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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Poll</title>
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		<title>Steve Moore &amp; Michael Barone at Restoration Weekend</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/steve-moore-michael-barone-at-restoration-weekend/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=steve-moore-michael-barone-at-restoration-weekend</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Dec 2014 05:50:07 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[Two top conservative minds give their take on America's political and economic landscapes. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong style="color: #232323;">Below are the video and transcript to the panel discussion “Politics and the Economy,” which took place at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 20th Anniversary Restoration Weekend. The event was held Nov. 13th-16th at the Breakers Resort in Palm Beach, Florida. </strong></p>
<p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/115323365" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>When I was coming into this weekend I wasn&#8217;t even fully ready because I was like, wow, what an election we just had. Wow.  Then day three of Restoration Weekend and I&#8217;m like, wow, there is so much more to be done, and it&#8217;s so funny, this is the third year that I&#8217;ve been part of Restoration Weekend thanks to David and Michael Finch, and for years and years many of my friends who are here from Orange County, Marilyn, Cathy Grimmer, Paul and Sally Bender had said, &#8220;You&#8217;ve got to go to Restoration Weekend, no matter what the outcome of the election.  We go there and we leave feeling revived and ready to fight more.&#8221;  After this particular weekend I was thinking to myself, a weekend might not be long enough.  We should maybe start, David, Restoration Week. I don&#8217;t know.  Michael&#8217;s going to kill me for saying that.</p>
<p>We have a really great panel today.  We have two of the foremost minds of the conservative movement.  Their brains are so big that I&#8217;m intimidated to be on stage with them.  I&#8217;m going to introduce them both from left to right and they don&#8217;t need introductions, you all know them so I&#8217;ll make this quick.  Michael Barone, obviously a senior political analyst for the <i>Examiner</i>, Fox News contributor and the author of the <i>Almanac of American Politics</i>.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>Co-author.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>Co-author, foremost author, right?  Then second, Stephen Moore, long-time writer and editorial writer and columnist with <i>The Wall Street Journal</i>.  Now he&#8217;s the Chief Economist of the Heritage Foundation and I think his most impressive credential, because I&#8217;m biased, is that he&#8217;s also a columnist for the <i>Orange County Register</i> so, just saying.  We&#8217;re going to start our panel off with opening remarks.  We&#8217;ll start with Steve and then we&#8217;ll move to Michael with kind of their thoughts on what&#8217;s next on politics and the economy.  Then we&#8217;ll ask a couple of questions and then open it up for you all to get your questions answered as well.  Steven, let&#8217;s start with you.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Okay, so let me give you my quick &#8212; Michael is obviously the Dean of Politics.  I&#8217;m going to give you just a quick seven or eight minute kind of sketch on what&#8217;s going on with the economy.  Some of you have seen these slides before, and I&#8217;m sorry if I&#8217;m a little bit repetitive of what I said last year, but I think this is such an important message.  Let me just start by saying this, I&#8217;m incredibly bullish on the U.S. economy.  I think we&#8217;re going to see an incredible, especially after this election, I think we&#8217;re going to see a big burst out of growth.  We&#8217;ve been stuck in this 2 percent rut on growth now for six years.  This has been an incredibly weak recovery but because of a lot of factors I talk about, I just think we&#8217;re really prepped for a big recovery.  As I said last year, but I&#8217;ll repeat this, the one industry that has really almost carried the rest of the economy on its back for the last six years has been this oil and gas boom.  It&#8217;s not a surprise to anybody in this room by now.  This is an incredible expansion we are living through.  Politics is so rich with irony.  The irony of Barack Obama&#8217;s Presidency is that he will have presided over the biggest oil and gas boom in American history and this is a president who hates the oil and gas industry.  If you look at this chart you can see what&#8217;s going on here.  The red line is all employment in every industry outside of oil and gas over the last six years, and you can see the big decline obviously in employment that happened during the great recession of 2008 and 2009 and you can see what a really flimsy recovery this has been, and it has taken us so long to get back to zero.  By the way, this goes through the end of 2013.  If it went through today, we&#8217;re right back about zero; so that is to say it took us six years but we finally recovery of every job that was lost during the recession.  That&#8217;s a pretty, pretty long and slow recovery process.</p>
<p>Now look at the blue line. That&#8217;s the oil and gas industry, and it&#8217;s interesting, I was giving a talk this summer to the Oklahoma and Texas Oil and Gas Drillers Association.  By the way, I think that may even be more conservative than this group here and so I started off my speech by saying, &#8220;Congratulations, you&#8217;re the people who reelected Barack Obama.&#8221;  They weren&#8217;t real happy but without this boom, there is no way that Barack Obama would have ever been reelected because the economy would have still been in a recession in 2012.  Now what&#8217;s interesting about this boom are a couple of things.  It is not &#8212; as you know, Michael, my mentor was the Great Julian Simon and Julian Simon taught us that natural resources don&#8217;t come from the ground or from the earth. they come from the human mind.  This boom in oil and gas is such a perfect example of what Julian talked about; that the ultimate resource is the human mind because this massive amount of energy we have in this country.  It&#8217;s not as if all of a sudden overnight God endowed America with all this oil and gas. It has been there for hundreds of thousands of years.  This is a testament.  This breakthrough is a testament to incredible technological prowess.  Wild cat or entrepreneurs, most of this energy was not found by Chevron and Exxon and so on, but smaller oil drillers just went out there and found this stuff, and it&#8217;s also a result of incredible technology.  We&#8217;re just seeing technologies that have changed this industry in such a massive, massive way.</p>
<p>Now what&#8217;s interesting about this story are a couple of things.  One is that if we get this right, and I said this last year &#8212; actually I misspoke last year.  Last year I said if we get this right within five years, the United States of America is going to be energy independent.  That is to say we are going to be selling more of this stuff than we buy and that&#8217;s true, I&#8217;m going to stick with that.  It&#8217;s quite plausible that by the Year 2020 if not before, the United States will be a net exporter of oil and gas, and as you know, that is a complete game changer with respect to our economy, and it&#8217;s a game changer, by the way, with respect to our National Security.  If we can actually sell this stuff rather than buy it; you know that you&#8217;ve been reading about this, ISIS gets about $5 million a day, $5 million a day from petro dollars.  We are funding the people that are trying to kill us so if we don&#8217;t have to buy this stuff, it changes the whole geopolitical situation, but I&#8217;ve changed my tune on this.  I would simply say this.  I kind of underestimated how big this is.  Before I said five years from now we&#8217;re going to be energy independent.  Five years from now we&#8217;re going to be energy independent.</p>
<p>My new line on this is five years from now the United States of America; this great, great, great country of ours is going to be the energy dominant country in the world, the energy dominant country in the world.  The thing that&#8217;s amazing about this, if you look at that incredible boom &#8212; just think about this ladies and gentlemen, think about how big this would be and could be if you actually had a president who liked this industry.  This has happened at a time when Barack Obama is doing everything possible behind the scenes to completely decapitate this industry.  For example, the pipeline issue is a big one and, by the  way, we don&#8217;t just need the Keystone Pipeline, obviously we do; we need pipelines all over this country to get the oil and gas that we have to every area of the country and around the world where we need it.  So that&#8217;s number one, Obama is not allowing virtually any new pipelines to be built.</p>
<p>Second of all as you know, if you look at this oil and gas boom on that chart, almost all of that, 98 percent of that boom is happening on private land.  Almost none of it is happening on federal.  In fact, I saw a statistic the other day that we&#8217;re actually drilling less today on public land than we were six or seven years ago.  If we were to open up federal lands &#8212; and I&#8217;m not talking about drilling on Yosemite or Yellowstone or the precious national parks that are environmentally sensitive; I&#8217;m just talking about drilling on forest land and so on that&#8217;s basically vacant.  If we were able to do that we could literally raise trillions of dollars of revenue of the next ten years to repay our national debt or to do other things to raise revenues.  We could practically eliminate the corporate income tax and replace that with money that we could get from drilling on federal land.</p>
<p>So that&#8217;s the second one, and the third one that&#8217;s so important and that we should all be paying attention to is these new EPA Regulations that President Obama is talking about, and this insane deal that President Obama supposedly signed with the Chinese.  Did you all follow this that the Chinese are now going to agree to reduce their carbon emissions by 25 percent by the year 2030?  That is the biggest bald-faced lie I have ever heard.  The Chinese are not going to reduce their carbon emissions.  They are laughing at us today in Beijing.  The Chinese are building a new coal burning fire plant every month in China so they are using fossil fuels. They&#8217;re going to burn this and they said to Obama, &#8220;Yeah, you go back to the United States and you cut your carbon emissions by 25 percent and we&#8217;ll do the same,&#8221; wink, wink, wink.  That isn&#8217;t going to happen.  This is just unilateral economic disarmament by the United States, and let me make another point about this because I think it is such an important issue.  I think a lot of you probably know this but can anybody in this room tell me what country of all the industrialized nations in the world, which country has reduced its carbon emissions the most over the last six years.  We have.  How many of you know that?  The United States. If you read the school books or read the newspapers you would know that.  We have reduced our carbon emissions more than any other country.  Wait a minute, how could that possibly have happened?  How could that possibly be true?  We didn&#8217;t do cap and trade.  We didn&#8217;t do, I don&#8217;t think we ever signed the Kyoto Treaty.  I don&#8217;t think we ratified it.  We didn&#8217;t have a carbon tax, all these things that all these sanctimonious Europeans said that they did.  We&#8217;ve cut our carbon emissions more than they have and I think you all know the reason why &#8212; because we&#8217;re converting electricity to natural gas.  Natural gas has become the number one source of electricity in the United States; it just surpassed coal.  Natural gas is a wonder fuel.  It is like this amazing wonder fuel.  Think about this; 1) It is abundant, we have hundreds of years&#8217; worth of natural gas in this country; 2) It is made in the USA; 3) It&#8217;s incredibly cheap; and 4) It&#8217;s a clean burning fuel.  Now why in the world would anybody be against natural gas?</p>
<p>But you know what&#8217;s amazing, the environmentalists have turned against natural gas; they&#8217;re against it even though it reduces greenhouse gasses.  Stunning, isn&#8217;t it?  I&#8217;ll make one last point about this.  If you look at electricity production today in America, because you all know this – the master resource is energy.  You can&#8217;t produce anything without energy and everything that we have, a major component of that is cheap and affordable energy.  Well if you look at our electricity today, where do we get our electricity today?  I just told you the number one source of electricity today is natural gas.  The number two source of electricity is coal.  So they don&#8217;t want natural gas, right, because they don&#8217;t want fracking.  The second source of electricity in the United States is coal.  They don&#8217;t want coal; they&#8217;re shutting down coal mines all over the country.  The third source is nuclear power.  They hate nuclear power.  The fourth source is an incredibly good, very affordable source of renewable energy, which is what?  What&#8217;s the number one source of renewable energy in American today?  I heard somebody say it. Hydropower.  Actually hydropower is a very good source of energy.  They hate hydropower too.  Why do they hate hydropower?  Because then don&#8217;t want dams, it&#8217;s going to kill the fish.  So any form of electricity production that actually works they&#8217;re against.  This leads me to an important point that I want to make.</p>
<p>You know, David, at this conference we&#8217;ve been talking a lot about the sinister elements in America today, the communists and the Jihadist and the &#8220;so-called progressives.&#8221;  I want to make a point to you that I think is really important.  I would make the argument to you that the most dangerous movement in the world today is not all of these other groups, and I&#8217;m not saying they&#8217;re not dangerous.  The most dangerous movement in the world today is the Radical Green Movement.  These people are absolutely crazy.</p>
<p>So I&#8217;m going to just kind of move on and make a couple of other quick points.  This is the crux of my argument about the economy, and this drives liberals crazy, so I want just two or three minutes to walk you through this.  If you look at this chart, the way I put it is the last 50 years there have been two great economic crises in America.  The first of course was the late-1970s and early-1980s when the United States went through what I call a mini depression.  We all remember that period.  You all remember 20 percent mortgage interest rates and 14 percent inflation and the fact that in the late-70s and early-80s America was truly deindustrializing, and if actually you read about what liberals and even a lot of conservatives were saying at that time, you remember this, Michael: America is an empire in decline, the Japanese are going to take over and actually the Soviet Model works better than ours does and so on.  That was the kind of environment that Ronald Reagan took over in and of course, in 2008 Barack Obama took office during an incredible economic crisis.  There&#8217;s no question about it.  We had lost six million jobs, the real estate bubble had burst, and half of the banks in America had collapsed.  So when Barack Obama walked into the White House, he walked into office in an incredible crisis, as he says ever speech that he gives.</p>
<p>Now here is what makes this experiment so interesting.  These two presidents used diametrically opposite approaches to dealing with the crisis, right?  So you all know the Reagan formula. It was to cut tax rates; it was to get government spending under control.  He worked with Paul Volker to slay inflation by cutting the money supply, and in a sense what Ronald Reagan did was he empowered workers and entrepreneurs and businesses to rebuild the American economy, the supply side recovery.  Barack Obama came in and did exactly the opposite, right?  Barack Obama used every single page out of the Keynesian playbook and, by the way, I&#8217;m not going to blame this just on Obama.  I would say the last year and a half or two years of the Bush Administration were a disaster too. So what did we do in response to the 2008 crisis?  Well, we bailed out big banks, insurance companies and auto companies.  We passed an $850 billion dollar so-called spending stimulus bill.  We had ObamaCare.  We had tax increases on the rich.  We borrowed $7 trillion, in six years we have borrowed $7 trillion.  This is a Keynesian&#8217;s dream, right?  We threw everything in the Keynesian playbook at that recession.  If you look at this chart, what I think is really interesting and I don&#8217;t think liberals have a good response to this.  What this chart is showing you is that the U.S. economy has grown by 2 percent under Barack Obama under his Keynesian formulation.  In fact, I think I wrote a piece on this for you guys are OCR.  You can see, so the economy has grown by 11½ percent over that period.</p>
<p>Now that&#8217;s decent but then you look at what happened under President Reagan.  Under Ronald Reagan the economy didn&#8217;t grow at 11½ percent over the recovery period; it grew at nearly 25 percent.  Now that&#8217;s a big, big difference ladies and gentlemen, that&#8217;s a huge difference.  That means, and what the number there you&#8217;re looking at, what that means, and if I updated that to today &#8212; because I don&#8217;t have the last two quarters on here. The underlying point of this chart is if the U.S. economy had grown as rapidly under Barack Obama&#8217;s recovery as it did under Ronald Reagan&#8217;s, the GDP national output and national income of this country would be $2 trillion larger today, $2 trillion.  That&#8217;s a massive number. If we were to give that $2 trillion to every single family &#8212; by the way, that&#8217;s year after year after year we&#8217;d be $2 trillion larger.  If we didn&#8217;t have that growth gap and we prorated that money to every family in America, the average family in America today would have $15,000.00 more income. $15,000.00 more income.  Now here is the amazing part about this.  The average family in America doesn&#8217;t have $15,000.00 more income in this recovery.  I think most of you know this.  The average median income family in the United States has $1,500.00 less income than when this recovery, so-called recovery, began.</p>
<p>Now why is that so important?  I think that single statistic may more than anything else explain why the Democrats had their heads handed to them a week and a half ago. Barack Obama was saying just ten days before the election, &#8220;Every single statistic shows improvement while I&#8217;ve been President.&#8221;  Well he left out the one that Americans care the most about.  What Ronald Reagan used to call &#8220;real take home pay&#8221; and &#8220;real take home pay&#8221; has been reduced and not increased over Barack Obama&#8217;s presidency, and that explains in my opinion, Michael, why 51 percent of Americans today say that the United States of America is still in a recession – because for half of the Americans it still is a recession.  When you&#8217;re losing income relative to inflation, you&#8217;re not feeling better about things; you&#8217;re feeling worse and that&#8217;s a point we have to hammer home over and over again.  One quick final point.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>Okay, real quick though.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Okay, just the states.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>Michael wants to talk about something.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>No, I know. I agreed not to be too long, but this is so important.  No, I just got to do the Texas thing.  So this is just the last point.  If you really want to understand the superiority of our ideas versus their ideas, we&#8217;ve got such a great, great experiment here in the United States, and it turns out the four largest states in America, two red states, Texas and Florida are obviously red states.  The two biggest blue states are California and New York.  Correct me if I&#8217;m wrong about this Michael but I believe one out of three Americans lives in those four states.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>That&#8217;s right.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>So those are the states that really matter and the basic bottom line here is that these red states, and this is what my book is about, the red states are incredibly outperforming the blue states.  You know this, migration pattern – there is a huge migration out of the Midwest and out of the Northeast into the South and to states like Phoenix and Utah and so on, and this is what liberals cannot, they cannot explain this because they kept saying, &#8220;Look, they want higher minimum wages, higher tax rates on the rich, don&#8217;t allow drilling, more regulation&#8221; and so on.  All of these things were supposed to create a worker&#8217;s paradise for the workers.  What they can&#8217;t explain is if that&#8217;s the case why are people leaving those states and what this chart is showing you is that over the last 15 years, for every job that was created in California and New York, three to four jobs were created in Texas and Florida.  Look, what&#8217;s the income tax rate today in Texas and Florida?  Zero.  How many in this room are Californians or New Yorkers?  Do you know what your highest income tax rate in California and New York is today?</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>Don&#8217;t remind us.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>13.5%.  This stuff matters.  I debated Paul Krugman on this about a month ago, about the economy.  I showed him this chart and I said Paul, you&#8217;ve got the Nobel Prize in economics.  Please explain to me if your ideas are so much superior to ours, what explains this, and you&#8217;ll love this, Michael. He said, &#8220;Well there&#8217;s a very simple explanation.&#8221;  He said people are leaving because of the weather, because of the weather.  Now, actually, as with everything &#8211;</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>The last year that Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex had something like 90 consecutive days of triple digit weather.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Exactly, you took my &#8211;</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>I&#8217;d like to have Paul Krugman mow some lawns in that weather.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>I said to Krugman, well, Paul, that&#8217;s an interesting theory, that you say you know people, and by the way, there is some truth to that. People want to live in warmer places, and I said if that&#8217;s the thing, if this is all driven by weather, Paul, you&#8217;ve got the Nobel Prize, please explain this to me, why are people leaving San Diego and going to Houston?  He had no answer.  I&#8217;m going to stop there.  Thank you very much.  It&#8217;s been a pleasure.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>Thank you Steve, and all right, Michael, ready to give us the political scoop?</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>Well I&#8217;ll try to give you my view of a couple of important things, including some reflections on the dialogues that have been going on here at the Restoration Weekend.  I can&#8217;t resist beginning with some census data because I can&#8217;t think of anything more interesting to do than to plow through historical census data, make tables and things like that.  Steve&#8217;s economic tables are no match for this and the match is my home State of Michigan versus the State of Texas.  When I was growing up in Michigan everybody said well Texas is going to progress, inevitably. They will get big labor unions and so forth.  They&#8217;ll have business corporations that will cooperate with the unions.  They&#8217;ll get big government.  They&#8217;ll have an income tax, they&#8217;ll be like us in Michigan and so forth – census date.  In 1970, Michigan had nine million people.  In 2010, 40 years later, Michigan had ten million people.  A little bit of growth over 40 years, not spectacular.  In 1970 Texas had 11 million people.  Just a little bit bigger than Michigan.  In 2010 Texas had 25 million people.  Explain that Professor Krugman.  You got cold winters in Michigan, but you sure got hot summers in Texas and you actually have some cold winters there too.  Anybody that&#8217;s moving to Texas for the weather is deluded.  So let me just make three major points here that have been to some extent inspired or amplified by what I&#8217;ve been hearing, listening and talking to people with about at the Restoration Weekend.</p>
<p>The first is about the macro economy in which I do not consider myself to be an expert by any means.  I do know that there was a congressman from New York that said if you tax something you get less of it; if you subsidize something you get more of it.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Would that be Jack Kemp?</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>Yeah and Jack had the right idea.  Obviously we want to get the macro economy growing again.  Some conservatives are saying okay we&#8217;ll just reduce rates on the high end like Reagan did and that will be fine.  I think we need something more than that.  For one thing, tax rates are not as high as when Reagan entered office.  There&#8217;s less to be cut, but I think we&#8217;ve got to do something else.  We&#8217;ve got to lower some tax rates.  We&#8217;ve got to get rid of some of the really hostile and anti-growth regulatory things and the crazed religion of the Radical Greens.  I think we also have to try to do something about family formation.  If we want to unleash human capital &#8212; and Steve has written about this recently.  I don&#8217;t know if his former colleagues at the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> editorial board are a little miffed at you, but one of the things that I think is holding us back to some extent, although it&#8217;s difficult to quantify, is family formation or the lack thereof.  All the sociological studies show that children raised in two-parent families do better by all sorts of metrics from crime to economic growth and productivity.  No, I don&#8217;t want to say anything negative about single parents and so forth.  But almost 50 years ago Pat Moynihan wrote his family report and he said that we&#8217;ve got a real crisis because 25 percent of black children are born out of wedlock.  The figure today is 70 percent.  The figure for all children is 40.  That is higher form of magnitude than what Moynihan was looking at justifiably, presciently, with alarm back in 1965, so what can we do.  The Tax Code doesn&#8217;t automatically shape behavior.  I think there are ways society can send signals.  When you look back in history people like us like to talk about declines of morals.  There are also increases in moral behavior that occur in various ways.  The United States in 1820 was a nation of drunks.  Basically alcohol consumption was cut by about two-thirds over the next 40 or 50 years.  That was an advance in human capital among other things.</p>
