THE FOUNDATION
"Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing. And that you may be always doing good, my dear, is the ardent prayer of yours affectionately." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Martha Jefferson, 1787TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS
Obama to Wait on Immigration Move Until After Election
Everything Barack Obama does is politically calculated. And sometimes, even the Leftmedia give up trying to hide it. Reuters reports, "Obama reversed course on Saturday and delayed taking executive action on immigration reform until after November congressional elections, bowing to concerns it could cost his fellow Democrats control of the U.S. Senate." Obama admitted the flood of illegal minors across the border this year and public reaction to it affected his decision. "[T]he truth of the matter is that the politics did shift midsummer because of that problem," he said. Midsummer? Try mid-weekend. Just Friday, Obama reiterated, "I want to be very clear. My intention is, in the absence of action by Congress, I’m going to do what I can do within the legal constraints of my office. Because it’s the right thing to do for the country." By Saturday, he had decided to delay. We certainly still expect his pen to be busy after the election, whether Democrats hold the Senate or not. But it's telling that even Democrats admit this is a losing issue. More...Comment | Share
Upping the Game Against ISIL
Fresh off the NATO Summit, Barack Obama returned with some new bravado to confront the world's problems, confident with the backing of the other world leaders. On Sunday, he appeared on "Meet the Press" where Chuck Todd asked Obama, "Are you preparing the country to go back to war?" And Obama replied, "I'm preparing the country to make sure we deal with a threat from ISIL. Keep in mind this is something we know how to do. We've been dealing with terrorist threats for quite some time." Preparing the country for war is different than preparing the country to make sureComment | Share
Obama Can't Act
Ronald Reagan knew what he was doing, and he acted on his strategies with force. Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing, and he can't act. He admitted as much in his twelfth interview with "Meet the Press" as journalist Chuck Todd turned to Obama's response to the beheading of reporter James Foley. Obama was criticized for retreating to the golf green after saying a few words about Foley. But Obama was really sad over Foley's death, according to Obama. He just didn't keep the act up. "But there's no doubt that after having talked to the families, where it was hard for me to hold back tears listening to the pain that they were going through, after the statement that I made, that you know, I should've anticipated the optics. … But part of this job is also the theater of it." So Obama struts his hour upon the stage, wagging his tongue in an attempt to circumvent God. Yet he's no Shakespeare, and even the peanut gallery is shouting him down. More…Comment | Share
Global Warming Hiatus Nearing 18-Years-Old
The global warming hiatus continued through August, extending "the longest continuous period without any warming in the global instrumental temperature record since the satellites first watched in 1979," says journalist Christopher Monckton. The pause, now 17 years, 11 months old, "coincides with a continuing, rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration." Earlier last week professor Dr. Ross McKittrick published his own study that revealed no warming for "19 years at the surface and 16-26 years in the lower troposphere depending on the data set used." But regardless of which "value one adopts," Monckton says, "it is becoming harder and harder to maintain that we face a 'climate crisis' caused by our past and present sins of emission." It also shows the absurdity of basing climate policy on computer projections. "[T]he length of the Great Pause in global warming, significant though it now is, is of less importance than the ever-growing discrepancy between the temperature trends predicted by models and the far less exciting real-world temperature change that has been observed," Monckton adds. Then again, this was never about searching for the truth. More...Comment | Share
S. Truett Cathy, RIP
S. Truett Cathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A, died Sunday night at 93. In a statement to employees, Chick-fil-A noted, "Cathy relied on a keen business sense, a strong work ethic and a deep Christian faith to build a tiny diner in the Atlanta suburb of Hapeville, Georgia." That tiny diner grew into a chain featuring more than 1,800 restaurants across 40 states, proving that a Christian business model -- including closing on Sundays -- does work. Chick-fil-A became a lightning rod for the Left in 2012 when Dan Cathy, Truett's son and current CEO of the company, said he believes marriage is a union between one man and one woman. The nation is fortunate to have men like S. Truett Cathy and his sons, and we think it's only appropriate to quote Matthew 25:21: "Well done, good and faithful servant."Comment | Share
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RIGHT ANALYSIS
That Same Old Tepid Job Growth
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Whether you believe the 6.1% “official” number, the wider-focused 12% “U-6” unemployment figure that counts those who have given up looking for work, or the 23.2% unemployment figure the ShadowStats website comes up with by using pre-1994 criteria that includes more long-term discouraged workers, it's still apparent that jobs are rather scarce and employers remain very picky. The average time to fill a vacant position is nearly 25 working days. By the same token, employees are afraid to leave their jobs to search for something better, with the “quit” rate still below pre-recession levels.
During this so-called recovery, government policy has been more heavy-handed than in previous efforts to revive and jumpstart the economy. While Barack Obama crows that “the American economy and American workers are better off since I took office,” he has presided over a decrease in median household income since his tenure began, according to the Census Bureau. Obama's added trillions to the debt with failed "stimulus" programs and additional government assistance for those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. All this has done, though, is consign more people to a meager existence, while the top 10% of wage-earners -- often those who have a hand in writing government policy that suits their needs -- saw a 10% increase in income from 2010-13. In short, while Obama drones incessantly about helping out the middle class, in reality he's hollowing it out.
The solution seems rather obvious, but there are two groups who would prefer to see the status quo remain: the long-term poor, who generally have little in the way of working skills but outsized demands for giveaway wages, and the wealthy, who can count on governmental cronyism for a return on their tax dollars through federal funding of projects in which they've invested. While the former group has the votes to keep compliant politicians in place, the latter only needs elected officials to look the other way. Democrats talk a good game about helping the "middle class," but they're working against average Americans from both ends.
