Wednesday, November 20, 2013

THE PATRIOT POST 11/20/2013

Wednesday Digest

November 20, 2013

THE FOUNDATION

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." --James Madison

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

The Writing Is on the Wall

Ancient Babylon

It has been obvious for some time that ObamaCare is full of lies, and that one of the primary lies was this: "You can keep your plan. Period." Barack Obama "apologized" for this "misstatement," while other Democrats are torn between arguing Obama said nothing wrong and asserting that they knew all along that you couldn't keep your plan.

The latter group is far closer to the truth. Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy unearthed a brief filed by the Justice Department in Priests for Life v HHS that acknowledges and argues for regulations that would cancel millions of insurance plans: "Even under the grandfathering provision, it is projected that more group health plans will transition to the requirements under the regulations as time goes on. Defendants [the government] have estimated that a majority of group health plans will have lost their grandfather status by the end of 2013."

As for Obama's "fix" -- allowing state insurance commissioners to decide whether insurance companies in their state can extend cancelled policies through next year's elections -- it quickly turned from illegal farce to unwanted flop. Insurance commissioners in Washington, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont and Minnesota (all blue states) have already declined to participate; more will undoubtedly follow. Georgia's commissioner called it a "political stunt," but promised to do everything he can to help Georgians kicked off their plans.
Meanwhile, user data at Healthcare.gov remains at "critical risk," according to congressional testimony from an IT expert Tuesday. An inspector general report warned over the summer about the lack of security testing, and, in August, 14 attorneys general demanded a delay of the launch in order to address security issues. Evidently the site is no better seven weeks after its launch, but the administration continues to offer nothing but Jedi mind tricks: "This is not the security vulnerability you're looking for."

Worse, Henry Chao, the deputy chief information officer for Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), estimates that 30% of the website still hasn't been built. And that includes the payment system, which brings up another question: If people can't pay, is anyone actually enrolled? Political considerations alone pushed HHS to proceed with the Oct. 1 rollout, but they badly miscalculated because ObamaCare will continue to fail and it will continue to bring Democrats down.

It wasn't long ago that Obama was bragging that when opponents saw how well the "Affordable" Care Act worked, they'd quit calling it "ObamaCare." After its calamitous rollout, however, it's Democrats who are quietly dropping the term. The word is disappearing from Healthcare.gov and Democrats' websites, as well as from TV talking points and speeches. Nancy Pelosi even corrected David Gregory for using the term on NBC. But Democrats can't erase the term "ObamaCare" completely; it is the writing on the wall.

The Patriot Post's Noble Cause

"Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!" --George Washington
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ECONOMY, REGS & TAXES

Around the Nation: Oil Boom, Ethanol Bust

In good news from the energy independence front, the International Energy Agency (IEA) recently announced that by 2015, the U.S. will top Russia and Saudi Arabia as the world's leading oil producer and, in the next 20 years, will near energy independence. We first reported this story last month, but this month we highlight that the boon is due in large part to the success of hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") in tapping vast reserves in North Dakota and Texas. Long the nemesis of environmental zealots, fracking is not only safely reducing reliance on foreign sources of energy but is also continuing to disprove the alarmist claims of the environmental lobby.

Meanwhile, in other energy news, the EPA is finally facing facts regarding its green-lobby-appeasing renewable fuels standard and has proposed a reduction to the standard for 2014. The move is all but an admission that the mandate -- which requires that 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel be blended into the nation's gas supply by 2022 -- is bad policy. Indeed, shrinking demand for gas has led to a scenario in which the increasing ethanol-to-gas ratio threatens to damage automobiles. The environmental lobby is naturally (pun intended) calling the move a "capitulati[on] to the oil companies." In truth, the move is a capitulation to facts. And although the EPA's step is a small one, it's a step in the right direction.

NATIONAL SECURITY

Department of Military Readiness: Are We Ready?

USS Ronald Reagan

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recently said in a speech, "As we look out across the strategic landscape, the United States military will remain an essential tool of American power and foreign policy, but one that must be used wisely, precisely, and judiciously." The problem is that the commander in chief is not wise, precise or judicious regarding anything to do with military readiness or purpose, opting instead to cut, conduct social engineering experiments and remove God from the equation.

Hagel admitted that Obama's military spending cuts have left our military in a precarious state. "We may have to accept the reality that not every unit will be at maximum readiness, and some kind of a tiered readiness system is perhaps inevitable," Hagel said. "This carries the risk that the president would have fewer options to fulfill our national security objectives." As Brian Slattery of the Heritage Foundation rightly points out, "'Tiered readiness' is a term the military uses to rationalize budget cuts without admitting they are less capable as a result."

Slattery also quotes U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno, who warned, "This is the lowest readiness levels I've seen within our Army since I've been serving for the last 37 years." Unfortunately, that lack of readiness is just the kind of "fundamental transformation" Obama seeks -- to knock our military and our nation down a few pegs because we're not really exceptional in the world.

The bottom line is as our first president, George Washington, explained in his First Annual Address: "To be prepared for war, is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."

CULTURE, SCIENCE & FAITH

Village Academic Curriculum: Common Core Curses

Arne Duncan

In the past five years, this country has seen more government-sanctioned race and class baiting than ever before. These tools have been used to silence opposition to the Obama administration's position on everything from terrorism to taxes. The recent inflammatory statements made by Education Secretary Arne Duncan are just the latest chapter in that political curriculum.
In the face of mounting (and, as it turns out, diversified) opposition to the federal education Common Core program, Duncan remarked, "It's fascinating ... that some of the pushback [against Common Core] is coming from, sort of, white suburban moms who -- all of a sudden -- [realize] their child isn't as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn't quite as good as they thought they were."
Duncan has since been labeled a bigot because his comment was belittling to parents of all races. It was based on several offensive presumptions: first, that the education system's problems are race and class-based; second, that white suburban moms are fine with a subpar education system as long as their children are insulated from it; and third, that race plays a role in a parent's level of sophistication with regards to education. The underlying presumption, of course, is that Big Government must take a larger role in education in order to save the rest of us.
Clearly, Duncan expected his statement to divide and conquer the opposition. Instead, it solidified it. The coalition questioning increased federal control of education through Common Core is made up of people across religious, political, racial and class spectrums. And, as it turns out, people of all ages as well. "I don't like it," one fourth grade girl said of Common Core, "because it seems like they are just teaching us to take the test." How, one wonders, would Duncan seek to discredit her?

BRIEF OPINION

Editorial Exegesis

Investor's Business Daily: "The government issued an astounding $1 trillion in new debt during the first six weeks of the fiscal year. ... As we've noted, it was all part of the charade of last summer's debt-ceiling negotiations between the Obama administration and Republicans in the House. ... [T]he Obama administration didn't want to make things worse, so it pretended the debt wasn't rising by paying most of its bills out of incoming taxes, then rolling over the debts it owed for another day. By doing this, it bought time to bash the GOP politically in debt talks. And we, the people, were gamed, big time. ... Unfortunately, as CNSNews notes, what the government did meets its own definition of a Ponzi scheme. ... It's little known by the public that under the recent deal, the debt ceiling has been suspended through Feb. 7, 2014. Until then, Obama can add as much as he wants -- which explains the sudden explosion in public debt. ... Such fiscal legerdemain would land a private investor or manager in prison. Under Obama, it's how business is done. This could well be our next crisis."

Essential Liberty

Columnist John C. Goodman: "A free society requires the free flow of information. In any public policy dispute, if only one side is heard from, we are likely to get further and further away from the truth. The attackers will find there is no penalty for getting minor facts wrong or shading the truth. That will embolden them to make more serious errors, eventually resorting to downright lying. If the only entity providing any push back is the Washington Post fact checker, we are in real trouble. ... [W]hat threatens the foundations of a free society most of all is when it is the government (and its allies in the private sector) who are doing the attacking, and when the reason there is no response is that the victims of the attacks have been threatened and bullied into silence."

Re: The Left

Columnist David Limbaugh: "[O]n ABC's 'This Week' on Sunday, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., outright admitted that Obama's 'keep your plan' promises were false. She said: 'We all knew. The whole point of the plan is to cover things people need, like preventive care, birth control, pregnancy.' So, you see, the entire national Democratic Party apparatus has conspired to deceive Americans about a vital matter -- their own health care -- in order to advance its agenda. You still think this is just about health care? Well, another Democratic leader, Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, admitted that with Obamacare, what Democrats are 'trying to do is change a values system in our country.' That pretty much sums up modern liberalism as embodied in the Democratic Party. Come hell or high water, Democrats will coerce us, via the power of the federal government, into thinking and believing as they do and living under their utopian Leviathan state."
For more, visit The Right Opinion.

CHRONICLE QUOTES

Upright

Political analyst Charles Krauthammer: "If you are obsessed with equality, as they are in Europe, what you end up with is chronic unemployment. Because the real engine of growth is low regulation, low taxation and you allow the golden goose, meaning the private economy, to go ahead and to flourish. And when you over-regulate and you over-tax it, especially if you are doing it in the name of reducing inequality, you are going to get the opposite effect."

Non Compos Mentis

Barack Obama: "I think that we probably underestimated the complexities of building out a website that needed to work the way it should. There is a larger problem that I probably -- speaking personally, but also as the administration -- could have identified earlier, and that is the way the federal government does procurement and does IT is just generally not very efficient."

The BIG Lie

Barack Obama reciting the Gettysburg Address: "[T]hat we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Obama conveniently left out "under God" as spoken by Abraham Lincoln. The official transcript reads, "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom."

Demo-gogues

Sen. Dianne Feinstein: "I strongly oppose any attempt to increase sanctions against Iran while [international] negotiations are ongoing. I am baffled by the insistence of some senators to undermine ... talks. I will continue to support these negotiations and oppose any new sanctions as long as we are making progress toward a genuine solution."

Dezinformatsia

Radio talk-show host Mike Papantonio: "3,000 Americans were murdered [on 9/11], because the Republican administration didn't have the discipline or the good sense to read a presidential briefing."

Braying Jackass

NBA analyst Charles Barkley: "I'm a black man. I use the 'N' word. I'm going to continue to use the 'N' word with my black friends, with my white friends. They are my friends. ... Listen, what I do with my black friends is not up to white America to dictate to me what's appropriate and inappropriate."

Alpha Jackass

Politico's Ian Murphy: "Reagan f--ks Satan in hell."

Village Idiots

Texas A&M law professor Mary Margaret Penrose: "I think the Second Amendment is misunderstood and I think it's time today, in our drastic measures, to repeal and replace that Second Amendment. ... Why do we keep such an allegiance to a constitution that was driven by 18th Century concerns? How many of you recognize that the main concern of the 18th Century was a standing army? That's what motivated the Second Amendment: fear of a standing army."

Short Cuts

Comedian Jay Leno: "The Dow Jones average hit 16,000 for the first time. How about that? The bad news? It took us going $17 trillion in debt to get there."

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

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