The Patriot Post Digest 11-27-2017

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 11-27-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest

Nov. 27, 2017 · https://patriotpost.us/digests/52599

IN TODAY’S EDITION

    CNN doesn’t have much to say about Democrat sex scandals.
    Obama’s bureaucrat lackeys take on Trump #Resistance.
    Hedonism mixed with modern liberalism is the reason behind recent abuse stories.
    Socialist billionaire Jeff Bezos has far more influence than one man should.
    Plus our Daily Features: Top Headlines, Memes, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.

THE FOUNDATION

“A better system of education for the common people might preserve them long from such artificial inequalities as are prejudicial to society, by confounding the natural distinctions of right and wrong, virtue and vice.” —John Adams (1786)

IN BRIEF

CNN: What Democrat Sex Scandals?1

By Jordan Candler

CNN has secured a number of self-inflicted pejoratives. For example, it’s not uncommon to hear it referred to as the Communist News Network. Well, here’s another one: Censorship News Network. Recall that the allegations2 against Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore blew up faster than a grandiose Independence Day fireworks show in Boston. Unbeknownst to many of the network’s followers, however, are the trove of recent salacious accusations against Democrats, whose systemically bad behavior CNN ignores.

The Daily Wire chronicles two dozen new allegations3 CNN opted to ignore, beginning with a Nov. 20 report in which four women allege that Bill Clinton assaulted them during his post-White House days. Lawsuits are reportedly in the works. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Other cases implicate former Rep. Bob Filner, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, California Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, New Mexico congressional candidate David Alcon, Colorado state Rep. Steve Lebsock, Colorado House Speaker Crisanta Duran, Minnesota state Sen. Dan Schoen, California state Sen. Tony Mendoza, California state senate Democrat leader Kevin de León, Radnor Township Board of Commissioners president Philip Ahr, Georgia state Rep. Calvin Smyre, Florida Democrat Party president Sally Boynton Brown, New Mexico state Sen. Michael Padilla, Colorado state Rep. Paul Rosenthal, Illinois state Sen. Ira Silverstein, Missouri state Rep. Josh Peters, Nevada state Sen. Mark Manendo, Oklahoma state Rep. Will Fourkiller, Oregon state Rep. David Gomberg, former Washington state Rep. Brendan Williams, Connecticut councilman Scott Chamberlain, Florida state Sen. Jeff Clemens and Ohio Supreme Court Justice William O'Neill.

Every one of these names represents the Democrat Party. And every single one of these names the Demo/MSM4 seeks desperately not to acknowledge. The Leftmedia is covering the allegations against Democrats Sen. Al Franken and Rep. John Conyers, but only because they have no choice. Their stature renders it unavoidable. With these other names, their mostly non-national, lower profile offers an escape route. But just remember: Networks like CNN that choose to avoid these scandals while obsessing over Republican misdeeds — which exist but in smaller quantities — only prove that their goal is based on a political agenda, not fostering a truly bipartisan, sexual abuse-free environment for women.

Obama Lackey Sues to Limit Trump5

By Thomas Gallatin

Bureaucracy is as bureaucracy does. Barack Obama lackey Richard Cordray recently announced his resignation from the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and formally resigned the day after Thanksgiving. Before stepping down, however, Cordray named his deputy director, Leandra English, as his replacement. This was clearly a political play by Cordray, who is seeking to become the Democrat candidate for the Ohio governor race in 2018, to counter Donald Trump’s chosen temporary director, Mick Mulvaney. As we wrote recently6, the CFPB, created by the monstrous financial regulatory behemoth known as Dodd-Frank, is essentially a rogue agency answerable to almost no one, and Corday’s selection of English is a deliberate attempt to keep it that way.

Upon Cordray’s resignation announcement, Trump tapped current Office of Management and Budget Director Mulvaney, who has been vocal in his criticism of the agency, to serve as the interim director of the CFPB. Mulvaney showed up Monday morning to take the role, notwithstanding English’s also claiming the title. “Please disregard any instructions you receive from Ms. English in her presumed capacity as acting director,” Mulvaney told employees.

