The Patriot Post Digest 1-4-2016

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The Patriot Post Digest 1-4-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Daily Digest

Jan. 4, 2016

THE FOUNDATION

“Giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless.” —Thomas Jefferson, 1791

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

If you are among many who could not access our Website over the past few days, let me assure you, we’ve not laid down our arms! For the last week, data centers across the nation have been subject to endless “denial of service” attacks. While such targeted attacks are not unusual and often pass unnoticed, the recent attacks were unusual in their size and severity. Of course, none of our Website software or data was compromised. We’re pleased to report that we are back online today, full steam ahead. If you attempted to support to our 2015 Year-End Campaign1 and were unable to do so because of the interruption, please do so today!

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Obama’s New Year Resolution: Targets Guns2

Entering the New Year, Barack Obama is scheduled to meet with Attorney General Loretta Lynch to discuss how his administration can take executive action to create more gun control. In his weekly address3 Jan. 2, Obama pulled out all the rhetorical stops, evoking the Sandy Hook massacre and the shooting of former Rep. Gabby Giffords to say that he would make it a priority to use his phone and pen to enact more gun control regulation against the American people because Congress wouldn’t. “We know that we can’t stop every act of violence,” Obama said. “But what if we tried to stop even one? What if Congress did something — anything — to protect our kids from gun violence? A few months ago, I directed my team at the White House to look into any new actions I can take to help reduce gun violence.”

While Obama’s cronies guesstimate out how far he can go, the office of House Speaker Paul Ryan said4 the executive branch hasn’t communicated its specific gun control aspirations to Congress. Seems like that would have been a prerequisite before Obama declared that the legislative body refused to act. Such a move from Obama guarantees that he will push Americans to continue purchasing firearms in record numbers5 before the feds descend with their regulations. Obama opined that he received letters from “responsible gun owners” (as if the only gun owners that are responsible are the ones who agree with Obama) asking him to take action on gun violence. But the person acting irresponsibly is Obama. The federal government has all the tools necessary6 to curb gun violence, all the laws already on the books to crack down on straw purchases, but Obama’s administration refuses to act. And because of that, criminals are allowed to walk free while gun-toting lovers of Liberty are viewed with deep suspicion. But Obama cares nothing of the law; he only has his ideology to push.

Marine Vet Stands Up to DMV Red Tape7

If “Pastafarians,” people who satirize religion by claiming to be worshipers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, can get their department of motor vehicles to let them wear colanders on their heads8 while getting their driver’s license photo taken, then government can at least accommodate a veteran wanting to display his service to his homeland. Last month, Marine Corps vet Alex Morales went to his local DMV in California to get a new license while he was wearing a baseball cap with “USMC” emblazoned across it in red. Ahead of him, the DMV was photographing a group of men, probably Sikhs, who were wearing turbans. Here’s how Morales' wife, Henrietta, described what happened next in a Facebook post9:

“Alex was asked to take his hat off to have his picture taken. He said ‘no’, and ‘no’ again when asked the second time. When he was asked why he would not remove his hat he said, ‘those men didn’t remove their head wear, I shouldn’t either’. It was explained that this was their attire and their religion. Alex told the DMV person that what he had on was his attire and when he entered the Marines he declared an oath to the USA, and one nation under God, so that his oath was under God so just as good as his religion.”

Eventually, the DMV allowed Morales to stand for his photo, USMC hat and all. Afterwards, Henrietta Morales said some of the DMV staff quietly applauded Morales' stand. Marine vet: 1. Bureaucratic tangle at the DMV: 0.

Ranchers Take on the Feds in Oregon10

A group of armed activists took over the closed and unoccupied headquarters building at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, part of an escalating conflict over land use out West. Rancher Ammon Bundy is leading the group, and if his name sounds familiar it’s because he’s the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who had a similar standoff with the feds in 2014. We wrote at the time to choose your mascot carefully11, and we’d advise the same now. Essentially, this dispute arises from two things: First, the truly unjust treatment and sentencing of Dwight Hammond and his son Steven, ranchers punished for arson after they managed controlled burns on their property a decade ago; second, the use of the federal land at the wildlife refuge — Bundy and the other ranchers claim the feds have unlawfully taken it, and the ranchers should be able to continue using it.

