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So we’re treated to New York Times headlines such as, “On North Korea and Iran, Intelligence Chiefs Contradict Trump” that are meant to portray Trump as an uninformed rube blundering his way through foreign policy. The topic at hand is the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment prepared by the U.S. intelligence community. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, CIA Director Gina Haspel, and FBI Director Christopher Wray testified Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding the assessment.

The trio warned about threats from Russia and China, which the assessment says are “more aligned than at any point since the mid-1950s.” They also addressed North Korea, Iran, and ISIS. On each nation, Coats, Haspel, and Wray did indeed contradict some of Trump’s more brash assertions. For example, in announcing U.S. withdrawal from Syria, Trump declared, “We have won against ISIS; we’ve beaten them, and we’ve beaten them badly.” By contrast, Coats said the Islamic State will continue “to stoke violence” in Syria.

In our humble shop, however, we consider this to be another instance when Trump should be taken seriously but not literally. While Barack scumbag/liar-nObama effectively created ISIS, Trump has done a lot to beat it back. Unfortunately, by making hyperbolic, black-and-white declarations, he opens himself up to eye-rolling “fact checks” by the media and others. Trump has a maddening ability to be both wrong and right at the same time.

On North Korea, he did the same thing, saying after his summit with Kim Jong-un, “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.” Yes, there is, says the intelligence assessment. “We currently assess that North Korea will seek to retain its WMD capabilities and is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capabilities, because its leaders ultimately view nuclear weapons as critical to regime survival,” Coats said. “Our assessment is bolstered by our observations of some activity that is inconsistent with full denuclearization.”

Naturally, a good deal of time was spent on Russia’s election interference through Facebook. But Terence Jeffrey astutely argues what grassroots Americans are thinking: “The top national security issue facing the federal government today has nothing to do with deceptive political speech on social media. It has everything to do with our southern border.”

In the final analysis, the intelligence threat assessment is done in conjunction with the White House — these are executive agencies, after all — and the apparent disagreement arguably strengthens the American position in negotiations with our geopolitical foes. How? By keeping them off balance, on the ropes. Meanwhile, here at home, the Leftmedia is happy to keep churning anything that can be spun to make Trump look bad, reporting on complicated issues as checker games rather than chess matches.

Update: And of course Trump couldn’t resist punching back against the impression of him given over the last 24 hours:

“The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong! When I became President Iran was making trouble all over the Middle East, and beyond. Since ending the terrible Iran Nuclear Deal, they are MUCH different, but a source of potential danger and conflict. They are testing Rockets (last week) and more, and are coming very close to the edge. There economy is now crashing, which is the only thing holding them back. Be careful of Iran. Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!”  

~The Patriot Post

Socialist Sen. commie-Bernie Sanders made socialized health care integral to his 2016 Democrat presidential primary campaign, and other Democrats — already having favored quasi-socialist scumbag/liar-nObamaCare — are going all in for the latest version, marketed under the name “Medicare For All” banner.

In 2013, former Senate Majority Leader Harry dinky-Reid eagerly admitted single-payer (read “government-run”) health care was the ultimate goal, with scumbag/liar-nObamaCare just a step along that path. Of course, Barack scumbag/liar-nObama and his fellow Democrats knew they could not openly admit that back in 2008, so they blatantly and repeatedly lied. Or, as MIT professor and scumbag/liar-nObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber admitted candidly at a 2014 health economics conference, “This bill was written in a tortured way. … Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. … Call it the ‘stupidity of the American voter’ or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”

scumbag/liar-nObama knew he was a liar when he repeatedly claimed, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”; a lie so egregious that PolitiFact awarded scumbag/liar-nObama with its “Lie of the Year” in 2013. Yet few Americans realize that the disastrous results scumbag/liar-nObamaCare produced — the bankrupted CO-OPs, the millions of Americans kicked off private insurance, the skyrocketing costs — were designed to make Americans so frustrated and angry with those greedy insurance companies that they would clamor for government-run health care.

And now Democrats, more radical than ever, are pushing socialized health care once again — albeit with some feigned resistance among the ranks to at least make it appear there’s thoughtful debate.

At a town hall meeting Monday night, Sen. lowlife-Kamala Harris, current frontrunner for the 2020 Democrat presidential nomination, was unapologetic in calling for socialized health care. After endorsing Medicare for All, she was asked if Americans who liked their current insurance could keep it. She replied unequivocally that private insurance would be outlawed, stating, “Well, listen, the idea is that everyone gets access to medical care. And you don’t have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork, all of the delay that may require. … Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.”

