CNN: the most busted name in news

I know: such a frivolous title for discussing the forces shaping our national decision-making.

Thomas Lifson: CNN busted trying to put scripted words in mouth of hero Stoneman Douglas student at televised town hall

Nobody should take CNN seriously anymore.  Somewhere in Hell, Josef Goebbels is expecting company.

"CNN would be the object of humor if its behavior were not so contemptible. Coming in the wake of its disgrace over using chyrons to proclaim President Trump a liar, giving up all pretense of objectivity, the latest scandal reveals an active propaganda effort to manufacture fake questions from real children, even from a boy hero who used his body to protect others during the shooting at Marjory Douglas Stoneman High School." . . .

Are Democrat midterm ambitions the real reason Parkland is still in news?
. . . "Not long ago, Democrats were licking their chops at the prospect of a November midterm sweep.  Since then, however, two momentous things have occurred: both the Trump-Russia-collusion narrative and the Democrats' generic congressional poll numbers have collapsed.  To right this listing ship, leftists need a new issue, and fast, and they may think they've got it: gun control." . . .

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Calls to Lower Voting Age as Tide Pod Generation Suddenly Bestowed With Great Wisdom  . . . "All that it took was one school shooting, a well-funded and highly-coordinated anti-Second Amendment movement and a crooked cable television network falsely presenting itself as a legitimate source of news and Americans are being scolded by teenagers who have somehow become wise beyond their years and are presented as morally superior to their elders." . . .

After What This PUNK Survivor Said To Dana Loesch, She Deserves To Be Grounded

NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch attacks media over shootings: 'You love the ratings'  . . . " 'Many in legacy media love mass shootings. You guys love it," Loesch said. "Now, I'm not saying that you love the tragedy. But I am saying that you love the ratings. Crying white mothers are ratings gold to you and many in the legacy media." . . .   CNN reaped the benefits

Even the Left Is Slamming CNN’s Bullying of Female Trump Supporter: ‘Despicable,’ ‘Vile,’ ‘Awful’

CNN: Trump Is 'Flailing', 'Doesn't Know What To Do'  . . . "During a “listening session” with families of the victims of last week's Parkland School shooting, President Trump suggested that arming teachers might make schools safer; as they would no longer be soft targets. The media and the left ran with this, doing their best to paint it as a crackpot idea." . . . 

CNN hits a new low, no longer pretending to be fair at all

Anyone tuning in to CNN for real, accurate news should look elsewhere – or have his head examined.

Peter Barry Chowka  "On Tuesday evening, I was watching CNN (note to editor: my request for hardship duty pay will follow) when I observed a new low point – and considering the recent history of CNN, that's really saying something.  The program was The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.  Like all of the hosts on CNN, including news anchors, Blitzer is consistently anti-Trump, so I wasn't expecting anything close to fair and balanced.  But what I saw this time was even more obnoxious and telling.  As Blitzer and his talking head guests opined, a chyron on the bottom of the screen (the text scrolling with breaking news updates or quick summaries of points being discussed) said, all in caps:

BREAKING NEWS:WHITE HOUSE REPEATS TRUMP'S FALSE CLAIMTHAT HE'S TOUGHER ON RUSSIA THAN OBAMA

"There it was, right out in the open: an unproven, opinionated editorial judgment on a supposed hard news program, spelled out for everyone to read."

. . . [Even!]The left-of-center media analysis website Mediaite took note of CNN's performance on Tuesday in a story titled "CNN Completely Jumps the Shark with Chyron Fact-Checking Subjective Trump Claim."  The author, Aidan McLaughlin, is no friend of President Trump, judging by his recent Mediaite articles and his Twitter feed." . . .  Full article here.

"Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran reporter and analyst of news on national politics, media, and popular culture.  He is a frequent contributor to American Thinker.  In addition to his writing, Peter has appeared as a guest commentator on NBC; PBS; the CBC in Canada; and, on January 4, 2018, the BBC in London . . .

CNN denies school shooting town hall was scripted after Parkland massacre survivor claimed the network rejected his question about armed guards and urged him to ask one it had written

Via Drudge:

UK Daily Mail  "CNN has denied scripting questions for Wednesday night's town hall meeting on gun control and safety with survivors of the Parkland massacre.

Haab

Colton Haab, 17, a member of the Junior ROTC who shielded students with Kevlar vests while the school was under attack from the shooter, said he decided not to attend the televised meeting after the network rejected a question he wanted to ask and presented him with one of their own.

" 'CNN had originally asked me to write a speech and questions and it ended up being all scripted,' Haab told Miami's WPLG-TV.

"The network released a statement on Thursday morning refuting Haab's allegation.

"It read: 'There is absolutely no truth to this. CNN did not provide or script questions for anyone in last night's town hall, nor have we ever." . . .

