Biased Media

On Puerto Rico, Trump Is Right (UPDATED)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is all POWERLINE, but soo important for the “Mantra Busting” that …. here ya go:

…This is what is going on: Some “scientists”–read anti-Trump Democratic Party activists–constructed a theoretical baseline of how many deaths would be expected to occur in Puerto Rico during the months after Hurricane Maria. They then compared this baseline to the actual number of deaths, and voila! The actual number was higher than their hypothetical guess by 3,000. So all of those deaths–whether caused by cancer, car accidents, or whatever–are attributed to the hurricane. These activists have not made any attempt to count the actual number of hurricane-related deaths.

No one would use such a foolish methodology except for political reasons. This is more fake news propagated by anti-Trump activists. The fake news media, like CNN, have attacked President Trump for disputing the “scientists” who came up with the 3,000 number. Sadly, some Republicans have joined them, probably because they are ignorant about what is actually going on here.

For what it is worth, Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in September 2017, and Puerto Rico’s death rate declined in 2017, after years of increases:

(click to enlarge)

So, following the logic of the Left and the #NeverTrumpers, MORE hurricanes should hit Puerto Rico. Just sayin’ — I love the holes dug by these early reactors to the MSM. Some article to preserve:

…Excess mortality studies have been used to measure everything from the life expectancy of smokers to “temperature-related stress” in the Netherlands. The problem is that such studies are inherently reliant on conjecture. There can be other problems as well, namely politics, as I learned a decade ago while poking holes in an excess mortality study in Iraq published by the Lancet.

An article in the British medical journal estimated some 650,000 “excess” Iraqi deaths in the 40 months following the U.S. invasion. This figure was seven times higher than the toll based on body counts. It was based on field surveys supposedly done by a former health official in Saddam Hussein’s government and was authored by outspoken critics of the Iraq war — and of George W. Bush. It was also timed to come out just before the 2006 midterm elections.

To some neutral observers, the controversy underscored the importance of actually documenting wartime casualties. I don’t know how much Donald Trump knows about this topic. But he apparently is aware that “excess mortality” is not how U.S. authorities have previously tallied storm deaths. The National Hurricane Center, for example, estimated that 1,833 people died in Hurricane Katrina, most from drowning.

In Puerto Rico, there were myriad problems getting accurate data, the biggest being that electricity was knocked out for so long. This inhibited the reporting ability of island health officials. It also led to deprivations that killed health-impaired residents months after the hurricane season ended. In that environment, excess mortality studies made sense. Inevitably, they would be imprecise, and perhaps just wrong. The first such study, by researchers at Penn State University, estimated the number of deaths at 1,085 – when the government in San Juan was still listing the official toll as 64. Days later, the New York Times, using island death certificates, produced an estimate of 1,052.

Harvard went next. Its study, trumpeted uncritically around the world, had problems. For one thing, its range of 793 to 8,498 excess deaths was unhelpful. So the media settled on the median figure, 4,645, which was little more than a guess. The bigger problem is that the methodology was a mish-mash. Harvard’s researchers compared actual deaths in 2016 to estimates based on interviews – polling surveys – in 2017. “The big thing is the methodology is so completely different, you don’t now what you’re dealing with,” said University of Texas biostatistics professor Donald Berry. “What you end up with is garbage.”

That’s the background when the governor of Puerto Rico tapped George Washington University’s school of public health to do another excess mortality survey. Like all such studies, it’s based on assumptions and guesswork – in this case assumptions complicated by the outward migration of tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans to the mainland after the hurricane. That said, I know of no evidence that would undermine its estimate of 2,975 excess deaths…

(REAL CLEAR POLITICS)

Self Reporting is the worst!

The difference between survey results and demonstrable realities was also pointed out by the author of Hillbilly Elegy: “In a recent Gallup poll, Southerners and Midwesterners reported the highest rates of church attendance in the country. Yet actual church attendance is much lower in the South.”

Thomas Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2018), 23-25 (added references).

As Twitchy reported, the media went wild last week when a report from Harvard University estimated that nearly 5,000 people in Puerto Rico had died from Hurricane Maria.

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog, though, took a look at how Harvard, whose researchers admitted they conducted “a quick study on a limited budget,” came up with that number and found that the methodology was ridiculously flawed:

In effect, the researchers took one number — 15 deaths identified from a survey of 3,299 households — and extrapolated that to come up with 4,645 deaths across the island. That number came with a very large caveat, clearly identified in the report, but few news media accounts bothered to explain the nuances….

(TWITCHY)

Flashback: Puerto Rican Gov. admitted higher ‘death toll is only an approximation, not a concrete list of names’

The death toll is ‘a very broad estimate for the number of people who died above what you’d expect to see in a normal year’ – ‘But that number is not a count of the death toll in Puerto Rico caused by Hurricane Maria. Instead, it’s just the midpoint of a wide-ranging estimate of the possible number of deaths’

(CLIMATE DEPOT)

…It turns out there is no list of names.   There is no accounting of what causes of death were attributable to the aftermath of the devastating storm.  In fact, having now scanned the George Washington University report at the heart of this all, I have an itching feeling they missed a big statistical point.

The bottom line is that the researchers developed a model and made a projected estimate of the number of deaths to be expected on the island during the six months following the storm, based on previous year’s death numbers.   They then factored in the fact that a full 8 percent of the population, 280,000 people roughly, left the island following the storm.

With that population change factored in, the “expected” number of deaths was about 3,000 fewer than the 16,000 deaths which were recorded September through February.  Those 3,000 “excess” deaths above the projection are the one’s being attributed to the effects of the storm.  I’m rounding because their report admits the projection is not exact.  The chart I included above notes the higher death rate per 10,000 people.

