The Patriot Post Digest 3-6-2019

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The Patriot Post Digest 3-6-2019
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest

Mar. 6, 2019

https://patriotpost.us/digests/61598-mid-day-digest

THE FOUNDATION

“There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness.” —George Washington (1793)

https://patriotpost.us/fqd/61597-founders-quote-daily

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Amazingly enough, a couple of newspapers highlighted the border crisis.1
Dan Crenshaw articulates the reason the parties disagree on taxes.2
Daily Features: More Analysis3, Columnists4, Headlines5, Opinion in Brief6, Short Cuts7, Memes8, and Cartoons9.

IN BRIEF

There Is a Border Crisis, Leftmedia Finally Admits10

Thomas Gallatin

There are a “record number of families11” at the border, which is “at a ‘breaking point12,’” warns President Donald Trump. Oh, wait — actually those were recent headlines from The Washington Post and The New York Times. In fact, the Times further reports, “More than 76,000 migrants crossed the border without authorization in February, an 11-year high” and a jump from the 58,000 aliens who illegally crossed in January. Turns out this “manufactured crisis” is looking an awful lot like an actual crisis.

The truth is the facts support Trump’s argument: “There is a humanitarian and security crisis on our southern border that requires urgent actions.” On Tuesday, the White House released its fact sheet13 on the “emergency at the border,” and it is quite sobering. To put it bluntly, the situation at the southern border is only getting worse, “with more than 40,000” illegal alien families “arriving in February alone.”

Many of these migrants making the trek through Central America and Mexico are suffering “horrifying violence, including sexual assault.” Doctors Without Borders estimates that one-third of women are sexually abused on the journey. Criminals are exploiting the situation like never before, with 266,000 illegal aliens with criminal records — many charged with violent crimes — arrested over the last two years alone. And the metastatic growth of MS-1314 is alarming.

Furthermore, much has been made about these migrants seeking asylum due to soaring crime rates in their Central American home countries, but the data suggest that the crime rates15 in Central America have little to do with why these migrants are flooding the border. The biggest reason is economic — they can make 10 times the pay here in the U.S. while also taking advantage of welfare provisions such as free education and health care. From the perspective of a migrant, why wouldn’t he come?

Illegal aliens should not be incentivized to come, but that is exactly what Democrats have been doing for years. Trump did not create this problem, and yet he is vilified for attempting to aggressively deal with it. Past American leaders who repeatedly failed to actively enforce the nation’s immigration laws and fully secure the borders put the country in the situation it is in today. At least the Leftmedia is now admitting there is indeed a crisis at the U.S. southern border.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/61596-there-is-a-border-crisis-leftmedia-finally-admits

Dan Crenshaw on Limited Government16

Nate Jackson

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) is no stranger to the fight. The former Navy SEAL lost an eye in an IED explosion during his third combat tour in Afghanistan. Ironically, he’s probably best known so far for his amicable performance17 on “Saturday Night Live” last November. But he’s not just a warrior who can get along with his leftist opponents. He’s a philosopher espousing the principles of constitutionally limited government.

“Why does the left hate the tax cuts?” Crenshaw rhetorically asked18 Tuesday. “[Because] they think the people exist to fund the [government]. We believe the [government] exists to protect the inalienable rights of the people. When people keep their money, we get more jobs & wage growth, & less wasteful spending by ‘benevolent’ bureaucrats.”

With that comment, he posted video of his remarks at a House hearing, where he really nailed it (emphasis his):

We’re talking about a difference in philosophy, not just tax rates. It’s a question of whether the government should be taking more of your money or whether you should keep more of your money. It’s the difference in the role of government, in what we believe. It seems to me that you all believe that the role of government is to tax the people as much as possible so that you and your benevolent fellow academics can dream up more programs for the government to spend money on. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that’s what the role of government is for.

The role of government is to protect God-given rights that we have and to ensure that we live as free as possible. The role of government is to tax people to the least extent possible, while still taxing them enough to cover basic needs for government. And if we’re questioning what those needs are, we can just look at our Constitution; they’re generally pretty clear there.

Indeed, the Constitution19 is quite clear on the role of government, and today’s federal behemoth exceeds its mandate at nearly every turn. Much of that growth has been fueled by exactly what Crenshaw rightly criticizes: “more programs for the government to spend money on.” Democrats have become increasingly cynical and “generous” in their vote-buying scheme20 to offer “free stuff” to more people. But Republicans are hardly blameless. In 2017 and 2018, Republicans controlled both branches of government responsible for spending — and it increased drastically. Everyone wants to cut government, so long as it’s not their program. Thus, government never gets smaller.

If more elected Republicans would follow through on Crenshaw’s philosophy, that might begin to change.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/61593-dan-crenshaw-on-limited-government

ON OUR WEBSITE TODAY

Featured Analysis: Violent MS-13 Crossing Border, Spreading Throughout U.S.14 — Begun by El Salvadorans in LA in the ‘70s, the gang has spread all over America.
States Increasingly Police Family 'Thoughtcrimes’21 — As homeschooling rapidly grows, so too are state-level efforts to “oversee” families.
Google’s Male Pay Gap22 — The tech giant’s internal review reveals a gender pay gap against men, not women.
Unplanned Parenthood23 — We have all heard the quote, “If you fail to plan you plan to fail.” Well, it’s time to plan better.
Video: A 10-Year Tea Party Retrospective24 — Bill Whittle and Scott Ott, both active in the early days of the Tea Party movement, reflect.
Video: Academic Hoax25 — John Stossel interviews a trio that got seven phony academic papers published to prove a point.

TOP HEADLINE SUMMARY

“North Korea is restoring a rocket launch site it had dismantled as part of its disarmament pledge last year — just a week after a nuclear summit between Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump ended without an agreement, reports said Wednesday. New satellite images show that efforts to rebuild some structures at the Tongchang-ri launch site started between Feb. 16 and March 2. … Dismantling the site was one of several steps the North had begun last year after it entered talks with the U.S. and South Korea. But as the talks stalled, so did the site’s demolition.” (Fox News27)
“Christian cake artist Jack Phillips has scored a major victory after facing years of continuous persecution for his religious beliefs from LGBT activists and the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. … The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) … announced Tuesday that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission ‘will dismiss its most recent charges against cake artist Jack Phillips in the wake of newly discovered evidence of the state’s ongoing hostility toward religious freedom.’” (The Daily Wire28)
“Food and Drug Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who used his post to tackle difficult public health issues from youth vaping to opioid addiction … resigned Tuesday, effective in about a month. Gottlieb, who has been commuting weekly to Washington from his home in Connecticut, said he wants to spend more time with his family. … The resignation was not sought by the White House.” (The Washington Post29)

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The Patriot Post Digest 3-6-2019
From The Federalist Patriot
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Another win for King Corn: “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Monday it had sent a draft of its proposed rule allowing year-round sales of higher ethanol blends of gasoline to the White House Office of Budget for review. … E15 gasoline contains 15 percent ethanol, versus the 10 percent found in most U.S. gasoline. … Trump said in October he was directing the EPA to allow year-round sales of E15, a victory for the corn industry.” (Reuters30)
Deflecting: “A vote on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism31 in response to controversial comments by Rep. Ilhan Omar is set to slip past Wednesday amid intensifying pressure from the left both inside and outside the House Democratic Caucus. … Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said in a closed-door meeting Tuesday that the vote would likely happen Thursday. They also said a draft resolution would be updated to include additional language rejecting anti-Muslim bias, although some Democratic sources believe that an entirely new document might be crafted.” (Politico32)
“President Donald Trump’s former lawyer is returning to Capitol Hill for a fourth day of testimony as Democrats pursue a flurry of investigations into Trump’s White House, businesses and presidential campaign. … Though [Michael] Cohen told Congress last week that he had never asked for nor would accept a pardon from Trump, a lawyer for Cohen expressed interest to the Trump legal team in a possible pardon for his client in the aftermath of a raid last April on Cohen’s hotel room, home and office.” (Associated Press33)
“The Senate voted Tuesday to confirm a 37-year-old Washington lawyer whose nomination for a lifetime appointment on a federal appeals court drew vociferous opposition from LGBTQ and civil rights groups. Allison Rushing … was confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit by a vote that split down party lines. All 53 Republicans voted for her, while the rest of the Senate voted against her, with the exception of three abstentions.” (The Washington Post34)
“The federal government recorded a budget surplus in January. But so far this budget year, the total deficit is 77 percent higher than the same period a year ago. … The higher deficit reflected greater spending in areas such as Social Security, defense and interest payments on the national debt. … Individual income taxes withheld from paychecks total $818 billion for the October-January period, down 3 percent from the same period last year. Corporate income taxes total $73 billion over the four-month period, down 23 percent. Revenue, however, is up is in tariffs — border taxes collected on imports — which totaled $25 billion in the October-January period, up 91 percent from the same period a year ago.” (NBC News35)
Humor: Socialists criticized as “math deniers” (The Babylon Bee36)
Policy: The Heritage Foundation’s Ana Quintana explains why “Trump’s Cuba Sanctions Are a Solid Step in Cracking Down on Maduro Regime’s Enablers37.”
Policy: “Reports surfaced last week that advisers to the administration are calling for the U.S. to embrace China-style nationalization as our path to 5G,” the Federal Communications Commission’s Brendan Carr writes in National Review. “That’s like looking to Cuba as inspiration for reforming the U.S. health-care system.” Read more about why “Nationalizing 5G Is Not the Way to Beat China38.”
For more of today’s editors’ choice headlines, visit In Our Sights39.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/61594-wednesday-top-headline-summary

OPINION IN BRIEF

Ben Shapiro: “In 2016, Sanders stated, ‘One of the struggles that you’re going to be seeing in the Democratic Party is whether we go beyond identity politics.’ Sanders, in other words, separates people by class rather than race. That’s wrong, too: In America, we’re all individuals who move between classes with remarkable rapidity. We are not the 1 percent and the 99 percent; in fact, a huge number of those in the top 1 percent every year were not in the 1 percent in prior years, and will not be again in future years. We do not have a stable hierarchy of income in the United States. Sanders, by his own statement, grew up in a lower-middle-class household in Brooklyn; he now has two vacation homes despite never having worked a serious job. But if we’re going to talk about damaging divisions in America, class divisions take a back seat to racial divisions. That’s because America doesn’t actually have a real history of class divisions — we’ve been an overwhelmingly middle-class country for centuries, as Alexis de Tocqueville noted. But our racial divisions have been all too real, marking the greatest blot on America’s history.”

SHORT CUTS

Upright: “Next time someone labels your opposition to mass immigration ‘racist’ or ‘xenophobic,’ tell them you are equally opposed to New Yorkers immigrating to Florida and Californians immigrating to Arizona. And for the same reason: They bring with them the very values that caused them to flee. The only difference is Latin Americans are largely unaware of what they are doing; New Yorkers, Californians and other leftists who move to conservative states know exactly what they’re doing: voting for the government policies from which they fled.” —Dennis Prager

Observations: “‘Force’ is not a mandate that children who enter public school get vaccinated. ‘Force’ is the exposure of the public, without their consent, to life-threatening diseases that modern medicine figured out how to eradicate half a century ago.” —Tiana Lowe

For the record: “Running ethanol through your vehicles fuel system is a poor idea at any time. The fuel burns hotter while producing less energy by volume than gasoline. It also eats into the fuel lines and other components of older vehicles and small engines or marine motors. But during the summer, the exhaust from burning ethanol blends during hot weather has been shown to significantly contribute to smog problems in densely populated areas.” —Jazz Shaw on the EPA’s proposal to allow year-round sales of E15

Non Compos Mentis: “It’s something. Something that’s sticky that’s stuck to my car and took two different solutions to get it off.” —South Carolina Mayor Darnell McPherson, who reported a “hate crime” because her car had been covered with a sticky yellow substance. Police determined it was pollen.

The BIG Lie: “All I wanted was to get to the truth. All I wanted was to give the truth. … I pride myself on being fair.” —lesbian black ABC “Journalist” Robin Roberts regarding her “beautiful” interview with homosexual black hate-hoaxer Jussie Smollett

Freudian slip: “You have to persuade enough of the opposition party voters, Trump voters … that you’re not just trying to steal the last — to reverse the results of the last election.” —Jerry Nadler on launching phase two of the Demo “Obstruct Trump40” crusade

Friendly fire: “Maybe I’m missing something, but the hazard of an omnibus document demand by House judiciary versus discreet, serial ones is that … the wide-ranging nature of it … too easily plays into the ‘witch-hunt’ meme.” —former Obama strategist David Axelrod

And last… “‘(Crooked) Hillary Clinton confirms she will not run in 2020, rules out a third bid for White House.’ Aw-shucks, does that mean I won’t get to run against her again? She will be sorely missed!” —Donald Trump

https://patriotpost.us/articles/61595-wednesday-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