Tag: Trump

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Accountability First Amendment rights general freedom media and media people

Pravda in the Izvestia

Donald, Trump, fake news, Krugman, press, media,

Back in the USSR’s heyday, the joke about the two major newspapers, Pravda (meaning “truth” — and published by the Communist Party) and Izvestia (meaning “news” — and published by the Soviet State), was that “there’s no Truth in the News and no News in the Truth.”

Nowadays, in Trump’s America, we have fake news. And one reason Donald Trump won the presidency was his defiant stance against the “lying press.”

Which is why, when Trump announced, last week, his intent to give out awards to the news media for their top “fake news” stories of 2017, he was playing to his base. This week he announced his picks. It did not exactly bowl everyone over.

Indeed, I am going to skip most of it, noticing only that the press whined a bit and picked at the list on technical grounds, and that Sen. Flake gave Trump some flak.

But Trump’s pick for First Place is worth thinking about.

And the Duranty* goes to … New York Times economist Paul Krugman!

What for? The Nobel Laureate’s insane and unhinged prediction immediately after Trump’s win: “We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.”

An embarrassing play for Doomsayer Attention, which has been “trumped” (so to speak) by new record stock market highs.

Of course, a global depression may be in the offing — but it probably won’t be Trump’s fault, and Krugman is totally resistant to acknowledging that dire event’s likely structural causes (debt, Fed policy).

But note: prophecy isn’t “news,” and in announcing the award Trump characterized his win in 2016 as a “landslide.”

So save a Duranty for Trump.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* My term, not a “Newsy” or “Fakesy,” and named, of course, after Walter Duranty, the Times’ Pulitzer Winning Fake News apologist for the Soviet Union and Stalin, back in the 1930s.

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Common Sense

A Revolutionary Turn-around

Trump, Democrats, liberal, anti government, small government, influence, virtue signallng,

Donald J. Trump, 45th President under the Constitution of these United States, may be re-​establishing some constitutional order.

“The president has the power to veto half-​baked legislation,” explains Josh Blackman at the National Review. “If Trump returned a bill to Congress, stating in his message that it failed to include sufficient guidelines, there would be a paradigm shift in Washington, D.C.” And, in recent speeches at the Federalist Society, Blackman notes, administration lawyers appear to be advancing just such a shift:

  1. Congress must no longer delegate legislative power to the executive branch;
  2. Informal “guidance documents” must no longer be used to deprive people of the due process of law; and
  3. The courts’ rubber-​stamping of executive diktats must end.

Couple this agenda with Trump’s just-​in-​office executive order instructing that two old rules be stricken for every new rule concocted, and we could be witnessing an almost-​revolutionary turn-​around here. 

Why is this happening?

Not, I think, because Trump is an originalist or strict constructionist. “Donald Trump did not campaign for president as the guy who would reverse the mostly unbroken, century-​old trend of the executive power assuming more and more power in the face of an increasingly self-​marginalizing Congress,” Matt Welch reminds us over at Reason.

Maybe it is because Trump has been so roundly scorned and rejected and rebelliously opposed by Democrats in general and the far left in particular — including, especially, most major media figures — that the mogul-turned-politician’s many and obvious left-​leaning proclivities have been made … politically useless. His opposition on the left has sent him right … to good policy.

On this issue, anyway.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies responsibility

Coffee in the Age of Covfefe

Keurig, coffee, capitalism, Media Matters, Trump, Hannity, Roy Moore, Alabama

You might think that that coffee could not be spoiled by today’s politics, but, well, consider the Keurig line of coffee-​related products. I’m a Starbucks man, myself, but one of the great things about capitalism is that I can have my tall (or grande) latte and you can have your home-​brewed Keurig cup of java.

Enter Media Matters.

You might think of the outfit as the subject of President Trump’s enigmatic tweet of several months back … 

… which is all he wrote.

He obviously meant “negative press coverage,” but got distracted. And the typo took on a life of its own.

But Media Matters, a dirty player in the politico-​cultural wars (pretending to be a watch dog outfit), stepped in. One of Media Matter’s negative employees tweeted 

Good afternoon @Keurig. You are currently sponsoring Sean Hannity’s show. He defends child molester Roy Moore and attacks women who speak out against sexual harassment. Please reconsider.

And Keurig capitulated, pulling their ads from Hannity’s show.

Now, as far as I can tell*, Sean Hannity did not defend “child molester Roy Moore.” Understandably, Hannity’s fans struck back, not only initiating a public boycott, but made the whole thing viral by trashing the Keurig coffee makers in online videos.

This is the result of going full Alinsky.**

And there appears to be a clear bad guy here, clearer even than Roy Moore’s alleged crimes: Media Matters lied to squash Hannity for reasons having nothing to do with the Alabama Senatorial race.

Media Matters embodies “covfefe.” And the negativity has spilled out of politics and into the beauty of everyday life. Coffee.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The YouTube recording of Hannity’s interview of Judge Moore that I listened to has been pulled, so there’s no point in linking to it. Instead, consider Ben Shapiro’s take and other non-​covfefe at The Daily Wire.

** Never go full Alinsky.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency insider corruption media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Stranger Counsels

special prosecutor, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Russia, corruption, Trump, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates

The office of special counsel, like that of the special prosecutor in days (and administrations) of yore, is a strange one. Not mentioned in the Constitution, it is institutionally slippery. An executive branch position designed to investigate the executive branch — there is no way it cannot be … “problematic.”

Just in time for Halloween, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, tasked with looking into the Russian connections of the Trump administration — particularly electoral mischief* — landed his first fish this week, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. The two have been charged with, and pled innocent to, twelve criminal counts related to their activities in Ukraine before their association with Trump. There are tax dodging charges, too, including something called “conspiracy to commit money laundering.”

And while the whole bizarre Russia story has now launched into a feeding frenzy, it appears that it just became … mundane. “Legal experts said the court filings indicate Mueller is running a serious, deliberative, and far-​sighted inquiry,” says The Atlantic.

Meanwhile, the weird relations between the Clintons and Russia loom on the horizon, rather like that smoky monster from the Upside Down on Stranger Things 2.

But hey, none of this is shocking. Troll through the modern state and you will find corruption. You can land all sorts of fish.

Including suckers.

Could we be those suckers? 

Since this sort of thing can always be found — and the Manafort skullduggery seems somewhat tangential to Russian electoral influence, despite the man having served a stint as Trump’s campaign manager — is this just a way to get us to look the other direction from anything really meaningful?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

*And let’s not pretend this is new. Foreign influence was an issue in the campaign of 1800.

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First Amendment rights general freedom media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest too much government

Crossing the Twitter Rubicon

Liberty, Trump, censorship, NBC, New York Times, First Amendment

No sooner had I upbraided media folks for overreacting to various presidential peccadillos regarding Puerto Rico, when Donald J. Trump, in his running media battle, crossed a line with this week’s most notorious tweet.

He first complained, perhaps correctly, that, “Fake @NBCNews made up a story that I wanted a ‘tenfold’ increase in our U.S. nuclear arsenal. Pure fiction, made up to demean.” But then the chief executive officer of the United States of America tweeted this: “With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License?”

The answer to his question is: never.

The Federal Communications Commission licenses the network affiliates of ABC, NBC and CBS across the country — not the networks themselves — to broadcast their television signals using public airwaves. Still, through those affiliates a tyrannical FCC could no doubt damage the networks. 

Government licensing of media outlets is anathema to the First Amendment. And the thought of the POTUS actively threatening the ability of NBC or other networks to report the news as they freely decide is … well, unthinkable.

I don’t buy the accusations that Trump is undermining freedom of the press by criticizing the press — even arguing by tweet, “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @CNN, @NBCNews and many more) … is the enemy of the American People!” The president is as free to criticize the media as the media is free to criticize the president.

It might be his duty.

But considering the use of official government power to potentially “shut down NBC and other American networks,” as UK’s Independent reported, or just to temper their coverage?

Despotism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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Accountability folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Throwing in (and out) the Towel(s)

symbolism, crying, outrage, Hurricane Irma, gaffe, ideology, Trump

There is a time and a place for everything. Including the truth.

You do not proclaim that Uncle Eben was a skinflint miser and a sour old puss at his funeral. (You wait for the reading of the Will.)

Immediately upon Puerto Ricans coming up for air, after the devastation of Hurricane Irma, President Trump went for a visit. At one point, he threw paper towels out at a crowd, as if he were a sports star throwing … cloth towels. And he noted, after a pro forma expression of regret at loss of life, how shockingly low was the number of deaths.

For these and other such “gaffes” Trump has been roundly, hysterically criticized. 

But a good portion of the American people has ceased to care about such matters. Sure, Trump says some worse-​than-​inelegant things, gives new twists to “photo opp.” But the over-​reaction on the left and in the media (but I repeat myself) seems to have completely inoculated vast hunks of American humanity — who now choose to see the humor in all this.

It’s time, at last, to learn a new lesson: Political Man does not live by symbols alone.

No matter how hard he (she/​zhe?) tries.

In today’s political environment, it might help us all if we gave up the symbolic battles and discussed actual policies and principles. After all, the substantive ideological divide is deep enough.

It seems certain: continued over-​reaction in the Symbolism Department will prove feckless.

Americans increasingly don’t give a feck.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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