The Patriot Post Digest 6-22-2016

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The Patriot Post Digest 6-22-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Jun. 22, 2016

THE FOUNDATION

“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.” —Patrick Henry (1788.)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

GOP Seeks to Thread the 2A Needle1

After four gun measures failed in the Senate on Monday, several senators announced a compromise Tuesday on which they seek a vote Thursday. Essentially, this new bill bars individuals on the FBI’s “no-fly” and “selectee” (i.e., additional screening required) lists from purchasing firearms. People on the broader watch list at any point in the last five years could still buy guns, but the FBI would be notified.

“We are not finished with this war on terrorism,” said bill co-author Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ). “We want to help prevent future attacks while also protecting people’s constitutional rights. We feel like we thread the needle as best as we can.” However, the NRA and Gun Owners of America oppose the proposal for not doing enough to protect Second and Fifth Amendment rights.

So here’s the bottom line:

A horrific terrorist assault2 elevated this issue. The attack and how we deal with it should be about Islamist terrorism, not guns. But Democrats, as they always do, changed the subject to guns, so Republicans face a PR problem during a big election year. Unfortunately for the GOP, all most Americans are going to hear from the Democrats' Leftmedia super PAC is that “Republicans want terrorists to buy guns.” That’s nothing more than jackass braying, but a significant portion of the public will remember it.

Yet there does need to be clarity on the terrorist watch lists. How are people put on it? If wrongly so, how do they get off the list? What constitutes sufficient evidence, and which side has to provide it, for denying constitutional rights? Remember, these are people put on lists by bureaucrats; they have not been convicted of any crime. And we all know that bureaucrats can act in an arbitrary and capricious manner. The compromise bill puts the “burden of proof” on the attorney general, but that doesn’t ease all concern. Republicans have so far outmaneuvered Democrats3 and are trying to keep the focus on terrorism. After all, France has some pretty tough gun control laws that didn’t save a single life in Paris last year.

Note: Contact your U.S. senators today4.

Russian Hackers Infiltrated Clinton Foundation Computers5

The Russian government obviously thinks understanding the inner workings of the Clinton Foundation is one of the keys to understanding — and potentially manipulating — Hillary Clinton. Russian hackers have been busy this season in American politics. For at least seven months, they’ve been targeting about 4,000 people and organizations involved with American politics. The Clinton Foundation6 is essentially the who’s who of people who attempted to influence the Clinton machine with wads of cash and revelations disclosed from leaked documents could further implicate Clinton in corruption. At very least, it shows how embarrassingly amateur it was to keep the secret communications of a secretary of state on an unsecured email server. If Clinton can’t keep her valued documents from blowing all over the Internet, how good is she at diplomacy really?

This comes on the heels of the news that Russian hackers were able to penetrate the Democrat National Committee’s computer system and scrape up7 the opposition file it has against Donald Trump. As for the Clinton Foundation, it was unaware of the hack. The federal government, which has been investigating the hacking activity, found the breach. Bloomberg8 reported, “Clinton Foundation officials said the organization hadn’t been notified of the breach and declined to comment further” — what a Clintonesque statement.

For the DNC’s part, it’s running damage control by saying, in an effort to generate sympathy, that hackers leaking DNC documents9 could shape the course of the 2016 election. It’s not too much to conclude that the Clinton Foundation keeps some of Clinton’s sordid secrets, and now the Russians have them.

Hillary Can’t Best Trump’s Economic Platform10

Hillary Clinton attacked Donald Trump’s plan to improve the economy, with a Tuesday speech high on rhetorical zingers and low on examples of her own economic prowess. Trump didn’t have enough detail in his job creation plan, Clinton complained, “But maybe we shouldn’t expect better from someone whose famous words are: ‘You’re fired.’”

Hilarious coming from a woman who made her fortune penning books, giving speeches and peddling influence — pastimes of the liberal elite. At least Trump created jobs.

Clinton’s speech tried to paint Trump as “dangerous,” a bull in the China shop of the American economy. “Just like he shouldn’t have his finger on the button, he shouldn’t have his hands on our economy,” Clinton declared. But as commentator Ashe Schow points out, Clinton has a long record of using public money and her status11 to make herself and her family rich. Is she really the best advocate for the American middle class? It was just a few weeks ago where she admitted12 her policies would make coal miners lose their jobs.

