Wednesday Noon ~ thefrontpagecover

[Rudy Tirre]

TheFrontPageCover

~ Featuring ~

 Warning! Coming to a Republican

District Near You!

Mark Alexander   

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Democrats to Seniors: Drop Dead

by BETSY MCCAUGHEY

{ spectator.org } ~ Baby boomers beware. If you’re in your 50s or 60s and you’re counting on Medicare to pay your future hospital bills, you’re in for a shock... Medicare Part A — the fund that pays hospitals and nursing homes — is running out of money. A mere seven years from now, it will no longer have enough to pay your providers’ bills in full. The Medicare Trustees sounded the alarm in June, urging Congress to act “as soon as possible” to protect people “already dependent” on the program. Good advice, but don’t expect most politicians to take it. The Democrats running for president are in fantasy land, proposing to expand Medicare to millions of younger people or even to the entire population through “Medicare for All.” Never mind Medicare’s insolvency. That’s like a family that can’t pay its mortgage out shopping for a mega-mansion. Amazingly, in four national debates so far, not one moderator has asked the presidential wannabes how they would secure Medicare’s finances and keep the promise the nation has made to seniors. As if 65-and-overs don’t count. Message to the Democratic Party: If they don’t count, don’t count on their votes. Millennials also should be outraged. If Medicare falters, they’ll be choosing between sending their kids to camp and paying for Grandma’s hip replacement. Fortunately, President Trump is stressing the urgency of “securing and improving” Medicare to avert a meltdown. His budget slows the growth in Medicare spending by trimming what hospitals and other institutions are paid. Another change will allow knee replacements to be performed at ambulatory surgery centers, which are lower-cost. The idea is to stretch the money in the Medicare Insurance Fund and make it last longer. Predictably, Trump’s political opponents are trying to torpedo his efforts. A new digital ad by the Democratic-leaning group Priorities USA in battleground states like Michigan claims Trump is cutting Medicare “just to pay for tax cuts for billionaires.” It’s a blatant lie, and even the left-leaning Washington Post and PolitiFact admit that. Medicare Part A is funded through a payroll tax paid by employers and employees. As soon as the tax is collected, it’s spent. Today’s workers and employers fund health care for today’s seniors. Trouble is, there are too many boomers retiring, compared with the number of workers paying the tab. Economists have predicted the shortfall for years. During the 2012 presidential election, when Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan proposed Medicare reform, Democrats ran a TV ad depicting Ryan gruesomely rolling a wheelchair-bound granny off a cliff. The bitter lesson was that demagoguery works. Don’t level with voters about the problem. Just make big, impossible promises...  https://spectator.org/democrats-to-seniors-drop-dead/?utm_source=American%20Spectator%20Emails&utm_campaign=df0dac76f6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_08_07_11_41&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_797a38d487-df0dac76f6-104608113  

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How to Talk to Millennials About Socialism

by Ben Wilterdink

{ blog.independent.org } ~ By now it is largely considered common knowledge that American Millennials are more enamored with socialism than previous generations... While cutoff points vary, Millennials are most  commonly understood as the generation of those born between 1981 and 1996—meaning that, as of 2019, Millennials range in age from as old as 38 to as young as 23. Poll after poll has found that this generation is increasingly skeptical of capitalism and more open to trying socialism. While those headline findings don’t quite present a full and accurate picture of what’s going on, the trend is concerning, and should spur those of us who value a system of government that recognizes individual rights, human dignity, and the power of mutually beneficial voluntary exchange to be ready to defend those principles in the public square. While it is true that many, or even most, Millennials tell pollsters that they prefer socialism over capitalism, this finding obscures the fact that many don’t really understand what those terms mean. A March 2019  Harris Poll, reported by Axios, shows that nearly 50 percent of Millennials and G-Zers (the generation born after 1996) would prefer to live in a socialist country. Other polls have shown similar interest in socialism among younger Americans. Despite these dismal poll results, a 2018 Gallup poll found that only 17 percent of respondents defined socialism as government ownership of the means of production. The same poll reported that a higher percentage of respondents (23 percent) considered socialism to mean some form of equality. Regardless of what this misunderstanding might reflect about the state of education in America, there are some good reasons why Millennials might be confused. This is a generation that mostly grew up after the cold war had ended and entirely missed the Reagan era. Instead, this generation came of age during the economic downturn of 2008 and witnessed the corporate bailouts that followed. They then watched as right-leaning pundits attacked many of President scumbag/liar-nObama’s initiatives as “socialist” even though none of them actually handed over permanent control of business to the government. Finally, first Candidate then President Donald Trump, was hailed by many as the capitalist answer to the growing popularity of socialism on the political left, even as he promised tighter restrictions on international trade. All this has left Millennials with a very confused picture of what capitalism and socialism actually are, an opening that radical left politicians like commie-Bernie Sanders and commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been quick to exploit. Going beyond these labels, however, there are some trends that should provide reason for optimism. A 2016 Gallup survey found that 98 percent of 18 to 29 year olds had a favorable opinion of small business and 90 percent had favorable opinions of entrepreneurs. Furthermore, Millennials are excited by the possibilities of technology and innovation to improve people’s lives. These are points of agreement that serve as helpful starting points in any conversation about the drawbacks of socialism or the merits of free enterprise...

https://blog.independent.org/2019/07/19/how-to-talk-to-millennials-about-socialism/  

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Facing Extinction in Iraq, Can Christians 

Hope for Aid from the West?

By EDWARD CLANCY

{ nationalreview.com } ~ In the night of August 6, 2014, ISIS fighters swept through northern Iraq’s Nineveh Plains and drove more than 120,000 Christians into exile in Kurdistan... Five years later, ISIS has been ousted, and a measure of stability has returned to the region. With ISIS defeated, 40,000 Christians have returned to their ancient homeland, repopulating nine historically Christian towns. Overall, about 250,000 remain in Iraq, down from 1.5 million in 2003, on the eve of the U.S. invasion. For the moment, they are safe, but Sunni Muslims and Iran-backed militias have designs on their land and property. The U.S. has pledged to channel significant USAID funding to faith-based organizations on the ground that help to oversee the rebuilding of homes, schools, and hospitals as well as of water and electricity infrastructures and to make vital repairs. In order to further stabilize the region and increase economic opportunity, funds must be disbursed quickly. One of Iraq’s most prominent Christian leaders has deeper concerns. On the fifth anniversary of the ISIS invasion of northern Iraq, Bashar Warda of the Chaldean Catholic archdiocese of Erbil, Kurdistan, stresses that “Christianity in Iraq is perilously close to extinction.” The Church in Erbil has cared for the exiled families from the Nineveh Plains for almost three years. In an interview with Aid to the Church in Need, Archbishop Warda insists that the ISIS atrocities are part of “the recurring cycle of violence targeting Christians in the Middle East for more than 1,400 years.” From the beginning of Islam in the seventh century, whether Christians and other non-Muslims “were to be tolerated and to what degree” depended on the “judgment and whim” of particular rulers, Warda explains. In the end, Christians were tolerated or not “depending upon the intensity of the prevailing jihadi spirit.” The archbishop notes that even during the Arab Golden Age, from the eighth to the 14th centuries, which was “built on Chaldean and Syriac scholarship” and marked by rich Muslim–Christian dialogue, “it was never a question of equality” between Christians and Muslims.  The horrors of ISIS have “shocked the conscience” of the Islamic world. What remains to be seen, says Warda, is whether “Islam will continue on its current political trajectory, in which sharia law is the basis for civil law and nearly every aspect of life is circumscribed by religion, or whether a more civil, tolerant movement will develop.” On that score, recent alarming reports have circulated that the Iraqi parliament is due to vote on a provision to appoint mullahs as judges, with the prospect that sharia law will override secular laws that are in conflict with it...

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/christians-iraq-face-extinction-can-they-hope-for-aid-from-west/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202019-08-06&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart  

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The Trade War Isn’t The Only 

Reason For The Dow’s Big Drop 

By Willis L. Krumholz

{ thefederalist.com } ~ Last week, President Trump threatened to place a 10 percent tariff on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports on September 1 unless trade talks with China showed more sign of progress... Already, America has tariffed $250 billion of Chinese imports at 25 percent, and if tariffs are placed on the $300 billion basket of goods, this would increase tariffs on all Chinese imports to the United States. President Trump is unhappy that talks last week in Beijing between Chinese officials and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin broke down. He’s also unhappy that China hasn’t followed through on a promise to purchase more U.S. agriculture goods, like soybeans, in exchange for the United States allowing our chipmakers think Intel and Qualcomm to supply chips to Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications giant. There are risks to the president’s strategy. While the trade war has yet to significantly affect U.S. consumers, global business sentiment has been negatively affected as global supply chains have been upended, and the $300 billion basket of goods to potentially be tariffed next month is much more consumer-oriented than the $250 billion basket already tariffed. China can also attempt to retaliate, even though its ability to do so is limited because it doesn’t buy that many American goods. And even China’s tariffs on U.S. agriculture are more complicated than the media would have you believe. For example, China restricted U.S. pork imports since 2011 by spuriously claiming U.S. pork is unsafe. And because African swine fever (ASF) is wiping out China’s pig population, and pigs eat soybean meal, China is demanding less soybeans generally, even from Brazil. But the one channel where China could “retaliate” was in their currency rate, because a weaker Chinese currency helps keep Chinese goods attractive to American buyers, despite higher tariffs. China’s currency, called either the yuan or the renminbi (RMB), is pegged by the Chinese central bank the People’s Bank of China, or the PBOC to a basket of currencies, chiefly the dollar. The PBOC usually moves the peg higher or lower as it pleases, but market forces also push and pull on it. It is harder for the PBOC to fight the market on a prolonged basis, especially when the RMB wants to move lower. In years past, China used its peg to suppress its currency value even as it ran huge trade surpluses. In a free market, China’s currency value would rise over time due to the world buying its goods, yet China instead printed RMB and sat on the dollars it received. The RMB printing caused bubbles in China, and sitting on the dollars kept China’s exports super-competitive, by keeping China’s wages artificially low in U.S. dollar terms...

https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/07/trade-war-isnt-reason-dows-big-drop/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=da264a125d-RSS_The_Federalist_Daily_Updates_w_Transom&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-da264a125d-83771801  

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ass Shootings in Gun-Free Zones

by GEORGE PARRY

{spectator.org} ~Consider this excerpt from the “manifesto” issued by the shooter who murdered 22 people Saturday in an El Paso, Texas, Walmart store... Remember: it is not cowardly to pick low hanging fruit. AKA (sic) Don’t attack heavily guarded areas to fulfll (sic) your super soldier COD Call of Duty first person shooter video game fantasy. Attack low security targets. Even though you might out gun a security guard or police man, they likely beat you in armor, training and numbers. Do not throw away your life on an unnecessarily dangerous target. If a target seems too hot, live to fight another day. According to ABC News, El Paso law enforcement officials advise that, moments before his killing rampage, the shooter cased the Walmart “looking for Mexicans.” While that may be so, it is nevertheless true that, consistent with his “manifesto,” his recon was also calculated to make sure that he would be attacking in a low-security area. In that regard, the Walmart store had no armed security guard, no police presence, and was located in a shopping mall that was a self-proclaimed “gun-free zone.” Similarly, in the Dayton, Ohio, mass shooting on Sunday, which immediately followed the El Paso murders, the victims were attacked as they exited a nightspot that was a gun-free zone. And, in the Garlic Festival shootings in Gilroy, California last week, the victims were trapped inside a fenced area after going through metal detectors to make sure that they were disarmed. The shooter avoided the metal detectors by cutting through the fence and then attacking a victim pool that the Gilroy authorities had rendered incapable of defending themselves. So it is that these most recent massacres share the one common element of almost all mass casualty shootings: gun-free zones. According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, between 1950 and 2018 97.8 percent of all mass public shootings occurred in gun-free zones. Similarly, in the 20 states that allow teachers to be armed, there have been no school shootings as well as no accidents or injuries caused by firearms possessed by teachers. In addition to the El Paso shooter’s “manifesto,” there is abundant anecdotal evidence that mass casualty shooters prefer gun-free zones. For example, in 2016, Dearborn Heights, Michigan, ISIS supporter Khalil Abu Rayyan had an online discussion with an undercover FBI agent in which he discussed his plan for a “martyrdom operation” by attacking a Detroit church. He told the agent that this would be an easy target because “people are not allowed to carry guns in church.” Fortunately, Abu Rayyan was arrested before he could achieve martyrdom. Similarly, in 2015, Elliot Rodger murdered six people in a Santa Barbara, California, gun-free zone. In his 141-page “manifesto,” he explained that in planning his attack he had decided against launching it in other locations where someone with a gun might be present to cut short his killing spree... Do you dems hear this?

https://spectator.org/mass-shootings-in-gun-free-zones/?utm_source=American%20Spectator%20Emails&utm_campaign=df0dac76f6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_08_07_11_41&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_797a38d487-df0dac76f6-104608113  

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Warning! Coming to a Republican District Near You!

Mark Alexander

 

{patriotpost.us} ~Recently, there was a “near miss” in the conservative state of Tennessee. It involved our second-largest conservative county — and it exposed a well-planned strategy by a socialist cadre of outside “community organizers” endeavoring to turn a Republican congressional district Democrat. They didn’t conjure this up on their own.

The template for their activity is one being tested in other Republican districts across the nation by organizations with different names but similar goals. These efforts are modeled after the “Rules for Radicals” framework established by the original “community organizer,” Saul Alinsky. They are dark-money funded indirectly by leftists like scumbag-George Soros and his ultra-wealthy “Archenemies of Liberty,” including Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, and Jeff Bezos.

That leftist club, and its Democrat Party collective of congressional socialists, has been busy with a visible campaign to rig electoral demographics state by state, dispensing with the Electoral College in order to guarantee the perpetuity of leftist rule.

But the Left is also engaged in a much more subversive strategy to transform our constitutional republic into a permanent populist democracy: a district-by-district strategy.

In Tennessee, a group of former Obama “organizers” emerged from their rat holes after Donald Trump’s  unexpected defeat of scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton in 2016. Trump won Tennessee by 61% to scumbag/liar-Clinton’s 35%, which put the state directly in the Left’s crosshairs. Since then, pockets of leftist activists have worked to erode conservative districts — one by one. The template they are utilizing to achieve that goal is being propagated in at least four other Republican-controlled states right now, in preparation for rolling it out nationwide.

The Left’s first Tennessee target is the 3rd District held by my Republican friend, Chuck Fleischmann. While neighboring Knox County (Knoxville) in the 2nd District mirrored the statewide results for Trump in 2016, Hamilton County’s Trump support was softer, 55% Trump to 39% scumbag/liar-Clinton. Thus, the 3rd District became their test bed.

What follows is a profile of how these leftists embedded themselves in this district, ingratiated themselves with the wealthiest community liberals and their influential foundations, and set about to ultimately, turn the district from right to left. If you live in or near a marginal Republican congressional district, look for a similar quiet but invasive pattern of infiltration. If it’s not already in that district, it’s coming.

The largest urban center in the 3rd District is Chattanooga. That city is now controlled by a wealthy leftist Democrat, Andy Berke. He had set his political sites on the Senate seat that will be vacated by Lamar Alexander in 2020 — until Berke’s alleged “affairs with multiple female subordinates” derailed those plans. While Hamilton County repeatedly ranks at the top of national lists for beauty and recreational activity, under Berke’d Demo administration, Chattanooga’s management ranking has dropped precipitously, now dragging bottom at number 147 out of 150.

Unlike Chattanooga, Hamilton County’s school board and commission was controlled by conservatives ahead of the 2018 election — until a group of Berke-backed community organizers from Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s political machine set up shop in Chattanooga. They founded a thinly veiled political front called “UnifiEd” and set about their first task of unseating conservatives on the county school board and commission — stepping stones to 3rd District control.

Like so many malignant leftist initiatives, UnifiEd was, ostensibly, established “for the children” and promised to “improve education.” I mean, we’re all “for the children,” right?

That’s how these organizers and their benefactors, the latter themselves being the beneficiaries of generational wealth and privilege, attracted large donations from many unsuspecting marks and local foundations to fund their nefarious political charade. While their wealthy leftist backers knew exactly what they were funding, many of the donors to whom they provided access, did not.

UnifiEd parlayed its wealthy leftist connections as bona fides for their next asks — legal, but similar to how Ponzi schemes attract investors — often sweeping up unsuspecting donors in the process. And there is now substantial buyer’s remorse among some of those major donors. (You can read more about the UnifiEd organizers here, and how they used their wealthy benefactors’ connections here.)

Notably, it was this same group of wealthy UnifiEd backers who ensured that lower-income families in Hamilton County would not be eligible to participate in Tennessee’s Education Savings Account program — which provides parents of children in failing government schools a $7,000 per-student portable cost equivalent that they could then apply toward the tuition of a non-government school. The UnifiEd backers took this action to make sure that failing public schools wouldn’t be subjected to competition from non-government schools.

When UnifiEd was founded, its board promised, “What we won’t do is endorse individual candidates.”

But after Trump’s election, they knew they had to step up their game. So UnifiEd’s director, former scumbag/liar-nObama for America activist John “Jonas” Barriere, set up a political action committee, UnifiEd Action PAC. According to Barriere, “The goal of the political action committee is to advocate for the work that has traditionally been done by UnifiEd but in a different way.”

Different indeed — they used those funds to support the election of county school-board and commission pawns in order to control those political bodies and thus be able to implement their leftist agenda. And contrary to their original commitment not to endorse candidates, the PAC publicly endorse their slate of candidates. PAC president Lorie Runge claimed their objective was to achieve meaningful change funding candidates “at every level of local office … candidates who are ready to take bold action.” You know, all “for the children…”

Moreover their objective included the longterm control of the Chattanooga/Hamilton County school curriculums. So egregious are their “education initiatives” that this week, even Newsweek magazine published a story about UnifiEd’s mandated “teacher training” on “white privilege,” one segment asserting: “People of color cannot be racist because they lack the institutional power to adversely affect white lives.” This is what the wealthy leftists prescribed for Hamilton County teachers…and of course, some of them are drinking every last drop of the Kool Aid. They in turn, are indoctrinating the students in our county with this garbage – at taxpayer expense.

As for UnifiEd’s small cadre of “student activists” charged with recruiting other students within schools, one of them was arrested on double homicide charges.

Fortunately, a small group of conservatives in Chattanooga shed light on UnifiEd strategic agenda — better late than never! Consequently, the organization’s first big post-2018 goal, a $34 million “education” tax increase proposal for non-classroom personnel, was  defeated by the Hamilton County commission in June of this year — after a couple of commissioners finally figured out UnifiEd was serving as the de facto political arm for a handful of wealthy leftists who are directors on the boards of three local foundations.

Now, scumbag/liar-nObama’s well-funded socialists and their wealthy benefactors are licking their wounds – and plotting their next move.

In retrospect, it is notable that the Hamilton County Republican Party was not engaged in an ideological or political battle with UnifiEd. They had become complacent as is the case in many “safe” conservative districts and were totally unprepared for how this group of leftists operated — not only working wealthy liberals and foundations but recruiting and training activists with the most up-to-date strategies.

If these leftist cadres haven’t yet infiltrated a Republican district near you, consider the template they deployed here — using the “for the children” mantra to take over governing bodies as a step toward both controlling the future of your children’s education, and the broader goal of controlling that district. There are no safe conservative districts any longer, and conservatives in those districts need to become activists!

Note: Because The Patriot Post operates on a very tight budget, both in terms of manpower and financial resources, our editorial and publishing efforts would suffer if individual staff members took time off at multiple times throughout the year. Thus, we take a break and cease our operations for a week in August to provide all of our editorial staff with the same week off. As always, I thank you for partnering with us in support of Liberty. Your  steadfast support helps us to secure the blessings of Liberty in our day and extend it to the next generation. We’ll be back on our regular publication schedule on Monday, August 12. Until then, on behalf of your Patriot Post team and National Advisory Committee, thank you for standing on so many fronts in defense of Liberty!

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/64710-warning-coming-to-a-republican-district-near-you