2024 Is Going To Be An Interesting Year

Will 2024 be the year when Americans get their total freedoms back? I hope so. The Internet is heavily censored now–the research I used to be able to do in about 30 minutes now takes about an hour and a half due to censorship. I like my gas stove and my gasoline car. I would also rather eat beef than bugs.

On December 30th, Sharyl Attkisson posted an article at The Epoch Times about the continuing effort to silence President Trump. The problem is that President Trump is saying things that agree with the ideas of a majority of the American people.

The article reports:

Donald Trump has been slandered and libeled thousands of times.

Each time a news reporter, media commentator, or judge refers to Trump as an “insurrectionist,” or claims he’s guilty of “insurrection,” it’s another blatant case of defamation. Same with the other Jan. 6 attendees and participants.

Insurrection is a serious federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison under Title 18 U.S. Code 2383. Even with Trump’s enemies in charge at the Department of Justice and other law enforcement bodies, and with all of the scheming and operations they’ve mounted against him, nobody has convicted him of “insurrection.” Under our system of governing, no judge or election authority has the power to unilaterally accuse and convict any American of a crime, let alone with the accused denied any opportunity to present a defense or to appeal.

Yet that’s just what’s happening when courts and officials in Maine and Colorado remove President Trump from presidential election primary ballots for “insurrection.” It’s the ultimate defamation. And many are supporting it because, well, they don’t like President Trump.

Looking at the evidence today, it’s reasonable to hypothesize that, among all the other conspiracies President Trump’s enemies devised, they also conspired in advance to set up his Jan. 6, 2021, rally and the U.S. Capitol breach that followed as an “insurrection” that could serve as their insurance policy to provide grounds to keep him from ever running for president again.

The article concludes:

The real meaning of what’s being done to President Trump is this: They think he’s going to win. He’s like Christmas, and his enemies are like the Grinch. Despite the impeachments, improper wiretapping, censorship, intel agency conspiracies, criminal charges, civil lawsuits, and turncoats operating against him on the inside—President Trump’s popularity has increased. They haven’t stopped him from coming to the fore in 2024. He came! He came without Twitter. He came without Facebook. He came without Snapchat or Discord or Stripe. Somehow or other, he came just the same!

Pulling President Trump off ballots is the establishment’s latest attempt to censor a candidate that they clearly believe will win—if the people are left to decide. We’ve reached a dangerous and scary point when so many are willing to look the other way because their preferred candidate isn’t the one under attack.

To end where we began—President Trump potentially has actionable defamation claims against all those who continue to label him an insurrectionist. That includes judges on the Colorado Supreme Court and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows. But that’s likely not a battle he could win. The 2024 race? That’s another matter.

When The Numbers Just Don’t Add Up

On Saturday, Sharyl Attkisson posted an article about the number of Covid-19 cases among military veterans who have been vaccinated.

The article reports:

Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) is demanding that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) prioritize Veteran care after learning of first-hand accounts from VA employees, who say Biden’s coercive vaccine mandates are causing VA workforce shortages, ultimately limiting care for veterans.

In response to these accounts, Johnson submitted a letter to Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Denis McDonough stating the following:

On May 27, 2022, I met with a group of Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) employees regarding their concerns with the quality of care received by veterans. These health care professionals described the significant workforce shortages at the VA facilities in Wisconsin and Michigan and that the vaccine mandate is only exacerbating these shortages. The VA owes the public and our veterans answers about the steps the Department is taking to address the workforce issues and to provide the highest quality care to the finest among us.” 

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin)

…Senator Johnson also presented whistleblower data he recently obtained demonstrating the ineffectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccines’ ability to prevent infection. 

“Based on whistleblower data from the Milwaukee VAMC facility dashboard census count between October 22, 2021 and March 8, 2022, for 31 of the 54 days I received daily reports, at least 80 percent of VA employees who tested positive for Covid-19 were vaccinated. For 8 of those 54 days, 100 percent of VA employees who tested positive for Covid-19 were vaccinated. 

The continuation of care for our veterans should be our top priority, not politically motivated policies like vaccine mandates.” 

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin)

A letter written to Denis R. McDonough, Secretary U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, by Senator Johnson included the following statement:

In addition to these testimonials, enclosed data from the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center in Milwaukee (Milwaukee VAMC) reveals the failure of the vaccine mandate to protect VA employees and veterans from COVID-19.  Based on whistleblower data from the Milwaukee VAMC facility dashboard census count between October 22, 2021 and March 8, 2022, for 31 of the 54 days I received daily reports, at least 80 percent of VA employees who tested positive for COVID-19 were vaccinated.[4]  For 8 of those 54 days, 100 percent of VA employees who tested positive for COVID-19 were vaccinated.[5]

I think it’s time to reevaluate the effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccine.

One Consequence Of An Open Border

On Saturday, Sharyl Attkisson posted an article about the increase in drug overdoses in America and the relationship between that increase and our open southern border.

The article reports:

The following is an excerpt from the Executive Summary of the Commission on Combatting Synthetic Opioid Trafficking.

Cumulatively, since 1999, drug overdoses have killed approximately 1 million Americans. That number exceeds the number of U.S. service members who have died in battle in all wars fought by the United States. Even worse is that the United States has never experienced the level of drug overdose fatalities seen right now.

In just the 12 months between June 2020 and May 2021, more than 100,000 Americans died from drug overdose—more than twice the number of U.S. traffic fatalities or gun-violence deaths during that period. Some two-thirds of these deaths—about 170 fatalities each day, primarily among those ages 18 to 45—involved synthetic opioids.

The primary driver of the opioid epidemic today is illicit fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times more potent than heroin.

In 2018, according to the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the cost of overdose fatalities was $696 billion, despite being roughly two-thirds of annual overdose deaths today. It is therefore reasonable to estimate that drug overdoses are now costing the United States approximately $1 trillion annually.

Given these fatalities, the Commission finds the trafficking of synthetic drugs into the United States to be not just a public health emergency but a national emergency that threatens both the national security and economic well-being of the country.

The article continues:

In less than a decade, illegal U.S. drug markets that were once dominated by diverted prescription opioids and heroin became saturated with illegally manufactured synthetic opioids. Some of these synthetic variants are cheaper and easier to produce than heroin making them attractive alternatives to criminals who lace them into heroin and other illicit drugs or press them into often-deadly counterfeit pills.

Mexico is the principal source of this illicit fentanyl and its analogues today. In Mexico, cartels manufacture these poisons in clandestine laboratories with ingredients—precursor chemicals—sourced largely from the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Because illicit fentanyl is so powerful and such a small amount goes such a long way, traffickers conceal hard-to-detect quantities in packages, in vehicles, and on persons and smuggle the drug across the U.S.–Mexico border.

It is difficult to interdict given that just a small physical amount of this potent drug is enough to satisfy U.S. demand, making it highly profitable for traffickers and dealers.

Indeed, the trafficking of synthetic opioids offers a more profitable alternative to heroin for Mexican drug traffickers. The Mexican government, in part out of self-preservation and in part because the trafficking problem transcends current law enforcement capacity, recently adopted a “hugs, not bullets” approach to managing the transnational criminal groups. However, such approaches have not been able to address trafficking issues, and further efforts will be needed.

The article concludes:

U.S. and Mexican efforts can disrupt the flow of synthetic opioids across U.S. borders, but real progress can come only by pairing illicit synthetic opioid supply disruption with decreasing the domestic U.S. demand for these drugs.

Congress established the Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking to examine the causes of the influx of synthetic opioids, to understand how to reduce the trafficking of these drugs, and to identify solutions to mitigate a worsening overdose death crisis.

The magnitude of this fast-moving problem and the unique challenges it presents will require a new and different national response across all levels of government and policy domains.

Read or download the entire commission report here.

In a sense, the drug problem has something in common with the current debate over abortion. Until we have a cultural change that makes marijuana (a gateway drug) use socially unacceptable, we will not be able to solve the drug crisis. Until we make abortion socially unacceptable, overturning Roe vs. Wade will only be a small step forward. Peer pressure is real, and it has a lot to do with the drug problem in America. As long as teenagers and young adults believe it is cool to smoke marijuana, a percentage of those teenagers and young adults will go on to more dangerous drugs. In the past thirty years, we have seen the cultural change in the area of cigarette smoking. Smoking in a restaurant thirty years ago was acceptable, now it simply does not happen. We need to make similar changes in the areas of drug use and abortion.

A Good News Update

On Monday I posted an article about New York State Assembly Bill A416. That is the bill that would have allowed for the arrest and indefinite imprisonment of anyone deemed to be a risk to public health. Thank God that bill has been withdrawn.

On Tuesday Sharyl Attkisson reported the following:

New York Assembly Member Nick Perry (D-Flatbush 58) says he’s formally withdraw Assembly Bill A416, which would have allowed New York’s Governor to arrest and indefinitely imprison anyone suspected of being a public health risk.

That’s according to the Autism Action Network, which has been fighting the bill since its inception six years ago.

The bill had not received much attention until the coronavirus pandemic heated up in March of 2020. In the pandemic world of lockdowns, public health mandates, and the quarantining of the unvaccinated in certain parts of the world, critics said the serious threat posed by A416 was chilling.

In the beginning of November, the Biden Administration nominated Nick Perry to be the US ambassador to Jamaica. Critics say Perry’s bill would have proven to be a liability at Perry’s impending Senate confirmation hearing.

Perry colleague Patrick Burke (D Orchard Park) also received significant backlash a few weeks ago for his announcement of a bill that would have canceled health insurance coverage for Covid infections of unvaccinated people.

Burke was immediately flooded with calls and emails rebuking the bill and he quickly dropped the bill.

The obvious question is who in the world dreamed up this bill six years ago and why? However, the good news is that the bill is dropped, hopefully permanently. Note also that the lawmakers in New York were also willing to deny health insurance to the unvaccinated–again creating two separate classes of people–the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. We need to be very careful not to let our government divide us along those lines. Once that happens, the vaccinated will become the privileged class and the unvaccinated will have much of their access to society and the marketplace denied. That will be the end of America as we know it.

An Interesting Piece Of Information

Sharyl Attkisson posted the following on her website today:

Read the full statement below:

“The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has been working expeditiously to develop an emergency temporary standard that covers employers with 100 or more employees, firm- or company-wide, and provides options for compliance. Covered employers must develop, implement, and enforce a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy, unless they adopt a policy requiring employees to choose either to get vaccinated or to undergo regular COVID-19 testing and wear a face covering at work. The ETS also requires employers to provide paid time to workers to get vaccinated and paid sick leave to recover from any side effects. On November 1, the Office of Management and Budget completed its regulatory review of the emergency temporary standard. The Federal Register will publish the emergency temporary standard in the coming days.

– U.S. Department of Labor spokesperson

The Joys Of Herd Immunity

Yesterday Townhall posted an article about the Amish community and the coronavirus. I recommend that you follow the link and read the entire article. It has a number of really good points. There is a lot of common sense in the Amish approach to the coronavirus that the rest of America and some of the American medical community has not yet discovered.

Here are a few highlights from the article:

Contrary to assurances that hospitals would be overwhelmed and bodies would be piled up in the street unless everyone locked down, masked up, and got a Covid vaccination, the Amish community – a technology-eschewing Christian group generally distrustful of government – actually managed through the pandemic just fine after a brief shutdown in early 2020.

“There’s no evidence of any more deaths among the Amish than in places that shut down tight,” Attkisson (Sharyl Attkisson, an investigative reporter and host of “Full Measure”) said. “Some claim there were fewer here. That’s without masking, staying at home, or vaccines.”

The article notes that some of the Amish customs may have created herd immunity:

…When they take communion, they dump their wine into a cup and they take turns to drink out of that cup. So, you go the whole way down the line, and everybody drinks out of that cup, if one person has coronavirus, the rest of church is going to get coronavirus. The first time they went back to church, everybody got coronavirus.

The Amish had a remarkable attitude toward the coronavirus:

Even those who believed that they had Covid tended not to get tested. Their approach tended to be, “I’m sick. I know I’m sick. I don’t have to have someone else telling me I’m sick.” Or a concern that if they got a positive test, they would then be asked to really dramatically limit what they were doing in a way that might be uncomfortable for them. So, we don’t have that testing number.

…Yeah, all the Amish know we got herd immunity. Of course we got herd immunity! The whole church gets coronavirus. We know we got coronavirus. We think we’re smarter than everybody. We shouldn’t be bragging, but we think we did the right thing.

The article concludes:

‘Herd immunity.’ The medical establishment will tell you there’s no such thing, yet somehow it’s working for the Amish, who are now thriving while much of the rest of the world still languishes under Covid tyranny.

Maybe it’s time we stop thinking of the Amish as ‘backward.’

 

What Are The Real Numbers?

The staff of Full Measure posted an article yesterday questioning the numbers Americans have been given about Covid deaths. The article cites numerous examples of health officials giving us questionable information.

The article reports:

Grand County, Colorado, rural country a hundred miles outside of Denver.

Thanksgiving 2020, Lucais Reilly shoots his wife Kristin in the head, then turns the gun on himself, committing suicide. They have alcohol and drugs in their system and a history of domestic troubles.

Grand County coroner Brenda Bock explains how the small town tragedy is exposing serious questions about the way Covid deaths are counted.

Brenda Bock: I had a homicide-suicide the end of November, and the very next day it showed up on the state website as Covid deaths. And they were gunshot wounds. And I questioned that immediately because I had not even signed off the death certificates yet, and the state was already reporting them as Covid deaths.

Bock says somebody, somewhere had apparently run the couple’s names through a database showing they’d tested positive for Covid within 28 days of their death. Then recorded them as Covid deaths even though they died of gunshots.

Sharyl: If we look at the death certificates for the murder-suicide case, what will it say about Covid?

Bock: Nothing, absolutely nothing. I paid a forensic pathologist to do the autopsies on those two cases. And nowhere is COVID mentioned on those death certificates. Nowhere.

Bock: This is a copy of the death certificate, and nowhere does it say COVID. So we have a homicide, suicide, nothing to do with COVID.

Because there had been no Covid deaths within the geographic boundaries of Grand County in 2020, Bock was in a unique position to challenge the state’s accounting. In many cities and counties, the numbers are too big and the coroners would never know about discrepancies.

Sharyl is Sharyl Attkisson, an investigative reporter who was fired from CBS for her work on Fast and Furious.

The article concludes:

Short of a national audit, some of the best hard evidence can only be found in small places like Grand County, Colorado where they know precisely who did or didn’t die of what within the county limits. And where Bock says there were no Covid deaths in 2020.

Bock: Not as far as I’m concerned.

But when we checked in July, the New York Times tally over-reported Grand County’s 2020 Covid death toll by least 500%. It was missing one resident who reportedly died of Covid outside of the county. But the Times counted the unrelated heart attack; the two people who were alive – which were removed from the state total; and the murder-suicide of Lucais and Kristin Reilly.

Sharyl: What are the implications nationwide when we’re looking at numbers then?

Bock: I believe they’re very inflated. And don’t get me wrong. I believe Covid is real. And I believe people do get very sick from it. And I do believe a small number do die from that. I do not believe a homicide-suicide belongs in that number. I don’t, because my job is to tell the truth about why a person died, the cause and the manner. And I don’t believe that what’s going on is the truth.

Sharyl (On-camera): Alameda County, California changed their methodology in June to remove deaths that weren’t a direct result of Covid. That removed more than 400 people, or 25%, from their death toll.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. We have been totally mislead.

 

 

Following The Science

There are still a lot of things we don’t know about Covid-19 or the Covid-19 vaccine. However, as time goes on, the medical community is collecting statistics that will at least give us a partial picture of the disease and immunity to it.

On August 6th, Sharyl Attkisson posted an article on her website summarizing some of the research on natural immunity and vaccine immunity to Covid-19. Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is detailed and complex, but I will post a few highlights.

The article notes:

Updated Aug. 6 with CDC analysis of Kentucky (unvaccinated Kentuckians had “2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with fully vaccinated) and national analysis in Israel (vaccinated Israelis were 6.72 times more likely to get infected after the shot than after natural infection). More below.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) became one of the latest high-profile figures to get sick with Covid-19, even though he’s fully vaccinated. In a statement Monday, Graham said it feels like he has “the flu,” but is “certain” he would be worse if he hadn’t been vaccinated.

While it’s impossible to know whether that’s the case, public health officials are grappling with the reality of an increasing number of fully-vaccinated Americans coming down with Covid-19 infections, getting hospitalized, and even dying of Covid. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) insists vaccination is still the best course for every eligible American. But many are asking if they have better immunity after they’re infected with the virus and recover, than if they’re vaccinated.

Increasingly, the answer within the data appears to be ”yes.”

The article included the following:

The article notes:

Unfortunately, virologists say no commonly-used test can detect with certainty whether a person is immune. A common misconception is that antibody tests can make that determination. But experts say immunity after infection or exposure often comes without a person producing or maintaining measurable antibodies.

Because of that reality, people who have had asymptomatic infections — infections where they suffered no symptoms — have no easy way to know that they’re immune. However, a growing body of evidence indicates that the millions who know they got Covid can be assured they’re unlikely to suffer reinfection, for at least as long of a time period that scientists have been able to measure. Possibly far beyond.

This is an experimental vaccine. Remember that when you make your decision as to whether or not you are going to receive the vaccine. Meanwhile, there is nothing wrong with washing your hands frequently.

 

Were Lives Lost Because Of Politics And Greed?

I think it’s time to ask if the political games the media played during the Trump administration and the conflict of interest in some members of the National Institute of Health resulted in the deaths of Americans. Hot Air posted an article today about s recent study on the use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat Covid patients.

The article reports:

For most of us, the whole controversy over the use of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19 patients seemed mostly political in nature and less so about the drug’s effectiveness. Once Donald Trump came out in support of it, the gloves came off. At least half of the country decided that HCQ was not a scientific treatment for the coronavirus because the bad Orange Man was an anti-science president. Never mind that it was Trump who expedited the vaccine process to historic speed with Operation Warp Speed. He put together a White House coronavirus task force before many people (especially on the left) were willing to acknowledge the pandemic that originated in China. When Trump announced that he was taking HCQ himself, he was roundly mocked. Nevertheless, others in the medical community studied the use of the drug during the pandemic and found some positive results.

The article notes that hydroxychloroquine costs under $10 for the course of a COVID-19 treatment and the drug being promoted by the National Institute of Health (NIH) during the Trump administration, remdesivir, costs about $3,500 per treatment. Hydroxychloroquine has been used for years with known side effects. The side effects of remdesivir are unknown.

The article suggests we follow the money and continues with the following excerpt from The Washington Times:

Although, many doctors around the world were finding success with HCQ, in February 2020 NIH started enrolling patients for a remdesivir COVID-19 trial, with Dr. Fauci overseeing its progress. He had the final say on all the press releases, and presumably was working closely with Gilead. On April 16 something funny happened with the trial — the endpoints of it were quietly changed and updated on the clinicaltrials.gov website. Instead of evaluating remdesivir’s ability to prevent death from COVID-19, the study was redesigned to evaluate how fast a patient recovered from remdesivir.

…On May 1, the NIH’s COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines panel members granted emergency use of remdesivir and stated HCQ could only be used in hospitals or in studies. Investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson found 11 members of that panel had financial ties to Gilead. Two were on Gilead’s advisory board, others were paid consultants or received research support and honoraria. None of the members, however, had ties to HCQ, which is made by numerous generic manufacturers, and “is so cheap, analysts say even a spike in sales would not be a financial driver for the companies,” Ms. Attkisson reported.

Ms. Attkisson also found one of the authors of a small Veterans Administration trial that claimed HCQ caused increased deaths received a $247,000 grant from Gilead in 2018.

The article at Hot Air concludes:

You may remember that when Trump was hospitalized with COVID-19, he was treated with remdesivir and did, indeed, experience a speedy recovery. By the way, Gilead spent $2.45 million in the first quarter of 2020 lobbying the federal government.

The results of the latest study showing success with HCQ in patient recovery time for those on a ventilator is very encouraging. Perhaps the Follow the Science people should practice what they preach. How many lives were lost because of tunnel vision?

This is disgusting. All of the members of the NIH who had ties to Gilead should be fired. Lives were lost because they were greedy.

Protecting The Fourth Amendment

Sharyl Attkisson posted an article on her website today about a recent Supreme Court decision. Hopefully the decision will give pause to those politicians who want to take guns from law-abiding Americans.

The article reports:

The U.S. Supreme Court recently unanimously agreed that a warrantless search and seizure of a man’s firearms from within his home was unconstitutional.

The case involved a domestic argument between a husband and wife. The husband placed a handgun on the dining room table and asked his wife to “shoot [him] now and get it over with”. The wife left the home and returned the next morning with police.

The man reportedly agreed to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation on the condition that the officers not confiscate his firearms. But the police allegedly told the man’s wife that he’d agreed to give up the firearms. So the wife allowed them to enter the home and take them.

The lower courts upheld the police conduct under a “community caretaking” exception to the Fourth Amendment search and seizure protection.

I posted an article about the incident in March. The thing about the story that bothered me most was that the police lied to both the husband and the wife in order to take the guns from the house. I don’t think police should lie to law-abiding citizens.

Also, when was the last time the Supreme Court agreed 9-0 on anything?

The article concludes:

The community caretaking exception is commonly considered to apply to vehicles when a law enforcement officer is giving aid to a motorist.

A recognition of the existence of “community caretaking” tasks, like rendering aid to motorists in disabled vehicles, is not an open-ended license to perform [warrantless searches and seizures] anywhere.

U.S. Supreme Court

If the exception had been upheld, it would have been a significant limitation of Fourth Amendment rights.

I am truly glad to see that ruling. It protects all of us.

 

A New Platform

Sharyl Attkisson is reporting today that Mike Lindell’s new social media platform called “Frank” is set to launch.

The article reports:

Mike Lindell, founder of My Pillow Inc., is scheduled to launch his new social media platform called “Frank” this coming week. That’s according to a report in The Epoch Times.

Lindell’s stated mission is to provide a place for Constitutionally-protected free speech.

Lindell reportedly says he has taken steps to make sure the site is secure with its own servers, and will not be subject to censorship or the whims of big tech companies such as Amazon and Google.

Lindell clarified that threats of violence, pornography, and certain swear words will not be permitted on the site.

The new platform was reportedly created in response to big tech censorship of conservative viewpoints on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

Mike Lindell has stated that he does not plan to make money on the site initially, but may introduce ads in the future. The article also notes that former President Trump is also planning to launch a social media platform.

This Explains A Lot

Yesterday Just the News posted an article about the members of the National Institutes of Health’s COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel. It seems as if they have allowed their financial interests to interfere with the interests of the Americans who have contracted the coronavirus.

The article reports:

Members of the National Institutes of Health’s COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel have financial ties to a company behind clinical trials of a drug to treat coronavirus, as well as to another large pharmaceutical company involved with developing a COVID-19 vaccine.

According to the NIH, members of the panel include U.S. physicians, statisticians, and other experts who are developing treatment guidelines on COVID-19 “intended for healthcare providers.”

A total of eight panel members list a financial relationship with Gilead Sciences on the panel’s Financial Disclosure for Companies Related to COVID-19 Treatment or Diagnostics document: Judith Aberg, MD, Adaora Adimora, MD, Jason Baker, MD, Roger Bedimo, MD, Eric Daar, MD, David V. Glidden, PhD, Susanna Naggie, MD, and Pablo Tebas, MD.  

The U.S. has reportedly bought almost all of Gilead Sciences’ supply of the COVID-19 drug remdesivir. The company announced on June 1 the results of a phase 3 clinical trial of the drug in patients with moderate COVID-19.

On Monday, Gilead applied for FDA approval of remdesivir, which has been available for emergency use with patients hospitalized with severe cases of COVID-19.

The article notes:

Dr. William O’Neill, a cardiologist and Medical Director at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Mich., told Just the News contributor Sharyl Attkisson in an interview for her news program “Full Measure” that he is less impressed with remdesivir.

“There is a lot of hype for the drug,” said O’Neil, adding that he sees “no big benefit” to remdesivir after reading medical journal reports on it.  

This appears to be a blatant example of ‘follow the money’ resulting in Americans dying from the coronavirus because of pressure to block using hydroxychloroquine. It should be noted that remdesivir costs thousands of dollars for one pill and hydroxychloroquine costs less than a dollar for one pill. It’s sad to think that doctors would behave so badly, but it appears that they have.

The Timeline Is Important

When you look up Sharyl Attkisson this is what you find, “Sharyl Attkisson is a nonpartisan Investigative Journalist who tries to give you information others don’t want you to have. What you do with it is your own business. Do your own research. Seek advice from those you trust. Make up your own mind. Think for yourself.” That is a pretty accurate description of a lady who works hard to report the truth.She has received numerous awards for her investigative reporting and was under surveillance during the Obama administration because she got too close to the truth in her reporting about Fast and Furious.

On her website, she recently posted a timeline of all of the illegal surveillance carried out by the Obama administration. Please follow the link to see the entire timeline. I am going to focus only on the part beginning in the summer of 2016.

The article reports:

Summer 2016:

The FBI reportedly tries to obtain a secret FISA court order to monitor communications of Trump adviser Carter Page, alleging that Page is acting as a Russian agent. The application is turned down but approved in October when the anti-Trump “dossier” is included to justify the wiretap application.

2016:

It’s not yet known publicly, but CNN later reports that the Obama Justice Department wiretapped Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort before the 2016 election over Russia ties, closed the investigation, then began surveillance anew sometime in the fall and continued it through the early part of 2017.

Fall 2016:

Trump opponents “shop” to reporters a political opposition research “dossier” alleging Trump is guilty of various inappropriate acts regarding Russia. The information is unverified (and some of it is false) and the press doesn’t publish it, but a copy is provided to the FBI.

September 26, 2016:

It’s not publicly known at the time, but the government makes a proposal to the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) court to allow the National Counter Terrorism Center to access “unmasked” intel on Americans acquired by the FBI and NSA. (The Court later approves as “appropriate”.)

October 7, 2016:

Former vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff James Cartwright pleads guilty in a leak investigation to lying to the FBI about his discussions with reporters regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

October 26, 2016:

At  closed-door hearing before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Obama administration disclosed that it had been violating surveillance safeguards, according to Circa. It disclosed that more than 5 percent of its searches of the NSA’s database violated safeguards promised in 2011.

November 8, 2016:

Donald Trump is elected President.

November 2016-January 2017:

News reports claim Rice’s interest in the NSA materials accelerates after President Trump’s election through his January inauguration. Surveillance reportedly included Trump transition figures and/or foreign officials discussing a Trump administration.

December 2016:

FBI secretly monitors and records communications between Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who later became President Trump’s national security adviser.

After Trump’s election, Obama officials take steps to ensure certain intelligence gathered regarding Trump associates is “spread across the government.” One Obama official would later say it’s because they were afraid once Trump officials “found out how we knew what we knew,” the intelligence would be destroyed. However, Obama critics later theorize Obama officials were working to mount opposition to Trump’s presidency.

December 15, 2016:

National Security Adviser Susan Rice later reportedly acknowledged that the Obama administration spied on Trump officials in Trump Tower on this date, but claimed it was incidental to the administration’s spying on the foreign leader they were meeting with: the UAE crown prince. Rice also reportedly admitted to “unmasking” the names of the Trump officials who met with the crown prince, saying it was important to know who they were, although the identities of Americans are supposed to be strictly protected except in extraordinary circumstances. Trump officials who met with the crown prince reportedly included: Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner and Gen. Michael Flynn.

