Biden Warns Against Delegitimizing the Courts, Undermining the Media

He's got a point.  Both the courts and the media are important checks and balances on an out of control administration. But it's not Trump who is delegitimizing them.  They have already delegitimized themselves -- by their furiously partisan reporting and their selective enforcement of the law.

That the 9th circuit ignored many precedents set by Obama and others in disallowing Trump's Muslim travel ban was blatant even for them.  So when a major part of the judiciary is so selective in enforcing the law, why should anyone have respect for them? Why is something wrong only when Trump does it?

And note that the media just bowed down to Obama's constant and explicit efforts to supplant legislation by regulations.  And the courts let a lot of that through as well

So Biden is right.  The present situation is a bad one for America -- but his side of politics is responsible for it.  One can only hope that Trump's judicial appointments will help restore the balance

Former Vice President Joe Biden spoke out Wednesday about efforts to undermine the press and “delegitimize the courts,” saying “an independent and free press is the fundamental element” in a functioning democracy.

Biden spoke about “the almost drumbeat of denigration of the institutional structures that govern us.”

“When you delegitimize the courts, you delegitimize the legislative body. It’s corrosive, and it makes it almost impossible to reach compromise,” he said during a speech where he was given the 2017 Congressional Patriot Award by the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Biden said “if we undermine or destroy” the media, “we do it at our own peril.”

He said he’s taken more than his “fair share of hits from the press,” adding that he’s been “covered by the very best in the business and some of the worst.”

“Some of you press guys are lousy, just like some senators are lousy, like doctors are lousy, lawyers are lousy, but it doesn’t matter. We should never challenge the basic truth that an independent and free press is the fundamental element in functioning of our democracy,” Biden said.

Biden complained that politics “has become much too negative, too nasty, too petty, too personal, and yes, too partisan.”

“Compromise has literally become a dirty word,” he said. “We don’t just question other people’s judgment [when] we disagree with them, but we question their motivation now.”

“If you don’t agree with me, it’s because you’re in the pocket of somebody or if you don’t agree with me, you’re being bought off. If you don’t agree with me, it’s because you are not a good person. We don’t know each other anymore,” Biden said.

He said it’s hard to dislike someone “on the other side when you understand their problems.”

“We’ve got to stop being blinded by anger,” Biden said. “We’ve got to see each other again and continue to focus on hope and the things that unite us.

“I’ve always believed that we’re strongest when we’re one America, and I really mean that – rich, poor, middle-class, black, white, Hispanic, gay, straight, transgender - folks like my family and all of yours at some point who came to this country with a dream – new immigrants arriving today. One America. We’re all in this together. Everybody does their fair share. We can argue about what that share is… but we’ve got to move beyond where we are today,” he said.

SOURCE

**************************

Reporters savaged Trump for suggesting liberals behind anti Jewish threats

Now a liberal king of fake news has been arrested for the offences

President Donald Trump this week, lamenting a national wave of phoned-in threats to Jewish community centers, countered the mainstream media’s insistence that Trump supporters were behind it by suggesting perhaps it was a liberal.

Reporters reacted with feral outrage, howling at the thought a liberal could be behind such vile threats, until the FBI arrested a suspect in connection with some of the threats.

He’s a liberal.  In fact, he’s a liberal reporter.  And he’s a nationally notorious liberal reporter.

“A St. Louis man has been arrested for making some of the bomb threats against Jewish community centers,” The Washington Examiner reports.

“According to a criminal complaint filed in the Southern District of New York, Juan Thompson was arrested on one count of cyberstalking.”

Thompson made threats to several Jewish community centers, as well as the New York headquarters of the Anti-Defamation League.

The Juan Thompson taken into custody is no stranger to media coverage.  He used to be on the other side of it.

Thompson was fired in 2015 from his job as a reporter at The Intercept after reporting on his interview with Scott Roof, the cousin of racist mass killer Dylann Roof. It was a massive scoop, and Thompson’s story grabbed national headlines.

But there was a problem.  Scott Roof didn’t exist.  Thompson made up the story and the quotes.  His editors looked into other stories he had written, and found many of them to be completely made up.

“Thompson fabricated several quotes in his stories and created fake email accounts that he used to impersonate people, one of which was a Gmail account in my name,” Intercept editor-in-chief Betsy Reed confessed to readers. One of the people Thompson impersonated through fake email accounts was Reed herself.

Thompson was back in the national news, but this time exposed as a liar.

After being bounced from The Intercept, Thompson landed a job at “Media Blackout USA” before being canned after writing just six stories.

Thompson’s writing are unapologetically leftist.  In  “‘No Justice, No Respect’: Why the Ferguson Riots Were Justified,” Thompson claimed to have been gassed by police while in Ferguson, Missouri.

“…any person who looks at Ferguson and does not recognize the root cause of it is not the least bit interested in confronting America’s institutionalized racism. He or she is committed to maintaining the current social order that was built to oppress and degrade black life. He or she is an opponent of justice and a proponent of white supremacy,” he wrote.

“You show me a capitalist, and I’ll show you a bloodsucker,” he writes on his Twitter profile.

Thompson was planning to run for St. Louis Mayor.  As a socialist. “F–k it. I’m young, gifted, black, and a socialist and I’m running for mayor of St. Louis in 2017. #peoplepower,” he wrote on Twitter. (We deleted the expletive.)

“Make no mistake: #Chicago’s southside is about to be ethnically cleansed. It will look drastically different in 10 yrs,” he posted to Twitter Feb. 23, claiming President Trump was plotting to exterminate black people.

Thompson also took to Twitter to show off his latest tattoo, of Malcolm X, which he got in Cuba.  He also promoted anti-Trump “Resist” t-shirts.

Now he’s in custody for a series of bomb threats and threats to kill President Trump, which he made while impersonating a woman he once dated.  He claims he’s being framed by the “nasty white woman.”

“Thompson appears to have made some of the … threats as part of a sustained campaign to harass and intimidate” the woman, the FBI complaint reads.

“The defendant allegedly caused havoc, expending hundreds of hours of police and law enforcement resources to respond and investigate these threats,” said NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill. “We will continue to pursue those who peddle fear.”

All of this begs the question.  How did such an obvious liar and mentally unstable psychotic land multiple jobs at liberal media outlets?

And will liberals finally admit liberalism’s mainstream has a domestic terrorism problem?

SOURCE

Below is a picture of Juan Thompson, together with a picture of Jayson Blair, the famous creator of fake news at the NYT.  What makes such people think they can get away with totally made-up stuff?

***************************

Soft on Russia?

Not Trump.  Obama/Clinton were much softer

If you want to contain rather than coddle Russia, you certainly would not do what Barack Obama did ahead of his 2012 presidential election. Recall if you will, Obama told then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that incoming President Vladimir Putin needed to “give me space” on missile defense and other major policy and security matters ahead of the 2012 presidential election, and that after the election Obama would have “more flexibility.” Medvedev said he would “transmit” the message to Putin.

So as opposed to Obama’s weak and subservient sop to Moscow, let’s examine if Donald Trump’s policy is promoting or containing Russian power. There are a couple of key elements:

First, Russia’s anemic economy is totally dependent on oil and gas prices, so what has Trump done — opened the gate on oil exploration to keep the price down. And in general, to ensure dominance over totalitarian and dictator states, Trump is taking action to rekindle America’s economic might.

Second, Trump is following Ronald Reagan’s playbook to rebuild our military to contain threats like Russian expansion into Ukraine, which got a yawn from Obama.

Make no mistake, Obama and his secretary of state, Hillary “Reset Button” Clinton, were soft on Russia. Trump, on the other hand, is restoring America’s standing in the world.

And as for the Demo claims that Jeff Sessions perjured himself in confirmation testimony, that’s all political theater designed to derail Trump’s momentum after his congressional address Tuesday night.

SOURCE

*******************************

Mattis livid at reports disputing value of Yemen raid

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is hopping mad about media reports disputing his assessment that the U.S. special operations raid in Yemen last month yielded "vital intelligence."

Aides say Mattis is particularly upset about an NBC News report suggesting that so far none of the intelligence gathered in the raid, which cost the life of Navy SEAL William "Ryan" Owens, has proven to be either "actionable or vital."

"That is inaccurate," said a senior Pentagon official, who said while much of the intelligence is still being exploited, the cache of seized computers, cell phones, and hard drive has already produced leads as to where other al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula terrorists were located in Yemen, and their contacts.

The official said the raid was considered worth the risk of sending U.S. ground forces because AQAP has a history of plotting, inspiring, and exporting terror to America and the West, and because the U.S. has no military presence on the ground.

The U.S. said AQAP was behind the "underwear bomber," Boston Marathon bombing, and the 2015 attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris.

As if to underscore that the Jan. 29 raid gave the U.S. a better idea of where to strike in Yemen, U.S. warplanes and drones struck a suspected al Qaeda hideout in a mountainous region of Yemen on Thursday, according to the Associated Press.

The Pentagon has consistently said that the raid was a success, and that it was a worthwhile mission given that AQAP is the "most capable element of al Qaeda in exporting terror to the west."

"Valuable and actionable intelligence was taken in this operation," said Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, in a Pentagon briefing earlier this month.

SOURCE

******************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

***************************