THE FOUNDATION
"In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 1, 1787TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS
Feds Underestimating How Easy It Is to Get Ebola
A nurse from one of the best health care systems in the world has contracted Ebola. The nurse cared for Thomas Eric Duncan, the man who traveled to Dallas from Liberia with the disease, and checked herself into her hospital's emergency room Oct. 12. This story challenges the Obama administration's narrative. In a September video message, Barack Obama told the people of Liberia it was safe enough to sit on the bus next to a person infected with the disease and still not contract Ebola. Cue the CDC, which issued a travel warning for the country, telling travelers to "avoid unnecessary travel." Now, doctors are saying it may be easier to contract the disease than previously assumed. Dr. Dennis Maki, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said, "Some of the garb the health worker takes off might brush against a surface and contaminate it. New data suggest that even tiny droplets of a patient's body fluids can contain the virus." The 3,000 American soldiers fighting Ebola in Liberia are in greater danger than Obama lets on.Comment | Share
Air Force: Strikes Are Happening Too Slowly
Barack Obama's "strategy" against ISIL isn't exactly a success. It's haphazard, halfhearted, ineffective and ... slow. The Daily Beast reports, "Within the U.S. Air Force, there's mounting frustration that the air campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq is moving far more slowly than expected. Instead of a fast-moving operation with hundreds of sorties flown in a single day -- the kind favored by many in the air service -- American warplanes are hitting small numbers of targets after a painstaking and cumbersome process. The single biggest problem, current and former Air Force officers say, is the so-called kill-chain of properly identifying and making sure the right target is being attacked. At the moment, that process is very complicated and painfully slow." Part of that is because, with no boots on the ground, it's very difficult to tell ISIL apart from the so-called moderate Syrian rebels, or to identify desirable targets. The other part is that Obama is exerting both too much and not enough control over the operation. He's micromanaging without leading. More...Comment | Share
Obama Mulls Executive Order to Close Guantanamo
Closing the jihadi prison at Gitmo was one of Barack Obama's favorite campaign promises in 2008. Six years later, he's bitterly clinging to the dream. The Wall Street Journal reports, "The White House is drafting options that would allow President Barack Obama to close the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by overriding a congressional ban on bringing detainees to the U.S., senior administration officials said." The stakes are high, says the Journal: "Such a move would be the latest and potentially most dramatic use of executive power by the president in his second term. It would likely provoke a sharp reaction from lawmakers, who have repeatedly barred the transfer of detainees to the U.S." The whole thing is, as with everything Obama says or does, politically motivated. He wants to throw a bone to his base before the election, stringing them along with foolish promises. All he needs is a few more Bowe Bergdahls and he can clear the place out. More...Comment | Share
Army Completes Investigation of Bowe Bergdahl
The U.S. Army has finished its investigation into whether Bowe Bergdahl deserted his post in 2009. But it will not release the report to the public any time soon. Army spokesman Kenneth Dahl said, "The Army's priority is ensuring that our process is thorough, factually accurate, impartial, and legally correct" -- which sounds like the Army isn't done with its investigation. After Bergdahl walked into the desert, leaving his post and putting his weapon and body armor into a pile, the Taliban captured him and held him until the Obama administration traded five Guantanamo Bay detainees for him -- without the consent or knowledge of Congress. The stalled report is just another example of how the federal government shuts down in the weeks leading up to an election. More...Comment | Share
We Will Learn the Truth of ObamaCare After the Election
At least by the spirit of the law, the federal ObamaCare exchange is dispensing illegal subsidies, even though the government is working on its second iteration of the world's worst website, also known as Healthcare.gov. And now, the federal government behaves without ethics to preserve ObamaCare. Important information like premium rates will be available Nov. 3, according to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), but the Department of Health and Human Services will hold the information until Nov. 15. Why? Well folks -- mark your calendars -- Election Day is Nov. 4. By now, HHS has to have an idea what the rates will be. If they were lower, pushing that information out on the eve of the election would help the Left tremendously. But instead of letting voters make informed decisions at the polls, the administration controls the information -- just one of the perks of being in office, we suppose. More...Comment | Share
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RIGHT ANALYSIS
Calling a Tail a Leg Doesn't Make It a Leg
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Ideologically instigated nonsense is more like it. Item No. 5 instructs teachers that when it becomes necessary to reference gender, “[S]ay ‘Boy, girl, both or neither.’” Item 7 instructs them to “call out" and “interrogate” media examples that “reinforce gender stereotypes of binary models of gender."
Teachers were also supplied with a companion handout from the Center for Gender Sanity," was also part of the mix. It depicts a gingerbread-like character replete with four graphs explaining the ranges of gender identity (from women to genderqueer to man), gender expression (female-androgynous-masculine)
Adding insult to injury, Lincoln Superintendent Steve Joel had the nerve to say, “We don’t get involved with politics.” After the predictable national outcry, Joel was far more defensive, insisting nothing had been “mandated,” adding, "There’s no policy, there’s no procedure, there’s [sic] no changes being made to bathrooms in schools.”
One suspects Joel and his ideological soul-mates were taking their cues from the epicenter of ideological insanity, more familiarly known as California. In August 2013, Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill allowing kindergarten-through-12th grade students to use whichever bathroom and locker room they prefer, as well as the right "to participate in sex-segregated programs, activities and facilities" based on self-perception, irrespective of birth gender.
Yet even Governor Moonbeam and his California comrades are a bit behind the curve. At Bellevue College in Washington state, no less than seven gender choices are included in two questions about students' sexuality contained in the school’s application form. They include bisexual, gay, lesbian, queer, straight/heterosexual, other and prefer not to answer.
This New World Order has attendant complications, especially when it comes to sports. A proposal to allow students to play on teams based on their preferred gender rather than the sex assigned to them at birth led to an outcry in Minnesota, temporarily delaying a vote on the policy until December. There's also been blowback in the world of mixed martial arts. Fallon Fox, a male-to-female transsexual, is currently undefeated and some of his/her opponents have had the temerity to suggest that a former man successfully beating up women might be a tad unfair. One of them, UFC fighter Matt Mitrione, was suspended for “trans-phobic” remarks.
Apparently, acknowledging reality is now considered offensive.
Is anyone truly surprised? With the exception of extremely rare cases of hermaphroditism, there are only two genders: male or female. That such designations raise the ire of leftists speaks to their insidious efforts to impose their anything-goes agenda, even one that kicks nature to the curb. Even history can be “amended" -- in 47 states and the District of Columbia, a person can change his or her birth certificate to reflect a sexual conversion.
Moreover, it is an agenda that knows no boundaries. A recent article in The New York Times insists current law with regard to pedophilia is "inconsistent and irrational,” and that it is time to “revisit" categorical exclusions contained in the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that prohibited pedophilia from receiving the same kind of protection afforded other mental disabilities. The writer is gracious enough to separate practicing pedophiles from “inactive” ones and even admits that, in making accommodations for employment, a pedophile "should not be hired as a grade-school teacher.” Yet given the incrementalist march of leftist insanity, one might be forgiven for thinking such a restriction might be temporary at best.
The doyens of “social justice," who not only expect tolerance but approval of their agenda -- with all the attendant contempt and vituperation aimed at those who dare to resist -- will inevitably demand nothing less.
In Nebraska, the effort to deny gender instructs teachers to “Create classroom names and then ask all of the ‘purple penguins’ to meet at the rug.” They’ll have to do better than that: Penguins themselves are both male and female. Perhaps “amber amoebas” would work. Or perhaps Americans uninterested in having their children marinated in such a despicable garbage will remember a relevant quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln: "How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."
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We Need Good Preachers Before We Get Good Government
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Noting its limited scope and enumerated powers, Adams argued such a founding document would adequately govern given the personal and civic decorum and the decency of the citizens of the United States. Flip that coin over to understand that without the absolutes of right and wrong woven into the tapestry of a moral and religious people, an overreaching and excessive government would follow.
Dial the clock forward to 2014 America -- the nation devoted to the god of me, myself and I, rather than the Hand of Providence of earlier years. Consider the cries of discrimination, intolerance and even racism, when societal standards of what is right, decent and good are most perfectly summed up by the bumper sticker, “WHATEVER!”
This cultural casserole of conscience shuns “a moral and religious people” and heralds the governing elites who view their intellect as superior to the weak leaning on the crutch of faith and religion. These 21st century elites openly mock the belief in and reverence of the Judeo-Christian Deity who endows His creation with unalienable rights, demands personal responsibility, shows love and mercy through community benevolence and charity, and has a dim view of laziness, lying and corruption.
Yet a society composed of individuals who subscribe to honesty, individual discipline and industriousness, mutual respect of persons and property, along with a measure of good will and charity, is a free people. Such a society will enjoy Liberty driven not by external lists and constraints of law, but by internal goodness and the “Golden Rule.”
As we navigate the path toward the elections of 2014 and 2016, we ask this: Instead of winning the argument and exacting policy, isn’t the more bountiful fruit to sustain our Constitution’s limited government enjoyed by winning hearts and minds to live a life of faith?
Which brings us to former Arkansas governor and TV personality Mike Huckabee. Following last week's Supreme Court refusal to hear cases on same-sex marriage, Huckabee vowed he would leave the Republican Party if the fight against same-sex marriage and abortion did not continue as a primary political plank of the party. It's not the first such declaration from those of faith who seek higher office or lead in an elected position.
Yet a “house divided will not stand.” The nation's Mike Huckabees should be cautious in abandoning the political vehicle that most frequently and effectively opposes the party whose membership voted God out in the 2012 Democrat National Convention.
Isn’t it even more critical in this cultural battle that those of the Judeo-Christian faith season their environs by being the “salt of the earth” rather than taking their 50-pound salt block into isolation?
In using John Adams’ observation to inform our center-right pursuits, fiscal restraint and discipline, economic success and might, along with a populace of individual accountability and productivity, are more likely when our Judeo-Christian God informs our politics and drives our conduct.
One might say John Adams was observing that good preachers precede good government.
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Happy Birthday to the U.S. Navy
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Please visit The Patriot Post Shop for a great selection of items bearing the Navy's insignia.
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TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
- Tony Perkins: Sandy Hook Schools Parents on Education
- Ken Blackwell: Obama's Porous Borders and Security Moms
- Peggy Noonan: Is 'Worthy Fights' Worthy?
- Larry Kudlow: How About a Little Optimism?
- Burt Prelutsky: Consequential Kvetching
OPINION IN BRIEF
The Gipper: "I've always believed that a lot of the trouble in the world would disappear if we were talking to each other instead of about each other."FRC's Tony Perkins: "The Sandy Hook school shooting was the stuff of nightmares. Now, almost two years after that horrific tragedy, state officials are blaming another culprit: homeschooling. ... Governor Dannel Malloy (D) convened a special Sandy Hook Advisory Commission to study the shooting and offer recommendations for upgrading security and protocols. But so far, the Commission’s only contribution has been more controversy. In a proposal just released by the 16-member panel, the Commission makes the outrageous suggestion that Connecticut needs to crackdown on homeschooling, especially in homes with emotionally or mentally challenged kids. ... To people familiar with the Lanzas, the idea that homeschooling played any role in the shooting is ridiculous. In fact, it was Adam’s own psychologist who recommended teaching him at home where his parents could keep closer tabs on him. Now, the state of Connecticut is suggesting that it’s the government who needs to keep closer tabs -- on moms and dads who should be the ultimate authority on their children’s education."
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Columnist Peggy Noonan: "Decisions are made -- by someone, or some agency -- on matters of great consequence, Ebola, for instance. ... [T]he government chooses to let the flow of individuals from infected countries continue. They will be screened at five U.S. airports, where their temperatures will be taken and they will be asked if they have been around anyone with Ebola. ... U.S. health-care workers at airports will not early on be organized, and will not always show good judgment. TSA workers sometimes let through guns and knives. These workers will be looking for microbes, which, as they say, are harder to see. A baby teething can run a fever; so will a baby with the virus. A nurse or doctor with long experience can tell the difference. Will the airport workers? None of this plan makes sense. It’s busy work meant to foster confidence. But it encourages the feeling that no one’s in charge, the federal government isn’t working, everyone’s dissembling, and the No. 1 priority is to keep the public calm as opposed to safe."
Comedian Argus Hamilton: "Homeland Security announced new airport measures to try to halt Ebola from entering the U.S. The TSA will begin screening for Ebola at five major airports on the Eastern Seaboard. That's great -- our last line of defense against a global pandemic is the fellow who stole your iPad."
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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