LIKE THE ZELIG OF THE ANTI-TRUMP PROBES, THIS GUY IS EVERYWHERE: RealClearInvestigations: Foiled in U.S. Courts, Anti-Trump Lawyer Got Results Taking Ukraine Cases to Mueller and FBI.
Archive for 2020
January 13, 2020
ISSUES & INSIGHTS: It’s Clear Now To Dems: Soleimani Strike Was A Trump Slam Dunk. Especially when Democrats played right into Trump’s hands by acting angry and sad that it happened.
Teen Vogue published “How Facebook Is Helping Ensure the Integrity of the 2020 Election.” It’s a 2,000-plus-word story comprising a series of interviews with various senior Facebook employees about how the Silicon Valley tech giant is working to avoid nefarious political activity in the US’s coming presidential election.
The positive tone of the piece, and lack of byline indicating who wrote it, led some on Twitter to speculate that it was a piece of sponsored content — that is, an article paid for and overseen by Facebook to promote itself.
This suspicion was seemingly confirmed when, some time after publishing, Teen Vogue appended a note to the top of the story, reading: “Editor’s note: This is sponsored editorial content.”
Facebook instead denied that it was sponsored content, saying it was just a regular article, and the note disappeared from the top of the story again.
What a mess.
THE DEMOCRATIC ESTABLISHMENT FEELS THE BERN: “Democrats No Longer Dismiss Sanders’ Odds.”
BLUE ON BLUE:
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for January 13, 2019. “Williamson drops Out, Steyer eclipses Warren in two early states, the billionaire boys keep shoveling wheelbarrows full of cash into the fire, and Biden can’t tell the difference between Iran and Iraq.”
I REMEMBER WHEN DARK MONEY WAS SUPPOSED TO BE BAD: Schumer-Tied PAC Received $1.7 Million From Dark Money Group.
JOHN KASS: Column: ‘Richard Jewell,’ Nicholas Sandmann and the media mob.
While watching Clint Eastwood’s great new film “Richard Jewell,” about the heroic security guard of the Atlanta Olympics who saved lives only to be savaged by the media mob, I thought about another innocent.
Nicholas Sandmann, the kid from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky. He suffered the same kind of agony and humiliation.
It was only a year ago that Sandmann was all over the news, branded as a hateful racist in a MAGA hat. The media got it wrong. Sandmann was in the news again the other day, after CNN settled that $275 million libel suit he filed. Terms were not disclosed.
Jewell and Sandmann were each publicly stripped of their honor through no fault of their own. Yes, “honor” is a terribly old-fashioned word, a bizarre medieval concept to some, but others can’t live without it.
Though the press certainly manages. Plus:
You remember Sandmann?
CNN settled, but NBC is being sued too, as is The Washington Post and others. Let’s hope the dollar amounts, if any, are made public because, as we’re told, democracy dies in darkness.
Sandmann, then 16, was branded as a racist over a video confrontation with an old man, Native American activist Nathan Phillips, who pounded a drum in Sandmann’s face.
A CNN analyst wanted him punched in the face. Other journalists and commentators at major news organizations, and comics, poseurs and wits, called him terrible names and allowed his reputation to be destroyed.
Leftist mobs in the Twittersphere, that oily sea of anonymous partisan hate, clicked on anything that poured more hate on Sandmann. And journalism, desperate for clicks, served him up.
But Sandmann wasn’t a hater. The haters were a group of angry Black Hebrew Israelites screaming horrible racist and homophobic taunts at the Covington kids and at Native Americans.
Sandmann wasn’t doing any of that. He was just a white kid in a MAGA cap, confronted by the old man with the drum, and he smiled, nervously.
And for that, he was flayed by the media.. All of it could have been avoided by the application of another terribly old-fashioned word: reporting.
Lazy garbage people don’t do much reporting. And that’s what most of the press seems to be composed of these days.
IRAN: “You Killed Our Geniuses” – Regime Crackdown Intensifies As Iranians Flood Streets In Third Day Of Protest. “During the protests, which erupted out of anger over the regime’s initial lies about Flight 752 (it initially insisted that a “mechanical error” was responsible despite video evidence suggesting a missile strike), Iranian security forces fired both live ammunition and tear gas into crowds of demonstrators furious over the government’s denials.”
FLASHBACK: Documents: ATF used “Fast and Furious” to make the case for gun regulations. “ATF officials didn’t intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called ‘Demand Letter 3.’ That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or ‘long guns.’ Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.”
THE DISMAL TRUMP ECONOMY: Wages Soar Fastest among Those with the Least.
HEH. Metrollectual: “One who adopts the mannerisms, attire and behaviour of an intellectual, without actually ever thinking for themselves.”
Flashback: Richard Epstein on Obama: “I reject the suggestion that he is an intellectual. He is an activist merely mimicking the mannerisms of an intellectual.”