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FRANCE BURNS as Thousands of French Protesters Clash With Police, Call for Socialist Macron’s Resignation Over Tyrannical Gas Tax Hike [Gas in Paris Costs $7.06/Gallon]
WWW.MOEISSUESOFTHEDAY
.BLOGSPOT.COM Sunday, November 25,2018
All Gave Some~Some Gave All
*****
As President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence prepared to gather for their weekly lunch in August 2017, the President told his staff to add two more plates.
Both men had just welcomed new chiefs of staff -- retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly and Nick Ayers, a then-34-year-old Republican political consultant from Georgia -- and Trump decided to wave the pair into his private dining room off the Oval Office.
Until then, a Cabinet member would occasionally join them, but the meals were largely a chance for Trump and Pence to spend time together alone, chatting about politics, policy and whatever popped into Trump's mind -- sometimes prompted by the television in the room tuned to Fox News.
But in August 2017, the lunch went from a regular tête-à-tête to a four-man affair, one that became a more formal opportunity for the two offices to coordinate on strategy, policy and scheduling. For Ayers, Pence's new chief of staff, they were useful in another, perhaps more important way: he now had regular face-time with the President. With each passing lunch, Trump grew to know and like Ayers more, two sources close to the President said, allowing Ayers to build a strong personal rapport that could end up paying dividends.
As the President considers replacing his chief of staff, Ayers has emerged as a top contender, multiple people familiar with the situation told CNN. Interviews with nearly two dozen current and former White House officials, former Ayers colleagues, sources close to the President and Republican congressional staffers portray an ambitious aide who has worked to insulate his current boss from the chaos of the West Wing, while also angling for a bigger job that would place him squarely in the middle of it.
Trump has begun to envy the smoothly operating vice president's office, which Ayers has managed to keep distanced from the daily scrum and scandal of the White House. Ayers has cultivated key allies, including Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. He also boasts an impressive track record in Republican politics that could serve the President well in the run-up to his 2020 re-election.
But Ayers' meteoric rise has also earned him his fair share of critics, including a few inside the White House. While plans were floated earlier this month for Ayers to become the new chief of staff, multiple sources told CNN, they have stalled amid the President's reluctance to fire Kelly -- who typically does the firing for Trump -- and the backbiting Ayers has faced from some of his West Wing colleagues.
Several of Trump's top advisers have voiced concerns to him about Ayers, with some threatening to quit if he is tapped for the job. One of Ayers' top West Wing detractors during the process has been Kellyanne Conway, the combative counselor to the President who vehemently opposed Ayers' hire as Pence's chief of staff last year, two former White House officials and a source familiar with the matter said.
Conway disputes those allegations, telling CNN: "I have zero beef with Nick Ayers."
Outside the White House, former colleagues of Ayers say his relative youth and outsized ego -- conspicuous even in a world known for naked ambition and self-aggrandizement -- have rubbed fellow political operatives the wrong way. His allies say that people are just jealous or insecure.
"I think every job he's ever had he's been one of the youngest people to ever have it. And I think that's threatening to some people," said Alex Conant, who worked with Ayers on former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty's 2012 presidential campaign.
Though he's only 36, Ayers has amassed a small fortune that, according to recent financial disclosures, is between $12 million to $54 million. That's been built up through financial investments, fees generated by his own political consulting firm and his former role as a principal in an ad-buying firm called Target Enterprises, which has served as the media buyer on nearly every race Ayers has worked on since he joined in 2011.
The arrangement allowed Ayers to earn a consultant's salary while also influencing campaign spending in a way that benefited him financially, a practice that is not illegal but has raised consternation among fellow consultants. A source familiar with the matter insisted all of the candidates Ayers has serviced were aware of the financial arrangement behind his consulting.
Still, his finances and involvement with political dark money groups could become political baggage down the road. One of them, Freedom Frontier, for whom he consulted, is the subject of two recent ethics complaints, the most recent of which was filed with the IRS on Tuesday. That complaint, filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, contends the group's political spending exceeded legal limits in violation of campaign finance laws.
