|
Title: The Patriot Post Daily Digest 1-13-2014 Post by: nChrist on January 20, 2014, 12:45:10 AM ________________________________________ The Patriot Post Daily Digest 1-13-2014 From The Federalist Patriot Free Email Subscription (http://patriotpost.us/subscription/new) ________________________________________ Daily Digest Jan. 13, 2014 THE FOUNDATION “No man can well doubt the propriety of placing a president of the United States under the most solemn obligations to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution. It is a suitable pledge of his fidelity and responsibility to his country; and creates upon his conscience a deep sense of duty, by an appeal, at once in the presence of God and man, to the most sacred and solemn sanctions, which can operate upon the human mind.” –Joseph Story (1833) TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS The BIG Lie: Obama’s Record In his Saturday radio address, Barack Obama boasted of his record: “In 2013, our businesses created 2.2 million new jobs – including 87,000 last month. Our unemployment rate is the lowest it has been since October 2008. And across our broader economy, there are signs of progress. … Thanks in part to the reforms in the Affordable Care Act, health care costs now eat up less of our economy – over the past four years, costs have grown at the slowest rate on record. And since I took office, we’ve cut our deficits by more than half.” Now here’s the truth: Headline unemployment declined because people gave up looking. If the same number of Americans were in the labor force as just last year, the unemployment rate would be 7.9%. Second, thanks to the “Affordable” Care Act, millions of Americans have lost the insurance plan they liked and were told they could keep, and they’re forced to pay more for less. And finally, Obama could only “cut the deficit” in half because he quadrupled it upon taking office. The deficit remains far higher than the previous record. Big Labor and the Unemployed The AFL-CIO isn’t pleased with Friday’s jobs report1, issuing a statement complaining, “The unemployment rate has finally dipped below 7 percent – more than four and a half years since the recession supposedly ended. But that fall was driven mostly by people dropping out of the labor force, not by healthy job creation.” The AFL-CIO is, of course, one of the most powerful Democrat constituent groups, so it’s no surprise that they blame Republicans, who they say “remain fixated on irrelevant and counter-productive austerity measures.” The way to get people working, according to Big Labor, is to extend benefits for those who aren’t working. Final note: The only thing declining faster than labor force participation is union membership. Pelosi Unemploys Civility Republicans aren’t just a political party, they are the definition of evil and Nancy Pelosi wants you to remember it. Speaking on the extension of “temporary” unemployment benefits and GOP demands for cost offsets, she said, “Republicans are not just asking for pay-fors. They keep moving the goalpost. … ‘We want job creation,’ [they say,] a euphemism for tax breaks for the rich; and, ‘We want to end regulation, clean air, clean water,’ you name it. They want to simplify life for those who would exploit.” Democrats know a thing or two about exploitation – it’s the whole reason they keep extending benefits. Conservatives Still Outnumber Liberals From Gallup2: “Americans continue to be more likely to identify as conservatives (38%) than as liberals (23%). But the conservative advantage is down to 15 percentage points as liberal identification edged up to its highest level since Gallup began regularly measuring ideology in the current format in 1992.” Democrats like to describe Republicans as having gone “to the far Right,” but that’s only because Democrats have gotten more liberal. Compared to today’s crop, Woodrow Wilson might appear conservative. Congress Is Wealthier Than Ever A recent analysis shows that of the 534 current members of Congress, 268 have a net worth of at least $1 million, and that, as a whole, Congress is richer than ever. Katherine Clark, also a millionaire, is set to join the House representing Massachusetts. Democrats average more wealth than Republicans, too, though the wealthiest member is Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA). Unsurprisingly, senators are wealthier than House members. The study doesn’t tell us much we didn’t already know other than members of Congress aren’t exactly average citizens. No wonder they don’t “get it.” For more, visit Right Hooks3. RIGHT ANALYSIS ObamaCare Is ‘Burdensome’ – for the White House The White House has issued statements expressing displeasure over a House effort to require reporting and transparency on ObamaCare, calling the requirements “unfunded, unprecedented, and unnecessary,” as well as “unrealistic and costly” and “administratively burdensome.” Gee, that sounds a lot like … ObamaCare. It takes a special degree of chutzpah for the administration to whine about such things when Democrats foisted ObamaCare on the country with its unfunded, unprecedented, unnecessary, unrealistic and costly mandates, taxes and regulations. At issue is getting the administration to report weekly instead of monthly on enrollment data and within two days of any occurrence of security breaches in the Healthcare.gov website involving citizens' personal data. Currently, the government doesn’t have to notify people at all, but no doubt those whose information has been compromised find it to be “administratively burdensome.” Even many Democrats found White House opposition hard to swallow, as some 67 of them voted for the House’s Health Exchange Security and Transparency Act. Meanwhile, in the latest episode of Profiles in Accountability, the government terminated its contract with CGI Federal, the contractor that built Healthcare.gov, a couple of weeks before it expired anyway. The administration is planning to sign a 12-month contract worth roughly $90 million with Accenture, another web firm, to fix the website. Whatever happened to the White House announcement in December that “all is well”? Of course, as we reported at the time4, all was not well. On top of that, the website has already cost roughly a billion dollars. Will Accenture actually get it to work? Don’t hold your breath. Finally, it bears repeating that the fundamental problem isn’t the website5. Indeed, you know things are bad when even The New York Times runs an exposé6 on how badly ObamaCare has mucked up the health system. Title: The Patriot Post Daily Digest 1-13-2014 Post by: nChrist on January 20, 2014, 12:46:06 AM ________________________________________ The Patriot Post Daily Digest 1-13-2014 