RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/10/the-rebirth-of-both-sides/

The free press in the West, which has spent the past seven years warning of the dangers of “both sides” news coverage, insists now that there are two sides to the story of Hamas’s slaughter of more than 1,300 people, most of whom were unarmed Israeli civilians.

On October 7, Israel suffered its worst terrorist attack in the post–World War II era, as Hamas militants attacked Israeli communities by air, land, and sea. As of this writing, the estimated death toll of 1,300, which includes infants, women, and the elderly, also includes 27 U.S. citizens. In addition, Hamas has taken an estimated 150 hostages.

It’s rare that a news event is as black-and-white as this, with no gray areas, involving clearly laid out villains and victims. Terrorists murdered civilians. That’s the news story. The way the murders were carried out, and the sheer death toll, are shocking. In terms of straightforward reporting, there is plenty to go around for journalists. Who survived the attacks and how? What did the survivors see and hear? Most important: What happened? Yet, instead of focusing exclusively on uncovering the “who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” and “why” of the horrors of October 7, the free media insist upon presenting their work through a “root causes” prism, balancing their coverage of the terrorist attack equally with coverage of Palestinians’ criticisms of Israel.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/thomas-friedman-equates-trump-and-netanyahu-with-putin-and-xi/

New York Times foreign policy columnist Thomas Friedman wrote an opinion piece published by the New York Times on October 4th, entitled “How Four Leaders Are Turning the World Upside Down.” The four leaders whom Mr. Friedman lumped together in a disgusting display of moral equivalence were Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, former U.S. President Donald Trump, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He accused them all of having “created massive disruptions inside and outside their countries based on pure self-interest, rather than the interests of their people.”

Thomas Friedman’s condemnations of Putin and Xi were spot on, but he went off the rails completely by including Netanyahu and Trump on his list and claiming that Donald Trump “is the most dangerous of the four.” Friedman left out altogether North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un who has ramped up North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile testing and launches. And he skipped over Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose regime is arming Russia in Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine and is providing military and financial support to Islamist terrorists.

Mr. Friedman has written several columns that have taken Prime Minister Netanyahu to task, mostly because of what he absurdly has labeled “a judicial coup led by Netanyahu.” The so-called “judicial coup” was legislation approved by Israel’s duly elected Knesset to rein in the runaway power of unelected Israeli Supreme Court judges. The judges have taken it upon themselves to invalidate laws passed by the Knesset because the judges believed the laws were not “reasonable.”

Israel’s judiciary arrogated to itself the power to override legislation and government executive actions based on the judges’ subjective judgments that not all the related aspects of the policy issues involved were adequately considered and accorded their proper weight. The judges went far beyond deciding whether the Knesset or government officials exceeded their authority as defined in Israel’s Basic Laws or arbitrarily committed an outrageous act that was grossly unjust. And they went far beyond deciding whether the Knesset or government officials unduly infringed on a person’s fundamental human rights to dignity and liberty as spelled out in the Basic Laws. Instead of serving as an independent check to ensure that these limits on legislative and executive powers were not exceeded, the Israeli Supreme Court judges have turned themselves into an unelected super-legislative branch.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/trump-derangement-syndrome-infects-the-journal/

Last week the Wall Street Journal published an unsigned op-ed unworthy of one of the best teams of commentators in the country. The subject was some comments Donald Trump made on Truth Social that, by surprise, displayed his trademark turbo-charged hyperbole. The Journal is usually a reliable source of sober, judicious, and fact-based analysis, but this editorial is a troubling portent that Republican Trump-Derangement Syndrome hysteria may have a negative impact on next year’s election.

Trump’s heinous sin, according to the editors, is saying “that Gen. Mark Milley, the nation’s highest military officer, deserves execution—as in death. He said NBC should be investigated for treason and that the FBI should raid the homes of Senate Democrats. Then he accused President Biden of being manipulated by ‘the Fascists in the White House.’”

