Showing posts with label @candaceowens @charliekirk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label @candaceowens @charliekirk. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Illegal Alien Rapist/Murderer in Will County posted on Breithbart plus list of articles about what happened
http://thewillcountynews.blogspot.com/2018/08/officials-questioning-why-convicted.html
https://thewillcountynews.blogspot.com/2018/08/illegal-alien-canal-path-rapist-gets.html
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Sanctuary State Illinois: Illegal Alien Convicted of Raping Three Women After Failing to Be Deported
From Breithbarth
An illegal alien who failed to be deported in 2012 was convicted and sentenced this week for the rape of two women and a third, now deceased, whom he admitted to raping.
Miguel Luna, a 37-year-old illegal alien from Mexico, was sentenced to 80 years in prison after being convicted of raping two women in 2015 and 2016, according to the Chicago Tribune. A third woman whom the illegal alien raped has since died, though prosecutors revealed evidence showing Luna admitting to the rape.
Luna had an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) final order for removal placed on him in 2012 before the rapes occurred, but the deportation order was never honored. Illinois is, for the most part, a sanctuary state where illegal aliens are protected from being deported.
Judge David Carlson laid into the illegal alien as he passed down the 80-year prison sentence.
“You were free to do these acts … whether through misguided political correctness or people who do not believe in laws or borders,” Carlson told Luna, according to the Chicago Tribune.
“One thing I can do with the sentence is show that the laws we believe in here, maybe this won’t happen again, maybe that’s a little bit of closure,” Carlson said.
The illegal alien is mandated to serve at least 85 percent of his prison sentence and he must register as a sex offender should he ever be released from prison.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Saturday, October 13, 2018
Governments attacking free speech
Governments attacking free speech
Since people around the globe are ignorant blithering idiots unable to discern truth from "misinformation," they need compassionate and magnanimous governments to establish laws to protect them. And we are immensely grateful that governments are obliging them — because we know that governments never lie.
The Poynter Institute — which has somehow forgotten the basic tenets of what freedom of speech really means — has compiled a running tally of the wonderful government actions aimed at combatting "fake news." Or, as Poynter describes it:
| Poynter has created a guide for existing attempts to legislate against what can broadly be referred to as online misinformation. While not every law contained here relates to misinformation specifically, they've all often been wrapped into that broader discussion. We have attempted to label different interventions as clearly as possible. |
As an aside, Poynter is actively working with the European Union as an "expert" to help it craft policies to battle misinformation. In layman's terms, that means shutting down non-approved speech.
What we learn from Poynter is that several governments known far and wide for their history of respecting individual liberty and freedom of speech are generously passing laws aimed at identifying and punishing the authors of fake news. Among the countries that have shown compassion for their citizens and chosen to free them from the scourge of fake news are the free states of Egypt, Cambodia, Brazil, Indonesia and Kenya. Oh, and Russia, and Uganda, and Turkey, and Malaysia.
These governments are among those that have passed laws or enabled courts to impose fines and prison sentences on people who disseminate "fake news."
But America is backwards and there's that pesky 1st Amendment thing. So it hasn't yet passed a law to regulate speech, though Congress is considering various sorts of legislation, unless you count laws against "hate speech." Never mind that the very notion that something can be considered "hate speech" is totalitarian nonsense.
Several "respected" senators have taken to Twitter and expressed their contempt for fake news and advocacy for some law or another to stop it. And the free state of California has passed a bill aimed at creating an "advisory group" to develop ways to "monitor the spread of misinformation on social media."
And there's really no need for a law when you have corporatism. The social media giants that exist based on contracts with the government — particularly the Deep State — just delete any "misinformation" and purveyors of such without so much as a "by your leave." And that means that the "truth" we get is only that "truth" that is government approved.
The media's fake Kavanaugh news
We could have expended our bandwidth for the week if we recounted all of the fakeries published by "legitimate" news organizations about the Brett Kavanaugh sex assault allegations in just the last couple of days. But quite frankly, we're tired of the Kavanaugh controversy, and trying to make heads and tails out of Christine Blasey Ford's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee made our head hurt. So we'll focus just on this one item that caught our attention.
