RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/07/press_credits_juncker_for_trade_deal_but_should_credit_trump.html

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal headline, blared loudly, was: “How Juncker Sold Trump on Trade Deal.” They’ve since changed it, but here we are.

Juncker is Jean-Claude Juncker, the arrogant, sniveling Luxembourgish President of the European Commission so well regarded by anyone who’s in love with the European Union.

Maybe they changed it because enough readers protested. Because why wasn’t the headline: “How Trump Sold the EU and Juncker the Value of Lowering Trade Barriers to the U.S.”?

That was what really happened.

It is truly sad how one-sided the WSJ has gone on trade. No matter what Trump has done on trade, it is bad.

If something comes out good on trade, like the EU deal, it is the EU that gets the credit. Not Trump. Essentially the WSJ is no different from CNN, MSNBC, the Huffington Post, the New York Times or the Washington Post on trade. They are all worthless.

My guess is that Canada, Mexico and China will all come to the table now, having seen what just happened with Europe, because they realize we finally have a president who is actually serious about opening up trade, instead of just another presidents who gives in. They’ve seen a lot of those. The lack of vision by the WSJ (and others), is astonishing.

When Trump gets done, we will be much closer to zero tariffs and taxes across the board than before he took office. Trump is the one for open and free trade, not a guy like Juncker.

The Journal is little better on immigration, or rather, free borders. They seem to have little or no regard for actually enforcing the laws Congress passes.

Maybe the WSJ should just can all their journalists and replace them with fax machines and robots. When everyone repeats the same talking points, is it any wonder that readership goes down?

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/07/uncomfortable_msnbc_host_uses_antisemitic_slur_to_rhyme_the_name_of_jewish_lawyer_michael_cohen.html

It’s the sort verbal gaffe that could end a career if another ethnic group had been involved – even if, as I am fairly certain in this case, no ethnic animus was involved. Recall, for instance, the Washington, D.C. official who was forced to resign following his use of the word “niggardly” at a public meeting. (He was later offered his job back when linguistic experts pointed out the word has origins in Middle English and has nothing to do with race.)

Even so, it was an appalling lapse.

NewsBusters explains:

MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson crashed and burned Wednesday while attempting to plug an NBC News report during the final moments of her morning show. In a spectacular display of poor judgment, the MSNBC Live host attempted to rhyme former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s name with a made-up word, and wound up using what sounded like an anti-Semitic slur in the process: “Kikle.” Mr. Cohen is Jewish.

Here is video of the incident:

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/after-isis-claims-credit-for-toronto-attack-new-york-times-reporter-says-killer-could-not-be-pro-isis/

A shooting in the Greektown area of Toronto Monday evening killed two and injured 13 more victims:

#BREAKING: Toronto police have identified the 10-year-old girl killed in the Danforth shooting as Julianna Kozis of Markham.

CP24 has learned the identity of one of the victims killed in last night’s mass shooting on the Danforth: 18-year-old Reese Fallon.

BREAKING: Canadian officials identify suspect in Toronto mass shooting as Faisal Hussain of Toronto.

Early on Wednesday, ISIS claimed credit for Monday’s attack, calling Hussain a “soldier of the Islamic State”:

But later in the day, New York Times reporter Rukmini Callamachi claimed that because Hussain killed himself immediately following the attack, he could not possibly have been inspired by ISIS:

Now, alert readers might be a bit confused here. Not only did ISIS claim credit for the attack, as seen in the earlier tweet, but Callamachi herself had reported it.

Strangely, Callamachi was on Canadian TV giving an interview earlier today following the ISIS claim of credit acknowledging that, at least from ISIS’s point of view, they were praising Hussain for responding to their call for supporters to conduct attacks at home to terrorize Western countries:

The phrasing that refers to responding to calls to target coalition countries, that refers to a famous speech put out in 2014 by ISIS’s then spokesman Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani, where they called on people who could not travel to the Islamic State who were still back home in Western countries and elsewhere in the world to carry out attacks in situ, in their own communities, anyway they could. It was in that speech that they spoke about using cars to run people over, even using rocks to use them to smash the heads of their enemies.

So what the phrasing indicates is that from ISIS’ perspective this was a man who was most likely self-radicalized, who was inspired by their propaganda, and not somebody who actually traveled to Syria, or took more concrete direction from the group. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://pjmedia.com/trending/facebook-lawsuits-loom-tens-of-billions-on-the-line/

Facebook stocks plunged precipitously on Thursday after the company’s earnings report showed they missed expectations on revenue and that the social media platform’s monthly users are down significantly. All of this comes in the wake of ongoing scandals, including charges of data misuse and anti-conservative bias.

“During a conference call Wednesday, Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Wehner predicted bad news for the second half, and the company’s shares immediately began a drastic retreat in the extended session,” Marketwatch reported on Thursday.

According to Reuters, “Facebook shares dived 18.6 percent, set for its biggest one-day percentage drop ever, after the social media giant said profit margins would plummet for years due to costs to improve privacy safeguards and slowing usage in its big advertising markets.”

But stock prices aren’t the only problems facing the beleaguered social media behemoth. The company is facing massive fines and possible government intervention as lawsuits pile up in the U.S. and around the world. In fact, Facebook is facing more than three dozen class-action lawsuits over Cambridge Analytica privacy breaches alone. The looming legal nightmare is so significant that the company felt the need to include a note about it in their quarterly SEC report:

Beginning on March 20, 2018, multiple putative class actions and derivative actions were filed in state and federal courts in the United States and elsewhere against us and certain of our directors and officers alleging violations of securities laws, breach of fiduciary duties, and other causes of action in connection with the misuse of certain data by a developer that shared such data with third parties […] the events surrounding this misuse of data became the subject of U.S. Federal Trade Commission and other government inquiries in the United States, Europe, and other jurisdictions. Any such inquiries could subject us to substantial fines and costs, divert resources and the attention of management from our business, or adversely affect our business. [Emphasis added]

Here are a few of the dozens of lawsuits Facebook is facing:
1. Facebook accused of using ad tools to discriminate against older job seekers

PJM’s Phil Baker wrote in May that “A potential class-action lawsuit claims that companies are using Facebook’s ad creation tools to create ads for job hunters that discriminate by age, which is against federal law. The lawsuit is not against Facebook, but against a number of companies using their tools to weed out older job hunters.” CONTINUE AT SITE

http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/398940-polling-could-be-missing-reality-again

The biggest “fake news” story of the last few years was that Donald Trump had almost no chance of being elected president. The entire pundit-polling-news establishment (including myself) was wrong, and the expectation was that these institutions would recalibrate their coverage to reflect a true picture of the country. They made an enormous miscalculation and they would, of course, make changes.

Almost two years later, very little has changed in polling and analysis at major institutions and news media. If anything, the polling has drifted even further from reality when you look at the questions being asked and, more importantly, the questions not being asked. You don’t need polls to see the America you live in. You need polls to understand the part of America you don’t know, don’t see, and don’t understand.
I believe that, in 2016, many of the national election polls were basically accurate, depicting a fairly close race, but the analysis of them was sophomoric, failing to understand the electoral college power of the unique coalition Trump amassed. His daily Midwest rallies were dismissed as curiosities of a desperate candidate with no real chance of winning. Boy, were they wrong.

This disconnect could be happening all over again. Take a look, for example, at the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll for July. It’s very professional and a generally accurate poll. Look at what it found this month: Trump’s approval rating edged up 1 point and his “strong approval” went up 3 points. His personal image improved several points. The congressional horserace closed 4 points in the direction of Republicans.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/07/26/media-gaslighting-cant-hide-fact-trump-campaign-was-spied-on/

After a year of alarming revelations, the media are still more interested in proving the Trump campaign treasonously colluded with Russia than wrestling with the fact that the FBI spied on a presidential campaign.

On Saturday night, heavily redacted copies of the FBI’s application to wiretap Trump campaign affiliate Carter Page were released. The portion of the 412-page document that was not redacted supported the claims of Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), as well as those made by the majority of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

The senators and the representatives had issued reports alleging that the FBI used an unverified Clinton campaign document to secure a wiretap against an American citizen, that the application for the wiretap used circular reporting and lacked verification for its central claims, and that it made materially false claims related to the source’s credibility.

President Trump tweeted triumphantly and hyperbolically about what the documents showed regarding the FBI’s behavior toward his campaign. Whatever you think about Trump’s reaction to the release of the FISA application, the media reaction to the story was disingenuous and even more hyperbolic than the president’s tweets. After a year of continuous and alarming revelations, the media are still more interested in proving the Trump campaign treasonously colluded with Russia than wrestling with the fact that the FBI spied on a presidential campaign, and used dubious partisan political research to justify their surveillance.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270841/greatest-hysteria-american-history-dennis-prager

You and I are living through the greatest mass hysteria in American history. For many Americans, the McCarthy era held that dubious distinction, but what is happening now is incomparably worse.

For one thing, any hysteria that existed then was directed against the greatest evil in the world at the time: communism. Then-Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee notwithstanding, there really were Americans in important positions who supported communist regimes enslaving their populations and committing mass murder. McCarthy was on to something.

In contrast, the country is choking on hysteria over the extremely unlikely possibility — for which there is still no evidence — that Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 presidential election, and the absurdity that President Trump works for Russian President Vladimir Putin.​

For another, the mainstream media did not support McCarthy. Most in the media were highly critical of McCarthy. Today, the mainstream media are not the voices of caution. They are the creators of the hysteria. There have been conspiracy theories throughout American history (e.g. Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t kill President John F. Kennedy alone; the moon landing never happened). But this is the first time the media have created and promoted a conspiracy. Not surprisingly, they have dropped any pretense of objective reporting in the process.

And while some Americans were unfairly labeled communists during the McCarthy era, countless Democratic politicians and leaders in news and entertainment have called members of the Trump administration and the tens of millions of Americans who support the president fascists, white supremacists, haters, xenophobes and even Nazis.​

In the case of Mariia Butina, the lengths to which derangement is driving the left.

Another sign of the left is losing its mind and overplaying its hand in the Trump-Russia saga is the sudden obsession and fulmination over a Russian woman named Mariia Butina.

“Republicans Have an Alger Hiss Problem Named Mariia,” exclaims the title of a Politico piece getting a lot of play in the press. It states:

Alleged Russian spy Mariia Butina was arrested just a few days short of the 70th anniversary of the last major accusation of Russian infiltration in America’s political system: when on August 3, 1948, Time editor and ex-communist Whittaker Chambers publicly accused former high-ranking State Department official Alger Hiss of being a Soviet agent.

Rattled Democrats, including President Harry Truman, handled the fallout poorly, hesitating to distance themselves from Hiss and unwittingly feeding a conservative narrative that they were soft on communism.

Republicans are now having their own Alger Hiss moment.

The author maintains that Butina’s alleged efforts to ingratiate herself with conservative organizations and the GOP speaks to “how intertwined Russia and the Republican Party are becoming, and whether the Republican Party is willing and able to disentangle itself.” (A noteworthy aside: this Politico piece could use an update in light of Reuters’ exclusive report that Butina in 2015 had met with “wider high-level contacts in Washington than previously known,” including actual government officials from the Obama administration.)