07/17/15

Obama’s Message to Islam on Day of the Chattanooga Massacre

By: Denise Simon
FoundersCode.com

Just damn…

The Muslim brother in the White House had very shallow and empty words in response to the jihad massacre in Chattanooga where 4 Marines were killed. Remember, Obama is their direct boss and Commander in Chief.

He is just not that into our military, much less Christians.

During the Islamic month of Ramadan, Obama provides deep recognition, respect and benevolence to Islam.

From Breitbart:

On Monday, Barack Obama, speaking at an Iftar dinner (the evening meal when Muslims end their daily Ramadan fast at sunset), he hosted at the White House, intoned to his audience, “The Koran teaches us that God’s children tread gently on the earth … We affirm that whatever our faith, we are one family.”

Praising two Muslim young women he invited to sit at his table, Obama lauded Samantha Elauf, who sued Abercrombie and Fitch and won in the Supreme Court after she claimed she was not hired because she wore a hijab, saying he had not spoken before the Supreme Court at her age.

Obama has never spoken before the Supreme Court.

Abercrombie and Fitch has hired other women wearing hijabs; Elauf, a Palestinian-American who boasts #free Palestine on her Twitter feed, was initially awarded $20,000 by a federal court in Tulsa, but the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver threw out that decision because Elauf had not asked Abercrombie to accommodate her head scarf.

Obama also praised Munira Khalif, who has spoken in front of the United Nations regarding women being counted in a census. Khalif recently graduated high school in Minnesota and was accepted by every Ivy League school, choosing Harvard. Obama said when he was 18 he had not spoken before the UN. Read more here.

It gets worse.

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05/22/15

How the Media Got Into Bed with the Clintons

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Republican operative Karl Rove writes in The Wall Street Journal that “few demonstrate as much contempt for journalists as do Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.” That may be true for Obama, but Mrs. Clinton has taken a different approach. Her platforms, the Clinton Foundation and its project, the Clinton Global Initiative, have given the appearance of humanitarian work, drawing many big names from the media into her network of influence. No wonder they treat her with deference and respect. The media have been compromised.

“Until late Tuesday afternoon,” reports USA Today, “the Clinton Foundation website listed CNN anchor Jake Tapper as a ‘speaker’ at a Clinton Global Initiative event scheduled for June 8-10 in Denver. After USA TODAY asked CNN about the event, Tapper’s name was swiftly removed from the Clinton Foundation website.”

It appears that Tapper will still participate in the meeting, but not as a speaker.

This Tapper controversy should put an end to the pretense that George Stephanopoulos of ABC News is the only member of the journalism business who was compromised through his involvement in the Clinton Foundation. A list of media members of the Clinton Global Initiative in 2011 included Stephanopoulos and many others:

  • Christiane Amanpour, Chief International Correspondent, CNN
  • Thomas Friedman, Columnist, The New York Times
  • Lionel Barber, U.S. Managing Director, The Financial Times
  • Nicholas Kristof, Columnist, The New York Times
  • Maria Bartiromo, Anchor, CNBC (now with Fox Business Network)
  • Matt Lauer, Host, The Today Show, NBC
  • Matthew Bishop, New York Bureau Chief and American Business Editor, The Economist
  • Tom Brokaw, Special Correspondent and Moderator of Meet the Press, NBC News
  • Greta Van Susteren, Anchor and Host, Fox News Channel
  • Anderson Cooper, Anchor, CNN
  • Judy Woodruff, Senior Correspondent, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, PBS
  • Katie Couric, Anchor, CBS News (now with Yahoo)
  • Fareed Zakaria, Editor, Newsweek International

The pro-Clinton group Media Matters has been having a field day with the news that Fox News personalities were on the list. The group points out that Van Susteren and Bartiromo have both lavished praise on the Clinton Global Initiative for its good work.

For our part, we have been drawing attention to media links to the Clintons for at least 10 years. It wasn’t considered controversial by the media, on the left or right, until the release of Peter Schweizer’s new book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. Schweizer has attempted to link some of the contributions made to the Clintons to actions taken by the Obama administration when Mrs. Clinton was Secretary of State.