The day before Ford was scheduled to testify, her hack Democrat activist lawyers released signed declarations from four people claiming that Ford had told them of being sexually assaulted. Showing that its interest is activist journalism rather than truth-telling, the MSM ran with the story claiming the declarations corroborated her story.
This tweet by Peter Alexander of NBCNews is typical of the coverage of the "bombshell" news:
But the declarations do not "corroborate Christine Blasey Ford's claims of sexual assault against Kavanaugh" at all. All they "corroborate" is that Ford told them decades after the fact that she was assaulted, and only to one of them did she mention Kavanaugh's name.
Another fake candidate runs as a Democrat
Last month we told you about New York Democrat Julia Salazar, the phony "Columbian Jew" running for New York State Senate. Now meet a fake Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Arizona.
Kyrsten Sinema, a congressweasel running against Republican Martha McSally to fill the seat of retiring Jeff Flake(y), has played fast and loose with her biography. It seems it's mostly fake news.
Sinema has repeatedly claimed she grew up homeless, living in an abandoned gas station in Florida with no running water or electricity. She told the story while running for congress in 2012, and continued to tell it until a few days ago.
"You know when I was young my stepfather was out of work for several years and we lived in an abandoned gas station with no running water and no electricity," Sinema told Fox 10. "Sometimes we were hungry and we relied on the kindness of others to help us get through."
But then some uncomfortable information came to light through the reporting of The New York Times, which began digging through court records submitted during her parents' divorce case. The records show that the parents were paying for electricity, gas and telephone for the gas station.
"We are unable to provide adequately for the children," the stepfather wrote to the court, adding that his "bills will exceed $2,000 and I will only bring in $1,500."
When asked by reporters from The Times why the parents might have been paying for electricity if there was none at the station, Sinema said, "Oh gosh, I don't have an answer for that. That's not something a little kid would hear about from her parents."
Her parents told The Times in a statement that they lacked power and water while living in the gas station, but would not address why they still paid utility bills.
As Fox News reports, Sinema also declined to directly answer whether she had exaggerated details about the conditions of her upbringing:
| I've shared what I remember from my childhood. I know what I lived through. |
And Christine Blasey Ford remembers being sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh, but not much else. And her own witnesses refute her story — for what that's worth — but we digress.
Other media have asked her about discrepancies in her biography. In 2013 The Washington Post questioned her about her statement that she had a toilet but no running water. The Arizona Republic, in 2016, noted the owner of the gas station said the building had a spigot and wood-burning stove.
According to polls, the race between Sinema and McSally is a toss-up.
Given Arizona's propensity to elect fakers to the senate — John McCain and Flake were/are fake conservatives — I'm betting Sinema wins in a cakewalk.
One of first female infantry Marines gets busted
There have been female Marines for a number of years but it was only last year that female Marines were allowed to join the infantry.
There are many Neanderthals who think women have no business serving in combat roles. Women are far more adept at staying home barefoot and pregnant, cooking meals and cleaning house than being sent abroad to shoot at and be shot at by brown people in wars of aggression to expand Pax Americana or force democracy on a bunch of cave-dwelling goatherders. But if we were to say or write such a thing we'd be banished to a reeducation camp and forced into diversity training classes taught by a bunch of fat, homely feminazis and skinny jeans-wearing girly men. So we'd never say it, even if we were to think it privately.
What we would say publicly is that not only do experience and studies show that mixed-gender (sex) teams not perform as well as all-male teams, and that female Marines are more likely than males to be injured; there's a danger of fraternization between men and women in the same unit, and opportunity for more fodder for the #MeToo crowd. But the smart Ivy league social Marxists in government — mostly fat and homely feminazis and skinny-jeans wearing girly men — said such fears are poppycock and show backwards, Neanderthalistic thinking. Since men and women are the same — and in fact there is no such thing as "gender" (or sex, which is the proper term) except when it's convenient for government set-asides and the like — there's no chance of any hanky-panky going on.
So when we heard that Remedios Cruz, one of the three first women to join a combat unit, had been caught hany-pankying with a lower-ranked Marine in her unit, we were certain it must be fake news.
Alas, it wasn't. Cruz pleaded guilty to having a romantic relationship with another Marine after she was charged with fraternization, adultery and accessory to larceny and given a choice either pleading out and being granted a less than honorable discharge or going to court and risking the brig. Her case probably wasn't helped by the fact that she married the man she hanky-pankeyed just prior to having charges brought.
