“Teen in Lincoln Memorial protest sues Washington Post for $250 million”
“A high school student from Covington, Kentucky, at the center of a videotaped incident at the Lincoln Memorial involving a Native American activist sued the Washington Post for defamation on Tuesday, claiming the newspaper “vilified” him because he is white.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Kentucky by Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann, 16, seeks $250 million in damages – saying that was the amount Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com and the world’s richest person, paid for the Post in 2013.
“The Post wrongfully targeted and bullied Nicholas because he was the white, Catholic student wearing a red ‘Make America Great Again’ souvenir cap on a school field trip to the Jan. 18 March for Life in Washington, D.C.,” the lawsuit claims.”
“As Jussie Smollett’s account of his alleged assault falls apart, it is important to note that politicians, the media and influential voices did their best to fan the flames of outrage, based on nothing but the dark premise that conservatives and Trump supporters are evil.
It is astounding that so many reputable people took Smollett’s fantastical account seriously. Certainly, hate crimes based on race and sexual orientation are a very real thing, but the details surrounding this particular episode centered around a lampoonish representation of a Trump-era bigot.
It was a flimsy yarn from the outset, which only became more precarious with each passing day. That didn’t stop those most deeply invested in the narrative of Evil Trump to jump into action.”
—————-
And they bought it because it fit a narrative they wanted to push.
“The Jussie Smollett case, in which a young black, gay actor has apparently concocted a tale of being attacked by two white men wearing MAGA hats and shouting anti-gay slurs, is just the latest example of how desperately media elites want to confirm their favored narrative about America: that the country is endemically and lethally racist, sexist, and homophobic, and that the election of Donald Trump both proves and reinforces such bigotry.
The truth: as instances of actual racism get harder and harder to find, the search to find such bigotry becomes increasingly frenzied and unmoored from reality.
Smollett made a not-irrational wager that a patently preposterous narrative about an anti-black, anti-gay hate crime at 2 A.M. in subzero Chicago would be embraced by virtually the entirety of the mainstream media, leading Democratic politicians, Hollywood, and academia, with no one in these cohorts bothering to fact-check his narrative or entertain even armchair skepticism toward it. He also presumed, again with good reason, that to claim victim status would catapult him to the highest echelons of public admiration and accomplishment. And he was right. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker called it a “modern-day lynching.” Joe Biden warned that “we must no longer give this hate safe harbor,” his implication being that we need to stop winking at such racist attacks. If Beale Street Could Talk’s Barry Jenkins lamented, “This what all that hateful mongering has wrought. Are you PROUD???” Good Morning America interviewed Smollett without asking a single critical question about his story.
The examples are as numerous as the retractions will be minimal.”
“Russia Hysteria Proves America’s Foreign Policy Establishment Is A Raging Dumpster Fire
The MSNBC foreign policy gurus think Trump is crazy, but they quite literally don’t know what they are talking about. They think that smart, nuanced foreign policy must be a sign of collusion.”
———————
“Chuck Todd got his MSNBC pals together on “Meet the Press Daily” to have a serious, objective, and intellectual discussion of foreign policy and politics. Just kidding.
The Senate Intelligence Committee had just announced it found “no direct evidence” of collusion between President Trump and Russia. Democrats dispute this, without giving much reason why, which is a story in itself.
But Todd and his panel largely ignored that. ”
———————-
“That’s why, at the very least, we should all be able to have a reasonable debate about these issues. But the public discourse is so poisoned by the likes of Todd, Farkas, and their MSNBC panel that a reasonable debate has long ago become impossible. The MSNBC foreign policy gurus think Trump is crazy, but they quite literally don’t know what they are talking about. They think that smart, nuanced foreign policy must be a sign of collusion. You can’t deviate in any way from their approved mantras or they’ll get mad and call you a traitor. It almost sounds like a religion.
By their standards, many of our foreign policy elite—and many Democrats—are colluding with China. And have been for decades. See how this works, and where this gets us?
That’s why our foreign policy establishment is the worst. They have bad ideas about just about everything, and are utterly unwilling to engage about their ideas in a civil manner. That often makes their ideas the only game in town, so that the problem is bipartisan. Sen. Mitch McConnell can’t find enough Senate votes for conservative causes, but he easily found 68 Senate votes to keep us in Afghanistan and Syria. But it’s a bad idea to stay in Syria. And we’ve been in Afghanistan for 18 years, and the situation on the ground isn’t getting any better.
To borrow from an old saying, five people picked at random out of a small-town USA phonebook would do better at foreign policy than that MSNBC panel, or much of our foreign policy establishment. Maybe we start to have a foreign policy that reflects what the people in the phonebook want?”
“AMERICA’S FIRST TWO MUSLIM CONGRESSWOMEN WILL BOTH BE FUNDRAISING FOR HAMAS-LINKED ORGANIZATION”
“The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced Monday that Democratic Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib will be speaking at CAIR-Michigan’s annual banquet only days after the Hamas-linked organization revealed that fellow Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota will be speaking at CAIR-LA’s annual banquet.
CAIR is a notable pro-Palestinian organization with ties to Islamic terror groups. The U.S. Department of Justice listed CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in funding millions of dollars to the terrorist organization Hamas. Additionally, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) named CAIR a terrorist organization along with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in 2014.
Tlaib will be the guest speaker at CAIR-Michigan’s 19th annual “Faith-Led, Justice Driven” banquet on March 17, according to the organization’s invitation. Single tickets start at $50 per person and a table can cost upwards of $500. Tickets for Omar’s March 23 event start at a similar price point.
