Category Archives: culture

No, He Doesn’t

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Howard Kurtz has joined the frenzy in his cynical piece titled Trump fuels a media furor (again) with Second Amendment comments on Clinton, this time over Republican Party Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s remark, concerning Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s naked attack on the 2nd Amendment, that 2nd Amendment supporters would exercise their considerable political power to protect this fundamental American right.

This is what Trump actually said.

If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day.

This is the heart of Kurtz’ claim:

Donald Trump has talked himself into big trouble—and this time it’s not the fault of what he calls the “dishonest media.”

The media’s frenzied claim that Trump is inciting violence is truly breathtaking.  It also takes a truly sick mind—or a wholly dishonest one—to manufacture violence out of a prediction of strong political repercussion.

Kurtz then asked,

I don’t believe Donald Trump wants to incite violence against Hillary Clinton. But does he bear responsibility for an aside, or a joke, that many people heard that way?

And yet here is Kurtz carefully keeping exactly that distortion alive as though it were a legitimate interpretation.  This interpretation is manufactured entirely out of whole cloth by a media Kurtz himself has already called out as in the bag for Clinton.  The only people who “heard” Trump’s remark as a call for violence are Democrats who want to make personal political hay, no matter how much they have to twist facts to harvest it, and a press that has dishonestly chosen to take sides in a political contest that is for us voters alone to decide.

And as Kurtz ironically noted

This uproar is going to dominate the next few days, all but drowning out Trump’s message (and is drowning out the new controversy over emails showing favor-seeking between the Clinton Foundation and Clinton’s State Department).

Of course it is.  That’s the point of the press’ manufacture.  The decision to distort and then to hype the distortion is entirely the press’.  Just as it’s entirely the press’ choice to spike Democratic Party Ohio Senate candidate Ted Strickland’s yukking it up over how nice it was that Justice Antonin Scalia had died.  Or to conveniently forget about then-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s remark about doing things “the Chicago way,” and about bringing guns to a knife fight.  Nobody has stuck a gun in the press’ ear and made them do any of that.

Does Trump bear responsibility for the behavior of a mendacious media?

Of course not.  Apparently Kurtz doesn’t believe his own press.

No Connection

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There were no ties between Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her State Department on the one hand and the Clinton Foundation run by ex-President Bill Clinton, daughter, and…his wife Hillary.  That’s the claim by no lesser lights than Bill and Hillary.

Thus, neither

In an exchange from April 2009, a longtime aide to Mr Clinton told three of Mrs Clinton’s top advisers that it was “important to take care of” a particular person, whose name has been redacted from the document. That person had written the aide, Doug Band, under the subject line “A favor…” to thank him for the “opportunity to go on the Haiti trip,” which the person called “eye-opening.” Mr Band was a chief adviser in helping Mr Clinton launch the Clinton Foundation after leaving the White House.

nor

Huma Abedin, a longtime confidante of Mrs Clinton who is now working for her campaign, replied to Mr Band: “We have all had him on our radar. Personnel has been sending him options.” Mr Band responded: “Great.” Mr Band was an important figure in helping Mr Clinton set up his post-presidential career and has since co-founded a New York company called Teneo Holdings.

While at the State Department, Ms Abedin received a special designation that allowed her to work at the agency while also doing outside work. During that period, she held two other positions, at the Clinton Foundation and at Teneo.

nor

In a separate exchange, Mr Band asked Ms Abedin and Cheryl Mills, another top aide to Mrs Clinton, to set up a meeting between a State Department official and a top donor to the Clinton Foundation.

“We need Gilbert Chagoury to speak to the substance person re Lebanon,” Mr Band wrote in April 2009. “As you know, he’s key guy there and to us and is loved in Lebanon. Very imp.”

Mr Chagoury, a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire, has donated between $1 million and $5 million to the foundation, according to its disclosures.

mean anything at all.

There’s no connection.  Mm, mm.  From that, of course we don’t need to wonder about the content of those meetings, or trips, or favors, nor should we worry about what Federal goodies were given to folks like these.

Nah.  Not at all.

Arrogance and Hypocrisy

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I’ve been writing about the mendacious press recently.  Here’s an example of its self-important arrogance via Howard Kurtz of Fox News, and it’s at least as destructive of our nation as is its dishonesty and hypocrisy.

Liberal investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald recently told Slate that “the US media is essentially 100% united, vehemently, against Trump, and preventing him from being elected president”….

And Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times:

If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional. That’s uncomfortable and uncharted territory for every mainstream, nonopinion journalist I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable.

Yet

balance has been on vacation since Mr Trump stepped onto his golden Trump Tower escalator last year to announce his candidacy.

But, as Kurtz pointed out, if that’s the opinion, then by all means write it.  But write as opinion, don’t masquerade it as fact.  The latter is not just intellectually dishonest, it’s purely dishonest, and it stems from the unqualified self-importance, and unearned importance, of these pseudo-journalists.

Full stop.

Press Hypocrisy

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I wrote a short time ago about the press’ dishonesty.  Here’s an example of its hypocrisy, in the form of a Boston Globe op-ed.

Throughout the piece, the paper decried personal attacks against the Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Supporters of Donald Trump, recently joined by elements of Bernie Sanders’ supporters in Philadelphia, insisted that Clinton be “locked up[,]”

they wrote.

The paper also made its obligatory attack on Israeli politics by decrying personal attacks on Yitzhak Rabin…20 years ago.

[Protestors] called Rabin a murderer and depicted him in a Nazi uniform.

Then back on our Presidential campaign, came the BG‘s bleat,

As the final 100 days tick away, it’s important to appreciate the possible consequences of this type of toxic discourse.

That was their tie-in of those personal attacks on Rabin those 20 years ago—so they could insinuate (without the moral or intellectual courage to say so outright) that the assassination of Rabin was the result of those personal political attacks and to imply a similar threat against our current candidates.

The BG, though, carefully ignored the character assassinations the Left was inflicting on Republican Party Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, followed by the assassination attempt on him—also in an incident wholly unrelated to campaign character assassinations.

The BG piece, in its high dudgeon and regardless of any supposed actual assassination attempt today, also carefully ignored the steady drumbeat of character assassinations the Democrats have carried out against Republicans—and more generally, other groups of Americans of whom Democrats disapprove—over the last eight years.  For instance,

  • Democrats’ repeated accusations of Republican Congressmen as being unpatriotic
  • Democrats’ decrying police as acting stupidly
  • Democrats’ accusations of Republicans as terrorists
  • Democrats’ accusations of Republicans as hostage-takers
  • Democrats’ slur of conservative Americans as nothing more than bitter, gun-toting, Bible-clingers in flyover country
  • Democrats’ IRS attacks against conservative non-profit organizations

And, with a breathtaking lack of self-awareness, the BG piece closed with this:

[W]e may need to ask again and again, “Have you no sense of decency?” And then, insist on it.

Not caring a whit that the question was asked by Tennessee then-Senate Republican candidate Rand Paul in response to a slur by his Democratic Party opponent Jack Conway.

The Boston Globe‘s example, sadly, is all too typical of the modern hypocritical American…press.

Cynical

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The DC Circuit, in a mixed ruling, has said the trial court judge had erred in dismissing a collection of Tea Party suits he said had become “moot” because the IRS had apologized for its misbehavior and had said it had stopped such practices.

Of course, the IRS had said it had stopped—sort of—only conditionally.  DC Circuit Judge David Sentelle, writing for the majority (the ruling can be seen here), noted that the IRS only had suspended the screening “until further notice.”

A violation of right that is “suspended until further notice” has not become the subject of voluntary cessation, with no reasonable expectation of resumption, so as to moot litigation against the violation of rights. Rather, it has at most advised the victim of the violation—”you’re alright for now, but there may be another shoe falling.”

Sentelle took issue with “suspended,” understanding that suspension is not cessation.  He took separate issue with that “until further notice” bit, as noted above.

In fact, too, the IRS had not stopped at all.  As Sentelle noted,

…it is absurd to suggest that the effect of the IRS’s unlawful conduct, which delayed the processing of appellant-plaintiffs’ applications, has been eradicated when two of the appellant-plaintiffs’ applications remain pending.

After how many years are these applications still pending? It’s been two years since the trial court made its erroneous dismissal.

Of course, the trial judge knew these things. Based on his logic, too (even if he had been as ignorant as he seemed to be claiming he was), it would seem he would have dismissed charges against Willie Sutton had that worthy only apologized and averred he’s stopped. No consequence should ensue, this judge would seem to insist, for the banks Sutton had already robbed.

How cynical is that?

These are the trial courts and the IRS that will be heavily impacted by the Presidential elections.