BREAKING: What Is The Point of CNN?

Free Beacon

"CNN is a mid-tier cable news network that provides non-stop breaking news to bored airport travelers and internet journalists. The network has breathlessly covered President Donald Trump's every fart and utterance since 2015 and has contributed to the "national dialogue" through countless interviews with serious public intellectuals. Michael Avenatti, for example.

"One of CNN's most recent hires, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, was found to have lied to federal investigators under oath prior to his firing in March 2018. In addition to his role as CNN contributor, McCabe has a new side hustle: Keynote speaker at Democratic Party fundraisers.

"And speaking of the network's keen eye for talent, CNN invited celebrity white nationalist Richard Spencer on in June to discuss Donald Trump's "racist tweets." Brian Stelter, who hosts a show called Reliable Sources, recently nodded along as his guest, former Duke University chair of psychiatry Allen Francis, argued that Trump "may be responsible for many more million deaths" than genocidal dictators Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong.

"It wasn't the first time Trump has been compared to Hitler on the network. CNN host Don Lemon did it in July, which could explain why the New York Times has reportedly banned reporters from appearing on Lemon's show. In addition to interviewing Michael Avenatti dozens of times on his show, Lemon hosted the disgraced lawyer at a party in the Hamptons." . . .

The troubled face of the host MUST be in view constantly

How mainstream reporters disgraced themselves during Hurricane Dorian

. . . I was wrong that Dorian did little damage to the U.S.  The media somehow managed to lower its already debased reputation during the storm, much like Wilde's titular character.  Too bad there's no insurance company or federal agency to clean up the press's self-destructive behavior.  . . . TL

Taylor Lewis  . . . "Every time someone posts a video of a natural disaster wreaking havoc around him, reporters hound his replies, requesting permission to use the footage.

The common exchange goes something like this:

" 'Wow, take a look at this tornado tearing the roofs off of trailer homes in Kansas City. This happened 30 seconds ago in front of me."

"Reply: "Hi, I'm from the Washington Post.  May I use this footage in my report?  Thank you!"

"Second reply: "Oh, and please stay safe!  Did you see my original comment?  I'd like to file the report ASAP.  You own the video, right?"

"So it goes, with numerous reporters from a sundry of publications all asking for the same video to take advantage of the algorithm-driven news cycle.  We're to expect real human feeling out of these sensationalism-chasers?

"One more instance of media malpractice to emphasize my point.  Vox reporter Aaron Rupar thought he had sniffed out not so subtle racism displayed by President Trump regarding the then approaching storm.  As Dorian approached, Trump pointed out that Puerto Rico received $92 billion in aid after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island two years ago.  He then issued a warning to Floridians, urging them to heed "State and Federal instructions."  All-around innocuous, no?

"Not so, apparently.  "[W]hen the hurricane is headed toward brown people vs. when it's headed toward white people," Rupar snarked, thinking he had made a clever and incisive point about the two tweets.  The implication is that Trump warned white people of the hurricane and dickered about the cost of cleaning up the last one in a territory inhabited by non-whites.  In Rupar's reductive formulation, Florida might as well look like Denmark demographically, while Puerto Rico is the Inca Empire." . . .

Thomas Lifson: Media bias called out -- and not by a conservative  "We welcome to the club of media skeptics a former MSNBC host and Dem congressional nominee.  Conservatives can take a small degree of satisfaction that not all Democrats are oblivious to the toxic level of media bias. An article in The Hill by a progressive commentator named Krystal Ball, who ran for Congress unsuccessfully as the Democrat-endorsed candidate in 2010, and who has been a media figure for many years, including as an MSNBC host, calls out some striking examples of misreporting… the sort of thing that President Trump would call “fake news,” though Ball scrupulously avoids using that term." . . .

Ball correctly diagnoses the reason that the media obey the Democrats’ power elite. It is not a conspiracy, per se, but rather a system of incentives that operate on prominent journalists:

Death by Ecology: Killing California … God’s Best Green Deal

[An excerpt from a forthcoming book]  "So you think the Green New Deal isn’t going to happen? Well, California is leading the way — good[?] intentions on the road to hell? Here’s an autopsy of the Green policies killing California and identifying the killers. For 15,000 years, millions of human beings migrated to California. It was the American Dream.
"Millions of Californians go elsewhere to pursue life, liberty, property and happiness. From 1992-2018, California lost a net 4.2 million people to other American states. From 1990 to 2012, California lost nearly a million manufacturing jobs. That’s nearly half, 40%, of all manufacturing jobs. Similarly, industrial employment plunged 60% from 2005-2015. Two-thirds of the aerospace industry that sent America to the moon and won the Cold War has gone since 1990.
"In short, costly environmental drove them out of jobs and out of state.
"The New Left leader Jerry Brown, 1.0 and 2.0, and compliant Republicans Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger decided they could do better than God and a free people. These eco-gods demanded air, water and land made cleaner than God Himself made them. Human habitat, private property, had to give way to the needs of fish and wildlife.
"In pursuing eco-utopia, deep state environmentalists often appear rather silly, even stupid. Yet they are deadly serious. They destroyed what was once the world’s happiest place.

"Consider the California Crow. The California Air Resources Board is at war with milk and meat. They say cow farts, gases, are appalling dangers to the atmosphere of planet earth. The Water Resources Control Board is taking action against the dreaded enemy — cattle manure. 
"Eco-warriors have convicted grazing cattle of a genocidal holocaust. They blame cows for killing all manner of species and destroying their habitat: fairy shrimp, Desert Tortoise, salmon etc. One cow on one acre at a time, are blamed for destroying all manner of wildlife.

"Of Straws and Smelt. California’s war on all things plastic — bottles, bags and straws — shows its Lilliputian desperation to save the planet. California environmentalists are desperate to save the “fragile” 187 quintillion gallon Pacific Ocean from overflowing plastic. "And the 100 million-acre California must not run out of spaces to put trash in landfills.

California sends half of its abundant fresh water to the Pacific Ocean. Water police order city folk to drink recycled toilet water and to live on 55 gallons a day. Ten percent of all water is too much for the serfs who may bathe every other Saturday whether they need it or not. "Desalinated seawater at ten times the cost of reservoir water is also recommended. California demands its residents take a water conservation pledge … and to the utopia for which it stands." . . . Entire article.

Tony Branco

The author, Roger Canfield, Ph.D. americong.com: . . . "For failing to care for levees because DWR protected elderberry beetle habitat on levees, DWR was successfully sued for the deaths and destruction following a flood in Linda California.
"Working for the County of Placer where environmentalists, e.g. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and the Tree foundation, opposed cutting trees or clearing brush and pine needles to prevent wildfires. Therafter, the Agora fire destroyed 242 homes and 67 businesses in South Lake Tahoe.
"Working for the City of Colfax, he observed a locust of lawyers suing city for petty paperwork violations of clean air law costing the tiny thousands to fix and millions to build a new water treatment plant producing cleaner water than pristine Sierra runoff. "    

James Mattis Gives the Country a Warning

National Review

"Making the click-through worthwhile: A warning from former secretary of defense James Mattis about what really threatens our country; House Democrats conclude that what the country really needs right now is high-profile hearings about the payments to Stormy Daniels; and Bill de Blasio loses interest in his day job.

" ‘Tribalism Must Not be Allowed to Destroy Our Experiment.’

In his new autobiography, former secretary of defense James Mattis writes:

What concerns me most as a military man is not our external adversaries; it is our internal divisiveness… We are dividing into hostile tribes cheering against each other, fueled by emotion and a mutual disdain that jeopardizes our future, instead of rediscovering our common ground and finding solutions. All Americans need to recognize that our democracy is an experiment and one that can be reversed. Tribalism must not be allowed to destroy our experiment.

. . .

"There is no shortage of malevolent people who would be comfortable with our society backsliding towards the historical norm, just for the opportunity to express that endless rage within them.

"In another passage on leadership, Mattis writes, “institutions get the behavior they reward.” What behavior does our media reward? What behavior does our electorate reward? What behavior does our government reward?" . . .

A Shameless Lying MSNBC Hack is the Face of the Media ...

