NEIL ARMSTRONG ON MARS: Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee has displayed her idiocy for quite a while. “The Constitution is 400 years old.” “Today, we have two Vietnams, side by side, North and South, exchanging and working.” On and on. But now it’s serious. BuzzFeed reports that:

[A] woman, identified by a pseudonym, claimed in a lawsuit that she was raped by a former employee of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. She says Jackson Lee fired her as she was preparing to pursue legal claims over the alleged assault.

Being an idiot isn’t unlawful. But retaliatory firing of a whistleblower — let alone of an alleged rape victim — certainly is.

THE DESTRUCTION OF POLITICAL JOURNALISM: My column is up at The Daily Caller.

Thousands of pages have been written about our age of political polarization. Public discourse and political reporting have deteriorated into an “either/or” game, and while polarization has been around since the Jefferson-Adams kerfuffle, the level of anger is unprecedented.

Agree with me or I’ll call you terrible names.

LAYERS AND LAYERS OF FACT-CHECKERS: CNN ANALYST ACCUSES BLACK CONSERVATIVE RADIO HOST OF ‘WHITE PRIVILEGE’. CNN’s Areva Martin goes on a radio show, and the fun begins:

“Sirius XM radio host and Fox News Contributor David Webb brought Martin onto his radio show to discuss diversity in media, and he noted that he has always considered his accomplishments to be more important than his skin color when applying to jobs […] “I’ve chosen to cross different parts of the media world, done the work so that I’m qualified to be in each one. I never considered my color to be the issue — I considered my qualifications to be the issue,” Webb explained.”

Martin replied:

After Webb said that expertise and experience are what matter, Martin interjected: “That’s a whole ‘nother long conversation about white privilege, the things that you have the privilege of doing, that people of color don’t have the privilege of.”

Martin apologized for her comment and insisted that her team gave her incorrect information about Webb’s race. Exactly how does that work?

“Oh, by the way, Areva, you’ll be on with a white guy, so if you’re backed into a corner, you know what to say…”

THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS: One of the fundamental elements of good journalism is “show, don’t tell.” This means that reporting facts are preferred over interpretation or characterizations. But it’s not hard to see why distrust in the legacy media is ever-rising.

“Americans blame shutdown on Trump over Democrats by wide margin, poll finds” blares USA Today. Wide margin? The poll actually shows that:

When asked, “Who do you think is mainly responsible for this situation?” 53 percent of Americans told pollsters they blamed Trump and congressional Republicans.

Three points is a “wide” margin? Moreover, the story’s kicker admits that “The poll of 788 Americans was conducted Jan. 8-11 with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percent.” When the spread is less than the margin of error, that’s usually called a “split” or “close” race.

What more, this important fact isn’t revealed until the third paragraph. Given the fact that as many as 25 percent of American adults get their news from Facebook, and given that too many people never read past the headline, this is especially egregious. “Fake news”? No, but “Wrong” news? Absolutely.

CRYING WOLF FOR FUN AND PROFIT: I’m really not inclined to give any more oxygen to the trainwreck that is Ocasio-Cortez. In fact, it’s a rare time I agree with Whoopi Goldberg about anything, but in this case, AOC ought to take Whoopi’s advice and slow her roll.

But she or her handlers just can’t take a hint. Ever the victim, she tweeted this morning that:

“For those out of the loop, Republicans began to circulate a fake nude photo of me. The @DailyCaller reposted it (!) and refused to indicate it was fake in the title as well.”

Well, (avert your eyes!) here’s the “nude” photo in question:

OMG OMG OMG! Call the Vice Squad! Speaking of Vice, they even got a bunch of foot-fetishists to weigh in on the validity of the photo that had been rattling around the web for months before the DC published the story about the fake photo.

But morons gonna moron, and the media swallowed her latest “I’m a victim!” cry hook, line and sinker. People Magazine gullibly called it a nude in their lede, and Newsweek insists on using the phrase “fake nude” in their headline (tasty clickbait!) even though the story explains that it’s neither a nude nor a picture of AOC.

Sooner or later, she’ll have a legitimate grievance, but who in their right mind will take her seriously? Wait…don’t answer that…

**Disclosure: I write a bi-weekly column on media for The Daily Caller.**

SHOULD THE PRESIDENT HAVE A “PLATFORM” ON NATIONAL TV? Here’s my interview on global news network I24.  Short answer: yes.

MAXIMUM CHICAGO: “Chicago Seized And Sold Nearly 50,000 Cars Over Tickets Since 2011, Sticking Owners With Debt.” The magic part:

“In 2017 alone, Chicago booted more than 67,000 vehicles for unpaid tickets. In about a third of those cases, the driver couldn’t afford to remove the boot, and the vehicle was later towed to a city impound lot. Of those 20,000 impounded cars, more than 8,000 […] were sold off, with the owners receiving none of the sale proceeds. Instead, the city and its towing contractor pocketed millions of dollars, while residents were left with ticket debt.”

