Daily Digest
THE FOUNDATION
“Necessity, especially in politics, often occasions false hopes, false reasonings, and a system of measures, correspondingly erroneous.” –Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 35, 1788
TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS
Obama Is Campaigning for Republicans
To the chagrin of Democrats everywhere, Barack Obama recently said his policies were on this year’s ballot. Now the narcissist in chief has again placed himself front and center in this election. On Al Sharpton’s MSNBC show, he said of embattled Democrat senators, “The bottom line is, though, these are all folks who vote with me – they have supported my agenda in Congress.” Translation: A vote for those senators is a vote for Barack Obama. Never mind politicians like Alison Lundergan Grimes, who can’t even say if she voted for the man. Obama understands it’s all politics. “This isn’t about my feelings being hurt,” he continued. “These are folks who are strong allies and supporters of me. And I tell them, I said, ‘You know what, you do what you need to to win. I will be responsible for making sure that our voters turn up.’” Whose voters? Because Obama just gave Republicans the best fodder for a get-out-and-vote ad conservatives could ever hope for. More…
CDC Revises Guidelines for Treating Ebola
In response to the two nurses that contracted Ebola through Patent Zero, Thomas Eric Duncan, the Centers for Disease Control released new guidelines for health care workers on treating the disease. The Associated Press reports, “The new guidelines set a firmer standard, calling for full-body garb and hoods that protect workers' necks; setting rigorous rules for removal of equipment and disinfection of hands; and calling for a ‘site manager’ to supervise the putting on and taking off of equipment. They also call for health workers who may be involved in an Ebola patient’s care to repeatedly practice and demonstrate proficiency in donning and doffing gear – before ever being allowed near a patient.” This was all done without the stalwart leadership of the Ebola czar, Ron Klain, who was appointed Friday, but has yet to attend a single meeting on Ebola (he missed two meetings so far). Meanwhile, The Hill’s Kristina Wong points out the level of response over three sick people illustrate the U.S. is unprepared for a biologic attack, like a BioBomber.
Holder Isn’t Proud of One Aspect of His Legacy as AG
In an interview with CNN, outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder condemned former Obama cabinet member Leon Panetta for criticizing Holder’s sacred cow, Barack Obama. Holder said, “That’s not something that I would even consider doing.” But in the same interview, he lamented a big Obama failure – the inability to capitalize on the crisis of Sandy Hook to pass further gun control. Holder continued, “The thought that we could not translate that horror into reasonable – I mean, really reasonable gun safety measures that were supported by the vast majority of the American people is for me something that I take personally as a failure, and something that I think we as a society should take as a failure, a glaring failure, that I hope will ultimately be rectified.” Holder and Obama failed, at least in this instance, to undermine the Constitution. He hasn’t even left office yet, and Holder can’t help but have a running commentary on his legacy.
Gun Rights in New York Stripped for 35,000
New York’s SAFE Act is an anti-Second Amendment abomination that deserves to be repealed or struck down. More evidence of its faulty nature comes from, of all places, The New York Times, which reports, “A newly created database of New Yorkers deemed too mentally unstable to carry firearms has grown to roughly 34,500 names, a previously undisclosed figure that has raised concerns among some mental health advocates that too many people have been categorized as dangerous.” Naturally, Brian Malte, senior national policy director of the Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence, argues the ends justify the means, because if even one dangerous person loses their access to a gun, “that’s a good thing.” By design, the law took guns away from a whole lot of good citizens. The bad guys, who may be mentally unhinged themselves, will still have guns. More…
Law Would Force Wedding Chapel to Perform Same-Sex Weddings
The Alliance Defending Freedom had a busy week. First, it was the pastors in Houston. Now, ADF filed a federal suit against an Idaho town on behalf of a wedding chapel that was asked to perform a same-sex wedding ceremony. The town of Coeur d'Alene has a law on its books banning sexual orientation discrimination. However, the ordinance exempts religious entities. But here’s the kicker: The Hitching Post is a for-profit business, and owners Donald and Evelyn Knapp believe marriage to be between one man and one woman. The Knapps' lawyer, Jeremy Tedesco, told Fox News, “The other side insisted this would never happen – that pastors would not have to perform same-sex marriages. The reality is – it’s already happening.” And we have two examples of persecution in the name of “tolerance” in the last week. As Family Research Council president Tony Perkins says, “Remember when President Obama sat down and told ABC News that ‘churches and other faith institutions are still gonna be able to make determinations about what their sacraments are – what they recognize’? Neither does he.” More…
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For more, visit Right Hooks.
RIGHT ANALYSIS
Don’t Be Fooled: Obama’s Agenda for Amnesty Has Already Begun
It would be refreshing if the Obama administration would do something right on the issue of immigration. Unfortunately for America, some hopes never result in change. Lawlessness continues to dominate White House policy.
To be clear, Barack Obama continues to completely disregard Rule of Law when it comes to immigration. He has usurped authority in order to keep our borders open to whoever wants to enter. He has refused to pressure the agencies tasked with enforcing laws on immigration to find and deport those who are here illegally. He has not only allowed tens of thousands of children from Central America to be transported into America illegally, but he has then redistributed them to cities throughout the U.S.
Last month, we reported that Obama, at the request of several prominent Democrats, delayed action on immigration reform (read: amnesty) because too many congressional seats might be lost over the issue come November. For the moment, it’s on the backburner with the timer set to ring after the election. Yet the issue of immigration, specifically illegal immigration, is on the minds of voters who love this country enough to try and save it from a rogue administration bent on permanently changing the demographics of the nation in order to ensure a permanent Democrat voting bloc.
The president has every intention to move forward with his agenda of allowing illegal immigrants to flood the country. A new report highlights actions the Obama administration has already undertaken.
Recently, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) started soliciting bids for a contractor to produce nine million identification cards in one year – five million more than the annual requirement so as to meet a possible “surge” scenario of new immigrants. The new ID cards will consist of Permanent Residency Cards (also known as green cards) or Employment Authorization Documentation cards, which, according to the report, “have been used to implement President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.”
The request for so many new ID cards to accommodate the “surge” indicates Obama is planning executive action. But the immigration reform policies he wants to impose on the nation will be overwhelming for our struggling economy, as well as schools and medical facilities across the nation. This, however, is just part of the path to amnesty for illegals.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services also quietly announced last Friday that, as National Review’s Mark Krikorian puts it, “Certain illegal aliens from Honduras and Nicaragua are having their amnesty extended, and USCIS is establishing the ‘Haitian Family Reunification Parole Program.’” These illegal immigrants, estimated to number 90,000, have already had Temporary Protected Status since 1999, which was granted to them following Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Fifteen years of “Temporary Protected Status?” Sounds more like Permanent Protected Status, which is exactly what the new parole program will allow. It’s another frequently deployed deceitful Obama tactic – just change the meaning of words in order to accommodate the agenda.
To make matters worse, another recent report from the Center for Immigration Studies reveals, “[D]eportations from within the United States dropped 34 percent from last year and the number of criminal alien deportations declined by 23 percent.” Further, of the 900,000 immigrants who received a final order of removal, “167,000 are convicted criminals who were released by ICE.” Why aren’t the agencies tasked with enforcing the law on illegal immigration doing their job?
The answer is simple: When a president has an agenda to fundamentally transform America, he will do whatever it takes to accomplish it. He must be stopped. But who will stop him? The current Congress has done little because Democrats control the Senate, and they continue to appropriate money for Obama’s agenda. That must change on Election Day, or amnesty will steamroll ahead, to the peril of our already fragile Republic.
Mission Creep + Bureaucratic Failure = CDC, NIH
What do you get when a government entity created to address public health and responses to communicable disease operates outside its mission and purpose? What happens when an agency’s key leaders become more characteristic of an Ivy League professors' lounge than a highly responsive team of clinical medical professionals equipped with more than theory and unproven policy?
You get the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that’s “overseeing” the response to Ebola.
From the CDC’s own website, verbatim:
“CDC works 24/7 to protect America from health, safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S. Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are chronic or acute, curable or preventable, human error or deliberate attack, CDC fights disease and supports communities and citizens to do the same.
"CDC increases the health security of our nation. As the nation’s health protection agency, CDC saves lives and protects people from health threats. To accomplish our mission, CDC conducts critical science and provides health information that protects our nation against expensive and dangerous health threats, and responds when these arise.”
The CDC was birthed in 1946 out of a malaria outbreak in the U.S. and given a $1 million budget. Its personnel were devoted to mosquito-control and destruction of the insect’s habitat. In other words, the CDC was created to identify a public health problem, to develop a strategy to isolate, minimize and remove the cause of said problem, and to provide educational and health care research to treat and prevent such problems.
What has happened at this federal agency created to address public health and community safety related to the transmission of illness and disease?
