Stembridge News Digest

  • Conservative Koch network criticizes U.S. Senate healthcare bill Sun, 25 Jun 2017 14:53:35 -0400
    COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Reuters) - Officials with the conservative U.S. political network overseen by the Koch brothers say they are unhappy with the healthcare bill that may be voted on by the Senate this week and will lobby for changes to it.


  • Top Democrat slams Obama administration's response to Russian hacks Sun, 25 Jun 2017 16:39:52 -0400
    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Democrat on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee on Sunday criticized the administration of former President Barack Obama for not taking earlier and tougher action against Russia for its alleged hacks aimed at swaying the Nov. 8 election for Donald Trump.


  • Mosul celebrates first Eid without Islamic State in years Sun, 25 Jun 2017 15:32:10 -0400
    MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - People in the Iraqi city of Mosul celebrated their first Muslim Eid holiday without Islamic State in years on Sunday after the militants were ejected from much of the city, and hoped the battle to recapture the remaining area would soon be over.


  • Japanese airbag maker Takata files for bankruptcy, gets U.S. sponsor Sun, 25 Jun 2017 22:52:44 -0400
    TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Takata Corp , the firm at the centre of the auto industry's biggest ever product recall, filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States and Japan and said it would seek $1.6 billion in aid from U.S.-based Key Safety Systems (KSS). In one of Japan's biggest bankruptcies, Takata is facing tens of billions of dollars in costs and liabilities resultingfrom almost a decade of recalls and lawsuits. Its airbags have been linked to at least 17 deaths and


  • U.S. top court to rule on last cases as talk about Kennedy swirls Sun, 25 Jun 2017 18:11:23 -0400
    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court is set to issue the final rulings of its current term on Monday, including one on religious rights, amid talk that swing voter Justice Anthony Kennedy is considering retirement.


  • Asia stocks edge up on optimism over global growth, dollar soft Sun, 25 Jun 2017 22:51:17 -0400
    TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares edged up on Monday on optimism about global growth, while the dollar was on the defensive as a subdued U.S. inflation outlook capped U.S. bond yields and raised questions about the Federal Reserve's plans to tighten policy.


  • Vision and screwdrivers: Macron and Merkel converge on Europe Sun, 25 Jun 2017 10:38:22 -0400
    BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Back in January, when his chances of winning the French presidency were considered slim, Emmanuel Macron came to Berlin and spelled out what he felt was needed to fix Europe.


  • New York Pride marchers target Trump as San Francisco parties Sun, 25 Jun 2017 18:07:32 -0400
    NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Large crowds turned out for Pride marches on Sunday in New York City and San Francisco, the two U.S. places most associated with the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights movement, with the East Coast city bringing a more political flavor to the event sparked by events there almost 50 years ago.


  • Italy winds up Veneto banks at cost of up to 17 billion euros Sun, 25 Jun 2017 16:45:32 -0400
    MILAN/ROME (Reuters) - Italy began winding up two failed regional banks on Sunday in a deal that could cost the state up to 17 billion euros ($19 billion) and will leave the lenders' good assets in the hands of the nation's biggest retail bank, Intesa Sanpaolo.


  • Insurance industry warned of fire risk month before tower block blaze Sun, 25 Jun 2017 18:28:27 -0400
    (Reuters) - The insurance industry warned the British government of the dangers of flammable external surfaces on buildings a month before the Grenfell Tower fire that killed at least 79 people.
  • Trump: Not 'that far off' from passing health overhaul
    WASHINGTON (AP) — Making a final push, President Donald Trump said he doesn't think congressional Republicans are "that far off" on a health overhaul to replace "the dead carcass of Obamacare." Expressing frustration, he complained about "the level of hostility" in government and wondered why both parties can't work together on the Senate bill as GOP critics expressed doubt over a successful vote this week.

  • Over 150 dead as overturned fuel truck explodes in Pakistan
    BAHAWALPUR, Pakistan (AP) — Alerted by an announcement over a mosque's loudspeaker that an overturned tanker truck had sprung a leak, scores of villagers raced to the scene with fuel containers Sunday to gather the oil. Then the wreck exploded, engulfing people in flames as they screamed in terror.

  • 10 Things to Know for Today
    Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today:

  • UK: All samples from high-rise towers fail fire safety tests
    LONDON (AP) — The list of high-rise apartment towers in Britain that have failed fire safety tests grew to 60, officials said Sunday, revealing the mounting challenge the government faces in the aftermath of London's Grenfell Tower fire tragedy.

  • Takata files for bankruptcy, overwhelmed by air bag recalls
    Japanese air bag maker Takata Corp. has filed for bankruptcy protection in Tokyo and the U.S., overwhelmed by lawsuits and recall costs related to its production of defective air bag inflators linked to the deaths of at least 16 people.

  • Sean Spicer: CNN’s Jim Acosta Is ‘Sad’ Sun, 25 Jun 2017 18:03:35 +0000
    jim acosta
    Sunday on Fox News Channel’s “MediaBuzz,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer called CNN’s Jim Acosta “sad.” Acosta criticized Spicer as “useless” because the White House has less televised briefings. Spicer said, “It’s sad that he believes if it doesn’t occur on TV — I think some of these reporters are more interested in their YouTube clips than they are in getting factual news. You look at the number of questions asked over and over again just so the reporter can get a clip of themselves saying something or yelling at someone.” “To suggest that if it’s not on television is somewhat nonsensical,” he added. “We engage with the press corps very robustly from early in the morning to late at night. The briefing is one small part of what this staff does.” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
  • Donald Trump: President Obama Knew About Russia and ‘Did Nothing About It’ Sun, 25 Jun 2017 18:22:52 +0000
    President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama talk on the East front steps of the US Capitol after inauguration ceremonies on January 20, 2017 in Washington, DC. / AFP / Robyn BECK (Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)
    President Donald Trump continued pushing back on the left's obsession with Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election, criticizing former President Barack Obama for failing to respond properly.
  • Report: Democrats Behind ‘Dossier’ That FBI Used to Justify Spying on Trump Associates Sun, 25 Jun 2017 15:56:07 +0000
    Traditional Russian Matryoshka dolls in Moscow, depict (L-R) Russian President Vladimir Putin, Hillary Clinton and US Republican president elect Donald Trump
    Author Paul Sperry reports that the Senate is probing the partisan nature of a DC opposition research firm which produced a "dossier" on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016 alleging that he is a secret agent of Russian President Vladimir Putin -- recruited via blackmail with a videotape of Trump and urinating Russian prostitutes.
  • Panicked Democrats to Party Leaders: Voters Care About Economy, Not Russia Mon, 26 Jun 2017 01:03:31 +0000
    WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 25: U.S. House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks during a weekly news briefing May 25, 2017 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Pelosi held her weekly briefing to answer questions from members of the media. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
    A growing number of Democratic lawmakers are publicly pushing their party leadership to shift their focus away from President Donald Trump's alleged election campaign collusion with Russia and toward the issues facing American voters: jobs, health care, and the economy.
  • Very Fake News: CNN Chief Jeff Zucker Takes Reins of Investigation into Retracted Russia Conspiracy Story Sun, 25 Jun 2017 17:42:05 +0000
    CNN President Jeff Zucker attends CNN Heroes Gala 2016 at the American Museum of Natural History on December 11, 2016 in New York City. 26362_011 (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images for Turner)
    The “very fake news” scandal that is engulfing CNN inside and outside the left-wing network now reaches its highest levels as even CNN president Jeff Zucker is personally involved in the internal investigation into a now-retracted hit piece, sources inside CNN with direct knowledge confirmed to Breitbart News.
  • Breitbart News Daily: Politics of Healthcare Reform Mon, 26 Jun 2017 01:38:28 +0000

    On the Monday edition of Breitbart News Daily, broadcast live on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125 from 6AM to 9AM Eastern, Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow will continue our discussion of the Trump administration’s agenda. Thomas P. Miller of the American Enterprise Institute and veteran pollster Pat Caddell will join us to discuss the political and policy debates surrounding the Senate’s healthcare reform bill. Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center will discuss the media reaction to the GOP’s latest healthcare bill, as well as the fallout from actor Johnny Depp’s assassination comments. Peter Schweizer, author of the bestselling book Clinton Cash and President of the Government Accountability Institute, will discuss CNN’s retraction of a fake news story linking Trump to Russia. Live from London, Rome, and Jerusalem, Breitbart correspondents will provide updates on the latest international news. Breitbart News Daily is the first live, conservative radio enterprise to air seven days a week. SiriusXM Vice President for news and talk Dave Gorab called the show “the conservative news show of record.” Follow Breitbart News on Twitter for live updates during the show. Listeners may call into the show at: 866-957-2874.
  • Fake News: Washington Post Claims Thomas Jefferson Held White House Iftar Dinner to ‘Celebrate Ramadan’ Sun, 25 Jun 2017 19:00:57 +0000

    The media is upset this weekend that President Donald Trump canceled the "White House Muslim Iftar Dinner tradition started by Thomas Jefferson." But the media is wrong in every respect. Thomas Jefferson never held any Iftar dinner and only three out of 45 presidents ever hosted one, so there is no such "tradition" to cancel.
  • DHS John Kelly Defunds, Disinvites Islamic Groups Favored By Barack Obama Sun, 25 Jun 2017 08:15:53 +0000
    Islamic
    Administration officials have eliminated 2016 plans to fund Islamic groups closely allied to former President Barack Obama, and have also declined to host an annual Islamic dinner where those groups were able to show their political influence to the ambassadors of wealthy Islamic countries.
  • WATCH: Couple Brutally Beats Restaurant Owners Over Food Order Sun, 25 Jun 2017 22:44:51 +0000

    The incident took place at the Qwik Chick takeout stand adjacent to U.S. Highway 1 in Baxley, Georgia, on Thursday after the couple's chicken allegedly arrived cold and they were not given enough fries.
  • WATCH: Young Girl Falls from Ride at Six Flags, Saved by Park Guests Sun, 25 Jun 2017 23:54:08 +0000

