If You Watch The Mainstream Media, You Are Uninformed

Newsbusters posted an article today about some recent economic news reported by the major networks.

The article reports:

Another astounding market rally, another big chunk of good market news ABC’s, CBS’s and NBC’s evening news shows censor because it isn’t anti-Trump.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 27,000 Wednesday, “extending a market rally and returning the index to a level it first hit a year ago and last touched in early June,” according to The Hill. The new figure (27,006) put “the Dow within striking distance of erasing its losses for the year.” ABC World News Tonight with David Muir, CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell and NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt all censored the news last night.

By contrast, consider when the Dow dropped 1,000 points beneath 25,000 before rallying a bit later Feb. 28 to cap off Wall Street’s “worst week since the [2008] financial crisis.” On that day, the Big Three gave the negative market news a whopping 313 seconds of coverage collectively — or more than five minutes.

That’s 313 seconds for negative news versus 0 seconds for positive news. Seems like a pretty massive bias. 

Fox News’s Bret Baier did report the stock market news Wednesday during his 6:00 pm broadcast of Special Report. Maybe the Big Three should take notes from Baier.

The article also notes:

Both CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News in particular did find the time to boost presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s flat-out lie that President Donald Trump was a racist president.

But the Dow’s performance isn’t all the good market news yesterday had to offer last night. “Sales of previously owned homes rose 20.7% in June over the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.72 million,” according to The Wall Street Journal July 22. This, according to The Journal, was “the biggest monthly increase on record going back to 1968.” [Emphasis added.]

It’s difficult to have a fair election when the news sources that many Americans depend on refuse to report the news in an unbiased manner. Hopefully, most Americans have learned to look beyond the propaganda and search for the facts.

Slowly The Truth Becomes Available To The Public

Based on the information that has already come out, many Americans (at least those who don’t depend on the mainstream media for their news) believe that there was a soft coup attempt on President Trump that began immediately after he was elected. As information is made public from various investigations, this is becoming more obvious.

The Daily Caller posted an article yesterday about some of the latest information to come out.

The article reports:

  • The Senate Judiciary Committee released a newly declassified FBI document Friday showing that a New York Times report about contacts between Trump associates and Russian intelligence was riddled with errors. 
  • Peter Strzok, who served as FBI deputy chief of counterintelligence, spotted 14 errors in the Times story, published on Feb. 14, 2017. 
  • Strzok also critiqued Christopher Steele, saying that the dossier author was unable to judge the reliability of his network of sources.

The article continues:

An FBI document released Friday details at least 14 inaccuracies in a New York Times report from early 2017 that leveled shocking allegations of Trump associates’ contacts with Russian intelligence officers.

The document shows then-FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok’s comments on a Feb. 14, 2017 article entitled “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence.”

Written by journalists Michael Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo, the story cited four current and former American officials who said that U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies had intercepted call records showing that Trump associates had contacts with Russian intelligence in the year prior to the election.

Strzok, who was the lead investigator on the Trump investigation, spotted 14 errors in the article.

The article concludes:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, who released the FBI documents on Friday, said in a press release that Strzok’s annotations on the Times article “are devastating in that they are an admission that there was no reliable evidence that anyone from the Trump Campaign was working with Russian Intelligence Agencies in any form.”

James Comey, the former FBI director, criticized the Times report shortly after he was fired in May 2017. He told the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 7, 2017, that the story was “almost entirely” inaccurate.

The Times stood by the story despite the pushback from Comey.

“The original sources could not immediately be reached after Mr. Comey’s remarks, but in the months since the article was published, they have indicated that they believed the account was solid,” the paper said in a statement following Comey’s testimony.

The New York Times was driving the narrative that President Trump was a Russian agent. Their reporting was inaccurate from the beginning. Unfortunately, there are many Americans who still believe the fiction The New York Times was publishing. That is one of many causes for the divisiveness that we are currently seeing in America.

As Daniel Patrick Moynihan once stated, “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”

Actually, It’s Just An Eagle

Townhall posted an article today about an eagle used on t-shirts by the Trump campaign. The eagle is an ‘imperial eagle.’ Some over-excited members of the press are describing the eagle as a “Nazi symbol.”

Before you get to concerned about that, you might want to examine the history.

The article includes the following:

The following is from the USA Today fact check on the matter:

The article also mentions that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi uses a similar symbol on her website. The Marine Corps also uses a similar symbol in their emblem. The bald eagle is America’s national bird. To liken the use of it to racism and Nazism is simply over the top.

The article concludes:

This is the very example of why the American people hate the mainstream media. Everyone has become obsessed with these “fact checks,” yet simple things like this are totally bogus. For whatever reason, anything and everything President Donald Trump and his campaign does has to be racist or stoke anti-Semitism. The term “Make America Great Again” has been labeled racist. These shirts are being compared to Nazi Germany propaganda.

Unfortunately this sort of reporting is why many ill-informed Americans believe that the President is a racist. Based on his history, this is simply untrue. To claim that President Trump is a racist simply divides Americans and creates an obstacle to our working together to better the country.

Then And Now

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about ever-changing press coverage.

The article reports:

CNN described Mount Rushmore as a “monument of two slave owners” on “land wrestled [sic] away from Native Americans” ahead of President Donald Trump’s visit there on Friday.

But in 2008, CNN marveled at the landmark when then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) visited Rushmore on the campaign trail.

In 2008, CNN anchor Ron Marciano said: “Barack Obama is campaigning in South Dakota. That state’s primary is Tuesday. Obama arrived there late last night and got a good look around Mt. Rushmore — it’s quite a sight if you haven’t seen it.”

Fellow anchor Betty Nguyen added: “Barack Obama is in South Dakota today. He arrived there last night. Take a look at this. He got a good glimpse of the majestic Mount Rushmore. Well, South Dakota and Montana have closed out the primary season on Tuesday.”

But on Friday, CNN described Rushmore in less glowing terms.

Senior Washington correspondent Joe Johns said:

[A]t a time of racial unease, when protesters are tearing down statues of slaveholders and calling for the names of Confederate generals to be removed from army bases, the Rushmore event is a reminder that Trump is fighting to preserve these relics of heritage and history that some see as symbols of oppression. And to indigenous people, Mt. Rushmore, with four white presidents, two of whom were slave owners, is one of those symbols.

The article includes a screenshot of a recent Tweet that puts it all in perspective:

This sort of changing narrative might explain why many Americans have tuned out the mainstream media. They have become simply a publicity arm of the Democrat Party.

A Synopsis Of What Obamagate Was And How It Happened

Yesterday Andrew McCarthy posted an op-ed piece in The Washington Examiner detailing some of the highlights of Obamagate. Please follow the link to read the entire article. I am going to focus on a few highlights.

The op-ed notes:

The Trump-Russia inquiry was ingeniously designed. If the president demanded that his subordinates unveil the intelligence files that would reveal the prior administration’s political spying, he stood to be accused of obstructing investigators and seeking to distract the country from his own alleged criminality.

