Hat-tip, RIGHT SCOOP:
Dianne Feinstein
Mark Steyn Talks To Joe Concha About Media Malpractice
INFO UPDATE:
- All of Ford’s named witnesses of the party, both male and female, have now denied any recollection of attending such a party.
(WEEKLY STANDARD; CNN, POWERLINE, NATIONAL REVIEW, WESTERN JOURNAL, WASHINTON TIMES).
Mark Steyn filled in for Rush on Friday, and I caught this interview that discusses just how bad the media has gotten in regard to anything Republican. Joe’s article can be found at THE HILL.
An extended excerpt from Joe Concha’s article:
The examples of misleading tales are apparent for all to see, mostly on the anti-Kavanaugh side.
For example, MSNBC goes heavy with a story affirming the allegations from Ford’s classmate based on a Facebook post. The classmate later admitted to not even knowing Ford or hearing a story firsthand. The national news outlet covered this without, apparently, any reasonable vetting.
“I did not know her personally but I remember her. This incident did happen,” Ford schoolmate Christina King Miranda wrote. “Many of us heard a buzz about it indirectly with few specific details. However, Christine’s vivid recollection should be more than enough for us to truly, deeply know that the accusation is true.”
This was enough for MSNBC and other outlets to run with the story.
Third-party tale? She didn’t know Ford directly? Screw it. Let’s go with it anyway.
It’s gossip treated as gospel.
MSNBC would later in a subsequent tweet note that King Miranda had removed the post without deleting the initial tweet, which was retweeted nearly 900 times.
The follow-up tweet was retweeted less than 100 times, or nine times fewer, for those keeping score at home.
“That it happened or not, I have no idea,” King Miranda told NPR on Friday. “I can’t say that it did or didn’t.”
“I had no idea that I would now have to go to the specifics and defend it before 50 cable channels and have my face spread all over MSNBC news and Twitter,” she later added.
Meanwhile, CNN anchor Jim Scuitto tweets out an incomplete claim about how and where Ford could potentially be interviewed, publicly or privately or in Washington, D.C., or California, where she lives. The tweet’s omission is egregious enough that committee chairman Sen. Charles Grassley’s (R-Iowa) office is forced to respond to.
“The offer to #ChristinaBlaseyFord is blunt: testify in public six days from now while under death threats or your allegation will be ignored in the confirmation of a SCOTUS nominee. That is quite a choice,” Scuitto wrote in a tweet that is retweeted more than 7,600 times and liked 17,000 times.
“This is not close to the offer to #ChristinaBlaseyFord,” replied Grassley’s office to Scuitto, a former Obama State Department official. “Chairman Grassley offered an open or closed hearing, reached out to discuss timing that would work for Dr. Ford, has even offered to send staff to California. This deserves a correction.”
More than 20 hours later, Sciutto sends a second tweet clarifying his original tweet. That is retweeted just 134 times and liked just 320 times.
[….]
Washington Post bureau chief Philip Rucker also was lambasted for a story involving a photo showing a ritual that Kavanaugh’s fraternity at Yale participated in back in 1985 involving a flag woven together by women’s underwear.
[….]
[….]
One small problem: The photo doesn’t have Kavanaugh in it….
(Read it all at THE HILL)
POWERLINE notes another glaringly wrong media story (see Kimberley’s TWITTER for more):
Democrats Heavily Partisan Report Gets Keelhauled By CIA
(ABC) Six former Directors and Deputy Directors of the CIA fired back at the Senate Intelligence Committee with a vehemence almost never seen in the intelligence world.
The former CIA leaders — including George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden — blasted the Senate report as “one-sided and marred with errors” and called it “a poorly done and partisan attack on the agency that has done the most to protect America after the 9/11 attacks.”
Their 2,500-word rebuttal was posted as an op-ed on the Wall Street Journal website once the report was released. The former intel chiefs are also launching their own website to respond to the attacks on CIA’s post-9/11 activities.
Via CIA Saves Lives website:
….We, as former senior officers of the Central Intelligence Agency, created this website to present documents that conclusively demonstrate that the program was: authorized by the President, overseen by the National Security Council, and deemed legal by the Attorney General of the United States on multiple occasions. None of those officials were interviewed either. None. CIA relied on their policy and legal judgments. We deceived no one. You will not find this truth in the Majority Report.
