Berggruen Development Sacrifices Last Great LA Open Space And The NYT Likes It

Berggruen Development Sacrifices Last Great LA Open Space And The NYT Likes It

By Maria Fotopoulos

The New York Times has a history of journalistic infractions. Too-cozy relations with government operativesinaccurate reporting and outright plagiarism and fake stories. More recently, there’s been the unhinged writing of columnist Paul Krugman, the embrace of “Wokesters” and the meltdown of the commentary section, with resultant resignation of the publication’s opinion page editor.

With such a rich history of compromised content, it’s unsurprising that “the newspaper of record” would run a pure puff piece on real estate and investment mogul Nicolas Berggruen (net worth: $2.9 billion). The story’s fawning author, Michael Steinberger, who also manages to make himself part of the story, skirts the real story: A billionaire’s push for a vanity project that would sacrifice the last great open space in Los Angeles.

In opposition to the local community, Berggruen plans to plop a George Jetson-looking complex atop a Southern California mountain on a 447-acre holding that is home to rich flora and fauna, and offers respite to Los Angelenos via hard-won open space and public hiking trails. In the more than 3,500-word Times article, Steinberger gave only one line to the controversy: Berggruen “has yet to break ground on the project, which has drawn resistance from nearby residents.”



Architect’s rendering of Berggruen’s proposed SoCal project

Now based in Los Angeles, the Paris-born Berggruen is establishing himself as a philosopher, thinker and benefactor – the gushing Steinberger writes that Nic has been called a “latter-day Medici.” The physical manifestation of the “Philosopher King” and formerly “Homeless Billionaire,” as the Times headed the Steinberger article, is the Berggruen Institute. Created in 2010 with $100 million “to develop foundational ideas about how to reshape political and social institutions,” the Institute currently offices in Downtown Los Angeles in the iconic Bradbury Building.

In 2014, Berggruen purchased property in Los Angeles west of the 405 freeway and north of the Getty Center for $45 million (the NYT piece stated $15 million) to build his mountaintop retreat, which Town & Country described as “devoted to sheltering the world’s elite thinkers in a peaceful yet intellectually fervid sanctuary for reflection and dialogue.” There also are plans for Berggruen’s private quarters. Prior land owner and developer Castle & Cooke had been in a long, litigious battle over the 447 acres with various stakeholders, including area residents, the Canyon Back AllianceMountaingate Open Space Maintenance Association (MOSMA) and others. The end result in 2006 was zoning that allowed for 28 individual homes and unrestricted trail access – in other words, not a development such as what Berggruen desires.

Berggruen’s project “is blatantly illegal and cannot be built under existing law,” wrote the Sierra Club’s Santa Monica Taskforce in a seven-page January 2021 letter to the planning department for Los Angeles and to City Councilman Mike Bonin, who represents the disputed area.

Of the 447 acres, the Sierra Club letter outlines that 424 acres of open space and two historic trails are protected from development through conservation easements held by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, a local public agency exercising joint powers of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, the Conejo Recreation and Park District, and the Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District.

In addition to the Sierra Club letter, MOSMABrentwood Residents CoalitionBel Air Skycrest Property Owners’ AssociationCenter for Biological Diversity and numerous other groups have all either expressed problems with the development as proposed or outright opposition to Berggruen’s vanity project at the proposed site. Community activists are prepared to fight.

In January 2018, more than 500 community members attended a meeting at the Skirball Cultural Center, located within the immediate area of the Berggruen development proposal. The audience, largely opposed to the project, listened to a presentation from Berggruen’s people, and opposition arguments. Nic Berggruen did not attend the meeting, nor has he since reached out to community organizations to discuss any compromises, according to an activist close to the issue.

Among concerns about the proposed development are fire. California has become a tinderbox in recent years. In December 2017, the Skirball Fire burned 475 acres, destroyed or damaged 18 structures and forced 46,000 residents to evacuate. The October 2019 Getty Fire burned 745 acres – blackening some of the Berggruen property – destroyed or damaged 25 residences and forced thousands to flee. On its face, building in a high fire zone seems foolhardy.

The Berggruen site is on top of a former landfill now monitored by the City of Los Angeles for methane. A massive Southern California methane gas leak in a neighboring community in October 2015 should be taken as a cautionary tale for this proposed project.

As the last great open space in Los Angeles, the Berggruen property features wild woodland with ferns, oak trees and sycamores. The natural habitat is home to cougars, coyotes, deer, falcons, great horned owls, raccoons, redtailed hawks and quail, among other animals, who navigate the Santa Monica Mountains. In addition to loss of wildlife habitat, the Berggruen project would bring more light pollution, which impacts the biology and ecology of wild animals. Additionally, the development would eliminate an important animal corridor, including for cougars, under severe pressure in the area. If Berggruen were to gift his land holding to remain as open space, it would continue to benefit area wildlife and help connectthe patchwork of land to support the movement of animals.

Cottontail rabbit in the Santa Monica Mountains

Berggruen Development Sacrifices Last Great LA Open Space And The NYT Likes It
Cougar in the Santa Monica Mountains

Why Berggruen would continue to want to develop in an area when the community is not receptive seems odd, given he could build his think tank anywhere. For a contemplative, meditative retreat, there is plenty of desert in California! Should he continue with his commitment to build on the 447 acres in L.A., “It’s going to become a hotly controversial issue,” said Eric Edmunds, Chair of the Sierra Club Santa Monica Mountains Task Force and President of the Brentwood Hills Homeowners Association.

Edmunds says he would like to see Berggruen “recognize the enormous public value of this land and cooperate with an agency such as the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to donate the land to remain as wilderness and trails.”

Adds Edmunds, “I have no objection to him developing his project – just not here.”

The group Protect Our Woodlands recommends that Berggruen “consider locating his new institute in a part of Los Angeles that is already developed.”

In a state that’s horribly overpopulated and overdeveloped, preserving this intact area of precious wildland, wild animal habitat and trails forever would turn Berggruen – who is shaping up to be the local villain – into a local hero.


Maria Fotopoulos writes about the connection between overpopulation and biodiversity loss, and from time to time other topics that confound her.

Billionaire Development Sacrifices Last Great LA Open Space And The NYT Likes It

Paul Krugman Or Getting Away With Lies

Paul Krugman Or Getting Away With Lies is being published with the permission of Maria K. Fotopoulos. The original can be found here.

By Maria K. Fotopoulos

During the Bush (“W”) regime, my husband and I attended an event at the UCLA campus with featured speaker Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist. That we committed the time to attend the speaking engagement was an indicator of the value we thought Krugman brought to the discussion on the state of the world post the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. The coordinated terrorism perpetrated against the U.S. by 19 terrorists from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Egypt, who commandeered four passenger jets and turned them into weapons of mass destruction, killing 3,000 people, resulted, under W, in a U.S. attack on Iraq, a country not involved in the attack on our country.

At the UCLA event conclusion, Krugman signed his new book, and we got our 30 seconds with the author to commiserate on what a bad direction the Bush administration had taken, as Neocon Central dominated, with the talking head Bill Kristol, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz, Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee and Prince of Darkness Richard Perle, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, buttressed by Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, bringing their own special gravitas to false narratives.

At the same time, the credibility of The New York Times was shredding. The publication’s reporter Judith Miller had been a reliable water carrier (yellowcake, yellowcake!) for the Bush administration and/or the CIA, helping build the casebased on lies, for an invasion of Iraq.

The newspaper that has used the line, “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” since 1897, perhaps should have revisited that in recent years, maybe adding, “And a Bit of Propaganda Too.” Miller is just one of the failed products of The New York Times. Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of The New York Times, was called out in 2019 for plagiarism in her book, ironically called “The Merchants of Truth.” And how can we forget the infamous Jayson Blair story? His multiple infractions and fabrications/outright lies committed as a reporter at The New York Times were legendary.

