The Patriot Post Digest 5-16-2016

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The Patriot Post Digest 5-16-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

May 16, 2016

THE FOUNDATION

“Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue.” —John Witherspoon (1776)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Roadblocks to Obama’s Tranny Edicts

Barack Obama isn’t exactly rolling through American culture unimpeded with his illogical obsession with transgender rights. It took decades for same-sex marriage activists to make the nation bend to their will, and even then it was through the courts, not popular opinion. Obama wants the process ripping gender designation signs from bathroom doors to occur almost immediately. What’s the cause of Obama’s obsession? Have the social justice warriors fixed all of the more pressing issues in the world?

Last week, the Obama administration decreed that all schools receiving federal dollars must open their bathrooms and sports teams to transgender students or else the schools might see that funding disappear. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick accused the Obama administration of engaging in blackmail, and . Patrick said, “This will be the end of public education, if this prevails. People will pull their kids out, homeschooling will explode, private schools will increase.” We’d call that the silver lining. The Lone Star State intends to push back against this encroachment, too, and we doubt it will be the lone state to do so.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is delaying the pivot toward a policy allowing transgendered Americans to serve openly in the military. It will take months for some form of “enlightened” transgender policies to govern the force meant to keep America safe because Pentagon officials disagree on how accommodating the military must become. Much like Obama’s executive overreach in other areas, whether it be states or the military chain of command, there is resistance to Obama’s totalitarian tranny agenda.

Rules, Rules and More Rules to Combat Climate Change

EPA head Gina McCarthy announced first-ever standards to reduce the amount of methane the oil and gas industry releases into the air. The announcement this week was days away from a supposed mid-May deadline to pass rules for the Obama administration, one last-ditch attempt to slow the economy down. The rules are yet another push by the Obama administration to further cement its climate change fighting chops — in other words, expand federal control. In her announcement, McCarthy claimed the rules are supposedly to help make the oil and gas industries safer, but that’s a transparent attempt to make the regs easier to stomach. Kyle Isakower, a vice president of policy at the American Petroleum Institute, said, “The industry is already leading the way on methane reductions, because it is good for the environment and good for business. Imposing a one-size-fits-all scheme on the industry could actually stifle innovation and discourage investments in new technologies that could serve to further reduce emissions.” But Obama is living out the twilight of his time in the White House, so what’s he got to lose?

Speaking of losing, this new rule came out on the day ObamaCare lost a big court battle. Lose one battle, begin another one, Obama says. Toss down a pile of regulation and let the bureaucrats in Washington sort it out. Maybe some of it will survive challenges in court. It’s a terribly cynical way of “fundamentally transforming America.”

Are Trump Tariffs the Way to Bring Manufacturing Back?

As part of his promise to “Make America great again,” Donald Trump essentially advocates starting trade wars with the countries that took the manufacturing jobs once held by Americans. To analyze the effects of imposing tariffs on countries like China and Mexico, the National Foundation for American Policy, a think tank that advocates free trade, studied Trump’s proposals and determined it could add a massive burden to the poor in America, who rely on cheap, imported goods. We’ve previously warned of the consequences of Trump’s plan in more general terms. And the think tank says his plan would cost the average American household $6,000 a year.

“Donald Trump’s populist-fueled ignorance about how world trade works makes economists tear out their own hair,” writes Reason’s Scott Shackford. “He thinks trade deficits between the United States and other countries mean we’re somehow getting screwed over and not the actual reality that we’re buying goods that we want more cheaply. You have a trade deficit with your local grocery store, but you’re not getting screwed over by them (well, maybe on that overpriced Greek yogurt).”

