Pretty much…
Tag: mainstream media
Re-Visiting Russiagate In Light Of The Ukraine War
It’s hard to believe that the last president spent his term pouring weapons into Ukraine, shredding treaties with Russia and ramping up cold war escalations against Moscow which helped lead us directly to the extraordinarily dangerous situation we now find ourselves in, and yet mainstream liberals spent his entire administration screaming that he was a Kremlin puppet.
A lot of anti-empire commentary is rightly going into criticizing how the Obama administration paved the way to this conflict in Ukraine with its role in the 2014 coup and support for Kyiv’s war against Donbass separatists. But what’s getting lost in all this, largely because Trumpites have been using their mainstream numbers to loudly amplify criticisms of the role of the Obama and Biden administrations in this mess, is what happened between those two presidencies which was just as crucial in getting us here.
Though it’s been scrubbed from mainstream liberal history, it was actually the Trump administration that began the US policy of arming Ukraine in the first place. Obama had refused forceful demands from neocons and liberal hawks to do so because he feared it would provoke an attack by Russia.
In a 2015 article titled “Defying Obama, Many in Congress Press to Arm Ukraine“, The New York Times reported that “So far, the Obama administration has refused to provide lethal aid, fearing that it would only escalate the bloodshed and give President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia a pretext for further incursions.”
It wasn’t until the Trump presidency that those weapons began pouring into Ukraine, and boy howdy are we looking at some “further incursions” now. This change occurred either because Trump was a fully willing participant in the agenda to ramp up aggressions against Moscow, or because he was politically pressured into playing along with that agenda by the collusion narrative which had its origins at every step in the US intelligence cartel, or because of some combination of the two.
In all the world-shaping news stories we’ve been experiencing lately, it’s easy to forget how the narrative that the Kremlin had infiltrated the highest levels of the US government dominated news coverage and political discourse for years on end. But in light of the fact that today’s major headlines now revolve around that exact same foreign government, this fact is probably worth revisiting.
CNN analyst blames Trump for aftermath of Will Smith-Chris Rock Oscars incident
A CNN analyst appeared to blame the chaotic scene that occurred after Will Smith slapped Chris Rock during the 94th Annual Academy Awards on none other than longtime CNN nemesis former President Trump.
During the Oscars on Sunday night, Smith charged the stage and smacked Rock in the face after the comedian make a joke about the “King Richard” actor’s wife. The incident stunned the crowd, but the show went on and Smith eventually won the coveted Best Actor award.
CNN’s Asha Rangappa decided the Dolby Theater crowd stuck around because of Trump.
“So did like anyone walk out after that happened??? Or are we getting an independent psychological case study on how Trump got normalized?” Rangappa asked on Twitter.
Rangappa was swiftly mocked for blaming Trump for the incident.
CNN famously drifted away from its once-nonpartisan style to an anti-Trump, liberal network under former boss Jeff Zucker, who was forced to step down earlier this year. Incoming boss Chis Licht is expected to attempt to steer the network back toward the just-the-facts approach to news that founder Ted Turner intended.
Rangappa, who is one of the network’s more outspoken liberals on social media, was mocked last year for comparing a Southwest pilot who objected to President Biden to an ISIS sympathizer. A pilot on a Southwest flight from Houston to Albuquerque signed off his announcement for passengers by saying, “Let’s Go Brandon,” according to an Associated Press journalist who was reportedly on the flight.
ABC Anchor: Questioning Judge Jackson About Light Sentences For Child Porn Offenders Was “A Message To QAnon”
Yet another media talking head has claimed that Republicans probing into Biden Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s history of light sentences for child porn offenders is some kind of “message to QAnon.”
As we noted last week, several lawmakers grilled Jackson over the issue, prompting her to state that the cases she has presided over are “difficult” and that judges have to look at “various aspects of the offence and impose a sentence that is sufficient but not greater than necessary”.
Discussing the matter Sunday, ABC Jon Karl suggested that GOP lawmakers were sending some kind of message to right wing conspiracy theorists by continuing the line of questioning.
Karl suggested that the questions in the Senate were “harsh and highly unusual” and wondered “could the sharp questioning backfire” on Republicans with midterm elections approaching.
Karl then asked former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile about the “focus on child pornography and pedophiles,” To which she simply replied “QAnon.”
Karl responded “it was a message to QAnon, wasn’t it?” further suggesting “these are not major cases, these were sentencing decisions.”
George Carlin on the elite…
The Media Campaign to Protect Joe Biden Passes the Point of Absurdity
Burying the lede just a bit, the New York Times on March 16th published a long, spirited piece about the federal tax investigation of Hunter Biden. This is the 24th paragraph:
People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.
In confirming that federal prosecutors are treating as “authenticated” the Biden emails, the Times story applies the final dollop of clown makeup to Wolf Blitzer, Lesley Stahl, Christiane Amanpour, Brian Stelter, and countless other hapless media stooges, many starring in Matt Orfalea’s damning montage above (the Hunter half-laugh is classic, by the way). All cooperated with intelligence officials to dismiss a damaging story about Biden’s abandoned laptop and his dealings with the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma as “Russian disinformation.” They tossed in terms thought up for them by spooks as if they were their own thoughts, using words like “obviously” and “classic” and “textbook” to describe “the playbook of Russian disinformation,” in what itself was and still is a wildly successful disinformation campaign, one begun well before the much-derided (and initially censored) New York Post exposé on the topic from October of 2020.
Not to be petty, but — well, yes, let’s be petty, just a little, and point out that many of the people who were the most pompous about this story turned out to be the most wrong, including the conga line of Intercept editors and staffers who essentially knocked Glenn Greenwald all the way to Substack over the issue. There are more important things going on in the world, but for sheer bootlicking conformist excess and depraved journalist-on-journalist venom the “Russian disinformation” fiasco has no equal, and probably needs recording for posterity before it’s memory-holed via some creepy homage to Severance, or a next-gen algorithmic witch-hunt, or whatever other federally contracted monstrosities are being readied for deployment somewhere far up the anus of Silicon Valley.
Opposition To Starting WWIII Doesn’t Make You Pro-Putin, It Just Means You’re Sane
While Florida Democrats have been running around the Sunshine State yelling “gay!” the rest of the Democrat Party has been busy yelling “Russia!” in the general direction of anything they don’t like. The 2016 election of Donald Trump? Must have been Russia! Hunter Biden’s damning laptop? Russia!
Now that Russian President Vladimir Putin has invaded Ukraine in an attack that’s killed or displaced thousands of civilian innocents, Democrats are even more eager to accuse anyone they dislike of being a Russian plant. So that’s what they’ve resorted to instead of thoughtfully engaging arguments for why going to war with a nuclear power might not be the brightest idea.
It’s an obvious statement that shouldn’t need saying, but the willful distortion of common sense by manipulative media means not enough people are hearing it: Wanting to avoid World War III doesn’t mean you’re a Putin-lover, it just means you’re sane.
We all know them…
U.S. Media Decries Brutal Russia Invasion of Ukraine—Yet an Intrepid Reporter Finds that the Russians Were Welcomed as Liberators in the Southern Ukrainian City of Henichesk along the Sea of Azov
Last week I was embedded with the Russian army and visited two towns in southeastern Ukraine. The first town was called Henichesk, a port city along the Sea of Azov in Kherson Oblast (province) of southern Ukraine, bordering on Crimea.
The Russian army, patrolling the city, went with us—the embedded journalists—for protection. But actually the protection was not really needed; the people in Henichesk, at least the majority with whom I spoke, were very happy that the Russian army was there.
The people that I spoke to all said the same thing: They felt protected from the criminal gangs, with their Nazi ideology, who raged the towns. They in turn hoped that Ukraine will prosper again.
Since the coup d’état of 2014, the economy of Ukraine has become very bad, according to many citizens in Henichesk.
I could see that people were standing in line to get money from ATM machines outside the banks, money which was barely there.
At the market, the food was scarce. The Russian army is providing humanitarian aid, which they do in every village and town, liberated from these criminal gangs. This is how many Ukrainians call them.
Fascist Fitness: MSNBC Compares Physically Fit Men to Nazis
MSNBC’s “fascist fitness” column was written by far-left academic Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor and researcher on extremism at American University. Miller-Idriss used the column to compare men who are into physical fitness and mixed martial arts to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis while expressing worry that those who are strong physically and possess a masculine self-image will reject the teachings of the left. She even claims that they may eventually be responsible for violence in the streets and that governments and other organizations need to plan on cracking down.
Miller-Idriss expressed great concern with at-home fitness routines popularized during COVID lockdowns, claiming that “the far-right has taken advantage of pandemic at-home fitness trends to expand its decade-plus radicalization of physical mixed martial arts (MMA) and combat sports spaces.”
Appearing unhappy that people remained able to communicate during COVID lockdowns, Miller-Idriss claimed that “fascist fitness” groups on Telegram took advantage of the downtime, luring young men in with promises of bulging biceps before ultimately inviting them to “closed chat groups where far-right content is shared.”
Even more alarming to Miller-Idriss than young men spending time at the gym, or with a set of dumbbells at home, is the idea of mixed martial arts training, which says she remembers reading about in Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Miller-Idriss says that those interested in MMA are training for the “coming race war” and warned that if young men join MMA gyms, they may be able to share their political thoughts with other physically strong young men, leading to more of what she claims to be right-wing radicalization.
Even worse, says Miller-Idriss, is that the practice of MMA resembles hand-to-hand combat and when combined with other forms of physical fitness and thoughts that she doesn’t approve of, it could make for “a dangerous and powerful cocktail of radicalization.”
Hellbound and Down 
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