It’s Chinatown, Jake.

THE IRONY METER JUST EXPLODED: “WikiLeaks tells reporters 140 things not to say about Julian Assange.” The best part:

“There is a pervasive climate of inaccurate claims about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, including purposeful fabrications planted in large and otherwise ‘reputable’ media outlets,” Wikileaks said [in] an email sent to media organizations and marked “Confidential legal communication. Not for publication.”

(Italics added).

MEDIA MODE D’JOUR:

1) Find an unimportant and non-influential dope who tweeted something dumb;
2) Assert or imply that said idiot speaks for an entire party or movement; and
3) Feel satisfied you have managed to discredit tens of thousands of people with one meme.

The AOC dancing video and the phantom argument that “conservatives used it to smear her” was one example, and sorry to say this is the same bloody thing, only coming from the Right.

The 21st Century strawman.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Well, I thought about that very thing before posting a link below. But the account in question isn’t a random anonymous popup, but an established one with over 36,000 followers, and Steve Scalise himself weighed in with several other examples. So I’m not sure this is comparable to the dance-video kerfuffle.

UPDATE (FROM CHARLES): Glenn makes a very reasonable point. Still, I find similarity in ascribing bad motives to an entire group based on a few tweets. Remember, the Tea Party “were all racists” because the MSM could find at least a handful of yahoos to quote.

JOURNALISM ALGEBRA, 2018 EDITION: (Dishonest reporter with agenda + confirmation bias of editors) ÷ publishers drive to riding profitable Anti-Trump news appetite x (decimated newsroom fact-checking staff + journalism school failure to teach ethics) = Journalism 2018.

LEGAL FAIL OF 2018: “IT’S NOT HER FAULT, IT’S NEUROBIOLOGICAL.” OK, OK, I get it, some companies make dangerously defective products, and yes, at the same time there are lawyers who look for anyone from which to squeeze a dime. But then again, sometimes plaintiffs are just plain stupid and will go to extraordinarily lengths to say “not my fault.” Followed by “gimme money.” From the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit:

This case asks us to decide whether, under Texas law, a driver’s neurobiological response to a smartphone notification can be a cause in fact of a car crash […] According to Appellants’ amended complaint, Ashley Kubiak was driving her pick-up truck on April 30, 2013 when she received a text message on her iPhone 5. Appellants allege that Kubiak looked down to read the text, after which she turned her attention back to the road. At that point it was too late to avoid colliding with a vehicle carrying two adults and a child. The adults died, while the child survived but was rendered paraplegic. Kubiak was convicted of two counts of criminally negligent homicide.

But I had to look at the text! I’m conditioned that way! Nope, says the Fifth Circuit: “Because we decline to consider “neurobiological compulsion” a substantial factor under Texas law, we conclude that the iPhone 5 could not be a cause in fact of the injuries in this case.”

All I can say is Apple is lucky they didn’t get sued in California.
**Corrected to clarify that suit was brought by lawyers for estate of crash victims, who argued the driver was compelled to look at her phone.**

THOSE WHO CAN’T DO, TEACH. THOSE WHO CAN’T TEACH BECOME UNION LEADERS: Poor Randi Weingarten. She declared the United Federation of Teachers’ endorsement of Hillary Clinton without a union vote (“Shut up” she explained) and is now performing electoral cunnilingus on Elizabeth Warren. Except her skills in writing clearly leave something to be desired:

Heh. Mrs. Krababble would be proud.

SOROS-DIRECTED GROUP THREATENS JEWISH JOURNALIST: for wait for it…wait for it…emailing them with questions.

“I sent a few more [e-mails] and Patrick Alley, one of the head honchos, finally emailed back. “We do not wish to have any further contact with you. We find these messages threatening. We are asking you to respect our wishes and not to engage in any further communication.” There was nothing remotely threatening in my emails, by any reasonable standard, other than the threat of legal action. I replied — and posted his email and my reply on social media — “Not going to happen, shitheads. Fuck off and you will be hearing from me.”

So the Soros people filed a complaint with the DC Police. Nice. It’s a good picture of the utopian world Soros pretends to want to build.
#Nomenklatura

IT’S ALL IN WHAT YOU NAME IT: We know walls are for Nazis, racists and deplorables, right? So Wilhem DiBlasio, NYC’s Commissar decides a “privacy fence” is in order.

See, this is Trump’s biggest failing. He should never have used the word “wall.” He should have followed Cher’s lead and called it a “virtue ring.”

There, I fixed it.

NOT A SPOOF: I have no words.  They have out-smugged the PBS tote bag.

