The Patriot Post Digest 2-20-2018

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The Patriot Post Digest 2-20-2018
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest
Feb. 20, 2018 · https://patriotpost.us/digests/54266-mid-day-digest

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Scholars rank the presidents while ignoring the Constitution’s measuring stick.
Clarence Thomas decries the fatigue of everyone claiming victimhood.
The gun control agenda features anti-religious zealotry.
Black Panther has a political message, but a worthy human one too.
Military readiness is priority #1 for the Pentagon, not social engineering.
Plus our Daily Features: Top Headlines, Memes, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.

THE FOUNDATION

“His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man.” —Thomas Jefferson on George Washington (1814)

IN BRIEF

Trump Is the Worst President?1

On the occasion of George Washington’s birthday observation2, wrongly dubbed “Presidents’ Day,” a newly released New York Times poll3 of so-called “presidential politics experts” ranked President Donald Trump, after just one year in office mind you, as the worst of America’s presidents. This same group of “experts,” in a laughable display of “objectivity,” ranked Barack Obama as the nation’s eighth best, up 10 spots from the 2014 poll. That raises the obvious question: Other than the fact that he is no longer president, what standards have changed to suddenly improve Obama’s ranking by 10 spots?

Actually, the real question is this: What standard of judgment were these “experts” using? It would seem they relied most heavily on their own subjective political bias. A truer and more objective guide by which to judge a president is the U.S. Constitution4, specifically Article II, which delineates the duties and limits of the office. Judging from the opinions of these “experts,” it’s a good bet many of them need to reread, if not read for the first time, the Constitution. Even leftist Nate Silver bemoaned the poll’s lack of objectivity, tweeting, “It speaks poorly to the field of presidential scholarship that political scientists have Trump ranked as the worst president of all time — after only one year on the job — below presidents who e.g. helped blunder us into the Civil War & Great Depression.” He still misses the point, of course. Faithfully upholding the presidential oath to support and defend the Constitution is the true and only test. On that, Obama not only utterly failed but intentionally and contemptuously so.

Furthermore, using the constitutional test, these experts also get it completely wrong by ranking the likes of Franklin Roosevelt (3), Lyndon Johnson5 (10), Woodrow Wilson6 (11) and Bill Clinton (13) far too highly. The experts couldn’t even get the simplest one correct: Washington, not Lincoln, is first among presidents7.

Obviously, this Times survey is purely a political hit-job designed to reinforce the Left’s desired anti-Trump narrative rather than report on any genuinely objective, scholarly measurement of a president. By using unnamed “experts” to declare that Trump is just the worst, the Times aims to continue brow-beating Americans into rejecting a man who actually had a pretty impressive first year8 in office. That’s especially true when compared to the last eight years of the most anti-American presidency9 in the nation’s history. But, honestly, should Americans expect anything less from the Leftmedia?

Thomas Issues His Cultural Ruling10

By Thomas Gallatin

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas made a rare public appearance Thursday, speaking at the Library of Congress. His remarks yielded some noteworthy fruit. He opined, “At some point, we’re going to be fatigued with everybody being the victim.” Thomas went on to describe a recent encounter he had with a young black woman in Kansas who exclaimed to him that she was “really tired of having to play the role of being black.” She added that she “just wanted to go to school.”

Thomas then relayed the wisdom he received from the most influential person in his life — his grandfather, who took in Thomas and his brother when his single mother was unable to care for him. Thomas described his grandfather as a “hero” and “the single greatest human being I’ve ever met.” From him Thomas learned to “always … play the hand you’re dealt. If you’re dealt a bad hand, you still have to play it.” The future justice learned that there was no room for complaining, epitomized by one of his grandfather’s most regularly voiced refrains — “Old Man Can’t is dead. I helped bury him.”

Reflecting on his own experience, Thomas worried that the over-politicization of the judicial confirmation process will dissuade good people from serving. “This is not the Roman Colosseum. We’re not gladiators,” he observed. “And I think we’re going to lose some of our best people who choose not to go through the ordeal. They don’t want to have to fight the lion in order to be a judge or to be in government. And I think it’s our own fault for allowing this to happen.”