<p>We had senators like Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, others talking about child tax credit increase, other things to send money and signals to people to try to encourage family formation, to encourage two-parent families to give kids the advantage.  I think that there are a lot of other ways that we can think about this in terms of economics; but that&#8217;s one way to send a signal, that&#8217;s one way to give what Cass Sunstein calls a &#8220;nudge,&#8221; which in this case I think is useful.  So I think that we ought to be thinking about that and those of you who are active, and many of you are, in the voluntary sector, those of you who create organizations who work and organizations to try to foster better behavior, I think this is something many of you probably already are thinking about: how do we strengthen that kind of behavior because there&#8217;s a lot of human capital over the last generation that could have been created and wasn&#8217;t created.  That&#8217;s a problem.  We&#8217;d like to do better in the next generation, and how are we going to do this?</p>
<p>The second point I want to make is in another sense about the new generation and that&#8217;s taking a look at the election data, and this one was kind of fun to take a look at.  I was always a little dismayed at reading the number on President Romney, is to take a lot at two groups that we&#8217;ve been told are going to be a larger part of the electorate in years hence, and they are, and that we were told were going to be part of an inevitable during natural and permanent Democratic Party majority in America – the Hispanics and the Millennials.  If you made straight line extrapolations from the 2008 exit pole you might very well have thought that.  Both those groups, Hispanics, a term invented by a census bureaucrat circa 1970; Millennials, people born after 1980 or the 18 to 29 year-old-age group among voters, voted approximately two to one for Barack Obama in 2008.  They will be a larger part of the electorate.  My move to amend the Constitution to raise the voting age to 35 is barred &#8212; and permanently barring from the vote anyone born after 1980, our chances for that solution has been missed.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>I wouldn&#8217;t be able to vote.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>There you go, okay, sorry about that.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>No it&#8217;s all right, it&#8217;s all right.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>I&#8217;ll listen to your recommendation and start voting.  Those things having failed, those groups were going to go by, and you have writers like <i>National Journal&#8217;s </i>Ron Brownstein, who is a very talented guy, talking in addition about the non-white majority – divides electorate into whites and non-whites and says there will be a non-white majority.  Well let&#8217;s see how that&#8217;s working out.  Let&#8217;s start off with the Millennials.  In 2008 they voted 66/32 to Barack Obama.  Expressing that vote as a democratic margin as percentage of the total electorate.  Take the democratic popular vote margin among Millennials as a percentage of the total electorate. It&#8217;s 7 percent of the total electorate.  Barack Obama&#8217;s margin among the total electorate that year, 7 percent.  Essentially all of this popular vote margin came from them.  What has happened in years since.  Well the Millennials down there in their parents&#8217; basements have not been doing so well.  They were told that there was hope and change – that Obama was a with-it sort of person and he was cool and the other people weren&#8217;t and so forth.  In 2012 the Obama margin among Millennials goes down to 60 to 38.  That&#8217;s actually the biggest decline arithmetically among any age group so there is some decline.</p>
<p>It brings to mind the fact of the baby boomer, the fate of the baby boom generation politically, which I guess I&#8217;m part.  I&#8217;d like to say that the good news is that the baby boom generation is going to die out.  The bad news is I&#8217;m going to die about the same time.  The baby boom generation was 50/50 in the Nixon/McGovern race when the rest of the country was 63/36 for Nixon.  In 2012, 40 years later the baby boom generation voted for Mitt Romney, so people are affected by the changes and the things they see in their life as well as by some of the conservatizing forces perhaps of growing older, perhaps wiser, but in any case, the initial vote is not destiny.  Where were the Millennials in this election?  Take a look at the Exit Poll, the national vote for House of Representatives, it was 54/43 Democratic.  Express that as a percentage of the total electorate, Democratic margin as a percentage of the total electorate is 1.5 percent, 7 percent in 2008, 1.5 percent.  Millennial turnout will be higher in the general election than it was in the off-year election, so 1.5 percent translates to about 2 percent general election terms.  That&#8217;s a handicap for republicans.  They&#8217;ve got to carry their age groups by a larger margin in order to win, they did so, winning 52/45 House popular vote overall in this year in 2014 as well as 2010.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s happened to the Millennials in large part it&#8217;s a lot of human capital that&#8217;s not being achieved, that&#8217;s not finding an outlet.  I think one of the things I have felt is that there is a misfit between the Millennial generation and the way that they want to customize their own world.  Set up their own Facebook page and all this stuff, iPod list, that&#8217;s pretty antique now.  The tension between that and the centralized command and control policies of the Obama Administration. Those are policies that were initially crafted by people in an industrial age – 40,000 people worked at the Ford Rouge Plant.  You had a huge union local, it had 60,000 members.  You had a corporation that was one of the largest in the world.  The building was built in 1916 to 1918 at a cost of $1 billion which was actually a lot of money then.  I went around the Ford Rouge Plant in a car this summer – it&#8217;s 5.0 miles to drive around the perimeter of that place.  That is an artifact of the Industrial Age.  So individuals are small cogs in large machines, that&#8217;s what you do, big government, the centralized experts Jonathan Gruber will take care of you, you&#8217;re too stupid to take care of yourself, that&#8217;s the Industrial Age policies.  That&#8217;s a bad fit with this generation.  We&#8217;re not in an industrial age, we are in an information age.  The Ford Rouge Plant is a symbol of the Industrial Era, this is a symbol of the Information age.  It&#8217;s got more data in here than the Ford Rouge Plant ever processed and these policies aren&#8217;t working for them.  I think they&#8217;re waking up to that.  White Millennials are a significant Republican margin of this election.  The black under 30 voters.  Actually male blacks under 30 actually are moving towards Republicans more than their elders.  So I think that there&#8217;s some hope there. They are looking for something.</p>
<p>The Republicans have an opportunity, they sure don&#8217;t have a mandate. But they&#8217;ve got an opportunity for getting in touch with these people for policies that will enable them to find work, to earn success in ways that maximize their own special talents – their own individual interests.  The contribution that that individual uniquely can make to society.  The other side&#8217;s programs don&#8217;t give you any access to society.  The other side&#8217;s program don&#8217;t give you any access to that – you&#8217;re just a cog in a large machine.  These programs &#8212; I think conservatives can come up with a couple of programs that allow human capital to flourish in ways that are particular to the individual.  I think there&#8217;s an opportunity there.</p>
<p>Hispanics – Brownstein likes to lump together all &#8220;non-whites.&#8221;  I think this is misleading.  Hispanics and Asians, the people that fall into these categories, do not share the history experiences and heritages of Black Americans, which are, as many Black Americans will tell you, they are unique and they are absolutely correct in saying that.  They&#8217;re not behaving that way.  When Asians come to this country these days they don&#8217;t see separate drinking fountains marked off for them and they aren&#8217;t prevented from voting and in fact, what we&#8217;ve got is very different numbers.  If you look at the Hispanics, they go 67/31 Obama, 2008, 71/27 Obama, 2012.  They don&#8217;t like the self-deportation comment of Mitt Romney and so forth.  This election they&#8217;re moving in the other direction.  You look at the Exit Poll. It&#8217;s 62/36 for Democratic candidates for the House nationally.  But this aggregated by state.  One of the things you see, about 40 percent of Hispanics live in California, New York and New Jersey.  They were voting over 70 percent on average for the Democratic Party.  They are increasing Democratic margins that would exist if there were not a single Hispanic in any of those states.  If you are looking at the rest of the country, you&#8217;re seeing a different pattern.  In Rick Perry&#8217;s Texas, John Cornyn carried Hispanics 49/48, Greg Abbott got 44 percent here in Florida, Rick Scott got 38.  In Kansas and in Georgia, states with growing Hispanic percentages that some Democrats think are going to carry those states for them, Hispanics voted for the Republican, Nathan Deal, David Purdue, Pat Roberts.</p>
<p>My observation is that Hispanics are voting more like their white neighbors than their black neighbors and depending on the state they&#8217;re in.  I think that once again here are people that are looking for opportunity.  Here are people that are disproportionately in their younger years.  Here is human capital; potential human capital that is being under-utilized in this economy and these individuals are not being given an opening under this Administration&#8217;s policies so I think that once again there is significant opportunities and the idea that this is a totally non-white 90/10 democratic majority is simply factually wrong.  I could add that the Asian numbers show a flip from 73/26 Obama 2012 to 50/49 Republican.  I&#8217;m not sure that&#8217;s good data.  Sorry folks we&#8217;d love to believe it but I think that you&#8217;ve got small and potentially unrepresentative samples, but I think it&#8217;s an interesting mix and some of you are in situations like that.</p>
<p>Let me move on to my third topic that I want to talk about and that is one that I know evokes controversy or strong feelings in this room and that is immigration.  I think again there is a potential to unleash and enhance human capital in the United States, which we are in danger of missing, which people on the other side of the political fence are in danger of missing, and I think we have a set of immigration laws that have built on a system, that is built on a series of laws, 1924, passed 90 years ago, 1965, passed 49 years ago.  We inadvertently got a system that prefers extended family reunification of mostly low-skill people to admission of high skill people.  We&#8217;ve got a system now which we&#8217;ve got to lobby for declaring legalization of illegals, primarily low-skilled, and there&#8217;s an effective lobby for that.  There&#8217;s an effective lobby for increasing the number of H1BVs, as they tend to tie high-skilled people to a particular firm.  Microsoft wants you to work.  Apple wants you to work.</p>
<p>I think we should take this opportunity, the fact that it&#8217;s obvious that we need to change our immigration laws, to take a new approach and not just do patch work.  I&#8217;m not going to get into arguments here about what we do about seasonal farm workers, that&#8217;s a collateral issue.  I think that one of the things we&#8217;ve seen now, unlike 2006 and 2007, which is when the sort of design of the bill that passed the Senate in 2013 was formulated.  That&#8217;s a period when most of us thought we were going to have an unending surge of migration, especially low-skill migration from Latin America and some of us thought the best thing we can do is regularize it through some legalization.  We thought also that our high tech system was going on fine, we didn&#8217;t have any problems there and we thought that we had plenty of demand for low skill workers because the economy was growing.  Well, the surge in that migration from Mexico to the United States from 2007 to 2012 was zero, we don&#8217;t have that problem, and I think the argument is stronger today in my opinion than it was then, that says that legalization measures incentivize illegal immigration, which wouldn&#8217;t otherwise occur.  I think prior to 2007 it was going to occur anyway.  I think now we saw with the influx of Central Americans in the Rio Grande that there is an argument that undercuts the argument for legalization or at least suggests caution.</p>
<p>What I think is most important is to encourage high-skill immigration.  Steve and I disagree, I don&#8217;t think we need a lot of low-skill people right now, new people.  He thinks we always do.  I think we always need high skilled people in this country and I think if you want to maximize human capital in the United States or in the world, we want high-skilled people in this country, as many as we can get.  We&#8217;ve got a system where we admit a grudging amount of them, tied to particular firms.  I think we might do better if we let in high-skilled people, people who can demonstrate that they have high skills and abilities and let them see what they can do in something that we have here despite the effects of the current Administration, which is called the free enterprise system, a free economy and work their way up there.  I see as a model of the systems of our Anglosphere cousins Canada and Australia.  Canada and Australia have high-skill immigration.  They have point systems.  I had a chance to talk here with Senator Sessions and I said to him, let&#8217;s look at how Canada and Australia do this.  Can something like this be adapted to the United States?</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Canadians and Australians don&#8217;t want us to do this.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>Well, a Canadian diplomat in Washington said to me please, please do not adopt our Canadian immigration system.  We want these high-skilled people in Vancouver and Calgary and Toronto and Montreal.  We don&#8217;t want them going to the United States.  We want them in Canada and Australia wants them in Australia.  I have a lot of affection for Canada or Australia but I say let&#8217;s give them a fight.  I think that we should try to restructure this so that instead of extended family reunification of low-skill people we move towards high skilled people that have demonstrated their abilities and so forth in this country.</p>
<p>As I look back over the three things I&#8217;m talking about, let&#8217;s liberate the economy from high taxes, but also incentivize family behavior that we&#8217;re not sure we can fully influence but at least move people towards behavior that tends to maximize human capital.  Present opportunities to growing groups of the electorate like Hispanics and Millennials so to maximize their human capital and to exchange our immigration system and not just tinker with band aids and stuff on the 90-year-old legislation and the 49-year-old legislation but actually reframe our immigration law.  Take this opportunity to proclaim that we are a land of the free, home of the brave and we have open arms to people who come here with high skills and want to contribute to the United States and the world through becoming Americans.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>I think that, Michael, microphones are going to be going around in a second.  I&#8217;m going to ask a quick question.  Having just moved out from my parents&#8217; basement, thanks Ally and Paul, and being Hispanic and a Millennial, I&#8217;d like to talk kind of specifically about some of those policies the Republicans just took to Congress, both houses.  If you were in a room advising John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and the leadership in the Republican Party, what would you advise them they should do going out the gate in 2015 and what would you advise them not to do?</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Well the first thing, how many of you have been following this issue, this esoteric issue of corporate inversions of companies that are leaving and I say this is actually a real crisis in this country, and I don&#8217;t think a lot of the politicians quite understand what&#8217;s going on here.  If we don&#8217;t fix our corporate tax system &#8212; and most Americans have no idea about the corporate tax system and I don&#8217;t think Barack Obama understands this either.  Our corporate tax, as most of you in this room know, we have the highest statutory corporate tax in the world.  We&#8217;re at 40 percent and it&#8217;s interesting.  If you look over the last 25 years it used to be, Michael, if you go back to 1990 the rest of the world was at about 45 percent.  You know what&#8217;s happened over the last 25 years?  The rest of the world is adopting Reaganonics – Ireland, England, Canada, they are cutting their rates very sharply and so it used to be we were 5 percentage points below the world average.  Today we&#8217;re 15 to 20 percent above the world average.  That doesn&#8217;t work anymore.  I describe this as a Head Start program for every country that we compete with, right?  It&#8217;s true and I would even make the case it is unpatriotic to support a 40 percent corporate tax.  The people who are harmed by this tax are not big, rich Wall Street fat cats who own stock, although it does reduce returns to sharers, but there&#8217;s a lot of really good evidence by some of my friends at the American Enterprise Institute and some of my colleagues at Heritage, that the people that are hurt the most by this high corporate tax when companies leave is American workers.  This affects their wages and affects their job opportunities, so I would make the case by that and if I could do one thing overnight I would say, let&#8217;s just get rid of the corporate income tax, right?  Let&#8217;s just get rid of the corporate income tax and tax it to the shareholders when they earn it as capital gain.</p>
<p>But if we can&#8217;t do that there is a mandate in my opinion, there is a necessity we get that corporate tax rate down to 20 to 25 percent because if we do not do this and if we do not act quickly &#8212; you&#8217;ve seen what&#8217;s happened in the last nine months.  Think about the companies.  Burger King. Burger King is leaving the United States.  Walgreen&#8217;s wants to leave.  Pfizer wants to leave.  I could name four or five other major Fortune 100 companies that are essentially renouncing their United States citizenship and leaving the United States and as you said, going to Canada, going to Ireland.  In Ireland the highest corporate tax rate is 4½ percent.  That means you can change your location from, say, New York to Dublin, and you can cut your corporate income tax by two-thirds.  Companies have a charge to maximize their return to their shareholders so that would be the number one thing – get rid of the corporate income tax and then number two, let&#8217;s just blow up the whole income tax and start over with a flat tax.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>I agree with both of those things and I think you know that, but how to Republicans send that credibly to Obama when he spent his entire Presidency demonizing corporations and saying they&#8217;re the Devil.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Let me just make one quick comment about this.  I believe one of the biggest, one of the turning points in this election &#8212; and correct me if I&#8217;m wrong you guys because you know politics better than I do.  That imbecilic comment that Hillary Clinton made seven days before the next.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>When she was giving her Elizabeth Warren imitation?</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Exactly.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>No there is going to be a very spirited competition if those two run against each other because we don&#8217;t know who&#8217;s going to carry Salem.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>My only point in bringing that up is I do believe Brian that the big problem with the Democrats today, the Democrats today are anti-business, right?  They are anti-business.  My old boss Dick Army, you know Dick Army was the House Majority Leader, he used to say, and he said it so perfectly, liberals love jobs and they hate employers.  Liberals love jobs and they have employers.  You can&#8217;t have one without the other.  This is where I think it gets to your point about Millennials saying, wait a minute, the Democrats said they were going to create all these jobs.  When is the last time?  Just a thought I want to put in your head.  When is the last time this President in the last six years said anything good about business?  When has he said, he is the same President who said two years ago, &#8220;you didn&#8217;t build that,&#8221; so that anti-business sentiment is the ruination of the Democratic Party in my opinion.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>Well, Steve starts off right with the populist to appeal and cut the corporate income tax.  You&#8217;re absolutely right on the arguments intellectually and I think there is a political avenue to do this and an openness to do this.  There is a lot of low-hanging fruit off there – the Keystone XL Pipeline, vote on a bunch of things where you&#8217;re going to get, by the way, a bunch of Democrats, 31 House Democrats voted for the Keystone Pipeline last week and so forth, that it&#8217;s a 70 percent issue.  You&#8217;ve got a bunch of 70 percent issues, but I guess I would just reiterate my thinking on the immigration thing.  I really think that we have an opportunity to change the trajectory of incoming immigration and so forth in the world in the years ahead.  I wrote this book, <i>Shaping Our Nation:  How Surges in Migration Transformed American Politics</i> and it&#8217;s about internal migrations and it&#8217;s about immigration migrations.  We&#8217;ve had these unexpected surges of migration.  Nobody in 1965 was predicting huge migration from Latin America.  We actually imposed a limit of something like 60,000 Mexicans a year in the &#8217;65 Act, did you know that?  It didn&#8217;t turn out to be very effective because of family reunification provisions and because of illegal immigration.  Migration from Mexico was ten times that approximately between 1982 and 2007 and then it stops and that&#8217;s a historic pattern too.  You get these surges that last one or two generations, they stop.  I want the next surges to be high-skilled people from around the world.</p>
<p>One of the statistics that I saw recently and perhaps appropriate of last night&#8217;s meeting was that the percentage of people in the United States &#8212; like some of President Reagan&#8217;s statistics this may be wrong, so I want to be fact checked on this.  The data was that of people born in Africa, that doesn&#8217;t include the President, people born in African in the United States today is something like 47 percent of them have college degrees and moving on to their accounting degree and getting that and we see that in Washington, DC.  Michelle Obama, that Minnesota gets the Somalians, we&#8217;ve got the Ethiopians and it&#8217;s better for our metro area.  But anyway, that&#8217;s an interesting data point.  Let&#8217;s get the high-skilled people across the world because it&#8217;s better for our country and a more prosperous, more creative America is better for the world.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>You know Michael I was in &#8211;</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>It&#8217;s better for people all over the world because they in many ways have often been free riders on advances made in the United States and the people of the United States who make advances, who have economic success are also major supporters, not only through taxes and foreign aid but much more importantly through voluntary activities that have helped people around the world.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>I was just going to say, I got in a taxi in Washington, DC about two weeks ago and the driver was an Ethiopian and he kept staring at me, and he kept looking back at me, he had this big smile on his face, &#8220;You&#8217;re on Fox News, aren&#8217;t you.  I watch Fox News every day.&#8221;  I&#8217;m like these are our kind of people.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>All right let&#8217;s go to some questions from the audience.  We have a microphone in the back.</p>
<p><strong>Rep. Michele Bachmann: </strong>Thanks.  You guys are so brilliant and I want to thank you and I just want to see me too to Steve.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Michele you are irreplaceable in the United States Congress.  We love you.  You are awesome!  We need you to run against Mark Dayton for Governor of Minnesota.</p>
<p><strong><strong>Rep. Michele Bachmann</strong>: </strong>No I just want to say how much I love and underscore exactly what you said – in my former life I was a federal tax litigation attorney, before I came to the U.S. Congress and I think again this is a plus-up area where Republicans can go on offense in the next two years against Hillary Clinton or whoever the nominee is, because this is a job creations tax.  That&#8217;s what the Corporate Tax Code is, it&#8217;s a tax on job creation and we need to frame it in such a way so that people know that what we want to do is get rid of these job killing taxes and have job creation taxes and I&#8217;ll give you one perfect example based upon inversions.  Two weeks before the 2012 Election I sat down with all of the medical device industry in Minnesota from the baby startups all the way to the King Daddy which was Medtronic and all of them could be predictive.  They saw that this could very well go the way of Barack Obama and the way of the medical device tax and so they&#8217;d been out looking in Europe and other countries to see where they could move their industries, and they were very frank.  They said if we don&#8217;t take this election in 2012, we&#8217;re out of here because we&#8217;ve got better places to go for industry and so Medtronic is one of those companies that announced an inversion and then the Treasury Department came back and was basically going to cancel all those inversions but it&#8217;s human nature.  People go where they can make the income so I think this is a target rich environment for us to go on offense and I think we&#8217;ll get Millennials.  I think that we should compete for every bit of space for every voter because it&#8217;s about every voter, their job.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Let me make a broader point because I think that what you said is so important.  Tell me if you think I&#8217;m wrong about this, Michele, but I think Republicans have an incredible opportunity right now with the old Reagan blue collar industrial union workers; because think about that.  Put it like this, Michael.  How can Tom Steyer coexist in a party with unionized blue collar workers? Tom Steyer is trying to deindustrialize America.  He wants to destroy the jobs of pipe fitters, welders, electricians – he wants to destroy the jobs of Teamsters.  Your and my party, Michele, you&#8217;re the person to do this.  We ought to be going into these union halls, I&#8217;m serious, and we should be saying, we&#8217;re the ones who are trying to save your jobs.  It&#8217;s these wacko Green Environmentalists who are trying to destroy your jobs, right?  That should be our message.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>A question from Senator Sessions.</p>
<p><strong>Sen. Jeff Sessions: </strong>Thank you, just briefly.  I recall having met with a Canadian who runs their system of immigration.  They are very happy with it. They are very pleased.  At a hearing two years ago in the Judiciary Committee, the Microsoft representative and group pushing for high-tech visas praised the Canadian system.  I said, well, Mr. Microsoft, I&#8217;ll adopt the Canadian system today.  Do you agree to that?  What do you think his answer was?  He had this rueful smile, and the reason was they made a deal.  They got their deal on the big bill.  La Raza and the businesses who want lower-skill workers and the political groups that want family reunification.  They made a partnership so that the package itself was unacceptable, in my opinion, so I guess I would say if we can break this bunch from their unholy comprehensive alliance and focus on the Canadian-type system, which gives points if you &#8212; millions of people speak English in the world.  If you&#8217;ve got two people to apply to American, why not choose the one who already speaks English?  Have we got two young people in Honduras and one has two years of college and one is a high school dropout, why not let the scholar get in?</p>
<p>We&#8217;ve got data to show that people with two years of education who come to America almost always succeed.  Data shows that people who come to American without a high school degree, without language skills, almost always remain in poverty for generations.  So I guess, Michael, I think you&#8217;re on the right track.  I also am dubious about some of the things they say.  Microsoft just laid off 18,000.  Facebook, Mr. Zuckerberg, they only have 7,000 people.  This is not a big job industry.  If you travel the state like I do, and go in to business after business, it&#8217;s incredible the amount of robotics we&#8217;ve got.  We&#8217;re going to have more widgets made with fewer people every year for the next 30 years.  So we&#8217;ve got to think about how our people can be able to take the few jobs that exist out there, and we want to have their pay go up and not down.  So anyway, I&#8217;ve gone too long.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>I think that this is a great example, Senator, that we are in an area where we need good policy instead of good lobbying.  There&#8217;s a lobby for H1Bs because they stay with my company and you got indentured servitude or something like it.  But high skill hasn&#8217;t got a lobby.  It has got to find one.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>Why don&#8217;t we get a question over here and let&#8217;s walk to this side of the room too so there are a couple of questions over here.</p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong>Yeah, one thing you haven&#8217;t mentioned and please address it, is the toll on human beings of the Green Agenda.  The world and our country came into fruition on oil, on energy.  Nothing works, no one gets a better life without the energy to propel it.  If you look at the Green Agenda, as a matter of fact I live in Austin.  We have a little tabloid that&#8217;s called <i>The Austin Chronical.</i>  Yeah you laugh, but it&#8217;s amazingly effective.  They had some smartly groomed black kids calling green the new black, displayed on the cover of last&#8217;s week&#8217;s <em>Chronical</em>.  This is a lie.  It&#8217;s all a lie.  If you take away the energy, Africa stops.  They have no chance of ever getting out from under the chains of and if you look at China, what has propelled them forward at break neck speed?  Energy, energy, energy and they take that all away and would you please address that because that&#8217;s one of the human tolls of the Green Agenda.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>So I just got back my, it&#8217;s a great point.  I just got back from Zimbabwe.  My niece is a Peace Corps volunteer in this little village really out in the middle of nowhere.  When you were talking I was thinking about this because this village, they are incredibly great people.  I just fell in love with these people but you know, they&#8217;re living almost literally like it&#8217;s the 16<sup>th</sup> Century and you know what they don&#8217;t have in this town?  Electricity, electricity. You can&#8217;t do anything if you don&#8217;t have electric power, and for our government, for Barack Obama to run around the world telling these countries they should use fossil fuels, use less fossil fuels, that&#8217;s immoral, right?  He&#8217;s basically saying he wants to keep these countries poor and that&#8217;s a message we need to get through to people.</p>
<p>Just one other quick little story: we lost our electricity last summer when we had a big storm in Northern Virginia and I wrote a piece in the <i>Wall Street Journal, </i>and it got a huge response, and I just said what happened when the Morris electricity went out.  I have three kids, two teenagers who I don&#8217;t like very much and then I have an 11 year old but my teenagers when the electricity went out, they thought the first few hours were really cool. We had a fire and we had candles and so on and I&#8217;ve got to tell you.  After the first day, because we were without electricity for 72 hours, my kids were like screaming how do people live without electricity, my God they didn&#8217;t have any screen, they didn&#8217;t have cell phones.  The point is if we let the Green Agenda go forward as these people want to do, we&#8217;re going to have rolling brownouts and blackouts in this country.  If you want to see the American people get angry, it&#8217;s going to be when that happens.  If you turn out the lights, people get pretty upset.</p>
<p><strong>Audience Member: </strong>Good morning, two quick points.  I find myself not surprised that once again I agree with Senator Sessions.  Good morning Senator.  Alan Greenspan testified before Chuck Shumer on April 30, 2009.  It&#8217;s just two sentences, I want to read this because I think we have too many high-tech workers from foreign countries competing with American high-tech workers which disincentivizes kids from going into those fields.  This is from Greenspan&#8217;s testimony.  &#8220;Greatly expanding our quotas for the highly skilled with lower wage premiums of the skilled over the lesser skilled.  Skill shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition.  Quotas have been substituted for the wage pricing mechanism and in the process&#8221; &#8212; this word amazes me &#8212; &#8220;we have created a privileged elite whose incomes are being supported at non-competitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals.  Eliminating such restrictions would reduce at least some of our income and equality.&#8221;  We need to get more American kids into those high tech industries, item number one.  Item number two, if you go to the UN web site you will find that they predict the two fastest ways of increasing remittances flowing from the U.S. to the Third World, sustainability, green, and in that comprehensive reform. We need to understand that our laws were based on the concept of protecting American lives and American jobs, first and foremost.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>Michael, what are your thoughts.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>I&#8217;m not sure I&#8217;m so concerned about protecting high-skill people from competition.  I think high skills are not are zero sum game.  Andrew Carnegie did not suffer because John D. Rockefeller was successful in business.  You got one immigrant and the other is the son of a confidence man.  You can make an argument I think particularly at the stage of employment that we have now.  Steve would not agree with it, but that low-skill employment is the zero sum game for the people and you let in more low-skills from other countries you drive down wages of low skill people in this country.  I think there&#8217;s something at least marginally to that.  High skill people are going to create and do things that you central planners didn&#8217;t think up.  They&#8217;re going to actually figure out new things and Andrew Carnegie figured out new things, the poor boy from Scotland.  So I&#8217;m for letting a lot of competition bloom with high-skilled people and I don&#8217;t think they ever crowd each other out.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Here&#8217;s why that&#8217;s completely wrong to say that our high-skilled workers or immigrants are taking jobs from American high-skilled workers.  There&#8217;s a very simple reason why that&#8217;s completely wrong.  It&#8217;s because 36 percent of the businesses in Silicon Valley that hire American high-tech workers were founded by immigrants.  So if the immigrants didn&#8217;t come here a lot of those businesses wouldn&#8217;t exist in the first place.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>What we&#8217;ve seen with a lot of Hispanic voters &#8212; the one seriously contested Senate race was a state with above national average Hispanic percentage, was in Colorado and in Colorado the Democrats, partly through an effort of very rich people putting together a pretty smart political operation that&#8217;s won the major offices there, they imposed a gentry liberal, my friend Joe Cochran&#8217;s phrase, a gentry liberal program: gun control.  Hispanic voters recalled one of the state senators that voted for it in Pueblo County, 42 percent Hispanic county.  They were going to have an anti-fracking referendum.  They decided to take that off the ballot because it was polling so badly they were going to get licked 80/20 or something like that.  Abortion absolutism, Senator Mark Udall became known by the liberal media as Mark Uterus, ran half his ads, the NARAL pro-choice ad said that there would be no contraceptives available in Colorado if Cory Gardner was elected to the U.S. senate.  We now have a chance to fact check that prediction since Gardner was elected and we&#8217;ll see if there are any condoms available in Colorado.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>Along with their marijuana.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>Well I&#8217;m not going to go there.  They are rejecting that agenda.  The question is do Republicans have an agenda that can go forward and that can help them maximize their human capital.  Help them achieve their dreams.  Help them earn success.  I think we&#8217;ve been trying up in the platform, a lot of you in the audience are working at this sort of thing.  Can&#8217;t give you a fast formula but I think there are Republicans working on it.  I think that we&#8217;ve got to get going and the other low hanging fruit.  What Michele mentioned, the medical devices tax.  We have these wonderful industries that produce things like prosthetics that enable wounded veterans to live full lives in a way that wouldn&#8217;t have ever been possible before and what does this crowd do? They want to tax it.  I think that there are a lot of opportunities here.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Well Michael let me just give you one, Hispanics are an obvious one but let me just put up one thought about black Americans.  Anybody in this room from Illinois?  A few.  What a great race, Bruce Rauner won one of the most important races in the country this year, and what&#8217;s interesting about Bruce Rauner, this is a near billionaire hedge fund manager.  They tried to run their own Mitt Romney campaign against him.  Here&#8217;s what interesting about Bruce Rauner.  I think every Republican in the country should take a page out of his book.  You know what he did?  Bruce Rauner spent a lot of his time going into black churches, black neighborhoods, black schools and he had a couple of messages.  One of the things he said, which every Republican should do when we&#8217;re talking to black audiences.  What have the Democrats done for you?  Really, what have the Democrats done for black American?  Nothing.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>No, I&#8217;m from Detroit and I&#8217;ve seen what happens.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>Yeah, right, exactly.  That was his point and what Bruce Rauner said is you elect me Governor of this State – I&#8217;m going to clean up your neighborhoods, I&#8217;m going to give you school choice, I&#8217;m going to clean up your schools, I&#8217;m going to give you jobs and you know what?  Bruce Ronner got 20 percent of the black vote in Illinois, so we can win a bigger percentage of black Americans with a message of economic growth.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Barone: </strong>Well, and here&#8217;s an Hispanic message.  California and Texas, we&#8217;ve been looking at the number of jobs.  Both of those states in the 2010 census were about 36 percent Hispanic.  Texas Hispanics get better test scores than California Hispanics.  Texas is non-union, non-ed run schools do a better job than California&#8217;s Teacher Union runs schools, okay?  Texas Hispanics make more money than California Hispanics.  Texas Hispanics have lower unemployment than California Hispanics.  We have a test case on whose policies help Hispanic people in American and I think also there&#8217;s a spirit of, well there&#8217;s a spirit of enterprise.  There&#8217;s also a cultural spirit.  When you go to Texas the people in Texas look at somebody that&#8217;s got stereotypical Latino features, they say that&#8217;s a Texan.  When rich Californians see somebody with that figure they hand them the keys to the car because they assume it&#8217;s a valet parking attendant.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Moore: </strong>So the message here, folks, is we have to make America look more like Texas and less like New York and California.</p>
<p><strong>Brian Calle: </strong>Except for the weather, except for the weather.  Thank you all very much for taking the time to listen to us and let&#8217;s give one more round of applause to our great panel.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
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		<title>Why Do 80% of Palestinians Support Murder?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/moshe-phillips-and-benyamin-korn/why-do-80-of-palestinians-support-murder/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-do-80-of-palestinians-support-murder</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Dec 2014 05:03:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Moshe Phillips and Benyamin Korn]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247961</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The one issue that unifies Palestinians more than any other. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/F121214IR01-1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247962" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/F121214IR01-1-450x299.jpg" alt="F121214IR01-1" width="342" height="227" /></a>In most parts of the world, it&#8217;s not easy to find a major issue on which 80% of the population agrees. An election victory in the United States is considered a &#8220;landslide&#8221; if the winner receives more than about 60% of the vote. (Such as Richard Nixon winning 65% of the vote against George McGovern in the 1972 presidential race.)</p>
<p>But among Palestinian Arabs in Judea-Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza, it turns out there is one issue on which there is more support than any other: randomly murdering Israeli Jews.</p>
<p>The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research last week asked a sample of 1,270 Palestinian Arab adults in the territories what they thought of the recent wave of attacks in which Palestinians stabbed Israelis or ran them over with their cars. Fully 80% responded that they support such attacks.</p>
<p>Note that the respondents weren&#8217;t talking about theoretical future attacks. They were commenting on recent attacks which they know all about. Here is what they are endorsing:</p>
<p>&#8211; Ramming a car into a crowd at a train station in Jerusalem. The fatalities included a three-month old infant.</p>
<p>&#8211; Stabbing an unarmed young woman standing at a bus stop in Gush Etzion.</p>
<p>&#8211; Axing and machine-gunning four rabbis at prayer in a Jerusalem synagogue.</p>
<p>Could the 80% endorsement be a fluke? A one-time aberration? A momentary lapse in good judgment, spurred by recent tensions?</p>
<p>Hardly. There is a remarkable consistency in Palestinian public opinion. The same polling institution surveyed 1,200 Palestinians in the territories in late September and found that 80% support resuming the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel.</p>
<p>Why is it that 80% of Palestinians embrace the brutal murder and terrorization of Israeli civilians?</p>
<p>Three reasons stand out.</p>
<p>First, there is the general brutality of Palestinian Arab society. Violence by relatives against women suspected of immorality, violence by Muslim extremists against Christian Arabs, violence by the Palestinian Authority regime against dissidents&#8211;it&#8217;s all commonplace in the territories. That makes it easier for the average citizen to see violence as acceptable.</p>
<p>Second, there is a sense that violence works. Kidnapping Israelis led to the release of thousands of Palestinian terrorists from prison. Decades of bombings and hijackings led to widespread international support for Palestinian statehood. The recent attacks in Jerusalem have led to calls to redivide the city (including, most recently, by U.S. Mideast envoy Martin Indyk).</p>
<p>Third, and perhaps most important, is the influence of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement by the Palestinian leadership. Secretary of State John Kerry has correctly pointed out that the Jerusalem synagogue slaughter was, as he put it, &#8220;a pure result of incitement.&#8221; The constant declarations by Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas and other leaders praising terrorists as heroes and accusing Israel of desecrating Muslim religious places, have created an atmosphere in which support for murdering Jews has become the norm.</p>
<p>The normally alleged justification for Palestinian violence – a reaction to “the occupation” – does not stand up. Since 1995, over 95% of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) Palestinians have lived under the administration of the Palestinian Authority, which controls all aspects of Palestinian life except for visas and external security. And since 2005, Palestinians in Gaza have controlled even these.</p>
<p>The Oslo Accords were supposed to have put an end to all that. Palestinian leaders were supposed to educate the public to embrace peace. They promised to change the hearts and minds of average Palestinians, to raise a generation ready to live in peace with Israel. Instead, they decided to do exactly the opposite. And, as the new poll demonstrates, they succeeded.</p>
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		<title>Fear in America</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/fear-in-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=fear-in-america</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 21 Oct 2014 04:40:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243425</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Citizens say their country is "out of control" -- and leadership is nowhere to be found. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/20193bfc-943d-49dc-b9dd-eee2f768b4a81.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243428" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/20193bfc-943d-49dc-b9dd-eee2f768b4a81.jpg" alt="20193bfc-943d-49dc-b9dd-eee2f768b4a8" width="330" height="256" /></a>In Abraham Lincoln’s famous words, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” The American people have common sense. They cannot be fooled for long by the kind of pious pronouncements and half-truths from President Obama and his administration that they hear and read about virtually every day.</p>
<p>During the last six years, many Americans have sensed a steep decline in America’s prestige, military might and economic power in the world. They wake up every day to witness their country lurching from crisis to crisis in a rudderless ship.</p>
<p>Jihadists are on the march, unchecked by President Obama’s tepid responses. Russian President Vladimir Putin openly thumbs his nose at the United States under Obama’s leadership. Iran is edging ever closer to achieving its ambition of becoming a nuclear-armed power, while the Obama administration bumbles along with fruitless negotiations and weakening of sanctions. Ebola is spreading, while the president refuses to take the common sense step of banning commercial flights from the most affected countries. In fact, according to Judicial Watch, “the Obama administration is actively formulating plans to admit Ebola-infected non-U.S. citizens into the United States for treatment,” apparently without seeking congressional approval. President Obama is also reportedly planning to issue an executive order after the mid-term elections that would effectively grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants in this country while the southern border remains vulnerable to the entry of terrorists and infected illegal immigrants. The economy remains shaky, characterized by stagnant household incomes and people giving up looking for work as the labor participation rate has declined to the lowest rate in 36 years. Add to all this the scandals about which the Obama administration has not been forthcoming, including the handling of events leading up to, during and following the jihadist attacks in Benghazi that claimed four American lives, the IRS’s politically motivated targeting of conservatives, the mess at the Department of Veterans Affairs and Fast-and-Furious.</p>
<p>Thus, it should be no surprise that, in a recent poll of likely voters in competitive U.S. House and Senate races reported on by<a href="http://images.politico.com/global/2014/10/17/141017_politico_topline_october_2014_survey_t_1605_watermark.html"><span style="color: #0463c1;"> Politico</span></a>, 64% believed that “[t]hings in the U.S. feel like they are out of control right now.” A whopping 84% of those polled believed that ISIS represents a threat to our homeland, despite assurances from the Obama administration that there is no credible information that ISIS plans to attack the homeland. When Americans see the brutality ISIS is capable of with their own eyes, and hear ISIS warn that “We Will Drown All of You in Blood” and that the jihadists will “raise the flag of Allah in the White House,” Americans have good reason to believe that things are getting out of control and that the Obama administration is either clueless or deceitful. ISIS is far better armed than al Qaeda was when it carried out its 9/11 attacks and has the advantage of hundreds of recruits from the West, including the United States, who can return home and wreak havoc.</p>
<p>Overall, 53% disapprove of President Obama’s performance as president while 47% approve, according to the poll published by Politico. Three times as many strongly disapproved than strongly approved of President Obama’s performance. While neither President Obama nor former President George W. Bush elicited much confidence in terms of being effective at managing the basic functions of the federal government, Bush edged out Obama by 38% to 35%, respectively.</p>
<p>President Obama’s signature domestic piece of legislation, Obamacare, fared poorly in the poll. More than twice as many of those polled believed that their quality of health care will be worse than better under Obamacare. Eight times as many believed that the amount of money they pay personally will increase than decrease under Obamacare.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/10/20/americans-gloom-marches-into-second-decade/"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll</span></a> released last week backs up the prevailing feeling among Americans that things are heading in the wrong direction. Sixty-five percent of those polled “said the country had taken a wrong turn, and only 25% said the U.S. was on the right path,” according to the Wall Street Journal. “The only time the public has felt worse was in October 2008, during the first, deep spasms of the recession.” As one retirement-age female Democrat from Iowa was quoted as saying in explaining why she thought the nation was on the wrong track:  “The wars, the bombings, the terrorism and that, this Ebola thing, that’s not good.</p>
<p>The results of a <a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/right_direction_or_wrong_track"><span style="color: #0463c1;">Rasmussen Reports survey</span></a> published last week further confirm Americans’ deep concerns about the direction in which the country is heading. Sixty-five percent of likely voters polled believed that the country was on the wrong track while only 27% believed that the country was headed in the right direction. “[Seventy percent] of voters not affiliated with either major political party think the country is on the wrong track,” Rasmussen reported. Democrats and liberals were more inclined to believe the country was headed in the right direction, but by slim margins of 48% to 42% for Democrats and 48% to 40% for liberals.</p>
<p>When former President Jimmy Carter gave his so-called “malaise” speech in July 1979 in which he discussed the energy crisis the nation was then facing, he tried to address head-on what he described as a “crisis of confidence” among the American people. While not acknowledging that his own failed policies were a significant contributor to Americans’ loss of confidence in the future, at least he did not let fund-raising and golf games divert his attention from trying to directly address Americans’ concerns.</p>
<p>To be sure, Carter misdiagnosed the reasons for Americans’ loss of confidence. However, he did see that there was a fundamental feeling of deep unease in the land that the president as the leader of the country and the free world could not simply ignore. President Obama, on the other hand, is either in denial or casts about for false excuses. Indeed, he chose a fund-raising event last August to pronounce that the world was in much better shape than when he took office. He blamed the rise of social media for feeding Americans’ anxieties. He said that the “world has always been messy,” and that “we’re just noticing now because of social media and our capacity to see in intimate detail the hardships that people are going through.”</p>
<p>Barack Obama cannot even man up as much as Jimmy Carter tried to do 35 years ago, which is pathetic. Instead, he continues to insult the intelligence of the American people. But as the poll numbers reported by Politico demonstrate, the American people will not be fooled. They know in their guts that things are out of control and they have a pretty good idea why. They have decided to believe their own eyes and ears rather than the Obama administration’s double-talk.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Independents Fear Terrorism &#8212;- Dems Prioritize Global Warming &#8216;Threat&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/independents-fear-terrorism-dems-prioritize-global-warming-threat/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=independents-fear-terrorism-dems-prioritize-global-warming-threat</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Sep 2014 04:38:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=241646</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[New polling shows progressives' peculiar priorities. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/140625-iraq-isis-mosul-street-445a_82f23afee3a82a104ef51a50474e30c61.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-241649" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/140625-iraq-isis-mosul-street-445a_82f23afee3a82a104ef51a50474e30c61-450x334.jpg" alt="140625-iraq-isis-mosul-street-445a_82f23afee3a82a104ef51a50474e30c6" width="295" height="219" /></a>A Pew Research Center/USA Today <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2014/08/28/as-new-dangers-loom-more-think-the-u-s-does-too-little-to-solve-world-problems/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">survey</span></a> conducted between Aug. 20 and 24 reveals a startling disconnect between Democrats and the rest of America.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">A staggering 68 percent of Democrats consider global climate change a greater threat to the United States than either Al Qaeda at 67 percent, or ISIS at 65 percent. By contrast, 80 percent of Republicans cited Al Qaeda as the principal threat facing the nation, followed by 78 percent citing ISIS, and only 25 percent expressing concern about global climate change. Among Independents, Al Qaeda led the way at 69 percent, followed by ISIS at 63 percent, and global climate change bringing up the rear at 44 percent.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The survey addressed nine categories, including Iran’s nuclear program; China&#8217;s emergence as a nuclear power; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; extremist groups like Al Qaeda; Islamic militant groups like ISIS; North Korea’s nuclear program; growing tension between Russia and her neighbors; the country-to-country speed of infectious diseases; and global climate change.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">For Democrats, global climate change was concern Number One. For both Republicans and Independents, it came in dead last.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Such findings should surprise no one. Global climate change has assumed a cult-like status among the American left, one that not only transcends scientific reality, but engenders an unseemly level of rage directed at skeptics, and a monumental level of hypocrisy among its adherents.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The scientific reality has been scarred by politics. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2014/08/07/global-warming-pause-puts-crisis-in-perspective/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">admits</span></a> that many of their hypotheses are based on &#8220;best guess” assumptions. Yet those best guess assumptions have consistently over-estimated the amount of warming, with predictions far exceeding that which is actually taking place. We are currently in a global warming “pause&#8221; that has <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/03/rss-shows-no-global-warming-for-17-years-10-months/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">exceeded</span></a> 17 years. Yet even if one goes back to 1979, when satellite instruments began to consistently measure temperatures in the Earth’s lower atmosphere, the overall temperature rise has been approximately one-third of one degree Celsius, or approximately one degree Celsius per century. Since 1990, IPCC computer models have predicted at least 2.4 degrees of global warming per century, almost two-and-a-half times the actual amount.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Perhaps such measurements are honest mistakes. Or perhaps not. In 2009, the Climategate scandal revealed scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit <a href="http://www.thenewamerican.com/reviews/opinion/item/18555-global-warming-hoax-unraveling-someone-tell-obama"><span style="color: #1255cc;">conspired</span></a> to suppress data that conflicted with their apparently preconceived conclusions. According to Real Science blogger  Steven Goddard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has also been <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/10916086/The-scandal-of-fiddled-global-warming-data.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">involved</span></a> data manipulation, replacing real temperature readings with data compiled on computers. And much to Al Gore’s chagrin, the Arctic ice cap he <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2738653/Stunning-satellite-images-summer-ice-cap-thicker-covers-1-7million-square-kilometres-MORE-2-years-ago-despite-Al-Gore-s-prediction-ICE-FREE-now.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">predicted</span></a> in 2007 could be &#8220;gone in summer in as little as seven years,” has now expanded two years in a row by as much as 43 to 62 precent, depending how one measures it.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">None of these inconvenient realities (and countless others) are presented to entirely dismiss the notion that global temperatures may be increasing, but rather to demonstrate that among leftists, hysteria and fear-mongering remain an integral part of the climate change debate.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It is hysteria and fear-mongering that demands any skepticism whatsoever must be threatened. Thus when Swedish climatologist Dr. Lennart Bengtsson expressed his own reservations about climate change, his fellow colleagues <a href="http://humanevents.com/2014/05/16/the-new-climategate-scandal/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">turned</span></a> him into a pariah that made it impossible &#8220;to conduct my normal work and ….even start to worry about my health and safety,” he said in letter explaining his resignation from a London think tank—not because he questioned global warming, but because he challenged the rate of change demanded by the dogmatists.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">On Monday, Robert Kennedy Jr. <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/23/robert-kennedy-jr-we-need-laws-punish-global-warmi/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">epitomized</span></a> the left’s determination to silence the doubters, insisting there should be a law allowing authorities to punish skeptics who are “selling out the public trust,” even as he accused the left’s favorite target, the Koch Brothers, of engaging in climate “treason.” Getting even more hysterical, Kennedy stated that the Kochs should be thrown in &#8220;the Hague with all the other war criminals.” Yet when a reporter <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2765461/Robert-F-Kennedy-Jr-loses-cool-grabs-mic-reporter-pushing-carbon-footprint.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">confronted</span></a> Kennedy about his own rather large carbon footprint, he became irate and accused her of “destroying democracy,” before stating that he does not believe quality of life should sacrificed for the environment.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The exchange highlights the glaring hypocrisy that animates Kennedy, Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, and a host of other celebrities and politicians more than willing to talk the talk, as they conspicuously avoid walking the walk. Even the 300,000 marchers who took part in New York’s &#8220;People&#8217;s Climate March” Monday were apparently unconcerned by the <a href="http://theweek.com/speedreads/index/268575/speedreads-climate-change-marchers-leave-behind-mounds-of-trash"><span style="color: #1255cc;">tons</span></a> of non-biodegradable garbage they left behind in their wake. Furthermore, it’s quite easy for jet-setting, yacht-squatting celebrities to pontificate about preserving one’s “lifestyle”—as long as one is willing to ignore the reality that millions of people’s <i>lives </i>depend upon the economic development that requires energy expansion.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In a <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/09/23/350911527/obama-to-lays-out-approach-to-climate-change-in-u-n-speech"><span style="color: #1255cc;">speech</span></a> yesterday at the United Nations, President Obama addressed party’s favorite issue, warning the developing nations of the world that, because of global warming, they cannot repeat the “dirty phase” of industrial development. According to a <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/23/fact-sheet-president-obama-announces-new-actions-strengthen-global-resil"><span style="color: #1255cc;">fact sheet</span></a> from the White House’s Office of the Press Secretary, the president’s initiatives include an &#8220;Executive Order on Climate-Resilient International Development, requiring agencies to factor climate-resilience considerations systematically into the U.S. government’s international development work and to promote a similar approach with multilateral entities.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">That didn’t sit particularly well with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with one insider <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2767000/Obama-s-new-climate-change-rules-create-unnecessary-hurdle-global-relief-development-work-warns-CDC-official-including-EBOLA-efforts.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">characterizing</span></a> such considerations as “an unnecessary hurdle” to leap over during emergencies that require urgency. On Monday the CDC offered up a sobering example of such urgency, predicting that as many as 1.4 million people could be affected by the Ebola outbreak by January of next year.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Furthermore, the multilateral entities to which Obama referred don’t include India and China. Both countries decided to <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-china-ignore-un-climate-change-summit/article1-1267288.aspx"><span style="color: #1255cc;">ignore</span></a> yesterday&#8217;s UN Climate Summit, despite being responsible for one-third of the total carbon emissions in 2013. Both nations have little interest in curbing their emissions until the United States and the European Union offer “substantial incentives” for doing so. Their resistance is likely exacerbated by the reality that the Green Climate Fund, established by the UN at the 2010 talks in Cancun to <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2014/0923/UN-Climate-Summit-China-India-leaders-are-no-shows.-Why-that-s-ok.-video"><span style="color: #1255cc;">finance</span></a> green energy projects in Third World nations, has failed to get off the ground. Absent the transfer of wealth from rich nations to developing nations this fund represents, there is little likelihood of either nation jumping on board the “green” bandwagon anytime soon.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In the meantime, Democrats’ &#8220;less-urgent” national security priorities have forced the Obama administration’s hand. A bombing campaign was initiated in Syria Monday, driven in large part by the reality that a virtually unknown group of al Qaeda affiliated terrorists called the Khorasan Group &#8220;was in the final stages of plans to execute major attacks against Western targets and potentially the U.S. homeland,” <a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/defense/defense-official-al-qaida-affiliated-group-was-in-final-stages-of-planning-attacks-against-the-west-20140923"><span style="color: #1255cc;">according </span></a>to Lt. Gen. William Mayville, the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. American officials <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/world/middleeast/us-sees-other-more-direct-threats-beyond-isis-.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">contend</span></a> the group, comprised of al Qaeda operatives from the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa, is even more intent on initiating domestic terror attacks than ISIS is. Moreover, they have a special affinity for terrorists plots involving concealed explosives.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">ISIS may disagree. In a 42-minute speech released Monday, ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad Adnani <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/23/islamic-state-followers-urged-to-launch-attacks-against-australians"><span style="color: #1255cc;">called</span></a> on Western Muslims to perpetrate domestic attacks in a series of “lone wolf” operations. &#8220;Do not ask for anyone&#8217;s advice and do not seek anyone&#8217;s verdict,&#8221; Adnani said. &#8220;Kill the infidel, whether he is civilian or military for they have the same ruling. Both of them are disbelievers.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">One is left to wonder whether Democrat “true believers,” who view global climate change as a greater threat than Islamic terror, are swayed by the possibility of  “imminent” domestic terror attacks. Perhaps they need reminding that 9/11 was a “two-fer,” as in a terrorist attack that also precipitated an <a href="http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/wtc/html/know/know.shtml"><span style="color: #1255cc;">environmental disaster</span></a> in Lower Manhattan. Nor does it take much of an imagination to envision the “environmental impact” of a “dirty” bomb, or outright nuke, detonated in an American city. It takes even less of an imagination to know how a majority of Americans would view the warped priories of Democrats if Islamic terrorists make good on any of their murderous designs. Perhaps that majority should remember those priorities in November.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The Great Racial Disconnect on Police</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ben-shapiro/the-great-racial-disconnect-on-police-1-1/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-great-racial-disconnect-on-police-1-1</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ben-shapiro/the-great-racial-disconnect-on-police-1-1/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Aug 2014 04:54:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Black]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Darren Wilson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ferguson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[loot]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michael Brown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Police]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Poll]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[shooting]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239086</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The black community's distorted view of Ferguson — and how to fix it.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/MOSTP352-814_2014_000000_low.jpg-400x257.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239024" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/MOSTP352-814_2014_000000_low.jpg-400x257.jpg" alt="MOSTP352-814_2014_000000_low.jpg-400x257" width="284" height="229" /></a>On Monday, Rasmussen released a poll of Americans regarding the guilt or innocence of Officer Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot unarmed 18-year-old black man Michael Brown six times in Ferguson, Missouri. Those polls show that 57 percent of black adults think that Wilson should be found guilty of murder; 56 percent of whites, by contrast, are undecided on the matter.</p>
<p>The latter position is the correct one. Witnesses, including one Dorian Johnson, claim that Brown was pulled over by Wilson, attacked by him and pulled into the car, ran, stopped when told to freeze by Wilson, held up his hands, and was then shot. Other witnesses — more than a dozen of them, according to local media — say that Brown attacked Wilson, went for Wilson&#8217;s gun, fled before being told to stop, then charged Wilson before being shot.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s what we do know: Despite original media reports labeling Brown a &#8220;gentle giant,&#8221; Brown and shooting witness Dorian Johnson did participate in a strong-arm robbery of a local convenience store. We know that despite original witness reports suggesting that Brown was shot in the back, he was not. We know that contemporaneous witness accounts caught on tape suggest that Brown charged at Wilson. And we know that a young black man is dead with six bullets in him at the hands of a white cop.</p>
<p>And to huge segments of the black community, that last fact is the only one that matters. The full facts do not matter to extremists in the black community and to their white leftist enablers, particularly in the media. A full 41 percent of black Americans believe that riots and looting represent &#8220;legitimate outrage.&#8221; Not protesting — riots and looting. Just 35 percent of blacks think that looters and rioters are criminals taking advantage of the situation.</p>
<p>There is a pattern here: a widespread belief in the black community that the justice system is rigged against them. That belief is not without basis — there is no question that America has a history of racism within the criminal justice community. By the same token, there is also no question that American law enforcement is the least racist it has ever been, by a long shot, and that racism within the law enforcement community is broadly considered unacceptable and vile.</p>
<p>But the belief in a racist justice system seems to have maintained its stranglehold inside the black community. That belief, taken to its extreme, means support for black criminality. It is no coincidence that during the O.J. Simpson trial, 60 percent of black Americans did not believe O.J. was guilty. It is also no coincidence that many white Americans perceive black support for murderers like O.J. Simpson and riots in Ferguson as support for lawlessness, and therefore pooh-pooh charges of police racism. When crying racism becomes crying wolf, it is hard to take such charges seriously.</p>
<p>The solution, however, lays neither in knee-jerk accusations of racism from the black community nor in immediate dismissals of individual accusations by the white community. It lies in continued targeting and prosecution of individual racists in the police community, of course — and far more importantly, it lies in less criminality within the black community. The high levels of crime in the black community contribute to heavier policing, which in turn reinforces perceptions of racial targeting; those perceptions then create resentment against police than ends too often in violent encounters and failure to report crime. And so the cycle starts anew.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s time to break the cycle. The only way to do that is to focus on the fact that police have no excuse to shoot anyone unless those people are committing criminal acts. On that we can all agree. Yes, we must arduously insist that police hold to that standard, and we must prosecute those who do not to the fullest extent of the law. But by the same token, we must insist that criminal acts stop — and to do that, we must move beyond simple anti-police sentiment.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The Amnesty Radicals&#8217; Big Mistake</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-amnesty-radicals-big-mistake/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-amnesty-radicals-big-mistake</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-amnesty-radicals-big-mistake/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Aug 2014 04:52:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Amnesty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[border crisis]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=238312</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[America's new anti-immigration consensus. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/MG_5962.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238414" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/MG_5962-450x300.jpg" alt="MG_5962" width="273" height="182" /></a>A new <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2014/0807/70-percent-of-Americans-see-immigration-as-threat-to-American-way-of-life">Reuters poll</a> shows that not only do 70% of Americans think that illegal aliens threaten the traditional American way of life, but 45% believe that even the number of legal immigrants should be reduced.</p>
<p>Only 17% think that legal immigration should increase. That’s a problem because increasing legal immigration is one of the major planks of the “immigration reform” plan of both parties.</p>
<p>Everyone used to agree that immigration was a good thing. But that was before they saw photos of gang members slumped in their gyms and buses full of illegal aliens in Homeland Security convoys coming to hike up their taxes while lowering their property values.</p>
<p>And then immigration suddenly stopped being a Neil Diamond song and became a national crisis.</p>
<p>America is developing an anti-immigration consensus. That wasn’t supposed to happen in the nation of immigrants. Media outlets are shaking their heads over the poll numbers and correctly tying them to the border crisis. What they aren’t saying though is that the border crisis was calculatedly set off by Obama’s illegal alien DREAM amnesty. And as with ObamaCare, the radical agenda backfired.</p>
<p>The border crisis was supposed to start the amnesty machine. It was the sort of confrontational activism popular with Chicago community organizers who know that if you can’t get what you want, you dump a bunch of people on the doorstep of whatever agency you want to blackmail which creates an instant social services mess so that the politicians will have no choice but to “solve the problem” on your terms.</p>
<p>The harassment of politicians by illegal alien activists took Chicago community organizing to the national level. The border crisis was the next phase of the assault aimed at hitting Americans right where they lived by turning every state into a border state. But the rest of the United States isn’t Chicago. Or at least not the parts of Chicago that community organizers like.</p>
<p>Crowds waving American flags blocked buses. Stories leaked out about diseases being spread around. Even Democrats did their best to keep the illegal alien drops out of their states.</p>
<p>The border crisis was meant to move Americans toward an even more liberal position on illegal immigration. Instead it had the opposite effect and tainted the idea of immigration as a whole.</p>
<p>The backlash was completely predictable to anyone who had been paying attention to Europe.</p>
<p>The United States didn’t have an anti-immigration consensus until Obama duplicated the European situation by manufacturing a refugee crisis. Europe developed an anti-immigration consensus when a poor economy collided with large numbers of refugees and a central authority that remained blindly intent on pushing more immigrants and migrants through the system regardless of popular discontent.</p>
<p>Democrats and Republicans plotted amnesty while dismissing the idea of an anti-immigration consensus. They acted as if the rise of anti-immigration parties like UKIP was a purely European phenomenon and that the American political brass ring would go to the biggest amnesty shill.</p>
<p>Now the polls are telling them that they were wrong.</p>
<p>Republicans and Democrats had always been selectively reading the polls in favor of amnesty while ignoring the negative polls involving immigrants and the economy. Americans appeared to support legalization because they didn’t care much about illegal aliens. Even Latino voters ranked immigration low on their set of priorities. The passion had always been on the side of immigration opponents.</p>
<p>Just like ObamaCare, an issue that no one had particularly cared about before and for which passionate support was virtually non-existent, Obamnesty became the banner policy of the establishment and that made it possible for the opposition to define the issue through the politics of confrontation.</p>
<p>The border crisis made immigration seem urgent for the first time by visualizing a massive human tide swarming inside. Now immigration is polling as a priority and not the kind of priority that Obama had in mind. Instead the border crisis has caused immigration to be seen as an economic threat.</p>
<p>Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012 had played off isolationism among ordinary Americans while promising multilateral soft power to the elites. Pledges of opposition to the Iraq War in 2008 and the dishonest promises of “Nation Building at Home” in 2012 allowed Obama to outmaneuver a moribund Republican political machine that was desperately short of ideas.</p>
<p>But Obama forgot that isolationism tends to go together with immigration skepticism. Once people decide that the outside world isn’t worth bothering with, their suspicion of international interventions easily transfers over to immigration.</p>
<p>America today has more than a little in common with the period of the great immigration backlash of the 1920s. Economic uncertainty and a period of isolationism after an exhausting foreign war combined with the arrival of huge numbers of immigrants led to an immigration backlash back then. It would not be unprecedented for it to lead to an immigration backlash all over again.</p>
<p>Economic malaise and political isolationism are just as present in the United States as in Europe. The amnesty push polarized the issue and created a major crisis. Obama took on the role of America’s EU, an internationalist force dedicated to unlimited immigration with no concern for the citizenry.</p>
<p>The anti-immigration consensus stunned Tories and Labour alike in the UK. Both parties are still reeling from how easily UKIP exploited popular anger over immigration. And both parties have been forced to learn how to talk to working class voters again. If the same political tsunami hits America, Republicans and Democrats will be even more unprepared to deal with a phenomenon that will make the Tea Party disruptions over ObamaCare seem like a fond memory for the political establishment.</p>
<p>The two big parties are unready to deal with real isolationism. Barack Obama and Rand Paul may flirt with anti-war sloganeering, but they are also committed to amnesty, free trade and open borders.</p>
<p>Both Democrats and Republicans have made the mistake of trying to trade the white working class voters that they have for the future demographics of a transformed nation. But like their European counterparts they may find that they have prematurely buried the white working class voter.</p>
<p>Isolationism is less of a rejection of the outside world than it is a rejection of the terms on which a domestic political leadership has dealt with the rest of the world. Skepticism toward foreign intervention and immigration are really votes of no confidence in our own government. And that’s what the poll numbers for Obama and Congress have been communicating even before the border crisis.</p>
<p>In a miserable economy with living standards on the decline and little hope for the future, there is a great deal of free-floating anger in the political atmosphere. The sleeping giant of the coal mines and bars, the rust belt and the drought-plagued farmland may wake to his anger much more slowly than the mobs of migrants who have been community organized into parading back and forth all day in front of government offices waving their fists in the air, but when he wakes up, the political establishment that has gotten used to ignoring him will collapse and fall apart.</p>
<p>The amnesty radicals pushed too hard and too fast. They could have gotten everything they wanted through a consensus of both parties, but now they may end up with nothing at all.</p>
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		<title>Hope and Change Has Crashed and Burned</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/hope-and-change-has-crashed-and-burned/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hope-and-change-has-crashed-and-burned</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 19 Jun 2014 04:50:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[approval rating]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bush]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=234391</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama’s approval rating nosedives.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/110905_obama_approval_ap_328.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234392" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/110905_obama_approval_ap_328.jpg" alt="Obama" width="288" height="227" /></a>A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News <a href="http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/A_Politics/14463%20JUNE%20NBC-WSJ%20Poll%20(6-18%20Release).pdf"><span style="color: #1255cc;">poll</span></a> reveals that President Obama’s overall approval rating has cratered to 41 percent, tying the low-water mark of his presidency. Moreover, only half of those polled consider the president to be competent, a lower percentage than that accrued by George W. Bush following the pounding he and his administration took for its response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. One year later, Democrats took control of both houses of Congress. Whether the 2014 election will produce similar results remains to be seen.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Chuck Todd, Chief White House Correspondent for NBC News, <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/about-that-wall-street-journal-poll-is-the-public-saying-obamas-presidency-is-over/article/2549878"><span style="color: #1255cc;">minced</span></a> no words assessing the results. “This poll is a disaster for the president,&#8221; Todd said. &#8220;You look at the presidency here: Lowest job rating, tied for the lowest; lowest on foreign policy. His administration is seen as less competent than the Bush administration, post-Katrina.” Todd then addressed the leadership issue. “And then the issue of do you believe he can still lead? A majority believe no. Essentially the public is saying your presidency is over,” he added.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Todd is referring to the 54 percent of respondents who said Obama is no longer able “to lead the country and get the job done” compared to only 42 percent who thought he could. That pessimism is buttressed by the 41 percent who believe his performance has gotten worse over the past year, compared to only 15 percent who thought it had improved.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The economy is another sore spot for the president, with 54 percent of the respondents disapproving his handling of it, compared to only 41 percent who think he’s doing a good job. This suggests Americans are very much aware that the current <a href="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">6.3 percent</span></a> unemployment rate cannot obscure the reality that more than 92 million Americans have <a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/372-percentage-not-labor-force-remains-36-year-high"><span style="color: #1255cc;">given up</span></a> looking for work, dropping the labor force participation rate to its lowest level in 36 years. That economic discontent was reinforced in an <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/18/obama-hits-new-low-in-poll/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">April poll</span></a> conducted by the WSJ revealing that 55 percent of registered voters believe “the economic and political systems in the country are stacked against people like me,” versus only 39 percent who disagreed with that statement.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">By a massive 57-37 percent margin, Americans disapprove of Obama’s foreign policy and national security decisions. Despite such a dismal spread, Obama may have actually caught a <i>break</i> with regard to polling on this subject. Because the nationwide telephone poll of 1,000 adults was <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/obama-polling-lower-than-george-w.-bush-on-competency/article/2549877"><span style="color: #1255cc;">conducted</span></a> between June 11-15, it occurred largely before the consequences of his decision to prematurely withdraw from Iraq in 2011 was thrust front and center by the media.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">NBC News contends the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/world/middleeast/us-captures-benghazi-suspect.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">capture</span></a> of primary Benghazi suspect Ahmed Abu Khattallah might be an offsetting factor. But one suspects that when the public becomes fully aware that Khattallah had <a href="http://www.kgns.tv/home/headlines/Captured-Benghazi-suspect-an-enigma-263573411.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">remained</span></a> out in the open and conducted several news interviews over the past year and half, the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/25/obama-poll_n_4337643.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">majority</span></a> of Americans polled last November who said the president is neither honest nor trustworthy may see this as another effort to distract from the numerous scandals surrounding his administration. The public did get a chance to weigh in on the prisoner swap of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for five imprisoned Taliban fighters. A plurality of Americans disapproved, by a margin of 44 percent to 30 percent. Furthermore, Americans disagree with the real impetus behind Bergdahl’s release: despite Obama’s determination to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, 59 percent of Americans want it kept open.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Democrat Peter Hart, one of the three pollsters who ran the survey, along with fellow Democrat Fred Yang and Republican Bill McInturff, <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/18/obama-hits-new-low-in-poll/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">contends</span></a> the president’s ratings are tanking because “whether it’s Putin, Ukraine, the VA hospitals, Bowe Bergdahl, the events have controlled Obama, rather than Obama having controlled the events,” and while the public supports him on some issues, “he’s losing the political debate because they don’t see him as a leader,” Hart added.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">There are bright spots for Obama in the data as well. Sixty one percent of the respondents said they believe climate change is either &#8220;a serious problem&#8221; requiring &#8220;immediate action&#8221; or a big enough concern that &#8220;some action should be taken,” and 57 percent would favor curbing greenhouse gases, even if it meant an increase in their electricity bills. On the education front, 59 percent of Americans support the implementation of Common Core standards in their respective states, a number likely driven by the 61 percent who believe America’s public schools need “major changes” or a “complete overhaul.” Obama gets a pass on the VA scandal as well with six-in-ten blaming it on long-term bureaucratic issues, compared to only 14 percent who blame the Obama administration. And while only 27 percent of respondents believe the war in Afghanistan was worthwhile, one is left to wonder whether that percentage would have been if this poll had been taken after Americans were fully aware of the bloody chaos a complete and scheduled withdrawal of American forces actually leads to.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">With regard to immigration, 47 percent of the respondents believes it helps the nation, compared to 42 precent who believe it hurts the nation. But the question made no distinction between legal and illegal immigration. That is unsurprising since both NBC and the Wall Street Journal favor comprehensive reform. Thus while both entities characterize it as an advantage for Obama, reality may be quite different.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">So who gets the edge in the 2014 elections? Most <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-midterm-elections-democrats-can-have-some-hope-of-retaining-control-of-senate/2014/05/11/560476c6-d913-11e3-8009-71de85b9c527_story.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">pollsters</span></a> concede that the House is not in play, since Democrats would have to overcome a 17-seat deficit. Thus the focus has been on the Senate, where Republicans need a pickup of six seats to gain control of that chamber.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">What happens there remains highly uncertain. While Obama remains unpopular, the GOP remains more so: 45 percent of the respondents held an unfavorable view of Republicans compared to only 29 percent who favor them. Democrats favorable/unfavorable ratings were less ominous, at 38 percent positive, and 40 percent negative. Those numbers correlate to 45 percent who prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress, versus 43 percent who want Republicans in control. Furthermore, while 34 percent say their vote will signal opposition to the president compared to 24 percent who say it will signal support, 41 percent say it won’t signal anything about the president. There is also historical data that point to the reality that while the party of two-term presidents gets hit hard in one mid-term election, they <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/05/01/congressional_elections_and_the_sixth-year_myth_118199.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">almost never</span></a> get hit hard twice.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">On the other hand, other historical <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/11/15/why_obamas_job_approval_will_matter_in_2014_120676.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">data</span></a> show a president’s plunging job approval ratings correlate to gains made by the opposition party. And a Pew Research/USA Today poll <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/17/a-dug-in-electorate-bodes-poorly-for-the-democrats-in-november/#utm_source=rss&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=a-dug-in-electorate-bodes-poorly-for-the-democrats-in-november"><span style="color: #1255cc;">taken</span></a> in April indicates largely negative public perceptions of ObamaCare, the economy and the president &#8220;have to move in a clearly positive direction for the Democratic Party to avoid a drubbing in the congressional elections.” The poll further noted that as of two months ago, &#8220;the indications for that are not so good.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Two other factors <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fivethirtyeight-senate-forecast-toss-up-or-tilt-gop/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">favor</span></a> the GOP’s chances as well: one, in the 10 most competitive Senate races, eight are in states currently held by Democrats; and two, Democratic incumbents are retiring in South Dakota, West Virginia, and Montana. Uber pollster Nate Silver gives Republicans an 80 percent chance of making a pick up as a result.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Perhaps the brightest spot for the GOP concerns what the <i>WSJ</i> characterizes as Obama’s loss of &#8220;significant altitude among core constituencies such as Hispanics and younger Americans,” in an election that “tends to swing on turnout.” Among Hispanics, Obama’s approval rating has nosedived from 67 percent in January 2013, to 44 percent in the latest poll. Younger Americans, who have been <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/scotterickson/2014/06/16/as-millennials-struggle-through-obama-economy-president-offers-pledges-not-jobs-n1852130"><span style="color: #1255cc;">hammered</span></a> by ongoing high unemployment, have long been abandoning the president, with only 41 percent <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/harvard-poll-millennials-abandon-obamacare-would-vote-to-recall-obama/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">approving</span></a> his job performance as of last December. Moreover many of them have “buyer&#8217;s remorse” with regard to casting their votes for him in 2012. Neither of these developments bode well for Democrats.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Neither does one last unmentioned fact about the poll itself. The percentage of respondents who are “strong,” not very strong,” or “lean” Democrat is 41 percent, versus 36 percent of those who are “strong,” not very strong,” or “lean” Republican. Fifteen percent self-identified as strictly independent.” That most of the media apparently consider a five point advantage in favor of Democrats unworthy of mentioning is hardly surprising.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Neither is Obama’s fall from grace. Fox News contributor James Pinkerton <a href="http://foxnewsinsider.com/2014/06/16/will-media-hold-obama-admin-accountable-iraq"><span style="color: #1255cc;">illustrated</span></a> why in one searing sentence. “As Iraq is falling apart, the president is in California fundraising and talking about climate change of course, and playing golf,” he said. Even before Iraq spiraled out of control, Americans apparently noticed such a stunning lack of leadership. It appears Hope and Change has finally crashed and burned.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Illegal Immigration, Polls and Dishonesty</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ann-coulter/illegal-immigration-polls-and-dishonesty/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=illegal-immigration-polls-and-dishonesty</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 09 Jan 2014 05:04:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ann Coulter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Deportation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214934</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why conservatives are on the right side of the immigration debate. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/111005_border_patrol_ap_328.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214950" alt="Border Fence Donations" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/111005_border_patrol_ap_328-450x317.jpg" width="315" height="222" /></a>With Republicans tying themselves in knots over the Democrats&#8217; destructive, but superficially appealing, demand that unemployment benefits be extended to two and a half years, I return to my suggestion that Republicans stop playing defense and go on offense.For every issue that MSNBC loves to prattle on about, gloating that it will cost Republicans this or that demographic, there&#8217;s an equivalent issue to use against the Democrats. (The difference is: Our proposals would actually be good for the country.)</p>
<p>In addition to my repeated suggestion that Republicans introduce bills to institutionalize the dangerous mentally ill and force the Democrats to defend the right of psychos to crap in libraries and shoot up schools, Republicans should take the public&#8217;s side on immigration.</p>
<p>Democrats love to pretend their sucking up to illegals is all upside for them, but that&#8217;s because they lie even when taking polls.</p>
<p>Liberals will claim that 99 percent of Americans favor national health care after taking a poll that asks: &#8220;Do you support Americans being nice to one another?&#8221;</p>
<p>WAIT! THAT&#8217;S NOT A POLL ABOUT NATIONAL HEALTH CARE!</p>
<p><i>It&#8217;s the same thing. The government providing free health care to everyone is just being nice.</i></p>
<p>They&#8217;ll claim &#8220;90 percent of Americans favor banning most guns&#8221; based on a poll that asks, &#8220;Are you for common sense gun safety or are you against it?&#8221;</p>
<p>Similarly, the immigration polls triumphantly brandished by the media ask about positions no one holds, no politician has proposed and no bills would require. Polls are irrelevant if you lie to the people being polled.</p>
<p>Most immigration polls are variations on the one taken by the liberal Brookings Institution last March. Although it has been endlessly cited for allegedly showing that a majority of Americans support amnesty, the poll never asked about amnesty, or any real policy.</p>
<p>Rather, the poll gave respondents only two options, neither of which have been proposed by either political party or are up for a vote anywhere in America.</p>
<p>The options were:</p>
<p><i>&#8220;The best way to solve the country&#8217;s illegal immigration problem is to secure our borders and arrest and deport all those who are here illegally&#8221;;</i></p>
<p>Or:</p>
<p><i>&#8220;The best way to solve the country&#8217;s illegal immigration problem is to both secure our borders and provide an earned path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already in the U.S.&#8221;</i></p>
<p>Neither of those choices describes the position of anyone on either side of the immigration debate. Amnesty proponents have no intention of either securing the border or making illegals do anything to &#8220;earn&#8221; citizenship. Meanwhile, not a single amnesty opponent has proposed any program to &#8220;arrest and deport&#8221; illegals.</p>
<p>But amnesty proponents turn around and cite this fraudulent poll as proof that a majority of Americans support &#8220;a path to legalization.&#8221;</p>
<p>This is how the left uses polls to manipulate public opinion, rather than find out what it is. They provide the ingredients for today&#8217;s political discussion and we&#8217;re not allowed to pick any items off the menu.</p>
<p><i>But can&#8217;t I be against amnesty without voting for rounding up illegals at gunpoint?</i></p>
<p>No substitutions! Look at the menu.</p>
<p>All the &#8220;path to legalization&#8221; polls play the same trick. Either armed men round up millions of women and children at midnight, put them in leg irons and immediately deport them on stinky buses; or we offer them a &#8220;path to legalization&#8221; after meeting all sorts of onerous requirements (none of which will ever materialize).</p>
<p>There were loads of promises surrounding Ronald Reagan&#8217;s 1986 amnesty, too &#8212; such as securing the border, punishing employers who hire illegals and forcing illegals to pay back taxes. Sen. Teddy Kennedy vowed: &#8220;We will secure the borders henceforth. We will never again bring forward another amnesty bill like this.&#8221; (Those were the good old days when they were willing to call it &#8220;amnesty.&#8221;)</p>
<p>Obviously, that promise ended up in the same place Mary Jo Kopechne did &#8212; underwater and unmentioned.</p>
<p>After the bill passed, then-Rep. Chuck Schumer (Gov. Chris Christie&#8217;s current immigration adviser) immediately introduced a bill excusing illegal aliens from having to pay any back taxes at all.</p>
<p>Now, instead of 3 million illegal aliens living here, we have 11 million, salsa is the best-selling condiment in America, and I have to press &#8220;one&#8221; for English.</p>
<p>We already tried this the nice way. The country gets one mulligan, not two.</p>
<p>An honest poll question would ask:</p>
<p><i>Do you think people who have knowingly broken our laws to come here illegally with their families since the last amnesty should be rewarded with citizenship, or should they voluntarily go back the same way they came?</i></p>
<p>An even more honest immigration poll question would ask:</p>
<p><i>At a time of massive unemployment, do you think people who have knowingly broken our laws and come here illegally with their families since the last amnesty should be rewarded with citizenship, or should they voluntarily go back the same way they came?</i></p>
<p>Even a poll question that simply omits the lies about the theoretical hurdles illegals will have to clear (which will never happen) produces a poll in which a majority of Americans support &#8220;deportation.&#8221;</p>
<p>Last year, the TechCrunch website polled this question: &#8220;Do you support or oppose deporting the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S.?&#8221;</p>
<p>Again: NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT DEPORTATION. We didn&#8217;t round up 11 million foreigners to get them here, and we&#8217;re not going to round them up to send them home. They&#8217;ll leave the same way they came.</p>
<p>But even answering a stacked poll question asking about something no one has proposed &#8212; deportation &#8212; a majority of respondents, 53.4 percent, supported deportation, compared to 42 percent opposed. Among Republicans, 74.1 percent favored deportation, with only 22.3 percent opposed.</p>
<p>Not only that, but a Fox News poll last year showed that a majority of Americans would like to curtail <i>legal</i> immigration, with 55 percent supporting a decrease in legal immigrants and only 28 percent supporting an increase.</p>
<p>My thought is: Republicans should push policies that are popular.</p>
<p>But instead of proposing immigration reforms that are runaway hits with a majority of Americans &#8212; without anyone even having made the argument! &#8212; Republicans have been hoodwinked by Democrats into trying to outbid Democrats for the Hispanic vote. They still won&#8217;t win the Hispanic vote, but now the rest of the country will hate Republicans, too.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>How Obama Poisoned Race Relations in America</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/how-obama-poisoned-race-relations-in-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-obama-poisoned-race-relations-in-america</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Jul 2013 04:55:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=198280</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A legacy of race hatred.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/barack-obama-race304.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-198293" alt="barack obama race*304" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/barack-obama-race304.jpg" width="243" height="187" /></a>A new <a href="http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/A_Politics/_Today_Stories_Teases/130724-July-NBC-WSJ-poll.pdf">poll</a> by NBC News and the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> reveals that public perceptions about race relations in America have taken a devastating <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/25/race-relations-have-plummeted-since-obama-took-office-according-to-poll/">hit</a> since the election of Barack Obama. At the beginning of the president&#8217;s first term, 79 percent of whites and 63 percent of blacks had a positive view of American race relations. Those numbers have plummeted to 52 percent and 38 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, 45 percent of whites now consider race relations fairly or very bad, compared with 20 percent in 2009, and the negative views held by black Americans has jumped from 30 percent to 58 percent. Thus, the idea that the election of Barack Obama would usher in a golden age of so-called post-racial relations has exploded. And the president and his administration bear the lion&#8217;s share of the responsibility for lighting the fuse.</p>
<p>The poll, conducted in mid-July by Hart Research Associations and Public Opinion Strategies, has tracked Americans&#8217; attitudes about race since 1994. And despite only a single poll question regarding the Zimmerman trial, which asked whether the outcome increased, decreased, or didn&#8217;t affect one&#8217;s confidence in the legal system, the steepest decline in positive views, and greatest increase in negative views, occurred in the last two years. That the timeframe largely coincides with the Trayvon Martin shooting controversy is likely no coincidence.</p>
<p>The Trayvon Martin case is one of the most visible examples of the Obama administration&#8217;s deliberate poisoning of race relations; all in coordination with the NAACP, the racial grievance industry and the corrupt leftist media. We now know that the administration had direct involvement in fanning the flames of racial discord that brought the case to the national stage. The Eric Holder-led Justice Department&#8217;s Community Relations Service (CRA) was sent to Sanford, FL to <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/21/former-doj-official-civil-rights-unit-sent-to-mediate-anti-zimmerman-protests-has-history-of-advocacy/">help</a> set up meetings and organize protests. Among other services, the administration <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/10/did-justice-department-support-anti-zimmerman-protests-after-trayvon-shooting/">arranged</a> an escort for college students participating in a 40-mile march to &#8220;demand justice&#8221; for Trayvon. When the situation erupted, Obama then famously took the racial motif national, saying, &#8220;If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.&#8221;</p>
<p>Even after the jury rendered its not guilty verdict in the Zimmerman trial, Obama, once again, <a href="http://swampland.time.com/2013/07/19/obama-speaks-trayvon-martin-could-have-been-me-35-years-ago/">injected</a> himself into the case, this time noting that &#8220;Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago,&#8221; and launching into a lecture on race &#8212; despite the fact that a Martin family <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/trayvon-martin-trial-prosecution-star-witness-grilled-article-1.1384074">lawyer</a>, Trayvon&#8217;s <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2013/06/29/Trayvon-Martins-STEPMOTHER-I-Dont-Think-Zimmerman-Picked-Him-Out-Because-He-Was-Black">stepmother</a>, the Sanford <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/rights_rap_unlikely_OC3TAXeSdC80gDuo7dkm1I">police</a>, and an investigation <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/07/12/155918/more-evidence-released-in-trayvon.html#.UeXrLWQkE5W">conducted</a> by the FBI all concluded the case had nothing to do with race.</p>
<p>However, well before the Trayvon Martin shooting, Obama made clear he would use the presidency to provide a platform for the race agitation industry. Prior to his election in 2008, the president sought to <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2008/04/11/obama-on-small-town-voters-bitter-xenophobic-religious/">belittle</a> small town &#8220;bitter clingers&#8221; who demonstrate &#8220;antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment[.]&#8221; In July 2009, when black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=8148986&amp;page=1">arrested</a> in front of his Cambridge home after antagonizing police, Obama, despite admitting that he had not seen &#8220;all the facts,&#8221; still came to the conclusion that &#8220;the Cambridge police acted stupidly.&#8221; In a radio interview that aired on Univision in 2010, the president <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2010/10/25/obamas-turnout-pitch-to-latinos-get-out-there-and-punish-your-enemies/">urged</a> his Latino supporters to &#8220;punish our enemies and reward our friends,&#8221; in the upcoming election. That was the same year he made an unsubtle reference to Rosa Parks and segregation in order to <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/10/25/obama-tells-republicans-sit/">belittle</a> Republicans. &#8220;We don&#8217;t mind the Republicans joining us,&#8221; the president told supporters in Rhode Island. &#8220;They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.&#8221;</p>
<p>At a January 2012 Washington fundraiser, the president made <a href="http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2012/01/10/obama-plays-race-card/">subtle references</a> to the idea that if he weren&#8217;t reelected, minorities would be denied opportunities to pursue the American dream, while he implied Republicans would be the ones do the denying. &#8220;The notion that we’re all in this together, that we look out for one another&#8211;that’s at stake in this election,&#8221; he warned. &#8220;Don’t take my word for it. Watch some of these [Republican] debates that have been going on up in New Hampshire.&#8221; The following August in Colorado, Obama kept that meme alive, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/08/08/obama-romney-would-take-health-care-back-to-150s/">insisting</a> that Republicans, &#8220;want to take us back to the policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century.&#8221;</p>
<p>If such a divisive attitude were limited to the president himself, maybe race relations might not have soured as much as they have. Unfortunately, many members of his administration have also been more than willing to fan the flames of racial discord. Former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, who <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/03/raw-data-van-jones-words/">referred</a> to Republicans as &#8220;assholes,&#8221; insisted that &#8220;white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people-of-color communities.&#8221; Addressing the annual NAACP convention in Orlando, FL on July 17, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/sebelius-obamacare-opponents-are-those-who-opposed-civil-rights">likened</a> those who oppose ObamaCare to those who opposed civil rights legislation in the 1960s, comparing the fight against them to “the fight against lynching and the fight for desegregation.” On August 14, 2012, Vice President Joe Biden <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/08/vp-biden-says-republicans-are-going-to-put-yall-back-in-chains/">told</a> a largely black audience in Danville, Virginia, that Republicans wanted to &#8220;put y’all back in chains.” Former Assistant Attorney General and current Labor Secretary Thomas Perez viewed virtually every aspect of his former job through a racialist lens, from <a href="http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/052013-656882-proof-obama-cabinet-nominee-perez-framed-banks.htm?p=full">prosecuting</a> banks for lending discrimination based on dubious &#8220;disparate  impact&#8221; studies, to <a href="http://www.justice.gov/crt/speeches/2010/crt-speech-100420.html">promoting</a> the expansion of hate crimes prosecution, which he <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7dOvFzQSnk">insisted </a>was a largely white-on-black problem.</p>
<p>And then there is Eric Holder. Holder, who runs the most racially polarized Justice Department in modern history, wasted no time burnishing his racialist credentials, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/18/holder.race.relations/">telling</a> Americans soon after he was confirmed in 2009 that &#8220;in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.&#8221; In 2010, after being stonewalled by his own department, Christopher Coates, former voting chief for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, testified that Holder&#8217;s decision to drop an already-won voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party was due to &#8220;pressure&#8221; from the NAACP. Furthermore, he corroborated earlier testimony by J. Christian Adams, a former DOJ attorney, revealing that the DOJ cultivates a &#8220;hostile atmosphere&#8221; against &#8220;race-neutral enforcement&#8221; of the Voting Rights Act.</p>
<p>Holder also turned a blind eye when the Panthers <a href="http://www.christianpost.com/news/black-panthers-10000-bounty-to-capture-george-zimmerman-dead-or-alive-was-from-2012-video-100428/">offered</a> a $10,000 bounty to capture George Zimmerman &#8220;dead or alive.&#8221; As for race-neutral enforcement of the the Voting Rights Act, as recently as yesterday Holder <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324110404578627692123727574.html">vowed</a> to continue insisting that states &#8220;pre-clear&#8221; with the DOJ any changes to their voting laws. This represents nothing less than a determination to defy a recent Supreme Court ruling that effectively nullified his ability to do so. Texas is his current focus, but in a speech in Philadelphia, he promised that the decision to target the Lone Star State &#8220;will not be our last.&#8221; The motivation of this effort is clear: to portray red states and whites in general as abusive toward minority voters &#8212; as seeking to reinstitute &#8220;Jim Crow&#8221; through commonsense voter ID laws, as the Democratic Party propaganda goes.</p>
<p>This follows Holder&#8217;s decision to continue pursuing the possibility of civil rights charges against George Zimmerman, without a shred of evidence for doing so, making good on a promise he first made during an appearance at racial arsonist Al Sharpton&#8217;s National Action Network on April 11, 2012. After praising Sharpton “for your partnership, your friendship, and your tireless efforts to speak out for the voiceless, to stand up for the powerless, and to shine a light on the problems we must solve, and the promises we must fulfill,&#8221; Holder made his intentions clear. “If we find evidence of a potential federal criminal civil rights crime, we will take appropriate action,” he warned. To that end, Holder has <a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/os-george-zimmerman-doj-investigation,0,4338518.story">set up</a> &#8220;tip lines&#8221; trolling for information he can use to prosecute Zimmerman. The &#8220;investigation&#8221; has now been ongoing for over a year.</p>
<p>The reason for fomenting this sort of racial animosity is transparently political. Just like in 2010, and 2012, Obama is determined to agitate and mobilize voters for the 2014 election and beyond and to weaken the Republicans with racial innuendo and accusations. He has tainted Democrats by presiding over the weakest recovery on record, one which is currently losing even more steam, with growth rates being revised downward, and one of the <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/here_prince_of_an_idea_VbPT2NNp29fkf1Arrl6eRM">worst</a> corporate revenue performances on record. The same is true of ObamaCare, which will be so damaging to Democrats that the administration unilaterally decided to postpone the employer mandate until 2015, <a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/congress-debates-if-obama-could-unilaterally-delay-employer-mandate">usurping</a> congressional authority in the process. This is to say nothing of Democrat-led foreign policy, with Egypt and Syria in free fall, Iraq and Afghanistan on the verge of reverting back to the failed states they were, Iran pursuing nuclear weapons absent any fear whatsoever, and both China and Russia signaling their intentions to fill the leadership vacuum the president’s &#8220;leading from behind&#8221; approach has produced.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, minority populations continue to suffer and grow disaffected under the reign of liberal policies. Majority-black Detroit is bankrupt. Chicago seethes with black-on-black gun crime, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/08/chicago-shootings_n_3561407.html?view=print&amp;comm_ref=false">including</a> 62 people wounded and 12 killed during the Fourth of July holiday weekend alone. Black <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/22/black-unemployment_n_3624725.html">unemployment</a> is 13.7 percent, compared to 6.7 percent for the nation as a whole. The black American illegitimacy rate, one of the surest predictors of poverty, is <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324281004578356422222235976.html">approaching</a> 75 percent.</p>
<p>Yet in his most recent <a href="http://spectator.org/archives/2013/07/25/economic-malpractice-and-polit">speech</a> on economics, Obama addresses none of these realities, preferring to blame the lot on Republicans (who have only ever controlled the House since 2010) and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/full-text-of-president-obamas-remarks-on-the-economy-at-knox-college-as-prepared-for-delivery/2013/07/24/fd580f6a-f47f-11e2-a2f1-a7acf9bd5d3a_story_4.html">warning</a> that if America fails to embrace his policies, &#8220;[S]ocial tensions will rise as various groups fight to hold on to what they have, or start blaming somebody else for why their position isn&#8217;t improving.&#8221; In the Obama era, this should be interpreted as an ultimatum.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s going to be a long, divisive slog to the 2014 elections, and racial division continually promoted by the Obama administration is guaranteed to be an integral part of the mix. The fact that Americans view race relations as far worse than they&#8217;ve been in years should surely be an embarrassment for the first elected president of African descent. Odds are, however, he views it as an electoral boon for his party.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Eye on 2016</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/eye-on-2016/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=eye-on-2016</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/eye-on-2016/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Jul 2013 04:49:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[2016]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillary Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iowa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Poll]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[president]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rand Paul]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rubio]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Clinton, Paul lead as Rubio falls.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/130626_hillary_clinton_rand_paul_martin_omalley_ap_328.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-196958" alt="130626_hillary_clinton_rand_paul_martin_omalley_ap_328" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/130626_hillary_clinton_rand_paul_martin_omalley_ap_328.jpg" width="235" height="195" /></a>The early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign are already underway. Hillary Clinton has held a steady, arguably insurmountable lead for the Democratic nomination, while the Republican nomination is much more fluid. Senator Rand Paul is the frontrunner, thanks to a drop in support for Senator Marco Rubio in Iowa over immigration reform.</span></b></p>
<p>At this point, Clinton can essentially walk in and take the Democratic nomination. In Iowa, <a href="http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/07/paul-clinton-early-leaders-in-iowa.html">wins an incredible 71%</a> of the vote. Of course, pundits will argue that Clinton seemed inevitable in 2008, but that was only because it was assumed that then-Senator Obama would not run. Today, there is no one with the super-stardom of Obama on the Democratic Party stage at all.</p>
<p>If Clinton decides not to run, the race (and the general election) becomes more interesting.</p>
<p>Biden is the clear favorite, taking 51% of the vote in Iowa, compared to 13% for Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, 9% for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and 6% for Newark Mayor Cory Booker. The latter three have not received the attention that Biden has, so their numbers are more likely to reflect a floor, while his tend to reflect a ceiling.</p>
<p>The most important polls to look at are in Iowa and New Hampshire, as their results dramatically shift the national polls. By this measure, Paul is the frontrunner as he leads in both states. His position poll-wise is the one most comparable to Romney’s during his successful 2012 bid for the nomination.</p>
<p>In February, PPP had Rubio <a href="http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/02/looking-ahead-to-2016-nationally-and-in-iowa.html">tied</a> with Huckabee for the lead in Iowa (each at 16%). Paul was right on their heels (15%), closely followed by Jeb Bush (14%), Chris Christie (12%) and Paul Ryan (10%). The bottom tier was New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez (4%), Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (3%) and Texas Governor Rick Perry (3%).</p>
<p>PPP noted at that time that Rubio’s strength came from “very conservative”  voters; the primary voters most in disagreement with him on immigration reform. He has <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/07/12/Rubio-Drops-to-5th-in-Iowa-Poll">fallen 5%</a> in Iowa and is now in fifth place; quite a dramatic shakeup.</p>
<p>The beneficiaries from Rubio’s slip and the replacement of Huckabee with Senator Ted Cruz in the poll options are Paul (18%), Christie (16%) and Ryan (15%). Interestingly, Ryan’s support increased by five points even though he <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2013/07/11/paul-ryan-quietly-pushing-immigration-reform-in-house/">also supports the immigration reform plan.</a> Fortunately for him, Rubio has more closely associated with it, but that would change after the first primary debate.</p>
<p>Bush’s support in Iowa is holding steady at 14%, while Rubio has fallen to 11% and Cruz debuts with 10%. Last year’s winner of the Iowa Caucus, former Senator Rick Santorum, only has 6%. The bottom tier is Jindal (2%) and Martinez (1%), the latter of which seems unlikely to run.</p>
<p>There hasn’t been a poll in New Hampshire for a month, but the <a href="http://freebeacon.com/majority-of-n-h-voters-support-keeping-gitmo-open/">most recent one</a> also shows Clinton and Paul ahead.</p>
<p>For the Democrats, Clinton has the support of 61%. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick comes in third, making him the biggest threat to Biden in New Hampshire if she declines to run.</p>
<p>Paul led in New Hampshire by four points with 22%, ahead of Ryan with 18%. Christie and Rubio were tied for third with 17% and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker had 2%. It can be assumed that Rubio has also slipped here as well, bringing him down to fourth place.</p>
<p>There are some other polls that give us a glimpse of the makeup of the future campaign.</p>
<p>Christie wins the electability argument. He still <a href="http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes-and-centers/polling-institute/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=1921">loses</a> to Clinton by 6%, but he has a wide lead of 11% over Biden. Paul, on the other hand, loses to Clinton by 12% and ties Biden. In the critical battleground state of Ohio, Christie <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/307873-poll-clinton-christie-tied-in-ohio">ties Clinton</a> but crushes Biden by 18%. Paul loses to Clinton by 3% and defeats Biden by 9%.</p>
<p>Rubio’s electability argument rests upon his ability to win over Latino voters. However, Clinton <a href="http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/11/17706095-poll-rubio-popular-with-latinos-but-not-as-popular-as-clinton-obama?lite?ocid=twitter">defeats</a> him among Latinos by 38% and Biden wins by 32%. Rubio is the most popular GOP candidate among Latinos, leading Christie by 15% but the general election match-ups show his selection would not trigger a decisive shift. However, 40% of Latinos did not know Rubio or had no opinion, leaving a lot of room for upward movement.</p>
<p>Polls actually show that Bush is more electable than Rubio and he may be able to argue that he’d be more popular among Latinos. In Florida, Clinton <a href="http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/hillary-clinton-beats-out-jeb-bush-and-marco-rubio-new-q-poll-florida">defeats</a> Bush by 7% and Rubio by 12%. Biden loses to Bush by 4% and Rubio wins by 2%.</p>
<p>Another significant development is Perry’s decision not to run for re-election; a move that is widely interpreted as interest in a presidential bid.</p>
<p>Perry improved in the debates following his infamous gaffe, but he’s having a hard time convincing voters that he will not make that mistake again. A poll in his own state found him in <a href="http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_TX_703.pdf">sixth place</a>, 20% behind Cruz. PPP <a href="http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/01/clinton-could-win-texas-in-2016.html">finds</a> that Clinton beats him by 8% in Texas, a must-win state for the GOP.</p>
<p>The takeaway from this analysis of the polls is that there’s a high price to pay among GOP primary voters for supporting anything seen as amnesty. National polls aside, Paul is now the frontrunner and Rubio isn’t.</p>
<p>You can’t be considered one of the frontrunners if you are in fifth place in Iowa and fourth place in New Hampshire. Team Rubio should be worried.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama’s Presidency and the End of Affirmative Action?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/jack-kerwick/obamas-presidency-and-the-end-of-affirmative-action/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-presidency-and-the-end-of-affirmative-action</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 14 Jun 2013 04:08:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jack Kerwick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Affirmative Action]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why new polls show Americans are rethinking race preferences. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/AFFIRMATIVE-ACTION-large570.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-193047" alt="Michigan Affirmative Action" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/AFFIRMATIVE-ACTION-large570-450x187.jpg" width="270" height="112" /></a>For many of us, Barack Obama’s presidency has been anything but an occasion for rejoicing.  From its beginnings to the present, and particularly during the last couple of months with the eruption of one scandal after the other, it has been like a dark cloud hanging over the nation’s head.</p>
<p>Still, this dark cloud does indeed have a silver lining.</p>
<p>Five years ago, Obama and his supporters (on both the left <i>and right</i>) assured the country that his election promised to alleviate interracial tensions.  Most people bought this line.  Some of us, though, knew that it was just that—a line.   Moreover, we knew that not only would race relations not improve, they would actually worsen as the usual suspects in the Racism Industrial Complex (RIC), ever fearful that a black president would undermine their heretofore tried and true narrative of perpetual white oppression and black suffering, accelerated their cries of “racism.”</p>
<p>On the other hand, some of us also knew that RIC agents’ fears were not unfounded.  For however frequently and loudly they screamed “racism,” the presence of a black president—and a black president with the name of <i>Barack Hussein Obama, </i>to boot—could very well, eventually, suck the life out of their template.</p>
<p>An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll taken last week suggests that maybe, just maybe, this is beginning to occur.</p>
<p>The poll found that the public’s support for affirmative action is at an all-time <i>low.  </i></p>
<p>Forty-five percent of respondents maintain that this race-centered preferential treatment policy is still necessary in order to protect racial minorities.  But, for the first time, an equal number of people think that it is unjust inasmuch as it discriminates against whites.</p>
<p>The significance of this can’t be overstated.  Two decades ago, 61 percent of Americans supported affirmative action.</p>
<p>Predictably, race and politics remain reliable indicators of where one comes down on this issue.  Opposition to affirmative action stems from nearly 60 percent of whites, 40 percent of Hispanics, and 20 percent of blacks. Sixty-seven percent of Democrats support it, versus just 22 percent of Republicans and 17 percent of self-identified members of the Tea Party who do so.  Independents support affirmative action by just 39 percent.</p>
<p>As NBC News’ Domenico Mantanaro writes, this historically low support for affirmative action is attributable to several things, including “diversity fatigue” and “20 years of anti-affirmative-action campaigns.”  Yet, he adds, it is also explained as a result of “an African-American being elected president [.]”</p>
<p>Whether Obama’s presidency is just one cause among others or a primary contributor to the erosion of support for affirmative action is neither here nor there.  Any extent to which the Obama presidency accounts for this phenomenon almost makes his time in the Oval office worth it, for there are few policies as inimical to our constitutional order as affirmative action.</p>
<p>The liberty that Americans have always prized and that our Founders did their best to codify in and secure by way of the Constitution did not fall like manna from heaven.  It is the product of many generations, a complex of historically and culturally-specific habits, including and especially the habit of despising large concentrations of power.  This last found its penultimate expression in respect for <i>the rule of law.</i></p>
<p>The rule of law prevents those in government from succumbing to arbitrary—i.e. unlawful—deployments of power at their disposal.  In other words, it forbids them from acting partially, whether in their own interests or those of a class.  It requires of the government that it refrain from privileging some citizens above others.</p>
<p>The rule of law precludes affirmative action.</p>
<p>Reporting on the results of the NBC/WSJ poll, Domenico Mantanaro says that respondents who reject affirmative action reject it on the grounds that such “programs unfairly discriminate against whites.”  They are mistaken.  Affirmative action deserves to be rejected, certainly, but not because it is either discriminatory or discriminatory against whites.</p>
<p>Affirmative action needs to be abolished because it is <i>government </i>discrimination against some citizens in favor of others.</p>
<p>As such, it is an affront to the liberty of all citizens.</p>
<p>Wouldn’t it be ironic if Obama’s color wound up actually <i>harming </i>his cause by facilitating the end of affirmative action and the restoration of some measure of liberty?</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>The Formidable Islamist Minority in America</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/the-formidable-islamist-minority-in-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-formidable-islamist-minority-in-america</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Jan 2013 04:50:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[islamist]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[What polls show about the ideology of Muslim-Americans.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/the-formidable-islamist-minority-in-america/the-council-on-american-islamic-relations-announces-educational-initiative-3/" rel="attachment wp-att-172704"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-172704" title="The Council on American-Islamic Relations Announces Educational Initiative" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/National-Executive-Director-of-Council-on-American_Islamic-RelationsCAIR-Nihad-Awad-holds-a-translated-copy-of-the-Quran-as-he-speaks-news-conference-at-the-headquarters-of-CAIR-450x339.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="203" /></a>A summary of polls about the ideological makeup of the Muslim-American community shows that the majority is moderate, but there is a formidable minority influenced by Islamist doctrine. A significant number are refusing to give answers or are still figuring out where they stand on issues like terrorism and Sharia Law.</p>
<p>The number one question is how many Muslim-Americans support terrorism. A <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2011/08/30/muslim-americans-no-signs-of-growth-in-alienation-or-support-for-extremism/%20">2011 Pew poll</a> found very little support for Al-Qaeda, with only 2% viewing the terrorist group very favorably, 3% somewhat favorably and 11% somewhat unfavorably. About 70% view Al-Qaeda very unfavorably, an increase of 12% since 2007.</p>
<p>There are 2.6 million Muslim-Americans, a number that is <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/28/nation/la-na-muslim-report-20110128">expected</a> to rise to 6.2 million by 2030. This means there are 130,000 Muslim-Americans who will admit that they view Al-Qaeda favorably and that assumes there are no supporters among the 14% who did not answer the question. Plus, the survey did not poll support for Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups.</p>
<p>Only 1% of Muslim-Americans say violence against civilians to defend Islam is “often” justified. About 7% say it is sometimes justified and 5% say it is rarely justified. Approximately 81% say attacks on civilians are never justified. Of course, the definition of “civilian” varies. Hamas supporters, for example, argue that there is no such thing as an Israeli civilian. The survey did not poll support for attacks on soldiers.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://pewresearch.org/files/old-assets/pdf/muslim-americans.pdf">2007 Pew poll</a> found that about 49% feel mosques should stay out of politics and about the same amount feel the Koran should not be taken entirely literally. The survey concluded that Muslim immigrants are more moderate on this issue than those who were born here.</p>
<p>“Native-born Muslims express overwhelming support for the notion that mosques should express their views on social and political matters. By contrast, a large majority of foreign-born Muslims—many of whom are from countries where religion and politics are often closely intertwined—say that mosques should be kept out of political matters,” the report said.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most surprising findings were related to social issues. The Pew 2011 poll shows that 39% feel that homosexuality should be accepted by society, an increase of 12% from 2007. On the issue of multiple wives, a <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2012/10/guess-who-u-s-muslims-are-voting-for/%20">Wenzel Strategies poll</a> released in October found 22% support allowing polygamy.</p>
<p>The findings related to Sharia Law and specific elements of Islamist doctrine were less comforting.</p>
<p>The Wenzel poll found that almost 40% strongly or somewhat agree that Sharia Law should be the supreme law of the country. A slight majority oppose that proposition, with 35% strongly disagreeing and 18% somewhat disagreeing. However, when presented with a more refined question about what to do if Sharia conflicts with the U.S. Constitution, 70% would follow the Constitution and only 9% would follow Sharia Law. About 21% were undecided.</p>
<p>There is high support for restricting freedom of speech in compliance with Sharia Law.</p>
<p>About 59% feel that criticism of Islam or its founder is not permitted under the First Amendment. Only 41% disagreed. Shockingly, 52% strongly or somewhat support criminal charges against those that criticize or parody Islam, while 33% oppose it. Nearly 15% strongly or somewhat support executing critics of their religion. About 70% strongly oppose it and around 11% only somewhat oppose it.</p>
<p>Only about 30% believe that Americans have the right to encourage Muslims to leave their faith. Around 45% disagree. Note that this question isn’t about whether people <em>should</em> proselytize to Muslims. It’s about whether doing so is a constitutional right.</p>
<p>The polls indicate that the Muslim-American community is more moderate than its counterparts overseas on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A <a href="http://www.gallup.com/strategicconsulting/153611/REPORT-Muslim-Americans-Faith-Freedom-Future.aspx">2011 Gallup poll</a> found that over 80% support a two-state solution. However, the 2011 Pew poll shows only 61% believe a two-state solution that respects the rights of Palestinians is possible. About 20% feel it is impossible, matching Gallup’s result.</p>
<p>The Wenzel poll directly asked Muslim-Americans whether Israel has a right to exist. About 46% strongly agreed that it does and 21% somewhat agree. Only 8% strongly disagree, essentially supporting the elimination of the state of Israel. Another 8% somewhat disagree that Israel has a right to exist and 16% were unsure.</p>
<p>The campaign to demonize the U.S. government’s counter-terrorism efforts by Islamists and Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups has been fruitful. The 2011 Pew poll found that 41% do not believe that the war on terrorism is a sincere effort to reduce terrorism, while slightly more (43%) believe it is. This is a huge improvement from 2007, when 55% felt the U.S. government had ulterior motives and only 26% felt it was sincere.</p>
<p>The 2007 Pew poll found strong support for 9/11 conspiracy theories. Only 40% of Muslim-Americans would say that Arabs perpetrated the attacks. Of the 28% that said Arabs were not involved, 7% blamed the U.S. government, 1% attributed it to an Israeli/Jewish plot and 2% blamed insane people or others. The remaining 18% of those who denied Arab involvement said they did not know who carried out the attacks or wouldn’t answer the question.</p>
<p>One important observation from the Gallup poll is that the Muslim-American community does not feel represented by any major Muslim-American organization with Muslim Brotherhood origins. The most popular one was the Council on American-Islamic Relations, followed by the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Muslim American Society and the Islamic Circle of North America, in declining order of popularity.</p>
<p>Altogether, only 25% of Muslim-American men and 19% of Muslim-American women chose one of these organizations when asked which one most represents their interests. This is remarkable because these organizations have been around for decades without any major challenge from within the community. This may be connected to the 2011 Pew poll’s finding that 48% feel that the Muslim-American leadership hasn’t done enough to speak out against extremism and only 34% feel they have.</p>
<p>The polls show there is a sharp divide in the Muslim-American community between those who completely reject Islamist doctrine and those who subscribe to it, in part or in whole. There is a significant number that is on the fence. Unfortunately, the U.S. government overlooks it.</p>
<p>The nominee for CIA director, John Brennan, won’t say “Islamist” or “jihadist.” The White House is <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/3777/a-red-carpet-for-radicals-at-the-white-house">regularly visited</a> by the self-proclaimed Islamist leaders of the Muslim-American community that have actually been rejected by the community. The coordinator of the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Violent Extremism efforts <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/17/dhs-counterterrorism-muslims_n_1099631.html">emphasizes</a> that it is focused on violence, not ideology.</p>
<p>You cannot be an Islamist terrorist without first being an Islamist. You cannot spread Islamist doctrine unless you are first a believer in that doctrine. We must recognize that this is a broader ideological conflict than just Al-Qaeda.</p>
<p><em>This article was sponsored by the <a href="http://www.theird.org">Institute on Religion and Democracy.</a></em></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Obama’s Fifth Column in the Fourth Estate</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/daniel-flynn/obamas-fifth-column-in-the-fourth-estate/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-fifth-column-in-the-fourth-estate</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 21 Nov 2012 04:35:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Flynn]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Bias]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[A damning indictment of the media from the Pew Research Center. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/daniel-flynn/obamas-fifth-column-in-the-fourth-estate/20120820-hero/" rel="attachment wp-att-166087"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-166087" title="20120820-hero" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/20120820-hero.jpg" alt="" width="309" height="239" /></a>MSNBC didn’t run a single negative story on Barack Obama during the final week of the presidential campaign. MSNBC didn’t run a single positive story on Mitt Romney during the final week of the presidential campaign.</p>
<p>Bias? What bias?</p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/final_weeks_mainstream_press">study</a> by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that news outlets increased their coverage of the president in the campaign’s final week—and increased the favorability of that coverage. At the same time, the negative tone in stories on the Republican nominee increased sharply. When the going gets tough, Andrea Mitchell, Anderson Cooper, and George Stephanopoulos get going to their favored candidate’s rescue.</p>
<p>During the presidential race’s last week, Obama enjoyed positive reports for 29 percent of stories and negative ones for 19 percent. Pew deemed the remainder neutral or balanced. Mitt Romney endured negative stories for 33 percent of reports and positive ones for 16 percent of reports. In other words, in the immediate lead up to Election Day Obama’s coverage tended to be more positive than negative and Romney’s coverage tended to be more negative than positive.</p>
<p>The Pew analysis follows a Gallup survey from earlier this fall that found the public’s trust in the media at an all-time low. Gallup reported that six in ten Americans put “little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly.” Since the polling organization began surveying on that issue in the 1990s, Americans have never been more down on the media than now. The current gap between those who trust and don’t trust journalists is the largest “by far,” according to Gallup. The political breakdown among respondents itself supports claims of bias: Most Democrats retain faith in the Fourth Estate to report “fully, accurately, and fairly”; most Republicans do not.</p>
<p>Conditioned by a steady stream of campaign coverage anecdotes, political observers—particularly conservative ones who harbor a grudge against the press—may not find Pew’s findings surprising. This is an administration, after all, that plucked <em>Time</em> magazine’s Washington bureau chief to serve as its mouthpiece. And election season revealed any number of newsmen willing to serve in that role without pay or title. People who matter-of-factly refer to the “lamestream media” didn’t need a study to tell them the Washington press corps roots for the Democrats. But the Pew account nevertheless puts the imprimatur of a respected research organization on a phenomenon ridiculed as more phantom than fact, the sour grapes of ideologues who demand journalistic reinforcement of their beliefs.</p>
<p>This is certainly the outlook of <em>New York Times</em> media writer David Carr. “Many Republicans see bias lurking in every live shot, but the growing hegemony of conservative voices makes manufacturing a partisan conspiracy a practical impossibility,” Carr maintained in an October 1 piece. Though Carr allowed that not everyone crying bias “needs to be fitted for a tinfoil helmet”—a comforting observation, since Gallup contends that <em>most</em> Americans believe that journalists don’t play it fair—he held that “the trope is losing traction, partly because there are many robust champions of the right, which gives conservatives the means to project their message far beyond the choir.”<strong> </strong>Americans distrust journalists. Journalists, working in a profession known to attract skeptics, ridicule the public’s distrust of them.</p>
<p>Though Candy Crowley’s transformation from moderator to advocate during the second presidential debate may be the most glaring instance of the partiality of a journalist during the race for the White House, it’s not the most egregious malefaction. Like Crowley, so many of the scribes and anchors who succumbed to a crusading style did so in covering the murders of U.S. ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. When journalists talked about Benghazi, they often did so to dismiss it or simply to reinforce the administration’s tenuous narrative. <em>Time</em>’s Joe Klein opined that the attack on the U.S. consulate “really isn’t an issue.” Thomas Friedman of the <em>New York Times</em> dubbed Libya an “utterly contrived story.” ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos called the Obama administration “relatively transparent” in its handling of the attacks. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews maintained of the killings, “Everybody knows it’s about the video. It’s all about the video.”</p>
<p>Never have so many in a profession that prides itself on speaking truth to power so sucked up to power. For the same reasons they expect blind faith from listeners, watchers, and readers, ideologue journalists display it towards the administration: their ideas are too noble to partake in deception so ignoble. Take it from the press. You can trust them on that. Or not.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Americans Don&#8217;t Trust the Media</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/americans-dont-trust-the-media/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=americans-dont-trust-the-media</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Sep 2012 04:33:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[A Gallup Poll reveals three-in-five Americans have little faith in the Fourth Estate.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/MSNBClogo.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-145237" title="MSNBClogo" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/MSNBClogo.jpg" alt="" width="324" height="126" /></a>In a thoroughly unsurprising revelation, a Gallup Poll <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/157589/distrust-media-hits-new-high.aspx" target="_blank">released</a> on Friday shows that 60 percent of the American public has &#8220;little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly.&#8221; Gallup further notes that the 20-point gap between negative and positive views represents an all-time high. And while Americans tend to pay more attention to the news during a presidential election year, only 39 percent are following the news closely this year, compared to 43 percent in 2008.</p>
<p>According to Gallup, most of the decline is driven by Republicans and Independents. Only 26 percent of Republicans and 31 percent of Independents express either a great deal, or fair amount of trust in the Fourth Estate. Both number represent record lows and a significant drop from last year. Independents are also far more negative this year than in 2008, implying they are very dissatisfied in their ability to get accurate and unbiased coverage of the election campaign. Overall, Democrats remain most trusting of the media and Republicans the least. Media trust by Independents fell below 50 percent in 2004, and has declined steadily ever since.</p>
<p>The key number here is the one reached by taking the opposite figure of those paying close attention to the news. If only 39 percent of the public is paying close attention, that means more than three-out-of-five Americans remain largely unaware of what is going on around them. As for mainstream media bias, the numbers are not <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/149624/Majority-Continue-Distrust-Media-Perceive-Bias.aspx" target="_blank">even close</a>. For the 60 percent of Americans who perceive media bias, 47 percent of them say the media are too liberal, while only 13 percent say they are too conservative.</p>
<p>Who&#8217;s right? No doubt the fallback position for many Americans, especially those who work in media, would be that bias is in the eye of the beholder. Certainly that is true to some extent. Americans&#8217; experience with media is anecdotal by nature. No one watches every news show, reads every newspaper, or listens to every radio broadcast disseminated on a daily basis throughout the nation. Furthermore, there is something called the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_exposure_theory" target="_blank">&#8220;selective exposure theory,&#8221;</a> which is the idea that people tend to interact with media sources that reinforce their pre-existing views, and avoid those that conflict with, or challenge, those views.</p>
<p>Yet a 2005 <a href="http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/Media-Bias-Is-Real-Finds-UCLA-6664.aspx" target="_blank">study</a> conducted by Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist, and co-author Jeffrey Milyo, a University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar, reveals that while coverage by public television and radio is conservative, compared to the rest of the mainstream media, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left. &#8220;I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican,&#8221; said Groseclose. &#8220;But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are.&#8221; Milyo was equally adamant. &#8220;Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>The authors used 21 research assistants to examine 10 years of U.S. media coverage. They kept close track of the number of times each media entity referred to various think tanks and/or policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP, or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation. Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center. CBS&#8217;s &#8220;Evening News,&#8221; The <em>New York Times</em> and the <em>Los Angeles Times</em> ranked the second, third and fourth most liberal media sources, respectively. Number one was the news pages of <em>The Wall Street Journal. </em> The only two sources on the right side of the equation were Fox News<em>&#8216;</em>s &#8220;Special Report With Brit Hume,&#8221; and <em>The Washington Times.</em> The most centrist outlets were &#8220;NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,&#8221; CNN<em>&#8216;s</em> &#8220;NewsNight With Aaron Brown&#8221; and ABC&#8217;s &#8220;Good Morning America.&#8221; The study focused on news, omitting op-eds and editorials from the equation &#8212; which is why <em>The</em> <em>Wall Street Journal,</em> whose editorial page is decidedly  conservative, got the top slot on the left side of the equation, the authors explain.</p>
<p>Another <a href="http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/jesse.shapiro/research/biasmeas.pdf" target="_blank">study</a> conducted in 2010 by University of Chicago economists Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro looked at the different language used by Democrats and Republicans in Congress to describe various issues as a means of determining which way newspapers lean, and why. They concluded that &#8220;consumer demand responds strongly to the fit between a newspaper’s slant and the ideology of potential readers, implying an economic incentive for newspapers to tailor their slant to the ideological predispositions of consumers.&#8221; That would seem to support a mutually-reinforced selective exposure theory. Yet unlike Groseclose and Milyo, they came to no conclusions regarding an overall slant of newspaper coverage.</p>
<p>Neither did David D’Alessio, a communications sciences professor at the University of Connecticut at Stamford, who reviewed 99 studies of campaign news coverage over 60 years. He <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-biased-is-the-media-really/2012/04/27/gIQA9jYLmT_story.html" target="_blank">wrote</a> a book, “Media Bias in Presidential Election Coverage 1948-2008: Evaluation via Formal Measurement,&#8221; in which he concludes that news reporting is evenly split “because that’s where the people are, and that’s where the [advertising] money is&#8230;There’s nuance there, but when you add it all and subtract it down, you end up with nothing.&#8221;</p>
<p>Nothing is an interesting word. Or more accurately &#8220;omission.&#8221; How does one quantify the stories the major media deliberately choose not to run at all? For example, as outlined in a previous <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/a-hurricane-of-hatred-for-republicans/" target="_blank">c</a><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/a-hurricane-of-hatred-for-republicans/" target="_blank">olumn</a>, in order to maintain the fiction that Republicans are a &#8220;racist&#8221; political party, MSNBC chose to omit from its coverage all the speeches made by minorities at the Republican convention. CBS News <a href="http://bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view/20110217cbs_complicit_in_news_coverup" target="_blank">spiked</a> a story about its own reporter Lara Logan being sexually assaulted by a mob of Egyptian men in Tahrir Square, because it would have interfered with the &#8220;Arab Spring&#8221; narrative that the Obama administration desperately wanted to be true. As for the president himself, the same media that more than willing to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romneys-prep-school-classmates-recall-pranks-but-also-troubling-incidents/2012/05/10/gIQA3WOKFU_story.html" target="_blank">dug up</a> a 47-year-old story about Republican Mitt Romney cutting a prep school classmate&#8217;s hair (implying Romney targeted the classmate because he was supposedly suspected to be gay), remains almost pathologically incurious regarding a president whose past remains a vague, even after nearly four years in office.</p>
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		<title>Are American Jews Waking Up?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ben-shapiro/are-american-jews-waking-up/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=are-american-jews-waking-up</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Jun 2012 04:45:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[10 percent]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Poll]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[support]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turkey]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=135005</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why shrinking Jewish support for Obama may be too little, too late. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Picture-72.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-135040" title="Picture-7" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Picture-72.gif" alt="" width="375" height="253" /></a>This week, a Gallup poll showed that President Obama’s support level among American Jews had dropped from 74 percent in 2008 to 64 percent. That drop is twice as large as the drop for any other racial or ethnic group. It still leaves two-thirds of Jews standing in support of a President who will not  stand by the Jewish State. But it does mean that a growing population of Jewish voters understand the threat that Obama poses – even if they had supported his socialistic domestic agenda.</p>
<p>The Obama administration proved again last week just why Jewish voters should be troubled. On Friday, June 7, the Obama administration blocked an Israeli request to join the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) in Istanbul, Turkey. Now, for the past several years, Turkish sentiment has been turning against Israel.  Once the two countries&#8217; had a vibrant defense relationship, but Israel now has to fight off flotillas of armed terror-supporters launched from Turkey. Turkey’s Head of state, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is living proof of what happens to a heretofore secular state falls to the scourge of Islamism.</p>
<p>Instead of seeing Turkey as a threat, however, the Obama administration sees it as a model for the Middle East. Egypt has been allowed to go Islamist; so has Iraq (which now has Shariah law as its default under its constitution); so have Libya and Tunisia. All, like Turkey, went Islamist by popular demand. And all, like Turkey, have become radically anti-Israel.</p>
<p>When faced with the intransigence of Islamism, the West has two choices: they can call upon the Islamists to drop the nonsense and begin dealing reasonably with the Jewish State. Or they can cave.</p>
<p>The Obama administration caved.</p>
<p>The GCTF, a crowning achievement of the Obama administration’s foreign policy, was opened in September 2011; it was the United States that chose Turkey as the site of this month’s conference. So when Israel asked to join, America could have told the Turks to deal with it.</p>
<p>Instead, they told Israel to get out, even as they invited Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. Non-Middle Eastern nations like China, Russia, and countries of West Europe showed up, too.</p>
<p>Not Israel, however. “The GCTF sought from the outset to bridge old and deep divides in the international community between Western donor nations and Muslim majority nations,” said one U.S. official. “And it has, I think, done that quite effectively.”</p>
<p>Not <em>that</em> effectively. Israel remains a bridge too far for the Arab and Muslim world, which seeks its destruction above all else. And yet the Obama administration acts as though the international scene is one big happy family, anti-terror to the core.</p>
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		<title>Poll: Israel as Unpopular as Terror States Iran, North Korea</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-bawer/poll-israel-as-unpopular-as-terror-states-iran-north-korea/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=poll-israel-as-unpopular-as-terror-states-iran-north-korea</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 23 May 2012 04:42:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Bawer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North Korea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Poll]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[popularity]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=132761</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism: bringing the world together.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/destroy-israel-for-world-peace.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-132866" title="destroy-israel-for-world-peace" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/destroy-israel-for-world-peace.gif" alt="" width="375" height="261" /></a>Among the <a href="http://globescan.com/commentary-and-analysis/press-releases/press-releases-2012/186-views-of-europe-slide-sharply-in-global-poll-while-views-of-china-improve.html">findings</a> of a new international survey, commissioned by the BBC and performed by an outfit called Globescan, is that the four least popular countries in the world, or at least in the 22 countries surveyed, are Pakistan, Iran, North Korea – and Israel.</p>
<p>Polling residents of the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Pakistan, Australia, Indonesia, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, and Nigeria, Globescan found that only 21 percent of respondents had a positive impression of Israel, and that the only one of the Western countries surveyed whose residents have an overall positive view of Israel is the U.S.</p>
<p>Looking at the study in its <a href="http://globescan.com/images/images/pressreleases/bbc2012_country_ratings/2012_bbc_country%20rating%20final%20080512.pdf">entirety</a>, one discovers that while 50 percent of Americans took a positive view of Israel and 35 percent were negative, the breakdown in Canada was a very different 25-59.  Of Russia, France, Britain, Germany, and Spain, guess which had the most positive view of Israel?  Believe it or not, Russia – land of the shtetls and pogroms, of Sakharov and Sharansky.  While French attitudes toward Israel split 20-65, British 16-68, Germans 16-69, and Spaniards 12-74, the Russians broke almost even, 25-26.  Indeed, Nigerians (54-29) and Kenyans (45-31) were far friendlier to Israel than any of the Western European countries.  Unsurprisingly, the Muslim countries surveyed were not terribly pro-Israel: the figures for Egypt were 7-85, for Pakistan 9-50, for Indonesia 8-61.  But the country that was most hostile of all was Japan, where only 3 percent had an affirmative view of Israel.</p>
<p>The report, of course, only confirms what many of us already know: that with the exception of the U.S., the countries of the West – in which diaspora Jews have lived for centuries and which, in the wake of the Holocaust, fell all over themselves apologizing for, and trying to atone for, their roles in the destruction of the Jews – are today no friends of the Jewish state.  Mountains of anecdotal evidence, moreover, make it clear that it is impossible to separate this antagonism from pure and simple anti-Semitism.</p>
<p>American Jews who still believe that they are living in a world – or, at least, in a <em>Western </em>world – in which anti-Semitism is, by and large, a thing of the past need to open their eyes.  They should be aware of what is going on in the minds of many of the people they encounter when they travel to places like Paris or London.  They should recognize that the relative lack of Jew-hatred that they experience in the U.S. is an outright aberration – an aberration, moreover, that, as rhetoric emanating from the Occupy Wall Street movement has suggested, may not persist for much longer.</p>
<p>Similarly, Western European gentiles who think that they inhabit the most civilized, tolerant, and peaceable corner of the world need to think again.  For the ancient prejudice that led Europe down the road to the Holocaust has come crawling back out of its dark hole.</p>
<p>Clearly, the main reason for the widespread enmity toward Israel in Western Europe is that left-leaning individuals in positions of influence – from politicians and journalists to schoolteachers and professors – have been engaged for quite a long time in a relentless campaign of disinformation and demonization directed against Israel and, frankly, Jews generally.  In turn, a major (if not the only) reason for that effort is a misbegotten desire to please, and appease, European Muslims.</p>
<p>“I am so tired,” <a href="http://blogs.jp.dk/susetfrahimmerland/2012/05/18/jeg-er-sa-tr%C3%A6t-af-alle-l%C3%B8gnene-om-israel/#comment-10151728616780717">complained</a> Søren Espersen of the Danish Folkeparti last Friday on his <em>Jyllands-Posten </em>blog, “of all the lies about Israel.” He elaborated:</p>
<blockquote><p>I am often invited to high schools, where both teachers and students get such a very special masochistic thrill out of seeing and meeting someone like me &#8211; the very epitome of Danish political evil &#8230;.! It is, of course, [my] foreign policy they most want to be outraged by, but the second most important topic at Danish schools is actually the Middle East. The relationship between Israelis and Arabs, between Jews and Muslims.</p>
<p>And time after time it has struck me that even in a situation where the interest in the Middle East conflict is burning hot, for the most part neither the teachers nor the students are aware of the historical background.</p></blockquote>
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		<title>Primary Lessons</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/primary-lessons/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=primary-lessons</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/primary-lessons/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Jun 2010 05:00:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[Anna Little]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=62630</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Left sputters, while the Tea Parties surge. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/scaled.0609_sun_angle_t651.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-62645" title="scaled.0609_sun_angle_t651" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/scaled.0609_sun_angle_t651-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a></p>
<p>As President Obama’s poll ratings tumble and the Democratic majority in Congress continues to post record disapproval numbers, some on the Left have consoled themselves with the thought that the growing grassroots hostility to incumbent candidates transcends party and ideology. In this exegesis, liberal and progressive discontents are just as wound up – and just as influential – as their conservative Tea Party counterparts. If this week’s primary election results proved anything, it’s that this reading of the nation’s political map won’t wash. While the Tea Parties continued to notch victories in pivotal primary races, the Left’s insurgents were rebuffed.</p>
<p>The most prominent example came from Arkansas, where embattled Senator Blanche Lincoln staved off a bruising challenge from her union-backed rival, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. Lincoln drew Big Labor’s wrath for heresies like opposing “<a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Labor-blows-another-_10-million-on-card-check-95977759.html">card check</a>” legislation, which would have eliminated secret ballots to facilitate union organizing. As payback, unions, aided by a battery of progressive political action groups, put their full political clout into the race, sponsoring Halter to the tune of $10 million. But while the lavishly funded challenge did force Lincoln into a runoff, the unions’ purchasing power came up short. As one agonized Obama White House official told <em>Politico</em>: “Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members&#8217; money down the toilet on a pointless exercise.” Lincoln remains deeply vulnerable. Polls show she trails her Republican opponent John Boozman by some 25 points. But her defeat, if it comes, will be punishment for being too loyal to the Left’s agenda (Lincoln cast the decisive 60<sup>th</sup> vote to pass ObamaCare) rather than for straying too far from it.</p>
<p>Lest one dismiss Arkansas as a one-off from conservative country, liberal bastions proved no more receptive to left-wing insurgents. In California’s 36<sup>th</sup> district, far-Left candidate Marcy Winograd lost her second successive bid to oust Democratic centrist Jane Harman. Winograd, who styles herself as a “peace” activist, ran a campaign that sounded the full range of the angry Left’s talking points: Harman was variously portrayed as a corporate shill, a warmonger, and a traitor to the Left. An outspoken foe of Israel, Winograd even tried to capitalize on Harman’s pro-Israel record in the context of the recent clash between Israeli commandos and armed Turkish activists attempting to run Israel’s naval blockade. Winograd<a href="http://www.facebook.com/notes/marcy-winograd-for-congress/peace-candidate-winograd-denounces-murders-of-free-gaza-activists/10150196134540206%20"> boasted</a> that as a sign of “solidarity” with the activists, her campaign had sent a Winograd for Congress T-Shirt that had been “worn on the flotilla.” As primary day neared, progressive blogs began <a href="http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/linda-milazzo/28963/will-marcy-winograd-pull-a-sestak-and-beat-jane-harman-in-the-june-8th-california-primary">trumpeting</a> Winograd as the new Joe Sestak – a true progressive who would oust the incumbent impostor. The hype proved just that, as Harman won by a comfortable <a href="http://redondobeach.patch.com/articles/election-results-veteran-harman-defeats-winograd">18-point</a> margin.</p>
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		<title>Stopping the Imperial Senate</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/john-ellis/stopping-the-imperial-senate/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=stopping-the-imperial-senate</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:03:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[John Ellis]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[Aaron Nimzowitsch]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=53551</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How can we prevent Senate Democrats from forcing through ObamaCare against the will of the American people? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/us-senate.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-53554" title="us-senate" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/us-senate.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="311" /></a></p>
<p>There is a story about legendary chess grandmaster Aaron Nimzowitsch, who detested cigar smoke. In the great New York tournament of 1927 his opponent Milan Vidmar took out his cigar case and began to fiddle with it. Nimzowitsch became agitated and complained to the tournament director. But he is not smoking, the director replied. “He is threatening to!” shouted the distraught Nimzowitsch. Vidmar got the better of Nimzowitsch in New York. The threat was enough.<strong> </strong></p>
<p>The GOP could learn a valuable lesson from Dr. Vidmar and protect the country from a disaster in the making. If the Senate Democrats force passage of ObamaCare through “reconciliation,” what will individual Democrat Senators have done? First, they will have ignored the clear and consistent message of the American people in poll after poll. In some states those who oppose the bill outnumber those in favor by 20 points or more. Second, they will have taken the unprecedented step of passing major social legislation without bipartisan support—in fact without a single opposition party vote. Third, they will have violated Senate rules which allow only a limited and technical role for reconciliation, not a use that to all intents and purposes abolishes the Senate’s 60 vote rule for substantive policy issues.</p>
<p>It is reasonable to conclude that this represents a series of morally indefensible actions on the part of the Senators involved. On the first point, they have treated the opinion of the people who elected them with contempt. On the second point, they have acted irresponsibly. On the third point they have cheated when the stakes were so huge that faithful adherence to the rules was essential. Take the three points together, and you have despicable behavior, behavior unworthy of a U.S. Senator.</p>
<p>Elected representatives have been recalled for much less than this. California’s Governor Gray Davis was recalled simply for failing to halt runaway legislative spending, and that doesn’t come close to the immorality of jamming through legislation of massive national import with parliamentary tricks and ruthless partisanship over the strong objection of the American people. Recalls are as a rule both difficult and dangerous. They easily create a backlash in favor of the incumbent as the electorate becomes irritated with a process that seems to question its judgment in having elected the individual in the first place. In 1967, the attempt to recall Frank Church probably strengthened his position for reelection, which he won by a large margin. But given the mood of the country with respect to ObamaCare, that danger is now minimal.</p>
<p>What of the difficulty of the process? The answer to this is that there are severe limits to what can be done, but that there are nonetheless some real opportunities. Only eighteen states provide for recall of U.S. Senators: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin. (The question whether state recall statutes are legally enforceable for federal offices is not completely clear, but I’ll return to that in a moment.) That is 18 states, so a total of 36 senators are potentially subject to recall. Of these, 11 are at the moment Republicans, which leaves us with 25. A recall would be pointless for 7 of those, because they are up for reelection this year. Among the remaining 18, only Kent Conrad has said that “Reconciliation cannot be used to pass comprehensive health care reform.” We are thus left with 17 senators in 12 states: Alaska’s Begich; California’s Feinstein; Colorado’s Udall; Louisiana’s Landrieu; Michigan’s Levin and Stabenow; Minnesota’s Franken and Klobuchar; Montana’s Baucus and Tester; New   Jersey’s Lautenberg and Menendez; Oregon’s Merkley; Rhode   Island’s Reed and Whitehouse; Washington’s Cantwell; Wisconsin’s Kohl.</p>
<p>All but four of these are states carried by Gore, Kerry and Obama. Anything is possible in a climate in which a Republican took Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, but it would certainly be hard to get a blue state to recall a Democrat. However, the chances are quite good in the three states carried by both George W Bush and McCain: Alaska, Louisiana and Montana. And then there is Colorado, which Bush carried twice.</p>
<p>If we look at the mood in these four states, it’s clear that their five Democratic Senators are all vulnerable. In Alaska, Mark Begich’s approval rating has fallen to 35% according to a recent Public Policy Polling poll. In Colorado, Mark Udall’s approval numbers had dropped into minus territory already by April of 2009, and that was a time when Obama’s numbers were still high. But when you add to this the fact that Obama’s current polling in Colorado is worse than his national average, that the incumbent Senate Democrat up for reelection this year is now behind by 14 points, and that in an especially ominous poll Coloradans say they trust the judgment of the American people more than their political leaders by 74 to 11 percent, this looks to be fertile ground for a recall. In Louisiana Mary Landrieu’s polls plummeted following the Louisiana purchase, and the state’s incumbent Republican Senator is 24 points up in his reelection campaign this year. In Montana, a recent poll showed a huge margin against ObamaCare (74 to 26) and Max Baucus’ approval rating instantly dropped 20 points to 44% because of his role in promoting it. If Baucus or Jon Tester vote for ObamaCare by reconciliation in this climate of opinion in their state they can expect a firestorm.</p>
<p>But states vary in the difficulty of mounting a recall: some make it easy, while in others the hurdles are almost impossible to overcome. Fortunately, Alaska, Colorado and Montana are among the easiest. In Alaska and Colorado, the number of signatures needed to qualify a recall petition is 25% of the vote received in the last election by the person to be recalled. That means roughly 38,000 signatures for Begich and 50,000 for Udall—easily doable. In Louisiana and Montana the number is a percentage of the total eligible voters (not those who actually voted) in the last election. In Louisiana, that percentage is one third, which means 800,000 signatures, and that would be hard to do. But in Montana the percentage is a mere 10%, so it would take only 75,000 to recall Tester or Baucus, and that is feasible. Recall efforts would create the kind of national attention that would generate more than enough money to finance the collecting of signatures.</p>
<p>To be sure, there are many ways in which recall drives can fail. There is a school of legal thought which holds that a recall interferes with the federally determined term of six years, and is thus unconstitutional. I don’t find this convincing, but some people I respect do. The least we can say is that it is not clear what the U.S. Supreme Court would do. The outcome could well be that U.S. Senators can’t be recalled after all—we simply don’t know. But back to Dr Vidmar: just take out the cigar case and fiddle with it, and see what happens. The threat is a powerful one. If tomorrow the state Republican chairs in these four states were to announce that any vote for ObamaCare by reconciliation would trigger a drive to recall the Senator who cast it, these five would have to decide whether they wanted to take the risk.</p>
<p>At the very least, the recall drive would be embarrassing to them, and would provide a forum in which the full extent of their betrayal of their constituents, of responsible government, and of Senate rules and traditions could be spelled out, discussed, publicized, denounced. And in the worst case scenario, the Supreme Court might decide that those state statutes are not in fact unconstitutional. It might hold, say, that the six year term only specifies a limit; after all, Scott Brown was not elected to a six year term, and nobody thinks that unconstitutional. Or it may hold that a recall from a six year term is an action that cancels the term completely, and does not change the definition of a full term. My hunch is that that is what the court would do, because it makes the most sense. But we just don’t know—and the point is that the Senators can’t know either. We can be sure that they don’t really want to cast this vote. The announcement that they will face a recall effort could easily be enough to tip them over the edge. Go to it, Alaska, Colorado, Louisiana, and Montana.</p>
<p><em>John Ellis is President of the California Association of Scholars, and a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz.</em></p>
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		<title>Three Reasons Why The Dems Are in Big, Big Trouble. And One Reason Why They&#8217;re Not. &#8211; Reason Magazine</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/three-reasons-why-the-dems-are-in-big-big-trouble-and-one-reason-why-theyre-not-reason-magazine/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=three-reasons-why-the-dems-are-in-big-big-trouble-and-one-reason-why-theyre-not-reason-magazine</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:21:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Martha Coakley&#8217;s resounding defeat in the Massachusetts Senate race is hardly the sort of anniversary gift President Barack Obama could have predicted. Yet there it was, wrapped in a bow and plopped on his doorstep like a flaming bag of dog poo to mark the end of his first year in office. Among other things, [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/20/three-reasons-why-the-dems-are"><img src='http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/logo.gif' alt='' /></a></p>
<p>Martha Coakley&#8217;s resounding defeat in the Massachusetts Senate race is hardly the sort of anniversary gift President Barack Obama could have predicted. Yet there it was, wrapped in a bow and plopped on his doorstep like a flaming bag of dog poo to mark the end of his first year in office.</p>
<p>Among other things, Scott Brown&#8217;s upset victory means that Obama, who flew up to the Bay State to campaign for the deservedly doomed Coakley in the race&#8217;s twilight, is zero for three when it comes to high-profile two-minute drills for beloved causes (remember getting Chicago the Olympics and putting together a global carbon deal at the U.N climate conference in Copenhagen?).</p>
<p>There are at least three basic reasons, plain as the nose on your face, that the Democrats and Obama are in trouble for the near future:</p>
<p>1. Health care reform is not popular. An ABC News/Washington Post poll published on January 19 has 51 percent against current congressional plans and just 44 percent in favor, numbers that haven&#8217;t moved in a month. Other polls show even greater percentages oppose the plan, with all the trend lines over the past year working heavily against the Democrats.</p>
<p>People fear the obvious: &#8220;Reform&#8221; that increases the government&#8217;s role in anything virtually guarantees steadily increasing costs, lower levels of services, and ballooning federal deficits. All the special-interest carve-outs to buy votes from wavering senators and pay down objections from Big Labor didn&#8217;t help either, especially on an issue that was not boiling over on the front-burner of voter concerns at a time of prolonged economic crisis.</p>
<p>2. The stimulus and TARP bailouts are not popular. They never were, even back when Republicans were pushing them, and are getting less and less so as it becomes clear that such policies are at best ineffective and at worst horribly counterproductive. During his first year in office, reports Congressional Quarterly, Obama got what he wanted from Congress a record-setting 97 percent of time, so it&#8217;s not like he&#8217;s simply muddling through with a bad hand. Yet the president (and by extension, the Dems) are tanking when it comes to handling the economy, both in terms of results and job approval. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll from January 10 shows just 43 percent approving of Obama&#8217;s economic policies, down from 56 percent a year ago.</p>
<p>Simply put, nobody believes that weatherizing vacant homes in Detroit or keeping an already bloated public sector on permanent life support is going to restart the economy.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/20/three-reasons-why-the-dems-are">Three Reasons Why The Dems Are in Big, Big Trouble. And One Reason Why They&#8217;re Not. &#8211; Reason Magazine</a>.</p>
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		<title>A Massachusetts Miracle?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/a-massachusetts-miracle-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-massachusetts-miracle-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:00:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Can Republican Scott Brown pull an upset in the Bay State?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-46820" title="APTOPIX Kennedy Successor Brown" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/alg_brown1.jpg" alt="APTOPIX Kennedy Successor Brown" width="485" height="364" /></p>
<p>The big news about today’s special election in Massachusetts is that it is big news.</p>
<p>The contest between state Attorney General Martha Coakley and her Republican opponent, once-obscure state senator <a href="http://www.brownforussenate.com/">Scott Brown</a>, was never supposed to be much of one. Early forecasts posited that Ted Kennedy’s former seat would be easily reclaimed by a Democratic successor. Instead, Republicans stand poised to score a major upset in the Democratic stronghold – and with it the irony-rich possibility that Kennedy’s seat could become the GOP’s last line of defense against much of the legislative agenda championed by the late liberal lion.</p>
<p>None of this was in the script. Massachusetts has long been friendly Democratic territory. The last Republican to serve as senator of the state – <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Brooke">Edward Brooke</a> in 1978 – is a distant memory. It has been 16 years since the state sent a Republican to Congress. Democratic domination is such an accepted fact of life that in 2008 Republicans chose not to run candidates for six House races. It was not a thoughtless decision: In the four competitive races, Republicans were thumped by margins of least 40 percent. Today, Democrats control all ten of the state’s House seats. Democrats outnumber Republicans three-to-one. If ever there was a place for Republicans to strike a blow against the Democratic establishment, the Bay State was not it.</p>
<p>For a while, indeed, the Senate race seemed to conform to old patterns. But in recent days the race has tightened dramatically. Last week yielded a series of surprise polls that showed Coakley’s initial advantage crumbling and the race in a statistical dead heat. Some polls even give Brown the advantage: A recent Suffolk University poll showed Brown leading Coakley by 50 percent to 46 percent, while a <em>Politco</em> <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31621.html">poll</a> conducted this Monday had Brown with a staggering 9-point lead. Even more worryingly for Democrats’ fortunes, independent voters have been breaking for Brown. In a state where 51 percent of the electorate is unaffiliated with either of the two major parties, the significance of that statistic can not be overstated.</p>
<p>What’s behind Brown’s rise? In part, he has benefited from the insipid and complacent campaign that Coakley has run. Having taken victory for granted, she has spent little time making her case to the voters. The campaign’s desperate last-minute scramble to drum up support – capped by a rescue attempt this weekend by a visiting President Obama – underscores the bankruptcy of that strategy.</p>
<p>With Coakley failing to define herself, Brown has proven adept at demonstrating just what she stands for. One of those things is giving legal rights, including prosecution in civilian courts, to terrorist captives – a position that Brown has had some success exploiting. As a lieutenant colonel in the Massachusetts National Guard, Brown not only has credibility on the war in terror; he also has the support of most Americans. A recent <a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/december_2009/58_favor_waterboarding_of_plane_terrorist_to_get_information">Rasmussen poll</a> found that 71 percent of all voters think that would-be Christmas Bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt to blow-up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 should be investigated by military authorities as a terrorist act. Just 22 percent take Coakley’s view that such plots should be handled by civilian authorities as a criminal act. Coakley’s retort has been to link Brown with what she has called the failed policies of “the Bush-Cheney administration.” Unpromisingly for this line of attack, however, the Rasmussen poll finds that nearly 60 percent of Americans agree with the original Bush-Cheney view that terrorist captives should be subjected to aggressive interrogation techniques like waterboarding.</p>
<p>Coakley hasn’t shored up her national security credentials with her opposition to President Obama’s surge of troops in Afghanistan. More damaging to the campaign has been her defense of that position. In an unfortunate bit of military analysis, Coakley has said that U.S. forces should withdraw from Afghanistan because “we believed that the Taliban was giving harbor to terrorists.” But now, according to Coakley, “They’re gone. They’re not there anymore.” In fact, there is widespread evidence of strategic cooperation between Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda elements – a reality highlighted with the recent murder of seven CIA agents by al-Qaeda double agent and Taliban sympathizer Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi in Khost, Afghanistan. In this context, Coakley’s claim that al-Qaeda is no longer a threat in Afghanistan seems about as astute as Gerald Ford’s blundering <a href="http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/ford/essays/biography/3">assurance</a> in a 1976 presidential debate that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.”</p>
<p>Healthcare is another issue that has worked in Brown’s favor. If elected, Brown would deny Senate Democrats the 60-vote supermajority they need to override a GOP filibuster of the health care bill. That makes Brown the man who could stop ObamaCare. The issue has special resonance in Massachusetts, whose increasingly unpopular “universal” health care law is seen as a model for the federal legislation. Once widely supported, the state’s health care program is now a source of voter discontent. Massachusetts families pay <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/08/22/bay_state_health_insurance_premiums_highest_in_country/">the country’s highest health insurance premiums</a>, according to the Commonwealth Fund, and more than a third of state residents consider the law a failure. Strange though it may seem, the fact that Brown may be the critical vote to block the health care bill – Ted Kennedy’s favorite piece of legislation – may actually help him win Kennedy’s seat.</p>
<p>It helps that the telegenic and well-spoken Brown is also an attractive candidate in his own right. His shining moment came during a recent debate, when moderator David Gergen asked if Brown wanted “to sit in Teddy Kennedy’s seat” in order to stop ObamaCare. Brown <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJEEQHOnI2Q">took memorable issue</a> with that description. “With all due respect, it’s not the Kennedy’s seat. It’s not the Democrats’ seat. It’s the people’s seat.” “<a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31579.html%20">People’s Seat</a>” has since become campaign supporters’ unofficial rallying cry.</p>
<p>Brown still faces an uphill battle. State Democrats have a larger and more effective political structure in place. And while special elections are generally low-turnout affairs, the prospect of losing a seat so long under Democratic control could propel enough frightened Democrats to the polls.</p>
<p>Even if Brown comes up short, however, the fact that a race many expected to be a Democratic coronation has been so hard-fought sends a clear warning to the Democratic leadership: the Democrats’ domestic policy agenda is now a political liability and could cost them come next fall’s midterm elections. Then there is the more immediate concern. Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat was the Democrats’ to lose. Now lose it they could.</p>
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