We noted back in 2005 that Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of the Fox News parent company, was a participant in the Clinton Global Initiative meeting held in New York in mid-September of that year. As we also pointed out, Clinton himself had appeared on Greta Van Susteren’s Fox News Channel show to promote the event.

That same year we reported that the Fox News Channel, in addition to giving Clinton a platform to talk about his Global Initiative, had done then-Senator Hillary Clinton a big favor by canceling some interviews with Ed Klein, the author of a book critical of Hillary.

Back in 2007 we noted that Murdoch had personally made a $500,000 gift to the Clinton Global Initiative.

“In terms of the Clinton Global Initiative,” Van Susteren told former President Clinton in a 2010 interview, “I’ve seen so many of the good works in terms of the money that goes around the world, whether it’s clean water in different areas. If there is one particular mission for you to describe the Clinton Global Initiative, what is it?”

Clinton’s lengthy reply to this softball question included praise for Frank Giustra, the Canadian business executive, for giving $20 million. Giustra’s donations have subsequently been linked to a plan to win U.S. approval to sell a uranium company to Russia.

Rather than look into the contributions of Giustra and others, Van Susteren encouraged others to contribute to the Clintons. She said to the former president, “A lot of people look at the program, a lot of big names, big contributors and very generous, what about somebody who says I don’t have any big money to contribute. I might have some ideas, or I’m willing to do some leg work to help. How can I participate?”

Isn’t that nice? Even Fox News was in bed with the Clintons.

In a September 27, 2012 column, we pointed out that members of the media scheduled to speak at that year’s Clinton Global Initiative meeting were:

  • Nicholas D. Kristof, Columnist, The New York Times
  • Piers Morgan, Host, CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight
  • Charlie Rose, Executive Editor and Anchor, “Charlie Rose”
  • Fareed Zakaria, Host, CNN-GPS

It turns out that 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney even attended and addressed that year’s Clinton Global Initiative meeting. Perhaps he had been told by Republican advisers like Rove that it was a humanitarian event with a bipartisan flavor.

“Since serving as President here in America,” Romney declared, “President Clinton has devoted himself to lifting the downtrodden around the world. One of the best things that can happen to any cause, to any people, is to have Bill Clinton as its advocate. That is how needy and neglected causes have become global initiatives.”

The comment goes to show how Clinton, who disgraced himself by having sex with a White House intern and was impeached, has had his reputation rehabilitated. A Republican who got caught doing such things would be forced to slink away and beg for forgiveness from the media.

Romney may have gotten bad advice about going to that event, but it was Romney himself who told Jan Crawford of CBS News during the campaign that the major media were not in the tank for President Obama and that he had no plans to challenge liberal media bias.

No wonder the Democrats are so confident about their ability to manipulate the press. They have the Republicans eating out of their hands.

04/27/15

Media’s Ongoing Attempts to Downplay VA Scandal

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

While some in the media have demonstrated they are willing to challenge the narrative emerging from the Obama administration that downplays ongoing abuses by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), others on the far left such as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow have cast the administration’s chronic disservice to ailing veterans as a vast right-wing targeting conspiracy. VA Secretary Bob McDonald recently aided Maddow’s agenda by claiming during his appearance on her show that the VA was becoming “transparent” and desires “sunshine.”

“It’s hunting season at the VA,” VA Secretary Bob McDonald told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on April 24, announcing a special medical advisory group to fix the VA’s problems. “Nobody wants to talk about the good things. We’re the largest medical system in the country, so when something goes wrong, it becomes news.”

More than a few “somethings” are going wrong at the VA if the ongoing scandals in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Denver, Phoenix and Tomah, Wisconsin are any indication. Yet, as I noted in a previous column, when President Obama recently traveled to Phoenix, Arizona he asserted that “there were deficits with the way the VA is being run” but then called this a “case of bad apples and systems run awry.”

Secretary McDonald has presented similar talking points to the media, and some, such as Maddow, seem to be buying this narrative.

