THE FOUNDATION
"The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Hunter, 1790TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS
Is 'Core al-Qaida' Decimated?
Fox News' Bret Baier posed this question to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson: “Has core al-Qaida been decimated and destroyed or does it continue to pose a threat?” Johnson responded by weaseling out of answering: "Well, core al-Qaida, as we know it, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is still present. They are not gone. Very definitely, through actions of the Bush and Obama administrations over the last decade or so, we've done a lot to capture or kill members of core al-Qaida -- bin Laden, KSM and others. The group is not what it was in 2001 and what I'm focused on is the fact that there are now all these al-Qaida affiliates and adherents out there in the world that remain active and we still have threats and potential threats to the homeland from terrorist organizations." So it’s decimated but remains an active and potential threat. Got it. More...Comment | Share
Former Congressman Urges Congress to Act against ISIL
In 1999, Bill Clinton in all his presidential power sent American planes over Serbia, much like Barack Obama's actions against ISIL. One representative stood in Clinton's way and forced Congress to vote on Clinton's little war. He also sued Clinton for violating the 1973 War Powers Resolution. Today, former Rep. Tom Campbell says Congress must get involved in the conflict against ISIL and not leave Obama to do whatever he wants in the Middle East. It must vote on the war to get Congress on board with the conflict, he said. (And ideally, avoid another Vietnam by setting clear goals for the conflict, and to reauthorize another Authorization to Use Military Force.) "This is Congress running way from its responsibility," Campbell said. "Is there anything left to the Constitution's requirement that it's the Congress's role to declare war?" Good question. More...Comment | Share
Panetta: I Warned Obama Not to Leave Iraq
Former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta has a memoir coming out soon, titled "Worthy Fights." In an excerpt, he recounts the debate over leaving Iraq: “[T]to me -- and many others -- ... withdrawing all our forces would endanger the fragile stability then barely holding Iraq together." Rather than see "the country split apart or [slide] back into ... violence," Panetta said, "I privately and publicly advocated for a residual force that could provide training and security for Iraq's military." However, he writes, the White House was "so eager to rid itself of Iraq that it was willing to withdraw rather than lock in arrangements that would preserve our influence and interests." And finally, "To this day, I believe that a small U.S. troop presence in Iraq could have effectively advised the Iraqi military on how to deal with al-Qaeda's resurgence and the sectarian violence that has engulfed the country." His account directly contradicts Barack Obama's latest story -- that total U.S. withdrawal "wasn't a decision made by me." Actually, yes, it was, and it was a terrible and costly one.Comment | Share
Obama Says You Should Thank Him for Saving You $1,800
In his speech on the economy Thursday, Barack Obama devoted some time to tooting his own horn on ObamaCare. "Today, we have seen a dramatic slowdown in the rising cost of health care. ... If your family gets your health care through your employer, premiums are rising at a rate tied for the lowest on record. And what this means for the economy is staggering. If we hadn't taken this on, and premiums had kept growing at the rate they did in the last decade, the average premium for family coverage today would be $1,800 higher than they are. Now, most people don't notice it, but that's $1,800 you don't have to pay out of your pocket or see vanish from your paycheck. That's like a $1,800 tax cut. That's not for folks who signed up for ObamaCare. That's the consequence of some of the reforms that we've made." We don't know where he's getting his numbers, but our plan here at The Patriot Post is 27% more expensive this year than last, and it's being canceled for not meeting ObamaCare standards. Even if he's correct about the dollar amount, that's nothing like a tax cut. Your premium still went up, just not as much as he says you should have expected. He says the good part is thanks to him.Comment | Share
Happy Birthday, Global Warming Hiatus!
The global warming hiatus has officially entered adulthood, having passed the 18-year mark based on new satellite data. "The RSS monthly satellite global temperature anomaly for September 2014 is in, and the Great Pause is now two months longer than it was last month," says journalist Christopher Monckton. "The Great Pause is the longest continuous period without any warming in the global instrumental temperature record since the satellites first watched in 1979. It has endured for a little over half the satellite temperature record. Yet the Pause coincides with a continuing, rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration." The growing pause and climate models' failure to forecast the hiatus are creating agitation at the RSS office. Senior researcher Dr. Carl Mears recently wrote, "The denialists like to assume that the cause for the model/observation discrepancy is some kind of problem with the fundamental model physics, and they pooh-pooh any other sort of explanation. This leads them to conclude, very likely erroneously, that the long-term sensitivity of the climate is much less than is currently thought." It's usually a good idea to remain skeptical of the gloom and doom scenario when predictions have failed this miserably. More...Comment | Share
For more, visit Right Hooks.
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RIGHT ANALYSIS
A Recovery or a Mirage?
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In a speech at Northwestern University, Barack Obama touted economic successes as evidence that his policies are working. He cited progress such as increased energy extraction that's made America the world's top producer of oil and natural gas, a declining rate of increase in health care costs and shrinking deficits (how could deficits not shrink after he bloated them?). Make no mistake, however, these successes are despite his efforts.
Moreover, these limited and qualified successes are outweighed by a number of other factors. If you think the stock market is doing well, imagine its fate without the quantitative easing that has been in effect for several years. Will the additional trillions of dollars the Federal Reserve pumped into the monetary system help the middle class if the money simply cycles between a limited number of parties?
The drop in unemployment below 6% was achieved not by the 248,000 jobs added (in truth, a rather good number) but by the 315,000 people who left the labor force. Those 315,000 people are now essentially a drain on the economy, even if not necessarily by choice, and risk slipping out of their middle-class existence.
And while the oil and natural gas boom has been successful at creating good, well-paying jobs, the administration still blocks drilling on public lands, insists on supporting “clean energy” boondoggles such as Solyndra or Fisker, and seeks to kill the coal industry with regulations. Even job-creating projects like the Keystone XL pipeline are held up by pandering to environmental groups who cheered the death knell for our coal industry.
In short, America is rapidly becoming a nation of “haves” and “have-nots,” even as Obama promised to address this inequality during his tenure. A Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances found that between 2010 and 2013, median income rose 2% for the top 10% of wage-earners but declined 5.5% among the bottom two-fifths. Increasing stock prices have helped investors who managed to keep their nest eggs intact -- a group that tends toward the higher end of the income scale -- but the battered middle class that had to sell off its investments to stay afloat isn't getting much help from that Wall Street surge. Instead, that bottom 40% feels the effects of rising health insurance premiums and deductibles created by ObamaCare, higher food prices created in part by a foolish reliance on corn-based ethanol, and increased energy costs despite the natural gas boom because coal-burning power plants are rapidly becoming an endangered species.
Meanwhile, another ticket to success is becoming a thing of the past. Over the last half-dozen years, the number of companies ceasing operations actually outpaced the number of start-ups, though the creation of new business entities is only continuing a long-term decline over the last three decades. As those large operators at the top consolidate their market share and position, they increasingly rely on government to create policy and regulation assuring their supremacy. After all, while the next Google could have the potential to jump-start progress, it's not in the best interests of the current version to have a leaner and hungrier competitor.
Yet Barack Obama wants to double down on these policies while bringing in millions of people through an amnesty guarantee for those crossing a porous southern border. While Obama talks about manufacturing jobs where “[y]ou’re not just punching in and pounding rivets anymore; you’re coding computers and you’re guiding robots [and] mastering 3D printing,” he's encouraging and facilitating the influx of workers who have none of these skills and use educational resources just to bring themselves up to bare literacy. Of course, we're also supposed to “invest” in their education, which means more money out of the threadbare pockets of the middle class.
It's worth remembering the American economic system was unmatched for generations and it pulled the entire world up in the last century. At its beginning, we rode horses and buggies and only dreamed of flight; by its end we had conquered the moon and had instantaneous communication to every corner of the globe, all led by America. Now we succumb to Capitol Hill regulations on the wattage in our light bulbs.
Yet all these trivial pastimes only occur because our middle class is breaking down from the stress of survival in today's economy. And as we drift along at 2% annual growth with untold trillions of unfunded liabilities, it's hard to tell if even the prescriptions we've relied upon before to shake us out of our economic doldrums would work this time -- not that any of them will be tried before 2017.
After all, as Obama said in his weekly address, he was right all along. He declared that much of our hard-earned economic progress is because of "decisions made by my administration." We could point to those decisions, but it wouldn't be to highlight progress.
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PC: As Deadly as Ebola
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Read the rest here.
Guideposts of Liberty Can Help the RNC
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The GOP has an opportunity here to clearly establish the party's values and vision. The RNC chairman seems to have staked out the proverbial Republican field on which candidates roam, graze and live in the world of politics.
Read the rest here.
For more, visit Right Analysis.
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TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
- Peggy Noonan: The New Bureaucratic Brazenness
- Stephen Moore: Fracking Could Save the Planet
- John C. Goodman: Inequality Explained
- Tony Perkins: Focusing Our Eyes on the Real Threat
- Frank J. Fleming: Now Is Not the Time to Turn the Country Around
OPINION IN BRIEF
The Gipper: "We are faced with the most evil enemy mankind has known in his long climb from the swamp to the stars. There can be no security anywhere in the free world if there is no fiscal and economic stability within the United States."Columnist Peggy Noonan: "[D]oes anybody in the government feel it is necessary to be truthful about anything anymore? Does anyone in the federal government ever think about concepts like 'taxpayers' and 'citizens' and their 'right to know'? Everything sounds like propaganda. That will happen when government becomes too huge, too present and all-encompassing. Everything almost every level of government says now has the terrible, insincere, lying sound of The Official Line, which no one on the inside, or outside, believes. ... The only people who seem to tell the truth now are the people inside the agencies who become whistleblowers. They call a news organization, get on the phone with a congressman’s staff. That’s basically how the Veterans Affairs and Secret Service scandals broke: Desperate people who couldn’t take the corruption dropped a dime. What does it say about a great nation when its most reliable truth tellers are desperate people? ... A nation can’t continue to be vibrant and healthy when the government controls more and more, and yet no one trusts a thing the government says."
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Economist Stephen Moore: "The one common theme of the green marchers these days is they hate fracking, even though it has done more to reduce greenhouse gases than all the government subsidies to wind and solar power combined. The Sierra Club and other environmental groups which once saw natural gas as a valuable 'bridge' fuel to the future, now denounce this wonder fuel. ... Shale gas is a wonder fuel because it is clean-burning, abundant, domestically produced, and cheap. The price of natural gas has fallen by more than half over the last six years and we have at least 150 years of supply in the Marcellus Shale and elsewhere. The Left’s unhinged objections to natural gas exposes their real aspirations. They aren’t fighting to stop global warming or the rise of the oceans; they’re fighting to stop growth itself. Americans better wake up to that reality, before the greens actually succeed."
Twitter satirist @hale_razor: "You know what else Obama inherited? An America without Ebola."
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
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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