Archive for the ‘Media Watch’ Category

LinkSwarm for September 21, 2018

Friday, September 21st, 2018

And you may ask yourself how did I get here why I didn’t do any blog posts about the “bombshell” Brett Kavanaugh allegations earlier this week? Simple: They were as obviously stupid as they were predictable. Thanks to my sloth foresight, I managed to avoid writing about the mess before the Democrats’ unpopular ploy collapsed into the stinking pile of garbage it always was!

  • More on the Democrats’ Kavanaugh stupidity:

    The tactics they’re now employing against Kavanaugh, while extreme, are nothing new for them. They’ve always shot from the hip and aimed for the heart, hoping to sway public opinion by means of passion rather than reason. The more convinced they are of the righteousness of their cause—call it their “higher loyalty” to the arc of history—the more antic they get, like chimps in the zoo at feeding time, moving from whingeing servility to outright viciousness the hungrier they get. Left unchecked, even the cuddliest Cheetah eventually will rip off your face.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • There should be a big difference between vague accusations of sexual assault 35 years ago and documented instances of assault from last year, as in the case of Keith Ellison. But the media seem strangely incurious about the congressman and DNC vice-chair…
  • Do all-girl preppie high schools typically approve of blackout drinking and teenage sex? I can’t even imagine anyone even trying to document such antics in my own high school yearbook.
  • “Trump Hit Iran With Oil Sanctions. So Far, They’re Working.” Or so says those notorious pro-Trump shills at the New York Times
  • “Foreign money bankrolls climate change lawsuits against US oil companies.” (Hat tip: Steve Malloy on Twitter.)
  • Japan issues warning to China by conducting military exercises in the South China Sea.
  • Donald Trump’s race against death.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • This seems worrisome:

    The real news is that Linux, the project, adopted the “Contributor’s Covenant” code of conduct and thereby acknowledged SJW ideological supremacy. The CC is an SJW vehicle promulgated by Coraline Ada and a related group of activist malcontents. While the CC appears on the surface to be a call of civility, it’s actually the tip of a very long and exsanguatory anti-meritocracy spear, one that ultimately seeks to elevate high-verbal-IQ non-technical politics-playing San-Francisco-residing cliques of social justice advocates into positions of recognition and authority in the free software world and beyond. If you write code and you’re good at it, these people are a direct threat to your status, your hobby, and your livelihood, because if these people get their way, your technical excellence becomes secondary to their wokeness.​

  • #MeTooFar:

  • Republican congressmen demonstrates provable sexual misconduct. GOP: “Resign, sleazeball.” Democratic state senator demonstrates sleazy, felonious personal conduct. Democrats: “We shall defend him to our last breath! Or, you know, until he’s actually convicted.” Result: Republicans now hold all those seats.
  • Beto O’Rourke says we need an illegal alien amnesty so Mexicans can work cotton gins. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Want a healthier heart? Eat a steak.
  • Bert and Ernie are not gay. So says their actual creator.
  • Solar Observatory closed by the FBI. Old and Busted explanation: Aliens! The New Hotness: Child porn server.
  • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn should be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Wait, Solzhenitsyn wasn’t already awarded the Medal of Freedom? (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • “A US tech company was found guilty of abusing the H-1B visa.” That’s People Tech Group, for those of you playing along on the home game…
  • Apple-1 computer for sale. 1 MHz processor, 4K of memory. Current bid: $175,000.
  • Suge Knight pleads guilty to manslaughter, to spend 28 years in the big house. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Oh Florida Man, don’t ever change:

    The operator of a Florida-based animal sanctuary says she was the target of an Oklahoma zookeeper who was indicted last week on federal murder-for-hire charges.

    Carole Baskin of Big Cat Rescue said she’s clashed in the past with Joseph Maldonado-Passage, who goes by the nickname “Joe Exotic.”

    “He’s been threatening me for many, many years,” Baskin told The Oklahoman after Maldonado-Passage’s arrest last week.

    Prosecutors allege that Maldonado-Passage tried to hire two separate people to kill an unnamed woman, who wasn’t harmed. One of the unidentified people he sought to hire connected him with an undercover FBI agent, who met with Maldonado-Passage in December 2017. The indictment was unsealed Friday and Maldonado-Passage remains jailed in Florida. He didn’t reply to an email seeking comment and court records don’t list an attorney for him.