On that score, an underappreciated aspect of the saga is that Trump came to office as a novice. His unhinged Twitter outbursts obscure an abiding uncertainty about the extent of the president’s power to direct the intelligence bureaucracy. A more seasoned Beltway hand would have known what he could safely order reluctant bureaucrats and Obama holdovers to produce for him or disclose to the public. Trump, however, was at sea. That is why it was so vital for his antagonists to sideline Michael Flynn and Jeff Sessions, Trump loyalists with deep experience in intelligence and law enforcement, who could have put a stop to the farce if they’d remained, respectively, national security adviser and attorney general.

The article concludes:

There are two lessons to be drawn from all this.

First, Barr could not be more right that the malfeasance in our government today is the politicization of law enforcement and intelligence. The only way to fix that is to stop doing it. That cannot be accomplished by bringing what many would see as the most politicized prosecution of all time. The imperative to get the Justice Department and the FBI out of our politics discourages the filing of charges that would be portrayed as banana-republic stuff. Yet, even if Barr succeeds in this noble quest, there is no assurance that a future administration would not turn the clock back.

Second, when wayward officials are not called to account, the powers they have abused become the target of public and congressional ire. The problem is that the powers are essential. Without properly directed foreign counterintelligence, supplemented by legitimate law enforcement, the United States cannot be protected from those who would do her harm.

The Trump-Russia farce has destroyed the bipartisan consensus on counterterrorism, and on the need for aggressive policing against cyberintrusions and other provocations by America’s enemies. There is an implicit understanding: The public endows its national security officials with sweeping secret authorities, and those officials solemnly commit that these authorities will only be used to thwart our enemies, not to spy on Americans or undermine the political process.

That understanding has been fractured. In counterintelligence, government operatives have to be able to look us in the eye and say, “You can trust us.” Americans no longer do. The sentiment is justified. That will not make our consequent vulnerability any less perilous.

Consequences for the guilty parties would be appropriate. However, until the American public is educated on exactly what happened, any consequences are going to look political. What is needed at this time is a massive education campaign to bring the general public up to speed. Unfortunately, the mainstream media is not likely to participate in that campaign. I am concerned that because of the dishonesty of the mainstream media,  many Americans have no idea that there actually was an attempted soft coup against President Trump. Attorney General Barr and those working with him will need the wisdom of Solomon to navigate the maze that lies before them.

Distorting A Quote To Fit An Agenda

It’s no secret that the mainstream media does not like President Trump. It is no secret that they were hoping to celebrate the election of Hillary Clinton as President. Okay. They’re biased–but that is no excuse for totally distorting the truth to create the narrative that President Trump is a dictator controlling the Justice Department (his predecessor pretty much did that with the IRS, the New Black Panthers, the Russian Hoax, etc.). There is no evidence that President Trump has spied on political opponents or newsmen (James Rosen) or done any of the things the media has routinely accused him of. So why am I surprised when they take a quote totally out of context to make President Trump look bad? This is the story in an article posted at Just The News yesterday.

The article reports:

Meet the Press,” the signature news show hosted by Chuck Todd, apologized Sunday and admitted it had deceptively edited a video clip of Attorney General William Barr after the Justice Department cried foul.

I guess we should be grateful that they apologized.

The article explains:

The episode began when Todd aired a clip of CBS News’ Catherine Herridge asking how history would judge the DOJ’s decision to dismiss the Michael Flynn criminal case. The clip showed Barr initially laughing before saying,” History is written by the winners, so it largely depends on who’s writing the history.”

Todd immediately comments that he was “struck by the cynicism of the answer — it’s a correct answer, but he’s the attorney general. He didn’t make the case that he was upholding the rule of law. He was almost admitting that, yeah, this was a political job.”

But Barr did says in the CBS interview he felt the Flynn decision upheld the rule of law, which “Meet the Press” failed to air.

“I think a fair history would say it was a good decision because it upheld the rule of law,” Barr said. “It upheld the standards of the Department of Justice, and it undid what was an injustice.”

A short while later, Barr’s spokeswoman went to Twitter to sharply criticize the NBC show.

Fortunately we currently have a Department of Justice that calls out fake news.

The article notes:

A short while later, Barr’s spokeswoman went to Twitter to sharply criticize the NBC show.

“Very disappointed by the deceptive editing/commentary by @ChuckTodd and @MeetThePress on AG Barr’s CBS interview,” Kerri Kupec tweeted. “Compare the two transcripts below. Not only did the AG make the case in the VERY answer Chuck says he didn’t, he also did so multiple times throughout the interview.”

A short while later, the official “Meet the Press” Twitter account posted an apology.

“You’re correct. Earlier today, we inadvertently and inaccurately cut short a video clip of an interview with AG Barr before offering commentary and analysis,” the tweet said. “The remaining clip included important remarks from the attorney general that we missed, and we regret the error.”

Excuse my cynicism, but they don’t regret the error–they regret being publicly called out for the error. Errors like that–because many people will not see the apology–are one of many reasons the country is divided.

Citing A Non-Existent Report In Order To Fuel The Narrative

It is no surprise that the mainstream media is trying to blame President Trump for any and all deaths associated with the coronavirus. Not to mention the fact that many deaths reported as caused by the virus have very little to do with the virus. However, one of their recent attempts has failed miserably. There has been a claim that President Trump was briefed on the coronavirus in November. The Washington Times posted an article on April 9, 2020, that corrects the claim.

The article reports:

The Pentagon says a supposed intelligence report cited by ABC News on an emerging COVID-19 pandemic doesn’t exist.

ABC said the report was issued in November by the National Center for Medical Intelligence, an arm of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). It supposedly warned of a pandemic of what would be later named COVID-19.

Relying on sources who said they saw the report, ABC News said the warning was briefed “multiple times” to the DIA, the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Trump White House.

I have learned in recent years that any claim made by unnamed sources tends to be proven wrong as events unfold.

The article continues:

The Pentagon said it did an exhaustive search and could find no such document.

Col. R. Shane Day, a physician who heads the medical intelligence unit, issued a flat denial.

“As a matter of practice, the National Center for Medical Intelligence does not comment publicly on specific intelligence matters,” Col. Day said. “However, in the interest of transparency during this current public health crisis, we can confirm that media reporting about the existence/release of a National Center for Medical Intelligence Coronavirus-related product/assessment in November of 2019 is not correct. No such NCMI product exists.”

A defense official told The Washington Times, “The center is part of the broader Intelligence Community effort to provide intelligence, expert assessments, and pandemic warning to senior U.S. government leaders, with the critical mission of supporting defense policymakers and U.S. warfighters. NCMI and the Defense Intelligence Agency spent considerable time over the last 24 hours examining every possible product that could have been identified as related to this topic and have found no such product.”

November was the date of the first reported victim of the virus, but considering that our intelligence assets in China were severely compromised because of the Chinese hacking into Hillary Clinton’s private server, it it unlikely that we would have had information on the virus.

