The Patriot Post Digest 5-17-2017

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The Patriot Post Digest 5-17-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

May 17, 2017

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Another day another anonymously sourced Leftmedia takedown of Trump.
Mizzou is reeling from enrollment drop after pathetic political correctness.
It turns out that turning super heroes into diversity stand-ins doesn’t sell.
Daily Features: Top Headlines, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.

THE FOUNDATION

“During the course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been levelled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety.” —Thomas Jefferson (1805)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Don’t Believe the Hype1

Reading the headlines from much of the mainstream media’s news reporting has become eerily similar to browsing the latest salacious tabloid covers in the check-out line at the local grocery store.

According to The Washington Post and its unnamed sources, Donald Trump disclosed “highly classified information” to the Russian foreign minister which “jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.” One problem: National Security Advisor Gen. H.R. McMaster says these sources were not even present during Trump’s meeting. As we noted yesterday, per McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, this dezinformatsiya was not the case2. And yet the Post stands by the charges of its unnamed sources, and the Leftmedia at large demand Trump answer for his supposed careless, dangerous and maybe illegal action. Talk about the tail wagging the dog.

And then on Tuesday, tag-teaming off the Post’s successful scandal spin, The New York Times threw out its latest hearsay hit piece — the supposed existence of a memo written by former FBI Director James Comey. Once again according to unnamed sources, the Times alleges that in a meeting this past January between Trump and Comey, the president requested that the then-FBI director end an investigation into Gen. Mike Flynn, Trump’s then-national security advisor. Now, the Times admits that it hasn’t actually seen the memo, but suggests that it’s legitimate anyway. No comment yet from Comey. One would think a responsible journalist would seek to both obtain an actual copy of the memo in question, authenticate its veracity and seek a comment from its author, before basing a blockbuster on hearsay.

On a side note: If the implication of the memo turns out to be true, then obviously Trump has something to answer for. But Comey would also find himself in hot water for breaking the law by failing to report immediately to the Justice Department an attempt to interfere in a federal investigation, irrespective of who made the request. In other words, Comey would know better, and since he didn’t act then, it implies that there’s little substance to this story. It’s just more rumor and speculation being passed off by the Times as legitimate news.

Why did The Washington Post lower its journalistic standards to those of the National Enquirer? And when did The New York Times start answering to the execs at the Globe? When did mere hearsay and rumors reach the level of need-to-know reporting, and at what point did the account of “unnamed sources” rise to a level of greater legitimacy than statements from senior officials on record? While those questions may be somewhat hyperbolic, the fact of the matter is that MSM journalistic standards have taken a nose dive in the era of Trump.

Once again, the Leftmedia objective is to take Trump down because they both enjoy an increase in readership and ad revenue and they object to Trump’s reforming agenda. But honestly, Trump has made himself an easy target, and he’s all too willing to get dirty with the pig. This injures him in two ways: It lends greater legitimacy to the MSM and it proves to distract both him and Republicans from plowing forward with enacting government reforms.

Mizzou Feeling the Effects of Appeasement3

The University of Missouri is feeling the impact of its capitulation to the demands of the leftist social justice warriors. In the fall of 2015, Mizzou students started a protest4 spurred by Black Lives Matter thugs that disrupted the university and lead to the eventual resignation of both the president and chancellor over rumors of racism. It proved to be just the beginning of many “social justice warrior” (SJW) wins on the campuses of America’s colleges and universities over the ensuing years.

Fast forward to the end of this school year to see the dramatic effect the Mizzou administration’s appeasement has had. Since the fall of 2015, student enrollment has plummeted by 35% and cost the university millions. The large enrollment decrease has negatively affected the local economy of Columbia, too, with the city council reporting that the off-campus housing vacancy rate has risen nearly 10%. The university itself has had to shuttered seven residence halls.

The numbers of students graduating is down and the freshman class is the smallest in nearly 20 years. These lower numbers have impacted the school’s sporting events, with slumping game-day revenue. The Devils Lake Journal reported, “Attendance for football in 2016 was down almost 13,000 people per game from 2015, and the men’s basketball team filled, on average, only 9,930 of Mizzou Arena’s 15,000 seats.” You know things are bad when people don’t even show up to watch sports.

The lesson here is, don’t give in to the ridiculous demands of generation snowflake. Because doing so is a no-win proposition.

