RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-problem-with-veterans-1533682511

After 18 years as an executive at MTV, I decided to start a media brand for an underserved audience: American military veterans and their families.

We Are the Mighty, which launched in 2014, has intentionally stayed away from hard news, politics or anything that tries to polarize veterans. Because our entire purpose is to engage this audience, we rely heavily on social media, especially our Facebook page. At first we found, as many publishers have, that there was no better partner than Facebook , the company whose mission statement is “to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together . . . and express what matters to them.”
Photo: iStock/Getty Images

Despite Facebook’s frequent and inscrutable changes, our business continued to thrive. We were rewarded—with likes, shares and comments—for our authentic posts, positive message and high engagement. Thanks to Facebook’s enormous scale, we could reach a monthly audience of millions. If we stayed true to our values and remained assiduously nonpolitical, positive and honest, we assumed we could withstand the inevitable tweaks to the algorithm.

Then in June, Facebook said it had changed its policies “in response to criticism over how its ad network was able to be manipulated during elections.” These policies require publishers to label anything considered “political” or “issue-based advertising.” Evidently, if anything in our posts uses the word “military,” we are classified as a “political” advertiser—as seen on Facebook’s Advertiser Help Center in its list of “National Issues of Public Importance”—and must be labeled as such. Publishers like We Are the Mighty must register as creators of “political advertising” to target audiences with such content.
. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/08/outrageous_media_shrug_off_feinstein_spy_scandal_story.html

Imagine for a minute if Representative Devin Nunes or Trey Gowdy or Matt Gaetz had employed a Russian spy for two decades. Imagine further that this Republican solon were married to a spouse who had made a fortune investing in Russia. Do you think such news would receive less than wall-to-wall coverage on CNN, MSNBC, or any of the other television news operations?

Yet, with very little media attention, the story has emerged that Senator Dianne Feinstein – of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, with access to the highest-level secrets – employed for two decades a spy who reported to China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS). When the news was first made public, buried paragraphs deep into a Politico story, hardly anyone noticed.

China, for example, is certainly out to steal U.S. technology secrets, noted former intelligence officials, but it also is heavily invested in traditional political intelligence gathering, influence and perception-management operations in California. Former intelligence officials told me that Chinese intelligence once recruited a staff member at a California office of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, and the source reported back to China about local politics[.] …

According to four former intelligence officials, in the 2000s, a staffer in Senator Dianne Feinstein’s San Francisco field office was reporting back to [China’s Ministry of State Security]. While this person, who was a liaison to the local Chinese community, was fired, charges were never filed against him. (One former official reasoned this was because the staffer was providing political intelligence and not classified information – making prosecution far more difficult.) The suspected informant was “run” by officials based at China’s San Francisco Consulate, said another former intelligence official. The spy’s handler “probably got an award back in China” for his work, noted this former official, dryly.

Most of the media attention that mentioned the scandal did so to disparage President Trump for tweeting about it Friday night…

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/31/the-unmasking-of-the-weekly-

Barack Obama really owes Bill Kristol—big time.

First, had Kristol and his fellow neoconservatives not pushed for a deadly, prolonged war in Iraq after September 11, there would be no President Obama. The first-term senator’s premature candidacy for president was based largely on his vocal opposition to the Iraq War, which had been supported by his primary opponent, Senator Hillary Clinton.

“Most of you know I opposed this war from the start,” Obama said in his announcement speech in February 2007. “America, it’s time to start bringing our troops home. It’s time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else’s civil war.”

Second, Kristol’s magazine, The Weekly Standard, just gave political cover to Obama’s most unforgivable scandal: The weaponization of our law enforcement and intelligence apparatus to target Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and violate the constitutional rights of private U.S. citizens.

In a flawed, dishonest, and truly contemptible cover article by April Doss, The Weekly Standard crossed the line from Trump foe to Obama defender; in the process, the allegedly “conservative” publication gave voice to a hyperpartisan Democrat who briefly worked for a disgraced Senate committee so she could smear a man who has been a real hero these past 18 months: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).

The article, “What We Can Learn About Carter Page, the FBI, and Devin Nunes’ Conspiracy Theory,” reflects the kind of willful ignorance and deceitfulness employed by pundits on the Left and the NeverTrump Right to make Nunes—and not the dozens of unelected bureaucrats who orchestrated this travesty—the real villain. It is straight-up, Adam Schiff-style propaganda.

Unreasonable and Belligerent
Ever since the Justice Department on July 21released a heavily redacted version of the application (along with three renewals) submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in October 2016 seeking authority to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page, the anti-Trump media mob has focused its wrath on Nunes, whose committee authored the bombshell memo that first outlined the misconduct behind the FISA application. Kristol and the Standard have aided #TheResistance in attacking Nunes since his memo was issued last February. Kristol objected to the memo’s release, then ridiculously warned that “when the history of the degradation of the Republican Party is written, the Nunes memo will be a significant moment.”

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: