05/20/15

De Blasio’s “Contract for Communism”

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Red Bill de Blasio just unveiled a 13-point national “Progressive Agenda” that is being touted as the liberal “Contract with America.” It more closely resembles a “Contract for Communism.”

And a majority of Democrats wholeheartedly approve this as the basis for the “Progressive Agenda” – the bedrock for their primary economic policies and the running platform for their anointed 2016 presidential candidate. The mask is coming off… they are going full bore Marxist/Communist and are proud of it. Members of Congress are praising de Blasio for uniting Progressives.

Rev. Al Sharpton stated that the shared goals of Progressives are more important than each individual leader’s specific opinions – how very communist of the Reverend:

“We don’t agree on everything but we agree that we have to deal with income inequality and wages and how we get there,” he said. “We can’t debate that America has to be fair for everybody. We can’t debate that the billionaires are playing games with us and treating us like hamsters on a treadmill rather than people that are focused on the goal line. We will change the debate starting today.”

Comrade Sharpton waxes poetic for the communist agenda. Is anyone surprised that the weasel who is vocally advocating for the nationalization of our police forces stands on a communist perch worthy of Lenin?

De Blasio comparing this to the Republican Party’s 1994 “Contract with America” only holds up if you consider it the very antithesis to such a political platform. But it certainly does lay bare their wealth redistribution and class realignment goals.

Aaron Klein at WND has documented that most of the 13 points in de Blasio’s “Progressive Agenda” can also be found in the manifestos and literature of the Communist Party USA and the Socialist Party USA:

Here is a comparison of the Agenda’s plan with literature from the manifestos and writings of the Community Party USA, or CPUSA, and the Socialist Party USA, or SPUSA.

• Progressive Agenda: “Raise the federal minimum wage, so that it reaches $15/hour, while indexing it to inflation.”

SPUSA: “We call for a minimum wage of $15 per hour, indexed to the cost of living.”

CPUSA: Calls for “struggles for peace, equality for the racially and nationally oppressed, equality for women job creation programs, increased minimum wage. … Even with ultra-right control of the Federal government, peoples legislative victories, such as increasing the minimum wage, can be won on an issue-by-issue basis locally, statewide, and even nationally.”

• Progressive Agenda: “Reform the National Labor Relations Act, to enhance workers’ right to organize and rebuild the middle class.”

SPUSA: “The Socialist Party stands for the right of all workers to organize, for worker control of industry through the democratic organization of the workplace.”

CPUSA: “One of the most crucial ways of increasing the strength and unity of the working class as a whole is organizing the unorganized. Working-class unity depends on uniting all the diverse sectors of the multiracial, multinational working class in the U.S. … Speeding up the organization of unorganized workers is one of the most important challenges to labor and all progressive forces.”

• Progressive Agenda: “Pass comprehensive immigration reform to grow the economy and protect against exploitation of low-wage workers.”

SPUSA: “We defend the rights of all immigrants to education, health care, and full civil and legal rights and call for an unconditional amnesty program for all undocumented people. We oppose the imposition of any fees on those receiving amnesty. We call for full citizenship rights upon demonstrating residency for six months.”

CPUSA: Declares the “struggle for immigrant rights is a key component of the struggle for working class unity in our country today.”

• Progressive Agenda: Pass national paid sick leave. Pass national paid family leave.

CPUSA: In October 2014, hails that “women are fighting back to defend their jobs and their families against candidates who want to destroy women’s reproductive rights, health care, family leave and paid sick days. Women’s voices and votes can make the difference in this election in the U.S. Senate and House, for Governors and State Legislatures, and in the movement going forward for full equality.”

• Progressive Agenda: “Make Pre-K, after-school programs and childcare universal.”

SPUSA: “We support public child care starting from infancy, and public education starting at age three, with caregivers and teachers of young children receiving training, wages, and benefits comparable to that of teachers at every other level of the educational system.”

• Progressive Agenda: “Earned Income Tax Credit.” “Implement the ‘Buffett Rule’ so millionaires pay their fair share.”