Efforts to reach officials with Freedom Frontier for comment were unsuccessful.
The prodigy
Who is potential Kelly replacement Nick Ayers?
Ayers was just 19 when he dropped out of Kennesaw State University in Georgia to be Republican gubernatorial candidate Sonny Perdue's body man. Ayers quickly became one of Perdue's most trusted advisers and helped guide the campaign to victory, making Perdue the first Republican governor in Georgia since Reconstruction. Over the next few years, Perdue tapped Ayers to manage his first re-election campaign and later to lead the Republican Governors Association as executive director.
As head of the RGA, Ayers was credited with streamlining the organization and dramatically expanding its fundraising prowess. Though he wasn't even 30, Ayers' work caught the eye of Pawlenty, who hired him to manage his short-lived 2012 presidential campaign that ended before the primaries even began that year.
"I like to joke that it was more brief than a Kardashian marriage," Pawlenty told CNN. "My brief and ill-fated campaign for president failed for a variety of reasons, but none of them related to Nick ... He's a really, sort of prodigy-level talent."
Still, Ayers faced criticism from some of his former colleagues over Pawlenty's failed campaign. Also that year, a video surfaced of his arrest on charges of drunk driving in 2006, when he was working for then-Gov. Perdue's re-election campaign. In the video, Ayers can be heard trying to engage the arresting officer in a conversation about politics, and implying how badly the incident would reflect on the governor's race. The charges were eventually reduced to reckless driving.
Tension with Conway
Trump eyes replacements for Kelly, Nielsen and othersAyers' journey into the Trump fold began in 2011 when he first met then-Rep. Pence in Washington. Though he and Pence didn't work together officially, they stayed in touch. In 2015, Ayers joined Pence's gubernatorial re-election campaign as a general consultant. At the time, Conway was the campaign's pollster.
Three people familiar with the campaign said Ayers was critical of Conway's polling and wanted to oust her from the role. A fourth person familiar with the time period refuted that claim.
The tables turned two years later, when White House officials mulled enlisting Ayers to take over as Pence's chief of staff in the spring of 2017 and Conway stepped in to try and block the hire, two former White House officials and a source familiar with the matter said. In one incident, two sources said she erupted at then-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who was pushing for the move.
Conway denied having ever opposed Ayers -- then or now -- and criticized the "endless speculation" in the media.
"I preceded Nick on Gov. Pence's consulting team and I preceded Nick in this White House, but I was very happy when he followed and joined in the fun on both times on both occasions," Conway said. "I am pro-John Kelly and pro-Nick Ayers. As somebody who deals routinely and directly with the President and the vice president, I have an excellent working relationship with their excellent chiefs of staff. As far as I know, neither of those jobs are available."
Ayers declined to comment for this story, but Alyssa Farah, the vice president's press secretary, dismissed the reporting as "absurd and it's false" and maintained that Ayers and Conway are "personal friends."
Relationship with Trump
After Pence brought him in as chief of staff, Ayers quickly expanded his portfolio beyond the day-to-day operations of the vice president's office. That included setting himself up as a key liaison to the Oval Office and offering to help in times of chaos.
"When stuff was going crazy or there would be some bad story and we'd be in crisis mode, Josh (Pitcock, Pence's former chief of staff) wouldn't come in and be like, 'How can I help?'" one former White House official said. "Nick would."
A senior administration official rejected the notion that Pitcock wasn't as engaged as Ayers during his time as chief of staff, telling CNN that Pitcock "did his fair share of crisis management during his tenure as chief of staff."
Ayers also made a point of steering Pence away from the chaos of the West Wing. A senior White House official said Ayers determined a narrow set of targets for the vice president and his team to accomplish and built out a plan to focus almost exclusively on those goals. The official said Ayers did a better job of coordinating between the President and vice president's office -- the weekly lunches being a prime example.
Ayers also worked to improve his own access to the President, multiple former Trump campaign officials told CNN. "He wanted to be around Trump a lot and the family. He made sure he was real visible," one former Trump campaign official said.
