Wednesday Digest

October 30, 2013

THE FOUNDATION

"For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it." --Patrick Henry

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

Repeat a Lie Often Enough...

"No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away, no matter what." --Barack Obama in June 2009

Well, never mind. NBC News now reports that "50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a 'cancellation' letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don't meet the standards mandated by the new health care law." Surprise!

The administration, of course, has known this since the law passed and its regulations were written. Those regulations set specific standards for health insurance, and the administration acknowledged (though not publicly) in 2010 that between 40% and 67% of customers would lose their plans. It wasn't passive knowledge that the market would react a certain way, either; it was writing the rules so that people would lose their policies. And not only are policies being canceled, but many insurers aren't participating in the ObamaCare exchanges at all. The goal is to crush private insurance.

Yet the president and his NeoCom cadres continued to lie for four more years, "If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance." (Watch the video montage.)

Why do they lie? They don't, says House Democrat Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD): "I don't think the message was wrong. I think the message was accurate. It was not precise enough. ... [It] should have been caveated with: 'assuming you have a policy that in fact does do what the bill is designed to do.'" Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI) says those "so-called cancellation notices" are just a means to "help people transition to a new policy."
Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney blamed insurance companies, saying of course you can't keep your plan "if your insurer basically threw you off that plan." He also explained that Americans just aren't buying the right policies. "It's correct," Carney conceded, "that substandard plans that don't provide minimum services ... are no longer allowed because the Affordable Care Act is built on the premise that health care is not a privilege, it's a right." The Left thinks it's your "right" to be forced to buy insurance that pays for everything from contraceptives to mental health, whether or not you need or want it. You don't know what's good for you; Obama does. Or as analyst George Will put it, "You're free to choose if you choose the right thing."
Also in 2009, Obama said, "My view is that health care reform should be guided by a simple principle: Fix what's broken and build on what works." He has now built what's broken. Indeed, from here forward, Americans of every political stripe who have any issue with health care will tie blame for their discontent like a noose around the necks of Obama and his Democrats.

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ECONOMY, REGS & TAXES

Income Redistribution: The Fannie and Freddie Con Job

While the government four years ago bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the tune of $188 billion, a settlement reached last Friday between Uncle Sam and J.P. Morgan Chase required the latter to pay $5.1 billion to the government for "duping" the federal government into purchasing mortgage-backed securities that eventually piled upon each other and brought down both the housing market and the economy at large. Instead of taking their share of the blame, Fannie and Freddie tried to shift it to Chase, which was a key player but not the only one taking advantage of an overheated market.
Yet when you own or guarantee over $5 trillion in mortgage assets as Fannie and Freddie did, one would think there were people minding the store. On the contrary, a former Fannie Mae risk officer wrote in an email that the company "was not even close to having proper controls processes for credit, market, and operational risk." Evidently, they figured the market would forever appreciate, because so-called NINA (No Income No Asset) loans at Freddie didn't even require verification of borrower income or assets.
In the end, it's the federal government exacting another toll from a business that only followed the lead of what those inside the Beltway were mandating or doing. Partisans continue arguing over just who's to blame, in the process negating any effort to assist the millions who lost their homes and livelihoods after the housing bubble burst.

NATIONAL SECURITY

What Obama Didn't Know and When He Didn't Know It

Barack Obama is claiming that he was unaware of the extent of the NSA's international spying activities until an internal White House review was conducted this summer. The review revealed that the NSA monitored communications of 35 world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who may have been the target of NSA data snoops as far back as 2002, three years before she became chancellor. However, Obama was actually briefed three years ago and signed off on the effort.

America's allies are making a lot of noise about these revelations, with the French and German governments suggesting that a new international framework be laid out with regards to spying and intelligence collection. Prohibitions on spying among allies and new protocols about the sharing of information are popular solutions, but they are merely political reactions to an age-old practice. In fact, European intelligence helped the NSA collect data. Obama now says he will put an end to spying on allied leaders, but many of the data collection efforts conducted by the NSA are intricately intertwined, so it's difficult to determine how long such a policy reversal will take.

Finally, back to Obama's blind-eye defense, being completely unaware of what his government is doing has become a tiresome refrain. He didn't know about the NSA. He didn't know about the looming train-wreck rollout of Healthcare.gov. He didn't know about the IRS targeting Tea Party conservatives. He didn't know about security protocols at Benghazi or other embassies. He didn't know about the ATF running guns to Mexico. And so on. We don't buy any of it for a second, but what makes him think being oblivious is a good defense?

CULTURE, SCIENCE & FAITH

More Military Political Correctness

Another U.S. Army briefing and yet another incident of Christians and Tea Party members cast as a threat to America. This time, the briefing took place at Fort Hood, where, as you'll recall, an Islamic fanatic killed 13 people and an unborn child in a murderous rampage based solely on his religion. Earlier this month, we noted that soldiers at Camp Shelby in Mississippi were told that the American Family Association is an extremist group. The same thing happened at Fort Hood. And last year, Army Reserve troops were briefed about Evangelical and Catholic "religious extremism."

In each case, the Army insisted that the soldiers responsible for the presentations did their own research on the Internet and that these were isolated incidents. Once is isolated and twice might be coincidence, but three times is a pattern. Combined with the restriction of chaplains, and the mysterious removal of "so help me God" from Cadet and Officer oaths at the Air Force academy, there is obviously a more widespread effort to undermine our tradition of faith in the military.

In what we fear is a related note, the list of senior military commanders fired by Barack Obama continues to grow, including nine more this year. Active duty senior commanders are keeping their heads down. Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely notes, "Obama will not purge a civilian or political appointee because they have bought into Obama's ideology. The White House protects their own. That's why they stalled on the investigation into Fast and Furious, Benghazi and ObamaCare. He's intentionally weakening and gutting our military, Pentagon and reducing us as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged."

BRIEF OPINION

Essential Liberty

Economist Walter E. Williams: "Despite the fact that today's increasing levels of federal government spending are unsustainable, there is little evidence that Americans have the willingness to do anything about it. Any politician who'd even talk about significantly reining in unsustainable entitlement spending would be run out of town. Any politician telling the American people they must pay higher taxes to support handout spending, instead of concealing spending through deficits and running up the national debt and inflation, would also be run out of town. Can you imagine what the American people would do to a presidential candidate who'd declare, as James Madison did in a 1794 speech to the House of Representatives, 'Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government'? If we are to be able to avoid ultimate collapse, it's going to take a moral reawakening and renewed constitutional respect -- not by politicians but by the American people."

Faith and Family

Columnist Burt Prelutsky: "Women don't need anyone's approval to have a wart removed, [feminists] say, so why should it be any different when it comes to what they regard as just another bodily blemish? This is the sort of vile pabulum that's been spoon-fed to young women for the past forty years by the likes of Gloria Steinem, Nancy Pelosi, Susan Sarandon and Mrs. Clinton. Even if you get past the notion that after all the advances in contraception and all the school hours devoted to sex education, anyone who is still dumb enough to get pregnant by accident should be turned into mulch, the fact remains that an embryo no more resembles a wart than a baby resembles a battleship. For one thing, nobody ever threw a party to celebrate a wart. Nobody ever painted a room blue or pink because a wart was expected. And nobody ever named a wart after a beloved parent or grandparent. If anyone deserves to be compared to a wart, it's the men and women who spew this garbage."

Editorial Exegesis

Investor's Business Daily: "Obama has claimed ignorance about spying on allies and the ObamaCare meltdown. ... Ridiculous or not, pleading ignorance has become routine for Obama whenever a scandal arises. Just last week, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Obama had no idea there were any problems with the ObamaCare exchange before it went live on Oct. 1. ... Now, ObamaCare just happens to be Obama's biggest and most important domestic program. He's said so himself. So the idea that no one bothered to tell him the exchange website crashed in low-volume tests just days before launch strains credulity. As does Obama's plea of ignorance earlier this year about the IRS' efforts to hold up tax-exempt applications from Tea Party groups in the run-up to the 2012 election. ... Is it any more believable that Obama knew nothing about the Justice Department's snooping on the Associated Press? ... And how about Fast and Furious, the gun-running scandal that left one border patrol agent dead? ... And when the administration released hundreds of illegal immigrants, blaming sequester cuts? ... The problem is that Obama's desperate attempts to avoid taking blame only make him look dangerously inept."

For more, visit The Right Opinion.

CHRONICLE QUOTES

Upright

Columnist Peggy Noonan: "The ObamaCare rollout is a disaster for the White House, not a problem or a challenge or an embarrassment, not a gaffe or a bad few weeks. ... It was Bill Daley ... who Thursday, on 'CBS This Morning,' admitted the scale of the problem. Asked whether Kathleen Sebelius should be fired, he said: 'To me that's kind of like firing Captain Smith on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg.' The Titanic. Some will see his comments as disloyal. Actually they were candid and realistic. Although in fairness, the Titanic at least had three good days, and Edward Smith chose to go down with the ship."

From the 'Non Compos Mentis' File

White House adviser Valerie Jarret: "FACT: Nothing in Obamacare forces people out of their health plans. No change is required unless insurance companies change existing plans."

The BIG Lie

Former White House adviser David Axelrod: "The majority of people in this country -- the vast majority of people in this country -- are keeping their plan."

Village Idiots

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services director Marilyn Tavenner: "[W]hat I can guarantee is that we have a system [Healthcare.gov] that's working. ... It's just not working at the speed that we want and at the success rate that want. Those are the things we're working on."

Demo-gogues

Barack Obama: "One year ago, Hurricane Sandy's landfall devastated communities up and down the East Coast -- a tragedy that demanded massive rescue, recovery, and rebuilding efforts. ... Over the past year, my administration has fought for these communities throughout the response, and the federal government will remain by their side as our fellow citizens rebuild. ... That's who we are as Americans -- we take care of our own. We leave nobody behind."

(Unless you're an ambassador under a terrorist attack in Benghazi just before a pivotal election...)

Dezinformatsia

Radio talk-show host Leslie Marshall: "No matter how much security we have, things like [the Benghazi terrorist attack] can happen. Let's keep in mind, Ambassador Stevens was the one who wanted to be in Benghazi; Ambassador Stevens was the one who wanted to branch out from Tripoli to Benghazi."

Alpha Jackass

Filmmaker Michael Moore: "Since 1980 the policies in this country have been driven by the Christian right. They took over and they turned this country into the dark ages and we're so far behind now with science, education, health care, everything."

Short Cuts

Comedian Jay Leno: "According to a new report, more than 700 fake ObamaCare websites have been created. Security experts say it's simple to identify the phony sites because they are easy to log on to. ... The ObamaCare website is not the only one crashing. The NSA website went offline Friday after suspected hackers broke into it. Hey, NSA: It's not so much fun when people are sneaking into YOUR computer, is it?"

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team

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.

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

THE PATRIOT POST 10/30/2013