“New term ‘Blue Anon’ invented to describe Democrats’ nutty conspiracy theories
Many Republicans’ theories that are a little bit “out there” have been lumped together under QAnon. Now, people can do the same for people on the other side of the political fence by calling them “Blue Anon”.”
“”Ladies and gentlemen, we did it.” the tweet reads, referring to the fact that the term “Blue Anon” has been officially entered into Urban Dictionary. Urban Dictionary is the number one go-to site for researching slang terms in the English language.
Contained within the Urban Dictionary definition are many of the top conspiracy theories bought into frequently by registered Democrats. Here is a list of them as they appear in the definition:
The definition of “Blue Anon” is “a loosely organized network fo Democrat coters, politicians and media personalities who spread left-wing conspiracy theories.”
“Democrats like to accuse anyone who doesn’t embrace every one of their brand-new, rapidly evolving, Constitution-corroding positions of being “authoritarians.” It’s often an impressive feat of projection. For a pristine example of the genre, take Jonathan Chait’s recent New York magazine piece alleging that former vice president Mike Pence is laying the “blueprint” for a fascistic GOP state in his new Heritage Foundation op-ed.
What “authoritarian” diktats does Herr Pence have in store for our fragile American democracy? For starters, the former vice president argues that states, as they always have, should conduct their own elections rather than permit a narrow partisan majority led by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to unilaterally nationalize and dictate the rules for every locality in perpetuity — as they did with a House vote on a sweeping measure known as H.R. 1.
To be more precise, Pence writes that he opposes empowering the federal government to:
compel states to count mail-in votes that arrive up to ten days after Election Day.
compel states to allow ballot harvesting.
compel states to ban voter ID laws.
compel states to allow bureaucrats to redraw congressional districts.
compel states to allow felons to vote.
compel states to undermine free-speech rights by imposing “onerous legal and administrative burdens on candidates, civic groups, unions, nonprofit organizations.”
The latter of these initiatives is an outrageous attack on the First Amendment, but all of them are contained in some way in H.R. 1 — which amounts to an integrity-corroding, banana-republic attempt to override the will of states, which most Democrats don’t seem to believe should exist. Or, at least, not for the red ones.”
“The US Supreme Court has dismissed three pending appeals on former President Donald Trump’s effort to withhold law enforcement grants from states and cities that refused to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, according to reports.
The high court acted shortly after the Biden administration, as well as state and city governments in New York and California, jointly asked it to dismiss the appeals, Fox News reported.
Attorneys for jurisdictions challenging the order in the three cases — which involve the Big Apple and San Francisco — said they agreed with the new administration that the cases should be dismissed.
Biden has rescinded Trump’s 2017 executive order that called on US agencies to withhold federal funds from the so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, many of which are governed by Democrats. Lower courts were divided on whether the policy was lawful.”
“Abbott to Biden: ‘Neanderthal-Type’ Thinking Is You Releasing COVID-Positive Migrants in Texas
Biden said: “The last thing we need is the Neanderthal thinking.”
“Who’s up for more of that sweet Joe Biden brand of unity? President Joe Biden described Texas and Mississippi lifting COVID restrictions as “Neanderthal thinking.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told Biden he has a “Neanderthal-type” approach to COVID because he is okay with releasing COVID positive immigrants in the state.
Biden’s Remarks
Caitlin McFall reports at FOX News:
Biden says Texas and Mississippi guilty of ‘Neanderthal thinking’ over lifting COVID restrictions
President Biden took a swipe at Republican governors in Texas and Mississippi Wednesday, accusing them of “Neanderthal thinking” following their decision to reverse COVID safety policies, including mask mandates.
“We’ve been able to move that all the way up to the end of May to have enough [vaccines] for every American, to get every adult American to get a shot,” Biden told reporters from the White House Wednesday. “The last thing we need is the Neanderthal thinking.”
Despite the warning issued by health officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regarding a fourth resurgence in coronavirus cases earlier this week, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said all state regulations would be lifted starting Wednesday.
Here’s the video:”
“Abbott Responds
From Fox News:
GOV. ABBOTT: “The two things, Brian. First, it obviously is not the type of thing that the president should be saying. But, second, he kind of said it on the worst day he could have, because the same day he said that in Texas, the Biden administration was releasing illegal immigrants into our communities who had COVID. The Biden administration was spreading COVID in south Texas yesterday because of their lack of constraint of testing and quarantining people who come across the border illegally. The Biden administration was exposing Texans to COVID. That is a Neanderthal type approach to dealing with the COVID situation.””
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Freedom of choice for Americans: “Neanderthal thinking”
“Two recent polls suggest wokism is beginning to recede on a variety of fronts, from less trust in Black Lives Matter and more confidence in the police, to suspicion that the Capitol “insurrection” account is being used to unfairly suppress political expression while Antifa, increasingly, is seen as a terrorist organization whose violence has been ignored improperly by authorities.
There are tens of millions of Americans who either have been stung, or turned off, by McCarthyite wokeness (and thus have anti-wokeness antibodies). More have been vaccinated from its latest virulent strains by their own values of judging people as individuals, not as racial or gender collectives. So lots of Americans have developed peremptory defenses against it. The result is that daily there are ever-fewer who are susceptible to the woke pandemic. And it will thus begin to fade out—even as the virus desperately seeks to mutate and go after more institutions.
Peak wokeness is nearing also because if it continued in its present incarnation, then the United States as we know would cease to exist—in the sense that 1692-93 Salem or 1793-94 Paris could not have continued apace without destroying society. Woke leftism exists to destroy and tear down, not to unite and build. It is not designed to play down and heal racial differences, but to accentuate and capitalize on them.
Scattershot Immunity
The methodology of cancel culture is utterly incoherent and unsustainable. The shark was jumped by the case of the Dr. Seuss books—banned by some local school districts, even as Dr. Seuss Enterprises, in terror, pulled some of the late Theodor Seuss Geisel’s publications of its own accord. If the author of The Cat in the Hat is now an enemy of the people, then anyone and all can be so designated.
That is, after 70 years and millions of books in the houses of millions of Americans, our generation’s new Soviet censors have now decided that Seuss’s books of the late 1940s and 1950s do not conform to our 2021 sensibilities and thus should be banned. The same kind of canceling of Disney films and cartoons, and of particular novelists and social critics is now a matter of record.
But what are to be the new standards of Trotskyization as we go forth? Can the Governor of New York be excused for months of policies that led to nearly 15,000 unnecessary deaths, but not for inappropriate kisses and touching of women? Or will he, as an Emmy-winning woke official, be exempt from punishment for both types of transgressions?
There are no logical standards that dictate who is and who is not canceled. For now, all we know about the rules of wokeness is that living leftists are mostly not canceled by the woke mob for the thought crimes that ruin both the non-Left or the generic dead.
The operating assumption is that the uncovered sins of the progressive are aberrations and not windows into their dark souls. Or perhaps woke leftism works on the same principle as carbon credits: the more you act progressively, the more pluses you have when minuses are summed up.
Most who have claims of being non-white are likely to find partial vaccination from the woke mob. Those who are independently wealthy or successfully self-employed likewise have some immunity. Then there are the defiant, the proverbial “Don’t Tread on Me” folks, who will fight, and thus encourage the zombie walkers to detour around them.
The only consistent pattern of woke punishment is the shared logic of the lions and water buffalos at the ford—devour the sacrificial, single, and vulnerable while avoiding the robust herd with retaliatory horns.
