It’s not really a stretch to think so, especially after seeing the effects of environmental activism and the wild fires in Cali. last year. Unintended consequences are a bad side effect.
“Did Green Justice Policies Cause the Massive Midwest Floods?
A Nebraska city is now underwater after reducing its levees to comply with “reconnecting the river to its floodplain” rules.”
———-
“The damage and deaths (now numbering 4) in the wake of these floods have drawn comparisons to those experienced in 1993. Looking at the developments, one long-term analyst of the flood plains questioned if environmental policies contributed to this disaster.
Joe Herring, a contributor to American Thinker, took a look at data relayed to the catastrophic flooding of the Missouri River basin in 2011. He noted that priorities of the Corps of Engineers, as expressed in its manual related to flood control policies for that region, placed “habitat restoration” ahead of human life and property.
From the completion of the dam construction (in 1967) until 2004, the Master Water Control Manual listed the priority functions in order of importance, with flood control being number one.
1) flood control
2) irrigation and upstream beneficial uses
3) downstream water supply
4) navigation and power
5) recreation and wildlife
In 2004, under pressure from environmentalist organizations who had been lobbying hard for the previous decade, Congress approved a revision to the manual that no longer specifically prioritized the uses of the system, leaving the order of the functions to the discretion of the Corps of Engineers.
The previous list was then essentially upended, with wildlife (habitat restoration, preservation, and imitation of natural cycles) becoming the top priority, and all the others swapping places back and forth depending on the year.
Hamburg, Iowa, a small town southeast of Omaha, Nebraska, experienced terrible flooding in 2011 and raised the heights of their levees. The Corps of Engineers, based on the new green justice values, forced a height reduction of those structures.
Hamburg now sits underwater.
“We want our future — with our businesses back and our people home,” Cathy Crain, who has been the mayor of Hamburg, Iowa, for 12 years, tells Here & Now’s Robin Young.
Crain says two-thirds of Hamburg was underwater when the bomb cyclone hit in March, causing flood waters to overflow the levee that protects the town from the Missouri River. Half the town is still submerged from the flooding, she says.
If you thought California has crazy water policies protecting bait fish, then behold the Corps of Engineers’ projects “reconnecting the rivers to floodplains” on behalf birds!”
“Turnabout: Barr deploys Holder defense to stymie Democrats in Congress”
“As Attorney General William P. Barr works to fend off an aggressive Congress demanding more information, he has turned to a surprising source for justification: former Obama official Eric H. Holder Jr., who seven years ago found himself in much the same position.
Mr. Holder’s justification for thwarting the House — then under Republican control — was the first piece of evidence Mr. Barr used last week in his letter letting House Democrats know he would not meet their deadline for complying with a subpoena.
At issue is the unredacted copy of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the 2016 election.
Democrats want both the report and reams of supporting evidence Mr. Mueller compiled during his 22 months of investigation. Mr. Barr says he is willing to negotiate but that some of the information — the parts Mr. Mueller gleaned from a grand jury — are shielded by law and can’t be turned over without breaking that law.”
————————-
Make no mistake here folks, Dems are demanding that the highest law enforcement officer in the land break the law to accommodate their unrealistic demands. I guess they figure if the Comeys and Clapper will break the law for them, won’t the rest as well?
So Nadler has scheduled a contempt vote….. which (ask Holder) is meaningless, and has no teeth. With a R controlled Senate and Presidency, impeachment for Barr or Trump stands no chance. They know this too, this is just the theatre of the absurd, for their leftist base, who apparently doesn’t understand how any of this works. 🙂
“House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler scheduled a vote Monday to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for not giving the committee special counsel Robert Mueller’s full unredacted report.
The New York Democrat gave Barr a deadline of 9 a.m. Monday to turn in the full report with no redactions, which many Republicans believe would be dangerous due to the possibly sensitive material, which could be leaked. Nadler has now scheduled the congressional contempt vote for Wednesday, May 8 at 10 a.m.”
——
“House Judiciary Committee ranking member Doug Collins blasted Nadler in a Monday statement, saying Nadler’s request would require Barr to break the law. (RELATED: Attorney General Bill Barr To Not Testify In Front Of House Judiciary Committee)
“Chairman Nadler knows full subpoena compliance requires Attorney General Barr to break the law. Yet, instead of introducing legislation allowing the attorney general to provide Congress grand jury material, Democrats move to hold him in contempt,” Collins said in a statement Monday.
“They know the Justice Department is working to negotiate even as they pursue contempt charges, making their move today illogical and disingenuous. Democrats have launched a proxy war smearing the attorney general when their anger actually lies with the president and the special counsel, who found neither conspiracy nor obstruction,” Collins continued.”
“Treasury denies Democrats’ demand for Trump tax returns, again”
“Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has denied congressional Democrats’ request for six years of President Donald Trump’s personal and business tax returns, writing that the request “lacks a legitimate legislative purpose” and therefore the Dept is “not authorized” to release the returns.
Mnuchin added that the Department of Justice had informed Treasury, “that it intends to memorialize its advice in a published legal opinion as soon as practical.””
“American jurisprudence is based on the presumption of innocence — in other words, innocent until proven guilty. The accused remains innocent unless and until the prosecution can convince a judge or jury that the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Exoneration is not part of this equation for it represents the exact opposite principle, namely guilty until proven innocent. This is an impossible standard as it requires proving a negative. How does one prove that he or she didn’t commit a crime? How does one prove that Elvis or JFK aren’t still alive, conspiracy theories aside? Exoneration is an impossible standard and turns the American judicial system upside down.
