10/25/16

Breitbart, liberal activist cooperated on GOP primary disruptions: report

By: Mark Hensch | The Hill

A liberal activist and organizer collaborated with the right-wing news site Breitbart on coverage of him interrupting GOP presidential primary candidates, according to a new report.

Aaron Black teamed with the pro-Donald Trump outlet by alerting them to stunts, sharing raw video footage and orchestrating coverage, Politico reported on Monday.

“He worked directly with Breitbart’s political team on the ground in the primary states to sabotage [Sens.] Marco Rubio [R-Fla.] and Ted Cruz [R-Texas], and elect Trump as nominee of the [Republican] party,” a source with direct knowledge of the arrangement told Politico.

“[Black] was coordinating with [Breitbart’s] top staff to rabble rouse against Rubio at rallies,” citing various disruptions during the former White House hopeful’s events.

Politico’s source said Black coordinated with Breitbart journalists via email, phone and even in-person meetings.

Black is an associate with the liberal-leaning Democracy Partners super PAC, it said, and is also a former Occupy Wall Street organizer.

Politico added Black has since conducted interviews with Breitbart and appeared on the outlet’s radio programs.

Read more here…

03/5/16

Left-wing Miami Herald endorses Rubio because he not ‘an extremist like Ted Cruz’

By: Renee Nal | New Zeal

Marco Rubio via Conservative Review

The Miami Herald’s left-wing editorial board endorsed presidential candidate Marco Rubio as the best Republican choice for their readers because he has “support among party leaders” and while Rubio has ramped up his conservative rhetoric during an election year, he may soften his views after his election and after all, Rubio is not “an extremist like Ted Cruz.”

In other words, Rubio is malleable.

Read more here…

02/16/16

WATCH: Marco Rubio lies (again) about #Amnesty (video)

By: Renee Nal | New Zeal

Trump and Rubio speak during commercial break at GOP Debate via statesman.com

During Saturday’s GOP debate, Republican Presidential candidate Marco Rubio “made a demonstrably and provably false declaration” regarding his position on Obama’s executive amnesty, as reported at Breitbart. Actually, he made two completely false statements before he made the statement explored at Breitbart.

This is what Rubio said:

“I want immigration reform to pass, I want people to be able to come out of the shadows, and he [Cruz] proposed an amendment that would have legalized people here. Not only that, he proposed doubling the number of green cards. He proposed a 500% increase on guest workers. Now his position is different. Now, now he is a passionate opponent of all those things. So he either wasn’t telling the truth then, or he isn’t telling the truth now…”

Read more here…

02/16/16

WATCH ‘Sanctuary:’ Pro-Cruz SuperPac ad PULLED in South Carolina (video)

By: Renee Nal | New Zeal

Marco Rubio via Conservative Review

A television ad created by the pro-Cruz Stand for Truth PAC was pulled from stations in South Carolina for unclear reasons after a “legal review.”

The New York Times reported Monday:

“The ad, titled ‘Sanctuary,’ was a version of an ad the group ran in Iowa, criticizing Marco Rubio for his record on immigration. It used the December attacks on San Bernardino, Calif., to stoke fear of terrorists sneaking into the country illegally, and cited the immigration deal Mr. Rubio pushed for in Congress in 2013 as evidence he worked to ‘allow sanctuary cities.'”

Although the video below is titled “Sanctuary” and was found at the YouTube website for the Stand for Truth SuperPac, this version does not mention San Bernardino specifically.

The reason for pulling the ad was unclear:

“We had our legal folks review it, and it was decided that this needed to be pulled and substituted,” Randy Ingram, the general manager of WBTW in Myrtle Beach, S.C., said, although he couldn’t recall the specifics of the legal team’s decision.”

It is ~~unlikely~~ a bit bizarre that the interviewee had no idea why the ad was pulled.

Read more here…

02/9/16

Rubio is Right: Obama is Betraying America

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

The problem of Russian aggression in the Middle East was not brought up in the New Hampshire Republican debate. Instead, the candidates were asked about the outcome of the Super Bowl and urged to attack each other. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) was mocked by Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) and many in the media for saying several times, “Let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

But what if Rubio is right? And what about the argument that he needs to keep saying this because so many of his competitors are content to let Obama off the hook for his repeated “failures” in foreign policy?

Senator Rubio is trying to make a point when he talks about Obama’s deliberately destructive policies. In addition to his socialist policies at home, Obama’s foreign policy actions as President are designed to make things worse for the United States and its allies around the world. A current example is the Middle East, where a military offensive by the combined forces of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah is threatening any chance for peace in Syria. After five years of war, the Russian client, Bashar al-Assad of Syria, may survive.

However, this would actually be a victory for the regimes outside of Syria, primarily Russia and Iran. Assad is their puppet. Israel may be their next target.

The network news programs are finding it impossible to ignore the ugly truth about what is happening in Aleppo, Syria. Holly Williams of CBS News coveredthe destruction of that city, which is the main rebel stronghold. Tens of thousands of new refugees are now fleeing the area seeking safety.

French journalist Natalie Nougayrède notes, “The defeat of anti-Assad rebels who have partially controlled the city since 2012 would leave nothing on the ground in Syria but Assad’s regime and Islamic State.” In other words, the so-called Russian war on the Islamic State, or ISIS, was a fraud. The Russian intention all along was to weaken and then destroy the anti-Assad rebels who want a real democracy in Syria.

As Nougayrède puts it, “Russia has all along claimed it was fighting ISIS—but in Aleppo it is helping to destroy those Syrian groups that have in the past proved to be efficient against ISIS. If there were ever any doubts about Russia’s objectives in Syria, events around Aleppo will surely have cleared them.”

“Aleppo will define much of what happens next,” she points out. “A defeat for Syrian opposition forces would further empower ISIS in the myth that it is the sole defender of Sunni Muslims—as it terrorizes the population under its control. There are many tragic ironies here, not least that western strategy against ISIS has officially depended on building up local Syrian opposition ground forces so that they might one day push the jihadi insurgency out of its stronghold in Raqqa. If the very people that were meant to be counted on to do that job as foot soldiers now end up surrounded and crushed in Aleppo, who will the west turn to?”

Obama’s response to all of this has been to let the Russians and their Iranian allies run the show. He is betraying the anti-ISIS, anti-Assad rebels.

As Rubio indicates, this cannot be considered a misguided policy. Making excuses for Obama doesn’t make sense anymore.

Like the Soviets before, the Russians are diabolical masters of manipulation. Nougayrède notes, “…if Europe sees a new exodus of refugees, Russia will stand to benefit. The refugee crisis has sowed deep divisions on the continent and it has helped populist rightwing parties flourish—many of which are Moscow’s political allies against the EU [European Union] as a project.”

Those “populist rightwing parties” have their counterpart in the United States, in the form of the Donald J. Trump presidential campaign. Curiously, he is anti-Muslim immigrant while pro-Russian. The candidate who failed to understand a question about the nuclear triad during one debate seems willing to let Putin run rampant in the Middle East, oblivious to the fact that Russia is making the refugee problem Trump complains about far worse.

Trump may not know what’s he’s saying or doing, but Obama clearly does. He cut a nuclear deal with Iran that has emboldened the main allies of Russia in the Middle East.

“Without Washington’s interference,” reports Avi Issacharoff, the Middle East analyst for The Times of Israel, “Moscow continues its incessant bombing of Aleppo, killing hundreds of innocent civilians. And Iran is taking over large parts of Syria and in the future may establish strongholds that will threaten Israel, whether in northwestern Syria or in its next target, the Deraa area close to the border with Israel and Jordan.”

Rubio kept saying, “Let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

Rubio keeps saying this because it’s true. Nothing that Governor Christie said in response to that line of attack disproved the truth of Rubio’s words. And if Rubio has to say it over and over again, in order for people to understand what’s happening in the Middle East and elsewhere, then please say it once again.

02/4/16

WATCH: Courageous Conservatives PAC releases ‘The Lightweight’ (video)

By: Renee Nal | New Zeal

Trump Hillary

In their “about” section, Courageous Conservatives PAC explains:

As Ronald Reagan stated, “It is bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people”.

That is why Courageous Conservatives PAC is supporting Ted Cruz and other conservative candidates who are willing to be bold, remain unwavering in their conservative principles and defend the Constitution of the United States.

The group released a video Thursday:

What do you think?