January 10, 2017:

The media reports on the leaked anti-Trump “dossier” compiled by a political opposition research group containing unverified and at least partly untrue allegations of misconduct involving Trump and Russia.

January 12, 2017:

The Obama administration finalizes new rules allowing the National Security Agency (NSA) to spread certain intelligence to 16 other U.S. intel agencies without the normal privacy protections.

President Obama commutes all but the last four months of Manning’s sentence for leaking intelligence information to WikiLeaks.

February 2, 2017:

The news reports that five information technology (IT) computer professionals employed by Democrats in the House of Representatives are under criminal investigation for allegedly “accessing House IT systems without lawmakers’ knowledge.” The suspects include three brothers identified as Abid, Imran and Jamal Awan “who managed office information technology for members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other lawmakers.” The brothers were said to have been employed by three Democrats on the Intelligence Committee and “five members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs which deal with with many of the nation’s most sensitive issues and documents, including those related to the war on terrorism.”

February 9, 2017:

News of the FBI recordings of Lt. Gen. Flynn speaking with Russia’s ambassador is leaked to the press. The New York Times and the Washington Post report that Flynn was captured on wiretaps discussing current U.S. sanctions, despite Flynn’s earlier denials.

The Washington Post also reports the FBI reviewed Flynn’s calls with Russian ambassador and “found nothing illicit.”

I realize that is a long list, but there are a few things in it that stand out to me. President Trump took office on January 20th. Why would President Obama change long-standing rules on handling intelligence eight days before leaving office? Why have we heard nothing about any consequences the Awan brothers have suffered because of their activities? Why were there no consequences for the spying on Trump Tower?

The timeline of the increased unmasking during the transition period and during the early days of the Trump administration is very telling. This looks like the setting up of a shadow government to make sure the previous illicit activities were not discovered. I firmly believe that General Flynn was targeted because he was smart enough and had been around Washington enough to figure out quickly what was going on. Had General Flynn stayed on the White House staff, I suspect there might already be some people on trial for their misdeeds. That may well have been the reason he was targeted. The reason he is still being targeted is that those who broke the law want to make sure he is never put in a position to uncover their misdeeds.

Complicated, But Important

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the ongoing case of Sharyl Attkisson, a CBS journalist who was spied on by the government as she investigated the Fast and Furious scandal and later Benghazi.. I strongly suggest that you follow the link to the article as it includes a lot of detail about the case.

The article reports:

According to a recent court filing [Source Here] a person who was engaged in the “wrongful activity” has come forward to provide Ms. Attkisson with details about the operation.  As a result of those whistle-blower revelations Attkisson is able to name specific individuals who were running the operation

…Former DOJ Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein is named as the person who was in charge of the operation; and the former head of the FBI DC field office, Shawn Henry is also outlined.

Mr. Henry is the head of Crowdstrike, a contractor for the government and a politically connected data security and forensic company.  Those who have followed the aspects related to the FBI use of the NSA database to illegally monitor U.S. persons; and those who followed the DNC cover story of Russia “hacking”; will be familiar with Crowdstrike.

According to the updated lawsuit (full pdf below) Rod Rosenstein, as the U.S. Attorney for Maryland, was in charge of the Obama 2011 and 2012 operation to monitor journalists specific to Ms. Attkissons reporting on Fast-n-Furious and Benghazi.

The article concludes:

This is the same time-frame when DNI James Clapper falsely denied to congress about the U.S. government -through the NSA- collecting metadata on all U.S. electronic communication.  This is the same time-frame where CIA Director John Brennan was monitoring the computer networks of congressional intelligence oversight staff.

When you overlay the new information from the Attkisson lawsuit, what emerges is the picture of an intentional effort by the Obama administration to weaponize the ability to collect electronic information on domestic political opposition.  It’s one long continuum.

This is not acceptable government behavior in a representative republic. It remains to be seen what will be done about it.

Respecting The Constitutional Rights Of Americans

Yesterday John HInderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article with the following headline, “Schiff Obtained Phone Records of Nunes, Journalist, Others.”

How in the world did Adam Schiff get access to those phone records?

The article notes:

The mainstream media is abuzz with stories about Nunes communication with “Rudy Giuliani during key aspects of his Ukraine pressure campaign.” Nunes was in touch with John Solomon around the times he published major articles. And on and on. The telephone records don’t include the actual conversations. They identify who was calling whom and how long they spoke.

Schiff has crossed the line of decency with this move. Once again, he has abused his power. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton tweeted that obtaining these records is a remarkable abuse of President Trump’s constitutional rights. I would argue that it’s an abuse of the constitutional rights of all of the above. These are KGB tactics.

Well, fair is fair. Republicans should obtain Schiff’s phone records, those of the so-called whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella, and the colleague with whom he had a “bro-like” relationship, you know, Sean Misko, the one Schiff hired as an aide the day after the whistleblower’s complaint was submitted.

The repellent Adam Schiff has managed to reach a new level of depravity.

This is not something that should be happening in America. It is a total disregard for the constitutional rights of the people involved. However, this is not a new tactic by the political left.

In October 2014, I posted an article about Sharyl Attkisson. She was fired from CBS for her reporting on Operation Fast and Furious. As you remember, that was President Obama’s gun-running operation that was supposed to bring Americans to the point where they overturned the Second Amendment.

The article from rightwinggranny noted:

Attkisson says the source, who’s “connected to government three-letter agencies,” told her the computer was hacked into by “a sophisticated entity that used commercial, nonattributable spyware that’s proprietary to a government agency: either the CIA, FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency.”

The breach was accomplished through an “otherwise innocuous e-mail” that Attkisson says she got in February 2012, then twice “redone” and “refreshed” through a satellite hookup and a Wi-Fi connection at a Ritz-Carlton hotel.

The spyware included programs that Attkisson says monitored her every keystroke and gave the snoops access to all her e-mails and the passwords to her financial accounts.

“The intruders discovered my Skype account handle, stole the password, activated the audio, and made heavy use of it, presumably as a listening tool,” she wrote in “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.”

But the most shocking finding, she says, was the discovery of three classified documents that Number One told her were “buried deep in your operating system. In a place that, unless you’re a some kind of computer whiz specialist, you wouldn’t even know exists.”

“They probably planted them to be able to accuse you of having classified documents if they ever needed to do that at some point,” Number One added.

It’s time to charge people with a crime when they violate the civil rights of an American citizen. I hope this will happen (but I am not optimistic).

This Might Have Interesting Implications For American Politics

The Gateway Pundit is reporting today that Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno said that the UK has provided written assurances that they will not extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to any country where he will face the death penalty.

I really don’t have an opinion about Julian Assange. Obviously he broke the law by leaking information that was classified. Whether or not those leaks put anyone in danger, I don’t know. I guess if you are concerned with Julian Assange and his leaks, you should also look at the information taken off Hillary Clinton’s private server that actually did put people in danger. At any rate, I don’t feel as if I know enough about what was actually leaked to understand his case. However, his problems with the American government began about 2008. The Obama administration was known to be harsh on any whistleblowers, and it is possible that Assange was simply a whistleblower. It is also possible that if Assange had successfully hacked into the files of the Obama administration he would be a reliable source on President Obama’s use of government agencies to target his political enemies. We know that happened with the IRS and conservative organizations, and it is becoming obvious that there were other instances where conservatives were spied upon–for example Sharyl Attkisson.

The article at The Gateway Pundit concludes:

It was recently revealed through a filing error that Assange has been secretly charged in the United States — though the nature of the charges remains unknown.

At the end of November, a judge heard arguments about unsealing the charges, but no decision was made.

The US government argued that the press and the public have no right to know what the charges against the publisher actually are. He explained that he would be willing to provide more information in a closed setting.

The UK has refused to acknowledge the findings of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD), which found that he is being arbitrarily and unlawfully detained and must be immediately released and compensated.

As Matt Taibbi recently wrote in a must read op-ed for Rolling Stone, “the more likely eventuality is a prosecution that uses the unpopularity of Assange to shut one of the last loopholes in our expanding secrecy bureaucracy. Americans seem not to grasp what might be at stake. Wikileaks briefly opened a window into the uglier side of our society, and if publication of such leaks is criminalized, it probably won’t open again.”

Stay tuned.

Some Interesting New Information

Sharyl Attkisson is an Emmy award winning investigative journalist. She fell out of favor with the mainstream media when she began looking behind the scenes at some of the Obama scandals. Her personal computer was hacked by the government, and other violations of her civil rights occurred. She worked for CBS for a number of years. She has continued her investigative work independently and hosts a website where the results of her investigations are posted. She is also active on Twitter.

This is a screenshot of one of her recent tweets:

Recently she posted a timeline of the collusion against Trump on her website. Here are just a few highlights from that timeline that might explain some things:

June 2013: FBI interviews U.S. businessman Carter Page, who’s lived and worked in Russia, regarding his ongoing contacts with Russians. Page reportedly tells FBI agents their time would be better spent investigating Boston Marathon bombing (which the FBI’s Andrew McCabe helped lead). Page later claims his remark prompts FBI retaliatory campaign against him. The FBI, under McCabe, will later wiretap Page after Page becomes a Donald Trump campaign adviser.

FBI secretly records suspected Russian industrial spy Evgeny Buryakov. It’s later reported that Page helped FBI build the case.

…2015

FBI opens investigation into Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, including for donations from a Chinese businessman and Clinton Foundation donor.

FBI official Andrew McCabe meets with Gov. McAuliffe, a close Clinton ally. Afterwards, “McAuliffe-aligned political groups donated about $700,000 to Mr. McCabe’s wife…for her campaign to become a Democrat state Senator in Virginia.” The fact of the McAuliffe-related donations to wife of FBI’s McCabe—while FBI was investigating McAuliffe and Clinton—later becomes the subject of conflict of interest inquiry by Inspector General.

2016

Obama officials vastly expand their searches through NSA database for Americans and the content of their communications. In 2013, there were 9,600 searches involving 195 Americans. But in 2016, there are 30,355 searches of 5,288 Americans.

Justice Dept. associate deputy attorney general Bruce Ohr meets with Fusion GPS’ Christopher Steele, the Yemen-born ex-British spy leading anti-Trump political opposition research project.

January 2016: Democratic operative Ukrainian-American Chalupa tells a senior Democratic National Committee official that she feels there’s a Russia connection with Trump.

Jan. 29, 2016: FBI Director Comey promotes Andrew McCabe to FBI Deputy Director.

McCabe takes lead on Clinton probe even though his wife received nearly $700,000 in campaign donations through Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe, who’s also under FBI investigation.

March 2016: Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s email gets hacked.

May 23, 2016: FBI probe into Virginia governor and Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe becomes public. (McAuliffe is ultimately not charged with a crime.)

Justice Department Inspector General confirms it’s looking into FBI’s Andrew McCabe for alleged conflicts of interest in handling of Clinton and Gov. McAuliffe probes in light of McAuliffe directing campaign donations to McCabe’s wife.

FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, who are reportedly having an illicit affair, text each other that Trump’s ascension in the campaign will bring “pressure…to finish” Clinton probe.

Nellie Ohr, wife of Justice Dept. associate deputy attorney general Bruce Ohr and former CIA worker, goes on the payroll of Fusion GPS and assists with anti-Trump political opposition research. Her husband, Bruce, reportedly fails to disclose her specific employer and work in his Justice Dept. conflict of interest disclosures.

Nellie Ohr applies for a ham radio license.

June 2016: Fusion GPS’ Glenn Simpson hires Yemen-born ex-British spy Christopher Steele for anti-Trump political opposition research project. Steele uses info from Russian sources “close to Putin” to compile unverified “dossier” later provided to reporters and FBI, which the FBI uses to obtain secret wiretap.

The Guardian and Heat Street report that the FBI applied for a FISA warrant in June 2016 to “monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials” but that the “initial request was denied.” 

Please follow the link to the article to see the entire timeline, it is worth reviewing. Sharyl Attkisson is one of the few really reliable resources on government corruption.

The Evidence Is In The Edits

Yesterday BizPacReview posted an article about a recent tweet by Sharyl Attkisson. The tweet shows the original language James Comey proposed to use about Clinton classified email and the edited version.

This is the information in the tweet:

The original sentence: “There is evidence to support a conclusion that Secretary Clinton, and others, used the private email server in a manner that was grossly negligent with respect to the handling of classified information.

The edited sentence: “Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate the laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in very sensitive, highly classified information.”

So what’s the difference?

 US Code Sec. 793 (f) says:

(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer-

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

The article further comments on the difference made by the editing:

A social media user offered a stellar explanation of just what the altered sentence achieved.

“And ‘Intent’ was not part of the relevant law. Mishandling classified information for ANY reason was a violation, & a lack of intent should have had no effect on a decision to prosecute,” the tweet read. “Comey simply invented an reason not to act. Then he watered down even that bogus explanation.”

The question now becomes, do we actually have equal justice under the law?

The Timeline

The Russian Collusion/Spy In The Trump Campaign story is getting old and it is getting complicated. There are some reporters, however, who have made the story a little easier to follow. Sharyl Attkisson has continued her outstanding work as an investigative reporter  and posted a timeline of changes in Justice Department personnel from October 2015 to the present on her website.

Here is the timeline:

As the spying scandal unfolds, keep an eye on the people who have moved out and the people who have moved in. I would suspect that the people who are being moved in are there to drain the swamp. The people who have moved out or left are quite likely looking for good lawyers at this point.

We Seem To Have A Problem With Our Intelligence Community Understanding That It Is Supposed To Work Within The Constraints Of Our Representative Republic

Townhall posted an article today by Sharyl Attkisson about misconduct by the intelligence community of our government.

The article lists ten examples of the intelligence community running amok:

Telecom takeover

Joe Nacchio, CEO of telecom giant Qwest, said that after he refused to spy on his customers for the National Security Agency (NSA) without a warrant in February of 2001, the government retaliated by yanking a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars and filing an insider trading case against him. He went to prison. The government denied charges of retaliation. 

Olympic spying

In 2002, the NSA reportedly engaged in “blanket surveillance” of the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, collecting and storing “virtually all electronic communications going into or out of the Salt Lake City area, including … emails and text messages” to “experiment with and fine tune a new scale of mass surveillance.” NSA officials had denied such a program existed.

Spying on Congress

In 2005 intel officials intercepted and recorded phone conversations between then-Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-Calif.)  and pro-Israel lobbyists who were under investigation for espionage.

[…]

Journalist “witch hunts”

Internal emails from a “global intelligence company” executive in 2010 stated: “Brennan is behind the witch hunts of investigative journalists learning information from inside the beltway sources.

[…]

Misleading on mass spying

On March 12, 2013, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress that intel officials were not collecting mass data on tens of millions of Americans.

[…]

More spying on Congress

CIA officials improperly accessed Senate Intelligence Committee computers, according to an Inspector General report in July 2014, contradicting denials by then-CIA Director Brennan.

[…]

NSA privacy violations

In fall 2016, the government confessed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court “significant non-compliance” of crucial procedures designed to protect privacy rights of U.S. citizens.

[…]

Intel mutiny?

Government requests to see or “unmask” names of Americans whose communications are “incidentally” captured during national security surveillance are supposed to be rare and justified.

[…]

Politically motivated press leak

In May 2017, former FBI Director James Comey secretly orchestrated a “leak” to The New York Times of negative memos he said he wrote contemporaneously about President Trump, with the motive of spurring the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the president’s alleged Russia ties.

[…]

Conflicted investigators

One purpose of special counsel investigations, such as the Russia investigation being led by former FBI Director Mueller, is to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest. But multiple investigators working on Mueller’s team have been removed after being caught in compromising positions.

The swamp has been operating successfully for a number of years. It is time for the leadership in the intelligence community to resign. The intelligence community needs to go back to doing their job of protecting Americans–not spying on people who disagree with their political philosophy.

The article reminds us:

This issue has special meaning to the former CBS reporter, who alleges she was spied on by the Obama administration. She’s documented the reported Obama surveillance timeline on her website as well. Even left leaning journalists, like Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, said the leaks from the intelligence community are a prescription to the destruction of our government. Granted, Greenwald’s publication is set up as a safe space for leakers, and to protect them, as they disseminate information relating to government corruption or wrongdoing. Leaking because Hillary Clinton lost isn’t any of those things. Now, Greenwald fears both the deep state and the Trump White House, but noted the former doesn’t have the institutional constraints to keep their power in check.

 

What Is True vs. What Is Reported

Media bias is old news, but every now and then it can be really interesting. The following story illustrates why President Trump needs to hold on to his Twitter account.

This morning the Associated Press reported:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The top House and Senate Democrats said Wednesday they had reached agreement with President Donald Trump to protect thousands of younger immigrants from deportation and fund some border security enhancements — not including Trump’s long-sought border wall.

The agreement, the latest instance of Trump ditching his own party to make common cause with the opposition, was announced by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi following a White House dinner that Republican lawmakers weren’t invited to attend. It would enshrine protections for the nearly 800,000 immigrants brought illegally to this country as kids who had benefited from former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, which provided temporary work permits and shielded recipients from deportation.

Fox News reported today:

President Trump on Thursday denied reports that he struck a “deal” overnight with top Democrats to protect so-called “Dreamers,” while insisting “massive border security would have to be agreed to in exchange for consent.”

Trump’s Twitter post was in response to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announcing after a dinner meeting at the White House that they had “agreed to a plan to work out an agreement to protect our nation’s DREAMers from deportation.”

They also said “we would review border security measures that didn’t include building a wall.”

The president clarified Thursday morning that he intends for the wall to be built — and while he wants to helps Dreamers, there’s no deal yet. 

The political consequences for President Trump if he does not build a wall would be enormous.

On Tuesday The Hill posted an article about support for the wall among Americans.

These are a few highlights from the article:

Last February, Pew reported similar findings: 62 percent of Americans oppose building a wall. Only 35 percent support it.

But are we telling the whole story?

First, it’s worth looking at what Pew asked: “All in all, would you favor or oppose building a wall along the entire border with Mexico?” To me, it’s a confusing question. After all, there already is a wall or fencing along approximately 700 miles of the southern border. It might make more sense to ask, “Would you favor or oppose building a wall along the remaining, unwalled portion of the border with Mexico?”

…While we’re in the weeds, assuming there’s value to asking a poll question about something that nobody is proposing, there’s additional nuance to consider. Pew ended up with a Democrat-heavy sample: 38 percent Republican/Republican leaning and 52 percent Democrat/Democrat leaning. The 14 percentage point difference means Pew interviewed 38 percent more Democrat thinkers than Republican thinkers. I can’t find any estimate that says the actual U.S. population is politically lopsided along those lines.

That is how you skew a poll.

The article at The Hill concludes:

There are two things we could do to provide more meaningful reporting. First, when addressing polls on political topics, we should disclose the breakdown of Democrats and Republicans upfront. To state the obvious: findings from a sample that’s made up of 98 percent Republicans will be entirely different than findings from a sample of 98 percent Democrats. How can meaning be put behind results on any political topic without the partisan makeup of the sample being considered?

Second, our reporting could include opposing findings and trends, if they exist. For example, in the most recent Pew poll, “three-quarters (74 percent) of Republicans and Republican-leaners supported a border wall” and that support had grown substantially in recent months. Conservative Republican support for a wall was up nine points since Trump was elected President (from 71 percent to 80 percent).

Support also grew among moderate and liberal Republicans (from 51 percent to 60 percent). An accurate headline could just as well have been: “Poll shows growing Republican support for a wall under a Trump presidency.”

All things considered, I came up with my own headline that’s more transparent than many of the ones I saw: “In polls with Democrat-heavy sampling, there’s overwhelming opposition to building a wall along the ‘entire’ border; a concept that nobody is, in fact, proposing.”

The article at The Hill was written by Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson), an Emmy-award winning investigative journalist, author of the New York Times bestsellers “The Smear” and “Stonewalled,” and host of Sinclair’s Sunday TV program “Full Measure.” If you are not familiar with her story, please search for her on the Internet and read her history. She definitely knows what she is talking about.

The Timeline Shows The History

Sharyl Attkisson was an investigative journalist who resigned from CBS News in 2014. She was unbiased and reported events as she saw them. In July 2012, Ms. Attkisson’s reporting on the Fast and Furious scandal received an Emmy Award. Ms. Attkisson has reported that her personal computer and work computer were illegally accessed beginning in 2012. She has posted an article on her website about some of the indications that government surveillance of Americans during the Obama Administration was not unusual.

The article includes a timeline. Here are some highlights:

 April 2009:

Someone leaks the unmasked name of Congresswoman Jane Harmon to the press. According to news reports, the Bush administration NSA incidentally recorded and saved Harmon’s phone conversations with pro-Israel lobbyists who were under investigation for espionage. The story is first broken by Congressional Quarterly’s Jeff Stein.

December 17, 2009:

The Obama administration prosecutes FBI contractor Shamai Leibowitz for leaking documents to the media in April 2009. Leibowitz says he leaked because he felt FBI practices were “an abuse of power and a violation of the law” which he reported to his superiors at the FBI “who did nothing about them.”  (According to the ACLU: “Amazingly, the sentencing judge said, ‘I don’t know what was divulged other than some documents, and how it compromised things, I have no idea’.”)

2010:

The IRS secretly begins “targeting” conservative groups that are seeking nonprofit tax-exempt status, by singling out ones that have “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their names.

Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning begins illegally leaks classified information to WikiLeaks revealing, among other matters, that the U.S. is extensively spying on the United Nations.

Obama Attorney General Eric Holder renews a Bush-era subpoena of New York Times reporter James Risen in a leak investigation.

Obama administration pursues espionage charges against NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake. (According to the ACLU: spy charges were later dropped and Drake pled guilty to a misdemeanor. The judge called the government’s conduct in the case “unconscionable.”)

May 28, 2010:

The government secretly applies for a warrant to obtain Google email information of Fox News reporter James Rosen in a leak investigation, without telling Rosen.

September 21, 2010:

Internal email entitled “Obama Leak Investigations” at “global intelligence” company Stratfor claims Obama’s then-Homeland Security adviser John Brennan is targeting journalists.

“Brennan is behind the witch hunts of investigative journalists learning information from inside the beltway sources,” writes one Stratfor official to another.

The email continues: “Note — There is specific tasker from the [White House] to go after anyone printing materials negative to the Obama agenda (oh my.) Even the FBI is shocked. The Wonder Boys must be in meltdown mode…”

“The Wonder Boys” reportedly refers to the National Security Agency (NSA). Brennan later becomes President Obama’s CIA Director.

Early February 2011:

After receiving an anonymous tip, CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson begins researching the Department of Justice “gunwalking” operation nicknamed “Fast and Furious” that secretly let thousands of weapons be trafficked to Mexican drug cartels. One of the “walked” guns had been used by illegal aliens who murdered U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010.

February 22, 2011:

CBS’ Attkisson breaks news about “Fast and Furious” on The CBS Evening News.

After the story airs, the government issues an internal memo that seeks to “push positive stories” to contradict the news.

Given the negative coverage by CBS Evening News last week…ATF needs to proactively push positive stories this week, in an effort to preempt some negative reporting, or at minimum, lessen the coverage of such stories in the news cycle by replacing them with good stories about ATF.

March 4, 2011:

CBS News’ Attkisson exclusively interviews sitting ATF special agent John Dodson. He gives a firsthand account contradicting government denials re: Fast and Furious.

The article continues with the timeline continuing through April 11, 2017, citing actions by the Obama Administration and by the people who remained in government positions after the Obama Administration ended. I think we have a problem. The only possible solution is to find the guilty parties and hold them accountable to the law. One wonders if we are not in a situation similar to what happened when J. Edgar Hoover headed the FBI and collected enough damaging information on everyone in government so that no one ever challenged him when he overstepped the limits of his position. If we have a similar situation now, we may not be able to solve the problem of overactive government surveillance for political purposes, and voters are simply going to have to be smart about what they believe.

 

 

 

Did CBS Report The News Or Manipulate The News?

President Obama was re-elected in 2012. He won. The Republican Candidate was portrayed as an out-of-touch rich man who caused people to die of cancer. When he warned of the dangers of Russian aggression, Mitt Romney was told, “The 80’s called, they want their foreign policy back.” It was a big joke. And when Mitt Romney pointed out that it took President Obama 14 days to admit the Benghazi attack was terrorism President Obama balked, saying he did it that day.

Well, CBS News edited out part of a 60 Minutes‘ interview with President Obama on the day after the Benghazi attacks. During the interview, the President stated, “Well, it’s too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved. but, obviously, it was an attack on Americans.” 

Yesterday, Breitbart.com posted an article about the incident. The article reports:

(Investigative Journalist Sharyl) Attkisson said, “Let me say that that exchange should have been pulled out immediately after the debate, which would have been very newsy at the time. It was exclusive to CBS. It would have to me proven Romney’s point against Obama. But that clip was kept secret.”

“I was covering Benghazi, nobody told me we had it and directed me from the ‘Evening News’ to a different clip of the same interview to give the impression that the president had done the opposite. And it was only right before the election that somebody kind of leaked out the transcript to others of us as CBS and we were really shocked. We saw that was something very unethical done to have kept that up.”

She added, “The ‘Evening News’ people who had access to that transcript, according to the emails that I saw when it was sent from ’60 Minutes’ to ‘Evening News’ the very day it was taken, they, in my view, skipped over it, passed it up, kept it secret. And I think that was because they were trying to defend the president and they thought that would be harmful to him.”

I don’t know whether airing that exchange would have changed any votes. I don’t know how well-informed the people who voted for President Obama were. I do know, however, that it was unethical to edit that exchange out of the interview. It prevented the American voters from getting a true picture of the events at Benghazi and the President’s reaction to those events.

 

The Fight For Honest News Continues

John Hinderaker at Power Line posted a story today about Sharyl Attkisson, the investigative reporter who resigned from CBS’s Washington Bureau in March of this year.

Ms. Attkisson tells her story in her book Stonewalled: My Fight For the Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.

In the book, Ms. Attkisson describes the hacking of her computer while she was at CBS:

Attkisson says the source, who’s “connected to government three-letter agencies,” told her the computer was hacked into by “a sophisticated entity that used commercial, nonattributable spyware that’s proprietary to a government agency: either the CIA, FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency.”

The breach was accomplished through an “otherwise innocuous e-mail” that Attkisson says she got in February 2012, then twice “redone” and “refreshed” through a satellite hookup and a Wi-Fi connection at a Ritz-Carlton hotel.

The spyware included programs that Attkisson says monitored her every keystroke and gave the snoops access to all her e-mails and the passwords to her financial accounts.

“The intruders discovered my Skype account handle, stole the password, activated the audio, and made heavy use of it, presumably as a listening tool,” she wrote in “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.”

But the most shocking finding, she says, was the discovery of three classified documents that Number One told her were “buried deep in your operating system. In a place that, unless you’re a some kind of computer whiz specialist, you wouldn’t even know exists.”

“They probably planted them to be able to accuse you of having classified documents if they ever needed to do that at some point,” Number One added.

It is scary that our government is involved in this sort of thing.

John Hinderaker comments on Ms. Attkisson’s story:

If the Obama administration hacked into a reporter’s computers, used them to spy on her, and even prepared to frame her for a potential criminal prosecution by planting classified documents, aren’t we looking at the biggest scandal in American history? Perhaps I’m forgetting something, but I can’t come up with anything to equal the stunning lawlessness on display here–if what Attkisson says is true (which I don’t doubt), and if the administration is the guilty party.

John Hinderaker suggests that she file a lawsuit against the offending agency. Ms. Attkisson’s story is another example of a government that is out of control.