03/13/17

You won’t believe the 50 websites Harvard has labeled “Fake News”

By: Doug Ross @ Journal

Your betters at the Harvard University Library have published a guide to “Fake News Sites” that includes a bevy of real news sites that happen to lean right. Among them: the Heritage Foundation, Conservative Review, and Wikileaks, the latter of which has revealed (whether you agree with its approach or not) some very real news indeed.

This, my friends, is a dangerous game. Just as Snopes and Politifact are reliable Democrat public relations outlets (remember when the latter played both sides on ‘If You Like Your Plan, You Can Keep It’?), anyone claiming to be an arbiter of truth is inherently suspect.

Because progressives always get it wrong, I’ll repeat. The market is the only arbiter for media. The marketplace of ideas dictates who wins and loses.

Based upon a simple comparison of ratings, MSNBC and CNN are considered very, very fake news when it lines up against Fox News. And which means National Public Radio is also faux news.

Some here’s my list of the top 50 sites labeled by Harvard as ‘False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and Satirical “News” Sources’:

Site Harvard Labels Real Description
americanthinker.com bias Political news and opinion liberals hate
AmmoLand.com bias Firearm news liberals hate
barenakedislam.com hate News about Isamic terror that liberals hate
breitbart.com political unreliable bias Political news and opinion liberals hate
canadafreepress.com conspiracy bias Political news and opinion liberals hate
centerforsecuritypolicy.org bias conspiracy News about Isamic terror that liberals hate
citizensunited.org bias Pro-free speech group that liberals hate
city-journal.org political Urban news that liberals hate
CNSNews.com unreliable bias Political news and opinion liberals hate
commentarymagazine.com political Political opinions that liberals hate
conservativereview.com political Pro-Constitution articles that liberals hate
counterjihad.com bias News about Isamic terror that liberals hate
dailycaller.com political clickbait unreliable Political news and opinion liberals hate
dailysignal.com bias Pro-Constitution articles that liberals hate
drudgereport.com political bias Political news and opinion liberals hate
familysecuritymatters.org conspiracy bias News about Isamic terror that liberals hate
FreeBeacon.com bias Political news and opinion liberals hate
freedomworks.org political Pro-Constitution articles that liberals hate
frontpagemag.com bias hate News about Isamic terror that liberals hate
gatesofvienna.net hate conspiracy News about Isamic terror that liberals hate
heartland.org bias Pro-business group that liberals hate
heritage.org unknown Pro-Constitution articles that liberals hate
jihadwatch.org unknown News about Isamic terror that liberals hate
judicialwatch.org unknown Pro-Constitution articles that liberals hate
lifenews.com bias clickbait Pro-Life articles that liberals hate
lifezette.com clickbait Pro-Life articles that liberals hate
nationalreview.com unknown Political news and opinion liberals hate
pamelageller.com conspiracy fake bias News about Isamic terror that liberals hate
PeakProsperity.com unknown Economic facts that liberals despise
pjmedia.com unknown Political news and opinion liberals hate
powerlineblog.com unknown Political news and opinion liberals hate
rightwingnews.com bias unreliable Political news and opinion liberals hate
ShadowStats.com unknown Economic facts that liberals despise
SteveQuayle.com unknown Political news and opinion liberals hate
theamericanmirror.com unknown Political news and opinion liberals hate
TheBurningPlatform.com unknown Economic facts that liberals despise
theconservativetreehouse.com unknown Political news and opinion liberals hate
theduran.com unreliable Political news and opinion liberals hate
thegatewaypundit.com bias conspiracy unreliable Political news and opinion liberals hate
theintercept.com unknown Political news and opinion liberals hate
therightscoop.com fake clickbait Videos of news shows that liberals hate
truepundit.com bias clickbait Political news and opinion liberals hate
twitchy.com clickbait rumor Tweets that liberals hate
unz.com unknown Politically incorrect articles that liberals hate
weaselzippers.us unreliable bias Political news and opinion liberals hate
weeklystandard.com political bias Political news and opinion liberals hate
westernjournalism.com bias clickbait Political news and opinion liberals hate
wikileaks.org unknown Government documents that liberals hate
wnd.com bias clickbait unreliable Political news and opinion liberals hate
zerohedge.com conspiracy Political news and opinion liberals hate


So my counsel is to visit all of these sites frequently.

Because Harvard’s full of sh**. But you already knew that.

02/23/17

A Dangerous Medical Cover-Up

By: Cliff Kincaid | America’s Survival

WARNING: occasional graphic language. Dr. Paul Church speaks about the power of the LGBT lobby and “unprecedented censorship” in the medical profession and scientific establishment. He was fired for objecting to hospitals glorifying the male homosexual lifestyle through “gay pride” events. Not even Fox News would have him on the air to talk about his ordeal at the hands of the LGBT movement and its supporters. Dr. Church also discusses the safety of the blood supply.

10/19/16

The Trump Treatment for a Campus Conservative

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

cliff

I was disinvited from a college debate on the campus of the State University of New York in New Paltz last March. Left-wing professors didn’t want to hear me debate a left-winger on media coverage of the elections. It was the first time in academic history, to my knowledge, that an actual debate was cancelled because of faculty objections to one side of the debate.

The ban proved to be embarrassing to the president of the university. Reminded in a letter from me that his campus website proclaims a devotion to free speech, he invited me back on October 20. Security was demanded and will be provided.

Before my rescheduled appearance, however, psychologist Dr. Jonathan Haidt was brought to SUNY New Paltz to discuss the controversy over the cancellation, in the context of whether “trigger warnings” should now be used to warn students of speech that may offend them. It looks like he got paid $10,000 for a couple hours’ work, to counsel students about the trauma from a debate that didn’t take place. Those assembled for his lecture then discussed whether a university can be for truth and social justice at the same time.

