10/11/13

How the Media are Shaping Obama’s Government Shutdown

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

Despite a Friday afternoon meeting with GOP senators that has led to anticipation that a solution is near on both the partial government shutdown and the debt ceiling showdown, President Barack Obama remains in an intense public relations war with the Republican-led House of Representatives. He believes that the compliant media will back up his most outrageous actions, even as he tries to magnify the crisis for the average American. The Wall Street Journal quoted a senior administration official last week as saying, “‘We are winning…It doesn’t really matter to us’ how long the shutdown lasts ‘because what matters is the end result.’”

The reason President Obama believes he is winning, and can continue to win the current showdown with Republicans over the partial government shutdown and the debt-ceiling hike, is his confidence that the media will continue to support him—no matter how irresponsibly he acts. And the October 8th presidential press conference demonstrated why he is justified in taking the media’s bias for granted. It was a shameful performance, by both Obama and the media.

When asked, for example, in one of the few non-set-up questions, “Would you prioritize and pay bondholders first to maintain the semblance of credit or—rather than Social Security recipients or military servicemen and—women? And how would you go ahead and make that determination?” The President responded, “I’m going to continue to be very hopeful that Congress does not put us in that position. And I think if people understand what the consequences are, they will set that potential scenario aside. I do know that there have been some who’ve said that if we just pay bondholders, if we just pay people who’ve bought Treasury bills, that we really won’t be in default because those interest payments will be made. And to them, what I have to remind them is, we’ve got a lot of other obligations, not just people who pay Treasury bills.”

Yes we do, and in Obama’s nearly five years in office, the federal government has borrowed over $6 trillion more than we’ve taken in to pay our obligations, raising the national to just under $17 trillion. No one is questioning the fact that if we do reach the debt ceiling, estimated to be on October 17th, and have to prioritize our spending, there would be difficult and painful choices to make, and the markets and the ratings services won’t like it. But we can still avoid default by paying the interest on our debt through the normal cash flow coming into the federal government. If Obama was interested in calming international and domestic markets, he should have said, “Of course we will pay the interest on our debt to the bondholders first, to maintain the full faith and confidence that U.S. is not a deadbeat.”

This week, Moody’s Investors Service circulated a memo to that effect: “We believe the government would continue to pay interest and principal on its debt even in the event that the debt limit is not raised, leaving its creditworthiness intact,” it said. “The debt limit restricts government expenditures to the amount of its incoming revenues; it does not prohibit the government from servicing its debt. There is no direct connection between the debt limit (actually the exhaustion of the Treasury’s extraordinary measures to raise funds) and a default.”

Yet many of Obama’s media allies, such as Paul Krugman of The New York Times, have been calling people who hold such views, “default deniers,” which is their despicable way of comparing them to Holocaust deniers. Postponing payments in other areas doesn’t constitute default, no matter how much they want to pressure the Republicans and scare the American public.

The other question Obama dodged was asked by Mark Knoller of CBS News, who is famous for his record keeping of the President’s routine activities. Knoller asked if he’s tempted to go along with any of the bills passed by the House such as funding the NHA and FEMA, among other agencies.

“Of course I’m tempted,” Obama replied, “because you’d like to think that you could solve at least some of the problems if you couldn’t solve all of them. But here’s the problem: What you’ve seen are bills that come up wherever Republicans are feeling political pressure, they put a bill forward. And if there’s no political heat, and if there’s no television story on it, then nothing happens,” Obama said.

“And if we do some sort of shotgun approach like that, then you’ll have some programs that are highly visible get funded and re-opened like national monuments but things that don’t get a lot of attention, like those SBA loans, not being funded. And we don’t get to select which programs we implement or not…we don’t get to pick and choose based on which party likes what…but you don’t do a piecemeal approach like that when you’re dealing with a government shutdown.”

Apparently Obama has felt enough “political heat” to use the shotgun approach and cherry pick a couple of the House’s bills: He signed the Pay Our Military Act, and on October 10th, a bill to fund military benefits of people killed in combat. His administration has also cherry picked which items to keep open, and which to shut down, trusting that the overwhelming anger and frustration by Americans at the obvious petty maneuvering to inflict pain on Americans and visiting tourists will be blamed on Republicans. He knows he can count on a compliant media to help him pull off such shenanigans. Obama’s shutdown and threat of default is no mistake: it is how he runs things. No budget has passed both houses of Congress since 2009, Obama’s first year as President.

Beyond that, the press conference was scripted batting practice. The media tossed softballs, the President incessantly trashed the Republicans, with whom he supposedly wants to make a deal. But it certainly doesn’t look that way. In the hour-plus press conference, he used the term “ransom” eight times, and variations of the word “threat” 11 times. He’s such a victim.

As Investor’s Business Daily pointed out in an editorial, there was “not one single question on the shameful spectacle the other day of allegedly furloughed National Park Service employees suddenly appearing at the open-air World War II Memorial on the National Mall to bar aging veterans from visiting their monument.”

Nor, as IBD pointed out, were there any questions on the blockade of the Lincoln Memorial, nor “about the busload of seniors confronted by armed guards in Yellowstone National Park and incarcerated in a lodge after committing the crime of flocking to photograph bison shuffling across the road.” The editorial said that according to the National Park Service, the orders came directly from the Obama White House.

In addition, there were no questions on the “humiliating rollout of ObamaCare that was supposed to start Oct. 1 and is still stumbling. The total failure of the online operation despite 42 months to prepare. The constant crashing of the site.” And not one question “about how, as a senator, Obama voted against increasing the debt limit in 2006 as a sign of failed Bush leadership, but now Sir Changealot is all for an increase. And Congress is the failed institution.”

The Washington Examiner argued that the shutdown, in monetary terms, is only a 17% shutdown. “Perhaps that is why the effects of the shutdown, beyond some of the most visible problems, like at the monuments and memorials on the Washington Mall, don’t seem to have the expected intensity.” Without the memorials, and other public shenanigans, would many Americans even notice the government shutdown?

With all that was forbidden on the National Mall, one thing was approved: “Camino Americano: March for Immigration Reform.” This was a rally in support of a policy the administration supports, and it included former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Obama’s favorite labor union, the SEIU.

The House has passed a series of bills to fund parts of the government. All but the ones cherry picked by the President have been rejected by Majority Leader Harry Reid in the Senate and threatened with veto from President Obama.

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Roger Aronoff.

10/11/13

Communists Defend Democrat NYC Mayoral Candidate

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Bill de Blasio, the Obama-backed Democrat “progressive” poised to become New York City’s mayor, is under attack by “Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid empire,” his supporters are charging. It’s a reference to the New York Post examining the candidate’s ties to the Nicaraguan Solidarity Network, a Communist-front organization that still supports the Marxist regime in Nicaragua headed by Communist Sandinista Daniel Ortega.

In fact, however, it was The New York Times that originally disclosed de Blasio’s fondness for the “foreign revolution” in Nicaragua, in a major piece that shocked even some liberals. The Times article revealed de Blasio’s pro-communist activities and his prediction back in 1991 that Islam would become a major political force.

Combined with de Blasio’s anti-police views, including his announced desire to can the tough New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, the revelations are worrying New Yorkers concerned about terrorism coming back to the city in a major way. The September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorist attacks in the city killed nearly 3,000 people. Years before that, the Cuban-backed Puerto Rican terrorist group, the FALN, carried out numerous terrorist bombings in the city, including an attack on Fraunces Tavern in 1975, which killed four people.

De Blasio’s comrades in the Communist Nicaraguan Sandinista movement were praised by Libya’s lunatic leader Muammar Gaddafi as having the will to “fight America on its own ground,” and they promised a “revolution beyond our borders” in Nicaragua. The Sandinistas, who were backed by the Soviet Union and Castro’s Cuba, seized power in Nicaragua in 1979 and fought in the Middle East with the PLO. In 2012, Sandinista leader and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a guest of honor.

The Nicaraguan Solidarity Network, which still exists, has run an item, “Nicaragua Solidarity Back in the News,” noting the media focus on its former comrade de Blasio. It points out that he not only visited Nicaragua, in order to support the regime, but went on a “honeymoon” to Castro’s Cuba. The nature of this “honeymoon” has never been fully explained, and the New York media don’t seem particularly interested in this aspect of his background. He is married to a former lesbian who joined what would become the Combahee River Collective, described by The New York Times as “an influential collection of black feminist intellectuals.”

Castro’s Cuba protects several fugitives from American justice, including FALN leader William Morales and convicted cop-killer and Black Liberation Army terrorist Joanne Chesimard.

We conducted our own inquiry into the nature of de Blasio’s “solidarity” activity by taking a look at the records of the U.S. Peace Council, housed in the “Peace Collection” at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. The U.S. Peace Council was a Communist Party-dominated organization associated with the World Peace Council, a Soviet front. It played a mostly behind-the-scenes role in “peace” activities throughout the 1980s, although Congress and the FBI did probe its Communist ties in various hearings and investigations.

One of the documents identified the U.S. Peace Council as having helped “initiate” the Nicaraguan Solidarity Network. One of the Peace Council officials, Robert Cohen, a member of the National Lawyers Guild, played the role in starting up the pro-Sandinista organization. “We are doing the same with El Salvador now,” said the document, alluding to the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, also known as CISPES.

These activities took place during the late 1970s and ‘80s when communists were threatening a complete takeover of Central America and the Caribbean. President Ronald Reagan liberated the island of Grenada in 1983 from a Communist seizure of power and supported anti-Sandinista freedom fighters and the pro-American government of El Salvador. Eventually, the Sandinistas were forced under U.S. military pressure to hold free elections and the Communist terrorists in El Salvador made a peace deal with the government.

De Blasio, who captured the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City on September 10, is running against Republican Joe Lhota in the general election on November 5. De Blasio’s Marxist views were largely ignored during the campaign because of the media interest in another Democratic primary candidate, sex pervert and former congressman Anthony Weiner.

But after de Blasio won the nomination, The New York Times apparently thought his background deserved some attention, and the story about his pro-Sandinista activities was published. The paper sent a reporter to examine the records of the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York, which included incriminating documents about de Blasio.

After these revelations, De Blasio was even asked about the influence of Marxism on his current views, a question he dismissed as antiquated. Still, he has not disavowed previous statements in support of “liberation theology” and “democratic socialism.”

He was an aide to former New York City Mayor David Dinkins, who was closely associated with the Democratic Socialists of America.

Curiously, it also turns out that de Blasio has had three different names, but he refuses to talk about that in any depth, either.

Now that de Blasio is positioned to crush Lhota, in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans by six to one, some media attention is being paid to his far-left views, and it appears that de Blasio’s Marxist supporters are starting to get worried. Hence, their attacks on the “Murdoch Empire” and the New York Post, the paper following up on de Blasio’s extreme views.

The Nicaragua Solidarity Network is advising its activists to write a letter to the editor of the New York Post protesting the paper’s scrutiny of de Blasio.

The national office of the group says, “Former Nicaragua solidarity activist Bill de Blasio is the frontrunner in the NYC mayoral election. The right-wing is pulling out all the old lies against Nicaragua from Reagan’s dirty war against the Sandinistas in order to tar de Blasio. While the Nicaragua Network/Alliance for Global Justice has no position for or against any candidate for political office in New York or anywhere else, we do have an interest in countering the current slanders against Nicaragua.”

The Alliance for Global Justice, the parent organization, is funded by billionaire leftist George Soros and provides money and support for such organizations as Occupy Wall Street and the Bradley Manning Support Network, named for the Army traitor. Soros has personally endorsed de Blasio for mayor.

As we noted in a previous article, beneficiaries of largesse from the Alliance for Global Justice have also included Code Pink, the Venezuela Solidarity Network, and ANSWER—the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism group.

Code Pink is the hard-left organization that includes luminaries such as Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans, a fundraiser for Obama. When they are not protesting U.S. foreign policy, they are working to undermine Israel.

De Blasio is their candidate in New York City.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.

10/11/13

Did boastful rhetoric dissuade Washington, DC truckers protest?

By: Nelson Abdullah
Conscience of a Conservative

This was to be a weekend to remember in our Nation’s Capitol. On Sunday a group of veterans have planned a Million Veteran March On The Memorials to reclaim the privately funded memorials illegally closed by Barack Hussein Obama. The veterans from WWII, Korea and Vietnam, some of them in wheelchairs, won’t be alone. They will have some back up as Belinda Bee the organizer of the Bikers Ride to Washington last month has called for many bikers to return to give them support. Recalling the two-million Tea Party tax protesters who gathered on the National Mall in Washington in 2010 and the one-million bikers (the official estimate by the Washington, D.C. Police) who rode to Washington on September 11, 2013 to counter the Million Muslim non-event that turned out only a dozen Islamic sympathizers, a group of truckers planned a massive drive-through today to clog the Beltway around the Capitol. But one of the truckers organizers made some boastful claims that may have persuaded many others to avoid the conflict.

One of the organizers of the protest, Earl Conlon, was quoted on US News but later retracted his comments.

“We are not going to ask for impeachment,” Conlon said. “We are coming whether they like it or not. We’re not asking for impeachment, we’re asking for the arrest of everyone in government who has violated their oath of office.”

Conlon cited the idea of a citizens grand jury – meaning a pool of jurors convened without court approval – as the mechanism for indicting the officials.

“We want these people arrested, and we’re coming in with the grand jury to do it,” he said. “We are going to ask the law enforcement to uphold their constitutional oath and make these arrests. If they refuse to do it, by the power of the people of the United States and the people’s grand jury, they don’t want to do it, we will. … We the people will find a way.”

But Steve Nelson, who reported the story wrote: “It’s almost certain that anyone attempting to “arrest” a member of Congress would be arrested themselves for attempted kidnapping.” While the boastful rhetoric proved to be just that, the accusations made were still true.

Conlon and Andrews say Obama committed “treason” by allegedly funneling weapons to al-Qaida-linked rebels in Syria. Members of Congress who support arming Syrian rebels, Conlon said, are accessories to the alleged crime. He identified House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., as politicians he will seek to arrest for alleged acts against the Constitution.

The Hill reported three days ago that Earl Conlon told The Washington Post that his boastful rhetoric was a ploy to get national attention. “The comments to U.S. News were designed to do one thing and one thing only: stir the feather of the mainstream media,” said Conlon, a father of three. “Nothing gets the attention of the mainstream media like some sort of disastrous threat. I knew it was going to ruffle some feathers.” But the statements about convening a Citizens Grand Jury to indict and arrest members of Congress sounded like a lynch mob and may have been taken seriously by a lot of other truckers who avoided the protest drive to keep out of trouble. Someone should have mentioned to Earl Conlon one rule of automotive mechanics: too much fuel causes a backfire.

A truck driver who called for protesting the government by backing up the Capitol Beltway says he made the threat to attract media attention.

Georgia-based truck driver Earl Conlon, who was behind the group “Truckers for the Constitution,” told The Washington Post he was hoping to use the threat of shutting down the Beltway to highlight the industry’s frustration with federal regulations.

“The comments to U.S. News were designed to do one thing and one thing only: stir the feather of the mainstream media,” Conlon said. “Nothing gets the attention like the mainstream media, like some sort of disastrous threat. I knew it was going to ruffle some feathers.”

So as the weekend progresses we have, as usual, our aging veterans and patriotic bikers left to defend our liberties. God speed to both of these patriotic groups. Our younger generation, at least those who are not serving in our Armed Forces, are still too busy trying to figure our why their “free” ObamaCare healthcare isn’t free.

10/11/13

Obama’s Kathleen Sebelius Tells How They are Fascists, in 17 Seconds

By: Arlen Williams
Gulag Bound

Q: What is Fascism?
A: It is what Fascists do.

Listen to Kathleen Sebelius, Obama’s Director of the Department of Health and Human Services give us a textbook example of Fascism, in seventeen seconds.

Presented at YouTube by “codefilms” with its caption:

Sebelius: We Are Bringing Western Civilization to its Knees with Obamacare

Published on Oct 8, 2013

In a bizarre statement, US Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said that, “As you know, we’re facing the end of the Western Civilization by having a market-based strategy. We are bringing Western Civilization to its knees by selling private insurance plans on a website where people can pick and choose.” At face value, this could imply any number of things including a bold-faced admission that Obamacare is the end of the Western Civilization health care system. View the rest of the bizarre and infuriating interview here: [at code-interactive.com, “The Most Infuriating 10 Minutes of Your Life”].

Fascism at its core is corporatism, that is, central administration of people’s private business and behavior, by government.

It is also called “the administrative state” by proponent, Pres. Woodrow Wilson’s mastermind, Edward House. It is also called ministerial socialism, state capitalism, the Third Way (by Bill Clinton, Sebelius, etc., and prior, by European fascists), crony capitalism (by Sarah Palin and the Tea Party), and always it is to be called traitorous corruption and despotism.

Fascism is labeled “far right,” by both deceitful and duped Marxists, but it is actually very similar to their methodology and can be called Marxism’s unnatural son, sired by the structurally advantaged (a far cry from the opposite end of the spectrum, of popular sovereignty under God and the true freedom of Natural Rights by Natural Law). The essence of Fascism is the same today as the essence of neo-Marxism. That is why I suggest calling it Marxofascism. All of the above is collectivism, as Benito Mussolini described in his manifesto.

It is the chosen means of the 1% of 1% of 1%, for controlling the entire world and everyone in it. (See Agenda 21 and Technocracy.)

It is what we have fought wars, at the great, bloody cost of our forerunners’ sacred lives, against which to be free.

Ancillary to Fascism us usually “eugenic” racism (e.g., Hitler’s and Islam’s antisemitism, Obama’s and Sebelius’ black semi-genocide through Planned Parenthood, etc.). George Orwell described Fascism’s need for victims upon which to unjustly and irrationally prey, in 1984. And The Bible describes it as the authentically hateful work of Satan, his demons, and their witting or unwitting human thralls.

Kathleen Sebelius with her blood-money benefactor, late-term abortionist, Charles "Killer" Tiller

Kathleen Sebelius with her blood-money benefactor, late-term abortionist, Charles “Killer” Tiller

And since this is hypertext, subject to search engines and this word has not yet worked its way into this article, I present it here: Obamacare.

10/11/13

Mark Levin tells Values Voter Summit: ‘America is a blue state’ so change the Constitution

SavageNationLiberty:

10/11/13 – Conservative radio host Mark Levin on Friday proposed changing the United States Constitution because he said “America is a blue state right now.” Levin told the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C that legislative efforts like President Barack Obama’s health care reform law meant that the country was facing “tyranny.” To fix the problem, he proposed that two-thirds of the states meet for a convention to pass amendments to the Constitution. “Now some of you come from blue states, I apologize that you’re in these blue states, I refuse to live in a dark blue state, but some of you live in dark blue states,” he told the audience. “And some of you are saying, ‘Well, this is great for those of you who are in purple states and red states.’ And my answer to you is this: America is blue state right now!”

“And the only way to address this is to find 34 state legislatures, and to take the time to do it. It took us a century to get here and so it make us 20 or 30 years get out of this. But we have no options. This is the only option,” Levin said. “I don’t care if no senator or no member of Congress supports this, we bypass them. That’s the entire purpose of this project.”

“If you have one out-of-control Supreme Court, one out-of-control Congress and one out-of-control president, there’s no where to go!”