The Patriot Post Digest 1-4-2017

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The Patriot Post Digest 1-4-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Jan. 4, 2017

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Hollywood’s latest paean to gun control flops badly. Surprise!
Conservative intellectual giant Thomas Sowell retires.
Democrats have a problem with Christians. It’s not going to get better soon.
And more news, policy and opinion.

THE FOUNDATION

“Our unalterable resolution would be to be free. They have attempted to subdue us by force, but God be praised! in vain. Their arts may be more dangerous than their arms. Let us then renounce all treaty with them upon any score but that of total separation, and under God trust our cause to our swords.” —Samuel Adams (1776)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

‘Miss Sloane’ Misses the Mark1

When it comes to Hollywood, a film’s accruing $3.2 million in its first two weeks is considered a debacle. Yet that’s the meager reception with which a new pro-gun control movie, “Miss Sloane,” was greeted. The Salt Lake Tribune says2 the anti-NRA film “serves up plenty that’s worth seeing” and praises it as “a smart take on what’s gone wrong with the system.” Evidently, moviegoers didn’t get the memo. The statistics aren’t pretty, as well-known firearms researcher John Lott explains3 in National Review:

Out of the 200 highest-grossing movies of 2016, only ten exceeded the $15.9 million television advertising budget of Miss Sloane, and seven of those did so by very small amounts. Miss Sloane spent more than the Star Wars spinoff Rogue One, Star Trek, Pete’s Dragon, Arrival, Doctor Strange, and Hacksaw Ridge. It had twice the advertising budget of such hits as Sully, The Girl on the Train, and The Secret Life of Pets. For every dollar spent on advertising, Miss Sloane brought in just 21 cents in ticket sales. By this measure, it came in dead last out of the 200 top-grossing movies in 2016. No one else was even close. Coming in second-to-last was Collateral Beauty, which made 53 cents per advertising dollar. The average movie made almost $2 for each dollar spent on advertising.

It’s not like the ensuing failure wasn’t written all over the wall. Last year was a record-setter4 for prospective gun buyers. While December’s numbers are still being tallied, based on figures through November the FBI ran an astonishing 24,767,514 firearm background checks in 2016. The Tribune claims “Miss Sloane” explains “what’s gone wrong with the system.” It does, but not for the reason it tries to instill. The film’s flop depicts just how out of touch with reality and the rest of America Hollywood and Washington really are. Voters sent a clear message to Democrats on Nov. 8: Leave us alone.

Thomas Sowell’s Retirement: The End of an Era5

Thomas Sowell6 and Walter Williams7 are two of the bravest academic scholars in America, and two of the boldest black men. We have long carried both men’s columns in our Right Opinion8 section. Sowell is retiring after decades standing in the line of fire in defense of Freedom.

He published his final “Random Thoughts9” piece on December 27. Here are a few priceless excerpts:

Warning America: “If you want to understand the fatal dangers facing America today, read ‘The Gathering Storm’ by Winston Churchill. The book is not about America, the Middle East, or nuclear missiles. But it shows Europe’s attitudes and delusions…”

Addressing academic idiocy: “Black adults, during the years when I was growing up in Harlem, had far less education than black adults today — but far more common sense. In an age of artificial intelligence, too many of our schools and colleges are producing artificial stupidity, among both blacks and whites.”

Regarding our pathetic culture: “There are words that were once common but that are seldom heard any more. The phrase ‘none of your business’ is one of these. Today, everything seems to be the government’s business or the media’s business. And the word ‘risqué’ would be almost impossible to explain to young people, in a world where gross vulgarity is widespread and widely accepted.”

About what we celebrate: “When I was growing up, we were taught the stories of people whose inventions and scientific discoveries had expanded the lives of millions of other people. Today, students are being taught to admire those who complain, denounce, and demand.”

Over the years, Sowell has routinely written such wonderful insight10.

And in his farewell column11 the next day, Sowell offered wisdom quite typical of his missives: “We cannot return to the past, even if we wanted to, but let us hope that we can learn something from the past to make for a better present and future. Goodbye and good luck to all.”

Thank God for the intellect and courage of Thomas Sowell! He will be sorely missed.

Top Headlines12

Ryan easily wins speakership as Pelosi sees more defections. (The Washington Times13)

Joe Biden swears in Senate of 115th Congress. (RealClearPolitics VIDEO14)

Senate Republicans introduce ObamaCare repeal resolution. (The Hill15)

GOP drops plan to overhaul ethics rules after Trump trashes it. (The Washington Times16)

Ford cancels plans for $1.6 billion plan in Mexico, with CEO giving “vote of confidence” to Trump’s economic plan. (CNBC17)

Obama releases 220 illegal alien kids per day. (Media Research Center18.)

Congress to freeze State Department funds until U.S. embassy moves to Jerusalem. (Washington Free Beacon19)

Teens step forward to serve as pallbearers for veteran with no family. (The Patriot Post20)

Surprise! Syrian cease-fire crumbles as government forces advance around Damascus. (The Washington Post21)

Megyn Kelly bolts from Fox to NBC News. (USA Today22)

Policy: Friedmanism in Finland? (Washington Examiner23)

Policy: The problems with “repeal and delay.” (Health Affairs Blog24)

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
A Grand Canyon-Sized Divide Between Democrats and Christians25

By Louis DeBroux

Eight weeks after progressive Democrats' world was rocked by the Earth-shattering, this-can-NOT-be-happening realization that tens of millions of “deplorable” Americans had turned out to vote for Donald Trump, thereby depriving Her Royal Lie-ness, Hillary Clinton, of the presidency, they are still dredging the depths of the political ocean for answers as to why they lost.

They blame FBI Director James Comey’s re-opening26 of the Hillary email investigation in the final days of the campaign. They also blame Russian hacking27, though there is scant evidence for this (besides, had Hillary not illegally used a private server to conduct official government business out of the reach of congressional oversight, the Russians would have nothing to hack). Still others blame sexism, “fake news28,” voter fraud, talk radio, or even Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her pervert husband, former Democrat Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-Creepystan).

A relative handful of introspective Democrat operatives have touched on a major reason for their loss, but it’s one which the progressive Democrat leadership and their uber-leftist foot soldiers don’t even see as a problem — the massive disconnect between the Democrat Party and America’s evangelical Christians, which make up approximately one-fifth of the American electorate. To put that into context, Evangelicals (which are just one subset of professed Christians) are a larger bloc of voters in the U.S. than black voters and Jewish voters combined.

Yet rather than court this critical demographic, Democrats and their “tolerant” base openly and defiantly mock and attack Christians as being the worst elements of humanity. Is it any wonder that Donald Trump, who openly admitted to serial adultery but promised to defend Christians, won a staggering 81% of the Evangelical vote?

In a recent interview29 with The Atlantic, Michael Wear, former 2012 Obama campaign director of faith-outreach efforts, got to the root of the Democrats' problem with Christians. “Liberals have been trying to convince Americans, and evangelicals in particular, that America is not a Christian nation,” Wear explained. “The 2016 election was evangelicals saying, ‘Yeah, you’re right! We can’t expect to have someone who is Christian like us. We can’t expect to have someone with a perfect family life. What we can expect is someone who can look out for us, just like every other group in this country is looking for a candidate who will look out for them.’”

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The Patriot Post Digest 1-4-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Democrat Party has become a bastion of leftist radicals, including those who are rabidly anti-Christian. Other than popping up in black churches just before elections to remind parishioners that if Republicans are elected, they will take away Social Security and Medicare, try to implement school choice (gasp!), or reinstate slavery (conveniently forgetting it was Democrats who defended the abhorrent practice), Democrats have little good to say about Christians in general, and Evangelicals in particular. What else would you expect of people who booed God30 at their 2012 national convention?

Obama famously described salt-of-the-Earth Midwesterners as “bitter” people who “cling to guns or religion31.”

Lest one think these are isolated incidents taken out of context, consider the following:

In a speech at the 2015 National Prayer Breakfast, the blood having barely dried from the murderous attacks by Islamist terrorists in Paris, Obama lectured us about how Christianity is no better than Islam, trotting out the brutality of the thousand-year old Crusades32 as proof. Obama haughtily declared, “Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.” Obama conveniently forgot that the Crusades were a reaction of European Christians to Muslim hordes invading their lands, and also that it was Christian ministers who led the fight to end slavery in America.

It was likewise the Obama administration that used the power33 of the federal government to force The Little Sisters of the Poor, a charitable order of Catholic nuns, to provide as part of its employee health insurance contraception drugs, including abortifacients which trigger abortions in early pregnancies. The use of contraception, and especially abortion, are grave sins in the Catholic faith.