A particularly important moment in the relationship between Ayers and the President came in January, when Ayers invited Trump to sit in his private box at the college football playoff title game between the Alabama Crimson Tide and Ayers' home-state team, the Georgia Bulldogs. A photo that Ayers posted on Twitter shows the two men standing side by side in the stadium box, smiling and wearing identical red ties and navy suits. Like Trump's, Ayers' tie hangs on the long side, just past his belt buckle.
A political chief of staff
By the end of this summer, as the midterms approached and the emphasis turned toward electoral politics, Ayers became more visible in the West Wing.
He played a key part during White House discussions about political strategy, the candidates Trump should endorse and where he should travel. Ayers' political insights only served to amplify something several of the President's friends and advisers have voiced to him, which is that Kelly lacks the political know-how with which most White House chiefs of staff are armed.
And as the President begins to focus on his 2020 re-election campaign, those same friends and advisers are urging him to replace Kelly with a politically savvy successor.
"From now until November 2020, every decision that should be made in that building should be a political one. Every decision should have an eye on the re-election," one source close to the President said. "Nick understands that."
If Trump does tap him to replace Kelly, Ayers would be expected to usher in a dramatic shift in tone, style and expertise.
While Kelly has no experience running campaigns and shies away from interacting with the donor class and Trump's billionaire friends -- like when he was spotted off to the side with one of his aides while Trump entertained those friends on election night -- Ayers is seen as a strategist seasoned beyond his years who has established himself as a smooth-talking fundraiser dialed-in with the GOP's top donors.
Like Kelly, though, Ayers would be pressed to manage White House infighting, a mercurial President and the free-flowing discourse between Trump and his kitchen cabinet of outside advisers.
The challenges of the coming year could eclipse those Kelly has faced in his 16 months on the job.
Trump will have to contend with the new reality of a divided Congress and a feisty Democratic House eager to bring the full force of its oversight power down on Trump and his administration. Special counsel Robert Mueller could also soon complete his lengthy investigation into allegations of Russian collusion and questions of obstruction of justice, a prospect that has unsettled the President.
The question is whether Ayers could translate his success in running the vice president's office into calming things down in the Oval Office.
"He's shown he can swim in the shallow end. The question is whether he can play in the deep end," a former White House official said. "They run their own agenda over at the VP's office; they go where they want, they do what they want, they avoid what they want. You don't have that luxury with this President."
Finances
Ayers' past political work and issues over his finances could also dog him down the road. Ayers did not immediately disentangle himself from his businesses upon joining the administration, selling his consulting firm, C5 Creative Consulting, nine months later in April to Phil Cox, a fellow Republican strategist and former colleague who is close to Ayers.
Some White House aides have questioned Ayers' motives in the delay and say that his consulting business is at odds with Trump's "drain the swamp" slogan. A person familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to discuss the confidential process, said Ayers was "very willing from the beginning to do whatever was required" to be in compliance with government ethics regulations. The source said it took time for Ayers to be able to sell the firm at fair market value.
"He is not an ethically-challenged person," the person said. "Those folks exist in the Trump administration and Nick is not one of them."
A review of Ayers' financial disclosure form from October 2017 shows the complexity of his assets and holdings. Ayers listed 31 sources of income that exceeded $5,000 a year each, with some of those including consulting for Aflac, Coca-Cola, and political campaigns like Pence's gubernatorial re-election campaign in Indiana and Eric Greitens' successful bid to become governor of Missouri in 2016. Ayers also owns stock in various companies and agricultural real estate for forestry and pecans in Georgia.
Loyalty
Despite hailing from more traditional Republican circles, Ayers has sought to firmly establish himself as a Trump loyalist, an important marker of trustworthiness for the President. It doesn't hurt that before joining the administration in 2017, Ayers co-founded America First Policies, which has become the principal outside political group supporting the President.
At times, though, Ayers' political tendencies have gotten him in trouble, including over an August 2017 New York Times report that Ayers told GOP donors that Pence wanted to be ready to run for President in 2020 should Trump be unable to run for re-election. He also drew flak in April over a plan to install Jon Lerner, a Republican pollster to whom he is close, as the vice president's national security adviser. Lerner was publicly forced to withdraw after the appointment caused tensions in the administration, with some reports signaling Trump was upset after learning of Lerner's association with a Republican political group that savaged him during the 2016 campaign. Lerner and Ayers are both close with outgoing UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.