There are not 3,000 death certificates noting hurricane-related causes (loss of electricity, stress, poor transportation response) and the authors chide the local medical community for not being sufficiently exact in filling out their death certificates.  So they are left with models and projections and estimates, which have translated into MSM-accepted Truth.

Here’s my question, the itch not addressed in the report, that I saw:   Who left?  Who departed following the storm?  Would the elderly, infirm and impoverished have been the ones to decamp to the mainland?  Or would they have been the one’s left behind?  Doesn’t the shift in the baseline also at least in part explain this?  The death rate really only jumped dramatically when you reduce the baseline population…

(BACON’S REBELLION)

Mass Media’s Bias = Big Brother

Published by Papa Giorgio

Facebook on Friday issued an apology to PragerU for “mistakenly” removing several videosand limiting the reach of others. (DAILY CALLER)

Confronting The Left’s Agenda To Silence Conservative Voices – The dire lesson of the Freedom Center’s recent victory over censorship. (FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE)

Michael Ledeen is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center and Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

We’re rightly upset at the censorship of the big social media platforms, and our morale wasn’t improved when something north of three hundred newspapers wrote editorials in virtual unison, or when Mastercard, in cahoots with the Southern Poverty Law Center, attempted to shut down our Center.  Thankfully, we won and they lost. But the efforts to silence conservative spokesmen seem to be intensifying, which makes strategic political sense to me.  If you can’t win an argument on the merits, then either discredit or silence your opponents. 

The Left has lost most of the substantive arguments—from health care to taxation, from foreign policy to defense spending–and their best political chance is to silence the opposition.  This campaign rages throughout the society, from social media to the educational system, from publishers to movie makers. 

There is seemingly no limit to their zeal in silencing their opponents, even to changing our Constitutional system.  Did you know that the Democratic Party is on record against the First Amendment?  Officially, publicly, and, in the United States Senate, unanimously.  They tried to rewrite it in 2014, and introduced a Constitutional Amendment that would have enabled federal and state governments to prohibit various kinds of political spending, broadcasting or publishing. 

This remarkable measure, which flew in the face of the Bill of Rights and the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, had no chance of being approved by the requisite majorities in Congress and the states.  It was, therefore, a purely political maneuver, laying down a marker for voters and opinion-makers.  Still, the numbers are astonishing:  49 Senators voted for it, and not one—not a single one—voted to preserve the First Amendment.

It gets worse.  Outraged by the Democratic stance against freedom of speech and press, Senator Ted Cruz introduced his own amendment, which consisted of the First Amendment itself.  Once again, the numbers were remarkable.  Not a single Democrat voted for it, either in committee or in the full Senate……

Instagram Makes Free Speech Disappear – Company owned by Navy SEALs banned for criticizing NFL kneelers. (FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE)

Project War Path, a clothing company owned by Navy SEALs and Army Special Forces combat veterans, Charlie Nash of Breitbart News reported Monday, “has been permanently suspended from Facebook’s Instagram platform for ‘hate speech’ after criticizing NFL players who kneel during the national anthem.”

The post in question read, “This sums it up, Veteran’s defend our freedom and keep us safe. Meanwhile overpaid turds throw a leather ball around in an overpriced stadium and shit on all the men and women who have been killed defending our country.”

Project War Path co-owner Tej Gill, a Navy SEAL veteran, told Breibart “players kneeling really hits home with me and my teammates, I think it’s disgusting, an insult to all veterans, Americans, and especially families of veterans that have been killed and wounded during war.”

The same post on Twitter was not removed but Instagram took it down. As Gill explained to Breitbart, “I tried to reinstate my account, the form I filled out said my account was permanently suspended for hate speech. I have not heard anything back from Instagram since.”

Gill cited “a very aggressive censorship operation that is being conducted by Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the mainstream media.” Instagram, as it happens is owned by Facebook, which purchased the upstart in 2012 and turned it into a profit center……

CENSORED! How Online Media Companies Are Suppressing Conservative Speech (NEWSBUSTERS)

Executive Summary (Full Special Report can be found here.)

Like it or not, social media is the communication form of the future — not just in the U.S., but worldwide. Just Facebook and Twitter combined reach 1.8 billion people. More than two-thirds of all Americans (68 percent) use Facebook. YouTube is pushing out TV as the most popular place to watch video. Google is the No. 1 search engine in both the U.S. and the world.

War is being declared on the conservative movement in this space and conservatives are losing — badly. If the right is silenced, billions of people will be cut off from conservative ideas and conservative media.

It’s the new battleground of media bias. But it’s worse. That bias is not a war of ideas. It’s a war against ideas. It’s a clear effort to censor the conservative worldview from the public conversation.