This is just what Special Counsel Robert Mueller did in his final report on Russian collusion. The 400-page report could have been summarized in four words – no collusion, no obstruction.
White House Special Counsel to the President, Emmett Flood, laid it all out in a recent letter to Attorney General Barr. The purpose of the letter was a rebuttal, an on-the-record response to the Mueller report.
Flood began by saying that the Mueller report “Suffers from an extraordinary legal defect. It quite deliberately fails to comply with the requirements of governing law.” This is a roundabout way of saying the report is illegal.”
“The FBI’s Trump-Russia Investigation Was Formally Opened on False Pretenses”
“The State Department and an Australian diplomat grossly exaggerated Papadopoulos’s claims — which were probably false anyway.
Chicanery was the force behind the formal opening of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation. There was a false premise, namely: The Trump campaign must have known that Russia possessed emails related to Hillary Clinton. From there, through either intentional deception or incompetence, the foreign ministries of Australia and the United States erected a fraudulent story tying the Trump campaign’s purported knowledge to the publication of hacked Democratic National Committee emails.”
“That is what we learn from the saga of George Papadopoulos, as fleshed out by the Mueller report.”
“In a recent op-ed, fired FBI Director James Comey was back again preaching to the nation about the dangers of Donald Trump and his capacity to corrupt any top-ranking federal official of lower character than Comey’s own.
Comey seems to have become utterly unhinged by Donald Trump, especially when the president, in his thick Queens accent, scoffs in the vernacular—quite accurately, given the transgressions of the FBI hierarchy—about “crooked cops.” What an affront to Comey’s complexity, his subtlety, his sophistication, his feigned Hamlet-like self-doubt—at least as now expressed in his latest incarnation as Twitter’s Kahlil Gibran.
One can say a number of things about the timing of Comey’s latest sermon and his characteristic projection of his own sins on to others.
First, Comey’s unprofessionalism was home-grown and certainly did not need any help from President Trump. His schizophrenic behavior both as a prosecutor and investigator in the Hillary Clinton email matter was marked by exempting Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin from indictment, despite their lying to his own federal officials about their knowledge of a private Clinton email server. Comey wrote his summation of the Clinton email investigation before he had even interviewed the former secretary of state. He was hardly independent from a recused Attorney General Loretta Lynch in the Clinton email investigation. As her rubbery courier he bent to her directives on all key decisions that led to de facto exoneration of likely next president Hillary Clinton.
Second, Attorney General William Barr is soon to receive a number of criminal referrals from Congress, inspectors general, and perhaps other prosecutors. He won’t allow collusion hysteria to cause him to recuse himself in the manner in which Jeff Sessions sidelined himself and elevated Rod Rosenstein.
In anticipation of that bleak reality, Comey seems to be prepping his own defense by a transparent preemptive attack on the very official who may soon calibrate Comey’s own legal exposure. Comey should at least offer a disclaimer that the federal prosecutor he is now attacking may soon be adjudicating his own future—if for no other reason than to prevent a naïf from assuming that Comey’s gambit of attacking Barr is deliberately designed to suggest later on that prosecutor Barr harbored a prejudicial dislike of likely defendant Comey.
How ironic that Comey who used to lecture the nation on “obstruction” and the impropriety of Trump’s editorializing about the Mueller prosecutorial team, is now attacking—or perhaps “obstructing”—the Attorney General before he has even issued a single indictment.
Three, Comey somehow remains seriously delusional about the abyss between his sermonizing and his own unethical and likely illegal behavior.”
The problem here is that objectivity shouldn’t be a partisan thing. No left or right, no editorializing, just the facts. No more, no less.
But now, narratives trump truth to the press, and that’s a bad thing whether you’re from the left or right.
Sharyl Attkisson is an example on how to do it right. While she’s someone I disagree with politically, her reporting is top notch, and she tries to do it right. I’ve no doubt this is how 75% of the press do business. But the other 25% taints the overall picture.
“How Media Narratives Became More Important Than Facts”
“The day that I told CBS News I wished to leave my job as investigative correspondent ahead of my contract, I didn’t give a reason. I didn’t see the point because the problem wasn’t fixable.
Nor was it isolated to CBS News.
My own take is that—as our industry has changed in ways that have become undeniable to most—I was a bit of the canary in the coal mine. By that, I mean I believe I was among the first to really pay attention to the increasingly effective operations to shape and censor news—the movements to establish narratives rather than follow facts—and to see the growing influence of smear operations, political interests, and corporate interests on the news.
It’s not that I’m smarter than my peers, and I’m surely far less smart than many, but my particular brand of off-narrative reporting happened to draw the intense attention of the smear operators and propagandists, so I began to study it.
A case in point: the smear that was promulgated when I left CBS. It was often incorrectly reported that I told CBS management I was quitting due to liberal media bias. That false story turned out to be convenient for both political sides, and largely survives today. It simply wasn’t rooted in fact. And I don’t recall reporters even asking me whether it was true. Once a few articles reported that it was, others simply copied the claim and adopted it as if established fact, eventually without attribution. Now there would be no point in trying to clarify it. After all, Wikipedia says it’s true. No going back from that.