Under the law, the president has the right to name a temporary acting head to any executive agency who has already been confirmed by the Senate to another position, which Mulvaney has been. In other words, Trump is on solid legal ground. Even the CFPB’s general counsel, Mary McLeod, agreed with this view, writing in an internal memo, “Questions have been raised whether the president has the authority under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA) to designate Mick Mulvaney … as Acting Director of CFPB following the resignation of Richard Cordray as of midnight, Friday, November 24, 2017. This confirms my oral advice to the Senior Leadership Team that the answer is ‘yes.’”

And yet for Democrats, the #Resistance must go on, irrespective of questions of legality. English has now filed a lawsuit against Trump over his appointment of Mulvaney, claiming that she was the “rightful acting director” because the authority to name a successor lay not with the president but with the outgoing director. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) responded to English’s lawsuit by calling for her removal: “The president should fire her immediately and anyone who disobeys Director Mulvaney’s order should also be fired summarily. The Constitution and the law must prevail against the supposed resistance.”

Now the issue will be settled by the courts, which many legal experts believe is almost assuredly a victory for Trump. The irony for leftists is that while Obama was in office they eagerly promoted and pushed to extend the power of the executive branch. But now that Trump is in office, Democrats are pivoting in order to placate their base. In continuing the resistance, they’re only continuing to alienate the rest of the country.

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 11-27-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Top Headlines7

    GOP pushing ahead on tax-cut plan (The Washington Post8.)

    Justices to weigh cell phone privacy in landmark case (The Hill9)

    Democrat Sen. Al Franken “ashamed” but back to work amid sexual misconduct allegations (The Washington Times10)

    Democrat Rep. John Conyers steps down from committee leadership position amid harassment accusations (NBC News11)

    Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill took action to hide travel on private plane from public (The Washington Free Beacon12)

    Record amount of background checks for guns on Black Friday (Fox News13)

    UK begins another gun surrender initiative amid increase in gun crime (The Washington Free Beacon14)

    Trump’s call to stop ObamaCare payments leads to more cheap plans for low-income customers (Washington Examiner15)

    Bigoted Church of Sweden to stop using God’s preferred pronoun “He” (The Guardian16)

    Florida jury’s verdict thrown out because they weren’t tested for homophobia (BizPacReview17)

    Policy: In charts, how these seven taxpayers’ bills would change if tax reform was enacted (The Daily Signal18.)

    Policy: The Freddie Gray police hearings are over. What did we learn? (Hot Air19)

For more of today’s news, visit Patriot Headline Report20.

FEATURED ANALYSIS
Hedonism’s Predictable Horrors21

By Robin Smith

Headlines lately serve as sirens warning of an epidemic of a widespread contagion called sexual misconduct. Presenting in various forms — harassment, groping, fondling, intimidation and rape — these inappropriate behaviors are in the public view because individuals on both sides of the political aisle and within the media/entertainment industry are standing accused as pedophiles, rapists, perverts and power-hungry sex addicts.

The unending disgust is justified. None of these alleged behaviors, if true, is ever right or appropriate, though there is a vast distinction lost to conflation22. The #MeToo hashtag activism railing against predators and predatory behavior soars to new heights of moral supremacy, while accomplishing nothing.

But how exactly did the American culture arrive at such a moment? How did our mores slide from viewing pornography in private to living it out in the public square as daily fare?

Those who blame Donald Trump are laughingly ignorant and live blissfully under the banner of victimhood, finding a target of hatred and blame for their own missteps and grievances. Those who blame a prominent institution of our society such as the media or education get a bit closer to touching part of the answer. The aforementioned institutions have been and are tools that have chipped away at our standards and norms to yield such cultural and moral decay.

