Hillary deleted emails, destroyed servers, handheld devices and ipads etc after they were already under subpoena….
Category Archives: Communications Theory
Every week Hillary and her friends in the elite media will invent a new distraction
Hillary has to keep the media narrative off her record, her corruption and the issues such as Common Core, corruption, taxes, regulation, mass immigration/colonization, Obamacare etc. They will pull a new distraction out of a hat every week from now until the election.
Kellyanne Conway:
Axanar: The Star Trek Fan Film CBS Wants to Stop
Sometimes media companies just don’t get it:
Pictures Speak a Thousand Words About Diversity and Rhetoric…
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Clinton’s Get Millions From World’s Biggest Sharia Law Education Firm
Like Hillary is going to lead any positive education reforms….
If people only knew how corrupt the education cartel is…..
Via the Daily Caller:
Former President Bill Clinton collected $5.6 million in fees from GEMS Education, a Dubai-based company that teaches Sharia Law through its network of more than 100 schools in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation.
The company’s finances strictly adhere to “Sharia Finance,” which includes giving “zakat,” a religious tax of which one-eighth of the proceeds is dedicated to funding Islamic jihad.
The company also contributed millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.
His biggest paycheck from the closely-held company — which is incorporated in the Cayman Islands — was in 2014 when he pocketed $2.1 million. It is unclear if Bill received income from the Middle Eastern firm in 2015, since Hillary has not yet released her tax return for that year.
So Hillary, Let Me Get This Straight…..
“None of my emails had the classified header and border “- Hillary Rodham Clinton
So Hillary let me get this straight. I take a classified document complete with the border and header markings, and then I open up my email program and start copying the secret information. Because my email program does not have the classified header and border this now makes it all OK. This is what Hillary is saying literally and no one follows up.
This is an old propaganda trick known as “smoke screening”. Smoke Screening is when you present a small, partial fact (or lie) as truth as if shown to you out from behind a smoke screen so that you cannot see the rest of the truth or context in hopes that a completely false narrative can be presented to you through implication and attitude. Parents know that bratty teens do this all the time to try and get out of trouble, except they are usually not very good at it.
The Progressive Income Tax: A Tale of Three Brothers [video]
The Progressive Income Tax: A Tale of Three Brothers via Prager University:
Video: Hamas in their own words (video)
Death to all the infidels etc … in short, they aren’t interested in peace except when they need to stop and rearm.
Television Icon Glen A. Larson Dead at 77
What a terrible loss.
Glen A. Larson — who created the hit shows “Magnum P.I.”, “Knight Rider”,”Battlestar Galactica,” “The Fall Guy,” “B.J. and the Bear,” and “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” and “Quincy M.E.” — has died from esophageal cancer at the age of 77.
He also wrote the original “Six Million Dollar Man” pilot and TV movies.
The incredibly successful writer died Friday night at UCLA Medical Center … according to his son James.
Lawmakers Demand Answers From Obama Administration on ‘Operation Choke Point’
What is Operation Check Point? It is very simple, you own a gun store or some other business that Democrats don’t like, so the Obama Administration pressures (read threaten) banks and credit card companies to stop doing business with you.
This is yet another assault on not just freedom of commerce, but freedom of conscience and association as well which is guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Via The Daily Signal:
Thirty members of Congress demanded today that the Department of Justice launch an “immediate investigation” into the agency’s own Operation Choke Point and those involved in creating and implementing the initiative against enterprises that are out of favor with the Obama administration.
Led by Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., the 30 lawmakers sent a letter to Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, and Robin Ashton, head of its Office of Professional Responsibility, calling Choke Point a “blatant abuse of legal authority.”
>>> Meet Four Business Owners Squeezed by Operation Choke Point
“This situation merits your full and immediate attention, and we request that you launch a comprehensive investigation on Operation Choke Point and the individuals charged with creating and carrying out this unprecedented initiative,” Luetkemeyer and the 29 other lawmakers write.
The letter from House members follows one sent to the Justice Department earlier this month by six Republican senators, demanding that Attorney General Eric Holder release information about Operation Choke Point.
The House members want a response to their request for an investigation by Nov. 12.
“There is no doubt in my mind that [Justice Department] officials have abused their authority to address consumer fraud issues while misleading business owners by claiming financial institutions have not suffered any actual losses,” Luetkemeyer said in a press release.
Continue reading and examine the letters lawmakers sent to the Obama Administration demanding answers HERE.
Govt tells ministers: Perform same-sex weddings or face jail, fines
More on the Democrats’ war on the First Amendment. This time the assault is on freedom of religion, freedom of conscience and freedom of association.
Via the ADF:
COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho – Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a federal lawsuit and a motion for a temporary restraining order Friday to stop officials in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, from forcing two ordained Christian ministers to perform wedding ceremonies for same-sex couples.
City officials told Donald Knapp that he and his wife Evelyn, both ordained ministers who run Hitching Post Wedding Chapel, are required to perform such ceremonies or face months in jail and/or thousands of dollars in fines. The city claims its “non-discrimination” ordinance requires the Knapps to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies now that the courts have overridden Idaho’s voter-approved constitutional amendment that affirmed marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
“The government should not force ordained ministers to act contrary to their faith under threat of jail time and criminal fines,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Jeremy Tedesco. “Many have denied that pastors would ever be forced to perform ceremonies that are completely at odds with their faith, but that’s what is happening here – and it’s happened this quickly. The city is on seriously flawed legal ground, and our lawsuit intends to ensure that this couple’s freedom to adhere to their own faith as pastors is protected just as the First Amendment intended.”
“The government exists to protect and respect our freedoms, not attack them,” Tedesco added. “The city cannot erase these fundamental freedoms and replace them with government coercion and intolerance.”
The Hitching Post Wedding Chapel is across the street from the Kootenai County Clerk’s office, which issues marriage licenses. The Knapps, both in their 60s and who themselves have been married for 47 years, began operating the wedding chapel in 1989 as a ministry. They perform religious wedding ceremonies, which include references to God, the invocation of God’s blessing on the union, brief remarks drawn from the Bible designed to encourage the couple and help them to have a successful marriage, and more. They also provide each couple they marry with a CD that includes two sermons about marriage, and they recommend numerous Christian books on the subject. The Knapps charge a small fee for their services.
