Accidentally Telling The Truth?

Yesterday NewsBusters posted an article about a recent comment made by Nikki Fried, a Democratic politician who is running for Florida governor.

The article reports:

Sometimes people just come out and say what we all know to be true, even if some still pretend otherwise. Nikki Fried, a Democratic politician who is running for Florida governor and hopes to challenge Republican Ron DeSantis, tweeted this on Thursday: “Ron DeSantis has Fox News, but we have everyone else. Florida will be blue in 2022.” 

The article includes a screenshot of the tweet in case it is deleted.

The article concludes:

Fried is a frequent guest on the outlets she knows are in her corner. On March 31, 2021, she appeared on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show and bashed not just DeSantis, but her own state, saying she “want[ed] to apologize to the rest of the country of what happens here in the state of Florida.” Fried trashed DeSantis as “not rational,” “egotistical” and “dogmatic.” 

On the June 27, 2020 edition of AM Joy, Reid tossed this softball to Fried about DeSantis and Covid: “Commissioner Fried, I want to let you critique your governor’s performance.” See, MSNBC and the Democratic Party working together. At least Fried is being honest about it now. 

I don’t entirely agree with her statement. Fox News is a 24-hour news station. Of that 24 hours, I would say that approximately 4 or 5 hours of broadcasting actually lean conservative. Most of the shows on Fox are either in the political center or center right. The fact that the network is referred to as conservative illustrates the fact that our political center has moved left in recent years. In the last century, all Americans understood that communism and socialism were not workable economic systems. We are now at a point where we need to send almost everyone back to school to take an economics course.

What Gets Reported…And What Does Not.

Yesterday NewsBusters posted an article on two important stories the media is choosing to ignore.

The article reports:

On Friday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported another record number of apprehensions at the Mexican border in June: almost 190,000. This number does not include those who have been able to get away from Border Patrol.

But somehow, this is not an ongoing Biden border crisis. On Friday night’s newscasts, only ABC and NBC mentioned it. CBS and PBS did not.

NBC tossed just 19 seconds on the border.

Lester Holt threw this brief: “Despite scorching summer temperatures, the record migrant surge at the southern border is still growing tonight. Newly released numbers show customs and border patrol agents apprehended nearly 189,000 migrants trying to cross in June. That’s the highest number in 21 years. Over 1 million migrants have been apprehended this year.”

The article concludes:

On Friday morning, Politico had a new revelation on Hunter Biden. Ben Schreckinger reported that the Hunter probe had reached a point where they “could have issued grand jury subpoenas and sought search warrants that would have revealed its existence,” but Delaware’s U.S. Attorney David Weiss “decided to delay taking any actions that were likely to make the existence of the government’s Hunter Biden probe public. Concerns about affecting the presidential election loomed large when Weiss entertained arguments about advancing the probe, according to the person involved in the discussions.” It was supposedly apolitical to avoid anything that could help Trump. 

The networks all ignored it. As usual.

Is anyone surprised?

In America we live in a Representative Republic–we are responsible for electing our leaders. If you are unhappy with the direction our government is currently headed, you need to work to change that–learn to do your research on your own, learn what sources you can depend on for national and international news. Then go out and share that information with your friends. That is how we can reserve our republich

Why Economics Needs To Be Taught In School

Yesterday Newsbusters posted an article about some comments recently made on mainstream media about inflation. The comments indicated that economics is not universally taught in our colleges.

The article notes:

Did CNBC get its understanding of economics from the back of a cereal box? The outlet is arguing that the silver lining to skyrocketing inflation is — “rising wages.”

The liberal outlet noted how “[a]s the economy picks up in the wake of the Covid pandemic, concerns about inflation are also gaining steam.” After conceding that prices of goods are rising, CNBC took a nosedive into ineptitude: “Companies facing a labor shortage are also paying more to get workers to walk in the door.” Did CNBC even consider that rising prices of goods are eating into American pay? Bloomberg News just reported that American pay boosts “are failing to keep pace with surging prices for everyday goods.” CNBC seemed to only figure that out after the story was originally published. Its original headline was “The upside to inflation: rising wages.” The headline has since been changed to alter the entire context of the story: “It’s not certain rising wages will be enough to outpace inflation.”

Rising wages are a good thing when they are part of a strong economy.

On November 2, 2020, The Federalist reported:

Many on the left refuse to admit President Trump’s populist policies have provided massive benefits to working-class Americans. Matthew Yglesias argued at Vox that Trump’s refusal to endorse a federal $15 per hour minimum wage proves Trump has abandoned populist ideals. Progressives claim the Trump economy helps billionaires, not workers, and snidely dismiss his outreach to minorities.

Yet, during the first three years of the Trump presidency, wage growth was off the charts, especially for low-income workers and African Americans. The third-quarter economic data released Thursday confirm once again that Trump is on the job for U.S. workers.

The Biden campaign has tried to tie COVID-linked economic devastation to Trump’s leadership. The new third-quarter economic data once again shows that’s wrong. The total number of U.S. wage earners increased more than 5 percent in that period, and the third-quarter rebound for African Americans occurred at a 17 percent faster rate than for wage earners as a whole.

During the Trump administration, inflation remained at about 2 percent.

On May 18, 2021, The Post Millennial reported:

It’s not just anecdotal evidence, the Consumer Price Index released last week shows that prices are up across the board by .8 percent for April. That’s after a .3 increase for January, .4 increase for February, and a .6 increase for March. In contrast, the last few months of the Trump administration had increases as well, albeit much lower. October showed a .1 percent increase, while November and December both showed increases of .2 percent.

Newsbusters also notes:

CNBC’s “Key Points” section also contradicted itself by admitting that prices of goods were increasing while lauding how pay was increasing at the same time. Newsflash, CNBC: rising costs of living takes away from the benefit of a pay increase.

    • “Although consumers may be paying more for everyday items, it’s not all bad news.”
    • “As inflation takes hold, wages may increase, too.”

CNBC must have realized this contradiction and changed its “Key Points” section to reflect new points entirely:

    • “As inflation takes hold, wages may increase, too.”
    • “The question is, will it be enough to outpace the rise in prices.”

CNBC couldn’t stop contradicting its points. It even warned that economists were saying rapid increase in wages could in fact cause inflation, further undercutting the entire story:

And still, some economists fear a too-rapid increase in wages could prompt companies to raise prices and create the very phenomenon of inflation, causing more harm than good.

No kidding. Elections have consequences, but at least President Biden doesn’t do mean tweets.

The Media Is Telling You What To Believe

On Monday, Newsbusters posted an article about the media reporting after a tragedy involving a gun.

The article reports:

In the aftermath of the tragic shooting in Boulder, the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) network evening and morning shows sinisterly depicted Republicans, conservatives and gun owners as a “wall of opposition” and “resistance” to “common sense” gun control measures that would save lives. 

In just four days (March 23 through March 26) of coverage, the networks filled their morning show and evening programs with statements favoring gun control over gun rights by a ratio of roughly 14 to 1.

It’s become commonplace for the networks to quickly seize on a mass shooting to champion the Left’s longstanding anti-gun agenda. After the December 2012 killings in a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school, NewsBusters found the networks slanted their coverage 8-to-1 in favor of the gun control agenda.

In the wake of the 2016 mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub, the spin was an equally-lopsided 8-to-1. TV coverage of the killings in Las Vegas in 2017 was slanted five-to-one against gun rights, while in the wake of the February 2018 shootings at Parkland High School the networks tilted 11-to-1 in favor of anti-gun activists.

And after the 2019 shootings in El Paso, Texas, the networks tilted an even more lopsided 17-to-1 to the Left.

The article summarizes the numbers:

MRC analysts reviewed all statements that took a position on overall gun policy by anchors, reporters, guests and soundbites, beginning with the morning of March 23 (the morning after the Boulder shooting) through the morning of March 26, and found time spent arguing in favor of more gun control (36 minutes, 11 seconds) overwhelmed time devoted to supporting gun rights (2 minutes and 31 seconds.)  

How are Americans supposed to get a fair picture of any issue when our media is so lopsided? This is ridiculous.

None of the laws currently proposed by Democrats in Congress to ‘save lives’ would have been relevant in most of the shootings that have occurred in America in recent years. Limiting the rights of law-abiding gun owners does nothing to prevent criminals from obtaining guns and using them. Has it occurred to anyone in Congress that criminals do not follow laws?

Why Everyone Needs At Least One Alternative News Source

The mainstream media is getting very bold about its censorship of all things conservative.

Yesterday Newsbusters reported the following:

Guest-hosting MSNB’s AM Joy today, Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post and MSNBC suggested that network execs shouldn’t show the “felonious couple,” i.e. the McCloskeys, when they speak at the RNC convention next week.  And guest on the show claimed that President Trump would use the McCloskeys as an example to promote a “violent mutiny” should he lose the election.

The McCloskeys made national news when they defended their home by displaying weapons when a large BLM group entered their gated community. The McCloskeys have been convicted of nothing, and the Missouri Attorney General has intervened, calling their indictment by the Democrat St. Louis Circuit Attorney a “politically motivated prosecution.” And the governor of Missouri has stated that he would pardon the couple, if convicted, saying “they’re being attacked frankly by a political process that’s really unfortunate.”

Okay. Let’s take a look at the McCloskeys and their case. One of the oddities here is that based on some of their statements it is a pretty safe bet that the McCloskeys were not (or ever planned to be) Trump voters. That may or may not have changed recently. The BLM gang that was threatening them broke through the gate of a gated community to get to their house. They were verbally threatened, and the ‘protestors’ were visibly armed. The McCloskeys are protected under the Missouri Castle Doctrine that gives them the right to defend their home and themselves. They were well within their legal rights. There was nothing ‘felonious’ about what they did.

The article continues:

While suggesting the canceling of the McCloskey couple—who benefit from the presumption of innocence—Capehart predictably didn’t utter a peep about the Democrats having given a convention speaking slot to someone convicted of murder in a particularly gruesome and grisly slaying. 

Commenting on the RNC’s invitation to the McCloskeys, activist Brittany Packnett Cunningham claimed that President Trump “wants to give permission to the people who intend to harm us.” 

Cunningham also asserted that President Trump is using the McCloskeys as an example for others to “emulate,” and is “readying his people for violent mutiny” if he loses the election.

Just for the record, the convicted murderer at the Democrat Convention was Donna Hylton.

This is the history of Donna Hylton according to an August 22 article at Fox News:

She was behind bars for her role in the grisly murder and torture of Thomas Vigliarolo, a balding New York businessman found stuffed inside a steamer trunk and left to rot in Harlem. Hylton and six others let him die “in the most heinous circumstances,” the prosecutor said at their trial in 1985. On Thursday, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hailed Hylton as one of “America’s most impactful community leaders” and asked her to participate in a video reading of the Preamble to the Constitution during a televised portion of the convention.

To be fair, Ms. Hylton claimed to be the victim of human trafficking and sexual abuse who was coerced into her role in the torture and murder. She has served her time, and it working to better her community, but I still question the wisdom of putting her in the spotlight.

Meanwhile, if you plan on watching the Republican Convention, find a source that will show you all of it.

When The News Doesn’t Report The News

Newsbusters posted an article today about the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite stock index.

The article reports:

The Big Tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite stock index closed at a record 11,108.07 Thursday evening, well over the historic 11,000 milestone, according to Nasdaq August 7. “A big reason for the market’s second-half momentum today was this week’s better-than-expected jobless claims report,” Nasdaq reported. “[N]early 1.19 million” filed jobless claims, but that marks “the lowest level since the pandemic began.” CNBC reported that this was the NASDAQ’s “seventh straight gain.” 

Like a bad habit, ABC World News Tonight (Tom Llamas filling in), CBS Evening News (Margaret Brennan filling in) and NBC Nightly News all censored the Nasdaq’s historic performance. Other good market news censored by the Big Three yesterday included how “[b]oth the Dow and S&P 500 posted five-day winning streaks,” according to CNBC. [Emphasis added.] 

Fox News’s Special Report did report on the stock market news, putting the Big Three to shame.

This may be one of many reasons Fox New’s ratings are going up while other news media ratings are going down.

The article continues:

ABC World News Tonight and CBS Evening News did find the time to egregiously spin the jobless claims report without providing the context that it was “at the lowest level since the pandemic began.” CBS Evening News spent 115 seconds pushing propaganda on the topic without providing that important bit of context. 

According to comments to CNBC by Jefferies money market economist Thomas Simons on the jobless claims report:

‘The overall tone of the jobless claims data is the best it has been in 3 weeks or so. The decline is the biggest since the week of June 6, so the data does not have the same sort of ‘stalling out’ theme that we have seen in recent weeks.’

That context was apparently not worth reporting by ABC World News Tonight or CBS Evening News.

If you depend on the mainstream media to keep you informed, you might want to rethink that.

 

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.

I Really Have My Doubts About This As Positive Parenting

Yesterday Newsbusters posted an article about an interview with Ali Wentworth, wife of George Stephanopoulos.

Here are some parenting tips put forth in the interview:

In a recent podcast interview with Will & Grace’s Debra Messing, comedian Ali Wentworth – who has been married to George Stephanopoulos since 2001 – opened up about her insane parenting methods involving educating her kids about pornography. 

There’s the normal strategy of staying vigilant as a parent and educating them about the dangers of this corruptive, and addictive medium, which profits off of violent exploitation of women and has been linked to sex trafficking. Then there’s what Mrs. George Stephanopoulos told her Hollywood friend — watching porn with her children.

…Wentworth, who has two daughters with the Good Morning America anchor, claimed, “You can’t stop them, so I would watch it with them. I would look at the porn with them that one time, like, ‘They’re performing.’” Oh that’s wonderful. Though Wentworth, a comedian, explained that this was a way in which she could provide context about the practice to her kids. You see, watching it with her kids would allow her to explain how it’s exploitative of the actors in pornographic productions.

