Tag Archives: Collusion

Facebook uses pro-abortion “fact checkers” to label pro-life pages “fake news”

Facebook banned Franklin Graham for "hate speech"
Facebook banned evangelist Franklin Graham for “hate speech”

Recently, this blog’s Facebook page reached 5000 likes. We were immediately hit with a fact-check by a secular leftist, who labeled an  satirical meme image as “fake news”. Facebook informed me that they would be lowering our distribution for not being secular leftists. In fact, Facebook is censoring anyone who disagrees with the Democrat party, because the 2020 election is almost here.

Here’s the story from the Daily Caller:

Live Action founder and President Lila Rose said Facebook allowed abortionists to fact check Live Action content and label it as misinformation.

Facebook cited a fact check from two third-party fact checkers, telling Rose and Live Action that their statement “abortion is never medically necessary” was both inaccurate and misleading.

The Aug. 30 fact check, published in Health Feedback, targeted an August 9 video that included the statement “abortion is never medically necessary.” Another video shared by Live Action featuring Dr. Kendra Kolb explaining why abortion is never medically necessary was also fact checked.

Live Action’s page was punished for posting “fake news”, according to Facebook’s pro-abortion “fact-checkers”. There is no way to appeal a fact-check.

Live Action decided to make their case known to the Republican party, and they have responded.

Fox News reports:

Four Republican senators blasted Facebook for ‘censorship’ over the tech giant’s recent fact check of pro-life organization Live Action.

In a letter today to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri, Ted Cruz of Texas, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota and Mike Braun of Indiana condemn the company’s “pattern of censorship” and demand that it issue a correction, remove any restrictions placed on Live Action and its founder Lila Rose, as well as submit to a “meaningful” external audit.

Let’s look at two Facebook “fact checkers”, and an example of their “fact-checking” and see how objective and non-partisan they are.

Let’s look at the first far-left Facebook partner: Politifact. Politifact is just a group of journalists from the Tampa Bay Times newspaper.

Avik Roy, health care policy expert at Forbes magazine, writes about Politifact’s assessment of Obama’s promise to Americans about keeping their health plans after Obamacare.

2008 PolitiFact before the election: ‘We rate his statement True’

Roy writes: (links removed)

On October 9, 2008, Angie Drobnic Holan of PolitiFact published an article using the site’s “Truth-O-Meter” to evaluate this claim: “Under Barack Obama’s health care proposal, ‘if you’ve got a health care plan that you like, you can keep it.’” The article assures us in its headline that “Obama’s plan expands [the] existing system,” and continues that “Obama is accurately describing his health care plan here…It remains to be seen whether Obama’s plan will actually be able to achieve the cost savings it promises for the health care system. But people who want to keep their current insurance should be able to do that under Obama’s plan. His description of his plan is accurate, and we rate his statement True.”

[…]As per PolitiFact’s usual M.O., Holan didn’t seek out any skeptical health-policy experts to suss out the veracity of Senator Obama’s signature claim. Instead, its sources included Jonathan Cohn, a passionate Obamacare supporter at The New Republic, and various interviews and statements of Mr. Obama. Holan simply took the “keep your plan” promise at face value, dismissing as dishonest anyone who dared suggest that Obama’s claim would be impossible to keep. “His opponents have attacked his plan as ‘government-run’ health care,” she wrote, the scare-quotes around “government-run” being visible to all.

PolitiFact’s pronouncements about Obamacare were widely repeated by pro-Obama reporters and pundits, and had a meaningful impact on the outcome of the election. Indeed, in 2009, PolitiFact won the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the 2008 campaign.

Here’s the screen capture from 2008:

Politifact caught with its pants on fire
Politifact caught with its pants on fire

Before the election, it’s true! And Obama got re-elected, because people believed that. But what happened after the election?

