The Patriot Post Digest 9-21-2018

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The Patriot Post Digest 9-21-2018
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest

Sep. 21, 2018 · https://patriotpost.us/digests/58406-mid-day-digest

THE FOUNDATION

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

https://patriotpost.us/fqd/58405-founders-quote-daily

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Exposing the deep state, one video of socialist activists at a time.
Socialism costs $40 trillion? No worries; just print more money.
There’s good news on the counterterrorism front.
Hispanics are reaping the benefits of Trump’s economy.
The truth about teacher pay.
Your email: A presumption of privacy?
Daily Features: Top Headlines, Memes, Cartoons, Columnists, and Short Cuts.

IN BRIEF
Socialist Resistance Bureaucrats ‘Can’t, Like, Get Fired’1

Nate Jackson

Bureaucrats are hard to fire. Whether it’s the EPA employee2 who browsed porn all day, IRS employees who stole from taxpayers3 or targeted conservatives4, or CFPB bureaucrats resisting President Donald Trump by forming a children’s literature-inspired “Dumbledore’s Army5,” public-union employees have great job security.

Evidently, that’s also true for bureaucrats who, instead of doing their jobs, spend all day working for the Democratic Socialists of America. They’re part of what one employee boasts is “a little resistance movement” inside the government.

And leftists scoff at the idea of a “deep state.”

Columnist David Limbaugh notes6 the latest undercover videos by the infamous James O'Keefe and his Project Veritas:

[One] video features State Department employee Stuart Karaffa, a smarmy, self-proclaimed socialist using his government position to resist official Trump administration policies. Karaffa is a member of the Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America. …

He admits to drafting DSA communications at his worksite. “I’m careful about it,” says Karaffa. “I don’t leave a paper trail, like I leave emails, and like any press s—t that comes up, I leave that until after 5:30. But as soon as 5:31 hits, got my, like, draft messages ready to send out.” …

But what comes next is way worse and ought to infuriate all federal taxpayers. “I have nothing to lose,” he adds. “It’s impossible to fire federal employees.”

But wait; there’s more. Another video shows another DSA activist talking about making social-media posts for the organization all day instead of working. “No one knows I spent six hours yesterday doing social media for DSA,” he bragged.

And Limbaugh also records:

Project Veritas exposes Department of Justice paralegal Allison Hrabar reportedly using government hardware and software as part of her socialist activism. … Hrabar, also a member of Metro DC DSA, was supposedly one of those who chased7 Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen from a D.C.-area restaurant. That was beyond despicable. Hrabar allegedly uses the LexisNexis search engine on her work computer to find home addresses for DSA protests. … Hrabar smugly brags that as an employee of the DOJ, “We can’t, like, get fired.”

It’s outrageous enough to have active and open socialists working in the bowels of government in the first place. But it’s at least as big a problem that employees like this, who are at best dead weight on taxpayers and at worst actively undermining constitutional Rule of Law, “can’t, like, get fired.”

https://patriotpost.us/articles/58400-socialist-resistance-bureaucrats-cant-like-get-fired

Just Erase Debt With Fuzzy Math8

With the latest estimates projecting our national debt of $21 trillion to reach more than $30 trillion by 2025, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have begun embracing a dubious coping mechanism known as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). As National Review explains9, “MMT essentially says that the government’s capacity to finance its debt is limitless. Since the U.S. government is the sole printer of dollars, it faces no binding revenue constraint because more dollars can always be printed.” Apparently money does grow on trees — or at least Treasury Department printing presses.

The fact that this MMT concept has been embraced by leftists like Sen. Bernie Sanders (Socialist-VT) shouldn’t surprise anyone — not when they’re out pitching new entitlements with a 10-year, $40 trillion price tag — but the fact that it’s begun to gain traction among some Republicans is rather alarming. Even hard-left economist Paul Krugman warns against MMT, calling it “a recipe for very high inflation, perhaps even hyperinflation.” No kidding.

The obvious motivation behind lawmakers’ acceptance of this flawed concept is that it absolves them of guilt for their lack of fiscal restraint and for adding to our nation’s massive debt. But those who believe MMT to be a debtor’s “get out of jail free” card should be reminded that they’re not playing with Monopoly money.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/58379-just-erase-debt-with-fuzzy-math

Top Headlines10

Jobless claims fall to 49-year low for third straight week (The Hill11)
Scripted fakery: Christine Blasey Ford “willing” to testify about Kavanaugh allegations, but not on Monday and on her own utterly ludicrous12 terms (CBS News13)
Kavanaugh accuser’s classmate: “That it happened or not, I have no idea” (NPR14)
Senate Dems urge FBI to probe threats against Ford; those against Kavanaugh and kin unmentioned (Fox News15)
Ford’s attorneys were scheduled to headline a Democrat fundraiser (National Review16)
Booker’s push for Kavanaugh vote delay called out over his 1992 column detailing teenage groping (Fox News17)
Trump hits pause on declassifying documents18 related to Russia probe (NBC Washington19)
EPA takes steps to ensure regulatory reforms advance (The Daily Signal20)
Harvard to award Colin Kaepernick medal for work in African-American studies (The Washington Times21)
Humor: Nation’s FBI agents just want to get back to their main business of investigating vast UFO conspiracies (The Babylon Bee22)
Policy: Current planned defense budget falls short (The Heritage Foundation23)
Policy: U.S. should not sign a peace declaration with North Korea (The Heritage Foundation24)
For more of today’s news, visit Patriot Headline Report25.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/58404-friday-top-headlines

FEATURED ANALYSIS
The Good News on Terrorism29

Michael Swartz

While there are no doubt many millions around the globe who reflexively dislike President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, many of those critics in certain strife-torn nations such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, and Syria should thank him for the terrorist attacks that never happened there.

Upon release of the latest edition of an annual report30 called Country Reports on Terrorism, State Department Ambassador-at-Large Nathan A. Sales explained31 that, compared to 2016, “the total number of terrorist attacks worldwide in 2017 decreased by 23 percent. Similarly, the total deaths due to terrorist attacks decreased by 27 percent.” That’s very significant progress in one year, but there’s a good reason for it, as Sales elaborated further.

“2017 saw the United States and a global coalition accomplish major efforts against ISIS. Ninety-nine percent of the territory ISIS once held in Iraq and Syria has now been liberated. Approximately 50 percent of those gains were achieved since January of 2017,” said Sales, adding, “Similarly, more than 7.7 million people have been liberated from ISIS’ brutal rule — approximately 4.5 million in Iraq and 3.2 million in Syria. Of those 7.7 million people, an estimated 5 million have been liberated since 2017.”

In a year’s time, then, Trump’s change in strategy took a population that’s on par with that of South Carolina out from under the boot of the brutal, short-lived Islamic State’s caliphate. It should have been headline news32, right?

Of course it wasn’t, nor did the crack investigative reporters who drool over the latest details of a long-ago Trump dalliance ever bother to look into why the Islamic State grew to be a threat in the first place. (Hint: It was the guy who most recently tried to take credit33 for the resurgent Trump economy.)

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The Patriot Post Digest 9-21-2018
From The Federalist Patriot
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Once our coalition forces were withdrawn34, Barack Obama’s “moment of success” in Iraq became just that. When Obama won re-election, in part thanks to his administration’s Benghazi cover-up, we saw the further deterioration of conditions in the Middle East that led militants to declare themselves a sovereign Islamic State, better known as ISIS or ISIL. For three harrowing years, much of Iraq and Syria was under the control of this rump thugocracy.

On the other side of the Iraq frontier, Iran was sufficiently emboldened by Obama’s hands-off policies — as well as $1.7 billion in American cash — to itself meddle in Iraq’s affairs35. Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran was the icing on the cake, so much so that treasonous former Secretary of State John Kerry has encouraged the Iranian leaders to simply wait out the Trump administration36 in the belief that some subsequent president will undo what Trump has done.

The success of Trump’s strategy in dismantling the Islamic State — which allowed those on the ground to run the war rather than DC-based bureaucrats — worked brilliantly in a military sense. But the global War on Terror is an asymmetrical battle, which explains why terrorist incidents, while down worldwide, have increased in severity and frequency in certain areas. (An annex37 to the Country Reports on Terrorism points out that, while still a small number in comparison to world hotspots, deaths or injuries from terror attacks were significantly higher year-over-year in the United Kingdom and Spain, while France also had a 59% increase in the number of attacks.)

Notably, Western Europe has taken in a huge number of Middle Eastern migrants in the last decade.

