I’ve made no secret in the past about my feelings regarding Tucker Carlson. I viewed him as a spoiled brat who’s had his sobriety issues, and he’s entirely a creature of the swamp. Carlson has claimed in recent years to have reformed, and while that may be true, I must admit that once burned, I’m slow to return to a position in which trust will be offered again, if ever. I think my disdain for Carlson hit its high point when he referred to then Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as the “supreme commander of milfistan.” I had to look it up. I’d never heard the term MILF before, and frankly, from that moment forward, I considered Carlson a purveyor of filth and slime posing as a journalist. On the surface, by the time he was brought on for Tucker Carlson Tonight, he seems to have reformed himself, but with a mouth like that, I’m going to require some convincing. Did he ever apologize for such things? Part of the reformation process is to seek forgiveness and to atone for past transgressions. Did he? I have no idea. This is why for me, despite the fact that Carlson has been saying some very interesting things since taking over the 8pm Eastern slot on FoxNews, I’m not willing to watch that network. You see, they began their betrayal of conservatives some years ago, and on the 3rd of November 2020, they consummated that betrayal. Oddly, a large proportion of their audience was too thick-skulled to notice. This is why I believe Fox News won’t see much harm from getting rid of Carlson. After all, they were already going to take a bath due to the very strange settlement of the Dominion case, so adding Carlson to this was a relative drop in the bucket. Most of their audience, too lazy to learn how to use devices like ROKU or similar, will continue to lap-up their thin gruel because it’s too much trouble to learn a new technology that’s been around for half a generation now. Fox News won’t be hurt because too many in their audience are lazy, and FNC knows it. They bank on it. They expect them to be shallow and forgetful, but they’re not alone.
If this sounds like a criticism of the audience of Fox News, you’re right, but it’s not just Fox. A large number of the 45+ audience is just too damned intellectually lazy for their own good. They still watch CBS news every evening, or NBC, or ABC, or PBS, or naturally Fox, not because they prefer it over the alternatives, but because they’ve NEVER SEEN THE ALTERNATIVES and worse, don’t want to. These are the people who abhor any change, even change for the better, and they’re the people who are driving this country directly off a cliff. It’s not that they’re too stupid to understand how to use a streaming device. It’s not that they don’t have Internet connections. It’s that they’re so change-averse and so comfortable in the same old habits that they’ll go to their graves still pining for the days of Walter Cronkite and all the other crypto-communists who delivered them the news for decades.
It’s not that they have any malice for the country, except that they despise change to an unnatural extent. They’ve sat in a chair at the same place at the same time looking at a screen located in the same relative position in the room, and gee, it’s only been five years since they got this new TV and they still don’t know what all the buttons on the remote do.
“There’s that one I pressed by accident that one time, has some green logo that says “Hulu” on it and I couldn’t find my damned programs for two days.”
Don’t laugh. These people exist, and some of them read this web-page occasionally. I heard from them in droves eleven years ago when I moved this site onto a separate platform from wordpress.com, because by gosh, they had to change their saved hyperlinks, and that always takes them “half a damned day.” Of course, in truth, even that crowd grudgingly made the change, but there is a broad and inflexible element in our country, and in every country, that detests change so much that they’ll do anything to avoid it. Just wait until they discover electric charging stations and the new Hell that’s going to inflict on their lives. Wait until they find out they need a digital health pass(vaccine passport) to use their new Central Bank Digital Currency and that they’ll only be permitted to spend it where and when they’re told. They will initially flip out, and then they’ll passively comply. They may hate change, but they hate friction even more.
This is why Fox News will continue pretty much as before. The people described above like putting the TV on one channel and leaving it there, in perpetuity. They don’t want to be forced to think or choose or discriminate among a myriad of options, including many better alternatives. That’s just too damned much friction. I would pity these people, but for the fact that they’re dooming the lot of us. They won’t go to a damned school board meeting, or a county commissioners’ court, or a congressman’s town hall, or get involved in much of anything. They’re like conscious vegetables. They consume content, but produce very little of their own. Most of them barely make a grunt most days. They won’t challenge their own alleged political party, because that would mean friction, and we damned-well know how they feel about that. If the Republicans tell them they won’t put Trump on the ballot in various states, these people will accept it. If the election is corrupted, they won’t say a word. If there is anything that causes them the slightest discomfort, they’ll surrender. Meet the bulk of the Fox News audience. It’s no different than the bulk of the CBS audience. Or the NBC audience. If it requires more than a press of a power button, they don’t want to know about it: Too much friction.
These are and have been the people truly destroying America for generations. They’ve watched, mostly in silence, except perhaps to their spouses seated beside them, as Presidents have been murdered, removed, and defamed. They’ve watched as soldiers are sent into bloodbaths that have served no purpose but provide them another reason to look away from their screens. They’ve watched as we’ve gone from normalizing homosexuality to the brink of normalizing pedophilia, and still, they watch mostly in silence, but unwilling to act lest an action create more friction. They’ve watched the politicians for years vote away their money into the abyss of another black hole in a bureaucratic agency without batting an eye. They want not merely to be left alone, but they want to be left alone so badly that they’re willing to see their lives stripped from them in payment of the privilege. Freedom doesn’t matter to this sort. Freedom requires effort, and that’s more damned friction, don’t you know?
As your civilization collapses, don’t wait for these to be roused from their living graves. They’re already dead, and that’s why Fox News isn’t worried. It’s why even in the longer run, Anheuser-Busch will make a complete recovery.
“Buycott? Sounds like more damned friction to me, Mabel.”
Or:
“Streaming service? Now I have to learn how to use another remote control and worse, the full functions of the one I already have? Two remotes? Henry, how can you expect me to do all of that? Can’t we just watch Fox News? I miss that Tucker fellow, but that Kilmeade guy seems okay. He’s a bit humorless, but I can live with him. Dan Rather didn’t have a sense of humor either, after all.”
While some will assume it’s a question of age, that’s only partly the issue. You see the same thing in some younger folk, but it seems to be the tendency of humans as they age to seek the state of lowest energy. I’m not immune to this either. The problem is that the lowest state of energy a human can attain is ‘dead.” I tend to agree with Dan Bongino when he says “Don’t get dead,” but it seems the first death happens between the ears, then in the soul, and finally in the body. Too many Americans numbering among the technically living have already assumed either the first or second state of death, and nothing much seems to faze them.
This is why Fox News isn’t worried, but neither is the GOP establishment or the DC Mafia. These one-button-lifers will never discover there had been an alternative, and they’re just fine with it. Don’t count on these people. Don’t expect them to act. Even as the mobs burn their homes to the ground, they will sit there in disbelief, wondering why anybody would cause them friction. You see, the source of the friction for them is anything that requires them to think and to reason. They don’t like to be in the position to rely upon their minds, and it may not even be because their minds are inferior, but simply because thinking is hard. It requires a kind of discipline they’d just as soon not be compelled to practice.
Many will be quick to point out that I’ve repeatedly made reference to the fact that I avoid popular culture. This is true. I avoid it because it tends to clutter the mind with too many meaningless things. The one way in which the popular culture provides any use to me is that on occasion, it’s a short-cut to understanding, for instance in comparing something observed in a movie to what might be seen in real life: You can describe that movie scene and people will understand its application because so many of them will have seen it. I try not to rely on this very often, because on the one hand, I have so completely fallen away from popular culture that any references I’m likely to make are dated and particularly among the young, will be pointless. Also, I recognize that this is a lazy way of communicating an idea, and while very effective in some instances, it is nevertheless a shortcut that should be avoided. In short, I’m willing to spend the time thinking about it.
This is not true for our one-button-lifers, who will probably be the death of us all. I’ve tried many times to rouse them from their one-button dependency, but it doesn’t seem to work. Even if I can convince them to try something new for a day or two, maybe even a week, they quickly return to the comfort of their single button. In a few cases, it causes them to change the destination of the single button, but it doesn’t modify the habit. I once wondered how one might convince a crazy person to change their actions in light of their craziness. The sad answer is that you can’t. I view the one-button-lifers as another form of crazy, albeit expressed in a different way. Perhaps there is some rational argument one might make to them such that they change their habits and thereby change their lives, but I’ve not discovered it. In the end, my observation has been that once they get to the point of soul death, there is no chance of saving them. They no longer care to be saved, and are simply waiting for the final, physical death. It’s sad to watch, but it’s sadder still to know that we depend to a degree on these people to help us save our country and our world. We should have learned by now that there will be no help from that quarter, but we should also recognize that the Fox News Channel and all the other undying media outlets of the world rely on this same habitual one-click living. They’re not worried. The so-called “Deep State” isn’t worried. They know. One-click lifers are the most reliable people living on Earth; Democrats know the only votes more reliable are no longer among the living.
I listen to some mainstream media because one ought to know what the talking-points and narrative of the day will be that one must confront and break through to see the truth. Now that it’s clear that there are only a handful of shows anywhere that will tell you anything like the truth, it’s time we start cleaning this mess up to the degree we are able. The reports I am seeing and hearing in mainstream media suggest that “Putin is desperate,” and he’s “increasingly isolated” or “becoming unhinged.” If you’re seeing these same reports, let me suggest to you that you carefully pay attention to the motives behind those telling you these things. Of course, none of us are on the ground in Ukraine, so it’s hard to know with any precision what is true, but the thing you can assume is that the first reports of any event are going to be mostly false. There is propaganda from both sides of the war, but Western media has decided to go “all in” on whatever propaganda the Ukrainian side prefers. Putin is a monster, they tell you, and I have no doubt that from certain perspectives, he is. On the other hand, you should know that there are plenty of monsters to go around in Ukraine, and many of them are not Russian. Some of the worst monsters in the situation in Ukraine are people like Victoria Nuland, and the people she represents. If you were thinking that as a Deputy Secretary of State, she represents the people of the United States, you’re tragically mistaken. She represents the real enemy of the American people. Ukraine is not what you’re being told, and no amount of lipstick applied to this pig of a situation can possibly conceal the truth.
The other problem in Ukraine is that most Americans don’t know the first thing about that corrupt buffer-state in Eastern Europe. Many don’t know anything about its history, or how it came to the situation in which it now finds itself. Portrayed in the West as purely the victim of Russian aggression, Americans are expected to believe the bilge the media spews, without ever noticing that the country of Ukraine has extensive problems that pre-date, and indeed have contributed to, the invasion you’re now witnessing. I can’t possibly recount here all the history of Ukraine, and particularly the history that plays a thorough role in what you’re now witnessing. What I can tell you is that some people have tried to document some of it, including sometimes mad-cap film-maker Oliver Stone. While I don’t agree with many of the conclusions he seems to reach, he does a fair job explaining the side of this argument you haven’t heard, and that makes this documentary worth watching. Made in 2016, long before the current crisis, Ukraine On Fire documents much of the history of the Ukrainian problem, told from a point of view that seems somewhat sympathetic to the Russian position. Still, even with the bias, it’s interesting that so few Americans know anything of the opposing arguments, but have heard the Western position twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week, since the beginning of this crisis:
As I said, I can’t endorse everything that Stone presents, at least in the manner he presents it, but there are some very important takeaways that Americans must recognize as true upon deeper reflection upon their own experiences. For instance, in the Summer of 2020, you witnessed the beginning of a color revolution in America, and had Trump been re-elected, you would have experienced its full fury. Notice that groups like BLM and Antifa, responsible for nearly all of the mayhem that rocked the United States in the run-up to the Presidential election, employed tactics like those of the revolutionaries in Ukraine in 2013-14. In point of fact, the same people funded it, pushed it, assisted, aided, and abetted it. Had Donald Trump been re-elected rather than having been cheated out of a second term, the same basic approach was going to be used to depose him as had been used to remove Yanukovych in the so-called “Revolution of Dignity.” People who watched the entire affair in the wake of George Floyd’s death will see the similarities. Understand that the same group of people who caused the Ukrainian President to flee to safety in Russia in 2014 were intent upon doing the same to Trump in 2020 or 2021, had he been re-elected.