Powerful smear groups and certain interests—including some within CBS at the time—started the narrative that I was “conservative,” not because they necessarily believed it, but as a tool to “controversialize” the reporting I was doing that was contrary to powerful interests. The idea is that if I can be portrayed as a partisan, then my reporting can be more easily dismissed.”
———————
It’s like like the press version of playing the race card. Label, then dismiss.
This story provides a good explanation of what’s happened and why.
______________________________________
… The results are in: A stark divide has emerged between a handful of national players that have managed to stabilize their businesses and local outlets for which time is running out, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of circulation, advertising, financial and employment data.
Local papers have suffered sharper declines in circulation than national outlets and greater incursions into their online advertising businesses from tech giants such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc. The data also shows that they are having a much more difficult time converting readers into paying digital customers.
The result has been a parade of newspaper closures and large-scale layoffs. Nearly 1,800 newspapers closed between 2004 and 2018, leaving 200 counties with no newspaper and roughly half the counties in the country with only one, according to a University of North Carolina study. …
The shrinking of the local news landscape is leaving Americans with less information about what’s happening close to them, a fact Facebook recently acknowledged as it struggled to expand its local-news product but couldn’t find enough stories. Local TV news is still a major, if declining, source of news for Americans, but local newspapers are vanishing. …
______________________________________
(And local TV news typically relies on local newspapers/web sites for their content.)
_____________________________________
… With print advertising revenue hammered, online ad sales had seemed like the answer. But online ads fetch a mere fraction of the price of print ads. As a result, digital ad sales didn’t come close to offsetting what was being lost in print.
Few people in the industry understood just how potent Google and Facebook would become in online advertising. By 2017, they accounted for 86% of all growth in the industry that year, according to Brian Wieser, a former analyst at Pivotal Research.
While Google and Facebook have siphoned ad dollars away from all publishers, local news publishers have been the hardest hit. The tech giants suck up 77% of the digital advertising revenue in local markets, compared to 58% on a national level, according to estimates from Borrell Associates and eMarketer.
… Putting up a digital-subscription paywall has so far only worked for a few. …
_____________________________________
… For years, many in the news industry believed that even if newspapers vanished, journalism would flourish in a lower-cost, digitally native form. But those hopes proved misplaced.
Newspaper jobs declined by 60% from 465,000 employees to 183,000 employees between 1990 and 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since January, more than 1,000 newspaper jobs have disappeared through layoffs and buyouts.
Jobs in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s internet publishing and broadcasting category, the best measure of online news employment available, rose from 29,000 to 197,800 during the same period. Those jobs have been highly concentrated in New York and California, according to a Journal analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
That would leave large swaths of America with radically diminished access to local news. A future without newspapers, Mr. Mele of the Shorenstein Center, says, is “actually a crisis for democracy.” …
______________________________
The article after that goes into some of what’s taking place with our company (MNG) which is trying to execute a hostile takeover now of Gannett (board vote is May 16), and takes a look at the nonprofit model being proposed by some to save the diversity of news outlets that has characterized the U.S.
Want less one-voice partisan news from the big guns? Support your local news outlets. More voices, better journalism. Besides, the national news outlets don’t really care about your communities.
I’m still surprised by how many people will ask me if our paper has considered putting up a website. I smile and say, well, yeah, actually …
Newspapers, including ours, have had websites for 20+ years, offering content largely for free. The online editions are updated throughout the day and have become our main focus, with the print editions now more of an afterthought (but still needed for the ad revenue it still brings in).
For years we were banking on digital ad revenue rising as print revenue declined — eventually, it was thought, digital ad revenue would take over and replace the print $. We all sat in meetings where the execs would put up impressive charts showing how the lines were expected to dissect by such-and-such a year (it kept getting pushed back) and then we’d be able to probably kill the print model altogether (please) and be a self-sustaining digital operation.
But those digital ad revenues were gobbled up by Google and FB, leaving publications struggling and trying to rely more on digital subscriptions to at least help fund the operations.
It’s been a really hard 10 years for most of us in the trenches of day-to-day journalism. The ride down has been dizzying. When I think of the changes & drastic downsizing our company has seen in just the last two years it’s really mind-boggling.
Anyway, kudos to the WSJ for publishing such a clear explanation of a phenomenon that has been hard for many to understand.
“The New York Times editorial board urged Congress to give the Donald Trump administration requested emergency funds, writing that the president was right about a crisis on the border.
“Congress, Give Trump His Border Money,” read the headline on the Sunday editorial, which argued that Democrats should approve the $4.5 billion in funds that were requested in a letter from Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought.
“We are continuing to experience a humanitarian and security crisis at the southern border of the United States,” Vought wrote. “Apprehensions are expected to surpass one million by the end of the year, more than doubling those compared to last year. The number of large-scale groups of family units and unaccompanied alien children (UAC), primarily from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, seeking to enter the country and claim asylum has increased dramatically.”
“President Trump is right: There is a crisis at the southern border. Just not the one he rants about,” the editors wrote. They argue that while Trump is wrong to demand a wall and to present the border as a natural security issue, there is a very real humanitarian crisis at the border due to the surge in asylum claims and wall funding is not included in the request.”
——————-
Almost had it, but they couldn’t resist an unnecessary shot at Trump.
Guy who’s never predicted right even once says what?
CNN: If we don't start "having fewer children" a million species will die.
