In a June 11, 1807 letter to newspaper editor John Norvell, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “… nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper… Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle… I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time… I will add that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors…”
In the wake of the attack on the Republican congressional baseball team in Alexandria, Virginia, by deranged Democrat James T. Hodgkinson, Democrats were quick to provide us with all of the hollow and meaningless platitudes that we have come to expect from them. And although their sentiments regarding the need for free and open debate … the issues of the day look good on paper and before the TV cameras, what they fail to acknowledge is the fact that those who collect and disseminate the daily news… those who own and operate the “sieve” through which all news and opinion must pass… rarely report the facts in a complete and unbiased fashion. It is why men such as James Hodgkinson exist.
The mainstream media is so thoroughly wedded to the Democratic Party agenda, so intellectually dishonest, that they will allow no opposing views and no complete understanding of the issues to make their way into the public mind. If Thomas Jefferson had been able to see 150 years into the future, he might have expanded his condemnation by saying, “I will add that the man who never reads a newspaper, who never watches network television, who never watches late night TV talk shows, and who refuses to set foot on a college or university campus, is better informed and is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors…”
For example, U.S. State Department approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline was delayed by the Obama administration for at least eight years before being approved by the Trump administration just days after taking office. According to a January 26, 2017, editorial in the New York Times, “The Trump administration has reversed the government’s position on a highly contentious energy project, issuing a permit for the Keystone XL, a pipeline that would link oil producers in Canada and North Dakota with (refineries) and export terminals on the Gulf Coast. A long battle may delay construction for months or even years.
“The pipeline has long been at the center of a struggle pitting environmentalists against advocates of energy independence and economic growth. Â President Barack Obama rejected the project in late 2015, saying it would be antithetical to the United States’ leadership in curbing reliance on carbon fuels.
The editorial went on to suggest that the pipeline was not as essential as it was in 2008 because of changes in energy markets and increased U.S. production. But what the mainstream media failed to communicate during Obama’s eight years in office is that the 2.5 million miles of oil and gas pipelines already crisscrossing the country are approximately 70 times as safe as transporting oil and gas by tank truck or by train. Nor did they inform the American people that pipeline safety was only a “false flag” issue and that the primary reason for Obama’s opposition to the pipeline was rooted in the mindless opposition of wealthy environmentalist.
When it came time to choose between plentiful, secure, and inexpensive energy supplies for the American consumer, and the billions of dollars that wealthy environmentalists would provide to the Democratic Party and its candidates, the Democrats decided in favor of taking the money and the mainstream media kept that dirty little secret from the people. If the American people had known the whole truth about the Keystone XL pipeline, that its fate was rooted in the ability of Democrats to extort money from wealthy environmentalists, it is unlikely that Obama could have sat on it for eight years, but they didn’t. That was never fully understood by the public at large and Obama was allowed to take advantage of that information vacuum.
Beginning in 2008, as the U.S. economy sank into economic recession, Democrats blamed the economic downturn on George W. Bush and his economic policies, while the mainstream media systematically repeated the fiction, preventing the American people from knowing the truth about the roots of the recession and the bursting of the inflated real estate “bubble.”
The seeds of the economic crisis were sown decades earlier with the passage of the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA), a Carter administration initiative that encouraged lenders to make home loans to qualified borrowers who had previously been denied solely on the basis of the color of their skin. The CRA worked exactly as intended until the 1990s when the Clintons moved into the White House. They recognized the CRA as a political “mother lode” which, if strategically enforced with a political end in mind, provided a unique opportunity to attract and solidify the votes of the poor, especially minorities.
Under the Clinton administration, regulators paid particularly close attention to the lending practices of banks and savings & loan associations. They questioned whether lenders were meeting the credit needs of all borrowers, regardless of borrowers’ ability to repay their loans. Accordingly, they began to use the results of those examinations to decide whether or not to approve bank mergers and acquisitions, and whether or not to approve applications for new branch banks. Mortgage lenders soon found that the CRA was more stick than carrot.
As a result, lenders abandoned traditional lending criteria and made mortgage loans to almost anyone who applied, regardless of their income level or credit worthiness, and immediately sold those sub-prime mortgages to one of two Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSE), i.e. Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Fannie and Freddie, of course, had no reason to worry because, as quasi-public institutions, they had the entire cash assets of the American taxpayer… the U.S. Treasury… at their disposal. They had nothing to lose.
Fannie and Freddie then bundled the loans with other sub-prime mortgages and sold the bundles to private investors, promising not only attractive returns, but a high degree of security as well. By year end 2010, Fannie and Freddie had acquired more than half of the $11 trillion mortgage loan market in the United States.
However, the sale of mortgages to private investors was not a totally arms-length proposition because, even though Fannie and Freddie had sold the bundled mortgages to private investors, they guaranteed the securities for the investors, promising to continue making payments on mortgages even if homeowners stopped making payments. In 2008, when the overheated real estate market collapsed and a great many homeowners stopped paying all at once, the cash reserves of Fannie and Freddie were soon depleted, forcing them to default on their guarantees and precipitating a major economic crisis.
So how much of that Democratic “sting” operation were American taxpayers aware of? Very little. Not only was it difficult to explain to economically illiterate voters… many of whom found it difficult to balance their own checkbooks… the mainstream media saw to it that essentially all the people heard was Democratic charges that it was all George Bush’s fault.
But the most damaging First Amendment failure of the past century took place beginning on Tuesday, July 27, 2004. It was on that date that Barack Hussein Obama, an unknown Illinois state senator and Chicago community organizer, took his first giant step toward winning the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Within hours of his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Democratic kingmakers began speculating about his potential as a future presidential candidate.
However, just as quickly, serious-minded American patriots, true believers in the rule of law, began delving into Obama’s personal history and background. What they found, and what any person with the ability to read the English language would be forced to conclude, was that a young man who was born with dual US-British citizenship on August 4, 1961, and who held dual US-Kenyan citizenship between December 12, 1963 and August 4, 1984, could never qualify as a “natural born” U.S. citizen, as required by Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution.
And while Obama’s lack of qualifications for the presidency was without question, Democrats were so anxious to have an attractive and articulate young black man in the White House that they were only too happy to rip the U.S. Constitution to shreds. Republican leaders, on the other hand, were so concerned about the firestorm that was sure to follow if the first black presidential candidate in U.S. history was suddenly disqualified on constitutional grounds, that they tucked their tails between their legs and ran for cover. And the mainstream media? They simply took it upon themselves to misinform the people, tagging anyone who questioned Obama’s eligibility with the “birther” label and subjecting anyone who spoke the truth about his lack of eligibility to withering public ridicule.
Is it any wonder, then, that a man of James Hodgkinson’s political views, and millions of others like him, are wandering around our country with seething hatred in their hearts, with Democratic voter registration cards in their wallets, and with deadly weapons in their hands? And is it any wonder that a longtime New Jersey Democratic political strategist, named James Devine, has responded to the Alexandria shootings by shamelessly introducing the Twitter hashtags #HuntRepublicans and #HuntRepublicanCongressmen?
Unlike the Frankenstein monster of Mary Shelley’s imagination, James Hodgkinson was not a figment of anyone’s imagination. But like the Frankenstein monster who was created in a laboratory by a mad scientist, Hodgkinson was created by Democratic politicians who suffer from a mental illness called “liberalism.” He was not one of a kind. He is legion.
Paul R. Hollrah is a retired government relations executive and a two-time member of the U.S. Electoral College. He currently lives and writes among the hills and lakes of northeast Oklahoma’s Green Country.