In reality, the VA scandal represents an insidious form of government corruption and mismanagement which will not cease until those responsible are held accountable. But accountability is the one thing lacking in Obama’s Washington largely due to a complicit media. They fail to hold President Obama accountable for government corruption and malfeasance by blaming low-level civil servants or ignoring ongoing scandals entirely.

The New York Times deserves credit for a recent story outlining the lack of accountability in the continuing VA crisis. However, it relegated this breaking and relevant news to page A16.

Secretary McDonald, who replaced disgraced former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, told NBC’s Meet the Press in February that “the department had fired 60 people involved in manipulating wait times to make it appear that veterans were receiving care faster than they were,” reports Dave Phillips for the Times. Then the VA clarified that “only 14 people had been removed from their jobs, while about 60 others had received lesser punishments,” he writes.

“Now, new internal documents show that the real number of people removed from their jobs is much smaller still: at most, three,” writes Phillips. Sharon Helman, “the only person fired” was “removed not for her role in the manipulation of waiting lists but for receiving ‘inappropriate gifts,’” continues Phillips.

In the meantime, VA employees feel empowered to retaliate against whistleblowers within the VA, likely because of these weak accountability measures.

“Once you talk to the media, you are on your own…The VA does not support you, and you are not representing the organization,” declared a Denver, Colorado VA Medical Center Director, as I pointed out in March. She continued, “The only thing you are representing is yourself, and then, once you are in hot water, nobody will help you.”

CNN also reported in March that a Los Angeles, California VA representative, Dr. Sky MacDougall, actually lied to Congress about wait times at the Greater Los Angeles Medical Center, and that Congress was investigating this incident based on their CNN report.

VA crises are spreading throughout the country like a wildfire. On March 30 Congressional members traveled to Tomah to hold a joint field hearing to discuss a death resulting from the over-medication of one patient, the over-prescription of drugs to other patients, and the neglect of an older veteran who came in and suffered from a stroke while waiting for care at the Tomah VA. The older veteran, Thomas Baer, died from complications due to a stroke after delays at the VA Urgent Care center, an unavailable CT machine, no helicopter, and after being driven by ambulance to a new facility long after the initial onset of his symptoms.

One of the witnesses, Ryan Honl, a combat veteran who suffers from PTSD, was a whistleblower at the Tomah VA Medical Center. Honl testified about how his electronic medical file was accessed by multiple persons at the VA. “However, as soon as I blew the whistle, I started hearing about my instability from other employees,” he writes in his official testimony. “In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, [Dr. David Houlihan’s] attorney alluded to my mental health status,” he states. “Shortly after while VA investigators were in the Tomah VA, Police Chief Huffman directed that a police report be done on me by my former supervisor…and two coworkers…four months after I resigned over a supposed ‘threatening incident’ that took place while I was an employee before I resigned.”

“Clearly, my mental health diagnoses are being used by those I reported in order to discredit me,” he writes.

Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner told Congress earlier this month that “The number of new whistleblower cases from VA employees remains overwhelming,” according to Joe Davidson of The Washington Post. In fact, Davidson reports that her testimony revealed that “whistleblower cases reviewed by her office are almost 150 percent higher than historical levels. Nearly 40 percent of her office’s incoming cases are from VA, although her office takes cases from across the government.”

If VA whistleblower cases are up 150 percent when compared to “historical levels,” why aren’t the media questioning President Obama’s leadership on this issue?

“Monday’s session demonstrated that VA’s entrenched culture of retaliation against whistleblowers endures, a year after revelations exploded over poor service and the covering up of long patient wait times,” writes Davidson.

Then he defends Secretary McDonald, writing, “The retaliation continues despite the solid efforts of the current VA secretary, who replaced one driven out by the scandal.”

Accountability and professional standards are set by those at the very top. Secretary McDonald was confirmed last July, yet it appears that little change has happened at the VA under his leadership, nor that of his boss, President Obama.

In previous articles covering the ongoing VA scandal I pointed to the media’s reluctance, if not outright refusal, to implicate the Obama administration for its role in facilitating the ongoing corruption at the VA.

But in some far-left circles this has been taken to the furthest possible conclusion, that the scandal is about to be exploited by the “right wing” for its own purposes.

