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Home Front: Politix

National Security and Foreign Policy Professionals and Gold Star Families for Trump

2024-10-06

A lot of big names here: National Security and Foreign Policy Professionals come out for Trump.https://t.co/5HWoLAoAXY
— Glenn Reynolds (@GlennReyno62674) October 4, 2024

There’s a contact number at the bottom of the last page if you fit the criteria and want to be added.

Link

-Short Attention Span Theater-

Sarah Ashton-Crillo is suspended as Ukraine war spokeswoman after trans Floridian posted blood-curdling video threatening to 'hunt down' Russians

2023-09-21

Is it TRANS?
Is it Ukraine/Russia?
Is it Florida Man/?
News is so confusing.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news]

Transgender Sarah Ashton-Cirillo,

...father of 1, former fake Trumpster, now a registered Democrat and fake woman...
45, has been suspended by Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces

In a statement they said that her comments were 'not approved' by her chain of command

Ashton-Cirillo was born in Florida, lives in New York and first arrived in Ukraine in March 2022 to work as a reporter

More details from Abu Uluque
Ukraine's ~~Transgender~~ Transvestite Spokesperson Suspended by Military, Zelensky Claims No Knowledge, as U.S. Citizen Journalist Still Remains Behind Bars in Ukraine

[Breitbart] The Ukrainian military has announced that it has suspended controversial transvestite spokesperson Sarah Ashton-Cirillo for allegedly making unapproved statements on social media, however, there have been no updates from the Ukrainians, or the Biden administration on the fate of an American citizen journalist currently imprisoned in Ukraine.

Following a row sparked by inquiries initiated by Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH), as reported by Breitbart News, the Command of the Territorial Defense Forces (TDF) of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) announced on Wednesday that Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, an American transvestite, has been suspended from the role of spokesperson.

On social media, the TDF said: "The statements of (Junior Seargant) Ashton-Cirillo in recent days were not approved by the command of the TDF or the command of the AFU. When conducting military operations against the aggressor, the defense forces of Ukraine strictly observe the norms of international humanitarian law.

"The command of the TDF will conduct an official investigation into the circumstances of these statements. Appropriate decisions would be taken. Sergeant Sarah Ashton-Cirillo will be suspended immediately pending the investigation."

Following the announcement, a source close to President Volodymyr Zelensky told Breitbart News that Ashton-Cirillo had been appointed to the role without the approval of the president and confirmed the suspension.

It is unclear as to the exact statements Ashton-Cirillo was suspended for. However, as Breitbart News reported, Republican Senator J.D. Vance wrote this week to top Biden administration officials demanding information on the American citizen after Ashton-Cirillo posted a video on social media declaring that Ukraine was planning to "hunt down" alleged Russian propagandists.

Following the publication of the contents of the letter by Breitbart, Ashton-Cirillo took to social media again, this time claiming that people who supposedly espouse narratives perceived as being pro-Russian were not entitled to be called journalists, and therefore were undeserving of free speech protections and should be tried as war criminals.

As Breitbart News reported on Tuesday, the U.S. State Department confirmed that the American government is aware that a citizen journalist, known as Gonzalo Lira, is currently in prison in Ukraine. Lira has reportedly been accused by the Ukrainians of having "had a criminal intent aimed at the manufacture, distribution materials containing justification, recognition as legitimate, denial of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, which began in 2014, as well as justification, recognition as legitimate of the temporary occupation of part of Ukraine territory."

Ashton-Cirillo has publicly admitted to being involved in the prosecution of Lira, who is a dual citizen of the United States and Chile. Last week, the transvestite spokesperson claimed to have met with Lira while giving testimony in the case, claiming that the YouTuber is in good mental and physical health. Lira has previously claimed to have been tortured and extorted while in prison after being arrested initially in May.

Following an attempt by Lira to escape the country and seek asylum in Hungary in July after being released on bail, Ashton-Cirillo declared in a video that Lira was a "criminal" and that an "innocent man" would not seek asylum. Lira is reportedly facing between five and eight years in prison, which he claims would represent a death sentence.