    The New York Post reports that a 14-year-old girl fell almost 25 feet from a ride at a Six Flags amusement park in upstate New York but was luckily caught by a group of park guests and security guards.
  • Eric Trump: Democratic Party ‘Imploding,’ DNC Chair Perez Is a ‘Nut Job’ Sun, 25 Jun 2017 20:28:28 +0000

    Sunday on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” President Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump said the Democratic Party was “imploding” and that the Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez was a “nut job.” Trump said, “I don’t exactly think the message being spewed by the media — the mainstream media, most of them — is really resonating all that well. If you look at the Democratic party — and I keep saying it — they’re imploding. They’ve got no leadership. They’ve got no message. If you look at the DNC, the DNC is half defunct.” “They’ve got no money in the bank,” he continued. “They have no operation. You look at the head of the DNC. He is, quite frankly, a nut job. I mean, what is the Democrats’ message right now? I mean, what are they running on? All they’re doing is obstructing. And it’s clearly not working because every race, every special election, my father is winning.” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
  • Memorial Cross at Airport Threatened with Removal After One Complaint Sun, 25 Jun 2017 21:03:33 +0000
    Ocotillo Wells Memorial Cross (S&S Off Road Magazine)
    In January, one unidentified person made a phone call asking authorities to remove a cross that has stood for 51 years in honor of a fallen Vietnam War soldier at the San Diego County airport in Ocotillo Wells.
  • Bernie and Jane Sanders Lawyer Up as FBI Probes Financial Fraud at Burlington College Sun, 25 Jun 2017 18:50:08 +0000
    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) arrives with his wife Jane for the confirmation vote of Wilbur Ross for the position of Secretary of Commerce at the U.S. Capitol on February 27, 2017 in Washington, DC. Ross was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 72-27. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) Restrictions
    Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and his wife Jane have hired lawyers to navigate the FBI's investigation into alleged financial wrongdoing while Jane was president of Burlington College.
  • Chicago’s ‘Dyke March’ Kicks Jews out of Gay Pride Event Sun, 25 Jun 2017 22:01:45 +0000
    Jewish gay pride flag (Gali Tibbon / AFP / Getty)
    Attendees at the Chicago "Dyke March" who carried Jewish LGBT Pride flags were made to leave on Saturday, according to a report.
  • Rahm Emanuel: Republicans in Congress Aren’t Up to Speed With What Trump’s Base Is Sun, 25 Jun 2017 16:44:27 +0000

    Sunday on CNN’ “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Republicans in Congress do not understand President Donald Trump base. Emanuel said, “The talk about health care vis-a-vis his base, I think, misread what his bass wanted. I think it was a misreading of the Republican base. He changed the Republican base and Republicans in Congress aren’t up to speed with what his base is.” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
  • PBS NewsHour Promotes Leftist Pastor Who Accuses GOP Christians of 'Heresy' June 25, 2017 6:00 PM EDT

    It shouldn’t be surprising that a government-funded broadcasting service would happily promote a socialist Christian preacher that eschews all those old conservative Christian concerns like prayer in school, abortion, and homosexuality – even calling that “heresy” and “theological malpractice.” There was no rebuttal from the conservatives.

    The puff piece subject was Rev. William Barber, who started a series of leftist protests of the Republican governor he called “Moral Mondays.” The correspondent for this segment was Charlayne Hunter-Gault, a longtime co-anchor of the NewsHour in the ‘80s and ‘90s and one of two African-Americans to enroll at the University of Georgia in 1961.

    Barber was promoting a new book titled The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear. Marxist professor Cornel West proclaimed in a book blurb “William Barber is the closest person we have to Martin Luther King, Jr. in our midst." Hunter-Gault began the segment with the same comparison:

    HUNTER-GAULT: In recent weeks, Reverend William Barber stepped down from heading the NAACP in North Carolina to focus on what he calls a national moral revival, updating the Poor People’s Campaign started by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. that linked the civil rights struggle for African-Americans to demands for equality for all poor people.

    He was joined by his co-author Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a former Republican operative and Moral Majority worker who said Barber helped him recognize he had been a racist. He has another book titled Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals. There were no ideological labels, only what PBS presents as common sense:

    REV. WILLIAM BARBER: I said, listen, this legislature just cut, denied Medicaid expansion. There are 1,000 people in this county that would get health care, and they can’t be black, because there are no black people are up here. They cut funding for public education. You are losing teachers here. And they have to be white.

    Now, you voted for some of the people because of what they told you they stood on prayer in school and abortion and homosexuality, but let’s look at what they are doing, and how it is hurting you.

    HUNTER-GAULT: So, basically, what you did was to talk to them about the things that they had in common. And it registered. It permeated their consciousness.

    BARBER: You talk to people honestly, you talk to them about what it means to be a human being, and you show them the hypocrisy. You know, you show them how they’re being fooled, if you will, that people are saying, I care about your best interests, but those people are actually putting in place policies that are hurting everybody.

    This is basically the African-American version of Thomas Frank’s What the Matter with Kansas?, which argued cultural issues caused Americans to vote against their own economic interests. Let's go back to Barber “permeating the [false?] consciousness” of the working class and identifying the "heresy" of the conservative Christians:

    HUNTER-GAULT: What strategy did you use to reach people who had been brought up like Jonathan? What did you do to convince them that this wasn’t right?

    BARBER: I know that many of my white evangelical friends or many African-Americans who were bought into this kind of a public engagement-type faith really have been introduced to — and I say this sorrowfully — a form of heresy and a form of theological malpractice.

    To try to suggest that Jesus was just about a little prayer, a little preaching and a little worship and a little charity — the very Jesus that white evangelicals claim to lift up was a brown-skinned Palestinian Jew whose first sermon was challenging the economic exploitation of the empire.

    This sounds like the Jesus in the Reza Aslan book Zealot, a man who sounds more like a guerrilla fighter than a nonviolent man who says he didn't come for earthly political ends. The sickest joke about this campaign is these radical leftists call themselves the "Repairers of the Breach" while they divisively attack the conservatives as the worst kind of Christians.

    PS: Hannah Lutz at the Juicy Ecumenism blog also found Barber pushing his conservatives-are-heretics line on The New Yorker Radio Hour.

  • MSNBC Panel Decries 'Monster' Paul Ryan, 'Criminal' Health Plan June 25, 2017 7:30 PM EDT

    On Friday's The Last Word on MSNBC, it was the place for demonizing Republicans as regular MSNBC guests Joan Walsh and Nancy Giles called Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan a "monster" and declared that the way Senate Republicans had handled health care reform has been "criminal."

    After substitute host Ari Melber devoted the first part of the segment to a woman, Karen, and her adult disabled son, Mike, who are afraid he will be forced to move away from home and live in a hospital or nursing home, the MSNBC host turned to Walsh -- currently with the left-wing The Nation magazine -- and posed: "Joan, you've been covering the health care battles for seven plus years. I wonder what you're thinking?"

    Walsh got emotional and took aim at Speaker Ryan as she began:

    I'm thinking, "What the hell kind of a country are we, Ari, that Michael has to lose sleep wondering if he can stay in his home with his family?" I mean, what is this family supposed to do? Paul Ryan has been dreaming about cutting this program since he was sitting -- hanging out at keggers in college -- he's told that story.

    As Giles injected, "What kind of a man is he?" Walsh became more harsh as she continued:

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    What kind of a monster is he? Who dreams of cutting Medicaid? They act like people are merely takers -- they act like they don't understand hardship of any kind. Paul Ryan -- who actually got Social Security as a survivor when his father died, God bless him. I mean, the cruelty -- Karen uses that word -- it's the only word we can use -- the cruelty of this bill is beyond belief.

    After Melber recalled that Mike had spoken of being frightened since President Donald Trump was elected, he went to Giles -- a CBS News contributor -- who did her own part to launch into Republicans. Giles:

    I am so overwhelmed at Mike and Karen. I don't even know really what to say. I mean, for starters, that anybody could think the kind of care that he gets and that his mom supports him getting is a luxury, and is not something that is his right as a human being, I just find appalling. I echo what Joan said. I just -- I'm really confused about what kind of country we are? 

    The CBS contributor seemed to mix up Medicaid and Medicare, and even through in Social Security as she suggested that Republican reforms to Medicaid would be tampering with benefits that were "earned," and charged that Republican behavior had been "criminal":

    We are revealed by how we treat our most vulnerable citizens, and if an inefficient system that profits some people could mean that an earned right -- not, you know, not a gift. I mean, Medicaid and Social Security -- they are not gifts. These are things that we earn -- that something like that could be denied someone like Mike who has thrived and used it and has been able to express himself, to not have a chance for his voice to be expressed is just criminal. It's criminal.

  • Maher Likens GOP Plan to 'Zodiac Killer'; Frets Too Many 'Waste-Making' Kids June 25, 2017 3:30 PM EDT

    On Friday's Real Time show on HBO, liberal comedian Bill Maher derided the Senate Republican health care plan as being like "a manifesto from the Zodiac killer," and trashed Republican Senator Ted Cruz as someone who does not believe the bill is "mean" enough, and who has experience at "making people sick."

    He ended the show with a commentary in which he encouraged his audience members to reproduce less and snidely portrayed children as "resource-sucking, waste-making human beings" who are bad for the environment.

    About five minutes into the opening monologue, Maher brought up the GOP health care reform plan:

    And, of course, the, you know, real bad idea and real bad dude this week is the Senate unveiled their super-secret health care bill. (audience boos) Like me after the show, it was hashed out behind closed doors. And, you know, everybody's saying it was unveiled. Unveiled? Unveiled is not the right term. You unveil a sculpture. Nobody goes, "Behold, a turd." This is more likely something that was excreted, I mean.

    He further demonized Republicans as he added:

    Health care bill? More like a manifesto from the Zodiac killer. They should have published this by cutting out letters from the newspaper. It phases out Medicaid -- the safety net for our oldest, poorest, and most vulnerable citizens. It lets states drop the ObamaCare protection for preexisting conditions. And, just for spite, it defunds Planned Parenthood.