Undeterred, President Trump is planning to ratchet up pressure on Iran, including the restoration of the Iranian oil embargo38, which had been lifted as part of the Obama deal. But harsher measures may be required to curb Iran’s malevolence, because, as Ambassador Sales noted, “Iran uses terrorism as a tool of its statecraft. It has no reservations about using that tool on any continent.” While Iranian leadership will be in New York for the upcoming UN General Assembly meeting, there are no plans for talks between the Iranians and the Trump administration regarding this or other issues — so they may be taking Kerry’s advice.

Iran isn’t the whole problem, though. Wrapping up a question-and-answer session on the release of the report, Ambassador Sales, who’s also the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, was asked about a domestic threat: “I think all three of them [al-Qaida, ISIS, and Iran] have both the capability and intent [to carry out domestic terror attacks],” he replied, “so the key question then becomes: What are we doing about it? And I think there’s a suite of tools that are useful against all three of those diverse threat streams.”

Those tools include stopping their flow of money, cutting off terrorist travel, and using law enforcement to investigate, prosecute, and incarcerate suspected terrorists. In other words, tools that the previous administration either lacked the will to employ or, worse, were complicit in working against. But at least there’s now evidence that a new approach has turned the tide in the Long War.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/58401-the-good-news-on-terrorism

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

Hispanics Reap Benefits of Trump’s Economy39 — “President Trump’s economy is the rising tide that is lifting all boats. This is especially true for Hispanics.”
The Truth About Teacher Pay40 — The popular perception is that teachers are underpaid, but is that widely true?
Your Email: A Presumption of Privacy?41 — Google admits to allowing third-party data mining of users’ Gmail accounts.
Video: Liberal Students Admit Trump Helping Economy42 — Students have varying opinions on Trump but admit that the economy is booming with his help.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Rich Lowry: “At its best, our system of justice judges each individual — the accuser and the accused — on the basis of the evidence and with an adversarial process that has proved over the centuries to be the best way to ascertain the truth. The problem is that Ford’s accusation doesn’t seem particularly provable, and the Democratic-media complex isn’t very interested in proving it. It wants to take her truthfulness as a given, as a matter of cosmic and gender equity. ‘I believe the survivor,’ says Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal. It would be accurate for him to say, ‘I believe Ford is a survivor.’ But the point is to take rhetorical and political advantage of her alleged victimhood before it has been established — indeed, to use her assumed victimhood to foreclose any serious questioning of whether she is a victim or not. We’re seeing, in effect, the importation of the kangaroo court colleges use to adjudicate such cases to the United States Senate.”

SHORT CUTS

Upright: “Ford’s demand is, to put it simply, out of line. … There is no precedent for a quid pro quo demand for testimony by a witness. [Ford] does not have the right to set conditions before testifying under oath.” —Georgetown law professor (and Democrat) Jonathan Turley

Upright II: “I believe [Ford] has to show up on Monday. If she doesn’t show up on Monday she has violated [Kavanaugh’s] core right to confront his accuser. If he shows up, what’s he going to respond to? News reports? She has to go under oath.” —Harvard law professor (and Democrat) Alan Dershowitz

For the record: “If the FBI wants to investigate things that need investigation there is much behavior from the Bill and Hillary Clinton era that would keep agents busy and produce results of interest to the public and law enforcement, including alleged Chinese hacking of Hillary’s emails while she was secretary of state, Uranium One scandal, foreign gifts to the Clinton Foundation and so much more.” —Cal Thomas

Blind squirrel finds a nut: “To President Trump’s point, I mean, there’s a deep state feel to this, right?” —NBC reporter Jonathan Allen

Braying Jackass: “We never had a president who was engaged in this kind of behavior. I mean, he’s not telling the truth. He keeps changing his mind. He’s sabotaging the world order in many respects. … Something’s got to happen to this guy, because if we don’t get rid of him, he’s going to undermine America and even the world.” —California Gov. Jerry Brown

Accurate — minus the “ir”: “Of course the presidency will be something I consider. It would be irresponsible not to.” —Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ)

And last… “It wasn’t supposed to go this far. Senate Republicans were supposed to buckle. Trump was supposed to get wobbly. Kavanaugh was supposed to have dropped out by now. Senate Democrats had no contingency plan for a scenario in which people demanded evidence.” —Sean Davis

https://patriotpost.us/articles/58377-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