The arbiters of truth 284

From now on, when you write news on Facebook, it will be judged by certain people – specially talented, it is implied, in being totally uninfluenced by their own likes and dislikes – and if they reject it as untrue, it will be …

Deleted? Banned? Demoted? Obscured?

Discredited, anyway.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Facebook Inc. is inching closer to fact-checking the news on its platform, a role that Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg shunned a month ago, by rolling out steps to weed out “the worst of the worst”, the social media platform said on Thursday.

It has inched all the way. It is commissioning fact-checking.

Facebook said it has identified several markers of sites that consistently peddle fake news, and it will demote posts from those sites in people’s news feeds.

It is also outsourcing the delicate task of determining whether individual stories are true or false to a few external organizations and tweaking its news feed algorithm based on their rulings. It is unusual for Facebook to entrust outsiders with this much power to influence the way posts are played in the news feed, the central stream of information that is customized for each user by Facebook’s algorithm. …

Mr. Zuckerberg initially dismissed concerns over fake news, but later backed away from that stance. Still he remains wary of Facebook becoming the “arbiters of truth” … 

By drafting the help of a network of fact-checking groups affiliated with the Poynter Institute, a journalism nonprofit based in St. Petersburg, Fla., Facebook is seeking to keep the task at arm’s length. …

(More about Poynter below.)

The fact-checking organizations — Snopes.com, PolitiFact, ABC News, Factcheck.org and the Associated Press — will sift through the flagged stories to determine if they are fake. It will be up to those organizations to determine whether or not to fact-check them. …

Facebook’s partnerships immediately sparked questions among users and conservatives on the neutrality of the fact checkers themselves.

“Fact checkers all seem to be from the left,” said a Twitter message from the account of Republican strategist Evan Siegfried. “Not good for conservatives.”

If a fact checker determines articles are untrue, those stories will appear lower in Facebook’s news feed and publishers can’t promote them with Facebook ads, the company said. The links will also carry a warning label to indicate that their accuracy is in dispute.

ABC news and the Associated Press (AP) as arbiters of truthful reporting? Orwell, your Ministry of Truth exists, and rules over us! Both are notoriously left-biased. (Read about ABC’s bias here. As for AP – Google “Associated Press misreporting” and see instantly on page one just some of the topics they’ve lied about.)

But wait! Worse is to come.

Aaron Klein writes at Breitbart:

The organization partnered with Facebook to help determine whether a certain story is “disputed” is financed by billionaire George Soros and a slew of other left-wing funders.

The partnering organization is Poynter. It has set up a new subsidiary for this task, the International Fact-Checking Network, and yes, it is funded by George Soros, the ideal man to head Orwell’s Ministry of Truth!

The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) drafted a code of five principles for news websites to accept, and Facebook yesterday announced it will work with “third-party fact checking organizations” that are signatories to the code of principles.

Facebook says that if the “fact checking organizations” determine that a certain story is fake, it will get flagged as disputed and, according to the Facebook announcement, “there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why. Stories that have been disputed may also appear lower in News Feed”.

IFCN is hosted by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. A cursory search of the Poynter Institute website finds that Poynter’s IFCN is openly funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundations as well as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, and the National Endowment for Democracy.

Poynter’s IFCN is also funded by the Omidyar Network, which is the nonprofit for liberal billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. The Omidyar Network has partnered with the [Orwellian-named] Open Society on numerous projects and it has given grants to third parties using the Soros-funded Tides Foundation. Tides is one of the largest donors to left-wing causes in the U.S.

Another significant Poynter Institute donor is the Craig Newmark Foundation, the charitable organization established by Craigslist Founder Craig Newmark. On Monday, just days before the announcement of the Facebook partnership, Poynter issued a press release revealing that Newmark donated $1 million to the group to fund a faculty chair in journalism ethics.

States the press release:

The gift will support a five-year program at Poynter that focuses on verification, fact-checking and accountability in journalism. It’s the largest donation Poynter’s ever received from an individual foundation.

The Newmark Chair will expand on Poynter’s teaching in journalism ethics and develop certification programs for journalists that commit to ethical decision-making practices. The faculty member will also organize an annual conference on ethics issues at Poynter and be a regular contributor to Poynter.org.

Newmark funds scores of liberal groups also financed by Soros, including the Sierra Club, the New America Foundation, and the Sunlight Foundation.

Newmark also finances the investigative journalism group called the Center for Public Integrity, where he serves on the board.  Soros’s Open Society is another Public Integrity donor.

Soros has earned his megafortune in part by short selling currencies and causing economic crises. He is credited with breaking the pound on September 16, 1992 in a day that became known in Britain as “Black Wednesday.” He reportedly made $1.2 billion from that crisis.  In 2002, he was convicted for insider trading.

And that’s the least of his offenses. See the very long list of the organizations through which he works his evil will, and read what their principles and purposes are.

Poynter, meanwhile, has hosted controversial journalism programs in the past, including one that was accused of downplaying the threat of global Islamic terrorism. FoxNews.com reported the course suggested reporters “keep the death toll from Islamic terrorism in ‘context’ by comparing that toll to the number of people killed every year by malaria, HIV/AIDS and other factors”.

It is typical of the Left to compare terrorism to accidents and diseases, as though no moral decision is involved in the committing of random murder. This amounts to a condoning of terrorism, which positively encourages it.

The course taught reporters that the term “jihad” means internal struggle, and it discussed what it claimed was the issue of “right-wing activists” attempting to link American Muslims to terrorism.

As examples of fact-checking, the propagation of such blatant lies does not inspire confidence.

The section includes the good-journalism tip that reporters should check to see if experts they’re interviewing “have a bias or a stake in the story you are covering.” But then it only cites examples of anti-Muslim groups.

The course in Islam, Fox News reported, was supported by a group calling itself the Social Science Research Council, which has received funding from Soros-financed groups.

In response to the report, the Poynter Institute explained that it created the course “as a tool for journalists who want to be accurate in educating their audience about the religion and culture of Islam, Muslim communities in the U.S., and the distinctions between Islam as a political movement and the radical philosophies that inspire militant Islamists”. 

As there is NO distinction to be drawn between “Islam as a political movement and the radical philosophies that inspire militant Islamists”, those journalists who long to achieve strict accuracy will be teaching a lie from the get-go.    

“We believe there is a need to better understand the complexities of Muslim societies and the online course offered by Poynter and Washington State University is a vital resource toward that end,” Poynter added.

The values underpinning the course are truth, accuracy, independence, fairness, minimizing harm and context — the core journalistic values on which we build all our teaching here at Poynter.”

No one should be surprised at Poynter’s capacity for self-deception. It is what makes Leftism possible.

What of the other “fact-checkers”  on which Facebook will rely?

Poynter owns the Tampa Bay Times, and the Tampa Bay Times owns Politifact,

Politifact declares about itself:

PolitiFact is a project of the Tampa Bay Times and its partner news organizations to help you find the truth in American politics. …

Control of the newspaper and its operations, however, lies with a single executive. Upon retirement, that leader picks a successor. …

We received a grant from the Democracy Fund that has assisted us in expanding to new states. …

For our PunditFact project — which fact-checks talking heads and opinion leaders – we have received grants from the Ford Foundation and the Democracy Fund. Seed money for the project was provided by craigconnects. …

The Democracy Fund is administered by the iniquitous United Nations. The Ford Foundation funds such causes as Black Live Matter.

 When it comes to the question of “Who is PolitiFact?” or “Who pays for PolitiFact?”, we can assure you that no one is behind the scenes telling us what to write for someone else’s benefit. We are an independent, nonpartisan news organization. We are not beholden to any government, political party or corporate interest. We are proud to be able to say that we are independent journalists. …

Sorry, but we find that really, really hard to believe.

Then there is Snopes.com. It too is heavily left leaning(Read about it here and here.)

And what of Factcheck.org?

We quote from (conservative) Free Republic, which investigated it:

The “Truthfulness” website called FactCheck.org is itself decidedly BIASED toward the LEFT …

Among several proofs of this assertion, it cites this:

The sponsoring agency behind FastCheck.org, is itself supported by the same foundation, the ANNENBERG FOUNDATION, that Bill Ayers secured the 49.2 million dollars from to create the Chicago ANNENBERG Challenge “philanthropic” organization in which Barack Obama was the founding Chairman of the Board for and Ayers served as the grant writer of and co-Chair of for its two operating arms.

That’s Bill Ayers the terrorist. Read here how he and Barack Obama tried to “push radicalism in schools” through the Annenberg Challenge.

Free Republic concludes its report on Factcheck.com with a question:

Does the LEFT have no conscience at all?

Answer: Absolutely none.

Has all this been revealed to Mark Zuckerberg? Does he not know or not care?

Facebook is a global platform. With this ploy, the lying Left has brought off a power-grab of immeasurable proportions. From now on it will be the arbiter of truth, all over the world.

And for the Left, “truth” equals political correctness.

But does anyone over there on the Left know what you stand for now? Where you’re going, or why?

The paymaster of evil 9

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Hillary Clinton is blaming other people – never herself! – for losing the presidential election; chiefly James Comey for informing Congress that certain of her emails were still under investigation, and Barack Obama for not stopping Comey from doing it.

Sure. Had that letter to Congress not been issued, Hillary Clinton, corrupt as she is, traitorous as she is, lying as she does, proposing policies guaranteed to harm America and make all Americans poorer, would have been elected by a landslide. Definitely. No doubt about it.

See the smile gone from poor Hillary’s face. She is crying. Aaah! – you gotta feel sorry for her, right?

 

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One person she cannot blame is George Soros. He spent hundreds of millions on dirty tricks he was certain would get her elected.

J. Christian Adams writes at PJMedia:

Leaked funding documents reveal an effort by George Soros and his foundations to manipulate election laws and process rules ahead of the federal election far more expansively than has been previously reported.

The billionaire and convicted felon moved hundreds of millions of dollars into often-secret efforts to change election laws, fuel litigation to attack election integrity measures, push public narratives about voter fraud, and to integrate the political ground game of the left with efforts to scare racial minority groups about voting rights threats.

These Soros-funded efforts moved through dozens of charities and involved the active compliance with civil rights groups, government officials, and purportedly non-partisan groups like the League of Women Voters.

The leaked documents also reveal deliberate and successful efforts to manipulate media coverage of election issues in mainstream media outlets like the The New York Times. Conservatives and Republicans have no opposing effort or source of funds that represents even a small fraction in opposition to level of the Soros-led manipulation contained in the leaked documents.

The documents reveal that the Soros campaign fueled litigation attacking election integrity measures, such as citizenship verification and voter ID. It funded long-term efforts to fundamentally transform election administration  … It propped up left-leaning media to attack reports of voter fraud, and conducted racially and ideologically targeted voter registration drives.

The racially targeted voter registration drives were executed at the same time Soros dollars were funding other public relations efforts to polarize racial minority groups by scaring them about the loss of voting rights and the dangers of police officers.

The Soros documents reveal hundreds of millions of dollars being poured into the effort to transform the legal and media environment touching on elections. One document … states: “George Soros has authorized U.S. Programs to propose a budget of $320 million over two years … ”

… Soros documents show that it funded efforts to attack the efforts of Tea Party organizations such as True the Vote to promote election integrity …

The funding documents name groups which received in excess of $500,000 each year from Soros. … Three of the largest recipients are engaged in litigation and strategic communications denying voter fraud and seeking to transform the rules of elections.

Soros money is moving away from pressing for “campaign finance reform” and speech regulations, and instead into election process areas.  …

Soros money fought voter ID everywhere.  The leaked documents state: “…  Not only was this field successful at blocking restrictive laws from being implemented in Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Texas, Wisconsin and South Carolina, but a strong coalition in Minnesota came from behind to achieve the first victory against photo ID on the ballot.”

Soros money was directed at the Advancement Project and Brennan Center to influence media coverage on election integrity issues and provide voter fraud denial propaganda.  Leaked funding documents state: “In a specific grant update, the U.S. Programs board-funded communications and messaging project was successfully led by the Brennan Center and the Advancement Project, and played an important role in the spike in media attention on voting rights this year. The groups developed affirmative voting rights messages and shared them widely in and beyond the field. The messages were used verbatim hundreds of times in sources ranging from The New York Times to the Philadelphia Inquirer, quickly and fully working their way into the media, national and local, and across social networking sites.”  Verbatim. …

Soros money is funding some of the loudest voices who deny that voter fraud is a serious problem. These voices have produced poorly researched studies that are routinely cited by mainstream media to argue that voter fraud is a myth.  Among the groups are the Brennan Center for Justice and the Advancement Project, two organizations that have opposed election integrity laws and have sought to stop the efforts of states to ensure that only citizens are voting.  Soros grants also went to “New America Media,” which describes itself as “a nationwide association of 3,000 ethnic media organizations representing the development of a more inclusive journalism.”  This mix of funding for media efforts with non-profit organizations that oppose election integrity was branded as “Broad and Equitable Access to the Ballot” in Soros funding documents. …

Soros-funded groups even swoop in after ligation to push narratives to voters about the results of Soros-funded litigation. One leaked document shows $158,000 was spent on this activity in Texas alone …

Soros money specifically targeted voter mobilization efforts of racial minority groups that exhibit racially polarized voting patterns and can be counted on to support Democrats.  For example, the “Democracy and Power Fund” was established to “inspire the participation of people of color, immigrants, young people, and low income people  . . . . The fund invests in multi-issue advocacy, organizing and voter participation organizations that work at the federal, state and local level to expand access to democracy and build power for lasting social justice and systemic change.”  This distinct effort from all of the other Soros activities involved over $15,000,000 in just the three-year period from 2010-2012.

Other documents reveal extensive funding streams to tilt process rules involving elections.  …  The “Democracy and Power Fund” funded efforts to “increase participation in the 2010 U.S. Census, a key effort to ensure that OSI communities of interest – immigrants, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, low-income people, and people of color – will not be undercounted. … ” The project’s messaging worked its way into national and local media. A complementary $200,000 grant to New America Media, a multi-media content producer and aggregator for ethnic media, extended this work to thousands of local ethnic media outlets. “The public opinion and communications efforts influenced registration and get out the vote efforts, ballot initiative outcomes, and this fall’s string of court victories for voting rights.” …

Prior to the 2012 election, Soros organizations also planned to move millions to a swarm of downstream groups to fund organizing and political activities.  …

Soros money is also behind the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Education Fund.  $300,000 in Soros money went to “mobilizing the Latino community to engage in civic life, and promoting policies that advance Latino civic engagement”; $500,000 went to the National Council of La Raza and Democracia USA to conduct “nonpartisan voter registration and voter education in latino communities”; $200,000 went to the Center for Civic Policy to engage “ordinary people in the policy debates that affect their daily lives through increasing voter turnout; educating and mobilizing the public on issues; and training new leaders for civic life.” …

Soros money is fueling the effort to reassert federal control over state elections by passing amendments to the Voting Rights Act. …

We have omitted much of the very long article. Read it all here, see how much this man spent on his personal plot to wreck the American democratic process and get the corrupt and criminal Hillary Clinton into the presidency.

All wasted, George. Aw, shucks!

Anyway. He hasn’t been deterred by his failure to get his pick into the presidency. He’s not giving up. Not he! He’s now paying thousands of thugs to march through cities all across America, assaulting Trump voters and police, throwing Molotov cocktails, starting fires, to protest the election of Donald Trump. Does he really believe that the protests will reverse the result?

As soon as there are new heads of the FBI and the Department of Justice appointed by President Trump to replace the present corrupt Obama appointees, George Soros will – surely? – be arrested and sent to prison for inciting riot and whatever else he deserves to be charged with.

Then we can feel ever so sorry for him too.

Celebrate, celebrate, this glorious day! 112

This day of President-elect Donald Trump’s triumph.

To add to the pleasure of the victory, consider how glum must they be feeling, all those princes, emirs, CEOs, diplomats, wheeler-dealers, unscrupulous exploiters of the downtrodden, financiers of mass murderers who gave money to the Clintons – ostensibly to their “charitable” Foundation – in the expectation that a future President Hillary Clinton would reward them with favors. Millions, tens of millions of dollars, down the drain! George Soros, the èminence mauvaise of the whole international Left, poured … what… billions ? into getting the corrupt Clintons back into supreme power. All wasted, George, all wasted now.

The Clinton Foundation will get no more donations. Not much point now in its continuing to exist. It never did give anything worth mentioning to charity. And what need now for Bill and Hillary and Chelsea to jet round the world and live high on the hog – the “good causes” on which the Foundation spent most of its bribe-money?

The Clintons will be out of public life at last. As a former president, Bill and his wife will continue to have Secret Service guards – to her continuing annoyance. The disadvantage of being Someone Important without being important.

Let’s think gleefully of the impending departure from high office of Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, Loretta Lynch, Jeh Johnson. Maybe James Comey too.

Members of the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR will no longer be welcome at the White House. Happiness!

And yet more happiness: Valerie Jarrett, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, John Kerry – that bunch of irritating women who have surrounded Barack Obama –  will pass into dim obscurity, and their dirty deeds will have to be undone, now that the eight-year long winter of our discontent is changed to glorious summer by this Son of New York.

America’s moment of truth 6

Pat Condell – who always gets it right and says it well.

Posted under America, Britain, Europe, Islam, jihad, Muslims, United Kingdom, United States, Videos by Jillian Becker on Wednesday, October 26, 2016

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Election cheating 130

In the third and final presidential candidates’ debate last night, Donald Trump refused to commit himself to accepting the results of the November 8 election (if Hillary Clinton wins it, understood).

He was right not to, when there are some 4 million dead people registered as voters, and the voting machines in 16 states are supplied by a George Soros-owned firm – Soros being the money-power behind the criminal campaign to get Hillary Clinton elected to the presidency. Furthermore, the manager of her campaign, John Podesta, wants any illegal immigrant to be able to vote on production of a drivers license.

Democrats cry that the Republican candidate’s refusal is “out of keeping with American history”:

Breitbart exposes their hypocrisy:

Democrats are aghast that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump would declare our election system “rigged,” and that he declined to state in the third presidential debate whether he would accept the result if he loses in November. …

Democrats — including Hillary Clinton — seem to have forgotten their own history of claiming elections are “rigged”.

  1. 2000: Al Gore and the Florida recount.Yes, Gore eventually accepted the result — but only after withdrawing his concession, trying to have the vote recounted only in Democrat-heavy Florida counties, and suing to stop ballots from being recounted. Even after a consortium of media outlets concluded that George W. Bush had indeed won more votes in Florida, Democrats continued to claim the election had been “stolen” by the Supreme Court and Bush was an illegitimate president.
  2. 2004: John Kerry and “rigged” machines.While Kerry conceded the election, he and his running mate continued to believe afterwards that the election had been stolen from them, possibly by voting machines. Elizabeth Edward said in 2007 that she had been “very disappointed” in Kerry’s decision to concede the election. And last year the New Yorker reported that Kerry believed “proxies for Bush had rigged many voting machines” in Ohio, and that he may in fact have won the election.
  3. 2008: John Podesta and Obama’s voter fraud. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out recently, President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have suggested that voter ID laws are a way of rigging elections against black people. And while they downplay fears of voter fraud, Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podestreported internally (via Wikileaks) in 2015 that Clinton operatives believed that “the Obama forces flooded the caucuses with ineligible voters” to win the primary.
  4. 2014: Congress and a “rigged” district system.Thanks to the Tea Party wave election in 2010 in response to Obamacare, Republicans were left in charge of many state legislatures as they redrew congressional district boundaries. Except in a few states — such as Illinois, where Democrats drew several Republicans out of their seats — that meant Republicans held the advantage in the House. As a result, Democrats complained bitterlythat congressional elections were “rigged” against them.
  5. 2016: Bernie Sanders and a “rigged” primary. Sanders uses the word “rigged” often to describe the economic system. But in 2016, the Democratic Party primary was rigged against him in a political sense — both openly, in the party’s anti-democratic super delegate system, and secretly, through collusion between party officials and the Clinton campaign. Sanders supporters protested at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia against what they called a “rigged” election.

Hillary Clinton herself has made at least one similar claim. National Review — which officially opposed Trump earlier this year — points out that Clinton told a private fundraiser in 2002 that George W. Bush had been “selected”, not “elected”.

It’s all too likely that the Democrats will find ways to skew the vote in Hillary Clinton’s favor. If she gets to the White House, by fair means or foul, the darkness of a criminal socialist corruptocracy will fall over America.

Trump is unwilling to lead his followers gently into that good-night.

They are calling their movement a revolution – against a complacent conspiratorial political establishment that serves its own interests rather than the interests of the people.

If the election is dishonestly won by Hillary Clinton, is a self-named revolutionary movement likely to accept the result meekly and quietly?

If Trump is elected, a new and better Republican Party may arise. If he is not, his defeat may bring the GOP to its end.

Cliff Kincaid writes at the Selous Foundation for Public Policy Research:

As the election draws close, a new report from a communist defector to the United States and a new book from two staunch conservatives have put the stakes in very dramatic terms. Former Romanian intelligence chief Ion Mihai Pacepa warns of a “looming disaster” if socialism takes hold in the United States, while J.B. Williams and Timothy Harrington contend that a “New American Revolution”, as represented by Donald J. Trump, is the only way at this point to save America from four more years of Marxist rule.

After almost eight years of Obama, desperation is setting in. Pacepa’s Looming Disaster report is being provided for free by WorldNetDaily, while the book, Trumped: The New American Revolution, is available for a modest price from a conservative website that celebrates American principles of freedom. They both make the critical point that an America built on freedom and capitalism is fading fast.

The Williams/Harrington book helps to explain the Trump phenomenon. There’s no doubt that the New York businessman is representing the views of millions of Americans who are disgusted by what America has become under Obama. As Trump says, this is a “movement” that has taken hold in the country. The authors explain the failures of the Republican Party in detail. …

This movement is real and determined to fight for American sovereignty, free enterprise capitalism, and educational reform.

We have seen in the squalor called Venezuela that the people may get beaten down, but they still see through the propaganda and disinformation when the products start disappearing from the store shelves and members of their families who protest the slide into socialism start “disappearing”.  They understand that the rhetoric about “Socialism for the 21st Century” is a big lie.

Likewise, a Hillary regime in the U.S. may continue to accelerate the descent into socialism, but the American people will still resist. The Trump voters will not go away.

So Trump or no Trump, the “new American revolution,” as Williams and Harrington call it, will never die.

Will Trump become the “last peaceful effort to retake control of their party and their country?” That’s what Williams and Harrington suggest may come to pass.

Will the Republican Party end up on “the ash heap of history”? They also suggest this is possible if Trump goes down to defeat.

Thugs working violently for Hillary 187

This is a very important video made by James O’Keefe of Project Veritas (via Breitbart).

America may be about to elect to the highest power a gang of violent crooks as low as any ever bred in a moral gutter. They are using gutter tactics to win this election – and they are boasting of it:

Heard of “bird-dogging”? The video explains what it means.

We particularly savor the words of one Scott Foval, of Democracy Partners and/or People of the American Way, who organizes violent attacks but is a moral poseur, proud of “the way I was raised”.*

And they call Trump a “Nazi”!

 

* Scott Foval has been fired since this video was released. But he is merely a scapegoat for the people who employed him to do what he did. They will continue with their dirty work.

Save America! 137

In this time of painful stress and deep dread leading up to the most important US presidential election ever, the great actor Jon Voight speaks eloquently to us and for us. (We politely overlook his appeal to “God”.)

What about the workers? 242

The Democratic Party has become the Party of Wall Street billionaires, Hollywood stars, Silicon Valley whizz-kids, and the ruthless Utopians of the Ivory Tower.

Its “progressivism” harks back to the last century. Its concerns are mystical like those of all religions: the earth burning up; the end of days; the humbling of humankind; the profound spiritual need for the Holy Family Clinton and its angels to reign over the whole earth.

Its high priests are richly dressed and housed, driven in stately carriages, flown on the wings of Boeings.

Still, it claims to have a bleeding heart. Ask not for whom it bleeds. Obviously, dull-witted Underdog, it bleeds for thee!

James Pinkerton writes at Breitbart:

The Democrats, once the party of working people, are now a party dominated by environmentalists and multiculturalists. And I can prove it.

As we shall see, when Democrats must choose between … providing jobs for workers, and … favoring politically-correct constituency groups — they choose the PC groups.

Indeed, the old assumptions about the Democrats as the party of labor are nowadays so tangled and conflicted that the unions themselves are divided. Some unions are sticking with their blue-collar heritage, but more are aligning themselves with the new forces of political correctness — and oh, by the way, big money.

The proposed Dakota Access Pipeline, running through four states — from western North Dakota to southern Illinois — would create an estimated 4,500 unionized jobs.  That is to say, good jobs at good wages: The median entry-level salary for a pipeline worker in North Dakota is $38,924.

Yet the advancement of what was once called the “labor movement” is no longer a Democratic priority.  The new priorities are heeding the goals of “progressive” groups — in this instance, Native Americans and the greens. Indeed, this new progressive movement is so strong that even many unions are climbing aboard the bandwagon, even if that means breaking labor’s united front. To illustrate this recent rupture, here’s a headline from the The Huffington Post: “Dakota Access Pipeline Exposes Rift In Organized Labor.” Let’s let Huffpo labor reporter Dave Jamieson set the scene:

The nation’s largest federation of labor unions upset some of its own members last week by endorsing the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota. Some labor activists, sympathetic to Native American tribes and environmentalists, called upon the AFL-CIO to retract its support for the controversial project.

In response to the criticism, Sean McGarvey, head of the AFL-CIO’s building-trades unions, fired right back; speaking of pipeline opponents, McGarvey declared that they have …

… once again seen fit to demean and call for the termination of thousands of union construction jobs in the Heartland.  I fear that this has once again hastened a very real split within the labor movement.

Yes, it’s become quite a fracas within the House of Labor: so much for the old slogan, “Solidarity Forever!” We can note that typically, it’s the old-style construction unions — joined, perhaps, by other industrial workers, if not the union leadership — who support construction projects, while the new-style public-employee unions side with the anti-construction activists.

In the meantime, for its part, the Democratic Party has made a choice: It now firmly sides with the new progressives.

To cite just one ‘frinstance, we can examine the July 2016 Democratic national platform, released at the Philadelphia convention. That document includes a full 16 paragraphs on “climate change”, as well as 14 paragraphs on the rights and needs of “indigenous tribal nations”. Here’s one of those paragraphs; as we can readily see, Democrats are striving mightily to synthesize the demands of both groups, green and red:

We are committed to principles of environmental justice in Indian Country and we recognize that nature in all its life forms has the right to exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate its vital cycles. We call for a climate change policy that protects tribal resources, protects tribal health, and provides accountability through accessible, culturally appropriate participation and strong enforcement. Our climate change policy will cut carbon emission, address poverty, invest in disadvantaged communities, and improve both air quality and public health. We support the tribal nations efforts to develop wind, solar, and other clean energy jobs.

By contrast, the Democratic platform included a mere two skimpy paragraphs on workers and wages.

Some Democrats are troubled by this shift in priorities, away from New Deal-ish lunch-bucket concerns — because, as a matter of fact, it’s a shift away from the very idea of economic growth. For example, William Galston, a top White House domestic-policy aide to Bill Clinton in the 90s, had this to say about the Democrats’ latest platform:

The draft is truly remarkable — for example, its near-silence on economic growth. . . . Rather, the platform draft’s core narrative is inequality, the injustice that inequality entails, and the need to rectify it through redistribution.

… Perhaps it seems strange that a political party would lose interest in such an obvious political staple as economic growth. And yet if we look more closely, we can see, from the perspective of the new Democrats, that this economic neglect makes a kind of sense: We can note, for example, that the financial heart of the green movement is made up of billionaires; they have all the money they need — and, thanks to their donations, they have a disproportionate voice.

One of these noisy green fat cats is San Francisco’s Tom Steyer, who contributed $50 million to Democratic campaigns in 2014 and has been spending heavily ever since. We can further point out: If Steyer chooses to assign a higher value to his eco-conscience than to jobs for ordinary Americans, well, who in his rarified Bay Area social stratum is likely to argue with him?

Admittedly, billionaires are few in number — even in the Democratic Party. Yet at the same time, many other groups of Democratic voters aren’t necessarily concerned about the vagaries of the economy, because they, too, in their own way, are insulated from its ups and downs. That is, they get their check, no matter what.

The most obvious of these groups, of course, are government employees.  … Public-sector workers have an obvious class-interest in voting Democratic, and they know it — lots of Lois Lerners in this group.

Then there are the recipients of government benefits. … Welfare recipients, for example, are overwhelmingly Democratic. And Democratic politicians, of course, know this electoral calculus full well. Indeed, in this era of slow economic growth, nearly 95 million Americans over the age of 16 are not in the labor force; not all of them are receiving a check from the government, but most are. And that has political consequences.

We can take this reality — economic stagnation on the one hand, economic dependence on the other —a  step further: If the Democrats can find the votes they need from the plutocrats and the poor — or near-poor, plus public employees — then they can make a strategic choice: They can ignore the interests of working-class people in the private sector, and they can still win.

So for this cynical reason, the Democrats’ decision to stiff the working stiffs who might have worked on the Dakota pipeline was an easy one.

We can sum up the Democrats’ strategy more concisely: In socioeconomic terms, they will go above the working class, and also below the working class. That is, they will be the party of George Soros and Al Sharpton. So no room, anywhere, for the blue collars. (Of course, if any of those would-be pipeline workers end up on public assistance, well, they’ll have a standing offer to join the Democratic fold.)

We can see this Soros-Sharpton coalition in America’s electoral geography: The Democrats expect to sweep the upper east side of Manhattan, and, at the same time, they expect to sweep the south side of Chicago. Moreover, this high-low pattern appears everywhere: Greenwich and the ghetto, Beverly Hills and the barrio.  

In addition, Democrats can expect to do well in upper-middle class suburban enclaves, as well as college towns. And so if we add all those blocs together, plus the aforementioned public-employee unions, we can see that the Democrats have their coalition …  a 2016 victory coalition.

So now we can see the logic of the Democrats’ policy choices. And we can even add an interesting bit of backstory to the Democrats’ 2016 platform. In June, as a concession to the insurgency of Sen. Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton’s campaign agreed to include a contingent of Sanders supporters on the 15-member platform-drafting committee.

Specifically, the Clinton camp accepted the Palestinian-American activist James Zogby, the Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the environmental activist Bill McKibben, the African-American activist Cornel West, and the Native American activist Deborah Parker. …

The unions got a grand total of one name on that 15-member body. … So we can see: Big Labor isn’t so big anymore; it is now reduced to token status within the party.

Given this new correlation of forces, it’s no surprise that top Democrats oppose the Dakota pipeline. …

In this new era of green-first politics, the anti-pipeline forces must win, and the pro-pipeliners must lose. …

For her part, Hillary Clinton certainly knows where she stands: She’s with the new eco- and multicultural Democrats, not the old unionists — who were, after all, mostly “deplorable.” As she said to a cheering campaign crowd earlier this year, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

To be sure, Clinton has a heart — a taxpayer-funded heart. In fact, she has offered to put all those soon-to-be ex-coal workers on the government dole; she has proposed a $30 billion program for them.

Yet whether or not Congress ever approves that $30 billion, it’s a safe bet that if Clinton wins, more fossil-fuel workers will need to find some new way of earning a living. After all, just last year, the Obama administration pledged that the U.S. would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025. And whereas Donald Trump has promised to scrap those growth-flattening CO2 targets, Clinton has promised to maintain them.

Indeed, during Monday night’s debate in New York, she promised to install “half a billion more solar panels” as part of her plan, she said, to create 10 million new jobs.

We can quickly observe that most blue collars don’t seem to trust Clinton with their livelihoods; Trump beats her among non-college-educated men by a whopping 59 points. Yet at the same time, we can add that if Trump leads among blue collars by “only” 59 points, that might not be enough for him to overcome Clinton’s advantage — her huge strength among the Soros-Sharpton coalition.

And here we can note, with some perplexity, that the leadership of the industrial unions is still mostly in lockstep with the Democrats. That residual partisan loyalty to the party of FDR might cost their members their jobs now that the Democrats have found policy goals other than mass employment, but hey, perhaps the union bosses themselves can get jobs at Hillary’s Department of Labor.

So if Clinton wins this November, what will happen to the private-sector blue collars, especially those in the traditional energy sector?

Sadly, we already know the answer to that question; the only unresolved matter is how they might react.

The Party of the American princess, the professor, the fashionable the cool the glamorous, the very rich and the very safe is the Party of the party. Of parties in Manhattan, Nob Hill, Santa Monica, Bel Air.

But its heart bleeds for … Oh, you know, blacks and Hispanics and gays and women and Muslims and …

And the workers?

You gotta believe it.

If you don’t … all you can do is vote Trump for President.

The would-be destroyer of the world 153

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George Soros (his adopted pun-name: a “sauros” is a lizard, a kind of reptile – not unsuitable for this repulsive specimen) looks to be intent on destroying everything.

So he’s an anarchist? Mmm … no. Worse. A nihilist? No, worse still. An annihilationist? Yes. That describes him.

He’s a billionaire chaos-merchant. And Hillary Clinton is his servant*.

Thousands of documents belonging to what he calls his Open Society Foundation (an intensely sarcastic name) have been hacked and leaked. They confirm and  stress – rather than reveal –  his evil designs, most of which have been visible, but insufficiently noticed, for some time.

Caroline Glick writes at Front Page:

Major media outlets in the US have ignored the leak of thousands of emails from billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundation by the activist hacker group DCLeaks. The OSF is the vehicle through which Soros has funneled billions of dollars over the past two decades to non-profit organizations in the US and throughout the world.

According to the documents, Soros has given more than $30 million to groups working for Hillary Clinton’s election in November, making him her largest single donor. So it is likely the case that the media’s support for Clinton has played some role in the mainstream media’s bid to bury the story.

It is also likely however, that at least some news editors failed to understand why the leaked documents were worth covering. Most of the information was already public knowledge. Soros’s massive funding of far-left groups in the US and throughout the world has been documented for more than a decade.

But failing to see the significance of the wider story because many of the details were already known is a case of missing the forest for the trees. The DCLeaks document dump is a major story because it exposes the forest of Soros’s funding networks.

The first thing that we see is the megalomaniacal nature of Soros’s philanthropic project. No corner of the globe is unaffected by his efforts. No policy area is left untouched. …

The vast number of groups and people he supports … all work to weaken the ability of national and local authorities in Western democracies to uphold the laws and values of their nations and communities.

They all work to hinder free markets, whether those markets are financial, ideological, political or scientific. They do so in the name of democracy, human rights, economic, racial and sexual justice and other lofty terms. … [But] their goal is to subvert Western democracies and make it impossible for governments to maintain order or for societies to retain their unique identities and values.

Black Lives Matter, which has received $650,000 from Soros-controlled groups over the past year, is a classic example of these efforts.

Until recently, the police were universally admired in the US as the domestic equivalent of the military. BLM emerged as a social force bent on politicizing support for police. Its central contention is that in the US, police are not a force for good, enabling society to function by maintaining law and order [but rather] a tool of white repression of blacks. [So now] law enforcement in predominantly African American communities is under assault as inherently racist.

The demoralization and intimidation of police is very likely to cause a steep increase in violent crimes.

Then there are Soros’s actions on behalf of illegal immigration. From the US to Europe to Israel, Soros has implemented a worldwide push to use immigration to undermine the national identity and demographic composition of Western democracies.

The leaked emails show that his groups have interfered in European elections to get politicians elected who support open border policies for immigrants from the Arab world and to financially and otherwise support journalists who report sympathetically on immigrants.

Soros’s groups are on the ground enabling illegal immigrants to enter the US and Europe. They have sought to influence US Supreme Court rulings on illegal immigration from Mexico. They have worked with Muslim and other groups to demonize Americans and Europeans who oppose open borders. …

The notion at the heart of the push for the legalization of unfettered immigration is that states should not be able to protect their national identities.

If it is racist for Greeks to protect their national identity by seeking to block the entrance of millions of Syrians to their territory, then it is racist for Greece – or France, Germany, Hungary, Sweden, the US or Poland – to exist.

Parallel to these efforts are others geared toward rejecting the right of Western democracies to uphold long-held social norms. Soros-supported groups, for instance, stand behind the push not only for gay marriage but for unisex public bathrooms.

They support not only the right of women to serve in combat units, but efforts to force soldiers to live in unisex barracks. In other words, they support efforts aimed at denying citizens of Western democracies the right to maintain any distance between themselves and Soros’s rejection of their most intimate values – their sexual privacy and identity.

As far as Israel is concerned, Soros-backed groups work to delegitimize every aspect of Israeli society as racist and illegitimate. … In the US,  Soros-backed groups from BLM to J Street work to make it socially and politically acceptable to oppose Israel.

The thrust of Soros’s efforts from Ferguson to Berlin to Jerusalem is to induce mayhem and chaos as local authorities, paralyzed by his supported groups, are unable to secure their societies or even argue coherently that they deserve security.

In many ways, Donald Trump’s campaign is a direct response … to Soros himself.

By calling for the erection of a border wall, supporting Britain’s exit from the EU, supporting Israel, supporting a temporary ban on Muslim immigration and supporting the police against BLM, Trump acts as a direct foil to Soros’s multi-billion dollar efforts.

The DCLeaks exposed the immensity of the Soros-funded Left’s campaign against the foundations of liberal democracies.

The “direct democracy” movements that Soros support are nothing less than calls for mob rule.

The peoples of the West need to recognize the common foundations of all Soros’s actions. They need to realize as well that the only response to these premeditated campaigns of subversion is for the people of the West to stand up for their national rights and their individual right to security. They must stand with the national institutions that guarantee that security, in accordance with the rule of the law, and uphold and defend their national values and traditions.

Soros the Destroyer, not surprisingly, sees the Democratic Party as a powerful tool to achieve his aims.

He is working at ways to keep the Democrats in power.

Among other measure – the hacked documents reveal – he is bent on increasing the number of ill-informed voters who, he expects, will vote Democratic.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

A top priority of liberal billionaire George Soros is to enlarge the U.S. electorate by 10 million voters by 2018, according to leaked documents.

The plan to grow the electorate by millions of voters was discussed during a May 2014 board meeting of the Open Society Foundations, a liberal [sic] grant-making group founded by Soros. A 220-page guide detailing the plan was among more than 2,500 hacked Soros documents released by DC Leaks

The guide covers strategies and tactics the group will employ in the United States from 2015 to 2018. The top goals listed by the guide are to “advance electoral reform” and “combat suppression”. … [A strategic goal is to achieve]: Full political, economic, and civic participation of immigrants and communities of color by dismantling the barriers and strengthening the conduits to opportunity.”

Later, the guide discusses expanding the electorate by “at least 10 million voters” in the United States. This would be accomplished “by lowering barriers to voter registration through the various forms of modernization and increased ballot access while sustaining and expanding the franchise by establishing strong protections against vote suppression, denial and dilution.”

The campaign’s leader is Marc Elias, a partner at the D.C-based law firm Perkins Coie and Hillary Clinton’s top campaign lawyer. Elias’ work on the legal project is separate from his work on the campaign, although Clinton supports the effort.

The first in a series of lawsuits claiming that voter ID laws disproportionately hurt minority voters was filed in Ohio just days before the Open Society documents were transmitted to the board of directors in May 2014.

Elias filed the Ohio lawsuit on behalf of a group called the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. That group was later replaced on the lawsuit when it was investigated by a state criminal agency for allegedly forging signatures and registering dead people to vote. Weeks after the Ohio lawsuit was filed, a second lawsuit was filed challenging Wisconsin’s voter ID laws. A third lawsuit was filed in Virginia soon afterward, a challenge Soros and Elias would ultimately lose. Lawsuits in other states followed.

Soros has also funded recent voter registration campaigns from his own bank account.

Soros donated $3 million to the Immigrant Voters Win PAC, which was established to fund the Families Fight Back campaign. That campaign aims to register 400,000 Hispanic voters in swing states before the November elections.

Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a nonprofit law firm that litigates to defend election integrity, said that Soros is spending big to transform American elections.

George Soros is involved in every aspect of manipulating the rules of American election. From funding Pew’s efforts to centralize election administration, to fueling litigation that attacks election integrity laws, to fanning the flames of racial agitation and polarization, Soros dollars are doing all they can to fundamentally transform American elections.

What is the ultimate purpose of all this subversive activity?

What it will achieve if it is not stopped (and only Donald Trump can stop it) is chaos and destruction.

Can Soros not see that? Of course he can.

Plainly, that is exactly what he wants.

 

*A series of messages within the September 2015 State Department dump of Hillary Clinton e-mails show the Secretary of State of the United States received direct orders over U.S. foreign policy from none other than Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.from Canada Free Press.

The fire and the fire engine 135

To vote for Hillary Clinton and side with the Democratic Party is to side with America’s worst enemy – Islam.

Donald Trump made this clear in the speech he gave yesterday in Ohio.

Frank Gaffney writes at Breitbart:

Yesterday in Youngstown, Ohio, Donald Trump delivered the best speech of his campaign to date. Newt Gingrich rightly called it the most important since Ronald Reagan left office.

In fact, in many ways, it was very Reaganesque. After all, long before he became president, Mr. Reagan warned that every generation faces an existential threat to freedom. Mr. Trump made clear that he recognizes the threat to freedom in our time, which he explicitly characterized as “Radical Islam” and its guiding, supremacist ideology, Sharia.

The GOP nominee also channeled President Reagan by espousing a comprehensive strategy highly reminiscent of the one the Gipper formally adopted in his National Security Decision Directive 75 and employed to defeat freedom’s last existential threat: Soviet communism. Mr. Trump recognizes that now, as then, we must bring decisively to bear all instruments of national power – economic, military, intelligence, information and ideological.

The last element, which was emphasized repeatedly in the Trump speech, reflects an essential understanding that has eluded past administrations of both parties and some of the candidate’s most vociferous critics, Democrats and Republicans alike: Jihadists who seek the destruction of our country, its Constitution, and people employ different tactics – including violence, migration, material support for terrorism, recruitment, indoctrination, conversions and stealthy subversion. But they are all motivated by the same ideology: Sharia. Donald Trump declared yesterday that if you embrace that supremacist doctrine, you must seek to supplant our Constitution and, therefore, you are not welcome here.

Specifically, the speech adopted a basic principle: As a foreign national and would-be immigrant to this country, you must share our values to gain admission. That filter has for too long been absent and has greatly contributed to the ominous demographic trends facing not just Europe, but this country, as well: growing numbers of transplanted and inherently hostile populations, most of whom have no interest in assimilating and, rather, insist that freedom-loving Americans accommodate their demands and, ultimately, submit to Sharia.

Finally, the Republican candidate to be our next Commander-in-Chief spoke of a reality that can no longer safely be ignored: There are “networks” in America that support “radicalization”. In so doing, he recognized another hard lesson from Europe’s experience. Violent jihadists rely upon and exploit the infrastructure (including Islamist mosques, societies, cultural centers, front groups, influence operations, etc.) that has been systematically put into place in the West over the past fifty years by Islamic supremacists, notably those associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. …

Much encouraged by President Obama, who has numerous Muslim Brothers advising his administration – to what ends we have seen in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Libya …

We have no choice but to identify, designate and roll-up such operations. …

At no point since 9/11, and arguably for thirteen years before, has there been a better articulation of what’s at stake and what needs to be done to secure freedom, namely by seeking and achieving Victory over Jihad. We desperately need more such visionary and collaborative leadership.

The other candidate for the Presidency, Hillary Clinton, wants to import many more Syrians – that is, many more devotees of Sharia – into the US. (According to Politifact, 550% more.) She is being massively helped to achieve her aims with funds by billionaires who do not understand that they, along with all non-Muslims, will be the victims of her pro-Islam policy.

Investor’s Business Daily reports:

A massive hack of socialist billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations suggests that his various nonprofit organizations are little more than fronts for his many political activities. His growing closeness to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton should be a warning to all.

The hack by a group called DC Leaks, includes 2,576 files from various Soros groups from 2008 to 2016. The DC Leaks website says the attack was “launched by American hacktivists who respect and appreciate freedom of speech, human rights and government of the people.”

Apart from the ease with which the Soros group’s computer system was breached, what we’re learning so far fills in the troubling details of how Soros goes about his business. No doubt, in coming days, more revelations will emerge as researchers comb through the thousands of documents.

But what’s emerged so far is eye-opening. In one of the purloined memos from 2011, titled “Extreme Polarization and Breakdown in Civil Discourse”, a nonprofit Soros group proposes conducting opposition research on a number of highly prominent American critics of radical Islam, including Pamela Geller, Frank Gaffney and Robert Spencer. It also targeted conservative activists and intellectuals David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes, Cliff May and former Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter, Liz Cheney. All of them are strongly pro-Israel and have warned about the threat of radical Islam.

The memo suggests that the research was outsourced to the Center for American Progress (CAP), a leftist think tank that has “received millions of dollars in grants from Soros’s groups”… 

Oh yes, CAP also happens to have been founded by John Podesta, Hillary’ Clinton’s campaign chief. One of many close ties between Soros and Clinton.

Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post notes that some of the hacked emails show that the Soros Open Society Foundations’ stated goal was “challenging Israel’s racist and anti-democratic policies,” in part by “questioning Israel’s reputation as a democracy”.  This is an old Soros trick: He spends money to delegitimize governments and others with whom he disagrees. It’s not about debate, and certainly not “open”, as his groups’ names all suggest. It’s political subterfuge in service of a far-left agenda.

So remember the next time Hillary postures as a pro-Israel Democrat – her campaign has ties to groups that actively undercut the Jewish state, our only real ally in the Mideast. 

But it goes well beyond just Israel. In yet another revelation from the doc-dump, a memo called the “List of European Elections 2014 Projects” details the elaborate efforts of Soros’ well-funded global network to manipulate election outcomes in Europe. The memo includes over 90 Soros projects in Europe to influence election outcomes. Now, through Hillary, he wants to do the same here. And Soros has the clout. …

Happily, he does not always succeed. He tried to influence the British referendum on withdrawal from the European Union, hoping to keep Britain in that corrupt bureaucratic dictatorship, and he failed. 

Fox News reports that Soros has given an estimated $9 million to Hillary-favoring super PACS in 2015 and 2016, more than anyone else. But he’s not Hillary’s only billionaire. Not by a long shot. “Within the past year,” Fox News reported earlier this month, “a total of 24 billionaires have donated more than $42.5 million to two Clinton campaign arms and three allied super PACs”. 

So while Soros and other billionaires fund Clinton’s campaign and other left-wing causes, the Clinton Family Foundation focuses on extending the Clintons’ political clout both here and abroad by trading political access for cash. The Clintons have together pulled in more than $240 million since leaving the White House “dead broke”, as Hillary once put it. Now the Clinton Foundation reportedly is under federal investigation for its questionable fundraising practices.

“It’s a way, effectively, to get around those campaign laws,” noted Peter Schweizer, author of the extensively documented book Clinton Cash, in a recent interview. “Hillary Clinton running for president in 2008, if you’re a foreign oligarch, you can’t give to her campaign, but you can have Bill Clinton give a 20-minute speech for half a million dollars, or you can make a $5 million donation to the Clinton Foundation, and you’ve got access every bit as much as if you had raised money for their political campaign. That’s really what the Clintons have done.”

As the saying goes, between the fire and the fire engine you cannot be neutral.

The fire is Islam, stoked by Soros, Podesta, the Clintons …

The fire engine is manned by Donald Trump, Pamela Geller, Frank Gaffney, Robert Spencer, David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes, Cliff May, Liz Cheney …

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