THE FOUNDATION
“Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.” —Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richards Almanack, 1749
TOP RIGHT HOOKS
While Barack Obama’s amnesty actions are held up in court, the administration has argued Obama’s power grab is simply prosecutorial discretion and a prioritization of enforcement. Specifically, Obama’s Justice Department says it can “focus limited resources on higher priority aliens” who pose “threats to national security, border security, and public safety.” That’s a convenient lie, however, as revealed in a recent report from DHS Inspector General John Roth: “DHS uses prosecutorial discretion in deciding to what extent it will enforce immigration laws, including whether to place aliens in or take them out of the removal process. However, the Department does not collect and analyze data on the use of prosecutorial discretion to fully assess its current immigration enforcement activities and to develop future policy. … As a result, DHS may not be using its significant investment in immigration enforcement as efficiently as possible. The Department may also be missing opportunities to strengthen its ability to remove aliens who pose a threat to national security and public safety.”
In other words, DHS isn’t collecting the information needed to even assure that it’s doing what Obama claims is a “priority” — removing dangerous aliens. We’re pretty sure the Fifth Circuit Court would find this report relevant as it considers the legality of Obama’s actions. More…
On Friday, a Boston jury condemned Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers, to death by lethal injection for detonating his pressure-cooker bomb that killed four people. Now, the years of legal red tape begins — the appeals, the stays, the years of waiting. Death is the most just punishment society can mete out to this jihadi; life in prison wouldn’t have been enough. Since 1988, the federal government has sentenced 80 people to death, yet only three have received their penalty. Jazz Shaw at Hot Air notes, “But now, this very young terrorist will awaken each day and go to bed each night counting the days he has left, looking at a life far shorter than any his less heinous peers envision. Will the next appeal be approved? Will he be granted a stay? Can he hang on to precious life, no matter how lonely and morbid, for just a little longer before he faces the darkness of eternity?” Now, Tsarnaev’s defense team will test every procedure of the trial, trying to find a crack that will overturn his sentence. Boston.com says his defense will most likely make issue that the trial was not held outside Boston, and that some of the evidence was sealed for the sake of national security. More…
Using car bombs and suicide bombers, ISIL launched an attack Sunday that overran the Iraqi city of Ramadi, capital of the Anbar province and once home to 850,000 people. The Iraqi government was so desperate to hold the city that it called up Shiite militias backed by Iran, a move the Obama administration discourages because it heightens the chance of sectarian war. However, the Pentagon is spinning the defeat, saying the capture of Ramadi is little more than a propaganda victory for ISIL. Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said, “ISIL seems to have the advantage. They will use this for their own propaganda purposes, but it doesn’t give them a significant tactical advantage.” But Obama’s former ambassador to Iraq has a different take.James Jeffrey told Bloomberg, “It’s a desperate situation in Ramadi. … We can’t assume time is on our side. It isn’t. My feeling is something needs to happen quickly or we’re going to lose all of Anbar.” On Saturday, the Pentagon announced that U.S. Special Forces killed a senior ISIL leader who controlled the group’s moneymaking schemes. While the Pentagon is taking it on the chin for Obama’s failed military strategy, silent professionals are doing their jobs.
FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
By Robin Smith
In the case of hysterical leftists, their response to every crisis, real or manufactured, is to find the political angle that supports a statist or collectivist policy and begin the echo chamber of victimization and mass protest. The horrific Amtrak derailment is no exception.
First, the facts. Forensic examination of video footage from cameras mounted on the Amtrak passenger train shows that it inexplicably accelerated from 70 mph to 106 mph in the 65 seconds before the crash, all while heading into a turn with an authorized speed limit of 50 mph. This feat, according to Amtrak and the National Transportation Safety Board, should have been impossible due to the train’s design, which allows it to accelerate only via manual control.
Amtrak train No. 188 crashed due to the defiance of the laws of nature and, quite possibly, human error.
Oh, but ne'er a crisis should be lost as an opportunity to level political blame at those who demand accountability, transparency and results in government spending and programs.
After the Philadelphia Amtrak train met with calamity, the eight lives lost and the two hundred plus injured passengers were converted from tragic victims of a horrific accident to props in political theater.
A harsh statement? Well, let’s roll tape.
At a House Transportation Committee hearing Wednesday, only one day after the train wreck, Oregon Democrat Rep. Peter DeFazio was shown blasting Republicans who should be “cognizant of the real world out there, of what happened last night, of what the capital needs of Amtrak are, and will not engage in short-sighted budget cutting.”
Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) decried that a decision to block a $1 billion spending increase was directly responsible for the deadly incident and its victims: “Last night we failed them. We failed to invest in their safety.” This Democrat’s statement was made so early in the first responders' rescue and recovery phase that not all the victims had yet been cleared from the wreckage.
And Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) declared, “We don’t know the connection between funding and this incident, but regardless, Amtrak needs more funding.”
