The Patriot Post Digest 12-16-2016

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The Patriot Post Digest 12-16-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Dec. 16, 2016

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Obama fires the latest salvo in the Democrat effort to delegitimize Trump.
Facebook discloses its plan to suppress “fake news.” Conservatives beware.
Tillerson at State: More questions than answers.
And more news, policy and opinion.

THE FOUNDATION

“When people are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their manners, they will sink under their own weight without the aid of foreign Invaders.” —Samuel Adams (1775)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Obama Plays the Russian Card1

One thing is clear, Democrats still can’t come to grips with the fact that Hillary Clinton lost because she was a lousy candidate with a bad message. Hence the latest attempt to stamp the “illegitimate” tag on President-elect Donald Trump, which came from none other than Barack Obama himself. In the guise of concern over both national security and the “integrity of our elections,” Obama, in an interview on National Public Radio, blamed Vladimir Putin for hacking the DNC. He warned, “I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that we need to take action and we will at a time and place of our own choosing.” And yet he offered no actual evidence to support his claims. As we noted yesterday2, Congress has yet to be briefed by the National Intelligence community on its findings. Without verification of the leaked intelligence, the Leftmedia and now Obama are asserting it as unquestionable truth.

Meanwhile, Obama Press Secretary Josh Earnest claimed Trump had prior knowledge of Russia’s hacking activity. As “evidence,” Earnest pointed to Trump’s mocking call3 for the Russians to release Hillary’s 30,000 missing emails. Earnest huffed, “I don’t think anybody at the White House thinks it’s funny that an adversary of the United States engaged in malicious cyber activity to destabilize our democracy. That’s not a joke.” Evidently, the concept of contextualization is lost on Earnest. It wasn’t Trump who operated a private, unsecured email server that was open to hacking. But by all means, blame the Russians.

Fears of “destabilizing our democracy” are real, but it’s Democrats who are doing everything in their power to accomplish it. The American people have spoken, and Democrats are refusing to listen. Worse, it’s Democrats, along with the Leftmedia, who are actively seeking to instill distrust in the American electoral system and process, first by calling for the abolishment of the Electoral College, and second by seeking to convince electors to switch their votes on account of Russian election interference. Failing these things, they hope to at least convince Americans that Trump’s election victory is questionable or illegitimate. Allegations without cooperative evidence are merely hearsay bordering on conspiracy theory.

Once again, the pertinent question for the Obama administration is why now? They did nothing for months after the intelligence community suggested the Russians were behind the DNC hack. According to a report from NBC News4, there were three rather reasons for this: 1) Obama didn’t want to appear to interfere in the election, 2) He believed Clinton would win, and 3) He worried that starting a cyber war with Russia would “not [be] worth it.” Well, evidently Obama believes it’s worth starting a “cyber war” because Hillary lost. In reality, it’s the second reason that reveals the true motivation for Obama’s current behavior — overconfidence.

‘Fakebook’ Teams Up With Leftist ‘Fact Checkers’5

Earlier this year, we noted Facebook’s practice of suppressing conservative news6. Just last week, we warned about their Version 2.0 plan: quashing “fake news7.” And yesterday, Facebook announced how it was going to achieve this — by partnering with left-wing “fact check” sites to help separate the wheat from the chaff. “We’ve started a program to work with third-party fact-checking organizations that are signatories of Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Code of Principles,” Facebook announced. “We’ll use the reports from our community, along with other signals, to send stories to these organizations. If the fact-checking organizations identify a story as fake, it will get flagged as disputed and there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why.”

So which organizations? ABC News, The Washington Post, Snopes, Associated Press, FactCheck.org, Climate Feedback, and Politifact are all signatories. Every single one of them has been guilty of ridiculous leftist bias8 in their “fact checks.” And we reckon the ability for users to flag “fake news” is going to yield more fakery than it stops.

We’ll stipulate that fake news is a real problem, though not as the Leftmedia imagines it. They create it and then hypocritically worry about others doing likewise. Finally, let’s just say there’s a reason we cautioned of the social media giant’s transition to “Fakebook.”

Top Headlines9

Republican National Committee security foiled Russian hackers, though they didn’t know until later. (The Wall Street Journal10)

Health insurance premiums Obama promised he’d lower actually add $10B to taxpayers' health law tab — now at $42.6 billion. (Fox Business11)

Another ObamaCare enrollment extension — whatever it takes. (The Washington Post12)

Trump names David Friedman his ambassador to Israel. (Washington Examiner13)

Trump “mulling” Larry Kudlow to chair his Council of Economic Advisers. (The Weekly Standard14)

Wheeler to step down from FCC. That’s great news for Republicans and the Internet15. (The Wall Street Journal16)

“Luxury” living: Senate report finds IRS workers racked up huge travel tab. (Fox News17)

Racist guilty in Charleston church murders. Now he faces death. (USA Today18.)

Ohio State jihadi’s name added to student group’s list of people of color killed by police. (The Lantern19)

Colorado school district to allow teachers to arm themselves. (Associated Press20)

Policy: Steps Congress can take to fix the student debt system. (Fiscal Times21)

Policy: Making NASA great again. (National Review22)

Boston Tea Party23

On Dec. 16, 1773, “radicals” from Boston, members of a secret organization of American Patriots called the Sons of Liberty, boarded three East India Company ships and threw 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor.

This iconic event, in protest of oppressive British taxation and tyrannical rule, became known as the Boston Tea Party.

Resistance to the Crown had been mounting over enforcement of the 1764 Sugar Act, 1765 Stamp Act and 1767 Townshend Act, which led to the Boston Massacre and gave rise to the slogan, “No taxation without representation.”

The 1773 Tea Act and resulting Tea Party protest galvanized the Colonial movement opposing British parliamentary acts, which violated the natural, charter and constitutional rights of the colonists.

Three years later, this rebellion had grown to such extent that our Founders were willing to give up their fortunes and lives, attaching their signatures to a document that declared, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

For more on our nation’s founding and the role the Tea Party played, see Mark Alexander’s column, “Essential Liberty24.”

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Tillerson at State: More Questions Than Answers25

By Michael Swartz

It’s been a hallmark of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition so far: supply a willing media with a batch of politically obvious names for open positions within his cabinet and among his advisers, then pull the rug out from under everyone with a less orthodox choice.

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The Patriot Post Digest 12-16-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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So while the rumors and stories were circulating among the chattering class about who would run the State Department, they focused on some obvious names: Sen. Bob Corker, Rudy Giuliani, Gen. David Petraeus, John Bolton, and even uber-Trump detractor Mitt Romney were supposedly on the short list, despite the flaws and baggage each of them carried.

If you believe the report26 that Trump wasn’t happy with any of those prospective candidates, it’s not a shock that he went off the board. Pending confirmation, the prize will go to someone who was suggested by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates: ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson27, a man whom no conventional wisdom had previously considered.

Yet Tillerson did get a recommendation from other key officials besides Gates. Because of their post-political dealings, both Gates and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice knew Tillerson well and reportedly considered him a fine choice28, as did former Vice President Dick Cheney. Obviously a support roster like that leads to queuing up the concern from certain quarters of the Trump coalition about the influence of George W. Bush.

But many more have noticed the close ties between Tillerson and Russia in general, and Vladimir Putin in particular. They point out that before Tillerson took the top job at Exxon, he was in charge of their Russian operations and inked an Exxon pact with the Russian oil company Rosneft for exploration there, as well as giving Rosneft the opportunity to partner with Exxon on their American projects. For his work with the Russians over the years, Tillerson was presented Russia’s Order of Friendship by Putin himself in 2013. Fairly or not, writes David French29, “Tillerson is the pick least likely to ease concerns that Trump is too close to Putin,” and the current Russian election manipulation narrative30 will get a lot more mileage if Tillerson takes the reins.

And there’s another aspect of Tillerson’s background that raises concerns about him being America’s face to the world: Despite being the CEO of an oil company, Tillerson is in favor of a carbon tax31. Exxon has also called the Paris Climate accord “an important step forward,” which makes little logical sense from the fiduciary standpoint of an energy company looking to preserve its market — although it may have been a smokescreen to throw the radical Left off their trail. So Tillerson is neither the obvious option given his lack of formal diplomatic or political experience, nor the safest of choices when it comes to the American interests of avoiding dealings with enemy nations or of not being the only nation forced to make sacrifices in the name of combating the fallacy of man-made climate change. (However, on the former point, the previous two secretaries of state had political experience aplenty, and look what they’ve done to America’s reputation and national security.)