We're certain that it's male privilege that got Cruz in hot water and not her paramour-ne-husband, who by all accounts remains a Marine.
Monday, October 8, 2018
The illness deep within the bones of the republic
By John Kass
The illness deep within the bones of the republic
It is tempting to watch the political spectacle of Democrats destroying Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as if it were only some shameful partisan circus.
Something brutally Roman with a howling mob, blood on the sand; or something medieval, like trial by ordeal, with a mace and an axe and the might of brutes as the elements of God’s will.
Or, better yet, a drama as Spanish as the Inquisition itself.
Because what we’re seeing in the Kavanaugh circus isn’t American, where until very recently — like a few months ago — the accused was given the presumption of innocence.
All that has changed. Now the accused is forced to prove his innocence before accusers who must be believed, accusers who aren’t expected to bring witnesses, accusers who must not under any circumstance be subject to rigorous cross-examination, before judges who have already made up their minds.
What we’re witnessing is the symptom of an illness now deep within the very bones of our republic.
It threatens Republicans now, and Democrats tomorrow. It will threaten even those who don’t give two figs for politics and see all such talk as lies told by knaves to fools.
What we are seeing are founding American principles being swept — among them the presumption of innocence and the rights of the accused — to feed the appetites of power politics
That’s what Kavanaugh is dealing with, having to testify and defend himself against uncorroborated allegations of sexual predation 36 years ago, when he was in high school and in his freshman year of college.
The short-term politics of all this is quite clear, a movement led by cynics and assisted by their handmaidens in the Democratic Media Complex.
It is designed to convince suburban women voters that Republicans are hateful creatures, help Democrats pick up congressional seats in the November midterm elections and do away with President Donald Trump.
But look deeper and you’ll see something else.
The sweeping away of traditions that have been carefully nurtured from the founding of this nation, to protect individual liberty and shield us from the passions of the mob.
Without these principles, we are no longer a republic.
To prove the point, Hawaii Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono insisted the other day that Kavanaugh’s accusers not only “need to be heard, they need to be believed.”
But asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper if Kavanaugh should have the same presumption of innocence as other Americans, here is what Sen. Hirono, a lawyer, said: “I put his denial in the context of everything that I know about him in terms of how he approaches his cases.”
In other words, Kavanaugh’s legal decisions on unrelated matters make him guilty of sexual predation, and therefore, he is disqualified.
That is the reasoning of magistrates in the trials of Salem, that is the logic of Torquemada’s Spain, not the principles of the United States of America.
Sen. Hirono says she supports women. But I wonder about American women who are the mothers of boys, women who are the wives of husbands, women who have brothers. Doesn’t what’s happening to Kavanaugh concern them?
A few days ago, there was that story in The New Yorker, that while a freshman at Yale, Kavanaugh exposed himself at a party to a female student, Deborah Ramirez, who couldn’t remember seeing him do it.
The story offered no corroborating eyewitnesses, only hearsay. And still it was published, providing cover for political operatives to peel Kavanaugh’s skin.
Even the New York Times, the great gray liberal battleship in America’s cultural/political wars, wouldn’t touch it. The newspaper explained:
“The New York Times had interviewed several dozen people over the past week to corroborate Ms. Ramirez’s story, and could find no one with firsthand knowledge. Ms. Ramirez herself contacted former Yale classmates asking if they recalled the episode and told some of them that she could not be certain Mr. Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself.”
No firsthand knowledge? And even the alleged victim was unsure it was Kavanaugh? Then why run it?
But it was published in The New Yorker. And it was defended by the same journalistic class that wonders, publicly, why Americans hold journalism in such low esteem.
This is what happens when tradition and principle is swept away and are subjugated to politics.
As if to mitigate its sin for avoiding the Yale story, The New York Times offers an account of Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook, and the lusty commentary from high school boys who drink beer.
Those of us who were once high school boys may dimly recall that lust was on our minds, oh, every 30 seconds or so, in those rare moments when physics or baseball didn’t intrude upon the urgent requirements of biology.
Now, I don’t know what happened 36 years ago between Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford. And I don’t know what happened at Yale in that drunken dorm room party. I refuse to condemn the women making the accusations.
