The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

In The Mailbox: 01.22.19

Posted on | January 22, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Is “Conservative Media” An Oxymoron?
EBL: How Long Will National Review Survive?, also, How Depraved And Corrupt Is Hollywood? Won’t You Be My Neighbor Not Nominated For An Oscar
Twitchy: New Reporting Suggests Nathan Phillips Is Even Worse Than You Thought
Louder With Crowder: Patricia Heaton Goes Ballistic On People Attacking Covington Catholic Kids

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Yellow Vest Protests – Who Are The Bad Guys? also, The Wigwam Tom Tom Credibility Test
American Power: Prince Philip Stokes Debate On Older Drivers, also, Rachel Notley’s NDP Government Launches Stalinist Campaign To Shut Down Rebel Media
American Thinker: Kamala Harris’ Identity Ticket, also, The Madness Of Crowds And What Lies Ahead
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday, also, Animal’s Daily Western Pacific News
BattleSwarm: Jonathan Pie On Why May’s Brexit Deal Was So Horrible, also, Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update
CDR Salamander: Now THAT’s The Navy I Like To See! also, Keeping An Eye On The Long War, Part LXXX
Da Tech Guy: They Want To Make Him Pay, also, Non-Tweets For January 22
Don Surber: Covington Kids Should Sue Twitter, also, National Review Should Apologize – And Finally Has
Dustbury: Strange Search Engine Queries, also, Needing More Than Mrs. Peel
First Street Journal: The Sexism & Racism Of CNN’s Nia-Malika Henderson
The Geller Report: SNL Writer Offers BJ To Anyone Who Punches “The MAGA Kid” In The Face, also, CNN Legal Analyst – The Buzzfeed Fiasco Will Make People “Think We’re A Bunch of Leftist Liars Trying To Get Trump”
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Accountability?
Hollywood In Toto: Is This Why Judd Apatow bows To The PC Police? also, Jones’ Ghostbusters Trump Rant Is Pure Ingratitude
Joe For America: Alyssa Milano Brands Iconic MAGA Hats As “The New White Hoods”, also, Judge Jeannine Puts Her Career On The Line, Exposes Who Pelosi Is Really Working For
JustOneMinute: You Can’t Make this Stuff Up – Unless You Do, also, Feel Great, Feel The Hate
Legal Insurrection: Supreme Court Allows Military Trans Ban To Go Into Effect, also, WaPo Corrects Covington Smear Story To Say Indian Provocateur Didn’t Fight In Vietnam
The PanAm Post: The Young, And Capitalism As An Attitude
Power Line: Sue The Bastards! [Updated], also, Racist Black Nationalism And The Covington Controversy
Shark Tank: Carlos Muniz Appointed To Florida Supreme Court
Shot In The Dark: Advice
STUMP: San Diego ERS Has No Business Giving Out 13th Checks, also, Taxing Tuesday – For Illinois, I Foresee PAAAIN!
The Political Hat: Banning The Receipt In California, also, The Latest In Transgender “Science” – Reincarnation
This Ain’t Hell: Nathan Phillips, “Vietnam Times” Veteran, also, Poe’s Take On Politics & Honesty
Victory Girls: Pelosi, Not Trump, Is Holding America Hostage, also, Should Twitter Be Charged For Threats To MAGA Kids?
Volokh Conspiracy: Federal Circuits & The Second Amendment In 2018, also, Will SCOTUS Read The Free Exercise Clause As Often Mandating Religious Exemptions To Common Laws?
Weasel Zippers: Lawyer Offers Covington Kids Free Representation, Warns NYT About “Obvious Libel”, also, Dems Who Slammed Kavanaugh Went on Puerto Rico Trip With Cardenas
Megan McArdle: The Covington Students Failed To Act Like Grownups. So Did The Adults.
Mark Steyn: Pure Barry, or Not, also, The Drumbeat Of The Mob


Category: Linkagery

Elizabeth Warren’s Billion-Dollar Indian Casino Plan Defeated by Democrats

Posted on | January 22, 2019 | Comments Off on Elizabeth Warren’s Billion-Dollar Indian Casino Plan Defeated by Democrats

 

