The NPC Meme is the Best!

This is the craziest thing ever, and boy did it make the Twitter administrative leftists mad!

At Zero Hedge, "4Chan Sparks Mass Triggering With NPC Meme; Twitter Responds With Ban Hammer":

Gawd this is hilarious. #NPCmeme 😂😝🤣 https://t.co/uJwBnTclTe

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 17, 2018

The "weaponized autists" at 4Chan have done it again, because they can; a new meme suggesting that liberals are soulless idiots who can't think for themselves has gone viral. The concept compares Democrats to "nonplayable characters," or NPCs - the recurring characters in video games with repetitive lines and limited knowledge. Lack of an "inner voice" is a dead giveaway that someone may be an NPC.

The NPC meme essentially meant to ridicule the post-election perpetual outrage culture in which liberals simply parrot the latest talking points from their favorite pundits, who do their thinking for them.

The 4chan version is a simple greyed out, expressionless face known as "NPC Wojak" - which has triggered the left so hard that Twitter conducted a mass-banning campaign for accounts promoting the meme, and the New York Times wrote an entire article trying to figure it out.

The Times writes of the Twitter bans:

Over the weekend, Twitter responded by suspending about 1,500 accounts associated with the NPC trolling campaign. The accounts violated Twitter’s rules against “intentionally misleading election-related content,” according to a person familiar with the company’s enforcement process. The person, who would speak only anonymously, was not authorized to discuss the decision. -NYT.

There is precisely zero evidence that the accounts were spreading "intentionally misleading election-related content," so we're just going to have to take Twitter's word for it.

Um, actually, I think leftists on Twitter just couldn't handle the lolz.

If you sincerely refer to living human beings as NPCs you are a fascist, an enemy of to your own species, and basically a complete shitbag person. Dehumanization is not some cool trend of thought by Caucasian as fuck grad students, it’s the capitalist erasure of ethics.

— ◉ (@brightabyss) September 14, 2018

Fascists adopt dog whistles so quickly that as soon as one becomes recognizable to the public (like SJW) they’ve moved on, it’s not coincidence, it’s plausible deniability. “NPC” is explicitly meant to dehumanize, they’ll take advantage of lack of recognition as long as they can

— Appropriating Mummy 🎃💀👻 (@DreddByDawn) September 15, 2018

The NPC meme hit Silicon Valley so hard that they’re planning on banning it. pic.twitter.com/KVN6IWSfK0

— Faceberg (@thefaceberg) September 26, 2018

Elizabeth Warren Releases DNA Test Showing 1/1024 Native American Ancestry

This has been the big story at Memeorandum all day.

See the Boston Globe (safe link), "Warren releases results of DNA test."

And at Twitchy, "MATH doesn’t add up! It gets WORSE for Elizabeth Warren and her DNA release (hint, she’s STILL Fauxcahontas)."

MATH doesn’t add up! It gets WORSE for Elizabeth Warren and her DNA release (hint, she’s STILL Fauxcahontas) https://t.co/IdMKPdokND

— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) October 15, 2018

And from William Jacobson, at Legal Insurrection, "Elizabeth Warren DNA test does NOT prove she’s Native American, contrary to the hype."

Elizabeth Warren DNA test does NOT prove she’s Native American, contrary to the hype https://t.co/pzcnb2zsZP pic.twitter.com/24lnwn4lQZ

— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 15, 2018

How #Democrats Created Insane 'Social Justice' Mobs

From the inimitable Robert Stacy McCain, at the Other McCain, "The TrigglyPuff Party: How Democrats Created Insane ‘Social Justice’ Mobs":

"Democrats are now held hostage by the mob mentality of the identity-politics 'social justice' coalition they’ve built. ... Democrats are now the party of TrigglyPuff, of angry college girls driven to fits of insanity ..." https://t.co/1Pjz9mHXgZ pic.twitter.com/I8oo0GxvZK

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) October 14, 2018

Commenting on the irrational female rage unleashed by the Kavanaugh confirmation circus, Stephen Green remarks: “The Democrats have worked hard to lock down the Trigglypuff vote, but at what cost of even slightly more moderate voters?” But do such voters really exist?

