TODAY HE’S CENSORED. TOMORROW IT’S YOU: Freedom of speech and thought either applies to everybody, including those with whom we disagree, or, sooner or later, it is enjoyed by nobody but the censors. Consider the case of Ball State University Physics Professor Eric Hedin.
Archive for 2024
October 10, 2024
WELL, GOOD: Trump campaign, Arizona GOP brings in a big gun to run election integrity operation. “And that big gun is popular Trump supporter and attorney Harmeet Dhillon, who previously ran against Ronna McDaniel to be RNC Chair.”
THE ENEMY WITHIN: U. Mich Chinese grads criminally charged for military base photos.
CREEPING WORLD WAR III UPDATE: North Korea Now Sending Troops to Ukraine to Fight Alongside Russians.
END THE CULTURE OF LEFTIST IMPUNITY: 10 UC Irvine anti-Israel activists face charges, including refusal to disperse, resisting arrest.
REGIME MEDIA, AND NOT EVEN COMPETENT REGIME MEDIA: CBS 60 Minutes Scandals Pile Up.
FLASHBACK: CBS NEWS LIES:
Here are the two different 60 Minutes edits layered on top of each other in full. You will hear where Whitaker's questions line up, and the different edited answers from Harris.
SC 1842 (bottom) is what aired on Monday night.
SC 1843.5 (top) is what the Face the Nation X account… pic.twitter.com/FEuQp2o0kn— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) October 9, 2024
“Besides inserting a different response from Harris, CBS edited out everything about Harris defending Israel from Hamas and Hezbollah and their right to do so,” Miller continued. “The tracks time up almost exactly. This was not ‘edited for time’ as CBS and 60 Minutes will likely claim.”
UPDATE (From Ed): Miller ponders if the CBS edits dovetail with their massive anti-Israel bias, as exposed in their ongoing struggle session with Tony Dokoupil over his grievous crime of committing actual journalism by interviewing Ta-Nehisi Coates:
UPDATE (9:19 pm) John Nolte makes the connection: CBS Corruption – Anchor Shamed for Coates Interview, ‘60 Minutes’ Rigs Kamala Interview. “If CBS had released the full, unedited transcript, Kamala’s word salad answer would be found elsewhere in the transcript, and it’s not. So this is not an unedited transcript. This is the Kamala Harris Campaign-Approved Transcript. And let us never forget that this is the same CBS News and 60 Minutes that still hasn’t retracted its lies about the Hunter Biden laptop being Russian disinformation. So, to sum things up, if you gently ask an antisemitic leftist like Ta-Nehisi Coates a few challenging questions, CBS News will publicly shame you until you buckle. But if you rig an interview to make a Democrat look smarter than she is, that’s a-okay. Antisemites and Democrats sure got it good…Especially at CBS.”
Reminder: It was CBS that tried to flip the 2004 election with an (obviously) phony memo about George W. Bush’s military service.
FINALLY, THE TRUTH: Recession Since 2022: US Economic Income and Output Have Fallen Overall for Four Years.
The phenomenon of undercounting inflation is particularly concerning today given how high the official inflation measurements have been for the last several years. The inflation itself has increased the nominal values of several key economic metrics without resulting in any real change. This is why there has been such a disparity between the rapid rise in nominal, pre-inflation GDP and the relatively slow increase in real, after-inflation GDP.8
The following data are presented in such a way as to show the reader the change in nominal and real values through the second quarter of 2024, beginning in either the first quarter of 2019 or January 2019, when applicable.
Note that not only are the inflation adjustments large, but they are highly variable, ranging from under 20% for wholesale sales to 22% to 23% for manufacturing inventories and new orders.
While 3% may seem like a small difference, in the context of GDP growth it represents nearly a $1 trillion difference in real output – roughly the GDP of Saudi Arabia. And in the context of annual economic growth, 3% over a 4-year period is a very large number – the difference between robust and anemic growth. Or between anemic growth and recession.
Plus: “On a per capita basis, the results are worse because the population has increased approximately 2.1 percent from the first quarter of 2019 through the second quarter of 2024. During that period, nominal GDP per capita increased $22,182, or 34.7 percent. Real GDP increased $7,038 in chained 2017 dollars, or 11.4 percent. Adjusted real GDP fell $1,540, or 2.5 percent.”