The Media Research Center has undertaken an extensive study of the problem at major tech companies — Twitter, Facebook, Google and YouTube — and the results are far more troubling than most conservatives realize. Here are some of the key findings:

  • TWITTER LEADS IN CENSORSHIP: Project Veritas recently had caught Twitter staffers admitting on hidden camera that they had been censoring conservatives through a technique known as shadow banning, where users think their content is getting seen widely, but it’s not. The staffers had justified it by claiming the accounts had been automated if they had words such as “America” and “God.” In 2016, Twitter had attempted to manipulate election-related tweets using the hashtags “#PodestaEmails” and “#DNCLeak.” The site also restricts pro-life ads from Live Action and even Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), but allows Planned Parenthood advertisements.
  • FACEBOOK’S TRENDING FEED HAS BEEN HIDING CONSERVATIVE TOPICS: A 2016 Gizmodo story had warned of Facebook’s bias. It had detailed claims by former employees that Facebook’s news curators had been instructed to hide conservative content from the “trending” section, which supposedly only features news users find compelling. Topics that had been blacklisted included Mitt Romney, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and Rand Paul. On the other hand, the term “Black Lives Matter” had also been placed into the trending section even though it was not actually trending. Facebook had also banned at least one far right European organization but had not released information on any specific statements made by the group that warranted the ban.
  • GOOGLE SEARCH AIDS DEMOCRATS: Google and YouTube’s corporate chairman Eric Schmidt had assisted Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The company’s search engine had deployed a similar bias in favor of Democrats. One study had found 2016 campaign searches were biased in favor of Hillary Clinton. Even the liberal website Slate had revealed the search engine’s results had favored both Clinton and Democratic candidates. Google also had fired engineer James Damore for criticizing the company’s “Ideological Echo Chamber.” The company had claimed he had been fired for “advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.” Damore is suing Google, saying it mistreats whites, males and conservatives.
  • YOUTUBE IS SHUTTING DOWN CONSERVATIVE VIDEOS: Google’s YouTube site had created its own problems with conservative content. YouTube moderators must take their cues from the rest of Google – from shutting down entire conservative channels “by mistake” to removing videos that promote right-wing political views. YouTube’s special Creators for Change section is devoted to people using their “voices for social change” and even highlights the work of a 9/11 truther. The site’s very own YouTube page and Twitter account celebrate progressive attitudes, including uploading videos about “inspiring” gay and trans people and sharing the platform’s support for DACA.
  • TECH FIRMS ARE RELYING ON GROUPS THAT HATE CONSERVATIVES: Top tech firms like Google, YouTube and Twitter partner with leftist groups attempting to censor conservatives. These include the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Both groups claim to combat “hate,” but treat standard conservative beliefs in faith and family as examples of that hatred. George Soros-funded ProPublica is using information from both radical leftist organizations to attack conservative groups such as Jihad Watch and ACT for America, bullying PayPal and other services to shut down their funding sources. The SPLC’s “anti-LGBT” list had also been used to prevent organizations from partnering with AmazonSmile to raise funds.
  • LIBERAL TWITTER ADVISORS OUTNUMBER CONSERVATIVES 12-TO-1: Twelve of the 25 U.S. members of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council – which helps guide its policies – are liberal, and only one is conservative. Anti-conservative groups like GLAAD and the ADL are part of the board. There is no well-known conservative group represented.
  • TECH COMPANIES RELY ON ANTI-CONSERVATIVE FACT-CHECKERS: Facebook and Google both had partnered with fact-checking organizations in order to combat “fake news.” Facebook’s short-lived disputed flagger program had allowed Snopes, PolitiFact and ABC News to discern what is and is not real news. Google’s fact-checkers had accused conservative sources of making claims that did not appear in their articles and disproportionately “fact-checked” conservative sources. On Facebook, a satire site, the Babylon Bee, had been flagged by Snopes for its article clearly mocking CNN for its bias. YouTube also had announced a partnership with Wikipedia in order to debunk videos deemed to be conspiracy theories, even though Wikipedia has been criticized for its liberal bias.

[…..]

Fighting Political Desegregation With A Digital First Amendment – Political segregation must end just as racial segregation did. (FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE)

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism

The United States has 325 million people. Facebook has 2.2 billion active users. Google is even bigger. Even a smaller company like Twitter tops the population of the United States with 335 million active users. And not even China has a bigger population than that of the biggest internet companies.

The scale of the internet dwarfs any individual nation-state and obtaining many of the traditional benefits of the nation-state, political freedom, engagement, economic opportunities, requires access through the corporate monopolies that act as the gatekeepers of their own virtual nation states.

Google, Facebook and Amazon aren’t governments, but they have a larger virtual citizenry than any government, and they control access to the marketplace of ideas, determining what ideas billions of people can express, whether they can conduct financial transactions or even exist. Technopolies have a vast sphere of control without having to offer their users any of the personal freedoms of governments.

The virtual state of the internet grew to be controlled by a handful of corporations based out of bicoastal cities, almost universally to the political left of ordinary Americans.

8.8% of tech industry founders voted for Trump, compared to 46% of voters or 56% of the country. 63% of tech bosses are Democrats while only 14% are Republicans. A majority of Americans support the death penalty. A majority of tech bosses oppose it. More Americans want to decrease immigration than increase it. But a majority of tech bosses want to increase immigration levels instead.

60% of Americans oppose socialized medicine backed by tax hikes. 82% of tech bosses support it.

The tools of political participation and engagement, the means by which politicians, political activists and the public interact, are in the hands of leftists. And they’re using them for political segregation.

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, the left blamed social media for its defeat. Campaigns were launched to scour opposition media from social media under the guise of fighting ‘fake news’, conservative organizations and activists were banned from social media and dropped by payment processors after pressure campaigns by left-wing activists denouncing them as ‘hate groups’…….

Trump Didn’t Violate Campaign Finance Law (Media Myths)

Published by Papa Giorgio

The first hour of Thursdays show where Mark Levin discusses the false media reports that Donald Trump violated campaign finance laws. A good dealing with the topic.

Former CIA chief Hayden warns against impeaching Trump (“One-third of America will believe it was a soft coup’)

….“If President Trump is somehow forced to leave office before the end of his first term […] one-third of America will believe it was a soft coup,” added Mr. Hayden, a career intelligence official who retired in 2009 after leading the CIA under former President Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

An outspoken critic of the president, Mr. Hayden warned against impeachment in light of prosecutors securing convictions this week against Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former personal attorney and election campaign chairman, respectively….

