Friday, May 3, 2024
Facebook Instagram RSS Twitter Youtube
Home Blog Page 14

4 Recent Examples Show Why No One Trusts Media ‘Fact Checks’

By
Gustavo
-
0

A few weeks ago, Donald Trump responded to Meryl Streep’s insults by calling her overrated. Some fact checks came out saying that Streep, in fact, had won many awards. The Associated Press’ “Meryl Streep overrated? Donald Trump picks a decorated star,” was one such example. Four of the seven paragraphs to the story listed awards and honors she’d received.

As Victor Morton noted, “‘She has won a bunch of awards’ isn’t even a prima-facie rebuttal of the claim ‘she is overrated’.” He added, “If anything, ‘She won a bunch of awards’ is a necessary precondition for being ‘overrated,’ i.e. rated highly in the first place.”

Exactly. If journalists involved with the “fact” “check” enterprise are capable of self-reflection, they should begin understanding why so many people find it a waste of time at best. Here are a few other examples just from the past few days.

1) Palestinians Are Not All the Same

The New York Times ran what it claimed was an Associated Press “fact check” on David Friedman, President Donald Trump’s pick to be U.S. ambassador to Israel. Here’s how it began, with a characterization of a Friedman statement and then “THE FACTS”:

FRIEDMAN:He said Palestinians had failed to ‘end incitement’ of violence, and terrorism had increased since the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, intended to be a stepping stone toward Palestinian statehood.

THE FACTS: Not all Palestinians are the same.

That’s really what it says. You don’t say, Associated Press. Thanks for that brilliant piece of information about which we were all unaware. If you are a reader looking for facts to gauge whether terrorism had increased since Oslo, you are completely out of luck.

2) The Ninth Circuit

PolitiFact “fact” “checked” a Sean Hannity claim that “The United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is ‘the most overturned court in the country.’” They rated it patently “false.”

Researcher Lauren Caroll said she used SCOTUSBlog’s Supreme Court statistics archive to evaluate the claim and found that the Supreme Court reversed about 70 percent of the cases it took between 2010 and 2015. The Supreme Court reversed 79 percent of cases from the Ninth Circuit, which put it in third place for most reversed court.

But a reader noticed something interesting: the fact check didn’t mention the sheer number of reversals even though the researcher would have had to know the number of reversals to calculate the rate of overturning. And if you just look at the actual number of reversals, not only is the Ninth Circuit the one with the highest number, it’s not even close. From 2010-2015, the Ninth Circuit was overturned at the Supreme Court 77 times. The next highest was the Sixth Circuit, with 28 reversals.

Here are the overturned decisions by the circuit court of appeals from 2010-2015:

First: 6
Second: 16
Third: 19
Fourth: 12
Fifth: 27
Sixth: 28
Seventh: 10
Eighth: 16
Ninth: 77
Tenth: 10
Eleventh: 21
DC: 10
Federal: 19

In fact, in each year of the sample, the Ninth Circuit had the most reversals. The reader notes: “I suppose one could argue that the percentage of reversals is cases heard by the Supreme Court is more significant than the raw number of reversals (although [a] quote in the article seems to caution against looking at the rate of reversal percentage), but the article does not even acknowledge the story told by the raw data. Moreover, it was necessary to look at the raw data in order to calculate the percentages of cases overturned, so the decision not to mention this in a purported ‘fact-checking’ article is curious, to be charitable, particularly since the statement being evaluated makes no claims with respect to percentages. The upshot is that the article does a nice job of proving Mark Twain’s point that the three types of lies are lies, damn lies, and statistics, as it uses a statistical analysis of questionable merit to ‘disprove’ a statement that was literally true.”

PolitiFact continues to be a place where you can say something literally true and get a false rating (if you are a non-liberal).

3) An Abortion of a Fact Check

Our next example of a “fact” “check” failure is a Snopes piece on whether Planned Parenthood rewards employees for promoting abortion services. Journalist Lila Rose interviewed former Planned Parenthood employees who said they were expected to increase the revenue-generating abortion portion of the business. She also had a document purporting to show a reward for one clinic exceeding its abortion visits relative to a prior period of time. Therefore, the check couldn’t determine that the allegations were “false.” Instead, they were rated “unproven.”

But where things got really weird is when the piece used a completely unrelated legal case to discredit one of the women who had made the claim. And then Snopes got the facts wrong in that case.

✔@CaseyMattox_

.@snopes says @AllianceDefends lost this Medicaid fraud case v PP. Which is funny, b/c I argued and won that appeal. http://www.snopes.com/planned-parenthood-abortion-quotas/ …

Photo published for FACT CHECK: Does Planned Parenthood Enforce 'Abortion Quotas'?

FACT CHECK: Does Planned Parenthood Enforce ‘Abortion Quotas’?

An anti-abortion activist revived claims that Planned Parenthood maintains “abortion quotas.”

snopes.com

Whoops.

Snopes used Planned Parenthood talking points in an attempt to discredit Sue Thayer. They claimed she was unsuccessful in a lawsuit she brought alleging Medicaid fraud. But the lawsuit is ongoing and was reinstated by the Eighth Circuit.

Had they reviewed the actual video they were purporting to check, they would have known this. They would have known this if they’d looked up her congressional testimony. Heck, “researcher” Kim LaCapria didn’t contact Thayer, Mattox, the Alliance Defending Freedom, or Lila Rose’s LiveAction before running the “fact” “check” that was nothing other than unrelated Planned Parenthood talking points. It’s a stunning lack of work for an organization that is supposed to fact check the fake news on Facebook.

4) ‘Actually,’ Regulations Create Jobs

For our last entry, we head over to the Washington Post, which has a piece headlined “Trump supporters see a successful president — and are frustrated with critics who don’t.” Authored by Jenna Johnson and Dave Weigel, the piece is about how Trump voters are frustrated at media hostility to Trump’s successes. It positively drips with condescension, as this sample section shows:

Several people said they would have liked to see more coverage of a measure that Trump signed Thursday that rolled back a last-minute Obama regulation that would have restricted coal mines from dumping debris into nearby streams. At the signing, Trump was joined by coal miners in hard hats.

‘If he hadn’t gotten into office, 70,000 miners would have been put out of work,’ Patricia Nana, a 42-year-old naturalized citizen from Cameroon. ‘I saw the ceremony where he signed that bill, giving them their jobs back, and he had miners with their hard hats and everything — you could see how happy they were.’

The regulation actually would have cost relatively few mining jobs and would have created nearly as many new jobs on the regulatory side, according to a government report — an example of the frequent distance between Trump’s rhetoric, which many of his supporters wholeheartedly believe, and verifiable facts.

Oh, where, where, where to begin?

First off, it’s absolutely true that most national media completely messed up by spending all of their Trump coverage last Thursday on his press conference instead of the far more important regulatory reform. It’s not just important in an economic sense, but a political sense. You bet your patootie that Republicans in mining states were elated by this change to proposed regulations. Also, seeing miners in hard hats praising a Republican president was far more significant than Round 242 of the war with the media.

Second, Nana is correct that the industry projected job losses for 70,000 miners. In fact, she lowballed it. The actual prediction was a loss of up to 78,000 coal mining jobs, on top of the 40,000 already lost since 2011. The National Mining Association produced a report that the rule could lead general coal-related employment to plummet by 281,000 positions, including in related fields.

As we investigate the last sentence excerpted above, let’s note that the reporters smugly wrote “actually” in their “fact” “check” of Nana, the 42-year-old naturalized citizen from Cameroon. Not only do they appeal to a government report they don’t even bother to identify, they put complete trust in it. They trust, with not a smidgen of doubt, that the government that designed a given regulation is the best, if not only, judge of its impact. They refer to a speculative report about the future — about the future — as “verifiable facts.”

Here’s an idea for Johnson and Weigel: Read this Michael Crichton essay until you understand it. You can’t assert that a prediction, of all things, is a verifiable fact. That would be true even if central planners had good track records of looking out for all unintended consequences. The writing duo doesn’t bother to quantify “relatively few.” Relative to what, you might ask. If you are one of the vast majority of Americans who don’t trust the media, they have given no information that you can use to check whether what they’re saying is true.

Even that’s not the big problem with this. The big problem is the idea that a “relatively” minor loss of mining jobs is no big deal because there will be “nearly as many new jobs on the regulatory side.” Is this some kind of a joke … about how Trump won? That elite think jobs can go from the mining sector to the … regulatory sector?

Apart from the abject ignorance required to imagine that the downsides of losses in coal mining jobs are easily balanced in their communities by new jobs in regulating the affairs of other people, there’s another issue. Say what you want about coal miners, they are producing a real thing that powers much of our economy. Electricity generation, steel production, cement manufacturing, and liquid fuel are some of the uses of coal.

What would you say regulators produce?

In short, that “actually” line may be the stupidest thing I’ve read in a year.

‘Media Are Not In A Good Position To Be Holding Trump Accountable’

By
Gustavo
-
0

Mollie Hemingway joined Fox News’s “Media Buzz” on Sunday to talk about how the media have failed to cover Donald Trump fairly. Hemingway said much of the press’s criticisms of Trump’s 77-minute-long presser Thursday were tired and stale.

“Yes he goes off on tangents, yes he lies or exaggerates, yes he insults people,” she said. “When you keep saying the same things about someone and expecting a different result — they say Donald Trump is crazy, but isn’t this like the very definition of crazy, what the media are doing?”

“When big media companies go to small-town pizza companies and try to destroy them because they don’t have the same sexual doctrines that the media do, it can feel threatening to people,” Hemingway said. “When they fail to cover a serial killer like Kermit Gosnell, the abortionist who kept trophies of his victims and had a filthy clinic, and have to be shamed into covering it, it feels like they’re doing propaganda instead of news.”

“This feeling of the media being an enemy it’s just something Donald Trump is exploiting and I agree the best way we can handle it is by not dong such a bad job,” she said.

Hemingway also said the media’s visceral reaction to Trump’s critiques of the press puts them at odds with half of the country.

“I don’t think many people in many newsrooms had a positive reaction to the press conference — that puts them out of touch with the rest of that half of the country that loved it,” she said. “Media are not in a good position to be holding Trump accountable. We are believed to be less credible than Donald Trump.”

“We’re getting breathless headlines, not a lot of substantiation,” Hemingway said. “We should think more about how this story is developing and thinking about whether we’ve been had.”

4 Reasons The Anti-Trump Resistance Won’t Win Like The Tea Party Did

By
Gustavo
-
0

In the wake of the 2008 election, Democrats had won the presidency. They held 59 Senate seats and a 76-person majority in congress. There was a talk of a permanent Democratic majority, and the GOP appeared to be in complete, powerless disarray. In response, a grassroots protest movement emerged. Considered more or less a joke at first, the Tea Party would change the face of American politics. And just eight years later, it would help restore Republican political power.

Now, as Democrats face the dark political wilderness, they too have launched a protest movement, loosely referred to as “The Resistance.” It is tempting to compare these historical moments. Many on the Left have begun to not only compare the Resistance to the Tea Party but to use it as a model. This means more than protesting and attending town halls—it also means organizing and promoting candidates who will challenge Trump.

But for all the similarities of situation and tactics, there are several specific reasons why the Resistance is unlikely to succeed as the Tea Party did. Becoming the new “party of no” may be the best option progressives have to fight the president—but progressivism has baked into it aspects that make it very different from the Tea Party they seek to emulate.

1. Progressives Have Embraced Intersectionality

For those unfamiliar with the term, intersectionality refers to the ways in which marginalized people overlap in the hierarchy of oppression. So being gay and black makes you oppressed, but if you are cis (not transgender), your gender privilege intersects with your oppression. If that idea gives you a headache, it should. It also helps to explain why progressives so often wind up at each other’s throats.

This phenomenon was on display at the Women’s March on Washington. Originally organized by two white people, calls came almost instantly to diversify its leadership. The problem with this is that it leads to ever more radical positions—when the lesbian, Eskimo, midget, left-handed, ninja albinos demand inclusion of their cause in the platform. This was one of the things that led to the failure of Occupy Wall Street, as more moderate voices were pushed to the side.

The Resistance believes that diversity is its strength. But diversity can also be a profound weakness, one that has haunted many progressive movements. The Tea Party faced almost no similar divisions, and more or less avoided such internecine struggles.

2. They Have No Unifying Issue To Rally Around

Related to the problem of intersectionality is the Resistance’s lack of a unifying issue. The Tea Party was laser-focused on government spending, both regarding the bailouts and eventually the Affordable Care Act. Protests, in general, are more successful when they oppose something concrete—like a war or a specific law. We saw evidence of this in the airport protests over the president’s immigration executive order. Politicians, the courts, and the media followed their lead. In some measure, they were able to claim victory.

But the Resistance is about much more than immigration: it is opposed to Trump, not any one or two of his policies. This will make the movement a mile wide and an inch deep. The public will not be able to process all their complaints at once, and politicians will not be able to concentrate their fire.

3. Progressives’ Bubble Won’t Help Them

The Resistance likes to point out that Hillary Clinton received more votes than Trump. And it is an important point: Clinton came much closer to winning the 2016 election than John McCain did in 2008. But the disparity between the popular vote and the Electoral College reveals a telling weakness for Democrats in national elections. Progressive voters are densely packed into small geographic areas where they dominate.

It may well be that the Resistance has greater overall participation than the Tea Party did. But it will be focused in progressive cities and on college campuses. This will not give the Resistance the kind of reach that the Tea Party had. Even if it succeeds in motivating voters, it will only enhance already overwhelming advantages in places where Democrats already win.

4. The Resistance’s Use Of Violence Is Counterproductive

As we saw during the recent Berkeley riots and the assault on Richard Spencer caught on video, there is an element of the Resistance that is willing to use violence to achieve its political ends. Progressives will argue that this is a small percentage, just as the Tea Party did when confronted with allegations of racism. But thus far, too many progressives have been apologists for such violence. Somehow they are engaged in a debate as to whether punching political opponents is okay.

This is an old story on the Left. It’s how William Ayers, a convicted political terrorist, and a member of the Weather Underground, can be friends with former President Obama. Rather than say “there is no place for this here,” as the Tea Party did with racism, progressives see their violent elements as having similar aims and different methods.

Any protest organizer will tell you that seeing grandmothers and toddlers is much better messaging than seeing masked thugs setting things on fire. But if the Resistance cannot firmly and totally reject such methods, they deserve the stain that comes with them. And the American people will associate them with that kind of madness.

