Trump, Fake News and the Mainstream Media

From Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept: a rundown of bogus stories that mainstream media outlets have run about Donald Trump. Those include:

• A CNN story about a supposed Congressional investigation of a link between Trump ally Anthony Scaramucci and a Russian investment fund.
• Another CNN story claiming that James Comey, in testimony before Congress, was going to contradict Trump’s claim that Comey assured the President he was not being investigated by the FBI.
• A Washington Post story, based on anonymous sources, that Russian hackers had hacked into the “U.S. electricity grid,” supposedly through a Vermont utility.
• Another Washington Post article about a supposed 213 million times that stories emanating from a Russian “disinformation campaign” had been viewed by American readers. The source was a shadowy group of self-appointed experts who had compiled a McCarthyite blacklist of sites that supposedly published Russian propaganda. The story had to be retracted.
• Liberal website Slate published an article claiming the discovery of a secret server used by the Trump Organization to communicate with a Russian bank.
• C-SPAN made a splash when it claimed that “RT programming” had interrupted its broadcasts. Since RT is owned by the Russian government, this played into the Russian narrative, but it was untrue.
• The leftist Guardian published a story asserting that WikiLeaks, and WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, had “long had a close relationship with the Putin regime.”
• A bogus claim from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike that Russian Military Intelligence had hacked the Democratic National Committee’s servers was hyped by multiple outlets.

Greenwald notes:

WHAT IS MOST notable about these episodes is that they all go in the same direction: hyping and exaggerating the threat posed by the Kremlin. All media outlets will make mistakes; that is to be expected. But when all of the “mistakes” are devoted to the same rhetorical theme, and when they all end up advancing the same narrative goal, it seems clear that they are not the byproduct of mere garden-variety journalistic mistakes.

Greenwald goes on to discuss business incentives to hype Russia, which are most certainly real.

What he does not give sufficient attention is ideological bias.

Donald Trump and Fake News

That the media have a bias against Trump is blatantly obvious. What is less commented on is that Trump’s attacks on the “lying media” may be self-fulfilling assertions.

The media, chafing under those charges, appear to be itching to get back at Trump by implicating him in some nefarious conspiracy with Russia. Journalistic standards go by the board.

There is a lot wrong with Donald Trump as president, but he has one huge political asset: he drives his political adversaries utterly bonkers. He has gone far in discrediting his mainstream media enemies. And not because people simply believe Trump when he calls them liars, but because during Trump’s presidency they have published a lot of lies.

American Indians: “Redskins” Team Name Not Offensive

All the politically correct types are demanding that the Washington Redskins change the name of their team. It’s “offensive,” they say.

But a new Washington Post polls says otherwise.

The headline says “New poll finds 9 in 10 Native Americans aren’t offended by Redskins name.”

The race hustlers claiming to represent the Indians reacted badly.

But Suzan Harjo, the lead plaintiff in the first case challenging the team’s trademark protections, dismissed the Post’s findings.

“I just reject the results,” said Harjo, 70, who belongs to the Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee tribes. “I don’t agree with them, and I don’t agree that this is valid way of surveying public opinion in Indian Country.”

But the Post explained:

Across every demographic group, the vast majority of Native Americans say the team’s name does not offend them, including 80 percent who identify as politically liberal, 85 percent of college graduates, 90 percent of those enrolled in a tribe, 90 percent of non-football fans and 91 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 39.

Even 9 in 10 of those who have heard a great deal about the controversy say they are not bothered by the name.

What makes those attitudes more striking: The general public appears to object more strongly to the name than Indians do.

In a 2014 national ESPN poll, 23 percent of those reached called for “Redskins” to be retired because of its offensiveness to Native Americans — more than double the 9 percent of actual Native Americans who now say they are offended by it.

A 2013 Post poll found that a higher proportion of Washington-area residents — 28 percent — wanted the moniker changed.

An earlier Annenberg poll which showed the same result was attacked on the grounds that respondents classified themselves as “Native American.” Maybe they weren’t really, the race hustlers said.

(Interestingly, these are the same people who say that a man can be a woman if he just calls himself a woman. But apparently a white person can’t decide to be an Indian.)

But the current survey not only shows overwhelming majorities of Indians enrolled in a tribe are not offended, it shows 91 percent who live on or near tribal land say they are not offended.

This is just another case where the politically correct hustlers fail to represent the groups they claim to represent. Thus, women are as likely to oppose abortion as are men, feminists to the contrary. Blacks are likely to favor “quality of life” policing (which jumps on small offenses) and a clear majority of blacks believe the courts are “not harsh enough” on criminals.

Likwise, the black race hustlers go ballistic when people say “all lives matter” rather than “black lives matter.” But black people nationwide say they prefer “all lives matter.”

Honesty in any discussion of policy requires calling out the race (and gender) hustlers.

Washington Post: Electric Car Folly

From the (liberal) Washington Post:

GM’s vaunted Volt is on the road to nowhere fast

By Editorial Board, Editorial Board

The Washington Post

AS A CANDIDATE for president in 2008, Barack Obama set a goal of getting 1 million all-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road by 2015. In February 2011, the Obama administration’s Energy Department issued an analysis purporting to show that, with the help of subsidies and tax credits, “the goal is achievable.” This was a paltry claim in the first place, since 1 million cars amount to less than 1 percent of the total U.S. fleet. Yet it is increasingly clear that, despite the commitment of many millions of taxpayer dollars, the United States will not hit Mr. Obama’s target by 2015. A recent CBS News analysis suggested that we’ll be lucky to get a third of the way there.

The Energy Department study assumed that General Motors would produce 120,000 plug-in hybrid Volts in 2012. GM never came close to that and recently suspended Volt production at its Hamtramck, Mich., plant, scene of a presidential photo-op. So far, GM has sold a little more than 21,000 Volts, even with the help of a $7,500 tax credit, recent dealer discounting and U.S. government purchases. When you factor in the $1.2 billion cost of developing the Volt, GM loses tens of thousands of dollars on each model.

Some such losses are normal in the early phases of a product’s life cycle. Perhaps the knowledge and technological advances GM has reaped from developing the Volt will help the company over the long term. But this is cold comfort for the taxpayers who still own more than a quarter of the firm.

The Energy Department predicted that Nissan, recipient of a $1.5 billion government-guaranteed loan, would build 25,000 of its all-electric Leaf this year; that car has sold only 14,000 units in the United States.

As these companies flail, they are taking the much-ballyhooed U.S. advanced-battery industry down with them. A Chinese company had to buy out distressed A123, to which the Energy Department has committed $263 million in production aid and research money. Ener1, which ran through $55 million of a $118 million federal grant before going bankrupt, sold out to a Russian tycoon.

No matter how you slice it, the American taxpayer has gotten precious little for the administration’s investment in battery-powered vehicles, in terms of permanent jobs or lower carbon dioxide emissions. There is no market, or not much of one, for vehicles that are less convenient and cost thousands of dollars more than similar-sized gas-powered alternatives — but do not save enough fuel to compensate. The basic theory of the Obama push for electric vehicles — if you build them, customers will come — was a myth. And an expensive one, at that.

In our Public Policy class, we warn students about the dangers of the “Warm Fuzzies School of Policy Analysis.” This way of thinking doesn’t ask tough questions about whether something if economically viable, whether it’s the best approach to a social problem, or even whether it’s scientifically possible. It just endorses anything that gives the person the warm fuzzies. If solar power, or wind energy or electric cars give one the warm fuzzies, it immediately follows that one’s fellow citizens should be taxed to support it, and if necessary coerced to use it.

The really good ideas, of course, can find private financing — there is a huge amount of venture capital in the U.S. economy.

(But private venture capital is derided by people like Barack Obama.)

The things that really make people’s lives better are things they will happily buy, and indeed line up to buy.

But the pet projects of elites have to be imposed on the citizenry.

Obama Chastized by Washington Post on Iraq

Barack Obama’s pandering to the hard left anti-Iraq War crowd has drawn a sharp rebuke from the liberal Washington Post.

BARACK OBAMA yesterday accused President Bush and Sen. John McCain of rigidity on Iraq: “They said we couldn’t leave when violence was up, they say we can’t leave when violence is down.” Mr. Obama then confirmed his own foolish consistency. Early last year, when the war was at its peak, the Democratic candidate proposed a timetable for withdrawing all U.S. combat forces in slightly more than a year. Yesterday, with bloodshed at its lowest level since the war began, Mr. Obama endorsed the same plan. After hinting earlier this month that he might “refine” his Iraq strategy after visiting the country and listening to commanders, Mr. Obama appears to have decided that sticking to his arbitrary, 16-month timetable is more important than adjusting to the dramatic changes in Iraq.

Mr. Obama’s charge against the Republicans was not entirely fair, since Mr. Bush has overseen the withdrawal of five American brigades from Iraq this year, and Mr. McCain has suggested that he would bring most of the rest of the troops home by early 2013. Mr. Obama’s timeline would end in the summer of 2010, a year or two before the earliest dates proposed recently by members of the Iraqi government. The real difference between the various plans is not the dates but the conditions: Both the Iraqis and Mr. McCain say the withdrawal would be linked to the ability of Iraqi forces to take over from U.S. troops, as they have begun to do. Mr. Obama’s strategy allows no such linkage -- his logic is that a timetable unilaterally dictated from Washington is necessary to force Iraqis to take responsibility for the country.

At the time he first proposed his timetable, Mr. Obama argued -- wrongly, as it turned out -- that U.S. troops could not stop a sectarian civil war. He conceded that a withdrawal might be accompanied by a “spike” in violence. Now, he describes as “an achievable goal” that “we leave Iraq to a government that is taking responsibility for its future -- a government that prevents sectarian conflict and ensures that the al-Qaeda threat which has been beaten back by our troops does not reemerge.” How will that “true success” be achieved? By the same pullout that Mr. Obama proposed when chaos in Iraq appeared to him inevitable.

“What’s missing in our debate,” Mr. Obama said yesterday, “is a discussion of the strategic consequences of Iraq.” Indeed: The message that the Democrat sends is that he is ultimately indifferent to the war’s outcome -- that Iraq “distracts us from every threat we face” and thus must be speedily evacuated regardless of the consequences. That’s an irrational and ahistorical way to view a country at the strategic center of the Middle East, with some of the world’s largest oil reserves. Whether or not the war was a mistake, Iraq’s future is a vital U.S. security interest. If he is elected president, Mr. Obama sooner or later will have to tailor his Iraq strategy to that reality.

Will he?

Or will he continue to be the leftist that panders to his leftist base? You know -- the people who don’t want America to win the war because they don’t much like America and virulently hate George Bush.

Let’s hope we never have the opportunity to find out.

Classic Media Bias: Anti-War Protest vs. Anti-Abortion Protest

From the Media Research Center:

Another classic contrast in media bias is emerging with Saturday’s “anti-war” march on Washington, just six days after the annual March for Life. Already, the Washington Post is showing more love in column inches for the left-wing protest. The Post had no article previewing the pro-life march, but on the front page of Thursday’s Post, in a box promoting its “Faces of the Fallen” pages of the war dead, it ran a promotional blurb for a protest planned for Saturday in the District: “Actors, Other Activists Plan Mall War Protest, Jane Fonda and Susan Sarandon are expected for Saturday’s anti-war rally and March -- Metro.” But the Post never even use the word “liberal” to describe anyone in the story. Jane Fonda was an “actress, author, and peace activist.” Jesse Jackson a “civil rights activist.” The organizing group simply “describes itself as a coalition of 1,400 local and national organizations,” and apparently none of them are left-wing. The story had photos of Fonda, Danny Glover, Tim Robbins, and Susan Sarandon listed in a caption as “among the activists expected.”

You can read all the details of the Post’s fawning treatment of the leftist protestors on the MRC web site.