Sadly, such sanitizing and protectionism go far beyond “Gosnell.” Whether it’s glossing over the atrocities of abortion or refusing to report on current scandals implicating high-profile dummycrats-Democrats, the media’s problem with concealing unflattering dummycrats-Democrat amoralism is systemic. In fact, NewsBusters recently chronicled six instances of dummycrats-Democrat scandals being ignored by media behemoths ABC, CBS, and NBC. These indecencies include:
               Texas Senate candidate socialist-Beto O'Rourke, who falsely claimed to have not fled from a DUI crash two decades ago. The networks allotted the fib zero time.
               Sen. scumbag-Robert Menendez (NJ), whom the Senate Ethics Committee formally vilified in April for his having made a deal with a donor in which gifts were swapped for promotional support. A mere 49 seconds were devoted to the committee’s admonishment.
               Sen. scumbag-Claire McCaskill (MO), whose husband has profited $11 million-plus via “a business that buys up tax credits awarded to Missouri affordable housing developers and sells them to high-income entities seeking tax relief,” according to The Washington Free Beacon. ABC, CBS, and NBC have yet to mention it.
               lowlife-Jackson Costco, an ex-staffer of Rep. scumbag-Sheila Jackson Lee, who doxxed Republicans for their support of Supreme Court nominee-turned-Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The incident has received zero coverage.
               Colorado gubernatorial candidate scumbag-Jared Polis, who shoved an ex-female employee. Neither of the networks have reported on the situation.
               dummycrats-DNC Deputy Chair Rep. scumbag-Keith Ellison (MN), who is alleged to have been violent towards his ex-girlfriend. Given scumbag-Ellison’s stature, this is a major allegation, yet a measly three minutes and 47 seconds have been devoted to it.
               And there’s plenty of other material the media could but probably won’t cover. For example, CBS’s local Dallas affiliate reports, “Four women are facing felony charges, accused of being part of what Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office called an organized voter fraud ring in Fort Worth.” Unsurprisingly, “The indictments show several of the ballots in question were for  dummycrats-Democratic candidates.”
               Farther north, “The Minnesota dummycrats-Democratic Party has suspended a spokesman for calling for violence against Republicans even as two GOP candidates have been assaulted in suspected politically motivated attacks,” according to The Washington Free Beacon. The spokesman stated that leftists would “bring [=Republicans to the guillotine.”
               Meanwhile, The Daily Wire says, “Law enforcement officials arrested a dummycrats-Democratic operative on Tuesday for attacking the female Republican campaign manager for Nevada GOP gubernatorial nominee Adam Laxalt, the second time this year that the operative has been arrested for allegedly physically attacking Republican women.”
               For a Leftmedia that feasts on faux scandals, there’s no shortage of legitimate scandals to keep it happy if whistleblowing is truly what it’s pursuing. But the press would prefer to keep it a partisan affair. As Investor’s Business Daily writes, “In contrast, even minor scandals that involve no-name Republicans typically receive lavish coverage from these networks. … The obvious explanation is that they want to portray Republicans as corrupt, and dummycrats-Democrats pure as the driven snow. So they play up stories that fit this narrative, and ignore those that don’t. The worst form of media bias isn’t how they cover a story, but what they choose to cover in the first place.” Exactly.

