H/t Power Line
Posted tagged ‘Democrats’
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December 3, 2016‘Panic in Progressive Park’ — What If Trump Is Actually Good?
December 2, 2016‘Panic in Progressive Park’ — What If Trump Is Actually Good?, Roger L Simon, December 1, 2016
If you thought Trump Derangement Syndrome was a tad excessive, as they say, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. To channel an old Pacino flick, opening now for Oscar season, it’s “Panic in Progressive Park.”
Reason for the panic — the dawning realization, repressed and often unrecognized though it may be, that Donald Trump may even a be a good president, possibly a great one.
Then what?
If anything could cause panic among liberals, progressives, and the media (apologies for the redundancy), that’s it.
And Trump has certainly hit the ground running with more “vigah” — this time to channel an old Kennedy phrase — than we have seen in a long while. And not just because of the Carrier deal, though that clearly caught America’s attention, as it should.
It also caught the attention of the media, which rushed to denigrate it — and demonstrate their “profound knowledge” of deal-making — by reminding us that Donald’s agreement did not keep all the Carrier jobs in America, just most of them. And they actually had to bargain with the directors of Carrier — imagine that!
For comic relief, the now completely ignored (as he should be) Bernie Sanders rushed to remind us of the same thing, as if anything of that sort (or any sort) could have been done under a Sanders presidency.
Indeed, Trump seems to be firing on all engines to a degree I have never seen in an American president, before he has even been inaugurated. His transition, once said to be confused, is rocketing along with a palpable sense of excitement that Trump and his team are deliberately sharing with the public, by-passing the media when necessary.
The Democrats, who have been floundering to an extent equally never before seen, are participating in a juvenile and over-priced recount while reelecting the terminally botoxed Nancy Pelosi to the House minority leadership even though that same chamber hemorrhaged Democrat members like a hemophilia victim under her rule. Topping that off, they’re considering Keith Ellison to helm the DNC, a man who, according to a recent report, “met with a radical Muslim cleric who endorsed killing U.S. soldiers and with the president of a bank used to pay the families of Palestinian suicide bombers” on a trip to Saudi Arabia organized by an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Talk about a party on a suicide run.
Meanwhile, the thing that Democrats, and many Republicans too, don’t get about Trump is that Donald is an upper. He’s a real optimist in a world of cynics. That’s a yuuuge part of his attraction, as that should be, and the catalyst that helps him get things done. The reaction to Trump is something of a Rorschach test — those who have a positive (even excited) view of the future tend to go for him. Those that don’t, don’t.
His victory speech in Cincinnati Thursday night — and the reaction to it — was an illustration of that. Watching the postmortem on Tucker Carlson’s excellent new show (prediction: it will soon be outstripping The Kelly File, if it hasn’t already), the optimistic Tucker himself was wildly positive about Trump’s speech. His two guests — Caitlin Huey-Burns of RealClearPolitics and Shelby Holliday of the Wall Street Journal — were much more cautious in their somewhat fearful approaches. While obviously intelligent women, the conventional wisdom they imparted was pessimistic by nature and unwittingly a minor part of the swamp that Trump seeks to drain. Perhaps they sensed that.
Most of the media doesn’t just sense it. They know it. They are at war with Trump and at this moment they are losing, badly. A wise person would change their tactics. But the media is not filled with wise people. These days they’re filled with wounded, entitled people who seem already to have forgotten the rest of us have read WikiLeaks. We know who they are even if they don’t know themselves.
Look for “Panic in Progressive Park” to run for a long time. It will, however, be more amusing than the original Pacino version.
EXCLUSIVE: ‘Civil Rights’ Groups Fearmongering Over Trump “Hate Crimes” Backed Hillary
December 2, 2016EXCLUSIVE: ‘Civil Rights’ Groups Fearmongering Over Trump “Hate Crimes” Backed Hillary, Counter Jihad, Paul Sperry, December 2, 2016
“President-elect Trump must reconsider some of the selections he has made as top advisers to his administration,” asserted Brenda Abdelall of Muslim Advocates. “Otherwise, the selection of individuals like Steve Bannon (White House counselor), Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (National Security Adviser) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (Attorney General nominee) indicates that the bigoted and divisive rhetoric that we saw in his campaign will continue as a matter of policy and practice in the White House.”
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A coalition of self-described “civil rights groups” tarring GOP President-elect Donald Trump and his advisers as “white supremacists” unleashing “hate crimes” against Muslims and other minorities is made up of Democrat activists who endorsed or donated heavily to Hillary Clinton, federal records show.
The group — comprised of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Muslim Advocates, The Leadership Conference, National Council of La Raza and the American Federation of Teachers — says it formed to protect minorities from the “hate-filled” and “bigoted rhetoric” of Trump and his supporters. But it has a decidedly partisan political agenda that includes trying to derail key Trump appointments to his Cabinet.
Earlier this week, the group held a press conference in Washington calling on Trump to “disavow” supposedly “anti-Muslim” policy proposals and “reconsider” Cabinet appointees “who have sent a message that white supremacy and anti-Muslim conspiracy theories are in vogue this days.”
“President-elect Trump must reconsider some of the selections he has made as top advisers to his administration,” asserted Brenda Abdelall of Muslim Advocates. “Otherwise, the selection of individuals like Steve Bannon (White House counselor), Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (National Security Adviser) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (Attorney General nominee) indicates that the bigoted and divisive rhetoric that we saw in his campaign will continue as a matter of policy and practice in the White House.”
Added Abdelall: “He needs to disavow the dangerous proposals and ideas that single out and demonize Muslims and other communities.”
The George Soros-controlled group bankrolling Muslim Advocates, the Open Society Foundation, gave $9,463 to Clinton and $0 to Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.
White House visitors logs show San Francisco-based Muslim Advocates met with Obama officials at least 11 times, including several times in 2011 to lobby the administration to purge FBI and Homeland Security counterterrorism training materials it deemed “offensive” to Muslims. Muslim Advocates played a central role in the agencies removing in 2012 more than 870 pages of material from some 390 presentations — including PowerPoints and papers describing jihad as “holy war” and portraying the Muslim Brotherhood as a worldwide jihadist movement bent on, according to its own bylaws, “establishing an Islamic state.” Security experts say the purge weakened terrorism investigations and left the US vulnerable to the rash of deadly homegrown jihadists attacks seen in the country starting with 2013’s Boston Marathon bombings.
Top Muslim Advocates officials have spoken at Islamic conferences held by known Muslim Brotherhood front groups and defended a major U.S. Muslim Brotherhood charity convicted of financing terrorism.
Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen called Trump’s naming of Bannon as his top White House strategist “a very unfortunate sign.” He contended that Bannon “is the alter ego” of American white nationalist Richard Spencer.
“Mr. Trump has been singing the white supremacist song since he came down the escalator in his tower and announced his candidacy,” Cohen claimed, adding that “he needs to apologize to the Muslim community.”
Cohen, who says he was the target of discrimination “growing up as a Jewish kid,” has hired security guards to protect his offices and home in Montgomery, Ala. In the past, he has said that he so feared “white supremacists” that he “had to leave his home and stay in a hotel as a precautionary measure.”
A search of Federal Election Commission records shows that Southern Poverty Law Center directors have given more than $13,450 to Hillary Clinton’s campaigns.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is also backed by the ultra-liberal billionaire Soros, and has supported radical leftists, including unrepentant communist terrorist Bill Ayers, whom the group once called “a highly respected figure.”
The National Press Club event also featured Janet Marguia of the National Council of La Raza, an illegal immigrant advocacy group, who claimed Trump was “threatening” Hispanic children.
La Raza, which means “the race,” refuses to condemn an openly racist affiliate known as MECHa, which claims the Southwest was stolen and should be returned to Mexico and whose slogan is “For the race, everything; outside the race, nothing.”
In the 2016 election cycle, La Raza gave $6,600 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and $0 to Trump’s campaign.
American Federation of Teachers President Randy Weingarten also took the podium to denounce Trump and his appointments.
“The nomination of Jeff Sessions, the appointment of Steve Bannon and the appointment of Mike Flynn all sent a message that white supremacy and anti-Muslim conspiracy theories are in vogue these days,” she said.
American Federation of Teachers formally endorse Clinton and donated$38,885 to her campaign while contributing nothing to Trump.
“We endorsed Hillary today for the same reasons we endorsed (her) in the Democratic primary. She is a tested leaders who shares our values,” Weingarten said</> earlier this year. “Today, our members made it clear we stand with her.”
During the campaign, AFT made more than 1 million phone calls and knocked on more than 500,000 doors to get out the vote for Clinton.
Leadership Conference President Wade Henderson also laced into Trump and his nominations, claiming they were “racist.”
“We are concerned about the impact of Jeff Sessions at the Department of Justice, Gen. Mike Flynn or Steve Bannon just a heartbeat away from the presidency,” he said during the press conference.
Henderson charged that Bannon “has supported and embraced organizations that take direct views that are anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, anti-immigrant and racist.” He also alleged that Sessions is “someone whose record will suggest that he will have great difficulty in enforcing civil rights laws, including hate crimes laws on the books.”
In the 2016 election cycle, records show The Leadership Conference donated $8230 to Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign, while contributing $0 to Trump. All told, the conference gave $81,800 to Democrat candidates for federal office in 2016 vs. $0 for Republicans.
In addition, FEC individual donation records reveal that The Leadership Council’s top lobbyists — including executive vice president Nancy Zirkin and senior counsel Emily Chatterjee — have personally given thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Kellyanne Conway Would Be A Feminist Hero If She Were A Democrat
December 1, 2016Kellyanne Conway Would Be A Feminist Hero If She Were A Democrat, The Federalist, Julie Kelly, December 1, 2016
Now that President-Elect Trump is appointing women to key posts such as UN Ambassador, Secretary of Education, and Deputy National Security Advisor, their anger is rising rather than abating. If anything, this election has further revealed the hypocrisy of the left—particularly modern-day feminists—who despite all their talk of empowerment, are now exposed as a weak and whiny sisterhood of victims.
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If you’re a woman still anguishing over “what to tell our daughters” about the 2016 election, I suggest you point to Kellyanne Conway: the first woman to run a presidential campaign. This smart, tough, cool mom of four was the winning campaign manager for the most brutal presidential race in history—and she kept a steely smile on her face the whole time. She’s now poised to become either White House press secretary, or the most sought-after political consultant in the world.
After taking the helm of the listless Trump campaign in August, Conway helped shape a more disciplined candidate, with a message focused on a stronger economy and national defense. Conway is like the pretty brainiac who tamed the school jock, got him to shut up in class, and made him carry her books. Hell, she even got him to study once in a while. She’s the kind of example I want for my own daughters on how to handle an egotistical, sometimes boorish male boss: with firmness, class, and calm.
But Conway didn’t just take on Trump. She faced down an antagonistic, male-dominated media that had declared was acting as a de facto arm of the Clinton campaign. One of the few bright spots leading up to Election Day was watching political commentators lose their cool and credibility trying to rile Conway. It didn’t work (and still isn’t). This lawyer, pollster, and business owner should be the new hero of the post-feminism era: a super mom who rose to the top of her field and is now, unquestionably, the most influential woman in Washington.
Why Don’t Feminists Love Conway?
But modern-day feminists are still wringing out their “I’m With Her” crying towels and snubbing Conway’s historic victory because, well, she’s a Republican.
Without any sense of irony, they ignore the achievements of a self-made woman (Conway), while lamenting the loss of a candidate who earned fame and power largely because of her husband. If she were a Democrat, Conway would be the toast of women’s groups across the country, feted in the media, splashed across the pages of Vogue and Cosmo. She would be touted as a future candidate herself. Maybe even Lena Dunham would’ve thrown out a tweet or two after her Election Night shower-cry.
But I suspect there’s even more to this than partisan politics. After all, you can’t accuse a man of misogyny—which literally means “hatred of women”—if he puts a female in charge of the riskiest, most important endeavor of his life. Trump can’t be a sexist pig who hates women if he fires two men and replaces them with a woman, right? Acknowledging, even celebrating, Conway’s success would undermine that entire plotline.
Conway Undermined Trump’s Misogynist Image
The Trump-is-a-misogynist meme was the cornerstone of Clinton’s campaign message: a Google search of “Trump” plus “misogynist” yields 579,000 results—not counting the approximately five billion tweets making the same accusation.
The day of the election, The Telegraph UK published a lengthy list of allegedly sexist Trumpisms dating back to the 1980s. Some were not bad (in 1994, he said he gets mad if dinner isn’t on the table when he gets home, so what did that make my grandfather). Many were cringe-worthy—particularly remarks he made as a guest on the Howard Stern show, perhaps one of Trump’s worst judgment calls of all time. Some were downright slap-worthy, and nothing you would want to hear from your husband or son or boss. But when people put a microphone in front of your face for three decades, you’re bound to have to live down a trove of dumb comments.
But raw, even offensive remarks do not a misogynist make. Yet the pearl clutching by the female left went into overdrive after Trump was elected, with women weeping and fearing for their daughters—as if Trump is a one-man Boko Haram ready to swipe them out of their classrooms and turn them into drink cart girls.
