In the wake of the IRS scandal, the AP Reporter scandal, and the James Rosen scandal, we now have a new one, involving CBS Reporter Sharyl Attkisson, who was practically the only mainstream media reporter to doggedly pursue the gun-walking operation known as Fast and Furious. In addition to CBS confirming that Attkisson's computers have been breached, she says that it started during the time she was investigating Fast and Furious.
Here is an excerpt from an exchange with Bill O'Reilly:
O’REILLY: Which was what? What big stories were you working on?
ATTKISSON:
Well, at the time I was doing Fast and Furious of course, some green
energy debacle sort of stimulus spending stories, and then later on the
Benghazi story.
Here is the exchange between O'Reilly and Attkisson, via NewsBusters:
In June of last year, Attorney General Eric Holder was found in both criminal and civil contempt of Congress for not turning over documents related to Operation Fast and Furious demanded by a Congressional subpoena. As the contempt votes were taking place, President Barack Obama asserted Executive Privilege to prevent them from being turned over.
In that case, the Obama administration thumbed its nose at the notion of honoring a subpoena.
Even after being held in contempt, the arrogance of Holder was on full display during a statement he made to the press:
If it comes to light that the Obama administration had anything to do with the breach of Attkisson's computer, we can logically conclude that it was done so without a warrant or subpoena.
Conversely, Barack Obama himself asserted Executive Privilege to prevent Eric Holder from having to honor one. As for suspicions that Obama and Company were involved in breaching Attkisson's computers, they certainly would have had a motive. Otherwise, why go to such great lengths to ignore a Congressional subpoena?
There's a fine line between ignoring a subpoena and ignoring the need for one. That line is made even finer when subpoenas and the absence of subpoenas both appear to involve Fast and Furious.
During an interview on MSNBC, Barack Obama senior adviser David Axelrod toll Chuck Todd that when the Boston marathon bombings went off, Obama thought they may have selected April 15th because it was 'tax day'. Axelrod then started to suggest it was someone with a "pro..." agenda. He caught himself and didn't finish the word but in light if the Kermit Gosnell trial, odds are that 'pro-life' or 'pro-gun' were the options rolling around beneath the combover.
Remember Michael Bloomberg telling Katie Couric that the Times Square bomber could have been someone unhappy with Obamacare?
Perhaps it's time for CBS to reconcile some inconsistencies in its reporting about when U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice received her talking points on the Benghazi attack. Given that Rice's appearances on five talk shows on 9/16 have become a focal point, it might be more than just a little warranted here.
First, let's go back to a November 15th CBS report. In particular, take note of the very first paragraph, which says:
CBS News has obtained the CIA talking points given to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on Sept. 15 regarding the fatal attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, four days earlier. CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan says the talking points, which were also given to members of the House intelligence committee, make no reference to terrorism being a likely factor in the assault, which left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead.
Here is the screenshot:
Now, how about the most recent CBS report, published on November 20th? It claims that Rice received her talking points on September 14th:
The head of the DNI is James Clapper, an Obama appointee. He ultimately did review the points, before they were given to Ambassador Rice and members of the House intelligence committee on Sept. 14. They were compiled the day before.
This may seem like a matter of splitting hairs but given the sensitive nature of the timeline between 9/11 and 9/16, it's a bit relevant to find out exactly when Ms. Rice received those talking points, is it not? After all, two significant things happened on September 14th. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney pointed to the now infamous anti-Muhammad video in the daily press briefing that kicked off before Noon and Hillary Clinton was at Andrews Air Force Base as the four murdered Americans arrived. While there, Hillary talked about the video being responsible.
We now know that was demonstrably false and that Hillary gave that false information at quite an unseemly time and place. According to Charles Woods, the father of Tyrone Woods, a former Navy SEAL and CIA who was among the four who were murdered, Clinton told him that the filmmaker would be arrested and prosecuted.
So, CBS, when exactly did Susan Rice receive her talking points?