From The Federalist Patriot Free Email Subscription (http://patriotpost.us/subscription/new) ________________________________________ Despite the President’s Clear Victory Over Al-Qaida… In the 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama wove a narrative about having “decimated” al-Qaida. His bravado was as tiresome as it was untrue. In recent months, al-Qaida has made gains in Iraq and Syria, while Afghanistan has also deteriorated. Now there are two more stories of al-Qaida’s resurgence. First, according to a U.S. counterterrorism official, “We know al-Qaida is using Syria to identify [American and Western] individuals they can recruit, provide them additional indoctrination so they’re further radicalized, and leverage them into future soldiers, possibly in the U.S.” Since the civil war in Syria began three years ago, at least 70 Americans have traveled there, many to fight with the rebels against Bashar al-Assad’s government. Most are still there, but FBI director James Comey says the agency is keeping tabs on them if they return. Recall that the administration’s bent has been to aid the rebels against Assad, believing in the so-called democratic wave behind the “Arab Spring.” Yet the rebels are increasingly dominated by Islamic fascists. The second story is even more germane to the 2012 election, as the details of the attack on Benghazi was a prime lie of Obama and his team. Hours after the attack – on Sept. 11, 2012 was the first clue – the Obama administration knew that Ansar al Sharia in Benghazi claimed responsibility. Now, 16 months later, the Obama State Department is officially designating three Ansar al Sharia groups as terrorist organizations tied to al-Qaida. Sufian bin Qumu, the leader of the Derna branch of Ansar al Sharia, trained with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and fought with jihadis against U.S. forces there. He then spent a few years at the terrorist resort at Guantanamo Bay before checking out to continue his work. Meanwhile, three days after the Benghazi attack, members of Ansar al Sharia in Tunisia ransacked the U.S. Embassy in Tunis. And yet Obama and his team continued to deny this throughout the campaign, while touting Obama’s success against al-Qaida as a reason to re-elect him. With a second term secured, he can now quietly dispense with the charade. If only that meant seriously dealing with U.S. national security. For more, visit Right Analysis3. TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS Arnold Ahlert: For the Historical Record7 Tony Perkins: On Abortion, GOP Puts Tax Dollars in Life Savings8 George Will: A Defining Moment for the Court9 Burt Prelutsky: The Bully's Pulpit10 Ken Blackwell & Bob Morrison: The Left's Necessary Lie11 For more, visit Right Opinion12. OPINION IN BRIEF Columnist Peggy Noonan: “Policy people are policy people – sometimes creative, almost always sober, grounded, mature. But political operatives get high on winning. They start to think nothing can touch them when they’re with a winner. They get full of themselves. And they think only winning counts, because winning is their job. The ones who are young lack judgment, but they don’t know they lack judgment because they’re not wise enough. So they don’t check themselves. … There’s an ethos of wise-guy toughness among these staffers and consultants, and they often try to out-tough each other. That’s how dirty tricks happen. … There’s a twist on this you can see in the Christie story. You read the emails and texts his operatives were sending, and you realize: This is TV dialogue. It’s movie dialogue. They get everything off the screen, not real life, and they’re imitating the sound of tough guys.” Columnist Star Parker: “The quality of our lives ultimately flows from the behavior of individual human beings and not from any meticulously designed political system. The best any political system can do is to assure political freedom. But it cannot assure what individuals choose to do with their freedom and the values that will define their lives. The more we believe that politics alone can make our lives better, and that moral standards are just private matters with no import on the quality of our national life, the deeper we will dig the hole in which we are burying ourselves. … [President Lyndon] Johnson’s promotion of government as the source of life’s answers, and his split between politics and personal morality, contributed mightily to the breakdown of the American family that he knew was vital to our society. Politics and political rhetoric is no substitute for personal morality.” Missouri Lt. Gov. Harriet Woods (1927-2007): “You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims.” Media Research Center’s L. Brent Bozell: “The IRS scandal … is completely untouched by the same media who believed they need to spend two days worth of non-stop coverage on Chris Christie. The two controversies aren’t even close in importance. One is a lane closure on a highway. It’s obnoxious. It’s petty. It’s beneath the governor’s office. It’s a scandal. It should be covered no question about it. The other one is using the most feared arm of government as an intimidation, even a persecution arm against the citizenry of America. There’s no comparison. Yet one gets 44 times13 more coverage than the other.” Comedian Jay Leno: “New Jersey Governor Chris Christie doesn’t know yet if he’s running for president in 2016. I guess he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it. … Pundits are saying this could hurt his 2016 presidential campaign. The ironic thing is this: Now that Christie is denying everything he sounds even more presidential.” Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis! Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team Join us in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform – Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen – standing in harm’s way in defense of Liberty, and for their families. Links 1 - http://patriotpost.us/posts/22649 2 - http://www.gallup.com/poll/166787/liberal-self-identification-edges-new-high-2013.aspx 3 - http://patriotpost.us/ 4 - http://patriotpost.us/articles/22032 5 - http://patriotpost.us/alexander/22065 6 - http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/11/us/enrollees-at-health-exchanges-face-struggle-to-prove-coverage.html 7 - http://patriotpost.us/opinion/22672 8 - http://patriotpost.us/opinion/22670 9 - http://patriotpost.us/opinion/22661 10 - http://patriotpost.us/opinion/22656 11 - http://patriotpost.us/opinion/22660 12 - http://patriotpost.us/opinion 13 - http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2014/01/10/deluge-44-times-more-network-coverage-christies-traffic-scandal-last |