Newsgate 2016, Updated November 12, 2017

Sharyl Attkisson

"The following is a news media analysis and commentary"

"Regardless of who is your chosen – or least favorite – presidential candidate, independent minds should be concerned about the latest revelations in the news media’s unseemly relationships with government and political actors. While there are many responsible journalists working today, inside documents and leaks have exposed serious lapses constituting the most far-reaching scandal our industry has known. It’s our very own Newsgate.

Compromised reporting has always existed as a result of covert collaborations between reporters and political officials—Democrats and Republicans alike. For example, in my new book out next year, The Smear, I’ll report on instances of improper collusion that surfaced during the Bush administration. The most recent available evidence is heavy on Democrat-ties due to the nature of the available documents and leaks.  

"It can be argued that some individual accounts can be rationalized and are not serious breaches of ethics. But taken as a whole, it’s easy to see how we as journalists have done a poor job protecting ourselves from being co-opted by organized interests, often ones that are paid and politically-motivated. Whether we realize it or not, they’ve figured out how to exploit the media and use us to publish their propaganda. It implies a broad and growing trend that has seriously undermined the credibility of the news industry.

"Opinion reporters and those who work for obviously ideological news groups are entitled to publish party propaganda. It’s one matter to provide viewpoint journalism. But it’s quite another for us to act as a tool of any interest, publishing narratives or talking points upon suggestion or demand, without disclosing we’ve done just that." . . .

Full Article

Three little Fausts went to market

Evoke

Richard Rail  "Kathy Griffin, Hillary Clinton, and Colin Kaepernick go around in despair about how mean the world is to them, how they're getting cheated out of something rightfully theirs, how things just shouldn't be like this.

"Hatred figures prominently in their respective worldviews.  Griffin hates Donald Trump.  Hillary hates deplorables and Jim Comey and the Russians and men and self-hating women.  Oh, and Bernie.  And Donna.  Kaep hates America, or anyway America's cops.

"All three did this to themselves, but none sees any connection between choices made and present predicament.  Now they make themselves pitiful, irritating, and disgusting by whining, crying, complaining, ranting, and blaming.

"Griffin was the real dumb one.  Kaep's a millionaire even if he did kick away another season's work, and Hillary's got a tidy nest egg up there in Chappaqua, but Kathy didn't look far enough down the road before taking this wrong turn.

"America responds to this trio with eye-rolling.  And deep sighs.  And looking away.  And channel-changing.  Professional victims are nobody's idea of achievers, heroes, models for kids, or fun company on a desert island.

"Look at it this way, guys: you coulda been in Hollywood getting it from Harv and Kev and that bunch.  Then you could have laid it on really thick.  True, it's hard to see how, but you would have thought of something.

"Truth is, you all had it pretty good.  You had it real good.  But you couldn't accept that.  You kept pushing for more.  Idolization or headlines or something.  You never figured out how to enjoy what you had and pocket your winnings.

"Three Fausts looking for the ultimate high.  My, my."

George Washington wishes us all a happy Thanksgiving

Hat tip to Leslie Vaughn Burckard, Tillamook, Oregon

The First Thanksgiving: A story always worth returning to  . . . "The months turned into years and saw the Pilgrims develop good relations with the local natives including Massasoit, a wise and welcoming chief of the local tribes, Samoset, and especially Tisquantum, or Squanto.

"In the middle of March 1621, just as the Pilgrims were coming out of the devastatingly harsh winter, a guard alerted his comrades with the cry of “Indian coming!” Wearing only a loincloth as he walked into the Pilgrims’ camp, Samoset astonished the English onlookers with a hearty “Welcome!” Then speaking surprisingly clear English, he followed his friendly greeting with a request, “Have you got any beer?' ” . . .

2017 NFL condition

The NFL ratings slump is getting worse  "The TV audience for NFL games steepened its slide in Week 11, losing 1 million viewers versus last year’s season-to-date average.

"The 6.3 percent slump — worsening from comparable declines of 5.6 to 5.7 percent during the previous three weeks — plagued a week whose off-the-field drama made gridiron tackling seem almost tame by comparison.

"Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones remained the major distraction by continuing to battle with fellow team owners and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

"Jones brought even more tension to Week 11 when video footage surfaced late last week of the football tycoon making a racially charged remark at a 2013 wedding party.

"President Donald Trump added to the off-field antics with a tweet calling for the suspension of the Oakland Raiders’ Marshawn Lynch for not standing for the national anthem during a game played in Mexico City.

"Only two games had audience gains.

"The NBC “SNF” during which the Philadelphia Eagles whopped the Dallas Cowboys 37 to 9 managed to attract 12 percent more viewers than the comparable contest a year ago.

"Fox’s single header on Sunday, which saw the New Orleans Saints sneak past the Washington Redskins 34 to 31, drew 10 percent more viewers." . . .



NFL viewership down 11 percent in 2017   . . . "The NFL ratings are in focus because of President Donald Trump’s suggestion that viewers are turned off by a protest against police brutality that began with quarterback Colin Kaepernick refusing to stand for the national anthem. The protests spread rapidly this past weekend following the president’s criticism of people involved.

