Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Wanted: Lion Tamer
A circus owner runs an ad for a "lion tamer wanted" and two people show up.
One is a retired golfer in his seventies, the other a drop-dead gorgeous brunette with a great body in her twenties.
The circus owner tells them, "I'm not going to sugar coat it. This is one ferocious lion. He ate my last tamer so you two had better be good or you're history.
"Here's your equipment -- a chair, a whip and a gun. Who wants to try out first?"
The gorgeous brunette says, "I'll go first."
She walks past the chair, the whip and the gun and steps right into the lion's cage.
The lion starts to snarl and pant and begins to charge her.
As he gets close, the gorgeous brunette throws open her coat, revealing her beautiful, perfect naked body. The lion stops dead in his tracks, sheepishly crawls up to her and starts licking her feet and ankles. He continues to lick and kiss every inch of her body for several minutes, then lays down and rests his head at her feet.
The circus owner's jaw is on the floor!! He says, "That's amazing! I've never seen anything like that in my life!"
He then turns to the retired golfer and asks, "Can you top that?"
The tough old golfer replies, "Possibly... but you've got to get that lion out of there first."
Wanted: Lion Tamer
A circus owner runs an ad for a "lion tamer wanted" and two people show up.
One is a retired golfer in his seventies, the other a drop-dead gorgeous brunette with a great body in her twenties.
The circus owner tells them, "I'm not going to sugar coat it. This is one ferocious lion. He ate my last tamer so you two had better be good or you're history.
"Here's your equipment -- a chair, a whip and a gun. Who wants to try out first?"
The gorgeous brunette says, "I'll go first."
She walks past the chair, the whip and the gun and steps right into the lion's cage.
The lion starts to snarl and pant and begins to charge her.
As he gets close, the gorgeous brunette throws open her coat, revealing her beautiful, perfect naked body. The lion stops dead in his tracks, sheepishly crawls up to her and starts licking her feet and ankles. He continues to lick and kiss every inch of her body for several minutes, then lays down and rests his head at her feet.
The circus owner's jaw is on the floor!! He says, "That's amazing! I've never seen anything like that in my life!"
He then turns to the retired golfer and asks, "Can you top that?"
The tough old golfer replies, "Possibly... but you've got to get that lion out of there first."
A return to:
Libs know that taking over local government will lead to anarchy more quickly.
Reminds me of:
There is no doubt all the labs are again, just not reporting to the public.
My source is a scientist and we are god parents to one of his grandchildren and one of his other grandchildren was almost borne in the back of our Volvo on the way to the hospital. So, no bs. I'm sure he wonders why his son has multiple cancer issues and in his early 60's.
It was initially in the news here, then the reporting stopped. Our friend, started calling the lab and talk to his friends there.
Radiation goes into the ocean, the radiated moisture goes into the sky, forms clouds and it rains on the west coast. We were having record rains at that time. When one thinks about it, it rains radiation every year since that date. If they initially found cesium readings in NYC, imagine what they didn't report here.
One can somewhat understand why DC didn't want the truth to come out. Imagine the panic, what it would do to business and every other service. Still, no excuse and still, no real coverage. The BS about the radiation in our drinking water while testing positive is 'reported' 500 times under toxic level. Yeah, right.
This year, there was a similar report from the same reporting agency that said the main current of radiation from Japan hit the west coast this year. So strongest flow hitting us now in the bay area. Great. And go to our local restaurants..... and they are serving 'local' fish. Uhhh, no thanks. Give me Scotland, Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and I'm good.
The order came from the President.
The worst part here was the rain storms at the time. It was raining radiation. We have a friend who knows people at the Livermore Lab and he was calling them and we called him. They were monitoring it despite being told not to by the government.
There is a brand of beans that has Japanese seaweed in it. There are numerous products from Japan in all our stores across the nation. And the radiation continues to pour into the ocean because there is no way to stop it. Our government is hiding the information. More and more people that I know are getting cancer and or have other serious problems. All at a younger age than one would anticipate. CA is in deep shit as is the entire coastline from Alaska all the way down to the tip of South America.
What did BO do? Hid it from us since he banned all the readings to be made public from the initial start meltdown. In one way, total panic and evacuations would happen if the truth came out. Don't eat west coast fish, seafood unless one wants to glow in the dark...
If the left wants to integrate with terrorists, maybe they should be required to put them in their own homes until they finish college and have a job.
Think they have been all along.
Berkeley calls it 'free speech'......
Article right on the money. Dimocraps are the anarchists of America and want terrorists to come to our nation.
A couple of SNL skits:
Good Hoover Daily Report today:
http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=de744b88c98cf7f8a268b1808&id=30d8217233&e=81a468bcc5
Nice world BO handed off.........
Fundamentally transforming the world.........
Let the brainwashed millennials throw away their undeserved money.
They will pay for their idiocy later in life when their zombie offspring tell them to bugger off........
The casualties of Obama’s Syria policy
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have died as the Obama administration's lead-footed inaction contributed to the country's deteriorating situation
Nearly 500,000 have died and 11.4 million have been displaced as a result of the Syrian civil war, one of the bloodiest and most brutal conflicts in modern history. That’s over half the country.
Syria held 21.5 million inhabitants in 2010, according to population statistics from the World Bank. Now, over 50 percent of those 21.5 million have seen their homes and livelihoods destroyed, and many, too, have seen their friends and family killed.
Many of those killed and displaced in Syria’s civil war - the majority, in fact, according to data compiled by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) - were victims of punitive, indiscriminate regime airstrikes on civilian populations. Since 2011, the Assad regime has been the primary actor in the commission of what the World Policy Institute classified early on as a genocide.
The list of casualties attributed to actions by the Syrian regime of president Bashar al-Assad are innumerable, and attempts to quantify the atrocities have led to a 20,000-page compilation of data including barrel bomb attacks, kidnappings, rape, torture, and civilian executions.
The crimes which stand out most are detailed in the Caesar Files, which documented nearly 11,000 instances of dead detainees, kidnapped and imprisoned by regime mukhabarat (secret police), displaying physical signs of torture and brutalisation.
In the public eye, the brutal nature of Syria’s casualties can be seen in the Ghouta attack of 21 August 2013, when a Syrian Arab Army brigade launched Volcano rockets loaded with sarin - an internationally prohibited nerve agent - into civilian areas in an eastern suburb of Damascus, leading to at least 4,000 casualties and the death of at least 426 children.
And many, including US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Powers and HRW Director Kenneth Roth, have attributed much of this so-called genocide to the inaction of the Obama administration.
Stagnant policy
This is a controversial opinion, to be sure, but it is one supported by assessments by swaths of Syria watchers and policymakers - from the independent analysts documenting the ongoing conflict, to the academic establishment of major foreign policy think tanks, to those within Obama’s administration itself.
Yes, a significant number of those within the US government hold the belief that the Obama administration’s lead-footed inaction in taking steps to prevent genocide have contributed to Syria’s deteriorating security situation, and the continued perpetration of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The president sparked outrage when he reneged on his 2012 red line, which amid worrying reports of chemical weapons use in Syria set the continued use of the weapons against civilians as a threshold which would prompt action from the US.
After the 2013 Ghouta attack, the Obama administration pursued a path of cooperation with the Assad regime and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which monitors compliance with international law regarding chemical weapons. The regime agreed to destroy its existing chemical weapons stockpiles, and remove the capability by which it could produce new chemical warheads.
But as I wrote for Bellingcat in early 2015, chemical weapon use in Syria continued, and in July of 2016, OPCW chief Ahmet Uzumcu pressured the Assad regime to explain why it had four undeclared chemical warfare agents still present in its stockpile.
Half measures
The categorical tragedy of Syria cannot be directly attributed to US inaction, nor would a simple demand for direct military intervention necessarily be enough to stop the deterioration of security and the commission of large-scale killings - as US intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan has shown.
Instead, much of the tragedy in Syria can be directly attributed to half-measures of US policy, a further result of Obama’s unwavering refusal to directly commit support to the besieged nation.
The CIA pursued a provision program of TOW anti-tank missiles to a lengthy list of vetted, often Free Syrian Army-associated rebel groups in Syria, but with the condition that rebels couldn’t use those missiles in Damascus lest they lose their US backing.
The CIA and Department of Defense provided operational and logistical support for rebel groups by establishing joint operations rooms for rebel factions - but neutered those groups’ effectiveness on the battlefield by imposing strict limits on what action they could take, and where they could launch offensives.
And the looming spectre above the rebel opposition to the Assad regime? The United States’ refusal to provide air support for groups fighting against regime coalition forces. The Syrian Arab Air Force and the Russian Air Force are the only direct parties in Syria with air power, providing an outsized advantage against the exclusively ground-based rebel opposition and leading to heavy reliance on suicide bombers and VBIEDs - the poor man’s F-16.
“The problem is that the United States' Syria policy was handicapped from the start,” Faysal Itani, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, told me.
“The premise of every approach taken in Syria was that the United States would not involve itself in the conflict on any meaningful level. All other US positions were shaped around a decision which was already taken, in spite of, not because of, the war's specific attributes.”
Internal disorder
The widespread sentiment among those with knowledge of Syria indicates that failure to take committed, effectual action in the country has created an environment by which crimes against humanity may be perpetrated with impunity.
And nowhere more visible are the casualties of the Obama administration’s noncommittal, ineffectual policy in Syria than within the Obama administration itself.
Former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford was the first high-profile casualty of the Obama administration’s Syria policy. Ford is a career diplomat and a lifelong Arabist who entered the US Foreign Service in 1985, overseeing several critical aspects of US policy in the Middle East, including as Deputy Chief of Mission to Bahrain from 2001 to 2004 and Political Counselor to the US Embassy in Baghdad from 2004 to 2008.
In 2010, Ford was confirmed as US Ambassador to Syria by unanimous consensus from the US Senate. He served in this position during the Arab Spring, amid the outbreak of protests and revolution in Syria. Ford took initiative in being vocally supportive of the Syrian uprising, and in July of 2011, he visited the city of Hama, where anti-regime demonstrators draped his vehicle with flowers and olive branches in a sign of solidarity with his role in speaking out against the Assad regime’s brutal crackdowns, which led to the death of thousands of protesters.
This open support of the Syrian revolution drew ire from the regime, which broadcast false reports on state-run television blaming him for the formation of anti-government death squads. Soon after, the US government pulled Ford out of the country, with then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland blaming the regime for incitement which threatened his safety.
“We are concerned about a campaign of regime-led incitement targeted personally at Ambassador Ford by the state-run media of the government of Syria and we are concerned about the security situation that that has created,” said Nuland.
After the outbreak of armed conflict in Syria, Ford became instrumental in negotiating talks between opposition groups and the largely external political opposition to participate in the Geneva process, which sought to end the bloody conflict and remove Assad from power. But talks broke down, and in 2014, Ford announced his retirement - a protest at the stagnation of US policy in Syria.
Ford’s outspoken role in supporting democratic rebellion against the Syrian state drew ire from regime supporters, and drew protest from similar Arab regimes who feared they could be next in line for a popular uprising. The Egyptian government of Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, which had just seized power in a brutal military coup, blockaded Ford’s appointment as US Ambassador to Egypt on the basis that Ford “helped foment disorder in Syria by supporting insurgents”.
Ford, who has largely avoided the public eye since stepping down from his post at the State Department, gave a rare interview to PBS Newshour several months after his retirement. In speaking to PBS foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner, Ford said he could “no longer defend” the Obama administration’s policy in Syria.
“The efforts we’ve made to date have not worked,” said Ford. “We have not put enough pressure on the regime on the ground, and that’s why the peace talks we tried to do in Geneva [have failed]. The regime completely refused to discuss a political settlement - the policy has not brought them to the point where they feel like they have to negotiate. They’re not under enough pressure.”
When asked why Ford retired from his position at the State Department even after exiting the country in 2012 amid fears over the safety of his embassy staff, Ford cited stagnation of US policy on the ground.
“In the end, I worked from Washington on the Syria issue for two years. Events on the ground were moving, and our policy was not evolving very quickly. We were constantly behind the curve. [...] Finally I got to the point where I could no longer defend it publicly. As a professional career member of the US diplomatic service, when I can no longer defend the policy in public, it is time for me to go.”
Ford now serves as a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, and tweets exclusively from a small, inconspicuous personal account largely shielded from the public eye. But in June of 2016, he sat down with the New Yorker to comment on the latest casualties of Obama’s policy in Syria: the 51 State Department dissenters who leaked their outspoken protest to the media, and in doing so, committed career suicide.
“Frustration at the State Department has come to a boil. People don’t write in the Dissent Channel every day. The cessation of hostilities in Syria has broken down completely. The bombings of hospitals in Aleppo and Idlib are a violation of every human norm—and that’s not including the barrel bombs and the chemical weapons. The effort to get a political deal is going nowhere. The Assad government has refused to make any serious concessions. It won’t let in food aid, in violation of U.N. resolutions. And the Americans are watching it all happen. So the Dissent Channel message is a reflection of frustration by the people who are responsible for conducting policy on the ground. I felt that way when I left.”