Absent from the report is any discussion of the context the United States faced after 9/11. This was a time we had solid evidence that al Qaida was planning a second wave of attacks against the U.S.; we had certain knowledge that bin Laden had met with Pakistani nuclear scientists and wanted nuclear weapons; we had reports that nuclear weapons were being smuggled into New York City; and we had hard evidence that al Qaida was trying to manufacture anthrax. It felt like a “ticking time bomb” every single day.
In this atmosphere, time was of the essence. We had a deep responsibility to do everything within the law to stop another attack. We clearly understood that, even with legal and policy approvals, our decisions would be questioned years later. But we also understood that we would be morally culpable for the deaths of fellow citizens if we failed to gain information that could stop the next attacks.
The report defies credulity by saying that the interrogation program did not produce any intelligence value. In fact, the program led to the capture of senior al Qaida leaders, including helping to find Usama bin Ladin, and resulted in operations that led to the disruption of terrorist plots that saved thousands of American and allied lives…
This from the Wall Street Journal in regards to that last emphasized sentence:
…First, its claim that the CIA’s interrogation program was ineffective in producing intelligence that helped us disrupt, capture, or kill terrorists is just not accurate. The program was invaluable in three critical ways:
• It led to the capture of senior al Qaeda operatives, thereby removing them from the battlefield.
• It led to the disruption of terrorist plots and prevented mass casualty attacks, saving American and Allied lives.
• It added enormously to what we knew about al Qaeda as an organization and therefore informed our approaches on how best to attack, thwart and degrade it.
A powerful example of the interrogation program’s importance is the information obtained from Abu Zubaydah, a senior al Qaeda operative, and from Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, known as KSM, the 9/11 mastermind. We are convinced that both would not have talked absent the interrogation program.
Information provided by Zubaydah through the interrogation program led to the capture in 2002 of KSM associate and post-9/11 plotter Ramzi Bin al-Shibh. Information from both Zubaydah and al-Shibh led us to KSM. KSM then led us to Riduan Isamuddin, aka Hambali, East Asia’s chief al Qaeda ally and the perpetrator of the 2002 Bali bombing in Indonesia—in which more than 200 people perished.
The removal of these senior al Qaeda operatives saved thousands of lives because it ended their plotting. KSM, alone, was working on multiple plots when he was captured.
Here’s an example of how the interrogation program actually worked to disrupt terrorist plotting. Without revealing to KSM that Hambali had been captured, we asked him who might take over in the event that Hambali was no longer around. KSM pointed to Hambali’s brother Rusman Gunawan. We then found Gunawan, and information from him resulted in the takedown of a 17-member Southeast Asian cell that Gunawan had recruited for a “second wave,” 9/11-style attack on the U.S. West Coast, in all likelihood using aircraft again to attack buildings. Had that attack occurred, the nightmare of 9/11 would have been repeated.
Once they had become compliant due to the interrogation program, both Abu Zubaydah and KSM turned out to be invaluable sources on the al Qaeda organization. We went back to them multiple times to gain insight into the group. More than one quarter of the nearly 1,700 footnotes in the highly regarded 9/11 Commission Report in 2004 and a significant share of the intelligence in the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on al Qaeda came from detainees in the program, in particular Zubaydah and KSM….
Democratic Money Grubbing Hypocrites Kowtowing to Billionaires
This bugs me to no end, I will post at the end of this a oft posted comparison to progressive billionaires versus more conservative billionaires and the impact this money has for-or-against our freedoms.
Michael Medved shows how Democrats and rational libertarians (the Koch Brothers) diverge on the issues most important to voters. Not to mention the hypocrisy of the left in all this. So much so that Washington Post’s Dana Milbank said:
✂ “Democrats’ climate-change filibuster is nothing but a lot of hot air”…. “This may be the first time in history that a group of senators filibustered themselves.”
The Washington Examiner’s Zack Colman points out some of the hypocrisy when he writes,
✂ “While Reid has grown more boisterous when it comes to the Koch brothers, Republicans have shot back that Democratic-aligned outsiders are starting to play the big money game as well. They have pointed to Tom Steyer, the billionaire former hedge fund manager, who has pledged to spend $100 million through his NextGen Climate PAC on climate and environmental issues ahead of the 2014 midterm elections.”