    Is there a mugshot? Why yes. Yes there is.

  • Facebook Adjusts Algorithm To Show You Even More Terrible Content.” I’m glad they mentioned that super-annoying Ray-Ban tag spam. Also this:

    Content will also appear in a completely jumbled, totally incoherent order, even more so than before. “Something that was posted a few minutes ago you’ll probably never see, even if you try. But stuff that got posted three weeks ago, we’ll plaster your screen with it to no end.”

  • Twitter Suspends Bosch Fawstin

    Thursday, September 13th, 2018

    You may remember cartoonist Bosch Fawstin, the winner of the Everybody Draw Mohammed Contest in Garland that two Islamic State jihadis tried to attack at the cost of their lives.

    Well, it seems that Twitter has suspended his account. I’ve written him to see if they gave any reason but I haven’t heard back yet. Some suggested it might be his participation in the (now cancelled) Dutch Draw Muhammed contest:

    In the meantime, you can buy his book, My Mohammed Cartoons Vol 1.

    Houston Chronicle Reporter Resigns Under Suspicion of Making Quotes Up

    Tuesday, September 11th, 2018

    Another day, another press scandal, this time in Texas:

    Another Houston Chronicle journalist flagged me with questions about the accuracy of a story written by veteran Austin reporter Mike Ward. Ward joined the Chronicle in 2014 after a long career with the Austin American-Statesman. Specifically, questions were raised about whether individuals quoted in one of his stories were real people.

    Our own researchers, after an initial review, had difficulty finding a number of sources cited in Ward’s most recent reports.

    Ward has insisted that his work was truthful, that his work involved real people, and that we would eventually find the individuals behind his “man-on-the-street” interviews. However, given the questions this review raised, he offered to resign and I accepted that resignation last week. If we were in another business, that might be enough.

    As a journalism organization, we owe the public more. We owe our readers the truth and to tell you if, in fact, there were inaccuracies in anything we published. We simply do not know the full story yet.

    To help us ferret this out, we have hired an independent, highly respected journalist to review Ward’s work for the last year, or further, if necessary, and determine whether any reporting transgressions occurred. We have given that journalist full access to our archives and promised access to our editors as well. Investigative work takes time, and it can be tedious. Tracking down and verifying sources, especially across a year or more of work, requires significant legwork.

    Ward frequently reported on state politics.

    At least the Chronicle was kind enough to make a public statement about it.

    Once again: If members of the media want to know why the public has lost faith in them, they need only look in the mirror.

    Tucker Carlson on NBC’s Burgeoning Weinstein Scandal

    Thursday, September 6th, 2018

    First came this story about NBC spiked Ronan Farrow’s story on Harvey Weinstein:

    In February 2015, Farrow lost his daytime show on MSNBC and began working with NBC News’ investigative unit. In November 2016, Farrow and a producer named Rich McHugh decided they wanted to do a story about Hollywood’s “casting couch,” the longtime practice of producers and other powerful men exchanging sex with women for film roles, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. The story was timed to be released around the Academy Awards, these sources said.

    They presented the idea to NBC News President Noah Oppenheim, who suggested the team look into a October 2016 tweet by actress Rose McGowan that she was raped by a Hollywood executive, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation.

    Over the next several months, Farrow collected evidence that suggested Weinstein had a pattern of inappropriate behavior toward women, according to the sources and previous reporting by The Daily Beast, HuffPost, and The New York Times. Weinstein has repeatedly denied all allegations of non-consensual sex. Sources familiar with the matter previously told The Daily Beast that at least eight women accusing Weinstein had agreed to go on camera, including two alleged victims with their names and faces.

    In an interview with The New York Times published Thursday night, McHugh accused “the very highest levels of NBC” of later stopping the reporting.

    “There was not one single victim or witness to misconduct by Harvey Weinstein who was willing to go on the record. Not one,” the spokesperson told The Daily Beast.

    By February, according to the sources, Farrow had secured an on-the-record interview with McGowan in which the actress said she had been sexually harassed by a powerful producer, though she did not name Weinstein. (McGowan subsequently named Weinstein during the NBC investigation, according to a source with knowledge of the story, but reportedly pulled her interview after being legally threatened by Weinstein, who had reached a $100,000 settlement with her in 1997 after she accused him of sexual assault.)