At the center of today’s outbreak of sexual deviancy lie several factors, among which are two that we’ll approach broadly: hedonism and modern liberalism.

According to Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy, hedonism is a philosophy, whether taught or simply pursued out of human satisfaction, that’s been argued back to Plato and Aristotle. It’s founded on the premise that humankind is motivated by either pleasure or pain, with the former being understood in terms of pleasant feelings, experiences, delight, gratification and emotions of the like. Restraints to the pure elation sought at all costs of human behavior, consequences to others and even criminality have been the observances and practices of religion, a common morality and the respect of the law.

Those who observe hedonism, whether deliberately or not, possess a few common characteristics of self-indulgences, addictions, excesses, unbridled pursuit of individual satisfaction and the exploitation of others for an end goal. Clearly, the sexual deviants under public scrutiny manifest these characteristics.

But, hey, back in the 1960s, the revolution of the individual — the root of hedonism — and the elevation of a clash of culture against accepted norms heralded self-indulgence, addictions, excess and the “freedom” to do with one’s body as one chose. This birthed a new type of liberalism. Modern liberalism targets an individual’s pleasures and desire for “freedoms.” The Left redefined the “empowered” woman to be one whose anatomy is her own to display, exploit, prostitute, sexualize, objectify, etc., even extending to terminating the life of her unborn child in the name of “choice.” Pleasure without consequence.

These two darlings of deviancy are raging at the core of our cultural war today. Hedonism spans the ages because it’s a doctrine based on the human tendency to satisfy versus experience pain and discomfort. Liberalism, however, has been hijacked by radicals to weaponize egalitarianism and individualism. Thus they inflict societal and individual self-harm under the wrongheaded belief that any standards are to be treated as bigoted judgments instead of logic based on objective reasoning and discernment.

Let’s take these two approaches — hedonism and modern liberalism — and see how today’s “sudden” rash of sexual scandals has been a predictable outcome.

In 1996, Judge Robert Bork wrote a prescient book, Slouching Towards Gomorrah, which greatly expanded the notion of “defining deviancy down” and fingered radical egalitarianism and radical individualism as the responsible culprits in our cultural decay. Bork cited Emile Durkheim, a founder of sociology, who observed a limit ultimately reached by a society of deviant behavior that recalibrates norms. Specifically, as collective behavior coarsens, and deviant behavior prevails, the community will adjust its standards to define deviancy down related to drug use, illegitimacy, promiscuity, and the like, and begin to normalize wrong conduct — even crime.

So, our natural bent to pursue pleasure has been combined with political indoctrination to create today’s cultural cesspool. There’s no shock — it just took time for the mixture to prove its putrid toxicity.

Take pornography. In its original definition, pornography was the visual consumption of material that prostituted an individual’s physical essence for the sexual pleasure of voyeurs. Today, that which was deemed to be pornography just two decades ago is now disguised as various television series and watched by millions.

Remember, applying the philosophy of hedonism, pornography then and now is meant to achieve pleasure. Coupled with modern day liberalism, an individual’s anatomy is theirs to exploit as a government-sanctioned right to empower self. Yet when that which previously restrained hedonism — the ideas of moral limitation, respect of the law and even the application of religion that one’s body is a uniquely created, precious vessel fashioned in the likeness of one’s Creator — has been politically and publicly disdained, we’re supposed to feign shock that sexual squalor in the workplace, in our media, in our entertainment and in our politics is normal.

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 11-27-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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There was a day when pornography was “look, don’t touch.” In 2017, the predictable horrors of hedonism are rampant and being fanned by liberalism’s indoctrination. So, today pornography is occurring in real time as daily life in the halls of Congress, in the studios of Hollywood, in the newsrooms of major broadcast news organizations and throughout our society.

So, when will society see the value of the boundaries provided through the respect of law and religion? When will society wake up and reject the almost mythical mess created through the follies of modern liberalism?

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

    Billionaire Bezos’ Amazon/Washington Post/CIA Alliance25 — Jeff Bezos is the world’s richest man, and his influence is becoming more problematic.
    Trump Finally Weighs in on Moore26 — “We don’t need a liberal person in there, a Democrat,” the president said. So it’s a binary choice.
    FCC Seeks Repeal of Obama-Era Internet Regs27 — Chairman Pai argues that repeal is needed in order to pull back on an unnecessary government power grab.
    Col. Wesley Lee Fox, RIP28 — The Medal of Honor recipient for actions in Vietnam drew his last breath Saturday at age 86.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

    Jeff Jacoby: Scrap the ObamaCare Mandate29
    Erick Erickson: We Live in Roman Times30
    Ed Feulner: Crowding Out Compassion31
    Burt Prelutsky: Impeach Trump, and Then What?32
    Michael Barone: Merkel — and Davos — Rebuked in Germany33

For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion34.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Jeff Jacoby: “Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, repeatedly opposed her party’s attempts this year to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But doing away with the ACA’s individual mandate, a change included in tax-reform legislation being readied by Senate Republicans, is a different matter. ‘I have always supported the freedom to choose,’ Murkowski wrote in an op-ed for the Daily News-Miner in Fairbanks. ‘I believe that the federal government should not force anyone to buy something they do not wish to buy, in order to avoid being taxed.’ Murkowski’s positions — unwilling to kill Obamacare but very willing to kill the individual mandate — put her squarely in the mainstream. The individual mandate, unfair and ineffective, has always been the most disliked feature of the law, and not just by Republicans. From the outset, Americans across the spectrum resented the notion that the federal government could order citizens to buy something they didn’t want — not as a condition to doing something, the way auto insurance is required for those who wish to drive a car on public roads, but simply for being alive. … You can be a liberal Democrat committed to affordable health insurance for everyone and still be against an individual mandate. That was Barack Obama’s original position, and he reiterated it often during his 2008 campaign. … It was a good argument then; it’s an even better argument now.”

SHORT CUTS

The Gipper: “Excellence demands competition. Without a race there can be no champion, no records broken, no excellence — in education or in any other walk of life.”

Amazing what happens when you step outside your bubble: “When you’re one-on-one with someone who doesn’t agree with you, or whose ideology is different than yours, when you’re face to face, your porcupine needles go down. The surprise was… I fell in love with [Trump voters]. I had a great time with them and I felt comfortable.” —Sarah Silverman

Non Compos Mentis: “Every white woman raises a detriment to society when they raise a son. Someone with the HIGHEST propensity to be a terrorist, rapist, racist, killer, and domestic violence all star. Historically every son you had should be sacrificed to the wolves b—.” —Indiana University Health (ex)nurse Taiyesha Baker

Alpha Jackass: “I would, for the safety of humanity. It has nothing to do with my personal opinion of his face or his family, but in the interest of humanity I would push.” —singer Morrissey when asked about a hypothetical “assassinate Trump” button

Braying Jackass: “How Murderer Charles Manson and Donald Trump Used Language to Gain Followers.” —Newsweek headline

Revisionist history: “The truth is, European invaders came to this land, took it from the indigenous people, raped, pillaged, gave them all sorts of diseases, called it their own, and desecrated a culture. It is one of the grossest examples of genocide in recent history and much as I don’t want to think about that, it’s really hard for me not to think about that when I think about Thanksgiving.” —actress Mayim Bialik

And last… “In America, three things confer aristocratic status: fame, money and power. Hollywood, politics and journalism are built on all three. … So long as fame and money and power exist, there will be those who seek to exploit them and those who look the other way. False idols always have their adherents. It’s our job to ensure that the idols remain smashed. And that means recanting our own idolatry for a cultural sultanate that deserves to be torn down.” —Ben Shapiro

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. We also humbly ask prayer for your Patriot team, that our mission would seed and encourage the spirit of Liberty in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis

Nate Jackson, Managing Editor
Mark Alexander, Publisher