New York Times reminds us why we don't trust the press

Jack Hellner  "We sat through eight years of Hurricane Barry abusing his power and not giving a damn about the law or the separation of powers, while most of the media cheered him on. We were even treated to stories of how the Obama/Biden years were scandal-free.

"The media so liked Obama they colluded with other Democrats to protect the corrupt Hillary Clinton, his designated successor, from prosecution in order to elect her president. They used a clearly fictitious dossier as they sought to destroy Trump before and after the election.

"The NYT executive editor is proud of the fake news stories on Russian collusion that they won Pulitzers for. (Isn’t that great that journalists get awards for excellence for false stories?)  Now that the public knows that it was always a fake story they now will seek to divide the country on race. In other words, there will be more attempts to mislead the public instead of report truthful news.

"We can look forward to more false stories about Trump and Charlottesvile, the false 'hands up don’t shoot narrative,' the false stories trying to take out white Christian boys, endlessly ginning up racial hate with the term “white privilege” and calling Trump a racist for enforcing the immigration laws Congress passed as the Constitution and his oath requires. But in the meantime, we are getting this:

“We built our newsroom to cover one story, and we did it truly well,” Baquet told the assemblage. “Now we have to regroup, and shift resources and emphasis to take on a different story.”  . . . 

Have Pollsters Learned Nothing since the Last Election?  While the moniker “fake news” is typically reserved for cable news and some of the more prominent newspapers in America, the term could also be applied to presidential polls. How many pollsters predicted Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election by a landslide up to and including the day of the actual election?

The “paper of record,” the New York Times, told readers on election day, Nov. 8, 2016, that Hillary Clinton had an 85 percent chance of winning the election. Their prediction was updated on 10:20 PM ET, oblivious to the evening smiles on cable news shows that were curdling into frowns and outright hysteria.

Screen shot from the New York Times web site on Nov. 8, 2016 // Fair Use

The Unmasking of BDS; Congress will need to do much more.

American Spectator  "After fourteen years of being lulled by propagandists into believing that their boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign (BDS) is a human rights movement, we’re finally waking up to the deception.

Tony Branco

"The U.S. House last month overwhelmingly passed a bill opposing BDS efforts to target and delegitimize the State of Israel. Last February, the Senate passed a bill, never taken up by the House, legalizing the right of state governments and employee benefit plans to refuse to do business with companies boycotting Israel, thereby protecting the 27 states with anti-BDS legislation. Concerned about BDS similarity to Nazi boycotts and incitement of anti-Semitism becoming “the breeding ground for escalations to violence,” the German parliament recently passed a resolution declaring BDS anti-Semitic.
"The Western world is acting, albeit slowly, to unmask BDS for what it is — a dangerous 21^st century iteration of the age-old scourge of Jew-hatred. Anti-Semitism is a mutating cancer, evolving and adapting, intent on destroying Jews in their host communities. Our State Department definition of modern-day anti-Semitism identifies expressions of hatred, including when disguised as Israel-bashing and anti-Zionism, the hallmarks of BDS.
"The BDS movement was founded by left-wing socialists and Marxists in 2001 explicitly to undermine Israel’s sovereignty, skillfully exploiting the language of peace, justice, and human rights to appeal to Western audiences. Adopted by Palestinian extremists in 2005, BDS misleads civic and cultural organizations, governments, and individuals into believing that its goal is merely to establish a Palestinian state living peacefully beside a Jewish state. Using sophisticated subterfuge to hide its linkage to Palestinian terror groups, it obscures its extremist endgame — the destruction of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people and the creation of yet another Arab-majority state." . . .

Report: Obama Tried to Talk Biden out of Running for President

PJ Media   "In the most recent Democratic debate, Senator Cory Booker called Joe Biden to task for his constant name-dropping of Barack Obama. “You invoke President Obama more than anybody in this campaign. You can’t do it when it’s convenient and then dodge it when it’s not,” he said in what was one of my favorite moments ever in any of the debates.
"According to the New York Times, while Joe Biden was seeking counsel on whether to run for president, Barack Obama tried to talk his former vice president out of running.

The two men spoke at least a half dozen times before Mr. Biden decided to run, and Mr. Obama took pains to cast his doubts about the campaign in personal terms.“You don’t have to do this, Joe, you really don’t,” Mr. Obama told Mr. Biden earlier this year, according to a person familiar with the exchange.Mr. Biden — who thinks he could have defeated Donald Trump four years ago — responded by telling Mr. Obama he could never forgive himself if he turned down a second shot at Mr. Trump.

Mr. Obama has said he will not make an endorsement in the primary, and has offered every candidate his counsel. But he has taken an active interest in the inner workings of his friend’s campaign, to an extent beyond anything offered to other candidates.  