We can’t afford four more years: “On differences with Biden, Harris says ‘not a thing that comes to mind.’”
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: This Biden Guy Doesn’t Seem to Be a Big Kamala Harris Fan. “We can’t be positive, but it would seem that President LOLEightyonemillion is not amused and may be harboring some animosity. It makes sense to direct it at the person who benefitted most from his forced ouster — Kamala Harris.”
SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED: Reddit bans forum dedicated to sharing information about would-be Trump assassin Thomas Crooks. “The posts issued on the forum varied, but all pertained to seeking answers and sharing information about the historical assassination attempt on the 2024 GOP nominee’s life. Questions about Crooks, security failures that day, and whether the attempt was an inside job were discussed in the section before the ban. Reddit did not provide an example of the violent content shared that went against its company policies.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Hurricanes and political violence push chance of ‘collapse’ to 57%.
STANDING UP AGAINST MISINFORMATION:
GDP growth last year was 2.5%. That's a nice number! But also almost exactly the long-term average. The idea that it's the "best economy in decades" is straight-up misinformation. https://t.co/yhkDWtBpj5
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 6, 2024
AT AMAZON, Shop Today’s Deals. #CommissionEarned
DON’T BE EVIL: Google Does It Again, Buries US-Based Right-Leaning News on Election 23-Pages Deep.
Last week, MRC researchers found that Google buried US-based right-leaning news outlets on the 14th page of search results. It appears that the tech giant is still at it, as it continues to hide right-leaning outlets in the depths of search results.
On Oct. 8, MRC researchers once again used AllSides “right” and “left” bias classifications and found that Google search results for “kamala harris presidential race 2024” and “donald trump presidential race 2024” were stuffed with leftist, legacy media sources. The results featured outlets like CNN and The New York Times as well as publications of leftist billionaires like Jeff Bezos’s The Washington Post and Marc Benioff’s Time. When searching for the aforementioned Harris search prompt, researchers did not find any U.S.-based media outlets that AllSides rates as “lean-right” or “right” until Fox News appeared as the first result on page 11 of Google search results. Likewise, Google buried the first U.S.-based “lean right” or “right” result for the aforementioned Trump prompt as the sixth result on the 23rd page, as Google featured a Fox News video in this spot.
Although one “lean right” video appeared in the search results for the Trump prompt, Google outrageously did not display a single “right” or “lean right” news article from a U.S.-based source anywhere in the tech giant’s search results, which ran out after 26 pages.
This overt leftist bias is especially concerning considering that according to a November 2023 Pew Research survey, a rising number of American adults receive their news from search.
Related:
Google is going from horrifically bad to just completely unusable as a deliverer or real information. I'm legit using Twitter as a search engine with more success.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) October 9, 2024
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: IV fluid supply crunch forcing hospitals to postpone elective surgeries.
DON’T GET COCKY (CONT’D): NY Times: Yup, Republicans Are Going to Win the Senate. Now if they can just keep the House and take the White House. . . .
COLUMBUS’S ADVICE: LET’S STICK IT OUT JUST A LITTLE LONGER: When Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain on August 3, 1492, he expected the trip to the Orient would take two months. By October 10 (this day in history) the crew of the Santa Maria was ready to mutiny, and Columbus wasn’t feeling so great about the voyage either. But he managed to convince them to keep going a little longer. Early on October 12, land was sighted by a seaman aboard the Pinta.
(Columbus later claimed that he personally had sighted land first, but the consensus seems to be that he was a liar motivated by the fact that a reward had been offered to the man who first sighted land.)
October 9, 2024
OPEN THREAD: Hump Day.
CBS NEWS LIES:
Here are the two different 60 Minutes edits layered on top of each other in full. You will hear where Whitaker's questions line up, and the different edited answers from Harris.
SC 1842 (bottom) is what aired on Monday night.
SC 1843.5 (top) is what the Face the Nation X account… pic.twitter.com/FEuQp2o0kn— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) October 9, 2024
“Besides inserting a different response from Harris, CBS edited out everything about Harris defending Israel from Hamas and Hezbollah and their right to do so,” Miller continued. “The tracks time up almost exactly. This was not ‘edited for time’ as CBS and 60 Minutes will likely claim.”
UPDATE (From Ed): Miller ponders if the CBS edits dovetail with their massive anti-Israel bias, as exposed in their ongoing struggle session with Tony Dokoupil over his grievous crime of committing actual journalism by interviewing Ta-Nehisi Coates:
UPDATE (9:19 pm) John Nolte makes the connection: CBS Corruption – Anchor Shamed for Coates Interview, ‘60 Minutes’ Rigs Kamala Interview. “If CBS had released the full, unedited transcript, Kamala’s word salad answer would be found elsewhere in the transcript, and it’s not. So this is not an unedited transcript. This is the Kamala Harris Campaign-Approved Transcript. And let us never forget that this is the same CBS News and 60 Minutes that still hasn’t retracted its lies about the Hunter Biden laptop being Russian disinformation. So, to sum things up, if you gently ask an antisemitic leftist like Ta-Nehisi Coates a few challenging questions, CBS News will publicly shame you until you buckle. But if you rig an interview to make a Democrat look smarter than she is, that’s a-okay. Antisemites and Democrats sure got it good…Especially at CBS.”
THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA awards Rocket Lab study contract for Mars Sample Return.
COLUMBIA BROADCASTING STRUGGLE SESSION UPDATE: ‘Shut the F*ck Up:’ CBS Staffers Escalate Criticism of Tony Dokoupil’s Hostility on Palestine [sic – Ed]. The far left Zeteo Substack, created by Mehdi Hasan, formerly with MSNBC (and where John Harwood and even Greta Thunberg(!) have slots on the masthead), gives the game away with what happened to Tony Dokoupil after he committed journalism at CBS:
It was the sitdown with Coates, who was promoting his new book The Message, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Due to the fraught nature of the book, which features an essay on the “apartheid” Coates witnessed in the occupied West Bank, the network went through its standard protocol of vetting questions through its legal, standards, and race and culture departments. The properly vetted questions were then included on what’s known as a “one-sheet,” from which everyone within the show works.
As newsroom staffers pointed out to Zeteo, the “one-sheet is done for a reason,” which is to work within editorial standards. Hosts or reporters can push back and discuss what is on the sheet and whether it has been properly fact-checked, but one has to be working within that process to begin with.
While co-host Nate Burleson stuck to the plan with his first question, Dokoupil immediately deviated from the script. The anchor said that Coates’ book “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist,” wondered if the author was “offended by the Jewish state,” and questioned why he didn’t include “appropriate” context about the Palestinians’ role in their own oppression. Dokoupil’s ex-wife and two children live in Israel, by the way, something he did not disclose in the interview.
“Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it? Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it?” Dokoupil pointedly asked. “Is it because you just don’t believe that Israel in any condition has a right to exist?”
“There is no shortage of that perspective in American media,” Coates calmly responded.
“What is it that particularly offends you about the existence of a Jewish state, that is a Jewish safe place, and not any of the other states out there?” Dokoupil wondered.
“There’s nothing that offends me about a Jewish state,” Coates replied. “I am offended by the idea of states built on ethnocracy, no matter where they are.”
Journalism ethics experts have criticized Dokoupil’s “gotcha” and “performative” questions that were designed to put Coates on the defensive.
Dokoupil’s hijacking of the interview left both Burleson and co-host Gayle King largely sidelined throughout the discussion. In fact, King had planned to ask Coates about Hamas’ role in the war with Israel, something that the author revealed in a podcast interview with Trevor Noah. According to Coates, King had approached him backstage with his book full of her handwritten notes, explaining that she was going to ask him some specific questions.
“While on the one hand, [Dokoupil] probably did me a service… by just kind of commandeering that interview, I don’t think he did Nate and Gayle a service, and I’m really, really sorry for them,” he told Noah.
In his conversation with Mehdi, Coates said that while he was a “little surprised” by Dokoupil, he soon realized he “was in a fight” but was prepared.
As Stephen Miller tweets, “Coates had every question asked of him vetted through what CBS calls a race and culture department. They are even calling it ‘standard protocol.’ This is what CBS News is now.”
More from Zeteo:
Even before Coates was all but accused of being an antisemitic terrorist by Dokoupil last week, the CBS anchor had raised eyebrows at the network over the past year with his overt editorializing, especially regarding topics involving Israel and Gaza.
“If Tony would just shut the fuck up, none of this would be happening,” one CBS insider told Zeteo.
