Daily Archives: April 8, 2015

04/8/15

Obama’s “Potemkin Village”

By: T F Stern
T F Stern’s Rantings

Financial MarketsHistorians would recognize the term “Potemkin village” as it’s used to describe “any attempt to make others believe we are better than we really are”.   I first heard the unusual sounding combination of words this past Saturday evening as used by Dieter F. Uchtdorf in his General Conference talk, On Being Genuine, when he addressed the Priesthood Session.

He intended to emphasize the importance of actually being who you claim to be publicly as he explained the origins of this interesting terminology.

“In the late 18th century, Catherine the Great of Russia announced she would tour the southern part of her empire, accompanied by several foreign ambassadors. The governor of the area, Grigory Potemkin, desperately wanted to impress these visitors. And so he went to remarkable lengths to showcase the country’s accomplishments.

For part of the journey, Catherine floated down the Dnieper River, proudly pointing out to the ambassadors the thriving hamlets along the shore, filled with industrious and happy townspeople. There was only one problem: it was all for show. It is said that Potemkin had assembled pasteboard facades of shops and homes. He had even positioned busy-looking peasants to create the impression of a prosperous economy.”

As I listened my first thoughts turned immediately to Barrack Obama and his administration; lie after lie covered by smoke and mirrors, deception and stone walling to keep the public in the dark until such time as the truth didn’t matter anymore.

The health and safety of our nation has taken a back seat to how Obama and his administration appear in public; but I fear it is much worse than Grigory Potemkin’s slight of hand trick to make himself look good, Obama’s implementation of Marxist communism seems to be the driving force behind all this fakery.

An example of Obama’s questionable use of the presidency, and I’m being far too kind in calling it questionable; some might prefer treasonous…would be his entering into nuclear treaty talks with Iran.

Thomas Sowell wrote an article for the National Review,  Obama’s Iran ‘Agreement’ Is a Charade, in which he outlines the incredulity of forming any alliance with Iran and believing this band of terrorists might keep their word.  (I suppose the folks in Iran are saying the same thing about Obama and his administration; none are men of integrity.)

“By abandoning virtually all its demands for serious restrictions on Iran’s nuclear-bomb program, the Obama administration has apparently achieved the semblance of a preliminary introduction to the beginning of a tentative framework for a possible hope of an eventual agreement with Iran.

{…}

Why then all these negotiations? Because these charades protect Barack Obama politically, no matter how much danger they create for America and the world. The latest public-opinion polls show Obama’s approval rating rising. In political terms — the only terms that matter to him — his foreign policy has been a success.”

Sowell goes on to give a history lesson on Neville Chamberlain’s handling of a treaty made with NAZI Germany in an attempt to stave off war.  At no time did it appear that Chamberlain intended to set Great Britain up for the nasty ramifications of such poor judgment; but at the same time his actions did “throw a small country to the Nazi wolves in order to get a worthless agreement with Hitler”.

On the other hand, as Sowell points out, Obama’s worthless treaty giving Iran the ability to expand its nuclear program may well be throwing Israel to the wolves “for the sake of another worthless agreement”.

“If anyone examines the hard, cold facts about the Obama administration’s actions and inactions in the Middle East from the beginning, it is far more difficult to reconcile those actions and inactions with a belief that Obama was trying to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons than it is to reconcile those facts with his trying to stop Israel from stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons.”

If you consider the folks Obama has for his inner circle then his intentions become more troubling.

His senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett, has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and openly stated she looks forward to using America’s ignorance and tolerance of all religions via the First Amendment to further advance Islam into our society in order to bring about an eventual Transformation to Islam here.

Obama has been steadily weakening our military while at the same time placing ‘questionable’ individuals who happen to be Muslim, not only Muslim… but individuals who have ties to radical jihadist groups in key positions of government.

