Monthly Archives: February 2014

UPDATE II: Russia And The Pussy Riot Press (Pussy Rioting Again)

America, Feminism, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Russia

“Very little of the US media’s reflexive demonization of Russia and the Sochi games should be trusted,” we cautioned, on Feb. 8. “The trashing began well before the games and came from the usual menagerie of media morons, who, from studios in the US, were able to attest to everything from the availability of toilet paper to the overlapping dangers of terrorism and toothpaste.”

Now the left wing of the “Legacy Media” has awoken to the fact of systematic bias against Russia in US media. The blanks are filled in most ably by Stephen F. Cohen, writing in the February 11, online edition of The Nation:

… a general pattern has developed. Even in the venerable New York Times and Washington Post, news reports, editorials and commentaries no longer adhere rigorously to traditional journalistic standards, often failing to provide essential facts and context; to make a clear distinction between reporting and analysis; to require at least two different political or “expert” views on major developments; or to publish opposing opinions on their op-ed pages. As a result, American media on Russia today are less objective, less balanced, more conformist and scarcely less ideological than when they covered Soviet Russia during the Cold War. …

… Since the early 2000s, the media have followed a different leader-centric narrative, also consistent with US policy, that devalues multifaceted analysis for a relentless demonization of Putin, with little regard for facts. (Was any Soviet Communist leader after Stalin ever so personally villainized?) If Russia under Yeltsin was presented as having legitimate politics and national interests, we are now made to believe that Putin’s Russia has none at all, at home or abroad—even on its own borders, as in Ukraine.

Russia today has serious problems and many repugnant Kremlin policies. But anyone relying on mainstream American media will not find there any of their origins or influences in Yeltsin’s Russia or in provocative US policies since the 1990s—only in the “autocrat” Putin who, however authoritarian, in reality lacks such power. Nor is he credited with stabilizing a disintegrating nuclear-armed country, assisting US security pursuits from Afghanistan and Syria to Iran or even with granting amnesty, in December, to more than 1,000 jailed prisoners, including mothers of young children. …

… Not long ago, committed readers could count on The New York Review of Books for factually trustworthy alternative perspectives on important historical and contemporary subjects. But when it comes to Russia and Ukraine, the NYRB has succumbed to the general media mania. In a January 21 blog post, Amy Knight, a regular contributor and inveterate Putin-basher, warned the US government against cooperating with the Kremlin on Sochi security, even suggesting that Putin’s secret services “might have had an interest in allowing or even facilitating such attacks” as killed or wounded dozens of Russians in Volgograd in December.

Knight’s innuendo prefigured a purported report on Ukraine by Yale professor Timothy Snyder in the February 20 issue. Omissions of facts, by journalists or scholars, are no less an untruth than misstatements of fact. Snyder’s article was full of both, which are widespread in the popular media, but these are in the esteemed NYRB and by an acclaimed academic. Consider a few of Snyder’s assertions: …

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UPDATE I: In “About Russia With Hate,” Eugene Girin exposes a cast of particularly slimy US media characters prating on about Putin.

UPDATE II (2/17): PUSSY RIOTING AGAIN.The Pussy Pukes are at it again, showing the foolish fluff women are made of.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina, along with seven others, were held by police near Sochi’s ferry terminal, a popular area for fans celebrating the Olympics. Police said they were questioned in connection with a theft at the hotel where they were staying. No charges were filed. …

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READ “Will The ‘Pussy Riot’ Sisterhood Storm The Sistine Chapel?”

The Mindset Of A Subject

Healthcare, Law, Natural Law, Reason

“It is the law of the land,” parrot the statists, whenever the notion of repealing Zero Care is raised.

But even the legal positivist, for whom the law does not have to embody the “ideals of justice, democracy, or the rule of law” to remain in force, must concede that Obamacare is destructive to all Americans.

Americans are certainly coming to this realization. Polls show that “82% of Republicans and 58% of voters not affiliated with either party view the law unfavorably.”

As one natural-law scholar put it, “The human person is not a means for the ruler’s use.” (p. 174.) “A rule that does not issue from the activity of reason, an arbitrary rule or an arbitrary decree would savor of lawlessness rather than law.” (p. 172.)

