September 18, 2024

THIS. IS. CNN.

Host Wood, passed over for “The Daily Show’s” hosting gig earlier this year, asked the panel, “What was the fake name of the head of the Taliban that Donald Trump cited during the debate.”

The answer? Abdul.

“He picked the most obvious name to make up for the head of the Taliban,” Black cracked as his fellow panelists cackled in glee. The show’s official X account pushed the clip out, secure in its comedy mileage and accuracy.

Except they got it wrong.

Trump actually negotiated with Taliban official Abdul Ghani Baradar during his presidency.

Morons who think they’re smart. Ignoramuses who think they know things. That’s our ruling class in a nutshell.

Posted at 7:59 pm by Glenn Reynolds

FORMER SINATRA HANGOUT PATSY’S RESTAURANT SUED OVER ALLEGED ALBANIAN HATE, $1 MILLION IN WAGE THEFT:

A classic Manhattan restaurant once frequented by Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack is accused of a disturbing duet of hatred toward Albanians and over $1 million in stolen wages, a pair of lawsuits filed this week in federal court claim.

The owners of Patsy’s Italian Restaurant allegedly told two Albanian workers that “all Albanians deserve a bullet,” are “gay” and “garbage,” and even said that adults and young children of the nascent Balkan nation deserve “to be f—ed,” one explosive federal complaint says.

Those disturbing comments were raised when discussing the similarly named and Albanian-owned Patsy’s Pizzeria, with which Patsy’s Restaurant had a long-simmering trademark feud stretching back to 1999, and is allegedly the origins of the anti-Albanian hate, according to court docs.

Wake up, sheeple! It’s the home stretch in an election year, so of course the sitting president is gearing up to launch the B-3 bombers in order to deal with Albania over the flimsiest of premises:

Posted at 6:55 pm by Ed Driscoll

J. PEDER ZANE: The Sins of the Gray Lady. The following is a chapter from the recently released book, Against the Corporate Media: Forty-two Ways the Press Hates You.

Readers of the New York Times know the news may change, but the message is always the same in their paper of record. It will play up every Republican kerfuffle and downplay Democratic scandals while presenting the choice between the two parties as a Manichean struggle between good and evil. Now clad in rainbow colors, the Gray Lady will, in the name of inclusion, celebrate a wide range of heretofore marginal behaviors – homosexuality, polyamory and transgenderism – while sowing divisions by separating Americans into warring camps based on race, gender, and ethnicity.

The transformation of the Times, and much of American journalism, during the last decade from a traditional newspaper that largely reports the news into the daily call sheet for the “woke” revolution that seeks to undermine the traditional pillars of American society is now so complete that it may seem unremarkable. Both its defenders and critics know exactly what to expect when they open its pages. Such acceptance, or resignation, is dangerous because it normalizes the great sin of the New York Times: the betrayal of hitherto bedrock journalistic principles of fairness, objectivity and pluralism that made the Fourth Estate a pillar of American democracy during the 20th century.

In his 2010 book Gray Lady Down, William McGowan began with a look at the New York Times of the 1970s:

A tribute of sorts to the ideological neutrality of Times news reporting under Rosenthal had come from a rather unusual source: William F. Buckley’s National Review, the very bible of American conservatism. In 1972, as Spiro Agnew railed against the “elitist Eastern establishment press,” and Richard Nixon was livid over the Times’ publication of the Pentagon Papers and its looming endorsement of George McGovern, the National Review produced an article examining the charges of left-leaning bias. Conservatives had long dismissed the Times as “a hopeless hotbed of liberalism, biased beyond redemption and therefore not to be taken seriously,” the magazine observed, asking, “But to what extent was this impression soundly based?” A subheadline telegraphed its findings: “Things on 43rd Street aren’t as bad as they seem.” The National Review audit examined five developing stories, which it said had a “distinct left-right line,” and concluded: “The Times news administration was so evenhanded that it must have been deeply dismaying to the liberal opposition.” It went on to state that conservatives and other Americans would be far more confident in other media—specifically newsmagazines and television networks—if those media “measured up to the same standard” of fairness. “Were the news standards of the Times more broadly emulated,” National Review said, “the nation would be far better informed and more honorably served.”

This was very much a validation for [NYT editor Abe] Rosenthal, and for Arthur O. “Punch” Sulzberger, who also upheld the tradition of politically agnostic news reporting despite the shrill liberalism of the editorial page and, increasingly, the journalistic activism of a new generation of reporters touched by the lengthening shadow of the counterculture. Indeed, Rosenthal would cite the National Review piece on other occasions when challenged by accusations of political bias at the Times. Even Joseph Lelyveld, who took over the top editor’s job in 1994 and was undoubtedly to the left of Rosenthal, saw need for vigilance. “Abe would always say, with some justice, that you have to keep your hand on the tiller and steer to the right or it’ll drift off to the left.”

Flash-forward to 2019. As Zane writes:

In August 2019, the newspaper devoted an entire issue of the New York Times Magazine to The 1619 Project. Its stated “goal” was “to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 [the year enslaved sub-Saharan Africans first landed in North America] as our nation’s ”real” birth year. Doing so,” the magazine’s editor Jake Silverstein wrote in an introduction, “requires us to place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country.” Through eighteen articles and fifteen artistic contributions that spanned the length of American history, the project abandoned journalism’s traditional mission of presenting the complexity of consequential issues in order to make the argument that the nation’s past, present, and future have been and forever will be defined by anti-black racism. There were no dissenting views, and few countervailing facts.

The vast ambition of The 1619 Project underscores the Times’ transformation into a tool of the cultural revolution whose aim is to disrupt traditional understandings and beliefs about almost every aspect of American life. The hubris is astonishing. While newspapers have often revisited episodes of the past in response to scholars having unearthed new information, the 1619 Project started with an ideological position about the sweep of American history which it then set out to demonstrate through tendentious pieces. The lead essay was not written by a scholar, but an activist black journalist, Nikole Hannah-Jones.

The backlash was immediate, as many leading historians wrote lengthy critiques of nearly every article. This included a letter to the Times signed by five prominent scholars – including James M. McPherson and Sean Wilentz of Princeton University and Gordon Wood of Brown University – which challenged two of Hannah-Jones’ most sweeping assertions regarding the Revolutionary War and Abraham Lincoln.

“On the American Revolution, pivotal to any account of our history, the project asserts that the founders declared the colonies’ independence of Britain ‘in order to ensure slavery would continue.’ This is not true. … The project criticizes Abraham Lincoln’s views on racial equality but ignores his conviction that the Declaration of Independence proclaimed universal equality, for blacks as well as whites, a view he upheld repeatedly against powerful white supremacists who opposed him.”

The historians wrote that “These errors, which concern major events, cannot be described as interpretation or ‘framing.’ They are matters of verifiable fact, which are the foundation of both honest scholarship and honest journalism. They suggest a displacement of historical understanding by ideology.”

Rather than engage these prominent scholars, Hannah-Jones dismissed them as “white historians.” A few months later, their interpretation of the Project’s ideological spirit was underscored by Leslie M. Harris, an African-American historian at Northwestern University who helped fact-check Hannah-Jones essay. She wrote in Politico that she was stunned by Hannah-Jones’  assertion “that the patriots fought the American Revolution in large part to preserve slavery in North America,” because “I had vigorously argued against [it] with her fact-checker.”

As Zane writes, the 1619 project was buttressed between the Times pushing the Russian Collusion hoax involving Donald Trump, and afterwards, the paper’s young staffers getting the vapors over Tom Cotton’s op-ed in June of 2020.

Exit quote:

During the last decade, the Times has transformed itself into a very different publication. It is not an honest broker but an organ of advocacy. To its critics, this is a tragedy for journalism and the nation. But, as a free-standing business, that is also its right. Perhaps the Times could defend these changes. Its refusal to do so, to report on the world as it is, not as it would like it to be, does a grave disservice both to journalism and the nation.

I hope it was all worth it for the Sulzbergers and others concerned with the paper’s survival.

Posted at 6:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

SPRINGTIME FOR TUCKER:

I’m much less interested in Tucker’s erstwhile historian’s insane Pat Buchanan-esque reversal of who the good guys were in WWII, than why Tucker himself decided to bring up this particular topic a couple of months before election day.

Posted at 5:38 pm by Ed Driscoll

LAUGHING WOLF: A big BRAVO to whomever did the pager op, and a rundown of why.