In comments provided to Breitbart News, Senator J.D. Vance remarked on Ashton-Cirillo’s suspension: "No American dollar should flow to someone threatening violence against people for exercising their free speech rights. So I’m glad Ukraine parted ways with this spokesman.

"The fact that Ukraine had such a spokesman to begin with suggests a military too focused on propaganda toward liberals and neoconservatives. I’m sick of the fake tough talk and social media videos.

"I’d like to know whether Ukraine thinks it’s any closer to victory today than a year ago. We know the answer. And it’s why we should he pushing for peace instead of more war."

Former Trump administration Deputy Director of National Intelligence Cliff Sims told Breitbart: "JD’s election to the senate was the most consequential of the last cycle and this shows exactly why: He’s taking a stand on issues that are otherwise being totally ignored, often even by members of his own party, and getting results."

More from regnum.ru
Transvestite Ukrainian Speaker Ashton-Cirillo was removed from office

A representative of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' territorial defense forces, American transvestite Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, was removed from her post after public threats against Russian journalists. The command of the Ukrainian army announced this on September 20 on the social network X (formerly Twitter).

It is clarified that the command of the Ukrainian Defense Forces will conduct an internal investigation and take appropriate decisions based on its results. Sergeant Ashton-Cirillo has been suspended from duty pending an investigation.

It is indicated that the statements of the transvestite were not approved by the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Earlier, IA Regnum reported that, as the representative of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' defense forces, transvestite Ashton-Cirillo said she did not threaten to kill Russian journalists.

American journalist and transvestite Ashton-Cirillo in early August became one of the official speakers of the Ukrainian territorial defense forces. On September 8, she published a video in which she repeated the rhetoric of the Third Reich and said that “Russians are not people,” and also threatened representatives of the Russian media. She later stated that she had been misunderstood and was joking.

Commenting on Ashton-Cirillo’s statements, official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova, in turn, said that Russia would send a statement from a representative of the Ukrainian territorial defense forces to all international organizations and NGOs .

The head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Alexander Bastrykin, ordered to check Ashton-Cirillo’s statement threatening Russian journalists. After verification, the words of the defense speaker will be given a legal assessment.

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-Signs, Portents, and the Weather-

Biden's new crackdown on another appliance will be worse than gas stoves

2023-08-06

[FoxNews] It's not just stoves, Biden is going after air conditioners and other home appliances.

We have seen a big consumer backlash in 2023 over Biden administration bureaucrats targeting gas stoves, but that could pale in comparison to the coming anger over costly air conditioning regulations.

In fact, that has already begun, making this unusually hot summer even more unpleasant for homeowners needing air conditioner repairs. And things could get downright ugly starting next summer.

The Environmental Protect Agency (EPA) just announced a 40% production cut in 2024 for hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), the widely used class of refrigerants being targeted for their claimed contribution to climate change. As it is, the modest 10% cut in force today has already caused many HFCs to triple in price, including HFC-410a which is used in most home air conditioners.

As a result, replacing refrigerant lost from a leak has cost millions of homeowners at least $150-$200 more than it used to. But next summer, stricter production quotas will be in effect, likely sending refrigerant costs through the roof — and repair costs with them.

EPA regulators are targeting new systems too. A pending rule would outlaw all but the most climate-friendly, new central air-conditioners by 2025. Doing so is strongly supported by the air conditioning equipment makers who see an opportunity to skew the market towards their pricier models.

It would be bad enough if EPA were the only federal agency that has it in for affordable air conditioning, but the Department of Energy (DOE) is just as bad. DOE has a track record for concocting energy efficiency regulations for air conditioners and other appliances that boost a homeowner’s up-front cost so much that it may never get earned back in the form of energy savings.

Perhaps the worst of them, created at the end of the Obama administration and taking effect on January 1 of this year, has caused prices for new central air conditioning systems to spike by up to $1,000, according to several installers.

And the agency is already in the early stages of devising an even tougher rule. Separate rulemakings also target window unit air conditioners and other categories of cooling systems.

What explains the anti-homeowner tilt? Like much of the nonsense coming from Washington these days, it’s based on the Energy Department's "need to confront the global climate crisis."

Indeed, beyond air conditioners and stoves, Biden’s regulators are going after furnaces, incandescent light bulbs, washing machines, refrigerators, dishwashers, ceiling fans, water heaters and other home appliances.