Witnesses might help us understand, but as I write this, they don’t exist.
And as Sen. Hirono and her Democratic colleagues insist, witnesses are irrelevant.
And this is damning.
Somewhere in America, there must be Democrats who read John F. Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage” when they were children, Democrats who must be sickened by what is happening and would speak out.
But they must be afraid, lest they, too, are denounced and devoured.
Theirs is a silence breaking the bones of America.
We reap what we sow.
Listen to “The Chicago Way” podcast with John Kass and Jeff Carlin — at www.wgnradio.com/category/wgn-plus/thechicagoway.
Sunday, October 7, 2018
The everything bubble: When will it finally crash?
Much like the laws of physics, there are certain laws of economics that remain constant no matter how much manipulation exists in the markets. Expansion inevitably leads to contraction, and that which goes up must eventually come down. Central banks understand this reality very well; they have spent over a century trying to exploit those laws to their own advantage.
A common misconception among people new to alternative economics is the idea that central banks only seek to keep the economy afloat, or keep it expanding forever. In reality, these institutions and the money elites behind them artificially inflate financial bubbles only to deliberately implode them at opportunistic moments.
As I have outlined in numerous articles, every economic bubble and subsequent crash since 1914 can be linked to the policy actions of central bankers. Sometimes they even admit to culpability (to a point), as Ben Bernanke did on the Great Depression and as Alan Greenspan did on the 2008 credit crisis. You can read more about this in my article 'The Federal Reserve Is A Saboteur — And The "Experts" Are Oblivious.'
Generally, central bankers and international bankers mislead the public into believing that the crashes they are responsible for were caused "by mistake." They rarely if ever mention the fact that they often use these crises as a means to consolidate control over assets, resources and governments while the masses are distracted by their own survival. Centralization is the name of the game. It is certainly no mistake that after every economic implosion the wealth gap between the top 0.01 percent and the rest of humanity widens exponentially.
Yet another crash is being weaponized by the banks, and this time I believe the motivations behind it are rather different. Or at least the goals are supercharged.
The next phase of the financial elite's plans for centralization involve a complete restructuring of the global monetary climate, something Christine Lagarde of the IMF has often referred to as the great "economic reset." The term "economic reset" is more likely code for "economic collapse," one epic enough to facilitate a completely new monetary framework with a new global reserve currency. A historically unprecedented economic reset would require a historically unprecedented financial bubble, which is exactly what we have today.
The 'Everything Bubble' as many alternative analysts are calling it is built upon multiple crumbling pillars. Here they are in no particular order:
Central bank stimulus
Bailouts and QE measures on the part of central banks have been used as a stopgap since the 2008 crash to prevent market reversal whenever they appear. Most of all, central banks have been particularly obsessed with keeping stocks in a perpetual bull market, which Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan admitted was part of maintaining a certain positive "psychology" within the public. In other words, the purpose of stimulus measures was to give the masses a false sense of security, not heal the real economy.
The other primary initiative behind stimulus was to prop up debt poisoned governments and corporations around the world. However, the intention was not necessarily to help these institutions climb out of the red. No, instead, the goal was to keep them semi-solvent long enough for them to take on even more debt, to the point that when they do collapse the aftermath will be so devastating that recovery would be impossible.
The timing of central bank tapering of QE should be treated as an alarm on the crash of the everything bubble. With the Federal Reserve cutting off QE measures, the Bank of Japan using "stealth tapering," and the European Central Bank warning of high inflation and the need for tapering, it is clear that the era of easy money is almost over. When the easy money is gone, the crash is near.
Stock buybacks
Using steady loans from the Federal Reserve as well as Trump's tax cut, stock markets have been inflated beyond all reason by corporations implementing the equities manipulation scheme of stock buybacks. By artificially reducing the number of stock shares on the market, companies can increase the "value" of the existing shares and fuel a bull market rally. This rally has nothing to do with actual wealth creation, of course. It is a game of phantom wealth and inflated numbers.
Stocks in particular will require ever more debt on the part of corporations along with never-ending near zero interest rates in order to keep the farce going. The central banker, though, have other plans.
Near zero interest rates
Low interest rates should be considered a part of the stimulus model, but I'm setting them separately because they represent a special kind of market manipulation. The option for corporate entities to borrow from the Fed at almost no cost has done little to improve the effects of the 2008 credit crisis. In fact, corporate debt levels are now near all-time highs not seen since the last crash. This time, though, dependency on low cost loans has conjured a monstrous addiction within the business cycle. Any increase in interest rates will trigger painful withdrawals.
Central banks around the world are now increasing that pain as they hike rates well beyond what many analysts were expecting a few years ago. Corporate debt in particular is highly vulnerable to this new tightening policy. Without low rates, corporations can no longer afford to hold the debts they have, let alone take on more debt in a futile attempt to keep equities propped up.
Central banks argue that "inflation" is the excuse for hiking interest rates at this time. True inflation has been well above Fed targets for years, and the banking elites showed no care whatsoever. I suspect that the real reason is that the next phase of the reset is near, and a little chaos is needed.
For decades, the Fed has kept the neutral rate of interest well below the rate of inflation. For the first time in at least 30 years, the Fed under Jerome Powell is seeking to increase neutral rates to make them equal to the pace of inflation (official inflation). The Fed has approximately two to three more rate hikes (including the September rate hike) to reach the pace of inflation. I believe this is our window on the next crash; the moment at which the Fed completely reverses its past policy of artificial support for the economy.
Federal Reserve balance sheet
I have written at great length about the correlation between the Fed's balance sheet and equities and I will not go into great detail here. Simply put, with each increase in the balance sheet over the past decade, stocks rallied in tandem. As the Fed cuts assets, stocks enter volatility. A divergence has occurred the past two months between the Fed balance sheet and stocks, but I believe this is temporary.
Corporate buybacks are at all-time highs in 2018, and it's obvious that this is meant to offset the Fed's waning support for the markets. As interest rates increase and the Trump tax cut dwindles, though, buybacks will die.
If we consider the possibility that the Fed's assets also include stock shares as many suspect, then the Fed asset dumps would also increase the number of existing shares on the market and sabotage corporate efforts to reduce shares through stock buybacks. I predict stocks will once again converge with the falling Fed balance sheet by the end of this year and that they will continue to drop precipitously through the last quarter of 2018 and the rest of 2019.
Timing is everything
Central banks need cover before they can launch their "global reset," and what better cover than a massive international trade war? Trump's trade war is an excellent distraction which can be used as a rationale for every negative consequence of the central banks pulling the plug on stimulus life support. Meaning, the disasters the central bankers cause through tightening into a weak economic environment can be blamed on Trump and the trade conflict.
I don't think it's a coincidence that almost every escalation in the trade war happens to take place at the same time as major central bank announcements on rate hikes and balance sheet cuts. The latest trade war salvo of $200 billion in tariffs against China is leading to a Chinese announcement on retaliation — all of this taking place on the exact week of the Fed's September meeting which is expected to result in yet another rate hike and expanded balance sheet cuts.
The Fed's tightening policies have resulted in a severe reaction by emerging markets which are already crashing and have diverged greatly from U.S. markets. American stocks will not escape the same fate.
The Fed's neutral rate efforts suggest a turning point in late 2018 to early 2019. Balance sheet cuts are expected to increase at this time, which would also expedite a crash in existing market assets. The only question is how long can corporations sustain stock buybacks until their debt burdens crush their efforts? With such companies highly leveraged, interest rates will determine the length of their resolve. I believe two more hikes will be their limit.
If the Fed continues on its current path the next stock crash would begin around December 2018 into the first quarter of 2019. After that, other sectors of the economy, already highly unstable, will break down through 2019 and 2020.
Thursday, October 4, 2018
Worse than a hundred hurricanes
As the late, great Florence graphically testifies, we are smack in the middle of "hurricane season." Far worse, though, is the other storm natural disasters always unleash: unconstitutional, corrupt, incompetent and even lethal government.
The Constitution is as trashed as the homes in Florence's path. Only with academic interest, then, do we note that the country's highest law never empowers the feds to provide erroneous forecasts of weather, sell subsidized "flood insurance" to encourage building in dangerous areas, squander over $15 billion on "first responders" who exacerbate emergencies and steal yet more billions from taxpayers for "disaster relief."
