Trump' Crusade

Thomas Gallatin:  On Monday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. scumbag-liar Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) launched a second wave of the Democrats’ long-running attempt to take down President Donald Trump. Using a dragnet approach,  scumbag-liar Nadler sent requests to more than 80 individuals, agencies, and entities for documents related to Trump’s personal, business, and political life, with the hope of finding something — anything — to justify impeaching the president. While admitting there was no evidence yet uncovered to support the allegation that Trump has actually engaged in any criminal activity, scumbag-liar Nadler asserted, “Our goal is to hold the administration accountable for the obstruction of justice, the abuse of power and the corruption.”

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders had a different take, however, as she unmasked the Democrats’ real motives: “They’re not after the truth. They are after the president.”

Rep. Doug Collins, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, deftly called out the Democrats for their obvious witch hunt, stating, “We don’t even know what the dirty cop-Mueller report says, but Democrats are already hedging their bets. After recklessly prejudging the president for obstruction, Chairman scumbag-liar Nadler is pursuing evidence to back up his conclusion because, as he admits, ‘We don’t have the facts yet.’”

A few things to be pointed out regarding this predictable action taken by House Democrats:

First and most significantly,scumbag-liar Nadler’s actions make it patently clear that Democrats have determined dirty cop-Robert Muller’s forthcoming investigation report into the Trump/Russia collusion conspiracy will be a giant nothingburger.

Second, it exposes the fact that Democrats are primarily committed to pursuing political power over and against what is good for the country. They care little for the consequences their actions may have on the economy, foreign policy, the Constitution, and future elections.

Third, Democrats have coalesced and hardened around their number-one political issue: hatred of Trump. He must be hampered and obstructed at every turn, with the goal of either seeing him impeached or so politically damaged that he fails to win reelection. Since this is the course Democrats are committed to chart through 2020, expect only more of this politically motivated obstructionism from the donkeys.  ~The Patriot Post

But a series of events occurring this February has me questioning the direction that we as a society — a “black” society — are taking. It has me wondering if we are ready to move forward — especially those of “us” on the Left.

Hardly a way to start a month-long observance of blackness, news surfaced surrounding the Jussie Smollett controversy in Chicago. But it only took a few days to unveil the true face of his claims — a race-baiting hoax attempt perpetrated by two Nigerian brothers. As rapper Cardi B so bluntly put it, Smollett “F-ed Up” Black History Month. I tend to agree with her sentiments, calling into question whether this is (perhaps coincidentally) the time to stage a fake hate crime when so much evil is already being afflicted on black Americans, especially those in Democrat-run towns.

While everyone was reeling over Smollett’s fictional crisis, 30 people were shot — in the very same city — in only a short three-hour timeframe. Eleven of the victims were teenagers. One was just 11 years old. Still, Democrats and leftists who run that town have done little if anything to resolve the out-of-control crime plaguing black families. The Windy City has become our nation’s epicenter of the black-on-black crime for decades. How many more Februarys need to pass before our black Chicagoans can partake in the prosperity promised by their forefathers?

Meanwhile, Democrats voted against legislation to prevent newborns and full-term babies from being aborted, knowing good and well that the black population is disproportionately affected by this. All of this occurring in the same month that is said to celebrate being black. Can we look in the mirror and ask ourselves if more aborted black babies is a celebration of blackness?

These incidents are vivid examples of what happens when a Democrat drives a bus full of people forward while teaching them to look back through the rear window. Democrats refuse to look ahead at the lives and potential right in front of them. They only want black people to see the death and destruction behind them and not the cliff straight ahead.

As I reflect on Black History Month, I ask whether this what black history is all about — a diversion to keep black people focusing on the past while letting the present and future slip from their grasp.

Fortunately, the month rounded out with beacons of hope — not surprisingly from the Right. President Donald Trump greeted hundreds of black attendees during a Black History Month reception at the White House. During the event, he announced that black unemployment is down to its lowest ever and that he plans to create more opportunities for people of all races.

These gestures from the Right are why so many black people are leaving the Democrat plantation. They see with clearer eyes who truly has their best interests at heart.

