Great article from the WSJ

'This Is Kind of Old News’

Hillary Clinton’s editorial judgment.

James Taranto

Aug. 4, 2016 1:46 p.m. ET

Does the New York Times have a liberal bias? Most readers of this column would answer the question with a rhetorical one about ursine digestive functions or the religious affiliation of the pope. But the Times’s “public editors”—hired for fixed terms to report and comment on the Times, independent of its usual editorial processes—have grappled with the question with varying results.
The first public editor, Dan Okrent, ended his tenure in 2004 with an affirmatively forthright answer: “Of course it is.” Clark Hoyt, who had the job some five years later, raised the question frequently, and always (as we recall) reached a conclusion like this one: “I do not think liberal bias had anything to do with it.”
Liz Spayd, the newest public editor, raised the question without answering it in her first column last month:

Why is it that conservatives, and even many moderates, see in The Times a blue-state worldview? Let’s set aside for now the core of their criticism—that the coverage is in fact biased. I’ll be turning to that as I settle into the job.

Turn to it she did on Tuesday, in a blog post titled “The Clinton Story You Didn’t Read Here.”

That would be Hillary Clinton’s interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace, in which, as Spayd gently puts it, the Democratic presidential nominee’s “contentions”—most notably her claim that FBI director James Comey had vouched for her honesty—“were misleading, bordering on false.” You did read it here, in Monday’s column. Spayd:

If you’re getting all your political news from The New York Times, this may be the first time you’re hearing this. [Mrs.] Clinton’s remarks were covered by several major news organizations, several of which pointedly challenged the Democratic nominee’s candor. But nothing on the interview ever appeared in The Times, either online or in print.

Spayd doesn’t take a clear position on whether the paper erred in ignoring the story, about which she writes both that “it was clearly news” and that it “may have felt like more of the same, especially coming as it did on the same day [Donald] Trump made a flip remark about a Muslim couple who lost their son in Iraq and appeared at the Democratic convention.”
We tend to agree with the former observation. As for the latter, surely a news organization with the Times’s resources could cover both stories, as this columnist did; we weighed in on the Trump-Khizr Khan kerfuffle on Tuesday.
Which brings us to The Wall Street Journal’s report, in yesterday’s paper, by Jay Solomon and Carol Lee:

The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.

Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.

The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

On Twitter, Jonathan Weisman, the Times’s deputy Washington editor, scoffed: “New York Times’ @SangerNYT in January vs. @WSJ ‘scoop’ today. Hmmm. Is that really a secret ransom payment?” He provided this excerpt from that Times report, on which David Sanger shared a byline with Rick Gladstone and Thomas Erdbrink:

[President] Obama also announced the resolution of another argument between Tehran and Washington that dates to the Iranian revolution, this one over $400 million in payments for military equipment that the United States sold to the shah of Iran and never delivered when he was overthrown. The Iranians got their money back, with $1.3 billion in interest that had accumulated over 37 years.

It’s true, as Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin notes, that the fact of the payment “wasn’t exactly a secret up until now.” But he adds:

The Journal story not only connects the dots to prove that Secretary of State John Kerry’s claim the U.S. didn’t pay ransom was a lie; it also illustrates how President Obama’s eagerness for a deal at any price prolonged the captivity of the hostages and wound up facilitating the West’s commitment to subsidizing the regime Kerry’s own State Department has certified as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.

The image of piles of money being delivered to Tehran on wooden pallets also made the story a lot more vivid than the abstraction of a nine- or 10-figure money transfer.
The Weekly Standard’s Jeryl Bier, a contributor to this column, notes that in September 2015 an anonymous “senior administration official,” in a State Department background briefing, “pooh-poohed” what the official called the “common misperception” about the administration’s deal with Iran “that on implementation day a big suitcase full of cash shows up in Tehran and all of a sudden they have all this money.”
All of that denial turned out to be false, except for the bit about the suitcase. That would have been one hell of an oversize bag.
There’s more. The Journal’s Devlin Barrett reports in today’s paper:

Senior Justice Department officials objected to sending a plane loaded with cash to Tehran at the same time that Iran released four imprisoned Americans, but their objections were overruled by the State Department, according to people familiar with the discussions. . . .

The timing and manner of the payment raised alarms at the Justice Department, according to those familiar with the discussions. “People knew what it was going to look like, and there was concern the Iranians probably did consider it a ransom payment,’’ said one of the people.

Even Vox describes the cash delivery as “a debt payment dressed up as a ransom.”
The Times treated the story as a political one, reporting on page A5 of today’s paper that the payment “became part of the presidential campaign on Wednesday, as Donald J. Trump seized on the money transfer as a sign of what he called the administration’s failed foreign policy—prompting a forceful White House rejection”:

The existence of the payment was disclosed in January, and [White House press secretary Josh] Earnest dismissed a Wall Street Journal report on Wednesday about the details of the cash payment as a “six-month-old news story” that is being pushed by opponents of the president’s nuclear deal with Iran.

The Washington Examiner reports that Mrs. Clinton took a similar tack in an interview with Denver’s KUSA-TV:

“The White House has addressed this,” she said. . . . “This is kind of old news.”

“So far as I know, it had nothing to do with any kind of hostage swap or any other tit-for-tat. It was something that was intended to—as I am told—pay back Iran for contracts that were cancelled when the shah fell,” she added.

So Mrs. Clinton’s news judgment is in line with the Times’s. Some readers will take that as an indication of bias.
See his regular column by subscribing to the Wall Street Journal

Fox Butterfield, Is That You?
“Republicans are freaking out about Donald Trump, but the candidate himself is insisting his campaign has never been in better shape.”—Dana Bash and Stephen Collinson, CNN.com, Aug. 4

I saw this and thought it worth reformatting for this blog.
The article steps through the Democrat parties positions over the years. Most is historical
The link to the original article is here

American Minute

Politics of Race:
Democrat-slavery & discrimination; Republican-abolition & civil rights

In 1857, the Supreme Court, with 7 of the 9 Justices being Democrat, decided that Dred Scott was not a citizen, but property.

Chief Justice Roger Taney, appointed by Democrat President Andrew Jackson, referenced in his decision that slaves were "so far inferior...that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for their own benefit."

After the Civil War, Republicans pushed through the 13TH AMENDMENT, adopted December 6, 1865, officially abolishing slavery in America.

Once Southern Democrats were forced to free their slaves, they attempted to effectively re-enslave them by passing Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws which required former slaves to be "apprenticed" to "employers" and punished those who left.

On November 22, 1865, Republicans denounced Mississippi's Democrat legislature for enacting Black Codes as they institutionalized discrimination, such as an 1865 Mississippi Black Code which stated:

"No freedman, Negro, or mulatto shall carry or keep firearms or ammunition."

On February 5, 1866, Republican Congressman Thaddeus Stevens introduced legislation to give former slaves "40 acres and a mule," but Democrats opposed it, led by President Andrew Johnson.

On April 9, 1866, Republicans in Congress overrode President Johnson's veto and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, conferring rights of citizenship on freed slaves.

To force Southern States to extend State citizenship rights to former slaves, Republicans in the U.S. House passed the 14TH AMENDMENT, May 10, 1866, as did the Senate, June 8, 1866.

One hundred percent of Democrats voted against it.

The 14TH AMENDMENT was adopted by the States on JULY 28, 1868.

Republican Congressman John Farnsworth of Illinois stated, March 31, 1871:

"The reason for the adoption (of the 14TH AMENDMENT)...was because of...discriminating... legislation of those States... by which they were punishing one class of men under different laws from another class."

Along with Jim Crow laws, Southern Democrats attempted to keep former slaves from voting.

On January 8, 1867, Republicans granted voting rights to former slaves in the District of Columbia by overriding President Andrew Johnson's veto.

On July 19, 1867, Republicans passed more legislation protecting voting rights of all freed slaves after overriding again President Andrew Johnson's veto.

On March 30, 1868, Republicans began impeachment proceedings of President Andrew Johnson.

On September 12, 1868, Democrats in Georgia's Senate expelled civil rights activist Tunis Campbell and 24 other Republican African-Americans, who would later be reinstated by a Republican Congress.

On October 22, 1868, while campaigning for re-election, Republican Congressman James Hinds was assassinated by Democrats who had organized vigilante groups.

The 15TH AMENDMENT, granting the right to vote to all men regardless of race was passed February 3, 1870, overcoming 97 percent Democrat opposition.

Once Southern Democrats could no longer keep former slaves from voting, they attempted to intimidate them through KKK-type vigilante activities and lynchings.

Republican President U.S. Grant signed the Enforcement Act, May 31, 1870, which imposed stiff penalties for depriving any American of their civil rights.

The Republican Congress, June 22, 1870, created the U.S. Department of Justice to safeguard civil rights against Democrats in the South.

The Republican Congress passed another Enforcement Act, February 28, 1871, which provided federal protection for Black voters.

The Republican Congress enacted the Ku Klux Klan Act, April 20, 1871, outlawing Democrat-affiliated groups which oppressed African-Americans.

On October 10, 1871, African-American Republican civil rights leader Octavius Catto was murdered by a Democratic Party operative, after repeated threats by Philadelphia Democrats against black voting.

Republican President Ulysses S. Grant deployed U.S. troops on October 18, 1871, to combat violence against African Americans.

Republican President Theodore Roosevelt stated December 3, 1906:

"White men are lynched, but the crime is peculiarly frequent in respect to black men...

Governor Candler, of Georgia, stated... 'I can say of a verity that I have, within the last month, saved the lives of half a dozen innocent Negroes who were pursued by the mob, and brought them to trial in a court of law in which they were acquitted.'

As Bishop Galloway, of Mississippi, has finely said: 'The mob lynches a Negro charged with rape will in a little while lynch a white man suspected of crime. Every Christian patriot in America needs to lift up his voice in loud and eternal protest against the mob spirit that is threatening the integrity of this Republic...'"

Republican President Theodore Roosevelt continued:

"There is but one safe rule...that is, to treat each man, whatever his color, his creed, or his social position, with even-handed justice...

Reward or punish the individual on his merits as an individual. Evil will surely come in the end to both races if we substitute for this...

Every lynching represents...a loosening of the bands of civilization... No man can take part in the torture of a human being without having his own moral nature permanently lowered.

Every lynching means just so much moral deterioration in all the children who have any knowledge of it, and therefore just so much additional trouble for the next generation of Americans."

Democrat President Woodrow Wilson segregated the U.S. Navy.

During World War II, General Dwight Eisenhower overcame racism and made the decision to arm African American soldiers with weapons.

In 1952 and 1956, a majority of African Americans voted for Republican President Dwight Eisenhower.

Republican President Eisenhower ordered the desegregation of Washington, D.C. public schools after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.

When Southern Democrat Governors resisted desegregation, Republican Eisenhower sent in Federal troops.

Eisenhower forced integration by having Federal soldiers escort Black students.

In 1953, Republican Vice President Richard Nixon chaired a committee which sought to eliminate discrimination on the basis of race or color in the employment practices of government contractors.

In 1957 and 1959, Republican President Eisenhower proposed civil rights bills to enforce the 15th Amendment, strengthening the rights of African American to vote.

Senate Democrats filibustered the bills and watered them down.

In 1959, when Southern Democrats demanded that any who violated the new civil rights bill should be tried before all-white Southern juries, Republican Vice-President Richard Nixon gave the deciding Senate vote to kill the Southern amendment.

Southern Democrats who opposed desegregation included former KKK klansman Senator Robert Byrd and Governor George Wallace.

After the Birmingham Children's Crusade Protest where police dogs and fire hoses were used against African Americans, President John F. Kennedy called for a bill emulating the Republican Civil Rights Act of 1875.

Southern Democrats fervently opposed it, as Democrat Senator Richard Russell in 1964:

"We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our (Southern) states."

Democrat Senator Robert Byrd filibustered the Civil Rights Bill for 14 hours and 13 minutes on June 10, 1964.

Democrat Senator Strom Thurmond stated in 1964:

"This so-called Civil Rights Proposals, which the President has sent to Capitol Hill for enactment into law, are unconstitutional, unnecessary, unwise and extend beyond the realm of reason. This is the worst civil-rights package ever presented to the Congress and is reminiscent of the Reconstruction proposals and actions of the radical Republican Congress."

The phrase "the bribe or the bullet" refers to positive or negative human motivations, as generations of parents had motivated children with a piece candy for obedience or a swat on the rear for disobedience..

From the Civil War to Lyndon Johnson, Southern Democrats were accused of engaging in negative intimidation tactics to keep African Americas from voting.

As television and media coverage of these tactics grew, it resulted in bad press for the Democrat Party. Political strategists proposed a switch from "the bullet" to "the bribe"; from "intimidation" to "entitlement."

In other words, if the African American vote could no longer be suppressed, then maybe it could be manipulated and controlled through dependency on entitlement programs.

Would anyone vote to stop receiving free money?

Even though Democrat Senators filibustered the Civil Rights legislation nonstop for 71 days, from March 30 to June 10, President Lyndon Johnson persuaded the leaders of his Party to support of watered-down compromise bill, which he signed July 2, 1964.

According to Ronald Kessler's book, Inside The White House (1996), Lyndon Johnson explained his abrupt change in strategy to two Democrat governors aboard Air Force One, saying: "I'll have those n****rs voting Democratic for the next 200 years."

Lyndon Johnson's Great Society Welfare State proceeded to enroll large numbers of minorities into entitlement programs, leading to a dependency and a strong inclination to vote for the Party promising a continuance of those entitlements.

Lyndon Johnson, with the help of Democrat Senator Edward Kennedy, also changed immigration quotas to bring in large numbers of immigrants from poorer countries who would enroll in entitlement programs and thus be more likely to vote for Democrat candidates who promised to continue entitlements.

The Welfare State provided more money to a household if a father was not present in the home.

This adversely affected the strong church-centered African American families and neighborhoods.

As lower income voters grew in their dependency on government programs it proportionally increased the Democrat Party's voting constituency.

Prior to LBJ's "War on Poverty," less than 2 percent of the Federal Budget was on welfare spending. 50 years later spending has mushroomed to 27 percent of the Federal Budget, costing $22 trillion a year, three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the Revolution, yet the percentage of people in poverty has not improved.

Before LBJ's "War on Poverty," less than 5 percent of children were born to unmarried parents. 50 year later it has skyrocketed to 40 percent.

Before LBJ's "War on Poverty," less than 10 percent of U.S. children lived in single parent households. 50 years later that number has exploded to 33 percent, with the poverty rate of single female parent households growing to 37.1 percent.

African American Republican Rep. J.C. Watts, Jr., stated February 5, 1997:

"For the past 30 years our nation's spent $5 trillion trying to erase poverty, and the result, as you know, is that we didn't get rid of it at all. In fact, we spread it.

We destroyed the self-esteem of millions of people, grinding them down in a welfare system that penalizes moms for wanting to marry the father of their children, and penalizes moms for wanting to save money. Friends, that's not right."

Internationally renown Pediatric Neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson stated:

"My mother worked as a domestic, two, sometimes three jobs at a time because she didn't want to be on welfare.

She felt very strongly that if she gave up and went on welfare, that she would give up control of her life and of our lives, and I think she was probably correct about that...

But, one thing that she provided us was a tremendous example of what hard work is like."

Dr. Carson added:

"The more solid the family foundation, the more likely you are to be able to resist peer pressure. Human beings are social creatures.

We all want to belong, we all have that desire, and we will belong, one way or another. If the family doesn't provide that, the peers will, or a gang will, or you will find something to belong to.

That's why it becomes so critical for families with young children to understand what a critical anchor they are."

Get the book George Washington Carver-His Life and Faith in His Own Words

Beginning in the 1960s, educational emphasis transitioned from strictly academic achievement to behavior modification.

Voters who were less educated tended to be more easily manipulated, as foreshadowed in the pre-Civil War South where it was a crime to teach slaves to read.

An effort began to redefined "racism" to mean anyone opposing big government dependency welfare programs.

In a tragic irony, growing dependency on government hand outs appeared reminiscent of the dependency which existed on Southern Democrat plantations where slaves waited for hand outs from their masters.

Star Parker, founder of CURE (Center for Urban Renewal) wrote Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can Do About It.

Rev. C.L.Bryant produced a documentary Runaway Slave Movie, stating: "I am a 'Runaway Slave' from the Democrats' plantation."

C. Mason Weaver wrote It's OK to Leave the Plantation: The New Underground Railroad.

Wayne Perryman wrote Unfounded Loyalty: An In-Depth Look Into The Love Affair Between Blacks and Democrats.

Increasingly, media, music and entertainment began to be employed to stir prejudices and passions for political purposes, as President William Henry Harrison warned in his Inaugural, 1841:

"The understanding of men can be warped and their affections changed by operations upon their passions and prejudices."

Political organizers used race-baiting tactics to incite racial tensions for political purposes.

Saul Alinsky wrote in Rules for Radicals:

"The organizer's first job is to create the issues or problems...

"The organizer must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community...

"The organizer...polarizes the issue...and helps to lead his forces into conflict...

"An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent...

"Fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression.

"He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them... for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act."

Booker T. Washington - American Hero

Earlier in the century, Republican Booker T. Washington had written in My Larger Education-Being Chapters from My Experience (1911, ch. V: The Intellectuals and the Boston Mob, p. 118):

"There is another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public.

Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays.

Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs..."

Booker T. Washington stated:

"There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who do not want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public."

Rep. J.C. Watts, Jr., stated February 5, 1997:

"Too often when we talk about racial healing, we make the old assumption that government can heal the racial divide....

Republicans and Democrats - red, yellow, black and white - have to understand that we must individually, all of us, accept our share of responsibility....

It does not happen by dividing us into racial groups. It does not happen by trying to turn rich against poor or by using the politics of fear. It does not happen by reducing our values to the lowest common denominator.

And friends, it does not happen by asking Americans to accept what's immoral and wrong in the name of tolerance..."

J.C. Watts continued:

"We must be a people who dare, dare to take responsibility for our hatred and fears and ask God to heal us from within.

And we must be a people of prayer, a people who pray as if the strength of our nation depended on it, because it does...."

J.C. Watts concluded:

"I've often told the story of a boy and his father.

The father was trying to get some work done, and the boy wanted the daddy's attention, but the father was busy at his desk with so much to do.

To occupy the boy, this father....remembered that he had seen a picture of the world in this magazine.

In what he thought was a stroke of genius, the father tore out the picture and tore it into 20 different pieces, and he said, 'Here son. Go put the world back together.'

And you know what happened? Five minutes later the little Michelangelo was back, saying, 'Daddy, look what I've done.'

The father looked, and he said, 'Son, how did you do it so quickly? How did you put the world back together so quickly?'

And the little boy answered, 'Dad, it was easy. There was a picture of a man on the back of the map, on the back of the world. And once I put the man back together, the world fell into place.'

And friends, this is our agenda: to put our men and women back together, and, in that way, get our country back together."

END OF ARTICLE
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