Once you realize that similar tactics were employed, right down to the martyrs who were mere useful idiots of the protests, you realize that there were more similarities than you’d otherwise dare to suspect. The corporate media represents a particular view, and where there is insufficient corporate media, it was created in real time to support the revolutionaries. We saw some of this here, with a proliferation of Youtube Channels the purpose of which seemed to have been to assist the coordination of BLM and Antifa anarchists. Big Tech is neck deep in all of this. They repeatedly tell you they’re ‘defending Democracy’ while they simultaneously do everything they can to undermine it. What else could be the meaning of Mark Zuckerberg spending hundreds of millions of dollars in 2020 to influence the outcome of the election, or now, to assist Ukraine by permitting for the calls for violence and incitement against Russians on the Meta/Facebook platform? Do you realize yet how you’re being set up, again? Zuckerberg’s organization helped spread the word and assisted the Coup-plotters in Ukraine in 2014, and they did the same with BLM/Antifa in 2020 here in the US. George Soros spent millions in Ukraine, as he’s spending millions more now, but the way he spends it is most important: He uses seed money directly in the target country, while bribing politicians with indirect support, in order to get them to spend billions on his pet projects in the US and abroad.
When you listen to Foxnews and the panel tells Newt Gingrich essentially to shut up about George Soros, you know the fix is in. Here’s a reminder of how that went down:
This is the sort of stifling that has happened with contrary information about SARs-CoV2, the COVID vaccines, Hunter Biden’s laptop(s,) and now Ukraine. The information you’re being permitted to see and hear is only approved information in most cases. People are now talking about how Putin is isolating his people from information, but that’s a two-way street. Western governments are likewise isolating their own populations from information. Why do you really think Trump was kicked-off Twitter and Facebook and Instagram? Why do you think Parler was submarined by the Big Tech oligarchs who control Apple, Google and Amazon Web Services? All of it is about limiting the information to which you have access. Dan Bongino likes to play the Soviet National Anthem when talking about the Big Tech oligarchs for this very reason. He’s lived it. Indeed, the Stone documentary above was kicked off Youtube to prevent you from seeing it. This is a clear indicator of how dangerous these people think certain information is to their plans.
Do you really believe George Soros only seeks to influence elections in the US? He uses his money to help foment “color revolutions” around the globe, and one of the ways in which he uses these revolutions is to profit from them. Soros made the bulk of his wealth wrecking currencies. At this moment, Soros is in the process of an all-out attack on Russia’s Ruble, and he has the complicity of the United States and most of the EU in so doing. Recently, Soros published an op-ed that called for regime-change in both Russia and China. He remains entirely dishonest and misleading. Here’s one example:
“In July 2021, Putin published a long essay arguing that Russians and Ukrainians are really one people, and that the Ukrainians have been misled by neo-Nazi agitators. The first part of his argument is not without some historical justification, given that Kyiv was the original seat of the Russian Orthodox Church. But in the second part, it was Putin who was misled. He ought to have known better. Many Ukrainians fought valiantly during the Euromaidan protests in 2014.“(empahasis mine.)
The statement “Many Ukrainians fought valiantly during the Euromaidan protests in 2014” makes it seem as though Soros is an outsider simply observing these events, but the truth you already know from the Stone documentary above, from other articles previously published on this site, and from other sources: George Soros was up to his neck in the 2014 protests that ultimately became a coup d’etat in Ukraine. This is not open to debate. That this was manned by people flying the neo-Nazi symbols of WWII collaborators of Western Ukraine is not a mistake. Even now, the so-called Azov battalion are augmenting Ukrainian forces. Their roots lie in the deep history of Ukraine along with the color revolution that Soros spawned in 2014. Color revolutions are what Soros does, and it’s part of his mechanism for generating new wealth. With the influence he now owns in the US, he basically now considers the US mostly a matter of “Mission Accomplished.”
He goes on a bit before concluding, but I’d like to you to consider the sort of bilge Soros here asks you to swallow:
“Meanwhile, Xi seems to have realized that Putin has gone rogue. On March 8, one day after Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had insisted that the friendship between China and Russia remained “rock solid,” Xi called French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to say that he supported their peacemaking efforts. He wanted maximum restraint in the war in order to avert a humanitarian crisis.”(emphasis mine.)
Who here believes, having learned about the plight of the Uyghurs in China could become convinced that Xi is even remotely concerned with averting any humanitarian crisis anywhere on Earth?
He concludes with this gem, and there’s a tell in here if you pay close attention to what this madman actually believes:
“It is far from certain that Putin will accede to Xi’s wishes. We can only hope that Putin and Xi will be removed from power before they can destroy our civilization.”(emphasis mine.)
A casual reader might be led by this statement to believe with the use of “our civilization” that Soros is talking about the traditional Western civilization you and I consider “ours.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Soros didn’t write this as an opinion piece to be consumed by you and I. Instead, this is an order sent out publicly to his minions around the globe, and his message is clear: Take out Putin and Xi because “our civilization” is endangered, but by “ours,” he does not mean yours and mine. He’s talking about the vast criminal enterprise he and his coterie of corrupt globalist politicians have put in place to dominate the world. He’s saying it in the open, even though he’s using veiled language. More, in the beginning of the article, he confesses having set up another of his NGOs in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in each of the former Soviet states, including Ukraine.
What has happened these last twenty or so years is that Soros has been booted-out of most of these countries, because Putin quickly realized that Soros was slowly but surely intent on driving color revolutions in each and every one of these former Soviet republics, including eventually Russia. This has been the base of operations for vast global political corruption, not merely in the former Soviet republics in question, but reaching their tentacles across the globe, including particularly Europe and the United States, but also in Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and South America. Soros’ network of organized gangsters is global. While Vladimir Putin remains a dangerous murderer, it makes a great deal of sense to understand a bit of where his mind is. You’re not being told this, because on balance, most Americans would firmly plant their feet onto the solid ground of “not my monkey, not my circus,” refusing to play along with the latest of Soros’ global power plays. At worst, you might even call for the United States to abandon that sphere forever, and there’s simply too much cash to be had there. How do you think Mitt Romney and Joe Biden and a whole laundry-list of other American and Western politicians are so deeply entrenched in the goings-on in Ukraine, of all places? While certainly not on “our side,” meaning yours or mine, Putin is more like the enemy of my enemy, not with respect to the people of Ukraine, but of their actual attackers over the last two decades who have used them as guinea pigs for the biological and pharmaceutical research that’s been conducted with the willing “consent” of these desperately poor people.
This brings us to the next problem Mr. Soros now faces. His color revolutions in and around Russia have been stymied, at least for the moment, but he’s got another problem, and it’s a difficult one. Putin may hold some information on Biden and his son, along with the activities of other Western politicians likewise involved. This is a serious threat to “[their] civilization” because Biden is currently refraining from undercutting Putin in any serious way. I believe they have an operation in motion to get to Putin, and the future duration of Biden’s presidency is entirely wrapped-up in the success or failure of their ability to “go get him.” If it fails, and Putin remains, Biden may be forced to choose between “[their] civilization” and his own son. This is why the Western Information Cartel has made Russian contributions to world news increasingly opaque. There are certain stories they cannot afford to have exposed. Hunter Biden is now a liability, as may be Joe Biden himself. Soros may have to play that card, and pull the plug on Biden. That may not, however, be enough. They need to free-up NATO to go kinetic against Russia. The “Neocons” and others screaming for war on the approximate, putative political right in the United States are pushing hard against Biden. These people are compromised too, most of them, and they’re in bed with Soros one way or the other. Don’t delude yourself on this: The United States Senate is ultimately controlled almost entirely by sell-outs to the United States. Lindsey Graham and Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio are far from alone among those who will happily do the bidding of their masters.
If we get to the next round of this rolling catastrophe, Taiwan will present very similar themes all ’round. Hunter and Joe are every bit as compromised by Xi’s CCP, perhaps even more than they are by Putin. Many Western politicians fear this most of all. Xi is only now coming to understand that Soros and his crowd have been using the last thirty years to infiltrate his country too, and indeed, much of the Pacific rim. This is why Soros’ op-ed piece, linked above, contains a warning as much or even more to Xi than to Putin. He desperately needs Xi not to back Putin on anything here, but the fact that Xi has sent mixed messages on the matter have left Soros quite angry. Xi has figured out that Soros would happily foment color revolutions in Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as in mainland China. Xi very much fancies himself the next Mao, or the next Deng, but more probably, bigger and better than either. Xi exudes confidence and not a little arrogance. Soros is here warning Xi that he’s now on the list too.
I’d ask readers to consider some important questions worth pondering. Let us begin with the information war, and the way in which the Western Information Cartel is conducting it, not on behalf of Ukraine, but on behalf of “[their] civilization.” Consider what you have been told, all simultaneously:
Putin is on the run, or getting desperate, or his forces are failing(or some version of this narrative)
Ukrainians are heroically fighting-back, preventing Putin from capturing territory
Putin is destroying Ukraine, flattening it everywhere, without regard to civilians
Putin doesn’t have the ability to reliably project force over the battle space
Putin conducted a strike on a training base in far Western Ukraine
Some of these are assessments, by “analysts.” Others are from commentators. Still others are provided as facts. Some of these may be true, but they cannot all be true simultaneously. Remember these other things told you by the same Western Information Cartel:
Trump colluded with Russians to hack Hillary’s email and otherwise get dirt on her and also secure their help in rigging the 2016 election
Trump said there were good people on both sides(implying he was simply talking about the protesters and counter-protesters – and all counter-protesters were white supremacists)
SARS-CoV2 is a lethal virus that arose naturally in bats and jumped to humans in a wet-market in Wuhan
Hydroxychloroquine is a dangerous drug that can cause significant heart problems and doesn’t work against COVID
COVID-19 Vaccines are perfectly safe and effective
The 2020 Presidential Election(and indeed all elections that November) were the safest, most secure in history
Oil price increases and spiking inflation are mostly due to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine
Do you begin to see a pattern?
Ghost of Kiev
Snake Island
Zelenskiy’s “ammo, not a ride” quote that wasn’t
There are many more, and you must begin to ask yourself to what degree and how frequently you’re being played by mainstream media. The Western Information Cartel is staffed by people largely sympathetic first and foremost to George Soros and his coterie of corrupt globalist cannibals, who fancy themselves compassionate while they simultaneously feast on average people anywhere the hunger strikes them. These people are gangsters, and their small errand-boys in the media simply follow orders. This is how they can in one moment tell you that Putin has carried out a devastating strike in far Western Ukraine, but in the next, provide analysis claiming that Putin is incapable of projecting power on the battlefield. The two notions are entirely incongruous.
Consider too this recent controversy in which Mitt Romney, one of Soros’ boys, accused former Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard of treason for daring to question the narrative about bio-labs in Ukraine. Romney came unglued. All Gabbard did was to ask some pointed questions based on the information publicly available. Romney’s reaction was clearly one of a man worried about some darker truth being unearthed. Here’s TheHill‘s take on the controversy:
After seeing Romney’s reaction, it’s clear that he’s worried about something not obvious to the rest of us. His reaction was very defensive, and his former aid’s involvement in Ukraine may be the key. Whatever is motivating Romney’s attack on Gabbard, it’s clear that he seems quite perturbed. Pierre Delecto isn’t happy with Tulsi.
