BY: Sonny Bunch
I’m not terribly fond of “the culture war,” at least as it is generally discussed in relation to United States domestic politics. Abortion, gay marriage: these are not things I am particularly interested in, and the arguments surrounding them tend to be so remarkably tedious that I try to avoid them altogether.
Read More
I'm not terribly fond of "the culture war," at least as it is generally discussed in relation to United States domestic politics. Abortion, gay marriage: These are not things I am particularly interested in, and the arguments surrounding them tend to be so remarkably tedious that I try to avoid them altogether.
Cultural warfare, on the other hand, is endlessly fascinating. Efforts to spread cultural products (books, movies, operas, etc.) in order to convince the rest of the world that your way of life is superior are far more interesting to me than troop movements and power politics. This is one of the reasons I so enjoyed writing my latest column for the Washington Post, in which I suggested that the CIA should mount an effort to clandestinely spread Sorry to Bother You throughout mainland China.
As part of the research process for that essay, I picked up a copy of Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War by Frances Stonor Saunders. It's an interesting, well-researched book, one that I quite enjoyed despite the fact that Saunders is relentlessly critical of the CIA's efforts to covertly fund certain aspects of the culture war. Her disdain for Nicolas Nabokov, cousin of the novelist Vladimir, is particularly pronounced. Consider, for instance, her recounting of his behavior at a conference in New York City organized by the Soviets and their States-side useful idiots at the Waldorf Astoria:
For instance: trying to paint Nicolas Nabokov of the villain here *just isn’t working* for me. pic.twitter.com/F07koHoNZz
— Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) August 11, 2018
One can feel pity for Dimitri Shostakovich, a Soviet composer required by the monstrousness of Stalinism to denounce fellow composers, while also understanding that Nabokov is entirely right to highlight the inherent absurdity of a Soviet-sponsored "Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace." Nabokov was well within his rights to note that this effort to propagandize American artists and intellectuals was being underwritten by a nation that had spent much of the last 20 years un-personing artists and intellectuals, sentencing them to the gulags (or worse) for failing to use their art in service of the revolution. Nabokov wasn't "throwing punches at a man with his hands tied behind his back": He was punching up at one of the few remaining world powers, an enemy state that had set its sights on bringing America to its knees. That Shostakovich was the Evil Empire's representative at this event may have been unfortunate. But cultural warfare ain't beanbag.
Anyway! I highly recommend reading Saunders's book, available at an Amazon near you. So long as you remember how to read it.
Read Less
BY: Andrew Stiles
Donald Trump is only halfway through the first of (at least) two terms in the White House, and he has already owned more libs than any U.S. president in history. Not surprisingly, the libs have utterly lost their minds. A number of lib social media users, for example, are writing children’s books about a beefcake …
Read More
Donald Trump is only halfway through the first of (at least) two terms in the White House, and he has already owned more libs than any U.S. president in history. Not surprisingly, the libs have utterly lost their minds. A number of lib social media users, for example, are writing children's books about a beefcake Bob Mueller (Roberal Moral) who saves the world from "Ronald Plump."
Sneak Peek at the last page of my upcoming book: "How The People Trumped Ronald Plump"
Available for Pre-order now – Ships Nov 6th (Election Day):https://t.co/9CrreZMrU5
And YES, I am teaching our children that Trump's actions are NOT ok.
DEAL WITH IT!
Meet Robert Moral! pic.twitter.com/19PUFGv7VC
— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) August 18, 2018
Prominent lib reporter Lachlan Markay got into a slap fight with the libs who wrote the book, Ed and Brian Krassenstein, probably because he didn't think Robert "Moral" Mueller was buff enough.
Why is Bob Mueller a Chippendale dancer https://t.co/iNmuIAjnwp
— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) August 19, 2018
Here are some other cartoon character men without shirts on. Make sure you cover your poor little eyes. pic.twitter.com/IvsDQVX3az
— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) August 20, 2018
The conflagration ended with Markay getting thoroughly owned by his fellow libs.
My mentions have been a delight for the past 12 hours, but this one from @not_drwho is the winner pic.twitter.com/rttjTlDJKS
— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) August 20, 2018
When it comes to owning the libs, relentlessness is key.
SEE ALSO: 5 Ways to Own the Libs
Follow Trump's example. Trigger them at every opportunity. Do everything in your power to make sure the libs stay owned.
SEE ALSO: 5 More Ways to Own The Libs
If liberals are so comfortable with shirtless superheroes with chiseled bodies, then surely they won't mind these epic photos of Donald Trump with rock hard abs. Surely they'll just accept the fact that this is how real Americans see our president — as a glistening Adonis protecting America from animals who want to turn the country into a hellscape of vegan bike shops and avocado orgies.
This machine owns libs.
Feeling owned yet, libs?
How 'bout now?
Look on my abs, ye mighty, and despair!
Take that, libs!
Coming soon to a town square near you…
Read Less
BY: Andrew Stiles
Earlier this year, former President Barack Obama inked a “high eight-figure deal” with Netflix to produce original content in the form of “scripted series, unscripted series, docu-series, documentaries, and features.” As luck would have it, the Washington Free Beacon has exclusively obtained what appears to be a partial transcript of the first episode in this …
Read More
Earlier this year, former President Barack Obama inked a "high eight-figure deal" with Netflix to produce original content in the form of "scripted series, unscripted series, docu-series, documentaries, and features." As luck would have it, the Washington Free Beacon has exclusively obtained what appears to be a partial transcript of the first episode in this vaguely defined yet highly anticipated cinematic endeavor. It is presented below for your immediate edification.
Page 1
MEDIUM / CLOSE UP SHOT – WHITE BACKGROUND – SOFT BACK LIGHTING TO CREATE AN AURA OF "SUPERNATURAL BENEVOLENCE" (PER BHO CONTRACT)
President Obama smiles, and speak directly to the camera / viewer:
"Hello! I'm Barack Obama. I'm a husband, a father, a celebrated orator, and, um, former president of the United States of America. Michelle and I, and all the folks at Netflix, are thrilled to share with you this project we've been working on for the last several months. In this first episode of Barack Obama Presents: Barack Obama's American Dream and Other Stories, we're going to hear from a number of talented, inspiring, and creative young men and women who reminded me of me by working hard every day to promote greater empathy and understanding between peoples all over the world.
But first, I'd like to say a few words about the alarming political climate we find ourselves in today, and the many challenges that lie ahead.
…
Page 9
Now, let me be clear, I'm not here to keep score or play pundit, or political historian, especially when it comes to questions about my quote unqoute ‘legacy.' That's for the actual historians to decide. And, I think, for the most part, the best historians already agree that I haven't been given enough credit for pulling the American economy back from the brink of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and leaving the Middle East region better than I found it, as the saying goes. But that's neither here nor there. In a way, my personal legacy is probably too grand in scope to be measured solely through the lens of history. Many of you have suggested as much in your letters.
Since leaving the White House, I've been thinking a lot about Nelson Mandela — one of the most inspirational leaders to ever walk the planet, may he rest is peace — and what it must have been like, from his perspective, to meet me for the first time. I was just a lowly U.S. Senator, albeit with much promise. My only concern back then was keeping my head down, working hard, reaching across the aisle to get things done, putting families first, fighting to improve the lives of all Americans, and promoting my second memoir.
It was 2005, and Madiba was giving a speech at the NAACP in Washington, D.C., so I stopped by his hotel with a photographer friend of mine I happened to be hanging out with that day. After exchanging pleasantries, I humbly suggested a few dozen minor edits to improve the cadence and emotional gravitas of my hero's speech. I was also eager to share with him the video of my acclaimed keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Come to think of it, one of the biggest regrets of my presidency is that the big guy wasn't around to hear the eulogy at his funeral.
