The Patriot Post Digest 4-20-2016

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 4-20-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Apr. 20, 2016

THE FOUNDATION

“It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth.” —Thomas Jefferson (1785)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

A Good Night for Bad Candidates1

Donald Trump has spent much of the last week complaining about how “phony,” “unfair,” “rigged” and “crooked” the primary process was in Colorado (among a few other states). But just because he didn’t bother trying to play by the rules — or even knowing what the rules are — doesn’t make them unfair. So it was rich to hear him boast after his blowout New York victory, “It is really nice to win the delegates with the votes. … Nobody should take delegates and claim victory unless they get those delegates with voters and voting.” Except that Trump took 60% of the vote and 96% of the delegates. Indeed, Trump has won more delegates than his share of the vote in 23 states. And overall, his 38% of the vote has netted him 47% of the delegates. How is that “fair”? He certainly isn’t complaining about the rules when they benefit him.

We’re being facetious to illustrate his hypocrisy. States set election rules, as proscribed by the Constitution. If some are winner-take-all, or winner-take-most, or proportionate, or use another process, that is for the people of that state to decide. Not Donald Trump.

A couple of other pointed notes: For all his bluster about winning, New York marks the first time out of 34 states to vote so far that Trump has actually won a majority of the votes. And he lost his native Manhattan to John Kasich.

On the Democrat side, Hillary Clinton won big in her adopted home state, further cementing her likely nomination. The amusing thing is Clinton’s win broke a streak of eight straight defeats, and it comes as her overall popularity is tanking and Sanders has caught her in national polling. The only person more widely disliked than Clinton is Trump. The latter still has a rough path to the nomination, but if he wins, both parties will be fielding very unpopular nominees. The general election should be quite entertaining.

Delegate count:

Donald Trump 845
Ted Cruz 559
John Kasich 147 (1,237 needed to win)

Hillary Clinton 1,893
Bernie Sanders 1,180 (2,383 needed to win)

Bill Nye ‘The Straw Man Guy’2

So Bill Nye, the elementary “Science Guy” (we prefer the more accurate phrase “Science Lie”), is taking on Patriot Post contributor and veteran meteorologist Joe Bastardi. Posing with a fabricated hard copy of a Post publication in his latest video, Nye responds directly to Bastardi’s November column, “Some Questions for Bill Nye Six Years After Our ‘O'Reilly Factor’ Debate3.” Nye’s challenge? “Mr. Bastardi, I will bet you $10,000. I predict that the year 2016 will be among the top ten hottest years ever recorded. … I’ll take it up a notch. I’ll bet you another $10,000 that the decade 2010-2020 will prove to be the hottest decade ever recorded.”

Bastardi has been quite public about forecasting a warm 2016 since last year. Nye is apparently unaware of this, so he resorted to a straw man. Why would Joe bet against his own forecast? Note also that Nye did not accept Bastardi’s challenge after the El Niño of 2010. Bottom line: The El Niño spike was predicted well in advance. Isn’t it ironic that Nye is responding to the piece several months later — once the spike occurred as forecasted? He should take the $20,000 he would have lost after 2010 and put it toward helping feed starving people, or the homeless — either is a far more pressing problem. Nobody denies that the climate is changing — in fact, with every breath you exhale, it changes. But on the assumption that global temperatures are warming, the question is, “Why is the climate changing?” Bastardi addresses that question here3.

Nye calls Joe a “climate change denier,” which is the Left’s catch-all moniker for those who do not attribute “global warming” exclusively to human activity, or advocate the ecofascist prescriptions for dealing with that change. Recall that when global cooling trends challenged the “global warming” rhetoric of Al Gore and his ecofascists, they adopted the ubiquitous alternative “climate change,” which can encompass the whole range of climate phenomena — colder, hotter, wetter, dryer, calmer, stormier, etc. Of course, the Left’s real underlying political agenda4 is not about “climate change” at all, but big government control. The real deniers are those who refuse to recognize that the sun, the earth, stochastic events and the very design of the system far outweigh the effects of the increase of one molecule of CO2 out of every 10,000 molecules of air over a 100-year period.