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NATO Doesn't Seem Ready to Counter Putin's Russia
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| NATO leaders not looking prepared |
The last, and perhaps biggest, point of the plan calls for Ukraine to pull back artillery out of range of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, currently under separatist control. Conveniently, this would solidify gains made by the Russian-supported separatists and essentially force Ukraine to concede the loss of this territory, leaving roughly a tenth of Ukraine's population under separatist (read: Russian) control.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko tepidly supports the cease-fire, hoping it will bring an end to hostilities, but Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk called the peace plan a "deception" disguising Putin's real goal to "destroy Ukraine and restore the Soviet Union."
Putin's announcement came on the eve of a NATO summit in Wales. The alliance, which has faltered repeatedly in half-hearted attempts to curb Putin's "New Russia" policy, has been toying with the idea of tougher sanctions against Russia for its support of the Ukrainian separatists. Yet sanctions have had almost no effect on Russia's behavior to this point. In fact, Russia holds the upper hand, since much of Europe is beholden to Russian natural gas to keep warm this coming winter.
Poroshenko, who took office in June, has been vigorous in attempting to beat back the separatists up to this point. Government military forces had successfully beaten back rebels in an extended campaign, driving them back to Donetsk and Luhansk. It was then that thousands of Russian troops with hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles entered Ukraine to support the separatists, a move the Kremlin still denies in the face of reports on the ground proving otherwise.
Now Putin is calling for a stop to hostilities, figuring that he can hold onto the territory his minions have gained for him, leaving Ukraine fractured and weakened politically and economically. This is all part of Putin's master plan to keep Ukraine under the Russian sphere and prevent it from joining NATO, an organization he despises.
NATO successfully protected Western Europe from Soviet invasion for almost 50 years, but the organization is a shell of its former self. Putin is clearly not intimidated by an alliance that exercises no clear directive and is run by countries decidedly reluctant to engage in any military endeavors. Count the U.S. among them. Barack Obama, appearing in Estonia before heading to the NATO meeting, expressed a muddled mix of optimism and skepticism over the peace plan announcement, but once again noted favor for more sanctions over a more robust response to keep Russia inside a box.
Obama has made it quite clear that there is no military solution to the Ukraine issue or the broader problem of an expansionist Russia. This signals to Putin he is free to run wild. However, political analyst George Will noted that the West underestimates Putin at its own peril. Putin's anger, Will wrote, "is a smoldering amalgam of resentment (of Russia’s diminishment because of the Soviet Union’s collapse), revanchist ambitions (regarding formerly Soviet territories and spheres of influence), cultural loathing (for the pluralism of open societies) and ethnic chauvinism that presages 'ethnic cleansing' of non-Russians from portions of Putin’s expanding Russia."
The lack of will to truly engage Putin only fuels his ambitions. He knew that by announcing his peace plan before the NATO summit he would confuse the alliance's leadership, making them ponder an extended wait-and-see policy that has already seen Russia carve up Georgia and annex Crimea. After Ukraine, the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia may be next. Sure, they're full-fledged NATO members, but it's not entirely unreasonable to believe that weak-kneed NATO leaders would validate a Russian annexation of the Baltics by making the excuse that they weren't "original" members of the alliance, but only joined after the end of the Cold War.
This kind of backward thinking that propelled Obama's inaugural apology tour and has driven many of the decisions made by European leaders is directly proportional to the high level of chaos we are witnessing around the globe. Tyranny is on the march because no one stands ready to oppose it. Historian Victor Davis Hanson argues that free peoples have a tough time giving up their comforts in peace to ensure they are not lost in war. "It is even harder for sophisticated liberal thinkers to admit that after centuries of civilized life," Hanson wrote, "we still have no better way of preventing Neanderthal wars than by reminding Neanderthals that we have the far bigger club -- and will use it if provoked."
The time has come to brandish that club.
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TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
- Arnold Ahlert: Our Ongoing Keynesian Calamity
- Peggy Noonan: The World Needs a Clarion
- Larry Kudlow: A Bold and Optimistic GOP Can Create a Wave Election
- Tony Perkins: Navy Clears the Decks for Bible Regs
- Jonah Goldberg: No Military Dog Left Behind
OPINION IN BRIEF
The Gipper: "I urge you to beware the temptation ... to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of any evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil."Columnist Arnold Ahlert: "[D]espite the Obama administration and Democrats bewailing income inequality, it is their steadfast determination to expand government and continue embracing Keynesian economic theories that have done more than anything else to exacerbate that inequality. Without getting into the eye-glazing details, understand that this bunch fervently believes that shoveling trillions of dollars into the economy ... is the ultimate solution to all of our economic problems, because it will create a 'wealth effect' that in turn will spur the consumer spending necessary to 'jump start' the economy. Six years and $7 trillion later, we're still waiting for liftoff. ... We're amassing the largest 'bar tab' in the history of mankind. And the only reason we're still getting beer is because entities like the European Union, China and Japan are running up their own tabs, and we look like less risky drunks by comparison. Why don't we stop? Because no one wants to deal with the pain of getting 'sober,' aka living within our means."
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Columnist Peggy Noonan: "People say Mr. Obama hasn’t spoken on the Islamic State with sufficient 'passion,' but the world at the moment probably doesn’t need more passion. He needs to speak with clarity, conviction and most of all credibility. Politicians always think they have to reach people’s hearts. They have to reach their minds. ... Is the administration’s foreign-policy apparatus as rudderless, ad hoc and faux-sophisticated as it looks? Is the president starting to fear, deep down, that maybe he is the junior varsity? ... The problem is really not that the president, as he said, does not yet have a strategy. It is that the world doesn’t know and the country doesn’t know how, deep down, he thinks about the Islamic State."
Humorist Frank J. Fleming: "The problem for a modern day military is figuring out how to destroy an evil enemy without hurting their feelings."
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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