As the matter of who changed Susan Rice's talking points continues to be a bone of contention for those demanding the truth about what happened in Benghazi, the White House has apparently decided to throw Republicans a bone fragment. The person they're now saying is responsible for taking out any reference to al-Qaeda in Rice's talking points is Director of National Intelligence (DNI), James Clapper, while also saying that it wasn't him specifically.
Uh, yeah, I know.
As for the reason why references to al-Qaeda were removed...
...an intelligence source tells CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan the links to al Qaeda were deemed too "tenuous" to make public, because there was not strong confidence in the person providing the intelligence. CIA Director David Petraeus, however, told Congress he agreed to release the information -- the reference to al Qaeda -- in an early draft of the talking points, which were also distributed to select lawmakers.
Does this not beg a very simple question? If references to al-Qaeda were too "tenuous" and the source did not have enough credibility to warrant running with that assessment, what genius was trusted when the narrative came out that the anti-Muhammad video was responsible? It would appear then that the source that wasn't trusted but should have been, now has more credibility and that the source that was trusted and shouldn't have been is... who?
"The intelligence community assessed from the very beginning that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack." DNI spokesman Shawn Turner tells CBS News. That information was shared at a classified level -- which Rice, as a member of President Obama's cabinet, would have been privy to.
An intelligence source says the talking points were passed from the CIA to the DNI, where the substantive edits were made, and then to FBI, which made more edits as part of "standard procedure."
Since the truth is so evasive because those responsible for releasing it don't seem interested in doing so, let's go with the aforementioned narrative. The extramarital affair of former CIA Director David Petraeus notwithstanding, the CIA appears to be the only entity that assessed the attack correctly by pointing to al-Qaeda. Yet, the head of the CIA is the only guy who lost his job?! This would seem to point to the possibility of the administration holding the affair over Petraeus' head until after the election.
There are some interesting questions raised in the next two paragraphs from the CBS report:
The head of the DNI is James Clapper, an Obama appointee. He ultimately did review the points, before they were given to Ambassador Rice and members of the House intelligence committee on Sept. 14. They were compiled the day before.
Brennan says her source wouldn't confirm who in the agency suggested the final edits which were signed off on by all intelligence agencies.
First, as I mentioned in an update to this post, in a previous CBS report, dated November 15th, it was claimed that Susan Rice received her talking points on September 15th but as you can see above, the most recent CBS report says she received them on September 14th.
Second, note the last sentence in the excerpt above about "all intelligence agencies" ultimately signing off on the final edits. That would include Petraeus, right? Now, what sort of thing might motivate him to "sign off" on the talking points that excluded al-Qaeda?
Administration knowledge of an extramarital affair perhaps?
As for Clapper, he has a history of denial when it comes to identifying America's enemies. When one couples his involvement in the extraction of the words "al-Qaeda" from Rice's talking points with his claim in 2011 that the Muslim Brotherhood is "largely secular", we have a bit of a trend with this guy.
There are some parallels developing between Operation Fast and Furious and the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. First, the man at the tip of the spear in the Fast and Furious investigation has been Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight committee. He now appears to be taking the lead in the investigation into why four Americans - including ambassador Christopher Stevens - were murdered in Benghazi.
Another similarity is the reporting of Sharyl Attkisson of CBS. Many might remember that Attkisson was the first and only real mainstream media reporter who investigated Fast and Furious. In fact, she's the one who introduced whistleblower John Dodson to the country in an interview during which the ATF agent dropped the bombshell that ultimately led to Attorney General Eric Holder being found in criminal contempt of Congress. Specifically, Dodson was the first whistleblower to charge that the ATF was allowing guns to walk into Mexico. The death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was the last straw for Dodson.
Now, as the Oversight Committee prepares for its first hearing into what happened in Benghazi, Attkisson sat down with Lt. Col. Andy Wood, the man who led the Special Forces "Site Security Team" in Libya before he was told the American mission there would have to do with less. In many ways, Wood does in this interview much of what Dodson did to the Justice Department in Fast and Furious; Wood outs the State Department as being complicit in the Benghazi murders by ignoring calls for more security.
