The Patriot Post Digest 9-20-2016

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The Patriot Post Digest 9-20-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Sep. 20, 2016

THE FOUNDATION

“A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.” —Samuel Adams (1779)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

DHS Bureaucratic Failure1

It was unveiled on Monday that the Department of Homeland Security had mistakenly granted U.S. citizenship to over 800 immigrants from “special interest countries” who had been scheduled for deportation. This alarming revelation in light of this past weekend’s bombings perpetrated by a naturalized citizen from Afghanistan has generated numerous questions from lawmakers as to how DHS allowed such a serious security breach to happen.

DHS Inspector General John Roth’s explanation was that old paper files of fingerprint records had not yet been fully added to the digital database due to a lack of funding. Homeland Security officials had been ordered by Congress in 2012 to report how much it would cost for everything to be digitalized. DHS never commented on whether this report was given. Of the 858 individuals mistakenly granted citizenship, roughly 120 were identified by the department as worthy of being prosecuted for fraud and, to date, only two cases have been accepted by the Justice Department and another 26 cases have been refused. Upon learning of the DHS blunder, Republican Sen. Ben Sasse commented, “This is a picture of total incompetence. A bureaucracy that blunders so badly is one that doesn’t take our national security seriously.”

Hours after bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami was apprehended, Donald Trump stated, “The safety and security of the homeland must be the overriding objective of our leaders when it comes to our immigration policy.” Bureaucratic blunders like this further prove that Donald Trump’s immigration concerns are well-founded.

A Battle of Narratives?2

On Sunday, while the search for bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami was unfolding, CNN had Barack Obama spokesman Josh Earnest in the studio for an interview. Earnest made a point to stress that the U.S. battle against Islamic terror was a “battle of narratives.” He said, “What I am telling you is that we are, when it comes to ISIL, we are in a fight — a narrative fight with them, a narrative battle, and what ISIL wants to do is they want to project that they are an organization that is representing Islam in a fight and a war against the West and a war against the United States.”

However, it appears that the real battle over narratives is not primarily between the U.S. and ISIL but between leftists and conservatives. Consider how CNN reported on Donald Trump’s remarks after the bombings. A CNN headline read: “Trump Says ‘Racial Profiling’ Will Stop Terror.” The problem is that Trump never said “racial” in his comments on the need for better vetting of immigrants. CNN simply injected the word into its coverage. Clearly, CNN wants to promote a false image of Trump being a racist.

Then there was MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. He tweeted: “We’re also very very lucky that the attackers tried to use explosives rather than guns.” Clearly, Hayes' seeking to make some anti-gun point comes across as completely out of touch with regard to the actual issue at hand. This kind of unabashed exploitation of a horrific event in order to further some unconnected social agenda has become increasingly common for the Leftmedia. On a side note, to counter Hayes' foolish comment, it was a citizen armed with a handgun who stopped the knife-wielding attacker in Minnesota.

Back to Earnest’s comments on a “battle of narratives,” the Democrat leadership and specifically Hillary Clinton, who was the secretary of state at the time of ISIL’s rise, and current Secretary of State John Kerry are responsible for framing this as a battle of narratives rather than what it truly is — a war against American values. To deny the radical Islamic ideological motivation for these terrorist attacks and boil them down to merely a “battle of narratives” is to deny reality.

Iran: Obama’s Proliferating BIG Lie3

There’s no shortage of spurious claims promulgated by the Obama administration. But when it comes to Iran, the consequences of getting it wrong are exceptionally dangerous. And every new development only reaffirms that Obama is conjuring up narratives faster than Iran can chant “Death to America.” A new report4 reveals that in July 2015 and April 2016 the U.S. government sent Iran a total of around $10 million to close the books on two separate arrangements. It’s not necessarily the subject of those arrangements but the means of how the money got to the mullahs that’s drawing attention.

The funds, the Treasury Department recently conceded, were electronically wired — an admission that entirely subverts Obama’s August assertion regarding how the highly contentious ransom payment to Iran was crafted earlier this year: “The reason that we had to give them cash is precisely because we are so strict in maintaining sanctions and we do not have a banking relationship with Iran, that we couldn’t send them a check and we could not wire the money.” On the contrary, the July transaction is particularly noteworthy because sanctions were still in full effect.

According to Sen. James Lankford, “I don’t have any question that Iran wants the money in cash because they wanted it faster than what a wire transfer would be and it’s fungible. They announced pretty quickly afterward that they were expanding their defense and their military budget by $1.7 billion dollars, an exact amount that we had just sent over to them. So I don’t think that was accidental. But when you give cash, we can’t track. Did that go to Hezbollah? Did that go to the Russians? Did that go to the coup in Yemen? There’s no way to be able to track that.” What we do know without question is that Obama’s placating Iran — in a shroud of secrecy, no less — has severely undermined our national security.

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BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

    Rich Lowry: Is Trump a Traitor?7
    Stephen Moore: No Thank You, Obama8
    Dennis Prager: Did the Famous Sailor Sexually Assault the Famous Nurse?9

For more, visit Right Opinion10.

TOP HEADLINES

    Ceasefire in Syria Completely Unravels11
    Merkel May Back Down From Open-Door Refugee Policy12
    Clinton Email Sweeper Asked Reddit for Tips13

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report14.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
After Eight Years, Obama’s Energy Secretary Visits West Virginia15

By James Shott

Those who lived in or near the southern West Virginia and/or southwest Virginia coalfields during the peak of the coal business in the 1950s and ‘60s know that state and local economies thrived because of the tens of thousands of people employed by mining companies and the dozens of companies that supported the industry.

The Norfolk and Western Railway yard in Bluefield, WV, was always filled with coal cars — many of them full of the world’s most widely used fossil fuel — that were bound for the port in Norfolk, VA, or ready to be unloaded into trucks for delivery. The rest were empty, heading back into the coalfields to be refilled and brought back for distribution.

They remember the bustling downtown that was the financial, shopping and recreational center of the region’s coalfields and Bluefield’s population of well over 20,000 residents during the time of peak coal. These are valued memories of the good times.

Today’s population is half that size, and the rail yard is often empty. To those who have seen firsthand the decline of the industry and its effects on local communities, the industry’s decline is a very real and painful thing.

The decline began with natural technological advances, as mechanization gradually began putting hundreds of miners out of work. Over time other forces developed that affected the industry, including the very recent rise of cheap natural gas. Through all of that, there was always a market for coal.

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The Patriot Post Digest 9-20-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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But the federal government’s assault on coal through excessive environmental regulation, spurred by the hotly debated idea that burning coal pours too much carbon dioxide — a gas essential for life on Earth — into the atmosphere, is the greatest problem. Barack Obama put this attack into high gear. However, today our air is cleaner than it’s been in 100 years, mostly because of evolving technological improvements.

Cloistered away in their comfortable offices in Washington, DC, our public servants frequently have no idea what life is like for those toiling away to pay the taxes that fund their salaries. Perhaps if they got out of Washington more they would understand the problems they create for the people they serve.

This may be the case with Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who at the invitation of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) finally visited the state after many invitations over the eight painful years of the Obama administration. But while in the state last week, Moniz suggested there is no war on coal, arguing to the contrary that the Obama administration is working to keep coal as an important part of a low-carbon energy future. He also said that cheap natural gas prices are primarily responsible for coal’s downturn.

The absurd idea that there is no war on coal today would be hilarious if the reality wasn’t so tragic, and the suggestion that the very recent drop in natural gas prices is the principal reason for coal’s decline is simply false.

This general situation was foretold by Barack Obama back in the 2008 campaign. “So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted,” Obama declared.

Assuming that Moniz has the capacity to recognize the misery the administration for which he works has caused for this region or really cares about the people affected by its policies, visiting West Virginia much earlier in the administration’s tenure might have made some difference.

Hillary Clinton is on that same path. While campaigning in Ohio earlier this year, she said, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” Trying to make that sound better, she said she favored funding to retrain those put out of work, but she didn’t say what kind of jobs and how many of them are currently waiting for trained workers.

Shortly thereafter, while campaigning in West Virginia, Clinton was asked about that comment by a tearful out-of-work coal miner, to whom she responded that what she meant was that coal job losses will continue. See the difference?

Obama’s energy policy is like putting a square peg in a round hole. If you want to put a square peg in a round hole, take some time and think it through: You should gradually and gently reshape the square peg so it will comfortably and appropriately fit into the round hole. Obama’s method is to place the peg on top of the hole and beat it with a hammer until enough of the corners are destroyed that the peg will go into the hole. And even then, it is a poor fit.

Just as horse-drawn wagons and carriages gave way to motorized vehicles when they came to be, coal’s role as a primary fuel would have changed as better methods evolved. Such a process would have been not only more humane and less destructive but infinitely smarter than what has transpired.

Through the centuries humans solved life’s problems and improved their lives through applied intelligence. Somehow, they managed to do this without Barack Obama and the EPA.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

    Lawsuit Against Left’s Anti-Police Rhetoric16 — Black Dallas police sergeant sues Black Lives Matter, Obama and others for inciting violence against police.
    A Climate Plan Many Don’t Want to Fund17 — More than 40% of Americans don’t want to invest in climate mitigation.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Rich Lowry: “Someone dares call it treason. Hillary Clinton used the occasion of the New York-area bombings to accuse Donald Trump of providing 'aid and comfort’ to ISIS. This speaks both to her desperation as polls show a tightening race and her foolish misunderstanding of what drives ISIS and other Islamic radicals. Clinton makes it sound like ISIS fighters are disaffected members of a swing-state focus group who, as soon as they hear an offensive statement from Donald Trump, prepare the next attack. If Hillary really believes Trump is a ‘recruiting sergeant’ for terrorists, she has a thin understanding of human motivation. It takes something very powerful to convince a young man to risk life and limb fighting for a terror group that is hunted and bombed wherever it gains a foothold. That something isn’t the ephemera of an American presidential campaign; it is religion. … None of this is to say that Trump’s inflammatory statements are correct or wise. But the best recruiting tool that ISIS has, besides its twisted religious vision, is its success on the ground. That’s why voters should want to hear a serious plan to defeat ISIS from both Trump (whose plan is secret) and Hillary (whose plan is a nebulous version of the status quo).”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “Is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavor consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for?” —Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992)

Braying Jackass: “We know that a lot of the rhetoric we’ve heard from Donald Trump has been seized on by terrorists, in particular ISIS. … We know that Donald Trump’s comments have been used online for recruitment of terrorists. … We also know from the former head of our counter-terrorism center, Matt Olsen, that the kinds of rhetoric and language that Mr. Trump has used is giving aid and comfort to our adversaries.” —Hillary Clinton

Upright: “The only thing that gives comfort to our adversaries is weakness. The only thing that will alarm or put fear in the hearts of our adversaries is the absolute assurance that we will have an American president who will rebuild our military, marshal our resources, rebuild our alliances, and confront and hunt down and destroy those who would bring violence to our citizens or inspire violence here at home. … We’re at war with the ISIS caliphate that sprang up because Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama precipitously withdrew all American forces from Iraq and created a vacuum of power. … ISIS was able to overrun vast territories that our soldiers had won in Operation Iraqi Freedom.” —Mike Pence

The BIG lie: “We can argue from now on about whether this [gun control] bill would have prevented this weekend’s attacks. But one thing is for sure: It would prevent the next attack. … It’s hard to believe in America today an FBI terror suspect not allowed to fly on an airplane can walk into a gun story in Las Vegas, New York City, anyplace, and legally purchase explosives and assault weapons. But it’s true because Republicans refuse to close the terror gap loophole.” —Harry Reid

Non Compos Mentis: “We’re … very lucky that the attackers tried to use explosives rather than guns.” —MSNBC’s Chris Hayes

And last… “Trump spent half a decade trolling the media with birther baloney, only to implicate Mrs. Clinton in the end. Whether that was his strategy from the start or a recent tactical adaptation, it’s dazzling gamesmanship on his part. The question is whether the media’s open hostility will hurt Trump and help Mrs. Clinton. It may have the opposite effect.” —James Taranto

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.