MSNBC’s Maddow recently minimized the poor treatment received by veterans at the VA, warned that the right wing would soon push to privatize the VA, and gave Secretary McDonald a platform to claim that the administration was actually being “transparent” on this issue.

“One of the reasons I want you to be here tonight, Mr. Secretary [Robert McDonald], is because I do feel like VA is about to have political challenges that it has not faced in at least a generation, if not more, and veterans groups have been able to hold off some of those challenges in the past,” said Maddow on her April 15 show. “…I’m not sure that VA has the political backup right now to fight those battles. And honestly, I’m here partly because I want to sort of raise the flag that this is coming.”

The graphic on the MSNBC broadcast read, “V.A. Secretary on Right-Wing Efforts to Privatize VA.”

Secretary McDonald responded to her by emphasizing the VA’s alleged transparency and desire for “sunshine.” He said:

“That’s why we’re here. We want to get out. We want to be transparent. We now publish our data every two weeks online. Sunshine is a great, transparency is a great benefit to us. We’re gonna do our share. We’re gonna improve the results of the VA. We’re working very hard to do that, and hopefully veterans will be happy with the care we provide them. It’s the most exciting mission that we could possibly have.”

Both participants in this highly disingenuous interchange may have wished to assure the public about the VA’s integrity, but the growing news about corruption at the VA, prompted in part by Congressional hearings held by Rep. Jeff Miller’s (R-FL) House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, makes it less and likely that the public can be fooled by such false assurances.

Veterans actually served by the VA certainly aren’t being fooled, and a number of them have contacted me after reading my articles on this continuing scandal to say that things are bad, and in some cases even worse than I described.

As is true for most MSNBC shows, Maddow’s presentation of this scandal was highly misleading as well. Veterans groups are now actively asking for change themselves. For example, the price tag for the VA Medical Center in Denver, Colorado has ballooned from $328 million to $1.73 billion. As a result, “The American Legion in Colorado held a protest last year in which members held up ‘JUST BUILD THE DAMN THING’ signs and carried shovels, symbolically ready to build it themselves,” reported The Washington Post’s Emily Wax-Thibodeaux in March.

There is no doubt that the VA is a behemoth of a bureaucracy, and McDonald seems like a sincere and capable manager. But regrettably he also seems to have been captured by the Obama administration’s culture of deceit, of punishing whistleblowers, and of failing to hold people accountable. Hopefully, for the sake of America’s veterans, of which he is one, that culture will change, and change fast. McDonald was caught exaggerating his service history earlier this year, which may have contributed to skepticism about whether he is the right man for this job.

Rachel Maddow’s transparent attempt to cast the VA scandal as the fabrication of right-wing political forces bent on destroying an embattled institution serves as a red herring designed to provide Secretary McDonald, and thereby this administration, with a platform to praise the past successes of this corrupt, mismanaged bureaucracy—at the expense of those veterans who have died or been neglected. But MSNBC and other complicit media aren’t interested in accountability, they’re interested in covering for the Obama administration.

04/17/15

Sexual Madness in Obama’s America

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The headline over the story is, “LGBT Friendly: White House Unveils First Gender-Neutral Bathroom.” But it’s not a joke. It wasn’t a story from the comedy site The Onion. Instead, this was from NBC News.

It is apparent that the liberal media will treat anything “gay” coming out of this administration as somehow legitimate or even compassionate. Nothing will be described as weird or strange, out of fear of offending some new sexual minority. This time, the “transgendered” are supposed to benefit. It’s yet another effort to confuse sexual roles and undermine traditional values.

NBC reported, “For the first time in history, the White House has designated a gender-neutral restroom for visitors and staffers—the latest in a series of steps the administration has taken to protect the rights of members of the LGBT community.”

At the risk of sounding politically incorrect, isn’t there an obligation on the part of NBC News to at least consider giving some space or attention to an opposing view? By the way, despite liberal use of the term, it’s not clear what “transgendered” actually means. Does it mean people who dress like the opposite sex? People who have sex-change operations? Or what about people who have mental disorders and simply think they’re the wrong sex?

Instead, the NBC News story merely notes that there’s legislation in “Republican-dominated” legislatures in Florida and Kentucky to keep the “transgendered” out of bathrooms for men and women. What these bills actually do is keep men out of women’s bathrooms, and vice versa. These bills are designed to secure the privacy and safety of all individuals using a single-sex public facility for which the facility is designated. That is, for men and women. This is common sense. But it doesn’t make sense in Obama’s America.

The Florida bill is also designed to keep predators out of the facilities. The bill notes, for example, that “Single-sex public facilities are places of increased vulnerability and present the potential for crimes against individuals using those facilities, including, but not limited to, assault, battery, molestation, rape, voyeurism, and exhibitionism.”

The liberal media describe this common-sense approach as preventing the transgendered “from using the restroom of their choice.” Hence, the Republicans who want to maintain restrooms for men and women are depicted as mean-spirited Neanderthals. This is how the media try to intimidate Republicans into accepting any new “change,” no matter how ridiculous or absurd.

Years ago the idea of a man dressing like or appearing as a woman was good for some laughs. Comedian Flip Wilson evoked that response as the character “Geraldine.” Corporal Klinger did likewise in the comedy show MASH.

But now we’re supposed to take all of this seriously. It’s tempting to laugh now, except that the campaign for transgendered rights has big money and Big Media behind it.

The Washington Post just ran a huge front page story on Shane Ortega, who has served three combat tours, two as a woman and one as a man. He was a woman who became a man, but who is still a woman in the eyes of the military.  As the United States is facing threats around the world, our military is currently wrestling with the problem of what to do about Shane Ortega. The Post will make sure this remains on the top of the military’s priority list.

Who’s behind this drive for “transgender” rights?

Three names jump out at you: the Arcus Foundation, the Gill Foundation and the Open Society Foundations.

The executive director of the Arcus Foundation is Kevin Jennings. Remember him? He was the Obama-appointed Education Department official whose life of homosexual activism was inspired by Harry Hay, the Communist Party member and “Radical Faerie” who believed in the power of the occult. Hay started the gay rights movement in the U.S.

The Gill Foundation is named for Timothy Gill of Denver, the founder of Quark, Inc., a computer software company, and a tech multimillionaire. He says he has singlehandedly “invested more than $220 million” in the cause of homosexual rights through his Gill Foundation.

Finally, the Open Society Foundations are associated with billionaire hedge fund operator George Soros. In 2009 he financed the “New Beginning Initiative” to encourage the Obama administration to make “policy changes” to benefit the homosexual movement.

The Arcus Foundation, the Gill Foundation and the Open Society Foundations are all financial backers of the National Center for Transgender Equality. This group has just announced that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission delivered “a landmark ruling that employees must have access to restroom facilities consistent with their gender identity.”

Not surprisingly, The Washington Post covered this development. The Army was found guilty of barring a “transgender employee” from a restroom “matching her new identity” and had “referred to her by her previous gender.” The individual is described as a military veteran who is now a civilian Army employee.

The Post reported, “A recent study by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National LGBTQ Task Force found that 90 percent of transgender individuals report mistreatment or discrimination in the workplace, forcing many to hide their gender identity.” How are these for objective sources?

By the way, the “Q” in LBGTQ stands for “questioning.”

Believe it or not, the Post has a “manners columnist” who examines these issues. “When the ‘Q’ is used as a stand-in for questioning, you’re right that it means the individual is uncertain of his or her orientation,” reported Steven Petrow.

So a “questioning” individual could dress up as a man or a woman, depending on how he or she feels on any particular day.

But, one step at a time. The National Center for Transgender Equality is now pressing for the right of transgender service-members to serve openly in the U.S. Armed Forces. After that, presumably, the “questioning” will demand their rights. Then, Petrow says, there is an “I” category for “intersex,” meaning “An individual whose biological birth does not correspond with conventional expectations of male/female anatomy or genetics.”

We’re confident the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, funded by all of the big media organizations, will instruct reporters on what all of this means and how to portray conservatives and Republicans as obstructing necessary societal change.

