The Fundamental Transformation of the Armed Forces
By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media
When men dress as women and serve openly in the U.S. military, there are bound to be problems identifying these people. But don’t worry. The National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) has come to the rescue. This special interest group, backed financially by all the major media organizations, has issued special guidance in the form of an “open letter” to the media on how the “transgendered” are supposed to be covered.
For example, it says that referring to “transgender woman” or “transgender man” is acceptable on first reference, but that subsequent references should refer to a transgender woman as a “woman” or a transgender man as a “man.”
In other words, forget about someone’s DNA, the scientific and objective measure of one’s gender and sexual identity. The “open letter” makes that clear, noting that someone’s sex “assigned at birth” is not relevant to one’s “gender identity.”
We are told that the term “transvestite” is an “antiquated term” and should be avoided.
Transvestite or cross-dresser are terms that used to refer to Corporal Klinger wearing dresses and women’s hats as a character on the comedy show M*A*S*H. It was his attempt to get discharged. Today, in real life, Obama’s Defense Secretary Ash Carter hasannounced the transgendered can serve openly without fear of being discharged.
Under the Constitution, the Congress is supposed to make the rules and regulations for the Armed Forces. Article I, Section 8, clause 14 says, “The Congress shall have Power To …make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces….”
Our media reported the policy change without explaining on what basis, legal or constitutional, the change was made.
CNN simply said Carter had removed “one of the last barriers to military service by any individual,” and that he “had been studying the issue for almost a year.”
The New York Times said, “The decision pushes forward a transformation of the military that Mr. Carter has accelerated in the last year with the opening of all combat roles to women and the appointment of the first openly gay Army secretary.”
On what basis, however, can Carter or his boss Obama “transform” the military? The original ban on homosexuals in the military was changed through congressional action. There has been no congressional lifting of the ban on the transgendered.
Columnist and radio commentator Bryan Fischer noted that “President Obama and the Pentagon have violated the Constitution and committed an impeachable offense by unilaterally admitting transgenders, transvestites, and transexuals into the military.”
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council noted that the enormously unpopular and disruptive policy is being implemented “without Congress’s approval.” Such a move has constitutional and legal implications.
House Committee on Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-TX) issued a statement questioning the change, but did not assert the constitutional requirement that the new policy be approved by Congress before taking effect. Once again, Congress has abdicated its responsibility.
This is, of course, no concern to the NLGJA, which monitors the media to make sure not that the Constitution is followed but that the demands of the gay lobby be met.
Thornberry says that “when we learned DOD was looking at new policies on the service of transgender individuals, the Committee posed a number of questions to DOD. In particular, there are readiness challenges that first must be addressed, such as the extent to which such individuals would be medically non-deployable. Almost a year has passed with no answer to our questions from Secretary Carter.”
How’s that for an executive branch out of control and showing complete disdain for Congress?
Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee,called for hearings, saying that the military “is facing historic readiness shortfalls, putting our service members’ lives at greater risk.” Instead of addressing these problems, Inhofe noted that the Obama administration is “forcing their social agenda” through the Department of Defense.
Inhofe did not question the legal or constitutional basis of what Obama and Carter had done.
Perhaps a hearing will attempt to answer the questions posed by Roger Severino of The Heritage Foundation:
- Will biological males who identify as female be subject to physical fitness requirements for men or women?
- Will they be required to do 35 pushups or 13 pushups to pass basic training?
- Will American taxpayers be required to pay for expensive “sex reassignment” surgeries, including breast implants in men and shaving down Adam’s apples when that money can be spent on better weapons or more training?
- Will service members who have addressed an officer as “sir” for years be booted out of the military if they refuse to address him as “ma’am?”
- Wouldn’t the loss and impact on recruiting offset any supposed gains of allowing a relatively few transgender troops the ability to dress according to their chosen identity?
One of these questions has already been answered. Carter said that by October 1, 2016, DOD will “create and distribute a commanders’ training handbook, medical protocol and guidance for changing a service member’s gender in the Defense Eligibility Enrollment System (DEERS),” and that the services “will be required to provide medically necessary care and treatment to transgender service members.”
At a briefing, Carter said, “The transgender individual, like all other service members, will get all medical care their doctors deem necessary.”
None of this is a controversy for the major media, which finance the NLGJA and do not dare question this radical sexual agenda. As reported extensively by Accuracy in Media, the NLGJA holds conferences and fundraisers on a regular basis that are sponsored by all of the major news organizations.
A benefit for the NLGJA in New York featured what the group itself called “some of the biggest names in media.” They included:
- Don Lemon of CNN
- Tamron Hall of NBC
- Simon Hobbs of CNBC
- Alisyn Camerota of CNN
- Christine Romans of CNN
- Poppy Harlow of CNN
- Harris Faulkner of Fox News
A more recent benefit event for the NLGJA in Los Angeles was sponsored by Comcast/NBC Universal and CBS News.
If members of Congress challenge this “transformation” of the military and assert their legislative powers, they would be going up against two of the most powerful interest groups in the country—the gay lobby and the major media.
So they take the easy way out by asking a few questions and meekly requesting hearings.
It’s difficult to know which is declining at a more rapid rate — the morality of the country or the relevance of the U.S. Constitution. Perhaps they are both hitting rock bottom at the same time.
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?
In Memoriam
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