coming, like free check ups, lower prescription costs and more ways to protect us and Medicare from fraud.”  That’s about it.  That’s the ad.

            Initial cost for this vignette: 700,000 of your tax dollars. 

Not only is the ad an egregious misuse of tax dollars, it is an injustice to and deception of American seniors, most of whom, according to the polls, don’t like Obamacare. 

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Thune Budget Reforms Deserve Attention

BY GARY ANDRES

 Reprinted from weeklystandard.com

The View’s hostesses probably won’t invite Senator John Thune on the show to discuss his new budget proposal. Ideas this thoughtful rarely attract pop culture media attention.

Despite the glitterati’s lack of interest, the South Dakota senator’s new plan to restore fiscal discipline should become a cause for decision-makers and regular Americans alike.

President Obama, on the other hand, has no problems finding his way to a daytime TV set.  But when it comes to curbing red ink, he disappears when others yell “Action!”

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Rangel’s Defense Very Familiar

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

            I don’t know who is advising Rep. Charlie Rangel in his defense against ethics charges, but my guess is that he or she or they got a hold of a book on political campaigns by political scholars Jim Thurber and Candy Nelson of American University.  

            There’s a chapter in the book on playing defense in a campaign,  featuring four classic categories of a good defense. The defense strategy was the creative invention of Jay Bryant, Buddy Bishop and Paul Newman.  For those of a younger generation, Bryant, and his wife, Susan, Bishop and Newman were among a vanguard of political strategists in the pre-Reagan era, who helped sow the seeds of a Republican majority strategy.  

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Middle Class Tax Anthem Hits Sour Note

BY GARY ANDRES

 Reprinted from Weeklystandard.com

It sounded very easy in theory. With the biggest tax increase in history set to go into effect on January 1, 2011, Democrats were poised to win the middle class rock heroes award.

The song had all the subtlety of a Pete Townshend guitar riff. Pass a bill before the end of the year extending current tax law for everyone except those nasty “rich” folks (individuals earning more than $200,000 per year and families with incomes above $250,000) and bang!

Then, just hitch a ride on the shoulders of grateful fans in the mosh pit to electoral victory. 

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Wikileaks Is Espionage

BY TONY BLANKLEY

Reprinted from Townhall.com

“Wiki” is a cute Hawaiian word for “quick” — borrowed by Ward Cunningham, creator of the first Internet wiki — from the name of a fast little inter-terminal shuttle at Honolulu International Airport.

But cute and innocent as the word may sound, when attached to damaging wartime leaks by WikiLeaks operator Julian Assange, its cuteness should not protect Mr. Assange from being prosecuted and possibly executed by the U.S. government for wartime espionage.

Title 18 U.S. Code, Section 794, Paragraph (b) reads:

“Whoever, in time of war, with intent that the same shall be communicated to the enemy, collects, records, publishes, or communicates, or attempts to elicit any information with respect to the movement, numbers, description, condition, or disposition of any of the Armed Forces, ships, aircraft, or war materials of the United States, or with respect to the plans or conduct, or supposed plans or conduct of any naval or military operations, or with respect to any works or measures undertaken for or connected with, or intended for the fortification or defense of any place, or any other information relating to the public defense, which might be useful to the enemy, shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life.”

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Wikileaks Crime Should Shock America

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

I wonder if there is a family somewhere in America whose son’s or daughter’s life was put at risk because of the Wikileaks.org release last month of 76,000 classified documents?

            I wonder if there is an Afghan family whose son’s or daughter’s life was put at risk because of those leaks that we are told contain the names of Afghani citizens who have tried to help U.S. soldiers in their war against the Taliban.

            I’m the father of five and I wonder about those things because war must get very personal and very heart wrenching for parents with children—age doesn’t matter and adulthood doesn’t exist for parents—involved on the violent fronts of the conflict.

            So it was especially alarming to read the reactions of those detached observers suffering from chronic arrogance and elitism who thought the release of the documents was boring, telling us little we didn’t know already.  “Overall, though, the most shocking thing about the ‘War Diary” may be that it fails to shock, wrote columnist Eugene Robinson.  His colleague Richard Cohen went further: “The news in that massive data dump…is that there is no news at all.”

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