As for Clinton’s plan to get this Obama economy roaring back to life, Clinton suggested — what else? — massive government spending on the nation’s infrastructure. But as Jim Geraghty points out13, it’s not like Obama didn’t try that same trick in 2012 with $102 billion in roadway funding (“the largest new investment in our nation’s infrastructure since Eisenhower”) — and look where that got us. Clinton proposes nothing new. If she were to become president, expect four more years of dismal economic growth in a continuation of the Obama-Clinton stagnation.

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Our operations and mission are funded by — and depend entirely upon — the financial support of American Patriots like you. Thank you for standing with us. —Nate Jackson, Managing Editor

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Jim DeMint: America Stands With UK on Brexit15
Victor Davis Hanson: Ideologues Make for Dangerous Politicians16
Walter Williams: Purification of America17
John Stossel: Warning: Labels18

For more, visit Right Opinion19.

TOP HEADLINES

DHS Worker With Top-Secret Clearance May Have Been Staging Attack20
FEMA Refuses Emergency Funds for Orlando21
Another Black Race Hoaxer Punished22

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report23

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Yellow Flags in the Trump Campaign24

By Lewis Morris

Donald Trump shattered all variety of political predictions and won the Republican primaries by simply being a force of nature. He figures to win the White House the same way, but politics has some forces of its own, as the presumptive and presumptuous GOP nominee is finding out.

Trump could have opened this week dealing blows to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over their crass exploitation of Orlando for gun control or their politically correct refusal to acknowledge the Islamist threat. Instead, Trump’s campaign opened the week with a double whammy that included the firing of his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski25 and a May fundraising report that shows the Trump machine in dire financial straits26.

How dire? According to the numbers submitted to the Federal Election Commission, Trump’s campaign raised $3.1 million during the month of May. Even worse, it has just $1.3 million in cash on hand, and that is only due to a loan made by the candidate himself. Compare that to Clinton’s May report, which puts her campaign at $28 million raised and $41 million on hand. It’s evident that Trump is going to have to do a lot better on the fundraising front, but more on that in a moment.

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The Patriot Post Digest 6-22-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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First, let’s look at the train wreck that has been Trump’s campaign management. Lewandowski’s “let Trump be Trump” strategy allowed the candidate to shoot himself in the foot so many times that it’s a wonder Trump can still walk. While Lewandowski certainly can’t be blamed for every Trumpism that tumbled out of The Donald’s mouth, his lackadaisical handling of basic campaign mechanics has put the presumptive GOP nominee in a very uncomfortable position.

Trump has not put together any ground game27 in crucial swing states, allowing Clinton to take the lead in media ad buys and setting up field operations. He has waffled back and forth between announcing that he was going to “go it alone” without coordinating with the RNC, then saying that he was going to leave swing-state planning to the national Republican party.

This lack of strategy was symptomatic of Lewandowski’s campaign leadership. Rather than corralling his candidate and developing a game plan, he let himself be the yes-man, convinced like Trump that everything would just magically come together like it did in the primaries. But the general election is a different contest entirely, and Trump has seemingly squandered the first crucial weeks.

In May 2012, Mitt Romney raised $86 million and pledged $38 million in media buys for the month of June. (To be sure, Romney’s own poor campaign strategy cost him a very winnable election.) This year, Clinton has pledged $20 million in media buys over the next few weeks, and Trump has pledged … zero. Trump may be running an unorthodox campaign that transcends traditional politics, but the complete absence from the ad market is puzzling. He’s allowing Clinton and her Leftmedia super PAC to set the tone unchallenged.

May 2016 should have been a free month for Trump to mount his broadside against an incredibly weak Democrat opponent. He had conquered his Republican rivals while the Democrats continued to brawl it out. He could have set up field operations; instead entire states have no campaign presence. He could have laid out a media strategy; instead there is only the earned media28 he has received through his own entertaining bombast.

Trump’s campaign will live to fight on thanks to the intervention of his children and new campaign boss Pal Manafort. But there are some serious corrections that need to be made. It is never a good sign when the presidential candidate ranks behind 76 House Republicans29 in campaign fundraising.