Daniel Greenfield

"At the end of July, MSNBC’s biggest and dullest conspiracy theorist got some very bad news.
"After over a year of booming ratings, The Rachel Maddow Show’s viewership had crashed. It had been a long road for Maddow, the former blonde Catholic high school girl who had decided she wanted to be a media personality and ended up with an MSNBC show through the efforts of Keith Olbermann.
"And after Keith was gone, MSNBC had to settle for a slightly less effeminate version of Olbermann.
"Maddow had retained the key elements of Olbermann’s personality, the unhinged conspiracy theories, histrionic delivery, the dark hair and even the fashionably ugly boxy black glasses. The former blonde not only looked and sounded like Olbermann, but she had learned to hit the same buttons in her audience.
"One man had made her MSNBC career possible and another moved her show into the top cable spot.
"That man was Robert Mueller. There was no Russian conspiracy theory too bizarre or insane to earn a rant from Rachel. Going where few dared go, Maddow began insisting that Russia was conducting a “continuing operation” and might even be in control of the White House and the entire country now.
"And then the Mueller Report and later, Mueller’s testimony, destroyed all of Maddow’s conspiracies.
"At the height of her Russian conspiracy theories in which she connected everyone and their uncle to Moscow, Maddow had could boast 4 million viewers while claiming to be the top cable news show. In July, she had fallen to fifth place without even 2.5 million viewers to scrape together for her rants." . . .

Looking back:  MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Reveals Democrats’ Targeted Plan to Block Kavanaugh’s Confirmation: ‘There Is a Method to What They Are Doing’

Rachel Maddow, done in by her own 'fake news' mouth  . . . "Here’s how it all went down, beginning at 7:36 p.m. Eastern Time: Maddow tweeted “BREAKING: We’ve got Trump tax returns. Tonight, 9pm ET. MSNBC. (Seriously).”
"The “seriously” gave it extra oomph — not to mention extra mystery. It wasn’t long before social media got buzzing, wondering the likes of how many tax returns Maddow had, whether she had the paperwork goods that would lead her not only to become the One Who "Got Donald Trump, but the One Who Got Donald Trump Impeached.
"Well, 8:21 came and went, and nothing. Then 8:22 came and went — and again, nothing. "Yes, it was all the way to 8:24 when the next Maddow tweet came out, this one specifying that it was Trump’s IRS Form 1040 from 2005.
"We’ve got the goods. Let the Trump tears begin.
"And now the show starts, and Maddow starts to talk and as the seconds wear into minutes, and the minutes into many minutes, viewers begin to realize: This lady ain’t gonna get to the point any time soon.
“ 'In just a second, we’re going to show you exactly what it is we’ve got,” Maddow said, at the opening of the broadcast hour.
"But second must have a different meaning in Maddow world, because it was actually 23 minutes or so into the show — a long 23 minutes, marked by twists and turns into conspiratorial territory about Russia, real estate and the Deutsche Bank — before she hit remotely on the topic of viewer anticipation. Even that was after commercial break.
"And by then, wouldn’t you know it, the White House had released its own tax information, saying Trump had paid millions of dollars on $150 million worth of income in 2005.

CNN to Host a Presidential Town Hall on LGBTQ Issues

Eric Lendrum  "CNN, in conjunction with the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, has announced that it will be hosting a town hall focusing exclusively on the LGBTQ community and its issues.
"The event will be held on October 10th, and candidates who wish to participate must meet the same criteria as the official primary debates, meaning that they must register at least two percent in four or more national polls recognized by the DNC, as well as having over 130,000 individual campaign donors.
"Currently, only six candidates have accepted CNN’s invitation to appear at the debate: Former Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-Ind.), former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro (D-Texas), and Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).
"In announcing the town hall, the HRC Foundation’s president Alphonso David claimed, without evidence, that “in 30 states, LGBTQ people remain at risk of being fired, evicted, or denied services because of” their sexuality. He also falsely claimed that the “Trump-Pence Administration is directly attacking our community…and seeking to erase LGBTQ people from protections under law.”

"This announcement comes the day after CNN hosted a 7-hour town hall focusing solely on “global warming,” featuring 10 candidates. This will mark the second presidential town hall hosted by the network focusing exclusively on a single issue." . . .

CNN To Host Town Hall On LGBT Issues In October  "The announcement came at the end of the network’s seven-hour environmental town hall, where Democratic presidential candidates fielded questions about their various proposals to combat climate change."

California’s Newsom signs bill allowing citizens to refuse to help a police officer

Sen. Hertzog thought the law enacted in 1872 was used to catch runaway slaves...Slavery was abolished in the USA in 1865. Never let history and facts cloud your agenda.  Comment to this post:

@GavinNewsom Great job! Let's encourage people NOT to help police! What are you going to do when the death of a police officer could've been prevented? Not a thing! You should be ashamed of yourself! I BACK THE BLUE, wish you did!

Fox News  A comment to this post reads:

"The Sacramento Bee reported that the old law, the California Posse Comitatus Act of 1872, was common in the country’s early days, but Sen. Bob Hertzberg, a Los Angeles Democrat who sponsored the bill, called the old law a “vestige of a bygone era." The law was employed to help catch runaway slaves, the report said."Better read history, California did not have an escaped slave problem, the Emancipation Proclamation was January 1863, and the 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865, seven years prior to the the Act of 1872.The justification and explanation simply exposes a blatant lie and ignorance.

A Trinity County Sheriff’s Office invoked posse comitatus back in 2014 when a couple filed a lawsuit alleging they were put in harm’s way when asked for assistance by a police officer.

"This is your democrat party. Why would anyone vote for a democrat???"

Will this be life for our police officers in California from now on? 

The liberal governor has, however, earned the ire of state and national law enforcement in recent months, making a variety of anti-police remarks.

This is completely insane. The police put their lives on the line in order to support the people and now it is legal to just turn your back on them when they need help.

Why do we want the CNN/ Democrat party to govern our lives?

http://www.terrellaftermath.com/

Democrats' 2020 game plan  . . . "Julián Castro has come out in favor of banning conservative ideas from public schools, presumably to increase the rate of successful indoctrination in Marxist, Islamofascist, and other diabolical ideologies.  One can be sure that the other Democrat presidential candidates are slapping their foreheads for not having suggested it before.

"And at some point in their game plan, the Democrat presidential candidates all must have at least a sketch for the extermination of opponents of their socialist agenda, after having confiscated their guns.  After all, that is what socialists do." . . .

2020 Dems: We’ll Do Anything to Stop Climate Change, but We Won’t Do That
"Nuclear power, clean and carbon-free, is taboo for the major candidates"

Gruesome Twosome: This Is How Bad CNN And MSNBC Overreacted To Trump’s Hurricane Dorian Map

CNN’s Town Hall on Climate Change Revealed More Than Intended  "Since the 1970s, the Democratic Party has promoted climate alarmism in one way or another. In the '70s and '80s, the earth was cooling, and we were going to be a giant ice ball floating in the universe. Along came the '90s and the left realized that was not working, so they shifted to global warming, which was another lie. The '90s came and went with no substantial proof of warming so the phrase climate change was created for the scare tactic. The last 40-plus years are not about the environment, and the CNN climate change town hall proved it." . . .

Now, remember how Democrats start. First, they mention something radical as a suggestion. They allow the initial uproar to settle down, then bring it up again only to let that uproar phase-out. After doing this a few times, people become numb to it, and that is when the once-radical idea becomes routine and part of the Democratic platform. 

. . .  The Democratic Party is corrupt, immoral and un-American. " . . .
(Emphasis mine, TD)

Marianne Williamson: ‘I Didn’t Think the Left Lied like This’  “ 'I know this sounds naive. I didn’t think the left was so mean. I didn’t think the left lied* like this,” Williamson told the New Yorker’s David Remnick in an interview. “I thought the right did that. I thought we were better.”
"Williamson accused the left of lying about her use of crystals and “crystal gazing,” telling Remnick that there has “never been a crystal on stage” at any of her events and “there is no crystal” in her home.
"She accused those on the left of also falsely accusing her of having told AIDS patients not to take their medicines or implying that “lovelessness” causes diseases and “love” is “enough to cure their diseases.”
“ 'I’m Jewish, I go to the doctor,” Williamson said, ripping those on the left for labeling her as an anti-science candidate who does not believe in modern medicine." . . .

