RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/progressive-plans-change-senate-response-jamelle-bouie/

I n a provocative Sunday opinion piece for the New York Times, Jamelle Bouie takes aim at the United States Senate. It is “is highly undemocratic and strikingly unrepresentative” institution, dominated by a “Republican coalition of rural whites, exurban whites and anti-tax suburbanites.” This needs to be changed — because everybody knows it is un-American to oppose higher taxes!

Bouie offers an outside-the-box idea. Rather than change the Senate via constitutional amendment, progressives should look to increase the number of Democrats in the Senate by giving representation in the Senate to non-state units—“Washington, D.C., the Atlantic territories, the Pacific territories and the Native tribes.”

Normally, I do not write columns responding to other columns. But Bouie’s piece is typical of the progressive Left’s frustration with the Senate, as well as of an inability to reckon with its role in our constitutional regime. For these reasons, it merits a thorough examination.

For starters, full disclosure: I get it. The Senate is not democratic, and in a republic, that is problematic. All else being equal, I would agree with Bouie. But all else is not equal. This is in fact a very old debate, whose context demands some thoughtful appreciation before slashing changes are made. Why do you think the Constitutional Convention dragged on through the entire summer of 1787? James Madison, James Wilson, and other federalists from the large states insisted on a fully majoritarian system. But the small-state representatives, including John Dickinson and Roger Sherman, said, No dice — you want our assent to this Constitution, we need guarantees.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/12/the-media-wounded/

There still exists a physical media in the sense of airing current events. But it is not journalism as we once understood the disinterested reporting of the news. Journalism is now dead. The media lives on.

Reporters today believe that their coverage serves higher agendas of social justice, identity politics, “equality” and diversity. To the degree a news account is expanded or ignored, praised or blasted, depends on its supposed utility to the effort to fundamentally transform the country into something unlike its founding.

At the recent third president-less White House Correspondents’ Dinner, passive-aggressive journalists whined that they were victims, standing on the barricades against the all-powerful, all-evil—and all absent—Donald Trump. If the attempt was to return professionalism to the evening and eschew the pathological celebrity obsessions of the past, the result was only more confirmation of the self-referential and narcissistic culture of the Washington press corps.

Why should we believe reporters suddenly worried about ethics, and free inquiry and speech?

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/wapo_jumps_to_gazas_defense_on_missile_attack_story.html

The Washington Post article “Gaza’s homemade rockets still test Israel’s sophisticated defense system,” published May 7, 2019, uses biased phrasing in the title to downplay the threat Gaza imposes against Israel, stating that Gaza’s “homemade” rockets merely “tested” Israel’s defense system.

The authors open the article highlighting the tight border controls Israel enforces on Gaza but disregard Egypt’s border controls on Gaza. More importantly, the authors neglect to mention why border controls exist! The reader is primed to feel that Israel is singularly acting unjustly against impoverished Gaza. Why is Gaza impoverished when Hamas receives billions in humanitarian aid? Largely because Hamas exploits aid funds to stockpile weapons and build terroristic infrastructure instead of helping its people.

While the authors admit to Gaza’s large stockpile of rockets in the article’s beginning, their biased frame continues by stating that a tiny fraction was fired toward Israel. The nearly 700 rockets were not just fired “toward” Israel. The rockets fired by Hamas and Islamic Jihad targeted and devastated civilian, not military, areas across southern Israel, resulting in the tragic deaths of four Israeli civilians (briefly mentioned later) in addition to injuring hundreds of Israeli civilians, including children (who are never acknowledged).

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/deplatforming-the-platformers-why-antitrust-legislation-is-the-way-to-go/

Having failed to impeach President Trump on grounds of collusion with the Russians, the Democratic left and its allies have turned to other weapons in their arsenal to obstruct his re-election. Their instruments can be very potent: a media blitzkrieg, the raising of the dead (the cemetery vote), multiple vote counting, newly franchised illegal voters, massive vote harvesting, and social media censorship—all of which constitute a campaign of monstrous voter fraud.

Evicting dissident voices from social media platforms may be the most effective device of the left. How can such high-tech despotism be challenged or negated? Citizen journalists, who can be seen as liberal democracy’s samizdat warriors, are to be applauded and supported for trying to counter a significant bias, but far more is required to thwart what amounts to an organized campaign to commit doxa violence—a modus operandi perhaps even more effective than the practice of totalitarian terror.

