THE FOUNDATION
“Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. … A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.” –George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796
TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS
It just doesn’t stop. Another video of MIT professor and ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber is out. This time, he explains that Barack Obama sought Gruber’s assistance telling lies to obfuscate their so-called Cadillac tax on premium health plans: “The problem is it’s a political nightmare, and people say, ‘No, you can’t tax my benefits.’ … So what we did a lot in that room was think a lot about, well, how could we make this work? … And [Obama] is really a realistic guy. He was like, ‘Look, I can’t just do this.’ He said, ‘It’s just not going to happen politically. The bill will not pass. How do we manage to get there through phase-ins and other things?’ And we talked about it. He was just very interested in that topic.” And that’s just part of how Gruber managed to rake in nearly $6 million doling out health care policy advice – often specifically to Barack Obama. Not bad for a guy who Obama says was “never on our staff” and had a bunch of opinions “that I completely disagree with.” Where do we sign up for that gig?
National Journal writer Ron Fournier has long been a supporter of ObamaCare. But Jonathan Gruber’s inconvenient disclosures have made Fournier almost see a ray of light. “The problem is the central attribute you have to have as any leader, in any walk of life and certainly in government is trust,” Fournier said. “This president has destroyed the credibility of his administration himself and government itself.” We couldn’t have said it better. And for Fournier and his cohorts, that’s a huge problem – because they want Big Government to have credibility. “In the long run, as somebody who would like to see this bill work, I think they have really undermined it,” he added. “And it’s going to be harder to defend it.” Lies do have a tendency to reduce trust.
It’s cold outside, but the streets in Ferguson, Missouri, may be about to heat up. The Washington Times reports, “Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard in advance of a grand jury decision about whether a white police officer will be charged in the fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson. … The St. Louis County prosecutor has said he expects the grand jury to reach a decision in mid-to-late November.” We have surmised they’re waiting for cold weather before exonerating Officer Darren Wilson because frigid temperatures may help keep protesters off the streets. That said, protesters are better organized now than rioters were in August. Perhaps that’s because, as Al Sharpton recounted, Barack Obama met with them and encouraged them to “stay on course.”
The White House believes the Republican majority in Congress cannot stop Barack Obama from enacting his sweeping environmental policies. Soon, the Obama administration will pass new ozone regulations, politic with the international community to create a global treaty in response to climate change, and renew his attack on the coal industry. John Podesta, a White House counselor, boasted to reporters, “I believe the president will complete actions. It is a top priority of his and I don’t believe they can stop us. Notwithstanding Sen. [Mitch] McConnell making this a top priority to leave the status quo, to leave the air dirtier.” He also forgot to mention that McConnell hates puppies. While Republicans have the majority, they don’t have a veto-proofmajority. They can’t defund the EPA without starting a roaring fight on Capitol Hill that may end up shutting the government down. At least in the short term, Obama continues unchecked.More…
Barack Obama played the nuclear option against his military advisers. Sending U.S. troops to Iraq is still not in Obama’s playbook and he publicly contradicts his military advisers who want to keep the strategy open. Well, there is one scenario where Obama would send troops: if ISIL got its hands on a nuclear bomb. “There are always circumstances in which the United States might need to deploy U.S. ground troops,” Obama said. If we discover that ISIL had gotten possession of a nuclear weapon … then yes, you can anticipate that not only would Chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin] Dempsey recommend me sending U.S. ground troops to get that weapon out of their hands, but I would order it.“ That red line doesn’t extend to chemical weapons, apparently, and Obama is content to lead a waffling, less-than superpower. As Mitt Romney saidabout sending U.S. troops to the region, "You don’t take that as a source of our strength from the battlefield.”
For more, visit Right Hooks.
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RIGHT ANALYSIS
The Department of Veterans Affairs is making progress in reducing the number of veterans who have been waiting longest for care, according to James Hutton, a VA spokesman. Long-term wait-lists have been reduced by 57%, but the news isn’t all good. More than 600,000 veterans, 10% of all VA patients, still wait over a month for appointments at VA clinics and hospitals, according to a report by USA Today.