01/8/16

Natural Born Nonsense – Trump and Rubio’s latest gambit

By: Richard Cameron
Red State

Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and John McCain go to the citizenship card to derail Ted Cruz’ momentum

John McCain plays Marco Rubio’s Cat’s Paw in the latest desperation attempt to bring Ted Cruz down. Donald Trump is somewhere in the pile as well.

There has been a considerable amount of chatter regarding Donald Trump’s latest tactic in his ongoing scorched earth campaign, this time aimed at Senator Cruz’ campaign – in particular, the Senator’s legal qualifications to occupy the highest public office in the land. I refer to it as the NBC (Natural Born Citizen) flatulence. Flatulence in case you don’t know, is a polite term for stinking the room up.

While Senator Cruz’ and his campaign have addressed this issue on numerous occasions (quite satisfactorily) – as far back as August 2013; the timing of this attack from the Trump campaign is curious to say the least. Trump is now behind Cruz in the Iowa Caucus polling. The raising of the NBC flatulence is obvious on the face of it as a cheap desperation move to attempt to derail Senator Cruz’ momentum.

I have good friends on Facebook, who subscribe to the NBC narrative and whom I have had spirited discussions with and we have agreed to amiably steer away from the subject. Now is one exception. I can only issue a cautionary note against hopping on the Trump and Rubio Bandwagon on this matter. Even if you don’t find Trump’s antics as disreputable as I do, please be aware that you will also have some other quite dubious political bedfellows.

The Obama White House is joining in the chorus, questioning Cruz’ status of eligibility! As I told a family member who brought this up this morning, my objection to Obama’s legitimacy as President, did and does not center around his father (whoever that may have been) or whether Obama was born on American soil. It centered around thelies, obfuscations, contradictory documents, possible forgeries and ongoing withholding of details of his background. Details that the American people are legitimately entitled to examine.

In embracing this NBC faux controversy, you will also be in the company of Senator John McCain – who, by all appearances has worn out his welcome with Arizona voters and has, for the first time, some viable opponents lined up to term him out. McCain, who received a favorable interpretation of his own eligibility questions (having been born in the Panama Canal Zone), is acting as an “arms length” surrogate for his junior apprentice,Marco Rubio. McCain was quoted as saying, “I think there is a question. I am not a Constitutional scholar on that, but I think it’s worth looking into. I don’t think it’s illegitimate to look into it.”

But it is illegitimate to “look into it” Senator McCain. It has already been “looked into” by an eminent bi-partisan team of Constitutional scholars, in a commentary, titled “On the Meaning of `Natural Born Citizen’ ” in Harvard Law Review, co-authored byPaul Clement, Solicitor General during George W. Bush’s second term, and Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general in the Obama administration and during the 2000 recount, co-counsel to Bush’s opponent, Al Gore. You can read their detailed argument and analysis, here – although the point of this article is not necessarily to win converts to what I consider to be an open and shut case for Senator Cruz’ eligibility bonafides.

For reasons that are obvious on closer examination, the NBC issue is not something Rubio’s campaign wants Marco to get embroiled in personally. Rubio is also a target of the NBC fetishists because he was born in the United States to parents, neither of which were U.S. Citizens at the time of his birth. You have not heard ONE word from me on Rubio’s status and beyond this brief reference, you won’t again. Because to borrow a phrase that John McCain is fond of using – it is “Wacko Bird” stuff.

Not only have Clement and Katyal, “looked into it”, but the non-partisanCongressional Research Service (CRS), has as well:

CRS, Nov. 14, 2011: The weight of legal and historical authority indicates that the term “natural born” citizen would mean a person who is entitled to U.S. citizenship “by birth” or “at birth,” either by being born “in” the United States and under its jurisdiction, even those born to alien parents; by being born abroad to U.S. citizen-parents; or by being born in other situations meeting legal requirements for U.S. citizenship “at birth.” Such term, however, would not include a person who was not a U.S. citizen by birth or at birth, and who was thus born an “alien” required to go through the legal process of “naturalization” to become a U.S. citizen.

And, to add to the roster, Fact Check.org., references Sarah Helene Duggin, a Catholic University law professor, who wrote in 2013 on the subject, “There is a strong argument that anyone who acquires United States citizenship at birth, whether by virtue of the 14th Amendment or by operation of federal statute, qualifies as natural born.”

