The Patriot Post Digest 10-16-2017

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The Patriot Post Digest 10-16-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest

Oct. 16, 2017 · https://patriotpost.us/digests/51873

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Hillary’s not done with her hyper hypocrisy about sexual assault.
So blacks want more gun control? We have a few thoughts about that.
Trump threads the needle on the Iran nuclear deal, and has good reasons.
The stories you don’t hear from the Leftmedia are as important as the ones you do.
Trump exits UNESCO, and that’s a great thing.
Plus our Daily Features: Top Headlines, Memes, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.

THE FOUNDATION

“Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.” —Samuel Adams (1775)

IN BRIEF

Hillary Calling the Kettle Black1

By Thomas Gallatin

Hillary Clinton, the enabler of her own husband’s sexual harassment and assault2, was asked in an interview last Friday about the accusations3 of sexual assault against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. Hillary opined, “I think it’s important that we not just focus on him and whatever consequences flow from these stories about his behavior but that we recognize this kind of behavior cannot be tolerated anywhere.” She would have been well advised to stop there, but she continued, “After all, we have someone admitting to being a sexual assaulter in the Oval Office.” Bill Clinton was not available for comment.

When the interviewer brought up the legitimate point of Hillary having dismissed Bill’s accusers, her response was reprehensibly contemptuous. She said, “I mean, that was the subject of a huge investigation, as you might recall, in the late 90s and there were conclusions drawn and that was clearly in the past.” But, to paraphrase her buddy Barack Obama, was it on the right side of history?

Evidently for Hillary, a woman’s accusations of sexual harassment or assault only really matter if they are aimed at one of her political opponents — in this case Donald Trump. Those settlements over sexual harassment accusations against Bill are totally irrelevant because they were in the past, but go ahead and feign concerns over this news about Trump.

So about that… Over the weekend, it was reported that a former “Apprentice” contestant filed a subpoena of Trump’s campaign for “all documents concerning any woman who asserted that Donald J. Trump touched her inappropriately.” Recall last October after the release4 of the infamous “Access Hollywood” recording, Summer Zervos accused Trump of sexual harassment. Now in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations, the Demo/MSM are seeking to divert attention back onto Trump.

While this subpoena is overly broad in its scope — seeking documents from any “directors, officers, partners, shareholders, managers, attorneys, employees, agents and representatives” who had connections with the Trump campaign — and it is clearly intended as a witch hunt, it is also true that Trump has a checkered past. There is no high ground for Republicans to stand on in defending Trump on this issue. That said, the Democrats and their Leftmedia propaganda machine5 long ago ceded the high ground. Ignoring their own blatant hypocrisy, Democrats, the Leftmedia and in particular Hillary Clinton are spinning the narrative in their never-ending attempt to take down Trump.

About That ‘Blacks Want New Gun Laws’ Poll…6

By Nate Jackson

“Black Americans want new gun laws to curb gun violence,” The Washington Post headline tells us7. “Trump offers more police.”

And with that one statement, we have so much to rebut!

So let’s start with the racist origins of gun control in the Jim Crow South. That’s right; the first gun control laws were meant to keep guns out of the hands of blacks, leaving them defenseless against the KKK. The worst massacres in American history weren’t Orlando8 and Las Vegas9. As National Review’s Kevin Williamson recounts10, “That happened in — depending on who is doing the counting — 1917 in East St. Louis, or in 1873 in Colfax, La., or in 1921 in Tulsa, Okla., or in 1919 in Arkansas. All of those were mob-violence episodes in which white terrorists, often working under the leadership of Democratic politicians, massacred African Americans, hundreds at a time. Some were shot, some were hanged, some were burned alive.” Unarmed and defenseless blacks.

Second, we’d call this an example of pollaganda11. The Leftmedia repeatedly and falsely tells blacks that the problem with inner cities is guns. Then the Leftmedia asks blacks if removing guns would fix the problem. Lo and behold, people are able to regurgitate the position fed them by the media.

Third, among the Trump statements the Post takes issue with was his assertion that Democrats have “ruled the inner cities for 100 years. This is their rule.” He’s absolutely correct. As Mark Alexander noted Wednesday12, “The 30 cities with the highest murder rates13 have been under Democrat control for decades.” Even the Post sort of concedes this by noting how successful New York was at reducing crime … under Republican Rudy Giuliani.

Fourth, speaking of reducing crime, that brings us to law enforcement. Barack Obama’s war on cops14 has been deadly before, and it turned so again this week. A 19-year-old college fanboy of Obama and Bernie Sanders gunned down Texas Tech University campus police officer Floyd East Jr. on Monday.