Now that President-Elect Trump is appointing women to key posts such as UN Ambassador, Secretary of Education, and Deputy National Security Advisor, their anger is rising rather than abating. If anything, this election has further revealed the hypocrisy of the left—particularly modern-day feminists—who despite all their talk of empowerment, are now exposed as a weak and whiny sisterhood of victims.
So what do we tell our daughters? Be less like Lena and more like Kellyanne.
RIGHT ANGLE: Will He Ever Stop Talking?
November 29, 2016RIGHT ANGLE: Will He Ever Stop Talking? Bill Whittle dot.com via YouTube, November 28, 2016
(Long may he blather. — DM)
Recount Freakout
November 26, 2016If you’re a liberal, anything is better than admitting that you lost. So now, just weeks after cautioning Donald Trump’s supporters that they had better accept the results of the election (unlike the Democrats in 2000 and 2004), Democrats led by Jill Stein are demanding recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Left-wingers have donated millions of dollars, and the Hillary Clinton campaign has announced that it will participate in Stein’s recount efforts.
The presidential election wasn’t particularly close: Trump won, 306-232. Still, if you convert Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania to Hillary Clinton victories, she would edge Trump out, 278 to 260. That is obviously the basis on which those states were chosen. However, there is zero chance that a recount will change the result in any of those states, let alone all of them. Trump won Wisconsin by more than 20,000 votes, Michigan by 10,704 votes, and Pennsylvania by more than 70,000 votes. Lots of luck with those recounts.
Jill Stein claims that she isn’t trying to favor one presidential candidate over the other, but only wants to assure a fair process. That is nonsense. The states she and other liberal activists have chosen to challenge are not those where the race was closest. How about New Hampshire, which Hillary Clinton won by around 2,700 votes? Or Nevada, which she won by a little over 26,000? Even Minnesota was a whole lot closer than Pennsylvania; with its notoriously lax ballot security, Minnesota could be fertile territory for questioning election results.
Liberals know they aren’t going to overturn the result of the election through recounts, they just want to undermine Trump’s victory by making vague allegations of irregularities, “hacking,” and so on, which will circulate in the fever swamp for the next four years. It is, in other words, just another attempt by liberals to undermine our democracy.
The Progressive Disintegration
November 23, 2016The Progressive Disintegration, Front Page Magazine, Bruce Thornton, November 23, 2016
A month ago, progressives were having a conniption fit over Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the election. So of course, now that Trump has won, they are rioting, vandalizing, staging “cry-ins,” ditching class, group-hugging, tweeting threats, calling names, seeking counseling, and doing everything in their power to make sure that their party declines even further. If this behavior continues, and if––a big “if” –– Trump governs the way he promised, we may be witnessing the start of the progressive disintegration.
Start with the melting snowflake millennials, all those “cocksure women and hensure men,” as D.H. Lawrence once described feminists of both sexes. These layabouts have become used to throwing tantrums whenever they don’t like something or they feel “unsafe.” Most of them are spoiled brats, the pampered detritus of the middle class. But don’t forget the Alinskyite activists who manipulate these juveniles and bus them in on George Soros’ dime. These two-bit Leninists are adept at using “useful idiots” in order to further their aim of destroying America’s political and social order. They’re skilled at manipulating empty slogans like “income inequality,” “fair share,” “social justice,” “diversity,” “inclusion,” and all the other bumper-sticker bromides in order to consolidate and increase their power and influence.
If the delicate millennial Eloi were really interested in reforming their team instead of indulging phony moral exhibitionism, they would start with the Democrat party. No true leftist would have sat still for the nomination of a candidate so obviously part of the fat-cat ruling class as Hillary Clinton. (And no, he wouldn’t be happy with Bernie Sanders either, a bumbling blowhard who thinks imitating Sweden’s “social democracy” ––which means an overregulated capitalism leavened with over-generous social welfare benefits––is somehow an epochal revolutionary change.) It was electoral malfeasance to choose a geriatric insider and establishment plutocrat with no charisma and a long record of abusing her privilege and power. So, kiddies, go protest against the DNC and Barack Obama. They’re the reason the Republican party is the strongest it’s been since 1928.