VA Secretary Robert McDonald, who took over the embattled department at the end of July, has been working overtime to get the VA back on track. Frequently crisscrossing the country to visit facilities and speak with VA administrators and veterans, McDonald discovered there is much left to do to raise the level of veterans' care to where it should be.
Since the wait-list scandal exploded earlier this year – revealing the outrageous fact that veterans were waiting in some cases more than a year to receive care – the department has dropped the number of chronic wait-times from 120,000 in May to 23,000 in October. The kicker is that a substantial amount of those veterans seeking care obtained it from private providers outside the VA system.
Some VA facilities still have long wait times, with 64 of them having average wait times of more than 60 days for new patients. Major facilities like Baltimore, Atlanta and Jacksonville each have at least 30,000 pending appointments. An additional 33 facilities have a two-month wait for new patients seeking mental health appointments.
McDonald announced a restructuring plan on Nov. 10, the day before Veterans Day. He wants to include a VA-wide customer service office, create new partnerships with private organizations that can help with the VA backlog, and take action to simplify the department’s structure. He is also seeking to expand the staff at VA hospitals.
McDonald is also moving to fire VA employees who do not meet the department’s values. “We are acting aggressively, expeditiously and consistent with the law,” he said. The VA has taken disciplinary action against 5,600 employees in the last year, but attempts to fire poor performers have been stymied by bureaucracy. VA executives who face the ax can appeal their firing with the Merit System Protections Board, which has a policy of addressing appeals within 120 days but has a significant backlog of cases stemming from last year’s government furlough. Two VA leaders – Deputy Chief Procurement Officer Susan Taylor and Dublin, Georgia, VA Director John Goldman – retired during the termination process with their pensions intact.
Restoring trust in the VA will be no easy task, and it won’t happen soon. The second largest government agency is home to the largest health care system in the country. McDonald doesn’t seem to be taking his job lightly. The former Procter and Gamble CEO is also a graduate of West Point, so there is at least hope that he is sincere in his efforts. The big question is whether he will get the congressional backing that he needs. The $17 billion bill Congress passed earlier this year included $360 million in employee bonuses that could have been better spent on our veterans. As long as there is a mentality by those in power in Washington to protect their own, veterans will suffer neglect.
Leftists are more concerned with who you are than what you do. And the U.S. Armed Forces has become a prime target for social engineers to advance their twisted cultural agenda through a manufactured gender-identity crisis.
Here are but two examples:
First, the ongoing debate regarding roles and standards for women in certain military specialties reflects the Left-driven trend of favoring identity over ability. At the behest of women-in-combat advocates, the Pentagon directed the services to assess the impact of opening male-only combat specialties to women.
Seeking empirical evidence in order to respond objectively, the Marine Corps provisionally opened its Infantry Officer Course to females last year. None of the applicants had made it beyond the first major hurdle – the Combat Endurance Test (a.k.a., Endurance Course) – until three completed it last month. Proponents' hopes were quickly dashed, however, when all three were dropped soon thereafter for failing to meet standards in subsequent events.
Similarly, the Army recently announced a pilot program at its grueling Ranger School to assess “whether and how to open combat arms military occupational specialties to women.” While the Army’s announcement protests that standards will not be altered to accommodate the females, they would do well to learn from the Marines' experience.
As females have repeatedly failed to meet combat-tested standards – validating the existing restrictions – advocates have shifted their argument from “you can’t exclude them just because of their gender” to “you can’t exclude them just because they can’t meet the standards … the standards aren’t ‘fair.’” Leftists always have to move the goalposts to meet their objectives.
Second, in a similar vein, leftist social engineers are working to enforce “tolerance” of gender-disorientation pathology in the Armed Forces. The military is forcing a combat pilot into retirement because he tried to stop two lesbians from making out on the dance floor at a formal ball. According to a lawsuit against the Army for throwing the pilot under the bus, the couple was kissing for long periods, taking off each other’s jackets and a scene was developing.