Finally, a point about the NFL, which both Trump and the Post note because of the national anthem protests15 that began largely as an anti-police expression. USA Today compiled an arrest database16 of NFL players that is 870 records long. (The NBA is no better17.) So the National Felons League doesn’t like cops? Who knew? Yet these thugs are the heroes of many inner city blacks — the same people who think guns are the problem.

So a memo to the Post and the inner city community: Guns aren’t the problem, Democrat constituencies and policy are the problem.

Top Headlines18

California wildfires have killed at least 40, with hundreds still missing (Reuters19)

Kirkuk: Iraqi forces capture key sites from Kurds (BBC20)

Judicial Watch says FBI has found Clinton-Lynch tarmac meeting documents (Fox News21)

Motion Picture Academy expels movie mogul Harvey Weinstein (Associated Press22)

18 states sue over halted ObamaCare payments (The Hill23)

Taxpayer funded PBS airs anti-Pruitt documentary funded by environmentalist group Backer (The Washington Free Beacon24)

NFL won’t force players to stand for Anthem, focuses on social justice (The Daily Wire25)

Bergdahl doubts fair trial because of Trump’s comments (ABC News26)

Wyoming school district apologizes for “shooting at Trump” answer on quiz (KOTA27)

Student magazine warns against “racist” Halloween costumes (Campus Reform28.)

Policy: Social Security’s raw deal for the poor (Investor’s Business Daily29)

Policy: President Trump makes right call on Iran strategy (The Heritage Foundation30)

For more of today’s news, visit Patriot Headline Report31.

FEATURED ANALYSIS
Trump Threads the Needle on Iran32

President Donald Trump announced Friday that he will not certify Iran’s compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal (known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action), something that is required every 90 days under the terms of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015. Having twice gritted his teeth and certified Iranian compliance while his administration was conducting a thorough review of its Iran policy options, the president appears finally to have had enough of people advising him that the United States is better off sticking with a flawed deal than no deal at all.

His senior advisers are themselves split on the issue. Secretary of Defense James Mattis maintains the deal remains in the best interest of the United States. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also reportedly favors keeping the deal even though he has acknowledged Iran’s material breach of its obligations. Meanwhile, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster has called the JCPOA “fundamentally flawed” but has not gone as far as stating the United States should withdraw from it. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, on the other hand, made the case for decertification. Yet even she said Sunday, “Right now, we’re in the deal to see how we can make it better. And that’s the goal. It’s not that we’re getting out of the deal. We’re just trying to make the situation better so that the American people feel safer.”

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The Patriot Post Digest 10-16-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Leftmedia punditocracy wasted no time shifting into maximum outrage mode, with some even offering their views33 on what Iran should do to out-fox the president. The New York Times opined34 that withdrawing “would be the rashest, most foolish act of the Trump administration to date.” Others claimed35 that there were no benefits to withdrawing from the JCPOA.

The three European nations that have been indispensable in the ongoing 14-year effort to block Iran’s nuclear aspirations — France, the UK and Germany — all registered their displeasure, stating bluntly that they support maintaining the JCPOA. On the other side of the fence, Israel and Saudi Arabia both welcomed President Trump’s decision. Israel has long been wary of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile advances. Saudi Arabia meanwhile has been in a shooting war with Iranian proxies in Yemen for nearly three years, and understands better than most the malign influence of Iran in the Middle East.

Trump unquestionably has sole authority in providing or withholding his certification to Congress. The Review Act calls upon the president to certify four specific issues: Iran’s full, transparent implementation of the deal’s terms; whether or not Iran has committed a material breach of the deal; that Iran is not acting in ways that would advance its nuclear weapons capability; and whether the suspension of U.S. sanctions called for in the JCPOA remains in the best interest of the United States. The last provision is the one most clearly immune to arguments about technicalities of Iranian compliance or what is known about their nuclear weapons program, and it is also the one that opens the door to considering Iran’s overall behavior since the JCPOA took force.

Refusing to certify Iran’s compliance will not by itself take the United States out of the JCPOA. In a must-read examination of the possible outcomes, The Weekly Standard’s Reuel Marc Gerecht suggests36 that the best-case option could even be to de-certify the deal while continuing to waive sanctions, and then working to influence our European allies to ramp up economic pressure on Iran in an effort to get Tehran to accept modifications to the deal. He also makes a key point often left out of recent discussions of the Iran deal — namely the absolute need for a credible threat of military force as a last resort. Without that threat hovering in the background, Iran probably would think it could weather economic pain and wear down its western adversaries with endless go-nowhere talks. After all, the mullahs successfully ran out the clock on the Bush administration with that approach, and they know that President Trump, like George W. Bush before him, won’t be in office forever.

We fully support the president’s effort either to rectify the JCPOA’s serious deficiencies or to begin the process of withdrawing from it. But no one should ignore the very difficult, focused effort that must be put forth over the coming months and even years to bring about rectification, and neither the president nor the Republican Congress have distinguished themselves of late in the focus department.

Supporters of the JCPOA — and there are many of them — will deny its flaws and argue that it remains the best way to prevent Iran getting nuclear weapons. Our international relations with friends and allies may suffer in the short term. As we said at the time37, Barack Obama inflicted a double injury to the United States with the Iran deal, first with the deal itself and second with the need for some future president to undo it and damage our relation with European allies. But whatever the short-term fallout, the Unites States must begin the work of correcting the worst foreign policy blunder of the Obama administration.

North Korea has demonstrated what a determined adversary can achieve, in both nuclear and missile capability, if given enough time. Fourteen years have now elapsed since Iran’s nuclear program came to light. In less than that amount of time many of the JCPOA’s restrictions will come to an end, and Iran will be free to establish an industrial-scale nuclear fuel cycle. So we urge the president and like-minded members of Congress not to let up in their efforts to deal with this problem. Time is not on our side.

For more of today’s memes, visit the Memesters Union38.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

All the News That’s Fit to Suppress39 — Sharyl Attkisson says, “Every day … stories are killed because powerful people know how to get them killed.”
Trump Pulls the U.S. Out of UNESCO40 — This particular UN organization has done little more than stoke the fires of anti-Israel bias.

For more of today’s top cartoons, visit the Cartoons archive41.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Peggy Noonan: The Culture of Death — and of Disdain42
Edwin J. Feulner: Growing Threats, Weakened Forces43
George Will: Trump Is Turning and Turning in a Widening Gyre44
Burt Prelutsky: Sexual Harassment45

For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion46.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Peggy Noonan: “Why do Americans own so many guns? Because they don’t trust the protected elites to protect them. … I think a lot of Americans have guns because they’re fearful — and for damn good reason. They fear a coming chaos, and know that when it happens it will be coming to a nation that no longer coheres. They think it’s all collapsing — our society, our culture, the baseline competence of our leadership class. They see the cultural infrastructure giving way — illegitimacy, abused children, neglect, racial tensions, kids on opioids staring at screens — and, unlike their cultural superiors, they understand the implications. Nuts with nukes, terrorists bent on a mission. The grid will go down. One of our foes will hit us, suddenly and hard. In the end it could be hand to hand, door to door. I said some of this six years ago to a famously liberal journalist, who blinked in surprise. If that’s true, he said, they won’t have a chance! But they are Americans, I said. They won’t go down without a fight.”

SHORT CUTS

The Gipper: “In an ironic sense Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis, a crisis where the demands of the economic order are conflicting directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West but in the home of Marxism- Leninism, the Soviet Union. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens.”

Upright: “In America we don’t worship government — we worship God.” —Donald Trump

For the record: “The Affordable Care Act granted the executive branch a fair amount of leeway. It was written in a way that, in my view, moves too much policymaking authority from the legislative to the executive branch. Given that the law was written this way, though, I’m in favor of Trump’s using that leeway in the interest of better health policy.” —Ramesh Ponnuru

Demo-gogues: “He [Trump] has shown an uncontrollable personal need to pour disgusting liquids on anything associated with President Obama.” —Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA)

The BIG Lie: “That’s what black athletes kneeling47 was all about. That’s not against our anthem or our flag. Actually, kneeling is a reverent position. It was to demonstrate in a peaceful way against racism and injustice in our criminal system. … I think it would be a grave error for Democrats to recede from those fights, so therefore we have to stand up, fight back, resist.” —Hillary Clinton

Alpha Jackass: “If [Republican viewers are] so turned off by my opinion on health care48 and gun violence49 then, I don’t know, I probably wouldn’t want to have a conversation with them anyway. Not good riddance, but riddance.” —Jimmy Kimmel on GOP viewers tuning out of his show

Profiles in courage: “I found out about Harvey [Weinstein] about a year ago, and I am ashamed that I didn’t say anything right then. … I was not that bold. Because, I guess, it hadn’t happened to me, and so I didn’t feel it was my place.” —Jane Fonda

Braying Jenny: “The Republicans have been stacking the courts for decades now including the Supreme Court of the United States and they have moved it to a much more pro-corporate court that really crushes the rights of individuals, crushes women’s rights, the rights of those who want to challenge big banks in court.” —Elizabeth Warren

“If there’s a full reckoning of Hollywood, there are not going to be a lot of survivors.” —Frank J. 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.