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« on: September 17, 2019, 12:00:50 AM » |
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The Patriot Post Digest 9-16-2019
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest
Sep. 16, 2019
https://patriotpost.us/digests/65496-mid-day-digest
THE FOUNDATION
“Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” —Thomas Jefferson (1801)
https://patriotpost.us/fqd/65495-founders-quote-daily
IN TODAY’S EDITION
What to make of the attack on a Saudi oil facility.1
Justice Kavanaugh is yet again under assault by the Left.2
Daily Features: More Analysis3, Columnists4, Headlines5, Opinion in Brief6, Short Cuts7, Memes8, and Cartoons9.
IN BRIEF
Russian Puppet Iran and the Saudi Attack10
Saturday’s drone attack on the Abqaiq oil facility in Saudi Arabia, the largest oil-processing plant in the world, temporarily cut off an estimated 5% of the world’s oil supply — about 5.7 million barrels per day. Oil prices spiked nearly 20% before settling back down a bit on Saudi promises to dip into reserves. Could there be a clearer illustration of the need for American energy independence?
President Donald Trump said, “I have authorized the release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, if needed, in a to-be-determined amount sufficient to keep the markets well-supplied.” He also warned that the U.S. is “locked and loaded” for a response against “the culprit … depending on verification.”
Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, who have been battling the Saudis in a proxy war, claimed responsibility for the attack, while Iran itself denied any role. But U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded that there was “no evidence the attacks came from Yemen,” and he instead pointed to Tehran: “Amid all the calls for de-escalation, Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply.”
If Iran was indeed the culprit, the timing is noteworthy. National Security Advisor John Bolton, a hawkish and staunch critic of Iran, left the White House11 last week amidst disagreement on policy, particularly pertaining to Iran. President Trump, who did rightly nuke Barack Obama’s bad deal with Iran12, has sent numerous signals of late that he wishes to soften policy toward Tehran. That includes floating a personal meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at this week’s UN General Assembly confab, as well as contemplating support for a possible $15 billion bribe to the mullahs from the French. Iran is testing Trump.
Iran may also hope to boost its struggling economy with higher oil prices. An unstable oil market would pressure the U.S. to lift sanctions on Iranian oil exports. The Iran-supporting Russians may also benefit from higher prices given that well over half of Russia’s exports are oil and gas, as would their socialist fellow travelers in Venezuela. In any case, Shia Iran most certainly seeks regional hegemony, and Sunni Saudi Arabia is the most sizable and capable Islamic opposition. As Behnam Ben Taleblu of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies put it, “This competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia is a struggle for both the sacred and profane: for leadership of the Muslim world, for individual Muslim hearts and minds, for the Middle East regional balance, and for oil.”
Going forward, there are a lot of questions. Primarily this from National Review’s Jim Geraghty: “Nobody — or perhaps its more accurate to say few Americans — want a war with Iran, but the Iranians get a say in that, too. Assume the coming days bring proof that Iran launched an attack that shut down half of Saudi Arabia’s oil production. What would the appropriate response from the United States be?”
https://patriotpost.us/articles/65494-russian-puppet-iran-and-the-saudi-attack
NYT Spins Another Anti-Kavanaugh Yarn13
Vindictive motives will often result in bending the truth or even peddling outright lies in an effort to inflict maximum damage on a target. Following the election of President Donald Trump, most mainstream-media outlets exposed themselves as Democrat partisans who vindictively attack Trump and conservatives because their preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton, was soundly defeated. In this era of Leftmedia vindictiveness, The New York Times served up yet another piece of propaganda aimed at propping up the fallacious and discredited smear campaign14 against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
This latest hit piece claims — without any supporting evidence and in fact with statements from the alleged victim denying any memory of the supposed event — that back when Kavanaugh was at Yale, he drunkenly sexually harassed a fellow student at a party. In its original story, the Times failed to mention an important detail that it only reluctantly added later in an editors’ note that stated in part, “The female student declined to be interviewed and friends say that she does not recall the incident.”
So, the entire premise of the article is based upon a non-memory of a supposed drunken sexual assault that no one can verify ever occurred, most significantly not even the alleged victim. The Times sought to pass off a steaming pile of bovine excrement as “evidence” to support its vindictive claim that Kavanaugh is unfit for the highest court in the land. The strategy: to rally Democrats to the anti-Kavanaugh lynch mob.
It worked like a charm. Democrat presidential candidates immediately grabbed their virtue-signal torches and demanded Kavanaugh’s impeachment.
The timing of this latest salvo against Kavanaugh appears to be strange, though, as it is months away from the primaries and over a year away from the 2020 election. But it may be less about timing and more of an attempted counterpunch to shore up the #MeToo narrative against Kavanaugh after recent revelations have further eroded the credibility of Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford. For example, Ford’s longtime and closest friend, Leland Keyser, who was supposedly at the party in which Ford claimed she was attacked, stated that her story “just didn’t make any sense” and that she didn’t “have any confidence in the story.” Furthermore, Ford’s own father didn’t believe her story. In fact, write15 The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino, “It wasn’t just Ford’s father. The national drama played out on a decidedly local scale as the D.C.-based family and friends of Ford’s quietly apologized to friends and family of Kavanaugh, even as the toxic political environment made it punitive for them to speak up publicly.”
The real reason for this whole leftist charade is the same as it was the moment Kavanaugh was nominated: abortion. Don’t take our word for it. Here’s Ford attorney Debra Katz: “I believe that Christine’s testimony brought about more good than the harm the misogynist Republicans caused by allowing Kavanuagh on the Court. He will always have an asterisk next to his name. When he takes a scalpel to Roe v. Wade we will know who he is, we know his character and we know what motivates him. It’s important that we know and that’s part of what motivated Christine.”
Democrats and their Leftmedia cohorts have grossly smeared Kavanaugh in an effort to at the very least impact his rulings in any abortion-related case, and their long-term aim is to create a sufficiently negative narrative to provide grounds for a future Democrat-controlled Congress to impeach him. In other words, this latest play by the Times is not designed for any immediate impact but simply to put another story on the record against Kavanaugh.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/65493-nyt-spins-another-anti-kavanaugh-yarn
ON OUR WEBSITE TODAY
Featured Analysis: Scapegoating John Bolton16 — Debate over American foreign policy is deeper than Trump’s former national security advisor.
Clinton-Era Media Collusion and Propaganda17 — Clinton Library documents shed light on the Left’s effort to subvert talk radio in the ‘90s.
Grassroots Perspective: Will the Left Cancel Civil Rights?18 — Segregation’s color switch — are we unwinding the Civil Rights Movement?
Video: How to Create a Gun-Free America in 5 Easy Steps19 — An oldie but goodie in light of Beto O'Rourke’s demand for gun confiscation.
Video: Don’t Say 'Guys’ to Women, You Guys20 — Sydney Watson dissects this feminist garbage, along with other insane true stories. |
