November, 2018, Part 1 , The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: A Stupid Politician, More English Single Payer Failures, and More

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, sugar, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and copays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

1) We start today’s discussion on the failures of Obama Care with a videotape clip from 2017 that I recently came across. It contains an assertion by Congresswoman Maxine Walters and it is totally ridiculous. During an interview on MSNBC Walters stated that 700 billion people would lose their health insurance as a result of Trump’s actions. 

Now, 700 billion is a lot of people who will lose healthcare insurance especially since there are far less than 8 billion people in the entire world. Think about this reality: this is the type of person who wants to be in charge of your entire healthcare future, either via Obama Care or the bigger disaster, a single payer health care system. Do you really want to trust your future health care needs to someone like this who has no concept of reality?

Her idiotic statement can be seen at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndt0qM05cIg

As a side note: the interviewer does not even try to correct her insanity, another example of the mainstream press accepting anything that Democrats say without ever questioning the validity of it.

2) Speaking of a single payer healthcare system, many Democrats still think that would be a good idea for the U.S. even though the concept has failed miserably around the world. We have shown how bad the system is in previous posts where we see that health care quality, quantity, and health care access goes down substantially when a single payer system is put in place:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/09/september-2018part-2-unfolding-disaster.html

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/01/january-2018-part-1-unfolding-disaster.html

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2017/02/february-2017-part-5-unfolding-disaster.html

This reality in England was proven again in a recent headline in a leading London newspaper which said that: “A Million People A Week Cannot See a GP” [a regular doctor]. To see a copy of the actual article got to: 

https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2017/07/08/ari-fleischer-shares-newspaper-headline-from-the-single-payer-future-liberals-want/?utm_campaign=socialflow_twitchy&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social

The good news under a single payer system is that you now have health care coverage but the bad news is that you cannot receive health care coverage. A single payer health care system: a bad idea that refuses to die.

3) One of the major problems we always had with Obama Care is that it forced Americans to do things that were against their will, a clear violation of their First Amendment rights. And this forced coercion usually related to birth control. If a charity or hospital or company did not want to implement the draconian rules of Obama Care relative to birth control and abortion, they were then most likely sued for having their morals dare to conflict with Obama Care.

Fortunately, according to a recent article on the Liberty Planet website, Trump is relieving this violation of the First Amendment:

• According to the article, “Under Obamacare, employers had little choice in the matter of contraception coverage or religious freedom; they had to cover birth control pills and even abortion, even if their faith and beliefs oppose these methods.”
• The Department of Health and Human Services under Trump is now rolling back some of these requirements in order to allow people and companies to live their lives as they see fit regarding abortion and birth control.
• Insurance companies are no longer required to provide such services within their health insurance plans: they can provide them but do not HAVE to provide them.

A good start in restoring freedom and killing off another anti-freedom, stupid Obama Care tenet. More Obama Care insanity to follow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

November, 2018, Part 2,I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: Bad Political Policy Caused The California Wildfires, Not Global Warming

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.” This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of man made global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control on our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical post listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaim.

1) Unless you are totally out of touch with current events, you know that California is suffering through some massive wildfires. Tragically, many have died, many more are missing and the property damage is massive. Of course, global warming advocates are never going to pass up a tragedy like this to advocate for their climate and global warming positions, even if it means pathetically doing their advocacy when people are still grieving and suffering.

But before we get to this current wildfire situation let’s review the reality from wildfires in a scientific, data driven, reality perspective. Consider the following set of real data that we have previously talked about concerning wildfires:

Wild Fires

Research by James Taylor, writing for Forbes magazine, found that “2013 was one of the quietest wildfire years in U.S. history.” If global warming/climate change was such a bad thing from a weather perspective, one could expect to see a growing trend of wildfires as severe weather, droughts, etc. resulting in more wildfires.

But according to a government agency, the National Interagency Fire Center, an entity that tracks the number of forest fires every year and has been doing so since 1960, well before global warming theory took hold: 

• The year 2013 had the fewest forest fires since data tracking began.
• From 1962 through 1982, there were at least 100,000 forest fires tracked every one of those years. But since 1982 there has not been a single year where forest fires totalled above 100,000.
• Fifty years prior, in 1964, forest fires totalled three times as many vs. 2014 and burned up twice as many acres.
• Twenty years ago, in 1994, there were 79,000 forest fires vs. 63,000 in 2014.