Note that the "expert" they interview is Paul Ehlrich, the discredited "Population Bomb" prof who's been predicting imminent mass starvation since the 1960s. pic.twitter.com/mG2HS7HGwk
“Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd wrote to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler in a letter Monday, telling Nadler his demands for the full version of the Mueller report have no “legitimate basis.”
Boyd wrote in response to Nadler’s Friday letter in which he threatened to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of court unless he handed over the full version of the Mueller report. Boyd said Nadler and the House Judiciary Committee do not hold legitimate basis for their request.
“The Committee has not articulated any legitimate basis for requesting the law enforcement documents that bear upon more than two dozen criminal cases and investigations, including ongoing matters,” Boyd wrote in the letter.
He said the committee “does not identify any available legal basis to authorize the Department to ask a court to share materials.””
———————-
Maybe another public temper tantrum would help Jerry. Poor baby. 🙂
A lot of people have a hard time understanding/accepting how a video of a HS kid smiling was the focus of national media outrage for weeks, but video of a State Rep harassing pro-life women gets almost no national coverage outside right-wing media.
The answer is simple: Most national reporters are on the left and mostly follow people on the left. They assume outrage among people they follow/agree with is worthy of coverage. They assume outrage on the right is just partisan anger unworthy of coverage.
(((AG)))
@AG_Conservative
And this is where you really notice the difference between national and local media (which are not nearly as partisan).
For those of you unfamiliar with the story, more here. Again, as DJ said, the locals got it.
Here’s him harassing the old woman, and the second is him trying to dox and bring the hate on 3 teen girls. He’s a real tough guy.
WATCH: Pennsylvania State Representative @BrianSimsPA harasses an elderly woman who is peacefully advocating for the lives of preborn human beings and women who are considering abortion.
Never happened before: I clicked on Aj’s 2:32 and got a statement “Error not your fault”
I’ve never seen that before.
As for Anon’s 12:02, the picture looks like one I saw in 1972 warning about the Coming Ice Age.
I liked it better when people complained about the weather, not the climate. But we can’t do anything about either.
On that longer video at 2:32pm, I could not even make it through three whole minutes without feeling like crying, and then I turned it off. His meanness, and repeated use of “Shame on you!”, really bothered me.
Christian parents and pastors must learn more about counteracting online hatred.
Whenever we hear news of a mass shooting, we expect the shooter’s life to follow a certain kind of biographical script. Perhaps he’s long suffered from mental instability. Perhaps he’s from a troubled home, with a long history of suspect behavior. Deprived of purpose and meaning, he’s drawn to dark thoughts and evil places. The pattern of radicalization is clear — evil actors are drawn to broken men, and broken men are prone to evil deeds.
But then I read about the Poway synagogue shooter. He attended an Orthodox Presbyterian Church. His parents seem to be faithful believers. His father is an elder at the church. His pastor preaches the Gospel. Yet he was infected with vile and murderous anti-Semitism and white nationalism.
Wait. What?
This news hit home not just because the shooter is a Christian from a Christian family — and not just because he comes from an Evangelical church — but because he comes from my faith tradition. The OPC is a close cousin to my denomination, the much larger Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). We’re both from the Protestant Reformed tradition, we’re both broadly Calvinist, and congregants often move from one to the other with ease. I have friends in the OPC.
So, what should Christians — specifically, Reformed Christians — do with this news? …
________________________________________
Put me in the category of those who believe the shooting should be an alarm bell.
Let me be clear: Barring unexpected or highly unusual revelations, the alarm bell isn’t over the theology of the church or the illegitimacy of the teaching of the church. No reasonable person can survey OPC theology (or the theology of its Reformed cousins) and think for one moment that it countenances white supremacy, anti-Semitism, or white nationalism. No reasonable person could sit in the pews of any mainstream OPC church and think such a thing.
The OPC put out a heartfelt statement condemning the violence, and the congregation’s statement is clear and unequivocal …
So if the concern isn’t over theology — or any specific, known teaching of the church — then why the alarm bell?
It should warn us about our vulnerability. The shooting in Poway is a terrifying reminder that the church isn’t immune to any moral malady that stalks our land. It may land within the church with varying degrees of intensity and frequency, but it will land in the church. And as we see the spread of the very kind of online hate that seduced the Poway shooter, it’s incumbent upon the church to wake up and deal with this modern, deadly incarnation of the very old sin of white supremacy.
In 2015 and 2016, when my family was in the crosshairs of the alt-right — with my adopted daughter the subject of vile and vicious online memes — members of my church (and my Christian friends from across the nation) were shocked and appalled. The vast majority didn’t even know online communities such as 4chan or 8chan existed. Some were completely unfamiliar with terms such as “meme” or words like “sh**posting” or even “trolling.” …
____________________________________
Wandering Views 
It’s not really a stretch to think so, especially after seeing the effects of environmental activism and the wild fires in Cali. last year. Unintended consequences are a bad side effect.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/05/did-green-justice-polices-cause-the-massive-midwest-floods/
“Did Green Justice Policies Cause the Massive Midwest Floods?
A Nebraska city is now underwater after reducing its levees to comply with “reconnecting the river to its floodplain” rules.”
———-
“The damage and deaths (now numbering 4) in the wake of these floods have drawn comparisons to those experienced in 1993. Looking at the developments, one long-term analyst of the flood plains questioned if environmental policies contributed to this disaster.
