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« on: March 21, 2016, 05:56:00 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Digest 3-21-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest
Mar. 21, 2016
THE FOUNDATION
“History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy.” —Benjamin Franklin (1774)
TOP RIGHT HOOKS
Obama’s Visit to Cuba Will Accomplish Little1
On Sunday, the whole Obama family touched down in Cuba for a historic visit, as this will be the first time in 88 years that a sitting American president visited the island. While there, Barack Obama will visit everyone from Cuban dictator Raul Castro to political dissenters calling for Liberty. However, Obama’s visit will have failed if he doesn’t condemn Castro’s police state.
Last year, Obama claimed that he was interested in visiting Cuba only if he saw the country making progress towards Liberty. “I’m not interested in just validating the status quo,” he said. However, on Friday, the U.S. Coast Guard picked up 18 Cubans who were fleeing the country on homemade rafts, trying to cross the 90 miles between Cuba and Florida. Hours before Obama’s jet touched down on communist soil, the Cuban government arrested 50 protesters2 from the group Ladies in White for demonstrating and throwing pro-Liberty leaflets into the air. The protests have become a weekly occurrence.
The dissidents said Cuba’s crackdown on political speech has increased in the weeks leading up to Obama’s visit, showing that things are just as they have been. The Castros are still in charge, after all. While Obama hoped for a diplomatic shortcut, Liberty could yet come to the country ruled by a police state. It’s possible that the flow of goods and information could foster more Liberty for the nation, especially when the 85-year-old Castro leaves power — just as when Ronald Reagan began to trade3 with the Soviet Union. But it will take time and an actual friend of Liberty in the White House.
Remember the Global Threat of Terror4
First, good news: After a months-long manhunt, Belgian law enforcement captured alleged Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam in a neighborhood of Brussels on Friday. It was a blow5 to the Islamic State, as it disrupts the group’s plans. Abdeslam said he was planning another attack. Now he’s a mine of intelligence that interrogators hope to exploit. However, the fact that Abdeslam evaded capture for months shows the extent6 of the network in Belgium sympathetic to violent jihad.
Make no mistake: The tentacles of that network reaches into the United States. Late last week, the FBI finally announced the 18-year-old who was killed by police after stabbing four people on the Merced campus of the University of California was inspired by the Islamic State. Faisal Mohammad carried out a terrorist attack7 Nov. 4, 2015, despite the stubborn insistence of California law enforcement to the contrary.
This wasn’t the only example of political correctness being destroyed by stark reality over the last few days. The city of Östersund, Sweden8, canceled its earth hour celebration over worries that turning off the lights for one hour on Mar. 18 would have encouraged sexual assaults from Muslim migrants.
Back in the Middle East, the violence continues and even grows. The Islamic State bombed9 one of Turkey’s most popular shopping area Sunday and, the day before, a U.S. Marine was killed10 during a skirmish with the terror group. He is officially the first American combat death in fighting with the Islamic State. “There is no safe place in Iraq,” said Najim Abdullah al-Jabouri, an Iraqi general. “Even the Green Zone in Baghdad, which houses the U.S. Embassy, is being targeted by rockets.” Indeed, we must destroy the nexus of terror before it grows so much that the U.S. becomes the site of a Paris-like mass terror attack by a group the commander in chief still treats as the JV team.
Diversity Must Be Only Skin Deep11
Leftists sure do love diversity — to a point. Their favored constituencies include blacks, Hispanics and those suffering from gender disorientation pathology. But each member of those groups must yield to leftist groupthink, or they’ll be excommunicated. The thought police were on patrol most recently at Brown University, where Janet Mock, a black transgender activist and author, was forced to cancel an appearance after students objected to the group that invited her. Hillel House is a Jewish group that asked Mock to speak, but a group of Palestinian activists accused Hillel of having “defended and even advocated for the Israeli state’s policies of occupation and racial apartheid.” Furthermore, the aggrieved students say, Israel is guilty of “colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of native Palestinians.” In a petition, the students complained, “Hillel’s Moral Voices campaign has chosen the topic of LGBTQ rights this year. This hides the fact that for decades, the state of Israel and Israeli advocacy organizations (like Hillel) have been engaging in pinkwashing, a strategy that tries to improve Israel’s image and rebrand it as a liberal, modern, and ‘hip’ country.”
Mock is hardly alone. Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner12 has been ridiculed by leftists13 for generally being conservative politically, but worse, for daring to say nice things about Ted Cruz. No doubt thanks to that backlash, Jenner even felt compelled last week to deny endorsing Cruz.
And then there’s Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), who is black, said last month that Barack Obama should nominate a black because “to have an African-American voice that has definitely not been there since Thurgood Marshall would really be an incredible contribution to our country.” Thomas is conservative, therefore he isn’t “an African-American voice.”
In other words, leftists love diversity, as long as it’s only skin deep.
BEST OF RIGHT OPINION
Burt Prelutsky: The Spirit of ‘7614
Ken Blackwell: Fight or Flight?15
Ryan Anderson: Georgia Guts Religious Freedom Bill16
For more, visit Right Opinion17.
FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Alternative Health Care Flourishes18
By Robin Smith
Consumers seek solutions to either unmet needs or alternatives to a substandard product or service. A great example of this maxim is this: Participants in health care cost-sharing ministries have more than doubled in number since ObamaCare’s inception in March 2010.
Before ObamaCare, there were faith-based risk pools such as Samaritan Ministries International, Medi-Share and Christian Healthcare Ministries. A hundred years ago, such mutual-aid societies covered one-third of American men before the welfare state saw to its decline. But while ObamaCare outlaws any new such ventures, membership has exploded for the ones grandfathered in under the law. Samaritan alone grew 33% last year, and is more than double its size in 2013.
With membership in these nonprofit organizations now surpassing 500,000, all credit rests with the so-called “Affordable Care Act.” That monstrosity was passed without a single Republican vote and signed into law by Barack Obama on March 23, 2010 — six years ago this week. From their inception in the early nineties, these organizations were growing at a rate of no more than 10% annually, until the Left weaponized the IRS to mandate the purchase of a service (health insurance). |
