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Minnesota U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann

A little boy named Jack, adopted from Russia several years ago as a toddler, celebrated Father’s Day this year with his family in Minnesota with Rep. Michele Bachmann. Jack is now 8. (Photo: AP/Getty)

Think Progress, the media wing of the leftists Center for American Progress, has been caught with their unethical pants down, publishing a fictitious story that claimed Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann proposed “Americanization” labor camps for Central American children illegally crossing over the southern border.

“I’m calling on all of us, Obama and Congress and everyone, to chip in and build special new facilities…‘Americanization facilities,’ if you will,” Think Progress erroneously quoted Bachmann as saying. The website has since corrected its embarrassment, but for failing to vet a bogus story their reputation will long be scarred.

Perhaps the most ridiculous and unbelievable aspect to this story is the depiction of Bachmann as a cold and calculating individual respecting children. The congresswoman is a foster mother to 23 foster children, and her record on child protective services, is unquestionably one of compassion.

“And we’d send these kids to these facilities, in Arizona and Texas and wherever else. And we’d get private sector business leaders to locate to those facilities and give these children low-risk jobs to do. And they’d learn about the American way of life, earn their keep, and everyone wins in the end,” Think Progress went on to quote Bachmann as saying.

Think Progress is owned by the leftist think-tank, the Center for American Progress, and is run by several individuals who served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations.

The bogus Think Progress story was further pushed in a post published on the website KCTV 7, which claims to be a news outlet based out of Kansas City. However, KCTV 7, too, publishes fake news. In fact, in the Kansas City area, channel 7 is not even a valid channel.

The KCTV 7 article claimed that Bachmann proposed putting the children in the work camps during an interview with Minnesota’s Twin Cities News talk radio host Jason Lewis. But a simple attempt to follow the link directed us to the homepage on Twin Cities News site, and there was no article or radio interview with Bachmann to be found.

Interestingly, it was another liberal website, the Raw Story, that first pointed out the entire hoax after Think Progress published it on Sunday. Still, the Raw Story coverage was just as shameful as the original story, one could argue, as the headline read “Crazy racist Bachmann story so believable liberal websites fall for parody.”

“The news site KCTV7 News is a parody. Rep. Bachmann (R-MN) never made the statement. We sincerely regret the error,” the apology and correction statement from Think Progress reads.

The Daily Kos, another liberal website popular with the left, also took the story and ran with it before ever bothering to confirm whether the story was accurate.

Think Progress, the media wing of the

Michelle Nunn and Barack Obama

Georgia Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate Michelle Nunn and President Barack Obama.

Internal campaign documents obtained by Nation Review Online not only reveal that Michelle Nunn is perpetuating a complete fraud on Georgia voters, but also that the media is helping her to do it.

Nunn’s campaign will often have “fair warning” before negative news stories surface, if they ever do, because the so-called journalists have promised to work to “kill or muddy” such stories.

“I would love to know what kind of already-formed relationships they have in Atlanta and even in the national media that they’re planning on using as sources and conduits of information,” Kerwin Swint, a professor of politics at Atlanta’s Kennesaw State University, told National Review Online. “It’s certainly interesting to see it in writing like that.”

Nunn’s strategists also discuss plans to rebut attacks over her time as CEO of the Points of Light Foundation, which she has done since her nonprofit organization, Hands On Atlanta, merged with the group in 2007. PPD previously reported on questionable decisions made under Nunn to cut roughly 60 percent of its regular workforce from 175 jobs down to 80, all during a time she saw an increase from $197,506 to $322,056 in total annual compensation.

But, according to the document, these decisions pale in comparison to the concerns the campaign strategists have over her tenure. They worry about Georgia voters discovering that the Points of Light gave grants to “terrorists” and “inmates” during her tenure. Islamic Relief USA, which is part of a greater global network operating under Islamic Relief Worldwide, received over $33,000 in grants under Nunn. Islamic Relief Worldwide funnels money to Hamas, which is currently storing missiles in U.N. schools and shelters with the hope innocent people will be targeted by Israeli military strikes.

