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« Reply #1 on: July 11, 2017, 01:55:53 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Digest 7-10-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
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Now that he’s no longer president, he’s no longer taking campaign contributions from Wall Street. Instead, he’s getting paid directly. “Former President Barack Obama, less than 100 days out of office, has agreed to speak at a Wall Street conference run by Cantor Fitzgerald LP, senior people at the firm confirm to FOX Business,” the NY Post reported29 in April. “His speaking fee will be $400,000, which is nearly twice as much as Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state, and the 2016 Democratic Party candidate, charged private businesses for such events.”
Again, some fat cats are more equal than others. Moreover the man who railed30 against “an economy that’s become profoundly unequal” in a 2013 speech, and chastised the top 10% of Americans for taking more than their fair share, has only just begun amassing his share of personal largesse. “With book deals, speaking engagements, and a government pension, former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama stand to earn as much as $242.5 million in the next 15 years, according to data from the Kogod School of Business at American University,” Business Insider reported31 in February.
Part of that take was $20 million to $45 million The New York Times estimated32 the Obamas would receive for their White House memoirs. Memoirs that would give them “more than enough to pay the estimated $22,000 monthly rent for the nine-bedroom home they will occupy in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington and foot the bill for flights on private jets,” the paper stated.
Those estimates were far too modest. According33 to the Financial Times, book publisher Penguin Random House will pay more than $65 million for the global rights to two books written separately by Barack and Michelle. The record-setting price for presidential memoirs, precipitated by an auction, dwarfs the $15 million paid to former president Bill Clinton for his 2004 memoir “My Life,” and the $10 million George W. Bush made from “Decision Points.”
In a hand-wringing column34 for The Washington Post, Ruth Marcus wonders if Obama’s “rapaciousness” is “really the image he wants to cultivate — for himself or for fellow Democrats?” Moreover, she asks, “Having left his party in such terrible condition, does he really have to offer opponents ammunition to attack him as hypocritical?”
Apparently Ms. Marcus remains oblivious to the reality that Barack Obama has always been a member in good standing of the “do as I say, not as a I do” group of progressives, all of whom are immune to accusations of hypocrisy.
Fox News has chronicled35 some of Obama’s image-making, noting that since he left office in January, he has been on “a seemingly endless tour of millionaire and billionaire luxury retreats.”
Luxury travel agency owner Kendra Thornton illuminates the level of lavishness. “These are some of the most luxurious travel destinations in the world,” she explains. “Many of our clients spend tens of thousands of dollars or more to stay at these resorts, which cater to the most discriminating and demanding guests. For example, Necker Island has a nightly price tag of $80,000. Anyone who stays at these properties does so because they want the best of the best.”
Pat Caddell, who was President Jimmy Carter’s adviser, is less than enthused. “I think every time Obama opens his mouth, the fair question is: Which billionaire’s paradise island did he do it from? When is he going to do anything to help people other than enrich himself?” he wondered.
In our capitalist system, achieving a luxurious lifestyle is in some ways the pinnacle of the American Dream for anyone with drive, the willingness to take risks, the entrepreneurial skills, and the ambition to go as far as their abilities take them.
What is not okay is the rank hypocrisy of Obama presenting himself as the arbiter of sufficient wealth — and the definer of “fairness” in achieving it — when there’s no end in sight to his own appetite for luxury, or his highly conspicuous consumption of wealth.
In other words, the class warfare rhetoric that was Obama’s political stock in trade now rings exceedingly hollow. “I’m not sure he’s ever been more out of touch than he is right now,” stated HBO host John Oliver last month.
Not out of touch, John. Out of office, and no longer feeling constrained by political expediency — all the images of “rapaciousness” in the world notwithstanding. Even those political constraints weren’t much, though, as he lived rich and famous36 while in the White House too. It’s just who Obama is — the consummate hypocrite.
MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST
Indoctrination of Children Knows No Bounds37 — The Boys & Girls Clubs of America have new guidelines about being more friendly to LGBTQ kids. It’s not friendly.
McConnell Pushes Republicans on Health Reform5 — Either repeal it or fix it. Meanwhile, Sen. Toomey essentially blames pollaganda for Republicans’ lack of preparation.
Hybrid Cars and Islamic Power38 — Government regulations are driving economic decisions that may also have geopolitical and security implications.
A Humorous ‘Apology’ to CNN39 — Brandon Morse recognizes that he should have never made fun of the great and totally not fake news organization CNN.
BEST OF RIGHT OPINION
George Will: A Measure to Rein in Medicaid’s ‘Mission Gallop’40
Peggy Noonan: On Health Care, a Promise, Not a Threat41
Rich Lowry: Trump’s Warsaw Triumph42
For more, visit Right Opinion43.
OPINION IN BRIEF
George Will: “Were it not for the provision that Pat Toomey, the Pennsylvania Republican, put into the Senate’s proposed health care reform, this legislation would be moderately important but hardly momentous. Toomey’s provision, however, makes it this century’s most significant domestic policy reform. It required tenacity by Toomey to insert into the bill a gradually arriving, but meaningful, cap on the rate of growth of per-beneficiary Medicaid spending. … Lawrence Lindsey, formerly a governor of the Federal Reserve System and an assistant to both presidents Bush, puts the matter plainly: ‘No large component of the federal budget can perpetually grow faster than nominal GDP.’ In 1970, Medicaid spending was 1.4 percent of federal spending. In 1980, it was 2.4 percent. In 1990, 3.3 percent. By 2000, it had doubled to 6.6 percent. In 2010, it was 7.9 percent. In 2017, it will be 9.8 percent. … As Lindsey says, Medicaid’s unrestrained growth will become economically impossible, then arithmetically impossible. Democrats fancy themselves the ‘party of science’ — strangely, because they think climate science (unlike astrophysics, neurobiology or any other scientific field) is ‘settled.’ Democrats certainly are not the party of arithmetic. Republicans can fill that comparatively mundane but useful role by enacting Toomey’s provision, which is, as Lindsey says, ‘the first serious attempt to limit the unsustainable rise in entitlement spending in our lifetime.’”
SHORT CUTS
The Gipper: “A friend of mine was asked to a costume ball a short time ago. He slapped some egg on his face and went as a liberal economist.”
Observations: “The difficulties the Republicans have faced were inevitable. They are divided; they don’t have the will or the base. The party is undergoing a populist realignment, with party donors, think-tankers and ideologues seeing things more or less one way, and the Trump base, including many Democrats, seeing them another. The long-stable ground under Republican senators has been shifting, and they’re not sure where or how to stand. The president, philosophically unmoored and operating without a firm grasp of the legislation he promotes, is little help. He has impulses and sentiments but is not, as the French used to say, a serious man. He just wants a deal and a win, and there’s something almost refreshing in this, in the lack of tangled and complicated personal and political motives. It makes so much possible.” —Peggy Noonan
Non Compos Mentis: “Taxation is a sharing of responsibility … only the wealthy believe that taxation is theft … they dont pay taxes … we should make them.” —tweet from “Chelsea” Manning
Braying Jackass: “Our whack job POTUS @realDonaldTrump is tweeting about me at the G20. Get a grip man, the Russians committed a crime when they stole my emails to help get you elected President.” —John Podesta
That’s racist! “Trump’s white-nationalist dog whistles in Warsaw.” —Jonathan Capehart opinion headline
More race bait: “The Racial and Religious Paranoia of Trump’s Warsaw Speech.” —The Atlantic headline
And last… “Democrats seem to believe that if they were capable of successfully impeaching Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton would become president because she came in second last November. That’s what comes of not reading the Constitution.” —Burt Prelutsky
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Managing Editor Nate Jackson
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