Dees, a marketer and self-promoter, and his partner in crime, Richard Cohen, perfected the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton race-bait shakedown model for, in effect, extorting money from corporations. Now comes word that Cohen is also out.

Late Friday afternoon news dumps are a way to avoid a lot of media attention. The letter I received from Cohen announcing his resignation came Saturday night during the March Madness playoffs — which is to say, it was really buried in the weeds. While Cohen had indicated to his board last year that they should start looking for his replacement, he now says, “In light of recent events, I’ve asked the board to immediately launch a search for an interim president in order to give the organization the best chance to heal.”

He does not mention what “recent events” were, but we all know he is referring to Dees’s firing, and the fact all of his alleged sexual harassment and racial discrimination occurred on Cohen’s watch. We don’t know to what extent Cohen may also be implicated in such misdeeds.

In his letter he notes, “We’ve heard from our staff that we need to do a better job of making sure that our workplace embodies the values we espouse — truth, justice, equity, and inclusion.” In other words, they have raised $500 million telling other people what values their workplaces should embody, but they apparently have not gotten a dose of their own medicine.

So, you may fairly conclude Dees, Cohen, and their cohorts are typical hypocritical leftists.  ~The Patriot Post

Today, water is sold just as a soft drink, iced tea, or another beverage of convenience — in cans, plastic bottles, or sometimes in glass bottles. We Americans seem to need both hands occupied with a beverage and our smartphones to be fashionably complete in the modern-day world of hustle and bustle.

But at what price?

Last week, both The New York Times and Breitbart touched on the same topic and came surprisingly close to a similar conclusion — Americans generate a ton of waste that, despite being recycled, now is adding more and more to our landfills due to the increasing costs of recycling and the excess of recycled items that end up in the trash heap.

The most current data available to quantify our waste is from 2015. That year, Americans generated about 262.4 tons of garbage that was placed in a landfill. Compounding a growing problem of our reliance of packaging for convenience is the fact that our recyclables, once bought by China in vast quantities, have been restricted since 2017 due to the contamination of products with waste. China’s ban on used plastics and paper have resulted in a glut of recycled materials not just in America but abroad, with municipalities seeing the cost of recycling rising due to the falling value of the collected materials. Hence, the quandary: What do we do with the increasing volume of waste?

To appreciate the scale, Fort Worth, Texas gained $1 million through the sale of its recycled items in 2017 but is on track to lose $1.6 million this year due to the reversal of fortune in dealing with a mountain of material that is too expensive to be exported yet has to be addressed.

This isn’t a glamorous issue. Most want to talk about economic policy, health-care-payer dynamics, world trade and the value of the dollar, or the healthy conflict between global markets that need America to be competitive. Heck, it’s pretty fun to talk about the metaphorical head explosions of the crowd that refused to accept the loss of scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton in 2016 now having to admit that President Donald Trump endured two years of investigation only to be found innocent of collusion with Russia!

Nevertheless, our garbage is never the policy point of soaring rhetoric, but let’s face it — if America doesn’t begin to address some of our consuming habits and our infrastructure to handle it, we’ll see a public health and safety problem that no one will enjoy having to deconstruct after we’ve helped build it.

Some cities are incinerating their waste. That means smoke, particulate matter, and pollution in the air, right? No. Capturing the heat from the closed combustion and harnessing that energy onto a grid, cities in Florida and Pennsylvania featured in the Times piece are finding a less expensive way to deal with items that would otherwise consume space in landfills or prove increasingly more expensive to send across the Pacific for recycling.

The next question will be, should there be a ban of the use of disposable items? It’s always easier to issue edicts but in the case of food packaging, there’s a complicating factor of sanitation that’s required with the sale of consumable goods like food, beverages, and medicines. It’s also a fact that those who have the most restrictive access to fresh foods and refrigeration are the poorest who rely heavily on items packaged for single use.

Back to the largest contributor resulting in China’s ban: single-stream recycling. The ease of placing a container of waste on the curbside beside a bin of recyclable items mixed for later separation is popular, but unwelcomed by those who want to purchase the used items with a minimal amount of work to reuse the items. About two-thirds of all municipal recycling programs are single-stream recycling processes that don’t require separation at the point of return and pick up. Dialing it back a bit, when recycling first launched, even the plastics were separated by the number that corresponds to the type of plastic, ranging from numbers one through seven. Simply put, the Chinese began rejecting our recycling because it included too much of our other waste they didn’t want to buy.

So, if the use of disposable products shouldn’t be banned and likely since folks want to see less land used for landfill dumping, we need to change our behavior as consumers. America’s desire to frequent the drive-through and enjoy the conveniences of single-use items has added costs to our retail purchases. We’re now seeing those desires and conveniences are adding costs to our lives in the long run.

As we approach solutions, let’s reflect on a few of President Theodore Roosevelt’s thoughts on conservation that teach us being a good steward transcends a partisan divide:

“We have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received, and each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune.”

“I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.”

“Conservation means development as much as it does  protection.”  

~The Patriot Post

Here’s a list of the top 20 things that engender “historic” levels of angst for a generation seemingly ill-equipped to cope with the vicissitudes of everyday life:
1. Losing wallet/credit card
2. Arguing with partner
3. Commute/traffic delays
4. Losing phone
5. Arriving late to work
6. Slow WiFi
7. Phone battery dying
8. Forgetting passwords
9. Credit card fraud
10. Forgetting phone charger
11. Losing/misplacing keys
12. Paying bills
13. Job interviews
14. Phone screen breaking
15. Credit card bills
16. Check engine light coming on
17. School loan payments
18. Job security
19. Choosing what to wear
20. Washing dishes

Other stress-inducing factors that did not make the top 20 list were just as indicative. Nearly one-in-five consider getting zero “likes” on a social-media post to be more stressful than arguing with a partner. Thirty percent believe slow WiFi is more stress-inducing than slow traffic. Twenty-two percent believe arriving first at a party is more stressful than a job interview. And more than one-in-three believe sticking to plans is more stressful than abandoning them.

“Many feel their overall stress level is caused by the accumulation of daily micro-stressors…”  reports  columnist Ben Renner.

Micro-stressers? Enter Psychology Today columnist Jasmin Tahmaseb-McConatha, Ph.D., who defines the term as a “continuous low level of anxiety emerging from my confrontation with numerous day-to-day hassles,” that “create vulnerability, anxiety, and feelings of loss and marginalization.” She adds, “It is clear that feelings of vulnerability which emerge from our confrontation with daily micro-stressors are not easily discussed.”

Until now.

Remarkably — or maybe not so much — the above list reveals a couple of things. First, note how much of Millennial stress centers around technology, and more specifically, cell phones. Five of the above top 20 stress-inducing factors were related to that attention-grabbing piece of hardware.

Yet is that stress, or outright addiction? Health journalist Catherine Price, who authored How To Break Up With Your Phone, offers compelling evidence that cell phones, and the social-media apps they contain, are designed to addict people. And Western Washington University psychology professor Ira Hyman, Ph.D., asserts that young Americans are most vulnerable. “Teens and young adults are natives in the land of technology,” he writes. “They have grown up with cell phones and the internet. Their social lives are tied up in these machines; they live across the internet and airwaves.”

And what are the internet and “airwaves” saturated with? A cornucopia of real and imagined disasters in the oldest “if it bleeds, it leads” tradition of ratings-driven information dissemination. The digital age has also upped the ante on hysteria in the form of “clickbait,” as in something designed to drive increasing levels of traffic to a particular website, via an enticing, but often misleading, statement or headline.

Thus, there is a certain amount of legitimacy that a generation which has never known anything other than the digital age is inclined to believe the world is a far more ominous place than it actually is. Yet any sympathy one might feel for Millennials in that regard is almost totally mitigated by factor number two: an eye-rolling lack of perspective, driven by a monumental level of historical ignorance.

How many Millennials know that 29,000 Americans, many of whom were in their age group, were killed storming the beaches of Normandy during WWII? How many could even conceive of being forced by utter destitution to stand in bread and soup lines awaiting their next meal, or living in the shantytowns precipitated by the Great Depression? How about something as simple as being required to register for the draft, or waiting in line for gasoline during the 70s, when Americans were assured the world was running out of oil? The Cuban missile crisis? For 13 days Americans waited to see if world-ending nuclear war would break out.

“Really, the solipsism of these millennials is absurd,”  writes columnist Quin Hillyer. “By almost every [measure] imaginable, Americans today live in a veritable Nirvana.”

Unfortunately, Nirvana is in the eye of the beholder, and nothing is more inimical to the interests of the American Left than people largely content with their lives, largely resistant to the siren song of “fundamental transformation.”

Yet one Millennial believes the Left, which has cultivated his generation’s penchant for pettiness, will lose an “eminently winnable” 2020 election as a result. “High on kale and identity politics, we demand that our candidates check each and every box on our customized purity list,” writes Millennial Christopher Dale. “No sin is too venial to escape excommunication.”

Customized purity, and the insufferable arrogance it engenders, are apt descriptors of a generation that believes the world will end in a dozen years — again — unless they save it. That such a “noble” effort seemingly demands the wholesale elimination of power-limiting constitutional institutions?

The loss of Liberty is a reasonable tradeoff for saving the planet.

Save it for whom? Certainly not the “privileged,” the “toxic,” the “deplorable,” the “bitter clingers” or the trans-, homo-, xeno-, Islamophobic Americans too backwards to know how backwards they are. Certainly not for those who have the unmitigated gall to believe speech isn’t limited by “hate,” or that the right to self-defense against tyranny shouldn’t be limited by “benevolent” tyrants themselves. And most certainly not for those who possess the one attribute Millennials conspicuously lack, even though it would mitigate a tremendous amount of that aforementioned stress: a sense of humor — including the ability to laugh at oneself.

“Across the United States, high-profile comedians like Jerry Seinfeld, Larry the Cable Guy and Chris Rock have said they are avoiding campuses because of student hypersensitivity,” The Wrap reported in 2015.

Four years later — after one of the most virulent and coordinated hatefests ever directed against a sitting president — one suspects things are more “stressful” than ever for those who are also “natives” in the land of political correctness.

“Stress isn’t an abstract issue — it’s a significant problem and doesn’t necessarily have to be caused by one large inciting incident,” says Endoca CEO Henry Vincenty. “No matter what’s causing our stress, we should take care to be proactive about finding solutions before it begins affecting our health.”

Growing up would be a great place to start.  ~The Patriot Post

National Medal of Honor Day is an opportunity to recognize the recipients of our nation’s highest military award, and remember their extraordinary sacrifice on behalf of their brothers in arms and in defense of American Liberty.

It marks the anniversary observance of the First Medals awarded on March 25, 1863, for actions by Andrews’ Raiders. Their valorous acts were immortalized in print and film as “The Great Locomotive Chase,” which started in Big Shanty, Georgia, on April 12, 1862, and ended just south of Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Notably, Chattanooga was also the field of service for the only woman who holds a Medal of Honor, Dr. Marry Walker. Other well-known recipients from our area include World War I’s Alvin York, whose life story was immortalized in the film “Sergeant York,” and World War II’s Desmond Doss, whose heroic actions were featured in the recent movie, “Hacksaw Ridge.”

Please join us in honoring these extraordinary warriors, that their service and sacrifice will never be forgotten.

“Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them.” —Thomas Jefferson (1775)

We invite you to read Mark Alexander’s brief history, “The First Medals of Honor.”

Mr. Alexander serves on the Advisory Board of the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, established to honor in perpetuity the recipients of the First Medals and all those since, and to promote the six character trait pillars demonstrated by those recipients: Courage, Sacrifice, Patriotism, Citizenship, Integrity, Commitment.

For more information on the new Heritage Center, please contact the Patriot Foundation Trust Administrator.

Read about The Patriot Post’s Mission of Service to our Armed Forces, and Operation Shield of Strength.

Also read the story of one American Flag, and consider helping us distribute “I’m Your Flag” booklets to  elementary school students nationwide.

“There is a certain enthusiasm in Liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.” —Alexander Hamilton (1775)  ~The Patriot Post

That was the case with news that dirty cop-Robert Mueller’s report on the Trump/Russia collusion delusion had finally dropped.

After 675 days of investigation, Phase One of the  collusion between scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director scum bag-James Comey and his cronies, and dirty cop-Robert Mueller, however unwitting dirty cop-Mueller’s involvement was to take down Donald Trump, has now concluded. But the roots of the special counsel investigation of Trump actually began when he was a candidate — and he and his administration have been under assault every day since.

As you recall, this charade was prompted by a fake dossier funded by scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton’s  campaign and the Democrat National Committee. scumbag/liar-Clinton and scumbag-Comey, whose “higher loyalty” was, first and foremost, to scumbag/liar-Clinton, set that fabrication into motion, and it was carried out by a handful of high-ranking officials within the FBI and Department of Justice in what was, in effect, a coup d'etat strategy.

dirty cop-Mueller’s mandate immediately turned into an unlimited investigation into all manner of ostensible wrongdoing regarding Trump and his campaign.

Sunday, Attorney General William Barr released his “Principal Conclusions” on the dirty cop-Mueller investigation for Congress: “The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”

Indeed, dirty cop-Mueller was the second-longest serving FBI director in history and, given his unfettered investigative powers and resources over the last two years, if he did not find collusion, there was none. Those of us who are grounded in reality, not partisan agendas, already knew that.

The dirty cop-Mueller report also doused 10 anonymously sourced Trump-Russia bombshells and six unfounded media collusion claims about key Trump associates, including Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and Michael Cohen.

But the first phase of the “collusion” distraction has served its purpose — to keep Trump on the ropes for the last two years.

Rep. Mark Meadows, Freedom Caucus chairman, concludes, “The Democrats’ Russian collusion narrative is fading for one reason: because there was no collusion. It was a political conspiracy theory. To say the case ‘fell apart’ would be kind — because there never was a case from the beginning.”

But Sen. Ted Cruz warned: “I do think it’s striking that at least the early indications are there are no further indictments, which means … that not a single person was indicted for colluding with the Russians to influence the 2016 election. [But] if anyone thinks that the dirty cop-Mueller report being concluded is the end of the Democrats’ attempt to take down President Trump, they haven’t been paying attention the last two years. … They fully intend to impeach the president and they don’t care about the basis.”

Indeed, the Democrats are now launching Phase Two of the their endless strategy to obstruct the Trump administration’s agenda — the House impeachment subterfuge.

House Speaker Nancy Pulosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck scumbag-Schumer declared, “Attorney General Barr’s letter raises as many questions as it answers. The fact that Special Counsel dirty cop-Mueller’s report does not exonerate the president on a charge as serious as obstruction of justice demonstrates how urgent it is that the full report and underlying documentation be made public without any further delay. … The American people have a right to know.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman scumbag liar-Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) insisted, “There must be full transparency in what special counsel dirty cop-Mueller uncovered to not exonerate the president from wrongdoing. DOJ owes the public more than just a brief synopsis and decision not to go any further in their work.” scumbag liar-Nadler will call Barr to testify: “We must hear from AG Barr about his decision making and see all the underlying evidence for the American people to know all the facts.”

The leading 2020 Demo presidential candidates parroted the Pulosi/scumbag-Schumer/scumbag liar-Nadler response.

Of course, the call for releasing the full report has nothing to do with ensuring “the American people know all the facts,” and everything to do with perpetuating the only thing Democrats have to offer ahead of the 2020 presidential campaign — “Hate Trump.” And holding the administration’s MAGA agenda hostage may well produce the economic recession Democrats want in  order to claim Trump’s agenda has failed.

Trump responded to calls to release the “witch hunt” report, declaring, “Let people see it. There was no collusion with Russia. There was no obstruction. … This was an illegal takedown that failed, and hopefully, somebody is going to be looking at the other side.”

Regarding Trump’s insistence on “looking at the other side” and Democrat calls for “full disclosure,” former U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy responded: “You want disclosure? Me too. But let’s see all of it. Not just dirty cop-Mueller’s report. Let’s see everything: all of the memoranda relevant to the opening of the investigation, all of the testimony at closed hearings, all of the FISA-warrant applications, all of [Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein’s scope memo.”

House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes backs that full inquiry: “What we really need to see is what was the FBI’s involvement with Fusion GPS. Who were they? Who did they know about? … Fusion GPS was essentially the scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton campaign. They were hired by the scumbag/liar-Clinton campaign, so we need to see all of that and need the FISA fully disclosed.”

The Demo “dog whistle” line in Barr’s summary is this: “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

Of course, that was not the mandate of the investigation, so stating there is no exoneration of obstruction of justice is an obvious conclusion, but provided an open invitation for Democrats to keep seeking to prove a negative. However, despite that invitation, anyone without a partisan political motive must ask, “If there was no collusion, then how do you make a case for obstructing an investigation into something that did not happen?”

Democrats have repeatedly staked their bets on “collusion,” and they’re doubling down.

scumbag liar-Nadler: “We know there was collusion with people in the campaign with Russians. … There was obviously a lot of collusion.” House Intelligence Committee chairman scumbag-Adam Schiff (D-CA): “There’s clear evidence of an attempt to collude. … There’s plenty of evidence of collusion.” DNC chief Tom Perez: “Over the course of the last year, we have seen a mountain of evidence of collusion between the [Trump] campaign and the Russians.”

In addition to reinvestigating the “Russia collusion” claims, the Democrat investigation will also take in the question of how then-candidate Trump used his own money to settle what constituted extortion payouts — and whether those payments violated campaign-finance law.

Bottom line: Every American should be concerned that a completely unsubstantiated opposition-research dossier of Donald Trump, funded by scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton and the Democrat National Committee, was elevated by high-level FBI officials into an investigation of a candidate they opposed during a presidential campaign, leaked to the Leftmedia by the director of the FBI, and resulted in the appointment of a special counsel. This was a purely partisan setup of a political candidate and then sitting president, scripted and prompted by high-ranking officials in the FBI, CIA, and DoJ.

That should concern every American of any political stripe.

And of equal concern should be the fact that, consequently, that investigation has consumed an enormous amount of time and energy by an administration, devoted, most notably, to creating more jobs and better wages for all Americans. Thus, Democrat Party operatives set about to obstruct the Trump administration’s agenda at enormous expense to those Americans they claim as constituents, and they plan to continue that obstruction.

That unmitigated arrogance and hypocrisy should also be a concern of every American of any political stripe.  ~The Patriot Post

The fake news narrative is that Trump called the racists “very fine people.”

For the record, let’s debunk that lie and restate exactly what President Trump actually said.

Assessing the violence, Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas noted, “Other groups [opposing the racist factions] began amassing along the street and in the park. Gradually, the crowd sizes increased along with aggressiveness and hostility of attendees toward one another. … We did have mutually combating individuals in the crowd.”

This mutual violence was evident to everyone present, and it was affirmed in real time by New York Times  reporter Hawes Spencer, who observed, “Protesters maced each other, threw water bottles and urine balloons — some of which hit reporters — and generally beat the crap out of each other with flagpoles.” At least NBC and BBC reporters showed enough integrity to report the violence on both sides.

After concurring with the police chief and other observers about “mutually combating individuals,” Trump said, “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides. On many sides. No matter our color, creed, religion, or political party we are all Americans first.”

A day later, after Leftmedia complaints Trump had not been clear, the White House communications staff followed up: “The President said very strongly in his statement yesterday that he condemns all forms of violence, bigotry and hatred and of course that includes  white Supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazi and all extremist groups. He called for national unity and bringing all Americans together.”

But that was insufficient for the Democrats and their Leftmedia. Their goal was to elevate the conflict to the level that best serves the Demo agenda and the MSM’s ability to cash in on the chaos with ad revenue.

So the next day at a press conference, Trump again repeatedly condemned the racists in what was to be a unifying speech.

When a reporter complained that Trump “said there was hatred, there was violence on both sides,” the president responded correctly, “Yes, I think there’s blame on both sides.”

When a reporter then said, “The neo-Nazis started this,” Trump responded, “You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. … I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”

When another reporter then questioned: “Who are the good people, sir? I just didn’t understand what you were saying. You were saying the press has treated white nationalists unfairly?”

Trump replied, “No. No. There were people in that rally … there were people protesting [the city] very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. … The following day it looked like they had some rough, bad people — neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest, and very legally protest.”

Again, Trump made it very clear he was not calling neo-Nazis and white nationalists “very fine people,” and declared “They should be condemned totally.” When asked in a follow up question if he was referring to them as fine people, he reiterated, “No. No.”

But Democrats and the Leftmedia pitched that as too little too late. Fact is, there is nothing Trump could have said that would be sufficient for Democrats and their Leftmedia, because fomenting racial division — division of any kind — is the foundation of their political domain.

So, I guess we will have to clarify this every time there is a racially motivated assault somewhere in the world.

Got it?  ~The Patriot Post