THE DOCTRINE OF THE N.A.F.T.A. GLOBALIST DEMOCRATS IS TO SERVE THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS WITH ENDLESS WAVES OF INVADING 'CHEAP' LABOR SUBSIDIZED WITH WELFARE FUNDED BY TAXES ON MIDDLE AMERICA.
In many speeches, Mayorkas says he is building a mass migration system to deliver workers to wealthy employers and investors and “equity” to poor foreigners. The nation’s border laws are subordinate to elites’ opinion about “the values of our country,” Mayorkas claims.
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
THE SQUALID AND RUTHLESS ETHICS OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY
THE BANKSTER
FUNDED DEMOCRAT PARTY: SERVANTS OF THE LA RAZA MEXICAN WELFARE STATE ON THE
AMERICAN WORKERS’ BACKS!
THEY
DESTROYED THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS, AMERICA’S BORDERS AND ENDLESSLY ASSAULTED
THE AMERICAN WORKER IN THEIR EFFORTS TO FINISH OFF THE GOP… And they got filthy
rich doing it!
“The Democrats had abandoned their working
class base to chase what they pretended was a racial group when what they were
actually chasing was the momentum of unlimited migration”. DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE
Where were the HOWLERS when serial rapist Bill Clinton, Bill
Cosby and Harvey Weinstein were on the prowl?
Harvey Weinstein has been exposed in the
media as the sexual
predator he is, and Hillary Clinton has been exposed as the
craven money-grubber she is; money over
morality is the mantra she lives by. PATRICIA Mc CARTHY – AMERICAN THINKERcom
"But
what the Clintons do is criminal because they do it wholly at the expense of
the American people. And they feel thoroughly entitled to do it: gain power,
use it to enrich themselves and their friends. They are amoral, immoral, and
venal. Hillary has no core beliefs beyond power and money. That should be clear
to every person on the planet by now."
---- Patricia McCarthy -
AMERICANTHINKER.com
Victor Davis Hanson makes an important point in his American Greatness column, "One Ford Narrative Too Many." Christine Blasey Ford's accusation against Judge Kavanaugh was deeply unethical.
I am confused by the bipartisan outrage solely directed at Senator Dianne Feinstein's or her staff's lowdown leaking of Ford's name. Of course, it was unethical and so typical of the twilight years of the senior senator from California. But, then again, so is authoring an anonymous hit piece without any corroborating evidence but with misleading written assertions (such as how Ford sought "medical treatment" for the assault – without disclosing she meant marriage counseling 36 years after the fact.) It seems far less noble to charge Kavanaugh with sexual assault anonymously than to have come forward at the outset and demonstrate the charge transparently. The cloak of anonymity does even more damage to the idea of jurisprudence than does the unethical removal of it by a would-be enabler.
Indeed, it is wicked to ruin a man's life with an anonymous note.
It is unethical to destroy the career and reputation of an outstanding man over something as small as being jumped and groped at a drunken teenage party. Blasey Ford wants us to believe that the episode was a rape attempt by two strong boys, in which her clothes were not removed, she was not raped, and she was easily able to run out of the room without opposition. Nothing actually happened except that she was scared something would happen.
It is unethical to humiliate a good man and his family before the nation.
It is wicked to rob someone of one of the greatest and happiest days of his life, a day he worked hard for his entire life, yes, from those very teenage years.
It is unethical to purposely besmirch the honor of the nation by besmirching a revered and precious institution with gutter politics.
How wicked that it was done to protect federal backing and funding of abortion without limit!
It is wicked to lie in order to make your charges seems more plausible. Ford wanted us to believe that such an episode haunted her for life – or haunted her after she recalled it in marriage counseling thirty years later. She claimed before the nation that it restricted her ability to live in a normal house (a lie), fly in airplanes (a lie), or have a healthy marriage.
Bearing false witness is of the utmost seriousness as a moral breach. It breaks the Ninth Commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." It is right up there with murder and stealing, because it partakes of both.
The warning against bearing false witness is so important it is repeated 30 times in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. It is so important that it is repeated twice at Mount Sinai: "Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment."
It is one of the six commandments Jesus cites as the most important of the Ten Commandments, if one wishes to be saved (Matthew 19:19). It is one of the seven things the Lord hates (Proverbs 6:16-19): "a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren."
At the end of his life, Moses spells out in detail God's teaching on how to safeguard an innocent man from false accusations. One witness is not sufficient to lodge an accusation. Two witnesses do not suffice. There must be three witnesses.
One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sinneth: at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established."
Moses also spells out the need for consequences – that is, punishment – for bearing false witness.
If a false witness rise up against any man to testify against him that which is wrong; Then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges, which shall be in those days; And the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother; Then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother: so shalt thou put the evil away from among you. And those which remain shall hear, and fear, and shall henceforth commit no more any such evil among you.
The Jewish Kabbalah tradition teaches that he who lies against the true witness lies against the entire Bible.
Politicians do not operate in the realm of ethics. They can't even tell a false witness from a credible one, if it seems politically risky.
If Judge Kavanaugh had not stood up for his own innocence with righteous indignation, the scumbags would have triumphed.
The Democrats think anything goes ethically in their drive for power, because they have defined their desire to rule as ethical in itself, and their political opponents as evil. We have just experienced what happens when a just cause – to end sexual abuse and assault – is twisted to serve a partisan political purpose.
America has become morally confused. Good and evil do not lie along party lines. To follow that moral reasoning leads to horrors.
HILLARY CLINTON: DEMOCRATS WON'T BE CIVIL TO REPUBLICANS UNTIL WE TAKE OVER
Waterfalls in the desert. Sunny days in Seattle. And something like a moment of honesty from Hillary Clinton. It's very partial, but still entirely implausible.
Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that civility in America can only begin again if Democrats win back the House or Senate this fall.
We won't be civil to you... until we take over.
At least Hillary comes close to admitting that this is about power. And that the Democrats will do destroy any public norms to get it.
"You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about," Clinton said in an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour. "That's why I believe, if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that's when civility can start again. But until then, the only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength."
All Republicans seem to respect is strength?
Who wore it best, Mussolini or Hillary?
"There can be no democratic norms, until we take power. But we're only doing it because strength is the only thing the other side understands," every tyrant ever.
"I remember what they did to me for 25 years -- the falsehoods, the lies, which unfortunately people believe because the Republicans have put a lot of time, money, and effort in promoting them," Clinton said.
The Republicans have even managed to shamelessly convince folks that Hillary Clinton didn't bring peace to Northern Ireland, try to join NASA or land under fire at an airport.
Or get named after Sir Edmund Hilary.
All these Republican lies are a serious problem. Like the time Republicans tried to convince people that Chelsea Clinton wasn't jogging around the World Trade Center on 9/11.
"So when you're dealing with an ideological party that is driven by the lust for power, that is funded by corporate interests..."
