By Nancy Thorner & Ed Ingold -
The enemy of "We The People" really is the mainstream media. They will manufacture a train wreck if they can't find a real one. As such, headlines are powerful weapons. Headlines changes the way people read an article and the way they remember it.
Psychologists have long known that first impressions really do matter—what we see, hear, feel, or experience in our first encounter influences the way we process the rest of it. By drawing attention to certain details or facts, a headline can affect what existing knowledge is activated in your head.
Even so, media malpractice is allowed to flourish with free reign to target and destroy anyone they wish to. The US Constitution guarantees a free press, which can be extrapolated to include all news media – TV, radio, the web, etc. But what rights does the First Amendment actually guarantee? Primarily, press freedom means the news media are not subject to censorship by the government. In other words, the government does not have the right to try to control or block certain things from being published by the press.
Below are some of the many Fake Headlines (and fake news):
- The new tax law benefits only the very wealthy
The top 1% pay 40% of the taxes. The top 10% pay 80% or more. In order to benefit from tax reductions, you have to actually pay taxes, and over 50% of US residents pay no income tax. While the dollar amount of benefits to the wealthy and large corporations are large, they are proportionately less than that of the middle class. Furthermore, their benefits create jobs, and more people who pay taxes and buy things.
- President Trump likes Kim Jung Un (Putin, etc.) more than he respects his own intelligence agencies
Trump is a deal-maker. You don’t preface making deals by insulting (or demonizing) your opponent. Kim will negotiate only if he feels the US won’t try to depose him by force of arms.
- 90% of illegal drugs come through check points
90% of drugs are INTERCEPTED at the borders. This constitutes only a small fraction of drugs smuggled into this country.
- Illegal immigration is decreasing
Compared to over a million illegal immigrants in 2000, yes. Illegal immigration dropped by half when Trump was elected from Obama years. 650,000 in 2017 compared to 635,000 in 2018 is not exactly a precipitous drop. Those are the ones we caught. Who knows how many escape detection (estimated at 25% to 35%)
- Most illegal immigration consists of visa overstays
They’re about equal, 600K. There are 700K overstays, but many are resolved quickly. By government estimates, there are about 770,000 illegal entrants. Visa overstays are LEGAL entrants.
- Illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes than US citizens as a whole
Misleading! According to FBI prison statistics, 52% of violent crimes are committed by African-Americans. Nearly 30% are committed by Hispanics, disproportionately by illegal immigrants. While 70% are committed by US citizens, the illegal immigrant population is only 8% of the population. By simple arithmetic, that’s nearly 4x the average crime rate of the country.
- “Undocumented” residents work and pay taxes. They earn their keep
There are an estimated 25M illegal residents in the US. Only about 4M file taxes. Many of those claim dependents who do not reside in the US, up to 20 at a time, costing the US billions of dollars. Asking about citizenship on census forms will suppress responses
They don’t respond now. The Census agency estimates the reportage at about 25%, and adjusts the total accordingly to grant more benefits to states and cities with a high illegal population.
- Investing in infrastructure returns more than it spends
Only if it increases the GDP. Spending money on roads and workers alone is like digging one hole to fill another. GDP was flat from 2008 to 2016, then jumped the day after the presidential election.
- Assault weapons must by banned
The definition of mass shootings, as used for Leftist propaganda, has been expanded to include every incident where two or more people are shot. Nearly all of these are domestic violence, which even the police are unable to engage. When a child finds a loaded weapon and shoots himself or others, it makes the headlines. Why? Because it is so rare. Most child shootings are done by adults, as in domestic violence. About 16 or so toddlers shoot themselves. It’s a large country, and children, unfortunately, die by mishap. About 30 toddlers a year drown in mop buckets, wading pools and toilets. A twelve-year-old who takes a parent’s gun and shoots someone is not quite the same. When convenient, anyone under 18 is a “child” for the purpose of a salacious headline. Maybe we need rules against open containers of water.
- CNN's Jim Acosta challenged Trump over description of illegal immigration policy
We have an invasion of drugs, invasion of gangs, invasion of people, and it’s unacceptable,” President Trump said last Friday. “It’s very simple. We want to stop drugs from coming into our country. We want to stop criminals and gangs from coming into our country.”
- 16 lawsuits filed against Trump's national crisis to secure southern border
The lawsuits ought to be laughed out of court, even in the Ninth Circuit. Presidents have declared 58 national emergencies since 1976, when Congress gave the president that power, and 31 of them are still in effect. Never before has a judge tried to second-guess a president’s declaration that a national emergency exists, and no court should be allowed to enter those uncharted waters now. Congress gave that power to the president with no limit on the reasons for which an emergency can be declared.
- The Earth is facing a climate change deadline, with a looming tipping point into a dramatically changed, less hospitable planet
Climate may be changing (it’s too early to tell, since the data is continually “adjusted” to meet the predictions, not the facts). There have been wide swings in global temperature and local precipitation every 200 years or so since antiquity. Egypt was green in the time of the pyramids, and so was the Sahara 5000 years ago. Temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were up to 10 degrees below “normal” from the mid-16th century until the Civil War in the "Little Ice Age. One thing is certain; whichever way nature heads, it will take energy to survive – heating, cooling, crop maintenance, or even pumps and levees to keep NYC and DC dry. The so-called “Green New Deal' is designed to demolish the energy infrastructure. What then … back to “The Flintstones?”
- Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer claim moral high ground in closing the border
So, just who are we? Well for openers, we grant foreign invaders any number of advantages over American citizens; we don’t execute murderers, rapists and child molesters, but we kill babies by the tens of millions, leaving the life or death decisions up to women and doctors who violate their Hippocratic oaths every time
- Deep State" conspiracy of soft coup mocked by the Left
The 25th Amendment, which was added in the 1960s, mandates that a sitting president must be incapacitated, such as suffering from a traumatic brain injury. Our Founding Fathers wisely set up an executive branch to prevent such coup attempts from happening, as with the now Deep Staters who believe it’s their patriotic duty to fight and remove Trump from office.
- Bernie makes Democratic Socialism cool
Vowing to launch a grassroots movement that will "lay the groundwork for transforming the economic and political life of this country, whereas Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Chavez and Maduro, all knew exactly what they were doing, people like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are “useful idiots”, as defined by Vladimir Lenin, but the end result is always the same: poverty, slavery and death.
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez moves Democrat Party sharply to left
It should make heads spin that a 29-year-old ditz who appears to be coming up on her 15th birthday could receive so few votes and still be regarded as the leading light of a major political party, whereas Trump, who captured well over 60 million votes, can’t even count on members of his own miserable party to move his agenda forward. So few people cared about the election that even though AOC only received 16.898 votes, it was enough to bury Crowley, who only managed to eke out 12,880.
- 60% of Trump’s daily calendar is devoted to executive time
To the media it meant watching cartoons on TV while devouring Twinkies. You’d think that the chattering class at CNN and MSNBC would be relieved to think he doesn’t devote 24/7 to singlehandedly destroying the planet. But you can never make some people happy, and when they’re people like Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders, Mark Warner, Adam Schiff and Rachel Maddow, you shouldn’t even try.
- Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discuss firing President Trump
Mueller’s team and all involved in the investigation are “unelected” and they “took it upon themselves to overthrow the election results of 2016. These guys ought to be the ones in jail. What’s being ignored is “the potential real collusion and conspiracy between Democrats and Russians to undermine the Trump candidacy and the Trump presidency.
