Posts Tagged ‘Tulsi Gabbard’

Democrats’ attacks on what they call “disinformation” have their roots in Barack Obama’s Truth Squad

Posted: May 1, 2022 by John Ruberry in culture, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

While calling public figures “Orwellian” goes back decades, usually it’s an exaggeration. 

Not so with the new Misinformation and Disinformation Governance Board, whose existence was revealed by the soulless hack Alejandro Mayorkas, Joe Biden’s secretary of Homeland Security. The board’s executive director is Nina Jankowicz, a misinformationist. 

Among other things, Jankowicz in 2020 called into question the veracity of the Hunter Biden laptop revelations.

George Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” in 1984 of course propagandized lies. 

The Democrats’ Orwellian attacks on their opponents began during Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, when he created groups such as “The Truth Squad.” 

This morning on Twitter, former Democratic member of Congress and 2020 presidential candidate, Tulsi Gabbard, pointed her finger at the instigator on the Dems’ obsession with “disinformation,” Joe Biden’s former ticket-mate.

“Biden is just a front man,” Gabbard Tweeted. “Obama, April 21: social media censors ‘don’t go far enough,’ so the government needs to step in to do the job. Six days later, Homeland Security rolls out the ‘Ministry of Truth’ (aka Disinformation Governance Board).”

Obama’s “Truth Squad” made its first appearance in during the 2008 Democratic primaries. It was ramped up for the general election. A KMOV-TV St. Louis anchor reported that fall, “Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is asking Missouri law enforcement to target anyone who lies or runs a misleading TV ad during the presidential campaign.”

“Prosecutors and sheriffs from across Missouri are joining ‘The Barack Obama Truth Squad,'” reporter John Mills added, he then named Jennifer Joyce, St. Louis circuit attorney, and Bob McCulloch, the prosecutor for St. Louis County, as members.

Mills continued, “They will be reminding voters that Barack Obama is a Christian who wants to cut taxes for anyone making less than $250,000 a year.” 

What about those prosecutors?

“If they’re not going to tell the truth,” McCulloch told KMOV, “somebody’s got to step up and say, ‘That’s not true. This is the truth.'”

Jim Geraghty of National Review summed up the Missouri threat concisely at the time, “While the report never quite comes out and says that anyone running an ad saying those things would be subject to prosecution, that certainly is the message implied.” 

Truth, like knowledge, is nearly never a settled construct, especially in the political arena. 

Leftists, like Barack Obama, undoubtedly disagree with me. Rather, under the cloak of “truth,” they now label criticism of their policies, as well as reports that harm their side, such as the revelations from the Hunter Biden laptop, as “misinformation” and “disinformation.” The Obama quote referenced earlier comes from a Stanford University conference about “misinformation” held in April. Earlier that month, longtime top Obama campaign aide, David Axelrod, was a co-host of the “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy” conference at the University of Chicago.

Obama, ironically, was the recipient of PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” award in 2013. That’s the truth.

Informers are an integral part of any un-free society. In 2009, an Obama administration media flack, Macon Phillips, under the guise of–wait for it–fighting “disinformation,” asked Americans to rat out any who disparaged ObamaCare. “If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy,” he said, “send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

In 2012, the Obama-Biden campaign launched “the Truth Team.”

Never forget, the Democrats war on what they call “disinformation” began with Obama.

John Ruberry, and this is certainly the truth, regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Mixed Feelings on the Exclusion of Tulsi Gabbard from the Next Dem Debate

Posted: March 8, 2020 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, elections, politics, primaries
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To nobody’s surprise now that Tulsi Gabbard has managed to meet the standards for inclusion in the next rounds of Democrat debates, the Democrats have, you guessed it, changed the rules.

Now the Democrats would have a lot more credibility in their explaination that this is just the normal progression in how they are doing things if:

  1. The field was still too large to accommodate a third person running
  2. Tulsi Gabbard had not previously appeared in a debate
  3. They didn’t already change the rules to allow Mike (I bought the congress for you) Bloomberg onstage

Furthermore it’s worth noting that just two weeks ago the same conventional wisdom that say Gabbard has no prayer said that Joe Biden was finished.

However with the Democrat establishment firmly in the drivers seat and still angry that Gabbbard voted against one of the articles of impeachment and took out Kamala Harris of race there is virtually no change that this is going to change.

I think this is actually a sign of fear on their part. Gabbard single handedly turned Kamala Harris from a frontrunner in the Democrat race to a failure and if put on a stage next to two 70’s men, one a socialist and one who is shall we say “challenged mentally” is likely to destroy them.

That’s rather unfair but I look on the bright side, because while I think that Donald Trump has this in a walk, of Biden, Sanders and Gabbard only Tulsi has the best chance of the three to pull and upset, and it’s not close.

So by all means keep her off the stage.

Spot the “Maverick” Paul, Lee (but NOT Gabbard)

Posted: January 13, 2020 by datechguy in media, politics
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Over the last week the MSM has developed a great affection for a pair of Republican “Mavericks” Rand Paul (R-KY) & Mike Lee (R-UT).

Both had serious objections and had a very different opinion of the White House briefing on Iran than other senators and those differences of opinion were highlighted & Lionized by the MSM. Mike Lee in particular was highlighted on MSNBC , CNN, NBC News & CBS.

As you might guess the MSM loved it because nothing is more popular than a republican who is willing to publicly hit a republican, particularly if it’s Donald Trump.