The Lid

*Has she never watched CNN?

NOAA Delivers The Death Blow To The Liberal Media Over Trump's Hurricane Dorian Map Controversy

Townhall  "That’s it, folks. In another bout with the liberal media, President Trump has emerged victorious. Over the couple days, networks have been going berserk over a minor map controversy. President Trump showed a map of Hurricane Dorian’s projected path that included Alabama possibly being impacted. It changed course, as a lot of storms do from time to time. It’s not working its way up the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, but “sharpiegate” was borne(sp) nonetheless (via Roll Call):

CNN couldn’t even find Alabama on a map, believing the state to be Mississippi in graphics. Oh, and they even said that Alabama could be impacted by Dorian, so yeah—you should feel bad for the fake news media, not Donald Trump. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a statement today saying that they told the Trump White House that Hurricane Dorian could impact Alabama, which at the time was a major hurricane:  .  .  .

Trumped: NOAA backs president on Alabama storm news  "The leftist media’s latest uncontrolled episode of Trump Derangement Syndrome is evident in the ongoing 6-day coverage of the President’s Hurricane-Dorian-to-hit-Alabama warning on Sunday, in spite of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) backing Trump in a statement that disavowed the National Weather Service’s Birmingham, Alabama, office that had contradicted him." . . .

Gruesome Twosome: This Is How Bad CNN And MSNBC Overreacted To Trump’s Hurricane Dorian Map  

. . . "An adviser to Trump released a statement explaining the whole episode, but that didn’t stop CNN and MSNBC beclowning themselves for combined two-plus hours of coverage (via Newsbusters):" . . .

America's theologian Pastor Pete Buttigieg Defends Abortion by Suggesting the Bible Says ‘Life Begins with Breath’

But when it comes to abortion, he of the unswerving moral compass thus far has fallen silent, repeatedly demurring on whether it’s ever appropriate to limit abortion legally on moral or religious grounds. That is, until today.  . . .

 National Review  "In an interview this morning on The Breakfast Club radio show, South Bend mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg attempted to rationalize his support for legal abortion until birth by suggesting that perhaps human life begins at the moment of a child’s first breath. Here’s what he said:

[Pro-life people] hold everybody in line with this one piece of doctrine about abortion, which is obviously a tough issue for a lot of people to think through morally. Then again, there’s a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath. Even that is something that we can interpret differently. . . . No matter what you think about the cosmic question of how life begins, most Americans can get on board with the idea of, ‘I might draw the here. You might draw the line there.’ The most important thing is the person who should be drawing the line is the woman making the decision. [Emphasis added.]

"It’s the latest salvo in a long string of attempts by Buttigieg to paint his entire progressive agenda as the only acceptable set of policies for a moral Christian, insisting that a proper interpretation of Christianity will “point you in a progressive direction.” Time and again, the mayor — who considers himself a faithful Episcopalian — has derided Republicans and conservative Christians for their supposed hypocrisy and immorality, while proclaiming the objective moral correctness of his own policy prescriptions." . . .

Buttigieg Calls Climate Change a ‘Moral’ Issue, Says a ‘Reckoning’ Is Coming for Republicans  "During yesterday evening’s climate-change town hall, South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg pulled out one of his favorite rhetorical tricks: insisting that it’s immoral not to support his preferred progressive policies. Here’s part of what he had to say about this  . . . :"

In other words, if you’re a real Christian, you’d better be a progressive — and more specifically, you’d better get on board with Mayor Pete’s policy proposals. This common refrain also has led Buttigieg throughout the campaign to outright condemn Republicans as insufficiently Christian, and even as moral hypocrites.

. . .

Defiant Pete Buttigieg Insists Presidential Campaign Is Worth Killing the Planet

"Meanwhile, Beto takes the bus in desperate plea for attention".

. . . Instead, he appears on national television to suggest that people who could never afford private air travel but nevertheless insist on eating hamburgers and using plastic straws are "part of the problem." . . .