Presstitutes lined up to do their part, parroting the DNC-approved narrative that “mean Republicans wouldn’t increase spending by $1 billion as requested, so people died!” (Imagine that spoken in the most dramatic, angst-filled oratory to get the full intended effect.)
News accounts attempted to tie the House Appropriations vote to the absence of a high-tech safety system — the Positive Train Control (PTC) — that theoretically would govern the Philadelphia train and override any human error or mechanical failure that could cause such a dramatic and inappropriate increase in speed.
NTSB member Robert Sumwalt told reporters Wednesday evening, “Based on what we know right now, we feel that had such a system been installed in this section of track, this accident would not have occurred.” Leading the crash probe, Sumwalt was interviewed just hours after the House Appropriations Committee “voted down a Democratic amendment that would have offered $825 million for the technology known as positive train control,” according to Politico.
Ready for the fact-filled footage that didn’t make the edits?
The House Appropriations Committee only rejected a $1 billion increase, which would have almost doubled Amtrak’s annual budget from $1.4 billion to $2.4 billion. But, why, oh why, you ask, would there be any hesitation to approve such a massive increase in Amtrak spending?
According to its own records, Amtrak operated at a $1 billion loss in 2014 and $1.2 billion losses in 2012 and 2013. To Democrats and their presstitutes, billion-dollar losses each year merit more money to lose.
The NTSB showed its own reckless behavior in making erroneous and accusatory remarks. ThePTC safety system is in place on the very Amtrak line where this crash occurred. Why was this advanced safety system not operational? Government regulation, of course.
The PTC operates through wireless networks requiring Federal Communications Commission approval. FCC negotiations have been ongoing since 2011 to award Amtrak use to implement this system.
Ready to anticipate the next straw-man argument? Following an investigation by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the NTSB, the FBI and other agencies, should this awful catastrophe be proven the result of human error, the Democrats will only add to their talking points. Be ready.
In addition to the lie that funding kept the safety system from being installed, the new narrative around the train’s unsafe acceleration will be that Republicans are attacking the engineer for hishomosexual and pro-union activism. Funny, the only folks reporting this man’s personal life are the same ones who keep blaming funding for a system already in place but choked in Obamaland bureaucracy.
The Left rewrites the truth one social media hashtag at a time and cranking up the decibel of protest.
Mark Twain seems to capture the value Democrats place on veracity and our fellow American citizens: “Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”
TODAY AT PATRIOTPOST.US
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OPINION IN BRIEF
John Goodman: “Here is what everyone needs to understand. It doesn’t matter what teenagers earn in their first job. Whatever they earn, they will likely spend on fun and frolic. But the skills they learn — showing up for work on time, following orders, being respectful — are skills that will pay off for a lifetime. Meanwhile, employers are substituting capital for labor — including greater use of robots — just about everywhere in the labor market. For example, there is now a 14-arm, automated harvester that can wheel through rows of strawberry plants, distinguish the ripe from the unripe and pick the berries from the green leaves surrounding them. At $100,000, the robot is not cheap. But no one in Congress is insisting that farmers pay the robot more than it’s worth and there are no laws requiring farmers to provide the robot with Obamacare or other expensive benefits.”
SHORT CUTS
“I have witnessed five major wars in my lifetime, and I know how swiftly storm clouds can gather on a peaceful horizon. The next time a Saddam Hussein takes over Kuwait, or North Korea brandishes a nuclear weapon, will we be ready to respond? In the end, it all comes down to leadership, and that is what this country is looking for now.” —The Gipper
Demo-gogues: “Everything we’ve done over the past six years has been in pursuit of one overarching goal: creating opportunity for all. … What we’ve long understood is that some communities have consistently had the odds stacked against them. … That sense of unfairness and powerlessness has helped to fuel the kind of unrest that we’ve seen in places like Baltimore, Ferguson and New York.” —Barack Obama (Nothing says fairness like gang shootings.)
Non Compos Mentis: “I’ve been watching politics since [Dwight] Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and Obama is my favorite, favorite president. I am just thankful for every day that he’s in office. … I’ve never seen a Congress that has been so obstructive and so contrary and so committed to doing anything that will foul up this administration. I just think it’s an absolute scandal that he has had so little cooperation.” —singer/songwriter James Taylor
Village Idiots: “ISIL’s momentum has indeed been blunted, its ability to mass and maneuver forces degraded, its leadership cells pressured or eliminated, its command-and-control and supply lines severed.” —Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz, whose remark came as jihadists were overrunning Ramadi, Iraq
The BIG Lie: “Make no mistake: [Dzhokhar Tsarnaev] claimed to be acting on behalf of all Muslims. This was not a religious crime. And it certainly does not reflect true Muslim beliefs. It was a political crime, designed to intimidate and to coerce the United States.” —U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz, dismissing Tsarnaev’s jihad motives
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.