Paul’s or Lee’s moves which incidentally are both consistent with their previous positions. Those positions are coincidentally shared by their position on the President’s recent decisions on Iran. However a month ago there was another act of a Maverick that took place, one even more significant than either.

Tulsi Gabbard a Democrat candidate for President, when the vote for impeachment came up, voted “Present” on both articles of impeachment, in defiance of both the house but of the base if the party that she is seeking the nominate.

However you might have noticed that while there were several different words used to describe her, the one which was not employed was “Maverick”.

That’s because during the time of John McCain the word “Maverick” was always given a positive connotation because any person who took the side of the Democrats on a key issue, must be lionized across the press. In fact during the presidential campaign that language was used to describe Lindsey Graham, until of course he started supporting Donald Trump.

However a Democrat refusing to support impeachment, the single cause most dear to the left/media, is, as far as the media is concerned, beyond the pale, and a Democrat candidate for president doing so is even worse and Maverick is now identified as a complement of honor.

To put it simply because of her vote on Impeachment, Tulsi Gabbard couldn’t get herself described as a Maverick by the MSM if she came into congress wearing black broadcloth and wielding a deck of cards

Quaint things: Covington Toobin, Erickson, Gabbard, and the California Press Under the Fedora

Posted: January 9, 2020 by datechguy in education, News/opinion, politics
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A couple of nights ago the word came that CNN has just made a settlement with the Covington High School Kids that they painted as a bunch of racists on the network. Fortunately for the MSM the Iran “attack” gave them a reason to ignore it.

Alas for Resa Aslin the MSM pretending it didn’t happen didn’t keep things from moving along as he, along with several “friends” were now served with suits as well.

The real comedy? It was only then after it cost CNN eight figures and he was served that he deleted his tweet from a year ago suggesting the joy that would come from assaulting a young man who did nothing wrong, as it a year later it would make things all OK.

How Quaint

One of the things that makes both nostalgia and children so quaint is are the innocent assumptions involved here are a few examples:

Jeffrey Toobin in Impeachment:

The House inexplicably refused to seek to compel key impeachment witnesses in court, burning months in which it could have secured not just key decisions in its favor but actual testimony. Indeed, a year ago, I appeared before the Judiciary Committee and encouraged it not only to hold a vote on impeachment but to go to court to force the testimony of figures such as former White House counsel Don McGahn. While refusing to trigger its impeachment powers with such a vote, it did take McGahn to court. It won that case shortly before its impeachment vote. The case will be heard by the appellate court this week, even without being expedited for the impeachment investigation.

When faced with the embarrassing timing of the McGahn ruling after the hurried impeachment vote, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff insisted there was no time to waste in getting the case to the Senate and that “it has taken us eight months to get a lower court ruling” to compel McGahn to testify. He was wrong on both points. After key members claimed there was a “crime spree in progress” and no time to delay a Senate trial, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi immediately blocked any submission to the Senate to demand the witnesses that the House unwisely omitted in its investigation. It seems time is no longer of the essence.

How quaint of Toobin to think that the point of impeachment was to secure a conviction rather than to appease a base for political reasons.

Our next contestant in our quaint exercise in innocence comes from Erick Erickson who is responding to those who ridiculed the VP for pointing out Iran’s & Soleimani 9/11 connection:

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Mr. Erickson is sincere in being offended which is in a sense so cute, as if in 2020 and the years prior the foes of this administration actually still considered obtaining facts and evidence over the possibility of scoring a political point over a hated foe, when in reality as John Adams reminded a young journalist over 200 years earlier that this has ever been the norm.

I really laughed when I saw this one from the Tulsi Gabbard campaign

Just when you thought that Democrats couldn’t possibly play it any dirtier they prove that they are, in fact, capable of just that. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the so-called progressive left is really labeling their fellow party members Russian stooges… and that’s only because those fellow Democrats have the audacity to disagree with the foreign policy establishment. “Roving journalist” Michael Tracey reports on Twitter that Tulsi Gabbard volunteers claim they have found “dozens of signs around New Hampshire defaced with a hammer-and-sickle logo.”

Here is a twitter image

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Is there anything more quaint than the idea that there is still at least one Democrat candidate who thinks being associated with the hammer & sickle might be considered an insult to them. I suppose it’s a mark in Gabbard’s favor that she doesn’t want to be associated with the murderous philosophy responsible for the murder of over 100 million people in the previous century and the enslavement of millions more.

But how naive can one be to think that when running for the Democrat nomination for president in the Year of Our Lord 2020 that there is the slightest possibility that an association with communism would not be considered a great incentive for the current party base to pledge their undying support.

One of the things about the far left is that when you give them power they invariably take it regardless of what you think. Nothing is more illustrative of this than this story out of California:

I’m not sure how I feel about this,” said anchor Jessica Holmes to her co-anchors. “You’re not going to be allowed to shower and do a load of laundry in the same day.”

While that may sound insane, what California Attorney Richard Lee breaks down the hypothetical figures.

“Doing a load of laundry takes about 40 to 50 gallons of water. Taking a shower for about eight minutes uses about 17 gallons of water. Well, there’s a limitation of your daily use of water, 55 gallons per day. So that means if you’re taking a shower and doing a load of laundry, you can’t do both without being in violation of the law.”

How quaint. the News media have been an ally of the left forever and now they are finally discovering that this left isn’t just interested in turning places like Venezuelan into 3rd world hellholes they are interested in importing third world conditions, complete with blackouts and water shortages to America so that folks coming from the 3rd world can feel right at home.

Oh and a note to KTLA, taking down the video doesn’t end the law.

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