    After the audience booed the plan, he complained about proposed tax cuts for the wealthy, and then took aim at Senator Cruz as he added:

    And even still -- I love this -- a small group of Republicans -- (looks at audience member) thank you, one person -- a small group of Republican Senators say they can't vote for it because it's not mean enough. A group led by, not surprisingly, Ted Cruz -- who has been studying health care from top to bottom, up and down. Ted says, "Who knows more about making people sick than I do?"

    As he concluded the regular "News Rules" segment at the end of the show, Maher recalled the passing of Mother's Day and Father's Day, and then called for a celebration of single people who help the world by not producing children. Without noting that most children grow up to be productive and therefore contribute back at the same time that they consume, the left-wing HBO host emphasized children as consumers of resources as he declared:

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    But we've spent a lifetime being the cool aunts and uncles, but while we celebrate everybody else, nobody celebrates us. And they really should because, you know what Mother Nature loves more than electric cars? Condoms. There's literally nothing you can do that's better for the environment than to not produce another resource-sucking, waste-making human being -- probably with a bad attitude.

    He then added:

    I didn't bring a kid into the world to consume valuable resources. Where's my breakfast in bed? Where's my coupon good for one foot rub? Where's my greeting card that says, "Roses are red, Violets are blue, You help the Earth, By keeping a lid on your goo"? So, you know, you can do it all. You can get the hybrid car, do the recycling, not throwing batteries in the trash -- it all adds up to a fraction of the good it would do to have just one less child because that child increases your carbon legacy by over 9,000 tons.

    Below is a transcript of relevant portions of the Friday, June 23, Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO:

    10:05 p.m. ET
    And, of course, the, you know, real bad idea and real bad dude this week is the Senate unveiled their super-secret health care bill. (audience boos) Like me after the show, it was hashed out behind closed doors. And, you know, everybody's saying it was unveiled. Unveiled? Unveiled is not the right term. You unveil a sculpture. Nobody goes, "Behold, a turd." This is more likely something that was excreted, I mean. 

    Health care bill? More like a manifesto from the Zodiac killer. They should have published this by cutting out letters from the newspaper. It phases out Medicaid -- the safety net for our oldest, poorest, and most vulnerable citizens. It lets states drop the ObamaCare protection for preexisting conditions. And, just for spite, it defunds Planned Parenthood. (audience boos) No more gynecological exams, although Trump says he is still available to grab p*****s.

    Now, of course, I'm being one-sided and leaving out the good part. There's a massive tax cut for the top one percent. (audience boos) Yes, the guiding principle is: Rich people, if you like your money, you can keep your money. And even still -- I love this -- a small group of Republicans -- (looks at audience member) thank you, one person -- a small group of Republican Senators say they can't vote for it because it's not mean enough. A group led by, not surprisingly, Ted Cruz -- who has been studying health care from top to bottom, up and down. Ted says, "Who knows more about making people sick than I do?"

    (...)

    10:52 p.m. ET
    And, finally, "New Rule," now that we've had "Mother's Day" and "Father's Day," let's set aside this Sunday to celebrate people who are neither with a new holiday called "I Didn't Reproduce Day." And let me be clear, I am not saying there's anything wrong with having a small number of children. After all, children are the leaders of tomorrow. Sometimes they're even the leaders of today. (shows image of Jared Kushner) I'm just saying, where's the holiday for single people? We don't have a day -- only happy hour. 

    But we've spent a lifetime being the cool aunts and uncles, but while we celebrate everybody else, nobody celebrates us. And they really should because, you know what Mother Nature loves more than electric cars? Condoms. There's literally nothing you can do that's better for the environment than to not produce another resource-sucking, waste-making human being -- probably with a bad attitude.

    i didn't bring a kid into the world to consume valuable resources. Where's my breakfast in bed? Where's my coupon good for one foot rub? Where's my greeting card that says, "Roses are red, Violets are blue, You help the Earth, By keeping a lid on your goo"? So, you know, you can do it all. You can get the hybrid car, do the recycling, not throwing batteries in the trash -- it all adds up to a fraction of the good it would do to have just one less child because that child increases your carbon legacy by over 9,000 tons.

    (...)

    So, you know, having kids or not having kids There's not a moral dimension to it. That's what I'm saying. It's just your taste. i don't have kids for the same reason you do. Because that's what each of us wants. I get it -- lot's of people love kids, although I must say no one in the world ever looks happier than when Maury Povich says, "You are not the father." (shows clips from the Maury Povich Show of men getting excited and celebrating after being told that they are not the father of their girlfriend's child)

    (...)

  • GOP Senators School CBS, NBC Moderators on Fake Cuts to Medicaid June 25, 2017 3:15 PM EDT

    The Sunday morning shows of the Big Three Networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) were filled with discussion of the health care bill recently released by Senate Republicans on Thursday. That discussion was loaded with fake news about the bill drastically slashing Medicaid, which was being pushed by the program moderators. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos actually yelled at Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway because she refuted it. Meanwhile, on the other networks, GOP Senators were embarrassing their hosts by educating them on what the bill actually did to Medicaid. One Senator didn’t even support the bill.

    CBS host John Dickerson had Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey on Face the Nation to discuss his support for the proposed legislation. “We just heard Senator Manchin on the Democratic side, but on the Republican side, there are two criticisms: That too much ObamaCare is left in place and then criticisms from say, Senator Heller, which is that these Medicaid cuts are too big,” he prefaced his question to the Senator. “How do those get solved?”

    “Yeah. Listen, it's going to be a challenge, but I have to strongly disagree with the characterization that we're somehow ending the Medicaid expansion,” Pat Toomey said, immediately shooting down Dickerson’s assertion. He then proceeded to lecture Dickerson on what the bill would do for poor people:

    In fact, quite the contrary. The Senate bill will codify and make permanent the Medicaid expansion, and will, in fact, have the federal government pay the lion's share of the cost. Remember, ObamaCare created a new category of eligibility. Working age, able-bodied adults with no dependents for the first time became eligible for Medicaid if their income is below 138 percent of the poverty level.

    “We're continuing that eligibility. No one loses coverage,” Toomey added as he then explained where the funding was coming from. The Senator from Pennsylvania appeared to have left Dickerson speechless. The CBS moderator didn’t address Toomey’s correction, instead, he called on his other guest, Republican Senator Bill Cassidy to give his perspective as a former doctor in a poor area.

    On NBC’s Meet the Press, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson chastised moderator Chuck Todd for pushing the “inflamed rhetoric” of false cuts to Medicaid:

    You know, here’s some other inflamed rhetoric. You said it yourself: “slashing Medicaid.” Now that's Washington's speak. My definition of a cut is spending being reduced year over year. We don't have the final figures. But any projections that I've been working with regardless of the bill, I don't see anything other than a reduction in the growth of spending.

    Johnson explained to Todd that he didn’t support the bill or the process in which it was crafted because it didn’t fix ObamaCare the way it needed to be. So Senator’s words carried extra weight when he requested that the media “be honest about what we're talking about here.” He seemed to implore Todd to think of the future generations in order to get government spending under control. “We are mortgaging our children's future. A compassionate society doesn’t impoverish future generation for benefits in the here and now,” he said.

    Senator Johnson’s call for honesty by the media was of vital importance to elevating the political discourse surrounding the Senate’s bill. It was an example of how one can disagree with a piece of policy on stable terms without having to concoct fake news about what it does. The liberal media need to learn a lesson from this GOP Senator.

    Transcripts below;

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    CBS
    Face the Nation
    June 25, 2017
    10:52:41 AM Eastern

    JOHN DICKERSON: There seem to be two criticisms of the bill. We just heard Senator Manchin on the Democratic side, but on the Republican side, there are two criticisms that too much ObamaCare is left in place and then criticisms from say, Senator Heller, which is that these Medicaid cuts are too big. How do those get solved?

    PAT TOOMEY: Yeah. Listen, it's going to be a challenge, but I have to strongly disagree with the characterization that we're somehow ending the Medicaid expansion. In fact, quite the contrary. The Senate bill will codify and make permanent the Medicaid expansion, and will, in fact, have the federal government pay the lion's share of the cost. Remember, ObamaCare created a new category of eligibility. Working age, able-bodied adults with no dependents for the first time became eligible for Medicaid if their income is below 138 percent of the poverty level.

    We're continuing that eligibility. No one loses coverage. What we are going to do, gradually over seven years is transition from the 90 percent federal share that ObamaCare created and transition that to where the federal government is still paying a majority, but the states are kicking in their fair share; an amount equivalent to what they pay for all the other categories of eligibility.

    As far as some of my conservative friends who are concerned the bill doesn't go far enough, I'm sympathetic about the kinds of reforms they would like the make the lower premiums through more market forces and greater freedom on the part of consumers. But I see this bill as a first step, a first important step in the direction of repealing those portions of ObamaCare that we can, stabilizing the individual market, which is collapsing, and making important reforms to Medicaid. It's not the last step.

    (…)

    ...

    NBC
    Meet the Press
    June 25, 2017
    10:40:02 AM Eastern

    (…)

    CHUCK TODD: The point is: During the campaign you used that fun little buzzword [repeal and replace] and your constituents are hearing that buzzword look at buzzword, and they’re looking at this now and saying: “You've been promising repeal and replace on the campaign trail for seven years as party.” Now you’re being realistic, I think, in the January statement when there isn’t an election coming. But isn't this part of the problem in that you use one set of rhetoric during an election year and then when you need a pragmatic process, the constituents don't buy it?

    RON JOHNSON: Well the problem, Chuck, is on shows like this you get a couple of minutes and you have to condense what you want to do. No, I would repeal all of ObamaCare and I would replace it with something that actually worked. Focus on repair, that’s those skyrocketing premiums those are the collapsing markets, that’s addressing the forgotten men and women.

    You know, here’s some other inflamed rhetoric. You said it yourself: “slashing Medicaid.” Now that's Washington's speak. My definition of a cut is spending being reduced year over year. We don't have the final figures. But any projections that I've been working with regardless of the bill, I don't see anything other than a reduction in the growth of spending. So let's be honest about what we're talking about here. We are $20 trillion in debt, over the next 30 years according to the CBO, another $129 trillion of accumulated deficit. We are mortgaging our children's future. A compassionate society doesn’t impoverish future generation for benefits in the here and now.