SPUSA: “We call for a steeply graduated income tax and a steeply graduated estate tax. …”

CPUSA: “No taxes for workers and low and middle income people; progressive taxation of the wealthy and private corporations. …”

Eerily similar, huh? Getting a little hot in our comrade’s kitchen – in fact, hot damn!

De Blasio considers Obama “too conservative” to implement a progressive economic vision and “too afraid to take the bold kind of action that President Roosevelt took” during the Great Depression. It is widely rumored that de Blasio is considering running for president in 2016. At the very least, his agenda for New York is very clear. No way would I live in New York these days – did you know 46% of the population there lives in poverty? Of course, de Blasio blames it all on the Bloomberg administration. Bloomberg deserves a lot of blame, but if he pulled the city into ghettosville, de Blasio is tripling down on it. He wants to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, just like Seattle. That was disastrous for Seattle by the way. And now LA has decided that they are copying this suicidal move. Looks like both coasts just can’t get enough Marxism going on. Both are racing to see who can go third-world first.

Speaking at the “Progressive Agenda” launch event, de Blasio said “something is changing in America.” Yeah and not for the better. “It’s time to take that energy and crystallize it into an agenda that will make a difference,” he said. “We’ll be calling on leaders and candidates to address these issues, to stiffen their backbones, to be clear and to champion these progressive policies.” It’s an all-you-can-eat Marxist buffet. In attendance were politicians, union leaders and of course, race monger, Al Sharpton. In other words, the who’s who of America’s communists.

The Hill quoted Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., saying de Blasio’s plan “could be the beginning of a revolution.”

Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., commented the mayor’s plan represents “the meat on the bones of a progressive agenda.”

Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., said, “The cavalry has arrived.”

Either de Blasio is taking his communist agenda on the election trail, or he is trying to force the Hildebeast even further to the left. But honestly, it’s hard to see how she could go much further left these days.

The Atlantic reported the coalition supporting de Blasio’s plan includes Dan Cantor, executive director of the Working Families Party. Cantor was also a founder of the socialist-oriented New Party. Did you know de Blasio once served as executive director of the New York branch of the New Party? Trevor Loudon has done massive research on Obama, who was also listed in New Party literature as a member. WND did as well.

De Blasio’s plan is based on a plan crafted by a George Soros-connected professor. De Blasio’s “Progressive Agenda” was formed around a 112-page policy report at the liberal Roosevelt Institute titled, “Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy.” The author is Joseph Stiglitz… the Columbia University economist who was an integral part of Occupy Wall Street. De Blasio is a big fan, which should tell you all you need to know. Stiglitz wants more government regulation of the economy.

Stiglitz previously chaired the Commission on Global Financial Issues of Socialists International, the world’s largest socialist organization. He’s also an economic adviser to Obama. His Keynesian economics are pure Marxist pablum.

Gavin Wright, chairman of Stanford’s economics department, summarized Stiglitz’s work:

“Broadly speaking, Joe’s theoretical work has had to do with the shortcomings and imperfections of market economy, not from the standpoint of a thorough-going rejection of the market economy but from the perspective that holds out hope for improvement through government regulation or use of the tax system,” Wright said.

From WND:

Stiglitz was a member of President Bill Clinton’s administration, serving both in Clinton’s cabinet and as chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Stiglitz’s most important contribution during his time in the Clinton administration was helping to define a new economic philosophy called a “third way,” which called for business and government to join hands as “partners,” while recognizing government intervention could not always correct the limitations of markets.

“Third Way” is an ideology first promoted as an alternative to free markets by Mikhail Gorbachev after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The “Third Way” of governing would be neither capitalist nor communist, but something in between.

In his 1998 “State of the Union” address, President Clinton outlined the “Third Way”: “We have moved past the sterile debate between those who say government is the enemy and those who say government is the answer. My fellow Americans, we have found a Third Way.”

The “Third Way” calls for business and government to join hands as “partners.”