With this choice, perhaps Donald Trump is channeling his inner Winston Churchill. In 1939, Churchill noted, “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.” So why not select our own riddle wrapped in a mystery? Not only that, Dick Morris came up with the interesting take32 of Trump “reverse-engineering” the Nixon strategy of cozying up to China as a counterweight to the Soviet Union assisting North Vietnam during the Vietnam war: working with Putin and the Russians to counterbalance China’s aggressive foreign policy in both military and economic terms. It’s already clear Trump is unafraid to make waves with China33, so perhaps Tillerson is an additional reinforcement of the adage of using the enemy of one’s enemy.

A fine line is being walked when both sides of the political aisle see reasons to support and oppose a nominee. Welcome to the America of Donald Trump.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

The Foreign Policy To-Do List34 — What to do after obliterating the Islamic State.
New Sanctions Rebuke Iran, Obama35 — Congress does what Obama was too weak to do.
A Romney for RNC Chair36 — Trump picks a loyalist to head the RNC.
NY Times Dismisses Abortion Trauma37 — Just in time for Obama’s move to fortify Planned Parenthood funding38.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Charles Krauthammer: The Trump Cabinet: Bonfire of the Agencies39
Erick Erickson: The Russians Are (Not) Coming40
David Harsanyi: The 5 Stages of Losing an Election to Donald Trump41

For more, visit Right Opinion42.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Charles Krauthammer: “The most incendiary nomination … is Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency. … Pruitt has been deemed unfit to serve because he fails liberalism’s modern-day religious test: belief in anthropogenic climate change. … It doesn’t matter whether the man believes the moon is made of green cheese. The challenges to EPA actions are based not on meteorology or theology, but on the Constitution. … Pruitt’s is the most important nomination because it is a direct attack on the insidious growth of the administrative state. We have reached the point where EPA bureaucrats interpret the Waters of the United States rule — meant to protect American waterways — to mean that when a hard rain leaves behind a pond on your property, the feds may take over and tell you what you can and cannot do with it. … Pruitt’s nomination is a dramatic test of the proposition that agencies administer the law, they don’t create it. That the legislative power resides exclusively with Congress and not with a metastasizing administrative bureaucracy. For some, this reassertion of basic constitutionalism seems extreme. If so, the Obama administration has only itself to blame. Such are the wages of eight years of liberal overreach.”

SHORT CUTS

Upright: “Democrats who voted for Donald Trump … told pollsters after the election that they thought Hillary Clinton was more interested in putting men in their daughters' bathrooms than in creating jobs. That was not Vladimir Putin convincing them. That was Hillary Clinton failing to convince them. The Clinton campaign ran a campaign for people in skinny jeans and college professors. They were convinced of their dominance until it was too late. But the Democrats would rather blame the Russians than admit just how terrible a candidate Hillary Clinton was.” —Erick Erickson

Bottom line: “The issue here isn’t who elected Donald Trump. The American people did. The issue is the power of the Russians and presumably others to get into our systems and disrupt what we do. And the deeper issue is we have had an administration … that does nothing. It does absolutely nothing to deter the other power.” —Charles Krauthammer

Turning the narrative on its head: “I think it’s important to note that on election night we had our guard up for this. We had our crisis action team ready on election night. We did not see anything that amounted to altering ballot counts or degrading the ability to report election results, nothing out of the ordinary.” —Obama’s DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson

For the record: “We suppose we can understand why one might prefer direct nationwide election by popular vote, but the way to achieve that would be through a constitutional amendment. Good luck with that: It’s unlikely the requisite 38 states would agree to defer to California (where Mrs. Clinton’s margin was more than four million, meaning that Trump ‘won the popular vote’ in the other 49 states combined).” —James Taranto

Hyperbole: “You get rid of ObamaCare, people are going to die.” —Harry Reid

And last… “Surely there were alarmists who thought 2016 might end in an undemocratic coup. But who predicted Democratic opinion leaders would be the ones agitating for it?” —Rich Lowry

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.