Sleepless in Midland

Journalists use spy tactics -- A Swallow got intel from government official

This reads like something out of cold war spy history. Henry Kyle Frese was a Defense Intelligence Agency who had a top secret clearance. And his girl friend got him to share some of those secrets with her. From Intelligence agent arrested for spilling secrets to journalists:

Frese and the journalist had the same residential address for a year starting in August 2017 and, based on Frese’s social media pages, “it appears that they were involved in a romantic relationship for some or all of that period of time,” the feds said in a statement.

The release of the unspecified secrets could be “expected to cause exceptionally grave harm to the national security of the United States,” they said, adding that foreign countries could use the information against their rivals, possibly placing US lives at risk.

The main stream media apparently uses honey traps and swallows to get secrets that can be turned into headlines. Never mind who gets hurt. And apparently in this case, the journalists got off scot free.

------
1:18 PM 2/22/2020

Misinformation campaigns by leftists very similar to foreign misinformation campaigns

The fact that Russia may have propagated fake news to Americans is old news. Hopefully, news consumers are smart enough to detect it without help.

But Russians aren't the only ones doing it.

The New York Times and Washington Post have published plenty of Chinese propaganda pieces disguised as news. There's also Iran's efforts to influence people with fake news.

Not to be outdone, the American left has gotten in on the act. Noah Rothman in Propaganda, Inc. tells us that progressive Courier Newsroom has set up websites disguised as local news organs which will deliver news with a very leftist slant.

For an example of some of their propaganda, see Organizers “Hope” This Gun Rally To Become The Next Charlottesville. A reader has to read all the way to the end to determine there is zero evidence that such a "hope" exists.

News consumers need to use critical thinking before believing any source.

------
3:40 PM 1/15/2020

Paging Cindy Sheehan -- Democrats need a mascot

Time will tell whether the action to take out Qassem Soleimani was a good strategic move.

But the left wasted no time in condemning President Trump's decision. Never mind how much deliberation went into it.

Republicans and Democrats have staked out their sides in the debate, and their sides are very predictable. Beginning when Trump announced he was running for president as a Republican, Democrats have been against anything Donald Trump says or does.

Next up will be a symbol for the left --Thomas Sowell called them Mascots Of the Anointed, and they appear out of nowhere in practically every political dispute.

Remember Cindy Sheehan? She was a gold star mom who radically opposed the war in Iraq during the Bush administration. The main stream media gave her enormous amounts of air time. But after Obama got elected, she had as much value to their cause as an obsolete cell phone. They dumped her cold.

So let's keep out eye out for the next mascot.

------
10:45 AM 1/5/2020

Media pounce on distrust of media

Politico's playbook is a reasonably good source of what is of interest to folks in the media on any particular day. Directed to their media allies, it's as partisan as you might think.

What got my attention in the one for 10/3/2019 was the link to an AP article titled ‘Are you talking to me?’ Trump’s anger on impeachment erupts which revealed Trump's impatience with the reporters who, instead of directing a question to the Finish President, wanted to ask about impeachment.

So here was Polico's take on it: TO BELIEVE THE PRESIDENT’S SPIN at this point is to believe that every single news story printed is wrong. [Caps theirs.]

Well, let's do some fact checking. That the public doesn't believe every news story is wrong. It's the ones about Trump they don't believe. Rasmussen provides some documentation of that. See Voters Don’t Trust Political News, Say Most Reporters Want to Stop Trump. See also from Gallup, Americans' Trust in Mass Media Edges Down to 41%.

Is partisanship a higher goal than credibility for the main stream media?

------
11:12 AM 10/3/2019

Vox Journalist does Emily Latella impression with outrage over Trump proclamation

This proves how liberals will criticize Republicans for doing the same thing Democrats do. This is just the latest example, though by no means the worst. The guiding principle is that Donald Trump gets criticized for everything he does. Never mind that Democrats did the same thing.

In this case, Trump used a presidential proclamation to declare Labor Day. Cue the outrage by some traumatized progresive journalist. Turns out Obama did the same thing. It's reminiscent of the late Gilda Radner's portrayal of Emily Latella making a dumb remark. Then, "Never mind."

Anyway, here's the story: Journalist Deletes Anti-Trump Tweet After Realizing Obama Did the Exact Same Thing as Trump.

------
12:45 PM 9/3/2019

Slavery in 2019

Byron York tells us about the NYT's latest effort to sway voters in the next election in New goal for New York Times: 'Reframe' American history, and target Trump, too. The reframing puts slavery front and center and will attempt to make "race the central theme of Times coverage for the remaining two years of President Trump's term in office."

It's all partisan politics, but those of in flyover country might wish that they could tackle the real problem of modern day slavery with the same fervor they attack Trump. The State Department periodically publishes a report on slavery, and you can download the most recent one at https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2019-Trafficking-in-Persons-Report.pdf. Or see the overview at 2019 Trafficking in Persons Report.

A screen shot about the Western Hemisphere should appear on the right. Note that Cuba and Venezuela are the only two countries in this hemisphere that are Tier 3 countries. (Tier 3 is the worst in terms of slavery.)

We last talked about this in 2012 in a blog post titled Slave states - present day. Looks like Cuba was in Tier 3 then, too. But Venezuela wasn't. Hugo Chavez and his successor must have thought Friedrich Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" was a how-to manual.

------
2:57 PM 8/19/2019

Quote of the week from Dennis Prager promising only nine commandments to placate Google

Whatever benefits Google gets from favoring Democrats must be significant, because it's no longer a secret that Google has been actively favoring them by restricting the spread of conservative viewpoints.

Here's the quote of the week in response to a Google rep claiming they blocked Prager's video “The Ten Commandments: What You Should Know” because it contained the word "murder."

As he did not appear to be joking, I assured the Senate committee that we would release a Google-friendly video, “The Nine Commandments.”

Here's the full paragraph to put it into context.

The only restricted video for which Google has offered an explanation is “The Ten Commandments: What You Should Know,” a video I made. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz asked the Google representative at the hearing what could land a video about the Ten Commandments on the restricted list. The representative responded that the video referred to “murder.” As he did not appear to be joking, I assured the Senate committee that we would release a Google-friendly video, “The Nine Commandments.”

See Don’t Let Google Get Away With Censorship to read the whole article.

------
1:50 PM 8/9/2019

MSM screaming over Trump's foreign information remark ignored Dem's use of foreign info

George Stephanopoulos laid a trap for Donald Trump, and he managed to get Trump to almost step in it. Stephanopoulos had to do some gymnastics to get it, but the ultimate result was msn hysteria over a remark that Trump made about receiving information from a foreign source.

It left conservatives wondering: If that's so wrong, how come there was no outrage from their side about what Obama, Hillary, the DNC, and the deep state have done with foreign information?

John Solomon is one of those rare reporters who actually might be objective. In a recent piece at thehill.com he asks the rhetorical question: Aren't delirious Democrats now accusing Team Obama of treason?:

Sound familiar? That is EXACTLY what the Obama administration did in 2016. It’s something no one in the media or the political space grasped during the tsunami of breathless reaction that followed the interview.

In July 2016, the Obama administration accepted unsolicited information from Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat who just happened to have helped arrange a $25 million government donation to the Clinton Foundation years before. Downer said that he had witnessed a Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, bragging about some dirt that the Russians supposedly had on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Though Downer’s claim was reported two-plus months after the alleged event, and was only hearsay gathered at a London tavern, the Obama administration gave it to the FBI which, in turn, thought it was weighty enough to justify opening a counterintelligence case against the lawfully elected Republican nominee for president.

In other words, the Democratic administration accepted dirt from a foreign friendly and used it to justify investigating its GOP rival.

And then, OMG, they did it again just a few weeks later.

In October 2016, less than three weeks from Election Day, the Obama Justice Department approved a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to spy on the Trump campaign through its former adviser, Carter Page. The primary evidence supporting the warrant? A dossier written by a foreign friendly named Christopher Steele, a retired MI6 intelligence agent from Great Britain. Of course, the Justice Department and the FBI forgot to tell the courts that Steele actually was working on behalf of the Clinton campaign, but that’s a small detail for the purpose of this column.

For the second time in three months, the Obama administration took dirt on Trump from a foreign ally — this time, from one in Europe — and weaponized it for a criminal investigation.

Ordinary Democrats wring their hands and wish their party could win without cheating. But a win is a win.

------
1:36 PM 6/17/2019

Biased public radio can quit asking for my money

I listen to the local outlet of the regional public radio station -- Marfa Public Radio -- so I can keep up with the version of news progressives are exposed to. But sometimes they try too hard to misdirect. But to be fair, maybe they don't know they are misdirecting.

A case in point was a report broadcast in the program, Texas Standard, which purports to provide news occurring in Texas. That day the interlocutor was interviewing a reporter about the state legislative proceedings leading up to a decision that pertained to abortion and planned parenthood.

The reporter said that the secret video of Planned Parenthood employees talking about selling baby parts was shown to the legislators who wanted to see it. The interlocutor immediately interrupted to say, "the video was edited," implying that it had to have been fake news.

That's the sort of thing that drives conservatives nuts. A panel of judges no less authoritative than the U.S. 5th Circuit ruled that the video was authentic.

It brings to mind that famous Ronald Reagan quote: "It's not that liberals aren't smart, it's just that so much of what they know isn't so."

------
1:28 PM 5/26/2019

Poynter withdraws list of unreliable news websites because list was unreliable

This looks like satire, but it most likely isn't. Poynter institute -- self proclaimed thought leader -- published a list of 515 “unreliable” news websites, presumably to help journalists maintain some semblance of accuracy. Oops. It turned out their list was unreliable.

Letter from the Editor
May 2, 2019 Barbara Allen
Category: Letter from the Editor

Dear readers:

On Tuesday, April 30, Poynter posted a list of 515 “unreliable” news websites, built from pre-existing databases compiled by journalists, fact-checkers and researchers around the country. Our aim was to provide a useful tool for readers to gauge the legitimacy of the information they were consuming.

Soon after we published, we received complaints from those on the list and readers who objected to the inclusion of certain sites, and the exclusion of others. We began an audit to test the accuracy and veracity of the list, and while we feel that many of the sites did have a track record of publishing unreliable information, our review found weaknesses in the methodology. We detected inconsistencies between the findings of the original databases that were the sources for the list and our own rendering of the final report.

Therefore, we are removing this unreliable sites list until we are able to provide our audience a more consistent and rigorous set of criteria. The list was intended to be a starting place for readers and journalists to learn more about the veracity of websites that purported to offer news; it was not intended to be definitive or all encompassing. We regret that we failed to ensure that the data was rigorous before publication, and apologize for the  confusion and agitation caused by its publication. We pledge to continue to hold ourselves to the highest standards.

— Barbara Allen, managing editor, Poynter.org

Read it here and decide for yourself whether it's satire.

------
1:34 PM 5/20/2019

Conservatives are tuning out Fox News

Seems to happen weekly -- some prominent conservative blogger declares that he/she will no longer watch Fox News Channel.

The network does seem to have changed somewhat. With Old Man Murdoch having left the boys in charge, it's easy to suspect they've been doing some back stage manipulating. Not too long ago the network was being charged with being a megaphone for Donald Trump. While there were some commentators on the network who would have had a hard time refuting that, for the most part, the news people were pretty even handed, Bret Baier, for example. After all, many of them are Democrats, Chris Wallace, for example.

Anyway, the other day Donald Trump criticized the late John McCain following the disclosure McCain was instrumental in the delivery of that fake dossier to the FBI. That evening on Special Report with Bret Baier the very first report came from Fox's White House reporter, John Roberts. He started out by saying that Trump had a win that day, but then Roberts added the unnecessary editorial that Trump stepped all over his win by criticizing McCain.

It would have been better if Roberts had simply reported the facts and left the editorializing to the commentators. But all the news shows editorialize now and call it news. Maybe Fox is trying to broaden its appeal, but this sort of thing drives away some of Fox's previously loyal viewers.

Instant update: POTUS Trump Gives Fox News The Cold Shoulder – Calls On OANN Instead.

------

2:24 PM 3/23/2019

Variation on Republicans Pounce theme -- Ted Cruz earns fact check

The "Republicans Pounce" headline has been around so long it has its own urban dictionary definition.

Noah Rothman described the phenomenon nicely three years ago in When Republicans ‘Pounce’:

When political reporters are compelled by necessity to report on subjects that cast liberals in a negative light, nothing is more welcome than a reaction quote from a Republican. If a Democrat or a progressive interest group finds itself in the dock, the press can always count on Republicans to rescue liberals from due opprobrium by virtue of their very existence. The story is never the story; for political reporters and editors alike, the Republican reaction to the story is the preferred prism through which to view events Democrats find… discomforting.

Reporters no doubt seek to continue the tactic without being so obvious as to use the phrase in the title. So here's a variation which appeared on the front page of the 10/10/2018 print edition of the Midland Reporter-Telegram: "Ted Cruz earns fact check on accusation that Beto O'Rourke supported oil tax." Egad! Ted Cruz didn't lie!

The MRT is heavily reliant on wire services and other newspapers to fill its pages. And that article came from dallasnews.com -- click to read it there.

The story was about Beto O'Rourke's vote in the House of Representatives against a resolution which sought to prohibit an Obama proposed $10 per barrel tax on oil pumped out of the ground. But the msm focused on Cruz use of that fact in the campaign. Cruz pounced!

------

1:29 PM 10/10/2018

 

 

 

P.S. No one should be surprised at this: Beto O’Rourke: ‘I Would Not Have’ Voted To Confirm Brett Kavanaugh. O'Rourke would be a Chuck Schumer rubber stamp if elected.

Google has taken over as leader of the liberal media

Most of us have been aware of this for quite a while -- Google search results favor Democrat leaning articles.

It's reminiscent of the era a few decades ago when Walter Cronkite was declared by his media counterparts as the most trusted man in America. Turns out he was a hard core Democrat, although most of us were oblivious to that particular aspect of the main stream media until much later.

But the point here is that the bias permeated the media for decades. Now TV cable added some political competition. But the idea of a medium of some sort trying to sway elections with political bias is still very much alive in the form of the search engines and social networks.

There's a lot of hand wringing over Google, Facebook, and Twitter as reports spread about bias search results and shadow banning. But the truth is, the names and faces have changed. And the methods have changed. But the bias has been there for a long time.

Attempting to regulate them is a bad idea. But it's incumbent on all of us to be aware of what they are trying to do to us and do some independent thinking.

What triggered this post? These links:
YES. BBC: Could Google Flip Elections?
How Google Could End Democracy
Could Google manipulate elections?.

See also: Study: Google Pushes Liberal News in Top 5 Search Suggestions.

P.S. In regard to Google, it's practically inevitable that the msm are structuring their headlines in such a way as to maximize their attraction to the Google algorithms.

------

1:13 PM 8/31/2018

Stunner -- fake racist claim right here in West Texas

These days whenever we see or hear a news item in which one individual describes some act of racism it's probably a prudent approach to give it at least a 50% chance of being fake.

But it's probably hard for a reporter to put that principle in effect when he is staring at a super salacious story about racism.

That's what happened in our neighbor city of Odessa, TX, the other day. You've probably heard the story. First, a waiter claimed that a customer wrote a racist note on a receipt. Here's the Odessa American's first report complete with a glowing portrayal of the claimant: Racist receipt at restaurant condemned.

It took the restaurant owner's own investigators to do the fact checking -- the note was faked. But let's give credit to the Odessa American for reporting that important narrative breaker a week later in Saltgrass COO, waiter say racism story made up. Oops.

Does anyone wonder why so many people don't trust the media?

P.S. Newspeak addition: "Terrorist" is now a racial epithet.

------

5:37 AM 7/25/2018

Coders write Chrome extension for NYT writers that will make their words sound meaner

Sometimes it's hard to distinguish truth from satire. Such is the case with this item found at BoingBoing. It's a Chrome extension called NYTspeak:

What is this?
NYTspeak makes the edits to New York Times US politics articles that you wish the New York Times editors would. For example:

It's a barb aimed at Donald Trump and his staff, wouldn't you know. And it changes words like "falsely claimed" to "lied." Get it?

Actually, it seems almost harmless compared to what some on the left are doing these days to demonstrate their Trump hatred.

------

3:14 PM 6/25/2018

NYT reporters tactics mirror Russian spy tactics

It's amazing how similar reporters' tactics are to Russian spy tactics.

I've been watching the final season of "The Americans." That's the series in which Russian spies inveigle themselves into the lives of individuals employed in sensitive capacities in the U.S. government for the purpose of obtaining intelligence. Hot sex and feigned love are tools of the trade.

I'm struck by the similarity of the Russian spies and reporters. It happened to General Petraeus. He was shtupping a writer all the while sharing sensitive information with her.

The most recent publicized case is the romance between the young, attractive, New York Times reporter, Ali Watkins, and the former security director for the Senate Intelligence Committee, James Wolfe, who is roughly twice her age.

The New York Times hired her knowing she had a relationship with the guy, and a previous employer knew about it too. Heck, it was probably a resume enhancer.

Anyway, the Russians want to cause discord in the U.S. and ultimately the destruction of the U.S. system of government. It often seems as if many Progressives want that, too. In any event, they use similar tactics to achieve their goals.

------

5:43 AM 6/9/2018

Thomas Frank talks tough about the main stream media -- a club of which he is a card carrying member

I'm a link hoarder. My browser bookmarks number in the thousands. I pity any NSA underling or some other entity employee in or out of the government that should ever be tasked with looking at each one. From time to time I scroll through one of the several "Read Later" folders for something that might still be of interest. And this one jumped out.

Thomas Frank's animus toward conservatives was painfully obvious when he wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal. Frank was hired on as a columnist as a way to placate progressive reporters for that newspaper when Rupert Murdoch's family enterprise bought it. Frank was very hostile toward conservatives in those columns, and it prompted some readers to speculate that his addition to the line-up was intended to showcase the hostility progressives held for conservatives more so than to convince anyone that just maybe progressive ideology had some good points after all.

Anyway, Frank eventually moved on, and the buried treasure unearthed from the bookmark archives is his article from July, 21, 2017, from the Guardian in which he tries to explain the disconnect so many people had with the main stream media. See The media's war on Trump is destined to fail. Why can't it see that?.

He saw two reasons. One was the social media websites like Facebook that feed their readers what they want to see. Then there's this:

But there’s also a second reason, one that is even more fundamental. The truth is that the unanimous anti-Trumpness of the respectable press is just one facet of a larger homogeneity. As it happens, the surviving press in this country is unanimous about all sorts of things. ...

Everything they do, they do as a herd – even when it’s running headlong over a cliff. ...

These things don’t happen because the journalists that remain are liberals. It happens because so many of them are part of the same class – an exalted and privileged class. They are professionals and they believe in the things that so many other professional groups believe in: consensus, “realism”, credentialing, the wisdom of their fellow professionals and (of course) the stupidity of the laity.

This is the key to understanding many of their biases – and also for understanding why they are so utterly oblivious to how they appear to the rest of America.

His observations seem accurate. But people who remember his column in the Wall Street Journal might wonder if he's aware of how oblivious he appeared there.

------

12:25 PM 4/28/2018

The media are winning their war against Trump

While some say the media are losing the war, see for example, The media are killing themselves with botched anti-Trump reporting, they may losing a battle here and there, but they may be winning the war.

See for yourself. This AP article below was in the print edition of the local Sunday morning paper. (See it online at: another site.)

In spite of there being no evidence of any collusion with Russia, the AP managed to get poll results telling them Trump had dirty dealings with Russia. News reporting is what shaped people's minds on things like these. The media are winning.

------

2:30 PM 12/17/2017

Kamala Harris is being groomed as the dems new it girl

As long as there are political points to be made, the Democrats' war on men is likely to continue for a good while. And it's a pretty good bet that the next Democrat presidential nominee will be a woman.

Even chief proponent of identity politics, Barack Obama is calling for more women in power.

But the usual suspects are tainted. Hillary Clinton is old, out of touch, and of questionable veracity. Elizabeth Warren can't escape her resume falsification with lying about her race, at least as long as it benefited her. Even her fellow traveler Trevor Noah piled on.

Right now Kamala Harris appears more than eager to step in to save the day for Dems. And media members are ramping up the coverage to help her. See this very long puff piece, for example, The Inevitability of Kamala Harris.

Inevitable? Dang! Give voters a chance, will ya?

------

12:41 PM 12/3/2017

Correcting AP -- giving people right to opt out of Obamacare doesn't make them lose

Sunday morning's paper contained an AP article purporting to list winners and losers in the Republican tax plan. (The article, not on the morning paper's website, can be found at fox23.com -- Ultra-wealthy win in Senate tax bill, other face hikes.)

And it highlights a point made at this blog before: Lefties are masters of word manipulation.

Among the losers the article identifies were people they said would lose insurance coverage because the individual mandate would be repealed. All that means is that they have a choice. Democrats are proud to say they are "pro choice," and it's a darn shame that only applies to abortions.

Here's that particular offending paragraph in the part listing "Losers":

- An estimated 13 million Americans could lose health insurance coverage under the Senate bill, which would repeal the "Obamacare" requirement that everyone in the U.S. have health insurance. The projection comes from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Eliminating the fines is expected to mean fewer people would obtain federally subsidized health policies.

If people opt out of Obamacare coverage, they are not losers. They've merely opted not to use Obamacare and are freed from being punished with a tax for that decision.

P.S. There are other problems with the article. Read the whole thing if you can stand it.

------

12:41 PM 11/19/2017

NorKor military leaders watch Morning Joe -- CNN hardest hit

I'll never forget Wolf Blitzer's reaction some years ago when a correspondent told him that Kim Jong Un watched CNN and was a big fan. Blitzer almost blushed when he thanked the reporter and said he was very proud of that. It seemed at the time that only an enemy of the United States could be proud of that.

Now we are hearing that the current crop of military officers in North Korea are big fans of Morning Joe. See NBC News correspondent: Senior North Korean officials watch 'Morning Joe':

“He quite plainly said he believes President Trump is mentally ill,” Simmons told "Morning Joe" co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough. “And he was unequivocal in saying he believes North Korea could win a war with America.”

Joe and Mika must be as proud as Wolf was back in the day. Poor Wolf.

Meanwhile, we should be grateful if they've convinced the North Koreans that Trump is crazy. Convincing an attacker that you're crazier than he is is a pretty good defense.

------

11:36 AM 10/21/2017

NBC doesn't know how to take full advantage of Megyn Kelly

I would speculate that Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, Chris Matthews, and the other Democrat stars at NBC and MSNBC flexed their muscles to prevent Megyn Kelly from invading their anti-Trump turf.

I was not a fan of Magyn Kelly when she had a show on the Fox News Channel. I tuned her out early on when she blasted conservatives for the contention that child rearing is best done with a mom AND a dad. Then it came out that she claimed that her ex-husband abused her, however, she later admitted it was a lie. Whose favor was she trying to curry with a lie like that?

Nevertheless, she must have had a following at Fox, other than the boss man, Roger Ailes.

Then when she ripped into Donald Trump during a debate, her path was set. I predicted on these pages that she would end up on MSNBC. That was a near miss. She signed on with NBC and is now hosting a morning show which is getting terrible reviews.

She made a bad career move. And there are probably some FNC fans who are chortling at her misfortune.

But NBC has to shoulder the blame here, because her skill is in skewering conservatives with Democrat dogma thrown in for good measure, not in entertaining viewers of morning TV shows. NBC will eventually find a place for her, but she would need to take a few giant steps away from progressivism before conservatives would be tempted to watch a show of hers again.

------

2:17 PM 10/20/2017

What did Texas responders learn from Katrina? That people are very dedicated to their pets

Somewhere the other day I read that Texans put what they learned from hurricane Katrina to use in the response to hurricane Harvey. I call B.S.

Texas experts who offered their assistance to Louisiana were turned away. And the local and state officials made a mess of it. The never-let-a-crisis-go-to-waste crowd quickly blamed George W. Bush. And he suffered for his decision to not take control away from the local and state governments.

As for lessons learned from Katrina, there were two. One was that people love their pets so much that they would rather stay in a hazardous situation than leave them behind. So images of people and pets being carried out of the Harvey flood zone are common now. And rescuers accommodate the little critters.

The second lesson was that now, unlike in the past, voters will blame a Republican president should anything in the recovery effort goes wrong. If the roles were reversed, Republicans would do the same thing to Democrats, but without the tailwind of the msm they wouldn't get any traction.

------

12:37 PM 9/2/2017

Tip for reporters -- don't try to outfox Ted Cruz

Kyle Becker tells us how an MSNBC reporter tried to trap Ted Cruz with a comparison of his appeal for help for hurricane Harvey victims with his vote against the hurricane Sandy bill. He patiently explains to the hapless reporter that the Sandy bill was piled high with unrelated spending. See After MSNBC Host Broadsides Ted Cruz With 'Gotcha' Question About Hurricane Sandy, He Drops the Thunder:

“The problem with that particular bill is it became a $50 billion bill that was filled with unrelated pork. Two-thirds of that bill had nothing to do with Sandy. And what I said then, and still believe now, is that it's not right for politicians to exploit a disaster and people are hurting to pay for their own political wish list. Disaster relief needs to be focused on the victims of disaster relief. And I supported that for Sandy, disaster relief there, and I would support that anywhere there's a major disaster without getting distracted by political unnecessary pork spending.”

Seemed less like "thunder" to me than polite mansplaining, which Katy Tur, and probably others at MSNBC, sorely needed.

Thomas Frank mansplains the main stream media's problem to them

Thomas Frank, you will recall, was the progressive writer hired by the Wall Street Journal following the acquisition of Dow Jones & Company by News Corp. He was brought in to placate Democrats already on the staff at the WSJ. Mr. Frank became the face of liberalism on the editorial pages of the WSJ, but instead of presenting persuasive arguments for the Democrat agenda, mostly he just insulted conservatives.

He is no longer at the WSJ, but he is still in the business. And here he was at theguardian.com the other day calmly mansplaining to the msm about their efforts to bring Trump down. See The media's war on Trump is destined to fail. Why can't it see that?. He gets the obligatory Trump insults out of the way right up front:

A recent Alternet article I read was composed of nothing but mean quotes about Trump, some of them literary and high-flown, some of them low-down and cruel, most of them drawn from the mainstream media and all of them hilarious. As I write this, four of the five most-read stories on the Washington Post website are about Trump; indeed (if memory serves), he has dominated this particular metric for at least a year.

And why not? Trump certainly has it coming. He is obviously incompetent, innocent of the most basic knowledge about how government functions. His views are repugnant. His advisers are fools. He appears to be dallying with obviously dangerous forces. And thanks to the wipeout of the Democratic party, there is no really powerful institutional check on the president’s power, which means that the press must step up.

But there’s something wrong with it all. ... It hasn’t worked.

It's a class thing. They are the privileged, and they know it. More from Frank:

These things don’t happen because the journalists that remain are liberals. It happens because so many of them are part of the same class – an exalted and privileged class. They are professionals and they believe in the things that so many other professional groups believe in: consensus, “realism”, credentialing, the wisdom of their fellow professionals and (of course) the stupidity of the laity.

This is the key to understanding many of their biases – and also for understanding why they are so utterly oblivious to how they appear to the rest of America.

It's as if, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

------

2:25 PM 7/23/2017

Media bullies were accustomed to Republicans who played dead when attacked -- Trump gave them a rude awakening

Imagine this scene: Delinquents walking by a picket fenced yard containing a dog. They harass the dog, they rake a stick against the pickets as they go by. The dog goes nuts, but he's helpless against them. Then one day, an open gate. The dog attacks. And they go crying to mommy.

That's what is happening now as Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, long accustomed to dogs that didn't even bark, encountered one that bites. They are making themselves out to be victims, but if they don't like that status, then maybe they should stop making baseless claims against Trump.

My only beef with Trump's tweet was the part about Mika's bleeding face but no photos. If Trump made it up, then that's bad form -- he shouldn't be generating fake news. Otherwise, I have no sympathy for Morning Joe and the future Mrs. Joe.

--------

12:45 PM 7/2/2017

Republicans should probably not fret too much if Son of Obamacare doesn't pass

And then there were five -- Fifth Republican Jumps Ship On Healthcare Bill. According to this, Senators Dean Heller of Nevada, Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin all say they won't vote for the Republican version of Obamacare as written. If the bill goes down, maybe they will take the heat off the other Republicans.

Failure of the Obamacare repeal effort isn't looking like such a bad thing. If Son of Obamacare passes with no Democrat votes the Republicans will own it.

With the MSM serving as a branch of the Democrat party, if the new law passes, the only news we'll get over the next few years will be about all the people who are suffering from it. Those suffering from Obamacare are currently in the shadows.

But you can bet your bottom dollar that if Republicans succeed in changing or repealing the law it will be presented as the worst thing to happen to people. Democrats are already proclaiming people will die. It will continue until Democrats take over the House, the Senate, the White House, or all three.

So put me in the camp of "leave it alone," and wait until enough people suffer that they will join conservatives in wanting the change.

------

12:13 PM 6/25/2017

Newseum, desperate for artifacts, gets Ben Jacob's glasses

I visited the Newseum around the time it opened in 2008 and wrote about it on these pages. See Fun at the Newseum.

At that time they had multiple exhibits consisting of videos of newscasts. They had a room dedicated to news coverage of the 9/11/2001 attack on the twin towers. And they had a few physical artifacts such as a chunk of the Berlin wall and a headless statue of Lenin.

But it's hard to imagine what artifacts might fit in a museum dedicated to news production. Not to worry. Ben Jacobs is donating his broken glasses. What a get!

Ben Jacobs, you will recall, is the fellow who exclaimed, "You broke my glasses," after a tussle with Montana politician Greg Gianforte. The rest of us laughed it off, but in the age of Trump resistance by the main stream media, anything that could even remotely hurt Trump is considered good news to them. The Newseum curators must be absolutely giddy over their newest acquisition. One has to wonder, though, what to make of Newseum visitors such a display might draw.

Misleading headline -- Gov Abbott didn't joke about shooting reporters

The print edition of the morning paper had this headline over an article: "Texas governor jokes about shooting reporters after signing gun bill."

It's an article from Texas Tribune. And the headline is the same at the Texas Tribune site. But Abbott didn't joke about shooting reporters.

Reporters are hypersensitive these days after Montana´s U.S. Representative elect, Greg Gianforte, jostled a pesky reporter. So maybe they are looking for any way to make themselves victims of Republicans. Thus the trolling.

Abbott's joke was that he should carry around the target, not shoot anyone. Here's the quote from the article:

Following the bill signing, Abbott tested out a few guns at an upstairs shooting range.

"I'm gonna carry this around in case I see any reporters," Abbott joked while holding his bullet-riddled target sheet.

Huge difference. Texas Tribune knew that. But they ran the misleading headline anyway. Poor guys must be desperate for business now that they are no longer partnered with the New York Times.

------

2:52 PM 5/27/2017

Oh, that liberal media -- Harvard report proves it

It has been obvious to almost everyone that the main stream media has a very negative view of Donald Trump. It influences their coverage of him, or they don't seem to care that it's so obvious.

So unless that attitude changes, reports such as this one won't matter to anyone but Trump supporters: News Coverage of Donald Trump’s First 100 Days. Here's the intro:

A new report from Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy analyzes news coverage of President Trump’s first 100 days in office.

The report is based on an analysis of news reports in the print editions of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, the main newscasts of CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC, and three European news outlets (The UK’s Financial Times and BBC, and Germany’s ARD).

Findings include:
-President Trump dominated media coverage in the outlets and programs analyzed, with Trump being the topic of 41 percent of all news stories—three times the amount of coverage received by previous presidents. He was also the featured speaker in nearly two-thirds of his coverage.
-Republican voices accounted for 80 percent of what newsmakers said about the Trump presidency, compared to only 6 percent for Democrats and 3 percent for those involved in anti-Trump protests.
-European reporters were more likely than American journalists to directly question Trump’s fitness for office.
-Trump has received unsparing coverage for most weeks of his presidency, without a single major topic where Trump’s coverage, on balance, was more positive than negative, setting a new standard for unfavorable press coverage of a president.
-Fox was the only news outlet in the study that came close to giving Trump positive coverage overall, however, there was variation in the tone of Fox’s coverage depending on the topic.

Take at look at it. The charts are very revealing.

What I find interesting is the high percentage of Republican voices featured in the coverage, and yet it's overwhelmingly negative for Trump. While that's discouraging overall, the bright side has to be that at least Republicans don't march in lock step like the opposition party does.

Via Heatstreet.

P.S. As for the negative coverage, Trump is probably right to say about the New York Times, "They're not our friends. We're never going to win them over ."

------

2:35 PM 5/19/2017