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Human Events Online - View From the Right: We shall fight on the beaches

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 15:42:56 -0600

Today in History: the Miracle of Dunkirk

On June 4, 1940 Winston Churchill gave one of his most iconic speeches to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was in this speech that Churchill famously stated that the British Empire would fight their Nazi German enemy anywhere, including “on the beaches” of the speech’s informal title. Since May 26, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had been doing just that across the English Channel in the little French coastal town of Dunkirk.

Human Events Online - View From the Right: Independence and responsibility

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 15:16:28 -0600

Responding to criticism of his notorious push to outlaw the sale of large sodas in New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg penned a defensive op-ed for USA Today, in which he completely fails to appreciate why he’s become a national laughing stock, as well as the living symbol of the creepy nanny state:

The initial reaction to our proposed portion cap on sugary beverages follows a now familiar pattern. But here are the key points. The increase in sugary drink consumption is the largest single cause of the rise in calories in the American diet in the last 40 years. Many studies show consumption of these beverages is linked to weight gain and obesity, and more recently, diabetes and heart disease.
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Human Events Online - View From the Right: Supreme Court upholds the fleecing of Indiana utility customers

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 13:32:05 -0600

Eight years ago, the city of Indianapolis decided to implement a new payment plan for sewer hookups. A major project to connect about 180 homes to the city’s sewage system left homeowners looking at a $9,278 assessment. A few of them chose to pay the full assessment up front, but the city also offered installment plans, allowing payments to be made monthly, for up to 30 years.

As it turns out, the 30-year installment plan was a very wise choice, while people who paid up front got utterly and totally screwed. As the Washington Post explains:

Human Events Online - View From the Right: Wisconsin Watch: Vote, if you know what’s good for you

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 12:50:24 -0600

At the end of last week, with just a few days to go before the recall elections of Governor Scott Walker and Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, people across Wisconsin complained of receiving ominous postcards, described by the Janesville Gazette as follows:

The mailing includes a note to “Dear Registered Voter” which says, in part: “Look at the list below: Are there neighbors on this list you know? Call them or knock on their door before Election Day, and ask them to go vote on Tuesday, June 5. After the June 5th election, public records will tell everyone who voted and who didn’t. Do your civic duty—vote and remind your neighbors to vote.”
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Human Events Online - View From the Right: Advice to Mitt Romney on how to pick a Veep

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 11:51:22 -0600

On Sunday, Reuters reported that GOP-nominee designate Mitt Romney might announce his running mate selection “earlier in the summer.” Here are three names for Romney’s reviewers to consider: Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney.

Together they tell you a lot about what’s ahead and how the campaign should prepare.

Dan Quayle: Though all but forgotten now, and considered best forgotten by most who remember, Quayle was actually a very shrewd selection when George H.W. Bush tapped him at the start of convention week in 1988. In the Senate, he had shown himself a serious and astute senator. He had become one of the body’s acknowledged experts on arms issues relating to the Soviets, essential knowledge with the Evil Empire coming apart at the seams. Then, too, the Midwest was the crucial swing region of the country that year. Quayle was the one GOP Midwestern senator or governor acceptable to all segments of the Republican Party.

Human Events Online - View From the Right: Democrats downplay the impact of a Walker win

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 10:39:19 -0600

MADISON, Wisc. — “I’m voting against Walker!” fumed a waitress at a steakhouse in downtown Madison late Sunday night, referring to Republican Gov. Scott Walker and his bid to survive a recall election Tuesday against Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. She went on to explain that the Republican governor “was a big reason I had to leave the University of Wisconsin when I was a junior last year. My professors were canceling classes so often to go out in the square [site of the State Capitol] to protest his program [requiring some public employee workers to contribute about six percent of their salary and 12 percent to their health insurance premiums], that it just wasn’t worth it for me to go to college anymore.”

Human Events Online - View From the Right: The pain from Spain falls across the Euro plain

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 10:34:25 -0600

The degeneration of Greece into fiscal ruin and political anarchy is heartbreaking, but Spain is the real nightmare country for European investors and ministers. Spain is far larger than Greece – in fact, it’s the fourth-largest economy in the Eurozone – and its impending collapse is literally unbearable for the European Union.

