The Patriot Post Digest 11-6-2015

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The Patriot Post Digest 11-6-2015
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Daily Digest

Nov. 6, 2015

THE FOUNDATION

“I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.” —Thomas Jefferson, 1785

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Economists Expected a Scare but Oct. Jobs Report Not Bad1

The U.S. economy added 271,000 jobs in October and the unemployment rate fell a tenth of a point to 5%. After the discouraging jobs reports2 for August and September, economists feared the worst for the Bureau of Labor Statistics' October jobs report3. For months, the economy has struggled to add enough jobs to keep pace with population growth, and economists thought the October report would say America gained only 185,000 jobs. Yet by some indicators in the report, the economy seems to be slowly turning around. Even the alternative measure of unemployment, the U-6 rate, dropped from September’s 10% to 9.8% for October. The BLS revised up its employment numbers for the late summer, reporting the economy added an additional 12,000 jobs. And while many of October’s hires were possibly in preparation for the holidays (44,000 jobs were added in the retail trade sector), the most notable areas of growth were in health care and professional and business services.

This encouraging report may precipitate Federal Reserve action on interest rates in December. The Washington Post reported4 ahead of BLS’s release that investors saw a 50% chance the Fed would raise interest rates next month. The report also means the economy could yet break free of Barack Obama’s economic quagmire. That’s good news, but it could prove politically challenging. As the American Enterprise Institute’s James Pethokoukis tweeted5, “GOP couldn’t beat Obama with 8% unemployment. Can they beat Hillary when it’s 4% next November?”

Zombie Ex-Im Bank Is Undead6

As Ronald Reagan once said, “The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.” He was all too right. “The House on Wednesday night rejected efforts to derail a renewal of the Export-Import Bank, virtually assuring a new life for the agency,” reports The Hill7. “Supporters of the 81-year-old bank highlighted the 313-118 House vote last week — 127 Republicans voted in support — in favor of reviving Ex-Im as proof of the strong support in Congress.”

As we noted8 before its temporary expiration, the bank is a little-known federal agency that gives loans to foreign customers to buy U.S. goods. In practice it’s little more than a mechanism for Big Government to choose Big Business winners and losers. The first warning that the bank would be a cronyism cesspool was when the father of modern Big Government, FDR, created it by executive order in 1934. The second warning is that Ex-Im’s biggest defenders are cronyists in Congress and in huge companies like GE and Boeing, the latter of which benefits from 30%9 of the bank’s financing — nearly $70 billion over the last seven years to foreign purchasers of its products.

Rep. Stephen Fincher (R-TN), who led the GOP charge to reinstate the bank, said Wednesday that “this is a Republican reform bill, [and] we should be happy when Democrats want to cross the aisle to support Republican ideas.” He added, “It’s sad when people put their political scorecards above their constituents.” No, it’s sad when Republicans abandon the Constitution and free-market principles in favor of cronyism. But that’s standard procedure in Washington.

If the Planet’s Warming, Why Is McCarthy Going After AC?10

The 27th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol, which began on Sunday, came to a close Thursday in Dubai. The United States was represented by EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, who urged an amendment to the Montreal Protocol that would require a global reduction in hydrofluorocarbons. In an op-ed11 for The Guardian, she wrote, “Our planet’s fragile ozone layer is on a path toward full restoration by about 2050. But there’s a hitch: the success has hinged largely on replacing ozone-depleting substances with hydrofluorocarbon (HFCs) — chemicals we now know are highly damaging to the environment.” Consequently, McCarthy now advocates a universal policy curbing HFCs in equipment and material like air conditioners, refrigerators and insulation. She continues:

    “It was the 1987 Montreal Protocol, one of the most successful environmental treaties in history, which led to HFCs replacing ozone-destroying pollutants. On 1 November, at the international meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol in Dubai, the United States will make a powerful case for better management of HFC pollution worldwide. Because of the importance of taking aggressive action on these chemicals to achieve global climate goals, I will be leading the United States delegation at that meeting. … Solutions are here, and it’s time to amend the Montreal Protocol to reflect that.”

Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw quips, “Maybe it’s just me, but the same moment you’re telling everyone how much warmer it’s getting might not be the best time to take away their air conditioner.” Besides, researchers just informed us that rising global temperatures are ruining Americans' sex lives12. Moreover, they hypothesize that the population is bigger today because of air conditioning. And now they want to take that away? Liberal logic — it’s why we can’t have nice things.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Democrats' Misplaced Faith13

By Kelly Bartlett

Kentucky House Speaker Greg Stumbo, a Democrat, tried to rally dispirited party members in an odd speech following Tuesday’s election losses. At times, Stumbo sounded more like a preacher speaking to his flock than a politician. The primary takeaway is that Democrats have no idea how to talk about faith, and they are particularly guilty of making Christianity into nothing more than a religion about Big Government.

Memo to Democrats: Jesus wasn’t a socialist14.

Perhaps Stumbo ditched his victory speech last minute for this impromptu sermon. After all, Democrats were floored that, once again, polls were so wrong. Conservatives Matt Bevin and Jenean Hampton handily won election15 as governor and lieutenant governor, respectively, despite being down in the polls.

Acknowledging a “bad night,” Stumbo promised a “new day” was coming. “Our message has to be reflected upon,” he exhorted. “We can’t let them miscommunicate what our core values are. We can’t let them make people believe that we are not godly people. We can’t make them believe that only Christians are Republicans and Republicans [are] therefore entitled to hold office.”

Stumbo’s sermon boiled down to this: We’re Democrats because “the Bible tells me so.”

But his ignorance and gross misinterpretation were on full display:

    “I’m gonna admit I have not read the Holy Book from front to finish like some of you probably have, but my reading of our Bible shows that the word Republican or Democrat isn’t used. And people sometimes ask me … what would Jesus have been if he were alive? Would he be a Democrat or Republican? I don’t know. Nobody knows. The Bible doesn’t tell us that, does it?

    "But I believe the Bible is a book of parables. God teaches us through lessons. We are children and this is the primer that he uses to teach us lessons. So, the lessons of our party are the lessons of the Bible.”

Here Stumbo makes a huge leap of faith and logic. His argument is essentially that God uses the Bible to teach us lessons, therefore Democrats are the Bible Party. This goes beyond clinging to religion16 — this is a blatant attempt to co-opt Scripture for political gain. To be fair, both parties are capable of doing that. Ohio governor and GOP presidential candidate John Kasich has used17 Matthew 25 to endorse expanding ObamaCare in his state.

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 11-6-2015
From The Federalist Patriot
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Stumbo continued:

    “I don’t know whether Jesus would’ve been a Democrat or Republican. Nobody else does. But I know this, he was a carpenter and a teacher. And … the carpenter and teachers I know are pretty good Democrats.

    "And the other thing I know is that if in fact the Bible is a book of parables … as I believe it is, think about this: Mary did not ride an elephant into Bethlehem that night!”

In other words, Mary couldn’t have been a Republican. And Christ was a Democrat because he was a teacher.

First of all, the Bible doesn’t tell us how Mary got from Nazareth to Bethlehem, only that she traveled with her husband Joseph. Furthermore, she was complying with a government mandate to be counted in the census for the purposes of taxation. Even in Jesus' time, the government could be heavy handed and onerous.

But neither detail is the point of the incarnation narrative, and to reduce the Bible to a political manual is simply wrong.

Stumbo wasn’t done.

    “So, you go home and you go to your church and you tell people, ‘I’m a Democrat. I’m a God-fearing Democrat. … You gonna go to church and challenge those people about values and morals and talk about the things that this party was built upon? Say yes! You can even say 'Amen’ if you want to.”

Go to church and pick a fight with a Republican! Stand up for your religious belief in the Democrat Party!

    “I’m a Democrat that believes in the principles of the Bible that became the principles of our party. That this wealth accumulation in America has to cease!”

Scripture has a lot to say about using wealth responsibly and honorably, and not a word of it has to do with taxes and government redistribution. Stumbo confessed that he hasn’t read the entire Bible, but that sure didn’t stop him from telling us that Democrats know it better than Republicans.

Stumbo finished his sermon with perhaps his most bizarre remarks of the night. He declared that Democrats were anticipating their new savior — a “lady jockey” riding on a horse called “Arkansas Traveler.” Obviously, this was an awkward reference to Hillary Clinton, who he declared will “come here to Kentucky next year and help us rebuild this party.”

Seven years after the arrival of the current false messiah, Democrats are still putting their hope in princes — er, princesses. It would be one thing if this were simply misplaced faith, but it could have disastrous consequences for the country.

MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE

    ANALYSIS: Can We Trust Obama on Trade?18
    Cruz: Iran ‘Still Is at War With the United States’19
    China’s Coal Throws Out More CO2 Than First Believed20

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

    Charles Krauthammer: Take the Winnings and Run21
    Jonah Goldberg: Imagining a World Without Polls22
    Mona Charen: Chris Christie’s Cheap Shot23

For more, visit Right Opinion24.

TOP HEADLINES

    Christie, Huckabee Cut From Next Week’s Primetime Debate25
    Did the ‘Stabbing Intifada’ Come to America?26
    Obama Pushes Military Frustration to Highest Level in Decades27

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report28

OPINION IN BRIEF

Jonah Goldberg: “It’s a national, and international, trend. The polls underestimated the scope of the 2014 midterm elections. Elections and referenda in Greece, Poland, Britain, Israel and Scotland embarrassed the pollsters who thought they knew what was going on. … Modern polling began in the 1930s. But democracy is a good bit older. Before polls, politicians still managed to figure out what their constituents wanted. How? By talking to them. They also talked to local officials, prominent citizens and journalists. The horror! … I don’t want to get rid of phones, but I think we lost something valuable when politics started becoming hashed out more conversationally. Similarly, I don’t want to ban polls, but they have their downside. They encourage leaders to become followers. When staring at polling data, too many politicians become afraid to voice their convictions or make the effort to convince the public to go a better way. You can argue that following the polls is democratic, but it’s a cheap and shallow form of democracy. We are also a republic, and in republics leaders are expected to do what they think is right, not just popular. Toppling the tyranny of polls would put arguments back at the center of politics. And that’s as it should be.”
SHORT CUTS

Insight: “How did our national government grow from a servant with sharply limited powers into a master with virtually unlimited power? In part, we were swindled. … But let us be honest with ourselves. Broken promises are not the major causes of our trouble. Kept promises are. … We have taken the bait, preferring to put off to another day the recapture of freedom and the restoration of our constitutional system.” —Barry Goldwater (1909-1998.)

For the record: “Four people were stabbed during a terrible attack [Wednesday] at a California university. … All we were told throughout the news cycle was that the attacker was a resident of California and a student at the university. Was there some politically correct reason that prevented us from having the information we usually get immediately after such violence? You bet! [Thursday], authorities identified the attacker: Faisal Mohammad, 18 years old. As usual, the authorities are mystified about his motive, and the FBI has been called in to help. I guess it didn’t occur to any of the reporters or police that a stabbing attack by a Muslim might have been inspired by the ongoing stabbing attacks by Palestinians in Israel.” —Gary Bauer

Observations: “The greatest irony of this campaign is that Clinton and Bernie Sanders are the ones making the case that the economy is stagnant, inequality growing and the middle class falling increasingly behind. That’s a devastating indictment of Democratic governance, exactly the case Republicans should have been making all year. Instead, they’ve wasted months trading schoolboy taunts and ad hominems.” —Charles Krauthammer

Next time, try not badmouthing the Constitution: “When Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and his fellow Democrats study what went wrong for them in Tuesday’s crucial legislative elections, one possible mistake stands out: Their aggressive advocacy of gun control in a pivotal Senate race in the Richmond area may have backfired by producing a pro-Republican backlash.” —Washington Post’s Robert McCartney

Demo-gogues: “If you’re living in a society that devalues your culture, or perpetuates stereotypes, you may be devaluing yourself. So, we have to preserve those bonds and break stereotypes. I believe that includes our sports teams, because we all need to do more to make sure … our young people feel supported and respected.” —Barack Obama

And last… “If you can’t handle the name Redskins how seriously do you think Putin or China are going to take you?” —Stephen Miller

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis!
Managing Editor Nate Jackson

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.