Furthermore, global trade benefits the high-quality goods made in the United States. Impose tariffs on China, and they’re likely to impose them back, further hurting U.S. manufacturing, destroying even the paltry gains in GDP that have occurred during Barack Obama’s “recovery.” And thanks to advances in manufacturing technology, there are fewer manufacturing jobs than in the past. To put Trump’s plan in perspective, one estimate said implementing all of Bernie Sanders' socialist plans would cost the average American household $5,000 a year. That Bernie is cheaper than Donald should give everyone pause.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Ryan Anderson: New ObamaCare Transgender Regulations Threaten Freedom of Physicians
Todd Starnes: We Must Defy Obama’s Transgender Decree — No Matter the Cost
George Will: Due Process Is Being Kicked Off Campus

For more, visit Right Opinion.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
The Salvation of States' Rights

By Arnold Ahlert

Barack Obama’s administration once again revealed its contempt for the Constitution last Friday. A letter signed by officials at the Departments of Justice and Education was sent to every public school district in the country, and it’s nothing less than federally inflicted blackmail: Either transgender students get to use whatever bathroom they choose, or those districts could be subjected to lawsuits and/or a loss of federal aid. Thus the stage is set for a battle that may ultimately decide the nation’s future. Either we restore the notion of states' rights, or we succumb to a federal leviathan with an insatiable appetite for power.

The Obama administration, and by extension the American Left, have made it clear they have little use for federalism. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, revealed to be every bit the ideological hack as her predecessor Eric Holder, is busy threatening North Carolina with a loss of Title VII and Title IX funding unless Gov. Pat McCrory dumps the recently passed “Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act.” It requires people to use the restroom that aligns with the sex on their birth certificate. That there is no mention of “gender identity” anywhere in the Constitution — meaning either the states or the people themselves determine such issues — means nothing to our would-be federal overlords.

It is likely many Americans don’t frame the so-called “bathroom wars” in terms of states' rights vs. authoritarian federal overreach. But if the 2016 election cycle has made anything clear, it is the idea that millions of Americans are fed up with an Us vs. Them status quo best described as the People versus a cabal of pompous elites dedicated to a one-size-fits-all, top-down ruling apparatus ensconced in Washington, DC.

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The Patriot Post Digest 5-16-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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It is time to reverse this odious trend. As National Affairs editor Yuval Levin explains in his new book, “The Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism,” Americans on both sides of the political divide are immersed in “Baby Boomer nostalgia.” Liberals long for a return to the radicalism of the 1960s, and conservatives for the Cold War victory of the 1980s. Levin also believes both groups pine for the 1950s when the American dream was readily attainable. The commonality of those dreams lies in the mistaken idea that DC is the vehicle for restoring them.

Levin sees this as a fool’s errand, insisting institutions that give Americans individual choices are best suited to 21st century living. Columnist Jonah Goldberg poses the ultimate question: “What would be so terrible about letting diverse communities decide how they want to live and spend their tax dollars?”

Only the devolution of power from DC — along the notion that a collectivist and enforced national unity is the ultimate panacea for what ails us.

Such a notion is utterly at odds with reality, and has been since the birth of the republic. Article One, Section 8 of the Constitution lists exactly 18 “enumerated powers” that accrue to the federal government. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments make it clear anything beyond those enumerated powers accrues to the people and the states, respectively. The reason for that construct is simple: The Founding Fathers believed individual Americans acting in their own best interests would produce far better solutions to the nation’s problems than edicts emanating from a central bureaucracy. A central bureaucracy that now embraces a level of authoritarianism far exceeding its constitutional limits.

A laughable tweet disseminated by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) demonstrates the obliviousness of our ruling class. In a shot at presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, Warren warned that the 2016 election “will determine whether we move forward as one nation or splinter at the hands of one man’s narcissism and divisiveness.”

Isn’t that splintering precisely what America has endured for the last seven-plus years, Ms. Warren? Isn’t it precisely one man’s narcissism and divisiveness driving the attempt to completely usurp states' rights using fiscal blackmail as a hammer?

