THE FOUNDATION
"It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, Query 19, 1781TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS
Editor's Note
Be sure read Mark Alexander's commentary below on The Heavy Price of Obama's Race-Bait Rhetoric -- the story of the two NYPD officers who paid that price with their lives over the weekend.Yankees to Pay for Education of Sons of Slain Cop
The man who bought a gun for "Putting Wings on Pigs" murdered a father and a newlywed in cold blood. Of the two officers killed in Saturday's attack, New York City police officer Wenjian Liu was recently married and Rafael Ramos left two sons, one in college and the other 13 years old. "Today I had to say bye to my father," Jaden Ramos wrote on Facebook. "He was their [sic] for me everyday of my life, he was the best father I could ask for. It's horrible that someone gets shot dead just for being a police officer. Everyone says they hate cops but they are the people that they call for help. I will always love you and I will never forget you. RIP Dad." Meanwhile, the New York Yankees will pay for the education of Rafael Ramos' sons through the Yankee Silver Shield Foundation, a foundation started by former Yankees owner George Steinbrenner to fund the education of children whose parents died in the line of duty working as New York City firefighters, police officers and port authority employees. It's a bright spot in what is a truly horrific story. More...Comment | Share
'Interesting Stuff Happens in the Fourth Quarter'
Barack Obama has already been doing way too much by executive order -- and executive memo -- and we expect that, not only is he not done, but he may pick up the pace. During a press conference Friday, he said, "In terms of my own job, uh, I'm energized, uh, I'm excited about the prospects for the next couple of years, and I'm certainly not going to be stopping for a minute in the effort to make life better for ordinary Americans." He continued, "We are better positioned than we have been in a very long time. A new future is ready to be written. We've set the stage for -- uh, for this American moment. And I'm going to spend every minute of my last two years making sure that we seize it. Um, my presidency is entering the fourth quarter. Interesting stuff happens in the fourth quarter, and, uh, I'm looking forward to it." We shudder to think what "interesting stuff" he has in store for our nation as he and a Republican Congress face off and we all wait for his clock to run out.Comment | Share
Will 'Normalizing' With Cuba Work?
After normalizing relations with Cuba, Barack Obama said, "I don't anticipate overnight changes. But what I know deep in my bones is that if you've done the same thing for 50 years and things haven't changed, you should try something different if you want a different outcome." That's an understandable argument, and many on both sides of the political aisle believe the embargo against Cuba is a waste. But while maintain the embargo is unlikely to bring Liberty to Cuba, neither is lifting it. Political analyst Charles Krauthammer argues, "In the early days of the Cold War, there was a semi-tongue-in-cheek proposal that, instead of having bombs on the B-52s, we ought to fill them with nylons and drop them over the Soviet Union. As a result, there will be a revolution, they're going to become capitalists. This is exactly the same idea for Cuba. It hasn't worked for Vietnam or China, if your objective is to liberalize it. And the bulk of the benefit is going to go to the military and the repressive apparatus. That's the argument against normalization." Then again, spreading capitalism is never Obama's goal.Comment | Share
Publisher's Note: If you find today's Digest interesting, inspiring or informative, we humbly ask that you consider making a secure online donation. We must raise $64,650 in the next 4 days in order to meet our Christmas Day goal and keep our budget on track. Thank you for your support! --Mark Alexander
Obama Says Sony Should Have 'Spoken to Me First'; Sony Says 'We Did'
"I think they made a mistake," Barack Obama declared, weighing in on the controversy surrounding Sony's decision to spike a movie over North Korean hacker threats. "We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States," the president continued. "That's not who we are. That's not what America is about." And if anyone knows a thing or two about blaming a movie for violence and pressuring someone to remove it from public view, it's Obama (Benghazi, cough, cough). No, America is about some dictator someplace granting amnesty to five million illegal aliens, but that's another story. "Again," he droned on, "I'm sympathetic that Sony, as a private company, was worried about liabilities and this, that, and the other. I wish they had spoken to me first. I would have told them, 'Do not get into a pattern in which you're intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks.'" That's right. When you get intimidated by attacks, you start making prisoner swaps for nothing. In response, Sony CEO Michael Lynton said, "We definitely spoke to a senior adviser in the White House to talk about the situation. ... The White House was certainly aware of the situation." Maybe Obama didn't get that memo.Comment | Share
Pentagon Sends More Boots to Iraq
The Pentagon announced it would send 1,300 more paratroopers to Iraq to "train, advise and assist Iraqi security forces," according to Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby. The troops will deploy for nine months in the Anbar province to train 12 Iraqi brigades. In addition to these boots on the ground, the U.S. will continue to fly bombing runs against ISIL to support Iraqi troops. "Where will this lead?" asks RedState. "Barring a deus ex machina that eliminates [ISIL] and restores some semblance of what passes for stability in the Arab world our involvement is going to increase and the next president will be left with an ugly mess in Iraq and Syria that is totally the creation of Barack Obama." Obama only created a false peace when he pulled out of Iraq. Because of that, he's made the conflict that much more ugly. More...Comment | Share
For more, visit Right Hooks.
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RIGHT ANALYSIS
The Heavy Price of Obama's Race-Bait Rhetoric
NYPD Officers Pay With Their Lives
By Mark Alexander
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To distract attention from his cascading domestic and foreign policy failures, as affirmed by the resounding defeat of Democrats in the 2014 midterm elections, Obama and his race antagonizers seized upon a duo of emotive diversions -- the deaths of two black men, Michael Brown in Missouri and Eric Garner in New York, as fodder for a national crusade against a political straw man: endemic racism in the ranks of law enforcement.
The underlying assumption of this folly is because "people of color" are arrested more often than white people, this must be a "racist cop problem" rather than an urban culture problem -- the direct result of disastrous liberal social engineering programs beginning in the 1960s.
To further that assumption, Obama is repeating this claim nationwide: "I got into politics ... so that the country understands [racism] ... is an American problem. ... A combination of bad training [and] departments that really are not trying to root out biases, or tolerate sloppy police work; a combination in some cases of folks just not knowing any better, and, in a lot of cases, subconscious fear of folks who look different -- all of this contributes to a national problem that's going to require a national solution."
Holder is pushing his assessment of race relations: "We as a nation have failed. It's as simple as that. We have failed."
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| Obama and Sharpton |
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio doubled down on the Obama/Holder/Sharpton race-bait rhetoric with this claptrap: "We're not just dealing with a problem in 2014. We're not dealing with years of racism leading up to it -- or decades of racism. We are dealing with centuries of racism that have brought us to this day. That is how profound the crisis is."
This cast of race hustlers are propagating the lie that Brown and Garner were killed because cops are racist. In response, I concluded my "Blame Racist Cops?" column with a warning that Obama and Holder "have thrown cops under the bus with their diversionary race-bait rhetoric, and that will escalate violence against police officers."
Indeed, on Saturday, two NYPD officers became the first murder victims of Obama's rhetoric.
Officer Wenjian Liu was 32 years old and just married two months ago. Officer Rafael Ramos was 40 and the father of two sons. Both Liu and Ramos were minority officers -- Asian and Hispanic, respectively.
They were murdered by a racist black man, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, possibly affiliated with Baltimore's urban "Black Guerilla Family" gang. Brinsley posted a social media comment Saturday, proclaiming, "I'm Putting Wings on Pigs Today. They Take 1 Of Ours. Let's Take 2 of Theirs."
Clearly, Brinsley is responsible for pulling the trigger. But as a senior New York law enforcement investigator told me shortly after Liu and Ramos were murdered, "Obama, Holder, de Blasio, and that f---ing racist Sharpton are accessories to murder. Our brothers' blood is on them all. Their racist rhetoric is totally inexcusable. This was totally predictable. We are going to hold them totally accountable." He indicated his outrage is shared across the board -- regardless of race.
Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association in New York, stated, "Mayor de Blasio, the blood of these two officers is clearly on your hands. It is your failed policies and actions that enabled this tragedy to occur. Ever since this mayor took office there has been a sense of lawlessness that is rampant in every borough. I only hope and pray that more of these ambushes and executions do not happen again."
Similarly, Patrick Lynch, head of the NYPD Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, said, "That blood on the hands starts on the steps of City Hall, in the office of the mayor. When these funerals are over, those responsible will be called on the carpet and held accountable."
Former New York Gov. George Pataki said on Twitter the officers' deaths were a "predictable outcome of divisive anti-cop rhetoric of #ericholder & #mayordeblasio."
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| de Blasio and Sharpton |
In response to that protest, de Blasio had the gall to say, "It's unfortunate that in a time of great tragedy, some would resort to irresponsible, overheated rhetoric that angers and divides people." The primary source of irresponsible, overheated and divisive rhetoric here is de Blasio and his fellow race-baiters.
Having spent the early years of my career as a uniformed patrolman, this assault on my brothers and sisters in blue is very personal. While there are instances of racial bias and abuse of power, the vast majority of police officers from municipal, state and federal agencies are endeavoring to "serve and protect" our fellow citizens against lawless sociopathic miscreants.
In reality, Brown and Garner did not die because of "racism." They would be alive today had they obeyed lawful orders instead of making fatal choices. However, Obama, Holder and their race-baiting minions insist that these individuals were entitled to ignore lawful orders on the assumption of "black privilege" and the errant notion that "society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker."
Predictably, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund issued a statement insisting, "These two killings ... like so many other unfortunate incidences of gun violence, provide a stark example of the need for sensible gun control measures. While some may suggest a causal link between these killings and the recent protests and activism focused on the serious issue of police violence against unarmed African Americans, we caution against escalating an already tense national state through rumor and conjecture."
Officers Liu and Ramos were not murdered by "gun violence." Their murders were inspired by racist rhetoric.
It is time for Obama, Holder, Sharpton and de Blasio to stand down and shut up.
Fact is, the primary source of racial discord across our nation is not "white racism." It is Barack Obama, who was indoctrinated by Marxist mentors from a young age, and had radical racist views shaped by the Afrocentric theology of Jeremiah "God D--- America" Wright for the 20 years prior to his first presidential campaign.
The Obama administration has fomented racial discord from day one. This toxic discord has been propagated unchallenged for the last six years, and consequently it has permeated deep into the pit of black urban culture where it has festered.
However, now with the blood of murdered police officers on their hands, as my law enforcement colleague in New York said, "We are going to hold them totally accountable."
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Anti-Semitism Rising in the EU
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| Not terrorists? |
When the Council established the list of terrorist organizations in 2001, Hamas' military wing, the Izz al-Din Qassam Brigades, was placed on the list. It took another two years before the political wing of the organization was added to it.
Hamas had contested the part of the common position that included "freezing of the funds of those people and entities included on a list adopted and regularly updated by Council decisions." And while the Court annulled that position, it maintained that freeze for a period of three months, or "if an appeal is brought before the Court of Justice, until this appeal is closed."
The Court stressed that the annulments made on "fundamental procedural grounds do not imply any substantive assessment of the question of the classification of Hamas as a terrorist group within the meaning of the Common Position."
Perhaps the most burning question is what have the so-called national competent authorities been doing for the last 13 years? Besides its bloody track record of terrorist attacks and the indiscriminate firing of thousands of missiles into Israel, Hamas' founding charter, "The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement," calls for the annihilation of the Jewish State. A statement from the Prophet Mohammed provides the rationale:
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."
One suspects far too many Europeans are more than willing to ignore such evidence in an effort to be "even-handed." The leftist BBC implies as much, noting that the terror group's "supporters see it as a legitimate resistance movement against Israel, with whom it has fought for years." And only hours after that ruling, the European Parliament (EP) voted overwhelmingly to recognize a Palestinian state "in principle" by a margin of 498 to 88, with 111 abstentions. The vote is the culmination of a trend that began with similar recognition by the Swedish Parliament in October, followed by similar non-binding votes in Britain, Ireland, Spain, France and Portugal, with the latter two countries passing those resolutions last week.
All of the votes passed by large margins.
The EP's vote reeks of an illegal double-standard exposed by the United Kingdom Independence Party's (UKIP) Member of the European Parliament (MEP), James Carver. In September, he asked the EP to recognize the Islamic State of Somaliland. In October, they replied that only individual member states of the EU can act in that capacity. Even more transparently, they insisted that the status of Somaliland should be determined via "negotiations between the authorities of Somaliland and the Federal Government of Somalia" absent any effort by the EU to "influence the outcome of the process."
Putting their collective fingers on the scale in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, even as decades of those negotiations have never held the Palestinians to remotely the same standards of compromise as Israel? Perfectly acceptable.
A survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League reveals the impetus behind that effort. It reveals nearly one-in-four Western Europeans and more than one-in-three Eastern Europeans harbor anti-Semitic feelings.
Virulent expressions of those feelings were chronicled by the Guardian last August. They reported on a series of attacks and fire-bombings of synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses throughout Europe. Dieter Graumann, president of Germany's Central Council of Jews, illuminated the feelings of his co-religionists. "These are the worst times since the Nazi era," he explained. "On the streets, you hear things like 'the Jews should be gassed', 'the Jews should be burned' -- we haven't had that in Germany for decades. Anyone saying those slogans isn't criticizing Israeli politics, it's just pure hatred against Jews: nothing else. And it's not just a German phenomenon. It's an outbreak of hatred against Jews so intense that it's very clear indeed."
Hamas was pleased with the Court's decision. Senior Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk characterized it as "a correction of a historical mistake." He added, "Hamas is a resistance movement and it has a natural right according to all international laws and standards to resist the occupation." That would be the same Hamas reportedly repairing the "terror tunnels" used to infiltrate Israel for the sole purpose of killing as many Jews as possible. Increasingly and most ominously, it appears the EU is on board with the utterly bankrupt moral equivocation known as "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
Israeli economy minister Naftali Bennett called the Court's annulment "immoral." But he also offered the EU a warning. "Israel is strong and can defend itself against its enemies, but those who will suffer from strengthening terrorist groups will be the Europeans themselves," he said. Suffer may be an understatement. Abject surrender to Islamic totalitarianism, one anti-Semitic-driven decision after another, is more like it.
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TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
- Ken Blackwell & Bob Morrison: Surrender to Cuba? Why Didn’t We Think of That?
- Jeff Jacoby: A Happy Christmas for the Castro Regime
- Stephen Moore: The Great Lima Climate Change Shakedown
- John C. Goodman: Is Liberalism Intellectually Bankrupt?
- George Will: Lighting Fuses in Oklahoma
OPINION IN BRIEF
The Gipper: "Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid."Columnists Ken Blackwell & Bob Morrison: "We have had Presidents of both parties maintaining a policy of unusual consistency toward the captive island nation of Cuba for more than half a century. Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush and Bush for the Republicans. But there was little difference when the Oval Office was occupied by Democrats JFK, LBJ, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. It’s most curious that with that bi-partisan consensus of ten U.S. Presidents, it never occurred to any of them: Why not just surrender to Cuba? Why not simply run up the white flag? That is what [Obama's] policy is. ... We’ve heard of a 'war on women.' Would the Obama administration care to read what a distinguished woman -- even a longtime friend of Fidel Castro, Dr. Martha Frayde -- experienced in one of his prisons? 'My cell was six meters by five. There were twenty-two of us sleeping there in bunk beds of two or three layers. The basins we had to wash in were filthy, sometimes it was impossible to wash at all. [Unable to empty the toilets] a layer of excrement formed, invading our cells.. We managed to sweep away some of [it] with the pressure hoses, but there still wasn’t enough water, and we had to live with this vile layer for another few days.' This is the regime that Mr. Obama is now rewarding."
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Economist Stephen Moore: "The global warming brigades from around the world gathered ... at a United Nations climate change conference in Lima to save the planet. ... The BBC described the final agreement as 'a weak and ineffectual compromise' while green groups complain that it actually 'weakens international climate rules.' It turns out most of the nations of the world see the climate change issue as merely a shake down opportunity to leverage more aid money from American taxpayers. ... In less than one month, Barack Obama’s 'epic deal' with China president Xi Jinping to reduce greenhouse gas emission standards has been exposed as a sham. ... Su Wei, China’s lead climate negotiator admitted in Lima: 'we do not have any clear road map of meeting [emissions] target for 2020.' Well, isn’t that reassuring. ... The lesson of Lima is that the rest of the world is not going to cut its carbon emissions. Period. ... Mr. Obama has agreed to an historic climate change deal with… himself. America will give up jobs and money (eventually trillions) and pay higher energy prices and in exchange the rest of the world will do nothing. In the climate change racket, we are being played for fools."
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Comedian Argus Hamilton: "Obama's executive order granting blanket amnesty to illegal aliens was struck down in a Pennsylvania federal court as unconstitutional. The president didn't skip a beat correcting the misunderstanding. He quickly declared another executive order making it constitutional."
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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