https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=FW0sy8w23rU&feature=youtu.be
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Brent Bozell laments the fact that more and more Americans no longer express a sense of patriotism and he urges everyone read Mark Levin's new book: "Rediscovering Americanism."
Those who are "extremely proud " Americans has declined to 52% from 70% during the period Obama was president and only 34% of those between 18 and 29 years of age. The former president set the tone through his speeches demeaning America's history , traveling around the world criticizing our nation and attacking our police and various institutions.
Yes, Obama has been successful in transforming America and he continues to do so.
I submit, Obama learned well the Alinsky lessons of how to be a racist while accusing those of racism who disagreed with and/ or opposed him and his radical message(s.)
His anti-Colonial views formed the basis of his attack on "American Exceptionalism." One must never forget the impact Rev. Wright had on Obama and his radicalized wife.
The anti-American transformation continues as the extreme left stoke the flames of hate against Trump. It is there for all to see but effective efforts at intimidation have blinded an increasing segment of our population from connecting the dots.
This is another basis which forms my more dour views of what is eating at the foundations of our Republic. We are destroying ourselves from within because we have been pummeled into believing the "enemy is us." (See 1 below.)
I caught a little of Trump's speech in Poland. Most of what Trump said was worth listening to but his delivery and phrasing takes away from what he says. As an orator he is no Kennedy,
That said, I believe Trump is far more adept at the job of being president and carrying out his commitments than any of his detractors give him credit for accomplishing. I suspect before long Poland will be buying gas from American companies, foregoing being supplied by Russia.
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Advice for Democrats. (See 2 below.)
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Ken Langone, co-founder and financier of Home Depot, discusses the N Korean threat. He is a strong supporter of Trump and believes he could well be a great president. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Maxine Waters is a disgrace and every time she opens her mouth she proves my point. Ben Carson will rip her apart but do it with dignity. (See 4 below.)
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My exact sentiments. (See 5 and 5a below.)
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Horse laugh humor. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1)
Another Mark Levin Best-Seller Spiked
i
By L. Brent Bozell III
Polls out for Independence Day hit a sobering note: Our patriotic feelings are on a steady decline. Gallup found the number of people describing themselves as "extremely proud" Americans has dropped from 70 percent in 2003 to just 52 percent in 2016. Just 34 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 picked "extremely proud."
That's also demonstrated in the latest poll from YouGov, which finds that while 61 percent of people 65 and older describe themselves as "very patriotic," only 20 percent of those under 30 describe themselves as "very patriotic," while 35 percent said they were "not very patriotic" or "not at all patriotic."
Could the days of "Morning in America" be over? Is Ronald Reagan's vision of a nation's embrace of her exceptionalism a thing of the past? There is no question that we are headed in the wrong direction.
American exceptionalism is on trial, and one man is pleading for her to regain her senses. Mark Levin's new runaway best-seller, "Rediscovering Americanism," somberly argues that the American experiment is over if the "tyranny of progressivism" is not defeated. The surveys showing such a dramatic decline in patriotism, especially among the young, indicate that the progressives are succeeding. Levin is calling for America to rekindle her exceptionalism -- a belief in the inalienable rights of man and the preservation of a system of ordered liberty through the rule of law.
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2) Back ToTheCenter Democrats
By Mark Penn and Andrew Stein
The path back to power for the Democratic Party today, as it was in the 1990s, is unquestionably to move to the center and reject the siren calls of the left, whose policies and ideas have weakened the party.
In the early 1990s, the Democrats relied on identity politics, promoted equality of outcomes instead of equality of opportunity and looked to find a government solution for every problem. After years of leftward drift by the Democrats culminated in Republican control of the House under Speaker Newt Gingrich, President Bill Clinton moved the party back to the center in 1995 by supporting a balanced budget, welfare reform, a crime bill that called for providing 100,000 new police officers and a step-by-step approach to broadening health care. Mr. Clinton won a resounding re-election victory in 1996 and Democrats were back.
But the last few years of the Obama administration and the 2016 primary season once again created a rush to the left. Identity politics, class warfare and big government all made comebacks. Candidates inspired by Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren and a host of well-funded groups have embraced sharply leftist ideas. But the results at the voting booth have been anything but positive: Democrats lost over 1,000 legislative seats across the country and control of both houses of Congress during the Obama years. And in special elections for Congress this year, they failed to take back any seats held by Republicans.
Central to the Democrats’ diminishment has been their loss of support among working-class voters, who feel abandoned by the party’s shift away from moderate positions on trade and immigration, from backing police and tough anti-crime measures, from trying to restore manufacturing jobs. They saw the party being mired too often in political correctness, transgender bathroom issues and policies offering more help to undocumented immigrants than to the heartland.
Bigger government handouts won’t win working-class voters back. This is the fallacy of the left, believing that voters just need to be shown how much they are getting in government benefits. In reality, these voters see themselves as being penalized for maintaining the basic values of hard work, religion and family. It’s also not all about guns and abortion. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both won working-class voters despite relatively progressive views on those issues. Today, identity politics and disdain for religion are creating a new social divide that the Democrats need to bridge by embracing free speech on college campuses and respect for Catholics and people of other faiths who feel marginalized within the party.
There are plenty of good issues Democrats should be championing. They need to reject socialist ideas and adopt an agenda of renewed growth, greater protection for American workers and a return to fiscal responsibility. While the old brick-and-mortar economy is being regulated to death, the new tech-driven economy has been given a pass to flout labor laws with unregulated, low-paying gig jobs, to concentrate vast profits and to decimate retailing. Rural areas have been left without adequate broadband and with shrinking opportunities. The opioid crisis has spiraled out of control, killing tens of thousands, while pardons have been given to so-called nonviolent drug offenders. Repairing and expanding infrastructure, a classic Democratic issue, has been hijacked by President Trump — meaning Democrats have a chance to reach across the aisle to show they understand that voters like bipartisanship.
Immigration is also ripe for a solution from the center. Washington should restore the sanctity of America’s borders, create a path to work permits and possibly citizenship, and give up on both building walls and defending sanctuary cities. On trade, Democrats should recognize that they can no longer simultaneously try to be the free-trade party and speak for the working class. They need to support fair trade and oppose manufacturing plants’ moving jobs overseas, by imposing new taxes on such transfers while allowing repatriation of foreign profits. And the party seems to have forgotten that community policing combined with hiring more police officers worked in the ’90s — and it will work again today. It can’t be the party that failed to stop the rising murder rates in cities like Chicago.
Health care is the one area where the Democrats have gained the upper hand and have a coherent message about protecting the working poor from losing coverage. But the Affordable Care Act needs to be adjusted to control costs better, lest employer-sponsored health care become unaffordable. For now, the Democrats are right to hold the line in defending Obamacare in the face of Republican disunity.
Easily lost in today’s divided politics is that only a little more than a quarter of Americans consider themselves liberals, while almost three in four are self-identified moderates or conservatives. Yet moderate viewpoints are being given short shrift in the presidential nominating process. So Democrats should change their rules to eliminate all caucuses in favor of primaries. Caucuses are largely undemocratic because they give disproportionate power to left-leaning activists, making thousands of Democrats in Kansas more influential than millions of people in Florida.
Americans are looking for can-do Democrats in the mold of John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton — leaders who rose above partisanship to unify the country, who defended human rights and equality passionately, and who also encouraged economic growth and rising wages. That is the road back to relevance, and the White House, for the Democrats.
Mark Penn served as pollster and senior adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton from 1995 to 2008. Andrew Stein is a former Manhattan borough president and New York City Council president
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3) Home Depot's Langone: North Korea 'Greatest Threat Since World War II'
Home Depot co-founder and Trump supporter Ken Langone warns that tension with North Korea is “the single greatest threat since World War II.”
North Korea's test of an intercontinental ballistic missile earlier this week is a "very ominous" and "extremely dangerous situation" for the world, Langone told CNBC on Thursday.
U.S. officials confirmed that North Korea launched its first successful intercontinental ballistic missile test this week, just days before President Donald Trump was scheduled to travel to Europe for the G-20 summit in Germany, Bloomberg reported.
The test, which follows several missile launches in recent months, has drawn the rebuke of several world leaders and increased pressure on Trump to take action to back up his rhetoric against the regime of Kim Jong Un.
Trump has previously said that “the era of strategic patience with the North Korea regime has failed’’ and “is over.”
Trump has said all options including military force are available against Pyongyang, though its neighbors warn a strike could be disastrous for North Asia. South Korea’s new government favors talks to bring Kim to heel, also putting it potentially at odds with Trump’s administration.
Langone, a longtime Republican supporter and co-founder of Home Depot, warned CNBC that Trump must soon resolve the conflict with North Korea.
"This is the trigger, OK? This could be the trigger of a calamity in the world," Langone said. "We're looking at the single greatest threat since World War II," he said.
Langone said Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who are set to meet at the G-20 on Friday, should talk about North Korea's leader and "nothing else" instead of "all this other crap."
"This is an extremely dangerous situation," Langone said. "We better figure out what we better do with this guy," Langone said.
"We'll survive as a society and as a nation. He'll hit us once. We'll obliterate him. But look at what happens to the world when you do that," Langone said.
For his part, Trump said Thursday that he is contemplating some "pretty severe things" to retaliate against North Korea after it launched an intercontinental ballistic missile this week that brings it closer to being able to hit the U.S. mainland.
“I have some pretty severe things we’re thinking about," Trump said at a news conference in Warsaw. "Doesn’t mean we’re going to do them. I don’t draw red lines."
"It’s a shame they’re behaving this way and they’re behaving in a very dangerous manner, and something will have to be done about it," Trump said, Bloomberg reported.
Trump, who spoke alongside Polish President Andrzej Duda, offered no details about what he is considering and did not answer a question directly about whether is contemplating the use of military force. Earlier in the news conference, he said he is calling on all nations to "publicly demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences for their very, very bad behavior."
To be sure, North Korea's firing of a long-range missile that could possibly reach Alaska is a "continuation of North Korea flaunting the world, and China and Russia using this to the disadvantage of the United States," former Trump political adviser Sam Nunberg told Newsmax TV on Wednesday.
"This is leading to a conflict," Nunberg told Newsmax TV host J.D. Hayworth. "There is going to be some kind of conflict.
"Hopefully, the confrontation and the conflict can be quick – but, look, I think at the end of the day you have to look at South Korea.
"South Korea is prepared to fight North Korea on this," he said. "Japan is prepared."
Nunberg noted the 1953 armistice that was signed at the end of the Korean War that established the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea.
No final agreement on peace has been reached between the nations, however.
"We're basically still at war with North Korea," he told Hayworth. "We only signed an armistice with them and that is we're going to protect South Korea.
"We're only on a standstill with them. We're on an armistice, and that's the way these people live."
North Korea’s pursuit of a nuclear-tipped warhead capable of reaching the U.S. is likely to be a significant topic during the G-20. Trump is scheduled to have bilateral meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, South Korean President Moon Jae-In and Putin. Each of those leaders have spoken out against North Korea’s provocations, and Trump has leaned on China in particular to rein in the rogue regime but acknowledged recently that it’s not working.
3a)Report: US Missile Shield Not Ready for NKorea Nuke Attack
As North Korea continues testing missiles it says can reach the United States, while simultaneously working to build nuclear warheads small enough to mount atop them, America's plan to shoot down the ICBMs is nowhere near a sure bet, Politico reported.
The U.S. plan includes various sensors, radars, and interceptor missiles based in Alaska and California. But testing has been far from 100 percent. In fact, three of five tests have failed. And the two that succeeded were "heavily scripted," Politico quoted military leaders.
"If the North Koreans fired everything they had at us, and we fired at all of the missiles, we'd probably get most of them," Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, told Politico. "But is 'probably get most' a good day or a bad day?"
The Pentagon on Wednesday said its Ground-based Midcourse Defense system can take down missiles flying through the atmosphere, but that optimistic view is not widely shared.
"Partly we are failing because it is the hardest thing the Pentagon has tried to do," Phil Coyle, former Pentagon chief weapons tester, said. "We've had more success with short-range and medium-range systems. But they are going more slowly, they are traveling in the atmosphere. That is different than traveling at 15,000 miles per hour in space. Especially when the enemy is trying to fool you."
A May 30 test was deemed a success, but the system still is meant to rely on a multi-pronged approach, and not just an interceptor missile model.
"It doesn't exist in a vacuum," said Thomas Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It should be understood in the larger deterrent and defense posture of the United States."
