Errant Nonsense

Last Thursday, the New York Times published a damning exposé about how Facebook’s two most senior executives engaged in a concerted and deliberate scheme to shield from the public the extent of the company’s data breaches and then attempted to minimize the deleterious effects the fallout from these revelations would have for the company.

The portrait that emerges of CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO, Sheryl Sandberg, is not a flattering one. Their attempts at damage control have backfired, prompting calls for substantive regulations that will reign in the company in many areas where they have abused their unchecked and unfettered power.

Despite all the outcry from liberals, the most important aspect of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal was its impact on demystifying the company and exposing the scope and extent of its surreptitious business practices. The privacy scandal has revealed the enormous gulf between the company’s high-minded persona and the devious business practices in which it engages. It’s allure and image as a “tech” company has been permanently punctured.

When the story broke, the delayed reaction of the company was perplexing — almost bizarre. While Mark Zuckerberg emerged slowly from his cocoon and took most of the incoming fire from the resultant public outcry, his Lieutenant, Sheryl Sandberg, was inexplicably MIA. Instead of “leaning-in,” media darling Sandberg, chose to hide out. Since the revelations resulting from the privacy scandal had the potential to unravel the company’s core business operations with dire consequences for its ability to sustain its growth into the future, the company’s response, while unjustifiable, in hindsight, is understandable.

Here’s the dirty little secret: Facebook’s business model is fundamentally sleazy. It misappropriates customers personal private informant and sells or transfers that data to third parties without its user’s knowledge or consent. There is nothing “high tech” about Facebook. It is nothing more than a giant network that functions as a worldwide advertising platform. That’s it. Zuckerberg’s transparently phony act of appearing at shareholders meetings in a T-shirt to create the image of himself as a Steve Jobs visionary doesn’t change that fact.

The extent to which Facebook tracks individual’s interactions with the internet was previously unknown. We now know that Facebook’s tracking tentacles extend and record even the web browsing history of those who are not on its site. This has now prompted a question that for almost a decade was never asked: what right does Facebook have to collect information on which sites a person visits without their knowledge or approval?

Apple CEO Tim Cook was correct when he said that Facebook’s product is its users. Indeed, the company’s ability to generate revenue is directly related to it unencumbered ability to transfer and sell to third party’s consumers private information.

Throughout its history, Facebook has had the great fortune of being able to operate in an environment of complete laissez-fair, without any burdensome regulations or oversight. In short, it has run its operations with impunity for over a decade. The company has profited enormously through [click to continue…]

Lost amidst all the uproar and sanctimonious indignation within the mainstream media about Trump’s revoking CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta’s White House pass, is the interesting notion the political media is not a “free” press, but is in effect, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party.

In my book, How Trump’s Politics Changed the Mainstream Media-Democratic Party-Complex, I make the compelling argument that the idea the mainstream media, acts in the capacity of a free press, whose duty it is to report the news to encourage an informed citizenry, is preposterous.

Here is an excerpt from the chapter that describes how the press debased themselves during the election by openly colluding with the Clinton campaign.

The Press Corps: Hillary’s Cheerleaders

Those who earnestly believe Trump is an enemy of a free press, would do well to review and digest the astounding partiality exhibited by the media during the election, including at times, outright collusion with the Clinton campaign. An unbiased analysis of the political media’s Hillary cheerleading will demonstrate Trump was fully justified in treating the press corps with disdain when he assumed office because of the rampant bias and Get-Trump agenda of the mainstream media during the later stages of the election.

During the election, Hillary’s Scooby Doo van was treated by a craven press corps as the 21st century equivalent of the royal carriage. Reporters, on cue, would chase down the vehicle and when Her Majesty emerged, they would hang on to her every word, which due to her ongoing email scandal, were sparse. Hillary peremptorily dismissed journalists, her lips sealed and they welcomed the abuse. Hillary treated her courtiers with appropriate disdain because she knew she was immune from any real probing questions or criticism because those who purportedly speak truth to power, in the end, were all rooting for the home team. The interaction of reporters with a haughty Hillary demonstrated the relationship was one of unrequited love.