I could add Theodore “Ted” Olsen, former Solicitor General, who defended a lawsuit contending John McCain was not “natural born”. Mr. Olsen, a noted legal participant of the infamous Bush / Gore 2000 debacle, told National Review that “My conclusion would be that if you are a citizen as a consequence of your birth, that’s a natural-born citizen.” Another respected Constitutional expert, this one with liberal leanings and personally favorable experience with Ted Cruz, Harvard Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz opined in National Review, “Of course he’s eligible.”

And of course, I ask the same question my friend Trevor Loudon asks on his blog,New Zeal:

Did the founding fathers really believe that any pregnant American woman who happens to be on holiday or business outside of America could be jeopardizing her child’s future chances of becoming the president of the United States?

Did they indeed? One fascinating analysis of that question, was credibly answered by a very respected Senior Fellow at the CATO Institute, Mr. Ilya Shapiro – guesting on the “Doc” Washburn radio program. Among other things, Mr. Shapiro notes that Congress early on, had to revise or at least clarify the definition of “Natural Born Citizen” because the first 6, count ’em, 6 US Presidents were not born on United States soil – technically speaking, because when they were born the United States did not yet exist!

Shapiro also explains the later modification to the law that Congress instituted in 1952 –The Walker McCarran Act – or the Nationality Act of 1952, defining “Natural Born” and that after 1986, they widened the parameters even more. Ted Cruz, Mr. Shapiro notes, comfortably fulfills the requirements of that legislation. He also sheds more light than I’ve seen elsewhere on the “intent of the founding fathers”.

But you, should you hop aboard the NBC clownwagon, will also find yourself in the dubious company of one of the most unhinged, leftist Democrats in Congress, Florida House Member Alan Grayson, who has unabashedly equated the Tea Party to theKu Klux Klan and who has said that he intends to file suit in Federal court to challenge Senator Cruz’ eligibility. This from a man who terms Obama ‘Birthers’ as “loons”. No contradiction or inconsistency there unless you happen to have any degree of intellectual honesty and do not fit the profile of “partisan hack”.

If these uncomfortable bedfellows have not yet convinced you that you should leap from that flea ridden bed forthwith, perhaps the folks at the “National Society of Natural Born Citizens” will give you the “jolly old convincer”. Not only do they maintain a preposterous list of individuals past and present whom they deem ineligible to occupy the Oval Orifice, but they also are of the remarkable belief that:

An Amendment is necessary to provide the law necessary to provide woman eligibility to the Presidency. Woman (sic) are currently not eligible to the Office of President because they are not included in the definition of “natural born citizen and an Amendment is necessary to provide the law necessary for races other than European eligibility to the Presidency. Currently, only those of the European race are in the definition of “natural born citizen.” Congress needs to propose an Amendment to the Constitution that will provide the law necessary to provide other races eligibility to the Office of President. Congress is currently outside the law by accepting Electoral votes for a person not included in the definition of “natural born citizen.”

Did you catch that? European Race???? Only Whites and specifically White males are Constitutionally franchised to be elected to the office of the President of the United States? How do I double capitalize OMG? Really, do you want to be thought of in the same frame of reference as these lunatic obsessives?

I trust the answer is no – at least I hope so.

12/28/15

“The Great Bait and Switch”

New Zeal

Why Conservative Reagan Won Two Landslides, and Moderates Always Lose – Cruz vs. Rubio – THE “ELECTABILITY” DEBATE

By Shlomo Pollak

Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, right, speaks during a news conference with Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, following a vote in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Friday, Sept. 27, 2013. The U.S. Senate voted to finance the government through Nov. 15 after removing language to choke off funding for the health care law, putting pressure on the House to avoid a federal shutdown set to start Oct. 1. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The debate continues: do we stick to our principles, or do we run to the middle?

Since Romney’s shocking defeat, this debate has taken on a new sense of urgency, with the thinking that if Obama was reelected, even Hillary can win this thing?!?

Nobody changed teams, obviously…. The moderates remained moderates, and are “now more then ever”, energized to crush the right wing, that “cost us” an important election….

The conservatives, are equally incredulous, and fear a do-over with another moderate, will net us exactly the same results as last time….

