New Polls: Black And Hispanic Voters Are Turning From Clinton To Trump

According to new polls, Donald Trump is up to 20% among black voters, and rising. And among Hispanic voters, a very diverse group Trump is actually exceeding Romney, especially in key battle ground states:

In some places, Trump is actually outperforming Romney. In Nevada, for example, President Obama ran up a 47-point margin of victory among Hispanic voters in 2012, according to exit polls, defeating Romney 71 percent to 24 percent. A recent Marist poll in the state for NBC News and The Wall Street Journal showed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton leading among Hispanics, but by the smaller margin of 35 points, 65 percent to 30 percent.

A series of Univision polls earlier this month surveying Hispanic voters in four battleground states — Arizona, Colorado, Florida and Nevada — also put Trump in the same ballpark as Romney four years ago. Clinton’s lead over Trump among Hispanics in Colorado was smaller than Obama’s margin in that state in 2012.

A Bloomberg Politics "poll decoder" on Tuesday averaged several national surveys and found Clinton leading among Hispanics by 38 points. But Obama won the group by six points more in 2012, according to exit polls.

 


Actually, I think both these numbers for black and Latino numbers supporting Trump are understated. People in many of these communities might say one thing to pollsters and their peers just to go along to get along, but for a surprising number, what happens inside the voting booth is going to be quite different. None of this will be any surprise to people who have actually attended his Yu-uge rallies and seen the diversity of the people whom attend them.

 

The reason for that is obvious. Trump is talking bread and butter issues to the communities that have been hardest hit by Obama's policies. He's talking jobs to people that desperately need them. He's talking ending illegal migration to people that have to live with the results of increased housing costs, lower wages and diminished prospects. He's talking school choice to people desperate to get their kids out of dysfunctional public schools and better law enforcement to people that have to live with the reality of crack houses, gangs flourishing in their neighborhoods and the ever present danger of their children being murdered as collateral damage in street wars.

What's even more important is that he's going to their neighborhoods and talking directly to these people, not just issuing policy papers and statements. Mitt Romney had the baggage of his LDS faith, an issue for some Catholics and Evangelicals. But what I think really cut his numbers down among blacks and Latinos was that with rare exceptions he ignored them. There were few if any campaign offices in minority neighborhoods, little phone banking or canvassing and definitely very few if any rallies or campaign events,let alone poll watchers. That's why in places like detroit and Philadelphia you had precincts with 120% turnout and not a single recorded Romney vote.

Trump is doing exactly the opposite, and it's going to show up to a surprising degree on election day.

Fun fact: there's an organized campaign to get bigoted Trump hater Jorge Ramos removed from his slot as a news anchor at UniVison. And while Brent Bozell is heading it, the campaign is being driven by Latino journalists and public figures.

Whore Hay won't be leaving, of course but the very fact that his nonsense is being increasingly recognized is unprecedented.

The times, they are a'changing.

 

Racism? Hillary Endorsed By KKK Grand Dragon!!!

Guess what! Hillary Clinton is the recipient of an official endorsement from the Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Clan!

Mrs. Clinton, of course, just started running an ad linking Donald Trump with the Klu Klux Klan, and yesterday, in a speech in Reno, Nevada she openly accused him of being a racist.

But as it turns out, the Klan favors Mrs. Clinton! Here's the Grand Dragon Will Quigg endorsing her candidacy at 2:17



Notice he also has a nice line in Holocaust denial...c'mon you lefty Jews, vote Democrat!

Come to think of it, Hillary was also quite friendly with former Klan Kleagle turned Senator Robert Byrd. Like a lot of Democrats.

 

Let's get something straight here. I don't think Hillary Clinton is a secret Klan member. But it's fascinating that the media was willing to totally lie about former Klansman David Duke endorsing Donald Trump and make a major headline story out of it while ignoring this item completely.

I do however agree totally with this statement:

Breaking: NYT Admits Obama Deliberately Manufactured Netanyahu Spat

President Barack Obama and his minions in the White House and the press have had a lot to say about how 'disrespectful' it was for Congress to invite Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of congress without informing the White House. And how wrong it was for Netanyahu to accept when he knew the White  House hadn't been informed.

Read this correction , from Pravda-on-the-Hudson own website.

Correction: January 30, 2015
An earlier version of this article misstated when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel accepted Speaker John A. Boehner’s invitation to address Congress. He accepted after the administration had been informed of the invitation, not before.

Omri Ceren first spotted the correction and explained on Twitter:

 NYT tries to promote anti-Netanyahu talking point that #Israel blindsided Obama. They got just 1 tiny detail wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/us/politics/benjamin-netanyahu-is-talking-to-harry-reid-and-leading-democrats-to-little-effect-so-far.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=2

Correction: January 30, 2015 

An earlier version of this article misstated when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel accepted Speaker John A. Boehner’s invitation to address Congress. He accepted after the administration had been informed of the invitation, not before.

This correction literally destroys the entire accompanying NYT article, about how Netanyahu was trying to make peace with Democrats in congress and explain why he had cooperated in 'bypassing the White House.'

Let's look at what originally ran, in the print edition:

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said Thursday that Mr. Netanyahu had called him the previous afternoon to explain why he had accepted an invitation to speak to Congress without first notifying the White House.

Then it was revised in the online edition:

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said Thursday that Mr. Netanyahu had called him the previous afternoon to explain why the White House had been circumvented before he was invited to speak before Congress. 

And let's look again the correction at the bottom of this piece of journalistic chicanery, online:

An earlier version of this article misstated when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel accepted Speaker John A. Boehner’s invitation to address Congress. He accepted after the administration had been informed of the invitation, not before.

