Tag: media

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.

Rubio and Fox News sold out America

It doesn’t get much more politically damning than this unexpected news of a media sellout. And it’s more than just the usual anti-Republican hit piece from the New York Times, because it leaves Rush Limbaugh, of all people, in a position to confirm it:

A few weeks after Senator Marco Rubio joined a bipartisan push for an immigration overhaul in 2013, he arrived alongside Senator Chuck Schumer at the executive dining room of News Corporation’s Manhattan headquarters for dinner.

Their mission was to persuade Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the media empire, and Roger Ailes, the chairman and chief executive of its Fox News division, to keep the network’s on-air personalities from savaging the legislation and give it a fighting chance at survival.

Mr. Murdoch, an advocate of immigration reform, and Mr. Ailes, his top lieutenant and the most powerful man in conservative television, agreed at the Jan. 17, 2013, meeting to give the senators some breathing room.

But the media executives, highly attuned to the intensifying anger in the Republican grass roots, warned that the senators also needed to make their case to Rush Limbaugh, the king of conservative talk radio, who held enormous sway with the party’s largely anti-immigrant base.

Looks like Donald Trump’s instincts served him well when he refused to genuflect before the cuckservatives at Fox. And Rush doesn’t appear to be inclined to give either Fox or Rubio any cover.

“Mr.
Limbaugh shed light on his interactions with the senators when he told a
caller frustrated with his criticism of Mr. Rubio that the immigration
position the senator had advocated “comes right out of the Gang of Eight
bill.” Mr. Limbaugh added, “I’ve had it explained to me by no less than Senator Schumer.”

I assumed Rubio was done after Trump beats him in his home state of Florida, but after this revelation, I think he’s done now. Even establishment Republicans will be appalled by his successful attempt to corrupt Fox News and turn it against conservatives, to say nothing of their joint attempt to turn Rush Limbaugh.

I like Fox and its pretty blondes better than the ABCNNBCBS cabal to which it is the alternative, but I’ve never trusted it and I haven’t watched it in over a decade. People at Fox helped kill my Media Whores book at Thomas Nelson because it criticized Bill O’Reilly and Michelle Malkin, so I’m well aware that they’re on the Republican Left, but this anti-American, anti-conservative collusion with pro-immigration Republicans and Democrats is stunning.

No, that’s not it

It’s amazing how many so-called pundits and analysts are casting about, looking everywhere except at the real reason, in their attempts to explain why Trump supporters are angry:

Bernie Supporters’ Hatred Of Work Is Why Trump Supporters Are So Mad.

The cultural disconnect about the value of work explains why there’s an open revolt in both parties and the future seems so uncertain…. Indeed, it is precisely this cultural disconnect about the value
of work that explains why there’s an open revolt in both parties and
the future seems so uncertain.

If any one issue defines this election, it’s economic stagnation.
Many Trump supporters in the GOP feel left behind by the
twenty-first-century economy. They’re angry about it, because our
“follow your bliss” culture doesn’t begin to appreciate coal miners or
people who work in brake disc factories, even as it obsessively
venerates empty celebrity and people like social media executives and
hedge fund managers who are filthy rich in spite of the fact their
contributions to society aren’t very tangible.

Combine that with the
self-loathing these guys feel from, say, being laid off and having to
fake a fibromyagia diagnosis so they can collect disability and feed
their families, and you have tremendous resentment.

Trump was not only canny enough to speak to this, but he still
remains arguably the only candidate to forthrightly talk about issues
such as immigration that are feeding this anxiety, even if he speaks
about them with great ignorance. It’s regrettable in many ways, but it’s
also not a mystery why 30 percent of Republicans are lining up to
support a lunatic who has (allegedly) made a lot of money and wields
considerable influence despite now being despised by our cultural
betters.

What a prodigiously stupid headline. And what a transparently futile attempt to redirect that anger to the conventional Bad Democrat Good Republican channel. As usual, conservatives have it completely backwards. Americans are struggling economically, in part due to the economic policies that have caused their real wages to peak in 1973. But that merely exacerbates the anger that they feel at their country being subject to the largest invasion in human history, an invasion of 60 million that is nearly 16 times larger than Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union.

They want their country back. They want to see America be great again, not prostrate before the boots and burqahs of foreign invaders.

That is why they are angry.

Winning the war on free speech

Mike Cernovich has launched the Kickstarter for his documentary Silenced: Our War on Free Speech:

Things are different than they used to be. We all know the feeling of
dread when posting or talking about something controversial, and this
dread has silenced us. It’s not censorship. The government isn’t doing
it. We are. To ourselves. Across business, education, politics, and
entertainment. Many comedians are even refusing to tour college campuses
due to the sensibilities of students, and posting one wrong Tweet can
get you fired from a job – or worse.

I’m a backer. I’d encourage you to have a look and consider doing the same.

Trump drives the narrative

A conversation about the way Donald Trump is forcing the cuckservatives at National Review and elsewhere to confront their failures.

AN: “I never thought I’d see the day. NRO is actually admitting that the Iraq war by Dubya was a mistake. Trump nailed it again, no wonder they hate him so much.”

VD: Exactly.

AN: He’s now driving the narrative, what a huge shift.

VD: That’s all it took. Instead we had to listen to those pussies telling us surrender was inevitable for 20 years.

AN: They really are cowardly, that’s what Trump has exposed and I still get a chuckle out of Bill Kristol being mad that there aren’t any strong leaders amongst the cucks to face him. Dude, they are cucks for a reason.

VD: Exactly. If they were strong leaders, they wouldn’t be cuckservatives in the first place.

Hillary hides in the closet

It’s hardly a secret that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian. I remember an interview that Hannity and Colmes did with Gennifer Flowers during the Lewinsky scandal when she quite flatly stated that Hillary was of a Sapphic orientation – hardly a surprise when you consider Hillary’s alma mater – and I have never seen a show go faster to a commercial before or since.

But it is apparent that people in Arkansas who are aware of her orientation are considerably less afraid of the the Clinton machine than they were, as more and more people are speaking openly to the press about what everyone in Little Rock circles has known for decades. Such as, for example, another Arkansas woman who had an affair with Bill Clinton:

The twice-divorced 77-year-old took to social media in recent weeks to post an extraordinary warning that if she dies by ‘suicide’ no-one should believe it.

When Daily Mail Online visited Miller at her Arkansas home she insisted she had been stalked, spied upon and plagued by anonymous phone calls since word of her memoir leaked out.

‘She doesn’t care what I say about Bill, that’s old news,’ Miller told Daily Mail Online. ‘But I think she wonders what Bill told me. I think she wonders how much I know about her that came from Bill.

‘With the election coming up she can’t afford any sort of loose end. She’s the closest thing you can imagine to Al Capone. I don’t think she is going to rest until she puts me to rest.’

And what of those accusations so insulting or damaging that a potential Presidential candidate would unleash her operatives to intimidate or even bump off an elderly lady?

‘Hillary is a lesbian,’ Miller claims, reigniting a lingering but unsubstantiated rumor that has dogged the former First Lady for years.

Frankly, I’m surprised that anyone might still believe that Hillary is straight. One look at those pantsuits she favors would be sufficient evidence to convict in any court of law.

Sanders upsets Clinton

When thinking about the way in which Bernie Sanders trounced Hillary Clinton, it’s worth noting that as recently as January, Clinton was leading Sanders in the New Hampshire polls:

Sanders didn’t just win in New Hampshire. He undermined Clinton’s campaign so badly, she may never recover.

CONCORD, New Hampshire — Hundreds of Bernie Sanders’s supporters packed into a high school gym here—after waiting outside in frigid temperatures to file through metal detectors one-by-one—to celebrate his big win. Meanwhile, about 20 miles away, a loyal crowd tried to keep its collective chin up as Hillary Clinton conceded defeat in the first Democratic primary contest.

The contrast highlights just how much damage Sanders is doing to Clinton’s campaign. Even though he’s still a longshot to snag the nomination, his candidacy is persuading young voters, women, and progressives that Clinton is in the pocket of big banks and corrupt corporations—and it’s persuading Clinton’s own supporters that they’re on the sadder side of this contest.

It remains to be seen, of course, if Sanders will actually be able to pick up any more wins. Current polls indicate that Sanders’s campaign in the other early states will be much trickier than his efforts in New Hampshire. Clinton’s double-digit leads in South Carolina and Nevada might have given a few of his supporters pause.

But those supporters weren’t in Concord tonight.

The gym his supporters packed into brimmed with unmitigated glee. An eclectic crowd danced, chanted, foot-stomped, and overall whooped it up for the democratic-socialist turned Democratic primary champion.

And the crowd’s devotion to their candidate highlighted just how much damage his candidacy is doing to Clinton’s—even if she’s the party’s ultimate nominee, which still seems all but guaranteed.

Considering that Sanders gained 25 points on Clinton in New Hampshire in just a single month, it seems insane to put any weight at all on Clinton’s 29.5 percent advantage in South Carolina that dates back to the week of January 17th.

I suspect that Sanders has dealt Hillary her death blow, everyone just hasn’t realized it yet. It’s not as if Hillary is particularly popular in the South, after all. And let’s face it, there wouldn’t be all this talk about Biden getting into the race if anyone had any confidence in Hillary, who appears to be the least competent establishment favorite since Bob Dole.

I mean, she managed to lose 83 percent of the young female vote to a 74-year-old gamma male… while running on her vagina. She is spectacularly unlikable; young women openly hate her. And remember, despite all the revised expectations in the new narrative, she was the favorite in New Hampshire until her Iowa debacle.