Amid Facile Reports of Chaos, Prudent U.S. Strategy Emerges

An additional positive development, if it happens, would be the defection of the U.K. from the European Union, always a somewhat anti-American organization, for closer relations with the United States and Canada.

Conrad Black
                   Trump’s geopolitical strategy follows respected and successful American tradition

"Almost imperceptibly, as political discourse continues to be a discordant contest between haters and admirers of President Trump with no journalistic distinction between comment and reporting, there has been substantial progress toward an improved strategic environment for the United States and the West generally.

"Journalists in general and the American media in particular have never been especially adept at separating good causes from grand strategy. Even venerated commentators such as Walter Lippmann and Edward R. Murrow, let alone Walter Cronkite, tended not to see geopolitical questions outside their apparent moral effects.

"In the Battle of Britain, for example, it was naturally easier to explain in terms that one country that was a dictatorship and engaged in frightful acts of racial discrimination while bombing the civilian population of a democracy. Therefore, for that reason alone, most Americans identified with the victim and supported them over the author of the aggression, regardless of strategic calculation.

"But apart from Franklin D. Roosevelt, who certainly possessed the same instinct to support the underdog, it was not clear to many Americans—except a few specialists, such as the young George Kennan—that if Nazi Germany retained control of what it then occupied, (Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Austria, most of France, most of Poland, and the Czechs), and retained it for a whole generation so that the occupied population was effectively Germanized, that entity would be more populous and as powerful as the United States. Few saw that such a greater Nazi Germany, surrounded by satellites like Vichy France, fascist Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, and sympathetic states like Franco’s Spain, would be a mortal danger to the preeminence of the United States." . . .

All of these are legitimate and prudent strategic actions of the United States. Some are original, some had been abandoned by previous administrations, and some had been ineffectively pursued. All are complicated international issues that can only gradually be resolved. But they are all in progress and all have progressed appreciably. These are facts easily lost sight of in such a febrile and over-strenuous pre-electoral campaign as this.

Today's look at Joe Biden

Former Obama Adviser: Biden ‘Serially’ Distorts Own Record  . . . "Biden claimed in a recent NPR interview that he only voted to authorize President George W. Bush to use military force because Bush promised him it was only about getting weapons inspectors into Iraq. Biden claimed that once "shock and awe" began, he came out against the war.
"NPR reported that Biden's claim was false:

But in multiple public remarks made after the invasion began in 2003, Biden openly supported the effort. Biden publicly said his vote was a mistake as early as 2005, but not immediately when the war began in 2003.

"Biden has also taken heat after the Washington Post reported a story he often tells about pinning a war medal on a Navy captain was false in almost every detail. He dismissed criticism in his interview with NPR." . . .

Colbert Asks Biden: Would You Appoint Obama to Supreme Court?  "Of course Colbert has long served as the loudest late night mouthpiece for the left."

Joe Biden Stays ahead of the Pack in Latest Democratic Polls  . . . "A survey from The Economist/YouGov, also out this Wednesday, tells a slightly less optimistic tale for Biden, showing the former vice president with just a four-point lead over Warren. Biden comes in at 26 percent, Warren at 22, and Sanders in a more distant third place with 14. Though he has consistently held the frontrunner position since entering the race in April, at this stage of the race it seems that Biden is largely being buoyed by the fact that the voters looking for an alternative are splitting their support between two progressive candidates." . . .

We have seen video of Biden trashing this economy under Trump. Then we see Biden and Obama wanting to claim credit for the great economic upswing....
Economists agree: Trump, not Obama, gets credit for economy  . . . "Trump and Obama (and their admirers) are slugging it out, both claiming that it is their policies that have led to the ongoing economic expansion, steady job growth and higher stock prices.
"Happily for President Trump, the pros agree with him. A recent survey of economists suggest it is President Trump, and not Obama, who should be taking a bow.
"The Wall Street Journal asked 68 business, financial and academic economists who was responsible for the strengthening of the economy, and most “suggested Mr. Trump’s election deserves at least some credit” for the upturn. " . . .

Tony Branco