Next, look at yourselves. As Piers Morgan––no conservative he––said recently, “The tragic truth is that America’s millennials are a bunch of phone-addicted, selfie-obsessed, hashtagging, snapchatting, kale-munching, twerking, lazy, whining, ill-informed, politically correct, cossetted narcissists who find absolutely everything mortally offensive and believe there are 165 ways to sexually identify.” It follows that your politics are merely symbolic, expressions of your inflated self-regard, privileged life-style, and arrogant pretensions to sophistication and intelligence. Unsurprisingly, as Morgan points out, according to the National Institutes of Health, 40% of you think you should be promoted every two years despite performance, 77% of you can’t name a senator from your home state, and 80% of you think you’ll be richer than your parents, even as you pile up student debt earning junk “studies” degrees utterly useless for employment in the real world.
In contrast to symbolic politics, real politics is grubby hard work: knocking on doors, registering voters, and not just preaching to the choir, but converting new voters. Follow Obama’s advice to Republicans three years ago: “You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election” (HT Cal Thomas). By the way, you won’t win many elections by demonizing nearly half of voters as ignorant, racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and cisgendered “irredeemable deplorables.”
More important, you need to vote. Only half of your 24-million-strong cohort voted in this election. You also need to understand that not everybody between the ages of 18-29 thinks exactly like you. Thirty-seven percent of millennials voted for Donald Trump. Instead of crying and vandalizing and screaming question-begging epithets, you should figure out how to talk to your fellow millennials and make persuasive, fact-based arguments based on coherent principles. But of course, if you could do that, you wouldn’t be progressives.
Then there are the Dems. They long ago embraced a balkanizing identity politics based mainly on demonizing those white voters who pulled the lever for Trump. They pander incessantly to race hucksters and rich women and sleek “Hispanics,” most of whom never cut grapes or even speak Spanish. They embrace counter-factual nonsense like “white privilege,” when they of all people should know that the color of privilege in America is the currency shade of green. They and their wholly owned subsidiaries, the mainstream media and the educational industry, enforce a preposterous political correctness that is intellectually lazy and morally bankrupt. They trade in group-identities often based on stereotypes and generalizations that old-school Jim Crow segregationists relied on. The blatant hypocrisy of a political correctness that never protects Christians, poor whites, or conservatives finally angered enough voters to set aside their distaste for Trump and put him in office.
Yet despite that rebuke, after the election the Democrat elite indulged the same old nonsense. The tried to play the “sexist” card to explain Hillary’s defeat, posited a preposterous “whitelash” of racists, tarred the careerist James Comey as a Republican mole, whined about the Electoral College while trying to suborn Electors, conjured up sinister Klansmen and alt-right storm-troopers, insulted 49 million Americans as haters, and prophesized an imminent fascist coup engineered by Trump’s goose-stepping Goebbels, Steve Bannon. Rather than come up with new ideas, they’re doubling-down on the stale paradigm that demography guarantees them a permanent coalition comprising various identity-groups united by the promise of more set-asides and wealth redistribution, and bicoastal plutocrats who compensate for their privilege by catering to the minority masses they make sure never enter their gated compounds except to make the beds and mow the lawn. They don’t consider that Trump’s victory could make that plan obsolete if he follows through on his promise to tighten up on immigration.
Finally, instead of rethinking their exploded economic myths and abandoning a divisive identity politics, many Dems want to keep steaming full speed ahead toward the next electoral iceberg. Look at the two candidates touted as replacements for the tarnished DNC interim chair Donna Brazile. Howard “Screaming” Dean, erstwhile presidential candidate and governor of a state with fewer people than Fresno County, is a tax-and-spend, “fair share,” regulation-happy, identity politics tribune and radical egalitarian redistributionist of the kind whose policies have given us sluggish growth, job-killing regulations, and astronomical debt. The other choice is Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, a zealous Muslim convert by way of the ultra-racist Nation of Islam. He is tainted with anti-Semitism, apologetics for Iran and terrorists like Hamas, virulent hatred of Israel, wacky 9-11 conspiracy theories, and the usual progressive blame-America-first foreign policy and magical-thinking economics. No surprise that he has been endorsed by the Jacobin Cherokee Elizabeth Warren, and ex-Senator Harry Reid, Obama’s legislative Luca Brasi.
The few sane Democrats counseling a change of course are unlikely to halt the self-destruction of so many failed progressive gods. Only Trump can prevent that “consummation devoutly to be wished” by failing to keep his campaign promises.
The New War on Conservative Media
November 22, 2016The New War on Conservative Media, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, November 22, 2016
Remember when Hillary Clinton won a landslide victory? The fake news media which predicted it in order to depress pro-Trump voter turnout certainly does. And so they’re out to fight “fake news.”
By fake news, they don’t mean their own raging torrent of misinformation and lies.
