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The Washington Post Displays Glaring Double Standard When Reporting Sexual Assault Claims

By
Gustavo
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0

The Post’s standards seem to change based on whether or not the alleged perpetrator is a Democrat or a Republican. This is bad for us all. 

It is now apparent that The Washington Post’s standard for reporting on cases of sexual assault is dependent upon whether the accused is a political target of their choosing.

Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax issued a statement Monday morning denying accusations of sexual assault from 2004. Fairfax said the allegations were investigated by The Washington Post last year, who found, “significant red flags and inconsistencies within the allegation.” Now, The Washington Post is pushing back with a story of their own, revealing more details of the alleged incident and on their decision not to report the story when the victim first came forward.

“The Washington Post, in phone calls to people who knew Fairfax from college, law school and through political circles, found no similar complaints of sexual misconduct against him. Without that, or the ability to corroborate the woman’s account — in part because she had not told anyone what happened — The Washington Post did not run a story,” the newspaper reported on Monday.

This is quite the opposite of the standard the Post applied when reporting on allegations of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh last year. The Washington Post reported Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations against Kavanaugh despite no evidence and no corroboration of Ford’s account. The Post claims the fact that Fairfax’s accuser, “had not told anyone what happened,” is a reason for not running the story — something that Ford did not do either until Kavanaugh was listed as a potential Supreme Court pick.

Fairfax’s accuser provided specific details to the Post, including a date, time, location, and details of a “sexual encounter that began with consensual kissing and ended with a forced act that left her crying and shaken.” In the Post’s reporting on Kavanaugh, Ford was unable to recall or provide any similar details of her encounter with Kavanaugh, but that did not prevent them from publishing her accusations. Additionally, details of Ford’s testimony changed several times throughout the reports and hearings.

After interviewing contacts of both Fairfax’s and his accuser, The Washington Post was unable to corroborate either accounts of their sexual encounter. Through his lawyers, Fairfax admitted the encounter did happen but was consensual. In contrast, multiple friends and supposed witnesses of the Kavanaugh-Ford story, were indeed able to corroborate Kavanaugh’s version of events, but not not Ford’s.

As for Fairfax, he is fervently relying on The Washington Post’s decision not to run the story as evidence that the allegations are false. “The fact that they’d run a story on an uncorroborated allegation from 15 years ago tells you exactly what the smear is all about,” he said this morning. “This person, a year ago, came to the Washington Post with this very same allegation. They investigated it for several months, and they made the decision not to publish the story because it was not credible.”

Throughout the lengthy Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, and in the time since, media figures and celebrities alike have embraced the mantra, “Believe All Women.” The Post’s handling of the Fairfax allegations now reveals that it is in fact not about believing all women, just the women whose stories are politically expedient.

It’s Time To Accept The Truth: Tom Brady Is The GOAT

By
Gustavo
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0


Tom Brady is the only one that can rock a turtleneck, win six Super Bowls, and beclown Roger Goodell with ease. And he shall have no equals.

Sunday, Thomas Edward Patrick Brady, Jr. played in his ninth Super Bowl, winning his sixth. Although the Patriots were slightly favored—Vegas placed the odds at a slim -3—never doubt a man who can both pull off a turtleneck and beclown Roger Goodell with ease. In the Year of Our Lord 2019, there is one indisputable truth, and that is that Tom Brady is the greatest of all time, the GOAT. Any arguments to the contrary are ridiculous, as last night showed.

Sure, Brady hasn’t always won. In 2007 and 2011, the Pats lost to the New York Giants and quarterback Eli Manning, a man who may well be Brady’s Kryptonite. Superman cannot be Superman without Kryptonite.

But Jared Goff, the Los Angeles Rams quarterback, was no Kryptonite. The Rams defense almost filled that role, but ultimately fell short. At the end of a defensive battle—an unexpected one, as Vegas had the over/under at 56—the Patriots won 13-3. In my pre-game draft, I wrote, “Brady the GOAT threw for [x yards and touchdowns] while rushing for [x].”

Post-game, I have to admit that Brady the GOAT threw for only 253 yards, didn’t run, threw zero touchdowns, but did toss up an interception. Yet, when the clock ran out, it was Brady who was getting his sixth ring. The one touchdown drive sealed it. The drive did feature Brady on a long throw to Rob Gronkowski, but backs Sony Michel and Rex Burkhead did the yeoman’s work, with Michel reaching the end zone.

Standing on the Shoulders of Greatness

Sometimes victory doesn’t rest upon the hero’s shoulders, but upon those around them. Sometimes, the successful general knows when it’s time to get out of the way and let his troops lead the storm. This is especially true when the troops know they can stand upon their general’s shoulders. Super Bowl LIII was an example of this, although we shouldn’t have been surprised.

In fact, the victory was foretold in the good book. As Daniel wrote, “The goat charged furiously at the ram and struck him, breaking off both his horns. Now the ram was helpless, and the goat knocked him down and trampled him. No one could rescue the ram from the goat’s power.” Daniel may have been speaking of a different sort of goat than the greatest of all time variety, and of a different sort of charging and trampling, but his message was as true Sunday as when it was written.