Powerline goes on to explain the reason behind a bunch of old, outdated politicians doing an all-nighter:
…Tom Steyer, a billionaire who has made a great deal of money on government-subsidized “green” energy projects, has become one of the Democratic Party’s most important donors. On February 18, he hosted a fundraiser at his home that netted $400,000. Harry Reid and six other Senators attended, along with Al Gore and a number of rich environmentalists. At that meeting, plans for last night’s talk-a-thon were already being laid.
The connection is simple: Steyer has pledged to contribute $50 million and raise another $50 million to help Democrats in the 2014 elections. The catch is that they have to emphasize global warming as an issue:
✦ Steyer’s advocacy group, NextGen Political Action, plans to spend at least $50 million of the former hedge-fund manager’s money, plus another $50 million raised from other donors. The group will refuse to spend money on behalf of Democrats who oppose climate regulation, but will not spend money against them either, according to Chris Lehane, a Steyer consultant.
So the Democrats are trying to walk a narrow line. They need to make noise about global warming to keep the cash flowing from Tom Steyer and other deep-pocketed environmental activists (some of whom, of course, are also “green” energy cronies)….
Plus, the comparison to these leftist radicals shrinking human freedom (growing government) versus allowing the proverbial us to make more choices in the individual sense (smaller government) is legend:
…First, the government needs to issue a mandate that all households must own at least one firearm. We will need a federal agency to ensure that people aren’t just buying cheap BB guns or .22 pistols, even though that may be all they need or want. It has to be 9mm or above, with .44 magnums getting a one-time tax credit on their own. Let’s pick an agency known for its aptitude on firearms and home protection to issue required annual certifications each year, without which the government will have to levy hefty fines. Which agency would do the best job? Hmmmm … I know! How about TSA? With their track record of excellence, we should have no problems implementing this mandate.
Don’t want to own a gun? Hey, no worries. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts says citizens have the right to refuse to comply with mandates. The government will just seize some of your cash in fines, that’s all. Isn’t choice great? Those fines will go toward federal credits that will fund firearm purchases for the less well off, so that they can protect their homes as adequately as those who can afford guns on their own. Since they generally live in neighborhoods where police response is appreciably worse than their higher-earning fellow Americans, they need them more anyway. Besides — gun ownership is actually mentioned in the Constitution, unlike health care, which isn’t. Obviously, that means that the federal government should be funding gun ownership….
This is why people fear government, to answer John’s question.
Back to the excellent NewsBusters response to “Krystal Ball” on MSNBC:
Honestly, how does this woman have a job in a news division?
Oh. That’s right. MSNBC isn’t a news organization. How could I have forgotten?
Saying Republicans don’t want young people to buy health insurance is preposterous.
What conservatives don’t want is the government to force young people to purchase something that morbidity tables show will likely have absolutely no benefit for them until the distant future so that others who likely will benefit much sooner can get it either for free or far more cheaply.
Irrespective of what Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts foolishly ruled last year, this is neither Constitutional nor ethical.
As for these young people dying if ObamaCare is not enacted, that asininely assumes that people won’t have the money to pay for their care if they get sick or won’t purchase health insurance when they reach an age when they believe they need it.
For example, Ball mentioned prenatal care and tetanus shots. As a person that owns an insurance agency, I certainly would be telling a client looking to have children to purchase health insurance.
As for Pap smears, the Mayo Clinic recommends women over 21 do them every two to three years.
The cost varies state by state. In New York City, you can get one for as little as $150.
As such, a woman in that city doing it even once every two years would save thousands of dollars paying for it herself rather than buying health insurance.
As for cholesterol tests, these are now available online for as little as $40.
This great, short, update comes via The Lonely Conservative:
The short answer to the question posed above is “Not even close.” It’s not the Koch Brothers or ALEC. Nope. The biggest spender in the dark money game is the Tides Foundation. Oh and by the way, Tides is a big liberal group.
Whenever “ALEC” and “dark money” are mentioned in the media, however, there ought to be a third name given at least equal attention – the Tides Foundation. That’s because Tides, the San Francisco-based funder of virtually every liberal activist group in existence since the mid-1970s, pioneered the concept of providing a cut-out for donors who don’t wish to be associated in public with a particular cause. It is instructive to compare the funding totals for Tides and ALEC.
A search of non-profit grant databases reveals 139 grants worth a total of $5.6 million to ALEC since 1998. By comparison, Tides is the Mega-Goliath of dark money cash flows. Tides received 1,976 grants worth a total of $451 million during the same period, or nearly 100 times as much money as ALEC. But even that’s not the whole story with Tides, which unlike ALEC, has divided and multiplied over the years. Add to the Tides Foundation total the directly linked Tides Center’s 465 grants with a combined worth of $62 million, and the total is well over half a billion dollars. (Read More)
So there.