As Candace Owens so brilliantly stated, a virus has spread throughout black America. That virus is victimhood, as people are infected by an ideology that only programs them to embrace entitlement while the world crumbles around them. The antidote? A hearty dose of conservative American values and the true knowledge about those who have historically had our best interests at heart — the Right.

With February behind us, concerned black Americans across the political spectrum are facing a fork in the road. And it’s up to us to choose the best direction for ourselves and decide who truly is in our corner — not just during one month or holiday, but every single day, all year round.  

~The Patriot Post

The surprise was to the leaders within the denomination and the media who seemed to be at a loss that a church, organized to teach the Bible and function as a modern-day body of Jesus Christ, would have the audacity to stick to Biblical teachings rather than embrace a cultural acceptance that is identified in Scripture, along with many other acts, as sin.

According to reports, three plans were presented to the assembled delegation to be enacted as governance for local churches: The One Plan, the Traditional Plan, or the Simple Plan supported by the Queer Clergy Caucus (no, we’re not making that up). The Traditional Plan was finally adopted, maintaining the prohibitions of homosexual or otherwise gender-confused leadership or marriages,. What seems to be at the center of all these plans really transcends the one issue of homosexuality and this one denomination.

The unanswered question is this: Do churches organize, operate, and grow based on the Biblical function as the Body of Christ — one that is called to live as a redeemed membership, forgiven through mercy, but called to a life set apart to be “in this world, not of it”? Clearly, this conflict, whether Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Catholic, or whatever, runs as a common thread throughout the tapestry of today’s faith communities. Do we teach Christ or culture?

Let’s review a few statements from last week’s events that reflect the divide, which, while on display in the UMC, is within every organized religious body.

Horatio Vilanculo, a delegate from Mozambique, told Christianity Today that the Traditional Plan “keeps the church in the way of God … and is what God wants in the church in this world.” His sentiments were shared by a delegate from the Western Pennsylvania Conference, Nancy Denardo, who told USA Today, “The One Church Plan does not agree with the words of our Savior and in so doing deceives young persons into believing that same-gender marriage is OK with God when clearly it is not. There is danger to that not only to those being deceived but the deceivers as well.”

This stance reflects the self-reported 44% of the conservative-traditional Methodists participating in a United Methodist Communications survey published in February. In the U.S., about 20% of the UMC congregants identified themselves as liberal.

What’s the importance of this survey data regarding ideology within the UMC? In the same survey, when asked if the church’s priority should be saving souls for Jesus Christ or advocating for social justice to transform the world, 88% of the conservative-traditionalists said the former while 68% of the liberals declared the latter.

To reflect this chasm, a Virginia delegate spoke to USA Today at the UMC General Conference and heralded, “What’s being said in private conversations is that if the Traditional Plan, the majority plan, is voted in today, you will be putting a virus into the American church and it will make it very sick and it will be sick quickly.” Reverend Tom Berlin not only supported the One Church Plan but, obviously, believes the sickness of the church is not the sin, but, teaching about the sin.

The General Conference was tasked with addressing a 2018 report from a UMC commission on revising the Book of Discipline, which is published every four years and has been since 1784. The most recent edition was released in 2016, meaning that the vote to adopt a church plan was to serve as the governing stance for at least the next four years, as noted in the upcoming 2020 publication.

A warning was issued by a former bishop whose assessment seems to predict a split that may not be ruinous. Professor Will Willimon, at Duke’s Divinity School and former Dean of the Chapel at Duke, offered to Religion News Service, “The hope is that Jesus Christ is Lord. There is a God, and our God is a redemptive God. I can’t decide if the Lord is saying now, ‘You created the structure and polity of the United Methodist Church. I didn’t. You wrote the Book of Discipline. I didn’t. If that’s being dismantled, that’s OK.’”

As has been stated and discussed by many, religion is man’s attempt to get to God, while Jesus Christ is God’s way to get to man. The various denominational doctrines and practices of the various branches of the Christian church were created by God’s creation in some attempt to organize in shared belief. Yet the taxonomy of the various branches of Christianity reflect the differences, not the unity of beliefs. These separations permit interpretations and even deceptions related to Biblical teachings and practices — in this case, sexual sin.

As has been written about very plainly here at The Patriot Post for years, Mark Alexander’s column from 2006 stated: “Homosexuality is unanimously condemned by the foundational teachings of all world religions, and those teachings are the basis for societal norms worldwide. … In every authentic translation of the Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek Old and New Testament Scriptures, homosexual acts are, indeed, explicitly condemned.”

For folks like the Queer Clergy Caucus, however, the normalization of homosexuality is the goal, just as is the normalization of murdering an innocent child in the womb and calling it a matter of “choice” and “reproductive health” in these efforts to prioritize culture over Christ in the church. This is no surprise at all.

In the first century, a very learned Jew who was forever changed by Jesus Christ, Paul of Tarsus, wrote in his farewell to his trusted colleague, Timothy, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

Indeed.  ~The Patriot Post

Nuclear Energy

by Thomas Gallatin:  The Left’s obsession with environmentalism and more specifically climate change has little to do with protecting the environment. Instead, as we have repeatedly noted, the real motive behind the Left’s “green” agenda is red socialism — increasing government control over the economy.

This reality was made patently clear with Rep. commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal (GND). Using apocalyptic warnings of the world ending in 12 years should the country not embrace her radical and absurd agenda — which would effectively destroy America’s entire economic system as we know it — AOC and her fellow travelers claim their cause to be a just one because they are simply trying to save the planet. But, as National Review’s David French astutely points out, “When you read the [GND] you quickly realize that progressivism is the priority, not the environment. In other words, environmentalism and progressivism are wrongly treated as fundamentally inseparable.”

As for supposedly working to “save” the environment, the GND offers no practical real-world solutions. Where this may be most glaringly evident is in the GND’s rejection of nuclear energy. The resolution proposes that “100 percent of the power demand in the United States” would be met “through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.” But these energy sources “would not include creating new nuclear plants” and, in fact, “the plan is to transition off of nuclear and all fossil fuels as soon as possible.”

Yet, as Time magazine “Hero of the Environment” Michael Shellenberger argues, the only truly “green energy” is nuclear power. “When it comes to generating power for billions of people, it turns out that producing solar and wind collectors, and spreading them over large areas, has vastly worse impacts on humans and wildlife alike,” he says. “I think it’s natural that those of us who became active on climate change gravitated toward renewables. They seemed like a way to harmonize human society with the natural world. Collectively, we have been suffering from an appeal-to-nature fallacy no different from the one that leads us to buy products at the supermarket labeled ‘all natural.’ But it’s high time that those of us who appointed ourselves Earth’s guardians should take a second look at the science, and start questioning the impacts of our actions.”

So why the Left’s aversion to nuclear energy? Maybe because it’s a proven, reliable, and cost-effective source of green energy that doesn’t necessitate a socialist takeover of the American economy. The fact is, nuclear power offers a more realistic means of meeting the Left’s loudly proclaimed environmental goals, but it does so via capitalism — and there’s the rub.  ~The Patriot Post

“You mean, you’re preventing these qualified students from attending your college because of the color of their skin?!”

Well, you don’t have to imagine it. It’s happening. And at arguably the most prestigious college in America — my alma mater, Harvard.

The ethnic minority isn’t blacks or Jews, as it was in years past. The target this time is Asian Americans.

And it’s just as wrong.

After millions of dollars in legal fees, millions of records examined, and hundreds of hours of depositions and testimony, Harvard’s once purposely opaque admissions policies have been laid bare. It’s not a pretty picture.

Here’s what we now know:

Harvard Admissions rates student applicants in three main ways: 1) Academic performance; 2) Extra-curricular achievements; 3) “Personal qualities.” That’s fine, as far as it goes, if the criteria were applied fairly. But they’re not.

Asian American applicants consistently score higher in the first two criteria–academics and extra-curricular activities, which can be objectively assessed–than white students, Latinos and African Americans.

So how does Harvard justify its Asian American quota? With the help of category three — “personal qualities,” which include vague and largely subjective factors like “likability,” “maturity,” “integrity,” and “effervescence.”

According to Harvard’s own internal reports, Asian American applicants are routinely and systematically marked much lower on this personality scale by Harvard admissions officers who almost never meet or interview applicants. But here’s the kicker: the personality ratings given to Asian students by admissions officers are vastly different than the personality ratings Harvard gets from its own alumni interviewers, who actually meet the applicants in person. Alumni interviewers score Asian applicants as high as whites.

In other words, Harvard artificially and fraudulently downgrades Asians on “personality” to get the results it wants. And what Harvard wants is to suppress the number of Asian Americans admitted.

Based on the data that Harvard was forced to turn over, economist Peter Arcidiacono of Duke University concluded that with the same application profile in terms of test scores, extracurricular activities and personality factors, an Asian American male applicant would only have a 25% chance of admission–versus 32% if white, 77% if Hispanic, and 95% if black.

What’s the real-life result of all this?

In 2013, Asian Americans made up 19% of the incoming freshmen class. According to Harvard’s own Office of Institutional Research, if the personality factors had not been rigged, that percentage would have been 43%.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 guarantees that “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color or national origin, be excluded from participation in, or be denied benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

Each year, Harvard takes hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government.

In Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s affirmative action policies, deciding that race could be used as a “plus factor” to achieve diversity, but never as a quota. Yet, by placing strict limits on the percentage of Asian American applicants it will admit, racial quotas are exactly what Harvard is using.

One strongly suspects this quota system isn’t limited to Harvard. In the last ten years, Asian American students have been limited to an 18-22% presence across the Ivy League. Or maybe that’s just a coincidence.

Writing for the majority in Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that the Court “expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.”

With less than a decade to go, the Ivy League shows no indication that it’s giving up on those racial preferences. Instead, these colleges have doubled down. Objective standards regarding admissions continue to be increasingly disfavored as the illegal goal of racial balancing is advanced. This racial balancing is justified by the left’s desire to achieve “racial diversity” — its insistence on seeing every person only through the prism of race, as if the most important thing any of us has to offer is the color of our skin.

Not long ago, that was called “racism.” It’s still called racism.

It needs to end, once and for all — for the sake of deserving Asian American students, for the sake of Harvard’s own integrity, and for the sake of the American principle that the rules must be the same for everyone.

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts said it best: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

It’s time we did just that. I’m Lee Cheng, of the Asian American Legal Foundation, for Prager University.  ~The Patriot Post

VIDEO:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOuYN-Fz6tQ

Last year provided the first clues as to how this effect is or isn’t playing out. According to The Washington Post, “Charitable giving in the United States rose a lackluster 1.6 percent last year, despite a strong economy — a sign that the 2018 tax code overhaul could be hurting donations, according to a new study published Monday. The study by the Fundraising Effectiveness Project also reported a quickening shift away from smaller and middle-class donors in favor of wealthy donors. Money coming from donations under $1,000 fell by more than 4 percent. But gifts from major donors jumped 2.6 percent.”

Of course, the Post was strongly against the tax law from the very beginning, so it’s no surprise that it immediately puts this news in a bad light. But is it accurate? It depends on a few factors.

Essentially, there are two ways to look at this. The “lackluster” rise could be attributable to those who simply were unsure about what their tax obligations would look like given the substantial changes to the tax code. This is especially true for independent contractors. But now that they have a better idea and have ironed out the adjustments, their financial situation is more clear, meaning they know for sure how much they can give to charities. In this sense, any rise at all is a good thing.

On the other hand, the simple truth is that there are some who give to charities or nonprofits only for the tax benefits. Take away the benefits, and suddenly they have no inclination to donate whatsoever. While their willingness to provide in the first place is commendable, their benevolence is paradoxically borne out of a selfish desire.

This last point presents an interesting test case. No-strings-attached giving is a virtue. And most of us probably know people who give generously and yet still take the standard deductions out of necessity when filing a tax return without even thinking twice about it. But others are surely now leery to donate. In which case their priorities need to be reevaluated.  ~The Patriot Post

In fact, if anything, China is now facing a serious issue with a ticking clock, thanks in part to the Marcus Island motherlode. Beijing once had a near-monopoly on rare-earth metals and used it as leverage against Japan and other U.S. allies. Now, Japan has its own stockpile that is well out of China’s reach for the foreseeable future. China’s leverage is thus greatly diminished.

China had been able to count on a relatively docile United States — at least in the area of trade. Well, America is not so docile anymore, with the election of President Trump. China has been used to America not taking it seriously on trade. scumbag/liar-Bill Clinton pretty much bent over, George W. Bush had bigger fish to fry in the form of radical Islamic terrorism, and Barack scumbag/liar-nObama was too busy apologizing for America, giving the storeaway to Iran, and otherwise ignoring threats to do much about China.

Trump, though, has applied the pressure in other ways besides the trade war. His strategy with North Korea has managed to lessen the tensions in that hot spot — the collapse of this week’s summit notwithstanding. The White House has no illusions about Kim Jong-un’s character or brutality as a dictator, but at the same time, if the U.S. can get North Korea to partially or completely denuclearize (something scumbag/liar-nObama managed to make more difficult), it’s worth these diplomatic efforts.

The removal of North Korea as a card to play hurts China as well. A potential Second Korean War (more accurately a resumption of the 1950-1953 war) had the potential to pin American forces down, enabling China to make a move in, say, the South China Sea. Now, with a real potential for peace, China’s finding the Pacific Fleet is not so tied down.

So, how do we keep the pressure on China? For starters, building up the Navy is a big part of this. The more hulls in the water, the easier America can respond to regional crises without having to open the door for China.

In addition, it allows the United States to threaten the tankers that would provide China oil — and force the People’s Liberation Army Navy to cover even more territory far from home. The economic boost from a massive naval buildup is a secondary benefit to the improved geopolitical situation.

Second, America must help Japan develop the Marcus Island discovery and to get those materials to market as quickly as possible. The sooner Beijing feels that crunch, the sooner that Xi will have to make some hard decisions that will be related to things like China’s military budget. Cutting into China’s military modernization plans is a good thing — especially as the Department of Defense has been trying to rebuild its own capabilities.

Finally, Trump needs to look for other openings to pressure China. In this case, weapons sales. Lockheed recently offered India a highly advanced version of the F-16. This is a plane that perhaps could be exported to Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Philippines to bolster their defenses against Chinese aggression.

America defeated to the Soviet Union without firing a shot almost three decades ago, and the Soviets had a much more potent military arsenal than China. The right pressure, applied the right way, can achieve a similar result across the Pacific.  ~The Patriot Post

by Thomas Gallatin:  “The Democrats don’t care,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said in his opening remarks at Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing for President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen. Jordan then zeroed in on the real reason behind the Democrats’ call for Cohen’s testimony: “They just want to use you. You are the patsy today. They want to find someone somewhere to say something so they can remove the president.” That would be impeachment. From there, the hearing descended into several heated exchanges between members of both parties with one another and with Cohen.

There were a few important points to note, however. First off, Cohen did nothing to negate Trump’s recent characterization of him as “proven liar” who was “lying to reduce his jail time.” In fact, it appears Cohen lied again during his testimony when he claimed that he did not want a job in the White House. That statement does not comport with what he had privately told friends and colleagues, captured in seized text messages — that he expected to get an important job within the administration.

As we noted yesterday, Cohen admitted he had no evidence to support the long-running Trump/Russia collusion narrative. But he did try his best to continue spinning the Democrats’ favorite conspiracy narrative, suggesting that Donald Trump Jr. may have alerted Trump to the infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer. “Mr. Trump had frequently told me and others that his son Don Jr. had the worst judgement of anyone in the world,” Cohen said, “and also Don Jr. would never set up any meeting of any significance alone — and certainly not without checking with his father.” However, when he was pressed on whether Trump actually colluded, Cohen hedged, “I wouldn’t use the word ‘colluding.’”

Ironically, Cohen’s testimony actually exonerates Trump of the charge of Russian collusion and undercuts his own claim of  campaign-finance violations. Cohen stated that Trump never really intended or expected to win the election; rather his aim was “only to market himself and to build his wealth and power.”

If, according to Cohen, Trump had no intention of winning but was simply running to build his own brand, then there would have been no reason to engage in collusion with Russia or to pay legally specious hush money to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. In other words, Cohen’s testimony on Trump’s motivations was contradictory.

In the end, little new information was gleaned from Cohen, and none of it appears to be legally damaging to Trump — even as much of the mainstream media seeks to spin it as such. That said, the factor that may be most damaging to Trump is having hired Cohen in the first place. What does it say about Trump’s decision-making when he hired and retained for over a decade a man of Cohen’s obviously poor character?  

~The Patriot Post

VIDEO:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXxCmO5IirU