Thurs/Med AM ~ TheFrontPageCover

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The Front Page Cover
~ Featuring ~
Yes, the Debt Really Is a Problem
by Lewis Morris
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Thursday Top Headlines
7MaDCvUn9N4tHwagvF0RhJoCGHFtJS8QvPboDt01lxkTXt2s9mxTuLApMSXv9jJfjYR03R9chnZ97aZ5GiPdHeqnNBAf4_WDJnvZxNavTWHXZkuDMkGTofOUwPcs1f4=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=?width=500by Political Editors:  Trump poised to set record for appeals court judges (Roll Call)
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Trump pulls two judicial picks after Grassley warns they would have been defeated (The Washington Times)
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Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton will appoint current Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith to fill Senator Al Franken’s seat (National Review)
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So maybe spending is the problem… Feds collect record taxes through November; still run $201.8B deficit (CNS News)
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Federal Reserve hikes interest rates, easing off stimulus efforts amid improving economy (The Washington Post)
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Disney to buy 21st Century Fox assets in a deal worth more than $52 billion (CNBC)
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Tavis Smiley’s show suspended by PBS after sexual misconduct accusations involving staffers emerge (Fox News)
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Second woman accuses Rep. Kihuen of sexual misconduct (The Hill)
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Kentucky State Rep. Dan Johnson dies of “probable suicide” after sexual molestation accusation (WDRB)
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Unfunded liabilities of state public pensions top $6 trillion in 2017 (The Washington Free Beacon)
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Belly laugh of the week: Vladimir Putin will run as an independent for fourth term as Russia’s president (Washington Examiner)
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Policy: GOP tax bills aim to derail the green-power gravy train (Manhattan Institute)
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Policy: Occupational licensing reduces interstate mobility (E21 ~The Patriot Post
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Jim Jordan Grills
Rosenstein Over Dossier, Agent Strzok
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by AMBER ATHEY
{dailycaller.com} ~ Republican Rep. Jim Jordan grilled Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Wednesday... about the objectivity of the FBI and the special counsel’s Russia investigation. Jordan asked Rosenstein during a House Judiciary Committee hearing what he was going to do so that the public could regain trust in the FBI. Jordan focused on the FBI’s alleged reliance on the Democrat-funded Trump dossier and the recently-fired FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was caught sending anti-Trump text messages. “If you guys paid Christopher Steele at the same time the Democrats and the liar-Clinton campaign paid him,” Jordan said, referring to the author of the infamous Trump dossier, “or if you took the dossier, dressed it all up, took it to the FISA court and used it as the basis to get a warrant … this is unbelievable.”...  http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/13/jim-jordan-grills-rosenstein-over-dossier-agent-strzok-video/?utm_medium=email
VIDEO at the site.
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“Totally Phony”: Lawmaker Lays 
Down Truth About Collusion Hoax

{restoreamericanglory.com} ~ In a frank interview with Fox News this weekend, Rep. Peter King of the House Intelligence Committee said...
 that Donald Trump Jr.’s official congressional interview last week cleared up nearly all doubt about the possibility of the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia. “Nobody listening to that interview could come out of that thinking there was any collusion at all,” King said Sunday. “This is totally phony.” King went on to say that the president should not remove Special Counsel Robert Mueller because it would only serve to give the Democrats more ammunition. “They’ll blow this up and come up with another phony issue,” King said of the biased mainstream media. That said, King is eager to move beyond the ridiculous accusations of collusion so House investigators can begin looking into more important matters, such as the deal liar-Hillary Clinton made to sell U.S. uranium interests to Russia...  http://www.restoreamericanglory.com/breaking-news/totally-phony-lawmaker-lays-down-truth-about-collusion-hoax/
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Gowdy Slams Allegedly 
‘Unbiased’ Special Counsel 
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by AMBER ATHEY
{dailycaller.com} ~ Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy aggressively questioned the presence of a special counsel in the Russia investigation... while questioning Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Wednesday. During the House Judiciary hearing, Gowdy noted that the entire purpose of appointing a special counsel is to get rid of conflicts of interest. However, there seem to be numerous conflicts of interest on Robert Mueller’s team. “The reason we have special counsel is because of a conflict of interest,” he said. “We don’t like conflicts of interest because it undermines people’s confidence in both the process and the result.”...  http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/13/gowdy-slams-allegedly-unbiased-special-counsel-video/?utm_medium=email
VIDEO at the site.
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Deputy AG Won’t Say 
Whether The FBI Paid For Dossier
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by CHUCK ROSS
{dailycaller.com} ~ Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein refused to say on Wednesday whether the FBI paid... for the infamous Trump dossier. Rosenstein, who was grilled by the House Judiciary Committee, suggested that he knew the answer to the question, which was posed by Florida Rep. Ron DeSantis.  “Did the FBI pay for the dossier?” DeSantis asked. “I’m not in a position to answer that question,” Rosenstein responded.  “Do you know the answer to the question?” the Republican DeSantis followed up...  http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/13/deputy-ag-wont-say-whether-the-fbi-paid-for-dossier/?utm_medium=email
VIDEO at the site.
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These 13 Countries Are 
Giving Weapons To Kim Jong Un
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{libertyinvestor.com} ~ Since 2014, 49 countries worldwide have broken international sanctions against North Korea... Some of these offenders include France, Germany, and even Japan, according to a Dec. 5 report issued by the Institute for Science and International Security. But 13 malefactor nations in particular have provided North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un with military aid over the years. The assistance came in the form of combat training, military equipment, and ammunition – all swapped with Pyongyang to keep Kim Jong Un’s nuclear ambitions not just alive, but advancing. In its latest report, institute researchers honed in on a trade pattern between Pyongyang and the aberrant parties over the past three years: They found that the majority of these arms deals were made at the regime’s behest... https://libertyinvestor.com/these-13-countries-are-giving-weapons-to-kim-jong-un/
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Yes, the Debt Really Is a Problem
ItgpGHDU-3VDsqAYkaL2srpT6CrSQ2g2gahXTcrU6Se52nxg9f-dayD_BDwU8FzlBv39_gKT5IeHOCOKsREGIo034JWKP1xU2MKMpAmujw4KJS8NsskEDHVLM-Ta6a8=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=?width=500by Lewis Morris:  America is approaching a major fiscal crisis, one that could fundamentally change our way of life, and not for the better. That crisis, of course, is the growing national debt. Clocking in at $20.2 trillion at the end of fiscal 2017, which ended Sept. 30, the debt boggles the mind and confounds the imagination. Economists, certain members of the business community, and reasonable elected officials (what few still remain) are deeply concerned about this. And the public should be, too. Yet, far too many people are remarkably unconcerned about the current state of affairs.

          Admittedly, it’s hard to wrap one’s head around such a staggering figure. With “just” $1 trillion, you could buy every NFL, NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball team in the country. And $20 trillion is greater than the market capitalization of all the companies on the S&P 500. The richest single person in the world, currently Amazon founder and owner of the Washington Post Jeff Bezos, only holds $90 billion.
          All this fun trivia aside, our national debt is frighteningly real. And few people in Washington, none of them Democrats, want to do anything about it.
          The size of the number adds a level of disbelief, but another reason for inaction is the perception that economic doomsayers have been crying wolf. Ever since the debt crossed the trillion-dollar threshold during the Reagan presidency, we have been hearing constant warnings about the growing national debt and the harm that it will cause the economy. These warnings were real, but they went unheeded.
          Aside from some cyclical recessions, the 80s and 90s proved to be good economic times for the country. Low unemployment, booming business and life-changing technological innovations muted conversations about the debt and the growth of the federal government. Budget surpluses in the late 90s all but kicked concern over the national debt to the curb. What few people realized at the time, however, was that even with those surpluses, the national debt continued to grow every year, thanks in part to the interest on the debt that continued to mount.
          In fact, the national debt has not decreased year over year since fiscal 1957. At that time, the debt dropped from $272.7 billion to $272.5 billion. When Dwight Eisenhower was president, that $200 million cut was probably a big deal. Now, it’s too small to even be considered a rounding error.
          A trillion-dollar national debt was not motivation enough for Washington to change its spending ways. Crossing the $5 trillion threshold in 1996 didn’t seem to rattle enough lawmakers to pass spending reform, either. In 2008, when the debt reached $10 trillion, Republican lawmakers sounded alarms and proposed serious spending and entitlement reforms. Democrats, however, balked at the idea and accused Republicans of class warfare.
          Then along came Barack liar-nObama. In his eight years in office, the national debt doubled in size. Neither he nor his Democrat cadres in Congress expressed any concern over the issue. And they jealously defended Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security from any reforms, ignoring the fact that these are the very entitlement programs that were driving America over a fiscal cliff.
          The Left’s inverted view of the American economy is based on the idea that the federal government is the driver of the economy, not the private sector. Embracing this mindset allows them to push the idea that deficits do not suggest a spending problem, but a revenue problem.
          This is why the current tax cut that we hope to see before Christmas is the bane of Democrats. They are trying to frame the tax cut as a loser because it will supposedly add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years. As if we are supposed to believe they really care about that after supporting liar-nObama’s record-breaking annual budget deficits for eight straight years.
          At what point, though, does the national debt become a critical problem? Decades of watching the debt grow have not yet led to fiscal disaster, even if we are seeing the early effects of massive debt.
          The Heritage Foundation’s Romina Boccia refers to it as the “silent crisis.” Fewer jobs and slower economic growth are the first symptoms. If the present course holds, the coming years will bring high inflation, economic contraction, a shrinking ability to maintain current entitlements, and a complete inability to afford new ones.
          The tax cuts will help prime the pump to get the economy moving, but spending cuts must follow if the national debt is to be brought under control. Targeted spending cuts to shrink the size of the federal government and sincere reform of Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security are the only way to prevent a financial calamity that could wreck this country.
          Democrats don’t want to touch entitlements at all. But if something isn’t done to reverse the course of the growing debt, the day will come when those entitlements will go away all by themselves because the government won’t be able to pay for them anymore. And if action is not taken now, that day won’t be far off. Best estimates give us a decade or so before that happens. It’s better to do something now while there is still time and options. The longer Washington waits, the more painful the fix will be.  ~The Patriot Pos
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https://patriotpost.us/articles/52909

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