The Patriot Post Digest 5-2-2016

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The Patriot Post Digest 5-2-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

May 2, 2016

THE FOUNDATION

“I have no ambition to govern men. It is a painful and thankless office.” —Thomas Jefferson (1796)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Hoosier State Hectoring1

The all-important Indiana primary is Tuesday, and that means the presidential candidates are upping the ante. Ted Cruz hit back after John Boehner called him “Lucifer”2 and all but endorsed Cruz’s rival. “Donald Trump is attempting to perpetuate one of the greatest frauds in the history of modern elections, which is he is trying to convince people that he’s some sort of outsider,” Cruz said. “Donald is the essence of the Washington insider. He has been enmeshed in the corruption in Washington. One of the things that illustrated that powerfully this week was when John Boehner went out of his way to attack me, to call me the devil, and then he praised two people. John Boehner praised Hillary Clinton, and he praised Donald Trump. He said Donald was his friend, was his golfing and texting buddy.”

Cruz also joked, “I kind of wondered if Boehner was auditioning to be Donald Trump’s vice president. You know, a Trump-Boehner ticket would really say ‘The Washington Cartel’ in all its force. One has been funding the cartel. The other has been giving in to Democrats for years.”

The Hoosier State has been lightly polled so far, but a recent one shows Trump with a 15 point lead. Another shows Cruz winning by the same margin. So, as usual, the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day. Cruz is certainly hoping the endorsement of Gov. Mike Pence3 will give him a boost, and that Boehner’s virtual endorsement of Trump will put Cruz over the top.

Cruz isn’t done wrangling for delegates to bring to a possible contested convention4 either. The Texas senator managed to win a large majority of Arizona delegates at the state’s convention. Trump won the state, and thus secured the first-ballot votes of all 58 of its delegates, but should Trump fail to reach 1,237 before the convention and balloting goes beyond Round One, Cruz will have nearly three-quarters of Arizona’s 58. At first glance, Cruz is looking much stronger on the second and third ballots in a number a state delegations, but with the major caveat that those delegates may waver5 if Trump continues to gain momentum.

On a final campaign note, violent protesters once again interrupted a Trump rally, smashing police car windows and waving Mexican flags. Is there any better way to say “Vote for Trump”?

Biden Tries to Fix Broken Iraq6

Joe Biden’s helicopter touched down at the American Embassy in Baghdad Thursday as America’s second in command made a surprise visit with Iraq’s leaders in an effort to protect the stability of the government. Over the last several weeks, the state of Iraqi politics has deteriorated (who could’ve seen that coming?). Biden’s staff scheduled appointments with Iraqi leaders but reportedly didn’t know if they would be in office by the time Biden could meet with them. The prime minister is weak. The parliament is fractured and notoriously corrupt. It would have been an embarrassing visit for Biden even if nothing happened afterwards. We’ll come back to that.

In 2010, Biden boasted7 that abandoning Iraq “could be one of the great achievements of this administration.” It was during the time that the Obama administration was peddling8 its “success” story in Iraq to pave the way for the 2012 campaign narrative. Not only will American troops be gone, the veep promised then, “You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.”

How’s that working out? On Saturday, hordes of protesters stormed9 the Iraqi parliament, scrambling over blast walls and entering a room forbidden to the general public for the last 13 years. A state of emergency was declared. Some of the lawmakers went into hiding. Others fled the country. Most of the protesters were goaded by an anti-American Shiite cleric named Moqtada al-Sadr.

And all this is happening while the Islamic State sits a five-hour drive away in Mosul. “Mr. Biden’s diplomatic fly-ins are no substitute for the consistent presence that 5,000 or 10,000 U.S. troops could have provided,” opined10 The Wall Street Journal. But it gets Biden in the news demonstrating a highly visible (if ineffectual) foreign policy visit to boost his prominence in case Hillary Clinton gets indicted and Democrats need that Biden-Warren ticket to save the day.

Army Keeps Soldier Who Beat Child Rapist11

Turns out the U.S. Army will not remove Sgt. First Class Charles Martland from service. In January, the Army planned on punishing the Green Beret because in 2011 he slammed to the ground12 an Afghani police commander after he discovered the man had abducted and raped a child. Because Martland violated the U.S. policies on respecting Afghan culture, rapey bits and all, Martland was going to be kicked out of the military March 1.