THIS DEBATE ACTUALLY SEEMS TO BE, BETWEEN REASON AND HISTORY!!!

On the one hand, the moderates’ argument seems intuitively correct, and more reasonable. The closer one is to the middle, the more of the electorate he should be able to capture. In a two party system, there is nothing to the right of the GOP candidate, no matter how moderate he is…

But History seems to tell a different story. As Senator Cruz often reminds us, the last Republican to win a landslide, was actually painting IN BOLD COLORS- Reagan. Over and over we nominate a Bob Dole, a Mcain, a Romney, and over and over WE LOSE?!?!

FACTS DON’T LIE, YET IT SEEMS SO COUNTERINTUITIVE….

Many have gone the “energize the base” route, to explain this phenomenon. They claim that, staunch conservatives, not being COMPLETELY represented by the moderate GOP candidate, just stayed home!?!

Personally, after the 2012 debacle, that line of reasoning doesn’t hold water. Any voter that wasn’t 100% committed to stop Obama, with all the lawlessness, and wrong headedness, will certainly find a different excuse not to vote next time around…..

SO WHAT IS THE ANSWER??

My explanation is “THE GREAT BAIT & SWITCH”….

The media, Uber-leftist that they are, consistently root for, and aid, the candidate in any race, that is farther to the left. In the general election, they help the Democrat. In the GOP primary, they help the moderate. Jeb Bush with his embarrassing numbers, still gets more mentions, and is discussed more than Senator Ted Cruz. We consistently hear “here comes Governor Kasich”, as we didn’t stop hearing in 2012, to “watch Jon Huntsman”…

However, when a moderate secures the nomination, the media, IMMEDIATELY, switches sides!! Over night, the media turns from strong advocates for the moderate Republican, to fierce adversaries of the exact same candidate!!

In 2008, the media was falling all over themselves to support John McCain. Once he became the nominee, they we’re openly hostile. That very WEEK, The New York Times ran a full expose on some supposed scandal in the senators past….

The first thing Romney did as the fresh GOP nominee, was to go on that now infamous foreign trip. The Romney camp didn’t know what hit them!! All of a sudden, the drumbeat of media scorn, ridicule, and unfavorable coverage was pointed at THEIR direction. The strong headwind pointed at their opponents in the primary- that was wind in their back to win the nomination…reversed!! It was like someone simply turned around the media fan… Out of the blue, the Romney’s were facing fierce headwinds. THEY DID NOTHING.

Then came the biggest gift in the history of politics, and Romney squandered it! In a culmination of Obama’s many failings, a US ambassador, and three more Americans were killed in Benghazi….TWO MONTHS BEFORE THE ELECTION!! It was chock full with; enormous incompetence, reckless and naive policies, inexplicable chaos, and a transparent cover-up. The Romney camp waited for their chairleaders – the media, to spread the message……crickets. To their horror, the media switched teams, and were actively chairing-on Obama, reporting, and covering the movie….

Don’t worry, we were told, by the debate Romney will “nail Obama on Benghazi”…. How did that work out?! Obama simply said he had agreed all along it was a terrorist attack, the leftist moderator agreed, the media didn’t say a word about the inconsistency, so Romney moved on to “the economy”.

IF YOU LIVE BY THE MEDIA, YOU DIE BY THE MEDIA!!!

The 2008, and 2012 campaigns, of Mcain and Romney, are best remembered, as laid back, reactionary, on the defense, and not at all aggressive. The reason is simple. Their campaigns were BUILT in primaries that the wind / media, was in their back. Additionally, the candidates themselves, have never demonstrated the ability to aggressively, and effectively, go after the left. They never honed that skill, and were certainly not battle tested.

The media props up the moderate, enticing and BAITING conservatives to follow along, only to SWITCH away, and tear the GOP candidate to shreds.

We NEED a candidate AND a campaign that is built for the general!!

Which brings us to 2016, and Ted Cruz vs. Marco Rubio.

The difference in the two campaigns is as clear as day, and publicly reported.

Ted Cruz is tirelessly focusing on organizing and retail campaigning , with intensive mobilizing efforts. The man doesn’t sleep!! In the car, he can’t do a TV interview, so he schedules a radio show. He is building a network which one can build on, and only grows, and expands against Hillary.

Rubio has been relying on favorable news coverage and attention, most of which would virtualy disappear in the big fight.

Ted Cruz, as the the nominee, will be treated no different than he’s been, since he arrived on the scene. Cruz is already scorned, hated, lied about, discounted, and ignored. He is building a formidable campaign, DESPITE the media . The only small differences in the general will be; the media will be forced to ignore him less, and will choose to mock him more.

Twice recently, the Cruz team displayed the skills they have developed and honed over the years in pushing back. Mr. Trump quickly regretted referring to Cruz’s tenure in the senate as “like a maniac”. With humor, class, and talent, they displayed a deep connection with popular culture, turned “I am a maniac” into a source of pride, and even sold “I am a maniac” gear….

When the Cruz family shot a brilliant ad, parodying parents reading Holiday books to their little children, a partisan cartoonist for the Washington Post couldn’t stand that two million people viewed it on YouTube alone. She too surely regrets her cartoon, depicting the girls as monkeys. Her editor yanked the picture, and Cruz & Co. turned this incident into what is now being referred to as a gift!!… raising millions and generating plenty of positive news coverage…

Marco Rubio, on the other hand, is now framed as the sensible, electable, moderate. In a general election he would be caught totally flat-footed. Marco is being propped up, by leftists and moderates in the media, only to collapse like a house of cards, when his supporters begin fawning over Hillary.

For heaven’s sake!! Let’s not do the same thing over and over, and expect different results.

12/20/15

The Truth on Ted Cruz’s and Marco Rubio’s Records on Immigration

12/5/15

Putin’s “War on Terror” Could Backfire

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

There can be no doubt that the Russians are winning the Middle East propaganda war. But it’s not just the Marxist far-left that is willing to believe whatever Vladimir Putin and his mouthpiece Russia Today (RT) are saying. Some conservatives and self-described Tea Party leaders have also accepted the disinformation the Russians are putting out, even to the extent of affirming the Russian president as a Christian statesman leading the global war on terror.

Consider Chuck Baldwin’s piece, “Rootin’ for Putin,” which insists that “Russia’s Vladimir Putin is the only one fighting a Just War in the Middle East right now.” Baldwin, a Christian pastor “dedicated to preserving the historic principles upon which America was founded,” was the presidential candidate in 2008 of the Constitution Party, a group associated with the late conservative icon Howard Phillips.

It is simply amazing that any conservative would insist that Putin, who, despite dropping the communist label is still allied with Iran, Communist China, North Korea and Cuba, is somehow doing the right thing in Syria, a long-time Soviet/Russian client state. What Putin is doing is entirely consistent with what the Soviets always did. They are trying to save a client state from what started out as a popular rebellion.

In his column, Baldwin went on to label Barack Obama, David Cameron of Britain, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, King Salman of Saudi Arabia, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey as “international gangsters.”

It is true that Obama, through a few of America’s Arab “allies,” has been supporting the cause of some jihadists and terrorists in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been implicated in these dangerous schemes, one of which culminated in the Benghazi massacre of four Americans in Libya. That was a treasonous action that should sink Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and could have justified impeachment charges against Obama himself. Mrs. Clinton was Obama’s Secretary of State at the time.

These operations in the Middle East have been characterized by former CIA officer Clare Lopez of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi as “switching sides in the War on Terror.”

But the idea that Putin has clean hands in the Middle East is absolutely ridiculous. Considering that he was a Soviet KGB spy and actually headed one of the KGB’s successor agencies, the idea that Putin has suddenly had a Damascus Road conversion to Christianity is simply ludicrous. His foreign policy is very similar to that of the old Soviet Union.

Since the foreign policy has mostly remained the same, Soviet financing and sponsorship of international terrorist networks, many of them linked to Arab and Muslim groups, also have to be taken into consideration here. It is reasonable to assume that the Russians have maintained at least parts of these networks for a purpose that we see in the backing of Bashar Assad in Syria. Indeed, writer and researcher Christian Gomez has traced the roots of ISIS to the Islamic Revival Party, created by the KGB, during the final days of the old Soviet Union. U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, has noted that the Russians are doing little in Syria to fight ISIS terrorists and that “Everything they [the Russians] are doing is to support Assad, to keep Assad in power.” In other words, Putin is continuing a clever Soviet-style strategy that seeks to maintain Assad in power while using ISIS for his own purposes. One of those purposes, as reflected in RT propaganda, is to make Putin look like a terrorist fighter.