But this is not the only source of real data that shows forest fires, and the severe weather that might affect them, is down on a historical basis despite global warming/climate change:

• According to the Weather Underground, the two largest forest fires in American history occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
• The first of these forest fires occurred in Wisconsin 1871 and burned 3.8 million acres and killed 1,500 people.
• The second worse forest fire hit Idaho and Montana in 1910 and destroyed 3 million acres and killed 87 people.
• The 47,579 forest fires in 2013 destroyed only 4.3 million acres, an average of 90.79 acres per fire.
• Furthermore, research in 2009 analysis by R.M. Beaty and A.H. Taylor researched charcoal records in northern California to study wildfires over thousands of years. They concluded that “current fire episode frequency is at one of its lowest points in at least the last 14,000 years.” And certainly manmade global warming and climate change was not a topic of concern or a reality 14,000 years ago.

That whole post where the above passage was taken, a post that also looks at other types of natural disasters, can be accessed at:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2015/06/june-2015-part-4-i-am-global-warming.html

So yes, the California wildfires raging today are very, very bad. But are they really just a statistical anomaly which is what real data would show? You cannot take one situation, today’s California wildfires, and all of a sudden throw out thousands of years worth of real data to conclude man made global warming is the culprit. One data point is not a trend.

Let’s look at another set of real data from that same post referenced above:

Roger Pielke Jr. is an environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado Boulder in Colorado. On may 22, 2015 he a graph on his blog that showed a slight DECREASE in global droughts since 1982, a time period of extensive worries about global warming and weather. His data is based on a 2013 publication in the magazine Nature which tracked “historical drought severity data.”

Fraction of the Globe in Drought: 1982-2012



The graph above shows the proportion of the planet in drought, by intensity, 1982-2012. The graph comes from a paper in a new Nature publication called Scientific Data and is open access.

So, again, the California wildfires are bad. But from a historical perspective, the world is not in a drought infested state, the historical data shows that if anything, drought situations are slowly decreasing over time, a direct contradiction of what global warming advocates would tell us.So if the long term trend for drought and wildfires is down as measured by real data, a direct contradiction of what global warming advocates measure by real hysteria, what could possibly be going on in California to fuel these current fires?Consider a recent Forbes article from November 16, 2018 by Chuck DeVore, Texas Public Policy Foundation VP and former California legislator. The title of his article is, “California's Deadliest Fires Could Have Been Mitigated By Prevention.” Given his background as a California politician, and years spent with the state’s National Guard fighting disasters, he does have some credibility about talking about his current state’s situation:

• He starts off the article by recognizing how bad the situation is: “At least 63 people have been killed with 631 reported missing in the California fires as thousands of firefighters, including 200 sent from Texas as well as other states, battle to contain the blazes. More than 7,000 structures have been destroyed, including up to 90 percent of the homes in Paradise, population 26,682, in Northern California’s Butte County. More than a quarter of a million people have been evacuated in both the north of the state by the Camp Fire and by other fires in Southern California, Hill and Woolsey.”
• Given his first hand experience, it is his experienced opinion that political policy bears at least some of the blame for these massive fires.
• He cites the opinion of Mike Marcucci, the assistant chief of CAL FIRE, California’s main firefighting agency, who in a recent interview blamed decades of political policy of discouraging controlled burns as a safety precaution to reduce the natural wood fuel that feeds massive wildfires.
• These needed burns were decreased as a result of environmental lawsuits and the fear of air quality degradation, a concern that has certainly backfired big time with the air degradation caused by these wildfires which have been many times greater than what would have happened under much smaller, controlled burns.
• Real data show that in the three decades before 1990, lumber companies annually took out 10-12 billion board feet of lumber from our national forests, much of which is located in California.
• By 2013, environmental policies had reduced that annual forest thinning down to a meager 2.5 billion board feet.
• Concurrent with that reduction, the thinning of underbrush and dead trees also declined dramatically.
• According to the article, the following simple truth is that, “Harvesting trees on public land is controversial but helps pay for needed brush clearing. Many environmental groups vigorously oppose both. But fighting the larger, hotter fires that result without active forest management is even more costly and threatens lives.”
• California, and its much tighter environmental controls and higher and higher prices for forest harvesting permits, has cut employment in the lumber industry by half since the 1990s, and with that has led to the overgrowth of the forests in the state.
• Of course, global warming advocates like California governor Jerry Brown ignored all of this reality when he blamed the fires on, no surprise, global warming, “During this summer’s fires, outgoing California Governor Jerry Brown blamed the record-breaking fires on climate change. In a press conference he warned that the level of climate change-induced forest fires predicted in 20 to 30 years were “now occurring in real time.””

It is tragically ironic that the zeal of environmentalists and global warming advocates along with stupid political and environmental policies have likely resulted in the intensity and death and destruction of these recent fires. These current wildfires have likely given off 50 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, about 12% of the state’s entire annual emissions in addition to creating incredibly bad air quality, the exact opposite of what environmentalists advocate for. As we said above, one data point, the current fires, do not represent a trend. But leaving behind billions and billions of lumber board feet not harvested along with the ever growing underbrush and dead trees that go with it, is a trend that has resulted in the current wildfire situation in the state, not global warming.2) When Trump recently suggested that bad environmental policies had contributed mightily to the current California wildfires, Governor Jerry Brown pooh poohed the idea since he is one of the biggest global warming advocates around, data, science, and reality be damned. But after the camera and news crews left the area after Trump’s visit and Brown’s retort, something curious happened:

• According to Emily Zanotti, writing for the Daily Wire on November 19, 2018, Brown quietly starting urging California politicians to undo some of the environmental legislation that so greatly reduced logging in the state and created the current combustible disaster that exists today in the state’s forests.
• In fact, he is not suggesting minor tweeks, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper, some of his proposed changes are the most significant changes in the state’s logging industry in almost 50 years: "Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing broad new changes to California's logging rules that would allow landowners to cut larger trees and build temporary roads without obtaining a permit as a way to thin more forests across the state." 
• Specifically: "Under Brown's proposal, private landowners would be able to cut trees up to 36 inches in diameter - up from the current 26 inches - on property 300 acres or less without getting a timber harvest permit from the state, as long as their purpose was to thin forests to reduce fire risk. They also would be able to build roads of up to 600 feet long without getting a permit, as long as they repaired and replanted them." 

So Trump gets crucified by global warming advocates for suggesting the need for more forest pruning and better forest management. But when one of the global warming heroes, Brown, proposes the same thing, crickets from the global warming crowd. The hypocrisy is deafening.To the man made global warming/climate change advocates, please stop knee jerking. Look at data, look at history, be logical and not hysterical and maybe then we can all have a mature, adult, reality based discussion on climate. Until then, I will continue to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

November, 2018, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.” This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of man made global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control on our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical post listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaim.

1) A recent research paper that was published in the scientific journal, Nature, proclaimed that the oceans were warming much faster than expected due to global warming and/or climate change. If true, this would have serious ramifications around the world, especially with countries with long coastlines along the oceans. The mainstream media went nuts with the news, proclaiming catastrophe in in its headlines covering the research, especially since the well respected magazine Nature had published the peer reviewed article.

One problem though, the research was wrong due to a math error:

• The study claimed that ocean temperatures had risen 60% faster than previously believed.
• But mathematician and well known climate change skeptic Nicholas Lewis found some math errors that proved this was not the case: “The findings of the . . . paper were peer reviewed and published in the world’s premier scientific journal and were given wide coverage in the English-speaking media. Despite this, a quick review of the first page of the paper was sufficient to raise doubts as to the accuracy of its results.”
• Research author Ralph Keeling, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who co-authored the paper, said he and his partner, Laure Resplandy of Princeton, agreed that their math error was indeed true: “When we were confronted with his insight it became immediately clear there was an issue there. We’re grateful to have it be pointed out quickly so that we could correct it quickly.”
• Keely went on say in total honesty: “We really muffed the error margins.”

Error corrected, good thing. But three troubling thoughts come to mind:

• It does not appear that the mainstream media corrected their original stories once the error was found and admitted to. Which, if given what we have discussed over the past week or so, lack of journalism honesty and ethics, means that the mainstream media has contributed to muddying the waters when it comes to the science of climate to suit their preconceived and biased intentions and aims.
• Second, we will these two scientists the benefit of doubt on the error in their calculations. However, given the proven history of global warming advocates and scientists intentionally faking data and results to align with their preconceived notions, this type of relatively simple screw up does the raise the specter of bad and corrupt science for political and personal fame and glory.
• And finally, and related to the previous point, this was a peer reviewed article. Why did none of those peers find the error? Were they just sloppy also or did they want the wrong findings to stand and fit their biased and skewed view of climate? 

Shady dealings potentially all around.

2) Although global warming basically stopped increasing two decades ago, there was global warming prior to the last two decades. And while global warming advocates always claim that ANY global warming is really bad, we have often discussed the reality that global warming may actually make it better for humanity, not worse.

Consider a February 13, 2018 article from the Constitution website that discussed this topic from both perspectives:

• Former EPA head, Scott Pruitt, earlier this year posed the hypothesis that global warming might actually be good for humanity.
• Penn State global warming advocate Michael Mann accused Pruitt of being in “stages of denial” and American Meteorology Society’s Paul Higgins also checked in to berate Pruitt. 
• But Mann and Higgins represent only one side of the argument.
• Consider Robert Murphy, an economist with the free market Institute for Energy Research who has done a lot of research regarding climate-economic models: “It’s always problematic to try to add benefits and harms together since people are different, but in terms of standard economic modeling, Administrator Pruitt’s comments are not as unreasonable as some of his critics are claiming. There are plenty of obvious benefits to certain regions from warmer temperatures, such as better harvests and fewer elderly deaths in the winter.” 
• Murphy has concluded that, “It shows that the actual economic research on the human impacts of climate change are not as catastrophic as the alarmists would have you believe.”
• Another study by environmental economist Richard Tol forecasted that impacts of global warming would be a net benefit to humanity, at least in the shorter term horizon.
• Even longer term impacts, if global warming would start rising again, would not be all that bad: “ After 1.5 degrees [increase in warming], Tol found warming has “a limited impact on the economy and human welfare in the twenty-first century,” but the costs would be “substantially greater in poorer, hotter, and lower-lying countries.””
• Specifically, Tol has stated: “There are of course positive aspects to climate change. The eastern US has just been through a brutal winter. Climate change will bring lower heating costs in winter, and cut cold-related death and disease. Plants grow faster and tolerate drought better if there is more carbon dioxide in the air.”
• Historical satellite data likely shows that the Earth has greened up over the past several decades, possibly because of higher levels of carbon dioxide in the air from fossil fuel burning.
• Since carbon dioxide is an essential plant food, more carbon dioxide may suggest more plant food which may mean more plant growth.
• In fact, scientist Craig Idso of the CO2 Coalition has documented a load of studies and research that show the improved growth rates with higher levels of CO2 in the air: “And beyond this very real benefit to human health from increasing temperatures, the extra CO2 has helped to increase crop yields so as to improve food security.”
• Of course, the United Nations’ effort on climate change, the IPCC, disagrees with all of these positive research findings on higher levels of carbon dioxide in the air.
• But the IPCC also ignores the reality that crop yields have increased so much during the global warming hysteria that, “The world produces so much food now the World Peace Foundation declared the “elimination of calamitous famines.” Population has grown, but the death toll from famines has shrunk considerably in the last 50 years.”

So who is right, the global warming skeptics or the doubters? Tough to say but in my opinion there is far more science showing that global warming, which stopped two decades ago, has been more beneficial to humanity than hurtful. And given the reality that the forecasts of doom of global warming advocates over the past forty years or so have always been wrong, I believe the reality as pointed out by Dr. Tol: “The climate change we have witnessed over the last half century has been a net positive for humans.” 

And that is why I am a global warming skeptic and a believer in science.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

How The American Journalism Profession Is Destroying The First Amendment and Our Democracy, Part 3

One of the once great things about this country was the First Amendment and the freedom of press guaranteed by it. A free press helps offset the nefarious political ambitions and freedom encroachments of politicians by keeping their actions in the sunlight of visibility, disclosure, and scrutiny, i.e. it helps keeps politicians honest. 

Unfortunately, we for the most part do not have an unbiased, free press anymore in this country but not in the way you think. Most people, when they think that the free press has been suppressed, consider many of the actions of Presidents like Obama, who was one of the worst Presidents when it came to undermining the free press guarantee of the First Amendment:

• He went after and prosecuted more whistleblowers than every other President combined.
• He spied on journalists who he thought was an enemy of his views and efforts without proper cause or warrants.
• His administration fought tooth and nail, more than any other President, to block legitimate and legal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
• His administration even tried to illegally charge a legitimate news gathering organization, the Associated Press, an outrageous sum of money for a FOIA request.

All of these acts undermined freedom of the press in the traditional way. But unfortunately, freedom of the press has been undermined over recent years not by politicians but by the press industry and journalists themselves. For the most part, and especially at the national level, news organizations have gone from reporting the facts, realities, and news in an unbiased way to shaping those facts, realities, and news in a very biased way. 

