THE FOUNDATION
“To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude that the fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace; and that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquillity would be to calculate on the weaker springs of human character.” –Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 34, 1788
TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS
MIT professor and ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber is testifying before Congress today regarding his comments about “stupid voters” and the deception Democrats employed to cram through the “Affordable” Care Act. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) slammed Gruber, though mainly for exposing Democrats' methods. He decided to discredit Gruber: “As far as I can tell, we are here today to beat up on Jonathan Gruber for stupid – I mean absolutely stupid – comments he made over the last few years. Let me be clear, I am extremely frustrated with Dr. Gruber’s statements. They were irresponsibly, incredibly disrespectful, and did not reflect reality. And they were indeed insulting.” Cummings then denied having anything to do with deceiving Americans: “I was in Congress when this law was debated, and Dr. Gruber does not speak for me, or the chairman of the other committees who worked tirelessly on this bill. We debated this legislation for nearly a year before it was finally passed and signed by the president! Never once did I believe or did anyone suggest that we were somehow hiding our goals from the American people!” At least he can’t say so with righteous indignation, but we all know ObamaCare is the biggest of the BIG Lies foisted on this country. “But worst of all,” Cummings concluded, “Dr. Gruber’s statements gave Republicans a public relations gift in their relentless political campaign to tear down the ACA and eliminate health care for millions of Americans!” Gruber just spoke too candidly.
Barack Obama interviewed with Black Entertainment Television (BET) and addressed the furor that followed the recent decisions by two grand juries not to indict police officers Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo. The president said America has made significant progress when it comes to racism – then alluded to continued racist behavior among some communities. “We can’t equate what is happening now to what was happening 50 years ago,” he explained. “And if you talk to your parents, grandparents, uncles, they’ll tell you that things are better. Not good in some cases, but better.” Nevertheless, “When you’re dealing with something as deeply rooted as racism or bias in any society you’ve got to have vigilance but you have to recognize that it is going to take some time, and you just have to be steady.” If this is about racism, why did Eric Garner’s widow admit her husband’s death isn’t a “black and white thing”? According to a recent poll, if anyone is to blame for fanning the race card flame, it’s Obama. Bloomberg Politics reports, “[A] majority of Americans, 53 percent, say the interactions between the white and black communities have deteriorated since [Obama] took office.” More…
Barbie of the Left, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), told a group of Democrat donors in the Boston area that the subprime mortgage crisis unfairly “targeted” minority families looking to buy a home. She also lambasted what she saw as an unholy alliance between Wall Street and government, with people moving from – in leftist eyes – the evil corporate banks into government work, tainting the vaulted work of orchestrating plebeians' lives. Politico reports, “She ascribed some of the problem to a worsening climate of economic opportunity for African-Americans than existed even a decade ago, according to attendees. And she said that the mortgage crisis affected black and Hispanic families more heavily, describing those groups as being ‘targeted.’” Warren neglected to mention those subprime mortgages were created by the government – Democrats, in particular – and then the government forced banks to adopt risky lending practices as a way to encourage minority homeownership. So were minorities “targeted”? Absolutely. By Democrats. More…
The National Bureau of Economic Research is out with a new paper showing once again that raising the minimum wage has a high cost for workers. In October, Hillary Clinton summed up the Left’s argument that raising the minimum wage is a no-brainer: “[D]on’t let anybody tell you that raising the minimum wage will kill jobs. They always say that.” But what University of California, San Diego, researchers Jeffrey Clemens and Michael Wither found is this: “[B]inding minimum wage increases had significant, negative effects on the employment and income growth of targeted workers. … We also present evidence of the minimum wage’s effects on low-skilled workers' economic mobility. We find that binding minimum wage increases significantly reduced the likelihood that low-skilled workers rose to what we characterize as lower middle class earnings.” In other words, the minimum wage often has the opposite of the intended effect. No wonder the best argument liberals can come up with is “because we said so.” More…
It seems like Iran has the upper hand in the negotiations with world leaders over its nuclear program. First, the talks failed to bring a deal by the Nov. 24 deadline. During the negotiations, the Iranian diplomats shouted at Secretary of State John Kerry so violently that his bodyguards thought the “negotiations” would go beyond words. But as the talks failed, the countries at the table agreed to move the deadline to June 30. And according to Kerry, a former peace protester, diplomats will be joining hands, singing Kum Ba Ya within a few months time. But that’s not what Iran has been indicating. It has shopped for materials to build a heavy-water reactor that could make weapons-grade plutonium. And while the U.S. announced Iran made concessions, Iran publicly corrected the White House. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told his state-run media, “Of course we bypass sanctions. We are proud that we bypass sanctions because the sanctions are illegal.” By these indications, it seems like Kerry can add the Iranian nuclear talks as a smashing failure to his résumé.