READ MORE
The Democrats Were Against Nuclear Option Before They Were For It
Re-posted with a memory h/t to All American Blogger
David Cutler`s Warnings 3-Years Ago About Obamacare (Bonus: Dianne Feinstein Spins)
Via HotAir:
…David Cutler, who worked on the Obama 2008 campaign and was a valued outside health care consultant wrote this blunt memo to top White House economic adviser Larry Summers in May 2010: “I do not believe the relevant members of the administration understand the president’s vision or have the capability to carry it out.”
Cutler wrote no one was in charge who had any experience in complex business start-ups. He also worried basic regulations, technology and policy coordination would fail.
“You need to have people who have understanding of the political process, people who understand how to work within an administration and people who understand how to start and build a business, and unfortunately, they just didn’t get all of those people together,” Cutler said.
The White House dismissed these and other warnings. It relied on appointed bureaucrats and senior White House health care advisers.
[….]
The White House didn’t heed this warning for the same reason they embarked on this project in the first place. The bureaucrats and the activists thought they were smarter than the markets, and smarter than the people who have actual experience in the private sector. It’s the same infection that creates the monumentally tone-deaf argument that people should be happy that the government forced them out of existing plans they chose for themselves in order to pay more for coverage that the consumers know they don’t need. It’s unbridled hubris, and it produced this inevitable Greek tragedy that also doubles as farce.
Now, keep this in mind, too. Did the White House bring in ground-up business people and web-savvy firms to take over from the bureaucrats and the contractors who wasted $400 million on a web portal that doesn’t portal anything? No — they brought in Jeffrey Zients, one of Obama’s economic advisers, and kept everyone else in place. With this background in mind, just how likely will it be that the November 30th deadline for full functionality will be met?
More from HotAir. Dianne Feinstein spins Obama’s promises:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein appeared on CBS’ Face the Nation yesterday in part to face the music. Bob Schieffer led off this portion of her appearance by noting that the Obama administration has failed to deliver on many promises of ObamaCare, not the least of which was “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” Feinstein tries to explain that the promise was true … up until the bill passed.
No, seriously (via Eliana Johnson at The Corner):
More from HotAir:
So let’s get this straight. The promise made by Barack Obama from 2007 forward all the way through the 2012 election, made dozens if not hundreds of times in those five years, meant that you could keep the plan you liked only if we never enacted the reform he proposed? I’ve heard some pretty fanciful spin on the “keep your plan” promise, but that really does take the cake. “Never made clear,” indeed.
Here’s another question for Senator Feinstein. You voted for this bill and helped push it through Congress with zero Republican votes. Why is it only now that we find out that you had no idea how this bill, drafted in the Senate by senior Democratic leadership, would impact Americans who liked the insurance they already had?…
Egypt Going the Way of Terror?
BigPeace has this story from DEBKA that should set straight what happened in Egypt. I will post Sen Diane Feinstein’s comments after the excerpt:
The old idea of the “secular” military in Muslim countries keeping a check on explicitly Islamist or jihadist forces is a bit of conventional wisdom I’d really like to see put to pasture. When dealing with both Turkey and Pakistan, the military was revealed to be as ineffective in dealing with the threat as the secular political class. Over time, the military becomes comprised of a mix of both the still secular, and those sympathetic to a broad range of Islamist philosophies; there’s no guarantee enough of the military will side with a secular government if really challenged. And so it seems to go with Egypt– and not even after a week’s time.
Debka reports that:
Thursday, Feb. 17, the Muslim Brotherhood was allowed to take charge of opposition demonstrations in the emblematic Tahrir Square and given permission to build a platform, after the other opposition parties and movements had been refused. Ahead of the big event Friday night, the soldiers withdrew from the square and the Brotherhood’s strong-arm brigades move in. Opposition leaders who tried to mount the platform alongside Brotherhood speakers were thrown off and dragged out of the square without the army interfering.
By this means, the military rulers achieved two objectives: Letting Muslim Brotherhood adherents mass in the square diminished the role played by the other opposition factions in the eighteen-day uprising; and, secondly, it flashed a graphic warning to the Obama administration to stop pushing for a rapid transition to democracy because it would only lead to the Muslims taking power in government and parliament.