Putin Threatens

Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking during his state-of-the-nation address Wednesday, warned that Russia will aim new hypersonic missiles at the US should it deploy new intermediate-range missiles in Europe.

Russia and its predecessor USSR have aimed weapons, including nuclear weapons—ICBMs, SLBMS, nuclear-armed bombers—at the US since they first acquired the weapons.  Does anyone really believe Putin doesn’t already have nuclear weapons aimed at the US today?  Is anyone interested in some beachfront property north of Santa Fe?

No, Putin’s threat just puts a premium on our deploying anti-missile systems at home, in Europe, around Asia, and in orbit as well as on developing heavily upgraded such systems and then deploying them, too.  Putin’s threat also puts a premium on developing upgraded offensive systems, including nuclear, and deploying them at home, in Europe, around Asia, and in orbit.

This is an arms race that Russia can no more afford to sustain technologically or fiscally than could the USSR a prior arms race.  It’s an arms race we should strongly encourage and actively pursue.

False and Dangerous

The New York Times published a hit piece on President Donald Trump, a piece in which the news outlet’s authors—Mark Mazzetti, Maggie Haberman, Nicholas Fandos, and Michael  Schmidt—cited only “several American officials” and other such, but not a single on-the-record source to underlie their central thesis or otherwise corroborate claims of their carefully hidden “sources.”  Indeed, here is their methodology, proudly proclaimed in the middle of their piece,

How The Times Reported This Story
To write this story, New York Times reporters reviewed documents and conducted several dozen interviews with current and former government officials, members of Congress, legal experts and more[]

but even here, they identified no one and nothing—not even the “reporters” who did the claimed reviews and interviews, much less any of the persons or documents the authors claimed were consulted.  We’re just supposed to meekly take the authors’ word for this.

Of course, Trump demurred, and in his usual blunt, seemingly inflammatory way.  As do I; the NYT‘s bit is a long one, and it cites “sources” that, for all we know, are only made-up.

Now to the heart of my post.  Quoting Howard Kurtz’ citing of NYT Publisher AG Sulzberger from Kurtz’ own piece on Trump’s objection, Sulzberger (see that? An actual on-the-record source) said

in demonizing the free press as the enemy, simply for performing its role of asking difficult questions and bringing uncomfortable information to light, President Trump is retreating from a distinctly American principle…The phrase “enemy of the people” is not just false, it’s dangerous.

No.  What’s false and dangerous is Sulzberger’s blatant, deliberate lie about what Trump said.  Here’s Trump’s actual claim:

Notice that.  As Sulzberger knows full well—both with words and grammar being his stock in trade, and from what he learned in his third grade grammar lessons—words that modify nouns limit the class of nouns to a clear subset of that class.  Trump has never called the media, or the news media, an enemy of the American people.  He has said only that that subset of the news media that is fake news is that enemy.

It’s true enough that Trump has made no bones about his contention that many, if not most, journalists are purveyors of fake news, nor has he hidden his view that many, if not most, news outlets are such purveyors.  He’s used no euphemisms in expressing his views of CNN as a routine such purveyor.  He also called the NYT a true enemy of the people.

Notice that, though: even in the latter two instances, he’s addressed particular outlets, not “the news.”

On the other hand, Trump has, often, commented favorably on other journalists and news outlets as being quality reporters, “fair” journalists and outlets, including journalists at outlets Trump otherwise disdains.  Plainly, not all news media, or individuals within it, are enemies of the people in Trump’s view or commentary.

This is the false and dangerous lie that Sulzberger—one of the influential MFWICs of one of the influential printers of what it’s pleased to call “fit news”—is spreading.  Sulzberger deliberately and carefully censored the key part of what Trump said—that modifying phrase, which Trump even emphasized in his tweet—and thereby changed utterly what Sulzberger claims Trump said to fit Sulzberger’s own narrative.

And guys like Howard Kurtz, who claims to know better as a critic of the news media, uncritically repeat the lie.

Amy Klobuchar the Progressive

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D, MN) and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential primary candidate is proud to declare herself Progressive, for all that her mouth keeps saying words of centrism, highlighting her work bridging the political divide.

I think [voters] should see me as a progressive because I believe in progress and I have worked towards progress my whole life.

Here’s Herb Croly, one of the founders of the modern Progressive movement.  I’ve cited him on other occasions; this should be a familiar quote.

[A]ny increase in centralized power and responsibility, expedient or inexpedient, is injurious to certain aspects of traditional American democracy.  But the fault in that case lies with the democratic tradition; and the erroneous and misleading tradition must yield before the march of constructive national democracy….  [T]he average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.

The necessity for increased centralization of government power that’s claimed by the Progressive-Democratic Party is illustrated by the attempted nationalization of our health care coverage industry that is Obamacare (which we weren’t allowed to know anything about until the bill was passed, recall).  It’s illustrated by the Progressive-Democratic Party’s incessant demand for ever higher taxes and ever higher spending.  It’s Illustrated by Progressive-Democrats’ crowing over having “successfully” driven Amazon out of Long Island City before it even arrived (a withdrawal with which I agreed, but not for Party reasons).  It’s illustrated by the Progressive-Democratic Party’s, and nearly all of its declared and not-yet-declared candidates for President’s enthusiastic endorsement of the Green New Deal, which seeks to nationalize our energy, auto, construction industries—virtually our entire economy—and get it done within 10 years.

Today’s Progressives’ contempt for Americans, echoing Croly’s, is illustrated by ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) dismissal of tens of millions of us as bitter Bible-clingers and gun-toters living in flyover country.  Today’s Progressives’ contempt for Americans is illustrated by the Progressive-Democratic Party’s just prior Presidential candidate dismissing tens of millions of Americans as irredeemably deplorable racist, misogynistic homophobes.  Today’s Progressives’ contempt for Americans is illustrated by their dismissal of the need to secure our borders and the need to control who we let into our country.

Progressive, indeed.  There’s nothing moderate about Progressivism, and Klobuchar is proud—insistent—to be known as a Progressive.

A Serious Case

Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann is suing The Washington Post for its despicable and wholly, deliberately dishonest assault on the boy in its reporting on a confrontation initiated by an American Indian provocateur who also has a history of misrepresenting his role in the Vietnam War, a confrontation that was triggered by a group of blacks claiming to be Jewish and who were yelling racial slurs at Sandmann and his fellow students as the students waited for their bus ride back home.

The suit accuses WaPo of

using its vast financial resources to enter the bully pulpit by publishing a series of false and defamatory print and online articles…to smear a young boy who was in its view an acceptable casualty in their war against the president.

Any member of the NLMSM that delayed reporting of anything more than the fact of an encounter by a whole day in order to view the full video of the encounter would have known the facts and the truth.  WaPo made the carefully thought out editorial decision not to tarry that moment in order to gather actual facts on the matter.  Of course, the news outlet’s owners and editors could not know in real time that a dispositive video would be published, but those worthies did know, absolutely, that more facts would emerge, more facts could be brought to light by competent investigation.  The outlet chose not to bother.  It chose, instead, to attack children—leave aside its bias against a Republican President—for the sake of sensationalism, for clickbait, for readership.

My advice to Sandmann and the lawyers? Do not settle.  Get the court ruling.  Do not settle any appeals.  The suit is for harm and for $250 million.  Those $250 million needn’t only be for immediate damages, either; they can include significant punitive damages.

Burn the WaPo to the ground.  Its despicable assault on a child wants a serious answer, not a slap on the wrist. WaPo‘s abuse of a child wants an answer that not only gets the outlet’s attention (which to achieve that attention must consider the outlet’s deep pockets, via its owner), but one that also serves as a serious warning to the outlet’s peers in the NLMSM on the relative priorities between telling the cold facts and objective truth on the one hand and sensationalizing smears for the sake of clickbait on the other.

Those…1%-ers

Those evil 1%-ers.  Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY) hates them.  Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) hates them.  Senator Cory Booker (D, NJ) hates them.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) hates them, even though she’s one of them.  The list goes on and on and on of Progressive-Democrats and Modern Liberals in general who hate them.

Charlie Munger, Vice MFWIC of Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway and 1%-er, thinks otherwise.

I think it’s really stupid for a state to drive the rich people out[.]

It’s been serious. Driving the rich people out is pretty dumb if you’re a state or a city.

And

They’re old. They keep your hospitals busy. They don’t burden your schools, the police department, your prisons. They give a lot. Who wouldn’t want rich people?

Indeed.

Notice who the envious haters are, too.  The rest of us—politically in the center, right of center, and right, and ideologically middle of the road or conservative—might be jealous of those wealthy ones, but far from hating them, we want to be like them, we want the same success, prosperity, and wealth.  And we’re willing to work for it, rather than claiming “our fair share” of their money or demanding their trappings of success for ourselves.