A short week with the holiday, but not without significant news.
— To those who support and think that the woman who climbed and forced closure of the Statue of Liberty on Monday is a hero, you should be ashamed. People who planned their day, vacation, and time had to evacuate the statue. Those on line to go in had to leave. Those on boats had to turn around. By what virtue is that right and makes her a hero? She should be locked up, yet she is on the MSM saying how proud she is. I hope we have enough sense of values left to make her pay for the thousands she disrupted.
— Scott Pruitt resigned. It’s about time. We called for this a month ago. Story after story about him said he was part of the swamp that the President was committed to clean. You may recall some of the stories:
He rented a Washington DC room at favorable rates from a well connected lobbyist.
He installed a $43,000 private phone booth in his office.
He tried to get first a franchise, then a job for his wife.
The government is looking at excessive raises he gave some staff.
They are investigating his traveling costs, at government expense.
They are reviewing his use of staff for personal errands.
And it goes on. The time for him to leave was long up.
— Did you hear that the son of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed while trying to attack a power station in Syria? It wasn’t big news on the MSM. You remember Baghdadi? He is the leader of the Salafi jihadist militant terrorist organisation known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which controls territory in several countries. He has a $25 million bounty on his head and has not been heard from since September 2017, when he urged supporters to launch attacks against the West and keep fighting in Syria and Iraq.
— We also used a drone strike to kill a militant commander and his aide in Pakistan near the Afghan border Wednesday, Pakistani intelligence officials reported. The drone targeted the commander, Qari Abdullah Dawar, as he was walking with his associate near their mountain hideout in the Tor Tangai area of North Waziristan. The slain militants were from the Gul Bahadur group, which is Taliban-linked faction. They were targeted for carrying out multiple attacks in Afghanistan.
Good news like this is not MSM worthy. People might think we are making progress and why report that.
— Did you hear that Brian Ross, who was suspended as chief investigative correspondent by ABC for a faulty report on Michael Flynn, is leaving the network? You may recall, he excitingly reported that Flynn testified the President directed him to contact the Russians before the election. It was an exclusive report and set off a frenzy. The market tanked as ABC reported it and talked about it.When it was finally reported that the story was false, it added to other Ross negative reports on the administration and he finally was suspended. When his suspension was lifted he was assigned to an off the air role. Now they have parted company. I don’t see Ross getting a role on a major station. He is too damaged.
— Did you hear that Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who falsely claimed to be black and became an NAACP chapter president, was booked in new charges this week — welfare fraud.
According to authorities, she reported her income as under $500 a month and she received $8,800 of food assistance. However, a subpoena of her bank records showed she made $84,000 over that same time from her auto biography and speaking engagements.
Go figure, the woman lied.
— Did you hear that the Mexican President -Elect said he is going to invite President Trump to his inauguration (Dec 1)? It’s his latest olive branch to the President after his tough rhetoric in the campaign.“We are neighboring countries, we have economic and trade relationships, ties of friendship. It is very important to us to cooperate on development. We share 3,180 kilometers of border. So President Trump will be invited,” Lopez Obrador told journalists.
— Here’s another story reporting on the MSM lack of fairness as reported in The Hill.
A Democratic aide is arrested while attempting to flee the country, ultimately pled guilty to felony charges, and an investigation found that he violated numerous standards of conduct imposed on House employees. Sound like a news story?
In the two days since former Democratic House IT aide Imran Awan pleaded guilty to bank fraud, no broadcast news outlet has bothered to report on the story. This lack of coverage reflects the media’s historic disinterest in case.
ABC and NBC have never reported on Awan, making CBS the sole major news network to have acknowledged the story since the federal investigation into his conduct as a House staffer became public in February of 2017. The only attention that CBS paid Awan was on July 26 of 2017, in the form of a 38-second news brief on CBS This Morning. The report mentioned that Awan had been arrested at Dulles Airport while attempting to leave the country.
Cable news has displayed a similar lack of interest. CNN has dedicated four minutes and 47 seconds to Awan across three separate stories, the bulk of which came from a July 27, 2017 segment on The Lead with Jake Tapper. An examination of all MSNBC shows for which there are Nexis transcripts yielded no coverage. That analysis included all shows airing between 5:00 p.m. and midnight.
By comparison, back in 2014, broadcast network news spent more than 14 minutes over the course of two days on mid-level Republican congressional staffer Elizabeth Lauten. The breathless reporting centered around a leaked private Facebook message in which Lauten had criticized the Obama daughters for being “under-dressed” at the annual Thanksgiving turkey-pardoning ceremony.
Based on the current numbers, Lauten, a Republican, received 22 times more network attention for sending a private Facebook message than Awan, a Democrat, has for committing a felony.
While Awan was found guilty of bank fraud, the investigation into his behavior as a House employee determined that he had also violated “House IT internal controls,” which would have resulted in “administrative action” against him, had he still been employed.
And that’s they is the day after a holiday.