TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
The Power of Economic Pollaganda
Nate Jackson
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Trump pulls back troops from northern Syria
ahead of Turkish assault, Pentagon
officials 'blindsided'
By Edmund DeMarche, Lucas Tomlinson, Jennifer Griffin
{ foxnews.com } ~ The White House announced late Sunday that Turkey will soon move forward with a planned military operation in northeast Syria... as U.S. troops who have been deployed and operating with Kurdish-led forces in the area began pulling back from their positions. The decision sent shockwaves through the region and Washington, with U.S. officials telling Fox News that top Pentagon officials were “completely blindsided” and “shocked” by the order to pull back hundreds of U.S. troops, a move that effectively green-lights the Turkey operation. President Trump spoke with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan by telephone. Some officials see the move as a betrayal of the Kurds, whom the U.S. supported against ISIS for years. Speaking on "Fox & Friends" Monday morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called it an "impulsive decision" by Trump that would undo U.S. gains in the region and give ISIS fighters a "second lease on life." He tweeted: "If press reports are accurate this is a disaster in the making." But Trump vociferously defended the decision in a string of tweets early Monday morning, saying the ISIS "Caliphate" has been defeated and lamenting that the U.S. was in the region years longer than planned. Reprising the rhetoric on foreign wars he has often used on the campaign trail, he described the fight as a regional conflict for Turkey and other countries to wage -- not America's problem. "The United States was supposed to be in Syria for 30 days, that was many years ago. We stayed and got deeper and deeper into battle with no aim in sight. When I arrived in Washington, ISIS was running rampant in the area. We quickly defeated 100% of the ISIS Caliphate," he said....
John Solomon to join Fox News as contributor
by Mike Brest
{ washingtonexaminer.com } ~ Journalist John Solomon has joined Fox News as a contributor, the Washington Examiner learned Saturday. Fox News confirmed the recent hire... Solomon, who recently announced his departure from the Hill newspaper and the Hill.TV brand to start his own media firm, will make his debut as a contributor during the prime-time hours Monday night. He has recently made headlines with his reporting on former Vice President loose lips liar-Joe Biden and his connection to Ukraine. Prior to that, he gained notoriety for his reporting on the Trump-Russia collusion theory and for his frequent appearances on Sean Hannity's show on Fox News. Prior to his time at the Hill, Solomon spent time as an investigative reporter for the Associated Press and spent the past decade with the Washington Times. He also started Circa, was president of Packard Media Group, and headed the Center for Public Integrity, a group that investigates politicians and funding. Solomon also spent time as an investigative reporter at the Washington Post before he was named executive editor of the Washington Times in 2008. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/john-solomon-to-join-fox-news-as-contributor .
Trump vs. dinky-Warren: Trump Builds,
dinky-Warren Destroys
By Jeffrey Folks
{ americanthinker.com } ~ President Trump's vision of our country is America First. Unlike all presidents of the past 30 years, Donald Trump is not afraid of saying he puts his own people first. Everything he does is in the interest of ordinary Americans... The policy of America First rejects the globalist and universalist policies of the past that saw America as just one nation among others — and a guilty and undeserving nation at that. The low point in this anti-American era was President scumbag/liar-nObama's apology tour of 2009, during which he traveled to Europe and the Middle East apologizing for everything America had done in the past and promising that we would do better in the future. They loved it in Berlin and Cairo, places where they do not love America and where they do not share our fundamental values of individual liberty. scumbag/liar-nObama spoke the words that other nations wanted to hear, and he spoke them because he shared their disdain. He believed that America needed to be "transformed" from what it had been in the past. That kind of antagonism toward America is shared by Elizabeth dinky-Warren today. She does not speak with awe of the Greatest Generation that saved the world from fascism and communism. Nor does she celebrate the greatness of our capitalist economy, the sanctity of life, the Second Amendment, the right of religious expression in the public sphere, the need for a strong military and police force including ICE, the crucial role of the family, or even the debt we owe to our legal immigrants. Instead, dinky-Warren is pushing the transformation of America farther. Her official website offers no fewer than 46 "plans" for changing America. It says nothing about preserving what is good about our country. dinky-Warren's plans range from the familiar "protecting a woman's right to choose" to "100% clean energy for America." They cover every politically correct topic, from "LGBTQ+ rights" to "A fair and welcoming immigration system" — welcoming those who cross illegally? When one digs into her "plans," they come down to a familiar, even trite recitation of progressive causes — call it scumbag/liar-nObama on steroids. dinky-Warren offers nothing that is different — only more of what didn't work in the past. dinky-Warren's plan for "gun safety," for example, involves familiar ideas for restrictions on gun ownership: universal background checks, extended waiting periods, and bans on sales to many classes of individuals. It goes even farther by "holding gun companies accountable" for crimes involving use of their weapons — in effect, forcing them into bankruptcy. And it promises investigations that would weaken the NRA as well. Democrats have always run with promises of free cash, and dinky-Warren's plan for Social Security is not at all different. It includes an immediate increase of $2,400 per year in benefits to all recipients, plus "even greater" increases for "people of color" and "women and caregivers, low-income workers, public sector workers, students and job-seekers, and people with disabilities." Everyone gets an extra raise except those who have worked and paid in most of their lives....
What Iran's Friends Are Doing in Gaza
by Khaled Abu Toameh
{ gatestoneinstitute.org } ~ As Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations pursue their efforts to spare the two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip another war with Israel... the Islamic Jihad organization is promising its people more suffering, violence and bloodshed. The terrorist organization is also promising to continue the fight until it achieves its goal of annihilating Israel. The Iranian-funded Islamic Jihad's latest pledges came as the organization, the second largest group in the Gaza Strip after Hamas, celebrated this week the 32nd anniversary of its founding. Tens of thousands of Palestinians participated in a major Islamic Jihad rally in Gaza City under the banner "Our Jihad holy war – The Promise Will Soon Be Fulfilled." The promise, of course, refers to Islamic Jihad's pledge to "liberate Palestine, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River – a well-known euphemism for the destruction of Israel. Particularly disturbing is that a large number of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, an enclave often described as suffering from a high percentage of poverty and unemployment, continue to support Islamic Jihad, one of the organizations there that has done nothing to improve the living conditions of its people. Their hatred for Israel seems to be stronger than any wish to better their situation by revolting against failed Palestinian leaders and groups. Islamic Jihad has, since its establishment, brought on Palestinians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip nothing but misery, destruction and death. During the Second Intifada, which erupted in September 2000, Islamic Jihad and its military wing, Al-Quds Brigades, took credit for killing dozens of Israelis in more than 60 terror attacks. Since 2008, Islamic Jihad has fired thousands of rockets and mortars from the Gaza Strip into Israel, killing and wounding several Israelis. According to Iran's state-run Press TV, Islamic Jihad terrorists fired 3,000 rockets at Israel during the 2014 Israel-Hamas war. After the war ended, the Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera TV network broadcast a video of Islamic Jihad's tunnel systems. In the video, an Islamic Jihad member declares that the organization is preparing for its next war with Israel and that the tunnels will be used to launch terror attacks and mortars on Israel... https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14961/iran-friends-gaza .
commie-Sanders’ Inequality Tax Trap
by Aparna Mathur
{ forbes.com } ~ Senator commie-Bernie Sanders has a new tax plan to tackle income inequality. Specifically, it requires increasing the top marginal corporate tax rate on companies... by anywhere between half a percentage point to 5 percentage points, depending upon the ratio of CEO pay to median worker wages within that company. The tax hike would apply to all companies with annual revenues of more than $100 million. Even privately held corporations would have to disclose the pay gap information. Here’s why this plan could exacerbate income inequality. The first problem with the proposal is that it calls for a hike in the corporate tax rate rather than a direct increase in personal income taxes on executives. The simple reasoning is that companies that pay their CEOs much more than the typical worker need to be penalized, as the typical workers’ wages compare unfavorably with those of top executives. But who would a higher corporate tax rate actually punish? While people often assume that higher corporate rates directly hurt CEOS and executives, academic research on this topic is mixed. The extent of the burden on workers varies across studies, but nearly all studies show that higher corporate taxes do adversely affect workers. A 2017 study for Germany finds that, on average, 51 percent of the corporate tax burden is passed onto workers. How does the burden of corporate taxes get passed to workers? As companies face higher tax rates, they are less likely to invest in physical capital, which leads to lower worker productivity and lower worker wages. Of course, some share of the tax burden is likely to be borne by consumers and shareholders as well, in the form of higher prices and lower returns on stocks. In its recent report on the distributional effects of Trump’s tax reform bill of 2017 the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the Joint Committee on Taxation assumes that workers bear 25 percent of the corporate tax burden, while capital bears 75 percent. Given the preponderance of evidence that there is in fact a burden on workers, this should give policymakers pause when proposing such penalties on companies. A policy that results in lower wages for average workers, and lower levels of physical capital investment, is likely to further exacerbate inequality, in direct contrast to the intended aim of the policy....
liar-Nancy Pelosi's Prayers
By T.R. Clancy
{ americanthinker.com } ~ An ardent, prayerful, and moral liar-Nancy Pelosi has been called from sitting for her holy-card portrait to lend her aid in getting the president impeached — and the nation torn apart in the process... She's been on TV constantly, lecturing America that it's the moral burden of Democrats to undo the 2016 election by any means necessary. The Constitution, she keeps saying, demands it. She just never mentions where. But even as she expends herself, Mother Teresa–like, for the good of humanity on the impeachment crusade, she can still serve other mission fields as well. Take last week, when she fellowshipped with the saints at Planned Parenthood, telling them how "Republicans 'ignore basic morality'" with their bans on partial-birth abortions and infanticide. Such bans are immoral, she says, because they violate what else? the Constitution, and "every woman, everywhere has the constitutional and moral right to basic reproductive health care." And what more basic reproductive health care does every pregnant mother need than a grisly procedure that will stop her pregnancy dead — literally? It's strange that 93% of OB-GYNs so immorally fail to provide their patients with this most basic reproductive health procedure. Are they all Republicans? For a while now, the word "moral," or some form of it, has been liar-Pelosi's go-to word. Trump's efforts to secure the border are "immoral," but we're not sure why. All restrictions on abortion are immoral, but liar-Pelosi never offers to explain how. Now impeaching Trump is a moral imperative — but she can't say where the virtue is in it. Now it seems that "prayer" is crowding out "moral" for the favorite spot. Like how liar-Pelosi is now saying she's "heartbroken and prayerful" that House Democrats have no choice but to drag the nation through an impeachment. Since last Saturday, she's been repeating all over friendly media, in reference to her and her exultant accomplices' current attack on the president, that "there is no joy in this." If she really finds no joy in it, it may be because her more intelligent advisers — or maybe the Angel Gabriel — warned her that it's an exploding cigar, lit and planted by her out-of-control caucus right between her own sacred lips. And is liar-Nancy genuinely heartbroken over this? Then what's with the permanent sickly smile? Why do I sense that if she really believed that impeaching Trump was going to be a slam-dunk, she'd be performing some pigeon-like jig on the Capitol steps? Still she intones, "We must be somber, we must be prayerful and we must pursue the facts further to make a decision as to, Did this violate the Constitution of the United States? Which I believe it did."....
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The Power of Economic Pollaganda
Nate Jackson: The Leftmedia’s relentless warnings about economic decline is yielding the desired “pollaganda effect.” According to CNBC (not our first choice for objective economic analysis), “Americans’ attitudes toward the economy took a sharp turn downward in the third quarter, the lowest level of optimism in three years.” Moreover, “With only 23% expecting the economy to improve and 32% believing it will get worse, the poll marks the first time in the Trump presidency that economic pessimism outstrips optimism.” Even worse for President Donald Trump, “50% now disapprov[e] of his handling of the economy, the worst of his presidency.”
Mission accomplished? In order to win in 2020, Democrats are hoping for a recession they can blame on Trump. The way to achieve that is through media reports of a weak economy, followed by polls to gauge how well Americans have digested that incessant reporting. Then media outlets report on the polls to convince even more consumers that the economy is weak because their fellow Americans think so. And so the churn goes.
Frankly, though, Trump’s economic approval rating has as much to do with the Democrats’ impeachment charade as Leftmedia economic pollaganda.
How is the economy actually doing? Reasonably well. It’s true that GDP growth slowed to about 2% in 2019 after hitting 3% during 2018 for the first time in a decade. It’s also true that Trump’s tariffs are a burden on the economy (albeit a means to a desirable end). Yet consumer spending remains healthy, leading to a higher trade deficit in August.
Meanwhile, September jobs numbers came in at 136,000, slightly lower than expected, but numbers for the last two months were significantly revised upward. For perspective, however, headline unemployment is at just 3.5%, the lowest since December 1969. The fuller measure of unemployment fell from 7.2% in August to 6.9% in September. (The all-time low is 6.8%.) National Review adds, “Hispanic unemployment fell to 3.9 percent, setting a record low, while black unemployment remained at a record-low 5.5 percent.” Those rates aren’t dropping because people are leaving the workforce, either, which is what happened under Barack scumbag/liar-nObama. It’s somewhat tough to add jobs when most everyone who wants one has one. The slowdown in hiring likely has a cooling effect on GDP as well, but that doesn’t mean neither are healthy.
Economic health is dependent on consumer confidence, which is shaped by media reporting. That’s why Democrats and their Leftmedia super PAC want Americans to see not a solid economy but one teetering on the brink of recession. If that pans out, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy and help defeat Trump in 2020. ~The Patriot Post
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