The Media Is Whining About Being Exposed

If you are following the news, a number of press outlets coordinated editorials about freedom of the press. In truth, they are all bashing the President. No surprise there. That is pretty much to be expected, given their political views. All of those synchronized editorials are advocating for "press freedom". Exactly what is it that they currently can't do?

- The media can produce stories that are proven to be false with virtually no repercussions for producing them.

- The media can advocate in the portions of their publications and shows that are supposed to be straight news without stating that they are giving opinion.

- The media can publish classified material without penalty where anyone else would be convicted and jailed for doing the same thing. Example: They are about to sentence a NSA contractor (Reality Winter) to at least five years in prison for leaking classified information. They are doing nothing to the media that published it.

- They can slander and demean people but unless intentional malice can be proven by the victim (which is next to impossible), there is no consequence for the media.

Exactly what are these restrictions that they are referencing? Is it being held to a standard that they don't like? Generically, when a media outlet (print or electronic) produces a "news" story that turns out to be false, and someone points out publicly that the story is false, is that restricting freedom of the press? Or....is that actually allowing more freedom, because both sides are having their say publicly?

It appears that, after many decades of being able to control the public agenda and get away with whatever they wanted to do (up to and including riling up the public enough to start a war), the media has gotten more scrutiny in recent times. Additionally, with the advent of the internet, the corporate media is no longer the only outlet for information. Granted, a large portion of information on the internet is not subject to editorial management and contains a lot of false material. That is certainly true and one has to be skeptical of everything that shows up, even more so with outlandish claims. However, many major real news stories have broken in those same venues.

Examples:

1) The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal was revealed by an internet blogger posting a story about Newsweek not publishing the sexual misconduct story, even though it was huge news. As it turned out, they were not publishing it to protect President Clinton, for political reasons, which is a real news story unto itself.

2) The fact that Dan Rather was using unquestionably forged documents to smear former President George W. Bush during his re-election campaign was revealed by internet tech bloggers. It cost Rather his job, appropriately so.

3) The false story about the Democratic National Committee servers being hacked by Russia via the internet was disproved by internet tech bloggers.

So.........it seems that the media companies have lost control of their monopoly on public disbursement of information. They don't like it. They are whining about it. However, they need to get over it because things will never go back to the way they were before the internet became available. If anything, there is more freedom to publish now than at any time in history. The caveat is that the consumers of information have to be much more skeptical and have to process information better. Most don't do it so there are obviously a lot of misinformed people and social media gets filled with nonsensical memes and posts. It is up to all of us the cull through the nonsense and believe only that which can be verified. The mainstream media wants blind trust. However, they have clearly demonstrated that they don't deserve blind trust. That is what has them upset. The curtain has been pulled back and "Oz The Magnificent" has been shown to be what he actually is.

Are Confederate Veterans considered US military veterans? Yes they are.

A friend posted a meme on Facebook that said that Confederate Veterans are the same as other US military veterans and there were some commenters that disputed that, using Snopes.com as their reference. Since I have found Snopes to be agenda-driven at times, I decided to find out. Interestingly, when you use a search engine like Google, the first page consists of all these goofy opinion sites like blogs and Snopes. In fact, Snopes says it isn't true. Snopes is wrong, sort of. They are commenting on the wrong section. The controversy was over Public Law 85-425 passed in 1958, specifically section 410. I wanted to read the actual text of the law. I finally found it on the House of Representatives site. The first thing that is amazing is that the entire law is less than one page. Take that.... Affordable Healthcare Act.

So, to answer the question, as we say, In God We Trust..... all others bring real data. First of all, Section 410 is the wrong section to refer to for this discussion. So... here is the real deal.

Public Law 85-425 amended the Veterans Benefits Act of 1957 (Public Law 85-56). Most of the changes were changes in rates of pensions paid. However, this is the ACTUAL text of the law that added subsection (e) of Section 432 (not 410, the one people always mistakenly refer to).

"3) Section 432 is amended by adding at the end thereof the following new subsection: e) For the purpose of this section, and section 433, the term “veteran” includes a person who served in the military or naval forces of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, and the term “active, military or naval service” includes active service in such forces.”

That could NOT be clearer despite what any biased observer might think.

So..moving on....what is Section 410? Item 9 of the 85-425 law added a new Section 410 which made pensions equal for Confederate and US veterans. The ACTUAL text of that is this:

9) Immediately above Section 411, insert the following: “Confederate Forces Veterans” “Section 410. The Administrator shall pay to each person who served in the military or naval forces of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War a monthly pension in the same amounts and subject to the same conditions as would have been applicable to such person under the laws in effect on December 31, 1957, if his service in such forces had been service in the military or naval service of the United States.”

I will also point out another mistake that Snopes is making. The web site describes the law as a "feel good" measure because there may not have been any Confederate veterans alive at the time of its passage. There may or may not have been any Union Veterans alive at the time, either. That doesn't matter. The law does have actual consequences, not the least of which is that unmarked graves of Confederate veterans can have government-funded tombstones placed, to honor them, by the Veterans Administration, That is true, to this day. Additionally, older veterans who had married markedly younger women still had their widows protected by pensions.

So, in summary, Confederate Veterans are, by law, considered the same as other US veterans and had equal benefits under the law. Don't believe it??? Don't rely on opinion sites. Read it yourself.

http://uscode.house.gov/statutes/pl/85/425.pdf

August 18, 2018 Summary of the Mueller Investigation, to this point

For those who find it hard to keep up with it all, because they have other things to do, a summary, to this point:

1) James Wolfe, chief of security at the Senate Intelligence Committee, was sleeping with a 20-something New York Times reporter, Ali Watkins . He leaks the fact that minor Trump campaign advisor Carter Page was interviewed by the FBI to his girlfriend who is dumb enough to run it, along with the editors of the Times, implying that Page was working with the Russians. In truth, Page was approached by a Russian agent and fully cooperated with the FBI but, of course, this is nothing close to what was reported in the Times. Lots of people who dislike then-candidate Trump go nuts over the bogus story.

Wolfe has since been fired and Watkins is big trouble for apparently "sleeping her way to stories".

2) The Clinton Campaign hires Fusion GPS, through the Perkins Coie law firm, in order to hide their involvement, to dig up dirt on then-candidate Trump. Fusion GPS hires, Nellie Ohr, the wife of then fourth-ranked person at the Department of Justice, Bruce Ohr, and former British spy Christopher Steele to come up with stuff to use against then-candidate Trump. Between Ohr and Steele, they come up with the infamous "dossier" which turns out to be unverified nonsense. Steele has testified as much under oath.

Ohr has been demoted twice. Steele is being sued for libel. Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS has recently been discovered to have perjured himself in front of Congress.

3) Both former CIA Director John Brennan and Senator John McCain shop the phony documents around to the FBI and news media. Most news outlets know the dossier is nonsense and will not publish it. Eventually, the web site Buzzfeed does, even though they know it is nonsense.

4) Former FBI Director James Comey starts an investigation based on the phony story and document. The investigation is prioritized over the Clinton investigation by the infamous FBI agent Peter Strzok. He, his lover Lisa Page and Andrew McCabe are all in on it. Counter intelligence head Bill Priestap and FBI General Counsel James Baker are in on it. They ask for a FISA warrant and lie by saying the evidence is "verified", which is absolutely untrue. One of the FISA requests is signed by current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is still participating in the process even though he is a potential witness or co-conspirator.

James Comey gets fired and freely admits to violating the law by intentionally leaking classified material to the press. Rosenstein won't recuse himself, even though he is up to his neck in it. BIll Priestap is gone from the FBI. Peter Strzok is fired. Lisa Page was fired. Andrew McCabe was fired three days before he could retire. Baker has been "reassigned" from the highest legal post in the FBI (That is FBI talk for fired from an important job).

5) Comey commits a felony (leaking classified material knowingly to a friend to give to the media) in order to assure that a Special Counsel is appointed. Since Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (there is that name again) appoints Robert Mueller as Special Counsel. However, the special counsel statute specifies that a special counsel is only appointed to investigate a crime. In the appointment documents, there is NO alleged crime mentioned. Additionally, "collusion" is NOT a crime under federal law. So..... what was he appointed to investigate?

6) The Special Counsel, after almost two years, has indicted some Russians for attempting to hack US elections. Every senior official who has testified has said that the election was IN NO WAY effected by their efforts. They have also indicted Rick Gates and Paul Manafort for some business dealings (for which Manafort had previously been cleared by the DOJ) which occurred six or seven years BEFORE the election and had nothing to do with the election or the President. They do not even look into Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta's brother, Tony Podesta, for doing the exact same thing. They also indicted Michael Flynn for mis-remembering a conversation that was not a crime. Yes, that is correct, they prosecuted him for lying about something that was never a crime. (Side note: This is not a new thing. You might remember that US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald went after Scooter Libby for outing a clandestine agent, who everyone knew was not a clandestine agent, and it had already been revealed that Richard Armitage was the one who outed her. Made no difference to Fitzgerald, He just wanted to make a name for himself.)

Therefore, in summary, the entire Mueller investigation was initiated by bogus documents and criminal activity by law federal law enforcement officials. Almost all of those officials have been fired. It is hard to make the argument that they did nothing wrong. As a result of the Mueller investigation, with the exception of the inconsequential Russian hackers (who will never face justice in the US), Paul Manafort and Rick Gates (who made some shady financial deals many years ago that had nothing to do with the election), and Michael Flynn (for lying about something that was not a crime), ALL of the documented crimes have been committed by members of the FBI (Comey, Priestap, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Baker), a friend of the former Director of the FBI (the college professor who leaked classified material from Comey to the media), Department of Justice officials (Rosenstein and whoever signed the other FISA requests), a former CIA Director (Brennan), and the head of Fusion GPS (Simpson, perjury). There has been nothing revealed about the President, or anything to do with his campaign, trying to do something nefarious in the election. If there was, we would no by now. Rep. Adam Schiff couldn't keep a secret about his family if he thought they was political gain in it being leaked.