Then last year, in a tremendous display showing how cojones-less The New York Times has become, senior management caved to the “woke” they’ve allowed into the publication and accepted the resignation of their editorial page editor, James Bennet, who had the audacity to run a reasonable and sound viewpoint by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). But to the zombified woke, they saw “The Horror.” One of the woke among the Times staff wrote: “Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.”

Good grief. The exaggeration, the hyperbole and the mindlessness stagger the rational mind.

The Times then added a lengthy editor’s note at the front of Cotton’s commentary. Given the extent of the newspaper’s descent into the abyss and the world of State-Run Media, it’s surprising they didn’t pull the piece.

Paul Krugman Or Getting Away With Lies
Paul Krugman

This brings us back to Paul Krugman. In addition to his Times duties as a scribe, Krugman now fronts a “MasterClass” in which students can learn: “Really good economics has a kind of beauty to it, and it comes down to just two principles. $100 bills don’t lie in the street very long. The other is every sale is also a purchase — things add up.”

Oy vey!

Towards the end of the promo teaser for the class, Krugman says, “Don’t let the crazies grind you down.”

Krugman is wholly unaware that he has become one of the crazies — not because of his MasterClass silliness, but for a variety of other missteps, to be explained, that put him squarely on the list of New York Times failures.

But before getting to his most egregious recent Proof of Madness, let’s revisit a few of his misses in his chosen field: economics.

Krugman was one of, granted, many cheerleaders for globalism. I’d wager, however, that the average American who works for a living understood that outsourcing jobs and importing labor offer no silver lining for American workers. Yet, a Yale graduate and Nobel Prize winner in Economics couldn’t figure that out. Journalist and author William Greider outlined many of Krugman’s failings in a piece for The Nation, “Why Was Paul Krugman So Wrong?”

Read too David Harsanyi’s Nov. 19, 2019, piece, “Paul Krugman: Always Wrong, Never in Doubt,” and you might start to think that the economist is an economist in name only, and that his prime directive has been to serve as a propagandist for Democrats, with the 2016–2020 goal of criticizing anything coming from the Trump administration. Wrote Harsanyi, “One of the nation’s leading doomsayers has been The New York Times’ perpetually mistaken Paul Krugman, who warned shortly after the 2016 election that Trump’s victory would trigger a global recession ‘with no end in sight.’”

Until the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the country and the world in 2020, “Trump’s economy” was booming.

Last year, Laurence B. Siegel, in a piece for Advisor Perspectives, “The Wisdom and Folly of Paul Krugman,” wrote in his review of Krugman’s book, “Arguing with Zombies,” that he couldn’t “in good conscience recommend this book, despite its occasional flashes of brilliance.” Siegel wrote:

“Winston Churchill has been quoted as saying, ‘A fanatic is someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.’ Along with Mark Twain and Albert Einstein, Churchill is claimed to have said just about everything worth saying. I don’t know if he said it, but it applies to Krugman, whose Johnny One-Note approach to political discourse is deeply annoying. Because of his obvious talent for a certain kind of economic analysis (he revolutionized economic geography in the 1980s), I just know he has the ability to discern good arguments from bad. Yet, in Arguing with Zombies, he mixes them with wild abandon.”

In a bit of a non sequitur, moving from the world of economics, last year Krugman said that child pornography being downloaded from his IP address “could be an attempt to Qanon me.”

With that as some backstory on Krugman, let’s move to Twitter, April 2021; wherein, we see the complete devolution of Krugman (@paulkrugman) into the truly crazy zone.

Here are three Krugman tweets of April 22:

“In the past few days I’ve been noticing a lot of what I think of as delusional whataboutism. It runs like this: ‘OK, maybe police are killing an innocent Black person every day or so, but what about all the killing and looting by BLM mobs?’ 1/

“This would be terrible even if the premise were true — the police, empowered by the law, are supposed to behave better than rioters. But the reality is that BLM protests were overwhelmingly peaceful 2/

“Yes, there were bad actors. There are always bad actors in any situation. But not many. The idea that our big cities were under threat is pure malevolent fantasy; BLM may have been the best-behaved protest movement in history 3/”

“Peaceful protests.” Uh, right. How many times has that lie been uttered? Add the famous Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman to the count! And when a reporter is standing in front of a burning building set ablaze by rioters, uh, “peaceful protestors,” that’s just one more example of a peaceful protest.

Paul Krugman Or Getting Away With Lies
Peaceful protests’ like this occurred throughout the U.S. in 2020.
Paul Krugman Or Getting Away With Lies
Paul Krugman Or Getting Away With Lies

Dear Reader: How many times can you say, “factually incorrect,” as you read the tweets above?

In 2020, there were 1,021 fatal police shootings. Of those, 457 were white, and 241 were black. In “The Truth About Police Shootings in America,” Dan O’Donnell and Daunte Wright write: “Nearly every single person police officers have shot and killed since The Washington Post started its comprehensive database has been armed, yet the popular misconception persists that law enforcement is killing unarmed black men at a staggering rate.”

One might think an economist would have a better grasp of data! And to think the Left and Rasputin over at Twitter HQ were concerned about Trump’s tweeting. What about this guy Krugman?

Hrrrm!

Paul Krugman Or Getting Away With Lies
Twitter’s Jack Dorsey.
Getting Away With Lies
Rasputin.

In response to another April 22 Krugman tweet, “In reality, given that GOP supporters believe that rampaging mobs burned and looted major cities — somehow without the people actually living in those cities noticing — getting them to see facts about something as abstract as the deficit is a hopeless cause,” National Review Online contributing editor Deroy Murdoch said, “Either this guy is lying, or he’s got some sort of clinical level state of denial, in which case I really recommend he go see a psychiatrist as soon as possible.”

But, it gets worse. On April 23:

“This is what right-wing politics is down to. It’s all false claims about evil liberals, which the base is expected to believe because it’s primed to believe in liberal villainy. They’re not even trying to engage on actual issues 3/

“With ‘replacement theory’ gaining ground, I thought I’d do some quick and dirty number crunching to confirm what I thought I knew. Using PRRI data on % saying undocumented immigrants should be deported, the most anti-immigrant states are those with few immigrants 1/

“This may be bc actually interacting with immigrants you tend to see them as human beings. It may also be bc tales of murdering rapists fly less where ppl can see they aren’t true 2/

“Similar to another thing I’m pretty sure is true: belief that BLM mobs sacked our cities prevails mainly in rural areas, where the reality isn’t in front of ppl’s noses 3/”

Krugman manages to disparage Americans, while pretending that no murders and rapes have been committed by illegal aliens and that riots resulting in property destruction and bodily harm did not occur in many cities across the country for most of last year!

Amazing denial of reality by Mr. Krugman! Or, perhaps there’s more at play. As author Upton Sinclair wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

More amazing to believe is that 4.6 million folks follow this guy on Twitter. But, if we’re to believe that 80 million people put a man of obviously diminished mental capacity and a woman who dropped out of the presidential race early, polling at only 3 percent, in the White House, I guess we can believe anything is possible — no matter how horrifying. Again, “The Horror.”

If we weren’t living in some alternative universe now, Paul Krugman would be fired for lying. That’s because in the real world The New York Times would practice ethical journalism and be a standard-bearer for high-integrity journalistic endeavors. Being fired is the right outcome for an employee who has put forth lies, not once, but repeatedly.

Yes, in a United States that hadn’t become a dystopian morass, Krugman would have been fired by now. But, alas, we are a dystopian mess.

The Nobel Prize folks should consider retracting his prize too.

But, alas, to repeat, we are a dystopian mess. And, the Nobel folks now are as woke as The New York Times, or maybe more woke … woker?

The Nobel descent begins at least with the President Obama nomination for the 2009 Peace Prize. Obama was nominated for the prize 11 days after he took office. In other words, he had done nothing as President to advance peace and presumably to be nominated for the prize.

Advance to 2020, and the Nobel brain trust nominated the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement for the Nobel Peace Prize. There are so many examples that we are living George Orwell’s “1984.” But this nomination is a primo example. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” Black Lives Matter, a Marxist movement that’s caused massive social erosion, hatred, destruction and violence is labeled a peace movement.

Getting away with lies
BLM’s early work: shutting down one of America’s busiest freeways.

Among BLM’s early disruptions were shutting down the 101 and 405 freeways in Southern California and intersections in Beverly Hills. The results: PO’d drivers. Wow. That was really productive. And 2020 was BLM’s crown jewel year, as the movement produced chaos, anarchy and social unrest across the country. BLM also advanced the brilliant idea to “defund the police,” and got woke “leadership” in the Democrat party to “bend the knee.” Among the first was one of many feckless Democrat mayors, Eric Garcetti, the legacy mayor of Los Angeles, who indeed did whack the police budget on a force that already was too small for the size of the city.

And Krugman chooses to ignore the reality of BLM. Who is this guy’s master?

The BLM name itself, however, is pretty brilliant. It has a built-in element that one can’t say “no” to. If anyone rejects the organization — “No, I don’t support Black Lives Matter” — the default position is, “You are a racist!” Of course, that has become the default position on many topics, so the “r” word is becoming fairly meaningless, but the woke among us seem unaware of the word’s diminishing power.

The Nobel may become a case study one day in “brand destruction.” If the Nobel continues on its trajectory, at the current rate of destruction, will most people put any stock in this prize? Alfred Nobel started the prize, it’s been written, because he was criticized for his profiteering in arms. This ignited his altruistic side, and he left his fortune for the Nobel Prize. Wonder what Alfred would think of today’s awarding process, including an award to an economist who now appears detached from reality?

So it’s unlikely with the level of wokeness at the Nobel HQ that they will “cancel” Krugman. But aren’t there still some normal folks at The New York Times? Are there no ramifications anymore for lying? Surely yes? If so, it’s time for The New York Times to acknowledge that Krugman’s red button has popped out. He’s done.

Maria Fotopoulos writes about the connection between overpopulation and biodiversity loss, and occasionally about other issues (such as media failure) so outrageous they drive her to write in the tradition of her training — journalism. Contact her on FB @BetheChangeforAnimals.

Paul Krugman Or Getting Away With Lies

New York Times Opposes Free Speech

New York Times Opposes Free Speech— Swarthmore’s Bob Small has sent us this link from an Oct. 11 Glen Greenwald article that appeared in The Intercept, describing how the union representing the dead trees inksters — no, they are not journalists –of The New York Times has taken a bold stand against dissent and free speech.

What has invoked the ire of The New York Times Newspaper Guild is an column by Bret Stephens taking to task the discredited 1619 Project promoted by the greedy tree killing corporation.

We have written about the 1619 Project before. It’s garbage befitting The New York Times.

New York Times Opposes Free Speech
New York Times Opposes Free Speech

Brawndo Brian Williams Heralds Idiocracy With Report On Bloomberg Spending

Brawndo Brian Williams Heralds Idiocracy With Report On Bloomberg Spending –Highly paid MSNBC news professional Brian Williams discussed Michael Bloomberg’s failed presidential bid with highly paid New York Times news professional Mara Gay.

Brawndo Brian Williams Heralds Idiocracy With Report On Bloomberg Spending
The idiocracy has arrived.

It may have been the scariest thing ever to appear on the internet.

“Somebody tweeted recently, that with the money he spent he could have given every American a million dollars,” Ms. Gay opined.

“I got it, let’s put it on the screen,” said Williams. “When I read it, tonight, on social media, it all became clear. Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. The US population is 327 million — don’t tell us if you are ahead of us on the math — he could have given each American $1 million and have had lunch money left over. It’s an incredible way of putting it.”

A more incredible way of putting it is that some still trust NBC and the New York Times as sources of information.

What Bloomie spent equals about $1.53 per American. It’s about enough for a can of Brawndo for each of us. We would have been charitable and given ours to our Democrat friends who still read the New York Times or watch an NBC product. It’s what plants crave.

Brawndo Brian Williams Heralds Idiocracy With Reporting On Bloomberg Spending

1619 New York Times Garbage

1619 New York Times GarbageThe New York Times is starting a divisive propaganda push to convince Americans that our country didn’t start in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence but in 1619 “when a ship carrying enslaved Africans landed in Virginia.”

This is going to backfire. You see those 20 Africans were not chattel slaves bound for life but indentured servants much as half of the European immigrants to the colonies were. These Africans were put in bondage by other Africans. Europeans gave money to those who had put them in chains allowing them to gain their freedom after a period of labor– at least in Virginia. It wasn’t all that bad a deal for them.

One of those 20 original indentured servants was an Angolan who took the name Anthony Johnson. After Johnson served his indenture and gained his freedom, he became a successful tobacco farmer. He got an African indentured servant of his own named John Casor.

Except Johnson didn’t free Casor upon the expiration of the indenture.

So Casor got help from an English neighbor, who compelled Johnson to grant Casor’s freedom. The victory, however, was short lived. Johnson filed his own lawsuit in 1654 in Northhampton County, Va. The powers that be felt Johnson had a pretty neat idea, and ruled in his favor binding Casor to him for life.

And hence the vile evil of chattel slavery was born.

If The New York Times wants to argue that our founding father was Anthony Johnson, well, it would certainly be an interesting thing to teach during Black History Month.

The United States was founded on July 4, 1776. Almost immediately upon declaration of independence the British mandate to maintain slavery was rejected by the Northern colonies and abolition began, starting with the counties of New York that would become Vermont in 1777 and then Pennsylvania in 1780. Note this was before the Treaty of Paris was signed and the Revolution still raged.

Skin color is meaningless. Judge people by their character.

The New York Times is garbage. All decent people should ignore it.

1619 New York Times Garbage
1619 New York Times Garbage

New York Times Hypocrisy Exposed

New York Times Hypocrisy Exposed — The amazing James O’Keefe will expose the hypocrisy and lies of The New York Times 10 p.m., tonight on One America News.

It’s part of a continuing series and is worth watching. Go get ’em James. God bless Project Veritas.

New York Times Hypocrisy Exposed

New York Times Hypocrisy Exposed

Maureen Dowd Thanksgiving Good Humor

Maureen Dowd Thanksgiving Good Humor — We are shamelessly without permission reprinting this column with an introduction by Maureen Dowd that appeared in the New York Times after Thanksgiving, and that we received by email. It perfectly illustrates to many still bruised over this last election that peace can be found and families don’t have to be broken up. Hat tip Joanne Yurchak.

WASHINGTON — First I had to deal with the president-elect scolding.

During his interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, Donald Trump chided me twice for being too tough on him.

Sitting next to our publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Trump invited everyone around the table to call him if they saw anything “where you feel that I’m wrong.”

“You can call me, Arthur can call me, I would love to hear,” he said. “The only one who can’t call me is Maureen. She treats me too rough.”

Then I had to go home for Thanksgiving and deal with my family scolding me about the media misreading the country. I went cold turkey to eat hot turkey: no therapy dog, no weaving therapy, no yoga, no acupuncture, no meditation, no cry-in.

The minute I saw my sister’s Trump champagne and a Cersei figurine as the centerpiece — my brother, Kevin, nicknamed Hillary “Cersei” during this year’s brutal game of thrones — I knew I wasn’t in a safe space.

My little basket of deplorables, as I call my conservative family, gloated with Trump toasts galore, and Kevin presented me with his annual holiday column with an extra flourish.

My colleague Paul Krugman tweeted Friday that “affluent, educated suburbanites” who voted for Trump are “fools.” What else is there to say, he asked.

Well, here is what Kevin, an affluent, educated suburbanite, has to say in his column, titled an “Election Therapy Guide for Liberals”:

Written by Kevin Dowd:  “Donald Trump pulled off one of the greatest political feats in modern history by defeating Hillary Clinton and the vaunted Clinton machine.

The election was a complete repudiation of Barack Obama: his fantasy world of political correctness, the politicization of the Justice Department and the I.R.S., an out-of-control E.P.A., his neutering of the military, his nonsupport of the police and his fixation on things like transgender bathrooms. Since he became president, his party has lost 63 House seats, 10 Senate seats and 14 governorships.

dowd-thanksgiving-table
Her game of thrones over, Cersei — as Kevin Dowd nicknamed Hillary Clinton — stood guard over the Dowd family Thanksgiving. Credit Kevin Dowd

The country had signaled strongly in the last two midterms that they were not happy. The Dems’ answer was to give them more of the same from a person they did not like or trust.

Preaching — and pandering — with a message of inclusion, the Democrats have instead become a party where incivility and bad manners are taken for granted, rudeness is routine, religion is mocked and there is absolutely no respect for a differing opinion. This did not go down well in the Midwest, where Trump flipped three blue states and 44 electoral votes.

The rudeness reached its peak when Vice President-elect Mike Pence was booed by attendees of “Hamilton” and then pompously lectured by the cast. This may play well with the New York theater crowd but is considered boorish and unacceptable by those of us taught to respect the office of the president and vice president, if not the occupants.

Here is a short primer for the young protesters. If your preferred candidate loses, there is no need for mass hysteria, canceled midterms, safe spaces, crying rooms or group primal screams. You might understand this better if you had not received participation trophies, undeserved grades to protect your feelings or even if you had a proper understanding of civics. The Democrats are now crying that Hillary had more popular votes. That can be her participation trophy.

If any of my sons had told me they were too distraught over a national election to take an exam, I would have brought them home the next day, fearful of the instruction they were receiving. Not one of the top 50 colleges mandate one semester of Western Civilization. Maybe they should rethink that.

Mr. Trump received over 62 million votes, not all of them cast by homophobes, Islamaphobes, racists, sexists, misogynists or any other “ists.” I would caution Trump deniers that all of the crying and whining is not good preparation for the coming storm. The liberal media, both print and electronic, has lost all credibility. I am reasonably sure that none of the mainstream print media had stories prepared for a Trump victory. I watched the networks and cable stations in their midnight meltdown — embodied by Rachel Maddow explaining to viewers that they were not having a “terrible, terrible dream” and that they had not died and “gone to hell.”
The media’s criticism of Trump’s high-level picks as “not diverse enough” or “too white and male” — a day before he named two women and offered a cabinet position to an African-American — magnified this fact.

Here is a final word to my Democratic friends. The election is over. There will not be a do-over. So let me bid farewell to Al Sharpton, Ben Rhodes and the Clintons. Note to Cher, Barbra, Amy Schumer and Lena Dunham: Your plane is waiting. And to Jon Stewart, who talked about moving to another planet: Your spaceship is waiting. To Bruce Springsteen, Jay Z, Beyoncé and Katy Perry, thanks for the free concerts. And finally, to all the foreign countries that contributed to the Clinton Foundation, there will not be a payoff or a rebate.
As Eddie Murphy so eloquently stated in the movie “48 Hrs.”: “There’s a new sheriff in town.” And he is going to be here for 1,461 days. Merry Christmas.”

Maureen Dowd Thanksgiving Good Humor

 

Anonymous Bill Clinton Child Molesting

Anonymous Bill Clinton Child Molesting
Sicko one.

Anonymous Bill Clinton Child Molesting — The New York Times, whose only reasons for existence are to empower globalists and murder helpless trees, has just released the bombshell that Donald Trump kissed a couple of girls.

Really.

The girls said they didn’t want to be kissed by The Donald. Here is a question for one to mull: Is it appropriate to bring forth hard to verify sexual allegations short weeks before a major election hence causing more important issues to be shunted aside? Like whether we should allow a culture that is OK with sexually abusing young girls to gain a foothold here?

Anonymous Bill Clinton Child Molesting
Sicko Two

Yes, you say?

OK, here is the hacker group Anonymous claiming Bill Clinton raped a 13-year-old on Jeff Epstein’s Pedo Island and that Hillary is OK with it.

Hat tip GatewayPundit.com.

By the way, the Trump campaign is calling The New York Times story complete fiction.

The Clintons have not addressed Bill’s trips to Pedo Island.

Anonymous Bill Clinton Child Molesting

 

 

Pope Condom Portrait And Gutless Hypocrites

Pope Condom Portrait -- The New York Times, June 29, ran a story regarding a controversy concerning the acceptance by the non-profit Milwaukee Art Museum of a portrait of Pope Benedict XVI made of condoms.  While the premeditated insult pretending to be art is not yet on display due to gallery renovations, Catholics are understandably upset.  The Times, of course, included an image of the offending artwork.  OK, fine. It's a story and showing the image helps bring an understanding as to what the fuss is about.  The problem is that with regard to a far more relevant story seven months ago, the Times pointedly chose not to print an image that they thought might offend religious sensibilities, even though it far more integral to the events being discussed.  Why the double standard?  The answer is obvious. Despite its long boast, the Times bases its editorial decisions  entirely on fear and favor.  They are gutless hypocrites and a disgrace to journalism.The New York Times, June 29, ran a story regarding a controversy concerning the acceptance by the non-profit Milwaukee Art Museum of a portrait of Pope Benedict XVI made of condoms.

While the premeditated insult pretending to be art is not yet on display due to gallery renovations, Catholics are understandably upset.

The Times, of course, included an image of the offending artwork.

OK, fine. It’s a story and showing the image helps bring an understanding as to what the fuss is about.

The problem is that with regard to a far more relevant story seven months ago, the Times pointedly chose not to print an image that they thought might offend religious sensibilities, even though it was far more integral to the events being discussed.

Why the double standard?

The answer is obvious. Despite its long boast, the Times bases its editorial decisions  entirely on fear and favor.

They are gutless hypocrites and a disgrace to journalism.

Oh yeah, and regarding the character of the “I think I’m smart” set, would the Milwaukee Art Museum accept a portrait of Mohammed ? Even if it wasn’t made of condoms?

Hat tip Breitbart.com

Pope Condom Portrait And Gutless Hypocrites

 

New York Times Graham Spanier Whitewash

The New York Times Magazine carried a paen, July 16, to disgraced former Penn State President Graham Spanier, by Micahel Sokolove.

Sokolove practically acquits him of the charges filed against him stemming from his handling of reports that one-time football coach and retired faculty member Jerry Sandusky was abusing children.

The charges were filed on Nov. 1, 2012 and are one count perjury,  two counts of endangering the welfare of children, two counts of criminal conspiracy, which are all third-degree felonies  punishable by up to seven years in prison and $15,000 fines; one count of obstructing the administration of law or other governmental function and one count of criminal conspiracy, both second-degree misdemeanors punishable by up to two years in prison and $5,000 fines; and one count of failure to report suspected child abuse, a summary offense punishable by up to 90 days in prison and a $300 fine.

“The case against Spanier is at best problematic, at worst fatally flawed,” Sokolove says.

Sokolove writes about how the 66-year-old Spanier’s father flew into a rage at everything and beat him and made him eat everything on his plate and sometimes sent him to bed without dinner.

Sokolove writes that Spanier grew Penn State “from a remote outpost of American higher education into a top-tier public university” and had some of “world’s most decorated architects” design the new buildings on his watch.

He writes that Sokolove “paid his own way through Iowa State.”

Regarding the e-mails that led to the charges, Sokolove says that Spanier says he has no memory of writing it but that using the word “vulnerable” as in “The only downside for us is if the message isn’t ‘heard’ and acted upon, and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it. But that can be assessed down the road” was a bad idea.

And he blames the late Joe Paterno, anyway.

Maybe Sokolove’s biggest journalistic failure was his omission of any reference to the John T. Neisworth matter in which Spanier was told by a young man in 2002 about how Neisworth, a respected Penn State special education professor who literally wrote the book on autism, molested him. Neisworth would make a six-figure cash settlement to the man.

The contact was made with Spanier two weeks after Spanier had been told about Sandusky.

The New York Times whitewash is almost enough to make one take David Icke seriously.

 

New York Times Graham Spanier Whitewash

New York Times Graham Spanier Whitewash