There was an interesting tidbit found toward the end of a 6-page article written by Serge Kovaleski and Brooks Barnes of the New York Times - in which the two reporters revealed the contents of their interview with Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man behind the Innocence of Muslims video. Until now, it was only assumed that the Sam Bacile YouTube channel belonged to the filmmaker.
According to Kovaleski and Barnes, the person responsible for creating and maintaining the YouTube account is Nakoula's twenty one year-old son, Abanob Nakoula:
On July 2, the trailer was posted on YouTube by someone using the name Sam Bacile. Mr. Nakoula’s son said he was the one who did it.
“My dad is not tech-savvy at all, and does not know how to work social media,” Abanob Nakoula said. “So he asked me to take the initiative to spread the word, and I did my best.”
He explained that using the name Sam Bacile, he created a Facebook account before production started and then the YouTube account.
Now that we know who is responsible for the YouTube account, how about some questions about content?
This screenshot was captured on October 5, 2012 (converted from tiff to jpeg on November 28th). At the time, it was the only video found under the channel's "Likes" tab. The video consists of an interview between a woman from the U.K. who had converted to Islam and an Arabic-speaking man. The woman is effusive in her praise of Islam. The video has since disappeared from the Sam Bacile YouTube account:
Here is a screenshot of the YouTube page today. Note, there are no more "Likes" on the page (the video is no longer posted):
This is the video once liked by who is now believed to be Abanob, based on what can logically be deduced from the New York Times piece:
The question it'd be nice to know the answer to is:
Why would someone so anti-Islam "like" a very pro-Islam video?
A logical follow-up question would be:
What made Abanob "un-Like" the video?
Questions about this YouTube account have been raised before.
Senate Republicans have decided to swing at the slow, high-hanging softball that Barack Obama and the New York Times gave them yesterday. It's laughably obvious that when Obama said he found it "offensive" to suggest that his White House leaked national security secrets to the New York Times, someone was lying because the Times article referred to "three dozen" former and current White House employees who provided them the information.
President Obama at a press conference this morning insisted that high-level national security leaks are not coming from the White House. "The notion that my White House would purposefully release classified information is offensive," President Obama said.
But a Republican memo from the Senate Republican Policy Committee maintains that either the president or the New York Times is wrong.
"It would appear the President’s statement and the New York Times statements directly conflict with each other and cannot both be true at the same time," the memo states.
For proof, the memo highlights Obama's denial that the White House is responsible for the leaks and certain statements in the Times's stories.
"If that statement were meant to serve as a denial that the Obama Administration leaked classified information, it would appear to stand in direct contrast to the New York Times article describing the President’s personal involvement in a process 'to designate terrorists for kill or capture,'" the memo states. "One of the opening paragraphs described the methodology for compiling the story, saying 'three dozen' of the President’s 'current and former advisers' were interview sources for the story."
Perhaps the biggest indicator that it is Obama who is lying is that the Managing Editor for the New York Times actually threw his own paper under the bus to a competitor - POLITICO:
“I can’t believe anybody who says these are leaks,” Times Managing Editor Dean Baquet told POLITICO. “Read those stories. They are so clearly the product of tons and tons of reporting.”
Obama appeared to point to those comments Friday when he stated: “The writers of these articles have all stated unequivocally that [the information] didn’t come from this White House.”
Isn't it obvious what's going on? The New York Times told the truth then, in the article about where it got its information; Obama is lying about the White House not being a source; and the New York Times is lying now to run interference for Obama.
So to answer the Senate Republican Policy Committee's question about who's lying, the answer is "both."
As I watched Barack Obama tell the White House Press Corps. (pronounced "corpse") that he found it "offensive" for anyone to suggest that his White House was responsible for leaking national security secrets to the New York Times, I remembered Attorney General Eric Holder using the same term when pressed by Rep. Darrell Issa last year at a House Judiciary Committee hearing. In both instances, both men (Obama and Holder) appeared to be lying their faces off.
There are countless lies to chronicle from both Barack Obama and Eric Holder but let's focus on one each. First, Obama is a liar when it comes to his denial that he was a member of the Socialist "New Party." Eric Holder is a liar when it comes to his May 3, 2011 testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee at which he said he'd learned about Fast and Furious for the first time "a few weeks" earlier. He later had to admit that he learned about the operation in February, more than a couple of months earlier.
Given that Obama lied about his membership in the "New Party" as well as the way he did it, with a vehement denial and smear of the person who levied the charge, the prospect that Obama is lying about anything, especially when he does so vehemently, should be on the table. After all, he lied about not being a socialist party member simply because it was politically expedient in an election year.