"What is so interesting about this story is how it conflicts with Biden’s prior claim that he specifically asked Obama not to endorse him. "I asked President Obama not to endorse me. He doesn't want to. Whoever wins this nomination should win it on their own merits.” If Obama was trying to persuade Joe not to run, it’s highly unlikely that Biden would have had to ask for him not to endorse him. Not that anyone really believed Joe’s story anyway.

"Another fun nugget in this story is what is revealed about Obama’s search for a running mate. " . . .

Newsrooms actually call out Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren for lying about Michael Brown’s death

One of these two candidates may be our next president. Neither should relish having to govern in a racial environment as toxic as the one they are promoting through false statements like the one about Michael Brown’s case. Americans should fear being governed in that environment.

Michael Brown: “A Poor Candidate For Martyrdom”

Power Line Blog  "Glenn Kessler writes a “fact check” column for the Washington Post. I find the column helpful because Kessler usually does a good job of stating what’s correct and what’s incorrect about the statements he’s checking.
"On the other hand, I think Kessler’s liberal bias comes into play when he applies his “Pinocchio Test.” It seems to me that he’s more inclined to award lots of Pinocchios to conservatives who have misstated things than to liberals who have done so to a comparable degree. (But then, this view may reflect conservative bias on my part).

"Kessler’s column would be better if he simply struck to the facts and ditched the Pinocchio bit. But I suppose he needs a gimmick and, perhaps, an outlet for his liberal bias.

"Kessler’s latest fact check concerns statements by Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren about the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Harris tweeted:

5 years ago Michael Brown was murdered by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. . . We must confront systemic racism and police violence head on.

"Not be outdone, Warren tweeted this, half an hour later:

Brown was murdered by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. . . .

"Hard though it is for liberals to earn four Pinocchi[o]s from Kessler, the maximum number he awards, Harris and Warren accomplished this feat with their claim that Brown was murdered." . . .

Ignorant Liberals Need To Go Visit America

Kurt Schlichter  "It’s always good to occasionally leave deep blue west Los Angeles and visit the United States. When your congressjerk is Ted Lieu, you get a skewed perspective on the country as well as suffer continuous embarrassment. My recent travels through parts of the country that aren’t populated and controlled almost exclusively by liberal nimrods gave me some hope for the future. America as a whole does not appear eager to become Scat Francisco. The problem is the people who want to transform our entire country into a socialist open sewer know nothing of this country outside their reeking pinko enclaves."
. . . 
"At Little Round Top and the Angle, you stand on patches of ground where bodies piled up because Americans could not resolve their differences in any other way than with bayonets and Minié balls. That’s true American history, not the garbage propaganda the elite tries to feed us to undermine the moral basis of our country and thereby justify their fundamental transformation of it into a socialist dictatorship with them in charge, of course."
. . . 
"Americans are thirsty for their heritage. They flock to it. And liberals, at best, ignore it and its lessons when they are not actively trying to erase it. The New York Times has promised a series of essays dedicated to show that slavery was the entirety of America’s foundation, but that’s a lie designed to create a kind of original sin they can exploit for their own advantage today. It’s weaponized history." . . .

Here the leftist Senator gets refuted by Candice Owens:

The Bogus Story That Launched a ‘Collusion’ Probe

Andrew C. McCarthy

A minor functionary’s farcical encounter with a self-promoting schemer provided the excuse for an investigation.

Editor’s note: Andrew C. McCarthy’s new book is Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency. This is the fourth in a series of excerpts; the first can be read here, the second here, and the third here. 

"The George Papadopoulos Origin Story has never added up. It has been portrayed as the Big Bang, the Magic Moment that started the FBI’s investigation of “collusion” — a suspected election-theft conspiracy between Donald Trump’s campaign and Vladimir Putin’s regime. But if the young energy-sector analyst had actually emerged in early 2016 as the key to proving Trump–Russia espionage, you would think the FBI might have gotten around to interviewing him before January 27, 2017 — i.e., a week after President Trump had been inaugurated, and six months after the Bureau formally opened its “Crossfire Hurricane” probe.

"You would probably also think Papadopoulos, Suspect One in The Great Cyber Espionage Attack on Our Democracy, might have rated a tad more than the whopping 14-day jail sentence a federal judge eventually imposed on him. You might even suppose that he’d have been charged with some seditious felony involving clandestine operations against his own country, instead of . . . yes . . . fibbing to the FBI about the date of a meeting.

"That, however, does not scratch the surface. We are to believe that what led to the opening of the FBI’s Trump–Russia investigation, and what therefore is the plinth of the collusion narrative, is a breakfast meeting at a London hotel on April 26, 2016, between Papadopoulos and Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic we are supposed to take for a clandestine Russian agent. We are to take Papadopoulos’s word for it that Mifsud claimed Russia possessed “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands” of “emails of Clinton.” We are further to believe that “the professor” elaborated that, in order to help Donald Trump’s candidacy, the Kremlin would release these “emails of Clinton” at a time chosen to do maximum damage to the Democratic nominee’s campaign.