Dissenters
In June of 2016, the New York Times received a draft document of an official State Department Dissent Memo, which utilized 2 FAM 072 - a State Department policy channel set up during the Vietnam War for dissenting diplomats to express their disagreement with US policy. Despite the Dissent Channel’s origins as protest to US military action in Vietnam, the 51 unnamed dissenters used the channel for a different route: to protest against military inaction.
“We are the State Department officers who have been involved in the US government’s response to the Syria crisis in varying capacities over the past five years,” the memo read. “Despite the Secretary’s efforts to deescalate the violence and forge ahead with the political track, we believe that achieving our objectives will continue to elude us if we do not include the use of military force as an option to enforce the Cessation of Hostilities (CoH) and compel the Syrian regime to abide by its terms as well as to negotiate a political solution in good faith. Assad’s systematic violations against the Syrian people are the root cause of the instability which continues to grip Syria and the broader region.”
The memo is measured, and notes that the 51 State Department officials do not see a large-scale US invasion of Syria as an appropriate option to bring an end to the conflict. Instead, the officials argue for judicious use of “stand-off and air weapons, which would undergird and drive a more focused and hardnosed US-led diplomatic process, leveraging the International Syrian Support Group to end the daily mass killing of civilians and egregious violations of human rights…”
Despite the dissenters’ actions in leaking the memo to the New York Times, ostensibly to avoid dismissal of their concerns by the Obama administration, the US has taken no further action to step up its pressure on the Assad regime. But the memo has left a lasting impact on public discussion of Syria, and a permanent scar on Obama’s foreign policy legacy.
In responding to the leaked memo, US Secretary of State John Kerry hinted, however subtly, at his true views towards the administration’s Syria policy.
“It's an important statement and I respect the process, very, very much.”
Resignation
Frederic Hof lasted only six months before he was struck by the categorical tragedy of Syria. He was appointed by President Obama as a Special Adviser for transition in Syria in March of 2012, and stepped down from his post in September that same year. He had worked tirelessly to bridge a detente between Syria and its neighbours since 2009, but in 2011, his role transitioned to halting Assad’s brutality at home.
“When I resigned my State Department post as adviser on Syrian political transition to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, I knew that Syria was plunging into an uncharted abyss—a humanitarian abomination of the first order,” wrote Hof in a 2015 editorial for Politico Magazine. “And I knew that the White House had little appetite for protecting civilians (beyond writing checks for refugee relief) and little interest in even devising a strategy to implement President Barack Obama’s stated desire that Syrian President Bashar Assad step aside.”
Like Robert Ford, Hof has been a lifelong Arabist. He was first exposed to Syria as a teenage foreign exchange student, and graduated from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in 1969 before joining the US Army as a Middle East Foreign Area Officer. His list of military accomplishments include a Purple Heart, a Superior Service Medal, and an outspoken role in drafting the Long Commission report, which investigated Hezbollah’s bloody 1983 bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut.
Throughout his career, Hof was vocally forthright about what he viewed as “Iran’s penetration of the Arab world”. But in 2012, as Hof undertook a larger position in the settlement of Syria’s chaos and amid an ever-expanding Iranian role to keep Assad in power and further perpetuate its geopolitical aims, his hopes for a stable Middle East eroded. “When Kerry launched his latest Syrian peace initiative last October in the wake of Russia’s military intervention,” he wrote in March, “I warned that the objective might be process without end: a bridge of empty talk over Syria’s troubled water to January 20, 2017, one enabling the administration to leave office without having protected a single Syrian in Syria from Assad’s murder machine.”
Hof now serves as director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, and writes frequently on the Syria situation; a noble attempt to cauterise Syria’s wounds with the stroke of a pen.
As the Atlantic Council’s Faysal Itani told me, for the Middle East, for Europe, and for the world, there appears to be no end in sight.
“As it turned out, Syria became a bloody disgrace to the international community. We'll never know what would have happened had the US engaged with the opposition, pressured Assad, or done anything else. But the fact is this was never given any consideration in the first place. A position was taken, evidence was either ignored or spun, and external expertise was actively ridiculed.”
- Jett Goldsmith is a journalist from Denver, Colorado. He currently serves as news editor for Neowin, contributing writer for Bellingcat, and formerly is a member of the investigative reporting and geopolitical analysis outlet Conflict News. He is currently an undergraduate student in International Affairs and Middle Eastern Studies. You can follow him on Twitter@JettGoldsmith
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Photo: US President Barack Obama walks to speak on Syria in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington on 31 August 2013 (AFP)
http://www.middleeasteye.net/essays/casualties-obama-s-syria-policy-494786610
Somehow, the demons will blame Trump.....
They want to be a sanctuary city and get billions to save them from their stupidity?????..... Absolutely hilarious.
Absolutely, it's on fill. The City basically tried to 'extend' the boarder areas and fill it with sand so builders could make millions.
Who Will Pay for San Francisco's $750 Million Tilting Tower?
The Millennium Tower is still sinking, and residents might be stuck paying for the fixes themselves.
by James Tarmy and Kartikay Mehrotra
?February? ?1?, ?2017? ?3?:?00? ?AM? ?PST
Best to click on the link. article too difficult to cut and paste.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-01/who-will-pay-for-san-francisco-s-tilting-sinking-millennium-tower
It's not just this building, it's all of the new growth to house the millennials coming in to work for Sales Force and the dozens of other tech companies. The numerous building all around this one, some huge. These people are in deeper than deep. Not just one building, dozens and there are town along the peninsula that also are having huge problems. Never buy on fill, period. For the City, no one will trust what's there even though on rock. For the builders?.... Declare bankruptcy, hide the money and retire where no one can find you.
Back in Iraq days, we were with a group, BENS, and attended a Marines graduation. Extremely impressive. Afterward, we went on a grounds tour and to an indoor training area in the middle of the sand and hills.
Large buildings, 3D effects, the interior was set up like one would find in Iraqi streets. A 3D shoulder fired missile would fly past our shoulders and blow up beyond us. Huge boom. 3D bad guys would appear and the laser weapons we had were to shoot them. Really gave us a feeling of what our troops experience every day. Who's a good guy, who's trying to kill you and one has to be first to win.
Billions for Camp Pendleton property.
Pentagon may renew push to close some California bases
by Chris Reed | February 1, 2017 8:09 am
Squeezed by the 2011 budget sequester, the Pentagon is eager to launch the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process for the sixth time to close down thousands of facilities it says it no longer needs — freeing up billions of dollars in funding.