She added, “In porn, women have been conditioned to look and act a certain way… They are performing and it’s dangerous to have boys see this as something women want.” Oh wonderful. How about telling your daughters to turn it off if it’s dangerous. Also how would it not be awkward for the Stephanopoulos parents to sit in with their teenage daughters as the actors simulate sex?

The article concludes:

Porn is bad for men and women in different ways. Though many studies focus on porn’s destructive effects on males, anti-porn research group Fight The New Drug notes that “women can be just as at risk of becoming dependent upon pornography as men.” 

The group cited a German sex study published in The Telegraph which claimed, “at least 17% of women consider themselves addicted to porn, and half of the women surveyed were internet porn consumers.”

So yeah, great for Wentworth. Expose your daughters to a potential porn addiction, as long as you talk to them about their feelings afterward. Besides peddling harmful hippie BS parenting techniques, they’re also contributing viewership to an industry that utterly destroys the dignity of the performers, turning them into a sexual commodity. It’s an industry so exploitative of young girls that the internet’s largest free porn provider, Pornhub, has been accused of featuring videos of rape and sex trafficking victims.

Well as long as George and Lindsey explain why human trafficking is bad as they sit down to watch as a family.

This is not healthy for the children. It should not be promoted anywhere as a good idea. There are studies that show a link between sex trafficking and pornography. There are also studies that show a negative impact on the brain leading to addiction. This is insanity.

The Cancel Culture Is Getting Absurd

I knew things were getting out of hand when a mob tore down the statue of Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York, on Sunday. Now they are coming for Hawaiian shirts. On July 1, Newsbusters posted the story.

The article reports:

The New York Times has identified a new villain in their insane cancel culture wars. Hawaiian shirts. I kid you not.

On Monday, freelancer Nathan Taylor Pemberton targeted Hawaiian shirts because some undesirable people wear them. His warning about the dire associations connected with that ubiquitous article of clothing came in “What Do You Do When Extremism Comes for the Hawaiian Shirt?”

It’s one of the most discussed street styles of the spring: tactical body armor, customized assault rifles, maybe a sidearm and helmet, paired with the languid floral patterns of a Hawaiian shirt.

While it’s not uncommon to see heavily armed white men toting military-grade gear on American streets, the addition of the Hawaiian shirt is a new twist. It turned up in February at gun rights rallies in Virginia and Kentucky, then in late April at coronavirus lockdown protests in Michigan and Texas.

Think of the shirts as a campy kind of uniform, but for members of extremist groups who adhere to the idea of the “boogaloo” — or, a second civil war in the United States. If that sounds silly to you, consider that these groups settled on the Hawaiian shirt thanks to a string of message board in-jokes.

The article explains:

Ah! So now we get to the source of leftist antipathy towards Hawaiian shirts. They somehow interpret it as a symbol of American colonialism in Hawaii although ironically it is a big source of textile employment for many Hawaiians as well as worn by many of them although they refer to them as “Aloha shirts.”

The article concludes:

Sigh! To paraphrase Sigmund Freud: Sometimes a Hawaiian shirt is just a Hawaiian shirt. In fact that is what is should be, always.

I wonder when wearing sneakers is going to become a problem.

The Networks Have Totally Lost Their Credibility

Newsbusters posted an article today about an interview to be aired on ABC during prime time on Sunday.

The article reports:

On June 15, former National Security Adviser John Bolton sat down for an interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz to promote his new “tell all” book, expected to rip the bark off the Trump White House. ABC is airing it Sunday during prime time….just like they aired a prime time interview in 2018 with former FBI director James Comey to promote his anti-Trump “tell all” book.

In 2007, Bolton wrote a book about his experience in government. No major network came calling for a prime time special. He wasn’t useful to them back then.

Now try to remember ABC offering a prime time special to an Obama insider who wrote a rip-roaring “tell-all” book. You’ll have a tough time. Because most publishers are liberals, and aren’t going to roll out the red carpet for that kind of book….even if the author is a liberal. So there was no insider “tell-all” for ABC to promote.

The article notes that there were never any prime time interviews for authors of tell-all books about the Obama administration.

The article continues:

To be fair, there were former Obama officials who came out with memoirs that may have said something negative about Obama…and they were attacked for it.

In 2014, Robert Gates, Obama’s first Secretary of Defense, was selling a book. As he sat in NBC’s studio wearing a neck brace, Today co-host Matt Lauer accused him of endangering the troops for having the audacity to criticize the sitting commander-in-chief: “[A]t a time when some 40,000 U.S. troops are in harm’s way, do you think that by calling him into question at this stage it is either dangerous or dishonorable?”

Now look back and imagine being called “dishonorable” by Matt Lauer.  

In 2013, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, fired by President Obama over critical comments from his staff in a Rolling Stone article, issued his memoirs, and did a round of TV interviews. The first one, with CBS Pentagon correspondent David Martin, mostly skipped Obama, except for McChrystal to express pain over his apparent “disloyalty” with Rolling Stone. There wasn’t any attack on Obama. The general did promote his book on a special edition of Hannity in prime time, and the Fox host talked through what happened with Obama, but there was no trashing of the president.

This same pattern emerged last September with Gen. James Mattis. CBS promoted his book in two interviews, but completely ignored his strong criticisms of Obama. He even called some of his choices “catastrophic.”

Instead, CBS This Morning co-host Anthony Mason asked about Trump: “What do you think the President got wrong about Syria?” Guest host Maria Elena Salinas pushed about his resignation: “Was it your decision to leave, or were you fired, or were you pushed into resigning or pressured into resigning?”

The article concludes:

There’s no need to pre-judge what John Bolton will say to ABC. But we can judge a long history of “tell all” imbalance, from the publishing houses to the TV studios. Republicans are mercilessly dissected. Democrats are carefully protected.

ABC is not noted for presenting both sides of the story. How much of the Comey interview was proven to be lies after documents were declassified? Those who claim to want to bring the country together (and accuse President Trump of dividing it) would do well to begin by reporting both sides of every story and letting the American people discern the truth.

Sometimes It Takes A While For The Truth To Come Out

Newsbusters posted an article today confirming something President Trump has been asserting for quite some time.

The article reports:

President Donald Trump’s strategic silence on Puerto Rico’s earthquakes, while greenlighting billions of dollars in aid and a new major disaster declaration for the stricken U.S. territory, is forcing the liberal media into a most uncomfortable place…acknowledging that he was right all along.

Earlier this week, The Washington Post attempted to redeploy ye olde Hurricane Maria playbook, in order to commoditize human suffering for Democrat political gain. This ham-fisted close to their editorial gave the game away:

Still, it is worth remembering that many Puerto Ricans were forced to leave the island after Maria and are now living — and will be able to vote — in swing states such as Florida and Pennsylvania. Presumably many of them will remember how the island has been treated.

It is important to recall that the national media was asleep at the switch during the initial aftermath of Hurricane Maria –devoting coverage instead to the president’s tweets regarding the NFL. In fact, the liberal media didn’t begin to cover Maria’s terrible aftermath until there was a clear anti-Trump angle as embodied by the radical, separatist mayor of San Juan, who rode her post-Maria notoriety all the way to Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign — where she now serves as national co-chair.