Editor’s Note

Yesterday, we ran a story entitled “About That Murdered DNC Staffer…5” in which we recounted the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Seth Rich, as well as the history of Democrats' Russia obsession that began with the DNC hack. A federal investigator told Fox News that Rich had transmitted tens of thousands of DNC emails to WikiLeaks, which certainly would have shed new light on the whole story.

Rich’s family, however, strongly denies the allegations, and even the investigator, Rod Wheeler, is now walking back his story6. Fox News got its quote from him, but he got his information from … Fox News. Rich’s family says Wheeler has never actually seen Rich’s computer.

NBC News corroborated7 that with FBI sources: “A current FBI official and a former one completely discount the Fox News claim that an FBI analysis of a computer belonging to Rich contained thousands of e-mails to and from WikiLeaks,” the report read. “Local police in Washington, D.C., never even gave the FBI Rich’s laptop to analyze after his murder.”

Furthermore, Wheeler was contractually barred from speaking about the investigation publicly.

So perhaps the conspiracy theory is just that. Democrats have indeed blown the whole Russia-hacking affair completely out of proportion for political gain, as we’ve said all along. But it would seem that just because an allegation fits with a narrative doesn’t mean the allegation is true. That’s a lesson for every media outlet.

Top Headlines8

McMaster on Trump’s conversation with Russians: “Real issue” is leaks. (CNS News9)

Obama ordered the U.S. intelligence community to share intel with Cuba. (The Federalist10)

Obama’s CIA director leaked top secret bin Laden raid intel to Hollywood. (The Federalist11)

Traitor Bradley “Chelsea” Manning walks free. (The Hill12)

Petition to ABC to save Tim Allen’s “Last Man Standing”13 draws intense interest. (The Washington Times14)

Still great: GOP doubles campaign war chest for 2018 midterms. (Washington Examiner15)

Californians finally striking back against Democrats who keep raising their taxes. (Hot Air16)

These are the 15 most expensive U.S. states. (CNBC17)

Report: Net neutrality leads to higher prices, less innovation. (The Washington Free Beacon18.)

Humor: The Venezuela Diet! Socialism works… for weight loss. (Reason19)

Policy: How Maine reformed its welfare system. (The Insider20)

Policy: Forging a consensus on Medicaid reform. (E2121)

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report22.

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The Patriot Post Digest 5-17-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
________________________________________

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
The Comical Social Justice Warrior23

By Michael Swartz

In a much simpler time, growing up as a boy in America came with several rites of passage: Skinned knees from falling off your bicycle, trading baseball cards with your friends, or reading the exploits of your favorite superheroes when the newest editions of their respective comic books came out. Perhaps you thrilled to the adventures of Steve Rogers as Captain America, Peter Parker as Spider-Man, Thor, Iron Man, or the X-Men as a child.

Boys in 2017 still may skin their knees from falling off a bicycle (in those rare instances when they play outside in an unsupervised fashion) but they now place their baseball cards in sleeves for collection and, since the aforementioned comics are all now under the Marvel Comics banner, the forces of political correctness (and desire to milk the characters for all they’re worth) have taken over that branch of publishing. So Steve Rogers has died and been reborn multiple times, Peter Parker was shoved aside for the multi-racial Miles Morales, Thor is now a female, and Iron Man has evolved into the black teenage female Ironheart. And the X-Men? According to writer Matt Battaglia24, “The new villain of the X-Men Universe is a barely disguised stand-in for the Heritage Foundation and the X-Men assault the president of said organization.”

Marvel’s lesser known heroes, like Harlem’s Luke Cage, are also being used for the social justice message. And no one’s buying it. Heat Street reports25, “Liberal darling Ta-Nehisi Coates and Yona Harvey’s Black Panther & The Crew is getting the axe after poor sales, just two issues after its launch.” The crew is an all-black group of superheroes facing a Black Lives Matter problem — cops who beat people up for no reason.

This venture into “relevance” isn’t surprising. In recent years, Marvel has broken various social conventions such as same-sex marriage in its comic books, gaining a temporary boost in sales but not arresting a long-term slide in the genre26. One problem is that Marvel has attempted to replace these tried and true characters with new, more politically correct versions in the comic book world but their movies more or less maintain the original incarnations. If that were the only problem, it could be simply chalked up to poor marketing27 and left at that.

