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Archive for the 'Axis of Drivel — Adventures in Narrative Media' Category

The inmates are in charge of the asylum.

Clown Cars In Ohio

19th March 2024

Power Line.

This year’s Senate race in Ohio could be pivotal to who controls that body in 2025. Incumbent Sherrod Brown, while not unpopular, should be beatable by a strong candidate in increasingly-red Ohio. But here, as so often happens, the question is whether the GOP can come up with a good nominee.

The principal candidates in the Republican primary, which is tomorrow, are Trump-endorsed Bernie Moreno and state senator Matt Dolan. As of today, Moreno holds a nine-point lead in at least one poll.

Four days ago the Associated Press, presumably pursuant to its anti-MAGA mania, released a story accusing Moreno of having created a gay account on the Adult Friend Finder web site in 2008.

Funny how the Narrative media have no problem with fag-shaming people if Republican.

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Our Democracy

18th March 2024

ZMan does an eye-roll.

Joseph de Maistre famously observed, “False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.” We get a sense of that in the weekend media drama over Trump using the word “bloodbath” in a speech. He used the word in reference to what would happen to the auto industry under a second Biden term, but the media left out the part about the auto industry.

The result was a media frenzy based on the false claim that Trump was promising some sort of homicidal revenge if he did not win the election. One media pinhead after another went to their favorite platform to repeat the claim. In some cases, they did so on video platforms as the video of Trump giving the speech in which he used the word was playing in the corner of the screen with the sound muted. So much for the second half of that de Maistre quote about honest people perpetuating the crime.

It probably would have gone like so many other fake media narratives in that normal people without access to the megaphone would have spent days clarifying what was said but by that point the media would be onto the next lie. This time the world’s richest man noticed and posted about it on Twitter. Joe Scarborough deleted his post about it, but others kept up the lie. Nancy Pelosi made the rounds stammering through the claim that Trump is promising a homicidal rampage.

UPDATE: Fallout Continues Over Trump “Bloodbath” Media Hoax

 

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Trump Is Funny? Who Knew?

18th March 2024

Power Line.

For years, liberals have obtusely refused to acknowledge that part of Donald Trump’s appeal is his sense of humor. Often they have branded his comments as outrageous, when in truth they were intended as jokes, and understood as such by his audience. Now, for whatever reason, liberals are belatedly conceding the point. As in this Politico piece, which is, in its own unintentional way, funny.

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From Anxiety to Cancer, the Evidence Against Ultra-Processed Food Piles Up

18th March 2024

NPR.

Ultra-processed foods are abundant in our food supply. Among the most common are highly refined breads, fast food, sugary drinks, cereals, cookies, and other packaged snacks. They are often high in salt, sugar, fat and calories and low in fiber and micro-nutrients such as vitamins.

And that’s as much of a definition of ‘ultra-processed foods’ as you’re going to get in this article. No indication of what distinguishes ‘ultra-processed’ foods from mere ‘processed’ foods. I guess it’s like ‘ultra-right-wing’; you know it when progressive see it.

At a time when Americans consume more than half of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods, there is increasing evidence that eating too many of these foods can make us sick.

‘Evidence’? No, there isn’t. Here’s what they call ‘evidence’:

A study published in the British Medical Journal finds people who consume high amounts of these foods have an increased risk of anxiety, depression, obesity, metabolic syndrome, certain cancers including colorectal cancer and premature death.

The data come from more than 9 million people who participated in dozens of studies, which researchers analyzed as part of umbrella review.

Such ‘studies’ are merely statistical correlations … and, as any legitimate scientist will remind you, correlation doesn’t imply causation. Suspicious? Certainly–depending on the methodology of the study–which, as we are increasingly seeing, is often shoddy. But evidence? Not in the rigorous legal sense. None of which slows down the hammer of the people who want to ban stuff ‘for your own good’.

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The Liberal Arts Are a Right-Wing Plot!

17th March 2024

Power Line.

And pretty much always have been. (Western civilization? Sounds fascist to me….)

In its typically clueless way, The New Yorker is hot on the topic of whether the liberal arts—and especially classical education—have gone conservative. (The article is titled, “Have the Liberal Arts Gone Conservative?”) Better break out the smelling salts.

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A New York Times Editorial And Its Trump Derangement Syndrome

17th March 2024

Newsbusters.

It never ceases to amaze watching the so-called “mainstream media” (aka the far left press) foam at the reality someone who is an outsider to the conventional politics of the day – aka in this case Donald Trump – is ascending to the presidency. Again.