Well, when the word “Prevention” was added to the agency’s moniker in 1992, the CDC’s mission expanded from killing the vector of malaria to managing venereal disease and tuberculosis, and then to disability, injury control and chronic illnesses like diabetes and heart disease. As easily observed, some of these are communicable through public exposure, and others happen due to accidents. But some are not communicable at all – they are instead a result of poor health choices.
Meanwhile, the CDC’s budget increased to $6.9 billion in 2014, an 8.2% increase from 2013, and most certainly a far cry from its early days operating on $1 million. So much for the Democrats' mantra that GOP budget cuts are to blame for the Ebola panic.
Now, America is faced with a true infectious disease issue that, while not easily contracted through incidental contact, does indeed involve a communicable pathogen that manifests its disease as hemorrhagic fever with a mortality rate of 50% to 70%.
But what exactly has the CDC’s ample taxpayer-funded budget included in recent years?
With its “Prevention and Public Health Fund” housed within Obama’s signature legislation, ObamaCare, the account has received in excess of $3 billion since 2010 to serve as a general fund for things like breastfeeding educational programs and neighborhood improvements such as sidewalk installation and streetlight placement.
And what about its mission to address infectious or communicable diseases?
It seems, according to its own financial reporting, just over 6% of that taxpayer funding made its way to the true scope of the CDC mission to address epidemiology and prevention programs.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is a CDC partner agency devoted to research and development within the Department of Health and Human Services. NIH Director Francis Collins blames budget woes for the lack of an Ebola vaccine: “Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would’ve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready.”
Would that Ebola vaccine have come before or after the agency blew through more than $39 million in its “priority” to understand why lesbians are obese? Or maybe a vaccine wasn’t quite as important as encouraging senior citizens to participate in choral groups, texting drunks at bars telling them they’ve reached their limit, or figuring out why getting dates is tough for fat girls. Oh, and then there was the spending on shoe insoles to track body weight and the study on origami condoms. We’re not making these up.
Both the CDC and the NIH have important roles in America’s public health and safety. Yet they are both examples of bureaucratic failure in meeting the demands and premise of their very existence. They have not met the challenge of the day due to their mission creep and lost scope of practice.
The Ebola virus infects its hosts' healthy cells where the replication of the deadly virus occurs in the hijacked normal, helpful cells. The virus grows, replicates and may ultimately kill, only because it overtakes the machinery of one’s body turning it into a dysfunctional mess.
Sounds eerily like the expansion of bureaucracies like the CDC and the NIH.
For more, visit Right Analysis.
TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
- Dennis Prager: The Media Are Much Scarier Than Ebola
- David Limbaugh: Criminalizing Innocent Christian Behavior
- Ed Feulner: Showing Proper ID Is a Fact of Life
- Joe Bastardi: Fossil-Fueled Fiction
- Burt Prelutsky: Politically Correct Insanity
For more, visit Right Opinion.
OPINION IN BRIEF
French writer Andre Gide (1869-1951): “Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”
Radio talk-show host Dennis Prager: “According to the World Health Organization, in 2012, 627,000 Africans died of a disease. But it wasn’t Ebola. It was malaria. Why no concern about that? Because malaria won’t touch anyone in the Western world, and therefore the media never mention it. The obsession with Ebola rather than malaria is First World narcissism. If Americans seek reasons to panic, at least two things rationally qualify: The Islamic State and all the other Muslim terror groups whose greatest desire is to murder and maim as many Americans as possible; and Iran on the verge of making a nuclear weapon. It would be a better world if the media were preoccupied with those two issues. But for two weeks, they have only mentioned the former in between reports on Ebola. And they almost never mention the latter. … For half a century, just about every health and social hysteria has been manufactured or abetted by these media, especially television news. That is why the media are so frightening. There doesn’t appear to be anything that they cannot persuade most people, in any country, to believe.”
Columnist David Limbaugh: “The left and militant gay movement are getting bolder and bolder, and too many Christians are stewing in their apathy. It seems that with each passing month, this senseless tyranny advances. … Why can’t same-sex couples who want to marry under the newly minted law find ministers who have no objection to the procedure? Are they seeking the vindication of their rights or trying to force their beliefs on other people to the point of compelling them to deny their own? … Many of us keep warning our fellow Christians (and other freedom lovers) that their apathy and refusal to fight for their rights in the public square is going to bite them where it hurts. Could it be that this, along with other disturbing developments around the country, will wake them up? We shall see.”
Twitter satirist @hale_razpr: “More Americans now have Ebola than the number of people fired for IRS targeting, Fast & Furious, and Benghazi … combined.”
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
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