But it seems the Marvel empire is suffering from some of the same problems that bedevil ESPN, which recently laid off 100 key staff members28 in a cost-cutting move. That’s because ESPN is hemorrhaging viewers29 thanks to its push into leftist politics.

Sports and comic books have one thing in common: both provide an escape from the everyday world, and the introduction of the politically correct was an unwelcome intrusion — based on ratings30 and unit sales, anyway.

There was no need to create a multi-racial Spider-Man or teenage Ironheart or to make the millennia-old Norse god of thunder a woman. But there could have been new characters with different powers as well as the politically correct characteristics desired. If the characters and storylines were likable, believable, and well-written and illustrated, they would have found their market. Unfortunately, as one of these commentators found, the studio at Marvel is an echo chamber of far-left, politically correct ideas, where there is diversity in everything but thought: hence, you have new portrayals of beloved characters in ways people don’t like anymore. And when they don’t like the character, they don’t buy the comic books. Marvel chose to mess with success and it’s costing them current and future readers.

No one is suggesting that we return to some of the stereotypical humor and portrayals that were common in comics of old, especially in wartime. But why can’t we have the characters we grew up with given new and more exciting adventures and villains to match wits against?

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

Trump and Sessions Fight Crime Bigly31 — The AG calls for enforcing the law on mandatory minimum sentencing, unlike Obama. But the law itself is a problem.
IRS’s Lerner Wants Protection From Tea Party Terrorists32 — Lerner and her cohorts shouldn’t be protected from testifying just because their political enemies are pursuing justice.
Who Knew? Union CEO-Shamers Are Hypocrites33 — Not only do union heads throw around bogus numbers, but they make more than your typical CEO.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

L. Brent Bozell & Tim Graham: Democracy Dies in Anonymous Sourcing34
Ed Feulner: Deep-Sixing the Paris Agreement35
Star Parker: Trump Should Move U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem36

For more, visit Right Opinion37.

OPINION IN BRIEF

L. Brent Bozell & Tim Graham: “In the current hothouse environment, with liberal media that define Trump as the antonym of democracy, the public should be wary of anonymous sources. This is especially true today. Newspapers that crusaded against Trump in their pages — both news sections and editorial pages — simply cannot be trusted. Theirs is not the pursuit of truth; it’s the hunt for Donald J. Trump’s scalp. Earth to the [Washington] Post: Your new motto is ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness,’ but anonymous sourcing is darkness. Every source who hides behind a wall as he tries to ruin other people’s careers is a self-serving coward with a personal or political axe to grind. Without knowing an identity, the public has no way of telling anything. It’s idiotic for the press to demand transparency in government at the exact same time it rewards government officials who refuse to be transparent themselves. Journalists pat themselves on the back that they would never be ‘stenographers to power,’ but they’re worse than that now. In their zeal to destroy Trump, they’ve become stenographers to anonymous power.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “We must abandon the prevalent belief in the superior wisdom of the ignorant.” —Daniel Boorstin (1914-2004)

For the record: “Modern feminism is less concerned with giving women a choice than in telling them which choices to make.” —David French

Upright: “Somebody is selectively leaking information and facts, and there’s a reason it’s selective; it’s because they’re trying to create … a narrative or a problem.” —Sean Spicer

The bottom line: “It is not breaking news that an adversary of the United States — Russia — tried to cause trouble for us by meddling in our elections. What is new and dangerous is that there are partisans in our intelligence agencies who are trying to destroy the duly elected president. They and their big media allies are doing far more to damage the U.S. than the Russians could have ever dreamed of.” —Gary Bauer

Hyperbole: “I was in the Nixon administration as you know and I thought, after watching the Clinton impeachment, I thought that I would never see another one. But I think we’re in impeachment territory now for the first time.” —CNN political commentator David Gergen

Braying Jenny: “There is so much evidence — I myself do not think that the Attorney General [Jeff Sessions] should be the attorney general. He’s already violated the recusal.” —Nancy Pelosi

Friendly fire: “Democrats are doing this in collusion with the media obviously, because they just want to create chaos. They want to completely obliterate any sense that the Trump administration is making any progress on anything.” —lefty Camille Paglia

Late-night humor: “American Airlines says it’s getting rid of seat-back TV screens, because most people bring a device with them. While United’s doing the same thing on their flights, because most people just watch the live entertainment.” —Jimmy Fallon

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.