    Farrow and McHugh also obtained a bombshell audio recording from a NYPD sting in which Weinstein admitted to groping Filipina-Italian model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez in 2015. (The Battilana audio was subsequently published by The New Yorker.)

    “The tape on its own was color, it added to an already known accusation,” an NBC spokesperson said. While it was “absolutely significant” to hear Battilana’s voice, the spokesperson said, the tape alone would not expose Weinstein as serial sexual predator, as has been alleged.

    NBC’s reluctance stoked Farrow and McHugh’s concerns about NBC’s commitment to the story, the sources said. Farrow did not respond to a request for comment. Ari Wilkenfeld, McHugh’s attorney, told The Daily Beast that his client “has no comment.”

    In spring 2017, according to the sources, Farrow played Oppenheim the audio of Weinstein with Battilana admitting that he was “used to” groping women’s breasts. At one point during their meeting, according to two sources, Oppenheim had asked if people still cared about Weinstein.

    “That is absolutely false,” a NBC spokesperson said, “and it is clearly contradicted by the fact that Oppenheim assigned the story on Harvey Weinstein in the first place. Obviously he understood him to be and believed him to be a newsworthy figure.”

    Farrow had begun to suspect that Oppenheim—who moonlighted as a Hollywood screenwriter—was potentially communicating with Weinstein directly about the story, according to the sources.

    During a meeting in summer 2017, Oppenheim mentioned to Farrow that Weinstein had raised objections to Farrow’s reporting—even though Farrow had not yet asked Weinstein to comment on the allegations, according to individuals briefed on the meeting.

    “Externally, I had Weinstein associates calling me repeatedly,” McHugh told the Times. “I knew that Weinstein was calling NBC executives directly. One time it even happened when we were in the room.”

    Read the whole thing.

    NBC news not only spiked the Weinstein story, but provided an ever-changing list of excuses why and made legal threats against Farrow.

    Here’s Tucker Carlson on how NBC keeps changing their story, and how MS/NBC News honcho Chuck Todd has a lot of explaining to do:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    Village Voice Shuts Down

    Sunday, September 2nd, 2018

    The “alternative weekly” finally had no alternative to shutting down:

    Three years after buying The Village Voice, and a year after the paper shut down its print edition, owner Peter Barbey told the remaining staff today that the publication will no longer be posting any new stories.

    “Today is kind of a sucky day,” Barbey told the staff, according to audio obtained by Gothamist. “Due to, basically, business realities, we’re going to stop publishing Village Voice new material [sic].”

    Barbey said that half of the staff, which is around 15 to 20 people, will remain on to “wind things down,” and work on a project to archive the Voice’s material online.

    The rest of the staff will be let go today.

    Since they announced they were ending print publication a year ago, this is no surprise.

    It’s like when some musician who was briefly important in the sixties dies, and you go “Oh, wait, he was still alive?”

    Alternative weeklies were useful for carrying club, event and restaurant listings, all things the Internet does better now. As far as I can tell, their “carrier medium for liberal opinion” business model is only viable two ways: Carry tons of sex ads (something else the Internet does better now), or have the tabloid as an adjunct to a large, profitable music festival (the Austin Chronicle model). Since the most recent super-geniuses running the Village Voice eliminated sex ads, plus the tremendous BS involved in running any business in New York City, the graffiti was on the brownstone wall.

    Plus it’s not like readers have a crying lack of far left-wing voices in the media today…

    LinkSwarm for August 31, 2018

    Friday, August 31st, 2018

    Just when I think the Catholic Church can’t make itself look any worse in the wake of the burgeoning child rape scandal, they prove me wrong:

  • Papal spokesman on the Catholic Church’s spiraling child rape scandal:

    In an NBC News interview yesterday, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago insisted that it was more than acceptable for Pope Francis to refuse to discuss Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s shocking testimony, which implicates a host of Catholic Church leaders — including the pope — in covering up sexual abuse and immorality.

    “The pope has a bigger agenda,” Cupich told interviewer Mary Anne Ahern when asked about the pope’s refusal to discuss Viganò’s claims. “He’s got to get on with other things, of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the Church.

