90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

GIZMODO SMEARS TRUMP WITH FAKE NEWS, AND LIBERAL HACKS RUN WITH IT

Ashley Feinberg, a Gizmodo contributor whose impressive credentials include writing for the since-defamed rag Gawker, published a fallacious report Monday claiming President-elect Donald Trump had fired the federal officials responsible for maintaining the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

According to an official within the Department of Energy, the Trump transition team has declined to ask the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration and his deputy to temporarily stay in their roles after Trump takes office on January 20th …

Trump … appears determined to be free of anyone who was appointed by Obama, regardless of whether or not he has anyone in line for the job. Or, as our source put it: “It’s a shocking disregard for process and continuity of government.”

Later that same day, the real journalists at Defense News reached out to the National Nuclear Security Agency to confirm the veracity of Feinberg’s allegations and discovered that she was full of shit.

“The story is not accurate,” an NNSA official told them. “There have been no discussions between the president-elect’s transition team and any of NNSA’s political appointees on extending their public service past Jan. 20.”

In other words, Trump did not fire any federal officials from the NNSA; in fact, he has not even spoken to them yet about their positions or the possibility of them staying at the agency until replacements can be nominated and subsequently confirmed.

Whoops.

By then, though, it was already too late, as the hacks at Daily Kos, Opposing Views and the immensely erudite Teen Vogue, among other trite rags, had already...

Georgetown Professor Calls For Whites To Have An I.R.A. – "Individual Reparations Account"

Georgetown Professor Michael Eric Dyson is proposing the idea that white people should have an ‘Individual Reparations Account’ to make donations to black institutions and individuals.

The idea is part of his forthcoming book, “Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America.”

Dyson made the argument during an interview with Ana Marie Cox in the January 8 edition of the New York Times Magazine.

From the interview:

At the end of your sermon, you do a “benediction” section, in which you talk about making reparations on the local and individual level: donating to groups like the United Negro College Fund or a scholarship program, but also, to cite your example from the book, paying “the black person who cuts your grass double what you might ordinarily pay.” That gave me pause!

Good! I used to say in church, “If the sermon ain’t making you a little bit uncomfortable, it ain’t effective.” Look, if it doesn’t cost you anything, you’re not really engaging in change; you’re engaging in convenience. You’re engaged in the overflow. I’m asking you to do stuff you wouldn’t ordinarily do. I’m asking you to....

A CBS Radio News report on the video of four young Chicago people torturing a mentally disabled man falsely implied that the victim was black and his attackers were white, when in fact the opposite was true.

In the brief Thursday morning report– which attracted attention when a listener posted the clip on Reddit Friday– here’s how CBS characterized the attack:

The viral video of a beating and knife attack in Chicago suggests the assault had racial overtones. CBS’s Dean Reynolds tells us the victim is described as a mentally-challenged teenager.

In the video he is choked and repeatedly called the n-word. His clothes are slashed and he is terrorized with a knife. His alleged captors repeatedly reference Donald Trump. Police are holding four people in connection with the attack. [Emphasis added]

The report is technically correct, but widely misleading. By noting the attackers used the n-word during a racially-motivated attack while “referencing” Donald Trump, the clear implication is that the victim was black and his attackers were racist Trump fans.

The n-word was indeed used to refer to the victim, but only in the more neutral sense that is often used in black vernacular. Omitted from the report are details that would corrected that misapprehension. Most obviously, the report could have simply stated the attackers’ and victim’s races. But it also neglected to clarify that the “reference” to Donald Trump was “F*** Donald Trump,” and neglected completely the fact that...