Much as it was common for people to dispute the truth when Daniel was writing, some still dispute the quality of Patriots Coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Brady. Sometimes, it’s mentioning the imaginary asterisk next to Brady’s name and the Patriots’ record. Other times, people get straight ridiculous.

For example, that student in Kentucky who had a science fair project “proving” that Brady’s a cheater. The kid did get an honorable mention, and he’s a kid who actually did some research, so I applaud his creativity. However, his methodology seems less than scientific. (If you’re disenchanted about the state of the NFL, I have some news about the state of science fairs.) It seems especially not-dispositive when we consider Brady’s rebuttal of the accusations, the tape of which proves he’s also the GOAT of NFL press conferences.

Speaking of tape, it is also true that the Patriots were busted for Spygate, but the actual charges were more yawn-worthy than the headlines suggested. They definitely don’t change the fact that Brady has ice water in his veins, knows how to handle his balls, and can throw strikes all day long and at least twice on Sundays.

Don’t Forget Joe Montana

Beyond the asterisks and the lowest-scoring affair ever that was Super Bowl LIII, there is a better argument against Brady being the best. That better argument is known as former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana. He also had ice water in his veins, knew how to handle his balls, and could throw touchdowns every day and at least twice on Sundays.

He may have won fewer Super Bowls, but unlike Brady, he won 100 percent of the Super Bowls he played in. Also, he played when the game was rougher and there were fewer protections for quarterbacks and receivers. (There were also no salary caps, which helps when an owner wants Montana and receiver Jerry Rice on the same team.)

Nevertheless, Montana was a quintessential quarterback. He inspired a generation, including Brady. He was the GOAT. But when you look at the stats, the student has become the master.

That’s overall stats, though. Just going off postseason numbers, the ones when performance and victory matter most, Montana has the edge, especially when you look at Brady’s sixth Super Bowl win. Also, we’re talking about Joe Montana. Just saying his name elicits reverence from those who know the game. Montana passing to Rice was poetry in motion. The man is deserving of praise, of Nicolas Cage-worthy high praise, even.

He’s Won Six—Six!—Super Bowls

But six Super Bowl victories, with Brady winning his most recent when he was 41, is an insurmountable edge. Montana won his final Super Bowl in 1990 when he was 34 years old. He did throw for five touchdowns in that game, and achieve that 100 percent Super Bowl success rate with those touchdowns, but he didn’t make it to six and retired when he was 38.

Not that it was all downhill after Super Bowl XXIV, but Montana never again reached the summit, after being traded to the Kansas City Chiefs for his final two seasons. Those seasons weren’t slouch seasons, emblematic of a man refusing to go gentle into that good night, but he could have retired in 1995 and his record would be much the same as it is today, absent a few more passing yards and touchdowns.

He did not, not that it much matters. Either way, despite Montana’s greatness, despite being one of the most quintessential quarterbacks ever, he was no Brady. Only Brady is Brady, and he is the greatest ever. (At least one 49ers fan can agree with this declaration.)

Taking Delight in the Work that Suits You Best

Last night, Brady again took the crown and reclaimed his kingdom. In his post-game interview with CBS, he said of the game, “We kept fighting and finally got a touchdown … the defense played their best game of the year.” He continued, “It’s been a great year. I’m so happy for my teammates. This is a dream come true for all of us.”

This was after Brady dispelled rumors that he may retire and stuck by his claims that he plans to play until he’s 45. With that quote and proclamation, Brady channeled another warrior, albeit not one of the gridiron variety. No, the warrior he channeled was another who relied on his troops and sought above all to be a good leader, one who shouldered the agonies of defeat while sharing the spoils of victory.

When writing about that man, Homer did not label him the GOAT, although he very easily could have. Instead, he simply said, “Each man delights in the work that suits him best.”

With his latest Super Bowl victory, Tom Brady took delight in the work that suits him best and fully claimed the mantle of the greatest. Someday, there may be another. Penelope will never be without her share of suitors, after all. For today, though, Brady has proven unequivocally that he is the king, and that “there is no greater fame for a man than that which he wins with his footwork or the skill of his hands.”

May that footwork and those hands continue to trample the naysayers—and Roger Goodell—for years to come, for the work of the GOAT is never done.

US Senate rebukes Trump over Syria, Afghanistan withdrawal plans

By
Gustavo
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0

By a 68-23 margin, the Senate decided we haven’t spilled enough blood, broken enough soldiers, or spent enough money on Afghanistan. 

The U.S. Senate cannot agree on anything. They are so mired in partisan gridlock, a resolution declaring the sky to be officially the color blue would fail along party lines. But there is one thing and one thing only they agree on: 17 years of our troops dying in Afghanistan isn’t long enough.

By a 68-23 margin, the Senate decided we haven’t spilled enough blood, broken enough soldiers (mentally and physically), or spent enough money. All for a now-aimless conflict in a part of the world Americans don’t even care about.

What began as an attempt to hunt down Osama bin Laden has now become a generational conflict where sons are patrolling the same areas as their fathers did. This no longer a war. This has become a hopeless mission to tame a part of the world that has never been and will never be tamed.

Afghanistan is a rugged, tribal nation with different interests than ours. As with so many parts of the world, the strong will rule over the weak there, and there is precious little America can do about that. That is why we’re now resigned to negotiating a peace deal with the very Taliban we’ve been fighting for 17 years.