UPDATE II: Cutting And Clever Comments About John Kerry

Critique, Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Israel

What I love about Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon’s remarks about John Kerry is their intelligence. The guy is sharp. Witty too.

Ya’alon lambasted Kerry “as ‘inexplicably obsessive’ and ‘messianic’ in his efforts to coax” Israel and the Palestinians into a peace agreement.

“All that can ‘save us’ is for John Kerry to win a Nobel Prize and leave us in peace,’ Ya’alon was quoted saying to the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

I’m not sure if this last hilarity qualifies as a syllogism, but the allusion to the trajectory of Obama’s peace-making efforts works magnificently.

Defense Minister Ya’alon is also passionately vested in his analysis of the Kerry character.

I can’t imagine one of our feeble-minded morons in public office coming up with a cutting or clever comment on any topic.

Ditto our columnists. Other than yours truly, Ann Coulter and Mark Steyn—I can’t think of a columnist who is in possession of a funny bone. And I don’t mean potty humor; I mean stringing concepts together to come up with some absurdly funny reductio.

UPDATE I: Greg Gutfeld is really really funny, although he is not someone I read. He’s a riot. Clever too.

UPDATE II (2/16): Fred Reed rocks.

UPDATED: Banana Obama’s Latest Ex Post Facto Exploits (Idiocracy über alles)

Affirmative Action, Business, Constitution, Healthcare, Law, Taxation, The State

Every self-respecting banana republic, as the US is fast becoming, operates on an unconstitutional ex post facto basis. The victims of its agencies have no way of foreseeing or controlling how vague laws will be bent and charges conjured in the course of seeking desired prosecutorial outcomes.

Wikipedia:

An ex post facto law (Latin for “from after the action” or “after the facts”), also called a retroactive law, is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences (or status) of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed, before the enactment of the law. In criminal law, it may criminalize actions that were legal when committed; it may aggravate a crime by bringing it into a more severe category than it was in when it was committed; it may change the punishment prescribed for a crime, as by adding new penalties or extending sentences; or it may alter the rules of evidence in order to make conviction for a crime likelier than it would have been when the deed was committed.

“Two clauses in the US Constitution prohibit ex post facto laws: Art 1, § 9 and Art. 1 § 10.” But the Constitution—itself no great shakes for lasting liberty—is dead.

Via the indefatigable Betsy McCaughey, who knows Obamacare backwards, comes foreboding news about President Camacho’s latest ex post facto exploits. These entail new Obamacare regs making it “a requirement that employers attest to the IRS, meaning under penalty of perjury, that they have not reduced the number of employees or cut hours to shield themselves from the extra costs of Obamacare.”

More on these “bone chilling intrusion into your freedom to run your business”:

Monday’s announcement is actually a hush money scheme. Under the Affordable Care Act, as written, employers are penalized a whopping $3,000 each time one of their workers goes onto the Obama exchanges and gets a taxpayer subsidized plan. Now the administration is offering to waive that penalty, provided employers stop complaining. Employers who want to take this deal must attest that they haven’t laid off workers or cut hours to squeeze under the 99-worker threshold.

Here’s where Big Brother starts running your business. The IRS will forgive you if you make changes “because of the sale of a division, changes in the economic marketplace in which the employer operates, terminations of employment for poor performance, or other similar changes.” It’s none of Big Brother’s business why you hire or fire. This is a bone chilling intrusion into your freedom to run your business.

UPDATE: Idiocracy über alles. And how can an affirmatively appointed judiciary, members of who “confuse the Constitution for the Declaration of Independence,” know the meaning and prohibition on mischief-making with the law?

Both federal judge Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen and the one-time newspaper of record confused the Constitution for the Declaration of Independence during their haste to celebrate the overturning of Virginia’s gay marriage ban Thursday night.

“Our Constitution declares that ‘all men’ are created equal. Surely this means all of us,” wrote Allen in a tautological pronouncement that cited a unilateral assertion of sovereignty penned in response to 18th-century British abuses of power, rather than the supreme law governing the U.S.

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