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Patriot Headlines | Grassroots Commentary Mid-Day Digest
March 10, 2016
THE FOUNDATION"[H]e who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him." —Thomas Jefferson (1785)TOP RIGHT HOOKSClinton's Benghazi Lies Are Beyond Insulting
For days after the Sept. 11, 2012, attack, Barack Obama — in the midst of a re-election campaign — and his sidekick Clinton told the American public and the families of the four murdered men that the whole debacle was because of a YouTube video. All while Clinton emailed her daughter the same night it happened to say it was a terrorist attack. In a video clip aired during the debate, Pat Smith, mother of Sean Spicer, accused Clinton and the rest of the administration of misleading her about the events surrounding the death of her son. Clinton's defense? Admit nothing, deny everything, make counter allegations. "She's absolutely wrong," Clinton insisted. We can't overstate the chutzpah of the Clintons when it comes to the truth. She's on record, standing in the presence of the four flag-draped caskets as they came home, telling the families that their loved ones died because of a YouTube video: "We've seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with." Clinton dishonored herself further in last night's debate by mentioning the lives lost in the 9/11 attacks, the attacks on the embassies in Tanzania, Kenya and the bombing in Beirut. "At no other time were those tragedies ... politicized," Clinton complained. But when those attacks occurred, the leaders were not more interested in winning an election than ensuring the truth came out and justice was upheld. The only ones who politicized Benghazi were Obama and Clinton. Forget Clinton's dangerous habit of emailing classified information over her unsecured email system. Her response to the Benghazi attack alone should disqualify her from the Oval Office. Comment | Share Obama's Aversion to Funerals (If You're a Conservative...)
Obama has attended other former public officials' funerals, including those of Senators Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd and Daniel Inouye, Representative Tom Foley and South Carolina State Senator Clementa C. Pinckney. It's also worth noting that while he skipped Thatcher's funeral, he flew to Africa to witness Nelson Mandela's. Obviously a president can't attend every single funeral, and he shouldn't be expected to. But there is a clear and disconcerting pattern here. The officials whose burials Obama attended had one thing in common — they were all Democrats, and in Mandela's case he was a supporter of communism. On the contrary, Thatcher, Scalia and Reagan held strongly conservative ideals. Just before Scalia's death, Obama, speaking on his home turf in Springfield, Illinois, said "one of my few regrets is my inability to reduce the polarization and meanness in our politics." Whether it's intended or not, the message Obama conveys when he won't honor conservatives is that he believes polarization and partisanship don't matter. Comment | Share Rubio's (Perhaps) Fatal Mistake
In a word, his juvenile assault on Donald Trump. In the Feb. 25 debate, Rubio (and Ted Cruz) emptied both barrels on Trump, but it was Rubio who, for three days after the debate, gave Trump a dose of his own medicine, heaping cheap insults about Trump's spray tan, pants-wetting and joking about the implications of Donald's small hands. That led infamously to Trump telling us during a nationally televised presidential debate that there's "no problem" with the size of his, well, you know. The problem is, while Trump's supporters eat it up when their man goes all fifth-grade playground on his opponents, Rubio's did not. Nor should they; this is a contest for the presidency of the United States, not class clown. And Rubio knew it. "In terms of things that have to do with personal stuff, yeah, at the end of the day it's not something I'm entirely proud of," he conceded. "My kids were embarrassed by it, and if I had to do it again I wouldn't." That said, Rubio said his reason for attacking Trump was because "this time the stakes are not a worthless $36,000 degree at Trump University. The stakes are the greatest nation on earth." Of Trump, he added, "This is a guy that has basically offended everyone for a year. I mean literally has mocked a disabled journalist, a female journalist, every minority group imaginable on a daily basis. ... He's used profanity from the stage. That said, I don't want to be that. If that's what it takes to become president of the United States then I don't want to be president. I don't think that's what it takes to be president. In fact, I know it's not what it takes. It's not what we want from our next president and if I had to do it again I would have done that part differently." Comment | Share Don't Miss Alexander's ColumnRead Who Are the 'Establishment Republicans'? — until six months ago, the line distinguishing "establishment" and "conservative" was clear. What happened?If you'd like to receive Alexander's Column by email, update your subscription here. BEST OF RIGHT OPINION
FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSISProtectionism's Opposite EffectBy Allyne Caan
Theoretically, higher prices for foreign goods will increase demand for U.S. products and, consequently, create jobs here at home. Nice theory, but reality doesn't support it. Instead, protective tariffs have historically cost American jobs while inciting retaliatory tariffs by foreign powers and increasing consumer prices. Consider, for example, the tariff increase Barack Obama imposed on Chinese tires in 2009. While Chinese tire imports dropped by 30%, U.S. manufacturers didn't automatically pick up the slack. As Forbes reports, from 2009-2011, "30 percent more tires were imported from Canada; 110 percent more from South Korea; 44 percent more from Japan; 152 percent more from Indonesia; 154 percent more from Thailand; 117 percent more from Mexico and 285 percent more from low volume provider Taiwan." "But jobs were created," some will say. Perhaps, but there's more to that story. As National Review's Jim Geraghty