-The president of the New York Veteran Police
Association (NYVPA) Lou Telano delivered an award to GOP frontrunner Donald
Trump at a press conference in Staten Island, New York on Sunday morning. Feb
11-15 AP Poll: 86% of Republicans Think Donald Trump Can Win General Election
-On morning Joe Wednesday Member of the Georgia
Republican party, former Newt Gingrich backer, and RNC rules committee member
Randy Evans told MSNBC's Morning Joe that Donald Trump could win the GOP
nomination even if he comes short of 1,237 delegates but must get 1100.
-Poll: Donald Trump Hits 65 Percent in New York,
More than 50 Percent Ahead of Ted Cruz 12% and Kasich 1% - By BostonEmerson College
-On Saturday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) Republican
party convention won 14 out of the 14 Wyoming delegates who will go to the
Republican National Convention in July – Cruz (23) 66.3% 644 – Trump (1) 7.2%
70 – Rubio (1) 19.5% 189 delegates
a.The Wyoming win is another victory demonstrating
how Cruz’s campaign has organized party insiders and activists to make it
difficult for Trump to secure the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the GOP
nomination, ABC reported.
b.Prebuis Know the rules (1B)
c.ABC are you getting beat on the ground? Manafort
(1A)
-After Brussels terrorist attacks and with the
European Union estimating that 3 million more migrants will arrive in Europe
this year, the patience of Slovenians, traditionally known for tolerance, is
wearing thin. Today, anti-Muslim protesters in Slovenia chanted "Donald
Trump, Donald Trump!".
-During the RNC speech Cruz mic went dead for 7
mins and Rush calls it dirty tricks.
-Ted and the Dildo
a.A Time for Truth, Sen. Ted Cruz proudly
chronicles his days as a Texas solicitor general, a post he held from 2003 to
2008. Bolstering his conservative cred, the Republican presidential candidate
notes that during his stint as the state's chief lawyer before the Supreme
Court and federal and state appellate courts, he defended the inclusion of
"under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, the display of the Ten
Commandments on the grounds of the state capitol, a congressional redistricting
plan that assisted Republicans, a restrictive voter identification law, and a ban
on late-term abortions. He also described cases in which he championed gun
rights and defended the conviction of a Mexican citizen who raped and murdered
two teenage girls in a case challenged by the World Court. Yet one case he does
not mention is the time he helped defend a law criminalizing the sale of dildos
2.Public Re Education Program
-Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is expected to
announce this week that Alexander Hamilton’s face will remain on the front of
the $10 bill and a woman will replace Andrew Jackson on the face of the $20
bill, a senior government source told CNN on Saturday
-Over 50 million students are heading off to
approximately 98,500 public elementary and secondary schools for the fall 2015
term, and before the school year is out, an estimated $634 billion will be
spent related to their education. By ed.gov
-70 percent of inmates in America’s prisons
cannot read above a fourth grade level, according to BeginToRead.com.
-32 million adults in the U.S. can’t read. That’s
14 percent of the population. 21 percent of adults in the U.S. read below a 5th
grade level, and 19 percent of high school graduates can’t read.
-The current literacy rate isn’t any better than
it was 10 years ago. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy
-The Act of 1867 directed the Department of
Education to collect and report the "condition and progress of
education" in annual reports to Congress. In the first report of 1870, the
Commissioner proudly reported that nearly 7 million children were enrolled in
elementary schools and 80,000 were enrolled in secondary schools. Also some
9,000 college degrees had been awarded. (.15%) This contrasts with 1990, when
30 million enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools and 11 million
enrolled in secondary schools. Over 1.5 million bachelors and higher degrees
were awarded. (3.7%)
-In 1979, President Carter advocated for creating
a cabinet-level Department of Education.
-Upgrading Education to cabinet level status in
1979 was opposed by many in the Republican Party, who saw the department as
unconstitutional, arguing that the Constitution doesn't mention education, and
deemed it an unnecessary and illegal federal bureaucratic intrusion into local
affairs
-Susan Brownell Anthony (February 20, 1820
– March 13, 1906) was an American social reformer and feminist who played a
pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement.
Born into a Quaker
family committed to social equality, she collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. In
1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.
3.EARTH QUAKES OF THE CENTURY
-7.8: At least 77 dead, hundreds injured in
Ecuador earthquake
-Japanese Authorities have confirmed 32 deaths
from Saturday’s magnitude-7.3 earthquake, and nine from a magnitude-6.5 quake
in the same area Thursday night.
Listen to Military Veteran Talk Radio iHeart.SmythRadio.com
Facebook.com/SmythRadio
gizmodo.com
Image: AP
This week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared to publicly denounce the political positions of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign during the keynote speech of the company’s annual F8 developer conference.
“I hear fearful voices calling for building walls and distancing people they label as ‘others,’” Zuckerberg said, never referring to Trump by name. “I hear them calling for blocking free expression, for slowing immigration, for reducing trade, and in some cases, even for cutting access to the internet.”
For a developer’s conference, the comments were unprecedented—a signal that the 31-year-old billionaire is quite willing to publicly mix politics and business. Zuckerberg has donated to campaigns in the past, but has been vague about which candidates he and his company’s political action committee support.
Advertisement
Inside Facebook, the political discussion has been more explicit. Last month, some Facebook employees used a company poll to ask Zuckerberg whether the company should try “to help prevent President Trump in 2017.”
image: Gizmodo
Every week, Facebook employees vote in an internal poll on what they want to ask Zuckerberg in an upcoming Q&A session. A question from the March 4 poll was: “What responsibility does Facebook have to help prevent President Trump in 2017?”
Sponsored
A screenshot of the poll, given to Gizmodo, shows the question as the fifth most popular.
It’s not particularly surprising the question was asked, or that some Facebook employees are anti-Trump. The question and Zuckerberg’s statements on Tuesday align with the consensus politics of Silicon Valley: pro-immigration, pro-trade, pro-expansion of the internet.
But what’s exceedingly important about this question being raised—and Zuckerberg’s answer, if there is one—is how Facebook now treats the powerful place it holds in the world. It’s unprecedented. More than 1.04 billion people use Facebook. It’s where we get our news, share our political views, and interact with politicians. It’s also where those politicians are spending a greater share of their budgets.
And Facebook has no legal responsibility to give an unfiltered view of what’s happening on their network.
Advertisement
“Facebook can promote or block any material that it wants,” UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh told Gizmodo. “Facebook has the same First Amendment right as the New York Times. They can completely block Trump if they want. They block him or promote him.” But the New York Times isn’t hosting pages like Donald Trump for President or Donald Trump for President 2016, the way Facebook is.
“Facebook can promote or block any material that it wants.”
Most people don’t see Facebook as a media company—an outlet designed to inform us. It doesn’t look like a newspaper, magazine, or news website. But if Facebook decides to tamper with its algorithm—altering what we see—it’s akin to an editor deciding what to run big with on the front page, or what to take a stand on. The difference is that readers of traditional media (including the web) can educate themselves about a media company’s political leanings. Media outlets often publish op-eds and editorials, and have a history of how they treat particular stories. Not to mention that Facebook has the potential to reach vastly, vastly more readers than any given publication.
With Facebook, we don’t know what we’re not seeing. We don’t know what the bias is or how that might be affecting how we see the world.
Facebook has toyed with skewing news in the past. During the 2012 presidential election, Facebook secretly tampered with1.9 million user’s news feeds. The company also tampered with news feeds in 2010 during a 61-million-person experiment to see how Facebook could impact the real-world voting behavior of millions of people. An academic paper was published about the secret experiment, claiming that Facebook increased voter turnout by more than 340,000 people. In 2012, Facebook alsodeliberately experimented on its users’ emotions. The company, again, secretly tampered with the news feeds of 700,000 people and concluded that Facebook can basically make you feel whatever it wants you to.
If Facebook decided to, it could gradually remove any pro-Trump stories or media off its site—devastating for a campaign that runs on memes and publicity. Facebook wouldn’t have to disclose it was doing this, and would be protected by the First Amendment.
But would it be ethical?
“I’m inclined to say Facebook has the same responsibility of any legacy media company,” said Robert Drechsel, a professor of journalism ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He thinks Facebook should provide coverage that is thorough, fair, accurate, complete, and contextual. “There is no legal issue.”
The only way that Facebook could legally overstep, experts say, is by colluding with a given candidate. “If Facebook was actively coordinating with the Sanders or Clinton campaign, and suppressing Donald Trump news, it would turn an independent expenditure (protected by the First Amendment) into a campaign contribution because it would be coordinated—and that could be restricted,” Volokh said.
“But if they’re just saying, ‘We don’t want Trump material on our site,’ they have every right to do that. It’s protected by the First Amendment.”
We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment and will update if we receive one.
Listen to Military Veteran Talk Radio iHeart.SmythRadio.com Facebook.com/SmythRadio
April 15, 2016
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Well, I guess I'm wrong. Guess I'm the only guy that I know who thinks that a dirty trick was pulled last night. I mean, if it was a dirty trick, it has to be one of the best that I've seen, in I don't know how long, and they've got everybody playing along with it. It's the most amazing thing, but it must not have been a dirty trick 'cause I'm the only guy who thinks it was.
No, what happened at that Republican thing last night, the New York GOP speech, I'll show you here in a minute. I'll show you what I'm talking about. It's the most amazing thing and everybody is just playing right along with the whole premise that is accompanying what happened there last night.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I also watched last night the New York Republican Party black-tie event where the three Republican contenders showed up to address -- it's kind of a mini-version of the Al Smith dinner for Republicans only.
Donald Trump led off, followed by John Kasich, followed by Ted Cruz. And something remarkable happened a short time into Cruz's speech that did not happen during either Trump's or Kasich's speech. I watched this on the Fox News Channel, and the timing of this, it happened to coincide with the Kelly File, the TV show hosted by Megyn Kelly. She had a focus group in there, minus Frank Luntz, just had a bunch of people there from New York, bunch of New Yorkers, and there was a break between every candidate's speech. Trump got up and spoke, and then there was a little downtime before Kasich came up.
And during that downtime they go back to Megyn Kelly's show and she would discuss what they had just seen or what they thought of it with the focus group. The focus group was diverse, it had supporters of all three candidates in there, and it was feisty. It was kind of a hoot watching these New Yorkers go after each other. Cruz fans, Kasich fans. There were some Kasich fans in there. And, of course, people for the Trumpster. But something happened when Cruz got up there.
Now, by the time Cruz started making his remarks, I had my iPad Pro out, I was multitasking. I was doing some other things while listening. I had watched a little bit. I didn't watch the totality of everybody's speech, but I watched the last half of Trump's and I watched the intro to Kasich and most of his speech. He went a little long. I think I probably had all of it on, and I had my iPad Pro on. Cruz comes on after the focus groups -- he goes last -- and I've got my head down the first I don't know how many minutes, maybe three minutes.
Frankly, I'll be honest with you, I tuned out a little bit because Cruz was doing a stump speech. He was talking about his campaign's the only campaign that's beaten Donald Trump 11 times and he was talking about how he's gonna do his first day in office. He's gonna rip up Obamacare and he's gonna abolish the IRS. I said okay, I'll tune out a little bit here and focus more on what I'm researching here on my iPad Pro. And something happened. My iPad Pro, there was a website I was looking at which had a video on it, and all of a sudden the audio in my library just went berserk. And I looked, I said, "What in the hell happened?"
So I thought maybe my iPad, maybe something happened on the iPad, because it was striking. Cruz was speaking the one moment and then a cacophony, I mean literally in a split second. And my hearing is such, all sound is noise to me, even communicating with people in person, it's noise. It's all irritating, folks. The way you have to understand this, for me, so that you can understand how I heard this. All noise, even talking to people, is noise to me. To people who can hear normally, speech is not noise. To me it's all noise, 'cause it's all bionic, it all sounds artificial to me. I don't hear anything the way anybody else hears it.
I am so at home in complete, total, utter silence. I keep the TV mute on oftentimes and just read the closed-captioning 'cause it's just noise. But I had the video and the audio up, and when this cacophony hit, I thought a video had started on my iPad, and the first thing I did was turn the volume down 'cause I thought I had two different audio sources competing and it was just irritating as hell so I turned the iPad audio down, there wasn't anything on the iPad. The change had occurred totally at the New York GOP affair.
So I studied it, I looked at it, and in 30 seconds I figured out what happened. They had cut Ted Cruz's microphone at the podium and they had replaced it with what sounded like microphones at five or six tables where you heard nothing but the table noise. The clinking of knives and forks on plates, people swigging beverages. You could hear people smacking their lips while they were eating. At least it sounded like it to me. You could hear people chatting with each other. I said, "What the hell is this?"
It was so different from anything I had heard all night at this thing that my attention was riveted. And I said, "Something's gone wrong here." This is obviously an audio glitch, and I stayed riveted for the Fox News Channel to fix it. And I stayed riveted, and I stayed riveted, and I continued to watch. Five minutes went by and not one change. Then another two minutes went by and then there was silence for a couple seconds. "A-ha," I said, "they're gonna fix it." But when it came back, it was all the same. I could not hear Ted Cruz. Cruz had no idea. He's still up there gesticulating, he's doing his normal speech, can't hear him anymore, don't know what he's saying. All you hear is what's going on at the table. You hear the waiters running around; sounds like people were dropping plates and knives and forks on the floor and stomping on them.
And then the next thing that happened was I saw the face of Sean Hannity, who said, "Sorry. Audio problems." And then he turned to Eric Bolling to begin discussing the virtues of Trump and Corey Lewandowski. And I said, "Well, hot damn." I said, "This is one of the best damn tricks I have ever seen. They just sabotaged Cruz at this thing." I didn't know who did it, but somebody -- I said, this is amazing. And I waited for the lid to blow.
I started reading people's Twitter feeds. I started reading all kinds of things, and there wasn't one reference to it. I said, "This can't be." I can't be the only person that noticed this. I can't be the only person that saw it. And then I finally saw a thread, and I was even more impressed. I was even more incredulous, because the thread had a theme. You know what the theme was? Cruz was so boring, Cruz was so bad, Cruz is so hated that nobody listened to him. We had Drive-By Media supposedly on site as witnesses tweeting and reporting that nobody listened to Cruz, that the crowd was getting up and walking around and milling around and being rude, that the whole room had turned Cruz out.
I just smiled. I said, "Whoever put this together is a genius." 'Cause they have coordinated every bit of this. In the first place, they sabotaged Cruz, then they get to the media and make it look like what happened was totally natural, Cruz is hated, despised, everybody started ignoring him. Such tweets as, "Wow, this crowd is not digging Cruz's speech. A lot of people talking amongst themselves as Cruz speaks at New York GOP gala. So far the most enthusiastic crowd reaction to Cruz has been a couple of moments of tepid applause. It's legitimately loud in here, people talking and eating and ignoring Cruz."
That's not what was happening. The only people who thought that were the people watching on Fox News because the microphones, something happened to them, I don't know. I'm gonna take a brief time-out and I'm gonna come back and show you, I'm gonna play the audio here and you'll see what I'm talking about. But what brings it all together is, even today, I'm watching Fox News, and they are talking today about, "Wow, just terrible last night for Ted Cruz. Nobody cared what he had to say. I mean, you should see it, people getting up and milling around and walking around, it was rude, people didn't care. It was really a big problem for Ted Cruz."
I said, "That's not what happened." (laughing) It isn't what happened at all. And then I saw Kellyanne Conway on Fox. She is Cruz's pollster and she didn't even reference it. She went along with the idea that a United States senator had been disrespected and how unfortunate it was. Wow. Whoever planned this, whoever orchestrated this, and whoever executed this, this was pulled off flawlessly. This was a brilliantly conceived and flawlessly executed slam on Ted Cruz.
And I'm sure it's all about New York values. I'm sure some people have been planning this for weeks when they found out Cruz was gonna show up. People that probably hate each other got together on this to come up with this scheme. I mean, if they have pulled this off, I just hope and pray that they do something like this against Hillary when the time comes. I'll show you what I'm talking about when we come back.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. Here we go. We're gonna first start off with Trump. And Mike, I don't need to play the whole bite here. Just play it 'til I tell you to stop. Just need to establish enough here to let you know how everybody at the podium sounded last night. Up first, the Grand Hyatt, which Trump used to own, I'm sure still has some connections there, Grand Hyatt hotel, Grand Central Station, at the 2016 New York state Republican gala, here's Trump.
TRUMP: I loved the potential of the building. It's called the Commodore Hotel. It was built in 1909, and it was a mess. And they had a spa, and the spa was called Relaxation Plus. And nobody ever got into what the Plus meant. You don't want to know.
RUSH: Okay. That's enough. Perfectly normal, right? You could hear everything Trump was saying no problem. Here's John Kasich next. His audio also loud and clear.
KASICH: When we live in the dark, when we practice politics in the dark, over time people don't like it. I think when the public looks at a politician whose lips are moving, they figure that politician is lying. And I'm a citizen myself. And when people come to tell me about what they want to do and why they want to be elected, I always say to them, "What have you done in your life? Why should --"
RUSH: Enough of that. That's Kasich. And here is the first part of Ted Cruz. Cruz goes last. And this is what it sounded like at the beginning of Cruz's speech. Totally normal.
CRUZ: The heart of our economy is not Washington, DC. The heart of our economy is small businesses all across the United States of America. (Applause) And if you want to see the economy take off, it's very simple: You lift the boot of the federal government off the back of the necks of small businesses. If I'm elected president --
RUSH: Okay, so we've established that circumstances for all three are perfectly fine. You could hear them each equally and well. They were all being listened to. And then magically, I mean, remember, my face is down, I'm looking and reading something on my iPad Pro, and my room goes berserk with audio that's twice as loud as any of the speech audio was, and it turned out it was somebody giving Ted Cruz a taste of New York values.
CRUZ: If we remain divided we will lose. And so I recognize many of the people in this room (unintelligible). They started on the (unintelligible). Maybe they started out supporting Jeb Bush. (unintelligible) supporting Rubio (unintelligible) or any of the fantastic candidates who began (unintelligible).
RUSH: Stop it. Stop it. That is how the final eight minutes of Ted Cruz's speech sounded. You couldn't hear him. They turned the podium mic off, somebody turned the podium mic off and turned on all the other microphones in the room to pick up all the room noise, and then there were tweets like this one. "It's sort of painful to watch someone speak passionately to a crowd who wouldn't even notice if he killed himself on stage." I mean, the media was in on the trick, Fox News was in on the trick, everybody played along as though all of a sudden Cruz lost the room. Now, Mike, here's what I want you to do. I want you to grab sound bite number three and just as soon as it ends, start number four.
CRUZ: The heart of our economy is not Washington, DC. The heart of our economy is small businesses all across the United States of America. (Applause) And if you want to see the economy take off, it's very simple: You lift the boot of the federal government off the back of the necks of small businesses. If I'm elected president, we will repeal every word of Obamacare. (mic cut) If we remain divided, we will lose. And so I recognize many of the people in this room, who started out supporting other candidates. Maybe you start out supporting Jeb Bush. (unintelligible) Maybe you started out supporting Marco Rubio (unintelligible) or any of the fantastic candidates who began this race. (unintelligible).
RUSH: And I expected all hell to break loose. I expected there to be outrage from pro-Cruz people over how he had been sabotaged, double dirty tricked, whatever it was, and there was nothing. All there was was a bunch of media people talking about how disrespected Cruz was, that people got tired of listening to him and got up and started walking around and making all this noise. And even today, everybody continues: "Nobody cared about Cruz. It was so boring. Poor guy."
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: One more demonstration of this just 'cause I know many of you, "Gee, play that again, I want to hear it again." I'm gonna play it one more time. Now, keep in mind, folks, to show you how brilliantly this thing's executed. They got three guys showing up making speeches. The speeches go I think 15 minutes max. There's a bunch of prespeeches. I'm watching this. It's at nine o'clock and nobody has eaten yet.
It is important to understand that whoever orchestrated this also was smart enough to realize not to serve dinner until Cruz got up to speak. There were no plates and knives and forks and all that to make any noise when Trump and Kasich were speaking. But between the break between Kasich and Cruz, they served dinner. So people were also eating during Cruz's remarks, and it was at some point during Cruz's speech somebody turned off the podium microphone and turned on all of the room microphones, picking up all the white noise in the room, making it look like that was the only noise in the room, that nobody was listening.
Meanwhile, if you're watching this, there's Cruz, his arms are waving around and he's giving a speech, nothing has changed, in his mind. He's not off tempo. He's not seeing a bunch of people walk around and mill around and ignoring him. He's watching people still listening to him. He doesn't know anything that's happened. He doesn't know until it's over when somebody tells him, I'm sure. The TV audience is thinking there's some audio glitch that's happened here and Fox is gonna find it and fix it, but that never happens.
And then later that night, the Drive-By Media and into today and everybody at Fox News is reporting what a dull, dry speech Cruz made. It was so bad, it was so boring that everybody ignored him, started walking around, talking to themselves, making noise. How embarrassing. And I am sure this is payback for New York values. I'm sure that's what this is, Cruz got a dose of it last night.
Whoever planned this pulled this off and not only did they pull it off, they had to coordinate this with the media or else they relied on the stupidity and gullibility of the media. They relied on what they know is the media's prejudice against Cruz. They probably didn't even have to tell people, "My God Cruz was so boring, nobody listened." They probably didn't even have to tell the media that, that's the media's natural disposition, to dispossess and disrespect Cruz.
So here, listen again, exactly as I heard it, listening to the beginning of Cruz's speech, my head's down not watching the screen, multitasking, doing some show prep on the iPad Pro, and then all of a sudden the noise changes. And, by the way, the noise in the second bite, the room noise when you're watching TV, it was twice as loud as the audio of the speeches from the podium. Here we go.
CRUZ: The heart of our economy is not Washington, DC.
RUSH: Perfectly normal.
CRUZ: The heart of our economy is small businesses all across the United States of America.
RUSH: No problems at all here. Applause. Here they're listening.
CRUZ: And if you want to see the economy take off, it's very simple: You lift the boot of the federal government off the back of the necks of small businesses. If I'm elected president, we will repeal every word of Obamacare. (mic cut) If we remain divided, we will lose. And so I recognize many of the people in this room, who started out supporting other candidates. Maybe you started out supporting Jeb Bush. (unintelligible) Maybe you started out supporting Marco Rubio or Scott Walker (unintelligible) or any of the fantastic candidates who began this race. (unintelligible).
RUSH: That is not how it sounded in the room. It only sounded that way on TV. In the room all was normal. There wouldn't have been any perceived difference. You're watching on TV, that was all you heard. And you would think, okay, something's happened, there's an audio glitch somewhere. But it went on for five or eight minutes, and they never fixed it. It just continued, and finally they bumped out of it. The next thing they saw was Sean Hannity saying, "Sorry, audio problems. We want to welcome Eric Bolling. Eric? What is a great guy like Corey Lewandowski doing tonight?"
It was not even addressed. So I think, if I'm just patient, I'm gonna see a bunch of Cruzers just blow up, fit of tirades all over the media watching last night, and I didn't see anything except the media tweeting and posting blogs, blog posts about how boring Cruz was, how nobody listened, it was a shocking thing. I said, "Gee, they must be in on it." At no time last night did I see anywhere anybody questioning what happened, what might have gone wrong with the audio during Cruz's remarks.
So I get up today, I start show prep, I've got Fox on in here, and still they're continuing with this premise that Cruz was so dull, so boring, so hated, that the room, fellow Republicans just totally disrespected him. They got up, they walked around, they talked amongst themselves, they were eating, they were making noise with their plates and knives and forks.
And I just had to marvel at it. I said, "This is a multipart trick that involves the cooperation of a whole lot of people, and every one of them played along." Not one person blew the whistle on this. Even now nobody has blown the whistle. The media is still writing about what a dull dryball Cruz is. They're still writing about how the audience totally tuned out. They even had Kellyanne Conway on. She's with the Cruz campaign. She's a pollster and works with the Keep the Promise super PAC. She's the president of it.