Obama also aided in the effort to force Christian bakers, florists, photographers and bed-and-breakfast owners, among others, to violate their faith by providing services for same-sex “weddings.” He has routinely implied that holding true to the biblical definition of man/woman marriage is driven by bigotry and homophobia.

His administration argued before the Supreme Court34 that religious organizations should be forced to hire employees not of their faith, and should be prevented from firing employees who violate their code of moral conduct. In a similar vein, the Obama administration instituted health care regulations under the ObamaCare monstrosity that stripped health care workers of conscience protections35, effectively forcing them, for example, to participate in abortions or be fired, and possibly prosecuted.

He pressured Evangelical pastor Louie Giglio to withdraw from offering the inaugural benediction because of his biblical views on marriage.

Though anecdotal, to be sure, it’s interesting that in eight years, not one of the White House “holiday” cards sent out by Obama — who claims to be a Christian, even as he denigrates Christians — has ever included the word “Christmas.”

These are just a few of the dozens and dozens of examples of Obama’s hostility toward Christians (we won’t even here address Obama’s contemptible treatment of Israel36, our staunchest ally in the Middle East).

In the present political atmosphere, it’s nearly impossible for the far-left Democrat Party to find common ground with Middle America, much less devout Evangelical Christians. The Democrats openly loathe and mock Christians, are rabidly pro-abortion, reject any respect for or compromise on moral issues so important to religious people, and in short, they find us “deplorable.”

That creates quite a problem for Democrats who find themselves unexpectedly in the political wilderness, having lost control of the House, the Senate, the White House, and two-thirds of state legislatures. They are vehemently opposed to the beliefs and principles of the very people they need in their camp to regain political power.

Democrats worship at the altar of the state, and as far as anyone can tell, they have no inclination to stop.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

How the GOP Can Use Its Mandate37 — The congressional agenda in the coming weeks will bear watching.
ObamaCare Complicates Gender, Judge Intervenes38 — HHS’s controversial redefinition hits a judicial barricade.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Terence Jeffrey: Make Government Schools Compete or Die39
Rich Lowry: The Nation’s Abattoir40
Ben Shapiro: The Anti-Science Mainstreaming of Mental Illness41

For more, visit Right Opinion42.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Terence Jeffrey: “President-elect Donald Trump advocates school choice. His campaign website says his vision on education includes establishing ‘the national goal of providing school choice to every one of the 11 million school aged children living in poverty.’ That may be a good start. But it is not good enough. School choice programs should not become yet another avenue for government redistribution of wealth. They should aim at lifting the entire nation from the wreckage of the public schools. Middle-class families who now pay taxes to subsidize a failing government school system should not be shut out of a school-choice program that can liberate their children from that system. … Congress should tell states and local jurisdictions: You are on your own when it comes to primary and secondary education. Let your voters decide. Those voters should do for their hometowns what Congress should for the District of Columbia: enact school choice.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.” —Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948.)

For the record: “Seven hundred sixty-two people were murdered in [Chicago] in 2016, a nearly unheard of 50 percent increase over the year before. … While everyone on the left pays obeisance to the slogan Black Lives Matter, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel runs a jurisdiction where black lives have been getting cheaper almost by the day, especially in its poorest areas.” —Rich Lowry

Dezinformatsia: “Let’s pretend we’re in some cosmic therapist’s office, in a counseling session with the year 2016. We are asked to face the year and say something nice about it. Just one or two things. The mind balks. Fingers tighten around the Kleenex as a cascade of horribles wells up in memory: You were a terrible year. We hate you. We’ll be so glad never to see you again. The silence echoes as we grope for a reply.” —New York Times editorial43

Demo-gogues: “The only way we’re going to work with [Donald Trump] is if he moves completely in our direction and abandons his Republican colleagues. Ninety, 95 percent of the time, we’ll be holding his feet to the fire and holding him accountable. But we’re Democrats — we’re not going to just oppose things to oppose them.” —Sen. Chuck Schumer

The BIG lie: “The purpose of the ACA was to lower costs, to improve benefits and to increase access. The ACA has made transformative progress in doing all three.” —Nancy Pelosi

Despicable: “Start your 2017 off on the right foot — no time like the present to make an appointment at Planned Parenthood!” —Cecile Richards

And last… “The ethics committee should disband. There hasn’t been any ethics in Congress for years, so what’s its purpose?” —Frank Fleming

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.