The Patriot Post Digest 8-11-2017

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The Patriot Post Digest 8-11-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest

Aug. 11, 2017 · https://patriotpost.us/digests/50743

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Fusion GPS, the firm responsible for the fake Trump/Russia dossier, isn’t cooperating.
Beware troll polls that try to smear Republican voters.
Google’s diversity problem is deep and getting deeper all the time.
Daily Features: Top Headlines, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.

THE FOUNDATION

“The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.” —Thomas Jefferson (1775)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Fusion GPS Thumbs Its Nose at Congress1

As the Russian election meddling investigation continues to roll on, a central player has begun to emerge that may turn the entire investigation on its head. That player is research firm Fusion GPS2, the organization responsible for creating the debunked, fallacious and salacious Trump/Russia dossier3 that got the whole ball rolling.

In July, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley subpoenaed Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS, seeking to glean more information about the infamous dossier and related interactions with the FBI. Initially Simpson refused to testify, pleading the Fifth Amendment, but a deal was later reached in which the subpoena was withdrawn in exchange for Simpson’s agreement to disclose “his involvement in creating the Trump dossier and interactions with the FBI” and “his alleged work with the unregistered foreign agents who met with the Trump family and campaign officials.”

Fast-forward to Thursday, when Fusion GPS turned over documents related to the Trump dossier. What was actually received by Senate Judiciary Committee, however, was described by spokesman George Hartmann as “mostly news clippings,” not a record of Fusion GPS’s substantive communications. In other words, this is what political strategist Dick Morris calls “a brazen disregard for a Congressional inquiry.”

Now the questions are mounting. What are Simpson and Fusion GPS seeking to hide? Who funded their work2? After all the smoke being blown around about a supposed Trump/Russia collusion conspiracy, it now looks as if the embers from that fire are resting on the Democrat side of the fence.

WaPo’s Electoral Moratorium Pollaganda4

Pollsters from Yeshiva University and the University of Pennsylvania yielded a survey that showed relatively significant support for an electoral moratorium among Republicans anxious about voter fraud. Among the survey questions were two gauging Republican voters’ sentiments over a theoretical situation in which Donald Trump and/or Congress prescribed delaying the 2020 election “until the country can make sure that only eligible American citizens can vote.” The pollsters were aghast at the results.

According to their Washington Post analysis5, “52 percent said that they would support postponing the 2020 election, and 56 percent said they would do so if both Trump and Republicans in Congress were behind this.”

The pollsters do (later) admit, “Of course, our survey is only measuring reactions to a hypothetical situation. Were Trump to seriously propose postponing the election, there would be a torrent of opposition, which would most likely include prominent Republicans.” But none of this is reflected in the headline, which intentionally tries to label the majority of Republicans as a bunch of nitwits.

Furthermore, even after their so-called disclaimer, the authors do some editorializing by asserting their findings demonstrate “that a substantial number of Republicans are amenable to violations of democratic norms that are more flagrant than what is typically proposed (or studied).” There are a plethora of problems with this suggestion, as outlined6 by National Review’s Dan McLaughlin.

“The Post does not provide the full sequence of the questions,” he writes, “which itself is somewhat suspicious given the well-known ability of ‘troll polls’ to get answers they want by priming respondents with a series of leading questions.” We in our humble shop refer to this as the pollaganda effect7 — polls used to drive rather than reflect public opinion.

Then there’s the issue of cross-aisle similarities. As McLaughlin ponders, “How does the result compare to how Democrats or independents would answer the same or a similar question? Again, the Post doesn’t disclose that.” McLaughlin points to a few double standards. Democrat congressmen Don Beyer and Jose Serrano each have advocated their own dubious electoral end runs in their party’s quest to retain control.

“Beyer proposed postponing the Electoral College vote until more information could be obtained on Russian interference in the 2016 election,” says McLaughlin, and “Serrano proposed repealing the 22nd Amendment to let President Obama run for a third term.” Moreover, citing a WPA Research poll, The Hill reported in June 2016, “A strong majority of Democrats would cancel the 2016 presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump if it meant President Obama could serve another term.” None of this is referenced in any of the aforementioned pollsters’ research.

McLaughlin makes this critical observation: “The great conceit of the media’s incessant attacks on the Republican voting base is not that Republicans include a lot of people who believe a lot of bad or untrue things. It’s that this isn’t also true of Democrats.” Charles C.W. Cooke, for his part, retorts, “Partisan troll polls trap both sides, tell us nothing interesting, and, ultimately, make us all stupider.” Well, it actually does tell us one thing: The media will do anything to fill up space and earn advertising revenue, preferably by making Republicans looks bad.