We are more than 25 years into a cycle of increasing polarization that arguably began with Bill Clinton’s election as president. Clinton’s radicalism — remember the so-called “assault weapons” ban? — sparked a backlash that cost Democrats the control of the House that they’d held for 40 years. Everything thereafter increased the partisan divide: The budget standoff that led to the government shutdown, the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment crisis, the Florida recount in 2000, the Iraq War, the recapture of Congress by Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats, Obama’s election in 2008, the Tea Party movement, on and on.

It is not the case that America’s politics have become more divisive because the Republican Party has moved further right. Liberal pundits, commenting from within their ideological cocoons, habitually apply labels — “far right,” “extremist,” “white nationalist,” etc. — to depict the GOP as beholden to a dangerous fringe, but this is just paranoid propaganda. The typical Republican voter in 2018 is actually no more “extreme” than his father was in 1988. Nor is the policy agenda of the GOP now any more “far right” than it was in the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The cause of the increased partisan divide is not that the Republicans have moved right, but that Democrats have moved left.

What happened, when did it happen and why did it happen?

What happened?

A whole helluva lot, lol, but keep reading.

Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, Inventing the Future

Following-up, "America's New Mainline Ideology."

I do read a lot of the current Marxist revolutionary literature, but I've fallen a bit behind. (It takes a lot of time, and I've been enjoying a lot of classic fiction literature this past year.)

In any case, perhaps it's time to order some more books.

See Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work.

Democrats Becoming 'More Ruthless'

Folks are noticing, dang!

Here's the recent piece at Politico that got some pushback on Twitter the other day, plus more from the Republican National Committee Below:

After failing to stop Kavanaugh's confirmation, Democrats wonder if it's time to be more ruthless https://t.co/NyserWzlvR

— POLITICO (@politico) October 7, 2018

The Left: An Unhinged Mob. pic.twitter.com/d4YhXrAsXe

— GOP (@GOP) October 11, 2018

.@GOPChairwoman: We at the RNC certainly do not want to see people create problems around Democrat leaders or attack people in restaurants. We need a return to civility. pic.twitter.com/Ffg41tLcEf

— GOP (@GOP) October 12, 2018

America's New Mainline Ideology

This is perhaps the best explanation of "cultural Marxism' I've read. (ADDED: With the exception of Linda Kimball, "Cultural Marxism," at American Thinker back in 2007; a great piece.)

Very good.

At the Mises Institute, "Is Cultural Marxism America's New Mainline Ideology?":

Is Cultural Marxism America's New Mainline Ideology? | Antony P. Mueller https://t.co/SO4stcEbeq @realjameswoods

— Janie Johnson (@jjauthor) October 13, 2018

Another name for the neo-Marxism of increasing popularity in the United States  is cultural Marxism.” This theory says that the driving force behind the socialist revolution is not the proletariat — but the intellectuals. While Marxism has largely disappeared from the workers' movement, Marxist theory flourishes today in cultural institutions, in the academic world, and in the mass media. This “cultural Marxism” goes back to Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) and the Frankfurt School. The theorists of Marxism recognized that the proletariat would not play the expected historical role as a “revolutionary subject.” Therefore, for the revolution to happen, the movement must depend on the cultural leaders to destroy the existing, mainly Christian, culture and morality and then drive the disoriented masses to Communism as their new creed. The goal of this movement is to establish a world government in which the Marxist intellectuals have the final say. In this sense, the cultural Marxists are the continuation of what started with the Russian revolution.

Lenin and the Soviets
Led by Lenin, the perpetrators of the revolution regarded their victory in Russia only as the first step to the world revolution. The Russian Revolution was neither Russian nor proletarian. In 1917, the industrial workers in Russia represented only a small part of the workforce, which mainly consisted of peasantry. The Russian Revolution was not the result of a labor movement but of a group of professional revolutionaries . A closer look at the composition of the Bolshevist party and of the first governments of the Soviet state and its repressive apparatus reveals the true character of the Soviet revolution as a project that did not aim at freeing the Russian people from the Tsarist yoke but was to serve as the launchpad for the world revolution.

