Category: partisanship

Mainstream Disinformation

“A historic crime and disgrace.”

That is how left-leaning journalist Glenn Greenwald characterizes U.S. media coverage of the 2020 presidential race.

Back in October, he resigned from The Intercept, a publication he co-founded with the aim of providing “fearless, adversarial journalism that holds the powerful accountable.” Its editors, you see, refused to publish his writing unless he removed “all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.”

When the New York Post, the nation’s fourth largest newspaper, reported on emails from a laptop belonging to his son, Hunter Biden, Facebook and Twitter quickly blocked folks from sharing the news. Arguing the story was “hacked,” Twitter shut down the Post’s account for the critical final weeks of the campaign.*

“We will not waste our time,” declared National Public Radio, on “stories that are just pure distractions.” Now, with Hunter acknowledging the FBI criminal investigation of the family business, the state-media outlet’s Distraction Meter appears out of whack.

But there’s more. “[A]s soon as these [Hunter Biden] documents became known,” Greenwald told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, “the operatives in the intelligence community, the CIA, [former CIA Director] John Brennan, [former Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper, [former NSA Director] Michael Hayden — all of the standard professional liars — issued a letter claiming that this material was the hallmark of Russian disinformation, even though they had no basis for thinking that.”**

This, he points out, “gave the media permission to lie to the public continuously” by enthusiastically repeating the baseless claim.

Most ominously, there was again “domestic interference on the part of intelligence agencies in order to manipulate the outcome of our election,” Greenwald explains.

The election is over. Our national nightmare is not.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* There were two huge problems with Twitter’s excuse: (a) the Post’s revelations were not from a hack, and (b) stories are continually written from information hacked and unlawfully leaked to the media — and then shared widely on Facebook and Twitter without any impediment.

** Greenwald is best known for breaking the story of Edward Snowden’s leak of classified information showing unconstitutional NSA spying on Americans, while working for the UK Guardian. Mr. Snowden claimed his “breaking point” in deciding to release the information “was seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress.”

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Tags democracy, Joe Biden, president

ideological culture partisanship

Ssshhh, Not Now

“Democrats need to keep their eye on the ball,” a Democratic Party strategist confided to The Washington Post on deep, dark background, “and not say things that are, on balance, a loser when everything is on the line.”

To what “loser” is this anonymous capital insider referring?

“D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser gave [President Trump] ammunition,” informed The Post this week, by “publishing a sweeping list of historical figures whose names should be removed from public property or ‘contextualized.’”

Developed by a task force Mayor Bowser appointed this summer called DCFACES (District of Columbia Facilities and Commemorative Expressions), the report calls for “renaming 21 public schools, 12 recreational facilities, six public housing complexes and other sites.”

The Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial are both fingered, though they are on federal property, not city land. Still, plenty of statues, schools and other public buildings controlled by the city bear the names of such historically tainted folks as Ben Franklin, Alexander Graham Bell and Presidents James Monroe, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor and Woodrow Wilson.

“The mayor, her top advisers and the authors of the list,” The Post noted a day after the public release, “would not discuss it.”

What caught my attention, however, was the issue of timing.

“The mayor usually has very good political instincts,” offered former D.C. Chamber of Commerce CEO Barbara Lang. “I was just surprised that this came out now, quite frankly.”

As The Post explained, Lang “believes Bowser should have waited to publish the report until after the presidential election.”

Why after? Because the issue is a “loser.” And the Dems do not want the public to know their lofty and ludicrous (and loser) goals and aspirations until after all votes are cast.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags monuments, racism

national politics & policies partisanship

Voting Like a Neo-Nazi

Richard Spencer, alt-right, white nationalist, Biden Supporter, Joe Biden

Dinesh D’Souza is tickled. You see, Richard B. Spencer, the almost-famous “alt-right”/“Sieg Heil” guy is voting, he says on Twitter, “for Biden and a straight democratic ticket.”

D’Souza, who is relentlessly pro-Republican in addition to pushing conservative values and arguments, had his dearest dream handed to him. Richard Spencer, an ethnonationalist, is loathed mightily by the left. And, frankly, by most of the right. Not to mention those looking straight-ahead and -backwards. So to have Spencer prefer the Democrats is rich.

For Republicans. (And not a few others.)

Usually, Democrats revel in lambasting Republicans for garnering support among the explicitly racist set. Now, tables turned.

Yet this is not really all that “out there.” Spencer, who is often characterized as a neo-Nazi, has admitted to many leftist sympathies in the past. His only real heresy from the left is his racist nationalism. He likes transfer programs, regulations, etcetera. Hefty-sized, all-encompassing government.

In his original tweet, Spencer explained his rationale less ideologically, though: “It’s not based on ‘accelerationism’* or anything like that; the liberals are clearly more competent people.”

Uh, what?

Oh, the heights — or depths — of irony should this election between Sleepy Joe and The Donald come down to a contest over competence. Mr. Trump’s struggles with the pandemic — as well as the economic impacts of a lockdown strategy so tightly embraced by progressives —hardly proves the competence of Democrats. Nor do riots in cities run by Democrats over alleged structural racism administered by those same Democrats.

But the Democrats were competent enough to get a Richard Spencer endorsement.

That’s something?

At least for the Republicans.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

“Accelerationism” noun : the scheme to embrace one’s opponents’ ideas so that they prove themselves spectacularly bad, and one can then ride in during the ensuing chaos. [Risky maneuver.]

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Tags alt-right, Biden Supporter, Joe Biden, Richard Spencer, white nationalist

national politics & policies partisanship Popular

Between the Devil and the Deep State, See?

Post author By Redactor
Post date December 18, 2019
3 Comments on Between the Devil and the Deep State, See?

Donald Trump, Imperial Presidency, President, crown,

“If it turns out that impeachment has no sting, has no bite,” exasperated Princeton University professor Eddie Glaude, Jr., speculated on Meet the Press, “and we are in the aftermath, what it will mean is that there will be an unlimited, an imperial, executive branch that can do whatever it wants to do.”*

Per the “imperial presidency, actually, that ship sailed a while ago,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Danielle Pletka quickly responded.

“I mean, it was a problem under George W. Bush. It was a growing problem under Obama. And it has come to its apotheosis under Donald Trump.”

There appears a left-right consensus among TV chatterers that, a Constitution of enumerated federal powers notwithstanding, the president can “do whatever [he] wants to do.”

But considering what we are learning about “the interagency” machinations to take down the current imperator, the imperial guard may be as big a problem.

Last week, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released his report on the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign, code-named “Crossfire Hurricane.” Though the IG did not find conclusive evidence that political bias inspired the launch of the investigation, he did detail “many basic and fundamental errors” that “raised significant questions” . . . adding portentously, “we also did not receive satisfactory explanations for the errors or problems we identified.”

“[A]s as the probe went on,” reported The Washington Post, “FBI officials repeatedly decided to emphasize damaging information they heard about Trump associates, and play down exculpatory evidence they found.”

The evidence piles up: Washington is dangerously out of control, and our career-politician Congress can only muster to provide a constitutional check on the flimsiest grounds and partisan manner.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Somehow Professor Glaude seems to have forgotten President Bill Clinton, who reached his highest ever public approval rating — 73 percent — in the aftermath of his 1998 impeachment by the then-Republican-controlled House. Been there, done that.

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partisanship political challengers

Such Is Today’s Politics

land grab, eminent domain, theft, property, border,

“You do have a problem with a President demanding the federal government go ahead and seize private land and then promising to pardon those who seized the land,” challenged Joe Walsh, the former Illinois congressman running in the Republican Party primaries against Donald Trump.

“Don’t you?”

Matt Welch, writing in the LA Times, quoted this Walsh tweet (three days after the Walsh2020 campaign announcement) to express alarm about where the GOP is heading. “We are accustomed to some ideological shape-shifting when the White House changes teams,” writes Welch. “But what’s so striking about this week’s slate of immigration-related controversies — including the one that supplanted the land-grab pardon: the administration’s new rules governing potential citizenship for the children of U.S. service people abroad — is that none of it should come as a surprise.”

Because Trump is doing (sorta) what he promised to do. Which includes taking land by eminent domain.

Before his election, Trump had proclaimed his support for the Kelo decision that signed off on governments nabbing land to give to private developers. At issue now is condemning land to build The Wall — at least an arguably public use.

While “private property rights used to be foundational to the conservative movement,” Welch bemoans that Trump “didn’t care. And that Republicans cared a hell of a lot less than they claimed to.”

Again, unsurprising. Republican pols did little to nothing for property rights or limited government pre-Trump. So these anti-leftist voters went for someone — anyone? — who could deliver something.

I doubt that candidate Walsh will convince many that he can deliver much of anything.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture partisanship

The False Binary

cards, playing cards, pick a card, politics,

Characterizing herself as a “moderate with a brain,” Bridget Phetasy writes that things have gotten so bad that now “every vote is considered a statement on your personal identity and worth.” Her article in Spectator USA, “The battle cry of the politically homeless,” paints a bleak picture.

“Your value, who you are, what kind of world you want, whether or not you’re a good person or an evil person . . . it all boils down to which lever you pull. Damn your reasons. Vote for the ‘right’ person, or else you are a fascist, or a racist, or a globalist, or a communist.”

Ms. Phetasy expresses fatigue at “being afraid to voice my own opinions, of knowing how saying the wrong thing at a barbecue while someone is filming on their iPhone could result in a nationwide clarion call for my head on a pike.”

I, however, feel not one whit of a compulsion to cave to what Phetasy says is the “totalitarian-like” demand of the two parties for “devotion to their ideology.”

How did I become so blessed?

I know that Trumpians have almost no way to rationally defend their major positions — protectionism being the tippy-top of an Everest of an iceberg. Meanwhile, the far left is worse, flushing the old wine of socialism through the new-but-leaky bottles of racist (“anti-racist”) resentment.

Can we really fear such intellectual paper tigers?

There is a way out: Ranked choice voting. Witless partisanship rests on the A/not-A (=B/not-B) duality rut of the two-party system, into which I have never purchased admission. None of us are required to — and won’t be tempted to once our absurd electoral system is swapped for one not programmed to create false binaries.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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