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« on: March 07, 2018, 12:14:34 AM » |
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The Patriot Post Digest 3-6-2018
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest
Mar. 6, 2018 · https://patriotpost.us/digests/54560-mid-day-digest
IN TODAY’S EDITION
With all the rank hypocrisy, is it any wonder the Oscars ratings hit record lows?
Government is worried about inflation, but the biggest cause of inflation is government.
Democrats are moving ever further left on the Second Amendment.
What Antonin Scalia can still teach us today.
Plus our Daily Features: Top Headlines, Memes, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.
THE FOUNDATION
“In reality there is perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will now and then peek out and show itself.” —Benjamin Franklin (1771)
IN BRIEF
Hollywood’s Self-Inflicted Ratings Deflation Continues1
By Thomas Gallatin
Over the weekend, most of America missed watching the 90th Academy Awards. Put another way, this year the award show set the record for the lowest viewership ratings in Oscars history. In fact, total viewership dropped a whopping 20% from last year alone, continuing a downward trend for Hollywood’s premier awards show. Jimmy Kimmel2, the hypocritical late-night talk-show host and leftist demagogue, hosted the award show for a second consecutive year and his polarizing presence certainly didn’t help matters.
It was a surreal combination of Kimmel’s preaching to the choir and Hollywood stars’ virtue signaling their leftist dogma ad nauseam. They ignore their own blatant hypocrisy, all the while congratulating themselves on being the culturally “woke” arbitrators of morality — a nauseating recipe for unwatchable TV. So many Americans simply tuned out and chose to spend three hours Sunday evening engaged in less vacuous pursuits. Honestly, how many people will tolerate being told, “Do as we say, not as we do?”
Following the show, James Woods, one of Hollywood’s few conservative actors, tweeted, “Sad. How can Hollywood stop itself from alienating its audience?” President Donald Trump had a more humorous take, tweeting, “Lowest rated Oscars in HISTORY. Problem is, we don’t have Stars anymore — except your President (just kidding, of course)!”
The fact of the matter is that Hollywood has long been a bastion of the Left, propagating its fantasy so incessantly it has become an ideological and isolated echo-chamber that has completely lost touch with real life in America. These Hollywood elites blame their own glaring sins on the rest of America and supposedly backwards conservatives rather than turning introspectively and seriously examining how — maybe, just maybe — they are their own monster3.
Biggest Driver of Inflation Is the Government4
Much of the recent volatility in the stock market can be attributed to growing fears over the Federal Reserve enacting interest-rate hikes due to concerns over increasing inflation. On the subject of inflation, however, it is the government’s meddling in the market that tends to be the greatest contributor. Economist Mark Perry, who has tracked changing prices for over two decades, has noticed a common trend with the price of various goods and services — costs have increased over the inflation level for those goods and services that have lacked competition. This should be no surprise to conservatives.
Specifically, those goods and services that have seen the greatest overall price increases are in the fields of medical and education-related services. And those two fields are most directly impacted by the government’s intervention in the marketplace, via subsidy and regulation. As the costs for health care and schooling only continue to increase, they in turn significantly impact the overall rate of inflation.
As Investor’s Business Daily explains5, “All that subsidy money was premised on the goal of making these things [health care and schooling] more affordable. The result is, for many, the exact opposite. By paying most of the tab, the government has insulated consumers from the true cost of these things — a recipe for runaway prices.”
In short, much of the stock market’s current uneasiness can be laid directly at the feet of government for its work to limit competition, all in the name of making these goods and services more affordable. In the end, the American taxpayer is left footing the bill.
Top Headlines6
FBI sees background-check hike in February (National Review7)
Meet the conservative Parkland massacre survivor the media has largely ignored (Townhall8.)
Obama-era policies9 helped keep Parkland shooter under the radar (The Daily Signal10)
Jeff Flake touts gun control, bashes GOP for engaging in culture war (The Federalist11)
Judge rules Trump’s DACA phaseout legal (The Washington Times12)
Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg, who’s kind of crazy13, says he’ll probably cooperate with Mueller subpoena (ABC News14)
Trump says he’ll exempt Mexico, Canada from tariffs if “new & fair NAFTA agreement is signed” (CNS News15)
Republican Thad Cochran to resign from Senate next month (The Hill16)
We get results17 — Nashville Mayor Megan Barry announces resignation after affair and felony theft (Tennessean18.)
Man who got famous2 showing scantily clad women bouncing on trampolines lectures nation on sexual propriety (The Babylon Bee19)
Policy: Flippy the robot just destroyed the case for minimum-wage hikes (Investor’s Business Daily20)
Policy: Obesity: The latest national-security crisis (The Washington Times21)
For more of today’s news, visit Patriot Headline Report22.
FEATURED ANALYSIS
Dems Coalescing Around Second Amendment Elimination23
By Jordan Candler
Democrats are so perturbed by the Second Amendment that they are resorting to the distribution of fraudulent data. For example, during a recent congressional meeting24 with President Donald Trump, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) presented findings from professor Louis Klarevas, whose analysis points to a homicide-through-mass-shooting reduction rate of 37% between 1994 and 2004 — when the 10-year Federal Assault Weapons Ban Feinstein championed was in effect. Even if we ignore the reality that this claim is an extreme outlier — it has virtually no peer backing — there are still some major issues with Klarevas’ assessment. According to Ars Technica co-founder Jon Stokes25:
There are few actual “assault weapons” of any type in his dataset, either pre- or post-ban. Klarevas and his allies are taking an apparent drop in fatalities from what are mostly handgun shootings (again, pre-ban as well as post) and attributing this lowered body count to the 1994 legislation. … Had Klarevas chosen a “mass shooting” threshold of five fatalities instead of six, then the dramatic pause he notes in mass shootings between 1994 to 1999 would disappear too.“ |