First, it was fairly precise targeting, which limited (nothing can eliminate the possibility of) “civilian” casualties. Limiting the explosive to one or two ounces helped guarantee limitation of collateral damage. Those who are screaming otherwise, and that it was against the rules of war, are both wrong and far more upset that their favored side was hurt and that the Jews dared defend themselves instead of just lining up for the slaughter. By their words and actions, they reveal who and what they are. Make notes.

Second, if they could intercept and do this to THOUSANDS of pagers, do you think they wouldn’t be able to also use those devices to track locations, monitor communications, and more? Months of data, and just the location data alone would have revealed locations and more. Where did they meet? With whom did they meet? Where did they go when things got hot? The so-called meta data on this is tremendous on its own. If they literally did get inside their coms and were reading the mail…

Third, most interesting that the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon had a Hezballess-issued pager.

Much more at the link from one of my favorite milbloggers.

Posted at 4:52 pm by Stephen Green

KDJ: Hey Democrats, Stop Trying to Kill Our Guy. “If the Democrats, deep state, and uniparty are so secure with their candidate, why do they want to kill Trump? Because they know they are losing. Also, communists believe assassinating Trump is not only acceptable but virtuous.”

Posted at 4:21 pm by Stephen Green

SOMEBODY TELL GAVIN NEWSOM:

Posted at 4:10 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THAT’S ABOUT RIGHT:

If nothing else, I suppose we’ll find out whether Bidenflation is well and truly squelched.

Posted at 3:57 pm by Stephen Green

HOT, HOT, HOT!!:  The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights will be turning out another not-so-great report later today—this one on crime victimization.  Here is my Statement—which I hope you’ll read, including Footnote 9.  We’re at kind of a low point.  The Vice Chair is accusing one of my conservative colleagues of “race baiting” apparently for pointing out that African Americans are disproportionately victimized by crime.  It’s all a bit loony.

Posted at 2:49 pm by Gail Heriot

KARMA, COURTESY OF MOSSAD:

Posted at 2:48 pm by Stephen Green

THE POLITICO: Harris’ formula for national media interviews: Don’t make news.

Kamala Harris largely stuck to her script during an interview Tuesday with a panel of National Association of Black Journalists members, carefully parrying questions about hot-button issues like the war in Gaza, reparations and other critical election topics.

It was the vice president’s second high-profile national media interview since announcing her presidential run, and though she spoke passionately at times about abortion rights and other policies, she did not break much ground or stray far from her talking points during the near hour-long conversation.

* * * * * * * * *

The panel of NABJ members who moderated the interview were POLITICO Playbook co-author Eugene Daniels, Fresh Air co-host Tonya Mosley and theGrio White House Correspondent Gerren Keith Gaynor.

Which means the official Politico policy is to do nothing to get her off her talking points. “Don’t make news?” They’re perfectly content to play along.

Just think of the Politico as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

Evergreen:

Meanwhile, in sharp contrast:

UPDATE: Run silent, run not very deep!

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

IT’S AN ELECTION YEAR, SO…: The Federal Reserve just cut interest rates by a half point. Here’s what that means for your wallet.

The Federal Reserve announced Wednesday it will lower its benchmark rate by a half percentage point, or 50 basis points, paving the way for relief from the high borrowing costs that have hit consumers particularly hard.

The federal funds rate, which is set by the U.S. central bank, is the interest rate at which banks borrow and lend to one another overnight. Although that’s not the rate consumers pay, the Fed’s moves still affect the borrowing and savings rates they see every day.

A series of interest rate hikes starting in March of 2022 took the central bank’s benchmark to its highest in more than 22 years, which caused most consumer borrowing costs to skyrocket — and put many households under pressure.

Now, with inflation backing down, “there are reasons to be optimistic,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com.

However, “one rate cut isn’t a panacea for borrowers grappling with high financing costs and has a minimal impact on the overall household budget,” he said. “What will be more significant is the cumulative effect of a series of interest rate cuts over time.”

Earlier: “Trump’s arrival in the Oval Office will result in a hailstorm of bad economic data, and most of this will be due to the sudden end of statistical manipulations that have been in place for the last four years.”

Posted at 2:25 pm by Ed Driscoll