Armstrong and Getty read from a good New York Times piece titled: “A Sandwich Shop, a Tent City and an American Crisis: As homelessness overwhelms downtown Phoenix, a small business wonders how long it can hang on” — Here is the link to the NYT’s article itself — Here is a PDF version of it.
New York Times
The State of the Black Family (Nicholas Kristof) | Armstrong & Getty
- Among the many wise things said by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was that you are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts. — Thomas Sowell
Armstrong & Getty read from honest lefty New York Times contributor regarding the state of the [esp.] black family. The article’s author is Nicholas Kristof, and the title is “The One Privilege Liberals Ignore” (link to the article – reproduced below in appendix). Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell, as well as Larry Elder and Walter Williams have been talking about this for many decades. So Kristof is standing on the vapors of giants.
THOMAS SOWELL: His 1982 book Race and Economics mentions Moynihan’s report, and in 1998 he asserted that the report “may have been the last honest government report on race.” In 2015 Sowell argued that time had proved correct Moynihan’s core idea that African-American poverty was less a result of racism and more a result of single-parent families: “One key fact that keeps getting ignored is that the poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits every year since 1994.”
SOME OF MY VIDEO UPLOADS:
- Larry Elder Quotes Obama on Fatherless Homes (YOUTUBE | Uploaded November 26, 2014)
- Fatherless Homes and Poverty – Europe and America: Larry Elder and Thomas Sowell (YOUTUBE | Uploaded September 21, 2016)
- Fatherless (Black) Homes in Milwaukee – 85% (YOUTUBE | Uploaded June 26, 2017) – the percentages is more now. Sadly.
- Fatherless Homes The Problem – Denzel Washington (YOUTUBE | Uploaded April 4, 2018)
- Boys Need Fathers – Warren Farrell (YOUTUBE | Uploaded March 4, 2019)
Fatherless Homes The Problem – Denzel Washington
(Uploaded April 4, 2018)
SOME ARTICLES:
- Fatherless Households: A National Crisis (Larry Elder, CREATORS | October 2020)
- To Truly Reduce Racial Disparities, We Must Acknowledge Black Fathers Matter (FEDERALIST | June 2020)
- The Black Family: 40 Years of Lies: Rejecting the Moynihan report caused untold, needless misery (CITY JOURNAL | Summer 2005)
- How Much Does Politics Count? (Walter Willaims, CREATORS SYNDICATE | November 2006)
- Random thoughts (Thomas Sowell, WAYBACKMACHINE | April 1999)
The below is taken from Walter Williams “Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination?”
[The source I got this from mislabeled/lost a few footnotes. So, a couple numbered referenced footnotes notes may be placed a sentence or two too early or late. I could correct it, however, I am not digging through thousands of books to find my copy.]
While material poverty in its historical or global form is nonexistent in the U.S., what I call behavioral poverty has skyrocketed. Female-headed households increased from 18 percent of the black population in 1950 to well over 68 percent by 2000.[5] As of 2002, 53 percent of black children lived in single-parent households, compared to 20 percent for whites.[6] As of 2006, roughly 45 percent of blacks fifteen or older had never been married, in addition to 17 percent who had been divorced or widowed; that contrasts with only 27 percent of whites fifteen and older never married and 16 percent divorced or widowed.[7]
Some argue that today’s weak black-family structure is a “legacy” of slavery. Such an explanation loses credibility when one examines evidence from the past. Even during slavery, where marriage was forbidden, most black
children lived in biological two-parent families. One study of nineteenth-century slave families found that in as many as three-fourths of them, all the children had the same mother and father.[8] In New York City, in 1925, 85 percent of kin-related black households were two-parent households.[9] In fact, “Five in six children under the age of six lived with both parents.” [10]
A study of 1880 family structure in Philadelphia shows that threequarters of all black families were nuclear (composed of two parents and children). What is significant, given today’s arguments that slavery and discrimination decimated the black family, is the fact that years ago there were only slight differences in family structure between racial groups. The percentages of nuclear families were: black (75.2 percent), Irish (82.2), German (84.5), and native white American (73.1).[11] Only one-quarter of black families were headed by females. Female-headed families among Irish, German, and native white Americans averaged 11 percent.
Also significant was the fact that, in 1847, just one of ten Philadelphia blacks had been born in slavery. However, those ex-slave families were more likely than free-born blacks to be two-parent families.[12] Theodore Hershberg found that 90 percent of households in which the head purchased his freedom included two parents. He found that those households existed 80 percent of time among ex-slaves in general and 77 percent of the time among free-born blacks.[13] Historian Herbert Gutman found, in analyzing data on families in Harlem between 1905 and 1925, that only 3 percent of all families “were headed by a woman under thirty.”[14]
Thomas Sowell reported that, “Going back a hundred years, when blacks were just one generation out of slavery, we find that census data of that era showed that a slightly higher percentage of black adults had married than white adults. This fact remained true in every census from 1890 to 1940.”[15]
Coupled with a dramatic breakdown in the black-family structure has been an astonishing growth in the rate of illegitimacy. The black rate was only 19 percent in 1940, but skyrocketed in the late 1960s, reaching 49 percent in 1975.[16] As of 2000, black illegitimacy stood at 68 percent and in some cities over 80 percent.[17] High illegitimacy rates not only spell poverty and dependency but also contribute to the social pathology seen in many black communities: high incidences of adolescent violence and predatory sex, and as sociologist Charles Murray has noted, a community not unlike that portrayed in Lord of the Flies.[18]
Several studies point to welfare programs as a major contributor to several aspects of behavioral poverty. One of these early studies was the Seattle/Denver Income Maintenance Experiment, also known as the “SIME/DIME” study. Among its findings: for each dollar increase in welfare payment, low-income persons reduced labor earning by eighty cents.[19] Using 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data, Ann Hill and June O’Neill found that a 50 percent increase in the monthly value of welfare benefits led to a 43 percent increase in the number of out of wedlock births.[20]
FOOTNOTES
- cdc.gov/nchs/data/statab/t001x17.pdf. See also Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 222; and June O’Neill, “The Changing Status of Black Americans;’ The American Enterprise, vol. 3, no. 5 (September/ October 1992): 72.
- Census Bureau, “Marital Status and Living Arrangements,” Current Population Survey (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, March 1998 Update), Series P-1, 20-514.
- Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, Series P-20, no. 468 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1992), vi, cited in Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 80.
- Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom: 1750-1925 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976), 10.
- The Black Family, ix.
- , xix.
- Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., Theodore Hershberg, and John Modell, “The Origins of the Female-Headed Black Family: The Impact of the Urban Experience,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History VI:2 (1975): 211-233. Originally published in Kenneth L. Kusmer, ed., From Reconstruction to the Great Migration, 1877-1917, vol. 4, part II, (NewYork: Garland Publishing, 1991), 72-96.
- “The Origins,” 180.
- Theodore Hershberg, “Free Blacks in Antebellum Philadelphia: A Study of Ex-Slaves, Freeborn, and Socioeconomic Decline,” Journal of Social History 5:2 (1971-72): 194.
- Gutman, The Black Family, 449-56.
- Sowell, The Vision, 81. Prior to 1890, this question was not included in the census.
- Rector, “Why Expanding Welfare Will Not Help the Poor,” (lecture no. 450, The Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C., 1993), 6.
- National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics Report, vol. 50, no. 5 (Hyattsville, Md.: 2002), 49.
- Charles Murray, “The Coming White Underclass,” The Wall Street Journal, October 29,1993.
- Gregory B. Christensen and Walter E. Williams, “Welfare Family Cohesiveness and Out of Wedlock Birth,” The American Family and the State, ed. Joseph Peden and Fred Glahe (San Francisco: Pacific Institute for Public Policy Research, 1986), 398.
- Anne Hill and June O’Neill, “Underclass Behavior in the United States: Measurement and Analysis of Determinants,” cited in Rector, “Why Expanding Welfare,” 6.
Here are some similar — more recent stats:
Fatherlessness is the root issue beneath so many ills that plague society today. Statistically speaking, a child who grows up without a father in the home is more likely to experience homelessness, commit crime, serve time in prison, abuse drugs, drop out of school, be obese, suffer from poverty, and so much more. And the United States has the highest share of single parenting in the world. How did we get here, and is there anything that can be done to reverse this trend? PragerU personality Amala Ekpunobi breaks it down.
A police officer and a protestor teach two young men that there is a better way than rioting. Black America needs fathers and good role models. Broken homes lead to broken communities. Larry Elder takes over from there:
APPENDIX | NYT’s Article
The One Privilege Liberals Ignore
Sept. 13, 2023 | Nicholas Kristof
American liberals have led the campaign to reduce child poverty since Franklin Roosevelt, and it’s a proud legacy. But we have long had a blind spot.
We are often reluctant to acknowledge one of the significant drivers of child poverty — the widespread breakdown of family — for fear that to do so would be patronizing or racist. It’s an issue largely for working-class whites, Blacks and Hispanics, albeit most prevalent among African Americans. But just as you can’t have a serious conversation about poverty without discussing race, you also can’t engage unless you consider single-parent households. After all:
- Families headed by single mothers are five times as likely to live in poverty as married-couple families.
- Children in single-mother homes are less likely to graduate from high school or earn a college degree. They are more likely to become single parents themselves, perpetuating the cycle.
- Almost 30 percent of American children now live with a single parent or with no parent at all. One reason for the sensitivities is large racial disparities: Single parenting is less common in white and Asian households, but only 38 percent of Black children live with married parents.
“The data present some uncomfortable realities,” writes Melissa S. Kearney, an economist at the University of Maryland, in an important book on this topic to be published next week. “Two-parent families are beneficial for children,” she adds. “Places that have more two-parent families have higher rates of upward mobility. Not talking about these facts is counterproductive.”
We liberals often perceive the world through prisms of privilege, but we rarely discuss one of the most important privileges of all — and it’s the title of Kearney’s book, “The Two-Parent Privilege.”
Let me interrupt this column with a shower of caveats. Many children raised in part by single moms do extraordinarily well; one was a two-term president in the 1990s and another served two terms until 2017. And I think the big driver for the rise in single-parent households is bad decisions by policymakers that led to mass incarceration and a collapse of earnings for working-class men.
Yet this is still so wrenching to discuss.
That goes back to 1965, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a prescient report about the decline of marriage among Black Americans. Moynihan, who himself had been raised mostly in poverty by a single mother, warned that family breakdown would exacerbate social problems, but he was denounced by liberals for racism and victim-blaming.
Scholars ran for cover. It helped greatly that the eminent African American sociologist William Julius Wilson of Harvard later conducted research in this area and praised Moynihan’s work as “prophetic.” But even today there is a deep discomfort in liberal circles about acknowledging these realities.
A scholarly organization in the field published a call in 2021 to “dismantle family privilege” (such as championing two-parent families), which it warned was embedded in “white supremacist society.” And while 91 percent of college-educated conservatives agree that “children are better off if they have married parents,” only 30 percent of college-educated liberals agree, according to a report to be released next week by the Institute for Family Studies.
In fact, children simply do better on average in school and typically earn more in adulthood if they have married parents, and this is particularly true of boys. It doesn’t seem to matter if the two parents are a mom and dad or a same-sex couple.
One advantage of a two-parent family is simply a function of arithmetic: Two parents can earn two incomes, meaning less poverty.
Two-parent households seem to benefit not just their own kids but the neighborhood as well. Harvard’s Opportunity Insights group found that upward mobility was more likely for Black boys in neighborhoods with a higher share of Black dads living with their children.
One stunning and depressing gauge of racial inequity in the United States: The study found that 62 percent of white children live in low-poverty areas with fathers present in most homes, while only 4 percent of Black children do.
The collapse of marriage has happened mostly among less-educated Americans, including those who are white, Black or Hispanic. While many college graduates in theory embrace all kinds of family relationships, they remain traditional in their personal behaviors, mostly having children after marriage and raising their own kids in two-parent households. Brad Wilcox, a sociologist and family expert at the University of Virginia, calls this “talk left, walk right.”
The United States is an outlier in family breakdown. A Pew study of 130 countries found that American children were more likely to live with a single parent than those of any other nation. Conservatives sometimes argue that increases in welfare benefits undermined marriage, but this appears not to be a major factor — partly because European countries have both stronger social welfare programs and more two-parent families.
The proposed solutions from conservatives, such as marriage promotion efforts tried under the George W. Bush administration, likewise have had little impact. What does appear to strengthen marriage is lifting earnings of low-education men. This makes them more “marriageable,” researchers find.
Lifting earnings is where liberals have the solutions: strengthened labor unions, community college support, skills training initiatives such as high school career academies and groups that provide technical training like Per Scholas.
The breakdown of family primarily among low-income Americans may be uncomfortable to talk about, but it is part of the apparatus of inequality in the United States. It doesn’t help when we avert our eyes, ignore the data and deny the existence of two-parent privilege.
Media Changes Narrative To Protect Biden
Over the past four years, President Biden has said that he did not know about, and did not benefit, from Hunter Biden’s business dealings.
BRIETBART has more on the exact dates these lies were spoke:
President Joe Biden “lied” at least 16 times about his family’s elaborate business schemes, the House Oversight Committee recounted Thursday.
The committee says Joe Biden lied in five different ways about his family’s foreign business endeavors:
1) That Joe Biden never spoke to his family about their business dealings;
2) His family did not receive $1 million through a third party;
3) Hunter Biden never made money in China;
4) Hunter Biden’s dealings were ethical;
5) and his son did nothing wrong.
This is a bit of a FLASHBACK PIVOT, but one worth making as it leads into a new talking point. Remember, the previous lkie told to get Biden across the finish line was that the laptop was Russian disinfo:
A MATT TAIBBI FLASHBACK
Burying the lede just a bit, the New York Times on March 16th published a long, spirited piece about the federal tax investigation of Hunter Biden. This is the 24th paragraph:
People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.
In confirming that federal prosecutors are treating as “authenticated” the Biden emails, the Times story applies the final dollop of clown makeup to Wolf Blitzer, Lesley Stahl, Christiane Amanpour, Brian Stelter, and countless other hapless media stooges, many starring in Matt Orfalea’s damning montage above (the Hunter half-laugh is classic, by the way). All cooperated with intelligence officials to dismiss a damaging story about Biden’s abandoned laptop and his dealings with the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma as “Russian disinformation.” They tossed in terms thought up for them by spooks as if they were their own thoughts, using words like “obviously” and “classic” and “textbook” to describe “the playbook of Russian disinformation,” in what itself was and still is a wildly successful disinformation campaign, one begun well before the much-derided (and initially censored) New York Post exposé on the topic from October of 2020…..
NOW THEY REJECT RUSSIAN DISINFO
Now that it has been confirmed, Democrat politicians and the MSM have switched gears, saying, that there is no evidence that Biden benefited from these [now proven] transactions. Let me re-word it how the MSM and Dems do:
“NO DIRECT EVIDENCE OF BENEFIT.”
BREITBART again notes this newest pivot by Dems and media:
….After Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s best friend in business, testified Monday before the House Oversight Committee, Democrats and members of the media used a joint talking point to try to discredit his testimony.
Archer told House investigators that then-Vice President Joe Biden spoke on speakerphone over 20 times with Hunter Biden’s business associates to promote the Biden “brand.”
Breitbart News reported that Archer’s testimony produced evidence implicating Joe Biden in a bribery scheme in which a foreign company paid Hunter Biden in return for use of the Biden “brand.”
“So far they [Republicans] have not been able to prove any evidence of wrongdoing,” a reporter said on ABC News’ Good Morning America.
“House GOP members continue to try and link Hunter’s business dealings to the president, though they have yet to produce any concrete evidence,” NBC News’ Today morning show claimed. “Now it is important to keep in mind while Republicans believe that there is a tie between Hunter Biden’s business dealings and the president himself, they have yet to provide any hard evidence that the president himself has done anything wrong.”
“Republicans have not tied the president, Joe Biden, to profiteering from them,” MNSBC reported. “They didn’t have the evidence yet.”
“Where’s the evidence?” Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) asked on CNN. “There is no evidence of any wrongdoing by the President.”
“There is today zero evidence — zero evidence — that Joe Biden, the president United States, knew about what his son was doing,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) claimed.
-
- “And if the President of the United States committed the kind of offenses that in the Republican fever dreams they’re saying he committed without any evidence,” he continued, “there is at this point zero evidence that Joe Biden is guilty of anything. What the Republicans are doing, of course, is they’re just very, very angry that their guy got impeached twice, and so they’re just casting about for a way of revisiting retribution on the Democrats and this is their latest fever dream.”
“Nothing shady is going on with Hunter Biden and his overseas business.”
“Hunter’s laptop is Russian disinformation.”
“Okay, the laptop is real but it doesn’t prove anything.”
“There is no proof who ‘the Big Guy’ is.”
“Okay, the Big Guy is Joe Biden but he still didn’t do… pic.twitter.com/HTtueOcvJ4
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 1, 2023
However, 15 pieces of evidence strongly suggest Joe Biden was involved in his family’s business dealings:
- Biden family Suspicious Activity Reports of wire transfers
- Texts
- Emails
- WhatsApp messages
- Photos of Joe with Hunter’s business partners
- Joe Biden’s voicemail to Hunter Biden
- Five individuals referencing Joe Biden as the “big guy”
- Two whistleblower testimonies
- FBI FD-1023 form alleging recorded phone calls and text between Biden and Burimsa executive
- FBI informant alleging bribes
- Video of Joe Biden bragging about firing the Ukrainian prosecutor
- Hunter’s statements about giving half his income to his dad
- Ex-White House Aide saying FBI ignored Joe Biden’s role in Ukraine business dealings
- Millions flowing into Biden family bank accounts
- Hunter Biden paying for Joe Biden’s expenses
THEY THINK THEIR VIEWERS ARE DUMMIES
Professor Turley make the most salient point when discussing the Democrats position:
- “Being a crook doesn’t mean you’re a moron, and it would take a moron to do a direct deposit into an account to the Biden family or send him some Zelle transfer. It’s not done. The Bidens are very good at this,”
Here is more from DAILY CALLER:
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said that the media and Democrats were offering “ridiculous” excuses about bribery allegations involving Hunter Biden.
“The media is now acknowledging that, sure, Hunter Biden was selling influence and access but it was an illusion and there’s no proof that Joe Biden got an envelope full of money or a direct deposit to his account; therefore, there’s nothing here,” Turley told Fox News host Laura Ingraham. “Democrats have constantly said stop asking questions because you don’t have that type of direct evidence of benefits. Well, that’s just ridiculous. I mean, obviously, all of these payments benefit Joe Biden. It’s going to the Biden family fund.”
[….]
“Being a crook doesn’t mean you’re a moron, and it would take a moron to do a direct deposit into an account to the Biden family or send him some Zelle transfer. It’s not done. The Bidens are very good at this,” Turley said. “They have been in the influence peddling business for decades. There’s been articles, not just Hunter but the president’s brother openly selling his access according to critics, so they have been at this a long time.”
“Here’s the weird thing is that you have got this labyrinth of accounts, right? Two dozen different shell companies’ accounts that have no discernible pursuance except to hide the money transfers going to the Biden family and, yet Democrats are demanding the one thing that is the least likely to appear,” Turley added. “Despite that whole apparatus to transfer money, someone was giving a direct deposit slip to Joe and Jill Biden. I mean, how crazy is that? So we have to, I think, deal with the reality that this is what influence peddling is.”
Eric Schwerin, a former business partner of Hunter Biden who visited the White House at least 19 times during the Obama administration when President Joe Biden served as vice president, will testify before the House Oversight Committee, Republican Rep. James Comer told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow earlier Thursday.
CAVING TO FACTS… SLOWLY
Much like their other positions, this narrative is [grudgingly] starting to [have to] conform to evidence.
It’s so bad that like the “trump called NAZI’s good” lie, CNN has caved again to facts after a long holdout:
Maybe this fact will someday make the MSM?
9 VS. 6
Remember, Democrats challenged more states electors in 2016 with the election of President Trump in 2020, which is that in 2017 Democrats challenged nine state’s electors and in 2021 Republicans challenged six state’s electors:
…In the 2016 presidential election, Trump won 304 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton‘s 227. During the joint session on January 6, 2017, seven House Democrats tried to object to electoral votes from multiple states.
According to a C-SPAN recording of the joint session that took place four years ago, the following House Democrats made objections:
- Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) objected to Alabama’s votes.
- Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) objected to Florida’s votes.
- Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) objected to Georgia’s votes.
- Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) objected to North Carolina’s votes.
- Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) objected to the votes from North Carolina in addition to votes from South Carolina and Wisconsin. She also stood up and objected citing “massive voter suppression” after Mississippi’s votes were announced.
- Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) brought up allegations of Russian interference in the election and malfunctioning voting machines when she objected following the announcement of Michigan’s votes.
- Maxine Waters (D-Calif) rose and said, “I do not wish to debate. I wish to ask ‘Is there one United States senator who will join me in this letter of objection?'” after the announcement of Wyoming’s votes.
[….]
In 2017, House Democrats objected to votes from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Wisconsin. Objections also were made after the announcement of votes from Mississippi, Michigan and Wyoming, adding up to nine states. None of the nine objections was considered because they lacked the signature of a senator.
[….]
In total, Republicans made objections to votes from six states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. By the end of the joint session, Biden’s 306 electoral votes were certified, just as Trump’s votes had been certified in 2017….
(NEWSWEEK)
THE BIG LIE DEM VS. GOP
Democrat’s “Stolen” Election Claims | “Stolen” 2016 Election
The NEW YORK TIMES notes the following about the Democrats 21st century strategy:
…Few objections were filed in accordance with the Electoral Count Act in the 20th century. But starting with George W. Bush’s victory in the 2000 presidential election, Democrats contested election results after every Republican win.
