The Patriot Post Digest 8-23-2019

________________________________
The Patriot Post Digest 8-23-2019
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
_______________________________

The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest

Aug. 23, 2019

https://patriotpost.us/digests/65033-mid-day-digest

THE FOUNDATION

“Men of energy of character must have enemies; because there are two sides to every question, and taking one with decision, and acting on it with effect, those who take the other will of course be hostile in proportion as they feel that effect.” —Thomas Jefferson (1817)

https://patriotpost.us/fqd/65032-founders-quote-daily

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Jobs numbers for 2018 were revised down 501,000. Here’s some context.1
Bernie Sanders has a Green Double deal to spend $16 trillion.2
Daily Features: More Analysis3, Columnists4, Headlines5, Opinion in Brief6, Short Cuts7, Memes8, and Cartoons9.

IN BRIEF

Demos’ 2020 Strategy — Recession10

By Mark Alexander

Democrats11 and their Leftmedia propagandists12 are doing everything they can to, as I wrote last December, “get the pre-2020 election recession they want13.” They know the best way to achieve that is to undermine confidence in our economy14 as they did ahead of Barack Obama’s 2008 election. To that end, they are shouting “Recession!” from the hilltops, while obstructing and undermining President Donald Trump at every turn.

They are now heralding Thursday’s revised jobs estimate for 201815 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a preliminary revision that asserts there were 500,000 fewer jobs created last year than previously estimated. What Democrats and the media are not saying is this: 500,000 fewer jobs than what?

Noticeably absent from the BLS report and any of the subsequent media reports is the good news: There were more than 2,200,000 jobs created in 2018. As for this being the “largest revision” in 10 years, we are also in the midst of the largest growth in 10 years. The unemployment rate stands near a 50-year low of 3.7%, and as we have noted in the last year, companies are finding it difficult to fill jobs — which is reflected in the revised job numbers.

And contrary to Demo claims, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross noted earlier this week16 that the administration’s $1.8 trillion 2017 tax cuts and other policies have boosted worker wages and added millions of jobs to the U.S. economy. “Contrary to misleading arguments that the president’s policies are not benefitting workers,” Ross said, “this data shows that it is the average American workers who are gaining from the country’s broader economic success.”

Trump said last week, “Our economy is incredible.” What else would you call an economy that created more than two million jobs last year and has unemployment at a 50-year low? But the economy, even when bolstered by good economic policies, is cyclical, and Trump wants to pad the current slowing market with interest-rate cuts and other moves. As for the impact of tariffs on China, its economy is already contracting. Slowing U.S. economic growth is bad for China, too, as our consumers buy its products.

The bottom line: Economic confidence is a reflection of business and consumer confidence, and Democrats are doing everything they can to undermine both. If Democrats get the recession they are promoting and hoping for, the job and income prospects for tens of millions of American workers will fall victim to their politically induced recession.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65029-demos-2020-strategy-recession

Sanders the Alchemist Offers $16T Green New Deal17

Democrat socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders released his version of the infamous Green New Deal (GND) on Thursday. Using the same apocalyptic language that’s become commonplace for climate alarmists, Sanders claimed, “We have less than 11 years left to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.” Sanders further asserted, “When we are in the White House, we will launch the decade of the Green New Deal, a 10-year mobilization to avert climate catastrophe.”

Sanders’s GND mirrors much of the original House bill18 introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) earlier this year, though Sanders claims his plan would cost only $16.3 trillion while adding 20 million “good paying, union jobs.” Sounding like a modern-day alchemist, Sanders promises to essentially end the fossil-fuel industry and replace it with 100% renewable energy leading to “complete decarbonization” by 2050.

However, as with the original GND, Sanders’s plan is merely a veiled excuse to radically transform the U.S. into a socialist state19. If his plan were primarily focused on tackling climate change, then it wouldn’t call for the ending of nuclear power, nor would it oppose carbon-capture technology. Sanders labels all these current and developing technologies as “false solutions,” when the truth is that these are real and perhaps the most viable solutions to the alleged problem of increasing CO2 levels — solutions that don’t require a government takeover of the entire energy industry. As Joshua Freed of the centrist Democrat think tank Third Way notes, “The Sanders plan appears to be big, but it’s not serious.”