Elizabeth Warren’s effort to gain credibility as the 1/1024th Native American candidate in the Democrat 2020 presidential primary field wasn’t limited to her creepy experiments in DNA “racial science.” Emily Zannotti at the Daily Wire recaps Senator Warren’s failed efforts to promote a Massachusetts tribe’s casino bid:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has been working with a local Native American tribe in Massachusetts to push through authorization for a new casino on federal land — a casino that local Massachusetts residents, and the federal government, have repeatedly said they don’t want.
But the bill to build the casino died in the senate late last year, and now, it seems, some of Warren’s fellow Democrats may be to blame.
The Washington Times reports that the bill, which would have allowed the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe to build a “$1 billion resort in Taunton, Massachusetts,” never made it to the senate floor, thanks to the efforts of the two Democratic senators from Rhode Island, Sheldon Whitehouse and Jack Reed, who pleaded with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to let the bill die in committee.
The bill reappeared in the House last week, this time sponsored by Reps. William Keating and Joe Kennedy III, both Massachusetts Democrats.
The bill overrides a federal court’s decision not to award the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe around 300 acres to build the billion-dollar tribal casino, based on rules granting tribal land only to those tribes recognized in an early-20th century federal agreement. The Mashpee Wampanoag received federal recognition, the Times reports, in 2007.
“As a result, federally recognized tribes in Rhode Island would argue that they hold the same standing as the Massachusetts tribe and request that similar legislation be introduced on their behalf,” the two Rhode Island senators wrote. “As you know, we have long opposed doing so due to potential conflicts with the 1978 Rhode Island Indian Claims Settlement Act, which ensures that settlement lands remain subject to Rhode Island state law.”

There are so many things wrong with the Mashpee Wampanoag casino bid that it’s difficult to say what’s the worst thing about it. The Massachusetts gaming commission will approve only three casinos in the state, each in a different region, so if the plan backed by Warren to put a casino in Taunton goes through, that would sabotage efforts by nearby Brockton to bring a casino to their struggling town:

Brockton Mayor William Carpenter said the Warren legislation on behalf of the Masphee Wampanoag tribe would destroy his community’s plans for a casino, a project designed to bring badly needed jobs and economic development to the blue-collar burg. . . .
Lobbying on behalf of the Warren-Keating legislation is the Genting Group, a Malaysia-based entity that has sunk a reported $400 million into the tribe’s First Light Resort and Casino project and could lose it all if the federal government fails to take the land into trust.
“We are up against a foreign company that’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars,” said [Taunton resident Michelle] Littlefield. “It’s a bottomless well on the other side. From day one, we’ve been the underdog, and the only thing we’ve ever had on our side was the law.”
She criticized lawmakers for attempting to overrule the judge’s orders [denying the Mashpee Wampanoag’s federal land claim]. “If we could just get the government to follow the law, not only the federal agencies involved, but every congressman and senator who’s taken the oath of office,” she said.

Hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign money are involved:

The biggest push behind the effort has come from the Genting Group, a Kuala Lumpur-based company with a global portfolio of casino businesses that has $249.5 million invested in the troubled project and is slated to manage the First Light Resort & Casino if it’s completed, according to Malaysian reports.
Genting disclosed in its 2015 annual report its $249.5 million investment in promissory notes from the Mashbee Wampanoag Tribal Gaming Authority. It gained no equity from the investment, which was intended to “establish” its “growing presence in the U.S.”
There will be no return on investment until the casino is in operation and Genting is paid for management, an increasingly unlikely outcome that would result in Genting losing $274 million. In the case that no casino is ever built, the tribe says it won’t even have to pay back the investments made by Genting.
Genting hired lobbying firm Gavel Resources in February 2018 to make its case on the land use decision in Washington, D.C., according to official lobbying disclosure forms.

Heap big wampum, as you might say, has been invested in lobbying for this Indian casino that federal courts have declared illegal, but it’s being promoted by the 99.8% white Massachusetts Senator because . . . ?

I don’t know, “social justice,” or something.

Despite being the first Democrat to declare her presidential intentions for 2020, Senator Fauxcahontas isn’t actually popular with primary voters. Polls show her with less than 5% support, according to the Real Clear Politics average, far behind Joe Biden (27%) and Bernie Sanders (17%).

Perhaps the surest omen that Warren’s campaign is doomed, however, is the way Saturday Night Live spoofed her during the “Weekend Update” segment, with Kate McKinnon as the candidate mocking her DNA test (“The test came back 100% bad idea. Who knew race science wasn’t a good PR strategy?”) and comparing herself to a prostate exam. “Politico was accused of sexism for an article saying you aren’t likable,” host Colin Jost asked. “What do you think about that?”

“Look, yeah, I’m sorry I’m not young and pretty like Donald jackass Trump,” she said. “Look, Colin, was the article sexist, of course it was. Am I likable? Probably not. But neither is a prostate exam. But you need one or you’ll die.”
“This country is long overdue for a finger up its caboose. You might even like it,” she continued. “So bend over, America, and let Mama Warren get to work.”

No, thank you, ma’am.




 

 

 

Category: Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts

Advice to Criminals: Avoid Texas

Posted on | January 21, 2019 | Comments Off on Advice to Criminals: Avoid Texas

America’s criminal population lost three members over the weekend:

Three men were killed and two others were injured after dozens of shots were fired by a homeowner in Texas during a home invasion early Sunday, officials said.
The incident happened around 1 a.m. in east Houston after five men wearing ski masks broke into the home, police told KPRC.
The male resident inside then grabbed his weapon and opened fire at the men.
“The homeowner appears to have defended himself,” Houston Police Department homicide detective Travis Miller told KTRK-TV.
A shootout then took place between the groups, according to police.
“We have multiple, multiple shell casings from several different types of guns,” Miller said. . . .
One of the suspects was found dead in front of the house, while the others fled in an SUV and on foot. Police told KPRC that the SUV crashed into a pole nearby and a second suspect was found dead inside.
A third suspect who was in the SUV fled, collapsed in the street, and later died, KPRC reported.
The fourth and fifth suspects, who were also injured in the shooting, were taken to the hospital. The incident remains under investigation by police, who did not release additional information. The homeowner was not injured.

You should read the book Guns Save Lives: True Stories of Americans Defending Their Lives With Firearms by Robert Waters.

(Hat-tip: Kirby McCain on Twitter.)

Category: Crime, Texas

Lessons From an Online Lynching (Why #StandWithCovington Is Going Viral)

Posted on | January 21, 2019 | 2 Comments

 

One of the basic rules of political journalism is, you don’t have to comment on every controversy that comes along. And you certainly don’t have to rush to become the first to publish such a commentary. What happened over the weekend with a viral video of Catholic school boys confronted by a protester in D.C. should remind us of that rule.

On Friday, students from Covington Catholic School participated in the annual March for Life in Washington. On Saturday, a video clip was posted that claimed to show the students — many of whom were wearing red “Make America Great Again” hats — engaged in harassment of a Native American activist named Nathan Phillips. This clip went viral on Twitter, with a swarm of blue-check pundits excoriating the boys.

 

For about 24 hours, this Catholic school in the northern Kentucky suburbs of Cincinnati was the target of an online outrage mob. Kids were get “doxxed” and their families were being threatened.

Guess what I said about this controversy? Nothing.

It is not my policy to comment on everything that goes viral on the Internet. Every day, controversies like this flare up and burn out without my ever bothering to notice them, because there’s just so much happening in the world that I’d drive myself crazy if I felt obligated to add my two cents to every controversy on the Internet. The #GamerGate controversy, for example, had been raging for weeks before I bothered to pay much attention to the melodrama that started with a tattoo-covered, mentally ill ex-stripper whose real name is Chelsea Van Valkenburg.

When I saw the Covington Catholic controversy start trending Saturday, I glanced at it briefly and just couldn’t make sense of it. My podcasting partner John Hoge’s reaction was similar:

I held off commenting on the Covington Kid v. Native American story this past weekend. The initial video didn’t look good, but it also didn’t make sense to me. I waited for corroborating facts, and none appeared. In fact, the additional raw footage that surfaced has discredited the narrative spun around the original edited version. It now looks to me as if someone used the edited video to tell a lie, and that lie resulted in a social media mob rioting, trying to figuratively burn down the lives of some kids who got in the way of The Narrative.

As so often happens in such cases, it now appears that the liberal media Narrative was almost 180-degrees opposite of the truth. The Covington student has told his side of the story. What happened was that, when the March for Life ended, the students had been told to assemble at the Lincoln Memorial to wait for their buses. The buses were delayed, and as the Catholic students waited, they were harassed by a group of black people nearby. What the Covington students didn’t realize is that, on the same day as the March for Life, there was another event in D.C. — the Indigenous Peoples March. This event was what Nathan Phillips was doing near the Lincoln Memorial when the Covington boys showed up and, apparently, the event also attracted some members of a bizarre cult known as the Black Hebrew Israelites (BHI), who started harassing the Catholic students. Reason‘s Robby Soave reports what happened:

Phillips put himself between the teens and the black nationalists, chanting and drumming as he marched straight into the middle of the group of young people. What followed was several minutes of confusion: The teens couldn’t quite decide whether Phillips was on their side or not, but tentatively joined in his chanting. It’s not at all clear this was intended as an act of mockery rather than solidarity.
One student did not get out of Phillips way as he marched, and gave the man a hard stare and a smile that many have described as creepy. This moment received the most media coverage: The teen has been called the product of a “hate factory” and likened to a school shooter, segregation-era racist, and member of the Ku Klux Klan. I have no idea what he was thinking, but portraying this as an example of obvious, racially-motivated hate is a stretch. Maybe he simply had no idea why this man was drumming in his face, and couldn’t quite figure out the best response? It bears repeating that Phillips approached him, not the other way around.
And that’s all there is to it. Phillips walked away after several minutes, the Black Hebrew Israelites continued to insult the crowd, and nothing else happened.

Kudos to Robby for taking time to watch two hours of video to figure out what actually happened Friday, while everybody else jumped the gun to mischaracterize this encounter as a racist incident, on the basis of a video clip that seems to have been edited to convey that false impression.

The mainstream media — particularly CNN — went all-in to demonize these Catholic school boys as symbols of white supremacy and toxic masculinity when the truth was that they were the ones being subjected to racial harassment, simply for being white. And as Allum Bokhari at Breitbart notes, Twitter’s rules against harassment apparently don’t apply when the targets are white boys from Catholic schools.

The hashtag #StandWithCovington is being used to rally support for these kids, who were unfairly smeared by the online mob.

UPDATE: Legal Insurrection cites the typical media headlines:

  • The New York Times:  “Viral Video Shows Boys in ‘Make America Great Again’ Hats Surround Native Elder”
  • CNN:  “Teens in Make America Great Again hats taunted a Native American elder at the Lincoln Memorial”
  • The Washington Post: “‘It was getting ugly’: Native American drummer speaks on the MAGA-hat-wearing teens who surrounded him”
  • Variety:  “MAGA Hat-Wearing Teens Harassing Native American Elder Spark Condemnation From Hollywood”

Not like there’s a pattern here or anything . . .




 

 

 

Category: Media Bias, Racism

Rule 5 Sunday: The Kessler Twins

Posted on | January 21, 2019 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

This week, a blast from the past: Anne & Ellen Kessler, twin sisters who studied dance in East Germany before escaping to the West with their parents in 1954. From there, they made quite a name for themselves in Germany and Italy, appearing in a lot of movies and eventually being celebrated for fostering Italo-German friendship. They appeared in the Italian edition of Playboy in 1960 and looked pretty fine for forty, but this pic is actually safe for work so I went with it instead.

The Kessler Sisters showing off their bikinis.

Ninety Miles From Tyranny leads with Hot Pick Of The Late Night,The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #503, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns; Animal Magnetism follows up with Rule Five Shutdown “Crisis” Friday and a Saturday Asian Invasion.

EBL’s herd this week includes Emma Mackey, Verna Bloom (RIP), Carmen Ejogo, Carol Channing (RIP), New Frey Girls, Democrat Feminists Don’t Like Israel, and Shark Babes.

A View From The Beach brings Shannon Lawson From Down Under, “F**k Up”, Social Media Terrible, Girls and Women Hit Worse, Surf’s Up!, 10!, Walking in a Winter Wonderland, The Heart Wants What It Wants, and Global Warming Makes Great Tits Bad.

At Dustbury, it’s time again for a Zooeypalooza!

Thanks to everyone for the luscious linkagery!


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Amazon Fashion – Jewelry For Women

Category: Rule 5, Uncategorized

FMJRA 2.0: Isn’t It Time?

Posted on | January 21, 2019 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Isn’t It Time?

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Rule Five Sunday: Good Night, Sweet Princess
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

#BoycottGillette: Company Goes Full SJW, Launches Anti-Male Ad Campaign
Health & Money News
Socialism Is Not The Answer
Al Jahom’s Final Word
Pushing Rubber Downhill
EBL

The Compulsory Approval Doctrine: Sliding Down the Slippery Slope
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: John The Baptist Was A Real Humdinger
The Pirate’s Cove
A View From The Beach
EBL

George Will: Apologist For Tyranny?
EBL

Lesbian Is a Synonym for ‘No’ (Or: Guys, Please Leave @LayneMorgan Alone)
Sigma Frame
357 Magnum
EBL

Girl’s Kidnapper Held on $5 Million Bond; Court Documents Reveal Crime Details
EBL

Lesbian Professor: ‘How Has the Form of Your Child Been Culturally Interpreted?’
EBL

In The Mailbox: 01.14.19
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

In The Mailbox: 01.15.19
A View From the Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

A World Without Norms: The Influence of Judith Butler’s ‘Gender Trouble’
357 Magnum
Pushing Rubber Downhill
EBL

In The Mailbox: 01.16.19
357 Magnum
Proof Positive
EBL

Caroline Calloway and the ‘Creativity Workshop’ Influencer Tour From Hell
Pushing Rubber Downhill
EBL

Transgender Victimhood Narrative Update
EBL

In The Mailbox: 01.17.19
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

‘This Tragic Epidemic’
EBL

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge
EBL

In The Mailbox: 01.18.19
Proof Positive
EBL

Top linkers for the week ending January 18:

  1.  EBL (17)
  2.  Proof Positive (6)
  3.  A View From The Beach (5)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!


Prime Day – Prime Pantry $3 bounty
Shop Amazon Warehouse Deals – Deep Discounts on Open-box and Used Products

Category: FMJRA Award

Haunted by Ghosts of ‘Fitzmas’ Past: Jason Leopold’s Trump/Cohen Debacle

Posted on | January 20, 2019 | 1 Comment

Jason Leopold is a journalist, allegedly.

The anti-Trump media are going through the Kübler-Ross stages of grief, Professor Jacobson notes, since the collapse of Thursday’s BuzzFeed “exclusive” with the devastating headline, “President Trump Directed His Attorney To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project.” One clue to what was wrong with the story was in the first paragraph: “according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.” Who were these “officials”? Keep in mind that Cohen has already pleaded guilty to lying to Congress; the question is whether this was done at Trump’s direction and, also, is there proof of such direction?

Another clue to what was wrong with the BuzzFeed story was the byline: Jason Leopold wrote the story along with Anthony Cormier, and some of us have long memories of Leopold’s sordid career as an “investigative journalist.” Here we must climb into the time machine . . .

In 2005, left-wingers were promoting wild conspiracy theories about the “leak” of Valerie Plame’s employment at the CIA. What became known as “Plamegate” was a scandal — in retrospect, rather minor — that involved Plame’s husband Joseph Wilson, who had undertaken an unusual trip to Africa to investigate whether Saddam Hussein had obtained uranium ore from Niger. Plame’s husband published a July 6, 2003, column in the New York Times describing his Niger trip and disputing the Bush administration’s claims about Saddam’s attempts to develop nuclear weapons. This column bolstered the Left’s “Bush lied” theme about the Iraq war, and the question arose: Why would the CIA choose this retired diplomat to undertake such a sensitive mission?

The answer was supplied by legendary Washington Post columnist Robert Novak in a July 14, 2003, column which explained how Wilson got his assignment: “Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction.” It was not actually a secret that Plame worked at the CIA, but until Novak’s column, nobody had connected the dots. Novak had gotten this scoop from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, but nobody knew this at the time, and the anti-war Left instead focused suspicion on their two most-hated villains in the Bush administration, Vice President Dick Cheney and senior political adviser Karl Rove. A special counsel investigation by Patrick Fitzgerald was undertaken in December 2003 and, although Fitzgerald learned early in the investigation that Armitage was Novak’s source, the investigation inexplicably dragged on past the 2004 election, in which Bush defeated anti-war Democrat John Kerry.

Having failed to defeat Bush at the polls, therefore, the anti-war Left was now obsessed with the idea that this “CIA leak” investigation would provide the scandal that brought down Bush, and so in 2005, speculation about Fitzgerald’s probe was rampant on the newly emergent liberal blogosphere. In December 2005, the phrase “Fitzmas” was coined to describe the moonbat Left’s hope that Fitzgerald would indict Karl Rove and bloggers gloated over their fantasies of Rove being “perp-walked” in handcuffs after what they hoped would be his imminent arrest. Alas, December came and went with no “Fitzmas” to celebrate, but in May 2006, Jason Leopold broke the exclusive news: Fitzgerald’s grand jury was about to return an indictment against Rove!

Leopold reported that Karl Rove “told President Bush and Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, as well as a few other high level administration officials,” that he was about to be indicted in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case, “according to people knowledgeable about these discussions.”
Leopold claimed that multiple sources “confirmed Rove’s indictment is imminent. These individuals requested anonymity saying they were not authorized to speak publicly about Rove’s situation.”

This was simply false, and so far as we know to this day, the “knowledgeable” sources were figments of Jason Leopold’s imagination. Rove was never indicted, and the only person prosecuted by Fitzgerald was Cheney’s aide Scooter Libby who had lied about his conversations with two reporters, Tim Russert of NBC News and Matt Cooper of Time magazine. (Libby’s indictment was only tangentially related to the CIA “leak” and had nothing at all to do with how Novak got his scoop, thus paralleling the current Mueller “Russian collusion” probe, where people associated with Donald Trump keep getting charged with crimes that have nothing to do with Russia.) Once it became clear that Leopold’s story about Rove’s indictment was wrong, the Columbia Journalism Review mocked his story as “Leopold’s latest addition to his application for membership in the Stephen Glass school of journalism.” (In case you don’t know, Stephen Glass was an infamous journalistic fraud who once worked for The New Republic.) The key point about the Rove indictment story is this: Not once in more than a dozen years since that debacle has Leopold explained how and why he got it wrong.

Think about that: A reporter for a website claims to have sources “knowledgeable” of discussions among top White House officials related to the pending indictment of a key presidential advisor in the most widely reported scandal of the era, and his story is proven false. Yet there is never any explanation from the reporter, not even after more than a decade, when surely the identity of his sources could no longer be regarded as confidential, especially since the information obtained from them was wrong. Shouldn’t that omission — the lack of an explanation from Jason Leopold of how and why he botched that 2006 “exclusive” — cause us to be permanently suspicious of him?

Indeed, after the BuzzFeed “bombshell” about Cohen and Trump exploded Thursday morning, many people familiar with Jason Leopold’s past brought up his previous bungles, and CNN’s Alisyn Camerota raised the issue with Anthony Cormier in an interview Thursday morning:

“[Leopold] was in trouble for perhaps claiming to have sources he really didn’t have. His stories didn’t wash. Executive directors and editors have had to apologize after some of his big blockbuster stories,” Camerota noted, before asking” How can you be certain today?”
Cormier fiercely defended his “rock solid” sourcing on this story.
“My sourcing on this goes beyond the two on the record,” Cormier told Camerota, adding “It’s 100 percent. I am the individual who confirmed and verified that it I am telling you our sourcing goes beyond the two I was able to put on the record. We were able to gather information from individuals who know this happened.”

 

Watch that interview closely, because something Cormier said may give away where this story actually came from:

“[Our sources] have been working the Trump Moscow tower portion of the investigation…before Mueller. So they had access to a number of different documents, 302 reports which are interview reports,” he said. “That stuff was compiled as they began to look at who the players were speaking with, how those negotiations went, who all from the Trump organization and outside the organization were involved in getting that tower set up.”
“They began to compile the evidence before Michael Cohen decided to cooperate and speak with the Special Counsel,” Cormier added.

Doesn’t this indicate that this story is coming from sources who are no longer involved in the investigation, perhaps James Comey, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, et al.? In other words, it appears that Cormier and Leopold are taking the word of “individuals” who say they “know this happened,” but this doesn’t tell us anything about the direction of Mueller’s current investigation or what Mueller can actually prove.  In other words, even if it were true that Trump directed Cohen to lie in his testimony to Congress, the sources cited by Cormier and Leopold would not have knowledge of whether Mueller could prove this, because their sources were involved “before Mueller.” He was appointed special counsel in May 2017, so when Cormier says these sources “began to look at who the players were speaking with” prior to May 2017, shouldn’t we infer that these “two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation” are not relating any recent information obtained by the Mueller probe?

A gigantic nothingburger — that’s what this story was, and when BuzzFeed published it, Professor Jacobson speculated about the motive:

The Buzzfeed story, like the Steele Dossier, serves a purpose.
Just like the Dossier was used as justification for a FISA warrant on Carter Page and two years of Russia collusion conspiracy theories, the Buzzfeed story is being used by Democrats in the House to demand a House investigation be launched to see if there is evidence to support impeachment of Trump. . . .
How convenient that this story drops just after Democrats regain control of the House and its committees, and just three weeks before Cohen is scheduled to testify in the House.
What better way to justify pre-impeachment proceedings that otherwise would be unpopular than to be able to point to the smoke of the Buzzfeed story.

That’s merely speculation, of course, but what else could explain it? Well, if you’re really cynical — and I am — how about the possibility that Jason Leopold needed a big “exclusive” to justify his continued employment? Prior to his Jan. 17 article, it had been four weeks since his last article (“Russian Agents Sought Secret US Treasury Records On Clinton Backers During 2016 Campaign,” Dec. 20, 2018). Now, I don’t know how your workplace operates, but in most companies, somebody who goes four weeks without producing any actual work might have to deal with an angry boss demanding to know what the hell he’s been doing lately.

Having had some experience as an editor dealing with investigative journalists, I’ll say that productivity can often become an issue if the reporter gets the idea that only the Big Story is worth his time and attention. If he thinks his byline should only appear on “home run” stories, an investigative journalist may stop producing the “base hits” of daily news. In such cases, “investigative journalism” can become synonymous with goofing off, and if Jason Leopold’s editors at BuzzFeed were pressuring him to produce more content, perhaps this overhyped, undersourced nothingburger of a story was his response.

Sketchy as this story was, it nevertheless gave the media an excuse to return to their favorite theme, The Walls Are Closing In. MSNBC and CNN mentioned “impeachment” 179 times in less than 24 hours, before a spokesman for Mueller officially denied the story:

“BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate.”

Well, “not accurate” is perhaps not a synonym for bullshit, but it was enough to send the anti-Trump media into a state of mourning. CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin had perhaps the most honest reaction:

“The larger message that a lot of people are going to take from this story is that the news media are a bunch of leftist liars who are dying to get the president, and they’re willing to lie to do it,” Toobin said. “And I don’t think that’s true.”
“I just think this is a bad day for us … It reinforces every bad stereotype about the news media,” he added.
“Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter agreed with his latter statement but said as a media reporter, he was “desperate” for his audience to judge individuals and brands on a case-by-case basis.
“Don’t fall for what these politicians out there want you to do. They want you to think we’re all crooked,” Stelter said. “We’re not.”

Narrator voice: “In fact, they are all crooked.”

 

If the media were not “a bunch of leftist liars who are dying to get the president,” as Toobin said, Jason Leopold would be unemployed. The fact that he is on BuzzFeed’s payroll, despite his demonstrable record of publishing discredited hit jobs against Republicans, tells you everything you need to know about the liberal media’s ethical standards.




 

 

 

Category: Donald Trump, Media Bias

Jonah Goldberg Only Steals From the Best

Posted on | January 19, 2019 | Comments Off on Jonah Goldberg Only Steals From the Best

 

Plagiarism — passing off someone else’s work as your own — is generally a career-destroyer in journalism, and what Jonah Goldberg has done in recycling an idea borrowed from Ace of Spades is perhaps not exactly plagiarism. Like, it’s not as if he cut-and-pasted entire sentences, but rather that he failed to attribute the basic idea to the guy who originated it. By his lack of attribution, Goldberg essentially cheated Ace of credit he deserved. The weird thing is that, less than three years ago, Jonah did acknowledge Ace’s authorship of the “political MacGuffin” idea in a May 2016 column about Trump’s campaign where the “MacGuffin” was the GOP nomination. But now in January 2019, Goldberg returns to the same idea — this time, with the border wall as the “MacGuffin” of the government-shutdown melodrama — and cheats Ace out of his proper credit. Maybe it’s not a career-destroying plagiarism scandal, since Goldberg had previously acknowledged Ace’s authorship in an earlier iteration of the same theme, but it sure as hell ain’t fair or honest.

By the way, my entire blogging career was stolen from Ace.

Circa 2005-2006, I was feeling trapped in the newsroom of the Washington Times and, in my idle moments, would toggle over to Ace’s and literally laugh out loud at his stuff. Ace was having fun, and I was like, “I want to do that for a living.” I met Ace at CPAC 2006, hanging around outside the Omni Shoreham Hotel smoking cigarettes, basically fangirling all over him like my daughter would behave if she ever met Harry Styles. Then in 2007, I recommended Ace to my friends at the Young America’s Foundation for a sort of blogger junket to their West Coast student leadership conference in Santa Barbara, which was nice. That was where I learned how seriously Ace takes his anonymity, by the way. He presciently understood that the Left would sooner or later want to destroy his life, and so he guarded his true identity to such an extent that he was actually registered in the hotel as “Ace of Spades.” Also, that 2007 West Coast YAF conference was the occasion when I got a Drudge-linked front-page scoop on a story based on Phillip Klein’s notes of an interview, but I digress . . .

When the Washington Times changed editors in 2008 and I took that as my cue to leave, I knew that blogging was a thing I could do, and the madcap “what’s-he-gonna-say-next” aspect of Ace’s work was my basic inspiration for this gig. And sometimes it’s demoralizing to me to realize how far short I fall of my original ambition. Ace is remarkably productive, and consistently so, and he somehow manages to stay focused on the daily D.C. melodrama in a way I simply can’t anymore. Like, I just don’t see any point in writing about whatever is the top-of-the-hour thing on Fox News. Why should anyone want to read my take on the Breaking New Development in the Ongoing National Crisis? What’s the point in adding my own voice to the incessant mooing of the Pundit Herd?

The fact that Ace is able to keep going, and is still a daily must-read, is remarkable. He’s been doing this for 15+ years, OK?

Thursday night, I took my daughter and one of her school friends out for a late-night snack at Sheetz and while we were sitting there eating our delicious MTO meals — Sheetz is da bomb — I was reading Ace on my phone and laughing out loud at his take on the Google “you-can’t-say-‘family’-because-that’s-homophobic” story. And rather than trying to explain what I was laughing at, I just handed the phone over to my daughter: “Read this.” She didn’t seem to get it, but that’s OK. My point is to illustrate what I mean when I say it’s demoralizing to compare myself to Ace. I’d seen the same Daily Caller scoop by Peter Hasson that Ace was commenting about, and had intended to comment on it myself, but was busy Thursday working on my American Spectator column and intended to get around to the Google story later. But once I’d seen Ace’s take, I was like, “Why even bother now?” Because he absolutely murdered it:

Hi, I’m a transexual weirdo in a polyamorous relationship with multiple other dregs. We hope to live together in a collective f–k-pile. We would like to be called a “family” like a boring heterosexual family of 2.5 kids and a dog. We hate stereotypes but it’s okay to stereotype heterosexuals because Breeders, Am I Right?

You’d have to read the whole thing to understand how funny that sentence was in context, because Ace has an impeccable sense of comedic timing that enables him to deliver that line just so. Now I’m doing the Harry Styles fangirling thing again, but Ace deserves more praise than he usually gets and this Goldberg ripoff situation reminds me how wrong it is to take Ace for granted. That ewok is a National Treasure, and if he were to keel over from a heart attack, it would be a loss as painful as Andrew Breitbart’s untimely death in 2012. So now I suppose the question is, what are we gonna do about Jonah Goldberg? How are we going to avenge the injustice Jonah has inflicted on Ace?

We don’t want to be like the Left, doxxing the guy and then assembling a mob to surround his house and frighten his children. Or do we?

One of the reasons Jonah felt he could diss Ace like this, you see, is because he is arrogant enough to think there won’t be payback. And I honestly don’t want to declare war on Jonah. Despite his recent transition to being a testosterone-deficient #NeverTrump soy boy, I still have fond memories of when Jonah was one of the Good Guys, even though there were always signs he might be a bit wobbly, like when NRO purged Ann Coulter over . . . what? It’s been so long I’ve forgotten, but that was one of those incidents that made me mark down Rich Lowry’s name in the “unreliable” column, and I seem to vaguely recall that Jonah played a role in the Coulter purge although, as I say, it’s been a long time and details of that incident are now very fuzzy in my memory. But I digress . . .

My point is not to recount the entire history of Goldberg’s slow-motion descent into an absurd parody of a controlled-opposition RINO, but rather to say that if this is the Franz-Ferdinand-at-Sarajevo moment that leads to all-out #WAR, I’m enlisting with the Ewok Army.

Of course, it’s still possible diplomacy can prevent the needless effusion of blood. There needs to be an “intervention” with Goldberg, to try to save him from turning into Rick Wilson or Tom Nichols or Max Boot.

Oh, dear God, why did I just write the name “Max Boot” and remind myself of his existence? The other day I saw a clip of Max Boot on CNN and there are no words to describe how creepy he is.

 

Somebody should show that clip to Jonah and ask him: “Is this who you want to be?” Is it your life’s ambition to become a cartoon caricature of an effeminate ex-Republican doing guest spots on CNN to feed their liberal narrative? Because that’s your ultimate destination if you keep hanging around the #NeverTrump crowd. Selah.




 

 

 

Category: Ace of Spades, Jonah Goldberg
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