In January 2001, Representative Alcee Hastings of Florida objected to counting his state’s electoral votes because of “overwhelming evidence of official misconduct, deliberate fraud, and an attempt to suppress voter turnout.” Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas referred to the “millions of Americans who have been disenfranchised by Florida’s inaccurate vote count.” Representative Maxine Waters of California characterized Florida’s electoral votes as “fraudulent.”
Vice President Al Gore presided over the meeting in 2001. He overruled these objections because no senator joined them. Part of the reason they didn’t join, presumably, was that Mr. Gore conceded the election a month earlier.
In January 2005, in the wake of Mr. Bush’s re-election, Democrats were more aggressive. Senator Barbara Boxer of California joined Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio to lodge a formal objection to Ohio’s electoral votes. The objection compelled Congress to spend two hours in debate, even though Mr. Bush won Ohio by more than 118,000 votes.
Representative Barbara Lee of California claimed that “the Democratic process was thwarted.” Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York said that the right to vote was “stolen.” Ms. Waters objected too, dedicating her objection to the documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, whose 2004 movie “Fahrenheit 9/11” painted a dark (and at times factually debatable) picture of the Bush presidency.
The motion failed, but not before 31 members of the House, and Ms. Boxer in the Senate, voted to reject Ohio’s electoral votes — effectively voting to disenfranchise the people of Ohio in the Electoral College.
In January 2017, after Donald Trump’s victory, Democrats in Congress once again challenged the election outcome. Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts cited “the confirmed and illegal activities engaged by the government of Russia.” Ms. Lee of California argued that Michigan’s electoral votes should be thrown out because “people are horrified by the overwhelming evidence of Russian interference in our elections.” She also cited “the malfunction of 87 voting machines.”
There were objections against the votes in at least nine states. To his credit, Vice President Joe Biden rejected each objection on procedural grounds, stating that “there is no debate” and “it is over.”
Then as now, each member of Congress was within his or her rights to make an objection. But the objections were naïve at best, shameless at worst. Either way, the readiness of members of Congress to disenfranchise millions of Americans was disconcerting…..
The NYT article went on to say Hillary conceded, but so did Trump — as much as Hillary did:
“Rigged” Election Claims | Trump 2020 vs Clinton 2016
Not only that, but, Also, remember, more “unfaithful” electors went to Hillary than they did Trump. An often forgotten stat.
DEM VS. GOP FAITHFULNESS
GATEWAY PUNDIT did what I wanted to do… and GP notes the following: “…Hillary Clinton lost more electors than any politician in the last 100 years. Not since 1912 has a candidate lost more electors.” The Final Count:
8 Clinton defectors
- 4 WA (successful)
- 1 HI (successful)
- 1 MN (attempted)
- 1 ME (attempted)
- 1 CO (attempted)
2 Trump defectors
- TX (successful)
Gateway Pundit goes on to list past “unfaithful electors” of the past, a great summary of our history in this regard, here’s the list:
- 2004 – Anonymous (Democrat, Minnesota)
- 2000 – Barbara Lett-Simmons (Democrat, District of Columbia)
- 1988 – Margaret Leach (Democrat, West Virginia)
- 1976 – Mike Padden (Republican, Washington)
- 1972 – Roger L. MacBride (Republican, Virginia)
- 1968 – Dr. Lloyd W. Bailey (Republican, North Carolina)
- 1960 – Henry D. Irwin (Republican, Oklahoma)
- 1956 – W.F. Turner (Democrat, Alabama)
- 1948 – Preston Parks (Democrat, Tennessee)
- 1912 – Eight Republican Electors
The popular belief was that many electorates were going to defect (called, “unfaithful”) from Trump. In the end, more “unfaithful electorates” defected from Hillary Clinton than from Donald Trump. I find this HILARIOUS! Why? Because Trump even came out a winner in this arena as well. As Powerline notes, only two electors were “unfaithful” to Trump. Four ignored Clinton’s win in their states. In fact, there would have been more unfaithful electorates for Hillary if state law didn’t prohibit it, like the “chaos” over state rules in Colorado:
THE BIG LIE MSNBC
Katie Phang is still [April 2023] saying that Trump stole the election!
RPT FLASHBACK
DEMOCRATS WERE FOR CHALLENGING ELECTORS
BEFORE BEING AGAINST IT
- The last three times a Republican has been elected president — Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004 — Democrats in the House have brought objections to the electoral votes in states the GOP nominee won. In early 2005 specifically, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., along with Rep. Stephanie Tubbs, D-Ohio, objected to Bush’s 2004 electoral votes in Ohio.
Over the past 20 years, Democrats have on three separate occasions objected to the validity of electoral votes on the floor of Congress. Wednesday, Jan. 6, will mark the first time Republicans choose do so in the past two decades.
My sons and I have discussed the January 6th issues, and, some historical aspects as well. Firstly, people saying Trump should be impeached are just as radical as the people breaking into the Capital. The throwing around of the “sedition” label is funny, and shows how people are not aware of the recent history of the lawful process of debate in Congress about just such topic. Here is one blogger noting Chuck Todd’s biased lack of awareness:
…NBC host Chuck Todd, who is always in the running to overtake CNN’s Brian Stelter as the dumbest newsman in the news media, had it out with Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) over a number of Republican members of Congress who are planning to dispute the certification of Joe Biden winning the 2020 election due to questions of massive election fraud.
After being accused of trying to thwart the democratic process, Johnson hit back by telling sleepy eyes Todd that they are trying to protect it.
“We are not acting to thwart the democratic process, we are acting to protect it,” Johnson said to Todd.
[….]
Todd and others in the Fake News media are acting like the Republicans contesting the election results is an unprecedented affair.
Let me remind them that the last three times a Republican won a presidential election the Democrats in the House brought objections to the Electoral votes the Republican won.
Lest they forget that the House Democrats contested both elections of former President George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 and President Trump’s win in 2016.…
(DJ-MEDIA)
PJ-MEDIA however has an excellent notation of this history when they point out Democrats outrage that Republicans objected to the certification of electoral votes. “It’s ‘conspiracy and fantasy,’ says Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.” PJ further states,
“The effort by the sitting president of the United States to overturn the results is patently undemocratic,” the New York Democrat said. “The effort by others to amplify and burnish his ludicrous claims of fraud is equally revolting.”
“This is America. We have elections. We have results. We make arguments based on the fact and reason—not conspiracy and fantasy,” he added.
There’s only one problem with Chucky’s “argument based on fact and reason.” Democrats have been challenging the electoral vote certification for two decades.
The last three times a Republican has been elected president — Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004 — Democrats in the House have brought objections to the electoral votes in states the GOP nominee won. In early 2005 specifically, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., along with Rep. Stephanie Tubbs, D-Ohio, objected to Bush’s 2004 electoral votes in Ohio.
Illinois Senator Dick Durbin appears to be even more incensed at Senator Josh Hawley’s plan to object to the Electoral College vote.
“The political equivalent of barking at the moon,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said of Hawley joining the challenge to electoral slates. “This won’t be taken seriously, nor should it be. The American people made a decision on Nov. 3rd and that decision must and will be honored and protected by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.”
Brave Sir Dick seems to forget he was singing a different tune in 2005. Then, it was Democrats questioning the results of the Ohio vote, which went narrowly for George Bush.
Durbin had words of praise for Boxer then:
“Some may criticize our colleague from California for bringing us here for this brief debate,” Durbin said on the Senate floor following Boxer’s objection, while noting that he would vote to certify the Ohio electoral votes for Bush. “I thank her for doing that because it gives members an opportunity once again on a bipartisan basis to look at a challenge that we face not just in the last election in one State but in many States.”
In fact, the Ohio electoral vote challenge was only the beginning. Rumors and conspiracy theories swirled around the outcome on election night that saw Bush winning Ohio by a close, but the surprisingly comfortable margin of 120,000 votes. So why are so many of these headlines familiar to us today?
- Mother Jones: “Recounting the Election: Was Ohio stolen?”
- New York Times: “Glitch Found in Ohio Counting”
- They even included some voting machine controversies.
- National Election Defense Coalition: “PARTISAN TECHNOLOGY FIRM IS IMPLICATED IN JOHN KERRY’S IMPLAUSIBLE LOSS IN OHIO 2004
- NBC News: “Machine Glitch Gave Bush Extra Ohio Votes”
And THE BLAZE also referenced it’s readers to the same issues in their post (BTW, these are the two videos I used for my upload):
TheBlaze’s Chris Enloe noted this weekend that while Democrats are rebuking Republicans for planning Wednesday to oppose the Electoral College certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory due to fraud concerns, Democrats themselves have a robust history of doing that very thing.
And a damning, resurfaced video underscores what’s already on the public record.
The video is a compilation of clips from congressional sessions following the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, both won by Republican George W. Bush — and in the clips Democrats launched protests against Bush’s electoral votes.
[….]
That wasn’t all. The Washington Post reported that during the January 2001 session, words such as “fraud” and “disenfranchisement” were heard above Republicans calling for “regular order.”
More from the paper:
The Democratic protest was led by Black Caucus members who share the feeling among black leaders that votes in the largely African American precincts overwhelmingly carried by [then-Democratic presidential nominee Al] Gore were not counted because of faulty voting machines, illicit challenges to black voters and other factors.
“It’s a sad day in America,” Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) said as he turned toward Gore. “The chair thanks the gentleman from Illinois, but . . . ” Gore replied.
At the end of their protest, about a dozen members of the Black Caucus walked out of the House chamber as the roll call of the states continued.
Hawaii Officials’ Focus On Equity and Climate | Not Safety
If there is indeed a social revolution under way, it shouldn’t stop with women’s choice to honor their [own] nature. It must also include a newfound respect for men. It was New York City’s firemen who dared to charge up the stairs of the burning Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. The death tally of New York City’s firefighters was:
- men 343,
- women 0.
Can anyone honestly say you would have wanted a woman coming to your rescue on that fateful day?
Suzanne Venker & Phyllis Schlafly, The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know — and Men Can’t Say (Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2011), 181-182.
EQUITY
OFF THE PRESS bullet points DAILY CALLER’S story for us:
- Former Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Michael Brown blasted officials in Hawaii over their focus on “equity” prior to a deadly wildfire.
- The West Maui Land Company accused M. Kaleo Manuel, an official with the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR), of delaying a response to a request to use water to refill reservoirs used by the Maui Fire Department to fight the wildfire, Hawaii News Now reported.
- A video of Manuel discussing the importance of having conversations about “equity” when it came to water use surfaced Thursday.
BREITBART has more:
A state water agency in Hawaii has been accused of delaying the release of water from a traditional farm that landowners reportedly wanted to use to protect their property as the Maui wildfire spread last week.
According to the Honolulu Civil Beat, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) initially refused a request from West Maui Land, a real estate development company, to provide water to protect properties that were at risk in the area.
Fingers have been pointed at one official in particular, M. Kaleo Manuel, DLNR’s deputy director for water resource management.
The Honolulu Civil Beat reported:
[….]
According to the sources, Manuel wanted West Maui Land to get permission from a taro, or kalo, farm located downstream from the company’s property. Manuel eventually released water but not until after the fire had spread. It was not clear on Monday how much damage the fire did in the interim or whether homes were damaged.
