More on Shoddy Journalism

Michael Crichton:

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

Troll Level Galactic Mega-God

Cost Disease

Scott Alexander:

College is worse

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/

On Free Speech

Justice Louis Brandeis:

Those who won our independence . . . believed liberty to be the secret of happiness, and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that, without free speech and assembly, discussion would be futile; that, with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty, and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.

Modern Democrats Adopt Policies of Antebellum Democrats, Media Doesn’t Notice

Ed Driscoll strung this together

PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1859:

● Atlanta Mayor Signs Order Banning ICE Detainees

● ‘Not Here, Not Now’: Gov. Brown Signs Bill Blocking Trump’s Offshore Drilling Plan.

● Cities defiant after Justice Department’s threat on ‘supervised injection sites.’

Old and busted: Confederate-era Democrats believe they can pick and choose which federal laws they wish to enforce.

The new hotness? Err, pretty much the same in the Trump era.

Effects of Government Involvement in Economic Sectors

From Mark Perry:

It’s shameful what US Open did to Naomi Osaka

Reminds me of Hillary’s defeat and similar behavior from the “in-crowd” 

“…Naomi Osaka, 20 years old, just became the first player from Japan to win a Grand Slam.

Yet rather than cheer Osaka, the crowd, the commentators and US Open officials all expressed shock and grief that Serena Williams lost.

Osaka spent what should have been her victory lap in tears. It had been her childhood dream to make it to the US Open and possibly play against Williams, her idol, in the final.

It’s hard to recall a more unsportsmanlike event.

Here was a young girl who pulled off one of the greatest upsets ever, who fought for every point she earned, ashamed.

At the awards ceremony, Osaka covered her face with her black visor and cried. The crowd booed her. Katrina Adams, chairman and president of the USTA, opened the awards ceremony by denigrating the winner and lionizing Williams — whose ego, if anything, needs piercing.

“Perhaps it’s not the finish we were looking for today,” Adams said, “but Serena, you are a champion of all champions.” Addressing the crowd, Adams added, “This mama is a role model and respected by all.”

That’s not likely the case now, not after the world watched as Serena Williams had a series of epic meltdowns on the court, all sparked when the umpire warned her: No coaching from the side. Her coach was making visible hand signals.

“I don’t cheat to win,” Williams told him. “I’d rather lose.”

She couldn’t let it go, going back multiple times to berate the umpire. At one point she called him a thief.

“You stole a point from me!” she yelled.

After her loss, Williams’s coach admitted to ESPN that he had, in fact, been coaching from the stands, a code violation. The warning was fair.

Everything that followed is on Williams, who is no stranger to tantrums. Most famously, she was tossed from the US Open in 2009 after telling the line judge, “I swear to God I’ll take the f—king ball and shove it down your f—king throat.” John McEnroe was taken aback. Even Williams’s mother Oracene Price couldn’t defend her daughter’s outburst…

https://nypost.com/2018/09/08/its-shameful-what-us-open-did-to-naomi-osaka/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Lembert Dome

Lembert Dome © Doug Santo

Quote of the Day

Harry Callahan: Well, when an adult male is chasing a female with intent to commit rape, I shoot the bastard. That’s my policy.
The Mayor: Intent? How did you establish that?
Harry Callahan: When a man is chasing a woman through an alley with a butcher’s knife and a hard-on, I figure he isn’t out collecting for the Red Cross.

Dirty Harry

Tweet of the Day

Corey Booker Tease of the Day

Olmsted Point

Olmsted Point © Doug Santo

Dems are Right to Panic Over the Court

This is a long article, but well worth your time. Link to original below snippet.

Karin McQuillan:

“…My intuition is that the Democrats are not panicking enough about the pending confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. They’ve been so busy ginning up their base with claims that Kavanaugh will spell the end of abortion and gay marriage that they haven’t focused on the more likely, and larger, impacts of an originalist court. Trump’s court will change America.

Kavanaugh is most robust in defending the Constitution on foundational questions, not the headline grabbers. This is good news.

An originalist court will bring needed changes to everyday life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We’ve already seen several dramatic victories when Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the court last term. This was a foretaste of far-reaching changes to come. Reinstating constitutional safeguards against government power will be significant for religious freedom, free speech, curtailing racial preferences, unleashing free enterprise, and stopping unaccountable government…It has been almost a century since progressives on the Supreme Court radically transformed America’s legal traditions.  We will not see abrupt and rapid change, as when progressives legislated from the bench in Roe v Wade or dictating gay marriage.  The Trump court will be the beginning of a new era of slower, case by case progress back to constitutional limits on government power…”

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/05/are-dems-right-to-panic-over-the-court-five-originalists-weigh-in/

Political Death Match

Conrad Black:

“…Also on Tuesday, the Democrats fired an instantly fizzling cannon with the inevitable Bob Woodward’s customary pastiche of fabrications, unsourced misquotations, and malicious gossip. Woodward’s credibility has been impugned by almost all of the last nine presidents; his original co-mythmaker Carl Bernstein has almost battered himself into insensibility with his pronouncements in the last six months that Trump was finished because under the 25th Amendment he was mentally incompetent and then because the Manafort and Cohen cases put him into the legal self-ejection seat. Woodward, the old sniper who never dies, on Tuesday had the distinction of being called a liar by two four-star Marine generals, John Kelly and James Mattis, both among the very few holders of high public office in living memory whose integrity could not be and never has been questioned. In this toxic atmosphere they were confirmed in the Senate last year by a combined vote of 186 to 12, nonpartisanship’s last gasp, for a while.

The United States is now like Egypt, in that the armed forces are the only respected institution left standing. A narrow majority disapprove of the president, and steadily larger majorities are doubtful of the judiciary, despise the Congress, loathe the academy, and detest the national media. In a democracy, somebody will pay for this, and it is unlikely to be Donald John Trump, the principal accuser of the others. Woodward should never have survived as an author after inventing the deathbed confession of a comatose William Casey in his nasty novel Veil about the Iran-Contra fiasco, but this time he took one for the losing team and shot himself in the head with a howitzer. Sending him into battle to win it for the Democrats two months before the election is like dispatching a small brigade of very aged arsonists to fight one of the California summer forest fires that the new prophet of the Democrats, Bernie Sanders, says was caused by this president’s opinion of climate change.

Finally (still on the first day of the campaign), Robert Mueller accepted written answers to questions from the president on collusion matters. Inspector Javert is hanging up his badge. This is a concession that he can’t subpoena the president and has no evidence of Trump–Russia collusion and no chance of a perjury trap. The thought, expressed by many in the media, that Mueller could still hang tough on questioning of the president about obstruction of justice is, like the Democratic-media echo chamber’s joyous ululations over the Woodward drivel, rubbish. That circus has flopped; strike the tents. Day One was a disaster for the Democrats.

Either the Democrats will win the House of Representatives and force an utterly hopeless impeachment trial on the Senate with only the ravings of Maxine Waters and the false pieties of Dick Durbin et al. as a case, or they will win the House but recognize that they have no case and leave it there after an excruciatingly futile debate; or the Republicans will hold the House and Donald John Trump will grind his heel in the faces of his rabid enemies. The conventional wisdom remains that the Democrats will win the House. I don’t think so. No president has ever run a midterm campaign remotely as determined as this president will, his objective performance in office is good — the economy, the border, and trade; his only weaknesses are stylistic, but he is a good deal more substantial and even likable than his gutter-sniping enemies.

My uninformed suspicion is that the president has not accepted Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s letter of resignation of last May, and has delayed ordering the release of all the documents the congressional committees have demanded from the Justice Department, for a reason. The right moment for the documents is very soon. The president has made a hero out of Sessions to the Democrats, although all 48 Democratic senators opposed his confirmation and Elizabeth Warren promised vengeance on the Republicans for installing him. If Sessions repossesses his office as collusion evaporates, it will be difficult for the Democrats to change lanes again on Sessions. It would also not be surprising if something were heard in the next two months from John Huber, the U.S. attorney for Utah, whom Sessions appointed ten months ago to look into the FISA and Clinton Foundation–Uranium One matters. He would be a much more dangerous rabbit to emerge from the pre-electoral hat than the Ancient Mythmaker, Woodward.

Trump has not got to this historic point by being the blustering and crooked buffoon portrayed by his enemies. He is a cunning and pitiless enemy. This is political mortal combat, and in evidentiary as in electoral matters, you can’t fight something with nothing…”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/donald-trump-political-opponents/

Anonymous NY Times op-ed is a liberal media attack on President Trump

Newt Gingrich:

“…The anonymous op-ed published by The New York Times Wednesday is the most stunning proof we have seen so far of the liberal media’s aggressive bias and the very real efforts by parts of the institutional establishment to undermine President Trump, the U.S. Constitution and the will of the American people.

In its fervor to attack the White House – and influence the midterm elections – The New York Times happily eschewed basic journalistic standards and offered its page and waning credibility to a nameless, disgruntled, elitist coward who seems to believe he or she has the moral authority to ignore and undermine the elected leader of the free world.

The paper’s editorial board clearly said it granted the writer anonymity to “deliver an important perspective” to readers and to protect the writer from losing his or her job. This is a naked endorsement of the subversive efforts described in the piece – The New York Times wants the author to keep it up.

The collusion between this supposed senior administration official (who could be one of thousands of minor-but-experienced appointees) and the newspaper (which is the standard bearer of elite media power) is also clear evidence that members of the old guard, institutional establishment are working to protect old Washington power structures and prevent the changes that the American people elected President Trump to bring to our country…”

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/09/07/newt-gingrich-anonymous-ny-times-op-ed-is-liberal-media-attack-on-president-trump.html

7 points on the anonymous New York Times ‘resistance’ op-ed

A good analysis of the anonymous White House coward.

Byron York:

“…1) It concedes Trump’s accomplishments are big. Early in the piece, the author admits that the Trump administration has had significant success on the issues most important to American voters. . . .

2) Its complaints are small. Why does the author object to Trump? The president is not a true philosophical conservative, he says.

3) It suggests there is a government conspiracy to thwart the president…”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/7-points-on-the-anonymous-new-york-times-resistance-op-ed?platform=hootsuite

Bombshell Report: Wait Until You See How Many Google Employees Donated to Democrats

It is time for congress to act on the big tech companies. They have monopoly power and are abusing it.

“…Americans are rightly concerned that Big Tech companies in Silicon Valley have an outsized influence over the news and opinions we see on social media platforms and in Google searches. The fact that most of these platforms originate in some of the most liberal strongholds in the country — Mountain View, San Francisco, and Menlo Park, California —  raises questions about whether they’re either intentionally or subconsciously putting their oversized thumbs on the scales to promote points of view they agree with and hide views they find odious or dangerous. A study released today from GovPredict shows that more than 90 percent of political donations by Alphabet employees went to Democrats. This news will only amplify fears that everything we read, see, and hear is being controlled by tech industry employees with a left-wing political bent…”

https://pjmedia.com/election/bombshell-report-90-percent-of-google-employee-political-contributions-went-to-democrats/

Anonymous White House Coward is Identified

Tom Keefer

Rest in Peace

Tweet of the Day

Doug Santo