The experience of World War I and its aftermath showed that the Marxist concept of the "proletariat" as a revolutionary force was an illusion. At the example of the Soviet Union, one could also see that socialism could not function without a dictatorship. These considerations brought the leading Marxist thinkers to the conclusion that a different strategy would be required to establish socialism. Communist authors spread the insight that the socialist dictatorship must come in disguise. Before socialism can succeed, the existing culture must change. Control of the culture must precede political control.

Cultural Control Rises in Tandem with Political Control
Helping the neo-Marxists was the fact many of their efforts in taking control of culture happened parallel to the encroachment of the state on individual liberties. Over the past decades, at the same time when so-called political correctness has been on the rise, the American government obtained a vast arsenal of repressive instruments. Few Americans seem to know that the U.S. is still under emergency law that has been in force since George W. Bush used the executive privilege to declare a state of national emergency in 2001. In the same year, 9/11 opened also the path to push through the Patriot Act . From a score of around 95 points, the Freedom House "Aggregate Index of Freedom" of the United States has fallen to 86 points in 2018.

Moral Corruption
The way toward the rule of the cultural Marxists is the moral corruption of the people. To accomplish this, the mass media and public education must not enlighten but confuse and mislead. The media and the educational establishment work to put one part of the society against the other part. While group identities get more specific, the catalog of victimization and history of oppression becomes more detailed. To turn into a recognized victim of suppression is the way to gain social status and to obtain the right to special assistance, of respect and social inclusion.

The demand for social justice creates an endless stream of expenditures deemed essential — for health, education, old age, and for all those people who are "needy," "persecuted" and "oppressed," be it real or imaginary. The flood of never-ending spending in these areas corrupts the state finances and produces fiscal crises. This helps the Neo-Marxists accuse "capitalism" of all evils when, in fact, it is the regulatory state that provokes the systemic failures and when it is the excess of public debt that causes the financial fragility.

Politics, the media, and the judiciary never pause at waging the new endless wars: the war on drugs or against high blood pressure or the campaigns that assert the endless struggle against fat and obesity. The list of the enemies grows every day whether racism, xenophobia, and anti-Islamism. The epitome of this movement is political correctness, the war against having one's own opinion. While the public tolerates disgusting expositions of behavior, particularly under the cult of the arts, the list of prohibited words and opinions grows daily. Public opinion must not go beyond the few accepted positions. Yet while the public debate impoverishes, the diversity of radical opinion flourishes in the hidden.

The cultural Marxists drive society morally into an identity crisis by the means of the false standards of a hypocritical ethics. The aim is no longer the "dictatorship of the proletariat," because this project has failed, but the "dictatorship of political correctness" whose supreme authority lies in the hands of the cultural Marxists. As a new class of priests, the guardians of the new orthodoxy rule the institutions whose power they try to extend over all parts of the society. The moral destruction of the individual is a necessary step to accomplish the final victory.

Opium of the Intellectuals
The believers of neo-Marxism are mainly intellectuals. Workers, after all, are a part of the economic reality of the production process and know that the socialist promises are rubbish. Nowhere was socialism established as the result of a labor movement. The workers have never been the perpetrators of socialism but always its victim. The leaders of the revolution have been intellectual party politicians and military men. It was up to the writers and artists to conceal the brutality of the socialist regimes through articles and books and by films, music, and paintings, and to give socialism a scientific-intellectual, aesthetic and moral appearance. In the socialist propaganda, the new system appears to be both fair and productive.

The cultural Marxists believe that someday they will be the sole holders of power and be able to dictate to the masses how to live and what to think. Yet the neo-Marxist intellectuals are in for a surprise...

Still more.

Gay People Are 'F–king Terrified' to Criticize #TransCult Ideology

Arielle Scarcella's a cool chick, and actually kinda hot, even though she's lesbian.

She's something of a career sexologist, or at least she's monetized her "hobby" of sexual identity and identity politics. Robert Stacy McCain calls folks like this "occupation activists" --- that is, the make a job out of their politicized sexual identity.

Anyway, the Other McCain has a post up on Ms. Scarcella. See, "Arielle Scarcella: Gay People Are ‘F–king Terrified’ to Criticize Trans Ideology":

.@PatriarchTree "Arielle Scarcella: Gay People Are ‘F–king Terrified’ to Criticize #Trans Ideology." 😨 https://t.co/cQBxuMn6hO #TransCult pic.twitter.com/Js2gM7efDK

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 13, 2018

Arielle Scarcella has 550,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel, which makes her one of the most popular lesbian YouTubers. Some of her videos have more viewers than the average program at CNN (but let’s be honest, CNN is barely more popular than the Hallmark Channel). Her popularity is the only reason Ms. Scarcella has been able to survive telling the truth about transgender activists, who have harassed her viciously for months because of her criticism of their bizarre ideology.

In a video this week, Ms. Scarcella explained that most gay and lesbian YouTubers are “f–king terrified to even touch on an trans topics — about the blatant misogyny that the SJW trans activists promote, about how the Left is so far left at this point that they are suggesting conversion therapy and hiding it behind the agenda of ‘queer’ progressiveness, about how some bisexual YouTubers have made videos and public statements saying that our ‘genital preference’ is a whole bias, when in reality it’s not a bias, it’s not a preference, it’s our sexual orientation and it’s not something we can help, about how little gay men are actually policed for their sexual orientation in comparison to lesbians — not very much at all.”

Fear of being labelled a “TERF” (trans-exclusive radical feminist) causes many lesbian YouTubers to avoid the topic of transgenderism entirely, Ms. Scarcella explains, because SJWs (social justice warriors) like Riley Dennis have specifically targeted the lesbian community as “bigots” for rejecting relationships with men who think they’re women...

Keep reading.

Will the Democrats Wake Up?

This is great.

It reminds me of Theodore White, The Making of the President, 1960.

From Dan Balz, at WaPo, "Will the Democrats Wake Up Before 2020?":

From the Magazine: They have no unifying leader and no clear message — yet. Will the Democrats wake up before 2020?

A definitive inquiry into the state of the party. https://t.co/yGBu7cOIUb pic.twitter.com/QpgJezNKnY

— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 2, 2018

The Iowa State Fair is an obligatory stop on the road to the White House, a cultural and culinary festival of heartland sensibilities, varied livestock and all manner of unhealthy food. The stands that populate the fairgrounds offer such treats as deep-fried mac and cheese, deep-fried pickles and ice cream nachos, along with the traditional favorites of pork-on-a-stick and foot-long corn dogs. In the summer of 2015, Donald Trump descended on the fair from his helicopter and was mobbed by press and public. On a recent muggy August morning, the arrival of Steve Bullock is far less dramatic.

Bullock, 52, the second-term governor of Montana, is dressed in blue jeans, a blue button-down shirt and boots. He ambles down the main street of the fairgrounds virtually undetected. Only a few heads turn as he stops to talk with his friend Tom Miller, Iowa’s long-serving attorney general. Bullock’s political calling card these days is that he is a Democrat who won reelection by four points on the day that Trump was winning his state by 20 points. That won’t get you elected president, but it’s enough to start a conversation. Which is why Bullock is here in Des Moines in the summer of 2018: to start a conversation.

Next summer, the Iowa State Fair will be overrun by presidential candidates. This year, the pickings are slimmer — dark horses and lesser-knowns who might or might not eventually compete for the 2020 nomination. Among the Democrats who have decided to skip the fair are the big three: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Among those who have decided to show up are Rep. John Delaney of Maryland, who has already visited all of Iowa’s 99 counties; Julián Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio and former HUD secretary; Tom Steyer, the billionaire Californian on a mission to force impeachment proceedings against the president; and Michael Avenatti, the combative lawyer for adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. As a sign of the times, the swaggering Avenatti, who has never run for office, creates the biggest waves in Iowa with his message that Democrats will need a real fighter — hint! — to topple the president.

