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Ruth King

MEDIA, POLITICS Comments turned off

The Factless Fact-Checkers How do you fact check when you don’t know what a fact is? Daniel Greenfield

By on November 3rd, 2016

Once upon a time, fact-checking meant that newspapers, radio stations and television news broadcasts were obligated to check their facts before broadcasting or publishing them. Some newspapers and magazines boasted renowned departments filled with intellectuals whose restless minds roved over each line to ensure that the fewest possible errors would appear under that publication’s masthead.

But fact-checking of the media by itself has declined almost as badly as the Roman Empire. Errors routinely appear under storied mastheads followed by corrections that are published as a janitorial duty. There is very little concern for the facts even among the great names of publishing and broadcasting.

The media has stopped fact-checking itself and it now uses fact-checking largely to refer to a type of opinion journalism in which it “checks the facts” of public figures. The fall of fact-checking within the media has paralleled the rise of fact checking by the media of its political opponents. The media has become factless even as it deploys a term that once meant self-correction to instead correct others.

Fact checks once meant that reporters were expected to be accurate. These days they’re only expected to be politically correct. The media deploys fact checks to check political correctness, not facts. Its fact checks routinely venture into areas that are not only partisan, but subjective matters of opinion.

Consider Politico’s often mocked “fact check” of Donald Trump as to whether ISIS was indeed unbelievably evil. Under a banner headline, “Donald Trump’s Week of Misrepresentations, Exaggerations and Half-Truths”, it zoomed in on a quote from his Florida rally.

“We’re presiding over something that the world has not seen. The level of evil is unbelievable,” Trump had said.

Politico swooped in to correct the candidate with its fact check. “Judging one ‘level of evil’ against another is subjective, but other groups in recent history have without any question engaged in as widespread killing of civilians as ISIS.”

There were no facts being checked here because Politico doesn’t seem to know what a fact even is.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

From Higher Ed to Political Indoctrination Parents who plan on refinancing their homes to send their children to college should instead consider trade school. Jack Kerwick

By on November 3rd, 2016

Parents who plan on refinancing their homes in order to send their children off to college should instead consider encouraging them to specialize in a trade.

Speaking as a Ph.D. in philosophy who has spent the last 17 years teaching at the college level, I’m perhaps the last person from whom advice of this sort is expected. But it is precisely because of my familiarity with academia that I beseech the college bound and their enablers—I mean their supporters—to revisit their plans.

Whether one regards a post-secondary institution as a means to either a remunerative profession or a genuine education, the tragic fact of the matter is that the contemporary academic world is about as politicized a cultural institution as any. More specifically, it is a bastion of Political Correctness, a decidedly leftist ideology that tolerates no competition.

For the last 11 years, Professor Duke Pesta, who is currently an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, has taught literature at a range of colleges. At the outset of each semester, he would quiz his students on their knowledge of American and Western history. What he found is that the “overwhelming” number of them believed that slavery—an institution, mind you, that is as old as humanity itself, was practiced in virtually every society the planet over, and that lasted only some 87 years in the United States—was an exclusively American phenomenon.

“Most of my students could not tell me anything meaningful about slavery outside of America,” Pesta told The College Fix. His students “are convinced that slavery was an American problem that more or less ended with the Civil War and they are very fuzzy about slavery prior to the Colonial era.”

“Their entire education about slavery,” he adds, “was confined to America.”

Yet it isn’t just students who display an astonishing ignorance of slavery. Over at Boston University, Saida Grundy, an Assistant Professor of sociology and African-American Studies, tweeted that slavery is “a white people…thing.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

College Forces Mandatory Microaggression Sessions on Faculty After Prof Accuses Student of Plagiarism Daniel Greenfield

By on November 3rd, 2016

College is now a politically correct joke.

Suffolk University’s interim president said Tuesday that the college will hold mandatory microaggression training for all faculty in response to an outcry last week after a Latina student wrote a viral blog post saying she was the victim of a professor’s racial bias.

What did this racial bias involve?

Tiffany Martinez.said an unidentified Suffolk sociology professor handed back a paper she had written and in front of the class and told Martinez, “This is not your language,” insinuating that Martinez had plagiarized.

Martinez posted a photo of the paper on her blog, showing where the professor appears to have written “please go back and indicate where you cut and paste.” The professor had circled the word “hence” in the paper and wrote, “this is not your word.”

“In this interaction, my undergraduate career was both challenged and critiqued,” the student wrote. “It is worth repeating how my professor assumed I could not use the word “hence,” a simple transitory word that connected two relating statements. The professor assumed I could not produce quality research.”

