Americans are by nature suspicious of conformity of thought
OpEd in the Washington Times:
“…What set off the latest Trump-press contretemps was a speech the president made in Pennsylvania, where he cried “Fake! Fake! and identified reporters and pundits the enemy of the people, and this so wounded Jim Acosta of CNN News that he all but collapsed in tears in an exchange with Sarah Huckabee Sanders in the White House press room. “We all get put through the wringer,” he said in a pitiful voice that broke hearts from Chevy Chase to Bethesda. “We all get put in the meat grinder in this town.” Wringer or meat grinder, being there was not a good place to be.
There was more. “For the sake of this room, the people who are in this room, this democracy, this country, all the people around the world are watching what you’re saying, Sarah, and the White House for the United States of America, the president of the United States should not refer to us as the enemy of the people.”
This was sob-sister stuff of an earlier day, before the press was the media, and newspapermen (including women) reveled in the knowledge that their publishers bought ink by the barrel and it never occurred to anyone to seek an apology for sharp words from a president, a governor, or an alderman. It was all a part of the game, and newspapers and presidents took a certain pride in giving as good as they got.
The press, or “the media,” as it now includes television, an entertainment medium not given to sober examination of events, has lost much of its reputation as a tribune of the people. A recent Gallup/Knight Foundation poll found that 62 percent of U.S. adults believe the news they get from traditional sources — newspapers, radio and television — is biased. Nearly half — 44 percent — think the information is inaccurate, and 39 percent even conclude that it’s misinformation cooked for a gullible audience. Social media fared even worse: Eighty percent of respondents reckon the material that flashes across their electronic devices is sometimes dodgy. Fake news is a reality, and has been since long before the Trump era.
Americans are by nature suspicious of conformity of thought. When nearly every flick of the TV remote and click of the computer mouse brings up an avalanche of anti-Trump news, it sure looks like groupthink. Pundits of the small screen cried on camera when Hillary Clinton went down on Election Night in 2016. The speculation that “Trumpcolluded with Russia” travels relentlessly in a closed loop, with press and television heavyweights vying to play “can you top this?” with the latest gossip and manufactured rumor.
The rallying cry for a united editorial-page assault on President Trump is “courage in numbers.” The press has a responsibility to identify every president’s misdeeds, and pay no attention to slings, arrows, and insults aimed its way. Setting out to take down a president by any means necessary is not the role of a responsible press. When newspapers return to their fundamental role, the public reputation of the press will recover. The sooner the better…”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/aug/15/editorial-the-press-is-not-the-enemy-of-the-people/
Media must look to itself to restore trust
Nolan Finley:
“…Our feelings are hurt in the news media. The president of the United States is calling us the Enemy of the People and we don’t like it.
So across the nation today, newspapers are publishing editorials telling Donald Trump, “We are not, you are!” and reminding readers of our own importance.
Let me join them: The free press is not the people’s enemy. It is a vital pillar of our democracy and was assigned by the Founders the role of watch-dogging the nation’s institutions. It’s a mission we usually carry out quite well, even in this era of technological disruptions, changing consumer tastes and eroding resources.
But who really cares if Donald Trump is using us as a whipping boy to mask his many deficiencies? Presidents have done that before, and often.
Trump may be both more relentless and obnoxious than his predecessors, but cries of “Fake News!” from the Oval Office are old hat. Presidents always blame the messenger. Even Barack Obama, the object of so much media fawning, groused about distorted coverage.
This time, though, we are taking it personally. Striking at the bait Trump dangles. Joining the war he’s declared. Allowing him to goad us into abandoning the fundamental principles of our profession.
Donald Trump is not responsible for the eroding trust in the media. He lacks the credibility to pull that off. The damage to our standing is self-inflicted…”
America’s Newspapers Just Played Right Into Trump’s Hands
Jack Shafer:
“…Most journalists agree that there’s a great need for Trump rebuttals. I’ve written my share. But this Globe-sponsored coordinated editorial response is sure to backfire: It will provide Trump with circumstantial evidence of the existence of a national press cabal that has been convened solely to oppose him. When the editorials roll off the press on Thursday, all singing from the same script, Trump will reap enough fresh material to whale on the media for at least a month. His forthcoming speeches almost write themselves: By colluding against me, the fake media proved once and for all, that they are in cahoots with the Democrats and have declared themselves to be my true political opposition …
The Globe’s anti-Trump project is also an exercise in redundancy, not to mention self-stroking. Most newspapers have already published a multitude of editorials and columns rebuking the president for his trash-talking of the press. Most major editorial boards opposed Trump’s election, according to this tally by Business Insider. The largest of the 19 newspapers to endorse Trump was the Las Vegas Review-Journal, owned by one of his faithful donors, Sheldon Adelson. More than 240 endorsed Hillary Clinton. Editorial-page sentiment against Trump remains largely unchanged since the election, making the call for a collective reprimand all the more pointless…”
ISIS Killer Caught in Sacramento
“…An Iraqi national who entered the U.S. as a refugee was arrested this afternoon on charges he participated in ISIS killings in Iraq in 2014.
The arrest of Omar Abdulsattar Ameen comes after an arrest warrant was issued by an Iraqi court in May.
According to the Justice Department press release, Ameen is accused of involvement in ISIS killings in Anbar province, Iraq:
The Iraqi arrest warrant and extradition request allege that after the town of Rawah, Iraq fell to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) on June 21, 2014, Ameen entered the town with a caravan of ISIS vehicles and drove to the house of the victim, who had served as an officer in the Rawah Police Department. On the evening of June 22, 2014, after the caravan arrived at the victim’s house, Ameen and other members of the convoy allegedly opened fire on the victim. Ameen then allegedly fired his weapon at the victim while the victim was on the ground, killing him.
Ameen, originally of Rawah, in the Anbar province of Iraq, fled Iraq following the alleged murder, and later settled in Sacramento as a purported refugee. It is alleged that Ameen’s family supported and assisted the installation of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in Rawah, and that Ameen was a member of AQI and ISIS. It is also alleged that he participated in various activities in support of those terrorist organizations, including helping to plant improvised explosive devices, and committing the murder that is the subject of the extradition request. Ameen concealed his membership in those terrorist groups when he applied for refugee status, and later when he applied for a green card in the United States.
A detention memo filed in the case states that the FBI has been investigating the case since 2016:
Evidence gathered in a Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) investigation of Ameen, ongoing since 2016, corroborates Ameen’s membership in and actions on behalf of AQI and ISIS, including the murder.
News outlets in the Sacramento area reported on FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force activity earlier in the day:
The FBI could only tell us “warrant activity” is occurring at the Eastern Villa Apartments today. Sacramento sheriff’s deputies are here, too. So was Metro Fire. We’ve seen FBI in Joint Terrorism Task Force jackets.
The Justice Department states that Ameen lied on his refugee application to conceal his past terrorist activities, and on his application for a green card…”
A side note: Sacramento is a declared “sanctuary city.”
Second Headline of the Day
It’s no laughing matter — SF forming Poop Patrol to keep sidewalks clean
You can’t make this stuff up!
Headline of the Day
“The New York Times has an advice column about how to ‘cure’ white skin privilege.”
This is not the 21st century I was anticipating!
NATO’s East Is Rearming, But It’s Because of Putin, Not Trump
Donald Rumsfeld was mocked for saying the eastern NATO countries of “New Europe” were taking defense more seriously than the traditional western NATO allies. Mocked, but accurate; to twist a phrase.
“…The jump in acquisitions behind the former Iron Curtain of aircraft, ships and armored vehicles began when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, well before Trump’s 2016 election victory, according to analysts including Tomas Valasek, director of Carnegie Europe in Brussels. While the median defense expenditure of NATO members is 1.36 percent of gross domestic product, below the alliance’s requirement of 2 percent, eastern members comprise seven of the 13 members that are paying above that level.
“Countries on NATO’s eastern border do not need Donald Trump to boost defense spending,” Valasek said. “They decided this long before he came to power. The spending boost was because of a president, but it was Vladimir Putin, not the U.S. President.”
Constant overflights by Russian aircraft into NATO airspace, cyberattacks on government and military installations, wargames on the borders of the Baltic states and accusations that Russia was behind a failed coup in newest member Montenegro have put NATO’s eastern quadrant on alert for what it says is an increasingly expansionist Russia. Of the 15 members exceeding the bloc’s guideline that 20 percent of total defense spending should go to equipment, six are from eastern Europe…”
Brennan Security Clearance Revoked
About time
Tenaya Lake
China is really not happy with Trump’s $716 billion defense spending bill
I remember that Gorbachev was not super thrilled with Reagan’s defense budgets either. Look how that turned out.
“…The bill received widespread bipartisan backing in Congress, amid a growing acknowledgment that the U.S. is facing an increased threat from Russia and China.
The bill is considered particularly tough on China, targeting several areas of concern for the Pentagon, including the increased Chinese military activity in the South China Sea, Beijing’s pursuit of cutting-edge U.S. technology and the spread of Communist Party propaganda at American institutions.
China’s commerce, defense and foreign ministries all issued statements slamming the bill’s proposals.
The commerce ministry focused on a ban on Chinese telecommunications giants Huawei and ZTE. The U.S. government and government contractors will now largely be blocked from using the companies’ products in the future, though in non-critical systems some products will still be allowed.
China’s foreign ministry pointed out that the act was passed despite Beijing’s strong objections, and it was dissatisfied with the “negative content related to China.”…”
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/qvmnn7/china-trump-defense-bill-john-mccain
Peter Strzok cheated on his wife, got fired, and liberals gave him $250,000 anyway
A great piece on the inconsistencies of liberal support for Strzok.
Philip Wegmann:
“…He cheated on his wife, and the Left gave him a quarter-million dollars.
A GoFundMe page for disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok has raised more than $290,000 for his legal expenses in just one day. Donations continue to pour in for Strzok, who sent tons of anti-Trump text messages to his colleague and mistress, Lisa Page.
It seems that the roughly 6,500 donors hate President Trump so much that they are willing to enable the infidelity of this philanderer because they like his politics. The women in question have not been so lucky.
No legal fund has been set up for Page, though she remains at the FBI and seems to be cooperating with congressional investigators. More egregious still, no money has been sent to Strzok’s wife, Melissa Hodgman.
Her politics aren’t known, but her plight has been public for some time. Her husband texted his mistress thousands of messages on a government phone to hide the affair from her, and inadvertently archived his infidelity in the process, for all of posterity. She has been humiliated on the front page of every major paper and disgraced almost daily during the nightly news.
Everyone knows his cheating. No one cares about her pain.
The pair has not split. One can only hope that if they do divorce, though, a judge will award her a hefty chunk of his ill-gotten cash at the very least. But money won’t undo the betrayal. Cash payments won’t change the fact that liberals are crowdfunding so that another man who used women can escape the consequences.
This isn’t the first time the Left has forced women to take a back seat for partisan purposes. When battling Trump or confronted with vast right-wing conspiracies, liberals suddenly care significantly less for victims.
The same people who ignore violated interns turn a blind eye to ruined marriages because, turns out, women are expendable when the patriarchy has the correct politics…”
Pennsylvania priests molested over 1,000 children
Horrible. Really horrible.
“…Hundreds of Roman Catholic priests in Pennsylvania molested more than 1,000 children — and possibly many more — since the 1940s, and senior church officials, including a man who is now the archbishop of Washington, D.C., systematically covered up the abuse, according to a grand jury report released Tuesday…”
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/deadline-looms-release-catholic-church-abuse-report-57161030
Trump campaign files arbitration complaint against Omarosa
Omarosa made a significant mistake. She does not have the resources to battle Trump related entities in court. She will incur tremendous defense costs, and will loose, and could face a significant monetary judgement against her. This does not include the potential criminal case against her for surreptitiously recording conversations in the White House. In addition to Omarosa being a disaster as a person, she is also a nitwit!
“…President Trump’s campaign organization has filed an arbitration complaint against Omarosa Manigault Newman, the former White House aide who is out with a scathing memoir of her time in the administration. The campaign alleges that Omarosa is in breach of a confidentiality agreement she signed.
The claim was filed with the American Arbitration Association in New York City, a firm that handles such cases for private parties. However, the arbitrator overseeing the case can impose a penalty for the breach of a non-disclosure agreement. The Washington Examiner first reported the news, which was confirmed to CBS News’ Arden Farhi by a campaign official.
According to the Examiner, the arbitration move could “wipe [Omarosa] out financially.” The publication, citing “a Trump ally,” says that it is the campaign’s contention that Omarosa’s 2016 non-disclosure agreement remains in effect…”
Iran bows under growing economic pressures
This is a good summary of the dire situation the Iranian regime finds itself faced with. I don’t agree with the Financial Times opinion on economic pressure from the US or the Obama Nuclear deal with Iran, but this is the best presentation of those positions I have seen.
“…Troubles are mounting in Iran. Its currency, the rial, has lost more than half its value against the dollar on unofficial markets this year and inflation is soaring. Even middle-class Iranians are struggling to get by, with food prices rising and reported fuel shortages in some cities. Sporadic anti-government demonstrations are continuing. Worse, the economic pressure on the country is set to mount. The US government last week reinstated economic sanctions that had been waived as part of the Iran nuclear deal of 2015. These punitive economic measures are set to intensify in November, when the US will seek to ban Iranian oil exports. EU nations have pledged to try to preserve economic ties with Iran. But it seems probable that most large European companies will sacrifice trade with Iran, rather than risk suffering from secondary sanctions. The US government says its goal in re-imposing sanctions is to force Iran to make deeper concessions on its nuclear programme and to stop its military and political intervention in neighbouring countries — in particular Syria, Lebanon and Iraq…”
Journalism and Fake News
This is a good article about how the media treated with Omarosa and the lack of judgement and professionalism in today’s media personalities and newsrooms.
Thomas H. Lipscomb:
“…Rather than functioning as a news organization, NBC news simply allowed itself to be used as a PR outlet promoting the clearly self-interested complaints of its source, just as Andrew Duehren at The Wall Street Journal did the following day. And why?
This isn’t “fake news.” It is news fraud. It is a conscious failure to cover an equally critical part of a news story that isn’t hidden, but sitting there in plain sight. It is a conscious choice by a news organization to only run the allegations of a source and allow selective use of a tape offered as bait to support those allegations and in the process provide only negative information on the Trump administration. Kelly states the White House had “integrity” issues with Manigault Newman. But she at least makes no pretensions to greater ideals than her own self-promotion. There are even greater integrity issues with news organizations that do.
“Fake news” may often be a matter of opinion, but a blatant case of intentional news fraud against the fair presentation of a news story of interest to Americans is hard to miss. Avoiding exploring why she was fired, when the opportunity to do so was readily at hand, has only one net effect: It avoids challenging the veracity of Manigault Newman’s charges against Trump and his administration…”
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/08/14/fake_news_and_news_fraud_137791.html
Breaking the Climate Spell
A good article. Worth reading the whole thing.
Rupert Darwall:
“…No country has a greater abundance of hydrocarbon energy than the United States. The corollary is that no country was as big a loser from participating in the Paris Agreement and its intention to progressively decarbonize the world’s hydrocarbon superpower. On July 10, the Energy Information Administration forecast that next year, the United States will produce 12 million barrels of oil a day and overtake Saudi Arabia to be the world’s number-one producer. When it comes to the politics of energy, the interests of the United States and European green ideology are irreconcilable.
Donald Trump understands this. “Our country is blessed with extraordinary energy abundance, which we didn’t know of even 5 years ago and certainly 10 years ago,” the president said in 2017. Those remarks were not only a paean to America’s energy resources, they were a full-dress rejection of the policies of his predecessor and of the Democrats’ goal of Europeanizing American energy policy.
We have nearly 100 years’ worth of natural gas and more than 250 years’ worth of clean, beautiful coal. We are a top producer of petroleum and the number-one producer of natural gas. We have so much more than we ever thought possible. We are really in the driving seat. And you know what? We don’t want to let other countries take away our sovereignty and tell us what to do and how to do it. That’s not going to happen. With these incredible resources, my administration will seek not only American energy independence that we’ve been looking for for so long, but American energy dominance. And we’re going to be an exporter—exporter. We will be dominant. We will export American energy all over the world, all around the globe. These energy exports will create countless jobs for our people, and provide true energy security to our friends, partners, and allies all across the globe.
For the first time since 1992, when George H.W. Bush went to the Rio Earth Summit, an American president was outlining a global energy strategy diametrically opposed to the tenets underlying the U.N. climate process. Trump was establishing a rival pole based on energy realism and energy abundance…”
https://www.weeklystandard.com/rupert-darwall/breaking-the-climate-spell
The Legacies of Robert Mueller’s Investigations
The Trump-Russia Collusion Investigation has been corrupt from the start. This is the biggest scandal in American history. The scandal is the intelligence and law enforcement apparatus of the government directed to destroy a presidential candidate, and later the elected president.
Victor Davis Hanson:
“…Some 450 days ago we were treated to melodramatic announcements from the media about the start-up of Robert Mueller’s “dream” and “all-star” team.
Reporters gushed in the general hysteria of the times that Mueller would no doubt soon indict President Trump, some of his family, and almost anyone else in his campaign—and therefore end the Trump aberration.
Press puff pieces highlighted the résumés of his superstars—of Lisa Page (no comment needed), Peter Strzok (less than no comment needed), Jeannie Rhee (a former attorney for the Clinton Foundation, Ben Rhodes, and for a bit Hillary Clinton), Andrew Weissman (Clinton zealot, Obama and DNC donor, and the cheerleader to Sally Yates’s refusal to carry out a presidential order), Aaron Zebley (the former attorney for Clinton staffer Justin Cooper who set up the infamous Clinton home server and smashed to bits her mobile devices), and a host of other pros, who were all shortly to prove Trump-Russian “collusion.”
Although that Mueller mandate of collusion was never formally defined, much less explained as a criminal offense, the media salivated at the idea that Mueller’s whiz kids nonetheless were going to find it and no doubt thereby usher in impeachment.
Now we have gone from melodrama to bathos…”
and
“…Robert Mueller’s legacy will be not so much that he was chasing the white whales of Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen, and Paul Manafort, or even that he is another Patrick Fitzgerald desperate to indict Trump as the new Scooter Libby. Instead, Mueller’s testament thus far will be one of willful blindness: he saw nothing ethically or legally wrong, or dangerous to the republic, in a bought and fictional dossier that fueled both his own reason to be, and in various ways was central to an historic government effort to surveille, to infiltrate, to undermine, and to discredit a political campaign first—and later to derail an elected presidency…”
https://amgreatness.com/2018/08/13/the-legacies-of-robert-muellers-investigations/
Headline of the Day
This is not the 21st century I was anticipating!
Social Justice Warriors Drive Lesbian Actress Off Twitter For Not Being Lesbian Enough and/or For Being an Inauthentically “Hot” Lesbian
Trump’s foreign policy is actually boosting America’s standing
I have been assured by numerous media personalities that this is impossible!
Michael Goodwin:
“…A story is supposed to have two sides, but there is only one when it comes to President Trump’s foreign policy. Most American media treat his every effort as a savage assault on a harmonious world order.
Whether it’s the trade dispute with China, his pushing North Korea to scuttle its nukes or his demand that NATO members spend more on defense, the headlines sound the same shrieking note: “Trump inflames . . . Trump escalates . . . Trump doubles down . . . Trump risks . . .”
The parade of horribles continues to this day, but it will be hard to out-fear-monger a Time magazine headline from May: “By Violating Iran Deal, Trump Jeopardizes National Security.”
But since the world hasn’t ended and since we’re not dead yet, I humbly suggest it’s time to take a deep breath and consider the other side of the story.
We don’t have to look far. Numerous signs are popping up that the impact of Trump’s policies is far from the disastrous scenario the media predict. By wielding America’s power instead of apologizing for it, and by keeping his focus on jobs and national security, Trump is making progress in fixing the ruinous status quo he inherited.
America First, it turns out, is more than a slogan. It is a road map to reshaping America’s relationship with friend and foe alike…”
https://nypost.com/2018/08/11/trumps-foreign-policy-is-actually-boosting-americas-standing/