The Patriot Post Chronicle 5-22-2013

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The Patriot Post Chronicle 5-22-2013
From The Federalist Patriot
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Politicizing the Tornado

May 22, 2013

The Foundation

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams

Editorial Exegesis

"Despite no evidence that devastating tornadoes have increased in frequency or intensity due to fossil fuel use, another warm-monger blames the Moore, Okla., disaster on GOP 'polluters and deniers.' Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., ... took to the Senate floor Monday to rail against his Republican colleagues for denying the theory of anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming (known by its acronym, AGW). ... 'So, you may have a question for me,' Whitehouse said. 'Why do you care? Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run off the climate cliff like a bunch of proverbial lemmings and disgrace ourselves? I'll tell you why. We're stuck in this together. We are stuck in this together. When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover. And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn't just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas.' ... According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 'The 12-month period from May 2012 to April 2013 was remarkable for the absence of tornado activity and tornado impacts in the United States.' NOAA tornado expert Harold Brooks notes that during that period there were just 197 tornadoes rated EF1 or stronger, the fewest since at least 1954. ... During 1953, 519 people died and more than 5,000 were injured. Three tornadoes killed a total of 320 people in Waco, Texas; Flint, Mich. and Worcester, Mass., during May and June of that year. In 1965, 301 people were killed by tornadoes, 260 of those on April 11, Palm Sunday. Like the 1965 Palm Sunday outbreak, the largest outbreak in 1974 occurred on one day, Wednesday, April 3. For 1974 in total, 348 people perished. ... As renowned meteorologist Joe Bastardi1 notes, storm cycles are heavily, and perhaps mainly, influenced by natural ocean phenomena known scientifically as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. When the Atlantic is warming and the Pacific is cooling, as they are now, we tend to see more tornadoes and hurricanes. Unfortunately, we also see more demagogues exploiting tragedy for political and ideological purposes." --Investor's Business Daily2

Upright

"The consensus in Washington seems to be that the [scandal] involving the IRS presents the greatest threat to President Obama, since everyone gets the IRS. But at the White House, the scandal that I sense is causing the most fear is Benghazi. ... Four people died. Help was not sent. And nobody really has any idea what the president did or didn't do about it the night it happened. The administration sought to falsify the story. ... Each of these scandals ... must be investigated. But Republicans would be remiss if they didn't get to the bottom of Benghazi, which may have been the greatest dereliction of duty of all. The White House has signaled as much." --columnist Keith Koffler

"Many countries around the world have introduced government health systems since 1945, but ... only in America does 'health' 'care' 'reform' begin with the hiring of 16,500 new IRS agents tasked with determining whether your insurance policy merits a fine. So now not only are your books and Facebook posts legitimate tax issues but so is your hernia, and your prostate, and your gotcha143. ... Big Government is erecting a panopticon state -- one that sees everything, and regulates everything. It's great 'customer service,' except that you can never get out of the store." --columnist Mark Steyn

"This will be a scandal like Watergate if it turns out that the IRS was acting under orders from Barack Obama or Valerie Jarrett. If the White House's conduct turns out to be unimpeachable, then it is something far worse: a sign that the government itself has become a threat to the Constitution." --Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto

"The left suggests that only greater government can fix the issues that trouble Americans. That's because, according to the left, one grand, unifying problem underlies all the other problems: Americans are nasty. Some Americans are poor because other Americans are greedy. Minorities are disproportionately poor because white Americans are racist. Women are trapped in socioeconomic oblivion because male Americans are sexist. America is not a melting pot. America is a hell pit designed to consume its non-white, male, Christian inhabitants. How then can the patriarchal, xenophobic majority be defeated? Only with a coalition of victims. ... The true American experience, according to Obama ... is marginalization. And marginalization justifies massive government interventionism to foster e pluribus unum." --columnist Ben Shapiro

"For Obama, the only things separating America from redemption are politics, specifically obstruction from unhinged Republicans and others clinging to outdated and vaguely illegitimate motives. Opposition to gun control is irrational because the 'government is us.' Reject warnings 'that tyranny is always lurking,' he told the graduating class at Ohio State, because a self-governing people cannot tyrannize themselves. But, suddenly, when the administration finds itself ensnared by errors of its own making, the curtain is drawn back on the cult of expertise and the fantasy of statist redemption. ... Of course, it was Obama who once said, 'I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors.' That is, when things are going relatively well. When scandal hits the fan, he goes from 'the government is us' to talking of his own agencies the way a czar might dismiss an injustice in some Siberian backwater. The hubris of omnicompetence gives way to 'lighten up, we're idiots.'" --columnist Jonah Goldberg

Insight

"The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread." --former head of the New York Times' editorial staff, John Swinton (1829-1901)

"Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon." --British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Demo-gogues

That's racist: "Barriers have come tumbling down, and new doors of opportunity have swung open, and laws and hearts and minds have been changed to a point where someone who looks just like you can somehow come to serve as president of the United States of America." --Barack Obama speaking to the predominately black Morehouse College, about the fact that discrimination is no longer an excuse for making bad decisions. Unfortunately, he still plays the race bait and class bait cards in order to make plenty of bad choices in government policy.

"I might have been in prison. I might have been unemployed. I might not have been able to support a family -- and that motivates me." --Barack Obama in his commencement speech to Morehouse College, many graduates of which face an economy with no jobs

"We're now poised for progress, but our work is not done, and our focus cannot drift. We've got to stay focused on our economy, and putting people back to work, and raising wages, and bringing manufacturing back to the United States of America. That has to be what we're thinking about every single day." --Barack Obama (In short: Don't get sidetracked by so-called "scandals.")

The IRS is fine: "You know, after listening to all of the discussion and reading all of the information that I've read, I am not convinced that this is a great big political conspiracy. I would certainly admit that there has been some ineptitude, there has been some lack of serious management procedures used and adhered to." --Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL)

"[Republicans] make so much of these issues because this president is such a great president. They will use talking points on Benghazi, they will use the IRS, they will use AP, as, I think, subterfuges -- evasions -- of what the American people want us to do." --House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

Hot air: "This is climate change. We were warned about extreme weather: Not just hot weather, but extreme weather. ... Carbon could cost us the planet. The least we could do is put a little charge on it so people move to clean energy." --Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) advocating a carbon tax