There Are Some Caveats Worth Considering

For the reasons listed above, it is unlikely that the Resistance can duplicate the Tea Party’s success. After all, the political turnaround it achieved in eight years may be unprecedented in modern American history. But the good news for the Resistance is that they don’t have to. Democrats are not in nearly as deep of a hole as the GOP was in 2009. Democrats trail Republicans by only 47 votes in the House and two in the Senate.

This is why some Democrats—including moderate congressman Tim Ryan, whose attempt to be minority leader fizzled—want a very different approach from the Resistance. Rather than protest and yell, the few moderates left to see a calmer path: one that requires not a political sea change but winning back a few frustrated voters who were swayed by Trump.

At the moment, it does not appear that the moderates are winning the day. Just as the Tea Party stuck it to the GOP establishment, the Resistance seems eager for a similar fight, even with vaguely moderate Democrats. Most Republicans say such a choice will turn Trump into a two-term President. But there are reasons to temper such optimism.

The Resistance Will Be Formidable, Even If It Isn’t Successful

The first reason is Trump himself. Just as Obama launched unpopular policies that fueled the Tea Party, Trump could do or say things that keep the Resistance energized and relevant. He hasn’t been president long, but thus far the size and sustained nature of protests have been impressive. The progressive protest networks, which certainly do have their professional elements, are succeeding in bringing many regular people into the street.

A second reason is that in politics, an offense is better than defense. As Obama found out, popular change is easier to promise than it is to deliver. The party out of power can focus on pie-in-the-sky schemes that haven’t been tested. The party in power has to slog through reality and build a case that they are better than a hypothetical alternative.

Short of some unforeseeable détente between the president and his progressive detractors, the Resistance is likely to have legs. It may even succeed in becoming an effective political organization, as the Tea Party did.

But the Resistance faces structural disadvantages that the Tea Party did not.  If it can be a broad-based movement, tolerant of differing philosophies of progressivism, it has a chance to sway opinions and move votes. But if moderate, or as progressives would say, privileged voices are pushed to the side; it will double down on recent failures. The Resistance is not the Tea Party and it can’t win the way Tea Party did. But for now anyway, it looks like that is exactly what is it going to try to do.

There Are No Good Options For Handling North Korea’s Belligerence

By
Gustavo
-
0

Last week North Korea sent its love to the world, especially to its Asian neighbors, by testing a medium-to-long-range ballistic missile. It’s reported that the missile successfully traveled 500 kilometers (approximately 310 miles).

North Korea’s dictator Kim Jung-un claimed, “We have the sure capability to attack in an overall and practical way the Americans in the Pacific operation theater.” Although that claim hasn’t been substantiated, the United States and its Asian allies are rightfully concerned. In 2016, North Korea conducted two nuclear tests and more than 20 missile tests. With each test, the hermit nation gets closer to subjecting the rest of world to apocalyptic danger.

The ultimate question is: what should the United States do about it? Other than paying lip service, the so-called “international community” is usually toothless and lacks resolve when faced with real danger and serious challenges from thugs.

Let’s Start With Our Failures

Let’s first examine what didn’t work in the past. First, years of economic sanctions have failed to curtail North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. North Korea is already the most isolated country in the world, and it does very little trade with the outside world. Its most important and largest trading partner is China. (The North Korean regime also conducts illicit weapon sales and drug trades with rogue states such as Iran, but income from those trades is small potatoes compared to trade with China).

Since the Korean War, China has been the only steadfast economic backer of North Korea and has provided it with food and fuel to sustain the regime. It’s estimated that North Korea-China trade accounts for about 70 to 90 percent of the trading volumes in North Korea, and trading activities for the two countries have steadily increased in recent years. Had it not been for China’s ongoing economic support, aid, and trading activities, the North Korean regime would have collapsed a long time ago.

China’s increasing economic power has only enhanced its ability to absorb the cost of economically sustaining North Korea. Therefore, other than being a “feel good” measure, international economic sanctions have done little to change North Korea’s behavior. Sanctions or not, the North Korean people continue to suffer under one of the most oppressive and brutal regimes.

Second, years of diplomacy have failed too. China and North Korea have long blamed the “real” military threats from the United States and its allies for Pyongyang’s provocative behavior, even though the only force that constantly threatens regional peace and prosperity is North Korea. The United States and South Korea have tried to extend many olive branches to Pyongyang. Neither South Korea’s “sunshine” policy nor the rounds of six-party negotiations since 2003 have curtailed North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

Instead, Pyongyang took advantage of these diplomatic efforts to extract food, energy, and other aid from the international community, then used these resources to support its ruling elites, military, and nuclear program. In some respects, these good-intentioned diplomatic efforts helped extended the North Korean regime’s longevity.

One of the reasons diplomacy hasn’t worked is that from Kim Jong-il to Kim Jong-un, North Korean leaders have viewed a nuclear weapon as their only way to get a seat at the table and only insurance plan to sustain their regime. As the Brookings Institution’s Jonathan Pollack wrote, “The North Korean leadership has thus convinced itself (if not others) that its existence as an autonomous state derives directly from its possession of nuclear weapons.” Without any nuclear weapon, no one will take North Korea seriously. After all, it’s a small country about one-fifth the size of Texas, with only 24 million people.

China Is a Key Problem Here

The most important reason diplomacy has failed is that China’s interests are different from those of the other parties involved (the United States, Japan, and South Korea). China may be concerned about an overly powerful next-door neighbor with nuclear weapons, so wants to see North Korea’s nuclear program somehow contained. However, China doesn’t want to push North Korea too hard for several strategic reasons.

There’s the well-known potential refugee issue if North Korea collapses. More importantly from a geopolitical standpoint: a standing North Korea would buffer against any U.S. land invasion. While China continues its ascent into a world superpower (or, in China’s words, “returning to its former glory through peaceful rising”), Chinese President Xi Jinping is eager to keep a “benevolent” and “peaceful” superpower façade. Therefore, there are things he won’t publicly say or do to maintain a good global citizen’s image.

But North Korea can serve as an “attack dog” towards western democracies such as the United States. The crazier and the more unpredictable the regime gets, the more it will consume the time, energy, and resources of the United States and its Asian allies. By keeping them busy through North Korea, China has a freer hand to do what it wants, such as building artificial islands in the South and East China Seas.

Despite three decades of economic growth, the Chinese government, especially President Xi, is deeply suspicious of ideas such as democracy and the free market. Ideologically, China is more aligned with North Korea. If North Korea collapses, it would put the Chinese Communist Party’s own legitimacy in question. China can’t and won’t allow that to happen.

No Good Options for the United States

It should be clear to everyone by now that North Korea will never give up its nuclear program and China will never stop supporting Pyongyang economically and politically. So what should the United States do?

Unfortunately, there isn’t any good option. The United States can’t draw a red line against Pyongyang because we all learned from recent history that a red line is useless if there’s no follow-through. A follow-through, in this case, would mean a preemptive strike against one nuclear power (North Korea) that has the backing of another nuclear power (China). It would be a very dangerous undertaking. Not surprisingly, a red line followed by a military strike is out of the question.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the White House is considering a number of proposals: more economic sanctions (remember the definition of insanity?), military exercises with regional allies, and a faster deployment of regional missile defense systems. All are defensive measures, and none is likely to stop North Korea from continuing its nuclear program. Among all these options, speedily deploying regional missile defense systems is probably the only one that will make some difference, which is probably why China has long campaigned against it. Therefore, it should be the Trump administration’s focus.

Pyongyang’s nuclear ambition is threatening not only the peace and prosperity of East Asia but also the rest of the world. The whole world is watching the United States for policy clues, so doing nothing is not an option. Is President Trump up to the challenge?

Helen Raleigh owns Red Meadow Advisors, LLC, and is an immigration policy fellow at the Centennial Institute in Colorado. She is the author of several books, including “Confucius Never Said” and “The Broken Welcome Mat.” Follow Helen on Twitter @HRaleighspeaks, or check out her website: helenraleighspeaks.com.

Denmark Says No to Muslim-Majority Neighborhoods

By
Gustavo
-
0
 With Sweden suddenly all over the U.S. news, perhaps Americans will cast their eyes to another Scandinavian country to see how they’re dealing with their own refugee problem.
Sweden jumped into the headlines over the weekend after President Trump said he’d heard about an incident “last night.” Well, he meant he’d heard about the mess over there “last night” in a TV report, but that didn’t stop the mainstream media from going wild with reports that Trump is a buffoon.
Of course, the gist of what Trump was talking about — that Sweden, which has taken in 190,000 refugees, has now become the rape capital of Europe, not to mention a veritable hotbed for terrorist activity — was spot on. But CNN and other “news” outlets focused only on the “last night” part.
Yet Sweden is not the only place in Scandinavia that’s having a huge refugee crisis. Faced with its own refugee problems, the Danish parliament has passed a new declaration that makes it illegal for a residential area to be occupied by an immigrant majority population, notably Muslim.
The bill, pushed by the populist Danish People’s Party, drew bipartisan support but barely passed with a 55-54 vote.
“Parliament notes with concern that today there are areas in Denmark where the number of immigrants from non-Western countries and their descendants is above 50 percent. It is parliament’s opinion that Danes should not be a minority in residential areas in Denmark,” the People’s Party said.
Liberals objected, with one leader, Martin Ostergaard, saying: “How will we ever achieve good integration if it is stated in advance that your ethnic background prohibits you from being considered Danish? This isn’t just trivial hair-splitting, this is alarming!”
Some 600,000 refugees and immigrants have flooded into Denmark, which provides superb services for its citizens. That accounts for more than 12 percent of the population there. The influx comes despite Denmark being considered the least attractive country for refugees.
Last November, the Danish parliament passed a law that allows authorities to seize assets exceeding $1,450 from asylum-seekers in order to help pay for the migrants’ needs in the country. In August, the Parliament also voted to cut social benefits to refugees and immigrants by 45 percent.
So, side by side, two experiments. Sweden has an open-door policy — and is being overrun with dangerous and violent refugees. Denmark is trying to keep control over its borders and protect its people. Which one do you think will triumph?