  • Evidently Pope Francis and company were doing their darnedest to imitate the Babylon Bee.
  • Related: “Pope Starting To Suspect He Might Be Antichrist.”
  • How ObamaCare was designed to force independent doctors out of business. (Hat tip: Ian Murray at Instapundit.)
  • ICE arrests over 100 illegal alien workers at Load Trail LLC in Sumner, north Texas.
  • The U.S. share of mass shootings is actually lower than the global average.
  • President Trump’s Iran sanctions are working.
  • “There’s a widespread consensus that at no time in the past 40 years, since Saddam Hussein acquired absolute power and led Iraq into a series of ruinous wars, has Baghdad been as free and as fun as it is now.” (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Remember Russia’s new T-14 Armata tank? They were going to build 2,300 of them. Now? 132. And that number is split between the T-14 and the T-15 heavy infantry fighting vehicle, which shares the same chassis. Which means Russia will have to continue to rely on older T-72 and T-90 tanks as the mainstays of their armored forces for the foreseeable future. By comparison the United States has over 1,500 M1A2s and over 4,000 M1A1s, both of which proved capable of taking out T-72s in the Gulf War. As Stalin once put it, “Quantity has a quality all it’s own.” And the essential brokeness of Russia is why I’m not worried about their costly adventurism in Syria. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • John McCain was admired by liberals; that is, when they weren’t calling him a senile plutocrat warmonger.
  • How Chicago 68 destroyed the Democratic Party:

    Humphrey would be the last Democratic presidential nominee to represent the values of Truman and JFK: compassionate big government at home, and resolute anti-Communism abroad. Instead, a new Democratic party was born, one that increasingly reflected the radical views of the Chicago protesters: that America, not Communism, was the real force for evil that needed to be contained and transformed. That Democratic party would nominate George McGovern in its 1972 convention and become a party obsessed with social justice, identity politics, and America’s past sins — essentially the party it is today. Meanwhile mainstream Democratic voters began their flight to the Republican party, “Reagan Democrats” who would enable the GOP to win four of the next five presidential elections and who later became the foot soldiers of the Trump insurgency.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • The Missouri Democratic Party does not need any of you stinking moderates. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Biased liberal news sites hate being called biased liberal news sites. (Hat tip: Mark Tapscott at Instapundit.)
  • Philadelphia is bankrupt. So naturally the liberal mayor is trying to ignore the obvious. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Cahnman looks at gang rape in the Baylor football program. Add to this the news that Baylor planted moles in sexual assault survivor groups to report back on cases involving student athletes, and you start to wonder whether the NCAA out not to revive the “Death Penalty” for Baylor’s football program…or maybe their entire athletic department.
  • CNN lied, they know they lied, and they can’t stop lying.
  • Washington Post: “Russia hacked the election!” Also Washington Post: “We’re going to court to fight election transparency advertising law!” (Hat tip: Ace of Spaces HQ.)
  • Speaking of liberal mouthpiece newspapers, both the editor and the publisher for the Austin American Statesman are retiring.
  • This just in: Greece is still boned.
  • “If he’s cute, it’s flirting. If he’s ugly, it’s sexual harassment.”
  • “Abbas to close banks in Gaza, cut off all salaries.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Lancaster Independent School District violates state law with illegal electioneering.
  • Dick’s Sporting Goods move away from guns hurt their bottom line. “The anti-gun crowd must not buy a lot of sporting goods.​”
  • ESPN finally seems to understand that they should get out of politics and stick to sports. Took them long enough…
  • Chicanery at the Llano police department. Bad cop! No ribs!
  • Eat Steak and Live Longer.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Snowflake Kansas professor cancels office hours because concealed carry is no legal. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • There can be only one…going to prison. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • How ballpoint pens killed cursive.
  • ACLU Finds Clue, Backs NRA On Banks

    Monday, August 27th, 2018

    This qualifies as news because it’s actually novel:

    The official view of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) remains that the Second Amendment protects a “collective right rather than an individual right.” But the organization nevertheless is helping the National Rifle Association (NRA) fend off extralegal attempts by New York state officials to put it out of business.

    In a brief filed in federal court today, the ACLU argues that New York’s strong-arm efforts to compel banks and insurance companies to ditch the NRA as a customer represent a glaring violation of the First Amendment.

    “Although public officials are free to express their opinions and may condemn viewpoints or groups they view as inimical to public welfare, they cannot abuse their regulatory authority to retaliate against disfavored advocacy organizations and to impose burdens on those organizations’ ability to conduct lawful business,” the ACLU says.

