Matt Taibbi savages the New York Times

Over Russiagate. It's brilliant. Go read the whole article, but here's a wonderful excerpt to whet your appetite: 

More irritating is Savage’s diatribe against Patel and the hoax “narrative,” offered without mentioning the roughly ten million instances in which the Times botched its coverage of Patel and Republican investigations into Russiagate. When Patel and then-House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes released the much-denounced “Nunes memo” about FISA abuse in early 2018, Savage personally “annotated” the document, which would be vidicated more or less entirely by an Inspector General investigation nearly two years later.

The New York Times continue to operate as if their opinions rather than facts will DICTATE what people believe. It's beyond being propagandists at this point, the NYT has become pathological in their TDS leftism. If it weren't so worrisome it'd just be sad.

This does not matter

Calling out the New York Times does not matter. Mostly it doesn't matter to be more precise.  The New York Times will not change it's stripes because people who already thought they were vile, disgusting, manipulative and deceitful see this as vile, disgusting and manipulative (and probably deceitful too).  The New York Times is what it is: a radical left propaganda vehicle, and nothing more or less. It will not change, it's too late.  It will go down to absolute bankruptcy continuing to do what it has been doing for decades; lying for the left's ignoble cause.

Where this does matter, is to those who pay attention that they may be reminded of what the NYT is, and to those few who happen upon the story on Fox and are awakened to the ill intent and evil of that rag.

Truth hurts

Project Veritas exposes New York Times' over-reaction to the supposed January 6th cataclysm. The truth hurts because for the left, everything hurts, everything is bad.

New York Times think they are above the law

Project Veritas is in the process of suing the New York Times. The judge in the case ordered the NYT to stop sharing private Project Veritas communications. The NYT has decided that a legal judicial order does not apply to them. Do they feel they are above the law.

Project Veritas 2 - New York Times 0

 Project Veritas wins again. A highlight real score too.

Drudge is off the rails and why it matters

 For years the Drudge Report was the place for news minus the mainstream media skew.  Conservatives held it in high esteem.  For the last year I have not been using the Drudge Report at all because it has gone off the rails.  It's just like the New York Times now.  It's useless, anti-Trump, orange man bad, kool-aid drinking Trump-derangement syndrome crazy.

It's not just me seeing this.

If you are a conservative and have been relying on Drudge without realizing the change that has happened, please stop using it as a source.

The problem with being a conservative and having so few news sources and pundits on our side (relatively speaking) is that progressive know this.  They can attempt to destroy our voices like they tried with James O'Keefe and Project Veritas (and many others) or they can  subvert or convert the voices on our side like with Fox News or Matt Drudge.  Either way it is a big blow to our voice, our side.  Each voice silenced is a big blow to our message, unlike CNN faltering on the left there are hundreds of other voices that can step into the void.  What hinders liberals is that they step in and keep making the same mistakes so liberal messaging is hemorrhaging across the board.  That's what is keeping our side afloat, not our own strength of voice.

I hate to say it but what the right needs is a little less competition and a little more cooperation.  We see that happening but not enough.  Conservative voices are still seedlings and not mighty oaks.  Outside of Fox News, Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh there are a few next tier voices that matter but with Fox and Drudge titling leftward now, only Rush Limbaugh remains as a steadfast top tier reliably conservative voice.  As much as I love Rush and have been listening since 1989 or 1990, we cannot have him remain our lone voice, even as strong as his voice is.

We must become a network of supporting members, as fraught with peril in the long run as that becomes.  We do not want to become the same problem the liberal media can become.  While we are capable avoiding that, and must be mindful of it, we do need to create an environment where conservative voices can flourish.  It's a strategic imperative for the right. 

Biden will win 555 electoral college votes

LOL - Trump down by 9000 points. Okay 14. This NYT poll, like so many others so far, is simply not even directionally instructive.

More Russian Interference Garbage

This tweet by Catherine Herridge sums up how little there is to the NYT fake story about Russia trying to help president Trump get re-elected in 2020:

Source familiar w/house briefing @CBSNews says briefers pressed for evidence to back up claims Russia “trying to help POTUS in 2020.” Asked if there was signals intelligence - such as phone intercepts or “SIGINT” - to back up claims, source said briefers had none to offer #DNI

— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) February 21, 2020

Important: NYT rewriting their own history

A look at how the New York Times (NYT) is ignoring their own history and rewriting or overwriting it with their current take on climate change.

NYT/Sienna polling - I have my doubts.

In district after district there are New York Times/Siena polls that are really out of alignment with other polls in the district. Invariably they are skewed heavily towards the Democrat in the race.  Where other polls have for example a Democrat 3 point lead, the NYT/Siena poll shows an 11 or 12 point lead.  Once the midterm elections are finalized, the NYT/Siena polling is going to be proven correct, in the case of a big blue wave, or proven to be complete garbage.

It's not going to be  long wait but Nate Cohn, I'm watching you.  I believe your polling methodology is flawed. I'm not saying it's being done intentionally, but there seems to be something amiss. Whether there needs to be more work done on phone answers vs. non-answers or mobile vs. landline or the weighting, there needs to be some change.

I'm merely speculating here, but do calls for the polling have caller ID labelled as New York Times?  Maybe non-responders believe the call is solicitation and are choosing not to answer.  If that's the case it could introduce a bias towards people who have not had their phones as long and are less likely to screen solicitation calls.  That would be younger people generally, and therefore more likely to be liberal and vote Democrat.  Again that's speculation - I cannot see the crosstabs because they are presumably behind the firewall.  I'm not going to pay for a subscription just to validate polls, because I really d not like the New York Times' editorial slat.

After the election we will see if your methodology is good or garbage.  If I'm wrong, I'll admit it, if the NYT polls are wrong, I'll call it out, because I don't expect the same admission from you.

SCOTUS unanimously gets it right.

Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg agrees that first amendment rights protect disparaging trademarks.  Why? Because it's the first amendment. Someone deciding what's offensive and what's not is inherently autocratic and anathema to freedom of speech, isn't it?

Obviously this band was self-aware enough to fight for the right to name themselves and it was a conscious decision to do so.

WASHINGTON — In a decision likely to bolster the Washington Redskins’ efforts to protect its trademarks, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the government may not refuse to register potentially offensive names. A law denying protection to disparaging trademarks, the court said, violated the First Amendment.

The decision was unanimous, but the justices were divided on the reasoning.

The decision, concerning an Asian-American dance-rock band called the Slants, probably also means that the Washington Redskins football team will win its fight to retain federal trademark protection.

The law at issue in both cases denies federal trademark protection to messages that may disparage people, living or dead, along with “institutions, beliefs or national symbols.”

The NYT editors must be eating their own livers right about now.

Liberals pull out all the entertainment stops

Some liberals have moved on from ranting about president Trump winning the election to once again using their strong suit (the entertainment industry) to disparage the president. I'm not expecting much from Roseanne Barr's show reboot.  That is not much new. Meanwhile, the NYT newspaper is sponsoring a president Trump assassination Julius Caesar play. For real.

New York's venerated theater organization, the Public Theater, is facing a PR disaster over its long-running free "Shakespeare in the Park" series. The organization is mounting a production of Julius Caesar, which (spoiler alert!) ends with the Roman politician being assassinated. Many far-right online personas—including Donald Trump Jr.—consider this to be offensive given that Caesar appears Trump-like in this particular production. (It depicts him with blonde hair and modern attire.)

A flurry of online trolling and hysteria over the show has resulted in two corporate sponsors—Bank of America and Delta—cutting ties with the Public Theater. But not everyone is ready to cut and run. Today the New York Times, another corporate sponsor, confirmed to me that it will continue supporting the theater.

Kathy Griffin redux.  I wonder if this still applies?

Comey early testimony highlights

Via Fox 10 Phoenix, a few important portions of the James Comey testimony today:

NYT article on collusion was fake news:



Comey took "I hope" to mean an order. That doesn't mean it was.

How do I know excommunicating Trump is a bad idea for the GOP?

I wrote yesterday that dis-inviting Donald Trump was a bad idea for the GOP whether it's the GOP or independent events that could be perceived as being a GOP handheld maneuver (i.e. done by Red State but perhaps orchestrated by the GOP) . I stand by that.

In fact I'm going to double down on it.  My reasoning is that, as Bluegrass Pundit points out, if the New York Times is on your side, you're doing something wrong.

As George Will said this morning referring to his polling status, Donald Trump will seek his own level.

Q3 GDP results are in and...

...at least the New York Times is thrilled:

The American economy grew last quarter at its fastest rate in more than a decade, providing the strongest evidence to date that the recovery is finally gaining sustained power more than five years after it began.

Bolstered by robust spending among consumers and businesses alike, economic output rose at an annual rate of 5 percent during the summer months, the Commerce Department said Tuesday, a sharp revision from its earlier estimate of 3.9 percent. The advance followed a second quarter where growth reached a rate of 4.6 percent after a decline last winter that was exacerbated by particularly harsh weather.

5% growth following 4.6% growth is pretty solid to be sur. In the view of the New York Times it no doubt proves that progressive, Keynesian Obama policy has worked. A bit late for them probably but successful nonetheless.

Here's the problem. On the heels of a dismal non-recovery for 5 years, it's to be expected. It's the least the economy should be doing at this point. Suffice it to say, I'm not impressed.