How Spin Works

The recent sexual assault charges against presidential candidate Joe Biden have created a problem for the candidate. If he were a Republican, there would be pressure for him to withdraw from the race, but he’s a Democrat, so the reaction from the mainstream media is very different.

Yesterday Townhall.com posted an article detailing how the Biden campaign is handling the allegations. It should be noted that investigative reporters (not in the mainstream media) have found corroborating evidence that indicates the charge of sexual assault may be valid. This makes it a little more challenging for the media to deal with the charges.

The article reports:

Buzzfeed originally published talking points for Democratic candidates that were drawn up by the Biden campaign. The memo instructs Democrats to categorically deny Reade’s claims and stand in solidarity with the former vice president if asked about the allegations:

“Biden believes that all women have the right to be heard and to have their claims thoroughly reviewed,” the talking points read, according to a copy sent to two Democratic operatives. “In this case, a thorough review by the New York Times has led to the truth: this incident did not happen.”

“Here’s the bottom line,” they read. “Vice President Joe Biden has spent over 40 years in public life: 36 years in the Senate; 7 Senate campaigns, 2 previous presidential runs, two vice presidential campaigns, and 8 years in the White House. There has never been a complaint, allegation, hint or rumor of any impropriety or inappropriate conduct like this regarding him — ever.”

That sounds good. Unfortunately it isn’t true.

The article at Townhall explains the problem with this defense:

Biden’s campaign also cites The New York Times’ story that exonerated the former vice president, claiming that NYT “investigated” Reade’s claims. The puff piece published in defense of Biden was not only unfair to Reade, but also did not actually investigate her claims. NYT cleared Biden of guilt purely on the word of his campaign and a few of his staffers from his tenure in the Senate. NYT’s exoneration occurred before new evidence and corroboration from Reade’s family and friends became public knowledge, but NYT has published no follow-ups thus far. The Times’ take on the allegations against Biden represents a 180-degree spin from their coverage of the claims against Brett Kavanaugh; this same newspaper ran with the claims of Dr. Ford, Julie Swetnick and Michael Avenatti on face value, while piling onto the character assassination against the future Supreme Court Justice and putting due process on the back burner. 

First of all, anyone who has watched Joe Biden’s behavior over the years could easily question his treatment of women. There are numerous videos of his inappropriately touching women and children around him.

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today with the following information about The New York Times ‘investigation’:

The New York Times has issued a statement slamming the talking points being sent around by Joe Biden’s campaign claiming that the newspaper cleared him of the sexual assault allegations by his former staffer.

…The New York Times article did not clear Biden or deem the allegation uncredible.

The article they have been referencing, “Examining Tara Reade’s Sexual Assault Allegation Against Joe Biden,” actually states that “a friend said that Ms. Reade told her the details of the allegation at the time. Another friend and a brother of Ms. Reade’s said she told them over the years about a traumatic sexual incident involving Mr. Biden.”

The mainstream media will do all it can to make this scandal go away without it being investigated. The people who pay attention to the media that actually reports things will have the information they need to make an informed decision on the matter. The coverage of these charges is only one example of things that cause division in America.

Countering Fake News

Unfortunately many in the media have decided to use the coronavirus pandemic to bash President Trump rather than to help deal with the problems created by the crisis. That has caused some government agencies to periodically make statements calling attention to the false reporting that is going on. Yesterday The Epoch Times posted an article about one such event.

The article reports:

The Department of Defense issued a rare denial to an anonymously sourced media report claiming that military intelligence allegedly warned about the CCP virus pandemic as early as November 2019.

ABC News cited anonymous officials on April 8 to claim that the National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) released a report in November 2019 that detailed concerns about a potential outbreak. The NCMI issued a statement in response to the article saying the report doesn’t exist.

“As a matter of practice, the National Center for Medical Intelligence does not comment publicly on specific intelligence matters. However, in the interest of transparency during this current public health crisis, we can confirm that media reporting about the existence/release of a National Center for Medical Intelligence Coronavirus-related product/assessment in November of 2019 is not correct. No such NCMI product exists,” Shane Day, director of the NCMI, said in a statement.

The article also notes:

Trump banned travel to China on Jan. 31, ten days after the United States confirmed its first case of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.

Sam Faddis, a former CIA operations officer, told The Epoch Times that the idea that the highest levels of the U.S. government were repeatedly warned about a pandemic and “collectively” ignored it is “ridiculous.”

I wonder how many people who saw the initial charge saw the response from the Intelligence Community that it was false. Somehow I don’t think the mainstream media made that a major story. Therein lies the problem. The segment of our population that relies on the mainstream media has been fed a bunch of lies about how President Trump has handled this crisis. This makes them less likely to listen to him in the crisis. That seriously undermines our government and creates divisions which make it harder for Americans to work together. The mainstream media is largely responsible for knowingly tearing at the fabric of our society. It is truly a shame that they cannot be trusted to report events honestly.

 

A Guest Post From Mark Jones, Chairman, Surry County Republican Party

America Needs to Go Back to Work

We have to put America back to work, and we have to do it sooner rather than later! President Trump’s instincts on this issue were right when he suggested a gradual, careful, and measured shift in parts of the Country. Most areas are mildly impacted with little strain on hospitals (which was the stated reason for the lockdowns in the first place). Putting America back to work is critical for so much more than our economy as it impacts our LIBERTIES, FREEDOMS, and our VERY WAY OF LIFE. THE CURE OF A TOO LONG LOCKDOWN WILL BE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE.

I have written multiple e-mails trying to put COVID-19 into perspective. I agree we MUST DO EVERYTHING we can to fight the disease and protect the elderly and vulnerable. Any loss of life is tragic, but I have used unequivocal data and research from several respected Universities to demonstrate that the death rate from the disease is being over-stated by the mainstream Media. Articles in the New England Journal of Medicine and additional articles by Stanford University Doctors support this and have been e-mailed and posted on the Surry GOP Facebook site. I’ll make them available to anyone who missed them.

The Media has scared the American people into believing we must destroy our American way of life, our freedoms, and our economy to save humanity from COVID-19. This is a lie. The Democrats, with help from the Media, are exploiting this crisis in an attempt to fill every socialist wish list on the planet including free “stuff” for everyone, on-line voting (to help them cheat), and TIGHT GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF EVERY ASPECT OF OUR LIVES (a socialist’s dream). The Democrats also want to hurt Trump who is set to face a very weak Democrat candidate (whether Biden, Cuomo, or someone else) this Fall. While the President is doing a good job under impossible circumstances against a hostile Media, Democrats continually try to exploit this disease to advance their Agenda rather than help America recover and go back to work. The longer panic-driven lockdowns occur, the more it plays into the Democrats’ hands, and the more Americans become used to their totalitarian philosophies.

To be fair, Republicans seem to have been scared and forgotten any concept of smart spending or concern about National deficits and debt. Many objective analyses of the so-called “Historic” and “Bipartisan” $2.2 Trillion Bill show that MUCH LESS than half of the Bill actually helps businesses or impacts COVID-19. The Senate, supposedly a “deliberative body”, sent it over to the House in a panic-driven rush. We were assured “it had to be done immediately”. Leaders in the U.S. House were in such a rush to pass the Bill they refused to debate or even record votes for and against. Wasteful and non-COVID spending in the Bill includes money for tens of millions of people still working along with funding for the Kennedy Center, Planned Parenthood, Unions, and National Public Radio. NO SENATOR OR HOUSE MEMBER SHOULD BE PROUD OF THAT BILL. Americans deserve better from our leaders. Our children already face monumental debt and will face inflation worsened by the Bill. Economics 101 tells us bad things happen when you borrow and print money and infuse it into a system where people cannot make products. Congress talks about passing another and more massive Bill as if it must happen. Over the long-term, our very way of life and economic survival is at stake. Will leaders encourage spending sanity?

If you dare to speak out against the crackdown on freedoms and the massive spending, the Media trots out statistics from the misrepresented death toll of this disease. They will be quick to tell you about the latest tragic death as if to suggest that anyone who suggests we are on the wrong track just doesn’t care. If hyped death tolls don’t suffice, they film Italian Hospitals and present the video as coming from New York (CBS did this and publicly admitted it as reported in the New York Post). When lies are exposed, they bury the retraction. They fail to provide perspective. The first two deaths in North Carolina occurred on a day when five people died of the flu. Did the Media tell you? Do they talk about the 99% with mild reactions to the disease?

A commonly used and 65-year old anti-malarial drug (Hydroxychloroquine) shows promise for severe cases and as protection for Health Care workers, but the Media only criticizes the President for giving false hope and calls the drug “unsafe”. Multiple Doctors have reported that thousands of people have been successfully treated for COVID-19 with the drug. Millions of people have safely taken this drug for Malaria and Lupus for decades, yet the Media seems almost afraid that it might work and be safe for COVID-19. Ask yourself why the Media almost gleefully reports the worst news possible and why they refuse to focus on the fact that WELL OVER 99% (remember tens of thousands of people have gone untested) OF INFECTED PEOPLE HAVE MILD COMPLICATIONS from this illness. Multiple scientific papers support this, were provided in prior messages, and are available upon request.

The same people telling us we need to lock down for months and not worry about our economy are the same people who criticized the President for closing travel from China. They are the same people who complained when the President closed travel from Europe and the same people who encouraged large gatherings for Chinese New Year in New York and Mardi Gras in New Orleans. They are the same people who favor open borders to allow illegal immigrants to become undocumented voters.

The United Nations is now calling for a 10% tax on every Country in the World to “fight COVID-19”. Henry Kissinger called for a “New World Order” in the Wall Street Journal. Many nations, and some American Democrats, have called for GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER of everything from businesses to banks in order “to fight COVID-19”. This is a dream-come-true for Socialists determined to advance their Agenda and SHOULD SCARE ALL MAINSTREAM AMERICANS more than the latest misrepresented death tolls from the Media. Never let a crisis go to waste! Fear will compel people to comply!

What the experts are not telling you is that their own models show severe lockdowns only DELAY THE EFFECTS of the disease until round two comes next winter. Multiple scientific papers show it and have been provided. Do we shut down America for months or even years? Do Doctors decide? That seems to be what the Media and Democrats favor – especially if they can force shut down through the Elections and force electronic or mail-in voting. Every time the President talks of finding creative ways to go back to work, the Media becomes frantic. HOW MUCH OF OUR FREEDOM AND OUR WAY OF LIFE WILL WE SACRIFICE FOR A FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY? In addition to public health, we must also consider economic health and American Constitutional Liberties.

America must be smart enough to refuse to allow fear to rule our lives. Our Constitutional Rights and Liberties are what set us apart from the rest of the World. When President Trump suggested putting segments of our economy back to work, he was quickly attacked and told we could not do that. If “Essential Services” like grocery stores, gas stations, and hardware stores can remain open, can’t we figure out ways to open many other segments of our economy? How far will we allow the Media and fear to push us? As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”.

If you have had enough of the fear and panic driven by the mainstream Media, I encourage you to speak up. Write and call elected officials including Republicans in our State and National Legislature. Write and call to support President Trump and Vice President Pence. They are doing a great job against impossible opposition from many Democrats and many Media outlets. Refuse to let fear deprive you of what made America special in the first place. Think for yourself. Ask yourself if this is the Country our forefathers fought to defend. It is time the American people let our leaders know we don’t want to see our American liberties and our economy destroyed out of fear and panic. How many of our rights and liberties will we sacrifice? When do we put segments of American Society back to work? When do sensible and courageous political leaders step up?

 

How To Navigate The Media Spin

The Epoch Times posted an article yesterday about the report of the Justice Department Inspector General. The report found that the FBI failed to document facts correctly in 29 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications that were reviewed. A rational person would take that as an indication that all was not well at the FBI and that Americans were being unlawfully surveilled. However, the mainstream media did not necessarily see it that way.

Eli Lake posted the following comments at Bloomberg News:

In the twisted politics of the Trump Era, some of bureau’s defenders might actually view this report as good news: It shows that the investigation of the Trump campaign was not necessarily politically motivated. The bureau made the same kinds of mistakes with suspects who were not connected to the Trump campaign.

That’s hardly reassuring — and the malpractice that the report uncovers is a much larger problem than the FBI and its defenders may wish to admit. So far, the response to Horowitz’s December report has been a series of administrative reforms, such as a requirement that FBI field offices preserve their “Woods files” and a mandate for new FISA training for FBI lawyers and agents. That’s all well and good. But one need not go back to the bad old days of J. Edgar Hoover to see that the bureau has been careless in its monitoring of U.S. citizens.

The Woods procedures were issued in 2001 after Congress obtained a memo from the FBI’s counterterrorism division detailing surveillance abuse in the late 1990s. One target’s cell phone remained tapped after he gave it up and the number was reassigned to a different person. Another FBI field office videotaped a meeting, despite a clear prohibition on that technique in its FISA warrant. In 2003, an interim report from the Senate Judiciary Committee concluded that the 2001 memo showed “the FBI was experiencing more systemic problems related to the implementation of FISA orders” than a problem with the surveillance law itself.

Very little has changed in the intervening 17 years. That’s why it’s foolish to expect new and better procedures will work this time. A better approach would be an aggressive policy to prosecute FBI agents and lawyers who submit falsehoods to the surveillance court. The best way to prevent future violations is to severely punish those who commit them in the present.

Scott Johnson posted an article today at Power Line Blog that included the following quote (follow the link to the article for the audio of the answer to the question):

The New York Times is illustrative of “the twisted politics of the Trump era.” Daniel Chaitin covers the Times angle in his Examiner article “‘Biased and out of control’: Devin Nunes rips New York Times reporting on FISA memo.” Chaitin reports on Rep. Devin Nunes’s interview with Larry O’Connor:

Radio host Larry O’Connor read a passage from the [Times’s] report [on the Horowitz memo] to Nunes during the Examining Politics podcast on Tuesday. It said DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report “helps the FBI politically because it undercuts the narrative among President Trump and his supporters that the bureau cut corners to surveil the adviser, Carter Page, as part of a politically motivated conspiracy.”

“So, the good news for the FBI is that they trampled on people’s rights all over the place, not just people who worked with Donald Trump’s campaign,” O’Connor said. “Is that the takeaway we should have here congressman?”

I agree with Eli Lake–severe punishment for those guilty of illegal spying on American citizens is the only way to prevent future abuse by the FBI.

 

Fake News Isn’t Helping Anyone

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted pictures that CBS News aired as pictures of New York City hospitals. The pictures were actually pictures of Italian hospitals.

These are the pictures:

Showing this picture while discussing the coronavirus in New York City was both irresponsible and misleading.

Unfortunately there is a lot of fake news being reported in the mainstream media right now. Be careful who you believe.

In The Long Run, This Would Not Have Mattered, But It Was Still Irresponsible

Yesterday The Daily Signal posted an article about the shortage of N95 protective respirator masks. Some of the media have stated that President Obama chose not to replenish the stockpile of these masks after the 2009 H1N1 virus epidemic. That is true, but there is more to the story. At this point I would like to note that the masks have a shelf life of five years–even if President Obama had replenished the stockpile, in order for the stockpile to be any good it would have had to have been replenished again in 2014 and 2019. The responsibility for the shortage of these masks rests of both the Obama and Trump administrations. However, I think that the blame actually rests on the bureaucrats running the CDC and other health agencies inside the government.

The article notes:

H1N1, also known as the swine flu, drew down about 100 million N95 protective respirator masks.

Afterward, an H1N1 task force recommended that the Obama administration replace the masks in the national stockpile, according to reporting by the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg News.

“If the Obama administration didn’t respond to a request for additional masks, and if they did not communicate that need to the incoming [Trump] administration, that would certainly make the present situation more difficult,” Amy Anderson, a registered nurse and co-founder of the Global Nurse Consultants Alliance, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

…The Los Angeles Times reported March 20 that the U.S. government ignored warnings in 2009, making no reference to Obama’s being president at the time. 

The CDC, under the George W. Bush administration, published a “National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza” in 2005. In that case, the government heeded the agency’s advice to stockpile medical supplies. 

…The International Safety Equipment Association and the federal H1N1 task force recommended replacing the N95 masks after the response to the swine flu drew down 100 million masks from the federal stockpile, the paper reported.

However, association President Charles Johnson told the Times: “Our association is unaware of any major effort to restore the stockpile to cover that drawdown.”

The problem with a medical emergency is that you generally don’t see it coming. Blaming any administration for current supply problems is not helpful. Finding a solution to those problems is helpful. It would be nice if the mainstream media would attempt to unite us rather than divide us. The reporting during the Wuhan Flu epidemic has been horrendous and very unhelpful.

This Is Not Helpful To Anyone

Breitbart reported the following yesterday:

A Democrat-aligned Super PAC announced on Tuesday that it will spend $5 million on negative ads targeting President Trump’s response to the coronavirus.

Why not spend $5 million on encouraging people to take precautions to avoid getting the virus or to help those most impacted by the financial distress caused by the virus?

The article continues:

Acronym owns the technology firm Shadow, Inc., which was responsible for developing the infamous app used in the chaotic Iowa caucuses. Notably, the firm’s founder and CEO, Tara McGowan, “worked for Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign and previously served as the digital director for NextGen America, a progressive organization founded by presidential candidate Tom Steyer,” as RealClearPolitics noted.

Acronym is funded by the “liberal dark money group” New Venture Fund, which is “part of a larger group called Arabella Advisors, which provides philanthropic guidance and manages four nonprofits,” according to the nonpartisan ethics watchdog group Americans for Public Trust. Those also include the Sixteen Thirty Fund, Windward Fund, and Hopewell Fund.

The financial web, however, goes far beyond those connections. The political group American Bridge, which was founded by David Brock — a close ally of the Clintons and founder of Media Matters for America — is also involved in the overarching efforts to spread misinformation on President Trump’s response to the coronavirus and further politicize the crisis.

“American Bridge’s network of nonprofits received funding in 2018 from New Venture Fund, as well as another Arabella group called Sixteen Thirty Fund,” Americans for Public Trust reports.

The Post notes that American Bridge has been running political advertisements on Trump’s response to the crisis in key swing states — Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. According to the Post, the group signaled that more was coming, including an ad focusing on “‘Trump’s incompetence,’ including ‘clips of Trump himself downplaying the crisis.’”

“Our job is to hold Donald Trump accountable, and we have no plans to let up, particularly with a focus on economic issues as we’ve done to date,” American Bridge President Bradley Beychok said, according to the outlet.

He added that the group is “not going to give him [Trump] a pass for bungling the government’s response to this pandemic.”

This PAC is not helping anyone. At a time when reliable information is critical, this group, along with their allies in the mainstream media, are spreading fake news. I posted three stories (here, here, and here) in the past week that cited misreporting by the media regarding the coronavirus. All three stories were inaccurate and framed in a way to make either the President or the Republicans look bad. At a time when Americans need to work together to get through a crisis, spending $5 million on a political hit-job is not constructive.

 

Are We Willing To Learn The Lessons Of History

Today The Washington Examiner posted an opinion piece about what can happen when the media refuses to report the obvious. The piece deals with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his health as he was running for his fourth term as President.

The opinion piece notes:

On August 18, 1944, Senator Harry S. Truman met President Franklin D. Roosevelt for lunch at the White House. Truman had just been nominated to be Roosevelt’s running mate that year, and the two men dined on the White House lawn and chatted about the upcoming campaign.

Truman had not seen the president for over a year and was shocked at Roosevelt’s haggard appearance. He noticed that FDR was so ill that he couldn’t even pour cream into his coffee. Despite seeing direct evidence of Roosevelt’s poor health, Truman told reporters afterwards that Roosevelt “Looked fine…He’s as keen as a briar.”

Truman was lying. Roosevelt was a dying man, which was evident to everyone who saw him. But during the 1944 campaign, a conspiracy of silence reigned about his health. Roosevelt had a physical in the summer that showed he had high blood pressure and was suffering from congestive heart failure, but the results were kept from the public.

With the assistance of a compliant media that was overwhelmingly sympathetic to FDR, the issue of Roosevelt’s ability to serve four more years never materialized as a serious campaign issue.

We know what happened as a result of Roosevelt serving as President while his health was failing and he was not at his best.

The piece notes:

In February 1945, a dangerously ill Roosevelt traveled to Yalta to meet with Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin to discuss the future of post-war Europe. At Yalta, FDR effectively surrendered Poland and most of Eastern Europe to the Soviets. During the conference, Roosevelt lacked the stamina to keep up Stalin, and the agreements they reached reflected the poor state of FDR’s health.

No one knows how different the course of history would have been if America had elected a President who was in good health during these negotiations.

We now face a similar problem as former Vice-President Joe Biden is set to become the Democrat presidential nominee for 2020. The former Vice-President has always been known for questionable remarks, but we are watching him forget where he is and show unusual aggression toward voters who have come to hear him speak. Either one of these things could be an early sign of dementia. It is ironic that Bernie Sanders, after heart surgery, looks more energized than the former Vice-President.

We live in a complex world with complex problems. Many Americans rely on the mainstream media as a news source (I think that’s a mistake, but that is simply my opinion). If America is to continue as a republic, we need well-informed voters–we can’t afford to be lead by propaganda. Electing a President who is not physically or mentally capable of doing the job because the media refused to tell voters the truth would have major consequences. History tells us that. We can’t afford to repeat history.

Solving Problems Before They Arise

The mainstream media is in full spin blaming President Trump for any Americans who happen to get the coronavirus. Meanwhile The Conservative Treehouse is reminding us of the steps President Trump took early on the prevent the virus from spiraling out of control.

The article reports:

The level of media opposition and snark against President Trump is simply so ridiculous at this point there’s a desperation to it.  So let us consider…

From the outset of Donald Trump’s entry into the world of politics he espoused a series of key tenets around what he called his “America-First” objectives:

  1. The U.S. needed to have control over our borders, and a greater ability to control who was migrating to the United States.  A shift toward stopping ‘illegal’ migration.
  2. The U.S. needed to stop the manufacture of goods overseas and return critical manufacturing back to the United States.  A return to economic independence.
  3. The U.S. needed to decouple from an over-reliance on Chinese industrial and consumer products.  China viewed as a geopolitical and economic risk.

Donald Trump was alone on these issues.  No-one else was raising them; no-one else was so urgently pushing that discussion. In 2015, 2016 and even 2017, no-one other than Trump was talking about how close we were to the dependence point of no return.

Given the status of very consequential issues stemming from the Chinese Coronavirus threat; and the myriad of serious issues with critical supply chain dependencies; wasn’t President Trump correct in his warnings and proposals?

In early 2017 President Trump and his administration coined the phrase: “economic security is national security”, and the economic team set about starting a very complex process to ensure the past three decades of trade policy was reversed.

The article reminds us of how bad the reporting on the President’s handling of the threat of this virus has been:

On January 30th while Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler and Chuck Schumer were literally trying to impeach President Trump; on that very day President Trump was assembling a task force in advance of his authorization for HHS Secretary Alex Azar to declare a proactive national health emergency.

On the exact same day the Senate was debating whether to call more witnesses for the Senate impeachment trial, the newly assembled Coronavirus Task Force was holding a press conference to outline: in accordance with the national health emergency declaration, at 5:00 p.m. EST; Sunday, February 2nd, the U.S government would implement temporary measures to increase detection & containment of the coronavirus proactively:

Any U.S. citizen returning to the United States who was in Hubei Province in the previous 14 days was/is subject to up to 14 days of mandatory quarantine. Any U.S. citizen returning to the United States who was in the rest of Mainland China within the previous 14 days was put through proactive entry health screening at a select number of ports of entry, and up to 14 days of monitored self-quarantine. All foreign nationals, other than U.S. citizens and permanent residents, who traveled in China within the prior 14 days were denied entry into the United States.  (link)

Simultaneous to this joint HHS, CDC and NIH announcement, on the other side of Capitol Hill, the U.S. Senate voted on whether to add additional impeachment witnesses; and what the impeachment process would be moving forward.

Guess which event the media covered?….

The President has been on the case since before there was a case to be on. It’s a shame that the mainstream media is working against the interests of America instead of working with the President to protect Americans.

You Might Not Have Read This In The Mainstream Media

Yesterday The Western Journal posted some comments by Dr. Marc Siegel, a professor of medicine at New York University, a medical correspondent for Fox News, and the author of “False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear.”

The article reports Dr. Siegel’s comments:

“I’ve been handling these emerging contagions for about 20 years now, and I have to tell you, I’ve never seen one handled better,” Dr. Marc Siegel said regarding the actions of President Donald Trump since the coronavirus first emerged as a concern in January.

…“The task force are really top players,” said Siegel, noting the inclusion of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Fauci is “one of the top infectious disease experts in the country,” he noted.

“They’ve been doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing,” he said, listing actions Trump has called for such as “restricting travel, isolating patients who are sick and, trying to cut down on contact. It’s a very hard thing to do when people are pouring in from all over the world.”

CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield, a virologist, and Dr. Nancy Messonnier, an expert in vaccines who has been sounding the alarm about the virus, are also important members, he said, though he believes the “doom and gloom comment” about the inevitable spread of the virus was uncalled for.

Siegel said that the coronavirus is different from diseases such as SARS or the flu.

“SARS had about a ten percent mortality [rate], but it only affected about 8,000 people. Swine flu had a very, very low mortality for flu, but flu itself really only causes about a point-four percent death rate, and [coronavirus] is about one-point-four percent. So this is killing more than flu, but I want to make a couple of points that will reassure people,” he said.

“One, at the beginning of an emerging contagion, it always appears more deadly than it actually is. The 1918 flu is an exception, but normally as time goes on, it’s less deadly, and part of that is because you see more immunity appearing, and you also find a lot of milder cases — or even cases where people don’t get sick at all. You find that as you start to test more people,” he said.

He also noted that people who were infected but never got sick do not show up in statistics, making the virus seem more deadly than it is.

The bottom line here is that the coronavirus is serious, but it is not the 1918 flu. Wash your hands, and use common sense. Winter is ending, and hopefully the flu season will end with it!

We Need To Have A Chat About Civility

I understand that some people truly dislike President Trump (and his supporters). Chances are they get their news from the mainstream media and are totally unaware of the good things he has done for America. They have made the choice not to notice when the economy improves or our overseas military escapades seem to be winding down or when America becomes energy independent. That’s fine. They are totally entitled to their opinion. However, they do not have the right to harm people because they disagree with them politically. If you are ‘triggered’ by someone wearing a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat, maybe you should look at your own problems rather than attack the person wearing the hat. Civility is rapidly becoming a lost art.

The Washington Examiner reported the following today:

A Denver city councilwoman appeared to cheer on a message about spreading the coronavirus at one of President Trump’s rallies.

Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca, a Democrat, enthusiastically responded last week to a tweet that featured a graphic that said, “For the record, if I do get the coronavirus I’m attending every MAGA rally I can.”

Her quote tweet said, “#solidarity Yaaaas!!” along with five emojis, three of which were faces laughing so hard that they were crying.

The councilwoman later responded to a reporter’s tweet, saying, “1. Are you listening to ANYTHING Trump has said about the virus? 2. Do you realize Trump reduced the virus to a common flu? 3. I know sarcasm is hard to read in a tweet, but you are usually a bit quicker than this. Next time I will use more emoji’s just 4 you.”