American Soldiers Deserve Better than This

Our troops are the best of us, and they deserve better. They sign up to serve and defend this nation, and their lives should be sold dearly. Go take a long walk through your nearest Veterans Affairs hospital. It is no longer a place full of old men. It is now full of broken, injured, and sick young men walking the halls.

For the politicians banging the war drums, casualties are “an unfortunate reality of war.” For the young man learning how to walk with prosthetic legs or learning to read Braille, it’s a bit more real than that.

It is not only the physical toll. We are mentally breaking our guys. These endless conflicts are heavily shouldered by our special forces. Chief Edward Gallagher is being charged with killing an ISIS teen and posing for pictures with his dead body.

I won’t speak to what happened there, as I don’t know the truth and neither do you. But I do know this: Our special forces guys are now deployed for 250-plus days a year. You immerse a man in endless combat for a decade, and that’s going to have an effect.

We cannot continue to ask this of our best troops or their families, who are so often forgotten in all this. When you call for deploying troops, understand that you’re telling a man to kiss his wife and children goodbye for maybe the last time.

This Is an Un-American Foreign Policy

Our current foreign policy of involvement all over the globe is not the policy of our Founding Fathers. Nor has it been the foreign policy of this nation for the majority of our existence. George Washington famously wrote in his farewell address:

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible…Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation…Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel. Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?

Washington knew the dangerous quagmire of too much foreign involvement. And he knew too much of it would be the enemy of the people’s liberty. As did James Madison, who wrote:

In a time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive, will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against a foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans, it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

Here’s my personal favorite, John Quincy Adams, who wisely warned about constantly seeking out a foreign boogieman:

America…has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart…But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own…She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.

This is a better foreign policy, and the men who built this nation knew it. Americans themselves knew it. Even during World War II, as war raged across the globe, Americans opposed getting involved in the conflict by 95 percent until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Inevitably, this article will meet cries of, “We have to stop them over there before they come here!” Or, my personal favorite, “America must lead!”

First of all, scores of Americans have died on American soil from Islamic terror attacks since 9/11. So that “stop them there” argument has no facts to back it up.

Secondly, “America must lead!” is quite a statement. Maybe there’s even some legitimacy to it. But “America” is not very specific. What you’re really saying is, “Someone else has to go immerse himself in the mud and blood so I can feel better about myself.”

Let us stop this. Let us revert back to an originalist foreign policy that lets America worry about America and Americans.

That’s not isolationism, as America must remain ever vigilant and ready to take on the evils of this world should they threaten her interests. Instead, it’s a foreign policy that focuses on neutrality, trade, and places high value on the life of the American soldier. Let us finally send neoconservative interventionalism to the death it wishes upon our troops.

Ilhan Omar Deletes Tweet Smearing Covington High Schoolers, But Her Anti-Semitic Tweets Remain Online

By
Gustavo
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0

That Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar has left her anti-Semitic comments online while feigning remorse and deleting others is telling.

Since entering Congress this month, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has found herself indamage control mode over her record of anti-Semitism. Yesterday, she managed to bring more heat on herself by smearing the Covington Catholic High School students who were harassed by the racist Black Hebrew Israelites and Native American activist Nathan Phillips at the March For Life. Omar is now running away from the latter, but sticking by the former.

Here, preserved for posterity, is Omar’s tweet regarding the Covington controversy:View image on Twitter

The record will show that Omar’s tweet was false in every material respect. There is a video in which a teenager is heard shouting, “It’s not rape if you enjoy it,” but the person who promoted the video on Twitter admitted she did not know whether the boy attended Covington; it is a pure case of guilt by association:

https://twitter.com/girlsreallyrule/status/1087733862283776003

The “accuser even posted a longer version of the video where one of the boys says “he doesn’t go to Covington.” In addition, AG Conservative, who offers a service researching media bias, reports the incident involved a student from a different school.

The Covington students did not taunt any black men. As Reason magazine’s Robby Soave noted: “Far from engaging in racially motivated harassment, the group of mostly white, MAGA-hat-wearing male teenagers remained relatively calm and restrained despite being subjected to incessant racist, homophobic, and bigoted verbal abuse by members of the bizarre religious sect Black Hebrew Israelites, who were lurking nearby.”

Indeed, a review of the entire video shows that “Phillips enters the picture around the 1:12 mark, but if you skip to that part, you miss an hour of the Black Hebrew Israelites hurling obscenities at the students. They call them crackers, f****ts, and pedophiles. At the 1:20 mark (which comes after the Phillips incident) they call one of the few black students the n-word and tell him that his friends are going to murder him and steal his organs. At the 1:25 mark, they complain that ‘you give f*****s rights,’ which prompted booing from the students. Throughout the video they threaten the kids with violence, and attempt to goad them into attacking first. The students resisted these taunts admirably: They laughed at the hecklers, and they perform a few of their school’s sports cheers.”

It may be true that Nick Sandmann, the student thrust into the center of the left’s dishonest social media frenzy, is receiving help from a public relations firm (it appears he and other students are receiving pro bono legal aid, something the left usually favors). But here, Omar is essentially Capt. Renalt from “Casablanca” professing shock that gambling is going on at Rick’s Café Americain.

