Archive for 2019
March 25, 2019
BRENT BOZELL: AFTER MUELLER REPORT, ‘I DON’T KNOW HOW CNN EVER RECOVERS.’
Predicting what will be coming, the MRC President [told Fox Business’ Stuart Varney], “I don’t know how CNN undoes the damage, because they not going to stop. They’re going to continue this. Are they going to say, ‘Oops! For two years we were wrong in our slandering of the President?’ They’re never going to do it.”
Exit quote:
“Half of me wants to burst out laughing. The other half of me wants to look seriously at American journalism and look at the damage these people have done to that institution. I don’t know how they repair it. I don’t know how some networks ever come back. I don’t know how Jim Acosta can ever be seen on television without people laughing at them. He’s ruined. Brian Stelter at CNN, Chuck Todd of NBC. These people are never going to be believed again.”
To be fair, I never thought CNN recovered from inviting young human shields to shill for Obamacare in 2009, serving cake on air in honor of the Obama stimulus in 2010, Candy Crowley sabotaging Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential debate, or this “Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia” moment in 2008, which greatly helped to smooth Obama’s path to election:
Just think of CNN as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their actions all make sense.
THE ANSWER IS NOT 42, BUT IT’S CLOSE: After Multiple Reports About New Zealanders Turning In Guns, Guess How Many Actually Did It?
21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: To rival Amazon, UPS enters healthcare—with doorstep nurse delivery.
NEW SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO HAVE UNPAID TAXES ON HER DIVIDENDS: Ocasio-Cortez still hasn’t paid tax bill from failed business venture.
UPDATE from Charlie: Only a week and this is appropriate again: Raise Your Own Damn Taxes
MAKE AMERICA GREAT (AND DRESS DOWN) AGAIN: Men Ditch Suits, and Retailers Struggle to Adapt.
Business casual becomes more prevalent and even more casual in tight labor markets, as management attempts to keep workers happy.
UPDATE: From the comments:
Consequences/revelations from the Mueller report
1. No more waiting because Trump looks vulnerable at home by North Korea, China, even Germany. There will be a scramble for deals over the next year.
2. America’s institutions were robust enough put down a coup attempt by the prior president and deep infesters of the national security apparatus.
3. Doubling down by Democrats to overturn those institutions, the Electoral College. The professors will double down on their indoctrination at status universities to turn their acolytes against the US constitutional republican form of government
#3 for sure.
HOTTEST OF HOT TAKES: “Trump Owes Mueller an apology.”
While the Washington Post has since changed their headline this morning to the much more neutral “Robert Mueller, a real-life Atticus Finch*,” the headline is still visible in Google’s cache — and in the article’s URL.
(Via Allahpundit, who tweets, “There was a headline at WaPo this morning (now changed) that ‘Trump owes Mueller an apology,’ in case you’re wondering who’s leading the ‘take’ horserace.”)
* Wait, does the headline writer mean that as a compliment? The left has been very busy smearing the reputation of the famous fictitious attorney recently.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Can Comedy Recover from Russia Conspiracy Hoax?
Night after night, show after show, the notion that the U.S. president colluded with a foreign government flavored the monologues.
Don’t forget how “Saturday Night Live” carried the Russia collusion torch, too. The show hired Robert De Niro, an avowed Trump hater, to play Robert Mueller investigating the president’s alleged Russian ties. The purpose was clear: the president was one report away from going to the hoosegow.
The women of “SNL” even sang “All I Want for Christmas Is Mueller” just a few weeks back.
And, as we all just learned, it wasn’t true. No Russia collusion. Period. Full stop.
Click over for examples of the New Funny.
Comedy was never pretty, but it sure has gotten ugly.
THE BACKSTREETS OF SERFDOM: BBC Goons Go Door-to-Door Demanding ‘TV License’ Fees to Pay for Their Biased News.
The BBC’s handling of their license fees is not at all creepy and Orwellian.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Mueller report: Collusion by the news media, not Donald Trump, but don’t expect apologies. “The irony, of course, is that while purporting to worry about Russian interference in American politics, by advancing this story the press was actually doing Putin’s work, sowing division and confusion through the American polity. As former Clinton pollster Mark Penn tweeted, we wasted two years, thirty million dollars, and a lot of institutional credibility at the FBI and Department of Justice over ‘a false story of Russia collusion based on oppo research that was always unsubstantiated and preposterous.’ . . . We may someday need a press we can trust. But I hope not, because we certainly don’t have one.”
