Health care, wiretapping, Maddow and Hillary …

News briefs to start your day informed.

NO, HEALTH CARE IS NOT A RIGHT, even though we occasionally hear this from liberals, and socialists like Bernie Sanders. With all of the back and forth on the repeal and replacement of ObamaCare, it has again surfaced.

“Just because our rights are secured by government, it does not follow that they must be provided by government,” writes David Weinberger in The Federalist. When you consider the fact that nobody can be refused health care in an emergency, we possess it as a means to an end (the right to life), not as an end itself. If health care is a right, what about food as a human right, a home, transportation, a college education, and a decent wage?

AREN’T WE SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE THE NY TIMES? – The media is making a big deal out of President Trump’s Twitter accusation of former President Obama wiretapping Trump Tower. In the same paragraph of a Jan. 19, 2017 New York Times article, in which it stated that the FBI, NSA, CIA and the Treasury Department “found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing,” the article noted that “One official said intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the (Obama) White House.” Just what is the President Trump supposed to think? The White House has since backed off the charge, insisting that the president was speaking broadly about the Obama administration.

MEANWHILE, we now learn from the House Intelligence Committee that there is no evidence that Trump’s offices were wiretapped. Really? Now the media is looking for an apology from Trump. Yeah, like Obama apologized for his numerous lies to all of us over eight years. Like Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) apologized for his outrageous statements on the floor of the Senate, including his claim that Mitt Romney paid no taxes. No apology necessary, Mr. President, despite NBC’s demand.          

HOW ABOUT MSNBC’S RACHEL MADDOW? – It appears her obvious hatred of President Trump got the best of her and her colleagues, who thought that releasing two pages of the president’s 2005 tax return was surely the makings of media stardom, an Emmy and blockbuster ratings. The Prez learned what she planned to do and released his 2005 income and taxes paid before she went on air. The Twittersphere went wild as viewers were upset with Maddow’s unsubstantiated speculations regarding the president’s finances. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said it was Trump himself who leaked the tax form. Yeah, Joe.

Funny thing … most of the numbers were included in a Wall Street Journal piece on March 17, 2016.

TWO ‘HILLARIOUS’ STORIES SURFACE – Most of us already knew this, but the Wesleyan Media Project found that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign was without a doubt one of the worst-run political operations in years. The study also pointed to her failure to advertise until the final week in Wisconsin and Michigan, where Donald Trump had advertised for several weeks. “The study also concluded that her message was devoid of policy discussions,” according to Ian Miles Cheong, writing in Heatstreet, a Dow Jones blog.

THEN THERE WAS THIS INTERESTING EXPERIMENT – Two professors wanted to see what would happen if Hillary Clinton were a man and Donald Trump were a woman, so they cast actors to reenact a gender-swapped version of the presidential debates. “What happened next surprised everybody, “ Bre Payton wrote in The Federalist.

The actors began the project assuming that the gender inversion would confirm what they’d expected watching the real-life debates … that Donald Trump’s aggression – his tendency to interrupt and attack – would never be tolerated in a woman, and that Clinton’s competence and preparedness would seem even more convincing coming from a man.

The simplicity of Trump’s message became easier for people to hear when it was coming from a woman. Someone noted that the male Hillary Clinton was “really punchable” because of all the smiling. Someone else described the female Trump as the middle school principal who you didn’t like.