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MEDIA

The Carnivores of Civil Liberties By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2018/05/31/the-carnivores-

After a landslide loss in the 1972 presidential election, the Democratic Party was resuscitated the following year by the Watergate scandal. The destruction of the Nixon presidency powered the Democrats to make huge political gains in the 1974 elections.

Watergate also birthed (or perhaps rebirthed) modern investigative journalism. A young generation of maverick reporters supposedly alone had challenged the establishment in order to uncover the whole truth about abuses of power by the Nixon Administration.

Liberalism rode high during the Watergate era. It had demanded that civil liberties be protected from the illegal or unconstitutional overreach of the Nixon-era FBI, CIA, and other agencies. Liberals alleged that out-of-control officials had spied on U.S. citizens for political purposes and then tried to mask their wrongdoing under the cover of “national security” or institutional “professionalism.”

All those legacies are now eroding. The Democratic Party, the investigative media, and liberalism itself are now weirdly on the side of the reactionary administrative state. They have either downplayed or excused Watergate-like abuses of power by the former Barack Obama Administration.

Liberal journalists apparently have few concerns that the FBI apparently used at least one secret informant to gather information about the 2016 Trump campaign. Nor are they much bothered that members of the Obama national security team unmasked the names of U.S. citizens who had been improperly surveilled. Many of those names then were leaked illegally to the press.

Democrats seem indifferent to the fact that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign paid a foreign agent, Christopher Steele, to compile dirt on Republican candidate Donald Trump—largely by trafficking in unverified rumors from Russian interests. Obama administration officials leaked details from that dossier.

Civil libertarians appear unconcerned that the Department of Justice sought to deceive the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, getting it to grant warrants to allow the surveillance of U.S. citizens based on the suspect and politically motivated Steele dossier.

When Is It Okay to Drop the C-Bomb on a Woman? By Jim Treacher

https://pjmedia.com/trending/when-is-it-okay-to-drop-the-c-word-bomb-on-a-woman/

When her dad is a POTUS from the wrong party.

It’s been a little over 24 hours since Roseanne Barr blew up her career (again) for saying something really stupid and hateful (again). And now, yet another alleged comedienne is in the news for being a loony, vulgar piece of garbage.

First, some background. On Sunday, Ivanka Trump tweeted the following with a picture of herself and her baby:
Ivanka Trump
✔ @IvankaTrump

My ♥️! #SundayMorning

If you think that’s just a nice photo of a mother with her baby, you’re obviously not #Resisting enough.

Ladies and gentlemen: the comedic stylings of Ms. Samantha Bee.

Samantha Bee’s response:
Jon Levine
✔ @LevineJonathan
Samantha Bee to @IvankaTrump on Full Frontal tonight:

“Let me just say, one mother to another, do something about your dad’s immigration practices you feckless cunt!”

As David Rutz at the Washington Free Beacon notes:

The remark came at the end of her weekly program “Full Frontal’s” A block, where the left-wing comic blasted the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of separating illegal immigrant children from their parents at the border. Bee acknowledged this policy did not begin under President Trump, but she said he had made it worse.

Netflix CEO bundles money for Obama, Netflix gets net neutrality, Obamas get huge contract By Jack Hellner

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

I was surprised yesterday when I read that the CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings, was a bundler for the 2012 Obama campaign, because with the media’s deep interest in political corruption, equality, and especially income equality, I would think such political connections would be widely reported.

From April 2012’s Hollywood Reporter:

Billionaire mogul Haim Saban threw open his arms as he arrived to meet first lady Michelle Obama at the Beverly Hills home of Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos and his wife of 2½ years, Nicole Avant, the newly returned U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas.

“I’m here!” Saban announced to all within earshot of the no-press-allowed crowd of 135 – a who’s who of Hollywood political power players, including Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steve Bing, Harvey Weinstein and Mike and Irena Medavoy; Sarandos’ boss, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings; and Quincy Jones, Avant’s godfather.

Now this, from RedState:

Ex-President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle just signed a deal with Netflix to “produce television shows and films for the streaming service.” It could be worth as much as $50 million.

Which makes perfect business sense for Netflix – given the Obamas’ extensive experience in story development, screenwriting, direction and production.

Bay of Pics Media fakery targets Trump with photos of Obama-era child trafficking. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270299/bay-pics-lloyd-billingsley

Over the Memorial Day weekend, photos of Central American children at a U.S. holding facility began to appear online. Democrats and their media allies quickly hailed the pics as the latest exhibit of anti-Trump hysteria.

“Look at these photos,” Linda Sarsour tweeted.

“Speechless,” tweeted Antonio Villaraigosa, former Los Angeles mayor and candidate for governor of California. “This is not who we are as a nation.”

“All of these photos are disturbing, but the first two are especially awful,” tweeted New York Times Magazine editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein, linking to headline hailing “First glimpse of immigrant children at holding facility.” And so on.

For the breathless tweeters, the photos were prima facie evidence that, as CNN’s April Ryan wondered, “is the Trump administration involved in a child sex-trafficking ring?”

Antonio Arellano, who claims to work for ABC in Houston, circulated a story about an ICE detention center in Texas with “a prison bus just for babies.” CNN’s Ana Navarro responded, “America, this cannot be who we are” and those who picked up Arrellano’s story included Kasie Hunt of NBC, Sharon Waxman of TheWrap, actor Alyssa Milano, and POTUS 44 staffer Michael Simon and Democrat Party strategist Zac Petkanas.

Trouble was, the story was from 2014, long before the Trump administration. Likewise, As Saagar Enjeti noted in the Daily Caller, the detention center photos “stem from a 2014 Arizona Central story showing migrant children in steel cages. The cages were implemented at the height of the Central American migrant crisis under the Obama administration.”

Is Facebook Violating U.S. Counterterrorism Laws? by Ruthie Blum

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12294/facebook-terrorism

Nearly a year has passed since the establishment of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, announced by Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube, but groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas — among the 64 organizations currently designated by the State Department as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) — still have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and YouTube videos.

The more important question, then, is whether Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms are providing “material support or resources” — in the form of a “tangible or intangible” property or service — to FTOs and Specially Designated Global Terrorists. The Counter Extremism Project appears to think that the answer is yes.

“[G]iven the volume of content uploaded to Facebook by the platform’s estimated 2.2. billion active users on a daily basis, the one percent of terrorist content that is not removed is a significant amount that needs to be addressed.” — Counter Extremism Project Executive Director David Ibsen.

During his Congressional hearings in April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was interrogated by members of the House and Senate. Because it was evident from their questions that many of the lawmakers were actually clueless about how Facebook works, much time was wasted on Zuckerberg’s having to explain the basics of its tools and business model. A select few – among them Senator Ted Cruz — challenged Zuckerberg about the political slant of his platform, which has led to discrimination against conservative groups and individuals.

Zuckerberg acknowledged that:

“…Facebook and the tech industry are located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely left-leaning place. And this is actually a concern that I have and that I try to root out in the company is making sure that we don’t have any bias in the work that we do, and I think it is a fair concern that people would at least wonder about.”

When asked about what Facebook is doing to prevent terrorists from using the platform to recruit and coordinate, Zuckerberg said that 200 of his (25,000) employees monitor such content and activity in 30 languages.

The question that Zuckerberg should have been asked is why organizations and individuals that are designated by the State Department as terrorists are able to open pages on his platform in the first place, let alone continue to maintain those pages, or block their content temporarily, before allowing it to be re-posted. It would have been a particularly relevant query, given the launch in July 2017 of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, announced by Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube. The stated goal of the Forum was to:

“help us continue to make our hosted consumer services hostile to terrorists and violent extremists.

Media Double Down After New York Times Gets Busted Peddling Fake News By Mollie Hemingway

http://thefederalist.com/2018/05/28/media-double-down-after-new-york-times-gets-busted-peddling-fake-news/

There may have been a real White House briefing with real White House officials, but The New York Times couldn’t be trusted to accurately summarize what the White House official said. And it wasn’t on a minor point.

On the path to the June 12 summit with North Korea, journalists claimed President Donald Trump would not be willing to walk away from the negotiating table because he was too desperate for a win.

The Washington Post’s David Nakamura wrote that “critics fear that a president determined to declare victory where his predecessors failed will allow his desire for a legacy-making deal to override the substance of the negotiations.” On the same day, the Washington Post’s Paul Waldman mocked Trump’s desire for a win, which he said was turning Trump into a fool who was getting played.

Then President Trump did what media outlets said he’d never do. He walked away from the negotiating table due to North Korea’s behavior. The media outlets didn’t acknowledge their previous analytical missteps so much as come up with new lines of attack on Trump.

Mark Landler and David Sanger of The New York Times wrote an article arguing there were deep divisions between Trump and his advisors. To support the claim, the Times argued that Trump said a June 12 summit was still possible, while his top aides said it was “impossible”:

MEDIA, INCLUDING BREITBART FORCED TO TAKE DOWN STORIES ABOUT TOMMY ROBINSON’S ARREST IN ENGLAND

Breitbart, The Mirror, Russia Today (RT), Birmingham Live, etc., forced to take down stories on Tommy.
According to UK independent reporter Caolan Robertson, Robinson was arrested outside the Leeds Crown Court on Friday morning as he was covering the trial of ten men (Muslims) for offenses including child rape, trafficking, and supply of Class A drugs to children.

Robinson was on video telling the arresting officers that “this is free speech. This is where we’re at.”
(Much more. Go to Nick Monroe’s Twitter feed before it is taken down, or, better yet, screen copy ASAP)! Janet Levy, Helsinki

Nick Monroe@nickmon1112
UPDATE: Breitbart forced to take down story about Tommy Robinson’s arrest.