2013 PolitiFact after the election: ‘We rate his statement Pants On Fire’

Roy writes: (links removed)

On December 12, [2013] the self-appointed guardians of truth and justice at PolitiFact named President Obama’s infamous promise—that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it”—its 2013 “Lie of the Year.”

[…]On November 4, Jacobson rated as “Pants on Fire” the President’s new claim that “what we said was, you can keep [your plan] if it hasn’t changed since the law passed.” Both pieces were edited by Angie Drobnic Holan, who had initially granted PolitiFact’s seal of approval to Senator Obama’s 2008 promise. Holan delivered the coup de grâce, declaring as PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” the “keep your plan” promise.

“The promise was impossible to keep,” says Holan in her December piece. Now she tells us! But none of the key facts that made that promise “impossible” in 2008 had changed by 2013. The President’s plan had always required major disruption of the health insurance market; the Obamacare bill contained the key elements of that plan; the Obamacare law did as well. The only thing that had changed was the actual first-hand accounts of millions of Americans who were losing their plans now that Obamacare was live.

And the screen capture from 2013:

Politifact says: we were just kidding! Kidding!
Politifact says: we were just kidding! Kidding!

So when Politifact rates a statement by a Democrat as true, what they really mean is that it’s pants-on-fire-false, except when Politifact wants to collude with the Democrat party to influence elections.

What about Snopes?

The Daily Caller explains:

Snopes’ main political fact-checker is a writer named Kim Lacapria. Before writing for Snopes, Lacapria wrote for Inquisitr, a blog that — oddly enough — is known for publishing fake quotes and even downright hoaxes as much as anything else.

[…]She described herself as “openly left-leaning” and a liberal. She trashed the Tea Party as “teahadists.” She called Bill Clinton “one of our greatest” presidents. She claimed that conservatives only criticized Lena Dunham’s comparison of voting to sex because they “fear female agency.”

[…]Lacapria — in another “fact check” article — argued Hillary Clinton hadn’t included Benghazi at all in her infamous “we didn’t lose a single person in Libya” gaffe. Lacapria claimed Clinton only meant to refer to the 2011 invasion of Libya (but not the 2012 Benghazi attack) but offered little fact-based evidence to support her claim.

It’s groups like far-left groups like Politifact and Snopes who are spotting “fake news” for Facebook.

New York Times finally admits FBI spied on Trump campaign during Obama administration

The only collusion and treason was committed by Democrats
The only collusion and treason was committed by Democrats

Well, now that the 2018 mid-terms are over, the mainstream media thinks it’s OK to admit that the whole Trump-Russia collusion . The latest admission is from the radically leftist New York Times, which published two ACTUAL Nazi cartoons last week. I guessed they were sorry, because on Thursday, they published a story about how the Obama administration spied on Trump’s campaign.

The Federalist reports on the New York Times story:

Following months of angry claims by journalists and Democratic operatives that the Obama administration never spied on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, The New York Times admitted Thursday that multiple overseas intelligence assets were deployed against associates of the Republican nominee. It is not the first time the Times has revealed widespread spying operations against the campaign.

In addition to noting that long-time informant Stefan Halper was tasked with collecting intelligence on the Trump campaign, the Times story details how a woman was sent overseas under a fake name and occupation to oversee the spy operation. The woman’s real name is not mentioned in the article, though the Times says she went by “Azra Turk” and has a relationship with an unidentified federal intelligence agency.

[…]he NYT also admits in its article that the aggressive and unprecedented action of deploying spies and luring American targets overseas to collect intelligence on a rival political campaign “yielded no fruitful information.” It is not clear whether information collected by Halper and “Turk” was used to justify formal spy warrants against any U.S. citizens.

The spies didn’t get anything on Trump, because there was nothing to get. But that doesn’t change the fact that American law enforcement spied on American citizens, completely outside of any criminal investigation.

So why is the New York Times reporting on this now?

More:

The leak that fueled the Thursday NYT bombshell was likely placed in anticipation of the formal release of even more damaging information about how U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies potentially abused their authority to punish the government’s political enemies. The article specifically references the forthcoming release of an extensive inspector general review of potential improprieties at the Department of Justice (DOJ).

By leaking the information to the friendliest of friendly reporters, including Michael Schmidt at the Times, the individuals who ran the anti-Trump operation are likely hoping to spin the news in their favor.

Right now, Attorney General Barr is promising to launch the real investigation – the investigation that matters. That is, the investigation in to the attempted coup by Democrats within the Obama administration and their allies in the mainstream media.

Mollie writes:

So long as anti-Trump operatives controlled the FBI and DOJ, this type of leaking and concealing of information worked well. Most major media outlets have chosen to ignore the spying scandal in favor of non-stop anti-Trump advocacy. That left actual fact-finding and truth-seeking to a small group of media outlets and a handful of elected lawmakers tasked with oversight of the nation’s spy agencies.

By the way, there was also a news story on Thursday about how the Democrat Party colluded with Ukraine to try to win the 2016 election.

Finally, some real collusion

Fox News reports on a story from the leftist The Hill:

Ukraine’s embassy wrote that a Democratic National Committee (DNC) insider reached out in 2016 seeking dirt on President Trump’s team, according to a bombshell new reportThursday that further fueled Republican allegations that Democrats were the ones improperly colluding with foreign agents during the campaign.

Ambassador Valeriy Chaly said DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa pushed for Ukraine’s then-President Petro Poroshenko to mention Paul Manafort’s ties to Ukraine publicly during a visit to the U.S., and sought detailed financial information on his dealings in the country, The Hill reported. At the time, Manafort was Trump’s campaign chairman.

[…]Federal Election Commission (FEC) records confirm that Chalupa’s firm provided various services to the DNC in 2016, and that the DNC paid Chalupa more than $412,000 from 2004 to 2016.

[…]Ukrainian law enforcement officials said earlier this month they had a slew of evidence of collusion and wrongdoing by Democrats and were trying to share the information with U.S. officials in the Justice Department.

Do you remember what was Trump accused of? He was accused of trying to get opposition research from a foreign country in order to damage an opponent’s election campaign. And now we find out from this report that the Democrat National Committee did EXACTLY that. Will we now have a two-year investigation with a special counsel and non-stop media coverage for that? It seems only fair that we do, don’t you think? This is actual collusion here.

This two-year investigation created by Hillary’s refusal to accept defeat basically destroyed Republican candidates in the 2018  mid-terms. We lost so many races because the media poisoned the American voters against us with their fake news stories. I want to see something proportional done to the Democrats so that everyone is crystal clear about what really happened.

I have to debate a co-worker on Trump-Russia collusion, here are my notes

The media spent two years parroting a fake news story paid for by Democrats
The media spent 2 years pushing a fake news story paid for by Democrats

Well, now that the Mueller report is out, I am dealing with a bunch of angry progressives at work. They want to know how why their favorite mainstream media sources got the Trump-Collusion story so wrong. One of them even asked me to go to lunch so that I could explain why the story fell apart. I made some notes in preparation for the lunch, and I’ve written them up below.

So, basically I wanted to get a bunch of articles together that trace the whole narrative from start to finish. Let’s see an outline first.

The Trump-Russia collusion story that was trumpted by the progressive media for the last two years was a joint effort between the Hillary Clinton campaign and high-ranking members of the FBI during the Obama administration.

The goal was to get the government to spy on the Trump campaign, in order neutralize his administration, if he won the 2016 election.

Here’s the left-leaning The Hill, reporting on an important finding from October 2018:

Congressional investigators have confirmed that a top FBI official met with Democratic Party lawyers to talk about allegations of Donald Trump-Russia collusion weeks before the 2016 election, and before the bureau secured a search warrant targeting Trump’s campaign.

Former FBI general counsel James Baker met during the 2016 season with at least one attorney from Perkins Coie, the Democratic National Committee’s private law firm.

That’s the firm used by the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to secretly pay research firm Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence operative, to compile a dossier of uncorroborated raw intelligence alleging Trump and Moscow were colluding to hijack the presidential election.

The article notes that Perkins Coie is the “Democratic National Committee’s private law firm”.

The Federalist reports that the Obama presidential election campaign also paid $972,000 to Perkins Coie in 2016 alone:

Former president Barack Obama’s official campaign organization has directed nearly a million dollars to the same law firm that funneled money to Fusion GPS, the firm behind the infamous Steele dossier. Since April of 2016, Obama For America (OFA) has paid over $972,000 to Perkins Coie, records filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show.

[…]Federal records show that Hillary Clinton’s official campaign organization, Hillary For America, paid just under $5.1 million to Perkins Coie in 2016. The DNC paid nearly $5.4 million to the law firm in 2016.

[…]The Washington Post reported last week that Perkins Coie, an international law firm, was directed by both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to retain Fusion GPS in April of 2016 to dig up dirt on then-candidate Donald Trump. Fusion GPS then hired Christopher Steele, a former British spy, to compile a dossier of allegations that Trump and his campaign actively colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 election. Though many of the claims in the dossier have been directly refuted, none of the dossier’s allegations of collusion have been independently verified. Lawyers for Steele admitted in court filings last April that his work was not verified and was never meant to be made public.

In addition, Fox News reports that the FBI paid Christopher Steele ELEVEN TIMES in 2016. So this dossier was funded by Democrats from many different groups. They probably thought that no one would ever find out who was behind it.

But why would the FBI and the FISA court accept the Democrat-funded dossier as a basis to spy on the Democrat’s main political rival? Answer: there were Democrats in the FBI who covered up the source of funding for the Steele dossier, as well as the anti-Trump bias of the dossier’s author.

The Washington Examiner reported on the released text messages from highly-placed anti-Trump Democrat Lisa Page within the FBI in March 2019:

The text messages, between then-Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe, who was later fired, and former FBI attorney Lisa Page — who was having an affair with FBI agent Peter Strzok — were obtained by Fox News.

They reveal that Stuart Evans, deputy assistant attorney general of DOJ’s National Security Division at the time, had “continued concerns” about the “possible bias” of a source being used in the FISA application but that Lisa Page had a sense of urgency about the FISA application being submitted quickly and was considering ending “the hold up” with “a high-level push.”

“OI [Office of Intelligence] now has a robust explanation re any possible bias of the chs [Confidential Human Source] in the package,” Page texted McCabe on Oct. 12, 2016. “Don’t know what the holdup is now, other than Stu’s continued concerns. Strong operational need to have in place before Monday if at all possible, which means to ct tomorrow. I communication you and boss’s green light to Sty earlier, and just sent an email to Stu asking where things stood. This might take a high-level push. Will keep you posted.”

Page said she would press the issue with Evans by “invoking” McCabe’s name. Further texts show that a meeting would eventually be set up including then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates at the direction of the White House. The FISA application, relaying heavily on Steele’s dossier, would be submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court just days later.

Then-Director of the FBI James Comey ultimately signed off on the application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for approval to surveil Carter Page. It was dated nine days after the Page-McCabe texts: Oct. 21 2016.

The specific funding of Steele’s dossier was never mentioned to the FISA court, either during that first application or during three subsequent FISA renewals. Steele’s anti-Trump fervor and determination to provide his dossier to the media and members of the U.S. government later became well known.

I think there’s enough information in this post to show why the mainstream media ought to have known better than to push a “collusion” narrative on the strength of the Steele dossier and the FBI spying on the Trump campaign. The whole collusion plot was funded lock, stock and barrel by Democrats. The reason why the mainstream media reported on a #FakeNews story for two years was because they wanted to sway voters away from Trump in the 2018 elections. It’s only now that they are trying to step away from it so they can pretend to be unbiased.