Predictably, the vast majority of the people and the outlets that shared this exchange failed to note that the violations being discussed had occurred during the previous administration, while those who did know failed to ask themselves (and others) why the violations didn’t receive similar coverage when they were first exposed. Instead, they jumped straight to the conclusion that the federal government, headed up by President Trump, was deliberately inflicting pain on babies. This isn’t true.
It wasn’t true during the Obama administration either. Then, as now, the violations weren’t part of an intentional or evil ploy, but were the product of the system’s being overloaded. Then, as now, the intended care at these facilities was humane, and consistent within the requirement under Flores. In 2014, the Obama administration was dealing with a serious crisis: a large influx of unaccompanied minors that strained the facilities. In 2019, the Trump administration is dealing with a serious crisis: a large influx of unaccompanied minors that strains the facilities.
The absence of coverage back in 2014 makes perfect sense. After all:
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jun 24, 2019 at 5:30 pm Link
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Power Line takes a deep dive into “the mixed-up files of Rep. Ilhan Omar.” The above link takes you to all of their recent posts on Omar, but you can drill down into a couple of the highlights by following the links included in the excerpts below:
Omar’s 2014 and 2015 tax returns reflect her wayward way with the truth, her penchant for shortcuts, and her treatment of the marriage to Elmi as a sham (which I believe it to have been). They also raise obvious questions that the Star Tribune appears so far to have failed to ask.
* * * * * * * * *
In their Ilhan Omar story today, Patrick Coolican and Stephen Montemayor refer repeatedly to Power Line as conservative. Let it be noted, however, that their story tacitly reveals the Star Tribune to be a pillar of Minnesota’s leftist/progressive establishment. Coolican and Montemayor note in passing (italics added): “Campaign e-mails disclosed by the campaign finance board also show a concerted effort to quash the Elmi story. An August 2016 internal e-mail written by campaign spokesman Ben Goldfarb, a veteran DFL operative, suggested reaching out to political newsletter writer Blois Olson ‘and shut it down with him as we do with the Strib.’”
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and that last paragraph makes perfect sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23, 2019 at 4:30 pm Link
It’s indeed strange to hear a leftist who champions anti-Israel causes and anti-Semitic politicians using this phrase, since the Jewish state is the most successful and enduring manifestation of Never Again.
The appearance of “Never Again” also undermines her later contention that she wasn’t talking about the Nazi camps.
We’re forced to take someone seriously who believes vegetables are a tool of colonial oppression because Ocasio-Cortez is both a charismatic elected official with many impressionable fans, and a person bestowed with a huge media platform. Only last weekend, she appeared on “Meet the Press” praising socialism—the other scourge of the 20th century.* Yet when we need our media to ask her to explain her profoundly childish and destructive statements, they are nowhere to be found.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Regarding AOC’s disastrous roll-out of her Green New Deal fantasies at the start of the year, ultimately, they would be enforced with the barrel of a gun. As Virginia Postrel noted about 20 years ago when discussing The Future and its Enemies with Brian Lamb on C-Span:
The Khmer Rouge sought to start over at year zero, and to sort of create the kind of society that very civilized, humane greens write about as though it were an ideal. I mean, people who would never consider genocide. But I argue that if you want to know what that would take, look at Cambodia–to empty the cities and turn everyone into peasants again. Even in a less developed country, let alone in someplace like the United States, that these sort of static utopian fantasies are just that.
Although socialist North Korea begs to differ:
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jun 18, 2019 at 8:45 pm Link
Propelled by her “I’ve got a plan for that” motto, Warren has improved as a retail politician since her first successful U.S. Senate bid in 2012. Proposals like the wealth tax, to go along with her drumbeat of ideas on issues on issues like canceling student debt and breaking up big tech companies, have flipped the media narrative on her presidential campaign. Here is just a short list of recent headlines:
Washington Post: Warren’s nonstop ideas reshape the Democratic presidential race — and give her new momentum
New York Times: Elizabeth Warren Gains Ground in 2020 Field, One Plan at a Time
The Guardian: Elizabeth Warren gains momentum in the 2020 race plan by plan
Bloomberg: Elizabeth Warren Rises in 2020 Race as Policy Focus Catches Fire
CNN: Elizabeth Warren Breaks Through Crowded 2020 Field — With A Plan
Politico: How ‘I got a plan’ became a thing: Warren nerds out and the crowds go crazy
Media members and liberal pundits have touted her as having a “plan for everything.”
Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and their marching in lockstep all makes sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jun 12, 2019 at 12:35 pm Link
Infuriated by headlines about a Harris speech declaring that she is defending her record as a prosecutor, Stephen Robinson writes:
Is Harris on trial here? Why is she “defending her record”? Did she lose all her cases like the prosecutor who faced off against Perry Mason each week? That guy needed to explain himself. Harris put [bad words] in prison. She imprisoned [bad words] so well she was the first woman elected district attorney of San Francisco and the first black woman to become attorney general of California. She’s the Serena Williams of law and order.
What is interesting here isn’t Harris’s record, or not-so-surprising development that a left-of-center web site wrote a piece fervently defending Harris’s record. (Whatever else you think of Robinson’s argument, he’s absolutely right when he declares, “it’s insulting to claim that black people can only have an adversarial relationship with the criminal justice system or that a black woman can’t prosecute crimes without betraying her community.”)
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their sycophancy makes perfect sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jun 12, 2019 at 7:45 am Link
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Related: Kevin Poulsen is the symptom, not the disease. “Excuse me, but… what? A reporter from the Daily Beast can just pick up the phone, call up Facebook, and have an official there reveal one of their user’s personal information? How does that work? One might expect that they wouldn’t be doing that for anyone other than a law enforcement official with a warrant.”
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jun 03, 2019 at 12:14 pm Link
Let’s assume, hypothetically, that an independent journalist working in Washington somehow obtained a confidential FBI report on the death of a prominent Trump administration official that described its lurid circumstances, including the presence of a woman not his wife and the use of illegal drugs that caused, or at least contributed to, his demise.
Let’s also assume that the Justice Department responded to the disclosure by raiding the journalist’s home and confiscating computers and other tools of his trade, hoping to learn who leaked the report.
Democratic politicians and civil libertarians would erupt in outrage at a heavy-handed government act intended to discourage journalists from delving into areas that officialdom considered off-limits.
So where is that outrage about the San Francisco Police Department’s May 10 assault on journalist Bryan Carmody, who had obtained a police report about the death of San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi under exactly those unbecoming circumstances?
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their silence makes perfect sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on May 23, 2019 at 8:44 pm Link
Imagine an older, powerful male politician belittling and questioning the intelligence and credibility of a female reporter for the New York Times. If the politician in question were a Republican, the media outrage machine would have kicked in immediately, with angry pieces about the perils of toxic masculinity and journalists under siege in abundance.
But when it’s an old communist senator mansplaining his longstanding anti-American sentiments, it’s just business as usual.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their reluctance to call out their bosses all makes sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on May 21, 2019 at 12:44 pm Link
Mr. Trump is using the issue to rouse his base, including the crucial voting bloc of Christian conservatives for whom abortion is an overarching issue. His false statements that Democrats would “execute” newborn babies — which he has repeated on his Twitter feed, during his State of the Union address and at campaign rallies, sometimes as he mimics swaddling a baby — are being picked up and repeated by conservatives all over the country.”
Catch that description? That the President is making “false statements that Democrats would ‘execute’ newborn babies.”
And right there this story becomes a jewel of an example of left-wing journalism by omission, in this case from the New York Times.
Missing entirely from the article was the name of Virginia Democratic Governor Ralph Northam. It was Northam, appearing on a radio show, who stirred the hornets nest by saying this about aborting babies when the mother is in labor. The direct quote was this, as reported here at National Review Online:
“If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen,” he continued. “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
The passive tense in the headline is telling. The Times can keep a story alive when it wants to, such as when the Gray Lady ran nearly 100 stories on the Augusta National Golf Club between 2001 and mid-2003. Similarly, the paper in Northam’s backyard ran approximately 100 stories in the fall of 2006 on George Allen’s “macaca” gaffe. The media’s selective amnesia on Northam’s blackface and endorsement of infanticide might lead a cynical person to conclude that they’re Democratic Party operatives with bylines, or something.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on May 19, 2019 at 7:44 am Link
As Rubin tweets, “My invite for @PeteButtigieg remains. If he caves to Media Matters, Vox and HuffPo that isn’t a good sign for a presidential candidate. Doing what’s right often means standing up to the mob.”
Buttigieg made the remarks when Hewitt asked him which form of Islamic extremism he thought posed the greatest overall threat.
“Do you find Iranians’ variant of Shia extremism to be more dangerous to the world than the Sunni variant that we see in the Taliban and perhaps in Hamas and some of the more radical elements of Wahhabism?” Hewitt asked.
“Well, you know, not unlike Christianity when it is motivating someone to do something extreme,” Buttigieg responded. “It can have a thousand different flavors.”
Deplorable, as Hillary would say.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on May 18, 2019 at 10:00 am Link
In press materials, ABC admitted the media’s culpability in taking the spotlight off of Kopechne and putting it on Kennedy, stating that “her story has largely been lost to history as the media and the public focused on the man whose career was forever damaged by the accident, rather than the bright and young woman who did not live to tell us what really happened on that mysterious night.”
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and Kopechne becoming a footnote makes perfect sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on May 08, 2019 at 12:45 pm Link
I suspect that all this sudden concern about the word “spying” is because the Obama administration was in fact doing a lot of spying on a lot of political opponents, and the Democrats know it.
Flashback, March 2017: “Hypothesis: The spying-on-Trump thing is worse than we even imagine, and once it was clear Hillary had lost and it would inevitably come out, the Trump/Russia collusion talking point was created as a distraction.”
When we talk about third trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of the mother, with the consent of the physician. More than one physician, by the way. And its done in case where there may be severe deformities, where there may be a fetus that is non-viable.
So, in this particular example, if a mother is in labor I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their amnesia makes perfect sense. Or as a New York Times headline put it at the start of the month, (with a nice use of the passive tense), ‘‘‘It Just Went Poof’: The Strange Aftermath of Virginia’s Cascade of Political Scandals.”
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Apr 28, 2019 at 9:14 pm Link
Mr. Mueller did indict 13 Russian nationals for offenses related to election meddling. We know Moscow spent money on Facebook ads designed to exploit America’s divisions, targeting voters on both sides of the aisle. And Mr. Trump and the Republicans have responded. Under legislation enacted by a Republican Congress, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Russian oligarchs and intelligence agencies.
Beyond the meddling, Mr. Trump has slammed Russia with bold moves designed to weaken Mr. Putin on the world’s stage. This administration imposed sanctions on Russia for violating nonproliferation laws by supporting weapons programs in Iran, Syria and North Korea. The Trump administration also issued more sanctions in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine and its continuing occupation of Crimea. In 2017, the administration expelled 60 Russian intelligence officers and ordered multiple Russian consulates to close after Russia used a military-grade chemical weapon in the U.K. Mr. Trump even blocked Mr. Putin’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which could generate hundreds of millions of dollars for Russia if it goes ahead.
These tough actions have had an effect. Between January and July 2018, the Russian ruble declined 9% against the U.S. dollar. Russia’s Economic Development Ministry expects its economy to grow only 1.3% in 2019. The U.S. economy grew 2.9% in 2018 and is headed for another strong year.
In 2017, Mr. Trump supplied Ukraine with weapons so it could defend itself against Russian attacks. Remember, it was President Obama who stood idly as Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. Under the Trump administration, the U.S. has also engaged in hard-fought battles with Russian mercenaries in Syria.
