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It’s important to keep this in mind when reading reports such as this from Fox News: “The caliphate has crumbled, and the final offensive is over.” Embedded journalists in Baghouz, Syria, report that the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has waged a successful campaign against the last stronghold of ISIS. “This final corner of the caliphate was in the far eastern desert of Syria,” Fox reports. “It was where ISIS first captured territory, and it is where they finally lost.”

Reuters reports, “U.S.-backed Syrian forces were sweeping on Thursday through the final enclave that had been held by Islamic State fighters, and said they would declare the group defeated once a search for hidden mines and jihadist holdouts was complete.”

ISIS was driven out of Iraq in December 2017.

We’d caution against declaring any final victory for the reasons stated above. ISIS may indeed have lost its territory, but its twisted and radical ideology is still alive and not bound by geography. Nevertheless, President   Donald Trump has implemented a remarkable turnaround in American national-security policy. Whereas Barack scumbag/liar-nObama and scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton effectively created the Islamic State, Trump — albeit with a rather schizophrenic approach to action in Syria — has worked to bring about its territorial destruction. That’s worth celebrating. ~The Patriot Post

Ordinarily, one might reasonably assume that the host of an opinion show expressing an opinion, followed by a question designed to elicit debate, would be firmly inside the boundaries of acceptable discourse.

These are not ordinary times. Fox initially pulled Pirro’s show last Saturday, airing a repeat episode of its documentary series “Scandalous” in Pirro’s time slot. When asked why Pirro’s show wasn’t being aired, Fox refused to answer. “We’re not commenting on internal scheduling matters,” a spokesperson stated last Saturday. On Sunday, CNN’s Brian Stelter reported that Pirro had been suspended for two weeks.

That same day, Fox released a statement denouncing Pirro’s remarks. “We strongly condemn Jeanine Pirro’s comments about Rep. Ilhan Omar,” it stated. “They do not reflect those of the network and we have addressed the matter with her directly.” Fox also released a statement from Pirro. “I’ve seen a lot of comments about my opening statement from Saturday night’s show and I did not call Rep. Omar un-American. My intention was to ask a question and start a debate, but of course because one is Muslim does not mean you don’t support the Constitution,” Pirro said. “I invite Rep. Omar to come on my show any time to discuss all of the important issues facing America today.”

Thus, Fox joins the coordinated effort to delegitimize one of the more important realities of our time. In a 2016  column, Andrew McCarthy — a key prosecutor in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case — didn’t ask what Pirro asked about Sharia law and the Constitution. He stated it in no uncertain terms. “Sharia is antithetical to the Constitution, to the very foundational American principle that the people may make law for themselves,” he asserted.

Why? “Sharia is not religion,” he expounded. “Sharia is a totalitarian societal structure and legal corpus that anti-American radicals seek to impose.”

Not just radicals. As the National Center for Constitutional Studies explains, “shariah is held by mainstream Islamic authorities — not to be confused with ‘radical,’ ‘extremist’ or ‘political’ elements said to operate at the fringes of Islam — to be the perfect expression of divine will and justice and thus is the supreme law that must comprehensively govern all aspects of Muslims’ lives, irrespective of when or where they live.”

So, is questioning one’s religious dogma as it relates to one’s constitutional fealty out of bounds? As columnist M. Catharine Evans reminds us, it depends on who’s doing the asking. During the confirmation hearing for Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Amy Coney Barrett,  Sen. Dianne Fein-stein (D-CA) called Barrett’s Catholic beliefs “controversial.” “When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you,” Fein-stein asserted. “And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for years in this country.”

Of course, Fein-stein was defending one of the Left’s foremost “religious” dogmas, better known as abortion on demand — now apparently including post-birth abortion  on demand. If Barrett’s “dogma” is fair game, why not Feinstein’s?

And why not Ihan Omar’s?

As Evans asserts, “When the popular Judge Jeanine gets removed from her show for confronting Jew-hatred by an elected representative, yet Omar, who had to delete anti-Semitic tweets, and who is coddled by an Islamic extremist organization known as CAIR, gets an apology, something is insanely upside-down over at Fox.”

Upside down, or indicative? In 2015, conservative-leaning Rupert Murdoch turned overcontrol of the network to his left-leaning sons, James and Lachlan. Ever since then, the network — in what The New York Times described in 2017 as “generational change at one of the globe’s most powerful media conglomerates” aimed at ridding the network of its of “roguish, old-guard internal culture” (read: conservative) — has moved steadily leftward.

The future? Uncertain: Fox News will be spun off as a separate entity from Fox’s merger with Disney.

What is certain is that while Pirro was getting suspended, former CNN contributor and interim DNC chairwoman Donna Brazile was getting hired. “You can be darn sure that I’m still going to be me on FOX News,” Brazile stated. “I’m going to do what I always do: and dish it out straight, exactly as I see it, with just as much New Orleans hot sauce as folks expect.”

Dish it out straight? Brazile was tossed off CNN for  collusion with scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton’s campaign to furnish verbatim questions that would be asked during the scumbag/liar-Clinton’s 2016 primary debate with commie-Bernie Sanders. And when Brazile was confronted, she initially lied about doing so.

Fox’s rationale for hiring her? According to an employee who spoke on condition of anonymity but claimed to know the details of her contract, Brazile will not have anything to do with campaign debates or town halls.

So what? Furthermore, considering the legions of leftists who would undoubtedly jump at the chance to work for Fox News, why would the network choose to employ a documented cheater and liar?

In the meantime, the usual suspects are playing familiar roles. “Fox News must clearly state that Jeanine Pirro will not be allowed back on the air after her long history of Islamophobic hate rhetoric, and the network must also take similar action against other Islamophobic hosts like Tucker Carlson,” declared Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR) executive director Nihad Awad in a statement.

That would be the same CAIR that remains an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror funding case — and the same Nihad Awad who declared his support for Hamas in 1994, despite its designation as a terrorist group by the federal government.

As for the term “Islamophobia,” Muslim American reformer Shireen Qudosi aptly describes it as “a term that has no tangible meaning and has extended from initially meaning ‘fear of Islam’ to being any perceived criticism toward Islam or Muslims (even if it comes from other Muslims).”

She also has a warning for those who embrace the contemptible political correctness intended to shut down that criticism. “Omar is part of a growing legislative arm of the Islamist body, a body that was already well-formed with lobbies, cultural icons, and academics,” she writes. “Yet, as a Muslim reformer, my concern is less with Omar and more so with the debilitating chaos, controversy, and polarizing communication breakdown she brings. That is what Islamists do. They create chaos because they thrive in chaos.”

Fox News is abetting that chaos. Shame on them.  ~The Patriot Post

Illegal immigration didn’t begin to be controversial with the election of President Donald Trump. It has always been on the political radar. Let me give a basic view of it. Men and women, boys and girls risk their lives to migrate to America. Hundreds of thousands at a time ride on top of trains for miles as they strap themselves on by rope. Some fall off and their legs are amputated or they plummet to their death. Others are raped (often numerous times) or harassed by gang members threatening their lives with extortion. Young girls are sex trafficked and pregnant women are looking to have their babies born as U.S. citizens. The journey to the southern border is so dangerous that many turn back, get sent back by customs, or are killed. With all these factors and others to consider, why wouldn’t our government want to secure our borders?

Even our 44th president, Barack scumbag/liar-nObama, had some very sharp comments in the spring of April 2009 about illegal immigration. He said, “This is not going to be a free ride. It’s not going to be some instant amnesty. What’s going to happen is you’re going to pay a significant fine. You are going to learn English! You are going to go to the back of the line so that you don’t get ahead of somebody who is in Mexico City applying legally. But, after you’ve done these things over a certain period of time, you can earn your citizenship.” He would go on to say, “[Americans] can’t have a situation where you just have a half a million people pouring over the border without any kind of mechanism to control it.”

