Biden has Cancer

It has been reported that President Biden has an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has metastasized to his bones.  Was this only discovered since he left office or has this been kept under wraps for longer?  Back in 2022, President Biden claimed that he had cancer that had been caused by oil refinery pollution in Delaware.  Was this a case of the President going off script, but revealing something that was true?  Has he had cancer since 2022?  If the White House and the media were so busy keeping signs of senility out of the news, what are they odds that they also opted not to talk about a cancer diagnosis.

Defund NPR & PBS

There is no shortage of media in the United States today.  When I was a kid, there were 7 TV channels and PBS.  That was a lot.  I remember visiting my grandparents and they only had 4 channels.  In those days, you could argue that the government should subsidize some programming that would not be aired on the limited stations.  That is not true now.  We have a glut of programming on a vast array of topics.  Niche programming abounds.  If you can't find your thing on TV, the internet - YouTube, Hulu, Rumble, and so on will have it.  Government-funded media was always questionable and is now just wasteful.  Any programming that has a sufficient audience will find private media to air it.  There is no reason for the American taxpayer to subsidize programming for anyone.

Ahead of My Time

Four years ago, I asked if Biden would bow out.  Why?  Because it was obvious that he was going senile.  What is interesting is what I supposed might happen:

Having won the nomination, he could admit to his mental decline and gracefully bow out. The Democratic Convention has a floor fight to pick the nominee. That could generate a lot of excitement though it does have the problem of nixing the primary results. ...  If Biden does bow out, Democrats will angle for a black woman. Then, any criticism of her - or her policies - will be either racist or sexist, possibly both.

Thanks to the Democrat-aligned media, Joe's dementia was kept under wraps for nearly his entire term.  Not until his ill-advised June debate - carefully timed to take place after the nomination was secured but still leaving plenty of time to boost his replacement - did the country have clear evidence of his mental decline.  The Democrats did not bother with a floor fight and simply elevated Kamala Harris - a black woman - to the top spot.

There is a new wrinkle though.  Joe was replaced because he was mentally impaired (and should be removed by the 25th amendment), but his replacement has adopted his 2020 campaign strategy: avoid the press.  Kamala Harris has not had an unscripted event since being named the nominee.  The basement strategy won last time; let's try it again. 

Don't Trust the Media

The new story from Israel is the discovery of 40 dead babies, some of them beheaded.  If true, that is Nazi level of evil.  However, I remember when Iraqis supposedly tossed babies out of incubators during the invasion of Kuwait.  It was a big story.  The young woman who testified was quite convincing.  It wasn't true but it sure helped sway the American public for the Gulf War (1990-1991).  Though I have seen pictures of dead Israelis and even tourists in this conflict, I have not seen the beheaded babies.  Of course, I don't want to see beheaded babies, but the media has proved so unreliable that I don't believe it.  What Palestinian could be so stupid as to not realize how devastating such an action would be?

If this is not true, then Israel is perpetrating one of the darkest public relations operations ever.  As if what has been done was not bad enough, we'll stack on 40 dead babies.  That will get the public on our side.  That is a vile way to win support.  Not as terrible as what Hamas has done, but still vile.

Again, I don't want to see pictures but, until I do, this is a bogus story.

Perception vs. Reality

In this YouTube video, the professor asks the class how many people were killed by police in 2016.  Their estimates are surprisingly good.  Then he asks how many were black?  Here, their estimates are more the twice as high as the actual number.  How many were unarmed?  Again, the estimates are wildly high.  Why does everyone have the same overinflated misconception?  Several offer the media as the cause.  The media will focus on the relatively few cases of unarmed victims and never account for the vastly larger number of armed ones.  In the end, the professor notes that the odds of an unarmed black man being killed by police are 0.6 in a million.  Sure, that's more than it should be, but it is not what is portrayed in the media.

Who Picks What is News?

There is a scene in A Beautiful Mind where John Nash (Russell Crowe) asks Alicia (Jennifer Connelly) to pick a shape.  She chooses an umbrella.  Looking at the stars, he then picks out a number of stars that form an umbrella.  She is impressed and asks him to find an octopus.  This reminds me of the news.  There are countless events that happen around the country and the world every day, but there is only so much room on the front page or the evening news.  Someone has to choose which of those countless events are newsworthy.  Let's just consider murders.  If the media gave every homicide equal weight, the picture that would be painted is thus (FBI Crime Statistics 2020):

Consider that the African American population is 14% of the nation but accounts for 50% of the offenders and 56% of the victims.  Black Lives Matter would have us believe that white cops are gunning down unarmed blacks.  In fact, gang members are killing other gang members.  Given the option between stopping all the cop shootings or all the gang shootings, which would result in a better outcome for the African American community?  What does the news imply?

Of course, the editors must pick and choose among the stories of the day, but it is incumbent upon the news consumer to realize that someone made this particular selection.  The selection inevitably reflects the views of the selector.  If one does not sample news from multiple sources with different points of view, the 'news' is, in fact, propaganda.  That may not be intentional, but that would be the effect.

Russell Brand, Right-Winger

As a performer, I was never impressed by Russell Brand.  I saw him on Saturday Night Live about 10 years ago and was unimpressed.  He's so manic and not particularly funny.  British comedy, right.  Get Him to the Greek was one of those rated R comedies that made liberal use of profanity as a punchline.  Oh, the humor.  His one performance I have enjoyed was that of Dr. Nefario in the Despicable Me franchise.  Of note, you would never know it was Russell Brand if not for the billing in the credits.

On the side, he has been a political activist, as most entertainers these days are.  He's called for the legalization of drugs, massive redistribution of wealth, supported the Green Party, supported the Labour Party, attacked Nigel Farage of UKIP (pro-Brexit), and called the Conservative Party a danger.  Standard leftwing talking points all.  Like him or not, he has all the bona fides of a leftwing partisan.  And yet, on a list of Joe Rogan guests that divides them as left-wing and right-wing, Brand was listed on the right!  He addressed this in a video on his YouTube channel.  The video is almost 3 moths old, but I only just learned of it.

Brand outlines his views, which are still classically leftist, but he has taken to attacking the ruling class of either side.  The left-wing parties are more often just elitists who espouse views that they do not then enact.  He's anti-war and feels homeless.  He wants to regulate big pharma while the main parties are in the pocket of big pharma.  What party does one join to roll-back the surveillance state?

It is no longer a left vs. right issue.  It is insider vs. outsider and has been for quite some time.  Glenn Reynolds described it as Front Row Kids vs. Back Row Kids.  The new nobility has control of government.  Their acolytes dominate the media and will denounce any who threaten the status quo.  Welcome to the outside, Russell.

Abusive Relationships

I saw this posted on Instapundit today: 15 Signs of an abusive relationship.  Let's check them out!

1. Stop you from seeing friends and family.  Yes, state and local government have been putting a lot of effort into this one.

2. Won't let you go out without permission.  This one has been worse in some places.  California sent police to arrest a man who was surfing at a deserted beach.

3. Tell you what to wear.  Yes, masks are the new government-mandated fashion accessory.

4. Monitor you phone or emails.  Well, this one is an old one as we learned thanks to Edward Snowden.  That abuse is old hat.

5. Control the finances or won't let you work.  Ha!  That unemployment rate sure did skyrocket.  In some states, the refusal to allow businesses to open persists.  Some states are more abusive than others.

6. Control what you read, watch and say.  As with the infamous rendition regarding terrorists, the government has outsourced this one to the 'private' sector.  First it was Alex Jones, then Milo Yiannopoulos, and now the sitting president.  Even competitors to the government sanctioned monopolies have been banned (i.e. Parler).  Say the wrong thing and you get canceled.  YouTube channels with the wrong views have been removed.  

7. Monitor everything you do.  If you have a cell phone, the government or their 'private' lieutenants know where you are and probably what you are doing.

8. Punish you for breaking the rules, but the rules keep changing.  All last year, it was fine to riot and government crackdowns were stomping on 'mostly peaceful protests.'  Now riots are sedition and government crackdowns mandatory.

9. Tell you it is for your own good, and that they know better.  The government is locking us up for our own safety.  Really, we're too irresponsible to make an informed decision.

10. Don't allow you to question it.  You know, the recent election seemed a little fishy.  When Hillary complained about Russian interference, we had a 2 year investigation.  How about...  Hello?  Huh, the line went dead.  Huh, I just got banned from Twitter.  That's odd.

11. Tell you you're crazy and no one agrees with you.  Yeah, if you don't agree with the mainstream narrative, you're some sort of loon.  See, there is only one way of seeing things and alternate viewpoints are just a sign of insanity.

