Anderson Cooper Confronted at CNN on Sandy Hook: ‘You Were in Front of a Green Screen and You Are a Liar’

theinnoplex

By Shepard Ambellas
theintelhub.com
February 3, 2013

After it was reported by two credible alternative news websites such as theintelhub.com and infowars.com Anderson cooper was caught staging an interview at a Sandy Hook funeral by way of green screen technology.

Now in a turning point Anderson Cooper was confronted by a US Citizen in response to the green screen reports.

Please watch the following video:

Sarah Palin and Fox: When Reform Takes Precedence over Reputation

thespeechatime

By Whitney Pitcher

"Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences." - Susan B. Anthony

Governor Palin's decision not to renew her contract at Fox News has received a lot of discussion from the punditry  as expected. Some have pretentiously referred to her as a fad. Others wrote her political obituary (just as they did when she stepped aside from the governorship), casting everything in past tense as if she just plans ride off into the aurora bourealis on a snow machine. Of course, Governor Palin isn't the political equivalent of pogs or Shirley MaClaine, who has had more lives than most cats. Rumors of her political death are greatly exaggerated, which is just how she wants it. As Governor Palin said to Breitbart News on Saturday, " we delight in those who underestimate us".

Throughout her career, Governor Palin, just like Susan B. Anthony, has cared far more about reform than reputation. When she was on the city council, she took a stand by voting against a regulation for garbage pickup because it would have unethically steered business to the garbage company owned by other council member. Who was that council member? Nick Carney--the very person who encouraged Palin to run for city council. Reform was more important to her than social standing.

As an oil and gas regulator in the Murkowski administration, she stood up to Randy Ruedrich, a fellow member of the Alaska  Oil and Gas Commission and the head of the Alaska Republican Party, when he did party business on state time and was engaged in other unethical behavior. Palin did all she could do with in her power to expose the corruption, but Governor Murkowski did not act. The only thing Palin felt she could do in good conscience was resign. She gave up a six figure job and risked her political future.Again, reform was more important to her than social standing.

Later, as Governor and following her time as the GOP vice presidential candidate, she was hit with a barrage of frivolous ethics complaints. Defending these complaints cost her family hundreds of thousands of dollars, her state upwards of two million dollars, and her staff eighty percent of their time. Governor Palin thought that remaining governor stood in the way of reform for Alaska, as the money and time suck of ethics complaints stymied progress. Governor Palin resigned, with the full understanding that it may negatively affect her political future.

Following her resignation, she spread her message of reform using multiple methods. She became a commentator at FoxNews, endorsed and campaigned for reform minded candidates,spoke at Tea Party rallies and used social media outlets to voice her ideas and thoughts on issues ranging from energy independence to foreign policy to government ethics. She used somewhat unconventional outlets, like TLC's Sarah Palin's Alaska and appearances Conan O'Brien, to reach new groups and affect the culture beyond the traditional media used  in politics. For much of this, she was mocked. Governor Palin takes to the her Facebook page far more often than the pages of the Wall Street Journal, although she does that on occasion too. However, using such a platform was poo pooed as unserious. In reality, it was a revolutionary way for politics to enter the social media, as people were exposed to energy policy right along side new pictures of their grand children and news of their favorite music artist's tours. Her travelogue show exposed new people to Alaska's vast resources and the application of a strong work ethic. Again, reforming the method of marketing conservatism in culture and new media was more important to her than her social standing within a party holding steadfast to a world where white papers are seen as the means to influencing the populace.

Governor Palin spoke unabashedly as a commentator at FoxNews. However, as an outlet primarily seen as the "Republican" channel, commenting at Fox became "preaching to the choir". Governor Palin's message of reform is taking on the "big government enablers" on our side and using opportunities to broaden "the message of the beauty of freedom and the imperative of defending our republic and restoring this most exceptional nation." Interestingly and possibly purposefully, news of Governor Palin's departure from Fox and her next steps came as the same time as the National Review held a summit to discuss the future of conservatism--i.e. the very preaching to the choir that she indicated that conservatives need to move away from. For all this, the mainstream media, many of whom try to cast FoxNews as inconsequential, are now trying to portray Governor Palin as irrelevant without Fox. Yet, if one is truly irrelevant, they usually do not require hundreds of news stories deeming them so. She is so "irrelevant" that a publicly funded university did a study to determine how much money she was paid per word at Fox. There still hasn't been a study to determine how much money the federal government spends/borrows per word that President Obama reads off of a teleprompter.

Governor Palin's next step of reform is to too expand her previous steps of taking on the party establishment and continuing to broaden the message of conservatism. Reform is in her nature--whether is policy reform inside elected office or conservative messaging reform and supporting reform minded candidates outside of office. As she said in channeling Revolutionary war hero John Paul Jones, she has not yet begun to fight.

'60 Minutes' Obama, Clinton interview heavy on laughs, light on substance

foxnews

AP/CBS

By Dan Gainor 

If CBS ever needs a softball team, they should sign Steve Kroft. The veteran newsman filled nearly three fourths of his big interview with President Obama and outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with easy questions (11 out of 15). So much so that laughter was more commonplace that any challenging questions.

For media watchers, the much-ballyhooed half-hour was a waste of good interviewing time. Kroft only threw four mildly tough questions at the power duo and two of those were still fairly easy health questions aimed at Clinton. Only the last two questions tackled Libya, Syria and conservative criticisms that there has been “an abdication of the United States on the world stage.”

Kroft then let Obama dodge questions of his failure in Syria and let stand Obama’s bizarre assertion that the revolution in Egypt has turned out well. “When it comes to Egypt, had it not been for the leadership we showed, you might have seen a different outcome there,” said Obama. 

