Yesterday we noted that CNN had buried their poll reflecting vast unfavorable public opinion of President Obama.
Indeed, even though the poll was taken by CNN/ORC they didn’t even provide the raw poll data that’s customarily available. Instead they couched their perspective on the information inside an article discussing Syria and ISIS:

[…] Obama’s upcoming speech comes as two Americans were murdered and grisly images and stories of the terrorist group needlessly killing enemies have emerged from Iraq and Syria. So far, Americans are not happy with how Obama has addressed the ISIS situation. The CNN/ORC poll shows that only 30% of Americans think that he has a clear plan for dealing with ISIS.

Overall, the President’s approval rating is 43%, while 55% disapprove how he is handling his role as commander in chief. (link)

Setting aside the fact that oddly 30% of Americans think President Obama has a clear plan for dealing with ISIS – after he said last week he did not have a strategy for ISIS – we can only assume 30% of those polled don’t watch or read the news.  I digress…
Occasionally serendipity steps into the room and provides an opportunity to expand on the discussion. This time serendipity is an MRC Study released yesterday which takes an empirical and historical look at media reported polling for President Obama (2014) vs. President Bush (2006). The results are as eye-opening as they are staggering.
(MRC) It’s no secret that television news has long been addicted to public opinion polls; decades ago, all three broadcast networks decided to partner with an influential newspaper (ABC News with the Washington Post; CBS News with the New York Times; and NBC News with the Wall Street Journal) to sponsor their own regular surveys for use in their political coverage. (more…)

Do you remember when President Obama was debating Mitt Romney and he said this:

Well check out the list of advisors attending tonights’ Think Tank dinner:
We are doomed. RT @Bridget_PJM: The let’s-strategize-on-ISIS dinner list tonight, via the White House pic.twitter.com/kJI02cdBhI
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) September 9, 2014
(more…)

If you wanted to find a copy of the CNN/ORC Poll that Jake Tapper referenced during his Monday evening “The Lead” TV show, good luck.
Young Tapper stated the results of a CNN poll released today were “devastating to [president] Obama“. Apparently Tapper is correct because you won’t find the poll data on any CNN website.
And you won’t find any high visibility mention of it either.
If you dig far enough you’ll find an article on Syria / ISIS that references it, but that’s as far as it goes.  And if you read all the way down the article you find:

[…] Obama’s upcoming speech comes as two Americans were murdered and grisly images and stories of the terrorist group needlessly killing enemies have emerged from Iraq and Syria. So far, Americans are not happy with how Obama has addressed the ISIS situation. The CNN/ORC poll shows that only 30% of Americans think that he has a clear plan for dealing with ISIS.
Overall, the President’s approval rating is 43%, while 55% disapprove how he is handling his role as commander in chief. (link)

BINGO – Now we know why the actual poll data is missing. Candy Crowley must have it under her office cushion.
Nothing to see here folks, move along… move along.

The key issue is not that ISIS is using U.S. made weapons.  Given ISIS geographic conquests it would be expected, vis-à-vis Iraq, they were able to capture weapons and armament.     No, it’s the *type* of weapons, specifically boxed M16’s, which identifies the covert shipments to Syria we outlined within the Benghazi Brief.   

In 2012 those small arms were shipped to Syria as a result of President Obama’s authorization.  Saudi Arabia and Qatar were providing the financing, Turkey provided an initial storage base near Adana where the nerve center for supporting what became ISIS was set up.   The UN peacekeeper Kofi Annan was pulled out of Syria, and U.S. weapons were poured in.

On September 5th 2012 a Libyan flag ship called Al Entisar docked in the Turkish port of Iskenderun, it carried small arms and rockets from the U.S. originally destined for the Free Syrian Army.  However, by that point the FSA had collapsed and most of the leaders defected to join what is now ISIS.

(Via Raw Story) Islamic State fighters appear to be using captured US military issue arms and weapons supplied to moderate rebels in Syria by Saudi Arabia, according to a report published on Monday.

The study by the London-based small-arms research organisation Conflict Armament Research documented weapons seized by Kurdish forces from militants in Iraq and Syria over a 10-day period in July.

The report said the jihadists disposed of “significant quantities” of US-made small arms including M16 assault rifles and included photos showing the markings “Property of US Govt”. (more…)

As predicted:  The “Mike Brown Effect” Comes To Memphis Tennessee – A white male is jumped in the parking lot of a grocery store.  Two store employees try to stop the beating.   Video shows the cheering crowd chasing and then gleefully beating and kicking the employees. A young black female videotaped the assault while gleefully proclaiming “they got a white dude.”  This beating took place Saturday September 6th – Reverse the races and Don Lemon/Anderson Cooper/Sonni Hostin would be airing 24/7…..
[…] According to police, three white people were jumped by a large group of teenagers who were chanting “fam mob.” The black group, who came from CiCi’s Pizza, reportedly attacked a 25-year-old white customer as he left his car to enter Kroger.

Two white employees, ages 17 and 18, were attacked while trying to stop the fight. Both were “struck several times in the head and face while being knocked to the ground”. The victims say large pumpkins were thrown at their heads. They both were eventually knocked unconscious. (more…)

Not to put too fine a point on it, yet knowing President Polling is going to deliver a magnanimous prime-time speech in a few days, the Syrian conversation with Chuck Todd needs, or, well, deserves a little e-x-p-a-n-s-i-o-n.

Obama will give a speech to explain the United States’ "game plan" in the fight against #ISIS. http://t.co/HdZ7A9m4qZ pic.twitter.com/zwe45HazQY

— CNN International (@cnni) September 8, 2014

During a rather revealing part of the interview between Chuck Todd and President Obama the specific issue of Syria came up surrounding ISIS.   Viewers should note in the entire dialogue it was not Obama who brought up Syria, it was Chuck Todd. (Video @9:20)
Mr. Todd even seemed a little perplexed with having to do it; albeit reluctantly, as if he knew he needed to. If Chuck Todd’s new role on MTP is to attempt credibility retention he held no choice, he had to bring up the geography.  Todd specifically needed to ask, because Dear Leader avoided mentioning Syria throughout the previous ten minutes:

@09:25 President Obama: “the boots on the ground have to be Syrian”.
Chuck Todd interjects “but WHO”?
President Obama has publicly committed himself to the removal of Syrian head Basher Assad.  His public proclamations to Assad’s removal make getting cooperation from the Syrian National Army a little disingenuous amid the option scale.
Additionally we know the Free Syrian Army (FSA) is little more than a corrupted fractured contingent of ne’er-do-wells, most of which defected to join ISIS.  And then we have Dear Leader’s previous statements saying to the New York Times’ Tom Freidman it is “fantasy” to think “an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth” could battle “a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, [and] a battle-hardened Hezbollah.”
So naturally Chuck Todd had to ask the question: Whose boots does Obama plan on supporting?
To wit POTUS puts three groups on the table: The Syrian national army, ISIS, and some weirdly defined “Moderate Opposition” – and then says we should support the moderate opposition who are “pinched between the Syrian Army and ISIS“.

STOP  

{{Insert Scratching Record Sound}}}

Let’s just imagine a REAL REPORTER was sitting in that seat across from POTUS. (more…)

There are moments in edited TV content when a keyed-in viewer can see a cut intended to make a “comfort edit”, smoothing out the narrative. The Chuck Todd interview with President Obama was riddled with them. Even when being interviewed by a fellow ideological traveler.

But first to content:
On ISIS:
@00:24 “this administration has” – President Obama using third person distancing tactic discussing an uncomfortable negative. When the topic is positive, or viewed as favorable currency, the term “my administration” is used.
@01:05 “what I have done over the past several months” – President Obama knowing he was caught flat-footed, having called ISIS “JV”, and having admitted not having a strategy is now trying to give appearance of them having been working on this all along.
@01:45 “the next phase, is to start going on some offense” – Again, framing incompetence as if there was a previous outline/plan in place. This is similar to the re-writing of the Syrian RED LINE strategy, ‘yeah, yeah, we, um, we meant to um, create that Russian intervention WMD thing’. Embarrassingly juvenile for a President. (more…)

(HatTip MoonBattery) Oskar Freysinger, a member of the Swiss Parliament gave a passionate speech filled with truth that no politician in Washington, DC has yet to give from the floor of Congress. He calls out Islam for what it is: A dogma that is gnawing away at the pillars of our system of laws, wherever it is granted the space to do so. Video courtesy of Walid Shoebat

I said it two weeks ago, and I’ll say it again, Parks and Crump are trolling for a “DeeDee”. The only thing blocking them from executing that page of the playbook is optics. Well, us, and the optics of their insufferably predictable history.
Saint Louis – Among the claims that ignited the fury over the fatal shooting of Michael Brown were that Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson chased the unarmed teen on foot, shot at him as he ran away, then fired a barrage of fatal shots after Brown had turned around with his hands up.
Almost all of the witnesses who shared these accounts with media either knew Brown; lived at or near the Canfield Green apartments, where the shooting occurred; or were visiting friends or relatives there.
http://instagram.com/p/riPFZ8oeQy/
But there were two outsiders who happened to be working outside at the apartment complex on Aug. 9 — two men from a company in Jefferson County — who heard a single gunshot, looked up from their work and witnessed the shooting.
http://instagram.com/p/r3uWpyIeQL/?modal=true
(more…)

Many people do not fully comprehend the scope of how critical this question is.
The post shooting events of the Big Mike Brown incident might just be one of the most captured timeframes in social media history. Virtually half of the community who walked out their front door recorded some aspect of the shooting. In addition to being a reflection of the new social media impact – those recordings can be key pieces of a puzzle.
By now everyone should be familiar with what we have labeled the “Black Canseco” video. [Again, the name is merely an identifier for the video recording, it does not signify anything beyond a convenient label].
This image is a panoramic view of the position where the Black Canseco recording took place.  (click to enlarge)

And for a cognitive refresh here’s the video:

This video is a key element because it holds significant research value. We know the body of Big Mike Brown was covered at 12:17pm, so we are able to identify the start time of this video 10 minutes earlier, or around 12:07pm. A mere 5 minutes after the shooting itself which was at 12:02pm. (more…)