Any responsible conservative who has found himself on a “list” maintained by the Southern Poverty Law Center or the Council on American Islamic Relations knows that these groups target and try to destroy anybody who stands in the way of their achieving political power in this country. Their charges are picked up repeatedly by the media without any supporting or substantial evidence. They were used by SUNY New Paltz faculty members to create the controversy that forced the cancellation of my debate.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, a student journalist wrote a story about the Haidt lecture that included the allegations that I had “previously claimed that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and that the LGBTQIA+ community is responsible for global warming.” Neither of these statements attributed to me were ever uttered by me. I didn’t even know what all those initials meant. After I brought these falsehoods to the attention of University President Donald P. Christian and other officers, a correction and apology were issued. Here is the correction:

“It has come to the attention of The Oracle that the Oct. 6 article entitled ‘NYU Professor Talks Trigger Warnings on Campus’ misattributed two claims to Cliff Kincaid, director of investigative journalism for Accuracy in Media. Mr. Kincaid has not claimed that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya nor that the LGBTQIA+ [community] was responsible for global warming.”

Here is what the student journalist attached at the end of the correction:

“Dear Mr. Kincaid,

I want to clarify a sentence in my article on Oct. 6, ‘NYU Professor Talks Trigger Warnings on Campus.’ There seems to be some misinterpretation on my part about past statements you have made, namely that, ‘President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and that the LGBTQIA+ community is responsible for global warming.’

Misinterpreting a web page detailing your past statements on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website, I incorrectly attributed those aforementioned claims to you and for that I apologize. It was not my intention to misrepresent you and there was certainly no intent behind it.

To be clear, I am at fault and take responsibility for my mistake. I take great pride in my work as an aspiring journalist and it has been a humbling experience to make a mistake of this degree. We will make the necessary corrections to the article and work to improve our fact-checking process for the future.

I look forward to your appearance on campus for the rescheduled debate with Steve Rendall on Oct. 20.

Sincerely,

Jack O’Brien, Managing Editor,

The New Paltz Oracle”

By the way, the final two parts of the “LGBTQIA+ community” apparently mean “asexuality” and the “+” symbol “stands for all of the other sexualities, sexes, and genders that aren’t included in these few letters.”

Please recall that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was responsible for helping tocreate the controversy that resulted in the original decision to ban me from campus. Faculty members used information from the SPLC website to argue that I was a threat to the university. None of the faculty members who used their information and raised concerns about my status as a “hatemonger” ever bothered to contact me. I was notified of the cancellation as I was sitting on the tarmac at Reagan National Airport on the way to the event. I got off the plane, got my bags, and went home. I got paid anyway (considerably less than Professor Haidt for his counseling session).

You can see the malicious pattern. The student journalist at the New Paltz Oracle goes back to the same organization responsible for the cancellation of the event to provide an “update” on how I sparked another campus event on “trigger warnings.” And he gets the facts wrong again, since he never contacted me.

On another occasion, the New Paltz student paper published an article insisting that I should have been heard because I represented the Republican Party and Donald J. Trump. This was completely false as well. Nothing in the materials from our speaker’s bureau about this debate or my speech in particular suggests that I represent the Republican Party or Trump, and I do not and never have represented either. Ironically, my prepared speech for our scheduled March 30 debate included remarks very critical of Trump. Our debates have always been portrayed as a debate between right and left, conservative and liberal. That’s all.

With Gallup reporting that trust in the media is at an all-time low, one wonders if it can get any lower. The conclusion has to be that it can, it must, and it will. After all, look at the “education” and “fact-checking” methods being used by tomorrow’s journalists. They are non-existent. The student O’Brien is identified as being in his fourth-year of journalism.

I am participating in the October 20 debate on the assumption that the atmosphere will be civil and that the 1984 George Orwell totalitarian attitude of “Newspeak” that has emerged at SUNY New Paltz will not silence opposing voices. We shall see.

At SUNY New Paltz there is an Office of Compliance and Climate Control, the CCC. In 2013, the SUNY New Paltz LGBTQ Campus Climate Task Force issued a report that reveals the extent to which the CCC plans to control every aspect of the “campus climate” inside and outside of classrooms. The report even discusses “preferred names for food and beverage orders” and gender-neutral housing accommodations.

As Orwell wrote in 1984, “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”

This “Climate Control” agency is combined with the administration bureaucracy to enforce “compliance” with federal administrative discrimination and diversity protocols, which Dr. Tina Trent calls in our new book, Marxist Madrassas, “a threat in a velvet glove.”

But that is not the worst of it. She points out that universities in America are already using the Climate Control-style initiatives to ban public speakers and monitor the content of what is taught in classrooms.

Regarding my case at New Paltz, she writes, “Kincaid’s mere presence was described as a threat to both student safety and ‘campus climate.’ In essence, Kincaid wasn’t merely banned from campus: he and his ideas were labeled as creating actual danger and harm. He was also blamed by the administration for the protests being fomented against him, thus tacitly endorsing the protesters’ threats. This is rewarding the mob.”

She adds, “The purported threat Kincaid was said to pose to ‘campus climate’ by his mere presence contains a warning for all of us: we are much further down the road of entirely banning mostly conservative ideas and speech, not only within our institutions of higher education but everywhere. This road will end with the suppression of all sorts of speech and ideas and ultimately people, not only in higher education but everywhere. And the source for this censorship lies in a hate crimes industry that is currently operating from a dual power base within the Federal Departments of Justice and Education.”