Now, to the videos. The first one is from today's press conference. Watch it all if you have time but fast forward to the 2:30 mark if you don't. This is where Obama suffers a bout of righteous indignation and tells the world that...
"...the notion that my White House would purposely release classified national security information is offensive; it's wrong and people need to have a better sense of how I approach this office and how people around me here approach this office..."
Be sure to continue on to the Holder video after viewing this one...
Now, at this House Judiciary Committee hearing on May 3, 2011 Rep. Darrell Issa grilled Holder about operation Fast and Furious. During this exchange, Issa made it clear to Holder that Congress wasn't interested in looking at the straw purchasers who placed guns in the hands of drug cartels; he was looking at the leadership in Holder's Justice Department. Here is part of Holder's response (6:40 mark):
"...I'm going to take great exception to what you just said. The notion that somehow or other this Justice Department is responsible for those deaths that you mentioned, that assertion is offensive."
In light of what we now know, Holder is no longer making such an argument. Issa has copies of wiretap applications in his possession that prove Holder's being offended is unwarranted, righteous indignation (see Obama above).
To wrap this all up, consider that the New York Times article from last week specifically cited more than 30 White House sources when writing about much of the sensitive national security information in question.
The Times claimed to have spoken to three dozen current or former advisors about Obama’s role in the process. Hard for me to believe that all of them were eager to talk, but between quiet encouragement from the White House and/or the “here’s what I already know” rap from the reporter, they probably ended up feeling obliged.
Hot Air goes on to cite a POLITICO story that quotes NYT's managing editor as saying the White House had nothing to do with leaking the information. Ok, this necessarily means that either the authors of the May 29th New York Times article lied or the paper's Managing Editor is lying.
Don't you find it offensive that the New York Times, Eric Holder and Barack Obama are all liars?
When New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau submitted his final version of the article published with the intent of smearing Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight on Government Reform committee, it wouldn't actually be his final version. Issa's office maintains that the August 15th article had 13 factual errors in it and has been on offense ever since. The initial demand for a complete retraction seemed to be a bit much to ask but thanks to three official corrections to the article, a retraction may not be too far off. All you need to know is that Lichtblau appears to have relied on the work of a Think Progress writer for most of his material. Think Progress is a George Soros-funded group.
Last week, I posted Issa's smack down of the Times, which chronicled all 13 errors. The first correction in Lichtblau's article afforded the Times some plausible deniability due to an 'honest' mistake. Instead of writing that Issa's holding company consisted of several 'multi-million dollar companies,' the original article said, 'multi-billion dollar companies.' Based on the latest two official corrections from the Times, that plausible deniability is dissipating quickly. Another one of Lichtblau's claims, that Issa's office overlooks a golf course has already been debunked with video. Even the POLITICO reported on this.
Now, when you go to Lichtblau's article, it consists of three official corrections at the bottom of the article. Courtesy of an email from Issa's office, I was made aware of these latest corrections:
Correction: August 16, 2011
An article on Monday about the business empire of Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, misstated the worth of the companies involved in his splitting up of a holding company. The split entailed separate multimillion-dollar companies, not multibillion-dollar ones.
Correction: August 26, 2011
An article on Aug. 15 about Representative Darrell Issa’s business dealings, using erroneous information that Mr. Issa’s family foundation filed with the Internal Revenue Service, referred incorrectly to his sale of an AIM mutual fund in 2008. A spokesman for the California Republican now says that the I.R.S. filing is “an incorrect document.” The spokesman, Frederick R. Hill, said that based on Mr. Issa’s private brokerage account records, which he made public with redactions, the purchase of the mutual fund resulted in a $125,000 loss, not a $357,000 gain.
And the article, using incorrect information from the San Diego county assessor’s office, misstated the purchase price for a medical office plaza Mr. Issa’s company bought in Vista, Calif., in 2008. It cost $16.3 million, the assessor’s office now says — not $10.3 million — because the assessor mistakenly omitted in public records a $6 million loan Mr. Issa’s company assumed in the acquisition. Therefore the value of the property remained essentially unchanged, and did not rise 60 percent after Mr. Issa secured federal funding to widen a road alongside the plaza.
Of course, the argument that the New York Times is state-run is only bolstered by the fact that Lichtblau's story appears to have been lifted from Think Progress and falsely reported as fact. The Obama administration does technically have a motive when it comes to the smearing of Issa; the Oversight committee chairman is getting extremely close to the truth about Operation Fast & Furious.
Even the POLITICO's Mike Allen conceded that Issa's office doesn't overlook a golf course. Yet, the New York Times is sticking by that particular claim, despite this video recorded from both inside and outside Issa's office, which catches Lichtblau's hand inside a fourth cookie jar:
As the investigation into Operation Fast and Furious continues to build quiet but very substantial momentum, the man at the tip of the spear in that investigation, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has a new badge of honor that should demonstrate he's on the right track. New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau published a hit piece on Issa that is so egregiously false, Issa has decided to go to the mat over it, demanding retractions from the New York Times. In fact, Issa's team has identified a total of 13 factual errors. One of those errors was Lichtblau's assertion that Issa's district office overlooks a golf course.
Here is a video shot from Issa's office that clearly shows there is no golf course in sight.
As for some of the other 12 errors, here is a taste of what Lichtblau did via Issa's website:
The New York Times story cites three central examples it believes justifies these allegations:
* A medical complex purchased by Rep. Issa in 2008 that the Times story alleges enjoyed a 60 percent appreciation as it increased in value from $10.3 million to $16.6 million, "at least in part because of the government-sponsored road work" that Rep. Issa supported.
* That he "went easy" on Toyota during 2010 hearings on unintended acceleration due to "his electronics company's role as a major supplier of alarms to Toyota."
* An alleged 1900 percent profit Rep. Issa's charitable foundation made on an investment of "less that $19,000" that was sold seven months later for $357,000 "months before the stock market crashed."
Ok, so that's what Lichtblau reported. Take a look at what Issa's office said in response:
*The medical complex the Times story alleges enjoyed a 60 percent appreciation since it was purchased for $10.3 million and is now valued at $16.6 million is a patently false claim. According to the buyer's final settlement statement, the property in question was not purchased for $10.3 million as the New York Times reported but for $16.6 million – the exact same figure of its current tax assessment. According to these numbers, the appreciation is not 60 percent but roughly zero. In addition, the government sponsored road work noted in the article has not even begun and Rep. Issa's requests for the project (which were publicly announced and made on behalf of and at the request of the City of Vista, and the San Diego Association of Governments which is the regional transportation planning authority) all came before the 2008 property purchase.
*The allegation that Rep. Issa "went easy" on Toyota during 2010 hearings because of "his electronics company's role as a major supplier of alarms to Toyota" is again an example of a factual error in the Times story that lends no support to the story's central premise. While the Times story tells readers that Rep. Issa's former company, Directed Electronics, is a "major supplier of alarms to Toyota," the story offers no evidence, and Directed Electronics is, in fact, not a supplier to Toyota. The New York Times also fails to note that Rep. Issa does not have a personal financial interest in Directed Electronics.
*The "1,900 percent" profit allegation is, again, based on reporting errors by the New York Times. This is assertion is based on an incorrect form obtained by the Times. According to a financial transaction record, the Issa Family Foundation's initial investment in the AIM Small Company fund was not $19,000 but $500,000. The asset was later sold for $375,000 resulting in a $125,000 loss – not a 1900 percent gain as was reported.
It's mighty coincidental that the New York Times is doing this to Darrell Issa at a time when the Oversight Committee chairman appears to have really dug into a scandal that is increasingly proving to reach all the way to Eric Holder at best and the White House at worst. Still, as Issa's team is mired in uncovering the details of that scandal, it decided it could not ignore Lichtblau's charges. No matter what the Times does in response to Issa, this appears to be one heck of a smack down.
It's safe to say that after throwing down the gauntlet with these apparently quite factual refutations, the ball is in Lichtblau's court. Will he and the Times double down or will it admit to libel by saying nothing?
Far left kook, Paul Krugman is the poster child for how liberal the New York Times has become. He is the quintessential authority for economic talking points in left wing circles. In his mind, the stimulus didn't work because it wasn't big enough; we need to continue quantitative easing until we're out of the recession. You've heard it all before. However, it will be interesting to see if his colleagues pick up his latest bit of pabulum. Though this comes off as an attempt at an allegory, the look in Krugman's eyes coupled with his flawed belief system and the amount of time he spends on the subject kinda makes one wonder.
Nicholas Kristof is making the charge that wealth in the United States should be re-distributed to make everyone equal because such a scenario is good for one's soul. Amazingly lost on these whack jobs is who they think should have their money confiscated and by whom - though he doesn't concede that the confiscators (the Government) is more powerful and wealthier than the richest 1% of Americans he thinks should cough up their money.
John Steinbeck observed that “a sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.”
That insight, now confirmed by epidemiological studies, is worth bearing in mind at a time of such polarizing inequality that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans possess a greater collective net worth than the bottom 90 percent.
There’s growing evidence that the toll of our stunning inequality is not just economic but also is a melancholy of the soul. The upshot appears to be high rates of violent crime, high narcotics use, high teenage birthrates and even high rates of heart disease.
That’s the argument of an important book by two distinguished British epidemiologists, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. They argue that gross inequality tears at the human psyche, creating anxiety, distrust and an array of mental and physical ailments — and they cite mountains of data to support their argument.
If you ever found yourself wondering where the 'everyone gets a trophy' mentality comes from, it's from people like this.
Again, accepting the argument that Kristof is parroting here requires Americans not to be the least bit suspicious of those who actually re-distribute the wealth. The irony is that they become even more powerful and the problem Kristof is allegedly trying to resolve is exacerbated.
William Jacobson over at Legal Insurrection makes an excellent point relative to Hawaii's Democrat Governor, Neil Abercrombie coming out to debunk the 'Birthers' by seeking to actually provide them with further evidence that Obama was born in Hawaii. The liberal media spin is what is so incredible here. Ain't it funny how Abercrombie - by doing exactly what the 'Birthers' have been asking for - is not a 'Birther' but instead someone who will shut them up.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't the Birthers been asking to be silenced with such information? This really is an amazing display of raw partisanship.
HONOLULU — Gov. Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, who befriended President Obama’s parents when they were university students here, has been in office for less than three weeks. But he is so incensed over “birthers” — the conspiracy theorists who assert that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya and was thus not eligible to become president — that he is seeking ways to change state policy to allow him to release additional proof that the president was born in Honolulu in 1961.
“It’s an insult to his mother and to his father, and I knew his mother and father; they were my friends, and I have an emotional interest in that,” Governor Abercrombie said in a telephone interview late Thursday. “It’s an emotional insult. It is disrespectful to the president; it is disrespectful to the office.”
The governor, a Democrat and former congressman, said he has initiated conversations with the state’s attorney general and the chief of its Health Department about how he can release more explicit documentation of Mr. Obama’s birth on Aug. 4, 1961, at Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital. He said he has done so of his own accord, without consulting the White House, which declined to comment.
So because Abercrombie's motives are to silence the 'Birthers' he himself is NOT one even though he is actually doing exactly what they want done.
Much was made this week about the Sunday New York Times magazine article by Peter Baker in which Obama admitted that he knew there were no 'shovel-ready' projects that stimulus dollars could fund, even though that was the whole point of the stimulus package. Perhaps as equally troubling as that admission is an admission from New York Times' resident Conservative in Name Only (CONINO) David Brooks, who said Obama admitted the same thing to him a year ago.
Brooks, while appearing on PBS' News Hour with Jim Lehrer claims that it was "obvious" there were no shovel-ready projects but said he didn't report on it because Obama wouldn't tell him on the record. The least he could have done was taken a position that opposed the stimulus if that claim is true.
MARK SHIELDS: How would you like to be a Democratic member of the House fighting for your life right now, getting hit over the head for having voted for the stimulus bill, and have the president say in The New York Times Sunday magazine, there’s no such thing as a shovel-ready project?
JIM LEHRER: Yes. That was — that’s the piece that’s been — that particular quote has really been drawing the flies — the fleas, has it not?
DAVID BROOKS: Yes. Well, I shouldn’t have confessed this. He said this to me off the record about a year ago. But it hasn’t…
JIM LEHRER: Off the record? So, then you can’t talk about it. (LAUGHTER)
DAVID BROOKS: Yes, because Peter Baker is a better than I am, because I couldn’t get him to go on the record with that thing. (LAUGHTER)
JIM LEHRER: He said this to you a year ago?
DAVID BROOKS: It was obvious. I mean, you are trying to build a stimulus package. And when they were trying to build it, believe me, they would have loved to have filled it with infrastructure jobs. But the projects just didn’t exist. They couldn’t do it. They couldn’t find them.
Let there be zero doubt that David Brooks is a liberal in conservative clothing. Fast forward to the 10:00 mark to watch this exchange between Lehrer, Brooks, and Mark Shields.
New York Times public editor, Clark Hoyt has admitted that his paper was late reporting on the Acorn story of a couple of young aspiring journalists (Hoyt calls them "conservative activists") exposing what very well could be a systemic problem within an organization that Barack Obama has very close ties to.
