The Patriot Post 6-19-2017

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The Patriot Post 6-19-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
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Mid-Day Digest

Jun. 19, 2017

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Why can’t Trump fill key administration spots? All the distractions.
The United Nations takes on a bogeyman — “cultural appropriation.”
Leftist violence is nothing new, though it’s increased in intensity.
Daily Features: Top Headlines, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.

THE FOUNDATION

“Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” —James Madison (1787)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Two-Fold Trouble Filling Administration Posts1

After President Donald Trump’s inauguration, he set about appointing the most conservative administration since Ronald Reagan — more conservative, in fact2. He’s accomplished some important policy changes, not least of which is reining in the regulatory beast. And yet his administration, from even before Day 1, has been beset by distraction and phony scandal. Most of that — 95% of it — is fomented by leftists determined to undermine his agenda and delegitimize his very presidency. Still, that leaves 5%, and we have on occasion chalked that up to Trump’s tendency to say dumb stuff3, primarily on Twitter, that amounts to self-inflicted damage. For example, his trouble with James Comey4 really grew when he attacked his already fired FBI director on Twitter. In general, rather than accomplishing his agenda, he fuels DemoMSM fires of distraction, all because he still thinks he controls the realty-TV script. He doesn’t, even as president.

That’s playing out in one particularly important way — his difficulty in filling administration posts. The Washington Post reports5, “Republicans say they are turning down job offers to work for a chief executive whose volatile temperament makes them nervous. They are asking head-hunters if their reputations could suffer permanent damage, according to 27 people The Washington Post interviewed to assess what is becoming a debilitating factor in recruiting political appointees. The hiring challenge complicates the already slow pace at which Trump is filling senior leadership jobs across government.”

Two yuge caveats. First, as the administration disputes this, saying there are procedural delays in vetting applicants, and there are people, in the words of Press Secretary Sean Spicer, “knocking down my door” to apply for jobs. Second, the report comes from The Washington Post, which also today celebrates the 45th anniversary of the Watergate break-in6. Think they’re not itching to relive the glory days? So take what they report with a major grain of salt.

That said, there are also two sides to this coin. Senate Democrats are delaying confirmations at a record pace, and leftists in general are raising such a stink as to block others entirely. Dr. Mark Green withdrew from consideration7 for Army secretary after the Rainbow Mafia went after him. It’s all part of the derail-Trump’s-agenda campaign. But Trump is also moving slowly and putting up red flags for potential recruits. When he’s poorly running a realty-TV administration and publicly undermining his own officials, there’s less incentive for qualified individuals to take the risk.

UN Targets ‘Cultural Appropriation’8

“Cultural appropriation” is a popular term used by social justice warriors (SJWs) to vilify those who adopt ideas, styles, dress, expressions, cuisine or social practices from cultures not their own. That used to be known here as the American melting pot, but SJWs claim this is a form of racial oppression. Well, the United Nations has decided that “cultural appropriation” has become a big issue — so much so that delegates from 189 countries are gathering for a specialized international committee meeting in Geneva in order to declare the practice illegal and work toward creating international laws to prevent it.

The goal of the UN, says James Anaya, dean of law at the University of Colorado, should be to “obligate states to create effective criminal and civil enforcement procedures to recognize and prevent the non-consensual taking and illegitimate possession, sale and export of traditional cultural expressions.” You heard that right — the UN should require governments of the world to create laws which prevent citizens from engaging in the traditions of other cultures. This is ironic given that the constant mantra from the UN and the Left has been calls for greater diversity and globalism. This is a call to tribalism.

In reality, this UN special committee is working to prevent the cultural and economic development of some nations, and the U.S. in particular. Our entire history is one of engaging in the adoption and blending of a multitude of various cultural traditions and practices into one — e pluribus unum. The UN evidently views the concept of a melting pot as racist and oppressive. Just another issue for those disgruntled nations within the UN to use to demonize the U.S.

And that really seems to be the point. Much of the world rejects those foundational values espoused in the U.S. Constitution. Whether it is the right to bear arms or the right to freedom of speech, those are values that many of the world’s intellectual elites find repugnant, because those rights prevent them from controlling people. Liberty prevents them from being able to rule the world according to their own ideals. It allows for the common man to express his own opinions and values. To put it bluntly, this is an attempt to squelch that Liberty.

Top Headlines9

U.S. Navy confirms seven missing sailors on USS Fitzgerald deceased. (Fox News10)

15 days after Islamist terror attack, terror flags waved openly in streets of London. (CNS News11)

Van hits Muslim worshippers near London’s Finsbury Park mosque. (NBC News12)

198 million Americans hit by “largest ever” voter records leak. (ZDNet13)

Trump administration keeps Obama LGBT policies at the Pentagon and other agencies. (The Daily Signal14)

Surprise! Sex offender shot by ICE in Denver had already been deported. (Hot Air15)

U.S. shoots down Syrian fighter jet over Syria. (ABC News16)

Oregon becomes first state to allow nonbinary gender on driver’s license. (OregonLive17)

World War II hero, Medal of Honor recipient Arthur Jackson dies at 92. (Idaho Statesman18.)