Coeur d’Alene officials told the Knapps privately and also publicly stated that the couple would violate the city’s public accommodations statute once same-sex marriage became legal in Idaho if they declined to perform a same-sex ceremony at their chapel. On Friday, the Knapps respectfully declined such a ceremony and now face up to 180 days in jail and up to $1,000 in fines for each day they decline to perform that ceremony.
“The city somehow expects ordained pastors to flip a switch and turn off all faithfulness to their God and their vows,” explained ADF Legal Counsel Jonathan Scruggs. “The U.S. Constitution as well as federal and state law clearly stand against that. The city cannot mandate across-the-board conformity to its interpretation of a city ordinance in utter disregard for the guaranteed freedoms Americans treasure in our society.”
Virginia McNulty Robinson, one of nearly 2,500 private attorneys allied with ADF, is serving as local counsel on behalf of the Knapps in Knapp v. City of Coeur d’Alene, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho.
Govt to study ‘social pollution’ (Political Speech) on Twitter
As we have stated in the previous several posts, the government has no business regulating, or even trying to regulate political speech.
What you will read below is the beginning of several very creepy efforts to destroy freedom of political speech and conscience. Those efforts will likely manifest themselves in three ways:
I – First and most obviously, this “study” is designed to develop techniques to identify the political leanings of Twitter users. That way opinion leaders and top influencers can be singled out for IRS audits like they did to Becky Garritson; or spied upon like they did to reporters James Rosen, Sharyl Attkisson, as well as the entire Washington Bureau of the Associated Press.
This went as far as the government putting classified documents on Sharyl Attkisson’s computer in case they ever decided to charge her with possession of classified documents. Perhaps you are spreading messages someone doesn’t like or you grow to be an influencer on Twitter; so they sneak a little kiddy porn on your PC using government hacking tools and you go bye bye.
II – The study will “determine”, by the standards of “truth” as defined by the Democrats in power who paid for it, what is “true” or not. This is so obvious that it does not even need to be said, but we will say it anyway. Who lies more than government and politicians? Any attempt by them to declare something true or false will be done by pure political motivation. Even if that is not the intent of this study the results and resulting software will be used for just such a purpose, it is only a matter of time.
III – The study will determine what messages propagate through Twitter via mass fake accounts and “astroturfing” vs how messages that genuinely go viral propagate. This will be done for the purpose of perfecting methods of astroturfing to further manipulate and control the messages you see and hear on social media.
Read the following carefully….
Via The Washington Post:
By Ajit Pai – Ajit Pai is a member of the Federal Communications Commission.
If you take to Twitter to express your views on a hot-button issue, does the government have an interest in deciding whether you are spreading “misinformation’’? If you tweet your support for a candidate in the November elections, should taxpayer money be used to monitor your speech and evaluate your “partisanship’’?
My guess is that most Americans would answer those questions with a resounding no. But the federal government seems to disagree. The National Science Foundation , a federal agency whose mission is to “promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; and to secure the national defense,” is funding a project to collect and analyze your Twitter data.
The project is being developed by researchers at Indiana University, and its purported aim is to detect what they deem “social pollution” and to study what they call “social epidemics,” including how memes — ideas that spread throughout pop culture — propagate. What types of social pollution are they targeting? “Political smears,” so-called “astroturfing” and other forms of “misinformation.”
Named “Truthy,” after a term coined by TV host Stephen Colbert, the project claims to use a “sophisticated combination of text and data mining, social network analysis, and complex network models” to distinguish between memes that arise in an “organic manner” and those that are manipulated into being.
But there’s much more to the story. Focusing in particular on political speech, Truthy keeps track of which Twitter accounts are using hashtags such as #teaparty and #dems. It estimates users’ “partisanship.” It invites feedback on whether specific Twitter users, such as the Drudge Report, are “truthy” or “spamming.” And it evaluates whether accounts are expressing “positive” or “negative” sentiments toward other users or memes.
The Truthy team says this research could be used to “mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate.”
Hmm. A government-funded initiative is going to “assist in the preservation of open debate” by monitoring social media for “subversive propaganda” and combating what it considers to be “the diffusion of false and misleading ideas”? The concept seems to have come straight out of a George Orwell novel.
The NSF has already poured nearly $1 million into Truthy. To what end? Why is the federal government spending so much money on the study of your Twitter habits?
Some possible hints as to Truthy’s real motives emerge in a 2012 paper by the project’s leaders, in which they wrote ominously of a “highly-active, densely-interconnected constituency of right-leaning users using [Twitter] to further their political views.”
Truthy reminds me of another agency-funded study, in which the Federal Communications Commission sought to insert itself into newsrooms across the country. That project purported to examine whether news outlets were meeting what researchers determined were the “critical information needs” of the American people. And it involved sending out government-funded researchers to ask editors and reporters questions about their news philosophy and editorial judgment.
Once this study was brought to the attention of the American people, howls of protest from across the political spectrum led the FCC to scrap the project — thankfully. The episode reaffirmed that the American people, not their government, determine what their critical information needs are and that the First Amendment means the government has no place in the newsroom.
That principle applies here. Truthy’s entire premise is false. In the United States, the government has no business entering the marketplace of ideas to establish an arbiter of what is false, misleading or a political smear. Nor should the government be involved in any effort to squint for and squelch what is deemed to be “subversive propaganda.” Instead, the merits of a viewpoint should be determined by the public through robust debate. I had thought we had learned these lessons long ago.
Now, I do understand the motivation behind this scheme, even though I disagree with it. To those who wish to shape the nation’s political dialogue, social media is dangerous. No longer can a cadre of elite gatekeepers pick and choose the ideas to which Americans will be exposed. But today’s democratization of political speech is a good thing. It brings into the arena countless Americans whose voices previously might have received inadequate or slanted exposure.