(WASHINGTON TIMES)

Mueller’s Probe Is Under Internal Pressures

Published by Papa Giorgio

RED STATE does a BANG-UP job in the following list:

…A comparison of the carnage at the very highest levels of the FBI and the DOJ to the complete lack of evidence of wrongdoing by President Trump following over two years of investigations should tell Robert Mueller that it’s time to extricate himself, as gracefully as possible, from this fraud. He needs to admit defeat in his attempt to undo the results of a fair election.

Seamus Bruner of The Epoch Times has just put together a list of 25 DOJ and FBI officials who have resigned in the last year. Some of them, Rachel Brand for example, have left to take positions in the private sector. Mike Kortan has said he was planning to retire anyway. But many on this list have been fired, or forced out (largely in disgrace) or demoted, because of the Trump/Russia investigation.

FBI Departures:

  1. James Comey, director (fired)
  2. Andrew McCabe, deputy director (fired)
  3. Peter Strzok, counterintelligence expert (fired)
  4. Lisa Page, attorney (demoted; resigned)
  5. James Rybicki, chief of staff (resigned)
  6. James Baker, general counsel (resigned)
  7. Mike Kortan, assistant director for public affairs (resigned)
  8. Josh Campbell, special assistant to James Comey (resigned)
  9. James Turgal, executive assistant director (resigned)
  10. Greg Bower, assistant director for office of congressional affairs (resigned)
  11. Michael Steinbach, executive assistant director (resigned)
  12. John Giacalone, executive assistant director (resigned)

DOJ Departures:

  1. Sally Yates, deputy attorney general (fired)
  2. Bruce Ohr, associate deputy attorney general (twice demoted)
  3. David Laufman, counterintelligence chief (resigned)
  4. Rachel Brand, deputy attorney general (resigned)
  5. Trisha Beth Anderson, office of legal counsel for FBI (demoted or reassigned*)
  6. John P. Carlin, assistant attorney general (resigned)
  7. Peter Kadzik, assistant attorney general, congressional liaison (resigned)
  8. Mary McCord, acting assistant attorney general (resigned)
  9. Matthew Axelrod, principal assistant to deputy attorney general (resigned)
  10. Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney, SDNY (firedalong with 45 otherS. Attorneys)
  11. Sharon McGowan, civil rights division (resigned)
  12. Diana Flynn, litigation director for LGBTQ civil rights (resigned)
  13. Vanita Gupta, civil rights division (resigned)
  14. Joel McElvain, assistant branch director of the civil division (resigned)

*Status Unclear

As I look at this list, I know it includes only a fraction of those who have risked their careers and their reputations because they simply couldn’t bear to see Donald Trump in the White House.

Before this is over, others will be added to the list. Perhaps even Rod Rosenstein. And there will likely be former top-level Obama officials caught in the net as well. Perjurers John Brennan and James Clapper come to mind.

In addition to the men and women who have been working against Trump in the DOJ and the FBI, there were/are employees in the State Department and the CIA, holdovers from the Obama administration, who are complicit.

The mainstream media has played a huge role in perpetuating this hoax. They have breathlessly distorted events to influence public opinion. Instead of reporting the news, they have worked overtime to shape it.

For an example of how the mainstream media has aided and abetted the left’s attempt to impeach Trump, we need to look no further than their outrage over the revocation of John Brennan’s security clearance….

Even contention in the ranks of the upper echelon of SPOOKS is starting to maske it’s way to the public as people “cover their asses”

THE HILL notes about the above:

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Sunday that he thinks former CIA Director John Brennan‘s rhetoric is becoming an issue “in and of itself.”

“John and his rhetoric have become an issue in and of itself,” Clapper said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “John is subtle like a freight train and he’s gonna say what’s on his mind.”

Clapper’s comments came in response to an op-ed penned by Brennan in The New York Times this week, in which he wrote that President Trumpcolluded with Russia during the 2016 election.

Clapper said he empathized with Brennan, but voiced concerns for Brennan’s fiery rhetoric toward Trump and his administration.

“I think that the common denominator among all of us [in the intelligence community] that have been speaking up … is genuine concern about the jeopardy and threats to our institutions,” Clapper said.

Brennan’s claims drew criticism from some in the intelligence community who said the timing was suspect.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) on Thursday took aim at Brennan for “purport[ing] to know, as fact, that the Trump campaign colluded with a foreign power.”

“If his statement is based on intelligence he has seen since leaving office, it constitutes an intelligence breach. If he has some other personal knowledge of or evidence of collusion, it should be disclosed to the special counsel, not The New York Times,” Burr said……..

REMEMBER, Brennan has a shoddy intelligence past and had his clearance removed due to it — among other things. See my previous post entitled: “Brennan Leaked Top Secret Info That Blew A US Operation“

Trump “Would… Like to ‘Murder People Without Due Process'” (NYT)

Published by Papa Giorgio

HAT TIP to WEASEL ZIPPERS!

WOW — how far Podhoretz has fallen. When Mika Brezinski (on the Left) notes John Podhoretz Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS)… if she see’s it it MUST be bad!

 

The PRAVDA Like Actions of the Unified Press (+Flashbacks)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Trust me, I wish Trump was as clear as Newt, but with Trump we get the whole package, like with our spouse, friends, children, etc (Via RIGHTSCOOP).