She was on this morning on Fox, and the question she got, "You were there last night. You've seen a lot of the reporting this morning, that Senator Cruz was ignored." Did you see this? This is Martha MacCallum carrying on with this charade. "You've seen a lot of the reporting this morning that Senator Cruz was ignored, the people were intentionally not paying attention, and the thinking is that it's because of the New York values comment. What was your take?"
CONWAY: Some people waited up to 90 minutes just to get through metal detectors last night. Mr. Trump has Secret Service security. So by the time dinner was served, the event started an hour late, I think Senator Cruz was speaking as people were eating for the first time all night. And I think it would be unfortunate if people, as you suggest, were intentionally ignoring a United States Senator from their own party and a presidential contender from their own party because of a comment he made, which he has since explained really goes to Donald Trump's comment. That was a phrase Donald Trump used many years ago to explain his position, his support for partial-birth abortion.
RUSH: Apparently, she didn't even know what happened. She was accepting the premise that her candidate was universally despised and reviled and thus he was ignored and mistreated and treated rudely, and she could only say that it was a sad thing that this happened to a sitting senator and that sought to justify the New York values comment.
It continues, folks, as we sit here today, as we sit here at this moment, that is still the premise. That's still the narrative. And I'll tell you if you're the Cruz campaign, since this happened once, and you know that whoever was involved in this, they could do it again. (interruption) Brian, the broadcast engineer, you think something broke? Oh, come on, Brian. He's like Moe Thacker, you know, the old United Screeners of America union thug head back in New York. So you're not gonna cast aspersions on your engineer brethren?
So you think something broke last night, like maybe the wires, the cables connecting the podium mic to the amplifier just accidentally came unplugged maybe and they couldn't figure it out in 10 minutes of trying to troubleshoot the problem? Yeah, just one of those unfortunate technical glitches that nobody in 2016 could figure out how to find and fix.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We're gonna go to Pittsburgh. Jesse, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks for taking my call. I wanted to talk about what you were talking about, what Fox did to Ted Cruz last night. I was absolutely -- I just couldn't believe it, the lengths, the depths that they would go to --
RUSH: Well, now, wait.
CALLER: -- to discredit him.
RUSH: I know why you think Fox did it, because they are in charge of the telecast so you're thinking, okay, there's gotta be a control room, there has to be somebody there, the audio engineers have to hear something's wrong, and the first thing you would do is turn down the crowd mics, if you can't hear the podium, or put up a banner that says, "Technical difficulties, we're working on it, please stand by." There was none of that. So that's why you're thinking Fox. But I think it goes deeper than Fox.
CALLER: Really?
RUSH: Well, it has to. It goes to when they decided to serve dinner. There wouldn't have been any the crowd noise unless they had served dinner before Cruz started to speak, you see. I mean, I think this is deep. I think this trick has woven tentacles of deceit that are deeply throughout this event last night. You have a lot of people that played along with this one, and they're still playing along with it today.
CALLER: I do believe that the tentacles are deep in that but, I mean, Fox had to do something with it. I mean, they had to be a part of it somehow.
RUSH: Well, look. Yeah, maybe. But are you of the opinion that Fox and Fox alone decided to actually sabotage Cruz's speech?
CALLER: No. No. Definitely not Fox alone. Like you said, I think this is bigger than just Fox --
RUSH: Okay, so you think Fox, though, you think Fox killed the podium microphone?
CALLER: I do. I do.
RUSH: That could have been somebody that had nothing to do with Fox. That could have been somebody backstage at the amplifier, turned it off, unplugged it. It could have been a circuit breaker. It could have been a number of things. But in the labyrinth of audio and video connections there's a bunch of stuff that happens before you get to the Fox feed per se. I understand why you would think it's Fox. When you lose the audio on a football game or TV show, you think it's the network.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: It makes sense that you would think that, yeah.
CALLER: Yeah, and you're right about not really seeing too much online about it because right when it was happening I went out to Fox's site on Facebook, and nobody was mentioning it. They had Ted Cruz's speech on there 'cause it was a little bit afterwards, and nobody was mentioning it, but then slowly throughout the evening people were starting to comment on it, and they were pretty mad.
RUSH: Yeah, but they were in the minority. Most of the comments, most of the first early tweets were from media people perpetuating the hoax, essentially. Which was also crucial. I mean, that's what I mean. There were a lot of elements of this that somebody had to coordinate. There are a lot of people that played a role in this that had to be silent. Somebody had to be assured that all the players here would not give up the trick and blow it, even at this point.
I mean, the fact that the narrative still remains, Cruz was a dull, drying whatever speech, that nobody cared, is what survives as the narrative of the night. So I don't know how you watch that on TV and not think that there was something wrong with the audio. Whether it was done on purpose or not, how do you not conclude that there was something wrong with the audio as you heard it, as I played it for you. And, believe me, had you been watching it live, the cacophony of sound from that room was much louder than any of the speeches from Trump, Kasich, or Cruz.
I mean, it was loud enough that they literally bumped out of Cruz. He still wasn't finished speaking, they bumped out of it, and Hannity said, "Sorry, audio problems," and then that was it. Then went right into his program, interviewing whoever it was, Eric Bolling. No explanation, just, "Sorry for the audio problems," as though that was the excuse for bumping out of it. The reason they were leaving the Cruz speech, "Sorry, we got some audio problems here," and bam, that was it. Classic. I suspect Megyn Kelly. (laughing) Just kidding. (ahem) Just kidding. I appreciate the call up there, Jesse. Thanks.
This is Janet Marie in Pleasanton, California. You're next on Open Line Friday. Hi.
CALLER: Hi there, Rush. Thank you so much for taking my call. I have to tell you, I came home, I was listening to Ted's speech, I was working out at the gym and all of a sudden everything started cutting out, and I came home spitting mad. I blamed it on Fox. I didn't have the background you have. But the other thing that occurred to me, because I've run charity events and galas, and I was furious that they were starting to serve dinner while he was speaking. Ted Cruz was hitting it out of the park. He got more response from the audience, there was more clapping. I thought he hit a home run last night, and then they cut it out, and I came home and I said to my husband, "I'm done with Fox. I am done."
RUSH: Well, look, I can understand that would be your knee-jerk first reaction to it. I had a different take on Cruz's speech. Let me just repeat this. The reason I was multitasking with the iPad Pro, the big one, in case you're wondering, was because Cruz was doing his stump speech. There was nothing at the time this happened that was even specific to New York, which I thought, what is this?
I mean, he was talking about how this campaign is the only campaign that's beating Donald. That doesn't matter anymore and then talking about what he's gonna do the first day in office. He's gonna rip up Obamacare, then he's gonna abolish the IRS. It was a stump speech. And so I thought okay, I'm just gonna focus on something else here until he and if he gets into something specific to the New York primary or current events, something other than a stump speech, and it didn't happen.
And maybe he was pivoting and hitting into some different area when the audio snafu happened. But after that nobody knows what he said except the people in the room. The people in the room, everything appeared normal. You had to be watching this on TV to know that any kind of a sabotage had taken place.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here's Patty in Naugatuck, Connecticut. Great to have you. I'm glad you waited.
CALLER: Oh, thanks for having me on. I wanted to just discuss real quickly the audio for Senator Cruz. Last night my husband and I were watching, and we knew immediately, because it was too long; so my husband looked over at me, he said, "I think this is intentional." And I nodded my head up and down and said, "New York values." It went too long without being fixed, and there had to be more than one person involved, because nobody complained about it.
And, with all due respect, I have to honestly say, I hope people do not have buyer's remorse afterwards because you don't get to go back and do this over again. There are so many serious issues facing our country, and I personally believe that Senator Cruz has been a pillar. I knew he would rise above this, and even if he thought it was intentional, he would get back to the business of discussing the real issues this country faces, of which I think he has the best principles, values, and policies.
And on day one, he's probably already engineered in his brain how he would put things in place and be ready on day one to lead this country. He has contributed an enormous amount to this country already, even from his work on in the Senate and what he did before. He's preserved a lot of our First Amendment and our Second Amendment --
RUSH: Wait. Do you think his supporters, though, need some kind of affirmation, at least from the campaign, "Hey, look, we know our guy got shafted last night. He knows it. We gotta move on"? I mean, to ignore what happened last night, do you think that's wise?
CALLER: I think the more attention you pay to something, the more it's a distraction, it becomes a bigger issue. If they know it bothers you --
RUSH: Well, I understand that. I'm talking surrogates doing that, not him.
CALLER: But, you know what, Rush? What's the point. The point is really what it's all about in this election, and we need to keep our eye on the ball and never forget what's at stake for this country.
RUSH: I know that, but if you let it stand that an entire audience at a party gathering was so bored that they got up and started milling around, that's not helpful.
15 Apr, 201615 Apr, 2016 Volunteers at the Colorado Republican Assembly are coming forward with evidence to indicate that their state’s delegate selection process was riddled with errors that disadvantaged some Donald Trump supporters who were running to become national delegates.
The errors could have violated state bylaws significantly enough that some of the results could be contested, according to the volunteers.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) took all 34 of Colorado’s delegates last week in a process that closed down traditional caucus voting to the public.
A handful of volunteers spoke to Breitbart News about the process.
“I’m the former Chairman of the Pueblo County Republican Party and the person who developed the Slates for National Delegates for the Trump team. The Colorado GOP website was filled with errors posted about the National Delegates,” Nancy Mizel told Breitbart News.
Mizel took a photograph of a ballot in Congressional District 7 that included ONLY the ballot numbers of delegate candidates, NOT the names of the candidates as required by state bylaws.
(Photo: Becky Mizel)
But Article Xiii of the Colorado Republican Convention bylaws (Assemblies and Conventions Section A) show that a delegate candidate must be identified alongside the name of the presidential candidate that he or she is pledged to support, so long as the delegate candidate discloses that information:
Candidates for national convention delegate need not identify the presidential candidate they are pledged to support, but may do so at their option. The ballot shall include the presidential candidate each candidate for national delegate is pledged to support, or shall indicate that the candidate for national delegate is unpledged. CRC Bylaws, Art. XIII, § A(5)(c).
Here are stories of three of the volunteers in their own words:
Kimberly JaJack:
JaJack, a Trump supporter, tells Breitbart News that she was not allowed to vote at the State Assembly:
I was a delegate. I pledged support for Donald Trump. In the Arapahoe County section they had designated seating areas for your last name. When it came time to pass the ballots out, someone from the Colorado GOP came around and started calling out names. When you received your ballot you received a mark on your name.
She went directly from K to I and skipped the Js. She said she didn’t have the Js….
…I asked a few people, no one seemed to have the ballots for my last name. At that particular time, I had to do my ten-second speech because I was running for national delegate. I came back and said I don’t have a ballot and I went to Andie, the president of the Cherry Creek Republican Women in Colorado, and she looked at her board. She had my name on this page and it had a check mark next to it. She looked at it and said “this is a check mark.” I said “This is my badge, you do NOT see a mark on it, do you?”
I approached a representative of Donald Trump’s campaign and I went to Steve House, chairman of the Colorado GOP. He took my name and telephone number.
JaJack said that she found out that another woman in Arapahoe County later told her that she had her ballot, but by then it was too late to vote. JaJack said that she has not heard back from the Colorado GOP. She says her case represents a “serious injustice.”
JaJack told her story at the time in a video obtained by Breitbart News:
Becky Mizel:
Mizel told Breitbart News about the extent of the errors she observed:
While I was putting together the National Delegate Slates for Mr. Trump on April 5th or 6th, copied and pasted from the Colorado GOP website – I noticed my name was missing from the website as being a national delegate candidate. Even though I had submitted timely paperwork. I called the GOP HQ. They said it was an error and they would correct it. Gave me ballot number 602 over the phone. I assumed my delegate name was corrected and added although even as ofThursday my name was still not on the website as a delegate.
I don’t know if it was ever added to the website. If I had not checked the website, which probably few do, I would never have even known the mistake and would have been completely missed as a delegate candidate. This may have happened to others who thought they were delegate candidates and were not. Only a guess. I have never implied my number was deliberately changed nor claimed I was deliberately left off the lists. If names were left off possibly numbers were also confused. I have no idea regarding their process, A series of errors that appeared to happen to myself and others and were not unique to only Trump candidates.
Folks with ballots numbered higher than 588 – those people I assume we’re errors in entry – were not published as national delegate candidates in the GOP program- nor listed in the voting booklet. Disappointing, since candidates were only allowed 10 second speeches. Being left off both informational programs was disheartening.
Nancy McKiernan:
Trump volunteer Nancy McKiernan described the chaos to Breitbart News:
Jan Herron and I and another friend were volunteers at the Trump table at the Colorado Republican State Assembly on Saturday, 4/9/2016 and witnessed a lot of confusion regarding these numbers.
When I arrived at the table at around noon, I was told by other volunteers that some of the numbers that were printed on the official Trump slates (Exhibit A) were wrong and needed to be changed. My understanding from speaking with Becky is the numbers on the slate were taken directly off of the Colorado GOP website. In trying to ascertain what the correct numbers should be, I looked in the Assembly & Convention program (Exhibit B, Paid for by the Colorado Republican Committee, www.cologop.org) and noticed that the numbers only went up to 588, yet for 4 of the delegates on the slate, their numbers were higher than 588, and therefore not listed in the program:
#589 Kimberly Jajack
#598 Rheba Massay
#602 Becky Mizel
#610 Gabriel Schwartz
I started asking around to try to figure out what the delegates were using as a reference to vote with; what was the “official” guide to match names to numbers? I was given a “Delegates to the Republican National Convention Ballot Supplement” (Exhibit C) and cross referenced numbers and names on the slate with this. Inserted into it was a blue sheet of paper containing names of delegates with numbers from 596 – 619 (Exhibit D). This sheet of paper included names for Unpledged, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and John Kasich delegates. When cross checking the slate with this “supplement”, I found these discrepancies between the Official Trump slate and the Ballot Supplement:
Name Number on Slate Number on Ballot Supplement
Robert Jenkins #257 #259
William Lambert #289 #298
Jerome Parks #379 #401
Becky Mizel #602 #606 (from blue sheet insert)
I witnessed several Trump delegates coming to the volunteer table, confused and frustrated, asking what numbers they should be using to vote for people on the Trump slate. While I was helping one gentleman fill out his ballot, I noticed errors/misprints on the ballots themselves (Exhibit E-1, E-2), e.g. two number 523’s but no 513, two 378’s, but no 379. I also noticed there were 948 numbers on the ballot, but as far as I could tell delegate numbers only went up to 619.
One woman reported that she was very angry that numbers corresponding to Trump delegates were left off the ballot. I do not have specifics on this, other than #379, Nicolas Robert Neitzel…
…Another woman/Trump supporter, reported that she was an alternate delegate and was elevated to delegate, and then was told they made a mistake and the delegate credential she had been given was ripped up. She said she was elevated again and then dropped back down to alternate a 2nd time. She was visibly upset, said I feel like I’m in a third world country and left without filling out her ballot…
When I left at approximately 5:00 pm, delegates were still walking up to the Trump volunteer table, confused, upset and asking questions. Shortly before I left, a gentleman, who was very upset, asked if he should go talk to Colorado GOP State Chairman Steve House to report the issues he encountered and set off to do just that.
Overall, what I witnessed appeared to be very chaotic, confusing and lacking in integrity. I saw delegates walking around with ballots and wondered if anyone was keeping track of them. Was there anything to stop someone from getting some extra ballots as they were roaming about and putting them in the ballot boxes? I don’t know, as I didn’t go into the arena itself, where ballots were being turned in. However, I got a general feeling of uneasiness in how things were being run.
From what I understand, mistakes were also made for Cruz delegates. However I did not track those.
The Colorado Republican Party did not immediately return a request for comment for this report.
The real “war on women” takes place on the battlefield where abortion clinics target baby girls for elimination, according to congressional testimony from Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, a human-rights group.
“Sex-selective abortion is the ultimate violence against females,” Reggie Littlejohn, President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, told Breitbart News. “Aborting a baby just because she is a girl is the ultimate act of gender discrimination.”
On Thursday, April 14, a congressionalhearing is being held before the House Judiciary Committee to debate the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA) of 2016, a bill aimed at reducing gender-based abortion in America. The bill is being opposed by abortion-giant Planned Parenthood, NARAL and other abortion-rights groups.
The United Nations estimates that some 200 million women are “demographically missing” in the world today due to sex-selective abortion. This number is greater than all the casualties of all the wars of the twentieth century combined.
According to Littlejohn, this is the real “war on women,” despite the fact that it is ignored by many groups supposedly interested in women’s rights, and constitutes “gendercide.”
In China, there are some 37 million marriage-age men without a female counterpart, due to systematic, sex-selective abortions, Littlejohn pointed out. In India, the number is about the same. The growing gender disparity has had a notable effect on human trafficking and sexual slavery as well.
Predictably, the Huffington Post is on record as defending sex-selective abortion and opposing PRENDA, contending that Asian-American women would be unfairly subjected to greater scrutiny than Caucasian women, due to the prevalence of sex-selective abortion in many Asian cultures.
In her HuffPo essay, Miriam W. Yeung, an abortion-rights advocate who described herself as “a proud queer Asian American immigrant woman activist,” discounted the importance of sex-selective abortions, saying that legislative efforts to limit gender-based abortion constitute an “attempt to distract from the real issues at hand.”
Though Ms. Yeung may consider the targeting of baby girls for elimination to be a non-issue, her opinion is far from universal. A 2015 report from Geneva on global violence against women called sex-selective abortion “one of the most shocking crimes against humanity.”
Yeung, who is executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, is among those called to witness at the Congressional hearing Thursday.
Although the problem of sex-selective abortions is most evident in nations like China and India, it is a significant issue in the United States as well.
A 2011 study by Dr. Sunita Puri of the University of California at San Francisco found that 89 percent of immigrant Indian women who became pregnant with girls during the study period had abortions. None, however, who were pregnant with boys aborted them. The participants identified influence from their husbands and mothers-in-law as “sources of significant pressure” to abort their children, once it was learned they were girls.
Curiously, using ultrasound and sperm-sorting technologies explicitly for sex selection is illegal in India, whereas this is legal in the United States.
This is the sort of atrocity PRENDA seeks to abolish.
Listen to Military Veteran Talk Radio iHeart.SmythRadio.com
Facebook.com/SmythRadio
hosted.ap.org
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday the whole world is watching American politics and that he can understand how Middle East allies would be rattled by Republican front-runner Donald Trump's provocative comments.
The Wisconsin Republican, who recently led a congressional delegation to the Middle East, dismissed the notion that a war-weary United States could retreat, as reflected by Trump's demand that allies pay more or else America will step back. Ryan, who has been compelled to tamp down speculation that he could be the GOP's eventual presidential nominee, said that approach is unrealistic.
"There is a commonality that this has been our problem too long, it shouldn't be our problem any more if we just pull out, we can fortress America and we will be better off. I don't buy that," Ryan told a group of reporters. "The reason I don't buy that is it is going to come to us. Who else is going to help lead the world ... to ultimately extinguish radical Islamic terrorism? And if we just pull back and think our oceans are going to save us, the evidence of the last couple of decades disproves that theory."
The congressional delegation traveled to Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Germany. Back on American soil, Ryan faulted President Barack Obama's foreign policy on dealing with Iran and Syria, and said allies wanted to know if the United States is "still in the game."
He said allies were rattled a bit by administration policy. Asked if Trump's comments had rattled them as well, Ryan said, "Sure. I get that too. Everybody pays attention to our politics."
Ryan expounded on his tacit criticism of Trump, who has proposed a ban on Muslims coming to the United States. Earlier this year, Ryan rejected that idea. He said allies knew about it and thanked him for speaking out.
"When he proposed the Muslim immigration ban, that really got under my skin, so I spoke out very forcefully the day after," he said. "When you see our beliefs our values and conservative principles being disfigured, you have to speak out for it if you're a party leader."
Ryan also has assailed Trump on other occasions, but never by name. He complained about Trump's slow disavowal of white supremacist groups.
Ryan, the 2012 vice presidential nominee, hastily called a news conference this week to state that he would not accept his party's nomination and that the choice should emerge from among the candidates who have sought the party nod, including Trump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
But Republicans fear that a Trump nomination will alienate women, minorities and independent voters, costing them not only the White House but control of the Senate as well.
On foreign policy, Trump suggested in an interview with The New York Times that the United States boycott oil from Saudi Arabia unless the country provides ground troops in the fight against Islamic State militants. He also has suggested withdrawing U.S. forces from Japan and South Korea if the countries don't pay more to cover the cost of the American military presence.
In other interviews, Trump has said NATO is obsolete and questioned U.S. involvement after more than half a century of ensuring Europe's protection.
During his trip, Ryan said the Saudis "didn't say Donald Trump this and Donald Trump that. They just said, 'Where is America?'"
The speaker said he raised the issue of allegations of human rights abuses with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. Secretary of State John Kerry and several Western European nations have rebuked Egypt amid reports of killings, torture and secret detentions.
"You make it more difficult for us to be supportive of you when you have so many human rights violations," Ryan said he told the Egyptian president.
Ryan, a foe of the international nuclear agreement with Iran, also expressed concern about business deals with Tehran and other outreach in the aftermath of the landmark pact that lifted years of economic sanctions in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program.
"I worry about that," Ryan said. "I worry that so much toothpaste is going to get out of the tube that we're not going to be able to put much back in. And I do believe that next year, with the new government, we need to put as much of this toothpaste back in the tube that we can."
Image: AP
image: Gizmodo
RUSH: I also watched last night the New York Republican Party black-tie event where the three Republican contenders showed up to address -- it's kind of a mini-version of the Al Smith dinner for Republicans only.
I said, "That's not what happened." (laughing) It isn't what happened at all. And then I saw Kellyanne Conway on Fox. She is Cruz's pollster and she didn't even reference it. She went along with the idea that a United States senator had been disrespected and how unfortunate it was. Wow. Whoever planned this, whoever orchestrated this, and whoever executed this, this was pulled off flawlessly. This was a brilliantly conceived and flawlessly executed slam on Ted Cruz. 
It is important to understand that whoever orchestrated this also was smart enough to realize not to serve dinner until Cruz got up to speak. There were no plates and knives and forks and all that to make any noise when Trump and Kasich were speaking. But between the break between Kasich and Cruz, they served dinner. So people were also eating during Cruz's remarks, and it was at some point during Cruz's speech somebody turned off the podium microphone and turned on all of the room microphones, picking up all the white noise in the room, making it look like that was the only noise in the room, that nobody was listening. 
RUSH: Apparently, she didn't even know what happened. She was accepting the premise that her candidate was universally despised and reviled and thus he was ignored and mistreated and treated rudely, and she could only say that it was a sad thing that this happened to a sitting senator and that sought to justify the New York values comment. 
RUSH: I know why you think Fox did it, because they are in charge of the telecast so you're thinking, okay, there's gotta be a control room, there has to be somebody there, the audio engineers have to hear something's wrong, and the first thing you would do is turn down the crowd mics, if you can't hear the podium, or put up a banner that says, "Technical difficulties, we're working on it, please stand by." There was none of that. So that's why you're thinking Fox. But I think it goes deeper than Fox.
CALLER: Hi there, Rush. Thank you so much for taking my call. I have to tell you, I came home, I was listening to Ted's speech, I was working out at the gym and all of a sudden everything started cutting out, and I came home spitting mad. I blamed it on Fox. I didn't have the background you have. But the other thing that occurred to me, because I've run charity events and galas, and I was furious that they were starting to serve dinner while he was speaking. Ted Cruz was hitting it out of the park. He got more response from the audience, there was more clapping. I thought he hit a home run last night, and then they cut it out, and I came home and I said to my husband, "I'm done with Fox. I am done." 