Manuel participates in the Obama Foundation’s Leaders Asia-Pacific program and prioritizes traditional local views on water.
Honolulu Civil Beat quoted Gov. Josh Green (D) as saying that there had been some local opposition in general to using the state’s scarce water resources to fight fires. A state bill to promote the use of state and private reservoirs for fire safety was proposed in 2022 by legislators from Maui, but was not passed….
Here is this “water official” using woke buzzwords like “holistic” — they just string words together to sound important / compassionate:
(WASHINGTON EXAMINER) ….“Meet M. Kaleo Manuel, the official who refused to release water in Maui, contributing to up to 106 deaths,” Jeremy Kauffman wrote on X, citing the original article. “A Hawaiian Studies major, Kaleo prefers a traditional, holistic ‘One Water’ approach where water is revered, not used. Water requires ‘true conversations about equity.'”
Kauffman, the CEO of a bitcoin company, included a Zoom interview video of Manuel, posted to YouTube about 10 months ago.
“Native Hawaiians treated water as one of the earthly manifestations of a god,” Manuel said in the video. “We’ve become used to looking at water as something that we use and not something that we revere. … We can reconnect to that traditional value set.”….
[….]
[….]
What a douche. The LEFT looks for religion in all the wrong places.
WATER & POWER
The government would rather blame “climate change” for the Hawaii wildfires than take responsibility for their own reckless disregard.
- This event was not the result of climate change, Hurricane Dora, or an extended drought. It resulted from an unusually intense mountain wave/downslope windstorm produced by a fairly rare convergence of conditions. (Cliff Mass Weather Blog)
And Steve Milloy points out another NEW YORK TIMES article that missed an opportunity to zero in on the issue:
And THE BLAZE notes the issue with the power companies
A number of Democrats and other leftists have blamed the deadly wildfires in Hawaii on the specter of anthropogenic climate change. They may be right, but only in a perverted sense.
Like the Biden administration, Hawaii’s Gov. Josh Green (D) and both the state’s 88%-Democratic House and 92%-Democratic state Senate are ostensibly keen to “lead the globe on clean energy and climate issues.”
It appears that the efforts by Hawaii’s largest energy provider to follow suit and satisfy a Democrat-mandated transition to renewable energy took priority over alternatively pragmatic efforts to maintain its equipment and deal with the known and documented threat of fuel buildup in the form of flammable vegetation…..
All these useless policies to make politicians fell good through “messianism” [saving the planet] have consequences. Like all the other policies with a stated outcomes by the Left – they hurt those they purport to want to help.
SAINTHOOD
It reminds me of the stellar [extended] quote by David Mamet:
One might say that the politician, the doctor, and the dramatist make their living from human misery; the doctor in attempting to alleviate it, the politician to capitalize on it, and the dramatist, to describe it.
But perhaps that is too epigrammatic.
When I was young, there was a period in American drama in which the writers strove to free themselves of the question of character.
Protagonists of their worthy plays had made no choices, but were afflicted by a condition not of their making; and this condition, homosexuality, illness, being a woman, etc., was the center of the play. As these protagonists had made no choices, they were in a state of innocence. They had not acted, so they could not have sinned.
A play is basically an exercise in the raising, lowering, and altering of expectations (such known, collectively, as the Plot); but these plays dealt not with expectations (how could they, for the state of the protagonist was not going to change?) but with sympathy.
What these audiences were witnessing was not a drama, but a troublesome human condition displayed as an attraction. This was, formerly, known as a freak show.
The subjects of these dramas were bearing burdens not of their choosing, as do we all. But misfortune, in life, we know, deserves forbearance on the part of the unafflicted. For though the display of courage in the face of adversity is worthy of all respect, the display of that respect by the unaffected is presumptuous and patronizing.
One does not gain merit from congratulating an afflicted person for his courage. One only gains entertainment.
Further, endorsement of the courage of the affliction play’s hero was not merely impertinent, but, more basically, spurious, as applause was vouchsafed not to a worthy stoic, but to an actor portraying him.
These plays were an (unfortunate) by-product of the contemporary love-of-the-victim. For a victim, as above, is pure, and cannot have sinned; and one, by endorsing him, may perhaps gain, by magic, part of his incontrovertible status.
[…..]
There is a Liberal sentiment that it should also punish those who take more than their “fair share.” But what is their fair share? (Shakespeare suggests that each should be treated not according to his deserts, but according to God’s mercy, or none of us would escape whipping.)
The concept of Fairness, for all its attractiveness to sentiment, is a dangerous one (cf. quota hiring and enrollment, and talk of “reparations”). Deviations from the Law, which is to say the Constitution, to accommodate specifically alleged identity-group injustices will all inevitably be expanded, universalized, and exploited until there remains no law, but only constant petition of Government.
We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law’s treatment.
But “fairness” is not only a nonlegal but an antilegal process, for it deals not with universally applicable principles and strictures, but with specific cases, responding to the perceived or proclaimed needs of individual claimants, and their desire for extralegal preference. And it could be said to substitute fairness (a determination which must always be subjective) for justice (the application of the legislated will of the electorate), is to enshrine greed—the greed, in this case, not for wealth, but for preference. The socialistic spirit of the Left indicts ambition and the pursuit of wealth as Greed, and appeals, supposedly on behalf of “the people,” to the State for “fairness.”….
….But such fairness can only be the non-Constitutional intervention of the State in the legal, Constitutional process—awarding, as it sees fit, money (reparations), preferment (affirmative action), or entertainment (confiscation)….
….“Don’t you care?” is the admonition implicit in the very visage of the Liberals of my acquaintance on their understanding that I have embraced Conservatism. But the Talmud understood of old that good intentions can lead to evil—vide Busing, Urban Renewal, Affirmative Action, Welfare, et cetera, to name the more immediately apparent, and not to mention the, literally, tens of thousands of Federal and State statutes limiting freedom of trade, which is to say, of the right of the individual to make a living, and, so earn that wealth which would, in its necessary expenditure, allow him to provide a living to others….
…. I recognized that though, as a lifelong Liberal, I endorsed and paid lip service to “social justice,” which is to say, to equality of result, I actually based the important decisions of my life—those in which I was personally going to be affected by the outcome—upon the principle of equality of opportunity; and, further, that so did everyone I knew. Many, I saw, were prepared to pay more taxes, as a form of Charity, which is to say, to hand off to the Government the choice of programs and recipients of their hard-earned money, but no one was prepared to be on the short end of the failed Government pro-grams, however well-intentioned. (For example—one might endorse a program giving to minorities preference in award of government contracts; but, as a business owner, one would fight to get the best possible job under the best possible terms regardless of such a program, and would, in fact, work by all legal and, perhaps by semi- or illegal means to subvert any program that enforced upon the pro-prietor a bad business decision.)*
Further, one, in paying the government to relieve him of a feeling of social responsibility, might not be bothered to question what in fact constituted a minority, and whether, in fact, such minority contracts were actually benefiting the minority so enshrined, or were being subverted to shell corporations and straw men. †
PAGE-NOTE FROM PAGE 154
*No one would say of a firefighter, hired under rules reducing the height requirement, and thus unable to carry one’s child to safety, “Nonetheless, I am glad I voted for that ‘more fair’ law.”
† As, indeed, they are, or, in the best case, to those among the applicants claiming eligibility most capable of framing, supporting, or bribing their claims to the front of the line. All claims cannot be met. The politicians and bureaucrats discriminating between claims will necessarily favor those redounding to their individual or party benefit—so the eternal problem of “Fairness,” supposedly solved by Government distribution of funds, becomes, yet again and inevitably, a question of graft.
David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (New York, NY: Sentinel Publishing, 2011), 134-135; 116-117, 122, 151, 154.
A Candace Owens FLASHBACK
Candace Owens reacts to the New York Times asking her why she spread the idea that Ukraine is a corrupt country, even though she got the information from their publication.
Did Officer Brian Sicknick Die From Injury Sustained By Rioters? (Tucker)
Final Update!
“Whatever happened to Brian Sicknick was very obviously not the result of violence he suffered at the entrance to the Capitol. This tape overturns the single most powerful and politically useful lie the Democrats have told us about January 6.”
Update (1-8-2023)
Fox News host Tucker Carlson reflects on the January 6 Capitol breach two years later on ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight.’
UPDATE (4-27-2021)
The medical examiner rejected the idea of bear spray being an issue regarding the death of Brian Sicknick. “D.C. Chief Medical Examiner Francisco J. Diaz has determined that Brian Sicknick, the United States Capitol Police officer who died following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, died of natural causes” (ABC). The WASHINGTON TIMES also notes that “Prosecutors told a federal judge Tuesday that U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was assaulted with Mace — not the more dangerous bear spray as originally reported — debunking another false narrative that emerged after the officer’s death the day after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.” CNBC also notes the following:
- Police officer Brian Sicknick suffered strokes and died of natural causes a day after he grappled with pro-Trump rioters at the Jan. 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol, Washington’s chief medical examiner ruled.
And finally, THE DAILY WIRE notes the following:
…The New York Times reported on Jan. 8 that two unnamed law enforcement officials said Sicknick died after being hit with a fire extinguisher. House Democrats cited the report as part of its case to impeach Trump on charges that he cited an insurrection at the Capitol.
“The insurrectionists killed a Capitol Police officer by striking him in the head with a fire extinguisher,” the Democrats wrote in a memo for the impeachment proceedings.
There has also been speculation that Sicknick died from a reaction to bear spray that was dispensed at the Capitol. Federal prosecutors charged two men last month with hitting Sicknick and several other police officers with the chemical irritant outside the Capitol.
Diaz’s ruling appears to rule out bear spray as a cause of death….
UPDATE (2-15-2021)
Like so many fake news stories about Donald Trump and his supporters, millions of Americans believe the Sicknick story as truth; even a correction won’t change their minds.
In a quiet but stunning correction, the New York Times backed away from its original report that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was killed by a Trump supporter wielding a fire extinguisher during the January 6 melee at the Capitol building. Shortly after American Greatness published my column Friday that showed how the Times gradually was backpedaling on its January 8 bombshell, the paper posted this caveat:
UPDATE: New information has emerged regarding the death of the Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick that questions the initial cause of his death provided by officials close to the Capitol Police.
The paper continued to revise its story within the body of the original January 8 story: “Law enforcement officials initially said Mr. Sicknick was struck with a fire extinguisher, but weeks later, police sources and investigators were at odds over whether he was hit. Medical experts have said he did not die of blunt force trauma, according to one law enforcement official.”
What’s missing, however, is how the Times first described what happened to Sicknick. “Mr. Sicknick, 42, an officer for the Capitol Police, died on Thursday from brain injuries he sustained after Trump loyalists who overtook the complex struck him in the head with a fire extinguisher, according to two law enforcement officials.”
The account of Sicknick’s death was reported as fact, not speculation or rumor. Further, it appears that the anonymous sources were not law enforcement officials but people “close” to the police department—which means they could have been anyone from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to inveterate liar U.S. Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to the Democratic mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser.
Not only was the Times’ untrue story about Sicknick’s death accepted as fact by every news media organization from the Wall Street Journal to the Washington Post, political pundits on the NeverTrump Right also regurgitated the narrative that Sicknick was “murdered” as did lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
[….]
*The Times’ correction might be one reason why Democrats on Saturday reversed their demand to subpoena witnesses. House impeachment managers cited the original January 8 Times’ article as evidence in their impeachment memo: “The insurrectionists killed a Capitol Police officer by striking him in the head with a fire extinguisher.”
Any arrangement to compel testimony would have provided Trump’s legal team with an opportunity to expose yet another myth in the Democrats’ “incitement” case against the former president.
Now that the Times has essentially retracted its explosive article, will other news organizations, pundits, and lawmakers follow suit? Unfortunately, like so many media-manufactured stories about Donald Trump and his supporters, millions of Americans already believe the Sicknick story as truth; even a Times’ correction won’t change their minds.
The truth in all matters related to Donald Trump is only of secondary concern, if at all. And once again, reporters who egregiously exploited a man’s untimely death to score political points against a man they revile won’t be held accountable. Another hoax down the memory hole.
I, like other conservative outlets, believed this story. I linked to RIGHT SCOOP regarding the story and agreed (and still do — if the story was true — not just in this situation):
- I hope they have on video exactly who hit this brave officer with a fire extinguisher and prosecute them for murder. This cannot go unpunished.
*ANOTHER REASON WHY NO WITNESSES CALLED
RPT NOTE: As well as the first witness called would have been Nancy Pelosi, who was IN CHARGE of Capitol Hill security… the Buck didn’t stop with her apparently…. the DEMS couldn’t afford the narrative to break!
GATEWAY PUNDIT notes the “moving on” timeline:
It is well known that Pelosi, Bowser and Mitch McConnell refused to increase security on January 6th for the US Capitol.
Senator Ted Cruz agreed this morning that the Trump legal team will call in Speaker Pelosi to testify along with Mayor Muriel Bowser.
Following this announcement, the House Impeachment Managers backed off from calling witnesses.
They moved on to closing arguments.
REMEMBER AS WELL
Mark Levin discusses Mark Meadows revelation from February 7th (TRUMP WAR ROOM). I do not listen to Mark all that much, but this is the maddest I have heard him (at the end: 6:03 to 6:15 mark).
…Meadows told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo that even though Trump was vocal about offering Capitol Police and National Guard presence at the Capitol on multiple occasions prior to January 6, his offers were rejected “every time.”
“We also know that in January, but also throughout the summer, that the president was very vocal in making sure that we had plenty of National Guard, plenty of additional support because he supports our rule of law and supports our law enforcement and offered additional help,” Meadows told Bartiromo.
“Even in January, that was a given, as many as 10,000 National Guard troops were told to be on the ready by the Secretary of Defense,” Meadows said. “That was a direct order from President Trump and yet here is what we see … all kinds of blame going around but yet not a whole lot of accountability.”…
What is not known by the typical cable news watcher, probably, is that both the Capital Police and the mayor of D.C. turned down offers to help secure the government areas before and as the mob of crazed Lefties and Righties descended on the Capital:
-
- …Three days before the riot, the Pentagon offered National Guard manpower. And as the mob descended on the building Wednesday, Justice Department leaders reached out to offer up FBI agents. Capitol Police turned them down both times, according to senior defense officials and two people familiar with the matter. Despite plenty of warnings of a possible insurrection and ample resources and time to prepare, police planned only for a free speech demonstration. (WASHINGTON TIMES)
- Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser told federal law enforcement to stand down just one day before a mob of Trump supporters breached the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, smashing windows, entering the chambers, and forcing lawmakers and congressional staff inside into lockdown. “To be clear, the District of Columbia is not requesting other federal law enforcement personnel and discourages any additional deployment without immediate notification to, and consultation with, MPD if such plans are underway,” Bowser wrote in a letter to acting U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, and Secretary of the Army Ryan D. McCarthy. According to Bowser, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department in coordination with the U.S. Park Police, Capitol Police, and Secret Sevice were well-equipped to handle whatever problems could come up during the Trump rallies planned for Wednesday. (THE FEDERALIST)
FIRST POST (2-10-2021)
(RIGHT SCOOP) At the open of his show tonight, Tucker Carlson had a great monologue about the lies Democrats are telling about what happened on January 6th… The monologue runs for just over 12 minutes, but you can keep watching if you want (HERE). The part I wanted to highlight specifically is what Tucker reported about Officer Sicknick’s death. It was reported widely that Sicknick was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher by a rioter and that he later died. But according to Tucker, that’s not what happened:
In this short clip, Tucker reveals that Sicknick’s own brother said that Sicknick texted him the night of the Capitol riot, after it was over, and said that he’d been pepper sprayed twice but was in good shape. His brother then noted that Sicknick collapsed in the Capitol and that he was resuscitated with CPR. The family was told that he was in the hospital on a ventilator after having had a blood clot and a stroke.
Tucker says that there is zero evidence that Sicknick was ever ‘bludgeoned’ with a fire extinguisher despite CNN, MSNBC, and other major media outlets having reported it. And Democrats are still saying it….
(BTW, I hope every rioter in these scenes is arrested. But this is the only fire extinguisher video [1:40 mark] I could find)
This is not the entire article… and I suggest reading the entire thing… however, I wish to post part of it here as i think it important (AMERICAN GREATNESS):
What Happened to Officer Brian Sicknick? No one should discount the idea that Democrats and the news media would intentionally promote a totally fabricated story to destroy Donald Trump and vilify his supporters.
The claim is so pervasive as not to be questioned: Five people died as a result of the January 6 “insurrection” at the Capitol building, killed by blood-thirsty Trump voters at the president’s behest, out for revenge over a stolen election.
Even though only one death—the shooting of Ashli Babbitt by a still-unidentified police officer—is provable by video evidence, the other fatalities nonetheless are accepted as an article of faith to stoke public outrage about what happened that day.
[….]
NARRATIVE vs. EVIDENCE
Democrats wasted no time exploiting Sicknick’s untimely death. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) immediately ordered flags flown at half-staff at the Capitol; news and opinion outlets on both the Left and NeverTrump Right blamed the so-called “insurrectionists” for killing Sicknick.
National Review claimed, without evidence, that Sicknick was “murdered.” The president and his allies in the Senate, pundits raged, were accomplices. “When he told followers to ‘STAND UP,’ they listened and murdered a cop while storming the Capitol,” one Washington Examiner writer tweeted about the role of Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). “Make him pay.”
Lawmakers of both parties paid their respects to Sicknick last week during a rare Capitol ceremony; his body lay in honor in the Rotunda on February 3 following a brief memorial service. When Joe Biden and his wife walked away from the display, the president shook his head in grief.
The widely-accepted circumstances surrounding Sicknick’s death are part of the Democrats’ impeachment crusade against Donald Trump. “The insurrectionists killed a Capitol Police officer by striking him in the head with a fire extinguisher,” House impeachment managers allege in a memorandum detailing their evidence.
But that inflammatory accusation isn’t backed by an autopsy report or any hard evidence such as a video clip. It isn’t backed by charging documents filed against anyone suspected of killing Sicknick; nearly five weeks later, no one has been accused of murdering the officer even though federal law enforcement officials have arrested more than 200 people tied to their involvement in the January 6 melee.
No, the only proof the House impeachment managers can find is the January 8, New York Times article that relied not on evidence but on background from “two law enforcement officials.”
STRUGGLING TO BUILD A CASE
If Sicknick is the face representing the carnage of January 6, Democrats are at risk of losing their most compelling sympathy storyline just as the impeachment trial gets underway.
“Investigators are struggling to build a federal murder case regarding fallen U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, vexed by a lack of evidence that could prove someone caused his death,” CNN disclosed last week. “Authorities have reviewed video and photographs that show Sicknick engaging with rioters amid the siege but have yet to identify a moment in which he suffered his fatal injuries.”
A medical examiner’s report has not been released and law enforcement authorities are tight-lipped; in a January 26 email to me, an FBI spokeswoman refused to comment on the status of the investigation. The District of Columbia medical examiner’s office told me Monday by email they “will release the cause and manner of death when this information is available.”
Sources, however, told CNN that the medical examiner “did not find signs that the officer sustained any blunt force trauma . . . and early reports that he was fatally struck by a fire extinguisher are not true.” Investigators also couldn’t confirm that Sicknick died as a result of reaction to pepper spray.
Messaging from the FBI does little to inspire trust in the Sicknick storyline. The agency at first issued a statement that claimed 37 suspects were under investigation for the officer’s death but later said the statement was in error and relied on “incorrect internal information.”
During a January 12 press briefing on its sweeping investigation into the events of January 6, the assistant director for the FBI’s D.C. field office twice referred to Sicknick as having “passed away,” with no mention of his having been “murdered” or “killed.” A distinction, in this matter, with a big difference.
WILL OPTICS TRUMP THE TRUTH
Comments from Sicknick’s family also raise legitimate suspicions about what happened to their loved one.
“Many details regarding Wednesday’s events and the direct causes of Brian’s injuries remain unknown, and our family asks the public and the press to respect our wishes in not making Brian’s passing a political issue,” his older brother wrote in a statement released January 8.
[….]
The more likely explanation is that Sicknick wasn’t murdered but died of other causes that neither law enforcement nor the family wants made public. It’s certainly the family’s prerogative to keep it secret; it is not, however, acceptable for the FBI to continue avoiding questions while at the same time feeding the public a false account of what happened to him. And since the medical examiner’s office hadn’t confirmed the cause of death, it’s beyond irresponsible for anyone, particularly a reporter, to describe it as murder…..
New York Times Calls Free Speech “Proto-Fascism”
…because we all know that Fascist and Communist countries encouraged “free speech”
Some of the change in positions noted… Musk, like Trump, cause a “coming out” as THE FIVE notes:
Dennis Prager (a little under the weather) shares his thoughts on the New York Times calling free speech “proto-fascism.”
A clip from the NEW YORK TIMES and FOX NEWS also covers it:
…This is why his deal to purchase Twitter is so dangerous. In recent years, there has been progress toward positive freedom of speech — real work to give everyone, truly everyone, more meaningful occasion to speak. Mr. Musk apparently wants to shut that down. Instead, in a moment of proto-fascism on the political right, his priority seems to be to undam the flood of bile and bigotry and bullying and disinformation.
The country already faces the very real prospect, starting at noon on Jan. 20, 2025, of a descent toward racist authoritarianism and a protracted slide away from liberal democracy. If your idea of what the country needs in this moment is less clamping down on hate and lies and more rightists gone wild, whew….
MINISTRY OF TRUTH
The only “Fascistic” enterprise from Musk buying Twitter is our government wants to counter with a Ministry of Truth, via ACE OF SPADES:
Good morning, kids. Thursday and information, misinformation, disinformation, dat information and bullshit remains the hot topic of conversation. Elon Musk’s “Grabbe”-ing Twitter by the weeping Vajaya has caused both the wailing and rending of garments on the Left and exultation for us normal people. While I would caution us not to commence a venturi effect on our nether regions just yet, Musk has been saying the right things about economics and taxation for quite some time, earning him the ire of all the wrong people. The actions of the EPA in blocking the construction of a SpaceX launch facility in Boca Chica is textbook government retribution. And that’s just for starters. Whatever his motives may be, he has painted a big fat target on himself.
Our ability to communicate freely via the internet hangs in the balance even now. We barely escaped that Orwellian (what the hell isn’t these days?) “Net Neutrality” Act — for now. The internet absolutely broke the stranglehold on both the crafting and mass dissemination of information that Leftist propagandists had had for decades and, along with talk radio, both confirmed what many had feared to be the true nature of who and what has been running the government and society and, more importantly, revealed those truths to a vast audience that was heretofore unaware.
All of that said, Musk acquiring Twitter, in and of itself, is not going to win the war for free speech. But it may very well be the moral equivalent of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. It both absolutely shocked Imperial Japan, who had not been attacked in centuries and electrified American morale, which had taken a pounding since Pearl Harbor. Afterwards, the Japanese set about to finish off America once and for all, or so they had hoped. Same thing with the junta in power.
The Department of Homeland Security is setting up a Disinformation Governance Board in an attempt to combat “misinformation” online. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas spoke about the “just established” governance board during a congressional hearing on Wednesday, arguing it would help reduce domestic threats to the United States. Nina Jankowicz, a fellow for the Wilson Center, confirmed reports that she would direct the board, sharing her official government portrait on her social media profile. “Cat’s out of the bag: here’s what I’ve been up to the past two months,” she wrote. She claimed the new board was created to “maintain the Department’s commitment to protecting free speech, privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties”… … Jankowicz has long been an advocate for social media censorship and regulation. In October 2020, Jankowicz testified to the House Select Committee on Intelligence on the dangers of misinformation and conspiracy theories and how to stop it online. “Disinformation is a threat to democracy,” she warned and criticized the government and social media platforms who have “all but abdicated their responsibility” to address ”domestic disinformation.”
Just fucking wow. I mean, where does one even begin to try and unpack this hideous farce? Aside from the fact that this hag was pimping the now proven lie that the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation, there’s this thing called THE FIRST AMENDMENT that, like Charlie Gibson, she apparently has never heard of. The government does not get to decide what is and what is not misinformation. There are laws governing things such as slander and libel, as well as this thing called common sense which is supposed to, in theory, give the individual pause before shooting his mouth off as well as the right to discern for oneself what is and what is not truth. The consequences for either of those being on the individual.
Moving on from the philosophical, under what authority does this “politburo” have the right to exist in the first place? What regulatory power, completely illegitimate that it is, will it wield in supposedly maintaining the DHS’ “commitment to protecting free speech, privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties?” Will it amass dossiers – pun absolutely intended – on people who object to the sexualization, disfiguring and brainwashing of their children? On those of us who consider the very government that is forming this commission illegitimate on the basis of the mountain of evidence proving the 2020 election was stollen?
And once it has amassed those dossiers, what is the punishment for spreading disinformation, otherwise known as stating one’s opinion? Considering the Junta and its supporters define what happened on January 6th as the greatest threat to our precious democracy (*vomit*) since the Civil War, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 combined, one assumes there will be 3:00AM raids followed by incarceration in the Garland Archipelago if not Gitmo, incommunicado and indefinitely.
I’m suddenly reminded about the arguments around the limitations or even abolition of the Second Amendment. The Left always insisted that the Founders never anticipated automatic weapons and machine guns back in the 18th century. The counter to that argument was, should we abolish the First Amendment since they never anticipated massive printing presses, television, radio and — wait for it — the internet either? Well, I guess the answer to that is a big old “yes!”
If the Second Amendment was always the final firewall between liberty and tyranny, the First Amendment I guess was the penultimate and, at least in theory, the strongest. Much of this also centers around the battle for who controls the speech. This whole notion of “safe spaces” from being offended has both crippled the last few generations as well as been used as a weapon with which to terrorize us into submission via group coercion, be it at work or even at home. The nature of being free runs antithetical to being safe. Those who argue for safety will hide behind the veneer of being benign and doing things “for our own good.” What was that thing that’s supposed to be paved with good intentions?
That said, I’m not buying that anymore. There are no good intentions with those who seek to silence us. They do these things not for our own good but for theirs. If agents or informants of this pathetic Ministry of Truth are reading this, come and get me and the publishers who wrote my book.
You can also round up Anthony Fauci. He claimed yesterday that the pandemic was over.
Whoops! Did he say the pandemic was over? No! What he really said was it’s NOT over.
Dear Lord how I hate these people. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out, especially if Musk purges the Goebbels acolytes from the Twitter ranks. The Left has already “woke” (heh) a sleeping giant with the assault on children. Let’s see how they react if they are silenced and/or threatened because they use Twitter as a means to communication…..
(More at ACE OF SPADES)
NYT Reporter: Jan 6 Media “Overreaction”
Here is the video description:
Pulitzer Prize Winning New York Times Reporter: January 6 Media Coverage ‘Overreaction,’ FBI Involved, Event Was Not Organized Despite Ongoing Narrative
- NYT National Security Correspondent, Matthew Rosenberg, contradicts his own January 6 reporting: “There were a ton of FBI informants among the people who attacked the Capitol.”
- Rosenberg: “It was like, me and two other colleagues who were there [January 6] outside and we were just having fun!”
- Rosenberg: “I know I’m supposed to be traumatized, but like, all these colleagues who were in the [Capitol] building and are like ‘Oh my God it was so scary!’ I’m like, ‘f*ck off!’”
- Rosenberg: “I’m like come on, it’s not the kind place I can tell someone to man up but I kind of want to be like, ‘dude come on, you were not in any danger.’”
- Rosenberg: “These f*cking little dweebs who keep going on about their trauma. Shut the f*ck up. They’re f*cking b*tches.”
- Rosenberg: “They [media] were making too big a deal. They were making this an organized thing that it wasn’t.”
- Rosenberg RESPONDS: “Will I stand by those comments? Absolutely.”
[NEW YORK – Mar. 8, 2022] Project Veritas published a bombshell video on Tuesday showing Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times correspondent, Matthew Rosenberg, speaking about the events of January 6, 2021, in a way that contradicts his own reporting.
Rosenberg, who covers national security matters for the Times, says on the undercover video that “there were a ton of FBI informants among the people who attacked the Capitol.”
This revelation is a break from Rosenberg’s reporting on the matter where he characterized such a notion of FBI informants in the crowd as a “reimagining of Jan. 6.”
This was not the only time Rosenberg’s commentary to Project Veritas’ undercover reporter directly contradicted his own published words. Despite telling a Veritas journalist that January 6 was “no big deal,” his article says that downplaying the events of that day was “the next big lie.”
Soundbites of Rosenberg published Tuesday show him saying, “They [media] were making too big a deal. They were making this an organized thing that it wasn’t.”
Project Veritas founder and CEO James O’Keefe revealed that Rosenberg’s article titled, “The Next Big Lies: Jan 6 was No Big Deal, or A Left-Wing Plot,” was written around the same time as he was making contradictory statements to a Project Veritas undercover reporter.
In the video, Rosenberg also revealed that January 6 was “fun,” a contradiction to his reporting that January 6 was “a violent interruption to the transition of power in American history.”
Rosenberg said, “It was like, me and two other colleagues who were there outside and we were just having fun.”
He even appears to make fun of his New York Times colleagues in one soundbite saying, “I know I’m supposed to be traumatized, but like, all these colleagues who were in the [Capitol] building, and are like, ‘Oh my God it was so scary!’ I’m like, ‘f*ck off!’” He adds, “I’m like come on, it’s not the kind place I can tell someone to man up but I kind of want to be like, ‘dude come on, you were not in any danger.’”
Rosenberg concludes, “These f*cking little dweebs who keep going on about their trauma. Shut the f*ck up. They’re f*cking b*tches.”
More Media #FakeNews (“Genius” and “Savvy”)
Clay Travis and Buck Sexton wade through the left’s lies about our interview with Donald Trump. These journos have nothing else left but to gaslight and demonize Trump.
REAL CLEAR POLITICS notes the out of context nature of the MSM narrative:
BUCK: Mr. President, in the last 24 hours we know Russia has said that they are recognizing two breakaway regions of Ukraine, and now this White House is stating that this is an “invasion.” That’s a strong word. What went wrong here? What has the current occupant of the Oval Office done that he could have done differently?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, what went wrong was a rigged election and what went wrong is a candidate that shouldn’t be there and a man that has no concept of what he’s doing. I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, “This is genius.” Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.
So Putin is now saying, “It’s independent,” a large section of Ukraine. I said, “How smart is that?” And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s strongest peace force… We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy… I know him very well. Very, very well.
By the way, this never would have happened with us. Had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened. But here’s a guy that says, you know, “I’m gonna declare a big portion of Ukraine independent,” he used the word “independent,” “and we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.” You gotta say that’s pretty savvy. And you know what the response was from Biden? There was no response. They didn’t have one for that. No, it’s very sad. Very sad.
Marco Rubio says of the interview:
Former President Donald Trump was being “sarcastic” when he referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “genius,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said Tuesday.
“I heard that interview,” Rubio said during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “I’m not going off the press reports. I heard the interview. I didn’t hear him say that. I heard what I heard. A guy who was being sarcastic. He was saying, Oh, look at this guy, he’s a genius, this, that and the other.”
Trump came under fire last week after his comments on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton radio show, on which he referred to Putin as being “savvy” and a “genius.”
[….]
“If it wasn’t for what the Trump administration did and laid the groundwork for, there’s no way Ukraine would still be able to hold out today,” Rubio said.
(NEWSMAX)
RED STATE rightly notes what Clay and Buck did when speaking about what the Left and Press has run with counters basic English context when “referring to someone as a ‘genius’ can carry with it, alternative meanings.”
…Certainly, Trump’s talk on Putin has been at times sycophantic, something this author will not discount. However, referring to someone as a “genius” can carry with it, alternative meanings.
For instance, when it comes to people like David Axelrod or Rahm Emanuel, I can admire their genius within politics and hold them in utter contempt because of how they choose to use their gifts. Adolf Hitler was a genius as an orator, but a genocidal sociopath. I do not presume to understand Trump’s motivations in his less-than-polished statements about the Russian leader; however, I simply state that Trump can believe Putin is a genius and a sociopath. While I can think Trump is a genius in manipulating the media (and trust me… he is), I can disagree with him on things like increasing deficit spending and his lowest-common-denominator rhetoric.
When it came to Putin though, the left and the media (but I repeat myself) did their damnedest to tie Trump to Putin and Russia, despite the total lack of evidence of such a connection. Whether it was Russia-gate, in which Trump and his officials were never charged, or lofty stories of Trump and his behavior with Russian prostitutes, or even flat out fabrications, like was spun regarding Russian bounties on American servicemen in Syria, the media went to all lengths to make Trump appear weak against Putin and the Russians.
Yet one stark reality cannot be ignored: Putin took no action against any of his neighbors during the Trump Administration.
Regardless of Trump’s statements (which I often took issue with), the result of his foreign policy led to the lack of the entry of the US in any additional foreign conflicts for the first time in decades. That includes saber-rattling with any foreign powers.
Meanwhile, when you look at Trump’s predecessor, the same cannot be said.
Beginning immediately in 2009, Obama faced Russian games in Crimea in Ukraine. Russia, which had been exerting influence in the region towards the end of 2008 (after Obama’s election but before he took office) thrust the new leader (Obama) into a place many felt he was unprepared to be. Obama sat idly by and watched as Putin and the Russians pushed the area to the brink of war.
In the months leading up to the conflict, the Russians had been issuing Russian passports to residents of other countries, an act which granted those people the rights of other Russian citizens, including the protection of the Russian military, should they need it. Protests, largely organized and funded by Russia, began popping up in Crimea, sending the region into chaos. Of course, this was the goal of the Russians, so they could use this conflict as a reason to enter Ukraine to reestablish peace on behalf of the (new) Russian citizens living in that region.
Obama did nothing….
(RIGHT SCOOP also responds to Meghan McCain)
Hillary Clinton jumps into the fray and gets walloped! PJ-MEDIA has a great post in which I will steal two tweets from:
Clay Travis and Buck Sexton break down Hillary Clinton’s lies about our interview with Donald Trump. How much wrong can the Democrats fit into just one year?
The N.Y. Times Called Birthirism A “Right Wing Conspiracy”
MIKE B. posted a link to a NEW YORK TIMES story that in the first paragraph reminds me why I cannot stand almost the entirety of the Gray Lady. Here is the first paragraph:
- When called upon to believe that Barack Obama was really born in Kenya, millions got in line. When encouraged to believe that the 2012 Sandy Hook murder of twenty children and six adults was a hoax, too many stepped up. When urged to believe that Hillary Clinton was trafficking children in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor with no basement, they bought it, and one of them showed up in the pizza place with a rifle to protect the kids. The fictions fed the frenzies, and the frenzies shaped the crises of 2020 and 2021. The delusions are legion: Secret Democratic cabals of child abusers, millions of undocumented voters, falsehoods about the Covid-19 pandemic and the vaccine.
So, let’s deal with some of this first paragraph.
BIRTHIRISM
This is included in the NYT’s list of right-wing conspiracies.
Which I find odd.
Because the first time this idea was put into the public’s mind was by Barack’s own publisher. Here is an highlighted portion of the above which was on Obama’s publishers brochure in 1991 (to the right), and found elsewhere online till 2007. And the publisher of “Dreams of my Father” So far from it having a “Genesis” in some right wing “conspiracy” — for over a decade it was viewable by Obama and fans of his book.
I say “the first time this idea was put into the public’s mind” because my belief is that he lied to unlock grants, gain access and recognition at Occidental College, his publisher, etc.… similar to Elizabeth Warren. (Or, Carrie Bourassa up in Canada, or Ward Churchill, or the MANY others. There is some gain to claiming “other”.)
At any rate, that was the first the world heard of the “born in Kenya” idea. It was in the public eye from 1991 until April 2007…
…and then….
Hillary ran for office.
And this story went from public to through the Hillary Clinton “propaganda machine.”
PERCENTAGE OF BELIEVERS
Some of this is from: Comparing Two Conspiracy Theories: Birtherism vs. 9/11 Conspiracies
Since this had it’s origins as an idea via Democrats, it would be safe to assume many Democrats believed it.
Seems logical. While it was half [essentially] of Dems, it is still pretty high. I will combine polls from two conspiracies [Birthers and Truthers] to make a point.
Polls from RASMUSSEN (and others compiled at WIKI) that show an amazing thing. What is this “amazing thing,” you rightly ask?
Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure.
(RPT)
Not sure? Not sure? To be clear, Democrats by over a majority believed Bush either knew directly or they said they were [basically] “still on the fence.” Here is more:
I’ve been looking for a good analogue to the willingness of Republicans to believe, or say they believe, that Obama was born abroad, and one relevant number is the share of Democrats willing to believe, as they say, that “Bush knew.”
There aren’t a lot of great public numbers on the partisan breakdown of adherents to that conspiracy theory, but the University of Ohio yesterday shared with us the crosstabs of a 2006 poll they did with Scripps Howard that’s useful in that regard.
“How likely is it that people in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East?” the poll asked.
A full 22.6% of Democrats said it was “very likely.” Another 28.2% called it “somewhat likely.”
That is: More than half of Democrats, according to a neutral survey, said they believed Bush was complicit in the 9/11 terror attacks….
(POLITICO)
What is the percentage of Republicans that believed (at it’s height of belief) Obama was not born in America?
- 31% of Republican think/thought that Obama was not born in the states…
How many Democrats?
- 15% of Democrats believe the same… [as well as 18% of Independents]
However, a third who believe him to be born out of the country approve of him (ABC-NEWS and my RPT post).
So it is clear the “BIRTHIRISM” is not just a “right-wing” conspiracy.
Various Conspiracies and Ironies
However, I do not believe the New York Times has ever said 9/11 Trutherism is a “left-wing conspiracy.” From the beginning of the next paragraph from the NYT article:
- While much has been said about the moral and political stance of people who support right-wing conspiracy theories, their gullibility is itself alarming.
This article is for the gullible, as you will see.
ALEX JONES
Some of these listed conspiracies in the paragraph quote from the NYT are via Alex Jones…. whom I have an entire section of my main conspiracy-debunking page (some isolated here)… so I do not know who my friend is thinking is a “big conspiracy/gullible” person, as, I refute many conspiracies on my site.
I think my mom is the only person I know who believes almost every conspiracy named. Flat-earth, energy beams from space starting fires, the pizza “trafficking kids” thing, and the like. But she is getting senile.
SEX TRAFFICKING
What is ironic is that Hillary wasn’t trafficking underage kids… they were being trafficked to Bill Clinton (“Slick Willy”).
- Clinton’s presence aboard Jeffrey Epstein’s Boeing 727 on 11 occasions has been reported, but flight logs show the number is more than double that, and trips between 2001 and 2003 included extended junkets around the world with Epstein and fellow passengers identified on manifests by their initials or first names, including “Tatiana.” The tricked-out jet earned its Nabakov-inspired nickname because it was reportedly outfitted with a bed where passengers had group sex with young girls. (FOX | See also TOWNHALL)
NEW GEORGIA REVELATIONS
What prompted the NYT post was my posting a story about new video compiled by True the Vote after collecting and going over CCTV of the area around drop-boxes in Georgia. The collecting, viewing, and then isolating these many videos was a time consuming project. Here is a snippet from JUST THE NEWS:
….The group informed the secretary its evidence included video footage from surveillance cameras placed by counties outside the drop boxes as well as geolocation data for the cell phones of more than 200 activists seen on the tapes purportedly showing the dates and times of ballot drop-offs, according to documents reviewed by Just the News.
The group also said it interviewed a Georgia man who admitted he was paid thousands of dollars to harvest ballots in the Atlanta metropolitan area during the November election and the lead-up to Jan. 5, 2021 runoff for Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats, which were both captured by Democrats and ended GOP control of Congress. The group has yet to identify the cooperating witness to state authorities, referring to him in the complaint simply as John Doe.
Raffensperger confirmed in an interview aired Tuesday on the John Solomon Reports podcast that his office has deemed the allegations credible enough to open an investigation and possibly seek subpoenas from the State Election Board to secure evidence.
Here is BREITBART’S take:
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Tuesday he initiated a probe into possible illegal ballot harvesting in the 2020 election.
While former President Trump lost the state of Georgia by a 12,000 vote margin, True the Vote submitted a complaint to Raffensperger’s office on November 30 that details digital data of 242 people making visits to drop boxes to dump mail-in-ballots, with about 40 percent of the trips occurring between midnight and 5:00 a.m., Just the News reported.
The True the Vote evidence reportedly includes phone data correlated with video that shows individuals dropping ballots at 5,662 ballot drops during the 2020 pandemic. Breitbart News reported on a True the Vote document in August:
In other words, what the document says is that True The Vote was able to take cell phone ping data on a mass wide scale and piece together that several people—suspected ballot harvesters—were making multiple trips to multiple drop boxes, raising potential legal questions in a number of these states.
Raffensperger told Just the News:
We do have some information. And we are going to investigate that. We did deploy drop boxes that were under 24/7 surveillance, and because they were then that really, you know, can indicate who dropped that information off, and we’re really just going through that.
“If people give us, you know, credible allegations, we want to make sure that we do that,” Raffensperger continued. “And we have that right now as an ongoing investigation.” ….
CONVO
When MIKE B. saw a phone screen capture of a Gateway Pundit story on this from their site, he said:
- Silly tweet
I asked Why – to which he said:
- because it is not based on fact.
I said:
- There is video (in fact MANY hours). And someone who was part of delivering these illegal ballots was being paid?
To which MIKE B. notes:
- all bs. Investigated by republican investigators. Look no further then Arizona recount. 6 months of investigation. Nothing found. And by a biased investigator. Time to move on from 2020. Trump lost.
Apparently, many people believe that the Arizona Audit didn’t find anything. (Many of these same people believe conspiracies about: yellow cake uranium; that we supplied most of Iraq’s weapons; that the Iraq war was over oil; that Halliburton was given “no bid contracts”; that the CIA trained Osama Bin Laden; or that there weren’t WMDs in Iraq — to name a few examples)
I refuted the Arizona Audit not finding anything a while back, which was part of my next comment:
Arizona? Lol. You need to leave the NYT cocoon. Here are two examples from my post:
- Nearly half of the votes flagged as suspicious — 23,344 — fell into a category called “ballots cast from individuals who had moved prior to the election.” They included 15,035 who moved within the county before the registration deadline, 6,591 who moved to another state before the registration deadline and 1,718 who moved to a different county before the registration deadline.
- Found 34,448 votes from those who voted more than once in Arizona in the 2020 election. 17,000 votes that NEVER should have been included in the audit!
That is what led him to simply post the URL to the NYT article.
To wit, let’s talk about the NYT a bit.
NEW YORK TIMES Lies About History
One big lie which required the paper supporting the rewriting of history was the 1619 Project. One left leaning professor of history at Northwestern University, Leslie M. Harris, wrote a piece for POLITICO stating essentially after the NYT’s approached her to fact check the article because she is an historian of African American life and slavery, she said she was ignored.
Weeks before, I had received an email from a New York Times research editor. Because I’m an historian of African American life and slavery, in New York, specifically, and the pre-Civil War era more generally, she wanted me to verify some statements for the project. At one point, she sent me this assertion: “One critical reason that the colonists declared their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery in the colonies, which had produced tremendous wealth. At the time there were growing calls to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire, which would have badly damaged the economies of colonies in both North and South.”
I vigorously disputed the claim. Although slavery was certainly an issue in the American Revolution, the protection of slavery was not one of the main reasons the 13 Colonies went to war.
The editor followed up with several questions probing the nature of slavery in the Colonial era, such as whether enslaved people were allowed to read, could legally marry, could congregate in groups of more than four, and could own, will or inherit property—the answers to which vary widely depending on the era and the colony. I explained these histories as best I could—with references to specific examples—but never heard back from her about how the information would be used.
Despite my advice, the Times published the incorrect statement about the American Revolution anyway, in Hannah-Jones’ introductory essay. ….
Over time via pressure, the NY Times began correcting the record. NATIONAL REVIEW headlines some major faux pas: Leaving Out Unwelcome Facts about Slavery; Smearing the Revolution; Distorting the Constitution; Misrepresenting the Founding Era; Misrepresenting Lincoln.
A more recent article found at the same place is by Professor Wilfred Reilly, associate professor of political science at Kentucky State University and the author of Taboo: 10 Facts You Can’t Talk About, as well as Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War. Both of which I have read.
April of last year was a big “correcting month” for the NYT, as the NEW YORK POST notes:
April was the month the narratives died.
On April 15, the Biden administration acknowledged there was no evidence that Russia ever offered bounties on American troops in Afghanistan, walking back a report that wounded former President Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2020 election.
Four days later, the Washington, DC, medical examiner revealed that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick had not been murdered by rampaging Trump supporters during the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, as reports had claimed, but had died of natural causes.
Both stories were based on anonymous, unidentifiable sources, but had become deeply enmeshed in the public consciousness. Both confirmed the assumptions of the nation’s left-leaning media and academic elite, while damaging their political enemies.
And both were driven by The New York Times, where malicious misreporting has been the practice for a century, argues journalist and media commentator Ashley Rindsberg.
“My research churned up not mere errors or inaccuracies but whole-cloth falsehoods,” Rindsberg writes in “The Gray Lady Winked” (Midnight Oil), out now, which examines how the nation’s premier media outlet manipulates what we think is the news.
The “fabrications and distortions” he found in the Times’ coverage of major stories from Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia to Vietnam and the Iraq War “were never the product of simple error,” Rindsberg contends.
“Rather, they were the byproduct of a particular kind of system, a truth-producing machine” constructed to twist facts into a pattern of the Times’ own choosing, he says.
Rindsberg argues that Times reporters have followed the same playbook since the 1920s.
Star reporters cite fuzzily identified sources and make sweeping assertions to support a narrative aligned with the corporate whims, economic needs and political preferences of the patriarchal Ochs-Sulzberger family, which has helmed the operation since 1896, he writes. The chosen narrative, reinforced from multiple angles, is entrenched through a network of stories over time.
“We toss the term ‘fake news’ around as if it’s something whimsical,” Rindsberg told The Post.
“But creating what I call a false media narrative is really hard,” he said. “It takes coordination, deliberation, and a lot of resources. And there aren’t many news organizations that can do it.”
With close to $2 billion in annual revenue, the Times has the money, prestige, experience and stature to set the narratives that other news outlets almost invariably follow.
“When the Times breaks these stories, it’s wall to wall,” Rindsberg said. “MSNBC, CNN — everywhere you look, you’ll get that story.
“And with the Times, it’s never just one false claim,” he said. “They make a concerted effort over time that they dig into and won’t let go.”
The paper’s coverage of Adolf Hitler’s Germany in the decade before World War II is an early example of its narrative manipulation, Rindsberg writes.
So glowing was its picture of the regime that the Nazis regularly included New York Times reports in their own radio programs.
That’s because the Times bureau chief in Berlin, Guido Enderis, was a Nazi collaborator,” Rindsberg said. ………
See also some audio uploads of mine on the NYT:
- Shame, Shame On The New York Times
- NYT’s Executive Editor Admits Bias
- The New York Times Reduces History to Rubble In Order to Push an Agenda
- NYT vs. WSJ ~ Media Bias Exemplified
- NYT’s Best Seller Book List = #Fakenews
NYT’s PULITZER
I have listened to Dennis Prager for years, and this is only the second time I have heard him this mad:
It should also be noted that without the Press, Stalin and Communism would not have had a pristine veneer. The Pulitzer prize winning New York Times writer, Walter Duranty, is quoted in THE WEEKLY STANDARD as an example:
- “There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be.”
–New York Times, Nov. 15, 1931, page 1 - “Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda.”
–New York Times, August 23, 1933 - “Enemies and foreign critics can say what they please. Weaklings and despondents at home may groan under the burden, but the youth and strength of the Russian people is essentially at one with the Kremlin’s program, believes it worthwhile and supports it, however hard be the sledding.”
–New York Times, December 9, 1932, page 6 - “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
–New York Times, May 14, 1933, page 18 - “There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.”
–New York Times, March 31, 1933, page 13
And here is a great recap by NEWSBUSTERS:
The New York Times doesn’t change. The paper is atrociously biased today and it was 85 years ago when columnist Walter Duranty proved himself to be a useful idiot for Soviet propaganda. Talking about a famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, he insisted: “There is no actual starvation… There is no famine.”
Another example from This Week in Media Bias History: CNN founder Ted Turner claimed global warming will kill “most of the people” with the survivors resorting to cannibalism.
Below are Rich Noyes’s collected tweets from the 14th week of This Day in Media Bias History. To get the latest daily examples, be sure and follow Noyes on Twitter. To see recaps of the first 13 weeks, go here.)
The blow article is about the real reporter who risked his life to tell the truth. The NYT’s should strip Duranty of the Pulitzer and ask for it to be transferred to Gareth Jones (click pic to enlarge):
More:
Conclusion
So to post a link (URL) to an article that starts off badly and doesn’t touch on the papers conspiracy views of it’s own (another example):
…New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has for years now delved deep into partisan hackery. But now with the election of Donald Trump, he’s plunged headlong into crazy conspiracy theory. It’s amazing to watch.
Forget that Trump incest stuff. This is the real wacky theory, and there’s no chance the New York Times is going to fire him for it, either:
That’s right, he just suggested Donald Trump would intentionally allow a major terrorist attack to kill thousands of Americans, just to raise his approval rating.
This is a tiny step from the old “Bush Knew” 9/11 truther theories out there, and this is from a columnist from a major left-wing newspaper, too. This guy is respected as an expert. Yet he comes up with this stuff. He posts theories like this and nobody pulls him back from the brink…
Russia Gate: Glenn Greenwald’s “Media MOAB” and More
Shepard Smith at one point reported [and believed] the Steele Dossier as fact, or at least not disproven. Which at that time it was — both in conservative news sources, Congressmen (like Devin Nunes), and the like — shown to be a fabrication. We even knew quite some time ago that the FBI knew it was a complete fabrication. EVEN personalities on FOX NEWS were saying it was bunk! And these three indictments by Prosecutor Durham, the most recent of Igor Danchenko, prove this contention.
I will combine snaps of the Tweets with other media in them by Glenn Greenwald as well as text provided by THREAD READER:
GLENN’S THREAD
The employees of these media corporations know, deep down, what they did. They did the worst thing you can possibly do while calling yourself a “journalist”: they drowned US politics for years in a fake conspiracy theory funded and concocted by criminals for partisan gain.
But we have heard so little about these indictments from these media figures. Why? Because they know that as long as they stay united in silence, the only people who will point out what they did are those they have frozen out of their circle and trained their audience not to hear
The NYT, the WPost, CNN, NBC and the digital liberal outlets are all vastly more guilty of what they have spent years claiming Trump and the GOP are: they basically ran a dangerous disinformation campaign, full of lies, in conjunction with CIA/FBI, and now won’t own up to it.
From the start, Russiagate — which drowned US politics and dangerously ratcheted up tensions with a major nuclear-armed power — was concocted from whole cloth by serial liars paid for by the Clinton campaign and spread by their media servants: David Corn, Isikoff, Frank Foer.
They all made gigantic profit from this set of lies: all of them. Their ratings skyrocketed by scaring liberals about Kremlin control of the US. They wrote best-selling books and gave themselves Pulitzers based on this massive fraud. FBI lied to the FISA court. CIA fueled it all.
The indictments “cast new uncertainty on some past reporting on the dossier by news organizations, including The Washington Post?” LOL The dossier wasn’t just paid for by the Clinton campaign – which they lied about for a year – but the info in it came from a Clinton operative.
What Rachel Maddow in particular did makes her one of the most disgraceful and unhinged media figures ever to work for a major media corporation. Her derangement and lies were off the charts. Yet the liberal networks are bidding for her: because DNC disinformation is their model!
Anyway, for all of those who lied to the public for years — the NYT and WPost reporters, the rich and insulated CNN and NBC hosts, the countless charlatans and politicians like Adam Schiff & John Brennan who wrote bestselling books — none of this will matter. Lies are rewarded.
Polarization of media means virtually every major media corporation — CNN, NBC, NYT, WPost, NPR -have an exclusively Dem audience. These Dems don’t want to hear that they were lied to and, even if they knew, they’d be fine with it: for the right cause. So zero consequences.
But if you are someone who hates these media outlets and the liars who work for them to your core, know that your hatred is valid, justified and righteous. They are a toxic force in US political life. They don’t lie, smear and propagandize on occasion: it’s their core function.
MEDIA….
Jesse Watters
Jesse Watters discusses how the media latched on to the Russia collusion narrative on ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight.’
(Key in the below is that he worked for a Russian energy company. Why would Russians want Trump out? See my past “Bullet Points” on the issue.)
Dan Hoffman
Former CIA station chief Dan Hoffman reacts to federal agents arresting the primary sub-source who contributed to the Trump-Russia dossier
Jonathan Turley
Brett Tolman
Former federal prosecutor Brett Tolman reacts to the principle source of the Steele Dossier being charged with five counts of lying to the FBI.
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY
TWITCHY hat-tip:
They gave themselves PULITZERS for pushing the lie that Trump stole the 2016 election by colluding with Russia. https://t.co/qem5tQiseq
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) November 4, 2021
Where is media fan-fave Russia hoaxer Dr. Tick Tock Von Boom Boom on today’s news? @benjaminwittes pic.twitter.com/7Xo67WXLGH
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) November 4, 2021
Bari Weiss Wrecks CNN’s Brian Stelter!
(Just note “far right” is believing that gender/sex is binary) Bari Weiss, a former editor at The New York Times, spoke to CNN’s Brian Stelter about the tens of millions of regular Americans who know this to be true (despite what the mainstream media tells you to believe): “The world has gone mad.”
Brian Stelter is wrong… YouTube is increasingly removing (along with Twitter and Facebook and other social media outlets) any push back on “gender fluidity” and MANY other topics. Corporations disallow many a person’s views that tend toward conservative ideals. The schools and universities? Fuhgeddaboudit! And while Barry Weiss might have had CNN medical contributor Dr. Leana Wen remarked in June that any investigation of the lab theory shouldn’t lead to anti-Asian discrimination mixed up with this science writer for The New York Times who says promotion of the theory that the virus was manufactured in a Wuhan, China lab and escaped is “racist.” Glenn Greenwald notes the Tweet:
Stelter may also start with the Yale Law administrators who suggested a student’s membership in the Federalist Society could be grounds for discipline, including preemptive disbarment. I could go on, but I need to go to work.