The Patriot Post Digest 12-02-2015

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The Patriot Post Digest 12-02-2015
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Daily Digest

Dec. 2, 2015

THE FOUNDATION

“Amplification is the vice of modern oratory.” —Thomas Jefferson, 1824

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Obama Proves He’s the Greatest Windbag in the World1

At a time when he has degraded America’s standing as a super power, Barack Obama still sees himself as a super president. How super? During the opening remarks at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris Monday, Obama spoke for 14 minutes, delivering his full, prepared speech. Problem was, every other leader — 150 world leaders in all, including the likes of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping — kept their remarks to the three-minute time limit. But Obama forged ahead, ignoring the beeps every few seconds reminding him to wrap it up. Surely his staff received the memo that every other leader in the world would speak for three minutes. “Barack Obama has gotten so used to breaking rules here in America, he just can’t help himself,” Gary Bauer wrote2. “Not even when he is in other nations.” Indeed, it wasn’t the only communication blunder Mr. Hope ‘n’ Change™ made in the hours after touching down in Paris. As commentator Charles Hurt noted3, Obama stumbled through a press conference peppering the reporters with about 330 ‘um’s, 'uh’s and 'ahh’s and countless sentence fragments. Thus goes America’s “great orator.” And to think this summit lasts for 12 days.

Even the State Department Can’t List Hillary’s Achievements4

What were Hillary Clinton’s accomplishments while at the State Department? Well, she traveled a lot but other than that, she never can seem to actually list anything. Neither, apparently, can the State Department. As part of its latest Hillary email dump this week, one email stood out. Philippe Reines, Clinton’s spokesman, sent an email to her chief of staff, which was then forwarded to Hillary herself. It’s subject line: Achievements. The body contains a four-point bulleted list of Clinton’s supposed achievements, but the released version contains only the bullets, not the points. The State Department evoked exemption (b)(5) of the federal FOIA so as to redact Clinton’s actual achievements. (By the way, the total of emails in the Clinton trove illegally containing classified information is now up to 999. Hence a lot more redacting.) So, as you can see below, we’re actually left with a very accurate picture of Clinton’s achievements while running the State Department.

Another way to look at it is a blank bullet point for each of the lives lost in the Benghazi attacks5…

Court Throws Out Suit to Dismantle Memorial Cross in MD6

Judge Deborah Chasanow, a federal judge in Maryland, rejected a suit by the American Humanist Association Monday that tried to dismantle a 40-foot cross honoring the veterans who fought and died during World War I. Despite the accusations, Chasanow — a Clinton appointee, by the way — ruled that the Bladensburg Peace Cross in Maryland predominantly fulfilled a secular purpose, which was to invoke the thousands of crosses under which American soldiers lie buried. “Although the record indicates that there were three isolated religious services held at the Monument,” Chasanow wrote7, “the predominant and nearly exclusive use of the Monument has been for annual commemorative events held on Memorial Day and Veterans Day.” This suit was reminiscent of the fight over the memorial cross at Mount Soledad8 in San Diego, which was targeted for removal by those that wanted to strip every hint and inference of Christianity from the public square. Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky wrote9 of the Bladensburg Peace Cross, “The plaintiffs in this case, in essence, wanted to destroy a 90-year-old memorial to fallen soldiers based on thoughtless, vain, and shallow motives that are an insult to the sacrifices of brave Americans.” Like their intellectual siblings in higher education, it sounds like these cross-phobic humanists need some “safe spaces.”

Liberty Depends on You

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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Distrust in Government at Historic Highs Under Obama11

By Louis DeBroux

Back in 2008, candidate Barack Obama boasted, “Generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.”

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Back then, much of America was swooning over the charismatic, hopeful rhetoric of an inexperienced senator from Illinois. Obama, having clinched the Democrat Party nomination for president, spoke the words above to throngs of cheering, weeping supporters, who sincerely believed this community organizer with no prior executive experience would completely change the face of politics for decades to come.

Alas, the Progressive Pied Piper, the great Obamessiah, has been exposed as a naked emperor.

A recent study by the Pew Research Center found Americans’ trust in government is at “historic lows12,” with an anemic 19% saying they trust government to do the right thing always or most of the time (11% for Republican/leaning, and 26% for Democrats/leaning). The fact that barely a quarter of Democrats trust government is shocking, considering their standard-bearer, Obama, has had virtually free reign to do as he pleased for the last seven years. How is it that Obama has managed to implement nearly everything he wanted from the progressives' wish list, yet trust in government has decreased?

The answer, of course, is that the larger and more powerful government grows, the more inept, sluggardly and corrupt it becomes. Businesses that are run inefficiently shutter. Yet government, never punished for its failures, has no natural incentive to improve (indeed, the biggest failures are usually rewarded with more power and more money). It becomes a breeding ground for slothful public “servants” and petty tyrants.

It was another Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, who became the first president to openly denigrate13 the Constitution as an anachronism, insufficient for the times, and who preached against the Separation of Powers doctrine that limited the ability of the executive to enact his agenda without obstruction. Indeed, in his book, “Constitutional Government in the United States,” Wilson declared no theoretical limitations to the presidency beyond the capacity of the man holding the office: “The President is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can. His capacity will set the limit.”

Wilson’s philosophy took root in the Democrat Party and the size and scope of the federal government exploded, primarily through the New Deal and Great Society programs, and in the unchecked growth of the fourth branch of government — the bureaucracy and the regulatory apparatus14.

So how has that worked out for America?

One has only to look at the to-do list in Obama’s lofty speech to judge the scope of the failure. ObamaCare, which was supposed to bring health care to every American and “bend the cost curve down,” has instead kicked millions of Americans off of private health insurance plans they liked and into the ObamaCare exchanges and Medicare. More than half of the ObamaCare exchanges have now gone bankrupt, and the number of doctors refusing to accept Medicare patients has skyrocketed, leaving many with health insurance on paper, but no access to doctors, even as they now pay significantly more for health care.

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The Patriot Post Digest 12-02-2015
From The Federalist Patriot
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Then there’s the federal student loan industry, which was supposed to make college more affordable. Instead, college tuition costs have increased rapidly, leaving millions of college students with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, and no prospects for jobs with which to pay off those debts. Ironically, the dimwitted denizens of Dreamworld, the ones suffering from government’s ineptitude, are demanding more government as the solution.

Continuing down the list of Obama’s utopian promises, we certainly have not seen “good jobs for the jobless,” with the workforce participation rate lower now than at any time since the malaise of the Carter era. Obama has added tens of millions of Americans to the welfare and food stamp rolls, and the percentage of long-term unemployed has stayed stubbornly high.

Likewise, America learned the painful lesson that unilaterally disarming is not the same thing as ending a war, as Obama sits idly by and watches as the Middle East burns and the Islamic State is decidedly not “contained.” Sadly, as horrific as its campaign of evil has been, it pales in comparison to the danger we now face at the looming prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran flush with cash, courtesy of the prevaricator in chief. How to explain the lunacy of the so-called Leader of the Free World, who believes a conference on global warming can defeat terrorists15 when those Islamofascists envision their reign of murder will usher in the coming of the Islamic messiah?

As bad as this is, it only scratches the surface of the fecklessness and corruption of the Obama administration, which includes the Obama Justice Department running guns to Mexican drug cartels, the IRS targeting Obama’s political opponents, the deaths of four Americans at Benghazi, and the deaths of many battalions worth of beloved veterans after the VA Hospital system let them languish for months without treatment. Then there is the EPA dumping millions of gallons of toxic sludge16 into Colorado’s Animas River after being warned of the danger, even as the same EPA uses regulatory law as a bludgeon against businesses and private citizens. The list is virtually endless.

Obama laments the distrust of American citizens for their government (while still predicting a Democrat successor17), but that distrust is well-deserved, and both parties are to blame. He complains that everything has become politicized, but how can it not be when the federal government impacts every aspect of our lives? If this distrust leads to Americans to demand the federal government be limited to its functions under the Article I, Section 8 enumerated powers, we will finally see power back where it belongs — in the hands of the people.

MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE

ANALYSIS: Just Keep on Pumping Ethanol18
Whatever Happened to Hope and Change?17
Former NY Assembly Speaker Found Guilty of Corruption19
Too Few Students Passed Algebra? There’s Math for That20
U.S. Gives Ukraine Secondhand Nonmilitary Aid21
Hillary for President — Because ‘44 Boys Is Too Many’22

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Michelle Malkin: Deadly DC: The Land of No Consequences23
Walter Williams: Can We Learn From Europe?24
Jonah Goldberg: Blame for Planned Parenthood Killings Rests With Shooter Alone25

For more, visit Right Opinion26.

TOP HEADLINES

Emanuel Fires Head of Chicago Police27
Boom: Black Friday Gun Background Checks Break Record28
UnitedHealth CEO Regrets Entering ObamaCare29

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report30

OPINION IN BRIEF

Michelle Malkin: “About the only thing the VA has proved efficient and effective at these days is retaliating against the brave watchdogs who exposed their craven supervisors. It’s been two months since Office of Special Counsel head Carolyn Lerner blasted the systemic witch hunts against whistleblowers to President Obama in an open letter. After highlighting a ‘pattern of deficient patient care at VA facilities nationwide,’ she discovered a flood of chilling cases in which the agency ‘attempted to fire or suspend whistleblowers for minor indiscretions and, often, for activity directly related to the employee’s whistleblowing.’ In 2015 alone, the OSC has received over 2,000 cases from VA employees seeking protection from retaliation for whistleblowing. Where’s the White House? Too preoccupied with restricting the powers of federal inspectors general to investigate wrongdoing within the Obama administration’s agencies from A to VA to Z. These feckless, reckless officials in the top echelons of power will continue to jeopardize and sacrifice innocent lives as long as they suffer no risks to their own privileged, protected livelihoods. They deserve a change of climate all right — from the rarefied air of the Beltway to an enclosed habitat behind bars.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.” —Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948.)

Non Compos Mentis: “We’re not putting America combat troops back into Syria or Iraq. We are not going to do that. … I cannot conceive of any circumstances where I would agreed to [put combat troops on the ground].” —Hillary Clinton (So, two weeks after the attack in Paris, Clinton can’t “conceive of any circumstances” for committing combat troops?)

Braying Jackass: “I’m anticipating a Democrat succeeding me. I’m confident in the wisdom of the American people on that front.” —Barack Obama (Heaven help us if he’s right.)

Demo-gogues: “I have long believed that the most elegant way to drive innovation and to reduce carbon emissions is to put a price on it. This is a classic market failure. If you open up an Econ 101 textbook, it will say the market’s very good about determining prices and allocating capital towards its most productive use, except there’s certain externalities, there’s certain things that the market just doesn’t count, it doesn’t price, at least not on its own. Clean air is an example; clean water — or the converse, dirty water, dirty air. In this case, the carbons that are being sent up that originally we didn’t have the science to fully understand, we do now. And if that’s the case, if you put a price on it, then the entire market would respond. And the best investments and the smartest technologies would begin scrubbing, effectively, our entire economy.” —Barack Obama (Wow, is Obama really trying to lecture us on economics?)

Upright: “The amazing thing is, never in history, anywhere, ever, has all the power of the modern state — supplemented by mass education, supplemented by the mass media, supplemented by journalism and entertainment — been all been employed for 30 years to propagandize about this sort of thing, about global warming and all the rest, to almost no effect. Fewer Americans carpool today to work than carpooled in 1980. SUVs have never been a larger proportion of the vehicles being sold in this country.” —George Will

“Maybe President Obama will be more willing to fight ISIS if we name their leaders after hurricanes.” —Twitter satirist @weknowwhatsbest

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.