Thomas Sowell on famous American Racists

 Thomas Sowell TV provides a lecture on famous American racists, most of whom were academics, economists, socialists, journalists, progressives and leftists, just like today. https://youtu.be/Cbq145xnaSs?si=hKO--kj3WU6fXKeT

Edward A. Ross, Roscoe Pound, Francis A. Walker, Richard T. Ely, Madison Grant, George Horace Lorimer, George Creel, H.L. Menken, H. G. Wells, and Jack London.

Those who misled us during the pandemic

"The United States suffered through two lethal waves of contagion in the past year and a half. The first was a viral pandemic that killed about one in 500 Americans—typically, a person over 75 suffering from other serious conditions. The second, and far more catastrophic, was a moral panic that swept the nation’s guiding institutions.

Instead of keeping calm and carrying on, the American elite flouted the norms of governance, journalism, academic freedom—and, worst of all, science. They misled the public about the origins of the virus and the true risk that it posed. Ignoring their own carefully prepared plans for a pandemic, they claimed unprecedented powers to impose untested strategies, with terrible collateral damage. As evidence of their mistakes mounted, they stifled debate by vilifying dissenters, censoring criticism, and suppressing scientific research."

https://www.city-journal.org/panic-pandemic

Conservative news, journalism, opinion, talk shows A - G

America’s Voice News  24/7 digital entertainment and news network, focusing on Conservative family values.  https://americasvoice.news/

Sharyl Attkinsson: Investigative Journalist. "Full Measure." https://sharylattkisson.com/

Fred Barnes: executive editor of The Weekly Standard https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/author/fred-barnes

Glenn Beck: politics, author, producer, filmmaker, and entrepreneur https://www.glennbeck.com/

Bill Bennett: pundit, politician, political theorist, author http://thebillbennettshow.com/

Brent Bozell: Founder, President Media Research Center; columnist, TV commentator https://www.newsbusters.org/people-and-organizations/brent-bozell

Breitbart News https://www.breitbart.com/

Tammy Bruce: nationally syndicated radio host, author, and political commentator. Lesbian. https://tammybruce.com/

Tucker Carlson  Fox News Opinion show host,  conservative journalist, political commentator  https://www.foxnews.com/shows/tucker-carlson-tonight

Ann Coulter: Lawyer, author, columnist, frequent TV guest https://anncoulter.com/

Steven Crowder:  American-Canadian conservative political commentator, YouTube channel and podcast https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/

Dinesh D'Souza, Indian American conservative, speaker, author, film https://www.dineshdsouza.com/

Larry Elder, black conservative talk show host, https://larryelder.com/

Richard Fernandez, Filipino-Australian, conservative columnist, https://pjmedia.com/columnist/richard-fernandez/

John Fund, senior editor at The American Spectator, National Review, https://www.nationalreview.com/author/john-fund/

Mike Gallagher, conservative radio talk host, https://mikeonline.com/

Pamela Gellar: Commentator,  Activist Counter-jihad movement https://gellerreport.com/

Jonah Goldberg,  syndicated columnist, author, political analyst, and commentator. The founding editor of National Review Online  https://jonahgoldberg.com

Sebastian Gorka, British Hungarian immigrant, conservative talk show host,  https://www.sebgorka.com

Greg Gutfield,  Fox talker, comedian, author   https://ggutfeld.com/

Media leaks and persecution

This story has a little age--3 years almost--but it's important to remember which president has really been mean and nasty to journalists--Barack Obama. https://theblacksphere.net/2017/02/media-silence-obama-stunning-record-prosecution-journalists/

I looked it up because the Committee to Protect Journalists found at least 250 journalists in 2019 in jail in relation to their work globally. None by Trump. Obama went after leakers big time; Trump not so much and the White House leaked like a sieve. Journalists didn't like it during the Obama years, but it brings in the gold for them in this administration.

https://freedom.press/news/obama-used-espionage-act-put-record-number-reporters-sources-jail-and-trump-could-be-even-worse/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/06/08/trump-rages-about-leakers-obama-quietly-prosecuted-them/

Trump and the press

What is it about this President that drives the media mavens and moguls bonkers?  They are constantly attacking him, but he hits back. Remember how GW Bush just grinned? They call President Trump mentally ill, physically unfit, a Nazi, an anti-Semite, a homophobe and racist with no evidence.  And he calls them out on Fake News with a lot of evidence.

“. . .this President has been relatively passive when it comes action on the media. John Adams, Sedition Act. Locked up journalists. Abraham Lincoln's Executive Order. When the New York newspaper prinked printed a fake Presidential proclamation, he ordered his generals to arrest the editors and the journalists and they shut down almost 300 papers. Whatever you think about, that's; what he did. Woodrow Wilson set up a whole intelligence operation against the media and a new Sedition Act of 1918.

You've got FDR going after publishers. You've got Obama going after reporters. Trump has not done any of that.”  https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/historian-victor-davis-hanson-on-why-he-supports-trump.print

Sanctimony and smears

"Foul-mouthed journalists get to pronounce on Trump’s “vulgarity,” pundits who wish him dead comment on his “hate-filled” heart, and pols and celebrities who announce their desire to beat him up are nevertheless treated as experts on presidential “temperance.” "

https://spectator.org/government-by-sanctimony-and-smears/?

The demise of journalism, a once proud profession

Michael Goodwin:  "I’ve been a journalist for a long time. Long enough to know that it wasn’t always like this. There was a time not so long ago when journalists were trusted and admired. We were generally seen as trying to report the news in a fair and straightforward manner. Today, all that has changed. For that, we can blame the 2016 election or, more accurately, how some news organizations chose to cover it. Among the many firsts, last year’s election gave us the gobsmacking revelation that most of the mainstream media puts both thumbs on the scale—that most of what you read, watch, and listen to is distorted by intentional bias and hostility. I have never seen anything like it. Not even close.

It’s not exactly breaking news that most journalists lean left. I used to do that myself. . . liberalism is baked into the journalism cake."

"For the most part, I blame The New York Times and The Washington Post for causing this breakdown. The two leading liberal newspapers were trying to top each other in their demonization of Trump and his supporters. They set the tone, and most of the rest of the media followed like lemmings."

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/2016-election-demise-journalistic-standards/

Journalists for Hillary to gather and grieve

Heard on the news that "Journalists for Hillary" are having a conference on how to lick wounds and eat their own vomit. They need a 12 step program for their addiction. Their pro-Obama hyperbole shows no abatement even though his administration set the record for hostility toward media--and not just Fox. They will probably have workshops on new ways to blame Trump for Ferguson, Baltimore and Oakland burning. Poverty, welfare and unemployment stats will be more of a challenge ...as good jobs replace part time retail and restaurant careers; they'll find those trends in pre-Trump administration. They'll scour the tips for people dying because their insurance lapsed for their untreatable, fatal illness. Journalists ridiculed, lied, made up fake news and, by golly Miss Molly, they are not going to back down now and start being the free press the Constitution guarantees us.

Sharyl Attkisson

I watched a great interview with Sharyl Attkisson-- explaining how there are campaigns to destroy reporters who don't toe the line, how the government bureaucracy extends from party to party, administration to administration, how there is incestuous relationships between staff of government and media (sometimes siblings, sometimes friends, sometimes lovers). Her new book is "Stonewalled." After 3 years, she's just now getting some of the documents on Fast and Furious she requested when she worked for CBS. The plan, she says, is to draw it out so long that eventually the public loses interest.

I’ve been reading Citizens of London by Lynne Olson, which is about WWII, and although I’m not nearly finished, I see the power of the press and the flesh already and I’m only 50 pages into the story.

http://sharylattkisson.com/

http://humanevents.com/2014/11/20/fast-and-furious-white-house-doj-targeted-sharyl-attkisson/

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/11/20/bombshell-email-proves-that-white-house-doj-targeted-reporter-sharyl-attkisson/

Musing on the scandals—some of which I’m forgetting

Just a guess, of course, but I think Sharyl Attkisson, the Emmy-award winning CBS News investigative reporter who has covered Benghazi and now thinks her computer may have been compromised, will probably not get the backing from CBS she is hoping for. After all, what's in it for CBS except the wrath of Obama?

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/05/sharyl-attkissons-computers-compromised-164456.html

What a surprise. Lois the the Leaker, the director of the Internal Revenue Service’s Exempt Organizations division, Lois Lerner, is invoking the Fifth Amendment and will not appear before Congress to answer questions about the agency’s targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups. She'll be subpoenaed. She knew a year ago (at least) what was going on.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/348973/lerner-take-5th

What is so dangerous about a group of women who find people registered to vote who list empty parking lots as a residence? For starters, it's scary for Democrats to be held accountable. It's so scary, the founders need to be audited.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/20/group-fighting-voter-fraud-among-those-waiting-on-/

Steve Miller, the departing IRS acting head, has admitted his really bad idea to “leak” the story and bury it on a Friday afternoon. Last week he denied it—or maybe walked around it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/us/politics/senate-testimony-irs-scandal.html

Justice Department names a reporter (James Rosen) a criminal, read his private e-mails and tracked his whereabouts, right on the heels of the expose of the AP phones.  MSM reporters seem to be waking up to what he crook Obama is. But not Jay Carney.

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/justice-departments-scrutiny-of-fox-news-reporter-james-rosen-in-leak-case-draws-fire/2013/05/20/c6289eba-c162-11e2-8bd8-2788030e6b44_story.html

Is WaPo reporter complicit in blaming U.S.?

So it was the fault of President Carter and all those nasty capitalists of the 1970s that these coddled, wealthy, ungrateful people were spies for Communist Cuba?

"What Walter Kendall Myers kept hidden, according to documents unsealed in court Friday, was a deep and long-standing anger toward his country, an anger that allegedly made him willing to spy for Cuba for three decades.

"I have become so bitter these past few months. Watching the evening news is a radicalizing experience," he wrote in his diary in 1978, referring to what he described as greedy U.S. oil companies, inadequate health care and "the utter complacency of the oppressed" in America. On a trip to Cuba, federal law enforcement officials said in legal filings, Myers found a new inspiration: the communist revolution.

Myers, 72, and his wife, Gwendolyn, 71, pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of conspiracy, being agents of a foreign government and wire fraud. Their arrest left friends and former colleagues slack-jawed, unable to square the man depicted in the indictment with the witty intellectual with a prep-school background they knew. Washington Post in a much too sympathetic story for my tastes by Mary Beth Sheridan

Don't you wonder about wealthy people, children of privilege and elitist educations (like our first couple) deciding that everyone should be poor like the Cubans? What kind of guilt does that?

The author of this piece apparently was really stunned 4 years ago when through her "embedded" experience with the military she discovered such shocking things about our soldiers--they were decent, patriotic, and non brainwashed. Imagine.

"First of all, she said she was "overwhelmed by the military," but she did learn by being embedded that members of our armed forces were not "blood-thirsty maniacs." Yes, she really did say that.

In fact, she said, they were "really decent people." And even "sweet." Of course, after being shot at they were eager to shoot back — a military attitude that seemed to surprise her.

She also reported that when she asked soldiers why were they in Iraq, every single one told her, "to help the Iraqi people." Again she was surprised that the military could create such a unity of purpose even though, she said, she didn't see any "brainwashing" going on. She also noted that many soldiers had no opinion about the war. They had gone where they were ordered to go, like all good soldiers. Such an attitude seemed to dazzle her as well.

She didn't have anything much to say about "reporters as citizens," but clearly she appeared to be one citizen who had very little familiarity with, or understanding of, or even quite possibly respect for the military before her tour of duty. In a way, it is kind of sad that only after some first-hand experience did she learn what most American citizens believe: that American soldiers are "decent people." And that it is those soldiers, not our journalists, after all, who protect our freedom of the press." Reporters as citizens

Heavy reporting

James Taranto took the USAToday writer to task for the sloppy writing on the figures for overweight military yesterday, but today he says it wasn't enough--the article was even more poorly researched with speculative (i.e. anti-war) conclusions than he thought.

To begin with, the study contains nothing--zilch--to back up Zoroya's contention that the trend "since the start of the Iraq war" is "yet another example of stress and strains of continuing combat deployments." And a close look at it gives further reason to doubt [Gregg] Zoroya's linkage of the findings to the Iraq effort.

So who's chubbing out? The women, and the elders--just like the rest of the population. The Army and the Marines, the bulk of the Iraq troops, have the lowest rates of obesity. I guess the press will need to find another way to slam the troops. The prisoners on Gitmo got fat on good food, too--which will probably all change when they are sent home to "reeducation camps" and then loosed to come back to us, slim and trim.

Change really is happening

"More than 144 hours into Barack Obama's presidency, the economy is still in recession, the country is still at war, and in many parts of the country it's still cold outside. Citizens are growing impatient: Wasn't President Obama supposed to bring change?

Yet one institution has changed dramatically, and in a very short time: the press. After spending the Bush years as a voice of opposition, American journalists have by and large turned on a dime and become cheerleaders for the man in power." James Taranto, January 26, 2009

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Mort and me

It's phone tag in cyberspace. I occasionally drop by the blog, Octogenarian, written by a retired journalist living the good life as a snowbird in Florida. Mort is a secular Jew who had a fascinating career and is enjoying sharing his memories while upgrading his technical skills. Like me, he does get political. And he's a liberal. Earlier this spring his blogging was a story in the Palm Beach Post which he posted at his blog. I was a bit surprised, knowing all the problems in the world and his vast experience and talent, that what irked him most was "mean-spiritedness and lack of compassion of people, especially those from the religious right." I tried to comment, but the comments had been turned off for that one, so I went to an older entry and commented that compared to some really big problems (and I cited the ones exacerbated by the liberals) this seemed like an odd complaint.

When Mort found my comment he e-mailed me to clarify, which of course I had to answer with even more documentation. However, his e-mail server bounced my message, saying it was for spam abuse. So I had to go back to his blog, leave another message that in addition to facing closed comments, I was now blocked from replying to his e-mail. He has e-mailed me saying he doesn't know why, but of course, I can't respond. Nor can I leave my other e-mail address at his blog, because if I wanted that spread all over the internet, I wouldn't be using Medscape. Here's my comments in response to "mean spirited religious right" (code words for conservative Christians, not conservative Jews or Muslims or Hindus).

I was disappointed to see you set up the strawman "religious right" as what irks you most in life. I'm an evangelical Christian and a Republican, who was a Democrat until age 60. I can't imagine that you search the dial for conservative talk shows, and you certainly can't find conservatives on the network or cable news, unless you are watching the very timid Fox News. I, on the other hand, have almost no access to fairness unless I choose Fox, which sometimes is a bit too entertaining and giggly for my tastes. I read all the major papers, but am subjected to terribly biased opinion posing as news in the NYT, Wapo and WSJ. I don't mind it at all on the OpEd page where it belongs--just don't throw it into the news reporting. Because you are a liberal, I think you see this as "normal" or the way it ought to be because people can't be trusted to judge for themselves.

I believe I saw a survey that journalists were about 12:1 liberal to conservative; but you have nothing on librarians, who are 224:1 liberal to conservative. These are the folks who buy all the anti-Bush and anti-Christian books they can get their hands on, while insisting that another view must make it through the accepted review channels of Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, both owned by the same publisher.

What irks me most isn't left wing harangues, blogs or reporting. That is so much hot air. It's the result of leftist and socialist ideas that make it through congress or into the business world that result in real damage. What irks me is millions of Africans dying of malaria because do-gooders got DDT taken off the market; what irks me is the 60% poverty rate for single women and children when it is only 3% for married women, an almost direct result of militant feminism; what irks me is the head long rush into silly, expensive regulations and crushing business decisions that global warming fundamentalists are trying to impose--it's just a new age religion in different robes; what irks me is journalists who buried on the back pages the Christians who were tortured, mutilated (disemboweled, castrated, throats cut while alive) and murdered by Turkish Muslims, when Muslim terrorists who were "subjected" to wearing women's undergarments made the front pages for weeks and months.

Republicans are weak and disorganized and religious conservatives have all the same problems as anyone else--divorce, obesity, ill health, mortgages, etc. You need to find a bigger, stronger enemy to face down, and unfortunately, I think it is going to be the anti-semitic left wing of your party.

So in an e-mail he clarified it: hate in talk radio seemed to be the culprit. Well, here again, I'm pretty sure Mort doesn't listen to Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, but I do. And I also read or watch the major media. If you watch CBS, NBC, ABC TV or read NYT, WaPo, WSJ or USAToday, you can't get away from the liberal media. You'd have to look for the conservative media--and talk shows are opinions and don't pretend to be news, balanced or otherwise. The major media vehicles publish opinion as news. That's a HUGE difference.

And I read the web sites like Media Matters, that slices and dices and dispenses the raw meat to the liberals, what they think the talk show hosts are saying. Maybe 2 lines from a 3 hour show. But this I do know. If Rush Limbaugh is a Christian, he never mentions it. Glenn Beck is open about being a Mormon. Michael Medved and Dr. Laura are very open about being observant Jews. Laura Ingraham is very open about being a Catholic. Bill Bennett is some sort of conservative Christan (Southern Baptist?), but I don't know which brand, same with Hugh Hewitt.

Parody and poking fun is not "hate speech," Mort. Pointing out inconsistencies in Michael Fox's ads for political candidates is not "hate"; just because he has a disease doesn't mean he gets a pass to lie. Although I'm sure our Democratic Congress will try to make it so. What Rosie O'Donnell says IS hate speech because you get her words combined with her hate-filled expressions on TV, but if she can find a sponsor for it, let the public decide with their consumer dollars whether to support her hatefulness. Even so, she wasn't removed for her words, but for her demands for more money.

Rush Limbaugh (the non-religious talker) is first of all an entertainer, former disc-jockey, and sportscaster. He uses phrases and voice clips from the people he parodies--like "Barack the magic Negro," a phrase from the left coast LA Times, or the Justice Brothers, sound bites of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton singing duets about victimhoodness. His term "Feminazis" is close--but still no cigar, because it was a term applied many years ago to just a couple of shrill women in the media, who in fact, do support programs and ideas that would probably result in the demise of the male gender if taken seriously. Rush will often just read the words of a liberal columnist or journalist--that's all--just read it aloud. With pauses. Giggles. Sighs. Laughter. Now is that hate speech? One of his favorite phrases is the "drive-by media" (journalists who don't actually listen to him but take pot shots) who use the phrase "mean-spiritedness."

And "lack of compassion?" Mort, there have been so many studies on the generosity of conservative Christians--they far exceed the liberals and humanists, and liberal Christians. Protestant denominations and Catholic orders take Matthew 25 very, very seriously. That is our marching orders, not the belief that we will change the world. That's why humanistic-academic social plans so often fail or make things worse in the long run--they have no roots, no deep source and just enlarge the problems they try to solve. So, here I, the librarian, just have to tell a journalist to go back and review your sources.

A WSJ story about a new test for Down Syndrome ran yesterday. Although it mentioned the number of false positives, it did not say that 90% of women whose babies tested positive for Down Syndrome chose abortion. Now that, Mort, is a liberal slant to a news story. It was what was left out.

But sometimes it is the word choice. White intermarriage. Black miscegenation. Two phrases in the same story about intermarriage of races.

Or how about these.

Global warming. Climate change.

Pro-choice. Anti-choice. Pro-abortion. Anti-life.

Iraq debacle. Iraq conflict.

Right wing conservatives. Democrats.

Lots of ways to slant the news.