For media watchers, the much-ballyhooed half-hour was a waste of good interviewing time. Kroft only threw four mildly tough questions at the power duo and two of those were still fairly easy health questions aimed at Clinton.

Had Kroft not wasted the entire first two thirds of his interview on slow pitch, he might have thrown a fastball about the ongoing violence there now, the Muslim Brotherhood’s power grab, threats to Israel and bigoted comments from Obama’s buddy Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. (Just hours before the pre-recorded broadcast, Morsi declared a state of emergency in three provinces as 50 people had been killed in rioting.)

It was the questions that weren’t asked that left viewers wondering if Kroft reads international news. What about tensions between China and its neighbors and U.S. allies Japan, Taiwan and South Korea? Or the increased tensions over the Falklands? Or that pesky little would-be nuclear state of Iran? Or how about U.S. involvement in Mali or terrorism in Algieria? Maybe even our relations with our nearest neighbors Canada, which is waiting on word about pipeline approval, and Mexico which is wondering about fast and furious?

CBS had certainly built up to the event with pre-show promotion that included the network’s Bob Schieffer remarking how unusual it was for president’s to share the stage with anyone. In that vein, Kroft began by reminding viewers that of the Obama-Clinton “rivalry that is one of the richest in American history.” Someone needs to get Kroft a better history book. Even Obama admitted that the pair agreed on policy.

Kroft’s questions weren’t just softballs. More than half resulted in laughter from Obama or Clinton and sometimes both. A couple were so bad that even Kroft laughed as well. 

The most embarrassing one was a public relations person’s dream as Kroft reflected how he had been with both candidates back in 2008. “That was a very tough, bitter race and I’m going to spare you really some of the things that you said about each other during the campaign,” to which even he laughed.

He laughed again when he asked about Obama’s support for Clinton. “What’s the, I have to ask you, what’s the date of expiration on this endorsement?” Both Clinton and Obama’s responses were equally sickening. Clinton threw out an “Oh, Steve…” and Obama commented, “You guys in the press are incorrigible.”

This wasn’t the first embarrassing Kroft interview of Obama. Back before the election, “60 Minutes” ran another interview but left out key elements where Kroft asked Obama if the Libya attack had been by terrorists. Obama dodged and CBS dodged even more, releasing that full interview with less than 24 hours before Election Day.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/28/60-minutes-obama-clinton-interview-heavy-on-laughs-light-on-substance/#ixzz2JHy9fdvC

"The Optimizer": Secret of the Obama Victory

Daniel Borris for The New York Times

Larry Grisolano helped develop a system that permitted the Obama campaign to target advertising to supporters based on the shows they liked to watch. The campaign placed ads in surprising places, like the TV Land network, that might once have been overlooked.

By JIM RUTENBERG

It was called “the Optimizer,” and, strategists for President Obama say it is how he beat a better-financed Republican opposition in the advertising war.

Culling never-before-used data about viewing habits, and combining it with more personal information about the voters the campaign was trying to reach and persuade than was ever before available, the system allowed Mr. Obama’s team to direct advertising with a previously unheard-of level of efficiency, strategists from both sides agree.

“Future campaigns ignore the targeting strategy of the Obama campaign of 2012 at their peril,” said Ken Goldstein, the president of Kantar Media/CMAG, a media monitoring firm that tracked and analyzed political advertising for both campaigns. “This was an unprecedented marrying of detailed information on viewing habits and political predispositions.”

One of the biggest emerging stories about the campaign that has ended is how Mr. Obama’s team used information and technology to outmatch and outwit a galvanized and incredibly well-financed opposition.

And in the days since the election new details are emerging about just how outmatched the Republicans were on the technology side, prompting a partywide re-examination of how to avoid a repeat and regain the once-fearsome tactical advantages they held in the era of President George W. Bush. They acknowledge they have their work cut out for themselves.

Romney campaign officials have said the computer-driven operation they built to monitor turnout, and to push supporters to polls in areas that were falling below vote levels needed for victory, crashed and became inoperative for a prolonged period as voting was under way.

The system was meant to combat the far more sophisticated version that Mr. Obama’s team had built over years. But Mr. Romney was distracted and financially depleted by his long primary season, and even with perfect execution, both sides agree, he never would have had the time or finances to catch up.

With so much more time to prepare, Mr. Obama’s polling and “analytics” department collected so much information about the electorate that it knew far more about which sorts of voters were going to turn out — and where — than the Romney campaign and most public pollsters.

But in between identifying likely supporters and successfully delivering them to the polls there was an intensive effort to send them a constant stream of messages devised to keep wavering 2008 Obama supporters from succumbing to Mr. Romney’s effort to win them over, and to get unwavering supporters excited about voting.

That was where “the Optimizer” came in.

In essence, said Larry Grisolano, who helped lead the development of the system, it created a new set of ratings based on the political leanings of categories of people the Obama campaign was interested in reaching, allowing the campaign to buy its advertising on political terms as opposed to traditional television industry terms.

“We were able to create a set of ratings based on a model of our target voters, as opposed to the broader categories that are kind of defined by traditional advertising ratings,” he said.

Erik Smith, another senior strategist, said a decision by “super PACS” supporting Mr. Romney to hold off on their first major anti-Obama advertising push until well after the primaries had given the team extra time to develop its system.

Through its vast array of information collected via its e-mail list, Facebook and millions of door-to-door discussions conducted by volunteers in swing states — and fed into the campaign database — the campaign devised a ranking scale for voters ranging from likeliest to support Mr. Obama to least likely.