When journalists lose their integrity and ethics, the bedrock of their industry and profession, they undermine the First Amendment as much as some shady politician who is trying to get by with shady and unethical behavior. How far have journalists fallen down the integrity scale in Americans’ minds? In a recent Gallup poll:

• Only 20% of those polled said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in television news.
• 45% said they had very little or no confidence in television news.
• Newspapers do not do much better with 23% saying they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers while 40% saying they very little or no confidence in newspapers.
• Ironically they both did better than Congress whose ratings were the most abysmal among all major American institutions.

Note: The first two discussions on this theme can be accessed at:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/11/how-american-journalism-profession-is.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/11/how-american-journalism-profession-is_15.html

1) It is not just network news that has helped destroy the integrity and ethics of the mainstream press in this country. Consider a recent article from the Godfather Politics website by Warner Todd Huston:

• The Houston Chronicle newspaper has a major scandal on its hands as it turns out that one of its long time reporters invented many of the sources behind his politics-related news stories.
• The writer, Mike Ward, and his false sources have caused the paper to retract eight stories/articles of Ward’s and has had to correct 64 stories after finding that 275 quotes from his articles could not be verified as true.
• Nancy Barnes, the paper’s executive editor issued the following mea culpa statement: “These are challenging times for our country, and for journalism. That makes it all the more important that readers trust that we will ferret out the truth, even if it concerns ourselves.”
• Ward resigned from the paper in September as his falsehoods started to come to light.
• An independent outside investigator went through 744 of Ward’s stories and found hundreds of shady and likely non-existent sources that Ward had cited.

Makes you wonder how many other false source stories are out there that have not been found, given the previous two discussions we have had regarding the lack of ethics and integrity within the journalism industry today.

2) One way that today’s journalists and the mainstream media insult the integrity of their industry is not falsehoods or biased stories they do report but real, important stories they do not report. The following website describes a series of important stories that should have been important news stories that were not widely reported by the biased mainstream media:

https://patrioticviraltt news.com/articles/4-stories-the-mainstream-media-hid-from-you-this-week-2/

Two of those stories were as follows:

- For weeks at a time the mainstream media could not report enough about the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination. It seemed that every day a new woman would come forward and accuse him of some sort of sexual perversion or attack. The mainstream media coverage was non-stop which was fine. It is an important position in the country so it should be covered. 

But what was unethical is what was not covered is the aftermath of the hearings. An extensive Congressional analysis of the women who accused him of sexual perversion was conducted and it was found that most, if not all, of the accusations were totally false and lies. The women had sworn under oath that what they said was true when it was not. As a result, they face investigation and possible prosecution for lying under oath to Congress, a serious crime. 

If the accusations were so important to the press, than the vindication of the man after the accusations were proven false should have also been important. But it was not, the mainstream press covered virtually none of the hundreds and hundreds of pages of proof of his innocence since it did not fit their biased narrative which was, as always, trying to stick it to Trump.

- Louis Farrakhan is a long time bigot and hatemonger. He has been a long time and virulent hater of anything Jewish, calling Jewish people unmentionable names for a very long time. He is also a big time hater of white people, having at one time called for 10,000 young black men to gather together in a plan to kill white people.

Certainly a hateful, dangerous human being. One would think that a politician would not want to be associated with such hatred. But that is not the case since pictures and video exist of politicians kissing up with and having a grand time with him. But you would not know about that since the mainstream press does not want you to know about it since it would tinge your respect and support of the media’s favorite politicians:

Obama hanging out with Farrakhan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nafhanRZ4lc

Farrakhan hanging out with Congressional members:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qmweHbj-Ks

Just two instances where the mainstream press decided to protect its favorite politicians at the expense of the truth.

And he should also have been in the news recently for his latest antics but alas, the mainstream press was absent on this also. Farrakhan recently visited Iran which in itself should have been a news story. As one knows, Iran is probably the number one terror exporting country in the world. Anyone associated with it should be considered a potential source of terror.

In his recent visit to Iran, Farrakhan sat down with Iran’s leadership and supported those protesting the U.S. and Israel by shouting, “Death To America” and “Death To Israel.” Certainly troubling and possibly traitorous actions, But none of his antics were reported by the mainstream press:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/nov/6/farrakhan-under-fire-death-america-chant-iran/

The journalists in this country have been entrusted with a very important component of our democracy and sadly, they flub that responsibility just about every day of their working lives.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

How The American Journalism Profession Is Destroying The First Amendment and Our Democracy, Part 2

One of the once great things about this country was the First Amendment and the freedom of press guaranteed by it. A free press helps offset the nefarious political ambitions and freedom encroachments of politicians by keeping their actions in the sunlight of visibility, disclosure, and scrutiny, i.e. it helps keeps politicians honest. 

Unfortunately, we for the most part do not have an unbiased, free press anymore in this country but not in the way you think. Most people, when they think that the free press has been suppressed, consider many of the actions of Presidents like Obama, who was one of the worst Presidents when it came to undermining the free press guarantee of the First Amendment:

• He went after and prosecuted more whistleblowers than every other President combined.
• He spied on journalists who he thought was an enemy of his views and efforts without proper cause or warrants.
• His administration fought tooth and nail, more than any other President, to block legitimate and legal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
• His administration even tried to illegally charge a legitimate news gathering organization, the Associated Press, an outrageous sum of money for a FOIA request.

All of these acts undermined freedom of the press in the traditional way. But unfortunately, freedom of the press has been undermined over recent years not by politicians but by the press industry and journalists themselves. For the most part, and especially at the national level, news organizations have gone from reporting the facts, realities, and news in an unbiased way to shaping those facts, realities, and news in a very biased way. 

When journalists lose their integrity and ethics, the bedrock of their industry and profession, they undermine the First Amendment as much as some shady politician who is trying to get by with shady and unethical behavior. How far have journalists fallen down the integrity scale in Americans’ minds? In a recent Gallup poll:

• Only 20% of those polled said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in television news.
• 45% said they had very little or no confidence in television news.
• Newspapers do not do much better with 23% saying they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers while 40% saying they very little or no confidence in newspapers.
• Ironically they both did better than Congress whose ratings were the most abysmal among all major American institutions.

Note: The first half of the discussion on this theme can be accessed at:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/11/how-american-journalism-profession-is.html

1) Let’s start off today’s discussion with a recent poll that was written up by Warner Todd Huston on November 14, 2018 for the Godfather Politics website:

• The poll found that a whopping 72% of American blame the mainstream news media for many of the problems in this country since the media is “dividing Americans” and “spreading hate.”
• The poll was done by the respected polling outfit, Zogby Analytics.
• According to Zogby: “[respondents] felt the mainstream media spreads hate and misunderstanding, also felt that President Trump is responsible for the spread of hate and misunderstanding, but more voters overall, and in most sub-groups, blame the media slightly more!”
• And: “Overall, 72 percent said “the mainstream media has played a major role in dividing Americans along racial, gender and political lines. This has led to a spread of hate and misunderstanding among some people.”
• The overwhelming Republicans in the poll sample felt that the media was most to blame but even a majority of Democrats in the poll agreed that the mainstream media was most to blame.
• President Trump also caught flak for contributing to spreading hate and dividing Americans but the mainstream media was the clear winner in this question.

Thus, the First Amendment, which envisioned a free press providing clear, fair, and balanced news reporting has been undermined by at least the perception of almost three out of every four Americans that instead of being fair and vital to our democracy, they are guilty of dividing us and spreading hate.

2) The mainstream media has had a mortal and dedicated hatred for Trump even before he was elected. They definitely lean liberal and no doubt most wanted Hillary elected as President. Since they did not get what they wanted, they have gone after Trump for just about every affront they could imagine to the concept of the “free press.”

But as we have pointed out so many times in this blog, these same members of the media stood aside and let Obama get away with so many lies and so many transgressions against the First Amendment, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the rule of law. Two of those posts can be accessed below:

Shredding the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Rule of law: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-2-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Lies: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-1-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Which leads us to a fascinating article in the New York Times on December 30, 2016 by James Risen. Not only does the article provide a fascinating point of view on how the mainstream media is so biased but it was printed in the New York Times, one of the most biased, skewed, Trump hating journalistic endeavor out there:

