Images | Commentary | Digital Scrapbook
Paul Bedard:
“…In a sweeping move to further influence federal courts with conservative picks, President Trump on Wednesday renominated 51 judges who saw no action in the last Congress.
The list showed 37 nominees to district courts, nine to circuit courts, two each to the International Trade and Federal Claims courts, and one to the Military Commission Review.
One, Naomi Rao, was picked to replace the opening left when federal appeals court Judge Brett Kavanaugh won a seat on the Supreme Court.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said in a statement, “I truly appreciate the prompt attention President Trump and his White House team have shown to judicial nominations. I also appreciate the list of 51 impressive judicial nominations to fulfill the Senate’s constitutional role in advice and consent.” He added that his panel will try to “confirm as many as possible, as soon as possible.”
The president is already on a historic pace to change the courts and fill vacancies with conservative picks. According to one tally, he has put 30 judges on the United States courts of appeals and 53 judges for the United States district courts…”
JIM TREACHER:
“…Remember when wearing a MAGA hat meant you were certain to lose an election to Hillary Clinton? Remember the days before a red baseball cap became a symbol of all evil in the universe?
I’ve been typing words on the Internet to pay the bills for, I dunno, 12-13 years now. I spent eight of those years disapproving of a cult of personality centered in the Oval Office, and I’ve spent the past few years disapproving of the subsequent cult of personality centered in the Oval Office. I don’t like tribal groupthink, and I’m as immune to Trump’s charisma as I was to Obama’s, so in 2019 that means I have even fewer friends and admirers than usual.
But as we head into week 2 of the MAGA Kid Saga, I’m finding common cause with my Trumpkin brothers and sisters. Whatever our differences, I’ve always agreed with them that the media is astonishingly biased and corrupt. The abject shamelessness of our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters, the self-appointed gatekeepers of the truth, has never been more apparent than it’s been over the past week.
If you attend a march in Washington, D.C. while wearing a cheap red hat that can be purchased at any gift shop or souvenir stand in the city, there’s every chance you’ll be branded a racist for maintaining your composure while complete strangers scream at you and pound drums in your face. And even when irrefutable video evidence proves you’ve done nothing wrong, a pack of bigots with press passes will still blame you for angering them. . . . See, this is balanced journalism. Yesterday, Savannah Guthrie asked the kid who didn’t do anything — he stood stock-still and did nothing — if he thought he should apologize. Today, she asked the fraud who lied to her whether the kid who didn’t do anything should apologize. Gotta get both sides! (And I just love being lectured by Guthrie, the woman who stood by and did nothing while her co-host raped half the building.)…”
“…Days after Nathan Phillips’ story of his confrontation with a group of students in Washington was thoroughly discredited, many on the left are still rallying behind him, pretending he was somehow a victim.
This, even after both the New York Times and the Washington Post had to publish not just “clarifications” about the incident itself, but even corrections of his claim to be a Vietnam, or “Vietnam times,” veteran. (Turns out he was a stateside refrigerator technician, and frequently AWOL.)
It also turns out Phillips made nearly identical allegations against a few college students four years ago.
Yet the instant a single video of this incident hit Twitter, journalists jumped to uncritically accept Phillips’ account of how a mob of MAGA-hat-wearing white teens surrounded and taunted him. After all, the image exploited reporters’ preconceptions: Here was an aged Native American surrounded by a pack of smirking pro-Trump teens.
But full videos of the incident soon showed he was lying: He was the one who confronted the students, unprovoked, beating a drum just inches from their faces.
In fact, video shows the Covington school students were themselves being taunted with racist and homophobic slurs by a group of Black Hebrew Israelites.
Yet Phillips claims the kids “were in the process of attacking these four black individuals” and “looked like they were going to lynch them,” hence his move to “do something.” Why not beat his drum at the “Israelite” aggressors?
The video also shows, contra Phillips, no sign the kids were defiantly chanting “Build that wall.” Nor does it feature Phillips saying anything that sounds remotely like an effort to pacify the situation.
Yet he still has supporters because he keeps crafting new narratives that appeal to left-liberal prejudice. He certainly has the right bottom line, though: “Time for lies to be not accepted anymore,” he told CNN.
Yes: Starting with his…”
David Azerrad:
“…Suppose the second video had never come out and the Covington Catholic High School boys had not been exonerated. Suppose the media had not been compelled to issue pathetic, half-hearted apologies for stoking the flames of hatred after the incident. Suppose the pundits had not sheepishly deleted their rush-to-judgment tweets condemning the boys.
What exactly would the boys have been guilty of based on the 3 minutes and 44 seconds of footage in that first video?
After all, no one laid a finger on Nathan Phillips and the other two Native Americans banging their drums and chanting. No one yelled at them. No one insulted them. No one asked them to leave.
The boys chanted along and acted silly. They surrounded the men in order to see what was happening, the way any crowd would if someone was making noise or playing an instrument in public. They were all smiling and being rather good-natured. The only profanity in the video comes from a scowling woman who yells out “f***ing mob mentality” and rolls her eyes at the boys.
Those with more delicate sensibilities might accuse the boys of being a little too rowdy. I, for one, incline to a Milford Academy “children should be neither seen nor heard” pedagogy (I also think students should wear uniforms and caps should be worn only at baseball games, and preferably only by the players). In any case, few others in America today would agree.
Nathan Phillips later tearfully recounted that he had heard the boys say—not chant—“Build that Wall, Build that Wall.” The subsequent longer video did not corroborate his claims. Should another video prove Mr. Phillips’ recollection correct, is it now forbidden in American to repeat commonplace political slogans in the public square?
What about the specific boy in question, whose name I will not repeat in a futile effort to respect what little privacy he has left after Friday’s incident?
He did not move. He did not say a word. You could almost say he was stoic (I say almost because the stoics are not known for their smiles). He stood there motionless for almost three minutes as Phillips, who had walked over to him, loudly banged a drum in his face and chanted—rather obnoxiously, one might observe.
But it wasn’t a smile, the mendacious media explained. It was—brace yourselves—a smirk! The boy stood there and smirked. And for that he must be “punched in the face,” expelled from school and denied admission to college. His name should forever be ruined on the internet. He should become the face of evil in the 21st century—or at least until the next manufactured scandal erupts.
It goes without saying that if Covington had been an all-black school, a girls’ school or a Mexican high school visiting the US, the video would have sunk without a trace in the great abyss of unwatched YouTube videos. And it also goes without saying that if the boys had been wearing “Love Trumps Hate” or “Feel the Bern” caps, the episode would not have sent the media into an Orwellian frenzy of hate.
The kid in question, however, was part of the accursed white race that has wrought unspeakable evils onto humanity. He was a male and thus complicit in the patriarchal structures of oppression that subjugate women. He was the embodiment of power and privilege.
Worst of all, he wore a MAGA cap. Therein lies his crime. The inherited diseases of whiteness and masculinity, though incurable, can at least be mitigated and contained if the patient is willing to demonstrate good will by embracing leftist views and perpetually flagellating himself publicly for the sins of his race and his sex.
A MAGA hat is incontrovertible evidence that you refuse to take your medicine. While it does not necessarily make you a white supremacist, it (at least) suggests you could be. It indicates that you might belong to the half of Trump supporters whom Hillary Clinton put into her basket of deplorables, “the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it.”
The hysterical reaction to the first video points ultimately to an unsettling conclusion. Standing in silence with a smile before a person of color—or presumably, a member of any other aggrieved, oppressed identity group—is now a crime for deplorable white males of all ages…”
Seth Barron:
“…The story of a group of white parochial school kids wearing MAGA hats heaping racist abuse on a dignified Native American Vietnam veteran sparked an inferno of indignation across mass and social media. The incident was depicted as an iconic example of toxic white smugness, as well as a recapitulation of the history of European conquest of the American continent from its earlier inhabitants. Respected journalists and public figures responded to the images of a “smirking” teenager with calls for violence against him, his classmates, and their parents. Even after the story was debunked, many commenters kept their outrage burning, and pointed to photos taken years before, involving none of the participants in the recent event, as evidence that the school— Covington Catholic High School, in Park Hills, Kentucky—is infected by a virulent racism that can be cured only by closing it, razing it, and sowing salt in the ground.
Oddly, the media had learned nothing from its previous rush to judgment. Just days before the Covington story broke, the national media gave blanket coverage to a BuzzFeed report that President Trump ordered his lawyer to perjure himself regarding Trump’s business dealings in Russia. Commentary became so fervent, with members of Congress talking on Twitter of preparing articles of impeachment, that the special counsel broke his two-year silence to refute the report.