Stop Belittling The Holocaust With Your Stupid Nazi Analogies

By
Gustavo
-
0

When the Associated Press dropped a breathless piece contending that the Trump administration was “considering” and “weighing” using 100,000 National Guard troops to help round up illegal immigrants, all the usual hysterics erupted. Soon, the White House denied it had ever considered the memo (and so far there is no reason to believe they are lying). Then we learned the memo itself doesn’t even say anything about “100,000 National Guardsmen” rounding up illegal immigrants. Now, we can theorize about who leaked the story, but it looks to be the epitome of Donald Trump’s Yogi Berraism about a real story being fake news.

Anyway, none of this stopped the shameful Hitler and Nazi analogies from immediately clogging up social media. Comparing everything to 1932 is now a big part of our national discourse. People who should know better habitually make correlations.

This isn’t “Springtime for Hitler.” These gross equivalences belittle the memory of millions who died in unimaginably horrifying ways. Moreover, exaggeration and historical illiteracy undermine the very cause these people claim to care about unless that cause is desensitizing people to the terror of the Holocaust.

Jamil Smith, a writer for Rolling Stone, was just one of the high-profile journalists to use this intellectually lazy analogy. “First, they came for the undocumented,” he tweeted. (In the next tweet about the memo draft, he contends, “Whether or not it’s true doesn’t matter,” which is emblematic of much punditry today.) He is, of course referring to Martin Niemöller’s famous poem:

First they came for the Socialists [sometimes written as communists], and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

People love to use the poem as a cudgel against anyone who fails to match their own hyperbole on pet political issues. Implied, of course, is that those who do not share their outrage are ignoring an event that is in some ways akin to the Holocaust. It’s a convenient formulation, because, after all, you’d be hard-pressed to disprove events that haven’t yet transpired. And if for some reason, Trump’s term doesn’t actually turn into a Hitlerian nightmare, then they’ll tell you it was because they took Niemöller’s warning to heart and stopped the impending evil.

So, win-win.

First of all, even if the authorities — even if the National Guard (which I think would be an incredibly horrible idea) — were to start deporting illegal immigrants, not one of those unfortunate people would ever be sent to anything resembling the ovens of Treblinka and Auschwitz. Not their children. Not anyone else in this country. Most often, in fact, deported illegal immigrants are going back to Mexico, where they can apply for legal entry into the United States. Every year, more than a million people become American citizens. So we are hardly in the early staging plans of “total measures.” In fact, we function under immigration laws that were written by representatives of the electorate, and the constitutionality of those laws are determined by the judicial system.

If your argument is that all deportations are, in and of themselves, the actions of a proto-Nazi regime, then I would ask: why aren’t you comparing Barack Obama, who deported 2.4 million people from 2009-2014 2014 alone to Himmler? Or I would say stop appropriating the horrors of history for short-term political gain and come up with a better analogy.

DNC Chair Candidate Raymond Buckley Gets It #JusticeDemocrats

By
Gustavo
-
0

Raymond Buckley wants his party to concentrate on the issues that have worried Americans.

New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Raymond Buckley, a candidate for the DNC chair, told his fellow Democrats to “grow up” at a forum in Baltimore. Buckley noted that the Democrats did not concentrate on the issues that actually concern regular Americans.

Buckley said the Democrats ‘did not offer a positive message to anyone I … am related to.’

‘We did not offer a message to my neighbors, we did not offer a message to the people in Indiana or Ohio or Pennsylvania or Kentucky,’ he added, pointing to the state’s nominee Hillary Clinton lost throughout the Rust Belt.

What the Democrats did do, Buckley stated, is say ‘how offensive.’

‘Grow up,’ he shouted.

‘That is not reality for most of America,’ he said.

He appeared on Fox & Friends on Monday:

“We’ve had 11 or 12 debates already, and clearly we’ve been talking about a number of issues we tripped up on,” Buckley said. “But we really never got to the point that our nominee’s campaign really did not address the economic issues that so many Americans are still suffering under.”

It’s been said the Democrats have become a coastal party, with strongholds in California, New York, and Massachusetts. However, the message has failed to spread to middle America.

“I think it is important that whoever is our nominee in 2020 that they listen to our grassroots and less to their high-paid consultants,” Buckley said. “I really think that is a major problem within our party, both at the DNC and with our candidates up and down the ticket.”

Buckley is one of ten candidates to take over the DNC after Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schulz resigned last summer after someone leaked emails before the convention.

Instead of taking Buckley’s advice, the DNC has shown it wants to keep moving to the far left since Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and former Labor Secretary Thomas Perez remain the favorites. Former Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) expressed this sentiment when he appeared on Meet the Press this last weekend. From RealClearPolitics:

“You can’t have a Jefferson-Jackson dinner, which was a primary celebratory event of the Democratic Party for years, because Jefferson and Jackson were slaveholders,” Webb lamented. “They were also great Americans in their day. Something different has happened to the Democratic Party.”