Omar does not appear to have expressed similar shock over the capture of the Women’s March by the usual left-wing suspects. To the contrary, Omar made it one of her first acts as a congresswoman to meet with one of the march’s anti-Semitic co-chairs, Linda Sarsour.

Omar’s continued support for the likes of Sarsour is no surprise. While Omar has deleted her attack on the Covington students, this tweet remains posted to her feed:

https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/269488770066313216

Omar’s statement remains online despite the fact that she know acknowledges it is an “anti-semitic trope,” which she claims she used “unknowingly.” Omar further claims: “In all sincerity, it was after my CNN interview that I heard from Jewish orgs. that my use of the word ‘Hypnotize’ and the ugly sentiment it holds was offensive.”

In reality, the opinion editor and deputy news editor at the Forward, among others, sought comment from Omar on many occasions regarding her apparent anti-Semitism, and never got one. Indeed, Omar has yet to directly apologize for her comment and it is entirely possible that she only wants to disavow having used language that left little doubt as to her instinctive anti-Semitism.

Omar’s dissembling regarding anti-Semitism is not new, either. During her campaign she claimed the anti-Israel boycott, divest and sanctions [BDS] movement was “not helpful”and “counteractive.” After she won, however, she stated she “believes in and supports the BDS movement.”

The rationalization BDS supporters advance is to compare Israel to apartheid-era South Africa. Omar herself has referred to Israel as an “apartheid regime,” even though claiming the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor falls within the “working definition” of anti-Semitism adopted by the United States and 30 other member states of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

That Omar has left her anti-Semitic comments online while feigning remorse is telling. She deleted her attack on the Covington students even though it was merely an exaggerated form of the shameful distortions of the establishment media. But like Louis Farrakhan-loving Women’s March co-chair Tamika Mallory, Omar cannot bring herself to fully renounce other forms of bigotry.

The Bigotry At The Heart Of The Covington Affair Belongs To The Left

By
Gustavo
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0

After days of outrage and condemnations, the Covington affair has revealed disturbing bigotry among far too many media figures and outlets on the left. 

At a few days’ remove from the Covington Catholic High School incident at the Lincoln Memorial, we can be reasonably sure there will be no apologies or corrections forthcoming from the major media outlets that rushed to vilify the students involved. The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and dozens of lesser news organizations that condemned the high schoolers from Kentucky have not retracted or walked back their initial, warped narrative: that racist white teens harassed an elderly Native American man.

Nor will there be any public contrition from many individual members of the media who were in the vanguard of the online mob. CNN’s Reza Aslan tweeted an image of one of the boys and asked, “Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?” Filmmaker Michael Green tweeted the same image with the comment, “A face like that never changes. This image will define his life. No one need ever forgive him.”

Despite additional video footage that largely exonerated the students, neither of those public figures have deleted their tweets or apologized. Same for James Fallows at The Atlantic, who initially compared the high schoolers to Arkansas segregationists in the 1950s then doubled down, noting that because the kids were white and wearing “Make America Great Again” hats, they must be guilty.

Although some journalists have recanted at length, and others have apologized and deleted their early, emotionally charged reactions, plenty of others have not and will not. They believe that whatever the video footage actually reveals about the incident— specifically, that the elderly Native American man, Nathan Phillips, approached the kids and initiated a confrontation after they had been harassed by a bizarre racist group called the Black Hebrew Israelites—is irrelevant to what they say is the larger point: that “privileged” white teenage boys who wear MAGA hats are racist bigots and deserve no mercy.

The Covington kids are certainly getting none. They and their families have been doxxed, harassed, and threatened for days on end. On Tuesday, Covington Catholic High School was closed over security concerns.

Why the Covington Kids Were Deemed Guilty

It’s hard not to see the parallels here to the Brett Kavanaugh affair, the Rolling Stone-UVA rape hoax, and the Duke Lacrosse scandal. In all these cases, the rush to judgement hinged on the race and perceived privilege of the accused. They were guilty not based on the facts of what happened, they were guilty because of who they were: supposedly privileged white males.

The Covington high schoolers were in this sense the perfect villain for the social justice outrage mob. Not only were they mostly white, male, and Catholic, the entire reason they were in Washington was to attend the annual March for Life. As noted cultural commentator Alyssa Milano put it, “Let’s not forget—this entire event happened because a group of boys went on a school-sanctioned trip to protest against a woman’s right to her own body and reproductive healthcare. It is not debatable that bigotry was at play from the start.”

Milano is right that bigotry was at play from the start, but not quite in the way she means. The manifest, unquestionable bigotry at play is that of media figures and celebrities whose unfiltered contempt and rage bubbled up and spewed forth the instant they saw a smirking white kid in a MAGA hat face-to-face with an old Native American man.

Bigotry is what now animates the unrepentant members of the media like Deadspin’s Laura Wagner, who describes the “visibly aggressive teens” as “draped in racist, misogynist paraphernalia.” Bigotry is what’s behind comments like those of Mollie O’Reilly of Commonweal magazine, who declared, “You don’t let your kid wear a MAGA hat and then act offended when they get taken for a racist.”

These are not the thoughts and feelings of people who want to share a republic and live in peace with their political opponents. If opposing abortion or supporting the president marks you out as a bigot and a racist, then civic comity is impossible, there is nothing left to say, no way to compromise or live and let live. The only thing that’s possible is a zero-sum contest of brute strength. The only thing left to do is silence or destroy your enemy.

The Left Is Not Interested In Sharing a Country

This is the meaning behind another recent social justice pile-on that has received much less news coverage. Karen Pence, wife of Vice President Mike Pence, was denounced last week as the embodiment of hate and intolerance for having the temerity to teach art part-time at a small Christian academy in Northern Virginia called Immanuel Christian School. Pence’s crime is that the K-8 academy’s employment contract contains a provision asserting that marriage is between one man and one woman, “a single, exclusive covenant union as delineated in Scripture.”

The existence of an unremarkable contract that affirms what all orthodox Christians believe was first reported as news by HuffPo. It quickly had the desired effect. CNN’s John King wondered aloud whether the second lady should continue to receive Secret Service protection. Lady Gaga interrupted a set in Las Vegas to aver that the Pences are the “worst representation of what it means to be a Christian.” The Washington Post found a professor to tut-tut about how Immanuel Christian School embraces creationism and therefore can’t lay claim to orthodox beliefs about marriage: “They cannot have their orthodoxy and eat it, too.”

Here we get to the heart of the Covington affair. For the social justice left, including many mainstream media figures, holding conservative views on abortion or marriage automatically makes you a bigot. Even apart from any views you espouse, simply wearing a MAGA hat makes you a bigot. And being a white male, together with any of the above, makes you the worst of bigots.

And you don’t apologize to bigots. You destroy them.

Court Rules Undercover Videos Of Planned Parenthood Selling Baby Body Parts As Authentic

By
Gustavo
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0

The court ruling refutes Planned Parenthood’s own talking points about how the CMP videos were “highly edited.” 

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the state of Texas can strip taxpayer subsidies from Planned Parenthood, primarily based on evidence found in undercover videos of the abortion provider’s involvement in harvesting and selling aborted baby body parts for profit.

The undercover videos in question were first released in 2015 by David Daleiden, founder and project lead at the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), and scrutinized by Planned Parenthood and members of the media as “deceptively edited.”

“Planned Parenthood for years has been smearing us trying to say the videos were not accurate or somehow misleading,” Daleiden said in an interview with Federalist contributor DC McAllister. “The Fifth Circuit explicitly found in their ruling last night that the Center for Medical Progress’ videos is authentic…and could be relied upon by Texas and by others as the regulatory and other enforcement proceedings.”

https://twitter.com/McAllisterDen/status/1086310103802888192

The court ruling directly refutes Planned Parenthood’s own talking points about how the CMP videos were “highly edited,” and “falsely portray[ing] Planned Parenthood’s participation in tissue donation programs.”

“The video camera doesn’t lie: CMP’s undercover video series caught Planned Parenthood’s top leaders openly admitting to selling baby body parts for profit in violation of federal law,” said the Center for Medical Progress in a statement. “Now it is time for the Department of Justice to do its job and hold Planned Parenthood accountable to the law.”



Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Setting Women Back Light Years In Politics

By
Gustavo
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0

She doesn’t deserve to be lauded as millennials’ feminist icon. Her incompetence with numbers and jumbled facts validate every negative stereotype women have been trying to erase for years. 

Vox dubbed her “the most buzzed-about first-term member of the House of Representatives,” and The Atlantic credited her with an “unusually transparent approach to public relations.” She’s a former Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer and a self-styled democratic socialist. Despite all the fanfare, her recent “60 Minutes” interview with Anderson Cooper shined a bright spotlight on a painful fact: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will make it harder for young women in politics to be taken seriously in the future.

In mere minutes, Ocasio-Cortez managed to affirm nearly every negative stereotype about the female sex, from the trope that we’re no good at math to the notion that you shouldn’t trust us with a credit card. If all you saw was her example, you’d think we’re all just emotional dreamers who need to be reined in by reality.

Ocasio-Cortez is not the feminist hero most media coverage has made her out to be. If anything, her time in the spotlight has set women in politics back.

Ocasio-Cortez Is Not a Feminist Hero

“I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right,” Ocasio-Cortez told Cooper after he asked about her careless and incorrect analysis of the defense budget. In one sentence, Ocasio-Cortez portrayed herself as a woman who is ready to subordinate facts to her moral convictions, confirming achingly anti-female stereotypes. She may as well have driven erratically down the highway or failed to catch a gently thrown ball. Of course, she later admitted that being factually correct is “absolutely important.” She just doesn’t seem to care much about facts and numbers when she’s tweeting.

Or, for that matter, when she’s speaking. In discussing with Cooper her proposal for a “Green New Deal,” which would use the full force of the government in an attempt to convert the United States to 100 percent renewable energy by 2030, she could not offer an actual answer for how such an enormous transformation would be possible. “It’s going to require a lot of rapid change that we don’t even conceive as possible right now,” was all she could say.

