by Thomas Gallatin:  On Thursday, the Republican House passed its nearly $1.5 trillion tax-cut bill. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) stated, “This country has not rewritten its tax code since 1986. The powers of the status quo in this town are so strong. Yet 227 men and women of this Congress broke through that today.” While Ryan’s sentiment is indeed understandable, it may prove to be moot if Republicans in the Senate are unable to pass their own comprehensive tax reform. However, this should at least be an encouragement to Senate Republicans, as the Senate Finance Committee voted 14-12 on Thursday to send the GOP’s tax bill to the Senate floor for a full vote, which Senate Majority Leader RINO-Mitch McConnell (R-KY) plans to hold after Thanksgiving.

          The House bill aims at several main goals that include streamlining and simplifying the tax code, cutting taxes on businesses, creating jobs and increasing wages for American workers, and providing relief for middle class families. The legislation drops the corporate tax rate down from its current 35% to 20%, lowers the estate tax and would eventually faze it out entirely, and reduces the number of tax brackets from seven to four. Republicans estimate that a typical middle class family of four would see their taxes drop by an average of $1,182.
          Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), highlighting the tax plan’s benefit to small business, said, “Everybody starts getting a tax cut as you move forward. Small business will have the lowest rate since before World War II. And think of this: We lowered it even further after it came through committee. They will only pay 9% on the first $75,000. So for everyone who has ever dreamed of being an entrepreneur — here’s your chance; here’s your opportunity.”
          The Tax Foundation scored the tax plan and estimated that it would create 975,000 new full-time jobs and grow GDP by 3.9%. The Council of Economic Advisers estimated that the legislation would increase GDP by 3% to 5% and that Americans could expect to see their incomes increase by an average of $4,000.
          Now Americans will wait to see if Senate Republicans are able to maintain the positive momentum their House colleagues have created.  
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52483

by Brian Mark Weber:  The recent effort to upend the Senate candidacy of Alabama Judge Roy Moore is dominating headlines these days. The charges against Moore are troubling, serious and credible, while his denials are less than persuasive. But the speed with which Democrats and Republicans alike have demanded Moore’s exit from the race presents a high ethical standard that never seems to apply to Democrats.

          Just yesterday, in fact, Minnesota Democrat Sen. Al Franken was accused of committing sexual assault against a woman in 2006, and it looks like other victims might be coming forward. But the outrage toward Franken, a sitting U.S. senator, has been timid compared with the treatment that candidate Moore has had to endure. And buried beneath the Franken headlines was the news that a hung jury had spared another sitting senator, New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez, from a deserved corruption conviction.
          We’ve been down this road before. Republicans are always quick to destroy their own (deserved or not), while Democrats circle the wagons around the sleaziest politicians and public figures. This hypocrisy has paved the way for sexual predators on the Left to assume vast amounts of power and wealth without ever having to face their accusers, while those on the Right are cut off at the knees.
          Case in point: liar-Bill Clinton. For years Americans have waited for the convincing allegations of sexual abuse and even rape by liar-Clinton to get the attention they deserve. Sure, liar-Clinton was impeached (along party lines), paid a fine, and lost his law license, but Democrats never stopped embracing him or his enabling wife. Indeed, once he escaped conviction in the Senate (nearly along party lines), even Republicans seemed to forgive and forget.
          Ironically, the person who broke the radio silence on liar-Bill Clinton was none other than Donald Trump.
          After the notorious “Access Hollywood” tape nearly derailed his bid for the White House, Trump held a press conference in which the women who claimed to be liar-Clinton’s victims were given the collective attention they deserved. And then, in a brilliant move, Trump seated the women at the presidential debate right near liar-Clinton himself. Trump did more to hold liar-Bill Clinton accountable for his actions than any Republican had done since the former Arkansas governor moved into the White House in 1993.
          When Trump put the spotlight on liar-Clinton, Democrats had a perfect opportunity to make things right and condemn liar-Bill’s predatory behavior. After all, they were poised to take down Trump over alleged groping, not rape. But those on the Left couldn’t bring themselves to be critical of a man they’d forgiven for actually engaging in behavior that was far worse than what Trump was only caught describing.
          Now, nearly 20 years after Juanita Broaddrick went public with her credible accusation of liar-Bill Clinton raping her, and with the liar-Clintons having failed in their party’s most urgent mission — defeating Trump — the Left is suddenly emboldened. Indeed, some are even opportunistically admitting that liar-Clinton should have resigned from office 20 years ago.
          Too little, too late. The societal damage has long since been done.  Caitlin Flanagan writes in The Atlantic, “It was a pattern of behavior; it included an alleged violent assault; the women involved had far more credible evidence than many of the most notorious accusations that have come to light in the past five weeks. But liar-Clinton was not left to the swift and pitiless justice that today’s accused men have experienced. Rather, he was rescued by a surprising force: machine feminism. The movement had by then ossified into a partisan operation, and it was willing — eager — to let this friend of the sisterhood enjoy a little droit de seigneur.”
          Perhaps the parade of “progressive” sexual predators in the past year made it difficult to continue ignoring liar-Clinton’s past — difficult to self-righteously condemn the likes of Weiner and Weinstein and Franken while continuing to dismiss liar-Clinton’s decades of depravity.
          But don’t take this as a sign that progressives are suddenly holding their own accountable. They just couldn’t keep their dirty little secret any longer. There have been plenty of moments when Democrats could have taken a stand to end sexual abuse post-liar-Clinton.
          Matthew Yglesias contends, “The United States, and perhaps the broader English-speaking world, is currently undergoing a much-needed accountability moment in which each wave of stories emboldens more people to come forward and more institutions to rethink their practices. Looking back, the 1998 revelation that the president of the United States carried on an affair with an intern could have been that moment.”
          If only leftists like Yglesias had shown the courage of their convictions when it really mattered.
          Yes, the feminist movement could have become legitimate instead of selectively allowing the very behavior that it proclaims to detest. It could have been a pivotal moment in which the nation reasserted its values and principles, and took a stand against the moral degradation of the past. It could have been the moment for us to enforce the ethical standards that we have long expected of our public figures, and the moment for the media to put the plain truth ahead of its agenda.
          It could have been, but it wasn’t. And they’re now reaping what they sowed. One of the more troubling aspects of the 1998 liar-Clinton-Lewinsky affair is that mainstream media outlets had all the information they needed in 1998 but chose largely to ignore the very serious accusations of Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and especially Juanita Broaddrick.
          As David Harsanyi writes, “However reluctant editors might have been in moving forward with these stories, the fact is that most of them were ultimately brought to the public’s attention by established news organizations, not shady right-wing outlets. Still, Democrats weren’t merely skeptical of these women, they often treated them with disdain and smeared them for political expediency.”
          Yes, they were smeared by just about everyone on the Left including liar-Hillary Clinton. Remember her vicious and dismissive “bimbo eruptions” comment? That a female politician was willing to shame and degrade other women in order to advance her career mirrored the soullessness of the Democrat Party.
          Sadly, the cover-ups from the Kennedys to liar-Clinton to Harvey Weinstein allowed scores of women to be abused by powerful men — so long as these monsters were publicly supporting leftist causes.
          Since the 1960s, Democrats have pushed a culture of unbridled sexuality on American society while at the same time calling for men to respect women. It’s not possible to have both.
          Had liar-Bill Clinton and others been held accountable, perhaps we could have saved a lot of women some serious pain and suffering. Perhaps we could have prevented another generation of sexual perverts from preying on innocent victims. And perhaps we could have emerged as a nation dedicated to ethical and moral behavior in personal and public life.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52482

by Michael Swartz:  Thanks to the Alabama Senate race and all its “he said, she said” controversy, we haven’t heard much about liar-Hillary Clinton lately. Surely she’s hoping all that hullabaloo will drag on through the holidays until some other scandal or big news story grabs the headlines.

          But those pesky little dribs and drabs of news we’re getting about the Uranium One scandal are arousing plenty of interest and concern in uncomfortable places. Forget the rabble-rousers crying “treason” though. As Jonah Goldberg notes at National Review, that 20% share of American uranium liar-Hillary sold off to the Russians is but 2/10 of 1% of the world’s global reserves — and Russia has nine times our share already. (Goldberg and fellow NR writer Andrew McCarthy have been a veritable tag team of information on the scandal.) No, the criminality is where we often find corruption: follow the money.
          For example, what made liar-Bill Clinton such an interesting speaker that a “Kremlin-tied” financial institution would pony up a cool $500,000 to hear him talk? And how about all those millions that found their way into the liar-Clinton Foundation coffers right about then?
          The part of the alleged criminality that ties more directly to liar-Hillary  Clinton is the disposal of thousands of emails accrued while she was Barack liar-nObama’s secretary of state — emails that should have been kept as part of the public record but instead were stashed on an inaccessible (except, perhaps, to hackers) private server. Of course, liar-Hillary was hiding something, and this little bit of smoke that Uranium One represents could be a significant brush fire when one considers all the unsavory characters who may have done business via the back channels of the liar-Clinton Foundation to avoid the front door of public scrutiny with the liar-nObama administration. It’s a heck of a mess that’s been left to Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
          Sessions had been given a full plate already thanks to Democrats’ calls to investigate Russian ties to President Trump — an investigation in which Sessions has been unnecessarily hamstrung by his decision to recuse himself. But that hasn’t stopped the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, led by Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia,from  demanding  Sessions select a second special counsel to match the Democrats’ choice of onetime FBI head Robert Mueller to investigate the Trump campaign. In a Sept. 26 letter to Sessions, Goodlatte and his committee urged the appointment of a special counsel as the case “only reinforces the sense that our nation’s top law enforcement officials conspired to sweep the liar-Clinton ‘matter’ under the rug, and that there is, truly, one system for the powerful and politically well-connected, and another for everyone else.”
          On the other hand, some contend a liar-Clinton investigation can be handled within the Justice Department. Once again, Andrew McCarthy  argues, “Republicans should stop grousing about a special counsel and hope Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein has the good sense to assign any liar-Clinton investigation to a credible counsel. What is needed here is a scrupulous, experienced, skillful prosecutor — preferably, a district U.S. attorney with an excellent staff — who has not commented publicly on the matters under investigation and whose integrity is beyond question.”
          Another person who’s objecting to the appointment of a special counsel is, of course, liar-Hillary Clinton, who called the idea an “abuse of power.” (Something tells us she’s an expert in the field.) But even more ironic is her assertion later in the interview that appointing a special counsel “will also send a terrible signal to our country and the world that somehow we are giving up on the kind of values that we used to live by and we used to promote worldwide.” Madam liar-Hillary, we believe that ship sailed while your husband was president.
          liar-Hillary and liar-Bill can hope that some other sex scandal (oh, again the irony) can pop up and keep Uranium One off the front pages and the nightly news. But those who are now intent on following the money trail could make things very interesting over the next few weeks. There’s no doubt that sex sells, but so does unmasking those whose sold us out.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52480

by Political Editors:  A mistrial has been declared in the corruption trial of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) due to the jury becoming hopelessly deadlocked. One juror said that the panel was split 10-2 in favor of acquittal. It remains to be seen whether the Justice Department will seek a second trial.

          Menendez’s co-defendant, Dr. Salomon Melgen, was convicted earlier this year in Florida of massive Medicare fraud. Fraud in which Menendez was implicated for having pressured Medicare officials to change billing practices after it was determined that Melgen had over-billed by millions of dollars. Menendez was also alleged to have helped Melgen, who is married, secure visas for his foreign mistresses. The government alleged that Menendez had then received luxury vacations and hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Melgen’s business.
          Like a scene straight out of the movie “The Untouchables,” Menendez, sounding every bit the part of a mobster, warned, “To those who were digging my political grave so they could jump into my seat: I know who you are, and I won’t forget you.” Yikes!
          One of the most troubling aspects of this whole Menendez saga has been the mainstream media’s near silence on the story. The MSM has hardly covered the scandal and the subsequent trial. If Menendez were a Republican, every American would know about him and what he was accused of doing.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52485

by Lewis Morris:  American higher education is in crisis. And not just because of $1.45 trillion in crippling student loan debt or declining enrollment or the even the violence that seems to pass for accepted behavior on college campuses.

          The real crisis here is a complete lack of intellectual diversity in America’s colleges and universities. Faculty and administration in a vast majority of America’s institutes of higher learning are not just overwhelmingly left of center politically but nearly unanimously so. A 2016 study found that America’s left-of-center college faculty outnumber right-of-center faculty 10 to one. That used to be two to one.
          To be clear, we are not talking about people who lean left. In most cases, these academics are unapologetically, vocally and even militantly leftist if not outright Marxist. And they are in positions of power in many of America’s colleges and universities, teaching our children, shaping their academic curriculum, and running the student life of college attendees.
          This is a trend that has been going on for 50 years. When the protest era of the 1960s came to an end, a number of avowed leftists were forlorn that they did not achieve their dream of tearing down the United States of America. They realized that direct confrontation would not work. They didn’t have the numbers, and their arguments supporting the leftist political viewpoint were intellectually and morally bankrupt. What to do?
          They stayed in school. The protesters became professors. They wormed their way into the higher education apparatus and changed the rules of the game. Over the intervening decades, they slowly but steadily slipped their ideology into the curriculum of America’s colleges and universities. They taught their leftist propaganda to students, who grew up to become professors, who taught their leftist propaganda… You see where this is going?
          We are now at a point of critical mass. This leftist takeover of the American education system, which also includes public grade schools, has been going on for years. It has become painfully evident since the election of Donald Trump. Leftists thought they were assured victory when liar-Hillary Clinton was within reach of following Barack liar-nObama into the White House. But the country came to its collective senses, and the Left did what it does best: It got really angry.
          The damage from the leftist takeover of American higher education is immense and growing. In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, University of California, Santa Cruz, professor John Ellis points out, “The imbalance is not only a question of numbers. Well-balanced opposing views act as a corrective for each other: The weaker arguments of one side are pounced on and picked off by the other. Both remain consequently healthier and more intellectually viable. But intellectual dominance promotes stupidity. As one side becomes numerically stronger, its discipline weakens. The greater the imbalance between the two sides, the more incoherent and irrational the majority will become.”
          This is why we don’t see intellectually stimulating debate when Ben Shapiro or Milo Yiannopoulos appear on a college campus. Leftists would rather shout down and attack people. They are constantly surrounded by like-minded views, so they don’t have the intellectual capacity to frame their thoughts in a coherent way when challenged. In short, their brains don’t get exercise.
          Of course, any free-thinking person knows that the Left’s viewpoints are generally indefensible anyway. And leftists know that, too. That’s why they have purged America’s college campuses of intellectual opposition. And this has had a ripple effect that has impacted our whole society.
          The anti-male, every-man’s-a-rapist meme and the hostile social environment pushed by radical feminists on campus plays a major role in the 30% dropout rate among freshman males. A Brookings Institution study revealed that one in five college students believe that violence is an acceptable response to unacceptable speech. No wonder college enrollment is down. Who would want to put their family in massive debt sending their kid to school in such an environment?
          If the American higher education system remains in the grip of rabid leftists posing as academics, then the whole country will suffer. The social squishes who emerge from these institutions are ill-prepared to handle real life, shrinking back from every “micro-aggression” they experience, unable to take criticism and learn from it, and unable to be the leaders that this country’s next generation will need.
          Ellis points out that there is a solution — making these institutions of higher learning accountable. “What if voters were to insist … answers to some elementary questions? For example: How can a department of political science that excludes half the spectrum of viable political ideas be competent to offer degrees in the field? How can a history curriculum be taught competently when only one extremist attitude to social and political questions is present in a department? How can these extraordinary deficiencies deserve either accreditation, or support by state and federal funds?”
          Americans need to take back their schools and stop letting the Left run them as re-education camps. Higher learning is supposed to prepare you for a better life where you have the freedom to make your own choices and plan your own way to success as you define it. It’s not supposed to serve the ends of a bankrupt ideology whose only way to win an argument is to beat down the opposition.  
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52435