Hardly any room in your house will be spared, and each proposed new regulation asserts that the climate-related benefits help justify the extra cost. All of this meddling is bad news for consumers, but the measures targeting air conditioners will likely prove to be the worst of the bunch.

The one-two punch of both EPA and DOE aiming their red tape at air conditioners has already boosted the cost of staying cool this summer, and starting next year the homeowner pain could be every bit as unbearable as the heat.

Link

Economy

As Millions Flee Blue States, Red States Need To Remind Them Why

2023-02-04

[ISSUESINSIGHTS] People have been fleeing leftist strongholds such as Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,, New York, and Illinois for many years.

What’s interesting about the new data is that they come in the wake of COVID, when the different approaches taken by states could not have been starker. California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, and the like used COVID to exercise maximum control over their residents — with mandates, curfews, lockdowns, and school closures.

These states received fulsome praise from every elite corner for "following the science."

States such as Florida, in contrast, put their trust in their people, and were loudly denounced. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

...Republican governor of Florida, stone in the shoe of the Dems and their ilk, maybe one-day president...
was the bête noir of the we-believe-in-science crowd, which accused him of being complicit in murder.

As The Hill put it in late 2021, "A dark cloud hangs over the Sunshine State. COVID-19, fueled by delta variant, is running rampant in Florida and Gov. Ron DeSantis is losing the race to stop the spread of the pandemic."

Anytime there was an uptick in cases in one of these states, it made national news, with everyone from President Joe The Big Guy Biden
...46th president of the U.S., father of Hunter, close friend of an imaginary negro named Corn Pop. He blames Trump for losing Afghanistan....
on down tut-tutting them.

But despite this barrage, millions fled states that were "cracking down" on COVID for those that had taken a more laissez-faire approach.

To the liberal media, this is something of a mystery. CBS News says that the reason red states gained population was that many have "job markets that grew faster than average during the pandemic" and "housing is more affordable and available than in parts of the country that lost residents."

But it doesn’t even attempt to explain why these differences exist. Was it just dumb luck? Good weather? Magic?

Of course not. The reason jobs are plentiful and housing prices low in red states is precisely because they didn’t act like socialist dictators during COVID. And for years before COVID they tended to pursue conservative economic policies — low taxes, fiscal prudence, a pro-business climate — that the left routinely dismisses as "trickle-down economics."

The problem is that far too many of these internal ~~migrants~~ colonists take their ideology with them and push for the same leftist politicians and the same policies that they just fled.

It would be like Cuban refugees all voting for Castroite candidates and socialist policies as soon as they land in Florida.

This disconnect between knowing things are bad but not knowing why is troubling, if for no other reason than that blue flight ends up more like a socialist virus than a win for free markets. The more people leave places like California for more hospitable climes, the more those states start to turn blue.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Conservatives need to learn how to welcome their new additions with smiles on their faces and brochures in their hands explaining why it is that the freedom they just chose is better than the socialistic oppression they fled. Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds has been advocating a "welcome wagon" for years.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott
... governor of Texas. Abbott is a Republican. His 2014 Dem opponent, state senatrix Wendy Davis, thought the absolute, most pressing, most important issue facing the state was abortion. Abbott beat the pantyhose off her. His 2018 opponent, Lupe Valdez didn't dwell too heavily on abortion, but she lost too...
took a step in this direction. A couple of years ago he tweeted: "To the Californians moving to Texas: Remember those high taxes, burdensome regulations, & socialistic agenda advanced in CA? We don’t believe in that. We believe in less government & more individual freedom. If you agree with that, you’ll fit right in."

We need much more of that attitude. Otherwise, the mass migration will only spread the disease of leftism further and deeper into the nation’s bloodstream.

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-War on Police-

Feldman: Straight Talk on the Latest Riots

2023-01-30

By Clarice Feldman

[AmericanThinker] Riots broke out in Memphis and are rapidly spreading through the usual urban areas. The purported rationale is the horrific beating to death in Memphis of Tyre Nichols captured on video and released by the police. As Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) observes, Nichols’ beating was administered by “Black officers in a majority Black city with a Black police chief.”

The officers involved have been criminally charged, but the media to which every Black killed by a cop is just proof that we are still in the Selma, Alabama world of decades ago -- another case of some innocent Black person victimized by racist oppressors.

The odious Joy Reid at MSNBC highlighted a guest who blames Nichols’ death on “white supremacy” and CNN’s Van Jones opined “The police who killed Tyre Nichols were Black. But they still may have been driven by racism.”

To the contrary, I blame the death on those who actually administered the beating and the lack of rapid medical treatment, but people like Reid and Jones who refuse to acknowledge the murderous consequences of a savage urban Black culture which time and again ends on tragedy and who stir up absurdly conjured racism are also at fault.

As the deans of colleges and heads of k-12 schools pen their usual pap about this, and the overpaid professional consultants start scheduling conferences and workshops on ending “systemic racism,” it is a good time to review some facts which they steadfastly ignore.

Over at the Manhattan Institute, always a good source of unbiased information, Heather MacDonald sets out the too often ignored facts on police killings, facts which do not support reducing or defunding law enforcement

Read the rest at the link

Link

Government Corruption

Disgraced CBS anchor Dan Rather ripped for 'Let's Go Brandon' take: 'Sit down'

2022-01-01

[NYPOST] After attempting to dunk on the "Let’s Go Brandon" fans, disgraced CBS anchor Dan Fake but Accurate Rather
...the man who put the BS in CBS News. In 2004 he put on a news story that highlighted dissatisfaction with Lt. George W. Bush in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war. This was almost casually--but gleefully--debunked by the Blogosphere at large. Rather's face was rubbed in journalistic mud, four of his staff were fired, and within a short time his 43-year (about the same length as Muammar Qadaffi's) career had settled to the bottom, from whence he periodically emits a bubble, which proves he's not dead yet...
faced a dunking of his own.Late Wednesday night, Rather tweeted out his take on the popular "Let’s Go Brandon" phrase that has been used as a rebuff against President Joe Biden

...... 46th president of the U.S. Old, boring, a plagiarist, fond of hair sniffing and grabbing the protruding parts of women, and not whatcha call brilliant. Just look at the competent way he dumped Afghanistan......
"#LetsGoBrandonReallyMeans ’You can’t handle the truth," Rather wrote.

The quote came as a form of irony for some Twitter users as Rather previously stepped down from his position as a CBS anchor after airing a story that contained allegedly forged documents to question President Bush’s service in the National Guard. Several people called out his take based on Rather’s own relationship with "the truth."

Right-wing commentator John Cardillo tweeted, "Dan, Remember when you and your producer fabricated memos to derail Bush 43’s presidency, but you were caught, fired, and shamed off air? Remember that truth?"

"Says the man who literally lost his job for reporting fabrications and lies about GW Bush. Hahah.. you cannot make this stuff up. Let’s Go Dan Rather!" radio talk show host Joe Pagliarulo wrote.

Link

Home Front: Politix

A Possible Defense of Michael Flynn

2017-12-05

[PowerlineBlog] Like everyone else, I have puzzled over why General Michael Flynn apparently lied to the FBI when he had no reason to do so. We may never know the answer to that question, but here are a few possibly unrelated pieces of the puzzle:
1) Via InstaPundit, Michael Ledeen speculates about what drove Flynn’s guilty plea:

While working with General Michael Flynn on The Field of Fight, I interviewed many of his former colleagues in order to better understand my co-author. Virtually all of them described a man who cared deeply about the truth and presented it in circumstances that were certainly not favorable to him. These people portrayed General Flynn as a compulsive truth-teller.
So why has he now confessed to making false statements to the FBI?

It doesn’t make sense. I don’t believe Flynn intentionally misled the FBI, or anyone else, about his unquestionably licit conversations with the Russian ambassador.
I think the "guilty" plea tells us more about the Mueller investigation, and about the politicization of "justice" more generally, than it does about presumed malefactions by the retired general.

I think that Gen. Flynn admitted guilt in order to stop the pain for himself and his family.

It is notable that Mueller and company have apparently dropped their investigation of Gen. Flynn’s son, and the plea agreement will dramatically reduce the family’s legal expenses.

I believe Flynn has said that he has spent $1 million on lawyers, and felt compelled to plead guilty to something lest he be ruined financially.

2) Then we have this from Glenn Reynolds:
SO THE FBI SUPERVISOR WHO WAS TEXTING ABOUT HOW MUCH HE HATED TRUMP is the one who interviewed Mike Flynn. "A supervisory special agent who is now under scrutiny after being removed from Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office for alleged bias against President Trump also oversaw the bureau’s interviews of embattled former National Security advisor Michael Flynn, this reporter has learned. Flynn recently pled guilty to one-count of lying to the FBI last week. . . . Strzok was removed from his role in the Special Counsel’s Office after it was discovered he had made disparaging comments about President Trump in text messages between him and his alleged lover FBI attorney Lisa Page, according to the New York Times and Washington Post, which first reported the stories. Strzok is also under investigation by the Department of Justice Inspector General for his role in Hillary Clinton’s email server and the ongoing investigation into Russia’s election meddling. On Saturday, the House Intelligence Committee’s Chairman Devin Nunes chided the Justice Department and the FBI for not disclosing why Strzok had been removed from the Special Counsel three months ago, according to a statement given by the Chairman."

This stinks to high heaven. But wait, there’s more involving shady FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe [Ed.: McCabe is a Democratic Party activist masquerading as a law enforcement officer]:

According to another source, with direct knowledge of the Jan. 24 interview, McCabe had contacted Flynn by phone directly at the White House. White House officials had spent the "earlier part of the week with the FBI overseeing training and security measures associated with their new roles so it was no surprise to Flynn that McCabe had called," the source said.

McCabe told Flynn "some agents were heading over (to the White House) but Flynn thought it was part of the routine work the FBI had been doing and said they would be cleared at the gate," the source said.

"It wasn’t until after they were already in (Flynn’s) office that he realized he was being formally interviewed. He didn’t have an attorney with him," they added.
Comey was lecturing us about the FBI’s professionalism and integrity just today. Pathetic. This looks like a sleazy, deliberate trap.

There is no doubt that under the leadership of Robert Mueller and James Comey, the FBI became a sleazy, partisan operation. A thorough house-cleaning is needed, although it will come too late to do Michael Flynn any good.

3) I would like to see the transcript of the interview of Michael Flynn by Democratic Party activist Peter Strzok and his colleague that gave rise to Flynn’s guilty plea. What, exactly, did Strzok ask Flynn, and how, exactly, did Flynn respond? Is there actually any clear-cut falsehood in the transcript? I wonder.

Maybe Flynn really did try to mislead the FBI, for reasons that seem inexplicable. Or maybe he was an innocent man, crushed by the overwhelming power and financial resources of the Democratic Party, represented here by the FBI and Robert Mueller and his team of activists. If I could see the transcript of his interrogation, I would tell you which of those scenarios I think is closer to the truth.

PAUL ADDS: Andy McCarthy suggested a reason why Flynn might have lied about interactions with the Russian ambassador even though they didn’t break the law. He wrote:

Even though Flynn’s interactions with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak did not amount to Trump-campaign collusion in Russia’s perfidy, they did show that the Trump transition was dabbling in foreign relations with the Putin regime (among other foreign governments) and was attempting to undermine the policy of the incumbent Obama administration ‐ at least on the U.N. resolution condemning Israel. . . .

[W]e have only one president at a time. It is unseemly for an incoming administration to undermine the sitting president. If revealed, such behavior would be politically damaging enough. Here, that damage of Trump-transition interference with President Obama’s foreign relations would have been magnified by Russia’ involvement, given that Democrats were accusing Trump of colluding with Putin to throw the election. This made any conversation about the sanctions between Flynn and Kislyak look terrible, no matter how innocent they were and no matter how normal for a transition period.

To be clear, I’m not saying that Flynn was thinking this or, for that matter, that he lied. And I agree with John (and Glenn Reynolds) that Peter Strzok’s role as the interviewer of Flynn during the FBI investigation stinks. Like John, I would like to see a transcript of the interview.

I also wonder why the FBI questioned Flynn about his interactions with the Russian ambassador ‐ interactions that were legal and normal in a transition period. I have long thought that it was an attempt to set Flynn up. That suspicion deepens given the new information about the role of Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok in the proceedings.

Being set up does not, of course, excuse lying ‐ if Flynn lied. But the FBI’s apparent eagerness to entrap Flynn makes me want to see what, exactly Strzok asked Flynn, and how, exactly, Flynn responded.

Link

Government

Michael Barone: Let's go back to paper ballots

2017-09-15

[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] Mickey Kaus notes that the Netherlands is going to go back to conducting its elections with paper ballots. "Dutch go old school against Russian hacking," he notes, linking to a Politico Europe
...also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
story. Kaus adds an appropriate shout-out to Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, who has been calling for paper ballots for years.

Going back to paper ballots may strike many people, as it used to strike me, as retrograde. Isn't it a lot faster to count electronic votes? Isn't there a danger that paper ballots can be altered, defaced, and burned? Isn't electronic voting cooler and more up to date?

But the arguments against paper ballots wither under inspection. Speed of counting: Why do we need an immediate result? The press has exit polls, of varying and perhaps improving worth (Britannia's was much better this year than in 2015 and 2016). And speaking of Britannia, it only takes until about 5:00am the night of election day, to have the results in for all (save maybe one or two) parliamentary constituencies. Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,, in contrast, takes four to five weeks to count all its ballots ‐ California, the home of Silicon Valley!

The fact is that sacrificing a bit of speed for reliability is probably a good trade. The strongest argument for paper ballots is that they can't be hacked. The second strongest is that there is an independent record of each ballot cast, which some computerized systems lack.

It may take a long time to count ballots in some states where they include many offices and ballot propositions, but people can wait. And recounts of paper ballots can result in disputes over hanging chads and the like, but these are difficulties our republic has been handling for over 200 years. My vote is for paper ballots.

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Home Front: Politix

Injun Liz's Ugly Stew

2017-04-21

[American Thinker] Senator Elizabeth Warren denounced President Trump's election as the product of an 'ugly stew of racism' that propelled him to the top.

So given that she considers herself a Native American minority and has sought affirmative action privileges with that so-claimed designation, what she's saying is that a vote against her or her party could only have been due to racism, never a popular rejection of her socialist ideas.

Logic of that sort is why Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds can often say: 'Want More Trump? That's how you get More Trump.'

Warren;s contempt for America's votes couldn't be more obvious. If it was an ugly stew of racism that got Trump elected, is it not a little patronizing that Warrren also could say, in an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow:

"People are right to be angry, but Donald Trump said it’s their fault--those other people. Those people who don’t worship like you, those people who don’t look like you, those people who aren’t the same color as you."

So all those Trump-voting racists are right to be angry, is that it? Since when does one justify a racist's right to be angry? Only when one is a Democrat who still hasn't gotten over Hillary Clinton's loss, and needs a few insults to hurl at the people who kept her party out of power.

Link

-Short Attention Span Theater-

Musicians ask Trump for money help after Grammys bashing

2017-02-14

President Trump's political opponents in the music industry would like his help in at least one regard: The laws that govern who makes money off of music.

"The Recording Academy, together with America's music makers, call on the president and Congress to help keep the music playing by updating music laws, protecting music education, and renewing America's commitment to the arts," Neil Portnow, the president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, said during the 2017 Grammy Awards Sunday night.

The recording industry wants radio stations to be required to pay royalties to artists whose music is played on their stations. "Big radio corporations make billions of dollars from music but pay nothing to ~~artists and~~ producers and Recording Companies,who cares about the artists!" the GrammyPro website says. "Other provisions of copyright law force songwriters and performers to accept below market pay for their music."

I'd be happy to couple royalties to a proper, public and open accounting of music labels and movie studios. Plus Glenn Reynolds' proposal to repeal the "Hollywood Tax Credits"...

Link

Home Front: Culture Wars

Feldman: All the News the Editors See Fit to Print

2016-12-19

By Clarice Feldman

[AmericanThinker] Decades ago while in high school I read John Dos Passos’s USA. It was published in the 1930s before television or cable news. But it presaged well the strange mixture of important and ridiculous news we receive today. News today is largely fashioned into narratives by mostly young, unworldly reporters and biased news editors, repeated on TV by well-coiffed, fashionably garbed and cosmetically buffed up news readers, jazzed up by often highly biased photo editors and presented on a plate to passive consumers.

When I read USA, my hometown had -- like most larger cities -- two major newspapers, one liberal, the other conservative, and like most homes we got both and read both so we had a fairer picture of what was happening in the world. The reporters were often grizzled veterans of the world who drank hard, smoked a lot, and believed no one or nothing without evidence.

With the advent of television and the monopolization of print markets it seems to me we lost the ability to forensically analyze the news; we have become passive consumers and got what we deserved -- propaganda, largely megaphoning the increasingly leftward tilt of the Democratic Party and various “nonprofit” organizations who promote scare stories about food, health, and the weather and challenge wars only when a Republican is in office. To be sure, there are some fine people (operating largely online) who take the time to read the accounts with a critical eye. Among the best are James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal, bloggers Don Surber, Glenn Reynolds, Sheryl Attkisson, and Tom Maguire. If you read them daily you may reacquire this lost, but important art.

This week the clash between fake and real news became even more obvious.

Sharyl Attkisson who has sued the Department of Justice and the U.S. Postal Service for matters relating to intrusions on her computer and who is known for her outstanding reportage, took aim this week at the Obama-Clinton suggestion that Clinton lost because of fake news reports. Obama called “fake news” a “dust cloud of nonsense” and Clinton dubbed it “an epidemic”.
Much more at the link

Link

Home Front: Culture Wars

Media meets with Trump, gets dressed down

2016-11-22

Oh, to be a fly on that wall...

[NYPost] President-elect Donald Trump exploded at media bigs in an off-the-record Trump Tower powow on Monday, sources told The Post.

"It was like a f‐ing firing squad," said one source.

"Trump started with Jeff Zucker and said I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed….

"The meeting was a total disaster. The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing down," the source added.
Not unlike some of the ambushes they have laid out for previous Republicans.
A second source confirmed the encounter.

"The meeting took place in a big board room and there were about 30 or 40 people, including the big news anchors from all the networks…," the source said.

"Trump kept saying, ‘We're in a room of liars, the deceitful dishonest media who got it all wrong. He addressed everyone in the room calling the media dishonest, deceitful liars. He called out Jeff Zucker by name and said everyone at CNN was a liar, and CNN was network of liars.
He ain't wrong
"Trump didn't say Katy Tur by name, but talked about an NBC female correspondent who got it wrong, then he referred to a horrible network correspondent who cried when Hillary lost who hosted a debate – which was Martha Raddatz who was also in the room.

"Gayle did not stand up, but asked some question, ‘How do you propose we the media work with you?' Chuck Todd asked some pretty pointed questions. David Muir asked how are you going to cope living in DC while your family is in NYC? It was a horrible meeting"
How to get the ~~Democratic operatives~~ media to work with him? You don't. You keep them at arm's length and let them twist on the rope they made for themselves.
The meeting was off the record, meaning the participants agreed not to talk about the substance of the conversations.

Have to agree with the Donald: the press has gotten out of control and it has only itself to blame. It's become the mouthpiece of the DNC, or as Glenn Reynolds likes to say, "Democratic operatives with bylines." As Kurt Schlichter wrote today, the Donald doesn't give a damn when the media goes after him, and that makes him immune to media-inspired outrage.

So the media is being given notice: get back to reasonably bilateral, bipartisan, more-or-less even-handed coverage, or you'll end up with the public relations version of waterboarding.

The hour-long powwow included top execs from network and cable news channels. Among the attendees were NBC's Deborah Turness, Lester Holt and Chuck Todd, ABC's James Goldston, George Stephanopoulos, David Muir and Martha Raddatz, CBS' Norah O'Donnell John Dickerson, Charlie Rose, Christopher Isham and Gayle King, Fox News' Bill Shine, Jack Abernethy, Jay Wallace, Suzanne Scott, MSNBC's Phil Griffin and CNN's Jeff Zucker and Erin Burnett.
All of which were triggered, had to run to their safe space and blankies and teddy bears.

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