THE FOUNDATION
"If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security." --Samuel Adams, Letter to James Warren, 1779TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS
GDP Slows to a Crawl
"If we expect another pivot from the White House, don't expect it to be on the economy," writes Hot Air's Ed Morrissey. That's because first quarter GDP came dragging in at just 0.1% -- barely a heartbeat. That's a significant slowdown from the fourth quarter of 2013, when GDP grew 2.6%. We expect further evidence of economic stagnation when April's jobs numbers are released Friday. Some economists point to the rough winter weather as the reason for the slowdown, and that may be true to a point, but it's far more likely that small business owners finally got their now-higher Obama tax bills. Combined with the other form of taxation -- regulation -- a slowdown is the natural result of Obama's policies.Comment | Share
Another $121M on Healthcare.gov
The Department of Health and Human Services has already doled out roughly $677 million on Healthcare.gov, and they're ready to spend another $121 million between now and January 2015 to fix remaining issues. Contractor Accenture Federal Services, which took over CGI Federal's massive failure on building the website, now says the price tag will be $30 million higher than the original $90 million estimate. Meanwhile, HHS is soliciting applicants for next year's contractor services. By the time 2015 rolls around, at least $800 million (by this administration's count) will have been spent on the federal exchange. Brought to you by the "Affordable" Care Act.Comment | Share
The NBA and Racism
The NBA has banned LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling for life and fined him $2.5 million for racist remarks he made in private but that were released publicly (that's another story). Meanwhile, the NAACP, which withdrew Sterling's lifetime achievement award he was set to receive this week, said they're willing to "forgive" him -- if he makes some strategic donations. But here's something else to ponder: How many recordings are there of black NBA players making off-color racist remarks? And if they emerge will the NBA take similar action? We suggest a lifetime ban for the man who said this: "I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites." That was Barack Obama in his book, "Dreams from My Father."Comment | Share
Biden's 'Basic Bargain'
"This is not your father's Republican Party," said Joe Biden. "Folks, we're losing something profound when we break the basic bargain that built his country ... that made us the greatest economic powerhouse in the history of the world," he added, pointing to the recent story of the troubles of the middle class. The problem, he says, is Republicans. "This massive shift is being largely driven by this incredibly narrow mindset that presumes that wealthy investors are the sole drivers of the economy. ... That's what today's Republican Party is all about." One need not be wealthy to invest. In fact, though investment is down since the Great Recession, still more than half of Americans own stock, including about 50% of the middle class. And what built this country was hard work and self-reliance -- the very antithesis of the wealth distribution schemes of Biden and his boss.Comment | Share
WI Voter ID Struck Down
Wisconsin's Voter ID law was nullified Tuesday after federal district judge Lynn Adelman ruled that "virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin." This is just the latest state to fall victim to leftist charades -- Arkansas' Voter ID law was voided last week, and Eric Holder's DOJ is taking action against North Carolina and Texas over similar laws. The ACLU's Dale Ho declared, "This is a warning to other states that are trying to make it harder for citizens to vote. This decision put them on notice that they can't tamper with citizens' fundamental right to cast a ballot. The people, and our democracy, deserve and demand better." Wisconsin's Republican Gov. Scott Walker said of the decision, "We believe the voter ID law is Constitutional and will ultimately be upheld. We're reviewing [the] decision before deciding on potential action."Comment | Share
For more, visit Right Hooks.
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RIGHT ANALYSIS
Smoking Gun in Obama Benghazi Cover-Up
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But first, recall that in May of last year, Mark Alexander's investigative column on Benghazi noted, "State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland warned that the original CIA talking points 'could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that?' We believe that Nuland and Ben Rhodes, who is Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting, were the key conspirators in the talking point alterations, though the Rhodes alterations were certainly signed off by someone much further up the White House chain of command. If sufficient evidence is ever uncovered to implicate Rhodes and Nuland, they will likely become Obama's 'cutouts,' who will be encouraged to 'fall on their swords' in order to provide Obama plausible deniability."