…
Page 23
lying about my position on gay marriage, or the country where I was born, but there's actually one thing I wish I could take back. I should have never bequeathed the honor of my historic presidency upon that conniving fake nerd, Ahmed ‘Clock Boy' Mohamed. I mean, seriously, what a little jerk. ‘Cool clock,' I said. It wasn't even that cool. And of course Zuckerberg tried to get in on the action, riding my coattails, inviting the kid to visit Facebook after I'd already invited him to the White House. Has that ginger freak ever had an original idea? He'd still be a better candidate than Hillary, though. Who wouldn't? We haven't talked much since the election, Hillary and I. My speaking fee is at least double hers, and thanks to this show, so is my net worth. It must be eating her up inside.
…
Read Less
BY: Sonny Bunch
I know that subtlety isn’t really Spike Lee’s thing, but even with that knowledge, I was still a little surprised by how didactic BlacKkKlansman managed to be—and how much it damaged the overall tone and flow of the picture.
Read More
I know that subtlety isn't really Spike Lee's thing, but even with that knowledge, I was still a little surprised by how didactic BlacKkKlansman managed to be—and how much it damaged the overall tone and flow of the picture.
The title of the movie itself sets the tone. It's not enough to simply call it Black Klansman, highlighting the absurdity of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), an African-American police officer, infiltrating the KKK by posing as a white racist on the phone and then sending his Jewish partner, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), to meet the group in person. No, Lee has to jam in another k, lower case, in case you … what, don't know that a Klansman is a member of the Ku Klux Klan? Did we really need "KKK" in the title? Does it add anything to our knowledge? Or does it, rather, make the title look cluttered and awkward?
Cluttered and awkward is a fair description of the film as a whole. There's nothing wrong with polemic, and Spike Lee does polemic better than just about anyone else in mainstream filmmaking. And there's nothing wrong with being a bit didactic in service of your polemic; the extended sequence in which Lee intercuts Harry Belafonte (playing Jerome Turner) talking about a lynching whilst the Klan members watch The Birth of a Nation, for instance, spends a good long while (successfully) driving home the point about the ways in which media depictions of race can have real-world consequences. But at a certain point you have to trust that the audience is going to understand the points you're making, and that point is probably "having members of the KKK repeatedly shouting slogans from the Trump campaign like ‘America First' and ‘Make America Great Again.'" You don't really need to go beyond that.
All of which is to say that a prologue featuring Alec Baldwin playing a white supremacist in what appears to be a KKK-sponsored film strip discussing the evils of desegregation and a postscript in which we see Donald Trump talking about the aftermath of a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville are repetitive, unnecessary, and distract from the (genuinely fascinating!) story being told. Lee is at his best when he picks a cinematic strategy and sticks to it. I'm a sucker for Lee's manic-didactic mode, a hyper-stylized method of moviemaking that transcends realism to make a broader point (Bamboozled, Chi-Raq, Do the Right Thing), but his more straightforward-storyteller mode (Inside Man, 25th Hour) can be extremely effective as well. Granted, the two sometimes bleed into each other, but the mixture doesn't work in BlacKkKlansman, the power of which is undercut by annoying those who don't need their hands held all the way up to Spike Lee's Big Point.
One last note: The performances are all fantastic, from Washington's Stallworth on down to Topher Grace's David Duke. But Adam Driver steals the show as Flip. He manages an undercurrent of something that might be described as "jovial menace" when he's onscreen with the KKK members he is trying to take down, and Flip's journey from unobservant Jew to someone who understands the danger his targets represent is the most compelling character arc in the film. BlacKkKlansman demonstrates yet again that Driver is our most interesting young actor.
Read Less
BY: David Isaac
Since March 30, when Hamas launched its first “return march” with thousands storming Israel’s border, Israel’s media pundits have said neither side wants escalation. They had it right. What’s being termed “the small arrangement” looks like a big win for Hamas, whose strategy most resembles that of North Korea.
Read More
Since March 30, when Hamas launched its first "return march" with thousands storming Israel's border, Israel's media pundits have said neither side wants escalation. They had it right. What's being termed "the small arrangement" looks like a big win for Hamas, whose strategy most resembles that of North Korea.
In 1999, North Korea was in a similar situation to Hamas now. Its economy was in tatters. State rations hadn't been distributed for five years. Control of its population was slipping. Today, Hamas can't make payroll or provide basic services and faces staggering unemployment. One of the generally agreed reasons why Hamas whipped its people up in the first place was to distract them from their economic problems.
According to the agreement, which sources say will be signed Friday in Cairo, Hamas will accept a yearlong ceasefire in exchange for a sea lane to Cyprus, extension of its fishing waters, the opening of border crossings on the Israel and Egyptian sides of the Gaza Strip, and humanitarian projects and funding from Egypt and Qatar to pay the salaries of its public servants. Qatar will also pay Gaza's electric bills.
Curiously, despite the nearness of a deal, Khalil al-Haya, Hamas's deputy head, called on Gazan residents to march en masse to the border. Terrorists continue floating fire bombs into Israel. One was spotted above the skies of Netivot on Thursday. This continued aggression, too, follows North Korean strategy.
The North Korean Model
A fine description of North Korean policy is found in Dear Leader: My Escape from North Korea by Jang Jin-Sung, who was in a position to witness its formulation up close as North Korea's former State Poet Laureate. He describes how the policy, called the "Northern Limit Line – NLL – Strategy," began with the initiative of a left-wing South Korean government to improve ties with its northern neighbor. In 1998, South Korea introduced its "Sunshine Policy" – the name based on Aesop's fable where a strong wind (a get-tough policy) couldn't knock the coat off a man but sunshine (a peacemaking policy) led the man to willingly remove it.
The policy ironically served as a lifeline for the North Korean communists, who were on the ropes, facing mass starvation and economic disaster that eroded party loyalty. The North Koreans settled on a two-prong approach in response to South Korea's outreach. First, North Korea would take the South Korean aid, enough to meet, in Jin-Sung words, the "minimum resources it needed to reverse its diminishing control over the nation." Second, once the stream of unconditional aid was secured, North Korea would make sure that it would not need to make reciprocal concessions.
Finding a way to prevent this eventuality became acute when South Korea's conservative opposition floated the idea that the North should be forced to give something in return for all the aid thrown its way. The solution North Korea settled on to prevent such an outcome was ingenious. It would engage in military provocations at the same time it took South Korean largesse. Jin-Sung writes in Dear Leader:
"Acts of military provocation could prevent such a scenario [making concessions] from being realized, because North Korea would acquire the bargaining chip of offering to cease provocations, as a contingency to be held in reserve. Moreover, not only would our position be strengthened if it did come to give-and-take, but once the Sunshine policy's unconditional aid began to flow in, a lurking threat of military confrontation might even ensure the policy's longevity."
In order not to endanger the flow of aid on land, North Korea focused all its provocations at sea. Its first action was carried out on June 15, 1999. Everything went according to plan. South Korea played down the naval attack. "In fact, encouraged by the patient peace-making efforts of South Korea, the North decided to fix upon military provocation as the long-term basis of its foreign policy strategies … This would be carried out through the development of nuclear weapons at an international level, and through naval provocations at the inter-Korean level," Jin-Sung writes.
He concluded: "After completing my escape to the outside world, I would later come to appreciate – from the state of inter-Korean affairs and the South's perceptions of it – that [North Korea's] coordinated response to the Sunshine Policy could not have been a more phenomenal success."