Each year, the Des Moines Register sponsors what it calls the Political Soapbox for state and national politicians. The venue consists of a small stage along the fairgrounds’ main drag, a sound system, a few bales of hay and folding chairs for spectators. Politicians take the stage for a few minutes, deliver a speech, answer questions and hope the buzz lasts long enough for them to make their way to see the famous butter cow. It does not always go well: In 2011, Mitt Romney, in a testy exchange with a fairgoer, uttered the famous line that “corporations are people, my friend,” which didn’t do much to create a regular-guy image. In 2015, Trump smartly gave helicopter rides to kids.

As Bullock takes the stage, he finds himself in competition with a children’s Big Wheel race nearby, which is another reason the Soapbox can be a humbling venue. Bullock makes a joke about the tiny three-wheelers screeching along the pavement, offers a few obligatory comments about his connections to Iowa — his mother happens to have been born in the state — and then begins to road-test a message. Trust in government has disappeared, he says. He blames it on lost faith in all institutions and the corrupting influence of money, particularly big money whose origins are hard to trace. He tells the audience, “If we want to address all of the other big issues in our electoral system, in our political system, if we really want to address income inequality, if we want to address health care, if we want to address rights, you’re not going to be able to do it until you’ve also addressed the way that money is corrupting our system.”

He talks about what he’s done in Montana, working with a Republican legislature. “If we can do this in Montana,” he says, “it underscores to me that, look, this isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue; this is an issue about the fundamental trust and faith in our government.” His short speech completed, he takes a few questions. The last person asks whether he plans to run for president. “The question is when will I decide if I’m going to do anything after I serve as governor,” he says playfully. Then more seriously he adds: “Look, I do think that I do have a story of how I’ve been able to bring people together, and I think that’s in part what our country desperately needs. … So right now, what I’m doing is listening, and that’s honestly as far as it goes.” Within 10 days, he will be in New Hampshire...

There's lots more, at the link.

Cal State Long Beach Retires 'Prospector Pete' (VIDEO)

Now the California Gold Rush is racist and imperialist. Indigenous people were wiped out, or whatever.

Via CBS News 2 Los Angeles:



And at the school's Daily 49er newspaper, "President Conoley confirms retirement of Prospector Pete."

This is one of the least offensive "mascots" I've seen for any college in the country. Long Beach State's going psycho. (*Shrugs.*)

'The Church of Social Justice has more rules than a monastery during Lent and the list grows daily. But unlike traditional morality, there is no path to redemption...'

This is excellent, from Jon Gabriel, at Richochet, "Norm MacDonald, #MeToo, and the Fatal Flaw in the New Morality":

.@normmacdonald is right: the new #MeToo morality needs to offer a path to forgiveness. My latest at @ricochet. https://t.co/mR8oCEIcBs

— jon gabriel (@exjon) September 12, 2018

The ancient Hebrews confessed the community’s sin, placed it onto a scapegoat, and restored the flawed people. Early Christians confessed to their priest or bishop, perhaps did some acts of penance, and were redeemed in the eyes of the church. For especially egregious and public sins, the process could be quite involved. But the model held across time and faith: confess to wrongdoing, repent, and be forgiven.

The new secular church enforces the first and second steps with a vengeance but offers no mechanism for the third and most important step. Louis and Roseanne both confessed and repented. And then … nothing. Perhaps both could have done more. Donating millions to a well-regarded charity. Crawl on their knees to the Hollywood sign and sacrifice an Emmy.

Even if they did, forgiveness, redemption, and restoration were not possible. Instead, they were cast out into weeping and gnashing of teeth with no way to make things right.

This latest faux outrage will be soon forgotten as the Twitter mob lurches after another celebrity’s career tomorrow. As for me, I’ll watch “Norm MacDonald Has a Show” on Netflix and continue to chill. Life’s too short for outrage.

RTWT.

Racist Serena Williams Cartoon

I've haven't posted on the U.S. Open women's final, although I was watching. Serena Williams was out of control, IMHO. The thing for me is how many people have been defending her, all the more bizarre in that Williams tried to turn it into a gender equality issue. Fact is, she's got a long history of ugly on-court outbursts and disgusting unsportsmanlike behavior. She's basically a thug.

In any case, here's the new controversy over an alleged "racist" cartoon. Australia's Herald Sun, under fire, is not backing down.

See, "Australian newspaper is defending a cartoon of Serena Williams that has been widely condemned as a racist depiction."

Australian newspaper is defending a cartoon of Serena Williams that has been widely condemned as a racist depiction. https://t.co/Br6QP3XY8Y

— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) September 12, 2018

And, for the outrage take, see Guardian U.K., "'Repugnant, racist': News Corp cartoon on Serena Williams condemned."

Also, the latest at the National Post:

'Welcome to PC World': Australian newspaper doubles down, reprints controversial cartoon of Serena Williams https://t.co/QR03sgsgsl pic.twitter.com/Zk7Qcx7kHZ

— National Post (@nationalpost) September 12, 2018

Twitter Struggles to Police Bad Actors

If there were a decent alternative I'd use it.

But that alternative is not Gab.ai, which is the home to white supremacists mostly (AFAICT).

Twitter is so bad, though, I doubt it can continue to grow and maintain viability. It's too partisan and hideously biased against conservatives.

It's a joke frankly.

But like I said, it's the place for politics on social media until a genuine alternative emerges.

At WSJ, "Inside Twitter’s Long, Slow Struggle to Police Bad Actors":

Twitter soon plans "to start showing users a picture of a tombstone in the place of a tweet that has been taken down as a way to signal that a user has violated a company policy” https://t.co/nBwoDH5TrS

— Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) September 3, 2018

When Twitter Inc. Chief Executive Jack Dorsey testifies before Congress this week, he’ll likely be asked about an issue that has been hovering over the company: Just who decides whether a user gets kicked off the site?

To some Twitter users—and even some employees—it is a mystery.

In policing content on the site and punishing bad actors, Twitter relies primarily on its users to report abuses and has a consistent set of policies so that decisions aren’t made by just one person, its executives say.

Yet, in some cases, Mr. Dorsey has weighed in on content decisions at the last minute or after they were made, sometimes resulting in changes and frustrating other executives and employees, according to people familiar with the matter.

Understanding Mr. Dorsey’s role in making content decisions is crucial, as Twitter tries to become more transparent to its 335 million users, as well as lawmakers about how it polices toxic content on its site.

In a hearing Wednesday morning before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. Dorsey will appear alongside Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg to discuss how foreign actors can use the social-media platforms to spread misinformation and propaganda. Later in the day, the House Commerce Committee will question Mr. Dorsey individually in a Republican-led look at how Twitter treats conservative voices.

The latter hearing “is about pulling back the curtain on Twitter’s algorithms, how the company makes decisions about content, and how those decisions impact Americans,” said Rep. Greg Walden (R., Ore.), the chairman of the House Commerce Committee.

Twitter and rival Facebook are increasingly caught in a Catch-22 situation—criticized by some users for allowing hateful posts, but blasted by others for removing content because it curtails free speech.

Twitter has taken a different approach than Facebook, which has hired thousands of content reviewers in the last couple of years to review posts and built out technology to flag inappropriate content. Twitter has far less staff and typically only investigates harassment and abuse that has been reported by users.

Last month, after Twitter’s controversial decision to allow far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to remain on its platform, Mr. Dorsey told one person that he had overruled a decision by his staff to kick Mr. Jones off, according to a person familiar with the discussion. Twitter disputes that account and says Mr. Dorsey wasn’t involved in those discussions.

Twitter’s initial inaction on Mr. Jones, after several other major tech companies banned or limited his content, drew fierce backlash from the public and Twitter’s own employees, some of whom tweeted in protest.

A similar chain of events unfolded in November 2016, when the firm’s trust and safety team kicked alt-right provocateur Richard Spencer off the platform, saying he was operating too many accounts. Mr. Dorsey, who wasn’t involved in the initial discussions, told his team that Mr. Spencer should be allowed to keep one account and stay on the site, according to a person directly involved in the discussions.

Twitter says Mr. Dorsey doesn’t overrule staffers on content issues. The company declined to make Mr. Dorsey available...

Keep reading.

U.S. Officials Cracking Down on Illegal Immigrants Using Fake Documents to Secure Legal Status

The U.S. is seizing documents of so-called "citizens" along the U.S.-Mexico border. It turns out that loads of illegals are claiming dual citizenship --- citizenship in Mexico, where they were born, and citizenship in the U.S. --- where they're using fraudulent papers to scam U.S. taxpayers and help Democrats win office.

The Other McCain has the story, "Fake News, Real Hate":

Fake News, Real Hate: https://t.co/kJoWUFvkyd via @PatriarchTree pic.twitter.com/PhGYbG1b2v

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) September 3, 2018

When President Trump attacks the liberal media as “fake news,” this is treated by the media as a threat to freedom of the press. However, it is the press itself which, by its deliberately one-sided partisan approach to news, is destroying its own credibility. The transparent biases of the media — e.g., CNN’s role as the “Clinton News Network” in 2016 — are not merely harmful to their own journalistic integrity; they are a threat to democracy itself. “Fake news” is bad for America.

Consider the case of a Washington Post article about efforts by U.S. immigration officials to prevent illegal entry into the country by those using fraudulent documents. This article by Kevin Sieff claims that “U.S. citizens are increasingly being swept up by immigration enforcement agencies.” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert denounced the Post article as “dishonest,” and declared: “This is an irresponsible attempt to create division and stoke fear among American citizens while attempting to inflame tensions over immigration.”

The central claim of Sieff’s article — that there is a “surging” number of people being denied U.S. passports as part of a Trump administration “crackdown” — is false. According to State Department figures, the approval rate for passport applications involving disputed birth certificates has actually increased, from 64.1% in 2014 to 74.2% so far in 2018. Obviously, passport denials cannot be “surging,” if the approval rate is increasing; Seiff’s article is therefore “fake news” — partisan propaganda, an anti-Trump hit job disguised as journalism.

Sieff constructed a textbook example of fraudulent “reporting.” For example, he treats as authoritative the claims of two immigration lawyers in Texas, one of whom says that cases of denied passports are “skyrocketing,” and another who asserts that he is aware of “probably 20 people” who are U.S. citizens that have been sent to “detention centers” by the Trump administration. These anecdotal claims were accepted as fact by Sieff, who nevertheless was unable to identify even one such case by name, so it is impossible to verify if any such cases actually exist.

What is the truth? State Department spokeswoman Nauert explained...

Keep reading.

Selena Zito Under Attack

This is American politics encapsulated.

When you don't like the findings or conclusions, destroy the messenger. And that's what leftists are trying to do to Salena Zito.

This HuffPost hit piece, from scuzzy young leftist (who can't shine Salena's shoes), embeds the anonymous troll twitter attack that got this whole thing going. Ms. Salena was on Face the Nation today and was able respond.

i tried to talk to salena zito about her reporting https://t.co/NCMxUPRFtp

— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) August 30, 2018

My editors "stand behind my work and so do I," @SalenaZito tells @margbrennan, following an article calling into question a lot of Zito's work pic.twitter.com/MlSIVTltxQ

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) September 2, 2018

Ariana Grande 'Groped' at Aretha Franklin Memorial

It does look like this "bishop" grabbed a little tittie there.

At the BBC:

Aretha Franklin bishop sorry after 'groping' Ariana Grande https://t.co/QA3FyDYand

— deray (@deray) September 1, 2018

Also, at the Sun U.K., "OOOH ARI! Ariana Grande goes topless in nothing but body paint for cover of new single God Is A Woman: The pop star shed her clothes for a sexy new shoot to promote her new music."

'Social media, metrics, bad faith readers, columnists, instant and bad takes, blogosphere nostalgia, and online abuse have created an op-ed internet culture...'

At n + 1, "The New Reading Environment":

Grouchy / interesting piece in @nplusonemag on the op-ed's post-Trump renaissance and the weird longevity of op-ed pages — "Everything is an op-ed now. The op-edization of all writing should have rendered its traditional purveyors redundant....."https://t.co/VDWCg246of pic.twitter.com/2Kr1hG26Hr

— james crabtree (@jamescrabtree) August 28, 2018

Since Donald Trump’s election, new prominence has been given to an otherwise deranged and degraded form: the op-ed. The Times op-ed page — along with its basic best friend, the Washington Post op-ed page, and its evil, basement-dwelling older brother, the Wall Street Journal op-ed page — should have gone the way of the classifieds section. Instead it exerts a malevolent gravitational pull, delivering with punishing regularity an endless stream of annoying and offensive provocations.

The irony of the op-ed’s depressing reemergence is that everything is an op-ed now. The op-edization of all writing should have rendered its traditional purveyors redundant. Why read a Times columnist when you can read the same opinion delivered with more style and energy almost anywhere else? But even as internet writers refine and defend and reiterate their opinions — an archipelago of converging takes — so-called traditional outlets have consolidated their influence...

RTWT.

What Happened to the Liberal Arts?

Heather Mac Donald's new book is out on September 4th, at Amazon, The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.

And see the roundup on Ms. Mac Donald at AoSHQ, "Late Summer Saturday Open Thread August 25."

And at Prager University:

Adam Housley, Los Angeles-Based Reporter for Fox News, Quits Network Amid Objections to 'Talking-Head Panels' Focusing More and More on President Trump

I still love Fox News. I just don't watch it that much any more, for these very reasons.

At Politico, "Second Fox News reporter leaves amid objections to network: In the Trump era, hard reporting is being crowded out by opinionated panels, current and former staffers say":

"objections to the Trump-era Fox News are widely shared within the network’s reporting corps, according to current and former employees of the network.” https://t.co/WHFgXzFD0i

— Jon Passantino (@passantino) August 24, 2018

Another on-air reporter is leaving Fox News over frustrations with the direction and tone of the network, the second in the last three weeks to defect for those reasons.

Adam Housley, a Los Angeles-based reporter who joined Fox in 2001, felt there was diminished opportunity at the network for reporters and disapproved of tenor of its on-air discussion, according to two former Fox News employees with knowledge of his situation.

Housley believed that as the network’s focus on Trump has grown — and the number of talking-head panels during news shows proliferated — it had become difficult to get hard reporting on air, according to one of those former employees.

“He’s not doing the type of journalism he wants to be doing,” the former employee said. “And he is unhappy with the tone of the conversation of the channel.”

Housley’s objections to the Trump-era Fox News are widely shared within the network’s reporting corps, according to current and former employees of the network...

Still more.

The U.S. Maintains the Most Generous Immigration Policies in the World (VIDEO)

Here's Michelle Malkin, for Prager University:

Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We?

*BUMPED.*

Following-up, "Progressives Outraged at Laura Ingraham's Opening Segment Slamming Left's Program to Remake America (VIDEO)."

It's not like Ms. Laura was saying anything new. Conservatives have been sound the tocsin for decades. Here's Pat Buchanan's book from 2002, The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization.

And don't forget Jean Raspail's 1973 novel, The Camp of the Saints.

Also, Victor Davis Hanson, Mexifornia: A State of Becoming.

More recently, see Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam.

And my favorite, which was eye-opening at the time (2004), Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity.