Daily Digest
January 12, 2015
THE FOUNDATION"Tyranny has perhaps oftener grown out of the assumptions of power, called for, on pressing exigencies, by a defective constitution, than out of the full exercise of the largest constitutional authorities." --James Madison & Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 20, 1787TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKSAdministration Continues Defining IslamOn Sunday, ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked Attorney General Eric Holder, "Is the U.S. at war with radical Islam?" Holder replied, "Well, I certainly think that we are at war with those who would commit terrorist attacks and who would corrupt the Islamic faith in the way that they do, to try to justify their terrorist actions." The administration always tries to define Islamic faith as "peaceful," seeking to separate jihadis from "legitimate" Islam. But either way, Holder says, we're winning. "[W]e have decimated core al-Qaida," he said, repeating a tired refrain, "and I think we have decreased if not eliminated their ability to do the kinds of things that they did on September the 11th." He then pointed again to "lone wolf" attacks as the future. He's probably correct that the types of attack we've seen in Paris, Australia and Canada, as well as Fort Hood and Boston, are indeed the future -- as opposed to flying airliners into buildings -- but that doesn't mean these jihadis are "lone wolves." On the contrary, they are united by radical Islam. On a final note, the Obama administration couldn't even be bothered to acknowledge our oldest ally, France, by sending a representative to the weekend rally in Paris -- and Holder was in Paris for an anti-"violent extremism" summit. So they coddle enemies and snub allies. Par for the course.Comment | Share U.S. Denies Jihadist Motivation for Paris AttacksThe man who attacked a Kosher grocery store in Paris, killing four hostages and a policewoman in violent support of the jihadis who attacked the office of Charlie Hebdo, declared allegiance to ISIL. In a YouTube video, he said, "What we are doing is completely legitimate." With al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula allegedly funding and directing the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office, the Director General for MI5 (British intelligence) made a rare appearance to warn, "A group of core al-Qaida terrorists in Syria is planning mass casualty attacks against the West." The Canadian Prime Minister also didn't mince words about the threat of Muslims waging jihad against the West: "They have declared war on any country like ourselves that values freedom, openness and tolerance." But the United States, the home of the free and land of the brave, is still waffling on whether the Paris attacks were perpetrated by jihadis. U.S. State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harf said, "First, I think, again, there are a lot of unknowns here. We're certainly not jumping to conclusions." Heaven forbid she call a spade a spade.Comment | Share Democrats Start Session by Filibustering KeystoneEven though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has tried to work with Democrats in the upper chamber, the Democrat Party has dug in and started to filibuster the bipartisan bill authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline. "The proceedings represented a role-reversal from the last Congress," The Washington Times reports, "when Democrats tried to push bills to the floor only to face a GOP filibuster. In many of those cases, however, Republicans said they were filibustering because Democrats -- led by Sen. Harry Reid -- blocked out all amendments. This time around, Mr. McConnell promised to allow amendments from all sides." It seems like Democrat senators are trying to defend Barack Obama from conservative legislation, which is puzzling. Obama has unsheathed the veto pen and he loses nothing politically by using it. Yet Democrats have decided this is the legislation on which to begin their campaign as obstructionists -- a term they used to label Republican lawmakers for years. Hypocrisy at its finest. At this point, the GOP is only four votes shy of being able to override a veto. More...Comment | Share The Financial Planner You Should Avoid"Don't buy something you can't afford." That was Barack Obama's advice to home buyers as he announced a plan to cut mortgage insurance rates through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. "That $900 can go toward grocery, gas [or] children's education. ... That's money back in the economy," he said. Of course, the irony of this president lecturing people on what they can't afford is rich. He began his presidency with a near-trillion dollar boondoggle called the "stimulus" that not only failed to boost the economy but jacked up federal spending and deficits to record highs. Translation: He bought something all of us put together couldn't afford, so don't take financial advice from him. More...Comment | Share ObamaCare Takes Nearly 10% of Median PaycheckObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber said in 2009 the "Affordable" Care Act "really doesn't bend the cost curve." Today, skyrocketing prices are being felt by Americans who go to work, earn a paycheck and have health insurance (i.e., middle class America). The law is compelling millions of Americans to get more coverage, which in turn is taking a bigger bite out of paychecks. The Chicago Tribune reports, "Workers continue to be squeezed by rising insurance costs, eroding benefits and stagnant wages, the report from the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund found. Nationwide, the average contribution an employee made to an insurance premium in 2013 and the average deductible together represented 9.6% of the median income of American households with members under age 65." In 2003, Americans were spending 5.3% of their income on health insurance. Gruber was right. And while Americans are compelled to spend almost 10% on health care, the government still demands its share of earnings. More...Comment | Share For more, visit Right Hooks.
RIGHT ANALYSISNigerian Slaughter Dwarfs Paris Atrocities
On Saturday, Nigerian government spokesman Mike Omeri reported that fighting continues for Baga, a town that sits on the border with Chad. Boko Haram terrorists had seized a military base in the town Jan. 3 and initiated further attacks last Wednesday. "Security forces have responded rapidly, and have deployed significant military assets and conducted air strikes against militant targets," Omeri said in a statement. Those counter-attacks mattered little to Baga's women, children and elderly, killed when they were unable to flee in time. "The human carnage perpetrated by Boko Haram terrorists in Baga was enormous," said Muhammad Abba Gava, a spokesman for a poorly armed civilian defense group that fights the terrorists. District head Baba Abba Hassan tried to diminish the scope of the atrocity. "To say 2,000 people were killed is on the high side. The death toll could run into several hundreds," he insisted, adding that an official body count had yet to be undertaken. But he also noted these Islamic thugs were not content with murder alone. "To add to our misery, Boko Haram fighters who remained in the area went on a burning spree, setting fire to our homes after looting them," he revealed. Musa Bukar, chairman of the local government where Baga is located, was not quite as sanguine. "Dead bodies litter the bushes in the area and it is still not safe to go and pick them [up] for burial," he explained. "Some people who hid in their homes were burned alive." And while the world collectively mourns the 17 people killed in Paris over the course of three days, Boko Haram slaughtered more than 10,000 Nigerians in 2014, according to a count by the Council on Foreign Relations in November. In other words, more than 27 Nigerians were killed on average every day of the year. Moreover, that carnage doesn't include the spate of kidnappings also perpetrated by the terror group, including another 200 people from the village of Gumsuri in December, following the abduction of 276 schoolgirls from a boarding school in Chibok last April. Those kidnappings have subsequently resulted in hundreds of young girls being enslaved, raped, beaten, used as decoys in military operations -- and now as suicide bombers. In the city of Maiduguri, a girl who may have been as young as 10 killed up to 20 and wounded several others at a crowded market Saturday when she detonated explosives hidden under her veil. The West's response to the initial kidnapping spree? A Twitter campaign that has since been forgotten. If there is anything that epitomizes the kind of feel-good-about-myself impotence of the West's response to terror better than #BringBackOurGirls, one is hard-pressed to imagine what it is. British writer James Delingpole penned a brilliant column last week explaining how the West will respond to the carnage in Paris -- in all its multi-culti, hand-wringing, morally relative, bankrupt glory. Delingpole enumerates the machinations of a poisonous ideology that once again suggests it is Western society as a whole, or even the victims themselves, who bear a certain level of responsibility for inciting Islamofascist rage. The column ends with a well-deserved swipe at the contemptible denial that forms the heart of such bankruptcy: "Within a month, the [Paris] incident will largely be forgotten. Just like the Mumbai and Nairobi massacres were. Sophisticated commentators will recognise that though, of course what happened was pretty frightful and all that, it's important to appreciate that your chances of being killed in a terrorist incident are way smaller than being, say, run over by a bus and that actually all we're doing when we overreact to such incidents is placing undue emphasis on what are, after all, just rogue criminal acts and not the end of civilization."It is far worse than that. There is one -- and only one -- common denominator that links the atrocities in Paris and Nigeria: radical Islam. If only 5% of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims have been radicalized, then there is an army, 80 million strong, yearning for the West's submission to Sharia Law at best, or our complete annihilation at worst. Nonetheless, we are supposed to be comforted by the notion that "moderate" Islam has our backs. Perhaps that is true, but it is of little comfort because so-called moderate Muslims are viewed as every bit the apostates by their radicalized brethren as any Jew or Christian -- which is why they are also slaughtered with impunity, just as French policeman Ahmed Merabet was. And that's if moderates exist at all. As Front Page's Daniel Greenfield so deftly points out, moderate or secular Islam "is not the religion of Mohammed, the Koran, the Hadiths, the Caliphs or its practitioners in such places as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq or Indonesia." It is the one concocted by Western progressive apologists who require its existence lest "nationalism returns, borders close and the right wins," and the Left's "Socialist Kingdom of Heaven on Earth has to go in the rubbish bin." Perhaps nothing better explains the Left's despicable "lone wolf" exhortations that inevitably follow each new atrocity. Make no mistake: There is a war against an Islamic cancer far more reaching and deadly than the gaggle of Neville Chamberlain-like Western leaders are willing to countenance. Those leaders recoil from the proactive response such a threat desperately requires. Until an epiphany occurs, the body count of innocents across the globe will continue to multiply. "The future does not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam," said our feckless president at the United Nations in 2012. The hell it doesn't -- unless the freedom to criticize, satirize and ridicule all religions and prophets is extinguished by force. Or by self-imposed cowardice. Comment | Share Loyalty Being Destroyed by GOP Leaders
On Nov. 4, 2014, American voters from East Coast to West soundly rejected the policies of a dysfunctional Barack Obama and the concrete wall of the Democrat Senate. The calendar then flipped to December when lame-duck lawmakers passed the "CRominbus" spending bill (part continuing resolution, part omnibus), which funded ObamaCare and gave limited funding to Obama's unconstitutional executive amnesty. While voters demanded stronger opposition to both ObamaCare and amnesty, politicians only made more promises to fix things in the upcoming session of Congress. Then, on Jan. 4, John Boehner won his third term as speaker, though just barely, as 25 Republican dissenters cast their ballots against him. The GOP then spent the ensuing days having a "family discussion" about the party's future. Rep. Pete Sessions, chairman of the House Rules Committee, vented his irritation with conservatives fed up with the empty promises made to the base of the Republican Party: "The onslaught ... has taken a number of members by storm. Their district offices, their Capitol Hill offices have been inundated by people who seemingly drew conclusions that we didn't even have time to go home and defend." Imagine that declared with a furrowed brow and a stern voice. Well, cry us a river. For the last four years, Republicans from the moderates to the right-wingers have campaigned on the undoing of ObamaCare. Millions of dollars have been spent on advertisements pledging that a smaller, more accountable government is best and the only ones that can possibly ever make that happen are, you guessed it, incumbent Republicans. Memo to Republicans: It's time to articulate and work to develop a plan to animate the principles of Essential Liberty that should guide the party. Those who are elected, appointed or in some other manner selected to lead, need to be completely honest, trustworthy and dependable with their words and deeds. Many who've loyally supported candidates, worked in campaigns on the grassroots level, and given their most valuable treasure -- their time and talent -- are palpably fed up with those who fail this test. As the adage goes, "Never push a loyal person to the point where they no longer give a damn." The elected officials who run as Republicans had best be figuring out how to govern as Republicans or they can look forward to emptying out their offices after the next elections. Comment | Share For more, visit Right Analysis.
TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
 OPINION IN BRIEFThe Gipper: "Our task is far from over. Our friends in the other party will never forgive us for our success, and are doing everything in their power to rewrite history."Columnist Peggy Noonan: "In the late 1980s, Andres Serrano produced 'Piss Christ,' a photograph of a small crucifix submerged in the artist’s urine. That didn’t go over well with a lot of Christians. ... But the protests were peaceful, and no one even dreamed of harming the artist. In the late 1990s it was Chris Ofili, whose painting 'The Holy Virgin Mary' depicted Mary surrounded by pornographic images and smeared with elephant dung. ... There were protests and arguments, the mayor withheld funds, the museum sued him and won. No one ever dreamed of harming the artist. ... A singular feature of extremist Islamists is that they are not at all interested in persuasion. They don’t care about winning you over, only about making you submit. They want to menace and threaten. They want to frighten. They enjoy posing with the severed head. It is the West’s job not to be overcome by fear, not to give an inch. Steady is the word." Comment | Share Columnist Ken Blackwell: "Although the United States now claims the position of top global oil producer, 90 percent of all proven reserves still remain under the control of national oil companies, many within the OPEC cartel. This fact alone illustrates how little control we have when we let the oil market determine our economic fate. ... We have a unique opportunity to act quickly during this period of lower oil prices. Historically, we have moved on energy policy only in times of crisis, reacting after the damage has already been done. This was the case during the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, and it will be the case again when the next oil price spike inevitably arrives. We should seize this moment, working from a position of strength to lay the foundations for real, lasting U.S. energy security. We have a chance to pass effective supply-side and demand-side legislation that both sides can rally behind, putting us on the path towards an America that is more economically resilient and better protected from its enemies -- and that’s a good deal for all of us." Comment | Share
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. |
No comments:
Post a Comment