It's within the realm of possibility that North Korea even suggested Hamas undertake a variation of its strategy. Relations between North Korea and Hamas first became public in 2009. A Palestinian diplomatic mission was established in North Korea as far back as 1974.
In 1999, North Korea breathed a sigh of relief when everything went according to plan. Hamas must be doing so now. It risked a wider military confrontation, but instead came up big. It's going to receive international projects, an infusion of foreign aid and better access to goods through open border crossings and a shipping lane to Cyprus.
It's no accident that the terror group's demands centered around the Gaza Strip's economy. Like North Korea, it must supply the minimal requirements to ensure control over its population. Thanks to this agreement, it will be able to dole out enough to prevent a popular uprising.
All this after it organized mass demonstrations which eroded Israel's image, burned 7,000 acres of Israeli land, killed an IDF soldier and launched rocket barrages at Israeli towns, causing widespread trauma to Israel's southern citizens.
Quiet will be met with quiet. This formula, which has been around for years, had been repeated with increasing frequency by Israeli government officials over the last months. It's a euphemistic warning – tangle with Israel at your peril. Unfortunately, its practical application has rendered the phrase meaningless. Israel has allowed a continuous attack on its territory for some 140 days, only responding to certain Hamas strikes. "Aggression will be met with quiet" is a more apt description.
In truth, it's been hard to pin down Israeli policy. The government has been tight-lipped. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been content to let Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman do the talking, and Liberman has been sending mixed signals. On Monday, he said the next round of violence between Israel and Hamas "is not if, but when." On Wednesday, he directed a Facebook post at Gazans saying that they could become like Singapore.
On Thursday, Liberman finally presented a strategy. He announced that he wants to topple Hamas, and that his method is to draw a distinction between it and the people of Gaza. "My strategy is to speak straight to the public and not to the Hamas leadership," he said. "The public in Gaza needs to understand that only through quiet will they gain, and so long as there isn't any will they lose. The goal is that the people will rise up and replace the government. We don't want to conquer Gaza."
If this is indeed Israel's new policy, it is going about it exactly the wrong way. North Korea provides an ideal example of what happens when you take a dictatorship with a crumbling economy and inject it with foreign funding. You still have it 20 years later. If Israel wants to rid Gaza of Hamas, it should increase sanctions. The Palestinian Authority understands this, which is why it withheld salaries from Gaza's civil servants and stopped paying Gaza's electric bills. The goal was to wrest Gaza back from Hamas. Now Israel, Egypt, and the United Nations have stepped in and saved Hamas. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is not pleased.
The actions of Netanyahu's administration has led to a weird realignment, with left-wing politicians attacking the government from the right. Opposition leader Tzipi Livni warned that the agreement rewards terror and strengthens Hamas, which should not be negotiated with under any circumstances.
On this point, the Israeli public seems to be with her. According to a social media survey by Channel 20, 67.3 percent said under no circumstances should Israel deal with Hamas, while another 30.3 percent said there should be no deal if it doesn't include the return of soldiers' remains and the destruction of Hamas's arsenal. Only 2.4 percent approved of a deal, even if it led only to a temporary ceasefire.
It's difficult to know if Hamas will succeed in the long run, but thanks to Israel's policy, expect it to be with us for some time.
Read Less
BY: Andrew Stiles
I could have stayed silent. All my life I’ve avoided politics, eschewed social media, and devoted all my waking hours to building a successful jet ski repair business. I don’t normally vote in elections. (I wrote in Vince McMahon for president in 2012 because he seemed like a competent leader with tons of dragon energy.) …
Read More
I could have stayed silent. All my life I've avoided politics, eschewed social media, and devoted all my waking hours to building a successful jet ski repair business. I don't normally vote in elections. (I wrote in Vince McMahon for president in 2012 because he seemed like a competent leader with tons of dragon energy.) I haven't watched "the news" in decades. It would be easier to hold my tongue, but I feel compelled to speak out.
Every time THE POLITICO publishes a Stephen Miller hit piece — by his Uncle Dave, or the kid who sat across from him in third grade — I am reminded of the hours he and I spent together in an incubator as infants. I am forced to confront My Truth — that everything the media and general public thinks it knows about Stephen Miller is a lie.
It's hard to say how much a newborn's behavior in a hospital incubator can really tell you about the inner workings of his soul. At least that's what some people would have you believe. I know better, because the connection I shared with Stephen Miller in that incubator was probably the deepest connection I have ever experienced with another human being. It was also one of the most traumatizing moments of my life.
Here is what I remember.
When the nurse placed Stephen in my incubator in August 1985, I recall feeling as though my freedom was being tread upon. I must have intuited from my surroundings that we were in America, so I had expected to be treated as an American. But Stephen had other ideas. He wriggled his gooey head in my direction, and as soon as our eyes met, he unleashed a pernicious Hiroshima of fecal discharge, instantly annihilating the feeble confines of his nappy like a fire hose deployed against a ring of cobwebs. They say smell is the sense most closely tied to memory, which is probably why I'll never forget what happened next.
After the nurses finished hosing us down, Stephen and I locked eyes for a second time. That's when we started to communicate, newborn to newborn. We didn't use English, or even words, obviously. It was more like a binary code of "goos" and "gahs" instead of ones and zeros, incorporating all our senses to cultivate a furious cohesion of understanding. This was the motley language Stephen used to outline his terrifying vision for America.
"The Cold War is coming to close," he mused. "Soviet collapse is imminent, alas. Reagan won't be president forever, but his legacy will guide the Republican Party for decades to come. Only after a sustained attack on that legacy has succeeded in tarnishing the Republican brand will American voters be open to embracing Full Communism."
I didn't know what to say. This was a lot for an infant to process. His views on communism ran contrary to everything I had learned in utero listening to my father's daily lectures on the Red Menace. I'd always been of the mind that Reagan's foreign policy had been too soft on Moscow, and his Strategic Defense Initiative was little more than a misguided bluff. Stephen continued his rant before I had a chance to rebut.
"Constitutional conservationism, whatever that means, won't last," he asserted. "There's no constituency for it. Populist nationalism is the only way forward in a post-Cold War America. For Republicans, the key is getting them hooked on Soviet-style immigration policies — closing borders, building walls, and so on. That's the gateway drug to socialist economic programs. Just watch what happens when some young gun GOP congressman tries to ‘reform' Medicare and Social Security just as the Baby Boomers are starting to retire. Eventually, we'll elect a celebrity who doesn't believe in anything, and his top advisers, if they're clever enough, will have free reign to lay the groundwork for socialism. Who's going to stand in our way? The Democrats? Please. In 30 to 40 years the party will have purged itself of so-called moderates, and their top candidates will fully embrace the ‘socialist' label. I guess I could be wrong, but that's just how I see things playing out. I think you still have some of my poop on your foot. Sorry about that."
That about sums it up. Again, I'm not a political person. I just thought the American people should know the truth about Stephen Miller.
Read Less
While the media rush to blame wildfires on climate change, scientific evidence reveals there is less fire across the globe, and the credit goes to human activity.
Read More
While the media rush to blame wildfires on climate change, scientific evidence reveals there is less fire across the globe, and the credit goes to human activity.
The editorial board of the Washington Post recently declared, "We won't stop California's wildfires if we don't talk about climate change." NPR reported the best way to fight wildfires in Texas is "getting real" on climate change. NBC News says extreme heat and wildfires are "made worse by climate change," according to scientists, of course. The San Francisco Chronicle sees the "fingerprints of climate change" all over those California wildfires, again, according to ScienceTM.
