FEEL-GOOD ITEM OF THE DAY: Hamas explosives chief accidentally blows himself up.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
February 6, 2017
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: This Terrifying Camera-head is Supposed to Make Adult VR Content More Intimate.
Terrifying? No, but it’s certainly creepy-looking.
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Nearly two-thirds of US Navy’s strike fighters can’t fly.
It’s almost as though the U.S. military just got through spending eight years getting treated to a variation of the Cloward-Piven Strategy.
WOLVERINES! 7 Best Movies About the Russians: From Bolsheviks to Berlin.
Missing from the list? The World War II Italian production of Ayn Rand’s We the Living about life, such as it was, during the early days of Russian communism. Director Goffredo Alessandrini pitched it as anti-Communist propaganda in order to get the government greenlight, but he delivered Rand’s anti-totalitarian message a little too well for Mussolini’s comfort. As a result, the movie was banned shortly after its release, then forgotten for 40 years. The restored film is beautifully shot, well-acted, and true to the source material, which of course young Rand lived through.
Highly recommended.
ALSO: Seriously, no Red Dawn? That’s everything you need to know about the Russians, and the Cuban commies, too.
KURT SCHLICHTER: The Left Hates You. Act Accordingly.
DANIEL PAYNE: 16 Fake News Stories Reporters Have Run Since Trump Won.
We are in the midst of an epidemic of fake news. There is no better word to describe it than “epidemic,” insofar as it fits the epidemiological model from the Centers for Disease Control: this phenomenon occurs when “an agent and susceptible hosts are present in adequate numbers, and the agent can be effectively conveyed from a source to the susceptible hosts.”
The “agent” in this case is hysteria over Trump’s presidency, and the “susceptible hosts” are a slipshod, reckless, and breathtakingly gullible media class that spread the hysteria around like—well, like a virus.
It is difficult to adequately sum up the breadth of this epidemic, chiefly because it keeps growing: day after day, even hour after hour, the media continue to broadcast, spread, promulgate, publicize, and promote fake news on an industrial scale. It has become a regular part of our news cycle, not distinct from or extraneous to it but a part of it, embedded within the news apparatus as a spoke is embedded in a bicycle wheel.
Whenever you turn on a news station, visit a news website, or check in on a journalist or media personality on Twitter or Facebook, there is an excellent chance you will be exposed to fake news. It is rapidly becoming an accepted part of the way the American media are run.
Accepted by whom?
HIGH TIMES, ISRAELI EDITION: Knesset Bill Would Allow Export of Medical Cannabis.
Given how easy weed is to grow, even the medical-grade stuff, I wonder how much of an export market Israel will find.
NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT: Dem Rep Paid Sister’s Law Firm Nearly $150K From Campaign Funds in 2016.
Rep. William Lacy Clay (D., Mo.) dished out nearly $150,000 in campaign funds to a law firm owned by his sister during the 2016 election cycle and has paid more than $800,000 to the firm since 2002.
The St. Louis Democrat has also paid more than $30,000 to his father’s scholarship fund over the years.
Clay began paying family members from his campaign committee, Clay Jr. for Congress, almost immediately after entering Congress in 2001.
Michelle Clay, his sister, is the owner of the Law Office of Michelle C. Clay located in Silver Spring, Md., just outside of Washington, D.C.
Clay’s firm first appeared on the campaign payroll of Clay Jr. for Congress in 2002, and has been its largest recipient of cash on numerous occasions.
He must need an awful lot of family-friendly legal advice.
ROGER KIMBALL: Judge Robart’s Black Humor.
The funniest part of Judge James L. Robart’s cursory, six-and-a-bit-page restraining order against Donald Trump’s executive order — which temporarily suspends travel into the United States from seven notorious sponsors of terrorism — comes at the end:
Fundamental to the work of this court is a vigilant recognition that it is but one of three equal branches of our federal government. The work of the court is not to create policy or judge the wisdom of any particular policy promoted by the other two branches.
Ha! What a card!
The Left goes shopping for a likeminded judge, and finds a Seattle District Court judge who is sympathetic to Black Lives Matter and does pro-bono work for refugees. He has the added advantage of being located in the Ninth Circuit, the wackiest, most reliably left-wing precinct of the U.S. appellate system (though that may change soon). Said judge then intervenes to suspend the implementation of an executive order issued by the president of the United States to help safeguard the country.
So, not funny-funny.
Read the whole thing.
IT’LL WORK THIS TIME FOR SURE: Hollywood Celebs Produce Yet ANOTHER Anti-Trump Video, Pretend to Understand & Revere Constitution.
I don’t recognize any of these celebrities, but I can tell you that given their recent material, “Funny Or Die” ought to consider a new name.
DANIEL HANNAN: Marine Le Pen is really quite Left-wing.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Facebook launches fake news filter in France.
According to Le Monde, one of Facebook’s partners, the French campaign is similar to an initiative that Facebook launched in the US late last year, and in Germany last month. Both Facebook and Google faced widespread criticism for allowing fake news to spread during the US presidential election, and European leaders have expressed concern that such misinformation could impact upcoming elections across the continent.
Under the system, if an article is reported as false by users, it will be sent to a portal that all eight media companies have access to, according to Le Monde. If at least two of the companies confirm the article as false (with links to support their claims), the content will be flagged as disputed in Facebook’s News Feed, and users will see a warning before they share it. Advertising against the article will also be blocked, Le Monde reports.
