The Patriot Post Digest 8-17-2018

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The Patriot Post Digest 8-17-2018
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest

Aug. 17, 2018 · https://patriotpost.us/digests/57727-mid-day-digest

THE FOUNDATION

“Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.” —George Washington (1796)

https://patriotpost.us/fqd/57726-founders-quote-daily

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Is America great? Was it ever great? Democrats increasingly don’t think so.
A Navy SEAL sets the record straight on John Brennan.
Elizabeth Warren has a plan to “fix” capitalism.
Have middle-class wages really stagnated?
Millennial idealism meets Islamist reality in a tragic way.
Daily Features: Top Headlines, Memes, Cartoons, Columnists, and Short Cuts.

IN BRIEF
Cuomo’s Animus for America’s Founding Values1

Thomas Gallatin

“We’re not going to make America great again. It was never that great,” declared Democrat New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Wednesday. His statement, clearly intended as a political jab at President Donald Trump and his popular “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan, sparked outrage across the nation. Trump was quick to react, stating, “Can you believe this is the Governor of the Highest Taxed State in the U.S., Andrew Cuomo, having a total meltdown!” Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who is currently running for governor of Florida, called Cuomo’s comments “absurd,” arguing, “We’ve done things that no other country has done. I think the country’s a great country.” He added, “I think we are on the right track now more than we were the last eight years. New York is on the wrong track, and people are fleeing his state because of his bad policies.” Fact check: True2.

But honestly, Cuomo’s comments are merely par for the course for Democrat Party leaders. They’ve been regularly expressing this sentiment for the better part of 20 years. Hillary Clinton essentially said the same thing when she called half of America a “basket of deplorables3” (arguably the remark that best exposed her hatred of America’s foundational values).

A cursory look at the modern Democrat Party’s political platform speaks volumes to its low opinion of America’s greatness. As the Left further cements its takeover of Thomas Jefferson’s party, it ironically acts in opposition to those very values upon which its own party and this great nation were founded — namely Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Democrats’ growing preference for socialism4 while calling for greater limits on capitalism5 has fast become the party’s political guiding vision.

The truth is Democrats have been singing this tune for some time now. Who can forget Michelle Obama’s “for the first time in my adult life, I’m really proud of my country” remark upon the election of her husband? Speaking of her husband, Barack Obama’s view of the U.S. was overtly negative, as he often blamed America for causing much of the world’s ills. He rarely seemed to have anything positive to say about our nation’s history or her exceptionalism. In fact, he sought to fundamentally transform the country into a nation that conformed to his leftist ideals, while regularly seeking to subvert the Rule of Law enshrined by the Constitution — often circumventing Congress to do so. To modern leftist Democrats, America is the problem6, not the solution. To them, America is not Ronald Reagan’s “shining city upon a hill.”

To be a Democrat today is to oppose the very essence of the values that created this great nation in the first place. That is why they cannot admit that America was ever a great nation, let alone that it continues to be one.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/57723-cuomos-animus-for-americas-founding-values

SEAL Takes Out Brennan Clearance Defenders7
Mark Alexander

Some Democrats8 and the whole chorus of their MSM public relations network9 are feigning great outrage over Donald Trump’s10 decision to revoke John Brennan’s security clearance11.

Why? Well, the list is long, but allow me to highlight the top three reasons.

First, Brennan is a political hack. During his tenure under Barack Obama12 at the CIA, Brennan used his position to provide Obama political cover for Benghazi13 ahead of his 2012 reelection bid, and by extension provided Hillary Clinton14 cover for her 2016 bid. Obama awarded him with CIA directorship in March 2013.

Second, did I mention he is a political hack? In 2016, Brennan and ex-FBI Director James Comey orchestrated the fake Trump/Putin collusion charade15 to ensure Trump would not be elected.

Third, he then, to put it kindly, “misled Congress16” in testimony regarding numerous issues.

And finally, after the election of Trump, Brennan was elevated to Leftmedia “analyst” with NBC News and MSNBC, and all of his black-bag bias against Republicans and Trump has been spewing out through his social media accounts, effectively betraying him for the political hack he has always been.

After his security clearance was revoked, Democrats and the Leftmedia howled that the man who got Osama bin Laden17 deserves to be canonized, not ostracized.

To that end, Obama’s former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, who was central in the Benghazi cover-up, protested yesterday, “John Brennan was the point person for the Obama White House on the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. He knows a lot more about defending our nation than someone who uses security clearances to punish his political adversaries.”

Responding to Rhodes and others, Tier 1 operator Robert O'Neill, the Operation Neptune Spear SEAL team member who actually shot and killed bin Laden, responded, “Actually, @brhodes, 23 conservatives went after UBL. No offense, in case you were wondering.”

I met with O'Neill most recently last month and can assure you this: O'Neill and those “23 conservatives,” who assumed they were on a virtual suicide mission to kill Osama and would not make it out of Abbottabad, Pakistan, alive — not to mention the hundreds of thousands of other Americans who have served our nation in combat — “know more about defending our nation” than John Brennan and his ilk.

For the record, Brennon never served a day in uniform. In his CIA application process, he admitted having voted for a communist presidential contender because he was “signaling my unhappiness with the system.” He was and remains an angry, America-hating career bureaucrat, whose most notable field service assignment was under Bill Clinton18 as CIA station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Under his watch there, 19 U.S. Air Force service members were murdered in the Khobar Towers bombing. And, as you recall, when Brennan was in the Middle East, Clinton red-lighted operations19 to capture or kill bin Laden long before OBL orchestrated the 9/11 attack20.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/57724-seal-takes-out-brennan-clearance-defenders

Top Headlines21

Trump gears up to strip more clearances from officials tied to Russia investigation (The Washington Post22)
$1.5 trillion in corporate cash is coming to America (Bloomberg23)
Pentagon postpones Trump’s military parade after cost estimate of $92 million was $80 million more initially thought (CNBC24)
New Mexico compound25 mysteriously destroyed by authorities (NBC News26)
ISIS fighter wanted for murder posed as a refugee to get into the U.S. (Townhall27)
Nearly 20 illegal immigrant juveniles skip deportation hearings, disappear into shadows each day (The Washington Times28)
Trump administration cracking down on production of prescription opioids (The Hill29)
Federal judge orders Trump to reinstate Obama’s Waters of the U.S.30 rule (Washington Examiner31)
Good news: Hero groom strips off and leaps into the sea during his beach wedding to save drowning teen (Daily Mail32)
Humor: Dems: We have to enact socialism so we can find out what it is (The Babylon Bee33)
Policy: Ben Carson makes the right move rolling back Obama-era housing policy (Manhattan Institute34)
Policy: Sen. Warren’s plan to “fix” capitalism would destroy trillions in market value (Investor’s Business Daily35)
For more of today’s news, visit Patriot Headline Report36.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/57725-friday-top-headlines

FEATURED ANALYSIS
The Never-Ending War on Capitalism5

Michael Swartz

Leave it to the Left: Success by someone not dependent on government is automatically suspect and obviously an oversight of regulation. It’s greed that unfairly exploits loopholes unavailable to the average person — and closing them is the job of a senator with her eye on the White House.

Leftist heartthrob and prospective 2020 presidential candidate (even though she’s insisted40 there’s no interest on her part) Elizabeth Warren (D-Cherokee) was the one stepping into that breach. The senator has introduced what she calls the Accountable Capitalism Act, a measure she detailed more deeply41 in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week.

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The Patriot Post Digest 8-17-2018
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Her bill hasn’t drawn any co-sponsors, and its prospects of getting through the Senate are between slim and none, but that’s not the point of the legislation. To Warren and her fellow travelers, there’s really no such thing as “too big to fail,” nor can they resist the corollary “too small to control.” But it’s much easier to pile on to the popular perception that large corporations are greedy — a perception gleefully aided by the leftist Democrats who aspire to live like the so-called “One Percent” but try to portray themselves as part of the 99%.

To throw the tofu equivalent of red meat to that crowd, Warren complains in her op-ed, “In the early 1980s, large American companies sent less than half their earnings to shareholders, spending the rest on their employees and other priorities. But between 2007 and 2016, large American companies dedicated 93% of their earnings to shareholders. Because the wealthiest 10% of U.S. households own 84% of American-held shares, the obsession with maximizing shareholder returns effectively means America’s biggest companies have dedicated themselves to making the rich even richer.”

Her solution? “Corporations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue would be required to get a federal corporate charter,” she explained, “The new charter requires corporate directors to consider the interests of all major corporate stakeholders — not only shareholders — in company decisions.” She continued, “Shareholders could sue if they believed directors weren’t fulfilling those obligations.” In other words, this bill would be the Holy Grail for trial lawyers.

It’s this aspect of Warren’s proposal that rubs National Review’s Kevin Williamson the wrong way42: “Warren’s proposal is dishonestly called the ‘Accountable Capitalism Act.’ Accountable to whom? you might ask. That’s a reasonable question.”

Williamson has the answer to his own rhetorical question: “The answer is — as it always is — accountable to politicians, who desire to put the assets and productivity of private businesses under political discipline for their own selfish ends. It is remarkable that people who are most keenly attuned to the self-interest of CEOs and shareholders and the ways in which that self-interest influences their decisions apparently believe that members of the House, senators, presidents, regulators, Cabinet secretaries, and agency chiefs somehow are liberated from self-interest when they take office through some kind of miracle of transcendence.”

Nor does it necessarily have to be government. Warren’s proposal leaves a low threshold of 25% plus one share to preclude corporations from proceeding with any political activity. Imagine a group of wealthy left-wingers buying up just enough of a minority interest in a conservative-leaning corporation — such as a large gun company — to put the brakes on political advocacy on their behalf. Losing their investment would be a small price to pay for eliminating a company like Remington Outdoor or Sturm Ruger.

And that’s the main point. Companies sometimes succeed in ways that aren’t politically correct, and the Left hates this with a white-hot passion. Walmart’s non-union stance is a great example, despite Big Labor’s best efforts to overcome it. Amazon is a more recent example, as Scott Shackford argues43 at Reason. A bill such as the “Accountable Capitalism Act” leaves a corporation two bad choices: either grow sufficiently to come under its auspices and face sanctions from saboteur stockholders, or just stay small and under the threshold, such as a regional homebuilder passing up the opportunity to advance to a national scale.

Pardon us, then, if we detect within this batty scheme — a scheme, says Shackford, in which Warren is less concerned about seeing businesses fail than about seeing them succeed in a manner more to her liking — a faint whiff of economic fascism.

Needless to say, antifa won’t be rioting against Warren’s idea anytime soon.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/57721-the-never-ending-war-on-capitalism

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

Have Middle Class Wages Really Stagnated?44 — Too many Americans are convinced that we’re living through tougher times than we really are.
Millennial Idealism vs. Islamist Reality45 — Two Americans were killed while on a bike trip through ISIS territory. It wasn’t parody.
Video: Omarosa Manigault-Newman: The Journalist46 — Omarosa unleashes Unhinged and the news media immediately trust her allegations about Trump.

OPINION IN BRIEF

David Limbaugh: “It is easy for Cuomo to say America ‘was never that great,’ because he and his leftist soul mates believe it. It rolls off their tongues because they reject so much of the American idea. That is why candidate Barack Obama could proudly declare his intention to fundamentally transform America. That is why Michelle Obama, witnessing her husband’s electoral success, could say, ‘For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.’ For Cuomo and the left, the discontentment about America isn’t just or even mostly about the plight of minorities. It is about America’s founding principles. Liberals don’t embrace the Constitution and the rule of law in the same way conservatives do. They pay lip service to the separation of powers and pretend that Donald Trump is usurping authority when he makes derogatory comments about members of the media whose sole reason for existence is to attack him. But they cheered President Obama’s lawless executive power grabs, and they support appellate judges who arrogate to themselves the prerogatives of super-legislators. They treat the cherished principles of federalism and states’ rights as historical mistakes or fictions. And despite their denials, the Democratic Party has come to fully embrace socialism. … In view of its historical track record of abject failure, there is no way Democrats can defend socialism on the merits, which is why they will continue to defame their political opponents as being racist, sexist and multi-phobic. It’s what modern Democrats are; it’s what they do; it’s all they’ve got.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “The truth is more important than the facts.” —Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)

For the record: “Donald Trump has exposed [the Leftmedia] as dishonest Democrat Party hacks. The media right now are extensions of the Democratic Party.” —Jesse Watters

Upright: “Newspapers across the country are together running editorials on the same day decrying President Trump’s attacks on the press. … The press is not the enemy of the American people. But they are their own worst enemy. They are increasingly insular, live in leftwing bubbles, and are prone to lash out at criticism. They also, thanks to this editorial coordination, have given new ammunition to the president.” —Erick Erickson

Braying Jackass: “In a democracy, security clearances should not be used as pawns in a petty political game to distract voters from even bigger problems. This president befriends and praises despots and dictators like Putin and Kim Jong-un. Those friends provide stark contrast to the patriotic Americans and public servants he disrespects, threatens, and calls enemies: a war hero like John McCain, members of our country’s free press, and devoted public servants like John Brennan. American voters must not shrug off or be distracted from the terrible behaviors of this president, who lies to the American people every day, encourages racism, is a misogynist, and always puts his own interests above those of the United States of America.” —James Comey

Alpha Jackass: “The Republican Party is bankrupt intellectually. They are not going to campaign on their views of giving tax breaks to billionaires and cutting Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, so they have to come up with some demon. I guess their demon right now is Nancy Pelosi.” —Bernie Sanders

Friendly fire: “Dear Nancy Pelosi: It’s not about you, it’s about your party and country. Forget being speaker.” —Sacramento Bee editorial

And last… “Remember that time 350+ newspapers published coordinated editorials decrying the Obama admin’s attack on Sharyl Attkisson for exercising her right to freedom of the press? Oh yeah… me either.” —Liz Wheeler

https://patriotpost.us/articles/57722-friday-short-cuts

Join our editors and staff 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