Joe Herring, a contributor to American Thinker, took a look at data relayed to the catastrophic flooding of the Missouri River basin in 2011. He noted that priorities of the Corps of Engineers, as expressed in its manual related to flood control policies for that region, placed “habitat restoration” ahead of human life and property.
From the completion of the dam construction (in 1967) until 2004, the Master Water Control Manual listed the priority functions in order of importance, with flood control being number one.
1) flood control
2) irrigation and upstream beneficial uses
3) downstream water supply
4) navigation and power
5) recreation and wildlife
In 2004, under pressure from environmentalist organizations who had been lobbying hard for the previous decade, Congress approved a revision to the manual that no longer specifically prioritized the uses of the system, leaving the order of the functions to the discretion of the Corps of Engineers.
The previous list was then essentially upended, with wildlife (habitat restoration, preservation, and imitation of natural cycles) becoming the top priority, and all the others swapping places back and forth depending on the year.
Hamburg, Iowa, a small town southeast of Omaha, Nebraska, experienced terrible flooding in 2011 and raised the heights of their levees. The Corps of Engineers, based on the new green justice values, forced a height reduction of those structures.
Hamburg now sits underwater.
“We want our future — with our businesses back and our people home,” Cathy Crain, who has been the mayor of Hamburg, Iowa, for 12 years, tells Here & Now’s Robin Young.
Crain says two-thirds of Hamburg was underwater when the bomb cyclone hit in March, causing flood waters to overflow the levee that protects the town from the Missouri River. Half the town is still submerged from the flooding, she says.
If you thought California has crazy water policies protecting bait fish, then behold the Corps of Engineers’ projects “reconnecting the rivers to floodplains” on behalf birds!”
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The Holder Defense.
Well Dems, you sowed this, so now you reap it.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/may/5/william-barr-uses-eric-holders-defense-against-con/
“Turnabout: Barr deploys Holder defense to stymie Democrats in Congress”
“As Attorney General William P. Barr works to fend off an aggressive Congress demanding more information, he has turned to a surprising source for justification: former Obama official Eric H. Holder Jr., who seven years ago found himself in much the same position.
Mr. Holder’s justification for thwarting the House — then under Republican control — was the first piece of evidence Mr. Barr used last week in his letter letting House Democrats know he would not meet their deadline for complying with a subpoena.
At issue is the unredacted copy of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the 2016 election.
Democrats want both the report and reams of supporting evidence Mr. Mueller compiled during his 22 months of investigation. Mr. Barr says he is willing to negotiate but that some of the information — the parts Mr. Mueller gleaned from a grand jury — are shielded by law and can’t be turned over without breaking that law.”
————————-
Make no mistake here folks, Dems are demanding that the highest law enforcement officer in the land break the law to accommodate their unrealistic demands. I guess they figure if the Comeys and Clapper will break the law for them, won’t the rest as well?
So Nadler has scheduled a contempt vote….. which (ask Holder) is meaningless, and has no teeth. With a R controlled Senate and Presidency, impeachment for Barr or Trump stands no chance. They know this too, this is just the theatre of the absurd, for their leftist base, who apparently doesn’t understand how any of this works. 🙂
https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/06/nadler-vote-barr-contempt-of-congress/
“House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler scheduled a vote Monday to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for not giving the committee special counsel Robert Mueller’s full unredacted report.
The New York Democrat gave Barr a deadline of 9 a.m. Monday to turn in the full report with no redactions, which many Republicans believe would be dangerous due to the possibly sensitive material, which could be leaked. Nadler has now scheduled the congressional contempt vote for Wednesday, May 8 at 10 a.m.”
——
“House Judiciary Committee ranking member Doug Collins blasted Nadler in a Monday statement, saying Nadler’s request would require Barr to break the law. (RELATED: Attorney General Bill Barr To Not Testify In Front Of House Judiciary Committee)
“Chairman Nadler knows full subpoena compliance requires Attorney General Barr to break the law. Yet, instead of introducing legislation allowing the attorney general to provide Congress grand jury material, Democrats move to hold him in contempt,” Collins said in a statement Monday.
“They know the Justice Department is working to negotiate even as they pursue contempt charges, making their move today illogical and disingenuous. Democrats have launched a proxy war smearing the attorney general when their anger actually lies with the president and the special counsel, who found neither conspiracy nor obstruction,” Collins continued.”
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Still no. 🙂
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/deadline-looms-treasury-expected-buck-democrats-demand-trump/story?id=62851044
“Treasury denies Democrats’ demand for Trump tax returns, again”
“Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has denied congressional Democrats’ request for six years of President Donald Trump’s personal and business tax returns, writing that the request “lacks a legitimate legislative purpose” and therefore the Dept is “not authorized” to release the returns.
Mnuchin added that the Department of Justice had informed Treasury, “that it intends to memorialize its advice in a published legal opinion as soon as practical.””
——————
This is a no fishing area. Sorry Dems. 🙂
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Guilty until proven innocent.
Mueller the fraud has rewritten jurisprudence.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/05/mueller_rewrites_jurisprudence__guilty_until_proven_innocent.html
“American jurisprudence is based on the presumption of innocence — in other words, innocent until proven guilty. The accused remains innocent unless and until the prosecution can convince a judge or jury that the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Exoneration is not part of this equation for it represents the exact opposite principle, namely guilty until proven innocent. This is an impossible standard as it requires proving a negative. How does one prove that he or she didn’t commit a crime? How does one prove that Elvis or JFK aren’t still alive, conspiracy theories aside? Exoneration is an impossible standard and turns the American judicial system upside down.
This is just what Special Counsel Robert Mueller did in his final report on Russian collusion. The 400-page report could have been summarized in four words – no collusion, no obstruction.
White House Special Counsel to the President, Emmett Flood, laid it all out in a recent letter to Attorney General Barr. The purpose of the letter was a rebuttal, an on-the-record response to the Mueller report.
Flood began by saying that the Mueller report “Suffers from an extraordinary legal defect. It quite deliberately fails to comply with the requirements of governing law.” This is a roundabout way of saying the report is illegal.”
——————–
Here’s that rebuttal letter….
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/02/politics/white-house-letter-to-ag-barr/index.html
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We also now know for sure that the whole thing was started under false pretenses.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/fbi-trump-russia-investigation-george-papadopoulos/
“The FBI’s Trump-Russia Investigation Was Formally Opened on False Pretenses”
“The State Department and an Australian diplomat grossly exaggerated Papadopoulos’s claims — which were probably false anyway.
Chicanery was the force behind the formal opening of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation. There was a false premise, namely: The Trump campaign must have known that Russia possessed emails related to Hillary Clinton. From there, through either intentional deception or incompetence, the foreign ministries of Australia and the United States erected a fraudulent story tying the Trump campaign’s purported knowledge to the publication of hacked Democratic National Committee emails.”
“That is what we learn from the saga of George Papadopoulos, as fleshed out by the Mueller report.”
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Comey is still projecting his sins unto others.
“In a recent op-ed, fired FBI Director James Comey was back again preaching to the nation about the dangers of Donald Trump and his capacity to corrupt any top-ranking federal official of lower character than Comey’s own.
Comey seems to have become utterly unhinged by Donald Trump, especially when the president, in his thick Queens accent, scoffs in the vernacular—quite accurately, given the transgressions of the FBI hierarchy—about “crooked cops.” What an affront to Comey’s complexity, his subtlety, his sophistication, his feigned Hamlet-like self-doubt—at least as now expressed in his latest incarnation as Twitter’s Kahlil Gibran.
One can say a number of things about the timing of Comey’s latest sermon and his characteristic projection of his own sins on to others.
First, Comey’s unprofessionalism was home-grown and certainly did not need any help from President Trump. His schizophrenic behavior both as a prosecutor and investigator in the Hillary Clinton email matter was marked by exempting Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin from indictment, despite their lying to his own federal officials about their knowledge of a private Clinton email server. Comey wrote his summation of the Clinton email investigation before he had even interviewed the former secretary of state. He was hardly independent from a recused Attorney General Loretta Lynch in the Clinton email investigation. As her rubbery courier he bent to her directives on all key decisions that led to de facto exoneration of likely next president Hillary Clinton.
Second, Attorney General William Barr is soon to receive a number of criminal referrals from Congress, inspectors general, and perhaps other prosecutors. He won’t allow collusion hysteria to cause him to recuse himself in the manner in which Jeff Sessions sidelined himself and elevated Rod Rosenstein.
In anticipation of that bleak reality, Comey seems to be prepping his own defense by a transparent preemptive attack on the very official who may soon calibrate Comey’s own legal exposure. Comey should at least offer a disclaimer that the federal prosecutor he is now attacking may soon be adjudicating his own future—if for no other reason than to prevent a naïf from assuming that Comey’s gambit of attacking Barr is deliberately designed to suggest later on that prosecutor Barr harbored a prejudicial dislike of likely defendant Comey.
How ironic that Comey who used to lecture the nation on “obstruction” and the impropriety of Trump’s editorializing about the Mueller prosecutorial team, is now attacking—or perhaps “obstructing”—the Attorney General before he has even issued a single indictment.
Three, Comey somehow remains seriously delusional about the abyss between his sermonizing and his own unethical and likely illegal behavior.”
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Nope. No bias here……
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The problem here is that objectivity shouldn’t be a partisan thing. No left or right, no editorializing, just the facts. No more, no less.
But now, narratives trump truth to the press, and that’s a bad thing whether you’re from the left or right.
Sharyl Attkisson is an example on how to do it right. While she’s someone I disagree with politically, her reporting is top notch, and she tries to do it right. I’ve no doubt this is how 75% of the press do business. But the other 25% taints the overall picture.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/what-my-leaving-cbs-news-revealed-about-the-news-industry_2901934.html
“How Media Narratives Became More Important Than Facts”
“The day that I told CBS News I wished to leave my job as investigative correspondent ahead of my contract, I didn’t give a reason. I didn’t see the point because the problem wasn’t fixable.
Nor was it isolated to CBS News.
My own take is that—as our industry has changed in ways that have become undeniable to most—I was a bit of the canary in the coal mine. By that, I mean I believe I was among the first to really pay attention to the increasingly effective operations to shape and censor news—the movements to establish narratives rather than follow facts—and to see the growing influence of smear operations, political interests, and corporate interests on the news.
It’s not that I’m smarter than my peers, and I’m surely far less smart than many, but my particular brand of off-narrative reporting happened to draw the intense attention of the smear operators and propagandists, so I began to study it.
A case in point: the smear that was promulgated when I left CBS. It was often incorrectly reported that I told CBS management I was quitting due to liberal media bias. That false story turned out to be convenient for both political sides, and largely survives today. It simply wasn’t rooted in fact. And I don’t recall reporters even asking me whether it was true. Once a few articles reported that it was, others simply copied the claim and adopted it as if established fact, eventually without attribution. Now there would be no point in trying to clarify it. After all, Wikipedia says it’s true. No going back from that.
Powerful smear groups and certain interests—including some within CBS at the time—started the narrative that I was “conservative,” not because they necessarily believed it, but as a tool to “controversialize” the reporting I was doing that was contrary to powerful interests. The idea is that if I can be portrayed as a partisan, then my reporting can be more easily dismissed.”
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It’s like like the press version of playing the race card. Label, then dismiss.
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WaPo, NYT, WSJ, all surviving and stabilized.
Rest of us covering more localized markets? Not so much.
This story provides a good explanation of what’s happened and why.
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… The results are in: A stark divide has emerged between a handful of national players that have managed to stabilize their businesses and local outlets for which time is running out, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of circulation, advertising, financial and employment data.
Local papers have suffered sharper declines in circulation than national outlets and greater incursions into their online advertising businesses from tech giants such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc. The data also shows that they are having a much more difficult time converting readers into paying digital customers.
The result has been a parade of newspaper closures and large-scale layoffs. Nearly 1,800 newspapers closed between 2004 and 2018, leaving 200 counties with no newspaper and roughly half the counties in the country with only one, according to a University of North Carolina study. …
The shrinking of the local news landscape is leaving Americans with less information about what’s happening close to them, a fact Facebook recently acknowledged as it struggled to expand its local-news product but couldn’t find enough stories. Local TV news is still a major, if declining, source of news for Americans, but local newspapers are vanishing. …
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(And local TV news typically relies on local newspapers/web sites for their content.)
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… With print advertising revenue hammered, online ad sales had seemed like the answer. But online ads fetch a mere fraction of the price of print ads. As a result, digital ad sales didn’t come close to offsetting what was being lost in print.
Few people in the industry understood just how potent Google and Facebook would become in online advertising. By 2017, they accounted for 86% of all growth in the industry that year, according to Brian Wieser, a former analyst at Pivotal Research.
While Google and Facebook have siphoned ad dollars away from all publishers, local news publishers have been the hardest hit. The tech giants suck up 77% of the digital advertising revenue in local markets, compared to 58% on a national level, according to estimates from Borrell Associates and eMarketer.
… Putting up a digital-subscription paywall has so far only worked for a few. …
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(cont)
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… For years, many in the news industry believed that even if newspapers vanished, journalism would flourish in a lower-cost, digitally native form. But those hopes proved misplaced.
Newspaper jobs declined by 60% from 465,000 employees to 183,000 employees between 1990 and 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since January, more than 1,000 newspaper jobs have disappeared through layoffs and buyouts.
Jobs in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s internet publishing and broadcasting category, the best measure of online news employment available, rose from 29,000 to 197,800 during the same period. Those jobs have been highly concentrated in New York and California, according to a Journal analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
That would leave large swaths of America with radically diminished access to local news. A future without newspapers, Mr. Mele of the Shorenstein Center, says, is “actually a crisis for democracy.” …
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The article after that goes into some of what’s taking place with our company (MNG) which is trying to execute a hostile takeover now of Gannett (board vote is May 16), and takes a look at the nonprofit model being proposed by some to save the diversity of news outlets that has characterized the U.S.
Want less one-voice partisan news from the big guns? Support your local news outlets. More voices, better journalism. Besides, the national news outlets don’t really care about your communities.
I’m still surprised by how many people will ask me if our paper has considered putting up a website. I smile and say, well, yeah, actually …
Newspapers, including ours, have had websites for 20+ years, offering content largely for free. The online editions are updated throughout the day and have become our main focus, with the print editions now more of an afterthought (but still needed for the ad revenue it still brings in).
For years we were banking on digital ad revenue rising as print revenue declined — eventually, it was thought, digital ad revenue would take over and replace the print $. We all sat in meetings where the execs would put up impressive charts showing how the lines were expected to dissect by such-and-such a year (it kept getting pushed back) and then we’d be able to probably kill the print model altogether (please) and be a self-sustaining digital operation.
But those digital ad revenues were gobbled up by Google and FB, leaving publications struggling and trying to rely more on digital subscriptions to at least help fund the operations.
It’s been a really hard 10 years for most of us in the trenches of day-to-day journalism. The ride down has been dizzying. When I think of the changes & drastic downsizing our company has seen in just the last two years it’s really mind-boggling.
Anyway, kudos to the WSJ for publishing such a clear explanation of a phenomenon that has been hard for many to understand.
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As we speak a cold spell is hitting Hell.
Never thought I’d read this from the NY Times editorial board.
Golf clap, for being almost right for a change.
https://freebeacon.com/politics/nyt-editorial-board-trump-is-right-about-border-crisis-congress-should-approve-funds/
“The New York Times editorial board urged Congress to give the Donald Trump administration requested emergency funds, writing that the president was right about a crisis on the border.
“Congress, Give Trump His Border Money,” read the headline on the Sunday editorial, which argued that Democrats should approve the $4.5 billion in funds that were requested in a letter from Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought.