But thanks to inquiries by Rep. Duncan Hunter, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan himself as a Marine, the Army decided to retain Martland. Hunter said, “The Army did the right thing and we won — the American people, won. Martland is who we want out there.” As for Martland himself, he simply and humbly said, “I am real thankful for being able to continue to serve.”

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Peggy Noonan: Simple Patriotism Trumps Ideology13
David Harsanyi: The GOP Has Been Bad. But Not as Bad as You Think14
Joseph Horton: Conservative Solutions for Just Wages15

For more, visit Right Opinion16.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Obama’s Economic Escort Service17

By Robin Smith

“It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.”

Ronald Reagan’s famous quip sums up Barack Obama’s recent use of Leftmedia to defend his abysmal economic record.

In a laughable puff piece entitled “President Obama Weighs His Economic Legacy18,” The New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin assumed the role of what we’ve dubbed the “presstitute.” Willing to accept opinion and biased analysis for fact, Sorkin opened his piece with this shocking quote from one of Saul Alinsky’s top students:

“I actually compare our economic performance to how, historically, countries that have wrenching financial crises perform. By that measure, we probably managed this better than any large economy on Earth in modern history.”

Did you get that, folks? Obama lays claim to the best managed recovery of “any large economy on Earth in modern history,” and a supposed journalist offers no challenge or follow-up — instead shaming the American public for not appreciating the alleged benefits of Obama’s economic policies.

Ultimately, the Times' piece as a whole is more self-congratulatory than it is informative — with Obama delivering an assessment of his performance that is nothing short of narcissistic. It’s a case once again of someone who knows “so many things that aren’t so” and speaks of so few things that are true.

The numbers, however, speak the truth of our economy.

For the first quarter of 2016, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) — the total dollar value of all goods and services produced within the time measured — grew a paltry 0.5%, demonstrating a continued decline following 1.4% and 2% of the previous two quarters ending 2015. Translation: The American economy is not growing and is still mired in the worst “recovery” in history.

Yet, if you read CNN’s review of the New York Times' piece, Obama laments “the fact that public perception about the economy remains negative despite important gains in recent years.” He blames Republicans “that deny any progress,” and laments his only fault: “If we had been able to more effectively communicate all the [economic] steps we had taken to the swing voter, then we might have maintained a majority in the House or the Senate.”

So if Reagan was the Great Communicator — at first a leftist pejorative to explain away The Gipper’s success — Obama is the Failed Communicator of terrible policies. And that on top of the fact that, as even Bill Clinton acknowledged, Democrats set the stage for the 2008 collapse19.

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The Patriot Post Digest 5-2-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Never mind Obama’s proven record of increased taxes and massive regulations20, his legacy is one that speaks of a labor force hampered by his policies, such as the near-complete government takeover of our health care; historic expansion of entitlement programs and dependencies for those outside the scope of need; the almost complete end of the coal industry, and more.

But the best line of the Times' fairytale was Obama’s quote ascribing superhero status to his administration for its reaction to the economic hurdles he’s faced since 2009: “We were moving so fast early on that we couldn’t take victory laps. We couldn’t explain everything we were doing. I mean, one day we’re saving the banks; the next day we’re saving the auto industry; the next day we’re trying to see whether we can have some impact on the housing market.”

While Obama claims he was “saving” the economy, he was actually artificially propping up failure through misappropriated and unconstitutional government spending on his favored constituencies. Meanwhile, wages remain stagnant for the working class who see their companies borrowing money to buy back stock instead of experiencing real growth.

Obama is on track to be the first president in American history not to steward at least 3% GDP growth in any year of his presidency. America’s justified anger is rooted in the reality that 2015 marks the tenth consecutive year of such economic impotence.

The only positive metric for the Obama economy is the reduction in the unemployment rate, which has declined to 5%. With unemployment at 7.8% during Obama’s first month in office and peaking at 10% in October 2009, the numbers do show improvement.

But even that’s a façade.

It may not be commonly known that the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes six different rates and definitions of unemployment. The measurement known as “U-3” is what we call the headline unemployment rate, and it monitors “the number of unemployed people as a percentage of the labor force.” But the labor force participation — or number of people actually seeking work — has hit historic lows during “Superman” Obama’s recovery.

The fuller rate — dubbed the U-6 BLS rate of unemployment — measures the “total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.” So what exactly is America’s U-6 unemployment rate compared to the U-3 rate as of March 2016? Measuring the entire adult population that is not previously employed or employed at a desired level, the rate comes out to 9.8% rather than the widely touted 5%.

Over the past two presidential terms, our economic policies, sown by a leftist president outmaneuvering an undisciplined Republican Congress, have included increased redistribution of wealth, along with excessive government taxation, spending and interference. The natural result is the flourishing of a bumper crop of economic weeds choking out authentic growth.

When reading The New York Times' masthead, you see its motto emblazoned proudly: “All the news fit to print.” Given the paper’s willing services as this administration’s presstitute, it should read something along the lines of: “All the propaganda that we can fit.”

MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE

ANALYSIS: More Criminal Aliens Released by ICE21
Most Tepid Endorsement of the Campaign?3
Colorado to Consider Socialized Medicine22
Consumers Aren’t Keen on Mass Transit23

TOP HEADLINES

Puerto Rico Defaults on $370 Million Debt Payments24
Obama Weighing Under-the-Radar Routes for Syrian Refugees25
Protesters Breach Baghdad Green Zone, Occupy Parliament26

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report27

OPINION IN BRIEF

Peggy Noonan: “What Trump supporters believe, what they perceive as they watch him, is that he is on America’s side. And that comes as a great relief to them, because they believe that for 16 years Presidents Bush and Obama were largely about ideologies. They seemed not so much on America’s side as on the side of abstract notions about justice and the needs of the world. … Mr. Trump comes and in his statements radiate the idea that he’s not at all interested in ideology, only in making America great again — through border security and tough trade policy, etc. He’s saying he’s on America’s side, period. And because people are so happy to hear this after 16 years, because it seems right to them, they give him a pass on his lack of experience in elective office and the daily realities of national politics. … Bobby Knight, introducing him at a rally in Evansville, Ind., on Thursday, said that Mr. Trump is not a Republican or a Democrat. The crowd seemed to like that a lot. Those conservative writers and thinkers who have for nine months warned the base that Mr. Trump is not a conservative should consider the idea that a large portion of the Republican base no longer sees itself as conservative, at least as that term has been defined the past 15 years by Washington writers and thinkers.”

SHORT CUTS

The Gipper: “I’ve always believed that a lot of the trouble in the world would disappear if we were talking to each other instead of about each other.”

For the record: “Republicans have been dreadful on plenty of fronts — the quality of their advocacy, the spine they show making arguments and the lack of innovation and malleability in the focus of their policies, to name a very few — but resistance to Obama’s legislative agenda was definitely not one of them. If Republicans had capitulated in the way the average angry populist claims, Obama would not have needed to enact some of the most consequential abuses of executive power since World War II.” —David Harsanyi

“I have a lot of experience dealing with men who sometimes get off the reservation in the way they behave and how they speak. I’m not going to deal with their temper tantrums or their bullying or their efforts to try to provoke me. [Donald Trump] can say whatever he wants to say about me, I could [sic] really care less. I’m going to stand up for what I think the American people need and want in the next president.” —Hillary Clinton

When racial slurs are ok: “I’ve always joked that I voted for the president because he’s black. Behind that joke is a humble appreciation for the historical implications for what your presidency means. When I was a kid, I lived in a country where people couldn’t accept a black quarterback. … And now to live in your time, Mr. President, when a black man can lead the entire free world. Yo, Barry, you did it my nigga!” —comedian Larry Wilmore

Demo-gogues: “I know that there are times that we’ve had differences and that’s inherent in our institutional roles. It is true of every president and his press corps. But we’ve always shared the same goal to root our public discourse in the truth, to open the doors of this democracy, to do whatever we can to make our country and our world more free and more just.” —Barack Obama at the White House Correspondents Dinner

Late-night humor: “Joe Biden made a surprise trip to Iraq [Thursday] morning, and no one was more surprised than him. ‘Last time I use Expedia!’” —Seth Meyers

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis!
Managing Editor Nate Jackson

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