• The title of the article was, “If Donald Trump Targets Journalists, Thank Obama.”
• Mr. Risen correctly points out that Obama and his administration went out and prosecuted nine government whistle blowers during its eight years, three times the number that all previous Presidents COMBINED had gone after.
• Obama reached back to the Espionage Act, a leftover relic from the first world war 100 years ago, not to go after real spies, the original purpose of the law, but to get government employees who dared to talk to the press.
• In addition, according to Mr. Risen, “Under Mr. Obama, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases.”
• Mr. Risen himself got caught up in the Obama headhunting when Obama era officials tried to force him to reveal a confidential source.
• According to Leonard Downie, a former executive editor at the Washington Post and now a journalism teacher at Arizona State University (i.e. this guy has some credibility as a journalism professional) in a 2013 report from the Committee to Protect Journalists, Obama’s pressure on journalists was “the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration, when I was one of the editors involved in The Washington Post’s investigation of Watergate.”
• According to Trevor Timm who is the executive director of the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation: “Obama has laid all the groundwork Trump needs for an unprecedented crackdown on the press.” 
• And it gets worse: Dana Priest, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Washington Post, stated: “Obama’s attorney general repeatedly allowed the F.B.I. to use intrusive measures against reporters more often than any time in recent memory. The moral obstacles have been cleared for Trump’s attorney general to go even further, to forget that it’s a free press that has distinguished us from other countries, and to try to silence dissent by silencing an institution whose job is to give voice to dissent.”
• While historically finding and stopping leaks had been a low priority of previous Presidencies, that changed with Obama according to Mr. Risen: “The Obama administration quickly ratcheted up the pressure, and made combating leaks a top priority for federal law enforcement. Large-scale leaks, by Chelsea Manning and later by Edward J. Snowden, prompted the administration to adopt a zealous, prosecutorial approach toward all leaking.”
• According to Lucy Dalglish, the dean at the journalism school at the University of Maryland, after meeting with Obama officials to discuss news reporting and government sources: “You got the impression from the tone of the government officials that they wanted to take a zero-tolerance approach to leaks.”
• Ms. Dalglish has stated that if Trump is as bad as Obama when it comes to stifling the First Amendment it is because “Obama handed him a road map.”

And yet when Obama was abusing the journalism industry and profession, those in high, visible, and public positions within the mainstream media gave Obama a pass. When Trump does the same thing, even at a fraction of the intensity and hate that Obama did the same thing, these same “journalists” go ballistic. This is what I call hypocrisy and just another reason why they or any hypocrite, cannot be trusted to have a unbiased and objective reporting of the news. 

The journalists in this country have been entrusted with a very important component of our democracy and sadly, they flub that responsibility just about every day of their working lives.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

How The American Journalism Profession Is Destroying The First Amendment and Our Democracy

One of the once great things about this country was the First Amendment and the freedom of press guaranteed by it. A free press helps offset the political ambitions and freedom encroachments of politicians by keeping their actions in the sunlight of visibility, disclosure, and scrutiny, i.e. it helps keeps politicians honest.

Unfortunately, we for the most part do not have an unbiased, free press anymore in this country but not in the way you think. Most people, when they think that the free press has been suppressed, consider many of the actions of Presidents like Obama, who was one of the worst Presidents when it came to undermining the free press guarantee of the First Amendment:

• He went after and prosecuted more whistle blowers than every other President combined.
• He spied on journalists who he thought was an enemy of his views and efforts without proper cause or warrants.
• His administration fought tooth and nail, more than any other President, to block legitimate and legal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
• His administration even tried to illegally charge a legitimate news gathering organization, the Associated Press, an outrageous sum of money for a FOIA request.

All of these acts undermined freedom of the press in the traditional way. But unfortunately, freedom of the press has been undermined over recent years not by politicians but by the press industry and journalists themselves. For the most part, and especially at the national level, news organizations have gone from reporting the facts, realities, and news in an unbiased way to shaping those facts, realities, and news in a very biased way. 

When journalists lose their integrity and ethics, the bedrock of their industry and profession, they undermine the First Amendment as much as some shady politician who is trying to get by with shady and unethical behavior. How far have journalists fallen down the integrity scale in Americans’ minds? In a recent Gallup poll:

• Only 20% of those polled said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in television news.
• 45% said they had very little or no confidence in television news.
• Newspapers do not do much better with 23% saying they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers while 40% saying they very little or no confidence in newspapers.
• Ironically they both did better than Congress whose ratings were most abysmal among all major American institutions.

