10/28/15

A Stamp for Disgraced Newsman Cronkite?

Before Dan Rather disgraced himself as the anchor of the CBS Evening News, there was Walter Cronkite, who paved the way for a communist takeover of South Vietnam and openly despised and attacked President Ronald Reagan’s peace-through-strength policies. Cronkite, who became an advocate of world government and a stooge of Soviet propaganda operations, is now the subject of a campaign to put his likeness on an official U.S. postage stamp.

The terrible truth about Walter Cronkite, as we noted in 2009 after his passing, is that he “symbolized liberal media bias and used that bias with disastrous consequences for our nation and the world.”

This wasn’t just our opinion. The 1974 book by Dr. Ernest W. LeFever, TV and National Defense, examined in meticulous detail how CBS News programs under Cronkite “were frequently critical of U.S. policy,” usually from a perspective that “implied or called for a lesser military commitment and lower defense expenditures.”

The CBS News bias against a strong national defense continued when President Reagan took office, after the policies of Democratic President Jimmy Carter had severely weakened America’s standing in the world.

The push for a Cronkite stamp comes at a time when Robert Redford is playing Cronkite’s successor, Dan Rather, in a movie ironically titled “Truth” and based on a lie. Rather used forged documents to smear Republican President George W. Bush’s military service.

The proposed stamp seems to be a case of the old media longing for the days when a figure like Cronkite, once known as “the most trusted man in America,” could manipulate the public and affect national policy with little, if any, dissent.

The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the Radio Television Digital News Association are leading the campaign to have the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee, a 12-member group appointed by the postmaster general, issue a stamp in Cronkite’s honor.

As CBS Evening News anchorman, Cronkite campaigned against the American effort to save Vietnam from communism and attacked President Reagan for his anti-communist and anti-Soviet views. What was suspected during his life became known after his death. Cronkite was named in his FBI file as having been targeted in a Soviet “active measures” campaign against President Reagan’s anti-communist foreign policy.

Later in life, as if to confirm his role as an agent of influence against his own government, Cronkite made an appearance before the World Federalist Association, which favors world government financed by global taxes, and called for the U.S. to renounce “some of its sovereignty” and pass a series of United Nations treaties. Then-First Lady Hillary Clinton also appeared, via videotape, to pay tribute to the former CBS Evening News anchorman.

In 1988, Cronkite addressed a left-wing People for the American Way conference and denounced President Reagan for the “unilateral” military actions in Grenada, when the U.S. military evicted a communist gang, and Libya, when Reagan ordered a military strike in retaliation for the acts of terrorism against Americans.

Incredibly, Cronkite said that the smartest president he ever met was Jimmy Carter. The Carter presidency paved the way for the coming to power of the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the Islamic zealots in Iran. Later in life, Carter became an advocate of the interests of the Arab/Muslim world against Israel.

But SPJ at-large board member Bill McCloskey told Accuracy in Media, “In my view, Walter Cronkite deserves to be commemorated by the Postal Service as were a few other prominent journalists. He had a talent for engaging the American public in the important issues of the day in a way that they could understand and digest. His talent showed particularly in his reporting on Watergate and Vietnam, two very complex stories that had great importance to his audience, which was vast. There is a reason he was known as ‘the most trusted man in America.’ Certainly Walter Cronkite fulfills the Postal Service’s goal of commemorating American history better than some of the current crop of stamps featuring stylized eagles, flowers, ducks and bunnies.”

Regarding coverage of the war in Southeast Asia, Cronkite “contributed a great deal to our defeat in Vietnam,” noted Accuracy in Media founder Reed Irvine.

As we have previously pointed out, the bloody result of the Vietnam War was 58,260 U.S. servicemen and nearly one million civilians dead. The South Vietnamese military lost about a quarter of a million, while tens of thousands of South Vietnamese allies of the U.S. were left behind after the American military withdrawal and tortured in communist camps. Thousands of others fled in leaky boats, becoming known as the “boat people.”

Professor Paul Kengor’s book, All The Dupes Fit To Print: Journalists Who Have Served As Tools of Communist Propaganda, devotes a chapter to Cronkite, noting he was singled out in Soviet propaganda operations as willing to go along with communist campaigns against U.S. foreign policy. The record is clear for anyone, including professional journalists, to see.

Nevertheless, Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication has joined the campaign to honor Cronkite, saying it is encouraging alumni, students, faculty, staff and the journalism community to write a letter of support to the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee.

Cronkite School Dean Christopher Callahan said, “Walter Cronkite is our school’s guiding light…We are rallying our network of students, alumni, faculty and friends to get behind this fantastic proposal by the Society of Professional Journalists and the Radio Television Digital News Association.”

The eagles, flowers, ducks and bunnies that the SPJ’s McCloskey says are featured on stamps are harmless. Cronkite left a legacy of suffering and death and helped destroy objective news reporting in the process. It is shocking that a journalism school is named after him and that the SPJ, which maintains an ethics code, is leading a campaign to honor the disgraced journalist.

However, a stamp in tribute to Cronkite would be on the same level as a movie honoring his disgraced successor.

After honoring Cronkite, can a stamp paying tribute to Brian Williams be far behind? Williams’ lies are penny ante compared to Cronkite’s ability to destroy a free South Vietnam, apologize for Soviet communism, and promote world government.

Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee, 475 L’Enfant Plaza SW, Room 3300, Washington, DC 20260-3501.

07/8/15

The Media vs. Trump’s Patriotic Appeal

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Donald Trump may be the most politically incorrect candidate on the Republican side. He openly mocks the news media and addresses the problem of illegal immigration. But even more importantly, he attacks the trade policies that benefit our enemies and adversaries. By doing so, he challenges what radio talk show host Jeffrey T. Kuhner calls the bipartisan “ruling establishment,” whose dominance “is based on the complicity of the mainstream media.”

With regard to the media, Trump’s attack on NBC after the network cut ties with him demonstrates his understanding of what appeals to the conservatives who vote in the Republican Party.

“If NBC is so weak and so foolish to not understand the serious illegal immigration problem in the United States, coupled with the horrendous and unfair trade deals we are making with Mexico, then their contract-violating closure of Miss Universe/Miss USA will be determined in court,” he said. “Furthermore, they will stand behind lying Brian Williams, but won’t stand behind people that tell it like it is, as unpleasant as that may be.”

Williams is the serial liar who, despite being exposed for numerous fraudulent claims about his own career, has been kept on the payroll of NBC News.

The response to Trump, who is rising in the polls, demonstrates that conservatives like a candidate who exposes the liberals in the media as the hypocrites they are.

But it’s not just standing up to the media—or his criticism of criminals coming into the country through Mexico—that has made him into a hero. As analyst Nevin Gussack notes, “Trump’s economics and aspects of his national security strategy challenge the Washington Consensus of globalism, free trade, and other internationalist policies.” This may be the sleeper issue of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Gussack is the author of the book, Sowing the Seeds of Our Destruction: Useful Idiots on the ‘Right,’ which contends that trade policies under both Democrats and Republicans have served the interests of countries hostile to the United States, most especially China.

In his voluminous writings on the topic, Gussack is particularly critical of current and former Republican governors, some of them running for president, noting that they have “colluded to hasten Red Chinese economic colonization of the United States under the guise of foreign investment.” He faults them for traveling “hat in hand” to the Chinese “to negotiate for the outright takeover of U.S.-owned assets.”

He cites the case of 25 wealthy Communist Chinese investors visiting Orlando, Florida for a “US-China Investment Week” in 2012 that was attended by Florida Governor Rick Scott, then-Texas Governor Rick Perry, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

In 2010, Gussack notes, Governor Rick Perry helped the Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei Technologies open a headquarters in Plano, Texas. A 2012 report from the House Intelligence Committee called Huawei a threat to U.S. national security interests because of its connections to the Chinese government, including the People’s Liberation Army.

Accuracy in Media disclosed in a 2014 investigative report that the firm had been linked to the murder of an American citizen, Dr. Shane Truman Todd, who had been working on a project in Singapore involving Huawei.

Governor Walker opened something called the Wisconsin Center China in Madison, Wisconsin, to facilitate trade with the communist regime. At the time, Walker said, “This trade center strengthens our relationship with China and provides Wisconsin businesses the resources and assistance to pursue export opportunities in this growing market. Through the years, Wisconsin has built a strong trade relationship with China, and the opening of the Wisconsin Center China will help Wisconsin businesses continue to strengthen our trade relationships and grow export opportunities.”

Walker embarked on a trade mission to Red China in 2013, Gussack points out, where he met Communist Party officials and Chinese President/General Secretary Xi Jinping. The Communists then hosted a reception for Governor Walker and his delegation, which was made up of 300 Wisconsin businessmen and officials.

“Tragically,” Gussack goes on, “it appeared that Governor Walker and a majority of state Republicans sought to liberalize foreign ownership laws over Wisconsin land. Specifically, Governor Walker sought to overturn the law that prohibited the foreign ownership of more than 640 acres of land in Wisconsin.” Republican State Senator Dale Schultz acknowledged that repeal “would allow the Chinese government to buy a big chunk of land in northwest Wisconsin if it wanted to.”

However, outrage over the provision caused Walker to drop it from a budget plan.

In 2011, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush visited the Chinese province of Hainan, where he talked about stronger economic ties, and in January 2012 met with the former Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, now the President of China. Xi Jinping said the Bush family had made great contributions to promoting relations between China and the United States, “which the two nations and the two peoples will not forget.”

Gussack comments, “Naturally, Bush was following in his father’s and brother’s footsteps in the promotion of the economic and political interests of a communist enemy of the United States. The Bush family was another case of a family rooted in transnational capital which promoted Beijing’s interests, rather than solely the advancement of American national interests.”

In a piece entitled, “Is the U.S. Being Colonized By Red China?,” Tom Deweese, president of the American Policy Center, wrote that “The genius of the Chinese system is that they are using its growing industrial might to create wealth the Soviets could never have dreamed of possessing. China is using its vast wealth (trillions of dollars) compiled from the glut of Chinese goods sold in American stores, to buy its power. It’s buying American debt and wielding heavy influence on the American economy.”

DeWeese argued that through the so-called Immigrant Investor Regional Centers of the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Service, countries like China are investing in American communities with federal help. “While the program is open to immigrants from around world, the main interest appears to be from Communist China,” he said, adding that “the waning American economy and a U.S. government that no longer sees communism as a threat, makes us vulnerable to a power that knows exactly what it seeks.”

Trump has challenged this kind of pandering to Beijing and other foreign interests, leading radio talk show host Jeffrey T. Kuhner to comment that Trump “is a Teddy Roosevelt-style nationalist, who seeks to break the stranglehold of Big Business, Big Media and Big Government. Moreover, his vast wealth means that he cannot be bought and paid for.”

Kuhner added, “Economic nationalism has been a cardinal principle of conservatism dating back to our Founding Fathers. George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams—all supported protective tariffs and a trade policy that guaranteed America’s economic independence.”

While his comments on criminal aliens have garnered the attention, Trump’s criticism of the trade practices of foreign countries may be what ultimately sets him apart from the other Republican contenders. It could be his path to the Republican nomination and victory in 2016.

05/18/15

Stephanopoulos Fiasco is Par for the Course

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

What is surprising about the latest George Stephanopoulos controversy is that most of the media are treating it as something unusual rather than an acknowledgement of a problem that’s been plaguing the media for decades. We at Accuracy in Media are happy to see this issue receive the scrutiny it deserves. However, anyone convinced that Stephanopoulos’s ongoing political conflict of interest and failure to disclose it to his viewers is the exception, not the rule, hasn’t been paying attention to a long history of media corruption.

Stephanopoulos interviewed Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos on April 26. But the ABC host, formerly a Senior Advisor on Policy and Strategy, and unofficial hatchet-man, for President Bill Clinton, treated his broadcast as more of an interrogation than an interview in an effort to discredit Schweizer and defend, in turn, the Clintons. A real interview would have endeavored to understand Schweizer’s critique of the Clintons, not demand to see a “smoking gun” or “evidence” of a crime.

Stephanopoulos’s conflict of interest was blown wide open by an excellent outfit, The Washington Free Beacon, which started the ball rolling when it contacted ABC News about Stephanopoulos’s donations to the Clinton Foundation. ABC’s spokeswoman, Heather Riley, said that they would respond, but then turned first to a friendly ally—Politico—to spin the story favorably for the network and its golden boy.

“I thought that my contributions were a matter of public record,” said Stephanopoulos in his apology. “However, in hindsight, I should have taken the extra step of personally disclosing my donations to my employer and to the viewers on air during the recent news stories about the Foundation.”

ABC News initially incorrectly stated that he had given only $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation—an amount he later amended to $75,000 over three years.

But there’s more, much more.

The Washington Free Beacon’s Andrew Stiles reported that Ms. Riley “worked in the White House press office from 1997 to 2000,” including serving “as a press contact for then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.”

But beyond that, Schweizer followed up on the week’s revelations, and found that Stephanopoulos’s ties with the Clinton Foundation were much closer than just cutting checks to the foundation. Schweizer called it “the sort of ‘hidden hand journalism’ that has contributed to America’s news media’s crisis of credibility in particular, and Americans’ distrust of the news media more broadly.”

He pointed out that Stephanopoulos “did not disclose that in 2006 he was a featured attendee and panel moderator at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI).” Nor did he “disclose that in 2007, he was a featured attendee at the CGI annual meeting, a gathering also attended by several individuals I report on in Clinton Cash, including mega Clinton Foundation donors Lucas Lundin, Frank Giustra, Frank Holmes, and Carlos Slim—individuals whose involvement with the Clintons I assumed he had invited me on his program to discuss.” And on it goes.

Stephanopoulos inadvertently revealed in another setting what donations such as his are all about. “But everybody also knows when those donors give that money—and President Clinton or someone, they get a picture with him—there’s a hope that it’s going to lead to something. And that’s what you have to be careful of,” Stephanopoulos said to Jon Stewart about Schweizer’s theory on April 28. “Even if you don’t get an action, what you get is access and you get the influence that comes with access and that’s got to shape the thinking of politicians. That’s what’s so pernicious about it.”

“Could Stephanopoulos, who is also ABC News’s chief anchor and political correspondent, be hoping for access to and exclusives from Bill and Hillary, giving him a competitive edge during the 2016 presidential campaign?” asks Lloyd Grove for The Daily Beast.

On the May 15 broadcast of Good Morning America Stephanopoulos “apologized” again—while patting himself on the back for supporting children, the environment, and efforts to stop the spread of AIDS. “Those donations were a matter of public record, but I should have made additional disclosures on air when I covered the foundation, and I now believe that directing personal donations to that foundation was a mistake,” he said. “Even though I made them strictly to support work done to stop the spread of AIDS, help children, and protect the environment in poor countries, I should have gone the extra mile to avoid even the appearance of a conflict.”

The extra mile?

This is, basically, the same argument the Clintons and their Foundation have put forth to explain their conflicts of interest or “errors,” after having taken millions of dollars from companies and countries that had business with the U.S. government while Mrs. Clinton served as Secretary of State. Their failure to disclose many of these donations resulted in them refiling their tax returns for five years, once the obvious conflicts of interest came to light.

In reality the Clinton Foundation gives about 10% of what it collects to direct charitable grants, according to a study by The Federalist, as reported in National Review. “It looks like the Foundation—which once did a large amount of direct charitable work—now exists mainly to fund salaries, travel, and conferences,” writes David French. The study pointed out that “Between 2011 and 2013, the organization spent only 9.9 percent of the $252 million it collected on direct charitable grants.” In other words, less than $10,000 of the money that Stephanopoulos paid as tribute to the Clintons went to the causes he claims to care about.

Stephanopoulos has removed himself from the ABC-sponsored Republican presidential primary debate next February. Yet he simultaneously claimed, “I think I’ve shown that I can moderate debates fairly.” His decision to not participate ignores the bigger picture.

As we have pointed out, the incestuous relationships between the Democrats and media are almost endless. It’s not just ABC’s Sunday show, but the two other main broadcast networks that also feature highly partisan Democrats as hosts. NBC’s Meet the Press host Chuck Todd “served as a staffer on Democratic Senator Tom Harkin’s 1992 presidential bid,” according to Politico. John Dickerson, the new host of CBS’s Face the Nation gave the following advice to President Barack Obama in 2013: “The president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP. If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat.”

Stephanopoulos says he should have announced his conflict of interest. If such announcements become commonplace, which they should, where exactly will that end? Should CBS News announce each and every time it broadcasts news about President Obama’s foreign policy or national security issues that the president of CBS News is actually the brother of White House Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes? Or should ABC News have regularly disclosed that its former ABC News President Ben Sherwood had a sister with the Obama White House? She still works with the Obama administration. And, NBC? That’s the network of Al Sharpton, Brian Williams, Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow. Need I say more?

Chris Harper, formerly of ABC News, has posted his views, along with those of other mostly liberal former ABC News people, as cited by Kevin Williamson of National Review: “During the 15 years we worked for ABC News,” wrote Harper, “we remember that we had to sign a yearly disclosure of gifts worth more than $25 and contributions. Perhaps these documents no longer exist in the muddled world of TV news.”

Added Harper: “Mr. Stephanopoulos has few defenders among his former colleagues. According to a Facebook page, ABCeniors, the rather liberal bunch of former network staffers discussed the problems with his contributions. ‘That shows either indifference or arrogance. Or a nice cocktail of both,’ wrote one former ABC hand. A former producer noted: ‘He knew what he was doing, and he didn’t want us to know. That’s deceit.’”

Geraldo Rivera recalled that he had been fired from ABC back in 1985 because of a $200 political donation. At least that was the reason given at the time. Rivera wondered why Stephanopoulos was being treated differently: “The point is ABC treated my undisclosed $200 donation harshly because the network wanted me out for that unrelated reason,” Rivera continued. “Now ABC is bending over backward to minimize and forgive George Stephanopoulos’s $75,000 donation to the Clinton Foundation because he is central to the network’s recent success.”

Former ABC News reporter Carole Simpson said Sunday on CNN’s Reliable Sources that she “was dumbfounded.”

“But I wanted to just take him by the neck and say, George, what were you thinking?

“And clearly, he was not thinking. I thought it was outrageous, and I am sorry that, again, the public’s trust in the media is being challenged and frayed because of the actions of some of the top people in the business.”

She added that “there’s a coziness that George cannot escape the association. He was press secretary for President Clinton. That’s pretty close. And while he did try to separate himself from his political background to become a journalist, he really is not a journalist. Yet, ABC has made him the face of ABC News, the chief anchor. And I think they’re really caught in a quandary here.” She believes that ABC, despite their public support for Stephanopoulos, is “hopping mad” at him.

When the left has conflicts of interest involving money, the media allow the perpetrators—including themselves—to portray this as charity and supporting good causes. “[NBC’s Brian] Willams wrapped himself in the flag; Stephanopoulos cloaked himself in charity,” writes Grove. MSNBC identified 143 journalists making political donations between 2004 and the start of the 2008 campaign. “Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes,” according to NBC News.

But when conservatives are shown to have financial conflicts of interest, or even to have accepted legitimate campaign donations, they are generally portrayed as serving the interests of evil, greedy businessmen or lobbyists who are paying off politicians to allow them to pollute, destroy the environment, fatten up defense contractors and avoid paying taxes.

“As you know, the Democrats have said this is—this is an indication of your partisan interest. They say… you used to work for …President Bush as a speechwriter. You’re funded by the Koch brothers,” Stephanopoulos told Schweizer during the interview, casting the author as biased. Stephanopoulos, however, they want us to believe, is just an impartial journalist inquiring after the truth.

This is what happens when you have a corrupt media that don’t play fair, but instead put their thumb on the fairness scale to tilt it towards their partisan interests.

02/20/15

Too Many Lies, Too Much of the Time

By: Alan Caruba
Warning Signs

“He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.”

— THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to Peter Carr, Aug. 19, 1785

I am beginning to wonder if Americans have grown so accustomed to the lies told by the President, his administration, and others said to be highly regarded, that we are losing a sense of outrage?

To the degree that Brian Williams’ serial lies have evoked a national discussion, it’s good to know that most people think he has lost credibility to the point of not being a news anchor, but one still has to wonder what NBC will do at the end of the six month suspension it has imposed on him. I am cynical enough to think he may be offered a job at MSNBC.

It is far more significant that, regarding the leading candidate to be the Democratic Party’s choice to run for President in 2016, we know she engaged in similar lies of having been “under fire.”

It’s one thing to expect politicians to lie, but the nation’s future is at stake when we still do not know the truth of Hillary Clinton’s full role in the Benghazi attack that left a U.S. ambassador and three others dead. She was the Secretary of State at the time and we watched her stand at his side as the President attributed the attack to a video no one had ever seen. The fact that the attack occurred on the anniversary of 9/11 was conveniently ignored.

The refusal to identify the Islamic State (ISIS) as an enemy representative of the global jihad is not just politics. It is a lie on the order of the President’s assertion that “The Islamic State is not Islamic.” As we are repeatedly reminded, if you cannot or will not identify an enemy, you are leaving yourself and, in this case, the nation open to attack.

Indeed, many elements of the Obama administration have engaged in lying on a level that goes beyond “politics.” It is a deliberate attack on science itself when the EPA, NOAA and NASA actively engage in distorting data to say that the Earth is warming when it has been in a well-established cooling cycle for 19 years at this point.

How are we expected to maintain any confidence in an administration that lies about employment statistics and other critical data we need to know regarding the economy?

The lie about “income inequality” is the core rational for Communism. There is no such thing as equality when it comes to income because some people enjoy higher pay for higher skills, higher productivity, and higher responsibility. We don’t pay “sanitation engineers” the same as we pay real engineers. And you don’t create new jobs by raising the minimum wage when it will reduce existing and potential new jobs.

Most dramatically, it was a series of lies told by the President that led to the passage of ObamaCare. Its two thousand-plus pages were not read by the exclusively Democratic members of Congress who passed it and, today, we learn that it is a major contributor to the nation’s deficit which is the result of the government spending more than it takes in. For the past six years Obama’s policies have added trillions to our national debt, now $18 trillion and growing. It is going to be a burden on generations to come.

There is no evidence of the tax reforms that Congress knows are needed, nor reforms to the entitlement programs that are just years from becoming insolvent.

Whether it is domestic or foreign affairs, Americans have been at a loss to expect the national press to address the lies because they would have to abandon the protection they have afforded the President for the past six years. Only one news service, Fox News, is credited with providing the truth. Fortunately the Internet has provided access to many other outlets where the truth can be found. And, yes, many that maintain the lies.

It should come as no surprise that the Obama administration wants to regulate the Internet with a program that call “Net neutrality”, but there is nothing neutral about it. The freedom the Internet enjoys is the best example of the value Americans put on an uncensored source of information and communication. The Obama administration wants to control the Internet in the same way that despots around the world want to do.

There is always a far higher price to pay for believing lies than knowing the truth.

We expect our enemies to lie. We should not expect our government to do so in such a routine and obscene fashion.

02/15/15

Hitler Finds Out About Brian Williams

Hat Tip: Trapper Pettit

02/13/15

Warring Factions Threaten Clinton White House Bid

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

Ongoing rivalries and dissension among Clinton loyalists have percolated up through the mainstream media, even The New York Times—whose own investigative reporting may have set off the latest salvo. It seems despite the president-in-waiting status often accorded to Mrs. Clinton, there might not be enough money to go around, evoking harsh internal criticisms.

David Brock, founder of the far-left Media Matters, “is a cancer,” argued John Morgan, a Florida lawyer connected to both President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton, according to recent reporting by Nicholas Confessore and Amy Chozick at the Times. Brock made headlines earlier this week, when in response to their reporting, he sent out a letter that alleged “current and former Priorities officials were behind this specious and malicious attack on the integrity of these critical organizations” and “resigned from the board of the super PAC Priorities USA Action,” according to Politico’s Kenneth Vogel.

Brock is considering a return to Priorities USA, The Washington Post noted shortly thereafter. “People are starting to worry that Priorities could be a weak link,” one strategist told Vogel for his February 10 story about how this super PAC is “struggling in its early efforts to line up cash toward a fundraising goal of as much as $500 million.”

But one wonders whether the criticisms expressed in the media will sabotage Brock’s and other loyalists’ peacemaking. “If you care about your party and our country, you just do what you are asked,” said Morgan, according to Confessore and Chozick. “If you care about yourself, you take your toys and go home.” Morgan is apparently “close” to the co-chair of Priorities USA Action, Jim Messina. Messina served as President Obama’s campaign manager in 2012.

Confessore, a liberal writer/editor transplanted from Washington Monthly to The New York Times, seems to have access to a considerable circle of influential Democrats connected to the Clintons. After all, he sat down with John Podesta in 2003 and 2005. And his August 2013 exposé on mismanagement at the Clinton Foundation, co-authored with Chozick, included interviews with “more than two dozen former and current foundation employees, donors and advisers to the family”—most unwilling to speak on the record.

Like the 2013 piece, Confessore and Chozick report for the Times on February 10 that “most people interviewed for this article declined to speak on the record for fear of angering either the president or the woman who hopes to replace him.” But these persons are willing to speak to the Times about their frustrations.

“The Hillary people were more in it for themselves,” said Jonathan Alter, MSNBC political analyst, when he appeared on the February 10 Ed Schultz show on MSNBC. Alter was referring to the 2008 Democratic primary campaign against Obama. “If we get a repeat of that this time, she won`t have the passion and a genuine commitment that she needs to go the distance.”

“…what this is about is that is that there was a fundraiser who raised millions of dollars for these different groups including David Brock`s, but she was taking a 12.5 percent commission,” Alter said. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum described Mary Pat Bonner’s reported 12.5% commission as “way over the top.”

Confessore and Chozick cast this Democrat infighting differently. They describe the latest meltdown among Clinton movers and shakers as a conflict between two worlds: former Obama staffers who have been imported as strategists for Clinton, and long-time Clinton loyalists. But these writers aren’t the only ones with conflicted interests. The reality appears to be that many in the liberal media, including some reporters at The Washington Post and New York Times, want to tear Hillary and the Clintons down for being too close to Wall Street. But on the other hand, they realize that Mrs. Clinton is the overwhelming favorite to get the Democratic nomination, meaning they will undoubtedly support her when it comes down to her vying against any Republican candidate.

As I’ve reported in the past, The Washington Post—even amidst Mrs. Clinton’s “worst week in Washington” and her tone-deaf comments about being “dead broke” after leaving the White House—still gave her favorable coverage in order to ensure that a Democrat would retain the presidency. “The Post has issued wall-to-wall coverage of this subject, but most of it is about ensuring Hillary’s chances,” I wrote last July.

But when Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) launched her populist offensive in the Senate, hope sprang anew among die-hard liberals and some in the media that Mrs. Clinton, with all her baggage, might not be a shoo-in. The Post’s Paul Kane practically salivated over Sen. Warren’s presidential chances back during the December revolt. Sen. Warren has said she’s not running, but the Post continues to run articles like this: “Democrats suffering from Clinton fatigue say they’re ready for Warren.” Chozick recently described Sen. Warren as “an effective tool in moving Mrs. Clinton off message” whom Republicans favor as a candidate to create dissension within the Democratic primary.

Accuracy in Media has argued in the past that the Times’ David Kirkpatrick piece on Benghazi was a way of inoculating Mrs. Clinton while trying to make the definitive case supporting the Obama administration’s actions and justifications for Benghazi. But that obviously didn’t work, and revelations confirming the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi’s conclusions continue to break, implicating Mrs. Clinton not only for poor security preceding the 2012 Benghazi attacks, but her blind push to intervene in Libya in the first place. When Mrs. Clinton most likely appears before the Select Committee on Benghazi, an even greater spotlight will shine on her role in these attacks.

It looks like Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is very tempted to run against Mrs. Clinton from the left, and former Virginia Senator James Webb might run more or less from her right. The sharks are circling this establishment candidate; will Mrs. Clinton successfully fend them off?

And clearly others at the Times aren’t so interested in inoculating her. But in the meantime, the left is having a catfight, and it may be that some reporters are interested in stirring the pot for dramatic effect—and to cause some angst for Mrs. Clinton from their end.

Confessore’s bio from the Times states that he covers the “intersection of money, power and influence.” A visit to his Twitter page reveals that he, like many liberals, doesn’t like the Citizens United ruling very much. His twitter feed recently stated, “Thanks to Citizens United, we can now have campaign infighting without the campaign.” He also has tweeted about the Clinton Foundation’s $81 million received from “clients of HSBC’s controversial Swiss bank.”

He also wrote an article with Chozick in July of last year which stated, “Few political families are closer to Wall Street than the Clintons … And the Clintons often interact with the titans of finance on the Manhattan charity circuit and during their vacations in the Hamptons.”

Could it be that at least one New York Times staffer doesn’t favor Mrs. Clinton for her entrenched, big-money establishment ties much, either? Or perhaps it’s just that Confessore, Chozick, and the Times itself want to go around poking sleeping tigers before an election to see what they can stir up.

These aren’t Mrs. Clinton’s only problems. She also has what might become known as a “Brian Williams problem,” meaning she “misremembered” coming under sniper fire on a runway in Bosnia, and she repeated the story on more than one occasion, yet there were plenty of eyewitnesses who knew it was a complete fabrication. It cost Williams his esteemed position, and a lot of money. Will Hillary pay a similar price?

Plus, former President Bill Clinton is becoming a problem again based on his being linked in the media to a sex scandal involving a good friend of his who is a convicted pedophile. It’s certainly never dull when the Clintons are involved.

02/10/15

Say Her Name: Vaccine Victim Hannah Poling

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Brian Williams’ “chopper whoppers” about his exploits as a correspondent flying into Iraq are making him look foolish. It’s not clear whether he can survive in the anchor chair. But don’t think the Williams case means that the media are now on guard for misrepresentations and false claims. The controversy over vaccines has been another media low point. We are being told they are completely safe with no side effects. That’s a blatant lie.

Anybody who watches Williams’ newscasts can see who pays the bills: pharmaceutical companies. Commercials for various pills, and even vaccines, are regular fare and dominate the several minutes of time that pay for the newscast itself. You would have to be a fool to think these companies don’t try to exercise influence over what appears on the broadcasts.

Former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson’s book, Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington, offers evidence of how powerful these companies are. She explains how pharmaceutical companies, their front groups, and public relations representatives work to manipulate news coverage and hide the truth from the American people about injuries caused by vaccines.

Attkisson, an Emmy Award winner who received the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2012, left the network when it became clear that her investigative stories, especially of Obama administration misdeeds, were not welcome. One of the stories she had been covering on a regular basis for many years was the vaccine-autism link. She continues to do so on her own website.

This is an area where the truth affects many people, not just Brian Williams’ career. The developmental disorder known as autism is estimated to affect two million people. It involves difficulties in social interaction and verbal and nonverbal communication. Hiring doctors and therapists to treat the disorder can cost a family $50,000 or more a year. However, there is no cure.

The number of cases have risen from an estimated one in 5,000 in 1975 to one in 64 today, a more than 600 percent increase. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) claims it can’t identify the cause, but has consistently claimed that the disorder is not linked to the growing number of vaccines required for children.

The pro-vaccination side has increasingly resorted to vicious name calling and smears against those favoring informed consent and parental choice on vaccines. The Washington Post published a piece by Arthur L. Caplan, an alleged expert on medical ethics, comparing the opponents of vaccines to Holocaust deniers. He said that doctors favoring choice on vaccines should have their licenses lifted.

There is one name these proponents of mandatory vaccines in the media desperately want to avoid: vaccine victim Hannah Poling. You can search in vain for her name in the recent coverage of alleged vaccine safety.

Attkisson notes in her book that in 2008, the federal government agreed to pay damages to the family of Hannah Poling, “a child who developed autism after multiple vaccinations.” Attkisson explained that the “landmark case” amounted to $1.5 million for the girl the first year and $500,000 each year after. In total, the compensation could amount to $20 million over the child’s lifetime.

The Poling case was just one of thousands of cases filed in the National Vaccine Injury Program. But it was selected as a “test case” to evaluate the arguments underlying most of the other vaccine-autism claims.

Attkisson writes that the case was “ordered sealed, protecting the pharmaceutical vaccine industry and keeping the crucial information hidden from other families who have autistic children and also believe vaccines to be the culprit.” But word leaked out.

At the time, the head of the federal Centers for Disease Control, which assures the public of vaccine safety, was Dr. Julie Gerberding. After insisting the settlement of the Poling case was not an admission of a direct vaccine-autism link, she left the CDC to become president of vaccines for Merck. Last December she was promoted to executive vice president for strategic communications, global public policy and population health at Merck.

Attkisson reported on the Poling case for CBS News on March 6, 2008. She said, “While the Poling case is the first of its kind to become public, a CBS News investigation uncovered at least nine other cases as far back as 1990, where records show the court ordered the government to compensate families whose children developed autism or autistic-like symptoms in children, including toddlers, who had been called ‘very smart’ and ‘impressed’ doctors with their ‘intelligence and curiosity’ … until their vaccinations. They were children just like Hannah Poling.”

In a September 10, 2010, story on the vaccine-injury court award, Attkisson reported, “Hannah was described as normal, happy and precocious in her first 18 months. Then, in July 2000, she was vaccinated against nine diseases in one doctor’s visit: measles, mumps, rubella, polio, varicella, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, and Haemophilus influenzae. Afterward, her health declined rapidly. She developed high fevers, stopped eating, didn’t respond when spoken to, began showing signs of autism, and began having screaming fits.”

Not surprisingly, Attkisson reports in her book, the vaccine makers didn’t appreciate her stories. She said that after word leaked out about the government’s settlement in the Poling case, “vaccine makers and their government partners” worked hard “to controversialize and tamp down all news coverage of the facts.” She notes that their strategy included “a full-forced attack on me and my ongoing reporting.” She learned in June 2008, after the fact, that “PR officials and a top attorney for vaccine maker Wyeth have managed to get a private meeting to spin two Evening News senior producers in New York about my reports.”

Attkisson names one of the pharmaceutical PR officials as former ABC and CNN reporter Eileen O’Connor, who now works at the State Department under President Obama.

Attkisson comments on the pressure campaign: “It’s wrong on so many levels, in my opinion. Improper for the meeting to be conducted without my participation or knowledge. Unethical to offer the powerful corporate interests—who are also advertisers—special access, while those on the other side aren’t given an audience to be heard. Inappropriate because the producers haven’t been in the chain of command on any of my vaccine-related stories.”

She notes in the book that some of the “hardest pushback” she ever received for a story came after CBS Evening News Executive Producer Jim Murphy assigned her to look into the reported cover-up of adverse effects of various prescription drugs and military vaccinations. She writes, “That series of reports leads to me to investigate related stories about childhood vaccinations and their links to harmful side effects, including brain damage and autism. At the time, the Bush administration is marching in lockstep with the pharmaceutical industry in denying problems with the prescription drugs at issue as well as both military and childhood vaccines.”

She writes, “It’s one thing for them to want their side of the story told: that’s understandable. But it’s quite another for them to want the stories censored entirely. They’re trying to keep them from airing altogether.”

She reports that just minutes before one of her first stories about childhood vaccinations and autism was to air, a spokesman for a nonprofit group called Every Child by Two called CBS in New York. “The spokesman evokes the name of former first lady Rosalynn Carter, who cofounded the group,” Attkisson says. “The call reaches Murphy, who then calls me on the hotline that rings directly into the Washington bureau newsroom. I’m preparing for my live shot. ‘Why is some group called Every Child by Two, supposedly fronted by Rosalynn Carter, calling me about your story?’” Murphy asks.

Attkisson responded, “I have no idea,” and said she had never heard of the group. She then learned that it “promotes children getting fully vaccinated by age two and rejects the idea of investigating harmful vaccine side effects that could injure the very youngsters they purported to protect.”

Attkisson recounted how she also later learned that Every Child by Two is funded by the major vaccine manufacturer, Wyeth, and a Wyeth spokesman was listed as the group’s treasurer. She writes that she wondered “how they knew we planned to air a story on the news that night.” Nevertheless, CBS went ahead with the story.

In a 2011 story, “Vaccines and Autism: a new scientific review,” Attkisson cited an article in the Journal of Immunotoxicology entitled, “Theoretical aspects of autism: Causes—A review.” It was a review of studies finding cases of autism following vaccination.

You don’t have to be a scientist to notice this pattern. I have heard from several parents who have seen it for themselves. One told me, “Our son was affected by vaccines and there are too many out there with the same story. I’m sick of hearing and reading news reports saying there is no correlation between autism and vaccines.”

On her website, Attkisson is described as an investigative journalist “who tries to give you information others don’t want you to have.” That certainly is the case with vaccine safety. She’s one of the few journalists with national stature willing to tackle this issue.

As we have recently commented, the media across the political spectrum seem unwilling to cover vaccine-related injury cases. Many reporters and commentators are mindlessly spouting claims about “vaccine safety” and dismissing a vaccine-autism link without even mentioning cases like that of Hannah Poling.

Attkisson has vigorously defended her stories. Indeed, when challenged by CNN reporter Brian Stelter about her stories linking vaccines to autism, she replied, “…those were some of the most important stories I’ve done and I would like to continue along those lines, at some point. It continues to be a very important debate.”

Now a senior independent contributor to the Heritage Foundation’s The Daily Signal, Attkisson continues to cover the vaccine problem on her own website and is now quoting CDC’s immunization safety director as saying it’s a “possibility” that vaccines rarely trigger autism but “it’s hard to predict who those children might be.”

Attkisson comments, “It is a significant admission from a leading health official at an agency that has worked for nearly 15 years to dispel the public of any notion of a tie between vaccines and autism. Vaccines are among the most heralded medical inventions of our time. Billions of people have been vaccinated worldwide, countless lives have been saved and debilitating injuries prevented. The possibility that vaccines may also partly be responsible for autism, in individual cases, is not something public health officials are typically eager to address.”

The major media are not eager to address it, either. But the people are demanding that the truth be told. They do not believe the media’s declarations of vaccine safety and effectiveness.

Whatever the fate of Brian Williams, the credibility of the media will continue to nosedive.

02/10/15

Never let facts interfere with a lie

By: T F Stern
The Moral Liberal

Shakespeare had a line in his play, Hamlet; most are familiar with, “To be or not to be, that is the question”. Taking considerable liberties with this, “To lie or not to lie, that is the question”. Hamlet would have been a success either way; but for today’s purposes let’s have some fun. Brian Williams of NBC might come forward on his nightly news forum claiming he was at the performance and might have the original Playbill in his files.

What’s the big deal, everyone lies or exaggerates; at least that’s the rationalization from those who idolize Brian Williams, the leftist agenda offered at NBC and other major media outlets. What ever it takes to get the job done; lie a little, cheat a little and if we get caught we’ll admit that it was only a miscommunication or that we accidentally forgot to include a little just like everyone else does.

“You like your doctor, you get to keep your doctor! You like your plan, you get to keep it!” Obama said that or something similar no less than 12 times; but we have learned that Obama knew from the get go that it was a lie, that most folks would not get to keep their doctor or their original health plan. Obama knew this prior to twisting arms to pass Obamacare. Is telling the truth important?

Then there’s the United Nations IPCC report which intentionally left out two fairly important statements which were supposed to be in the final draft regarding Global Warming. If you’re not up on the IPCC report, that’s the focal point used by most of the nation’s leaders to justify and combat the man made global warming crisis. (It’s sometimes referred to as the man made global warming hoax since that is a more accurate assessment of this scheme to redistribute wealth on a global scale.)

“None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases.”

“No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man–made causes”

And yet the U.N. continues to push for a global government based on impending catastrophic events which will certainly befall humankind due to man made global warming. Based on intentionally misleading IPCC reports, would this be considered a lie?

Internet search engines can find most anything; but when you find what is offered can anyone be assured that the information supplied is of any worth? Looking for graphs and charts regarding air pollution turns up some interesting; useless but interesting charts.

There were so many charts on CO2 levels as to be a bonanza; that is until you figure out that the ‘settled science’ on CO2 being the cause of global warming isn’t settled. CO2 isn’t a pollutant at all; in fact it is a required component for plants to grow. Turns out the increase in CO2 is helping plant life to flourish, thereby helping to feed those in need across this planet; but you won’t hear environmental alarmists talking about that little tidbit.

Then there’s the ‘climate change blame game’, which countries are at fault for the world’s miseries and how much should the ‘world court of opinion’ exact for their alleged crimes against Mother Earth and her inhabitants?

“South Africa, on behalf of a broad group of developing and poor nations, called for a show of good faith — including for rich countries to show how they intend to keep a promise to scale climate assistance up to $100 billion (88 billion euros) by 2020.”

There were a couple of interesting charts on general air pollution which caught my attention. It became painfully clear that cities in Communist China far out ‘performed’ cities in the United States as the worst polluters based on suspended particles in the air, nearly 10 to 1.

Why would that be interesting?

It’s important because the so called environmental movement here in our country has been hiding, at least until recently, their close associations with communism and their desire to transform America into a pure socialist state.

“Until recently, those attacking the capitalist system as the cause of global warming were intentionally a little vague as to what will replace it if we are to solve the problem. But on Sunday in Oakland, that curtain was drawn back and the new system was finally revealed: Communism. Or at least hardcore socialism as Marx defined it — the necessary transitional phase before true complete communism (i.e. no private property, no families, no individualism). Most countries we tend to think of as “communist” actually self-defined as “socialist”: The USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, for example, was (as its name reveals) socialist. I point out this detail in case anybody reading this article thinks that the “socialism” advocated at the rally was merely some kind of squishy soft-hearted semi-capitalism; no, it is the same type of socialism one finds in places generally thought of as communist.”

Wait a second; didn’t the chart show that Communist China was almost 10 times worse at polluting the planet than our capitalistic nation?

Never let facts interfere with a perfectly good lie; that’s how the left gets away with their tall stories, their yarns and the evening news.

02/9/15

It’s Not Just Brian Williams

By: Alan Caruba
Warning Signs

“When reporters forfeit their credibility by making up stories, sources, or quotes, we are right to mock them. When their violations are significant or repeated, they should be fired,” says Charles Lipson, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. “Demanding honest reporting has nothing to do with the reporter’s politics, personality, or personal life. It is about professional standards and our reasonable expectations.”

Writing at Real Clear Politics.com, Prof. Lipson concluded by saying, “It’s essential for our news organizations, and it matters for our democracy.”

Are we seeing a trend here? Dan Rather at CBS and now Brian Williams at NBC? Well, two news anchors are not a trend, but biased and bad reporting is. It’s not new, but it does seem to be gathering momentum and nowhere has it been more apparent than the millions of words written and spoken about “global warming” and now “climate change.”

It would be easy and convenient to lay the blame on America’s Liar-in-Chief, President Barack Obama, but the “global warming” hoax began well before he came on the scene. It was the invention of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) dating back to its creation in 1988 when it was established by the UN Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization.

The IPCC came to world attention with the creation of the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty that committed the nations that signed it to reduce “greenhouse gas emissions” based on the premise that global warming—a dramatic increase—was real and that it was man-made. The Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on December 11, 1997. The United States Senate rejected it and our neighbor, Canada, later withdrew from it. Both China and India were exempted, free to continue building numerous coal-fired plants to generate the energy they need for development.

Today, though, the President is an unrelenting voice about the dangers of “climate change” which he and John Kerry, our Secretary of State, have rated the “greatest threat” to the world. Obama’s national security strategy document was released just a day before he equated the history of Christianity with the barbarism of today’s Islamic State.

The national security document included terrorism to which it devoted one out of its 29 pages. Essentially Obama sees all the problems of the world, real and imagined, as challenges that require “strategic patience and persistence.” This is his way of justifying doing nothing or as little as possible.

Still, according to Obama, the climate is such a threat, his new budget would allocate $4 billion to the Environmental Protection Agency for a new “Clean Power State Incentive Fund” to bribe more states to close even more power plants around the nation. He wants to increase the EPA’s overall budget by 6% to $8.6 billion. The Republican Congress is not likely to allocate such funding.

As for the environment, there have been so many lies put forth by the government and by a panoply of environmental organizations of every description, buoyed by legions of “scientists” and academics lining their pockets with billions in grants, that it is understandable that many Americans still think that “global warming” is real despite the fact that the Earth is now 19 years into a well-documented cooling cycle.

Not only are all the children in our schools still being taught utter garbage about it, but none who have graduated in recent years ever lived a day during the non-existent “global warming.”

On February 7, Christopher Booker, writing in The Telegraph, a British daily newspaper, wrote an article, “The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever.” You are not likely to find any comparable reporting in a U.S. daily newspaper.

Citing research comparing the official temperature graphs from three weather stations in Paraguay against what had originally been reported by them, it turned out that their cooling trend had been reversed by the U.S. government’s Global Historical Climate Network and then amplified by “two of the main official surface records, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and the National Climate Data Center.”

Why should we be surprised that the national media continues to report on “global warming” when our government has been engaged in the deliberate distortion of the actual data? It is, however, the same national media that has provided virtually no investigative journalism to reveal what has been going on for decades.

What fate befalls Brian Williams is a mere blip on the screen of events. At this writing, I cannot see how NBC could ever keep him as the managing editor and news anchor.

What matters regarding much of the product of the mainstream media is the continuing torrent of “news” about “global warming” and “climate change”; the former is a complete hoax and the latter a factor of life on planet Earth over which humans have no control, nor contribute to in any fashion.

02/5/15

My fellow bloggers: You will heartily enjoy this best Brian Williams flashback ever

NoisyRoom.net Note: I also wrote on this today at Right Wing News: Famous Author Absolutely Loses It And Smacks Down Lying NBC Anchor Brian Williams Over False Iraq War Story

By: Michelle Malkin

As I’m sure you’ve all heard by now, NBC News anchor Brian Williams — a real journalist — finally admitted he has been lying about coming under RPG fire in Iraq in 2003. Fed-up troops called him out, but even after being forced to ‘fess up, he still clung to lies and “misremembrance.”

I am reminded of what this arrogant fabulist once said about us lowly bloggers in 2007 during a lecture at NYU’s journalism school:

After years of experience in the news business, Williams said he has developed his own “strong BS meter” — he can watch the local news in any city in this country and tell you which anchors went out to dinner that night instead of staying and writing between the 6 o’clock and 11 o’clock news. Williams also said he can tell which anchors write their own copy and who’s just reading whatever pops up on the teleprompter. On The Nightly News, Williams reviews every word of the copy before it goes on the teleprompter. “Any time I’ve kicked a word, it’s because I’ve never seen it before,” Williams said.

The Nightly News attracts between 10 and 11 million viewers each night. But the playing field for prime-time nightly news is in constant motion, with NBC, CBS, and ABC jockeying for the top slot in the ratings game. The tremendous growth of online media — especially blogs — in recent years has altered the face of journalism.

“You’re going to be up against people who have an opinion, a modem, and a bathrobe,” said Williams. “All of my life, developing credentials to cover my field of work, and now I’m up against a guy named Vinny in an efficiency apartment in the Bronx who hasn’t left the efficiency apartment in two years.”

He added that it’s often difficult to judge the credibility of a blogger. “On the Internet, no one knows if you’ve been to Ramadi or you’ve just been to Brooklyn and have an opinion about Ramadi,” said Williams.

And if you work at NBC News, you can get away with bloviating a bullshit story about coming under fire for 12 years while America’s real heroes took bullets for you. And then, because you’re a Real Journalist, you can keep lying about it while using soldiers as your alibi.

Because Real Journalism.

Excuse me while I throw up all over my modem and bathrobe.

#JustABlogger.