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4) Maxine Waters on Ben Carson: ‘I am going to take his a** apart’
Rep. Maxine Waters said Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson doesn’t care about poor people
and vowed to “take his a– apart” during a speech to black activists Saturday.
The California Democrat continued her calls to impeach President Trump on the Essence Festival stage in New Orleans, but she also took aim at Mr. Carson for his recent comments about immigrants and poor people.“Ben Carson was appointed to be the HUD secretary,” Ms. Waters said, Essence reported. “He knows nothing about the mission of HUD. He doesn’t care about people in public housing. He believes that if you are poor, it is your own fault. And he doesn’t know the difference between an immigrant and a slave.”
“And if he thinks when he comes before my committee, where I am the ranking member of the [House Financial Services Committee], that I am going to give him a pass, I am going to take his a– apart,” she reportedly said.Ms. Waters was referring to Mr. Carson’s remarks in March, when he referred to slaves brought to America as “immigrants.” He later clarified that “the slave narrative and immigrant narrative” in America are “two entirely different experiences.”
He was also criticized in May after he suggested poverty was largely due to people having the “wrong mindset.”
He was also criticized in May after he suggested poverty was largely due to people having the “wrong mindset.”
Ms. Waters told the crowd that she’s “taking off the gloves” with the Trump administration.
“I don’t honor him, I don’t respect him, and I am not going to tolerate him,” she said of the president, Essence reported. “I am going to do everything I can do to get him impeached.”
Ms. Water reportedly ended her speech by leading an “impeach 45” chant.
© Copyright (c) 2017 News World Communications, Inc.
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5)The GOP’s Fatal Infatuation
Once the governors took expanded Medicaid payments, they were hooked.
Watching the Republican party self-immolate over the ObamaCare law, I’d like to shake the hand of whoever had the idea to plant the expansion of federal Medicaid payments inside ObamaCare.
Before this, Washington on average has been paying about 57% of Medicaid’s costs. ObamaCare expanded the federal payment’s share to 100% of newly eligible adults for any state that signed on, with the match “falling” permanently to 90% in 2020. That was political genius.
Maybe it was Jonathan Gruber, the ObamaCare architect vilified for admitting that the “stupidity” of American voters got the law passed. I’d say Mr. Gruber has the last laugh now on what people not long ago called the stupid party.
What an irony it is that one of the Republican arguments made now for preserving ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion is the opioid crisis. Even after the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Medicaid’s expansion was optional, some Republican governors got hooked on the promise of federal cash flow to the horizon.
Now GOP governors in the Medicaid-expanded states of Ohio, Arkansas and Nevada are pushing their Republican senators to defeat any significant limitations on the nationalized funding of this entitlement. Other Republican-led states that took the expansion are Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, New Jersey, Iowa and Indiana (which to its credit extracted the Obama administration’s commitment to its Medicaid reform program).
Now the party’s fabled repeal-and-replace effort is threatened by a standoff between Medicaid’s new best friends—“moderate” GOP senators—and conservative colleagues who are trying to moderate the entitlement’s permanent expansion.
Add in Donald Trump criticizing the House bill as “mean,” and how can anyone fault the retired Barack Obama for golfing his way through the world’s resorts? He earned his victory lap. His people understood the iron law of political spending: Offer it, and they will come.
The structure of Medicaid always made the program a Faustian bargain for the states. Originating in the Great Society outpourings of the 1960s, Medicaid’s purpose was to ensure medical care for the disabled and women and children in poverty. Though the states and Washington split the costs, a political genius back then inserted this spending opiate: If states expanded their Medicaid populations, Washington would still send them at least half of the rising costs. Meaning, of course, that taxpayers in states with even a minimal sense of fiscal responsibility paid for open-spigot states like California, New York, Illinois and New Jersey.
Medicaid has become most states’ second biggest budget outlay, behind K-12 education. Even the feds have cut back federal grants on everything else to pay for Medicaid. Here’s the Government Accountability Office’s bloodless 2012 report of how that works:
“The increase in federal outlays for Medicaid and other health-related grant programs was offset by an approximately equivalent decrease in grants to state and local governments targeted for other areas such as transportation, education, and regional development.”
Like state-administered medicine everywhere, Medicaid “works” only if no one notices it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul. The Peters getting robbed to make Medicaid work include doctors who are supposed to serve this population.
A Pew report described the mechanics of this perpetual grinding wheel: “In 2012, for example, Medicaid paid physicians on average 66 percent of what Medicare paid for services, down from 72 percent in 2008. Furthermore, both Medicaid and Medicare pay providers significantly less than what they receive from private payers. Low reimbursement rates decrease the willingness of providers to treat Medicaid enrollees, which sometimes limits enrollees’ access to health care services.”
As to Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren charging that the Republicans’ attempted Medicaid reforms will kill people, those are crocodile tears. For years, states have tried to control Medicaid’s open throttle the only way they know how—with cuts. On Friday, a federal judge ordered Illinois to start paying a stunning $3 billion it has withheld from Medicaid providers, claiming it doesn’t have the money. But from a pro shop somewhere, Mr. Obama, who learned his politics in Illinois, says the GOP effort to fix his namesake would “ruin Medicaid as we know it.”
Medicaid is already a fiscal ruin and lowest-common-denominator medicine. Advocates say it’s better than nothing for the poor or uninsured, but well-controlled studies put even that claim in doubt.
Reform Republicans want to give states a shot at restructuring the albatross Medicaid has become. Some GOP governors, such as Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, are gamely trying to reform Medicaid without taking the federal payment expansion. But pressure on them to take the money will be intense if Senate Republicans fail or vote to repeal and revisit ObamaCare in two years.
Give credit: ObamaCare’s designers got this part right.
5a) State of the Teachers Union
Good news from the NEA: It’s getting out of government.
The president of the National Education Association has had enough. On Sunday Lily Eskelsen Garcia told her delegates that though she knows “how to find common ground with people who will never agree with me,” she won’t make the effort with President Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
This is a sign the Trump Administration must be doing something right. The NEA is America’s largest union with some three million members, and it represents the adults in education, not the children. As if to underscore the point, on July 4 of all days the union approved a new and harsher statement on charter schools, calling privately run charters “a failed and damaging experiment.”
What the NEA really objects to is that charters are public schools that prove children written off as uneducable can be taught in the right environment. A telling sign of NEA priorities is that while it was denouncing charters the union said it is still happy to unionize them.
As for the Education Department, Jimmy Carter created it as payoff to the NEA for its support in the 1976 election. The department has neither the funds nor the authority to make much of a difference in schools, which are mostly a state and local matter. Where Mrs. DeVos can make an impact is by using her bully pulpit on behalf of parents who are desperate for more good schools for their children—whether they are traditional public schools, charter public schools, or private and religious schools.
Mrs. DeVos has apparently been effective enough to shock the NEA into disavowing federal control of education, which is like Fannie Mae rejecting taxpayer loan guarantees. We’ll know Mrs. DeVos has succeeded when Ms. Eskelsen Garcia calls for the Education Department to be abolished.
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6) The Jewish Bookie
A Jewish bookie was at the races playing the ponies and losing his shirt
He noticed a Priest step out onto the track and bless the forehead of one of the horses lining up for the 4th race.
Lo and behold, that horse - a long shot - won the race.
Next race, as the horses lined up, the Priest stepped onto the track. Sure enough, he blessed one of the horses.The bookie made a beeline for a betting window and placed a small bet on the horse. Again, even though it was another long shot, the horse won the race. He collected his winnings, and anxiously waited to see which horse the Priest would bless next.
He bet big on it, and it won.
As the races continued the Priest kept blessing horses, and each one ended up winning. The bookie was elated. He made a quick dash to the ATM, withdrew all his savings, and awaited for the Priest's next blessing that would tell him which horse to bet on.
True to his pattern, the Priest stepped onto the track for the last race and blessed the forehead of an old nag that was 100/1. This time the priest blessed the eyes, ears, and hooves of the old nag. The bookie knew he had a winner and bet every cent he had on the old nag. He watched dumbfounded as the old nag pulled up lame and couldn't even finish the race.
In a state of shock, he went to the track area where the Priest was standing. Confronting him, he exclaimed, "Father! What happened? All day long you blessed horses and they all won. Then in the last race, the horse you blessed never even had a chance. Now, thanks to you I've lost all my money!"
The Priest nodded wisely and with sympathy. “You aren't Catholic are you my son?"
"No, I 'm Jewish."
"That's the problem", said the Priest, "you couldn't tell the difference between a blessing and last rites."
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