"Next week’s ratings will be even more closely watched, since conservative groups and Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity have called for people angered by the protests to boycott this weekend’s games."

NFL ratings and viewership for every game of the 2017 season, compared to last year. Streaming and adults 18-49 numbers listed when available.

The History of Sex in America, Part 1

After years of this sex panic, with men being sued for telling their secretaries "you look great in that," feminists finally got themselves a genuine sexual predator with President Bill Clinton. Feminists defended the predator. 

Ann Coulter  " 'Spotlight on sexual harassment moves victims to break silence" 

"Women Drawing the Line"

"The Evolving Concept of Sexual Harassment"

"Thousands and thousands of headlines like these appeared in newspapers across the country -- back in 1991. Spare us the self-righteousness, millennials.

"Just as every new generation thinks it discovered sex, refusing to wonder how they came kicking and screaming into the world, apparently the new thing is for every generation to think it discovered sexual harassment.

"Historical note for my younger readers: George Washington didn't grab women's breasts or force them to watch him masturbate.

"There have been tectonic shifts in Americans' attitudes about sex, but the idea of thanking someone by sending him a prostitute with a note in her vagina is of relatively recent vintage. (Hat tip: Hollywood's Robert Evans!) (For Larry David fans, Evans' birth name was Robert Shapera.)

"These are the major epochs in American sexual history:

"1607-1968: Women in America were treated better than any place else on Earth, at any time in history.

"1968-1991: Manson Family values swept the nation, with the rise of the Worst Generation. Left-wing men, from senators to hippies, treated women as subjugated beings and sexual playthings.

"The Weathermen forced girls into group sex. The Supreme Court granted constitutional protection to the most vile forms of pornography. Hollywood dumped the Hays Code, and promptly went pedal-to-the-metal on movies showing the bright side of the sexual exploitation of women.

"Sen. Teddy Kennedy let a girl drown at Chappaquiddick, after driving with his lights off to avoid detection on the way to a late-night extramarital liaison, and then didn't report the accident for hours, passing houses with their lights on, while he tried to construct an alibi, ending with him asking his cousin to say he was driving." . . .  Full article

Politicians and media people doing what comes naturally

Sebelius: The Clinton White House doubled down on 'abusive behavior' and it's fair to criticize Hillary Clinton   "As a wave of stories unfold about sexual harassment and assault by men in power, a senior Democratic leader says her party should reflect on how it handled such charges when they were leveled against former President Bill Clinton.

" 'Not only did people look the other way, but they went after the women who came forward and accused him," says Kathleen Sebelius, the former secretary of Health and Human Services and Kansas governor. "And so it doubled down on not only bad behavior but abusive behavior. And then people attacked the victims."
"Sebelius extended her criticism to Hillary Clinton, and the Clinton White House for what she called a strategy of dismissing and besmirching the women who stepped forward—a pattern she said is being repeated today by alleged perpetrators of sexual assault—saying that the criticism of the former first lady and Secretary of State was "absolutely" fair. Sebelius noted that the Clinton Administration's response was being imitated, adding that "you can watch that same pattern repeat, It needs to end. It needs to be over.' " . . .

Ethics lawyer: Conyers summoned me to his office while wearing underwear  "Melanie Sloan, who formerly headed Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and worked for Conyers from 1995 to 1998, told The Washington Post on Wednesday that Conyers asked her to come to his Rayburn Building office at one point, where she found him in his underwear.

“ 'I was pretty taken aback to see my boss half-dressed,” she said. “I turned on my heel and I left.' ” . . .

Political media engulfed by sexual harassment crisis  . . . "Glenn Thrush of The New York Times, Charlie Rose of CBS, author Mark Halperin, NBC’s Matthew Zimmerman, NPR’s Michael Oreskes, Vox’s Lockhart Steele, The New Republic’s Hamilton Fish and The Atlantic’s Leon Wieseltier have all been suspended or fired in the last month over varying degrees of alleged harassment or assault." . . .

Groping’s Just Cool If You’re ‘For The Common Good’

Three CBS employees accuse Charlie Rose of sexual harassment  . . . "The three CBS employees spoke on condition of anonymity, reports CBS News correspondent Bianna Golodryga. One says she's not ready for details of her allegations to become public. The other two described unwanted encounters with Rose at work-related events. One claims he groped her rear. The other says he grabbed her inappropriately and whispered a sexual innuendo in her ear. Our CBS News communication office issued a statement saying: "This is new information. Beyond that, we have no comment at this time.' " . . .

Former Charlie Rose intern says he made her watch sex scene from a movie
. . . "A former intern says Charlie Rose made her watch an explicit sex scene from a movie while dropping mail at his home." . . .

Rose, 75, co-host[ed] the morning show with Gayle King and Norah O'Donnell — and the three frequently chat about sex.

. . . "In one video, Rose tells King she looks tan as he looks her up and down, to which she laughs and jokingly tugs at her bra strap.

" 'Can I see that one more time?" Rose asks with a laugh.
"On another occasion, Rose says he wouldn't think less of a woman who slept with him on a first date, and that he likes a girl wearing Victoria's Secret." . . .