In a sense, Russia succeeded in its mission to stoke division and fear within America. Some top Democrats have played right into Moscow’s hands by pursuing endless partisan investigations. If Democrats care about thwarting Russian meddling and aggression, they will disavow their conspiracy theory that our president is Mr. Putin’s puppet, and stop wasting taxpayer money peddling disproved collusion narratives. Instead, they can support this administration’s efforts to stand tall against the consistent threat Russia poses to America’s national security.
If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:
Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran
That Trump is planning to do precisely the opposite of these things may or may not be good policy for the United States, but anybody who thinks this is a Russia appeasement policy has been drinking way too much joy juice.
Obama actually did all of these things, and none of the liberal media now up in arms about Trump ever called Obama a Russian puppet; instead, they preferred to see a brave, farsighted and courageous statesman. Trump does none of these things and has embarked on a course that will inexorably weaken Russia’s position in the world, and the media, suddenly flushing eight years of Russia dovishness down the memory hole, now sounds the warning that Trump’s Russia policy is treasonously soft.
Think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines, and no particular loyalty to the country’s best interests, and you won’t go far wrong.
Okay, what’s being left out is that the victim is a legal immigrant from Togo. Whether intentional or not, I’ll let y’all debate that, it’s just another example of how the Left’s narrative about the Trump coalition is wrong. People of color can and do support President Trump. They will do so again in 2020. Trump did better with black voters than Romney and I think he’ll do better with this bloc next year. The Daily Callerhas more.
“Whether intentional or not, I’ll let y’all debate that.” Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Apr 17, 2019 at 4:14 pm Link
In the space of a week in early February, the public was stunned by revelations about each of the three highest statewide elected officials, all Democrats: the racist photo in the governor’s yearbook; accusations of sexual assault against the lieutenant governor; and the attorney general’s appearance in blackface at a party in college. Protesters and news crews swarmed the Statehouse. Calls for resignations came from fellow Virginia Democrats, Republicans and even 2020 presidential candidates.
And then? “It just went poof,” said Natalie Draper, a librarian sitting in the back of a coffeehouse last week in Richmond. “It’s like it never happened.”
Remember, kids:
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Apr 02, 2019 at 12:01 pm Link
It must be noted up front that there’s no evidence that the DNC put her up to doing this. It may be that Dafna Linzer, former WaPo reporter and current managing editor of politics for NBC and MSNBC, simply took it upon herself to do the DNC a solid.
But even if so, that’s news too. Since when does the head of an allegedly independent news organization do a favor for a political party?
Early and often — just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense. NBC’s PR flack is apparently going with “no comment” at the moment, as NBC coordinates damage control. I wonder if Linzer’s fellow former and current Democratic Party operative Chuck Todd, who famously compared old media to sports referees in 2015, will be asked to spin his way out of this one?
Perhaps he meant pro wrestling refs, which would explain the surprise political success in 2016 by a former host of WrestleMania events who knows how to work them properly?
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Mar 29, 2019 at 5:14 pm Link
Trump allies see Barr’s letter as a kind of Swiss Army knife—a tool useful in all kinds of situations. Not only is it exculpatory, they say, but it also implicitly rebukes the press for its coverage of the Russia investigation, inoculating Trump from any future scandal that reporters might unearth. According to a source familiar with internal discussions at the Republican National Committee and the pro-Trump super PAC America First, both organizations are “geared up for any nonsense to come.”
They’re already prepared to attack reporters. “Any reporter who tries that will be hit with 30-second spots of all their ridiculous claims about collusion,” said the source, who, like others interviewed for this story, requested anonymity to describe private conversations. “Their tweets have all been screencapped. It’s all ready to go.” (“It’s the same thing we’ve been doing the last two years. We’re going to hold the media accountable when we see fit,” an RNC official clarified, adding that this would include digital clips shared on social media.)
Earlier this week, Trump’s campaign previewed the in-your-face tactics they have in mind. A campaign official sent a letter to TV producers cautioning them against booking certain guests who had alleged that Trump colluded with Russia, including Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Democratic Representative Adam Schiff of California, and Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez.
“It’s not hard to figure where we’re going to go with this,” a current campaign official told The Atlantic. “We’re still in victory-lap mode, but it will turn into a message that [Democrats] will say or do anything to stop us from making America great again, including making up lies about the president and ruining a lot of people’s lives.”
Well, the nice thing about that argument is that it’s true. And Trump will treat the press like it’s made up of Democratic operatives with bylines, which is also true.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Mar 28, 2019 at 9:16 pm Link
I’M SO OLD, I REMEMBER WHEN CNN STILL PRETENDED TO BE OBJECTIVE:
Last October, during the Kavanaugh hearings, when the Journolist decided that calling the violent left a mob was not permissible on DNC-MSM airwaves, the Daily Caller noted that “CNN host Don Lemon lost his cool with [right-leaning] network commentator Matt Lewis while discussing the ‘mob behavior’ of liberals versus conservatives Tuesday, telling him to ‘shut up’ while he made his point:”
Lewis tried to respond but Lemon wasn’t having it. “Will you let me finish, Matt, please, before you jump in? I’m making a point. Okay?,” he said. “I’m making a point. I can’t make it if you keep interrupting me.”
“You’re making a point. Are you the moderator or the host or arguing a liberal talking point,” Lewis shot back.
It’s the latter. Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Mar 28, 2019 at 12:48 pm Link
Predicting what will be coming, the MRC President [told Fox Business’ Stuart Varney], “I don’t know how CNN undoes the damage, because they not going to stop. They’re going to continue this. Are they going to say, ‘Oops! For two years we were wrong in our slandering of the President?’ They’re never going to do it.”
Exit quote:
“Half of me wants to burst out laughing. The other half of me wants to look seriously at American journalism and look at the damage these people have done to that institution. I don’t know how they repair it. I don’t know how some networks ever come back. I don’t know how Jim Acosta can ever be seen on television without people laughing at them. He’s ruined. Brian Stelter at CNN, Chuck Todd of NBC. These people are never going to be believed again.”
Mr. Mueller did indict 13 Russian nationals for offenses related to election meddling. We know Moscow spent money on Facebook ads designed to exploit America’s divisions, targeting voters on both sides of the aisle. And Mr. Trump and the Republicans have responded. Under legislation enacted by a Republican Congress, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Russian oligarchs and intelligence agencies.
Beyond the meddling, Mr. Trump has slammed Russia with bold moves designed to weaken Mr. Putin on the world’s stage. This administration imposed sanctions on Russia for violating nonproliferation laws by supporting weapons programs in Iran, Syria and North Korea. The Trump administration also issued more sanctions in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine and its continuing occupation of Crimea. In 2017, the administration expelled 60 Russian intelligence officers and ordered multiple Russian consulates to close after Russia used a military-grade chemical weapon in the U.K. Mr. Trump even blocked Mr. Putin’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which could generate hundreds of millions of dollars for Russia if it goes ahead.
These tough actions have had an effect. Between January and July 2018, the Russian ruble declined 9% against the U.S. dollar. Russia’s Economic Development Ministry expects its economy to grow only 1.3% in 2019. The U.S. economy grew 2.9% in 2018 and is headed for another strong year.
In 2017, Mr. Trump supplied Ukraine with weapons so it could defend itself against Russian attacks. Remember, it was President Obama who stood idly as Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. Under the Trump administration, the U.S. has also engaged in hard-fought battles with Russian mercenaries in Syria.
In a sense, Russia succeeded in its mission to stoke division and fear within America. Some top Democrats have played right into Moscow’s hands by pursuing endless partisan investigations. If Democrats care about thwarting Russian meddling and aggression, they will disavow their conspiracy theory that our president is Mr. Putin’s puppet, and stop wasting taxpayer money peddling disproved collusion narratives. Instead, they can support this administration’s efforts to stand tall against the consistent threat Russia poses to America’s national security.
If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:
Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran
That Trump is planning to do precisely the opposite of these things may or may not be good policy for the United States, but anybody who thinks this is a Russia appeasement policy has been drinking way too much joy juice.
Obama actually did all of these things, and none of the liberal media now up in arms about Trump ever called Obama a Russian puppet; instead, they preferred to see a brave, farsighted and courageous statesman. Trump does none of these things and has embarked on a course that will inexorably weaken Russia’s position in the world, and the media, suddenly flushing eight years of Russia dovishness down the memory hole, now sounds the warning that Trump’s Russia policy is treasonously soft.
Think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines, and no particular loyalty to the country’s best interests, and you won’t go far wrong.
Think of them as Democratic party operatives with bylines — and no concern for the welfare of their country — and you won’t go far wrong.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Mar 24, 2019 at 8:25 pm Link
ANN ALTHOUSE ON JOURNALISM’S TRUMP/CHARLOTTESVILLE LIE: “I suspect that they keep repeating the falsehood because they are so clearly wrong that they can’t find any way to back down. And I also think they’ve seen the effectiveness of this attack on Trump. It has worked as propaganda, so why stop now? The hit to their credibility has already occurred, so why not keep manipulating minds?”
Think of them as Democratic Party political operatives with bylines and you won’t be far wrong.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Mar 22, 2019 at 2:44 pm Link
Dana Loesch was suckered into attending in the belief that this would be some sort of civil moderated discussion about the pros and cons of gun control. As it was, she was jeered for noting that some rape victims wished they had a gun during their attack, had people shout “murderer” at her, and allegedly needed a security detail to exit the event safely. Loesch reminisced about the magical evening she had earlier today on Twitter:
* * * * * * * *
It was embarrassing all the way through, less town hall than mob catharsis, and of course they’re being rewarded for it by industry watchdogs rather than reprimanded. If you wonder why big media is frequently so terrible, this is a small part of the answer: They’re incentivized to be that way by their own gatekeepers.
As long as it’s remembered that Cronkite himself, far from being the Mr. “And that’s the way it is,” was one of the original Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and would have loved CNN’s hard left coverage, then it’s an absolutely appropriately named award for CNN’s train wreck.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Mar 19, 2019 at 10:00 pm Link
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: “How Reuters uncovered Beto O’Rourke’s teenage hacking days…Members of the group, which calls itself Cult of the Dead Cow, protected O’Rourke’s secret for decades, reluctant to compromise the former Texas Congressman’s political career. After more than a year of reporting, Menn persuaded O’Rourke to talk on the record. In an interview in late 2017, O’Rourke acknowledged that he was a member of the group, on the understanding that the information would not be made public until after his Senate race against Ted Cruz in November 2018.”
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): As always. . . .
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Mar 16, 2019 at 6:28 pm Link
It was time for humankind and the world’s scientific community to begin to seriously study more extreme solutions to the climate crisis, Broecker said. That included creating a massive solar shield in the Earth’s atmosphere, a tactic known variously as “geoengineering,” “the sulfur solution,” “solar radiation management” and the “Pinatubo Strategy.”
Funny, that’s what John Holdren, former President Obama’s “science” “czar” urged in April of 2009:
In a November 2008 cover story, Time magazine described Mr. Obama’s incoming administration, which was obsessed with radical environmentalism (at least a vehicle for crony corporatism) as “the New New Deal.” It was dubbed the “Green New Deal” by the EU Observer in March of 2009. That year, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. Given all of the talk a decade later in 2019 of this year’s “Green New Deal,” will anyone ask former members of Obama’s administration why they had such a failure of nerve, when environmentalists were using the same grim talk about mankind’s future – or the lack thereof – as today? (We know that no current Democrat be reminded of all of the earlier doomsday prognostications — just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their feigned amnesia makes perfect sense.)
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Mar 03, 2019 at 12:52 pm Link
The only place in San Francisco still pricing real estate like it’s the 1980s is the city assessor’s office. Its property tax system dates back to the dawn of the floppy disk. City employees appraising the market work with software that runs on a dead programming language and can’t be used with a mouse. Assessors are prone to make mistakes when using the vintage software because it can’t display all the basic information for a given property on one screen. The staffers have to open and exit several menus to input stuff as simple as addresses. To put it mildly, the setup “doesn’t reflect business needs now,” says the city’s assessor, Carmen Chu.
San Francisco rarely conjures images of creaky, decades-old technology*, but that’s what’s running a key swath of its government, as well as those of cities across the U.S.
Shades of the New Yorker cover from 2013, which showed Obama with Gordon Gekko’s brick-sized cell phone and Kathleen Sebelius crossing her fingers while Jay Carney nervously inserted a five-inch floppy disk into the TRS-80-era Obamacare server. Not to mention the speeches that Newt Gingrich was giving during the heady Contract With America days of 1994 and 1995, when he would hold up in one hand a vacuum tube, and in the other a microchip. As he explained, vacuum tubes were still in use in some FAA-regulated Air Traffic Control towers in America.
I can walk out of the Apple store on Fifth Avenue in New York, which sees more visitors per day than any DMV office, with a couple thousand dollars’ worth of electronics without ever having to stand in line, much less fill out paperwork. When I found myself in need of an unexpectedly large sum of cash while out of the country a couple of years ago, one telephone call to American Express, lasting less than ten minutes, was all it took. Services such as Seamless and OpenTable have greatly simplified all sorts of commercial transactions, and services such as Uber have begun to disrupt longstanding cartels and monopolies on taxi services and other conveniences. Some services even make dealing with the government easier, such as the concealed-carry apps that use GPS to let you know whether you’re legally packing.
And Leviathan is not happy about that.
Fortunately, beginning in 2016, Democratic operatives with bylines advised out of work coalminers to learn to code, before receiving similar advice from former readers in more recent times. Hopefully all of the efforts of these nascent software engineers will eventually begin to pay off to bring urban governmental software into the 1990s.
* Now who’s being naive, Kay? When I lived in Silicon Valley, the numerous power outages were a reminder that the businesses trying to bring you the 21st century were reliant upon a power grid that, thanks to the NIMBY nature of Bay Area leftists, hadn’t been upgraded since the 1960s heyday of Pat Brown, Jerry’s dad.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Feb 28, 2019 at 2:46 pm Link
I tried to use as many examples as I could of the classic Western, whether it was “Shane” or “High Noon” or “The Magnificent Seven.” They all are the same—the community doesn’t have the skills or doesn’t have the willpower or doesn’t want to stoop to the corrective method to solve the existential problem, whether it is cattle barons or banditos. So they bring in an outsider, and immediately they start to be uneasy because he is uncouth—his skills, his attitude—and then he solves the problem, and they declare to him, whether it is Gary Cooper in “High Noon” or Alan Ladd in “Shane,” “I think it’s better you leave. We don’t need you anymore. We feel dirty that we ever had to call you in.” I think that is what is awaiting Trump…
Still not tired of winning yet. Plus, Neo comments:
The article is interesting for what it presents of Hanson’s thoughts on the matter. But it’s also interesting because of the subtext, which is a cat-and-mouse game the interview believes he’s playing with Hanson. In the latter game, I’m not sure who wins, but I am pretty sure it depends on the bias of who is reading.
When I read the article, Chotiner’s lead-in descriptions of Hanson leapt out at me as being a debunking of the opinions of the man he is set to interview (supposedly respectfully). He can’t do away with Hanson’s obvious academic achievements and honors, but he distorts Hanson’s record outside of academia in a way that is meant to discredit Hanson in the reader’s mind before even reading any of Hanson’s words in the interview.
Well, think of journalists as Democratic operatives with bylines and you won’t go far wrong.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 24, 2019 at 7:30 am Link
As for the Virginia Democrats’ current racism and #metoo-related scandals being tossed down the memory hole, just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Feb 22, 2019 at 1:43 pm Link
“Sean Hannity is going to eat Jussie Smollett’s lunch every single second. Tucker Carlson is going to eat Jussie Smollett’s lunch every single second. The President of the United States is going to eat his lunch.”
As Ed Morrissey writes:
Sorry. Mr. Lemon. The media earned every bit of ridicule and criticism it earned by going all-in on Smollett’s weird claim from the get-go. They earned every bit of criticism for doing the same thing with the Covington Catholic High School kids for the same purpose — to pounce, if you will, all over conservatives, pro-lifers, and anyone who might have a little sympathy for Donald Trump.
At least in some corners of the industry, they haven’t learned a damn thing from either failure. Expect more to come.
“Don Lemon completely gives the game away of why CNN won’t simply own up to this and other failings. Because they are paid to act like opposition. Smollet, Parkland, Covington, list goes on… they believe they are political opposition. Not journalists,” Stephen Miller adds on Twitter.
Back in 20s, H.L. Mencken wrote, “It is the prime function of a really first-rate newspaper to serve as a sort of permanent opposition in politics.” If only old media had gotten that message instead of becoming Democratic Party operatives with bylines.
The problem with what both Rupar and Gibson asserted regarding Trump “lying” about Northam’s stance on late term abortion? They’re both wrong. Trump got it right.
When we talk about third trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of the mother, with the consent of the physician. More than one physician, by the way. And its done in case where there may be severe deformities, where there may be a fetus that is non-viable.
So, in this particular example, if a mother is in labor I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.
Gaslighting. It’s not just for the Green New Deal anymore!
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Feb 13, 2019 at 12:15 pm Link
Using an open records request during a general inquiry, for example, The Post obtained Warren’s registration card for the State Bar of Texas, providing a previously undisclosed example of Warren identifying as an “American Indian.”
Warren filled out the card by hand in neat blue ink and signed it. Dated April 1986, it is the first document to surface showing Warren making the claim in her own handwriting. Her office didn’t dispute its authenticity.
This tidbit (click over for the photo of her Texas bar card) was buried eight paragraphs into a Washington Post story innocuously titled “Elizabeth Warren apologizes for calling herself Native American.” Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and the Post burying the lede makes perfect sense.
UPDATE: Heh — “Governor Northam should call on Senator Warren to resign,” Charles C.W. Cooke jokes on Twitter.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Feb 05, 2019 at 8:22 pm Link
To watch Stelter’s show, Reliable Sources, after a reporting debacle is to watch a master class in whataboutism and faux-persecution, followed by the insistence that even the most egregious lapses in judgment or professionalism are to be expected from time to time and that we should actually be worrying about the real victim here: the media’s reputation. This, suffice it to say, is not helpful. Were a football commentator to worry aloud that a team’s ten straight losses might lead some to think they weren’t any good — and then to cast any criticisms as an attack on sports per se — he would be laughed out of the announcers’ box.
* * * * * * * *
Sometimes consciously, but most often unwittingly, journalists treat Democrats as normal and Republicans as abnormal and proceed accordingly in their coverage. Once one understands the rules, the whole setup becomes rather amusing. When a headline reads “Lawmaker Involved in Scandal,” one can immediately deduce that the lawmaker is a Democrat. Why? Because if he were a Republican, the story would make that clear in the headline. Without fail, stories that begin with “Republicans pounce” are actually about bad things that Democrats have done or said, while stories about bad things that Republicans have done or said begin with “Republican does or says a bad thing” and proceed to a dry recitation of the facts. A variation on this rule is “Republicans say,” which is used when a Republican says something that is so self-evidently true that, had a Democrat said it, it would have been reported straight. For a neat illustration of how farcical things have become, take a look at the Washington Post’s most recent “fact check,” which helpfully informs its readers that the claimed “one thousand burgers” President Trump bought for the Clemson football team were not, in fact, “piled up a mile high” because, “at two inches each, a thousand burgers would not reach one mile high.”
Democracy dies in darkness, indeed.
It’s not at all “unwittingly.” Just think of the media as Democratic party operatives with bylines, and you won’t go wrong.™
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jan 26, 2019 at 5:51 pm Link
Some media outlets and activists are suggesting that Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) is guilty of hypocrisy because he will travel to Canada for surgery related to his 2017 assault at the hands of a neighbor. Paul, after all, has warned loudly against adopting the Canadian health care system.
“Rand Paul, enemy of socialized medicine, will go to Canada for surgery,” tweeted Talking Points Memo. The tweet includes a link to a Courier-Journal story that reminds readers that “Paul has called universal health care and nationalized options ‘slavery.'” Newsweek went a similar route. . . .
Checkmate, libertarians? Nope.
Those who chuckled at this supposed irony missed a major detail, even though it was noted in the press coverage: Paul’s surgery will take place at the Shouldice Hernia Hospital in Thornhill, Ontario. The clinic is private, and run for profit; The Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale, who is from Thornhill, notes that it was “grandfathered in to Ontario’s socialized health system.”
Get beaten nearly to death by a Democrat, go for medical care, get mocked by Democratic Party operatives with bylines. And the press wonders why people hate it.
As a sidenote, I was disappointed to see the Knoxville News-Sentinel pushing this bogus story on Facebook.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 15, 2019 at 7:05 am Link
WE, THE PRESS: “Frank Bruni, formerly the New York Times’s White House reporter and now a columnist for the paper, has a long, long op-ed that is unintentionally revealing. It is headlined, ‘Will the Media Be Trump’s Accomplice Again in 2020?’ As though the press were pro-Trump in 2016! ‘We have a second chance. Let’s not blow it.’ A second chance to help a Democrat beat Donald Trump.”
Just think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines and you won’t go far wrong.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 13, 2019 at 10:20 pm Link
Other former U.S. intelligence officials who have joined the anti-Salman campaign, include ex-CIA director John Brennan, who suggested the United States freeze arms sales to Riyadh, ex-deputy CIA director John McLaughlin, and former CIA official Ned Price. All three are MSNBC analysts, along with other former agency officers. One upside of the Khashoggi operation is that it has helped illuminate another part of the map of the new U.S. media—MSNBC appears to be a destination of choice for CIA leaks.
Blurring the lines between journalists/analysts and officials/operatives is not simply a matter of convenient nomenclature. It’s part of a conscious strategy to legitimize the nature and structure of information operations by obscuring their political character. How dare Trump strip John Brennan’s security clearance! He’s infringing on the former CIA director’s free speech rights—as a journalist.
Branding political operatives and intelligence officials as “press” is also intended to shield these newly minted “analysts” from possible prosecution. Evidence of their crimes and abuses may be found in the steady stream of classified intelligence illegally leaked to a complicit press corps for the purpose of marketing the Russia collusion narrative. By relabeling government officials as “journalists,” the media is protecting both its clandestine confederates and itself.
An analysis of Russiagate coverage also seems to suggest that the Federal Bureau of Investigation tends to favor The New York Times as a delivery mechanism while the Department of Justice prefers The Washington Post. Last month, the Timespublished a story sourced to memos written by FBI officials, including former deputy director Andrew McCabe, portraying Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as a conspirator plotting to bring down Trump. According to the account, Rosenstein told FBI officials that he’d wear a wire to record the president and gather evidence to remove him from office. When it was time for Rosenstein and allies at the DOJ to do damage control, their story went to the Post, published hours after the Times piece, explaining that Rosenstein was being sarcastic about spying on Trump, those FBI guys can’t take a joke!
Read the whole thing. Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.™
Found via Dan McLaughlin, who tweets, “The level of moral compromise involved in supporting Menendez is pretty well illustrated by this headline.”
That the paper’s online slogan is “True Jersey” is a nice added touch. Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Oct 29, 2018 at 1:05 pm Link
Here’s the thing: though there is no question that the GOP, like Democrats, play to the anxieties of its base — this is normal politics — there really were, and are, mobs out to get conservatives.
Conservatives didn’t just imagine the anti-Kavanaugh protesters filling the halls of Congress, harassing GOP senators. Conservatives aren’t imagining campus mobs shouting down conservatives. Republican political consultants didn’t invent the mob at Middlebury College last year that chased Charles Murray off of campus, and physically injured a (liberal) professor who was his host. Nor did the GOP conjure the Yale mob that abused the Christakises over Halloween costumes in 2016.
And on and on. More to the point, Republicans did not invent the mob-like behavior of the news media in the Kavanaugh affair. In the last 24 hours, I’ve heard from three friends — two Democrats, and one anti-Republican independent — who have written to express profound concern about this political moment, and the behavior of the liberal mob. One of the Democrats — no fan of Trump or Kavanaugh — told me that her party has lost her over all this. The independent told me he hasn’t voted GOP in 30 years, but that may change this November, because of the “malice” (his word) on the left. And the third remains a devoted Democrat, but he is agonizing over the demons now taking over his political side, and worries if they can ever be reined in.
In “After Kavanaugh,” Kevin Williamson adds, “The Democrats have created an environment that will render ordinary political discourse almost impossible for years to come:”
This has been shameful, and there should be a reckoning.
That reckoning will not come from the New York Times or from the faculty of the Yale Law School. And it will not come from mind-killed partisans who will believe — or at least pretend to believe — anything that justifies and facilitates their pursuit of power. “She sounded credible to me!” they say. People who are telling us what we want to hear often do. That isn’t good enough — and this cynical smear campaign cannot be allowed to go unanswered. Everybody likes to think that they would have had the good sense and spine to stand against Senator Joseph McCarthy or the House Un-American Activities Committee.
But as the Democrats in rodential retreat go slinking sideways away from this failed attempt at character assassination, what will we do? Not only in November, but after? They would very much like to make this election about Donald Trump, but this has very little to do with the president. They tried to do the same thing to Mitt Romney that they tried with Brett Kavanaugh, and they would have done the same thing if it had been President Romney naming a new justice.
If you don’t punish a political party for this, what do you punish one for?
“I challenge New York Times reporters this morning — not reporters, editors — I challenge Washington Post editors, I challenge Wall Street Journal editors, I challenge editors across America, write that story. What happened with Dr. Ford’s agreement with a congresswoman, with Dianne Feinstein? Why did they leak that story? And more importantly, look at yourself and ask yourself the question, why didn’t we report on this in real time when you sure as hell would have reported on it if [Sen. Chuck] Grassley (R., Iowa) and his office had done the same thing?”
Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense — or as “Comfortably Smug” tweets, “Journalists are the most insidious of paid protesters.”
It’s like in The Verdict, where James Mason’s “Prince of Darkness” character arranges favorable newspaper and TV profiles for the doctors who basically killed Paul Newman’s client, just before the case goes to trial.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Aug 27, 2018 at 10:24 pm Link
Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and the subtext of her statement — that because she’s a Democrat, NBC should be acting as her PR agents — makes perfect sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Aug 12, 2018 at 1:22 pm Link
Imagine if it emerged that the Republican chairman of the House or Senate intelligence committee had a Russian spy working on their staff. Think it would cause a political firestorm? Well, this month we learned that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) had a Chinese spy on her staff who worked for her for about 20 years, was listed as an “office director” on payroll records and served as her driver when she was in San Francisco, all while reporting to China’s Ministry of State Security through China’s San Francisco Consulate. The reaction of the mainstream media? Barely a peep.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and the silence makes perfect sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Aug 10, 2018 at 2:14 pm Link
Readers of these stories aren’t looking for evidence that some guy is an open bigot. They’re looking for evidence that millions of people are secret bigots, people who live in places like Texas, Kansas, Tennessee, small-town New Jersey, etc.
Media outlets that fall for receipt stories don’t just misinform their audience, they do so in a way that damages our nation’s social cohesion.
Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and you’ll understand why they view this as a feature, not a bug. As Fred Siegel wrote in his 2014 history of the American left, The Revolt Against the Masses:
The best short credo of liberalism came from the pen of the once canonical left-wing literary historian Vernon Parrington in the late 1920s. “Rid society of the dictatorship of the middle class,” Parrington insisted, referring to both democracy and capitalism, “and the artist and the scientist will erect in America a civilization that may become, what civilization was in earlier days, a thing to be respected.” Alienated from middle-class American life, liberalism drew on an idealized image of “organic” pre-modern folkways and rhapsodized about a future harmony that would reestablish the proper hierarchy of virtue in a post-bourgeois, post-democratic world.
And with the exception of a few brief time-outs in the culture war for pesky interludes such as WWII and 9/11, it has been ever thus.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jul 25, 2018 at 1:44 pm Link
Tronc, which owns NYDN, sent an email to staff Monday morning announcing it would be “fundamentally restructuring the Daily News,” according to a copy of the memo obtained by the Daily Beast’s Max Tani.
“We are reducing today the size of the editorial team by approximately 50 percent and re-focusing much of our talent on breaking news — especially in areas of crime, civil justice and public responsibility,” the email said.
* * * * * * * *
The biggest cut was editor-in-chief Jim Rich, who foreshadowed the layoffs in an ominous tweet Monday morning.
Rich tweeted, “If you hate democracy and think local governments should operate unchecked and in the dark, then today is a good day for you.”
No, there is another option. It’s entirely possible to believe that journalists should be a watchdog on politicians, without resorting to material such as this:
UPDATE: It’s easy enough already to think of the Daily News as Democratic operatives with bylines, but Andrew Cuomo wants to make it official: Cuomo Offers to Bail Out Daily News with State Money. Pardon the pun, but this is the money quote: “These layoffs were made without notifying the State or asking for assistance.”
“Notifying the state.”
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jul 23, 2018 at 12:14 pm Link
That puts Democrats who are rushing to get behind [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez in a bind, however. Will the news media start asking them about the “occupation of Palestine” in places like Indiana, West Virginia, and Ohio? Or how about even in New York, where Kirsten Gillibrand practically sprained an ankle attempting to embrace Democratic Socialism after Ocasio-Cortez’ surprise win? Does the Akin Rule apply to anyone else other than Republicans?
Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and you’ll know the answer is, “No. Next question?”
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jul 16, 2018 at 12:44 pm Link
Correction: An earlier version of this story misattributed a statement to Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, that no more than 250,000 Americans are in “extreme poverty.” The statement was made by the Permanent Mission of the United States to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva.
“But as so many have pointed out,” Twitchy adds, “isn’t it strange that when a reporter gets something wrong, it’s always something intended to make the Trump administration look bad, uninformed, or uncaring? Why is it that mistakes in reporting never go the other direction?”
Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.™
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Jul 14, 2018 at 5:44 pm Link
Just think of the news as being produced by desperate freaked out Democratic operatives with bylines, and the above headline from Bloomberg Media makes perfect sense.
George Stephanopoulos is still working hard to defend powerful men accused of sexually harassing women. The former Bill Clinton operative turned Good Morning America co-host on Thursday interrogated Linda Vester, the woman who accused Brokaw of unwanted sexual advances and groping. Stephanopoulos, who stood by Clinton as numerous women accused him, lectured Vester: “Tom Brokaw is pretty angry.”
He then questioned her honesty in relating the accusations: “[Brokaw] describes you as a colleague who has trouble with the truth. Are you absolutely convinced that everything you remember about that incident, those incidents with Tom Brokaw are what happened?”
BuzzFeed partnered closely with multiple Democratic and anti-Trump super PACs in 2016 to target its own users with dozens of political advertisements that were not in accordance with its own policies, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation.
Former BuzzFeed Vice President Rena Shapiro, who led the website’s native political advertising team during the 2016 election, described candidly in a pair of unearthed interviews how she partnered closely with political groups to create ads that harnessed the data BuzzFeed collects on its audience of over 650 million people to solve their “ultimate need, which is to get elected, to get their message out there, or to canvas people together to create impact around a cause.”
Plus:
BuzzFeed raised eyebrows in June 2016 when it announced it had canceled a $1.3 million advertising agreement with the Republican National Committee due to disagreements with then-candidate Donald Trump’s “offensive statements.”
Doing business with any group that supports Trump, BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti said after canceling the RNC ad buy, would be “hazardous to our health.”
And:
BuzzFeed’s advertising business demonstrated in 2016 that by refusing to work with pro-Trump political groups it had skin in the political game. But Smith, the website’s editor-in-chief, insists that its news coverage of the president is rooted in the facts. He said in January that the website would have treated a Hillary Clinton presidency the same way they’re treating Trump’s.
But juxtaposing BuzzFeed’s critical coverage of Trump to that of his predecessor, President Barack Obama, suggests otherwise.
BuzzFeed’s coverage of Obama was “almost uniformly uncritical and often sycophantic,” according to a 2016 analysis by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), a left-leaning media watchdog group.
At this point I probably don’t have to remind you to think of them as Democrat operatives with bylines.
Posted at by Stephen Green on May 07, 2018 at 10:09 am Link
That’s also from the Washington Post, which treated this “meme” like swamp-fever conspiracy theorizing.
Despite a reporter covering her letting us know she likes to drink, and despite an email from Palmieri instructing the staff to “sober her up.”
No one in the media asked the obvious follow-up questions or treated this as anything more than a silly internet conspiracy theory meme.
Combine that quote, and all the pictures of Hillary enjoying a cocktail or five (see below) with what didn’t get reported, and you have a genuine scandal — only partly about Hillary’s level of alcohol consumption.
Mostly, it’s about what the press knew but decided to hide from the public.
I know I’m writing this in a humorous way, but this is actually a question I’ve had for two years, and I’ve never seen the media touch it.
Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on May 02, 2018 at 8:41 am Link
There are poor ways, average ways, and shrewd ways to tackle the constitutional problems that arise from the administrative state. Many Republicans either don’t realize the problems of an unelected bureaucracy’s power, or fail to combat those problems effectively. Pruitt is in the final category, demonstrating competency and a devotion to rule of law. And he has the courage that so many of his GOP peers lack, not being intimidated by the normal media frenzy that intimidates other Republican appointees.
Recently, a coordinated attempt to oust him has taken shape, as this liberal TV producer notes:
Just think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines and… you know the rest.
The most charming of which might have been Bill Kristol, about whom Hemingway notes, “this week tweeted his desire for Michelle Obama to run and defeat Donald Trump, said Pruitt was a parody of sycophancy for supporting a conservative deregulatory agenda.”
Posted at by Stephen Green on Apr 05, 2018 at 12:07 pm Link
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: Journalism is Dead.
Journalists weren’t interested in that, or anything else associated with the memo. They, like McMullin, couldn’t care less about government abusing its power as long as it does it against people they don’t like. We saw this play out with the IRS scandal during the Obama administration – the media ignored it as long as they could, talked about it for a quick minute, then returned to repeating the lie that Obama’s tenure was “scandal-free.”
Were Trump not President, were the Oval Office occupied by any of the other candidates who ran in 2016, the story would be nearly the same. There might not be the personal ferocity or sense of urgency, but the simmering contempt would still be there and it would still dominate the actions of these people.
They don’t care. Journalism is dead. It didn’t die of natural causes, it was murdered by its practitioners in the name of attacking Republicans, in particular Donald Trump.
Huh — seems like it was just last month that half the MSM were telling us all to go see Steven Spielberg’s new movie, The Post.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on Feb 04, 2018 at 5:44 pm Link
Shades of the New Yorker cover from 2013, which showed Obama with Gordon Gekko’s brick-sized cell phone and Kathleen Sebelius crossing her fingers while Jay Carney nervously inserted a five-inch floppy disk into the TRS-80-era Obamacare server. Not to mention the speeches that Newt Gingrich was giving during the heady Contract With America days of 1994 and 1995, when he would hold up in one hand a vacuum tube, and in the other a microchip. As he explained, vacuum tubes were still in use in some FAA-regulated Air Traffic Control towers in America.