He said that the party’s focus on “identity politics” has lost them a “key part of the their base.”

He continued: “The people who believe that regardless of any of these identity segments, you need to have a voice in a quarters of power for those that have no voice. And we’ve lost that for the Democratic Party.”

Webb also noted that the Democrats lost the middle of America, who they need to gain back because they “used to be the core of their party.” From The Hill:

“You’ve lost white working people. You’ve lost flyover land, and you saw in this election what happens when people get frustrated enough that they say, ‘I’m not going to take this,’” he said.

“There is an aristocracy now that pervades American politics. It’s got to be broken somehow in both parties, and I think that’s what the Trump message was that echoed so strongly in these flyover communities.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17tLiVjxJdw

When It Comes To Michael Flynn, Everyone Needs To Get A Grip

By
Gustavo
-
0

Here’s a strange thought for the Trump era (which is, remarkably enough, less than a month old): What if the Michael Flynn kerfuffle falls somewhere between being completely innocuous and being the worst foreign policy scandal of the past 40 years? It’s crazy, I know, but what if Flynn was a disastrous pick who made vague, inappropriate promises to the Russian ambassador, period? What if his resignation doesn’t signify that Donald Trump has handed over our foreign policy decisions to the KGB?

A person can believe that Trump’s footsie-playing with Vlad Putin is misguided and harmful and that a politically motivated deep state that drops selective leaks meant to sink a national security advisor is also unhealthy for the republic. You don’t have to like Donald Trump to understand that spooks shouldn’t use their power to undermine elected governments and that functionaries of a previous administration shouldn’t sabotage new ones to preserve their Russia-approved Iran deals.

As John Podhoretz points out in the New York Post today:

Leftists have become fond of saying that Trump shouldn’t be ‘normalized.’ That concern should now go both ways. Every American should be equally concerned at the potential ‘normalization’ of the tactics used by unnamed government officials to do Flynn in.

Also, one can believe that Flynn, who served his country with distinction, is a political kook who should never have been named national security advisor in the first place but also that, as far as we know (and this can change), he did nothing to compromise national security. According to the Wall Street Journal, the retired general repeatedly reached out to the Russians to persuade them not to “overreact’’ to sanctions, implying the next administration would be more amenable to their concerns.

It’s not as if Trump hadn’t telegraphed this very position repeatedly during the campaign. Until we see the transcripts of the conversations, all that has been intimated is that Flynn told the Russians the new administration would have more flexibility after the election — which is sort of an American tradition these days.

It also should be mentioned that, according to NBC, after an investigation of his contacts with Russia during the campaign, the FBI came to the conclusion that Flynn would not face any “legal jeopardy.” Using this standard, something we were repeatedly told exonerated Hillary Clinton of any wrongdoing, Flynn is also in the clear. Then again, that was as silly then as it is now. The prosecutable evidence is a legal standard for criminality, not a political one for wrongdoing. Just because Flynn might not go to jail doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t do something inappropriate.

So while we should certainly concede that the removal of a national security advisor is a big deal, we can’t forget that many of the most dramatic stories about the Trump administration have been driven by off-the-record sources and turned out to be duds. If Democrats want us to believe they’re concerned about national security rather than just their own political fortunes, perhaps wish casting about impeachment before the evidence is in isn’t a great idea.  You’re supposed to demand investigations to uncover the facts first, and only then yell about it being “bigger than Watergate.”

Actually, what am I talking about? This is already the most nefarious attack on America in all of history. Thomas Friedman, noted admirer of lefty authoritarianism, wrote in The New York Times today that “we were attacked on Dec. 7, 1941, we were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, and we were attacked on Nov. 8, 2016.” So if legal democratic expression that manifested in a Trump presidency is a threat to the nation in the same way that Osama bin Laden and Tojo were, does that mean Americans have the moral authority to react comparably? Someone should ask him.

These kind of hysterical pieces are reminiscent of the Bush years when we were told our bumbling idiot president was simultaneously a mastermind who could dismantle the republic and sell out the country for oil and ideology.

Speaking of history, if you point out that Obama’s bungling and moral surrender on foreign policy helped empower autocrats and theocrats — Crimea was indeed taken while Obama was president — and habitually lied about their foreign policy goals, you would be right. Also, you shouldn’t excuse Trump for taking similarly inexcusable positions and lying. Simply because a biased media overreacts to everything the Trump administration does, doesn’t mean all its targets are innocent. Conversely, one can believe the neophytes in the Trump administration are incompetent and wrong about Russia (and much else), but also accept that not everything is 9/11, or even Watergate.

Why The Resistance Is The Best Thing That’s Happened To Donald Trump

By
Gustavo
-
0
FEBRUARY 15, 2017

Sure, it matters that Donald Trump owns a historically low favorability rating. Then again, disliking the president isn’t exactly a courageous act. Plenty of Americans — many of whom supported the president during the general election — don’t like Donald Trump. They do realize that politics is a tradeoff. A more revealing question pollsters might ask people is: But do you “like” any better Chuck Schumer or Elizabeth Warren, pussy-hatted marchers griping about the patriarchy, or the totalitarians blocking Education Secretary Betsy Devos from walking into a public school?

That’s the choice #TheResistance — whose mantra, let’s face it, has synched with the national Democratic Party — has created for many moderate Republicans, right-leaning independents, and movement conservatives concerned about Trump. Which is to say, they offer no choice whatsoever. They offer plenty of hysteria, hypocrisy, and conflating of conservatism with Trumpism for political gain.

For pundits on the Left, the idea that conservatives can judge the presidency issue by issue is completely unacceptable. As important as attacking Trump is, depicting conservatives as fellow travelers who enable fascism confirms every preconceived notion they harbor about the Right. As Scott Adams put it not that long ago:

But lately I get the feeling that Trump’s critics have evolved from expecting Trump to be Hitler to preferring it. Obviously they don’t prefer it in a conscious way. But the alternative to Trump becoming Hitler is that they have to live out the rest of their lives as confirmed morons.

In a recent Atlantic piece titled “The Anti-Anti-Trump Right,” by Peter Beinart, the subheadline reads: “For conservative publications, the business model is opposing the left. And that means opposing the people who oppose Trump.” As is customary these days, the Left, much like Trump, questions the motives of political foes rather than addressing their arguments. Beinart goes on to name the two only honorable conservatives in the entire country (according to Democrats), David Frum and David Brooks. For them, Beinart contends, conservatism is “prudence, inherited wisdom, and a government that first does no harm.” Sure it is. Everyone else is a moral coward and a hypocrite for failing to support liberals in their fight to …

… in their fight to do what, exactly?

It’s true that Trump doesn’t exhibit prudence, reliance, or inherited wisdom. Yet — and I know this is exceedingly difficult for Democrats to comprehend —neither does the alternative. If liberals were serious about convincing Republicans to abandon Trump in toto, they’d have something better to offer than Donald Trump.

Seth Mandel

✔@SethAMandel

There’s a weird thing on the left now where they *want* all Republicans to fully support Trump so they can bask in creepy moral superiority.

What seems to most vex critics of the anti-anti-Trump contingent (and I am mentioned in the Atlantic piece) is that conservatives aren’t appropriately agitated about the world that liberals see — a world that has turned out to be far less apocalyptic in the early going than they imagine. But if it’s a zero-sum choice they’re offering, that includes picking Neil Gorsuch over Planned Parenthood; tax cuts over teachers unions; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Iran’s Holocaust deniers; deregulation of the bureaucratic state over legislation, or forcing progressive cultural mores on everyone. And so on.

As Matt Lewis pointed out today, for example, many former free traders are now embracing the protectionist, big-government policies of Trumpism. This is the kind of capitulation many fiscal conservatives feared. Again, the problem is that for free traders, Democrats are as just bad. In fact, the popularity of protectionism among populist movements on left and right is so strong, there’s a good argument that the only way to possibly counteract it is by electing more conservatives to Congress.

The average Resistance fighter might dislike Trump. They hate conservatism. By treating even the most milquetoast, run-of-the-mill cabinet nominee as Worst Thing That Has Ever Happened to America, The Resistance gives conservatives the space to defend long-standing political positions such as school choice, immigration enforcement, and deregulation. I imagine many Republicans would happily hand over the scalp of more Michael Flynns if it meant creating a more stable and experienced administration. But they also understand that people who treat DeVos like a bigger threat to the republic than Steve Bannon will never be placated. Those who spend weeks after the election acting like the Electoral College was some kind trick pulled on the country are not interested in “rule of law.” They’re interested in Democrats.

Last week, when the president tactlessly attacked the Ninth Circuit Court on Twitter, the mantra was “Trump doesn’t respect the law!” — even though Democrats had spent eight years attacking the Supreme Court over Citizens United. By Monday, when we learned that there was a deportation uptick (there probably wasn’t) of illegal immigrants, the mantra had changed to “Trump is upholding the law!” (Do Democrats believe enforcing the law horrifies most voters? Do they really believe a temporary ban on refugees from Muslim-majority countries that are terror-producing nations is as cut and dry an issue as it looks on their Twitter feeds?) These days, “the law” means “policy positions liberals like.”

As Thomas Sowell says, there are no ideal solutions, only tradeoffs. Trump brings an array of obvious and problematic issues with him to the presidency that may one day make his presidency untenable for Republicans. The Resistance, though, offers them absolutely nothing.

PewDiePie Did Nothing Wrong

By
Gustavo
-
0
cover
Date: February 15, 2017, Author: Sargon0 

The faux-moral outrage of the Wall Street Journal cost PewDiePie millions of dollars over some jokes while smearing him as an anti-Semite.

Video

1...131415Page 14 of 15
- Advertisement -

RECENT POSTS

© Website Created by Gustavo Frias