Fake News

Worries about “fake news” are all the rage right now. It’s gotten elevated attention lately due to “pizzagate” culminating in some nutjob firing a semi in a Washington DC pizzeria. Pizzagate, for the uninitiated, is a false conspiracy theory stating that Hillary Clinton was running a child trafficking operation out of the basement of a popular DC pizzeria. (From what I’ve heard, said pizzeria has no basement.)

What is striking to me is that no one in the MSM is fessing up to where fake news finds its roots.

“News”: Barack Obama disparages the white working class of America by saying “you didn’t build that”.

“News”: Hillary Clinton tells Pat Smith that her son died because of an offensive video.

“News”: Michael Brown is savagely gunned down by racist Ferguson cop.

“News”: Donald Trump says Mexicans are rapists.

“News”: Trump attacks gold star mother.

“News”: Countless other stories about Donald Trump.

The pattern is clear. Over the past eight years (at least), the MSM has been feeding us incendiary pop fluff (sometimes outright lies) for profit. The boundary between straight news (which utilizes FACTS, not hearsay and innuendo) and opinion/propaganda has become incredibly fuzzy. Thirty years ago you could not tune into a network like MSNBC or Fox News Channel and get four hours of propaganda on a nightly basis.

It was only a matter of time before someone caught onto the idea of pulling stories straight out of his ass and publishing them as news to a public hungry to satisfy confirmation bias. The only shame is how our “legitimate” news sources lack the introspection to realize how they contributed to the current mess.

What do you think? The bar is open.

Let’s Talk Birther

Let me start by saying I am not nor have ever been a birther. With that said there’s a good deal of intellectual dishonesty surrounding coverage of this issue. 

Who Started It

The only TV pundit who has hit the origins of birtherism head on has been MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough. Not only did he acknowledge that the movement started in 2008 among Clinton supporters, he went so far as to say this weakens Hillary’s ability to attack Trump on the subject. 

The protests that the Clinton “campaign” did not start birtherism is a distinction without a difference. A low level staffer in Iowa pushed it (and was fired), Clinton strategist Mark Penn toyed with it, and Clinton best bud Sid Blumenthal outright said Obama was born in Kenya. I found no record of Hillary herself actively denouncing it. Furthermore, Hillary famously hinted in a “60 Minutes” interview that Obama might be Muslim – he’s a Christian “as far as I know”. 

Hillary needs to let the media fight this on her behalf and just shut up. Her hands are not clean. 

Chris Matthews Nutty Argument Against Birtherism 

Of all the pundits outraged by Donald’s birther nonsense, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews makes the nuttiest argument by putting preposterous logic behind birtherism that was never there in the first place.  According to Matthews, birthers propose that Ann Dunham gave birth to Barack in Kenya and then conspired to have his birthplace changed to Hawaii so that he could one day run for President some 4 decades later. He goes on to note how utterly ludicrous this is. He’s right. It is ludicrous but it’s ludicrous on HIS part. The central premise of birtherism places no guilt on Ann Dunham, nor does it suggest she had Presidential aspirations for her son way back in 1961.  This is made up out of whole cloth by Matthews himself. 

Birtherism is Racist

This assertion is debatable and I’d like to suggest an alternative. If Jesse Jackson or Jim Clyburn had become President, I seriously doubt anyone would have questioned their birthplace. They have the slave-ancestry identity of many blacks in America. Popular wisdom says that Obama got targeted as the first black President. But Obama was also the first Hawaiian President, born there only shortly after Hawaii’s admission to the US. He was also the first President who spent a lot of his youth outside the US (Indonesia, specifically). So to claim the only thing “different” about Obama was his race is just plain dishonest. 

None of this gets The Donald off the hook for perpetuating this foolishness. I don’t think he’s racist. I think he’s an opportinistic attention whore and birtherism would get him clicks and retweets. I actually found his “backwards extortion” of Obama a few years ago far more offensive. In that incident, Trump offered to donate to the charity of Obama’s choice if Obama produced his college records. Essentially he set up a ransom scenario where the kidnapped baby was a charitable donation. Shame this wasn’t illegal cos I’d have thrown Trumps orange ass right in jail for it. 

Bottom line: birtherism was an ugly mess where no one has clean hands. Drop it and move onto the more pressing issue – our choice between a corrupt liar and a reality TV star. Reject both and VOTE JOHNSON! 

What do you think?  The bar is open. 

What MSNBC Missed in its New Hampshire Coverage

The news channel that famously leans left and delights in identity politics somehow missed the obvious in last night’s coverage of the New Hampshire primary. They stepped right up to it and then failed to meet the clear conclusion. 

Analysis of the Democratic primary results reveals that Bernie Sanders won white “working class” voters who went for Hillary Clinton in 2008. MSNBC got that but seemed unable to take the next step. Clearly “working class” is a euphemism for Archie Bunker democrats. There was no way in hell they were voting for Barack Obama. 

In fact if you look at Ivy League schools in the past 30 years (post civil rights era) the only Ivy with headline making racial tensions was New Hampshire’s Dartmouth. 

Granted, Hillary also beat John Edwards in 2008 NH but women had not tired of her by then. 

Mark my words. Every “working class” state that Hillary beat Obama in 2008 will go to Sanders this year. That’s Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio for starters. 

The question remains why did MSNBC come to the precipice and not take the logical jump? Simple. In the world of MSNBC, democrats can’t be bigots. That’s reserved for republicans. 

I guarantee you. A large measure of Bernie’s gains in states like PA and OH will come from folks who couldn’t vote for a black guy and held their nose for the woman. Now they’ve got a man, albeit a Brooklyn Jew, to vote for … and they will. 

What do you think? The bar is open.