At first the media’s love affair was expressed by a blithe indifference to cover stories that would be harmful to the Clinton campaign, or by intentionally mischaracterizing her scandals as nothing more than the rumblings of the vast right-wing conspiracy. Later, when Donald Trump, whom the press treated as a novelty item or an entertaining circus clown, began to threaten Hillary’s return journey to the White House, the policy of a virtual blackout on negative Hillary stories [click to continue…]

The petulant display on the part of CNN’s Jim Acosta at the White House press conference recently demonstrates why the mainstream media is held in such low esteem.

During his protracted discussion with president Trump, the insufferable Acosta did what he does best: filibusters and grandstands. It is impossible to discern a legitimate question out of his extensive oration.

As predictably obnoxious and rude was Acosta’s behavior, I think it was unwise for the White House to suspend his press pass, as it instantly made him a martyr with his colleagues in the media. Trump should have ignored him and called on other reporters repeatedly, even if Acosta continued to hog the microphone.

Though one can find fault with Trump’s decision to evict Acosta, what is both disturbing yet telling is that not one of the reporters in the White House briefing room took Acosta to task for his monopolizing the floor.

Even if fellow members of the press vehemently disagreed with Trump’s decision, they could have at least demonstrated a modest measure of disapprobation with Acosta’s unruly behavior. This wasn’t the first White House reporter have witnessed the Jim Acosta show. By speaking out, the mainstream media, especially CNN, might have salvaged a bit of their ever-eroding credibility with the American public, but apparently, no political journalist thinks Acosta speechifying is a problem.

Responding to the clarion call to harass and intimidate Republicans where they dine, where they work and where they live, issued by unhinged left-wing Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an Antifa mob gathered outside the residence of Fox News host Tucker Carlson last night and broke the front door while his terrified wife locked herself in a room.

First and most important question: where are the Democratic unequivocal condemnations of the out-of-control Antifa mob tactics? Has any prominent Republican (where are you Mitt?) spoken out about this outrage and asked prominent Democrats to condemn these tactics? This game of disavowal is a long-practiced tactic used effectively by Democrats on Republicans.

Secondly, why haven’t charges been brought for this clear criminal act of attempted breaking and entering in addition to assault (Carlson’s wife fear that she would suffer imminent harm)?

If the police are able to identify and locate the perpetrators, they should immediately be arrested and indicted on the criminal charges referenced above.

Finally, Republicans should tie the increasingly strident and intimidating tactics of the fringe left on Maxine Waters and other Democrats.

What to expect next? Justification for the assault on grounds of Trucker’s White Supremacy and his White Privilege.

Here is a sampling, from Vox’s Matthew Yglesias, of how how other progressives view the assault.

Those Democrats who aren’t completely deranged should worry about these incipient trends that could ultimately impair the party’s prospects in the next election.

I’m waiting for CNN’s Brooke Baldwin to confirm on her show that the assault and break-in at Tucker Carlson’s home was not the action of a mob, but rather a peaceful protest by individuals of good will who were merely expressing their political views.

There good news and bad news. Bad news first. Had president Trump Tweeted a lot less, there is a good chance that Republicans could have maintained some of the seats that flipped. There is anecdotal evidence that despite the booming economy, Trump’s infelicitous manner of speaking irritates some voters — particularly suburban women — and they registered their disapprobation at the ballot box.

The good news is that Republicans only lost 25 seats, which is in line with historical results for mid-term elections and a far cry from the “blue wave” that so many pundits, commentators and Democrats assured us was inevitable. Americans, once again, voted for divided government.

By way of comparison, in 2010, Obama and the Democrats lost 63 House and 6 Senate seats. Republican losses in the House look almost inconsequential against the shellacking visited upon Democrats in 2010..

With a comfortable margin of 55 seats in the Senate, Trump’s next conservative Supreme Court nominees will be confirmed, which means there will be no need to appease potentially equivocating Susan Collings and Lisa Murkowski. Control of the Senate may turn out to be more consequential than the loss of the House.

It is also interesting to note that Obama ended up 0 for 4: the progressive candidates in close races he supported all came up short. So much for the new progressive coalition of the ascendant. Going forward, Democrats might want to ask themselves:does it make sense any more to invite Obama to hit the campaign trail?

With the migrant caravan from Central America slowly working its way to our Souther Border, a long-overdue debate is raging about not only the policy is sound immigration policy or beneficial to the interests of the United States.

The discussion was prompted by president Trump’s comments that he would rescind, by executive order the long-standing and until recently, unchallenged birthright citizenship provision in the constitution. Of course, this caused the usual hackneyed response on the left, that Trump is a racist, white supremacist, white nationalist, xenophobe,  ………………………..  (fill in the remaining blanks with the democrats “ism” du jour).

In terms of the wisdom of such a policy, it should be noted that no other country in the world has a similar legal or statutory provision. Naturally, the question as to why, answers itself: because it is nonsensical.

There are those who claim that birthright citizenship is mandated by the language of the constitution and the discussion ends there. This is idiotic for two reasons. One, the entire constitutional birthright citizenship provision was enacted by amendment after the Civil War. That should be definitive proof for the proposition that the entire creation for this exceptional category for citizenship was related to how to grant freed slaves the benefits bestowed upon all other Americans after the Civil War.

Trump’s opponents argue that the 14th Amendment grants illegal aliens ( a term unheard of when the 14th amendment was ratified) citizenship, I.e., anyone child born here, regardless of the parents legal status mustbe granted citizenship.

However, as Andy McCarthy notes, “That is a lot of weight to put on an amendment that had nothing to do with regulating aliens — an amendment ratified in 1868, a time when there was no federal-law concept of illegal aliens.”

Ann Coulter makes the identical and unassailable argument in her own colorful way,

As the court has explained again and again and again:

“(N)o one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose found in (the 13th, 14th and 15th) amendments, lying at the foundation of each, and without which none of them would have been even suggested; we mean the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly made freeman and citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him.”

That’s why the amendment refers to people who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States “and of the state wherein they reside.” For generations, African-Americans were domiciled in this country. The only reason they weren’t citizens was because of slavery, which the country had just fought a civil war to end. “

That was the entire and sole purpose of the 14th Amendment. This contention, as Coulter properly notes, is bolstered by the fact that even American Indians weren’t deemed citizens,

“The amendment didn’t even make Indians citizens. Why? Because it was about freed slaves. Sixteen years after the 14th Amendment was ratified, the Supreme Court held that an American Indian, John Elk, was not a citizen, despite having been born here.

“Instead, Congress had to pass a separate law making Indians citizens, which it did, more than half a century after the adoption of the 14th Amendment. (It’s easy to miss — the law is titled: “THE INDIAN CITIZENSHIP ACT OF 1924.”) Why would such a law be necessary if simply being born in the U.S. was enough to confer citizenship?”

Contrary to open borders advocates, birthright citizenship for illegal aliens, is not compulsory or mandated by the constitution, it is an issue that can be addressed by the Article I branch, namely Congress. Trump may try and force the issue by litigating whether his executive order exceeds the authority and powers of the executive branch.

In light of the incontrovertible evidence that the 14th amendment, birthright citizenship provision was a solution to a unique problem, those liberals who argue that the migrants must be legalized, might want to review U.S. history as well as the U.S. constitution.

I think president Trump’s phrase to characterize the corruption of the media is injudicious and causing him political problems. A more accurate and less inflamatory term to describe the Mainstream Media-Democratic Party-Complex is The Opposition Party. As they amply demonstrated during the last election, when the mainstream media decided to join the Resistance, they insured that their relationship with Trump from the moment he was inaugurated, would be an acrimonious one. For purposes of responding to the incendiary comments that Trump is responsible for all the divisiveness and corrosion in political discourse, including his low opinion of the press, the acerbic political environment was not the work of Trump exclusively.

I am inserting a passage from my new book, The Story of How Trump’s Politics Changed the Mainstream Media Democratic Party Complex and Why He Continues to Drive Them Madentitled, The Opposition Party, that is germane to the present toxic relationship between the mainstream media and the president.

The Opposition Party

Any meaningful analysis that seeks the reasons for the hostile interaction between Donald Trump and the political media must begin with an acknowledgement about the nature of the institution arrayed against him. The mainstream media that confronted Trump at every turn, from the latter stages of the presidential election, up to his first day in the Oval Office operates as an extension of the Democratic Party. Trump’s attacks against journalists and reporters must be adjudged against this unwavering truth in terms of whether his diatribes and conduct were warranted, or represented, as the media consistently argued, an attack on press freedoms. Reviewing journalists ideological predilections is necessary for an assessment of whether Trump’s missives against the Washington media establishment were justified.

“Mainstream Media-Democratic Party-Complex” is an appropriate term to describe the indissoluble nexus between Democrats and political journalists. Others, have used different phrases to denote the relatively new institutional phenomenon. Victor Davis Hanson calls the conglomeration of the entertainment industry, the mainstream media and the Democratic Party as a new “fusion party.”

The evidence for such an assertion is bountiful and simply indisputable. When one hears the results of a study conducted by Harvard’s Kennedy School Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, that found the overall coverage of Trump during the first 100 days of his Administration was 93% negative, can any sane individual not agree that such an a stunning and unprecedented finding could never have been recorded had the nation’s news media not operated as a de facto extension of the opposition party.

Members of the media are homogenous in their world-view, their education, the social circles in which they travel and their party affiliation. It is a fact that political journalists are overwhelmingly liberal. Every survey that has studied the issue yields the same results.1

Journalists over the past twenty-five years have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats by lopsided margins; their views on hot-button issues are consistently liberal and to the left of the country at large. In short, despite their specious protestations to the contrary, there are no conservative employees in the media that could act as a countervailing force to the prevalence of progressive political philosophy to which members of the mainstream media subscribe.

Given this ubiquity in ideological preferences among journalists, it is simply ludicrous to argue that they can put their political preferences aside, like a leopard shedding its spots, and report the news objectively. When the entire journalism profession is comprised almost entirely by registered Democrats, that is exactly the direction in which news is going to be slanted. No other result is or can be possible. Election 2016, was the political event that confirmed this reality.

When there is ideological homogeneity as well as cultural conformity, media bias is not a probability, it is an absolute certainty. Nowhere was this ineluctable fact more apparent than the lopsided pro-Hillary bias during the election.

Prior to the 2016 election, in a moment of pre-Trump uncharacteristic candor, even the New York Times, concurred with this assessment of bias, as noted by Politico,

“The people who report, edit, produce and publish news can’t help being affected—deeply affected—by the environment around them. Former New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent got at this when he analyzed the decidedly liberal bent of his newspaper’s staff in a 2004 column that rewards rereading today. The “heart, mind, and habits” of the Times, he wrote, cannot be divorced from the ethos of the cosmopolitan city where it is produced. On such subjects as abortion, gay rights, gun control and environmental regulation, the Times’ news reporting is a pretty good reflection of its region’s dominant predisposition.2”

Thus, as the incontrovertible evidence reveals, the mainstream media Trump faced after the election was an institution that was culturally and politically aligned with the Democratic Party that was determined to exact its revenge, after he had put out to pasture journalists’ candidate of choice.



1 “The Liberal Media:Every Poll Shows Journalists Are More Liberal than the American Public — And the Public Knows It”, Media Research Center, https://www.mrc.org/special-reports/liberal-mediaevery-poll-shows-journalists-are-more-liberal-american-public-%E2%80%94-and

2 Jack Shafer And Tucker Doherty, “The Media Bubble Is Worse Than You Think” Politico Magazine, May/June 2017, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/25/media-bubble-real-journalism-jobs-east-coast-215048

If the nation learned anything from the spectacle of the Kavanaugh hearings, it was that the entire dogma or political philosophy of the new Democratic Party now rests singularly on the perverse and absurd idea of the menacing nature of “Whiteness.”

Over the past decade, the ludicrous ideas of white privilege, white supremacy and white nationalism, were confined to the precincts of the fringe academic left. The Kavanaugh hearings unequivocally demonstrated that these zany social theories embedded in concepts of identity politics have now been incorporated within the official political platform of the Democratic Party.

Although “white privilege” and “white supremacy” were the principal terms bandied about by Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, the phrases diversity, white supremacy, white privilege and identity politics are all inextricably intertwined. Indeed, in most instances the terms are interchangeable, for the goal is the same: the belief that the oppressive nature of “Whiteness” is responsible for alleged past injustices toward minorities and women and is currently hampering their progress.

The lifeblood of the entire diversity concept requires establishing a cause and effect dynamic for explaining alleged discrimination against women and minorities or “historically disadvantaged” groups. The racial/gender classification of oppressed and disadvantaged members of protected classes. requires an oppressor. Since diversity concerns itself solely with skin pigmentation and gender, by default, the natural bogeyman in this entire grievance equation has to be white men. Not white men as individuals, but white men as a group. Brett Kavanaugh was a card-carrying member of this group and suffered the mandatory stigma and punishment demanded by white privilege theory.

The expressions concerning Whiteness during the Kavanaugh hearings were quite illuminating, as they have finally exposed the distinction between the theory of diversity and how diversity is actually practiced. Whatever its original intent, diversity has now become a punitive measure to be levied against white men as a group; no distinctions are to be made within the Caucasian category. However, exemptions are available for white men of wealth and privilege (e.g., many CNN commentators) who enthusiastically embrace and proselytize the underlying principles of identity politics. There is nothing more comical than watching rich white male cable TV commentators mercifully mocking the whiteness of the Republican Party. Too enamored of their exalted status as loyal progressives, these pundits cannot appreciate how the spectacle becomes theater of the absurd

A befuddled viewer of the Kavanaugh hearings might ask how Democratic Senator Hirono could, in one breath, condemn White Supremacy, yet in the same breath, elevate Christine Blaise Ford, an undeniably privileged white woman, to martyr status.

The answerer to that glaring contradiction is that white privilege exemptions are also readily available for white women. For purposes of diversity politics, gender always will trump whiteness, as it enhances the group grievance nature upon which diversity and identity politics is based.

How enamored is the Democratic Party of the new disparagement of Whiteness as a basis for its ideology and policy platforms?

It is telling that during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, not one prominent leader of the Democratic Party came forward to challenge, dissent from or criticize the party’s new standard for equal justice under the law, all predicated on the color of Kavanaugh’s skin and his gender, which in and of itself for Democrats, was sufficient to disqualify him from being afforded two hundred years of presumption of innocence legal standard, not to mention rudimentary principles of fairness.

The dirty little secret is that not only do progressives declare their right to unilaterally define the ever-shifting and evanescent terms of grievance theory, but also, they exclusively get to create the exemptions. Such a social theory is doomed to collapse by its own internal contradictions and incoherence. The glue that binds Whiteness theory is based on nothing more than pretzel logic, that in the end, will be revealed as nothing more than an exercise in monumental silliness.

The incoherence and spitefulness of stigmatizing “Whiteness” as the pillar of progressivism’s new political philosophy, demonstrates the intellectual bankruptcy of the modern-day Democratic Party.

Former president Obama tore into president Trump and the Republican Party recently, accusing the GOP and Trump of, “blatantly, repeatedly, baldly, shamelessly, lying.”

During his mid-term campaign stump speech, Obama proceeded to cite a litany of alleged lies and half-truths made by Republicans.

One portion of his speech is rather amusing, for it represents a perfect example of the pot calling the kettle black:

“But – but – but you know what? There’s a more important point here. When words stop meaning anything, when people can just make up anything, Democracy doesn’t work, society can’t work.”

If you can say anything and there are no consequences if it turns out what you’re saying is not true, well, how are we going to have any kind of accountability? And frankly, part of the problem is that we’ve gotten used to it; we just expect that, like, people just are going to just make stuff up. We just expect it.”

How preposterous it is for Obama to accuse any politician of making stuff up and say anything without suffering any consequences. There are millions of Americans who remember well one of the biggest political whoppers ever made. It was: “if you like your health insurance, you can keep your health insurance.”

How about blaming the well planed terrorist attack against our embassy in Benghazi on an anti-Mohammed video. Obama knew quite well that it had nothing to do with the coordinated and premeditated assault, yet he continued to cite the video as the substantial and proximate cause responsible for the ensuing carnage.

People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.