Oh, and the third largest economy in the Euro? That would be Italy, which is almost as shaky as Spain. The second largest economy, France, has launched a crusade against “austerity” under its new socialist president. The Number One economy, Germany, is getting mighty sick and tired of financing the welfare states of Europe. Gulp.

Human Events Online - View From the Right: Obama vs. the drug industry: sound and fury, signifying nothing

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 09:12:17 -0600

Late last week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee released more details of its investigation into the secret backroom deals that gave birth to ObamaCare. A pile of emails from senior White House officials to pharmaceutical industry bigwigs reveal that all of President Obama’s public anger at greedy drug companies was actually part of what professional wrestlers call “kayfabe” – a choreographed act designed to create drama and tension.

Obama and those pharmaceutical executives stayed in character as adversaries to fool the public, while behind closed doors, they were inking lucrative deals to put tax money into the industry’s pockets, in exchange for vital industry support for ObamaCare. This perpetuated the vital illusion that Obama was a brave crusader against drug company greed, at the same time he was privately offering various incentives to corporate honchos, to make certain they would fall into line and embrace ObamaCare at the pivotal moment.

Human Events Online - View From the Right: Jo Ann Nardelli and the Democratic revolt

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 08:32:25 -0600

“Faith is the reason I switched parties.”

So said Jo Ann Nardelli when my office contacted her last week to talk to her about why she left the Democratic Party for the Republican Party. Nardelli is a former Pennsylvania State Democratic Party Committeewoman and former president of the Blair County Federation of Democratic Women.

Nardelli said she had felt a “distancing from the party” over the past six months to a year as President Obama took the party leftward and began pandering more and more to left-wing special interests.

Candidate Obama promised unity and pledged post-partisanship. But President Obama has become the most divisive politician in recent history, remarkably eager both to attack—his political enemies, the Catholic Church, critical news outlets, other branches of government—and to pander—to environmentalists, gays, public employee unions, feminists, abortion groups and others.

Human Events Online - View From the Right: Walker moves toward win in recall election

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 07:41:08 -0600

MADISON, Wisc. — With under 24 hours to go before the polls open in Wisconsin, there is growing agreement on the eventual outcome of the special election for governor: that embattled Republican Gov. Scott Walker will not only survive the challenge from Democrat Tom Barrett, but do so quite comfortably.

Human Events Online - View From the Right: Thad McCotter to retire from Congress

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 19:31:34 -0600

Hours after the late-night announcement Saturday by Rep. Thad McCotter (R-Mich.) that he will end his write-in bid for renomination and retire from Congress, Republicans from Lansing to Washington began focusing on Michigan’s 11^th District and what comes next.

By just about all early reports, the answer is pure chaos.

Six-termer McCotter, who briefly ran for the GOP presidential nomination before deciding to seek re-election, suffered considerable embarrassment two weeks ago when election officials decided his campaign had only filed 244 acceptable signatures on petitions out of the 1000 required to appear on the August primary ballot. As McCotter announced he would try to win the Republican primary as a write-in candidate, the embattled lawmaker’s problems were compounded by the announcement that the state attorney general was investigating possible fraud in the collection of signatures for his petitions.

Human Events Online - View From the Right: Elizabeth Warren Doubles Down – Says She Will Be MA’s First Native American Senator

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 19:19:41 -0600

Good grief. Democrat Elizabeth Warren told reporters this weekend that if elected she would be the first Native American Senator from Massachusetts.

Human Events Online - View From the Right: A grim jobs report for America

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 19:17:05 -0600

You would think $1 trillion in spending stimulus and $2.5 trillion of Fed pump-priming would produce an economy a whole lot stronger than 1.9 percent gross domestic product, which was the revised first-quarter number. And you’d think all that government spending would deliver a whole lot more jobs than 69,000 in May.

But it hasn’t happened.

The Keynesian government-spending model has proven a complete failure. It’s the Obama model. And it has produced such an anemic recovery that, frankly, at 2 percent growth, we’re back on the front end of a potential recession. If anything goes wrong — like another blow-up in Europe — there’s no safety margin to stop a new recession.

Human Events Online - View From the Right: LATEST OBAMA PLAN: Replace the “Thingamajig” On Your Furnace (Video)

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 11:06:05 -0600

Do you get the feeling he’s just grasping at straws?
Hoping something, anything will work?

Barack Obama’s latest economic stimulus plan – replace the “thingamajig” on your furnace.
Via Common Cents:

Human Events Online - View From the Right: Ouch! Juan Williams Mocks Obama’s “Dr. Evil” Ad (Video)

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 11:03:43 -0600

Ouch. This hurt.
Even Juan Williams blasted the latest Obama Campaign ad with Anna Wintour.

“That was hilarious. That looks like a parody. It looked like the Romney Campaign planted Dr. Evil in the House of Obama. And, he said, you know, on the day the grim job numbers come out, let’s have someone who reeks of ornamental excess announce that the peasants can have a place at the table. It’s just unbelievable.”

Quick. Someone notify the Truth Team! The Obama Camp won’t like this one bit.

“Just don’t be late.”

Human Events Online - View From the Right: The Republicans’ secret weapon on LOST: information

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 09:30:10 -0600

The U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty, which passed the Senate Foreign Relations committee with a unanimous vote in 2004 but failed to receive the necessary two-thirds majority in the full Senate, is already in for a bigger fight this year. Longtime treaty critic Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) now sits on the committee, as do staunch conservatives including Sens. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), James Risch (R-Idaho) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), all of whom expressed opposition to the treaty at a recent hearing.

“I think we’re in pretty good shape,” Inhofe told Human Events. “If you look at the committee, the vast majority of Republicans on the committee were opposed to the ratification. I can assure you that there will be seven Republicans that will be voting against it.”

Human Events Online - View From the Right: Arab Summer 2012

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 06:20:38 -0600

WASHINGTON — The once highly touted Arab Spring has become the Arab Summer — scorching hot, unbearably dry and very brutal and bloody. Last weekend, as Americans prepared to celebrate Memorial Day and commemorated the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War, Bashar Assad unleashed tanks, artillery and his Quds force-trained shabiha militia to kill more than 100 Syrian civilians — most of them women and children. Though the atrocities and carnage in Syria continue, little but bluff and bluster is produced by the United Nations and the Obama administration.

In the aftermath of the May 25 massacre, 11 nations — the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Turkey — expelled Syrian diplomats from their capitals. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon — on a visit to Turkey, Syria’s neighbor and former ally — told the Alliance of Civilizations in Istanbul, “The U.N. did not deploy in Syria just to bear witness to the slaughter of innocents. … We are not there to play the role of passive observer to unspeakable atrocities.”

Human Events Online - View From the Right: Republicans need to go on the offense on healthcare, suggest free market solutions

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 05:06:46 -0600

“The best defense is a good offense,” runs an adage attributed to legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi. What’s true in football is even more true in politics.

As the election marches through a long, hot summer, Republicans need to go on the offensive on medical care. Playing defense against the assaults by President Obama and his Democratic allies is the path to defeat. They’re going to use the President’s healthcare plan to attack Republicans, using the socialized medicine scheme as a wedge to pry a large gap between the GOP and seniors, young folks, the working middle class and others.

Human Events Online - View From the Right: This summer in Congress: Tax cuts, jobs and Gibson Guitar Act

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 04:02:53 -0600

House Republicans have their legislative marching orders for the summer, which includes passing legislation to shrink the size of government, to promote private sector job creation and to cut taxes as well as the price of gas.

In a memo to members last week, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said tax cuts that are scheduled to expire in January as well as the coming medical device tax will have a negative impact on jobs. A vote has been scheduled for June to overturn the measure.

“Very little of what we do this summer will be able to offset the harm to small businesses if the largest tax increase in American history is allowed to go into effect Jan. 1, 2013,” Cantor said in the memo. “Working families and small business should not be saddled with the uncertainty of a looming tax increase as they attempt to invest and grow for the remainder of this year.”

Human Events Online - View From the Right: Amid showdown on Defense budget, sequester prospect worsens

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 03:06:37 -0600

During a forum hosted by the American Enterprise Institute earlier this week, Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter appeared to have House Armed Services Committee Republicans in his cross-hairs. Carter said the decision to include $4 billion above the White House budget request in the House version of the Defense appropriations bill meant that new technology and innovation would be sacrificed in favor of aging programs and excess equipment.

“I just want to say that every dollar the United States spends on old and unnecessary programs is a dollar we lose from new, necessary strategic investments,” Carter said on Wednesday. “As Secretary Panetta has said, if we had an open bank account, we’d keep all of it, but we don’t have an open bank account.”