The Patriot Post Digest 10-21-2016

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The Patriot Post Digest 10-21-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Oct. 21, 2016

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Hillary Clinton’s positions on guns and abortion are, to use her own words, “horrifying.”
The recent surge in illegal immigration isn’t going to be stopped by open-borders Hillary.
Obama moves against “violent ideologies” — by which he means “right-wing extremists.”
It’s time to fix ObamaCare, says … Barack Obama.
And more news, policy and opinion.

THE FOUNDATION

“Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.” —John Adams (1763)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Rule of Law vs. Rule of Clinton1

In Wednesday’s third and, mercifully, final presidential debate2, the subject of abortion came up during the discussion on the Supreme Court. “I strongly support Roe v. Wade, which guarantees a constitutional right to a woman to make decisions about her health care,” Hillary Clinton said. She became even more forceful, adding, “I do not think the United States government should be stepping in and making those most personal of decisions.”

First, let’s stipulate that the federal government wasn’t involved in “those most personal of decisions” until the Supreme Court asserted its own power over the states in 1973. Furthermore, SCOTUS created a right to abortion. There was and remains no constitutional right to take the life of an unborn child — to deny the very right to life upon which the Declaration of Independence is based.

Second, Clinton is no libertarian federalist convert. In fact, we’d challenge her to name a single other issue where she’d say the same thing about the federal government’s role. Marriage? Baking cakes? Which bathroom teenagers use? Purchasing health insurance? What fluids are in our air conditioners? How much water our toilets flush? What kind of light bulbs we use? When a campaign ad can run and who can pay for it? Even more hypocritically, she supports federal funding for abortion. She supposedly doesn’t want government stepping in to restrict abortion, but she’ll make you pay for abortions.

Oh, and what about the personal decision to exercise our Second Amendment rights? She feigned support for the Second Amendment when she would in fact eviscerate it. Regarding this constitutionally enumerated right, she said of DC’s outright handgun ban that the city was just trying to “protect toddlers from guns.” How outrageously wrong. As Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, “Few laws in the history of our Nation have come close to the severe restriction of the District’s handgun ban.”

One might say she supports keeping guns away from toddlers by preventing babies from growing into toddlers. She’d rather a doctor pull a baby halfway out of the birth canal and stab it in the back of the skull with scissors (that’s what happened during the now-banned practice of partial-birth abortion — a ban the Supreme Court upheld in 2007) than allow Americans to have guns if there’s a toddler around. To borrow her own phrase, “That’s horrifying.” It’s clear there is no abortion restriction she’d support, and no gun restriction she’d oppose.

In short, the contrast here is the difference between rule of men3 and Rule of Law4. As Hillary herself asked, “What kind of country are we going to be?”

Obama Attacks ‘Violent Ideologies’ — Meaning Conservatives5

Does attending a Tea Party rally mean you’re part of a “violent ideology” and thus in need of an intervention? Are Muslim terrorists “right-wing” extremists, as they’re often referred to in Europe? And, closer to home, are conservatives anti-government goons seeking to march on Washington? It should concern us all that the government may soon attempt to conflate two very different ideologies — that of a peaceful movement bent on reducing the size of government with that of a violent movement bent on murderous jihad. That’s not explicitly stated, of course, but neither was the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups.

Reuters reports on the proposition: “A White House plan aims to convene teachers and mental health professionals to intervene and help prevent Americans from turning to violent ideologies, work that is currently done mostly by federal law enforcement. … The policy aims to prevent conversions to all violent ideologies, including the white supremacist beliefs held by a gunman who killed nine black church members inside a historic African-American church in Charleston and the other shootings and bombs [sic] were inspired by Islamist militants.”

The obvious problem is that the definition of “violent ideologies” is highly adaptable in the minds of leftists, many of whom are sympathetic to the religion whose adherents commit nearly all deadly terrorist attacks. At what point are conservatives in general — or “right-wing extremists,” as they might be called — tossed into the same category? In some cases, they already are. Just look at the number of times Democrats have used the word “terrorist” when vilifying Republican “obstructionists.”

Preposterous, you say? Rush Limbaugh notes, “We know that the Department of Homeland Security in Obama’s first term released internal documents warning of the dangers posed by violent right-wing groups6.” Limbaugh believes “there’s no question that an ongoing effort to stamp out or intimidate anybody who happens to lean in any direction to the right is going to be undertaken.”