Nick Gellespie at Reason presents some compelling evidence that explains how Walter Cronkite erroneously got the "most trusted man in America" moniker. He also shows how the story of Lyndon Johnson saying, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost America" after watching Cronkite refer to the Vietnam war as a 'stalemate', is a myth. Nonetheless, the glowing urban legend that IS Walter Cronkite continues to give Chris Matthews a leg tingle.
...as American University professor and Getting It Wrong author Joseph Campbell notes on his great Media Myth Alert blog, the Cronkite story is totally bushwah. Campbell notes that Johnson did not watch the original broadcast and there's no indication he ever watched a taped version of the program either. Cronkite's invocation of "stalemate" was not original or memorable - that phrase had been used for a long time by then. And for all the talk of a "Cronkite moment," asks Campbell, why did U.S. troops stick around in Vietnam for another five years?
As further evidence that Cronkite should not go down as "the most trusted man in America," I give you exhibit A. It's video from a 1999 Award Ceremony at which Cronkite received the Norman Cousins Global Governance Award. Note how Cronkite refers to "Satan" by name and proudly proclaims he sits at the Devil's "right hand." To Gillespie's point, I think it's safe to say that anyone who shows reverence for "Satan" is far from being "the most trusted man in America."
This is not Matthews' first foray into showing reverence for someone who has expressed reverence for Satan. Let's not forget that Saul Alinsky dedicated his book to the prince of darkness:
“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history... the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”
Here is a clip of Chris Matthews touting none other than Saul Alinsky during a 2009 interview with Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT):
Actually, Al Gore has been saying that the North Pole will melt in "five years" for several years now. For some reason, the phrase "five" never seems to change as the years pass by. In any event, Gore first said that the North Pole would be gone in five years as a result of man-made global warming at the Davos Conference on Climate Change in 2007.
Then, one year later, in 2008, Gore said the North Pole would be gone in "five years." Uh, based on the fact that he had said it a year earlier, shouldn't he have said "four years"?
Since the 2008 video of Gore making the absurd prediction is no longer available, here's something that's a little better, especially in light of the fact that it exposes him as the fraud he is. This is from 2009. Watch as the sycophantic Harry Smith asks Gore to read a poem at about the same time climategate was being exposed.
Harry came dangerously close to giving Gore the key to his hotel room.
Just when you think the liberal media has lowered the bar of bias as far as it possibly can, someone finds a new rock bottom. In this instance, Face the Nation's Bob Schieffer has seized the mantle. Last week, Herman Cain's campaign released an ad that struck most as truly bizarre; it featured his campaign manager, Mark Brock, who ended the ad with a drag from his cigarette. The reaction of most people was a bit of head-scratching. Then something happened. The ad pulled a million views in four days and Cain's campaign contributions went up as a direct result. To call the ad counter-intuitive would be an understatement.
The aforementioned reality appeared to truly bother Bob Schieffer, who questioned Cain about the ad. In a bit of childish, righteous indignation, Schieffer masked his contempt for the success of the ad behind some holier-than-thou disgust for Cain's camp featuring such an image. After all, he's running for president and such an ad should be beneath him.
Cain handled himself well but a knockout punch would have been - as NewsBuster commenter Don'tFeedtheTrolls said - our current president smokes. Using Schieffer's standard, Obama is doing something that is beneath the office while Cain isn't even a smoker.
This is disgraceful on the part of Schieffer. Via NewsBusters:
CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson has been on the Fast and Furious for several months and provided the venue for ATF whistleblower John Dodson to spill the initial can of beans back in February / March. CBS has basically relegated her to the internet save for a few instances when they feature a few of her reports on the evening news. Now that the scandal is breaking wide open with evidence that Eric Holder may have perjured himself in front of the House Judiciary committee on May 3rd, the Justice Department and White House are becoming increasingly frustrated with Attkisson's investigating.
The clip below is from her interview with Laura Ingraham. Attkisson tells of a Justice Department spokesperson - Tracy Schmaler - who yelled at her over the phone when Attkisson asked for a written statement. She then said a representative from the White House - Eric Schultz - screamed at her, saying that she was the only 'unreasonable' reporter he had to deal with. Hats off to Sharyl Attkisson for being all over Fast and Furious but an additional hat tip for naming names at DOJ and the White House who took their frustration with her OUT on her.
Note: Since her interview with Ingraham, there have been reports that CBS has been attempting to keep Attkisson away from the media. This apparently is not at all true. It seems she has been so inundated with requests for interviews, there is no way she can do them all. This bodes well for this story continuing to grow.
At a House Judiciary committee hearing back on May 3rd, Darrell Issa asked Attorney General Eric Holder when he first learned about Fast and Furious. Holder's response was that it had been over 'the last few weeks.' That usually means about 3 or 4 but Holder had testified in front of another committee on March 10th about the operation. Assuming that's when he first learned about it, he should have said, 'last several weeks.' Now, it appears that he should have said, 'about one year ago.' Thanks to emails obtained by Sharyl Attkisson of CBS, it looks like Holder committed perjury on May 3rd. Don't worry though, he has an explanation.
New documents obtained by CBS News show Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the controversial Fast and Furious operation as far back as July 2010. That directly contradicts his statement to Congress.
On May 3, 2011, Holder told a Judiciary Committee hearing, "I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks."
Yet internal Justice Department documents show that at least ten months before that hearing, Holder began receiving frequent memos discussing Fast and Furious.
At this point, the guy who has got to be feeling perhaps the most heat is Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer. With evidence that memos about Fast and Furious originated with him demonstrates he was very familiar with it. Based on that bit of information, have a look at Holder lying to Rep. Darrell Issa on May 3rd:
Here is how Attkisson ends her article:
The Justice Department told CBS News that the officials in those emails were talking about a different case started before Eric Holder became Attorney General. And tonight they tell CBS News, Holder misunderstood that question from the committee - he did know about Fast and Furious - just not the details.
That is simply not believable and if Breuer knows it's not true, he should come forward. Since the memos originated with him, it's obvious he can't use the same excuse Holder did.
Back in February, CBS reporter Lara Logan suffered a violent sexual assault in Egypt's Tahrir Square as the government fell. She came forward in an interview with 60 Minutes to explain the details of her attack. Logan tells her story in excruciatingly gruesome detail while remaining extremely calm and composed. She's obviously an extremely strong and courageous woman and has said that this will be the only interview she will give on her horrifying experience because she doesn't want it to define her.
Back in December, the world's problems were solved by Katie Couric when she suggested that a Muslim version of the Cosby Show would help to ease tensions between east and west. Thanks to Jon Stewart, Katie's wish is the left's command. Interestingly, Feisal Abdul Rauf even volunteered to do an interview for this segment and whole heartedly endorsed Couric's idea; that should raise plenty of red flags for Katie - that is, if her IQ was at an acceptable level.
It wasn't and whether she knows it or not, Katie was the butt of this entire segment.
In the wake of the terrible news that CBS reporter Lara Logan had been raped after being surrounded by hundreds of Egyptian protesters, Nir Rosen made some extremely insensitive tweets about it. In addition to being a fellow with New York University (NYU), Rosen has also written for the Washington Post. His tweets were so bad that his resignation from NYU was almost immediate. Now there is another aspect to this story that leads to more questions.
On Rosen's facebook page is a picture of his young son donning a t-shirt with a Hezbollah logo on it.
It’s been a rough patch for Nir Rosen after some ill-advised remarks posted on Twitter got him in trouble earlier this week pertaining to his response to the news that CBS correspondent Lara Logan had been sexually assaulted and beaten while she was reporting on Egypt’s unrest...
...apparently his social media indiscretions aren’t relegated to just Twitter. An image added to his Facebook page dated Dec. 29, 2009 in the “profile photos” section of his profile, shows a little boy who is apparently his son wearing a yellow T-shirt with the Hezbollah logo.
Hezbollah has been on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations since the 1980s.
So what is Rosen's relationship with Hezbollah? Is there one? If there is one, how did he become a fellow at NYU? For those who scoff at the notion that the left and Islam are natural allies, here is yet another in a long line of examples. Those who scoff should do so while looking in the mirror.
For more about Rosen's initial comments, click HERE.