Omar and Tlaib became America’s first Muslim congresswomen when sworn into office in January. Their time in office has been embroiled in allegations of anti-Semitism.”
“National emergency declaration — a legal fight Trump is likely to win”
“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer claim that President Donald Trump’s Southern Border National Emergency Proclamation is an unlawful declaration over a crisis that does not exist, and that it steals from urgently needed defense funds — that it is a power grab by a disappointed president who has gone outside the bounds of the law to try to get what he failed to achieve through the constitutional legislative process.
In fact, this isn’t about the Constitution or the bounds of the law, and — in fact — there is a very real crisis at the border, though not necessarily what Trump often describes. It helps to understand a bit of the history of “national emergencies.”
As of 1973, congress had passed more than 470 statutes granting national emergency powers to the president. National emergency declarations under those statutes were rarely challenged in court.
In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, which was decided in 1952, the Supreme Court overturned President Harry S. Truman’s proclamation seizing privately owned steel mills to preempt a national steelworker strike during the Korean War. But Truman didn’t have congressional authority to declare a national emergency. He relied on inherent powers which were not spelled out in the Constitution.
Trump, however, is using specific statutory authority that congress created for the president.”
Re: AJ’s 7:30. I don’t recall the exact words, but I have the essence of the conversation here.
Tucker Carlson was interviewing a guy on FoxNews last night. He id a college professor who has written a book on hoaxes. In reply to a question, he mentioned several hoaxes, like Shollette hoax they were talking about the MAGA hat hoax still in the news, the Tawana Brawley hoax, and several others.
Tucker then asked another question. A pertinent question. And I think the answer was astoundingly true, simple and scary.
Q. Why to they have so many hoaxes?
Answer: “BECAUSE THE DEMAND FOR BIGOTS IN THE MEDIA FAR EXCEEDS THE SUPPLY.”
There’s a cabal of people in this country fully invested in driving The Narrative instead of The Truth. The Cabal is powerful, made up of those who wield outsized influence on what Americans know about our nation’s public affairs.
You know it, and I know it. The Narrative is simple:
President Donald Trump is a hypocrite and a liar. Everything he says and does is without precedent and has sinister motive. Anyone who supports Trump is complicit in racism and in allowing Russia to control the United States.
Trump has unleashed an army of misogynist, racist, red-hat wearing monsters who terrorize people for skin color, gender and sexual preference. Trump’s policies are built on lies and hurt many who support him and everyone who doesn’t. American democracy will cease to exist should Trump win re-election.
The Cabal will do virtually anything to keep The Narrative afloat. It reported erroneously that Trump threw a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. out of the Oval Office. With a straight face, it told you that a federal judge and future Supreme Court justice essentially participated in a high school sex cult.
It vilified — in error and without investigation — a mild-mannered teenager for wearing a hat while visiting the Lincoln Memorial. It pretends that members of the Trump #Resistance simply didn’t say about infanticide what the cameras clearly recorded, and that anti-Semitism in its ranks isn’t really anti-Semitism.
The Narrative is an elaborate stage production featuring clever sleight of hand. The actors portraying Victim and Perpetrator always feature the same characteristics. Desperation for The Narrative to become reality eliminates critical thinking from the minds of otherwise smart people.”
“The Jussie Smollett debacle shows, yet again, that the media are more interested in pushing a left-wing agenda than sticking to facts.
This week, the story of the Jussie Smollett hoax gripped the national media. The story, for those who missed it, went something like this: The Empire actor, who is both black and gay, stated that on a freezing January night in Chicago, in the middle of the polar vortex, he went to a local Subway store to buy a sandwich. On his way back, he was accosted by two men wearing red hats who called him the f-word and the n-word. They then tossed a clothesline around his neck, poured bleach on him, and shouted, “This is MAGA country!”
There were some obvious problems with the story. First, Chicago is not exactly MAGA country — Trump won 12.5 percent of the vote in the city precincts. Second, it seems unlikely that people would stake out Smollett in the middle of the night in below-freezing temperatures. Third, Smollett somehow retained hold of his sandwich after the alleged assault. Fourth, he strolled through his apartment complex without notifying the doorman of the incident. Fifth, he waited 40 minutes to call the police. Sixth, when the police arrived, he was still wearing the clothesline around his neck. Seventh, Smollett claimed that his manager had been on the phone with him at the time of the alleged hate crime; when asked to turn over his phone to the Chicago Police Department to verify this, he refused to do so.
Initially, the media ran with the story without taking such questions seriously. The Washington Post’s Eugene Scott stated, “To many, the Smollett incident — and the political nature of the assault — is yet another reminder for many black gay Americans that this president’s vision of a ‘great America’ does not appear to include them.” Jamil Smith of Rolling Stone tweeted, “The brutal attack on him in Chicago appears to be yet another example not just of further moral decay, but of the brand of terrorism that still doesn’t seem to spark enough response by Americans.” CNN’s Brooke Baldwin simply lamented, “This is America in 2019.”
Celebrities weighed in, too. Actress Ellen Page went on Stephen Colbert’s late-night show where she blamed Vice President Mike Pence for the attack. Cher tweeted, “VILLAINY, RACISM, HOMOPHOBIA, PROMOTED BY MOST INFAMOUS [clown emoji] IN [world emoji], IS THE POISON THAT KILLS [American flag emoji].” Singer Katy Perry tweeted, “Standing with and sending love to @JussieSmollett today . . . this is a racist hate crime and is disgusting and shameful to our country.” Director Rob Reiner added, “The horrific attack on Jussie Smollett has no place in a decent human loving society. . . . No intolerance! No DT!”