As it turns out, Alexander's assessment was fully vindicated. Judicial Watch announced Tuesday that, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request filed in October 2012, they have finally obtained a "newly declassified email showing then-White House Deputy Strategic Communications Adviser Ben Rhodes and other Obama administration public relations officials attempting to orchestrate a campaign to 'reinforce' President Obama and to portray the Benghazi consulate terrorist attack as being 'rooted in an Internet video, and not a failure of policy.'"
The email was sent prior to then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice's infamous appearance on a Sunday morning talk show in which she insisted the attack was caused by outrage over a YouTube video. Rhodes sought to remind people that "President Obama provides leadership that is steady and statesmanlike," an especially important spin for his re-election campaign.
The White House documents also include an email sent the day of the attack from Payton Knopf, former Deputy Spokesman at U.S. Mission to the United Nations, to Susan Rice. Knopf told Rice of events at an earlier press briefing: "Responding to a question about whether it was an organized terror attack, [State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland] said that she couldn't speak to the identity of the perpetrators but that it was clearly a complex attack." Clearly, that's contrary to Rhodes' message, yet Rice continued for days to insist that attack occurred "spontaneously" as a reaction to a "hateful video."
Recall recent testimony from former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell, who heavily edited the administration's talking points in the early days after the attack. He insisted that "none of our actions were the result of political influence," but, as these other pieces of the puzzle reveal, that wasn't true. Politics had everything to do with it. The administration willfully deceived the public to serve a political narrative of al-Qaida's demise that was essential to Obama's campaign. "It is no surprise," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, "that we had to go to federal court to pry [these emails] loose from the Obama State Department."
To sum it up, who can forget Hillary Clinton's exasperated question during Senate testimony: "What difference, at this point, does it make?"
(Editor's Note: For comprehensive analysis of this Benghazi talking points "smoking gun," see Alexander's column, "Benghazi: The Cover-up of the Cover-up." It will be posted by 12 EDST.)
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Prepare for Electricity Price Shocks
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Read the rest of the story here.
For more, visit Right Analysis.
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TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
- Ben Shapiro: Donald Sterling and the Rise of Thoughtcrime
- Terence Jeffrey: Did Illegals Misusing SSNs Earn More Than U.S. Women?
- Walter E. Williams: The Constitution or Good Ideas?
- John Stossel: American Dreaming
- L. Brent Bozell & Tim Graham: The New Age of Gay Mr. Manners
OPINION IN BRIEF
Economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973): "There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final or total catastrophe of the currency system involved."Columnist Ben Shapiro: "American society now considers expression of thought to be significantly more important than action. [L.A. Clippers owner Donald] Sterling got away with actual discrimination for years. But now he is caught on tape telling his gold-digging girlfriend he doesn't like blacks, and that's when the firestorm erupts? This is the thought police at work. Feelings matter more than action. Words matter more than harming others. That sets a radically dangerous precedent for freedom of thought and speech, particularly for those whose thought and speech we hate. Freedom of speech and thought matters especially when it is speech and thought with which we disagree. The moment the majority decides to destroy people for engaging in thought it dislikes, thoughtcrime becomes a reality. Sterling's career should have been ended by public outrage based on his established patterns of discrimination years ago. To end it based not on such disreputable action but on private musings caught on tape demonstrates America's newfound disregard for the rights of those whose thought we find despicable."
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FRC president Tony Perkins: "After heavy lobbying from NARAL Pro-Choice America, the search engine [Google] announced that it was banning ads from pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) for supposedly violating the policy on 'deceptive advertising.' NARAL, which makes a living ignoring the facts, had convinced the company the ads weren't 'factually supportable' because they popped up when users searched for things like 'abortion clinics.' But that's not because these centers were lying about their services -- it's because they, like most businesses, pay to have their ads pop up when certain keywords are used. It's no different than Coke, or any other competitor, bidding to advertise when people search for Pepsi. Like it or not, that's how the free market works."
Comedian Conan O'Brien: "During a Q&A with Michelle Obama, a young girl told the First Lady her dad was looking for a job and handed her a copy of her father's resume. The young girl was Sasha Obama."
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.
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