While the liberal media continues spinning the Egyptian / Muslim Brotherhood uprising as a wonderful thing, there are incidents and events on the ground that tell a much different story. Examples include the ten beatings sustained by CNN's Anderson Cooper and the assault of ABC's Christianne Amanpour. Another assault took place on February 11th and the victim was CBS News's Foreign correspondent Lara Logan. It was 'sustained,' 'sexual,' and 'brutal.'
Enter Nir Rosen. He's a liberal and a fellow at New York University's Center for Law and Security. He's also written for the Washington Post. In true ends-justify-the-means liberal fashion, Rosen exhibits no sympathy for Logan in multiple twitter posts. Instead, he implied that she deserved it because she is a 'war monger' while remaining completely insensitive, even joking that it would have been funny if Anderson Cooper would have been sexually assaulted as well.
All of this is happening as the liberal media continues to champion the uprising. Shockingly, in this AP video report about Logan's attack, it's reported that there have been 140 correspondents either killed or injured at Tahrir Square since the uprising.
At least in the case of one heartless liberal, apologizing for barbaric behavior justifies that uprising.
Thank goodness Katie Couric was wearing a pair of glasses intended to make her look so intelligent when she put forth her idea about how to assuage the misguided views of so many Americans when it comes to the 1.5 Billion Muslims that our populace allegedly shares 'seething hatred' for. Her idea? A Muslim version of the Cosby Show because the 1980's series did so much to heal racial division in this country. Also, take note of her guest, Mo Rocha who quite blatantly admits: 'I know nothing about Islam.'
Wouldn't you love to know how much Katie knows about it? Contrast her idea that involves a sit-com and Rocha's admission that he's ignorant on the subject with how the Mainstream media in general portrays experts on Islam who have been sounding alarm bells for years - people like Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, Walid Shoebat, and so many others. In the eyes of Couric and the uneducated left, those people represent a cross-section of Americans who are inexplicably bigoted.
There will come a day when Couric and all the others in the media who hold similar views will be completely exposed for what they are - Truthphobes.
I'm really finding myself ambivalent about John Boehner's crying. On one hand, the Tea Party has been screaming that Washington politicians are detached from what's actually going on in the country. It could be that the true gravity of the dire situation America is in has actually reached Boehner - the crying may reflect him actually 'getting it.' On the other hand, he needs to project strength. After all, he will be 2nd in line for the presidency after Biden.
Then there is the issue of how he was portrayed by liberal journalist Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes. On one hand, they showed him in his angrier moments when he was yelling, "Hell No" about the thousands of pages of legislation passed behind closed doors but never presented the source of that anger - it was that no one read the bills. On the other hand, the piece repeatedly showed him crying. So on one hand, he's angry and on the other hand he's crying.
Hmmmm. With all these hands, someone should hand him a bullhorn and a box of kleenex.
To say that Karl Rove's appearance on CBS' Face the Nation was a case of guest dressing down host and paddling him for eight minutes comes as close to not being a metaphor as you can get. In fact, the only thing Karl Rove didn't say that he should have was, 'Is that the best you can do, Bob?' Try as he might, Schieffer could not get around the blatant hypocrisy when he attempted to call Rove on the matter of unnamed contributors. Rove continued to bring it back to the lack of outrage when the left does it.
Instead of acknowledging the point, Schieffer kept wanting to go back to 'the original question.' I didn't think there was anything left of the mask on the liberal media but Schieffer pulled off another layer with this blatantly biased line of questioning.
Rove almost - note, I said 'almost' - redeems himself for the treatment he gave Christine O'Donnell.
As the fan favorite in the 70's sitcom, All In The Family, Archie Bunker thought Walter Cronkite was a communist. Based on these new revelations, the show's creator - Norman Lear - may have stumbled onto the truth by mocking conservatives through Carroll O'Connor's character, who was portrayed as a bigot and a simpleton. Thanks to Cliff Kincaid at America's Survival, FBI documents from 1969 have been released and indicate that Cronkite collaborated with anti-war protesters by offering CBS resources and possibly even helping to plan events his network was to cover.