Then there were the Democratic politicians. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi tweeted, “The racist, homophobic attack on [Smollett] is an affront to our humanity.” Senator Cory Booker (D., N.J.), who is running for president, called the Smollett incident a “modern-day lynching.” Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed anyone willing to question Smollett’s account, stating, “The attack was not ‘possibly’ homophobic. It was a racist and homophobic attack.”
Why did so many on the political Left buy into the obviously incredible story from the moment that it broke? Because it perfectly fit narratives that the Left loves: the narrative of America as racist, homophobic hellhole; the narrative of Trump supporters as violent bigots; the narrative of Trump himself as an inspirational figure for such violent bigots. The story was too good to be true. So no one cared whether it was or not.”
———————
That’s really the irony of this Smollett story, that the media and the left are (or, rather, were) all but rubbing their hands in glee that they had such a perfect story to prove how evil virtually the entire country is (America in 2019) and basically saying that anyone who dares even question the story must be not only naive but also a racist, homophobic bigot who just doesn’t like black gay men and assumes they are liars. And yet real Americans do question the story because it doesn’t sound credible–the story doesn’t sound credible as told AND we don’t believe the world is so full of bigots as to make it likely. (BTW, I am not trying to say there is no such thing in 2019 as racism; the human heart is desperately wicked, and bigotry of all sorts is one way that is shown. But leftists think Trump supporters and others on the right are just crawling with maggots of people who would do this if they could get away with it, and people on the right are shaking their heads and saying, “If he had gotten murdered in the middle of the night in Chicago, I wouldn’t be shocked. But these people just made a mostly symbolic statement and then left–they aren’t hardened criminals, just 1950s-era bigots and minor-league bullies, stereotypical Trump supporters who don’t exist in real life.”
I didn’t really even “hear” the story until the narrative had serious holes in it. But when I did hear it, two parts of it really rang untrue: (1) Nobody in Chicago would claim it to be “MAGA country.” It isn’t, and it’s absurd to say it is. (2) No black man who has a noose around his neck and believes it to have been put there by hate would leave it there until the police arrived. Other aspects of doubt, like whether he might have carried the sandwich home after that, I’ll grant him–if he was hungry enough to go out for a sandwich at 2 a.m. on a bitterly cold morning, and to go to two separate places to get that sandwich, he might well have remembered to take it home. And he more or less claims to have beaten up two guys, but I’ll grant him that one too–thugs may well not be trying to hang around to kill a guy, but just to take a few swipes and run before the police get there. Several other parts of the narrative could likely “go either way.” But keeping the rope around his neck is a really bad “acting” move, and not something an actual victim would do.
One thing that played into the narrative getting as much traction as it did is our cultural mantra that it is evil to “blame the victim.” We definitely include “question the victim’s story” as part of blaming the victim. And who is more a “victim” than a black homosexual? But in a culture where one can barely say, “Young female college students, you need to know that attending a party where there will be drunken men, and drinking to excess yourself, is foolish and dangerous–please do not do it, as you are likely to get hurt” without “victim blaming” and even “slut shaming,” then coming in after the fact and saying “That was dumb” or “Your story doesn’t ring true” is a really good way to be rendered insensitive and deeply prejudiced.
Another thing: There are multiple reasons I wouldn’t wear a MAGA hat, among them that I didn’t vote for Trump, that I don’t wear political slogans of any kind, and that only rarely do I wear a baseball cap at all. Also, in this climate it frankly seems like a dangerous thing to do.
But the narrative no one seems to be telling is how cleverly the left has decided what MAGA hats mean, and has demanded they do not belong in polite society.
Can you imagine if we seized on some emblem of the left and rewrote its meaning, the way they found out to work by first rewriting all Confederate imagery as “racist,” and succeeding with that (and getting rid of virtually all of it), then turning around and determining that a hat supporting a president is innately racist?
“Make America Great Again” means (according to the leftists, who never bother asking the wearer what it means) that (1) you support Donald Trump, and therefore you are a racist bigot–there can’t possibly be another reason; (2) you want to return America to the 1950s (which were a uniquely evil decade), because of your racism and homophobia.
OK, let’s imagine something. Imagine that we were to rewrite the narrative of the rainbow flag and to say that anyone who uses it isn’t showing their support for homosexual freedom, but is instead inciting people to violence against Christians? What if we claimed that the “real” meaning of the rainbow as they use it is “kill all Christians and burn down their churches” and that anyone wearing an LGBT rainbow is free to accept any and all public animosity? We decide to make wearing the rainbow so despised that no one dares wear it (and the few who do wear it probably really are hateful bigots, and the few who do wear it end up likely to get beaten up for it)? In reality, the rainbow has been co-opted from its actual, God-given meaning, and I’d happily see it unchained from its “new” meaning . . . but my point is that telling other people what they mean by their symbol is wrong, and somehow no one is questioning this action. (But conservatives caved on the Confederate symbols years ago, and maybe they realize this is a losing battle.)
Imagine that Obama had been as clever as Trump, and had made “Hope and Change” hats ubiquitous. Can you imagine the right coming out and saying (and having culture uncritically accept) “those hats really mean support of violence and racial division”? Trying to tell other people what their symbol means, and publicly shame–and threaten–them into dropping the symbol is dangerous. OK, the KKK symbolism actually did represent hatred, and so did Nazism; there are times when public rejection of a symbol is a good thing. But deciding that the political slogan of a sitting president is “hate speech” and something to brand teenage wearers “punchable” is a dangerous fomenting of hatred and division by a party that pretends to favor “tolerance.” We are being pushed toward civil war, and it isn’t prejudiced old white men who are doing the pushing (except behind the scenes . . . but I mean it isn’t people who hate blacks and homosexuals and want them destroyed who are pushing the hate here; that breed of prejudice belongs to only a tiny minority of American citizens; the truly divisive ones today are the ones who are out preaching “tolerance” and screaming about how intolerant everyone on the other side is).
… Anyone not blinded by bias or panic should have been skeptical of Smollett’s story from the beginning. He openly harbors an intense hatred for Donald Trump and his supporters, going so far as comparing them to Klansmen. That his alleged attackers perfectly fit this description should have raised eyebrows across the political spectrum. The cartoony, screenplay-villain portrayal of white Trump supporters was outrageously comical. But to insulated urban progressives who have little to no experience interacting with conservatives, a Trump supporter may as well be synonymous with evil. …
_____________________________
Interestingly, I was busy writing a story on deadline yesterday as I overheard the only 2 colleagues in the room, and editor and reporter, laughing about how they didn’t have any Republican friends. I kept thinking ‘and you find nothing wrong with that?’ They didn’t from the sounds of it. 😦
President Donald Trump is a hypocrite and a liar. Everything he says and does is without precedent and has sinister motive. Anyone who supports Trump is complicit in racism and in allowing Russia to control the United States.
Trump has unleashed an army of misogynist, racist, red-hat wearing monsters who terrorize people for skin color, gender and sexual preference. Trump’s policies are built on lies and hurt many who support him and everyone who doesn’t. American democracy will cease to exist should Trump win re-election.
… The Cabal will do virtually anything to keep The Narrative afloat. It reported erroneously that Trump threw a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. out of the Oval Office. With a straight face, it told you that a federal judge and future Supreme Court justice essentially participated in a high school sex cult.
It vilified — in error and without investigation — a mild-mannered teenager for wearing a hat while visiting the Lincoln Memorial. It pretends that members of the Trump #Resistance simply didn’t say about infanticide what the cameras clearly recorded, and that anti-Semitism in its ranks isn’t really anti-Semitism.
… The Narrative demands that certain people must always be believed, and that certain others must always be guilty. The Guilty must pay with their reputations and livelihoods, no exceptions. The Cabal refuses to take responsibility for its mistakes and never pumps the brakes on these stories, despite crash after crash. Of course, never admitting a mistake means never having to reflect on the destruction of your own credibility.
Neither American political tribe is without sin. Trump, like most presidents, has told some absolute whoppers, and some of his supporters have done dumb things. But that is no excuse for a cabal of the powerful to create a narrative that destroys lives and reputations in the name of achieving a political outcome. The Cabal accuses Trump of creating an “alternate reality” for his supporters. But what do you call the proliferation of narrative over truth? …
______________________________________
You are bringing me to whole new levels of wokeness. My intersectional categories just grew to include "people who haven't been attacked," but,"might not have the courage to come forward.
I haven’t been attacked either,
But I likely would be if I went to places where people are attacked.
Does that count for anything?
I have an empty pill bottle that I could store all the sympathy in.
Chicago police say Jussie Smollett suspected of filing false report about attack in Streeterville
____________________________________
“Jussie Smollett is now officially classified as a suspect in a criminal investigation … for filing a false police report,” police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a tweet, adding that authorities are seeking a Class 4 felony charge. “Detectives are currently presenting evidence before a Cook County grand jury.”
Earlier Wednesday, Guglielmi said attorneys for Smollett, 36, were meeting with prosecutors and detectives, but it was unclear if the actor was present. The lawyers, Todd Pugh and Victor P. Henderson, could not be reached for comment. They have been joined by high-profile, Los Angeles-based lawyer Mark Geragos who has represented numerous celebrities, including pop star Michael Jackson, R&B singer Chris Brown and actress Winona Ryder. …
______________________________________
In Snopes’ defense, they do know that it is satire, and said so:
“This was not a genuine news story, although some readers mistook it for such. The Babylon Bee is a satirical website whose disclaimer notes that “The Babylon Bee is Your Trusted Source For Christian News Satire.”
Felony criminal charges have been approved by @CookCountySAO against Jussie Smollett for Disorderly Conduct / Filing a False Police Report. Detectives will make contact with his legal team to negotiate a reasonable surrender for his arrest. pic.twitter.com/LvBSYE2kVj
Wandering Views 
Bezos’ wife needs to hurry up that divorce before others take her piece of the Amazon/WaPo pie.
https://news.yahoo.com/teen-lincoln-memorial-protest-sues-washington-post-250-224727674–finance.html
“Teen in Lincoln Memorial protest sues Washington Post for $250 million”
“A high school student from Covington, Kentucky, at the center of a videotaped incident at the Lincoln Memorial involving a Native American activist sued the Washington Post for defamation on Tuesday, claiming the newspaper “vilified” him because he is white.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Kentucky by Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann, 16, seeks $250 million in damages – saying that was the amount Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com and the world’s richest person, paid for the Post in 2013.
“The Post wrongfully targeted and bullied Nicholas because he was the white, Catholic student wearing a red ‘Make America Great Again’ souvenir cap on a school field trip to the Jan. 18 March for Life in Washington, D.C.,” the lawsuit claims.”
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A bad look for many.
“As Jussie Smollett’s account of his alleged assault falls apart, it is important to note that politicians, the media and influential voices did their best to fan the flames of outrage, based on nothing but the dark premise that conservatives and Trump supporters are evil.
It is astounding that so many reputable people took Smollett’s fantastical account seriously. Certainly, hate crimes based on race and sexual orientation are a very real thing, but the details surrounding this particular episode centered around a lampoonish representation of a Trump-era bigot.
It was a flimsy yarn from the outset, which only became more precarious with each passing day. That didn’t stop those most deeply invested in the narrative of Evil Trump to jump into action.”
—————-
And they bought it because it fit a narrative they wanted to push.
https://www.city-journal.org/jussie-smollett-bigotry
“The Jussie Smollett case, in which a young black, gay actor has apparently concocted a tale of being attacked by two white men wearing MAGA hats and shouting anti-gay slurs, is just the latest example of how desperately media elites want to confirm their favored narrative about America: that the country is endemically and lethally racist, sexist, and homophobic, and that the election of Donald Trump both proves and reinforces such bigotry.
The truth: as instances of actual racism get harder and harder to find, the search to find such bigotry becomes increasingly frenzied and unmoored from reality.
Smollett made a not-irrational wager that a patently preposterous narrative about an anti-black, anti-gay hate crime at 2 A.M. in subzero Chicago would be embraced by virtually the entirety of the mainstream media, leading Democratic politicians, Hollywood, and academia, with no one in these cohorts bothering to fact-check his narrative or entertain even armchair skepticism toward it. He also presumed, again with good reason, that to claim victim status would catapult him to the highest echelons of public admiration and accomplishment. And he was right. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker called it a “modern-day lynching.” Joe Biden warned that “we must no longer give this hate safe harbor,” his implication being that we need to stop winking at such racist attacks. If Beale Street Could Talk’s Barry Jenkins lamented, “This what all that hateful mongering has wrought. Are you PROUD???” Good Morning America interviewed Smollett without asking a single critical question about his story.
The examples are as numerous as the retractions will be minimal.”
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A raging dumpster fire.
http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/15/russia-hysteria-proves-americas-foreign-policy-establishment-raging-dumpster-fire/
“Russia Hysteria Proves America’s Foreign Policy Establishment Is A Raging Dumpster Fire
The MSNBC foreign policy gurus think Trump is crazy, but they quite literally don’t know what they are talking about. They think that smart, nuanced foreign policy must be a sign of collusion.”
———————
“Chuck Todd got his MSNBC pals together on “Meet the Press Daily” to have a serious, objective, and intellectual discussion of foreign policy and politics. Just kidding.
The Senate Intelligence Committee had just announced it found “no direct evidence” of collusion between President Trump and Russia. Democrats dispute this, without giving much reason why, which is a story in itself.
But Todd and his panel largely ignored that. ”
———————-
“That’s why, at the very least, we should all be able to have a reasonable debate about these issues. But the public discourse is so poisoned by the likes of Todd, Farkas, and their MSNBC panel that a reasonable debate has long ago become impossible. The MSNBC foreign policy gurus think Trump is crazy, but they quite literally don’t know what they are talking about. They think that smart, nuanced foreign policy must be a sign of collusion. You can’t deviate in any way from their approved mantras or they’ll get mad and call you a traitor. It almost sounds like a religion.
By their standards, many of our foreign policy elite—and many Democrats—are colluding with China. And have been for decades. See how this works, and where this gets us?
That’s why our foreign policy establishment is the worst. They have bad ideas about just about everything, and are utterly unwilling to engage about their ideas in a civil manner. That often makes their ideas the only game in town, so that the problem is bipartisan. Sen. Mitch McConnell can’t find enough Senate votes for conservative causes, but he easily found 68 Senate votes to keep us in Afghanistan and Syria. But it’s a bad idea to stay in Syria. And we’ve been in Afghanistan for 18 years, and the situation on the ground isn’t getting any better.
To borrow from an old saying, five people picked at random out of a small-town USA phonebook would do better at foreign policy than that MSNBC panel, or much of our foreign policy establishment. Maybe we start to have a foreign policy that reflects what the people in the phonebook want?”
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How nice. 2 US Congresswomen fundraising for a terrorist organization. Nice to see them serving their true masters, huh?
https://dailycaller.com/2019/02/19/tlaib-omar-cair-banquet/
“AMERICA’S FIRST TWO MUSLIM CONGRESSWOMEN WILL BOTH BE FUNDRAISING FOR HAMAS-LINKED ORGANIZATION”
“The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced Monday that Democratic Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib will be speaking at CAIR-Michigan’s annual banquet only days after the Hamas-linked organization revealed that fellow Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota will be speaking at CAIR-LA’s annual banquet.
CAIR is a notable pro-Palestinian organization with ties to Islamic terror groups. The U.S. Department of Justice listed CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in funding millions of dollars to the terrorist organization Hamas. Additionally, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) named CAIR a terrorist organization along with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in 2014.
Tlaib will be the guest speaker at CAIR-Michigan’s 19th annual “Faith-Led, Justice Driven” banquet on March 17, according to the organization’s invitation. Single tickets start at $50 per person and a table can cost upwards of $500. Tickets for Omar’s March 23 event start at a similar price point.
Omar and Tlaib became America’s first Muslim congresswomen when sworn into office in January. Their time in office has been embroiled in allegations of anti-Semitism.”
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Trump will win again.
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/430340-national-emergency-declaration-a-legal-fight-trump-is-likely-to-win
“National emergency declaration — a legal fight Trump is likely to win”
“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer claim that President Donald Trump’s Southern Border National Emergency Proclamation is an unlawful declaration over a crisis that does not exist, and that it steals from urgently needed defense funds — that it is a power grab by a disappointed president who has gone outside the bounds of the law to try to get what he failed to achieve through the constitutional legislative process.
In fact, this isn’t about the Constitution or the bounds of the law, and — in fact — there is a very real crisis at the border, though not necessarily what Trump often describes. It helps to understand a bit of the history of “national emergencies.”
As of 1973, congress had passed more than 470 statutes granting national emergency powers to the president. National emergency declarations under those statutes were rarely challenged in court.
In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, which was decided in 1952, the Supreme Court overturned President Harry S. Truman’s proclamation seizing privately owned steel mills to preempt a national steelworker strike during the Korean War. But Truman didn’t have congressional authority to declare a national emergency. He relied on inherent powers which were not spelled out in the Constitution.
Trump, however, is using specific statutory authority that congress created for the president.”
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Re: AJ’s 7:30. I don’t recall the exact words, but I have the essence of the conversation here.
Tucker Carlson was interviewing a guy on FoxNews last night. He id a college professor who has written a book on hoaxes. In reply to a question, he mentioned several hoaxes, like Shollette hoax they were talking about the MAGA hat hoax still in the news, the Tawana Brawley hoax, and several others.
Tucker then asked another question. A pertinent question. And I think the answer was astoundingly true, simple and scary.
Q. Why to they have so many hoaxes?
Answer: “BECAUSE THE DEMAND FOR BIGOTS IN THE MEDIA FAR EXCEEDS THE SUPPLY.”
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Yep. 🙂
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/2019/02/19/trump-hasnt-unleashed-army-racist-maga-hat-monsters/2903556002/
“Let’s be honest with each other for a moment.
There’s a cabal of people in this country fully invested in driving The Narrative instead of The Truth. The Cabal is powerful, made up of those who wield outsized influence on what Americans know about our nation’s public affairs.
You know it, and I know it. The Narrative is simple:
President Donald Trump is a hypocrite and a liar. Everything he says and does is without precedent and has sinister motive. Anyone who supports Trump is complicit in racism and in allowing Russia to control the United States.
Trump has unleashed an army of misogynist, racist, red-hat wearing monsters who terrorize people for skin color, gender and sexual preference. Trump’s policies are built on lies and hurt many who support him and everyone who doesn’t. American democracy will cease to exist should Trump win re-election.
The Cabal will do virtually anything to keep The Narrative afloat. It reported erroneously that Trump threw a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. out of the Oval Office. With a straight face, it told you that a federal judge and future Supreme Court justice essentially participated in a high school sex cult.
It vilified — in error and without investigation — a mild-mannered teenager for wearing a hat while visiting the Lincoln Memorial. It pretends that members of the Trump #Resistance simply didn’t say about infanticide what the cameras clearly recorded, and that anti-Semitism in its ranks isn’t really anti-Semitism.
The Narrative is an elaborate stage production featuring clever sleight of hand. The actors portraying Victim and Perpetrator always feature the same characteristics. Desperation for The Narrative to become reality eliminates critical thinking from the minds of otherwise smart people.”
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Agenda trumps truth with the left.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/jussie-smollett-controversy-media-pushes-left-wing-agenda/
“The Jussie Smollett debacle shows, yet again, that the media are more interested in pushing a left-wing agenda than sticking to facts.
This week, the story of the Jussie Smollett hoax gripped the national media. The story, for those who missed it, went something like this: The Empire actor, who is both black and gay, stated that on a freezing January night in Chicago, in the middle of the polar vortex, he went to a local Subway store to buy a sandwich. On his way back, he was accosted by two men wearing red hats who called him the f-word and the n-word. They then tossed a clothesline around his neck, poured bleach on him, and shouted, “This is MAGA country!”
There were some obvious problems with the story. First, Chicago is not exactly MAGA country — Trump won 12.5 percent of the vote in the city precincts. Second, it seems unlikely that people would stake out Smollett in the middle of the night in below-freezing temperatures. Third, Smollett somehow retained hold of his sandwich after the alleged assault. Fourth, he strolled through his apartment complex without notifying the doorman of the incident. Fifth, he waited 40 minutes to call the police. Sixth, when the police arrived, he was still wearing the clothesline around his neck. Seventh, Smollett claimed that his manager had been on the phone with him at the time of the alleged hate crime; when asked to turn over his phone to the Chicago Police Department to verify this, he refused to do so.
Initially, the media ran with the story without taking such questions seriously. The Washington Post’s Eugene Scott stated, “To many, the Smollett incident — and the political nature of the assault — is yet another reminder for many black gay Americans that this president’s vision of a ‘great America’ does not appear to include them.” Jamil Smith of Rolling Stone tweeted, “The brutal attack on him in Chicago appears to be yet another example not just of further moral decay, but of the brand of terrorism that still doesn’t seem to spark enough response by Americans.” CNN’s Brooke Baldwin simply lamented, “This is America in 2019.”
Celebrities weighed in, too. Actress Ellen Page went on Stephen Colbert’s late-night show where she blamed Vice President Mike Pence for the attack. Cher tweeted, “VILLAINY, RACISM, HOMOPHOBIA, PROMOTED BY MOST INFAMOUS [clown emoji] IN [world emoji], IS THE POISON THAT KILLS [American flag emoji].” Singer Katy Perry tweeted, “Standing with and sending love to @JussieSmollett today . . . this is a racist hate crime and is disgusting and shameful to our country.” Director Rob Reiner added, “The horrific attack on Jussie Smollett has no place in a decent human loving society. . . . No intolerance! No DT!”
Then there were the Democratic politicians. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi tweeted, “The racist, homophobic attack on [Smollett] is an affront to our humanity.” Senator Cory Booker (D., N.J.), who is running for president, called the Smollett incident a “modern-day lynching.” Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed anyone willing to question Smollett’s account, stating, “The attack was not ‘possibly’ homophobic. It was a racist and homophobic attack.”
Why did so many on the political Left buy into the obviously incredible story from the moment that it broke? Because it perfectly fit narratives that the Left loves: the narrative of America as racist, homophobic hellhole; the narrative of Trump supporters as violent bigots; the narrative of Trump himself as an inspirational figure for such violent bigots. The story was too good to be true. So no one cared whether it was or not.”
———————
Because?……..
Trump.
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That’s really the irony of this Smollett story, that the media and the left are (or, rather, were) all but rubbing their hands in glee that they had such a perfect story to prove how evil virtually the entire country is (America in 2019) and basically saying that anyone who dares even question the story must be not only naive but also a racist, homophobic bigot who just doesn’t like black gay men and assumes they are liars. And yet real Americans do question the story because it doesn’t sound credible–the story doesn’t sound credible as told AND we don’t believe the world is so full of bigots as to make it likely. (BTW, I am not trying to say there is no such thing in 2019 as racism; the human heart is desperately wicked, and bigotry of all sorts is one way that is shown. But leftists think Trump supporters and others on the right are just crawling with maggots of people who would do this if they could get away with it, and people on the right are shaking their heads and saying, “If he had gotten murdered in the middle of the night in Chicago, I wouldn’t be shocked. But these people just made a mostly symbolic statement and then left–they aren’t hardened criminals, just 1950s-era bigots and minor-league bullies, stereotypical Trump supporters who don’t exist in real life.”
I didn’t really even “hear” the story until the narrative had serious holes in it. But when I did hear it, two parts of it really rang untrue: (1) Nobody in Chicago would claim it to be “MAGA country.” It isn’t, and it’s absurd to say it is. (2) No black man who has a noose around his neck and believes it to have been put there by hate would leave it there until the police arrived. Other aspects of doubt, like whether he might have carried the sandwich home after that, I’ll grant him–if he was hungry enough to go out for a sandwich at 2 a.m. on a bitterly cold morning, and to go to two separate places to get that sandwich, he might well have remembered to take it home. And he more or less claims to have beaten up two guys, but I’ll grant him that one too–thugs may well not be trying to hang around to kill a guy, but just to take a few swipes and run before the police get there. Several other parts of the narrative could likely “go either way.” But keeping the rope around his neck is a really bad “acting” move, and not something an actual victim would do.
One thing that played into the narrative getting as much traction as it did is our cultural mantra that it is evil to “blame the victim.” We definitely include “question the victim’s story” as part of blaming the victim. And who is more a “victim” than a black homosexual? But in a culture where one can barely say, “Young female college students, you need to know that attending a party where there will be drunken men, and drinking to excess yourself, is foolish and dangerous–please do not do it, as you are likely to get hurt” without “victim blaming” and even “slut shaming,” then coming in after the fact and saying “That was dumb” or “Your story doesn’t ring true” is a really good way to be rendered insensitive and deeply prejudiced.
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Another thing: There are multiple reasons I wouldn’t wear a MAGA hat, among them that I didn’t vote for Trump, that I don’t wear political slogans of any kind, and that only rarely do I wear a baseball cap at all. Also, in this climate it frankly seems like a dangerous thing to do.
But the narrative no one seems to be telling is how cleverly the left has decided what MAGA hats mean, and has demanded they do not belong in polite society.
Can you imagine if we seized on some emblem of the left and rewrote its meaning, the way they found out to work by first rewriting all Confederate imagery as “racist,” and succeeding with that (and getting rid of virtually all of it), then turning around and determining that a hat supporting a president is innately racist?
“Make America Great Again” means (according to the leftists, who never bother asking the wearer what it means) that (1) you support Donald Trump, and therefore you are a racist bigot–there can’t possibly be another reason; (2) you want to return America to the 1950s (which were a uniquely evil decade), because of your racism and homophobia.
OK, let’s imagine something. Imagine that we were to rewrite the narrative of the rainbow flag and to say that anyone who uses it isn’t showing their support for homosexual freedom, but is instead inciting people to violence against Christians? What if we claimed that the “real” meaning of the rainbow as they use it is “kill all Christians and burn down their churches” and that anyone wearing an LGBT rainbow is free to accept any and all public animosity? We decide to make wearing the rainbow so despised that no one dares wear it (and the few who do wear it probably really are hateful bigots, and the few who do wear it end up likely to get beaten up for it)? In reality, the rainbow has been co-opted from its actual, God-given meaning, and I’d happily see it unchained from its “new” meaning . . . but my point is that telling other people what they mean by their symbol is wrong, and somehow no one is questioning this action. (But conservatives caved on the Confederate symbols years ago, and maybe they realize this is a losing battle.)
Imagine that Obama had been as clever as Trump, and had made “Hope and Change” hats ubiquitous. Can you imagine the right coming out and saying (and having culture uncritically accept) “those hats really mean support of violence and racial division”? Trying to tell other people what their symbol means, and publicly shame–and threaten–them into dropping the symbol is dangerous. OK, the KKK symbolism actually did represent hatred, and so did Nazism; there are times when public rejection of a symbol is a good thing. But deciding that the political slogan of a sitting president is “hate speech” and something to brand teenage wearers “punchable” is a dangerous fomenting of hatred and division by a party that pretends to favor “tolerance.” We are being pushed toward civil war, and it isn’t prejudiced old white men who are doing the pushing (except behind the scenes . . . but I mean it isn’t people who hate blacks and homosexuals and want them destroyed who are pushing the hate here; that breed of prejudice belongs to only a tiny minority of American citizens; the truly divisive ones today are the ones who are out preaching “tolerance” and screaming about how intolerant everyone on the other side is).
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/hate-crime-hoaxes-reflect-americas-sickness/
__________________________
… Anyone not blinded by bias or panic should have been skeptical of Smollett’s story from the beginning. He openly harbors an intense hatred for Donald Trump and his supporters, going so far as comparing them to Klansmen. That his alleged attackers perfectly fit this description should have raised eyebrows across the political spectrum. The cartoony, screenplay-villain portrayal of white Trump supporters was outrageously comical. But to insulated urban progressives who have little to no experience interacting with conservatives, a Trump supporter may as well be synonymous with evil. …
_____________________________
Interestingly, I was busy writing a story on deadline yesterday as I overheard the only 2 colleagues in the room, and editor and reporter, laughing about how they didn’t have any Republican friends. I kept thinking ‘and you find nothing wrong with that?’ They didn’t from the sounds of it. 😦
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And that is why they will never be fine journalists. Are we always so blind?
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“The Narrative.”
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/2019/02/19/trump-hasnt-unleashed-army-racist-maga-hat-monsters/2903556002/
________________________________________________
… The Narrative is simple:
President Donald Trump is a hypocrite and a liar. Everything he says and does is without precedent and has sinister motive. Anyone who supports Trump is complicit in racism and in allowing Russia to control the United States.
Trump has unleashed an army of misogynist, racist, red-hat wearing monsters who terrorize people for skin color, gender and sexual preference. Trump’s policies are built on lies and hurt many who support him and everyone who doesn’t. American democracy will cease to exist should Trump win re-election.
… The Cabal will do virtually anything to keep The Narrative afloat. It reported erroneously that Trump threw a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. out of the Oval Office. With a straight face, it told you that a federal judge and future Supreme Court justice essentially participated in a high school sex cult.
It vilified — in error and without investigation — a mild-mannered teenager for wearing a hat while visiting the Lincoln Memorial. It pretends that members of the Trump #Resistance simply didn’t say about infanticide what the cameras clearly recorded, and that anti-Semitism in its ranks isn’t really anti-Semitism.
… The Narrative demands that certain people must always be believed, and that certain others must always be guilty. The Guilty must pay with their reputations and livelihoods, no exceptions. The Cabal refuses to take responsibility for its mistakes and never pumps the brakes on these stories, despite crash after crash. Of course, never admitting a mistake means never having to reflect on the destruction of your own credibility.
Neither American political tribe is without sin. Trump, like most presidents, has told some absolute whoppers, and some of his supporters have done dumb things. But that is no excuse for a cabal of the powerful to create a narrative that destroys lives and reputations in the name of achieving a political outcome. The Cabal accuses Trump of creating an “alternate reality” for his supporters. But what do you call the proliferation of narrative over truth? …
______________________________________
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Hehehe. Too funny. 🙂
They make it so easy to mock them.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/02/snopes-fact-checks-babylon-bees-story-about-cnn-offering-jussie-smollett-a-job/
“Snopes Fact Checks Babylon Bee’s Story About CNN Offering Jussie Smollett a Job
“The network, according to the Babylon Bee, was reportedly impressed with Smollett’s ability to fabricate a story out of thin air”
————————-
The folks at the Bee are just going with it. 🙂
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We have reached the peak.
——————-
https://twitter.com/RandomNewsFeedT/status/1098297710640328707
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Peak woke?
Peak stupid at least….. 🤣😂😅
——————–
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———————–
https://twitter.com/OneBagTravels/status/1098307812940283904
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I haven’t been attacked either,
But I likely would be if I went to places where people are attacked.
Does that count for anything?
I have an empty pill bottle that I could store all the sympathy in.
😆
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CNN: Actor Jussie Smollett now a suspect in criminal investigation
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/20/entertainment/jussie-smollett-attack/index.html
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https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-jussie-smollett-suspect-20190220-story.html
Chicago police say Jussie Smollett suspected of filing false report about attack in Streeterville
____________________________________
“Jussie Smollett is now officially classified as a suspect in a criminal investigation … for filing a false police report,” police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a tweet, adding that authorities are seeking a Class 4 felony charge. “Detectives are currently presenting evidence before a Cook County grand jury.”
Earlier Wednesday, Guglielmi said attorneys for Smollett, 36, were meeting with prosecutors and detectives, but it was unclear if the actor was present. The lawyers, Todd Pugh and Victor P. Henderson, could not be reached for comment. They have been joined by high-profile, Los Angeles-based lawyer Mark Geragos who has represented numerous celebrities, including pop star Michael Jackson, R&B singer Chris Brown and actress Winona Ryder. …
______________________________________
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In Snopes’ defense, they do know that it is satire, and said so:
“This was not a genuine news story, although some readers mistook it for such. The Babylon Bee is a satirical website whose disclaimer notes that “The Babylon Bee is Your Trusted Source For Christian News Satire.”
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Full circle
https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1098393421860036608
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FYI
https://www.thepostmillennial.com/why-titania-mcgrath-is-funny/
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Jarvis Dupont is Titania’s “boyfriend”. He is as funny as she is.
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Felony charges no less.
And federal possibly to come.
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