Then the advertising team worked backward to figure out what sorts of programs likely and undecided voters were liable to watch, and when. It did so using not only traditional Nielsen Media Research data but also newly available information from set-top cable boxes that gave a far more detailed sense of how the groups watched television, and, more important, commercials.

The answers led to advertising purchases that the campaign might not have made, especially as it pursued undecided voters who did not regularly go to traditional sources for news.
Keep reading on New York Times >> 

The 2nd Coming of Obama

TheAlexJonesChannel 

During Barry's first run in 2008, the establishment media went out of its way to portray him in messiah-like fashion. Women swooned and fainted at his campaign events. Bedazzled followers were so mesmerized by Brand Obama's scripted message and performance they came away thinking the onetime foundation-supported community organizer was going to pay their rent and save them from evil Republicans.

Now that the people -- with the help of jimmy-rigged voting machines -- have "re-elected" Obama for a second term as the establishment's official teleprompter reader, the corporate media is once again attempting to convince us Barry Obama is the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

ALERT: CBS' Dickerson to Obama: 'Go for the Throat' of GOP

foxnews

John Dickerson

A column published on Slate.com over the weekend urged President Obama to "pulverize" and destroy his Republican opponents -- even "go for the throat" -- in order to "cement his legacy."
The words of advice, though, didn't come from a Democratic strategist or a former member of the president's inner circle.
The nearly 2,000-word playbook came from CBS News' political director John Dickerson.
Dickerson, who also works as chief political correspondent for Slate, had some unusually harsh words for the minority party as Obama takes the oath and launches into his second term.
To hear Dickerson tell it, Republicans have proved so intransigent that Obama's only option is to obliterate them. The subhead on the article said, "Obama must declare war on the Republican Party" if he wants to transform American politics.
"There's no indication that the president's clashes with House Republicans will end soon," Dickerson wrote. "The president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP. If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat."
Dickerson went on to describe the strategy of picking off and cultivating a few Republican allies as "the old way."
"Obama's only remaining option is to pulverize," Dickerson said. He wrote that Obama's attempt to build a "post-partisan" Washington didn't work, and in his second term Obama has the chance to "hasten the demise of the old order" of the GOP by "increasing the political cost of having the GOP coalition defined by Second Amendment absolutists, climate science deniers, supporters of 'self-deportation' and the pure no-tax wing."
The advice comes despite the eventual willingness of the Republican Party to allow tax increases on top earners, as part of the recent fiscal crisis deal.
Republicans have also eased off their opposition to raising the debt ceiling, proposing a three-month extension while a budget is debated.
Dickerson was named CBS' political director in November 2011.
Representatives from CBS News have not yet responded to requests for comment.

Debunking the Sandy Hook Debunkers

americanthinker

game-tuts.com

By Jack Cashill

During the age of Obama, the major media have gone fully AWOL. If they fear that their reporting will lead to inconvenient discoveries, they simply stop their advance, lay down their notebooks, and disappear. This trend began in the Clinton years and picked up momentum after the 1994 electoral debacle, but the Clintons at least worried that the media might turn on them.
If Barack Obama ever had any such anxiety, the nonreporting on Fast and Furious, Benghazi and now Sandy Hook has had to reassure him. Sandy Hook is particularly disturbing because the truth is, or at least should have been, so accessible. This tragedy should never have spawned anything like a conspiracy theory, but it obviously has.
Protecting the major media's flank during retreat are many and sundry well-funded leftist blogs -- Huffington Post, The Daily Kos, Media Matters, and TPM among others. While the major media withdraw, the blogs attack those who might challenge the "narrative" the majors have left behind.
A case in point is a recent multi-media Huffington Post piece titled "Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theory Video Debunked By Experts." In the video intro, HuffPo editor Meredith Bennett-Smith laughingly dismisses the various alternate theories of what transpired at Sandy Hook. Says Bennett-Smith, "That is what conspiracy theorists love to do. They put out a lot of questions, but they don't necessarily provide a lot of answers." When there is a Democrat in the White House, alas, anyone who asks a question becomes a conspiracy theorist.
Like too many alleged fact checkers, Bennett-Smith addresses only the least significant of the challenges to the Sandy Hook narrative: the alleged use of crisis actors, the memorials that predated the shooting, the confusion about what weapon was in Adam Lanza's trunk. The "experts" she promises in the headline turn out to be other Obama-friendly fact checkers like David Mikkelson, founder of Snopes, and Robert Blaskiewicz, editor of a comparable blog called Skeptical Humanities. Absent in the piece is anyone who knows anything about guns or police work.
Predictably, what the HuffPo piece does not address are the two most troubling inconsistencies in the Sandy Hook reporting: the nature of the guns used and the presence or absence of a second shooter. Both questions have gained importance because of the White House's obvious political exploitation of a ginned up "assault weapon" hysteria.
As to the guns, on December 15, one day after the shooting, NBC's chief justice correspondent Pete Williams spoke with Today Show host Matt Lauer. Williams shared "new information" from a "couple of federal officials and state officials." Said Williams, "They say now that there were actually four handguns recovered inside the school, not just two as we were initially told; four handguns and apparently only handguns that were taken into the school." (Italics mine)
Williams said that Lanza also brought an "assault style, AR-15 style rifle" with him to school, but, he added, "We have been told by several officials that he left that in the car." In the days that followed, the story would shift to the AR-15, not as the exclusive weapon -- two handguns remained in the story -- but as "the primary weapon used in the attack." On December 19, CNN reported, "Police say Lanza's rifle used numerous 30-round magazines." By January 6, the Hartford Courant was reporting that Lanza used the handguns only to shoot himself.
This shift in reporting may be justified, and Williams' sources may have been wrong, but why has no one at NBC addressed the discrepancy? The police had plenty of time to establish the nature of the weapons used that first day. Williams cited multiple police sources. He is a seasoned reporter on a show that takes itself seriously. In retrospect, it is easy to see why authorities would want to bend the narrative to an AR-15, but why would anyone have chosen to mislead Williams on day two?
Equally under-reported is the disposition of the second suspect. On day one, the media were reporting that the police had apprehended a likely second shooter. As CBS News reporter John Miller said definitively, "They have a second person in custody." He pointed out that this was not at all unprecedented given that there were two shooters at Columbine. Fox News described this person as wearing a black jacket and camouflage pants. According to Fox, a SWAT team escorted him out of the woods.
The Alex Jones Channel, although not always reliable, put together a nonconspiratorial video using network news clips of the chase in the woods, the capture, and interviews with witnesses. ABC News interviewed both a well-spoken child and an adult who confirmed seeing the man in custody. "They did walk a guy out of the woods with handcuffs," said the man. The fellow then pointed the reporter to a police car where the alleged second shooter was still sitting.
Admittedly, the media got much wrong on day one: the name of the shooter, the mother's relationship to the school, the supposed murder of the father, but the media quickly walked this information back. If they retracted the stories about the four handguns or the second shooter -- or even explained the discrepancies -- I have been unable to find any clarification, and the Huffington Post piece provided none either.
Until I see firm evidence, I remain agnostic about the official Sandy Hook narrative. My investigations into TWA Flight 800 and the Oklahoma City bombing have taught me to be wary of an "evolving" story line. In those two tragedies, as is often the case, the early reporting was the most reliable.
With TWA Flight 800, for instance, all initial reporting pointed to a missile strike as the cause of the highly visible explosion that killed 230 people off the coast of Long Island in July 1996. In the weeks that followed, without any new evidence, the Clinton Justice Department ignored the 270 FBI eyewitnesses to a missile strike and shifted the storyline from a missile to a bomb.
The FBI talked exclusively to the New York Times, and the Times returned the favor by interviewing none of the eyewitnesses. The cherry-picked evidence led to the following above-the-fold headline four weeks after the disaster -- "Prime Evidence Found That Device Exploded in Cabin of Flight 800."
Although not as unnerving as a missile strike, the bomb scenario threatened the peace and prosperity message to be promoted at the Democratic National Convention just days away. Whether coordinated with the White House or not, the Times simply ceased reporting on the bomb. A month later, the official narrative shifted from a bomb to a center fuel tank explosion, a possibility that had been ruled out a month earlier. Like the networks at Sandy Hook, the Times never bothered to explain what happened to the evidence that led to the earlier conclusions.
In a similar spirit, days after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the Washington Post reported specific FBI testimony describing "eyewitness accounts of a yellow Mercury with McVeigh and another man inside speeding away from a parking lot near the federal building." (Italics mine)
The media, however, quickly lost interest in the swarthy John Doe No. 2. The likely reason is that If he proved to be an Islamic radical, it would be harder to blame the "Republican Revolution" for the bombing. At McVeigh's trial, the Justice Department did not put a single one of the many reliable eyewitnesses on the stand because every one of them saw McVeigh with his foreign-looking accomplice. Again, the media chose not to notice the discrepancy. As Clinton himself acknowledged, Oklahoma City-i.e. the reporting on Oklahoma City -- saved his presidency.
Bottom line: if the Democrat-media complex can turn an obvious missile strike into a mechanical failure and lose John Doe #2 to history, turning four handguns into an assault weapon and making a second shooter disappear is small beer.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/debunking_the_sandy_hook_debunkers.html#ixzz2IcCWYL3c

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No one Protecting American masses against ‘The Revenge of Obama’

canadafreepress

Judi McLeod 

In an increasingly upside-down world, we’re now being Mainstream media-warned that Obama is getting more aggressive.

And just to think we’re getting that message as if a President of the United States of America getting more aggressive is normal.

“The wide-ranging proposals on gun control that Barack Obama is expected to announce tomorrow (Jan. 16) symbolize the change in attitude accompanying his second presidential term.

Rapidly accelerating a process that began during his campaign, Obama since November has confidently picked fights with Republicans—and challenged the most conservative members of his own party—on a broad range of foreign-policy and domestic social issues. Besides gun control these include immigration, the pace of withdrawal from Afghanistan and the nomination of Republican senator Chuck Hagel as Defense secretary, a red flag for the GOP’s neo-conservative wing.” (National Journal, Jan. 16, 2013)

“Picking fights with Republicans”, “challenging the most conservative members of his own party” is not Barack Hussein Obama at his worst.

It’s how his unchecked policies are dismantling the USA that is the real problem.

As politicians, the GOP’s neo-conservative wing can, or should be, able to look after themselves.

It’s the innocent masses which need protection from a “getting more aggressive” president.

With all the marbles ( the money supply, the mainstream media, the social media, unending executive orders, at your disposal)  and absolutely loathing the country you were elected to serve, you are no longer a president like all those who came before you, but a bully.

Radio Talk Show Host Rush Limbaugh did a superb job yesterday of describing the “Revenge of Obama”, but why is it that not a single elected official is not demanding to know where Obama gets off seeking revenge.

Is this behavior in a president adult, normal or even acceptable?

The lion’s share of Obama’s time in office has been dishing on the US.  No US enemy at home or abroad has done a better job.  Obama is systematically tearing apart everything that brought America to its noble place in the world,  scattering those parts into the four winds—and even showing he enjoys it.