Projection is a sad and unmerciful disease.
Clinton said. "I want to stop the degrading of the rule of law. The delegitimizing of elections."
She said while delegitimizing the election that she lost
GOOGLE WORKED TO RIGGED THE ELECTION FOR THE SWAMP EMPRESS TO KEEP THE FOREIGN INVADERS COMING SO WAGES ARE KEPT DEPRESSED!
Clinton said. "I want to stop the degrading of the rule of law. The delegitimizing of elections."
The Clintons, through their fraudulent Clinton Foundation, looted the poor of Haiti to fill their pockets… google it!
1.Globalism: Google VP Kent Walker insists that despite its repeated rejection by electorates around the world, “globalization” is an “incredible force for good.”
2.Hillary Clinton’s Democratic party: An executive nearly broke down crying because of the candidate’s loss. Not a single executive expressed anything but dismay at her defeat.
3.Immigration: Maintaining liberal immigration in the U.S is the policy that Google’s executives discussed the most.
HILLARY CLINTON’S GLBALIST VISION:
SURRENDER OF OUR BORDERS WITH NARCOMEX AND SUCKING IN
“It’s almost impossible
to get convicted in this city,” said [Sgt. Kevin] Healy, who works in the
Police Department’s narcotics division. “The message needs to be sent that
it’s not OK to be selling drugs. It’s not allowed anywhere else. Where else can
you walk up to someone you don’t know and purchase crack and heroin? Is there
such a place?”…
Police say drug dealers
from the East Bay ride BART into San Francisco every day to prey on the
addicts slumped on our sidewalks, and yet the city that claims to
so desperately want to help those addicts often looks the other way.
Steinle’s
murderer, Jose Zarate and been deported 5xs!
"While walking with her father on a pier
in San Francisco in 2015, Steinle was shot by the illegal alien. Steinle
pleaded with her father to not let her die, but she soon passed in her father’s
arms."
SANCTUARY CITY
SAN FRANSICO
AMERICA’S
DUMPSTER CITY OF FILTH AND DRUG DEALERS
HOME TO SENATOR
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, SENATOR KAMALA HARRIS, REP. NANCY PELOSI and GAVEN NEWSOM
“It’s almost impossible
to get convicted in this city,” said [Sgt. Kevin] Healy, who works in the
Police Department’s narcotics division. “The message needs to be sent that
it’s not OK to be selling drugs. It’s not allowed anywhere else. Where else can
you walk up to someone you don’t know and purchase crack and heroin? Is there
such a place?”…
Police say drug dealers
from the East Bay ride BART into San Francisco every day to prey on the
addicts slumped on our sidewalks, and yet the city that claims to
so desperately want to help those addicts often looks the other way.
Steinle’s
murderer, Jose Zarate and been deported 5xs!
"While walking with her father on a pier
in San Francisco in 2015, Steinle was shot by the illegal alien. Steinle
pleaded with her father to not let her die, but she soon passed in her father’s
arms."
More Bribery: Kamala Harris hands $400,000 to Heidi Heitkamp
Democratic senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota went against her own voters' sentiment, which supported Judge Brett Kavanaugh for Supreme Court by about 60%; voted against the man in a bid to sink his confirmation; and suddenly found herself with a flood of campaign cash, courtesy of Sen. Kamala Harris, who raised her a $400,000 payday.
Was that cash why she changed her vote from sympathetic to Kavanaugh to a "no"? One wonders if these were the arrangements made, because it sure was weird that she changed her vote, given that she was from a red state and likely to lose her seat, running as she was 9 points behind her Republican challenger, and would have politically benefited from casting a "yes." Did she know about the payday? Was it something she was offered? And did she need the payday that bad?
Oh, I heard her on 60 Minutes the other night, unpersuasively telling us she was voting her "conscience." The ace investigative reporters at that lefty show never thought to ask her about any of her political calculations – they just gave her a soapbox to justify herself and didn't quite notice that little $400,000 being slipped into her coffers.
It all has the look of disguised bribery, just as the crowdfunding efforts directed against Maine's Republican senator, Susan Collins, had the look of a bribe.
A crowdfunding website is trying to strong-arm Senator Susan Collins, the Republican from Maine, by giving more than $1 million to her 2020 opponent – unless she opposes Judge Kavanaugh. Donors are asked to make a financial pledge and then enter their credit-card information. As of Tuesday afternoon, 37,425 people had put down $1,041,878.
The fine print makes clear the quid pro quo: "Your card will only be charged if Senator Susan Collins votes for Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court." To avoid the money bomb, all Ms. Collins must do is vote "no."
That cash, by the way, snowballed to $2.9 million at the latest reading, an intimidating prospect, indeed.
Money didn't work, and Collins called it what it was: bribery. The Wall Street Journal in its editorial above explained why that was accurate:
But federal law defines the crime of bribery as "corruptly" offering "anything of value" to a public official, including a Member of Congress, with the intent to "influence any official act." The crowdfunders in this case are offering something of value – withholding funds from her opponent – in return for a Supreme Court confirmation vote.
"I have had three attorneys tell me that they think it is a clear violation of the federal law on bribery," Ms. Collins says. "Actually, two told me that; one told me it's extortion."
So now the bribes and payoffs go on, using the pretense of crowdfunding. I suppose the Democrats will attempt to justify it as free speech. What we are seeing here is quid pro quo, emoluments for services rendered, and this isn't different in kind from what Sen. Bob Menendez did with his doctor pal in Florida.
The problem is that there is little control over who is giving these vast sums of money, or if fat cats or foreigners are involved, which could mean campaign finance violations easily if the matter got looked at closely. There's also little notice of whether "incentives" were offered. Another thing that makes me suspicious is that Kamala Harris is not that popular: her Twitter feed, as I have pointed out repeatedly, has been loaded with fake followers in what was an obvious bid to puff herself up in influence she didn't have. Was she really capable of raising $400,000 as Democrats' Midas-like wonder woman? I think it's legitimate to ask.
Meanwhile, the message goes out: support leftist Democrat causes no matter what you think or your voters want, and you, too, can get cash from who knows where rolling in.
Any questions why Democrats are held in such disrepute?
Mob rule came very close to subverting America’s democratic constitutional republic. Fortunately for the country’s sake, enough brave members of the United States Senate faced down the mob’s intimidation tactics this time. They restored reason, justice and ordered liberty in confirming Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court after he had to endure weeks of character assassination. The unleashed mob had attempted to obstruct the whole process of Senate “advice and consent,” egged on by some irresponsible Democrat senators. Leftwing Alinskyite agitators yelled from the Senate galleries, staged disruptive demonstrations in the halls of the Senate, and stalked senators at their offices, restaurants, the airport and even at their homes.
After failing to get their way, some leftwing protesters clawed at the locked doors of the Supreme Court building as Justice Kavanaugh was being sworn in, shouting “shut it down.” Some Democrats in the House of Representatives are threatening impeachment proceedings against Justice Kavanaugh if they take control of the House. These Democrats would seek to perform their own do-over of the Senate confirmation proceedings in the House under the guise of an “impeachment” proceeding. They would be plowing over the same charges that the Senate had already decided were not sufficiently proven to prevent the one congressional body authorized by the Constitution to provide its “advice and consent” from confirming Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.
In short, in opposing Justice Kavanaugh, the deranged left is literally attacking the core institutions and constitutional structure of our nation’s republic that help to secure the rule of law.
The Founding Fathers recognized the threat posed by mob rule and built safeguards against it into the Constitution. James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 63 that “there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to…suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind?” The Founding Fathers viewed the Senate as one such “temperate and respectable body.” As James Madison commented at the Constitutional Convention, the “use of the Senate is to consist in its proceeding with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom, than the popular branch” of the Congress.
The Founding Fathers would have been appalled at the level of dysfunction wrought by the Senate Democrats’ dirty tricks, dishonesty and poisonous rhetoric during what should have been a solemn deliberative process.
In Federalist No. 71, Alexander Hamilton warned against “unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests.” He observed that “the people commonly INTEND the PUBLIC GOOD.” (Emphasis in the original) However, Mr. Hamilton also recognized how passions of the moment can be readily manipulated against the peoples’ own better sense of their interests. For that reason, he wrote, “it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection.” Mr. Hamilton went on to laud the “courage” of such guardians who “saved the people from very fatal consequences of their own mistakes…at the peril of their displeasure."
Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine, pictured above) displayed such courage in resisting the passions of the mob, including intimidation, to vote for Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation. In a speech she delivered on the Senate floor the day before the final vote, Senator Collins lamented “a confirmation process that has become so dysfunctional it looks more like a caricature of a gutter-level political campaign than a solemn occasion.” She carefully laid out the reasoning underlying her decision to vote for Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation, including an analysis of his judicial record. As to the uncorroborated allegations against Justice Kavanaugh of sexual assault, Senator Collins focused her attention on the fundamental legal principles of “due process, the presumption of innocence, and fairness.”
Channeling James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, Senator Collins declared, “We must always remember that it is when passions are most inflamed that fairness is most in jeopardy.” She said that the “presumption of innocence is relevant to the advice and consent function when an accusation departs from a nominee’s otherwise exemplary record. I worry that departing from this presumption could lead to a lack of public faith in the judiciary and would be hugely damaging to the confirmation process moving forward.” While Senator Collins credited Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee as being “sincere, painful, and compelling,” Senator Collins painstakingly reviewed both the lack of corroborating evidence for Dr. Ford’s charges and several further questions raised by her own testimony. After applying the lowest burden of proof test, the “more likely than not” standard, Senator Collins concluded that Dr. Ford’s charges leveled specifically against Justice Kavanaugh did not satisfy even that low level of burden of proof.
Weeks prior to the final confirmation vote, Senator Collins’ office had reported receiving threats of rape and other acts of violence against her staff from leftist opponents of Judge Kavanaugh. After Senator Collins delivered her speech explaining her rationale for voting in favor of Judge Kavanaugh, the enemies of the newly confirmed justice did not address Senator Collins’ thoughtful arguments on the merits. Instead, they hurled ugly epithets at her. The Women’s March, for example, called Senator Collins a “rape apologist.” The radical Women’s March leader and anti-Israel, Sharia-loving activist, Linda Sarsour, accused “white woman” Senator Collins of being “a traitor to women and marginalized communities.” The senator displayed “white supremacy live on the Senate Floor,” according to Sarsour, who added, “History will not treat her kindly.”
Sarsour is a women’s rights poseur whose only place in history, if she has one at all, will be in a footnote describing her as a leader of the mob that unsuccessfully tried to prevent the confirmation of a great Supreme Court justice.
Planned Parenthood’s political arm accused Senator Collins of siding with those “who disbelieve, disrespect and even mock survivors” of sexual assault. Such polemics against Senator Collins are at complete odds with what the senator actually said in her speech about the survivors of sexual assault: “Every person—man or woman—who makes a charge of sexual assault deserves to be heard and treated with respect. The #MeToo movement is real. It matters. It is needed. And it is long overdue… We must listen to survivors, and every day we must seek to stop the criminal behavior that has hurt so many. We owe this to ourselves, our children, and generations to come.”
Is Planned Parenthood, which gave Senator Collins an award last November for her work on protecting reproductive rights, now calling the senator a liar when she says she does care about and respect the survivors of sexual assault? Does this pro-abortion group assume that one can only show such care and respect by unquestionably believing all accusations of sexual assault alleged by all women, even if they are lodged without a shred of corroborating evidence? Apparently so.
The usual Hollywood celebrities added their two cents worth on Senator Collins’ decision to vote for Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Saturday Night Live’s Trump impersonator Alec Baldwin, for example, said, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a female US Senator who says f*** you to all American women…” That’s rich, coming from a man with his own history of anger management issues involving women.
Actress Molly Ringwald tweeted, “Susan Collins you are a betrayer of women.” The conceit of Ms. Ringwald and her radical feminist cohorts is that they presume to speak for all women. Their treatment of women as a monolithic group with a herd mentality that leads them in only one progressive political direction is the height of sexism.
Comedian Kathy Griffin, who held up a picture of President Trump’s severed head last year, tweeted in reaction to Senator Collins’ decision: “F******* YOUUUUUU.” This progressive political “commentator” must be auditioning for a place in the leftists’ hall of fame.
Peaceful protests and expressions of dissent are protected by the First Amendment. That includes the remarks of empty-headed, self-important celebrities, who are just a side show. However, the left’s tactics of disruption, intimidation, lies, weaponization of unproven accusations and incitement to violence threaten to lead us down the road to a second civil war. If Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives and seek to fan the flames of anger over Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation by threatening to reverse the Senate's exercise of its unique constitutional "advice and consent" authority under the guise of impeachment, the Democrats will be complicit in the left’s agenda to destroy America as we know it.
Democrats'
Foul Tactics on Kavanaugh May Come Back to Bite Them
The
opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views
of Townhall.com.
"I can't think of a more embarrassing scandal
for the United States Senate since the McCarthy hearings," said Texas
Republican Sen. John Cornyn as then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh testified before the
Senate Judiciary Committee on the afternoon of Sept. 27, "and the question
was asked, 'Have you no sense of decency?'"
Cornyn was quoting Joseph Welch, the Boston lawyer
who represented Sen. Joe McCarthy's targets in the June 1954 hearing,
responding to McCarthy's charge that a young lawyer of Welch's was a communist.
Six months later, the Senate censured McCarthy by a vote of 67-22, and his name
became a synonym for manipulating parliamentary procedure and making
spectacular and unsubstantiated charges for political gain.
Which is what Senate Democrats, with the active and
avid cooperation of many of their friends and fans in the press, did throughout
the confirmation process for Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh. They have, in
truth, been doing it for decades now. Character assassination has become their
weapon of choice.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, ranking Democrat on the
committee, concealed a letter she received on July 30 from Christine Blasey
Ford for six weeks, rather than turn it over to bipartisan staff in accord with
normal committee protocols, which would have allowed confidential investigation
of her charges. She did not take advantage of opportunities to pursue the
matter in private meetings with the nominee or with committee Republicans. That
allowed the letter's charges to be leaked, by one or more Democratic sources,
after the long-scheduled four-day committee hearings on the nomination.
This naturally left the field open for other highly implausible charges to
emerge from the undergrowth of ideological warfare, to be leaked to left-wing
media outlets eager to give them an airing without being subject to the
committee's bipartisan scrutiny. Senate Democrats, starting with Feinstein's
opening statement in the Sept. 27 hearing, cited not only the ostensible
subject matter but also the dubious charge of Deborah Ramirez that Kavanaugh
exposed himself to her while they were students at Yale; this was aired in the
New Yorker but not in The New York Times, whose reporters failed to obtain
corroboration.
Feinstein also raised the utterly ludicrous claim
by slime lawyer Michael Avenatti and his client Julie Swetnick that Kavanaugh
engaged in gang rapes. Swetnick has a history of dubious legal claims, and her
incredible story totally lacked corroboration, but Democrats nevertheless
launched it into public debate with their blessing and made sure it was in the
official record.
News media reported a claim made in an anonymous
letter to a Republican senator that Kavanaugh had shoved a woman up against a
wall; the woman denied the story that day.
Nonetheless, the impression was created that there
were multiple plausible charges of sexual assault against the judge. One cable
network headlined "5 accusations," even after one of them was
retracted. Viewers were invited to assume that where there's smoke there's
fire. Republicans, to their credit, took a different course. The morning of the
Sept. 27 hearing, two men were reported to have claimed that they, not
Kavanaugh, assaulted Ford in the 1980s. Sen. Lindsey Graham dismissed the
charges succinctly, saying: "One's crazy as a loon. I don't believe the
other one. ... I'm not going to play this game."
Senate Democrats' McCarthyite conduct was not out
of character. In fact, the question is not whether they will stoop to character
assassination -- that's what bookies call a racing certainty -- but how long
voters will accept and even reward the Party's disgraceful conduct. Can it go
on indefinitely, or will it come back to bite Democrats, as would be their just
deserts?
Events that led to the Sept. 27 hearing with Ford
pitted against Kavanaugh were reminiscent of those that led to the October 1991
confrontation featuring Anita Hill and then-Supreme Court nominee Judge
Clarence Thomas. Ford, like Hill, had requested that her charges not be made
public. Democrats in both cases nevertheless violated that stricture. The
Party's unwritten maxim is that all is fair in the pursuit of political power.
But wasn't America founded on the principle, among others, that might does not
make right?
Anger is a reasonable response. Clarence Thomas
reacted angrily to the "high-tech lynching" and was criticized. Kavanaugh
reacted with outrage to the even more voluminous and excessive attack on him,
and he, too, has been criticized for it. It's been argued by some that his
righteous anger demonstrates that he lacks the right judicial temperament. But
it seems likely that at some point, voters, too, will react with anger to
Democrats' revolting excesses. And voters always get the last laugh.
Feinstein's withholding of the Ford letter for six
weeks, during the first of which her staff recommended that she hire lawyer Debra
Katz, left time for a two-question polygraph test and for her account to be
altered in several particulars, as the detailed Sept. 30 memorandum by
Judiciary Committee Republicans' sexual crimes professional Rachel Mitchell
demonstrated. Ford's testimony was further delayed, until 20 days after the
regular hearings on Kavanaugh's nomination ended, by claims that the
Californian accuser was afraid of flying. The claim turned out to be bogus; she
had taken many cross-country and trans-Pacific flights. Even so, when Ford
delivered her testimony, it entirely lacked corroboration, and even the persons
she cited as witnesses testified in writing that they knew of no events of the
type she described. Ford's lifelong friend Leland Keyser declared that she did
not know Kavanaugh and had never met him.
Kavanaugh was not the first Supreme Court nominee in recent decades opposed by
a unified Democratic front. Nor was Thomas. The first, in 1987, was Robert
Bork, opposed by 52 Democrats and six Republicans, who was attacked for his
positions on legal issues. Every nominee of either Republican or Democratic
presidents since has declined to state their views on legal controversies.
In 1991, Thomas was opposed by 46 Democratic
senators and two Republicans. This was far more than the three Republicans who
voted against Bill Clinton nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993 or the nine who
voted against Stephen Breyer in 1994. Chief Justice John Roberts drew 22 nay
votes in 2005; Barack Obama nominees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan drew 31
and 37 nay votes in 2009 and 2010, respectively. Republican nominees Samuel
Alito and Neil Gorsuch drew 42 and 45 nay votes in 2005 and 2017.
Alito and Gorsuch were both confirmed, even though
neither got the 60 yea votes needed to overcome a filibuster under the Senate
rules in effect from the 1970s until very recently. In 2005, the filibuster was
under attack by some Republicans, who favored a "nuclear option" in
which the Senate would change its rules to allow a majority of senators, rather
than a supermajority of 60, to close debate.
Republicans were particularly frustrated that
Democrats used the filibuster to prevent confirmation of lower-court judges.
One case in particular stood out: For more than two years, Democrats blocked
Miguel Estrada's nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia, because of fears that this highly qualified Hispanic lawyer might be
appointed to the Supreme Court. During this time, Estrada's wife miscarried.
She then died of an accidental drug overdose.
By spring 2005, enough Democrats feared that
Republicans would pass the nuclear option that the so-called Gang of 14
senators, seven of each party, was formed pledging that they would filibuster
judicial nominations only "in extraordinary circumstances." They
managed to hold down the number of Democrats voting to filibuster Alito to just
25 (including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama), even though 42 Democrats sided
against his nomination when it came to a vote. Among other results of the Gang
of 14 agreement was the 2006 confirmation of Kavanaugh to the D.C. Circuit
Court of Appeals by a 57-36 margin.
Senate Republicans, always more willing to vote for
Democratic Supreme Court nominees than Democrats are for Republicans, made no
attempt to filibuster the nominations of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. But
they used the filibuster to block confirmation of some of President Obama's
appointments to federal judgeships. In November 2013, with lawsuits challenging
Obamacare pending in the D.C. Circuit Court and three vacant judgeships, Sen.
Harry Reid, then-Democratic Majority Leader, decided to employ the nuclear
option, outlawing filibusters for lower federal courts but not Supreme Court
nominations. Only a few years before, he and many Democratic colleagues had
decried that proposal as a violation of venerable Senate tradition, a
protection for the Senate minority and an incentive for bipartisan cooperation.
But to preserve endangered provisions of Obamacare, all that high-sounding
rhetoric was tossed in the trash. The nuclear option passed 52-48, and the
balance of the D.C. Circuit Court was shifted temporarily to the left.
It was characteristic of Reid's 12 years as Senate
Democratic leader that he did not bother to enunciate a neutral principle in
favor of this rules change. It was enough that it served his purpose for the
time being, and perhaps for a few years to come; in November 2013, there were
three more years left in Obama's term, and it was widely assumed that Hillary
Clinton would be elected in 2016 to follow him in the White House. Thus, the
filibuster was seen by Democrats as an irritant from which they wished to be
free. Once again, it was Democrats judging that the accumulation of power
excused or justified any procedural outrage.
For Reid, the ends justified the means. In August 2012, a few weeks before
the national conventions, Reid went to the Senate floor (where his words cannot
be questioned in libel litigation) and attacked then-Republican presidential
nominee Mitt Romney for not paying taxes. "The word's out that he hasn't
paid any taxes for 10 years," said Reid, knowing it was a lie he had
invented. When asked for his source, he told reporters, "I have had a
number of people tell me that." Actually, Romney disclosed records that
said he paid $1.9 million in federal taxes in 2011 and $3 million in 2010.
The Washington
Post fact-checker gave Reid four Pinocchios for his claim, but Reid was
not embarrassed. When challenged on his false claim by CNN's Dana Bash, he
blandly replied, "Romney didn't win, did he?" To the Post's Ben
Terris he bragged, "It's one of the best things I've ever done," and
when Terris asked him whether there was a line he wouldn't cross in political
warfare, he replied, "I don't know what that line would be." His
party seems to not see any line now, either.
Reid's invocation of the nuclear option ensured
that Kavanaugh would be in the minority in the D.C. Circuit Court in several
important cases, but it also seems to have increased his chances of being
confirmed to the Supreme Court. After President Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to
the Supreme Court in 2017, Senate Democrats made it clear that they would use
the filibuster to block the Senate from confirming him.
Back in spring 2005, Mitch McConnell's predecessor
as Senate Republican leader, Bill Frist, could not convince all of his
Republican colleagues to support the nuclear option; many resisted changing a
longtime Senate tradition. But in April 2017, after Reid had done so for
federal trial and appeals court judges, McConnell had no difficulty getting his
narrow Republican majority to make the change apply to Supreme Court nominations
as well. It helped that there were no heavily publicized personal charges
against Gorsuch. If Democrats had declined to change the filibuster rule in the
relatively quiet winter of 2013, it might have been harder to persuade every
Republican senator to do so in the turbulent spring of 2017.
One of my longstanding rules of life is that
nothing is free in politics; there is some question of when you pay the price.
The Democrats are now paying the price of Harry Reid's shameless promotion of
lies, and cynical and unprincipled changes in the rules for short-term gain.
The question still remains whether voters will also make the Party pay. Until
recently, the intensity of the Democratic voter base was measurably greater
than that of the Republicans heading toward the midterm elections. Now the gap
has closed. Conservative talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh warned
Republicans that voters would destroy them if they were to fail to confirm
Kavanaugh. It's an issue that has stoked political passions. If Democrats don't
get the blue-wave election they have been hoping for and believing in, they
will know at least one reason why.
Michael Barone
is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at
the American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of
American Politics.
NEW YORK — President Donald Trump confirmed on Tuesday that he is eying Goldman Sachs executive Dina Habib Powell, his former deputy national security advisor, as a contender to replace Nikki Haley as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Haley announced her resignation on Tuesday, saying she will officially leave her post at the end of the year. Trump said that he would name Haley’s successor within two to three weeks.
In one of many reports spotlighting Powell, CNBC cited “three people with direct knowledge of the matter” saying senior White House officials already reached out to Powell about the possibility of replacing Haley.
Trump confirmed to reporters outside the White House that he is indeed considering Powell for the soon-to-be vacant U.N. post. “Dina is certainly a person I would consider and she is under consideration,” Trump said. He added that “there are others. I’ve heard a lot of names.”
Powell has been closely linked to the Clintons, especially through her time at Goldman Sachs, where she returned to work after departing the White House last year.
Below, in no particular order, are eight significant ties between Powell and the Clintons:
1 – When she served as president of the Goldman Sachs Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Wall Street giant, Powell repeatedly partnered with the Clinton Global Initiative for a globalist women’s project that served as the centerpiece of Goldman’s foundation.
Powell served as president of the Goldman Sachs Foundation, where she ran the foundation’s projects after Goldman Sachs was implicated in the 2007-2008 financial crisis and sought to resurrect its shattered image.
The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) was founded by Bill Clinton in 2005 as a part of the controversial Clinton Foundation. CGI was co-founded by Doug Band, co-founder and president of Teneo Holdings. Powell’s now ex-husband, Richard C. Powell, is president of Teneo Strategy, an arm of Band’s Teneo Holdings.
Powell, an Egyptian-American, reportedly received a salary of $2 million per year from Goldman Sachs. Her financial disclosure form from last year revealed salary, benefits, cash bonuses and equity from Goldman Sachs totaling $6,128,950.
As head of the Goldman Sachs Foundation, she specifically oversaw two major charitable initiatives, one called 10,000 Women and another named 10,000 Small Businesses. 10,000 Women aims to provide at least that number of women around the world with a business and management education to further economic opportunities and global financial growth. 10,000 Businesses, according to Powell’s Goldman bio, “provides small business owners in the US and UK with business education and access to capital.”
The projects were widely viewed as Goldman’s efforts to resurrect its tarnished image after the firm was accused of unsound practices that allegedly helped precipitate the financial crisis. “Engaging wasn’t just the right thing, it was necessary, especially in the wake of the financial crisis when people said we weren’t doing enough,” John F.W. Rogers, Goldman Sachs’ chief of staff, told the New York Times of the company’s charitable efforts.
Goldman would later agree to pay a $5 billion settlement to the Justice Department for its alleged role in the financial crisis. “This resolution holds Goldman Sachs accountable for its serious misconduct in falsely assuring investors that securities it sold were backed by sound mortgages, when it knew that they were full of mortgages that were likely to fail,” acting associate attorney general Stuart Delery announced in a statement when the settlement was finalized.
In September 2013, Powell’s 10,000 Women was a main sponsoring partner of that year’s Clinton Global Initiative conference, hosting numerous events including a panel moderated by Chelsea Clinton. Goldman reportedly paid the Clinton Global Initiative $375,000 for the hosting rights.
In 2014 again, 10,000 Women hosted the Clinton Global Initiative annual event. Hillary Clinton spoke at the CGI event and singled out 10,000 Women for its work. “Thanks to Goldman Sachs and thanks to 10,000 Women for really shining a bright spotlight on what is possible if you believe in and you provide support to women,” Clinton said.
Speakers at the 2014 CGI event included the Clintons, President Obama, actor Matt Damon, and Alibaba Group executive chairman Jack Ma. Session topics featured such titles as “Confronting Climate Change is Good Economics” and “Reimagining Finance for Social Impact: Planning for Scale.”
2 – Powell’s organization joined with the Clinton Global Initiative for globalist giving projects.
At CGI’s 2013 annual meeting, 10,000 Women and other groups announced the launch of a $1.5 billion commitment to act for “global contract opportunities for women-owned businesses based outside of the U.S.”
The Clinton Global Initiative was also a “commitment to action” partner with Powell’s 10,000 Women for a $30 million, five-year program launched in 2008 to educate women in the African nations of Liberia, Nigeria and Zambia.
CGI was further a “commitment to action” partner for 10,000 Women’s $2.5 million, four-year program launched in 2009 to “provide women entrepreneurs in Peru with quality business education and enhanced access to capital.”
3 – Powell’s Goldman Sachs fund directly donated to the controversial Clinton Foundation.
The Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund run by Powell is listed as having donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
4 – Powell’s Goldman Sachs group worked with Hillary Clinton’s State Department in a project announced by Clinton.
In the spring of 2011, Hillary Clinton announced in an auditorium at the State Department’s headquarters that the State Department would create a partnership with the 10,000 Women initiative to help bring the program to more countries. The New York Times characterized that support as underscoring the “long-running relationship between one of the country’s most powerful financial firms and one of its most famous political families.”
“Initiatives like 10,000 Women invest in the economic empowerment of women to promote security, stability and prosperity around the globe,” Clinton announced in a statement about the partnership with Powell’s foundation. “This new partnership with the Department of State will extend the reach of the program and provide individual women the means to build safer, stronger, families, communities and nations.”
Clinton said the partnership with State would expand the program to more countries with a focus on Indonesia and Haiti.
At a luncheon in April 2012, Powell described how women from Pakistan were educated in the U.S. as part of the 10,000 Women partnership with Clinton’s State Department.
Stated Powell: “We had our first graduation—this is a sticky situation—of this group from Pakistan on a Monday and it just so happened Melanne and I were going to speak at the Embassy of Pakistan and it happened to be the Monday after Osama bin Laden had been killed. So it was really interesting because here were these women who were just extraordinary, in the United States at the invitation of Secretary Clinton.”
5 – Powell was a featured speaker at a Clinton Global Initiative event alongside Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chief, John Podesta.
On May 11, 2009, Powell was one of ten speakers at a Clinton Global Initiative event co-sponsored with the Economist titled, “Global Challenges, Corporate Solutions: Creating Value for Business and Society.” Other speakers included Bill Clinton and Clinton’s former chief of staff, John Podesta, who at the time was president and chief executive officer of the George Soros-financed Center for American Progress and co-chairman of the Obama White House transition team. Podesta would later become chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Powell also served as a panelist at the second annual Women in the World Summit in 2011, which was keynoted by Hillary Clinton. The summit was launched by longtime Clinton ally Tina Brown, who also founded the Daily Beast, where Powell was a contributor.
6 – There are crossover connections between employees paid by Powell’s 10,000 Women and the Clintons.
Gene Sperling, who served as chief economic adviser for Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, reportedly earned $887,727 from Goldman Sachs in 2008 for consulting work he did to help launch 10,000 Women. Sperling had served as director of the National Economic Council under the Bill Clinton administration, and he went on to take up that same position in 2011 under the Obama administration.
Noa Meyer, global program director for the 10,000 Women program, worked in Clinton’s speechwriting office when she was First Lady. Meyer is an advisor at the Clinton Global Initiative.
Asked by Fortune magazine what she learned from working for Hillary Clinton, Meyer replied: “I think the balance that you need to strike between impact and policy work, and how you actually draw attention to the importance of that work — those two need to go hand-in-hand in order to make change.”
7 – Powell served on a global group alongside Hillary Clinton.
In 2007, Powell was named a director of Vital Voices Global Partnership, where Hillary Clinton served as honorary co-chair.
8 – In coming to Goldman Sachs, Powell joined a firm that has long been deeply tied to the Clintons.
Powell joined Goldman Sachs as a managing director in 2007 and was named partner in 2010 in addition to her role as president of the Goldman Sachs Foundation. She headedthe firm’s Impact Investing business, where she was responsible for Goldman Sachs’ “investments in housing and community development projects, deploying more than $5 billion in loans and equity investments to revitalize underserved communities in the US
The New York Times partially outlined some of the lucrative Clinton-Goldman Sachs ties thusly:
Over 20-plus years, Goldman provided the Clintons with some of their most influential advisers, millions of dollars in campaign contributions and speaking fees, and financial support for the family foundation’s charitable programs.
And in the wake of the worst crash since the Great Depression, as the firm fended off investigations and criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike, the Clintons drew Goldman only closer. Bill Clinton publicly defended the company and leased office space from Goldman for his foundation. Mrs. Clinton, after leaving the State Department, earned $675,000 to deliver three speeches at Goldman events, where she reassured executives that they had an important role to play in the nation’s recovery.
The Clinton-Goldman ties solidified in the 1990’s, when Robert E. Rubin, Goldman Sachs’ co-senior partner, departed the firm to serve as the Bill Clinton administration’s Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and later as treasury secretary, a powerful economic role.
The Clinton White House famously abolished the Glass–Steagall legislation, which separated commercial and investment banking. The move was a boon for Wall Street firms and led to major bank mergers that some analysts say helped contribute to the 2008 financial crisis.
When Clinton joined the Senate, Goldman Sachs employees, who mostly lean Democrat, contributed more than $234,000 to her campaign coffers from 2003 to 2008, with the firm serving as her second largest contributor after CitiGroup.
The New York Timesdocumented federal tax breaks that Clinton was instrumental in securing for lower Manhattan, which helped Goldman Sachs construct its nearly $2 billion New York City headquarters. Clinton was there for the November 2005 groundbreaking ceremony. “Major employers like Goldman Sachs needed to know they had a partner in government to ensure that Lower Manhattan could continue to sustain their businesses in the area,” Clinton said at the ceremony.
The Clinton Foundation utilized the Goldman Sachs headquarters in Lower Manhattan for a number of events, including a May 9, 2014 meeting with the foundation’s biggest donors attended by Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton.
Bill and Hillary Clinton raked in massive speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, with CNN documenting a total of at least $7.7 million in paid speeches to big financial firms, including Goldman Sachs and UBS. Hillary Clinton made $675,000 from speeches to Goldman Sachs specifically, and her husband secured more than $1,550,000 from Goldman speeches. In 2005 alone, Bill Clinton collected over $500,000 from three Goldman Sachs events.
Lloyd Blankfein, who just exited as Goldman’s chief executive, provided a major boost to Clinton’s failed 2008 presidential bid when he endorsed her over Barack Obama and held a fundraiser in his apartment for her 2008 campaign.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program: Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him onFacebook.
Written with research by Joshua Klein.
GOOGLE WORKED TO RIGGED THE ELECTION FOR THE SWAMP EMPRESS TO KEEP THE FOREIGN INVADERS COMING SO WAGES ARE KEPT DEPRESSED!
The Clintons, through their fraudulent Clinton Foundation, looted the poor of Haiti to fill their pockets… google it!
1.Globalism: Google VP Kent Walker insists that despite its repeated rejection by electorates around the world, “globalization” is an “incredible force for good.”
2.Hillary Clinton’s Democratic party: An executive nearly broke down crying because of the candidate’s loss. Not a single executive expressed anything but dismay at her defeat.
3.Immigration: Maintaining liberal immigration in the U.S is the policy that Google’s executives discussed the most.
BARACK OBAMA’S CONSPIRACY FOR A THIRD TERM FOR LIFE
HE PARTNERS WITH ZUCKERBERG, SOROS AND LOUIS FARRAKHAN
“Obama would declare himself president for life with Soros really running the show, as he did for the entire Obama presidency.”
“Hillary was always small potatoes, a placeholder as it were. Her health was always suspect. And do you think the plotters would have let a doofus like Tim Kaine take office in the event that Hillary became disabled?”
“Obama has the totalitarian impulse. After all, he went around saying he didn't have Constitutional authority to legalize the illegals, and then he tried anyway. The courts stopped him.”
“The bottom line 2 is this: Barack Obama is a Communist. This was all an Obama operation. Why is anyone surprised that a communist (Obama) tried to subvert an election. That is what Communists do. It is Barack Obama and his people like Brennan and Clapper behaving to type. That's what Maduro does in Venezuela. That's what the Castro brothers did. That's what every communist and socialist nation does. THEY FIX ELECTIONS!!”
“Hillary kept a secret server overflowing with national security info which, more than likely, was hacked. June 28, 2016, on a Phoenix tarmac, Bill Clinton met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch to seal a deal insuring Hillary would not be prosecuted.”
“Obama, of course, covered up his own role, depicting his presidency as eight years of heroic efforts to repair the damage caused by the 2008 financial crash. At the end of those eight years, however, Wall Street and the financial oligarchy were fully recovered, enjoying record wealth, while working people were poorer than before, a widening social chasm that made possible the election of the billionaire con man and Demagogue in November 2016.”
David Bernstein & The Heritage Foundation - “Lawless: The Obama Administration’s Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule of Law.”
“The Lawlessness of the Obama Administration: A never-ending story.” Michael
"GOP estb. is using the $5 billion border-wall fight to hide up to four blue/white-
collar cheap-labor programs in lame-duck DHS budget. Donors are worried that
salaries are too damn high, & estb. media does not want to know."
TOP EVIL CORPORATIONS LOOTING AMERICA
Goldman Sachs TRUMP CRONIES – CLINTON CRONIES
JPMorgan Chase OBAMA CRONIES
ExxonMobil
Halliburton
British American Tobacco
Dow Chemical
DuPont
Bayer
Microsoft
Google
Facebook
Amazon
Walmart
GET THIS BOOK!
Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses
BY TIMOTHY P CARNEY
Editorial Reviews
Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.
Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers.
MULTI-CULTURALISM and the creation of a one-party globalist country to serve the rich in America’s open borders.
“Open border advocates, such as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, claim illegal aliens are a net benefit to California with little evidence to support such an assertion. As the CIS has documented, the vast majority of illegals are poor, uneducated, and with few skills. How does accepting millions of illegal aliens and then granting them access to dozens of welfare programs benefit California’s economy? If illegals were contributing to the economy in any meaningful way, CA, with its 2.6 million illegals, would be booming.” STEVE BALDWIN – AMERICAN SPECTATOR
YOU WONDERED WHY OBAMA-HOLDER WORKED SO HARD TO SABOTAGE AMERICAN VOTING FOR MORE ILLEGALS???
Those are the subliterate, low-skill, non-English-speaking indigents whose own societies are unable or unwilling to usefully educate and employ them. Bring these people here and they not only need a lot of services, they are putty in the hands of leftist demogogues as Hugo Chavez demonstrated - and they are very useful as leftist voters who will support the Soros agenda.
Banksters’ rent boy Eric Holder declares that Obama is ready to roll for a third term!
BARACK OBAMA and ERIC HOLDER: BUILDING OBAMA’S MUSLIM-STYLE DICTATORSHIP requires destroying white middle class first.
A leaked Google briefing titled “The Good Censor” advises tech companies to move away from the “American tradition” of free speech if they wish to attract advertising revenue and continue global expansion.
The briefing, leaked exclusively to Breitbart News, was the product of extensive research on the part of Google. This included expert interviews with MIT Tech Review editor-in-chief Jason Pontin, Atlantic staff writer and tech critic Franklin Foer, and academic Kalev Leetaru. 35 cultural observers and 7 cultural leaders from seven countries on five continents were consulted to produce it. It can be read in full here.
The 85-page briefing admits that Google and other tech platforms have fundamentally altered their policies in response to unwelcome political events around the world, including the 2016 election and the rise of Alternative für Deutschland in Germany.
Responding to the leak, an official Google source said the document should be considered internal research, and not an official company position.
Page 14 of the document acknowledges that a few Silicon Valley tech giants now “control the majority of our conversations,” but that these platforms – including Google – must now break their initial promise to users of free speech and content neutrality.
Pages 19-21 of the briefing describe this initial support for free speech as a “utopian narrative” that has been undermined by political events including the 2016 election and the rise of the populist AfD party in Germany.
Later, on pages 66-70, the briefing explains that tech companies including Google, Facebook and Twitter initially leaned towards an “American tradition” of free speech that prioritizes “free speech for democracy, not civility.”
But it goes on to say that the same companies now embrace the “European tradition,” that favors “dignity over liberty, and civility over freedom.”
Google, argues the briefing, must move towards the European tradition and create “well-ordered spaces for safety and civility” rather than “unmediated marketplaces of ideas.”
Doing so, says the briefing, will enable Google to “respond to regulatory demands” and “maintain global expansion,” as well as “monetize content through its organization” and “protect advertisers from controversial content,” both of which will “increase revenues.”
The idea that Google needs to censor its products to gain access to global markets is most closely reflected by its development of Dragonfly, a censored search engine that would reportedly link a user’s search history to their identity and phone number, and block search queries deemed unfavorable to the Chinese government. Read The Good Censor in full:
A video recorded by Google shortly after the 2016 presidential election reveals an atmosphere of panic and dismay amongst the tech giant’s leadership, coupled with a determination to thwart both the Trump agenda and the broader populist movement emerging around the globe.
The video is a full recording of Google’s first all-hands meeting following the 2016 election (these weekly meetings are known inside the company as “TGIF” or “Thank God It’s Friday” meetings). Sent to Breitbart News by an anonymous source, it features co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, VPs Kent Walker and Eileen Naughton, CFO Ruth Porat, and CEO Sundar Pichai. It can be watched in full above. It can and should be watched in full above in order to get the full context of the meeting and the statements made.
It was reported earlier this week that Google tried to boost turnout among the Latino population to help Hillary Clinton, only to be dismayed as the usually solid Democratic voting bloc switched to the GOP in record numbers. This video shows a similar level of dismay among Google’s most high-profile figures.
These individuals, who preside over a company with unrivaled influence over the flow of information, can be seen disparaging the motivations of Trump voters and plotting ways to use their vast resources to thwart the Trump agenda.
Co-founder Sergey Brin can be heard comparing Trump supporters to fascists and extremists. Brin argues that like other extremists, Trump voters were motivated by “boredom,” which he says in the past led to fascism and communism.
The Google co-founder then asks his company to consider what it can do to ensure a “better quality of governance and decision-making.”
VP for Global Affairs Kent Walker argues that supporters of populist causes like the Trump campaign are motivated by “fear, xenophobia, hatred, and a desire for answers that may or may not be there.”
Later, Walker says that Google should fight to ensure the populist movement – not just in the U.S. but around the world – is merely a “blip” and a “hiccup” in a historical arc that “bends toward progress.”
CEO Sundar Pichai states that the company will develop machine learning and A.I. to combat what an employee described as “misinformation” shared by “low-information voters.”
Key moments from the video can be found at the following timestamps:
(00:00:00 – 00:01:12) Google co-founder Sergey Brin states that the weekly meeting is “probably not the most joyous we’ve had” and that “most people here are pretty upset and pretty sad.”
(00:00:24) Brin contrasts the disappointment of Trump’s election with his excitement at the legalization of cannabis in California, triggering laughs and applause from the audience of Google employees.
(00:01:12) Returning to seriousness, Brin says he is “deeply offen[ded]” by the election of Trump, and that the election “conflicts with many of [Google’s] values.”
(00:09:10) Trying to explain the motivations of Trump supporters, Senior VP for Global Affairs, Kent Walker concludes: “fear, not just in the United States, but around the world is fueling concerns, xenophobia, hatred, and a desire for answers that may or may not be there.”
(00:09:35) Walker goes on to describe the Trump phenomenon as a sign of “tribalism that’s self-destructive [in] the long-term.”
(00:09:55) Striking an optimistic tone, Walker assures Google employees that despite the election, “history is on our side” and that the “moral arc of history bends towards progress.”
(00:10:45) Walker approvingly quotes former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s comparison between “the world of the wall” with its “isolation and defensiveness” and the “world of the square, the piazza, the marketplace, where people come together into a community and enrich each other’s lives.”
(00:13:10) CFO Ruth Porat appears to break down in tears when discussing the election result.
(00:15:20) Porat promises that Google will “use the great strength and resources and reach we have to continue to advance really important values.”
(00:16:50) Stating “we all need a hug,” she then instructs the audience of Google employees to hug the person closest to them.
(00:20:24) Eileen Naughton, VP of People Operations, promises that Google’s policy team in DC is “all over” the immigration issue and that the company will “keep a close watch on it.”
(00:21:26) Naughton jokes about Google employees asking, ‘Can I move to Canada?’ after the election. She goes on to seriously discuss the options available to Google employees who wish to leave the country.
(00:23:12) Naughton does acknowledge “diversity of opinion and political persuasion” and notes that she has heard from conservative Google employees who say they “haven’t felt entirely comfortable revealing who [they] are.” and urged “tolerance.” (Several months later, the company would fire James Damore allegedly for disagreeing with progressive narratives.)
(00:27:00) Responding to a question about “filter bubbles,” Sundar Pichai promises to work towards “correcting” Google’s role in them
(00:27:30) Sergey Brin praises an audience member’s suggestion of increasing matched Google employee donations to progressive groups.
(00:34:40) Brin compares Trump voters to “extremists,” arguing for a correlation between the economic background of Trump supporters and the kinds of voters who back extremist movements. Brin says that “voting is not a rational act” and that not all of Trump’s support can be attributed to “income disparity.” He suggests that Trump voters might have been motivated by boredom rather than legitimate concerns.
(00:49:10) An employee asks if Google is willing to “invest in grassroots, hyper-local efforts to bring tools and services and understanding of Google products and knowledge” so that people can “make informed decisions that are best for themselves.” Pichai’s response: Google will ensure its “educational products” reach “segments of the population [they] are not [currently] fully reaching.”
(00:54:33) An employee asks what Google is going to do about “misinformation” and “fake news” shared by “low-information voters.” Pichai responds by stating that “investments in machine learning and AI” are a “big opportunity” to fix the problem.
(00:56:12) Responding to an audience member, Walker says Google must ensure the rise of populism doesn’t turn into “a world war or something catastrophic … and instead is a blip, a hiccup.”
(00:58:22) Brin compares Trump voters to supporters of fascism and communism, linking the former movement to “boredom,” which Brin previously linked to Trump voters. “It sort of sneaks up sometimes, really bad things” says Brin.
(01:01:15) A Google employee states: “speaking to white men, there’s an opportunity for you right now to understand your privilege” and urges employees to “go through the bias-busting training, read about privilege, read about the real history of oppression in our country.” He urges employees to “discuss the issues you are passionate about during Thanksgiving dinner and don’t back down and laugh it off when you hear the voice of oppression speak through metaphors.” Every executive on stage – the CEO, CFO, two VPs and the two Co-founders – applaud the employee.
(01:01:57) An audience member asks if the executives see “anything positive from this election result.” The audience of Google employees, and the executives on stage, burst into laughter. “Boy, that’s a really tough one right now” says Brin.
Update — After Breitbart News published this article, a Google spokesperson replied to a request for comment with the following statement:
“At a regularly scheduled all hands meeting, some Google employees and executives expressed their own personal views in the aftermath of a long and divisive election season. For over 20 years, everyone at Google has been able to freely express their opinions at these meetings. Nothing was said at that meeting, or any other meeting, to suggest that any political bias ever influences the way we build or operate our products. To the contrary, our products are built for everyone, and we design them with extraordinary care to be a trustworthy source of information for everyone, without regard to political viewpoint.”
It is wicked to lie in order to make your charges seems more plausible. Ford wanted us to believe that such an episode haunted her for life – or haunted her after she recalled it in marriage counseling thirty years later. She claimed before the nation that it restricted her ability to live in a normal house (a lie), fly in airplanes (a lie), or have a healthy marriage.
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