Policy: Free market health care reform. (Capital Research Center19)

Policy: Ignore the critics. The Amazon/Whole Foods deal is good for consumers. (Investor’s Business Daily20)

Humor: “Crooked Hill” Street sign altered to read “Crooked Hillary” Street. (Fox News21)

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report22.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
‘Resisting’ Democracy and Decency23

By Arnold Ahlert

“Liberals protest; radicals rebel. Liberals become indignant; radicals become fighting mad and go into action. Liberals do not modify their personal lives and what they give to a cause is a small part of their lives; radicals give themselves to the cause. Liberals give and take oral arguments; radicals give and take the hard, dirty, bitter way of life.” —from24 Saul Alinsky’s “Reveille for Radicals,” published in 1946

Perhaps nothing has contributed to the toxic nature of today’s political climate more than the disturbing reality that a once classically liberal Democrat Party25 has been hijacked by the radical Left. This is not the party of John F. Kennedy, Tip O'Neill or former DNC chair Henry “Scoop” Jackson, who simultaneously supported liberal causes while remaining staunchly anti-Communist. Today’s DNC chair is Thomas Perez, whose contribution to “thoughtful” debate is to assert26 that Republicans “don’t give a sh-t about people,” and declare that Donald Trump “didn’t win the election.”

But Donald Trump did win the election, despite the recounts27, the death threats and petitions28 aimed at getting Electoral College voters to subvert the will of the people, and the felonious Inauguration Day riots29, courtesy of leftist thugs who smashed property and threw rocks at police.

And ever since, a Democrat Party, aided and abetted by a corrupt phalanx of leftist radicals in media, academia, Hollywood and vast swaths of the unelected federal bureaucracy, has made it clear Donald Trump must not be merely challenged or discredited.

He must first be demonized and then impeached — by any means necessary.

Hence, a severed presidential head is presented as comedy. A Shakespeare play featuring an orange-haired Caesar murdered30 by political rivals is presented as drama. A CNN host of a religious show tweets that Trump is a “piece of sh-t” who is “a stain on the presidency,” and Huffington Post columnist Jason Fuller writes31 that everyone assisting Trump’s agenda must be convicted of treason — and executed. “Anything less than capital punishment — or at least life imprisonment without parole in a maximum security detention facility — would send yet another message to the world that America has lost its moral compass,” Fuller spews.

America hasn’t lost its moral compass. Democrats have urged their followers to trample on it. Last Wednesday, Bernie Sanders supporter and dedicated Trump-hater James T. Hodgkinson attempted to massacre Republican Congressmen, critically wounding Steve Scalise before being shot dead32 by two Capitol Police officers.

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The Patriot Post 6-19-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
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Sanders was “sickened by this despicable act” and insisted that violence “is unacceptable in our society” — now. Yet the same Bernie Sanders told33 Rachel Maddow in March that “seeing members of Congress, Republicans, having to sneak out the back door or claim I’m worried about my safety, I can’t even hold a town meeting” is “our goal.”

Blaming Democrats or the greater left for the motives of Hodgkinson, regardless of his politics, or his list of Republican targets34, is the stuff of fools or agitators. Yet it is hard to ignore the reality that Democrat politicians have supported groups such as Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter, whose violent tactics have been propagandized as a fight for “social justice.” They are virtually silent about, or tacitly supportive35, of masked “antifa” (anti-fascist — irony alert) thugs who commit violence to oppress “hate” speech. And in May, Hillary Clinton announced her intention to fund36 groups supporting the “Resistance™” movement.

The Resistance™ movement highlights the divide between classic Democrat liberalism and the Party’s current allegiance to radicalism. The Nation’s Natasha Lennard illuminates37 why the former no longer satisfies the radicals. “Liberals cling to institutions: They begged to no avail for faithless electors, they see ‘evisceration’ in a friendly late-night talk-show debate, they put faith in investigations and justice with regards to Russian interference and business conflicts of interest,” she writes. “They grasp at hypotheticals about who could have won, were things not as they in fact are. For political subjects so tied to the mythos of Reason, it is liberals who now seem deranged.”

In short, faith in the Constitution and the Rule of Law is deranged. What’s not? According to Lennard, “disruption, confrontation, doxxing38 [publishing personal information online] and altercation remain tactics anyone taking seriously a refusal to normalize Trump-era fascism should consider.”

No one has led the effort to de-normalize Donald Trump more than Democrats and their media allies. Absent a shred of proof, Americans have been fed a steady diet of media leaks regarding collusion between Trump and the Russians, while former FBI Director James Comey4, who testified that investigation began almost a year ago, refused as late as May to confirm39 whether the FBI had even begun investigating the only known felonies perpetrated by that leaking.

And media leaking about the Russian investigation has now morphed seamlessly into leaks40 of the investigation being conducted by Robert Mueller, and the revelation that the investigation into “Russian meddling” has now morphed into an investigation of Trump’s “obstruction of justice.”

Loretta Lynch’s efforts to obstruct justice as outlined by Comey himself? Mueller’s conflict of interest with regard to his long friendship41 with Comey, in clear violation of a special counsel statute42? His hiring of at least a dozen attorneys, including four who contributed several thousands of dollars to the Democrat Party, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and one who once represented the Clinton Foundation?

The media portray43 Muller as a paragon of integrity, and Democrats threaten that any attempts to remove him will precipitate44 impeachment proceedings. The same impeachment theme Democrats have reiterated45 ad nauseam since the inauguration.

The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan takes on46 the media and their unstinting efforts in making “the whole political scene lower, grubbier,” and “showing the young what otherwise estimable adults do under pressure, which is lose their equilibrium.”

The result? “By indulging their and their audience’s rage, they spread the rage,” Noonan adds.

The Democrat Party? Dedicated leftist Camille Paglia excoriates47 their reaction to Trump’s election as “one of the most disgraceful episodes in the history of the modern Democratic party,” and describes Party leader Chuck Schumer as someone who “asserted absolutely no moral authority as the party spun out of control in a nationwide orgy of rage and spite.”

Not quite. Rage and spite are integral parts of the Democrat Party platform. Promoting victimization, and the tribalism it inevitably produces, is now its stock in trade, based on an adage as timely as it’s ever been:

The right believes the left is wrong; the left believes the right is evil.

Thus, a party once known for classic liberalism’s “give and take,” now embraces the radicals’ “hard, dirty, bitter way of life.” It is the party that champions the political correctness Paglia refers to as “repressively Stalinist, dependent on a labyrinthine, parasitic bureaucracy to enforce its empty dictates.”

What dictates? “Well-nigh the entire ruling class — government bureaucracies, the judiciary, academia, media, associated client groups, Democratic officials, and Democrat-controlled jurisdictions — have joined in ‘Resistance’ to the 2016 elections,” writes48 Angelo Codevilla, who further characterizes that Resistance™ as “a cold civil war against a majority of the American people and their way of life.”

Will Democrats and their allies turn a cold war hot?

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

The Artful Deal for the Cubans49 — Trump has changed some important “features” of Obama’s terrible Communist-coddling Cuba policy.
Mattis Blames Sequestration for Devastating Military Readiness50 — The secretary of defense didn’t hold back asserting that Obama’s sequester significantly impacted the military.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

John Goodman: Why Are We So Divided?51
Gary Bauer: The Game52
Hans von Spakovsky: Supreme Court Shouldn’t Delay Action on Travel Ban Case53

For more, visit Right Opinion54.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Gary Bauer: “Before [Thursday’s baseball] game, Democrat and Republican members of Congress joined each other on their knees in prayer. It was an encouraging scene. Those of us who work in Washington know there are quite a few believers in both parties and there are frequent Bible studies. But the scene was also a reality check, especially given Sen. Bernie Sanders’ bigoted and disgraceful attack against one public servant’s faith [recently]. If legislation makes it to the House or Senate floor guaranteeing that religious institutions don’t have to pay for abortions or contraception under Obamacare, many of the Democrat Christians kneeling Thursday night would likely vote against it. The reason comity is so hard is that the things dividing the two sides are not minor matters. Religious liberty. Secure borders. The Second Amendment. Whether cities can violate federal law. The sanctity of life. On some issues, compromise is extremely difficult. There are deep divides between the Left and Right over what America stands for, what it means, how to confront the threat of radical Islam and the role of religious liberty in our society. As I have said and written many times before, we are in the midst of a great culture war over the values we will pass on to our children and grandchildren, and only one side can prevail.”

SHORT CUTS

The Gipper: “The state of California has no business subsidizing intellectual curiosity.”

Observations: “Understand, I like President Trump. I want him to be able to carry through on his promises to get rid of ObamaCare, reform the tax code, build the wall and finally move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. But, sometimes he leaves me shaking my head. Why, for instance, didn’t he replace Comey on the first day of his administration? Both sides of the aisle in Congress would have flung confetti in the air. Instead, he waited four months and then dumped the guy in the most suspicious way possible, turning him not only into the world’s tallest political martyr, but the smuggest and least appealing.” —Burt Prelutsky

A broken clock is right twice a day: “The cold biological truth is that sex changes are impossible. Every single cell of the human body remains coded with one’s birth gender for life. Intersex ambiguities can occur, but they are developmental anomalies that represent a tiny proportion of all human births.” —lefty self-described transgender Camille Paglia

Dezinformatsiya: “It’s time to ask whether the attack on the United States Congress [Wednesday] was foreseeable, predictable and, to some degree, self-inflicted.” —CBS’s Scott Pelley

Race bait: “It’s a delicate thing because obviously everybody is wishing the congressman well and hoping that he recovers, but Steve Scalise has a history that we’ve all been forced to sort of ignore on race.” —MSNBC’s Joy Ann Reid

Braying Jackass: “No, the answer isn’t carry a gun. The answer is tone down your rhetoric and act like a leader, and bring people together, and stop fanning the flames of hate. That’s the answer. The answer is create an atmosphere where you don’t need a gun.” —Gov. Andrew Cuomo chastising Chris Collins

Late-night humor: “It really is amazing Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong Un are friends. Especially considering Kim Jong Un doesn’t speak English and Dennis Rodman doesn’t speak English.” —Jimmy Kimmel

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.