Well, did CNN ask students to give their statements, then coach them on the content? The part above that I highlighted with yellow strikes me as a Clintonesque response.

CNN’s long history of allowing Democratic town-hall plants

. . . "Uh-oh. Get out your best pruning shears and trowels. In an age of micromanaged partisan stagecraft and left-wing media enablers, there is no such thing as a spontaneous question.  

"CNN has a long history of allowing political plants to flourish in its public forums." . . .

CNN’s Tapper Sits Back as Student Equates Rubio to School Shooter

Liberals at their most reprehensible: Students Chant ‘Where’s Rick Scott?’ .......He Was At A Funeral For One Of The Victims

Hot Air  "Students from Marjory Stoneman high school traveled to Gov. Rick Scott’s office today to demand a meeting. MSNBC had a camera in the room and reported that the students had been told the Governor was too busy to meet with them:

"This message was repeated by MSNBC host Ali Velshi and retweeted thousands of times:

Ali Velshi

✔@AliVelshi

BREAKING: students are in the waiting area of FL Gov. Rick Scott’s office - after being told he’s too busy to meet with them - chanting “shame on you!”

1:28 PM - Feb 21, 2018

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"A little later on, Fox News aired footage of the students chanting “Where’s Rick Scott?” “Students demanding change, demanding action,” Shepard Smith said, adding, “And they’re asking where is Rick Scott.”

"So where was Rick Scott? It turns out he was attending a funeral for one of the victims and had already agreed to meet with students upon his return. From the Hill:" . . .

MSNBC Crank Claims Governor Rick Scott “Too Busy” to Meet With Students – Later Admits Gov Scott Was Attending Shooting Victim’s Funeral   MSNBC reported Wednesday that Governor Rick Scott was “too busy” to speak with students causing the teens to storm his office, chanting “shame on you!”

Trump-Supporting Father Who Lost Daughter in FL Shooting and Was Tortured By Hateful Leftists — Meets President Trump

Bernie blames Hillary for allowing Russian interference

Politico

The senator and his top political adviser also denied Mueller's assertion that Russian actors backed his campaign.

"Bernie Sanders on Wednesday blamed Hillary Clinton for not doing more to stop the Russian attack on the last presidential election. Then his 2016 campaign manager, in an interview with POLITICO, said he’s seen no evidence to support special counsel Robert Mueller's assertion in an indictment last week that the Russian operation had backed Sanders' campaign. 

"The remarks showed Sanders, running for a third term and currently considered a front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, deeply defensive in response to questions posed to him about what was laid out in the indictment. He attempted to thread a response that blasts Donald Trump for refusing to acknowledge that Russians helped his campaign — but then holds himself harmless for a nearly identical denial. 

"In doing so, Sanders and his former campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, presented a series of self-serving statements that were not accurate, and that track with efforts by Trump and his supporters to undermine the credibility of the Mueller probe. 

“ 'he real question to be asked is what was the Clinton campaign [doing about Russian interference]? They had more information about this than we did,” Sanders said in the interview with Vermont Public Radio. 

Gun-grabbers exploiting children to capitalize on grief. News crew coached Dvid Hogg on his story

Tony Branco

Thomas Lifson  . . . "It is a longstanding trick of the left to find people who are victims of something related to one of their causes and then proclaim "absolute moral authority" for the person who parrots the left's points.  See, for example, Cindy Sheehan.  And they hit the jackpot at MSD high school in the person of a student there named David Hogg.  CNN featured him a couple of days ago:"
. . . Hogg wasn't planted, but it looks to me as though he is a media-obsessed young man, seeking airtime now and a career in TV in the long run.  Big League Politics looked into his activist mother, Rebecca Boldrick, who apparently took him on a visit to CNN Headquarters, where he posed at an anchor desk:

Twitter discovered embarrassing video of him rehearsing his lines:

Sheriff Clarke Alleges Student Gun Control Effort Has "Soros' Fingerprints All Over It"

YouTube Apologizes For Promoting Video That Fueled "Florida Shooting Conspiracy"

Cries to 'Ban the AR-15' Based on Ignorance and Hysteria

Townhall.com/political-cartoons/bobgorrell

Michael Filozof

". . . What we need instead is a cool-headed and sober analysis to find out why so many people, in the prime of life, in the wealthiest and most prosperous society in history, are willing to casually murder scores of strangers – and usually kill themselves in the process.
Until we answer that question, massacres are going to continue, with or without AR-15s.  So long as they do continue, the rest of us need all the self-protection – and freedom to defend ourselves – that we can get."

