Dear Democrats

Real Clear Politics

Dear Democrats: 

Hunter Biden Is No Ivanka Trump

Joe Biden’s campaign can best be summed up as a game of dodgeball. Lately, he’s tried to “dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge” questions about why entities in two foreign countries funneled millions of dollars to his son, despite Hunter’s lack of relevant experience for those “jobs.” 

Worse yet are the efforts by Democrats and many in media to provide cover for the Bidens by absurdly comparing Hunter to Ivanka Trump. When it comes to business background and resume: Plain and simple, there is no comparison. Hunter Biden is no Ivanka Trump. 

Realizing the severity of the situation for the flagging front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, the left is currently in distraction mode. Democrats want to create a false equivalency between Biden being paid by entities in Ukraine and China while his father was vice president, and Ivanka Trump’s successful business enterprises. Anyone who dares to ask questions about Biden’s shady international business dealings is met with “But, but, but what about Ivanka?” The comparison is ludicrous. 

Ivanka Trump spent years in business prior to her father’s leap into politics. As part of building and growing her business, she filed over 120 trademarks to protect her brand and name — all before Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president. It would have been business malpractice for her not to secure legal protections, especially in countries like China where corporate theft is routine. Case in point, within days of President Trump taking office, more than 65 Chinese companies tried to trademark “Ivanka Trump” for different products. As a smart businesswoman, Ivanka fought to prevent companies from stealing and profiting from her name, especially since she was entering public service as an unpaid senior advisor to the president. So, while the media portrays her in a negative light, the truth is that she paid from her own pocket to protect her name while receiving nothing in return. 

Meanwhile, Hunter Biden had zero experience in Ukraine and zero experience in the international gas market, but while Joe Biden was vice president of the United States, a Ukrainian gas company found it useful to pay Hunter $50,000 per month for work that is unknown. Hunter also flew to China on Air Force Two with his father, and his firm later received a $1.5 billion investment from China’s national bank. Both “jobs” occurred while Joe Biden was leading the Obama administration’s policy in those two countries. Coincidence? 

Everyone knows Hunter Biden received these incredible business opportunities only because of his last name. He brought no other skills or expertise to the table — just look at his resume. This is a classic example of a political family profiteering from public service. The New York Times reported that Obama State Department officials had concerns about Hunter’s “businesses.” Even his own partner, the stepson of Secretary of State John Kerry, had concerns about these “deals” and severed their business relationship, according to the Washington Post. 

In contrast, Ivanka Trump has long been a successful, internationally recognized businesswoman. She has also been a success in her father’s administration, leading the drive to improve skills training for American workers and removing the barriers that hold back women around the world. 

So, let me answer the question for you about how Hunter Biden and Ivanka Trump compare: It’s not even close. If you need any further proof, Ivanka is in the White House working hard for the American people, while Hunter Biden dodges questions about his shady business practices, just like his father. 

Marc Lotter is director of strategic communications for Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. He previously served as special assistant to the president and press secretary to the vice president.

Should you be polite

USA Today

Say thank you and please: 

Should you be polite with Alexa and the Google Assistant?

Updated 11:14 am EDT Oct. 11, 2019

Jeremy Bloom has a polite family. But after a few frustratingly failed attempts in which Bloom politely asked Alexa to turn down the volume at dinner time, he shouted instead, “Alexa, zip it.” 

“To our surprise, the music immediately stopped,” says the Pittsburgh-area commercial lender. “We got a huge laugh out of that. And while not the best lesson in manners for the kids, it is common for us to tell Alexa to 'zip it’ now.”

As we increasingly rely on anthropomorphized artificial intelligence-powered  voice assistants in our homes or in our hands for weather, news, homework help and such, there's a question of whether these machines deserve the respect we (hopefully) afford fellow human beings.

In other words, should we use words such as “please” and “sorry” when we ask Amazon's Alexa, the Google Assistant or Apple’s Siri to do something on our behalf – or follow up with a "thank you" when the devices deliver on our requests?And if we're bratty with Alexa and the others, what does that not only teach our kids but say about our own level of civility? 

Dr. Laura Phillips, a clinical neuropsychologist at the Child Mind Institute, says the answers are “complicated and really nuanced."

A report last year by the U.K.-based market research firm Childwise suggested that voice recognition gadgets could be teaching children to be rude and demanding, and that “the dividing line between digital ‘person’ and a real human being might not be clear for

Some parents have been struggling to find the right tone.

"This has really made me think about people versus inanimate objects versus pets versus simulated intelligence," says Deidré McLaren, mother of a 4-year-old in Johannesburg, South Africa. 

For Cynthia Craigie, a stay-at-home mother of three in the central coast of California, it is all about what the kids hear.

“How do you interact with your spouse? How do you interact with the cashier at the convenience store? Do you say 'please' and 'thank you,' or are you on your phone, distracted when you go through the checkout line? Those little things, I’ve noticed my boys pay attention to and will copy my actions. Manners can be considered a lost art.” 

But another parent, Tawnya Slater, sees it differently. Watching manners with these devices is to her, in a word, "weird." “You want me to say 'please' to my electronic device? Should I say 'thank you' to my trash can for accepting my trash? How about I ask the freezer to please keep my ice cream frozen,” she shared in a Facebook group discussing the topic.

What makes things more complicated is that “digital assistants have this aura of authority,” says Dr. Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychological Research Center in Newport Beach, California. We may know that they’re not human, but to kids, "they sound like adults, know lots of stuff and are easy to anthropomorphize." As conversational interfaces and AI evolves further, such distinctions may blur further.

"Kids learn through repetition, which is why we all say, 'What’s the magic word?' infinitum,” she says. 

“These AI-driven, non-human entities don’t care if you sound tired and crabby, or if you are purposely rude because it’s 'funny.' But interactions of all kinds build patterns of communication and interaction. The more you are used to bossing Siri around or bullying her, the more you’re used to that communication pattern," Rutledge says.

Some parents have reported another problem with trying to sound friendly and considerate when talking to Alexa and Google – throwing in extra words when barking out a command may confuse these assistants.

Dr. Phillips has another concern. The use of "please" and "thank you" might, in some sense, cheapen the meaning of such words. 

"When you’re talking to very young infants who don’t understand it’s a machine and we want them to hear kind engagement with other people, it stands to reason that we should be using manners,” says Phillips. “When kids are older and understand that Alexa isn’t a person, we don’t want them to use those words in an automatic way. And that we say 'thank you' and 'I’m sorry' and 'please' because there’s a relational piece to our communication and our words impact other people.”

Getting positive reinforcement 

Amazon determined that politeness counts when it introduced the Echo Dot Kids Edition last year. When youngsters ask Alexa to solve a math problem by exhibiting good manners – “Alexa, please tell me what 5 plus 7 is” – the voice inside the Echo will not only supply the right answer but will then add positive reinforcement: “By the way, thanks for asking so nicely.” 

This “magic word” feature, as Amazon called it, was an apparent response by the company to a loud chorus of customers who were concerned that the act of rudely commanding Alexa to do something sent out the wrong kind of message, especially to the youngest members of the family. 

Google launched a similar “Pretty Please” feature for the Google Assistant last fall after director of product management for the Assistant Lilian Rincon saw her then 4-year-old son yelling at the devices to play the ABCs and eventually his favorite Disney songs.

“I quickly realized that we needed a way to help promote polite behavior – not only for kids but also for all people who now welcome digital assistants to their homes,” she says.

In Iowa City, senior marketing manager Dana Turner says her husband has come up with another sound reason for treating voice assistants nicely. He “always says 'thank you’ to her because, he says, one day AI is going to take over the world and he wants to be saved.”

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow @edbaig on Twitter

Rejected Federal Money

Townhall

Oh, So That's Why 

Virginia Democrats Rejected Federal Money To Combat Gun Crime?

Matt Vespa

Virginia Democrats are a total mess. Yes, it may not be reported extensively now, but Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam wore blackface in the 1980s. The state attorney general, Mark Herring, also did it. And Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax is facing two allegations of rape. The entire Democratic leadership was engulfed in scandal, but no one has resigned because Democrats play by a separate set of rules. You can be racist, be a Democrat, and survive. The state was the laughingstock of the country for a few news cycles, but now Impeachment Theater is taking the Hill by storm because Trump had a phone call with the Ukrainians. It’s a total hit job—what else is new—but back to the Old Dominion.

The Democratic Party is pro-open borders on immigration. We have 2020 candidates discussing decriminalizing border crossings and giving health care to illegal aliens. Oh, and they hate Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. It is part of their overall animosity towards law enforcement due to the Black Lives Matter nonsense, and yet they think these are the only people who should be trusted with firearms. That animus is so great that it appears state Democrats rejected government funds to fight gun crime because of the provision to share immigration data with federal law enforcement authorities. Firearms reporter Stephen Gutowski has more (via Free Beacon):

Virginia turned down hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal money used to combat gun crime in 2018, rather than comply with federal immigration authorities, according to documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

A series of Department of Justice memos show that two anti-gun-crime grants were transferred from the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), which had previously administered the program, in Dec. 2018. The memos say the transfer was necessary after state officials refused to certify that Virginia would comply with federal requirements to share immigration information with federal law enforcement.

"DCJS will not be able to comply with the requirements and the agency has formally declined the awards," a DOJ official said in one memo. "The grants were awarded to the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) to serve as the fiscal agent for the 2018 Project Safe Neighborhood (PSN) awards for the Eastern and Western Districts of the state of Virginia."

Democratic governor Ralph Northam, a supporter of gun control reforms, and his administration lost out on $665,673 in grant funding that is specifically aimed at reducing gun crimes. The grants are now administered through the non-profit Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police. A Northam spokeswoman declined to comment on the transfer but said the governor supports the program and how the non-profit has handled it.

So, the man who wants to enact a stringent anti-gun agenda, one that includes confiscatory measures, rejected funds for an action item that would share bipartisan support because of ICE. Screw saving lives if it means keeping illegals here—is that the message? That’s how it should be taken. We’re not going to fight certain aspects of crime because we might have to work with federal immigration authorities who are working to find and deport people who shouldn’t be here, mostly gang members, isn’t a winning message, especially for suburban voters who are becoming more uneasy about illegal alien violence. 

Northam is sure showing his dark side. 

https://pjmedia.com/trending/electric-car-owners-shocked-by-california-blackouts/

Electric-Car Owners Shocked 

by California Blackouts

Everybody knows that electric cars are going to save the planet from climate change or something. Unlike regular cars, which run on gasoline and make all the polar bears cry as they sink into the sea, electric cars are powered by... um... magic? Mjölnir, the hammer of Thor? That must be how it works, or else owning an electric car would impose some sort of cost to the environment. And that can't be, or those guys wouldn't be so insufferably smug.

You know those intentional blackouts they're having in California to reduce the risk of wildfires? Well, guess what happens now?

John Pearley Huffman, Car and Driver:

Weeks can be a long wait if you’re looking at a Model 3 in your garage with a drained battery, no electrical power to charge it, and the closest grocery store with power 80 miles away. But such is life in the Golden State, where forests and chaparral are all on hair triggers ready to ignite with slightest transformer malfunction or transmission line break. And the political environment demands minimal risk after the 2018 fire season produced 8527 conflagrations burning an astonishing 1,893,913 acres of wild lands and more than 18,000 structures...

California is experimenting with its power-generation future. And right now, that experiment is hurting. Particularly those electric-car owners with dead batteries.

So if you're a Californian who bought an electric car to save the environment, now you can't drive it because of the risk to the environment. If you really cared about the planet, you wouldn't go anywhere or do anything or participate in 21st-century life at all.

Whatever happened to those algae-powered cars we were supposed to have by now? Remember Obama talking about those? Imagine driving around smelling like a dirty fish tank. Smirking at all those planet-killing dummies in their outdated electric cars. That's the thing about being woke. There's always somebody woker.

Shrinking

American Thinker

The incredible shrinking whistleblower

House Democrats are now demanding that the “whistleblower” be allowed to testify by letter. This marks another step forward in the impeachment narrative. Yesterday it was from behind a curtain with the voice artificially distorted. Today it’s by letter. Tomorrow it will be from Elon Musk’s Mars colony.

The excuse for this is the evergreen “death threats,” but this is even less likely the case than in other instances. A CIA operative is frightened by anonymous death threats? Are you sure?

So what could real explanation be? Let us count the ways:

• The witness is balking. Following the complete public humiliations of Mrs. Christine Blasey Ford and Robert Mueller, Crusader for Justice, this could well be case. Blasey Ford was a reluctant witness finally pushed into appearing by the Democrats – wisely so, as it developed. In that, at least, she was smarter than her handlers. Vague threats is one thing; the certainty of being turned into a universal punchline for all time to come is something else altogether.
• 
  

Beyond that, there’s the fact that this is totally new legal ground – never has something as grave as a presidential impeachment been based on a reed as flimsy as a single whistleblower. One wrong step and the witness will be spending the rest of his days in one court or another, if not worse.

And beyond even that, there is the vengeance that DJT will undoubtedly wreak once he is reelected and doesn’t have to worry about running or being impeached. The whistleblower is an old D.C. hand, and is probably quite aware of all this.

• Fading courage. “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” Nancy and Adam struck at Donald Trump only to see their swords turn to rubber in their hands. Now, blades drooping, they stand staring at Trump. He stares back. In the distance, a dog barks.
• 
  

In this case, it’s not the whistleblower, but the Democrats themselves who are balking, in a desperate effort to buy time. The lawyers have had second thoughts. Vulnerable incumbents are screaming, “You can’t do this to us!”

• A flawed witness. Something is seriously wrong with the whistleblower. Something has emerged, or has been discovered, that makes it risky or impossible to put the whistleblower before the public. What this might be is anybody’s guess, but considering it involves the CIA, the possibilities are endless.
• The case has collapsed. For some reason as yet unknown, the case has effectively evaporated in the Dem’s hands. This could be new evidence, new testimony, or revelations that the Dems can’t allow to become public. As in the Kavanaugh case, every last piece of evidence has been undercut or contradicted. It wouldn’t take much more to bury it.
• There is no whistleblower.
• 
  

It could be any of these (except for the last -- not even the Democrats are that bold), or something else altogether. What is undeniable is that the House Dems are now trying to stall. This is a clear sign of failure. The only hope that the impeachment mob had was to strike quickly, cleanly, and successfully. A stretched-out process would only reveal the weaknesses of their case and turn the entire affair into a campaign issue, and not one in their favor. They blew it, and now they’re playing for time and looking for a way down. They have yet to find it.

Californians Learn

https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2019/10/12/uh-oh-californians-learn-solar-panels-stop-working-power-cut/

Uh oh! Californians Learn 

That Solar Panels Stop Working When Power Is Cut

Elizabeth Vaughn

As part of their efforts to prevent wildfires, California’s electric supplier PG&E shut down power to approximately 800,000 residents and businesses in the northern part of the state last week. The thinking is that dry, windy conditions spark wildfires and if the utility could take large swathes of the power grid offline when those conditions are present, this would prevent fires. The Mercury News reports that in the last couple of years, several major fires have started from “PG&E power lines in the Wine Country and Sierra foothills.”

Many residents did not understand why their solar panels stopped working when the power was cut. It turns out that only solar panels which are installed with a battery backup will keep the lights on.

Bloomberg explains the reason:

Most panels are designed to supply power to the grid — not directly to houses. During the heat of the day, solar systems can crank out more juice than a home can handle. Conversely, they don’t produce power at all at night. So systems are tied into the grid, and the vast majority aren’t working this week as PG&E Corp. cuts power to much of Northern California to prevent wildfires.

The only way for most solar panels to work during a blackout is pairing them with batteries.

Bloomberg reports that the market for batteries has started to take off. Ed Fenster, the Chairman of U.S. rooftop solar company Sunrun, Inc., expects battery sales to explode after the PG&E blackouts.

Trump Isn’t Your President?

Jews, African Americans and..

FrontPageMag

Jews, African Americans 

and the Democrat Party

The trap of blind loyalty.

October 11, 2019

In democracies, minority groups will often embrace one political party and cling to that attachment irrespective of changing political circumstances. This seems especially true of minorities that have experienced discrimination, marginalization, and other forms of abuse.

In America, the groups that have been most closely attached to the Democrat Party for virtually the last century are African Americans and Jews. Even consideration in the abstract of the wisdom of being predictably committed to one party would suggest likely more negative than positive consequences - for example, being taken for granted by that party while given up on and not pursued by the other - and experience has borne that out.

This would seem to be most obvious with regard to the African American experience. Consider, for example, the Democrats’ decades-long lock on control of most of America’s big cities, many with African American majorities, and the record of public education in those cities.

Little weighs as heavily on impoverished children’s potential for extricating themselves from their difficult circumstances and shaping a better future for themselves than the quality of the education they receive in their elementary and secondary schools. But the African American populations in our large urban centers have consistently been very poorly served by their schools and lag significantly behind national averages in command of basic skills.

Those in charge of the relevant cities point to lesser per student spending on their schools due to lesser tax subsidies as compared to the subsidies provided in other jurisdictions. Another argument is that the difficult family circumstances these cities’ impoverished children often face undercut the children’s ability to make full use of the educational opportunities available to them in their public schools. 

Both factors are indeed at play in shaping the school experience of inner city children from low income families. But the history of charter schools over the past almost three decades undercuts claims that these factors render better educational outcomes out of reach. Charter schools are public schools that operate independently under public charter with greater autonomy but with increased performance expectations. They are open to students on the basis simply of application or, if oversubscribed, on the basis of lottery. The general history of such schools has been mixed but overall positive, and, as the Harvard School of Education reported in the summer of 2017, “...low income students, especially black and Hispanic, tend to benefit from charter schools most...” And, in inner cities, such schools are serving children with basically the same social disadvantages as their peers and are doing so with per capita budgets no greater than those of the public schools. 

Not only have major cities failed to improve their schools, but their political leaders - like New York mayor Bill De Blasio, who shouted out at a campaign rally in July that he “hates” charter schools - have often worked to undercut and obstruct charter school alternatives for their constituents. They have done so even as tens of thousands of African American families, desperate for a better future for their children, have sought admission to charter schools. The politicians have taken this course to serve the interests of their backers such as teachers’ unions and others opposed to charter schools. They have chosen political expediency over the welfare of their cities’ children. 

And yet one would be hard-pressed to find African American voters in these cities shifting their support away from the Democrat politicians who control their cities and their schools. Their attachment to the party is so ingrained that their cities’ politicians know they will pay no price for ignoring African American children’s interests in favor of, for example, those of union contributors. 

One can come up with potential logical explanations for how the commitment to the Democrat Party, by both African Americans and American Jews, first evolved. Why it is so steadfastly embraced even when circumstances would suggest the wisdom of a more flexible approach to party preferences, an approach responsive to political changes, is the more germane question. Part of the answer is that groups that have been subjected to biased, abusive, marginalizing treatment are inclined to categorical thinking about what will make their situation better. That is, they tend to think in absolute terms about one set of choices being right and the other wrong. This inclination is driven largely by the wish to believe that making such sharp distinctions and choosing the “right” alternative will assure escape from past abuses. That wish, and the frame of mind it engenders, work against a more nuanced response to political developments. 

The potency of this dynamic among American Jews, and its role in the American Jewish embrace of the Democrat Party, have been elucidated by polls of American Jews regarding anti-Semitism in America. Sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset and co-author Earl Raab, writing in the 1990's, noted that such polls showed the overwhelming majority of American Jews believing anti-Semitism to be more rife among American conservatives than liberals, even though actual surveys of American opinion regarding Jews have not supported this assumption. The false belief, largely reflecting a wish that reality could be so simply defined, figures in American Jews’ allegiance to the Democrats, their routinely voting for Democrat candidates in numbers exceeding seventy percent.

The cost to Jews for this blind allegiance was illustrated in the Democrat leadership’s response when anti-Semitic tropes were spewed by a newly elected Democrat congresswoman, Ilhan Omar. Rather than forthrightly condemn her for her anti-Semitic comments, the Party leadership, eager to appease a Progressive wing more than tolerant of anti-Jewish voices, sponsored a meaningless condemnation of all sorts of bigotry. Its refusal to offer a simple, straightforward rebuke of the congresswoman’s anti-Semitism reflected a bowing to the sensibilities of that Progressive wing over those of their Jewish loyalists and an expectation that the cost of not appeasing the former would be greater than the cost of betraying the latter. And they were no doubt right in their calculations.

A similar calculation was reflected in the Party’s response to Israel’s decision not to allow Omar and another newly elected congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib, to enter the country. House Majority leader Steny Hoyer, who had just returned from leading a delegation of other newly elected Democrats to Israel and assuring that nation of Democrat support, condemned Israel’s action as “outrageous.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi similarly condemned it. They suggested it was somehow an unprecedented move by a democratic ally. But the United States has repeatedly blocked figures from other democracies from entering the country, including an Israeli member of the Knesset. And, aside from anti-Semitic statements, Omar and Tlaib have endorsed the anti-Semitic BDS (boycott, divest and sanction) movement whose goal, as articulated by its founder and many of its leaders, is Israel’s annihilation. Tlaib has also advocated Israel’s destruction more directly. Is Israel really obliged to admit people who openly declare they want to see the nation destroyed?

Both Hoyer and Pelosi have been strong supporters of Israel and neither can be construed as in any way anti-Jewish. Both are well aware of the history of Israel and the falsehoods in Omar and Tlaib’s glosses on that history. That they would come to the defense of the congresswomen and not support Israel in its right to deny them entry reflected a political calculation. It reflected once again the conviction that it was politically more important to propitiate the anti-Israel circles in the so-called Progressive wing of the Party than to worry about the Jews; that confronting the former would have more negative consequences for the Party than disregarding the latter. And, again, they were no doubt right in this calculation. There has been and will be no counter-push from Jews making the point that the Party cannot automatically assume Jewish allegiance no matter what action it takes against Jewish interests. While such pushback might not change the Party’s ultimate course, it would at least force some deeper reflection, some consideration of possible cost, before Jewish interests were ignored. But no such Jewish response will likely occur.

The two episodes above may seem of limited weight when compared to, say, the issue of schools in the nation’s major cities and the Party’s betrayal of African American children. But the episodes are reflective of a much broader problem.

The American institution most associated with anti-Semitism today is American academia. On the nation’s campuses, dominated by the Left, faculties have widely joined in the bigoted demonization of Israel and its American supporters, have backed the BDS movement and have penalized Jewish students and others who seek to defend Israel. College and university administrators, while typically resisting cooperation in boycotts, have also typically done little to counter campus anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bigotry. The actors in this institutional anti-Semitism are overwhelmingly Democrat supporters, and the Party, once more prioritizing propitiating supporters over challenging anti-Semitism in its midst, has been essentially silent on the bigotry of the campuses. And once more there has been very little American Jewish pushback.

The ethos of the campuses, and the lack of Democrat response, is a threat to American Jews in other ways as well. Basic American principles, principles that have figured prominently in making the Jewish experience in America so much more benign overall than the Jewish experience elsewhere, have in recent years come under attack. That attack has been primarily from the Left, starting again largely on the campuses. What is more fundamental to American Jewish well-being than the First Amendment and freedom of speech, or than the principal embodied in Martin Luther King’s vision of a more fully realized adherence to judging people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin? Yet both are under incessant attack in the leftist-dominated academy, where a supposed “right” to protection from distressing ideas trumps freedom of speech and where group identity trumps individual identity. (Martin Luther King would likely be harassed and pushed off campuses today for his ideas just as pro-Israel speakers are.) And this illiberal ideology is spreading from our colleges and universities to other bastions of the Left. Yet the Democrat Party has responded virtually not at all to this challenge to basic freedoms and basic principles coming overwhelmingly from its supporters. And Jews have done essentially nothing to call the Party to account.

There is little evidence to suggest that the great majority of either African Americans or Jews is prepared to reassess its longstanding blind loyalty to the Democrat Party. The ongoing refusal to do so in the face of inimical Democrat policies will likely exact an ever-increasing price from both groups.

Kenneth Levin is a psychiatrist and historian and author of The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People under Siege."

Sent from my iPad

Detroit Free Press “reporter” plays the Mom Card

It truly is amazing how far the so-called “free press” is willing to go to torch their own reputation while proving President Trump right.

Patriot Retort

A reporter for the Detroit Free Press claims, without evidence, that Elizabeth Warren is telling the truth because the reporter’s Mom says so.

I wish I was kidding.

But I’m not.

Nancy Kaffer of the Detroit Free Press sought to debunk the “evidence” (she used quotes) that disputes Elizabeth Warren’s recent claim that she was fired for being “visibly pregnant.”

And how did she “debunk” the evidence?

Why she talked to her Mom about her experience as a teacher in the 1950s.

This is what passes for evidence at the Detroit Free Press?

How ironic coming from a paper with “Free Press” in its name. 

The anecdotal claims of one former school teacher from the 1950s is not proof. Nor does it debunk the evidence that Liz Warren is embellishing her own experience.

Unless this reporter’s Mom was Elizabeth Warren’s boss, a school board member at Elizabeth Warren’s school or Elizabeth Warren herself, what the hell could she possibly offer by way of “evidence” that Elizabeth Warren is telling the truth?

Are reporters not taught logic in J-School?

• Elizabeth Warren claims she was fired for being visibly pregnant in the 1970s.
• My Mom said women were fired for being visibly pregnant in 1950s.
• Therefore Elizabeth Warren’s story is legit.

This is what is known as a logical fallacy.

Let me give you another example of this logical fallacy:

• Jussie Smollett claims he was attacked in a racist hate crime.
• There are incidents of racist hate crimes.
• Therefore Jussie Smollett’s story is legit.

See what I mean?

Are there no editors at the Detroit Free Press?  Was there nobody who has the sense God gave a goat that could say, “Honey, interviewing your Mom about something she has no direct involvement in is not good reporting, nor does it debunk the video and documentary evidence that Warren is lying.”

But it isn’t just the Detroit Free Press that is using anecdotal evidence to “prove” Warren is telling the truth.  I mentioned the other day, quite a few outlets are circling the wagons around Warren by making this same ridiculously illogical argument.

Do these idiots not realize that Elizabeth Warren herself has told more than one version of this event?

If you’re trying to prove that Liz Warren is not lying, how do you square that?

Was she lying in 2007 when she said she chose to leave teaching, have her child, take a couple years off and go to law school?

Or is she lying now with her “I am Victim, hear me roar” account that she’s peddling on  the campaign in hopes of scoring points with the Pussy-Hat-wearing, cul-de-sac busybodies?

And how does this Detroit Free Press reporter “debunk” the documentary evidence the Federalist published this week?

Why, naturally, by reporting that her Mom said the school board wouldn’t come out and say Liz got fired for being visibly pregnant.

Problem is, Liz didn’t get fired at all.

Clearly Nancy Kaffer’s Mom didn’t read the documents the Federalist released.  In fact, I can’t help but wonder if Kaffer herself even bothered to read them.

I read them.

But then again, I’m not a reporter.

Minutes from the School Board meetings show that the board voted to retain Elizabeth Warren as a teacher. In April 1971, they voted and approved issuing contracts to non-tenured teachers (including Elizabeth Warren).  But in June, 1971, the board’s minutes reveal that they “accepted with regret” Warren’s resignation.

In other words, they wanted to keep her on.  They voted to keep her on.  But Warren chose instead to resign – which the board reluctantly accepted.

The minutes from the school board meetings line up exactly with Liz Warren’s 2007 account of that time, and not the confabulated version she keeps burping out on the campaign trail.

You don’t have to be a reporter for the Detroit Free Press to see that.

Of course, Nancy Kaffer doesn’t address Liz Warren’s own 2007 account.  But then again, maybe her Mom didn’t see that video.

There is actual evidence of Warren’s dishonesty.  And by “actual evidence,” I mean documented proof, not “I asked my Mom and she said this.”

When Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) called out the “reporter” from the Detroit Free Press for this nonsensical article, she got super huffy.

But still this idiot didn’t get it.

Ah, yes. The “you’d have to be a sexist misogynist to not believe my Mom and this woman professor who have no first-hand knowledge of Elizabeth Warren’s story” argument.

Color me shocked.

This is really a sight to behold.

I watched that exchange unfold on Twitter and honestly could not believe what I was seeing.

This is how desperate the so-called Free Press is to shield and protect Elizabeth Warren from herself.

Like I said earlier this week, not since Barack Obama have we witnessed such flagrant apologists for a Presidential Candidate.

Did these guys even run this kind of interference for Hillary Clinton?  I’ll have to check the Detroit Free Press archives to check.

Or, I’ll ask my mom.

But what makes this entire thing so outlandish is this reporter doesn’t have a single clue as to why her “story” is garbage.

How did she ever get a job at a newspaper?

Interestingly enough (though hardly surprising) the Warren campaign is emboldened by the news media’s willingness to explain away her contradictory stories by the use of anecdotal accounts.

Clearly Team Warren feels completely secure in the knowledge that the media will provide cover fire.

So secure, in fact, her campaign actually tweeted this:

Honestly, at first, I thought this was a parody account.

“Believe pregnant women?”  Sorry, pregnant people.

So you get that?

The evidence that Liz Warren is telling the truth about getting fired for being “visibly  pregnant” is that pregnant women never lie and you must believe them.

Sorry, pregnant people don’t lie and you must believe them.

After Liz took that disastrous DNA test, most folks with half a brain figured she wouldn’t be so stupid as to dive in to the 2020 race.

How do you live down such a monumental fraud?

Well, apparently Liz’s answer to that question was to start telling yet another monumental lie to distract people from the Native American lie.

Meanwhile, the same so-called “free press” that ran interference for Liz and her DNA debacle are tripping all over themselves to run interference for her once again.

These guys just can’t stop going out of their way to prove President Trump right.

They really are corrupt, dishonest, and fake.

And they are willing to go to such clownish lengths to prove it.

I’ll close with these salient points from Jim Treacher:

TOWNHALL

Corporate Commies

Witten by Erick Erickson

The opinions expressed by columnists are their

 own and do not represent the views of Townhall

Source: AP Photo/Pat Sullivan

The general manager of the NBA's Houston Rockets, Daryl Morey, tweeted support for Hong Kong's protestors. The protestors are marching against increasing governmental incursions by mainland China into Hong Kong's affairs. When Great Britain handed Hong Kong over to China, China agreed to maintain autonomy for Hong Kong but now appears uninterested in keeping its promise.

Morey used the social media platform Twitter to voice his support for Hong Kong's protestors. Twitter is blocked in China. There is not a man, woman or child in China -- except for the communist agents censoring the internet there -- who could have seen Morey's tweet. But China demanded the NBA apologize.

The NBA is an organization unafraid to delve into "woke" American politics. The organization walked away from North Carolina merely because the state considered a ban on letting transgender people use bathrooms for the opposite sex. The organization decided to stop using the word "owner" for its teams because of woke politics. Multiple NBA team owners denounced pro-life and religious liberty legislation in the United States. Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr is famous for his pronouncements supporting every left-wing social justice cause imaginable.

Kerr had no comment about China. Neither did Stephen Curry, who claimed he was too ignorant of Chinese history to have an opinion on China's wholesale slaughter of its people. Making matters worse, the NBA released a statement supporting Daryl Morey's right to free speech, but its Chinese translation read differently. The Chinese language statement read that the NBA was "extremely disappointed" by Morey's "inappropriate comment." The NBA also apologized that Morey "severely hurt the feelings of Chinese fans." Again, that was not in the English language version.

On Wednesday, Americans showed up at a Washington Wizards game holding signs in support of Hong Kong. As the American national anthem played, NBA security officials forced these Americans to leave the area -- an area that sits only a mile from where the American Bill of Rights is on display, guaranteeing our freedom of speech. To the extent the NBA has taken a stance, it has stood for China. Frankly, none of us should be surprised an organization that routinely opposes religious liberty in the United States would stand with a totalitarian communist regime that routinely exterminates religious minorities.

Disney-owned ESPN covered what happened but danced around what Morey had actually said. Someone leaked an internal memo from ESPN management insisting its staff, long willing to talk about American politics, refrain from talking about Hong Kong and Chinese politics. Disney, which now owns most of Hollywood, is reliant on Chinese viewers for its billion-dollar box offices. ESPN's actions come months after Paramount changed Tom Cruise's famous jacket from "Top Gun" for the sequel: The patches for Taiwan and Japan disappeared. Tencent, the Chinese film company that also has ties to the NBA, helped produce the new movie.

United and American Airlines wiped Taiwan off their Chinese website maps because China demanded it. Marriott fired an Omaha, Nebraska-based employee for liking a pro-Tibet tweet after China excoriated the company. Apple Inc. has likewise bent over backwards for China. Try to find the Taiwan flag in the emoji keyboard while in Hong Kong, and you will come up empty. Apple also adhered to Chinese demands that iCloud data of people in China be stored on Chinese servers and an app used by Hong Kong protestors be removed from its app store.

Facebook has run counter to most American corporations. Though the company could undoubtedly make massive amounts of money off one billion tech-savvy Chinese citizens, the company apparently refuses to do business in China. It has allowed platform access in Hong Kong but, just the other day, blocked Hong Kong's police force from using WhatsApp. The police were purportedly using the service to track protestors. It is rare to see an American company put freedom ahead of Chinese money. Facebook is a notable and commendable exception.

Americans need to take a strong stand against Chinese censorship and totalitarianism. The American people will have to take the lead. American companies are signaling they like communist money more than American freedom.