The article concludes:

Additionally, the island was roiled by news that much-needed relief supplies sat in a warehouse as earthquake victims suffered- which only serves to bolster the president’s charge (one with which many Puerto Ricans agree, by the way) that the island’s government is corrupt and incompetent. Per CBS News:

Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced fired the island’s emergency management director on Saturday, after a video showing aid sitting unused in a warehouse went viral on social media. Some of the aid has allegedly been sitting in the warehouse since Hurricane Maria struck in 2017.

“There are thousands of people who have made sacrifices to help those in the south, and it is unforgivable that resources were kept in the warehouse,” Vázquez said in a statement. 

With no obvious anti-Trump angle to chase, the liberal media (with the continued exception of CBS’s David Begnaud) is forced to cover the issue itself, to wit: the earthquakes that have rattled Puerto Rico, and the local government’s continued inability to adequately respond to an emergency due to institutionalized corruption and incompetence. Trump was right after all.

The start of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is four and a half months away.

This is typical of countries where corruption reigns–many of the famine problems around the world have more to do with the distribution of food rather than a shortage of food. Dictators around the world have often used food as a weapon to keep their populations under control. In this case, the corruption in Puerto Rico was such that the aid never reached the people who needed it–it remained in warehouses. Meanwhile, the Mayor of San Juan has moved forward to work on the Bernie Sanders campaign.

Why Your News Source Matters

Yesterday CNS News posted an article about recent events involving Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge Rosemary M. Collyer and the FBI.

The article reports:

A complete and total blackout. That was how ABC, CBS, and NBC reacted on their Tuesday evening newscasts when the top Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge, Rosemary M. Collyer blasted the FBI for misleading the court when seeking surveillance warrants for a former Trump campaign staffer. The order was damning, accusing an FBI lawyer of a criminal act in intentionally lying to the court. It added that the court’s confidence in the FBI’s evidence was so shaken they needed extra oversight for all cases.

Judge Collyer penned the four-page order declaring: “When FBI personnel mislead NSD [National Security Division] in the ways described above, they equally mislead the FISC.” Much of the order explained the application process for obtaining FISA warrants and what happened in the case of Carter Page; in order for the public to “appreciate the seriousness of that misconduct and its implications…

On page three of the order, the judge accused an unnamed FBI lawyer of intentionally lying to other FBI personnel and the FISC in turn, which was a criminal act:

In addition, while the fourth electronic surveillance application for Mr. Page was being prepared, an attorney in the FBI’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) engaged in conduct that apparently was intended to mislead the FBI agent who ultimately swore to the facts in that application about whether Mr. Page had been a source of another government agency.

She added that the FISC couldn’t trust anything the FBI told them anymore:

The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.

From Fox News:

Please follow the link to the CNS News article to read the entire piece. Not only were the civil rights of American citizens violated, the mainstream media has refused to report what is going on.

 

Following The Money

Yesterday Newsbusters posted an article about the funding of National Public Radio (“NPR”). NPR has been often criticized for having a liberal bias.

The article cites one example of bias:

Recently, NPR was one of a string of media outlets that published stories hyping United Nations data that showed 100,000 migrant children being held in detention centers. One problem though: the stories were deleted after the data was revealed to have been from 2015, during former President Barack Obama’s (D) presidency. In September, NPR was also one of two taxpayer-funded outlets (the other being PBS), that interviewed Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) and failed to question his false “parody” of President Donald Trump’s July 25th phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The article includes the following chart:

Just for the record, the Foundation to Promote Open Society is a George Soros organization.

Most American media leans left, so this is not a surprise, but there are many listeners to NPR who believe they are getting unbiased news while they are actually getting misinformation. A strong republic depends on honest news sources. At present, we have very few of those.

Wouldn’t You?

If you had a person in your life that was constantly spreading gossip about you that was not true, would you allow that person to remain in your life? That is roughly the situation between President Trump and Bloomberg News.

In 2017, The Washington Examiner reporting the following:

How negative was press coverage of President Trump’s first 100 days in office? Far more than that of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, or Bill Clinton, according to a new report from the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.

The Harvard scholars analyzed the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and the main newscasts (not talk shows) of CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC during Trump’s initial time in office. They found, to no one’s surprise, that Trump absolutely dominated news coverage in the first 100 days. And then they found that news coverage was solidly negative — 80 percent negative among those outlets studied, versus 20 percent positive.

The numbers for previous presidents: Barack Obama, 41 percent negative, 59 percent positive; George W. Bush, 57 percent negative, 43 percent positive; and Bill Clinton, 60 percent negative, 40 percent positive.

Things have not changed–on November 13, 2019, CNS News reported the following:

On Tuesday, nationally-syndicated radio host Mark Levin demonstrated how corrupt and bias network news has become, by quoting extensively from a new Media Research Center (MRC) study documenting the overwhelmingly negative coverage of President Donald Trump.

Levin used the opening segment of his show to explore the findings of a study by NewBusters, a division of MRC (as is CNSNews.com):

“Media Research Center: now, that’s a solid organization, come hell or high water. Pressure or no pressure. Because, (MRC President) Brent Bozell is a patriot, as are the people who work with him and for him. And, they stay on it. They will not be deterred.

“And, in a fantastic piece today: ‘Impeachment Frenzy: TV Networks Blast Trump with 96% Negative News’ – That should be the headline right there.”

How can a President be expected to run a country with that kind of news coverage?

At any rate, yesterday Hot Air reported the following:

Bloomberg News decided that it would grant Bloomy’s primary opponents an exemption from investigative coverage but couldn’t grant that sort of exemption to a sitting president, setting up a double standard in which Democratic candidates get a free pass while the Republican nominee is scrutinized. That’s the sort of unworkable ethical nightmare Mike Bloomberg created for his own news agency by choosing to run despite having no realistic path to the nomination. Today the Trump campaign struck back, saying that if Bloomberg News can’t investigate — or won’t investigate — all candidates equally then they’ll no longer be credentialed for Trump campaign events.

The only difference between Bloomberg and the rest of the mainstream media is that Bloomberg is at least being honest about what they are doing. Wouldn’t you kick them off the bus?

The Mainstream Media vs. The Truth

Yesterday Newsbusters posted an article highlighting more dishonest reporting from The New York Times.

The article reports:

Seven weeks ago, after the White House released its official summary of a July 25 phone call between President Trump and the Ukrainian President, the New York Times noted that the two had previously spoken on April 21 and wrote the following about that conversation:

When Ukraine elected its new leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, on April 21, Mr. Trump seized on the moment as an opportunity to press his case….He urged Mr. Zelensky to coordinate with Mr. Giuliani and to pursue investigations of “corruption,” according to people familiar with the call, the details of which have not previously been reported.

On Friday morning, the White House released its official summary of that earlier call, and it completely debunked the Times reporting that appeared in a front-page September 26 article. The official summary shows a light-hearted conversation about Zelensky’s election victory, Trump’s promise that a “very, very high level” delegation would attend his inauguration, and an invitation for Zelensky to visit the White House.

There’s not the slightest indication that he “seized on the moment as an opportunity to press his case,” nor any reference to Joe Biden, Rudy Giuliani, or anything else suggested in the Times story.

The Times account of the today’s White House release is silent on the Times earlier, apparently false reporting. But it does complain about how “a White House readout of the call in April provides a different account.”

Reporters Mark Mazzetti and Eileen Sullivan point out: “In that summary, provided to reporters shortly after the call took place, the administration said that Mr. Trump promised to work with Zelensky to ‘implement reforms that strengthen democracy, increase prosperity and root out corruption.’”

Indeed, today’s White House release does contradict the White House report released at the time of the call, but the erroneous September 26 Times’ story does not rely on the “readout” as the basis for its wrong claims, but rather “people familiar with the call.”

In other words, the Times can’t blame the White House for its mistake in September. That’s all on them, and their anonymous source. (Maybe secret sources aren’t the best sources after all.)

There is agreement that there was corruption in Ukraine. There is also agreement that the corruption needed to be cleaned up.

A friend of mine who is a lawyer who follows these events very closely recently wrote:

Then I discovered that the day after VP Joe Biden bribed the Ukraine government into firing the Prosecutor who was investigating his son’s company, the Ukraine court released $23 million the government had seized as part of the investigation. Nobody knows what happened to the $23 million.

What we do know is the $23 million was part of the $50 Million in USAid that 26 Democrats shepherded through the United States Congress in 2014. All 26 received campaign contributions from Ukraine’s new lobbyist: Secretary of State John Kerry’s former chief of staff. How dare the President look into changing the USA’s foreign Policy!

Do you really wonder where the missing money ended up?

Maybe it’s time to take a really good look at where our foreign aid actually goes.

Sometimes The Spin Is Just Laughable

Yesterday Newsbusters posted an article about a recent statement by Chuck Todd.

The article reports:

When Todd asked Himes (Representative Jim Himes) about the Republicans, he helpfully suggested the Republicans might be “sabotaging the process” by having a different narrative that makes the process “hard to follow for the public.” Todd isn’t about to make anything difficult for the Democrats.

Just for the record, Jim Himes is a liberal Democrat representing the Fourth District of Connecticut. I would not consider him an objective source on impeachment by any stretch of the imagination.

The article also notes:

Earlier, Todd grew visibly disturbed when Sen. Paul suggested the American people think it’s unfair to treat Trump pressuring Ukraine with one standard and Vice President Biden pressuring Ukraine by a different standard. That was a distraction! Sabotage! 

So let me get this straight. We have Vice President Biden in a video talking about withholding aid to Ukraine because they are investigating his son and we have no evidence that President Trump actually withheld aid, so we are investigating President Trump. Amazing.

The interview also includes the following statement:

HIMES: The other thing, of course, Joe Biden’s son is on that witness list. They’re gonna try to do exactly what you were pushing back on Senator Paul for doing. They would like to bring Joe Biden’s son in front of the American people to discuss his role on the board of Burisma and as you pointed out with Senator Paul, we can have a long conversation whether the sons and daughters of high-ranking officials should do that sort of thing. That has nothing to do — absolutely nothing to do — with the actions of the United States president in extorting Ukraine in a way that damage our national security. 

Wow. Just wow.

The Truth Is Out There–But The Mainstream Media Doesn’t Want To Hear It

Below is a transcript of an interview of Ron Johnson by Mark Levin (as posted on Newsbusters):

“Chuck Todd cut me off when I started talking about the December 15, 2016 text from Peter Strzok to Lisa Page,” the senator recalled. Levin, by contrast, read from a text message between the two powerful Justice Department officials who hated Trump.

MARK LEVIN: December 15, 2016 text from Peter Strzok to Lisa Page, quote, “Think our sisters,” that would be the CIA –“

SEN. RON JOHNSON: Intelligence agencies, right.

LEVIN: ” …have begun leaking like mad, scorned and worried and political. They’re kicking into overdrive.”

JOHNSON: Again, this is during the transition, a little bit more than a month after the election. Six days before that is the first story that breaks and the CIA has actually attributed this leak.

LEVIN: The story is December 9, 2016, Boston Globe —  Washington Post headline, “CIA: Russia tried to help Trump win.” “The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency.” Is that what you’re talking about?

JOHNSON: Precisely. Now, Mark, one of the things I had my staff do — this was I think July of 2017, we issued a report because of all these leaks. And so I had a seasoned reporter on my staff from The Washington Post, one of the few conservatives. And, you know, we looked with Alexa search, and said, let’s take a look at all these news stories that are talking about a leak. And in that —

LEVIN: This document here?

JOHNSON: Yes, in just 125 days, 126 days, there were 125 leaks into the news media. Sixty two of those had to do with national security, and that compares to in the same time period, nine in the Bush administration and eight under Obama. Sixty two national security leaks.

And this is where this whole narrative began back in December with Trump, you know, the campaign being aided by Russia and then finally turning into Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election from Hillary Clinton.

And that’s resulted in the Special Counsel [Mueller] and has done great damage, I would argue to this democracy.

LEVIN: You think the FBI and the CIA set up this President, don’t you?

JOHNSON: I have my suspicions. Let’s put it that way. And again, when you’ve got Peter Strzok texting Lisa Page about his sisters are leaking like mad. What are they worried about? He talks about them being political. They are kicking it overdrive.

And that’s all I asked Chuck Todd. I said, hey, you’ve got John Brennan on your show. Why don’t you ask him what he was leaking? Or what the CIA might have been leaking?What was he potentially worried about? But Chuck didn’t ask John Brennan that question at all. But I’d like to ask that question to John Brennan.

Senator Johnson also made some other comments:

JOHNSON: I’ve always known the bias in the media. But what I’ve really — what’s been really, really reinforced to me is the bias in the media is revealed far more in what they don’t report, what they’re not curious about versus the very overt and real bias in what they do report.

So it really is. If they’re not curious about something, if they’re not reporting it, it’s not a news story, and that’s what drives conservatives. That’s what drives me. It drives you. It drives President Trump nuts.

LEVIN: Now, you’ve been looking into this Ukraine matter for a long time, long before the last month or two. Was Ukraine involved in the 2016 campaign? On whose side and how?

JOHNSON: Look, and this is, according to Politico. Chuck Grassley and I have an oversight letter referring to that article. It is written by Ken Vogel, who now works for The New York Times and again, he is talking about the potential of the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC involvement, working with potentially corrupt actors in Ukraine trying to dig up dirt on President Trump or candidate Trump at that point in time, Paul Manafort.

But you know, it’s also very possible and people don’t really realize this as well, but you know, Hillary Clinton had a primary. There was one Joe Biden, potentially getting into that race as well. Is it just possible or plausible that maybe the DNC, maybe the Hillary Clinton campaign was also trying to dig up dirt on Joe Biden back then in Ukraine?

So no, there are so many questions. I’m really not throwing out any accusations. I’m not making any allegations. I’m just saying there’s so many questions that remain unanswered. And they really remain unanswered, because by and large, the press has no curiosity about trying to get the answers to these things.

There are a lot of questions that still have not been answered because of stonewalling on the part of the State Department, Department of Justice, and FBI. It’s time that American voters actually knew what happened and who was behind it.

Putting Up The Smoke Screen

The Inspector General’s report on the foreign intervention in the 2016 election is expected to come out in the next two weeks or so. Many of us are getting very impatient. Based on what the alternative media has been reporting for years now, Attorney General Barr and his investigating team are looking in all of the right places–Russia, Australia, Italy, Ukraine, and Britain. Those who took part on the scam and the investigation that followed are correct to be very uncomfortable about what is to come. The mainstream media is trying to blunt the impact of the information that will be made public.

Yesterday Newsbusters posted an article detailing exactly what is going on. It is a complicated article, so I suggest you follow the link and read the entire article, but I will provide a few highlights.

The article reports:

Once upon a time — in a galaxy far, far away — The New York Times and The Washington Post were the go-to papers when it came to uncovering political scandals.  

Both papers made a point of running the Pentagon Papers, an internal and secret U.S. government history of  various presidents and their relevant Cabinet secretaries decision-making on American involvement in the Vietnam War. The Post, of course, was also famous for its birddogging young reporters Woodward and Bernstein and their digging out the details of the Watergate scandal. In fact, movies have been made with Hollywood A-listers lionizing both The Post and the journalists involved. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman starred in the Watergate movie (All the President’s Men), while Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep starred in the dramatic tale of the Post’s battles with government officials over  breaking the Pentagon Papers story (The Post. )

So it is with no little irony that today the two papers are leading the media charge to cover-up “Spygate” – the considerable scandal that is the the use of American intelligence agencies to spy on the political opponents of Obama and Clinton in 2016.

The Wall Street Journal has noticed, saying this in an editorial titled: “Foreign Influence and Double Standards. Democrats want to stop Barr from investigating what happened in 2016.” 

The article also notes:

Over at the Times, that paper is busy running stories like this one by the virulent Trump-hater Michelle Goldberg. This jewel of political framing is titled: “Just How Corrupt Is Bill Barr?” 

Perhaps the real question should be: Just How Corrupt is The New York Times

A perfect example of the game at play in this article is Goldberg citing one “Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University School of Law.” I recall Stephen Gillers. In fact, I took a look at Gillers in my 2005 book The Borking Rebellion, a recounting of the Senate confirmation of Bush nominee Judge D. Brooks Smith for the Third Circuit of Appeals. The Post had asked Gillers for comment on a supposed ethics issue involving Judge Smith, presenting him, as does Goldberg today, as an above-it-all, strictly non-partisan legal ethics expert.

In fact, in the Smith battle I uncovered the fact that Gillers was hardly a non-partisan. He had served as a consultant to a far left special interest group called the Community Rights Counsel. The CRC had issued a report harshly critical of the Judge, and The Post went to Gillers for comment, leaving out of their story Gillers own ties to the CRC, the very group whose report on Smith he was being asked to comment. 

Goldberg plays the same game, citing Gillers as if he were some lofty non-partisan when, in fact, his background and record illustrate that he is anything but. Goldberg’s presentation is, to borrow again from her title, corrupt.

Andrew McCarthy at The National Review noted recently:

The strategy here is obvious. The Democrats and their note-takers would like the public to believe that Barr’s investigation is an adjunct of the Trump 2020 campaign — and a grossly improper one at that. The misimpression they seek to create is that Barr is putting the nation’s law-enforcement powers in the service of Trump’s reelection campaign, in the absence of any public interest. The hope is that this will delegitimize not only any information that emerges from Ukraine but the whole of the Justice Department’s investigation of intelligence and law-enforcement abuses of power attendant to the 2016 election.

If the people who used government and foreign resources to spy on a political opponent in 2016 are not held accountable, their actions will become the template for future political campaigns. This will destroy our republic.

The Following Was Posted On Facebook On Sunday

DNM’s World posted the following on Facebook on Sunday:

Say what you like about the Star Trek: TOS episode “And The Children Shall Lead” but I am going to use it as an aid to make a real world point. More often than not, someone is using the children to advance evil causes and agendas.

In the episode Gorgan, a noncorporeal being (and anything BUT a “Friendly Angel”) is using the children of Federation scientists to advance his desires. Through these children, he has manged to kill those very scientists, and now Gorgan has his sights on Marcos XII and its population of children to recruit for his cause to rule the universe. Kirk was able to stop Gorgan by showing his evil to the children (using the videos of them with their families…and their deaths) and what this monster really did to their parents and the children called Gorgan’s bluff.

Now we have to deal with a similar evil and unlike the noncorporeal Gogan, the environmental statists of flesh and bone are using children to destroy our liberties and freedom. They are using the children not just in America, but the whole world (which for the most part has embraced Marxism) to advance their cause.

On September 20, 2019; with the approval of public school administrators and teachers (and the parents that agree with them), coupled with our major media news outlets with MSNBC leading the charge (remember they are trying to convince you that climate change is real and we must give up our freedoms for the greater good); most public high school students walked out of class to protest on behalf of our natural environment. Not just American governments (local, state, national), but governments all over the world to demand that they step up and do something to deal with our changing climate. 

“As You Believe So Shall You Do, As You Believe So Shall You Do, As You Believe So Shall You Do, As You Believe So Shall You Do…”

Here is a question to ponder. Would our schools grant dismissals if the children would go to some kind of rally in support of America or perhaps go in support of something like say…the Second Amendment or something that supports the true intentions of the First Amendment like freedom of faith and religion? The short answer is No, while my answer would be “I Don’t Think So.” The progressives leftists are truly in control of most of the educational institutions on the planet and that includes our so-called public/government (Common) elementary and secondary schools.

Spock and Dr. McCoy said it best regarding the evil that our “green blooded” hero and his best friend and captain would have to face very soon regarding Gorgan’s ‘adopted children;’  

Spock: “Evil does seek to maintain power by suppressing the truth.”

McCoy: “Or by misleading the innocent.”

While Swedish born Greta Thunberg, the 15 year old face of the movement; we adults have to question about the adults who are pulling the strings as the children do their “fist pounds” to make the rest of us submit to the powerful ‘Gorgans’ of the world who would not only impose terror and fear into our lives, but make us all slaves to the permanent underclass forever in poverty and forever needing the “help” of the rich elites everywhere in the world.

Thunberg has been given lots of publicity by our major media, and like any leftist either a mastermind or some kind of “useful idiot,” you know that the our own American Democrat Party Press (if not most major international media outlets that lean progressive) will jump on any opportunity to advance the progressive cause. Thunberg also has the blessings of Ellen DeGeneres, Michael Moore, Bette Midler, Whoopi Goldberg and Melissa Fumero.

Right now one of the biggest environmental causes at the moment is the very communist-socialist concept that is named the “Green New Deal” (by the way it does not impress our young environmentalist leader), which is not about saving the planet but rather setting back the human race a thousand years or so when we did not have electricity or food that could actually kill us and not because it’s processed but it was rancid.

Even the food inspectors will not be able to help the masses should the Green Statists have it their way…and chances are those very same statists will be able to enjoy the comforts of electricity and healthier food (processed or not) as they rule over the masses with Iron Fists of greater power. It seems they will never be happy until the masses are miserable…and even then they are not happy, but want to impose more suffering.

As with Captain Kirk and Spock, we must tame our own beasts and demons and do what we can to fight these children and their puppet masters who have enslaved them and their desire to enslave the rest of us…for if they are not stopped, we will not only be stripped if our liberty but our children’s liberty will be stripped as well.

Our environment will truly be worse and filthy if these Communist Greens have it their way.

Just look at what has happened to California. Rest assured the elite will have their personal clean environments and comfortable lifestyles as they look down on the “dead waste of civilization” who they view as neanderthals.

 

I Guess The Truth Is Not Important If You Are A Democrat Candidate

Newsbusters posted an article today about the reporting on some recent embellished stories told by Joe Biden.

The article reports:

Apparently, the truth and the accuracy of details meant little to the so-called “powerhouse roundtable” on ABC’s This Week. During the latter half of the Sunday show, the panel defended former Vice President Joe Biden after The Washington Post exposed that a war story Biden had been telling for years was actually a tall tale.

But it wasn’t entirely false. As The Post explained and ABC rationalized on Thursday, Biden created the story by conflating several real events into a, sort of, Frankenstein’s monster designed to tug on the heartstrings of listeners. According to The Post, “Biden got the time period, the location, the heroic act, the type of medal, the military branch and the rank of the recipient wrong, as well as his own role in the ceremony.”

But the facts be damned on ABC News.

First up was ABC political director Rick Klein, who said the story “shows the best of Joe Biden and the worst of Joe Biden. It’s him connecting and telling a really compelling story. It’s also him sanding away the edges and conflating things and maybe confusing details.”

The thing that is amazing about the above statement is that if your grandfather was ‘sanding away the edges and conflating things and maybe confusing details,’ you would probably have him checked for dementia. I really wonder if Joe Biden is going to be the Democrat nominee for President. I wonder if by some miracle he is the candidate, is he up for the task?

The article continues:

Washington Post national correspondent Mary Jordan was flippant about her own paper’s reporting on Biden’s latest gaffe. She suggested the voters she was talking too were telling her: “Come on, let’s focus on the big stuff, it’s the economy and the character of the leader and the character of the country that we want going forward”.

“And that’s what they’re saying. It’s big time. It’s big stuff that we care about. It’s not about the stories,” she concluded.

As Klein’s argument showed, it’s a double standard with it came to Democratic candidates and President Trump. If it was Trump telling Biden’s tale, then the media would be running story after story about him intentionally “gaslighting” America. Perhaps that’s why the news story wasn’t “resonating”.

I guess we are going to find out if American voters are willing to elect a candidate who the friendly media admits doesn’t even tell the truth when he is running.

Censorship Run Amok

On Friday, Newsbusters reported that Twitter had recently labeled a tweet by Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott as “sensitive” and covered it up. The tweet was hardly controversial.

The article reports:

Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott met with Twitter officials on July 15 to discuss why his tweet about the U.S. Navy’s flight demonstration squadron, the Blue Angels, was covered up by Twitter. His original tweet, which retweeted a video, said, “I’ve always loved watching the Blue Angels. They inspire the precision and power that makes the U.S. military the mightiest in the history of the world.” Both this tweet, and the video, were covered as “sensitive” by Twitter.

Users had to click through the “sensitive” filter in order to see the tweet.

Abbott later tweeted, “Multiple reports say Twitter categorized my Blue Angels post as sensitive. Just another way Twitter is erecting challenges for conservatives and for American institutions.”

After the meeting, Abbott announced, “We are working on solutions to ensure posts are seen.”

However, the consequences might be severe. Abbott mentioned that “Greater regulation of Twitter is on the table.”

The only thing that could even remotely be considered sensitive about a Blue Angels video is the pictures taken from inside the plane. The maneuvers those pilots go through are worse than the wildest roller coaster! At any rate, this is another example of overreaching censorship in a place where censorship should not even be allowed.

The Growing Contempt For Freedom Of Speech

Walter E. Williams posted an article at Newsbusters today about the attack on free speech.

The Professor notes:

The First Amendment to our Constitution was proposed by the 1788 Virginia ratification convention during its narrow 89 to 79 vote to ratify the Constitution. Virginia’s resolution held that the free exercise of religion, right to assembly and free speech could not be canceled, abridged or restrained. These Madisonian principles were eventually ratified by the states on March 1, 1792.

Gettysburg College professor Allen C. Guelzo, in his article “Free Speech and Its Present Crisis,” appearing in the autumn 2018 edition of City Journal, explores the trials and tribulations associated with the First Amendment. The early attempts to suppress free speech were signed into law by President John Adams and became known as the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Later attempts to suppress free speech came during the Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln and his generals attacked newspapers and suspended habeas corpus. It wasn’t until 1919, in the case of Abrams v. United States, when the U.S. Supreme Court finally and unambiguously prohibited any kind of censorship.

Unfortunately many of our college campuses have lost the concept of free speech and open debate.

The article reports:

Today, there is growing contempt for free speech, most of which is found on the nation’s college and university campuses. Guelzo cites the free speech vision of Princeton University professor Carolyn Rouse, who is chairperson of the department of Anthropology. Rouse shared her vision on speech during last year’s Constitution Day lecture. She called free speech a political illusion, a baseless ruse to enable people to “say whatever they want, in any context, with no social, economic, legal or political repercussions.” As an example, she says that a climate change skeptic has no right to make “claims about climate change, as if all the science discovered over the last X-number of centuries were irrelevant.”

Rouse is by no means unique in her contempt for our First Amendment rights. Faculty leaders of the University of California consider certain statements racist microagressions: “America is a melting pot”; “America is the land of opportunity”; “Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough”; and “There is only one race, the human race.” The latter statement is seen as denying the individual as a racial/cultural being. Then there’s “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.” That’s “racist” speech because it gives the impression that “people of color are given extra unfair benefits because of their race.” Other seemingly innocuous statements deemed unacceptable are: “When I look at you, I don’t see color,” or “Affirmative action is racist.” Perhaps worst of all is, “Where are you from, or where were you born?”

We should reject any restriction on free speech. We might ask ourselves, “What’s the true test of one’s commitment to free speech?” It does not come when people permit others to say or publish ideas with which they agree. The true test of one’s commitment to free speech comes when others are permitted to say and publish ideas they deem offensive.

I hated it when the neo-Nazis were allowed to march in Skokie, Illinois, but that is what free speech means. The concept of hate speech is the antithesis of free speech–it is an excuse for censorship. If you are not comfortable enough in your own ideas to be willing to let others who do not share those ideas speak, then maybe living in a free country isn’t your cup of tea.

Games The Media Is Playing

The media’s job is to report events, investigate questionable actions by those in power, and inform Americans about what their government is doing. It is not to follow Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals number 13. That rule states, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” That rule is currently controlling the American media, and their target is Donald Trump. If you want to know what is actually causing the division in this country, look no further than the media. They have the power to bring us together. They have chosen not to do that.

Yesterday Newsbusters posted an article about how The Washington Post has put its finger on the scale in the way it fact checks the President.

The article names five ways The Washington Post skews the results of its fact checking:

1. Bias by target selection. Did the Post have a database of President Obama’s false or misleading claims? No. Would the Post have a database of President Hillary’s false or misleading claims if she had won? Don’t be ridiculous. These people parse every sentence in Trump speeches, interviews, and tweets. They’re not doing that for anyone else, especially the Democratic candidates now running for president.

2. Nitpicking. Are they checking facts, or spin? Kessler & Co. fuss that Trump can’t say they’re building a wall at the border. Trump tweeted a picture of a wall being built. It’s clearly a border wall under construction. But Kessler says the money (and the plans) came before Trump, so it’s not “his” wall.  Kessler also cried False when Trump said he had “nothing to hide” from the Russia probe “but refused to testify under oath.” Kessler is spinning, not fact-checking.

3. Bias by multiplying nitpicking times 100. Once the Post throws a Pinocchio rating like the border-wall squabble, every time Trump says “we’re building the wall,” it’s counted as a false statement (160 times). Kessler repeatedly threw the False flag when Trump said there was “no collusion” with Russia. Which side was False on that one?

4. Lack of transparency. The Posties have dramatically increased the rate of the “false claims” they are finding. In announcing their 10,000 number, they claimed the president “racked up 171 false or misleading claims in just three days,” April 25 to 27.  They admit that’s a bigger number than they used to find in a month.

They claimed it was literally a falsehood a minute. They counted 45 in a 45-minute Sean Hannity interview, 17 falsehoods in a 19-minute Mark Levin interview, and 61 false claims in the president’s Saturday night rally in Green Bay.  But they don’t list them individually, so you can check their work.

5. Pinocchio forgiveness. Kessler also has a weird habit of skipping Pinocchios for Democrats when they call him on the phone and admit they fudged it. They just found Kamala Harris wrongly stated in a CNN town hall that a majority of women earn the minimum wage. Kessler concluded “Regular readers know that we generally do not award Pinocchios when politicians admit error, and we certainly give an allowance for a slip of the tongue during a live event. We don’t play gotcha at The Fact Checker.”

Unless you’re Trump. Then you get 10,000 Gotchas.

Where were these people when President Obama told us that if we liked our doctor we could keep him and that the cost of health insurance would go down under ObamaCare?

The Strange Case of Julian Assange

Yesterday NewsbustersNewsbusters posted an article reminding us that the media once loved Julian Assange. Now, not so much.

The article reminds us:

Before the hacking of the DNC during the 2016 Campaign, WikiLeaks was responsible for many document dumps that harmed American national security, the most infamous case involving a U.S. Army private then known as Bradley Manning. WikiLeaks also put at risk the lives of informants working for U.S. and allied forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was during that time, when WikiLeaks endangered lives and undermined U.S. war efforts, that the press sang its praises as a truth-telling and information-gathering organization.

The article lists a number of examples of news stories praising Assange for revealing ‘behind the scenes’ information on military matters. They chose to ignore the fact that American lives were put at risk by what he did. Then came the hacking of the DNC. Somehow the story changed–then Assange became a villain in the eyes of the media.

The article concludes:

Even if it wasn’t known in 2010 that WikiLeaks was an arm of Russian intelligence, Jullian Assange was enemy of the United States before, during, and after the 2016 hack into the e-mails of John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee, but the media only uniformaly came out against Assange when it appeared that his work would hurt Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, not when he was endangering lives by undermining U.S. war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There are a few things I want to remind people of as this story unfolds. Jullian Assange has repeatedly stated that the DNC leaks did not come from Russia. There is speculation that they may have come from a lost cell phone of John Podesta (with the password ‘password’) or from a leaker inside the DNC who was concerned that the primary election was being rigged for Hillary Clinton (Seth Rich?). I would also add that if you supported the leaking of the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, then you should probably support Jullian Assange. Just for the record, Daniel Ellsberg was indicted for stealing and holding secret documents, but the judge in the case declared a mistrial and dismissed the charges.

I don’t support leaking military information, but when there are shenanigans going on in a political campaign, I am grateful when it is revealed.

 

It’s All A Matter Of Perspective

Yesterday Newsbusters posted an article about a recent ABC News panel that was absolutely hilarious (not intentionally of course).

The article reports:

With nearly the entire Democratic 2020 field sprinting to be the closest to socialism without using the label, folks in the liberal media were busy trying to spin their radical policy positions as something palatable. A great example of this occurred during ABC’s This Week on Sunday, when two panelists tried to suggest that it was Republicans who were the radical ones with Democrats supposedly as the centrists.

During the “powerhouse roundtable” discussion late in the show, Republican strategist Alice Stewart noted that the candidates could “run away from the socialism label” all they wanted “but you can’t deny the fact that the Democratic Party is moving very, very far to the left.”

“We’re talking about a lot of policies that are extremely left. The Cortezs of Washington and the younger generation of Democrats are really causing a divide in the Democratic Party,” she added before triggered faux-Republican Matthew Dowd couldn’t hold back anymore.

Talking over Stewart, Dowd emphatically insisted it was the Republicans who were the ones who were out of touch with Americans: “The Democratic Party — if you look at all the issues and where the public stands, the Democratic Party is actually closer to the center than the Republican Party is. The Democratic Party is much closer to the center.”

Meanwhile ideas such as socialism, free education, free healthcare, and generally free money are gaining acceptance in the Democrat Party.

Wow. So let’s look at some of the other issues.

President Trump supports strong borders (and a wall). In January a Rasmussen poll showed that 48 percent of Americans felt that the government was doing too little to stop illegal immigration. On March 13th, Rasmussen reported that 56% of Likely U.S. Voters say Democrats should allow Fox News, the most-watched cable news network, to host at least one of their intraparty debates. Just 28% disagree, while 15% are undecided. On January 18th, Real Clear Politics reported that more Americans may identify as pro-choice than pro-life, but more than six in 10 of those who say they are pro-choice (61 percent) join the three-quarters of all Americans in wanting abortion restricted to – again, at most – the first trimester. So do about six in 10 Democrats (59 percent), eight in 10 independents (78 percent) and nine in 10 Republicans (92 percent).

In January 2018, the Pew Research Center reported the following:

The latest national survey by Pew Research Center, conducted Jan. 10-15 among 1,503 adults, finds that 42% say Donald Trump is “striking the right balance” in the situation in the Middle East, while 30% say he favors Israel too much (just 3% say Trump sides too much with the Palestinians; 25% do not offer an opinion).

At a similar point in Barack Obama’s presidency, 47% of Americans said he had struck a proper balance in dealing with the Middle East; 21% said he sided too much with the Palestinians, while 7% said he favored Israel too much.

I’m not sure it’s the Republicans who are out of touch with the American people. They are probably out of touch with the people in New York, California, and Washington, D.C., but I am not sure how out of touch they are with most Americans.