07/8/15

The Media vs. Trump’s Patriotic Appeal

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.

02/4/15

Media Bias Rears Ugly Head in Vaccine Controversy

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The media think they have discovered another issue to beat Republicans over the heads with—vaccines. But the media have no credibility on this, or any other major health issue. They do have, and often demonstrate, a partisan political bias on such controversial matters.

“Vaccination debate flares in GOP presidential race, alarming medical experts,” states The Washington Post in horror.

It’s yet another attempt to portray Republicans as “anti-science.” This follows the “climate change denier” mantra used against conservatives and Republicans for supporting pro-growth economic policies.

In the measles case, NBC news is attacking Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky for “giving credence” to an idea—“disputed by the majority of the scientific community”—that “vaccination can lead to mental disabilities.”

That’s interesting. As we reported back in 2006, NBC was aggressively covering the mercury-autism link involving vaccines. That was because Bob Wright, Vice Chairman and Executive Officer of GE and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NBC Universal, had a grandson who was autistic.

Going further back in time, consider a program on the link between vaccines and mental problems which was aired by NBC in 1994 and featured Katie Couric as a co-host.

If there are no problems associated with vaccines, then why did Congress pass the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which created a national Vaccine Injury Compensation Program?

Michael Chen of ABC 10 News in San Diego reports on one mother whose son suffered a very serious vaccine reaction and was diagnosed with autism, and later Tourette syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder and mitochondrial dysfunction. She was awarded $55,000 in damages. Chen reported that since 1988, 15,684 injury and death claims related to vaccines have been submitted to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and that among those, nearly 4,000 cases received compensation from a federal fund.

Nearly $2 billion dollars has been paid out to vaccine victims for their injuries.

But in response to New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie supporting parental choice in vaccines, CNN ran a story saying he had sidestepped “vaccine science.”

The Washington Post reported in 2008 that candidate Barack Obama had said, “We’ve seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it’s connected to the vaccines. This person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it.”

The phrase “This person included” was apparently a reference to someone in the audience.

Now Obama acts as if all the science is settled. It is total hypocrisy.

But the science is not settled. In regard to the measles outbreak, Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center points out that “there were 644 cases of measles reported in America in 2014, even though 95% of children entering kindergarten have gotten two doses of MMR vaccine, which is also true for 92% of school children ages 13 to 17 years.” She also notes that “less than one percent of children under age three are completely unvaccinated and 92% of them have gotten one or more MMR shots. In some states, the MMR vaccination rate is approaching 100 percent.”

“From January 1 to January 30, 2015, 102 people from 14 states were reported to have measles,” the CDC reports.

Fisher notes that the “measles virus has not been eradicated from the U.S., just like measles has not been eradicated from any other country and emerging scientific evidence suggests it never will be—no matter how many doses of MMR vaccine are mandated for every man, woman and child in the world.”

Could it be possible that the shots aren’t working? What about the fact that millions of Americans took flu shots that don’t work? Did you miss this ABC News story: “Flu vaccine may not be effective for this year’s strains, CDC says.”

Dr. Anne Schuchat, assistant surgeon general and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, was quoted by CNN as saying, “this is not a problem with the measles vaccine not working. This is a problem of the measles vaccine not being used.”

So why are vaccinated people getting measles? The CDC admits that 12 percent of those with measles associated with Disneyland were vaccinated. What’s more, some of the measles cases may be vaccine reactions. The fact is that the CDC just doesn’t know why or what is happening.

CNN, which is now trying to act “scientific” on the subject of vaccine safety, ran a January 15 column, “The climate is ruined. So can civilization even survive?” It was another effort to scare people over so-called global warming, or climate change.

Here, too, Republicans have been portrayed as “anti-science” for opposing scare mongering over the climate, based on junk science.

In this case, the editor’s note said the author, David Ray Griffin, “is emeritus professor of philosophy of religion at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University. His most recent book is Unprecedented: Can Civilization Survive the CO2 Crisis? The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.”

That sounds impressive.

Yet, his previous book was, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11. It argues that Flight 77, a Boeing 757 which was seen by dozens of people crashing into the Pentagon, was actually a missile or small aircraft.

He has no explanation for passenger Barbara Olson’s call to her husband, Ted Olson, in the Justice Department, alerting him to the fact that the flight had been hijacked, other than to suggest that they were both part of a secret plan to conceal the truth and that it is not clear “what became of Barbara Olson.”

Griffin is an advocate of global government that he calls “global democracy” as the solution to the world’s problems.

According to the acknowledgements section of his new book, the “seed” for the book was a series of lectures he gave at the invitation of Zhihe Wang and Meijun Fan of the Communist Chinese Institute for Postmodern Development. Their specialty is “ecological Marxism.”

Not surprisingly, the book, Organic Marxism: An Alternative to Capitalism and Ecological Catastrophe, receives Griffin’s endorsement.

In a hastily added postscript to his own book, Griffin seems ecstatic that President Obama and Chinese leader Xi Jinping recently made an “executive agreement” about limiting carbon emissions. He says this “undercuts what had become the Republicans’ main argument for doing nothing about climate change…”

Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is not impressed by the deal. He calls it “a non-binding charade” that benefits China.

Griffin calls the GOP “the party of denial”—a charge the media will increasingly use as the presidential campaign moves forward.

The Republicans ought to be getting used to this charge by now.

But using a 9/11 truther to attack Republicans? Don’t the media have any decency?

Will Republicans stand up to the media attack? Or will they wilt in the face of dubious “science” promoted by reporters with no credibility?