The week’s news that wasn’t

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Bone spurring, listening in, blaming and embezzling the most foot-fetishist, spying, Satanic and compassionless fakeries in the week’s fake news.

NYT digs into Trump’s feet

Back in 1968 Donald Trump did what millions of other American young men were doing; he obtained an exemption that enabled him to avoid the Vietnam war. He was one of an estimated 14 million young men – more than half of the 27 million eligible for conscription — who sought to avoid the draft through deferment or exemption, according to David Cortright, director of Policy Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame and chair of the Board of the Fourth Freedom Forum.

This week the intrepid and diligent investigative reporters at The New York Times “solved” the “50-year mystery” of how Trump received a “timely diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels that led to his medical exemption from the military during Vietnam.” They tracked down the daughters of a podiatrist named Larry Braunstein.

Braunstein, daughters Dr. Elysa Braunstein and Sharon Kessel allege, told stories of helping a young Trump as a favor to Trump’s father, from whom Braunstein rented space for his practice.

Elysa Braunstein told NYT the implication from her father was that Mr. Trump did not have a disqualifying foot ailment. “But did he examine him? I don’t know,” she said.

The Times admits no medical records exist that show that Braunstein treated, examined or assisted Donald Trump in any way. And Braunstein died in 2007, so he’s not talking. Nor is a second podiatrist implicated by the Times as a possible culprit, Dr. Manny Weinstein, who lived in two apartments in Brooklyn owned by Fred Trump but who died in 1995.

The doctor who bought Braunstein’s practice says he knows of no records related to Trump in the paperwork he inherited from Braunstein. The National Archives says most detailed government medical records related to the draft no longer exist.

In an interview with The Times in 2016, Trump said that a doctor provided “a very strong letter” about the bone spurs in his heels, which he then presented to draft officials. He said he could not remember the doctor’s name. “You are talking a lot of years,” Trump said. The president has said that no one helped him avoid the draft.

Elysa Braunstein said her father was initially proud that he had helped a “famous guy” in New York real estate. But later, her father, a lifelong Democrat who had served in the Navy during World War II, grew tired of Donald Trump as he became a fixture in the tabloid gossip pages and a reality television star, she said. The daughters, both Democrats, say they are not fans of Mr. Trump.

In other words, what NYT is passing off as news is a sack-full of speculation, innuendo and Trump animus. If the good “Democrat” doctor told his family about his treatment and diagnosis of Trump, he violated doctor-patient privilege and may or may not have filed a phony medical report… which sounds a lot like fraud. But he’s the hero of the story because… well, Trump.

If it took The Times 50 years to piece together this much speculation on Trump, it’s little wonder it hasn’t tackled other draft dodger stories like Bill Clinton’s, Richard Blumenthal’s or Bobby Kennedy’s, among others.

And back in the day The Times thought draft dodgers were cool. As recently as 2004 it published a piece about draft dodger utopia in Canada. In the piece NYT described the draft dodgers who fled north of the border and established the town of Nelson, British Columbia as “peace activists” and “expatriates” with a “courageous legacy.”

Curious how The Times treats some draft dodgers one way and others another, isn’t it?

Chinese and Russians join growing list of those listening to our calls

We learned long ago that the NSA, the FBI and Homeland Security were among the government agencies actively listening in on our telephone calls. Well, according to the Associated Press, so are “foreign spies and criminals.”

NYT implicates the Chinese and Russians as the “foreign spies” in question. The Times claims they are listening in not only on Trump’s calls, but all of our calls through cell site simulators. The simulators are ubiquitous in Washington, D.C., for obvious reasons.

Seems DHS found “anomalous activity” consistent with use of cell site simulators near the White House and other sensitive buildings. DHS admitted to Oregon Senator Ron Wyden last summer that devices that range in size from that of a cell phone to a brief case can be used to intercept cellular signals.

According to an article in The Hill, devices to intercept cellular calls are easy to buy or build from scratch… and inexpensive.

Of course, we’ve outsourced almost all of our tech to China so it’s not at all a surprise that they’re using it against us. But I’m far more concerned about local criminals and government agents listening in on my calls than Chinese and Russians. Chicoms and Ruskies aren’t interested in little ole me. But criminals and U.S. government agents are another matter entirely.

Could it be, SATAN?!

Following two gunshot homicides on recent back-to-back days in the small, south Alabama city of Opp, the city’s police department posted a message to Facebook that drew the ire of the Freedom from Religion Foundation and ridicule from the Associated Press.

Homicides were once quite rare in the city of 6,500 residents. But this year five murders were committed… all by young people. So in response, the police posted this to Facebook:

THIS PAST SUNDAY, A YOUNG MAN WAS SHOT AND KILLED IN KINSTON. MONDAY NIGHT, A MOTHER WAS SHOT AND KILLED IN NORTHERN COVINGTON COUNTY. THERE HAVE BEEN FIVE MURDERS IN COVINGTON COUNTY IN 2018. THESE MURDERS HAVE BEEN DONE BY OUR YOUNG PEOPLE. THIS IS HAPPENING BECAUSE WE HAVE TURNED AWAY FROM GOD AND EMBRACED SATAN. WE MAY HAVE NOT MEANT TO DO SO BUT, WE HAVE. IT IS TIME TO ASK FOR GOD’S HELP TO STOP THIS. IT IS TIME TO BE PARENTS AND RAISE OUR CHILDREN, NOT HAVE THEM RAISE US. IT IS TIME TO FULLY SUPPORT LAW ENFORCEMENT AND STAND BY THE OFFICERS AND DEPUTIES THAT ARE FAR TOO OFTEN HAVING TO WALK INTO THESE DANGEROUS SITUATIONS AND CLEAN UP THE MESS. FRIENDS, IT IS TIME TO STAND UP AND BE RESPONSIBLE, GROWN UP LEADERS IN OUR COMMUNITY. BOTTOM LINE, THERE ARE SHEEP; THERE ARE WOLVES AND THERE ARE SHEEP DOGS. WHICH GROUP DO YOU BELONG TO ?

Every God-fearing person understands exactly what the Opp PD is saying. Murder is sin, and all sin originates with Satan. Someone who loves God and keeps his commandments wouldn’t commit murder. But someone who has rejected God – and thereby embraced Satan, whether consciously or not – would, because life has no meaning for him.

Nevertheless, the AP made it sound as if the Opp PD was staffed by a bunch of loonies blaming Satan for their troubles. And the Satanists at the Freedom from Religion Foundation? They claimed the post “wrongly promoted religion” and it’s “illegal for a government entity to endorse or criticize religious belief.”

No. It’s not. That’s not what the 1st Amendment says.

More trouble for the Der Spiegel news fabricator

We told you last week about Claas Relotius, the CNN “Journalist of the Year” in 2014 working for the German magazine Der Spiegel who was fired after he got caught fabricating articles from whole cloth. We’ve learned a little more about him since then.

Relotius made quite a splash in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, where he spent a few weeks following the 2016 election in order to understand what prompted rural Americans to embrace Trump. Folks there whispered about “the German guy” and asked one another whether they’d met him or talked to him. So they were naturally anxious to see how he would portray their town.

What they saw appalled them. As Fergus Falls residents Michele Anderson and Jake Krohn wrote for Medium, “What happened is beyond what I could have ever imagined…:”

Not only did Relotius’ “exposé” on Fergus Falls make unrecognizable movie-like characters out of the people in my town that I interact with on a daily basis, but its very basic lack of truth and its bizarrely bleak portrayal of the place I love left a very sick, unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach… In 7,300 words he really only got our town’s population and average annual temperature correct, and a few other basic things, like the names of businesses and public figures, things that a child could figure out in a Google search. The rest is uninhibited fiction (even as sloppy as citing an incorrect figure of citywide 70.4% electoral support for Trump, when the actual number was 62.6%), which begs the question of why Der Spiegel even invested in Relotius’ three week trip to the U.S., whether they should demand their money back from him, and what kind of institutional breakdown led to the supposedly world-class Der Spiegel fact-checking team completely dropping the ball on this one.

The two found so many lies in Relotius’ portrayal of their town, they had to settle for exposing only the 11 most absurd ones in their article.

But Relotius’ troubles may be just beginning. His former employer is set to file a criminal complaint against him after learning that he may have embezzled donations intended for Syrian street children.

It turns out he likely fabricated stories about homeless Syrian children living on the streets of Turkey, then established a fund to help them financially and to get some of them adopted. But the donations were allegedly directed to his own bank account.

Even his “compassion” is fake.

Personal Liberty

Jay Baker

has been editorial director of Personal Liberty® and The Bob Livingston Letter™ since 2008. He previously worked as a reporter and editor for several newspapers — including Alabama’s largest daily, The Birmingham News — and as editor of a business magazine. Jay also served stints as marketing and public relations director in the healthcare, banking and construction industries. This experience makes him especially adept at digging through the lies, doublespeak and folderol emanating from places of power.