Of The Corrupt And Dishonet Democrat Party And The Corrupt And Dishonest Mainstream Media Propaganda That Serves Them

You want to see how to report a story without admitting the most central fact to the story?

Ex-mayor of Rosemead admits guilt in bribery case
John Tran, 36, admits to shaking down a developer for more than $10,000 while on the City Council. He also resigns from the school board and withdraws from an Assembly race.
February 04, 2012|By Abby Sewell, Los Angeles Times

A former Rosemead city official who made a run for state Assembly has agreed to plead guilty to soliciting and accepting more than $10,000 in bribes from a developer.

 John Tran, 36, an El Monte Union High School District board member and former Rosemead mayor and councilman, admitted shaking down a developer who was trying to build a mixed-use office and residential project in Rosemead while he was on the council, according to a federal plea agreement made public Friday.

The developer, who was not named in the court documents, had bought a vacant lot for $1.1 million and planned to build offices. At the request of Tran and two city employees, however, the developer agreed to buy an adjacent lot for $700,000 and build a mixed-use project.Between 2005 and 2007, while project approvals were pending, Tran would periodically visit the developer, who eventually became a confidential informant in the federal investigation, and demand money, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

During that period, the developer gave Tran $10,000 in cash payments and a check for $3,200 made out to “cash,” according to the plea agreement.

At one point, officials said, the developer asked why Tran had done nothing in exchange for the bribes, and Tran said he had done “this” — pointing to a staff report and preliminary design approval that suggested the project was moving forward in the approval process.

After August 2007, the developer refused to give any more payments to Tran, according to the agreement. In 2009, Tran was voted out of office; and the project, which became the subject of the federal investigation, never received final approval.

Before he was charged, Tran had thrown his hat in the ring for the 49th Assembly District seat being vacated by termed-out Assemblyman Mike Eng (D-Monterey Park). Tran’s attorney, Michael Zweiback, said Tran is now withdrawing his candidacy and submitted his resignation to the school board Friday.

“John understands that his elected position and public service is over,” Zweiback said. “He’s done a lot of good things for the community, and he wanted to spare his constituents and his family the pain of a long trial.”

A biography on Tran’s campaign website touts his achievements on the City Council and says that as a school board member “he has worked to establish reforms focused on rooting out corruption in the school district.”

Rosemead’s current mayor, Steven Ly, who won office in the election in which Tran lost his seat by a single vote, said that many community members had suspected Tran of pay-to-play politics before the criminal charges emerged. But Ly said the city has changed under the new council.

“I feel that we’ve done a good job of cleaning house since his period of time,” the mayor said.

A representative of a company that may have been the one involved in the federal investigation has filed a claim against the city in an attempt to recover funds taken by Tran, Ly said. The council voted last month to reject the claim. A representative of the company could not be reached for comment.

You see, what is never mentioned EVEN ONCE is that John Tran is a DEMOCRAT.

To whit:

The same omission “conveniently” occurred when the media reported on the shocking corruption case of Bell, California.  All EIGHT of the corrupt officials who took despicable advantage of their positions were DEMOCRATS.  But you’d never get the mainstream media to admit it.  At least not until the 44th paragraph buried in the bowels of the fine details.

If this guy had been a REPUBLICAN, the LA Times would have made it the first word of their story, as in “Republican John Tran is a scumbag.”

The mainstream media is pathologically dishonest and hyperpartisan in every way it possibly can be.

If you count on them for news, you will believe lies. 

And believing lies is only a degree worse than telling lies.

Obama Ambassador Cynthia Stroum A Self-Aggrandizing Tyrant (In Other Words The Perfect Liberal)

One might argue that every president plays political games.  But Barack Obama ran with such a dogmatic self-righteousness that he would be “The One” to transcend this crap that his total pathetic failure to do so amounts to a major scandal.

Big Obama donor quits envoy job amid criticism
Posted: Feb 04, 2011 1:10 AM PST
Updated: Feb 05, 2011 1:10 AM PST
By MATTHEW LEE
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) – As a supporter of presidential candidate Barack Obama, Cynthia Stroum was a superstar whose financial backing of the campaign landed her a plum diplomatic posting in Europe.

As America’s ambassador to Luxembourg, the wealthy Seattle-based businesswoman was a disaster.

According to an internal State Department report released Thursday, less than a week after she quit, Stroum’s management of the U.S. Embassy in the tiny country was abysmal. The report says her tenure of about one year was fraught with personality conflicts, verbal abuse and questionable expenditures on travel, wine and liquor.

Stroum’s case illustrates the pitfalls that presidents can face when they appoint non-career diplomats to ambassadorships as a reward for their political support.

The Luxembourg embassy “has underperformed for the entirety of the current ambassador’s tenure,” said the report, which was prepared last fall before she resigned abruptly. “At present, due to internal problems, it plays no significant role in policy advocacy or reporting, though developments in Luxembourg are certainly of interest to Washington clients and other U.S. missions in the NATO and EU communities.”

Stroum resigned effective Jan. 31, just days before the scathing report from the State Department’s inspector general was made public. A message left with a person who answered the phone at her Seattle home said she was unavailable for comment. The call was not returned.

In a farewell message published in the Luxembourg press, Stroum said she was leaving the job because she wanted to return to private life. “The reality is that I now need to focus on my family and personal business,” she said.

At the State Department, her departure was not announced. Spokesman Mark Toner gave no hint of problems when asked about the situation. “We are grateful for her service to the United States and wish her all the best in her new endeavors,” he said.

But the report paints a picture of a corrosive atmosphere at the small embassy, with the ambassador running roughshod over staff, threatening to read their e-mails, largely concerned about job-related perks and involved in improper purchases.

The situation was so bad that the inspector general recommended that the State Department dispatch medical personnel to Luxembourg to test the stress levels of embassy employees. It said at least four staffers quit or sought transfers to Iraq and Afghanistan during her tenure, unusual steps for diplomats assigned to a modern, Western European capital.

“The bulk of the mission’s internal problems are linked to her leadership deficiencies, the most damaging of which is an abusive management style,” the report said. “She has followed a pattern of public criticism of colleagues, including (deputies), who have not performed to her satisfaction.”

“Those who have questioned or challenged some of the ambassador’s actions state that they have paid a heavy price in the form of verbal abuse and been threatened with dismissal,” it said.

The report said the State Department was aware of the situation and that a perceived lack of action in dealing with it could be harmful. “It is unfortunate that an impression is being created among officers and local employees at this mission that this kind of behavior may be routinely tolerated by Department of State leadership, particularly for non-career ambassadors.”

Stroum began her short diplomatic career in 2009 when Obama nominated her to the cushy position of U.S. ambassador to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, a tiny nation of 500,000 people about the size of Rhode Island and surrounded by France, Belgium and Germany.

Aside from her business experience as an investor, entertainment producer and philanthropist active in numerous charities, Stroum’s major qualification for the post appeared to be her generous contributions to Democratic politicians and causes, particularly Obama’s campaign.

Financial reports say Stroum donated the maximum personal amount to Obama’s campaign. She also donated $2,300 to the failed presidential campaign of former Sen. John Edwards.

As a fundraiser, the records show she was responsible for ginning up at least $500,000 for Obama, putting her near the top of the campaign’s money generators.

The inspector general said it had learned in interviews with embassy staffers that Stroum, shortly after her arrival in Luxembourg, discussed with them “the importance she attaches to the perquisites of” being an ambassador. As such, she was particularly concerned about the state of the ambassador’s residence, which was being renovated, it said.

Because of the renovation, Stroum sought temporary housing. An embassy official spent six weeks searching for an appropriate property and, using contacts in Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany and France along with two officials from the U.S. Embassy in Brussels, screened 200 properties and visited 30 to 40.

They found only four that met the ambassador’s requirements and she rejected all of them, according to the report, before an acceptable residence finally was found.