Most college students, regardless of whether their ancestors originated from southern Europe or not, do not tend to use hence in a sentence. Hence, it’s the sort of word that professors seize on and suspect that what they are seeing is cut and paste material. Tiffany’s interaction has happened thousands of times with students regardless of race.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Obama DOJ: Handmaiden of Clinton Corruption How the Clinton machine is perverting U.S. federal law enforcement to shield Hillary. Joseph Klein

By on November 3rd, 2016

The Obama Department of Justice has been corruptly aiding and abetting the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, to escape legal accountability for her actions. From Attorney General Loretta Lynch on down through the Justice Department’s political ranks, the Department has blocked the FBI from searching for the truth and following the evidence of potential criminality to its logical conclusion. Whether it is Hillary’s use of a private e-mail server while serving as Secretary of State or her involvement in the pay-for-play Clinton enterprise known as the Clinton Foundation, the Obama administration is applying a banana republic-style double standard to pervert justice and the rule of law in order to shield her.

Lynch and President Obama were reportedly furious with FBI Director James Comey for sending a letter to Congress on October 28th indicating that new evidence potentially pertinent to the e-mail case had come to light, which required further investigation. This evidence consisted of a batch of e-mails FBI investigators had found on one or more computers belonging to Anthony Weiner, Clinton confidante Huma Abedin’s estranged husband, while they were searching for evidence in an unrelated case involving Weiner’s alleged sexting to an underage girl. Comey sent his letter after months of agonizing over his previous decision to let Hillary off the hook in the e-mail case last July. He was said by a source close to him to have been particularly disturbed by the mounting number of resignation letters from FBI agents who felt betrayed by that decision.

Department of Justice officials had leaned on Comey not to send the letter to Congress, claiming that it would violate Department protocols and procedures against taking any action that could be perceived as interfering with the upcoming presidential election. To his credit, Comey ignored the Department officials’ objections, claiming he had an obligation to keep the Congress and the public informed of any potentially significant new developments in the case.

Democrats, who had lavished praise on Comey for his July decision, lashed out at Comey for sending his letter updating Congress. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid went so far as to make the baseless charge that Comey may have violated the law by informing Congress, because, Reid argued, he appeared to be taking sides in an election. The disgraced former Attorney General Eric Holder, held in contempt of Congress for withholding information relating to the Fast and Furious scandal, said about Comey’s action, “I fear he has unintentionally and negatively affected public trust in both the Justice Department and the FBI. It is up to the director to correct his mistake — not for the sake of a political candidate or campaign but in order to protect our system of justice and best serve the American people.”

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

David Singer: Obama’s Islamic State Policy Uncorks Shiite Genie in Iraq

By on November 3rd, 2016

Mosul has well and truly blown up in his face with the news that the Iran funded Shiite Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) have now joined in the attack.

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter certainly did not anticipate this development when announcing Obama’s decision:

“The United States and the rest of the international coalition stand ready to support Iraqi Security Forces, Peshmerga fighters and the people of Iraq in the difficult fight ahead.”

Neither did Operation Inherent Resolve Commander Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend who stated:

“But to be clear, the thousands of ground combat forces who will liberate Mosul are all Iraqis”

The involvement of 15000 Shiite PMU militiamen – designated by the Iraqi Government as “an independent military formation” – could aggravate already existing sectarian divisions in Iraq.

This could eventually lead to a Shiite land grab of territory liberated by the PMU.

The retention of land conquered by the Peshmerga forces is also a realistic possibility.

Iraq as a distinct and separate territorial unit could be in real danger of being carved up.

Obama must be reeling after further reading on that:

“Ahmed al-Assadi, a spokesman for the Iraq-sanctioned paramilitary known as Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), said on Saturday that they will fight alongside Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s forces in Syria after finishing their battle against ISIS in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Al Arabiya News Channel reported”

Obama’s inability to remove Assad from power in Syria during the last five years has been a spectacular presidential policy failure.

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Documented: Obama’s “Traditional Muslim Bias” against Christians by Raymond Ibrahim

By on November 3rd, 2016

Those Arabs from nations with large Christian populations or with Christian names failed the Obama team’s “religious tests.”

The Obama government’s bias against Mideast Christians closely resembles the traditional bias Christian minorities experience at the hands of Muslim governments.

When inviting scores of Muslim representatives, the State Department has been called out at least twice for denying visas to solitary Christian representatives.

When a few persecuted Iraqi Christians crossed the border into the U.S., they were thrown in prison for months and then sent back to the countries persecuting them, possibly to be enslaved, raped, or murdered.

When the Nigerian government waged an offensive against Boko Haram — another Islamic group that regularly slaughters and rapes Christians and burn their churches — and killed some of its terrorists, John Kerry fumed and called for the “human rights” of the jihadis.

It is against Islamic law to side with “infidels” against Muslims.

Almost a year ago, U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama called the suggestion that the U.S. give preference to Christian refugees over Muslim refugees “shameful.” “That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion,” he added loftily.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Erdogan’s Neo-Ottoman Plans by Burak Bekdil

By on November 3rd, 2016

“Let us see how your Islamist friend [Erdogan] behaves after crushing the secular establishment.” — The author to a friend, 2004.

To insist on the borders Turkey accepted in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne “is the greatest injustice to be done to the country and to the nation.” — Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, October 19, 2016.

Erdogan’s newfound claims seem to refer not only to wish to regain hegemony to the west (Greece) but also about the south (Syria) and the southeast (Iraq). Turkey evidently wishes to be part of an Iraqi- and Kurdish-led offensive against Mosul, controlled since 2014 by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Sipping his ouzo at a café in Athens on a warm afternoon in 2004, a Greek diplomat friend smiled and said:

“You are wrong about Erdogan. He will reform Turkey’s democratic culture, align it with the European Union, strengthen its ties with NATO and pursue a pro-peace policy in this part of the world. Meanwhile he will crush the secular army establishment and Turkey will no longer be a threat to any of its neighbors.”

I said: “Let us see how your Islamist friend [Erdogan] behaves after crushing the secular establishment.”

Twelve years later, I still enjoy our peaceful ouzo sessions with the same Greek friend. But things do not look equally peaceful between Turkey and its neighbors, including Greece.

Speaking at a public rally on October 22, President Erdogan said that “We did not accept our borders voluntarily.” He went on to say, “At the time [when the current borders were drawn] we may have agreed to it but the real mistake is to surrender to that sacrifice.” What does all that mean?

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POLITICS Comments turned off

FBI Leaks: Clinton Foundation Probe a ‘Very High Priority,’ Will Likely Lead to an Indictment By Debra Heine

By on November 3rd, 2016

Two sources with “intimate knowledge” of the FBI’s investigations into the Clinton emails and Clinton Foundation leaked new information about both of the probes to Fox News Wednesday. The sources say that the latter investigation has been going on for more than a year and is being led by the white-collar crime division of the FBI. They also say that the Clinton Foundation “pay to play” probe has taken a “very high priority,” and the FBI has re-interviewed multiple individuals involved in the case. The sources told Special Report’s Bret Baier that their investigation will likely to lead to an indictment.

Additionally, Baier reported that according to Fox News’ sources, Clinton’s private email server had been breached by at least five foreign intelligence hackers. FBI Director James Comey said in July that he could not say definitively whether her server had been breached.

Via Fox News:

Even before the WikiLeaks dumps of alleged emails linked to the Clinton campaign, FBI agents had collected a great deal of evidence, law enforcement sources tell Fox News.

“There is an avalanche of new information coming in every day,” one source told Fox News, who added some of the new information is coming from the WikiLeaks documents and new emails.

FBI agents are “actively and aggressively pursuing this case,” and will be going back and interviewing the same people again, some for the third time, sources said.

Agents are also going through what Clinton and top aides have said in previous interviews and the FBI 302, documents agents use to report interviews they conduct, to make sure notes line up, according to sources.

Fox News reports that the re-opened email investigation is being run by the national security division of the FBI and that they are combing through former NY congressman Anthony Weiner’s laptop. According to the sources, they’ve found emails that came from Hillary Clinton’s private email server that appear to be new. It is not yet known if the emails contain classified information, but that will be known soon.

As for those questionable immunity deals with Clinton’s top aides including Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, Fox reports that the laptops that were supposed to be destroyed as part of those deals, have not been destroyed and are now in fact currently in the FBI field office in Washington, D.C., “being exploited.”

The source told Fox News that if a subject at any point lies during the investigation, the immunity deal is “null and void.”

On The Kelly File Wednesday night, host Megyn Kelly asked former NY mayor Rudy Giuliani why all this is coming out now.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Trump Derangement Syndrome, Schoenfeld Edition By Roger Kimball

By on November 3rd, 2016

One of the most repellent aspects of the 2016 presidential election has been a phenomenon that has its home in leftwing tactics but that has now emerged on the Right in addition to the Left. More precisely, it has revolved around the adoption by precincts of the #NeverTrump Right of tactics usually associated with the Left. The main feature of that tactic deploys a twofold effort at character assassination. The first step is the transformation of political disagreement into a species of heresy. The second step involves the thundering repudiation of the newly minted heretics, who are to be caricatured or demonized, and reminded that they must seek absolution or forgiveness for their apostasy.

A case in point is the New York Daily News column published two days ago by the erstwhile conservative, now Hillary Clinton supporter and #NeverTrump crusader, Gabriel Schoenfeld. “Expose Trump’s enablers,” the headline began, “How many people who should know better are making it easier for him to lie to the American people.”

Exhibit A in that roster of people “who should know better” is your humble correspondent, R. Kimball. In fact, I am the only Exhibit. My heresy is to have decided, rather late in the day, to support Donald Trump for president. Over the last couple of months, Schoenfeld has emitted several needling tweets taking me and others to task for that support. On September 17, for example, he tweeted that I, Victor Davis Hanson, and Charles Kesler were “backing a birther, a bigot, an enemy of the Constitution.” On October 1, I received a solo message: “impeccable timing for your endorsement of the lunatic, just as he implodes.” Then on October 17 we read that “If @RogerKimball, our Ezra Pound, had been born in Italy in, say, 1885, he would be singing Mussolini’s praises.” Note how the perceived pulse of the campaign affects Schoenfeld’s invective: when Trump is thought to be clearly losing, ridicule ensues; when Trump is on the upswing, paranoia and derangement follow.

Perhaps this is the place to mention that Schoenfeld and I, as he notes in his Daily News column, are acquaintances. “Encounter Press,” he writes, “published my first book.” Well, that’s nearly right. The publisher he has in mind is called Encounter Books, not Encounter Press. I should perhaps note for the record that I was not involved with Encounter when The Return of Anti-Semitism, the book to which he alludes, was published.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

William Safire justified: Hillary Clinton is a congenital liar By Russ Vaughn

By on November 3rd, 2016

In a notorious 1996 New York Times essay, pundit William Safire famously said this of Hillary Clinton:

Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady – a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation – is a congenital liar.

Drip by drip, like Whitewater torture, the case is being made that she is compelled to mislead, and to ensnare her subordinates and friends in a web of deceit.

Could anyone who has followed her political activities since make any sensible rebuttal to Safire’s observation? As many of her critics have noted, Hillary Clinton will lie when she’d be far better served by the truth. Now here we are just days away from an election that could put this woman into the most powerful political position in the world, and apparently she’s still at it.

Conservative site, 100% Fed Up, is reporting this (emphasis added):

Campaigning in Florida on Tuesday, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton claimed that she was in New York City on 9/11, when terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center. She made her claim while discussing terrorism and the threat posed by ISIS.”I know what happened not far from here at Pulse night club in Orlando,” she said. “I was in New York City on 9/11 as one of the two senators. I will defeat ISIS. I will protect America.”

Except that she wasn’t in New York City on 9/11; she was at her home in Washington, D.C. on the morning of that day of infamy and did not get to New York until the next day. Proof of her silly, useless lie is available from her own campaign media operation, the Clinton News Network, which in a 15-year commemoration of 9/11 featuring Clinton said this:

When news broke of the first plane ripping through the north tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, Clinton had just left her house in Washington, D.C., and was on her way to the Senate. By the time she reached Capitol Hill, evacuations were already underway.

Good grief! The woman is running for the nation’s highest office, and mere days before the election, she gratuitously lies to a crowd of supporters? Even the most naive political beginner would know that you don’t publicly lie about something that can be so easily checked. Had Hillary not been lying for so long, as Safire documents, we might attribute such a gaffe to the various head injuries she’s sustained or as a mental manifestation of the Parkinson’s disease some physicians suspect her to have. But no, her previous history all the way back to pre-Safire argues persuasively that this is one of those people whom many of us have met, and most of us have heard of, a person who simply can’t sort out truth from lies in her own mind and her own mouth. She will, in clear fact, lie when the truth would be to her advantage, as in Florida Tuesday.

Hillary Clinton is, quite clearly, a congenital liar. But here’s the sobering thought to take away from this: if she can’t separate truth from lies, is she also incapable of distinguishing between honest and dishonest behavior? Her behavior as secretary of state would seem to indicate the answer is no, she can’t.

And I ask you again today, folks: is this the kind of person we want leading our America?

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