09/2/15

Media Nervous Over Hillary Sting Videos

You know an event is potentially damaging to Hillary Clinton or other top Democrats when Dana Milbank of The Washington Post shows up. Hence, Milbank’s attendance at Tuesday’s James O’Keefe news conference on Clinton campaign violations of federal election law was an indication that the Democrats are concerned. This time, despite video evidence of top staffers for Hillary accepting cash from a known foreign national, most of the media reaction was vintage Milbank. “Is this a joke?” the media wanted to know.

In fairness, Milbank’s questions seemed mild, when compared to some of the other media reactions.

The joke question came from Olivia Nuzzi of The Daily Beast, with other liberals joining in and wondering what the press conference was all about. The law says that foreigners are strictly prohibited from contributing to U.S. political campaigns, and O’Keefe had dramatic evidence of the campaign law violation. Thevideo was played on a television screen for all to see.

Looking for some reason not to pay attention to the facts, some in the media seized upon the small amount of money that was used to pay for the Hillary campaign merchandise in question.

This was not the only media reaction, but it seemed to be one of the most popular. “James O’Keefe Targets Clinton Campaign For Legally Selling A T-Shirt,” was the dishonest headline over an article attacking O’Keefe published by Media Matters, the pro-Hillary and George Soros-funded group. This article set the tone for the pro-Hillary contingent in the press.

However, the great number of journalists who showed up was an indication that, when it comes to Hillary, nobody really knows how serious the law-breaking will get. O’Keefe suggested that more evidence against the campaign is yet to come.

Milbank may be in a quandary about what to do with Hillary, who is dropping in the polls against the socialist career politician Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and leaving the Democratic presidential field open to other candidates, most notably Vice President Joe Biden, a notorious plagiarist. (In Biden’s case, Media Matters had also defended him, insisting the plagiarism wasn’t as serious as some knew to be the case).

Milbank’s modus operandi in the past has been to ridicule conservatives who provide evidence of corruption by top Democrats such as Hillary and Barack Obama. For example, he attacked those who investigated Obama’s relationship with communist Frank Marshall Davis. He showed up at an AIM conference to write an article distorting the findings of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, which investigated Hillary’s role in covering up the terrorist attack that killed four Americans.

Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist has written that Milbank “serially exaggerates or distorts what he writes about. It’s just what he does.”

But those distortions won’t suffice when the video evidence itself can be seen by millions, telling the real story that some in the media try to conceal. As Project Veritas emphasized, the video shows Molly Barker, the Director of Marketing for Hillary Clinton’s national campaign, knowingly breaking campaign finance law by accepting a straw donation from a foreign national.

O’Keefe, who almost single-handedly took down the Alinskyite ACORN organization, has also investigated Planned Parenthood and National Public Radio. He wrote the book, Breakthrough: Our Guerilla War to Expose Fraud and Save Democracy, and has targeted Republican politicians in the past as well.

His reputation meant that O’Keefe’s Project Veritas Action news conference at the National Press Club was packed, with at least seven television cameras there to record the proceedings.

Washington Post reporter David Weigel conveyed the message from the Clinton campaign that the event was much ado about nothing. But at least he did an advance story about the video and got the Clinton campaign response.

Los Angeles Times reporter Evan Halper played the story to the advantage of the Hillary campaign, insisting that the video somehow missed its target. It was “Hardly the stuff of a Pulitzer Prize,” he insisted. He found it newsworthy, and somehow relevant to the issue of federal law violations, that the journalist from The Daily Beast had treated the video as a joke.

The “joke” response said more about the lack of seriousness from The Daily Beast than it did about O’Keefe’s video. Making matters worse, Olivia Nuzzi of The Daily Beast seemed proud of the fact that she didn’t grasp the seriousness of the election law violations, highlighting her “Is this a joke?” responses on her Twitter account.

O’Keefe may have the last laugh, as he repeatedly emphasized that more videos are coming, and that other Hillary officials may be in them and forced to resign. Reporters in attendance, anxious to dismiss these charges, seemed nervous about this prospect. They repeatedly pressed O’Keefe to spill more details about other undercover operatives he may have in the Clinton and other campaigns. He told the media they would just have to wait.