~The Patriot Post  

             The weapon of choice this (and every) election cycle for dummycrats-Democrats is deception.
               Let’s look at just a few examples to understand that, while campaigning, some dummycrats-Democrats want to run from their actual record and appear to voters as “Republican-lite.” The reality, however, couldn’t be further from the truth.
               The Senate has been the perfect example of the vast schism between reality and political “reality.” Let’s look at a few facts and understand that dummycrats-Democrats not only ignore, avoid, and distort the truth; they don’t recognize truth in their world of the aggrieved and offended. That helps explain their ongoing efforts to engineer chaos and mob rule.
               Let’s begin in Michigan, where Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the incumbent dummycrats-Democrat, is facing a tough GOP opponent in John James, a black businessman with distinguished service in the U.S. Army during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Once upon a time, Stabenow was a vocal supporter of tax cuts that “create jobs here rather than overseas.” Funny, she voted against the historic Tax Acts and Jobs Act that added 39,700 jobs in Michigan already this year, 5,500 more than in 2017. Now, the promise of the dummycrats-Democrats is to reverse the Republican tax cuts … simply because President Donald Trump signed them into law.
               Run down to Tennessee’s open Senate seat in the Marsha Blackburn vs. Phil Bredesen slugfest and see if you can figure out who’s running as the Republican nominee. Publicly,  dummycrats-Democrat and former governor Bredesen can’t run fast enough from the names of Senate Minority Leader Chuck scumbag/clown-Schumer and former NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Yet Bredesen landed $3.5 million in ads from scumbag/clown-Schumer’s political action committee and $1.6 million contributed directly to his campaign while enjoying a high-dollar fete at the New York home of gun-control extremist Bloomberg. The billionaire socialist has pledged $20 million to the Senate Majority PAC, fueling dummycrats-Democrat races in the nation’s upper legislative chamber. Add all this to the undercover video capturing Bredesen operatives freely admitting his deception regarding his support for Brett Kavanaugh, and the camouflage donned in the Volunteer State right now is not just worn by hunters.
               A few more on the deception dance card in the Senate are Jon Tester in Montana and Claire McCaskill in Missouri, both of whom campaigned on the importance of securing the southern border, yet voted against funding all the recent measures to fund personnel, structure, and resources to actually stem the tide of illegal immigrants coming to America. Likewise, when Kyrsten Sinema was running for Congress in Arizona in 2012, she pledged legislation that “secures our border from the threats of criminal cartels and criminal syndicates In Mexico.” Now, as a Senate candidate, Sinema has no recollection of voting against immigration reforms. Let’s not forget Sinema’s list of outrageous statements, including getting caught telling stay-at-home moms they are leeches in the world of progressive feminism. She went all in with the pink-hat-gals.
               Bundle up and head to North Dakota to see Heidi Heitkamp’s voting history that matches scumbag/clown-Schumer’s 80% of the time, despite promising she’d be that same kind of independent that Bredesen conjures up. Heitkamp has likely sealed her own doom with TV ads aimed to tie newly confirmed Justice Brett Kavanaugh to domestic assault victims — partly because she failed to get approval to use the victims’ names in the ad. Exploitation for the cause of deception — we guess that’s the collateral damage sick-Nancy Pulosi spoke of last week when calling her Resistance crowd to action.
               There is so much more, but the theme is clear: You can’t trust dummycrats-Democrats to tell the truth during campaign season or to govern in a manner that upholds the respect of our laws, our nation’s border and sovereignty or, sadly, the financial security and privacy of average Americans.
               While we may laugh in disgust at the dishonesty of politics, heed a serious warning. The type of behavior witnessed by dummycrats-Democrats in power — weaponizing agencies of government like the IRS, DOJ, EPA, etc. to control and punish political foes; using slander at every turn alleging sexism, racism, and all other -isms to marginalize; agitating the offended to the point of riot and violence; importing foreign individuals as part of a ploy to disrupt our government under the guise of asylum and safety; and employing a two-tiered system of justice to exempt criminal acts of the elite but not the average — is not just despicable, it’s dangerous. In decades past, these acts would be accurately defined and viewed as totalitarianism.  #WalkAway from the deception and dangers of the dummycrats-Democrats.

~The Patriot Post  

             Few, if any, actually believe the Saudis story, of course. A 59-year-old journalist spontaneously took on 15 Saudi security agents? Sure thing. Quite the contrary, reports are that he wasn’t just killed but dismembered on the scene. His body has never been produced. Furthermore, as the editors of National Review put it, “Very little happens in Saudi Arabia without bin Salman’s foreknowledge and approval, so the notion that he would be so unaware of his inner circle’s activities regarding one of the regime’s highest-profile international critics is laughable.”
               Beyond that quick recap of the story, here are a few things to bear in mind:
               First of all, this is what authoritarian regimes do, be they Islamic or otherwise. A free press is anathema to totalitarians. But with Khashoggi, there may be more than meets the eye. He joined the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1970s. He wasn’t an advocate of western-style democracy, instead favoring an Arab Spring-style political Islamic regime. That isn’t to minimize his death; it’s to see clearly who he was.
               The American Leftmedia — led by The Washington Post — is running wall-to-wall coverage of his murder primarily because Khashoggi is one of theirs. He’s a journalist, an untouchable saint, and his death thus rattles them to their core.
               But have most Americans heard of the the Gwinnett County Georgia police officer killed in the line of duty Saturday? Officer Antwan Toney had just turned 30, and he was an outstanding human being and police officer. Yet this black cop was murdered by two black assailants in the Atlanta area; one killer is in custody. Toney was one of ours — an American citizen serving his country and community honorably. Both of these men’s lives matter, but only one is getting nonstop media coverage.
               The strategic reason for that is the media’s hope to pin Khashoggi’s murder — or at least the aftermath — on President Donald Trump. Anything to create the appearance of scandal before the midterms.
               Which brings us to our parting thought: In 2012, four Americans, including an ambassador, were killed in a terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Barack scumbag/liar-nObama and liar-Hillary Clinton lied about it for weeks solely to preserve scumbag/liar-nObama’s reelection campaign. The Leftmedia aided them in this deception. So while Trump certainly should have been far stronger in his public condemnation of the Saudis, we suspect he’s using this incident for leverage behind the scenes. Don’t be surprised to see a subtle shift in America’s relationship with the Saudis that will benefit the U.S., all while Trump gives them breathing room publicly. Distasteful? Sure. But sometimes that describes American foreign policy out of necessity.

~The Patriot Post  

             Mexican authorities attempted to stop the migrants and funnel them into shelters where their requests for asylum could be processed, but the caravan quickly grew frustrated, overwhelming Mexican police and illegally crossing Mexico’s southern border by going around processing stations. They met little resistance.
               This is a politically orchestrated and timed event to interfere with the upcoming midterm elections. dummycrats-Democrats and their cohorts in the mainstream media would love nothing more than to rekindle the previous outrage over President Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” enforcement policy on illegal immigration in an effort to exploit women and Hispanic voters. That much is evident in the media coverage that offers nothing but an overly simplistic and sympathetic narrative regarding the “plight” of these migrant invaders.
               Meanwhile, Trump has sought to address the issue before the invasion of migrants reaches the U.S. southern border. On Friday, Trump received support from Mexican authorities that they would seek to help stop the migrants. On Saturday, Trump declared, “We’re going to figure it out,” adding, “They’re not coming into this country.” This morning, he warned that the U.S. would be “cutting off, or substantially reducing” aid to the three Central American nations in question, while putting the Border Patrol and military on alert. But the fact of the matter is that Trump’s ability to act on this current immigration crisis is limited. Republicans in Congress need to pass legislation to shut down the legal loopholes that have essentially allowed for de facto “catch and release” immigration. The underlying problem isn’t going to be solved easily — especially when one party is dedicated to ensuring it remains a crisis.

~The Patriot Post  

             “In the first week of November 2017, YouGov polled 1,500 Americans about their attitudes on the matter, on behalf of The Economist,” according to the report. “In the final week of September 2018, it conducted a similar poll again. When it came to questions about the consequences of sexual assault and misconduct, there was a small but clear shift against victims.” By the numbers:
               The share of American adults responding that men who sexually harassed women at work 20 years ago should keep their jobs has risen from 28% to 36%. The proportion who think that women who complain about sexual harassment cause more problems than they solve has grown from 29% to 31%. And 18% of Americans now think that false accusations of sexual assault are a bigger problem than attacks that go unreported or unpunished, compared with 13% in November last year.
               Paradoxically, it’s females, not males, who are most responsible for these shifts. As the report adds: “Surprisingly, these changes in opinion against victims have been slightly stronger among women than men. Rather than breaking along gendered lines, the #MeToo divide increasingly appears to be a partisan one. On each of these three questions, the gap between Trump and liar-Clinton voters is at least six times greater than the one between genders.” The partisan divide is routine in this polarized political atmosphere — not to mention also quite ironic given the liar-Clintons’ licentious history — but the fact that women appear to be growing more hesitant to cast stones suggests more of them view the #MeToo movement as sophomoric and even deleterious given the rather significant lack of due process.
               Even The Economist deserves some scrutiny. It uses the word “victims” three times, including in the title — “American opinion has shifted against victims” — yet the more appropriate term would be “accusers.” A victim implies the existence of concrete and/or corroborative evidence. But that’s often times not the case. Just this week we learned that a male student is taking legal action against Pittsburgh’s Seneca Valley School District after some fellow female classmates accused him of crimes he didn’t commit. A tape exists in which the girls, who claimed they were sexually assaulted, concede it was all a hoax. The reason? In their own words, “I just don’t like him” and “[I] would do anything to get him expelled.”
               This is why we have due process — because the idea that “women almost never lie about rape is a lie.” Except even in the Pittsburgh example it came too late. The male student faced expulsion and even imprisonment before the tape exonerated him. Yet he can’t erase the harrowing experience, and his reputation is irreparably tarnished. Yet a growing chorus of leftists want due process abolished because it supposedly undermines the #MeToo movement. By the way, the accusers — or “victims,” as The Economist would prefer to call them — at the school remain unpunished.
               The concept of #MeToo absolutely should be applauded. The problem is that the movement itself has devolved into a no-questions-asked morass wherein presumptions are treated as facts. It has been used by celebrities and politicians alike to paint a broad brush that unfairly portrays the situation. In truth, false allegations are likely to be just as hellish as real ones. Finally, it’s worth pondering what this poll would look like in the aftermath of the Brett Kavanaugh witch hunt.

~The Patriot Post  

             Also cheering for the president’s decision were Iowa’s two Republican senators, Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, who responded by writing an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. “Biofuels are a part of everyday life in Iowa, the top corn- and ethanol-producing state in the U.S.,” the pair noted. “Ethanol supports more than 43,000 Iowa-based jobs and 350,000 jobs throughout the country, directly and indirectly. Ethanol contributed $44.4 billion to gross domestic product and $5 billion in federal tax revenue in 2017.”
               So this is really about Making Iowa (and other Corn Belt states) Great Again, not America. Fair enough for two Hawkeye senators, but their ensuing dishonesty deserves to be challenged.
               The Grassley-Ernst op-ed descended into frankly Orwellian terms, boasting of the “competition” brought by ethanol and lauding Trump’s move to undo an “scumbag/liar-nObama-era regulation” that “hinders consumer choice at the pump” and “deprived consumers of the ability to make their own fuel choices.” They claim that “consumer demand” should by all rights drive up the use of ethanol.
               Yet all of that is exactly the opposite of reality. An onerous government mandate drives the use of ethanol, not consumer demand. And while Trump is technically “easing” a regulation to allow for year-round E15 sales, he’s actually  boosting the overall Renewable Fuel Standard — one of the biggest and most draconian regulations in government. If consumers want gas with no ethanol, it’s tough to find. Only about 11% of gas stations in the U.S. offer pure gasoline, and it’s always significantly more expensive than its less-efficient, more-corrosive, ethanol-infused cousin.
               No wonder Grassley fought so hard to save Brett Kavanaugh. The president got his Supreme Court justice, and Grassley ended up looking like the best friend Iowa farmers ever had.
               But in order to truly drain the swamp, Republicans must occasionally gore their own oxen.
               Our own Louis DeBroux recently wrote, “This move is entirely political. In fact, after the announcement, Trump held a MAGA rally in Iowa, and that was no coincidence. Between helping Iowa Republicans in the election and heartland farmers hurt by Trump’s own tariffs, the political ramifications are significant, so this decision is, sadly, hardly surprising.”
               How did all this start anyway? Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw  reminds us that dummycrats-Democrats and George W. Bush joined hands in 2007 to “require petroleum refiners to blend ever-increasing quantities of biofuels, chiefly ethanol, into gasoline, purportedly to promote energy independence and fight climate change.”
               First of all, the U.S. is now the world’s number-one oil exporter. We need ethanol less today than ever before. And secondly, putting the debate on manmade global warming aside, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change both agree that producing ethanol is a greater threat to the environment in terms of land use, chemical runoff, lower food production, and total emissions.
               Other issues that Iowa’s senators don’t seem concerned about include higher food prices, greater wear on engines that are built for gasoline, and increased environmental impact.
               Investor’s Business Daily considers the fallout: “One of the most unexpected developments of the ethanol experiment is the loss of millions of acres of natural habitat to grow corn and soybeans, not for the dinner table but for the gas-station pump. Do we really want to use millions of acres of land for no reason other to satisfy the farm lobby? Equally bad is the use of agricultural nutrients and chemicals to grow the crops. Much of those fertilizers end up in runoff that ends up in our rivers and lakes, causing algae blooms and other negative effects. You pay for that clean up — not those making billions from these crops.”
               Add in the billions of dollars spent by Americans to subsidize ethanol production in the past 30 years, and it’s pretty clear that this costly policy benefits only a relative handful of Corn Belt farmers and their political representatives in Washington.
               Senators Grassley and Ernst both have a solidly conservative record on many issues, but they’re nothing more than self-interested swamp creatures when it comes to ethanol. And now President Trump is giving them exactly what they want. The president deserves great credit for keeping his promises and taking on establishment Washington, but his ethanol policy is feeding into the very swamp that he promised to drain.

~The Patriot Post  

             When the nation is staring down its largest budget deficit since 2012, the wall may seem extraneous. But how much does doing nothing cost?
               A recent report from the Center for Immigration Studies indicates that one-fifth of all births in the U.S. are to immigrants, and a sizable number of those are to mothers here illegally. The report’s authors, CIS Research Director Steven A. Camarota, Demographer Karen Zeigler, and analyst Jason Richwine, write, “Our best estimate is that legal immigrants accounted for 12.4 percent — 494,000 — of all births, and illegal immigrants accounted for 7.5 percent — 297,000.”
               Those children become American citizens regardless of immigration status because of the widespread misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment. And many of their births are payed for by American taxpayers. “Medicaid will pay for a delivery in almost all cases if the mother is uninsured or has a low income, though some mothers without insurance may not even realize the program has paid health care providers,” the CIS report indicates. “Illegal immigrants and most new legal immigrants are ineligible for Medicaid, but the program will still cover the cost of delivery and post-partum care for these mothers for at least a few months.”
               CIS puts the price tag for these births at “roughly $5.3 billion — $2.4 billion of which is for illegal immigrants.” Not to mention the fact illegal immigration as a whole costs upwards of $300 billion annually. That kind of puts the wall in perspective.
               So while the Leftmedia is focused on the caravan, the real problem is far more interwoven into our system, and it will be much harder to solve.

~The Patriot Post  

             Speaking at the Battle of Ideas festival in London in October 2016, Paglia made it clear how far feminism has fallen from its high-water mark almost a hundred years ago:
               “The period of the 1920s, 1930s: that to me is my favorite period in feminism because these women admired what men had done. There was no male bashing as became systemic to Second Wave feminism. It’s an absolute poison that has spread worldwide.”
               “A feminism based on denigrating men, trivializing what men have done, defining men as oppressors and tyrants through history it is an absolute lie.”
               To be fair, the reemergence of this video is no coincidence: Paglia has released a new book, Provocations: Collected Essays, and the video will help draw attention to it. Yet it is hard to dispute her assertions, especially when she refers to the original feminist movement that won women the right to vote and saw iconic women such as Katharine Hepburn, Amelia Earhart, Dorothy Parker, and Anne Morrow Lindbergh as “great achievers.”
               Today’s feminists? Paglia believes the current generation of women has been tainted by an education system that “tried to make everyone feel good,” and social media “where people feel they have so many 'friends’ and they want a sense that reality is comforting them and cushioning them and so on.” She notes that when she went to college in the mid ‘60s she and her fellow feminists were willing to “risk rape” rather than maintain a system whereby college administrators acted “in loco parentis” for women, while male students were treated as adults.
               By contrast, today’s women are “easily upset,” even as they remain unaware of the “barbarities of human history,” and she contends this lack of historical perspective gives them “no sense of the special privileges they enjoy.”
               It’s worse than that. Like so much of the progressive  ideology that forms the backbone of modern-day feminism, a virulent combination of infantilism and hateful hysteria has taken over the movement. Today’s feminists parade themselves around in vagina costumes, and pussy hats, insist women can have penises, and advocate for witchcraft therapy to “process trauma, anger, and grief” — all while expecting to be taken seriously.
               When it comes to the Rule of Law and the Constitution, they believe men should “shut up,” due process should be tossed on the ash heap of history, and women who make accusations of sexual assault should be deemed “survivors.”
               Survivors whose accusations require unquestioning belief, irrespective of evidence or credibility.
               If not? A Washington Post op-ed entitled “Thanks for not raping us, all you 'good men.’ But it’s not enough,” written by Victoria Bissell Brown epitomizes the collective male-bashing that is precisely the “absolute poison” to which Paglia refers. “In the centuries of feminist movements that have washed up and away, good men have not once organized their own mass movement to change themselves and their sons or to attack the mean-spirited, teasing, punching thing that passes for male culture,” Brown asserts. “Not once. Bastards.”
               And aside from her anger, Brown, who is “almost 70 years old,” embraces another attribute that defines modern-day feminism: self-pity. “The gender war that has broken out in this country is flooding all our houses,” she declares. “It’s rising on the torrent of memories that every woman has. … Not just memories of sexual abuse. Memories of being dismissed, disdained, distrusted. Memories of having to endure put-downs at the office, catcalls in the parking lot, barked orders at a dinner party. And, for some reason, the most chilling memory of all, the one Christine Blasey Ford called up and that we all recognized: the laughter. The laughter of men who are bonding with each other by mocking us.”
               In a 2017 interview, American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers coined the most apt description of women like Brown and their fatuous assumptions that all women are fragile and easily traumatized: “fainting couch feminism.”
               As for mockery, no one wields that club more forcefully than feminists themselves — against other women. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s wife, Ashley, was attacked for standing in “ignorance, loyalty, & whiteness by her predator man.” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who refused to allow unsubstantiated allegations stand in the way of Kavanaugh’s ascension to the Court, was referred to by other women as a “betrayer,” “the face of the generation I can’t wait to die,” and someone who should never “have a moment of peace in public again.” As always, some women are “more equal” than others.
               That kind of rank hypocrisy is driven by ideology with conservative women invariably getting the short end of the stick. Nonetheless, the dividers remain unsatisfied: race is now part of the equation as well, and white women per se are the target. White women who “put their racial privilege ahead of their second-class gender status in 2016 by voting to uphold a system that values only their whiteness, just as they have for decades,” asserted NY Times columnist Alexis Grenell. White women who “have often played the protagonists in the history of sexual violence,” while “black women have been relegated to the supporting cast,” as Allyson Hobbs, director of African and African-American studies at Stanford University put it. White women who “use strategic tears to silence women of colour,” as the Guardian stated.
               Unsurprisingly, much of this animus was engendered by the same thing that has driven the entire American Left into paroxysms of uncontrollable hysteria: the election of Donald Trump. “Exit polls showed 52 percent of white women backed Donald Trump, and much sorrowful tsk-tsking ensued,” writes  Kyle Smith. “Sorrow turned to disbelief. Disbelief turned to rage.”
               Why would white women vote for Trump? Maybe it’s because liar-Hillary Clinton was just as contemptuous of them as her fellow racial arsonists. “They will be under tremendous pressure — and I’m talking principally about white women,” she said in 2016. “They will be under tremendous pressure from fathers and husbands and boyfriends and male employers not to vote for ‘the girl.’”
               That would be “the girl” who dismissed credible (and ultimately proven) allegations by women against her own husband as a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
               Thus, feminists might consider that Clinton’s rank hypocrisy and contemptible double standards were more important to voters than her gender. They might also note those character traits remain unchanging: despite liar-Clinton’s insistence that Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser “deserves the benefit of the doubt,” she remains convinced that liar-Bill shouldn’t have resigned, and that his relationship with then-22-year-old intern Monica Lewinsky was not an abuse of power.
               Paglia believes the bankruptcy of modern-day feminism stems from “getting rid of the orthodox religions because they were too conservative” and replacing them with “the new religion of political correctness.” Thus, she concludes Second Wave feminists resemble the “Spanish Inquisition” where “any form of dissent is treated as heresy, and they actually try to destroy you.” Actually, modern-day feminism is destroying itself.

~The Patriot Post  

             Nowhere is this fact more apparent than in the unfolding of recent events, in which American pastor Andrew Brunson was released after two years’ unjust imprisonment in a Turkish jail, while at nearly the same hour U.S. resident and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi was brutally tortured and slain in the Saudi consulate in Turkey.
               Neither Turkey nor Saudi Arabia has been the best friend of the U.S. over the years, but the U.S. nonetheless has looked the other way on myriad occasions during the more provocative acts by each, all for the sake of international comity and stability, not to mention the use of both countries’ soil for U.S. basing at various times past. Turkey’s apparent on-again-off-again status as a NATO ally under despotic President Recep Erdogan’s reign, along with Saudi Arabia’s questionable role in events spanning from the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and the 9/11 attacks to the present, both have strained relations with the U.S.
               Turkey released Pastor Brunson only after President Donald Trump directed the Treasury Department to apply economic pressure on Turkey under the Global Magnitsky Act, resulting in the precipitous fall of the Turkish lira. President Trump followed up by threatening to impose draconian tariffs on Turkish aluminum and steel. The threats and pressure from the U.S. ultimately forced Erdogan to release the pastor.
               As for the “disappearance” of dissident Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Turkey, Turkish authorities claim to have a gruesome recording purported to be from Khashoggi’s Apple watch — a recording Khashoggi had set up to be transmitted to his wife, who was waiting for him in a car outside the consulate. While President Trump wisely urged calm until the exact details of the incident are known, Saudi Arabia’s role will undoubtedly be severely scrutinized at least by Congress, among others. Potentially at stake if Saudi Arabia is shown to be holding a smoking gun are an arms deal for upkeep and modernization of the Kingdom’s F‑15 fleet — reportedly worth over $100 billion — and the Saudis’ role in holding Iran at bay as a regional power with hegemonic aspirations. The latter is, of course, far more important. The subsequent lowering of Saudi Arabia’s esteem as a U.S. ally would have grave implications, destabilizing the entire region even further and sending shockwaves throughout world oil markets.
               For its part, Iran has shown itself to be a truly capable enemy of Liberty generally and of the U.S. particularly. It is fomenting rebellions in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, funding proxy wars against the U.S. and its allies in Syria and Lebanon, and actively supporting the dismantling of U.S. victories in Iraq. Without strong Saudi support Iran will undoubtedly continue to attempt to establish regional dominance, further complicating attainment of U.S. national security interests in the Middle East.
               What’s the moral of the story? Simple: When it comes to the question of whether to impose our value set on other nations, Moral Number One is, “U.S. vital national security interests come first. Period.” President Trump tacitly nodded to this reality in a recent “60 Minutes” interview, telling CBS’s Lesley Stahl that while he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin has likely has been involved in many assassinations and poisonings tied to Russia, “I rely on them; it’s not in our country.” It’s a blunt statement, but in the current world in which each nation is viewed as sovereign and no nation (theoretically, anyway) has the right to intervene in the internal affairs of another, the first priority of every nation is to protect its vital national security interests — the U.S. is no different in this regard from any other. Teeing off into other nations without a clear national security interest at stake and under the ill-fitting guise of World Morality Police helps no one.
               The bottom line is that in a world overpopulated with enemy-of-my-enemy “friends,” tolerating localized despotism, state-sponsored dissident assassinations, and a host of other evils is the filthy price the U.S. pays as a part of the larger goal to keep its shores free of state-sponsored terrorists and impacts of worldwide instabilities.

~The Patriot Post  

             Even as record individual income tax revenue has been collected this year, the overall tax revenue filling government coffers has remained essentially flat. The reason is that while the Republican tax cuts on corporations have effectively ignited a stagnate economy, they have yet to cause enough growth to offset revenue lost to the lower tax rate. That said, even under the previous higher corporate tax rate, the net revenue would only amount to $70 billion more, still leaving a deficit of over $700 billion.
               So, irrespective of what dummycrats-Democrats may claim, the real problem is not the Republican tax cut; it’s soaring spending. And the fact of the matter is that dummycrats-Democrats would be even worse on spending with their calls for Medicare for All, free college, and whatever other income-redistributing entitlement they can concoct.
               This year’s deficit increase has been primarily due to a couple of factors. First, there was a 6% increase in military spending, per President Donald Trump’s promise to build up a military that Barack scumbag/liar-nObama decimated. That increase came, as Trump noted, with concessions in other areas for dummycrats-Democrat spending priorities. Second, and far more critical, was a 4% increase in Social Security spending due to the increasing number of retiring Baby Boomers. Social Security currently accounts for 23% of the entire budget. Add Medicare and Medicaid and we’re talking 46% of the budget. So that 4% increase matters a lot.
               Did we mention that Social Security and Medicare face a cash deficit of $82 trillion over the next 30 years? Worse, neither party will touch it.
               Acknowledging the deficit problem, the administration is also encouraging patience. Kevin Hassett, chairman of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, states, “The deficit is absolutely higher than anyone would like. [However], as you watch our next budget come out — and you’ll start to see things in the next few weeks — then you’ll see a much more aggressive stance” in tackling spending.
               Trump has never been an ideological fiscal hawk, yet due to his business instincts he has been impressive in his efforts to cut waste in Washington via deregulation. He addressed the issue Wednesday, declaring, “I have a Cabinet meeting in a little while and we are going to ask every secretary to cut 5% for next year.” That said, Republicans need to get serious about cutting spending — specifically the entitlement state, which is the true driver of our debt. Ignoring this growing problem will only prove to be disastrous in the long run.

~The Patriot Post  

             The search engine goes by the name “Project Dragonfly.” According to The Washington Free Beacon, “The tech giant’s executives are happy with the search engine’s performance and they believe it is in accordance with the company’s values.” If by “values” the executives mean “wherever the money flows,” then yes, they’re in accordance with said values. In fact, the project isn’t contrary to Google’s mission; it’s entirely consistent with it. Dragonfly was already known to exist despite the coyness of Google’s leadership, so CEO Sundar Pichai’s acknowledgement merely makes it official. But it’s disconcerting nonetheless.
               Pichai contends, “We are compelled by our mission [to] provide information to everyone, and [China is] 20 percent of the world’s population.” Yet that’s hardly what matters here. As the Beacon points out, “The rule of law in China is in the midst of a historic period of repression, with religious freedom sharply curtailed and the flow of information strictly controlled under President Xi Jinping. Meanwhile, China has continued its work in cyber and information warfare.” The fact that Google, headquartered in a nation that champions the free flow of ideas, is pacifying a communist, tyrannical nation that subjugates its people and despises America apparently doesn’t bother Google executives. Which should bother every American that does business with Google. (That would be most of us, by the way.)
               On that note, Americans are also victims of Google’s information manipulation. As USA Today reports, “Google News and Google News search engine results appear to show a ‘strong preference’ for media organizations that are on the left of the political spectrum, a new report finds. The report from the media technology group All Sides, out Tuesday, analyzed Google News’ homepage and search engine results from the news page over a two-week period and determined that news outlets with a ‘left’ bias were more often prominently displayed.” This explains the reluctance of dummycrats-Democrats to condemn what Google — a leftist bastion — is doing not just here but also internationally.
               Earlier this year, FBI Director Christopher Wray said, “I think China, from a counterintelligence perspective, in many ways represents the broadest, most challenging, most significant threat we face as a country.” Sadly, Google, by helping to establish a censored Chinese search engine, is undermining our attempts to subvert this dangerous foe. That’s awfully sad when the bottom line is all about the dollars.

~The Patriot Post  

             The Wall Street Journal further reports, “America’s vibrant entrepreneurial culture and its dominance in producing a competitive labor market and nimble financial system ‘are among the several factors that contribute to making the U.S.’ innovation ecosystem one of the best in the world,‘ the report said.”
               Another significant piece of data to highlight here is the latest report on jobs numbers. Investor’s Business Daily notes, “August was the fifth month in a row in which the number of [job openings] exceeded the official number of unemployed. The 7.14 million of open jobs in August exceeded the number of unemployed, now at 5.96 million, by about 1.2 million. That’s never happened in the history of the series, which dates back to the end of 2000. Moreover, the number of new hires, at 5.78 million, is also a record.”
               In other words, President Donald Trump’s aggressive deregulation crusade combined with the Republicans’ tax-cut legislation is making America’s economy great again.

~The Patriot Post  

               A friend launched an online fundraiser that brought in $15,000, more than the original $5,000 goal. Rather than keep the extra money, the soldier chose to give it to others in need.

Read more at Sunny Skyz.

~The Patriot Post