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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Fake News Media Go To War With Trump CNN and Buzzfeed go all in on unsubstantiated dossier of anti-Trump “intelligence.” Joseph Klein

The leftwing online “news” outlet Buzzfeed disgraced itself by publishing a widely discredited document making unsubstantiated charges against President–elect Donald Trump, purporting to tie Mr. Trump to compromising information that the Russian government had allegedly collected on him. The allegations regurgitated by Buzzfeed came from a “dossier” which, Buzzfeed said on its site, was “compiled by a person who has claimed to be a former British intelligence official.” The site tried to cover itself with a warning: “The allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors.” Buzzfeed’s own editor, Ben Smith, admitted that he has “serious reason to doubt the allegations” in it. Nevertheless, Buzzfeed went ahead and published the unverified allegations with the flimsy rationale “that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government.” Ben Smith tried to put lipstick on his pig by claiming that “publishing this dossier reflects how we see the job of reporters in 2017.” If the job of reporters is to knowingly publish completely unsubstantiated, sensationalist stories whose only “value” is to further polarize the country, the media are in big trouble. Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly,” which Gallup has been polling since 1972, will continue to hit new lows.

CNN amplified the false story by giving prominent attention to it on the air, without the warning it was unsubstantiated and contained errors that even Buzzfeed published. In fact, CNN described the source for the story as “credible.” Subsequently, CNN lamely tried to defend its reporting, instead of apologizing for running with a story that even the New York Times described as “a summary of unsubstantiated reports.” And then, in an attempt to change the subject, CNN conducted what it called a “reality check” of claims that Mr. Trump made during his news conference on January 11th . In the process, they ended up doing even more damage to their own credibility. For example, CNN critiqued Mr. Trump’s claim that “I have no deals in Russia.” Note that he spoke in the present tense and said that he has no deals in Russia, meaning actual completed commercial agreements currently in effect. CNN tried to refute this claim as “misleading” by themselves misleadingly pointing to a deal he had been negotiating in 2013, with a Russian billionaire, to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Even CNN admitted this approximately 4-year-old negotiation was never finalized. CNN even reached way back to 1987 when Mr. Trump “visited the Soviet Union with his first wife, Ivana, and announced plans to develop a luxury hotel there.” Of course, whatever the president-elect, his family or his company may have tried to do in Russia years ago, or said in the past about business prospects in Russia, has no relevance to whether his claim that “I have no deals in Russia” today is true.

5 Things You Should Know About Trump VA Pick David Shulkin By Tyler O’Neil

In his press conference on Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump announced his selection for U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs. He chose the current Undersecretary of the department, David Shulkin.

“We’re going to straighten out the VA for our veterans,” Trump declared. “Because our veterans have been treated very unfairly.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has fallen under fire in the past three years, for its record of shoddy care, long lines, and rampant corruption. The horror stories keep on coming: In November, an Iraq veteran committed suicide after the VA told him he’d have to wait months for treatment. In May, the current VA secretary, Robert McDonald, dismissed long wait times by comparing them to ride lines at Disney. In October, a veteran died with maggots in his wound at the VA, causing four employees to resign.

As a result of these horror stories, Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), a nonprofit group focused on VA reform, denounced the problem as cultural, and called for more health care choices for veterans and more accountability for staff at the VA.

“It is no secret that the VA has been failing veterans for years,” CVA Executive Director Mark Lucas said in a statement following Trump’s announcement. “While Shulkin already holds a leadership position at the VA, as Secretary, he will now have ultimate responsibility over the agency and we are hopeful he will take it in a new direction. CVA will seek to partner with Shulkin on urgently needed reforms, such as empowering veterans to access care outside the VA when the VA is failing them.”

“We are cautiously optimistic that Shulkin will turn things around and we want to give the Trump administration the opportunity to partner with us on choice and accountability reforms,” An anonymous source at CVA told PJ Media. “It must be noted, though, how horribly the VA has done under McDonald. So we hope Shulkin brings a fresh start now that he is in full control.”

So who is Shulkin? Here are 5 things you should know about Trump’s VA pick.
1. He is a medical doctor.

Shulkin graduated with an M.D. from the Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1986, and did his internship at Yale School of Medicine. He completed his residency and fellowship in General Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Presbyterian Medical Center. He served as chief medical officer for multiple hospitals and hospital systems.

2. He was appointed by Obama.

Shulkin was nominated for Undersecretary of Health at the VA by President Obama in March, 2015. He would be the first member of the Obama administration chosen by President-elect Trump to join the new administration. He was confirmed unanimously by the Senate in June 2015, a sign that he might be Trump’s first uncontroversial pick as well.
3. He was a successful businessman.

Shulkin is an entrepreneur. He founded a health care information company called DoctorQuality. When he joined the VA, he resigned from a private sector position with an annual salary of $1.3 million, and now only makes $170,000 a year at the VA.

4. He is not a veteran.

Notably, Shulkin has never served in the military, although he has an extensive record in health care. As NPR’s Quil Lawrence reported in December, the VA has always been headed by a veteran. He will be the first non-veteran VA secretary.
5. He has presided over the VA scandal.

For good or ill, Shulkin’s tenure at the Department of Veterans Affairs has continued to be plagued by scandal. It is possible he would champion reforms to allow veterans more choice in health care, and that he might turn around the culture of unaccountability which plagues the VA, but scandals have continued under his watch. In January 2016, Shulkin launched a “VA Shark Tank” to target innovations and improvements to the VA medical centers. Still, it seems the fundamental problems are persisting.

We Deserved Better Than Obama for Our First Black President By Walter Hudson

His legacy, a failure. His opportunity, a waste. His impact, division.

President Barack Obama addressed a tearful crowd of 20,000 supporters in his hometown of Chicago on Tuesday, reflecting upon his two terms in the White House and calling for action to preserve his legacy. From NBC News:

Obama warned that “if every economic issue is framed as a struggle between a hardworking white middle class and undeserving minorities, then workers of all shades will be left fighting for scraps while the wealthy withdraw further into their private enclaves.”

Obama also warned that “Democracy can buckle when we give in to fear. So just as we, as citizens, must remain vigilant against external aggression, we must guard against a weakening of the values that make us who we are.”

Obama leaves office as a failed president. Unable to lead as a statesman and work with Congress to secure consensus legislation, Obama built his legacy on a combination of executive orders and administrative rule-making. The incoming Trump administration will be able to reverse as much of that as they wish, all but erasing Obama’s presidency.

The failure extends beyond statecraft. As the nation’s first black president, Obama had an opportunity that will never again present itself. He was given a chance to set the tone for American race relations for the 21st century. With that opportunity, he could have done anything. He might have chosen to lead the nation toward a truly post-racial worldview, fulfilling Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of a world where individuals are judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. Instead, Obama used his bully pulpit to drag us back to the 1960s.

There will no doubt be another black president someday. But there will never be another first black president. That unique opportunity to set a post-racial tone will never again manifest. Instead, the next black president will start from a disadvantage, inheriting the divisive baggage of Barack Obama.

On the bright side, the chance remains for the first female president to emerge as an inspiring and unifying figure. Had Hillary Clinton prevailed, she would have no doubt wasted the opportunity in much the same way Obama has. Americans of either gender and all racial backgrounds deserve better. CONTINUE AT SITE

What unsubstantiated ‘news stories’ about Democrats would you like to see? By Ed Straker

The media has created a new standard for reporting “news”: it is appropriate to report anything, anything at all, as long as you preface it by saying it is “unsubstantiated.” That is the new standard for reporting about Donald Trump. But what if the media applied the same reporting standard to Democrats?

1) Would Politico post unreliable reports about Congressman Charlie Crist and his alleged relationship with a certain Green Iguana?

2) Would the Washington Post hypothesize about whether George Stephanopoulos is still mentally ill?

3) Would The New York Times suddenly change its tune and start speculating about where Obama was really born and what his real religion is?

4) Would ABC News run with speculation about who Vera Baker is, and what her alleged relationship with President Obama is or might have been?

5) Do you think we could expect to see unsubstantiated reports about Senator Cory Booker’s dating preferences?

6) Might the media published unsourced documents detailing Hillary Clinton’s alleged involvement in Vince Foster’s death?

7) Would the media publish claims from an anonymous source about the precise nature of the relationship between Hillary and her “body woman,” Huma Abedin?

8) And whom has Bill Clinton been violating lately? Wave some cash around hookers in Harlem and report whatever they say!

Can you imagine the media doing any of this? No, of course not. Because these are all Democrats, and the media holds them to a different standard; they never publish damaging personal information even if they are sure of the veracity.

Trump: The Outsider Moves Inside by Christopher Caldwell

The entire publicity apparatus of the media and government was enlisted to make a vote for him appear futile. Now poised to take power, many previously silent supporters will come out of the woodwork. His prospects of political success may be correspondingly larger.
In early December, when President-elect Donald Trump’s post-election “Thank You Tour” arrived at the US Bank Arena in Cleveland, someone hollered out of the audience, “We love you, Donald.” Trump yelled, “I love you, too”—one of the oratorical innovations of Barack Obama’s successful campaign for president in 2008 that few politicians have been able to resist imitating. But then, Trump pointed to the working-class fellow in the audience who had hollered in the first place. Trump said, in his unsyntactical way, “Guy. Some guy. Look at this guy. And I do love him. He’s a rough-looking cookie, though, I tell you. Love. We love. And there’s going to be a lot of love in this country.”

In a strange sense, spreading the love may be the biggest policy challenge Donald Trump faces as he approaches the presidency. His opponents are predicting catastrophe. Some of them are actively wishing for it. Hillary Clinton’s campaign backed an attempt to undo his election through legal challenges in three states. Not since Ronald Reagan has an American president arrived in the White House amid such widespread anxiety over his basic competence. Although Reagan was re-elected easily after four years, it took a long time to disabuse his detractors of the notion that he was too stupid to be president. And Donald Trump has a particular challenge. He was elected on an explicitly nostalgic campaign slogan—“Make America Great Again”. No politician can keep a promise to turn back the clock. Failure of one kind or another seems inevitable.

Yet Trump scored a triumph just days after his election. Carrier, an air-conditioning manufacturer that had been a special target of Trump’s bile on the campaign trail, agreed to cut in half a plan to move production facilities to Mexico. The initiative will keep 1100 jobs in Indiana. Newspapers have mocked Trump’s plans to bring industrial jobs back to the United States. “The reality is more complicated,” says the Los Angeles Times. Maybe so, but the Carrier deal is a sign that Trump is stronger than he looks. Voters who have had their credulity abused by politicians extolling capitalism’s theoretical benefits are likely to be patient with him. “They forgot that it was the American worker who truly built the country,” Trump said of the experts during his Cincinnati speech. Even if Trump cannot re-establish the high-paying manufacturing jobs of half a century ago, they are a symbol that he will not forget working people.

The Woman Who Scooped Everyone on World War II Clare Hollingworth was a journalist of the old school—daring, dogged and open-minded. By Melanie Kirkpatrick

The celebrated British war correspondent Clare Hollingworth died Tuesday in Hong Kong at 105. The news reached me via her obituary in the Daily Telegraph, which a friend emailed. It was fitting that the Telegraph published one of the first reports of her death, as the newspaper also published Hollingworth’s most famous article and arguably the biggest scoop of the 20th century: the outbreak of World War II.

In late August 1939, Hollingworth was a 27-years-old cub reporter for the Telegraph in Poland. After talking a British diplomat into allowing her to borrow his car, she drove across the border into Germany, where she observed large numbers of troops, tanks and field artillery lined up along a road.

As she wrote in her autobiography, when the wind blew open burlap screens “constructed to hide the military vehicles . . . I saw the battle deployment.” Her story appeared in the London newspaper on Aug. 29 under the headline “1,000 Tanks Massed on Polish Frontier.” Germany invaded Poland three days later.

The young reporter’s scoop heralded the rest of her journalism career, which took her to the four corners of the Earth. She was a journalist of the old school—daring, dogged and open-minded. She was interested, above all, in “getting the story.” In pursuit of that goal, she would talk to anyone, travel anywhere, endure any discomfort.

Hollingworth spent six years covering World War II in dangerous assignments that took her to Central Europe, the Balkans and northern Africa. Next she covered the war in Algeria, two wars between India and Pakistan, conflicts in Aden, Burma, Borneo and Ceylon, the Vietnam War, two Arab-Israeli wars, the bloody birth of Bangladesh, and the Cultural Revolution in China.

In 1946 she was staying at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem when a bomb went off, killing 91 people. “I was not being brave,” she once wrote about her adventures. “My over-riding feeling was enthusiasm for a good story.”

Her sources included high government officials and military officers as well as soldiers and ordinary people. When I knew her in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong in the 1980s and ’90s, she was as welcome at the governor’s sedate dinner parties as she was at the raucous bar of the Foreign Correspondents Club or with the local patrons of sidewalk noodle stands.

In what was perhaps her sole concession to being a female reporter in what was then mostly a man’s world, she often made a point of befriending sources’ families, secretaries and household help. Such sources came in handy, such as when she broke the news, in 1963, that British double agent Kim Philby had defected to the Soviet Union. The wife he left behind in Beirut was one of her sources.

Since the early 1980s, Hollingworth made her home in Hong Kong. She would hold court at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, where she often could be found in a corner of the bar sipping a G&T and attired in her regular working uniform of a custom-made safari suit and rubber-soled Chinese slippers. She was a marvelous raconteur, and I heard some of her best tales over dinner in the club’s upstairs dining room. CONTINUE AT SITE

Tillerson for State Trump and his nominee show more realism on Russia.

Over several hours before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, Rex Tillerson presented a largely clear-eyed view of Russia and American interests. Though the Secretary of State nominee had tense exchanges—with Marco Rubio over whether Vladimir Putin is a “war criminal,” with Tim Kaine on climate change, with others about his claim that Exxon had never “directly lobbied” against Russian sanctions—on the whole it was a sober, informed performance.

This sobriety was in marked contrast to the circus provoked by the publication of allegations—completely unsubstantiated—that the Russians hold compromising information about Donald Trump and worked with his surrogates to influence the 2016 election.

Among the allegations is that Mr. Trump hired prostitutes to perform degrading acts on a bed at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow that had been slept in by President and Mrs. Obama. Another is that Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, held a “clandestine meeting” with “Kremlin representatives” in Prague last August. These are two items drawn from 35 pages of memos prepared by a former British MI6 officer who was formerly stationed in Russia and who was paid first by Republican opponents of Mr. Trump and then by Democrats.

The memos had been circulating in press and political circles for some time. Yet even many publications that were vociferously anti-Trump declined to publish the material because they couldn’t substantiate the claims.

This changed Tuesday. First CNN published a dispatch noting that a summary of the memos had been attached to a report by the U.S. intelligence community on Russian hacking—though CNN did not include the uncorroborated details. The BuzzFeed website then published the 35 pages of memos even as its editor admitted “there is serious reason to doubt the allegations.”

The response was predictable. Mr. Trump took to Twitter to deny everything and ask with his familiar restraint if the U.S. is now “Nazi Germany.” Mr. Cohen said he’d never been to Prague. Amid Wednesday’s press conference brawl, it was easy to miss that Mr. Trump conceded for the first time that Russia was behind the hacks on the Democrats last year. Mr. Trump’s vehement denials also mean that if we learn in the future that Russia does have compromising details about him, his Presidency could be over.

All of this is a reminder—as if we need it—that the Trump Administration will be unlike any we’ve experienced. But when you look past the salacious, there’s been some healthy movement even on Russia. Mr. Tillerson showed that he’s nobody’s fool, that he has a good sense of the challenges America faces, and that the U.S. has paid a price for the Obama Administration’s retreat from leadership.

Notably he said that Russia “poses a danger,” that “there should have been a show of force” when the Russians invaded Crimea, and that the U.S. ought to give Ukrainians the arms they need to defend themselves against Russia. He had similar messages about how we have to “send China a clear signal” about its military buildup on contested islands in the South China Sea.

We wish Mr. Trump would handle these media frenzies with more presidential composure, but that’s all the more reason for the Senate to confirm Mr. Tillerson to advise him.

The Trump Russia Files The president-elect’s interregnum turns into a media circus damaging everyone.By Daniel Henninger

A standard journalistic defense for publishing, or reporting on, the sort of thing BuzzFeed put on the web Tuesday night about Donald Trump’s alleged compromise by the Russians is that “the people” ultimately will sort it all out. You could say the same thing about tornadoes.

Conventional wisdom after the election held that the media had been chastened by its coverage of the campaign, that it had learned to be more careful about separating facts from the media bubble.

The past week’s news, if one still can call it that, was bookended by two Trump files. The first was the intelligence community report that Russia’s hack of the presidential election favored Mr. Trump. The second was a salacious opposition-research file on Mr. Trump published by BuzzFeed, which says it is about “trending buzz.” Below the site’s Trump-in-Russia stories Wednesday sat, “Lauren Conrad Just Posted The Most Adorable Photo Of Her Baby Bump.”
No one has learned anything.

When people played on real pinball machines, everyone knew that if you banged on the machine too hard, it would lock up. It would “tilt.” Because so many once-respected institutions are behaving so badly, the American system is getting close to tilt.

The interregnum between the election result and next week’s inauguration has become a wild, destructive circus, damaging the reputation and public standing of everyone performing in it, including Donald Trump.

Trumpians will resist that thought, but they should be concerned at their diminishing numbers. Quinnipiac’s poll this week puts Mr. Trump’s approval rating at 37%. Building in even an expansive margin for error, this is an astonishing low for a president-elect.

Mr. Trump routinely mocks the “dishonest media.” He has a point, but dishonesty isn’t the problem. The internet, media’s addictive drug, is the problem. Whatever publication standards existed before the web are eroding.

Any person getting a significant federal job undergoes an FBI background check. These “raw” FBI files—a mix of falsity, half-truths and facts—are never published.

The BuzzFeed story about Donald Trump in Russia is a raw FBI file, or worse. Once it went online, every major U.S. news outlet prominently published long accounts of the story, filled with grave analysis and pro forma caveats about “unverifiable,” as if this is an exemption for recycling sludge.

This isn’t news as normally understood. It’s something else. CONTINUE AT SITE

Kerry Exits as Congenital Liar and Traitor to America & Israel By Joan Swirsky

Nothing could have surprised—indeed shocked—the national and international public more than learning through a Boston Globe article by Jennifer Anne Perez on February 2, 2003, that U.S. Senator John Kerry—who presented himself as a born-to-the-purple “Boston Brahmin” of Irish-Catholic ancestry—was in fact the grandson of Czech Jews.

Like another Democrat, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Kerry pretended to be shocked! shocked! to learn of his Jewish heritage.

Only when he was outed did this poseur—more known for marrying heiresses then for any legislative accomplishments in his over 30 years as a U.S. senator—admit that, yes, his Eastern European ancestors, surnamed Kohn (a variation of Cohen) were Jews.

But why, after he knew the truth, would he be one of the major architects of a policy to destroy the Jewish state of Israel, as he did with his genocidal speech in the State Department at the end of December?

Of course, the same can be asked of Jews like George Soros, Peter Beinart, and dozens of other Jewish Jew haters who lie awake nights roiling and ruminating over Israel’s success—indeed, its very existence—and feel so distressed by their own Jewishness that they spend their entire lives plotting and planning and spending millions of words and dollars to obliterate Israel, which they no doubt fantasize will kill the Jew inside themselves.

Here’s an ironic twist: Carrie’s younger brother Cameron, an attorney, converted to Judaism in 1983 and is racist children as juice.

Getting back to John Kerry, however, we now know that from the very beginning of his public life, he knew he had Jewish roots but lied about them. I think this is called being a liar.
ONCE A LIAR…

No one has said it better than the founder an editor of the New York Sun, Seth Lipsky: “It looks like Secretary of State Kerry is determined to go out the way he came in—wrapping himself in the flag while betraying the causes of both America and its allies. He came in by doing that to Vietnam and is going out by turning on Israel. “

To be sure, if there’s one thing most Americans are certain about it’s that Kerry lied through his teeth when he defamed the heroic soldiers he fought with in Vietnam, accusing them—falsely—of hideous war crimes.

Lipsky explains that, “Kerry’s tirade against Jewish settlements and liberated Judea and Samaria was breathtaking and it’s mendacity.” And what is the definition of mendacity? Lying!

“We Know in Alabama Who Jeff Sessions Is”: Black Pastors Defend Trump’s AG Pick Against Charges of Racism by Lauretta Brown

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) is a “very decent man” who has “served well and whose track record speaks for itself,” an Alabama pastor said on Capitol Hill Monday, as he and other black pastors spoke out in support for President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Attorney General.

“We know in Alabama who Jeff Sessions is,” Bishop Kyle Searcy, senior pastor of the multi-racial, nondenominational Fresh Anointing House of Worship in Montgomery, Ala., told CNSNews.com.

“And it’s important to me that the truth comes out about him,” he added, “that he’s known for who is, he’s known for the good things he’s done in Alabama.”

“It’s time in America that we become fair, that we stop listening to talking points,” Searcy said, referring to allegations of racism against Sessions.

“When somebody comes up that some people would be against – based on either party affiliation or based on fears, they may be unfounded fears, but based on fears – then typically there’s a need to scrape the bottom of the barrel and try to dig out whatever you can find, that might be an accusation that people would hear that would transfer the fear they have to others,” he said.

Addressing the press conference, Searcy said, “Those of us in Alabama know him to be a very kind and a very decent man, man that both Democrats and Republicans alike both endorse and appreciate, a man who’s served well and whose track record speaks for itself.”

Also speaking at the event organized by the Family Research Council (FRC) was Rev. Dean Nelson, director of African-American outreach for FRC’s Watchmen on the Wall, a ministry to pastors, and chairman of the board for the Frederick Douglass Foundation.

Nelson noted that Sessions helped prosecute and insisted on the death penalty for Ku Klux Klan (KKK) member Henry Francis Hays, who had abducted and killed a black teenager.

“Senator Sessions has consistently demonstrated respect and care for people of all races while serving in his home state of Alabama,” Nelson said. “He has, in fact, worked relentlessly on the side of desegregation and justice.”

Bishop Harry Jackson, senior pastor at the Hope Christian Church in the D.C. area, pointed out that Sessions had “helped desegregate schools in Alabama, a huge issue.”

“Also he got the death penalty for a KKK murderer. I think that would qualify you as someone who’s eliminating racism, not one who’s perpetrating it on anyone.”

Rev. William Green, also a minister at the Fresh Anointing House of Worship, said he could always count on Sessions “to stand up and stand on Christian principles.”

Sessions is not racist, he said.

True racism, said Green, is “what you see when Dylan Roof walked in and shot people [in a Charleston church in June 2015] simply because they were black. True racism is what you see when the four young kids kidnapped that white kid and tortured him. That is true racism. I think we do true racism an injustice when we throw it around so lightly.”

Rev. Ralph Chittams, president of the D.C. chapter of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, recalled that Sessions had “spearheaded the effort to honor the mother of the civil rights movement, Rosa Parks. He spearheaded the effort to have bestowed upon her the Congressional Gold Medal [in 1999].”

Chittams quoted from a Senate floor speech by Sessions at the time in which he said, “Equal treatment under the law is a fundamental pillar upon which our republic rests… As legislators we should work to strengthen the appreciation for this fundamental governing principle by recognizing those who make extraordinary contributions towards ensuring that all American citizens have the opportunity, regardless of their race, sex, creed, or national origin, to enjoy in the freedoms that this country has to offer.”