In fact, the U.S. State Department has designated them a terrorist organization. Yet, unbelievably, the campaign documents identify “Jews” as a key group to target for campaign fundraising, and further planned to taylor Nunn’s position on Israel regardless of where she actually stands on the Israeli-Palestine issue. Considering the aforementioned evidence, it is pretty safe to assume Nunn fits in with the radical wing of the Democratic Party, which has unquestionably grown into an anti-Israel advocate.

“Michelle’s position on Israel will largely determine the level of support here,” the document goes on to say.

National Review Online reported that in 2006, Israelis arrested Islamic Relief Worldwide’s Gaza coordinator, Ayaz Ali, because he was working to “transfer funds and assistance to various Hamas institutions and organizations.” Israeli officials found photographs of “‘swastikas superimposed on IDF symbols,’ and of Nazi officials, Osama bin Laden, and al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” NRO said.

The document is riddled with concerns regarding “grants to problematic entities” and “notable line items” in its 990 forms among other financial inconsistenies, including a 2010 audit that found the organization’s financial record-keeping practices were “not adequate to account for federal funds” under Nunn.

But aside from her less-than moderate record as the CEO of Points of Light, it is the plan to deceive Georgians and perpetuate a complete fraud on the voters in Georgia that has the potential to sink Nunn’s entire campaign, if of course, the local media would report it.

“Never before has a Senate campaign openly admitted that its number one objective is to deceive voters and hide a candidate’s true beliefs from public view. The hundred plus pages of Michelle Nunn’s campaign plan reveals a deliberate effort to manipulate Georgia voters and hide the fact that Nunn’s campaign is a proxy for the agenda of Barack Obama and Harry Reid,” NRSC Political Director Ward Baker said in a statement.

“The entire Nunn plan is dirty, offensive, and emblematic of why voters are so disenchanted with politics.”

Part of the plan discusses sending postcards depicting “Michelle and her family in rural settings with rural-oriented imagery” in order to “combat the notion that she is an Atlanta-based candidate uninterested in, or unfamiliar with, the rural parts of the state.” The direct mailing firm making the suggestion is none other than Ambrosino Muir Hansen Crounse, a firm that is well-equiped to help hide that Michelle Nunn is “too liberal,” and not a “real Georgian,” because their client list is filled with uber-liberal Democrats in the Senate, including Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Richard Durbin (D-IL).

The firm has also been hired by other vulnerable southern Democrats, such as Mark Pryor (D-AR) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA). But each of these candidates have their own challenges to overcome, and for Nunn its the fact she lives in an upper-class Atlanta suburb, and spent more time in Bethesda, Maryland, than rural Georgia. And as NRO pointed out, the same candidate who attended National Cathedral School before the University of Virginia and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, is not the same candidate standing in a rural field in South Georgia, as she is in one of her more notable campaign ads.

The Georgia Senate race is a contest to replace the open seat vacated by Republican senator Saxby Chambliss. The first poll conducted on the race since businessman David Perdue won the runoff found the Republican holding a six-point lead over Democrat Michelle Nunn, 46 – 40 percent. The race is currently rated “Likely Republican” on PPD’s 2014 Senate Map Predictions model, a rating assigned by senior political analyst, Richard D. Baris.

“I am not at all surprised to find out from these documents that the media is in the bag for Nunn,” Baris said. “There has been a clear disconnect between the media coverage of this race and political reality on the ground.”

PPD recently had to downgrade the pollster Landmark Communications, after a survey conducted for Atlanta-based WSB-TV 2 found Nunn over Perdue 48 – 42 percent. While public polling is but one variable out of many used in our election projection model, PPD rates pollsters based upon past performance and weighs them accordingly to avoid undue influence from outliers.

“It is extremely difficult for any Democrat to reach a 48 percent level of support in Georgia, let alone this early in the race,” Baris said. “We rate pollsters at PPD for this exact reason. Considering no Democrat has been able to muster 30 percent of the white vote in The Peach State since 2002, the idea that the Republican nominee would start off with 42 percent while Nunn is at 48, is preposterous, even if we didn’t have other polls showing evidence to the contrary.”

