WOBIK Blog views: 6992271

The Daily Trump
by Staff
8/26/2018

Excerpt:

At his recent rally in West Virginia, President Trump likened ordinary social media users to journalists, arguing that freedom of speech for the latter should mean freedom of speech for the former. Facebook seems to agree — except about the freedom of speech part.

Facebook recently revealed that it ranks the “trustworthiness” of regular people, just as it ranks the trustworthiness of news sources. Every Facebook user is assigned a “trustworthiness score” between one and zero, which drops if the social network believes users are contributing to “misinformation” on the platform.

This is an implicit acknowledgment of what was once acknowledged to be a core fact of the modern era — that in an age where members of the public have access to video recording, powerful cameras, and a global audience via the internet, anyone can be a journalist. All of the essential requirements for reporting the news are built into your smartphone.

Before they realized that right-wingers can use the internet too, the new era of citizen journalism was once celebrated by the mainstream media, who even attempted to co-opt the new trend. “36 stories that prove citizen journalism matters” is a headline from none other than CNN, for a 2013 story hyping its iReport project, which encourages ordinary citizens to submit stories and news reports online. New York Times editors, in 2012, spoke of a “golden age of storytelling” unlocked by the web, and encouraged journalists to look to Twitter for emerging stories. The far-left Guardian newspaper, in 2013, created a system to turn “user-generated content” into news.

You won’t find these old-media behemoths touting the value of citizen journalism today. They fear that the conservative citizen journalists who they once mocked as “pajamas media” (a term later embraced by conservative bloggers) have grown too powerful, as evidenced by the 2016 election. Now, the old media is frantically pressuring Facebook to restore their gatekeeping power and protect them from online upstarts.

But President Trump hasn’t forgotten.

“Every one of us is sort of like a newspaper, you have Twitter… Facebook … you can’t have censorship.”

“I’d rather have fake news like CNN than have anybody – including liberals, socialists … than have anybody stopped and censored.”

…………………………………………

View the complete article including links at:

http://thedailytrump.org/facebook-and-trump-agree-social-media-users-are-journalists/

EAG NEWS
by Victor Skinner
8/24/2018

Excerpts:

Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School Principal Lara Zelski decided students will no longer recite the Pledge of Allegiance during the school’s morning meeting agenda, which she described to parents as “an effort to begin our day as a fully inclusive and connected community.

“Over the past couple of years it has become increasingly obvious that more and more of our community were choosing to not stand and/or recite the pledge,” she wrote, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

The statement, posted to the school website, promised parents students could recite the Pledge of Allegiance later in the day, if they felt like it, and vowed to create better pledge specifically for the school.

……………………………………………….

The move infuriated parents and quickly gained the attention of Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp, and others who denounced the decision.

“I’m sure our House Education Committee will examine whether taxpayer funds should be used to instill such a divisive ideology in our students,” Ralston posted online, the AJC reports.

In less than a day, school officials reversed course.

………………………………..

View the complete article including image, links and comments at:

http://eagnews.org/parents-fight-back-after-school-drops-pledge-of-allegiance-for-student-authored-oath-to-global-society/

Patrick J. Buchanan — Official Website
by Patrick J. Buchanan
8/24/2018

Excerpt:

“If anyone is looking for a good lawyer,” said President Donald Trump ruefully, “I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen.” Michael Cohen is no Roy Cohn.

Tuesday, Trump’s ex-lawyer, staring at five years in prison, pled guilty to a campaign violation that may not even be a crime.

Cohen had fronted the cash, $130,000, to pay porn star Stormy Daniels for keeping quiet about a decade-old tryst with Trump. He had also brokered a deal whereby the National Enquirer bought the rights to a story about a Trump affair with a Playboy model, to kill it.

Cohen claims he and Trump thus conspired to violate federal law. But paying girlfriends to keep past indiscretions private is neither a crime nor a campaign violation. And Trump could legally contribute as much as he wished to his own campaign for president.

Would a Democratic House, assuming we get one, really impeach a president for paying hush money to old girlfriends?

Hence the high-fives among never-Trumpers are premature.

But if Cohen’s guilty plea and Tuesday’s conviction of campaign manager Paul Manafort do not imperil Trump today, what they portend is ominous. For Cohen handled Trump’s dealings for more than a decade and has pledged full cooperation with prosecutors from both the Southern District of New York and the Robert Mueller investigation.

Nothing that comes of this collaboration will be helpful to Trump.

Also, Manafort, now a convicted felon facing life in prison, has the most compelling of motives to “flip” and reveal anything that could be useful to Mueller and harmful to Trump.

Then there is the Mueller probe itself.

Twenty-six months after the Watergate break-in, President Nixon had resigned. Twenty-six months after the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta emails, Mueller has yet to deliver hard evidence the Trump campaign colluded with Putin’s Russia, though this was his mandate.

However, having, for a year now, been marching White House aides and campaign associates of Trump before a grand jury, Mueller has to be holding more cards than he is showing. And even if they do not directly implicate the president, more indictments may be coming down.

Mueller may not have the power to haul the president before a grand jury or indict him. After all, it is Parliament that deposes and beheads the king, not the sheriff of Nottingham. But Mueller will file a report with the Department of Justice that will be sent to the House.

And as this Congress has only weeks left before the 2018 elections, it will be the new House that meets in January, which may well be Democratic, that will receive Mueller’s report.

Still, as of now, it is hard to see how two-thirds of a new Senate would convict this president of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Thus we are in for a hellish year.

Trump is not going to resign. To do so would open him up to grand jury subpoenas, federal charges and civil suits for the rest of his life. To resign would be to give up his sword and shield, and all of his immunity. He would be crazy to leave himself naked to his enemies.

No, given his belief that he is under attack by people who hate him and believe he is an illegitimate president, and seek to bring him down, he will use all the powers of the presidency in his fight for survival. And as he has shown, these powers are considerable: the power to rally his emotional following, to challenge courts, to fire Justice officials and FBI executives, to pull security clearances, to pardon the convicted.

Democrats who have grown giddy about taking the House should consider what a campaign to bring down a president, who is supported by a huge swath of the nation and has fighting allies in the press, would be like.

Why do it? Especially if they knew in advance the Senate would not convict.

That America has no desire for a political struggle to the death over impeachment is evident. Recognition of this reality is why the Democratic Party is assuring America that impeachment is not what they have in mind.

Today, it is Republicans leaders who are under pressure to break with Trump, denounce him, and call for new investigations into alleged collusion with the Russians. But if Democrats capture the House, then they will be the ones under intolerable pressure from their own media auxiliaries to pursue impeachment.

Taking the House would put newly elected Democrats under fire from the right for forming a lynch mob, and from the mainstream media for not doing their duty and moving immediately to impeach Trump.

Democrats have been laboring for two years to win back the House. But if they discover that the first duty demanded of them, by their own rabid followers, is to impeach President Trump, they may wonder why they were so eager to win it.

View the complete article including links at:

http://buchanan.org/blog/do-democrats-want-an-impeachment-fight-129957

AFP/Getty Images

New York Post
by Salina Zito
8/22/2018

Opinion

Excerpt:

ZANESVILLE, OH — Last week, a woman in her mid-40s who lives in a tidy suburban enclave just outside of Columbus, Ohio, summed up her continued support for President Donald Trump despite his morals, values and behavior not matching hers nor matching her expectations she had for any president of the United States.

“For decades I have been inspired by aspiring politicians and elected officials who took to the podium or the camera and delivered poetic speeches to earn my trust and my support. They would sway me with expressive words and artfully delivered promises,” she said.

While the words were beautiful, they never manifested into anything tangible in her community.

“It took me a while to realize those words weren’t theirs, but skillfully crafted sentences that had been massaged and focus-group tested by a full staff of speechwriters and strategists.”

Along comes Trump in 2016. She cannot abide anything he tweets, finds his speeches a stream of consciousness that is hard to unscramble and considers his morals in the gutter. She reluctantly voted for him and knows she will vote for him again, something she admits even surprises her.

Why does he hold her support?

He delivers results.

“It’s just that simple.”

……………………………………………….

View the complete article including image and links at:

https://nypost.com/2018/08/22/why-trumps-supporters-wont-care-about-cohen-and-manaforts-convictions/

The Daily Caller
by Luke Rosiak | Investigative Reporter
8/21/2018

Excerpt:

• Former IT aide Imran Awan received no jail time Tuesday after a federal judge said he had “suffered enough.”
• His lawyer said his “destitute” client was building a charity hospital, but reports show that the land was also used for a real estate development and was allegedly stolen from farmers.
• Former Democratic chiefs of staff wrote letters of support for Imran, despite IT-violation findings by the House inspector general and Capitol Police.

A federal judge declined to give jail time to former Democratic IT aide Imran Awan Tuesday, saying he has “suffered enough” at the hands of politicians “at the highest levels of government.” In addition, the Department of Justice said it did not find any evidence that supported criminal charges.

……………………………..

View the complete article including image and links at:

https://dailycaller.com/2018/08/21/imran-awan-no-jail-time-hospital/

CREDIT: Getty Images
Image source — ‘inc’- https://www.inc.com/business-insider/howard-schultz-chairman-former-ceo-starbucks-successful-billionaire-coffee.html

===================================

American Thinker
by Thomas Lifson
8/23/2018

Excerpt:

Owing to the dominance of leftists throughout academia and the media, many corporations have caved in to, or willingly adopted, the values of the progressive left.  Institutions respond to other institutions more than to individuals, which is why so many ostensible beneficiaries of free markets end up supporting leftist causes.

Pretty much everyone that cares understands that Starbucks, with its infamous, counterproductive “talk about race” initiative, is progressive in outlook.  But many other companies quietly donate to the Southern Poverty Law Center or other leftist groups without much public awareness.

My friend who blogs under the name Bookworm, at the eponymous Bookworm Room website, has done us all a favor by collecting a database now exceeding 7,000 companies and their political positions and values.  The website What Business Thinks has made this database easily accessible for you as you shop either online or at stores.

………………………………………………….

View the complete article including links and comments at:

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/08/spot_the_companies_that_oppose_your_values.html

VOAT
Submitted by ‘CognitiveDissident5’
8/21/2018

View the complete post including links and comments at:

https://voat.co/v/news/2682944

Stilton’s Place
by Stilton Jarlsberg
8/22/2018

Excerpts:

Today, we’re debuting an exciting and journalistically responsible new feature intended to give a stronger voice to women in the normally testosterone-charged, scotch-swilling, cigar-chomping game of bare knuckle political commentary.
………………………………………

And so, we launch a bold experiment: grabbing actual headlines from the Drudge Report and getting reactions from some of the brightest young thinkers we could find at the beach.

………………………………………

LATE BREAKING NEWS:

Great. So after we declared it to be a slow news day, a whole bunch of feces hit the fan when the Tuesday evening news came on.

Michael Cohen pled guilty to multiple charges including campaign finance violations, and is pinning the blame squarely on Trump (this regarding hush money paid to women who found sex with Trump so incredible that they couldn’t resist talking about it even for 6-figure paydays)

…………………………………………….

View the complete post including image, links and comments at:

http://stiltonsplace.blogspot.com/2018/08/tan-oclock-news.html

With testimony from the president’s top lawyer, the special counsel is in no position to claim he needs to speak with Trump.

National Review
by Andrew C. McCarthy
8/20/2018

Excerpt:

For months, these columns have contended that, on the question whether President Trump should agree to a request by Special Counsel Robert Mueller III for an interview, the burden of persuasion has been imposed on the wrong party. That is, the president should not even be asked to submit to questioning at this point; the prosecutor must first establish that the president (1) is implicated in a serious crime and (2) has information or evidence that the prosecutor is unable to obtain from any other source.

That argument is bolstered by this weekend’s New York Times report that, with the president’s consent, Mueller’s team has conducted 30 hours of interviews with White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II. Having secured testimony from the president’s top lawyer, the special counsel is in no position to claim that he needs the president’s own testimony.

The president’s consent to make McGahn available to prosecutors is extraordinary, as it involves waiving both executive privilege and attorney–client privilege. As to the latter, some claim that there is no real waiver involved because McGahn purportedly represents “the presidency” in the abstract, not the actual incumbent. (The Times pushes this line, claiming that McGahn “viewed his role as protector of the presidency, not of Mr. Trump.”) This is nonsense. McGahn’s client is the president in the latter’s official capacity — in contrast to Trump’s private lawyers (Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow).

…………………………..

View the complete article including image, video, links and comments at:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/robert-mueller-donald-trump-interview-request/