The Woke Tax
Wokeness eventually would put an unsustainable economic strain on the system. Wokeness is siphoning off billions of dollars from a productive economy through a sort of value-subtracted tax. We are spending a great deal of labor and capital for merit to be replaced in college admissions, in hiring, in grants, in publication, in the selections of awards, and in movies and videos, in everything—as racial, ethnic, and sexual identity considerations replace meritocratic, literary, artistic, and technological criteria, rather than just augment, them.
Americans also are investing lots of capital in preempting wokeness—writing/saying/acting in ways that are not productive, but simply defensive. Diversity oaths, and diversity applications, pledges, and statements take some time to read and digest. It will not be long before insurers will sell “woke insurance,” the premiums adjusted upward for those more conservative and of the wrong genealogy. It won’t be long before we all carry cards certifying that “At no time, did I say, hear, or think anything . . . .””
“FBI’s cozy relations with reporters often backfired, ending with inaccurate scandal stories
Internal FBI text messages show widespread concern about bad reporting in Russia case. “The press is going to undermine its credibility.”
“Afew weeks after Donald Trump won the White House, senior officials inside the FBI had their latest heartburn about the news media’s coverage of a burgeoning Russia collusion controversy and the lingering Hillary Clinton email scandal.
The bureau had recently terminated its primary informant in the Russia probe Christopher Steele for leaking, and several of its leads about Russia-Trump collusion were falling apart. And inaccurate stories about the two biggest scandals in Washington were cropping up everywhere, even when FBI officials tried to work with reporters.
“Yes, the headline is REALLY misleading,” then-FBI deputy counsel Lisa Page wrote a colleague in a text message concerning a New York Times article that day. The text message didn’t further identify the article but made clear the article was the result of a bureau overture to reporters that backfired.”
———
“Despite all the consternation about inaccurate reporting, though, the same text messages show that many senior FBI officials remained in touch with the news media — especially McCabe, who often texted with reporters at the New York Times and other news organizations.
“Congrats on the new gig,” Times reporter Matt Apuzzo wrote in one such message in 2016 after McCabe was named deputy director.
“Thanks very much Matt,” McCabe wrote back. “It’s a great opportunity and a great challenge. I am lucky to have it.”
The two then arranged to have “drinks or lunch.”
Another time, ABC journalist Josh Margolin thanked McCabe for helping on a weekend with a story.
“Andy, it’s Josh Margolin at ABC,” the reporter texted. “Thanks for your help on Saturday. Sorry to disrupt your vacation. …Are you in DC Thurs or Friday next week? I have something interesting and delicate I’d like to discuss with you.”
“I am around next week,” McCabe answered, offering to get the FBI’s public affairs chief to arrange the meeting.
Ultimately, McCabe’s dealings with the news media became his undoing. He was fired after a Justice Department investigation concluded he lied about authorizing the release of information to the Wall Street Journal about an investigation and that he did not have the right under bureau rules to authorize the anonymous leak.
“We therefore concluded that McCabe’s disclosure of the existence of an ongoing investigation in this manner violated the FBI’s and the Department’s media policy and constituted misconduct,” the IG concluded.”
No one was hiding this position. You weren’t played. He was very upfront about this. You had the most pro-life president and you traded him for nice tweets.
You are idiots! You are pro life Christians who voted for the biggest pro abortion president in history, who just decreed our tax dollars will go to fund abortions world wide. You Idiots!!!
It took no "courage" to support Biden. That was abject stupidity. We warned you. You didn't listen. And now you'll "oppose" him? Bravo – here's the sound of one hand clapping. We're seriously screwed because of people like you, and abortion is the least of it. Yes, it's that bad.
Regarding yesterday’s conversation about the vaccination: I don’t think we should be pressuring people to get the vaccine, but there does need to be a bigger push to educate the public generally. Unfortunately there is a substantial and well-earned distrust of the CDC, public health agencies, and other leaders due to unnecessary politicization last year and the subsequent censoring this year, and it will take some time to rebuild. Evangelical snakes like David French are no help. If people really care about the health of their community, they should be willing to promote community health centers that provide affordable healthcare in under served communities in the urban and rural areas. Yet these are the very kind of projects that most libertarian-leaning never-trumper evangelicals like French find abhorrent.
“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott launched a program on March 6 that will deploy state National Guard troops and personnel from other agencies to respond to the burgeoning crisis at the southern border.
Abbott says Operation Lone Star, in collaboration with the state’s Department of Public Safety, will deploy air, ground, marine, and tactical border security assets to prevent Mexican criminal organizations from smuggling drugs and people into Texas.
“Texas supports legal immigration but will not be an accomplice to the open border policies that cause, rather than prevent, a humanitarian crisis in our state and endanger the lives of Texans,” Abbott said in a statement to media outlets on March 6.
“We will surge the resources and law enforcement personnel needed to confront this crisis.””
“President Joe Biden signed an executive order on March 7 altering the way the federal government handles elections, including by increasing voting and voter registration access for criminals in prison and on probation.
“The order will direct the Attorney General to establish procedures to provide educational materials related to voter registration and voting, and to the extent practicable, to facilitate voter registration, for all eligible individuals in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons,” a fact sheet distributed by the White House states.
The order also directs the attorney general to help former prisoners obtain appropriate identification to satisfy state voting requirements. Biden is also asking the U.S. Marshals Service to include language in its contracts to facilitate voting by mail and provide eligible criminals information on voting and voter registration.”
“Conservative nonprofit Heritage Action for America is on Monday expected to announce plans to spend $10 million on a wide-ranging election integrity campaign to strengthen voting laws in eight swing states, according to reports.
According to Fox News, the campaign will target Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, Texas, and Wisconsin, with the effort involving such initiatives as digital and television advertisements, as well as direct lobbying of state lawmakers.
“Fair elections are essential for every policy debate in the future,” Heritage Action Executive Director Jessica Anderson told the outlet in a statement. “We are working to help state lawmakers restore trust in our elections, ensure transparency, and protect the rights of every American to a fair election. This is our number one priority, and we are committed to doing whatever it takes.””
“Media-Hyped March 4 Capitol Attack Never Happened, So Now They’re Hyping Future Dates
Glenn Greenwald: “if this ‘armed insurrection’ and threat of domestic terrorism are so grave, why do media figures and politicians in both parties—from Adam Schiff to Liz Cheney—keep lying about it and peddling fictions?””
“Democrats and their media cohorts are furiously trying to spin out their Capitol riots Reichstag moment by hyping lunatic conspiracy theories as if they have any basis in reality. The goal is two-fold: demonize Republicans, particularly Trump supporters, and create a climate of fear in order to justify a new war on “domestic terror.”
However, for their fevered dreams of rampant civil rights-violating policies used against American citizens on American soil to come to fruition, they will have to come up with something better than a pretend “threat” from a lunatic fringe group. This time the made-up insurrection against the Capitol was to take place on March 4th. It didn’t.
In fact, so much nothing happened that the headlines warning of the March 4 armed insurrection read like ludicrous parodies of news.
The BBC: “US Capitol police warn of possible militia plot to breach Congress”
ABC News: “Capitol Police officials say intel on possible March 4 plot being taken ‘seriously’:
QAnon followers believe that Donald Trump will return to power on March 4.
USA Today: “Police bolster security at US Capitol as QAnon theory claims Trump will become president March 4”
NBC News: “D.C. police, FBI on alert ahead of QAnon’s ‘true Inauguration Day’”
CBS News: “House scraps Thursday session after intel warns of potential violence at Capitol”
Apparently, the crazy took hold because some QAnon followers were blathering on social media and in obscure online forums about March 4th being the day Trump would triumphantly ride into
DC and resume the presidency. I think a brain cell or two died just typing that sentence.
Anyway, yep, that’s the ‘threat’ that got DC Democrats, the FBI, the Capitol police, and the increasingly clownish legacy media all wee-wee’d up.”
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Tucker destroys their garbage in a hilarious way. 🙂
“Media Using Same ‘Anonymous Sources’ Tactic for Capitol Hill Riot That Propelled Russia Hoax
“according to a law enforcement official”
“Over the last four years, countless anti-Trump stories in the news relied on anonymous sources. The term ‘according to sources’ has become a punchline, and people in media are the only ones who don’t get the joke. They used this dishonest tactic to push the debunked Steele dossier, the Russia collusion lie, and more.
Now they are doing the same thing with the Capitol story.
See if you can spot the magic phrase in this New York Times report:
F.B.I. Finds Contact Between Proud Boys Member and Trump Associate Before Riot
A member of the far-right nationalist Proud Boys was in communication with a person associated with the White House in the days just before the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.
Location, cellular and call record data revealed a call tying a Proud Boys member to the Trump White House, the official said. The F.B.I. has not determined what they discussed, and the official would not reveal the names of either party.
The connection revealed by the communications data comes as the F.B.I. intensifies its investigation of contacts among far-right extremists, Trump White House associates and conservative members of Congress in the days before the attack…
The communication between the person associated with the White House and the member of the Proud Boys was discovered in part through data that the F.B.I. obtained from technology and telecommunications companies immediately after the assault.
“according to a law enforcement official”
“the person associated with the White House”
There’s something very familiar about all of this.”
"in communication with a person associated with" without substance is same garbage style connections NY Times, MSNBC, etc. use to push Russia collusion hoax for years https://t.co/mBGAGU85sX
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) March 6, 2021
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It’s probably the same in the AP stylebook too. All the lapdogs use the same script.
“As the Insurrection Narrative Crumbles, Democrats Cling to it More Desperately Than Ever
If the threat of “armed insurrectionists” and “domestic terrorists” is as great as some claim, why do they have to keep lying and peddling crude media fictions about it?”
“Twice in the last six weeks, warnings were issued about imminent, grave threats to public safety posed by the same type of right-wing extremists who rioted at the Capitol on January 6. And both times, these warnings ushered in severe security measures only to prove utterly baseless.
First we had the hysteria over the violence we were told was likely to occur at numerous state capitols on Inauguration Day. “Law enforcement and state officials are on high alert for potentially violent protests in the lead-up to Inauguration Day, with some state capitols boarded up and others temporarily closed ahead of Wednesday’s ceremony,” announced CNN. In an even scarier formulation, NPR intoned that “the FBI is warning of protests and potential violence in all 50 state capitals ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.”
The resulting clampdowns were as extreme as the dire warnings. Washington, D.C. was militarized more than at any point since the 9/11 attack. The military was highly visible on the streets. And, described The Washington Post, “state capitols nationwide locked down, with windows boarded up, National Guard troops deployed and states of emergency preemptively declared as authorities braced for potential violence Sunday mimicking the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of pro-Trump rioters.” All of this, said the paper, “reflected the anxious state of the country ahead of planned demonstrations.”
But none of that happened — not even close. The Washington Post acknowledged three weeks later:
Despite warnings of violent plots around Inauguration Day, only a smattering of right-wing protesters appeared at the nation’s statehouses. In Tallahassee, just five armed men wearing the garb of the boogaloo movement — a loose collection of anti-government groups that say the country is heading for civil war — showed up. Police and National Guard personnel mostly ignored them.
All over the country it was the same story. “But at the moment that Biden was taking the oath of office in Washington, the total number of protesters on the Capitol grounds in Topeka stood at five — two men supporting Trump and two men and a boy ridin’ with Biden,” reported The Wichita Eagle (“With Kansas Capitol in lockdown mode, Inauguration Day protest fizzles). “The protests fizzled out after not many people showed up,” reported the local Florida affiliate in Tallahassee. “The large security efforts dwarfed the protests that materialized by Wednesday evening,” said CNN, as “state capitols and other cities remained largely calm.”
“Indeed, the only politically-motivated violence on Inauguration Day was carried out by Antifa and anarchist groups in Portland and Seattle, which caused some minor property damage as part of anti-Biden protests while they “scuffled with police.” CNN, which spent a full week excitedly hyping the likely violence coming to state capitols by right-wing Trump supporters, was forced to acknowledge in its article about their non-existence that “one exception was Portland, where left-wing protesters damaged the Democratic Party of Oregon building during one of several planned demonstrations.”
Completely undeterred by that debacle, Democrats and their media spokespeople returned with a new set of frightening warnings for this week. The date of March 4 has taken on a virtually religious significance for the Q-Anon movement, announced NBC News’ Ben Collins, who was heard on NPR on Thursday speaking through actual, literal journalistic tears as he recounted all the times he called Facebook to plead with them to remove dangerous right-wing extremists on their platform (tears commence at roughly 7:00 mark). Valiantly holding back full-on sobbing, Collins explained that he proved to be so right but it pains and sorrows him to admit this. With his self-proclaimed oracle status fully in place, he prophesized that March 4 had taken on special dangers because Q-Anon followers concluded that this is when Trump would be inaugurated.
This is how apocalyptic cult leaders always function. When the end of the world did not materialize on January 6, Collins insisted that January 20 was the day of the violent reckoning. When nothing happened on that day, he moved the Doomsday Date to March 4. The flock cannot remain in a state of confusion for too long about why the world has not ended as promised by the prophet, so a new date must quickly be provided with an explanation for why this is serious business this time.
This March 4 paranoia was not confined to NBC’s resident millennial hall monitor and censorship advocate. On March 3, The New York Times warned that “the Capitol Police force is preparing for another assault on the Capitol building on Thursday after obtaining intelligence of a potential plot by a militia group.” All this, said the Paper of Record, because “intelligence analysts had spent weeks tracking online chatter by some QAnon adherents who have latched on to March 4 — the original inauguration date set in the Constitution — as the day Donald J. Trump would be restored to the presidency and renew his crusade against America’s enemies.”
These dire warnings also, quite predictably, generated serious reactions. “House leaders on Wednesday abruptly moved a vote on policing legislation from Thursday to Wednesday night, so lawmakers could leave town,” said the Times. We learned that there would be further militarization of the Capitol and troop deployment in Washington indefinitely due to so-called “chatter.” NPR announced: “The House of Representatives has canceled its Thursday session after the U.S. Capitol Police said it is aware of a threat by an identified militia group to breach the Capitol complex that day.”
Do you know what happened on March 4 when it came to violence from right-wing extremists? The same thing that happened on January 20: absolutely nothing. There were no attempted attacks on the Capitol, state capitols, or any other government institution. There was violent crime registered that day in Washington D.C. but none of it was political violence by those whom media outlets warned posed such a grave danger that Congress has to be closed and militarization of Washington extended indefinitely.”
————
The Blue Anons and their media members have been gaslighting us since election day. Sad that I know people who fall for this trash too. A little discernment can go a long way, but only when used properly by the rubes.
“Thousands of people who visited a COVID-19 vaccination site in California received the wrong dose, report says. Officials say nobody needs a booster shot.”
“Thousands of people who visited a mass-vaccination site in Oakland, California, on March 1 received the wrong dosage of the Pfizer vaccine, KTVU reported.
An estimated 4,300 people were administered less than the recommended dose while getting a shot at the Oakland Coliseum, two unnamed medical workers told the media outlet.
The optimal vaccine dosage is 0.3 milliliters of Pfizer, but thousands of people received around 0.2 milliliters, KTVU said.
Due to a problem with the syringes, too little of the COVID-19 vaccine was administered, the media outlet reported.
The mix-up took place in the morning but was identified and resolved by 2 p.m., state officials told KTVU.
Both agencies that run the mass-vaccination site – the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency – were unaware of the issue until KTVU alerted them of it on March 2.”
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This is what happens when the clowns run the circus.
Cronkite signed off 40 years ago; it seems like an eon in news standards
BY JEFFREY M. MCCALL, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 03/05/21 06:30 PM EST
It was 40 years ago on March 6 that news anchor Walter Cronkite signed off “The CBS Evening News” for the final time, stating his tag line, “That’s the way it is.” The phrase was more than just a signature ending of his nightly newscast. It was a statement that his newscast was designed to, as he put it, “hold up the mirror — to tell and show the public what has happened.”
Holding up the mirror meant focusing on actual news, steering away from advocacy, and nailing down facts. There was a reason that polls of the era listed Cronkite as the most trusted man in America. He projected a fatherly personality and professional image. He spoke in a slow, deliberate manner. He imposed strict standards for accuracy and objectivity into his broadcasts. Every writer and producer on his team knew the perfectionist’s expectations and knew not to stray into personal bias or activism.
The journalism world could use more of the Cronkite method today. …
… The media landscape was much different in the time of Cronkite. There were fewer competitors for the national news audience. The average news consumer never saw social media, partisan websites, or cable news.
It was a time, too, when professional journalism standards mattered. News outlets were run more to meet the public interest needs of the nation than to crassly generate profits. News organizations didn’t play to niche audiences or alienate news consumers with polarizing content. Commentary was labeled and kept separate from regular news.
The CBS hierarchy offered Cronkite the opportunity to do commentary in his nightly newscasts — but he declined.
Cronkite believed doing commentary was inconsistent with his news anchoring duties and would diminish his credibility with viewers who wanted just the news. He strayed from this position on two noteworthy occasions. …
____________________________
Sadly, what we have today, is nearly the direct opposite — a confused mainstream media that is more and more driving by a new generation of reporters; and that, in turn, has spawned “news” (really commentary) sites aimed toward providing biased news to one side or the other. But if you’re looking for things to change anytime soon, don’t hold your breath.
Adjust, choose varied sources, find a national source that seems (mostly) solid — and stay away from the fringes.
If one site is only one reporting something, that should be a pretty big red-flag.
Cross-read other sources on outlier, online information.
We’ll all just need to cope and adapt; change has to come from within the industry, so I’d guess this landscape isn’t changing soon. I don’t like it either, but here we are.
Back in the day, yes. There also was a study done by a UCLA professor, probably 8-10 years ago now, that provided some very compelling stats on how the news had become a left-leaning industry. But that was nothing compared to what we have today, as social media/partisan cable sites and other changes have completely turned journalists to practicing open advocacy in way too many cases.
“Journalism” in our nation’s early days was highly partisan so this isn’t entirely a new phenomenon — but the model that’s dominated through much of the mid and latter 1900s is the one that I think provided the best service for folks, a news coverage and writing goal that had objectivity (as best as could be achieved) as paramount.
With the advent of the Internet, cable news and (ugh) social media, the cat’s out of the bag, as they say.
I can’t tell you how many people lament to me about not having a fair-minded, no-drama, no-advocacy source of national news they feel they can trust anymore. We (many of us, anyhow) seem to be yearning now for a flat-toned, no-yelling, sober-faced, boring Walter Cronkite.
Someone who can give us a story that gives fair voice to different views — are the new state voting initiatives designed to “restrict” access to the voting booth (as the CBS national news reported last week, stating it as fact)? Or is it designed to make the ballot box more secure? Give me both of those arguments, please, in a serious news report. Let me decide.
Newspapers (which now are primarily news websites) have always been much more thorough than TV news and I still think Wall Street Journal is maybe among the more trustworthy sites (talking news, not opinion, though that have a diverse a lively list of guest opinion writers as well).
That UCLA study — which was by Tim Groseclose in the Political Science Department — was way back in 2003, so it’s quite outdated now. But he applied a statistical model to the study which was interesting.
Of course, there’s been a sea change in the media since then with the upheavals of the Internet and Cable news.
Generally, too, I welcome more media voices and don’t have a problem with sites like Fox or MSNBC — but there needs to be a sharp line of demarcation between commentary and news. I don’t think CNN even attempts any straight news much anymore.
And sadly, the purely straight news options are so limited now for the general public, a place where they can get both (or all) sides in what is a dispassionate presentation.
DJ, in GA what I have seen on the news from Republican politicians is that the effort to require absentee voting to include a valid ID is to up the failed voter confidence in the system. That makes logical sense to me. I did hear that the state plans to offer free IDs. Hmmm . . .
Tychicus, oh, no, I’d forgotten she’d written something recently, I’ll have to check it out.
Janice, yes, but only one view was presented on the network evening news program I was watching last week — that it was a movement to restrict voter access, period. I immediately thought, after hearing the anchor say that, “so there’s no other interpretation of that from supporters?” At least say what supporters and critics of these issues are saying, rather than picking one side (don’t care which one) and making it all and only about that.
DJ, I figured which side you had heard so I was giving the other side. I agree that we need to hear both sides from the one source so it seems balanced.
Tychicus; Here’s the letter-to-the-editor that I submitted to the Lewiston Morning Tribune. It was published this past Sunday.
CONSENT WITHDRAWN
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another’’ – so begins our Declaration of Independence.
Millions of Americans have taken an oath requiring that we defend our Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. Lately, a question has been plaguing me: ‘At what point does our government become a domestic enemy?’
Is it when wolves are introduced into the wilderness against the will of local citizens? Probably not, but how about:
When it fails to secure our borders?
Or, when it spends generational wealth indebting our great-grandchildren?
Or, when it grants citizenship to illegal residents?
Or, when it ignores the multitudes of homeless that roam our streets?
Or, when it claims ownership of lands in violation of the Constitution?
Or, when federal agencies are weaponized against political opponents?
Or, when the tax code is incomprehensible?
Or, when asylum seekers are strategically settled to affect the political landscape?
Or, when the Rights granted in the Bill of Rights are curtailed?
Or, when laws apply to commoners but not the elite?
Or, when activists are appointed to the Supreme Court?
The Declaration of Independence continues with, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”
Is it time to withdraw our consent?
Wandering Views 
Just another name for gullible rubes…..
https://thepostmillennial.com/new-term-invented-blue-anon-to-describe-democrats-nutty-conspiracy-theories
“New term ‘Blue Anon’ invented to describe Democrats’ nutty conspiracy theories
Many Republicans’ theories that are a little bit “out there” have been lumped together under QAnon. Now, people can do the same for people on the other side of the political fence by calling them “Blue Anon”.”
“”Ladies and gentlemen, we did it.” the tweet reads, referring to the fact that the term “Blue Anon” has been officially entered into Urban Dictionary. Urban Dictionary is the number one go-to site for researching slang terms in the English language.
Contained within the Urban Dictionary definition are many of the top conspiracy theories bought into frequently by registered Democrats. Here is a list of them as they appear in the definition:
Russia Hoax
Jussie Smollett hoax
Ukraine hoax
Covington kids hoax
Brett Kavanaugh hoax
The definition of “Blue Anon” is “a loosely organized network fo Democrat coters, politicians and media personalities who spread left-wing conspiracy theories.”
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But I was told it was Trump who was the authoritarian. Turns out Dems were just projecting. Again. Still.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/pelosis-h-r-1-is-an-authoritarian-outrage/
“Pelosi’s H.R. 1 Is an Authoritarian Outrage”
“Democrats like to accuse anyone who doesn’t embrace every one of their brand-new, rapidly evolving, Constitution-corroding positions of being “authoritarians.” It’s often an impressive feat of projection. For a pristine example of the genre, take Jonathan Chait’s recent New York magazine piece alleging that former vice president Mike Pence is laying the “blueprint” for a fascistic GOP state in his new Heritage Foundation op-ed.