The country was surprisingly young when Congress first grabbed such authority — or so the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] claims: the bureaucracy "can trace its beginnings to the Congressional Act of 1803. This act, generally considered the first piece of disaster legislation, provided assistance to a New Hampshire town following an extensive fire."
Leviathan lies about everything, all the time. So I verified that "an extensive fire" did indeed ravage "a New Hampshire town," and that it spawned legislation in 1803. It's also true that the Act "provided assistance" — but not in the way we interpret that, with bureaucrats and billions of the taxpayers' dollars drowning the place. Rather, the bill "authorized and directed" the "secretary of the treasury" "to cause to be suspended for months, the collection of bonds due to the United States by merchants of Portsmouth, in New Hampshire, who have suffered by the late conflagration of that town." Or, as a modern source puts it, Congress "provided relief for Portsmouth merchants by waiving duties and tariffs on imported goods."
Desisting from thievery, allowing entrepreneurs to keep their profits, differs as dramatically from "making federal funding for recovery available to individuals impacted by" Mother Nature as your morning shower does from Florence's deluge.
But nowadays, "Federal funding will also be available to state and eligible local governments, as well as certain private nonprofit organizations on a cost-sharing basis for emergency work on those affected counties." In other words, our rulers will force us to compensate the hurricane's victims. Many have already contributed to private efforts at relief. Americans are famous as the world's most liberal donors, nor must the government compel us to compassion. Yet it nonetheless taxes us so that politicians can "generously" redistribute the loot in Florence's wake. Their robbery of us downgrades charity to naked theft.
Remember, too, that most folks would never have built, much less rebuild, in a coastal neighborhood but for federal encouragement to do so — again on our dime: "The National Flood Insurance Program aims to reduce the impact of flooding on private and public structures. It does so by providing affordable insurance to property owners, renters and businesses..." And why is FEMA's insurance "affordable?" Because a private company would have to charge astronomical rates to cover the liability of a neighboring ocean: even as long ago as 1986, "Federal flood insurance ... costs those who qualify, by virtue of owning property in an official hazard zone and enlisting in the program, only about one-third of what private insurance premiums would be."I.e., politicians and bureaucrats bribe people to risk not only our money but their lives by residing in areas prone to weather that kills. And an article published in the Department of Homeland Security's own Homeland Security Affairs bemoans such recklessness: "Moral hazard is defined as when people do not assume the full risk of an action or decision; people are not [then] inclined to make a fully responsible or moral choice..." This "redistribution of risk" is especially culpable when it comes to floods because "flood-related hazards are the most prominent and significant hazards in the United States and account for the highest percentage of major disaster declarations and direct economic losses."
Count on the state to exploit every tragedy: "The NFIP [National Flood Insurance Program] was created as a mitigation program with the goal of preventing future loss of life and property from ... flooding." But as always with Leviathan's schemes, the NFIP's results diametrically diverge from its alleged purpose: "...from 1978 through 2015, 3.8 percent of policyholders have filed for repetitive losses, accounting for a disproportionate 35.5 percent of flood loss claims and 30.5 percent of claim payments." (Nor does such moral hazard come cheap: "...the impacts of 2004, 2005, 2008 and 2012 hurricane seasons have generated $24 billion in debt to the U.S. Treasury and revenue is unlikely to cover future catastrophic losses or repay the billions of dollars in debt.")
We can't even depend on accurate warnings of impending storms, thanks to the federal "National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which manages the National Weather Service and its underling agencies, including the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, where the nation's weather models are run..." Those "models are significantly flawed in comparison with commercial and European alternatives. American forecasting also does poorly at data assimilation, the process of integrating information about atmospheric conditions into modeling programs; in the meantime, a lack of available computing power precludes the use of more advanced systems already operating [elsewhere]. And there are persistent management challenges, perhaps best represented by the legions of NOAA scientists whose innovations remain stranded in research labs and out of the hands of the National Weather Service operational forecasters who make the day-to-day predictions..." Moreover, "...accuracy is everything, often the difference between life and death, given that extreme weather — tornadoes, flash floods, heat waves — kills more than 500 Americans each year. 'An incremental improvement would make a huge difference,' [Cliff Mass, a meteorologist and professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington] says. Industries like shipping, energy, agriculture and utilities lose money when predictions fail. Even slightly more precise wind-speed projections would help airlines greatly reduce fuel costs." Yet these botched forecasts cost us $1 billion annually.