Many leftists are demanding12 that the ranchers' actions in recent days be considered terrorism. After all, Barack Obama and his cadres have been stoking fears of right-wing extremism13 since taking office; this is just “proof.” But no one has been held hostage or hurt, much less killed, and the ranchers are so far peaceably assembled. There’s no question the federal government possesses far too much land14 in the West, but what is the appropriate response? Clearly, many ranchers have had enough, and they’re willing to take up arms to stop the abuse — even, apparently, if it provokes a violent government response.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
The GOP Brand Is Becoming Toxic15

By Arnold Ahlert

For the last few years, many people have been calling for the formation of a third political party. The latest budget deal16 demonstrated the error of that thinking: What America really needs is the formation of a second one.

After the deal was announced, the nation was forced to endure yet another round of media-trumpeted “bipartisanship.” Collusion is more like it, and the ones getting colluded against are average Americans who will be underwriting this 2,000-page paean to special interests. One that keeps upping an already unaffordable national debt, and makes a complete mockery of the notion we have at least one party dedicated to smaller, more responsible government. In fact the cheerleaders of this monstrosity ought to be required to answer a simple question:

What’s the compromise position between fiscal solvency and national bankruptcy?

Of course no one will ask such a question because it would force the surrenderist faction of the GOP to explain why they completely ignored the “stop Obama” mandate handed to them by voters in the 2014 mid-term elections. Economics aside, much of that mandate centered on public frustration with the de facto invasion occurring at our southern border. This bill just funded every progressive agenda item that aids and abets that invasion, including illegal alien resettlement programs, and Barack Obama’s constitutionally suspect executive amnesty agenda17.

“There is a reason that GOP voters are in open rebellion,” explains18 Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL). “They have come to believe that their party’s elites are not only uninterested in defending their interests but — as with this legislation, and fast-tracking the president’s international trade pact — openly hostile to them.”

That’s because they are. And while those elites and their media allies ring their collective hands over the success of Donald Trump, it apparently hasn’t occurred to them that they are the primary architects of Trump’s success.

A political party is two things: a conglomeration of people with a similar ideological agenda, and a brand. The Establishment GOP is on the verge of discovering a very uncomfortable truth: when you water down your ideology, you destroy your brand.

When the GOP had complete control of the federal government during the first six years of the Bush administration, they embarked on an unconscionable spending spree that remained the gold standard for fiscal irresponsibility until the Obama administration topped it. Even worse, they expected their base to be gulled into believing that “compassionate conservatism” was a different animal than “tax-and-spend liberalism.”

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The Patriot Post Digest 1-4-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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It wasn’t then, and it isn’t now. In 2000, the national debt19 was $5.6 trillion. Today it is $18.7 trillion — and the new budget will add another $830 billion to the national tab.

During his speech20 at the Republican National Convention in 2012, then-Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan stated a simple truth: “We need to stop spending money we don’t have.” Here’s a simpler truth: Americans are sick of voting for politicians who promise one thing when they campaign, and do another after they’re elected. Now-House Speaker Ryan has precious little time to prove he’s not John Boehner Jr., and that he’ll practice what he preaches. So far, not so good.

Whether or not Trump ends up as the GOP standard-bearer, one thing is certain: If Republicans can’t beat a candidate like Hillary Clinton, a serial liar21 who has compromised national security — when she wasn’t busy implementing one of the worst foreign policy agendas in the history of the nation during her tenure as secretary of state — they may be all done at the national level.

None of this downward spiral happened overnight. For decades the GOP has allowed Democrats, with an ample assist from their media water-carriers, to define both the Republican Party itself and frame the issues. As a result, the GOP supposedly became the “party of Wall Street” inhabited primarily by “old, white, country club racists” looking out for no one but themselves and their well-connected buddies. That George W. Bush appointed22 a more diverse set of Cabinet members and top advisers than any president in history? That the GOP established itself as the anti-slavery party, while Democrats were busy establishing the Ku Klux Klan and turning the South into a stronghold of white racism that endured for decades23? That at one point, no one took more money from Wall Street than Obama, or that Clinton has deep ties24 to the same deep pockets? History is apparently irrelevant, even when the GOP’s brand is getting trashed on a regular basis.

As for issues, when Democrats painted any attempt to require voter ID as racist, Republicans meekly responded by stating that it wasn’t. A real opposition party would have reframed the issue by pointing out nothing is more racist than a political party that assumes an entire ethnic group is fundamentally incapable of procuring the same voter ID as every other group of Americans. The so-called war on women? For the very first time, a Republican candidate named Trump has made it clear25 to Democrats that if they insist on playing that game, serial philanderer/sexual predator Bill Clinton will be an integral part of the conversation.

One doesn’t have to be a supporter of Trump to admire a GOP politician willing to fight at the same gut level Democrats have been plumbing for decades, while their GOP opponents embraced a Marquis de Queensberry flaccidness that routinely infuriated their base. A flaccidness that has done more to destroy the Republican brand than anything else.

Recently, the fast-food restaurant chain Chipotle discovered26 what happens to its brand when it poisons its customers with E. coli. The Establishment GOP may soon discover what happens to its brand after years of poisoning the base with promises that bear no semblance whatsoever to what they actually deliver. Nothing has facilitated the current success of so-called GOP “outsiders” more than an American electorate completely fed up with the idea that voting for the “lesser of two evils” is the best they can do.

This year, that message couldn’t be clearer. A Republican Party that rejects or ignores it is pushing their brand to toxic levels. A healthy political system necessitates opposing points of view. Anything less is ruling class tyranny. It’s real simple, GOP: embrace your roots — or embrace your extinction.

MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE

ANALYSIS: There’s Gonna Be Change, We Hope27
State Squeezes Last Penny From Bakers Who Defied Lesbian-Wedding Cake Order28

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Peggy Noonan: Will the New Year’s Tumult Trump the Old?29
Michael Barone: Obama Reshapes Presidential Politics — But Maybe Not to Democrats' Benefit30
John Goodman: What You Need to Know About ‘The Big Short’31

For more, visit Right Opinion32.

TOP HEADLINES

Saudis Sever Diplomatic Ties With Iran33
Distrust Toward Chicago Mayor Has Turned ‘Personal’34
Air Force Academy Football Players Allowed to Pray Publicly35

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report36

OPINION IN BRIEF

Peggy Noonan: “If at some point Mr. Trump appears to be on a sure glide path to the nomination, will the party establishment begin to bolt? If so, what will that look like? If Mr. Trump is done in and his supporters perceive it as the dark work of an underhanded establishment, will they bolt? What will that look like? Will it mean they go home, stay there and refuse to come out in November? Or will they mount a third party with Mr. Trump, having changed his mind once again, at the top? If that happened — here the unknowables and the potential for drama begin to spin out in creative and unexpected directions — could each of three parties garner enough support to produce an Electoral College deadlock? That would be resolved by the House, where Republicans will likely continue to control the majority of state delegations. Would GOP representatives go for the establishment Republican or the third-party Republican? I have not seen a political cycle so confounding in my lifetime, and it could continue into a year of the most historic kind. If you love politics — the excitement, the unknowability, the to-and-fro — this is the year for you. If you take unhappy U.S. political trends seriously — the shallowness, the restiveness, the division of our polity — you will feel legitimate concern. We could see a great party split in two. That, I think, is what I’m seeing among the Republicans, a slow-motion break.”

SHORT CUTS

The Gipper: “They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.”

Observations: “What’s interesting … is that Obama and Clinton are not out having town halls to convince the American public that the economy is doing well, as compared to how it was doing in 2009. According to the most recent Quinnipiac poll, ‘gun policy’ is the most important issue to a whopping 4% of Democrats — even after the recent full court press by Obama, Clinton, and the media. … Meanwhile, the economy/jobs continues its virtually uninterrupted run as the top issue for American voters, followed by foreign policy.” —Red State’s Leon H. Wolf

Belly laugh of the week: “If you look at my record, I’m not exactly a career politician.” —Bernie Sanders, who has been a member of Congress for a quarter of a century and served as a mayor in the ‘80s

Braying Jackass: “When that thing happened in France, we were sitting there going, 'Oh, my God, these terrorists!’ And I can’t even tell you how much that day the thing that happened in San Bernardino — I was in Hawaii — how much I really wanted that to just be another, you know, crazy white dude, and not really some Muslims.” —actor Samuel L. Jackson

Alpha Jackass: “What I suggest: We get the black leadership together, and as these [police] jurisdictions come into Jackson, we throw rocks and bricks and bottles at them. That will send a message we don’t want you in here.” —Jackson, Mississippi, councilman Kenneth Stokes

Non Compos Mentis Leftmedia Talkinghead Award winners of the year:

“American independence in 1776 was a monumental mistake… I’m reasonably confident a world in which the revolution never happened would be better than the one we live in now.” —Dylan Matthews

“As a Times columnist, I can’t do endorsements, so you have no idea which party I favor in general elections.” —Paul Krugman

And last… “Bill’s rape and sexual assault allegations are policy relevant because Hillary supports campus noncourts with no presumption of innocence.” —American Commitment president Phil Kerpen

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.