“As the more astute political observers will have noticed over the past few decades, there exist a number of discrete social and political camps in this country, and they’re pretty implacably opposed to one another,” writes National Review columnist Charles C.W. Cooke. “As a result, it really doesn’t matter who wins in 2016; whatever happens, the result is going to upset just under half the people.”

Other than rare instances of national unity, usually driven by tragedy or war, it has always been this way. Yet for much of our history, such divisiveness, animosity and a sense of powerlessness was mitigated by federalism and individual rights.

The best way for Americans to reacquire greater power over their own lives is to divide it into the smaller “live and let live” segments federalism and individual rights represent. An added bonus? Those who resist such efforts will be unmasked as the arrogant would-be tyrants they truly are.

Ironically, it is the arrogant would-be tyrants of the Obama administration forcing the states' rights issue front and center. With any luck, they are sowing the seeds of their own over-reaching destruction.

MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE

ANALYSIS: Time to Vote Libertarian?
Obama’s Graduation Speech an Exercise in Triviality
FBI Director Again Speaks Truth on ‘Ferguson Effect’
Tapper Takes Down Clinton

TOP HEADLINES

RICO Climate Alarmists FOIA Emails Released
Mayor Rahm Emanuel Abolishes Police Review Board
Islamic State Sets Its Sights on Libya’s Fragile Neighbor, Tunisia

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report

OPINION IN BRIEF

Ryan Anderson: “The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finalized new transgender regulations for Obamacare on Friday. … These regulations will penalize medical professionals and health care organizations that, as a matter of faith, moral conviction, or professional medical judgment, believe that maleness and femaleness are biological realities to be respected and affirmed, not altered or treated as diseases. The regulations create special privileges based on gender identity that will lead to unreasonable and costly litigation for physicians, hospitals, insurers, and others involved in health care. They will effectively require controversial procedures, such as ‘sex-reassignment’ surgery, that respected medical professionals argue have not been proven to be effective in treating serious mental health conditions. … This is not the first time, nor likely to be the last, that federal agencies have used the power given to them under Obamacare to promulgate rules that trample on the conscience rights of Americans. By centralizing control of health care decisions in the hands of unaccountable bureaucrats and forcing individual citizens to obtain government-approved insurance, the sweeping health care law poses an unprecedented and profound threat to the liberty of Americans. To truly protect individual liberty and freedom of conscience, and fully respect the medical independence of physicians, Obamacare must be repealed.”

SHORT CUTS

The Gipper: “The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away.”

Upright: “This march on our children’s innocence should be resisted with every legal and moral instrument we have available in this country. And that includes the House and Senate. If the administration goes forward with an order this extreme, then Congress should begin impeachment proceedings. Unless our leaders act, America will be circling the drain of this president’s ‘hope and change.’ Moments like these are exactly what a congressional majority is for. It’s time the Republicans used it.” —Tony Perkins

The BIG lie: “I think it’s important to underscore that Secretary Clinton isn’t even a target of this [FBI] inquiry, investigation, whatever ‘I’ word you want to use. … I’ve repeatedly been told that.” —DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Flexibility: “Look, anything I say right now — I’m not the president. Everything is a suggestion, no matter what you say. It’s a suggestion.” —Donald Trump

The messiah: “When you hear someone longing for the good old days, take it with a grain of salt, take it with a grain of salt. … Guess what? … The good old days weren’t all that good. … In fact, by almost every measure, America is better and the world is better than it was 50 years ago or 30 years ago or even eight years ago.” —Barack Obama

A stopped clock is right twice a day: “If there is any person here that thinks I’m coming to you as some kind of savior, that I’m going to do it all myself, you’re wrong. No president, not Bernie Sanders or anybody else, can do it alone. We don’t need a savior.” —Bernie Sanders

And last… “I find the incoherent authoritarian populist demagogue as bad as the corrupt oligarchic progressive pathological liar. (Cue jokes: ‘Wait, which one is which?’)” —Jim Geraghty

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis!
Managing Editor Nate Jackson

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