Now listen to what Trump actually said about Milley as quoted by the Journal: “‘This guy turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!  [emphasis added].’” That’s more nuanced than saying Milley “deserves execution.” 

Read carefully, one wonders why the editorial would provide its own refutation. Take “Woke train wreck.” Has the Journal forgotten that in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Milley argued for bringing critical race theory propaganda into the military academies and the armed forces’ training programs?

Is that not “woke”? And given the recruiting crisis across the services, caused in part by subjecting troops to a truly racist and preposterous leftist ideology, is there any wonder that potential recruits who would join up to be trained as warriors and fight for their country, would pass on being told that their country is “systematically racist,” including them?

https://victorhanson.com/american-pravda-part-one/

In communist countries, there were two levels of consciousness, two mindsets in other words. What all people mouthed publicly became the opposite of what most thought in private. When the private mind finally became all dominant, the entire system of the Soviet Union and communist Eastern Europe abruptly collapsed under the weight of its own lies.

The theme of George Orwell’s dystopic novel 1984 was that an abjectly cynical society that assumed what the government broadcasted and what was supposed to be orthodox were complete lies.

The truth was to be found only in whispered private conversations. Such mass schizophrenia resulted from the state’s desire and ability to hurt anyone who dared to tell the truth. But when the lies finally became too outrageous to pass off as true, and half the population no longer bothered to lie in public, the system either collapsed or turned murderous.

America is still ostensibly a free society. Or is it really—when the state, the media, and the elite establish rules of acceptable public discourse and expression, and they brand any opponents to their party lines as apostates to be canceled, doxed, shadow banned, and ostracized?

So, the problem is not just a weaponized FBI that pays off social media to ban unwelcome news, or government boards that brand as “hate” speech or “disinformation” what they find inconvenient. Nor are we dealing just with a corrupt Department of Justice that targets perceived opponents and exempts its supporters.

For example, does anyone believe that Donald Trump would face 91 indictments had he on January 7, 2021, just announced that he had no intention to run again for president? Would Elon Musk be facing possible federal suits had he promised to keep “speech moderators” on Twitter and announced that he was a diehard Biden supporter? Would Hunter Biden have been able to shake down foreign oligarchs and governments with impunity all these years were his father not a leftwing vice president and then a likely candidate for president and now commander in chief?

Still, the real culprit for our empire of lies is the culture of our bicoastal elite that uses its influence, wealth, political clout, social media, and the administrative state to create virtual realities that have nothing to do with the real world, but instead reflect the ridiculous utopian agendas of those who have enough money and clout to avoid the baleful concrete consequences of their ideologies.

https://themessenger.com/opinion/accessory-reporters-media-biden-allegations-hunter-biden-laptop

For some in the media, no allegation that might link President Joe Biden to unethical or even criminal behavior seems to be considered credible or worth investigating. Times have certainly changed. I remember when any hint of impropriety involving the White House administrations of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and, most especially, Donald Trump would catapult journalists into action, seeking to discover whether any of the suggested improprieties could be connected to those presidents.

I had no problem with that. In fact, I strongly support the practice because that is the role of journalists, especially investigative reporters: follow the facts to the truth, no matter the reporter’s personal feelings or biases they may harbor toward an individual or entity under investigation.

Many people believe that the ethical and professional conduct of some journalists and news organizations went out the window with the dawning of the Age of Trump. Soon after the New York City businessman declared his intention to seek the presidency in June 2015, many journalists began to openly declare their disdain, even hatred, for him.

Then, during the 2020 election, with seemingly little or no investigation, a report about the content found on Hunter Biden’s laptop was categorically labeled “Russian disinformation” by much of the mainstream media, with a large assist from more than 50 former U.S. intelligence officials, the Biden White House, and President Biden himself, who vigorously answered “Yes, yes, yes,” when asked if he believed the laptop contained Russian disinformation.

Case closed, apparently. No need for those in the media to do their jobs.  

Except, of course, the Russian disinformation label turned out to be untrue. Many liberal-leaning news organizations were forced to grudgingly acknowledge that the Hunter Biden laptop story was not Russian disinformation, and might have tentacles leading beyond Hunter Biden.

Now, we have another story involving Hunter Biden — that he allegedly received $260,000 from Chinese business interests during his father’s presidential campaign, with Joe Biden’s address on the wire transfer.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/propublica-buries-its-clarence-thomas-news-media-bias-political-ethics-de06903d?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

Justice Clarence Thomas has been attending private events with fierce critics of Donald Trump. That’s the only real news in the latest hit piece from ProPublica, which describes itself “an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force.” But you have to read between the lines to find it.

The outlet obtained a photograph of Justice Thomas with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. It said Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, was at an event Justice Thomas attended. It presents photographic evidence of that too, though it doesn’t note Mr. Bloomberg’s presence in the caption. And it said Justice Thomas had attended a 2018 event of Stand Together, a network founded by libertarian businessman Charles Koch.

What ProPublica doesn’t say in its 4,500-word piece is that Mr. Burns has described Mr. Trump as “Hitleresque” and “the greatest threat to American democracy since the Second World War.” It doesn’t say that Mr. Bloomberg has called Mr. Trump a “carnival barking clown” and sought the nomination to challenge him in 2020. It doesn’t say that the Koch network is reportedly spending tens of millions to defeat Mr. Trump in 2024.

Why leave all that out? Because ProPublica wants you to think Justice Thomas is in the tank for Mr. Trump. In April it complained: “Thomas’ approach to ethics has already attracted public attention. Last year, Thomas didn’t recuse himself from cases that touched on the involvement of his wife, Ginni, in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.”

The site misleads its readers by omitting the anti-Trump material from its latest attack on Justice Thomas. Mr. Burns is identified as someone “whose films Koch has financially supported.” The Koch network is described as having “spent over $65 million supporting Republican candidates in the last election cycle.” The piece omits Mr. Bloomberg’s liberal views on the environment but mentions that at California’s Bohemian Grove with him and Justice Thomas was the author Bjorn Lomborg, who “has for years argued the threat of global warming is overstated.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/his-magazine-claimed-cancel-culture-is-good-then-he-got-cancelled/

The surviving Baby Boomer counterculture heroes are either keeping very quiet or having brief outbursts while noting that the country has gone insane… before issuing scripted apologies pleading for everyone to forgive them for noticing that the country has gone insane.

Now the time has come for Jan Wenner, the Rolling Stone co-founder that people last paid attention to in the 1980s back before the magazine had come to consist of 90% Trump rants and 10% interviews with elderly celebrity pals. And so matters would have remained if Wenner, his ego so bloated that he doesn’t seem to have noticed the cultural weather outside, decided to freely spout off.

In the interview, he spoke about his decision to not include interviews with women and black artists, and his remarks on the topic were widely criticized.

“The people had to meet a couple criteria, but it was just kind of my personal interest and love of them,” he said, adding “Insofar as the women, just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level.”

He continued, “Stevie Wonder, genius, right? I suppose when you use a word as broad as ‘masters,’ the fault is using that word. Maybe Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I mean, they just didn’t articulate at that level.”

“For public relations sake, maybe I should have gone and found one black and one woman artist to include here that didn’t measure up to that same historical standard, just to avert this kind of criticism,” he told the outlet. “Maybe I’m old-fashioned and I don’t give a (expletive) or whatever.”

It turns out that he does give an expletive after issuing an apology and being kicked off the board for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Earlier this year, Rolling Stone published an article titled, “Why Cancel Culture Is Good for Democracy”.

Does Wenner still agree? Does he agree that, “Those who fear cancel culture may claim they fear suppression of speech, but it’s accountability that they want to avoid”?