Despite government's horrific record on all things weather, even conservative Americans expect its "help" during calamities like Florence. Why?
Cory Booker admitted groping yet makes deal out of no evidence accusations by Ford
New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker is facing accusations of hypocrisy over his calls to delay the confirmation vote of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh amid sexual misconduct allegations, as he once admitted groping a friend without her consent in high school.
The senator, who urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to first let the FBI conduct an investigation after California professor Christine Blasey Ford accused the high court nominee of sexual assault over 35 years ago, once wrote an article detailing an instance where he groped a female friend.
A portion of Cory Booker's 1992 column. (The Stanford Daily)
“New Year's Eve 1984 I will never forget. I was 15. As the ball dropped, I leaned over to hug a friend and she met me instead with an overwhelming kiss. As we fumbled upon the bed, I remember debating my next 'move' as if it were a chess game,” Booker wrote in the student-run Stanford Daily newspaper in 1992.
“With the 'Top Gun' slogan ringing in my head, I slowly reached for her breast. After having my hand pushed away once, I reached my 'mark,’” he continued, without explaining what he meant by “mark.”
“Our groping ended soon and while no 'relationship' ensued, a friendship did. You see, the next week in school she told me that she was drunk that night and didn't really know what she was doing,” he added.
Booker’s intent of the column was to detail his transformation from a 15-year-old who was “trotting around the bases and stealing second” to someone who was called a “man-hater” over his pro-women views.
“In retrospect, my soliloquy titled ‘The Oppressive Nature of Male Dominated Society and Its Violent Manifestations Rape, Anorexia, Battered Wives’ may have been a surreptitious attempt to convince her that I was a sensitive man, but more likely I was trying to convince myself that my attitudes had changed,” he wrote.
The now-senator came back to the topic a few months later in 1992, penning another article that mentioned the controversial column, which he said was about “date rape,” and admitted that his actions were at odds with his beliefs.
“But by my second column, as I raised my noble pen to address the issue of date rape, I realized that the person holding it wasn't so noble after all,” he wrote. “With this issue as with so many others, a dash of sincere introspection has revealed to me a dangerous gap — a gap between my beliefs and my actions.”
The columns by Booker, a potential 2020 presidential contender, have resurfaced after he became one of the leading voices of the Democratic opposition against Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
Following allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh, which he vehemently denied, Booker said the accusations are “serious, credible, and deeply troubling.” After the committee vote was delayed and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley invited both Ford and Kavanaugh to testify on Monday, Booker called for an FBI investigation before holding a hearing.
Paul Mulshine, a columnist for the Star-Ledger, the largest newspaper in New Jersey, wrote Thursday that Booker’s columns will put him in an awkward position amid the scandal rocking the confirmation hearings.
“Based on that Stanford Daily column, Booker should be giving Kavanaugh the benefit of the doubt as well. The point of it was that the future senator had ‘a wake-up call’ and decided ‘I will never be the same.’”
Booker’s office pushed back strongly.
“This disingenuous right-wing attack, which has circulated online and in partisan outlets for the past five years, rings hollow to anyone who reads the entirety of Senator Booker’s Stanford Daily column,” a spokesperson for the senator said in a statement to Fox News.
“The column is in fact a direct criticism of a culture that encourages young men to take advantage of women -- written at a time when so candidly discussing these issues was rare -- and speaks to the impact Senator Booker’s experience working to help rape and sexual assault survivors as a college peer counselor had on him.”
The Left Wants to Keep Information Classified to Make it Harder for Trump to Defend Himself
Tom Fitton: The Left Wants to Keep Information Classified to Make it Harder for Trump to Defend Himself
On September 19, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on the Fox News Channel to discuss President Trump ordering declassification of FISA warrant information.
Wednesday, October 3, 2018
The Reckless Coverage of Kavanaugh Allegations Is Why Americans Don’t Trust the Media
The last few weeks of coverage of the accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh have been a perfect example of why the American people don’t trust the media.
The sheer breadth of wild and reckless reporting on the situation has been extraordinary, even by the media’s increasingly low standards.
There have been a staggering number of backtracks and incidences of simply false reporting.
NBC published a social media post by one of Ford’’s classmates, Christina King Miranda, saying: “This incident did happen. Many of us heard a buzz about it indirectly with few specific details. However Christine’s vivid recollection should be more than enough for us to truly, deeply know that the accusation is true.”
NBC’s post went viral, but very quickly thereafter, the classmate deleted her post and admitted to not knowing what took place between Kavanaugh and the accuser.
“In my [Facebook] post, I was empowered and I was sure it probably did [happen],” Miranda said, according to NPR. “I had no idea that I would now have to go to the specifics and defend it before 50 cable channels and have my face spread all over MSNBC news and Twitter.”
NBC later had to revise the story.
The New York Times made its own mess. On Monday, the Times reported that Mark Judge, the second man named in Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh, had confirmed to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he did recall the episode. But the potentially damning statement was completely incorrect.
Judge has repeatedly claimed, via his lawyer, that he has no recollection of such actions ever taking place.
“Brett Kavanaugh and I were friends in high school but I do not recall the party described in Dr. Ford’s letter. More to the point, I never saw Brett act in the manner Dr. Ford describes,” Judge said in a statement.
The New York Times was forced to backtrack: “An earlier version of this article misstated what Mark Judge told the Senate Judiciary Committee. He said that he does not remember the episode, not that he does.”
Adding to injury, three different outlets framed a joke that Kavanaugh made three years ago as being a subtle admittance to Ford’s allegations.
Speaking to a public forum at Columbus Law School, he said, “what happens at Georgetown Prep, stays at Georgetown Prep.” When watched in its entirety, it is abundantly clear that Kavanagh is completely joking. It was the dean of the school that reminded him of the phrase.
But that didn’t matter. MSNBC, CNN, and Politico presented the clip as somehow evidence that Kavanaugh is guilty or hiding something egregious. That’s three networks who chose to ignore a critical statement made by Kavanaugh to a laughing crowd—that the dean “reminded him to say that.” It was a blatant joke.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., then referenced the clip in a tweet that currently has nearly 50,000 “likes” on Twitter.
“I can’t imagine any parent accepting this view. Is this really what America wants in its next Supreme Court Justice?”
These are just a few examples of the bad reporting in the last week.
Conversely, prominent members of the media lashed out at those who wanted to find the truth about the claims of the accuser, despite the fact that her claims are incredibly vague.
It’s all been a ridiculous fiasco, but this should be a lesson to those who worry that President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about the media is undermining the free press.
It’s the press that’s undermining itself by being so one-sided, so quick to publish damaging stories about conservatives—while holding fire on progressives—and bypassing the due diligence required for accurate and honest reporting that Americans should expect.
The Founding Fathers understood that a free press was vital to preserving liberty and keeping the powerful in check. They also acknowledged that the press itself was a powerful tool and that it could be used to disseminate lies and falsehoods.
The Founders, thankfully, protected press freedom through the First Amendment, as lies by the media would only be made worse by allowing the government to control the flow of information in society.
But the Founders didn’t protect the media because they wanted to empower falsehoods. They did so in order to preserve truth.
Many Americans have judged that modern media have not exactly been truthful with them, and that perception is wrecking the press’ credibility.
Some in the media, such as NBC’s Chuck Todd, have blamed conservatives, Republicans, and Trump for the poor reputation of their industry, claiming that the climate of distrust regarding the press is merely the result of their ferocious critics. “The conservative echo chamber created that environment,” Todd said on “Meet the Press.”
Polls also show that trust in media is catastrophically bad, a trend that predates the Trump administration, but is worse now. They also show that a majority of American people believe that the media intentionally publishes fake news, and a plurality think they create false stories about the Trump administration.
With the way the Kavanaugh allegations have been treated, no wonder huge segments of Americans are angry and frustrated.
The legacy media’s failure to acknowledge that the fault is not in their stars but themselves means that trust in the fourth estate will continue to erode, and they will get blistered with criticism that sticks.
In America, we have a free press, but the American people have free minds to judge truth and distortion.
The media’s role in the Kavanaugh controversy further erodes any chance the press has to regain the people’s trust. If anything, it should make us grateful for an alternative media that continues to call them out.
This story has been corrected to reflect that the NBC report was on a classmate of Ford’s.
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