After a little inspection, you start to realize that somebody’s applying lipstick with a trowel to the pig that is the situation in Ukraine. Either Ukraine is doing much more poorly than we’re being told, or Putin truly is a lunatic. Since I’ve seen plenty of evidence to disbelieve the second, and no evidence at all to dissuade me of the first, I’ve begun to believe the Western Information Cartel is simply telling us a gargantuan lie. Why? To what end? Surely, if this is so, it cannot change the ultimate outcome. If Ukraine is actually in a much worse military state than the media now suggests, what would be their object? It’s a stall-for-time tactic. One thing for which they’re clearly stalling is the finalization of a nuclear deal with Iran being negotiated by Russia. I’m still not certain as to why the nuclear deal is so deadly-important to the Biden gang, and presumably also the Soros club. The more immediate idea is to prevent Ukrainians from understanding how bad their situation really is across the entire battlefield, and to try to buoy their morale so as to extend their will to resist. The idea is likely to give time for an anti-Putin operation to succeed. At this point, it may be the only way the money-laundry and corruption-den that has been Ukraine these last twenty years may be salvaged by Soros and his gang, and they’ve invested a lot of money there, and with it, a ton of yours via the State Department, the Department of Defense, and countless other US agencies and departments. That’s right. You’re paying for this however it shakes out.
If you’re unfamiliar with the work of Emerald Robinson, I’d commend it to you. I try to check in at her site frequently, because she does a fantastic job of digging-up the truth. In this case, she’s managed to uncover a story of corruption in media. As it turns out, FoxNews and Newsmax along with many other channels were actively suppressing employees from expressing or reporting any stories questioning the efficacy or safety of vaccines? Why? It’s always the same reason: Money. In this case, the government was paying millions to so-called news outlets to propagandize you with your own tax dollars. It’s scandalous, and you should know all about it. It’s clear that Fox News and Newsmax are part of “mainstream media” now.
The difficult chore of maintaining credibility in the era of FakeNews
It started in a big way last week. Dan Bongino violated his own self-imposed “72 hour rule” with the story of the Snake Island story from Ukraine. Before the weekend was over, he’d discovered that he’d been misled like so many others, promptly informing his listeners of that fact on Monday. Dan’s “72 hour rule” is that when some new story of bomb-shell proportions comes along, he tends to hold onto them in order to verify the stories multiple ways before repeating them to his audience. Many others have seemingly been duped, repeatedly, and it’s a real problem, because while they may not be the ones originating the story, they’re the ones repeating it to their audiences. From the point of view of their audiences then, for all intents and purposes, they are originating the stories. On Tuesday, as is my habit while driving home, and as soon as I walk in the door, I tuned into Mark Levin’s show. Levin, long my runaway favorite among talk-show hosts, began in on a story in which he described the workings and effects of thermobaric bombs. He explained that Russia was using them. He also explained that Russia was using cluster-bombs against civilian areas, despite the bombs having been banned for use against civilians. Within less than twenty hours, these reports had been smashed when Bongino said on air on Wednesday that these reports hadn’t panned-out. A little digging revealed that this had been a completely unconfirmed report, and initially, there was a video discounted as fake by the gentleman in charge of the political subdivision in which it had allegedly occurred. The claims about cluster bombs are likewise unconfirmed, except that in Eastern Ukraine, there’s some evidence the Ukrainian forces have used them. At this moment, there is still no firm evidence that either side has used them, but even as of this moment, you can surf over to Levin’s site for his Tuesday Recap page and find the unverified claims about their use by Russia, along with the false claim that these weapons are altogether forbidden. He also claimed during his on-air description that the thermobaric bombs constitute a chemical weapon, which they most certainly are not. All of this made it plain to me in a very painful way that my favorite among talk-show hosts, Mark Levin, a guy I have enjoyed more even than Rush over the years, had now joined the legion of outlets I generally consider #FakeNews. It’s both shocking and saddening to me. We have so few media outlets we can take at face value. Whether by negligence or intent or because they’ve simply been fooled by others, it’s clear now that just when we need them most, most all media, even supposed “conservative” media, lie to us in varying degrees. Though I neither feel it should be my place, nor do I feel I have the heart to do the matter full justice, I must now take on “the Great One,” for the sake of my own integrity.
This is and has been the greatest disappointment of the last several years, and it began during the era of Trump, not because of anything Trump did, but because since the rise of Trump, any pretense at objectivity has been ditched in mainstream media, from CNN to MSNBC to Reuters to FoxNews. Media outlets have become so uniformly unreliable in so many ways for people like talk-show hosts, who must rely upon valid and factual news stories to fuel the discussions they will spawn with their audiences. The underlying information is so frequently inaccurate that talk-show hosts are finding it difficult to stay ahead of the fake news injected at light-speed into the conversation. Don’t misunderstand me to have said that I believe Mark Levin or Dan Bongino are liars, but that they now serve as a conduit through which lies are smuggled to their predominantly conservative audiences. I don’t believe this is their intention, but I suspect that applies to many other talkers. It’s that they’ve come to rely on sources that are corrupt or corruptible. It’s happened to me a time or two over the last eleven years here on this blog, usually in very small ways I’ve rushed to correct. The problem is that at the speed with which information now propagates upon its release in modern media, a lie can do real damage to our world, in ways that could be measured in millions of lives.
When the pandemic coverage had begun in 2020, I’d already suspected Fauci of giving us all a load of internally inconsistent nonsense. From a logical point of view, many of his pronouncements didn’t make sense. His answers were either unnecessarily evasive or expressed with unjustifiable certitude. Some of it was simply nonsensical. Mark Levin was among the first people in conservative media who featured Fauci as a guest, on his show on Foxnews. Fauci used Levin’s credibility with his conservative audience to ensnare them with his now largely-debunked and almost completely refuted narratives. I dare Mark Levin to now go back and re-watch the garbage he permitted Fauci to spew under the banner of “Life, Liberty and Levin,” and tell me that somehow, he feels unashamed for having failed his audience. He should feel pain if he now re-watches that episode, particularly considering that people made life-and-death-level decisions based on Fauci’s pronouncements early on. Mark Levin is a trusted source among conservatives like me. You can do the math. The fact that Fauci was saying these things on Levin’s show made them seem more reliable. Silly, gullible me. While I still didn’t trust Fauci, I did trust Mark Levin, and Fauci had now been given Levin’s virtual imprimatur. Fool me once…
Less than one year later, on January 6th, 2021, I listened as Mark Levin came on the radio and raged against the rioters at the Capitol on that day. He railed against the people at the Capitol, as if they were the terrorists my gut said they hadn’t really been, at least most of them. I listened, and I began to get that sickly feeling of disappointment. Was Levin falling for another false story? Since then, Levin has clearly realized, due to in-depth reporting by people like Julie Kelly, that he wasn’t getting the full story then, either. This entire episode had been frustrating to me because I actually know a man who observed some of what went on at the Capitol that day, during the event, from outside the Capitol, where he could see much of what was going on. While he never went into or anywhere near the scrum going on outside, he was in a position to see that there were numerous and obvious provocateurs. He told me that at one point, it became clear to him that at least some of the Capitol Police appeared to be acting in collusion with some of the provocateurs. Many innocent dupes followed the provocateurs into the Capitol, and my friend could see this happening. Some of the dupes were even drawn into a melee with police by the provocateurs, which happens quite easily in a crowd this size. As these events were happening, I was in my office listening to accounts of it, live on the radio, wondering immediately if this was another DC-UniParty setup. Why wasn’t that Levin’s first instinct? He has enough experience to have spotted it. I live half a continent away, but I can smell DC BS from the other side of the planet these days. This event had that stench from the beginning. Despite our shared experience of the last several years, for more than a few radio hosts, it wasn’t so obvious for some reason, but should have been. Instead, we got the usual “we condemn all violence” business, in a fashion no different than Chris Wallace repeatedly demanding that Trump denounce white supremacists on the debate stage, starting from the ridiculous premise that Trump were some sort of racist who now needed to renounce such associations. Conservatives must lose their fear of these smear-jobs, because it cripples them, not only politically but also intellectually, which is the intent of the smear-artists. For all appearances to the world, Levin and many other hosts were pushing the mainstream media, DC UniParty narrative, again.
Levin is a passionate advocate for positions in the information sphere, as am I, which is undoubtedly a large measure of what draws me to his broadcasts daily. I don’t make decisions about issues or candidates on the basis of emotion, but instead take a firm and careful accounting of them. Once I’ve done so, I then apply my passion to the conclusions I’ve drawn in explaining an issue or advocating a particular stance. The problem that arises for people like Mark Levin, Dan Bongino, or anybody else in the broadcast space is that things move incredibly fast. Information blasts in and out, and it is updated and superseded by better, more accurate information, but also sometimes more bogus, inflated, and hyped information. It happens constantly. In this environment, one is going to make judgments about the newsworthiness of a story in an accelerated frame of reference, and it will necessarily lead to a much higher rate of error than it will, for instance, on a lowly blog published in the backwaters of the Internet. Some of the posts here are composed, fact-checked, and pushed out in thirty minutes or less, but those are rare. In the main, the postings on this site will have taken hours to compose, sometimes days, or longer, and I’ve been known to table a story indefinitely if I think my information isn’t solid enough. If you were to have access to what’s here, you would see that I have almost half as many posts in “draft” status as the almost fourteen-hundred posts that have been published over the span of years. Those drafts are posts you cannot see, and many of them you will likely never see, but this is the process. If a story just doesn’t stand up as I think it should, it’s never published. That’s born of the luxury of knowing I’ll almost never be “first” with a story, and that all I can offer is a unique perspective, or new details you hadn’t been presented before, and because the speed at which I present information is far less important to my audience than the idea that I get it right.
Levin sometimes has excellent instincts. In March of 2017, based on a smattering of seemingly unrelated stories across several media outlets including McClatchy and the New York Times, Levin’s good instinct for political chicanery by Democrats led him to piece together the story we’ve all come to know is SpyGate, which actually encompasses a whole universe of sub-scandals, from spying on the Trump campaign and presidency, to the use of that information to concoct two fake impeachment narratives. The chicanery also revealed what should be the biggest scandal of all: The corruption of the FISA system by actors within the Justice Department and the FBI, along with others both directing and participating in these activities in the administration, and on the FISA court. What Levin’s instinct (and experience within the DOJ)provided him was the starting point for unveiling what should be known as the greatest scandal in American history, but for the fact that the corrupt and corruptible media will never willingly report on it. Claims that Levin is incapable of stellar research and investigation are to be ignored. It’s clear he has the experience and clear-eyed thinking to analyze such things. Why does it seem, of late, that he’s not nearly so clear-eyed in his appraisals? We can always forgive errors born of honest intent, but the problem is that media will attack even for those sorts of instances.
Levin bitterly complained after a small error in his most recent book, runaway New York Times best-seller American Marxism, was made out to be a mortal sin by a few among the chattering class in the leftist mainstream media. In general, his books are extremely informative and well-written. They’re amazingly well-researched and thoroughly documented. Few authors go to the lengths to provide the citations that Levin routinely does within the pages of his books. The problem is that when those critics reviewing your books are doing so with a political bias and intent, what you get instead of honest critiques are partisan hit-jobs. Levin made the error of writing “Franklin School” instead of “Frankfurt School,” as if that’s not an easy mistake to make and and a more difficult error to spot in editing. From the point of view of the full-tilt leftist media, this was the worst scandal in literary history, and they used it to libel him mercilessly. There’s a vast difference between an innocent error and the intentional falsehoods leftists publications gin through their presses and websites daily.
One of the problems is that in broadcasting, information moves extremely rapidly, and if you let yourself become emotionally invested in your conclusions about a given story too quickly, you’re going to get burned, quickly losing the trust of your audience, particularly if you don’t forthrightly confront the story’s inaccuracies or plain falsehoods promptly, as Bongino did on Monday and again Wednesday. In the case of Mark Levin, I’ve come to a crossroad due to this trouble. As a matter of loyalty for all his years of hard work, honest advocacy, and excellent programming, I am easily persuaded to give him another chance. And another. And probably several more. The crisis I’m beginning to experience is that this has become something of a trend, but more importantly, he surely became aware between his broadcasts of Tuesday and Wednesday that the use of thermobaric or cluster bombs (by either party) in the war in Ukraine are unconfirmed. I listened intently to the whole of his Wednesday broadcast, as I do most days, waiting for him to step right into the matter and clear it up. He never did.
Another sin of Levin’s is made up of his best intentions to advance conservatism. On many more than one occasion, due to his desire to defeat the left, he’s let alleged conservatives on the air, generally Republicans seeking election/re-election, who come on to use his platform in a political season, often seeking his endorsement or even just the legitimacy among conservatives lent to them by appearing on his airwaves. Lindsey Graham? Kevin McCarthy? There are more. Too many, really. I remember yelling at my radio, riding down the road “Mark, why do you bring these RINOs on your program? They’re going to screw you and betray us as soon as they’re re-elected.” Well? Have they? Yes, sadly they have. Levin himself was gently commenting on this recently. He knows. What he may not realize is how thoroughly it harms his credibility.
Since the beginning of the Russian attack on Ukraine, Levin has begun to bang the pots and pans indicating he’s very much in favor of some kind of intervention, or at least assistance to the beleaguered people of Ukraine. It’s leading him to accept too quickly the dis/misinformation he’s getting from some source(s), perhaps at Foxnews, or perhaps elsewhere. This has begun to seriously impact his credibility. On Wednesday evening, my worst fears in this vein were realized when he began gushing over Never-Trumper FoxNews Pentagon Correspondent, Jennifer Griffin, who’s a known leftist, clearly committed to corrupting news over at FoxNews. She’s one of the demons involved in the fake, ridiculous story about Trump at Normandy back in 2018, in which he allegedly called service-members who died there “suckers.” At the time of the story, Griffin said she was “unable to confirm the more salacious details,” implying she had confirmed the less salacious details, which naturally, she hadn’t. The whole story was later debunked, but as usual, the debunking never received coverage to scale of its the story’s original propagation. If this is one of Levin’s routine sources on national security matters, then nothing he says on the subject is even remotely reliable any longer. I get it: He’s not a reporter, but he still has some obligation to the facts, and he needs to be more discerning in selecting his sources. Neither Griffin nor Baier, both to whom Levin seems to have some unusual attachment, are what I would consider reliable or even particularly passable sources. Before going on an anger-fueled rant about how he’d happily provide his own weapons to the people of Ukraine, perhaps it would be a good idea to verify the reports of cluster-bombs and thermobaric bombs allegedly employed by the Russians. When it turns out, less than one day later, that the stories were either false or at least unverified, what then can he say to pull back on the bombast? It’s too late. Elvis has left the building. The best he can do is to retract the story later, but how does he then retract the bombast? He almost certainly won’t. He’s likely to leave that part stand, despite being at least partially motivated by the false stories. This is the danger of the passion when driven by unchecked or unverified information. As of now, he’s still letting the thermobaric and cluster bomb stories stand. I suppose he hopes we won’t notice, or that the unverified stories will become verified, or even mooted by future verified use.
Bongino was more measured Wednesday, having mostly abandoned the narrative that Putin had become unhinged and “irrational,” instead pulling it back to “unpredictable.” The interesting part about that is that in times past, Bongino had criticized Biden for destroying any “strategic ambiguity,” while praising Trump for having maintained it. “Strategic ambiguity” consists, in part, of unpredictability. On Monday and Tuesday, he had relentlessly pounded on the idea that Putin was perhaps irrational or even insane. It doesn’t help that this has been the mainstream media and UniParty narrative. Here is Hillary Clinton from Tuesday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show:
Notice that Clinton questions Putin’s state of mind too. It’s foolish to assume your enemy is a crackpot because he’s become less predictable. In time of War, I would in many respects seek to make myself as unpredictable as possible to adversaries and enemies. It would be my intention to keep them guessing, and I’d want them to worry mightily about my willingness to ratchet-up the intensity or scope of the war. Bongino likes to talk about how President Trump had maintained a cloak of “strategic ambiguity” around his foreign policy intentions. Why would Putin behave differently? In contrast, Clinton famously had her reset button with the Russians while serving as Secretary of State, a job she was woefully ill-equipped to perform. Fortunately for her, it did give her access to bilk much of the globe with her Clinton Foundation. It was strictly a cash-and-carry operation, and there was no “strategic ambiguity” in it. Her mission was to cart away cash, and Russia fully understood it.
The other thing clear in the video is that the DC UniParty establishment is trying to capture the mantle of Ronald Reagan, as they continue their anti-Trump narrative. People like Levin and Bongino need to think very carefully about who’s providing the information they now rely upon to make pronouncements about Ukraine. If I could ask either man a question, I think I might pose it this way:
Consider the following list of names: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Mitt Romney, Adam Schiff, Susan Rice, Eric Swalwell, Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, Fiona Hill, “Colonel” Vindman, Victoria Nuland, Ron Klain, and Jake Sullivan.
Now consider the events in Ukraine since roughly 2004. Then consider the activities of that list of people(and other cohorts) over the intervening period. Then, consider the following facts: In 2014, with funding and assistance from the US State Department, US DOD, and various US intelligence agencies, there was a coup d’etat in Ukraine. Essentially, the US fomented and funded regime-change in Ukraine. Ever since, the narrative in DC by the establishment, particularly the Democrats, has been “Russia, Russia, Russia.” Even Mitt Romney talked about Russia in his debate appearance, but Obama immediately deflected the question by mocking Romney. Had Romney inadvertently let a cat escape the proverbial bag?
Now ask: How many of the people listed above were involved in the RussiaHoax/SpyGate, the First Impeachment of Trump, the Second Impeachment of Trump, and how many had a hand in the January sixth story, events, and subsequent narrative? How many are now pushing the official DC UniParty’s Ukraine narrative, in concert with corrupt and corruptible media?
The media lies endlessly to us, and those lies don’t stop with events beyond the water’s edge. Meanwhile, I have to hear Levin questioning the patriotism of Americans who are questioning the official DC narrative, or suggesting they’re Russophiles or similar garbage. That’s what I expect from Hillary Clinton, so that when I hear it coming from the radio in Mark Levin’s voice, I must ask him: “What in the Hell are you thinking?” Why would Mark Levin now take up the “Russia, Russia, Russia” allegations of Hillary Clinton only to aim them against members of his own audience? On the basis of information from which sources? Jennifer-freaking-Griffin???
These two men have repeatedly demonstrated their capacity for intense investigations and research, but they’ve been steered in the Ukraine story largely by emotion, driven by many false stories, false narratives, and imagery that’s been created but unsubstantiated in far too many cases. In media generally, we’ve been shown a story about Miss Ukraine, bearing arms and ready to fight, but the rifle she’s pictured with is an airsoft rifle, (airsoft being a sport she enjoys.) We’ve been told about the “Ghost of Kiev,” by such low-lifes as Adam Kinzinger, that has turned out to be an utter hoax. The Snake Island story turned out to be propaganda in the larger dimension: It appears that rather than having been killed after telling their Russian attackers to “Go F’ themselves,” they laid down their arms in surrender, and are now all safe, albeit disarmed and removed from the battlefield. We’ve had a member of the Ukrainian Parliament tell the world that she’s fighting “not only for Ukraine, but for the New World Order.” We’ve had every manner of false story propagating, not merely from the combatants, but particularly from the Western media. The number of fabricated, concocted stories coming out of the war zone are far too numerous to list here. Even the imagery is frequently suspect, as reported elsewhere on this site.
That Levin and Bongino walked into some of these stories is no surprise. I too was sucked into one of them early on. The Snake Island story recalled the bravado and courage of the Alamo, until it didn’t. What’s been surprising and disappointing is how thoroughly Levin has been entirely swamped by some of it. Bongino corrected the record, in his defense and to his credit. So far, Levin has not, and he’s not backed-off his bombastic declarations about his willingness to ship arms to a country that has been a playground for the DC UniParty’s money-launderers. The alleged brave acts(it’s not that I doubt the bravery of Ukrainians, but only the veracity of this narrative) are being pushed in media with a reckless disregard for fact-checking and verification, which is the definition of war-time propaganda. The “fog of war” only clears if we work to make that hapen. It’s important for talkers to right their ships when they get a story wrong. Sometimes, it’s understandable and forgivable if the host makes amends by leading with the truth or a correction at the next available opportunity, as Bongino has done this week. We need solid information, and while I still want the passion both men bring to their respective endeavors in media, I have to insist that they improve their information-vetting, by reconsidering the sources they now employ. Clearly, some of those sources are of dubious veracity. I enjoy the presentations of each man, both interesting and entertaining, as well as bracing and motivating, but I need the foundation to be solid. Everybody makes mistakes, me included, but there are innocent errors and errors of incomplete information, but there are also errors born of haste, undue passion, lack of due diligence and malice. I expect the former to happen from time to time, and they are entirely generally to be forgiven upon forthright correction. The other sort, when they become habitual, threaten to turn an outlet or a show into nothing better than another mainstream media outlet: Corrupt or corruptible. This also applies to many others in the conservative space. In a moment of excess passion, it could easily happen to me. We must fight against this kind pollution of facts driven by our own intemperance, but we must also hold outlets and hosts accountable. I need Levin to correct the record, telling his audience that reports of thermobaric bombs or cluster bombsintentionally targeting civilians are unconfirmed, unverified reports at this time. In fact, their use at all remains unverified. These weapons are indeed nasty, but the US has employed cluster-bombs too. Ask the Iraqis. Ask the Afghans. What makes their use illegal, like so many weapons of war, is their use in the intentionaltargeting of civilians. Under various international treaties and conventions, doing so constitutes a war crime. It’s important for Levin to fix this at the next opportunity, and as ever, at least for the moment, I’ll be listening this evening to see if he will.
I was watching Fox and Friends on Thursday morning. Pete Hegseth was substituting for Steve Doocey, alongside regulars Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade, and in their last hour, about nine minutes in, Pete mentioned how the discussion always turns to guns. Ainsley asked Pete what he uses a “gun like that for,” implying that an AR-15 is something odd or weird. Pete made an explanation about his right to defend himself and so on, but he seemed unprepared for the question, and I think Ainsley was trying to ambush him a little. Watch this video, beginning at 9:20:
https://youtu.be/Xa9LBzsEW20?t=550
Here’s the problem: Ainsley Earhardt doesn’t apparently know the first thing about firearms, and Pete Hegseth doesn’t know how to defend his position very well.