“We are continuing to experience a humanitarian and security crisis at the southern border of the United States,” Vought wrote. “Apprehensions are expected to surpass one million by the end of the year, more than doubling those compared to last year. The number of large-scale groups of family units and unaccompanied alien children (UAC), primarily from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, seeking to enter the country and claim asylum has increased dramatically.”
“President Trump is right: There is a crisis at the southern border. Just not the one he rants about,” the editors wrote. They argue that while Trump is wrong to demand a wall and to present the border as a natural security issue, there is a very real humanitarian crisis at the border due to the surge in asylum claims and wall funding is not included in the request.”
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Almost had it, but they couldn’t resist an unnecessary shot at Trump.
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Guy who’s never predicted right even once says what?
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No. Legitimate. Basis.
https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/06/barr-nadler-mueller-report/
“Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd wrote to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler in a letter Monday, telling Nadler his demands for the full version of the Mueller report have no “legitimate basis.”
Boyd wrote in response to Nadler’s Friday letter in which he threatened to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of court unless he handed over the full version of the Mueller report. Boyd said Nadler and the House Judiciary Committee do not hold legitimate basis for their request.
“The Committee has not articulated any legitimate basis for requesting the law enforcement documents that bear upon more than two dozen criminal cases and investigations, including ongoing matters,” Boyd wrote in the letter.
He said the committee “does not identify any available legal basis to authorize the Department to ask a court to share materials.””
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Maybe another public temper tantrum would help Jerry. Poor baby. 🙂
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Poster adds:
@AG_Conservative
The answer is simple: Most national reporters are on the left and mostly follow people on the left. They assume outrage among people they follow/agree with is worthy of coverage. They assume outrage on the right is just partisan anger unworthy of coverage.
(((AG)))
@AG_Conservative
And this is where you really notice the difference between national and local media (which are not nearly as partisan).
Plenty of local outlets are covering it:
https://www.philly.com/opinion/brian-sims-video-planned-parenthood-protest-20190506.html …
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For those of you unfamiliar with the story, more here. Again, as DJ said, the locals got it.
Here’s him harassing the old woman, and the second is him trying to dox and bring the hate on 3 teen girls. He’s a real tough guy.
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Never happened before: I clicked on Aj’s 2:32 and got a statement “Error not your fault”
I’ve never seen that before.
As for Anon’s 12:02, the picture looks like one I saw in 1972 warning about the Coming Ice Age.
I liked it better when people complained about the weather, not the climate. But we can’t do anything about either.
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That 3:38 was from me
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On that longer video at 2:32pm, I could not even make it through three whole minutes without feeling like crying, and then I turned it off. His meanness, and repeated use of “Shame on you!”, really bothered me.
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I read his comments earlier and agree, the repeated “Shame on you!” was just rude and cruel.
People have lost it.
Oh, and there’s been another school shooting.
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Here’s another piece, this one by David French, on the synagogue shooting:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/dealing-with-the-shock-of-an-evangelical-terrorist/
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Christian parents and pastors must learn more about counteracting online hatred.
Whenever we hear news of a mass shooting, we expect the shooter’s life to follow a certain kind of biographical script. Perhaps he’s long suffered from mental instability. Perhaps he’s from a troubled home, with a long history of suspect behavior. Deprived of purpose and meaning, he’s drawn to dark thoughts and evil places. The pattern of radicalization is clear — evil actors are drawn to broken men, and broken men are prone to evil deeds.
But then I read about the Poway synagogue shooter. He attended an Orthodox Presbyterian Church. His parents seem to be faithful believers. His father is an elder at the church. His pastor preaches the Gospel. Yet he was infected with vile and murderous anti-Semitism and white nationalism.
Wait. What?
This news hit home not just because the shooter is a Christian from a Christian family — and not just because he comes from an Evangelical church — but because he comes from my faith tradition. The OPC is a close cousin to my denomination, the much larger Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). We’re both from the Protestant Reformed tradition, we’re both broadly Calvinist, and congregants often move from one to the other with ease. I have friends in the OPC.
So, what should Christians — specifically, Reformed Christians — do with this news? …
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A little more from that piece:
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Put me in the category of those who believe the shooting should be an alarm bell.
Let me be clear: Barring unexpected or highly unusual revelations, the alarm bell isn’t over the theology of the church or the illegitimacy of the teaching of the church. No reasonable person can survey OPC theology (or the theology of its Reformed cousins) and think for one moment that it countenances white supremacy, anti-Semitism, or white nationalism. No reasonable person could sit in the pews of any mainstream OPC church and think such a thing.
The OPC put out a heartfelt statement condemning the violence, and the congregation’s statement is clear and unequivocal …
So if the concern isn’t over theology — or any specific, known teaching of the church — then why the alarm bell?
It should warn us about our vulnerability. The shooting in Poway is a terrifying reminder that the church isn’t immune to any moral malady that stalks our land. It may land within the church with varying degrees of intensity and frequency, but it will land in the church. And as we see the spread of the very kind of online hate that seduced the Poway shooter, it’s incumbent upon the church to wake up and deal with this modern, deadly incarnation of the very old sin of white supremacy.
In 2015 and 2016, when my family was in the crosshairs of the alt-right — with my adopted daughter the subject of vile and vicious online memes — members of my church (and my Christian friends from across the nation) were shocked and appalled. The vast majority didn’t even know online communities such as 4chan or 8chan existed. Some were completely unfamiliar with terms such as “meme” or words like “sh**posting” or even “trolling.” …
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