"The story is based on no credible evidence. If it were ever presented to a jury, it would be laughed out of court." . . .

Hong Kong is a huuuuuuuge embarrassment for Democrats

Monica Showalter  "The turmoil in Hong Kong is a huuuuuuge embarrassment for Democrats. Hong Kongers are waving the stars and stripes, singing the national anthem, and issuing a global cry for freedom. For a Democratic Party that loudly supports bend-a-knee leftists who hate the U.S. flag, such as Colin Kaepernick, that's a problem. And for a party that is trying to sell socialism to the U.S. public, well, oppressive China's got socialism in spades.

"President Trump has taken flak for his response to the crisis, arguably so, but the real clown show is in what's coming from the Democrats.

"Axios did some homework and here's what it found when it tried to get answers from Democratic presidential candidates about what to do, particularly if the Chicoms get violent with the Hongkongers:" . . .

This is what the Democrats are offering as one of the world's greatest beacons of freedom stands to fall into the jaws of communism. Trump's response is still developing, so I'm not going to criticize him entirely for weakness, though I hope he moves things along.

Pelosi sticks up for her 'squad' after their failed Israel stunt  "You'd think someone as savvy as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would want to distance herself from the failed stunt of two of her squad members, Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. The pair of them were up to no good in their announced trip to Israel. Far from going there for the reasons normal people go, they wanted to hang out with terrorist-sympathizers and promote an anti-Israel boycott-divest-sanction campaign. The political nature of the trip was exposed by their refusal to go on a pro-offered bipartisan trip to the country, their acceptance of a different trip hosted by terrorist-linked sponsors, and creepiest of all, Tlaib's refusal of an invitation by Israel's prime minister for a humanitarian visa to make that one last trip to see her 90-year-old granny who might not be there for her next time, something Tlaib declined. Those detailed proved the whole trip to be nothing but a political stunt, and not surprisingly, Israel wasn't up for letting them do it on their time. 

They tried to damage Israel in other words, but failed miserably because Israel was smarter than them.

Wouldn't that be a good reason to pretend you didn't even know these losers? Not for Nancy Pelosi. According to Fox News:

“Israel’s denial of entry to Congresswomen Tlaib and Omar is a sign of weakness, and beneath the dignity of the great state of Israel," Pelosi said in a press release.  . . .

Why Israel Made the Right Move with Omar and Tlaib

. . . "Omar and Tlaib Support BDS, Which Supports the Destruction of Israel 

"Omar and Tlaib both support the BDS movement and voted against a bill, passed in the House of Representatives 398-17, that condemned BDS.  The BDS movement is anti-Semitic as it applies a double standard to Israel, the only state for the Jews.  BDS activists, including cofounder Omar Barghouti, have frequently asserted that the intention of the BDS movement is not to force Israel to leave Judea and Samaria (commonly referred to as the "West Bank"), nor is it to promote a two-state solution, but to bring about the destruction of Israel itself." . . .

Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib Share Antisemitic Cartoon by Participant in Iran’s Holocaust Denial Contest  "Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) both reportedly shared an antisemitic cartoon by an artist who participated in Iran’s Holocaust denial contest on their respective Instagram accounts on Friday, according to Forward editor Batya Ungar-Sargon." . . .

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Claim About The Homeless Was So Absurd Even Politifact Couldn’t Spin It

Hot Air

"Back in June, California Gov. Gavin Newsom made an incredible claim about homeless people in his state. Asked why the homeless population hadn’t declined when he was Mayor of San Francisco, Newsom said, “The vast majority (of San Francisco’s homeless people) also come in from — and we know this — from Texas. Just (an) interesting fact.”

"Newsom’s claim was discounted by the LA Times last month but Politifact decided to investigate independently. This week the least reliable fact-checker in the business agreed that Newsom’s statement was absurd, giving it a “Pants on Fire” rating." . . .

Proposed California Curriculum Riddled With Anti-Police Rhetoric, Anti-Israel Bias

Daily Caller  "A proposed California schools curriculum includes anti-Israel programming and also aims to teach students a one-sided view of police officers and police brutality.

"The Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, proposed by the California Department of Education, includes anti-Israel bias and aims to teach students about the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, a Palestinian-led anti-Israel initiative. The curriculum also has students study issues of police brutality and asks teachers to find incidents of bias by police in their own communities.

The “#BlackLivesMatter and Social Change” portion of the curriculum is aimed at grades 9–12, according to the proposed curriculum reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The purpose of this lesson is to expose students “to contemporary discussions around policing in the U.S., specifically police brutality cases where unarmed African Americans have been killed.”

The teachers are asked to discuss “a recent incident in your community where an African American has been subjected to racial profiling or police brutality.” Students are then asked to read “41 Bullets Off-Broadway,” a poem by Wille Perdomo.

The poem includes rhetoric such as “you bumped into four cops who happened to/wake up with a bad case of contagious shooting” and “Before your mother kissed you goodbye/she forgot to tell you that American kids/get massacred in gym class and shot during Sunday sermon.' ” . . .

https://youtu.be/aQMqWAiWPMs

CNN discovers that combining Trump Derangement Syndrome with ignorant reporters leads to embarrassing corrections

Beyond all that, imagine the fun of such an investment. Major League Baseball and soccer teams. The Ice Bowl. The Arctic Burger. The Iditarod Cup. Ice fishing. Glacier ice cubes like what John Wayne used, denser than ordinary ice so that a cube lasts all evening in a mixed drink. The possibilities proliferate. Richard Jack Rail*

CNN discovers that combining Trump Derangement Syndrome with ignorant reporters leads to embarrassing corrections

"CNN’s Chris Cillizza tried valiantly to hew to the Party Line when writing about the story that President Trump is exploring the concept of acquiring Greenland from Denmark. We know that everything the 45th President does is bad, so the only question for CNN people is how to pick and present the data that tries to prove the point.

"Alas for Cillizza (a graduate of Georgetown University), he chose (or more likely was assigned) the task of using the precedent of acquiring Alaska from Russia to comment on the possibility of a second Arctic acquisition, and he came up with this howler, caught by Ellie Bufkin and Jerry Dunleavy of The Examiner:

CNN stated that the 1867 purchase of Alaska by the United States "didn't work out so well" in an analysis article outlining potential problems if the U.S. pursued the purchase of Greenland.

"One of the last times the United States bought land from a foreign country was in 1867, when Seward orchestrated the purchase of Alaska from the Russians for $7.2 million," reporter Chris Cillizza wrote. "It didn't work out so well -- and has gone down as 'Seward's Folly' in the history books."

"Who could possibly write such drivel? And what kind of editor would let the contention that we’d be better off with Russia owning Alaska (and its vast natural resources including oil and many minerals) strategically placed at the top of the Western Hemisphere? And what about the nearly three quarters of a million Alaskans? I know that CNN wishes Sarah Palin had never been governor of a state, but really do we want to tell all those other Alaskans that they and their home state are a mistake?

"Apparently, Cillizza and his editor had never read about “Seward’s Folly” in a history course." . . .

NYT and WaPo hype Greenland ice cap melt – based on incorrect data  "Americans who get their news from the mainstream media that take their directions from the New York Times and Washington Post can be forgiven for suspecting the President Trump wants to buy Greenland because its ice cap is melting. Both newspapers reported that Greenland experienced temperature records in June this year.

"The Times hyped scares of melting ice and rising sea levels: . . ."

*Greenland: Something to think about . . . "It's doubtful that the Danes will sell Greenland.  Greenland's foreign ministry tweets that the country is "open for business, not for sale."  But if ever that changes, we need to be right there, first in line, check in hand.  Something to think about."

Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib Partnered with Vicious Anti-Semites to Plan Their Trip to Israel

"This should be a national scandal."

American Thinker

National Review  "To the extent that I care at all about Israel blocking entry to two U.S. congresswomen who partner with anti-Semites who seek its destruction, I agree with critics who argue that Bibi Netanyahu should not appear to bow to Donald Trump’s tweeted demands and that blocking Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from visiting Israel handed them a short-term propaganda victory. But that’s not the most important part of the story.
"The most important element of the story is the fact that two American congresswomen shunned a bipartisan congressional delegation to Israel to go on an independent trip to Israel sponsored by vicious anti-Semites. Another important element of the story is that, as of today, the mainstream media have whitewashed Omar and Tlaib’s vile associations.
"Writing yesterday, the Washington Post said that “Omar and Tlaib’s trip to Jerusalem and the West Bank was planned by Miftah, a nonprofit organization headed by Palestinian lawmaker and longtime peace negotiator Hanan Ashrawi.” The New York Times described it as an organization “headed by a longtime Palestinian lawmaker.” In its editorial, the New York Times editorial board identified it as a group “that promotes ‘global awareness and knowledge of Palestinian realities.’”
"This is a whitewash. Thanks to a Twitter thread from the Washington Examiner’s Seth Mandel — who pointed to multiple additional sources — I started looking at the articles and views published on the Miftah website, and it was like peeling an onion of evil. There was layer upon layer of vile anti-Semitism.
"First, the group actually published blood libel, posting an article that accused “the Jews [of using] the blood of Christians in the Jewish Passover.” When pro-Israel bloggers condemned the article, Miftah first claimed that the attacks against the piece were part of a “smear campaign” and minimized the reference to blood libel as merely “briefly addressed.' ” . . .