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Category Archives: Dirty Tricks
House Oversight Votes to Hold Clinton IT Aide Bryan Pagliano in Contempt – All Dems Vote No
When Congress sends you a subpoena showing up is not optional. Not showing up is a criminal act.
So when Hillary Clinton’s IT man who deleted her emails after they were under subpoena failed to appear, the House voted to take action against him as the law prescribes…..but every Democrat voted no on taking action. They literally voted to allow/endorse such criminal behavior all in an effort to protect Hillary.
Can there be any doubt that to Democrats power is more important than the law and the truth?
NOTE: Pagliano was given immunity by the DoJ, so he has no 5th Amendment excuse to not testify. This is all about Hillary.
A House panel voted Thursday to hold Bryan Pagliano, a former technology aide to Hillary Clinton, in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify about the private email set-up Clinton used as secretary of state.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted 19-15 along party lines, to send a contempt resolution to the full House. The move against Pagliano took place despite repeated warnings from his attorney that the showdown was fruitless since the computer specialist would assert his Fifth Amendment rights in response to any questions that would be put to him.
“Subpoenas are not optional,” panel Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said after Pagliano failed to show up at the second committee hearing he was formally called to in the past two weeks. “Mr. Pagliano is a crucial fact witness in this committee’s investigation former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s of a private email server to conduct government business.”
Hillary Clinton Gave State Department Appointments to 194 Donors
Hillary Clinton placed dozens of her donors on State Department advisory boards between 2009 and 2012, federal records show.
The former secretary of state’s agency appointed 194 donors who had given either to her family’s foundation, her political campaigns, or both, or were affiliated with groups that had.
Those donors represented nearly 40 percent of the 511 advisory appointments the State Department made during Clinton’s tenure.
Video: Why Obama’s IRS Commissioner Is Being Impeached
This is worth your time.
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.
Orwellian: CIA clears itself of spying on Senate committee…
A CIA panel Wednesday cleared agency officials of any wrongdoing when they accessed the computers of a Senate committee investigating the agency’s involvement in torture. The finding ended a yearlong dispute marked by angry accusations of “hacking” and criminal misconduct.
Instead, the panel — whose members were appointed by CIA Director John Brennan — faulted the agency’s own outgoing inspector general for suggesting in a report that there may have been grounds to discipline five officials at the agency.
The findings by the so-called CIA accountability board drew sharp objections from some Senate staffers who were involved in the torture report, citing it as yet another example of the CIA’s own inability to police itself.
Ya think?
IRS Watchdog: IRS Cuts Taxpayer Services; Elderly and Disabled Taxpayers Not Allowed to Leave Messages
Despicable. The IRS was punished in its budget for using their power as a political weapon, so their retaliation is to not take calls from tax payers, starting with the elderly and disabled.
ATR:
In its annual Report to Congress today, the office of the National Taxpayer Advocate outlined a series of Internal Revenue Service failures. In the “Access to the IRS” section, the report details the trouble taxpayers face reaching the right person in order to meet their tax obligations:
“The IRS does not answer the phone at local offices and has even removed the option it once provided for taxpayers, including the elderly and disabled, to leave a message.”
Until 2013, taxpayers — including the elderly and disabled — were allowed to leave a voicemail requesting an in-person appointment. But now, elderly and disabled taxpayers attempting to navigate the automated helpline maze are asked to email the IRS to set up an appointment. The automated message instructs as follows:
“If you are disabled or elderly and require special accommodations for service, please email us at…”
But this leaves many taxpayers in the dark. As the report states:
“Demographic research data show only 57 percent of adults over age 65 use the Internet compared with 87 percent of all adults. According to 2010 Census data, only 41 percent of those with a non-severe disability use the Internet and only 22 percent of those with a severe disability age 65 and older use the Internet. For those without Internet access, the only viable ways to reach the IRS are by phone, or in person.”
On its helplines, the IRS is required to provide taxpayers the option to speak with a live person. But as the report states, the IRS won’t even answer questions about what lines are considered helplines:
“TAS [Taxpayer Advocate Service] twice inquired of the IRS in a formal information request whether it considers the 3709 lines to be ‘helplines’ for the purpose of § 3705(d) of RRA 98, which would require them to have an option to speak with a live person. TAS also asked what lines the IRS does consider to be helplines. Twice, the IRS declined to answer these questions.”
The full report may be accessed here.
Americans Lose More High-Tech Jobs: Rubio, Hatch, Flake Co-Sponsor Bill to Increase H-1B Guest Workers Visas
This is not theory. This very writer has watched as tech companies fired hundreds of Americans and replace them with foreign workers who are flown in, crammed in tiny apartments, paid very little, and sent home when their time expires.
This is a big part of the reason why IT wages have stagnated and why so many Americans who graduate with hi-tech degrees are not finding work.
