Just How Bad is Legacy Media?

The first is the rise of politicized media “fact-checkers,” and the second is Facebook, the social media site.

It is arguable we have never had a completely free media, but today, independent media is pretty much there.

In 2016, I wrote a piece for the magazine’s website bluntly calling Facebook’s plan to collaborate with outside media organizations to fact check content on the platform “a terrible idea.” And years before that, in 2011, I had written a cover story for the magazine headlined “Lies, Damned Lies, and ‘Fact-Checking.’” It was the first major—and deeply critical—examination of media “fact checking” organizations, such as PolitiFact and The Washington Post Fact Checker.

For the next few days, I am going to run short - 1-3 minute reads - excerpts from a new book, Against the Corporate Media, 42 Ways the Media Hates You - a book of essays to which I contributed, along with forty-one others on just what happened.

“What do you two do?” one finally asked.

In 2017, editors above my paygrade decided that we were going to be one of a handful of media outlets that agreed to collaborate with Facebook for the social media giant’s “fact checking” program.

I had just escaped snowy London; the house in which I lived had no central heating because my landlady felt that “central heating kills a house”. 

https://elizabethnickson.substack.com/p/just-how-bad-is-legacy-media

A Cashless Society Is A Controlled Society- If Everything Must go Through an Online Banking or Credit Card Process, Then You Have Just Lost Virtually all Control Over What You Buy.

Having cash makes it easier to buy direct from individuals.

Transactions such as getting a great deal on a vintage bureau on Craigslist or scooping up a baby stroller at a garage sale are easier with cash for everyone involved.

And those possible situations are just everyday occurrences.

You also might want to avail yourself of a chance to get in on a friend’s bulk purchase by buying just one pair out of a dozen gloves or a small bag of artisan flour out of a 50-pound sack.

It also would be a shame to pass up a purchase of fresh delectable produce at a stand beside the road, or to miss an opportunity to donate a few dollars to a good cause because you did not have money handy to do so.

Building up a supply of money at home for true disasters works on the same principle.

Stuff happens. 

https://madgewaggy.blogspot.com/2024/08/a-cashless-society-is-controlled.html

Democrats Lose Effort to Block Cornel West from Michigan Ballot

 For months, we have been discussing the concerted effort of Democrats to bar challengers to President Joe Biden from primary ballots and block third-party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Cornel West from appearing on the November ballots.

Now, a state judge has issued a stinging denial of the effort of Democratic officials to block West from the Michigan ballots.

West issued a statement: “Victory in Michigan!

As both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris insisted that “Democracy is on the ballot,” their allies sought to deny the ability of voters to cast their ballots for other candidates.

Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson helped lead the effort to prevent citizens from being able to vote for West in Michigan.

One does not have to support Trump, West, or the other third-party opponents to find this effort repulsive.

We brought thousands of voices to the table, and the court listened, rejecting the Democrats’ technical challenges.

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/08/27/democrats-lose-effort-to-block-cornel-west-from-michigan-ballot/

Biden admin pushed group to cut trans surgery age requirements, faces probe

“Officials applied this inappropriate pressure by urging for the removal of age limits that expands the pool of children and adolescents recommended for irreversible gender transition surgical procedures.” Pointing to reporting from The New York Times, the committee said in its letter that WPATH published a draft of its recommendations online which included age limits of 14 for hormone drugs, “age 15 for transgender mastectomies, age 16 for transgender breast augmentation and facial surgery, and age 17 for transgender genital surgeries and hysterectomies.” Emails reportedly show that Biden administration officials, including Admiral Rachel Levine, assistant secretary for HHS who is a transgender woman, pressured the group to remove the age limits altogether.

(The Center Square) – A U.S. House Committee has launched a probe of the Biden-Harris administration after reports that the White House pressured the World Professional Association of Transgender Health, a leading professional nonprofit association, to remove the age limits for transgender surgeries and drugs for minors.

“Despite WPATH’s initial minimum age recommendations, Admiral Levine and [Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Sarah] Boateng’s clear, concise instructions to remove age recommendations from SOC-8 led to their ultimate removal, notwithstanding the Biden Administration’s now public statement that it opposes providing such surgeries to minors,” the letter said.

Critics have raised concerns that those surgeries, which do irreversible changes to the body, are often regretted.

Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., chair of the Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services, sent a letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra opening the probe, which requests all documentation and communication around the alleged “political interference” and whether HHS has pressured other medical groups to alter its guidance.

McClain’s subcommittee and the Federal Workforce Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, also have an investigation into reports that healthcare providers have been fraudulently billing Medicaid for pediatric transgender work.

“We are concerned that HHS officials, acting in their official capacity, inappropriately applied pressure for changes to international pediatric medical standards,” the letter said. 

https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_7eaaa51a-6499-11ef-b07c-d3fc940307fb.html

Trump Rally Sniper Exposes FBI ‘Cover-Up’ in Trump Assassination Attempt: ‘Evidence Tampering’

 According to SWAT counter-sniper Ben Shaffer, the FBI engaged in systematic “evidence tampering” in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

A SWAT counter-sniper who was working the Pennsylvania rally where former President Donald Trump was shot last month has come forward to expose what he believes is a FBI cover up of what really happened that day.

Shaffer admitted that it was ‘absolutely’ concerning that the roof of the AGR International building where gunman Thomas Matthew Crook, 20, was scrubbed of biological evidence so quickly after the July 13 assassination attempt.

‘Do you find it odd that literally only days after the attempted assassination on President Donald J Trump, while the roof was too sloped to place individuals for counter-sniper operations, that it wasn’t too sloped of a roof for the FBI to go ahead and tamper, in my opinion, with evidence by washing the roof off that may have had significant evidence on it?’ Mills questioned Shaffer.

‘Any suggestion the FBI is interfering with congressional efforts to look into the attempted assassination which took place in Butler, Pennsylvania is inaccurate and unfounded,’ it said in a statement to the New York Post.

‘This pattern of investigative scorched Earth by the FBI is quite troubling.’ But the bureau has denied any wrongdoing.

He said that his effort to examine Crooks’ body on August 5 created ‘quite a stir and revealed a disturbing fact… the FBI released the body for cremation 10 days after July 13.’ ‘On July 23, Crooks was gone,’ Higgins wrote, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

https://thepeoplesvoice.tv/trump-rally-sniper-exposes-fbi-cover-up-in-trump-assassination-attempt-evidence-tampering/

Trump Is Likely Right about Illegal Immigrants Accounting for Job Growth

Former president Donald Trump wrote in an August 20 post on Truth Social that “most new jobs under Biden went to illegal immigrants.” Predictably, “fact checkers” attacked his assertion.

It is the case that a significant share of job growth went to the native-born in 2021 as the economy recovered from Covid.

The foreign-born, often colloquially called “immigrants,” are all those who were not American citizens at birth — including naturalized citizens, permanent residents (green-card holders), temporary visitors (mostly guest workers and foreign students), and illegal immigrants.

The Census Bureau, which collects the CPS, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which analyzes the data each month, are both clear that illegal immigrants are included in the data.

It is possible that some of the growth in 2021 is overstated owing to problems with collecting the survey during the pandemic.

The government’s Current Population Survey (CPS) asks members of the general public each month whether they are working, looking for work (unemployed), or neither working nor looking for work.

In a series of reports, we have chronicled the dramatic growth of the foreign-born in the monthly CPS since President Biden took office.

https://cis.org/Camarota/Oped-Trump-Likely-Right-about-Illegal-Immigrants-Accounting-Job-Growth

Hush Money? Records Show Biden/Harris Campaign Paid $15K to Emhoff’s Ex in 2020

Investigative journalist Laura Loomer alleged in a recent X post that the Biden–Harris campaign in 2020 paid hush money to the ex-wife of second gent Doug Emhoff.

Kerstin Emhoff, the second gent’s first wife, who is now CEO of a film-production company called Ventureland, received a payment from the campaign for nearly $15,000 in 2020.

“We sometimes joke that our modern family is almost a little too functional,” Harris claimed, adding that the nontraditional family is perfectly possible “if everyone approaches it in the way that there’s plenty of love to share.” In addition to pointing out the hush-money mayments, Loomer reported that both Ventureland and Pretty Bird—another one of Kerstin Emhoff’s companies—shared an office building with NPR, which, like most of the corporate media, appears to favor Harris.

“To know Cole and Ella is to know that their mother, Kerstin, is an incredible mother,” Harris wrote in a 2019 essay for Elle magazine, claiming that she and Kerstin were “dear friends” and a “duo of cheerleaders” for the kids.

The childless Harris has sought to normalize herself to voters by appearing to be the co-parent to Emhoff’s children, claiming they had affectionately dubbed her “Momala,” even though Cole, 29, and Ella, 25, were both in their late teens when she married their father in 2014.

She posted an Instagram picture of herself inside Chicago’s United Center with the caption “So excited for this week!” Loomer speculated that the payments had helped to placate Kerstin Emhoff, who recently revealed in an interview with CNN how much she loved sharing her children with Harris.

Moreover, she has reportedly contracted with the 2024 Harris–Walz campaign for video production services, including some of the work at the recent Democratic National Convention. 

https://headlineusa.com/biden-harris-paid-15k-emhoff-ex/