Arnold Ahlert
Columnist.
Arnold was an op-ed columist with the NY Post for eight years, currently writing for JewishWorldReview.com and FrontPageMag.com. Arnold can be reached at: atahlert@comcast.net
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Columnist.
For the last few years I've had an ongoing discussion with my brother who agrees with me that Obama administration scandals like Fast and Furious, Benghazi, or the IRS corruption investigation are serious. Yet unlike me, he often wonders why they get no traction with the public. The reason, I tell him, is simple: when you have a mainstream media that has abandoned journalistic integrity in favor of an agenda, you get what you got. Remember Watergate? Of course you do. And the reason you do is because the entire mainstream media made it their non-stop topic of conversation for months on end. Despite being little more than a hotel break-in followed by an elaborate coverup, the media turned it into scandal of historic proportions.
One of the primary narratives associated with comprehensive immigration reform has nothing to do with the millions of low-skill workers that would be granted an opportunity to compete against Americans for jobs. As a letter sent to the president and Congressional leaders signed by more than 100 chief executives of major tech companies and trade associations indicates, there is a shortage of highly-skilled American labor that drives reform as well. Yet as the Atlantic's Michael S. Teitelbaum reveals, that narrative is a lie. "A compelling body of research is now available, from many leading academic researchers and from respected research organizations such as the National Bureau of Economic Research, the RAND Corporation, and the Urban Institute," Teitelbaum explains.
During his State of the Union address, President Obama restated a long-discredited factoid. "Today women make up about half our workforce," he declared. "But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it's an embarrassment." What's truly embarrassing is a president who seeks to once again divide Americans against each other using inaccurate information as his vehicle. The so-called wage gap is based on calculations done by the U.S. Census Bureau. Yet when the Bureau compiled those calculations, it made no distinction between professions, lumping them all together. Thus, as the Heritage Foundation explains, "if high school teachers make less than congressmen…and there are more women who are teachers and more men in the U.S. Congress, then yes, the numbers will show that men make more than women."
Of all the strained analyses offered by the Left on the Crimea crisis, none is quite so ludicrous as the comparison of Putin's invasion of the former Soviet territory to the 2003 Iraq War. As the Atlantic's Peter Beinart put it, Putin is just like "the American hawks who hate him most." This sentiment was vocally seconded by Michael McFaul, a former Obama administration official who served as a special assistant to the president at the National Security Council and as ambassador to the Russian Federation. "As ambassador, I found it difficult to defend our commitment to sovereignty and international law when asked by Russians, 'What about Iraq?'"
Last Thursday, Sen. John "Maverick" McCain took pandering to a new level. "I will never ever, while I'm alive and breathing as U.S. Senator, stop working to pass immigration reform," he told the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. That would be the same Sen. John McCain who ran this ad in 2010, when he faced a tough primary campaign against J.D. Hayworth. In it he blamed illegal aliens for "home invasions, murders" and advocated for completing the "danged fence" along the U.S.-Mexico border. That would also be the same Senator John McCain who had previously co-sponsored the DREAM Act on three separate occasions, but who once again opposed it in 2007 because he "got the message" that Americans wanted the border secured before we "go on to the rest." In short, John McCain is a poster boy for an idea whose time has come: much like America rectifying the enormous blunder of Prohibition, it is time to repeal the equally pernicious 17th Amendment that enabled the direct election of Senators.
Statistical wunderkind Nate Silver, who analyzes baseball and elections, has bad news for Democrats. Appearing Sunday on ABC's This Week, Silver told reporter Jonathan Karl that Republicans have a 60 percent chance to win the six seats they need to regain control of the Senate in November. "What's the projection, how many are they going pick up?" Karl asked. "Exactly six," Silver replied. Unsurprisingly, Democrats were not amused. Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) executive director Guy Cecil fired back in a memo released yesterday morning. "Nate Silver and the staff at FiveThirtyEight are doing groundbreaking work, but, as they have noted, they have to base their forecasts on a scarce supply of public polls," Cecil declared. "In some cases more than half of these polls come from GOP polling outfits. This was one reason why FiveThirtyEight forecasts in North Dakota and Montana were so far off in 2012. In fact, in August of 2012 Silver forecasted a 61% likelihood that Republicans would pick up enough seats to claim the majority. Three months later Democrats went on to win 55 seats."
President Obama remains as sensitive to criticism as he remains immune to reality. Speaking at a news conference in the Hague, Obama addressed criticism directed at him by Mitt Romney, who insisted during the 2012 presidential campaign that Russia is America's foremost foreign policy concern. "With respect to Mr. Romney's assertion that Russia is our number one geopolitical foe, the truth of the matter is that America has a whole lot of challenges," said the president. So what is one of the president's primary concerns? "I continue to be much more concerned when it comes to our security with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan," said Obama. That's a breathtaking assertion, one completely at odds with Obama's 's reckless foreign policy.
The Obama administration's contempt for the rule of law has hit a new low. On Tuesday night, federal officials revealed that Americans who claim they have been unable to enroll in healthcare plans on the federal exchange will be granted an extension past the March 31 deadline. "We are . . . making sure that we will be ready to help consumers who may be in line by the deadline to complete enrollment -- either online or over the phone," said Julie Bataille, director of the office of communications for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The move reeks of desperation. Once again, as the administration did for calculating premium subsidies based on one's income, no actual verification is necessary. People need only check a blue box on the HealthCare.gov website indicating that they tried to enroll before the deadline, and they will have until mid-April -- or perhaps longer -- to ask for an extension based on the "honor system."
In a Sunday column, Dr. Keith Ablow sounded the alarm about a Twitter feed, @LI PartyStories, where teenage kids posted explicit photos of themselves touching each other intimately, urinating on houseplants, lying dead drunk on a stairway, and several other "noble" pursuits. The account has since been suspended, a development that will no doubt elicit severe disappointment -- among its more than 22,000 followers. "It is no longer news that narcissism stoked by the Internet can dissolve anything left of the modesty of American teenagers, who already fancy themselves worthy of posting hundreds or thousands of photographs of themselves on Facebook and having their egos pumped up by equally deluded 'followers' on Twitter," writes Ablow, who suggests how parents should respond.
How Obama's con is pillaging America.
What happens when the "international community" oversees the web?
Last Friday, after six fruitless hours of negotiations, talks between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State John Kerry broke down. Barring an unforeseen development, Russia will absorb Crimea and who knows how much more of Ukraine before Russian President Vladimir Putin is finished. Pretty serious stuff. So where was President Barack Obama Friday morning, and what was he talking about? Appearing on the "On Air with Ryan Seacrest" show, Obama talked about his trip to a Gap store, attacks on his dad jeans and his appearance on an equally insipid show, "Between Two Ferns."
The Democratic political machine versus the students.
The Left's big gamble to distract from ObamaCare.
What's hiding behind the administration's statistics on the "newly insured."
In 1981, S. Robert Lichter, then with George Washington University, and Stanley Rothman of Smith College, released a survey revealing that the political leanings of 240 highly influential journalists from New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS were unabashedly liberal. In 2005, a UCLA-led study confirmed that reality. Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and lead author of that study, followed up that report in 2011 with a book, Left Turn – How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind. In it he revealed that *every* mainstream news outlet in the nation has a liberal bias. This is the sobering reality with which the GOP must contend. And it's about time they did something about it.
A last-ditch effort to save Democratic senators.
A victory against Obama's radicalization of the Department of Justice.
How Obama and the Left are working to create one-party tyranny.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously condemns free speech.