It was nervous laughter from the press, as they couldn’t figure out what other damaging evidence O’Keefe’s crew may have against the Democratic presidential candidate.

In a message to his supporters, O’Keefe noted, “Since at least 1996, Hillary and her husband Bill have been accused of accepting foreign contributions to further their political ambition. Back then, it was China accused of funneling massive amounts of money into the Clinton campaign and the DNC [Democratic National Committee]. The State Department investigated the matter. Three Americans were convicted of crimes, one of whom, Johnny Chung, admitted that $35,000 of his contributions came from the Chinese military. But Bill and Hillary got off clean.”

Not all media were prepared to laugh this all away. In his story about the O’Keefe news conference, Alan Rappeport of The New York Times seemed to admit that O’Keefe had struck gold, noting, “Foreign donations are a sensitive subject for the Clintons, as their family foundation has been under scrutiny for accepting money from overseas while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state, and recent State Department emails showed that former President Bill Clinton tried to get permission to give paid speeches in North Korea and the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

One question is whether the illegal transactions captured in the Project Veritas video are part of a pattern of illegal conduct. The media will just have to wait. Maybe their laughter will die down in the wake of more videos being released.

Asked why the major media don’t do these kinds of undercover investigations and the job falls on him and his staff, O’Keefe dismissed the significance of liberal media bias and said that he thinks journalists are more motivated by a desire to protect their access to candidates like Hillary. In other words, reporters have to flatter the candidates with fawning coverage.

But it’s increasingly difficult to portray Hillary in a favorable light. At the campaign event where the video of the illegal contribution was recorded, Hillary had told the crowd that she would “stop the endless flow of secret, unaccountable money that is distorting our elections, corrupting our political process, and drowning out the voices of our people.”

A reporter seeking to maintain access to a candidate like this, caught in scandal after scandal, is something that is destined to truly become a joke.

08/1/15

Donald Trump’s Greatest Hits

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Donald Trump has gotten popular, in part, by challenging the media. But he has praised journalists on occasion. His 2011 book, Time to Get Tough, said David Gregory was “doing a fine job filling some awfully big shoes over at Meet the Press.” It was a reference to legendary and highly respected host Tim Russert, who had passed away.

So-called “Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd,” who replaced Gregory, is a favorite Trump target. “The thing I find most offensive about Chuck Todd is the fact that he pretends to be an objective journalist,” Trump writes, “when in reality the guy is a partisan hack.”

In many ways, as Trump said, David Gregory was doing a fine job. Some of the criticism of Gregory’s performance as “Meet the Press” host missed the mark, such as when he interviewed Edward Snowden collaborator Glenn Greenwald. As we noted at the time, some in the media were aghast that Gregory asked Greenwald a perfectly reasonable question on “Meet the Press:” “To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?”

Snowden, the NSA leaker, has been charged with espionage and still resides in Russia.

In his book, Trump takes on Jon Stewart, the host of “The Daily Show” on the Comedy Central network who is quitting after years of service to President Obama and the liberal-left. Stewart’s strategy is spewing curse words and invective toward conservatives and Republicans.

Trump recognized Stewart as Obama’s tool before it was recently revealed that Stewart was secretly meeting with people in the Obama White House, including President Obama, in efforts “by the president and his communications team to tap into Mr. Stewart’s influence with younger voters,” as The New York Times put it.

“I actually enjoy the guy,” Trump’s book says of Stewart, “but when he did a segment mocking presidential candidate Herman Cain, and used a very racist and degrading tone that was insulting to the African American community, did he get booted off the air like Don Imus? No. Where was the Reverend Jesse Jackson? Where was the Reverend Al Sharpton? Where was Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd to provide hard-hitting journalistic ‘analysis?’ Nowhere. Stewart should have lost his job—at least temporarily. But he didn’t and he won’t because liberals in the media always get a free pass, no matter how bad their behavior.”

Cain himself had noted that Stewart had mocked him using the racially-charged “Amos & Andy” dialect. He concluded that Stewart has a problem with black conservatives.

In other comments in his book, Trump discussed the journalists “who are obsessed with protecting Obama,” noting that ABC’s George Stephanopoulos is among the “big Obama fans.” He added that “it was incredible to see how overprotective reporters got toward Obama when I simply said what everyone in America was thinking: ‘Where’s the birth certificate?’”

While he praises Fox News and Roger Ailes, the executive behind the popular channel, Trump faults the “disappointing behavior by people in the press” which “occurs on both sides of the aisle,” and singles out Charles Krauthammer of Fox News for special criticism. Trump said Krauthammer had attacked him on the air as a joke candidate, and that he was not given any rebuttal time.

Discussing a speech he gave to Republicans, during which he had used “strong language,” Trump admits, “I’m not a big curser but it did take place” and the controversial remarks were reported by the media. But Trump counters: “Of course, Joe Biden dropped the f-word in front of the entire media on a stage with the president. But Biden gets a pass because he’s with Obama, and as we all know, Obama can do no wrong in the media’s eyes.”

Other quotable comments from his book include the observation that The New York Times is Obama’s “favorite newspaper,” and that “The press constantly maligns, ridicules, and mocks the Tea Party folks.”

During the current campaign, Trump has not shied away from putting reporters on the spot.

Asked a question by Telemundo anchor José Díaz-Balart, who distorted his position on illegal immigration, Trump fired back, “You know what, that’s a typical case. Wait. That’s a typical case of the press with misinterpretation. They take a half a sentence, then they take a quarter of a sentence, they put it all together. It’s a typical thing. And you’re with Telemundo, and Telemundo should be ashamed.”

In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, he said, “Anderson, you are not a baby, okay. You are not a baby.”

Asked by NBC’s Katy Tur if he had a gun and used it, he responded, “It is none of your business, it is really none of your business. I have a license to have a gun.”

After The Wall Street Journal attacked Trump and his conservative supporters in the media, the businessman responded by saying the paper had a “dwindling” readership and “is worth about one-tenth of what it was purchased for…”

After Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard said he was “finished” with Trump, he responded, “Bill, your small and slightly failing magazine will be a giant success when you finally back Trump.”

Fox News media reporter Howard Kurtz notes, “Look, Trump thrives on being attacked. He’s a great counterpuncher. He particularly relishes doing battle with the media. And this latest story hands him a big fat gift to do just that.”

That “latest story” was in The Daily Beast and concerned some allegations about alleged marital rape from Trump’s divorce proceedings. Trump’s ex-wife Ivana responded, “I have recently read some comments attributed to me from nearly 30 years ago at a time of very high tension during my divorce from Donald. The story is totally without merit.”

She added, “Donald and I are the best of friends and together have raised three children that we love and are very proud of. I have nothing but fondness for Donald and wish him the best of luck on his campaign.”

Since then, a story has surfaced about Trump criticizing an opposing attorney who wanted to breast-pump in front of him. Trump told CNN he may have said to her that it was “disgusting.” He added, “Bottom line. I beat her.” He said the judge had even awarded him legal fees.

For turning the tables on the media, Trump deserves the praise of those who are sick and tired of the liberal media setting the national agenda and demonizing conservatives.

I have a feeling that the Donald Trump hit parade will continue.

05/18/15

Stephanopoulos Fiasco is Par for the Course

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

What is surprising about the latest George Stephanopoulos controversy is that most of the media are treating it as something unusual rather than an acknowledgement of a problem that’s been plaguing the media for decades. We at Accuracy in Media are happy to see this issue receive the scrutiny it deserves. However, anyone convinced that Stephanopoulos’s ongoing political conflict of interest and failure to disclose it to his viewers is the exception, not the rule, hasn’t been paying attention to a long history of media corruption.

Stephanopoulos interviewed Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos on April 26. But the ABC host, formerly a Senior Advisor on Policy and Strategy, and unofficial hatchet-man, for President Bill Clinton, treated his broadcast as more of an interrogation than an interview in an effort to discredit Schweizer and defend, in turn, the Clintons. A real interview would have endeavored to understand Schweizer’s critique of the Clintons, not demand to see a “smoking gun” or “evidence” of a crime.

Stephanopoulos’s conflict of interest was blown wide open by an excellent outfit, The Washington Free Beacon, which started the ball rolling when it contacted ABC News about Stephanopoulos’s donations to the Clinton Foundation. ABC’s spokeswoman, Heather Riley, said that they would respond, but then turned first to a friendly ally—Politico—to spin the story favorably for the network and its golden boy.

“I thought that my contributions were a matter of public record,” said Stephanopoulos in his apology. “However, in hindsight, I should have taken the extra step of personally disclosing my donations to my employer and to the viewers on air during the recent news stories about the Foundation.”

ABC News initially incorrectly stated that he had given only $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation—an amount he later amended to $75,000 over three years.

But there’s more, much more.

The Washington Free Beacon’s Andrew Stiles reported that Ms. Riley “worked in the White House press office from 1997 to 2000,” including serving “as a press contact for then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.”

But beyond that, Schweizer followed up on the week’s revelations, and found that Stephanopoulos’s ties with the Clinton Foundation were much closer than just cutting checks to the foundation. Schweizer called it “the sort of ‘hidden hand journalism’ that has contributed to America’s news media’s crisis of credibility in particular, and Americans’ distrust of the news media more broadly.”

He pointed out that Stephanopoulos “did not disclose that in 2006 he was a featured attendee and panel moderator at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI).” Nor did he “disclose that in 2007, he was a featured attendee at the CGI annual meeting, a gathering also attended by several individuals I report on in Clinton Cash, including mega Clinton Foundation donors Lucas Lundin, Frank Giustra, Frank Holmes, and Carlos Slim—individuals whose involvement with the Clintons I assumed he had invited me on his program to discuss.” And on it goes.

Stephanopoulos inadvertently revealed in another setting what donations such as his are all about. “But everybody also knows when those donors give that money—and President Clinton or someone, they get a picture with him—there’s a hope that it’s going to lead to something. And that’s what you have to be careful of,” Stephanopoulos said to Jon Stewart about Schweizer’s theory on April 28. “Even if you don’t get an action, what you get is access and you get the influence that comes with access and that’s got to shape the thinking of politicians. That’s what’s so pernicious about it.”

“Could Stephanopoulos, who is also ABC News’s chief anchor and political correspondent, be hoping for access to and exclusives from Bill and Hillary, giving him a competitive edge during the 2016 presidential campaign?” asks Lloyd Grove for The Daily Beast.

On the May 15 broadcast of Good Morning America Stephanopoulos “apologized” again—while patting himself on the back for supporting children, the environment, and efforts to stop the spread of AIDS. “Those donations were a matter of public record, but I should have made additional disclosures on air when I covered the foundation, and I now believe that directing personal donations to that foundation was a mistake,” he said. “Even though I made them strictly to support work done to stop the spread of AIDS, help children, and protect the environment in poor countries, I should have gone the extra mile to avoid even the appearance of a conflict.”

The extra mile?

This is, basically, the same argument the Clintons and their Foundation have put forth to explain their conflicts of interest or “errors,” after having taken millions of dollars from companies and countries that had business with the U.S. government while Mrs. Clinton served as Secretary of State. Their failure to disclose many of these donations resulted in them refiling their tax returns for five years, once the obvious conflicts of interest came to light.

In reality the Clinton Foundation gives about 10% of what it collects to direct charitable grants, according to a study by The Federalist, as reported in National Review. “It looks like the Foundation—which once did a large amount of direct charitable work—now exists mainly to fund salaries, travel, and conferences,” writes David French. The study pointed out that “Between 2011 and 2013, the organization spent only 9.9 percent of the $252 million it collected on direct charitable grants.” In other words, less than $10,000 of the money that Stephanopoulos paid as tribute to the Clintons went to the causes he claims to care about.

Stephanopoulos has removed himself from the ABC-sponsored Republican presidential primary debate next February. Yet he simultaneously claimed, “I think I’ve shown that I can moderate debates fairly.” His decision to not participate ignores the bigger picture.

As we have pointed out, the incestuous relationships between the Democrats and media are almost endless. It’s not just ABC’s Sunday show, but the two other main broadcast networks that also feature highly partisan Democrats as hosts. NBC’s Meet the Press host Chuck Todd “served as a staffer on Democratic Senator Tom Harkin’s 1992 presidential bid,” according to Politico. John Dickerson, the new host of CBS’s Face the Nation gave the following advice to President Barack Obama in 2013: “The president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP. If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat.”

Stephanopoulos says he should have announced his conflict of interest. If such announcements become commonplace, which they should, where exactly will that end? Should CBS News announce each and every time it broadcasts news about President Obama’s foreign policy or national security issues that the president of CBS News is actually the brother of White House Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes? Or should ABC News have regularly disclosed that its former ABC News President Ben Sherwood had a sister with the Obama White House? She still works with the Obama administration. And, NBC? That’s the network of Al Sharpton, Brian Williams, Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow. Need I say more?

Chris Harper, formerly of ABC News, has posted his views, along with those of other mostly liberal former ABC News people, as cited by Kevin Williamson of National Review: “During the 15 years we worked for ABC News,” wrote Harper, “we remember that we had to sign a yearly disclosure of gifts worth more than $25 and contributions. Perhaps these documents no longer exist in the muddled world of TV news.”

Added Harper: “Mr. Stephanopoulos has few defenders among his former colleagues. According to a Facebook page, ABCeniors, the rather liberal bunch of former network staffers discussed the problems with his contributions. ‘That shows either indifference or arrogance. Or a nice cocktail of both,’ wrote one former ABC hand. A former producer noted: ‘He knew what he was doing, and he didn’t want us to know. That’s deceit.’”

Geraldo Rivera recalled that he had been fired from ABC back in 1985 because of a $200 political donation. At least that was the reason given at the time. Rivera wondered why Stephanopoulos was being treated differently: “The point is ABC treated my undisclosed $200 donation harshly because the network wanted me out for that unrelated reason,” Rivera continued. “Now ABC is bending over backward to minimize and forgive George Stephanopoulos’s $75,000 donation to the Clinton Foundation because he is central to the network’s recent success.”

Former ABC News reporter Carole Simpson said Sunday on CNN’s Reliable Sources that she “was dumbfounded.”

“But I wanted to just take him by the neck and say, George, what were you thinking?

“And clearly, he was not thinking. I thought it was outrageous, and I am sorry that, again, the public’s trust in the media is being challenged and frayed because of the actions of some of the top people in the business.”

She added that “there’s a coziness that George cannot escape the association. He was press secretary for President Clinton. That’s pretty close. And while he did try to separate himself from his political background to become a journalist, he really is not a journalist. Yet, ABC has made him the face of ABC News, the chief anchor. And I think they’re really caught in a quandary here.” She believes that ABC, despite their public support for Stephanopoulos, is “hopping mad” at him.

When the left has conflicts of interest involving money, the media allow the perpetrators—including themselves—to portray this as charity and supporting good causes. “[NBC’s Brian] Willams wrapped himself in the flag; Stephanopoulos cloaked himself in charity,” writes Grove. MSNBC identified 143 journalists making political donations between 2004 and the start of the 2008 campaign. “Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes,” according to NBC News.

But when conservatives are shown to have financial conflicts of interest, or even to have accepted legitimate campaign donations, they are generally portrayed as serving the interests of evil, greedy businessmen or lobbyists who are paying off politicians to allow them to pollute, destroy the environment, fatten up defense contractors and avoid paying taxes.

“As you know, the Democrats have said this is—this is an indication of your partisan interest. They say… you used to work for …President Bush as a speechwriter. You’re funded by the Koch brothers,” Stephanopoulos told Schweizer during the interview, casting the author as biased. Stephanopoulos, however, they want us to believe, is just an impartial journalist inquiring after the truth.

This is what happens when you have a corrupt media that don’t play fair, but instead put their thumb on the fairness scale to tilt it towards their partisan interests.

01/29/15

The Media, Hollywood and the Pro-life Cause

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Ronald Reagan said, “I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.” In that context, one fascinating banner at the recent March for Life referred to the “survivors” of the abortion on demand mentality. A Christian pro-life ministry exists to rally the living on behalf of those being denied the right to life.

But the odds are that you didn’t hear or read anything about their presence at this massive demonstration.

The group, Liberty Counsel, notes that the controversy over deflating footballs has garnered enormous media coverage, but the annual anti-abortion March for Life on January 22 got little attention.

“The network media snubbed hundreds of thousands of participants who journeyed to Washington, D.C., to mark the 42nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. NBC and ABC completely ignored the March, and CBS dedicated 15 seconds,” Liberty Counsel pointed out in a message to supporters.

The group went on, “The intentional refusal to report on hundreds of thousands of people—dominated by youth—standing for life in our nation’s Capital is irresponsible.”

As both a regular participant in the March for Life and a media critic, I anticipated this virtual black-out. That’s why I went myself, armed with a video camera. If you’re tired of the coverage of deflated footballs, you can watch my short video from the March for Life that captures only a small part of the demonstration. The crowd was full of young people.

I tried to find the most interesting signs and banners, such as, “There’s nothing progressive about killing the innocent.” This banner shows the moral bankruptcy of the modern-day “progressives” who insist that unborn children have no rights.

I also liked “Je suis un enfant un naitre,” French for “I am a preborn child.” Delegations from France and Italy were at the rally.

But while the networks didn’t cover the march, it should be noted that Hollywood last year actually produced a pro-life film, “Gimme Shelter,” with powerful acting performances and well-known actors. The critics panned it. The audiences loved it.

Based on a true story, “Gimme Shelter” is about a pregnant teenager who finds help in a Catholic shelter for unwed mothers.

In real life, Kathy DiFiore turned her own New Jersey home into that shelter for mothers and their babies. She met with President Reagan, who thanked her for what she was doing. In the film, viewers catch a glimpse of the photo of Kathy Difiore and Reagan, taken on January 22, 1988, another anniversary of the March for Life.

DiFiore writes about the day that photo was taken, saying she told Reagan, “You are doing what our Founding Fathers did. You are bringing us back to God’s values. That is what you are doing and we thank you for that.”

Reagan told Kathy DiFiore and other members of the pro-life group meeting with him in the White House that the decision legalizing abortion-on-demand was wrong because “these children are already human beings [and] are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” He referred to remarks he had made in a telephone call to the March for Life, discussing how 24 prestigious doctors had responded to his comments that “These babies are human beings.”

Those were some of the comments he had made about unborn children feeling pain during an abortion. They deserve more attention, now that a vote on the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” was sabotaged by Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC).

At the time he made these remarks, Reagan had said, “there was an outcry—enraged criticism and angry denials. But criticism wasn’t the only response.”

The entire text included these comments about the science behind the observation that unborn children feel pain during abortions. Reagan said, “It so happened that I received a letter signed by 24 medical doctors, including eminent physicians like the former chief of pediatrics at the St. Louis City Hospital and the president of the New York State Medical Society. They discussed recent advances in medical technology and concluded: ‘Mr. President, in drawing attention to the capability of the human fetus to feel pain, you stand on firmly established ground.’”

A master communicator, Reagan effectively rebutted the “progressive” argument that the unborn have no rights. He said, “…our opponents tell us not to interfere with abortion. They tell us not to impose our morality on those who wish to allow or participate in the taking of the life of infants before birth. Yet no one calls it imposing morality to prohibit the taking of life after a child is born. We’re told about a woman’s right to control her own body. But doesn’t the unborn child have a higher right, and that is to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Or would our critics say that to defend life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is to impose morality? Are we to forget the entire moral mission of our nation through its history?”

Today, however, the Reagan vision has been abandoned, even by some in the conservative media.

The Fox Business Network just gave a former MTV personality, who calls herself “Kennedy,” an hour a night to promote her extreme libertarian views. Regarding her abandonment of the conservative label, she has said, “Social conservatism was really bringing me down.” She became a “Gary Johnson libertarian,” named after the pro-pot, former New Mexico governor. Her book features a photo of her virtually naked on a horse, and even the table of contents is marked by obscenities.

Put forward as a role model for young people, she is a supporter of same-sex marriage and “pro-choice” on abortion. That is, “pro-choice” for the mother and not her child.

She says, “Abortion, to me, is an issue of personal responsibility.” No. Based on any objective standard, this issue involves two people.

The Daily Beast reports that Kennedy, “in a notorious appearance as a presenter on the 1994 Video Music Awards—simulated oral sex on her microphone. This, while an unsuspecting Rudy Giuliani, then mayor of New York, stood beside her on camera and, oblivious to Kennedy’s lewd sideshow, blathered on about how great it was to have the awards show back in Manhattan.”

A much better pick for a program on Fox would have been any of the young women leaders in the pro-life movement such as Kristan Hawkins, Lila Rose, or Kristina Garza.

In response to the virtual media blackout of the March for Life, Lila Rose of Live Action said, “The continued media blackout on abortion disregards the primary obligation of journalism: to accurately report, investigate, and tell truth without bias. While mainstream media perpetuate a silence on the March for Life, the unjust killing of 3,000 preborn children in the womb by abortion continues each and every day. We must speak for society’s littlest and weakest members, and give voice to those who are the victims of the greatest human rights abuse of our day.”

Wouldn’t it be great to have a young female pro-life voice like that on either the Fox News Channel or the Fox Business Network?

Instead, the trend is to go in a libertarian direction and play down those “divisive” social issues. Being pro-abortion, pro-gay, and pro-pot is now the “in” thing. This constitutes another attempt at demoralizing the pro-life side.

In his book, Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation, Reagan told pro-lifers not to lose hope. “Despite the formidable obstacles before us, we must not lose heart,” he said. “This is not the first time our country has been divided by a Supreme Court decision that denied the value of certain human lives.”

He added, “…we know that respect for the sacred value of human life is too deeply engrained in the hearts of our people to remain forever suppressed.”

But the abortion industry and its defenders in the media are doing their best to keep this sacred value suppressed, by outright ignoring it.

01/17/15

It’s the President’s Policies—Not His Team’s Vision

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

It’s been a gradual process, but we welcome former New York Times columnist Leslie Gelb to the realization that President Barack Obama’s leadership has been disastrous for this country. Last October Gelb wrote, “While Obama inherited rather than caused many of the world’s current crises, his habitual complacency and passivity prevent him from mitigating or resolving them.”

By November, Gelb had scathing criticism for Obama, writing for The Daily Beast that “The leak suggests that Mr. Obama remains blind to the principal cause of his foreign policy woes… he is the person most responsible for the absence of a U.S. foreign policy strategy, for policy zigs and zags, and for the loss of credibility and power. The essential fault lies not with the stars around him, however dim, but with himself.”

The failure to send a high-ranking member of the Obama administration to Paris for the so-called unity rally was the last straw for Mr. Gelb, whose impeccable establishment credentials include board senior fellow and president emeritus at the Council on Foreign Relations. He even acknowledges it in The Daily Beast title: “This Is Obama’s Last Foreign Policy Chance.”

Gelb said that failing to go to Paris or to send the vice president was more than a “horrible gaffe,” adding that it “demonstrated beyond argument that the Obama team lacks the basic instincts and judgment necessary to conduct U.S. national security policy in the next two years. It’s simply too dangerous to let Mr. Obama continue as is—with his current team and his way of making decisions. America, its allies, and friends could be heading into one of the most dangerous periods since the height of the Cold War.”

But unfortunately, this wasn’t Obama’s last foreign policy chance. Gelb recommends that Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, Denis McDonough, and Valerie Jarrett should go. There is no doubt that these four have helped make an utter mess of American foreign policy, but largely at the direction of their boss.

Gelb suggests that President Obama add establishment Republican Thomas Pickering, who is soft on Iran and also complicit in the Benghazi cover-up as the Chair of the discredited Accountability Review Board (ARB), the State Department creation that didn’t even interview then-Secretary of State Clinton, and informed Mrs. Clinton through her aide, Cheryl Mills, when the vice chair of the ARB became concerned about the testimony of one of the witnesses.

“Pickering has personally explored opening relations with Hamas; pushed peace talks with the Taliban; argued for getting rid of, or removing to the U.S., all tactical nuclear weapons in Europe (and moving Russia’s to east of the Urals); and promoted bilateral talks with Iran without preconditions,” wrote Andy McCarthy. These are the credentials to pull our country out of its foreign policy disasters?

Actually, we may not even agree with Gelb’s belief that the President should replace his current team, or whether that even matters. And that is because of another point he makes: “In the end, making the national security system work comes down to one factor, one man—Barack Obama. He’s the key problem, and he’s the only one who can bring about a solution.”

What Gelb’s column fails to recognize is that this isn’t a problem of President Obama receiving bad advice. It is that he is ideologically driven, and his agenda is clearly antithetical to America’s national security needs and interests. This has been apparent since before the President took office, but it was laid bare in his first year in office. It is just that virtually everyone at The New York Times and other foreign policy establishment institutions either didn’t recognize it, or thought his presidency would be a great antidote to the “cowboy” foreign policy, as they saw it, of the George W. Bush era.

Consider these following presidential actions:

President Obama’s Cairo speech in his first months, where he invited the Muslim Brotherhood, and didn’t invite the then-president of Egypt to attend;
His hands-off approach to the green revolution in Iran that possibly could have overthrown that dangerous, terrorist sponsoring, corrupt regime;
The unilateral removal of our missile defense system from Poland and the Czech Republic;
His ongoing pledge to shut down Guantanamo Bay;
His immediate demands on Israel that proved both wrong and counterproductive for what he was hoping to achieve;
The unnecessary war in Libya, and the ensuing Islamic terrorist attack on our Special Mission Compound and CIA Annex in Benghazi, and the obvious lies and dereliction of duty that went along with it;
The current phony war against ISIS, with a plan to defeat them that would be absurd if it wasn’t so tragic;
His lies and distortions about the nature of the threat in today’s world, which include the West’s failure to confront Islamist, jihadist terrorism and growing influence of the caliphate.

Thursday’s Wall Street Journal had an article about the Iraqis’ growing impatience with how the U.S. and its coalition are carrying out the war against the Islamic State (IS), with whom we’re supposedly in a years-long process of degrading and destroying. “The swelling disapproval reflects Iraqi impatience at the U.S.-led mission’s multiyear strategy against Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Many Iraqis see the insurgents as an immediate threat pulling their country apart amid immense suffering,” reports the Journal. “Some Iraqis even believe the coalition is aiding the extremists by airdropping weapons into the third of the country they control.”

It has put us in the position of coordinating with Iran, and the Iranian backed militias are doing much of the fighting on the ground. At the same time, we are supposedly attempting to defeat ISIS in Syria, where we are doing some of the dirty work for Syrian president Basher al Assad, another Iranian proxy.

Mr. Gelb, we’ve just outlined how President Obama’s foreign policy team has been mishandling the hard questions—since day one—and Paris was, unfortunately, just a flash in the pan that momentarily illuminated the President’s perverse ideological strategic vision. He wasn’t there, nor did he send Vice President Biden, because he doesn’t stand in solidarity with the views of the French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, who said in the aftermath of last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris that left a total of 17 dead, “We’re at war, but not at war against a religion, not against a civilization, but at war to defend our values, which are universal.” He added, “It is a war against terrorism and radical Islam, against everything aimed at breaking solidarity, liberty and fraternity.”

The problem is not a lack of policy, or rearranging the circle of advisers—it’s Obama’s ideology and actual policies themselves that have us in this mess that Leslie Gelb has come to recognize.