 Stop Mistaking Evil for Mental Illness  . . . "As our culture grows more and more secularized, it has become a common practice to describe those who commit widespread acts of violence – especially if such violence involves the death of multiple human beings – as "crazy."  Some of this is tongue-in-cheek, but much of it is sincere.  I believe that this is the direct result of the psychiatric community attempting to redefine what is moral.

For decades, we have witnessed the psychiatric community taking acts long considered evil, or at least immoral and "illegal, and deeming them a "psychological disorder" that needs to be cured.  It's good for business, I suppose.

"However, it's a disaster for the culture.  As C.S. Lewis lamented in his essay "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment," when it comes to crime and punishment, we too often are facing off with those who believe "that all crime is more or less pathological."  Thus, instead of the criminal "getting what he deserves" – what used to be called "justice" – we must heal or cure him, and, as Lewis puts it, "punishment becomes therapeutic.' "

The Russians are as good as caught. Now what do we do? (Updated)

Rich Terrell

Mueller Indictments Reveal Russia's Real Goal … And Who's Been Helping Them  "Scandal: For more than a year, Democrats have been pushing the story that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. But the evidence keeps piling up indicating that it was Democrats, wittingly or not, who've been helping Russia achieve its real meddling goals.

"The latest comes from the indictments issued Friday by Special Counsel Robert Mueller against 13 Russians accused of illegally meddling in the U.S. political system. This has been taken by Trump critics as proof that Russia did, indeed, conspire to meddle in the election.

" 'But if you read the indictments, look at the Facebook ads, the Trump "dossier" and other evidence, it becomes clear that the goal of this meddling wasn't to elect Trump, but to create anger, hostility, bitterness, and discord in the U.S." . . .

Rich Lowry update: The Russian Bot Hysteria   "If only Joe McCarthy had lived to see this moment, when it is suddenly in vogue to attribute large-scale events in American politics to the hand of Russia and to inveigh against domestic subversion.
"Robert Mueller released an indictment of 13 Russians for crimes related to their social-media campaign to meddle in our internal affairs in the run-up to and aftermath of the 2016 election.
"The New York Post couldn’t find any evidence of planned pro-Trump and anti-Hillary rallies in New York — not exactly a swing state — in June and July of 2016. Pictures and videos that appear to be from Russian-initiated pro-Trump “flash mobs” in Florida show a handful of people in various cities. This at a time when Trump was routinely  holding rallies with thousands of people that garnered lavish media coverage. " . . .

The Russians didn’t do anything to us that we weren’t doing to ourselves, although we were doing it on a much larger, more potent scale. The Russians are just aping the arguments we are already having with one another, and the sewerish level of much of the discussion on social media. 

. . . 

Joy Reid Favorite Pundit Of Russian Trolls  . . . "Reid has attacked Christians, denounced Christmas bonuses for her employees, spread fake news on several occasions, joked about Nazis, and claimed the Trump era is the worst time to be a human."

Guilty Plea in another Mueller Process Crime prosecution unrelated to Trump Campaign or Russian Meddling

Slain cop's widow writes open letter after his emotional funeral

UK Daily Mail  "The widow of a slain cop has written a letter explaining that she 'almost lost her faith in humanity' - but had it restored by the good people of Chicago. 

"Erin Bauer's husband, Paul, was shot six times last Tuesday after responding to a call that a man had fled tactical officers when asked about a recent shooting in the area.

"The 53-year-old chased the man to a stairwell before being gunned down. Shomari Legghette, 44, has been charged with first-degree murder.   

"Now Erin has written an emotional letter praising the city of Chicago after mourners packed out a church to say farewell to Commander Bauer at his funeral on Saturday.

"She wrote: 'I'm writing to thank the people of Chicago for the outpouring of love and support at this horrendous time in our lives.' 

"Thanking those who 'waited for hours in the cold' to attend the service at the weekend, she said: 'You have no idea how much that meant to us.'

"Mrs Bauer added: 'I saw people of every color taking time out of their day, not only to pay respects to Paul, but to the entire Chicago Police Department. They are the men and women who selflessly put their lives on the line each day to protect people they don't even know. They are my new family." . . .

 More.

Pastor Billy Graham dies aged 99 after a lifetime serving as a spiritual leader to millions of people and multiple US presidents

UK Daily Mail

Billy Graham passed away at the age of 99 on Wednesday of natural causes at his home in North Carolina 
He  preached to over 200 million people in his lifetime and prayed with every single president since Harry Truman
Graham's wife Ruth died in 2007 and he is survived by his five children, 19 grandchildren and many great-grandchildren
He was a close friend and ally to Dr. Martin Luther King, who credited him with some of the success of the Civil Rights Movement 
'The GREAT Billy Graham is dead. There was nobody like him! He will be missed by Christians and all religions. A very special man,' wrote President Trump 

All the presidents: George H.W.Bush, Bill Clinon and Jimmy Carter with Graham and his son Franklin in 2007

. . . "In the end, he preached to over 200 million people over the course of his lifetime, and at one point prayed with every single president since Harry Truman. 

