Air Force general blows whistle on Obama admin, but why isn't this a big story?

http://www.examiner.com/article/air-force-general-blows-whistle-on-obama-but-media-deaf

<BLOCKQUOTE>
"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

<p>
"If an Air Force general blows the whistle on the Obama White House, does anyone in the media hear the corruption?"


</BLOCKQUOTE>


A United States Air Force general is blowing the whistle on another alleged White House scandal, but few in the news media seem to be listening.



According to General William Shelton, the commanding officer of U.S. Air Force's space command, he was told to alter his testimony before the House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Strategic Forces regarding an Obama White House attempt to award a defense contract to the Lightsquared firm.



Lightsquared is a high-tech company doing business in Virginia that's owned by billionaire Philip Falcone, an Obama friend and campaign contributor.

Do you know the specifics of the 4g network conflicts with existing GPS systems? What were the modifications, and if a domestic system can disrupt GPS.....what are our enemies doing?

I am not a 1N4 and I will take it that the general has a bit more knowledge on this issue above my own. I'm glad he stood up and said something NOW before all this went into the works and something drastic happened. It looks like the general takes his OATH to the Constitution quite seriously. We should all be thankful.

I am not trying to be a smart asz, but do you not find the most disturbing part of this story that our GPS systems could so easily be distorted......and you know better than me how integral GPS has become in our delivery of weapons, why is this general not talking about methods to protect our GPS from interference. I think we could become a toothless lion if a simple 4g domestic cell provider can bring down our national defense. Something is way out of proportion on this story, and it may have been a simple adjustment to the system which seems to be suggested, but the more important question is what are we doing to insure the integrity of our systems.

There is limited availabilty for everything that needs to operate off of satellites would be what I surmise. GPS is satellite based for operations. I believe it all comes down to being able to do what we need to do when we need to do it...and that isn't just a military issue either. I'd like my plane to get where I am going when I travel. It's a big issue.

I highly doubt that the general is making mountains out of molehills on this one. He's got four stars and beyond the CSAF job, he has no peers and few bosses at all. If the man says there is a problem, then there is a problem.

more chicago politics.

however, i do believe we are under attack from within.

According to a source familiar with the Lightsquared probe, many officers at the Pentagon are highly suspicious of the President, the White House staff and even Obama's appointees at the Defense Department.

Chrissy wrote:more chicago politics.

however, i do believe we are under attack from within.

According to a source familiar with the Lightsquared probe, many officers at the Pentagon are highly suspicious of the President, the White House staff and even Obama's appointees at the Defense Department.

This is why you are not credible and never will be.

Apparently Phil Falcone donates to both R's and D's. If there is genuine concern with the new tech interfering with the old tech, why is the General disseminating to the media instead of addressing the perceived problems with the system? This reminds me of McChrystal and ROLLING STONE. That was a career killer, not to mention the treasonous implications.

Chrissy wrote:more chicago politics.

however, i do believe we are under attack from within.

According to a source familiar with the Lightsquared probe, many officers at the Pentagon are highly suspicious of the President, the White House staff and even Obama's appointees at the Defense Department.

If there's pay to play going on here, it's from the R's in Congress who will have to forego their political payback for defense contracts.

Floridatexan wrote:
Apparently Phil Falcone donates to both R's and D's. If there is genuine concern with the new tech interfering with the old tech, why is the General disseminating to the media instead of addressing the perceived problems with the system? This reminds me of McChrystal and ROLLING STONE. That was a career killer, not to mention the treasonous implications.

Reread, the general was getting pressure to act as if this system would be A-OK to implement. Obviously, that is not the case and he made his point known to those pressuring him. They didn't relent for him to paint it with a rosy picture. He beats them to the punch (probably took notes from the McChrystal incident and didn't want to get thrown under the bus) and goes public so that AMERICANS will know that the admin is putting political payoffs to donors ahead of National Security. Generals are pretty much politicians anyhow. He's been watching how this admin plays ball and is going to play by their rules- scorched earth policies. At least he gets the first and last word. Now the ball is in the admin's court and the citizens are watching.

As for fixing it, well, the military only has so much money to invest in C2 and Congress/POTUS isn't giving them anymore to do the job so it obviously cannot get done without risking our nation's safety. Ask the Obama admin why they put military leaders in these sorts of situations repeatedly.



FYI- McChrystal is a hero.

PACEDOG#1 wrote:

Floridatexan wrote:
Apparently Phil Falcone donates to both R's and D's. If there is genuine concern with the new tech interfering with the old tech, why is the General disseminating to the media instead of addressing the perceived problems with the system? This reminds me of McChrystal and ROLLING STONE. That was a career killer, not to mention the treasonous implications.

Reread, the general was getting pressure to act as if this system would be A-OK to implement. Obviously, that is not the case and he made his point known to those pressuring him. They didn't relent for him to paint it with a rosy picture. He beats them to the punch (probably took notes from the McChrystal incident and didn't want to get thrown under the bus) and goes public so that AMERICANS will know that the admin is putting political payoffs to donors ahead of National Security. Generals are pretty much politicians anyhow. He's been watching how this admin plays ball and is going to play by their rules- scorched earth policies. At least he gets the first and last word. Now the ball is in the admin's court and the citizens are watching.

As for fixing it, well, the military only has so much money to invest in C2 and Congress/POTUS isn't giving them anymore to do the job so it obviously cannot get done without risking our nation's safety. Ask the Obama admin why they put military leaders in these sorts of situations repeatedly.



FYI- McChrystal is a hero.

You, sir, are a traitor to the President, a traitor to your country, and a traitor to your own soul.