Shockingly, the reason we “don’t conceive of it as possible” is because it is not possible. Renewable sources generated just 17 percent of U.S. electricity in 2017, so it would be a herculean task to more than quintuple that share in just 12 years. As for the cost, Stanford researchers estimated in 2015 that the machinery and infrastructure investments required to make our energy system wholly dependent on wind, water, and solar by 2050 would cost $13.4 trillion, a sum a bit larger than the entire U.S. gross domestic product was in 2005. And Ocasio-Cortez wants to do it even earlier than that, with little to no concern about the mind-numbing cost.

But her Green New Deal is more than just an energy policy proposal. Because fighting climate change apparently requires implementing every expansive progressive policy, Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal includes a universal jobs guarantee and a commitment, seemingly unrelated to the environment, to “mitigate deeply entrenched racial, regional and gender-based inequalities in income and wealth.”

It also features a mandate to create “additional measures such as basic income programs, universal health care programs and any others as the select committee may deem appropriate.” Proponents of a federal job guarantee estimate that the program would cost $543 billion annually, and a national single-payer health-care system would cost $32.6 trillion in just the first 10 years of implementation.

Talk about Pushing Granny Over a Cliff

Combining these figures, a conservative estimate of the total costs of the Green New Deal over its first 10 years would be a little over $51 trillion. Even without single-payer health care, a key part of the platform, the Green New Deal would cost $18.8 trillion over 10 years, or $1.88 trillion annually. For reference, the federal government only collected $1.884 trillion in total income and corporate taxes in 2017. All the assets combined of the nation’s top 1 percent totals approximately $23 trillion, to use a midrange estimate, so even confiscating every penny from the richest Americans would only fund five years of Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal. Then what?

Ocasio-Cortez has refrained from discussing the potential costs of her proposal and therefore has never tried to walk through the numbers on how to pay for it. Funding such expensive government programs requires increased deficit spending, raising taxes—or both. That seems to be Ocasio-Cortez’s approach, as she has suggested 70 percent marginal tax rates for the “tippy tops” of high-income households, and insists that simply increasing the national debt could pay for her proposal.

To say this unrealistic analysis is fiscally irresponsible would be a massive understatement. But Ocasio-Cortez’s refusal to engage in a difficult conversation about the numbers involved and her disregard for the truth hurts the cause of women’s equality. Like it or not, Ocasio-Cortez has become one of the most visible women in politics—and she’s making youll look dumb.

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter once made a controversial claim that “single women look at the government as their husbands,” expecting the government to provide for their every need. Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal naivete provides unfair validation for that statement. Instead of using her massive platform to make nuanced, well-reasoned arguments for taxing the rich and expanding the national debt, her current track record indicates that she’s interested in neither.

All of the cringeworthy media interviews and high-profile errors she’s been so flippant about making will only cause more difficulty for young women to get elected to high office in the future. Her incompetence only cements the idea that a pretty, likable woman is one who, unfortunately, lacks a brain.

Witness In El Chapo Trial Says Mexican President Took $100 Million Bribe

By
Gustavo
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A witness in the ongoing trial of infamous Mexican drug cartel kingpin Joaquín Guzmán Loera, a.k.a. “El Chapo,” testified Tuesday that former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto took a $100 million bribe from Guzmán.

The witness, Alex Cifuentes Villa, is a former Colombian drug lord who worked closely with Guzmán from 2007 to 2013. His bombshell testimony comes amid a trial that has revealed corruption at almost every level of the Mexican government.

According to The New York Times, one of Guzmán’s lawyers, Jeffrey Lichtman, asked Cifuentes during cross-examination, “Mr. Guzmán paid a bribe of $100 million to President Peña Nieto?” “Yes,” responded Cifuentes.

Later, Cifuentes said Peña Nieto is the one who first reached out to Guzmán, asking for $250 million in exchange for allowing him to come out of hiding. Guzmán offered $100 million instead.

When the trial began back in November, Lichtman alluded to high-level bribes and payoffs while outlining an overall defense that alleged Guzmán was framed by his partner, Ismael Zambada García, in league with corrupt American D.E.A. agents and top officials in the Mexican government, including two presidents.

Peña Nieto denied taking bribes at the time. Later the judge in the case, Brian M. Cogan, forbade testimony from Jesus Zambada García, Ismael Zambada’s brother, who reportedly would have testified that two Mexican presidents took bribes from the Sinaloa drug cartel.

He did, however, testify that he had bribed Mexico’s top law-enforcement official under President Felipe Calderón, twice handing off briefcases stuffed with $3 million in cash to Genaro García Luna, who was in charge of the Federal Investigation Agency, Mexico’s federal police force equivalent of the F.B.I., and was later appointed secretary for public security.

If Cifuentes’s testimony about Peña Nieto is true, it suggests that drug cartels in Mexico have infiltrated the highest levels of government, and have been doing so for years. The question of deep and widespread corruption in Mexico is nothing new—Peña Nieto’s administration was so badly plagued by corruption scandals that it sought to shield federal officials from a corruption probe in the months before Peña Nieto left office. But corruption in Mexico has taken on new significance amid the humanitarian crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Record numbers of Central American families and minors are attempting to cross into the United States and claim asylum at a time when criminal networks in Mexico have largely seized control of the border in their efforts to commercialize migration into the United States. Although precise amounts are hard to pin down, cartels and smuggling networks are estimated to earn hundreds of millions of dollars annually from human smuggling.

President Trump says there’s a crisis at the border, and in a sense he’s right. But the crisis is not that migrants are crossing into the country illegally. That’s been happening for a long time (and overall numbers of illegal immigrants are currently at historic lows).

The crisis is the deep and endemic corruption in Mexico and Central America, where powerful cartels have a vested interest in controlling and continuing illegal immigration and governments are powerless to stop them—in part, because officials in those countries are in on it. If it turns out corruption in Mexico reaches to the very top, then we have a lot worse problems to deal with south of the border than migrant families seeking asylum.

Pelosi Just Cancelled The State Of The Union Over The Border Wall She Refuses To Build

By
Gustavo
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she has cancelled the president’s state of the union address until the government is re-opened. After rejecting invitations earlier in the week from the White House to negotiate on funding for border security, Pelosi sent a letter to the president implying he would not be welcome to address the American people.

In her letter sent on Wednesday, Pelosi cited security concerns as the reason for the delay. She lamented that Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security “have not been funded for 26 days now – with critical departments hamstrung by furloughs.”View image on Twitter

Senior law enforcement officials are responding to Pelosi’s letter by debunking her false reasoning. Secret Service is fully funded and began planning security for the joint address months ago.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) said there is nothing the president can do to change the speaker’s mind.

“Yep! The speaker is the one who invites the president to speak at a joint session, and she has said as long as government is shut down we’re not going to be doing business as usual,” Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said to CNN. “The state of the union is off.”

If things happen as Pelosi says now, it would mark the first time that an annual address will not be sent to Congress from the president since 1790.


Why Businesses Should Support The Trump Administration’s Pushback Against China

By
Gustavo
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When Chinese President Xi Jinping’s autocracy asks Western companies to jump, the response is usually, ‘How high?’

What should Western companies do when threatened by the People’s Republic of China (PRC)? Should businesses promote appeasement of the PRC, or pushback? More broadly, is there a conflict between economic interest and the national interest regarding the PRC?

These are just a few of the questions indirectly highlighted in New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson’s new book, “Merchants of Truth.” She reveals the Times’ sensitivity to upsetting the Chinese over a story Beijing deemed damaging.

The offending Times article detailed how leaders in the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and their family members amassed vast fortunes through their control over strategically important and highly lucrative sectors of the economy via a spoils system rife with bribery and other forms of corruption.

By Abramson’s account, facing pressure from Chinese officials outraged when asked for comment in advance of the story’s publication, the Times rightly published it. China pulled the story, blocked the Times’ China website, stopped issuing visas to Times reporters, and detained several staffers.

Times executives contemplated shutting the China site altogether, and later unsuccessfully pleaded with Chinese officials to reopen their site. Per a review of Abramson’s book:

[New York Times publisher Arthur] Sulzberger…traveled to China to urge government officials to reopen the site, but to no avail. And Abramson claims that Times vice chairman Michael Golden ‘wanted to close the Chinese site altogether.” When she objected, arguing that it would look like “we were bowing to the censors,’ she was ordered to cut in half the losses incurred by keeping the Chinese journalists employed while the sites were blocked…she claims she…decided to find the savings elsewhere.

Then Abramson claims that, ‘without her knowledge,’ the publisher drafted a letter with input from the Chinese embassy ‘all but apologizing’ for the original story. She brought the draft to a tense meeting with Sulzberger…When she showed him the letter, he ‘seemed startled that I had it and he kept saying, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’ He tried to slip the letter into his folder, but I snatched it back,’ she writes.

Of the letter, Abramson further claims Sulzberger “eventually agreed to reword it with input from her and then managing editor Dean Baquet. But for Abramson, the letter was ‘still objectionable,’ since it included language about being sorry for the ‘perception’ the story created…” According to Abramson, Sulzberger was eager to appease the Chinese government because its operation in China was at stake.

China’s efforts to stifle Western reportage are extensive, so such appeasement would not be surprising. Propagating the CCP message while suppressing anything or anyone that contradicts it and pulls the veil back on the ruling regime’s repression is a clear national effort.

This Is a Common Reaction from China

The Times disputes Abramson’s version of events, although only generally. But her account rings familiar. The Times’ alleged China browbeating is consistent with not only what its peers have experienced, but what Western companies in other industries have faced. China appears to have made a concerted effort to threaten corporations to get them to tow the CCP line, at least on matters that challenge the Chinese government narrative. Recall just a few examples from the last year.

In January 2018, Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel company, cowered at verbal attacks by Chinese government officials for having set a survey listing Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, and Macau as distinct from China, and for an employee’s “like” of a tweet endorsing Tibetan independence using a corporate Twitter account.

Later, in November 2018, Marriott disclosed it was the victim of a massive hack of its Starwood reservation database, compromising the sensitive information of up to 383 million guests, including passport numbers, email addresses, and credit card data. According to reports, U.S. investigators believe the hackers were affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of State Security, its sprawling intelligence apparatus. This is not to suggest there is necessarily linkage between these events. The breach allegedly began in 2014. Marriott acquired Starwood in 2016.

Like Marriott, automaker Audi, fashion retailer Zara, and more than two-dozen other corporations faced a backlash from the Chinese government for individually listing sovereign territories that China considers its own in website dropdown menus or public presentations.

Also in 2018, Mercedes-Benz posted an anodyne quote from the Dalai Lama on Instagram: “Look at the situations from all angles, and you will become more open.” The Dalai Lama is a Tibetan leader. So, facing strong criticism from Chinese state media, Mercedes apologized, promising: “no support, assistance, aid or help to anyone who intentionally subverts or attempts to subvert China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

China Is Not Just Censoring, It’s Controlling

To its credit, the Times acted in a more principled fashion, at least in running its story, than can be said for many of these other firms. Regardless, what is clear is that when Chinese President Xi Jinping’s autocracy asks Western companies to jump, the response is usually “How high?”

Increasingly, China’s demands on foreign businesses are going beyond conforming to CCP political narratives, to demanding the CCP be empowered within businesses, through mandating CCP cells be embedded within foreign businesses, and potentially granting them control over operational decisions. None of this is to mention other “costs of doing business” with the ChiComs, such as forced technology transfer and intellectual property theft to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars per year.

When the Trump administration highlighted in its National Security Strategy that China’s story over the past half-century disproved the theory that economic liberalization would lead to political liberalization, it was right. Ironically, it appears that firms from liberal nations are acting less liberally under threat from illiberal China.

Stated differently: The Chinese are changing us more than we changed them. Meanwhile, in return for the United States giving China entrée to the global trade and financial architecture largely built and defended by us, we have turned China into a hostile, expansionist, muscular world military and economic power—one that seeks to advance its interests and exert influence while acting with wide impunity, including on our own shores.

Don’t Just Act Scared, Act Smart

Firms understand that the risk to business is acute in angering Chinese authorities. At its most benign, China might fire off a tersely worded letter from a government official, or float a critical story in the media. But given that China has been willing to orchestrate catastrophic cyberattacks, and turn foreign citizens traveling in mainland China into effective hostages through so-called “exit bans”—with the potential for even more serious threats to life and limb—one can understand the fear.

Businesses want stability. It is natural that they would support a status quo that has seen the opening of massive Chinese markets to American enterprise, with all the attendant economic benefits. Fear and greed both dictate a desire not to upset the apple cart.

This view might explain both the unwillingness of non-media companies to stand against Chinese aggression, and the intense lobbying across a variety of industriesagainst the Trump administration’s China tariffs. It is likely not just the immediate economic impact of the limited tariffs that businesses disapprove of, but their belief that escalation could hurt their bottom lines in the medium-term.

But what of the long-term? And what of the national interest?

China Is a Grave Threat to America’s Interests

Through any of a number of core policy documents—see the National Security Strategyand National Defense Strategy), reports (see the U.S. Trade Representative’s 301 report on China and the Defense Departments Manufacturing and Industrial Base report) and public proclamations (see Vice President Mike Pence’s Hudson Institute address, Director of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro’s CSIS address on “Economic Security as National Security,” former Attorney General Jeff Sessions on the Department of Justice’s “China Economic Espionage Initiative,” National Security Advisor John Bolton’s Heritage address on the Trump administration’s “New Africa Policy,” and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s address on “Restoring the Role of the Nation-State in the Liberal International Order” and elsewhere)—the Trump administration has made it clear that America’s main competitor in the world is China, and that China increasingly poses a grave threat to America’s national interest requiring a comprehensive response.

This has been perhaps the most far-reaching and revolutionary policy shift under the Trump administration, although often overshadowed by the media’s narrower focus on “trade wars,” or the clash of personalities between Trump and Xi. That even the political establishment has started to come around to the Trump view that the U.S. must reorient its posture and policy towards China tells us something major has changed. But with few exceptions, the business establishment remains recalcitrant. Have American executives really gamed out the consequences of inaction and appeasement towards China?

Businesses are often more focused on the next quarter than the next decade, and most executives likely concern themselves with the rise and fall of nations only insofar as it immediately impacts their fortunes. They should read the tea leaves and recognize that the China status quo is already starting to prove untenable.

It provides a false sense of security. Continue on this path, and Western firms may one day wake up to a world in which China has disproportionate sway over the rules of international trade, controls global ports and waterways, dominates in telecommunications, and backs these strengths with a large military equipped with nuclear and asymmetric weapons, robust information warfare capabilities, and a pervasive intelligence apparatus. Have American executives really gamed out the consequences of inaction and appeasement towards China? What evidence do they have that dovishness will bear fruit, given its history on both tradeand beyond?

Businesses’ interests need not conflict with the national interest. Strong, dynamic, innovative businesses are in the national interest. The Trump administration’s policies have been geared towards juicing the U.S. economy while using tariffs as a form of leverage towards free, fair, and reciprocal trade, which would be vastly better for American businesses. But tariffs are merely one tactic in one dimension of what appears to be a multi-dimensional Trump administration effort to compete with the PRC.

The response to Chinese hostility should not be to cower, but to upend the Chinese status quo. In the face of a hostile, ascendant China that increasingly threatens America’s position in the world, businesses should get on board, or propose superior solutions. Ultimately, their interests—and the national interest—will demand it.


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