The documents also show an effort to balkanize the electorate with an aim to increase voter turnout among key minority and other demographic groups in November. If you compare PPD’s previous data analysis with the strategy outlined by Nunn’s campaign, it is still a tall, nonetheless.

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Internal campaign documents obtained by Nation Review

Jul. 27, 2014 – 14:10 – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Hanan Ashrawi weigh in on the ongoing violence and what it will take to achieve a lasting cease-fire.

The United Nations called for an unconditional cease-fire between Hamas and Israel, and all 15 members of the U.N. Security Council approved the statement, which called on both Israel and Hamas to “accept and fully implement the humanitarian cease-fire” during the start of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr “and beyond.”

Israel has agreed to two cease-fire proposals, and even though Hamas has not, rocket fire into Israel has slowed, as has the bombing of Gaza. “The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) is free to attack after any fire if there is any,” an Israeli army spokesperson said in a radio interview. Hamas said it wanted a 24-hour truce to mark Eid al-Fitr.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader

Contracts to buy previously-owned U.S. homes fell in June at double the pace expected by economists, adding to months of data showing a weak housing market.

The National Association of Realtors, or NAR, reported Monday that its Pending Home Sales Index, which is based solely on contracts signed last month, fell 1.1 percent to 102.7.

Economists’ expectations were way off, as most forecast a 0.5 percent gain. The latest weak housing market news follows three straight months of increases that fell below expectations. U.S. housing starts and building permits also unexpectedly fell for the month of June, suggesting the housing market is having a difficult time standing on its own without artificial measures taken by the government, many of which triggered the housing crisis in 2007 to begin with.

Pending home sales, which lead sales by a month or two, increased 6.0 percent in May. Contracts fell in the Northeast and the South, but rose in the West and the Midwest.

The housing market is obviously still hanging by a thread, relying upon artificial and dangerous government regulations and rules to regain a small measure of momentum. Earlier in June, two policy statements made by Mel Watt, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), and Shaun Donovan, secretary of HUD, backed-off tight restrictions that required sound lending practices, repeating the mistakes of the subprime mortgage crisis.

The FHFA is the regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which along with the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) are responsible for guaranteeing about 75 percent of all mortgage credit in the United States. In an effort to boost a failing housing market, they’ve abandoned the rules against underwriting risky mortgages.

Contracts to buy previously-owned U.S. homes fell

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If a rematch of the 2012 presidential election were held today, 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney would defeat President Barack Obama in a landslide, according to a CNN poll. This is not the first time a poll has shown a severe case of voter’s remorse among the electorate. A similar ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted in November found that if a rematch of the 2012 election was held, Romney would have defeated Obama by 49 – 45 percent in the popular vote.

Most in the GOP’s Washington D.C.-based consultant class argue that Republican candidates should focus only on a handful of battleground, or purple states in a presidential campaign. However, a PPD study of the results suggest they are making a very expensive mistake.

CNN poll Obama vs Romney rematch

If a rematch of the 2012 presidential election were held today, GOP nominee Mitt Romney would defeat President Barack Obama in a landslide, according to a CNN poll.

According to the CNN poll conducted by Opinion Research, if the 2012 election were somehow held again in 2014, Romney would garner 53 percent of the popular vote, with President Obama falling extremely short at 44 percent. But how would the Electoral College look, which often varies significantly from the popular vote, and what does it suggest about the future of presidential elections?

142px-Mitt_Romney_by_Gage_Skidmore_6_cropped

Romney/Ryan: 332 Electoral Votes

For instance, President Obama beat Mitt Romney 51 -47 percent in the popular vote back in November 2012. Yet, the Obama/Biden ticket won the Electoral College by a much wider margin, 332 electoral votes to Romney’s 206. If the election were held today, the numbers would be reversed exactly. The Romney/Ryan ticket would have won 332 electoral votes to 206 for the Obama/Biden ticket, but the map would have looked significantly more unified, in true landslide fashion.

Democratic candidates typically begin with somewhere in the neighborhood of 220 – 240 electoral votes, due to larger states like California, New York and Illinois. Under the current consultant strategy, Republican candidates must run the table in all the battleground states in order to win the Electoral College, which our analysis demonstrates is an archaic, losing strategy that sells the Republican Party short.

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Obama/Biden: 206 Electoral Votes

Pennsylvania and Minnesota, for instance, are perfect examples of how the Republican Party is leaving millions of popular votes, and dozens of electoral votes, off the table. Even though Gov. Romney barely campaigned in The Keystone State, Obama only carried the state by a relatively small 52 – 46.8 percent margin. Though the GOP nominee did make a late play for Pennsylvania in the closing days of the campaign, it wasn’t enough and, the fact Romney would now carry the state by roughly 4 points should tell the next GOP nominee to dump conventional wisdom.

The same is true for Minnesota, a state David Axelrod was so sure Obama would carry he promised Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that he would shave his mustache if the state went for Romney. Axelrod dispatched Bill Clinton to Minnesota in the final weeks of the campaign not because he was sure he was going to keep his mustache, but because he knows what this study concludes, it’s a winnable state for the GOP. In fact, many GOP strategists would be surprised to see that Michigan is still in Obama’s column and, even though the Republican Party consistently prioritizes The Wolverine State over the home of the Vikings, Minnesota has been several points more Republican than Michigan on the presidential level for several cycles.

It is worth mentioning, however, that the simple study simply treated every state the same for purposes of simplicity. In other words, we applied the same popular vote disparity equally to each state, though clearly a 9-point nationwide increase in the popular vote would likely not increase Romney’s already huge margin in states such as Idaho and Utah.

The bottom line is that states that have been reliably Democratic in the past few decades are now becoming opportunities for Republican candidates, if however, they can capitalize on it. We are always listening to pundits talk about the “doomed by demographics” narrative, but as Sean Trende at RCP also pointed out, political coalitions are fluid and there will be realignments that will benefit the Republican Party as they increase their share of the white vote. We saw this play out in the Mid-West states, including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Iowa, several of which are states that make up the Democratic firewall. Romney was also able to bring New Hampshire back to the GOP and carry Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, chipping off a piece of an otherwise solidly Blue Northeast.

Perhaps even more concerning piece of data for Democrats going forward — as we see under this scenario — is that Romney would be able to peel off Obama voters from all races, including Hispanics, a group that has been pivotal in states Democrats have been able to flip over the past few cycles, such as Nevada and Colorado. These states could potentially move back to the Republican column.

Of course, this is all hypothetical and it is anything but clear whether the GOP would even change course on their losing strategy. Still, as is often the case with post-election knee-jerk analysis, the data suggest the “doomed by demographics” scenario fails to live up to empirical scrutiny.

According to the CNN poll conducted by

On the Jul. 27, episode of Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas railed against Palestinian sympathizers in the media. “You can’t equate a terror group’s intentional targeting of civilians with a legitimate government seeking to defend its civilians and protect its children,” Huckabee said.

Huckabee went on to say that the president’s foreign policy in the Middle East is embarrassing.

On his Jul. 27 show, Mike Huckabee

Last year, the Vatican claimed their research shows 100,000 Christians are killed in the Middle East each year. According to a May report from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Christian persecution in the Middle East and worldwide is on the rise, resembling more a genocidal extinction than persecution. Yet, no one is doing anything to curb the trend.

On the Jul. 27, episode of Justice, Judge Jeanine Pirro said that Christians in the Middle East are marked for death because of their faith and no one is fighting for them. Judge Jeanine’s comments come just days after the ISIS told Christians that they are not welcome in Iraq any longer, and even destroyed the tomb of the biblical prophet Jonah.

On the Jul. 27, episode of Justice,

Virginia Senate Debate Warner vs Gillespie

Republican Ed Gillespie, left, and Sen. Mark Warner, right, shake hands after a debate at The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. (Bob Brown/AP)

Fewer than 800 people tuned into the Virginia Senate debate Saturday, which was actually hosted in West Virginia by Virginia Bar Association and shown on PBS’s live stream. In fact, not one of the Old Dominion’s PBS affiliates will even air the debate in full. That’s good news for incumbent Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), who performed less-than ideal.

Warner debated Ed Gillespie, a former state chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia and Republican National Committee chairman. Gillespie, who is very telegenic and folksy, came across strong in the debate against an incumbent who was on the defense, seemed irritated for even having to answer attacks from a challenger, and several times appeared ignorant to his opponent’s positions.

One of the most awkward instances was the exchange over Gillespie’s non-existent support for a personhood amendment. Warner completely overreached when he claimed without direct evidence that Gillespie supports so-called “Personhood” legislation. “I respect women’s reproductive health. He would vote to repeal Roe v. Wade,” also stated.

“This is an area where you’re making up my view,” Gillespie said, challenging Warner to offer evidence to support his claim. “When did I support a personhood amendment?”, Gillespie asked. Warner had no real answer, save for “you’ll get the documentation for that.”

When Gillespie attacked the senator for voting 97 percent of the time with President Obama, Warner fired back at Gillespie for being “a cheerleader for the Bush-Cheney economic policy,” which put “two wars on a credit card.” But Warner seemed confused and agitated in his closing, adding “you know so I don’t know” at the end of his attack.

In Virginia, ObamaCare is deeply unpopular. It was at the time Warner voted for it against the wishes of the people of Virginia and remains unpopular today. Warner said he supports efforts to reform the law, not repeal it. Except, Gillespie is in favor of a repeal and replace strategy, though it didn’t appear Warner knew his opponents position on ObamaCare, the paramount issue of the campaign.

The single biggest vulnerability Gillespie has is the time he spent as a lobbyist. “Having advised private sector enterprises on how to get things done, with bi-partisan support can actually help me to be an effective senator,” Gillespie said in response to moderator Judy Woodruff’s question. “I think it can actually help me stand up to the special interest groups” and party leaders, Gillespie added.

Warner responded by saying it’s not bad to be a lobbyist per se, but “who you lobby for.”

The Virginia Senate race remains “Likely Republican” on PPD’s 2014 Senate Map Predications model, though admittedly, that rating insinuates a fake sense of security for Warner’s seat. Gillespie concluded back in January that the race was winnable, and our analysis concurs. But public polling, which is early and almost certainly overstating Warner’s lead, shows Warner is till personally popular.

Gillespie will have enough money to compete, though not enough as Warner, who is loaded himself and is known to self-fund. However, whether Warner becomes more vulnerable will rely upon the natioal political environment for Democrats, as a whole, and the polling trend mirrors where we see this race, at least for now. I say trend cautiously, as both another notable Virginia-based pundit and Eric Cantor thought they saw a trend, as well.

Poll Date Sample MoE Warner (D) Gillespie (R) Spread
PPD Average 3/19 – 7/19 48.7 29.7 Warner +19.0
Roanoke College* 7/14 – 7/19 566 RV 4.2 47 22 Warner +25
Rasmussen Reports 6/11 – 6/12 750 LV 4.0 53 36 Warner +17
Quinnipiac* 3/19 – 3/24 1288 RV 2.7 46 31 Warner +15
Roanoke College 2/22 – 2/28 707 RV 3.9 56 29 Warner +27
Rasmussen Reports 1/20 – 1/21 1000 LV 3.0 51 37 Warner +14
Christopher Newport Univ. 1/15 – 1/22 1023 RV 3.1 50 30 Warner +20
Roanoke College 1/13 – 1/17 553 RV 4.2 50 21 Warner +29
WFB/The Polling Company (R) 11/19 – 11/20 600 RV 4.0 51 33 Warner +18

Fewer than 800 people tuned into the

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