writes, jobs in the tire manufacturing industry rose from 50,800 in September 2009 to 52,000 two years later, representing a $48 million increase in income and purchasing power. However, Geraghty notes, "the tariff also forced consumers to spend $1.1 billion more on tires than they otherwise would have — or roughly $900,000 per U.S. tire industry job created." Plus, in 2010, China slapped a tariff of its own on U.S. poultry imports, cutting our exports by $1 billion and slamming U.S. poultry companies. The steel industry offers another example of tariffs' unintended consequences. In 2002, the Bush administration imposed tariffs on certain imported steel. The goal? Save U.S. steelworker jobs. As economist Walter Williams explains, the tariffs pushed certain domestic steel prices up by as much as 40% and saved approximately 1,700 steelworker jobs. But at great cost — $800,000 per job, thanks to higher prices. Furthermore, steel-using industries, such as the auto industry, bore the brunt. Williams notes, "It is estimated that the steel tariffs caused at least 45,000 job losses in no fewer than 16 states, with over 19,000 jobs lost in California, 16,000 in Texas, and about 10,000 each in Ohio, Michigan and Illinois. In other words, industries that use steel were forced to pay higher prices, causing them to have to raise prices on what they produced. As a result, they became less competitive ... and thus had to lay off workers." Bottom line: The costs of protective tariffs far outweigh any perceived benefits. Furthermore, foreign-made goods shouldn't be Trump's primary concern; rather, he should look at Americans who buy imported goods. As Williams notes, "Donald Trump ... can simply ask the American people not to purchase from abroad. Tyrants would never buy that strategy. Tyrants do not trust free markets and what they imply, voluntary exchange, because people acting voluntarily might not do what the tyrant thinks they should do. That is why they favor compulsion in the forms of tariffs and quotas." Far from helping American workers, protective tariffs harm workers in the form of higher prices and lost jobs. We who understand that a free-market economy is best should reject government attempts to rig the market, because invariably, the die is cast in favor of some at the expense of others. For those who think protective tariffs affect only foreign economies and not the U.S. economy, and therefore are not domestic market manipulation, just remember steel and tires. Free markets are not a threat to American Liberty; they are essential to it. Comment | Share
MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE
TOP HEADLINES
 OPINION IN BRIEFVictor Davis Hanson: "The country is divided 50/50 on most hot-button issues, not 95/5 as it is so often on campus. Life after college is about hearing and tolerating views one doesn't agree with — not about shouting down dissenting viewpoints in adolescent fashion, or demanding to feel always reaffirmed rather than occasionally uncomfortable. Why make campuses exempt from realities commonly found elsewhere? Tech graduates will enter the workplace without guarantees of lifetime tenure at Google. There will be no 'safe spaces' for supervisors at GM or Ford where others of a different race cannot enter. Employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs or NASA cannot expect their complaints and accusations to proceed by suspending the due process and free-speech rights of the accused. No boss at Citibank will issue trigger warnings before ordering subordinates to work harder. Do not tell your supervisor at Comcast that his advice to pick up the pace was a microaggression. Try shouting down or otherwise disrupting a presenter of a new smart-phone product line whom you do not like and see what happens. Saving the campus from itself is not about doing much that is new or different. Instead, the challenge is simply forcing colleges that have gone rogue to grow up and to return to the rules and regulations that everyone else follows — and which they should have long ago abided by as well."Comment | Share SHORT CUTSInsight: "Force and reason — which last is the essence of the moral act — are at the two opposite poles. The one who compels his neighbor ... treats him, not as a being with reason, but as an animal in whom reason is not." —Auberon Herbert (1838-1906)Non-endorsement endorsement: "Planned Parenthood's Worst Enemy Just Endorsed Ted Cruz" —Think Progress headline Who needs the First Amendment anyway? "This matter [of holding climate skeptics liable] has been discussed. We have received information about it and have referred it to the FBI to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for which we could take action on." —Attorney General Loretta Lynch Great idea! Someone should get on that: "I think you should be able to take college credit courses when you're in high school." —John Kasich Getting testy: "Oh for goodness — [an indictment] is not going to happen. I am not even answering that question." —Hillary Clinton when asked if she would leave the race if indicted The BIG lie: "I am not a natural politician, in case you haven't noticed, like my husband or President Obama, so I have a view that I just have to do the best I can, get the results I can, make a difference in people's lives and hope that people see that I'm fighting for them and that I can improve conditions economically and other ways that will benefit them and their families." —Hillary Clinton, who made a similar statement in February Upright: "Hillary will shamelessly, blatantly, and egregiously lie whenever she needs to in order to avoid blame. Any voter who doesn't see that by now is hopelessly naïve." —Jim Geraghty And last... "We suppose [Sunday's] debate, which was held in Michigan, couldn't actually have hurt Sanders that much, seeing as how he did manage to win there when everyone expected him to lose. It's only a matter of time before somebody calls him piggish for upsetting Mrs. Clinton on International Women's Day." —James Taranto 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. |
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