    (…)

  • Phil Donahue Rambles Aimlessly about His Trump Hostility June 25, 2017 1:30 PM EDT

    Have you ever had an old grand-uncle that you haven't seen in ages and that you have almost completely forgotten about suddenly show up from out of nowhere? His return quickly reminds you why you originally found him so annoying since he is still obsessed about the same grudges upon which he still continues expounding in an aimless manner.

    In this case it is former liberal talk show host Phil Donahue who appeared with Brian Stelter on his CNN Reliable Sources show on June 25. Yes, it was the same old by the numbers predictable liberal Phil and, of course, he was obsessed over President Donald Trump. Donahue went into some bizarre places in order to express his hostility towards Trump, starting with his obsession with people taking cell phone pictures at Trump rallies as we shall see in the following clip:

    BRIAN STELTER: What do you see? You see a lot of bad news out there?

    PHIL DONAHUE: Well --

    STELTER: I mean, Five months into the Trump presidency and you're not known for being a very conservative guy.

    DONAHUE: No. That's true. I think the press really missed or at least ignored an important story. That is, as Trump walks out at the rallies, you know, all the cell phones above the head that you see from the back?

    STELTER: Yes.

    DONAHUE: Who are those people?

    No mystery. They are people with cell phones who want to record their encounter with President Trump.

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    DONAHUE: The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, is the one who is saying his constituents are looking at all of this and saying, what about me?

    I think the mainstream media has -- it's Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. They haven't drilled down on why is he president? How did this happen?

    And I think they're going to discover -- well, I think it's already revealed. These are angry people. These are -- as we know now -- white working class people. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan.

    These are the people who make things. Or -- and they don't -- maybe they haven't had a raise in eight years. The rumor is that their company is being sold. Their kids can't pay back their college loans.

    They come back exhausted from their day at the factory. And they read the paper where a guy in a hedge fund made a million dollars on Thursday.

    You can't do this to people. Sooner or later, they're going to go kaboom. And they did. And the kaboom expressed itself in the election of Donald Trump.

    Same circumstance for Brexit. David Leonhardt, new...

    STELTER: "New York Times," yes.

    Yes, time now for Donahue to flit to another anti-Trump topic to ramble aimlessly about.

    DONAHUE: A new voice on the op-ed page, and I think a welcome one, had a fascinating piece just this week. He makes the point that the reason -- the people who elected Donald Trump president didn't vote. If...

    STELTER: You mean because so many people didn't vote.

    And now Donahue rambles on and on about how Trump got elected because so many people didn't vote.

    DONAHUE: Yes, right.

    The victory for -- or at least the people who cause him to lose would be the people who didn't vote who wouldn't have voted for him. It's a little bit of a difficult thing to grasp.

    STELTER: I made that mistake on air yesterday. I said on CNN, oh, well, 46 percent of the country voted for President Trump.

    Actually, no, about 19 percent of the country voted for Trump, and then a little bit more for Clinton, and then a lot of people didn't vote.

    DONAHUE: Hypocrisy is killing us.

    We're running around America -- America -- and at least half of us don't vote. Only 17 percent of 18-to-24 -- the earliest voters are not voting at all. Older voters have a better record, to be sure.

    Okay, enough with that shtick, Phil. Could you now bore us with another anti-Trump aimless ramble?

    DONAHUE: I mean, this is the Republican mantra. The only thing government should do is build things that go boom. And we have people out here whose financial strength is serious in deficit. And now we have got a health care -- Republicans are sleeping with a time bomb and they're not sure what to do. But it's all making the middle class angry.

    And now to Donahue's strange fixation with the young women behind Trump at his recent rally in Iowa:

    DONAHUE: And these -- the people are left with television shows that are talking about Trump, Trump, Trump. And I have to say -- and, by the way, he gets on the airplane, a big old airplane, flies anywhere in this country and four cars meet him, all black limousines. And he goes to the nearest, largest venue in that area and sells out. Not an empty seat. Walks in.

    And now they're producing these -- this is fascinating me. The other night at his rally, there were four or five really cute white girls. There are black people at those rallies, but you got to look for them. And they're behind him.

    STELTER: You're talking about the rally the other day he had in prime time on TV.

    DONAHUE: Yes. Well, it's happening more and more.

    They're being produced. These little girls are taking his picture. He turns around and faces them and they're taking then -- and then they're showing...

    STELTER: You don't think that was a coincidence, huh?

    DONAHUE: Oh, come on. This is a brilliant management of a campaign that continues.

    Donahue finally leaves behind his obsession with "these little girls" but sounds no less unhinged as he rambles on and on with his Trump antipathy until the sad end of the interview.

  • NY Times Runs Father and Son's Risible McCarthyite Projections on Trump and His Dumb Supporters June 25, 2017 1:45 PM EDT

    It was Father-and-Son Left-Wing Paranoia Day in the New York Times Sunday Review, as James Risen and Tom Risen penned “Donald Trump Does His Best Joe McCarthy.” James is an grizzled investigative reporter for the paper who has had his shares of legal scrapes with the Obama Justice Department for refusing to reveal his sources for his 2006 book State of War. His son Tom is a reporter for an aerospace magazine.

    Under the assuredly ominous date-line of Wheeling, West Virginia, the Risens ranted:

    On Feb. 9, 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy disembarked from his Capital Airlines plane at Stifel Field here, where he planned to speak at a Lincoln Day event hosted by the Ohio County Women’s Republican Club.

    At the McLure Hotel downtown that night, Joe McCarthy, a 41-year-old junior Republican senator from Wisconsin, gave one of the most infamous speeches in American history, mixing right-wing demagogy and outright lies as he claimed that there were hundreds of Communists burrowed deep in the State Department and accused President Harry Truman’s Democratic administration of refusing to weed them out.

    It’s a bit rich to call Trump a McCarthyite, given that the only weapon in his opponents’ bag these days seems to be making unsubstantiated and increasingly dubious links between his successful presidential campaign and the Russians.

    But within days, Mr. McCarthy’s accusation that there was a hidden Communist cabal at the heart of the American government blew up into a bitter national controversy. And before long, Joe McCarthy’s Wheeling speech had triggered a wave of paranoia and fear mongering that would forever bear his name: McCarthyism.

    Wait for it….

    On June 28, 2016, another Republican politician landed at Stifel, now named Wheeling Ohio County Airport, to campaign here: Donald Trump.

    ….

    There, the Republican nominee for president spoke to a crowd of roughly 4,000. “There’s something going on that’s really, really bad,” he said. “And we better get smart, and we better get tough, or we’re not going to have much of a country left, O.K.?”

    It was a dark speech that harkened back to the most fearful tones of Joe McCarthy. Drumming up fears about the Islamic State, which he said was “spreading like wildfire,” Mr. Trump said that if he was elected, he would bring back the use of torture techniques like waterboarding in the interrogations of terrorism suspects…..

    One year after he walked in Joe McCarthy’s footsteps in Wheeling, Mr. Trump now practices Mr. McCarthy’s version of the politics of fear from the White House. The two figures, who bear striking similarities -- and who shared an adviser, Roy Cohn -- both mastered the art of fear politics.

    Not hiding their animus, the Risens tapped into the smug ideas idea that Trump voters are uneducated ignorami:

    He keeps doing it because it works for him, just like it worked for Joe McCarthy. Mr. Trump knows what people want to hear — how terrifying the world can be and how he can protect them. Fearmongering resonates with his political base, particularly white voters without college degrees.

    And racist too:

    Underlying it all is a broad and unspoken fear of the looming loss of white dominance in American society. Increased diversity, notably the rapidly growing Hispanic population in the United States, is leading to a broader fear of all minority groups and foreigners, analysts believe.

    The Risens ate up the whole credential gap among Trump voters:

    “Clearly there is an audience for speeches that rally nationalist causes and against amorphous perceived threats,” [Professor Scott] Crichlow said. “What I think may be driving some of the appeal of the politics of fear is the state’s low education and demographics.”

    They got a condescending soundbite from Wheeling Mayor Glenn Elliott:

    “When you have 40 years of economic stagnation, that leads to frustration with the status quo and to zero-sum thinking,” the mayor said. “And I also think part of his appeal was that he said, I’m going to protect you from the Muslims, or Hispanics. There is a fear of that.”

    The Risens really stretched to link Trump to Joe McCarthy: He was from the 1950s, which is the same era Trump supporters (at least the ones in our heads) want to go back to!

    Trump supporters want to make America great again, to go back to what they believe were the halcyon days of the 1950s, which, ironically, was the decade of the fearmongering of Joe McCarthy.

     

  • Fake News: Stephanopoulos Claims Senate Bill Cuts Medicaid by $800 Billion June 25, 2017 12:00 PM EDT

    After Senate Republicans unveiled their ObamaCare replacement on Thursday, ABC smeared the bill during World News Tonight with claims that people were going to pay more for less and that Medicaid was being cut. On Sunday, Clinton lackey George Stephanopoulos took to his show, This Week to continue their smear campaign. “The President right there said no cuts in Medicaid … Why is the President going back on his promise,” he rudely yelled at Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.

    According to Stephanopoulos, “A lot of senators have questions about the Senate bill. Particularly those cuts in Medicaid. More than $800 billion.” He also asserted that the cuts to Medicaid in the Senate bill were larger than those in the House bill.

    “These are not cuts to Medicaid, George. This slows the rate for the future and it allows governors more flexibility with Medicaid dollars because they're closest to the people in need,” Conway tried to explain. “We are trying to get Medicaid back to its original moorings. And--” she said before her host cut her off and spoke over her.

    Sounding irritated, the ABC host said: “Kellyanne, I don’t see how you can say the more $800 billion in savings is not cuts.” He tried to back up is claim with the criticisms of big government Republicans. “You don’t have to take my word for it,” he said defensively. “It’s the Republican senators you're facing right now who have that problem, led by Senator Dean Heller of Nevada [and Susan Collins].”

    Conway again tried to explain why they were incorrect about there being cuts, but Stephanopoulos continued to interrupt her to tell her she was wrong:

    Kellyanne, hold on a second. There's no way you can say a 15-year-old on Medicaid today is not going to be affected by the cuts in the future. You said everybody on Medicaid now is grandfathered in and is not going to face any cuts. That simply is not factual if you have more than $800 billion in cuts. It’s also—

    It was Conway's turn to interrupt. “But you keep calling them cuts. We don't see them as cuts. It’s slowing the rate of growth in the future and getting Medicaid back to where it was,” she accurately told Stephanopoulos. “ObamaCare expanded the pool of Medicaid recipients beyond its original intentions.”

    And she’s right. The Senate bill doesn’t cut Medicaid, it only slows down the rate of spending growth by the federal government. In fact, the bill pegs spending growth to inflation so it’s almost guaranteed to go up every year.

    But, of course, in Washington D.C. anything that’s not an increase in spending is considered a cut. President Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney had expertly mocked D.C.’s definition of a budget cut during a press briefing back in May. “There are no Medicaid cuts in the terms of what ordinary human beings would refer to as a cut. We are not spending less money one year than we spent before,” Mulvaney joked as he talked about a proposed budget at the time.

    But to Stephanopoulos, the facts be damned. “Again, it's the Republican senators calling this cuts. It’s the experts calling this cuts. You can't say that $800 billion in savings are not cuts,” he exclaimed before turning the subject to funding for fighting opioid addiction. He also falsely claimed that Trump was gutting that too.

    Shameless Stephanopoulos never addressed if there were actual cut to Medicaid. He had no problem with going along with false assertions of cuts because it helped the liberal smears against the GOP bill.

    Transcript below:

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    ABC
    This Week
    June 25, 2017
    9:05:05 AM Eastern

    GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: So, you laid out the problems with Obamacare. A lot of senators have questions about the Senate bill. Particularly those cuts in Medicaid. More than $800 billion. I want to show the President's first speech when he announced for president.

    DONALD TRUMP: Save Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security without cuts. Have to do it.

    STEPHANOPOULOS: The President right there said no cuts in Medicaid, had several tweets on that same subject. This bill has, even more, Medicaid cuts than the House bill. Why is the President going back on his promise?

    KELLYANNW CONWAY: These are not cuts to Medicaid, George. This slows the rate for the future and it allows governors more flexibility with Medicaid dollars, because they're closest to the people in need. Medicaid's imperative, its founding was meant to help the poor, the sick, the needy, the disabled, children, some elderly, women, particularly pregnant women. We are trying to get Medicaid back to its original moorings. And--

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    STEPHANOPOULOS [Interrupting Conway]: Kellyanne, I don’t see how you can say the more $800 billion in savings is not cuts. And don’t—You don’t have to take my word for it. It’s the Republican senators you're facing right now who have that problem, led by Senator Dean Heller of Nevada. He said he's voting no. Also Senator Susan Collins.

    (…)

    STEPHANOPOULOS: Kellyanne, hold on a second. There's no way you can say a 15-year-old on Medicaid today is not going to be affected by the cuts in the future. You said everybody on Medicaid now is grandfathered in and is not going to face any cuts. That simply is not factual if you have more than $800 billion in cuts. It’s also—

    CONWAY: But you keep calling them cuts. We don't see them as cuts. It’s slowing the rate of growth in the future and getting Medicaid back to where it was. ObamaCare expanded the pool of Medicaid recipients beyond its original intentions. And George, you have to look at the whole health care bill, 142 pages in total here in order to have a full conversation.

    (…)

    STEPHANOPOULOS: Again, it's the Republican senators calling this cuts. It’s the experts calling this cuts. You can't say that $800 billion in savings are not cuts.

  • NBC’s Chuck Todd Asserts Obama Not Swaying Election Akin to 9/11 June 25, 2017 9:45 AM EDT

    Last this week, The Washington Post published an article saying that the Obama administration knew well in advance of Election Day 2016 that Russia was trying to meddle the U.S. election process. And despite their knowledge, they chose not to go public because of the fear that many would think President Obama was swaying the election to Hillary Clinton. During NBC’s Sunday Today, the network’s Chuck Todd let his true feelings show when equated Obama not putting his figure on the electoral scale to President Bush not acting on intelligence reports about Osama bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks.

    “This was a Washington Post story this week that said Obama administration soft-pedaled its response to the Russian meddling because it didn’t want to be seen as putting its thumb on the scale of this election,” prefaced host Willie Geist, before asking Todd the triggering question. “What’s the impact of that story and all this stew of Russia?”

    Todd whined that Trump was making his “head spin” by creating the “atmosphere” that kept Obama from taking the Russian meddling intelligence public. “I mean, for the very reason: Here's President Trump criticizing former President Obama for not doing anything,” he bemoaned. “Well at the time they got this intelligence, candidate Donald Trump was telling everybody that this election was going to get rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton.”

    According to Todd, “In hindsight, though, there clearly a bunch of Obama White House folks are hand-wringing about this.” Todd seemed to be almost obsessed or disturbed by Obama’s decision because he declared that he would “never get over” how one Obama official claimed that “we choked” for not speaking out.

    The story seemed to hit a boiling point for the Meet the Press moderator. “Look, this could be, Willie, what the infamous August 6th presidential intelligence daily briefing: ‘Bin Laden determined to strike the U.S. before 9/11,’” he announced, with a slight tinge of anger.

    “This may be the equivalent in history on this Russian infiltration of the American democracy. We may go back and say: ‘This was equivalent of that,’” He continued to rant. “The Obama administration had the intelligence, had the smoking gun, and decided to pull back for fear of politicizing the election.” What Todd failed to mention was that the warning received by Bush was not a cut-and-dry fact, but a vague prediction about what bin Laden wanted to do with no set date. In sharp contrast, Obama's intelligence was about what they knew to be happening at the time.

    Geist seemed to sympathize with Todd, saying: “And as you say, we’re hearing from a lot of Obama, who behind the scenes saying we should have done more in real time.”

    In a commercial for his show on MSNBC, MTP Daily, Todd once claimed to be the “referee” who was out there to enforce the political “rules.” By misleadingly comparing the Bush administration’s and the Obama administration’s inactions on intelligence, Todd is equating 9/11 with Trump’s presidency. That doesn’t sound like an unbiased referee. That sounds like one that has chosen a clear side to back and throws his own low blows.

    Transcript below:

     

    NBC
    Sunday Today
    June 25, 2017
    8:06:24 AM Eastern

    (…)

    WILLIE GEIST: Let me move on to Russia because when President Trump wasn’t tweeting about health care this week he was tweeting about Russia. I’ll read you one of them, Chuck. “Just out: The Obama administration knew far in advance of November 8th about lection meddling by Russia. Did nothing about it. Why?” Put to the side the fact that he acknowledges Russian meddling in that tweet right there, something he has not done previously. Just go to this is a story—This was a Washington Post story this week that said Obama administration soft-pedaled its response to the Russian meddling because it didn’t want to be seen as putting its thumb on the scale of this election. What’s the impact of that story and all this stew of Russia?

    CHUCK TODD: Well look, talk about making your head spin. I mean, for the very reason: Here's President Trump criticizing former President Obama for not doing anything. Well at the time they got this intelligence, candidate Donald Trump was telling everybody that this election was going to get rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton. And that was the atmosphere that the Obama administration was dealing with publicly when they got this intelligence, so we understand the reason why they did this. In hindsight, though, there clearly a bunch of Obama White House folks are hand-wringing about this. That line, I’ll never get over, you know: “We choked.”

    Look, this could be, Willie, what the infamous August 6th presidential intelligence daily briefing: “Bin Laden determined to strike the U.S. before 9/11.” This may be the equivalent in history on this Russian infiltration of the American democracy. We may go back and say: “This was equivalent of that.” The Obama administration had the intelligence, had the smoking gun, and decided to pull back for fear of politicizing the election.

    GEIST: And as you say, we’re hearing from a lot of Obama, who behind the scenes saying we should have done more in real time.

    (…)

  • Why Is The Huffington Post Afraid of The Washington Post? June 25, 2017 7:30 AM EDT

    This week, NewsBusters and other sides noticed that after the death of Otto Warmbier, The Huffington Post edited, but did not take down a controversial article entitled “North Korea Proves Your White Male Privilege Is Not Universal.”

    Washington Post media blogger Eric Wemple also grew interested in why the HuffPost would keep the Warmbier-bashing piece, when it unpublished a contributor arguing President Trump was right about the negatives of immigration in Sweden...as if that was more offensive. Here's what he found: the Huffington Post is terrible at returning phone calls from other media outlets.

    Why is The Huffington Post afraid of The Washington Post? It's not like Wemple is a right-winger with a Make America Great Again hat. His wife works at Mother Jones.

    Writer La Sha asserted Warmbier was the victim of white male privilege as it’s inculcated in America: “Every economic, academic, legal and social system in this country has for more than three centuries functioned with the implicit purpose of ensuring that white men are the primary benefactors of all privilege.” She even compared Warmbier to white male mass shooters.

    Here’s how Wemple reported trying to get an answer out of HuffPost:

    For days now, the Erik Wemple Blog has been attempting to engage HuffPost in a discussion about the piece. Lena Auerbuch Anderson, a spokeswoman for the site, emailed this statement: “HuffPost’s contributor platform operates an opinion site that hosts hundreds of items per day, and inevitably some are going to be more controversial than others,” reads the statement. “We enforce clear standards regarding hate speech and factual accuracy, but we’re not in the business of deleting posts because we disagree with the opinions in them.”

    That contributor platform is a holdover from the days when HuffPost was the Huffington Post, the creation of mogul Arianna Huffington. The idea was to supplement the often-very-good original reporting of the Huffington Post with a come-one, come-all content vertical that delivered free content — and free traffic — from voices everywhere. It was a critical part of the founder’s utopia of very well-rested liberals improving the world one clickbaity blog post at a time, mixed with a managerial blind spot toward tawdry partnerships with mattress producers and ride-sharing companies.