He was close with Dr. Martin Luther King as well, who credited Graham with the playing a huge role in the success of the civil rights movement.

Graham refused to segregate his audiences starting in 1953, and would later decline invitations to hold one of his famed crusades in South Africa during apartheid. 

" 'Had it not been for the ministry of my good friend Dr. Billy Graham, my work in the Civil Rights Movement would not have been as successful as it has been,' said Dr. King of Graham. 

"He was also a huge inspiration to Vice President Mike Pence, who shared his thoughts about Graham's passing on Twitter.am. We send our deepest condolences to the Graham family,' wrote Pence.

" 'Billy Graham's ministry for the gospel of Jesus Christ and his matchless voice changed the lives of millions. We mourn his passing but I know with absolute certainty that today he heard those words, "well done good and faithful servant." Thank you Billy Graham. God bless you.' " . . .  

Read more. 

"Billy Graham Will Not Be Advisor to Obama Because of His Abortion Position" From 2008.
. . . " 'But he's our president-elect, and those positions that he holds that are contrary to Biblical teaching, I hope that God will change his heart," Graham added.

Obama's position in favor of unlimited abortions throughout pregnancy for any reason was a key issue for pro-life voters during the campaign.

"Obama also came under fire for supporting the so-called Freedom of Choice Act, a Congressional bill that would make unlimited abortions under Roe v. Wade the national law and overturn the abortion reduction laws of all 50 states." . . .

His legacy lives on through his son, Franklin Graham's ministries:

. . . Billy Graham believed a lot of things he wouldn't necessarily preach "because he knew they would offend or divide people," Wacker added.
But Franklin has taken a different approach and created his own path—speaking directly and bluntly to Americans. Though he looks like his father — Charlton Heston-esque, square-jawed, tall and rangy — his bravado in the public square “is my mother coming out in me," he says.
Franklin has used his sermons and sharp-voiced Facebook posts, where he has 6.3 million followers, to mock both Islam and LGBT rights, along with to raise funds for "persecuted Christians.' "

Samaritan's Purse
"Samaritan's Purse is a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world. Since 1970, Samaritan's Purse has helped meet needs of people who are victims of war, poverty, natural disasters, disease, and famine with the purpose of sharing God's love through His Son, Jesus Christ. Emergency relief meets desperate needs of victims worldwide. Operation Christmas Child delivers more than 10 million shoebox gifts to poor children in more than 100 countries each year. World Medical Mission sends doctors, equipment, and supplies to underprivileged countries. Community development and vocational programs in impoverished villages and neighborhoods help people break the cycle of poverty and give them hope for a better tomorrow. Vulnerable children are rescued, educated, fed, clothed, and sheltered, letting them know that God loves them, Jesus died and rose again for them, and they are not forgotten."

10 of the Best Charities Everyone's Heard Of:  Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse is rated #4, and by a secular rating site yet.

Another anti-Trump Olympian crashes

Don Surber  "A year ago, Olympian Maddie Bowman said would not visit White House if she win another gold at the Winter Olympics.
"Not a problem.
"The Trump Effect took care of that for Bowman.

. . . "Apparently, booing the president is OK, but athletes (a few of them millionaires) are above reproach.
" 'Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Americans are now rooting for their fellow Americans to fail at the Olympic Games," she wrote.
" 'First it was Adam Rippon, then Lindsey Vonn, then Gus Kenworthy. All three dared to speak out critically against the leaders of our country, something that is about as American as apple pie, and very much in keeping with the First Amendment."
"Add Maddie Bowman to the list.
"Brennan thinks the First Amendment applies only to those with whom she agrees.
"I defend her right to write such garbage.
"But I maintain the right to call it garbage." . . .

Sheriff Offered Free Concealed Carry Classes to Teachers – The Number Who Signed Up Is Mind Blowing Photo of Benny Johnson BENNY JOHNSON

First this: No, The GOP Didn’t Pass A Law Last Year To Let The Mentally Ill Buy Guns  Where do some people get their news; The View?

Now:  Daily Caller 

 "An Ohio sheriff is offering free concealed carry classes to teachers in his district, and the number of applicants is overwhelming their system.
"The horrific school shooting that happened in Parkland, Florida has reignited the debate over gun control.  It has also opened the debate over arming teachers in classrooms. Some select school districts allow teachers to carry weapons, but the practice is rare.

"Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones offered free concealed carry training in a Facebook post after the tragedy in Florida.

"The immediate response to the offer was overwhelming. The 50 spots for training was filled in 20 minutes." . . .