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« on: November 01, 2015, 06:37:43 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Digest 10-30-2015
From The Federalist Patriot
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Daily Digest
Oct. 30, 2015
THE FOUNDATION
“[The people] are in truth the only legitimate proprietors of the soil and government.” —Thomas Jefferson, 1813
TOP RIGHT HOOKS
What’s NOAA Hiding? Agency Leaves Congress in the Dark1
First there was ClimateGate2, the scandal that broke in 2009 when a hacker exposed extensive data belonging to the UK’s University of East Anglia. That data, which unveiled scandalous email correspondence and a fallacious methodology dubbed the “fudge factor,” revealed a concerted effort by some of the world’s most influential climate scientists to keep evidence of global cooling in a shroud of secrecy. As we noted3 at the time, it was the biggest scandal to rock the scientific world in quite some time. After all, environmental policy is based on what the measurements depict — that’s the claim, at least — but those measurements were manipulated and exploited by the purveyors of climate alarmism. That malfeasance, however, appears to be just the tip of the iceberg.
Skeptical scientists have long rejected climate hyperbole. One reason is that satellite temperature measurements continue to depict a warming hiatus, which now stands at 18 years 8 months4. Faced with growing pressure to address the chatter, a group of warmists tried to quash those claims in a study published in June. According to the authors5, NOAA’s own findings “do not support the notion of a ‘slowdown’ in the increase of global surface temperature.” The researchers even rejected the IPCC’s recent conclusion that a slowdown indeed did happen. Fine, so let’s see all the evidence. Oh, wait, we can’t, because the authors would rather keep some of it a secret.
According to the journal Nature6, “Representative Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who leads the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, asked NOAA in July for the data used in the study and for any internal communications related to it. NOAA has provided the committee with the publicly available data and has briefed committee staff on the research, but the agency has not turned over the communications.” Nor does it plan to. “Although NOAA’s latest response to the committee skirted the issue, the agency suggests in a 27 October statement to Nature that it has no intention of handing over documents that reveal its internal deliberations.” Nothing to see here, right?
Smith contends, “NOAA needs to come clean about why they altered the data to get the results they needed to advance this administration’s extreme climate change agenda.” The Investor’s Business Daily editorial board observed7, “What’s strange is that major temperature revisions by NOAA and others in recent years have always been up — never down — a clear sign of possible bias.” The agency can put these allegations to rest with a little transparency. But it won’t, which leads us to just one conclusion: The ClimateGate fraud is bigger and more malicious than anyone realizes.
Dems' Biggest Super PAC Defends Clinton Again8
Sen. Marco Rubio has the answer to why Hillary Clinton is not damaged by her blatant deception9 surrounding the deadly 2012 attack on the Benghazi consulate. “You know the Democrats have the ultimate super PAC,” Rubio said10 at the Republican presidential debate Wednesday. “It’s called the mainstream media.”
That super PAC turned on Rubio over his claim that Clinton lied when Rubio appeared on CBS Thursday morning. “You’re saying, Senator, that Hillary Clinton lied to help Barack Obama in his re-election campaign,” journalist Charlie Rose said11. “That’s a serious charge!”
Rubio seemed flabbergasted by Rose’s statement. “Yes!” Rubio replied. “It’s the truth. That’s not only why she did it. That’s why everyone in the administration did it. The narrative of their campaign at the time, Charlie, was that al-Qaida was ‘on the run’ and had been defeated. That was their narrative. And this countered that narrative. They did not want that out there.”
Journalism’s ideal is to give information that allows Americans to self-govern. But if the press only fixates on he-said she-said clickbait, then the public isn’t served. Instead of simply chasing soundbites, the media should pursue facts and go where they lead. Fact: Clinton emailed her daughter saying that a group similar to al-Qaida attacked the consulate. Fact: Days later, Clinton told the family12 of slain Navy SEAL Ty Woods that their son died over a YouTube video. Rubio’s articulation of these facts during the Rose interview shows that he is capable of going up against Clinton and giving her such a trouncing that it’d be almost sad to watch.
Who Drops Out Next?13
There were obvious winners in Wednesday night’s debate14, and there were also clear losers. So which candidate(s) will drop out next? Several are struggling to gain traction and may not have a path forward. For starters, the entire slate of “undercard” debate participants have little rationale to continue. Bobby Jindal, Lindsey Graham, Rick Santorum and George Pataki aren’t going to launch out of the bottom tier by remaining stuck in the Happy Hour debates. But there are also some on the primetime stage who should probably pack it in. Mike Huckabee is a swell guy you’d love to chat with over barbecue at the church potluck, but he spends far too much debate time on folksy metaphors like that one and just doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Rand Paul seems to have missed his moment. In 2012, the GOP was perhaps ready for a commander in chief as cautious as Paul on foreign policy, but not in 2015 as the Obama/Clinton model of appeasement diplomacy and “smart power” has the world on fire (and not from global warming). Paul is a major asset in the Senate, too, and he can serve the nation well by staying put. John Kasich is stagnant, and his angry-man shtick isn’t going to help. Other than the fact (which he repeatedly made clear Wednesday night) that he’s from Ohio, there’s not much keeping a moralizing moderate like him afloat.
The big one, however, is Jeb Bush. The establishment favorite has never managed to convince a growing number of voters that a third Bush White House, or a second Clinton vs. Bush race, is in the nation’s best interest. Besides, “I’ve got a lot of really cool things I could do other than sit around, being miserable, listening to people demonize me and me feeling compelled to demonize them,” he complained recently. “That is a joke. Elect Trump if you want that.” And after his spectacular failure of an attack on Marco Rubio at the debate, there’s a growing sense that maybe Bush ought to find some of those other “really cool things” to do.
The first debate’s casualty was Rick Perry15; Scott Walker16 exited after the second. We’re willing to bet one or more of the aforementioned candidates won’t be on stage for the next one.
FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
The Fraudable Care Act17
By Kelly Bartlett
ObamaCare is not healthy. Saddled with side effects from fraud to canceled plans, the sickening reality is that government-driven health care delivers higher costs, more uncertainty and the potential to put insurance plans in a death spiral.
Undercover investigators from the Government Accountability Office created 18 false identities and successfully received subsidized coverage or Medicaid for all but one of them. This, despite the use of nonexistent Social Security numbers, fake birth certificates and other false documentation. Seto Bagdoyan, director of forensic audits at GAO, reported18 that “eligibility determination and enrollment process remains vulnerable to fraud.” One fictitious applicant not only received subsidized coverage from the federal marketplace, but also two state exchanges at the same time. Officials told Bagdoyan “there is no current process to identify individuals with multiple enrollments through different marketplaces.” What’s especially troubling is that the GAO discovered similar vulnerabilities to fraud during its 2013-14 investigation.
Duplicate coverage drives up the cost, as some people received subsidies for private insurance while enrolled in Medicaid. In addition, states incorrectly qualified some people for Medicaid despite their income exceeding the required income levels.
While one of the GAO’s fictitious applicants received three insurance policies, other real-life Americans are in round three of enrolling after losing their health insurance plans not once, but twice. Nine out of 23 co-ops set up to enroll people in ObamaCare have died and 11 more are on life support, causing families to switch plans again. National Review reports19:
“Over 600,000 people who enrolled in co-op health plans will lose their insurance at the end of this year. Many of them were forced into the co-ops to begin with when Obamacare canceled their private insurance policies in 2013, meaning they will have lost their health insurance twice because of the law.” |
