Tag: media

Breitbart needs a housecleaning

These leaked messages demonstrate that it’s amateur hour at Breitbart; the various contributors not only lacked the discipline of the VFM, but couldn’t resist the urge to jump in and become part of the story:

Well, they’re not standing with her anymore, and rightly so. Speaking of the VFM, I’ve requested a retraction and correction from the editor-in-chief. I’m giving him a few days to respond before we amplify the volume. As it happens, Nuzzi has already updated the piece a fourth time without correcting it; she’s putting it all on Jeet Heer now.

Breitbart and the Armageddon Hoax

First, Mike Cernovich notes how politically widespread the anti-Trump campaign hoax was:

Consider how deep this media hoax goes.

Michelle Fields, a “conservative,” fabricated a story with Ben Terris, a “liberal.”

Jabin Botsford of the Washington Post lied about being at the event, and then hid evidence that would have exposed the hoax.

Lloyd Grove of the liberal Daily Beast made up conversations to support Fields’ story.

Ben Shapiro, a “conservative,” used these fabricated sources and false accusations to demand that a man lose his job.

And everyone in the media kept running with the story, attacking skeptical readers like us. Moreover, a journalist who asked to see a video of the hoax was fired from his job.

The media is rotten to the core. Can you believe anything you read?

And there are some speculating just how deep the rot runs. A reader writes:

Suffice it to say that in the specific context of internal controls, my alarm bells went off when Fields’ non-event appeared on the front page of Breitbart, accompanied by a glamour shot and the title, “Michelle Fields, In Her Own Words,” or something to that effect.  It struck me as odd – basically, my “crap detectors” started to tingle. The first question that popped into my mind was, who made the editorial decision to print this? Failure #1.

Oddly, many Breitbart reporters began to publicly and vociferously back her up.  I say “oddly” because to any honest and rational person, there were a lot of unanswered questions, and given the venue, it would be normal for people to be bumped and jostled, highly unlikely that no one saw the battery that she alleged, and that there would be no Secret Service report on it.  This public commentary, much of it personal and emotional, was unprofessional and ill-advised.  Don’t they have an internal policy on this? If they do, why was it not enforced? Failure #2.

During this time, Joel Pollack, a Breitbart editor and in-house counsel, posted video as it came in, being very careful not to read too much into things. Personally, I think he did a pretty good job with this.

Breitbart suddenly suspended a reporter, Patrick Howley, who quite reasonably called for video of the incident, alleged to have occurred at an event filled with dozens of cameras and journalists. Fields and others spun this in her favor. Failure #3.

Breitbart publicist Kurt Bardella publicly and messily resigned, citing Breitbart’s handling of the situation as his primary reason for doing so.  Once again, Fields and company used this to bolster her story.  Failure #4.

The very next day, internal Breitbart emails from Joel Pollack were leaked to and published on Buzzfeed. Pollack was doing exactly the right thing in those emails – telling staffers to send him information and to stop commenting on the story.  That is just basic risk mitigation 101. I have no idea what was going on behind the scenes, but I suspect that Breitbart was getting more information about Fields, et al, from other sources, and may have been contacted by legal counsel for other parties. Nevertheless, SOMEONE leaked those emails, which were then used by Fields and her supporters to give her credibility and in the process to attack Pollack and Breitbart. Failure #5.

Late Sunday night, Shapiro and Fields “resigned.”  Here, I disagree with some of the comments I’ve seen around the internet regarding Shapiro’s future prospects.  He’ll be just fine, at least for as long as he can be of service to certain parties.  Shapiro wanted to leave Breitbart a couple years ago to focus on his new venture, The Daily Wire, but Breitbart allegedly bent over backwards to give him what he wanted so that he would stay with them in some capacity.  Yesterday, a blogger discovered that The Daily Wire is funded by the billionaire Wilks brothers who fund a Ted Cruz SuperPac.  It was after additional video and news about the funding behind the Daily Wire was going viral that Shapiro and Fields resigned.

This morning, you posted a Breitbart satire about Shapiro’s departure, and once again it gets very interesting.  The original piece was entitled something along the lines of “Shapiro Betrays Loyal Readers,” but the link itself was very odd: http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/03/14/futures-markets-wrap-dow-continues-uncertain-climb/. What does that piece have to do with the futures markets? Nothing.  It’s almost as if someone hid the piece behind a deceptive URL to get past internal editorial controls.  If you click on the link now, my suspicion is confirmed because the old story is gone, and instead you will find this statement by Joel Pollack:

“The article was written by me as part of an effort to make light of a significant company event, and was published as a result of a misunderstanding without going through the normal editorial channels. I apologize to Michelle Fields, my friend Ben Shapiro, and to everyone concerned.”

Failure #6.

Something big is going on at Breitbart.  Before I read SJWAL, I would have assessed this as incompetence, a failure of training and oversight, and the need for more robust internal controls. Now, I don’t. and it looks like it could be covert SJW entryism or something along those lines.  This is simply my opinion, but it looks like someone is targeting Joel Pollack, given the leaks of his emails and the latest event.  I also believe that one or more people with editorial control have been making decisions that create problems for Breitbart and diminish the site’s credibility.

I’m not sure whether it shows more arrogance, stupidity, or desperation that the perpetrators of the Armageddon Hoax would try to make hay out of such an obviously weak case, but the dishonesty and the repeated doubling-down precludes any possibility of it having been a series of accidents or mistakes.

It does, however, strike me that we might need to develop the concept of a “posture cascade”, similar to a preference cascade, in which the sum total of people striking knowingly false poses creates an unintended situation that takes on momentum of its own.

UPDATE: Cry us a river, little guy. No wonder conservatives always lost with “opinion leaders” like this.

Shapiro’s father, the writer David Shapiro, also resigned from Breitbart on Sunday evening.

According to the younger Shapiro, his father was hired under the pseudonym to protect his safety since the younger Shapiro said he received so many death threats for his writings.

“Breitbart put this under his byline because they knew I’d have to out him,” Shapiro said in an interview on Monday, adding that by linking to his profile with the California State Bar the site exposed personal information, though that information is outdated. “The fact they would use my father’s pseudonym in order to attack me just exposes how despicable they are.”

Now, wasn’t it Ben Shapiro who said people should be hunted down and lose their jobs for holding opinions other people didn’t like? Guess what, Ben? You’re fair game for everyone and anyone now.

The Littlest Chickenhawk melts down

Ben Shapiro white-knights himself into unemployment:

Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields and editor-at-large Ben Shapiro are resigning from the company over the site’s handling of Donald Trump’s campaign manager’s alleged assault on Fields, BuzzFeed News has learned.

Fields and Shapiro informed Breitbart News chairman Steve Bannon of their decision Sunday night.

“Today I informed the management at Breitbart News of my immediate resignation,” Fields said in a statement sent to BuzzFeed News. “I do not believe Breitbart News has adequately stood by me during the events of the past week and because of that I believe it is now best for us to part ways.”

In his own statement, Shapiro said the episode was emblematic of how he believes the site’s management had sold out the legacy of its founder and namesake, the late Andrew Breitbart.

“Andrew’s life mission has been betrayed,” Shapiro wrote. “Indeed, Breitbart News, under the chairmanship of Steve Bannon, has put a stake through the heart of Andrew’s legacy. In my opinion, Steve Bannon is a bully, and has sold out Andrew’s mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump; he has shaped the company into Trump’s personal Pravda, to the extent that he abandoned and undercut his own reporter, Breitbart News’ Michelle Fields, in order to protect Trump’s bully campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who allegedly assaulted Michelle.”

I look forward to the inevitable charges that Breitbart is not only the personal Pravda of the God-Emperor Trump, but anti-semitic, mysogynistic, and mean.

And yes, I did laugh when I heard about it. I told you all years ago that Shapiro isn’t particularly intelligent. People really need to learn to stop confusing verbal facility with intelligence. The former is a subset of the latter, not a synonym. Some of the smartest people I’ve known can barely form a coherent sentence in a reasonable period of time, because, I suspect, they struggle to translate their stream of consciousness into something their intellectual inferiors will be able to follow.

UPDATE: This brutal dismissal of Shapiro by William Bigelow at Breitbart borders on sadism, but it is more than a little amusing. Breitbart certainly doesn’t appear to be shedding any tears.

Ben Shapiro Betrays Loyal Breitbart Readers in Pursuit of Fox News Contributorship.

National Review hates working class whites

The beauty of the Trump campaign is that it is unmasking all of the entryists, infiltrators, and cuckservatives who have been leading conservatives astray for decades. Case in point, the white-hating “conservative” Kevin Williamson:

In a featured article for the prestigious conservative journal
entitled “The FatherFuhrer,” Williamson seeks to rebut criticism that he
and other conservatives don’t articulate any policies that would appeal
to Trump’s blue collar supporters.

Williamson, a long-time critic of The Donald, essentially agrees that
he doesn’t support any policies or rhetoric directly tailored to the
working-class — particularly about jobs being taken by outsourcing and
immigration — because it would be wrong to do so.

“It is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working
class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by
outside forces,” the NR roving correspondent writes. “[N]obody did this
to them. They failed themselves.”

He then goes on to make the conclusion that it’s great these
communities are dying out because they have a warped morality and are a
dead weight on the economy.

“The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that
they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally,
they are indefensible,” the conservative writer says.

What is conservative about calling working class white communities morally indefensible and deserving of death?

It’s telling that National Review, which fired everyone from Sobran to Derbyshire, not only didn’t fire Williamson, they published his appalling, anti-white hate.

Putting theory into practice

As those who have read it know, in SJWs ALWAYS LIE, I repeatedly remind the reader to never apologize on demand. Yesterday, despite having issued a correction within three hours of making the original mistake, hundreds of SJWs attempted to put pressure on me and on Donald Trump Jr to apologize, retract, and delete our tweets.

The telling thing is that they put no such pressure on anyone else who had tweeted or retweeted the same image, including the people who had tweeted it before me. In other words, they didn’t give a damn about the actual situation or the two women involved – and make no mistake, it was not the second lady who was wronged, it was the first one who was misrepresented and falsely characterized by the media for the crime of supporting Donald Trump – they were simply looking to damage and discredit those they deem enemies dangerous to the Narrative.

To the younger Trump’s credit, he had the sense to refuse to apologize or retract. After all, he did nothing more than say that the media was unlikely to report something, and he was generally correct. I didn’t do anything at all, except state that I would be happy to delete the tweet if the second lady asked me to do so.

But when Twitter moved on to other, more interesting things, Donald Trump Jr. finally deleted his tweet, presumably at the advice of the PR professionals advising his father’s campaign. Needless to say, the few SJWs still paying attention promptly attacked.

Tim Weeks ‏@TRWeeks
You falsely accused a woman of giving a Nazi salute, deleted the tweet and weren’t man enough to apologize. Trump class.

Ali Momen ‏@alimomen
noticed you deleted that tweet…without an apology.  Shame on you brother.

Matthew Koomen ‏@TheKooMan
why did you deleted your tweets. Afraid of actually having to own up to a lie?

PaulieP ‏@PauliePFunq
Awww deleted tweets now?

Glenn Greenwald ‏@ggreenwald
No apology. No retraction. Just quietly deleted them, slinking away, hoping nobody notices & that he won’t get sued.

Those responses are why you never give into SJW pressure to do anything. Anything you do in response to their pressure will be taken as a victory on their part and a moral failure on your own. I did nothing and gave no ground, except call out Olivia Nuzzi for her lies about me and about the younger Trump, and in less than 24 hours, the SJWs have largely vanished.

Never back down. Never apologize. Never show weakness. They are cowards and herd animals, and they will always retreat from those who don’t flinch in front of them. They wouldn’t be SJWs if they didn’t have short time preferences, so stand your ground no matter what they threaten and the storm will pass soon enough.

Now, don’t be pedantic about this; this does not mean you should not relinquish an indefensible position; it would have been stupid and a different form of weakness to insist that the second lady was the first lady once I saw another picture of her that made it clear she was not.

One last observation: the Twitter SJWs are remarkably incurious and rather less numerous than they pretend to be. Despite 191,014 organic impressions of the mistaken tweet (versus 11,628 of the correction they were so vehemently demanding), yesterday’s site traffic was 66,941 pageviews, nearly two thousand fewer than the 68,894 recorded two weeks ago.

Honest mistake vs media libel

So, this morning I retweeted a tweet that someone sent me about the “Nazi Trump supporter”; I think it was a tweet to Louise Mensch. I didn’t just retweet it because it had the fake children’s book “Everyone is Hitler” as part of the image, so I cropped that off, then tweeted the picture of the woman attached to the picture of another woman who looked like the same woman.

Except that woman was a Bernie Sanders activist. Which appeared to prove what looked like a media plant was, in fact, a media plant. Quite a few people retweeted the tweet, including Donald Trump Jr., which led someone to look more closely about three hours later and observe that the two women were different and the “Nazi Trump supporter” was from a Chicago Tribune story.

It was just a simple mistake, not an intentionally dank meme, so naturally I corrected the tweet right away.

Now reports are that the “Trump Nazi” is not pro-Sanders Portia Boulger, but “Birgitt Peterson of Yorkville”.

I didn’t delete the tweet because a) Ms Boulger did not request that I do so, and, b) because I am in the habit of owning up to my mistakes, not trying to conceal them. If Twitter had an edit function with a strikethrough, I would have noted the error that way, just as I do on this blog.

However, the Left erupted with minor outrage, apparently unfeigned, although I suspect it was more because the tweet disrupted their absurd attempt to once more portray Donald Trump’s supporters, and therefore Donald Trump himself, as a National Socialist. Probably the most notable reaction was from Ken at Popehat, apparently off his meds again, as he first insisted that I would need a lawyer, then started babbling something about something called Moon Court. I will leave it to the lawyers, and the mental health professionals, to interpret that.

They kept calling for me to correct the tweet, which I had already done, until, after finally realizing that I had, in fact, already done so, they demanded that I apologize and that I delete the tweet.

Needless to say, I did not apologize. I did, however, assure everyone that if Ms Boulger wished me to delete the tweet, I would do so. I have not, as yet, heard the lady express any such wish.

But wait, there’s more! One Olivia Nuzzi, who claims to be a “reporter” at the Daily Beast, thought that this would be a wonderful time to attack Donald Trump Jr. by also claiming that I am “a white supremacist”.

I reached Boulger by phone on Saturday morning, a few minutes after Donald Trump Jr. tweeted her photo with the caption, “Big surprise. However, the media will never run with this.” As the New Republic’s Jeet Heer pointed out, the user who Trump Jr. got the photo from, @voxday, is a white supremacist.

Naturally, I immediately let Ms Nuzzi know that Mr. Heer’s libelous, and baseless, accusation notwithstanding, I am nothing of the sort.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Actually, Olivia, you’re lying. I’m not a white supremacist. I’m an American Indian. We just made a mistake

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
I corrected my tweet. Are you going to correct your post falsely accusing an American Indian of being a white supremacist?

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
You are calling an American Indian – and the great-grandson of a Mexican revolutionary – “a white supremacist.” Retract. Now.

Olivia Nuzzi ‏@Olivianuzzi
I cite another reporters writing on you. If you dispute his story, I’m happy to add that to mine.

Her first response was to add additional information instead of correcting it.

I was not content with that:

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Not sufficient, Olivia. Retract. And mention that I am an American Indian and the great-grandson of a Mexican revolutionary.

So she continued trying to finesse it.

Apparently I’ll have to get in touch with her editor on Monday. First VFM to provide me with the contact details for Olivia Nuzzi’s editor wins a free copy of On The Existence of Gods and the Castalia House ebook of his choice. First one with her email wins the latter. The rest of you keep an eye on your inbox.

This week we dine on SJW flesh!

Update: And we have 2nd Law at work:

Olivia Nuzzi ‏@Olivianuzzi
nothing to retract, sorry.

Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
(shakes head) Oh dear. See where it says “Supreme Dark Lord”? You really should have paid more attention.

Olivia Nuzzi ‏@Olivianuzzi
Portia Boulger, the woman inaccurately smeared by @DonaldJTrumpJr and others as a Nazi, just told me she needs time to decide if she’ll sue.

Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
Except she wasn’t smeared as a Nazi. She was mistaken for the woman whom the media smeared as a Nazi.

Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
You lied and called me “a white supremacist”. Then you lied again and said @DonaldJTrumpJr smeared Portia Boulger “as a Nazi.”

The Littlest Chickenhawk goes to war

He never bothered to enlist for any of the campaigns in the Middle East, because he was saving himself for the noblest of all callings: Milady’s arm was said to have been BRUISED:

“Corey Lewandowski is a thug and Donald Trump is a thug for backing him… This has been a verified account. There’s a report in The Daily Beast this morning that Corey Lewandowski specifically went to Matt Boyle over at Breitbart, a guy I know, and said to Matt Boyle that if he’d known it was a Breitbart reporter, he wouldn’t have done it. As though that’s justification. As though you can go after somebody who’s not a Breitbart reporter just because Breitbart is friendlier to Trump than other publications? The whole thing’s absurd.”

Shapiro added, “And the fact that the Trump campaign continues to play this game, where they put out what’s not just violent rhetoric but in this case, a campaign manager engaging in allegedly violent action, and then they won’t even step down to apologize; it’s beyond disgusting. It’s just gross.”

Kelly then turned to Wohl to defend Trump’s campaign manager. He immediately suggested that Fields could be lying: “this whole thing from the beginning doesn’t look good to me. The reality is there were dozens of people around. No one apparently saw it other than this one Washington post reporter. There were 100 cameras, none of them caught anything?”

Kelly, skeptical, asked Wohl, “Were they acting when they had that exchange on tape?”

Wohl replied that Trump was the real victim: “Trump is under attack on multiple levels. On political, economic, social and a personal level. And this is a way to get at him… if it is a real, legitimate assault or battery, you file a police report, you don’t tweet it out and then 36 hours later, you tweet out pictures of bruises and you say, ‘Lewandowski caused it.’”

Shapiro responded brutally: “This is disgusting. How repulsive are you people?”

Oh, it is well done, noble sir! Milady’s honor has been defended! I’m sure you will all join me in tipping your fedoras to him.

Seriously, this whole Michelle Fields thing is totally surreal. The way Shapiro and
Fox News are going into serial fainting fits, you’d think Donald Trump personally ripped her arm off at the
shoulder and raped her with it.

I cannot exaggerate the extent of my indifference concerning the possibility that a female reporter may have been shoved. I think all reporters, male and female, should be beaten periodically, on general principle.

They made him inevitable

Finally, a conservative who gets it. Does Donald Trump scare you? Good, he should. And if the GOPe manages to stop him, you’re going to like who comes next even less.

This election is the Republican Altamont, where conservatives got knifed by the Hell’s Angels. It’s our own fault too – the GOP teased its base, looked down upon it, lied to it, and when it turned out it wasn’t playing games and pulled a blade the establishment wasn’t ready.

I spent the last few days at CPAC, surrounded by conservatives, and there was a clear preference for focusing on the symptom – Donald Trump and his myriad failings – rather than the disease. Our problem is not this digitally-challenged, bizarrely phallocentric clown; it’s our failure to represent the people left behind as we got ahead.

Donald Trump is the fault of the GOP elite, including movement conservatives, who failed to listen, who failed to follow through, who thought we were meant to lead the benighted past their narrow self-interests and unseemly prejudices to a wonderful new world reflecting our benevolent self-interests and elite prejudices. Funny how the conservative, globalized utopia we sought to impose always worked out really well for us. Except those left behind aren’t laughing.

Trumpism isn’t merely about unfocused anger – it would be super-convenient to write this off as a temper tantrum that will soon blow over and allow us to get back to the business as usual of ignoring the pleas (which are now demands) to stop the immigration disaster, to address the fallout of free trade, and to stop the useless sacrifice of our sons and daughters in wars we’re too damn gutless to win. But it isn’t. Again and again Republicans promised to solve these problems and yet every single time they’ve lied. Rubio got elected in Florida promising to oppose amnesty then not only fails to do so but stands up with the Democrats and did the exact opposite. And we’re surprised a candidate comes along and points that out?

These folks have been asking us for help, and what was our response?
Shut up, stupid racists. Well, they finally found someone who is taking
their side. His name is Donald Trump, and we made him possible. Hell, we
made him inevitable.

Admitting the problem is the first step towards solving it. Of course, cuckservatives and neocons and conservatives being what they are, they’ll probably just call him a racist Nazi Trumpkin and refuse to listen to anything he has to say.

Why he left the conservative movement

A lifelong conservative Republican informs the conservative media why he is no longer a conservative:

Let me say up front that I am a life-long Republican and conservative. I have never voted for a Democrat in my life and have voted in every presidential and midterm election since 1988. I have never in my life considered myself anything but a conservative. I am pained to admit that the conservative media and many conservatives’ reaction to Donald Trump has caused me to no longer consider myself part of the movement. I would suggest to you that if you have lost people like me, and I am not alone, you might want to reconsider your reaction to Donald Trump. Let me explain why.

First, I spent the last 20 years watching the conservative media in Washington endorse and urge me to vote for one candidate after another who made a mockery of conservative principles and values. Everyone talks about how thankful we are for the Citizens’ United decision but seems to have forgotten how we were urged to vote for the coauthor of the law that the decision overturned. In 2012, we were told to vote for Mitt Romney, a Massachusetts liberal who proudly signed an individual insurance mandate into law and refused to repudiate the decision. Before that, there was George W. Bush, the man who decided it was America’s duty to bring democracy to the Middle East (more about him later). And before that, there was Bob Dole, the man who gave us the Americans with Disabilities Act. I, of course, voted for those candidates and do not regret doing so. I, however, am self-aware enough to realize I voted for them because I will vote for virtually anyone to keep the Left out of power and not because I thought them to be the best or even really a conservative choice. Given this history, the conservative media’s claims that the Republican party must reject Donald Trump because he is not a “conservative” are pathetic and ridiculous to those of us who are old enough to remember the last 25 years.

Second, it doesn’t appear to me that conservatives calling on people to reject Trump have any idea what it actually means to be a “conservative.” The word seems to have become a brand that some people attach to a set of partisan policy preferences, rather than the set of underlying principles about government and society it once was. Conservatism has become a dog’s breakfast of Wilsonian internationalism brought over from the Democratic Party after the New Left took it over, coupled with fanatical libertarian economics and religiously-driven positions on various culture war issues. No one seems to have any idea or concern for how these positions are consistent or reflect anything other than a general hatred for Democrats and the Left.

TL;DR: He is an American nationalist who rejects cuckservatism.

For many years, people on both sides of the political spectrum have repeatedly tried to label me a conservative. If you look back to the very beginning, to my first column on WND after 9/11, I have steadfastly resisted that label because I have always known that I do not share an outlook with those who proudly wear it.

I am a nationalist, I am a traditionalist, I am a Christian, and I am right-wing, but I am most definitely not a conservative. I never was and I never will be.

The reason is this: conservatives are nothing more than progressives in slow motion.

The author, a veteran, proceeds to address the neoconning of conservatism, as reflected in conservatism’s newfound enthusiasm for violently exporting what it deceptively calls “democracy” around the world:

Third, there is the issue of the war on Islamic extremism. Let me say upfront that, as a veteran of two foreign deployments in this war, I speak with some moral authority on it. So please do not lecture me on the need to sacrifice for one’s country or the nature of the threat that we face. I have gotten on that plane twice and have the medals and t-shirt to prove it. And, as a member of the one percent who have actually put my life on the line in these wars movement conservatives consider so vital, my question for you and every other conservatives is just when the hell did being conservative mean thinking the US has some kind of a duty to save foreign nations from themselves or bring our form of democratic republicanism to them by force? I fully understand the sad necessity to fight wars and I do not believe in “blow back” or any of the other nonsense that says the world will leave us alone if only we will do that same. At the same time, I cannot for the life of me understand how conservatives of all people convinced themselves that the solution to the 9-11 attacks was to forcibly create democracy in the Islamic world. I have even less explanations for how — 15 years and 10,000 plus lives later — conservatives refuse to examine their actions and expect the country to send more of its young to bleed and die over there to save the Iraqis who are clearly too slovenly and corrupt to save themselves.

The lowest moment of the election was when Trump said what everyone in the country knows: that invading Iraq was a mistake. Rather than engaging the question with honest self-reflection, all of the so called “conservatives” responded with the usual “How dare he?” Worse, they let Jeb Bush claim that Bush “kept us safe.” I can assure you that President Bush didn’t keep me safe. Do I and the other people in the military not count? Sure, we signed up to give our lives for our country and I will never regret doing so. But doesn’t our commitment require a corresponding responsibility on the part of the president to only expect us to do so when it is both necessary and in the national interest?

And since when is bringing democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan so much in the national interest that it is worth killing or maiming 50,000 Americans to try and achieve?

Devastating. Absolutely devastating.

The business of convergence

The Guardian is in the process of learning the hard way that employing SJWs and marketing to them is a very good way to lose considerable sums of money:

As much as any newspaper in the world, Britain’s Guardian has been single-minded and aggressive in its belief that conversion to digital distribution and a digital identity was its future and, for that matter, the only future for any newspaper.

The costs of that conviction are now clear: The paper lost almost $120 million last year.

The Guardian has been something of an ultimate experiment in the migration from paper to digital publishing. The enterprise is supported by a trust set up in the 1930s by the Guardian’s founders, the Scott family from Manchester, wholly dedicated to the survival of the paper. While the trust envisioned providing the paper freedom from commercial pressure to let it practice unfettered journalism, the transition to digital is, in the estimation of the Guardian’s managers, the only path to journalism’s future — and a necessary cost, whatever it amounts to.  (Disclosure: I’m a former contributor to the Guardian.)

In order to underwrite the costs of this transformation, most of the trust’s income-producing investments have been liquidated in recent years in order to keep cash on hand — more than a billion dollars.

Translation: they should be tapped out and done in about 15 years.