Eradicate: Blotting Out God in America

Do you believe recent polls or reports saying the Tea Party is dwindling? The media has swayed public opinion on this, but conservatives must be reminded to stay the course.

Occupy Wall Street was promoted effusively by the mainstream media yet on the one year anniversary of OWS last September, New York City could only muster 1,000 demonstrators. Where are they now? A common catalyst leading to the break out of the Tea Party in 2009 and Occupy in 2011 was the policies of Barack Obama.

It’s been proven OWS was about as spontaneous as the attack at Benghazi. The movement was a planned uprising organized by socialists, unions, and left-wing activists. We now know many protestors had jobs, good incomes or college degrees while hypocritically demanding economic justice in the hopes of overthrowing America’s systems.

In contrast, I recently spoke at a Tea Party meeting. Though the movement has branched off into many organized groups, there are hundreds of weekly and monthly meetings continuing to take place across America. The TP has not gone away and continues to be a thorn in the side of the Obama White House and the moderate Republican establishment.

These were two of the biggest public movements affecting America in years, but there was a stark difference in how the media reported on them. For example, Occupy Wall Street drew 24 broadcast network stories in the first nine days of coverage while the Tea Party drew only 19 in the first nine months! This isn’t journalism, folks. The media practically became OWS’s public relations department.

The Tea Party is a conservative grassroots entity. Occupy Wall Street is [was] a well-organized creation supported in part by the leftist Tides Foundation, a major recipient of George Soros’s funding, MoveOn.org, as well as international interests. Massive government spending and the passage of Obamacare were two major factors that galvanized the TP while Vancouver, Canada-based AdBusters, an anti-consumerist publication sounded the initial call for OWS.

The TP endorses cutting both spending and taxes, reducing the national debt, and adherence to the US Constitution. They also aim to call awareness to issues challenging the security or sovereignty of the United States. OWS protested the disparity of wealth in America, capitalism, corporations, and big business. The primary OWS goals are equal distribution of wealth by government through taxation, financial aid for students/more jobs for college graduates, corporate regu­lation, and bank reform.

ABC, CBS, and NBC flooded their morning and evening newscasts in October 2011 with 33 full stories on OWS. In contrast, the Tea Party was initially ignored.

The story ratio was nineteen favorable to only one critical of OWS. (190 to 10) When confrontations erupted between the police and protestors, networks, being sympathetic to the OWS cause, were much more likely to pin the blame on police. Overall, American media continued to overlook arrests, property damage, public health concerns, assaults, and anti-Semitism.

What did OWS produce? Over 7,719 arrests in 122 different cities as of December 2012.  (Over two thousand in New York City alone.) Charges included civil disobedience, disturbing the peace, trespassing, drug use, and vandalism. Police rap sheets showed dozens of inci­dents of sexual assault, violence, and extortion.

There were at least nine deaths. The media also failed to report on the OWS money trail leading to big unions such as SEIU. The Nancy Pelosi-endorsed, White House-approved (President Obama said, “We are on their side”) protests included American flags hung upside down, desecrated, or burned. Some protesters openly admitted to being Socialists, Communists and Marxists, but the media was virtually silent on these associations.

Groups openly supporting OWS include the Communist Party USA, Louis Farrakhan and Nation of Islam, CAIR, American Nazi Party, Marxist Student Union, and Socialist Party of America.

Conversely, the Tea Party produced the mobilization of tens of millions of American patriots, many of whom have never before been involved in politics. They fly their flags at peaceful rallies, and they’re proud of America’s founders and Constitution. They love this country and are willing to stand up to big government.

The DNC called the Tea Party “rabid right-wing extremists.” ABC said they were a “mob.” CNN accused them of “rabble rousing.” Harry Reid called them “evil mongers.” Nancy Pelosi said they were “un-American.” Anderson Cooper and other liberals simply insult them.

President Obama has unleashed a tidal wave of bills, executive orders, and policies in efforts to make good on his promise to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” The result has been monstrous debt, relentless regulation, increasing taxes, and social policies that go against our Christian values.

Remember when this administration caused such a massive voter backlash in the 2010 Midterm elections the media had no idea how to spin the landslide? The GOP gained a record 65 seats in the House; Republicans also gained 680 seats in state legislatures and picked up ten state governorships. It was the largest margin of victory since the 1930’s. People of America woke up, spoke up, and voted. However, this is now about changing culture.

Our freedoms are under attack. We missed an opportunity in 2012 by failing to keep the momentum going. A friend recently reminded me, “Elections are not the leading edge of change. Elections are the lagging indicators of what’s already changed.”

Some now suggest our strategy needs to be: re-brand, retool, recruit, and re-engage. OWS may be plotting from underground, but the Tea Party is publicly active. We know what side the media is on. Let’s keep exposing hypocrisy and sharing the truth.

 Click here for Part 2, exposing Green Energy Failures/media protecting Obama:

Concerned American citizens that don’t know the facts about how our government uses taxpayer dollars are being misled because the truth is not reported by the media. Before the massive economic stimulus bill passed in 2009, VP Joe Biden insisted, “We have to spend more money to keep from going bankrupt.” That was three and a half years ago and Americans are still paying the bills.

We have a consistently anemic economy, high unemployment, as well as increasing energy and healthcare costs. Is the government corrupt or are they incompetent where handling taxpayer dollars is concerned? That stimulus money was supposed to lead to shovel-ready jobs – immediate job growth – but as the president himself chuckled, “Shovel ready was not as shovel ready as we expected.”

Just last week, Obama shut down the Jobs Council which apparently was created as a photo op used to dupe the public into believing they were trying to get people back to work and recharge the economy.

In the case of the energy market, the government’s decisions have cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Let’s look at some under-reported facts.

Ten months ago, another Obama-backed solar company in California, Solar Trust for America, declared bankruptcy after receiving $2.1 billion in loan guarantees from the Department of Energy (DOE). According to the Wash­ington Examiner, Energy Secretary Steven Chu boasted the deal was “the largest amount ever offered to a solar project.”

Through the massive economic stimulus, the Obama administra­tion basically funneled money to their Democratic allies and even with all the evidence of failure, the media protects the administration disregarding American citizens in the process. It sounds good to ‘invest’ in green energy and the future of America, but government typically rewards companies that are loyal to those who make the policies. Crony Capitalism 101.

Reports have noted $80 billion was set aside in the 2009 Obama stimulus and instead of creating desperately-needed jobs, the administration funded politically preferred energy projects. The DOE immediately provided over $35 billion in loans, loan guarantees, and conditional commitments to renewable energy companies before the American public knew what was going on. Sadly, many still don’t know.

Money was poured into companies that had poor track records. More than 36 companies have received money from generous U.S. taxpayers, and have either gone bankrupt or are in the process of major cuts and layoffs. One spectacular failure is Brightsource Energy which used up $1.6 billion in taxpayer money.

First Solar received $1.46 billion. Next, Solyndra solar manufacturer, received a $535 million loan guarantee from the DOE and went bankrupt. Fisker Automotive, the electric vehicle manufacturer, received a $529 million DOE stimulus loan and has gone through layoffs. Evergreen Solar received $527 million.

Abound Solar received $400 million and has declared bankruptcy. Battery maker A123 received a $249 million stimulus grant from the DOE and has had layoffs. Ener1 received a $118.5 million stimulus grant; now bankrupt. (Ener1 was on the White House list of 100 Projects that are Changing America.)

A few other glaring green energy failures include: Johnson Controls ($299 million), A123 Sola ($279 million), Babcock and Brown ($178 million), LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($151 million), ECOtality ($126.2 million), and Mascoma Corp. ($100 million). See Heritage Foundation’s extended list.

THIS ISN’T NEWSWORTHY? Even an AP report showed Solyndra hemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars years before the Obama administration signed off on the $535 million loan! The California-based company was the first renewable-energy company to receive a loan guarantee under a stimulus-law program to encourage green energy. Obama looked at the “investment” into Solyndra as a model.

At the time, Michigan Republican Fred Upton, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, warned:

“In this time of record debt, I question whether the govern­ment is qualified to act as a venture capitalist, picking winners and losers in speculative ventures and shelling out billions of taxpayer dollars to keep them afloat.”

Solyndra announced bankruptcy on August 31st, 2011, and in October, the Media Research Center released a study that exposed ABC, CBS, and NBC because they rarely mentioned it, just the opposite of their reporting on Enron, an energy company with Republican ties during the Bush administration:

“In just the first two months of 2002, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts cranked out 198 stories on the Enron debacle, compared to just eight (at the time of this study) on Obama’s Solyndra, which is a 24-to-1 disparity.”

How about investing in the private economy? There is no substantial proof green jobs are going to be successful in the near future. The green energy loan program was supposed to create 65,000 jobs, but reports could claim only 3,545 jobs.

The Obama White House and DOE stuck with Solyndra because its largest financial backer was George Kaiser, a major financial donor to Obama. Accuracy in Media’s Roger Aronoff stated, “This goes against the media narrative that Obama operates on a higher ethical plane than previous scandal plagued politicians.”

An entire month after Solyndra declared bankruptcy, a Pew survey found 43% of Americans “had never even heard of the scandal.” As for MSNBC, their primetime lineup went months without even acknowledging Solyndra.

Will this administration relent on its agenda? Just three months ago, Obama told an audience in Wisconsin that they’d continue to gamble with taxpayer dollars on green energy projects, confessing that “some of the businesses we encourage” with government loans “will fail” like Solyndra.

Bankruptcies and failures won’t diminish the Obama administration’s drive to keep spending our money as long as the media refuses to hold them accountable.

In Part 1 of this series on Media malpractice, we noted the lack of truthful reporting on abortion, and an overall abuse of power.

It appears NBC’s Bob Costas spoke too fast and made many conservative Americans including gun owners and the NRA furious. It happened the day after the murder-suicide involving Jovan Belcher of the Kansas City Chiefs. Not only was Belcher’s live-in girlfriend, 22 year old Kasandra Perkins, a victim, but the couple’s three month old baby daughter Zoey, is now an orphan. Most of us know Costas opportunistically used his halftime segment during “Sunday Night Football” to lobby for stronger gun-control laws.

Second Amendment advocate Ted Nugent ripped Costas and used Twitter to share a few thoughts such as: “Hey Bob Costas, we all know that obesity is a direct result of the proliferation of spoons & forks.” And another, “We thought Bob Costas was smarter than that. Only fools blame tools instead of human failings. Shame Bob,” and another, “Blaming guns for crime is like blaming helmets for head butts…”

Making his case, Costas quoted Kansas City-based writer Jason Whitlock stating that he, “said it so well that we may as well just quote or paraphrase from the end of his article.” Costas continued, “Our current gun culture,” Whitlock wrote, “ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead.”

“Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions, and their possible connection to football, will be analyzed… But here,” wrote Jason Whitlock, “is what I believe: If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”

Bob Costas believes what Whitlock believes, but according to the American Association of Suicidology, about half of 2010′s suicides were by firearm. The other roughly 50 percent were by such things as hanging and poisoning. To hypothetically say if someone didn’t own a gun, they would never have acted out in violent anger or taken their own life is absurd.

Let’s look at one more example. According to CNS News, the Chicago Tribune reported there were 192 shootings in that city throughout the month of November – a 49 percent increase from 2011! Police records also reveal that shootings increased more than 11 percent in 2012 compared with a year earlier. Total homicides in Chicago rose to 480 with one month to go in 2012 which is a 21 percent increase in just one year.

This brings us back to the Fast and Furious scandal and how the media prevented it from becoming Obama’s Watergate. We just learned another member of the Justice Department resigned this week. Gary Grindler, Attorney General Eric Holder’s chief of staff, will serve his last day at the Justice Department today, Wednesday. As deputy attorney general, Grindler oversaw the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which led the failed “gun-walking” operation.

A report from House Oversight Committee chairman Darryl Issa recommended disciplinary action against Grindler and 13 other officials; Grindler was accused of “passing the buck” and failing to take charge of the department. With the gun control issue at center stage again, it’s important to revisit a scandal the media failed to cover.

In June 2012, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was voted in con­tempt of Congress by 259 members of the House of Representatives for stonewalling the investigation into the Operation Fast and Furious scandal. In all of American history, no sitting Cabinet member has been held in contempt of Congress until now. President Obama even stepped in and used his “executive privilege” to protect Eric Holder. If Holder did nothing wrong, why did he need protection and why not cooperate with the investigation? What’s Holder hiding?

The media keeps glossing over corruption, and those of us who are informed have watched in astonishment. The Obama administration defies laws on marriage, immigration, gambling, marijuana, and por­nography, and conservatives are fed up. In this case, American guns were used in the deaths of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, Immigra­tion and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata, and approximately 300 Mexican citizens. The gun used in Terry’s death was purchased in Arizona, and the gun used in Zapata’s death was purchased in Texas. Both were “Fast and Furious” guns.

From 2009 to 2011, the Obama administration’s Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) ran Operation Fast and Furious (a.k.a. Project Gunrunner), a program to track U.S.-purchased firearms headed to Mexican drug cartels in order to get to cartel heads.

Critics believe the real purpose of the operation was to undermine the Second Amendment by vilifying gun owners and sellers so the govern­ment could enforce stricter gun laws in America. Either way, it went terribly wrong.

One problem with the plan was that our DOJ didn’t even notify Mexican authorities that thousands of semi-automatic firearms were being sold to people in Arizona thought to have links to Mexican drug cartels. ATF agents “were ordered not to intercept the smugglers, but rather to let the guns ‘walk’ across the U.S.-Mexican border and into the hands of Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.”

Fast and Furious was botched when over 1,400 guns, including AK-47’s, were lost. The operation was halted in December 2010 after two weapons the department lost track of were found at the murder scene of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. His family has since filed a lawsuit charging that the top federal prosecutor in Phoenix lied to them about the guns found at the crime scene in an attempt to hide the weapons’ connection to the ATF’s operation. The media has made this a political issue, and Holder has even accused Republicans of racism.

Rep. Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) requested the Justice Department release thousands of documents related to the inner workings of Fast and Furious. The Justice Department delivered less than ten percent of the 80,000 documents. Issa also released a report suggesting top DOJ officials had extensive knowledge of and involvement in Fast and Furious than previously acknowledged. Writing for Forbes, author Frank Minter asked, “Is it even conceivable that Attorney General Eric Holder didn’t know about this secret program? And if he didn’t, shouldn’t he have?”

However, in February 2011, the Justice Department sent a letter to Congress denying the operation even existed! Ten months later, the Department retracted the letter. Then, Eric Holder insisted he did not even know about the program until early 2011. After months of inves­tigation, the Justice Department finally acknowledged the allegations were true. Why did it take nearly nine months for the Department to acknowledge Holder’s earlier denials were false?

In other words, people died and Holder lied. Why did senior Justice Department officials who knew about and received briefings on the operation fail to stop it? By the way, Gary Grindler isn’t the only personnel change in the DOJ. Former ATF Director Kenneth Melson began talking to inves­tigators and pointed to a cover up. Melson was moved to a new position with the ATF. At least four more ATF officials were also reassigned or promoted by the Obama administration to other positions in Washington D.C.

Naturally, Holder has not only received continued support from President Obama, but White House spokesman Jay Carney said, “He absolutely stands by the Attorney General, thinks he is doing an excellent job.” Can American citizens still have confidence in their own chief law enforcement agency, the Department of Justice?

We should now be seriously considering whether this current administration is above the law. Similar to the flagrant corruption over the Benghazi tragedy, even if the truth is finally exposed and Holder resigns over Fast and Furious, the media successfully protected the president. Regardless of American deaths, whether a murder-suicide or corrupt policy and politics, we can conclude it’s not the tool or weapon that is responsible, but the people who misuse them.