The Front Page Cover
~ Featuring ~
Rediscovering Courage
by Arnold Ahlert
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Business Review Board: The Commerce Department released its revised figures for U.S. gross domestic product in the second quarter, and there’s good news — GDP grew not 2.7% but 3.0%. In other words, the U.S. economy is growing faster than was initially thought, and Donald Trump’s ambitious target of 3.0% annual growth for 2017 is closer than many had believed legitimately possible. Now some economists are estimating that third-quarter growth could be has high as 3.4%, based on early job numbers from August. There is a word of caution here, as Hurricane Harvey’s devastation of Houston, America’s fourth largest city, is bound to produce a negative hit to the U.S. economy. But even so, many experts believe it will be minimal and short-lived. 
Impressive Economic Growth Steadily Continues
Business Review Board: The Commerce Department released its revised figures for U.S. gross domestic product in the second quarter, and there’s good news — GDP grew not 2.7% but 3.0%. In other words, the U.S. economy is growing faster than was initially thought, and Donald Trump’s ambitious target of 3.0% annual growth for 2017 is closer than many had believed legitimately possible. Now some economists are estimating that third-quarter growth could be has high as 3.4%, based on early job numbers from August. There is a word of caution here, as Hurricane Harvey’s devastation of Houston, America’s fourth largest city, is bound to produce a negative hit to the U.S. economy. But even so, many experts believe it will be minimal and short-lived.
Trump’s greatest contribution to the economy has been his focused Washington deregulation crusade. It has saved Americans billions of dollars and has freed businesses from mountains of over-reaching, economically stifling regulations. But is this growth sustainable? This is where congressional action is needed in the form of tax reform.
Thus, on Wednesday, Trump kicked off his tax-reform push in a speech in Missouri by pressing Congress. Trump said, “This is our once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver real tax reform for everyday, hard-working Americans. And I am fully committed to working with Congress to get this job done. And I don’t want to be disappointed by Congress. Do you understand me?” He pushed for Democrats and Republicans to work together, stating, “What could possibly be more bipartisan than allowing Americans to keep more of what they earn and creating an environment for real job and wage growth in the country that we love so much?” Well, it would counteract Democrats’ class warfare strategy, for one thing.
On a final note, the good economic news was buried by The Washington Post on page 16 in “the digest” without even a headline. Evidently for the Post, good economic news in the era of Trump must die in darkness. ~The Patriot Post
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Sekulow, Fleisher and Guilfoyle Discuss
Latest Revelations of Corruption Within FBI
{theconservativetreehouse.com} ~ In a letter from Senator Chuck Grassley to new FBI Director Christopher Wray the senator outlines some disturbing information discovered in documents reviewed by the judicial committee... Chief among the issues was a discovery that fired FBI Director James Comey had already drafted a preliminary conclusion that liar-Hillary Clinton was not going to be held responsible. The FBI Director’s 2016 position was created in April and May before sixteen key investigative witnesses, including Mrs. liar-Clinton herself, were even interviewed. Jay Sekulow, Ari Fleischer and Kimberly Guilfoyle discuss... https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/09/01/sekulow-fleisher-and-guilfoyle-discuss-latest-revelations-of-corruption-within-fbi/
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Mueller Busted Colluding With Powerful Democrat
by Brooke Singman
{foxnews.com} ~ Special Counsel Robert Mueller reportedly is working with a top Trump foe — New York's Democratic Attorney General Eric Schneiderman — in a development that could signal an attempt to get around the president's pardon powers... As reported by Politico, Mueller and Schneiderman have been in communication in recent weeks and have shared evidence with one another. The joint effort is significant for two reasons: Trump and Schneiderman are political enemies, and the prospect of a state-level probe creates a scenario where Trump's pardon power would be blunted. New York's attorney general has long been fiercely critical of Trump. He has repeatedly sued or threatened to sue the current administration, and led the charge in the fraud case against Trump University... http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/08/31/mueller-reportedly-working-with-top-trump-foe-could-end-run-presidential-pardon.html.
The Irrelevant Democrats
by Matthew Continetti
{freebeacon.com} ~ Chuck clown-Schumer is in a spirited mood. "This is going to be one of the biggest fights of the next three, four months," the Senate minority leader said recently... of the coming debate over tax cuts. "And Democrats are ready for it." No doubt they are. But the relevant question is: Does their readiness even matter? Last month Mitch McConnell said he planned to bring taxes to the Senate floor under the budget reconciliation procedure. That would bypass the filibuster. The bill could pass by majority vote. No Democrats required. And Republicans are unlikely to experience the defections over taxes that doomed them on health care. The health bill was a mess, a product of Republican confusion and infighting. There is no such uncertainty toward cutting taxes... http://freebeacon.com/columns/the-irrelevant-democrats/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=550e663d82-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_08_31&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-550e663d82-45611665.
Private sector to the rescue in Texas:
Never underestimate the power of the
privatesector to rise up to any challenge
by Mark J. Perry
{aei.org} ~ Because of a hurricane of claims of price gouging in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, the private sector in Texas and Louisiana is getting slammed with lots of criticism for being greedy, uncompassionate, and focusing only on profits... For example, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton told CNBC that his office as of yesterday has received more than 500 complaints of price gouging, mostly against businesses accused of selling cases of bottled water for $99, gasoline for $10 a gallon, and hotels charging prices triple or quadruple the normal room rates. But there’s a flip side to that story that includes many counter-examples of private sector businesses and private voluntary organizations ignoring profits and demonstrating great compassion following Hurricane Harvey, as was the case after previous disasters like Hurricane Katrina in 2005... http://www.aei.org/publication/private-sector-to-the-rescue-never-underestimate-the-power-of-the-private-sector-to-rise-up-to-face-any-challenge/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWmpjNU1HRmhNR1poTnpObCIsInQiOiJuSEZxcVhOcFcyTktXaHhtOWRxNDNpRnFNb1RXeFd6XC8wWGl5aFFIYktLK3R3Q3prNVR1eU1uMk5SUElCV0pDMzJJb3M1VmNEY0JOVEtySjY5Nysxd2JVeDZCczNUbGpydE13RER0VVRUd3Vnc0JMR2xEOEdiNVZrMVlCc1FFZDAifQ%3D%3D.
It's time to shoot down North Korean missiles
{washingtonexaminer.com} ~ Early Tuesday morning, North Korea fired an intermediate range ballistic missile over Japan's northern Hokkaido island. It broke up shortly afterwards over the western Pacific Ocean... With this provocation, North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un has blunted American optimism that he might be willing to trim his ballistic saber rattling. It is clear that further U.S. action is required to force him into constructive diplomacy. The time has come for the Trump administration to take action. An invasion of North Korea would entail an immense loss of life and is clearly not on the cards. But there are measures a long way short of such hostilities that could prove effective and which President Trump should now employ. He should issue a clear statement of policy that the U.S. military will from now on shoot down North Korean intermediate or intercontinental ballistic missiles if Kim launches them in a way that poses a threat to America and its allies... http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/its-time-to-shoot-down-north-korean-missiles/article/2632898
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Rediscovering Courage
by Arnold Ahlert: “When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.” —Eric Hoffer
Today, there is little doubt that cowardice — more often than not couched as a “reasonable” response to the demands of hateful, hysterical leftists — is not only respectable but very much in fashion.
In Memphis, the Orpheum Theater announced it will end a 34-year-old tradition of “Gone With the Wind” summertime screenings due to “specific inquiries from patrons.” In a statement, the theater company explained, “As an organization whose stated mission is to ‘entertain, educate and enlighten the communities it serves’, the Orpheum cannot show a film that is insensitive to a large segment of its local population.”
The hyper-sensitive local population to which the theater refers are ostensibly black Americans, who comprise approximately 64% of Memphis’ total population. Yet like most things progressive, the narrative doesn’t align with reality: A 2014 YouGov survey taken on the 75th anniversary of the picture revealed that 73% of black Americans rated the movie as great, very good or good. Nonetheless, Orpheum Theatre Group president Brett Batterson insisted the move was “about the Orpheum wanting to be inclusive and welcoming to all of Memphis.”
Both Batterson and a large majority of the theater’s board members are white, and all of them apparently miss the searing irony: Their insufferably paternalistic presumption that they know what’s best for black Americans resembles that of antebellum slave masters. Moreover their exhortations of inclusivity and welcomeness are nothing more than fashionable cowardice.
They are joined — or is that topped — by the cowards at California’s San Domenico School, who have decided their 167-year-old existence as a Dominican Catholic institution needed an “update” requiring the removal of approximately 162 Catholic icons and statues. The head of San Domenico’s board of trustees, Amy Skewes-Cox, again issued boilerplate progressive bromides to justify censorship. “If you walk on the campus and the first thing you confront is three or four statues of St. Dominic or St. Francis, it could be alienating for that other religion, and we didn’t want to further that feeling.”
She further stated the removals had nothing to do with the frenzy surrounding the removal of Confederate statues, or the rioting in Charlottesville, insisting the issues are “totally different” and have “absolutely no connection other than it is change, and people have a hard time with change.”
Change? Capitulation to political correctness is more like it. “In our time here,” explains the mother of one of the school’s students, “the word ‘Catholic’ has been removed from the mission statement, sacraments were removed from the curriculum, the lower school curriculum was changed to world religions, the logo and colors were changed to be ‘less Catholic,’ and the uniform was changed to be less Catholic.”
Instead, the progressive agenda reigns supreme. “We welcome and embrace students, families, and staff who both enrich and promote diversity,” the school’s Inclusivity and Non-Discrimination statement declares. “We value the representation and full engagement of individuals whose differences include, but are not limited to, age, ethnicity, family makeup, gender, learning style, physical ability, race, religion, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status.”
The statues? “Pitched in the basement,” according to the parent of a former student. Catholic values clearly expressed in the Apostle’s Creed? Pitched into oblivion by people too cowardly to stand up for their own faith.
Another group of cowards familiar to most Americans is the collection of self-aggrandizing Hollywood hacks who remained at last Sunday’s 2017 MTV Video Music Awards despite rapper YG’s song “FDT” (F—k Donald Trump) being played during the commercial breaks. One need only imagine the stampede that would have ensued had Barack Obama been subjected to anything remotely resembling the same treatment. Cowards are people who only respect the presidency — or the county itself — when “one of theirs” occupies the Oval Office.
Sadly, there is also the cowardice best described by the adage often attributed to Irish statesman Edmund Burke: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Or perhaps when ordered to do nothing, as it appears police in Charlottesville and most recently in Berkeley — again — allowed rioting thugs to attack each other and innocent bystanders.
In Charlottesville, Police Chief Al Thomas insisted his force “had a very large footprint during this entire endeavor,” despite numerous assertions to the contrary, including one from New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg, who ruined the progressive narrative of only one side engaging in violence.
Berkeley Police Chief Andrew Greenwood was even more pathetic, insisting the “potential use of force became very problematic” — despite the reality that antifa thugs broke through police barricades and checkpoints and began beating and pepper-spraying people.
Cowardly Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin is equally willing to capitulate to the mob, asking UC Berkeley to cancel conservatives’ plans for a Free Speech Week to prevent his city from “being used as a punching bag.”
“A government that cannot maintain order in the streets — that has lost the will to even try and do so — signals to extremists that it has rotted,” asserts the editor of the Fabius Maximus website.
That goes double for a society so afraid it won’t even prevent its children from being indoctrinated. Thus when a teacher at Sacramento’s Rocklin Academy Gateway staged a “transition ceremony” for a student in her kindergarten class — one that consisted of initially introducing him to his fellow kindergarteners as a boy, and then having him change into a dress and calling him by his new female name — it becomes infuriating when parents who contacted Fox News “asked that their identities remain anonymous in fear of retribution by folks in the community who disagree with them,” Fox reported.
“What’s happening at Rocklin Academy is an example of how schools have become indoctrination grounds for the LGBT agenda,” writes Todd Starnes. “And the only way to stop the indoctrination is for moms and dads to take a stand.”
Not just moms and dads. Every American who’s sick and tired of having the progressive agenda rammed down their throats while they quietly acquiesce, ever fearful of consequences that only invite more boldness by those more than willing to destroy the nation itself, as long as they get to rule over what remains.
Even some conservatives miss the point. “Maybe if we grasp that, instead of getting hysterical over it, we can see why the loss of Robert E. Lee shouldn’t threaten Thomas Jefferson,” asserts National Review’s Andrew McCarthy.
But it does, and one is left to wonder how many outrages must be endured before such conservatives realize an incrementalist Left’s appetite for power and control is never satiated?
It’s time for decent Americans to fight back, using that same kind of incrementalism. Skip a Hollywood movie or concert. Pass on an NFL game, or stop patronizing progressive corporations that consider themselves the nation’s moral arbiters. Cancel a newspaper or cable company subscription.
No one has to do everything. But Americans should understand that small individual efforts make a collectively big difference. As progressives like to say, it’s time to live “woke.”
Let’s make courage fashionable again. ~The Patriot Post
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