Discover the Networks criticized the theory: “In short, Big Business would own the economy (as under capitalism), while Big Government would run it (as under socialism). Corporations would be persuaded to comply with government directives through subsidies, tax breaks, customized legislation, and other special privileges.”

Soros himself has been a vocal proponent of the “Third Way” economic policy.

Stiglitz, meanwhile, also became involved in “global warming” issues, including serving on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, helping to draft a new law for toxic wastes and serving on the boards of numerous environmental groups, such as the Alliance for Climate Protection.

Stiglitz is calling for a “New Global Economic Order” in which the world is “no longer dominated by one ‘superpower.’”

So you see, the communist ideals are endemic to de Blasio and his “Contract with America.”

In closing, here is the Progressive Agenda he is pushing:

Lift the Floor for Working People »

Raise the federal minimum wage, so that it reaches $15/hour, while indexing it to inflation.
Reform the National Labor Relations Act, to enhance workers’ right to organize and rebuild the middle class.
Pass comprehensive immigration reform to grow the economy and protect against exploitation of low-wage workers.
Oppose trade deals that hand more power to corporations at the expense of American jobs, workers’ rights, and the environment.
Invest in schools, not jails– and give a second chance to those coming home from prison.

Support Working Families »

Pass national paid sick leave.
Pass national paid family leave.
Make Pre-K, after-school programs and childcare universal.
Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit and protect and expand Social Security.
Allow students to refinance student loan debt to take advantage of lower interest rates, and support debt-free college.

Tax Fairness »

Close the carried interest loophole.
End tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.
Implement the “Buffett Rule” so millionaires pay their fair share.
Close the CEO tax loophole that allows corporations to take advantage of “performance pay” write-offs.

There are many on the right pushing some of this crap too – especially Van Jones‘ ’empty the prisons’ mantra. This is a blueprint for solid communism – just say no to Red Bill de Blasio and his commie policies. His “Contract for Communism” is a road map to tyranny and the fall of the Republic.

03/19/15

Obama Peddles Osama’s Propaganda

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

Without America there would be no Islamic State.

Indeed, without America there would have been no Cold War. Without the Cold War there would have been no need to arm and train the Mujahideen against the Soviets. Without the Mujahideen there would have been no Al Qaeda. Without Al Qaeda there would have been no Iraq War. And without the Iraq War there would have been no Islamic State. Or as President Barack Obama put it:

ISIL is a direct outgrowth of Al Qaeda in Iraq which grew out of our invasion which is an example of unintended consequences which is why we should generally aim before we shoot.

Such is the pretzel logic to which one must subscribe if one is to believe the president.

Which is to say that Barack Obama’s argument during a recent interview with VICE News is patently absurd.

(Image Source: VICE News/YouTube screengrab)

But there is something worse than the absurdity of the president’s remarks, his implicit banal Bush-bashing and unwillingness or inability to ever take responsibility for anything – the least of which includes his failure to negotiate a status of forces agreement with Iraq.

President Obama’s argument in the main is that America’s actions in the Middle East create terrorists. But by invoking “blowback,” he is parroting precisely the propaganda that Al Qaeda, Islamic State and other jihadist groups want us to repeat, while ignoring the self-evident truth that their actions come not from without but from within. In so doing, as when he raised the scepter of The Crusades, the president provides a veneer of legitimacy and even moral standing to genocidal Islamic supremacists who seek to destroy Western civilization and create a global caliphate.

The words of Osama bin Laden himself are germane to this argument. Witness what Al Qaeda’s godfather said during a May 1998 interview with ABC’s John Miller:

The call to wage war against America was made because America has spear-headed the crusade against the Islamic nation, sending tens of thousands of its troops to the land of the two Holy Mosques over and above its meddling in its affairs and its politics, and its support of the oppressive, corrupt and tyrannical regime that is in control. These are the reasons behind the singling out of America as a target.

…The wrongs and the crimes committed against the Muslim nation are far greater than can be covered by this interview. America heads the list of aggressors against Muslims.

…They rip us of our wealth and of our resources and of our oil. Our religion is under attack. They kill and murder our brothers. They compromise our honor and our dignity and dare we utter a single word of protest against the injustice, we are called terrorists. This is compounded injustice.

In a particularly nauseating portion of the interview in which Miller implores bin Laden to “give us the true picture that clarifies your viewpoint” – as opposed to the “distorted picture of Islam, Muslims and of Islamic fighters” presented by “American politicians,” bin Laden continues [emphasis added]:

The leaders in America and in other countries as well have fallen victim to Jewish Zionist blackmail. They have mobilized their people against Islam and against Muslims. These are portrayed in such a manner as to drive people to rally against them. The truth is that the whole Muslim world is the victim of international terrorism, engineered by America at the United Nations. We are a nation whose sacred symbols have been looted and whose wealth and resources have been plundered. It is normal for us to react against the forces that invade our land and occupy it.

Ignored however is the rest of bin Laden’s message [emphasis added]:

…[O]ur call is the call of Islam that was revealed to Mohammed. It is a call to all mankind. We have been entrusted with good cause to follow in the footsteps of the Messenger and to communicate his message to all nations.

…In our religion, we believe that Allah has created us for the purpose of worshipping him. He is the one who has created us and who has favored us with this religion. Allah has ordered us to make holy wars and to fight to see to it that His word is the highest and the uppermost and that of the unbelievers the lowermost. We believe that this is the call we have to answer regardless of our financial capabilities.

This too answers the claims of the West and of the secular people in the Arab world. They claim that this blessed awakening and the people reverting to Islam are due to economic factors. This is not so. It is rather a grace from Allah, a desire to embrace the religion of Allah.

…I am one of the servants of Allah. We do our duty of fighting for the sake of the religion of Allah. It is also our duty to send a call to all the people of the world to enjoy this great light and to embrace Islam and experience the happiness in Islam. Our primary mission is nothing but the furthering of this religion.

This bin Laden interview is crucial because it illustrates the two-sided nature of Al Qaeda’s rhetoric and the rhetoric of jihadists more broadly — appealing on the one hand to the West’s materialism, and on the other to the Middle East’s idealism.

Indeed one of the primary but underappreciated elements of the global jihad is the subtle psychological warfare in which bin Laden engages above by way of the materialist argument.

Understanding the West’s unhealthy sense of guilt and shame, bin Laden portrays jihadists as the oppressed to our oppressor, the victim to our aggressor. Bin Laden knew that repeating such arguments — regardless of their veracity — would have a profound effect on the Western consciousness over time.

Conversely, playing on our moral relativism, multiculturalism and religious tolerance, bin Laden knew that we would fail to internalize his idealist worldview: A worldview formed by the Islamic doctrine that animates jihadists and lays bare their goals, strategies and tactics.

We have accepted the former (materialism) but ignored the latter (idealism), which explains in part why we are losing to the global jihad.

If you disagree with this assertion, consider that we in the West ask “Why do they hate us?” We search in vain for “root causes” of radicalization, and tell ourselves that a group that calls itself Islamic State and follows Muhammad literally perverts Islam or has nothing to do with it at all.

Meanwhile, our enemies self-identify as Islamic jihadists — a jihad compelled by the corpus of Islamic texts – whose end goal is to make the entire world submit to Allah’s rule.

President Obama either out of political correctness, ignorance or a more nefarious impulse damages America’s cause by parroting the victimology that Osama bin Laden knew Western progressives would buy hook, line and sinker.

He gives credence to our enemies’ arguments while implementing an agenda ostensibly to combat them wholly consonant with such a worldview, and thereby wholly ineffectual.

This is the far more consequential and far more dangerous takeaway from the president’s interview than the tired invocation of “Bush’s fault” that Obama’s critics have harped on.

Feature Image: AP Photo/Irwin Fedriansyah

03/18/15

Anti-Marxist Counter-Revolution in Brazil

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

With the Middle East in turmoil and Russia’s Vladimir Putin threatening nuclear war, most of our media have missed a big story south of the border. President Barack Obama’s fellow Marxist, Dilma Rousseff, is coming under tremendous pressure to resign her presidency in Brazil. As many as three million Brazilians took to the streets on Sunday to demand the impeachment of Rousseff, a former Marxist terrorist, and the end of the rule of the Brazilian Workers’ Party.

Such a development would be a major blow to the anti-American left in Latin America, which has been operating since 1990 under the rubric of the São Paulo Forum, a pro-communist movement started by Rousseff’s predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva, and Fidel Castro.

In a growing scandal, the treasurer of the ruling Workers’ Party has been charged with corruption and money laundering linked to the state-run oil company, Petrobras, a firm which has benefited from U.S. taxpayer loans provided through the Export-Import Bank under Obama.

While Obama has attempted to stifle oil development and production in the United States, his administration officially launched an “energy partnership” with Brazil in August of 2011. “We want to work with you. We want to help with technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely, and when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers,” Obama told a group of Brazilian business leaders.

Some stories appearing in the Western press did note that as many as one million Brazilians turned out on Sunday to protest massive corruption linked to the Rousseff administration. One photo from the march showed a Brazilian waving a sign that said, “We won’t be another Venezuela,” a reference to another Marxist basket case of economic failure and corruption.

But sources contacted by Accuracy in Media say the turnout was far larger, with as many as three million Brazilians in the streets.

Alessandro Cota, a Brazilian who is currently a philosophy and political science researcher at the Inter-American Institute for Philosophy, Government, and Social Thought, told AIM, “This March 15 is certainly a new beginning for Brazil and probably the end of the dreams of all those who wanted to turn the largest country of Latin America into a socialist republic. After 12 years under the rule of the Brazilian Workers’ Party—8 years under President Lula (2003-2011), and 4 years under President Rousseff (who was re-elected last October for another four-year turn)—the Brazilian people, tired of waiting for opposition politicians to take action against the government, took the lead and decided to make history by themselves.”

Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho, President of the Inter-American Institute for Philosophy, Government, and Social Thought, said, “Never and nowhere has a government been so completely rejected by its own population. But it is more than that. It is not only the rejection of a government, or a President. It is the rejection of the whole system of power that has been created by the Workers’ Party, which includes intellectuals and opinion-makers in the big media. People are no longer afraid of going against the Workers’ Party. Brazilians realized that all the power that President Lula, President Rousseff, and their minions had was based on a bluff, and now they are calling it.”

In Brazil, Cota said, the actual turnout was three million people who made it clear that “they want President Rousseff and the Workers’ Party out.” The figure of one million people who took to the streets was from the city of Sao Paulo alone.

He added, “It was the largest nationwide anti-government demonstration in the history of Brazil, and it happened just two days after the Workers Party’s allies organized their own ‘popular’ demonstration in support of President Rousseff.” He said the March 15 wave of protests was genuinely popular, a massive embodiment of the seven percent approval rating that Rousseff received only a few days ago. He said the March 15 demonstrations took place in 26 of the 27 Brazilian states and at least 160 cities, not to mention the anti-government protests that happened abroad.

By contrast, Cota said a pro-government demonstration was attended by a mix of card-carrying union members and people who got paid the equivalent of $10.

It appears that the Brazilian mainstream media have decided to deliberately play down the anti-regime sentiment. Cota said, “According to Datafolha, a local polling company linked to the leftist newspaper Folha de São Paulo, there were only 210 thousand people gathered on Avenida Paulista, the main thoroughfare of the city of São Paulo, a number that not only contradicted the official estimate of the State Police of São Paulo, but also the eyes of those who use them to see.”

The protests in Brazil are giving hope to those who see an opportunity to defeat Marxism in the Western hemisphere.

The pro-communist association called the São Paulo Forum was created in 1990, after the collapse of the Soviet Union led many to believe communism itself was on the wane. However, that was when Fidel Castro reached out to Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva of the Workers’ Party of Brazil, who would later become President of Brazil. An event was hosted in São Paulo, Brazil, bringing together what came to be known as the São Paulo Forum. The international movement included many different leftist groups, such as the communist narco-terrorists known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and communist and leftist parties in the region.

Incredibly, a report appeared which seemed to demonstrate a possible link between the Obama presidency and this leftist group.

On March 1, 2008, before U.S. presidential elections, Operation Phoenix was launched by Colombian special security forces just inside the Ecuadorian border. Raúl Reyes, second in command of the FARC, was killed. Documents found in Reyes’ computer after his death disclosed that “gringos” representing Obama wanted to meet with the FARC and that they were opposed to U.S. military aid for the Colombian government. Obama had been publicly critical of the Colombia government’s human rights record.

The Bush administration, using the services of the NSA, helped the Colombian government of President Alvaro Uribe in its war with the Cuban-backed FARC by locating and killing terrorist leaders and decimating the organization. But Uribe’s successor, President Juan Manuel Santos, the former defense minister, suddenly opened up negotiations with the FARC in Havana and has recently suspended the bombing of FARC camps and bases. As a result, the Santos-led negotiations could enable the FARC to escape criminal charges and emerge in the political process in Colombia as a respectable opposition movement.

Supporters of Uribe accuse Santos of allowing “Castro-Chavism” in the country, a reference to the long-time Cuban dictator and former Marxist ruler of Venezuela. Although the members of the São Paulo Forum do not believe in democracy, the FARC seems to have learned the lesson that they have to disguise themselves as democratic forces in order to further their goals, as their armed struggle has not been successful.

Like Obama in the U.S., these Marxists work through the system and slowly dismantle democratic institutions and checks on their power.

On Saturday, March 21, at 1:00 p.m., the Washington Conclave for Democracy will be held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. to discuss freedom, democracy and free elections in Latin America. “The conference is aimed to expose fraud and deception in electoral processes in Latin America,” says organizer Dalmo Accorsini. The event is open to the press and the public and will feature several speakers with knowledge of the communist advance in the Western hemisphere, including in the U.S.

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?

12/13/14

Media Struggle to Save Obama, Not the Country

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

A story in Thursday’s Washington Post about establishing Obama’s “foreign policy legacy” goes a long way toward explaining why the Senate Democrats and the media have been trashing the Bush administration’s very productive enhanced interrogation program as “torture.”

Titled “Obama’s foreign policy plans collide with wars abroad and politics at home,” the story by Greg Jaffe and Juliet Eilperin made it clear that CIA director John Brennan’s defense of the agency had thwarted Obama’s plan “to move the country beyond what he [Obama] has described as the fearful excesses of the post-9/11 era.” While Obama has banned what he calls “torture,” he has failed to close the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (Gitmo), established by the Bush administration to house terrorist suspects. Other problems outlined in the Post article include the continuing war in Afghanistan and a new war in Iraq and Syria against ISIS.

What Obama calls “torture” is what the media call “torture.” If you needed any more proof of a pro-Obama media bias, just look at how regularly the personalities on CNN, supposedly more moderate than MSNBC, have adopted his terms of the debate. This is the media’s way of saying that Obama was right and that it’s good he has banned this way of getting information from terrorists. Never mind that Obama’s way of murder through drone strikes is decidedly more “harsh.” Bush grilled them, Obama kills them.

Without a foreign policy “legacy” of some kind, Obama’s two terms will look like a failure and the Democrats will be doomed in 2016.

Domestically, his only real “accomplishment” at this point looks like the Eric Holder policy of suspending enforcement of federal marijuana laws. This will be a “legacy” of interest to fellow pothead members of Obama’s “Choom Gang” in Hawaii, and the emerging cannabis industry. But it’s doubtful most people will appreciate this historic development.

Obama’s signature “accomplishment” in domestic affairs, Obamacare, has been exposed as a massive fraud and deception. According to a new CBS News poll, race relations have dramatically deteriorated under the first black president. It’s true he is moving forward unconstitutionally with amnesty for illegal aliens. But House Republicans are promising to do something about that next year. The economy is still lackluster. So foreign policy is really his only hope of doing anything positive, and he’s running into the facts of life there, too. The terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans is only one part of his legacy. The legacy of that attack hurts both Obama and Hillary Clinton, his former Secretary of State and likely 2016 Democratic candidate. And it’s doubtful that an Iran with nuclear weapons would qualify as a positive foreign policy legacy for Obama, either.

One can suppose that Obama will try to claim he was the one who got Osama bin Laden. But Brennan made it clear on Thursday that the enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) from the Bush-era played a role in killing the terrorist kingpin. Brennan said, “It is our considered view that the detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques provided information that was useful and was used in the ultimate operation to go against bin Laden. Again, intelligence information from the individuals who were subjected to EITs provided information that was used in that. Again, I am not going to attribute that to the use of the EITs; just going to state as a matter of fact, the information that they provided was used.”

What Brennan is saying is that he cannot pinpoint with any degree of accuracy that a particular form of interrogation led to the terrorists divulging certain information. That’s because nobody was taking precise notes on when terrorist X or Y said one thing or another at any particular time in the interrogation process. But the record is clear that the EITs contributed to the terrorists getting to the point where they decided to spill their guts.

CNN, which is increasingly trying to sound like MSNBC, headlined the Brennan news conference as “Brennan: No Proof Harsh Tactics Led to Useful Info.” How can his phrase that “intelligence information from the individuals who were subjected to EITs provided information that was used” to get bin Laden be interpreted as “proof” that it wasn’t useful? CNN was lying. CNN gave the opposite impression of what he actually said.

Before he held his news conference, Brennan met with Obama and was probably instructed to finesse his language somewhat so that a certain amount of ambiguity could be left in some minds. CNN and other media tried to take advantage of that for Obama’s sake. Still, Brennan’s statement was a vindication of the Bush policy. That means that any attempt by Obama to claim credit for the death of bin Laden will ring hollow. There goes his foreign policy legacy.

These facts help explain the desperation of the media and why they have adopted Obama’s rhetoric on “torture.” They must figure that if they use the term often enough, many people will assume that the techniques were, in fact, torture. In order to drive that point home, Andrea Mitchell of NBC News used the Brennan news conference to mention some of the techniques. She referred to “waterboarding, near drowning, slamming people against the wall, hanging them in stress positions, confining them in small boxes or coffins, threatening them with drills, waving guns around their head as they are blindfolded…”

She could have mentioned the horrible deaths suffered by those in the World Trade Center or the Pentagon or Flight 93 on 9/11. She could have mentioned the 9/11 jumpers—the people who jumped from the towers rather than be burned to death.

But Mitchell didn’t think it was worth mentioning any of that.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper have been fixated by a phrase in the Senate Democratic report on “rectal rehydration.” Tapper called it a form of torture. In fact, it’s a medical procedure to keep the terrorists alive when they resist sustenance. Would Tapper have preferred that the terrorists be allowed to die? Then the program would have come in for even stronger criticism. This goes to show that all of this discussion is just another attempt to tarnish the Bush presidency and make Obama look good by comparison. Tapper said he was dumbfounded by the talk of “rectal rehydration.”

No, he was just dumb.

Obama, the Senate Democrats and the media look foolish and unpatriotic. It looks like they are deliberately playing into the hands of America’s enemies in order to score partisan political points. Obama has abandoned proven techniques to get information from, and about, terrorists and has adopted in their place a policy of killing the terrorists and their families through drone strikes that don’t yield any intelligence data at all. How on earth does this make any sense?

From an objective point of view, does a Hellfire missile hitting a human being look more or less “harsh” than waving a gun over someone’s head, turning on a drill, or pouring water on a terrorist?

The answer should be obvious to anyone with half a brain. But most of our media are so determined to save Obama’s presidency that they can’t think clearly.

The Post and other media are desperate to construct a “legacy” for America’s first black president. The real concern should be saving the country, not Obama’s presidency.