What “authoritarian” diktats does Herr Pence have in store for our fragile American democracy? For starters, the former vice president argues that states, as they always have, should conduct their own elections rather than permit a narrow partisan majority led by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to unilaterally nationalize and dictate the rules for every locality in perpetuity — as they did with a House vote on a sweeping measure known as H.R. 1.
To be more precise, Pence writes that he opposes empowering the federal government to:
compel states to count mail-in votes that arrive up to ten days after Election Day.
compel states to allow ballot harvesting.
compel states to ban voter ID laws.
compel states to allow bureaucrats to redraw congressional districts.
compel states to allow felons to vote.
compel states to undermine free-speech rights by imposing “onerous legal and administrative burdens on candidates, civic groups, unions, nonprofit organizations.”
The latter of these initiatives is an outrageous attack on the First Amendment, but all of them are contained in some way in H.R. 1 — which amounts to an integrity-corroding, banana-republic attempt to override the will of states, which most Democrats don’t seem to believe should exist. Or, at least, not for the red ones.”
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Once again, the Supreme Court shows themselves to be supremely cowardly.
This needed to be answered, just like the election fraud they refused to hear about.
https://nypost.com/2021/03/05/supreme-court-ends-sanctuary-city-cases-after-biden-request/?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=SocialFlow&utm_source=NYPTwitter
“The US Supreme Court has dismissed three pending appeals on former President Donald Trump’s effort to withhold law enforcement grants from states and cities that refused to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, according to reports.
The high court acted shortly after the Biden administration, as well as state and city governments in New York and California, jointly asked it to dismiss the appeals, Fox News reported.
Attorneys for jurisdictions challenging the order in the three cases — which involve the Big Apple and San Francisco — said they agreed with the new administration that the cases should be dismissed.
Biden has rescinded Trump’s 2017 executive order that called on US agencies to withhold federal funds from the so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, many of which are governed by Democrats. Lower courts were divided on whether the policy was lawful.”
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Gov. Abbott is in a battle of wits with an unarmed man.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/03/abbott-to-biden-neanderthal-type-thinking-if-you-releasing-covid-positive-migrants-in-texas/
“Abbott to Biden: ‘Neanderthal-Type’ Thinking Is You Releasing COVID-Positive Migrants in Texas
Biden said: “The last thing we need is the Neanderthal thinking.”
“Who’s up for more of that sweet Joe Biden brand of unity? President Joe Biden described Texas and Mississippi lifting COVID restrictions as “Neanderthal thinking.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told Biden he has a “Neanderthal-type” approach to COVID because he is okay with releasing COVID positive immigrants in the state.
Biden’s Remarks
Caitlin McFall reports at FOX News:
Biden says Texas and Mississippi guilty of ‘Neanderthal thinking’ over lifting COVID restrictions
President Biden took a swipe at Republican governors in Texas and Mississippi Wednesday, accusing them of “Neanderthal thinking” following their decision to reverse COVID safety policies, including mask mandates.
“We’ve been able to move that all the way up to the end of May to have enough [vaccines] for every American, to get every adult American to get a shot,” Biden told reporters from the White House Wednesday. “The last thing we need is the Neanderthal thinking.”
Despite the warning issued by health officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regarding a fourth resurgence in coronavirus cases earlier this week, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said all state regulations would be lifted starting Wednesday.
Here’s the video:”
“Abbott Responds
From Fox News:
GOV. ABBOTT: “The two things, Brian. First, it obviously is not the type of thing that the president should be saying. But, second, he kind of said it on the worst day he could have, because the same day he said that in Texas, the Biden administration was releasing illegal immigrants into our communities who had COVID. The Biden administration was spreading COVID in south Texas yesterday because of their lack of constraint of testing and quarantining people who come across the border illegally. The Biden administration was exposing Texans to COVID. That is a Neanderthal type approach to dealing with the COVID situation.””
——-
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VDH gets it.
“Hitting Woke Herd Immunity? ”
“We have become an absurd society obsessed with race but without any mechanism to develop a logical category of victimization and reparation. ”
“Two recent polls suggest wokism is beginning to recede on a variety of fronts, from less trust in Black Lives Matter and more confidence in the police, to suspicion that the Capitol “insurrection” account is being used to unfairly suppress political expression while Antifa, increasingly, is seen as a terrorist organization whose violence has been ignored improperly by authorities.
There are tens of millions of Americans who either have been stung, or turned off, by McCarthyite wokeness (and thus have anti-wokeness antibodies). More have been vaccinated from its latest virulent strains by their own values of judging people as individuals, not as racial or gender collectives. So lots of Americans have developed peremptory defenses against it. The result is that daily there are ever-fewer who are susceptible to the woke pandemic. And it will thus begin to fade out—even as the virus desperately seeks to mutate and go after more institutions.
Peak wokeness is nearing also because if it continued in its present incarnation, then the United States as we know would cease to exist—in the sense that 1692-93 Salem or 1793-94 Paris could not have continued apace without destroying society. Woke leftism exists to destroy and tear down, not to unite and build. It is not designed to play down and heal racial differences, but to accentuate and capitalize on them.
Scattershot Immunity
The methodology of cancel culture is utterly incoherent and unsustainable. The shark was jumped by the case of the Dr. Seuss books—banned by some local school districts, even as Dr. Seuss Enterprises, in terror, pulled some of the late Theodor Seuss Geisel’s publications of its own accord. If the author of The Cat in the Hat is now an enemy of the people, then anyone and all can be so designated.
That is, after 70 years and millions of books in the houses of millions of Americans, our generation’s new Soviet censors have now decided that Seuss’s books of the late 1940s and 1950s do not conform to our 2021 sensibilities and thus should be banned. The same kind of canceling of Disney films and cartoons, and of particular novelists and social critics is now a matter of record.
But what are to be the new standards of Trotskyization as we go forth? Can the Governor of New York be excused for months of policies that led to nearly 15,000 unnecessary deaths, but not for inappropriate kisses and touching of women? Or will he, as an Emmy-winning woke official, be exempt from punishment for both types of transgressions?
There are no logical standards that dictate who is and who is not canceled. For now, all we know about the rules of wokeness is that living leftists are mostly not canceled by the woke mob for the thought crimes that ruin both the non-Left or the generic dead.
The operating assumption is that the uncovered sins of the progressive are aberrations and not windows into their dark souls. Or perhaps woke leftism works on the same principle as carbon credits: the more you act progressively, the more pluses you have when minuses are summed up.
Most who have claims of being non-white are likely to find partial vaccination from the woke mob. Those who are independently wealthy or successfully self-employed likewise have some immunity. Then there are the defiant, the proverbial “Don’t Tread on Me” folks, who will fight, and thus encourage the zombie walkers to detour around them.
The only consistent pattern of woke punishment is the shared logic of the lions and water buffalos at the ford—devour the sacrificial, single, and vulnerable while avoiding the robust herd with retaliatory horns.
The Woke Tax
Wokeness eventually would put an unsustainable economic strain on the system. Wokeness is siphoning off billions of dollars from a productive economy through a sort of value-subtracted tax. We are spending a great deal of labor and capital for merit to be replaced in college admissions, in hiring, in grants, in publication, in the selections of awards, and in movies and videos, in everything—as racial, ethnic, and sexual identity considerations replace meritocratic, literary, artistic, and technological criteria, rather than just augment, them.
Americans also are investing lots of capital in preempting wokeness—writing/saying/acting in ways that are not productive, but simply defensive. Diversity oaths, and diversity applications, pledges, and statements take some time to read and digest. It will not be long before insurers will sell “woke insurance,” the premiums adjusted upward for those more conservative and of the wrong genealogy. It won’t be long before we all carry cards certifying that “At no time, did I say, hear, or think anything . . . .””
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The FBI is still garbage.
https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/fbis-cozy-relations-reporters-often-backfired-ending
“FBI’s cozy relations with reporters often backfired, ending with inaccurate scandal stories
Internal FBI text messages show widespread concern about bad reporting in Russia case. “The press is going to undermine its credibility.”
“Afew weeks after Donald Trump won the White House, senior officials inside the FBI had their latest heartburn about the news media’s coverage of a burgeoning Russia collusion controversy and the lingering Hillary Clinton email scandal.
The bureau had recently terminated its primary informant in the Russia probe Christopher Steele for leaking, and several of its leads about Russia-Trump collusion were falling apart. And inaccurate stories about the two biggest scandals in Washington were cropping up everywhere, even when FBI officials tried to work with reporters.
“Yes, the headline is REALLY misleading,” then-FBI deputy counsel Lisa Page wrote a colleague in a text message concerning a New York Times article that day. The text message didn’t further identify the article but made clear the article was the result of a bureau overture to reporters that backfired.”
———
“Despite all the consternation about inaccurate reporting, though, the same text messages show that many senior FBI officials remained in touch with the news media — especially McCabe, who often texted with reporters at the New York Times and other news organizations.
“Congrats on the new gig,” Times reporter Matt Apuzzo wrote in one such message in 2016 after McCabe was named deputy director.
“Thanks very much Matt,” McCabe wrote back. “It’s a great opportunity and a great challenge. I am lucky to have it.”
The two then arranged to have “drinks or lunch.”
Another time, ABC journalist Josh Margolin thanked McCabe for helping on a weekend with a story.
“Andy, it’s Josh Margolin at ABC,” the reporter texted. “Thanks for your help on Saturday. Sorry to disrupt your vacation. …Are you in DC Thurs or Friday next week? I have something interesting and delicate I’d like to discuss with you.”
“I am around next week,” McCabe answered, offering to get the FBI’s public affairs chief to arrange the meeting.
You can read all of McCabe’s text messages here:
Click to access messages.pdf
Ultimately, McCabe’s dealings with the news media became his undoing. He was fired after a Justice Department investigation concluded he lied about authorizing the release of information to the Wall Street Journal about an investigation and that he did not have the right under bureau rules to authorize the anonymous leak.
“We therefore concluded that McCabe’s disclosure of the existence of an ongoing investigation in this manner violated the FBI’s and the Department’s media policy and constituted misconduct,” the IG concluded.”
————
And yet this fraud is still in charge….
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Could?
Try already did.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/03/07/sharyl_attkisson_biden_administration_policies_have_already_sparked_a_crisis_at_the_border.html?jwsource=cl
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What. A. Joke.
———
https://twitter.com/UbervillesD/status/1367822700467609602
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———-
https://twitter.com/OfBetters/status/1368330831941500929
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The clueless idiots among us are having buyers remorse.
https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1368400944476651523
———
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——–
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Regarding yesterday’s conversation about the vaccination: I don’t think we should be pressuring people to get the vaccine, but there does need to be a bigger push to educate the public generally. Unfortunately there is a substantial and well-earned distrust of the CDC, public health agencies, and other leaders due to unnecessary politicization last year and the subsequent censoring this year, and it will take some time to rebuild. Evangelical snakes like David French are no help. If people really care about the health of their community, they should be willing to promote community health centers that provide affordable healthcare in under served communities in the urban and rural areas. Yet these are the very kind of projects that most libertarian-leaning never-trumper evangelicals like French find abhorrent.
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States are starting to take matters into their own hands…
https://www.theepochtimes.com/texas-launches-operation-to-combat-drug-people-smuggling-at-southern-border_3723592.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-03-07-1
“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott launched a program on March 6 that will deploy state National Guard troops and personnel from other agencies to respond to the burgeoning crisis at the southern border.
Abbott says Operation Lone Star, in collaboration with the state’s Department of Public Safety, will deploy air, ground, marine, and tactical border security assets to prevent Mexican criminal organizations from smuggling drugs and people into Texas.
“Texas supports legal immigration but will not be an accomplice to the open border policies that cause, rather than prevent, a humanitarian crisis in our state and endanger the lives of Texans,” Abbott said in a statement to media outlets on March 6.
“We will surge the resources and law enforcement personnel needed to confront this crisis.””
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Since we’re already out of control, let’s just give criminals the right to vote. Brilliant!
Voter harvesting, anyone?
https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-to-sign-election-executive-order-to-increase-voting-by-criminals_3723677.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-03-08
“President Joe Biden signed an executive order on March 7 altering the way the federal government handles elections, including by increasing voting and voter registration access for criminals in prison and on probation.
“The order will direct the Attorney General to establish procedures to provide educational materials related to voter registration and voting, and to the extent practicable, to facilitate voter registration, for all eligible individuals in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons,” a fact sheet distributed by the White House states.
The order also directs the attorney general to help former prisoners obtain appropriate identification to satisfy state voting requirements. Biden is also asking the U.S. Marshals Service to include language in its contracts to facilitate voting by mail and provide eligible criminals information on voting and voter registration.”
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And so it goes:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/mar/6/satanists-sue-for-religious-right-to-ritual-aborti/
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Great to see many citizens taking action!
https://www.theepochtimes.com/conservative-nonprofit-to-launch-10-million-campaign-to-strengthen-election-integrity-report_3724693.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-03-08-1
“Conservative nonprofit Heritage Action for America is on Monday expected to announce plans to spend $10 million on a wide-ranging election integrity campaign to strengthen voting laws in eight swing states, according to reports.
According to Fox News, the campaign will target Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, Texas, and Wisconsin, with the effort involving such initiatives as digital and television advertisements, as well as direct lobbying of state lawmakers.
“Fair elections are essential for every policy debate in the future,” Heritage Action Executive Director Jessica Anderson told the outlet in a statement. “We are working to help state lawmakers restore trust in our elections, ensure transparency, and protect the rights of every American to a fair election. This is our number one priority, and we are committed to doing whatever it takes.””
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Yep.
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Oh look. The Blue Anon media is doubling down.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/03/media-hyped-march-4-capitol-attack-never-happened/
“Media-Hyped March 4 Capitol Attack Never Happened, So Now They’re Hyping Future Dates
Glenn Greenwald: “if this ‘armed insurrection’ and threat of domestic terrorism are so grave, why do media figures and politicians in both parties—from Adam Schiff to Liz Cheney—keep lying about it and peddling fictions?””
“Democrats and their media cohorts are furiously trying to spin out their Capitol riots Reichstag moment by hyping lunatic conspiracy theories as if they have any basis in reality. The goal is two-fold: demonize Republicans, particularly Trump supporters, and create a climate of fear in order to justify a new war on “domestic terror.”
However, for their fevered dreams of rampant civil rights-violating policies used against American citizens on American soil to come to fruition, they will have to come up with something better than a pretend “threat” from a lunatic fringe group. This time the made-up insurrection against the Capitol was to take place on March 4th. It didn’t.
In fact, so much nothing happened that the headlines warning of the March 4 armed insurrection read like ludicrous parodies of news.
The BBC: “US Capitol police warn of possible militia plot to breach Congress”
ABC News: “Capitol Police officials say intel on possible March 4 plot being taken ‘seriously’:
QAnon followers believe that Donald Trump will return to power on March 4.
USA Today: “Police bolster security at US Capitol as QAnon theory claims Trump will become president March 4”
NBC News: “D.C. police, FBI on alert ahead of QAnon’s ‘true Inauguration Day’”
CBS News: “House scraps Thursday session after intel warns of potential violence at Capitol”
Apparently, the crazy took hold because some QAnon followers were blathering on social media and in obscure online forums about March 4th being the day Trump would triumphantly ride into
DC and resume the presidency. I think a brain cell or two died just typing that sentence.
Anyway, yep, that’s the ‘threat’ that got DC Democrats, the FBI, the Capitol police, and the increasingly clownish legacy media all wee-wee’d up.”
———-
Tucker destroys their garbage in a hilarious way. 🙂
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It’s Russia, Russia, Russia! Part 543…..
All fluff, no stuff. The media is garbage.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/03/media-using-same-anonymous-sources-tactic-for-capitol-hill-riot-that-propelled-russia-hoax/
“Media Using Same ‘Anonymous Sources’ Tactic for Capitol Hill Riot That Propelled Russia Hoax
“according to a law enforcement official”
“Over the last four years, countless anti-Trump stories in the news relied on anonymous sources. The term ‘according to sources’ has become a punchline, and people in media are the only ones who don’t get the joke. They used this dishonest tactic to push the debunked Steele dossier, the Russia collusion lie, and more.
Now they are doing the same thing with the Capitol story.
See if you can spot the magic phrase in this New York Times report:
F.B.I. Finds Contact Between Proud Boys Member and Trump Associate Before Riot
A member of the far-right nationalist Proud Boys was in communication with a person associated with the White House in the days just before the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.
Location, cellular and call record data revealed a call tying a Proud Boys member to the Trump White House, the official said. The F.B.I. has not determined what they discussed, and the official would not reveal the names of either party.
The connection revealed by the communications data comes as the F.B.I. intensifies its investigation of contacts among far-right extremists, Trump White House associates and conservative members of Congress in the days before the attack…
The communication between the person associated with the White House and the member of the Proud Boys was discovered in part through data that the F.B.I. obtained from technology and telecommunications companies immediately after the assault.
“according to a law enforcement official”
“the person associated with the White House”
There’s something very familiar about all of this.”
———-
It’s probably the same in the AP stylebook too. All the lapdogs use the same script.
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Greenwald nails it too.
“As the Insurrection Narrative Crumbles, Democrats Cling to it More Desperately Than Ever
If the threat of “armed insurrectionists” and “domestic terrorists” is as great as some claim, why do they have to keep lying and peddling crude media fictions about it?”
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/as-the-insurrection-narrative-crumbles
“Twice in the last six weeks, warnings were issued about imminent, grave threats to public safety posed by the same type of right-wing extremists who rioted at the Capitol on January 6. And both times, these warnings ushered in severe security measures only to prove utterly baseless.
First we had the hysteria over the violence we were told was likely to occur at numerous state capitols on Inauguration Day. “Law enforcement and state officials are on high alert for potentially violent protests in the lead-up to Inauguration Day, with some state capitols boarded up and others temporarily closed ahead of Wednesday’s ceremony,” announced CNN. In an even scarier formulation, NPR intoned that “the FBI is warning of protests and potential violence in all 50 state capitals ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.”
The resulting clampdowns were as extreme as the dire warnings. Washington, D.C. was militarized more than at any point since the 9/11 attack. The military was highly visible on the streets. And, described The Washington Post, “state capitols nationwide locked down, with windows boarded up, National Guard troops deployed and states of emergency preemptively declared as authorities braced for potential violence Sunday mimicking the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of pro-Trump rioters.” All of this, said the paper, “reflected the anxious state of the country ahead of planned demonstrations.”
But none of that happened — not even close. The Washington Post acknowledged three weeks later:
Despite warnings of violent plots around Inauguration Day, only a smattering of right-wing protesters appeared at the nation’s statehouses. In Tallahassee, just five armed men wearing the garb of the boogaloo movement — a loose collection of anti-government groups that say the country is heading for civil war — showed up. Police and National Guard personnel mostly ignored them.
All over the country it was the same story. “But at the moment that Biden was taking the oath of office in Washington, the total number of protesters on the Capitol grounds in Topeka stood at five — two men supporting Trump and two men and a boy ridin’ with Biden,” reported The Wichita Eagle (“With Kansas Capitol in lockdown mode, Inauguration Day protest fizzles). “The protests fizzled out after not many people showed up,” reported the local Florida affiliate in Tallahassee. “The large security efforts dwarfed the protests that materialized by Wednesday evening,” said CNN, as “state capitols and other cities remained largely calm.”
“Indeed, the only politically-motivated violence on Inauguration Day was carried out by Antifa and anarchist groups in Portland and Seattle, which caused some minor property damage as part of anti-Biden protests while they “scuffled with police.” CNN, which spent a full week excitedly hyping the likely violence coming to state capitols by right-wing Trump supporters, was forced to acknowledge in its article about their non-existence that “one exception was Portland, where left-wing protesters damaged the Democratic Party of Oregon building during one of several planned demonstrations.”
Completely undeterred by that debacle, Democrats and their media spokespeople returned with a new set of frightening warnings for this week. The date of March 4 has taken on a virtually religious significance for the Q-Anon movement, announced NBC News’ Ben Collins, who was heard on NPR on Thursday speaking through actual, literal journalistic tears as he recounted all the times he called Facebook to plead with them to remove dangerous right-wing extremists on their platform (tears commence at roughly 7:00 mark). Valiantly holding back full-on sobbing, Collins explained that he proved to be so right but it pains and sorrows him to admit this. With his self-proclaimed oracle status fully in place, he prophesized that March 4 had taken on special dangers because Q-Anon followers concluded that this is when Trump would be inaugurated.
This is how apocalyptic cult leaders always function. When the end of the world did not materialize on January 6, Collins insisted that January 20 was the day of the violent reckoning. When nothing happened on that day, he moved the Doomsday Date to March 4. The flock cannot remain in a state of confusion for too long about why the world has not ended as promised by the prophet, so a new date must quickly be provided with an explanation for why this is serious business this time.
This March 4 paranoia was not confined to NBC’s resident millennial hall monitor and censorship advocate. On March 3, The New York Times warned that “the Capitol Police force is preparing for another assault on the Capitol building on Thursday after obtaining intelligence of a potential plot by a militia group.” All this, said the Paper of Record, because “intelligence analysts had spent weeks tracking online chatter by some QAnon adherents who have latched on to March 4 — the original inauguration date set in the Constitution — as the day Donald J. Trump would be restored to the presidency and renew his crusade against America’s enemies.”
These dire warnings also, quite predictably, generated serious reactions. “House leaders on Wednesday abruptly moved a vote on policing legislation from Thursday to Wednesday night, so lawmakers could leave town,” said the Times. We learned that there would be further militarization of the Capitol and troop deployment in Washington indefinitely due to so-called “chatter.” NPR announced: “The House of Representatives has canceled its Thursday session after the U.S. Capitol Police said it is aware of a threat by an identified militia group to breach the Capitol complex that day.”
Do you know what happened on March 4 when it came to violence from right-wing extremists? The same thing that happened on January 20: absolutely nothing. There were no attempted attacks on the Capitol, state capitols, or any other government institution. There was violent crime registered that day in Washington D.C. but none of it was political violence by those whom media outlets warned posed such a grave danger that Congress has to be closed and militarization of Washington extended indefinitely.”
————
The Blue Anons and their media members have been gaslighting us since election day. Sad that I know people who fall for this trash too. A little discernment can go a long way, but only when used properly by the rubes.
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It was just Oakland?
Suuuuure……..
https://news.yahoo.com/thousands-people-visited-covid-19-170338237.html
“Thousands of people who visited a COVID-19 vaccination site in California received the wrong dose, report says. Officials say nobody needs a booster shot.”
“Thousands of people who visited a mass-vaccination site in Oakland, California, on March 1 received the wrong dosage of the Pfizer vaccine, KTVU reported.
An estimated 4,300 people were administered less than the recommended dose while getting a shot at the Oakland Coliseum, two unnamed medical workers told the media outlet.
The optimal vaccine dosage is 0.3 milliliters of Pfizer, but thousands of people received around 0.2 milliliters, KTVU said.
Due to a problem with the syringes, too little of the COVID-19 vaccine was administered, the media outlet reported.
The mix-up took place in the morning but was identified and resolved by 2 p.m., state officials told KTVU.
Both agencies that run the mass-vaccination site – the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency – were unaware of the issue until KTVU alerted them of it on March 2.”
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This is what happens when the clowns run the circus.
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https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/541882-cronkite-signed-off-40-years-ago-it-seems-like-an-eon-in-news-standards
___________________________
Cronkite signed off 40 years ago; it seems like an eon in news standards
BY JEFFREY M. MCCALL, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 03/05/21 06:30 PM EST
It was 40 years ago on March 6 that news anchor Walter Cronkite signed off “The CBS Evening News” for the final time, stating his tag line, “That’s the way it is.” The phrase was more than just a signature ending of his nightly newscast. It was a statement that his newscast was designed to, as he put it, “hold up the mirror — to tell and show the public what has happened.”
Holding up the mirror meant focusing on actual news, steering away from advocacy, and nailing down facts. There was a reason that polls of the era listed Cronkite as the most trusted man in America. He projected a fatherly personality and professional image. He spoke in a slow, deliberate manner. He imposed strict standards for accuracy and objectivity into his broadcasts. Every writer and producer on his team knew the perfectionist’s expectations and knew not to stray into personal bias or activism.
The journalism world could use more of the Cronkite method today. …
… The media landscape was much different in the time of Cronkite. There were fewer competitors for the national news audience. The average news consumer never saw social media, partisan websites, or cable news.
It was a time, too, when professional journalism standards mattered. News outlets were run more to meet the public interest needs of the nation than to crassly generate profits. News organizations didn’t play to niche audiences or alienate news consumers with polarizing content. Commentary was labeled and kept separate from regular news.
The CBS hierarchy offered Cronkite the opportunity to do commentary in his nightly newscasts — but he declined.
Cronkite believed doing commentary was inconsistent with his news anchoring duties and would diminish his credibility with viewers who wanted just the news. He strayed from this position on two noteworthy occasions. …
____________________________
Sadly, what we have today, is nearly the direct opposite — a confused mainstream media that is more and more driving by a new generation of reporters; and that, in turn, has spawned “news” (really commentary) sites aimed toward providing biased news to one side or the other. But if you’re looking for things to change anytime soon, don’t hold your breath.
Adjust, choose varied sources, find a national source that seems (mostly) solid — and stay away from the fringes.
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… Or at least be very wary of the fringes. lol
If one site is only one reporting something, that should be a pretty big red-flag.
Cross-read other sources on outlier, online information.
We’ll all just need to cope and adapt; change has to come from within the industry, so I’d guess this landscape isn’t changing soon. I don’t like it either, but here we are.
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DJ: Have you read ‘Slanted’, by Sharyl Attkisson? I think that you would really appreciate it…
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Back in the day, yes. There also was a study done by a UCLA professor, probably 8-10 years ago now, that provided some very compelling stats on how the news had become a left-leaning industry. But that was nothing compared to what we have today, as social media/partisan cable sites and other changes have completely turned journalists to practicing open advocacy in way too many cases.
“Journalism” in our nation’s early days was highly partisan so this isn’t entirely a new phenomenon — but the model that’s dominated through much of the mid and latter 1900s is the one that I think provided the best service for folks, a news coverage and writing goal that had objectivity (as best as could be achieved) as paramount.
With the advent of the Internet, cable news and (ugh) social media, the cat’s out of the bag, as they say.
I can’t tell you how many people lament to me about not having a fair-minded, no-drama, no-advocacy source of national news they feel they can trust anymore. We (many of us, anyhow) seem to be yearning now for a flat-toned, no-yelling, sober-faced, boring Walter Cronkite.
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Someone who can give us a story that gives fair voice to different views — are the new state voting initiatives designed to “restrict” access to the voting booth (as the CBS national news reported last week, stating it as fact)? Or is it designed to make the ballot box more secure? Give me both of those arguments, please, in a serious news report. Let me decide.
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Newspapers (which now are primarily news websites) have always been much more thorough than TV news and I still think Wall Street Journal is maybe among the more trustworthy sites (talking news, not opinion, though that have a diverse a lively list of guest opinion writers as well).
That UCLA study — which was by Tim Groseclose in the Political Science Department — was way back in 2003, so it’s quite outdated now. But he applied a statistical model to the study which was interesting.
Of course, there’s been a sea change in the media since then with the upheavals of the Internet and Cable news.
Generally, too, I welcome more media voices and don’t have a problem with sites like Fox or MSNBC — but there needs to be a sharp line of demarcation between commentary and news. I don’t think CNN even attempts any straight news much anymore.
And sadly, the purely straight news options are so limited now for the general public, a place where they can get both (or all) sides in what is a dispassionate presentation.
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Here is a scientific look at the RNA vaccines from a Christian source:
https://creation.com/rna-vaccines
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DJ: I was referring rather to Attkisson’s book which came out in 2020, dealing with the lost art of journalism in light of the issues of today.
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DJ, in GA what I have seen on the news from Republican politicians is that the effort to require absentee voting to include a valid ID is to up the failed voter confidence in the system. That makes logical sense to me. I did hear that the state plans to offer free IDs. Hmmm . . .
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Tychicus, oh, no, I’d forgotten she’d written something recently, I’ll have to check it out.
Janice, yes, but only one view was presented on the network evening news program I was watching last week — that it was a movement to restrict voter access, period. I immediately thought, after hearing the anchor say that, “so there’s no other interpretation of that from supporters?” At least say what supporters and critics of these issues are saying, rather than picking one side (don’t care which one) and making it all and only about that.
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Kizzie @3:34. Very interesting article. It seems to be well balanced.
Debra
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DJ, I figured which side you had heard so I was giving the other side. I agree that we need to hear both sides from the one source so it seems balanced.
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Tychicus; Here’s the letter-to-the-editor that I submitted to the Lewiston Morning Tribune. It was published this past Sunday.
CONSENT WITHDRAWN
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another’’ – so begins our Declaration of Independence.
Millions of Americans have taken an oath requiring that we defend our Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. Lately, a question has been plaguing me: ‘At what point does our government become a domestic enemy?’
Is it when wolves are introduced into the wilderness against the will of local citizens? Probably not, but how about:
When it fails to secure our borders?
Or, when it spends generational wealth indebting our great-grandchildren?
Or, when it grants citizenship to illegal residents?
Or, when it ignores the multitudes of homeless that roam our streets?
Or, when it claims ownership of lands in violation of the Constitution?
Or, when federal agencies are weaponized against political opponents?
Or, when the tax code is incomprehensible?
Or, when asylum seekers are strategically settled to affect the political landscape?
Or, when the Rights granted in the Bill of Rights are curtailed?
Or, when laws apply to commoners but not the elite?
Or, when activists are appointed to the Supreme Court?
The Declaration of Independence continues with, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”
Is it time to withdraw our consent?
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