The additional caveat is that perhaps these are not the final revisions. I wouldn't be surprised if there is another revision in the future. And with the Congress controlled by the GOP, legislation will not continue to stand in the way of recovery any longer. At least if the president doesn't veto everything that gets sent his way.

Maureen Dowd turns on Obama

I never expected to see commentary like this in the NYT or from Maureen Dowd:

The president who was elected because he was a hot commodity is now a wet blanket.

The extraordinary candidate turns out to be the most ordinary of men, frittering away precious time on the links. Unlike L.B.J., who devoured problems as though he were being chased by demons, Obama’s main galvanizing impulse was to get himself elected.

Almost everything else — from an all-out push on gun control after the Newtown massacre to going to see firsthand the Hispanic children thronging at the border to using his special status to defuse racial tensions in Ferguson — just seems like too much trouble.

The 2004 speech that vaulted Obama into the White House soon after he breezed into town turned out to be wrong. He misdescribed the country he wanted to lead. There is a liberal America and a conservative America. And the red-blue divide has only gotten worse in the last six years.

Wow.

I suppose as a saving grace for the liberal Dowd, she does ot pin the polarization, any of it (be it political or racial or international) on Obama himself.

The man whose singular qualification was as a uniter turns out to be singularly unequipped to operate in a polarized environment....

Why should the president neutralize himself? Why doesn’t he do something bold and thrilling? Get his hands dirty? Stop going to Beverly Hills to raise money and go to St. Louis to raise consciousness? Talk to someone besides Valerie Jarrett?

The Constitution was premised on a system full of factions and polarization. If you’re a fastidious pol who deigns to heal and deal only in a holistic, romantic, unified utopia, the Oval Office is the wrong job for you. The sad part is that this is an ugly, confusing and frightening time at home and abroad, and the country needs its president to illuminate and lead, not sink into some petulant expression of his aloofness, where he regards himself as a party of his own and a victim of petty, needy, bickering egomaniacs.

I guess those problems are still the fault of president Bush and the GOP or maybe even Putin. Dowd bemoans Obama's actions and style but ends by simply excusing them as not right for the time. Obama is not complicit in Dowd's calculus. Not only are many of these problems explicitly a result of Obama's actions and inaction, he exacerbates them time and again because of those entrenched personality traits.

However, Dowd will continue to turn on Obama because the tipping point has been reached and because those traits will continue to display themselves as the president's certitude that he always does the right thing allows him to continue to do the things that Dowd regrets.

Plus c'est la meme chose.

Left-on-Left political correctness attacks?

As a conservative, my inclination when liberals are arguing with liberals over liberal-centered issues is to stand back and let them go at each other.  So when the New York Times decided to fire Jill Abramson for demanding equal pay for equal work as Executive Editor with her regards to her male predecessor, that was my first inclination.  Provided the fight stays on the left.  I don't know that it will stay there, because it seems to be a media hot-button issue right now. 

In fact, The New Yorker for example, jumped right on the story:

Several weeks ago, I’m told, Abramson discovered that her pay and her pension benefits as both executive editor and, before that, as managing editor were considerably less than the pay and pension benefits of Bill Keller, the male editor whom she replaced in both jobs. “She confronted the top brass,” one close associate said, and this may have fed into the management’s narrative that she was “pushy,” a characterization that, for many, has an inescapably gendered aspect. Sulzberger is known to believe that the Times, as a financially beleaguered newspaper, needed to retreat on some of its generous pay and pension benefits; Abramson, who spent much of her career at the Wall Street Journal, had been at the Times for far fewer years than Keller, which accounted for some of the pension disparity. Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the Times, said that Jill Abramson’s total compensation as executive editor “was directly comparable to Bill Keller’s”—though it was not actually the same.

The political correctness of equal pay is unequivocally a progressive agenda item.  Although equality is not a liberal-only issue.  Equality affects everyone.  But gender equality is, as every other form of equality, about equal opportunity, and not equal outcome.  Not every female would deserve equal pay with every other female in a given role, and to compare any two people, with different experience, and different skill sets will inevitably result in different value that they can offer in a role.  Therefore different pays are to be expected, always.  True equality comes from equal opportunity, not equal outcome. That would be a Marxist resolution.  Is the marketplace willing to hire female Executive Editors?  If so then equal opportunity exists.

Unless.....

That equal offer of employment comes with a clearly reduced level of compensation.  I'm not talking about 10% less - that could be attributable to a difference in experience. So too perhaps could a 30% difference in pay.  Maybe.  But a 50% difference in pay would seem to be a different scenario.  It could be gender based, or it could be a bias against Abramson individually.  Either way, the notion of equality is not being applied.

All that said, it is hard to argue that equal pay for equal work is some sort of unreasonable concept.  Within an acceptable range as defined by experience etc., it is likely the norm in most companies.  If women all end up at the bottom of the range and men all at the top, maybe there is still a problem, but proving that is not so simple.  Comparing women in company A to men in company B with similar roles is not necessarily an apples to apples comparison.   This is something that calls for a layered analysis, which is an expensive proposition to research and not necessarily even possible given the secrecy surrounding pay in many companies.  In other words, there is no easy answer, no A-HA, no "gotcha!" in this discussion.

Which is all the more reason as a conservative to step aside and watch the New York Times once again be subject to criticism and concern - especially on an issue that as a liberal media outlet, they should be championing.  Holding the NYT up to their own standards is something Alinsky might do if he were on the conservative side of the political spectrum.  I'm happy to do so, with the proviso that this doesn't turn into another attack on conservatives as per usual.  As a conservative, I believe in free markets - even when it comes to labor.  If Abramson is worth as much as her predecessor (or more, or less) she should be paid accordingly.  And if she isn't being paid what she is worth, she is free to leave and seek more gainful employment - the free market will see her get offers in accordance with what she has to offer. This should be true for every woman, and every man.  Underpaying someone will result in only being able to hire inferior employees.

As far as being able to leave for better employment, I suspect that is actually what is happening in this case already.

Good Unemployment Numbers? Let's Be Clear, Not Really.

More coming soon.

The real picture on unemployment is getting overlooked on a regular basis by the mainstream media.  So the latest numbers, showing a drop of unemployment from 6.7% to 6.3% can expect to have a lot of hoopla in support of the president.  But those of us who look beyond the headlines realize that the jobs report for April 2014 are anything but good.

Rather than rehashing the details, let me just quote Neil Irwin from the New York Times:

Rarely does a monthly report on the United States job market look so terrific on the surface while being so disappointing underneath.

At first glance, the new reading on the nation’s employment situation is shout-from-the-roof-tops, pop-the-Champagne fantastic. The unemployment rate fell to 6.3 percent from 6.7 percent, and employers added a whopping 288,000 jobs, the most in two years. Those types of numbers, if sustained, would signal something better than just the humdrum, sluggish recovery of the last few years, and something far more robust.

The details of the April job report, though, threw serious cold water on that proposition. The number of people in the labor force fell by a whopping 806,000, wiping out the February and March gains and a bit of January as well. The labor force participation rate fell by 0.4 percentage points to 62.8 percent, returning to its December level.

And the number of people reporting they were unemployed fell by 733,000, which sounds good on its surface, but paired with the similar-sized decline in the labor force points to job seekers giving up looking rather than finding new employment.

Kudos to the NYT for reporting on the softness of the numbers. The mainstream media gets a point in the plus column for a change. Then again, the NYT instead has this report on it's front page (online) "Report Shows Resurgence of Hiring but Has Downbeat Notes" and as it's main article on the subject. Reading through it the report seems to be reasonably neutral in tone. But it's still early. After the president's team gets a chance to spin this, you can bet the NYT will be onboard with the rah-rah cheerleading as we head towards the midterm elections.

New York Times, SCOTUS docket news and/or editorializing

Yesterday, someone left a copy of the New York Times on the train.  I don't normally get to see the NYT, because (1) I'm in Canada, not New York, and (2) I certainly wouldn't buy one at a local newsstand here (yes, many do carry it, as well as USA Today and the Washington Post) because I'm well aware of their biases. 

 

So, out of curiosity I picked it up to peruse the articles.  A lot of what gets reported about the New York Times are their more liberal pieces.  I found out that the reason is because most of their articles are indeed from a very liberal bent.  That was certainly the case yesterday at least.

 

 

There's so much I could comment on and point out their liberal slant, but the effort would be tiresome.  Bias aside, there was one article about the docket for the Supreme Court in its term that started yesterday.  Strip out the bias and there is some important factual stuff in there about a number of precedents that are in play and could be overturned by the Supreme Court.  Among them are issues relating to political contributions, the First Amendment, government prayers, federal treaties, affirmative action (again) and abortion.

 

That is indeed news, and worth conservatives taking note over.  Good reporting in this instance, but bad editorializing.  Honestly though, who among us reads the NYT?  It's a shame they are so clearly liberal that conservatives that cannot stomach it, do not bother to read the NYT paper.  I found the article online, you can read it here, if you really want to do so.

NYT piece on Obamacare starts from wrong

Via strata-sphere.

The New York Times had a piece yesterday talking about the inevitable trade-off on Obamacare.  The premise, that lower healthcare costs would mean less choice, shockingly admits that there is indeed a downside to the plan.  The real problem is that the NYT starts from a place that isn't based in reality.

I would applaud the NYT for pointing out a flaw in legislation they so vehemently supported in the past.  I would, if that were really the case.

 

They have another agenda though.