There are many ways to eliminate opposing voices, from police oppression to mass slaughter to the stifling of the means to acquire salient information. The coercive method eventually engenders resentment, revolt and ultimately political collapse. Data suppression works better, not only muzzling people from expressing their views and convictions but preventing many common folk from even knowing they have been erased from the public conversation. Big Tech, in collaboration with the Democratic left, may well be President Trump’s most powerful enemy—and, indeed, the gravest threat to freedom and the life of a viable democracy.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/washington_post_makes_gaza_assault_on_israel_into_israels_fault.html

In the Washington Post article “Israel, militants escalate clashes,” published May 6, 2019, the title gives the reader the impression that Israel is escalating clashes with “militants.” First, Hamas and (Palestinian) Islamic Jihad initiated the assault on Israel, to which Israel justly responded in defense. Hamas is the people’s elected governing body in Gaza and also an internationally recognized terrorist organization. Islamic Jihad, which is also a terrorist organization, receives funding and arms from Iran and is known to collude with Hamas.

Second, the subtitle goes on to express that the clash was the “Deadliest Fighting Since 2014 War” but does not point out that it was the deadliest for Israeli civilians, which is what should absolutely be mentioned in the title or subtitle. Not disclosing this fact upfront fails to alert the reader to the gravity of the assault on Israel, specifically Israel’s civilians, which The Washington Post continues to overlook and dismiss. The reader is allowed to make initial assumptions based on the biased presentation by experienced journalists before he even reads the article, if he does at all.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/im-glad-citizen-journalists-are-out-t

“I’m not going to let them bully me out of reporting,” said Tim Pool after recording an Antifa protest where angry activists cursed at him. There might have been violence, but Antifa’s “de-escalation team” protected him, he says.

That surprised me. “Antifa has a de-escalation team?” I ask Pool in my latest internet video.

“They have people who try and make sure nobody from their side starts it — because cameras are rolling,” he answered.

Pool is part of the new media that now cover stories the mainstream media often miss.

I’ve become part of that new media, too. I still work at Fox, but now most of my video views (117 million plus) come from short videos I post on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Pool considers himself a man of the left. He supported Bernie Sanders and once worked for Vice. But now he often finds himself criticizing his fellow leftists.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/06/if-deplatforming-hoaxsters-is-ok-the-news-media-should-be-in-big-trouble/

Without much explanation, Facebook last Thursday banned several high-profile users amid accusations they violated the company’s subjective rules about violence and hate speech. The ban applied to InfoWars founder Alex Jones; YouTube star Paul Joseph Watson; Laura Loomer, a 25-year-old journalist and conservative activist, and others accounts loosely aligned with the political Right. (Loomer and Jones already have been kicked off Twitter.)

The company offered little in the way of specifics about why these so-called “dangerous individuals” were banished from the world’s most active social media site. “We’ve always banned individuals or organisations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology,” the company said in a statement.

The corporation’s vague condemnation prompted widespread speculation from journalists about the real reason why these online menaces got the axe: Jones, Watson, Loomer, et. al. are conspiracy theorists, they warned. From 9/11 to Pizzagate, these alleged villains have peddled their own sinister version of reality and spread false information to their followers.

“President Donald Trump on Saturday retweeted messages from conspiracy theorists and far-right figures after Facebook banned several right-wing personalities for promoting violence and hate,” scoffed CNBC online reporter Tom DiChristopher in response to Trump’s weekend tweets criticizing Facebook’s move.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/googles-attack-on-the-claremont-institute-must-not-stand/

Ryan P. Williams of the Claremont Institute has a horror story to share about his experiences with Google:

We wanted to advertise our 40th Anniversary Gala on May 11, at which we’re honoring Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to readers of our own online publication, The American Mind. But Google refuses to allow us to do so. . . .

Google, either its algorithm or some individual, had a look at my essay launching our new campaign for a unifying Americanism, “Defend America—Defeat Multiculturalism.” They decided it to be in violation of their policy on “race and ethnicity in personalized advertising” and shut down our advertising efforts to American Mind readers. We weren’t “advertising” anything in the essay, of course, but the relevant section of their policy lists “racially or ethnically oriented publications, racially or ethnically oriented universities, racial or ethnic dating” as examples of violations.

Somebody must have determined we were offering “racially or ethnically oriented publications.” This is news to us. The Claremont Institute has spent forty years teaching all who are willing to listen that the meaning of the proposition that all human beings are created equal is the central, animating principle of American political life.

One of my colleagues spent two hours on the phone with Google to determine whether we could appeal this ruling or determine which section of the essay was in violation. The response, in short? There is no appeal; we recommend you remove the content to bring yourself into compliance.