Fake News

Propaganda

Propublica is a leftist rag spending a lot of it’s binary ink bitching about guns. The issue I have is in how they deliberately frame and distort facts in order to advance their agenda. Case in point is this headline:

This Gun Shop Stayed Open Despite Repeated Violations. Then A Chicago Cop Was Killed With One Of Its Guns

So how did the gun wind up in the hands of a criminal? Olivia Burgos bought the 10mm Glock handgun from Range USA, in Merrillville, Indiana, on May 27, 2024, by lying on an ATF form about why she bought the gun, where she lived, and about her addiction to illegal drugs. She admitted to buying the gun for her boyfriend, who gave her the money for the gun and was a convicted felon who was not allowed to buy or possess firearms. It’s unknown how the gun made it from the boyfriend to the cop murdering criminal.

The story spins this into an indictment of the gun store itself, claiming that this one gun store had been cited for “serious compliance failures on multiple occasions” by the ATF. One thing that’s important to remember is the chain of stores in question have 50 locations in 14 different states. In other words, this isn’t a gun store, it’s 50 gun stores. There is no mention of just how many citations were issued, nor the severity of most of those issues. The ones that were mentioned are:

  • The Merrillville store faced revocation of its license following a 2022 inspection that determined a background check was missing for one sale. The ATF later rescinded the citation after the store provided proof that the background check had actually been conducted. In other words, not a violation.
  • In 2021 at the store in Dayton, the ATF determined an employee sold a firearm to a person who failed a background check, records show. Company representatives admitted to the agency that the employee had failed to follow store policy and “missed the appropriate connections” concerning illegal sales, despite training.
  • The next year in Lewis Center, an ATF inspector found that a sales clerk had falsified records of a gun sale after accepting an expired conceal-and-carry permit in lieu of conducting a background check

The cop killed that supposedly spawned this article? Yeah, the gun used in the April 26, 2026 murder was in fact sold by Range, USA. In 2024.

Authorities said Bartholomew and another officer transported robbery suspect Alphanso Talley to the hospital April 25 after he claimed to have swallowed narcotics. Prosecutors said Talley pulled a hidden handgun from beneath a blanket while preparing for a CT scan and opened fire on the officers before briefly escaping custody.

So how can you lay this at the feet of the gun store? How is a gun store to know that the woman buying a gun is not going to give it to her drug dealing boyfriend who will soon sell the gun on the black market before two years later, it eventually winds up in the hands of a murderer that kills a cop?

Everyone knows there is no way for the gun store to know this. That isn’t the point. This is being used as some sort of ‘gotya’ to a large firearms retailer. This retailer has 50 store locations- actually, they are each required to have their own FFL, so we are really talking about 50 separate gun stores. What is that? 100,000 guns per year in those 50 stores?

The insinuation of this article is that Range USA is somehow deliberately selling guns to criminals. They don’t come right out and say that, because it isn’t true and they would likely get sued for it. So instead they frame the facts in such a way as to encourage the reader to make that connection themselves. It’s one of the three ways to tell a lie, according to Robert Heinlein:

  • lie with a straight face; anybody with enough gall to raise on a busted flush can do that
  • The first way to lie artistically is to tell the truth — but not all of it.
  • The second way involves telling the truth, too, but is harder: Tell the exact truth and maybe all of it…but tell it so unconvincingly that your listener is sure you are lying.

In leaving out the important details, they are misrepresenting the facts, and this is a form of lying. If you have to lie in order to make your point, perhaps your point isn’t worth making.

By Divemedic, ago

That’s Some Soviet Shit

Remember when the left got their panties in a bunch when Florida prohibited teaching about gay sex? Papers were written, and the left’s chorus were all claiming it was a First Amendment violation. (pdf warning- not hosted here)

Proving once again that, if it weren’t for double standards, the left would have no standards at all, Virginia has passed a law that defies belief. It is now a crime in Virginia for a school to “state, suggest, or present as credible a statement or suggestion that there was extensive election fraud that could have changed or actually changed the results of the 2020 presidential election.” 

Not only that, but the same law says that school instruction must “Describe the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the United States Capitol as an unprecedented, violent attack on United States democratic institutions, infrastructure, and representatives for the purpose of overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

Not only is this law egregious, but CBS’ reporting of it is as bad. The reporting here would have made Goebbels or Zhdanov proud. First lie is in the headline:

Virginia passes legislation prohibiting schools from teaching falsehoods about Jan. 6 riot

Read the money quote:

The White House posted a series of lies about Jan. 6 on an official federal government web page on Jan. 6, 2026, including a bogus claim that police bore responsibility for the attack.

So is telling teachers to teach only one side of a story propaganda, or not? A First Amendment issue, or not? Wouldn’t it be better in a politically charged case like this one, to present both sides and let students decide for themselves? Are we teaching students how to think, or what to think?

  • “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
  • “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
  • “All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth. I don’t think this matters so long as one knows what one is doing, and why.”

By Divemedic, ago

Propaganda

As I read this article, a supposed interview of the Minneapolis police chief, a couple of thoughts came to mind:

1 This is not an interview, it’s a propaganda piece

At one point in the interview, a supposed person driving by recognized the police chief and yelled out: “How dare you let this happen here? You should be fucking ashamed. You should be fucking sick. Fucking pig.” Yeah. That moment, some random passer-by, just happened to pass by when the chief was being interviewed on camera. I believe that. This entire piece is propaganda worthy of the old Soviet Union.

2 What we are seeing in real time, is an insurrection. There is nothing else to call it. This is a state, multiple states, in fact, that are openly defying Federal authority. The governor has said he is calling out the national guard to support local law enforcement. Support them in doing what? Defying or even attempting to arrest ICE agents, in my opinion. This is a thinly veiled threat.

The left is going to take over the government. Not by force. The useful idiots are going to help them. At the next election or two, the left will gain enough power to begin the purge. It’s coming. I’ve been saying it since the Floyd riots in 2020. Shit is going to get ugly. It’s taking longer than I thought, but this is perhaps being moderated a bit by the average American’s attention span.

By Divemedic, ago

Poverty Calculation

We always hear about poverty, but just how does the government decide what poverty is? In the 1960’s, a formula was created to define poverty. It was assumed at the time that food comprised one-third of a family’s budget, so any family that earned less than three times the amount of money that it took to buy food for the household was assumed to be poor.

Every year, the government calculates what they think it should cost to feed a family, then multiplies that number by three to arrive at a figure for the poverty line. How do they calculate that? How do they know what it costs to feed a family? Easy. They look at what it cost a family in 1963 to sustain itself, then adjust that number for inflation. Nowadays, there are idiots claiming that this number isn’t accurate- and I will grant you it isn’t- but they are using that to claim the new poverty number is 16, that is, a family needs to make 16 times what it costs for food in order to not be poor: $140,000 per year for a family of four. If you are poor, you should get government assistance. By this math, 60% of our nation would be living in squalor.

That’s ridiculous.

Where is that number coming from? The leftists claim that this is because the cost of childcare, Internet, and cell phones. First off, if you can afford cell phones and Internet, you aren’t poor. There are people all over the world who manage to exist without those things. Social safety nets are there to make sure people don’t starve. They aren’t there to buy Pizza Hut, video games, and cell phone porn.

The left is invested in making this economy look bad. They want Americans unhappy with the economy. There is an election next year, and Americans vote with their wallets. The press needs to hammer this home every day: “The economy sucks, but Joe Biden’s 9% inflation was the best economy in the past 50 years. Vote for us.”

Instead, let’s use the World Bank’s definition: Making less than $3.00 per person, per day. Under that definition, a family of four would be living in poverty if they had a household income of less than $4,400 per year. I will even be generous- we live in the richest nation in the world, so make that $10 per person, per day. A family of four who makes less than $14,600 is below the poverty line.

Would it suck to make that little? Sure it would. Being poor sucks. However, $10 per person, per day would make you more wealthy than 61% of the planet. That’s why we can’t afford to keep importing more and more poor people- they aren’t enriching us, they are dragging us down into poverty with them.

By Divemedic, ago

Tampa Bay Times

The recent court decision striking down Florida’s open carry ban prompted Publix to issue a statement stating that it would not ban individuals who openly carry firearms from its stores. Even though other stores like Aldi issued statements saying that anyone seen open carrying in their stores would be asked to leave, Publix realized that such policies don’t reduce the number of firearms in their establishment, but only cause them to be concealed. Being that the left is all about emotion and not logic, this really pissed off the left.

In typical leftie fashion, the Tampa Bay Times immediately launched an op-ed that compares apples to bowling balls. See, Publix plainly states in their policy:

Publix follows all federal, state and local laws. In any instance where a customer creates a threatening, erratic or dangerous shopping experience — whether they are openly carrying a firearm or not — we will engage local law enforcement to protect our customers and associates.

But that isn’t good enough for the communists at the Times. So they immediately launched an imaginary Q&A, comparing various items against open carry. They compare bringing pets into the store (which is prohibited by health regulations), policies limiting the number of coupons you can redeem each day, and the Publix policy against cakes with any flag that isn’t the US Flag against cakes with the Mexican, Canadian, or the flag they really want- the Fag Flag against the policy of not prohibiting open carry.

They claim that the sight of guns bother some Publix customers, so Publix should ban open carry. Do you know what else bothers some Publix customers? Seeing men wearing dresses pulling their dicks out in the women’s restroom. I would bet that the Times wouldn’t like it if a business banned that.

I can’t wait for newspapers to eventually go the way of the telegram. They are nothing more than leftie propaganda. To quote Thomas Jefferson:

The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth

However, as he rightly points out, newspapers are preferable to tyrannical government:

The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs through the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them.

However, newspapers have indeed become the propaganda arm of the communists. It is Social Media, and to a lesser extent, blogs that are informing the American public. The days of newspaper editors telling us what to think is long past. That’s why the media’s influence has faded to nearly zero- most people know that it is nothing more than slanted propaganda.

By Divemedic, ago

Meltdown

Many on the right AND the left are melting down because the MSM is reporting that Trump is letting the Qatar government build an airbase in Idaho. This is pure, 3D level bullshit.

First, it isn’t an operational base. It’s a training facility located within the US Air Force Base in Mountain Home, Idaho. That base has been used for decades as a training facility for US allies to train their pilots to fly aircraft that they have purchased from the US. Singapore was there before Qatar as the 428th Fighter Squadron, flying the F-15.

Second, this deal was made as a part of a purchase agreement that was signed eight years ago as a part of a $12 billion deal where Qatar paid for 36 F-15 fighters, with the option to double that number to 72 aircraft. The deal included the aircraft, weapons, maintenance support, spare parts, ground support equipment, and TRAINING on all of the above. This facility is part of the training for this equipment.

Stop freaking out. The US has done this for DECADES. There is nothing nefarious going on. Good Lord, you would think people would know by now that the MSM is lying.

By Divemedic, ago