The Patriot Post Digest 3-23-2016

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The Patriot Post Digest 3-23-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Mar. 23, 2016

THE FOUNDATION

“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” —Patrick Henry (1775)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

ObamaCare’s Six-Year Anniversary Checkup1

On March 23, 2010, Barack Obama signed the “Affordable” Care Act (a.k.a. ObamaCare) into law. It’s time we give it a checkup for its six-year anniversary. Via Investor’s Business Daily, here are seven of its most significant shortcomings2:

1.) Taxpayers will probably not recuperate $1.2 billion (a figure almost guaranteed to rise) after 12 of ObamaCare’s 23 co-ops collapsed. 2.) The federal government distributed $5 billion to the states to help set up their own exchanges, but already $1.5 billion (a figure also bound to increase) of that has been wasted. 3.) Healthcare.gov, the $2 billion federally operated marketplace disaster, “was supposed to be self-financed, [but] Obama wants an additional $535 million to keep it running next year.” 4.) Many insurance companies are operating deep in the red, so the White House is “diverting $3.5 billion meant for the Treasury to insurance companies to help cover losses.” 5.) About 500,000 fraudulent beneficiaries3 received roughly $750 million in ObamaCare subsidies. 6.) The IRS needs an additional $881 million to cover the added workload from ObamaCare. 7.) And finally, “An analysis by the American Action Forum concluded that businesses and individuals have spent 165 million hours to comply with ObamaCare’s 106 new regulations. In dollar terms, that works out to $45 billion.”

“Add it all up and it comes out to $55 billion,” writes Investor’s. “And that’s being generous to ObamaCare. This figure doesn’t count what families forced off health plans they liked had to pay in to buy ObamaCare’s overpriced insurance4. Or the adverse impact ObamaCare has had on the labor market. Nor does it count the vast amounts of waste and fraud in Medicaid before ObamaCare vastly expanded eligibility.”

When he signed the bill six years ago, Obama said, “This legislation will … lower costs for families and for businesses and for the federal government, reducing our deficit by over $1 trillion in the next two decades. It is paid for. It is fiscally responsible. And it will help lift a decades-long drag on our economy.” Every year it gets older, it’s clear ObamaCare was a huge mistake. Let’s birth a new kind of health care reform.

‘No Boots on the Ground’ in Iraq?5

Did you know there are now 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq? Barack Obama would certainly rather you didn’t realize how many boots were on the ground when he promised there wouldn’t be any. A brief history review: Upon withdrawing American forces completely in 2011 — after having rejected George W. Bush’s strategy of establishing a status of forces agreement (SOFA) to secure our hard-won gains in Iraq and the region — Obama declared, “Everything Americans have done in Iraq, all the fighting, all the dying, the bleeding, the building and the training and the partnering, all of it has led to this moment of success. … We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.” All because he kept his promise6 to end the war there, he’d have you believe.

Except the U.S. leaving the theater didn’t mean the war was over. The Islamic State filled the vacuum he left and now controls much of Iraq and Syria, which it uses to extend its global reach — as we saw yet again this week in Brussels7 (more on that below).

Obama is too proud to make much of his stealth escalation. David French, an Iraq veteran, writes8, “To change his public message is to admit a series of colossal errors. He thought he could leave Iraq without suffering serious consequences. He was wrong. He thought by turning the page on the Bush era, he could stabilize the Middle East. He was wrong. He thought he could defeat ISIS without a serious escalation and re-commitment to Iraq. He was wrong. He thought he could end the war in Afghanistan. He was wrong.”

That’s why Obama hasn’t announced or otherwise highlighted that there are 5,000 Americans in Iraq today. Over the weekend, Marine Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin became the first casualty in this renewed war. There will be more American blood shed, and it’s largely because Obama was so derelict in his duty as commander in chief.

FBI on Apple Hack: Never Mind9

In a surprise filing ahead of a scheduled court appearance, the FBI announced it might have a way to crack into the iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino terrorists without needing to force Apple to compromise the security on its own product10. On Sunday, a third party that the FBI swears11 isn’t another branch of the U.S. government (a.k.a. the NSA) demonstrated a method that could possibly crack the phone used by Syed Farook. “Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farook’s iPhone,” government lawyers wrote12 in their Monday filing. “If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple Inc. ("Apple”) set forth in the All Writs Act Order in this case.“

From the beginning, the government said the only way it could access the data in the phone was to compel Apple to give the government a backdoor to the device. However, the fact that it was entertaining third-party advice, listening to unknown members of the tech security world, shows that siccing the All Writs Act on Apple wasn’t a move of last resort. It implies that, all along, the FBI simply wanted to change the security landscape in its favor.

What may be most notable here is that the government fears an unfavorable ruling on the All Writs Act. Most legal analysts think a court would smack down the government’s request, setting the opposite precedent from the one sought by the FBI. In other words, the government has a lot to lose.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Michelle Malkin: Post-Jihad Gesture Theater: Je Suis Sick of It13
Tony Perkins: Keeping Kids at Harms Length14
Ben Shapiro: The Day Freedom Died in Cuba15
John Stossel: The Art of Trump16

For more, visit Right Opinion17.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Brussels: PC Police Won’t Defeat Islamic Terrorism7

By Louis DeBroux

The sun had not yet begun to creep up over the horizon Tuesday morning when Americans awoke to the horrific news of carnage in Belgium after a series of Islamic terrorist attacks rocked the city of Brussels.

Jihadis using firearms and suicide bombs killed nearly three dozen and wounded more than 200 in the deadliest terrorist attacks in Europe since last November, when Islamic terrorists killed 129 and wounded hundreds more in attacks in Paris. Though not yet confirmed by Belgian authorities, there is speculation that Tuesday’s terrorist attacks were in response to last Friday’s capture of terrorist leader Salah Abdeslam18, wanted in connection with the Paris attacks. The Islamic State issued a statement saying that the attacks against Belgium are the result of the nation’s participation "in the international coalition against the Islamic State,” and further threatening, “What will be coming is worse.”

On the other hand, though a relatively small nation, Belgium is home to the largest per-capita number of citizens who have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join ISIL. And Abdeslam had help in evading authorities from many people in Muslim enclaves. Yet Belgium remains on the list of nations from which travelers don’t need a visa to enter the U.S.19 through the Visa Waiver Program. That is astounding and it must be corrected immediately.

Reminiscent of the proclamations following the Paris attacks, the initial statements from Western leaders following the Brussels attacks were as predictable as they were frustrating and insipid. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel called the attacks “a dark time for our country,” adding, “More than ever, I call on everybody to show calm, but also solidarity.”

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The Patriot Post Digest 3-23-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO, said, “This is a cowardly attack, an attack on our values and on our open societies. Terrorism will not defeat democracy and take away our freedoms.”

French President Francois Hollande tweeted, “I express my solidarity with the Belgian people. Through the Brussels attacks, the whole of Europe has been hit.”

The “leading from behind” leader of the free world took time away from prostrating himself20 before the lecturing of communist Cuba’s diminutive dictator, Raul Castro, long enough to proclaim: “This is yet another reminder that the world must unite. We must be together regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism.” A lovely and meaningless platitude, but we suppose we should be grateful that Barack Obama didn’t use the moment as an opportunity to again lecture us on the dangers of global warming or on the sins of American imperialism and the medieval Crusades.

Obama spent less than one minute21 of his speech from Cuba discussing the Brussels attacks — less time than he spent doing the wave with the Cuban dictator while watching the Cuban national baseball team.

On a related note, Obama ordered flags at half mast almost immediately — something he waited five days22 to do after the jihadi attack in Chattanooga.

Showing that not everyone has lost their minds to politically correct orthodoxy, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz reiterated his position that there should be no attempts to bring in Syrian refugees to the U.S. following these latest Islamic terrorist attacks, stating that the U.S. program to vet Muslim refugees is “woefully inadequate.” He also called for a more robust response from Obama than just “another lecture on Islamophobia23.” Unsurprisingly, Democrat presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton called Cruz’s comments “unhelpful.”

Following the Paris attacks24, French PM Hollande vowed to be “merciless” in the fight against terrorism, calling those attacks “a horror,” “an act of war,” and attacks “against us all.” A joint statement by leaders of the European Union declared that the EU would “face this threat together with all necessary means and ruthless determination … to defeat extremism, terrorism, and hatred.” After Paris, Obama likewise promised to do all that was needed to combat the Islamic State; ironic, since he’d stated only hours earlier that his administration’s efforts had “contained25” that jihadi threat.

Writing in his book, “The Life of Reason, Vol. 1,” philosopher George Santayana opined, “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. … When experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. … This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.”

Worse than infants, modern “progressive” leaders in Western society not only have failed to learn the brutal lessons taught by several decades of relentless Islamic extremism, which openly seeks nothing less than the destruction and subjugation of Western society, they openly rebuke the obvious truths which their eyes reveal. As a result, thousands of their citizens are dead. Rather than declare Islamic extremism as the evil that it is, they wring their hands and engage in a form of twisted group therapy to try and discover why the attacks are really the fault of the West.

Without an awakening, and an undaunted determination to crush the evil of Islamic extremism, thousands more will die at the hands of Islamic terrorists in the years to come. The blood of those victims will be on the hands of those leaders who chose the path of willful ignorance and the appeasement of evil.

MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE

ANALYSIS: Is Hillary the Weakest Candidate?26
Chance of Contested Convention Slims27
Weighing in on Brussels23
Hillary Clinton Panders to Pro-Israel Lobby28
Belief in God in Dwindling, but What About the Afterlife?29
A Green Energy Proposal That Isn’t Bad30

TOP HEADLINES

Belgian Terrorists Can Still Enter U.S. Without a Visa19
Bomb-Making in George Mason Univ. Dorm: 3 Students Arrested31
Foster Girl Removed Over Her Native American Heritage32

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report33

OPINION IN BRIEF

Michelle Malkin: “To borrow a useful phrase coined by British journalist James Bartholomew last year, we have reached the oversaturation point of post-terrorism ‘virtue signaling’: Hashtags, avatars and animated GIFs ad nauseam. These are the easy advertisements and maudlin displays of one’s resolute opposition to an unidentified something that must be stopped somehow by unspoken means. Virtue signals are ‘camouflage,’ Bartholomew explained. They are sincere-seeming shows of collective unity that disguise the millennial-age indulgence of publicly patting one’s own back for supposed moral courage. ‘No one actually has to do anything,’ he opined. Virtue now ‘comes from mere words or even from silently held beliefs.’ Pre-Twitter, outraged Americans all donned ‘Never forget’ magnets and ribbons on our cars and lapels after 9/11. I was one of them. But after 15 years of hapless homeland security theater and bipartisan pandering to terror-coddling ‘Islamophobia’ shriekers, I’m so, so sick of noble gesture paraphernalia. … We’ve had enough piles of memorial flowers. We’ve heard enough hollow lip service paid to resolve. Where is the world’s active resistance to the sharia-imposing soldiers of Allah?”

SHORT CUTS

Nailing it: “I’m going to say something that is going to sound pretty harsh, but I think it is true. [The president’s statement] wasn’t a mistake. That wasn’t weakness, that was policy — his going to the ballpark and spending less than a minute on the attack. I actually believe that the president’s policy, in his heart of hearts is: That is not that big a deal.” —former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden

Still missing the point: “This isn’t about a religion. This is about a warped and brutal, depraved ideology that continues to be attractive to a small number of people in the Muslim faith — radicals and extremists.” —State Department spokesman John Kirby

Half-hearted: “You know, I call it radical jihadist terrorism because, you know, it is clearly rooted in Islamic thinking that, you know, has to be contested first and foremost by Muslims around the world.” —Hillary Clinton

Everything is awesome: “I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas. I have come here to extend the hand of friendship to the Cuban people. … I want you to know, I believe my visit here demonstrates that you do not need to fear a threat from the United States.” —Barack Obama

Non Compos Mentis: “In many ways, the United States and Cuba are like two brothers who’ve been estranged for many years, even as we share the same blood.” —Barack Obama

Observations: “The whole story of [Barack Obama’s] presidency and its foreign policy was seen in the [television] split screen. On one side you had the video footage of the attack in Belgium. This is the real world. And on the other side was Obama in a fantasy world he inhabits where Cuba is of some geopolitical significance. … Obama calls [ISIL] the JV team, he pretends it’s contained and controlled. It is not. Instead he does this ideological holiday trip in Cuba while the world burns.” —Charles Krauthammer

Late-night humor: “The big story is President Obama’s historic visit to Cuba. After landing [Sunday], Obama immediately tweeted out, ‘What’s up, Cuba?’ And Cubans opened up a window and yelled, ‘We don’t have the Internet! It’s like 1955 here!’” —Jimmy Fallon

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.