    The ACLU’s amicus brief never says the group agrees with the NRA’s positions on firearms. Instead, the group invokes a long series of First Amendment cases to argue that the regulators should not use their power in office to punish political enemies.

    A timeline prepared by the NRA suggests the intimidation campaign began last fall. The anti-gun group Everytown for Gun Safety met with New York officials in September 2017; a month later the Department of Financial Services began an investigation that started with a company called Lockton, which administered the NRA-branded personal liability insurance program known as Carry Guard. Despite a 20-year relationship, Lockton responded by abruptly ditching the NRA as a customer in February; so did Chubb and Lloyd’s.

    Emboldened by this initial success, Maria Vullo, head of the state’s Department of Financial Services, sent a pair of ominous letters to all banks, financial institutions, and insurers licensed to do business in New York. Vullo warned companies to sever ties with pro-Second Amendment groups that “promote guns and lead to senseless violence” and instead heed “the voices of the passionate, courageous, and articulate young people” calling for more restrictions on firearms. All companies receiving the letter, she advised, should “review any relationships they have with the NRA or similar gun promotion organizations, and to take prompt actions to managing these risks and promote public health and safety.”

    New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo underlined the regulatory threat in a tweet the next day: “The NRA is an extremist organization. I urge companies in New York State to revisit any ties they have to the NRA and consider their reputations, and responsibility to the public.'”

    As a result of those not-very-veiled threats, the NRA says, multiple banks withdrew bids to provide basic depository services. The NRA is also worried about being able to continue producing its NRA TV channel, with hosts including Dana Loesch and Cam Edwards, unless it can obtain normal media liability insurance. (In May, NRA sued Cuomo and Vullo, a former Cuomo aide when he was attorney general. See J.D. Tuccille’s Reason coverage at the time.)

    “If Cuomo can do this to the NRA, then conservative governors could have their financial regulators threaten banks and financial institutions that do business with any other group whose political views the governor opposes,” David Cole, the ACLU’s legal director, wrote in a blog post today. “The First Amendment bars state officials from using their regulatory power to penalize groups merely because they promote disapproved ideas.”

    A few decades ago, the ACLU acting like, you know, a civil liberties union wouldn’t have been shocking at all. (In fact, back in the dim mists of time, the ACLU back the Texas Review Society in a lawsuit against the University of Texas for prohibiting non-university on-campus newspapers, even though the Texas Review Society was a registered student group). Lately, however, the ACLU has seemed little more than an extension of the liberal overclass (it’s Twitter timeline seems to have gone to an “All ‘OMG The Illegal Alien Children’ All The Time” format), and recently it’s gone wobbly on it’s signature issue of free speech.

    So it’s nice to see the ACLU at least pretend it still cares about free speech for deplorables…

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

    Judge T. S. Ellis to CNN: “Get Stuffed”

    Monday, August 20th, 2018

    Of course I’m paraphrasing a bit:

    The federal judge presiding over Paul Manafort’s trial refused to give media outlets the names of jurors Friday, saying such a move would “create a risk of harm to them.”

    U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis of the Eastern District of Virginia said he himself has received threats during the trial, in which he has been criticized for a tough approach toward special counsel prosecutors.

    “I’ve received criticism and threats. I’d imagine they would too,” Ellis said.

    “I won’t tell you the threats I’ve received,” he added, “but I’ll tell you I have the Marshals’ protection.”

    Ellis’ decision, rejecting a request Ballard Spahr lawyers filed on behalf of several media organizations, came during a brief hearing Friday afternoon in an Alexandria federal courtroom. Ellis remarked that he had “no idea” about the emotions the special counsel prosecution would incite entering the trial.

    Ellis also expressed concern about a chilling effect, saying a “substantial number of people would be scared, afraid” if they knew their names would be made public as part of their jury duty.

    The media outlets—including The New York Times, Washington Post and CNN—filed a motion to intervene in the case earlier Friday asking Ellis to also unseal portions of sidebar transcripts, along with other sealed records in the case. The judge expressed concern that releasing some of the records would interfere with an ongoing investigation.

    The original motion to reveal their names was one of the most brazen attempts at open jury manipulation in history. “Your honor, my client would like the names and addresses of all the jurors, so Seven Finger Louie can get up close and personal to remind each of them, and their families, that Mr. Gotti is a peaceful, legitimate business men, as attested by the current unbroken conditions of their kneecaps.”

    Some tweets on the subject:

    LinkSwarm for August 17, 2018

    Friday, August 17th, 2018

    Themes for today’s LinkSwarm: Jihad, rape and China. Not necessarily in that order…

  • So let me see if I have this story straight: New Mexico jihadis, one related to a New York City imam who might have been involved in 9/11, murdered three children, abused and starved 11 other children while teaching them to be school shooters, and the judge let them out on bail?

    A New Mexico state judge ruled Monday that five alleged Muslim extremists accused of training children to conduct school shootings do not have to remain in jail while they await trial for child abuse.

    Judge Sarah Backus released the five defendants, Siraj Wahhaj, Hujrah Wahhaj, Subhannah Wahhaj, Jany Leveille, and Lucas Morten, on a $20,000 “signature bond,” according to the Albuquerque Journal. That means that the defendants will not have to pay money unless they violate the conditions of their release

    It’s a good thing there’s not a huge foreign nation immediately to the south with a porous border they can flee to…

    And authorities just bulldozed the compound?

  • The great illusion of China’s economic growth.

    If China really had a savings rate of 46%, the economy would look quite different. There would be very little debt in the system; the banks would have a very low loans to deposits ratio and low leverage, like banks in nineteenth century Britain. Consumer debt would be almost non-existent, while the Chinese market would have an enormous variety of saving and investment schemes, to take care of all the accumulated wealth. New company formation would be very high, but “venture capital” would be very scarce, because new companies would be capitalized from the savings of the founders’ relatives and friends. Overall, China might well have a rapid growth rate, but it would be a very contented, stable economy.

    A recent Financial Times examination of China’s economy illustrates the problem; it shows consumer debt almost doubling as a share of GDP, from roughly 20% to 40% in the last five years and tells pathetic stories of young, highly educated Chinese who max out their credit cards, desperately hoping to boost their earnings sufficiently to pay that debt back. But Chinese elite youths brought up in a society with a 46% savings rate would have neither the desire nor the need for heavy credit card usage. First, they would have been brought up in families with a fanatical devotion to deferring consumption, so would regard the over-indebted Western Millennial lifestyle with undiluted horror. Second, because of their families’ savings habits, such elite youths would be beneficiaries of very substantial trust funds from their relatives, and so would have no need of credit cards.

    If the savings rate is fiction, then so are all China’s economic statistics. GDP is at least one third lower than claimed, to account for the missing savings, and growth rates over the last decades correspondingly lower, On the other hand, China’s foreign debt is all too real, and most of the domestic debt also appears to be solid, so China’ s gross debt, already alarmingly high at 299% of GDP according to the Institute for International Finance, is in reality about 450% of true GDP, substantially higher than that of any other country. With such a level of debt, China is not about to overtake the West, it is in imminent danger of collapse. Indeed, it is at first sight something of a mystery why it has not collapsed already under the weight of its excesses.

    (Hat tip: Iain Murray at Instapundit.)

  • Speaking of China, they got all pissy about the latest defense bill.
  • Also: “China Buckles, Sends Trade Delegation to Washington to Seek End of Trade War.” Maybe, just maybe, President Donald Trump knows a thing or two about negotiating strategy…
  • Today’s @realDonaldTrump approval ratings among black voters: 36%.” That’s up from 29% two weeks ago.
  • “Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own.” That quote comes from an American bicycling across several foreign countries, including one where Islamic State followers killed him, his wife, and two fellow-travelers thanks to their “different perspectives.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Google has released a report on the paid ads they’ve run on political campaigns. It’s not completely useless, but then you drill down to congressional district, it only shows you total spending, not how much was spent by each campaign, much less links to the relevant ads.
  • Borepatch brings up an old and (to our media) deeply uncomfortable truth about the Catholic child rape scandal:

    A theme that keeps recurring in histories of the worst abusers is that they were trained in seminaries that were run by homosexual men and saturated with gay-liberationist subculture. Reading accounts of students at one notorious California seminary making a Friday-night ritual of cruising gay bars, it becomes hard not to wonder if gay culture itself has not been an important enabler of priestly abuse.

    Along those lines, the book Goodbye, Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption into the Catholic Church made this argument shortly after the original Catholic Church pedophilia scandal broke, and was promptly ignored by the media for not fitting the narrative.

  • Speaking of child rape, 30 Muslim men and one woman have been charged with multiple counts of rape and sex trafficking of women as young as 12 in West Yorkshire, UK. (“Luxury! We used to be raped 25 hours a day…”)
  • Ace of Spades is surprised to find Disney holding firm on it’s firing of James “I Make Pedophile Jokes” Gunn. Also, in the course of slamming (perhaps a littler too strenuously) Trump-skeptical establishment conservatives on their hypocrisy on the issue (RE: Roseanne), he does nicely articulate the logic of taking’s the Guardians of the Galaxy director’s scalp, even if Gunn was only joking:

    I will not be subject to one of your rules and yet permit you to be free of your own rule. If it’s your rule, you shall suffer under it just the same as me.

    We do not (yet) have a formal caste system in America, despite the obvious longing from the left and the NeverTrump rump to establish over-castes and under-castes.

    And it’s MUH #SacredPrinciple that we shall not have a tiered system of citizenship that the leftwing establishment as well as the “right”-leaning establishment so clearly crave.

    And I’ll sacrifice anyone to make sure that they do not put me in their designated under-caste.​

  • “Poll: Majority of Millennial Women Do Not Identify as Feminist.” Take a bow, Shoe0nHead! (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Newspaper editorial says that the MSM is falling into Prsident Trump’s trap:

    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.

    The independent press was built on a foundation of objectivity. Through a tradition of conscientious commitment to telling all sides of a story we convinced our readers, listeners, viewers that we were the source of fair and balanced coverage. We were equal opportunity scourges of scoundrels on both sides of the political aisle.

    Now, too many of us are following the websites, cable networks and blogosphere into point-of-view journalism that presents the news with equal parts fact and opinion. We’ve infused our reports with commentary and call it context.

    Journalists once kept their personal views personal, lest anyone challenge the motives behind their reporting. Now reporters post their opinions on Facebook and Twitter. They sob in newsrooms over the results of an election. News meetings and editorial boards are often indistinguishable.

    Respected journalists openly question whether remaining objective in the Donald Trump era is a sell-out rather than a virtue. Some have joined the resistance movement, blending journalism with activism.

    No one in our profession can say with a straight face that we cover Donald Trump the same way we have past presidents. We are not only giving him more scrutiny — rightly so — but we are making more mistakes in our haste to discredit him. Our accuracy ratings have fallen as we turn to poorly vetted anonymous sources and repeat every rumor that fits the narrative that Trump is a disaster.

    Yes, Trump is an extraordinary case. Chaos is the hallmark of his governing style. His personal conduct falls well short of presidential. But his administration has had successes, and the press is not as eager to cover those as it is his failures.

    Journalism seems to have turned a corner in search of some higher purpose beyond simply digging out the truth, presenting it to our readers and letting them decide what to do with it.

    Nothing about Donald Trump justifies tossing aside the standards that have allowed journalists to remain the trusted eyes and ears of the people.

  • “Patreon and Mastercard ban Robert Spencer without explanation.” That’s Robert Spencer of JihadWatch, not Richard Spencer the LARP Nazi.
  • By the way, Robert Spencer has a new book out: The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS.
  • MoviePass is getting ready to bite the moose. I can imagine a way you could make this thing work out: Make deals with large theater chains, exclude the first week of all movies, and the first few weeks for blockbusters, and make a deal to buy tickets at a steep discount to put butts in seats so theater owners can make more money off concessions. All things that MoviePass evidently never attempted…
  • The great plastic gun panic…of 1986. I think we can all remember how the widespread availability of the Glock resulted in the downfall of America…
  • The remote Australian town where people live underground and hunt opals.
  • Unlikely teamups:

  • Are you ready to take your cosplay to Flavortown? (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Twitter Randomly Banning Conservatives Yet Again

    Wednesday, August 15th, 2018

    Twitter is up to its old tricks:

    @OrdyPackard shows up as having a QFD ban. “QFD causes your tweets to be invisible within the latest section of the search, including hashtags, when the quality filter is turned on. Note that this quality filter is located on the search page, is turned on by default and will be reset for each search anew. It differs from the quality filter controlling your notifications. QFD was introduced on May 15, 2018 as part of Twitter’s so-called healthy conversation project.”

    And Gavin McInnis was banned outright. “I think what’s really going on here is Proud Boys have been successful in protecting speakers from Antifa.”

    I suggested one response: