RUTHFULLY YOURS

Jonathan Chait has now spun up an East-Germany-style vision of Donald Trump as Putin’s Honecker, a traitor to the USA since 1987.

Titled “What If Trump Has Been a Russian Asset Since 1987?,” the Chait piece does not even rise to the level of “conspiracy theory,” Chait having presented no conspiracy to theorize about. His technique is to raise, magnify and connect doubts. “How do you even think about the small but real chance — 10 percent? 20 percent? — that the president of the United States has been covertly influenced or personally compromised by a hostile foreign power for decades?” he asks. One answer is, you write a few thousand pointless words.

But only about Trump. Chait takes everything back to Trump’s July 1987 visit to Moscow. That’s because in September of that same year Trump took out a series of full-page ads in prominent newspapers noting that “Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States.″ In his open letter to the American people, Trump asked, ″Why are these nations not paying the United States for the human lives and billions of dollars we are losing to protect their interests?”

Classic Trump — or was it really Gorbachev in disguise? As Chait notes, it is the Kremlin’s propensity to seek splits between the US and its allies. He writes: “The safest assumption is that it’s entirely coincidental that Trump launched a national campaign, with himself as spokesman, built around themes that dovetailed closely with Soviet foreign-policy goals shortly after his Moscow stay. Indeed, it seems slightly insane to contemplate the possibility that a secret relationship between Trump and Russia dates back this far. But it can’t be dismissed completely.” (Emphasis added.)

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270691/pressure-break-facebook-builds-matthew-vadum

America’s largest communications union, the 700,000-member Communications Workers of America (CWA), has joined an activist coalition called Freedom from Facebook that seeks to break up the monopolistic social media giant.

So far the groups supporting the Freedom From Facebook coalition are predominantly left-wing. Among them are MoveOn.org and Public Citizen. Facebook has about 2 billion users worldwide.

But the ideological makeup of the FFF coalition could change in a heartbeat if Facebook continues down its intolerant, authoritarian path. That’s because conservatives have long been abused by Facebook and this ill treatment has only intensified since the election of President Donald Trump. Conservatives are getting wise to being used and taken advantage of and they don’t like it.

The Left claims to have only the purest motives for wanting to take action against Facebook.

“We should all be deeply concerned by Facebook’s power over our lives and democracy,” said Brian Thorn of CWA, the newest member of the Freedom From Facebook coalition.

Facebook’s workers are not represented by CWA, but the union does represent more than 100,000 employees at AT&T Inc. Facebook’s contracted shuttle drivers and cafeteria workers reportedly belong to labor unions.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/10/nunes-targets-the-real

Congress is finally closing in on the biggest perpetrator of the Trump-Russia election collusion hoax: the American news media.

After taking an eight-year break from its vital role as the executive branch’s watchdog, the media have been on a frenzied, anti-Trump bender since 2016. Every conspiracy theory, every rumor, every dubious source has been chased down and breathlessly covered by once-credible news organizations. (This shameful interview on CNN with a drunken former Trump campaign aide could be a new low in journalism.)

Despite sanctimonious protestations that the media are not—as President Trump suggests—the “enemy of the people,” their collective conduct before and during his presidency has been disgraceful and borderline subversive. The elite press is complicit in one of the greatest political scandals of all-time: How the Obama administration concocted the tale that Donald Trump’s campaign was working with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) now is asking his congressional colleagues to compel open testimony from several people suspected of working as conduits between the Justice Department and the media to facilitate the Trump-Russia narrative.

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

“But no one was interested in the facts. They preferred the invention,Because this invention expressed their hates and fears so perfectly.” James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son 1955

“The media are less a window on reality, than a stage on which officials and journalists perform self-scripted, self-serving fictions.” Thomas Sowell The Vision of the Anointed: Self Congratulations as a Basis for Social Policy 1995

As the two rubrics show, the concept of “fake” or “twisted” news is not new. The media has long been used for purposes of disinformation, propaganda and deceit. Aesop’s fable of the boy who cried wolf tells a story of deception gone wrong. The Federalist Papers was written to persuade the undecided to support the Constitution. Lenin argued that capitalists bought up newspapers to control what was printed. Hitler employed Joseph Goebbels as his minister for propaganda. Using words to coax and prod others is the province of politicians, columnists, bloggers and essayists, including yours truly. What is distressing today is that editorializing has seeped into the news room, so that news is comingled with opinions. That does not mean we should be a nation of cynics, but skepticism is healthy. For whom or for what is the writer or speaker an advocate?

One example: The front-page, top right-hand column of the July 2, 2018 New York Times was headlined, “Curbs on Unions Likely to Starve Activist Groups.” The article by Noam Scheiber, in reference to Janus v. AFSCME, read: “The Supreme Court decision striking down mandatory union fees for government workers was not only a blow to unions…” Why did Mr. Scheiber use the word “for”? The fees are not for workers; they are paid by workers. They are for union leaders, certainly not for workers who disagree as to how money is spent. The editors of The New York Time are scrupulous in words they choose; the use of “for” had to have been deliberate. One subtle example of editorializing on the front page.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/harpers-bazaar-editor-calls-for-sex-strike-to-support-abortion-rights/

Great news, everybody! Feminists are going on a “sex strike”! That’s right, it’s #Lysistrata2018 and it’s absolutely glorious. Jennifer Wright, political editor-at-large for Harper’s Bazaar, tweeted out the idea on Monday and it’s gaining traction among feminists who don’t understand logic (but I repeat myself).

“We’re very likely to lose Roe Vs. Wade,” Wright tweeted, following the announcement of Justice Kennedy’s retirement. “Some men may think that doesn’t concern them. Make it.” That’s right, feminists are protesting a potential abortion ban by — you gotta love ‘em — suggesting women stop doing the thing that could cause them to feel they need an abortion in the first place. Hold the phone, I think feminists just banned abortion!

Sadly, it’s not that simple. Wright suggests women add a female judge emoji to their “dating profiles” to “show people you won’t date/sleep with anyone who doesn’t support a woman’s right to choose.” She then coins the hashtag #Lysistrata2018.

Lysistrata, for those who don’t know, is a comedy by Aristophanes in which women withhold sex from their men in an attempt to end the Peloponnesian War. Wright’s hashtag — and her entire premise — on the other hand, doesn’t actually do anything.

Wright and her supporters — if I’m following the logic correctly, which is to say, not at all — aren’t withholding sex, per se. They’re only signaling their unwillingness to sleep with or date (which, to modern feminists, is pretty much the same thing) anyone who wouldn’t okay an abortion if he accidentally got her pregnant.

It’s possible that Wright thinks that she and all pro-choice women are so mind-blowingly desirable that anyone who sees their “dating profile” is going to suddenly rethink his moral and political stance for a chance to get her into bed. (How’s that going for ya, Jennifer?) But I think what Wright is really saying is that she believes that all women are pro-choice. Otherwise, why target only men? CONTINUE AT SITE

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/06/unaccountable-big-media

As Americans were finalizing their holiday plans on July 3, the New York Times quietly announced that Ali Watkins, the reporter caught up in a federal investigation into illegal leaks of classified information, would be reassigned rather than fired.

Executive editor Dean Baquet confirmed Watkins, 26, would be moved from the paper’s D.C. bureau to its New York headquarters, “where she will be closely supervised and have a senior mentor.”

“We hold our journalists and their work to the highest standards,” Baquet said in a statement. “We are giving Ali an opportunity to show that she can live up to them. I believe she can. I also believe that The Times must be a humane place that can allow for second chances when there are mitigating circumstances.”

Get that, all you ambitious J-school students? Even though Baquet admits his reporter flouted the basic ethical standards of journalism as well as the paper’s internal conduct guidelines, she can keep her job. You can cheat, lie, break the company’s rules, embarrass an entire profession and you will still get to work at one of the nation’s top newspapers! Polish up those résumés, kids!

Press Complicity
The Ali Watkins matter exposes everything that is wrong with the American media. A young reporter trades sex-for-scoops with a powerful man more than 30 years her senior and it’s excused as business-as-usual; the man, James Wolfe—who is responsible for safeguarding classified documents for the Senate Intelligence Committee—illegally leaks government secrets to her to slander Trump associates and boost the politically motivated Trump-Russia collusion hoax; editors at other news organizations not only know about the affair, but hire her because of it so she can continue to access secrets about the Trump-Russia probe; when her tawdry, unethical behavior is disclosed only after Wolfe is arrested for lying to the FBI about their relationship, her peers in the press rush to her defense; and arrogant media overlords apply a different set of standards to their own profession and expect the government to consider reporters a protected class.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/07/01/the-new-york-times-beclowns-itself-with-fake-news-about-free-speech/

There is nothing new about The New York Times running bizarre progressive agitprop. But thankfully these articles are more often relegated to the opinion pages. Not so today, as a headline purporting to be news, on page 1A above the fold, offered the absurd opinion that conservatives have “weaponized free speech.”

In the place of anything remotely resembling facts or serious empirical evidence, the article by Adam Liptak relies mainly on quotes from “experts” who think government needs to compel bad guys to shut up. William F. Buckley comes to mind while reading the mealy-mouthed assault on our greatest and first freedom, specifically his observation that “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.” Indeed.
Yes, Speech Is A Weapon

The first and most obvious refutation of this laughably illiberal word salad of nonsense is that of course speech is and always has been a weapon. Has anyone at The New York Times ever heard the phrase “The pen is mightier than the sword”? Or is that the kind of old-timey expression concocted by racist, colonialist white guys to subjugate nice people?

Of course speech is a weapon: the most powerful one that exists. The British understood this when Thomas Paine changed the world with a pamphlet, launching the deadly violence of the American Revolution and ultimately the natural rights protections that the Times so casually tosses aside today.

Just like a gun, speech is a weapon that can be used for good or ill, and there is no basic understanding or a priori definition of which is which. For some, hunting is not only a leisure activity, but also a real source of food. For others, hunting is an inhumane and even evil practice. The gun is neutral in this debate, just as speech is neutral in the debate over who should have the freedom of it.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/wapos-jennifer-rubin-calls-for-mobs-to-harass-sarah-huckabee-sanders-for-the-rest-of-her-life/

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin went on the attack against Sarah Huckabee Sanders on MSNBC’s AM Joy on Sunday, calling on left-wing minions to harass the embattled White House press secretary for the rest of her life. She also warned two female Republican senators not to vote for any potential Supreme Court nominees who might endanger her beloved right to abort unborn children.

Rubin, the left’s favorite conservative (they call her a conservative, I don’t), claims that Sanders is inciting violence by criticizing the press. (You know, like every press secretary in the history of press secretaries.) Rubin warned that “lives are on the line” and called for a million protesters to harass and intimidate Sanders. “I don’t think what’s most effective is throwing Sarah Huckabee Sanders out of a restaurant. I wouldn’t serve her either, frankly, but what’s most successful is getting a million people on the street to protest,” she said. (Tell us more about who you would and wouldn’t serve in a restaurant, Jen. You’ve said that bakers who refuse to make cakes for gay weddings are “grandstanding on bigotry and making a virtue out of the vice of prejudice.” I guess that doesn’t apply to your virtue signaling.)

“Sarah Huckabee has no right to live a life of no fuss, no muss, after lying to the press — after inciting against the press,” a vituperative Rubin said. “These people should be made uncomfortable, and I think that’s a life sentence frankly. [Emphasis added]

But Rubin wasn’t finished with yet, warning Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) not to vote for a Trump Supreme Court nominee who might erode abortion rights, an issue that appears to be near and dear to Rubin’s heart.

“Let’s get a million people to go to Maine or a million people to go to Alaska and start putting pressure on those senators,” said Rubin. “So it’s perfectly civil to do that — no one is telling them to be violent protesters, but we’re not going to let these people go through life unscathed,” she said.

“The message to those two women by Democrats, by pro-choice women in those two states, by the entire states of Maine and Alaska has to be simple,” she said. “You vote for this, Ms. Collins, Miss Murkowski, this is on you. We won’t accept these nonsense excuses.”

“It has to be all-out on the ground in those states,” she continued, “those women have to be put under a glaring light so that they finally have to make a choice that goes against their party — unless they were phony pro-choice women all along, which is distinctly possible.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/fighting-free-speech-at-the-new-york-times/

As the leaders of Western Europe continue to surrender their countries to Islam – and to punish those who resist by trying to shut them up – one fact of which we’ve all been reminded is that Americans are very lucky indeed to have a First Amendment. Across Western Europe, citizens who are worried about Islamization express envy for America’s free-speech protections. Meanwhile, American leftists who, unable to answer their opponents’ arguments effectively, would prefer to be able to shut them down, tend increasingly to view the First Amendment as a thorn in their side.

Even many members of the Fourth Estate, whom you might expect to be vigorous First Amendment champions, are now taking on what they deride as an excessive attachment to free-speech rights. At the vanguard of this unholy crusade is the New York Times. On June 5, the Times ran an op-ed by Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman, who on several previous occasions has taken to its pages to defend sharia law. This time, Feldman argued against applying the First Amendment to social media on the grounds that it would “make it harder or even impossible for the platforms to limit fake news, online harassment and hate speech.”

The one good argument Feldman has on his side is that Facebook and Twitter are private companies with the right to ban whomever they wish. On the other hand, both of these platforms have become huge parts of the public square, not only in the U.S. but around the world. As for Feldman’s reference to “hate speech,” it’s a concept that has no proper place in American law and that is, by definition, in the eye of the beholder. On this score, Feldman failed to acknowledge that both firms are notorious for having banned (for example) users posting objective facts about Islam even as they allow terrorist groups to continue to employ their services.

But enough about Feldman. More problematic than his op-ed was an article by Adam Liptak – which ran, note well, as a news story, not an opinion piece – that the increasingly senile Gray Lady published on July 1. The headline, “How Conservatives Weaponized the First Amendment” (on the front page of the Times’s website, it read “How Free Speech Is Being Used as a Weapon by Conservatives”; in the print edition, it was “How Free Speech Was Weaponized By Conservatives”), drew on a June 25 comment by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. When the Court, on First Amendment grounds, struck down a California law forcing pro-life “crisis pregnancy centers” to post information on their premises about where to get an abortion, Kagan complained in her dissent that conservatives were “weaponizing the First Amendment.”

Interesting turn of phrase. What it comes down to is the age-old sentiment that my speech should be protected but yours shouldn’t. When I say something you don’t like, I’m safeguarded by the First Amendment; if you say something I don’t like, you’re “weaponizing” that amendment. Coming from the likes of Elena Kagan, of course, the use of the word “weaponize” is especially priceless. Kagan is, after all, a perfect example of the kind of judge who, when she is out to justify practices she likes, is gifted at “discovering” in the Constitution rights that the Founders never put there and that nobody ever noticed before. In other words, she’s an extremely loose constructionist. But when she sees her ideological opponents actually making use of their very clearly spelled-out First Amendment rights to say things she deplores, Kagan is eager to find some way to pretend that the First Amendment doesn’t say what it quite explicitly says. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/nyt_undercuts_mueller.html

Two New York Times writers have offered evidence that the actions of the Russians and former director James Comey may not have been so crucial to the defeat of Hillary Clinton after all, calling into question the raison d’etre of the Mueller investigation.

First, Charlie Savage on June 28, commenting on the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, noted that Donald Trump promised to name conservatives to the high court. Savage then acknowledged, “Court-focused voters helped deliver Mr. Trump’s narrow victory over Hillary Clinton….” (Actually, the win was not “narrow.” Trump got 304 electoral votes to Clinton’s 227.)

Another editorial on the surprise defeat of Rep. Joseph Crowley by 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Sanders-ista, in the primary for a House seat from a district extending from the Bronx to Queens attributed the ten-term congressman’s loss to

“a sense of hubris and complacency… the kind that contributed to Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump… In Mrs. Clinton’s case, it may have stopped her from campaigning harder in states like Wisconsin and Michigan, places where Mr. Trump eked out narrow victories. In Mr. Crowley’s case, it may have led him to become smug.”