Is it me or does 44 sound just like 45? Where were the protests when scumbag/liar-nObama was saying the exact same things about illegal immigration as Trump? In the State of the Union address in February 2019, President Trump said, “I want people to come into our country in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally.” Why wasn’t scumbag/liar-nObama’s approach to illegal immigration taken as insensitive or intolerant? What’s the difference? Enter the Fake News media outlets.

The Left and its media outlets don’t care about illegal immigration as it relates to the fiscal or social health and security of our country, but they do have a political agenda. Some of the loyal Left voters within the Black American community are beginning to challenge the Democrat status quo, so party leaders need a new demographic to use for political gains. Without the minority vote, there is no Democrat Party. They are desperate and see illegal immigration as a numbers game. For them, the more illegal immigrants, the merrier. As the Black population of voters exits the stronghold control of the Democrat Party, the illegal immigrant Hispanic population becomes their new prey. I support immigration, but there must be parameters in place to make the transition fair to those who come legally. Besides, the safety and security of our nation depends on steps taken today by this administration. Piece by piece, our borders need to be secured first. The wall is a huge step in the right direction. Build that Wall! Build that Wall!  ~The Patriot Post

“Every vote matters,” 2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth dinky-Warren declared this week, adding, “and the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting, and that means get rid of the Electoral College.” Agreeing with her sentiments, Democrat presidential hopeful socialist-Beto O'Rourke voiced his approval, complaining that as things stand, people “don’t feel like their vote really counts.” Earlier this month, Democrat-controlled Colorado became the 12th state to pass legislation mandating that its Electoral College votes be given to the candidate who wins the national popular vote, irrespective of which candidate wins the vote within the state. Obviously, such laws could effectively negate the unique will and voice of a state’s own citizens.

But Democrats aren’t merely seeking to get rid of the Electoral College; they are also looking to increase their pool of uninformed and easily manipulated voters. Just last week, House Speaker Nancy Pulosi advocated lowering the voting age to 16. It’s a lot easier to deceive and entice propagandized schoolchildren who don’t know any better than it is informed adults. No alcohol or guns until 21, on their parents’ insurance until 26, but by golly, let them vote at 16.

Furthermore, seeking to artificially increase their population demographic, Democrats are demanding that the coming 2020 Census not include a citizenship question. The reason: Without the differentiation of citizen versus noncitizen, Democrat “sanctuary” areas, which have attracted a heavy influx of illegal aliens, can claim higher populations and therefore greater electoral representation. On top of this, Democrats often insist on extending voting rights to noncitizens, effectively diminishing the vote of American citizens.

The truth is Democrats aren’t interested in playing by the rules because to do so would require them to abandon much of their leftist, authoritarian ambitions. Instead, they want to change the rules and move the goalposts.  ~The Patriot Post

Remember when Democrats complained that $5.7 billion for a border wall was too expensive? Well, that’s chump change compared to what many of the congressional Democrats and nearly all of those 15 declared Democrats in the presidential race are now rallying behind.

The price tag isn’t in the billions but in the tens of trillions. President Trump was attacked earlier this month by Democrats for a budget blueprint that would run fiscal deficits of 5 percent of GDP. That’s too high, for sure, but count up the spending plans of Democrats and deficits could easily hit 20 to 30 percent of GDP and tilt the nation toward Greek and Puerto Rican-style bankruptcy.

Let’s start to add it all up.

Start with “Medicare for All,” the new health care anthem of the left. It is touted as a way to make medical services “free” for everyone. The cost to taxpayers? By some estimates, $32 trillion over the next decade, according to a study by the Mercatus Center. Medicare, just for the seniors it was designed to cover, is already projected to run deficits in the tens of trillions of dollars over the next four decades, according to the program’s own Trustees.

Then there is Rep. commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal,” which is supposed to turn America into an eco-friendly paradise and avert the apocalypse that commie-Ocasio-Cortez claims will occur in just over a decade. At least four presidential candidates have endorsed some or all of that agenda.

Of course, the politicians pushing these plans remain suspiciously quiet whenever they’re asked to explain exactly how much their pet projects will cost U.S. taxpayers and whether they’re worth the investment. But thanks to public-policy watchdog groups, we have some preliminary estimates. According to one recent study by the American Action Forum, the “Low-carbon Electricity Grid” proposed in the Green New Deal will cost taxpayers $5.4 trillion over 10 years or $39,000 per household.

Similarly, a “Net Zero Emissions Transportation System,” another part of the environmental proposal, could require as much as to $2.7 trillion or $20,000 per household, while “Guaranteed Green Housing” could cost an additional $4.2 trillion.

The Democrat-backed welfare programs in the Green New Deal are even more daunting. According to the study, “guaranteed jobs” and “universal health care” would together cost each American family as much as $582,000 or $80.6 trillion in total.

Then there is the loss of as many as 10 million jobs in the oil, gas and coal industries, which would add to welfare and unemployment benefit costs, let alone the severe   financial hardship this would impose on millions of middle-class families whom Democrats once said they cared about.

Added together, these preliminary Democratic proposals are projected to cost about $92 trillion over 10 years.

But wait, there’s more.

Another hot proposal on the left gaining momentum is called “universal basic income.” Everybody gets a free check from the government. A key sponsor of this is U.S. Sen. lowlife-Kamala Harris of California, a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination. This would give families making less than $100,000 a check of up to $6,000 from the government every year. “Americans are working harder than ever but stagnant wages mean they can’t keep up with cost of living increases,” Harris says.

Then there is the cost of “free” college tuition, another federal freebie supported by Democrats. That would add trillions more to the taxpayer tab over the next decade while further inflating the outrageous tuitions that universities already charge.

The $15-an-hour minimum wage would also impose new costs on government at every level.

Now the latest craze on the left is for “reparations” payments for slavery. Julian Castro and other presidential wannabes have endorsed this radical income redistribution scheme. A 2015 study by a professor at the University of Connecticut estimates that the cost of reparations would be between $5.9 and $14.2 trillion. These results were published in the Social Sciences Quarterly journal.

Add it all up and the estimated 10-year cost of creating the Democratic-socialist utopia envisioned by the likes of commie-Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. commie-Bernie Sanders and other leaders of the Democratic Party reaches well north of $100 trillion.

Who will be left to pay for the Democrats’ America when everything is “free”? To the extent that any of the Democrats currently running for president has offered an answer to this question, they’ve invariably claimed that they would finance their schemes by levying punitive taxes on “the wealthy.” But even if you took every penny of income from every millionaire and billionaire in America, it wouldn’t even pay half the cost. Some say we will just put it on the federal credit card. President scumbag/liar-nObama took our national debt from $10 trillion to nearly $20 trillion, but that might be loose change compared to the new spending spree.

Ultimately, the burden of paying for this radical transformation of America would fall predominantly on the middle class, as usual. Just one example: Many Europeans pay gas taxes that are double what we pay in the United States. That’s part of the tab for their green energy policies that Democrats are eager to bring here. Anyone want to pay $5 a gallon to fill up?

The Democrats balked at spending $5.7 billion to protect American communities by securing the border, but they’re perfectly happy to mortgage our future by spending nearly 20,000 times that amount on their own utopian fantasies. We will all have everything we want, and our country will be bankrupt.  ~The Patriot Post

First of all, as we have mentioned before, there aren’t very good options in the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia has been very oppressive when it comes to women’s rights, and the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi shows the House of Saud has little regard for freedom of the press. But the alternatives are the mullahs of Iran (who openly have vowed to wipe Israel off the map) and Turkey (run by Recip Tayyip Erdogan, a friend of Hamas and no champion of democracy, either, regressing toward an authoritarian Islamist regime). So, the Saudis, who are making some steps forward, seem to be the best option.

Second, if this resolution goes through, it would be yet another time America abandoned allies. The Hmong and Montagnards in southeast Asia (Vietnam War), Carlos Castano and Los Pepes in Colombia (the hunt for Pablo Escobar), and the Kurds (War on Terror) have all felt the sting of America turning its back on them. In addition, turning our backs on Hosni Mubarak or the Shah of Iran did not improve things for America. We shouldn’t add Saudi Arabia to the list of these mistakes.

Next, Yemen does occupy some key strategic real estate. It sits on the Bab el Mandab, a maritime chokepoint that controls access to the Red Sea. This means it can cut off a maritime lifeline for Israel. Now, given that the Houthis are backed by Iran, and Iran has vowed to wipe Israel from the map … well, it seems obvious that ending support for the Saudis would only make it easier for Iran to achieve the objective that the mullahs have repeatedly voiced.

Then, there is also a bit of a more “personal” factor: The Houthis fired missiles at a U.S. Navy ship. On multiple occasions in October 2016, the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Mason (DDG 87) dodged Iranian-built copies of the C-802 anti-ship missile. The skill of that ship’s crew in using the onboard defense systems (missiles and jammers) and luck kept the ship from being hit. Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s response? Three Tomahawks fired days later. It was typical of his fouled-up foreign policy. Three Tomahawks would have been nice right after the first salvo of missiles, but the repeated ones warranted something far stronger.

Don’t get us wrong — we’re all for peace, but there needs to be some serious disincentives to take potshots at our troops, planes, and ships. The fact is, with the departure of Secretary of Defense James Mattis, we lost one of our primary behavioral motivators. With Mattis in office, no other national leader in his right mind would think of taking potshots at us. Without Mattis, the behavioral motivation will have to be more direct and involve making examples of those who do take potshots at our ships and troops. We think even Tulsi Gabbard would be willing to shoot back in such cases.

In any case, the fact is that we often do not get to choose between good, great, and so-so outcomes in the world. Often, the choices are between slightly bad, bad, really bad, and horrendous. Trying to pick the least bad option means we have to accept some things that are pretty ugly. But we should remember that many of the other outcomes are far worse than what we’re dealing with from friends.  ~The Patriot Post

So what do we make of the ubiquity of the names (and faces) of mass murderers?

Such was the question when New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern asserted Tuesday that notoriety was a primary motivator for the fascist psychopath who attacked two mosques last week. “He obviously had a range of reasons for committing this atrocious terrorist attack,” Ardern said. “Lifting his profile was one of them. And that’s something that we can absolutely deny him.” She added, “He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless.” She continued, “And to others, I implore you, speak the names of those who were lost, rather than name of the man who took them. He may have sought notoriety, but we in New Zealand will give him nothing. Not even his name.”

It’s a thoughtful sentiment and approach borne of research into the profiles of these types of assailants. “They want attention,” says Mary Muscari, a forensic nurse at Binghamton University in New York. After studying numerous such mass shootings, she concluded, “That’s why you see them wanting to have a bigger head count, a bigger body count, to try to outdo the last one or to do something that is going to cause more of a rise.”

American media outlets that depend on eyeballs for advertising revenue dutifully comply, plastering the names and faces of assailants across our TV screens 24/7. Socially awkward and ignored young men commit atrocities and suddenly find the fame they desired. The   New Zealand attacker went so far as to broadcast his murderous rampage on Facebook live. According to the Associated Press, “Facebook said it removed 1.5 million versions of the video during the first 24 hours.” That’s an astounding level of success for a man who craved attention.

On the other hand, in order for justice to be done and even for the public to be informed, names must at times be given. That balance is something we in our humble shop have strived to maintain when covering such events. Name to inform when necessary, but deny notoriety. Unfortunately, the tide is against us.  ~The Patriot Post