Both aspects of this small clip are discouraging to me, because I am terribly frustrated that Ms. Earhardt hasn’t taken the time to inform herself, and Mr. Hegseth, a veteran, hasn’t made himself more able to defend his position and be prepared to answer the kind of question Earhardt asked. It shouldn’t be difficult to shine a little light in this darkness.
I’d love to help them both. First, Ms. Earhardt should be open to a little weapons education. I’m sure with his friends and connections, Mr. Hegseth can find somebody to facilitate a little range-time and take the Fox and Friends show on the road, maybe to Ms. Earhardt’s home state of South Carolina. In that state, it should be easy to find people who’d be willing to demonstrate the difference between a select-fire AR or AK type rifle and the more run-of-the-mill auto-loading (or semi-automatic) firearms so that she could be informed. After all, this is not difficult. Let Ms. Earhardt fire the actual military versions, on automatic(with coaching) and then fire the semi-automatic cousins. Show that externally, the two weapons can look exactly alike, minus the selector for automatic.
Now, with respect to Mr. Hegseth, it’s a somewhat easier cure. Hegseth seems to be a reasonably intelligent guy, but based on this segment, I don’t think he’s spent much time thinking about how to defend his position in an highly politicized environment. He should have asked Ms. Earhardt, first: “Do you know the difference between an actual so-called “assault rifle” which is the actual weapon of war, and a civilian modern sporting rifle, which however it looks, is not an “assault weapon?”
Whatever Ms. Earhardt may or may not know, it doesn’t seem she’s well-versed in firearms. At that point, she would probably be reduced to: “No, I don’t know the difference.” This is where education can occur. Let me help. The two popular types, AK and AR, have several things in common. In the main, they are gas-operated rifles that us the spent gas of one round to automatically load the next round. Where the difference between the military version and the civilian version comes in is the fact that the military versions have the ability to continue firing by simply holding the trigger. In this mode, the cyclic rate of these rifles can be extraordinary, in the case of the AR platform, obtaining a rate of 800 rounds per minute. The AKs, due to their heavier reciprocating assembly(bolt, carrier, piston, etc) are somewhat slower, attaining roughly 600 rounds per minute, but their bullets are roughly twice as heavy, carrying more energy even though they move at roughly 2/3s to 3/4s the muzzle velocity of the .223/5.56mm round used by the AR platform.
Hegseth should be well-versed in the technical differences between automatic and semiautomatic weapons. That’s not his problem. His problem is his inability to express the need he might have of such a rifle, but more importantly the right he has to own one. My readers are well aware of the fact that I believe machine guns ARE covered(and protected) by the Second Amendment. Let assume, however, that we intended only to defend the right to own a semi-automatic version that is a machine-gun look-alike. Let’s start with our right. Leftists and other anti-gun folk claim that when the 2nd Amendment was adopted, the standard service arm of the day was a musket. This is true, however, both semi-automatic and automatic arms had been invented, but were seen as too expensive for Congress to obtain in numbers sufficient to outfit their army. However, it is important to understand that the musket was the standard of that day. So was the feather quill pen and ink well, along with the manually set printing press. The notion was that armed citizens ought to have and maintain the ability to resist an overbearing government, which would imply directly that the founders thought citizens ought to be at parity with the Army, at least in terms of firearms. At the very least then, we can see that the founders’ intended object of the the 2nd Amendment was to guarantee the right to an armed resistance in case of blossoming tyranny.
Part of the problem is that Earhardt asked the question: What do you use them(“assault weapons”) for? The great thing about the modern AR type rifle is that it works great for many things. They’re excellent all-around ranch guns, they’re excellent for self-defense in situations where the defender is outnumbered, and they are useful in hunting. (Some state prohibit some calibers for hunting, but it may be game-dependent and so on.) Of course, you can built an AR-type rifle in many calibers, and also an AK-type. At times, I’ve seen AR-15 platform rifles in at least a dozen calibers, AR-10s in several more, and AKs in at least a half-dozen, including 12 and 20 gauge shotguns.
Hegseth, caught a little flat-footed, managed to say “for personal protection,” but he should have had a laundry list: “To defend my home, to hunt, to do target practice, I compete with others, and I keep up my skills in case I’m ever called upon to return to active duty to defend my country,” or some variant of that. Instead, he came across as somebody who walked into a battle he didn’t know he was going to be called upon to fight. I do wonder if Earhardt didn’t ambush him with that question. She may be sincere, but I think the question was part of satisfying an agenda. Of course, that’s fine, but Hegseth should have been ready.
Now, if Hegseth was clever, he’d make a pitch to do a remote from some place in South Carolina, perhaps he could contact the good folks at Palmetto State Armory, and maybe for the publicity, they’d be willing to host a little shoot and bring Ms. Ainsley down there to her home state and do some shooting. I think it would be awesome. They sell both AK and AR platform rifles, and they have a great reputation. They may even be able to get somebody who owns properly-licensed automatics to do a little demonstration. The point is, it shouldn’t be hard for FoxNews to provide actual education to their audience, if they wanted to do so.
Let people see the differences. If pictures are worth a thousand words, then video is worth a million. I think this is the value of having people in the gun-owning community reach out to the woefully uneducated to fill in the vacuum. People have a tendency to fill in the unknown with the bogey-man. They don’t fill in the unknown with rainbows and unicorns. If you can alleviate the vacuum by replacing it with actual knowledge, questions like Earhardt’s will be answered and the bogey-man will be vanquished. At the same time, somebody like Hegseth must do much more to be prepared for those kinds of questions. He should have crushed it, but he came across looking a little evasive and uncomfortable in his answer. That’s definitely NOT what the gun community needs.
It could be that I’m picking at nits, but I think people who are going to discuss gun ownership before audiences of a million or more ought to have their acts together. I like Hegseth, as he seems committed to assisting veterans’ organizations, and he certainly seems to have his heart in the right place. It’s not that his answer was “bad,” so much as it seemed incomplete and unprepared. Earhardt, earning the money she does working at FoxNews, ought to be able to alleviate her ignorance if she was sincere. Given her home state, it should be easy for her to discover the answers. I think it’s fair to suggest that before one throws around terms like “assault weapons,” one ought to know what that terms is being used to describe.
I’m not going to spend too much time prefacing this video. On Wednesday, substituting for Laura Ingraham on her 10pm Eastern “Ingraham Angle” show, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee spoke with guests Rudy Guliani, Joe diGenova, and Robert Ray. The most important part of this video is everything Joe DiGenova had to say, and you should pay particular attention to what he says near the end about Admiral Mike Rogers. This is stunning, and what it suggests is that there is big trouble for several Obama Administration officials. Watch this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4pNMNcqjyg
If what Joe diGenova asserts here holds up, and he’s got a great record for accuracy on these things, then it’s about to “get real” for some of Obama’s flunkies. So much for Obama’s phony claims of having an administration untarnished by scandals. (Assuming you forget the laundry list of them, from Fast and Furious to the IRS/TEA Party scandal, to Benghazi, to etc…) The simple fact here is that the spying was probably used against Romney in 2012 too, making the recent behavior of that freshman senator all the more peculiar. Does he know he was being screwed? Did they blackmail him? It’s hard to know, but diGenova clearly describes this scandal as stretching back more than four years before the 2016 election. That means at least going back through the 2012 election, perhaps all the way to the Benghazi attack time-frame of 11 September 2012.
The more we learn, the more we come to find that the Obama administration is full of corruption, and if what diGenova claims here holds up, then the next two months are going to bring into the light all sorts of infamy. It’s about time.
As usual, the open-borders, chamber-of-commerce media, including FoxNews rushed out to tell you what you need to know. As usual, they intentionally mislead you about the nature of the law. While I’ve already covered this issue, demonstrating plainly that President Trump has the authority, the media is great at lying and propagandizing, and sadly, that includes FoxNews on immigration-related issues. Everything is squeezed through the filters they want you to see. Let’s take a look at what FoxNews “Judicial Analyst” Andrew Napolitano has to say, and let’s see about the facts. First, the video:
Now let’s analyze Napolitano’s claims and assertions about the law, which I’ve here paraphrased and condensed for further examination:
Presidents can’t seize property under emergency declarations.
Presidents can’t spend money without congressional authorization in an emergency.
The President must “make a case” for a declared emergency.
If the President had authority to spend money under emergencies, we’d have seen it before, but we haven’t.
Sometimes Congress has “looked the other way” when Presidents reallocate defense money from one use to another, but it doesn’t make it lawful.
First, as a general observation, let it be acknowledged that in certain respect, Andrew Napolitano is a radical libertarian on immigration generally, which is a strong reason for FoxNews to have picked somebody else to provide “Judicial Analysis.” Naturally, FoxNews is itself a corporation that favor open borders, so it’s easy enough to understand their motives in picking open border hacks like Napolitano to make this particular case.
The first assertion of Napolitano was that the President cannot seize property under emergency declarations.
Let’s just stop right there on Napolitano’s first point. He’s busted. Thoroughly. There are hundreds more examples where Presidents made seizures of private property in time of war or emergency. It’s called the “rule of necessity,” and it is the legal basis for all emergency doctrine. Like most libertarians, I find such authority despicable, but they exist, have been exercised, and precedents must be recognized, as all the “wise judicial analysts” like to insist.
The Law: 1 Andrew Napolitano: 0
His next assertion was that Presidents can’t spend money without authorization by Congress in an emergency. Let’s ask a Democrat Congressman:
Imagine that! In addition to this, however, there are at least three known instances of Presidents’ spending without any prior Congressional appropriations:
Washington’s Unilateral spending to suppress the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion
Jefferson’s purchases of saltpepper and sulphur after the Chesapeake incident
Lincoln’s advance of $2 million to purchase supplies in advance of the Civil War in 1861
These are older examples, but if it was good enough for Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, it’s probably good enough for President Trump.
The Law: 2 Andrew Napolitano: 0
His next assertion was that Presidents must “make a case” to declare emergencies. This implies that a President must go find approval. That’s not the case. In point of fact, all a president must do is issue an emergency declaration, and point to his legal authority, and then act. This has been done repeatedly.
The Law: 3 Andrew Napolitano: 0
His next assertion has already been covered: He claimed that if the President had such authority, we’d have seen it used before, but we haven’t. See Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln above.
The Law: 4 Andrew Napolitano: 0
His last general assertion is that Congress may have “looked the other way” when it suited them, but that it isn’t lawful.
The problem with this notion is that legal precedents are born of such practices. If Congress historically “looks the other way,” time after time, permitting the President to do such things without challenging them, it can also be interpreted as an endorsement of that action, or at least an affirmation of its legitimacy. In short, the court could very well view it as a precedent that bears upon their decisions thereafter. “Looking the other way” once or twice might be tantamount to surrendering the issue in perpetuity.
The Law: 5 Andrew Napolitano: 0
Of course, there was at least one more assertion that had been made by Brian Kilmeade in the video clip above. He mentioned that one couldn’t rightly term this an “emergency” because it would take too long.
This is a bizarre point. The United States has been operating under all sorts of emergency statutes for DECADES, some of them continuously since the days of Jimmy Carter, and even earlier. Read this fascinating article.
Imagine that, and yes, score Mr. Kilmeade a big fat zero.
It’s time for the left and the pro-amnesty, open-borders media and political culture to shut the Hell up and get out of President Trump’s way. If he declares an emergency, he’ll have every bit of law and precedence on his side.
Saturday afternoon, I took a little bit of time to watch some news. I flipped over to FoxNews, and there I witnessed Mickey Cargile explaining to openly supportive host Eric Shawn and his audience that drug prices are a moral issue, and a quality of life issue, more than economic issue. I couldn’t agree more. His conclusion, however, was based on the moral system of collectivism. I realize that the anchors and stories on FoxNews on weekends tend to be the “B-Team” or even the “C-Team,” but this is despicable. Watch for yourself:
Apparently, Cargile believes this is a moral issue, but unfortunately, his moral standard is collectivism. He ignores entirely the morality of a civilized country inasmuch as he openly attacks private property rights, private wealth, and the freedom to choose. Reading between the lines, he’s advocating some sort of government-enforced price control at the very least, and perhaps even complete expropriation at the worst. This implies violence. In order to enforce such a thing, what one is saying is that one is ready to kill people in order to take their things if they do not otherwise consent.
The host, for his part, is no better. He smears the owners of the rights to the Hepatitis C treatment under discussion as people who are merely out to profit, first, as if profit is somehow an evil, and second in that they might use that profit to “buy a new Ferrari.” This shameful broadcast merely confirms my contention that FoxNews is all about co-opting conservatism. There’s nothing remotely conservative in this, Cargile’s protests about his continuing devotion to the free market notwithstanding.
For those who don’t understand the principles involved, let us be clear: If you invent a thing, and I purchase the rights to that thing from you, my moral claim to the thing in question is every bit as legitimate as yours when you had invented the thing. More, since it’s now my thing, I have the absolute right to buy it and sell it as I see fit, and the only moral method by which to obtain it is to pay the price at which we arrive by mutual consent. Any government interference in that exchange, either to my benefit or to a purchaser’s, is tyranny.
What Cargile advocates in this clip is tyranny. What the hapless Mr. Shawn approvingly supports is no different from what Hugo Chavez had imposed in that poor, enslaved, collapsing communist state that is Venezuela: Communism. The closer we get to complete collapse, and the more people begin to shrug their shoulders over the concepts and moral standing of individual rights, the more rapidly our collapse will accelerate.
One might argue, as the communists at FoxNews seem to insist, that there is some maximum amount that ought to be charged for some life-saving, or quality-of-life-preserving drug or treatment. My question for you is: Had I Hepatitis C, how much of my earnings would I forego for how long a period to finance a cure? Is there any amount of money I would not pay? One might argue, as the dolts on FoxNews have done here, that such a burden is unaffordable, and use this as a justification to steal. Theft via government action is still theft, even though done under color of law. The fact that the government was placed in office by vote does not reduce the significance of the crime, but merely multiplies the number of criminals and broadens the expanse of the guilt(though its concentration is not diluted.)
With this sort of thing becoming the norm on FoxNews, as further evidence of the spread of collectivist ethics throughout the culture, we cannot and will not last.
Seldom is there a shortage of stupid, insipid, vapid ideas in the mainstream media, but lately, it’s coming from every direction. I was watching the idiot at 8pm(Eastern) on the diminishing network that is Fox News, when he promoted an upcoming segment featuring Michele Bachmann(R-MN.) The segment has not yet played, and I’m not really interested in anything this perpetual TV dipstick has to say, so I was not surprised at the vacuous formulation of his segment, based on a recent McClatchy-Marist poll: “Why are the American people still more dis-satisfied with Republicans than Democrats?” Let me suggest an answer that refuses to evade the obvious, irrespective of what Bachmann may or may not say in response, and howsoever the bloviating 8pm-er may otherwise characterize it. It’s really a simple math problem, and it’s time we ask goof-balls like O’Reilly to understand mathematics. There is one reason Republicans are doing more poorly in Congressional approval polls, and it is not because they’re not moderate enough. In fact, it’s just the opposite.
Various surveys tell us that roughly 20-25 percent of the populace considers itself liberal. As much as 42 percent consider themselves conservative. The rest consider themselves mushy moderates and independents. Let me suggest that we break this up into a simpler math question: If 33 percent of respondents approve of Democrats in Congress, that is roughly equivalent to the number of avowed liberals and a portion of the “moderates” who are simply embarrassed liberals hoping to maintain some semblance of non-partisan cover. The rest of the country hates the Democrats, including some actual moderates. Meanwhile, the same 33 percent can be counted on to hate the Republicans. One might then think that since 40-45 percent of the populace considers themselves conservative, Republicans would gain the benefit. Actually, it’s not like this at all. You see, since Republicans register around 25 percent approval, let us then admit that the group most likely to be adding to disapproval of Republicans isn’t the moderates, but instead, the conservatives. 42 percent plus 33 percent equals 75 percent. While I am confident there will be some instances in which this isn’t precisely true, the obvious answer is that the Democrats are disapproved less because their own core constituents support them relentlessly. In contrast, conservatives who constitute the core of the Republican constituency are as unhappy with Republicans as liberals are. Only squishy moderates like O’Reilly support Republicans.
This is not difficult math, so simple in fact, that even a mindless dolt like O’Reilly should be able to figure it out. The problem is, however, that it’s only easy to see if one is willing to see it. O’Reilly isn’t willing to see anything that contradicts the DC orthodoxy. When O’Reilly implies that it’s all because Republicans are too immoderate, he’s evading the truth, because it’s not a truth he wants to purvey. If the Republicans in Congress were interested in getting a better approval rating, they wouldn’t push ridiculous “bi-partisan” budget deals like the one now being offered by Paul Ryan(R-WI) and his Senate counterpart, the estimable Patty Murray(D-WA.) Conservatives are rightly disgusted with this and other deals, and the explicit unwillingness of Congressional Republicans to fight. 42 percent plus 33 percent equals 75 percent. Mathematical wizardry is not required. All one needs is a commitment to the simple truth, and that’s something Bill O’Reilly plainly lacks.
(Editor’s Note: Apparently, the math escaped Bachmann too, because her explanation turned out to be that the media is against Republicans, which while true, doesn’t answer the heart of the question.)
One story that garnered some media attention this week was a commentary written by Suzanne Venker at FoxNews. In the article entitled War on Men, Venker contends that the real war in our culture has been waged against men. Her conclusions are based on the observation that fewer and fewer men seem to have any interest in marriage, while interest among women is on the rise, but there exists a widespread lament about an alleged dearth of good men. In the end, Venker concluded that women may bear the blame for this situation, but that conclusion garnered outrage and mockery from the typical leftist outlets. At the same time, Limbaugh discussed the matter at length, but his conclusions were clearly different than those of the shrill left. What’s the truth? Is there a “war” on men? Is it being waged by women who are unknowingly setting themselves up for failure? I believe Venker is onto something, but I also think her article didn’t fully explore the ramifications, never mind all the conspirators. If real, this war has had a silent collaborator or two, and I think rather than casting most of the blame on women, she should have identified all of the culprits.
It is true to say that the character of women has fundamentally changed, and much of that was driven by the so-called “sexual revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s. Women have entered the workplace in unprecedented numbers, and they are now a majority of employees across the nation. Women now dominate numerically the college campus, and in many respects, women have managed to displace men entirely. According to Venker, much of this owes to anger with men, a feeling engendered and supported by our education establishment, much of which is dominated by women. Writes Venker:
“In a nutshell, women are angry. They’re also defensive, though often unknowingly. That’s because they’ve been raised to think of men as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, women pushed men off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs.”
This may not be entirely true, but there is at least a nugget of truth in it. There is a clear hostility toward men being engendered by the culture, and I think it is safe to say that any number of men might secretly agree with this sentiment, but while Venker seems to focus on the pedestal from which men were knocked, she spends a good deal less attention on the pedestal being abandoned by women. She finally arrives at a statement that some will find offensive, but nevertheless contains a good bit of information about one of the collaborators in this war:
“It’s all so unfortunate – for women, not men. Feminism serves men very well: they can have sex at hello and even live with their girlfriends with no responsibilities whatsoever.”
Here is where Venker both reveals an effect, but slips and falls on the cause. Spending a good deal of time researching relationships and the culture, Venker should have realized that there is some truth to that old admonishment that “men are only after one thing.” In the main, and in the short-run thinking of men, that’s probably more often true than not, so that when women climbed down off their once-lofty pedestal in favor of the lower pedestal men had always occupied, it wasn’t true that they were kicking men off, but that men went willingly, at least initially. The truth is that men hadn’t been kicked off the pedestal so much as bribed off of it. Of course, this is not all the story, but it provides some insight. When Venker says “no responsibilities whatsoever,” she is mostly correct when viewed from the short-run perspective of men, however those responsibilities would need to be fulfilled by somebody, and therein we shall find the chief collaborator.
While men were busy stepping down from the lower pedestal to which feminism had enticed women, after spending some time on that lowly perch, women were finding it wasn’t all they were promised it would be. Venker’s point has merit, but the question is: “Why would women so easily leap from the higher perch?” The roots of this phenomenon may be fundamental to our nature, and has been understood about the nature of people since the beginning of time. How close does this parallel what the Judeo-Christian ethos regards as the moment of the original sin? Genesis 3:6 relates:
“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”
This would have made it seem as though Adam had been a bystander, but as 1 Timothy 2:14 records:
“Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.”
This line of thinking then begs the question: “Who played the role of the serpent?” This is the identity of the other collaborator in the “War on men,”, and its name is government. If there is a war on men, there is no institution that has benefited more from the battle. If it is to be alleged that while Eve was beguiled by the serpent, and thus caused herself to be cast out of the garden, so it is true that men had been complicit inasmuch as they partook also of the fruit, raising no objection, but knowing the fruit would have a bitter aftertaste. Just as the serpent knew to make his case to women, so too have statists. In our modern culture, the aftertaste of this temptation is to be measured in the wreckage of families, both those dissolved and those never fully constituted, and its evidence is seen in the fundamental breakdown of our society that continues at breakneck speed. It is true that men have shirked responsibility, but the worst of it is not in their roles as fathers, so much as in their role as men altogether. You see, men didn’t fight for their pedestal because they assumed that if they yielded it, they would partake of the fruit too, and like Adam, foolishly believed they would avoid the consequences.
Now we arrive in a world in which Venker describes women as angry and resentful of men, but I can imagine Eve being resentful of Adam too, as they were cast out of the garden. “If you had known better, why didn’t you stop me?” Adam might respond in coy pragmatism: “How was I to stop you?” His unstated truth had been: “I didn’t want to…”
All of this demonstrates a strong cultural decline that evades description in modern platitudes. Instead, what drives all of this is a pervasive immorality based on the notion that one can have anything one wants instantly, without consequence or responsibility, and without regard to the costs. The provider of this temptation has been big government, and those who advance its cause. Men sought the immediate benefits of the sexual revolution without concerning themselves with some murky consequence in some distant future. That future has arrived, and if men now find they are bearing the cost, as Venker explains, women are bearing a terrible consequence:
“It’s the women who lose. Not only are they saddled with the consequences of sex, by dismissing male nature they’re forever seeking a balanced life. The fact is, women need men’s linear career goals – they need men to pick up the slack at the office – in order to live the balanced life they seek.
“So if men today are slackers, and if they’re retreating from marriage en masse, women should look in the mirror and ask themselves what role they’ve played to bring about this transformation.”
I disagree with Venker inasmuch as I believe the worst victims of this entire problem are children. Men are largely absent from the lives of their children, and they’re being raised in a world that diminishes roughly half of them explicitly, but all of them in fact. We are now more than two generations into this culture of instant gratification, and yet few seem to have been gratified in the long run.
Just as there was a rush by many on the left to screech at Venker, so I expect there will be those who take a similar stance toward me, who will accuse me of some misogyny or other “primitive thinking.” Apart from the fact that I don’t care who doesn’t like it, the simple fact is that we can measure the tragedy that has arisen in an America transformed by post-modern feminism, and it’s ugly. I don’t blame women even as much as Venker, because I believe men were tempted by short-run “benefits” just as surely as Adam stood by as Eve was beguiled. Venker concludes that women can correct all of this, but I disagree:
“Fortunately, there is good news: women have the power to turn everything around. All they have to do is surrender to their nature – their femininity – and let men surrender to theirs.”
“If they do, marriageable men will come out of the woodwork.”
Men cannot permit themselves to be complicit bystanders, who partake of the fruit but point back at women as the blame. Men have let their own standards slide, and until they raise them a good deal, and for longer than the short-run, it’s going to continue because women will have no cause to change. Imagine a world in which men are the ones who say “no.” Preposterous? Perhaps, but if our society is to survive, never mind return to a past “golden age,” somebody is going to have to say it, and what Venker’s article reveals is that slowly, men have begun to shift in that direction. Today, they’re saying “no” to marriage in unprecedented numbers. Where Venker sees this as a result of a war on men, I see it as a result of their moral capitulation. Far too many men have adopted the shoddy notion encapsulated in that well-worn misogynist retort: “Why buy the cow if the milk is for free?” The real question laid before men is now: Is it so free as you once thought? On that basis, women are right to ask if the contempt so many women now feel for men is so entirely undeserved as Venker’s piece suggests. If, as the Bible explains, men were to be the moral leaders, one might ask where they had been. After all, it wasn’t Eve alone who fell into temptation. If the war on men began with the serpent’s whispers in the Garden of Eden, we ought to ask why Adam surrendered so easily.
In what can only be described as a poke-in-the-eye to President Obama, residents of as many as thirty states have begun to petition the President to let their states peaceably secede from the union. This movement seems to be gaining momentum, and it’s largely in response to the election results of last week. Anger over widespread vote fraud is one of the chief complaints I’ve seen cited as the reason for the desire to split, but I think this simply demonstrates how divided this country has become. Most of the petitions seem to originate from what have been traditionally “red states,” but no state has more petitioners at present than the Lone Star State, Texas, with nearly sixty-thousand signatures already. No response has been forthcoming from the White House on this matter, but at some point, they will be forced to respond in some way. I don’t know that this is anything more than symbolic at this point, but the plain fact that so many Americans are openly talking about secession is certainly amazing. On Foxnews, Monday, the following graphic was run, captured by a Facebook user:
Since this graphic aired on FoxNews, more petitions have been added. The petitions can be viewed on the White House website, here. Maybe we can petition him to resign. What are the chances that he’ll respond favorably? Will he respond like an actual liberal and come down on the side of self-determination? Will he simply ignore it? Will his staff laugh it off? Will his response demonstrate his radical Marxist view by being somewhat more dictatorial?
My bet is that the White House tries to ignore it, and if cornered on it, Carney will laugh it off as just the rantings of nuts.
As more facts are revealed about the events in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11th, 2012, what is becoming increasingly obvious is that President Obama not only lied to the American people about the role of the now-infamous anti-Islam video, but also systematically covered-up the entire fiasco resulting in the deaths of Americans serving at the President’s direction in Libya. The President and others in his administration are playing fast and loose with the facts, and sources now say that there were at least three requests for aid that were denied by the chain of command. This is astonishing news, because what it directly implies is that the President’s statements about his first direction being to secure Americans was a bald-faced lie. President Obama not only lied to the American people, but he and those acting at his direction abandoned Americans on the field of battle. He flew off to Las Vegas, precisely to create an alibi. The problem is, as President of the United States, the White House goes with you wherever you may be. No, there will be no alibis this time, and this President must face the music, but if he is re-elected, he will not. Any political black eye will come long after he begins his new term, if it materializes at all. I can no longer refer to him as “President” Obama. No American president has ever behaved so cravenly. Re-elect him if you like, but he will be “the Coward” on the pages of this blog, for leaving Americans to be slaughtered, some who fought valiantly to save others, giving their lives for their countrymen.
One of the lies being pushed around is that he needed to “get to the bottom of this.” That’s hogwash. We now know that there were Predator drones in the air over the scene, at least one providing a live video feed of the situation on the ground. More, we also know that the valiant Tyrone Woods – one of the Navy Seals killed in this action – maintained contact and was actually ordered to stand down in his efforts to save others before he ignored orders and ultimately gave his life in that pursuit. His father, Charles Woods, has given several interviews, but on Friday night, he gave one to Sean Hannity, and during this interview, we learn a good deal about the character of Tyrone Woods as well as the Marxist Coward. You can play the audio of the phone interview below:
Alternative content
A number of the people in media are ignoring a central point about all of this, and I think it needs to be understood, because it demonstrates the absurdity of the Marxist Coward’s lies. There can be no way that Barack Obama was out of the loop. There can be no way he ever believed this was the result of protests against a video. That entire story was cooked up in the bowels of the Obama campaign. You might ask how I know this with such certainty.
The reports of Friday morning that urgent requests for assistance were denied offers the first bit of evidence. The damning bit of evidence came later in the day, when the CIA put out this statement:
“We can say with confidence that the Agency reacted quickly to aid our colleagues during that terrible evening in Benghazi. Moreover, no one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. In fact, it is important to remember how many lives were saved by courageous Americans who put their own safety at risk that night—and that some of those selfless Americans gave their lives in the effort to rescue their comrades.”(emphasis added)
“No one at any level in the CIA.” Notice it does not say “No one at any level.” This qualification is the damning bit. The CIA does not claim that requests for aids weren’t denied. The statement merely claims nobody in the CIA denied them. Once you realize this, it’s now a more important statement, because it doesn’t tell us who did deny such requests, but merely who did not. With that in mind, we must now ask: Who else would have the authority to deny a CIA request? The State Department doesn’t have that authority, except insofar as the request might have been made of them, but it wasn’t. They were asking for military support. That means the Department of Defense.
Those of you who have spent any time around any government operation will know that a situation or request spanning different departments and agencies of this sort will always go all the way up the chain of command, before coming back down. Unless there had been some sort of standing order to the DoD to provide support, there would have been, of necessity, a request up the chain through the CIA, landing on the desk of whom? Ultimately, there is only one office that can then take such a request and issue orders to DoD for such support. Only one. And that office and its occupant were beating feet for Las Vegas on Air Force One. Got it?
That’s right, a move like that can only happen with Presidential approval, either explicitly in advance, in the form of some blanket order, or as events unfold, in the certain terms and context of the moment. Hillary Clinton could not deny such a request. The Department of Defense couldn’t deny such a request. Only the President of the United States, in this case, the Cowardly Marxist, could deny such a request, or refuse to act on it. A President could ignore such a request until the event was over and the request mooted by the outcome, but that sort of request must pass through national command authority.
That’s right people. You want a smoking gun? You want proof that the cowardly Marxist-in-chief knew all along, and was hip-deep in this? There it is. The CIA says no one at any levelin the CIA denied such requests. They did not say that there were no such requests, or if there were, what had been the ultimate disposition of such requests. What you have here is a CIA statement intended to relieve its director of culpability. Later, it will not be said that this had been a false statement. No, the CIA is off the hook. This statement shields the CIA so long as it’s a true statement, to the degree it says anything of use. The value in this statement is what it leaves unsaid, and that is a whopper that lands in the lap of the lying Marxist coward who sporadically occupies the White House between fund-raising jaunts and Letterman appearances.
Ladies and gentlemen, the matter is clear, and the answer is simple: Either Barack Hussein Obama denied the request, or he shelved it until moot. What you have in Obama is a professional liar, and his administration is staffed with people who exist to obfuscate, shade the truth, and outright lie when necessary to fulfill their political agenda. Americans have died because of this rotten, miserable soul, and there’s a reason Tyrone Woods’ father sensed something akin to a dead fish in Obama’s handshake: Like all miserable cowards, he’s dead inside. It is time for Barack Obama to go. He has lost all valid claims to moral authority. Our country can no longer afford him, and if he remains in office, we will never know the whole truth, and no justice will be had for Tyrone Woods, a young man who acted heroically in the face of his own chain of command’s cowardice.
Governor Palin appeared on Fox with Eric Bolling to talk about the Ted Cruz victory, as well as other matters. Bolling asked her about a remark by lobbyist and former Senator Bob Bennett(R-UT) who had said that the “Tea Party wave is receding.” Gov. Palin responded: “Bless his heart, he’s a little out of touch… Bolling also asked Governor Palin about the convention, and she said “I just want to help,” but that “sometimes, helping means you step aside,” apparently meaning that Governor Palin won’t be part of the convention as a speaker, at least as it stands. Here’s the video, courtesy of the Barracuda Brigade:
Governor Palin appeared on Fox News with Sean Hannity on Thursday evening. They discussed a wide range of topics, including the controversy over the Barack Obama Campaign’s unwillingness to urge an Obama SuperPAC to return a million dollars donated by Bill Maher in light of his long history of misogynist remarks over the years, including some aimed at Governor Palin and other women, including Rep.Michele Bachmann (R-MN). This highlights the hypocrisy on the left, as they continue to pummel Rush Limbaugh for remarks that are tame by comparison to anything Maher has said.
The video is in two segments:
In the second segment, Hannity asked Governor Palin about the Breitbart tape:
On Super Tuesday, Fox News talked to former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. She was asked who she voted for in the GOP Primary in Alaska, and she was blunt: She voted for Newt Gingrich. She explained her thinking, and she explained why she thought the Republican primary contest should go on. She also referenced the behavior of the media, and its focus on other irrelevant issues, or distractions. She pointed to the focus Newt Gingrich has placed on the energy question, and she made it clear that Barack Obama must be replaced if we are going to turn this country around.
Governor Palin appeared on Hannity on FoxNews on Tuesday evening, explaining why she thinks this process of vetting is far from over. Hannity asked her a number of pointed questions, on a variety of topic revolving around the primary season, including whether the process should end soon, since it seems they’re damaging one another more than the President. She answered with a play on words:
“A boiled egg is hard to beat.”
Asked about the possibility of a brokered convention, she made it perfectly clear as to whether she thought she would have any role in it when Hannity asked about her willingness to step forward:
“The establishment will never come to me, I know that for a fact.”
They discussed the attacks coming at Rick Santorum, and went on to explain that people should stand with Santorum on the question of good and evil in this world. More, she stressed the very topic she’s discussed before, and I have explained at length in these pages about the direct link between our economy and the availability of energy resources, and how the lack of the latter throttles the former. You can watch the video here:
At least she wasn’t ranting and raving, quite. I think Ann has lost the last shred of her rapidly declining credibility. Her littany is exhausting:
Romney is “conservative.” Newt isn’t electable. Obama is “personally charming.” Tea Party is a bunch of “utter hypocrites” for supporting Newt. The “era of Rockefeller Republicans is over.”
Oh, and again: “Romney is the most conservative….”
In an appearance on Judge Jeanine Pirro’s Saturday show on FNC, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin explained her rationale for who would be the candidate best able to handle Obama in the debates, who would be most likely to prevail over Obama, and how she draws those distinctions. It was a telling interview, inasmuch as she did not endorse Newt Gingrich, but instead suggested that she wants to see the honest vetting of these candidates go on, and she made it plain that she didn’t think Mitt Romney had been entirely honest with some of his attacks.
This interview began only a few minutes after Herman Cain announced he was endorsing Newt Gingrich at an event in Florida. Here’s the video:
Sarah Palin pointed out that Romney’s negative ads were not merely normal rough-and-tumble campaigning in Florida and reflected the politics of personal destruction. Palin pointed out that Romney drew first blood with negative attack ads in Iowa, but that Gingrich had tried to run a positive campaign. She mentioned how the tone of the campaign worsened when those in the DC establishment. She described Gingrich as an “agent of change.” The former Alaska governor spoke of her dislike of pundits, on Fox and elsewhere, who are “gleefully proclaiming” Romney as the “inevitable nominee.” Among other things, she also defended Gingrich, and describe him as the best candidate to “clobber Obama in the debates.” She said “Rage against the machine? Vote Newt! Annoy a liberal? Vote Newt!” In addition, Palin went to some lengths to explain that she would like to hear more about how Romney’s Massachusetts Healthcare plan was the model for Obamacare.
Again, while Governor Palin clearly isn’t endorsing a candidate as yet, she seems to be very supportive of Gingrich at this time. She also seems of the mind that there’s still some honest vetting to do, and while she was clearly disappointed with the dishonest smear tactics that had been used against Gingrich, she did stress that issues are issues, and we ought to welcome that fight. Lastly, I don’t know if it was just Pirro rushing to make the hard break, but near the end of the segment, Pirro talked over Palin several times, and the segment ended with an abrupt cut-off just as Palin was explaining her view of the establishment. I don’t know that this means anything, but then again, we’ve learned a good deal about media outlets recently.
Endorsement or not, Palin’s message was pretty clear: In Florida, vote Newt! Rage against the machine? Vote Newt! Annoy a liberal? Vote Newt! (I must admit the last one particularly appeals to me.)
Another so-called conservative lost her mind in public again today, this time on Fox and Friends. It’s funny to see Ann Coulter attempt to pass herself off as a mainstream Republican. In New York, maybe. She puts forward a pair of contradictory premises. On the one hand, she says that the voters who Republicans need to attract for the general election are those who trend more to the center, or even a little left, but on that basis, Gingrich isn’t the best choice. Then she attacks Gingrich for being to the left of Romney. The fact that Coulter can’t see this contradiction before she proposes it is all the evidence you need to know that she has now become completely unhinged.
The war against Newt continues to escalate. The GOP establishment is clearly terrified. Here’s the video:
The fact that Coulter dismisses the plurality of the South Carolina electorate who voted for Newt, or the vast majority that didn’t support her guy, Mitt Romney, is a key to understanding that Coulter has now left us. I’m certain there will be future instances in which she will say something conservatives and Tea Party folks like, but in the main, Coulter has demonstrated repeatedly throughout the last year that she is now irrevocably committed to the GOP establishment. She’s grown comfortable among them, and is now one of theirs. Of course, as she offers you her contradictory premises, she assumes you’re too stupid to notice, so her dismissal of conservatives is not surprising.
Just a short while ago, I was retrieving a fresh cup of coffee, and I happened to hear something on the television that caused me to do a double-take. FoxNews was on and America’s New Headquarters had a contributor on to talk about obesity in America, and the fact that obesity and even the classification “overweight” seem to have plateaued in the country. The doctor, from Mt. Sinai in New York, a David Samadi, was discussing the implications of the new study showing this plateau. The thing that caught my attention was not so much the discussion of obesity, but what this idiotic doctor was prescribing: He wants new taxes, for instance, a “soda tax,” and he wants to reduce the number of fast-food outlets in the country. Excuse me? Physician, heal thyself! This is the nature of the stories even allegedly “conservative” news outlets like FoxNews cover when most of us aren’t watching, and it almost always leans in the direction of socialism.
Let me say from the outset that like many Americans, I could stand to eat Five Guys burgers somewhat less frequently, but let me also suggest that it is none of this doctor’s business what I eat or drink, where I eat it or drink it, and most of all whether I am taxed for so doing. Samadi’s view seems to be that he can issue prescriptions for three-hundred-million people, never having examined more than a few hands-full of them. More, since he has no such authority or power or the ability to control, he exhorts government to do so on behalf of his preferred prescription for people the vast majority of whom he has never met, never mind examined or treated. What sort of collectivized thinking permits this arrogant [expletive deleted] to sit there in a television studio and proclaim to all that he has the answers for your life, but that he needs government’s power to coerce and to tax in order to implement them?
There is something wicked about the minds of those who view their fellow men as cattle, to be poked and prodded and driven in a direction that they may not themselves wish to go. It is born of a mindset that does not respect first and foremost the lives and rights of individual people. These people are those who I term “regulators,” who wish to regulate all persons in a given society of which they are members to conform to their view of what is right for all people. Mayor Bloomberg’s various bans on salt or saturated fats in cooking oils are just two examples, but it is the mindset of a tyrant that is troubling in all of this. I don’t need Mayor Bloomberg, Michelle Obama, or Dr. Samadi telling me what to eat, when to eat it, or whether I ought to have access to it at all. It’s simply not their concern. Or is it?
Now we arrive at the meat of this issue, because there is much more than burgers at stake here. What is under examination is not whether they have the authority to control us, but how they derive such authority in the first place. The answer is simple: They rely upon the faulty claims of the notion of “the public health.” You may have noticed that they always portray this as a “public health crisis,” and as an “epidemic,” but this is a lie, and their authority in the matter only arises because of health-care, and the fact that government is the biggest player in that segment of the market. They have routinely positioned the matter in such a way that they can make the claim that by virtue of governmental expenditures in this field, it therefore becomes an issue of public imperative. Worse, by allowing their colossal medical expenditures and controls to grow out of all bounds, you have permitted them to enter this field, and thereby exert control over your breakfast, lunch, dinner, and evening snack besides. More damaging still is the fact that the government is now the largest food provider on the planet. Again, I remind you: We have permitted this.
Here’s a basic rule of nature, and of civilization that the statists know and are now turning in their favor: If you are the provider of a thing, you can decide when to provide it, how to provide, how much of it to provide, and under what conditions you’ll provide it. For instance, if I invite you to my home for a meal, since I am providing it, it is my natural right to determine all the particulars. If you provide me a service without compensation, it is clear that I have no ethical or moral claim with respect to the manner in which you provide it. Only paying customers have any say-so in the matter. The old adage “beggars can’t be choosers” should immediately leap into one’s mind. That simple old adage merely paid homage to that which is self-evident, and yet it is this same concept that has been bent and twisted into the service of the state’s aggressive aggregation of power. The strategy has been to blur the lines. Let’s see if we can reconstruct the approach.
First, we create simultaneously programs to:
Provide food to the poor
Provide health-care to the poor
Provide “health insurance” to the elderly
Do you see how this has mutated? The idle poor are fed, but they are fed rations excessive for a person at hard labor, and we wonder why there is obesity? We then provide these same people health-care, and we wonder why there is a “public health crisis?” Add to this that we simultaneous have a system of health “insurance” for our elderly that further obscures the difference between paying and non-paying, and at the other end of the spectrum, we now have federal food programs in schools, as the manner by which federal funds are dispersed and control exercised.
By exercising control over the disbursement of these commodities and services, the government is essentially putting itself in the position of the provider, and therefore has become the “chooser,” with all the beneficiaries effectively having been rendered “beggars.” Those of us who are paying for this are the real providers, and yet we are now told it is a matter of “human rights” that we do this provisioning. Obamacare is simply the latest in this chain, but it’s hardly the only “improvement” to the system that has been foisted upon us in recent years, with the Bush Medicare Prescription Drugs program added to the mix.
With the government now being the largest payer in the health-care market, you can expect that it will naturally displace market imperatives in the delivery of health-care goods and services, and it will necessarily prioritize that delivery(death panels, for instance,) while reaching into unrelated markets to regulate those things that it will make the case as having some influence over the costs to government.
This then leads to the grotesque spectacle of Dr. Samadi appearing on FoxNews telling us what we can eat, where we can procure it, and what taxes we ought to pay along the way, as the whole miserable assembly comes lurching into plain sight. You can be told what you can eat because you will [eventually] rely upon government to pay for your health-care. The market can be told what it may provide, and how, because the government has an interest in reducing its costs. The tax-payer can be told to shut up about it, since it’s virtually established as some sort of irreducible premise that every person ought to be somehow entitled to that which does not pour from the heavens, but must be obtained by human effort. As you can therefore see, it is inevitable that government has now used this to become a dictator in every important facet of our lives, and all because somewhere along the march from our founding to present, we permitted them to make our needs the means to its ends.
When you consider that this is the sort of thing that is discussed on allegedly conservative media when most of the country isn’t watching, it ought to alert you to the underlying premises of the discussions in media many more of us witness. What we should note is that in most every media outlet, there is a sort of inherent reverence for the state, and for the under-girding foundational constructs of collectivism, and we ought to be very careful not to ignore that these media outlets are fundamentally in favor of it, almost all of them, and widely across the board. It’s easy to dismiss this sort of news story as simple time-fillers on a weekend with no ongoing crisis-bound event on which to report, but I think we should be careful to see that is also a sign of what lies behind the blaring headlines, and it is key to understanding why the country continues to be dragged ceaselessly leftward.
Allen West appeared On the Record with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News. He was asked about his opinion on Newt Gingrich’s statement about the question of work ethic, and the matter of unemployment and job creation. West gave his unreserved support for the notion, and when Van Susteren called it a “touchy subject,” West immediately said: “It shouldn’t be a touchy.” Van Susteren asked West what Obama could do to address the high unemployment, he pointed out taxes and regulations, and Dodd-Frank as various sources of trouble for job creation. He focused on the state of the economy and the role of work in lifting oneself out of poverty, warning against making a safety net into a hammock. In his usual no-nonsense manner, West took on the issues.
One of the points West made is that we shouldn’t have conversations limited by so-called “touchy subjects” because of race. He’s right. The destructive results of the Obama administration’s war on wealth and work knows no racial boundaries. It’s time to discard these faulty, racially charged notions of politics and economics. It’s time to set aside any claim that one party has the interests of any race at heart, and Allen West sees this. It’s time for our President to see this as well.
After watching Monday’s FoxNews debate, I have some pointed advice for voters in the upcoming South Carolina Republican primary: If a candidate will not disclose his tax returns before you vote, consider him ineligible. You have no need for a candidate whose dirty secrets will be aired only after you’ve voted for him. Mitt Romney talks about April, but I want to see them now, before any of us have voted(other than Iowa and New Hampshire, whose residents have already voted.) You have every right to demand this sort of disclosure from the candidates, and if they won’t meet your expectations, you have every right to withhold your vote. The suggestion of at least one of the candidates who hem-hawed this issue in Monday night’s debate is that you have no need to see them until after he thinks he’ll already have the nomination.
I want right now to pause and suggest to you that this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. It ranks right up there with Nancy Pelosi’s infamous:
Ladies and gentlemen, if you accept this from Mitt Romney or any of the candidates, you have no right to complain when Nancy Pelosi pushes through a monstrous health-care bill, or any bill, before anybody has had time to read it. The voters of South Carolina, and every subsequent state, all have a right to demand this of somebody asking for their votes. If you let Mitt Romney sneak by you with this one, it’s just the beginning, but I don’t care which candidate offers you this lie, because you must reject it, and you must do so by withholding your vote.
I am going to walk even further out on this limb: I will not vote, either in the Primary, or in the General Election in my state for ANY candidate who has not disclosed his tax returns before the date of the primary. I will not buy a pig in a poke, and neither should you. No tax returns? No vote!
As usual, the open-borders, chamber-of-commerce media, including FoxNews rushed out to tell you what you need to know. As usual, they intentionally mislead you about the nature of the law. 
