ANALYSIS: TRUE.
Archive for 2020
January 9, 2020
LIZ WARREN TO CRAZY LEFT: YOU WANT CRAZY? I CAN BE CRAZIER! Warren: U.S. Will Build No New Houses or Buildings Unless Carbon Neutral.
ANDREA MITCHELL SEES WHAT SHE WANTS TO SEE: ‘The worst national security team that I’ve ever seen.’
THE RETURN OF THE BLOB! CBS Huffs: ‘Unfounded’ Money Obama Sent Iran Helped in Attack.
Flashback: The president of CBS’s news division during the Obama era was David Rhodes, the brother of Obama’s Middle East guru Ben Rhodes, who famously bragged about selling their infamous Iran deal to their stenographers in the DNC-MSM:
“All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
Rhodes set up a team of staffers who were focused on promoting the deal, which apparently included the feeding of talking points at useful times in the news cycle to foreign policy experts who were favorably disposed toward it. “We created an echo chamber,” he told the magazine. “They [the seemingly independent experts] were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”
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Rhodes speaks contemptuously of the Washington policy and media establishment, including The Washington Post and the New York Times, referring to them as “the blob” that was subject to conventional thinking about foreign policy.
And to paraphrase “Joliet” Jake, they’re putting the blob back together again.
HARSH, BUT FAIR: What Elizabeth Warren’s statements on Qasem Soleimani really tell us.
It went like this: “Soleimani was a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans. But this reckless move escalates the situation with Iran and increases the likelihood of more deaths and new Middle East conflict. Our priority must be to avoid another costly war.”
Within 24 hours, Warren had another tweet — that took a decidedly different tack on Soleimani’s killing. (Bolding is mine.) “Donald Trump ripped up an Iran nuclear deal that was working,” tweeted Warren. “He’s repeatedly escalated tensions. Now he’s assassinated a senior foreign military official. He’s been marching toward war with Iran since his first days in office—but the American people won’t stand for it.”
Then, in a Sunday interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Warren referred to Soleimani as only “a government official, a high-ranking military official” — and suggested that Trump may have ordered the killing of the Iranian commander to distract from his pending impeachment trial in the Senate.
“Next week, the President of the United States could be facing an impeachment trial in the Senate,” Warren told Tapper. “We know he’s deeply upset about that. And I think people are reasonably asking, why this moment? Why does he pick now to take this highly inflammatory, highly dangerous action that moves us closer to war?”
Which, wow. We went from “murderer” to “wag the dog” in the space of a few days.
Which is mind-bending. And confusing — until you realize the “why” behind Warren’s rapid change of heart on Soleimani. Which is this: because the liberal left didn’t like her initial statement and she needs those voters to have a chance at winning the Democratic presidential nomination this year.
If Trump wins this year, he can thank the disproportionate effect of woke, white Twitter users, who have pushed the Dem candidates far to the left even of average Dem voters.
COCAINE MITCH: McConnell just ate Pelosi and Schumer’s lunch.
Like your Aunt Frieda threatening not to bring her awful fruitcake to Christmas Dinner, their plan didn’t work. Nobody wanted it in the first place.
McConnell won this round against his Keystone Cops opposition because he has something Schumer and Pelosi don’t: a reasonable argument.
The Senate majority leader has insisted from the beginning that if the House were to impeach Trump, the Senate should treat him the same way it treated Bill Clinton in 1998. So, McConnell has steadfastly argued for the same rules package that passed the Senate 100-0 in the Clinton iteration. “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander” makes a pretty sensible argument.
The Democrats have raged against his position. This is different, they say.
Because reasons. And also shut up.
ROGER KIMBALL: Polls Apart. The modern pollster tends to be in love with his model. Hence his predictions tend to confirm the model rather than pull back the curtain on other contingencies.
FAKE NEWS: MSNBC Repeats Iranian Propaganda That Missile Strikes Killed 30 U.S. Soldiers.
They’re not antiwar; they’re on the other side.
THEY DON’T PUT THESE BANS IN PLACE TO PROTECT YOU: Court weighs ban on secret recordings of public officials. “A Massachusetts prosecutor defended Wednesday a state ban on secret audio recordings of police and government officials, asking an appeals court to overturn a decision that found the prohibition unconstitutional. At a hearing before the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals, free speech groups countered that such recordings are protected by the First Amendment and that Massachusetts’ law is out of step with national norms, especially in an era when nearly everyone has a recording device in their pocket.”
January 8, 2020
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FIRST IT WAS BLACK OFFICIALS HATING ON JEWS. NOW IT’S BLACK OFFICIALS HATING ON ASIANS. Brooklyn School Board Member Suspended After Using Racial Slur Against Asians In School Forum.
OPEN THREAD: Distinguish yourselves.
THE WAR THAT SAVED EUROPE FROM COMMUNISM: A century ago only the Polish army stood between Bolsheviks and a severely weakened Europe. Not many Americans know about this. I believe I originally learned about it from Jim Dunnigan’s Strategy & Tactics magazine, back in high school.
OSCARS TO ONCE AGAIN HAVE NO HOST IN 2020. Ricky Gervais laughs…
…Meanwhile, the Babylon Bee links t0day to a 2018 headline that foreshadowed the donkey-kicking the rest of America witnessed on Sunday: Oscars Committee Announces New Host: Jordan Peterson.
While viewership from Canada’s academia would be sparse, the rest of North America would heartily tune in for that.
HOW’S THAT SPACE PROGRAM COMING ALONG? Asteroid Up to 1,800 Feet Wide is One of 14 to Pass Earth This Week.
ADHERING TO OUR ENEMIES: Warren, Sanders Hosting Call With Pro-Tehran Lobby Group.