For more, visit Right Hooks.
Playing Catch-Up
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RIGHT ANALYSIS
This is why interrogation is necessaryThe Senate Intelligence Committee will release a report today detailing the CIA’s use of what those on the Left call torture – otherwise known as enhanced interrogation techniques used against several members of al-Qaida during the Bush administration. The 6,000-page report (with a 500-page executive summary) took more than five years and $40 million to produce, and it’s sure to spark much debate for weeks to come.
Did we mention the release is conveniently timed to obscure today’s congressional testimony from ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber? As Democrats might say, “Gee, was that today?”
In 2009, Barack Obama deliberately undermined the CIA and ordered a stop to the techniques used to gather intelligence from three key members of al-Qaida. As Mark Alexander noted at the time, “Intelligence gathered from these detainees, particularly KSM Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, saved American lives and property – especially information that thwarted planned attacks on Los Angeles and New York, as well as actionable intelligence that led to the arrest of an al-Qa'ida cell in the U.S. and the capture or death of a succession of al-Qa'ida principals in the Middle East and Africa.”
By the way, Osama bin Laden is dead thanks to information obtained through enhanced interrogation. Obama likes to spike the football on that one, while repudiating the techniques that made it possible.
The president and his fellow NeoComs say that even though waterboarding and other enhanced techniques worked, they are just too inhumane, too evil. The president said in August, “We tortured some folks.” He further lectured, “When we engaged in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques, techniques that I believe and I think any fair-minded person would believe were torture, we crossed a line. And that needs to be understood and accepted.”
So let’s get this straight: Obama simply kills terrorists with drones rather than try to gather intelligence by interrogating them. His Iraq policy failure was driven by 2012 electoral politics and gave rise to the Islamic State. And yet he now wants us to believe he has credibility regarding what intelligence operations are good or bad for America.
CIA operatives did what was asked of them and what was necessary to gather actionable intelligence. Rather than give praise to these and other Patriots who have helped keep America safe, however, this president, with his rhetoric and policies, is choosing once again to knock America down a few pegs.
Secretary of State John Kerry anticipated outrage from terrorist organizations that could lead to an increase in atrocities overseas, and he personally phoned the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Diane Feinstein, asking that she “delay the imminent release of her committee’s report.” To be sure, Kerry “still supports releasing the report, just not right now.”
Intelligence officials and Republicans in Congress are concerned for the safety of U.S. personnel and facilities overseas. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden warned of the report’s questionable content and its betrayal of our overseas intelligence partners: “This report will lead to a … CIA that is timid and friendless, and that is a very dangerous situation.”
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said releasing the report “is a terrible idea.” He added, “Foreign leaders have approached the government and said, ‘You do this, this will cause violence and deaths.’ Our own intelligence community has assessed that this will cause violence and deaths.”
Feinstein is undeterred. She praised the “societal and constitutional values that we are very proud of,” while contesting, “Anybody who reads this is going to never let this happen again.”
Far from such high-minded concerns, she knows it wouldn’t see the light of day once she’s demoted from being chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. And, not uncommon with leftists, she would rather see her years of political work in the headlines than be concerned about the lives of U.S. personnel overseas.
Although many of the specifics of the soon-to-be released report are unknown, they are controversial enough to bring former President George W. Bush out of his deliberately chosen quiet retirement. During an interview on Sunday, he made it clear he was fully behind the actions of the CIA: “These are patriots. Whatever the report says, if it diminishes their contributions to our country, it is way off base.”
Retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had some choice words regarding the release of the report as well. He stated, “I’m not sure how much in the way of so-called new material might be forthcoming, but what the report does say … is that there was no actionable intelligence gathered through the process of interrogation of these terrorists. That’s wrong. It’s simply just not true.”
According to Jose Rodriguez, former CIA national clandestine service director, “We got a lot of information from the detainees that eventually led us to bin Laden. And that is a fact. … There was someone we captured in 2004, who told us about bin Laden’s courier, and gave us his pseudonym.”
Recall if you will that it was Rodriguez who destroyed interrogation tapes in order to protect CIA case officers, methods and sources – and that’s what got Feinstein on a roll.
To cap off the idiocy that comes out of this administration, Press Secretary Josh Earnest declared during a press briefing Monday, “Even if enhanced interrogations did help find bin Laden, it wasn’t worth the damage that it did to the U.S.” Excuse us Mr. Earnest, but what would the damage to the U.S. had been if we had not used enhanced interrogations to help find bin Laden and other terrorists?
This report was written by Democrats for the sole purpose of damaging the Bush administration and America. The release will embolden our enemies. And it’s shameful.
America is being roiled by racial huckstering. Huckstering that would be all but impossible absent the avalanche of mainstream media malfeasance that aids and abets it.
Such malfeasance is nothing new. In 1991, when Los Angeles TV station KTLA received what is arguably the nation’s first viral video of police beating Rodney King, they edited out the first few seconds showing King charging the officers. KTLA shared the video with CNN, which distributed it to networks that played it over and over. Virtually everyone used the same edit. Thus when the four officers involved were acquitted of assault – based in large part on King’s actions – people were infuriated. So infuriated they engendered three days of utter mayhem that killed 55 people, injured almost 2,000, and led to 7,000 arrests. In addition there was nearly $1 billion in property damage that included nearly 4,000 buildings being set ablaze.
It didn’t matter that in a subsequent federal trial for violating King’s civil rights, two of the four officers were found guilty and served prison time. The damage was done – and the media never accepted an iota of culpability for it.
The treatment the media afforded George Zimmerman proves they’ve sunk even lower. It began when one of their own, MSNBC’s Al Sharpton, a tax-evading, hoax perpetrating, Harlem riot instigating, racial arsonist of the first order turned Zimmerman’s shooting of black teen Trayvon Martin into yet another utterly misguided and erroneous national referendum on black/white race relations. Erroneous because Zimmerman was of Hispanic descent. That “problem” was “solved” by both CNN and The New York Times, which referred to Zimmerman as a “white Hispanic.” At least they got it half right. The AP, CBS News and the Martin family lawyer – appearing on Sharpton’s show – referred to Zimmerman as white.
Soon after, the media malfeasance reached gargantuan heights. NBC edited Zimmerman’s phone exchange with a 911 operator to make him sound racist. CNN suggested Zimmerman said “f–king coon” before it became apparent it was “f–king cold,” and the network was forced to walk back their “expert” audio analysis. ABC News showed video of Zimmerman’s head, but covered his lacerations with a chyron, even as they claimed he appeared uninjured.
None of it mattered. Zimmerman was acquitted. But that still wasn’t enough for much of the media that insisted the acquittal was due to Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, even though it was never presented as part of Zimmerman’s defense. Nor did it matter that the media’s despicable framing of the story led to a plethora of black-on-white violence by thugs using “payback for Trayvon” as their rationale.
One would think such media-engendered violence would cause those who report the “news” to be more diligent and careful. As Ferguson proves, the media were not only unrepentant but willing to double down on creating and collaborating with a racially charged narrative completely at odds with reality. As was the set-up with regard to Trayvon Martin, and the widely disseminated picture of him used to create the impression of innocence – despite the fact that it was three or four years old – “gentle giant” became the media catchphrase immediately associated with Michael Brown. In fact, the phrase was so ingrained that many people, including U.S. Attorney General and Sharpton-admirer Eric Holder, became indignant when Ferguson police released the video showing Brown participating in a strong-arm robbery just prior to his fatal encounter with Police Officer Darren Wilson.
That particular bit of reality became even more problematic when the media’s “star witness,” Dorian Johnson, not only confessed to being Brown’s accomplice in the robbery, but was subsequently revealed by irrefutable physical and eyewitness evidence to be lying when heinsisted Brown was shot in the back with his hands up. CNN tried to debunk the video, which was bad enough. But the media’s lionization of Johnson perpetrated the “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” meme that was an utter lie, and yet made it to the NFL field and the very floor of Congress.
With regard to Eric Garner, the media are once again attempting to keep the racialist angle front and center. And like the Rodney King case, the omission of critical information drives the agenda. One can have legitimately differing opinions about the grand jury’s decision not to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the death of Garner, along with the proper or improper training of the police, Garner’s own culpability in resisting arrest, and even the absurdity of a cigarette tax so high that selling “loosies” becomes a viable, if illegal, enterprise.
What there is no question about is the reality that race was not part of the equation here. The reason we know that is because black business owners called the police to report Garner’s disturbance, while a black NYPD Police Sergeant named Kizzy Adoni oversaw Garner’s arrest and apparently did nothing to stop the officers participating in his takedown.
Again, one would think this information, which might go a long way toward defusing Sharpton and his equally contemptible race-baiting colleagues, would be widely disseminated. And again, one would be wrong. New York’s PIX11 mentioned Adoni back in July, but only in regard to a police report on Garner’s arrest. Her race was never revealed. Only Denis Hamill of the Daily Newsrevealed that reality, even as he admitted the Garner arrest “can’t be called a racial incident” as a result. Several different Google searches reveal other third tier news outlets disseminating the info, but all of them source Hamill.
Hence we have an effective blackout.
And the bet here is most Americans know why. The same media with a decades-long investment in a race-bating, progressive worldview isn’t about to let go. And if Americans must endure everything from misguided protests based on lies, to widespread mayhem and murder precipitated by the withholding of critical information, so be it. The racialist narrative must be served – without reservation or remorse.
It won’t last. A Gallup report released Sept. 17, 2014, reveals public trust in the media has tied its all-time low of 40%. Coupled with the advance of streaming technology and alternative media sources, it won’t be long before our dinosaur establishment media faces the ultimate choice: become accurate, or irrelevant. Decent Americans of every ethnicity, who yearn for genuine truth and justice, won’t have it any other way.
For more, visit Right Analysis.
TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
For more, visit Right Opinion.
OPINION IN BRIEF
Economist Ludwig Von Mises (1881-1973): “The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. The history of the West, from the age of the Greek polis down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders.”
Columnist Thomas Sowell: “Every society has orders and rules, but not every society has the rule of law – ‘a government of laws and not of men.’ Nor was it easy to achieve even an approximation of the rule of law. It took centuries of struggle – and lives risked and sacrificed – to achieve it in those countries which have some approximation of it today. To just throw all of that overboard because of mobs, the media or racial demagoguery is staggering. A generation that jumps to conclusions on the basis of its own emotions, or succumbs to the passions or rhetoric of others, deserves to lose the freedom that depends on the rule of law. Unfortunately, what they say and what they do can lose everyone’s freedom, including the freedom of generations yet unborn. If grand juries are supposed to vote on the basis of what mobs want, instead of on the basis of the evidence that they see – and which the mob doesn’t even want to see – then we forfeit the rule of law and our freedom that depends on it.”
Columnist Arnold Ahlert: “From the racialized mayhem in Ferguson and beyond, to the sexualized mayhem ostensibly rampant on our college campuses, the nation is witness to a common theme: the truth is ‘not important’ if it creates a ‘conflict of interest’ with the progressive agenda. Fortunately, it is an agenda increasingly defined by its desperation, and the plethora of lies and unfounded allegations it needs to sustain the all-important narrative necessary for its survival. The racial component of that narrative was dealt yet another blow Sunday when Eric Garner’s widow, Esaw Snipes, insisted the death of her husband wasn’t ‘a black-and-white thing,’ seriously undercutting the efforts of racial arsonists like Al Sharpton, Eric Holder and President Barack Obama who insists racism and bias remain ‘deeply rooted’ in American society. Baloney. It remains deeply rooted in a progressive agenda on the verge of complete collapse.”
Comedian Argus Hamilton: “House Republicans threatened to shut down the U.S. government over Obama’s executive order Friday. That’d be catastrophic. Roads won’t be repaired, home loans won’t get approved, and bureaucrats won’t be reachable by phone, and that’s if we can get the government up and running again.”
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.
Students at one northern California high school are learning more than just the birds and the bees.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., a leading opponent of President Obama’s move to provide amnesty for up to 5 million illegal immigrants, expressed astonishment Monday and ridiculed the administration for not carrying out the action through an executive order.