“In 2002 Mohamed Elibiary founded the Freedom and Justice Foundation in Plano, Texas. Freedom and Justice is the political party of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. He was appointed a member of the Homeland Security advisory council which meant Elibiary had access to security documents. In October of 2011, it was reported he took sensitive reports from the Texas Department of Public Safety.”

Obama, Hillary and the Muslim BrotherhoodI almost wish I wasn’t aware of the loose ends, the shady deals, the outright lies and deception Obama and his administration have foisted off on the public, all the while claiming to be working for a better America.  It would seem the America Obama wants our constitutional republic Transformed into is under the flag of Islam.

America’s economic recovery… It’s all for show and major media outlets refuse to report the truth, instead they prefer building up Obama’s image as America’s first and greatest Black president.

I haven’t brought up job reports, unemployment or the disturbing fact that 63 million potential members of the workforce don’t have a job, some of them having quit looking long ago so they aren’t considered unemployed.  How’s that for another of Obama’s Potemkin Villages?

This article has been cross posted to The Moral Liberal, a publication whose banner reads, “Defending The Judeo-Christian Ethic, Limited Government, & The American Constitution”.

04/8/15

Journalistic Blindspots Exposed at Rolling Stone and Beyond

By: Bethany Stotts
Accuracy in Media

Biased journalists view the world locked into paradigms dominated by their own preconceptions. Often, they and their editors select stories designed to confirm those narratives at the expense of the facts. This is pure punditry masked as reporting.

Take Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s “A Rape on Campus,” for example. The Rolling Stone magazine writer approached a former rape victim working at the University of Virginia “searching for a single, emblematic college rape case that would show ‘what it’s like to be on campus now … where not only is rape so prevalent but also that there’s this pervasive culture of sexual harassment/rape culture,’” according to Erdely’s notes of her now-retracted story, which were obtained during an independent but solicited investigation by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

In other words, Erdely had decided that rape was occurring at these schools, that it was a pervasive cultural problem, and that it was her business to dramatize her preconceived narrative about this contentious subject. “As much casting director as journalist, she was looking for a single character with an emblematic story that would speak to—in her words—the ‘pervasive culture of sexual harassment/rape culture’ on college campuses,” writes Jonathan Mahler of The New York Times.

“By the time Rolling Stone‘s editors assigned an article on campus sexual assault to Erdely in the spring of 2014, high-profile rape cases at Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Vanderbilt and Florida State had been in the headlines for months,” states the Columbia School report.

Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana appears to have come to the story with the same preconceptions.

“‘My original idea,’ Dana said, was ‘to look at one of these cases and have the story be more about the process of what happens when an assault is reported and the sort of issues it brings up,’” states the report.

The authors of that report called Erdely’s tactics what they were: “confirmation bias.” Mahler reports that Rolling Stone suffered from a “lack of skepticism.”

But those two phenomena are just symptoms of the underlying problem in journalism: the pursuit of a liberal political agenda. “Like ‘A Rape on Campus,’ [the Duke lacrosse rape allegations] was a story that seemed to conform to a lot of the public’s worst ideas about the behavior of privileged young men at elite colleges,” writes Mahler.

Even MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews questioned back in December whether this story would end up just like coverage of the Duke lacrosse players.

Erdely and the editors at Rolling Stone consistently ignored suspicious behavior by their source, such as her fantastic recall of details of the event itself, yet apparent unwillingness to corroborate key facts through additional people. Even her mother wouldn’t talk to them. “She also said that her mother would be willing to talk to Erdely, but the reporter said that when she called and left messages several times, the mother did not respond,” states the report. Jackie’s contact was sporadic, and she would stop responding for periods of time.

“Yet Rolling Stone‘s senior editors are unanimous in the belief that the story’s failure does not require them to change their editorial systems,” states the report. And yes, Erdely will continue with her work there. “Sabrina’s done great work for us over the years and we expect that to continue,” Dana told The Washington Post.

“Reading the Columbia account of the mistakes and misjudgments in my reporting was a brutal and humbling experience,” writes Erdely in her public apology. “I want to offer my deepest apologies: to Rolling Stone’s readers, to my Rolling Stone editors and colleagues, to the U.V.A. community, and to any victims of sexual assault who may feel fearful as a result of my article.”

But, as Warner Todd Huston notes for Breitbart, members of Phi Kappa Psi, the fraternity which Erdely and Rolling Stone maligned, are not mentioned in her apology. Maybe they are just part of the “U.V.A. community” and don’t deserve special mention. To be fair, however, they are mentioned in Dana’s apology in the editor’s note that introduces the report.

Of course, the fraternity has also announced it will sue Rolling Stone because of this story, stating that it suffered “130 days of living under a cloud of suspicion as a result of reckless reporting by Rolling Stone Magazine,” according to The Washington Post.

Rolling Stone is a biased publication pursuing a political agenda, no doubt about it. Yet The New York Times itself is no stranger to similar problematic reporting.

AIM reported at length how the Times’ Matthew S. Schmidt based an entire news report covering Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi emails on anonymous administration sources who failed to provide him or the Times with the text of the emails for verification. Such reporting opens the Times to the possibility of the same type of errors as were made in covering Jackie’s story—the inability to corroborate basic facts and perform a paper’s journalistic duties to the public. All papers, not just Rolling Stone, should consider “A Rape on Campus” a much needed caution against this type of biased news.

04/8/15

National Security Question? Ask Someone Else, Says White House

By: Caleb Howe
RedState

RedState has learned this week that when Deputy White House Press Secretary for National Security Shawn Turner leaves this Friday, it is probable that he will not be replaced for that position. Instead, a source tells us they will most likely [be] offloading his duties to NSC spokesperson Bernadette Meehan’s office.

Turner has routinely been point man for the press regarding the President’s positions on intelligence, foreign policy, border security, military pay and benefits, and military and CIA interrogations. He previously served as Director of Public Affairs, Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The Obama administration has been under fire from the beginning of his first term for the President’s views on foreign policy as well as his, and his team’s, inexperience. With major screw-ups like Benghazi, Ukraine, the reset button, and just this week, caving on the Iranian nuclear deal deadline, one would think that having a press secretary prepared to articulate the President’s national security views would be a no-brainer. But the Obama administration has been out-thought by the no-brain crowd once again.

It seems the administration’s need to surrender extends not only to national security policy, but even to the apparently daunting task of talking about national security policy.

While turnover in Washington is the rule, the fact is that this position has been filled, and has had an office at the white House. That will no longer be the case. That means there won’t be someone on the premises who has the job of Deputy Press Secretary of National Security. The timing, hot on the heels of the Iran “deal” and other security gaffes (like Hillary’s entire tenure at State), is especially notable.

Putting distance between the President and the actions of the government under his leadership is certainly nothing new. How many times has he found out about a major issue by “watching the news”? Now it seems he can catch National Security Policy briefings on C-SPAN, too. And won’t it be convenient for Hillary Clinton to not have to associate her continuance of Obama policy with an actual White House spokesperson.

But hey, having other agencies do the talking has gone great so far. Just look at the resounding successes of Jen Psaki and Marie Harf. And of course, we still have the always forthcoming Josh Earnest and the rest of the most transparent administration in history. Right?

04/8/15

Watcher’s Council Nominations: Bake And Submit Or Else Edition

The Watcher’s Council

http://cdn1.godfatherpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Bake-the-cake1.jpg

Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the ‘sphere and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday morning.

Council News:

This week, The Jawa Report, The Pirate’s Cove, Maggie’s Notebook and Doug Ross earned honorable mention status with some great articles.

You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

To bring something to my attention, simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title and a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address (mandatory, but of course it won’t be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6 PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category. Then return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week when it comes out on Wednesday morning.

Simple, no?

It’s a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?

So, let’s see what we have for you this week…

Council Submissions

Honorable Mentions

Non-Council Submissions

Enjoy! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter… ’cause we’re cool like that! And don’t forget to tune in Friday for the results!