Of course, the truth is that the White House was never bypassed or circumvented. Netanyahu only accepted Speaker John Boehner's invitation after he knew the White House had been informed and had a chance to object.

And if the Obama White House had some objection  and had actually communicated it to  Netanyahu, do you think that just maybe, he might have made decision not to accept the speaking invitation?

Instead, the Obama White House said nothing, and Netanyahu, whose country gets threatened with destruction by Iran about every other week  decided to accept Boehner's invitation to speak to congress and help provide an impetus for legislation on Iranian sanctions that's in both Israel and America's interest .

American Thinker (where yours truly has been proud to appear in from time to time) blogged on this and revealed another tidbit :

In 2011, Boehner sent a notice to the WH stating his intention to invite Netanyahu to speak before a joint session of Congress. The White House never responded (spite? incompetence?) and Boehner proceeded to extend the invitation to Netanyahu. Netanyahu accepted the invitation and spoke. The White House did not express any outrage in 2011.

So there was a precedent set then, and no reason for Boehner or Netanyahu to assume there was any problem when the White House didn't respond with any objections this time.

The resulting fracus was simply kabuki outrage manufactured to create a negative impression that Israel had somehow 'disrespected' an American president. And of course, to assist Netanyahu's political enemies in the coming election...where the Obama Administration has already sent a crack campaign team and millions in campaign funds for the same purpose. The shotgun wedding of Labor's Yitzhak Herzog and Tzipi Livni lost no time in trying to spin this to show that 'Netanyahu was destroying Israel's relationship with the U.S.'

Actually, the reality is that it really doesn't matter what Netanyahu says or what Israel does.If it wasn't this, President Obama would have set up something else, and there will certainly be more of this coming no matter who gets elected in March and no matter how many of Mahmoud Abbas's demands Israel submits to.


This president wants very much to curtail America's alliance with Israel. That's the goal, and it has been ever since President Barack Hussein Obama first entered the White House.

Genocide Is In The Eyes Of The Beholder!

 

By Michael Haltman

It's mainstream media coverage that slants the news in all of the wrong directions!

Note: The numbers in the poster by now no doubt need to be ratcheted higher.

As we have seen it's not until an issue or humanitarian crisis in some way makes it unavoidable for news outlets to report it, that the average TV watching idiot learns anything about it.

For example if the story of Iraq's Yazidis trapped on a mountain had never reached the mainstream media, Barack Obama never would have learned about it and for him, ISIS would still be a JV team.

True to form, however, now that he knows they are anything but a JV team our Commander-in-Chief is still doing nothing to stop them!



Cross posted at The Political Commentator

Toronto Star Retracts Bogus Claim That Most Of Gaza Dead Are Women And Children

 

The Toronto Star finally published a retraction to as bogus claim in one of its articles that the majority of dead in Gaza were women and children.

The article in question was written by Canadian 'Palestine' shill  Dr. Izzeldine Abuelaish on July 30th who wrote, ”At the moment of writing this article, some 1,359 Palestinians have lost their lives in the current conflict with Israel, mostly women and children, and some 7,677 have been severely wounded.”

Watchdog group Honest Reporting Canada called out this nonsense and also questioned Abuelaish’s credibility, after which The Star added the following notice to the column on its website:

“Clarification: Aug. 5, 2015: This article was edited from a previous version that said the Palestinians killed in Gaza were ‘mostly’ women and children. In fact, as now stated, it was ‘many’ women and children killed. According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, as of July 31, 2014, a reported 345 children and 186 women were among 1,432 dead, 85 per cent of them civilians. Among the civilian casualties, 43.5 per cent were women and children. Among the total number of Palestinians killed, 39.5 per cent were women and children.”

Of course, those figures (from the so-called Palestinian Centre for Human Rights) are inflated as well. Something like 20-30 people per day die in Gaza of natural causes like old age, or maybe getting on the wrong side of a Hamas leader, but those will be included as 'war casualties'. And the percentage of civilians? Some other news sources have had something to say about that, even the BBC.

 

Al Jazeera, quoted the Hamas controlled Gaza Health Ministry on July 26 that 315 children and 166 females were among 1,361 dead and 6,780 injured in the Gaza Strip. The New York Times quoting the same Hamas controlled source reported on Aug. 5 that, “According to data from the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 34 percent of those killed in Gaza from July 6-31 were children, women, elderly or female victims of an unknown age… since July 6: 429 under age 18, 79 over 60, 243 women.”

Meanwhile, the BBC cited a report from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that said that as of Aug. 6, 1,843 Palestinians had been killed since the start of Operation Protective Edge. Among the civilians, more than three times as many men were killed as women, according to the UN report.

Considering that Hamas don't exactly wear uniforms, how exactly does one tell combatants from civilians? And where exactly in the UN HCHR getting it's data? From that same Gaza Health Ministry? From UNRWA? And how many of these people were forced human shields, forbidden to leave an area by Hamas after the Israelis dropped leaflets and warned people to evacuate?

At any rate, I'm glad to see that the Star maintains at least a semblance of journalistic integrity.

 

Hamas: We Intimidated Reporters Into Not Covering Rocket Firing

By David Gerstman

Israel and its supporters have argued for some time that the news media give a skewed view of Operation Protective Edge because reporters in Gaza are intimidated by Hamas.

Perhaps one of the most blatant examples was the disappearing tweet of The Wall Street Journal's Nick Casey, showing a member of Hamas sitting for an interview in Shifa hospital. As Prof Jacobson noted, Casey was subjected to online threats. But the disappearing tweet was consistent Hamas' rules for social media (that also apparently applied to major media organizations), which included "[d]o not publish photos of military commanders." Apparently Casey was in violation of that.

Last week the Foreign Press Association in Israel (and not an organization that shrinks from criticizing Israel) decried Hamas' "blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods" to intimidate journalists.

 

There were still skeptics. Jodi Rudoren, the Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times, called the FPA's charge "nonsense." The left wing Israeli paper Ha'aretz also covered the story calling the press "divided" over the issue. Even in the Ha'aretz story, the term"divided" seems generous. The one reporter who spoke on the record to say he hadn't been intimidated, was forced to leave Gaza after he violated Hamas' press guidelines.

If there was any remaining doubt about the intimidation, it was removed by an unlikely source, Hamas spokeswoman Yisra al-Mudallel.

http://youtu.be/mVjDiI1xm4U

According to the MEMRI transcript, al-Mudallel said:

Moreover, the journalists who entered Gaza were fixated on the notion of peace and on the Israeli narrative.

So when they were conducting interviewers, or when they went on location to report, they would focus on filming the places from where missiles were launched. Thus, they were collaborating with the occupation.

These journalists were deported from the Gaza Strip. The security agencies would go and have a chat with these people. They would give them some time to change their message, one way or another. ...We suffered from this problem very much. Some of the journalists who entered the Gaza Strip were under security surveillance. Even under these difficult circumstances, we managed to reach them, and tell them that what they were doing was anything but professional journalism and that it was immoral.

Al-Mudallel's (perhaps inadvertent) admission explains why India's NDTV's news crew waited until it left Gaza before it broadcast its news of Hamas firing rockets right next to the hotel where they were staying. And why Italian journalist Gabriele Barbati left Gaza before telling the truth.

 

https://twitter.com/gabrielebarbati/statuses/494131918732926976

Writing in The New Republic, Oren Kessler noted that as July ended media outlets were more likely to report on Hamas' war crimes. 

As the conflict approached the one-month mark, media coverage had perceptibly changed. On August 1, a correspondent for Finnish TV reported seeing rockets fired from Shifa. Days later, an Indian TV crew, filming from their hotel room, spotted a Hamas team setting up a rocket launcher in a densely populated area nearby. Yet again, the footage was aired only after the crew left Gaza. But the most damning footage of all came on August 5, from Gallagher Fenwick of the TV network France 24. Several days prior, the correspondent had been reporting live when a Hamas rocket whooshed over his head. Returning later to the launch site, he revealed that it had been a densely populated area 100 meters from a U.N. facility and 50 meters from a hotel frequented by foreign journalists.

Even if the coverage did change, Hamas' intimidation played a crucial role in establishing a media narrative of excessive Israeli violence. Yesterday Nechemia Gershuni tweeted a link to a Google spreadsheet showing that of some 700 reporters who were based in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge, only 15 actually reported on Hamas' war crimes.

https://twitter.com/Nehemia_G/statuses/500701447994871808

Mark Lavie a long time foreign correspondent for news organizations including NBC and NPR recently wrote in Why Everything Reported from Gaza is Crazy Twisted "[b]rutal intimidation and threats against reporters are so much more effective” than censorship.

The belated, under-reporting of Hamas' war crimes proves his point. Now that Hamas as confirmed the charges, it will be harder for the media to continue pretending that they weren't Hamas' public relations agents.

Cross posted on  Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

About Second-Guessing Israel on Hamas

 

By David Gerstman

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told the U.S. Ambassador to Israel "not to ever second guess me again" when it comes to Hamas, after Hamas' refusal and eventual breach of ceasefire agreements.

Did he have a point?

The international community in its zeal to solve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians makes plenty of suggestions about what needs to be done. One would think that with the number of suggestions it has made that have backfired, it would learn a little humility and perhaps listen a little bit more to Israel when it comes to Hamas.

For example, in a recent column, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen called the Israel-Palestinian conflict an "obscenity." At the end of the column he made a suggestion as to how to go about ending the conflict.

Real reconciliation can only come on the basis of an ironclad commitment to nonviolence and to holding of free and fair elections, the first since 2006. Good Palestinian governance, unity and nonviolence constitute the path to making a free state of Palestine irrefutable. The longer Hamas fights this, the greater its betrayal of its people.

What happened in those "free and fair elections" in 2006? Hamas won and established its political legitimacy among Palestinians. A year and a half later it violently forced Fatah out of Gaza and established a stranglehold on the territory. With its newly found freedom to operate it launched thousands of rockets into Israel forcing three wars.

 

But how and why did Hamas, a terrorist organization with a genocidal charter come to participate in those elections? International pressure, including pressure from the Bush administration, forced Israel to drop its objections to Hamas' participation. In retrospect that pressure doesn't look so good. After Fatah and Hamas announced their unity deal earlier this year, Elliott Abrams, who was a member of the administration, recalled:

The last parliamentary elections were held in 2006, and there was a major dispute about whether Hamas should be allowed to run. Abbas then argued strongly and successfully (in that he persuaded Washington to back off) that an election without Hamas would be illegitimate: He would be barring his only real opponent, in the manner of all Arab dictators. We in the Bush administration made the wrong call and sided with Abbas, over Israeli objections. As Condoleezza Rice wrote in her memoirs, “In retrospect, we should have insisted that every party disarm as a condition for participating in the vote.” She was right, for several reasons.

Subsequent developments have shown Israel's objections to having Hamas run in those election to be valid.

In addition to supporting the events that led to Hamas' gaining power, the United States and other allies pressured Israel to loosen its blockade of Gaza following the Mavi Marmara incident. When the boat, Mavi Marmara, captained by the terrorist organization IHH, tried to run the Israel blockade in 2010, Israeli commandos who stormed the ship were violently attacked. When they responded with force, nine of the attackers were killed. In response to Turkish outrage over the incident Israel was forced to relax the blockade. President Obama hailed the decision:

The President has described the situation in Gaza as unsustainable and has made clear that it demands fundamental change. On June 9, he announced that the United States was moving forward with $400 million in initiatives and commitments for the West Bank and Gaza. The President described these projects as a down payment on the U.S. commitment to the people of Gaza, who deserve a chance to take part in building a viable, independent state of Palestine, together with those who live in the West Bank. These announcements resulted from consultations with the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

Today, the United States welcomes the new policy towards Gaza announced by the Government of Israel, which responds to the calls of many in the international community. Once implemented, we believe these arrangements should significantly improve conditions for Palestinians in Gaza, while preventing the entry of weapons. We will work with Israel, the Palestinian Authority, the Quartet, and other international partners to ensure these arrangements are implemented as quickly and effectively as possible and to explore additional ways to improve the situation in Gaza, including greater freedom of movement and commerce between Gaza and the West Bank. There is more to be done, and the President looks forward to discussing this new policy, and additional steps, with Prime Minister Netanyahu during his visit to Washington on July 6.

Barry Rubin criticized this announcement at the time:

Note that Obama did not mention the conditions for easing the blockade--that Hamas abandon terrorism and accept Israel's existence--nor did he say that anything the Palestinian Authority or Hamas is doing is "unsustainable." Only Western and Israeli policy are said to be unsustainable. In effect, Obama is saying that the policies of Hamas, Iran, Hizballah, and Syria, among others, are infinitely sustainable, especially because of his reluctance to do things to make them unsustainable.

And thus in Middle East terms, he's saying: Your intransigence has won. We couldn't move you so our policy has failed. We must give in.

Practically speaking the policies that the United States advocated weren't just a surrender, but likely helped Hamas build its strategic capabilities.

 

It's reasonable to ask if the relaxing of the blockade help Hamas smuggle the cement it needed to build its terror tunnels. Did the American aid abet Hamas in its efforts? By IDF estimates, the tunnels cost at least $90 million. How much of that was paid for by international aid? (How much of the aid went to building the fortunes of Hamas' leaders?)

The international community will lament the violence in the Middle East and criticize Israeli self-defense measures. But when will it conclude that with the best of intentions it is encouraging terrorists by rewarding them for their violence and intransigence? Maybe it's time to start taking Israel's security concerns seriously.

Cross posted at  Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

Ignorant Media 'Splainers Absolve Hamas, Blame Israel

By David Gerstman




A few articles this week effectively absolve Hamas (and more generally the Palestinians) for the latest escalation in the Middle East and put the bulk of the blame on Israel. I’m only going to focus on two.
Max Fisher wrote How Israel is punishing ordinary Palestinians for three murdered Israeli students for Vox. Fisher’s premise is in the title. Israel is not justified in striking back, so any retaliation is “punishment.” Of course this brought plenty of criticism. David Harsanyi sums up Fisher’s illogical case against Israel.

In Fisher’s view, Israel is pining to kill, longing to occupy, aching to inconvenience. Israel wants to waste millions of dollars tracking down Hamas terrorists; it craves the international backlash that will inevitably follow, and it just never feels quite whole until hundreds of its own citizens, and thousands of Palestinians, are put at risk. There’s nothing quite like persecuting the elderly Arab shopkeeper. Mission accomplished!

The Free Beacon asks why GE is underwriting such anti-Israel propaganda and Twitchy put together the best critical tweets.


But I’d like to concentrate on Fisher’s last two paragraphs. Fisher writes without regard to context. His assumption are incomplete or false. Yes what he writes follows from those premises, but the foundation’s rotten, so his arguments don’t stand up.

Hamas is not so much a victim here, though. There is an important and valid case to be made that Hamas leaders, or at least some members of its armed wing, do bear some responsibility for the teenagers’ deaths. The group has previously encouraged and funded kidnapping Israeli civilians as a tactic. Hamas is labeled a terrorist group by the U.S. and E.U. for good reason, after all. But that does not mean that the group is directly responsible for this kidnapping. More to the point, Hamas joined in a Palestinian unity government in April, which would seem to at least potentially shift its incentives a bit away from militancy and toward cooperation.

In any case, the Hamas political leaders based in Gaza seem unlikely to have participated in a kidnapping in the West Bank committed by rogue Hamas militants, so it’s not clear that air strikes on Hamas political leaders in Gaza are an appropriate or justified response. Whatever you think of Israel’s political leaders, they’re intelligent enough to see the distinctions here. It’s hard to conclude that the air strikes are anything other than either blunt collective punishment or an attempt to damage Hamas’s political position. What the strikes are not doing, though, is deterring future kidnappings of Israeli students or punishing the suspected culprits of this one.

Sure Hamas joined a unity government in April. But Hamas denied that the agreement meant that they had to give up their weapons. A member of Hamas was later quoted saying that Abbas assured Hamas that “we agree on among ourselves.” Fisher’s arguing, without proof, that the unity government demonstrated the moderation of Hamas, when, in fact, all available evidence shows that it meant that Fatah would tolerate terror.

It’s also interesting that Fisher invents the idea of “rogue Hamas militants.” But it’s hard to give much credence to such entities when leaders of Hamas regularly call for kidnapping Israelis and Israel has established that Hamas has an operative in Turkey who’s running operations in the West Bank.
Of course all of Fisher’s unsubstantiated claims are building to his conclusion that Israel’s only goals would be deterring future kidnappings or punishing the specific culprits. Given that Hamas is an organization, disrupting its operations and arresting its personnel certainly would deter kidnappings. Also one of the reasons for the arrests was to get information about the suspects so it’s very clear that Israel’s actions against Hamas are part of the effort to apprehend the kidnappers.
Finally Fisher’s acting as if Hamas only kidnaps Israelis. It actually has a huge arsenal and has threatened to strike Israel with it. Attacking Hamas in Gaza is fully justified on these grounds. So it isn’t Hamas’s “political position” that Israel is attacking, but its military and operational one. Hamas, of course, knows that by hiding its arsenal in populated areas means that there will be people like Fisher objecting when Israel acts in self defense.

As bad as Max Fisher’s argument is, the New York Times has published an op-ed that’s even worse. The Deadly Politics of Revenge by Ali Jarbawi doesn’t just ignore Hamas’s terror and blame Israel for the violence but actually argues that kidnappings of Eyal Yifrach, Gil-ad Shaar and Naftali Fraenkel served Israel’s interests. Like Fisher, Jarbawi uses half truths and evasions to build his argument, but the op-ed reaches bottom in the middle when Jarbawi writes:

The current operation has several goals. It serves to humanize settlers in general, after they had come to be viewed in a negative light globally. The international outcry over the disappearance and death of the three young men, and the sympathy for their anxious and grieving parents, has led to a portrayal of settlers as victims of terror rather than as illegal occupiers. Even if the Palestinian Authority bears no responsibility for the abduction, which Mr. Abbas condemned outright, it has hurt the Palestinian cause, at least in the short run, and elicited sympathy for the settlers.

Jarbawi’s assertion that the three teens were “settlers,” isn’t even true. Only one, Gil-ad, came from territory captured by Israel in 1967. But it’s necessary for him to make the false assertion because of his odious complaint that the abductions would “humanize settlers.” The idea that somehow it’s wrong to feel sympathy for terror victims is beyond the pale.

Jarbawi’s charge that Israelis living in the disputed territories are simply “illegal occupiers” shows the degree to which Israel’s “occupation” has become a distraction. The Palestinians and their apologists continue to complain that the occupation and settlers are preventing peace, when it’s the Palestinian rejection of a Jewish state and support for terror that are the real obstacles to peace.

 


David Pollock of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy identified the point that Fisher and Jarbawi evade – that the Palestinian unity government emboldened and enabled Hamas.

Part of the agreement was that Hamas would be allowed to operate in the West Bank — the kidnapping is an indirect consequence of that provision. To be sure, there were numerous kidnapping attempts even before the unity deal, but the newfound license for Hamas enshrined in the deal is almost certainly what made this latest plot so tragically “successful.” Of course, the formal agreement did not explicitly condone kidnapping or murder, but Hamas officially interpreted it as an opening for militant activities of all kinds, openly contradicting PA president Mahmoud Abbas’s position. The group’s West Bank sympathizers were newly encouraged to provide local cover, and mid-level PA security officials suddenly became uncertain about where to draw the line in preempting or thwarting Hamas operations.

Until policy makers start assigning responsibility to the Palestinians for the lack of peace with Israel, there will be no peace. As long as the Palestinians feel that they can blame any difficulties in peacemaking to the “occupation” they will not make peace. It’s time to start holding them responsible and making clear that Hamas is not a legitimate partner for peace.

 

(cross posted at  Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion)

MSNBC Flatlines As Their Ratings Tank

The above chart pretty much tells the story..when your ratings are below even CNN's, there's not much lower you can go. And Ronan Farrow's catastrophe definitely didn't help.MSNBC is simply bleeding viewers at a torrid pace.

In 2013, MSNBC lost 24 percent of its prime-time audience and 15 percent of its daytime viewers, and that trend has continued. While CNN and FOX also lost viewers, mainly because the market has expanded, MSNBC's is double the losses of CNN and four times those of Fox. And where it counts, on the money side, Fox and CNN are both growing while MSNBC is actually losing income.And in broadcasting, that's the wound that keeps on bleeding because it perpetuates a death spiral - your ads are harder to sell because your audience share is smaller so you end up continually lowering your prices, kind of like a rapidly aging hooker trying to compete with the younger, more in demand ones.

Like Air America, MSNBC was the result of a conscious, corporate decision to chase the far Left demographic. It was always a place to find the most outre' Bush bashing and worship at the shrine of Obama and other far Left icons.

Well, Dubbyah has ridden off into the sunset and Barack Obama...well, let's be kind and just say that a lot of people have come to a new realization about what that hopey-changey crap really meant. And therein lies a problem.

Like Air America, MSNBC is a one trick pony and that is deadly boring to anyone but True Believers in search of an echo chamber. In the end, even many of them eventually zone out. And as the political climate is changing, MSNBC can't move with it without losing the core audience it has built up.

FOX doesn't have that problem. While the network definitely carries conservative commentary, they also use Lefties like Juan Williams or Susan Estrich as a counterbalance,so the spark is there. And FOX also carries a fair amount of straight news, regardless of how President Obama and his fellow Leftists demonize FOX as 'biased'. Most people who watch FOX for any length of time realize that FOX makes a real attempt to live up to the network's motto, 'Fair And Balanced', which is why FOX has maintained its position as the number one cable news network.

On MSNBC, most of the programming won't even interview conservatives let alone have them on the air
even as occasional panel members. The only real host who can even come close to being conservative is Joe Scarborough on 'Morning Joe', and even he pretty much toes the Leftist line of things like gun control, the Tea Party and amnesty for illegal aliens. Also, he and Mika, a major Lefty, have their own back and forth, which provides a bit of the spark needed to keep a show like that entertaining. Aside from 'Morning Joe', it's pretty much the George Soros network, all far Left talking points all the time.

Ironically, the best scenario for this changing would be for the GOP to retain the House, take the Senate and actually elect a conservative in 2016. If that happens, we might once again see MSNBC's audience increase as die hard Lefties look for a place on the dial that reflects their own worldview and prejudices.

Award Winning Reporter Sharyl Attkisson Quits CBS Over Leftist Bias,'Stonewalling'

Five time Emmy winning investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson has requested and received a release from her contract with CBS,after months of difficult negotiations.

Attkisson, you'll remember, was one of the only mainstream reporters willing to write hard hitting stories about Obama Administration scandals like Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the Obama Administration's crony-driven green energy scams and IRS-Gate. This brought her increasingly into disfavor with the powers that be in the news department and at the network, and also with the Administration, as her computers were repeatedly hacked and her phones tapped back in late 2012..back when Ms. Attkisson was practically the only mainstream news reporter not working for FOX that was covering the Benghazi debacle.

As time went on, Attkisson, who had been with CBS for almost 20 years noticed that she had increasing difficulty getting her stories on the air when they concerned scandals in the Obama administration and that she constantly had to butt heads with what she saw as political bias towards protecting the president, the stonewalling of any unfavorable coverage and a lack of support from the network for her investigative reporting.

Another key factor, according to at least one source of mine was her upset at the network's refusal to devote any time or resources into investigating her hacking incident or to allow her to investigate it herself.

Attkisson is currently finishing a book tentatively titled "Stonewalled: One Reporter's Fight for Truth in Obama's Washington" that will be published by HarperCollins, a division of NewsCorp and not by Simon & Schuster, a division of CBS. There's a great deal that can be read between the lines in that sentence.

I fully expect Attkisson to surface at another outlet after her book is published, a place where she won't be handcuffed and will be allowed to do what journalists used to do routinely - report the news, no matter where it leads.

Must See - Israeli Minister Naftali Bennett Vs. The BBC

Here we see Israeli economics minister Naftali Bennett making an appearance on the BBC's 'Hard Talk', hosted by one Stephen Sackur, who perhaps needs to learn that in an interview, if you want answers it's usually a good idea to listen, not talk over your guest and let the interviewee finish his sentences.

Nevertheless, Naftali Bennett makes an admirable showing. I especially found it humorous to watch Sackur (who, full disclosure is married to an Iraqi Arab and has always been outspokenly pro-Palestinian) lecture Israel's economics minister (and a multi-millionaire in his own right) on the state of Israel's economy.

Money quote from Bennett: "Would you hand over half of Britain to someone who keeps on killing you?"

Of course Sackur didn't answer that, but in reality the Brits are doing just that in places like Tower Hamlets and Birmingham, although they probably don't realize it yet. So are the French in La Zone and elsewhere, the Swedes in Malmö, and Norwegians in certain parts of Oslo, among others. This also explains a great deal about the anti-Israel sentiment in many European countries; aside from thei rown generic Jew hatred, they have now imported a huge number of Muslim voters with their own religiously inherent anti-semitism, and politicians if nothing else can count votes.

The implicit threats of boycotts against Israel also come from a similar place. Blackmailers of this sort will always do what they threaten to do to you eventually anyway, so Bennett's stance that a strong, secure Israel with things the world wants to buy is more likely to prosper and attract trade and investment than a cringing and vulnerable one makes a great deal of sense.

How Mellisa Harris-Perry Won My Respect

It's all over the internet by now how Mellisa Harris-Perry and her cohorts over at MSNBC made a racist attack on the Romney family, mocking Mitt and Anne's adopted black grandchild.Standard operating procedure for MSNBC.

 

But then something rather marvelous happened.

Deep inside of her,there's still a core of decency, and it was sickened at what she had done.

The very next day,first thing in the morning, she went on Twitter (and on the air, for all that I know)and issued a heart felt apology, as she put it 'without reservation.' She said there were no excuses for her behavior , and made a point in a subsequent tweet that "I work by guiding principle that those who offend do not have the right to tell those they hurt that they r wrong for hurting. Therefore, while I meant no offense, I want to immediately apologize to the Romney family for hurting them"

She also tweeted, "I apologize to all families built on loving transracial adoptions who feel I degraded their lives or choices."

In other words, a real apology, not a Barack Obama-style 'sorry if you were inconvenienced or something because I lied' apology.

I know for a fact that she wasn't ordered to do so by the suits at MSNBC, who've let far worse stuff go.And it's not like the Romneys had any ratings clout like Sarah Palin does. She simply did it because it was the right thing to do.

And I respect that.It would have been far easier for her to just wallow in the 'attagirls' from her Leftist cohorts and say nothing.

The apology, hopefully, is just a first step for her.Real teshuvah, repentance involves not only recognizing what you've done and doing your best to fix it,but to learn something from it so you don't repeat your misdeed, to spend some soul time thinking 'Why did I do that? How can I avoid doing it again'?

Whatever else we might disagree with, I have a feeling I and Ms. Harris-Perry would agree on that. So I wish Melissa Harris-Perry the very best in that endeavor of self-examination.

MSNBC'S Martin Bashir 'Resigns'

MSNBC's Pakistani/Brit import Martin Bashir announced his 'resignation' today:

Upon further reflection, and after meeting with the President of MSNBC, I have tendered my resignation. It is my sincere hope that all of my colleagues, at this special network, will be allowed to focus on the issues that matter without the distraction of myself or my ill-judged comments.

I deeply regret what was said, will endeavor to work hard at making constructive contributions in the future and will always have a deep appreciation for our viewers – who are the smartest, most compassionate and discerning of all television audiences. I would also wish to express deepest gratitude to my immediate colleagues, and our contributors, all of whom have given so much of themselves to our broadcast.’

What was said, of course, was a vicious on air rant about Governor Sarah Palin, who in a speech to a crowd at Iowa’s Faith and Freedom Coalition event compared the mushrooming national debt to slavery, saying, "..it’s going to be like slavery when that note is due.”

Bashir's foaming at the mouth response? He referred to her as America’s “resident dunce” and characterizing her remarks as “scraping the barrel of her long-deceased mind, and using her all-time favorite analogy in an attempt to sound intelligent about the national debt.”

And finished up by suggesting that someone should defecate in her mouth and urinate in her face.

Now, after this went viral, Bashir did do a fairly self-serving on-air apology, but he was never suspended, fairly egregious in view of how Alec Baldwin at MSNBC was tossed off the network immediately for a few anti-gay slurs.

The difference of course is simple,really. Baldwin was off the reservation and his remarks were merely an unscripted reflection of his out of control temper.Martin Bashir's stunt was entirely different.

In the entertainment biz, (and let's face it, that's the business MSNBC is in) market share and ratings are all that count. The suits at MSNBC took a look at Piers Morgan over at CNN, who used to be unknown and is unemployable in the UK since he was caught fabricating news stories, but who has carved out a career in a small way by being an obnoxious and nasty Lefty with a British accent.

I guarantee you that Bashir doesn't even sneeze on the air unless it's written into his TelePrompTer. So the Palin rant was cleared and vetted by MSNBC's management beforehand. Because, you see, the idea was for Bashir to become MSNBC's Piers Morgan, by being even nastier than Piers Morgan. And thereby garnering some ratings for their putrid little network.

And of course, Martin Bashir, whose last claim to fame was putting together an awful documentary about Michael Jackson a decade ago that most of Jackson's closest associates claim drove Jackson to depression was eager to play along.

That's precisely why they didn't suspend him or fire him.

Unfortunately for them, Sarah Palin has been around and understands this game a lot better than the boys at MSNBC.She didn't waste her time with unloading on Bashir, realizing he was just one of the willing lackeys. Instead, she got in touch with NBC, and canceled a series of interviews she had scheduled, explaining she no longer felt comfortable appearing on their network.

Now, Sarah Palin means ratings and that means money, something Steve Burke and the suits at NBC understand. So then they called Phil Griffin, the keeper in charge of the MSNBC asylum and lo and behold, all of a sudden Bashir comes out with that sniveling little apology. And when the stink still didn't dissipate, Bashir was called into Griffin's office for a little chat.

Naturally, MSNBC covered for their own part in this sordid drama:

“Martin Bashir resigned today, effective immediately. I understand his decision and I thank him for three great years with msnbc. Martin is a good man and respected colleague – we wish him only the best.”


A good 'man'? They must have a very different definition than I do.

Being a Leftist tool means never having to say you're sorry, no matter what, so Bashir might just surface somewhere. If all else fails, he's reportedly fluent in Urdu, so I'm sure he can get a gig in Pakistan, where their notion of how to treat uppity women might be a a bit more in line with what he expressed on the air.

Good riddance.

About That 'Jewish Controlled Media'

As you know, I normally only publish anonymous troll comments when there's something interesting to be learned. This is going to be an exception, because not only did the person in question submit something worthy of examining, but he had the courage to actually sign his name, or at least his pseudonym with a link to his site.One has to give him a smidgeon of credit for that much.

Mark Traina, who according to his site wants to run for governor of his state ( no links, but you can likely find it for yourself if you want to waste the time)left this comment over at Joshuapundit, which I've edited very slightly for obvious reasons:

Suddenly KNOCKING WHITE PEOPLE OUT is a very serious “HATE CRIME”, but only if YOUNG BLACK SAVAGES are ATTACKING JEWS!

NAAWP: BOYCOTTS MSNBC, CNN, HLN, CNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, the HUFF POST, the NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES TIMES and the “I must not tell a TRUTH” GEORGE WASHINGTON POST!

FACT: The LIBERAL JEWISH ZIONIST MEDIA controls 96% of AMERICAS MEDIA OUTLETS and 97% of the WORLD’S MEDIA OUTLETS! Now that the JEWS are getting “KOED” they suddenly give a $HYT!

The BEST WAY for WHITE AMERICANS to get even with all those ZIONIST ASSOLES is to STOP WATCHING their PROGRAMS and BOYCOTT their SPONSORS, in particular GENERAL MOTORS and GENERAL ELECTRIC!
YES, many THREATS have been made against my LIFE, but F*CK IT, I am NEVER gonna STOP ATTACKING those LYING ZIONIST LIBTURDS!


Ah, me. As if MSNBC is 'pro-Zionist' and not anti-Israel!

Nevertheless, I thought it would be worthwhile to examine this, since the fantasy of a secret cabal of Jews running the media seems to stoke the fires of fantasy in the warped heart of many an 'anti-Zionist'.

So let's look at it, shall we?

'Jews control the media'?

Well, let's take a  look at who runs the media. There's Roger Ailes,who runs FOX and his boss Rupert Murdoch, neither of whom are Jews, and who have Saudi Prince Taleed as a major stockholder. There's Steve Burke, CEO of NBC/Comcast...not a Jew, which is interesting considering that our friend here cites MSNBC as running 'pro Jew' content.For that matter, Phil Griffin, who presides over MSNBC and takes Burke's orders isn't Jewish either.

The Tribune company, who owns a number of America's newspapers including the Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Miami Herald? Ummm, that's mostly owned by two corporations, Oaktree Financial, whose CEO is Howard Marks and Angelo-Gordan, run by John Angelo and Michael Gordon. Not a Jew in the bunch. And most of their content could hardly be termed 'pro-Zionist'. The reverse, in fact.

Talk radio? Cumulus Media, the colossus that syndicates the majority of the top talk radio content is run by one Lewis J. Dickey...not Jewish. The biggest names in talk radio are Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, with Glenn Beck a close third. None of them are Jews either, although they are pro-Israel, as anyone with America's best interests at heart and with a sense of justice would be.

The New York Times? Please, my sides. Yes, it's run by Jews all right...the harshly anti-Israel Sulzbergers. A casual glance at the paper should put to rest any fears our friend Mr. Traina has about 'Zionist controlled media' over at Pravda-on-the-Hudson..

Those foreign media outlets..well, there's the BBC(UK), NHK (Japan). CBC (Canada), ABC (Australia), PBS/NPR, France 24 and the AFP, all of which are government owned, and several of these, namely PBS/NPR and the BBC can actually be said to be anti-Zionist, if anything.

There's Reuters, or Thompson-Reuters as it's corporately known. CEO? James C. Smith, not a Jew by any measure. There's al-Jazeera...not exactly a 'pro-Zionist site, wouldn't you agree?

Actually, when you really look at who runs the media, there are really only three Jews you come up with.

There's Les Moonves at CBS, hardly known for its pro-Israel coverage. Ditto with Disney/ABC, whose CEO is Bob Iger.

And then, finally, there's Jeff Bezos, who just bought the WAPO. Not a Jew, and I haven't seen any marked change in its coverage towards Israel before or after, have you?

Have any of these companies hired Jewish talent, staff or executive? Sure they have, but like any other employees, they do what they're told by the men who put them on the air and pay their salaries.

In other words, our friend Mr. Traina has no clue about what he's talking about. The 'Zionists' don't run the media, although I'm sure he and his pals have a lot of fun and excitement fantasizing about it.

Oh, and just an aside. If I were Mark Traina and there actually were some kind of Zionist conspiracy, I don't believe he needs to worry about anyone killing him. People like him are valuable, you see. Both for their entertainment value and because unlike a lot of the slick anti-Israel and anti-semitic media out there, someone like him is so easily discerned as the spittle soaked loony he really is and actually acts as a cover by making the stuff that runs on MSNBC, NPR or the New York Times look and sound like reasoned discourse.

By the way, lest I be accused of talking behind someone's back, I left much of this as a comment on his site. He won't print it of course, but..well, I understand, and no hard feelings.

Peter Beinart And His Anti-Zionist 'Open Zion' Get The Boot

Yes, Peter Beinart has been booted - uh, 'is leaving' The Daily Beast and taking his disgusting anti-Israel blog 'Open Zion' is no more:

His departure from Daily Beast, which was first reported by Mondoweiss, comes almost two months after founding editor Tina Brown announced she would be leaving the company. Open Zion, which was funded by New America Foundation, will cease to exist.

Ah, but there's always employment for an anti-Israel Jew:

UPDATE (3:26 p.m.): Atlantic spokesperson Emily Lenzner forwards the press release, which will be going out shortly (after the jump).

Washington, D.C. (November 4, 2013)—Political columnist, journalist, and author Peter Beinart will join Atlantic Media as a contributing editor, reporting for both National Journal and The Atlantic. Tim Grieve, editor-in-chief of National Journal, and James Bennet, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, jointly announced the addition of Beinart to their editorial teams, starting in January, 2014.

Not only that, but Israel's own anti-Zionist paper, Ha'aretz announced he'll be writing for them as well:

  Haaretz.com        ✔ @haaretzcom

BREAKING: Author and journalist @PeterBeinart to join @haaretzcom as senior columnist from January 1, 2014

1:12 PM - 4 Nov 2013

 

  21 Retweets 5 favorites

Yes, there's always employment for an anti-Israel Jew. The witch ain't quite dead, just relocated..and has taken his pungent aroma to a new location.

Ah, well.

FOX's Megyn Kelly Crushes MSNBC's Rachel Maddow In The Ratings

Megyn Kelly's FOX debut as the networks' prime time newscaster pitted her against MSNBC's top rated show, poster girl Rachel Maddow, in that time slot.

Last Tuesday, the day after its debut, “The Kelly File” doubled its audience, crushing “The Rachel Maddow Show,” in the ratings competition.

In fact, Kelly's ratings were so good, MSNBC chief Phil Griffin made a major stink, whining that Kelly's ratings were 'impossible'.

So Neilson conducted an investigation into the ratings for Kelly's show...and found them to be totally accurate.

I can't imagine why there was even a question. Aside from MSNBC's dubious content, just look at the two newscasters. Who would you rather watch read the news? Whose voice would you rather listen to?

FOX has always beaten MSNBC in the ratings anyway, simply because it is relatively fair and balanced and includes diverse points of view as opposed to the biased, Pravda-like regime touting echo chamber you get at MSNBC.

Maddow audience will likely continue to shrink as it narrows down to an audience composed of the True Believers, but that's about it.

Ted Cruz Destroys Obama Shill Candy Crowley On CNN

This is a superb lesson in how to handle a Leftist, partisan journalist in an interview when she tries at every opportunity to apply the old Alinsky rule of personalizing the target, in this case Ted Cruz.
You refuse to play that game, you don't allow them to make up their own 'facts', you hit back with real facts, and you turn the Alinsky rule right back on them to expose their bias. And you do it with a smile.

Well done, Senator!

I'd be very surprised if she had him back.