The private health care of 150 million Americans? Gone.

Moreover, hers was a lie so gargantuan as to make scumbag/liar-nObama proud.

Medicare has mountains of paperwork, as well as an approval process run by government bureaucrats. Saying so isn’t a “conservative attack,” as leftists claim; those fact come directly from the Medicare website. So with Medicare for All, when your life is on the line, you get the efficiency of the DMV, the competence of the Postal Service, and the compassion of the IRS.

And an astronomical price tag, which George Mason University’s Mercatus Center estimates at a mind-boggling $32.6 trillion over 10 years, nearly doubling the cost of all government. Harris and other proponents claim the doubling of taxes will be offset by eliminating premiums, reducing administrative inefficiencies (because we all know government is the gold standard of efficiency), and cutting drug costs, but these are more blatant lies. scumbag/liar-nObamaCare was passed promising costs under $900 billion over the following decade, but costs had doubled just three years after passage of the law, despite not being fully implemented.

We don’t even have to guess if this would work. The leftist utopias of Vermont and California both tried to implement single-payer, government-run health care, and both quickly abandoned the quixotic venture after costs spiraled out of control.

And what of results? We already have two government-run health care programs — the Veterans Administration and Indian Health Services — and both are national embarrassments. Five years ago the scandal broke in which we learned VA employees were falsifying appointment records to make it appear wait times were less than 14 days, when in actuality tens of thousands of veterans waited months, or even years, for treatment, with many dying while waiting.

Today this disaster is still not fixed, and has in fact gotten worse. What possible leap of logic would lead us to believe a government-run health care system that leaves hundreds of thousands of veterans without care will suddenly, miraculously be able to provide excellent care to hundreds of millions of Americans?

Leftmedia propagandists are eager collaborators in the “progressive” plan, recently touting polls showing a majority of Americans (56%) favor Medicare for All. That is true … sort of.

Americans support Medicare for All when told it would guarantee health insurance as a right (71%) and eliminate premiums (67%). But that support plummets when people are informed that the government-run system would lead to delays in getting care (26%) and higher taxes (37%), or that it would eliminate private insurance (37%) and the current Medicare program (32%).

Thousands more doctors each year are refusing to take Medicare patients because of shrinking reimbursements and the bureaucratic nightmare of fighting to get paid. It is delusional to think Medicare for All would improve the situation. In Canada and Great Britain, which have nationalized or regionalized health care, primary care is adequate, but seeing a specialist takes months.

Medicare for All would be an unmitigated disaster, and the American people overwhelmingly reject it when given the facts. Now Americans need to reject those who keep trying to repackage it and sneak it past us.  ~The Patriot Post

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

Aren’t “progressives” always touting how green energy is something that will benefit America? Well, it’s all in the not-so-fine print about the Green New Deal. You see, it calls for at least a 50% cut in military spending.

Take our current Air Force, which has seen massive cuts in its fighter squadrons. Even that tight budget would be cut in half. Look at our Navy, with too few hulls in the water as it is. That goes from 11 carriers to six — which would leave it in a one-to-one ratio with China’s planned carrier expansion. Our overstretched Army goes from a mere 10 divisions to five. The Marines Corps would take hits, too, in this drastic slashing of our capabilities.

What does that mean in real-world terms? Well, right now, we’d already be hard-pressed to deal with Russian aggression against Europe and Chinese power plays in the South China Sea. Our military, while it is very capable, is still too small. We fought the War on Terror with too small a force, and we’re paying today for George W. Bush’s failure to sufficiently increase the force structure after 2001.

Our current efforts against radical Islamic terrorist groups would, of necessity, also be crippled. Worse, America would be abandoning key allies in the Middle East, which would rebound to the benefit of Russia and China. With NATO already unreliable, many Eastern European nations could be compelled to again accept subjugation to Russia.

America’s allies in the Pacific would, in the best case, have to arm themselves — including with nukes — to make up for the drastic drop in American capabilities. Even then, the South China Sea would be dominated by the butchers of Beijing. That doesn’t help the cause of peace on earth at all.

Many of those who loudly support the Green New Deal are the ones who would back the nonsense claim from the likes of Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) that Donald Trump somehow is a Russian agent. But the actions tell a very different story. In 2012, many of these folks cheered when Barack scumbag/liar-nObama mocked rino-Mitt Romney for calling Russia our biggest geopolitical foe, even though rino-Romney was right all along.

On the other hand, President Trump has taken tough action against Russia. He has worked to restore our military readiness. He’s also been hitting Vladimir Putin in the wallet by expanding American oil and gas production and promoting exports, thereby not only reducing the size of the Russian pie, but also getting a slice of the pie for the United States. Oh, and Russia’s about to lose one of its client states as Venezuela moves to topple Nicolas Maduro’s regime, and the United States is happy to help shove it over the edge. Makes you wonder if Democrats are only tough on Russia because it’s a way to get Trump, not out of any real concern about Putin’s ugly track record of thuggery.

Green New Deal proponents should be asked some very tough questions about the geopolitical effects of the military cuts. After all, we wouldn’t want to be aiding Russia and China, now, would we?  ~The Patriot Post

Consider Sen. Elizabeth dinky-Warren’s call for a wealth tax on the richest Americans. Because some people are apparently too darned rich, Warren wants to tack a 2% tax on people with more than $50 million in net worth. People with more than $1 billion in the bank would get tagged for 3%. Keep in mind this would be an additional tax on top of what earners in these brackets pay in income, property, business, and capital gains taxes.

This plan has been proposed before. It’s not calamitous, perhaps, but it also has been criticized before by clear-thinking economists from around the globe. When you tax investors, they take their money overseas or push it into places the government can’t reach. Either way, the result is reduced investment capital, a slower economy, fewer jobs, less innovation, and — here’s the real kicker — less tax revenue. It seems an insurmountable concept for leftists to grasp, but taxes that are too high ultimately mean less tax revenue.

Why pitch this now? dinky-Warren’s running for president, and she needs to differentiate herself from the crowd of “progressives” who have thrown their hat into an already crowded ring. It’s a heated battle to see who can spend more of our hard-earned money.

Why pitch it again if it doesn’t work? Leftists never, ever believe that their programs and policies fail. When problems arise, it’s either because not enough money was spent (or in the case of tax hikes, stolen), or because someone on the Right sabotaged their plans.

Warren’s not alone in recycling bad ideas. Florida Reps. Ted Deutch (Democrat) and Francis Rooney (Republican) of the House Climate Solutions Caucus reintroduced a $15-per-ton carbon emissions tax that would rise by $10 per year until it reaches $100 per ton. They claim this $1 trillion tax would be “revenue neutral,” meaning that it would not be an imposition on taxpayers because it would be offset by tax cuts somewhere else. The problem is no one has announced where the offsets will take place yet. Maybe they’ll just have to pass this tax bill to find the offsets.

But wait, there’s more. New York Rep. commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s glorious Green New Deal is yet another attempt to guilt people into paying higher taxes for the sake of eliminating fossil fuels. commie-Ocasio-Cortez’s plan is light on details, no doubt by design, but she says it can be paid for by raising the tax rate for incomes over $10 million to 70%. Oh, and some deficit spending. But no one on Capitol Hill seems to get excited about deficits anymore. So whatever.

This statement apparently cannot be repeated enough: Higher taxes never bring growth; only more power and control for government. And when a tax increase inevitably fails to raise the promised revenue, the taxes spread down the income chain until hitting the middle class. Middle-income earners then get a double whammy because they also get hit with higher prices and reduced purchasing power as the economy sputters under the weight of higher taxes.

Leftists want the masses to believe that all our problems can be solved if the rich just paid their fair share. What does a fair share look like? Classists will never tell you. That amount must always be nebulous and just out of reach of the resources at hand. All that matters is the rich must be not playing fair, so therefore they must be punished.

Stoking the fires of class warfare is a major tenet of leftist ideology. Class warfare worked for Vladimir Lenin in 1917, and the most popular communists/fascists of today’s Democrat Party are looking to repeat that success. How do we keep these monsters in their cages?

These leftist policies must be proved false to the public before more taxpayer money is stolen. And we need look no further than comparing the economy under our last president and the economy under our current one.

High taxes, curbs on investment, government intrusion in the economy, and excessive regulations were the hallmark of the previous presidency. Economic growth never hit 3%, millions left the labor market, and economic freedom took a hit.

The Heritage Foundation’s Economic Freedom Index performs an annual ranking of the nations of the world by measuring tax burden, protection of property rights, trade policies, labor laws, and judicial effectiveness. During previous administration, America’s ranking dropped from sixth place to 18th. In just one year under Donald Trump, America jumped back up to 12th place, measuring its highest score on the index since 2011.

This jump in economic freedom, like the nation’s economic growth, is the direct result of Trump implementing tax reduction, deregulatory and free-market policies. Reducing taxes and slashing regulations brought the intended result of more investment, more jobs, and increased labor participation. Imagine what the economy might look like if the government reduced deficits and cut taxes even further.

Economic freedom is good for the wallet and much more. With economic freedom comes the power of choice in every aspect of our lives. More options in health care mean a healthier population. More choice in education means a better educated and more productive society. And protection of property rights means better environmental stewardship.

The economy still has room for improvement, but great strides have been made in the last two years, and Trump’s economic policies have been largely responsible. If the Left has its way, those gains will most definitely be rolled back. And the government will have more control over our lives. Who in their Right mind would ever want that?  ~The Patriot Post

Perhaps these U.S. moves — and National Security Advisor John Bolton’s warning that even military action is “on the table” to stabilize the country — explain why Guaido is still alive and holding rallies in Caracas.

So what are the Democrat socialism deniers saying about Trump’s moves against their preferred form of government?

commie-Bernie Sanders is “feeling the Bern,” declaring, “The United States should support the rule of law, fair elections and self-determination for the Venezuelan people. We must condemn the use of violence against unarmed protesters and the suppression of dissent. However, we must learn the lessons of the past and not be in the business of regime change or supporting coups — as we have in Chile, Guatemala, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic. The United States has a long history of inappropriately intervening in Latin American countries; we must not go down that road again.”

That’s right. commie-Sanders is so worried about “regime change” that he’d rather support an anti-American murderous tyrant who stole the 2018 election.

And California Democrat Ro Khanna got a retweet of endorsement from commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for saying, “The U.S. should not anoint the leader of the opposition in Venezuela during an internal, polarized conflict.” Khanna might want to look up the word “anoint.” It was the elected Venezuelan National Assembly, not the Trump administration, that installed Guaido, and only after a protracted constitutional battle involving Maduro’s hand-picked Supreme Court dissolving the Assembly and reversing course only under international pressure.

Meanwhile, Demo Rep. Ilhan Omar decried “Trump’s efforts to install a far right opposition.” Wrong again — Guaido is actually center-left.

The history of Venezuelan socialism over the last few years is appalling. Is the Democrat position really that, no matter how bad an executive gets, “impeachment” is off the table? Keep that in mind as they #Resist the duly elected president of our own nation. A president, by the way, who’s leading a resurgence in economic freedom that stands in stark contrast to the Democrat/Maduro model.  ~The Patriot Post

by Thomas Gallatin:  Former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw on Sunday inadvertently exposed the reason behind Democrat opposition to securing the U.S. southern border when he noted, “On the Republican side, a lot of people see the rise of an extraordinary, important new constituent in American politics, Hispanics, who will come here and all be Democrats.” Brokaw further asserted, “Hispanics should work harder at assimilation.” Predictably, such an “outrageous” statement caused a social-media backlash over his “racist” comments. Brokaw subsequently apologized.

The fact of the matter is Brokaw let the cat out of the bag. Leftists oppose immigrant assimilation because their aim is to create a hardened voting block of segregated Hispanics committed to their own unassimilated communities instead of the broader American society. This explains House Speaker Nancy Pulosi and her fellow Democrats objecting to funding a border barrier.

Immediately following President Donald Trump’s shutdown capitulation, an important point may have been missed by the mainstream media. Trump effectively called Pulosi’s bluff. She claimed to want to debate the issue of border security after the government was funded. Trump has now forced her hand.

Suddenly Democrats are stuck in a contradictory position of, on the one hand, claiming to support border security, while at the same time defending their refusal to act on securing the border via a barrier. Listening to Democrats attempt to send a pro-border-security message is actually quite humorous. Pulosi on Monday insisted, “Democrats are committed, uh, to border security, and we think we have some better ideas about how to do so, that, uh, protect our borders, honor our values, and are cost-effective.” Pulosi’s fellow Sanctuary-State-of-California Rep. scumbag/mad-Maxine Waters likewise claimed that Democrats “believe in border security … and we have offered, you know, how we think it can be done.” She then offered this tidbit: “We want to make sure that [Trump] understands that it’s not simply about a wall.”

Echoing the talking-points memo, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson declared, “Democrats remain committed to effective border security but will only allow taxpayer money be spent on border security measures that will actually make a difference.” No word on what those “effective” measures would be.

Finally, there were the comments from Democrat presidential frontrunner lowlife-Kamala Harris, who pledged, “I’m not going to vote for a wall under any circumstances, and I do support border security.” She then talked about employing cameras and drones along the border, while at the same time decrying the effectiveness of a wall, stating, “The idea that we’re going to sell this thing to the American public and require taxpayers of our country to pay $5 billion for something that will not deliver what he is suggesting we need is ridiculous, and I will not support it.” In this same interview, Harris expressed support for eliminating private health insurance in favor of creating a government-run single-payer health care system that is estimated to cost taxpayers $32.6 trillion over the next decade. Talk about wasting taxpayer money on an ineffectual government power grab.  ~The Patriot Post

It’s disappointing that the Supreme Court failed Tuesday to grant the Trump administration’s appeal of a lower court order that prevents the president from ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. But it’s not the end of the story.

Importantly, the high court didn’t reject the request filed by the Justice Department to allow President Trump to end DACA. The request is still pending.

If the Supreme Court grants the Justice Department’s appeal of the lower court order between now and the end of June, the case to determine the fate of the DACA program will be heard during the next term of the court that begins in October.

Roughly 700,000 immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children are protected from deportation by DACA. The argument in favor of the program is that the children didn’t choose to break the law and so should not be punished because their parents violated immigration laws by bringing them to the U.S.

But the central issue at stake in the DACA case is not whether the young people now protected by DACA deserve or don’t deserve to be allowed to stay in the U.S. The issue at stake is what power the Constitution gives the president to act alone by issuing executive orders, without seeking approval from Congress.

The framers of the Constitution very deliberately set up a system of government where power was divided between the president and Congress, with the courts given the power to rule on disputes. These checks and balances were created to prevent one person from ruling the country as an all-powerful king or dictator. The system has worked brilliantly.

To preserve that system of checks and balances, the Supreme Court should hear the appeal of the lower court case on DACA and give President Trump the authority to end the program.

No matter what view you may have about whether the DACA program is good public policy, the decision to extend amnesty and government benefits to illegal immigrants is a decision that under the Constitution can only be made by Congress — not the president.

President Trump announced Saturday that he would support legislation in Congress to extend DACA protections for three years for the 700,000 young people now in the program, and also support a three-year extension of another program that allows 300,000 immigrants from countries stricken by disasters or conflicts to stay in the U.S. But in return, the president said Congress would need to approve the $5.7 billion he has requested for a barrier along portions of our southern border.

Rather than agree to the president’s compromise proposal that would give DACA the congressional approval it needs to pass constitutional muster for three more years, Democratic leaders in the House and Senate rejected the offer immediately because they refuse to fund the expansion of current border fencing.

DACA was created by an executive order issued by President scumbag/liar-nObama in 2012 without the approval of Congress — despite the fact that Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution assigns complete authority to Congress to determine our nation’s immigration rules.

DACA provided a temporary promise that the government wouldn’t deport immigrants who were younger than 16 when they were brought to the U.S. illegally. DACA also provided these illegal immigrants with government benefits, such as work authorizations. And it allowed the president to defer deporting these illegal immigrants for years.

But providing administrative amnesty and access to government benefits is beyond a president’s constitutional and statutory authority. This was the ruling of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals when it upheld a court order against President scumbag/liar-nObama’s attempt to expand DACA and implement another program with similar benefits in 2014, called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA).

The appellate court said that federal immigration law “flatly does not permit the reclassification of millions of illegal aliens as lawfully present and thereby make them newly eligible for a host of federal and state benefits, including work authorizations.” A divided U.S. Supreme Court upheld this decision in 2016, leaving the court order against DAPA in place.

The Trump administration announced in 2017 that — given the Supreme Court’s ruling in the DAPA case — it was going to wind DACA down, too, since the same arguments accepted by the courts as to the unlawfulness of President scumbag/liar-nObama’s actions on DAPA applied equally to DACA. This is a logical and obvious conclusion.

President Trump said the wind-down would not immediately terminate the two-year grants of immunity that DACA recipients had received. This would give Congress time to act if it believed the DACA program was something that should be authorized through federal immigration law.

Given the huge battle currently going on over immigration policy, funding for a border barrier and the partial government shutdown, it should come as no surprise that Congress did not act on DACA.

Instead, a number of challengers — including the University of California — went to court and managed to convince a federal district court judge and a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to issue a court order preventing the Trump administration from ending DACA.

The lower court rulings defy not only common sense, but the Constitution.

It is untenable to claim that a subsequent president cannot end a program put in place by a prior president — particularly when courts have already held that prior executive action by a president on virtually the same issue was beyond his executive authority, violating the Constitution and statutory law.

No one questions that Congress could implement a DACA- or DAPA-type program. Congress can grant citizenship or amnesty to any immigrants it wants. But a president lacks the authority to do so.

The wisdom of the policy of allowing DACA recipients to spend the rest of their lives in the U.S. and eventually become citizens — as many Democrats in Congress advocate — is also questionable.

The media portrayal of DACA beneficiaries paints a uniformly rosy picture of highly educated, fluent individuals. But that is not in accord with the facts.

For example, according to the most recent figures only 49 percent of DACA beneficiaries have attained a high school education — despite a majority of them now being adults.

Almost no background checks were conducted by the Department of Homeland Security, resulting in illegal immigrants with criminal backgrounds being accepted into the DACA program, including members of the MS-13 criminal gang.

And one study estimates that perhaps as many as a quarter of DACA-eligible illegal immigrants are functionally illiterate in English, while another 46 percent have only “basic” English ability.

Providing amnesty and potential citizenship to DACA recipients and other illegal immigrants before we have a secure border will only encourage even more illegal immigration, just as the 1986 amnesty in the Immigration Reform and Control Act did.

That law provided citizenship to almost 3 million illegal immigrants and was supposed to solve the problem of illegal immigration. Yet within 10 years, there were another almost 6 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.

The federal government should be concentrating on enhancing immigration enforcement and border security to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into the country and reduce the number of them already in the interior of the U.S.

Until we achieve those goals, it is premature to consider any kind of benefits for any immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

The Supreme Court has a duty to take up the Trump administration’s DACA appeal and throw out actions by lower courts that are not in accord with the Constitution and federal immigration law. That action would send this issue of whether the DACA program should exist back to where it belongs — not to the president, as President scumbag/liar-nObama mistakenly believed, but to Congress.  ~The Patriot Post

The abortion mill claims that the procedure amounts to only 3% of its business. But that’s a cleverly disguised farce. Alexandra DeSanctis of National Review explains, “Planned Parenthood arrives at this statistic by dividing the abortion procedures for the year (332,757) by the number of ‘services’ the group provided (9.7 million). The report defines a ‘service’ as a ‘discrete clinical interaction,’ such as the administration of an STI test.”

DeSanctis continues, “Consider what this means in practice. If a woman visits a Planned Parenthood facility to obtain an abortion, and, while she’s there, is also given a pregnancy test, an STI test, a cancer screening, and contraception, the abortion procedure would be just 20 percent of the ‘services’ she received. This is why the group takes pains to list its annual ‘services,’ which is much higher than the number of patients Planned Parenthood saw last year (2.4 million). Using this deceptive formula, the report manipulates the data to make it appear as if abortion is a tiny fraction of its work, though a much higher percentage of actual patients who visit Planned Parenthood clinics are there, first and foremost, to obtain an abortion.”

This deceptive practice is nothing new for PP. Back in 2015, PP CEO Cecile Richards admitted to Congress that none of PP’s clinics had mammogram machines. This was a significant acknowledgement as a prevalent myth among Planned Parenthood’s fanbase is that the organization provides mammogram services for women. It’s one of many lies that weave the fabric of an evil institution.  ~The Patriot Post

Their hatred is raw and real. “Before he encountered Omaha elder Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial, Covington High School student Nick Sandmann had already taken steps to provoke and insult people of color,” writes NBC columnist Noah Berlatsky. “He’d put on a MAGA hat.”

Berlatsky’s overt bigotry, as in the ridiculous notion that he is a spokesperson for “people of color,” would likely be unsurprising to Eugenior Joseph. Last Mother’s Day, the 22-year-old black American was harassed by employees at a Miami Cheesecake Factory for wearing a MAGA hat. According to multiple eye witnesses, employers threatened Joseph with violence, called him names, and followed him to the bathroom. Multiple video clips and photos validate those eyewitness accounts.

As for MAGA, Berlatsky is equally blunt, asserting, “America was great when Trump fans could hurt others — especially non-white others — with impunity.”

Who’s hurting whom? In addition to Joseph, a quick search using the words “people attacked for wearing MAGA hats” yields a number of equally contemptible instances of people being harassed or assaulted, including a trans activist assaulted in Hollywood, a Brooklyn man attacked with a broken bottle in a Manhattan bar, a Texas teen assaulted at a Whataburger in San Antonio, and an Arizona man who had his ankle broken in a Tucson encounter.

Apparently such people automatically deserve such treatment. “It matters that they wore ‘Make America Great Again’ hats,”  asserts CNN columnist Issac Bailey, referring to the Covington Catholic School teens subjected to one of the most contemptible media smear campaigns in modern history. Bailey is particularly incensed by the hat’s acronym. “When was America ‘great’? he asks. "When millions of black people were slaves? When hundreds of thousands of black men were sold to US companies via convict leasing? Maybe during the heart of Jim Crow, the height of lynching, or when black people struggling with drug addictions were viewed as criminals to be controlled, not fellow human beings needing help?”

How about when slaves were freed at a cost of 360,000 Union soldiers’ lives, or when Martin Luther King triumphed over the same Democrats who established the Ku Klux Klan, embraced Jim Crow, and opposed the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution — amendments banning slavery, guaranteeing due process and equal protection to former slaves, and granting black Americans the right to vote, respectively?

Like so many progressive propagandists, Bailey tells half the story because the other half is utterly inimical to his twisted agenda. It’s an agenda completely immune to hypocrisy as well. “Together, we can make America great again,” said scumbag/liar-Bill Clinton in 1991, using the phrase as a springboard for his presidential campaign. The same campaign over which the Left swooned.

Unfortunately, this toxic brew of rage and hypocrisy has found a home in the nation’s education system, where two generations of semi-literate, semi-numerate students who know next to nothing about history, civics, or the Constitution are nonetheless well-attuned to a single idea: America is an inherently flawed nation in need of “fundamental transformation.”

Fundamental transformation that leftists would like to impose by any means necessary. Thus it should surprise no one that Kentucky Democrat and House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. John Yarmuth not only showcased his contempt for the Covington students but the Constitution itself. “I am calling for a total and complete shutdown of teenagers wearing MAGA hats until we can figure out what is going on,” he tweeted. “They seem to be poisoning young minds.”

What is poisoning minds, young and old alike, is the Left’s ongoing determination to reduce America to series of tribes. “People become groups — and an individual’s own guilt or innocence beside the point,” warns columnist Katrina Trinko.

Individualism itself is also becomes beside the point, which is why the Left is obsessed with identity politics. The dissemination of propaganda becomes far more difficult when inconvenient “anomalies” conflict with The Narrative™. Better to sweep Eugenior Joseph and other equally problematic MAGA hat-wearing exceptions under the proverbial rug than allow them to “complicate” memes such as the one that white, Catholic, male, pro-life students wearing MAGA hats are privileged, backward, toxic, misogynistic, and deplorable.

Moreover, the assignation of guilt and the rush to judgment it engenders from our politically correct would-be masters is much more effective when it can be categorized — and collectivized. How collectivized? “I’m a New York Times reporter writing about #exposechristianschools,” tweeted New York Times reporter Dan Levin last week. Apparently starting from the assumption that Christian schools require some kind of exposure is what passes for unbiased information gathering at the Times.

Can “Two Minutes Hate” be far behind?

Sadly, nothing is new here. The collective demonization that inexorably reduces groups of people to sub-human status enabled the guillotines of the French Revolution, the gas chambers of the Nazis, and the gulags, torture chambers, and mass starvation and mass executions that took place in the Soviet Union and Communist China.

For far too many leftists, the MAGA hat provides a springboard for rationalizing similar sub-humanization.

Leading to what? In a seemingly unrelated story, Trump adviser Roger Stone was arrested last Friday morning in a pre-dawn raid conducted like a terrorist takedown by approximately a dozen FBI agents armed with AR-15s. The 66-year-old man was led away — in his pajamas. The orchestrated, circus-like atmosphere was conveniently captured by CNN reporters, who claimed “instinct” had them on the scene filming the arrest.

Stone’s alleged crimes? Five counts of making false statements, a count of witness tampering, and one for obstruction of official proceedings, but nothing related to collusion with Russia — and nothing warranting law enforcement tactics that make it clear the Special Counsel investigation is anything but even-handed.

How over the top was this raid? A federal judge ruled Stone was not a flight risk and he was released on a $250,000 signature bond that will cost him nothing if he shows up for his court proceedings.

Anyone still remember when such heavy-handed tactics were considered the hallmark of totalitarian regimes?

Dangerously, over the top has become the essence of progressive ideology. “You don’t let your kid wear a MAGA hat and then act offended when they get taken for a racist,” asserts columnist Mollie O'Reilly.

No, Ms. O'Reilly. You don’t get to champion the evisceration of the First Amendment and then act offended if someone takes you for a fascist.

Such odious reality elicits paraphrasing. “First they came for the MAGA hat, and I didn’t object because, I don’t wear one…”

Will history repeats itself?  ~The Patriot Post

Since 2010, the U.S. and the Taliban have been attempting to broker a peace deal that would effectively allow for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. This latest news represents a significant step forward in seeing that goal realized — on the basis of conditions on the ground, not Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s electoral timetable. However, it’s far from a done deal. As Afghan President Ashraf Ghani noted, “We want peace … soon, but we want it with prudence. Prudence is important so we do not repeat past mistakes.”

The Taliban has in principle agreed to never allow Afghanistan to become “a platform for international terrorist groups or individuals,” like al-Qaida. We’ll believe it when we see it. The second U.S. demand, which Taliban leadership is still considering, is to enter into a cease-fire agreement with the Afghan government. The U.S. has made it clear that American troops will not withdraw without a cease-fire. That the Taliban is even considering this is significant given that it has long refused to engage in any talks with the Afghan government.

There is no timeframe set for a potential withdrawal of U.S. troops — and there shouldn’t be — but there may be a light appearing at the end of this long Afghan tunnel. The important issue for Americans is to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a threat to the U.S. again. Unfortunately for the people of Afghanistan, the threat posed by the Taliban continues.  ~The Patriot Post

Trump arguably misstepped when he told “scumbag-Chuck and Nancy” in their December meeting that he’d happily take responsibility for a shutdown. That sound bite only made blaming him for the shutdown easier for the media. Two other factors strengthened the Dems’ position. First, Trump Derangement Syndrome means anything Trump pitches — and he campaigned heavily on a “big, beautiful wall,” paid for by Mexico — is anathema. Second, Pulosi had taken to calling a border wall “immoral,” and there is simply no compromise when an issue has been made that black and white.

So what was Trump’s play in forcing the shutdown? He’s been floating an emergency declaration since December, but he couldn’t do it out of the blue. He needed to provethat the border is in a state of emergency. Over the course of the last five weeks, Trump showed just how intractable and entrenched Democrats really are, leaving him with no other recourse but to declare an emergency. Trump looked like the reasonable one by agreeing to a deal that included nothing he wanted, and Pulosi’s approval/disapproval spread is far worse than Trump’s. In fact, Trump’s support among Hispanics is up 19% in just one month.

Granted, declaring an emergency isn’t a clean play either. With 31 active emergencies on the books, Trump has a case. But Democrats will immediately challenge him in court, specifically where an activist scumbag/liar-nObama judge will block him, and such a declaration could set a precedent for a President lowlife-Kamala Harris to tackle climate change with an emergency declaration. Moreover, it’s likely such a move by Trump would actually divide Republicans more than defeat Democrats.

Speaking of that, where was the congressional GOP in all of this? Senate Republicans couldn’t have been clearer about their disinterest in backing Trump. Recall too that the GOP controlled both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue for the previous two years and did nothing about the border. Was immigration not an emergency then? Border security was Trump’s signature issue, but his administration did little to push a legislative effort until the GOP had lost the House. And Congress cared little for doing anything without his leadership. We’ll borrow one of Trump’s favorite words to describe this collective lack of effort: “Sad!”

Republicans also had unified control of Washington from 2001-2006. They did little on immigration. Democrats held power in 2009 and 2010. They did nothing — well, except take over the health and financial sectors of the economy. We’re left to conclude that both parties believe they benefit not from solving the major national problem of immigration but by exploiting it for political purposes.

A final note: Trump wanted $5.7 billion for a border barrier, while Washington University professor Liberty Vittert estimates the shutdown cost the American public approximately $40 billion — enough to pay for “the entire wall to be built and maintained for 40 years.” A more conservative estimate by the Congressional Budget Office still puts the economic toll at $11 billion, including $3 billion that’s permanent.  

~The Patriot Post