SUNY has a 35-page “Campus Guide for Strategic Diversity & Inclusion Plan” that says nothing about the crying need for intellectual diversity on the New Paltz campus. There is a passing reference from a SUNY Student Assembly noting how SUNY Buffalo State “supports diversity of thought,” in theory, but no follow-through on how this is to be done in practice on any campus in the system. This is just window dressing to mask the assault on free speech.

Yet the SUNY New Paltz website says: “The faculty encourages students to question, experiment, and discover in ways that lead to innovative thinking, fostering our creative environment of discovery.”

That’s false.

The website says a New Paltz education is one that involves “exposure to differing perspectives, open-minded inquiry, and a spirit of inventiveness.” Again, false.

Having Professor Haidt on campus to address the trauma caused by my scheduled appearance, and my re-scheduled appearance, means that the university was so embarrassed over its management of thought control on campus that it had to act to save face.

Dr. Michael Rectenwald, a Marxist professor in Global Liberal Studies at New York University, is opposed to speech and thought control on campus. He writes, “A singular orthodoxy has infiltrated the discursive parameters of U.S. and other universities and colleges. This orthodoxy now constitutes the ethical vocabulary of academia. Adopted from feminism, anti-racism, and LGBTQ theory and practice, the language, doctrines, and mechanisms of this orthodoxy now dominate academia’s policies, procedures and handbooks. The terminology has become the vernacular among the swelling ranks of administrators, especially the relatively new cohort of chief diversity officers, directors of diversity, associate provosts of diversity, assistant provosts of diversity, diversity consultants, and so on and so on. I refer not merely to the orthodoxy of ‘diversity,’ but in particular to ‘diversity’ initiatives as they are currently administered, using a particular set of policies, procedures, and mechanisms: trigger warnings, safe spaces, bias reporting, and the like.”

The professor tells me that “I completely reject the no-longer-so-implicit assumption that academia’s role, if not its only role as some see it, consists of liberal indoctrination—as if the main mission of the university were to produce good liberals. This is appalling beyond words. I teach people how to think, not what to think.”

He went on, “I recently came upon a status update of a professorial Facebook friend, which basically amounted to a celebratory announcement that by the end of the semester, all of her students had finally declared their commitment to ‘feminist Marxism’ as such. Of course, until I chimed in, all of the comments were congratulatory, as if she had done her job and done it well. I demurred, to say the least. Now mind this; I happen to be a Marxist myself. But I vehemently protested this professor’s obviously teleological model of teaching, as if the university classroom could or even should be conducted after the model of a communist indoctrination camp, and a sectarian one at that!!! Such ‘teaching’ represents an enormous swindle and even a criminal undertaking as such.”

Under attack by the mainstream media for his politically incorrect views, Trump recentlytold a group of college students: “In the past few decades, political correctness…has transformed our institutions of higher education from ones that had fostered spirited debate to a place of extreme censorship where students are silenced for the smallest of things.”

After laying out a program to control college costs, he said, “I will also make it a priority to protect students’ rights to free speech on campus. Do you want free speech? You’ll have it.”

These comments were greeted with a standing ovation from the millennial voters at the rally. They liked lowering costs, but wanted their free speech rights protected even more.

It is a troubling sign of the fundamental transformation of America that freedom of speech on campus hangs in the balance in 2016.

  • The SUNY New Paltz debate takes place on Thursday, October 20, 2016, at 7:00 p.m. in the Student Union Multi-Purpose Room. SUNY New Paltz, 1 Hawk Drive, New Paltz, NY 12561. The public is invited to attend. Contact Cathi Castillo at (845) 257-3288 or[email protected]

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.

06/1/16

Glenn Beck’s Prediction of Censorship Begins… Those Against Trump Are Being Silenced

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Beck

Well, that didn’t take long. SiriusXM is leading the charge in vigilante censorship by suspending Glenn Beck over a segment he had with Brad Thor. Beck is being purged and silenced for what a guest said on his show. Neither Brad Thor nor Glenn Beck called for the assassination of Donald Trump. For accurately likening Trump to a South American-style dictator and for positing a scenario where ‘if’ Trump violated the Constitution, it would justify removal from office, Trump’s acolytes are branding that a death threat. It’s a death threat alright… against free speech.

Here’s the exchange:

THOR: He is a danger to America and I got to ask you a question and this is serious and this could ring down incredible heat on me because I’m about to suggest something very bad. It is a hypothetical I am going to ask as a thriller writer.

With the feckless, spineless Congress we have, who will stand in the way of Donald Trump overstepping his constitutional authority as President? If Congress won’t remove him from office, what patriot will step up and do that if, if, he oversteps his mandate as president, his constitutional-granted authority, I should say, as president.

If he oversteps that, how do we get him out of office? And I don’t think there is a legal means available. I think it will be a terrible, terrible position the American people will be in to get Trump out of office because you won’t be able to do it through Congress.

BECK: I would agree with you on that and I don’t think you actually have the voices we’ve been talking about and we’ve been talking about this off-air for a while. I think the voices like ours go away. I don’t think we are allowed – especially if things, and I believe the economy is going to go to crap, even if Jesus was in office. It’s going to naturally reset. It has to.

CowardsSiriusXM is suspending Glenn Beck for a week of broadcasts relating to a conversation Beck had with author Brad Thor last week. They are suspending him during the same week that Glenn went on vacation. That’s just despicable and cowardly. If they think it will cow Beck, Thor or any other real conservative, they are delusional in the extreme.

This is guilt by imagination… the event never happened and is made up. I guess any excuse will do… the Trump lynch mob is using words like ‘implied’, ‘hinted’ and ‘insinuated’. Do you people see what you are doing? Really? You are doing everything you have accused the left of forever, only worse, because you are aggressively doing it. Worse yet, they know it is a lie. Beck has never advocated violence and the last time I looked, calling someone out for acting like a dictator was not a crime. Either these ‘so-called’ conservatives never heard the exchange or they are so brainwashed by the Trump movement, they are twisting everything they hear and see that isn’t pro-Trump. As Dom Theodore, the GM of the Glenn Beck Radio Show pointed out, this viral hatchet job is based on 49 seconds out of a 15-minute interview that gives no context of the hypothetical posited from by Brad Thor, a thriller writer.