Trump will also have to reconcile with his supporters just how he plans to fund his campaign. Charles Krauthammer put it this way: “The one thing that is interesting and paradoxical — and that would be a problem for any other ordinary candidate — is that he did campaign very strongly and very aggressively against his competitors in the primary for being owned lock, stock and barrel by the people they took money from. And here he is going around cup in hand trying to raise money from donors and complaining that he’s not getting enough.”

Maybe he won’t actually try to step up his fundraising game, though. “I think I could spend $50, $60, $70 million of my own money and run a wonderful campaign,” he says. But there have long been questions about whether he has vastly overstated his personal wealth, meaning that he will not be able to self-fund his campaign as he claimed.

And if he keeps paying out company staff and making repayable loans to his own campaign, he is not going to fill potential donors with any confidence as to his commitment or his future.

The other option is public financing. But again, money didn’t help John McCain or Mitt Romney. Money doesn’t hurt, but it’s the candidate and the campaign approach that matter most.

In any case, Donald Trump is full of surprises. And we have surely not seen the last of them.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

The ‘Brexit’ Question30
Illegal Immigrant Tried to Kill Trump: News at Never31
NYT Careful to Avoid the ’S' Word in Venezuela Coverage32
SCOTUS Critical of Obama’s Overtime Pay Rules33

OPINION IN BRIEF

Jim DeMint: “In 1975, 67 percent of British voters supported membership in the European Economic Community. But as it evolved into the European Union we know today, more and more power flowed away from the people and toward bureaucrats in Brussels. … The European Union has become an overregulated and undemocratic institution. In a time when Islamist terrorism is rising worldwide and mass immigration is occurring throughout Europe, Britain’s right to create its own border laws has been taken away by the European Union. Furthermore, any law passed in a British court can be overruled by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. By leaving the European Union, Britain will be able to control its own borders, restore its own legal system, and save a considerable amount of money by not having to pay European Union membership. … Nor should the U.K. be afraid of Obama’s bullying. Undemocratic restrictions made by foreign leaders are why so many citizens of the U.K. want to leave the European Union in the first place. They shouldn’t be beholden to either Brussels or the White House. … I hope that when our British friends go to the polls tomorrow, they know that America has their back.”

SHORT CUTS

Upright: “The rules flowing out of Brussels are in no way the source of all of Britain’s economic and social challenges, but when diktats come down about everything from the proper curvature of bananas to age requirements for the usage of balloons, you can understand why some Brits might be tempted to have their own version of a Boston Tea Party.” —Jonah Goldberg

For the record: “The sheer magnitude of Sept. 11 can almost blind us to the metastasizing danger out there. … Few people are aware that Orlando was the 86th plot of Islamist terror in the United States since Sept. 11. That’s right: 86th. And only here in America. That number doesn’t count the Paris bombings in 2015, or the Brussels bombings this year, and many others.” —Ed Feulner

Non Compos Mentis: “Our most effective response to terror and to hatred is compassion, it’s unity, and it’s love.” —Attorney General Loretta Lynch (On a personal level, sure, but not when your job is part of the U.S. national security apparatus.)

Belly laugh of the week: “Using the term ‘radical Islamic extremism’ is not a counterterrorism strategy. It is a political talking point, plain and simple. … The president has implemented a strategy that has put increasing pressure on ISIL and has made the country safer, but he has not relied on a political talking point as a substitute for a counterterrorism strategy.” —Josh Earnest

Demo-gogues: “The fact is, the AR-15, the gun that [Omar] Mateen used, that’s a weapon of war. … And somebody who is buying that kind of a weapon isn’t buying it for target shooting. They’re not buying it to go out and hunt deer. … They’re buying it to do bad things and we need to recognize that and address it.” —Sen. Jeanne Shaheen

Alpha Jackass: “Here’s a little secret for my Republican colleagues: The NRA doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t care about your constituents. It doesn’t care about the constitutional rights of the followers. The NRA and its leadership care about [three] things: making money from gun manufacturers and making money from the NRA and selling more guns. ” —Sen. Harry Reid, who was previously endorsed by the NRA

Late-night humor: “Chelsea Clinton gave birth to a son this weekend. Unfortunately, due to his young age, he’s a Sanders supporter.” —Seth Meyers

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.