    Just last year, the outlet streamlined procedures for posting on the contributor platform, the better to boost the ranks of these folks from 100,000 to 1 million. A backlash ensued...

    Now the contributors are fading. The blog hired Lydia Polgreen, an editor at The New York Times…..

    And the contributor platform is closed to new entrants, as of this writing. We asked Anderson whether that status reflected any policy decision at HuffPost. We didn’t get a reply, though one source indicated that Polgreen “wants to build a mini-New York Times.” The New York Times lacks a freewheeling contributor network.

    The Erik Wemple Blog would prefer to bag anonymous descriptions of Polgreen’s intentions in favor of input directly from her. Repeated appeals for an interview, however, went nowhere. With her background in mainstream media, though, Polgreen surely grasps the awkwardness of the contributor system that she has inherited. Why should her reporters have to deal with the fallout from a story that they had no role in generating? “Staffers aren’t thrilled when some controversial contributor piece gets intertwined with what the newsroom is trying to do,” says a HuffPost source.

    It's fun to see an anonymous source inside the media. Perhaps if there were more stories quoting anonymous sources inside media outlets, they would get a sense of how that can seem like a great way to mischaracterized someone's thoughts or statements, or simply trash somebody with no consequences. 

    Polgreen is somehow unwilling to talk to a fellow liberal at The Washington Post about this, but she did vaguely discuss the issue back in March on CNN’s Reliable Sources when they were discussing host Brian Stelter's favorite topic -- Fox News -- and he asked if the HuffPost had trouble separating news from opinion, or in their case, their full-time paid writers and the contributors who are unpaid: 

    POLGREEN: Well, we try to be very clear about it. But, again, you know, we have contributors in our network. But we have to be very clear about the fact that people see things and they don't distinguish whether it's opinion or news. I've often said that at The New York Times, there was this tradition of having ragged right [text justification] on a news analysis piece rather than a justified right on a news piece. And we acted as if that with a clear signal to the reader that you're reading analysis and not straight news.

    STELTER: We both used to work there and we both know that doesn't work. That's not enough.

    POLGREEN: It doesn't work. And, you know, the confuse -- even though the op-ed page of The New York Times is far removed from the news pages, people -- if you read it in The New York Times, you read it in The New York Times. So, this is a much larger media literacy issue.

    So why isn't this logic leading Polgreen to take down the piece slashing Warmbier? Because minority journalists won't take down a "white privilege" piece? By contrast, Wemple explained what HuffPost labored to take down:

    For an example of when HuffPost does delete a contributor piece, please see this archived item from February. Contributor René Zografos argued that President Trump was right in his comments about the impact of immigration in Sweden. “It’s well known for Scandinavians and other Europeans that liberal immigration comes with drugs, rapes, gang wars, robbery and violence,” wrote Zografos. “Additional to that we see the respective nations cultures fading away, for good and for bad.” Also: “The truth is, that several European cities have huge immigration problems where even the police force is afraid to interfere in some locations in these cities. UK, France and several other European countries are changing rapidly with extreme quantity of immigration. I’m not saying immigration is only bad, but a lot of problems come with poor immigration policy, as consequences we get violence, terror and gangs.”

    Does that stuff amount to hate speech or factual inaccuracies? A rep for HuffPost told the Daily Caller’s Peter Hasson back in February that the piece violated “our terms of use.” We’ve reached out to HuffPost in an attempt to determine why that piece triggered deletion, but not the Warmbier piece. We’ll update when we hear back.

    In the meantime, laugh at the HuffPost if they complain the Trump White House isn't engaging enough with the press. 

  • NPR Sides With Leftist LGBT Activists Targeting 'Cruel' Catholic Bishop June 24, 2017 7:15 PM EDT

    NPR blatantly slanted against a Catholic bishop in Illinois who recently instructed his priests to deny the Eucharist, last rites, and funerals to homosexuals in civil marriages. The public radio outlet filled their Friday write-up on Bishop Thomas Paprocki's decree with quotes from four activists who dissent against the Catholic Church's teachings on sexuality. While the article included excerpts from the cleric's document, as well as from a statement from his diocese, they failed to interview anyone conservative or orthodox to provide more balance to the four dissenters.

    Correspondent Laurel Wamsley highlighted near the beginning of her article, "Illinois Bishop Decrees No Communion, Funeral Rites For Same-Sex Spouses," that Bishop Paprocki had issued "a set of norms on same-sex marriage and related pastoral issues that he says are the policy of the diocese." Wamsley summarized the bishop of Springfield's instructions:

    Paprocki's decree bans priests and parish staff from performing same-sex marriages or allowing same-sex weddings or receptions at any Catholic facilities. People in same-sex marriages "should not present themselves for Holy Communion, nor should they be admitted to Holy Communion." A person in a same-sex marriage who is facing death may only receive communion after expressing "repentance for his or her sins."...Paprocki writes that "unless they have given some signs of repentance before their death," people in same-sex marriages may not receive a Catholic funeral.

    The NPR journalist didn't mention that the hierarch concluded his decree by reminding his priests that "while being clear and direct about what the Church teaches, our pastoral ministry must always be respectful, compassionate and sensitive to all our brothers and sisters in faith.

    Wamsley devoted 12 out of the remaining 17 paragraphs of her report to the quotes from the dissenters. She first turned to two leaders of DignityUSA, which she described as a "LGBT Catholic group." However, she omitted that the organizaton has a long track record of dissent against the Church's teachings on marriage. An October 2014 report about the group by CBS News pointed out that Dignity peformed a same-sex wedding ceremony for "LGBTQ activist" Brendan Fay and his partner.

    The journalist noted that DignityUSA's new president, Christopher Pett, denounced Bishop Paprocki's document as "mean-spirited and hurtful in the extreme." She also cited the organization's executive director, Marianne Duddy-Burke, who contended that it was "simply cruel and shameful to refuse burial or Communion to those who seek the grace and comfort that our Church offers at some of the most difficult moments of life."

    Before quoting from her third socially-left activist, Wamsley disclosed that the Springfield Diocese had issued a statement on the controversy: "Regarding the specific issue of funeral rites, people who had lived openly in same-sex marriage, like other manifest sinners that give public scandal, can receive ecclesiastical funeral rites if they have given some signs of repentance before their death." This excerpt referenced the Church's code of canon law, which regulates who may or may not receive Catholic funerals.

    The NPR correspondent then set aside five paragraphs to quotes from Michael Sean Winters, whom she described as being a "columnist at National Catholic Reporter, an independent newspaper." Just as in the case of DignityUSA, she failed to mention the Reporter has a decades-long history of providing a platform for heterodox activists. They left out that Winters is a Democrat who had a book party in 2008 at the home of George Stephanopoulos for his tome Left at the Altar: How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats

    Winters first asserted, "I can't imagine a cruder thing more at cross purposes with what the Holy Father [Pope Francis] is trying to do." The liberal columnist later made an outlandish claim about Bishop Paprocki's peers: "Privately, 95 percent of other bishops in the U.S. are reading [the decree] and are horrified. Even the ones who are pretty arch on same-sex marriage think this is too far." How would Winters know this?

    Wamsley followed her earlier bias by omission with her final Catholic dissenter, Christopher Hale, by merely noting that he "co-edits an online journal for young Catholics called Millennial." She didn't mention that Hale "helped lead national Catholic outreach for President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign," as his National Catholic Reporter bio revealed. The editor stated that "a church that excludes the LGBT community is a church without a future," and that "no one goes to the grave without sin....Every Catholic deserves a Catholic funeral."

    Hale, along with all of his confreres, should spend more time brushing up on Church teaching and canon law, instead of doing all in their power to change it to suit their left-wing agenda.

  • People Loads Up '100 Reasons to Love America' List with Liberal Items June 24, 2017 9:00 AM EDT

    The cover story of the July 3 edition of People magazine carries the theme “100 Reasons to Love America,” and number one is Chip and Joanna Gaines, the stars of the HGTV show Fixer Upper. It’s odd enough that the four-page article never mentions Buzzfeed's attempt to scald them for attending a church opposing same-sex marriage.

    Then came “99 More Reasons to Love America”…which largely skipped over the liberty-and-justice-for-all part and lunged into the typical liberal messaging, starting at #10, for “March Madness,” not the college basketball tournament, but “Standing up for women, science and more to exercise our rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.”

    The #96 reason to love America was Jack Schlossberg, the son of Caroline Kennedy and the grandson of JFK. Oh, it starts with a mention of “freedom and equality,” and then comes the Trump-bashing (without naming him).

    I love that I am free to say that I don’t love the new trajectory of American leadership. I am horrified by our government’s proposed immigration ban, I’m embarrassed that the United States pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement, and I’m frustrated that our government is attempting to take away health care for millions. I love how many Americans are speaking out against these developments that are antithetical to the values that made America the greatest nation on earth.

    Jack also loves protein powder and making jokes on the Internet. People also makes weird Love-America choices in food, including American cheese, Spam, and the dreadful Unicorn Frappucino at Starbucks. Trader Joe’s is honored with this message: “As much religion as grocery store.”

    The #27 reason to love America was Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer & Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump.” To inhabit Trump, Baldwin told Stephen Colbert, “left eyebrow up, right eyebrow down. Shove your face like you’re trying to suck the chrome off the fender of a car.” That’s liberal MAGA, apparently.

    The anti-Trump note continued in #47, a 2020 presidential ticket of The Rock and Tom Hanks, and #49 with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, atheist scold. “With the issues before us like climate and energy, science literacy is urgent,” he says. Melinda Gates is #69, touting how her foundation “invest in contraceptives around the world,” so women can “space their pregnancies.” There’s no mention of their support for international abortion advocates.

    Openly gay People editorial director Jess Cagle also hit a scale of LGBT notes, honoring Bette Midler in Hello, Dolly, the “Will & Grace revival,” Project Runway-winning fashion designer Christian Siriano, Bravo TV host Andy Cohen, and Barry Jenkins, who made the Oscar-winning film Moonlight, about a black, gay teenager.

    Number 81 was “Children’s Hospital Los Angeles,” which saved Jimmy Kimmel’s son: “Kimmel used the platform of his late-night show to praise CHLA and to advocate for health care for all children, regardless of financial need or preexisting conditions.”

    Comedian Aziz Ansari was #85, described as “a gentle voice of reason in a harsh world.” Um…they must have missed the episode of Ansari’s Netflix series Master of None where he had a character say of Justice Clarence Thomas “F--- his ass.” 

    There are two nods to Republicans. Number 60 is the “George W. Bush and Michelle Obama friendship.” Number 28 was Meghan McCain. She had a red-state list of what makes America great: “Freedom, the men and women who serve in the military, country music, Kentucky bourbon, the Grand Canyon, blackjack in Las Vegas and barbecue.”

  • WashPost Gets Out the Spike in a Clash of 'Hate Crime' Ethnicities June 24, 2017 4:00 PM EDT

    What’s a liberal newspaper to do when a member of one preferred identity group murders a member of another favored identity group?

    Answer? Ignore the first group completely.

    On June 21, the Washington Post headlined this sad story:

    Funeral, vigil for Muslim teen killed in attack near mosque draw throngs

    The story, a genuine tale of a horrific murder of a 17-year old girl in Northern Virginia,  begins as follows:

    “The Northern Virginia Muslim community and grieving high-schoolers gathered on Wednesday to mourn Nabra Hassanen, a 17-year-old killed while she was walking to her mosque on Sunday with friends.

    Dranesville Road, which was largely empty when an attacker beat Nabra there before dawn, was packed with people walking along the same sidewalk to attend her funeral. In traditional Muslim garb and Western attire, they walked and drove from every direction to All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS).”

    So far, so good in terms of straight-up journalism. But then, eventually, the reader comes to this: 

    “Authorities arrested Darwin Martinez Torres, 22, of Sterling, after a Fairfax County officer noticed him circling the site Sunday.

    Police said Martinez Torres, a construction worker, beat Nabra with a baseball bat and left her body in a pond near his apartment building. Her remains were found Sunday afternoon. 

    The brutal assault has alarmed the surrounding Muslim community and reverberated nationally with calls for a hate-crime investigation. A vigil in Dupont Circle in the District on Tuesday night drew hundreds, and hundreds more — many of them young — attended a vigil in Reston on Wednesday night.”

    There was a little more and then it was back to the murder victim and her friends. So what was missing? If one checked in with Fox, one would find this: 

    ICE: Suspect in Murder of VA Muslim Teen Was in US Illegally

    The Fox story begins as follows:

    “A 22-year-old illegal immigrant who beat a 17-year-old Muslim girl to death has been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

    Darwin Martinez Torres, a citizen of El Salvador got into an altercation with Nabra Hassanen on Sunday morning in Virginia in what was reportedly a road rage incident. He assaulted her with a metal baseball bat, killing her and dumped her body in a pond.”

    The Fox story of the murder, note well, ran a full day before the Post story. Which means the information as to the exact identity of the alleged murderer was out there in the public domain when the Post ran its story - a story that completely ignored the major fact that the alleged killer was not just some redneck white guy who hated Muslims. No, in fact the killer was an illegal immigrant from El Salvador. But mention of this in the Post account? Zero. Nada. None.

    The Media Research Center’s Tim Graham wrote about another story on the murder in the Post. Graham noted that the paper buried any relevant information on the crime: “Inside the paper on page 11, in paragraph 23, they sprinkled in the D-word -- deportation -- but never used an I-word in 35 paragraphs, for ‘illegally in the country.’" 

    This also happened in a June 21 Metro story on whether the killing was a "hate crime." This also happened in a June 20 Petula Dvorak opinion column in Metro: "Torres, the 22-year-old charged with Nabra's killing, is Latino and doesn't appear to have connected with any hate groups on his Facebook page. He doesn't fit into the narrative we come to expect when faced with alleged hate crimes."

    The question here is not “did this really happen?” The question is: Why did this happen? Why in the world would the largest newspaper in the Washington- Northern Virginia area deliberately not report a significant fact in a serious straight-news story involving the murder of this 17 year old girl?

    The guess here is the inevitable poison of identity politics. Too often identity politics - or as I call it the son of segregation and the grandson of slavery - is cast in the light of whites versus X other, non-white minority group. But the real and dirty little truth about identity politics is that eventually,  when there is no white person involved, the liberal media organization of the moment will inevitably get into the business of preferring one favored group over another supposedly equally favored group.

    In this case the Post has long made its view of illegal immigration perfectly clear through its criticisms of then-candidate and now President Trump. On August 17, 2015 the paper ran this editorial titled:   

    Donald Trump’s immigration plan would wreak havoc on U.S. society

    Among other things this scorching editorial said:

    “REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL hopeful Donald Trump, who unveiled his immigration platform over the weekend, says America’s illegal immigrants “have to go.” Although the large majority of Americans don’t agree, Mr. Trump is appealing to a more sympathetic audience: the most conservative slice of the Republican primary electorate.”

    It went on to scorch Trump for among other things his “nativist rhetoric.” 

    Only weeks earlier, in July, the Post’s uber-liber columnist Dana Milbank headlined this story:

    Donald Trump is the monster the GOP created

    In this jewel of left-wingism Milbank said that Trump’s real appeal to GOP voters included the fact that he was “anti-immigrant.”  And he went on to note: 

    “Trump’s position also closely follows those that came from Arizona in 2010 when then-Gov. Jan Brewer and other Republicans attempted an immigration crackdown. They spoke about illegal immigrants on the border as a source of beheadings, kidnappings and police killings.”

    In other words? The Post makes it abundantly clear that Trump’s concern for illegals who murder Americans is nothing less than out-and-out nativism, racism and xenophobia. And the concerns expressed by such as ex-Arizona Governor Brewer about lethal violence from illegals are cut from the same nativist, racist, xenophobic cloth. 

    Then there is the Post's supposed support for Americans who happen to be Muslims. The paper insisted they were being unfairly targeted by Trump’s “bigotry” or, in the words of a Post columnist, the Trumpian “demonization” of Muslims. Concern for Muslims in America just oozed from the paper.

    And now? Now one Darwin Martinez Torres, an illegal from El Salvador, has allegedly murdered a 17-year old Nabra Hassanen. An American born in America to her legal immigrant Egyptian parents. Nabra was savagely beaten to death with a metal baseball bat. The problem for the liberal Post? For a paper that adheres to the liberal religion of dividing by skin color two of its favored groups are now front and center in this horrific story. An illegal immigrant, a Hispanic, a “person of color” in the language of the new segregationists is accused by Fairfax County police of killing an American teenage girl who happens to be a Muslim. What to do?

    Simply write the story up and completely ignore that a member of one of its favored groups is charged with murdering a member of another favored group. 

    In the ongoing battle against the inherent racism that is identity politics the Post story is a vivid illustration of where, eventually, all identity politics is headed. Inevitably it pits one group against another. And in this case? Nabra Hassanen, the American-born daughter of legal immigrants from Egypt — along with her fellow Americans of Northern Virginia who happen to be Muslim —  got the short end of the identity politics stick. Nabra’s life ended brutally at 17, her death at the hands of an accused murderer who was in this country illegally. 

    Not that the Washington Post was going to tell anybody. 

    Shhhhh. Move along. Nothing to see here. 

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  • MSNBC-Style 'Conservative' Charlie Sykes Bashes GOP 'Cult,' Fox News June 24, 2017 3:00 PM EDT

    Appearing as a panel member on Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher, MSNBC contributor and former talk radio host Charlie Sykes displayed the latest example of why he is the type of right-leaning figure that liberal outfits like MSNBC include who will join liberal analysts in bashing Republicans.

    Sykes took aim at Fox News for supposedly not informing its Republican-leaning viewers on the nefarious activities of President Donald Trump, and likened conservatives to a "cult" that always supports the "Dear Leader" and "Orange Deuce."

    At one point, even when he was actually taking a shot at Democrats over the "insanity" of keeping Nancy Pelosi for so long as their House leader, he oddly suggested that she had done "wonderful things" in the past.

    At 10:33 p.m. ET, during a discussion of the recent Georgia special election, Sykes argued that Democrats need to find a point between "hysterical opposition" and "being boring" if they want to start winning again, and then managed to insert praise for Pelosi amongst criticism as he added:

    How many elections are you going to put up, you know, a party led by Nancy Pelosi. That is kind of the definition of insanity, isn't it? I mean, she -- all the wonderful things that she's done -- 77 years old.

    A bit later, after liberal host Bill Maher recalled that 90 percent of Republicans voted for Trump, with the HBO host wondering, "Can you get your party back? Do you have hope?" the right-leaning MSNBC analyst made an over the top reference to the horror film The Exorcist as he lamented:

    Less every day -- 65 percent of Republicans don't even believe this took place, this Russian hacking. I mean, remember Linda Blair in The Exorcist? I honestly think that if Donald Trump came out and his head spun around 360 degrees and exploded with green projectile vomit, that 65 percent of Republicans would say it was brilliant performance art. (audience laughter and applause) And this is the challenge that we're up against. 

    The MSNBC contributor then took aim at Fox News and theorized that President Richard Nixon might have survived Watergate if the cable news network had existed during the Republican's presidency as he added:

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    You were talking about, you know, the alternative reality of Fox News. The reality is, is that you have a lot of Republicans that do not read these stories, do not read about this, and have quite frankly just decided that they're going to -- they're going to dismiss all of this. So this is the real challenge, that if you had Watergate with this media ecosystem, I'm pretty convinced that Richard Nixon would have survived, would have had Sean Hannity talking about the witch hunt. They would have all of that cover that would have allowed him to get away with the coverup.

    Later on, as the group wondered why Republicans have remained so supportive of Trump, Sykes brought up his "cult" comparison as he explained:

    Now, it is a cult. It is a cult of personality. And there's almost no other way to interpret it. I mean, I want -- and I've stolen this line, by the way, from Jonah Goldberg -- for me, watching the last few years has been like watching Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where people I've known for 20 or 30 years -- decent people who used to argue that character mattered and all of these things -- suddenly, they get them.

    And they start, you know, figuring that, "No, we have to follow the Dear Leader -- whatever the Orange Deuce believes, we have to go along with." And so it makes it very, very difficult because the Democrats can come up with any line, but understand that, for the Right right now,  you don't have to be pro-Trump, you just hate the Left and the media more.

    Below is a transcript of relevant portions of the Friday, June 23, Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO:

    CHARLIE SYKES, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: The Democrats have to find that sweet spot between hysterical opposition with which the Trump folks feed upon and being boring and vanilla as Jon Ossoff was. And they haven't really figured out how to do that. And, by the way, you know, how many elections are you going to put up, you know, a party led by Nancy Pelosi. That is kind of the definition of insanity, isn't it? I mean, she -- all the wonderful things that she's done -- 77 years old. What the Democrats miss is they thought they were going to make this a referendum on Trump -- Republicans made it a referendum on Nancy Pelosi. Look, every party needs some fresh blood, some fresh faces at some point.

    (...)

    BILL MAHER: Only 10 percent of Republicans did not vote for Donald Trump, and they're still pretty much with him. What do you guys have to do to get your party back? Can you get your party back? Do you have hope?

    SYKES: Less every day -- 65 percent of Republicans don't even believe this took place, this Russian hacking. I mean, remember Linda Blair in The Exorcist? I honestly think that if Donald Trump came out and his head spun around 360 degrees and exploded with green projectile vomit, that 65 percent of Republicans would say it was brilliant performance art. (audience laughter and applause) And this is the challenge that we're up against. You were talking about, you know, the alternative reality of Fox News.

    The reality is, is that you have a lot of Republicans that do not read these stories, do not read about this, and have quite frankly just decided that they're going to -- they're going to dismiss all of this. So this is the real challenge, that if you had Watergate with this media ecosystem, I'm pretty convinced that Richard Nixon would have survived, would have had Sean Hannity talking about the witch hunt. They would have all of that cover that would have allowed him to get away with the coverup.

    (...)

    BRADLEY WHITFORD, ACTOR: Republicans understand that their party affiliation is like a union membership -- "Well, I may not agree" -- I think a lot of them think Trump's an idiot, but "Well, I'm going to stick with my group."

    SYKES: No, no, no, it's way worse than that. ... I used to say it was, you know, tribal politics. Now, it is a cult. It is a cult of personality. And there's almost no other way to interpret it. I mean, I want -- and I've stolen this line, by the way, from Jonah Goldberg -- for me, watching the last few years has been like watching Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where people I've known for 20 or 30 years -- decent people who used to argue that character mattered and all of these things -- suddenly, they get them.

    And they start, you know, figuring that, "No, we have to follow the Dear Leader -- whatever the Orange Deuce believes, we have to go along with." And so it makes it very, very difficult because the Democrats can come up with any line, but understand that, for the Right right now,  you don't have to be pro-Trump, you just hate the Left and the media more.

  • Smithsonian Magazine Mocks Memory of Conservative Talk Show Host Joe Pyne June 24, 2017 1:30 PM EDT

    The basic subject matter of an article in the June edition of the Smithsonian Magazine is actually quite interesting. It is about the ongoing restoration of many videotapes of the old Joe Pyne television show. Unfortunately, the author, Kevin Cook, chose to use this restoration as a way to slam not only the generally conservative Joe Pyne but current conservatives in the media as well. 

    However, despite Cook's petty slams, his article does provide some interesting information about Joe Pyne who many consider the father of entertaining talk radio and television interviewing. The good news is that sometime in the near future the public will have access to many Joe Pyne interviews long thought to be lost.

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    Charles Churchman throws a switch on a half-ton video console in a converted barn in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania. “Well, that won’t do,” he says. The oversized reel-to-reel console, complete with wave-form monitors and oscilloscopes, looks like a relic of the Gemini program. Churchman, 69, restores obsolete videotapes in his cluttered workshop. Twisting dials and pushing buttons, he reverses the crinkly 50-year-old tape in the machine, clears a dot of rust from it, restarts the tape, color-corrects the image. “That’s better,” he says. “I mean, Joe Pyne was a lot of things, but he wasn’t green.”

    Churchman is one of several techies, archivists and vintage-TV fans who hope to save “The Joe Pyne Show” from history’s scrapheap. He’s the mad scientist of the bunch, a self-taught engineer who can transform strips of moldy, decades-old videotape into crisp digital images. He first heard about Pyne from his client Alexander Kogan Jr., president of Films Around the World, a decade ago. Kogan, whose firm restores and markets classic movies and TV programs, had discovered a trove of long-lost tapes in his collection: more than 100 episodes of Pyne’s once-famous talk show on reels of two-inch videotape that weighed 28 pounds apiece. Many were in bad shape, the iron oxide that fixed the image to its acetate base flaking off. Churchman, the video savant, restored a few at a time. He has yet to work on dozens of tapes that feature interviews with some of the most polarizing figures of the 1960s.

    Okay, so far so good. The petty potshots come later. At least for now the article is informative.

    Nearly forgotten today, Joe Pyne ran roughshod over America’s airwaves in the 1950s and ’60s. A charismatic bully in a jacket and tie, he grilled hippies, Black Panthers, “pinkos,” “fairies” and “women’s libbers,” practically inventing the attack interview. The New York Times called him “the ranking nuisance of broadcasting...hitting a jackpot by making a virtue of bad manners and wallowing in the cheap sensationalism of an electronic peepshow.” To Time magazine he was “Killer Joe, host of a tasteless electronic peepshow.” By 1968 Pyne had more than ten million viewers a week—comparable to the audience Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Megyn Kelly combined to reach last year.

    According to media historian Donna Halper, author of Icons of Talk, “Pyne was one of broadcasting’s truly unique figures—the original angry talker. He rose from the lowest level of radio and founded the modern TV shoutfest.”

    Got that? A "charismatic bully" and an "angry talker." In fact, if you watch his few surviving videotapes, Pyne seemed to be enjoying himself. Hardly angry.

    Pyne died in 1970. He was 45. Had he lived, he might have lasted long enough to lecture Hannity, Howard Stern, Bill Maher, Rush Limbaugh and other rabble-rousers on how much they owed him. “When it comes to manipulating media,” says media critic Halper, “he was the father of them all.”

    Cook takes the ghost of Joe Pyne in order to smear talk hosts such as Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh as "rabble-rousers."

    One of Pyne’s protégés, the controversial radio shouter Bob Grant, followed his mentor Pyne as a talk show shouter in Los Angeles before moving to New York, where Grant paved the way for his successor at WABC, Sean Hannity. Hannity had first gained national attention subbing for Rush Limbaugh, another Bob Grant fan.

    Now Pyne is labeled as a "talk show shouter" as the author includes the late Bob Grant in his slam-fest.

    Even Vice President Mike Pence, who hosted a right-wing talk show in Indiana in the 1990s, was a successor of Pyne’s. (Soft-spoken Pence described himself as “Rush Limbaugh on decaf.”)

    When a writer uses the term "right-wing" you pretty much know where his bias is coming from.

    What seems to be overlooked in this article is that many of Joe Pyne's shows were non-political and flat out entertaining in a very funny way. An example is the following clip from the Joe Pyne show which featured someone with the worst hair dye job in his history as he is confronted by his very angry son-in-law. Comedy chaos ensues.

    Fun Fact: The young man with glasses who rushes onto the stage in the light colored jacket is Steve Kane, one of the Joe Pyne Show producers. After he left that show he became the host of the longest running radio show in Florida history.

  • Absolute Liberal Insanity: Combat White Supremacy With More Abortions June 24, 2017 2:30 PM EDT

    Listen up, America! The feminist left wants you to know that the solution to the white supremacy plague, that began when the pilgrims hit Plymouth Rock, is more white abortions. In fact, “the white family unit must be destroyed.”

    In an article published by Medusa Magazine, (a magazine whose website is headed by the slogan “Feminist Revolution Now!”) columnist Nicole Valentine argued that the concept of abortion is something that is radically misunderstood. The pro-choice argument that abortion is a constitutional right inherently implies that it is an idea rooted in white supremacist thought. Why?

    Because the Constitution “was drafted and signed by white men, for white men.” This is why there are so many shootings and hate crimes in the United States, in her opinion. Somehow, the author completely forgot that one of the Supreme Court Justices who aided the Roe v. Wade decision was Thurgood Marshall, the first African American justice on the Court. So. . .is abortion still a hate crime against “women of color” if the decision made was by a relatively diverse Supreme Court?

    The author tried to say that “women of color” are not granted the same access to abortion facilities as white women are, since apparently the United States is based on a mentality that only the health of the white woman should be preserved. Valentine is here to tell us the hard facts: “women of color simply do not have the absolute choice when it comes to their bodies.”

    How does the author propose to “level the playing field?” It is so simple. “White women should be encouraged to abort their white children, and to use their freed-up time and resources to assist women of color who have no other choice but to raise their children.” It’s an interesting statement, because in this case, the author is not denying that there is some element of genocide in the idea of abortion. If anything, it seems like she is calling for a low-key infant genocide to solve what she considered to be an intrinsic problem.

    Except the genocide is already happening, just not to the babies Valentine would prefer. According to the CDC, in 2013 black women had 35% of all the nation’s abortions, while blacks make up just 13.3% of the population. Tragically, access to abortion doesn’t seem to be a problem for black women.

    “White women: It is time to do your part!” she stated. Adopt colored children, and prevent the conception of white children at all costs. Since your forefathers started this “parasitic” culture by oppressing anyone who was not white with their “white fathers, submissive white mothers, and most critically, white children,” the solution is to end the existence of anyone who claims descent from these people. Clearly.

    Her statements do a grave injustice to the efforts that the United States has put forth to ensure equality. By offering death and murder as a solution, she only makes the problem infinitely worse.

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