US News – STEM Grads Can’t Find Jobs
DML – Majority of IT Jobs Given to Immigrants
PBS – The Bogus High-tech Worker Shortage
Sen. Jeff Sessions: No Shortage of High-tech American Workers
There are law firms and companies that specialize in showing companies how to make it look like they are trying to hire Americans, but have no intention of doing so.
On Tuesday, three Republican Senators joined three Democrats to introduce legislation that would expand the number of guest-workers for the tech industry even though there is a surplus of American high-tech workers.
The Immigration Innovation (“I-Squared”) bill, introduced by Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Chris Coons (D-DE), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), would also enable companies to hire an unlimited number of workers with advanced degrees from U.S. institutions in science, technology, engineering and math, which critics have said would turn some universities into diploma factories for foreign students. Currently, the first 20,000 H-1B applications for those with advanced STEM degrees are exempted.
Hatch said he hoped the bill could be a gateway to “more progress” on a broader immigration bill.
“I’m calling on everyone — the President, members of both parties, and stakeholders in the tech community – to support this bill and help make it the first step towards real immigration reform,” he said in a statement. “We must find make concrete progress to solve some of the many critical problems facing our nation. I-Squared is an obvious solution to an undeniable need, and I want to work with everyone to get it done now.”
In addition to increasing the annual cap on H-1B visas from 65,000 to 115,000, the bill would reform student visas, “authorize employment for the dependent spouses of H-1B visas holders, and allow a grace period for foreign workers to “change jobs and not be out of status.” It would also, among other things, allow for the recapturing of green cards “that were approved by Congress in previous years but were not used” and dependents of employment-based immigrant visa recipients, U.S. STEM advance degree holders, “persons with extraordinary ability,” and “outstanding professors and researchers” would be exempt from cap on green cards.
The high-tech industry, like Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us lobbying group, has pushed for massive increases in guest-worker permits even though companies like Microsoft have been laying of thousands of U.S. tech workers. As Breitbart News has documented, “despite evidence to the contrary, the tech industry has spent millions trying to get massive increases in the number of H-1b guest-worker visas, claiming that they ‘can’t find’ Americans to do various tech jobs” even though there is a proven surplus of America high-tech workers.
House Republican leaders are expected to introduce similar legislation.
But as Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) noted in his immigration roadmap for the new Republican Congress, “a stunning 3 in 4 Americans with a STEM degree do not hold a job in a STEM field—that’s a pool of more than 11 million Americans with STEM qualifications who lack STEM employment.” In a chapter titled, “The Silicon Valley STEM Hoax,” Sessions cites Rutgers public policy professor Hal Salzman, who has calculated that 100% of new hires in the tech industry could be guest workers if Congress continues to increase the number of H-1B visas, which would hold “down wages for both them and new hires.”
Bill Whittle: Weaponizing Government Against Citizens (video)
This is a must see…. more of the Democrats’ War against freedom of speech and the First Amendment.
Bill Whittle: Weaponizing the Government
House Oversight and Reform Committee video: Highlights of the illegal IRS targeting of American citizens for political reasons
The House Oversight and Reform Committee released a new video highlighting the illegal IRS targeting of American citizens for political reasons.
CIA Admits Spying on Senate
So much for Separation of Powers. After the revelations of Ed Snowden, Sharyl Atkisson and more, can anyone seriously believe that Members of Congress and their staff are not under electronic surveillance by the executive? Remember when Democrats were caught with tapes of Newt Gingrich’s phone calls?
With the little that we have learned, what we don’t know is likely stunning.
CIA officials improperly hacked the Senate Intelligence Committee’s computers as staffers compiled a report on “enhanced interrogation” techniques, the spy agency’s inspector general has concluded.
In a statement shared with The Hill, CIA spokesman Dean Boyd said the internal watchdog determined “that some CIA employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding” between the agency and the committee about access to the network they used to share documents.
CIA chief John Brennan told Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Vice Chairman Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) about the findings “and apologized to them for such actions by CIA officers,” Boyd added.
Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), a member of the committee, quickly retorted on Twitter that the watchdog’s report “shows John Brennan misled [the] public, whose interests I have championed.”
“I will fight for change at the CIA,” he added.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), another member of the panel, called for Brennan to publicly apologize and give “a full accounting of how this occurred and a commitment there will be no further attempts to undermine congressional oversight of CIA activities,” he said in a statement.
The admission is a stunning turn of events in the standoff between the two bodies and directly contradicts Brennan’s earlier claims that the agency would never snoop on the committee’s computers.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Brennan said in March, soon after Feinstein raised allegations that CIA operatives had been unconstitutionally prying on her panel’s work. “We wouldn’t do that. That’s just beyond the scope of reason in terms of what we’d do.”
Feinstein claimed at the time that operatives had accessed a computer network established in 2009 for committee staff to review classified CIA materials related to the agency’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques, such as waterboarding. Those interrogation methods were authorized during the Bush administration but have since been prohibited.
The documents were used to produce a classified 6,300-page study that reportedly shows the techniques were conducted more harshly and more commonly than was previously understood. The executive summary of the report is now being redacted for release to the public, possibly as soon as next month.
Feinstein on Thursday said that the search of her staff’s computers was “in violation of the constitutional separation of powers,” though she declined to pin the blame on Brennan.
“Director Brennan apologized for these actions and submitted the IG [inspector general’s] report to an accountability board,” she said in a brief statement. “These are positive first steps. This IG report corrects the record and it is my understanding that a declassified report will be made available to the public shortly.”
An unclassified summary of the inspector general’s report released on Thursday claimed that the five CIA employees – two lawyers and three information technology staffers – “improperly accesses or caused access” to the shared network.
It also alleged that the three IT staffers “demonstrated a lack of candor about their activities” in interviews with the agency watchdog.
Tensions over the interrogations report have strained relations between the Senate panel and the CIA. Earlier this month, the Justice Department declined to take up criminal charges on either Feinstein’s charges or a rebuttal from the CIA that Senate staffers had improperly taken classified documents from a secure Virginia facility.
To clear up the mistrust, Brennan has passed along the findings of the IG report to an accountability board chaired by former Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who used to be a member of the Intelligence Committee.
“This board will review the [Office of the Inspector General’s] report, conduct interviews as needed, and provide the director with recommendations that, depending on its findings, could include potential disciplinary measures and/or steps to address systemic issues,” Boyd said.
At the White House, press secretary Josh Earnest gave a robust defense of Brennan. Asked if the hacking incident had hurt Brennan’s standing as CIA director, Earnest responded: “Absolutely not.”
“He has been candid about the inconsistencies that the IG found,” Earnest said.
Earnest said Brennan appointed an accountability board to look into the matter further and has “taken all the responsible steps to address this situation. That’s the kind of proactive leadership the president would expect.”
Some members of the president’s party, however, said it’s time for new leadership at the CIA.
Udall said that blame for the incident lay with Brennan and his “apparent inability to find any flaws in the agency he leads.”
“From the unprecedented hacking of congressional staff computers and continued leaks undermining the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program to his abject failure to acknowledge any wrongdoing by the agency, I have lost confidence in John Brennan,” Udall added.
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 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.
Former CBS reporter: Govt bugged my computer, planted classified docs in operating system
[Note: This post is pinned to the top of the page. Please scroll down for the latest posts and updates.]
See part one of Sharyl Atkisson’s revelations HERE. Buy her book HERE. Read every word below.
UPDATE – USA Today: Obama administration most ‘dangerous’ to media in history
UPDATE II – Elite Media Reporters Ignore Story
UPDATE III – Sharyl in a two minute video summarizing her experience at CBS:
A former CBS News reporter who quit the network over claims it kills stories that put President Obama in a bad light says she was spied on by a “government-related entity” that planted classified documents on her computer.
In her new memoir, Sharyl Attkisson says a source who arranged to have her laptop checked for spyware in 2013 was “shocked” and “flabbergasted” at what the analysis revealed.
“This is outrageous. Worse than anything Nixon ever did. I wouldn’t have believed something like this could happen in the United States of America,” Attkisson quotes the source saying.
She speculates that the motive was to lay the groundwork for possible charges against her or her sources.
Attkisson says the source, who’s “connected to government three-letter agencies,” told her the computer was hacked into by “a sophisticated entity that used commercial, nonattributable spyware that’s proprietary to a government agency: either the CIA, FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency.”
The breach was accomplished through an “otherwise innocuous e-mail” that Attkisson says she got in February 2012, then twice “redone” and “refreshed” through a satellite hookup and a Wi-Fi connection at a Ritz-Carlton hotel.
The spyware included programs that Attkisson says monitored her every keystroke and gave the snoops access to all her e-mails and the passwords to her financial accounts.
“The intruders discovered my Skype account handle, stole the password, activated the audio, and made heavy use of it, presumably as a listening tool,” she wrote in “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.”
Attkisson says her source — identified only as “Number One” — told her the spying was most likely not court-authorized because it went on far longer than most legal taps.
But the most shocking finding, she says, was the discovery of three classified documents that Number One told her were “buried deep in your operating system. In a place that, unless you’re a some kind of computer whiz specialist, you wouldn’t even know exists.”
“They probably planted them to be able to accuse you of having classified documents if they ever needed to do that at some point,” Number One added.
In her book, Attkisson says CBS lost interest in her coverage of the deadly attack on the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, and killed her stories of the federal “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal.
Both CBS and the White House declined to comment.
Political Ad Deception of the Day: Alison Grimes
UPDATE – And just how right were we??
Grimes Staff Caught on Hidden Camera: She’s Lying About Support for Coal Industry
The Video:
UPDATE II – So much for Grimes’ support for paying workers more than minimum wage. Her family business pays minimum:
This ad is a great example of how far politicians will go to lie to get elected.
One would think by this commercial that Alison Grimes is a conservative Democrat. She isn’t. This commercial is clearly designed to paint her as a conservative Democrat, much like the the “Sportsman for Obama” pro-gun television ad from 2008.
Alison Grimes’ earlier speeches and debates clearly demonstrate that she is a proud card carrying leftist. Her rhetoric is similar to what one finds from DNC Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schulz (1, 2, 3, 4), and like Schultz, is in solid standing with the Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid wing of the Democratic Party.
Grimes would vote to place the same gun banning, eco-extremist, anti-affordable energy leaders in charge of the Senate, committees, and confirm into the executive branch as it has now, which is why anti-gun groups and most every other far left interest donate to her campaign.
The 2008 Obama “pro-gun” television ad has been pulled down from his YouTube channel which is a shame because we would like to show it to you for comparison, but remember this:
[Editor’s Note: Interestingly enough, back in 2008 during my college days, I wrote a post calling out Obama’s pro-gun ads as a fraud when compared with his record. Even MSNBC called him out on the deception. You can read the post HERE.]
Today’s political communications are designed to target specific groups of voters with messages and images designed for “attitude implantation”. A pro-gun coal miner might look at the Grimes ad and think he has a champion in her, but the truth is she would vote for the same leaders and appointees sent by the party leadership.
Emails and home mailings are targeted to the each type of voter specifically. If enough data can be gleaned from your internet activity, political donations, and Facebook group memberships you will get political communications in your inbox telling you exactly what you want to hear. For example, this very writer donated to Rand Paul’s lawsuit against illegal NSA domestic spying. Afterwards I received “please donate” emails from the RNC, as well as the House and Senate Leadership PAC’s sounding as if the GOP establishment is the heartbeat of the TEA Party movement and in the corner of Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul when reality is in fact very much the opposite.
The technology exists today to find out exactly what the hot button issues for most voters are and to tell them exactly what they want to hear in order to solicit votes and donations with no regard for intellectual honesty.
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
Right Wing Watch does “selective editing” smear job on Glenn Beck
To those who follow such things, you might say, “so what else is new”. Even so, it is worth reporting because it is an excellent example of attitude change propaganda mass media theory and it demonstrates how far some people will go to propagate a lie.
The video below from Right Wing Watch shows Glenn Beck talking about two different subjects and then splices them together to create the false narrative/claim against Beck, namely that he is warning that Obama is going to round up conservatives and put them into camps. The splice happens at 1:07 into the video.
At the beginning of the video Beck accurately explains historical examples of when those in power demonize people so as to make them two dimensional and easier to persecute. At the 1:07 mark the video cuts to Beck speculating on how he thinks Obama might react to mass critique if the elite media turned on him. By linking these two clips together using careful editing they have gullible people believing something that Beck simply did not say or intend to say.
The ruse by Right Wing Watch is further given away in the clip they used as Beck can be seen clearly stating that both sides in a conflict often use such demonization techniques.
This is the kind of dishonest shenanigan that “People for the American Way” and “Media Matters” have been caught doing from time to time. Alec Baldwin sits on the board for the group if that is an indication oh how off the rails they can get.
Here is an example where Media Matters was caught red handed doing the same – LINK.
Glenn Beck does three hours of broadcasting a day, so if someone disagrees with him there is room to do it legitimately without resorting to dishonest editing tricks.
Glenn Beck posts the entire audio of his show on his web site and on SoundCloud every day. Anyone can download the entire show and listen for themselves as there is no sign up or membership fee.
The entire post from Right Wing Watch is below:
Glenn Beck Warns Obama Is About To Snap, Will Start Putting Conservatives Into Internment Camps
On his radio broadcast today, Glenn Beck warned that too many crises are piling up all at the same time which will cause the press to finally turn on President Obama. That, in turn, will cause Obama to finally snap and start rounding up conservatives and putting them into camps.
Just as German society demonized Jews for years before the Nazis took power, Beck warned that this nation “has been watering some seeds” for nearly ten years to condition Americans to accept that “there are those enemies of the president that need to be punished.”
Once the press turns on Obama, Beck warned, he “is not going to react well” because he has been coddled his entire life and was always treated like a god who was never to be criticized or questioned.
Saying that Obama is like a spoiled child who is about to be told that he doesn’t get a trophy just for participating, Beck predicted that Obama would respond by lashing out furiously at conservatives and putting them into internment camps.
By Chuck Norton, Editor
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
Must See Video: How Chicago TEA Party Leader Saved Outspoken Cancer Patient and Was Targeted by the IRS
In the video blow you will see Bill Elliot, who lost his insurance due to Obamacare, could not afford the new Obamacare premiums and deductibles, had resigned himself to die:
Along comes C. Steven Tucker, Chicago TEA Party Leader and also one of the top insurance brokers in the country. Tucker reached out to Bill Elliot and this is how he saved Mr. Elliot’s life, but the IRS was not amused about telling their story on Fox News:
Dear idgits at the NYT…
At Benghazi the Al-Qaeda mortar teams had each building zeroed in which takes time and training. Distances measured to the meter, advanced scoping of the targets etc. Who brings mortars to a protest?
And this was after Al-Qaeda made coordinated attacks against the British, the Red Cross and other Western targets in Benghazi and took credit for them. We also know from wires to the State Department that our own people on the ground predicted an Al-Qeada attack was inevitable.
– Signed, the editor of this blog who has military munitions experience and everyone else who has had the requisite military training who isn’t paid to lie for you.
Sharyl Attkisson put truth to the latest politicized claim by the NYT that “Hey, maybe it really was a video“:
Whatever the status of the terrorists, there’s now widespread agreement even among Obama admin that they weren’t spontaneous protesters.
This was a piece I wrote in May that I think still holds up pretty well as far as describing Obama admin views: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57584921/officials-on-benghazi-we-made-mistakes-but-without-malice/ …
The NYT’s Hillary for President activism begins today.
George Zimmerman is no angel? Really? UPDATED!
Editorial by Chuck Norton
Be sure to also read the special editor’s note below!
As I sit back and go back over the trial video a few things come to mind that thinking people should to be aware of.
The prosecution and the press did a pretty good job of applying ill motives to George Zimmerman, but when one looks closer it was all maybe’s, assumptions, could haves and other assertions not in evidence. It amazes me how easily people adopt false narratives based on emotional appeals and assertions.
He was a “creepy cop wannabe”? Really? Did you know that as a part of the neighborhood watch program he was offered a car with flashing yellow lights, a uniform, and a computer system that tied into law enforcement? He turned it down. Is that what a creepy cop wannabe does? In fact, turning that down showed to be a mistake because if he had that car it would have identified him as neighborhood watch.
George Zimmerman is a racist? Really? The facts: his prom date was black and he mentored two young black children a mentoring program – even after the county ran out of funding. Sanford Police and the FBI did an extensive investigation, including talking to dozens of people who know George Zimmerman. Both police organizations concluded that he has never shown evidence of racism. Just who was it who called who a “crazy ass cracka”?
According to the prosecution, George Zimmerman had ill intent and hate towards Trayvon and looked for an excuse to… Not only did they have no evidence to support that claim, but Zimmerman, while on the phone with police, twice asked nicely for an officer to be sent out. Are those the actions of a hateful man bent on murder in the second degree?
George Zimmerman “stalked” Trayvon? Really? When Zimmerman called police and started following Trayvon until an officer showed up, Trayvon was texting and on the phone with his girl friend and realized he was being followed. After Trayvon hung up it was four minutes later that Trayvon jumped George Zimmerman and started ground pounding him MMA style and smashing his head against the cement. Now stay with me; in that four minutes did Trayvon run away? Nope. Did he run home? Nope. Did he use his cell phone to call the police after he hung up with his girlfriend? Instead he looped back around and came out at George Zimmerman attacking him. So in that four minutes who was stalking who?
[Note: Juror 37B said that Trayvon “got mad and attacked George Zimmerman” adding “Trayvon threw the first punch”. More details below and in comments. ]
There is a world of difference between “stalking” someone and merely observing them for police. As much as media pundits drumming up racial angst for ratings shout otherwise, observing someone for police does not make one an “aggressor”.
What verifiable evidence does anyone have that George Zimmerman was anything less than a normal decent guy before that fateful moment?
The ignorant man, wishing to ‘rise above’ as ‘a good post-modernist thinker’, will cast negativity on both sides, judging both with the same condemning brush, so as to create the illusion of their own ‘enlightenment’.
When police tried to trick Zimmerman into making an incriminating statement they lied and told him that a camera had caught the whole thing on video Zimmerman’s response was “Thank God”.
When expert law enforcement witnesses on self defense took the stand were asked “During the attack what alternative did George Zimmerman have besides using deadly force the witness said , “None.”
If Trayvon Martin had survived his wound what would he have been charged with?
[Note: Smashing Zimmerman’s head against the cement block likely would have resulted in charges of aggravated battery, a felony in Florida. This may seem insensitive, but as a matter of law the facts are the facts – Trayvon Martin was, as the evidence indicates, killed in the act of committing a felony.]
It is not often when lawyers Alan Dershowitz and Ann Coulter are on the same page. All of the physical evidence, expert testimony, and eye witness accounts confirm George Zimmerman’s account of what happened. The prosecution was caught breaking the law hiding exculpatory evidence from the defense about the state of mind and history of Trayvon Martin and it was a prosecution staffer who blew the whistle. The prosecutor lied to the judge, misled the court and was not forthcoming with the evidence. “Criminally perjurious“, “corrupt and politically motivated” is how (liberal) Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz described the prosecution.
Now George Zimmerman is suing NBC News for carefully editing the 911 tape to make him appear racist along with putting out demonstrably misleading information on a daily basis to create a demonic false picture of him. ABC News doctored video and pictures of Zimerman to hide his injuries to push the same false narrative. CNN’s coverage was so over the top and unethical that even those who resist claims of media bias were taken aback. It was these news organizations that repeated over and over that police told George Zimmerman not to get out of his car, which is of course demonstrably false.
CNN said even after the verdict that Trayvon Martin was armed with nothing ore than a bag of skittles, ignoring the damage to his knuckles from beating George Zimmerman and omitting the four inch thick block of cement that he was pounding George Zimmerman’s head into.
“And the suggestion by the state that that’s not a weapon, that can’t hurt somebody … is disgusting,” O’Mara said.
The elite media showed the world pictures of a nine year old boy who they claimed was gunned down when he went out to buy some Skittles the facts are that Trayvon Martin was a muscular athlete who towered over George Zimmerman.
As someone who is well trained in communications law I have little doubt that these ‘news organizations’ will be writing George Zimmerman a hefty check. Elite media consumers motivated by the lies and false narratives are engaging in violence in the streets.
Honestly, I hope that the Zimmerman team refuses to take what ever settlement NBC, ABC and the rest offer him and go to a very public trial, because the nation needs to see just how corrupt the elite media has become.
Remember Richard Jewell.
Editor’s Note: On Piers Morgan last night, Trayvon Martin’s girl friend Rachel Jeantel, according to her phone conversation with Trayvon Martin just before the attack, explained that Trayvon turned hostile toward George Zimmerman because he thought George Zimmerman was gay; perhaps some kind of gay rapist. The left has invested themselves beyond reason and fact into supporting, according to this new evidence, a probable gay basher. Martin had a cell phone and could have called police, but it seems that Martin took things into his own hands.
NOTE: Mediaite, in the link above has edited the story and headline to remove most of the gay comment references. History is being re-written already, however, we expected that so we posted the transcript below in the comments.
So who was violating federal hate crime laws? A case can be made that Trayvon Martin was. Eric Holder’s non-existent civil rights case against George Zimmerman just went out the window. I imagine this is some of the evidence that prosecutors kept from the defense.
Felony battery is wrong no matter if it is against perceived gays or anyone else. In her interview with Piers Morgan Rachel Jeantel explained in ghetto vernacular that George Zimmerman should have known that Trayvon Martin wasn’t going to kill him and that Trayvon just wanted to give Zimmerman a dose of what she called “whoopazz”.
New: the prosecution team kicked the only black person off jury consideration.
UPDATE II – Friends, Hell has officially frozen over. Attorney Leo Terrell who has a long history of saying “everything” is racial BLASTS those who made the Zimmerman case a racial issue. My jaw is agape as I type this. Leo said that the jury decided this case correctly saying this was not a race case at all.
Note** On Zimmerman’s referenced “martial arts training”. His Martial Arts instructor said that on a scale of 1-10 in fighting skill, he managed to get Zimmerman from a 0.5 to a 1 and that he wasn’t a threat to a punching bag.
UPDATE III – Via Kevin B. Shearer:
Sherman Ware. A black homeless man who was beaten by the son of a white policeman in Sanford, FL in 2010. Anyone want to guess who was the one ‘white’ person who went to churches passing out flyers calling attention to a coverup? Anyone want to guess who went to public meetings and demanded that this black man deserved better? Do you know who spent tireless hours putting fliers on the cars of persons parked in the churches of the black community? Do you know who waited for the church‐goers to get out of church so that he could hand them fliers in an attempt to organize the black community against this horrible miscarriage of justice? Do you know who helped organize the City Hall meeting on January 8th, 2011 at Sanford City Hall? You guessed it. George Zimmerman. But the main stream media isn’t talking about that are they.
UPDATE IV – Black Pastor: If you think that George Zimmerman was guilty than you are looking through your black eyes only, not the eyes of Jesus, not through the Blood of Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit. You are looking through the eyes of hate – you are black therefore George is guilty.
He explains further:
UPDATE V – Bill Cosby: This was not about racism – LINK
UPDATE VI – Evidence: Trayvon Martin was at 7-11 buying chems for home made drug cocktail – LINK
Obama Administration Engaged in Unprecedented Surveillance of Reporters
[Editor’s Note – In this post we will be providing links to the many stories on this emerging scandal. This post will take some time to complete and will be continually updated for some time.]
In a nutshell the Obama Administration bugged an entire division at the Associated Press (AP) and many reporters at Fox News, including the parents of reporters. When asked if a national security leak could be justified into such a wide net of bugging computers, emails and phones former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who served four presidents, said that such an action “is inconceivable”.
Former AP Washington Chief Fournier: DOJ’s phone record seizure of reporters is “Unprecedented, chilling and plain stupid”
CBS Reporter Sharyl Attkisson (who exposed the “Fast n’ Furious” scandal) : My computer has been compromised – LINK – LINK.
US Attorney in Justice Department who targeted Fox News reporters a large Obama campaign donor – LINK.
Obama Administration targeted other Fox News employees – LINK. Tracking at least one’s every movement. Administration claimed that Fox broke the law by merely asking questions about the scandal. The Obama Administration used the Patriot Act “administrative subpoena” to carry out this abuse. Megyn Kelly comments on this nonsense:
Joseph Curl: CIA source says Fox News scandal the “4th Shoe”; says it goes much deeper; says White House also sitting on “something” that has top aides terrified – LINK.
Attorney General Eric Holder personally signed off on bugging Fox News and labeling Fox reporter James Rosen a “co-conspiritor” – LINK.
Karl Rove: This is how Eric Holder lied to Congress
James Rosen Comments
Ann Coulter goes through the history of “national security” when it comes to reporters under the Bush Administration vs the Obama Administration:
NBC’s Lisa Myers explains how the Obama Administration history of intimidating reporters and sources:
Obama Administration seized records of Fox News reporters parents
Attorney General Eric Holder’s “I don’t know syndrome” under oath:
MORE – IRS Chief Steven Miller: “I Can’t Remember” Who Is Responsible for Targeting Conservatives
Associated Press: Obama Administration has intimidated people from talking to us – LINK.
CNN outlines the timeline of how the Obama Administration accused Fox News reporter Jim Rosen of being a criminal to get his personal information and then lied about it:
Brit Hume: ‘Chilling’ Search of Fox Reporter Shows DOJ Treats ‘Ordinary News Gathering As Crime’
Megyn Kelly – Eric Holder misled Congress:
Kirsten Powers and Denis Prager on Obama’s war in critics:
More prominent liberals call for Attorney General Eric Holder’s resignation – LINK.
BUSTED – If At First You Don’t Succeed? Report: Holder Went Judge-Shopping for James Rosen Subpoena – LINK.
Senator Ted Cruz: Obama Administration does not respect the Bill of Rights. Eric Holder should resign. Obama should tell the truth. They are telling flat-out falsehoods:
Same IRS man who politicized the IRS under Clinton at center of current scandal
[Editor’s Note – It is rare that we copy an entire article from another web site and present it in total. Usually we print a key excerpt of the most important points and have a link to the rest, which is considered “best internet manners”. However, in some rare cases, when the piece is so important, the information so crucial, that presenting the entire piece becomes warranted.
This piece from Michelle Malkin shows that some of the same people who were caught abusing the IRS under Bill Clinton, were re-appointed by Obama and are some of the guilty parties today. This indicates clear premeditation from the White House. What other reason would a President re-appoint a man with a criminal history like IRS Department Head Steven Miller?]
UPDATE – IRS boss of Tea Party probes targeted anti-Clinton group in 1990s – LINK.
UPDATE – IRS Official Admits Clinton Enemies Were Audited – LINK.
It’s always the “low-level” peon’s fault, isn’t it? When Democrats get caught red-handed abusing government powers and bullying their political enemies small and large, nobody at the top knows nuttin’. The buck stops … in the janitors closet or something.
Here’s what I know: While they pretend to champion privacy rights, top left-wing operatives have routinely ransacked and plundered through the private documents and personal records of conservative groups, business owners and public figures. Through it all, those on the right standing against government tyranny have refused to stand down.
During the Clinton years, senior IRS official Paul Breslan revealed that the administration’s auditors specifically targeted conservative critics. On the hit list: Judicial Watch, Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers, the National Rifle Association, The National Review, The American Spectator, Freedom Alliance, National Center for Public Policy Research, Citizens Against Government Waste, Concerned Women for America, and the San Diego Chapter of Christian Coalition.
Steven Miller, one of the Clinton IRS agents who helped conduct those witch hunts in the 1990s, is currently the head of the Obama IRS department that has now admitted it discriminated against tea party groups. Jackboot history repeats itself.
In 1997, far-left Congressman Jim McDermott obtained and leaked an illegally taped phone call involving House GOP leaders to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The New York Times. Far from a low-level underling, McDermott was the top Democrat on the House Ethics Committee at the time. Ohio GOP Rep. John Boehner won a $1 million civil lawsuit against McDermott. McDermott’s leak was condemned by U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan as “willful and knowing misconduct (that) rises to the level of malice in this case.”
In 2005, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — headed by New York Sen. Charles Schumer — targeted then Maryland GOP Lt. Gov. Michael Steele as he considered a U.S. Senate bid. Two of Schumer’s staffers illegally obtained Steele’s credit report by using his Social Security number, which they got from public documents. They set up a fake email account and then impersonated Steele on a website to filch his financial information.
Democrats framed the sleazy move as the work of junior staffers. But the supervising operative involved, Katie Barge, was senior research director of the DSCC, a former researcher at the George Soros-funded attack group Media Matters for America and a researcher for presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards.
Schumer’s other document plumber, Lauren Weiner, was a DSCC researcher who had worked for Dick Gephardt and the Democratic National Committee. She pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining a credit report and escaped jail time. After she was fired, she earned a journalism degree at the Columbia University School of Journalism.
In 2006, longtime Democratic operative Bob Fertik called on his minions to attempt to obtain the private phone records of prominent conservatives through shady online information brokers. “If money is scarce,” Fertik vowed, “Democrats.com will reimburse you if you buy the records for an important phone number and discover gold when you get the records.”
In October 2008, top Ohio Democrats targeted real plumber Joe Wurzelbacher after he challenged then presidential candidate Barack Obama’s “spread the wealth” radicalism. Helen Jones-Kelley, then director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, ordered underlings to scour government databases for dirt. In addition to pawing through his child-support papers, her agency also checked Wurzelbacher in its computer systems to determine whether he was receiving welfare assistance or owed unemployment compensation taxes.
Jones-Kelley was not just a high-level state official. She was also an Obama campaign donor who volunteered to arrange an event for Michelle Obama and provided the campaign with nearly 20 names of potential donors ahead of a Dayton campaign stop. Three years after resigning, she found herself back on the taxpayer dole with another government job. Corruptocrats protect their own.
Also in 2008, Obama’s allies at a Soros-tied outfit named Accountable America sent out “warning” letters to 10,000 top GOP givers “hoping to create a chilling effect that will dry up contributions.” Witch hunt leader Tom Matzzie, formerly of Soros-funded MoveOn.org, promised “legal trouble, public exposure and watchdog groups digging through their lives.” Matzzie also advertised a $100,000 bounty for dirt on conservative political groups “to create a sense of scandal around the groups” and to dissuade donors from giving money.
The effort was supported by Judd Legum, founder of Think Progress, which is run by former Clinton scandal manager turned Obama confidante John Podesta’s Center for American Progress.
During the 2010 midterms, the Obama bully brigade waged a similar campaign against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its donors as payback for the organization’s ads opposing the federal health care takeover. During the 2012 election season, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina declared war on free-market philanthropists Charles and David Koch and private donors to their nonprofit activist group Americans for Prosperity.
As I warned in my column in March 2012, it seemed “no small coincidence” at the time that Team Obama was threatening conservative activists publicly “just as numerous tea party organizations (were) reporting that the Internal Revenue Service (had) targeted them for audits. According to Colleen Owens of the Richmond (Va.) Tea Party, several fiscally conservative activist groups in Virginia, Hawaii, Ohio and Texas (had) received a spate of IRS letters. The missives demand(ed) extensive requests to identity volunteers, board members and … donors.”
The latest confession by Obama IRS officials that they targeted tea party, pro-Constitution and pro-Israel groups isn’t a sign of “rogue” behavior. It’s tyrannical Democratic business as usual.
Obamacare: Taxpayers Must Report Personal Health ID Info to IRS
After recent revelations, perhaps it is time to just change the name of the IRS to the KGB or the STASI. The motto of the STASI was “the sword and shield of the party”.
The new form will require disclosure of a taxpayer’s personal identifying health information in order to determine compliance with the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.
As confirmed by IRS testimony to the tax-writing House Committee on Ways and Means, “taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage, and/or making a payment”.
So why will the Obama IRS require your personal identifying health information?
Simply put, there is no way for the IRS to enforce Obamacare’s individual mandate without such an invasive reporting scheme. Every January, health insurance companies across America will send out tax documents to each insured individual. This tax document—a copy of which will be furnished to the IRS—must contain sufficient information for taxpayers to prove that they purchased qualifying health insurance under Obamacare.
This new tax information document must, at a minimum, contain: the name and health insurance identification number of the taxpayer; the name and tax identification number of the health insurance company; the number of months the taxpayer was covered by this insurance plan; and whether or not the plan was purchased in one of Obamacare’s “exchanges.”
This will involve millions of new tax documents landing in mailboxes across America every January, along with the usual raft of W-2s, 1099s, and 1098s. At tax time, the 140 million families who file a tax return will have to get acquainted with a brand new tax filing form. Six million of these families will end up paying Obamacare’s individual mandate non-compliance tax penalty.
As a service to the public, Americans for Tax Reform has released a projected version of this tax form to help families and tax specialists prepare for this additional filing requirement. Taxpayers may view the projected IRS form at www.ObamacareTaxForm.com. On the form, lines 3-4 show where taxpayers will disclose their personal health ID information.
View PDF here.
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.
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:
Propaganda Quote of the Day
“The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.” – Adolf Hitler
Political Arena 