But Ayers' loyalty to Trump has largely shined through. During a closed-door GOP fundraiser last year, Ayers leaned into the President's willingness to knock fellow advisers and pulled no punches in criticizing Republican lawmakers who he described as insufficiently supportive of the President.
"Just imagine the possibilities of what can happen if our entire party unifies behind him? If — and this sounds crass — we can purge the handful of people who continue to work to defeat him," he told the donors.
The comments rubbed lawmakers on Capitol Hill the wrong way. Two senior Republican aides told CNN that Ayers' had "pissed a lot of people off," and that lawmakers were taken aback since Ayers was so new to the White House.
"People were like, 'Who the hell is this guy?'" one of the aides said.
U.S. Reaches Deal With Mexico To Have Asylum Applicants Wait Across The Border
U.S. Reaches Deal With Mexico To Have Asylum Applicants Wait Across The Border
I’m shocked, and for once it’s the good kind of shocked. How on earth did the White House convince Mexico’s new populist left-wing president to go for this?
According to outlines of the plan, known as Remain in Mexico, asylum applicants at the border will have to stay in Mexico while their cases are processed, potentially ending the system Trump decries as “catch and release”that has until now generally allowed those seeking refuge to wait on safer U.S. soil.
“For now, we have agreed to this policy of Remain in Mexico,” said Olga Sánchez Cordero, Mexico’s incoming interior minister, the top domestic policy official for López Obrador, who takes office Dec. 1. In an interview with The Washington Post, she called it a “short-term solution.”…
U.S. officials involved in the talks said Mexico has not asked for financial assistance to implement the new procedures, which could result in significant costs if asylum seekers are made to wait for months or years. They described the deal as a collaboration, and senior officials from both governments insisted it was not imposed upon Mexico.
The status quo: An asylum-seeker surrenders to U.S. authorities, they apply for asylum, and they’re either detained while they wait or, given the paucity of detention facilities, they’re released into the United States with orders to show up for their asylum hearing. Some will, some won’t. The new process: An asylum-seeker surrenders to U.S. authorities, they go to the federal courthouse for an initial asylum hearing, and if the judge doesn’t rule then and there then they go back over the border to Mexico to wait for a determination. No more catch and release.
What’s the catch, though? If we’re not bribing Mexico to do this, what’s in it for them? Hmmmm:
A group of business leaders in [Tijuana] said they have thousands of job openings at the city’s assembly plants, or maquiladoras, inviting Central American migrants to work in the factories. Though wages there are a small fraction of U.S. pay, Mexican officials said the work offer was one reason they believe the Remain in Mexico plan will succeed. Across the country, there are 100,000 jobs available to Central American asylum seekers, officials said.
Is that what this is about, Mexico’s business class wanting to enjoy some cheap foreign labor like their American counterparts across the border? It’s a type of guest-worker policy: Thousands of immigrants are in town temporarily waiting for their asylum determination in the U.S., and are no doubt willing to work for peanuts to survive while they wait. One way or another, either via admission by the U.S. or deportation after their asylum claim is rejected, there should be plenty of turnover to keep the labor supply cheap and desperate.
Two cautions, though. You might remember this from yesterday’s post, Section 235 of the Immigration and Nationality Act:
“For now, we have agreed to this policy of Remain in Mexico,” said Olga Sánchez Cordero, Mexico’s incoming interior minister, the top domestic policy official for López Obrador, who takes office Dec. 1. In an interview with The Washington Post, she called it a “short-term solution.”…
U.S. officials involved in the talks said Mexico has not asked for financial assistance to implement the new procedures, which could result in significant costs if asylum seekers are made to wait for months or years. They described the deal as a collaboration, and senior officials from both governments insisted it was not imposed upon Mexico.
