The Patriot Post Digest 8-19-2016

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 8-19-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Aug. 19, 2016

THE FOUNDATION

“A good moral character is the first essential in a man, and that the habits contracted at your age are generally indelible, and your conduct here may stamp your character through life. It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous.” —George Washington (1790)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

When Democrats Violate Social Standards1

On Wednesday, we wrote about Donald Trump’s impassioned speech highlighting the growing problem of poverty and violence rampant in many inner city black communities2 today. We noted what we often do for context: The problems in the inner city today go all the way back to Lyndon B. Johnson and his “Great Society3” programs. At the time of their passage, Democrats hailed these programs as a step toward raising blacks out of poverty. But their motives were not so altruistic.

That’s when things ran afoul of the politically correct police. We quoted an authenticated LBJ remark, in which he said of the Civil Rights Act, “I’ll have those [racial slur redacted] voting Democratic for the next 200 years.”

Our original post with the image below included the quote, and listed other instances of LBJ’s racial slurs. (You can find that post, titled “The Not So Great Society,” here4.) But the progressive censors at Facebook threw the post down the memory hole, insisting that an authentic and historically significant quote from a U.S. president “doesn’t follow the Facebook Community Standards.” We most certainly agree that the slur Johnson used is vulgar and unacceptable. The point was to shed light on his crude, cynical and prophetic prediction about the long-term allegiance of black voters, and that today’s Democrats still believe it, even if their language is different.

Does Barack Obama Care About Black People?5

Louisiana is under water. Thirteen people are dead because of flooding, and tens of thousands have been displaced. Offering a bit of perspective on this disaster, The American Conservative’s Rod Dreher writes6:

    Hillary devoted three times that number of tweets to congratulating US women athletes at the Rio games. Hey, I have no problem with celebrating their victories. But let’s see: over 100,000 people have lost their homes in Louisiana. More than half of them are women, it stands to reason. This is not a secret. If you want to win the attention of the Democratic nominee for president, it’s much better to be a woman athlete than a Louisiana woman made homeless by the flooding, it would appear. …

    To his credit, the president has released disaster aid to Louisiana, and has sent the FEMA chief down. But he is not interrupting his vacation on fancy Martha’s Vineyard to come give comfort and show compassion to his own countrymen who are in extreme pain.

    Despite George W. Bush’s folly on Katrina, which left a permanent mark on his legacy, Obama remains on vacation, just as Bush did.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, rapper Kanye West once famously declared, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Is the same true of Obama, who ripped Bush for “unconscionable ineptitude” in 2005?

Clearly, this president would rather be golfing. Recall that in 2014 he was caught yukking it up on the links just minutes after denouncing the Islamic State beheading of journalist James Foley, and again a year later when video was released of the Islamic State beheading 21 Egyptian Christians.

How About We Make Black Lives Better?7

Black Lives Matter is becoming increasingly funded by far-left organizations. The Ford Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy announced that they have formed the Black-Led Movement Fund, which aims to raise $100 million for BLM over the next six years. Add to this amount the already donated $33 million from George Soros and BLM is really starting to rake in the cash. It seems that racist victimhood really sells.

But as has been documented, the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement was based on a lie. A lie that has been perpetuated and used to organize protests, rioting and looting, as well as provide “justification” for the murders of police officers all in the name of racial justice. Ignoring the riots and racial discord BLM has provoked, Borealis Philanthropy says it is working with “young, Black, queer, feminists and immigrant leaders who are shaping and leading a national conversation about criminalization, policing and race in America.” It’s fine to have a “conversation” and debate the problems, real or perceived, within the inner city, but this is not what BLM does, as their radical socialist demands8 illustrate. There is no back and forth discussion, there are only obnoxious, offensive and unconstitutional demands made in the name of concern for the plight of black Americans — a plight, by the way, that exists because of Democrats.

Why not put this $100 million into actually helping black Americans? Rather than paying for hashtags, rioting and murder, grant funding for private programs that aim to help educate and encourage development of skills to better engage in the American entrepreneurial spirit. The problem is BLM has seized tremendous influence within the Democrat Party, which allows them a greater platform to more effectively promulgate their racist ideals, further polarizing America.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

    Charles Krauthammer: The Price of Powerlessness9
    David Harsanyi: Reminder: ObamaCare Is Still a Disaster10
    Thomas Sowell: Trump and Blacks11

For more, visit Right Opinion12.

TOP HEADLINES

    State Department Admits Iran Payment Was Ransom13
    Team Clinton Skipped Required Ethics Training14
    Justice to End Use of Private Prisons15
    Seattle Offers Classes on ‘White Fragility’16

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report17.

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 8-19-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Hillary Joins the Protectionists18

By Michael Swartz

It’s likely most Americans haven’t read the Hillary Clinton autobiography “Hard Choices,” but in it she discussed the Trans-Pacific Partnership then being negotiated. She wrote, “It’s safe to say the TPP won’t be perfect — no deal negotiated among a dozen countries ever will be — but its higher standards, if implemented and enforced, should benefit American businesses and workers.” (By the way, the paperback version omits this section.) Ever the shameless opportunist, Clinton decided that competing with the protectionism that both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump espouse meant she had to join them19 in opposing the TPP.

However, Mercatus Center research fellow Veronique de Rugy analyzes Hillary’s (and Trump’s) position20 and asks the obvious: “Is she lying now or was she lying before?”

De Rugy adds, “Either way, the reality is that [Hillary Clinton’s] instincts on pretty much every policy issue are incorrect. She wants the government to grow and she wants to smother the labor market to death with new mandates and tell entrepreneurs how to run their companies and pay their workers. She wants more regulations and she wants the government to have a say in what the innovations of the future should be. She wants a one-size-fits-all labor market and opposes the sharing economy. She is a drug warrior and ‘the candidate of the war machine.’ She is also in favor of the worst crony programs out there, like the Ex-Im Bank.”

Others on the free trade side are chipping in21 with criticism of Hillary’s shifting position. “If Congress or the next president rejects TPP, China will be ready to fill the vacuum with its own brand of economic leadership,” warns22 fellow Mercatus Center scholar Daniel Griswold. Since China is not a party to the TPP, it could create its own pact with several of the TPP nations.

The GOP contenders were all over the map on TPP23 — and certainly were skeptical about giving Barack Obama fast-track trade authority. As it was being discussed last year, Donald Trump capitalized on the perception that Rust Belt factory workers were going to fare even worse than they have over the last two decades — a regional downturn Trump was quick to blame on NAFTA and other trade agreements. Trump instead has favored one-on-one pacts, noting, “I would make individual deals with individual countries and currency manipulation would be a pre-eminent part of every deal because that’s the chief weapon that other countries … use to take away our businesses and our jobs.” It’s a position where he has been more or less consistent throughout the campaign.

But because Hillary has been open to TPP in the past — she once called it the “gold standard” of trade agreements — some Republicans have come out for her24 simply based on the belief she may take an agreement, perhaps with some face-saving amendment25. Furthermore, revered economist Walter E. Williams argues on these pages26 that, while thousands of manufacturing jobs were indeed lost over the last few decades, America is better off because those job losses indicate economic progress. As a comparison, Williams notes that 90 percent of the workforce were farmers back in 1790, but less than 3 percent today. Yet farmers are vastly more productive thanks to technological improvements.

So while the top two candidates argue about who can best protect unionized American factory jobs, it’s worth remembering that trade is a two-way street, and protectionism by the United States will certainly be matched by those we desire to export to. All Hillary Clinton has done by her flipping and flopping on the question of free trade is to guarantee one side will be completely alienated once she finally makes up her mind.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

    How India Could Take Down China27
    Obama Sandbags ObamaCare Insurers28
    Obama Stands by While Putin Takes the Lead29
    Old Glory Stripped From Town’s Fire Trucks30

OPINION IN BRIEF

Charles Krauthammer: “This week Russian bombers flew out of Iranian air bases to attack rebel positions in Syria. The State Department pretended not to be surprised. It should be. It should be alarmed. Iran’s intensely nationalistic revolutionary regime had never permitted foreign forces to operate from its soil. Until now. The reordering of the Middle East is proceeding apace. Where for 40 years the U.S.-Egypt alliance anchored the region, a Russia-Iran condominium is now dictating events. That’s what you get after eight years of U.S. retrenchment and withdrawal. That’s what results from the nuclear deal with Iran, the evacuation of Iraq and utter U.S. immobility on Syria.”

SHORT CUTS

Upright: “The real outrage isn’t that insurers like Aetna are abandoning Obamacare, but that companies like Aetna likely participated in Obamacare for cronyistic reasons to begin with.” —David Harsanyi

For the record: “Everything Obama has done is fairly and necessarily imputable to Clinton because she participated in and ratified his policies and actions and promises to do worse. In a number of areas, she already has done worse. On top of all this, Clinton is the most opportunistically ambitious, double-dealing, corrupt fraud in the modern era.” —David Limbaugh

Non Compos Mentis: “This is a much more hopeful and positive period in history than we have seen certainly in our lifetimes. I tell my kids this: that they couldn’t be luckier to be living in this world at this time.” —Susan Rice

General regret: “Sometimes, in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don’t choose the right words or you say the wrong thing. I have done that. And believe it or not, I regret it. And I do regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain. Too much is at stake for us to be consumed with these issues.” —Donald Trump

Ransom: “So to recap, in contravention of federal criminal law that prohibits Americans from transferring things of value to Iran, whether directly or indirectly (including through third countries), President Obama transferred Iran $400 million by laundering American assets into foreign currency and then delivering it — as a ransom for hostages, in violation of American policy — to agents of the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, so it could be transported to Tehran by an airline previously sanctioned for abetting terrorism and weapons shipments.” —Andrew McCarthy

And last… “Obama says we need to trust the Iranians more, especially when it comes to their nuclear weapons program. So does he want us to trust the Iranians when they say he is lying and it was a ransom payment?” —Gary Bauer

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.