For instance, following a report in April on the University of Southern California canceling its Muslim valedictorian’s speech over “safety concerns” due to her pro-Palestinian views, Dokoupil said it spoke to a “bigger debate about what’s acceptable public speech” and suggested the student had called “for the complete abolishment of Israel,” prompting internal complaints.
Yes, we can’t report on the air what those crazy MAGA-hat wearing nutters at, err, NPR reported in April:
Asna Tabassum was selected as this year’s valedictorian. But student groups called for the decision to be reconsidered due to Tabassum’s social media content on the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Tabassum’s Instagram page links to a slideshow that says “learn about what’s happening in Palestine, and how to help,” and criticizes Zionism as “a racist settler-colonial ideology that advocates for a jewish ethnostate built on palestinian land.” The slideshow calls for a “one-state solution” that “would mean palestinian liberation, and the complete abolishment of the state of israel.”
Best that their on-air journalist “just shut the f*** up,” instead. There are rules at CBS this sort of thing. According to the Free Press, these rules can require doublethink that would make the Inner Party of Oceania blush: Does CBS News Know Where Jerusalem Is?
In late August, Mark Memmott, the senior director of standards and practices at CBS News, sent an email to all CBS News employees reminding them to “be careful with some terms when we talk or write about the news” from Israel and Gaza. One of the words on Memmott’s list of terms was Jerusalem.
Of Jerusalem, Memmott wrote: “Do not refer to it as being in Israel.”
He continued, in a note sent to thousands of journalists at the network: “Yes, the U.S. embassy is there and the Trump administration recognized it as being Israel’s capital. But its status is disputed. The status of Jerusalem goes to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel regards Jerusalem as its ‘eternal and undivided’ capital, while the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem—occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war—as the capital of a future state.”
Jerusalem’s status is indeed contested. For instance, the United States’ embassy in Israel is in Jerusalem, and the Jordanian Islamic Waqf has custody of its holy sites. But acknowledging the competing claims on different parts of the city, or declining to refer to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, are one thing. Denying that it is in Israel at all is quite another.
In which country is the Israeli Knesset, the home of the Israeli prime minister and the home of the Israeli president, located? The answer to that question is self-evident. Except, it seems, at CBS. In the rest of the United States, the answer is clear: Since 1995, when Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act, the government has recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
This latest revelation comes after CBS Mornings host Tony Dokoupil was admonished by executives at the network for his interview of best-selling author Ta-Nahesi Coates about his new anti-Israel book, The Message.
The other thing we’ve learned, Jeffrey Blehar writes at NRO in “The Obscene Public Humiliation Ritual of CBS’s Tony Dokoupil” is that, despite the premise of Nellie Bowles’ recent book, The Morning after the Revolution, wide swatches of the left are still very much stuck in the mindset of 2020:
The debate was not about Dokoupil, really; instead, it was about “whether Israel should exist at all” and why it wasn’t fair that Coates was prevented from making his case uninterrupted. (I can’t help but imagine a similar talk show in, say, Hamburg in 1943.)
Apparently, by the end of it all Dokoupil finally broke down and apologized (in tears) for potentially “endangering” any of his CBS colleagues and then submitted to an hourlong deprogramming session with CBS’s in-house “Race and Culture Unit” to instruct him in “context, tone, and intention,” so that he can be a more proper supplicant to the next elite political or cultural messiah who walks through the door. He may also have been shipped off to reeducation camp, though this is not yet documented in the reporting.
Commentary is almost superfluous, and beyond me at this particular point. For I am enraged at watching us reenact the public humiliation rituals that we witnessed in 2020, and imported from Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China long before that time. The same internal pressure and public lobbying we saw in the James Bennet affair at the New York Times years ago — and boy doesn’t this feel ironic given the role Bennet played in shaping Coates’s career — has now been brought to bear on anyone who dares cross such an elite messiah, particularly when he bears a message beloved by the younger generations staffing the media industry. We all know why this happened, because all of this has happened before. We thought it would not happen again, and we were wrong.
For years, the left seemed to be permanently stuck in the 1960s and ‘70s. Now the touchstone is 2020, and likely will be, for the foreseeable future.
MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Debt Doom Is Coming. Everybody Knows It. Nobody’s Doing Anything About It. Here’s How To Get Ready.