THE PATRIOT POST 10/02/2015

Right Analysis | Right Hooks | Right Opinion Patriot Headlines | Grassroots Commentary Daily Digest October 2, 2015    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, 1781 FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS Obama's 'Gun Violence' Pivot Point By Mark Alexander On Thursday evening, Barack Obama interrupted the East Coast primetime news hour with a 15 minute press conference. Obama called the conference to acknowledge the death of six American military personnel, who were killed when an Air Force C-130 crashed in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, three hours before his press conference. Except that's not actually why he called the press conference — in fact, their commander in chief didn't even mention them from the podium. Instead, Obama did what Democrats do every time there's an opportunity to assail the Second Amendment with an emotionally charged appeal on the blood of innocents. That's right. In a crass pivot away from the catastrophic crisis he created in the Middle East, which we learned Wednesday is now putting American and Russian fighter pilots on a collision course for direct confrontation, Obama preempted the primetime news to address the tragic murder of 10 adult students at a Roseburg, Oregon, community college, and the wounding of seven others. Saying "We should politicize this," Obama devoted only 80 of his 1,306 word diatribe to the families of those murdered. That would be 6% of his message. His other 1,226 words were about his political gun control agenda and the need for more firearm regulation. He did not mention what law he wanted to add to the more than 10,000 currently on the federal and state books, but he did mention needing "states and legislatures" on board, which sounded a bit like he was calling for some revision of our Constitution. According to early accounts, the Oregon assailant targeted Christians for execution, but Obama did not mention that either. Moments after Obama's remarks, Steve Hayes, senior editor for The Weekly Standard, boldly expressed my own sentiments: "[Obama] has had an avalanche of bad news over the past 36 hours and I think he is using this shooting to get out from under it. ... He's the one that said we should 'politicize' this. Well he did. He's distracting attention from his other problems." Indeed, he disgracefully did just that. Most of the media talkingheads noted variations on this theme: "Obama is passionate about this issue." No, Obama and his Leftist NeoCom cadres are passionate about increasing the power of the state, and the biggest obstacle to subordinating the American people to this statist agenda is the Second Amendment. When they say "commonsense gun laws" they mean "gun confiscation laws." The inconvenient truth about guns is, as the number of legally owned guns has increased, violent crime has decreased, according to the FBI's statistics — continuing a 12-year decline. Of course, in those states and cities with the most restrictive gun laws, violent crime is thriving. In Obama's adopted hometown of Chicago, almost 3,000 people have been murdered since Obama took office — and almost all of those murders were related to gang violence. However, Chicago ranks high among those cities with the most restrictive gun laws in the nation. Likewise, Oregon has universal background checks, and Umpqua Community College was the latest of "gun free zones" where victims are prohibited from the most effective means of self defense. In his parting remarks, Obama said, "[T]ally up the number of Americans who’ve been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade and the number of Americans who’ve been killed by gun violence, and post those side-by-side." He lamented the fact that we spend so much on counterterrorism efforts. But if Obama really wants to "tally up some numbers," how about starting with the fact that in five states alone (Arizona, California, Florida, New York and Texas), more than 5,400 people have been murdered by illegal aliens. That is more than all Americans killed defending our nation against terrorism in both Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Or maybe Obama would like to post a comparison with the 327,000 children who are killed on abortion tables every year, 900 of whom died just yesterday. For the record, “The ultimate authority … resides in the people alone. ... [T]he advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation … forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any.” —James Madison (1788) Comment | Share TOP RIGHT HOOKS Russia Creates Coalition to Back Assad Regime Where is America's moral high ground now? The Obama administration justified its abandonment of Iraq by saying the young government had to solve the problem of the Islamic State on its own. And that's exactly what it's trying to do. Reuters reports the country has aligned itself with the coalition that has sprung up to support Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria — a coalition that includes Russia, Lebanon, Hezbollah and Iran. While the U.S. worried terrorism would fill the void Barack Obama's weak leadership created, it was a stronger leader that ultimately took America's place — Russian President Vladimir Putin. The not-exactly-American-friendly coalition is preparing for a ground campaign against the rebels — some armed with U.S. weapons — backed with Russian airpower. Obama won't admit it, but Moscow's interests are different than American interests. While the U.S. would like the Great Bear to strike the Islamic State, Russian aircraft struck rebel areas that threatened Assad strongholds. So far, the Obama administration's response is to complain about Russia's "indiscriminate military operations against the Syrian opposition," per Obama spokesman Josh Earnest. Don't they understand this is no longer just about "degrading and ultimately destroying" the Islamic State? No, the long arc of history doesn't naturally bend toward peace and justice. The "international community" doesn't just iron out its differences to stop evil. Putin the Machiavel just swept over Obama's hope-for-change foreign policy. Comment | Share September Jobs Report Hit With Autumn Chill The U.S. needs to add more than 150,000 jobs per month just to keep pace with population growth. So September's number — 142,000 jobs — was not only below expectations but below what we need just to tread water. It also follows August's terrible report of 136,000 jobs added (revised down from 173,000), making for the worst back-to-back numbers in three years. But in the last two years, just seven months have cracked 250,000 jobs created. It seems the only number going up these days is the number of Americans leaving the workforce entirely — another 350,000 gave up in September, and a record 94.61 million Americans are not working. The labor participation rate fell to 62.4%, the lowest since October 1977. When you read that the unemployment rate held steady at 5.1%, remember low participation is the biggest reason why. And Barack Obama has 16 months remaining in office. Comment | Share House Probing Group That Wants Climate Dissenters Imprisoned Exactly one month ago, 20 scientific researchers with the Institute of Global Environment and Society penned an open letter calling on the White House to prosecute global warming skeptics under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. That letter, which appeared on the institution's website, went strangely missing this week — likely in response to severe criticism, and not just from the Right. The authors are now probably wishing they hadn't written anything at all. The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology launched a probe into IGES after it was revealed the institution is heavily taxpayer-subsidized. And Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the committee, wants to get to the bottom of it. In his own letter to IGES President Jagadish Shukla, Smith writes, "IGES appears to be almost fully funded by taxpayer money while simultaneously participating in partisan political activity by requesting a RICO investigation of companies and organizations that disagree with the Obama Administration on climate change. In fact, IGES has reportedly received $63 million from taxpayers since 2001, comprising over 98% of its total revenue during that time." And since "IGES's recent decision to remove documents from its website raises concerns that additional information vital to the Committee's investigation may not be preserved," Smith outlined steps Shukla should follow "so that a full and complete record of relevant communications can be produced." Talk about a backfire. Comment | Share Share MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE ANALYSIS: EPA Smog Rules Will Hit Hard, Offer Little Benefit More Cuts Coming to Military Budget McConnell Broke Senate Tradition to Stifle Cruz Illegal Alien Crime by the Numbers The Most Powerful UN Speech You'll Ever Hear BEST OF RIGHT OPINION Charles Krauthammer: Obama's Syria Debacle Michelle Malkin: The Baby Butchers and Their Media Butchers Arnold Ahlert: Navy Secretary Dismisses Risks to Women in Combat For more, visit Right Opinion. TOP HEADLINES Republicans Try to Clean Up McCarthy's Benghazi Mess Two Found Guilty in Murder of Border Agent Brian Terry Netanyahu Glares at UN for 45 Seconds to Underline Its 'Deafening Silence' For more, visit Patriot Headline Report OPINION IN BRIEF Charles Krauthammer: "Why is Putin moving so quickly and so brazenly? Because he’s got only 16 more months to push on the open door that is Obama. He knows he’ll never again see an American president such as this — one who once told the General Assembly that 'no one nation can or should try to dominate another nation' and told it again last Monday of 'believing in my core that we, the nations of the world, cannot return to the old ways of conflict and coercion.' They cannot? Has he looked at the world around him — from Homs to Kunduz, from Sanaa to Donetsk — ablaze with conflict and coercion? Wouldn’t you take advantage of these last 16 months if you were Putin, facing a man living in a faculty-lounge fantasy world? Where was Obama when Putin began bombing Syria? Leading a U.N. meeting on countering violent extremism. Seminar to follow." Comment | Share SHORT CUTS Insight: "Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. ... Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims." —Ayn Rand (1905-1982) Upright: "If the reports are correct, men and women [in Oregon] declared their faith and died for it. That is the classic definition of a martyr, and may their families be comforted by the words of the Savior: 'Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven.'" —David French on the Oregon shooting Observations: "Perhaps instead of the President politicizing the deaths of around a dozen Americans, killed for professing their religion, he should first answer a simple question: why are there more mass shootings like this under his watch than under George W. Bush’s watch? I really don’t think the man presiding over a cultural suicide should really be the man who leads on this issue, particularly when his 'common sense gun control' policy solutions would not have stopped this tragedy." —Erick Erickson Gun grabbers: "[T]he Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment. And I am going to make that case every chance I get.” —Hillary Clinton Village Idiots: "It is just beyond my comprehension that we are seeing these mass murders happen again and again and again. And as I have said, we have got to get the political will to do everything we can keep people safe. I know there is a way to have sensible gun control measures that help prevent violence, prevent guns from getting into the wrong hands and save live. I am committed to doing everything I can do accomplish that." —Hillary Clinton Non Sequitur Award: "The Second Amendment doesn’t say you can own a bazooka, it doesn’t say you can own an F-15 with hellfire missiles. There’s the ability of government to limit the type of weapon that is available.” —Joe "Double-Barrel Shotgun" Biden (And what does it say about abortion or marriage? Dezinformatsia, part I: "[Barack Obama] was embarrassed of the United States in front of the world saying every other industrialized country, every other Western country, they don't have these kinds of mass shootings every few weeks as we have here in the United States.” —CNN's Wolf Blitzer (What Obama should be embarrassed of is leftist ideology and policies that foster this carnage.) Dezinformatsia, part II: "I'm politicizing the hell out of this and I don't care.” —liberal commentator Charles Pierce on the Oregon shooting Late-night humor: "NSA leaker Edward Snowden joined Twitter yesterday, and immediately got more followers than the NSA. Which raises an interesting question: Who’s following the NSA on Twitter?" —Jimmy Fallon Comment | Share Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis! Managing Editor Nate Jackson 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.