PACEDOG#1 wrote:


A United States Air Force general is blowing the whistle on another alleged White House scandal, but few in the news media seem to be listening.



According to General William Shelton, the commanding officer of U.S. Air Force's space command, he was told to alter his testimony before the House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Strategic Forces regarding an Obama White House attempt to award a defense contract to the Lightsquared firm.



Lightsquared is a high-tech company doing business in Virginia that's owned by billionaire Philip Falcone, an Obama friend and campaign contributor.

The reason few are listening is because the source is The Examiner, a website of people who contribute stories, including plagiarized ones, like from Sharon Gray, and who are called "Examiners," not journalists. Examiner.com's writers lack integrity to write articles that are accurate and factual and instead mislead readers.

http://www.sfweekly.com/2007-12-05/news/blogos-free/

The Examiner does, however, reserve the right to remove blogs that include libel or plagiarism. And as of last Thursday, most of the "Around San Francisco" columns disappeared from the paper's site after I asked Gray by phone about what appeared to be work from other news sources, pasted verbatim and without attribution, into her column. By Friday, after I asked Pimentel about the plagiarism, "Around San Francisco" was no longer in the list of www.examiner.com's blogs.

That's apparently because Gray created the appearance of being an unusually industrious investigative reporter, writer, and photographer, when in fact much of her work consisted of material taken from elsewhere on the Internet. This cut-and-paste technique allowed her to post 19 stories in November alone, many of them consisting of news essays of more than 1,000 words with quotes from multiple interviews, and illustrated with numerous photographs taken from around California.

Rather than attributing these stories to their actual sources, Gray's Examiner page stated: "Note that most of photos and text on this site are from Sharon's upcoming books, Sharon Gray's Around San Francisco, San Francisco Bay Area Gardens, and Sharon Gray's Around Marin County."

Gray hoped to get publicity for books she planned to write. The Examiner, in return, got to offer a more substantial Web site, while placing profit-making ads next to the blogs. And it apparently didn't use money on costly editing time to ensure her stories met journalistic standards.

But rather than being a profits panacea for the Examiner, Gray's unsupervised, unpaid efforts may actually provide a glimmer of hope to us paid news hacks by showing that free isn't always a bargain.

Gray, by way of explanation, suggested that the Examiner blogs were subject to a different standard than print newspaper stories. "I'm not doing this for pay," she said. "I think it would be different if I were."

Pimentel was unaware of this attribution situation when I spoke with him Friday, but he told me the Examiner has a less-strict standard for accuracy and attribution in stories that appear on the Web. That's because online stories can be changed as journalistic problems emerge, while printed stories require publishing corrections, he said.

"There are obvious different standards," he said. "Content in the [printed] Examiner runs through different editors, so there's a level of accountability that I have to the newspaper. But as we've seen on the Internet, that accountability isn't always there."

Watcher wrote:

PACEDOG#1 wrote:


A United States Air Force general is blowing the whistle on another alleged White House scandal, but few in the news media seem to be listening.



According to General William Shelton, the commanding officer of U.S. Air Force's space command, he was told to alter his testimony before the House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Strategic Forces regarding an Obama White House attempt to award a defense contract to the Lightsquared firm.



Lightsquared is a high-tech company doing business in Virginia that's owned by billionaire Philip Falcone, an Obama friend and campaign contributor.

The reason few are listening is because the source is The Examiner, a website of people who contribute stories, including plagiarized ones, like from Sharon Gray, and who are called "Examiners," not journalists. Examiner.com's writers lack integrity to write articles that are accurate and factual and instead mislead readers.

http://www.sfweekly.com/2007-12-05/news/blogos-free/

The Examiner does, however, reserve the right to remove blogs that include libel or plagiarism. And as of last Thursday, most of the "Around San Francisco" columns disappeared from the paper's site after I asked Gray by phone about what appeared to be work from other news sources, pasted verbatim and without attribution, into her column. By Friday, after I asked Pimentel about the plagiarism, "Around San Francisco" was no longer in the list of www.examiner.com's blogs.

That's apparently because Gray created the appearance of being an unusually industrious investigative reporter, writer, and photographer, when in fact much of her work consisted of material taken from elsewhere on the Internet. This cut-and-paste technique allowed her to post 19 stories in November alone, many of them consisting of news essays of more than 1,000 words with quotes from multiple interviews, and illustrated with numerous photographs taken from around California.

Rather than attributing these stories to their actual sources, Gray's Examiner page stated: "Note that most of photos and text on this site are from Sharon's upcoming books, Sharon Gray's Around San Francisco, San Francisco Bay Area Gardens, and Sharon Gray's Around Marin County."

Gray hoped to get publicity for books she planned to write. The Examiner, in return, got to offer a more substantial Web site, while placing profit-making ads next to the blogs. And it apparently didn't use money on costly editing time to ensure her stories met journalistic standards.

But rather than being a profits panacea for the Examiner, Gray's unsupervised, unpaid efforts may actually provide a glimmer of hope to us paid news hacks by showing that free isn't always a bargain.

Gray, by way of explanation, suggested that the Examiner blogs were subject to a different standard than print newspaper stories. "I'm not doing this for pay," she said. "I think it would be different if I were."

Pimentel was unaware of this attribution situation when I spoke with him Friday, but he told me the Examiner has a less-strict standard for accuracy and attribution in stories that appear on the Web. That's because online stories can be changed as journalistic problems emerge, while printed stories require publishing corrections, he said.

"There are obvious different standards," he said. "Content in the [printed] Examiner runs through different editors, so there's a level of accountability that I have to the newspaper. But as we've seen on the Internet, that accountability isn't always there."

Oh yeah, this is just a made up story,,,,