This time around – again! – there is the redoubtable editorial board of the far left New York Times foaming and spewing over the fact that former President Trump has clinched the 2024 GOP nomination. It is Trump Derangement Syndrome at its finest.

Trump’s chief qualification for the Presidency is that all of the right people hate him.

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Reuters Ignores Biden, Fact Checks Babylon Bee

17th March 2024

Newsbusters.

The Babylon Bee lives rent-free in the minds of too many journalists.

How else do you describe constant fact checks on a site that churns out satirical news stories a la The Onion?

USA Today once fact-checked a Bee piece saying President Joe Biden sold Alaska to Russia. PolitiFact ran to the scene after a Bee article claimed, “ISIS Lays Down Arms After Katy Perry’s Impassioned Plea To ‘Like, Just Co-Exist’”

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SBF Considered ‘Coming Out as a Republican’ Amid FTX Collapse

17th March 2024

Bloomberg.

Because being a Republican is just so fashionable these days.

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Don’t Bother Avoiding Microplastics

16th March 2024

The Spectator.

They’re everywhere, it seems: in the oceans, the fish, the soil, our drinking water, our vegetables, our grains and cereals, our meat — even in us. Microplastics and smaller nanoplastics are tiny particles of plastic flubbage measuring less than a tenth of an inch that result from the degradation of plastic refuse, and according to recent news coverage the world is simply crawling with the stuff.

But before you start feverishly ridding yourself of ice cube trays and rubber spatulas, some nuance: nobody actually knows if they make you sick. A major 2016 study about microplastics poisoning fish — which made some people stop eating seafood — turned out to be fraudulent. Belgian scientists announced in 2017 that shellfish lovers could be consuming up to 11,000 plastic particles per year — but it turns out most people take in far more than that just by inhaling or swallowing tiny fibers in the air. Lab experiments have shown plastic particles can damage and even kill an individual cell, but less sensationalist reports admit the difficulty of determining whether they harm people any more than the billions of other particles in our food and air: dust, pollen and so on.

“If it bleeds, it leads” has been replaced by “Get more clicks from sicks”.

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The Reality of Homeschooling

13th March 2024

The Spectator.

Are children more likely to be abused in a homeschool environment than in a public school?

That key question has emerged in response to the recent surge of parents who have chosen to homeschool their children. Late last year, I wrote in this newsletter about an anti-homeschooling series by the Washington Post. The Post series argued that parents regularly use homeschooling as a shield for abuse, most aggressively in an article headlined “What home schooling hides: a boy tortured and starved by his stepmom.”

“Most schools have teachers, principals, guidance counselors — professionals trained to recognize the unexplained bruises or erratic behaviors that may point to an abusive parent. Home education was an easy way to avoid the scrutiny of such people,” the article says. “The research… suggests that when abuse does occur in homeschool families, it can escalate into especially severe forms — and that some parents exploit lax home education laws to avoid contact with social service agencies.”

There are several serious problems with the “research” presented by the Post. One study only collected data from six school districts across a period of a few years to claim half of students who are homeschooled were removed from school after an allegation of abuse at home. Not only is this not a representative sample of homeschooled kids, but it also lumps in substantiated with unsubstantiated allegations of abuse. The Post cites another survey of children who ended up in the hospital with signs of torture. About half of them had been homeschooled. The sample size? Seventeen children.

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Food Aid Convoy for Northern Gaza Looted After Delay at Israeli Checkpoint

7th March 2024

The Guardian.

A new drive by the United Nation’s World Food Programme to deliver aid to an estimated half million people at risk of famine in northern Gaza has failed amid further scenes of chaos and violence.

A 14-truck convoy destined for northern Gaza was looted on Tuesday after being held at an Israeli army checkpoint for several hours, aid workers said. As the convoy turned back after the delay, it was attacked and 200 tonnes of food looted by “a large crowd of desperate people”.

Insecurity, logistical bottlenecks, ongoing fighting and restrictions on movement imposed by Israel have combined to limit aid deliveries to a fraction of what is needed, aid officials said.

The Israelis, quite naturally, have to make sure that they aren’t shipping in weapons, since U.N. agencies are notorious for aiding Hamas in its terrorist activities. And it’s quite clear that the Palestinians were the ones doing the looting, although the lefty-wing Guardian does its best to spin it as if they were victims.

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Thought for the Day

3rd March 2024

cartoon image

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The Far Right Has Replaced the Old Left as Russia’s Propaganda Tool

28th February 2024

The Hill.