Top Headlines8

Trump appoints more judges in 200 days than Obama, Bush, Clinton. (The Daily Signal9)

Trump takes action: 9,000 federal employees slashed in first six months. (The Washington Times10)

China warns North Korea: You’re on your own if you go after the United States. (The Washington Post11)

Army short $7 to $9 billion needed to modernize force. (The Washington Free Beacon12)

Judge orders State Department to search state.gov accounts for Clinton aides’ Benghazi emails. (The Hill13)

President Trump says he won’t fire special counsel Robert Mueller. (USA Today14)

Castro huddles with Russia as U.S.-Cuba relationship crumbles. (Washington Examiner15)

Government employees arrested for allegedly selling false IDs to illegal aliens for voter fraud. (CNS News16)

College student gets 100 days in slammer for registering dead voters for Dems. (Fox News17)

NY Times editorial writer will proclaim ignorance in response to Palin’s defamation lawsuit. (Hot Air18.)

Policy: The war on free speech turns further left. (Capital Research Center19)

Policy: Suggestions for a bipartisan approach on health care. (Health Affairs Blog20)

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report21.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Doing a Google Search for Diversity22

By Michael Swartz

It may be an employee’s worst nightmare: writing a thoughtful memo to promote discussion and improve one’s workplace — and getting fired for it. We wrote about23 the 10-page memo24 that compelled Google to fire software engineer James Damore a few days back, but since then we’ve heard his side of the story25.

Damore says his firing offense was “perpetuating gender stereotypes.” He also noted that Google was “telling us about a lot of these potentially illegal practices that they’ve been doing to try to increase diversity … basically treating people differently based on what their race or gender are.” Damore, however, is a white male, so his analysis was immediately deemed a “sexist screed” and an “anti-diversity memo” by the mainstream media.

But his dismissal has encouraged other whistleblowers to speak out (anonymously) about Google’s hard-left monoculture, its politically correct atmosphere and the draconian measures being used to enforce its unwritten code of groupthink. One of those who spoke out, “Gordon,” claimed26, “Google is run like a religious cult. Conform and carry out the rituals, and you’ll be rewarded and praised; ask any uncomfortable questions or offend the wrong people, and the threats and public shaming will be swift and ruthless. The religion in this case is a kind of intersectional feminism, its central tenets are Diversity and Inclusion, its demonic enemy is Bias, and its purifying rituals include humiliating forms of ‘training’ that resemble Maoist struggle sessions.” Gordon also noted the company’s bizarre reaction to Donald Trump’s electoral victory: “After the 2016 election, we had an entire TGIF (Friday meeting) dedicated to the election result, in which several of our top management gave emotional speeches as though the world was going to end, and [they] seemed to be on the verge of tears. It was embarrassing.”

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The Patriot Post Digest 8-11-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
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Another employee, who goes by “Hal,” added27, “A lot of social justice activists essentially spend all day fighting the culture war, and get nothing done. The company has made it a point to hire more people like this. The diversity gospel has been woven into nearly everything the company does, to the point where senior leaders focus on diversity first and technology second. The companywide ‘Google Insider’ emails used to talk about cool new tech, but now they’re entirely about social justice initiatives. Likewise, the weekly all-hands ‘TGIF’ meetings used to focus on tech, but now they’re split about 50/50 between tech and identity politics signaling. For conservative employees, this is obviously demoralizing, but it is also dangerous. Several have been driven out of the company or fired outright for sharing a dissenting view.” Hal also spoke about “massive witch hunts” whereby hordes of Google’s social justice warriors target those colleagues who run afoul of the corporate narrative.

Yet there is a nuanced argument here beyond the tired anthem of creating a “diverse” workplace. Like most businesses, Google operates as an “at-will” employer, meaning that the company is perfectly within its rights to dismiss Damore for writing and distributing his memo, or anyone else for numerous “offenses.”

Any libertarian worth his salt would contend that Damore knew the risk he was taking by going against the corporate grain, but as Reason’s Nick Gillespie argues, “There should be no question that [Google] has the right to fire people. If a company does that consistently for arbitrary and unconvincing reasons (ranging from enforcing ideological consistency in non-ideological organizations to erratic management to whatever), it will have huge trouble attracting and keeping talent. But in a free society, every company should have the right to put itself out of business through bad management practices.” Gillespie goes on to warn us that Google provides a prime example of how intolerance of free expression isn’t limited to the public realm, such as public schools or the university campus.

Google is guilty of another troubling bit of totalitarianism. A few years back, the Internet giant meekly rolled over28 rather than deal resolutely with the communist Chinese government — ceding a market to competitors who allow that police state to monitor and crack down on signs of dissent among its populace. On the other hand, the company styles itself as a guardian29 of free expression and staunch opponent of government intrusion here in the U.S. Damore’s firing indicates the corporate culture is far closer to communism than capitalism.

The problem with Google and every other left-leaning champion of “diversity” is that they view the concept almost exclusively as a set of physical characteristics (with the fairly recent exceptions of same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria, which are behavioral and mental). But in Google’s world, diversity doesn’t include characteristics such as being Christian, being politically or socially conservative, and so forth. Of course, the exclusion of these ideas and attitudes leaves Google’s world far less diverse.

Google is a vast workplace, with employees coming from every corner of the earth. So why is the company trying to put them all in a homogenous box? Google’s drive for selective diversity may well be what Gillespie calls a “bad management practice.” Here’s hoping Google can come to its senses and James Damore can pick up the pieces after having boldly expressed what so many of us are witnessing in the workplace.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

The McMaster Problem?30 — Trump’s national security advisor is either an anti-Israel villain or the only man to steer the ship.
Rainbow Mafia Pushes Dubious Economics to Further Its Agenda31 — Socially conservative laws are labeled as dangerous for business, while leftist prerogatives are an economic boon.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Hans von Spakovsky: Rahm Emanuel Welcomes Criminal Aliens32
Michael Reagan: The Follies of Appeasement33
Jonah Goldberg: Diversity Flaps Are Often Manufactured34

For more, visit Right Opinion35.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Hans von Spakovsky: “Why would [Chicago Mayor Rahm] Emanuel even want to keep criminal aliens on the already mean streets of Chicago? One 2005 Government Accountability Office (GAO) study of 55,322 criminal aliens found that they had been arrested 459,614 times and committed almost 700,000 criminal offenses — an average of 13 offenses per illegal alien. The crimes included everything from murder to robbery to sex-related assaults. A 2011 GAO report told a similar sad story. Reviewing the records of 251,000 criminal aliens in federal, state, and local prisons and jails, it found they had been arrested nearly 1.7 million times for close to three million criminal offenses. Had these offenders not been in the country, their victims would have been spared much suffering. Or if cities and states had notified Washington that they were about to release these repeat offenders, the feds could have picked them up and removed them from the country. The sanctuary policies championed by Rahm Emanuel make that impossible. Yet he arrogantly boasts that Chicago will not be ‘blackmailed into changing our values.’ The ‘value’ he seeks to uphold is the self-proclaimed right to flout federal law to protect known predators. Only the most twisted logic could equate withholding federal agency grants from a city that refuses to allow the federal agency to do its job to some form of blackmail.”

SHORT CUTS

Upright: “No doubt there are real injustices out there. The demands of motherhood and the culture of Silicon Valley surely pose challenges. But these disparities are nonetheless a sign of great social progress. Women are choosing the careers they want. I don’t hear many people bleating about the lack of sexual diversity among trash collectors. The issue here isn’t diversity, but conformity. Everyone must agree with a very narrow dogma about not just sexual equality but the approved ways of enforcing it.” —Jonah Goldberg

Delusions of grandeur: “I think there’s some things that [the North Koreans] want from us, and we have to find out whether or not we can work with them on the things that they’re asking for.” —Maxine Waters

Village Idiots: “History shows that we can, if we must, tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea — the same way we tolerated the far greater threat of thousands of Soviet nuclear weapons during the Cold War. It will require being pragmatic.” —Susan Rice

Friendly fire: “We wish [Debbie Wasserman Schultz] would go away and stop being so public by doubling down on negative stories. … Those of us on the DNC know we have to rebrand ourselves and earn the people’s trust. And unfortunately Debbie’s name does not scream trust.” —DNC member Nikki Barnes

Braying Jenny: “I’m just going to say it. [The] #NRA & [Dana Loesch] are quickly becoming domestic security threats under President Trump. We can’t ignore that.” —Rep. Kathleen Rice

Non Compos Mentis: “Some early fetuses will die in early pregnancy due to abortion or miscarriage. And in my view that is a very different kind of entity. That’s something that doesn’t have a future as a person and it doesn’t have moral status.” —Princeton University professor Elizabeth Harman

And last… “I understand The Washington Post did not get the leadership it wanted on November 8th. But if ‘President Hillary’ had threatened Kim Jong-un with ‘fire and fury,’ the Post would be praising her as the ‘American Iron Lady.’” —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.