The federal government has no business spending your hard-earned money on a project to monitor political speech on Twitter. How should it instead have reacted when funding for Truthy was proposed? The proper response wouldn’t have required anywhere near 140 characters. It could have been, and should have been, #absolutelynot.
FEC Democrats Push for Control of Internet Political Speech
Speaking of the Democrats’ war on the First Amendment.
The Federal Election Commission, Congress and the President have no constitutional authority to regulate or censor political speech. Doing so is expresly for bidden in the First Amendment to the Constitution. But one can be sure that Democrats will find some statist judges that will say it’s legal.
Forty-nine Democrats in the Senate actually tried to repeal the political speech protections in the First Amendment itself recently:
The Democrat-proposed S.J. Res. 19, would change the First Amendment, giving politicians the ability to determine whatever they feel are “reasonable” limits on free speech, rather than the current First Amendment that completely disallows that power by stating that “Congress shall make no law prohibiting” free speech or the establishment and practice of religion.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tx) took the Democrats on:
The FEC deadlocked in a crucial Internet campaign speech vote announced Friday, leaving online political blogging and videos free of many of the reporting requirements attached to broadcast ads — for now.
While all three GOP-backed members voted against restrictions, they were opposed by the three Democratic-backed members, including FEC Vice Chair Ann M. Ravel, who said she will lead a push next year to try to come up with new rules government political speech on the Internet.
It would mark a major reversal for the commission, which for nearly a decade has protected the ability of individuals and interest groups to take to engage in a robust political conversation on the Internet without having to worry about registering with the government or keeping and reporting records of their expenses.
Ms. Ravel said she fears that in trying to keep the Internet open for bloggers, they’ve instead created a loophole for major political players to escape some scrutiny.
“Some of my colleagues seem to believe that the same political message that would require disclosure if run on television should be categorically exempt from the same requirements when placed in the Internet alone,” said FEC Vice Chair Ann M. Ravel in a statement. “As a matter of policy, this simply does not make sense.”
She said the FEC should no longer “turn a blind eye to the Internet’s growing force in the political arena,” and she vowed to force a conversation next year on what changes to make.
The three Republican-backed commissioners, though, said in a joint statement that Ms. Ravel’s plans would stifle what’s become the “virtual free marketplace of political ideas and democratic debate.”
FEC Chairman Lee E. Goodman said what Ms. Ravel is proposing would require a massive bureaucracy digging into the corners of the web to police what’s posted about politics.
Robert Reich cold busted in naked political deception (video)
This is not the first time Robert Reich has engaged in this kind of chicanery, courtesy of the oh so gimme a break liars at Moveon.org.
[Editor’s Note: Yes we said liars. So many political operatives lie so brazenly that the time for calling the simple truth what it is has come.]
Nice video, but… now, the rest of the story courtesy of The Right Scoop who described this pretty well:
In short, reconciliation is a Senate rule that allows passage of a budget bill with a simple majority, bypassing the normal process that requires 60 votes.
It’s also been dubbed the ‘nuclear option’ in the past.
So lets fast-rewind back to 2010 for a sec and read a quote by the same Mr. Reich who wrote an article in the Huffington Post:
“My free advice to the president: If you want to get health care enacted you must use reconciliation and quickly…
Explain to the American people you understand their impatience. The Constitution does not require 60 votes in the Senate to pass legislation. A majority will do. That’s called democracy.”
Of course we know that the Senate did use reconciliation on Obamacare, even though it wasn’t a budget bill. They violated the rule of reconciliation in order to pass Obamacare with a simple majority (or ram it down our throats) and Robert Reich was a major advocate of this.
But now, when Democrats are about to lose the Senate, he warns against Republicans using reconciliation – even properly – to pass their right-wing destructive agenda. What’s good for the goose is not good for the gander if you’re a hypocritical Democrat.
For more past hypocrisy of Democrats on reconciliation, read here.
Chuck Woolery: Obama, the great illusionist (video)
In this video Chuck nails one of the biggest problems in politics today, creating the illusion that you are doing something and all is well. It is just another form of kicking the can down the road.
Case in point, remember when Obama sent in the bombers to take away ISIS’s oil revenue? Well, so much for that:
Islamic State Militants Are Raking In $800 Million A Year From Black Market Oil Sales
Internet Snow Job Propaganda
Some attitude change propaganda is easy to spot for those who are vigilant, but those who create such propaganda know that all too many people simply “want to believe“….
Every graphic below creates a false narrative and is yet believed by many people.
This graphic, like most well executed propaganda is largely true, but a lie is inserted and a key truth is omitted to create a false narrative.
In 1890 the US Government did kill 290 civilians including women and children who were asked to surrender their arms and did so, when they were slaughtered.
What does the graphic omit? It was called the “Battle of Wounded Knee” in some older history books. Of course, since the winner usually writes the history, that explains why this event was called a “Battle” and not a “slaughter” which is much closer to the truth.
What is the lie? This event did not happen at a school.
Below is yet another example of out of context selective editing:
What President Obama actually said is quite different as he was talking about standing by Pakistani Americans should they face persecution because of Al-Qaeda.
Actual quote from “The Audacity of Hope” [pg. 261]:
Of course, not all my conversations in immigrant communities follow this easy pattern. In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific assurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.
In today’s examples we see propaganda that is designed to target the sensibilities of traditionalists and conservatives. Propaganda from “the right” is usually far less sophisticated and of lower production value than examples from the progressive left. There are several reasons for this.
The “right” just aren’t very good liars. To most traditionalists, Christians, Conservatives and Libertarians lying is held in disdain. Conversely, when one reads most any major leftist/progressive thinker be it Hegel, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Weber, Gramsci, Alinsky, Lippmann, etc they all endorse deception as a legitimate political tactic going so far to say that “rationality must be imposed from above”, “the ends justifies the means”, “the truth is anything that advances class struggle”, “all morality is secondary to the class struggle polemic”, “those who oppose the advance toward a leviathan state should be painted as rubes”, etc.
A great deal of this propaganda comes from outlandish conspiracy sites and/or from small bloggers who are trying to drive up traffic by coming up with something to grab attention.
Some of this type of misinformation is created by leftist sites and pressure groups so they can out “conservative lies” and thus bring attention to themselves. Creating controversy for the purpose of playing the hero is hardly a new tactic in political activism.
Political candidates from both parties have been known to put up fake “patriot” web sites that propagate disinformation and smears on rival candidates designed to target the sensitivities of conservatives. Social Media often picks up this misinformation and runs with it. The elite media often refers to such tactics as “campaign dirty tricks“. Mitt Romney employed this tactic against Fred Thompson and got caught. Ron Paul supporters have been caught doing this as well.
How Alex Jones’ Conspiracy Propaganda Works
As a part of our attitude change propaganda series today we are looking at Alex Jones.
Alex Jones uses several tricks to make his site look like a real information source. Aside from slick graphics that make parts of his site look like other legitimate news sites, he takes work from credible publications such as Human Events, recycles them with his hype and conspiracy theories added, and then tells people that the ONLY source of this information is him and that everyone else conspires to keep this from them (OK that one is partially true). Like all conspiracy theorists such as “9/11 truthers” those who effectively disagree with Jones automatically become a part of “the conspiracy”.
Jones uses a regular formula for what he puts out to keep his readers and listeners hooked. Jones mixes 1/3 to 2/3 of real facts with over-hype and his cult of personality conspiracy language. He will show you A + B & then how A + B = C, and then say this is why his X Y Z narrative is completely true. Jones does not explain or demonstrate how he makes the leap from ABC to XYZ in his narrative. Conveniently, when you argue with Jones he throws what is true about the A B C part of his narrative in your face and accuses you of lying or being against “the facts”.
Jones does same thing that Donald Trump did in his demonization of China in his “almost” presidential campaign – ‘IT’S THEM! THEY CHEATED! THEY did this to YOU!’ Now granted China does not play fair, but the truth is that China uses our leaders’ own stupidity against us. While China most certainly intends to damage us to a degree, it is no where near the damage caused by our own deeply flawed leaders. The victim card is mighty seductive to those who have not steeled themselves against it.
Those who are new to politics risk getting caught up with Jones pretty easily. Few will deny that Jones is entertaining. He is a cult of personality propagandist who leverages the appeal of a cloak and dagger soap opera. People who believe Jones over time become emotionally attached, they “believe in Alex” and it becomes less and less about facts or policy. Being a “Joneser” effectively renders someone politically powerless. Jonser’s mostly talk amongst themselves but never gain any political power as those with political experience ignore them. Jonser’s, like most people caught in a cult of personality, are virtually immune to any evidence that indicates that Jones is flawed.
45 Failed Alex Jones Predictions
Attitude Change Propaganda: Gun Violence, a PR Executive & Whopping Lies
[Note: This article was quoted by Eric Bolling on The Five – fxn.ws/1kRPBlz ]
Continuing on with our attitude change propaganda series, put this one in the “how far will they go to lie to you” folder.
If one were to believe the graphic below put out by “Mom’s Demand Action” you would think that the United States is the most violent country in the world…
However, the hoops one must jump through to get to the 20x number is staggering. If one were to add Americans shot by police, drug gang vs drug gang violence, border violence from Mexico, and Americans killed in war we still could not get near the 20x number claimed.
Tricks such as counting the deaths of Americans by police, during war, or even on D-Day as “gun violence” (after all the Germans used 14 MG42 machine guns to defend Omaha Beach at Normandy) are commonplace when one examines the statistics put out by academics and pressure groups who are given grants to come up with such scarey numbers.
The rather long list at the bottom of this page is the number of intentional homicides per 100,000 as ranked by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. As you can see, the United States is far from the most dangerous country in the world. The United States is average when it comes to numbers that count, in this case intentional homicides. There are 104 countries that rank worse than the United States and 102 countries that rank better. It is important to point out that most of the safest countries are smaller and have a unified culture as opposed to the United States which is huge and is a “melting pot” culturally.
Tiny little Belgium has an intentional homicide rate of 1.7 per 100,000. If we were to take that number and multiply it 20x the United States allegedly should have an intentional homicide rate of 34.0 per 100,000 rather than the 4.9 we have now.
But the story doesn’t end there. The gun violence in the United States has dropped over 49 percent since 1993 (http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2013/05/firearms_final_05-2013.pdf]. Assaults, robberies, and sex crimes are also down 75 percent. While at the same time gun sales have risen exponentially.
How exponential?
According to a recent investigation by The Washington Times:
“More than 21 million applications were run through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System last year, marking nearly an 8 percent increase and the 11th straight year that the number has risen.”
Let’s put that 21 million number in context. Each time a firearm is purchased, unless the buyer is exempt, the buyer’s name is put through the FBI National Instant Check Service (NICS) database to perform a back ground check. There is one NICS check even if the sale is for multiple guns. Also, in states such as Indiana, buyers who have a permit to carry a concealed weapon are exempt from the check. While no one knows the exact number of guns sold to civilians last year, that number may well be over 30 million in a single year.
What does all this mean? It means that while violent crime and firearm related homicide has dropped dramatically, literally hundreds of millions of guns have been bought by American civilians during the same time period. It means that any claims that civilian gun ownership is the cause of “escalating violent crime” is not supportable by any genuine examination of available data. So much so that recent data tends to suggest the opposite.
Who Is Shannon Watts?
This writer, as a student of mass media theory, is impressed by the production value, top of the line graphics and slick emotional marketing appeals generated regularly by Mom’s Demand Action. The work is impressive even by standards of a billion dollar presidential campaign, but when one looks at Mom’s Demand Action’s FaceBook they tell you that it was started by a concerned home maker from Indiana named Shannon Watts and its leaders are just a few concerned mothers. Oh really?
So who is Shannon Watts and where is she getting funds for top of the line campaign materials as well as the public relations talent to produce it?
Upon doing some digging we learned that Shannon Watt’s real name is Shannon Troughton. Her LinkedIn page shows her long career as a high dollar East Coast corporate and government public relations executive including:
Director, Global Public and Corporate Affairs at Monsanto
Freelance Senior Consultant/Counselor at Fleishman-Hillard
Founder and President at VoxPop Public Relations
Vice President, Corporate Communications at WellPoint
Director, Global Communications at GE Healthcare
Vice President, Corporate and Public Affairs at Fleishman-Hillard
Public Affairs Officer at Missouri State Government
Monsanto stands out as it has been named on multiple occasions as the company with the worst ethics record in the world. Vanity Fair even did a large investigative piece on Monsanto called “Harvest of Fear” and our sweet little home maker Shannon “Watts” Troughton was their chief spin-doctor.
[Editor’s Note: We do not have the space to outline the ethical lapses of Monsanto and quite candidly, explain just how low Monsanto will go and the lengths they will go to destroy little people just because they can. Books, and lots of them, have been written about this. Being the most unethical is not just something that happens, it is a choice and being the worst offender of all takes effort.]
At Fleishman-Hillard she directed a crisis communications team who represented Monsanto, BP Amoco, Bayer Corporation, Firestone, McDonald’s, Applebee’s, Purdue Pharma, Osco, BASF, and Hallmark. She even has a listing in PR Newswire.
In short, Shannon “Watts” Troughton is a ruthless high dollar public relations hired gun.
One does not have to look far to find people Shannon “Mom’s Demand Action” Troughton has smeared. Television and radio star Dana Loesch has been a frequent target of Troughton’s. Among other things, Troughton has falsely accused Loesch of being on the payroll of the NRA and of a gun company called Magpul simply because Loesch has stated that women should be allowed to choose to use a firearm for self defense.
Follow The Money
The New York Times, Buzzfeed and others have reported that “Mom’s Demand Action” is a front group for former New York Mayor Micheal Bloomberg’s “Mayors Against Illegal Guns”. Bloomberg has vowed to spend $50 million of his own money to battle the National Rifle Association. NRA certified instructors train both civilians and law enforcement, as well as teach hunter’s safety courses. The NRA also advocates for civilians who choose to use a firearm for self defense.
Mayors Against Illegal Guns’ efforts have been hamstrung thus far as high profile members have left the organization saying about Bloomberg’s group, “They’re not just against illegal guns, they’re against all guns.”
Delicious Irony
Dana Loesch attempted to interview Shannon “Watts” Troughton at the NRA Convention to see if she would be willing to correct the record or clarify her previous false statements. Armed guards working for Watts intervened and tried to push Loesch out of the way as Watts made her way to an up-armored SUV with a New York license plate. Erica Soto Lamb, a spokesman for Mom’s Demand Action, confirmed that they use armed guards at public events.
Erica Soto Lamb, a spokesman for Mom’s Demand Action, confirmed that they use armed guards at public events.
[Editor’s Note: Yours truly was banned from Shannon “Watts” Troughton’s Mom’s Demand Action FaceBook page within minutes of posting something challenging one of their claims. Like most hard propaganda outfits, they are not interested in any serious dialogue. Big money interests often create pressure groups designed to give the appearance of being grass roots organizations, but the decisions are always made where the money is, at the top. The creation of fake grass roots groups is often called “astroturfing“. ]
Just yesterday Shannon “Watts” Troughton told CNN Host Victor Blackwell that “a good guy with a gun has never stopped a bad guy with a gun”. Of course that statement doesn’t pass the snicker test, but it does cause one to ask why she needs armed guards if she believes her own talking points, of course the obvious answer is that she doesn’t, but Bloomberg money spends as well as any other.
UPDATE – Shannon “Watts” Troughton’s list of school shootings includes incidents that were not school shootings (she lied) – LINK.
Intentional homicides rate per 100,000 population via UNODC murder rates most recent year (full table here).
Honduras 91.6
Venezuela 79.0
El Salvador 69.2
Ivory Coast 56.9
Belize 41.4
Jamaica 40.9
US Virgin Isl 39.2
Guatemala 38.5
St. Kitts& Nevis 38.2
Zambia 38.0
Bahamas 36.6
Malawi 36.0
Lesotho 35.2
South Africa 31.8
Trinidad & Tobago 31.3
Congo 30.8
Colombia 30.8
Central African Republic 29.3
Puerto Rico 26.2
Ethiopia 25.5
Saint Lucia 25.2
Dom Republic 25.0
Tanzania 24.5
Sudan 24.2
Mexico 23.7
St Vincent & Grenadines 22.9
Guinea 22.5
Dominica 22.1
Brazil 21.8
Congo 21.7
Panama 21.6
Equatorial Guinea 20.7
Guinea-Bissau 20.2
Kenya 20.1
Cameroon 19.7
Montserrat 19.7
Greenland 19.2
Angola 19.0
Guyana 18.6
Ecuador 18.2
Burkina Faso 18.0
Eritrea 17.8
Namibia 17.2
Rwanda 17.1
Chad 15.8
Ghana 15.7
Myanmar 15.2
Benin 15.1
Sierra Leone 14.9
Mauritania 14.7
Botswana 14.5
Zimbabwe 14.3
Gabon 13.8
French Guiana 13.3
Papua New Guinea 13.0
Swaziland 12.9
Turkmenistan 12.8
Nicaragua 12.6
Bermuda 12.3
Comoros 12.2
Nigeria 12.2
Cape Verde 11.6
Grenada 11.5
Paraguay 11.5
Barbados 11.3
Togo 10.9
Gambia 10.8
Peru 10.3
Liberia 10.1
Nauru 9.8
Mongolia 9.7
Russia 9.7
Kyrgyzstan 9.1
Bolivia 8.9
Philippines 8.8
Senegal 8.7
Turks 7 Caicos Islands 8.7
Brit Virgin Isl 8.6
Costa Rica 8.5
Cayman Islands 8.4
Seychelles 8.3
Madagascar 8.1
Indonesia 8.1
Mali 8.0
Kazakhstan 7.8
Pakistan 7.8
Moldova 7.5
Kiribati 7.3
Guadeloupe 7.0
Haiti 6.9
Timor-Leste 6.9
Anguilla 6.8
Antigua & Barbuda 6.8
Lithuania 6.6
Cambodia 6.5
Uruguay 5.9
Argentina 5.5
North Korea 5.2
Ukraine 5.2
Estonia 5.2
Cuba 5.0
Belarus 4.9
USA 4.8
Attitude Change Propaganda Designed to Prey on the Ignorant and Uneducated
This is a great example of why so many universities do not teach American History well, virtually ignore American Studies and why Common Core dedicates all of a few lines of text to George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.
What we see below is a textbook example of attitude change propaganda in action. It cherry picks certain facts and partial facts way out of context and strings them together with an attitude to create a narrative and an attitude that is entirely false. This kind of lying is no accident. It takes a very deliberate mind to come up with propaganda this sophisticated.
If students were well educated in civics as well as the history of Western Civilization they would not fall for nonsense like this from the FaceBook page of “Being Liberal” which I saw cross posted on the timeline of a recent high school graduate:
Forcing a whole country to abide by the laws of one religion leads to persecution and oppression. We see this not only in the U.S. but other countries. Keep religion out of the Constitution – let everyone choose their own belief system..coexist. – Kelsie Ferguson
It’s important to remember history accurately.
Since we are remembering history accurately today….
The Constitution was meant to be a short and simple framework for government, it was never intended to be the guidebook for governance. This is why honest judges look at the Declaration of Independence (which says that our rights come from you know who), the Federalist Papers, letters and notes from the Founders, early docs that influenced the Constitution like the Virginia Declaration of Rights etc.
It might be important to point out that all 50 state constitutions mentioned God – http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/g/god-constitutions.htm
Also, one does not need to have God to have persecution or oppression. Shall we tally up the number of the dead by regimes hostile to the notion that human rights are God given?
Lets see:
People’s Republic of China 1949-present
Body Count: 73,237,000
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Body Count: 58,627,000
1922-1991 (69 years)
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Body Count: 3,163,000
1948-Present
Cambodia under Pol Pot
Body Count: 2,627,000
1975-1987
Vietnam (Note: this number excludes the 1,062,000 from the Vietnam War)
Body Count: 1,670,000
1975-Present
People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Body Count: 1,343,610
1974-1991
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Body Count: 1,072,000
1945-1992
People’s Republic of Mozambique
Body Count: 700,000
1975-1990
Socialist Republic of Romania
Body Count: 435,000
1947-1989
This list continues for a long way. It is also important to note that Islamic regimes do not recognize God given human and political rights as we know them.
I see the mention of James Madison. GREAT! The Founders were virtually unanimous in their belief that the state should not create a state church as most every European power had done. In each case a European power cherry picked one denomination of Christianity over the others. The Founders were virtually unanimous in their opposition to that behavior.
That being said most of the Founders, James Madison especially… well take a read:
First, Madison was publicly outspoken about his personal Christian beliefs and convictions. For example, he encouraged his friend, William Bradford (who served as Attorney General under President Washington), to make sure of his own spiritual salvation:
[A] watchful eye must be kept on ourselves lest, while we are building ideal monuments of renown and bliss here, we neglect to have our names enrolled in the Annals of Heaven.[1]
Madison even desired that all public officials – including Bradford – would declare openly and publicly their Christian beliefs and testimony:
I have sometimes thought there could not be a stronger testimony in favor of religion or against temporal enjoyments, even the most rational and manly, than for men who occupy the most honorable and gainful departments and [who] are rising in reputation and wealth, publicly to declare their unsatisfactoriness by becoming fervent advocates in the cause of Christ; and I wish you may give in your evidence in this way. [2]
Second, Madison was a member of the committee that authored the 1776 Virginia Bill of Rights and approved of its clause declaring that:
It is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other. [3]
Third, Madison’s proposed wording for the First Amendment demonstrates that he opposed only the establishment of a federal denomination, not public religious activities. His proposal declared:
The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established. [4]
(Madison reemphasized that position throughout the debates. [5])
Fourth, in 1789, Madison served on the Congressional committee which authorized, approved, and selected paid Congressional chaplains. [6]
Fifth, in 1812, President Madison signed a federal bill which economically aided a Bible Society in its goal of the mass distribution of the Bible. [7]
Sixth, throughout his Presidency (1809-1816), Madison endorsed public and official religious expressions by issuing several proclamations for national days of prayer, fasting, and thanksgiving. [8]
[1] Letter of Madison to William Bradford (November 9, 1772), in 1 James Madison, The Letters and Other Writings of James Madison 5-6 (New York: R. Worthington 1884).
[2] Letter of Madison to William Bradford (September 25, 1773), in 1 James Madison, The Papers of James Madison 66 (William T. Hutchinson ed., Illinois: University of Chicago Press 1962).
[3] The Proceedings of the Convention of Delegates, Held at the Capitol in the City of Williamsburg, in the Colony of Virginia, on Monday the 6th of May, 1776, 103 (Williamsburg: Alexander Purdie 1776) (Madison on the Committee on May 16, 1776; the “Declaration of Rights” passed June 12, 1776).
[4] 1 The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States 451, 1st Cong., 1st Sess. (Washington, D. C.: Gales & Seaton 1834) (June 8, 1789).
[5] 1 Debates and Proceedings 758-759 (1834 ed.) (August 15, 1789).
[6] 1 Debates and Proceedings 109 (1834 ed.) (April 9, 1789).
[7] Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States 1325, 12th Cong., 2nd Sess. (Washington: Gales & Seaton 1853) (“An Act for the relief of the Bible Society of Philadelphia. Be it enacted, &c., That the duties arising and due to the United States upon certain stereotype plates, imported during the last year into the port of Philadelphia, on board the ship Brilliant, by the Bible Society of Philadelphia, for the purpose of printing editions of the Holy Bible, be and the same are hereby remitted, on behalf of the United States, to the said society: and any bond or security given for the securing of the payment of the said duties shall be cancelled. Approved February 2, 1813.”)
[8] 1 James D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897, 513 (Published by Authority of Congress 1899) (July 9, 1812), 532-533 (July 23, 1813), 558 (November 16, 1814), and 560-561 (March 4, 1815).
Kyle Katarn to appear in a Star Wars spinoff movie by JJ Abrams?
Who is Kyle Katarn? He is the most popular Star Wars character you have never heard of. Katarn is the protagonist in the uber-popular “Dark Forces” and “Jedi Knight” series of LucasArts video games. He is also featured in a series of popular Star Wars novels.
Abrams’ “Star Wars: Episode VII” is part of big plans for The Walt Disney Co., which bought George Lucas’ Lucasfilm empire last year for $4.05 billion. The company is planning three sequels and two stand-alone spinoff movies focusing on characters from the “Star Wars” universe.
It is difficult to believe that Katarn will not be the subject of at least one spinoff film. Why? Katarn is easily the most interesting character in the Star Wars lexicon.
Katarn is a former Imperial Officer who had a change of heart, became a mercenary for the Rebellion, eventually becoming the personal “fix-it man” for Mon Mothma herself and eventually post Episode VI, Jedi. He is brilliant, conflicted, has an attitude, likes to act as if he is more morally ambiguous than he actually is and doesn’t care too much for rules, codes, or fighting fair. All that and a Jedi Master too. He is almost unique among Jedi in that he is as gifted in the Force as Mace Windu and wields force powers often preferred by the dark side of the force. In short, the Katarn character is a writer and director’s dream.
“I’m no Jedi, I’m just a guy with a lightsaber and a few questions.”
Notable Katarn quotes:
Luke Skywalker: I sense a disturbance in the force.
Kyle Katarn: You always sense a disturbance in the force, but yeah, I sense it too.
Desann: You? You’re the legendary hero who killed Jerec at the Valley Of The Jedi? You look like nothing more than a bantha herder.
Kyle Katarn: And you look like an overgrown Kowakian monkey-lizard, so I guess looks don’t count for much.
Kyle Katarn: Never trust a bartender with bad grammar.
Kirsten Powers: There is something just fundamentally really, really wrong with our media…(video)
I think another interesting aspect to this story is this claim that nobody should cover it because it’s being ‘politicized’? Which would then mean nothing in Washington can ever be covered. Right?
The [so called] ‘war on women’ was that not politicized? That was a DNC talking point. The fact that Fox News covers something means you shouldn’t cover it? Really? Because I never noticed that when MSNBC was hysterical over Sandra Fluke that nobody thought that it was a reason to ‘not cover it’.
There is just something just fundamentally really, really wrong with our media. They need to take a look at themselves and do some accounting.
Related: CBS News President David Rhodes and ABC News President Ben Sherwood, both of them have siblings that not only work at the White House, that not only work for President Obama, but they work at the NSC on foreign policy issues directly related to Benghazi. – LINK.
Emily Miller: Bloomberg, Obama and liberal media muzzled about gun crime decline
Emily Miller in The Washington Times:
New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg has not made a peep about gun control since news came out that firearms-related deaths were way down. President Obama has ignored it and continued to pursue more gun-control laws. Their reaction shows how this news screws up their agenda to keep the decline in gun-related homicides a secret from Americans so that they can pass restrictions on the Second Amendment.
The Justice Department released a study Tuesday that showed firearm-related homicides in the U.S. annually declined 39 percent from 18,253 in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011. Nonfatal firearm crimes declined 69 percent from 1.5 million to 467,300 in that time frame.
Mr. Bloomberg, who is usually very vocal on any gun-related news, fell mute. Neither he, nor his usually very active organization Mayors Against Illegal Guns, has said anything gun related this week. A spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg’s group did not respond to a request for comment. If the news had been that a bunch of people were shot, you can be assured that Mr. Bloomberg would have been in front of the microphones.
The president has not celebrated the good news. Quite the opposite. After learning that Americans are safer now than ever from criminals with guns, Mr. Obama launched a campaign for more gun laws. He tweeted from his Barack Obama account: “This is big: @OFA volunteers are about to deliver 1.4 million signatures to Congress demanding expanded background checks for gun sales.” OFA stands for Organizing for America, which is Mr. Obama’s political campaign group.
Mr. Obama followed up to tell followers to watch OFA’s account for “more coverage of the gun violence petition delivery to Congress.” He used the hashtag #NotBackingDown. By that he means to keep pushing more restrictions on the Second Amendment. On Wednesday, he took House Democrats to dinner to plot how to pass gun-control laws.
The reason they are hiding now is because they don’t want the public know that crime has gone down at the same time that gun ownership and carry permits have increased. The have — until now — been effective in hiding these facts.
On the same day that Justice released its report, Pew Research Center released a new poll that found that 56 percent of Americans believe gun crimes is higher now than 20 years ago and 26 percent thought it was the same. Only 12 percent knew that it was lower. The most dramatic decline was in the mid-1999s, but has steadily decreased since. The survey showed the public wasn’t that much more knowledgeable on recent crime data. Asked about trends in firearms crimes “in recent years,” 45 percent thought the number had gone up, 39 percent thought it was the same. Just 10 percent were correct that it has gone down 13 percent in the most recent five years.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/9/miller-bloomberg-obama-and-liberal-media-muzzled-a/
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
UPDATE – Kirsten Powers, who has been on a roll lately, comments:
Textbook example of Saul Alinsky ridicule and intimidation tactics
“Forget moral or ethical considerations… The end is what you want, the means is how you get it” – Saul Alinsky
At the web site of WFAA in Dallas they asked their viewers what they thought of Glenn beck’s speech to the NRA convention. The following is the response of one Saul Alinsky inspired leftist named Darrel Drake, who ironically enough, says that he has a Journalism Degree from the University of Oklahoma. The spelling errors are his:
Glen Beck is a nut job with a reich wing agenda. Since when has the 2nd amendment become more important than the rest, 1st and 14th especially. Funny how Republicans want to use government to control marriage, religion and vaginas, but not jobs or improving our economy. They want smaller, less government for whom? I guess they want it only for themselves and to Hell for the ret of us tax paying citizens.
People see through these pandering self- righteous, GOP “Christian Taliban” wackos like Beck. The country is waking up and finally saying no to hate and bigotry disguised as a religious belief! The majority simply do not want to become a Christian version of Iran! Beck is nothing but a pandering nut job making millions off fearful, ill informed Americans.
This is a textbook example of the hate, racial agitation, bigotry, and red herrings that Saul Alinsky inspired leftists engage in. They will never engage in any substantive debate on verifiable fact. All one can get from them is the type of hateful venom that Darrel gave us a textbook example of. For the Alinskyite, their purpose is to be so nasty with their hate and vitriol that more sensible people will be intimidated by it and just keep quiet.
When you fight back the first thing the Alinskyite pulls is the civility card. Never be intimidated by this tactic. No one who is such a dishonest broker and engages in such tactics has any claim to the civility card.
Colion Noir takes on the racist attacks from Democrats (video)
Colion Noir:
Mike Lee and Ted Cruz respond to Harry Reid’s name calling on the Senate floor (video)
Harry Reid not only violated Senate rules in his tirade. What Harry Reid tried to do that generated the floor objection of Ted Cruz is also very worthy of noting. What Reid tried to do was have the right to add language in the bill that was not voted on in the Senate in secret.
That is correct, the Senate leadership since 2006 has been legislating behind closed doors in secret during the conference process. The House under Nancy Pelosi was doing that until the Republicans took back the House. Please see our editor’s note below.
When called out by Senator Cruz on trying to use such a dirty trick against the American people, Harry Reid went on a name calling tirade.
Senator Ted Cruz:
Senator Mike Lee:
Editor’s Note: The videos below are from 2009. The Democrats inserted language in a bill (during conference in secret) to make it legal to give bonuses to the AIG execs who we were bailing out. Those execs were big donors to Democrat Senator Chris Dodd. After lying about it, Dodd and the Democrats finally confessed at what they had done:
LA Times: Gun Crime Plummets While American People Fooled by Media to Believe Otherwise
And during this time civilian gun ownership has gone up by well over 100 million firearms.
Gun crime has plunged in the United States since its peak in the middle of the 1990s, including gun killings, assaults, robberies and other crimes, two new studies of government data show.
Yet few Americans are aware of the dramatic drop, and more than half believe gun crime has risen, according to a newly released survey by the Pew Research Center.
In less than two decades, the gun murder rate has been nearly cut in half. Other gun crimes fell even more sharply, paralleling a broader drop in violent crimes committed with or without guns. Violent crime dropped steeply during the 1990s and has fallen less dramatically since the turn of the millennium.
The number of gun killings dropped 39% between 1993 and 2011, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in a separate report released Tuesday. Gun crimes that weren’t fatal fell by 69%. However, guns still remain the most common murder weapon in the United States, the report noted. Between 1993 and 2011, more than two out of three murders in the U.S. were carried out with guns, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found.
The bureau also looked into non-fatal violent crimes. Few victims of such crimes — less than 1% — reported using a firearm to defend themselves.
Despite the remarkable drop in gun crime, only 12% of Americans surveyed said gun crime had declined compared with two decades ago, according to Pew, which surveyed more than 900 adults this spring. Twenty-six percent said it had stayed the same, and 56% thought it had increased.
It’s unclear whether media coverage is driving the misconception that such violence is up. The mass shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., were among the news stories most closely watched by Americans last year, Pew found. Crime has also been a growing focus for national newscasts and morning network shows in the past five years but has become less common on local television news.
Glenn Beck delivers the greatest speech since Reagan at NRA convention (video)
This is the greatest political/motivational speech delivered in at least 25 years. Watch every last moment. Glenn Beck at his very best.
Poll: 29% say armed revolt may be necessary to preserve liberties
While some people may mock this or make light of it, this poll indicates that there is a growing discontent among voters who are weary of politicians who promise paradise and deliver misery. This loss of legitimacy is a serious problem. We believe that this loss of legitimacy is directly tied in to why more traditionally conservative voters did not show up at the polls.
If you doubt the veracity of this poll, go hang out at an auto parts store for a couple of days and bring up politics. You will get an earful.
What is stunning is that 29% were willing to say this to a pollster. On sensitive subjects it is known that people often do not trust that the poll is truly anonymous and they will lie or just hang up.
Twenty-nine percent of registered voters think that an armed revolution might be necessary in the next few years in order to protect liberties, according to a Public Mind poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University.
The poll, which surveyed 863 registered voters and had a margin of error of +/-3.4, focused on both gun control and the possibility of a need for an armed revolution in the United States to protect.
The survey asked whether respondents agreed, disagreed, neither agreed nor disagreed or did not know or refused respond to the statement: “In the next few years, an armed revolution might be necessary in order to protect our liberties”
Twenty-nine percent said they agreed, 47 percent said they disagreed, 18 percent said they neither agreed nor disagreed, 5 percent said they were unsure, and 1 percent refused to respond.
Results of the poll show that those who believe a revolution might be necessary differ greatly along party lines:
- 18 percent of Democrats
- 27 percent of Independents
- 44 percent of Republicans
FLASHBACK – Rasmussen Reports:
The founding document of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, states that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Today, however, just 21% of voters nationwide believe that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 61% disagree and say the government does not have the necessary consent. Eighteen percent (18%) of voters are not sure.
However, 63% of the Political Class think the government has the consent of the governed, but only six percent (6%) of those with Mainstream views agree.
Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters now view the federal government as a special interest group, and 70% believe that the government and big business typically work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.
That helps explain why 75% of voters are angry at the policies of the federal government, and 63% say it would be better for the country if most members of Congress are defeated this November. Just 27% believe their own representative in Congress is the best person for the job.
Leno: “To close Gitmo, Obama should just declare it a small business and tax it out of existence” (video)
Bill Whittle on how liberals tried to criminalize being “conservative”
A great video from Bill Whittle with a message that we gave you about how the left works to criminalize political differences.
Political Arena 