Baldwin isn’t the only personality on the right duped by Putin and his propaganda machine. The CEO of a group calling itself simply the Tea Party has distributed an article claiming that Russia has produced “stunning photographic evidence” that ISIS oil was being smuggled into Turkey on an industrial scale.

The “stunning photographic evidence” shows nothing of the sort. Natasha Bertrand of Business Insider examined the Russian maps and found that the three main routes the Russians claim ISIS had allegedly been using to transport illicit oil into Turkey are not primarily controlled by the Islamic State. Turkish President Erdogan has countered: “Who is buying oil (from ISIS)? Let me say it. George Haswani, holder of a Russian passport and a Syrian national, is one of the biggest merchants in this business.” He noted that the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Haswani, who was also placed on an EU sanctions list, “for serving as middleman for oil purchases by the Syrian regime from the ISIS group.”

If you haven’t heard about the sanctions on the individuals and networks providing support to Syria and facilitating Syrian oil purchases from ISIS, you are a victim of the slick propaganda that is being spread around the world by such outlets as RT. It is a fact that the Russian claims against Turkey are taking precedence, even in the Western media, over the facts on the ground, as determined not only by the U.S. Treasury but the U.S. Army. Colonel Warren said, “We flatly reject any notion that the Turks are somehow working with ISIL,” he said. “That is preposterous.”

The “Tea Party” article about the Russian claims was lifted directly from the Infowars.com site of Russian apologist Alex Jones, who just scored a major interview with GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. No respectable Tea Party group should have anything to do with Alex Jones, who defended the Russian invasion of its former republic Georgia in 2008. Trump’s decision toappear on his show was extremely foolish. He apparently was not aware that Jones promotes claims that actual terrorist attacks, such as the Boston Marathon bombings carried out by two Muslims from Russia, were “false flags” perpetrated by U.S. police and law enforcement agencies. His website ran a “Voice of Russia”story claiming the dead and wounded were actors plastered with fake blood.

Rather than treat Putin as a good guy or ally, GOP presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio (FL) argues that Turkey is a member of NATO and an ally that “deserves the full backing of the United States.” He noted that the Russians were “targeting Turkmen-populated pockets of northern Syria rather than territory controlled by ISIS” and that “Most Russian military strikes since the end of September have been non-ISIS targets, including many civilian areas, revealing that Russia does not share our interest in confronting and defeating ISIS but instead is intent on propping up the Assad regime.”

Before he assumed the role as a leader of the Sunnis in the Middle East, mobilizing forces against Shite Iran and Syria, Erdogan was known for his anti-Soviet views. Indeed, he was an anti-communist in his youth. As a result of Russia’s increased military involvement in Syria, he seems to have awakened to the fact that Putin has returned to his Soviet roots and that Turkey’s future lies with NATO and the West. Turkey joined NATO, originally conceived as an anti-Soviet military alliance, in 1952.

Assuming Erdogan is an Islamist of some kind, as some conservatives contend, it might make strategic sense for the West to back him for that reason alone in his battle with Russia. After all, most of Russia’s 14 million Muslims are Sunnis. RT itself recently highlighted how thousands of Muslims had gathered in central Moscow “to witness the opening of one of the biggest mosques in Europe.” The ceremony was attended by Putin and Erdogan, who had been considered to be on friendly terms.

Their relationship turned sour after Turkey shot down the Russian war plane, and it seems to be deteriorating further.

As noted by Ilya Arkhipov of Bloomberg Business, Putin used his annual state-of-the-nation address to attack Turkey and Erdogan in very personal and religious terms. Putin said, “Only Allah knows why they did this. And it seems that Allah decided to punish the ruling gang in Turkey by stripping it of common sense and reason.” Analyst Timothy Ash told Bloomberg that “The religious angle being used by Putin is unlikely to go down well in the region, where Erdogan is still seen as a defender of the Sunni faith.”

One observer has noted, in regard to Russian involvement in Arab/Muslim terrorism and now ISIS, that the monster that the USSR created may have grown too big, and that it may eventually attack its creator. In the case of Turkey, Putin is facing a Muslim problem of his own making.