Neither the city council’s office or the Trump campaign responded to a request for comment.

Is she aware of the precautions the Trump administration has taken to prevent the spread of the virus in America? Is she aware of the task force that was formed in January to combat the virus in America? Even if she is not aware of the efforts made to protect Americans, her comments are totally inappropriate. I don’t know if I would remove her from office, but I certainly believe she needs to apologize and to understand that her comments were not befitting an elected official.

Some Interesting Facts About The Coronavirus

Yesterday BizPacReview posted an article about a report by the New England Journal of Medicine about the coronavirus.

The article reports:

The report, published Friday and authored by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., H. Clifford Lane, M.D., and Robert R. Redfield, M.D., notes that there are no known cases of children younger than 15 being infected with the respiratory disease caused by a novel coronavirus.

Fauci, a member of President Trump’s coronavirus task force, joined the experts from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to pen the editorial citing a study which “detailed clinical and epidemiologic description of the first 425 cases reported in the epicenter of the outbreak.”

“The median age of the patients was 59 years, with higher morbidity and mortality among the elderly and among those with coexisting conditions (similar to the situation with influenza); 56% of the patients were male,” the article stated.

“Of note, there were no cases in children younger than 15 years of age,” the piece continued. “Either children are less likely to become infected, which would have important epidemiologic implications, or their symptoms were so mild that their infection escaped detection, which has implications for the size of the denominator of total community infections.”

The editorial went on to note the percentage of identified cases and that the contagious virus may “ultimately be more akin” to a case of influenza.

Much of the information the mainstream media is providing on the coronavirus is simply false. The President’s task force has been working to contain the virus since January. Preventing people traveling from China to America from entering the country has probably avoided a serious epidemic. Think of the tourists in our major cities that might have been carrying the virus if the travel ban had not been in place.

This is essentially another flu. We need to wash our hands, take care of ourselves, avoid people who are sneezing and coughing, stay home when we are sick, and generally exercise common sense. Chicken soup is also a wonderful idea if you are feeling under the weather.

Meanwhile, stay safe and stay healthy.

You Would Think The Media Might Have Noticed This

Yesterday PJ Media posted an article about President Trump’s appointment of Rick Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, as head of the Department of National Intelligence.

The article notes the mainstream media’s silence on one aspect of the appointment:

So it was rather surprising to discover that mainstream news stories about the first openly gay White House Cabinet member – ever, ever – were left on the newsroom floor.

I really don’t care that Ambassador Grenell is gay. I do care that he is loyal to the President, and lately that seems to be the exception rather than the rule in the Intelligence Community.

Please follow the link to the article to read the snippets from the mainstream media’s reporting on this appointment. Obviously Ambassador Grenell is not a member of the deep state, and the media is not happy with his appointment. His appointment also uncovers the lie that President Trump is anti-gay. I think the media may be having a bad day.

The Media Responsibility For The Divide Between Us

On February 8th, Gregory Timm drove his van into a Republican voter registration tent in Jacksonville, Florida. The mainstream media chose to ignore the story.

Today The Washington Examiner posted an opinion piece that noted a few things about the attack and the silence of the media:

In the hours and days after Gregory Timm plowed his vehicle into a tent of Republican Party volunteers registering voters in the parking lot of Kernan Village Shopping Center in Jacksonville, Florida, national coverage of the event has been alarmingly lacking.

Local news channel WJXT reported days later on the arrest report, which showed Timm telling the sheriff’s office his “disapproval of Trump” was the motivating factor for the attack. He showed the sheriff’s office a self-recorded video of him driving straight at the volunteers, expressing frustration that the video cut out before “the good part.” Even then, as I write this, the best the New York Times could muster was wire coverage.

No teams of reporters were sent to uncover his dark motivations, upbringing, or political leanings. No psychological profiles have been written up, nor have any experts weighed in on how this is a growing threat. These are all tools that would have been used by an army of reporters if Timm had been a Trump supporter plowing into Democratic Party volunteers registering voters.

The problem isn’t that Timm’s attack on the GOP wasn’t covered by most of the media. It’s that it wasn’t covered with the same voracious appetite news organizations have whenever someone who is even peripherally associated with the Right does something to a Democrat.

This isn’t whataboutism; this is realism. It gets to the heart of why people, especially conservatives, believe the media doesn’t just have a liberal bias, but it either doesn’t cover stories that show when conservatives are attacked, or it buries them.

The opinion piece concludes:

According to a new Pew Research Center study, more Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents trust rather than distrust most of the 30 outlets in the study, which includes the New York Times. The reverse is true among Republicans and center-right independents. In fact, the gap has widened substantially for Republicans’ trust in the media in the past six years to get the story right, or without bias, or report it at all.

Bier (Jeryl Bier, a freelance writer whose dispatches can be found in the Wall Street Journal and National Review) says the danger for right-leaning news organizations is to try not to overcompensate for what they see as left-wing bias. “It is truly difficult to walk the line, but more in media need to strive for that balance.”

One of the more common observations I hear from people on how my profession reports on politics in this country centers on how Trump has been covered since he became president.

The conversation typically goes something like this: “I don’t mind that you scrutinize every move he makes or what his motivations are, that is your job. I just want to know why you didn’t cover the last guy with the same gusto, which was also your job.”

It is fair to say that logic should also apply to how incidents are covered that affect Republicans. There would have been a week’s worth of cable news coverage, several nationwide protests, and someone calling for a national conversation by now had the victims of Timm’s attack been supporting anyone but Trump.

The liberal slant of the mainstream media is divisive. Many Americans do not hear both sides of an issue. The are constantly fed the idea that Trump supporters are unprincipled people who want to destroy the Constitution. When the media criticizes President Trump, it generally fails to mention similar actions of previous presidents. On the whole, the mainstream media is setting up an alternative reality that can only be harmful to America.

A Story You Have To Look Hard To Find

There was a certain amount of hysteria when Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was escorted from the White House last week and when his twin, Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, was also dismissed from the NSC. But there is a part of the story that the media seems to conveniently have overlooked.

The American Spectator posted the rest of the story today.

The article reports:

Within hours of the Vindmans being put out the door, Gordon Sondland, who testified about Trump’s Ukraine dealings during the House impeachment hearings, announced that “the president intends to recall me effective immediately as United States ambassador to the European Union.”

Sondland testified to his assumption that Trump had engaged in a quid pro quo exchange of U.S. military aid to Ukraine in return for that country’s assistance in investigating the corrupt Ukrainian dealings of Vice President Joe Biden and his wastrel son. Only after being pinned down on cross examination did Sondland finally admit that, contrary to Sondland’s assumptions, Trump had explicitly told him that he wanted nothing from the Ukraine other than for Zelensky to clean up that country’s culture of corruption.

As described by the hysterical media, you would think that President Trump had “settled all family business” in the manner portrayed in The Godfather’s climactic scene when Michael Corleone has the heads of New York’s five Mafia families whacked.

The article then reports:

But the truth is altogether to the contrary. In May of this year, Alexander Vindman will enroll in the Army War College. This is a highly sought and selective program and a singular opportunity to advance one’s military career. It is open only to the favored few who are being groomed for top leadership positions in the military.

Similarly, Yevgeny Vindman is set to work in the Office of General Counsel of the Army at the Pentagon. Neither this assignment nor the slot at the Army War College can be considered as punitive. Put another way, neither qualifies as the equivalent of being reduced in rank and placed in charge of the PX at Camp Frostbite, Alaska.

As for Sondland, he is a hotel magnate who was a big contributor to Trump’s 2016 campaign. Recalling him is not the equivalent of terminating the livelihood of a career State Department official. Sondland can go back to his day job of running his hotel empire. And, since the Obama regime is no longer in charge, he can do so without fear of the IRS auditing his company, OSHA inspecting his hotels, and ICE vetting his employees.

As retaliation goes, removing the Vindmans from the National Security Council and stripping Sondland of his ambassadorship is pretty weak stuff. Which raises the troubling question as to whether such pallid measures will be enough to deter others who may wish to emulate Sondland and the Vindman twins in any future coup attempt.

There are now reports that the House Democrats are gearing up for another impeachment. Given the positive effect that the last impeachment had on Trump’s approval rating and campaign fund raising, you might think that the House Democrats would be disinclined to do it again. But then such a conclusion would be premised on the belief that these people are rational. They are not. When it comes to Trump, they are bat-guano crazy and consumed by the kind of frustration and uncontrolled rage that drove Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to publicly debase and embarrass herself by tearing up the President’s State of the Union address.

The article concludes:

That is why President Trump should seriously consider taking firm and decisive punitive action to discourage all deep state partisans from promoting yet another impeachment hoax. In that regard, he has a positive obligation to the nation to make clear to one and all that they will pay a heavy price if they meretriciously participate in any future attempted coup.

The Vindmans and Sondland got off relatively unscathed. But, if other deep state denizens remain to be called to account, the President needs to take off the gloves.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media is hysterical because the twins have been moved. Somehow they failed to note that the moves were not disciplinary.

The Consequences Of Success

Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article that illustrates the bias of the mainstream media.

The article begins with a denial from the networks. I am not sure I believe the denial:

Representatives from both CNN’s State of the Union and CBS’s Face the Nation refuted Grisham’s claims that they turned down an appearance from a White House official. A Fox News spokesperson also pointed out that Grisham inaccurately said Fox Business was the only network to accept a White House spokesperson because they do not have a Sunday talk show.

The article states:

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham claimed a slew of networks declined to book a White House official for Sunday programming after a good news week for President Trump.

Grisham, in a Friday night appearance on Hannity, acknowledged the White House will not get much airtime to discuss the State of the Union address, the president getting acquitted in the Senate impeachment trial, and a strong jobs report.

“I have got to tell you there is not going to be one White House official on any of the Sunday shows this weekend. Only Fox Business is taking a White House official to talk about what an amazing week this president has had, and I do find that timing very, very suspect,” she explained.

The article concludes:

While most networks aren’t featuring a White House official, many are bringing on Trump supporters. CBS’s Face The Nation will have South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, as well as 2020 hopefuls Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. The two presidential candidates will also appear on Fox News Sunday.

Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani will appear on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures.

ABC’s This Week will also feature two Democratic presidential candidates; the only conservative on their guest list is former Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock, who is also a network contributor.

It will be interesting to see the comments about Speaker Pelosi’s tearing up the speech on the Sunday shows. Her actions were childish and totally inappropriate. However, I doubt they will be reported as such.

This Isn’t A Surprise To Any Unbiased Person

On Monday The Washington Examiner posted an article about race relations in America. We still have those who are trying to profit or gain personally by creating racial discord, but generally speaking America is doing better.

The article reports:

Satisfaction with race relations in the United States has jumped under President Trump, the latest indication that the Republican is making significant inroads with blacks and other minorities in advance of the 2020 presidential election.

New details from a Gallup survey on satisfaction said race relations and the “position” of minorities under Trump are far higher than they were under President Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president.

Race relations scored the highest satisfaction advance, 14 points, from 22% at the end of the Obama administration to 36% this month, said Gallup.

The article includes the following chart:

These statistics may explain why the Democrats were willing to embark on the seemingly suicidal mission of impeachment.

The article concludes:

What’s more, Gallup said that the nation’s average satisfaction rate is at a 15-year high.

Said the survey analysis:

“Americans’ average satisfaction rating for the 27 issues Gallup has tracked consistently since 2001 is now 47%. This is up three points from a year ago and is the highest since the January 2005 poll.

“Today’s average satisfaction is roughly on par with the level of the early 2000s. Only in 2002 was the average for this metric substantially higher than it is today. The average 53% recorded that year reflected heightened satisfaction as Americans were in full ‘rally around the flag’ mode shortly after the 9/11 attacks.”

President Trump has been a very successful President. It is a shame that most of the mainstream media has chosen to ignore that fact.

How Does This Make Sense?

On Saturday, BizPacReview posted an article about some recent comments made by Fox News Analyst Juan Williams.

The article reports:

Fox News co-host Juan Williams vehemently disagreed with the praise for President Trump’s appearance at the March For Life rally, saying his attendance further “divides the country.”

The liberal co-host of “The Five” delivered his tone-deaf argument on Friday’s show, criticizing Trump for what many have lauded as a powerful message with his appearance at Friday’s event, making him the first sitting U.S. president to address the March for Life rally in person.

In January 2017, Real Clear Politics reported the following:

If politicians really want to show that they trust American women, then they should follow the advice of the overwhelming majority of us and restrict abortion in meaningful ways.

This means supporting the president’s action to ban funding of abortion internationally, which is supported by 83 percent of women, and same percentage of all Americans.

This means limiting abortion substantially through legislation. Nationwide, 77 percent of women support limiting abortion to – at most – the first trimester. That is slightly higher than the percentage of all Americans – 74 percent. Laws restricting abortion should be embraced, not resisted.

And 61 percent of women think it is important, or an immediate priority, for our government to restrict abortion in this way, a slightly higher percentage than the 59 percent of all Americans who hold this position.

Not surprisingly, the majority of American women (59 percent) say abortion is morally wrong, the same percentage of all Americans who agree.

And a majority of women (51 percent) believe that abortion causes more harm than good in the long run; 50 percent of all Americans agree.

According to Juan Williams, is the President prohibited from speaking out or supporting controversial issues? Doesn’t the President have the same First Amendment rights that all Americans have?

I don’t think abortion is what divides the country–I think that biased news that only reports things that support their agenda is actually what divides the country. Right Wing Granny is a politically-biased site–it says so in the title. I share facts, but I share them with opinion. It is very difficult right now to watch the mainstream media and find unbiased information–while the mainstream media is totally unwilling to admit that it is biased.

No, President Trump has not divided the country–those who despise the fact that he was elected and are willing to do anything to undermine his presidency are dividing the country.