Mid-Day Snapshot · June 14, 2024

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“From The Patriot Post (patriotpost.us)”.

THE FOUNDATION

“Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence.” —Joseph Story (1833)

ON THIS DAY in 1775, the Continental Congress authorized the creation of the Continental Army, which went on to defeat the mighty British empire and win American independence. Also, on this day in 1777, Congress adopted the U.S. flag, then with 13 stars representing the original independent states. Read more about both.

IN TODAY’S DIGEST

EXECUTIVE NEWS SUMMARY

Douglas Andrews, Nate Jackson, & Jordan Candler

Politics

  • Trump visits Capitol Hill for early birthday celebration: Three years is a political lifetime, but still: Who’d have believed that in the wake of January 6, 2021, Donald Trump would be where he is today, the unquestioned leader of a party poised to take back the White House he so ingloriously left? Certainly, none of the congressional Republicans whispering to reporters that they didn’t want him around anymore. And yet there Trump was yesterday, back on Capitol Hill for the first time since J6, cajoling Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene to play nice and cutting a day-early 78th birthday cake with Mitch McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans. As The Washington Times reports: “Trump revved up congressional Republicans and made amends with former opponents in a whirlwind swing through Capitol Hill on Thursday that cemented his position as party leader. Mr. Trump held what lawmakers described as a ‘pep rally’ for House Republicans, followed by a ‘warm’ and ‘upbeat’ meeting with Senate Republicans.” Democrats and their Leftmedia trucklings are still wrestling with Trump’s political resurrection, even as their guy, the Meander in Chief, continues to embarrass our nation in front of the world. And yet the best they can do is to trumpet Trump’s age with headlines calling him the “potential future oldest president,” while at the same time trying to ignore Biden’s ever-advancing decrepitude. Good luck with that.
  • Larry Hogan withholds support from Trump after endorsement in Maryland Senate race (Washington Examiner)
  • Big Guy says he won’t pardon sonny boy: Yesterday, Joe Biden reiterated his earlier statement that he won’t pardon his son Hunter or commute his sentence — whatever that sentence may be — for his three felony gun-crime convictions. As the Washington Examiner reports: “The president’s comments mark his first on-camera remarks on the topic following Hunter Biden’s Tuesday conviction … which he characterized as a fair trial. His immediate statement following the verdict confirmed his decision not to pardon his son, following promises made by White House officials that he would not do so.” This isn’t a profile in courage or a show of respect for the Rule of Law. Instead, it’s an acknowledgment of political reality. Were Joe Biden to pardon his son for crimes that it took a friendly jury just three hours of deliberation to convict upon, it would expose Biden’s rank cronyism and cement the sentiment among so many Americans that Washington, DC, is a rigged town and our “justice” system has two tiers. Still: We’ll see if the Big Guy sings the same tune on Wednesday, November 6.
  • Hunter Biden drops laptop lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani (NY Post)
  • Beware the looming “theocracy” of the Right: The Left wouldn’t be the Left if it weren’t occasionally sounding the false alarm about “SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE!” And, true to form, there was The Washington Post, divining “what the Christian right wants from a second Trump term” and warning us that “Religious conservatives see opportunities for fresh gains after a series of victories during Trump’s first term” while “Rights advocates see a dangerous blurring of” —wait for it! — “church and state.” To be clear, the Left is as theocratic as any bunch; it’s just that they’ve swapped out God for their own earthly idols. Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa names some of these idols: “In Trump’s America, women will live in fear of having their pregnancies monitored or facing punishment if they have an abortion; teachers are told what books they can teach in the classroom and grown adults who they can love and marry.” Increasingly, as the facts continue to desert them, fear is all these desperate Democrats have.
  • Psst, Clarence Thomas took trips: As a Right-thinking black man, Supreme Court Clarence Thomas is a particular object of ire for left-wingers. Cue the Democrats, who unearthed three more trips Thomas took that were paid for by GOP “megadonor” Harlan Crow, a longtime friend of Thomas. The previously undisclosed trips in 2017, 2019, and 2021 supposedly show that Thomas is unethical or something. “As a result of our investigation and subpoena authorization, we are providing the American public greater clarity on the extent of ethical lapses by Supreme Court justices and the need for ethics reform,” a haughty Senator Dick Durbin lectured in a statement. An attorney for Thomas explained that the trips fell under the “personal hospitality exemption.” This whole charade started last year, yet no one has presented evidence that the trips corrupted Thomas or influenced his rulings. It’s all insinuation. If only Democrats had one iota of concern for the Biden Crime Family’s influence-peddling operation.
  • Biden mocked for wandering away from world leaders during photoshoot (Daily Wire)