According to The Washington Times, “Lt. Col. Christopher Downey, who was once assigned to the White House and completed tours in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, ended up being convicted administratively of assaulting a soldier trying to videotape the kissing and grabbing. Col. Downey’s attorney, Richard Thompson … said Col. Downey’s commanding officer also convicted him of violating the directive that ended the ban on gays openly serving in the military. ‘It’s political correctness run wild,’ Mr. Thompson said. ‘Military rules do not apply to lesbian officers because of political correctness.’”
These sorts of activists and incidents place our national security at risk by elevating identity above accomplishment and actions. The contrast with Congresswoman-elect Mia Love’selection-night emphasis on substance and results, for example, is stark and highlights one of the fundamental differences between Right and Left.
For more, visit Right Analysis.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Serving on the National Highway Traffic Safety CommissionGoodbye to an old friend … who never met a stranger. Harold Coker devoted most of his 84 years to all that is good and right about our community, state and country. He was both an astute business and political leader, and his name remains synonymous with the conservative values of East Tennessee. His legacy is framed by the model of selfless leadership he demonstrated, as well as his devotion to family and faith. Our mutual friend, Sen. Bob Corker, noted, “Anyone who spent any time with him knew his favorite roles in life were being husband to Lill, father, grandfather and great-grandfather.” The Patriot Post team is grateful for Harold’s life, and extend our heartfelt condolences to his wife, Lill Coker, and his family. (Mrs. Coker was the subject of a 2012 column, “The Battle of Athens.”)
TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
For more, visit Right Opinion.
OPINION IN BRIEF
President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919): “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming.”
Economist Stephen Moore: “Japan is suffering another economic free fall. Following a second quarter GDP decline of an annualized 7.3 percent, this last quarter the economy in Tokyo sank again by another 1.6 percent. … There are lessons here for U.S. policymakers if they are paying attention. Japan’s economic plunge coincides with the disastrous blunder by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government to raise the nation’s sales tax from 5 percent to 8 percent starting in April. To offset the negative effects of the tax hike, the Japanese central bank has flooded the nation with paper money; the yen has subsequently fallen in value relative to the dollar. … The nation has massively increased government ‘infrastructure’ spending to try to bump up demand. … But the spending only exploded net government debt as a share of GDP, which is now above 140 percent. So to lower the debt, the Abe government enacted the tax hike on consumers, which has had the predictable effect of reducing family spending. … It wasn’t so long ago that American intellectuals were fawning all over Japan as the planet’s new economic superpower. … If anything good can come out of this calamity it is that other nations learn the lesson that Keynesianism is a fraud. So why does Washington keep trying it?”
Columnist Ed Feulner: “Ready to pay more for Internet access? Me neither. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what we can expect under the ‘net neutrality’ rules being pushed by President Obama. ‘Net neutrality’ may sound harmless, but there would be nothing neutral about this change. … In short, [broadband providers] can offer – and charge – what they want. That’s good for consumers, because it means that in order to compete, they’re always trying to win and keep customers by offering better, faster service at lower rates. … [N]et neutrality would mean more than a rate hike (which will naturally hit lower-income Americans the hardest). Coming under the FCC’s regulatory thumb would harm innovation and make broadband companies wary of investing in new ways to provide better, faster and cheaper service. … So let’s see: We’d pay more – for less. Sounds like a government plan, all right. Here’s a better idea: Leave ‘net neutrality’ junked on the shoulder of the information superhighway instead.”
Humorist Frank J. Fleming: “Why is the Gruber stuff shocking? Isn’t it wildly known progressives consider themselves geniuses and the public stupid?”
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.
By MIKE LEVINE, PIERRE THOMAS, JACK DATE and JACK CLOHERTY.
Well, those are some words. Fournier has been sounding this alarm for a while, positioning himself as a responsible and disappointed Washington scribe who would like such government experiments in taking over corners of our lives to succeed, but alas, Obamacare’s implementation and the administration’s incompetence have made it nearly impossible to defend this particular experiment. I’m not hating too hard. I appreciate anyone genuinely coming to this realization, though it would have been far more helpful while the passage of Obamacare was underway, and Fournier seems to have come to it good and hard. His words carry weight with people for whom mine would not (though, as I said, maybe they should, since people like me were able to foresee this instead of realizing it after the fact).
