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« on: June 02, 2016, 03:45:03 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Digest 6-2-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
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Mid-Day Digest
Jun. 2, 2016
THE FOUNDATION
“The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” —James Madison (1794)
TOP RIGHT HOOKS
Mortality Increasing Right Along With Insurance Premiums1
America’s death rate rose in 2015, according to the National Center for Health Statistics — one of the few times it has in the past 25 years. Meanwhile, Americans are paying more and more for health insurance thanks to a certain Democrat law. In 2014, the death rate was 723.2 people for every 100,000. Last year that rate ticked up to 729.5 deaths. The preliminary data, while not complete, suggests suicide, drug overdoses and Alzheimer’s disease are driving the spike.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researcher Andrew Fenelon said, “We are not accustomed to seeing death rates increase on a national scale. We’ve seen increases in mortality for some groups, but it is quite rare to see it for the whole population.” According to Fenelon, this comes at a time when Europe’s mortality rate is dropping.
Of course, ObamaCare is here to save the day, right? Requiring people to pay much, much more for health insurance will help them live longer, happier lives, the Obama administration’s line goes. Yet with the death rate rising, health insurance premiums are skyrocketing right along with it2. Americans in just five states saw the price of premiums drop last year. For Americans in 12 other states, sticker shock came in the form of more than 20% increases on premiums. We in our humble shop yearn for the 8-10% increases of the pre-ObamaCare days.
Part of the reason is decreased competition. Insurance companies find themselves unable to compete in the ObamaCare marketplace and, therefore, leave. The survivors jack up prices3. But hey, all this mandatory insurance is causing the health industry to grow4, thanks to the government’s decree.
Obama Spins Hurricane Threat5
Speaking on hurricane preparedness at the FEMA National Response Coordination Center on Tuesday, Barack Obama said6, “All of us have seen the heartbreak, the damage and, in some case, the loss of life that hurricanes can cause.” Indeed we have. But then he asserted a dubious claim: “And as climate continues to change, hurricanes are only going to become more powerful and more devastating.”
How then does he explain this? It’s now been a staggering “127 months since a major hurricane has made landfall in the continental United States,” CNS News calculates7. “The last major hurricane (defined as a Category 3 or above) to hit the U.S. mainland was Hurricane Wilma … on Oct. 24, 2005.”
But Obama’s sheer ignorance goes well beyond 21st century history. As meteorologist Joe Bastardi has chronicled, the mundane hurricane seasons of late are even more amazing when compared to the 1940s and 1950s. Then, according to Bastardi, the U.S. saw “22 major hits in 20 years8.”
Yet Obama strangely remarked, “What we’re always worried about are the things we don’t know, things we can’t anticipate, things that we haven’t seen before.” Perhaps if he wasn’t wearing ideologically blinders he would know that virtually nothing the world experiences today is unprecedented. Sadly, when hurricane seasons eventually do ramp back up, you can bet America’s shorelines that it will only add spin to warmists' rhetorical whirlwind.
State Department Censored Video to Further Iran Deception9
In an effort to dupe the American people and Congress regarding talks with Iran, the Obama administration went so far as to censor an eight-minute section of a press briefing in 2013. When originally asked, the State Department insisted the segment, which was replaced with a flash of white light on the video posted to YouTube, somehow experienced a “technical glitch.” Kinda like how another video started a “glitch” that was the deadly attack on the Benghazi consulate, if you believe the Obama administration’s YouTube tall tales.
The deleted section featured then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki seemingly admitting10 that the Obama administration had been talking with Iran in secret. “There are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress,” Psaki said. “This is a good example of that.”
On Wednesday, State Department spokesman John Kirby admitted11, “A specific request was made to excise that portion of the briefing.” While the department claims not to know who ordered the eight minutes of footage erased — memory is foggy at Foggy Bottom, though the order came from somewhere in the Public Affairs Bureau — there’s no law against censoring, so State isn’t investigating the incident with anything approaching vigor. But Kirby made it a point to stress that his department has a “commitment to transparency and public accountability,” yada yada yada, Most Transparent Administration in History™.
Psaki now swears she “had no knowledge of nor would I have approved any form of editing or cutting my briefing transcript on any subject.”
Despite claims of transparency, the Obama administration was in the midst of a full court press of deception12, trying to sell the Iran deal by any means necessary. Now, it appears the administration is seemingly paying ransoms13 and otherwise capitulating to the state sponsor of terrorism. It’s no wonder Obama’s legacy is already being edited.
BEST OF RIGHT OPINION
Larry Elder: On ‘Inequality’14
Mona Charen: A Gorilla ‘Tragedy’15
George Will: The British Will Choose Their Destiny16
For more, visit Right Opinion17.
FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Obama’s Economic Fables18
By Allyne Caan
Lots of things can be considered “shovel-ready.” Manure, for instance. And that’s pretty much what we got with Obama’s speech Wednesday in Elkhart, Indiana, touting the “success” of his $800 billion stimulus package and overall economic policy.
Just weeks after taking office in 2009, Obama visited Elkhart to urge Congress to pass his massive spending plan. At about that time, Elkhart’s unemployment rate had skyrocketed to approximately 20%. Indeed, Obama had found the perfect stage to recite his regular mantra19 that he “inherited an economic crisis as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression.” To fix it, he offered the holy grail of statist solutions — a bigger, more intrusive, more controlling, more burdensome government.
This week, he returned to Elkhart to claim victory20: “We … wouldn’t have come this far — Elkhart would not have come this far — if we hadn’t made a series of smart decisions — my administration, a cooperative Congress — decisions we made together early on in my administration.”
To hear Obama tell it, thanks to his policies unemployment has dropped to 4%, industry has revived and businesses are hiring. According to the White House21, not only has manufacturing returned to Elkhart, but fewer Indiana homeowners have seriously delinquent mortgages and more kids than ever are graduating high school. We hear the ozone layer directly above Elkhart has also shown improvement!
Of course, as is typically the case with Obama’s claims, they’re high on flourish, low on facts. For example, Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN) noted22 credit goes to “the pro-growth policies pursued by the state of Indiana, which have made our state one of the nation’s economic success stories.”
Indeed, Indiana has repeatedly lowered its corporate tax rate to make the state more attractive to businesses. In 2012, the rate stood at 8.5%; now, it’s 6.5%23. By 2022, it will be just 4.9% thanks to reforms passed by Republican state lawmakers and signed by GOP Governor Mike Pence. The personal income tax is going down, too. |