Those articles usually quote Michael Mann, the guy behind the discredited global warming hockey stick graph, but even he won't say climate change is "literally causing the events to occur." We're just "making these events more extreme."
And the media love to echo this claim.
"Yes, humans have made wildfires worse," reads a graphic accompanying the Post‘s editorial on the California wildfires. An "obvious" response to the wildfires, the Post says, is "addressing global warming."
"Four of the five largest conflagrations the state has had to battle have come since 2012, according to the Los Angeles Times, and that is probably no mere coincidence," the Post says, connecting the dots. "Droughts, storms and heat waves have occurred throughout history, of course, and it is hard to attribute any single event to climate change. But scientists have concluded that climate change has increased the frequency of extreme weather and will continue to do so."
One connection the media seem to have missed, however, is the one between man-made economic activity and a global decline in fires.
"A human-driven decline in global burned area" was the title of a study published in Science last June and authored by climate scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, Columbia University, the Imperial College London, and elsewhere.
The Washington Times drew attention to the study last month.
The study revealed—"unexpectedly"—a robust decline in global burn area of approximately 25 percent between 1998 and 2015, largely due to human progress.
"Humans have, and always have had, a major impact on wildfire activity, which is expected to increase in our warming world," the authors wrote. "[Niels] Andela [a NASA research scientist] et al. use satellite data to show that, unexpectedly, global burned area declined by ∼25% over the past 18 years, despite the influence of climate."
"The decrease has been largest in savannas and grasslands because of agricultural expansion and intensification," according to the study. "The decline of burned area has consequences for predictions of future changes to the atmosphere, vegetation, and the terrestrial carbon sink."
The climate scientists said burn area could decline even more, as long as agricultural progress continues in the tropics. The study found the largest declines in burn area occurred in countries with the largest increase in agricultural production.
"Together, these analyses underscore the pervasive influence of human activity on global burned area, including the potential for further declines in savanna fires from ongoing agricultural development across the tropics," the study said.
Another study on the "perceptions versus realities" of wildfires around the world by researchers at Swansea University concluded "there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago."
"Wildfire has been an important process affecting the Earth's surface and atmosphere for over 350 million years and human societies have coexisted with fire since their emergence," the authors wrote in June 2016. "Yet many consider wildfire as an accelerating problem, with widely held perceptions both in the media and scientific papers of increasing fire occurrence, severity and resulting losses."
It might shock you to learn those "widely held perceptions" in the media are, once again, wrong.
"However, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived overall trends," the scientists write. "Instead, global area burned appears to have overall declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago."
The authors also point out the dangerous policies of 100 percent "fire exclusion," which derives from the German forestry school of the 19th century, as proven to be "impractical, unsustainable and ecologically detrimental in fire-prone regions."
The perception that all fire is bad, i.e., Smokey the Bear (Trump ahead of the curve again!), still pervades American media coverage and policy, as the authors point out the detrimental effects of fire suppression.
"The media still promote perceptions of wildfire as the enemy even in very fire-prone regions, such as the western USA," the authors write. "Achieving a more balanced and realistic perspective about fire occurrence, its risks and impacts among fire specialists, decisions makers and the wider public is perhaps the most critical step towards regaining a more sustainable coexistence with landscape fires."
A "more balanced and realistic" perspective from the media when it comes to climate change? Good luck with that.
Read Less
BY: Alex Griswold
A front-page New York Times story detailed Tuesday how the white supremacist and alt-right movements that many warned were on the rise now appear to be fractured and on the decline. The most obvious indication of the far-right’s slide back into irrelevance came Sunday when barely twenty people showed up to the much-hyped “Unite the Right” rally …
Read More
A front-page New York Times story detailed Tuesday how the white supremacist and alt-right movements that many warned were on the rise now appear to be fractured and on the decline. The most obvious indication of the far-right's slide back into irrelevance came Sunday when barely twenty people showed up to the much-hyped "Unite the Right" rally a year after it drew 400 attendees.
It was a fine premise for a fine story, but toward the end of the piece comes this:
But some experts on white nationalism say the movement’s political agenda remains disconcertingly widespread. And some policy issues the far right has promoted, including immigration restrictions, ending affirmative action and instituting trade protections, have been embraced by mainstream right-wing politicians and pundits.
"What’s crucial for the fate of the alt-right is not the demonstrations," said Thomas J. Main, a political scientist at Baruch College. "They are a political movement that is concerned with influencing the way people think, and there are a lot of signs that their ideas continue to penetrate mainstream media and political culture."
Seriously, New York Times? Whether or not you agree with tariffs, immigration restrictions, or opposition to affirmative action (I'm only one-for-three), it's pretty obvious that these are long-debated, legitimate policy positions on the left and right alike that ought to be divorced from the smear of white nationalism.
Yes, white nationalists do support those positions, but only because they happen to fall in line with their idiosyncratic views. When mainstream right-wing figures hold the same positions for wildly different reasons, it doesn't follow that it's a sign that white nationalist ideas "continue to penetrate" our politics.
Take for example the issue of abortion. Nazi Germany led the way in liberalizing abortion laws, legalizing it for all women but strongly pressuring Jewish and non-Aryan women to seek the procedure. Later during World War II, they banned the procedure for Aryan women and made it a capital crime to procure one.
It's exceedingly obvious that the Nazi position on abortion had nothing to do with reproductive rights or protecting human life and had everything to do with promoting certain races. But one could have made the same bad faith argument the Times does and accuse post-war Republicans and Democrats alike of embracing "some policy issues the far right has promoted," even though their motivations were radically different.
Proponents of the supposed "far-right" positions outlined by the Times include liberal members of minority groups who obviously have no love of white nationalism. Bernie Sanders is a proponent of keeping immigration levels low, denouncing the 2007 comprehensive immigration bill as a Koch Brothers ploy. Congressman Ted Leiu ripped Harvard for its affirmative action policies, calling them racist against Asian-American students. Proud Native-American Elizabeth Warren supports tariffs as a means to protect workers.
The same is true of ordinary Americans. Take affirmative action, the most obviously racially-tinged of the three debates. Polling on the issue is notoriously difficult, as responses are wildly dependent on how questions are phrased. But a 2016 Gallup poll found that 50% of blacks and 61% Hispanics said that colleges should admit applicants solely on merit, rather than taking race or ethnicity into account. When asked how much race or ethnicity should factor into admissions decisions, a majority of blacks (57%) and a plurality of Hispanics (47%) said it "should not be a factor at all," rather than either a minor or major factor.
Even if we take it for granted that question phrasing or some other circumstance led to higher-than-usual support, how many "white nationalist" policies could you trick more than half of minorities in the country into supporting?
The worry about support for "immigration restrictions" is arguably the most tenuous from the Times, given the longstanding bipartisan consensus for at least some immigration restrictions (only 21% of Americans support "basically open borders"). Where's the line that makes one a borderline Nazi? This is one of the issues where I depart from pro-Trump conservatives, but even I realize there are good-faith, non-racist reasons to support reducing legal immigration levels, ending the lottery visa, curtailing family migration, etc. I just happen to disagree.
We should delight in the fact that racist and far-right elements of our body politic appear to be on the decline. But to suggest the taint of racism has now infected well-meaning individuals within the political mainstream is textbook fear-mongering.