DO VENDING MACHINES DESERVE EQUAL PROTECTION? Professor Glenn links here to a College Fix article questioning the legality of having the abortifacient “Plan B” available on college campuses.

What I want to know is given the spurious but oft-unchallenged statistic that 20% of all college women are “rape victims”, why aren’t rape kits (also OTC) available in the same machine?

ADVENTURES IN SELF-DELUSION: “Amy Schumer: I’m Not Going To Look ‘Super-F***able’ Anymore.”

Maybe she is confusing “super-f***able” with looking “easy.”

(Eyebleach sold separately).

THE SOFT BIGOTRY OF LOWERED EXPECTATIONS: If Bloomberg says those knee-grows can’t be sensible gun owners, shut up, you racist. Or something.

NARCISSUS UNBOUND: “That whole, suddenly America’s, like, the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas — that was me, people.”

Not so fast.  According to The Daily Caller:

“Former president of Shell Oil Company John Hofmeister said former President Barack Obama had nothing to do with America’s increased oil production and actually frustrated many areas of the energy sector.”

The funny part is this is the same “won’t go away” guy who mocked Sarah Palin and John McCain for imploring further drilling. Victory has a thousand fathers, defeat is an orphan.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Obama’s spirit was well-captured in this work by the late (and very great) Joel Andrews:

MORE TO THE MANAFORT STORY: Referred to here, it turns out that The Guardian somewhat backpedaled on their “blockbuster” story by making “stealth corrections” and changing some of the factual assertions without telling readers. The current page carries no trashline, update or editor’s note telling the readers they made changes 3 times, according to correction tracker Newssniffer.

“Stealth” corrections are widely considered dishonest and unethical. Even The New York Times has said so. The Online News Association has gone as far as to say:

“Preventing mistakes is of huge importance, but so too is setting the stage to correct them quickly and fully by taking advantage of the networked news environment. Doing so not only meets our obligations to the public, but can, in fact, build trust and help us feel better about our work as journalists. Bottom line: Corrections are important.”

GREAT SATIRE DOES NOT BELONG EXCLUSIVELY TO THE ONION: “Melania Trump Criticized For Decorating White House With Skulls Of Her Enemies.” 

IF YOU DON’T LIKE MY PRINCIPLES, DON’T WORRY, I HAVE OTHER ONES: Poor Hillary finds a new “reason” for her loss every week. What she *still* fails to understand is that those “deplorable gun-and-bible clinging” people know a bullshit artist when they hear one. Now she’s triangulating to the right, admitting that maybe open borders and welfare for all isn’t a hot idea:

“I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken particularly by leaders like Angela Merkel, but I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must send a very clear message – ‘we are not going to be able to continue provide refuge and support’ – because if we don’t deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil the body politic,’ Clinton said.”

It’s almost like Claire McCaskill (Loser, Mo.) running on the “I’m not one of the crazy ones” platform. Too late, my dear.

CORPORATE VIRTUE SIGNALLING PART DEUX: This time it’s AirBnB deciding to make the world a better place by succumbing to the BDS crowd. The New York Post reports that:

Airbnb says: No Jews allowed. The apartment-sharing service has sided against Israel by banning and delisting the apartments of peaceful Jewish civilians living in Judea and Samaria. And that’s not even the worst part[…] No, the worst part is that Airbnb has singled out Jews, and only Jews, as the one group in the world that is worthy of such censure. That’s what makes its boycott a naked act of corporate anti-Semitism.

With any luck, people will stop doing business with AirBnB. As the Professor says:
“Get Woke, Go Broke.”

WHEN TRUMP DOES IT, IT’S A CRISIS: You may not agree with Glenn Greenwald often, and you may even believe that Julian Assange is/was a national security threat. Reasonable minds can differ. But Greenwald’s piece in The Intercept underscores what many conservatives, libertarians and free-thinkers have known for a while:

“Over the last two years, journalists and others have melodramatically claimed that press freedoms were being assaulted by the Trump administration due to trivial acts such as the President spouting adolescent insults on Twitter at Chuck Todd and Wolf Blitzer or banning Jim Acosta from White House press conferences due to his refusal to stop preening for a few minutes so as to allow other journalists to ask questions. Meanwhile, actual and real threats to press freedoms that began with the Obama DOJ and have escalated with the Trump DOJ – such as aggressive attempts to unearth and prosecute sources – have gone largely ignored if not applauded.”

Ask yourself this: If Acosta acted as he does in Saudi Arabia or China, do you think he’d ever see daylight again? “Trump was mean to me” just pales in comparison to the real “War on the Press.”

TRUMP, ACOSTA AND THE PRESS: My interview on the “Lawyer 2 Lawyer” podcast, where I predicted that the matter would turn on “due process.”

You know, that thing CNN et als didn’t apply to Kavanaugh.