Conservatives are already being unlawfully victimized by the IRS as the agency continues to stall tax exemptions for conservative groups even years after initially being exposed. It’s little wonder no major reforms have been implemented — the agency’s behavior only exemplifies the Left’s growing hostility toward the Right. And make no mistake, it is a war — a war in which one ideology will do anything to crush the other.

Open-Borders Hillary7

Homeland Security officials are scrambling to find space to house the ballooning number of illegal immigrants awaiting deportation — some 45,000 people. Immigration and Customs Enforcement currently has 40,000 illegals in detention centers, the largest number it has ever had. Illegal immigration has surged up 23% from last year’s numbers. Within the surging number of migrants is the drastic increase of both unaccompanied children and family members of people already here. For fiscal year 2016, the number of unaccompanied children and family members caught was 137,366, which was a slight increase over the 2014 number. This is further evidence that Barack Obama’s immigration policies have (intentionally) fueled the crisis.

But to leftists like Obama and Hillary Clinton, there really is no crisis. Clinton shares the open-borders vision of leftist billionaire and financier George Soros. In 1998, Soros wrote, “The sovereignty of states must be subordinated to international law and international institutions. We need some global system of political decision-making. In short, we need a global society to support our global economy.” In May 2013, Clinton told a closed-door audience at Banco Tau in Brazil, “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.”

The reason leftists have little serious concern for — and in fact work to prevent — stemming illegal immigration is their belief in the superiority of international law over and against that of individual sovereign nations. Logically, if one favors a vision for an international governing authority with the power to dictate what it sees as acceptable laws to individual nation states, one would find the concept of national borders irrelevant. Such is the case with a leftist like Hillary Clinton.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Mona Charen: Undermining Our System8
David Harsanyi: Hillary Clinton’s Dishonesty Was on Display in Final Debate9
Rich Lowry: Don’t Blame Never Trump10

For more, visit Right Opinion11.

TOP HEADLINES

Huma Abedin Implicated in Clinton Pay-to-Play12
‘Quid Pro Quo’ Email Contained Benghazi Intel13
Marilyn Mosby Wants Power to Block Bench Trials for Cops14
2,000 Seattle Teachers Sport ‘Black Lives Matter’ Shirts15

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report16.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
ObamaCare’s Namesake Calls for a Fix17

By Michael Swartz

It wasn’t long ago that job applicants, after considering a company’s starting salary, would weigh the cost of its health care coverage. Millions of lucky employees worked for companies that paid the entire price for health insurance, while others chipped in a nominal amount. Boy, have times changed.

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The Patriot Post Digest 10-21-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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These days, each new annual enrollment period brings the dread of how much premiums and deductibles will go up. We all know that the Orwellian “Affordable” Care Act was passed with the promise that we could keep our plans and our doctors, and that our families would save $2,500 per year on average. But in the six years since its passage, we’ve found these pledges to be lies. Insurers are pulling out18 of state-sponsored insurance exchanges, meaning 1.4 million Americans will be forced to change plans19 — some for the third time20. And those who pinned their hopes on the 23 co-ops (Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans) to provide their insurance have looked on helplessly as 16 of those enterprises have failed21, while six of the remaining seven languish on a “corrective action plan” that’s usually the precursor to bankruptcy. All told, these co-ops received over $2 billion in loans that will likely never be repaid.

Recall that Democrats passed ObamaCare without a single Republican vote. And once we found out what was in it, we voted them out of office by the dozens. Even Bill Clinton remarked that the Affordable Care Act isn’t working22, calling it “the craziest thing in the world.” Hillary’s husband correctly added that “the people that are getting killed in this deal are small business people and individuals who make just a little too much to get any of these subsidies.” Those would be the millions of voters who turned out Democrats in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections.

But the president for whom ObamaCare was derisively named survived his re-election in 2012, and as his days in office dwindle to a precious few he’s trying to again sell us on the benefits of his plan. Speaking at a community college in Miami23 yesterday, Barack Obama contended24 that the ACA “gave us affordable health care. So what’s the problem? Why is there still such a fuss? Well, part of the problem is a Democratic president named Barack Obama passed the law. That’s just the truth.” (Didn’t this guy just tell Donald Trump to “stop whining”?)

Yet Obama also conceded, “Just because a lot of the Republican criticism has proven to be false and politically motivated doesn’t mean there aren’t some legitimate concerns about how the law is working now.” (Obviously, the fact that we couldn’t keep our doctors, health plans, or any semblance of affordable private insurance is a partisan complaint.) It’s true that more people are insured now — although 27 million still go without25 under a bill where everyone was supposed to be covered — but much of the gain was created by loosening Medicaid eligibility standards, and Obama also called on the remaining 19 holdout states to do the same. (One carrot to that approach is a lucrative federal match which originally covered 100% of the cost. The match is phasing down to 90% over the next several years.)

Second, Obama advocated for tax credits to try to broaden the base of insurance purchasers, a proposal that basically expands the subsidy many of those who purchase coverage already receive to eliminate the sticker shock they would otherwise suffer when they saw how much the policies really cost. One issue with that approach is how the subsidy disappears as income rises, so this is nothing but a gimmick to gin up enrollment.

But Obama saved his most cherished idea for last: the return of the “public option.”

“The third thing we should do is add what’s called a public plan fallback to give folks more options in those places where there are just not enough insurers to compete. … This is not complicated. Basically, you would just wait and see — if the private insurers are competing for business, then you don’t have to trigger a public option. But if no private insurers are providing affordable insurance in an area, then the government would step in with a quality plan that people can afford.”

And that’s the end game. Because insurance companies exist to make a profit, they have to make decisions about which markets they can adequately compete in. As time goes on, “those places where there are just not enough insurers to compete” will cover more and more of the country because no private industry has the deep pockets the government does. The failure of the co-ops illustrates this well: In order to build market share, they charged too little to cover initial costs and ran into trouble when those who were older and sicker flocked to sign up thanks to provisions in the law preventing insurers from recouping their costs — perhaps tenfold that of a younger, healthier person — to only three times the rate from bottom to top.

So just imagine the effect on private-sector insurers once Uncle Sam comes in and establishes premiums based on a bottomless well of deficit spending. To borrow a phrase from Newt Gingrich, the private insurance industry will “wither on the vine,” which will lead to the single-payer system the Left has wanted since — well, at least since a former first lady came up with what we derisively called “Hillarycare.” Two decades later, she stands to become president, and we may be longing for those days when employer-paid health insurance was a valuable tool to attract employees. That’s because, as Obama promised yesterday, ObamaCare is “still just a first step.”

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

How Do We Get There From Here?26 — Achieving principles and objectives requires tactics and strategy.
Activist Judge Rules Boy Can Use Girls' Room27 — You can call it the transgender imposition.
Racial Indoctrination at School28 — Leftists' continued push for a Marxian view of social justice only creates more racism.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Mona Charen: “It’s a dangerous and irresponsible thing to undermine confidence in the nation’s institutions. So glad that Democrats have discovered that this year. Perhaps now that they are hearing it from the mouth of Donald Trump, they will repent of their own recklessness. … Citizens United upheld the most cherished right protected by the Constitution. The disclosure requirements in current law are more extensive than ever before in American history. Moreover, there are some pitfalls in total disclosure, such as exposing those with unpopular viewpoints to harassment. Democrats obscure these essential girders of free speech and demonize the case to suggest that a wealthy, obscure elite has hijacked the political system. Donald Trump again signaled his contempt for democratic norms by declining to say he’d respect the results of the election. But Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, who stoke mistrust by falsely spinning conspiracy theories of illegitimate, dark forces controlling our system are also to blame for the parlous state of social trust in America.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies.” —Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Keen sense of the obvious: “The Obama administration’s delivery of $400 million in cash to the Iranian regime at the time of the release of [hostages] may have whetted the appetites of Tehran’s jailers.” —The Washington Post editorial board

Demo-gogues: “It is the height of cynicism [for former Trump opponent Marco Rubio to now back the GOP nominee]. That’s the sign of somebody who will say anything, do anything, pretend to be anybody, just to get elected. And you know what? If you’re willing to be anybody just to be somebody, then you don’t have the leadership that Florida needs in the United States' Senate.” —Barack Obama (“Hillary Clinton will say anything to get elected.” —Obama 2008 campaign ad)

Non Compos Mentis: “The Supreme Court elected the president. Al Gore won the state of Florida in 2000, although not the presidency.” —Debbie Wasserman Schultz in September, still not accepting the results from 16 years ago

For the record: “If Trump thought he needed any of his conservative critics or reluctant endorsers, he could have actively sought to allay their concerns and conduct himself and his campaign more rationally. But the fundamental conceit of his campaign was that he could do it his own way, and win. With the exception of the month prior to the first debate, he has indeed done it his own way, and is losing. Should Trump come up short against a desperately flawed Hillary Clinton, it will be his failure and his alone.” —Rich Lowry

And last… “Hillary wants to protect toddlers from guns. Maybe someday she’ll want to protect them when they’re even younger and more helpless.” —Twitter satirist @weknowwhatsbest

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.