Read Less
BY: Andrew Stiles
Space Force is President Donald Trump’s gift to future generations of proud Americans who will one day bear witness to the greatest empire on Earth’s ultimate conquest: the final frontier. But first, he needs our help choosing a logo.
https://twitter.com/JustinFishelABC/status/1027650889425866752
Once the logo is sorted, we can all start stocking up on trendy Space Force gear, and wearing it to social functions. A selfie in a hot new Space Force tactical vest is sure to boost your swipe rate on Tinder. Unfortunately, the logo options the Trump campaign’s interns came up with are pretty lame, so we decided to design a few better, bolder logos for your immediate consideration. Let us know what you think!
Read More
Space Force is President Donald Trump's gift to future generations of proud Americans who will one day bear witness to the greatest empire on Earth's ultimate conquest: the final frontier. But first, he needs our help choosing a logo.
The Trump campaign wants people to vote on a new logo for @realDonaldTrump's proposed #SpaceForce and they want you to buy a new "line of gear." Setting aside questions about the appropriateness of all this, keep in mind there may never be a Space Force. pic.twitter.com/TNoX285knV
— Justin Fishel (@JustinFishelABC) August 9, 2018
Once the logo is sorted, we can all start stocking up on trendy Space Force gear, and wearing it to social functions. A selfie in a hot new Space Force tactical vest is sure to boost your swipe rate on Tinder. Unfortunately, the logo options the Trump campaign's interns came up with are pretty lame, so we decided to design a few better, bolder logos for Space Force (and its various branches, e.g., galaxy border guard, department of space corrections) for your immediate consideration. Let us know what you think!
Read Less
BY: David Isaac
Britain’s Labour Party has undergone a kind of gravitational collapse. Its fringes have fallen into its center, forming a black hole that is a maelstrom of anti-Semitism. Hard to imagine that only a decade ago it was the most mainstream of parties. Its leader Tony Blair preached a mixture of social justice and free markets. The speed with which Labour has fallen to extremists should serve as a wake-up call.
Read More
Britain's Labour Party has undergone a kind of gravitational collapse. Its fringes have fallen into its center, forming a black hole that is a maelstrom of anti-Semitism. Hard to imagine that only a decade ago it was the most mainstream of parties. Its leader Tony Blair preached a mixture of social justice and free markets. The speed with which Labour has fallen to extremists should serve as a wake-up call.
For Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, it's been the summer of discontent. He struggles with a series of embarrassments—all self-inflicted—the most recent of which is the disclosure that he spoke at the wedding of Palestinian Authority adviser Husam Zomlot in 2010. (Zomlot is often accused of denying the Holocaust. Whether or not he did, he's made so many obnoxious, ahistorical remarks typical of PA members that it hardly matters.)
The Zomlot wedding discovery, which hit the papers on August 12, followed the more damaging revelation the day before that Corbyn had taken part in a 2014 ceremony in Tunis honoring Arab terrorists. Corbyn can be seen holding a wreath at a cemetery monument which includes the names of those who perpetrated the 1972 Munich Massacre. Pathetically, Corbyn confederates attempted to defend his participation by claiming he was there to commemorate 47 PLO members killed in a 1985 Israeli air strike, which is bad enough. (It emerged that their monument was in a different part of the cemetery.)
This cemetery fiasco followed yet another leak of a 2013 video showing Corbyn comparing Israeli rule in the territories to the Nazi occupation of Europe. The combination seems to have been too much for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who condemned Corbyn in an August 13 tweet.
The cascading waterfall of bad press began on July 17 when Labour's ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) approved a watered-down version of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism. The NEC left out four points found in the widely accepted IHRC definition.
This was the last straw for Jewish Labour MP Margaret Hodge who on the day of the decision swore at Corbyn calling him an "anti-Semite and a racist." Tellingly, the Labour Party opened an investigation into Hodge, who was informed only on August 6 that no action would be taken against her. (Labour MP Ian Austin, who had also protested the new anti-Semitism code, remains under investigation.)
Hodge reflected the feelings of UK Jewry. On July 25, three Jewish newspapers made headlines themselves by running the identical cover page editorial warning about Corbyn's "existential" threat to British Jewry. This was after efforts to improve the situation hit a blank wall. In late April the Board of Deputies of British Jewry and the Jewish Leadership Council had met with Corbyn for two hours without getting him to agree to a single one of the concrete actions to combat anti-Semitism in Labour they had advanced. After the unprecedented consensus editorial, Corbyn attempted damage control by releasing a video in which he admitted that "there is a real problem of antisemitism that Labour is working to overcome." This was surreal coming from Corbyn—a man who reportedly expelled a Holocaust survivor from a 2010 Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony for objecting to his comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany.
Corbyn is only the tip of the iceberg. Corbyn's official Facebook post acknowledging his party's anti-Semitism problem was immediately proven correct by the stream of anti-Semitic comments below it. "Calling the Rothschild and other Jewish illuminati for what they are is not antisemitism," one wrote. Currently, some 75 Labour members are being investigated for anti-Jewish conduct. Over 200 cases of anti-Semitic behavior have yet to be investigated. Unsurprisingly, the NEC is dragging its feet. Only 11 cases have been concluded.
What Labour support there is for Israel seems to have little influence. The Labour Friends of Israel caucus condemned the NEC's revisionist definition of anti-Semitism to little effect. Jewish Labour Party councilors are made to feel unwelcome. In March, two former councilors, Joe Goldberg and Natan Doron from North London, quit because of the Jew hatred in their district. "Many members have repeated to me assertions about Jews having big noses, controlling the media, and being wealthy," Goldberg said. Doron said he was told how Israel was a Nazi state.
The Labour Party proves that even middle-of-the-road parties can go rogue. Can the same thing happen here? Sadly, there are disturbing trends within the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton's leaked campaign emails showed how she wanted to play down talk of Israel during large rallies, an acknowledgment of anti-Israel attitudes among the crowds. At a townhall in 2014, Bernie Sanders' milquetoast remark about how Gazans used some of the construction materials Israel sent them to build terror tunnels was met with outrage. Queens County primary winner Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is only the most prominent of a number of Democratic up-and-comers who openly criticize Israel.
A Pew Research Center survey conducted in mid-January found that the percentage of Democrats who sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians dropped from 38 percent in 2001 to 27 percent in 2018. Among those who identify as "liberal" Democrats the number is still more dramatic—from 48 percent in 2001 to 19 percent in 2018.
These are worrying numbers. Anti-Israelism is more than a gateway drug to anti-Semitism. It is the new anti-Semitism. American Jewish leaders who should be warning of the danger are focused on far right-wing anti-Semitism, far less dangerous today, while the more popular, virulent kind spreads directly under their noses and in the party to which nearly all of them belong.
Read Less
BY: Alex Griswold
CNN’s Chris Cuomo seems to think it’s okay to assault Nazis. He did not say so Monday night. Instead he strongly implied it throughout a five-minute monologue, in which he dredged up every canard justifying attacking Nazi protesters without actually saying it’s okay to attack Nazi protesters, all while maintaining that he was scandalized by the …
Read More
CNN's Chris Cuomo seems to think it's okay to assault Nazis. He did not say so Monday night. Instead he strongly implied it throughout a five-minute monologue, in which he dredged up every canard justifying attacking Nazi protesters without actually saying it's okay to attack Nazi protesters, all while maintaining that he was scandalized by the violent elements of Antifa that were on full display at Sunday's "Unite the Right" rally.
Cuomo is certainly against violence, yessir. He just thinks that "all punches are not equal morally" and "fighting hate is right" and "in a clash between hate and those who oppose it, those who oppose it are on the side of right."
I'm being generous when I say Cuomo "seems to think," because there's no evidence of thought driving Cuomo's rant. Instead it came from a sort of a simple brutishness where people who have it coming exist on a different moral plane from people who Cuomo prefers remain unharmed. The notion that maybe violent Nazis and violent anti-fascists might both be wrong escapes him.
Cuomo began okay.
The vast majority were peaceful. But peppered in the crowd were members of Antifa, or anti-fascists. They covered their faces, confronted police and berated journalists and that was wrong…
When you use your hands in a violent way, you are a rioter. And unless you're justified in defending yourself and you hit someone, you're a thug, you're a criminal. You attack cops, you slap the media, you are in the wrong, period.
So far, correct. But Cuomo made his perennial mistake: he continued to speak.
But I argue to you tonight, all punches are not equal morally. In the eyes of the law, yes. But in the eyes of good and evil, here's the argument: if you're a punk that comes to start trouble in a mask and hurt people, you're not about any virtuous cause. You're just somebody who's going to be held to the standard of doing something wrong.
But when someone comes to call out bigots and it gets hot, even physical, are they equally wrong as the bigot they are fighting? I argue, no. Fighting against hate matters.
I don't know how to describe this other than weaselly. It's written intentionally in the passive voice in a way that makes it impossible to actually weigh the morality of the situation he describes. It "gets hot." It "gets physical." Who throws the first punch is left to the imagination, even though the law and most people judge violence precisely on those terms.
That's an obscurity of convenience, of course. Cuomo can't bring himself to overtly say it's sometimes okay to start a fight with Nazis so he adopts the old Elaine Benes technique: you go to a Nazi protest, you counter-protest, things got heated, yada yada yada, you end up getting physical. We're just supposed to assume that the yada yada yada justifies getting physical through no wrongdoing on the part of the counter-protester.
The other weasel word that pops up throughout the piece is how it's okay to "fight" hateful people. That could of course mean something as benign as picketing Nazis, but also, you know, fighting. Cuomo's use of the word makes it impossible to call him out for doing things like looking into the camera and telling his "hateful" viewers that "fighting you is right," after five minutes of defending people who get into physical fights with Nazis.
Now, how you fight matters too. There's no question about that. But drawing a moral equivalency between those espousing hate and those fighting it because they both resort to violence emboldens hate, legitimizes hateful belief and elevates what should be stamped out.
This is exactly the phenomenon I pointed out this morning and why I felt the need to write this piece. Cuomo seems incapable of understanding that you can denounce the actions of people on one side of a debate without elevating or siding with their enemies. To him, drawing a equivalency between what actually are morally equivalent actions is the same as drawing moral equivalency between beliefs.
No one worth listening to is claiming that because the Neo-Nazis on Sunday performed no crimes and their opponents committed several, Neo-Nazism is the morally superior worldview. Rational adults are perfectly capable of understanding that right-thinking people can do bad things and wrong-thinking people can do good things. Most of us grasped this concept long ago, but Cuomo subscribes to a sort of tribalism where the morality of actions rises on falls on whether the perpetrators are The Good Guys or The Bad Guys.
To build on that point, notice later on why Antifa is bad, according to Cuomo.
The bigots are wrong to hit. Antifa, or whomever, anarchists or malcontent or misguided, they are also wrong to hit.
They're anarchists. They're malcontents and misguided. Earlier, it was because they were "not about any virtuous cause." In Cuomo's one-dimensional moral universe, Antifa violence is bad because Antifa are also The Bad Guys with Bad Thoughts, just of a different flavor.
But fighting hate is right. And in a clash between hate and those who oppose it, those who oppose it are on the side of right. Think about: civil rights activist, were they the same morally as the bigots, as the racist with whom they exchanged blows? Are people who go to war against an evil regime on the same moral ground as those they seek to stop from oppressing the weak?
"Fighting hate is right," is a sweeping statement that misses that there are about a million ways of fighting hate, and some are clearly moral and some are not. This is the crux of the issue, and it's getting to the point where I can't tell if Cuomo is intentionally dishonest or merely very obtuse.
To use his war analogy, shooting at a squad of Nazis on a battlefield during World War II is one way of fighting hate. Rounding up Nazis soldiers and summarily executing them in contravention of the Geneva Convention is another. Cuomo's singular focus on the justness of the cause gives us no way to judge the morality of individual actions taken in pursuit of that cause.
The hypothetical he does provide is no use at all.
When you punch me in the nose for being Italian and you say I'm somehow less than, am I in the same moral place when I punch you back for saying that? It's not about being right in the eyes of the law, but you also have to know what's right and wrong and immoral, in a good and evil sense.
This is crafted to obscure the actual issue. Of course you're morally justified in hitting someone in self-defense. Cuomo says it's "not about being right in the eyes of the law," but picks a convenient hypothetical where he'd be unquestionably right in the eyes of the law. If Cuomo were less, again, weaselly, he might provide an example where the law disapproves of methods of "fighting hate" so his ideas could be judged on their merits.
But that would give the game away. It's obvious to the point of banality that it's morally justified to protest Nazis, or hit them if they attack you first. Cuomo didn't tease before the break that his closing remarks would be "a little controversial," lead with "Two wrongs and what is right?" and go on a five-minute rant to explain what every rational American already believes.
Cuomo cannot bring himself to say what he wants to say, but knows to be indefensible: that it's morally justified to assault someone guilty of believing bad things. And for good reason! Cuomo's philosophy comes with no limiting principles. Virtually every politically active American believes that they are "fighting hate" or battling with the forces of injustice. If an individual person judges that the Republican Party or Black Lives Matter are forces of "hate" or "racism," Cuomo's paradigm would suggest that they are morally justified in engaging in violence.
Cuomo would likely respond that hypothetical person is simply wrong (again, because in his mind, they are not Bad Guys). But he can't have it both ways. He can't proclaim that we should judge the morality of a physical confrontation based on our personal estimation of the fighters' beliefs, and then balk when others reach different conclusions. Once the morality of an action has been divorced from the objective standard that you should not attack people who didn't attack you first, the door has been opened to rational and irrational subjective judgements alike.
If not out of decency, perhaps Cuomo should reconsider his views out of self-preservation. He and his CNN colleagues are smeared daily as fake news, as enemies of the people, as liars, as communists and globalists bringing down the country. Cuomo's black-and-white way of viewing the world is not so different as he'd like to believe from the man arrested for threatening to kill his colleagues, or the man who told a reporter after a newsroom shooting, "Maybe y’all shouldn’t be such fake news."
Cuomo would, in the words of the playwright, cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil. But to half the country, he IS the Devil. The rules of law and civilization protects him, protects you, protects me, and, yes, protects Nazis.
Read Less
BY: Andrew Stiles
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanuagh is in hot water for, among other things, claiming to be a “fan” of the Washington Nationals baseball team. Media outlets have been asking their readers to send in photos of Kavanaugh “attending” Nationals games to bolster their journalistic investigations.
Read More
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanuagh is in hot water for, among other things, claiming to be a "fan" of the Washington Nationals baseball team. Media outlets have been asking their readers to send in photos of Kavanaugh "attending" Nationals games to bolster their journalistic investigations.
Hey #Nats fans, have you gone to a game with Judge Brett Kavanaugh — or even just seen him at Nats Park? @propublica would love to hear from you. https://t.co/4bBFYX2NIo pic.twitter.com/HtSSOywrW9
— WAMU 88.5 (@wamu885) August 13, 2018
Naturally, the Washington Free Beacon has been conducting its own investigation, and recently contacted our readers for assistance. They responded beautifully, producing a tremendous body of evidence that raises troubling questions about Kavanaugh's fitness to serve on the highest court in the land. If the following crowdsourced photos are any indication, Nationals-Gate could turn out to be a far more monstrous scandal than we ever imagined.