The media has gone to war against Facebook. While various supporters have blamed Hillary’s loss on everything from the FBI to internalized misogyny, the media has decided that Facebook is to blame.
Why Facebook?
Cable news is dying. Newspapers struggle online and offline. The mainstream media’s profitability lives and dies by social media. But the essence of social media is that it allows communities to shape what they see. That’s a terrifying idea if you’re a media conglomerate that depends on its megaphone.
But it’s also scary if you’re a leftist running for office in a country that doesn’t agree with your views.
Obama blamed “messaging” for the election results. But messaging requires being able to reach people. And that means clearing competitive voices out of the social media space by banning conservatives.
The war on conservative media is being conducted under the guise of banishing “fake news” from Facebook. But the fake news devil is in the details. Fake news can mean satire sites like the Onion or the Daily Currant. It can mean foreign clickbait sites that invent fake news. But it can also mean sites from outside the mainstream media whose stories are contested by the left for partisan reason.
The war on fake news is a smoke screen for a campaign against conservative media. And it’s easy to see that it’s conservative sites that are the real target of the Facebook book burners.
Buzzfeed, which depends heavily on Facebook traffic , has fed the “fake news” hysteria. Its list of “fake news” sites includes “hyperpartisan” sites. Its story contrasting “legitimate” mainstream media outlets, a category that somehow includes the Huffington Post, with a variety of right-leaning sites is a major piece of supporting evidence used in the fake news crusade.
Considering BuzzFeed’s history of fake news stories that fit its political narrative, it has no credibility fact checking anyone else. Examinations of BuzzFeed’s own methodology for its fake news article tore it into tiny little shreds. Its claim that fake news outperformed real news turned out to be… fake.
But what’s more important is how quickly the goal posts have been moved from fake news to conservative news, from fraudulent sites to fighting “clickbait” or “hyperpartisan” sites. And it’s clear that these are largely a euphemism for sites on the right that are outperforming the media.
USA Today and the Los Angeles Times promoted a list of “fake news” sites that included a variety of mainstream conservative sites including RedState, IJR and the Blaze. BuzzFeed targeted RightWingNews.
Fake news, like fact checking, has very obviously become a euphemism for attacking the politics that the left disagrees with by dressing up partisan agendas in fake concerns about journalism and civic virtue.
This goes far beyond namecalling. The goal is to ban conservative sites from social media. Or at least to penalize them in ways that will make it difficult for them to compete with the mainstream media.
There are obvious ideological and financial motives behind this war on “fake news”. The financial motives are grossly blatant. The loudest media voices in this war, BuzzFeed, HuffPo and Vox, depend heavily on social media traffic for their own hyperpartisan factually challenged clickbait.
If anyone is in the business of purveying fake news, it’s this bunch of hoax clickbait sites.
Vox claimed that everyone in Boulder, Colorado had 102 toilets and that there was a giant bridge connecting Gaza and the West Bank. But somehow that doesn’t qualify as fake news.
Then in a further demonstration of how the war on “fake news” was itself fake news, media outlets ran stories headlined, “Fake news threatens democracy, Obama says” from USA Today, “Obama, With Angela Merkel in Berlin, Assails Spread of Fake News “ from the New York Times and “Barack Obama: Fake News On Facebook Hurts Democracy” from the Huffington Post.
But Obama hadn’t said anything about the media’s fake news crusade. He had specifically complained aboutthe way that the United States and Russia were being equated and objected to “misinformation” on television and Facebook that made both countries seem just as bad. The German context of his remarks strongly suggests that he was talking about the old NSA controversy. But the “fake news” crusaders briefly quoted him before recapping the same old attacks on “fake news”.
The irony was that their “fake news” war was being waged with very fake news.
This isn’t about the integrity of information. No one can look at the fake polls promising a Hillary win and believe that the media is concerned about “fake news”. Instead it’s trying to clear out competitors by bullying Facebook into banning or marginalizing news stories from the right that compete with theirs.
The outrage over Hillary’s loss is being monetized by left-wing clickbait outlets into a pressure campaign against Facebook. Google News has already partly folded by rolling in the media’s fake fact checks. Twitter went full social justice a while back. But Facebook is the biggest prize. Nearly half of Americans get their news through Facebook. Shape its feed and the narrative gets more power than ever.
Social media allows people to form their own communities and become their own gatekeepers. That’s a potent power. The crusade against fake news is about putting the media gatekeepers back in charge.
There’s no question that there is a lot of garbage circulating on social media, but just as much of it comes from Vox, Slate, the Huffington Post or even more mainstream media outlets, as from “fake news” sites. The mainstream media is hyperpartisan, its headlines are clickbait and while it’s eager to fact check political opponents, it doesn’t make much effort to fact check its own narratives.
The whole “fake news” crusade managed to show how true that was all over again.
The internet can be empowering when it liberates users to find their own answers. The media’s fake news outrage insists that it should be the only ones empowered to supply those answers. But, in the old hacker credo, information wants to be free. The media has been struggling and failing to dam the flow.
Banning conservative news from Facebook won’t create a safe space for media lies. Instead it will lead to an exodus of conservatives from Facebook. Just as conservatives left behind the media for the web.
The evolution of clickbait and hyperpartisan journalism was a media response to the collapse of its central authority. But the media is panicking because its tactics can be copied and imitated by anyone. If it’s become hard to tell fake news from real news, it’s because the media dived headfirst into the fake news business. It chooses narratives, shapes stories around them and lies constantly.
That’s not just a conservative critique. Take it from Obama’s own people.
“We created an echo chamber,” Ben Rhodes, the Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications, boasted. “They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”
“The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns,” he said. “They literally know nothing.”
Rhodes was talking about the Iran Deal and how easy it was to convince the media to repeat back White House lies. The media lied to Americans. Its fake news outlets continue to cheerfully talk up the disaster while demanding that dissenters be purged from Facebook. That’s where fake news really comes from.
If the media really wants to fight fake news, it can start in its own studios and offices. Its crusade to clear space for its fake news by banning conservative sites cannot and will not succeed.
Obama Hands Out Medals of Freedom to Major Democratic Donors, Supporters
November 21, 2016Obama Hands Out Medals of Freedom to Major Democratic Donors, Supporters, Washington Free Beacon, Morgan Chalfant, November 21, 2016
(Well gosh. Supporting Democrats, financially and otherwise, obviously constitutes “especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States.” Any fool knows that. — DM)
US president Barack Obama waves as he departs from Tegel airport in Berlin Friday Nov. 18, 2016. (Rainer Jensen/dpa via AP)
Barack Obama will deliver his final round of Presidential Medals of Freedom this week to a group largely comprised of Democratic donors and individuals who have supported him politically.
The White House on Wednesday unveiled the 2016 list of honorees, who will on Tuesday receive the nation’s highest civilian award for making “especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States.”
Eleven of the honorees have made contributions to Democratic committees or campaigns, including some that directly supported Obama, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission records by the Washington Free Beacon. Twelve of the individuals have publicly backed Obama or his policies.
A handful of the individuals are Hollywood celebrities who have used their stature to advocate for Obama or Hillary Clinton.
Obama underlined the significance of the award on Wednesday, characterizing the winners as individuals who have “helped push America forward.”
“The Presidential Medal of Freedom is not just our nation’s highest civilian honor–it’s a tribute to the idea that all of us, no matter where we come from, have the opportunity to change this country for the better,” Obama said in a statement. “From scientists, philanthropists, and public servants to activists, athletes, and artists, these 21 individuals have helped push America forward, inspiring millions of people around the world along the way.”
The list includes talk show host and comedian Ellen DeGeneres, who has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic committees and campaigns over the years. For example, DeGeneres contributed $35,800 to the Obama Victory Fund in 2012 and $100,000 to the Hillary Victory Fund this year.
DeGeneres, who endorsed Clinton in an interview with the former secretary of state on her show, also contributed the maximum $2,700 to Clinton’s primary campaign against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.). DeGeneres vocally praised Obama for coming out in favor of same-sex marriage ahead of his reelection in 2012.
Actor Robert De Niro, a supporter of both Obama and Clinton, will also receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday. De Niro has given thousands of dollars to the Democratic National Committee and contributed $10,000 to the Obama Victory Fund in 2012 and $2,500 to Obama’s general election campaign the same year.
Another celebrity who will receive the honor is Tom Hanks, who endorsed Obama during his first campaign for president in 2008. Hanks donated $2,300 and $2,500 to Obama’s 2008 and 2012 election campaigns, respectively, and has given thousands to the DNC and other Democrats, such as newly-elected Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.).
Hanks also backed Clinton in her most recent presidential bid, contributing the maximum $2,700 to her primary campaign.
Famed retired basketball player Michael Jordan will also receive a medal. While Jordan made headlines two years ago for calling Obama a “hack” golfer during an interview, the former pro basketball star has been a supporter of the president. Jordan hosted a $3 million fundraiser for Obama during his reelection bid that collected $20,000 per guest.
Obama will hand a Presidential Medal of Freedom to Lorne Michaels, famous for creating and producing Saturday Night Live. Michaels has contributed more than $81,000 to political committees and campaigns, the wide majority of which support Democratic causes. Michaels sent $4,600 to the Obama Victory Fund in 2008.
The producer also donated to Sen. John McCain’s (R., Ariz.) presidential primary campaign in 2008 and Ralph Nader’s 2000 presidential campaign.
At least one fierce critic of Trump will be honored on Tuesday: singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen, who described Trump as a “moron” and a “toxic narcissist” during the 2016 campaign season. Springsteen endorsed Obama in 2008 and rallied for Hillary Clinton alongside Jon Bon Jovi on the evening before Election Day.
Springsteen has donated thousands to committees supporting Democrats, including outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and Russ Feingold, who unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) this election cycle.
The ceremony will also honor actor, director, producer, and outspoken environmentalist Robert Redford, who endorsed Obama in 2012 and met informally with the president at the White House in May. In August, Redford fundraised for Feingold, of whom the film star has been a longtime supporter.
The entertainers’ careers, as well as those of the non-Hollywood recipients, were outlined by the White House in its announcement of the awards.
The list also includes prominent individuals in the fields of business and the arts. Business magnate and philanthropist Bill Gates along with his wife, Melinda, will receive medals, after having together donated thousands to Obama and tens of thousands to Democratic groups such as the DNC and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The couple has given to both Democratic and Republican committees over the years, though the contributions favor Democrats.
Bill donated $17,900 to the Obama Victory Fund in 2012, while his wife also gifted $35,800 to the joint fundraising committee. Melinda Gates contributed $5,000 to Obama’s 2012 primary and general election campaigns.
The two also each gave $50,000 to Obama’s inauguration in 2009. Obama and Bill Gates partneredon a multi-billion-dollar clean energy initiative, a project that was announced in timing with the Paris climate talks one year ago.
In the announcement Wednesday, the White House singled out the Gates family for their charity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has provided over $36 billion in grants to improve the lives of people in the United States and developing countries. The charity is also a major supporter of the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, giving more than $25 million to the cause.
Obama will also recognize architect Frank Gehry, the designer behind the controversial Dwight D. Eisenhower memorial who has given well over $250,000 to Democratic committees and campaigns since 1999. Gehry is a financial supporter of campaigns supporting Obama, to whom he donated $4,600 in 2008, and Hillary Clinton. Gehry sent nearly $80,000 to the Obama Victory Fund in 2012 and more than $60,000 to the Hillary Victory Fund this year.
Artist and designer Maya Lin, who has donated tens of thousands to Democratic committees and campaigns, including those of Obama and Clinton, was also named by the White House as a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient.
Newt Minow, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission who hired Obama as a summer associate at his law firm in the 1980s, will also be honored. Minow is a supporter of Obama and urged him to run for president, according to a 2008 Vanity Fair interview.
Minow has contributed nearly $18,000 to both Democratic and Republican political campaigns and committees, though the contributions have leaned Democrat. He donated $7,500 to committees supporting Obama in the early 2000s.
Also among the honorees are NBA all-time leading scorer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, an Obama supporter; physicist Richard Garwin, who was among several scientists who praised the Iran nuclear deal in a letter to Obama last August; Miami Dade College president Eduardo Padron, a proponent of Obama’s free college plan; and actress and Hillary Clinton supporter Cicely Tyson.
Not all those to be honored Tuesday are Obama supporters or major donors to Democratic causes. Mathematician and computer scientist Margaret Hamilton, singer Diana Ross, U.S. Navy Real Admiral Grace Hopper, and Blackfeet tribal leader Elouise Cobell will all be honored, the latter two posthumously, without having made substantial political contributions or stumped for Democrats.
The only clear Republican of the group is baseball broadcaster Vin Scully, who spurred a flurry of media coverage when he criticized socialism during a live broadcast in June. Though his political contributions pale in comparison to some others on the list, Scully donated $2,300 to McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008 and $1,500 to retired House Speaker John Boehner’s congressional campaign over 2010 and 2o11. Scully also wrote a check for $2,500 to the Romney Victory Fund in 2012.
The White House did not respond to a request for information about what the president took into account when selecting the latest round of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients.
Obama will award the last round of medals two days before Thanksgiving and two months before he will leave the White House as the Trump administration takes over.
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