I start out the following audio with a reminder of what Obama ACTUALLY DID in regard to the press. Trump has done none of this. But because a bombastic personality has said the press is the enemy of the American people (words), this is wrong when the same press compares Trump to the Third Reich, Hitler, NAZIs, fascists, bigoted, racist, etc., etc., THIS… this is somehow okay. Dumb.

All this does is fortify the idea that the media is far-left in their “news” AND “editorial;” positions. So every paper that puts forward an editorial YOU KNOW is a mouthpiece for the Democrats.

THE FEDERALIST notes the “non-scandal” of Obama’s war with the free-press:

…Yet many professionals who supposedly deplore the authoritarian nature of an administration that doesn’t answer CNN’s questions were generally quiet when Obama spied on reporters. The Obama DOJ spied on the Associated Press in an attempt to crack down on internal leaks. The DOJ tapped around 20 different phone lines—including cell phone and home lines—that snared at least 100 staffers who worked for the outlet. The Justice Department spied on Fox News reporter James Rosen in 2010, collecting his telephone records, looking at his personal emails and tracking his movements.

Color me skeptical, but somehow I doubt similar Trump efforts would be framed as a “rare peek into a Justice Department leak probe,” as if we were pulling the curtains back on a fashion show. It would be, rightly, depicted as an assault on democracy.

Then again, spying was also never really given the scandal treatment during the Obama years. As Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan became aware of an operation of illegal spying of a legislative branch staffer over torture files and misled the media about it. Did the president know? Shrug. The story hardly made a dent. Likewise, Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper, admitted he misled Congress about spying on American citizens. No scandal.

Today both these people are on TV chumming around with serious journalists who allow them to continue to make reckless, unsubstantiated political statements all the time. It isn’t Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” who asks Clapper tough questions, it’s Meghan McCain on “The View.”

There was unprecedented politicization of the government under Obama — most of it, I imagine, excused for being part of a good cause. The NLRB. The Justice Department. The IRS. The Office of Special Counsel, which reviews whistleblower allegations, foundthat IRS employees urged callers to vote for Obama, wore pro-Obama swag, and campaigned for Democrats in conversations with taxpayers — all of it illegal.

But far more seriously, IRS leadership, specifically Lois Lerner, aggressively targeted conservative groups before elections. The IRS admitted as much in an apology letter. Lerner was held in contempt by Congress for refusing to comply with investigators’  demands. She never answered questions for this genuine attack on democracy…..

FLASHBACK

The above UPDATE is with thanks to GayPatriot and Bruce’s Twitter page. Are people exaggerating the similarities? The only difference is the responsibility level… Nixon showed he was a man. Obama? Not so much.

The above audio is Hugh reading from the following article in the New Yorker Magazine:

The Justice Department and Fox News’s Phone Records

The Obama Justice Department has seized the phone records of numbers that are associated with White House staffers and, apparently, with Fox News reporters, according to a document filed in the case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, on October 13, 2011. Kim is a former State Department contractor accused of violating the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking classified information to James Rosen, a Fox News reporter. Ronald C. Machen, Jr., the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, who is prosecuting the case, has seized records associated with two phone numbers at the White House, at least five numbers associated with Fox News, and one that has the same area code and exchange as Rosen’s personal-cell-phone number (the last four numbers are redacted).

In all, Machen has seized records associated with over thirty different phone numbers. In the filing that included the new information, the last four digits of each telephone line targeted by the Obama Administration are redacted. Two of the numbers begin with area code 202 and the exchange 456, which, according to current and former Administration officials, are used exclusively by the White House. (The phone number for the White House switchboard is (202) 456-1414.)

At least five other numbers targeted by the government include the area code 202 and the exchange 824. The phone number for the Fox News Washington bureau, which is publicly available, is (202) 824-0001. Rosen’s work phone number at Fox News begins with the same area code and exchange.

William Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney, told The New Yorker this afternoon, “Because that information is sealed, I can’t confirm the owner or subscriber for any of those records.” Asked if the phone numbers of any reporters had been targeted in the Kim investigation, Miller said he could not comment.

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that, as part of the investigation of the Kim leak, Obama’s Department of Justice seized e-mails from Rosen’s personal Gmail account. In the search warrant for that request, the government described Rosen as “an aider, and abettor, and / or co-conspirator” in violating the Espionage Act, noting that the crime can be punished by ten years in prison. Rosen was not indicted in the case, but the suggestion in a government document that a reporter could be guilty of espionage for engaging in routine reporting is unprecedented and has alarmed many journalists and civil libertarians….

…read more…


Washington Blog does a bang-up job in showing how many liberals are saying that Obama’s “buck stops here” makes his admin waaayy worse than Nixon’s:

In the wake of the twin scandals of the IRS targeting conservative groups and the Department of Justice spying on AP reporters, the comparisons between Obama and Nixon are everywhere.

But what do experts say?

Former New York Times general counsel James Goodale – who represented the paper during its Pentagon Papers fight with the Nixon administration – said in an interview yesterday that Obama is worse than Nixon when it comes to press freedoms. And see this.

Former constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald noted last year:

We supposedly learned important lessons from the abuses of power of the Nixon administration, and then of the Bush administration: namely, that we don’t trust government officials to exercise power in the dark, with no judicial oversight, with no obligation to prove their accusations. Yet now we hear exactly this same mentality issuing from Obama, his officials and defenders to justify a  far more extreme power than either Nixon or Bush dreamed of asserting: he’s only killing The Bad Citizens, so there’s no reason to object!

Jonathan Turley – perhaps the top constitutional law expert in the United States (and a liberal) – writes:

The painful fact is that Barack Obama is the president that Nixon always wanted to be.