On the Supreme Court since surviving Ted Kennedy’s despicable character assassination attempt and winning confirmation in 1991, Thomas has been a principled and constitutionally committed justice and thus has served as a lightening rod for leftist criticism even to this day. Case in point is an article11 written by Jill Abramson and released in New York magazine just yesterday advocating for Justice Thomas to be impeached over — what else? — Anita Hill’s accusations as part of the #MeToo movement. There are no new accusations against Thomas; rather this is merely another attempt by leftists to demonize and libel the conservative justice as they seek to further their radical extremist agenda. Yes, we certainly are fatigued with everybody being the victim.

Top Headlines12

Trump supports improving federal background checks on gun owners (The Washington Times13)

Dallas mayor asks NRA to consider another city for annual convention (ABC News14)

Four leftist, anti-gun PACs outspent the “roadblock” NRA in the 2016 campaign (PoliZette15)

IRS warns of new tax refund scam (The Kansas City Star16)

Mueller charges lawyer connected to former Trump aid (The Hill17)

Duped: Michael Moore participated in anti-Trump rally allegedly organized by Russians (Fox News18.)

Due to ecofascist threats, security officials recommended EPA chief Pruitt fly first class (The Washington Free Beacon19)

Marine Corps eases requirement that has inhibited female infantry officers (The Washington Free Beacon20)

Benjamin Netanyahu associates arrested in Israeli corruption probe (Associated Press21)

Humorous Bottom Story of the Day: Farty passenger forces flight to make emergency landing (New York Post22)

Policy: Four cases to watch at the Supreme Court this month (The Daily Signal23)

Policy: Judgment day for public unions (City Journal24)

For more of today’s news, visit Patriot Headline Report25.

FEATURED ANALYSIS
The Anti-Religious Agenda Behind Gun Control26

By Jordan Candler

After every mass shooting, America succumbs to recycling the same old tropes, a process that inevitably devolves into social media attacks, public shouting matches, vitriol and polarization. The subject, regardless of which side of the debate you’re on, always ends up revolving around guns because even those who believe there are evil outside forces at work when mass shooters commit their carnage are faced with dispelling the shortsighted and erroneous notion propagated by the Left — namely, that the culprit is guns.

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The Patriot Post Digest 2-20-2018
From The Federalist Patriot
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To be fair, Democrats occasionally concede that cultural depravity27 is partially to blame. Even Barack Obama admitted that the lack of fatherhood and family structure affects cultural norms. For example, in June 2010, he declared, “I can’t legislate fatherhood — I can’t force anybody to love a child. But what we can do is send a clear message to our fathers that there is no excuse for failing to meet their obligations.” And in May 2013, during his commencement address at Morehouse College, he observed, “Everything else is unfulfilled if we fail at family, if we fail at that responsibility.”

But that’s about as far as most Democrats are willing to go. And most are certainly not willing to even touch on any spiritual angle, though in some ways, the opposite is true — naysayers have increasingly berated conservatives for invoking God. To put it another way, while leftists will admit that fatherhood is important28, they don’t want to acknowledge that every human needs a father figure in the form of Christ. What used to be a bipartisan call for “thoughts and prayers” upon news of a shooting is now extreme anger and agitation toward people who yearn for providential peace and healing.

Just consider the invective Keith Olbermann spewed at Paul Ryan after the shooting29 in Sutherland Springs, Texas: “Speaker Ryan, bluntly: shove your prayers up your a— AND DO SOMETHING WITH YOUR LIFE BESIDES PLATITUDES AND POWER GRABS.” Or the mockery from Neil deGrasse Tyson after last week’s shooting: “Evidence collected over many years, obtained from many locations, indicates that the power of Prayer is insufficient to stop bullets from killing school children.”

SHORT CUTS

Bill Wagner: Goal-Post Movement41
Tony Perkins: At Trump’s HHS, a Cry for Health42
For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion43.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Stephen Moore: “Obama and his supporters are saying that he ‘cut the deficit by two-thirds’ while president. The left-wing group Politifact, which is supposed to be a fact-checker, even has rated Obama’s claim as ‘mostly true.’ Last week, while I was talking about the fiscal outlook on CNN, the producers put a chart on the screen showing that the deficit dropped by 60 percent while Obama was president. My jaw dropped — literally — when I saw the chart. This takes data torturing to new heights. The national debt skyrocketed from $11 trillion to nearly $20 trillion on Obama’s watch. Is a diet successful if you start by weighing 200 pounds and eight years later you weigh 400 pounds? Would anyone in that position say, ‘I may be obese now, but at least I’m putting on the pounds at a slower pace’? The national debt nearly doubled in eight years, which makes Obama the runaway Olympic gold medalist for fiscal incompetence. On this score Obama’s record is by far the worst of any modern president.”

SHORT CUTS

Upright: “At some point we’re going to be fatigued with everybody being a victim. … You always have to play the hand you’re dealt. If you’re dealt a bad hand, you still have to play it.” —Justice Clarence Thomas

Alpha Jackass, part I: “You’ve done worse than nothing. You like to say this is a mental health issue. One of your very first acts as president, Mr. Trump, was to roll back the regulations that were designed to keep firearms out of the hands of [the] mentally ill. You did that. Your party voted to repeal the mandates on coverage for mental health. So I agree, this is a mental illness issue, because if you don’t think we need to do something about it, you’re obviously mentally ill.” —Jimmy Kimmel, who’s factually wrong44

Alpha Jackass, part II: “Tell these congressmen and lobbyists who infest that swamp you said you were going to drain, force these allegedly Christian men and women who stuff their pockets with money from the NRA year after year after year to do something. Now, not later. Now. And don’t you dare let anyone say it’s too soon to be talking about it, because you said it after Vegas, you said it after Sandy Hook, you say that after every one of these eight now fatal school shootings we had in this country this year. Children are being murdered.” —Jimmy Kimmel

Lack of self-awareness: “We cannot tolerate a society and live in a country with pride when our babies are being slaughtered.” —Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Abortion Supporter)

Non Compos Mentis: “Evidence collected over many years, obtained from many locations, indicates that the power of Prayer is insufficient to stop bullets from killing school children.” —Neil deGrasse Tyson

Zombie BIG Lie: “We have to end the absurdity of the gun show loophole. Forty percent of the guns in this country are sold without any background checks.” —Sen. Bernie Sanders

And last… “Media most days: We should wait until young people’s brains fully develop — around age 25 — before criminal justice system treats them like adults. They aren’t responsible. But when kids say what MSM wants to hear on guns: LOWER VOTING AGE! BECAUSE SO MUCH WISDOM!” —Jonah Goldberg

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, PublisherSHORT CUTS
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Upright: “At some point we’re going to be fatigued with everybody being a victim. … You always have to play the hand you’re dealt. If you’re dealt a bad hand, you still have to play it.” —Justice Clarence Thomas

Alpha Jackass, part I: “You’ve done worse than nothing. You like to say this is a mental health issue. One of your very first acts as president, Mr. Trump, was to roll back the regulations that were designed to keep firearms out of the hands of [the] mentally ill. You did that. Your party voted to repeal the mandates on coverage for mental health. So I agree, this is a mental illness issue, because if you don’t think we need to do something about it, you’re obviously mentally ill.” —Jimmy Kimmel, who’s factually wrong44

Alpha Jackass, part II: “Tell these congressmen and lobbyists who infest that swamp you said you were going to drain, force these allegedly Christian men and women who stuff their pockets with money from the NRA year after year after year to do something. Now, not later. Now. And don’t you dare let anyone say it’s too soon to be talking about it, because you said it after Vegas, you said it after Sandy Hook, you say that after every one of these eight now fatal school shootings we had in this country this year. Children are being murdered.” —Jimmy Kimmel

Lack of self-awareness: “We cannot tolerate a society and live in a country with pride when our babies are being slaughtered.” —Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Abortion Supporter)

Non Compos Mentis: “Evidence collected over many years, obtained from many locations, indicates that the power of Prayer is insufficient to stop bullets from killing school children.” —Neil deGrasse Tyson

Zombie BIG Lie: “We have to end the absurdity of the gun show loophole. Forty percent of the guns in this country are sold without any background checks.” —Sen. Bernie Sanders

And last… “Media most days: We should wait until young people’s brains fully develop — around age 25 — before criminal justice system treats them like adults. They aren’t responsible. But when kids say what MSM wants to hear on guns: LOWER VOTING AGE! BECAUSE SO MUCH WISDOM!” —Jonah Goldberg

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