Why is no one in office demanding to know why?

More importantly, why is no one trying to stop him?

It’s everybody’s nightmare that a full-of-hate community organizer from out of nowhere took over the White House in 2008 and was re-installed for a second term in 2012.

Everybody’s because most countries in the outside world depend on a healthy America to survive.

It’s as if Obama is in a self-devised contest to win 1st Place as the president who most hates his country.

People who hate their own country without reasonable rationale are not only dangerous but sick.

Why are so many sitting idly by allowing a revenge-seeking president to utterly destroy their country rather than removing him?

Media coverage of the Al Gore-Al Jazeera story

Congress Must hold Hearings into the Al Jazeera Deal

ijreview.com

NewZeal

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

If Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) lets the Al Jazeera-Al Gore deal go through without scrutiny, then every broadcast entity or communications facility in America is ripe for the plucking by any of our nation’s enemies and adversaries.

For those who haven’t been paying attention lately, the government of Qatar has announced a deal through Al Jazeera with former Democratic Vice President Al Gore for his Current TV cable channel, in order to transform it into an arm of its Jihadist or “Terror TV” network, once known as a mouthpiece for mass murderer Osama bin Laden. They are planning to call it “Al Jazeera America,” when the oil money for the transaction is coming from abroad. This is part and parcel of the deception, which is designed to make it appear as though Al Jazeera is as American as apple pie and simply has a foreign-sounding name.

To be sure, the deal was not technically announced by Qatar, a Middle Eastern dictatorship where freedom of the press is not permitted. Instead, Al Jazeera made the announcement. But that is part of the deception. Al Jazeera is an arm of the Qatar regime and is not in any sense of the term an “independent” news organization. It is government-funded with “advertising” from such entities as Qatar Airways, the national airline partly owned by the regime. Qatar and Al Jazeera are one and the same.

The purpose of this transaction is to soften the American people up for more Middle East revolution, including within the borders of the U.S. Dr. Judea Pearl, the father of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, supports an investigation of the deal and says, “Al Jazeera weaves the ideological structure and combustible angers from which Jihadi recruits eventually emerge.”

Qatar postures as a friend of the United States and hosts a U.S military base. But Qatar also served as the base for anti-American and anti-Semitic “cleric” Yusef al-Qaradawi before he returned to Egypt to help consolidate the Muslim Brotherhood revolution there. Al-Qaradawi is a leading television personality on Al Jazeera.

You may have missed the news that Qatar just extended another $2.5 billion in economic aid for Egypt, following a gift of $400 million that the emir of Qatar made to the terrorist group Hamas.

Al Gore and his partners, including Joel Hyatt, got more than that—$500 million, according to reports. Whether or not that is an accurate figure, any amount is a drop in the bucket to the emir, who is worth billions of dollars and lives in opulence.

By the way, Muslim Brotherhood leader and president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, just told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he wants the release of the Blind Sheikh, sentenced to life in prison for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York City. This first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center killed six people and injured over 1,000 others.

Dr. Pearl calls Al Jazeera “the main propaganda machine” of the pro-terrorist Muslim Brotherhood. It is no surprise, therefore, that Qatar would underwrite the Egyptian regime and Hamas, and that the Obama Administration would voice no public objection to the sale of Current TV to Al Jazeera.

However, there is no reason to believe this sale is legal. The circumstances surrounding the sale clearly require Congressional hearings and this is where the Republican House of Representatives and its new chairman of Homeland Security, Rep. Michael McCaul, come in.

If ever there was a time for Congress to take action, this is it. This is not a time to let the Obama Administration take the lead, since it has already approved the questionable deal, which fattens the coffers of two prominent Democrats.

There are many things about this deal that stink and which require an investigation by McCaul’s committee.

towleroad.com

First, there are unresolved complaints to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) about Al Jazeera’s operations in the U.S. Jerry Kenney of Kenney Broadcasting has asked that the DOJ enforce the law by requiring that foreign propaganda pumped into American homes by Al Jazeera be labeled as such. He says, “Why is it that if I buy a pair of tennis shoes made in China, it has to be labeled made in China? But foreign propaganda which is being aired in the U.S. is not being labeled as foreign propaganda, with its country of origin, in violation of the law? I want to know what I am getting. If you know who has produced something, you look at it differently.”

Secondly, it appears that Al Jazeera has evaded the law requiring federal approval for foreign investments in America that have national security implications.

Al Jazeera has issued a 26-page document in which it claims that the deal “does not involve any federal communications licenses or other assets subject to FCC approval.” Again, this is deceptive, since broadcaster Jerry Kenney has filed an FCC complaint about Al Jazeera programming being illegally aired on taxpayer-supported public TV stations. Al Jazeera also claims that “None of the statutory factors that trigger a CFIUS review—e.g., production of important technology, production of military goods, operation of critical infrastructure—are implicated in this transaction.”

CFIUS is the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and is under the jurisdiction of the Treasury Department. It is described as “an inter-agency committee authorized to review transactions that could result in control of a U.S. business by a foreign person (‘covered transactions’), in order to determine the effect of such transactions on the national security of the United States.”

What “covered transactions” come under the review of CFIUS? We have learned through press reports that CFIUS approved China-based Dalian Wanda Group Corporation’s purchase of AMC Entertainment, one of the nation’s largest movie theater chains.

The CFIUS process is secretive but we learned about this approval from the Chinese entity, which announced it in a press release in July of 2012.

The writer Zach Coleman notes, “News broadcasting is more politically sensitive than cinema operation and Al Jazeera is a much more controversial acquirer than Dalian Wanda, which was previously unknown in the US.”

This is precisely the case. Yet, Al Jazeera claims it had no obligation to obey the law in this case.

I asked the Treasury Department whether Al Jazeera was required to apply for approval of the purchase and all I got was a run-around. A spokesman said, “I will decline to comment. By law, information filed with CFIUS may not be disclosed by CFIUS to the public. Accordingly, the Department does not comment on information relating to specific CFIUS cases, including whether or not certain parties have filed notices for review.”

How’s that for transparent government? Mark Jaskowiak, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Investment Security at Treasury, should be called before Congress to explain the double standard.

If the Chinese buying a movie theater chain comes under the auspices of CFIUS, then a takeover of a cable channel reaching 40-50 million homes has to qualify as well.

Jerry Kenney, president of Kenney Broadcasting, says, “It’s even more insidious in the case of Al Jazeera because cable companies bundle these packages of channels and deliver them to your home, whether you watch them or not. You end up subsidizing the channels you don’t want. Current TV was actually getting a fee from the cable operators to run the channel. So subscribers who pay for that package will end up paying money to Al Jazeera for its new channel.”

In the case of a movie theater, Kenney points out, “you have to make an effort to get out of your home to drive to a theater to watch a movie. With Al Jazeera, you will be forced to pay for it coming into your own home, whether you want it or not.”

It is time for Rep. McCaul to do his duty and announce hearings into this curious transaction. The Committee on Homeland Security can be reached at 202-226-8417.

Glenn Beck's inside story on failed Current TV bid

PIONEERS OF TELEVISION | Carol Burnett's first big break

PBS

Glenn Beck Unveils ‘American Dream Labs’

theblaze

Tiffany Gabbay

Each day this week, Glenn Beck will lay out a new component of his plans for a venture that encompasses various areas of technology and innovation dubbed The American Dream Labs. Inspired by legendary American innovators, Beck said he plans to build a network that changes the face of new media in a transformative way.

“This is not just about the future of TheBlaze, not just the future of the entire TV industry,” he stated.

On his Monday evening broadcast, Beck talked about his plans for the Dream Labs, which includes locations in Dallas, Salt Lake City and New Zealand, where the enterprise will explore projects on energy, education, high-tech, entertainment and even foster collaboration with Tesla Motors. On his Beck also provided viewers with insight into the future of TheBlaze itself, which is now slated to open satellites in three separate countries outside the U.S.

“If you believe in not only thinking outside the box but in shattering the box all together, you’ve come to the right place,” he said.

“Believe it or not, revolutionizing how the news is delivered and how a network is run is the smallest of our many, many dreams… I do that knowing that some will mock, others will dismiss. But that’s OK. Every era of change has those who are resistant to it and those who like the comfort of the status quo or those who wish to spend their free time or their creative time mocking. It’s time to stop worrying about what others are doing and wonder why are we here.”

Beck said that the scope of what he plans to do with his new Labs is “enormous” and that he hoped his viewers would take a leap of faith and join him on the journey. With the support of his audience, according to Beck, the Dream Labs could change the fabric of “information, technology, entertainment, and more.”

Each evening this week, Beck will focus on a different area of innovation that the American Dream Labs is slated to address. On Tuesday, he will tackle global news and information as well as “research and development” and the rest of the week will follow suit in kind.

Watch below for the first glimpse into the enterprise Beck has been speaking about since 2012 and stay tuned this week for more:

Al Jazeera/Al Gore TV Launches Campaign to Promote Hamas

FrontPageMag/ Daniel Greenfield

Do you know what America needs more of? News networks that support terrorists. And I don’t just mean terrorists who claim to be innocent or terrorists who claim to want to negotiate peace deals. I mean 100 percent unfiltered homicidal non-stop killing machine terrorists.

Do you know what America really needs? A news network that favors Hamas and Al Qaeda.

Although Al-Jazeera incites Muslim masses around the world to revolt against “repressive regimes,” while calling for “democracy,” “pluralism,” and the ousting of totalitarian rulers, Qatar itself does not hold elections, has no political parties, has no democratic institutions, and its citizens have no political or social rights. What Qatar does have, with the help of Sharia [Islamic religious law], is a strong, family-run system of enforcing internal security and suppressing opposition. Al-Jazeera is the well-oiled and well-funded machine of a family employing armed mercenaries who call themselves “media personnel”: Propaganda warriors who use cameras and microphones as weapons.
Recently Al-Jazeera seems to have decided to topple the Palestinian Authority [PA], and transfer to Hamas — Al-Qaeda’s ideological and practical brother-in-arms — the international recognition that the PA received from the UN in September, and to make Hamas sovereign in the West Bank as well as the Gaza Strip. To that end, it airs biased programs that are disproportionately favorable toward Hamas, and covers Hamas’s “achievements,” such as its “heroism” in firing rockets at Israeli civilians.
Al-Jazeera is now embarked on a campaign glorifying Hamas at the expense of the PA… It recently cast suspicion on the PA as having collaborated with Israel in “poisoning Arafat,” and broadcast a biased and exaggerated report of the alleged “tortures” inflicted on Hamas prisoners in PA jails, including claims of rape, threats toward female members of Hamas under interrogation and other horrors – all of which are meant to represent the “crimes” committed by the PA in collaboration with, and at the behest of, Israeli intelligence.
Other Al-Jazeera initiatives aimed at toppling the PA include spreading rumors of a third intifada, and encouraging Hamas in the West Bank to hold marches and carry cardboard models of Qassam rockets.

Now coming to America. Courtesy of Al Gore and Current TV.

Foxnews still sleeping: Sign of progress in Cuba?