Beck1SiriusXM is a private company and they have every right to do this. But we also have a right to boycott them and I will never, ever listen to them again. I understand quite a few others feel the same way. If you are sooo in the tank for Trump that you feel safe abridging someone’s constitutional right to free speech, then as far as I’m concerned you are a propaganda outlet and a Marxist one at that.

Here is what SiriusXM said:

SiriusXM encourages a diversity of discourse and opinion on our talk programs. However, comments recently made by a guest on the independently produced Glenn Beck Program, in our judgement, may be reasonably construed by some to have been advocating harm against an individual currently running for office, which we cannot and will not condone. For that reason, we have suspended The Glenn Beck Program from our Patriot channel for the coming week and are evaluating its place in our lineup going forward. SiriusXM is committed to a spirited, robust, yet responsible political conversation and believes this action reflects those values.

That’s rich coming from a station that showcases Howard Stern who explicitly talks about sex all the time. It would seem that what they won’t condone is any stance against Trump. But filth, hey… go for it.

Beck2Both Glenn Beck and Brad Thor are terrified of what Donald Trump will do. I’m right there with them. Beck predicted that if constitutional conservatives and those who stand against Trump don’t hang together, we will most assuredly all hang separately as per Ben Franklin’s quote. And he was right. It’s begun already and Trump is only the nominee right now. I expect he will win the presidency and then the real silencing and purging will begin.

Constitutional conservatives and those taking a principled stand against Trump are being kicked out of groups and purged from social media interactions. We won’t be silenced, but that won’t stop the onslaught. Beck predicted every bit of this. SiriusXM is either a coward or bought and paid for by the Trump campaign or both. The outlets pushing this garbage should be ashamed of themselves. They are acting like brownshirts for Trump. Glenn Beck and Brad Thor did nothing wrong and have absolutely nothing to apologize for. Both sides of the political aisle are now enemies within and have gone dark and evil. I fear this is only the beginning.

02/29/16

Is Twitter suppressing the hashtag #NeverTrump?

By: Renee Nal | New Zeal

Twitter via Mashable

Twitter via Mashable

The popular hashtag #NeverTrump was going solid for a good day, but eventually fizzled, like all hashtags do. But there seemed something suspicious – while it seemed that the hashtag was still going strong, it was no longer on the list of Twitter Trends.

So this author did a little experiment. Based on the results, #NeverTrump had more tweets in a ten minute period than the second and last trend on the United States Trends list. 

Read more here…

06/26/15

The End Of Constitutional Government

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

It’s been an historic week and although I am not surprised by the Supreme Court decisions, they saddened me beyond belief. I have sadly come to the conclusion that many of my colleagues are correct… our Constitutional form of government is now dead and Obama’s transformative ‘change’ is all but complete.

Things are now snowballing and it is more than most Americans can take or bear. From gay marriage and the ensuing infringement on free speech and our religious rights, to enforced Obamacare, to forced wealth redistibution in our neighborhoods, to the EPA run amok… our freedoms are being absolutely nullified. States are now saying they won’t comply with the EPA on coal and who can blame them? Americans will get very dangerous when they are hungry and cold. And then there is the Iran deadline, which is this weekend. Instead of holding their feet to fire, we are actually giving Iran nuclear reactors while they shout, “Death to America!” in their parliament. Insanity is the norm now. Then there is the increased Islamic State threat on our southern border and the attacks on our power grid coming down the pike. It’s surreal and all instigated, manipulated and planned for by our government – the ultimate enemy from within.

Adding to the tyrannical frenzy of the aftermath of the mass shooting in South Carolina, evidently America is cool with censoring her own history, but wants to hang on to the likes of Nazi Germany and bloody communist regimes. Satanism is still in vogue it would seem as well… but if you are a lover of the Confederate flag, well, you should be summarily burned at the stake. Let’s not leave out Stalin or concentration camps as making the ‘cool’ list either. And it goes without saying that Che Guevara is tres chic. Prohibition of thought and our history is all the rage now. No doubt next on the censorship bandwagon… burning books and thought police. Oh, wait…

The flaming lynch mob mentality of Progressives is burning through businesses across the former land of the free. They are feeling immense pressure to conform and be politically correct. None of them seem to have a spine. This is insane. Not only are they banning all Confederate flags and calling for Civil War statues to be taken down (which is erasing American history), they are getting rid of General Lee, an orange Dodge Charger from “The Dukes of Hazzard.” Walmart and Amazon have stopped selling anything having to do with the Confederate flag, but Walmart is still selling Che Guevara shirts, as well as Castro memorabilia and Iranian flags. Apple just removed Civil War Games from their App Store. South Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama and Kentucky are all removing Confederate flags as well. It’s an all you can eat buffet of political correctness feeding a ‘get em!’ move by Progressives. Now, they want to ban Gone With The Wind. We have literally plummeted down the rabbit hole and are sipping tea with the Mad Hatter. The Constitution is now being replaced with censorship and regulation – it’s incomprehensible.

At least one good thing came out of the Supreme Court this week. During the Great Depression, the government decided that prices paid to farmers were too low and undertook to correct the problem by limiting their output. It was a fascist move then and is still one now. It is sheer theft. Marvin and Laura Horne decided not to play that game and took their beef all the way to the Supreme Court – raisin hell, so-to-speak. And they won on Monday! The feds claimed they owed $700,000 because they would not surrender 47% of their crop for over a decade to the government with no compensation. Not even the left-leaning Supremes could let that one slide.


Raisin farmer Marvin Horne stands in a field of grapevines planted next to his home in
Kerman, Calif. Horne was accused of violating a 1937 federal rule that regulates raisin prices
by setting aside a percentage of crop to avoid a glut. (Gary Kazanjian, AP)

The Raisin Administrative Committee, which operates under the supervision of the USDA, sells or gives away the raisins it takes, with the proceeds going to cover its operating costs, storage fees and promotional efforts abroad. If any money is left, the farmers get some of it. If not, they receive nada. Looks like the Road to Serfdom has been detoured on this issue, at least for now. The unconstitutional theft being imposed on farmers such as the Hornes is no more. But at least these raisin farmers can get back to raising their crops and taking care of business – liberal fascism has moved on to the next hot topic.

Then there was the ultimate betrayal by Justice Roberts and the ruling in favor of Obamacare this week. The ruling stomped all over state’s rights and bent over backwards to reinterpret the Obamacare statute in favor of federal exchanges. “The somersaults of statutory interpretation they [the Justices of the Supreme Court] have performed …will be cited by litigants endlessly, to the confusion of honest jurisprudence,” concludes Justice Antonin Scalia in his dissent, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito. “And the cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites.”

“So it rewrites the law to make tax credits available everywhere,” he dissents. “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.” The Court’s interpretation is “absurd,” Justice Scalia opined. And right he is. Scalia is a brilliant legal mind and he is horrified by the Leftist turn of the court. This must tear his soul apart. This was simply a political power play and one has to wonder, as I have before, if Chief Roberts has skeletons in his closet that are being used to sway his opinion.

This partisan ruling will have wide-ranging, catastrophic ramifications for America. The majority opinion states that “The combination of no tax credits and an ineffective coverage requirement could well push a State’s individual insurance market into a death spiral.” And it inevitably will. Which in turn, will usher in single-payer healthcare. It’s coming.

“It is implausible that Congress meant the Act to operate in this manner,” Justice John Roberts writes for the majority. Really? Because it looks entirely plausible to me. In fact, choreographed.

Justice Scalia notes that these Justices are “presuppos[ing] the availability of tax credits on both federal and state Exchanges.” In layman terms, that means that federal tax credits that have already been given to millions of people must continue. Along with the tax credits will come higher premiums, crappier healthcare, death panels, higher deductibles and part-time employment as the national norm.

This is tyranny and what you are seeing here is the dissolution of the three branches of constitutional government we are based upon. We now have one executive behemoth branch that is drunk with power and careening out of control, right on schedule.

Ted Cruz’s statement on the Supreme Court’s ruling:

“Today’s decision in King v. Burwell is judicial activism, plain and simple. For the second time in just a few years, a handful of unelected judges has rewritten the text of Obamacare in order to impose this failed law on millions of Americans. The first time, the Court ignored federal law and magically transformed a statutory ‘penalty’ into a ‘tax.’ Today, these robed Houdinis transmogrified a ‘federal exchange’ into an exchange ‘established by the State.’

“As Justice Scalia rightfully put it, ‘Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.” He also said, ‘We should start calling this law SCOTUSCare’ – I agree.

“If this were a bankruptcy case, or any other case of ordinary statutory interpretation, the result would have been 9-0, with the Court unanimously reversing the Obama administration’s illegal actions. But instead, politics intervened.

“For nakedly political reasons, the Supreme Court willfully ignored the words that Congress wrote, and instead read into the law their preferred policy outcome. These judges have joined with President Obama in harming millions of Americans. Unelected judges have once again become legislators, and bad ones at that. They are lawless, and they hide their prevarication in legalese. Our government was designed to be one of laws, not of men, and this transparent distortion is disgraceful.

“At the same time, crocodile tears are flooding our nation’s capital today over the Supreme Court’s decision to illegally rewrite Obamacare, which has been a disaster since its inception. But one day of faux outrage from the Washington Cartel won’t fool the millions of courageous conservatives across our country. They know the Republican leadership in Washington is quietly celebrating the Court’s decision. If they believe this issue is now settled so they don’t have to address it, they are sorely mistaken.

“Every GOP candidate for the Republican nomination should know that this decision makes the 2016 election a referendum on the full repeal of Obamacare.

“I have made repeal of this disastrous law a top priority since the first day I arrived in the Senate and have made its repeal central to my campaign. Any candidate not willing to do the same—and campaign on it every day—should step aside.

“The Court adopted the IRS’s blatantly unlawful reading of the statute to make subsidies available to individuals on federal exchanges, when Congress expressly provided the opposite.

“After today’s ruling, Obamacare will now be responsible for imposing illegal taxes on more than 11 million individuals and for burdening hundreds of thousands of businesses with illegal penalties on their workers, killing jobs, and further slowing economic growth. President Obama’s health care law remains deeply unpopular and is harming countless Americans by increasing costs and worsening the quality of care.

“I remain fully committed to the repeal of Obamacare—every single word of it. And, in 2017, we will do exactly that.”

This is why I support Ted Cruz – he stands for something and isn’t afraid to walk the walk. And the Left fears and hates him for it.

Next, in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., the Supreme Court found in favor of Obama’s wealth redistribution in communities. Now, the government can decide who lives where and they can literally bribe community leaders into doing ‘gentrified’ slum housing just about anywhere. This will socially and demographically engineer America. It will force people to live among criminals and others they are trying to stay away from. It will cause crime to skyrocket and property values to plummet. The regulatory groundwork is now laid for substantial redistribution of tax dollars. Gradually cities will effectively swallow up their surround­ing municipalities, with merged school dis­tricts and forced redistribution of public spending working together to kill the appeal of the suburbs. This is Agenda 21 and it is now nationally sanctioned. This is also aimed at manipulating the voter demographic to ensure a Marxist will stay in power indefinitely.

But, I saved the worst for last… in another 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationally, following on the heels of Mexico doing the same thing last week. Funny, I don’t remember marriage of any sort being mentioned in the Constitution or as being seen as ‘a right.’ This decision will literally touch every aspect of our lives. It’s not just the act of non-traditional marriage; it’s all that it entails.

The Left will use this ruling to try and destroy religious freedom of all forms of worship, except for Islam. It won’t just be the refusal by Christian pastors and priests to consecrate homosexual unions… it will go far beyond that. If you go to a church that preaches biblical principles and traditional marriage, that could cost you your job. Children in all schools will be subjected to gender theories and all forms of sexual preferences – everything from homosexuality, to pedophilia, to polygamy, to incest, to bestiality and on it goes. This is what the liberal Progressives want – the destruction of all morality, faith and the family unit. It is the very bedrock of communism come to life in America. This ruling on gay marriage was the equivalent of a legalistic Pandora’s Box. It’s already occurring in the military – ministers are being court-martialed or rotated out because of their Christian faith. And of course, you are seeing it playing out with wedding chapels, bakeries, florists and photographers.

It will also be used as a weapon to silence free speech. It’s already happening. Witness the editorial board of PennLive/The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, PA who is taking a hardcore stance against those who disagree with the Supreme Court ruling to legalize gay marriage:

As a result of Friday’s ruling, PennLive/The Patriot-News will no longer accept, nor will it print, op-Eds and letters to the editor in opposition to same-sex marriage.

And that will happen as well on the airwaves and on the Internet. Blogs, such as mine, who support traditional marriage will be censored, fined or banned. Prison is also a possibility.

As my friend, Bookworm Room, so astutely put it, we have an incredibly dangerous clash of constitutional rights looming and I wouldn’t place odds on our side winning at this point. Businesses and schools will get slammed and litigated to death over this.

Justice Antonin Scalia nailed it:

The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic. It is one thing for separate concurring or dissenting opinions to contain extravagances, even silly extravagances, of thought and expression; it is something else for the official opinion of the Court to do so. Of course the opinion’s showy profundities are often profoundly incoherent. “The nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality.”23 (Really? Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms? …

And just as Bookie quoted it, I will quote my friend James Simpson on gay marriage – because it goes to the heart of the matter:

The Left uses “rights” agendas to wrap itself in the mantle of righteousness and seize the moral high ground, tactically putting us on the defense in the process. But they couldn’t care less about the actual issue except in its ability to facilitate their path to power.

The agenda is never the agenda for the Left. And this is especially true for gay marriage. Homosexual marriage is a Trojan horse tactic. The true agenda is to establish the primacy of homosexual rights over the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion. Our nation was founded on this principle, and the gay marriage movement seeks to destroy it.

Consider that Annise Parker, the lesbian mayor of Houston, Texas, demanded to review pastors’ church sermons before public outrage forced her to back off. We have already seen how small businesses have been singled out and attacked for refusing to provide certain services to gays.

What is less known is that these gay couples are frequently part of the movement. They deliberately seek out businesses known for their Christian owners. They deliberately demand a service they know in advance will be refused. When the inevitable happens they use it as pretext to destroy the business and savage its owners. Doesn’t it amaze you how quickly legal groups immediately materialize to assist in the attack? The fact that they got unexpected push back through a spontaneous crowd sourcing campaign to support one pizza shop will not dissuade them from future efforts. If gay marriage is adopted, their current bullying behavior will look like child’s play compared to what’s coming.

This is a highly organized, nationwide campaign of vilification against Christians. But even Christians are not the ultimate target. If the First Amendment can be challenged this way; if a certain group’s “rights” can trump the U.S. Constitution, and if the Supreme Court can actually issue an edict making it so, then the entire Constitution has become meaningless. This is the Left’s true agenda and it always has been. This is the Cultural Marxists’ endgame. The issue is not the issue. The issue for them has always been destroying our country to impose socialism — with them in charge, of course. In order to do that they have to strip America of its culture, its traditions, and most importantly, the most important law of the land, the U.S. Constitution.

Persecution and tyranny are upon us. Now is the time for Christians and Constitutionalists to come together and make a stand. We are being persecuted and forced to go against all we believe in. I for one will stand and I will definitely not comply. Neither will the Black Robe Regiment. This will reverberate across all of our society, our laws and our lives. Soon, Americans will find that standing on their Christian beliefs will cost them their jobs, their families and maybe their lives. Marxism has swept global leadership and they are in the process of bringing their boots down on our necks. If the government enforces this blatant violation of free speech and religion here in the US, they will have to take us to jail. Americans will not comply.

I agree with Justice Scalia that this ruling is a threat to democracy and to the Republic itself. This decision effectively puts the State (the federal government) above the individual and this was never what our founding fathers intended. In fact, they warned us against this. The Supreme Court has turned activist, legislating from the bench, instead of being supreme judges of the land as they were so assigned. As JoshuaPundit puts it, what principles do you stand for? Just what are you willing to compromise on? It’s time to take a stand and choose a side. It was a nice Constitutional Republic while it lasted… now it’s time to reboot and fight. I hear a third party calling.

03/1/15

Net Neutrality: “Young fool … Only now, at the end, do you understand.”

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton


Emperor Palpatine. Photograph: Allstar

We keep hearing, from the saviors in Washington, DC, how government regulation is the answer and how “evil monopolies” (created, incidentally, by other government regulations) are responsible for all our trials and tribulations and the “fundamental unfairness” of the Internet as she is currently wrote.

Obligatory movie quote:

“No. No government. I know those people. Absolutely not.” – Col. Ira Kane

Yeah, it’s a movie. It’s also absolutely right.

The founder of Broadcast.com, Mark Cuban, has recently been vociferous in his opposition to so-called “Net Neutrality” with his most recent public appearance on the subject in an interview where he breaks it down. His effort to “plain-language” the argument notwithstanding, and frankly, it’s a subject that should not be oversimplified, he laid out the unintended consequences dominoes and how this “everything is equal” push plays out in terms of common services.

Now, you might want to shrug Mark Cuban off as “some rich guy who owns a sports team” and clearly that’s being done a lot, but don’t forget how he got rich: he pioneered live broadcasting over the Internet. He’s not some political hack, evil cable company exec, or mushy thinking me-too “fairness uber alles” flag waver. He is, for once, someone who knows what the hell he’s talking about.

Net Neutrality, like so many political labels, is a “fair sounding” name that hides the actual motives and consequences of the real world implementations we will experience after the seemingly inevitable adoption of this latest government overreach.

It won’t be fair. It won’t be optimum. And the right answer will never even be mentioned, never mind entertained: deregulate the cable and broadband space to eliminate the protected monopolies.

The broadband space needs more competition, not less; needs less regulation, not more. Companies like Google laying fiber? Cox, AT&T, Verizon and Comcast suddenly no longer have a free pass.

Otherwise? The cynical and dystopian view?

One of the unavoidable dominoes will be broad censorship. Once the deprioritization of broadcast packets leads to the epic traffic jam that will reduce the Web’s US speeds to worse than those found in Europe, the government of the day will, once again, have to “save us” from this “unforseen” outcome and their clever plan will include limiting who can “legitimately” have bandwidth preferences, since clearly “legitimate” news outlets need to bypass the buffering jams that will afflict TV signalling and once dot-gov starts adjudicating who’s a “real” news or other “essential” service, licensing will naturally follow, and then “standards” of what is “acceptable” traffic.

At which point, whichever political party is in power at that time will have the distinct advantage of licensing whomever they deem to be more politically correct in their eyes. “Neutrality” on the ‘Net? Yeah, not so much.

We’re in the hands of fools and corrupt bureaucrats. Last Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission held a faux meeting on open Internet rules and access to broadband Internet. Commissioner Ajit Pai made a statement before the FCC vote to take unprecedented control over the internet with a secret plan. Yes, secret. Secret as in no exposure to the public or Congress prior to its enactment. What follows is the transcript of his comments – in echoes of Obamacare, this had to pass before we could know what was in it. Except, they are still keeping it under wraps. It must be very, very bad indeed.

From Breitbart:

“The Wall Street Journal reports that it was developed through ‘an unusual secretive effort inside the White House.’ Indeed, White House officials, according to the Journal, functioned as a parallel version of the FCC. Their work led to the president’s announcement in November of his plan for internet regulation, a plan which the report says blindsided the FCC and swept aside months of work by Chairman Wheeler toward a compromise. Now, of course, a few insiders were clued in about what was transpiring. Here’s what a leader for the government-funded group Fight for the Future had to say, ‘We’ve been hearing for weeks from our allies in D.C that the only thing that could stop FCC chairman Tom Wheeler from moving ahead with his sham proposal to gut net neutrality was if we could get the president to step in. So we did everything in our power to make that happen. We took the gloves off and played hard, and now we get to celebrate a sweet victory. Congratulations. what the press has called the parallel FCC at the White House opened its door to a plethora of special interest activists. Daily Kos, Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, Free Press, and Public Knowledge, just to name a few. Indeed, even before activists were blocking the chairman’s driveway late last year, some of them had met with executive branch officials.

“But what about the rest of the American people? They certainly couldn’t get White House meetings. They were shut out of the process altogether. They were being played for fools. And the situation didn’t improve once the White House announced President Obama’s plan, and ‘asked’ the FCC to implement it. The document in front of us today differs dramatically from the proposal that the FCC put out for comment last May, and it differs so dramatically that even zealous net neutrality advocates frantically rushed in, in recent days, to make last-minute filings, registering their concerns that the FCC might be going too far. Yet, the American people, to this day, have not been allowed to see President Obama’s plan. It has remained hidden.

“Especially given the unique importance of the internet, Commissioner O’Rielly and I ask for the plan to be released to the public. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune and House of Representatives Chairman did the same. According to a survey last week by a respected democratic polling firm, 79% of the American people favored making the document public. Still, the FCC has insisted on keeping it behind closed doors. We have to pass President Obama’s 317-page plan so the American people can find out what’s in it. This isn’t how the FCC should operate. We should be an independent agency making decisions in a transparent manner based on the law and the facts in the record.

“We shouldn’t be a rubber stamp for political decisions made by the White House. And we should have released this plan to the public, solicited their feedback, incorporated that input into the plan, and then proceeded to a vote. There was no need for us to resolve this matter today. There is no immediate crisis in the internet marketplace that demands immediate action. now. The backers of the president’s plan know this. But they also know that the details of this plan cannot stand up to the light of day. They know that the more the American people learn about it, the less they will like it. That is why this plan was developed behind closed doors at the White House. And that is why the plan has remained hidden from public view.

“These aren’t my only concerns. Even a cursory look at the plan reveals glaring legal plans that are sure to mire the agency in the muck of litigation for a long, long time. but rather than address them today, I will reserve them for my written statement. At the beginning of this proceeding, I quoted Google’s former CEO, who once said, the internet is the first thing that humanity has built, that humanity doesn’t understand. This proceeding makes it abundantly clear that the FCC still doesn’t get it. but the American people clearly do. The proposed government regulation of the internet has awakened a sleeping giant. I’m optimistic we’ll look back on today’s vote as a temporary deviation from the bipartisan consensus that’s served us so well. I don’t know whether this plan will be vacated by a court, reversed by Congress, or overturned by a future commission, But I do believe its days are numbered. For all of those reasons, I dissent.”

Pai warned that the public and Silicon Valley were in for an unpleasant surprise. While that was being said, Demand Progress and Free Press, headed by Robert McChesney, flew a 2,000 square foot banner over the towering corporate headquarters of the cable giant Comcast, in Philadelphia, that showed Grumpy Cat and the legend: “Comcast: Don’t Mess With the Internet. #SorryNotSorry.” Referring to Pai’s comments, Evan Greer, Campaigns Director at Fight for the Future, had this to say: “What they didn’t know is that when they struck down the last rules we would come back more powerful than they could possibly imagine.” And that is exactly what happened – the Left surged, with Obama’s help and guidance and $196 million from George Soros, to come in and nationalize the Internet and communications. Obama has nationalized the banks, student loans, housing, healthcare and now the Internet. Americans walk around fancying that they live in a Republic that is no more. Marxism rules the red, white and blue now.

Not only will this stifle innovation and raise taxes massively, as well as costs… it opens us to UN intervention, which is exactly what Obama has in mind. You will see that basically your TV and Internet will become one as a utility. Higher costs, with slower speeds and horrid customer service await us. Not to mention, the Fairness Doctrine. Many of our blogs, such as this one, may cease to exist under these fascist rules.

Heed the words of Republican FCC commissioner Mike O’Rielly, when he states: “When you see this document, it’s worse than you imagine.” Of that, I have no doubt. I knew this was coming, but when it happened last week, a very cold shiver went down my spine. For the first time, genuine fear wormed its way into my being. I immediately squashed it and went back to work. I’m not that easily defeated.

The FCC on Thursday voted through strict new rules to regulate broadband and protect net neutrality – the principle that all information and services should have equal access to the internet. That is pure Socialism and worse. Few have seen the actual regulations – a number of Leftist organizations have, the White House who crafted this monstrosity in secret has, and Google who rewrote a portion of it has. We won’t get to see this baby until next week at the earliest.

From The Guardian:

Pai said the new rules would mean “permission-less innovation is a thing of the past”. The new rules will ban broadband providers from creating fast lanes for some or slowing the traffic of others for commercial reasons. They will also give the FCC the power to police conduct by broadband providers on a case-by-case basis.

Internet service providers will not be allowed to “unreasonably interfere with or unreasonably disadvantage” consumers’ access to content and services.

O’Rielly said this would mean that any company looking to start a new service would have to seek permission ahead of time. He said anybody looking for new business opportunities in the document would be best off becoming a “telecoms lawyer”.

While the wording seems to confine this permission-first model to “services” such as NetFlix, Hulu, and things of that sort, what it will likely mean tomorrow, as scope creep is engaged, is that you would no longer just be able to start a new business or even a blog online, unless you get permission from the government. Is that the “change” everyone wanted? Well, here it is. This echoes the nationalization of the press in Venezuela and other dictatorial provinces.

From National Review:

Net neutrality’s goal is to empower the federal government to ration and apportion Internet bandwidth as it sees fit, and to thereby control the Internet’s content,” says Phil Kerpen, an anti-net-neutrality activist from the group American Commitment.

The courts have previously ruled the FCC’s efforts to impose “net neutrality” out of bounds, so the battle isn’t over. But for now, the FCC has granted itself enormous power to micromanage the largely unrestrained Internet.

It’s not just the conservative Right that now fears these moves… Will Marshall, head of the Progressive Policy Institute, issued a statement that net neutrality “endorses a backward-looking policy that would apply the brakes to the most dynamic sector of America’s economy.” This will destroy the last domain of true freedom in America. Right on target for a Communist agenda.

Robert McChesney, the Marxist head of Free Press, made his stance on his goals crystal clear: At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies,” he told the website Socialist Project in 2009. “But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.” Earlier in 2000, he told the Marxist magazine Monthly Review: “Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism.” McChesney has come a long way… the Marxists know that if they get control of the military and communications, they can change the political structure of the US into a bonafide dictatorship. We’re here folks, they’ve done it.

We’re not done yet though… I suspect there will be a massive fight in Congress over this. If they can’t overturn it legislatively, they will try and starve it through funding. And the lawsuits and legal problems for the Marxists who have orchestrated this go on forever. The Republicans so far have been a massive, deadly disappointment. They better find their spines and stand against this. Between all the scandals, Amnesty, 2nd Amendment issues and this, the country is on the very edge of a civil uprising.

When the quislings in Silicon Valley finally wake up after this, they aren’t going to like what they have wrought. There will be unintended consequences galore and they’ll proclaim: “We couldn’t have seen this coming!” Oh, but you could have if you had any foresight at all. Quoting Emperor Palpatine, Republican Ajit Pai, a member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), said: “Young fool … Only now, at the end, do you understand.”

02/20/15

Too Many Lies, Too Much of the Time

By: Alan Caruba
Warning Signs

Lies and Deceit

“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.

Hillary Clinton and Brian Williams

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.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

02/20/15

Chinese Censorship of Hollywood

By: Cliff Kincaid
America’s Survival

Selwyn Duke, who writes regularly for The New American and The American Thinker, discusses China’s increasing power and influence in Hollywood. He talks about films in which characters or plot lines have been changed to accommodate the Chinese regime and its censors. His article, “Forget North Korea: Watch Out for Chinese Censorship of Hollywood,” appears in the December 19, 2014 issue of The New American. Duke also talks about Chinese influence over the U.S. educational establishment, trade issues and communist propaganda operations designed to promote “demoralization.”