On a final note, Mr. Conservationist printed a faux paper copy of The Patriot Post, which is an online publication. What a waste! Consider all the CO2 that did not get absorbed because a poor tree was butchered for a “climate change” prop.

In Apparent Hoax, Man Accuses Whole Foods of Discrimination5

In the ongoing showdown between cake bakers and the Rainbow Mafia, a homosexual pastor in Austin, Texas, accused Whole Foods of decorating a cake with a slur degrading the “LGBT community.” Jordan Brown asked for the store’s cake decorator to write “Love Wins,” the prevailing slogan of the same-sex marriage crowd, across the top of the cake. According to a video6 Brown created, the decorator decided to add the word “Fag” to the confectionery. Brown claimed he didn’t see the offending message when he bought the cake, only discovering it when he arrived at his car. Instead of taking the cake back, however, Brown brought it home. After receiving an unsatisfactory reply from the store, the man decided to sue the store for discrimination. As The Washington Post notes7, Brown belongs to the Austin Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, an organization whose mission8 is “keeping gay money within the gay-supportive community.”

Quickly, people started calling Brown’s accusation a hoax9. The color of the frosting and handwriting between the phrases “Love Wins” and “Fag” were different, for one. Then Whole Foods responded. “After a deeper investigation of Mr. Brown’s claim, we believe his accusations are fraudulent and we intend to take legal action against both Mr. Brown and his attorney,” the company said in a statement10. It even released surveillance video of Brown’s purchase, and noted that the person who decorated Brown’s cake “is a part of the LGBTQ community.”

If Brown pranked himself, it only highlights attention-seeking narcissism, which is pervasive in the community of people with the gender disorientation pathology11.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

    Walter Williams: Rights Versus Wishes12
    Jonah Goldberg: Higher Minimum Wage Is Well-Intentioned but Problematic13
    Ryan Anderson: Federal Court: Schools May Not Provide Separate Bathrooms Based on Biology14

For more, visit Right Opinion15.

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 4-20-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
An Uneasy Alliance16

By Lewis Morris

Barack Obama’s latest trip to Saudi Arabia takes place under the shadow of renewed public interest into the Saudi kingdom’s alleged complicity, maybe even direct involvement, in 9/11.

Two recent domestic events threaten to drive a wedge into the shaky U.S.-Saudi alliance, an alliance that isn’t necessarily doing America many favors. One is growing support for the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act17. JASTA, long sought by the families of 9/11 victims, would allow U.S. citizens directly affected by terrorism to sue state sponsors of terrorism for damages in federal court. The second is growing public demand for release of 28 classified pages from the 2004 9/11 report, which supposedly outlines greater Saudi involvement than previously admitted by Washington.

These two events are intrinsically linked. JASTA was first introduced last year, but support for the legislation has become a big part of the national conversation after a recent “60 Minutes” story explored the 28 pages redacted from the 9/11 report. Some members of the 9/11 Commission, former Senator and Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Bob Graham, and investigative reporter Paul Sperry have all spoken of evidence that the Saudis played some role in the 9/11 attacks.

Sperry writes18 that those 28 pages contain “incontrovertible evidence from both CIA and FBI case files of official Saudi assistance for at least two of the Saudi hijackers who settled in San Diego.”

The extent of the Saudi role remains unclear, as does whether the Saudi government had a hand in supporting the hijackers in any way. Obama, for all his talk about transparency and shedding light on the nature of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, has done his best to stonewall the release of additional documents. What does keeping the nature of Saudi Arabia’s hand in 9/11 secret from the American public accomplish?

There is the economic component. The Saudis are threatening to dump $750 billion in U.S. bonds onto the open market if the redacted pages are made public. Such a move would hurt the kingdom in the long term more than the U.S., though, as the riyal is pegged to the U.S. dollar.

The trouble is if Obama continues to sit on the 28 pages for the sake of “national security,” the outcome will look to the world as if the Saudi government just blackmailed the United States. Who next will follow suit? China? Russia? Iran? Unfortunately, thanks to this commander in chief’s feckless foreign policy and spinelessness on the world stage, these countries are already engaging in this kind of behavior against us.

This current trip to the Saudi kingdom is Obama’s fourth, more than any other sitting president. And for all the ink spilled by the Leftmedia over the photo of George W. Bush holding hands with the Saudi king, at least he didn’t bow to him.

As if open subservience isn’t bad enough, Obama’s also turned over a number of Guantanamo Bay detainees19 to the Saudi government. Last week’s batch of nine Yemenis is just the latest. Many of the detainees that have been let out of Gitmo have ended up right back on the battlefield. If the Saudis had a hand in supporting the 9/11 hijackers, then it would come as no surprise if Gitmo detainees turned over to them ended up back in the fight.

The U.S. does have strategic interest in an alliance with Saudi Arabia, but as time has passed, the Saudi kingdom’s usefulness has shrunk significantly to the point that if they can hardly be considered allies at all. They have harbored terrorists, they have supported terrorists, and they seek to influence our foreign policy through financial blackmail. About the only thing left is Saudi Arabia’s geopolitical balance to Iran. And Obama’s bungling that one, too, telling the Saudis they just need to learn to “share the neighborhood” with Iran.

Is there anywhere in the world that Obama hasn’t made a hash of foreign policy?

MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE

    ANALYSIS: Sanders Is Just Another Tax-Evading Liberal Hypocrite20
    Fairy Tales About Guns, Part II21
    Court Rules Trans Student Can Use Bathroom of Choice22
    ‘Congrats: You’ve Been Accepted Into Our Rape Program!’23
    Natural Gas as Environmental Threat?24
    The Myth of the Productivity-Pay Gap25
    Police Shooting Fatalities: Behind the Numbers26

TOP HEADLINES

    Judge Approves Ferguson-Justice Dept. Deal27
    Charges Forthcoming in Flint Water Crisis28
    Obama Did Not Press Putin on Military Provocations29

OPINION IN BRIEF

Walter Williams: “As human beings, we all have certain natural rights. Of the rights we possess, we have a right to delegate them to government. For example, we all have a natural right to defend ourselves against predators. Because we possess that right, we can delegate it to government. By contrast, I do not have a right to take one person’s earnings to give to another. Because I have no such right, I cannot delegate it to government. If I did take your earnings to provide medical services for another, it would rightfully be described and condemned as an act of theft. When government does the same, it’s still theft, albeit legalized theft. If you’re a Christian or a Jew, you should be against these so-called rights. When God gave Moses the eighth commandment — ‘Thou shalt not steal’ — I am sure that he did not mean ‘thou shalt not steal unless there is a majority vote in Congress.’ The bottom line is medical care, housing and decent jobs are not rights at all, at least not in a free society; they are wishes. As such, I would agree with most Americans — because I, too, wish that everyone had good medical care, decent housing and a good job.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition is so powerful that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations.” —Adam Smith (1723-1790)

For the record: “Law and order, a return to a strong, confident approach to threats, a complete dismissal of the dictates of political correctness — the good news is these are all elements of the Trump campaign. If he wasn’t an incoherent populist authoritarian demagogue, it would be a lot easier to jump on the bandwagon. The problem is that Trump is such a crass, deliberately-obnoxious, incendiary, policy-detail-ignorant, thin-skinned, women-repellent misogynist that he’s going to taint these positions by associating himself with them.” —Jim Geraghty

Upright: “The same First Amendment that gives Little Sisters of the Poor the right to object to this health coverage is the same First Amendment that gives photographer Elaine Huguenin the right to walk away from a same-sex wedding job. To ‘get over’ that, as Governor John Kasich (R-Ohio) has suggested, is to get over what it means to be American!” —Tony Perkins

Non Compos Mentis: “People ought to be able to use the restroom of the gender they identify with. That’s been our position. It’s still our position.” —Rep. Steny Hoyer

Alpha Jackass: “I’m not endorsing Ted Cruz. I hate Ted Cruz. And I think I’ll take cyanide if he got the nomination.” —Rep. Peter King

So low-tax advocates are just like the Nazis? “[Levying more taxes on hedge funds] is like us liberating death camps. The truth of the matter is, there’s no justification for a hedge fund paying at 15-17%. There’s just no justification.” —Joe Biden

And last… “So someone said New York values are horrible and then New Yorkers voted overwhelmingly for Hillary and Trump?” —Frank Fleming

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.