01/31/15

Hatin’ on the Police – an Old Communist Strategy

By: Trevor Loudon
New Zeal

The second half of 2014 was marked by a very intense anti-police campaign from the US left.

In an obvious attempt to destroy public confidence in local police forces, every black death at the hands of uniformed officers was trumpeted across the nation as proof of endemic police racism.

Revolutionary Communist party signs at "Ferguson" protest

Revolutionary Communist Party signs at “Ferguson” protest

This is an old communist game, but unfortunately not enough people know history.

Below are extracts from the testimony of Mr. Bellarmino Joe Duran, a plasticizing press operator and an FBI informant, working in the West Side Mexican Branch of the Communist Party of Denver, Colorado.

Mr. Duran was active in the Denver Communist Party from 1948 to 1956.

This testimony was given to the “Investigation of Communist activities in the Rocky Mountain area.” Hearings conducted May 15 and 16, 1956, by the COMMITTEE ON UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

Note what Mr. Duran has to say about the Communist Party’s campaign against the Denver police in response to government investigator Arens:

Mr. ARENS. Now may I invite your attention to an organization known as the West Side Fair Play Committee and ask you what you know about that organization.

Mr. DURAN. The West Side Fair Play Committee was an organization which to my knowledge was started in sincerity of a mother trying to defend her son against police brutality. The Communist Party of Denver heard about it and entered the case. When I heard about it Virgil Akeson, of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union was active in it. Morris Wright was active in it, Alfredo Montoya, of the Mine-Mill was active in it, Alfonso and Rose Sena were active, and Jesus and Judith Sauceda were active in it. These people I have identified before as members and leaders of the Communist Party.

In 1954-55 there was a meeting to disband ANMA (another Communist front, the National Association of Mexican-Americans). A Communist Party meeting was called. Present at this meeting were Alfredo Montoya, Martha Correa, Alfonso Sena, Morris Wright, and myself.

Immediately after that Harold Zepelin, early in 1954, instructed me as member of the Communist Party to penetrate the West Side Fair Play Committee and that I was released from my ANMA duties and therefore it would be my main responsibility directly to the party to develop the juvenile delinquency issue and fight the police in the West Side Fair Play Committee.

The directive from Harold Zepelin, and I quote him, was that it is time that the members of the Communist Party start fighting other individuals and organizations, and direct their fight against the government locally, either State or Federal. Our responsibility was to fight the Denver Police Department as part of that tactic of fighting the Government, to set the Denver Police Department against the people and the people against the police department.

The activities of the West Side Fair Play Committee were outright controlled and dictated by the Communist Party, and by that I mean this : There were people there who wanted other activities other than just juvenile delinquency and fighting against the police. They didn’t want to fight against the police. The Communists in there were less in number than the active people, but they would combine and bombard these people with their propaganda until they convinced them that they should fight the police.

In Denver, Colo., a Communist by the name of Martha Correa witnessed a policeman beating a Spanish American man. I cannot testify whether he was in the wrong or not. 1 do not know the situation.

She raised it. This man said he was wrong, and he wanted to forget about it. Later on the members of the Communist Party of Colorado convinced this man to sue Officer Burke, of the Denver Police Department for $45,000. This was continuously agitated to divide the people from their local government and specifically within the police department. That is the general activity of the West Side Fair Play Committee.

Does any of this sound familiar people?

In those days, America had two significant Marxist-Leninist parties. Now the country has at least ten.

Almost all of them have been active in the recent anti-police rioting and demonstrations. They are working overtime, right now in Black and Latino communities, to make the next wave of violence even bloodier and more destructive.

Some of them are actively working with Russian and Middle Eastern communists and Islamic radicals.

Federal, state and even city governments were once able to keep a lid on communist agitation, because they held regular public hearings which kept the public on guard against subversive activities. They also actively ran informants inside radical groups.

Now the government and the media are largely complicit with the radicals, so the public are almost completely unaware of the threat.

The next Republican administration must re-open Congressional and Senate hearings into internal subversive activities.

If they don’t, there will be significant blood on the streets. That’s a guarantee.