Don's Tuesday Column

           THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   5/16/2017

                    Reject media, political betters

Last week’s column left out some observations on the “100 days” of the press, the Democrats, Obama and Hillary due to space. I don’t see how the national mainstream news media, the MSN or the so-called “Fourth Estate,” recovers from their collectively biased performance covering the first months of Donald Trump’s presidency.

The partisan hacks, together with Democrats, bandied about the all-purpose term of derision—fake news—as a cudgel against primarily Trump and the Republicans. (Hint: “Trump colluded with Russia” has been fake news from the beginning.) They deserved the embarrassment of having “fake news” justifiably thrown back at them by Trump.

In March, Roger Kimball nailed it in “News, Fake News, Very Fake News: A Primer.” I mentioned motives last week. Kimball began, “The motor of fake news is not inaccuracy. It’s malice.” He described meeting an old journalist acquaintance at an event in New York City; one of her associates joined them and they conversed in from of him.

A tip was shared between them that “she had to be careful about what she posted on Facebook, Twitter, etc., because anything too explicitly anti-Trump could be used against her when that glorious day came and ‘they’—the conventional fraternity of groupthink scribblers—finally took down that horrible, despicable man. ‘We’ve got dozens of people working on it all the time,’ he explained, adding that it was only a matter of time before they got the goods on Trump and destroyed him…There in a nutshell, (Kimball) thought, is the existential imperative that has been so productive of fake news and (as Trump coined it) ‘very fake news.’”

The whole “fact check” obsession is a permutation of “fake news” that serves the anti-Trump, anti-Republican agenda exclusively. It was concisely explained in “The Associated Press is Guilty of False Advertising,” by John Hinderaker in April. The general pattern is 1) take a Trump statement without any context or allowance for irony or generalization, 2) Apply a Democratic talking point or spin to it, and 3) Simply assert that Trump has his facts wrong because some think tank, professor or other partisan mouthpiece has a different opinion.

The AP claims that its “fact checks…look at the veracity of claims by political figures.” In reality, only President Trump, his people or party are fact checked. Rarely are the same standards applied to Democrats like Obama, Hillary, Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi.

Hinderaker listed the headlines of 25 AP “fact checks” to show the agenda by quantity. Aside from Willie Nelson’s non-demise, the myth of Irish slavery and charges that “both sides” engage in “bluster” or are “loose with facts in health care debate,” AP only targeted Trump et al. Even “bluster” and “loose facts” mostly hit Trump’s side. The only relevant question is whether the MSN is an adjunct of the Democrat Party or vice versa.

Barack Obama’s first 100 days as ex-President have been an extension of the mendacity, delusion, subterfuge and infamy that attached to his active presidency. Syria used a chemical or nerve agent on villagers in April; Obama’s 2013 deal with Syria and Russia, to destroy such weapons, was thereby exposed as a sham that relied on the veracity and promises of unreliable, duplicitous parties. We were assured that “100 percent” of such weapons were removed. Obama’s promise (made over a “hot mic” to Putin’s man in 2012) to be “flexible” with Putin after the election, translated to Obama being little more than Putin’s stooge.

The illegal “unmasking” of Trump’s transition officials could not have occurred without tacit approval from Barack Obama. It joins other examples of widespread abuse of power by agencies in Obama’s control. Were it done by a Republican, Democrats would cry “most foul.”

On the infamous release of prisoners as part of the Iran deal, a Politico report revealed that Obama’s own Justice Department had described them as threats to America’s national security. Obama’s speech fees, on another topic, have dwarfed those paid to Hillary or Bill Clinton: $400,000 for a Wall Street speech, millions for another speech. Obama’s private jet flight to France for an anti-climate change speech (“humans cause it and must change their ways”) should embarrass any Obama-supporting environmentalist.

Failed candidate Hillary Clinton has had her entire premise of ignorance over computer security and her illegal private server blown up by the book, “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign” by Allen and Parnes. Clinton conducted an extensive search in her staff’s emails and electronic devices, hunting for signs of betrayal over her 2008 campaign loss. Unlike other losing candidates, Hillary has thrown in with the loony left “resistance” (to Trump) camp.

“In the first 100 days since Felonia von Pantsuit was not inaugurated, the goofy collection of commie traitors, coastal snobs, and crack-pot weirdoes that hilariously styles itself “#TheResistance” has only managed to successfully resist success (Townhall’s pithy Kurt Schlichter opined)…#TheResistance is not really resisting Trump as much as it is resisting us. The elite establishment is outraged that we normals have demanded to govern ourselves rather than begging for scraps from our betters in DC, NY and LA.

“It wasn’t just that horrible, sick old woman that we rejected; it was them. And by doing so, we ‘stole’ what they see as their birthright to reign sovereign over us. They try to cover up their humiliation with tales of ‘Russians’ and ‘hacking’ because the truth is too painful to face. This election was about the people they sought to rule looking at them and their track record of failure and saying, ‘Nah, you suck.’”