Apart from those difficulties and management problems, the report identified several improprieties while Stroum was in charge in Luxembourg. Among them:

– Stroum spent $2,400 to fly with an aide to a Swiss “professional school” whose graduates have gone on to work for Buckingham Palace and similar places to interview candidates to replace a retired property caretaker and a fired chef. The purpose of the trip was listed as “management meetings.” Although no one from the school was hired, such recruitment is allowed only if there are no qualified local employees. In addition, they did not get proper authorization for the trip.

– The embassy purchased $3,400 in wine and liquor a day before the 2010 budget year ended in an effort spend as much of its annual entertainment funds as possible. The booze did not arrive until the next fiscal year and State Department rules say embassies are not allowed “to use excess year-end funds” to buy items unless they are used in that year.

– Stroum was reimbursed for the purchase of a new bed because she “preferred a queen bed to the king-size bed already provided.” The embassy twice asked Washington to reimburse the amount but was denied because it was a personal choice. Despite the refusals, the No. 2 at the embassy signed off on a voucher “reimbursing the ambassador for the cost of the mattress out of program funds.” The report said the voucher needs to be repaid.

Liberalism = Abuse of Other People’s Money.

Cynthia Stroum ought to be held up as a quintessential liberal, as she is a total hypocrite who talks about how much she cares for the little people while running roughshod over them.  And her selection for an ambassadorship ought to be held up as a quintessential Obama appointment.  It is the paradigm of liberal hypocrisy.

John Edwards, John Kerry, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel, and every single Democrat in Bell, California are other recent examples of the complete disgustingness of liberalism.  And let’s not forget the pork emperor Barack Obama AND his empress wife Michelle, either.  These and many other Democrats personify the type of people who claim that private citizens aren’t entitled to keep their own money.

Liberals endlessly lecture Republicans as being “hypocrites” when they preach good moral values and then fail to live up to those good values with immoral personal conduct.  And, of course, that IS hypocrisy, no question about it.

But Democrats don’t just preach garbage that they themseleves don’t bother to live up to; they seize other people’s money and routinely hypocritically betray their own stated values using other people’s money to do it.

Just keep in mind that Republicans can’t steal your morality and spend it on their mistresses the way Democrats routinely do in their hypocrisy.

She shouldn’t resign; Obama should look for MORE self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing tyrants JUST LIKE HER so we can better see what Democrat rule is really like.

Democrats Abandon All Respect For American Voter And Electoral Integrity

The independent-minded American says, “Let the parties and candidates express their platforms in the open marketplace of ideas, and may the best candidate win.”

Unless you’re a Democrat, of course.

“If you’re a Democrat, it’s, “We stand for absolutely nothing but power over the people, we believe that ends justify means, and so go ahead and do whatever you need to do to win.”

Democrats need tyrant-power in order to shove terrible and evil legislation such as the $3.27 TRILLION stimulus which incredibly hasn’t even created any meaningful jobs; and ObamaCare, which is turning out to be so shockingly bad that even LIBERAL UNIONS tat supported this boondoggle are now pleading to be opted out; and Democrat environmental regulations that are destroying upwards of a million jobs and counting (and again, even UNIONS are begging for relief from these incredibly destructive policies).

You can’t destroy a country unless you have the total power to do so.  In America, the Constitution gives the people the right to rise up and throw off their shackles every two years.  At least, as long as we have a Constitution, and as long as judicial activists can’t interpret that Constitution any damn way they want to.

So Democrats have to cheat to get their “fundamental transformation.”  And cheat they do.

We think of Chicago and other Democrat strongholds, where dead people and inmates don’t only get to vote, they get to vote twice.  And apparently, Democrats are even paying dead people and inmates for their votes now.

We think of ACORN and years and years of voter registration shenanigans until they were finally caught on video doing something so vile that even many (but certainly not all) Democrats found them despicable beyond the pale.

We think of the Al Franken Senate election in Minnesota, in which a lead by the Republican candidate was overcome after new, uncounted ballots just kept magically turning up in the back seats of cars.  And then, lo and behold, we find that inmates’ ballots – well over the Franken margin of victory – were illegally counted.

We think of the vile Democrat Rep. Alan Grayson and the shockingly dishonest campaign ad that he ran, in which he deliberately tried to smear his Republican candidate for the exact opposite of what the man clearly actually said.

And now we’ve got Democrats trying to undermine the will of the American people by fraudulently running candidates to leech votes from the Republican and steal an election:

Report: Dems planted NJ tea party House candidate
By GEOFF MULVIHILL
The Associated Press
Saturday, October 9, 2010; 5:36 PM

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. — A New Jersey Republican congressional candidate criticized his Democratic opponent Friday amid mounting evidence that Democratic officials planted a tea party candidate in the race to siphon off conservative votes.

“My opponent, John Adler, represents everything that is wrong with politics in our country today,” Republican Jon Runyan said. “I would ask for an apology. But frankly, an apology from someone like Congressman Adler would be so meaningless that it’s not worth seeking.”

He spoke at a news conference as Adler, a first-term Democratic lawmaker, and his campaign remained mum about a report in the Courier-Post of Cherry Hill in which Democratic operatives speaking on the condition of anonymity confirmed what Republicans have believed for months: That tea-party candidate Peter DeStefano was put on the ballot by Democrats.

The operatives said a county Democratic employee is running at least the Web elements of DeStefano’s campaign.

Tea party organizations, which have denounced DeStefano since he entered the race in June, called on him Friday to quit. About 50 tea party activists gathered in protest outside a restaurant in Medford where DeStefano had scheduled a fundraiser Friday night.

DeStefano arrived at the fundraiser after the protesters left and told reporters he would remain in the race, but he would not answer specific questions about the newspaper’s report, dismissing the allegations as “hearsay.”

“I’m an average guy who’s running for Congress on the independent ticket,” DeStefano said.

One tea party group, the West Jersey Tea Party, said it plans to file a voter-fraud lawsuit against Adler next week.

Adler has previously denied the accusations. Adler and top officials in Adler’s campaign and did not return calls or e-mails from The Associated Press on Friday.

In an August interview with the AP, DeStefano excoriated both Adler and Runyan.

He fended off questions about Republicans’ accusations and tea party organizations’ claims that he wasn’t even a member, though he was running for Congress with the slogan “New Jersey Tea Party.” While there are several tea party groups in New Jersey, none goes by that name. Some tea party groups are supporting Runyan.

“Any American citizen can run for any office they want,” DeStefano said. “I think it’s time we get past this crap.”

He refused to answer questions about precisely when he decided to run.

In August, Adler told the Courier-Post: “I know we weren’t part of it.”

Runyan said his campaign was looking into whether there’s any legal action that could be taken against Adler.

The operatives told the Courier-Post that the plan was shared with members of the South Jersey Young Democrats, and some in that group gathered signatures for DeStefano – while others didn’t because they thought the plan was unethical.

Republicans started raising suspicions about DeStefano months ago when they found many of the signatures on his nominating petitions were from Democrats, including a former Adler campaign staffer.

I wrote about a related issue a little over a week ago, pointing out the fact that Democrats Don’t Give A DAMN About The Constitution Or Any Limits On Their Power.

In that article, I cited the audio of Democrat Robin Carnahan openly mocking the election process and the will of the voters in an exchange that went as follows:

Carnahan: “We’re going to also have a libertarian and a Constitution Party candidate running.  And I will tell you no one’s going to know who they are, but it’s not going to matter, because Glenn Beck says you’re supposed to be for the Constitution, and there is some percentage of people who will go vote for them.  And in our internal polling about six or seven percent goes like that to the Libertarian and Constitution Party.  So I’m quite sure that whoever wins is going to do it with less than fifty percent of the vote.” […]

Donor: “You just don’t sound like those Constitution Party votes are going to come out of your account.”

Carnahan: “What do you think?” (Audience laughter)

Donor: “I think you’re right.” (Audience laughter)

These Democrats don’t care about fairly and honestly winning elections; they care only about power and totalitarian control over government.  And they will use every UNFAIR and DISHONEST tactic to gain the power over the people that they seek.

And if you care about your country’s Constitution, why, you’re just an idiot schmuck to these contemptible Democrats.

I also wrote about some of the utterly contemptible examples of fraud that are besetting the Democrat Party, including the fact that ALL EIGHT of the vile little cockroaches in Bell, California, who stole millions from a town whose per capita income was only half the national average, were DEMOCRATS.

And it’s not a matter that Democrats did this a long time ago, or that they just did it recently; it’s about the fact that they are doing these things RIGHT THE HELL NOW.

If you think that Democrats have demonstrated that they deserve the right to continue governing, all I can say is that you personally are disgusting.

A Fact Media Is Hiding: All EIGHT Slimbeball Bell, Calif. Officials Are DEMOCRATS

Particularly if you live in California, you have seen repeated coverage of the incredibly despicable corruption and violation of the public trust demonstrated by politicians in Bell, California.

First, the story from Newsbusters:

Eight Dems Arrested in Bell, CA ‘Corruption on Steroids’ – Not a Single Mention of Party Affiliation From Media
By Lachlan Markay (Bio | Archive)
Tue, 09/21/2010 – 15:19 ET

Today, eight city council members were arrested in Bell, California for what Los Angeles County District Attorney labeled “corruption on steroids.” Thus far, every major news outlet that has reported on the story has omitted the fact that all eight individuals arrested are Democrats.

These glaring omissions come only weeks after NewsBusters reported that of the 351 stories on the then-brewing controversy, 350 had omitted party affiliations, and one had mentioned they were Democrats only in apologizing for not doing so sooner.

ABC, CBS, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, USA Today, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and the San Francisco Chronicle all reported on the arrests today without mentioning party affiliations.

One commenter at CNN’s online story got it spot on: “I notice there is no mention of the party affiliation of the accused. I can find no mention of it in any story on the internet. This must mean they were all Democrats.”

Give the man a cigar.

Together, the eight city officials “misappropriated” $5.5 million in municipal funds. Robert Rizzo, the chief culprit, was arrested on 53 counts of various brands of corruption.

Before the scandal came to light, Rizzo had been making roughly $1.5 million per year, even though the per capita income in Bell is roughly half the national average.

Pedro Carillo, Bell’s interim city manager, released a statement on the arrests today:

Given the sheer volume of charges levied against former Bell Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo and former Assistant CAO Angela Spaccia by the district attorney, it is clear that Rizzo and Spaccia were at the root of the cancer that has afflicted the City of Bell. Also, it is a sad day for Bell that four current and two former members of the council also have been arrested. I am prepared to double down our efforts to continue to restore order, establish good government reforms, and to ensure that Bell is providing needed services to its residents.

Despite arrests in one of the most massive cases of municipal corruption in recent memory, no media outlet could bring itself to mention the officials’ party affiliations, a fact that has been widely reported since the scandal entered the national spotlight.

There was basically ONE acknowledgment that the corrupt politicians who filched MILLIONS of dollars for themselves in the form of insanely lucrative salaries and pensions – all at the courtesy of taxpayers, of course – were all in fact DEMOCRATS.  That came from The Orange County Register.  And even then, that admission only resulted from the fact that knowledgeable readers complained about the omission:

In the wake of the Bell salary scandal, our readers noticed one part of the story has been left out by virtually all media sources, including our related editorials and columns: the political party affiliations of the five city council members who not only failed to protect city coffers, but participated in what amounts to shameless, if apparently legal, self-dealing.

All five council members are members of the Democratic Party.

Jack Abramoff wasn’t even a Republican official, but by the time the mainstream media got through with the story, there was naught an American who didn’t know that Republicans were evil as a result of their reporting of the 2005-2006 story.  And the fact that a number of prominent Democrats were involved, too, somehow got little mention, of course.

This has been going on for so long, and it’s so sickening.

On October 14, 2008 – two years ago this month – I wrote an article about another galling example of media bias and hypocrisy.  I reminisced about Mark Foley – whom the Democrats and the mainstream media turned into the poster boy of everything that was wrong with the Republican Party just in time to poison the 2006 elections against Republicans.

Now, the media could have made a similar example out of Democrat Tim Mahoney, who replaced Mark Foley in the very same West Palm Beach, Florida district.  In terms of breaking the law and being a slimeball, Mahoney did far worse than anything Foley did – and just in time to be the poster boy for Democrat malfeasance in advance of the 2008 elections.  But the same media that turned Mark Foley into a household name were nowhere to be found.

And, as I predicted, two years later and nobody knows who Tim Mahoney was anymore.

Tim Mahoney spent $121,000 of taxpayer money to keep an aide with whom he was sexually involved with from talking after she threatened to sue him.  He threatened his tax-dollar-funded mistress and said to her, “You work at my pleasure.  Do you understand what that means?”

Mahoney self-righteously claimed he would be better than Mark Foley.  He was actually the guy the Democrats tasked to lead the way in the Democrats’ ethics reform package.  And yet the mainstream media couldn’t seem to find a hitch to hang a story about the guy.

Journalists couldn’t bring themselves to harm Democrats.  Because they are partisan and biased.  And they don’t report the facts, they slant them.

There’s always a ton of stories to show how pathologically dishonest, biased and corrupt the mainstream media is.  Recently, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez was fired by the network after a bizarre rant in which he demonstrated he was profoundly racist and anti-Semitic.

No wonder Obama is so favorable toward CNN; they have the same attitude toward “them Jews” that his reverend and spiritual adviser for 23 years had.  Just saying.

That Rick Sanchez racist tirade reminded me of a story I wrote about how that very same CNN anchor falsely attributed racist statements to Rush Limbaugh in a shocking act of media scapegoating:

CNN joined MSNBC in “quoting” Rush Limbaugh to effect that he is a racist.  And as a result of these “bigoted remarks,” Rush Limbaugh was thrown out of an ownership package to purchase the St. Louis Rams.

CNN anchor Rick Sanchez did the following:

CNN anchor Rick Sanchez read a disputed racist quote attributed to Rush Limbaugh about antebellum slavery on Monday’s Newsroom: “Limbaugh’s perceived racist diatribes are too many to name. Here’s a sample- he once declared that ‘slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back. I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.’”

And that certainly wasn’t all that Rick Sanchez said.  Go to the link for more, and for the embedded video of the “reporting.”

You want to talk about the racist calling the kettle “racist”?

Rush Limbaugh never said any of the things that Rick Sanchez claimed.  It was a terrible, biased, ideological, serial slandering by someone who professed himself to be an “objective journalist.”

I want you to understand.  Clearly, Rick Sanchez didn’t go after Rush Limbaugh because Rush Limbaugh is racist.  It’s RICK who is racist, not RUSH.  No, Rick Sanchez targeted Rush Limbaugh because, like most of his fellow “journalists,” Rick Sanchez is a partisan, biased, ideologue propagandist.

If the media were to report the facts fairly, accurately and honestly, the Republicans would have dominated the political landscape since FDR nearly destroyed America with the same policies that Obama is using to destroy the country today.

Prior to Obama’s being elected president, the “story” was all about how Republicans had exploded the economy.  So it should come as no surprise that 57.4% of Obama voters were unaware of the fact that DEMOCRATS had been in control of Congress for the preceding two years.  It didn’t make any sense how the Republicans could be entirely to blame for the economy collapsing if it was actually DEMOCRATS who controlled both the House of Representatives and the US Senate.  So we had one of those cases in which “if the facts got in the way of the reporting, so much the worse for the facts.”

In 2006, and again in 2008, Democrats – with the help of the mainstream media – made Republican corruption a primary issue.

Now we’ve got more corrupt Democrats than you can shake a stick at (e.g., Charlie Rangel, Maxine Waters, John Kerry, all the many Obama officials who failed to pay their taxes – particularly the Treasury Secretary and top tax enforcer Timothy Geithner – and basically the entire Democrat establishment).  Not to mention the eight incredibly sleezy Democrat officials from Bell, California, who are robbing poor citizens who earn only half the national average blind.

And those eight Bell, California Democrats are basically using the same “pension enhancement” techniques that their fellow liberal public officials in the public employee unions have relied upon to rack up some $3.35 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities.

Which is to say that Democrats have been accusing Republicans of corruption, even as they were out literally bankrupting America with their own corruption.