And he’s right. What we have here is yet another leftist boondoggle based more on fantasy than fact. Sanders’s Green Double Deal would actually do more damage to the climate than good, while robbing the American people of both their hard-earned money and their Liberty.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65002-sanders-the-alchemist-offers-$16t-green-new-deal

ON OUR WEBSITE TODAY

Featured Analysis: New York Times ‘1619 Project’ Is Revisionist History20 — The Times says that slaves arriving in 1619 is the date of our “true founding,” not 1776.
Greenland Would Be a Good Buy21 — The world’s biggest island is strategically important, and Trump is smart to consider it.
Leftmedia Uses ‘Ecofascism’ Charge to Protect Ecofascism22 — The Washington Post distorts the meaning of terms to attack the “far right” after mass murders.
Partisan Power Grab: Reid’s Call to Eliminate Filibuster23 — McConnell counters that the Senate’s job is not to rubber-stamp House bills.
Grassroots Perspective: Twilight Zone Politics Part II24 — Omar, Tlaib, and the ridiculous and strange news about their abandoned trip to Israel.
Video: No One Wants a Recession (wink)25 — Media fixation on a possible recession hit a fever pitch over the last week.
Video: The Truth About NYT’s Trump Pathetic Coverage26 — Andrew Klavan slams the New York Times for ongoing bias against President Donald Trump.

TOP NEWS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

G-7 CONFAB: The Group of Seven summit is happening this weekend, and “one of France’s main objectives as host … is to minimize the chances that President Trump will blow it up,” The Washington Post magniloquently writes28. “Subjects on which to tread lightly include some of the biggest problems the world’s major economies are facing — including trade, the system of international rules that has ordered the democratic world for decades and climate change. … Senior administration officials told reporters … that Trump planned to ‘frankly’ discuss sticking points among G-7 nations including trade, a digital services tax and NATO spending obligations.” One thing we know won’t be on Trump’s agenda is the promotion of globalism.

NONCITIZEN ARRESTS: “Approximately 64 percent of the arrests that the federal government made in fiscal 2018 were of non-U.S. citizens,” CNSNews.com’s Terence Jeffrey reports29, citing a report from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. “That represents a dramatic change from just two decades ago, when approximately 63 percent of federal arrests were of citizens and only approximately 37 percent were of non-citizens. … Although immigration and immigration-related offenses accounted for the vast majority of non-U.S. citizen arrests, non-citizens were also over-represented among those arrested for non-immigration offenses, according to the report.”

________________________________
The Patriot Post Digest 8-23-2019
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
_______________________________

MENTAL-HEALTH PROPOSAL: “The White House has been briefed on a proposal to develop a way to identify early signs of changes in people with mental illness that could lead to violent behavior,” The Washington Post reports30. “Supporters see the plan as a way President Trump could move the ball forward on gun control following recent mass shootings as efforts seem to be flagging to impose harsher restrictions such as background checks on gun purchases. The proposal is part of a larger initiative to establish a new agency called the Health Advanced Research Projects Agency or HARPA, which would sit inside the Health and Human Services Department.” It’s understandable that mental health is a focal point, but there’s a legitimate fear over what this kind of endeavor can (or will) lead to.

FOREIGN-AID TURNABOUT: The Trump administration has opted not to curb foreign aid, according to The Hill31, which explains, “The Office of Management and Budget was expected to release a package this week calling for cuts in $4.3 billion in foreign aid through a process known as rescission. But the plan was taken off the table amid pushback from some top administration officials and lawmakers in Congress, the official said.” While the decision is being bipartisanly heralded, the goal was laudable. As one senior official put it, “The president has been clear that there is waste and abuse in our foreign assistance and we need to be wise about where U.S money is going. Which is why he asked his administration to look into options to doing just that. It’s clear that there are many on the Hill who aren’t willing to join in curbing wasteful spending.”

DAVID KOCH DEAD: Libertarian David Koch, a prolific political donor who until last year helped pilot Koch Industries, passed away today at just 79 years old. Reason magazine contains a good obituary32.

CHINA RETALIATES: “China said Friday it will impose new tariffs on $75 billion worth of U.S. goods and resume duties on American autos. The Chinese State Council said it decided to slap tariffs ranging from 5% to 10% on $75 billion U.S. goods in two batches effective on Sept. 1 and Dec. 15. That happens to be when President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs on Chinese goods are to take effect. It also said a 25% tariff will be imposed on U.S. cars and a 5% on auto parts and components, which will go into effect on Dec.15.” (CNBC33)

TRADE-WAR FALLOUT: Meanwhile, The Washington Post also says34, “The prolonged trade war between the United States and China is taking a toll on the manufacturing sector, which contracted for the first time since 2009, data show.” This development is said to be “a sign that manufacturers are starting to feel the effects of the ongoing trade war,” as “sales of U.S. exports decreased at the fastest pace since August 2009.” In fact, Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi believes, “If manufacturing isn’t in a recession, it is pretty close.”

EPIC FAIL: Gillette is “shifting the spotlight” — meaning it’s abandoning its anti-“toxic masculinity” campaign — after losing $8 billion (The Daily Wire35)

QUASI-WAR: “Academic espionage”: China suspected of flooding U.S. with students to access sensitive programs (The Washington Times36)

NO CAN DO: According to The Hill37, “The U.S. offer to sell Turkey a Patriot missile defense system has expired, a State Department official confirmed Thursday, amid ongoing tension over Ankara’s defense dealings with Russia. ‘We have consistently told Turkey that our latest offer of PATRIOT would be off the table if it took delivery of the S-400 system. Our PATRIOT offer has expired,’ the official told The Hill.”

POLICY: Trump is right: The 14th Amendment did not guarantee birthright citizenship (The New American38)

POLICY: The media should stop encouraging mass-shooting phobias (National Review39)

HUMOR: AOC: Jeff Bezos started Amazon fire to “make billions in insurance fraud” (Genesius Times40)

For more of today’s editors’ choice headlines, visit In Our Sights41.

The Patriot Post is a certified ad-free news service, unlike third-party commercial news sites linked on this page, which may also require a paid subscription.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65031-friday-top-news-executive-summary

OPINION IN BRIEF

Erick Erickson: “The New York Times has commissioned their 1619 Project, which apparently ‘aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.’ The key word is ‘reframe.’ The Times does not seek to tell the story of the United States. Nor does it seek to add to the story. Instead, the Times has a conclusion and is working backward to contort facts to fit the conclusion. This is activism. The Times is not reporting but rather building narratives in which they must ignore or fabricate facts. … Americans could use more knowledge about slavery, but this effort is not it. Instead, the Times has chosen to reframe American history to divide us along racial lines and exploit that division for progressive politics. The Times is behaving as its editors claim the President behaves.”

SHORT CUTS

The bottom line: “More so than any particular policy or administrative fiat or legal decree, what Trump has accomplished more boldly and triumphantly than he has anything else is his exposure of the various vessels of the mainstream media — that most supercilious and intellectually sheltered of institutions — for being the barely veiled partisan hacks that they so manifestly are.” —Josh Hammer

Grand delusions: “Seven young children have died since Trump was inaugurated as president of the United States. Not one died over eight years under President Obama’s stewardship. Family separations happened under this administration. We saw the public-charge assault last week, which is family separation by other means, and now here we are detaining some children indefinitely.” —California Gov. Gavin Newsom

Pipe dream: “It is no secret that we must transition away from fossil fuel, period. End of discussion. … There is no middle ground.” —Sen. Bernie Sanders

The BIG Lie I: “Look what he did with American Jews and the Jewish community. Come on, man. That’s like a dog whistle.” —Joe Biden

The BIG Lie II: “I can think of nothing more un-American, more resonant with what you might see in the Third Reich, than what the president said [about disloyal Israelis]. And if we’re unwilling to see this for what it is, if we’re unwilling to call it out, if we’re unwilling to act, then we’re going to lose this country.” —Beto O'Rourke

Braying Jenny: “[Trump’s] not focused on my policy agenda. He’s focused on my ethnicity, my background.” —Rep. Rashida Tlaib

Braying Jenny II: “I think that the Trump administration … sits around every single day thinking up new ways to be cruel to these migrants. That’s what they do. And tomorrow, they will probably come up with something else.” —Sen. Mazie Hirono

Non Compos Mentis: “You don’t want to worry about character? Elect a woman!” —MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt

And last… “For most of the Democratic presidential candidates, the only way they’re going to get anymore news coverage is dropping out.” —Frank J. Fleming

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65027-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