Time Warner Cable Drops Current TV Upon Sale To Al Jazeera

huffingtonpost

ibtimes.com

NEW YORK –- Time Warner Cable pulled the plug on Current TV just hours after news of the cable channel's sale to Al Jazeera became official.

"This channel is no longer available on Time Warner Cable," read an on-screen message where Current TV used to be found.

Al Jazeera took a major step into the U.S. cable market Wednesday by acquiring beleaguered Current TV and announcing plans for a U.S.-based news network to be called Al Jazeera America. But while the new channel will soon be available in 40 million households, Al Jazeera faced a setback when Time Warner Cable -- which reaches 12 million homes -- announced it was dropping the low-rated Current, which occupied a spot that could have been switched to Al Jazeera America.

Joel Hyatt, who co-founded Current TV with former Vice President Al Gore, told staff in a Wednesday night memo that Time Warner Cable "did not consent to the sale to Al Jazeera."

"Consequently, Current will no longer be carried on TWC," Hyatt wrote. "This is unfortunate, but I am confident that Al Jazeera America will earn significant additional carriage in the months and years ahead."

A Time Warner Cable spokesman said in a statement that "our agreement with Current will be terminated and we will no longer be carrying the channel."

Some media observers interpreted the move as motivated by politics.

Piers Morgan: Time to Amend the Bible

thelittlelephant

How The Media's Fiscal Cliff Hype Could Backfire Massively

businessinsider

Joe Weisenthal 

In theory, all of the media hype about how the US will go down into a canyon of flames on January 1 if we hit the Fiscal Cliff should help lawmakers come together to hammer out a deal.

Today's New York Post cover is an overdramatized version of what most media are doing with their countdown clocks and so forth.

The problem becomes: What happens if there's no insta-tragedy on January 2, when everyone comes back to work and the market opens?

What if the market doesn't budge?

What if life for most people seems totally normal?

The problem then is that you have the debt ceiling fight coming up soon thereafter, and there there's a real likelihood that failure to raise it would result in catastrophe.

Even in 2011, there were a fair number of people who thought that not lifting the debt ceiling wasn't a big deal, and that everyone was just spinning scare stories. If we go over the Cliff and nothing happens, the skeptics will multiply this time. There'd be no credible pressure from anyone.

This isn't a first order worry. The big worry is austerity via lower spending and higher taxes. But in terms of addressing a real issue, all this hype isn't helping.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-medias-fiscal-cliff-hype-could-backfire-massively-2012-12#ixzz2GGqTEfAl

End of an era: Farewell, Newsweek

Mark Whitaker, CNN

February 17, 1933

Editor's note: Mark Whitaker is executive vice president and managing editor of CNN Worldwide. Whitaker worked at Newsweek for 25 years and was the editor from 1998 to 2006. Newsweek's final print edition publishes this week.

--------------------

(CNN) -- When people ask me if there's anything I miss about my old job at Newsweek, it's an easy answer. Besides the amazingly talented colleagues I worked with there, I miss picking the cover.

The cover is the calling card of any magazine, but it was particularly true for newsmagazines, since we put out a new issue every week and the range of subjects we had to choose from was so broad. In my era, as competition from more instant news on cable TV and the Web became ever more intense, it was also the one area where our slowpoke frequency could work in our favor.

Make a smart call on the cover, and it stayed on newsstands and coffee tables for an entire week for readers to admire and discuss. It's why, for instance, I still hear people talk about the cover story that I asked Fareed Zakaria, my former colleague at Newsweek (and now at CNN), to write after 9/11 called "Why They Hate Us."

Of course, the opposite was also true. Make a dumb call and you had to live with it for a whole week. A crudely Photoshopped cover of Martha Stewart emerging from behind a curtain after her brief prison stint for obstruction of justice and making false statements to investigators comes to mind.

For decades, the cover was also how the fierce competition between Newsweek and Time was defined. In the 1960s, Newsweek became a "hot book" after three decades as a distant also-ran, thanks largely to its forward-looking covers on civil rights, Vietnam and the women's movement (not to mention Twiggy and LSD). In the 1970s, it was the cleverness of its cover designs as well as the depth of its reporting that wowed everyone who followed Newsweek's coverage of Watergate.

When both magazines put a young Bruce Springsteen on the cover in the same week in 1975, it became conventional wisdom that we tried to copy each other. But the opposite was true: We were always looking to win the cover war, and we exulted when we did.

One of those moments came for me the weekend that Princess Diana died in 1997. We held the presses, threw out the issue we had just put to bed and came back into the office in the wee hours to publish a new one. I wanted a striking image for the cover and remembered a black and white photo of a short-haired Diana that had been taken by the fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier.

One of my photo editors, a friend of Demarchelier's, went to his apartment, woke him up and persuaded him to give us the negative. When I saw a wire service photo several hours later of Time's cover, a standard news shot of Diana, I knew our issue would crush theirs on the newsstand. And it did, selling well over a million copies.

Some weeks, like that one, the thrill was in "crashing" a cover at the last minute when a big story broke close to our Sunday deadline. John F. Kennedy Jr. would perish in a plane accident, or Saddam Hussein would get captured in Iraq, and we'd switch covers and have the satisfaction of looking nimble and newsy on Monday.

Details, however, could sometimes get overlooked in the rush. In 1990, when I wrote a Sunday story on Nelson Mandela's release from prison, we put the word "Free!" on the cover. We never stopped to think that people would assume we were giving away the magazine for nothing.

On slower news weeks, the satisfaction was in posing a pressing or provocative question about the economy, or race relations, or gay rights, or the fight to improve our health or save our schools. Or it was in deciding which icons deserved covers when they died, and what new cultural figures were worth highlighting on the way up. As proud as I was of putting a newly elected senator from Illinois named Barack Obama on our year-end cover in 2004, I was just as proud of selecting Jon Stewart in 2003.

Then there was the sheer creative fun of coming up with the designs and words for the cover. I'll never forget election night 2000, when the race between George W. Bush and Al Gore went into overtime. We were closing a special issue, and we had prepared separate covers declaring each man the winner. But what to do now?

At about 3 in the morning, my art director walked into my office with an image that her staff had concocted of the two faces melded into one. "That's genius!" I said, and we put it on the cover with the headline "The Winner Is..."

Decades from now, when people have forgotten most of what they read inside the pages of Newsweek, they'll still remember the visual impact of covers like that one. And those of us who were lucky enough to work there will remember those late nights, crowded in the editor's office, competing to see who could come up with the best cover line.

It sure was heaven while it lasted.

'Hate speech' targets 2nd Amendment supporters

WND.com.

Michael Carl

“If this hate speech leads to hate crimes, people like Piers Morgan and Chris Matthews will be partly responsible.”

That’s the word from Second Amendment Foundation Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb on the issue of the vitriol that is being directed both at gun owners and firearms rights organizations in the aftermath of the Connecticut school shooting tragedy.

Gottlieb said the hostile tone against gun owners may lead to actual “hate crimes,” and some of the communications that have come into his office have been “vulgar.”

“We have received some vulgar e-mails from people that want us to vanish for the sake of a civilized world,” Gottlieb said. “This kind of rhetoric does not contribute to any rational discussion.”

He said the level of dialogue is only heightening a violent atmosphere.

“Vitriol like this only promotes hate, but apparently it’s OK to perpetuate bigotry so long as you are an anti-gunner, and a liberal. If anyone is harmed as a result of this hate campaign, we expect them to be prosecuted under the hate crimes laws,” Gottlieb said.

The Examiner reported Texas Democratic Party leader John Cobaruvvias tweeted that NRA supporters should be shot.

“Can we now shoot the NRA and everyone who defends them?” he asked.

Cobaruvvias is not the only one to post an angry tweet. From a Democratic Party Twitter feed came “Murder every NRA member” and another too vile and violent to reproduce here.

Ironically, the NRA reports that in the days following the Connecticut school shootings, the gun group gained membership. One report said that the NRA has gained 8,000 new members each day since the Connecticut shootings.

But the rhetoric on television and in columns has been strident.

One of the clearest examples of the tone in the dialogue is the exchange between Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt and CNN host Piers Morgan.

In the interview Pratt said, “I think we need to ban gun control laws that keep people from being able to protect themselves. The problem is not going to go away if we ban this or that gun. We’ve tried that. That doesn’t work. Doesn’t even work in England. You have mass murders there all over Europe. There have been mass murderers.”

The dialogue:

Morgan: “You’re talking complete and utter – you are talking complete and utter nonsense. ”

Pratt: “The solution is for people to be able to defend themselves at the point of the crime and not wait for 20 minutes for the police to come after everybody is dead.”

Morgan: “What you’ve just said, Mr. Pratt, was an absolute lie. The gun murder rate in countries like Britain or Germany or Australia, who’ve all suffered massacres many years ago, similar nature, have – there are 35 people killed a year. Your country has 12,000.”

Pratt: “Your murder rate has – your murder rate is lower than ours, that is true. Your violent – ”

Morgan: “Lower? It’s 75 against 12,000 in Australia. ”

Pratt: “Your violent crime rate – ”

Morgan: “They had a massacre. And they got rid of these assault weapons.”

Pratt: “Your violent crime rate is higher than ours as is the violent crime rate in Australia. America is not the Wild West that you are depicting. We only have the problem in our cities, and unhappily, in our schools where people like you have been able to get laws put on the books that keep people from being able to defend themselves.

“I honestly don’t understand why you would rather have people be victims of a crime than be able to defend themselves. It’s incomprehensible. ”

Morgan: “You’re an unbelievably stupid man, aren’t you?”

Pratt: “It seems to me that you’re morally obtuse. You seem to prefer being a victim to being able to prevail over the criminal element. And I don’t know why you want to be the criminal’s friend. ”

Morgan: “What a ridiculous argument. You have absolutely no coherent argument whatsoever. You don’t – you don’t actually give – ”

Pratt: “You have no – ”

Morgan: You don’t give a d—, do you, about the gun murder rate in America? You don’t actually care. All you care about – ”

See the exchange:

Salon editor Jacob Sugarman contributed to the tone by his report on Pratt’s interview with Chris Matthews. Sugarman compared Pratt to a snake in his article.

“The reptilian executive director of Gun Owners of America, last seen telling gun control advocates that ‘they have the blood of little children on their hands,’ argued that we are less free without automatic rifles and need to stay prepared,” Sugarman wrote, inserting the quote from Pratt.

“Does this mean that the Gun Owners of America’s 300,000 members are preparing to revolt?” Sugarman also wrote.

Citizen’s Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Communications Director Dave Workman says the current atmosphere isn’t helping the situation and that his group wants to open a real dialogue.

“We want to really study the issue of what causes violence in America. We want to examine the issue of mental health in America and take a hard look at violent video games and television shows,” Workman said.

Workman says his group’s interest is to bring the discussion back to the factors that really cause violence.

SAF President Joseph Tartaro said focusing on guns alone “to the exclusion of possible other causative factors is doomed to failure.”

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2012/12/hate-speech-targets-2nd-amendment-supporters/#dWdoH22vMflROh8x.99