In addition to Le Monde, Facebook’s French partners include Agence France-Presse (AFP), BFM-TV, Franceinfo, France Médias Monde, L’Express, Libération, and 20 Minutes. Facebook also announced that it will support CrossCheck — an initiative that will allow users to submit questions and gather information from 16 French media partners. CrossCheck was launched by the First Draft News coalition, with support from the Google News Lab.
When voters are already distrustful of of media institutions, assembling a number of them to perform a top-down determination of what the real news is, seems liable to backfire.
QUESTION ASKED: Why haven’t we repealed Obamacare yet?
House Speaker Paul Ryan and other top Republicans are currently crafting a similar budget reconciliation bill that would unravel big chunks of the law. But that process has become complicated by pressure to include Obamacare replacement measures in that legislation.
Ryan said at a news conference last week that he now hopes to move Obamacare legislation by the end of March.
Meadows told CNN that the party needs to move much faster.
“I don’t know that there’s any new revelations that are going to come up by waiting 60 to 90 more days,” Meadows said. “We’re making the whole idea of repeal and replacement far more complex and laborious than it needs to be and I think it’s time that we just make some decisions and move forward with (the repeal bill).”
On considering anything less than what was voted on in 2015, Meadows quipped: “You don’t get any credit with any of your constituents if you do that.”
The party in power typically loses around 30 House seats in the midterm election. If the GOP wants to buck the trend and keep their majority in 2018, they’d best not dispirit their base.
SALENA ZITO: Americans don’t trust anymore, and that’s a big problem.
Whom do we trust? The answer, it appears, is no one.
Well, that’s not entirely true. We trust our military, and in fact that trust has grown, said Richard Edelman, CEO of one of the world’s largest public relations consultancies. “Outside of that we are in such a crisis with trust that our faith and connection with the integral parts of our society is in collapse,” he said.
Edelman’s firm has been conducting the Trust Barometer survey for 17 years; last year the bottom dropped out and he is not quite sure how that tangible connection people have with institutions and expertise can be restored.
Only 43 percent of people said they trust the media; a whopping 5 percent drop from last year. Government came in even lower, at 41 percent; trust in military has grown, and trust in business is a bit stronger than the media and government, but not by much.
The question is why?
At a guess it’s because we have a lot more government than we need, but a lot less than we actually pay for.
THE WEEKEND HEADLINES OUT OF TURKEY SHOUTED: Turkey says over 800 detained in anti-ISIL operations.. But the real story is that “Turkey Plans Massive Transfer of Assets to State Wealth Fund.”
More:
“The move is likely to increase political control over the companies,” said Wolfango Piccoli, co-president at Teneo Intelligence. “The government is currently struggling to finance a series of high-profile infrastructure projects; Erdogan hopes these will boost his domestic prestige and enable him to consolidate his grip on power through the introduction of an executive presidential system with almost no checks or balances.”
Appointments to the board include Yigit Bulut, a senior presidential adviser; Himmet Karadag, Borsa Istanbul Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Kerem Alkin and Oral Erdogan, who are both academics, according to the country’s trade registry.
“Turkey’s most valuable state assets are being given to a specially authorized and unsupervised company,” said Cetin Osman Budak, a lawmaker and deputy chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party. “This is not a step for the benefit of the public.”
Erdogan is setting himself up as Turkey’s biggest (and final) arbiter of graft, which ought to keep in him power for a very long time.
TRUMP: ‘If Something Bad Happens Blame the Judge and the Court System’
Barack Obama opened this door when he publicly dressed down the Supreme Court as a part of his State of the Union Address.
ANDREW MCCARTHY: To Fix Counterterrorism, End Obama’s ‘Countering Violent Extremism’ Strategy.
Clearly, the FBI spent a lot of time on [Pulse nightclub attacker Omar] Mateen. It sent confidential informants to interact with him, conducted physical surveillance, covertly monitored some of his phone calls, and interviewed him face-to-face three separate times. It concluded that his bark was bad, but his bite was non-existent. Honoring guidelines imposed on terrorism investigations, the FBI closed its case. That is, in addition to concluding that no charges should be filed, the Bureau further decided that additional monitoring of Mateen was not warranted.
In retrospect, this seems reckless. But the FBI is not incompetent, far from it. The agency knew Mateen was worth a heavy investigative investment. The problem is that the FBI answers to the Washington political class. The bipartisan Beltway has long ruled that advocacy of radical Islam is protected by the Constitution. It has long instructed its investigators, preposterously, that seditious beliefs and agitation are immune, not just from prosecution, but even from mere inquiry.
What passes for Obama’s national-security strategy, known as “Countering Violent Extremism,” exacerbates this problem.
You can’t fight what you won’t name.
FAKE SCIENCE: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data.
The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organisation that is the world’s leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.
A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.
The report claimed that the ‘pause’ or ‘slowdown’ in global warming in the period since 1998 – revealed by UN scientists in 2013 – never existed, and that world temperatures had been rising faster than scientists expected. Launched by NOAA with a public relations fanfare, it was splashed across the world’s media, and cited repeatedly by politicians and policy makers.
But the whistleblower, Dr John Bates, a top NOAA scientist with an impeccable reputation, has shown The Mail on Sunday irrefutable evidence that the paper was based on misleading, ‘unverified’ data.
It was never subjected to NOAA’s rigorous internal evaluation process – which Dr Bates devised.
Read the whole thing.
But remember that if world leaders were duped, it’s because they’re willing dupes — nothing gets their attention faster than a drummed up crisis they can use to increase their money and power.
JEFF BUST: “I am deplorable, and I am happier with my vote every day.”
That’s a lot of that going around.