Mass Media and Liberal Election Rejection Hypocrisy. Defection Miscalculation.

Blast from the past: Al Gore explains why he won’t concede election

 By Thomas Lifson

 The tidal wave of harrumphing over Donald Trump’s refusal to endorse the probity of the voting and vote-counting to come is quite amusing to me.  I remember eight years of accusations from Bush 43 opponents that his election was “stolen” and that he was “selected, not elected.”  So spare me the righteousness about the need to respect our sacred institutions, unless you can point to your similar criticism of Gore. (See 1 and 1a below.)

 Millennials are probably ignorant of this history.  Click on: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/10/blast_from_the_past_al_gore_explains_why_he_wont_concede_election.html#ixzz4NdxRFOgy 

The mass media treats everything Trump says as gospel and ignore whatever Hillary says. This is simply more evidence of bias.

The mass media also ignored the WikiLeak e mail revealing  how the Clinton Campaign set about disrupting Trump campaign efforts.  This too is bias of the most disreputable kind.

Again, I am not suggesting the actual election is going to be rigged but everything leading up to it demonstrates clearly ,for any objective person, there has been serious bias on the part of the mass media, by agencies of the Obama Administration and even operatives within the Democrat party

Will this bias set the stage for corrupting the actual election process?  Stay tuned and we might be surprised.
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Mosul aftermath. (See 2 below.)

We vetted moderates and, what do you know, they defect to al Qaeda with arms we supplied. So much for tribal loyalty of a foreign culture. (See 2a below.)
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Messed up the reset button with Russia and now wants her finger on the nuclear button. yet, Hillary says Donald is a threat and does not have the temperament to be president. 

Click here: SR#1271 NBC Crew - Crooked Hillary’s MASSIVE MELTDOWN at Commander-in-Chief Forum - YouTube
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Dick
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1)Flashback: Hillary Says George W. Bush Was Selected President, Not Elected

Katie Pavlich

Much has been said about Donald Trump's refusal to flatly accept election results on November 8th. In fact, at the third and final presidential debate of the cycle last night in Las Vegas, Democrat Hillary Clinton said it was "horrible"  when Trump said he was going to wait and see what the results were. 

But according to statement by Clinton at a 2002 fundraiser, reported then by Newsweek and dug up today by Fox News' Brit Hume, the former First Lady said George W. Bush was "selected" president rather than elected after Al Gore refused to accept election results in 2000. Apparently Clinton hadn't accepted them either two years later. 

1a)The Roof Blows Off the Echo Chamber

By David P. Goldman

"We created an echo chamber. They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say. In the absence of rational discourse, we are going to discourse the [expletive] out of this....The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience is being around political campaigns. That's a sea change. They literally know nothing."

Thus spake a certain Ben Rhodes, literary dabbler and Don DeLillo wannabe, in a stunning interview-essay by David Samuels in the New York Times last May. Rhodes was describing the sale of the Iran nuclear deal to America's body politic, fed by media ignoramuses who dutifully repeated the echoes of the administration's stable of putatively independent experts. But the "echo chamber" principle applies just as well to anything that the Establishment media wants to sell to the public. The trouble with echo chambers, of course, is that positive feedback can blow the roof off. That is what is happening in American politics right now.

There is no news cycle. There is no national debate. There's no Ed Murrow, no Walter Cronkite, no figure of authority from whom the public can learn the facts with a reasonable degree of trust. We have had so many iterations of lies, cover-up, cover-up malfunction, new lies, new cover-up and new cover-up malfunction that the experts are in information overload. What is going on in the head of an ordinary voter with a passing interest in politics and ten or fifteen minutes a day to devote to news?

The answer is: Almost anything you might imagine. Sixty-two percent of Americans get at least some of their news via social media according to a Pew Researchsurvey and the proportion is growing fast. Facebook and other social media allow individuals to customize their news consumption on the basis of recommendations and re-posting by friends, and news consumers increasingly depend on their networks rather than the media.

That's how Steve Bannon's Breitbart news organization, with its edgy mix of salacious gossip and right-wing politics, morphed almost overnight into a major media player. That's why the Drudge Report got 1.47 billion page views in July. There is no way of knowing what Americans believe. Only one in nine Americansbelieves that Hillary Clinton is "honest and trustworthy." They don't trust the media's cover-up of her misdeeds, and the cover-up of the cover-up of the cover-up.

Trump Will Win the National Battle for Legitimacy

Do they believe what the National Enquirer put at the top of its website, namely that Hillary had her "bagman" arrange lesbian trysts? Do they believe she called Muslims "sand N---ers"? Do they believe that the Clintons are responsible for 46 unsolved homicides? Or do they just believe that Bill and Hillary made $250 million by peddling influence, used a private email server to hide their self-dealing at the State Department, and lied until their faces turned blue when caught?

There's no way to tell what people think. It's impossible for most Americans to form a judgment with which they feel comfortable, because they do not have sources of information they can trust. Fox News is in a civil war between the pro- and anti-Trump Republicans. The other networks are with Hillary. The major media outlets have lost credibility. Only 32% of Americans said they had "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of confidence in the news media in a September Gallup poll survey. That's the lowest level in history, and should be no surprise: the major media has to spin a new cover-up every couple of days, before it is finished putting the previous set of lies to bed.

That's why Americans don't simply watch the nightly news and go to bed. They read the rumors on the Internet and circulate them to their friends. They create networks of people they trust in the hope of obtaining an accurate account of what is happening around them.

That's why I'm still calling this election for Donald J. Trump. The polls are meaningless. Perceptions are morphing as rapidly as the new-model Terminator in the molten steel vat at the end of the movie. The election will be won and lost a dozen times between now and Election Day. And when Americans finally go into the voting booth, they will not be able to think of any reasons to vote for Hillary Clinton--only reasons to vote against Donald Trump.  There are far more compelling reasons to vote against Clinton. And that's how the election will go.

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2)THE BATTLE FOR MOSUL, AND ITS AFTERMATH

By Jacques Neriah 

The Iraqi decision to start the offensive on October 17 took the Turks by surprise and preempted a Turkish move toward Mosul.

IRAQI FORCES advance in Qayara to attack Islamic State in Mosul yesterday. (photo credit:Reuters)

A rolling artillery barrage fired by Iraqi, Kurdish, American and French gunners and air raids by the US-led alliance on Islamic State targets and military commanders in Mosul were launched on October 17 at 01:00. After long months of preparations, the long-awaited assault on Iraq’s second most populated city will develop into a major battle involving many players.

Mosul fell to ISIS cohorts in the summer of 2014. At that time 1,500 ISIS fighters at the most (at a ratio of one to five) dislodged and defeated three fully equipped Iraqi regular divisions entrenched in the city which were supposed to protect Mosul.

Various sources report today that facing ISIS’ 5,000-10,000 combatants in Mosul, about 65,000 Iraqi troops from different units have massed to dislodge ISIS. Some Arab sources place the total number of combatants of the anti-ISIS coalition at almost 140,000 fighters including: five to six divisions of the regular Iraqi Army – about 35,000 soldiers including armored and artillery brigades; commando and anti-terrorism division with fighting units of the Iraqi national police (around 8,000 fighters); and Kurdish Peshmerga forces (50,000 fighters).

Smaller fighting units include: Al Hashd el-Sh’aabi – The Shi’ite Popular Mobilization Units (which claim to include Christians, Yazidis and Assyrians) also including units of the Hezbollah-Iraq militia; Al Hashd el-Watani –The National Mobilization Sunni Turkish-trained and supported units which also claim to include minority units (several thousand fighters); Dwekh Nawsha – the Sacrificers of the Assyrian Army.

These military formations are assisted by thousands of American, Western and Iranian advisers, some of whom will take an active role in the fighting on the ground. The US-led alliance will provide air cover with around 90 fighting aircraft.

However, the missions of the different components of the Iraqi campaign are not clear cut except for the Kurdish Peshmerga, who are apparently responsible for maintaining their presence up to a certain pre-fixed line on the eastern and northeastern flanks of Mosul. The Iraqi Army, together with the National Mobilization units, will attack Mosul from the north, northwest and southern parts of the city.

According to Kurdish sources, the agreement between the Kurds and the Iraqi government stipulates that the Popular Mobilization Units will not be allowed to enter Mosul. It is not clear whether the PMU will be taking part in the assault since their ethnic identity and past brutal behavior against the Sunni population in the reconquest of Ramadi and Tikrit could forecast a massive onslaught against the mostly Sunni population of Mosul. All Iraqi army units have been instructed to raise only Iraqi flags and no other pennant tinted with Shi’ite colors.

With this background, key points must be stressed:

A. The Iraqi offensive against Mosul will likely create a wave of refugees of cataclysmic proportions. Some observers predict that the refugees will be in the hundreds of thousands (some even advance the number of one million), mostly Sunnis.

B. ISIS is fighting for its life. According to various sources, ISIS has dug a seven-foot trench around the city, booby-trapped with IEDs every possible venue, and prepared itself for a chemical assault on the attacking forces.

C. The Mosul siege could unravel into urban warfare with fighting on every street and sometimes house-by-house.

A KEY element in the battle of Mosul is the role to be played by Turkey. Since December 2015, Turkey has kept a tank battalion in Ba’ashiqa, a small Assyrian town 40 km. east of Mosul in a Kurdish-controlled area, under the pretext it was part of an agreement with the Kurdish Autonomous Government with the silent acquiescence of the Iraqi government and meant to train Kurdish and anti-ISIS elements. With the battle for Mosul approaching, the Iraqis have raised the issue of the “illegal” occupation of part of their territory by Turkish forces, and Ba’ashiqa is the focal point.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly said that Turkish forces will participate in the “liberation” of Mosul even if the Iraqi government is opposed. The Iraqis have vehemently expressed their opposition.

The Iraqi decision to start the offensive on October 17 took the Turks by surprise and preempted a Turkish move toward Mosul. By doing so, the Iraqis have very clearly signaled that they do not intend to let the Turks participate in the liberation of Mosul.

In parallel, Turkish-backed Syrian rebel forces captured on the same day as the Iraqi Mosul offensive the most symbolic icon of Islamic State – the city of Dabiq 40 km. north of Aleppo and 10 km. south of the Turkish border. According to the apocalyptic belief of ISIS, Dabiq is the place where the final battle between the West and Islamic forces will be waged and the place where the forces of Western civilization (“Rome” in ISIS jargon and eschatology) will be defeated.

The Turks are pursuing their offensive in Syrian territory to reach their next target: the town of Al-Bab. By doing so, the Turks would accomplish the targets set in August 2016 in their military incursion nicknamed “Euphrates Shield” by creating a safe-zone of 90 km. wide and 45 km. deep into Syrian territory.

The battle of Mosul signals the last gasps of the Islamic Caliphate envisioned by Abu Bakr el-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph who promised his followers to rebuild the Muslim Empire stretching from Europe to the borders of China. This does not automatically mean an end to the Muslim radical movements. These will continue to flourish as long as they are fed with hatred of Western civilization.

One thing is clear: the defeat of political Islam championed by ISIS will be translated into the defeat of the Sunnis in Iraq and Syria and will transform Iraqi and Syrian structures, and their regional and global alliances.

The main winner will be Iran with hegemony over two of the most important Arab states, while Saudi Arabia will have to concede its political defeat facing Iran.

Jacques Neriah is a special analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, was formerly foreign policy adviser to prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and deputy head for assessment of Israeli military intelligence.

2a)

U.S. 'Vetted Moderate' Syrians Defect to Al-Qaeda Affiliate

BY PATRICK POOLE 

Reports are emerging this morning that a battalion of Faylaq al-Sham fighters that had previously been vetted as "moderates" by the U.S. has defected to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the recently re-branded al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.

This is yet one more episode of U.S.-vetted Syrian rebel groups defecting to U.S.-designated terrorist groups in recent years. Just a few weeks ago, I reported here at PJ Media that U.S.-supported Free Syrian Army troops were openly allied with a group the State Department had designated a terrorist organization just one week before.

News of the defection of the Muhammad Rasoolullah Brigade of Faylaq al-Sham operating around Idlib initially appeared on Twitter:

Faylaq al-Sham has its roots in the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, and its member have been branded "Syria's moderate Islamists." Undoubtedly, the "experts" will lament this defection as a shock brought about by military necessities on the ground.

But if the so-called "vetted moderate" groups that receive U.S. weapons later turn terrorist, what is the point of the so-called U.S. "vetting" anyway?

The "experts" may also downplay this defection by claiming that Jabhat Fateh al-Sham cut ties with al-Qaeda, but nothing could be further from the truth. All the group did was rebrand -- with permission from al-Qaeda.

In fact, one of the top Jabhat Fateh al-Sham leaders present at the rebranding announcement was Abu Faraj al-Masri, a longtime lieutenant of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Al-Masri was killed in a U.S. drone strike earlier this month.

But the myth of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham's separation from al-Qaeda continues to circulate:

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