RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/12/trumps_great_economy_cant_be_hidden_.html

The wonders that President Trump is doing with the economy is getting impossible to hide or to ignore. November’s job report has been so good that even those poor souls encased in the liberal media’s bubble are learning about it. This is evidenced by a front page, above the fold, article in the New York Times titled “U.S. Job Growth Stays On Streak, Soothing Jitters.” 

The Times leads off this piece by informing its liberal reader base the following:

American’s job engine has again defied jittery stock traders, bearish forecasters, and blue-ribbon economists to deliver eye-catching gains and power an exceptionally resilient economy.
November’s outstanding employment report, released Friday by the Labor Department, featured payroll increases of 266,000 and offered a counterpoint to recent anxieties about an escalating trade war and weakening global economy.
“I think this report is a real blockbuster,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist at the career site Glassdoor. “Payrolls smashed expectations.”

You have to savor the wording used here — “eye-catching,” “exceptionally resilient,” “blockbuster,” and “smashed expectations” — and pinch yourself to remember it is coming from the New York Times. The editors of the NYT would have loved to have written such words about the Obama economy, but that would have been too far a leap even for them. Instead, they tried to spin the Obama’s lackluster years as ‘the new normal.” That has now been shown to be more fake news.

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/295247/red-yellow-journalism

According to a report published earlier this month, 84% of British Jews feel that Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is a “threat specifically to Jews.” Two-thirds of Labour supporters hold at least one anti-Semitic view, the frequent, public expression of which since Corbyn’s ascension four years ago has caused the party to come under investigation by Britain’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission (making Labour the only political party, after the avowedly racist British National Party, to face such an inquiry). Most chilling is a pollcommissioned by the Jewish News finding that half of British Jews would “seriously consider” leaving the country if Corbyn becomes prime minister after next week’s general election. In the words of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’s Gideon Falter, “British Jews are considering leaving the country on a scale unprecedented since medieval times.” This is a very disturbing moment for British Jewry, but it is also, I might argue, an even more threatening moment for Britain itself.

Which is why I am baffled that The New York Times, which prides itself on fearlessly reporting the truth, would in this case overtly and obviously obfuscate it.

Last month, in a piece titled, “At Odds With Labour, Britain’s Jews Are Feeling Politically Homeless,” Times London correspondent Benjamin Mueller portrayed a community torn equally between the party that has long been its traditional political home (Labour) and one that represents a “little England” nationalism historically inimical to progressive Jewish values (the Conservatives). “Online and over Shabbat dinners, arguments about the election have grown bitter,” Mueller reports. “Those grudgingly planning to vote for Labour have been called traitors to the community and self-hating Jews. Anti-Corbyn die-hards, on the other hand, have been branded the handmaidens of a hard Brexit.”

There is no such division within the Jewish community: 94% of British Jews will vote for any party but Labour next Thursday. For those Jews who cannot stomach a vote for Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s pro-Brexit Tories, the Liberal Democrats offer the option of unambiguous support for continued European Union membership without the rank stench of anti-Semitism. Last year, the country’s three Jewish newspapers—each representing different political and communal traditions and constituencies—all published the same, front-page editorial warning that a Corbyn-led government would present an “existential” threat to British Jewry. The old joke about two Jews, three synagogues really does not have any pertinence when it comes to the matter of how the British Jewish community sees Jeremy Corbyn.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/03/why-are-taxpayers-subsidizing-get-trump-propaganda/

A recent NPR segment is a microcosm of the whole thing: an echo chamber of Trump derangement through which reality cannot penetrate.

The name “All Things Considered” would suggest a wide-ranging survey of viewpoints on today’s issues. That’s the name of the taxpayer-subsidized nightly evening show that National Public Radio broadcasts to a national audience. So it is particularly maddening when NPR broadcasts yet another segment featuring a discussion among three anti-Trump pundits who seem unable to consider anything that doesn’t help NPR’s quest to take down the president.

Before turning to impeachment, the segment began with NPR host Ari Shapiro, New York Times columnist David Brooks, and Vox writer Matthew Yglesias finding something nasty to say about the president visiting the troops in Afghanistan for Thanksgiving. (A heartwarming video of the event can be seen here.)

It was a perfect little echo chamber.

“President Trump is back in the U.S. after just a few hours on the ground in Afghanistan, and the trip was not the only surprise,” Shapiro said. “He also unexpectedly announced that peace talks are back on between the U.S. and the Taliban.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/journalists-against-free-speech-john-tierney/

Reprinted from City Journal.

Suppose you’re the editorial-page editor of a college newspaper, contemplating the big news on campus: protesters have silenced an invited speaker and gone on a violent rampage. Should you, as a journalist whose profession depends on the First Amendment, write an editorial reaffirming the right to free speech?

If that seems like a no-brainer, you’re behind the times. The question stumped the staff of the Middlebury Campus after protesters silenced conservative social thinker Charles Murray and injured the professor who’d invited him. The prospect of taking a stand on the First Amendment was so daunting that the paper dispensed with its usual weekly editorial, devoting the space instead to a range of opinions from others—most of whom defended the protesters. When a larger and more violent mob at the University of California at Berkeley prevented Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking on campus, students at the Daily Californian did write a forceful editorial—but not in favor of his right to speak. Instead, they reviled Yiannopoulos and denounced those who “invited chaos” by offering a platform to “someone who never belonged here.”

Free speech is no longer sacred among young journalists who have absorbed the campus lessons about “hate speech”—defined more and more broadly—and they’re breaking long-standing taboos as they bring “cancel culture” into professional newsrooms. They’re not yet in charge, but many of their editors are reacting like beleaguered college presidents, terrified of seeming insufficiently “woke.” Most professional journalists, young and old, still pay lip service to the First Amendment, and they certainly believe that it protects their work, but they’re increasingly eager for others to be “de-platformed” or “no-platformed,” as today’s censors like to put it—effectively silenced.

These mostly younger progressive journalists lead campaigns to get conservative journalists fired, banned from Twitter, and “de-monetized” on YouTube. They don’t burn books, but they’ve successfully pressured Amazon to stop selling titles that they deem offensive. They encourage advertising boycotts designed to put ideological rivals out of business. They’re loath to report forthrightly on left-wing censorship and violence, even when fellow journalists get attacked. They equate conservatives’ speech with violence and rationalize leftists’ actual violence as . . . speech.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2019/12/new-york-times-says-trump-accusing-it-fake-news-daniel-greenfield/

I might say that the New York Times ought to be ashamed, but the paper clearly doesn’t even understand the concept. After launching a defense of Jeremy Corbyn by attacking the UK’s Chief Rabbi who called the radical leftist out for anti-Semitism, the Times, which covered up the Holocaust while it was going on to provide cover for FDR’s inaction, accuses Trump of having adopted ‘fake news’ from Hitler.

Literally. No shame.

As the historian Timothy Snyder has written in The Times, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came up with the slogan “Lügenpresse” — translated as “lying press” — in order to discredit independent journalism. Now the tactic has been laundered through an American president, Donald Trump, who adopted the term “fake news” as a candidate and has used it hundreds of times in office.

Accusing the press of lying did not originate with Hitler. Trump was not studying Nazi slogans. (Though there are alt-righters who use “lugenpresse” because they’re Nazi fans.) Plenty of American politicians have accused the media of being deceptive and dishonest.

David Brock, the Clinton lapdog, made a specialty of it. He even accused the New York Times of being right-wing.

The New York Times knows it’s spouting obscene nonsense. And it doesn’t care.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/12/01/new-york-times-faulted-for-irredeemable-and-indefensible-coverage-of-british-chief-rabbi/

The New York Times is drawing criticism for its handling of a warning by British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis about antisemitism in the British Labour Party.

The Times news article reported that “Rabbi Mirvis leads a body of Orthodox congregations not only in Britain but across the Commonwealth; in Britain, those synagogues account for just over half of total synagogue membership, according to a 2010 report.” The Times went on, “Not all British Jews recognize the chief rabbi as the leader of their communities.”

The Times also reported, “some people warned that Rabbi Mirvis had sidestepped a greater threat posed to Jews and other British minority groups by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has himself been accused of making racist and Islamophobic remarks and energizing parts of the far right similar to those responsible for recent attacks on Jews in the United States.” It attributed this view to “an organization called Jews Against Boris.” The Times didn’t say how many members Jews Against Boris has, or what proportion of British Jews it represents.

It’s a classic Times double standard. When an Orthodox rabbi warns against antisemitism on the left, the Times bends over backwards to undercut his authority. Contrast it to how the Times, in three recent news articles, handled a Reform rabbi’s criticism of decisions by the Israeli and American governments or politicians.

Here is the Times reporting in December 2017 about reaction to President Trump’s decision to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem: “‘Jerusalem has always been the most delicate issue in every discussion about peace,’ said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest branch of American Judaism. ‘So we’re very concerned that the announcement will either delay or undermine the very, very important resuming of a serious peace process.’” Nothing from the Times in that article about how many American Jews Rabbi Jacobs does or doesn’t represent or about how not all American Jews recognize his authority.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/newsweek-fires-anti-trump-reporters-who-wrote-inaccurate-story-on-the-presidents-thanksgiving-plans/

Until today, Jessica Kwong was a political reporter for Newsweek. More specifically, it was her job to keep an eye on the Trump administration, the Trump family, and the 2020 race for president. This week, however, she was fired. The reason? On Thanksgiving Day, she published an article in which she claimed that the president and first lady planned to spend the holiday golfing, tweeting, “and more” some such. Sadly for her, President Trump secretly flew to Afghanistan, where he met the troops (and served them turkey).

After President Trump had landed, pro-Trump Twitter users rightfully went after her. One of her fiercest critics was First Son Donald Trump Jr. “The President spends his Thanksgiving with American troops deployed in Afghanistan, including serving them lunch,” he wrote on Twitter. “Meanwhile, over at the Fake News…”…..

That tweet was retweeted over 8,000 times, which was a sure sign that the story about the Newsweek hoax had gone viral.Afterward — and when even Kwong and her Newsweek friends couldn’t deny President Trump’s presence in Afghanistan any longer — the story was updated, as was Kwong’s tweet in which she shared the original article.

It was, she wrote, “an honest mistake.” It wasn’t nice, no, but it could happen to anyone. Or something.