Poorly sourced, slanted reporting has become the new standard among prestige media. Three weeks ago, a little girl, black, was shot and killed in a Houston parking lot; initial reports that the shooter was white turned a local police item into national news. The New York Times ran stories on the case for days, exploring the implications of targeted, race-based murder in an age of intolerance. When it emerged that the child was killed by two black gang members gunning for their enemies, coverage of the story ceased.
Reporters have always made errors, but mistakes should occur independent of ideology. What we’re seeing instead is a pattern—media miscues always occur in the same direction, in favor of the liberal perspective. Over the last two years, countless “bombshell” reports have signaled grave danger for the Trump presidency, up to and including impeachment or resignation. Trump’s son got an early look at the Wikileaks pages; Anthony Scaramucci was tied to a dodgy Russian hedge fund; Michael Cohen met Russians in Prague; Paul Manafort met Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London; James Comey would testify that Trump was under investigation; and so on. As outrage ebbs from each discredited story, it is relegated to the memory hole in time for the next one to emerge…”
David French:
“…He’s a disgrace to the tribe of which he’s allegedly an “elder.” They should be ashamed to be represented by such a sad sack…”
“…I don’t care what your journalism school professors told you. Your job is not to afflict the comfortable. Your job is not to comfort the afflicted. Most of you couldn’t tell the difference with a seeing eye dog, a cane and the proverbial two hands. Your job is to investigate claims and report as close to the facts as you can. And if the story seems to endorse the narrative you like? INVESTIGATE TWICE AS HARD. Have some pride. Do your job to the best of your ability. Are you human or a puppet of your journalism professors and leftist ideologues?…”
Great article by Glenn Greenwald. It is not possible to excerpt it here. Click over and read it. You will laugh and cry at the documented media malfeasance.
Paul Bedard:
“…A top Trump ambassador is winning kudos for his part in convincing Germany to ban Iranian airline Mahan Air amid allegations it ran weapons to Syria.
Officials said that Richard Grenell, U.S. ambassador to Germany, played a key role and scored his latest victory since landing last May when he warned, “German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.”
Since arriving in Berlin, Ambassador Grenell has literally hit the ground running delivering on the president’s priorities,” said a key ally and senior Senate Republican aide.
“At the top of that list has been to ensure Europe doesn’t circumvent President Trump on Iran,” said the aide, adding, “Today is a massive win for President Trump. Because of Ambassador Grenell’s perseverance, this Iranian airline will no longer be able to fly to the largest economy in Europe. Make no mistake, Ric Grenell has become President Trump’s go-to diplomat in Europe. He delivers.”…”
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD:
“…Britain’s problem with the EU goes back decades. From the 1957 Treaty of Rome to the present day, Europe has been both the opportunity Britain cannot embrace and the problem Britain cannot solve. In the 1950s, Britain stood aloof from the increasingly integrated Continent as it clung to the remnants of its empire. In the 1960s it applied, twice, to join; both times its application was scuttled, twice by the implacable, but arguably correct, French President Charles de Gaulle. In 1973 Britain finally succeeded in joining the club, but euroskepticism was already so strong in British politics that the country held a referendum on leaving in 1975. Remain won that round, but British ambivalence over Europe has never gone away.
De Gaulle—the leader of the Free French resistance in World War II who went on to found the Fifth Republic under which France still lives today—understood the problem best. He thought Britain would never truly be at home in a European union. “England in effect is insular, she is maritime,” he said in his remarks blocking Britain’s entry into what was then called the Common Market in 1963. “She has in all her doings very marked and very original habits and traditions.” He added that “the nature, the structure, the very situation that are England’s differ profoundly from those of the continentals.”
Moreover, from de Gaulle’s point of view, admitting Britain into Europe was like letting a Trojan horse through the gates. He believed Europe faced a choice between pursuing its original goal of a deep integration of the original six members and opting for a larger, looser association that included Britain. A larger and looser Europe, he believed, would be a weaker Europe. It would be unable to develop into a true world power that could face Russia and the U.S. as an equal.
Today de Gaulle looks like a prophet. EU membership has left Britain miserable and divided. The rest of the 28-member EU is overextended, stressed and geopolitically weak…”