Here we see Kavanaugh enjoying the Star-Spangled Banner at Nationals Park with a man who appears to be Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a disgraced war criminal backed by Russia. Interesting… Wonder what they discussed during the game?
This reader submission clearly shows Kavanaugh scrounging for autographs next to a member of the infamous street gang MS-13. It's not clear whether the two men were attending the game together, but as you'll soon see, Kavanaugh has a pattern of disturbing associations at the ball park.
Here we see Kavanaugh in a fancy dress, belting out the National Anthem in close proximity to a man who resembles Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. (The third man in the background certainly seems to regard the situation with great suspicion.) Perhaps special counsel Robert Mueller would be interested to learn more about this baseline bromance?
This reader submission clearly shows Kavanaugh enjoying himself at Nats Park. What remains to be seen is whether the individual proudly displaying the "Go Nats" sign is, in fact, a buffed-up Khalid Sheik Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks. He's supposed to be in lockdown at Guantanamo Bay, but if anyone could secure the scoundrel's release and keep it quiet, it would probably be a judge. Hmm…
Here we see Kavanaugh embracing Nationals' All-Star outfielder Bryce Harper, who has never been convicted of a war crime. But take a closer look at the judge's left hand, and you'll begin to wonder just how deep this scandal goes.
Brett Kavanaugh, call your office…
Thanks to all our readers for your submissions. Keep them coming!
Read Less
BY: Alex Griswold
The good news about Sunday’s “Unite the Right II” rally held in Washington D.C. is that it was an embarrassing failure. A year after hundreds of alt-right protesters clashed with Antifa counter-protesters in Charlottesville, resulting in the death of Heather Heyer, less than two dozen fringe-balls showed up for the sequel. By contrast, the counter-protesters …
Read More
The good news about Sunday's "Unite the Right II" rally held in Washington D.C. is that it was an embarrassing failure. A year after hundreds of alt-right protesters clashed with Antifa counter-protesters in Charlottesville, resulting in the death of Heather Heyer, less than two dozen fringe-balls showed up for the sequel. By contrast, the counter-protesters numbered in the thousands, including hundreds of armored and black-clad Antifa.
The even better news, per The Washington Post's story "White-supremacist rally near White House dwarfed by thousands of anti-hate protesters," was that there was no violence at the rally!
A massive police presence Sunday kept the two sides separated, and outside of a confrontation between some antifa, or anti-fascist, protesters and police long after the rally had ended, there were no reports of violence. Police reported that one man was arrested after he assaulted a man wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat.
So there was no violence, except for, uh, those very specific acts of violence. Huh.
I thought that might have been awkwardly phrased, but such downplaying of leftist violence runs throughout the piece:
Antifa members vented their frustration at not being able to confront the rallygoers by lighting smoke bombs and firecrackers and throwing eggs in the direction of police.
Gosh, just a lot of "anti-hate" people at a rally with no violence tossing stuff in the direction of law enforcement officers (certainly not at them!). Well, they were just "venting their frustration" at not being able to "confront" the alt-right with the explosives they brought.
Most began heading home, but police kept a watchful eye as the black-clad group carrying umbrellas wandered about knocking over trash cans, chanting "Bust a window!" and yelling at police to get out of their cars and "meet us in the streets." A confrontation between the protesters and police erupted briefly near 13th and G streets NW.
You know, just brief violence, calls for more violence, and actual property damage from the anti-hate protesters at the rally with no violence.
C'mon. Antifa members came ready and raring to attack the far-right protesters, and proceeded to attack the cops for not letting them attack the protesters. The only reason they didn't partake in far greater violence as they did in previous years was because a massive police presence showed up to make sure they didn't. They don't deserve any credit for that.
By all accounts Antifa is radical, anarchist, and avowedly pro-violence, to the extent that the Barack Obama FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a warning calling them "anarchist extremists" and "domestic terrorists," a warning that has since been vindicated by many, many, many, many, many, many violent protests. Why, two years later, are the national media still downplaying the criminal elements of so-called "anti-hate" protesters?
Even to the extent WaPo‘s "anti-hate" descriptor was meant to apply to peaceful "anti-fascist" protesters, we're still talking about protesters who chanted things like "No border, no wall, no USA at all!" and "f*** the police." The counter-protesters were obviously pretty far to the left of the average American, yet WaPo described them with benign terms like "anti-hate" and "anti-fascist" and the words "liberal" and "left" never appear in the story. At one point, the paper describes how "hundreds of anti-racist protesters" had been brought to the rally by… the International Socialist Organization.
That WaPo bent over backwards to excuse the violence would be embarrassing in any case, but it also happened the day after Antifa protesters in Charlottesville showed up to counter a Nazi protest, found zero Nazis, and proceeded to clash with police anyway. Protesters also attacked reporters, cursed them out while trying to do stand ups, cut news crews' cables, and intentionally blocked photographers trying to cover the rally. Geez, don't they know democracy dies in darkness?
Credit where it's due; several journalists did a good job of calling attention to Antifa violence against police and journalists over the weekend. But even when they did so, they were lectured by other journalists.
This is a bad article & is a good example of how not to cover white supremacy https://t.co/lXZ3VkEfVv pic.twitter.com/kQ29c6kQ3R
— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) August 13, 2018
Hey Jake! Reporter who spent all weekend wedged up against anti-fascists who probably didn’t want press there, but were pretty uniformly chill. You know who shoved media indiscriminately? Police. https://t.co/vOIeKR1Yrm
— Kelly Weill (@KELLYWEILL) August 13, 2018
It’s just so weird that we’ve chosen this incident of swatting a camera away as PROOF that a group of people is violent. If swatting a camera away is the bar for coverage, then give me a call Tapper, I’ve got some real stories for you! https://t.co/HhGNRldVqP
— Andy Campbell (@AndyBCampbell) August 12, 2018
It’s a day that ends with y so Tapper is trolling for right-wing retweets https://t.co/mSMbCr02mz
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 12, 2018
Brian how much money do you make? https://t.co/M31SgNPI0O
— Luke O’Neil (@lukeoneil47) August 13, 2018
Corporate media are far more concerned with one person swatting a camera then they are with violent white supremacy. https://t.co/oZGwAjNIHi
— Fall Out Goy (@ben_geier) August 13, 2018
I suspect this sort of response is an overreaction to the infamous comments made by President Donald Trump in the wake of Charlottesville. Trump said of the Unite the Right rally-goers that "the press has treated them absolutely unfairly" and claimed "you also had some very fine people on both sides." Given that the Unite the Right attendees ranged from overt Nazis to merely-very-racist alt-right wackos, the president was rebuked by Republicans, Democrats, and even members of his own administration.
But in the zeal to repudiate that notion, many in the media and many more on the left fell victim to an equally irrational belief: that the self-declared "anti-fascist" side was unequivocally good. CNN's Chris Cuomo and The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg compared Antifa to brave WWII soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy. When CNN ran a well-researched profile headlined "Unmasking the leftist Antifa movement: Activists seek peace through violence," laying out multiple instances of Antifa engaging in and advocating for violence and property damage, that headline was later changed to remove any reference to violence.
That makes for a convenient, black-and-white media narrative, but the side effect is that you have to overlook or diminish the very real, very bad, very violent actors who make up a large part of the supposed good guys. It leads to an even more absurd result where you have to attack a Jewish reporter and left-wing websites who do express concern about attacks on journalists as useful idiots of the Nazis.
When "both sides" and "whataboutism" is used to overlook or avoid calling out violence from your allies, it deserves to be called out and shamed. But it doesn't follow that every effort to note violent elements on "both sides" is a bad faith attempt to shield Nazis. The media has a responsibility to report honestly, and when the fact is that anti-fascists engage in violence on a regular and organized basis, it shouldn't matter whose narrative it does or doesn't fit into.
Read Less
BY: Andrew Stiles
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) is one of the most unpopular politicians in the country. According to a recent Gallup poll, 53 percent of Americans hold an unfavorable view of the woman in line to become Speaker of the House if Democrats retake control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections. According to Pelosi, …
Read More
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) is one of the most unpopular politicians in the country. According to a recent Gallup poll, 53 percent of Americans hold an unfavorable view of the woman in line to become Speaker of the House if Democrats retake control of Congress in this year's midterm elections. According to Pelosi, voters don't like her because she's "effective." Others claim her unpopularity is due to the fact that "she's a woman." Perhaps some voters dislike her because, with a net worth approaching $30 million, she is one of the wealthiest members of congress.
That said, Pelosi remains popular among Democrats. Fifty-five percent of them continue to view her favorably, despite the fact that she presided over historic electoral defeats for the party in 2010 and 2014. A number of Democratic politicians, however, have started to distance themselves from Pelosi by pledging their intent to vote against her in House leadership elections, should she insist on running for Speaker again. Others, including rising star and 2028 presidential frontrunner Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are unable to muster a coherent thought when asked about their support for Pelosi's leadership.
.@Ocasio2018 on Nancy Pelosi: "I think absolutely right now..she is the leader of..no no, um, she is speaker..or rather leader Pelosi..hopefully we’ll see..she’s ah..she’s the current leader of the party and..the party absolutely does have its leadership in the House and Senate" pic.twitter.com/6FUTWpgS98
— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) August 9, 2018
Republicans, meanwhile, are hoping Pelosi sticks around. President Donald Trump recently engaged in some concern trolling on Twitter, urging Democrats to rally behind their Congressional leader.
Democrats, please do not distance yourselves from Nancy Pelosi. She is a wonderful person whose ideas & policies may be bad, but who should definitely be given a 4th chance. She is trying very hard & has every right to take down the Democrat Party if she has veered too far left!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 10, 2018
One of the primary complaints about Pelosi, and other members of the House Democratic Leadership, is her advanced age. She will be pushing 79 years old by the time the next Congress is sworn in. Born in 1940, Pelosi is too old to qualify as a Baby Boomer, the generation historians will rightly blame for the decline and fall of the United States. Pelosi's involvement in Democratic politics dates back to the early 1960s. She entered her senior year of college around the same time Barack Obama was "born" in Hawaii. Pelosi reached retirement age in 2005, two years before the first iPhone was introduced. Did I mention she is very old.
In order to put Pelosi's age into the crucial context necessary for adequate statistical analysis, what follows is a list of 10 celebrities who are ridiculously old, yet still younger than the House Democratic leader.
Hillary Clinton (70)
Vince McMahon (72)
Dolly Parton (72)
Gary Busey (74)
Mick Jagger (75)
Bernie Sanders (76)
Pelé (77)
Bob Dylan (77)
Chuck Norris (78)
James Clyburn (78)
Clyburn is the third-ranking member of the House Democratic leadership team. He is pictured below with Pelosi and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (left), the second-ranking Democrat in the House. All three of them are pushing 80, as is Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), the bald guy whispering in Clyburn's ear. Standing directly behind Clyburn in this photo is former Rep. John Conyers (D., Mich), who finally retired in 2017 at the age of 88, following a series of sexual harassment allegations. With a combined age of 235 years, the House Democratic leadership team of Pelosi, Hoyer, and Clyburn, is nearly as old as the United States (242 years).
Read Less
BY: Andrew Stiles
Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday formally unveiled President Donald Trump’s visionary plan to establish a new branch of the U.S. military: the Space Force. The president marked the occasion by Tweeting, and liberals across the country were left with the odd yet familiar taste in the mouths that often results from being thoroughly owned.
Read More
Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday formally unveiled President Donald Trump's visionary plan to establish a new branch of the U.S. military: the Space Force. The president marked the occasion by Tweeting, and liberals across the country were left with the odd yet familiar taste in the mouths that often results from being thoroughly owned.
Space Force all the way!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 9, 2018
Most Americans are justifiably thrilled about Space Force, primarily because they are eager to reverse the decline of the American Empire initiated under President Barack Obama. If Space Force is to succeed in extending America's military dominance on Earth to the rest of the galaxy, our leaders must establish a clear set of priorities. Below are five reasonable suggestions.
Defending the United States against space-born threats from China, Iran, and MS-13 space animals is the ultimate priority. This will require, among other things, the deployment of a Star Wars/Iron Dome missile defense capability just beyond Earth's atmosphere, and a buttload of hi-tech lasers. Another critical step in Trump's plan to project American hegemony in space will be the annexation of the International Space Station, followed by the total annexation of space itself. Once that's done, U.S. forces will litter the galaxy with space mines to hinder enemy "exploration" of the moon, Mars, and the billions and billions of stars and galaxies. This will have the added benefit of forestalling a potential alien invasion, in which case other nations would be expected to reimburse us for the cost of the mines.
If you don't have borders, you don't have a galaxy, much less a planet or country. Granted, patrolling the entire galaxy to prevent unlawful intrusion is more of a longer term project, but construction should begin immediately on a beautiful translucent border sphere that will ultimately envelope the entire planet. Only lawful U.S. spacecraft will be allowed to pass through without a visa or valid work permit, because we are definitely going to need a lot of foreign space laborers for what comes next.
If there's oil on Earth, there's got to be oil in space, whether it's on the moon, floating in Saturn's rings, or bubbling below the surface of a meteor. U.S. space forces can and must frack the $#!% out of anything that has moved, died, and turned into beautiful clean coal out there. Libs are going to freak, and they'll soon realize that building tent cities and forming drum circles to protest new pipelines aren't viable options on the surface of Mars. Losers! But just in case, Space Force should be testing new forms of tear gas to ensure compatibility in lower-gravity environs.
At some point the libs are going to have to realize that their fantasy world of universal bike ownership, solar-powered housing projects, and candlelit brunch outings is never going to happen, and the only way to truly combat climate change is through U.S. military might.
The U.S. Air Force Bombing Forest Fires Is So Crazy It Just Might Work https://t.co/2NOILfJako pic.twitter.com/xaqkIHP73G
— Popular Mechanics (@PopMech) August 8, 2018
Once the U.S. military has conquered space, Trump should direct our forces to get to work on a solution to "climate change," in the unlikely but not impossible event that liberals are right and the whole thing isn't, in fact, an elaborate Chinese hoax. It's anyone's guess as to how this might be accomplished, which is why Space Force should not hesitate to experiment by, for example, detonating a bunch of tactical nukes in space and just seeing what happens. Would environmental fanatics really miss the moon if blowing it to shreds helped stem the tide of rising sea levels they're always complaining about? I don't think so!
The projection of military might is merely one aspect of a successful empire. Perhaps equally important, if not more so, is the protection of wealth and opulence. That is why establishing a "Mar-a-Lago in space" should be a critical aspect of the Space Force mission. Fortunately, we have a president who knows a thing or two about luxury real estate. Marble tiling and gold-plated showers are just as breathtaking in orbit as they are on Earth, and no expense should be spared in constructing this monument to American might, which could also double as a military detention center for space terrorists.
Read Less