This could be bad news for California, which has 322 military installations pumping billions of dollars into the local economy around the Golden State. Eighteen of the bases are classified as large, triple the number of any other state.
While the Defense Department’s call for BRAC cuts have been routinely rebuffed by Congress since the 2005 round, this time it’s getting a friendlier reception. Rep. Adam Smith, D-Washington, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said last week that he supported another round of BRAC cuts in 2018 and had introduced[1] the Military Infrastructure Consolidation and Efficiency Act toward that end.
The ranking Republican and Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee — John McCain of Arizona and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, respectively — appeared ready to back a new BRAC if the idea waw supported by new Defense Secretary James Mattis, who wants to target Pentagon waste but has not weighed in to date specifically about BRAC.
According to a Pentagon report[2] to Congress last April, military leaders believe they could close 22 percent of all bases with no loss in defense capabilities.
Pentagon officials want to make sure the commission that designates bases for closure after receiving a list of recommendations from the various armed services is truly independent. The 2005 BRAC was considered a success by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other California officials because the Golden State escaped any major hits. But it was seen as a disaster by the Defense Department because political interference sharply reduced savings from closings.
Pentagon has targeted Norco, China Lake bases before
If the BRAC process is revived, the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Norco, shown above in a 2011 U.S. Navy photo, could be the California facility that is most at risk. The center, which employs more than 1,200 people and generates $150 million annually for the local economy, has been targeted for closure repeatedly by the Pentagon, most recently in 2005, only to win reprieves from the BRAC commission.
Another large base at risk is the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, a massive base that straddles Inyo, Kern and San Bernardino counties some 150 miles north of Los Angeles. The base — which has three full-length runways and more than 2,000 buildings, and employs about 7,000 active-duty military, civilians and contractors combined — was recommended for closure by the Pentagon in 2005.
However, in recent years, the China Lake facility has a powerful defender[3] in House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, who has lobbied for the base’s expansion[4].
The possibility of a new BRAC round was seen as big news[5] in San Diego County, home to the largest concentration of military personnel in the United States.
But while the county could have to deal with losing some facilities, it also has a chance to benefit from BRAC. The Washington Times reported in 2012[6] that Navy officials were interested in consolidating operations by moving warships from Washington state to San Diego. The need for such consolidations remains huge[7], according to former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
The base-closing process was launched by the Reagan administration and Congress in the late 1980s as the Cold War wound down and the threat posed by the Soviet Union waned.
Endnotes:1.had introduced: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/top-hasc-democrat-introduces-bill-to-allow-base-closures/article/2613064
2. Pentagon report: http://thehill.com/policy/defense/276528-pentagon-22-percent-of-bases-to-be-surplus-by-2019
3.powerful defender: https://kevinmccarthy.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/china-lake-of-critical-importance
4.base’s expansion: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/29/obama-administration-opposes-china-lake-expansion/
5.big news: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/military/the-intel/sd-me-brac-rif-20170127-story.html
6.reported in 2012: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/26/pentagon-preps-chopping-block-for-next-round-of-ba/
7.remains huge: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/26/pentagon-preps-chopping-block-for-next-round-of-ba/
Source URL: http://calwatchdog.com/2017/02/01/pentagon-may-renew-push-close-california-bases/
Obama Does It Again
Gary Bauer · Jan. 14, 2017
President Obama announced Thursday an end to the 20-year-old "wet foot, dry foot" policy that allowed most Cuban migrants who reach U.S. soil to stay and become legal permanent residents after one year.
President Obama issued a statement Thursday evening saying the U.S. is working to normalize relations with its one-time foe, and ending this policy was the next logical step.
"Effective immediately, Cuban nationals who attempt to enter the United States illegally and do not qualify for humanitarian relief will be subject to removal," Obama said. "By taking this step, we are treating Cuban migrants the same way we treat migrants from other countries."
The "wet foot, dry foot" policy, created by President Clinton in 1995, has generally allowed Cubans who simply touch U.S. soil to stay in the country. Those caught at sea are returned to Cuba. In exchange for the new policy, Cuba has agreed to start accepting Cubans who were issued a deportation order in the United States, something the communist nation has refused to do for decades.
The decision, formalized in a joint statement issued by both governments Thursday, comes as Obama tries to cement his historic opening of diplomatic relations with Cuba and one week before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
Obama ended more than five decades of isolation with Cuba in December 2014 and even visited the island in 2016. Trump has said he would renegotiate the U.S. dealings with Cuba, and ending the "wet foot, dry foot" policy could affect Trump's plans.
Cubans rush to U.S. shores before easy entry ends
Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who has advocated for closer ties with Cuba, praised the move.
"Individuals on both sides of the U.S.-Cuba debate recognize and agree that ending ‘wet foot, dry foot’ is in our national interest," Flake said. "It’s a move that brings our Cuba policy into the modern era, while allowing the United States to continue its generous approach to those individuals and refugees with a legitimate claim for asylum."
Others were enraged, arguing that Cuba's communist regime continues to violate the human rights of its citizens. Frank Calzon, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, called Obama's decision "another example of a heartless foreign policy."
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Cuban-American Republican from Florida, agreed. "With just eight days left in his administration, President Obama has found one more way to frustrate the democratic aspirations of the Cuban people and provide yet another shameful concession to the Castro regime," he said.
Cubans have received favorable treatment from the United States ever since Fidel Castro took control of the island in 1959 and declared it a communist ally of the Soviet Union. Congress passed the Cuban Adjustment Act in 1966 that allowed tens of thousands of Cubans who had already fled Castro's revolution to gain legal status in the U.S.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it left Cuba in economic ruin, prompting thousands more to take to the sea for the United States on makeshift boats and rafts. To end the crisis, Clinton enacted the "wet foot, dry foot" policy.
Rumors that the policy would end have been rampant in Cuba since the 2014 rapprochement between the two countries, prompting a surge of Cubans fleeing for the United States. In the year before Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro announced the opening of diplomatic relations, 24,278 Cubans reached the U.S. That number nearly doubled in 2015 and surpassed 54,000 in 2016, according to the White House.
Many Cubans continue traveling to the U.S. by sea in rickety, dangerous boats built from spare parts in Cuba. In recent years, more Cubans have taken advantage of laws that allow them to travel to Ecuador, where thousands have started the long, dangerous land voyage across Venezuela, Central America and Mexico to reach the southwest border.
Wave of Cubans finally reach U.S. after grueling land journey
The Obama administration said the surge in Cubans risking their lives to reach the U.S. played an important factor in its decision. Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said the improving diplomatic relationship between the two countries also contributed.
For example, U.S. officials met Thursday with their Cuban counterparts in Washington to coordinate efforts to combat human trafficking, and another set of government officials met in Havana to discuss outstanding claims by U.S. citizens who had their property confiscated during Fidel Castro’s revolution.
Rhodes pointed to one more factor: Most Cubans now come to the U.S. "for more traditional reasons, in terms of seeking economic opportunity," instead of fleeing in fear of the Castro regime as in the past.
That's why the U.S. should treat them the same as economic migrants from any other country, Rhodes said.
"There's not going to be a separate queue for Cubans," he said. "It just treats the Cuban migrants like migrants from other countries."
Under the new joint agreement, the U.S. will still accept at least 20,000 Cubans each year through traditional immigration channels.
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/46895
Soros: The Great Divider
A look at how the leftist billionaire funds all manner of leftist upheaval.
America is a divided nation. No one exacerbates that division more than far-left “philanthropist” George Soros.
Reporter Asra Q. Nomani has exposed the progressive billionaire’s latest machinations, revealing the “spontaneous” Women’s March on Washington was anything but. Research she made available for crowd-sourcing on GoogleDocs show Soros has either funded, or has close relationships with, at least 56 of the march’s so-called partners — partners that comprise a Who’s Who list of organizations dedicated to radical leftist causes. Two major Soros philanthropies, the Open Society Institute and the Foundation to Promote Open Society, keep the money flowing to many of these groups.
“Much like post-election protests, which included a sign, ‘Kill Trump,’ were not ‘spontaneous,’ as reported by some media outlets, the ‘Women’s March’ is an extension of strategic identity politics that has so fractured America today, from campuses to communities,” Nomani asserts. “On the left or the right, it’s wrong. But, with the inauguration, we know the politics. With the march, ‘women’ have been appropriated for a clearly anti-Trump day.”
Appropriation is far too kind. Used for the purposes of turning Americans against each other is far more accurate. And sadly, many women were willing to oblige the rank hypocrisy that attends marching for “dignity” while carrying signs with the words, “Pussy trumps tyranny,” and “Keep your politics off my pussy,” and wearing “Pussyhats” or vagina costumes. Add the outbursts of vulgarity, courtesy of celebrity has-beens like Madonna and Ashley Judd, along with a speech by former Black Panther Angela Davis offering praise for cop-killers Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Assata Shakur, traitor Bradley Manning and unrepentant terrorist Oscar López Rivera, and it becomes clear the so-called Women’s March was nothing more than a springboard for a progressive hate-fest.
A hate-fest Soros will underwrite at every turn.
Soros was born in Hungary in 1930 to non-practicing Jewish parents Tividar and Erzebat Schwartz. When the Nazis invaded Hungary, George’s father procured fake papers identifying him as a Christian, and sent him to live with a Hungarian official tasked with delivering deportation notices to Hungary’s Jews, and confiscating their property for the Germans. George would sometimes accompany the official on his rounds. When asked in a 1998 “60 Minutes” interview with Steve Kroft if he felt guilty about the experience, Soros replied, “No,” and likened it to “markets,” further explaining that if he weren’t there doing it, “somebody else would be taking it away anyhow.”
Some call that collaboration with the Nazis. That’s a dubious assertion given Soros' age (14) at the time. But there is no mistaking the arrogance of Soros' attempt to reduce his association with one of history’s greatest evils as something akin to “market forces.” It is precisely that arrogance that drives his dedication to globalism, a movement with contempt for national sovereignty and democracy, and one that Trump stands squarely against. Thus Soros views Trump as “a con artist and would-be dictator” with a cabinet comprised of “incompetent extremists and retired generals.”
Thus it should surprise no one that Soros is tied to groups attempting to get Trump impeached. On Monday, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in in Washington (CREW) filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutional nature of Trump’s presidency. The Soros-backed group claims the president is in violation of the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause because he has dealings with foreign countries who rent space in his buildings, or lend money to his real estate ventures.
Two other groups, Free Speech for People and RootsAction, have already created an Impeach Donald Trump Now website, and are also initiating impeachment efforts based on Trump maintaining his ownership of his luxury hotel and golf course businesses while he remains in office.
Breitbart News makes the connections between Soros and the major players involved, revealing Free Speech for People (FSP) co-founder John Bonifaz also founded the National Voting Rights Institute (NVRI), a group whose funders include Soros' Open Society Institute. NRVI also receives funding from the Soros-funded Tides Foundation. FSP director Lance Lindblom was the former Executive Vice President at the Soros Foundation’s Open Society Institute/Open Society Fund. RootsAction co-founder Norman Solomon also founded the Institute for Public Accuracy, a group funded by Open Society Foundations.
Prior to the election, Soros bankrolled efforts to undermine the integrity of the voting process in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Ohio. And the Open Society Institute funded Washington CAN! — a group that ran a Craig’s List ad offering $15 an hour to those willing to participate in pre-election anti-Trump protests.
Soros' determination to undermine America goes far beyond his efforts to delegitimize Trump. A document hijacked by DCLeaks revealed Soros' Open Society Foundations gave $650,000 to the #BlackLivesMatter movement when they saw a “unique opportunity to accelerate the dismantling of structural inequality generated and maintained by local law enforcement” in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray. The document also referred to the riots that besieged the city as peaceful protests “temporarily” disrupted by “a period of unrest that lasted less than 48 hours” that “catalyzed a paradigm shift in Baltimore that offers opportunities for major justice reforms.”
That 2016 was the deadliest year in Baltimore’s history — due in large part to police reticence engendered by pandering, progressive politicians — says otherwise.
Soros also targets Israel: another DCLeaks hack revealed he is behind a number of anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist causes.
How does Soros remain largely under the radar? A 2011 Media Research Center report revealed that since 2003, Soros “has spent more than $52 million funding media properties, including the infrastructure of news — journalism schools, investigative journalism and even industry organizations.”
The most troubling aspect of the report? “It turns out that Soros' influence doesn’t just include connections to top mainstream news organizations such as NBC, ABC, The New York Times and Washington Post. It’s bought him connections to the underpinnings of the news business,” MRC states. MRC further explains that because Soros funds organizations that fund other organizations, a complete accounting of his media influence is “almost impossible” to ascertain.
Columnist Dennis Prager asserts America is in the midst of a Second Civil War, pitting traditional liberals, conservatives and the Right — all of whom share a belief in American exceptionalism — against a Left that views America as “a racist, xenophobic, colonialist, imperialist, war-mongering, money-worshipping, moronically religious nation.”
The most significant factor in that war? As Prager astutely notes, only the Left is actively fighting it.
The critical dynamic going forward? Americans must understand that George Soros is one of the Left’s primary instigators — and that Trump is the foremost threat to his despicably divisive agenda.
Thus, those expecting leftist hysteria to abate once the initial shock of the election results wears off are being utterly naïve. They are equally naïve if they believe compromise is possible with people the late Andrew Breitbart described as Marxists more than willing to mount a “sustained attack on every institution of Western culture.”
Soros is the tip of the spear — which is why he and his ideas must be decisively defeated in the court of public opinion and at the ballot box.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/47107
China Tests Missile With 10 Warheads
Posted By Bill Gertz On January 31, 2017 @ 5:00 am
In National Security
China flight tested a new variant of a long-range missile with 10 warheads in what defense officials say represents a dramatic shift in Beijing's strategic nuclear posture.
The flight test of the DF-5C missile was carried out earlier this month using 10 multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs. The test of the inert warheads was monitored closely by U.S. intelligence agencies, said two officials familiar with reports of the missile test.
The missile was fired from the Taiyuan Space Launch Center in central China and flew to an impact range in the western Chinese desert.
No other details about the test could be learned. Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Gary Ross suggested in a statement the test was monitored.
"The [Defense Department] routinely monitors Chinese military developments and accounts for PLA capabilities in our defense plans," Ross told the Washington Free Beacon.
The test of a missile with 10 warheads is significant because it indicates the secretive Chinese military is increasing the number of warheads in its arsenal.
Estimates of China's nuclear arsenal for decades put the number of strategic warheads at the relatively low level of around 250 warheads.
U.S. intelligence agencies in February reported that China had begun adding warheads to older DF-5 missiles, in a move that has raised concerns for strategic war planners.
Uploading Chinese missiles from single or triple warhead configurations to up to 10 warheads means the number of warheads stockpiled is orders of magnitude larger than the 250 estimate.
Currently, U.S. nuclear forces—land-based and sea-based nuclear missiles and bombers—have been configured to deter Russia's growing nuclear forces and the smaller Chinese nuclear force.
Under the 2010 U.S.-Russian arms treaty, the United States is slated to reduce its nuclear arsenal to 1,550 deployed warheads.
A boost in the Chinese nuclear arsenal to 800 or 1,000 warheads likely would prompt the Pentagon to increase the U.S. nuclear warhead arsenal by taking weapons out of storage.
The new commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, Air Force Gen. John Hyten, stated during a Senate confirmation hearing in September that he is concerned about China's growing nuclear arsenal.
"I am fully aware that China continues to modernize its nuclear missile force and is striving for a secure second-strike capability," Hyten told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"Although it continues to profess a ‘no first use' doctrine, China is re-engineering its long-range ballistic missiles to carry multiple nuclear warheads and continues to develop and test hyper-glide vehicle technologies," Hyten added.
"These developments—coupled with a lack of transparency on nuclear issues such as force disposition and size—may impact regional and strategic stability and are cause for continued vigilance and concern."
The 10-warhead missile test comes amid heightened tensions with China. State-run media in recent weeks has carried reports calling for China to expand its nuclear forces. A broadcast report showed that new long-range mobile missiles could strike the entire United States.
The Chinese state television channel CCTV-4 last week broadcast nuclear threats, including graphics showing new DF-41 missiles deployed in northern China and graphics showing the missiles' strike path into the United States. The Jan. 25 broadcast included a graphic of a 10-warhead MIRV bus for the DF-41.
The Chinese Communist Party propaganda newspaper Global Times, known for its anti-U.S. stance, issued stark calls for China to build up its nuclear arsenal for use against the United States. On Jan. 24, the newspaper said China's strategic forces "must be so strong that no country would dare launch a military showdown."
"China must procure a level of strategic military strength that will force the U.S. to respect it," the newspaper said.
The same state-run organ criticized President Donald Trump in an article on Dec. 8 and said China should use its wealth "to build more strategic nuclear arms and accelerate the deployment of the DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile."
"We need to get better prepared militarily regarding the Taiwan question to ensure that those who advocate Taiwan's independence will be punished, and take precautions in case of U.S. provocations in the South China Sea," the newspaper said.
China conducted a flight test of the DF-41 in April.
Trump in December called for boosting America's aging nuclear arsenal.
"The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes," he stated in a tweet.
Military analysts said the large number of warheads is unusual for the Chinese nuclear program.
Rick Fisher, an analyst with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said the multi-warhead missile test appears to be aimed at sending a signal to the new Trump administration.
Trump has tangled with China in opposing its military buildup on disputed South China Sea islands and on U.S. policy toward Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province and not an independent country.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the United States is prepared to block China's access to reclaimed islands he said are located in international waters and not China's sovereign maritime domain.
"This test of the 10-warhead DF-5C is China's latest nuclear intimidation exercise aimed at the new Trump administration," Fisher said.
"China's nuclear intimidation signals have included the public revelation in late December via Chinese websites of the new DF-41 ICBM in Heilongjiang province, plus articles in China's state-controlled media touting the need for China to increase its nuclear forces to intimidate Washington," Fisher added.
China's known force of around 20 D-5 missiles were deployed with large single warheads in the past, while some were upgraded with three-warhead top stages.
In September 2015 China revealed for the first time during a military parade that it had deployed a new DF-5B multi-warhead missile. Unofficial published reports suggested the DF-5B carries between six and eight warheads.
"The revelation that China has tested a new version of the DF-5 carrying ten warheads constitutes a very strong indication that China has produced a smaller warhead to equip its MIRV-capable ICBMs," Fisher said.
Some analysts speculate that the recent test of the DF-5C used the older missile as a test platform for a new warhead delivery bus that will be used on the new DF-41.
French China watcher Henri Kenhmann reported on his website East Pendulum that a Chinese missile test was to be carried out Jan. 15, based on air closure notices issued by the Chinese government for areas around Taiyuan and a missile impact range in western Xinjiang Province.
Analysis of the impact range suggests the test would include multiple test warheads.
"The point of impact is located south of the Taklamakan desert, in the former ballistic range of Minfeng," Kenhmann said, noting the Chinese had imposed an unusually large air exclusion zone of 125 miles around the impact zone.
"It should be noted that this zone of ballistic impact is abnormally large," he stated, a sign the large area would be used for multiple dummy warheads.
‘The size of this impact zone could indicate testing several MIRVs," he said.
A similar Chinese test of the DF-41 in April involved two MIRVs that were fired to a much smaller impact area of 60 miles by 37 miles.
The Pentagon's latest annual report on the Chinese military said Beijing continues to upgrade its nuclear forces by enhancing silo-based missiles and adding new road-mobile missiles.
"China’s ICBM arsenal to date consists of approximately 75 to 100 ICBMs, including the silo-based CSS-4 Mod 2 (DF-5) and multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV)-equipped Mod 3 (DF-5B); the solid-fueled, road-mobile CSS-10 Mod 1 and 2 (DF-31 and DF-31A); and the shorter range CSS-3 (DF-4)," the report said.
The DF-5 is a two-stage, liquid-fueled missile with a range of around 8,000 miles.
Article printed from Washington Free Beacon: http://freebeacon.com
URL to article: http://freebeacon.com/national-security/china-tests-missile-10-warheads/
Obama's Failed Economic Policies
By Business Review Board
Jan. 27, 2017
GDP numbers are in for the final quarter of 2016 — Barack Obama’s last quarter — and they are unsurprisingly dismal. “The U.S. economy’s expansion slowed [to 1.9% growth] in the fourth quarter, and annual growth failed to reach 3% for an 11th straight year,” reports1 Market Watch. “For the full year, the U.S. grew just 1.6%, compared with its 2.6% clip in 2015. It was the weakest performance since 2011. The last time the U.S. topped 3% growth — the historical average is 3.3% — was in 2005.” It turns out that drastically increasing federal spending and taxes, and putting massive regulations on the economy, primarily in the forms of ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank and climate standards, don’t translate into a booming economy. Who knew?
The good news, of course, is that Obama isn’t in office any longer, and Republicans control the White House and Congress once again. That means free market policies, including lower regulations and taxes, as well as ObamaCare repeal all have a chance. So it’s no wonder that, despite the anemic state of the economy right now, there are good signs. The Dow Jones Industrial average this week topped 20,000 for the first time ever, and according to2 Gallup, “Americans have viewed the economy more positively since President Donald Trump’s election in November than they did in the nine years prior.” It’s not quite true that there’s nowhere to go but up since we’re not technically in recession, but we fully expect to end that streak of sub-3% growth in the next couple of years if the right policies are implemented.
And that’s a refreshing place to be.
https://patriotpost.us/posts/47147
Obama's Failed Economic Policies
By Business Review Board
Jan. 27, 2017
GDP numbers are in for the final quarter of 2016 — Barack Obama’s last quarter — and they are unsurprisingly dismal. “The U.S. economy’s expansion slowed [to 1.9% growth] in the fourth quarter, and annual growth failed to reach 3% for an 11th straight year,” reports1 Market Watch. “For the full year, the U.S. grew just 1.6%, compared with its 2.6% clip in 2015. It was the weakest performance since 2011. The last time the U.S. topped 3% growth — the historical average is 3.3% — was in 2005.” It turns out that drastically increasing federal spending and taxes, and putting massive regulations on the economy, primarily in the forms of ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank and climate standards, don’t translate into a booming economy. Who knew?
The good news, of course, is that Obama isn’t in office any longer, and Republicans control the White House and Congress once again. That means free market policies, including lower regulations and taxes, as well as ObamaCare repeal all have a chance. So it’s no wonder that, despite the anemic state of the economy right now, there are good signs. The Dow Jones Industrial average this week topped 20,000 for the first time ever, and according to2 Gallup, “Americans have viewed the economy more positively since President Donald Trump’s election in November than they did in the nine years prior.” It’s not quite true that there’s nowhere to go but up since we’re not technically in recession, but we fully expect to end that streak of sub-3% growth in the next couple of years if the right policies are implemented.
And that’s a refreshing place to be.
https://patriotpost.us/posts/47147
Makes one wonder what she was texting........
'Fukin' Bill is at it again.....'
Every picture tells a story, don't it!!!!
Rod Stewart
Every picture tells a story, don't it!!!!
Rod Stewart
Your award for the 'quote of the day'. Enjoy......
And the main stream media carrying her fiction as if fact.
The media is the leftist voice of the country and they hate any intrusion in 'their territory'. Fortunately, there are other voices though not as easy to fine for some. Shouldn't it be called a 'token' voice by a liberal biased media?..... Think all might agree on that.
And the main stream media carrying her fiction as if fact.
The media is the leftist voice of the country and they hate any intrusion in 'their territory'. Fortunately, there are other voices though not as easy to fine for some. Shouldn't it be called a 'token' voice by a liberal biased media?..... Think can all agree on that.
Fake News: Postmodernism By Another Name
by Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, January 26, 2017
After the election, Democrats could not explain the inexplicable defeat of Hillary Clinton, who would be, they thought, the shoo-in winner in November. Over the next three months until Inauguration Day, progressives floated a variety of explanations for the Trump win—none of them, though, mentioned that the Clinton campaign had proven uninspired, tactically inept, and never voiced a message designed to appeal to the working classes.
When a particular exegesis of defeat failed to catch on, it was mostly dropped—and then replaced by a new narrative. We were told that the Electoral College wrongly nullified the popular vote—and that electors had a duty to renege on their obligations to vote for their respective state’s presidential winner.
Then followed the narrative of Trump’s racist dog-whistle appeals to the white working classes. When it was reported that Barack Obama had received a greater percentage of the white votes than did either John Kerry in 2004 or Hillary Clinton in 2016, the complaint of white chauvinism too faded.
Then came the allegation that FBI Director James Comey had given the election to Trump by reopening the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails just days before Election Day. That fable too evaporated when it was acknowledged that Comey had earlier intervened to declare Clinton without culpability and would so again before November 8.
Then came the trope that Vladimir Putin’s hackers stole the election—on the theory that the Wikileaks revelations had turned off the electorate in a way the Clinton candidacy otherwise would not have. That storyline then evolved into the idea of Russian propagandists and Trump supporters variously peddling “fake news” to websites to promulgate myths and distortions—as a grand plan to Hillary Clinton and give Trump the election.
More specifically, it was alleged that Trump’s exaggerations and fabrications—from his allegations about Barack Obama’s birth certificate to rumor-mongering about Ted Cruz’s father—had so imperiled journalism that the media in general was forced to pronounce there was no longer a need to adhere to disinterested reporting in the traditional sense.
The New York Times’ Jim Gutenberg and CNN’s Christiane Amanpour confessed that they could not be fair in reporting the news in the era of Donald Trump. Apparently, being fair had become tantamount to being a co-conspirator in Trump falsity. The New York Times in a post-election op-ed explained why it had missed the Trump phenomenon, admitting, but not necessarily lamenting, that its own coverage of the election had not been fair and balanced.
Yet all politicians fib and distort the truth—and they’ve been doing so since the freewheeling days of the Athenian ekklesia.
Trump’s various bombastic allegations and claims fall into the same realm of truthfulness as Obama’s statement “if you like your health plan, you can keep it”—and were thus similarly cross-examined by the media.
Yet fake news is something quite different. It is not merely a public figure’s spinning of half-truths. It is largely a media-driven, and deliberate attempt to spread a false narrative to advance a political agenda that otherwise would be rejected by a common-sense public. The methodology is to manufacture a narrative attractive to a herd-like progressive media that will then devour and brand it as fact—and even lobby for government redress.
Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen has never been to Prague to negotiate quid pro quo deals with the Russians. Trump did not watch Russian strippers perform pornographic acts in the bedroom that Barack Obama once stayed in during a visit to Moscow. Yet political operatives, journalists, and even intelligence officers, in their respective shared antipathy to Trump, managed to lodge these narratives into the public consciousness and thereby establish the “truth” that a degenerate Trump was also a Russian pasty.
No one has described the methodology of fake news better than Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security advisor for Barack Obama and brother of the president of CBS News, David Rhodes. Ben Rhodes cynically bragged about how the Obama administration had sold the dubious Iran deal through misinformation picked up by an adolescent but sympathetic media (for which Rhodes had only contempt). As Rhodes put it, “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
Translated, that meant that Rhodes and his team fed false narratives about the Iran Deal to a sympathetic but ignorant media, which used its received authority to report those narratives as “truth”—at least long enough for the agreement to be passed before its multitudinous falsehoods and side-agreements collapsed under their own weight. “We created an echo chamber,” Rhodes bragged to the New York Times: “They [reporters] were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”
Obama’s healthcare advisor Jonathan Gruber likewise saw the virtues of fake news in pushing a political agenda. Gruber assumed that the public, not just the media, was stupid and easily conned: “Lack of transparency,” he said, “is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever.”
Again, the term “fake news” is best applied to mainstream media reporting of fantasies as facts that are demonstrably not true—and are probably known to be not true, but are thought to help advance a desired progressive political or cultural agenda.
A good example of such fake news is the Duke rape story of 2006. Over a decade ago, an African-American stripper falsely accused three Duke Lacrosse players of rape. The media eagerly consumed and enhanced the narrative fed to it by radical civil rights groups and a legion of progressive Duke academics: privileged white male students had predictably sexually abused a women of color, whose poverty had forced her to perform sexually demeaning acts for frat jocks.
The three accused students were summarily indicted on rape charges and expelled from Duke, and the lacrosse team’s season was cancelled and its coach fired—all without reliable forensic or investigatory evidence that corroborated charges of assault. By the time the professional stripper was shown to have fabricated the entire charge, lives were ruined, but the narrative of racial exploitation had been firmly implanted. Jesse Jackson, for example, offered to pay the alleged victim’s college tuition and said the fact that she had concocted the story was irrelevant.
A somewhat similar fake news story about rape was promulgated by Rolling Stone in a 9,000-word article (“A Rape on Campus”) that supposedly detailed a savage gang rape in 2012 of a University of Virginia first year co-ed. The narrative served as an illustration of a supposed nationwide epidemic of sexual assault. Later, Rolling Stone retracted the story as fictional, and was sued by both the innocent students and defamed administrators. But the myth once again served the useful cause of creating hysteria about sexually predatory, white-male undergraduate frat boys. Even after their respective refutations, both the Duke and Virginia fake news cases promoted a climate favoring new campus directives curtailing notions of due process in matters of alleged sexual assault.
Other examples abound. There was the “story” that racial slurs were shouted at a Washington DC 2010 Tea Party demonstration against Obamacare. There was the “story” that the purported last words uttered by Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri, were “hands up, don’t shoot”—a story that helped to give rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. And there was the hysterical narrative, spun by progressive politicians and environmental activists, that California was in a “permanent drought” due to global warming that required institutionalized water rationing. (Currently, California is enjoying one of the wettest seasons on record following normal precipitation in 2015-16.)
What unites these fake news narratives and gives them greater media resonance than other fables and urban myths is again their progressive resonance. Fake news can become a means to advance supposedly noble ends of racial, gender, class, or environmental justice—such as the need for new sexual assault protocols on campuses. Those larger aims supersede bothersome and inconvenient factual details. The larger “truth” of fake news lives on even after its facts have been utterly debunked.
And indeed, the fake news mindset ultimately can be traced back to the campus. Academic postmodernism derides facts and absolutes, and insists that there are only narratives and interpretations that gain credence, depending on the power of the story-teller. In other words, white male establishment reactionaries have set up fictive rules of “absolute” truth and “unimpeachable” facts, and they have further consolidated their privilege by forcing the Other to buy into their biased and capricious notions of discriminating against one narrative over another.
The work of French postmodernists—such as Michael Foucault and Jacques Derrida that mesmerized academics in the 1980s with rehashed Nietzschean banalities about the absence of facts and the primacy of interpretation—has now been filtered by the media to a nationwide audience. If the mythical exclamation “hands up, don’t shoot” was useful in advancing a narrative of inordinate police attacks against African Americans, who cares whether he actually said it? And indeed, why privilege a particular set of elite investigatory methodologies to ascertain its veracity?
In sum, fake news is journalism’s popular version of the nihilism of campus postmodernism. To progressive journalists, advancing a leftwing political agenda is important enough to justify the creation of misleading narratives and outright falsehoods to deceive the public—to justify, in other words, the creation of fake but otherwise useful news.
http://www.hoover.org/research/fake-news-postmodernism-another-name?utm_source=hdr&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2017-01-26
Great research to again point out the scam Cramer crew.
Most medicines have side effects, and as you know, some can kill yet we take them. Seizure medicines have side effects that effect the whole body for example including eyes, mobility, liver, kidneys, muscle joint pain and damage, more. I'm sure we can go on and on with the poisons we are prescribed that effect the body but it's for a 'better good'. Statins, another poison we take to save our hearts and clear our veins while trashing our muscles, joints, liver and kidney to stay alive. When one thinks about it, we are still relatively primitive about know how to solve these mysteries.
To me it's an announcement by the Cramer short crew that they are here until the company can release new data points that destroy their narrative but by then, they will have made their money and probably gone long to take the ride back up to the real value of the stock. We'll see if they pump it when the news destroys their current narrative and intentions.
Thanks. When we have to endure the left, it motivates us to expose them for what they are.
Had lunch with the gentlemen a couple of months before he passed. His legend and cause carries on.
They camp out at our main local Grocery store that's been there forever. Makes it easy as their goods are better than Safeway and Whole Foods (we like to call them Old Foods) and is where the locals go.
Have a photo of Trump in private grade school letting people know what he thinks of them at an early age...... Making the class photo better again.
Far better than the pink march......