Kaepernick the freedom fighter

Hillary’s Version

By Conrad Black at National Review. . . "Previous narrowly defeated presidential candidates have been almost uniformly civilized. It never seems to have occurred to Hillary Clinton that Trump won because the previous 20 years of government had been utterly and bipartisanly incompetent, in the White House and the Congress. Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama produced the housing bubble and the Great Recession, endless and fruitless war in the Mideast and an immense humanitarian tragedy, mountainous budgetary, current-account, and trade deficits, and, under Obama, serious increases in poverty and violence, a shrinking work force, and a foreign policy of telling America’s allies and enemies to change roles and places. (Clinton proudly claims that the surrender to Iran’s nuclear military ambitions avoided an arms race in the Middle East, and fears what a mess Trump might make of North Korea, oblivious to her own and her husband’s bungling of the issue.) She somewhat grasps that tens of millions of voters don’t enjoy being called “deplorables” (though she thinks they are anyway), but doesn’t grasp that Trump was running as much against the Bushes and Obama as against the Clintons. She seems not to realize that he and his supporters concluded that the entire political class, including its national-media launderers, Wall Street paymasters, greasy lobbyists, and Hollywood cheerleaders, all had to go when the swamp is drained." . . .  Read more

Sexual Harrassment story: all in one big post. Plus our tweet of the day

Why the SNL Women’s Defense of Franken Means Little

. . . It doesn’t matter how Franken treated his coworkers if he harassed other women. Treating one person well doesn’t expunge treatment of others.
As Yashar Ali pointed out in the tweet above, the only result of these kinds of letters is that they dissuade other women from speaking up, and serve to delegitimize their allegations. Especially when the media talking points on Franken’s alleged offenses are that he made an itsy bitsy ‘mistake‘. A ‘mistake’ that as one reader pointed out, Franken made repeatedly, if allegations are to be believed. . . .

Built up anger of abused liberal women finally breaks through, enabled oddly enough by Trump’s defeat of Hillary.  "Not all the revelations have been about liberals (see, Roy Moore), but it seems that there is a liberal self-cleansing mechanism in progress when WaPo, the NY Times, and even Vox are turning on their own after years of looking the other way (or in the case of NBC, spiking the story)"

 The Resistance Tony Branco

Your Tax Dollars Pay for Sexual-Harassment Settlements Against Lawmakers

Although Conyers has since denied the claim, the news follows a recent Washington Postreport that Congress’s Office of Compliance has paid over $17 million to settle 264 workplace complaints since 1997 — a figure that includes sexual-harassment allegations. But where does all this money come from? From U.S. taxpayers.

Today in Sexual Harassment  Some guesses:  "Bill Moyers (oh please, please)

"Brian Williams (because he was there)"Mister Rogers (because all our childhood memories need to b ruined)

"Ted Kennedy (oh, wait. . .)

Reminder of how the next Oscar night is shaping up:  "I didn’t think the morning news that Melissa Gilbert has accused Oliver Stone of sexual harassment way back in 1991 (I’d kinda forgotten who Melissa Gilbert is, and Oliver Stone is best forgotten on general principle), but then I saw the news that came out later that Pixar’s major creative force, John Lasseter, is “taking a leave” from the animation powerhouse because of the usual problem:" . . .

Tweet of the day:  

Dan McLaughlin

✔@baseballcrank

John Conyers settled charges of sexually harassing staffers during the time his wife was in prison for taking bribes on the Detroit City Council.
The perfect Democrat power couple.

CNN, the favorite news source of the California schools

From a Ventura County California middle school textbook
The young lady who was working on this assignment says she and her mother are CNN followers only. TD

Hat tip to Jeff Kuepper

ISIS Urges Supporters To Kill Trump’s 11-Year-Old Son, Lists His School Location…

Weasel Zippers   Via SITE:

Islamic State (IS) supporters distributed a call to kill Barron Trump, the 11-year-old son of U.S. President Donald Trump, providing the name and Google Map location of his school.

From living through the Rodney King riots and watching the attempted murder of truck driver Reginald Denny, I visualize Maxine Waters's response as being along the lines of ,"I do not condone the murder of this young man, but certainly understand the fear ISIS must have toward this racist, bigoted President and their need to do something to save the world from his evil".
The Tunnel Dweller

Source: SITE Intelligence Group

Why Aren’t Any NFL Players Kneeling Over This Pennsylvania Cop Shooting?

Law Enforcement Today

The Federalist  "On November 17, a police officer was killed during a routine traffic stop in New Kensington, Pennsylvania. His name was Brian Shaw, and he was only 25 years old.

"According to reports, the suspect, 29-year-old Rahmael Sal Holt, fled his car after he was pulled over, and shot Shaw during the subsequent chase. Officials said Shaw did not appear to have fired his gun, while Holt fired at least six times, landing at least once in Shaw’s chest. Shaw lay in the street gasping for air before dying in a hospital that night. After several days on the lam, Holt was captured and arrested November 21 with Shaw’s handcuffs."