400-408 – Dinesh D'Souza, best-selling author and lecturer, and now the new President of King's College in NYC (tkc.edu), is out with his latest entitled The Roots of Obama's Rage (dineshdsouza.com). Glenn Beck said today (11/5/2010) that Dinesh's new book "puts it all together" when one wants to understand Barack Obama.
•• Dinesh D'Souza, Forbes (9/27/2010) How Obama Thinks. This is an excellent piece!!
413-423 – Dinesh D'Souza
428-437 – • CNN (11/5/2010) UPDATE: Olbermann suspended for Dem contributions.
• AP (11/4/2010) Citing health overhaul, AARP hikes employee costs.
• Peggy Noonan, WSJ (11/5/2010) Americans Vote for Maturity: Obama gets a rebuke, but so do Republicans who seem unqualified.
// The Republicans won big, but both parties return to Washington chastened. Good.
Two small points on the election's atmospherics that carry implications for the future. The first is that negative ads became boring, unpersuasive. Forty years ago they were new, exciting in a sort of prurient way. Now voters take for granted that politicians are no good, and such ads are just more polluted water going over the waterfall. The biggest long-term loser: liberalism. If all pols are sleazoid crooks, then why would people want to give them more governmental power to order our lives? The implicit message of two generations of negative ads: Vote conservative, limit the reach of the thieves.
// On Wednesday, President Obama gave a news conference to share his thoughts. Viewers would have found it disappointing if there had been any viewers. The president is speaking, in effect, to an empty room...By the end I was certain he will never produce a successful stimulus because he is a human depression.
Actually I thought the worst thing you can say about a president: that he won't even make a good former president.
His detachment is so great, it is even from himself. As he spoke, he seemed to be narrating from a remove. It was like hearing the audiobook of Volume I of his presidential memoirs. "Obama was frustrated. He honestly didn't understand what the country was doing. It was as if they had compulsive hand-washing disorder. In '08 they washed off Bush. Now they're washing off Obama. There he is, swirling down the drain! It's all too dramatic, too polar. The morning after the election it occurred to him: maybe he should take strong action. Maybe he should fire America! They did well in 2008, but since then they've been slipping. They weren't giving him the followership he needed. But that wouldn't work, they'd only complain. He had to keep his cool. His aides kept telling him, 'Show humility.' But they never told him what humility looked like. What was he supposed to do, burst into tears and say hit me? Not knowing how to feel humility or therefore show humility he decided to announce humility: He found the election 'humbling,' he said."
// What the tea party, by which I mean members and sympathizers, has to learn from 2010 is this: Not only the message is important but the messenger.
// ...[T]he tea party is going to have to ask itself: Is this candidate electable? Will he pass muster with those who may not themselves be deeply political but who hold certain expectations as to the dignity and stature required of those who hold office?
This is the key question the tea party will face in 2012....Electable doesn't mean not-conservative. Electable means mature, accomplished, stable—and able to persuade.
// Here is an old tradition badly in need of return: You have to earn your way into politics. You should go have a life, build a string of accomplishments, then enter public service. And you need actual talent: You have to be able to bring people in and along. You can't just bully them, you can't just assert and taunt, you have to be able to persuade.
Americans don't want, as their representatives, people who seem empty or crazy. They'll vote no on that.
It's not just the message, it's the messenger.
• Charles Krauthammer (11/5/2010) A Return to the Norm: Waves comes and waves go, but the republic endures.
// Opposition to the policies was compounded by the breathtaking arrogance with which they were imposed. Ignored was the unmistakable message from the 2009–10 off-year elections culminating in Scott Brown's anti-Obamacare victory in bluer-than-blue Massachusetts. Moreover, Obamacare and the stimulus were passed on near-total party-line votes — legal, of course, but deeply offensive to the people's sense of democratic legitimacy. Never before had anything of this size and scope been passed on a purely partisan basis. (Social Security commanded 81 House Republicans; the Civil Rights Act, 136; Medicare, 70.)
Tuesday was the electorate's first opportunity to render a national verdict on this manner of governance. The rejection was stunning. As a result, President Obama's agenda is dead. And not just now. No future Democratic president will try to revive it — and if he does, no Congress will follow him, in view of the carnage visited upon Democrats on Tuesday.
This is not, however, a rejection of Democrats as a party. The center-left party as represented by Bill Clinton remains competitive in every cycle. The lesson of Tuesday is that the American game is played between the 40-yard lines. So long as Democrats don't repeat Obama's drive for the red zone, Democrats will cyclically prevail, just as Republicans do.
Nor should Republicans overinterpret their Tuesday mandate. They received none. They were merely rewarded for acting as the people's proxy in saying no to Obama's overreaching liberalism. As one wag put it, this wasn't an election so much as a restraining order.
The Republicans won by default. And their prize is nothing more than a two-year lease on the House. The building was available because the previous occupant had been evicted for arrogant misbehavior and, by rule, alas, the House cannot be left vacant.
The president, however, remains clueless. In his next-day news conference, he had the right demeanor — subdued, his closest approximation to humility — but he was uncomprehending about what just happened. The "folks" were apparently just "frustrated" that "progress" is just too slow. Asked three times whether popular rejection of his policy agenda might have had something to do with the "shellacking" he took, he looked as if he'd been asked whether the sun had risen in the West. Why, no, he said.
443-452 – • WSJ Editors (11/5/2010) The Two Left Coasts: Why the GOP wave didn't wash over New York and California.
// ...California's Democratic voters outnumbered Republicans by 13 points over the national average, according to exit polls...[P]ower lies at the iron triangle of public employee unions, high taxes and social budgets that are larger than the economies in other states.
The fiscs in both Albany and Sacramento are perched atop a shrinking base of taxpayers, many so wealthy that they don't care what tax rates are. The highest-earning 1% funds nearly half of the New York budget. The liberal political class then feeds these dollars to its union constituents—not least in the form of gold-plated benefits and pensions—who in turn spend mightily to protect their patrons, even as the state budgets lurch ever closer to Grecian territory.
// [T]his agenda squeezes the middle class and drives jobs out of state, it leaves politics to a coalition of well-off knowledge professionals, public employees and lower-income workers who depend on the state for transfer payments. The well-paid elites in finance, fashion, media, tech or Hollywood tend to view environmental issues like cap and tax as enlightened social statements unrelated to economic growth.
• John Fund, WSJ (11/5/2010) Next Year's Gerrymandering Free-For-All: GOP legislators are in charge of redistricting in 17 states. Democrats won't stand by passively.
// The raw use of power to draw districts that benefit one party over another—called gerrymandering—is as old as our republic and has been upheld by the Supreme Court on several occasions. But at its core it allows incumbents to pick their voters, rather than having voters pick their representatives.
Gerrymandering creates bizarre and serpentine districts that pack members of an opposing political party into as few districts as possible while leaving the rest dominated by the party drawing the lines. The 2000 gerrymander of California by Democrats was a spectacular case. Only nine of the state's 865 legislative and congressional elections held in the years since have seen a switch in party control.
• Jonah Goldberg (11/5/2010) Defeat, then Denial: Obama's self-exonerating narrative about the midterm elections is simply wrong.
• Ann Coulter (11/5/2010) We're All Bigots Now.
458-508 – Todd Zeile, former MLB player for 11 different teams over a 16 year career (1989–2004), is today an actor and producer, and one of the three creatives behind the movie I Am, along with Writer-Director John Ward and Mariner's Small Groups Pastor Jeff Pries. They released I Am in 2,500 churches a few weeks ago, and it came out on DVD this past week on Tuesday (iamthemovie.com). Todd is married to Olympic champion, Julianne McNamara, the first American gymnast to earn a perfect 10 at the Olympics, and they enjoy four children.
• Todd and John Ward will be at the "Dream Center" this Sunday at 2pm for a screening of the movie and some Q & A.
• ESPN (11/4/2010) Sparky Anderson was one of the best. Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson died yesterday at his home in Thousand Oaks, leaving behind his wife Carol, sons Lee and Albert, daughter Shirley Englebrect, and nine grandchildren.
• Wikipedia (11/5/2010) Sparky Anderson. He managed the Cincinnati Reds (1970-1978) and the Detroit Tigers (1979-1995), won the World Series three times (1975, 1976, 1984), and was named AL Manager of the Year twice (1984, 1987). He's 6th on the All Time Managerial Win List.
512-523 – • AOL News (11/4/2010) Couple Win $11.2M Lottery, Then Give It All Away. Since their July win, Allen and Violet Large have donated nearly every cent of their $11.2 million winnings to charity – the Red Cross, the Salvation Army and local churches.
• Fox News (11/04/2010) Growing Trend: 9-5 Schools. Is this a good idea or a bad idea and why?
(2:05) 9-5 Schools
528-539 – Calls.
544-554 – Calls. Do after-school programs discourage parents from being involved with homework?
558-608 – Paul Karpf, Founder and CEO of Financial Recovery USA (financialrecoveryusa.com, 800-385-0745), just one of eight companies in America certified by the Attorney General's office as a Foreclosure Consultant. And for the first 20 callers tonight, Paul's offering a free, in home consultation, that regularly costs $250.
• Financial Recovery USA can help you with ANY tax problem you're facing – from filing back tax returns, to negotiating Offers & Compromise, to negotiating affordable monthly payments, or even if your wages are being garnished. "Remember, the bank can take your house, but the IRS can take your freedom."
612-623 – Teachers, how can we free you up to do your job more effectively? Answers: Stop having to post the "Standard" for every lesson on the chalk board! Stop having to attend to 142 known languages in the classroom, rather than just English. Give us some help with rebellious kids! Maybe a tax break to parents whose kid makes good grades?
628-639 – Teachers, how can we free you up to do your job more effectively?
644-656 – Teachers, how can we free you up to do your job more effectively?