Second Amendment

  • ATF takes two shots: “The Supreme Court on Friday struck down a Trump-era ban on bump stocks, a gun accessory that allows semi-automatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns and was used in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history,” reports the Associated Press. The 6-3 decision was a rebuke of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which overreached its authority to outlaw something Congress had not expressly banned. One might argue that bump stocks were created to circumvent the law effectively banning machine guns, but that’s an argument for the legislature, not the ATF, which changed its mind after a decade in any case. As Justice Clarence Thomas explained, the device does not literally violate the law: “A bump stock merely reduces the amount of time that elapses between separate functions of the trigger.” The ATF also lost in a case over pistol braces. A U.S. District Court ruled that the Biden ATF’s effort to ban “assault weapons” via strict regulations on some devices is “unlawful” and “illegitimate.” In short, the ATF, under whichever president, is not free to write laws.
  • Dispatches from the People’s Republic of California: For the longest time, California Governor Gavin Newsom was waging a shadow campaign behind Joe Biden in the event that the president could somehow be convinced to step aside for Kamala Harris, who could then be convinced to step aside for Newsom. But we haven’t heard much from Newsom of late, and that’s probably because all the news coming out of California is so awful. Heck, the crime blotter from Oakland alone could fill a magazine. Here’s a case in point from X poster Kevin Dalton: “3 criminals attempted to break into a 77 year old man’s home in Oakland. He shot and killed one of the felons. Naturally, since it’s Gavin Newsom’s lawless California, where the criminals are in charge, the homeowner has been arrested for murder.” As Not the Bee adds, “According to the report, three criminals drove a stolen car up to his home armed with a crowbar and a replica firearm. The elderly man shot one of the criminals and held his gun on the remaining two until police arrived.” So much for the fundamental human right of self-defense.

Good News

  • Southern Poverty Smear Center announces massive layoffs: From our Schadenfreude Files, we note the following post from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s union: “More than 60 SPLC Union members, including five Union stewards and our Union Chair, were informed that they would be losing their jobs. We are devastated for our Union and for our colleagues.” As Not the Bee reminds us, the SLPC “was born out of the civil rights movement of the 60s and has since evolved into a corrupt far-left radical hate group that pushes gender ideology and slanders normal conservative organizations like Moms for Liberty as ‘hate groups’ in turn.” Disgraced SLPC founder Morris Dees “perfected the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton race-bait shakedown model and pulled in hundreds of millions for SPLC,” as our Mark Alexander noted recently. “JoAnn Wypijewski of the leftist Nation magazine described him as a ‘millionaire huckster.’ According to Harper’s Ken Silverstein, the SPLC exists ‘to separate wealthy liberals from their money.’ And Dees used those funds to build his ‘Poverty Palace’ offices and exotic luxury home.”
  • PragerU videos might be coming to a school near you: The Left ruins everything it touches. So says conservative author and thinker Dennis Prager, and he’s right. Art, music, journalism, sports, comedy, education, medicine, movies, the military, the Boy Scouts, free speech, social media, voting — everything. The Washington Post, though, is deathly afraid that folks are listening to Prager or, even worse, that children are listening to him. Yesterday, a pair of the Post’s journalists sounded the alarm: “A privately funded effort to use disputed videos to teach conservative values in public schools is gaining traction, as Louisiana recently became the sixth state to endorse educational materials produced by Prager University. PragerU is not a university but a nonprofit that produces short videos that push patriotism and conservative views of history, race, sex and gender, among other topics. Since last year, Florida, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Montana and Arizona have also announced partnerships with PragerU under which the nonprofit’s lessons become state-sanctioned, optional teaching materials for public schools.” Good for these six states. What the Left rightly sees here is an existential threat to its monopoly on educational indoctrination.

National Security

  • Biden protects more than 860,000 migrants from deportation with “temporary” amnesty (Breitbart)
  • Pentagon affirms it won’t install Chinese-manufactured solar panels (Washington Examiner)
  • Pentagon wants to feed troops “experimental” lab-grown meat to “reduce CO2 footprint” (Washington Free Beacon)

Economy

  • Supreme Court, siding with Starbucks, makes it harder for NLRB to win court orders in labor disputes (CNBC)
  • Tesla shareholders vote to reinstate Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package (CNBC)
  • U.S.-Saudi petrodollar pact ends after 50 years (TipRanks)

Culture

  • Federal judge blocks Biden Title IX rule in four states (Fox News)
  • Archaeologists discovered the first all-male child sacrifice site in Mesoamerica and told WaPo that we shouldn’t judge (Not the Bee)
  • Everything is racist: Racism can spark depression and anxiety in Black adolescents, study finds (Washington Post) | Everything is classist: A landslide in Wyoming deepens the disparities between the ultra-wealthy and local workers (NBC News)

World

  • Hezbollah No. 2 leader reportedly taken out in airstrike (RedState)
  • Putin offers truce if Ukraine exits Russian-claimed areas and drops NATO bid; Kyiv calls it “absurd” (AP)

For the Executive Summary archive, click here.

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FEATURED ANALYSIS

The Competing Flags of Liberty and Oppression

On Flag Day, let’s look at the quintessential American symbol versus its polar opposite, the pride flag.

Nate Jackson

Today is Flag Day, the day on which, in 1777, the Continental Congress authorized the first U.S. flag. Old Glory has long been a symbol of Liberty to the world, even in an imperfect nation of imperfect humans. The ideals it represents are timeless and eternal.

Americans ought to gladly unite under and around the flag. Our great nation is approaching its 250th birthday, and the flag transcends our many differences over those two and a half centuries. It represents the unity of the melting pot and the diversity of our people.

Its design is full of meaning, too. As Riley Gaines writes today at Fox News, “The American flag’s colors hold deep significance: red for valor and bravery, honoring the sacrifices of defenders of freedom; white for purity and innocence, reflecting foundational principles; and blue for vigilance, perseverance and justice, affirming our commitment to uphold the rule of law and ensure equal rights for all, as enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.”

Roughly 650,000 Americans died in battle to defend it, and another 539,000 died of noncombat-related causes while in service to it. The tri-folded flag is a fitting keepsake for their families.

We salute the flag, wave the flag, raise it at buildings around the country and at sporting events, wear it on our clothing, and put stickers of it on our cars. Most Americans view it positively.

Sadly, many don’t, and that is an indictment of what disgruntled leftists have done to divide us. They kneel rather than respect it and burn rather than fly it. And then they complain that if you do fly the flag, other people assume you support Donald Trump (who, by the way, just happened to be born on Flag Day). Gee, I wonder why that is.

Of course, I don’t wonder at all. Leftists increasingly detest the U.S. flag and the Liberty it represents. Instead, the flag they want everyone to bow down and worship — especially in June but also at many other times of the year — is the “pride” flag.

That malleable banner has changed over the years, as leftists are forever making “progress” and adding new categories of degeneracy to the ranks of the revered. They added the extra colors for so-called “transgender” people, as well as — bizarrely — certain minority skin colors. They call this monstrosity the Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride flag.

The rainbow was originally God’s covenant sign to Noah that He would never again destroy the earth with a flood. Gender-confused people appropriated that sign to shake their collective fists at God’s design for marriage and for humans as male and female.

Their objective is to loudly celebrate what a small minority of mentally ill people do with their genitals. I wrote that earlier this month, explaining why Pride Month is gross.

Maybe that message is beginning to resonate with people. Gaines, a leading advocate for protecting women’s sports, said almost the same thing: “June has officially been designated as Pride Month, meaning we have a full 30 days set aside for a national celebration of what a specific group of people do with their genitalia.” Exactly!

Meanwhile, it’s not unheard of to paint a crosswalk with the colors of the American flag, though it’s pretty rare. Walking or driving on the flag seems an odd way to honor it.

Yet it’s become all the rage around the country to paint crosswalks, intersections, and staircases with rainbow colors to celebrate deviant sexual activity. And then to get angry and criminally charge anyone who dares to make a tire mark on the thing painted on a street.

That’s happened in Florida, West Virginia, Washington, and elsewhere already this month. Some dude burned out his truck on a mural, and some teens scuffed it up with their scooters (and got arrested).

Maybe don’t vandalize public streets with religious symbols about genitalia and that won’t happen.

More than sexual fetishes, the “pride” flag’s very name is detestable. As Jordan Peterson notes, pride is not a virtue; humility is. In fact, pride is the root of all sin.

Pride also means intolerance because if you’re immensely proud of what you do with your private parts, you can’t allow anyone else to think otherwise. The narcissism is astounding.

The pride flag is a symbol of authoritarianism, the very opposite of what the American flag stands for. The intolerance leads to punishing dissenters. Businesses practically feel compelled to put rainbows in their windows and redesign their logos. They treat it the way the ancient Israelites did by putting a lamb’s blood on their doorway so the angel of death would pass over.

Just to be clear, the Rainbow Mafia’s “justice” is a long way from the Lord’s.

The pride flag does not, as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a homosexual, says, symbolize “love and acceptance.” It does not, as he asserts, “signal to people who have sometimes feared for their safety that they’re going to be okay.” Buttigieg works for the most powerful man in the world, who flies the hideous pride flag at the White House and sends Justice Department goons after parents who object to it being in schools.

Try burning an American flag and then burning a pride flag and see what happens. Heck, try just saying something negative about pride on social media and watch your speech be censored.

Speaking of schools, the pride flag is also a symbol of indoctrination because gender cultists are so infatuated with themselves that they are grooming kids to join them. Their flag flies at the Department of Education (as well as numerous other government agencies). Schools around the country are putting grossly inappropriate books in libraries and other materials into curricula, clearly teaching children that anyone who doesn’t accept this debauchery is a bigot.

Even kids in Sunday School classes and Vacation Bible School are making the golden calf pride flag as a way to show “love” for all their neighbors. News flash: Love doesn’t mean accepting and celebrating every foolish, destructive, or wrong thing someone does.

The pride flag is a symbol of oppression and tyranny, the suppression of truth and any opinion that still values God’s design. The American flag, by contrast, represents Liberty. Which one would you rather salute?

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MORE ANALYSIS

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion.

BEST OF VIDEOS

SHORT CUTS

Dumb & Dumber

“All Americans — both those who are well off and those who are near the bottom of the income distribution — are better off now.” —Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen

“To aspire to create wealth is a good thing, as far as I’m concerned, if that is what one chooses. I, on the other hand, have chosen to live a life of public service.” —Vice President Kamala Harris (Net worth: $8 million.)

The BIG Lie

“MAGA Republicans’ plan would increase inflation by repealing the Affordable Care Act, side with Big Oil to raise utility bills, let Big Banks rip off Americans, and blow up the debt by slashing taxes for billionaires. My plan puts working families first.” —Joe Biden

Projection

“The only thing that [Republicans] would want to do with this [Joe Biden-Robert Hur interview] audio is to basically misconstrue and pretend as if what people are reading is actually not what happened. … If we had a party that lived up to being the ethical people that we were elected to be, then I don’t think that there would be a big concern, but we know that they cannot be trusted with anything that can be manipulated. … We’re talking about an administration that has been completely transparent.” —Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-TX)

Biden Crime Family

“Given the array of serious crimes allegedly committed by Biden family members, Hunter’s gun conviction represents the equivalent of nailing Al Capone over unpaid parking tickets.” —Larry Elder

For the Record

“Either out of profound moral confusion, enmity toward Israel, self-loathing of the West, or all of the above, many people since Oct. 7 have confused victim with victimizer, hostage-rescuers with hostage-takers, and the forces of civilization with the forces of barbarism. If Israel can’t even bring home its own, the world is truly upside down, just the way Hamas wants it.” —Rich Lowry

Political Futures

“A debate and an election run strictly on issues and what has been proven to work in the past, and what hasn’t worked, is the way to build and sustain strong nations that contribute to their societies rather than a ‘take mentality’ based on what you think you are entitled to.” —Cal Thomas

And Last…

“Biden campaign is now demanding that he doesn’t have to stand during the debate. Next they’ll demand he doesn’t have to talk.” —Jimmy Failla

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MEMES & CARTOONS

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For more of today’s memes, visit the Memesters Union.

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For more of today’s cartoons, visit the Cartoons archive.

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