12. Call you names or shame you for being stupid or selfish.  Yes, the fun arguments where one person says a country needs borders and the other person says 'racist!'  Hey, the US government should consider the interests of American citizens before foreign citizens.  'Fascist!'  Good times.

13. Gaslight you, challenge your memory of events, make you doubt yourself.  Just look at how many people believe things that didn't happen.  Drink bleach?  Never happened.  Nazis are fine people?  Never happened.  Russian collusion?  Never happened.  Nonetheless, half the population believes them.

14. Dismiss your opinions.  If only it was merely dismissing.  Banning is the current tactic.  There are calls to blacklist people with the wrong opinions.

15. Play the victim.  If things go wrong, it's all your fault.  I've talked about this one before.  If the government shuts down when a Republican is president and Democrats control Congress, it is the president's fault.  However, if a Democrat is president and the Republicans control Congress, then it would be the Congress's fault.  And the Democrats are always victim of Republican partisanship.  At least, that's how the press reliably reports it.

Stop the abuse!

Tim Pool

I've been watching a lot of Tim Pool lately.  Though Tim is on the left in political views, he is open about it and makes considerable efforts to play the news straight.  He has an analysis channel where he just reports news - mostly - and a second channel where he often vents.  What is interesting about Tim is that, though disposed to be a Democrat, he is annoyed by the tactics the Democrats have been using of late.  He has repeatedly reported that the amount of left on right violence far exceeds any right on left violence.  His videos tend to be 10 to 15 minutes long providing a lot of depth to the topic with multiple sources; he often reads a news story verbatim.

 

Tim is open about his political views so the viewer can factor in any bias.  This makes him dramatically more trustworthy than many journalists who present themselves as objective and unbiased despite always spinning stories in an anti-Republican or pro-Democrat narrative.  Tim doesn't do that.  Tim is what a journalist should be.

 

Highly recommended.  Check it out:

 

Timcast on YouTube

Twitter Strategy?

Trump's latest Twitter outrage is a series of personal attacks on Mika and Joe from MSNBC's Morning Joe.  One is 'crazy' and the other is 'psycho' and Mika's cosmetic surgery was a mess when she visited Mar a Lago.  What is the point of these ad hominem attacks?  It's one thing to dispute the accuracy or tone of the reporting but another to descend to name-calling.  Moreover, Morning Joe is a low-ratings show and Trump may boost those ratings with all the attention he is giving them.  What is the point?

 

What if Trump's ravings are a strategy.  As soon as he unleashes one of these nutty tweets, the various news outlets fall all over themselves to denounce him and spend a couple of days pondering his mental state.  While the press obsess, Trump moves on to other things.  It's like he tosses a stick and the media chases after it for a while before getting back to reporting.  Are these just staged distractions, like some magic act that convinces the audience to look where the trick is not happening?  Is Trump creating an irresistible story for the media so that they will not have time to report his agenda?

President Held to Higher Journalistic Standards?

Before the news of the London terror attack was confirmed, President Trump retweeted a headline from the Drudge Report about a van mowing down 20 people.  NBC was quick to point out that the news was unconfirmed.  Russia collusions anyone?  That still hasn't been confirmed but has nonetheless been front page news for months.  How many unconfirmed stories - often provided by anonymous sources via leaks - have been reported and then proved false?  Trump has a rocky relationship with facts and truth but the news media are no better.  It would be nice if the media practiced the standard that they are demanding of Trump.

Airline Hell?

Ever since the man was dragged off the plane, there has been an uptick in stories about how bad the airlines are.  What does this mean?  I see two likely scenarios:

One: Airlines have become terrible recently.  Not that airlines have been great, but for some reason they have descended to a less tolerable level of customer service.  The news media has recognized this and is giving exactly the amount of coverage that it merits.

Two: The dragging story was a ratings winner and the media are currently in a feeding frenzy for more stories that reflect badly on the airlines.  Thus, though the level of service is no different from what it has been, the added attention is highlighting what wasn't considered newsworthy before the dragging.

 

My vote is for scenario 2.  More than a million people fly each day and it is a virtual certainty that a few of those people had a bad or even disastrous experience.  Right now, those 1 in a million stories are getting front page treatment and painting the airlines as villains.  The airlines are cruel capitalists who don't care about their customers and the proof is that they do not achieve a 100% satisfaction rating.

 

The dragged passenger has settled with United, as all knew he would.  This should be a lesson:  Never go willingly, make them drag you and there is a payday in your near future.

Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

Many years ago, I worked at a dry cleaners.  It was not a demanding job but I soon had a working knowledge of the business.  Most interesting was that a liquid was used to clean the clothes!  Sometime while I was working at the cleaners, the local TV news had a story on the sexist pricing practices of dry cleaners.  Huh?  The reporter noted that skirts cost more than slacks and that blouses cost more than shirts.  Proof!  Of course, that was nonsense.  So many slacks came through the shop that we had a special press that was designed to press slacks.  By contrast, skirts had so much variance that they needed to be hand pressed.  A woman's blouse in the 1980s often had shoulder pads and was silk or rayon where a man's shirt was just cotton and run through a normal laundry machine.  Likewise, we had a special press for business shirts but blouses had to be hand pressed.  This doesn't even consider the pleats!  The reporter didn't have a clue.  I shook my head but then watched the next news segment as though it was accurate, thus experiencing the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.

 

As the years accumulated, I would again come across news stories that happened upon a subject where I was knowledgeable and it would be biased, inaccurate, or completely wrong.  And yet, I would continue to read the newspaper or watch the news to get informed, assuming that the sources were accurate regarding subjects where I had no expertise.  It took about a decade after the dry cleaners incident before I learned to distrust the media.

 

A good rule is to find a source of news that has demonstrated accuracy in fields I know and trust that they are equally accurate in fields I don't know.  As long as the source demonstrates accuracy and knowledge, I'll watch, listen, or read even when I disagree with the conclusions.  I'll even accept bias, as long as it's out in the open.  Interpreting the facts differently is fine, misrepresenting the facts is unacceptable.

End the Pomp

President Trump has announced that he will not be attending the White House Correspondence Dinner.  Good.  I don't like the idea of the executive branch being chummy with the media.  Events of this sort created the Washington Establishment.  Let's get rid of some of these pointless traditions around the executive.  Trump shouldn't throw the first pitch when Baseball Season starts, a tradition that dates back to President Taft in 1910.  Of course, Trump already threw out the first pitch in 2006 anyway.  Pass on the Easter Egg Roll -  which goes all the way back to 1878 or 1814 depending on source - or just relegate that to the First Lady.  Don't pardon the Thanksgiving turkey, a practice begun by President Truman in 1947.  The president is an elected official, not a monarch.  Let's strip away the pomp and circumstance and deflate the Presidency to what it was intended.

Media Suicide

During the campaign, an intelligence report that could not be corroborated was circulating.  No one published because nothing could be confirmed.  The report revealed that the Russians were in frequent contact with Trump to provide him dirt on his opponents.  If this was to be believed, Trump is a traitor.  The most spectacular bit in the report had Trump hiring Russian prostitutes to urinate on a bed in the Moscow Ritz Carlton because Barack and Michelle Obama had slept there.  Still unable to prove any of it, Buzzfeed ran with the story and CNN covered Buzzfeed.  Pranksters on 4Chan and Reddit reveled.

 

It turns out that a Trump supporter wrote the report and sent it out to see if anyone would report it.  Weeks went by and no one took the bait.  Responsible journalists desperately wanted to report something this juicy but none of it could be proved.  In fact, some of it was demonstrably false.  Even so, Buzzfeed finally decided to go with the story, even declaring that it was unproven hearsay from entirely anonymous sources.  Trump pounced!  A clearer case of fake news would be hard to find.  By offering a fake story that was this outlandish, the media has shattered an already fractured credibility.  If Trump now sells arms to Russia and China, he can just claim fake news again.  As I have said in a previous post, trust is fragile and the media has been exposed through the Podesta email hacks (the contents of which have not been refuted) and now this.  Why trust anything the media has to say about Trump?

Here is the opening of the BuzzFeed story:

A dossier, compiled by a person who has claimed to be a former British intelligence official, alleges Russia has compromising information on Trump. The allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors.

This is the kind of introduction that sees an editor kill the story, not print it.  Of course, the story has over 5 million views.  True or not, it has been a boon for the website.

The Scandal that Wasn't

Thanks to WikiLeaks, it has been demonstrated that members of the media have colluded with the Clinton campaign to improve her electoral chances, a stellar violation of all putative journalistic standards.  The response from the majority of the media?  Ostracism?  Dismissal?  No, just an indifferent shrug.  This should be a career-ruining scandal for all involved and yet it has provoked little more than yawns among the corrupt journalists' colleagues.  They all do it and none are in a position to cast stones.  However, had any of them done the same for Trump, that person would be a pariah.

 

As noted in previous blogs, the media is either a lapdog or an attack dog depending on which party is in power.  Being distrustful of government, I want an attack dog that challenges every encroachment and every move of government.  The only way that happens is when Republicans are in office.  That is the unfortunate truth.

Polls to Bludgeon the Voters

WikiLeaks just keeps revealing the corruption of the system.  Here is an email chain where it is made clear that polling exists to shape public opinion, not measure it.  Intentional over-sampling to 'convince' voters that their candidate is way behind - and thus depress that candidates eventual votes - is common practice.  Not only that, but the Clinton Campaign is offering pointers on how to rig the polls for maximum effect.  Of course, this isn't new.  The media called the state of Florida for Al Gore while polls were still open (different time zone) in the Republican-leaning panhandle of the state.  How many votes were suppressed by doing that?  Was that accidental?  Had the state not been prematurely called, would we have completely avoided the fiasco that followed?

WikiLeaks has also shown that the Mainstream Media is all-in for Hillary.  The Center for Public Integrity found that 96% of the money given to campaigns by journalists has gone to the Clinton campaign.  That their reporting and polling is beneficial to the Democrats therefore comes as no surprise.  It has long been so but only now has it been exposed so clearly.  And yet the media dodges stories that should be HUGELY newsworthy because those very stories reflect so poorly on the news media.

Media Bias Demonstrated Yet Again

Here is a brief but enlightening article that shows how much money the 'unbiased' and 'objective' media gave to each of the candidates in the race.  Hillary received "more than 96 percent" of the contributions given by media.

With that in mind, consider the sudden flood of attacks on Trump that - if true - are less serious than the attacks attributed to Bill Clinton.  Was there a surge of such reports against Clinton in October of 1992?  No.  Why not?  The media is populated largely by Democrats or Democrat-leaning 'journalists.'  Judith Miller offers an explanation here:

Is it any wonder that Republicans are under constant assault while Democrats can rarely do wrong?  If the media showed half the enthusiasm for any one of Hillary's scandals, her campaign could be crippled.  Her only hope is that Trump can be made more odious than she is.  Certainly possible but not as easy as one might expect.

Dodging Questions

Considering that the media are hammering Trump for such things as joking that maybe the Russians could provide Hillary's missing emails while at the same time ignoring the pay-for-play scandal that shows strong ties between State Department actions and Clinton Foundation donations, why is Hillary avoiding a comparatively friendly press?  If she cannot face a largely sympathetic media, what is she going to do when faced by the obnoxious Trump in a debate?  She is going to hope most people tune into the football instead.  Looking at the email scandals, the resurfacing of Bill's sex scandals, apparent health troubles (coughing fits and unsteady on her feet), and Benghazi parents' lawsuit, Hillary might be a glass candidate.  She looks strong and more than likely to win but her campaign is fragile, like an impressive glass spire that might all come tumbling down.  Trump hasn't even started buying ads yet and Rasmussen shows only a 1 point gap between them.  This could all turn on a dime.

The Nominee Strikes Back

The press jumped on Trump's claim that he raised $6 million for veterans in his rally back in January.  Trump replied by jumping on the press.  He held a press conference in which he hammered the media, calling them sleazy and dishonest.  It is a moment like this when I really like Trump.  For decades, I have seen the media hound Republicans about things that they ignore in Democrats.  Why aren't these same reporters quizzing Hillary about the Clinton Foundation?  The mainstream media is composed almost exclusively of Democrats.  Republican voters know this and have been frustrated by how Republican candidates just accepted it without comment.  When speaking to George Stephanopolous, Trump reminded the viewer that Stephanopolous was a Clinton operative.  Trump must also have taken note of the huge boost that Newt Gingrich received in the 2012 campaign when he blasted the media for 'gotcha' questions.  The Republican base knows that the media is just as much the enemy as the Democrats are.  The base is so starved for a Republican who fights that it has nominated a marginal Republican to get that long-missing trait.  Romney made a passable impression of a doormat, especially when he let Candy Crowley derail him in the third debate.  Though there are many other Republicans I would prefer to have as president, I really appreciate Donald Trump as a nominee who won't just sit back and let the media walk on him.  Unlike Romney, he strikes back.  As Lincoln said when asked to remove Grant from command: "I can't spare this man; he fights."