Was this a contrite act of admission or a forced admission of omission? I thought the fourth paragraph was particularly telling:
for days, as more videos were posted and government authorities rushed to distance themselves from Acorn, The Times stood still. Its slow reflexes — closely following its slow response to a controversy that forced the resignation of Van Jones, a White House adviser — suggested that it has trouble dealing with stories arising from the polemical world of talk radio, cable television and partisan blogs. Some stories, lacking facts, never catch fire. But others do, and a newspaper like The Times needs to be alert to them or wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself.
That's what we call damage control boys and girls. The NYT is worried about looking "partisan". Newsflash: YOU ALREADY ARE.
I would really like to give Hoyt and the Times credit for seeing the light but this strikes as nothing more than a response to something that was so blatantly over-the-top when it comes to Acorn, that even the New York Times couldn't spin it or ignore it.
Ah, then comes the ignorance defense.
Some editors told me they were not immediately aware of the Acorn videos on Fox, YouTube and a new conservative Web site called BigGovernment.com. When the Senate voted to cut off all federal funds to Acorn, there was not a word in the newspaper or on its Web site. When the New York City Council froze all its funding for Acorn and the Brooklyn district attorney opened a criminal investigation, there was still nothing.
I guess the term "immediately" is relative but at best, it can usually only be stretched to mean "same day". The problem here is that if the New York Times is "objective" as they claim, why on earth don't they know about the videos?
Apparently, "immediately" in New York Times speak is one week.
Finally, on Sept. 16, nearly a week after the first video was posted, The Times took note of the controversy, under the headline, “Conservatives Draw Blood From Acorn, Favored Foe.” The article said that conservatives hoped to weaken the Obama administration by attacking its allies and appointees they viewed as leftist. The conservatives thought they had a “winning formula,” the article said, mobilizing people “to dig up dirt,” then trumpeting it on talk radio and television.
Again, damage control and not contrition as Hoyt merely says the political tone "irritated readers". Mr. Hoyt, ever heard of the saying, "where there's smoke, there's fire"?
Anyway, the good news is the extremely biased New York Times was obviously seething about having to write this piece and it was a bit fun watching them have to admit to being inept. The bad news is that it was a "yeah, but" apology without an actual apology.
The fact that Hoyt had to write about it is a victory nonetheless.
Frank Rich at the New York Times provides the latest look into the psyche of the unhinged left when you talk about Barack "Far Left" Obama. These people are really outing themselves as a strain of humanity that would be fascinating to study if not in power.
Rich starts out by pointing a finger squarely at Obama for using a tactic that allowed the latter to escape quite a bit (like ties to Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Tony Rezko, Jeremiah Wright, Rashid Khaleedi, Van Jones, Frank Marshall Davis, etc.). That tactic is of the "hands off / don't get too close to the scruff". Rich seems dissatisfied with "dancing with the one who brung you." He sets the stage for where he's going quite early in his acrimonious op-ed:
Obama’s deliberative brand of wait-and-then-pounce leadership let him squeak — barely — through the summer. The real crises already gathering won’t wait for him to stand back and calculate the precise moment to spring the next Do-or-Die Speech.
When trouble lurks, No Drama Obama stays calm as everyone around him goes ballistic. Then he waits — and waits — for that superdramatic moment when he can ride to his own rescue with what the press reliably hypes as The Do-or-Die Speech of His Career.
Someone needs to tell Rich that Obama didn't break from that script when he was distancing himself from all of his nefarious friends so he could become president. So why would he start now?
Rich apparently doesn't want to get too mad at Obama and needs to find another target for his ire. How about that "extreme right-wing"?
The right-wing fringe has become so deranged that it will yank its kids out of school to protest the president and risk yanking more Americans off assembly lines by boycotting General Motors to protest the administration’s Detroit bailout.
Actually, I was fully prepared to send my kid to school as a mole and report back to the family. That said, our district didn't show the speech. Truth be told, Mr. Rich, my problem with Obama speaking to our schoolchildren is tied more to my not trusting him than anything else. Did I mention all of his associates?
Here is where Rich exposes himself as a short-sighted liberal ideologue who simply doesn't get it:
Indeed Obama instantly gained a foot or two in height Wednesday night once that South Carolina clown hollered “You lie!” (One wonders what this congressman calls the Republican governor of his own state, Mark Sanford.)
Uh, Mr. Rich, you write for the New York Times. Why on earth would you have to "wonder" what Wilson thinks of Sanford? Why not go to the source and find out? Or is that too archaic for the NYT?
If you'd like to read the entire piece of partisan dreck from Frank Rich, CLICK HERE.