If you're pressed for time and can't read the entire 75 page file, skip to the 6th page of the actual pdf and start reading through the 9th page. Keep the media's disinterest in covering Tea Party events in mind as you read how a group of anti-war protesters known as Youth For New America, which was led by a person whose name is redacted. These groups were largely made of communist and socialist sympathizers and there is no reason to believe Youth for New America was any different.
On the 7th page of the pdf - 2nd page of the document - Cronkite is cited as having been in touch with the group's leader, who we'll call "commie" for now:
COMMIE TOLD GROUP HE HAD BEEN TO CBS CHANNEL SIX IN ORLANDO PRIOR TO MEETING TO SPEAK TO NESMEN ABOUT VIETNAM MORATORIUM ACTIVITIES. COMMIE RELATED THAT WHILE AT TV STATION, WALTER CRONKITE, NATIONALLY KNOWN RADIO AND TELEVISION COMMENTATOR, SPOKE TO HIM BY TELEPHONE FOR APPROXIMATELY FORTY FIVE MINUTES AND THAT CRONKITE REPORTEDLY TOLD COMMIE THAT CBS WOULD HAVE THIRTY SIX HOURS OF COVERAGE ON VIETNAM MORATORIUM WITH "OPEN MIKE" TO GIVE DEMONSTRATORS A CHANCE TO BE HEARD. CRONKITE NOTED, ACCORDING TO COMMIE THAT SENATOR EDMUND MUSKIE WOULD BE IN ORLANDO, FLA. NOVEMBER THIRTEEN INSTAN FOR DEMOCRATIC FUN RAISING DINNER. ACCORDING TO COMMIE, CRONKITE SUGGESTED THAT COMMIE ATTEMPT TO MUSKIE TO COME TO CAPE KENNEDY TO SPEAK AT KELLY PARK RALLY TO BE HELD NOVEMBER THIRTEEN INSTANT. CRONKITE ALLEGEDLY TOLD COMMIE THAT CBS WOULD RENT HELICOPTER TO TAKE MUSKIE TO AND FROM SITE OF RALLY AT KELLY PARK.
If this is true, it must necessarily mean that Walter Cronkite was involved in staging news and stacking the deck in favor of America's enemies. And to think TIME Magazine's Joe Klein wants to put Glenn Beck and the word "sedition" in the same sentence.
In today's 24/7 news world, cable networks do pay for transportation of guests to and from their studios to conduct interviews but what Cronkite allegedly did is vastly different from that. If true, Cronkite didn't offer Muskie a ride to the CBS studio for an interview. He would have offered the help of CBS in getting Muskie to an anti-war protest and report on it under the false pretense that Muskie just showed up. These documents seem to indicate that he was actively trying to stage news, a practice that is common today with Palestinian news crews.
To think, all this time Archie Bunker may have had it right when it came to Walter Cronkite. Maybe Rob Reiner is a meathead after all.
After watching the Richard Landes film "Pallywood", you'll soon realize that the Palestinians have cornered the market on Melodrama. Whenever they can find a camera or a news crew, it's show time! They're all seemingly in a race to catch the camera's attention by playing out scripts whose plots are always rooted in some perceived Israeli oppression.
Just to set the stage for what's going on in Honduras, here is Landes' outstanding film..
Now, onto Honduras...
William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection appears to be all over a Pallywood recreation in Honduras. Who is it that is mimicking the Palestinians? Well, of course, the supporters of deposed president Manuel Zelaya. The same Zelaya that the Obama administration is backing.
What's more is that CNN appears to have fallen for it. In 2000, as Landes points out, it was 60 Minutes who sacrificed legitimate journalism for acting that didn't measure up to a B movie.
CNN ran with a story of a Honduran protestor / Zelaya supporter covered in blood. Blood he says came from a boy that died in his arms. The problem is that he was photographed wiping blood off the ground and then onto his shirt, knowing that a camera wouldn't be far behind.
It wasn't.
Not only that but have a look at the guy in the lefthand portion of this photo. Donning Palestinian-like headress, I can't tell if he's with Hamas or Fatah.
You would think at some point, CNN would realize the joke is on them and that their antics cause them to come across as inept, shameless, and corrupt journalists.