The status quo: An asylum-seeker surrenders to U.S. authorities, they apply for asylum, and they’re either detained while they wait or, given the paucity of detention facilities, they’re released into the United States with orders to show up for their asylum hearing. Some will, some won’t. The new process: An asylum-seeker surrenders to U.S. authorities, they go to the federal courthouse for an initial asylum hearing, and if the judge doesn’t rule then and there then they go back over the border to Mexico to wait for a determination. No more catch and release.
What’s the catch, though? If we’re not bribing Mexico to do this, what’s in it for them? Hmmmm:
A group of business leaders in [Tijuana] said they have thousands of job openings at the city’s assembly plants, or maquiladoras, inviting Central American migrants to work in the factories. Though wages there are a small fraction of U.S. pay, Mexican officials said the work offer was one reason they believe the Remain in Mexico plan will succeed. Across the country, there are 100,000 jobs available to Central American asylum seekers, officials said.
Is that what this is about, Mexico’s business class wanting to enjoy some cheap foreign labor like their American counterparts across the border? It’s a type of guest-worker policy: Thousands of immigrants are in town temporarily waiting for their asylum determination in the U.S., and are no doubt willing to work for peanuts to survive while they wait. One way or another, either via admission by the U.S. or deportation after their asylum claim is rejected, there should be plenty of turnover to keep the labor supply cheap and desperate.
Two cautions, though. You might remember this from yesterday’s post, Section 235 of the Immigration and Nationality Act:
(ii) Referral of certain aliens.-If the officer determines at the time of the interview that an alien has a credible fear of persecution (within the meaning of clause (v)), the alien shall be detained for further consideration of the application for asylum.
Is the “Remain in Mexico” policy even legal given the requirement that applicants be detained while their application is pending? The White House will argue it is — if “catch and release” is legal, why wouldn’t “catch and release in Mexico” be legal? Amnesty activists will argue it isn’t. Mexico is too dangerous! The U.S. owes applicants some measure of safety and security while they await a verdict. They won’t get that in Mexican border states.
Any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival and including an alien who is brought to the United States after having been interdicted in international or United States waters), irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum in accordance with this section or, where applicable, section 235(b).
Is the caravan really going to end up stuck across the border thanks to the “Remain in Mexico” policy — or are they just going to change their plans from surrendering to U.S. officials at a port of entry to sneaking across the border illegally somewhere and surrendering to the Border Patrol when they’re caught? You can see now why the White House wants a new policy that limits valid asylum claims to only those immigrants who surrendered at a port of entry. The whole point of the “Remain in Mexico” policy is to bottle up asylum-seekers on the other side of the border. If they can cross into the U.S. illegally and still lawfully apply for asylum once they’re here then many of them will do that.
You can also see, though, why Trump lost in the Ninth Circuit a few days ago. The statute is clear: If you’re in the U.S., “whether or not at a designated port of arrival,” you can apply for asylum. Doesn’t matter how you got there. If the White House doesn’t like that, Trump should dial up McConnell and Ryan and have the law tweaked in the Republican Congress’s waning days. Good luck getting around a filibuster in the Senate by the open-borders party, though. Is there anything POTUS could offer Schumer and Pelosi next year to get them to agree to a change in the law here? Maybe a DREAM amnesty in exchange for wall funding and legislative backing for the “Remain in Mexico” policy?
Exit question: Has Mexico agreed to accept *all* asylum-seekers who enter the U.S. from their territory while they await their asylum judgment or only those who enter the U.S. at a port of entry? That is, if the caravan suddenly detours and crosses illegally en masse somewhere on the California border, do they go back to Mexico or is the U.S. stuck detaining them?
Monica Lewinsky Reveals Bill Clinton Insinuated She Could Lie Under Oath
By Jack Davis
Monica Lewinsky Reveals Bill Clinton Insinuated She Could Lie Under Oath
By Jack Davis
President Bill Clinton with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. (William J. Clinton Presidential Library via Wikipedia)New comments from Monica Lewinsky that are part of the A&E series “The Clinton Affair” explain how she was persuaded to lie under oath for former President Bill Clinton.
The former White House intern said Clinton encouraged her to deny their sexual relationship if she was called to testify in the lawsuit against Clinton filed by Paula Jones, Fox News reported.
“Bill called at 2:30 in the morning and there were two pieces of bad news which he was passing along,” she said, according to the Daily Mail.
One bit of bad news was the death of a co-worker’s brother. The other impacted her directly.
“And then, he really dropped the bombshell that he had seen the witness list for the Paula Jones case and I was on it,” Lewinsky said.
“The information about (the co-worker) spun me one way and the information about the witness list spun me completely the other way,” she said. “He told me that it broke his heart and that he’d thought that I probably wouldn’t get called as a witness.”
Lewinsky was not assuaged by his comments.
“I was petrified. I was frantic about my family and this becoming public,” she said.
“Thankfully, Bill helped me lock myself back from that, and he said I could probably sign an affidavit to get out of it, and he didn’t even know if a 100 percent I would be subpoenaed,” Lewinsky said.
She said their conversation never specifically discussed lying, but she was never encouraged to tell the truth, either.
However, the subpoena did come after all.
Lewinsky related that after meeting with Clinton attorney Vernon Jordan, she met lawyer Frank Carter.
“Frank Carter explained to me if I’d signed an affidavit denying having had an intimate relationship with the president it might mean I wouldn’t have to be deposed in the Paula Jones case,” she said.
“I did feel uncomfortable about it, but I felt it was the right thing to do, ironically, right? So, the right thing to do, to break the law,” Lewinsky said.
Not long after that, she was summoned to meet with Clinton.
“This is the first time I met Buddy, the dog, and we kind of all played around with Buddy in the office and then we went into the back study and we had a Christmas kiss,” Lewinsky said.
“Over the summer he had gone to Martha’s Vineyard and he brought back a bunch of different things. He had this big canvas bag from the Black Dog. This marble bear, sunglasses. It was the most presents he’d given me at one time. He knew the subpoena was gonna ask to produce certain items and yet he was giving me more gifts. He clearly still trusted me,” she said.
But the gifts soon paled in comparison with the ordeal of questioning she underwent.
“There was a point for me somewhere within these first several hours where I would be hysterically crying and then I would just shut down,” Lewinsky said. “And in the shutdown period, I just remember looking out the window and thinking the only way to fix this is to kill myself.
“I just felt terrible … and I was scared … and I was mortified.”
Fact Check: Did the US reduce carbon emissions more than any other country last year?
Brad Sylvester, DCNF
Fact Check: Did the US reduce carbon emissions more than any other country last year?
Brad Sylvester, DCNF
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro claimed that the U.S. reduced its carbon dioxide emissions more than any other country in 2017.
“The United States was the number one country in cutting emissions in the last year when it comes to carbon emissions, largely because of fracking replacing coal. So natural gas fracking is significantly less emitting than is the use of coal and coal energy,” he said.
Verdict: True
The U.S. reduced carbon emissions by over 40 million tonnes last year, more than any other country. On a percentage change basis, however, the U.S. fell outside the top 20 for emissions reductions in 2017.
Shapiro was speaking at Ohio State University on Nov. 13 when he made the claim.
The oil giant BP tracks the global carbon emissions produced by oil, gas and coal and publishes its findings annually. Its 2018 report shows that U.S. carbon emissions dropped to 5.1 billion tonnes in 2017, a decline of nearly 42 million tonnes over 2016 levels.
Last year marked the ninth time this century that the U.S. had the largest reduction in global carbon emissions, according to BP.
Ukraine had the second-largest reduction in 2017 – 21 million tonnes – followed by Mexico, the U.K. and South Africa, which saw reductions of 15 million, 12 million and 10 million tonnes, respectively.
While the U.S. had the largest reduction in 2017, it fell outside the top 20 when measuring the year over year change on a percentage basis.
Calculated this way, Ukraine had the largest reduction in 2017. Its carbon emissions dropped from 200 million tonnes in 2016 to 179 million in 2017, a 10.4 percent decrease. Columbia (7.4 percent), Croatia (6.7 percent), Denmark (6.6 percent) and Turkmenistan (5.4 percent) also experienced large declines relative to their size.
Despite these reductions, carbon emissions rose more than 1 percent globally last year. China and India accounted for the largest increases, together emitting an additional 212 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2017.
The U.S. accounted for 15.2 percent of global carbon emissions in 2017, behind only China, which accounted for 27.6 percent of global emissions.
The switch from coal to natural gas, a cleaner form of energy, has been a major factor in declining U.S. carbon emissions in recent years. The Energy Information Administration estimates that from 2005 to 2017, a greater reliance on natural gas for electricity generation reduced carbon emissions by 2.4 billion tonnes. Non-carbon forms of energy like wind and solar also reduced carbon emissions by 1.5 billion tonnes over the same period.
The International Energy Agency believes that reduced electricity demand and higher renewable-based electricity generation were the biggest drivers behind lower U.S. carbon emissions in 2017.
Have a fact check suggestion? Send ideas to brad@dailycallernewsfoundation.org
Silly Question: 'How Did Republicans Learn to Hate the News Media'?
By Tim Graham
Silly Question: 'How Did Republicans Learn to Hate the News Media'?
By Tim Graham
For a healthy dose of how liberals write unintentional humor, see this Columbia Journalism Review article:"How did Republicans learn to hate the news media?" CBS MoneyWatch blogger and former Wall Street Journal investing editor Larry Light claims Republicans have a "prejudice" against the news media, as if there is no evidence....like you've never, ever spent a day on NewsBusters.
He wrote: "My father didn’t want to hear any evidence that contradicted his views, and neither do today’s Republican media haters. The hallmark of a prejudice is that you don’t have to prove it: You just know it."
Light travels through history, from the media exposing Joseph McCarthy and Barry Goldwater, to forcing Richard Nixon from office, and then leaping ahead of George H.W. Bush's last-minute "Annoy the Media" slogan in 1992. Nowhere in those decades is there any evidence of media favoritism, apparently. Just "prejudice" and hate. Then he notes that the Media Research Center and others point to surveys showing few Republicans in the media elite:
[IN]early all available data indicate that journalists are overwhelmingly not Republican. Does it then follow that they hate Republicans and can’t report on the GOP honestly? In a time of increasing partisanship, where more and more Americans believe you’re either with us or against us, lack of devotion to the Republican tribe’s line, as disseminated by programs like Fox & Friends, for instance, is perhaps proof enough of bias. For the media haters, at least, it is.
One of the defining characteristics of the right is a sense of grievance. The success of Fox News demonstrates that the “mainstream” media seldom run stories appealing to this resentment. Most journalists tend to roll their eyes at, say, Fox’s perennial year-end coverage of the supposed “war on Christmas.”
The truth is that journalists, particularly at the most prominent outlets, are a highly educated bunch. And they mostly live in cosmopolitan places like New York and Washington, where support is not strong for allowing nativity crèches on town-hall lawns and stopping immigrants from crossing the Mexican border. That doesn’t make them Democrats’ shills or hostile to the right. But it might make them view some of its concerns as less important. My father, a combat veteran, believed anti-war protesters were traitors and couldn’t understand how the media didn’t scorn them as such.
Light somehow hasn't imagined that this lame attempt to deny liberal media bias is as old as he is. "Highly educated cosmopolitans might LOOK like Democrats, but they're only explaining the world in a highly educated way...that's not media bias." It's newer (but still lame) to claim "Not sounding like Fox News doesn't make you liberal." Listen to CNN or MSNBC for five minutes. You know which party line they closely resemble.
Or you could just say: Stephanopoulos and Cuomo, NOT Democrats?
The article arrives as a lame ending, as he notes that in private, Republicans try to work with reporters, and that toward the end of his life, Nixon sought out reporters, since he knew they would help define his legacy. Dear Larry: Just because you try to influence liberal journalists doesn't mean you don't know who they are, and what they will try to do.
Light concluded: "maybe someday, like Nixon, Republicans will tire of press bashing. In the meantime, duck."
PS: The liberals at Fivethirtyeight did a much better job earlier this year of investigating (rather than dismissing) the media's image problem.
G’ day…Ciao…Helen and Moe Lauzier
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