Consider the following election related stories on how journalists have “earned” these sorry reputations for trust and integrity:

• Erick Erickson, writing for the Maven website documented the following instances during the election season where journalists got the story mostly wrong, either intentionally or unintentionally, in his article, “Where Do We Go When Journalism Fails Us?”
• His first example involves the state of Georgia where former Georgia Secretary of State and Republican, Brian Kemp, probably won the race for Governor in that state.
• National reporters and journalists reported that Kemp tried to close predominantly African American voting locations which forced black voters to travel far distances by driving or walking to voting locations in mostly white neighborhoods which in turn discouraged black voters.
• Nice story but wrong since it was not Republican Kemp closing these voting locations but it was the Democratic county commissioners and the Democrat controlled local board of elections that closed those locations.
• They/local Democrats had hired a consultant who recommended closing some voting locations to be in line with the Americans With Disabilities Act requirements.
• In addition, the locations that were closed were ALL in mostly Republican precincts, not Democratic and black precincts.
• As you can see, the national press got just about every detail of this story wrong.
• The Associated Press told the story of a woman in Georgia who was supposedly denied the right to register to vote because, as required by state law, the name she put down on her voter registration form did not exactly match the information on her driver’s license, it was missing a hyphen, and thus, her voter registration application was denied.
• The AP then went with this story nationwide.
• But the truth is that she was not allowed to register because she was ALREADY registered to vote. 
• Despite the screw up, the Associated Press never retracted or amended this incorrect article.
• The Associated Press also reported that 53,000 Georgia voters had their voter registration paperwork held up and classified as “pending voter” and that the majority of those tied up were from minority voters.
• This made it look like there was a massive minority voter suppression effort underway.
• In reality, 75% of those on the pending list had submitted registrations with bogus Social Security numbers.
• And 23% had been on the voter registration list from 2014 and had had their names re-submitted by the the voter registration efforts of the black Democratic candidate running for governor.
• Thus, at least 98% of those 53,000 on the pending list did not have their voting rights suppressed, they either were duplicates or had submitted bad information themselves. realities that the Associated Press never mentioned.
• The national press also ran stories that accused Republican Kemp, as Georgia’s Secretary of State, of kicking minority voters off of voting registration lists to improve his chances of becoming governor.
• But the reality is that he was prohibited under state law from doing an such thing, the voting registration lists are maintained by local voting officials, they are the only ones allowed to remove people from voting lists because of death, felony conviction, or deemed incompetent.

The article correctly points out why the national media in these cases were more interested in building ratings and readership than reporting the truth and they themselves abused the freedom of the press trust that they should have protected with integrity and ethics: “Local media in Georgia got these stories right while national outlets flubbed them. They distorted the facts and got basic facts wrong. The national reporters wanted to build narrative arches with protagonists and villains instead of just giving people the facts. As local news outlets rely more and more on national reporters or fade away, more stories like these will be reported and even more people will distrust the press.”

2) But it is not just bad, biased reporting of election stories that made the press look bad, their polling results also bring into doubt their integrity. Remember back in the 2016 Presidential election how almost every media poll showed Hillary winning the election? 

One reason they may have all been so wrong is that maybe, like CNN did, they purposely over weighted their polling sample with Democrats/liberals which skewed the results to Clinton. The one conclusion that many people drew, given the bad confidence levels of the press in Americans’ minds, is that CNN wanted to shape the election and make it look like a Clinton victory was a done deal. That in turn would depress and suppress Trump voters and possibly add a bandwagon effect for Clinton, i.e. if CNN says she will win I might as well vote for a winner.

Could this same intentional skewing of poll results, in an effort to affect elections, also happened in the recent midterm elections, as pointed out by an article by Dick Morris:

• In 40% of the pre-election polls in the most closely watched Senate and governor races, the polls picked the wrong winner.
• In other words, you could have done almost as good a job on average by flipping a coin in picking winners, 50%, than the major news and polling organizations did with their much more sophisticated efforts.
• And even when the polls picked the right winner, in 60% of the time they were more than three points wrong in the number of votes the winner got despite their polling methods.
• The results would be less suspicious if the wrong predictions were more or less equal between Democrats and Republicans. 
• But these results were also skewed in that 75% of the major polls indicated that Democrats were doing better than what really happened while only 25% doing better than finally happened, a more than random difference.
• According to Morris: “Of the nine major polling firms, eight showed Democrats doing better than they actually did and only one — Trafalgar — showed Republicans doing better than it turned out.”
• The NBC/Marist poll was the worst polling effort, overestimating Democratic vote totals by 6.8%.

Given that the press constantly favors Democrats and liberals in their biased reporting and given that the press and their polling partners constantly overestimate the chances of Democrats and liberals in elections prior to voting, it should not be a surprise that Americans who cherish the First Amendment and the freedom of the press guarantee that it provides have a very low and dubious view of the integrity and confidence that the journalism profession has today. The journalists in this country have been entrusted with a very important component of our democracy and sadly, they flub that responsibility every day of their working lives.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w