Columnist.
It's trapping season. The targets are Republicans, whom the Democratic-friendly media (the trappers) hunt in order to smear -- especially the Romney-Ryan ticket -- forcing them off message. The bait in the latest case is the issue of abortion in cases of rape. The hunter's target was Rep. Todd Akin, a Missouri Republican, who is running for the Senate against Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill. Thirty-nine years after Roe v. Wade and subsequent Supreme Court rulings legalizing abortion, one might think a pro-lifer like Todd Akin would be able to see he was walking into a trap when a St. Louis TV reporter asked him whether abortion should be allowed, even in cases of rape. He didn't.
Dictionary.com defines a "debate" as: "A formal contest in which the affirmative and negative sides of a proposition are advocated by opposing speakers." That is not what will take place during three exchanges between President Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, or the one vice-presidential exchange between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan. The selection of liberal "moderators" for these sessions by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates is, as Joe Biden might say, a 20th-century model for the 20th century.
When women complain about men who can't commit, they can thank -- or blame -- two people: Playboy magazine publisher Hugh Hefner and the former editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, Helen Gurley Brown, who died this week at age 90. Brown was the flip side of Hefner, offering women permission, even encouragement, to embrace a female version of Hefner's freewheeling "Playboy philosophy" of unrestrained sexual pleasure. Brown and Hefner offered one-way tickets to fantasyland, a journey supposedly without cost to a destination seemingly without consequences.
Last Thursday's Wall Street Journal editorial "Why Not Paul Ryan?" made the case for his selection as the Republican vice-presidential nominee in this statement: "Romney can win a big election over big issues. He'll lose a small one." After Ryan's serious proposal to restructure Medicare -- which virtually everyone knows must be reformed -- the response from Democrats was an unserious TV ad, which showed a Ryan look-alike pushing an old woman in a wheelchair over a cliff. If Ryan and Romney can effectively respond to such silliness, they will not only win the election; they will actually accomplish something that will benefit all Americans.
To call Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a "mad dog," as Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank did, is an affront to the canine community and those suffering from legitimate mental illness. Reid was completely sane when he spread hearsay about an anonymous Bain Capital investor who allegedly told him Mitt Romney paid no taxes for 10 years. Doesn't Reid, a Mormon like Romney, subscribe to the prohibition in the Ninth Commandment: "Thou shall not bear false witness"? He appears to pay no political price because he's a Democrat and unlike Joe McCarthy, to whom some are comparing him, no prominent fellow Democrat or top media figure has asked Reid the question put to the commie-hunting McCarthy by attorney Joseph Welch in 1953: "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"
Marvin Hamlisch, 68, the composer-conductor who died Monday in Los Angeles after a brief illness was a certified genius. From the age of seven, when he became the youngest student ever admitted to New York's Juilliard School of Music, Marvin grew up to win both the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for his 1975 musical "A Chorus Line." He also was awarded three Oscars, four Grammys, four Emmys and three Golden Globes. Marvin embodied more than an impressive resume and long list of celebrity friends. He may have been the most self-effacing person of great achievement I have ever known.
PLYMOUTH NOTCH, Vt. -- Two of my pundit colleagues -- David Brooks of The New York Times and Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal -- have written about this "boring" and "inconsequential" presidential campaign. Perhaps the reason is that we've heard it all before. "There is nothing new under the sun," wrote the author of Ecclesiastes, but that doesn't mean old ideas that worked in the past can't be updated and applied to our time.
The Obama re-election team must be in panic mode. The president is stuck in a virtual tie with Mitt Romney in some polls and behind him in others, so in desperation it has reached out to the Big Dog, Bill Clinton, for help. Clinton will speak next month at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., in a Wednesday night position often reserved for the vice presidential nominee. Obama and Clinton have not had the most cordial relationship, but when you're drowning, your feelings about the lifeguard matter less than his ability to keep you afloat. And Obama is a sinking man.
Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy is in hot water with the LGBT community because he committed the cardinal sin in an age of political correctness: Thou must not speak ill of anything gays, lesbians, bisexuals or transgenders wish to do. In an interview with the Baptist Press and later on a Christian radio program, Cathy, whose father, the philanthropist Truett Cathy, founded the company, defended marriage between a man and a woman and when asked about the company's support of traditional marriage said, "Guilty as charged. We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit." Cathy believes American society is rotting (and where is evidence to the contrary?) because the country has turned away from God.
Like the ghosts of Shakespeare's Banquo or Dickens' Jacob Marley, the specter of the late commie-hunting congressman from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, will always be with us. It is summoned up today, by some on the left, who use it as a tool to thwart legitimate questions about people and ideologies that seek to destroy America. According to many commentators, the McCarthy spirit has inhabited Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). In several letters to high-ranking government officials, Bachmann has raised questions about Huma Abedin, a Muslim-American, who is deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Bachmann's concern is Abedin's relatives in the Middle East some of whom -- such as Abedin's mother -- she claims "are connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations." Abedin's job, according to Bachmann, "affords her routine access to the secretary and to policy-making." And, as a result of that access, says Bachmann, "The State Department, and in several cases, the specific direction of the secretary of state, have taken actions recently that have been enormously favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood and its interests."
By now the script should be familiar. A bombing or a mass shooting occurs and the media immediately look for a simple cause. Invariably, they turn to talk radio or some other conservative pit of "intolerance." Within recent memory are tragedies like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1999 massacre at Columbine, the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings and the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others in Tucson. Some politicians and liberal interest groups have sought to link these and other violent incidents to the far right. There have also been incidents when some conservatives have tried to blame other tragedies on "liberals" "secularists" and abortion. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote on his blog that the "hate-mongers" Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck contributed to the Giffords shooting, despite later reports that the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, had never listened to their programs. The discovery that Loughner liked "The Communist Manifesto" and "Mein Kampf" forced media types to quickly abandon that smear, but not retract their comments. They're running the same play again.
Stephen Covey, the management guru who died this week, would have had a hard time selling his books in Benjamin Franklin's America, or Abe Lincoln's. His best seller "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" would have been considered a self-evident truth, one drummed into earlier Americans by schools, churches and the Puritan ethic. Today, Covey's thoughts about how to become a success by applying principles with a proven track record seem innovative and cutting edge. His work is a rebuke to the notion that government can do it all for you. Contrast Covey's ethic with what President Obama said during a campaign stop in Roanoke, Va., last Friday: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." He mentioned roads and bridges as examples. Did he mean we should thank government for the structures because without them we might not be able to travel to a job interview, or to work? The subplot in the president's campaign remarks seems to be that none of us can make it without government. So what happens to those who do manage to succeed on their own? Are they to be taxed and regulated to death as a lesson to other upstarts?
Mitt Romney's speech to the NAACP convention in Houston was -- according to one's political perspective -- a "calculated move on his part to get booed..." to help his white base (Rep. Nancy Pelosi), or a presentation to "independent thinking adult citizens" whom he treated as equals (Rush Limbaugh). Having an adult conversation in a racially and politically polarized age is nearly impossible, especially when our current political culture does not require a solution to problems, only the use of rhetoric and symbols to gain political power. The second "A" in NAACP stands for "advancement." By any standard, African-Americans receiving government assistance do not appear to have advanced much, if by advancement one means progress toward a steady job. In fact, a serious argument could be made that they are falling farther behind.
In order to get the correct answer to anything, one must ask the right question. That is what former ABC News and current Fox News TV host John Stossel does on his weekly program. If ever there was "must see-TV," this is it. Stossel's show on Saturday, June 30 was a classic. It was called "Government, Incorporated" and focused on what private industry can do less expensively and more efficiently than government. After watching it, I wondered why this isn't happening. Why does inefficient, costly and unresponsive government continue to grow while the people and companies that could do the work much better are regulated and taxed to death? In part it's because politicians speak only in poll-tested sound bites and rarely focus on what works. It isn't as if we don't have a history that can teach us. We know what works, but politicians too often prefer the issue to the solution. That's where Stossel comes in.
President Obama's attempt to spin the latest discouraging unemployment numbers as "a step in the right direction" is like telling passengers aboard the Titanic to ignore the sinking vessel and listen to the live music. A Wall Street Journal analysis of the June unemployment figures offers little comfort, nor does it produce confidence that the economy will improve before the election. "The U.S. unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.2 percent in June," the Journal reports, "but a broader measure rose to 14.9 percent as the ranks of the underemployed grew. ... The reason the rate didn't decline was that while the number of employed increased, so did the labor force by a larger 189,000 people." The broader unemployment rate includes temporary and part-time workers who would prefer a full-time job, as well as people who want to work but have given up looking for jobs. The president's policies, which appear to have stifled economic growth, continue to contribute to the dismal jobs outcome.
When asked at the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 what the Founders had wrought, Benjamin Franklin famously said, "A Republic, if you can keep it." That question might also be put to the five Supreme Court justices who voted last week to uphold the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, which mandates health insurance for most Americans, based on twisted logic that it is a tax and thus within the power of the Congress to impose on an already overtaxed people. Even better than the question of what the court has allowed government to do is what its ruling says about us? Rugged individualists founded and helped preserve America through many challenges. They believed we should first take care of ourselves and help our neighbors with government intervening only as a last resort. Today we are rapidly becoming a collective in which government penalizes achievement and subsidizes failure, thus producing less of the former and more of the latter. Apparently promoting the "general welfare" has come to mean welfare. Food stamp ads run on the radio. The USDA pays for the ads, which encourage more people to apply for the program.
When is a tax not a tax? When President Obama says it isn't, or when the Supreme Court says it is? Obamacare was sold on several fraudulent lines. The president knows the country doesn't want to pay higher taxes, given the deplorable way their government spends the money. And so the administration packaged it as something different. That's called bait and switch, which is defined as "an illegal tactic in which a seller advertises a product with the intention of persuading customers to purchase a more expensive product." And Obamacare, if it is not repealed, is guaranteed to be more expensive, not to mention more bureaucratic, delivering lower-quality care and eventually rationing to save money. Does it matter what this president promises since so many have turned up empty?
Throughout America's history, there have been people who denied threats from our enemies. During the Revolutionary War, significant numbers sided with the British monarchy. Enablers in politics, the media and even religion helped Communism remain in power for seven decades in the Soviet Union. German Nazis had their U.S. apologists. The presidential election in Egypt, won by the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi in a race where three-quarters of Egyptians voted for someone else, challenges contemporary deniers and enablers who refuse to acknowledge the threat advancing Islamism poses to Israel and the West. Enough Egyptians voted for Morsi to allow Islamists to achieve greater political power than at any time since the Brotherhood's 1928 founding. Morsi mouths the words the West wants to hear (he was educated in America). He speaks of being president of "all Egyptians," promising to honor all international agreements made by the Hosni Mubarek regime.
BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules on the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" (this was written before the decision), the Obama administration has indicated it will move forward with those parts of the unpopular law it can impose on the country. Guidebooks are helpful when going on vacation. The U.K.'s National Health Service (NHS) is the best guidebook for Americans concerned where a nationalized health system might take us. For years throughout the U.K. there have been horror stories about declining health-care services. Last week, NHS doctors threatened a strike over a plan to raise their retirement age and pension contributions. A majority of doctors decided at the last minute not to strike after negative public reaction. Rationing has arrived, with more than 90 percent of English health trusts restricting "non-urgent" surgeries, which include hip and knee replacements and cataract surgery. It took a freedom of information request by the media to pry this fact from the NHS.
Those "cannibals" who recently turned up in Miami aren't the only people eating their own. Following President Obama's 54-minute snoozer of a speech in Ohio last week, even his "friends" are beginning to feed on him. In 2008, David Brooks of The New York Times played the sycophant when he admired the crease in Obama's pants and concluded that it was a sign he would be "a very good president." Last Thursday, Dana Milbank of The Washington Post wrote a scathing column, the headline of which suggests the media worm may have begun to turn: "Skip the falsehoods, Mr. President, and give us a plan." Boring was one of the kinder things said about Obama's speech, which rivaled Bill Clinton's address to the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Clinton's speech was so boring he received his loudest applause when he stopped talking.