Oceania has ALWAYS been at war with EurAsia! How could you not know that?

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Tapper Whines: GOP ‘Seizing’ on GA College Student Killed By Illegal Immigrant

27th February 2024

Newsbusters.

After the liberal media initially refused to report that the murderer of University of Georgia student Laken Hope Riley was an illegal immigrant who was arrested multiple times, we have now reached the phase of the coverage where Republicans noticing the problem was the concerning issue of the story. That seemed to be the reaction CNN’s Jake Tapper had during Monday’s The Lead when he whined that “Republicans [were], obviously, seizing on this horrific tragedy.”

But before getting to bellyaching about Republicans calling attention to the crisis at the U.S./Mexico border that was literally getting people killed, Tapper openly admitted that it played a role in the murder. “And his status as an undocumented Venezuelan migrant is now renewing the debate over immigration policies,” he announced.

Apparently it’s not allowed to point out the consequences of stupid government policy … if it’s Democrat policy.

UPDATE: An Illegal Immigrant Allegedly Murdered a Georgia Student. You Wouldn’t Know It From the Media Coverage.

 

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“Media Class Will Ignore” New Poll That Shows Black Voter Support For Trump Rising

26th February 2024

Read it.

For years, radical leftists in legacy media and progressive think tanks have portrayed former President Trump as a racist unworthy of votes from black Americans.

However, as confidence in corporate media plummets to record lows, opinion polls indicate an increasing number of black folks are diverging from the Biden camp and considering backing the former president ahead of the elections this November.

The latest poll by the Howard University Initiative on Public Opinion shows Biden’s support among black voters is tumbling, down to just 49%. At the same time, Trump’s support among black voters has surged to 26%, about three times the level compared with 2020 levels.

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What Is A Christian Nationalist?

26th February 2024

Read it: John Leonard at American Thinker.

Compare: David French at the New York Times.

The point that needs to be made is that progressive consider both ‘Christian’ and ‘Nationalist’ to be Bad Things, so combining them in a smear-phrase (like ‘war profiteering’ or ‘black market’) is a natural way to create a rhetorical stick to beat people who are on the ‘wrong side of history’. The chief function of the Narrative media is to distort the language to serve their political agenda, and then hammer is home so obsessively that people who aren’t compulsive followers of politics and are trying just to get on with their lives will accept such distortions as the truth. In such an endeavor, intellectual Quislings like David French are key players.

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Media TDS Kicks Into High Gear; Costas Says Trump Supporters In ‘Toxic Cult’

25th February 2024

Read it.

The media tentacles of the Trump resistance have been fully activated – the most recent example being former NBC sportscaster Bob Costas, who appeared on CNN’s “Smerconish” to slam the former president.

Trump “is by far the most disgraceful figure in modern presidential history” who “has a bubbling cauldron of loathsome traits.”

“You have to be in the throes of some sort of toxic delusion in a toxic cult to believe that Donald Trump has ever been in any sense, emotionally, psychologically, intellectually or ethically fit to be president of the United States. But his supporters are locked in on that,” Costas continued.

I must confess that I have no idea who Bob Costas is, or why I ought to give a sportscaster’s opinion on politics any weight. You want to talk to me about Magic Johnson, I’m there; you want to talk to me about Trump, I pass.

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Disney Exec Blames Woes on Racist, Sexist Fans

24th February 2024

Read it.

That HAS to be it. There is NO OTHER possible explanation.

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Why Won’t Legacy Media Investigate James Biden?

24th February 2024

Read it.

Politico is a member in good standing of the “establishment media.” Its journalists rotate in and out, to and from other pro-Biden outlets. But when Politico has a reporter who delves into the Biden family influence-peddling business, you can expect that work to be ignored routinely.

Ben Schreckinger authored a book in the fall of 2021 titled “The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power.” The publisher promised it would reveal “the secrets lurking in the deep recesses of Joe’s family tree to his son Hunter’s foreign deal-making spree—and the Trump gang’s ham-handed efforts to exploit it.”

Nobody in the pro-Biden media wanted a Biden tell-all, even from within its ranks. Schreckinger wasn’t all over TV selling his book the way every salacious anti-Trump author was rewarded. Brian Stelter, then still with CNN, even gave a dust-cover blurb for the book comparing the author to Bob Woodward, but didn’t book him on his show “Reliable Sources.”

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Once Valued at $5.7BN, Vice Media Stops Publishing and Nothing of Value Was Lost

24th February 2024

Read it.