THE HITS KEEP COMING:
MARGARET SULLIVAN DOUBLES DOWN ON STUPID: Serious journalists should be proud of — not bullied over — their Russia reporting.
Nobody ought to be bullied, but Sullivan has gone Full Stelter. And everyone knows you never go Full Stelter.
HARSH BUT FAIR:
HARMLESS OR HARMFUL?: Congressional Democrats have now re-introduced the proposed “Do No Harm” Act, which would limit the reach of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. I am not against clarifying the federal RFRA in some respects, but Progressives have made it clear that when religious freedom and anti-discrimination laws come into conflict, anti-discrimination laws should win hands down every time. That can’t be right.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a report on the conflict between religious freedom and anti-discrimination laws a while ago (e.g. should a baker have to bake a special cake for a same-sex wedding?). The body of the report was reasonably fair. But the individual Commissioner statements revealed a strong bias on the part of the Progressive majority toward religion (and especially toward the Christian religion). It was eye opening for me. The then-Chair of the Commission wrote this:
“The phrases “religious liberty” and “religious freedom” will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.”
Religious liberty was never intended to give one religion dominion over others, or a veto power over the civil rights and civil liberties of others. However, today, as in the past, religion is being used as both a weapon and a shield by those seeking to deny others equality. In our nation’s past religion has been used to justify slavery and later, Jim Crow laws. We now see “religious liberty” arguments sneaking their way back into our political and constitutional discourse (just like the concept of “states rights”) in an effort to undermine the rights of some Americans. This generation of Americans must stand up and speak out to ensure that religion never again be twisted to deny others the full promise of America.”
That was his whole statement; he obviously didn’t see any of the issues as close. I responded as best as I could. If you read my Commissioner statement, you may notice it was written in waves. The first page responds to the original staff-written part of the report, the next few pages responds to “Finding & Recommendations” adopted by the Commissioners themselves (over my objections), but the bulk of it responds to the over-the-top Statements of my fellow Commissioners.
I regard many of these issues as hard. My colleagues didn’t seem to think so.
RICK MORAN: The Most Epic Media Failure in U.S. History. “How did the institution of American journalism fail so utterly to get it right?”
Easy. They meant to.
THEY CAN GRIEVE AS MUCH AS THEY WANT SO LONG AS I CAN MOCK THEM AS MUCH AS I WANT: Van Jones: We gotta let Democrats and the Left “grieve” over Trump’s exoneration on collusion.
Plus: “I think Van hit the nail on the head. Democrats are so hell-bent on being anti-Trump that they’re becoming anti-American on this. Look, at the end of the day after this investigation — look, when you have the head of this probe and the head of this investigation telling us that — the client here — that there was no collusion and no obstruction, then he’s exonerated. Why can’t the Democrats just acknowledge that fact?”
Also: “So far, it looks like Democrats are stuck between anger and denial on the Kubler-Ross progression of grief: anger and denial. It’s too bad, because the fact that we had a clean election in 2016 should be a relief to Americans … and probably is to most of us.”
WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL? San Antonio Bans Chick-fil-A from Its Airport for Seven Years. “Excluding in the name of ‘inclusiveness’.”
BOSTON HERALD EDITORIAL: Time To Investigate The Investigators.
There is no collusion and there never was. But this is no time to celebrate. The very idea that Trump was working with the Russians was very possibly invented to open Trump up to investigation, and it worked.
The Democrats have been saying that the truth must come to light for two years, now. Let us oblige them. The president has been dogged by this entire situation..
Was the “Russia Dossier” used to get the ball rolling? There is evidence to suggest it.
Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr and Peter Strzok should be at the center of a new probe to determine whether members of the United States intelligence services took part in an effort to compromise the duly elected president of the United States.
Democrats and the media will show little interest in such an investigation but that is of no matter. History will outlive the activists on CNN and it is our responsibility to shed light on the motives behind the machinations to undermine a duly elected president.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.