by Nate Jackson:  “Can My Children Be Friends With White People?” That was the title of a weekend op-ed at The New York Times. The author, Ekow N. Yankah, is a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University. And he answers the provocative title question in exactly the way you’d expect: With a “no.” He writes, “I will teach my boys to have profound doubts that friendship with white people is possible. … For many weary minorities, the ridiculous thing was thinking friendship was possible in the first place.”

          Moreover, Yankah continued by — what else — slamming Donald Trump: “Of course, the rise of this president has broken bonds on all sides. But for people of color the stakes are different. Imagining we can now be friends across this political line is asking us to ignore our safety and that of our children. … His election and the year that has followed have fixed the awful thought in my mind too familiar to black Americans: ‘You can’t trust these people.’”
          As Gary Bauer properly noted, “The Times would never and should never publish a column by a white professor asking if his children could be friends with black people.”
          That’s because what Yankah is writing is pure racism. Not only is he ignorant of Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream of a world that judges by character and not color, he turns that dream into a nightmare — deliberately. He argues, “The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.‘s famous dream of black and white children holding hands was a dream precisely because he realized that in Alabama, conditions of dominance made real friendship between white and black people impossible.”
          What now makes those friendships impossible is the continued grievance-mongering of race-baiters like Yankah and leftist rags like The New York Times.  
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52423

by Political Editors:  With the mainstream media blaming Donald Trump for promoting hatred and all the talk of America being a society steeped in “white privilege” and racist nationalism, one might expect to see hate crime statistics support such claims. The FBI has released its “hate crimes” data for the year 2016. Now, as we have argued in the past, the designation of “hate crime” injects a rather subjective standard into motivating factors for crime and it’s often used to artificially increase the level of guilt beyond the actual criminal act. Moreover, leftist social justice warriors love to implicate the criminal’s entire social, religious or racial group, so long as it’s white or Christian. But for the sake of argument, let’s accept the FBI’s designation and look at some things.

          According to the data, over the past decade the total number of reported hate crimes has changed very little, with anti-black crimes remaining the highest reported percentage at 50.2%. However, over that same period there has been a significant shift in the percentage of white offenders. In 2007 — before the Age of Hope ‘n’ Change™ — nearly 63% of all known offenders were white; by 2016 and the rise of that big “hater” Donald Trump, that percentage had dropped to 46.3%. And while the percentage of white offenders has decreased, the percentage of anti-white crime saw an increase in 2016 to 20.5%, the highest level recorded since 2006.
          It’s not surprising to see an uptick in the number of anti-white hate crimes, since those who have been widely demonized by politically motivated leftists will tend to see a greater backlash against them by other groups who feel newly justified in their anger.
          Finally, one interesting stat not noted by the FBI were the number of crimes committed against politicians, particularly of the Republican variety. With all the rhetoric about Trump and Republicans supposedly fomenting hatred, it was Republicans who were violently attacked this past year, specifically when a Bernie Sanders-supporting leftist targeted and shot GOP House members practicing for a baseball game. And more recently there is Sen. Rand Paul, who is sporting six broken ribs after a blindside attack at the hands of his leftist neighbor. Are we the only ones detecting a pattern here?  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52414

by Todd Johnson:  Following last week’s election defeats in Virginia and New Jersey, many members of the Republican Party are wondering if the results are a one-time anomaly or potentially a harbinger of things to come in next year’s congressional contests. And while it’s tempting to write off the results as being due to the particular candidates not performing well or the locations leaning Democrat, the Republican Party must do its due diligence moving forward. Republicans must examine the facts, identify key lessons learned, and then push to all future candidates salient advice so that the same errors are not made for next year’s elections.

          And while many prognosticators and political pundits are quick to say that the Republican Party is in dire trouble — whether it’s the on-going Roy Moore saga in Alabama or President Donald Trump’s low approval ratings — the media is conveniently forgetting the political maxim that one set of off-year elections doesn’t make a trend.
          Take for example the media’s recent coverage of Republican House members and senators who have announced they won’t be running for re-election. The narrative by many outlets is that this movement portends disaster for the Party of Lincoln when nothing could be further from the truth.
          As of Nov. 13, two GOP senators and 12 House members have announced their retirements, two have resigned from office, and another 10 are leaving to pursue other elected offices. While these numbers sound like a lot, they are actually right in line with the last couple of election cycle’s turnover data.
          In 2014, 27 Republican representatives and senators choose not to run for re-election, while another eight decided to leave office early. In 2012, the number of GOP representatives and senators who decided to retire was 23, while one quit his office early.
          More importantly, we must remember that the vast majority of the seats being vacated by Republican incumbents are in GOP strongholds. Recent analysis shows that only a handful of seats are currently identified as competitive races. This dynamic, of course, can change but Republicans currently hold the tactical advantage — especially given that Senate Democrats are defending 25 seats (including two “independents”) while the GOP must hold just eight that are nearly all in solidly red states.
          That’s why it’s critical for the Party of Reagan to pass significant legislation (like tax reform) over the next year, as well as to keep putting conservative judges on the federal bench so that the members have some accomplishments to tout to their constituents. A look at the current and proposed 2018 House Calendar reveals that there are only 120 work days prior to next year’s election. That’s why it is imperative for Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader RINO-Mitch McConnell to work closely with President Trump in 2018. Unfortunately, neither Ryan nor RINO-McConnell has shown the leadership conservatives are craving.
          With 248 seats in the House of Representatives and 52 seats in the Senate, this Congress began with the largest Republican majority since the 71st Congress of 1929–1931. While there have been some very positive things have been accomplished in Trump’s first year, there have been too many missed opportunities. 2018 must be the year that the national Republican leadership coalesces, steps up to the plate, and delivers for the American people.
          They need to heed the advice of Thomas Jefferson, when he wrote back in 1811, “If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into squads, everyone pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check.”  ~The Patriot Post  https://patriotpost.us/articles/52409 

by Culture Beat:  GQ magazine named Colin Kaepernick its “citizen of the year” for his instigation last year of NFL kneeling protests. The magazine noted that Kaepernick refused to be interviewed for the cover article, explaining, “As his public identity has begun to shift from football star to embattled activist, he has grown wise to the power of his silence.” Seeking to suggest that Kaepernick is sacrificing himself for the cause, GQ quotes rapper J. Cole, who states, “Had [Kaepernick not taken a knee], this guy would be making millions of dollars right now. Period, point blank. And more important than the money, he was living his dream. He sacrificed his dream.” World’s smallest violin, please.

          Ironic how little respect and honor Kaepernick was willing to show for those who literally sacrificed their very lives to ensure that pro football players and other celebrity athletes enjoy the freedom of being able to make millions of dollars doing what they love to do. If Kaepernick were truly concerned about sacrificing himself for the cause of others, he’d march down to the nearest military recruiter’s office and sign up to fight for Liberty.
          In the meantime, Kaepernick may want to read up on famed abolitionist and escaped slave Frederick Douglass’ perspective on this nation Kaepernick so clearly despises. While Douglass was not shy about criticizing that “peculiar institution” of slavery, he encouraged black Americans to sign up with the Union to fight for freedom. He was also known to regularly play “The Star-Spangled Banner” on his violin, and in an 1871 speech at Arlington National Cemetery he said that “if the Star-Spangled Banner floats only over free American citizens in every quarter of the land, and our country has before it a long and glorious career of justice, liberty and civilization, we are indebted to the unselfish devotion of the noble army.”
          The problem for leftists like Kaepernick and GQ is that they no longer believe, and may have never believed, that the United States of America is a noble nation that has consistently espoused and defended the ideals of justice and Liberty. So on the heels of Veterans Day, GQ honored the wrong kneeler.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52401

by Thomas Gallatin:  Every headline should be focused on the corrupt behavior of the DNC, liar-Hillary Clinton and the liar-Clinton Foundation — especially its funding of the phony dossier on Donald Trump. Instead, what America gets is more anti-Trump obsession as the mainstream media continues to beat the dead horse of the Trump/Russia collusion conspiracy. Evidently, for the MSM fantasy is preferable to reality.

          Over the weekend, a clearly apoplectic CNN reported that Trump was “done confronting President Vladimir Putin over his country’s election meddling.” When questioned, Trump stated, “[Putin] said he didn’t meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times.” Trump added, “Every time he sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that.’ And I believe, I really believe, that when he tells me that, he means it.” It was this kind of nuanced language that prompted the Leftmedia to fawn over Barack liar-nObama, and yet with Trump, somehow all the nuance is lost. Notice that Trump never said that he believes Putin didn’t meddle…
          And there’s a good reason for Trump’s rather cryptic response. As he stated earlier, “You have President Putin very strongly, vehemently, [saying] he has nothing to do with that. Now, you are not going to get into an argument, you are going to start talking about Syria and the Ukraine.” He also tweeted, “Hope for [Putin’s] help to solve, along with China, the dangerous North Korea crisis.” Regardless of the fact that Russia sought to meddle in the election, something we’re certain has long been Moscow’s practice, the U.S. must still attempt to maintain some semblance of a working relationship. Trump clearly understands this priority over that of the Leftmedia and its continuous anti-Trump Resistance™ crusade.
          But back to that dubious dossier and the Russian story on which the media should be focused. We now know that Glenn Simpson, head of Fusion GPS, met with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya on the same day she had the infamous meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner. An innocent coincidence? Why won’t the Leftmedia, which has been so concerned with Russian election meddling, bother to dig into this interesting piece of information? Given that Fusion GPS was the firm responsible for the phony dossier, this meeting was most certainly not an “unrelated coincidence.” Ah, but that would mean digging into liar-Hillary’s campaign, something the MSM is loath to do.
          On another note, it’s now being reported that there is evidence of a second dossier — and this one alleges financial misconduct by major donors to the liar-Clinton Foundation. It would seem that this second dossier, also created by Fusion GPS, may have been the pretext of dirt on liar-Clinton that Veselnitskaya used to set up the meeting with Trump Jr. National Review’s Andrew McCarthy writes:
          My conjecture is that there are three explanations for what happened here, none of which excludes the others: (a) The Russians do not understand American political campaigns well enough to appreciate that alleged misconduct by a donor does not hurt a candidate if the candidate is not complicit in the misconduct; (b) the Putin regime attempted (unsuccessfully) to lure the Trump campaign into its anti–Magnitsky Act [adoption law] effort by convincing Don Trump Jr. and other campaign officials that there was a useful anti-liar-Clinton angle to be exploited; and (c) the Putin regime calculated that, simply by taking a meeting with a Kremlin emissary on the promise of damaging information about liar-Clinton, the Trump campaign would foolishly expose itself to blackmail by Putin.
          As we have stated repeatedly, Putin couldn’t care less who won the election. Russia’s aim was to sow distrust in the American electoral system, and Fusion GPS evidently played a key role.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52390

http://video.insider.foxnews.com/v/5642396223001

          On Friday afternoon, Moore interviewed with Sean Hannity to defend himself. He not only denied the story of Leigh Corfman, the primary accuser in The Washington Post’s exposé, he denied even knowing her. “I don’t know Ms. Corfman from anybody,” Moore said. “The allegations of sexual misconduct with her are completely false.”
          Three other women claim Moore either had or attempted to have a dating relationship with them when he was in his 30s and they were teens (above Alabama’s age of consent, 16). When Hannity asked about these or similar relationships, Moore was ambiguous: “No, not generally. … I’m not going to dispute anything. … It would have been out of my customary behavior. … I don’t remember going out on dates. I knew her as a friend. If we did go out on dates then we did. But I do not remember that. … I don’t remember dating any girl without the permission of her mother.”
          The problem with his denial of Corfman’s story is that witnesses at the time — including her mother — corroborate the story. And according to former deputy district attorney Teresa Jones, a prosecutor who worked with Moore in the early 1980s, “It was common knowledge that Roy dated high school girls. Everyone we knew thought it was weird. We wondered why someone his age would hang out at high school football games and the mall … but you really wouldn’t say anything to someone like that.”
          Other women who experienced sexual abuse say that Corfman’s story — and especially her reasons for taking so long to tell it — resonate with them.
          Gloria Allred, feminist extraordinaire, will hold a press conference today with a new accuser. Horrible that it’s a new accuser; dismissible because Allred’s involved.
          Even Moore’s defenders are either not denying his odd relationships or they’re bizarrely using Scripture to justify the behavior.
          All of this is to say the allegations are hard to dismiss as unbelievable … except for the timing of what was an obvious smear by the Democrats’ favorite paper, The Washington Post. In fact, Moore has threatened to sue the Post. Furthermore, one of the women talking about her dating relationship with Moore, Deborah Gibson, was a liar-Clinton campaign volunteer, though Corfman says she’s a Republican.
          In any case, as we said Friday, things don’t look good for Moore. He’s losing both endorsements and money from fellow Republicans. Recent polling shows the gap closing between him and Democrat opponent Doug Jones, and it’s too late to remove his name from the ballot. That, of course, was the point of the Post running the story when it did.
          As Mark Alexander puts it, “It is prudent to leave the door open for an ounce of doubt when The Washington Post runs a story with 40-year-old allegations of sex abuse a month ahead of an election, against a candidate who has been a public figure for most of those 40 years with not a (public) peep about these allegations previously. At best the allegations are totally unprovable and false, but the Post colluded with his accusers and timed the release of the story to affect the outcome of the election. At worst the allegations remain unprovable and true, but the Post colluded with his accusers and timed the release of the story to affect the outcome of the election.”  
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52393

by Jordan Candler:  The Left preaches that the Paris climate accord is not just an obligatory moral endeavor — the world faces an imbroglio that requires frantic countermeasures if we expect to stave off the (alleged) apocalyptic consequences of man-made global warming. Conservatives have countered that argument partly by insisting that key foreign nations have zero interest in abiding by the rules. They rightly see the accord as a massive transfer of wealth. The underlying motivation of nations to participate is the cash flow they envision flowing from the top. It’s a great scheme — if they can make it work.

          Unfortunately for them, the plan isn’t coming to fruition, at least not as intended. News broke last week that the U.S. represents literally the only nation not a signatory to the Paris climate accord following Syria’s about-face. Ecofascists are furious, but the move was a sterling one, especially considering the evidence isn’t in their favor. According to a new report, the trend is already heading in the direction that conservatives warned it would. It’s been predicted that whatever positives the U.S. achieves in terms of limiting emissions output will be canceled out by other big polluters like China. New indications via the Global Carbon Project affirm this concern.
          According to The Washington Times, “Several studies released by the Global Carbon Project and presented Monday at a United Nations climate conference in Germany say that worldwide carbon emissions are projected to rise about 2 percent in 2017 after they’d been flat for three years, according to preliminary estimates of this year’s data. The culprit, the data show, is China, which had kept its emissions in check in recent years but now is seeing a massive uptick in pollution. Under the Paris pact, China agreed to cap its emissions by 2030, meaning it’s free to ramp up pollution between now and then. China’s uptick in 2017, which comes after a 1 percent drop in 2015 and flat emissions last year, largely is due to the country’s increased use of fossil fuels.”
          One researcher stated the obvious: “Global commitments made in Paris in 2015 to reduce emissions are still not being matched by actions.” Not that it’s America’s fault. Emissions here are expected to see a 0.4% drop this year, which is happening without the onerous requirements set forth under the Paris climate accord. We can’t control what other nations do, nor should we expect to. But we certainly don’t have to be accomplices in their devious exploits. The Paris climate accord was one of the lousiest farces ever concocted. Thank goodness the Trump administration balked at it.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52398

by Arnold Ahlert:  “What is un-American is when shadowy billionaires pour unlimited money into our democracy to rig the system to benefit themselves and the wealthiest one percent. I believe in an America where economic opportunity is open to all. And based on their actions and policies they promote, the Koch brothers seem to believe in an America where the system is rigged to benefit the very wealthy.” —former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, denouncing the $14.5 million spent by Charles and David Koch on Senate races, March 4, 2014

          “California billionaire hedge fund manager turned political activist Tom Steyer announced in a press conference on Thursday morning that he is ‘doubling down’ and committing another $10 million to his Need To Impeach campaign against President Donald Trump. The additional capital, which would bring Steyer’s total dollars spent to $20 million, will fund new advertisement buys and at least one new commercial which will be released next week.” —Forbes Magazine, Nov. 9, 2017
          For terminally hypocritical Democrats, some billionaires and their spending are “more equal” than others. Thus Tom Steyer is their latest hero, not only because he spends money on their agenda but because he’s just as comfortable with rank hypocrisy as they are.
          “The president is doing some awful things. That’s the point we’re trying to make in those TV ads: ‘Let’s come together and stand up against somebody who’s doing awful things,’” Steyer stated in an interview with Newsweek. “But [I’m] as disturbed by the good things that he’s not doing as by the awful things that he is doing.”
          Steyer’s first ad is quite melodramatic. He accuses Trump of bringing America to the brink of nuclear war, obstructing justice at the FBI, taking money from foreign governments and threatening to shut down media organizations that report the truth. “If this is not a case for impeaching and removing a dangerous president, then what has our government become?” he asks.
          What our government has become is largely a self-serving enterprise where the needs of the American people have been ignored for decades. That reality — no doubt to Steyer’s chagrin — is why Trump got elected in the first place.
          Moreover, if Democrats still want to rail about the excess influence of shadowy billionaires, perhaps they might take note that no one contributed  more of his own money to federal candidates, parties, political action committees, etc., during the 2016 election cycle than Tom Steyer. He donated a whopping $91.1 million, solely to Democrat and leftist entities.
          The Koch brothers? Pikers by comparison. Only Charles made the list’s top 100. His total contribution? A little over $4 million.
          Steyer is free to spend his wealth as he sees fit, but the man who  likened Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris accord on global warming as “a traitorous act of war against the American people” is as self-serving as anyone on the planet. His group, Next Gen Climate, is a super PAC that aims to move the nation to a 100% renewable energy future within 25 years. And while it’s framed as a noble enterprise, a July 2016 report by the non-profit watchdog Energy & Environment Legal Institute reveals otherwise. Entitled “Buying the Democrat Party Lock, Stock and Barrel,” the report details Steyer’s efforts to “protect his solar energy investments by spending tens of millions of dollars on key 2016 races, buying a plank in the 2016 Democrat platform, and trying to silence debate from those who challenge his view on ‘climate change’ by using select attorneys general to prosecute ‘dissenters.’”
          That would be Steyer’s current solar investments. After a career on Wall Street that included stints at Goldman Sachs and equity firm Hellman & Freidman, Steyer took $15 million in seed money and founded Farallon Capital Management in 1986. By 2011, Farallon had become the 12th largest hedge fund in the world, with $21.5 billion in assets.
          How? Among other things, Farallon provided funding for acquisitions and expansions to six of the largest coal mine and coal power plant buyouts in Australia and Asia since 2003. Steyer’s hypocrisy is so egregious, a group of Yale students created the website UnFarallon.info to keep track of it.
          It is hypocrisy that also surrounds his opposition to the Keystone pipeline. As a 2014 Wall Street Journal article noted, “Mr. Steyer and the [Democrat] party’s liberal financiers are climate-change absolutists who have made killing Keystone a non-negotiable demand.” Yet 2014 was also the year it was revealed Farallon had $40 million invested in Kinder Morgan, an entity building a competitor to Keystone. That inconvenient truth elicited a promise from Steyer to sell his stock shares and donate the profits to charity.
          In May 2016, leaked corporate documents also showed that Steyer helped to finance a company used by the family of former Chinese premier Wen Jiabao “to park investments in overseas tax havens,” The Washington Free Beacon reported.
          That revelation was part of the Panama Papers scandal precipitated by a leak of 11.5 million files from the database of Mossack Fonseca, the world’s fourth largest offshore law firm. The files detailed how the rich exploit offshore tax havens. “The documents shed light on the activities Steyer engaged in to earn his estimated $1.6 billion fortune, but that run counter to many political principles and causes he is now using that fortune to support,” the Free Beacon explains.
          In short, Steyer was for anti-environmental profit-making before he was against it.
          What about Steyer’s “conversion” to green energy? As The New York Times explained in 2014, Farallon “has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into companies that operate coal mines and coal-fired power plants from Indonesia to China.” It further notes an examination of those records “shows that even after his highly public divestment, the coal-related projects his firm bankrolled will generate tens of millions of tons of carbon pollution for years, if not decades, to come.”
          The Times thought this might “cloud” Steyer’s image as an environmental crusader. No doubt. But it certainly clarifies his image as a first-class fraud, one reportedly considering a run for Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat.
          In the meantime, Steyer remains focused on Trump’s impeachment. “I believe we’re in an urgent political crisis,” he insists.
          Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Ahrens isn’t particularly concerned. “If Democrats want to appease the far left and their liberal mega-donors by supporting a baseless radical effort that the vast majority of Americans disagree with, then have at it,” he told Newsweek in an email.
          An American Left that believes it is entitled to rule, irrespective of election results, will undoubtedly do just that, embracing every effort to delegitimize the presidency of Donald Trump — by any means necessary.
          Tom Steyer is leftists’ chief financier, a man so arrogant he believes global warming “deniers” should be prosecuted and that impeachment proceedings can literally be bought.
          Along with Democrat politicians. “We need people like Tom Steyer,” Harry dinky-Reid stated on May 20, 2014, two months after hammering the Kochs — and three days after it was reported that Steyer contributed $5 million to the Senate Majority PAC run by former dinky-Reid aides.
          Apparently some efforts to “rig the system” are also more equal than others.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52388