Luckily archives are forever. Here’s the story if you haven’t seen it yet.http://archive.is/nC2ev pic.twitter.com/WpZgnD3MkN

Max Boot’s Turn Against Israel Is Pure Trump Derangement by David Harsanyi

http://thefederalist.com/2018/05/24/max-boots-turn-against-israel-is-pure-trump-derangement/

It’s possible to detest Donald Trump with the fire of a thousand suns and still concede that he’s done something positive. Possible, but rare. More often these days Trump antagonists adopt rigid positions that are predicated on the assumption that anything the president does must be immoral and destructive. Few people illustrate this intellectual cratering more dramatically than Max Boot.

This week, the one-time Israel supporter embraced a slate of J-Street talking points in The Washington Post — including ominous references to nefarious puppet-string pulling Jewish financiers. What supposedly irks Boot is the “emerging conservative talking point that Trump ‘is the most pro-Israel president in U.S. history.’”

Though, I grant, it’s too early to make wide-ranging historical pronouncements about a presidency, Trump certainly has a strong case. Not only has his administration improve the long-term projections for peace by finally following U.S. law and moving the American embassy to the Israeli capital — a move Boot claims to support, but says doesn’t really matter — the president also exited the broken Iran deal, despite what must have been tremendous international pressure to remain, and gave Israel unequivocal support in both its military campaign against Iranian targets in Syria and Hamas terrorists on the border of Gaza.

If we were to apply pre-Trump standards to these moves, they would undeniably be considered pro-Israel. And judging from reaction of Israel’s most reliable enemies, and the reaction of the vast majority of Israel’s citizens, we can still consider them pro-Israel. Only one variable has changed in the equation.

Boot adopts the well-worn progressive position that argues that Israeli people don’t know what’s best for them, the Left does. Trump, Boot says, “may be the most closely aligned with Israel’s current government, led by a fellow scandal-plagued right-winger, but that doesn’t mean Trump is safeguarding Israel’s interests. He is, in fact, inflicting long-term damage on the U.S.-Israeli alliance.”

The Obamas Sign Multi-Year Deal with Netflix to Produce Shows and Movies By Jack Crowe

Netflix announced Monday that Barack and Michelle Obama have signed “a multi-year agreement” to produce television shows and movies for the company’s rapidly growing line of original content.

The Obamas are slated to produce scripted and unscripted series as well as documentaries and feature films, according to a Netflix tweet announcing the deal.“One of the simple joys of our time in public service was getting to meet so many fascinating people from all walks of life, and to help them share their experiences with a wider audience,” the former president said in a statement. “That’s why Michelle and I are so excited to partner with Netflix – we hope to cultivate and curate the talented, inspiring, creative voices who are able to promote greater empathy and understanding between peoples, and help them share their stories with the entire world.”

Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos said in a statement that the Obamas “are uniquely positioned to discover and highlight stories of people who make a difference in their communities and strive to change the world for the better.”

Obama has frequently bemoaned the polarized state of the media eco-system since leaving office. A New York Times report published in March indicated that the Obamas will avoid overtly partisan programming in favor of a broader aspirational message. One project reportedly under consideration would feature debates over contentious national issues moderated by the former president.The Obamas’ compensation remains undisclosed but the couple were reportedly paid $60 million for their joint memoir, indicating that taste-makers believe consumers are eager for Obama-produced content.

Obamas Launch ‘Higher Ground Productions,’ Sign Netflix Deal By Bridget Johnson

Netflix announced today that former President Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama have struck a “storytelling partnership” with the video-on-demand service that will unfold in front of and behind the camera.

Netflix, which carries movies as well as original TV series, has about 125 million members in more than 190 countries.

The agreement with the Obamas is a “multi-year” pact, the company said, “to produce films and series” with the company.

“The Obamas will produce a diverse mix of content, including the potential for scripted series, unscripted series, docu-series, documentaries and features,” the company said.

The Obamas’ new production company is called Higher Ground Productions. Michelle Obama declared in her 2016 Democratic National Convention speech “when they go low, we go high.”

The company did not reveal how much the deal is worth

“One of the simple joys of our time in public service was getting to meet so many fascinating people from all walks of life, and to help them share their experiences with a wider audience,” President Obama said in a statement. “That’s why Michelle and I are so excited to partner with Netflix – we hope to cultivate and curate the talented, inspiring, creative voices who are able to promote greater empathy and understanding between peoples, and help them share their stories with the entire world.”

“Barack and I have always believed in the power of storytelling to inspire us, to make us think differently about the world around us, and to help us open our minds and hearts to others,” said Michelle Obama. “Netflix’s unparalleled service is a natural fit for the kinds of stories we want to share, and we look forward to starting this exciting new partnership.” CONTINUE AT SITE