O’Donnell’s Victory and What It Means

John Podhoretz "The presumption among delighted people on the Left-liberal side is that all this roil on the Right suggests a party in disarray and a movement intent on cannibalizing itself. That’s one way to look at it. The other is that the GOP is actually expanding and seizing the populist mood that seems to be the national direction –  even though the GOP leadership, especially in the Senate, is finding the whole business unnerving and destructive."

Tea Party candidates mostly did well, which should help pull the GOP back to its roots. "Tea Party candidates mostly did well, which is mostly to the good in my opinion. If the flurry and fighting that ended Tuesday represented a “war for the soul of the Republican Party” as the mainstream media is fond of saying, here’s the silver lining: at least the GOP still has a soul worth fighting for."

Koran burner Derek Fenton booted from his job at NJ Transit

NY Daily News  "If Fenton was fired for burning the Koran while off-duty, his First Amendment rights probably were violated, Chris Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union said.

"The Supreme Court has recognized a constitutional right to burn the flag. As reprehensible as it may be, burning the Koran would be protected as well." "
As, I'm sure they consider burning the American flag to be reprehensible.

Worries Over Tax Hikes Coloring Business Decisions

WSJ  "Nobody is doing much of anything about expanding or hiring or investing in new equipment," said Ken Keith, owner of Kasbar Inc., a Winston-Salem, N.C., accounting firm that works with small businesses.
"Target Plastics Inc., a Salem, Ore., maker of custom plastic products, used to have seven employees, but now it has only two full-time workers, with an additional person working half-time, said owner Melissa Hescock.
" "I've basically cut back because of the amount of taxes," Ms. Hescock said, including recent state increases and anticipated future federal boosts. "I have fewer people doing more work.""
Oh, the country's in the very best  of hands, the best of haaaaands, the best of hands.

GOOD MOVE MITCH!  "He is introducing a bill in Washington that would prevent anyone from paying a higher tax rate next year than they do this year. This would effectively extend all of the Bush tax cuts for another year .. and give a new congress the chance to straighten this mess out." Neal Boortz

Photo from Wikipedia

Obama's Tiresome Tolerance Lectures

David Limbaugh  "But it's not Obama's curiously bloodless behavior and strange disconnectedness ...that most concerns me about his Pentagon speech and the others. It's his reflexive instinct to lecture Americans, when they're not the ones who need lecturing.

"His first reaction, for example, when Americans protested the building of the ostentatious mosque at ground zero was to assume Americans were being intolerant and bigoted."....
"Surely it should be obvious to Obama and his ilk by now that Islamists don't attack us because of our alleged "intolerance." They don't even respect tolerance. They don't aspire to it. They reject it. And they reject us -- and will continue to, regardless of how nice and "tolerant" we are."

Obamacare vs. the Rule of Law

Heritage  "Secretary Sebelius’ Hugo Chavezesque threats against the health insurance industry demonstrate why the fight to repeal Obamacare is also the fight for the soul of our country. Obamacare and the progressive movement represent a fundamental threat to our founding principles. For the left, “progress” means fundamentally transforming America through bureaucratic dictates that will engineer a “better” society by assuring equal outcomes. Through Obamacare, progressives would redistribute wealth through a distant, patronizing welfare state that regulates more and more of the economy, politics and society. The question Americans face is: Are we a country ruled by law or by bureaucrat?"

October Surprises

Victor Davis Hanson "The Democrats' best hope is a major crisis overseas that would rally the American public around their commander in chief. Usually, cynical journalists dub an unexpected autumn bombing run, missile launch, or presidential announcement of a cease-fire or needed escalation an "October surprise."
"These are the "wag the dog" moments that might turn angry Americans' thoughts elsewhere. And they have a checkered history that began long before critics alleged that in August 1998, before midterm elections, Bill Clinton ordered bombing missions in Afghanistan and the Sudan to distract public attention from his embarrassing dalliance with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office. He looked decisive and presidential; his Republican opponents looked nitpicking and petty."

Legalizing Marijuana: Why Citizens Should Just Say No

Heritage" Marijuana advocates often point to the Netherlands as a well-functioning society with a relaxed attitude toward drugs, but they rarely mention that Amsterdam is one of Europe’s most violent cities. In Amsterdam, officials are in the process of closing marijuana dispensaries, or “coffee shops,” because of the crime associated with their operation.[26] Furthermore, the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport has expressed “concern about drug and alcohol use among young people and the social consequences, which range from poor school performance and truancy to serious impairment, including brain damage.”

Islam and Moral Nuance

Dennis Prager "Kristof: “In America, bigoted comments about Islam often seem to come from people who have never visited a mosque and know few if any Muslims.”
"Question: Would Kristof agree that those on the left who declare that “Islam is a religion of peace” and who claim to see no moral differences between the contemporary Muslim world and the contemporary Christian and Jewish and Buddhist worlds, also have “never visited a mosque and know few if any Muslims?”"

Obamacare and the Medicare Bureaucracy: A Dangerous Duo

Heritage “While there is obviously nothing wrong with experimenting with new models of physician payment, it should take place in an economic environment where patients control the flow of dollars in the system. It appears that the law’s replacement of traditional Medicare fee-for-service payment is to be coupled with a form of managed care, meaning that Medicare patients’ choice of physicians and treatment options is limited by those doing the managing.”

http://townhall.com/cartoons/cartoonist/MichaelRamirez

The Anti-American President?

Big Government "It is clear that Barack Obama abhors the core founding principles of individual self-responsibility, personal self-realization, and constitutionally protected individual rights, upon which our historically exceptional nation was built. He shares with America’s adversaries the view that our individualist ethos and worldview is selfishly immoral.

"Thus, the consistent thrust of his agenda, foreign and domestic, has been to humiliate America as an exceptional nation and to punish its exceptional achievers, by imposing the principle of coercive, egalitarian leveling on the American culture and economy.

"Evidence for this objective can be found throughout his life, statements, and career."

Getting Obama Half-Right — and All Wrong "It would seem likely that any ideas of an anti-colonialist nature that Obama might have imbibed as a child would not have come from the father, whom he saw only twice in his life, but rather from his stoutly American, Kansas-to-Seattle-to-Hawaii mother, whose remarkable life journey also included taking up permanent residence on the academic left.
"Gingrich might just have been careless in the way he was talking, and through that carelessness handed his party’s enemies a big stick to beat the GOP with at a particularly inopportune moment."

Sebelius, WH tactics on ObamaCare dissent “thuggery”

Hot Air "Last week, I wrote about the threat from Kathleen Sebelius to lock out insurers who dared to dissent from the official ObamaCare line of lower costs and bigger benefits for all. Today, both Michael Barone and the Wall Street Journal attack the White House and Sebelius for their “thuggery” in attempting to silence straightforward and rational criticisms as well as perfectly predictable increases in premium rates from accelerated mandates. Barone calls this an example of “gangster government“:"...

Gangster government stifles criticism of Obamacare "The threat to use government regulation to destroy or harm someone's business because they disagree with government officials is thuggery. Like the Obama administration's transfer of money from Chrysler bondholders to its political allies in the United Auto Workers, it is a form of gangster government." Michael Barone.

Political thuggery from HHS. "ObamaCare includes a slew of mandated benefits for next year, such as allowing children to remain on their parents' plans until age 26 and "free" preventative care (i.e., no direct out-of-pocket cost sharing for consumers). The tone of Ms. Sebelius's letter suggests that she doesn't understand that money is exchanged for goods and services, and that if Congress mandates new benefits, premiums will rise."