Four decades ago, Nixon was halted in his determined effort to create an “imperial presidency” with unilateral powers and privileges. In 2013, Obama wields those very same powers openly and without serious opposition. The success of Obama in acquiring the long-denied powers of Nixon is one of his most remarkable, if ignoble, accomplishments. Consider a few examples:

I will bullet point Jonathan Turley’s points that you can read his expanded thoughts on for yourself:

  • Warrantless surveillance
  • Unilateral military action
  • Kill lists
  • Attacking whistle-blowers

…More…

Nixon’s “Enemies List” is famous, and the former head of the National Security Agency’s global digital data gathering program says that Obama also has an enemies list … which has been used to take down a wide variety of people, including the head of the CIA. The Washington Post’s Ed Rogers notes:

Obama doesn’t need a traditional Nixonian enemies list. In the digital age, with the Obama machine’s much-celebrated technological capabilities, the president can sort his enemies by keywords.

You’ve heard about the AP spying scandal, and the head of the Department of Justice implies that the government has spied on many other reporters.

Reporters who criticize those in power are being smeared by the government and targeted for arrest (and see this).

Indeed, the Obama administration is treating real reporters as potential terrorists.

…read more…

Russian Scholar Stephen Cohen Pimp-Slaps #NeverTrumper Max Boot

Published by Papa Giorgio

Princeton professor and Russian expert Stephen Cohen went on Anderson Cooper with unhinged #NeverTrumper Max Boot earlier this week. The discussion quickly escalated when Max Boot accused Cohen of being a Russian sympathizer because he would not cheer on war with Russia. Professor Cohen destroyed him. (GATEWAY PUNDIT h-t)

This Is What REAL Treason Looks Like

Published by Papa Giorgio

(JUMP TO ADDED ARTICLE LINK) You just can’t make this stuff up!

NEWSBUSTERS hilariously notes…

…First, the Clinton Campaign made use of the same law firm during the 2016 election! Yes, Hillary Clinton, in fact, hired James Hamilton, a partner at Morgan, Lewis, and Bockius and a well-know DC attorney who also previously worked for Al Gore, John Kerry, and even Barack Obama!

Second,the law firm founded by Howard Dean received the same Russian Law Firm of the Year Award in, get ready, 2013, 2014, and 2016!…

If you need any reminding, the Democrats have a long history of “coziness” with the Russians, you need to look no further than the “Lion of the Senate” (Ted Kennedy) to see what REAL treason looks like:

…If these progressives want to know what actual treason looks like, they should consult liberal lion Ted Kennedy, who not only allegedly sent secret messages to the Soviets in the midst of the cold war, he also begged them to intervene in a U.S. presidential election in order to unseat President Ronald Reagan. That’s no exaggeration.

According to Soviet documents unearthed in the early 1990’s, Kennedy literally asked the Soviets, avowed enemies of the U.S., to intervene on behalf of the Democratic party in the 1984 elections. Kennedy’s communist communique was so secret that it was not discovered until 1991, eight years after Kennedy had initiated his Soviet gambit:

Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy.

“On 9-10 May of this year,” the May 14 memorandum explained, “Sen. Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow.” (Tunney was Kennedy’s law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) “The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov.”

Kennedy’s message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. “The only real potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations,” the memorandum stated. “These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign.”

Kennedy made Andropov a couple of specific offers.

First he offered to visit Moscow. “The main purpose of the meeting, according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA.” Kennedy would help the Soviets deal with Reagan by telling them how to brush up their propaganda.

(More at The Federalist Papers)

Let’s not forget this episode:

Also note the “coziness” of Bill Clinton via his wife’s Secretary of State position, detailed well in the documentary found HERE. But a quick reminder via NATIONAL REVIEW seems in order:

The Democrats and old-guard news media (forgive the redundancy) are pathologically obsessed with the hypothesis that Team Trump and Russia rigged last November’s presidential election. If Donald J. Trump so much as played Tchaikovsky’s Marche Slav on his stereo, these leftists deduce, he was in cahoots with the Kremlin.

Meanwhile, the same folks who spy a KGB agent behind every filing cabinet in Trump’s White House are aggressively apathetic about Hillary and Bill Clinton’s policies, decisions, and actions that gave aid and comfort to Russia.

Hillary’s much-mocked “Russian reset” established the tone for the Clintons’ coziness with the Kremlin. On March 6, 2009, during a trip to Geneva, she presented Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov a small, red button. Hillary thought it was emblazoned with the Russian word for “reset.” Her team mistranslated and the button actually read “overload.” Nonetheless, Clinton and Lavrov jointly pressed the symbolic button. And a new era in U.S.–Russian relations erupted.

While visiting Moscow on March 24, 2010, Hillary explained the Reset’s purpose: “Our goal is to help strengthen Russia.”

[Video at National Review]

Hillary said this in an interview with veteran broadcaster Vladimir Pozner of Russia’s First Channel TV network. Pozner is a Soviet-era relic who still communicates in barely accented English. During the Cold War, he popped up on American TV and radio programs and presented the views of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Pozner’s pleasantries made him and his totalitarian bosses seem blandly benign.

The shadiest deal that the Clintons hatched with Russia is called Uranium One. This outrage should mushroom into Hillary and Bill’s radioactive Whitewater scandal.

Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining mogul and major Clinton Foundation donor, led a group of investors in an enterprise called Uranium One. On June 8, 2010, Rosatom, the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation, announced plans to purchase a 51.4 percent stake in the Canadian company, whose international assets included some 20 percent of America’s uranium capacity.

Because this active ingredient in atomic reactors and nuclear weapons is a strategic commodity, this $1.3 billion deal required the approval of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). Secretary of State Clinton was one of nine federal department and agency heads on that secretive panel.

On June 29, 2010, three weeks after Rosatom proposed to Uranium One, Bill Clinton keynoted a seminar staged by Renaissance Capital in Moscow, a reputedly Kremlin-controlled investment bank that promoted this transaction. Renaissance Capital paid Clinton $500,000 for his one-hour speech.

While CFIUS evaluated Rosatom’s offer, Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer observed, “a spontaneous outbreak of philanthropy among eight shareholders in Uranium One” began. “These Canadian mining magnates decide now would be a great time to donate tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.”…

(Read It All)

I just wanted to add this updated article that is actually older (new to this particular post). Here is the intro of the reprinted article at FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE:

Editors’ note: In light of the Left’s deranged hysteria in response to President Trump’s recent press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, marked by pathological accusations that Trump has engaged in “treason,” Frontpage has deemed it important to bring attention to a forgotten story of verifiable scheming with the Kremlin — by the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy against President Ronald Reagan. We are reprinting below Frontpage editor Jamie Glazov’s 2008 interview with Dr. Paul Kengor, who unearthed documentation detailing Kennedy’s outreach to the KGB and Soviet leader Yuri Andropov during the height of the Cold War, in which the Democratic Senator offered to collude with the Soviets to undermine President Reagan. There were no screams of moral indignation, or accusations of treason, about this matter from the Left at that time — nor since.

Russian/Trump Mantras Dispatched

Published by Papa Giorgio

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TRUMP FINALLY ADMITTED RUSSIAN MEDDLING

A quote from Facebook on my wall:

  • “Hold up, Trump just accepted the intelligence on Russian meddling…“

People act as if Trump JUST NOW admitted to Russian interference? It is the weirdest thing! He has been saying that the entire thing was under Obama’s watch… do people not pay attention unless it is the latest outrage? They are guided by the media’s outrager of the week so easily, and are about a year-and-a-half too late (LARRY ELDER Hat-Tip)

  • Trump Acknowledges Russia Role in U.S. Election Hacking: Aide (REUTERS | January 8, 2017)
  • Donald Trump Concedes Russia’s Interference in Election (NEW YORK TIMES | January 11, 2017)
  • Trump Admits to Russia Meddling in Election: Says Obama Administration Knew But ‘Did Nothing’ (NEWSWEEK | June 24, 2017)
  • Trump Acknowledges Russian Election ‘Meddling’ in Tweet Criticizing Obama (NBC NEWS | June 24, 2017)
  • Trump Appears to Admit Russia Interfered in The US Election in A Tweet Criticizing Obama (BUSINESS INSIDER | June 23, 2017)

BTW, this is nothing new at all:

Exclusive: Russian Hackers Attacked The 2008 Obama Campaign

Russian hackers targeted the 2008 Barack Obama campaign and U.S. government officials as far back as 2007 and have continued to attack them since they left their government jobs, according to a new report scheduled for release Friday.

The targets included several of the 2008 Obama campaign field managers, as well as the president’s closest White House aides and senior officials in the Defense, State and Energy Departments, the report says….

(NEWSWEEK | May 12, 2017)

Here is a conversation from Facebook regarding the same issue:

(ME) This has got to be the dumbest thing. I mean really. EVERY election the Russians meddle. They have done so far worse in our past, and Obama meddled more directly in Israel’s election than Russia did in our. Dumb.

(JG) Siding with Putin over our own intelligence community is not only dumb, it is treasonous.

[First off, the ability to not separate the two issues is astounding to me… and it comes from a deep animus to Trump. I explain, but notice I am backing Putin because I can (again, can) separate the issue at hand.]

(ME) No. Every one knows Russians meddled? Who is saying they didn’t? There are (and have been) two issues here. The unnamed sources from the DOJ, State Dept., and FBI put in article after article saying Trump colluded [WaPo, NYT, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NPR, et al.].

Do you not see that JG?

The witch hunt is a fake dossier and biased FBI investigators who should have recused themselves passing off a fraud of a document to get FISA warrants.

THAT is completely separate from Russians hacking U.S. political parties and elections and other government operations each year. Every year.

Each year… and? Again, OUR GOVERNMENT tried to influence with American personnel and tax-payer money the defeat of Bibi more than these “indicted ham sandwiches” ever did.

(ME AGAIN)You do know and acknowledge that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC (Hillary again, according to Donna Brazile), which ended up in Russian hands that put together almost all of the info in it… right JG?

You also know the most probable reason the DNC didn’t hand the server over to the FBI right? It was the active working against Bernie Sanders that they probably didn’t want to split their party over.

REPUBLICANS HAVE BEEN WARNING OF THIS SINCE 2014

Here is a statement by Devin Nunes, The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence:

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes issued the following statement today on the indictments of Russian individuals and entities for interfering in the 2016 U.S. elections:

“The Putin regime presents a pressing threat to American interests, including through Moscow’s long-running influence operations against the United States. The House Intelligence Committee has been investigating these threats for many years: in 2014—the year the Russians began their operation targeting the 2016 elections—I warned about Russia’s worldwide influence operations. In April 2016 I stated that the United States’ failure to predict Putin’s plans and intentions is ‘the biggest intelligence failure that we’ve had since 9/11.’ Although the Obama Administration failed to act on the Committee’s warnings, it’s gratifying to see that Russian agents involved in these operations have now been identified and indicted.”

(DEVIN NUNES)

Here Mitt “ROMMMNY” is mocked for his 2012 warnings (Obama and Media):

Republicans would not have given a “Stand Down Order”

DNC vs RNC COOPERATION

Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary, Jeh Johnson said the DNC rebuffed help from them:

DNC REJECTED FBI HELP:

  • Mr. Johnson said his department identified Russian interference as “a front-burner item” last summer and reached out numerous times to assist the DNC after its network servers were hacked. “I was anxious to know whether our folks were in there,” he said. “The response I got was FBI had spoken to them, they don’t want our help, they have [private cybersecurity firm] CrowdStrike. And that was the answer I got after I asked the question a number of times over the progression of time. (WASHINGTON TIMES)
  • He testified that hacks in 2015 on the Office of Personnel Management spurred him to press his staff “to know whether DHS was sufficiently proactive, and on the scene helping the DNC identify the intruders and patch vulnerabilities,” according to prepared remarks he submitted to the committee. “I was anxious to know whether our folks were in there. The response I got was FBI had spoken to them, they don’t want our help, they have CrowdStrike,” Johnson testified, referring to the cybersecurity firm that investigated the Russian hacks on behalf of the DNC. (DAILY CALLER)

RNC ASKED FOR HELP:

  • Hackers did send phishing emails to the RNC last spring, in much the same manner as attacks which hit the DNC and other Democratic organizations and staffers. But a spam filter quarantined those suspicious emails, officials told the WSJ.Additionally, following the public exposure in June of the incursion into the DNC, officials at the RNC – concerned too that their network might also have been penetrated – hired a private computer security firm. The unnamed company then contacted the FBI and received intel on how to distinguish malicious emails. Knowing precisely what to look out for, this led to the determination that electronic filters put in place had indeed stopped spam delivered to a former employee. (SC MEDIA – who is SC MEDIA?)

OBAMA ADMIN DIALED BACK SECURITY

Here is another example of HOW Russians were allowed to play in our elections… NOT by Trump:

The Obama White House’s chief cyber official testified Wednesday that proposals he was developing to counter Russia’s attack on the U.S. presidential election were put on a “back burner” after he was ordered to “stand down” his efforts in the summer of 2016.

The comments by Michael Daniel, who served as White House “cyber security coordinator” between 2012 and January of last year, provided his first public confirmation of a much-discussed passage in the book, “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump,” co-written by this reporter and David Corn, that detailed his thwarted efforts to respond to the Russian attack…..

(YAHOO NEWS)

SUSAN RICE gave the order! (See HOTAIR as well)

TRUMP TOUGHER ON RUSSIA THAN OBAMA

If you think Russia spent money to get Trump in office, that was the biggest waste of money in history.

  • This admin reversed the policy of the Obama administration, which stood silently when Putin’s Russia annexed Crimea and attacked Ukraine. The Trump admin has sold the Ukrainians lethal defensive weaponry, including anti-tank missiles designed to destroy Putin’s Russian tanks in the hands of separatist rebels. (THE HILL)
  • The Trump administration has expelled 60 Russians, labeling them “spies” pretending to be diplomats. (DAILY WIRE)
  • About 300 men working for a Kremlin-linked Russian private military firm (many were Russian special operatives) were either killed (about 200) or injured in Syria on orders from the Trump administration (WASHINGTON TIMES)
  • Now, President Donald Trump approved sanctions on 38 different Russian companies and entities in response to Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, its presence in Ukraine, and support for the Assad regime in Syria. These entities include 7 Russian oligarchs, 12 companies they own and control, 17 Russian senior government officials, and a state owned Russian weapons trading company…. even sanctioning a member of Putin’s family. (DAILY CALLER)
  • President Trump is pressuring Germany to stop paying Russia BILLIONS of dollars a year via the gas-pipeline deal (YOUTUBE).

If Putin paid for Trump, Trump is a smart mother-effer, because he first used Russian interests to get the White House, and then immediately turned on Russias interests.

Putin, then, is an idiot, and Trump? The smart-as-hell-tactician.

DID RUSSIA HACK AFTER TRUMP ASKED THEM TO?

This is reeally dumb… but it is all over “town” — I will post Rush Limbaugh’s noting this charge followed by a HOT AIR comment on Christopher Ingraham’s‏ Tweet:

Ingraham later “clarified” that tweet to note that the indictment doesn’t say Russia tried to hack Team Hillary for the first time, period, that day in July. They’d been trying to hack her campaign and the DNC for months by that point. Nor does it say that they attempted to hack her infamous “homebrew” server that day, as that was already offline by July 2016. What it implies is interesting enough, though: Did they zero in on a fresh set of email accounts used by Hillary’s office in response to Trump’s calls to, ahem, “find” her missing personal emails?

Rick “Darker Than a Latte” Wilson

Published by Papa Giorgio

Here is another example of media bias many people, either with their own biases or “not catching it,” do not notice. Rick Wilson is said to be a Republican, but as you can see (and hear), CNN is padding their guest spots with like minded people — not a diversity of thought. The Left gives “diversity” lip-service, but in reality, they want a homogenized way to talk and think. Totalitarianism is the name of the Leftist game.

Here are some articles about Rick “Latte” Wilson:

  • CNN Guest: Trump’s Base Wants to Deport Anyone “Darker Than A Latte” (DAILY CALLER)
  • GOP strategist: Trump base wants “anyone who’s darker than a latte deported” (THE HILL)
  • Rick Wilson: Trump’s Base Wants “Anybody Who’s Darker than a Latte Deported” (BREITBART)

A Leftist site notes Rick’s [rhymes with?] defense later of his statements… keep digging (ROUGH Language Ahead):

Wilson later defended his comments in a series of tweets: