Friday PM ~ TheFrontPageCover

[Rudy Tirre]

TheFrontPageCover

~ Featuring ~  

Liberty v. Socialism: Trump on Foreign 

and Domestic Socialists

by Mark Alexander  

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Sloshed on spending

by Corie Whalen

{washingtonexaminer.com} ~ On Tax Day 2009, I stood on the banks of Boston Harbor clutching a bullhorn. I was mad as hell at both parties for the infamous Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP... bailout of the big banks and concerned that Democratic control of the White House and both houses of Congress would be disastrous. At the time, I was head of my alma mater’s College Republicans. My goal was to move the GOP in a libertarian direction. I was sure a generational shift was just around the corner. Ten years on, it’s easy to see that hasn’t happened, especially on government spending. On Feb. 12, the national debt surpassed $22 trillion for the first time ever. When I started organizing with the Tea Party a decade ago it was $12 trillion. Yet it’s also become clear why  the budget hawks never had our day. It’s a story of false dawn after false dawn. When the Tea Party movement began, we felt it was an idea whose time had come. I immediately got on board to organize, hoping my instincts about that shift would prove prescient. Perhaps others were as upset about bailouts and cronyism as I was! It sure seemed like it on that chilly April day, rallying a crowd of hundreds to the cause of limited government. Though they recognized then-President Barack scumbag/liar-nObama was a threat to fiscal restraint, they also seemed to understand that we had to elect Republicans serious about opposing scumbag/liar-nObama’s spending policies, not those who offered up watered-down versions of the same agenda. I was so optimistic, especially as Tea Party Republicans like my then-future, now-former boss Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., began to win their primaries. Granted, I was only 22. But what some might call naivete, I believed was idealism. Ten years later and $10 trillion more in debt, I found myself asking: What happened?...

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/sloshed-with-spending?utm_source=WEX_News%20Brief_02/20/2019&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WEX_News%20Brief

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dirty cop-Mueller’s ‘Foreign Agent’

Prosecutions May Lead to Probes

of Green Groups

by Kevin Mooney

{dailysignal.com} ~ By invoking a law regulating foreign agents to pursue prosecution of former Trump campaign officials, special counsel dirty cop-Robert Mueller opened the door to more intense scrutiny of some U.S. environmental groups... according to legal analysts who say China and Russia use such groups to influence America’s energy policy. But these legal analysts said they also see a danger that dirty cop-Mueller’s Russia investigation could set a precedent for the Justice Department to “selectively enforce” the Foreign Agents Registration Act in a manner that undermines the rule of law and potentially jeopardizes national security. The Trump administration, they say, should closely examine the relationship between environmental advocacy groups and foreign governments that are considered strategic competitors of the U.S. “If the dirty cop-Mueller probe has any real benefit, it is that it opened the door for the Justice Department to employ FARA as a basis to investigate green groups that are undermining our country and aiding socialist/communist regimes,” lawyer Mark Fitzgibbons told The Daily Signal. Because these same environmental groups persistently lobby for policy changes to restrict U.S. energy use and the projection of U.S. military power, the groups may operate at the direction and encouragement of hostile foreign actors, Fitzgibbons and other reform proponents argue...

https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/02/20/muellers-foreign-agent-prosecutions-may-lead-to-probes-of-green-groups/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTldFMk1HSXhZamxtTnpsbCIsInQiOiJBaEJTQ3JMUmludyswVzcrODhPMlh4SUN5NnVJdHM4cGN5NU9McnkzUDR2MnFrdUViT1ZJeU0xUXhyeU90OFwvYUtTY05WbUpcL05JQTlsV1hYWTIreEIzeGtZZUtcL0JpZ2FiNVp2dFdIZlJqcXd3c2RscVkzQnJ6NlhyN0M0akVuYSJ9

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Iran launches large-scale maritime 

war games in the Persian Gulf     

by Anna Ahronheim

{jpost.com} ~ With tensions high between Israel and Iran, the Islamic Republic began an annual week-long naval war games in the Persian Gulf and strategic Strait of Hormuz... The Commander of Iran’s Army Navy, Rr.-Adm. Hossein Khanzadi was quoted by Iran’s Mehr News Agency as saying the large-scale maritime drill, dubbed “Velayat-97,” would begin two kilometers from the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf of Oman, and continue to 10 degrees north of the Indian Ocean.The games “aims for training naval plans to deal with any external threats, displaying power, assessing the equipment, the level of preparedness and accountability of the navy, and declaring readiness to achieve collective security in open waters,” Khanzadi was quoted as saying. The drill is expected to have four stages, in which it will see submarines, warships, helicopters and surveillance planes take part in the drill. The drill will reportedly also include missile launches from naval vessels. Iran has been working to upgrade its navy, acquiring new vessels and submarines to bolster its aging fleet. Last week, the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy announced the launch of its first indigenously developed submarine capable of firing cruise missiles...

https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Iran-launches-large-scale-maritime-war-games-in-the-Persian-Gulf-581323

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commie-Ocasio-Cortez Boyfriend Troubles

Reveal the Corruption at the Heart

of Her Campaign

by Tyler O'Neil

{pjmedia.com} ~ Last week, an enterprising conservative political consultant unearthed evidence that Rep. commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) may have hired her boyfriend, Riley Roberts, to work in Congress... This news actually unraveled a far bigger story of corruption, however. As it turns out, a political group helping commie-Ocasio-Cortez's campaign had already paid Roberts during the campaign — and those payments from that shady organization may be the reason commie-Ocasio-Cortez is in Congress today. On Wednesday, Luke Thompson, a podcast host and former staffer for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), shared some damning research into commie-Ocasio-Cortez's campaign. He discovered more about the relationship between Riley Roberts and the campaign, but he also unearthed a humongous corruption story. Luke Thompson had originally unearthed the central piece of evidence tying commie-Ocasio-Cortez's congressional office to Riley Roberts — her boyfriend's official congressional staff email. In the wake of this news, some people noticed that the commie-Ocasio-Cortez campaign paid Roberts $1,750, but Thompson insisted this was only "a means of keeping accounting in order." During the first half of 2018, the boyfriend volunteered with the campaign, and his efforts were classified as an in-kind contribution. This is normal.Two far more conspicuous payments to Roberts came in 2017, however. Those involved Brand New Congress, an organization founded and run by Saikat Chakrabarti, who happens to be commie-Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff. Chakrabarti founded Brand New Congress in 2017. "It’s a rather ingenious organization, but one that dwells in a legal gray-area as far as campaign finance law is concerned," Luke Thompson reported...  https://pjmedia.com/trending/ocasio-cortez-boyfriend-troubles-reveal-the-corruption-at-the-heart-of-her-campaign/?utm_source=PJMCoffeeBreak&utm_medium=email&utm_term=February2019

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Talk grows that Trump will fire Dan Coats

by Morgan Chalfant and Jacquline Thomsen

{thehill.com} ~ Some close to the White House believe that Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats may soon be ousted as President Trump’s top intelligence official... a move that would draw ire from Capitol Hill and likely raise new concerns about the administration’s national security apparatus. The latest speculation around Coats’s potential dismissal comes just weeks after the director of national intelligence (DNI) testified in a high-profile congressional hearing that North Korea is “unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons” amid talks between Trump and the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un. Longtime Trump confidant Christopher Ruddy this week raised the possibility the president could remove Coats from his post, asserting in a CNN interview that there is “general disappointment” with him at the White House, and that he overstepped his bounds by trying to “make policy and not inform policy.” A former Trump administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Hill, “There is a growing sense in the administration that Coats’s days are numbered.” When asked by a reporter Tuesday if he had any plans to replace Coats, Trump said, "I haven’t even thought about it."...

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/430787-talk-grows-that-trump-will-fire-dan-coats
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Liberty v. Socialism: Trump on Foreign 

and Domestic Socialists

by Mark Alexander:  “We must make our election between economy and Liberty, or profusion and servitude.” —Thomas Jefferson (1816)

It is no coincidence that on the day after Donald Trump delivered an address on socialism to Americans of Venezuelan descent, socialist Sen. commie-Bernie Sanders announced another presidential bid.

commie-Sanders, who, along with his Millennial protégé  commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is the leader of the Left’s socialism denial movement, proclaimed a few years ago, “The American dream is more apt to be realized in … Venezuela.” He added, “Who’s the banana republic now?”

The answer to that question — drum roll please: Venezuela!

In his remarks, President Trump offered this assessment:

Not long ago, Venezuela was the wealthiest nation, by far, in South America. But years of socialist rule have brought this once-thriving nation to the brink of ruin. … In other words, the socialists have done in Venezuela all of the same things that socialists, communists, totalitarians have done everywhere that they’ve had a chance to rule. The results have been catastrophic.

Almost 90% of Venezuelans now live in poverty. … Crippling shortages of food and medicine plague the country. Socialism has so completely ravaged this great country that even the world’s largest reserves of oil are no longer enough to keep the lights on. … The twilight hour of socialism has arrived in our hemisphere and, frankly, in many, many places around the world. The days of socialism and communism are numbered not only in Venezuela, but in Nicaragua and in Cuba as well.

Socialism promises prosperity, but it delivers poverty. Socialism promises unity, but it delivers hatred and it delivers division. Socialism promises a better future, but it always returns to the darkest chapters of the past. … Socialism is a sad and discredited ideology rooted in the total ignorance of history and human nature, which is why socialism, eventually, must always give rise to tyranny, which it does.

And to those who would try to impose socialism on the United States, we again deliver a very simple message: America will never be a socialist country. We are born free and we will stay free, now and forever.“

Indeed, as Trump reiterated in his State of the Union earlier this month, "Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. We are born free, and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”

Meanwhile, commie-Sanders and commie-Ocasio-Cortez remain united behind Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. Always endeavoring to incrementally erode American Liberty, they have repackaged the failed old socialist deals as fresh new and improved socialist deals, and their youthful “constituency of dunces” are all in.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/61275?mailing_id=4089&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4089&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body