People are enjoying the demise of Vice Media, with many of them pointing out that literally nothing of value was lost.

Having once been valued at $5.7 billion (in 2017), and acquired out of bankruptcy last year by a consortium including George Soros, the company announced plans to cut hundreds of jobs and has – as of 14 hours ago – stopped publishing on Vice.com.

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Why Can’t the Networks Investigate James Biden?

23rd February 2024

Tim Graham.

Politico is a member in good standing of the “establishment media.” Its journalists rotate in and out, to and from other pro-Biden outlets. But when Politico has a reporter who delves into the Biden family influence-peddling business, you can expect that work to be ignored routinely.

Ben Schreckinger authored a book in the fall of 2021 titled The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power. The publisher promised it would reveal “the secrets lurking in the deep recesses of Joe’s family tree to his son Hunter’s foreign deal-making spree—and the Trump gang’s ham-handed efforts to exploit it.”

Nobody in the pro-Biden media wanted a Biden tell-all, even from within its ranks. Schreckinger wasn’t all over TV selling his book the way every salacious anti-Trump author was rewarded. Brian Stelter even gave a dust-cover blurb for the book comparing the author to Bob Woodward, but didn’t book him on his CNN show Reliable Sources.

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CBS Seizes Files of Fired Reporter Investigating Hunter Biden

23rd February 2024

Read it.

CBS seized the confidential files, personal items, and laptop of investigative reporter Catherine Herridge, who was investigating the Hunter Biden laptop scandal when she became one of hundreds laid off last week, the New York Post reported Thursday.

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Atlantic Magazine: Stop Trump Because He Causes Trump Derangement Syndrome

23rd February 2024

Read it.

Let us give Conor Friedersdorf credit for the most creative, as well as bizarre, reason for keeping Donald Trump from winning the presidency again this year. Friedersdorf says it is not about his past record or policies. No, according to him, the reason that Trump must be defeated in 2024 is because he drives people crazy with Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Friedersdorf makes this assertion in Thursday’s Atlantic magazine that Trump must be kept from returning to the White because he makes some people very, very uncomfortable in “The Strongest Case Against Donald Trump.”

First, Friedersdorf defines Trump Derangement Syndrome and even admits that those suffering from it are, well, deranged.

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NASA Images Show Where US East Coast Is Sinking

21st February 2024

Read it.

They keep saying ‘is sinking’ but it NEVER ACTUALLY SINKS. One or two millimeters a year isn’t significant. I want to see seawater pouring into the NY subways,

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The Rise and Fall of the Second Amendment

20th February 2024

Read it.

Everyone has undoubtedly heard about the shooting during the Super Bowl victory parade in Kansas City. These victory celebrations always bring the potential for trouble, what with all those young males consuming prodigious amounts of alcohol. And they draw the worst elements; the seemingly perpetually armed gang-bangers.

The shooting has triggered the yawningly predictable response from the “Woke” crowd. Which at this point means nearly our entire government and corporate leadership. One marvels at how many times clueless celebrities can breathlessly tweet out, “We have to do something about this!” or “We are failing the children!” It’s odd how the inanimate object- the gun- is always the Oswald-style patsy in these incidents. Often the names of those wielding the inanimate objects for no good are barely mentioned. Quick; name the Parkland school shooter. The Pulse gay night club shooter. It’s the guns, racist! The tweets in response to this most recent shooting, especially those emanating from the dying embers of Hollywood, are examples of insipid mindlessness. Digital postcards from the Idiocracy.

Rounding up young black males from the ‘hood would be more effective in stopping ‘gun violence’ than banning guns.

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‘News’ in the Post-Literate Age

20th February 2024

The Other McCain.

Sitting here with my office TV tuned to CNN — I watch CNN, so you don’t have to — I’m struck by the arrogance of their assumption that they get to decide what is and is not newsworthy, as if their audience had no other source of information about what’s going on in the world, and no desire to know anything else except what CNN is “reporting.” They have spent most of today going on and on about the death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, as well as the war in Ukraine, and they seem to imagine that no one sees through this wall-to-wall coverage in terms of its motive, i.e., to revive the “Russian collusion” hoax against Trump, and to attempt to blame Republicans in Congress for the failure of Ukraine to repel the Russian invasion. It’s about a political narrative, you see, and every other thing in the world — including events much closer to home, of far more relevance to the day-to-day lives of Americans — must be suppressed in order to focus attention on their propaganda message.

Most members of the vast herd of liberal journalists are disposable — without any inherent value — simply because all of them are “reporting” from the same point of view. So when we hear of the latest round of media layoffs, we shrug in indifference. Nothing of value has been lost.

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Media Bias: Subtle (and Not So Subtle) Ways Journalists Slant the News

19th February 2024

John Stossel.

Reporters overwhelmingly lean Democrat. A survey by The American Journalist found that for every Republican in a newsroom, there are 10 Democrats.

The reporters claim to be objective.

They aren’t.

News networks always covered Iowa Caucus victory speeches. Not this year — After Donald Trump won. CNN cut away from his speech, and MSNBC didn’t carry it at all.

Recently, NPR hired a new CEO. They chose Katherine Maher, who once tweeted that “Trump is a racist.” During BLM looting, she tweeted, “It’s hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression.”

Now she’s the boss of government-funded radio?

Your tax dollars at work….

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Ignore the ‘Far-Right’ Slurs—The Fighting Farmers Are Simply Right

19th February 2024

Read it.

When did it become ‘far-right’ to support European farmers who are fighting for their livelihoods and rural communities? If we were to believe the mainstream media coverage of the farmers’ protests, we might expect to see them marching through Berlin or Paris in jackboots rather than their working bottes en caoutchouc (Wellingtons to us Brits).

The ‘far-right’ political libel against hard-pressed farmers is really a sign of how far the EU elites have lost touch with the reality of life for the peoples of Europe. We should ignore the slurs, and get behind the fighting farmers.

The protests by angry farmers have spread across the European Union, with mighty convoys of tractors blockading roads and cities from Romania to Rome, from Portugal to Poland, from Bulgaria to Brussels and beyond.

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New York Times Sets Up Scary Israel Lobby Against Plucky Pro-Hamas ‘Ceasefire’ Pushers

18th February 2024

Read it.

Saturday’s New York Times featured an absurd piece of anti-Israel, pro-ceasefire propaganda, headlined “As Gaza Death Toll Mounts, Groups Urging Israel-Hamas Cease-Fire Are Outmatched,” by Kate Kelly, who covers “money, policy and influence” for the paper.
Kelly set up The Friends Committee, part of “Washington’s peace lobby,” as a plucky little underdog against AIPAC, much like the left tries to make terrorist Hamas sympathetic against big bad Israel, which was the actual victim. She dutifully forwarded the group’s propaganda.
Amazingly, nowhere in her call for unilateral ceasefire, which would benefit Hamas, was mentioned the major ceasefire sticking point: The hundred or so Israeli hostages still held by Hamas.

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CBS CHEERS Kansas City Shooting ‘Helping Renew’ Push Against Gun Rights

16th February 2024

Read it.

After conspicuously not pushing gun control following the Lakewood megachurch shooting in Texas last week, likely because good guys with guns put down the shooter, CBS Mornings spent part of their Friday show morbidly cheering on how the Kansas City Super Bowl parade shooting was “helping renew” the left’s fight against gun rights with a so-called “assault weapons” ban.

“And the shooting at the Kansas City Super Bowl parade is helping renew the conversation about how to curb gun violence in America, including how to limit easy access to military-style rifles,” co-anchor Tony Dokoupil announced.

There is, of course, no evidence that a ‘military-style rifle’ was used. I suggest (in agreement with Steve Sailer) that it was some non-white juvenile gang-bangers with pistols modified to shoot automatically (the so-called ‘Glock switch’), which accounts for the high number of wounded compared to the single fatality.

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Lies We Are Forced to Believe – And to Repeat

16th February 2024

Ammo Grrrrrl.

There is no way that we can possibly cover ALL the Orwellian lies and woke absurdities that we are forced to swallow daily AND repeat if we want to sit with the Cool Kids in the Lunchroom. Or have a job or a bank account. Most lies have been addressed by others, including Power Line. But here is my take, with an emphasis on mockery and sarcasm. Sarcasm is considered the “lowest” form of humor. No worries. I am built low to the ground. And I flat-out hate the people who inflict this tripe upon us. Since I can’t shoot them or even ADVOCATE shooting them (which I absolutely do not), the only thing left to do is mock them. Pour yourself a Morning Mocktail and let’s get started.

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The New Priesthood

16th February 2024

ZMan’s weekly podcast.  Highly recommended.

A unique feature of this age is the fact that our societies are largely controlled by what we call the media. It was not that long ago when the term “the media” did not exist as a commonly understood concept. There were newspapers, books, and pamphlets, but they were called newspapers, books, and pamphlets. The concept of “the media” is a product of the 20th century.

These days, the media is not a collection of discreet communication entities but more of a subculture that hangs over society like smog. There are thousands of people who call themselves journalists, for example, who do not work for a journal or even have full-time employment at a newspaper. They are part of the media and speak of themselves as if they are in a righteous subculture or mass movement.

That is the way to think of it. The people in this thing we call the media operate like people in a religious cult or movement. This is why there is so little diversity of opinion in the media now, compared to just a generation ago. In a holy cause, there is no tolerance for those who question the cause. The people in this thing called the media are a priestly class who see their role as moral enforcers.

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Media Stumped by Motive of Anti-Semitic Shooter With ‘Palestine’ Rifle

16th February 2024

Washington Free Beacon.

A woman toting a rifle emblazoned with a “Palestine” sticker walked into a pro-Israel celebrity pastor’s church and opened fire, according to law enforcement officials. News outlets declared the motive a “mystery.”

Genesse Ivonne Moreno, 36, an immigrant from El Salvador who sometimes identified as a man, shot up Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, on Sunday, injuring a worshipper before security guards shot her dead, the FBI and local police said. The church is home to televangelist Joel Osteen, a vocal supporter of Israel and friend of its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Police said they found anti-Semitic writings among Moreno’s belongings. Early reports also said the sticker on Moreno’s rifle said “Free Palestine,” but police later revealed the sticker said “Palestine.”

It would be easy to connect the dots and draw the obvious conclusion: The shooting was part of a worldwide eruption of anti-Semitism amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. But mainstream media have long struggled to see violence as anything other than a right-wing phenomenon.

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The Myth of MAGA’s Working-Class Roots

16th February 2024

UnHerd.

Surely the white working class is to blame? It’s obvious that those who stormed the US Congress on January 6, 2021, were the very same people Hillary Clinton described as “the basket of deplorables”. They’re obviously racist, sexist and xenophobic. Why even bother checking?

Well, because it’s not quite as straightforward as that. According to the University of Chicago, 50% of the January 6 mutineers were either business owners or white-collar workers, and only 25% had no college degree.

Again and again, white working-class Americans have been slandered and cast as deranged MAGA fans in the national press. But the reality, as I reveal in my new book, is that Donald Trump’s most hardcore supporters are far wealthier and better educated than your ordinary American. The political scientists Noam Lupu and Nicholas Carnes have convincingly argued that only 30% of Trump voters in 2016 were white and working class.

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Migrant Gang Rape of Child in Italy Prompts CNN to Worry About “Far-Right”

15th February 2024

Read it.

After a group of migrants gang-raped a 13-year-old girl in Italy, CNN responded by expressing concern about how it might help the “far-right.”

The girl was raped in front of her boyfriend in a public park in the Sicilian city of Catania.

The seven suspects are all Egyptian migrants and three were under the age of 18.

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Thought for the Day

15th February 2024

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How Americans Define a Middle-Class Lifestyle — And Why They Can’t Reach It

15th February 2024

Washington Poop.

A poll from The Washington Post finds widespread agreement among Americans on what it means to be middle class. But just over a third of U.S. adults have the financial security to meet that definition, according to a Post analysis of data from the Federal Reserve.

Americans also underestimate the income required for that lifestyle, suggesting that the popular image of middle-class security is more of an aspiration than a reality for most Americans.

About 9 in 10 U.S. adults said that six individual indicators of financial security and stability were necessary parts of being middle class in the Post poll. Smaller majorities thought other milestones, such as homeownership and a job with paid sick leave, were necessary.

 

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Another Variant, Another Desperate Cry For Masks

13th February 2024

Read it.

The names of those involved in creating a false consensus based on inaccurate information have become an infamous reminder of the dangers of excessive reliance on a few politically motivated individuals: Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins, Jerome Adams, Deborah Birx, and later entries like Ashish Jha and Vivek Murthy.

There were a host of others who had a significant impact on the rampant spread of indefensible, immediately disproven ideas, mandates, and policies.

Many continue into 2024 to advocate for failed policies, “interventions” that still don’t work, and unnecessary panic. And all with the willing participation of major media outlets dedicated to continuing their preferred narratives. For example, those who support the endless Covid vaccination series over natural immunity.

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ABC, CBS, NBC Refuse to Recognize Megachurch Shooter’s Trans Identity

13th February 2024

Read it.

The second verse, same as the first. In a continuation of their blackout from the previous evening, the Tuesday morning newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC absolutely refused to acknowledge the fact that the attempted mass shooter at the Lakewood megachurch in Houston, Texas was transgender, who would go by male and female names; a fact disclosed by authorities during a press conference.

What they did make sure to note, rightly, was that the shooter was anti-Semitic and a supporter of Palestine. “And it’s that anti-Semitic material combined with the fact authorities saw the word ‘Palestine’ written on the shooter’s rifle, which has them saying that they are not ruling out terrorism or a hate crime as a potential motivating cause here,” NBC correspondent Morgan Chesky announced on the Today show.

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Oxfam’s Disinformation Agenda

13th February 2024

Read it.

In what has become a tradition, Oxfam issued a report at the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos, complaining about “growing and extreme inequality.” The report states that “The world’s five richest men have seen their fortunes more than double since 2020, while in the same period five billion people have become poorer.”

There is just one problem: those figures don’t add up. Swedish researcher Johan Norberg has explained that the UBS “Global Wealth Report,” which is “the main source for Oxfam’s wealth calculations,” reveals that, “For the world as a whole, these annual shifts have roughly cancelled out, leaving global wealth inequality back at the level prevailing when the pandemic began.” Norberg adds that, “For most inequality indicators, [this] was the lowest level recorded this century.”

Looking only at the five people who did the best in a given period will always give the impression Oxfam wants to create. In doing so, the NGO—which has an obsession with the so-called Gini index, an inequality comparison method invented by an Italian fascist—ignores the 24 rich people who disappeared from the Forbes list after losing $43 billion in one year.

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FLASHBACK: Media Slammed Clinton’s ’99 Trial as a ‘Stalinist’ ‘Coup’

11th February 2024

Newsbusters.

It was exactly 25 years ago tomorrow, February 12, 1999, the U.S. Senate voted to acquit President Bill Clinton at his impeachment trial. Two months earlier, the House had approved two articles of impeachment: one charging that Clinton had “willfully provided perjurious, false and misleading testimony” to a federal grand jury; the other said he had “willfully corrupted and manipulated the judicial process of the United States for his personal gain and exoneration, impeding the administration of justice.”

In spite of his acquittal, Clinton eventually admitted that he had made false statements under oath, as part of a plea arrangement to avoid criminal indictment. So at least that element of the case against him is beyond dispute.

But unlike the two subsequent Trump impeachments, which the media had championed since before the Republican President had even taken office, journalists sneered that the trial of William Jefferson Clinton was a pointless waste of the Senate’s valuable time.

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The 7th Annual Fake News Awards

11th February 2024

OffGuardian.

And now, from a deep underground military base on the other side of the flat Earth, it’s time for the 7th Annual Fake News Awards!

How did the disinformation specialists of the mockingbird media lie to the public this year? What rich, creamery nothingburgers did they use to whip the public into hysteria over matters of no consequence whatsoever? And what real scandals of earthshaking importance did they ignore? And who will walk away with the most coveted Dino of them all: the Fake News Story of the Year?

Find out in this face-meltingly, apocalyptically horrifying extravaganza of media mendacity known as the Fake News Awards!

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Climate Cultists at The Guardian: This Time, It’s Evil Propane

11th February 2024

Read it.

Reporters at The Guardian never tire of demonizing fossil fuels. In its latest salvo, the newspaper –  funded in part by the green-billionaire Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – published a January 25 hit piece on the Propane Education and Research Council. PERC, funded by the U.S. propane industry, is a nonprofit that provides propane safety and training programs and invests in research and development of new propane-powered technologies. PERC, its critics charge, is “greenwashing” by downplaying “the full climate impacts of propane” and marketing it as “clean” energy. The Guardian article claims that PERC “has invested millions in a multiyear strategy to rebrand propane from what it’s called a ‘dirty fossil fuel’ to a so-called clean energy source.”

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The ‘High IQ’ of Murder

11th February 2024

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Nazism is a political meme which has been securely packaged up and filed under ‘Far Right: Conservative’, and is wheeled out whenever the left wants to shut down debate or dialogue or sling the ‘racist’ epithet against their opponents.

But whilst conservatives may want to preserve cultural integrity and Judeo-Christianity in particular, they have not generally indulged in mass murder and slavery as have the Left.

This ‘right-wing’ filing is wrong, but has caused mayhem for the last 70 years. It is a superlative opportunity for projection and, as conservatives nearly always fall for it, too, it has become a major suppressor of conservative cultural policy.

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Weaponizing ‘The Science’

10th February 2024

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And there you have it….California passed a law that threatens the professional license of any medical professional who shares their professional opinion or any information that contradicts a “contemporary scientific consensus”. It is considered “false” because it contradicts the current consensus. And in this case about a topic that has a lot of controversy and a broad range of opinion.

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Black Lives Matter and Black Lives Murdered

10th February 2024

Steve Sailer.

The first time the New York Times ever mentioned the phrase “Black Lives Matter” in its history going back to 1851 was August 21, 2014, twelve days after Michael Brown’s death at Ferguson, MO. Since then, it has run 5,915 more articles with the phrase “Black Lives Matter.”

As you can see, there were two eras in which Black Lives Matter was ascendant: 2015-2016 (the Ferguson Effect), after which Soros and other smart money funders let it slowly fizzle, followed by the utter insanity of 2020-21 (the Floyd Effect), after which, I’m guessing, the Biden White House got the word through to the NYT than it was no longer in the Democratic Party’s electoral best interests to continue harping on BLM.

For reasons utterly baffling to the New York Times, this barrage of concern for black lives led to a big boost in black deaths in BLM Era I and then a huge boost in black deaths in BLM Era II. It’s almost as if the cops got the message that the Establishment didn’t want them to hassle as many black drivers for driving badly, so they didn’t. In turn, blacks drove worse, died more in car crashes, and carried more illegal handguns when they went out, which led to more blacks shooting more blacks.

 

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New York Magazine Fantasizes in Extreme Detail About Trump’s Life in Federal Prison

8th February 2024

Newsbusters.

In the sad annals of Trump Derangement, perhaps the bizarre vengeance porn fantasies of New York magazine’s Ankush Khardori stands alone in coming from a very very dark place. The typical sufferer of TDS might hope for the imprisonment of Donald Trump and leave it at that.

In the case of Khardori he went full mental jacket on Monday in that magazine’s Intelligencer section with an over-3500-word diatribe dripping with Trump hate in which he fantasized in extreme detail what imprisonment for the President would look like as you can see in this unhinged missive “What Happens, Exactly, If Trump Is Sentenced to Prison?” [Image is also their imagination.]

Above Khardori’s overlong rant disguised as an article is a fantasy picture of Trump’s Bureau of Prisons identity card. Khardouri even has Trump’s future prison picked out for him which he describes in excruciating detail. As you read these asylum worthy Khardori rants that follow you can almost hear echoes  from one of the most famous of The Far Side cartoons screaming “Just Plain Nuts!”

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Stop Dunking on Trump Supporters

7th February 2024

Read it.

Why have so many American leftists spent the last nine years dunking on Donald Trump’s supporters instead of seeking to understand them? With Trump likely to become the Republican nominee in this year’s US presidential election, it’s a question worth asking.

In many online spaces, Trump supporters are routinely dismissed as cult members and white supremacists consumed with misogyny. In the best case, the idea goes, they want to take America back to the 1950s. In the worst case, they want to demolish our liberal democracy altogether and replace it with either fascism or theocracy.

Of course, there are radicals and bigots in all political movements. But the idea that these intellectual pathologies extend to Trump’s entire voting base is inaccurate and unhelpful. Moreover, these attitudes only seem to further energize Trump’s supporters, who’ve come to believe (not unreasonably) that they’re despised by American “elites.”

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Biden Calls Up Fake Story—Again

4th February 2024

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Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, all from Georgia, were killed in a drone strike by Iran-backed forces on January 28. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and members of Congress were first to call the families. Parents were told they needed to fill out special paperwork to get a call from the president, whose initial statement mentioned none of the victims. When Biden finally called on January 30, he told the parents of Kennedy Sanders that “My son spent a year in Iraq; that’s how I lost him.” Actually it wasn’t.

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Capitalization Wars Come to Our Courts

4th February 2024

Read it.

Equality under the law is a bedrock principle of our country.

But sadly, it’s fallen out of fashion, with many calling for “equity”—the favoring of certain racial or ethnic groups—instead of equality.

This toxic ideology has infused our culture and our courts in many ways, both large and small.

Once neutral areas like procedural and grammatical rules are being weaponized to subtly (or maybe not so subtly) advance the radical equity-over-equality agenda.

To this end, it has become fashionable for writers in both popular culture and the courts to treat and write about people differently based on their race. Many likely don’t even realize they’re doing it and probably (albeit mistakenly) believe they are being good grammarians and following the proper rules.

 

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