RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/max_boot_reaches_peak_narcissism_.html

Writing from his gilded perch at the Washington Post, Max Boot reflected on frustrations of being a #NeverTrump columnist:

“I love what I do and realize I am supremely lucky to be able to make my living by writing and speaking about the news of the day. I find contentment in the craft of writing and fulfillment in self-expression. But I do sometimes wonder what I am actually accomplishing. Much of my journalism for the past four years has been devoted to critiquing President Trump and opposing the spread of Trumpism. But no matter how many columns or sound bites I produce, he remains in office, acting… more erratically than ever. Sure, he’s not terribly popular — but he could still be reelected. I am left to ask if all my work has made any difference.”

This utter lack of self-awareness drew a response from National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke, who tweeted that “Max Boot is genuinely beyond parody.”

From the confines of the bubble, Boot keeps churning out the same column over and over and yet Trump has not been driven from office. How unfair!

https://amgreatness.com/2019/09/06/left-wing-website-think-progress-to-shut-down/

ThinkProgress, a once influential left-wing news site, is reportedly shutting down after being in operation for nearly 15 years.

The outlet was a “project” of  the Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF), a “sister advocacy organization” of the Center for American Progress (CAP).

The Center for American Progress is a 501(c)(3) organization that receives approximately $25 million per year in funding from a variety of sources, including individuals, foundations, and corporations, according to Sourcewatch.

From 2003 to 2007, the center received about $15 million in grants from 58 foundations. Major individual donors include George Soros, Peter Lewis, Steve Bing, and Herbert M. Sandler. The Center receives undisclosed sums from corporate donors.

Wal-Mart is a major funder of the Center for American Progress, having given at least half a million dollars to the organization. Wal-Mart has been a major backer of Pres Obama’s health care legislation, which critics contend would disproportionately drive up costs for Wal-Mart’s smaller competitors.

According to the Daily Beast, ThinkProgress ran on deficits for years and “will stop current operations on Friday and be converted into a site where CAP scholars can post.”

CAP officials had been searching for a buyer to take over website and were reportedly some interested parties, but ultimately, the site was unable to secure a patron.

amgreatness.com/2019/09/05/only-the-press-could-get-away-with-this/

Let’s say you are a salesman for a major company and while attending an industry conference, you begin screaming, cursing and threatening one of the hosts—in public.

Or, let’s say you are a manager for a major company and you make up a story about how a competitor secured a bank loan and you spread that baseless rumor throughout the industry.

Or, let’s say you are a secretary for a major company and you scour the social media page of a rival in the secretarial pool, edited one of her dated posts to make it sound much worse than it actually was, and email-blasted it to the entire company in an effort to get her fired.

Or, let’s say you are the chairman of the board of a major company and you direct your underlings to lie to customers and shareholders for three years about something that never happened.

See where this is going?

In any other professional sector outside of the news media, those kinds of activities would amount to fireable offenses. No constitutional protections would apply; no activist groups would rally to your defense; no C-Suite executive would issue a statement in support of your bad behavior; no colleagues would plead your case; no judge would demand that your job be reinstated.

You would be standing in the unemployment line. Justifiably.

A Mountain of Distortions and Transgressions

Of course, those are just a few examples in an embarrassingly long list of malfeasance committed by the national media in the Trump era: At the top of the rap sheet is the way nearly every reporter, editor, columnist and talking head either fell for the manufactured Trump-Russia collusion tale or peddled what they knew all along was a lie. A close second is the attempted political assassination of a nominee for the Supreme Court. Not far behind is an orchestrated hit on pro-life teenagers wearing MAGA hat in the nation’s capital.

Media Cancel James Mattis After They Learn His Book Criticizes The Wrong President

https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/2019/09/05/media-cancel-james-mattis-learn-book-criticizes-wrong-president/

When it comes to foreign policy, the President has the final say, no matter how strongly his advisors feel. The media don’t seem to understand this and constantly portray any decision Trump makes as dangerous and illegitimate. Somehow, the world hasn’t gone into a nuclear meltdown though. It’s almost like they have no idea what they are talking about?

One such decision was Trump wanting to pull out of Syria. It was enough that James “Mad Dog” Mattis resigned over it. That’s fair. If he couldn’t do the job anymore, I’m not going to criticize him for deciding to move on. The irony of the entire situation is that Democrats, who cheered Obama’s disastrous pull-out from Iraq, suddenly become the hawkiest of war hawks, but I digress.

The current story is that Mattis is writing his memoir and that got the media press corp really excited. You see, because Mattis left on rocky terms from the Trump administration, including a fairly forward resignation letter, the expectation was that he was going to blast Trump.

So you got headlines like The Man Who Couldn’t Take It Anymore from The Atlantic and The Man Trump Wishes He Were from The New York Times. You could almost see the foam forming around their collective mouths. They were about to get another tell all they could fluff for weeks, and if that meant rehabilitating a person they used to hate in James Mattis, then that was a price they were willing to pay.

Then something happened. While Mattis’ book laid into a President, it just so happened to be the wrong President in the media’s eyes. That would be Barack Obama.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274756/shameless-lying-msnbc-hack-face-media-daniel-greenfield

At the end of July, MSNBC’s biggest and dullest conspiracy theorist got some very bad news.

After over a year of booming ratings, The Rachel Maddow Show’s viewership had crashed. It had been a long road for Maddow, the former blonde Catholic high school girl who had decided she wanted to be a media personality and ended up with an MSNBC show through the efforts of Keith Olbermann.

And after Keith was gone, MSNBC had to settle for a slightly less effeminate version of Olbermann.

Maddow had retained the key elements of Olbermann’s personality, the unhinged conspiracy theories, histrionic delivery, the dark hair and even the fashionably ugly boxy black glasses. The former blonde not only looked and sounded like Olbermann, but she had learned to hit the same buttons in her audience.

One man had made her MSNBC career possible and another moved her show into the top cable spot.

That man was Robert Mueller. There was no Russian conspiracy theory too bizarre or insane to earn a rant from Rachel. Going where few dared go, Maddow began insisting that Russia was conducting a “continuing operation” and might even be in control of the White House and the entire country now.

And then the Mueller Report and later, Mueller’s testimony, destroyed all of Maddow’s conspiracies.

At the height of her Russian conspiracy theories in which she connected everyone and their uncle to Moscow, Maddow had could boast 4 million viewers while claiming to be the top cable news show. In July, she had fallen to fifth place without even 2.5 million viewers to scrape together for her rants.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/end-the-medias-campaign-privilege-11567551611

The Trump era has seen an erosion of the distinction between journalism and partisan politics, with much of the mainstream media in open opposition to the president. “Balance has been on vacation since Mr. Trump stepped onto his golden Trump Tower escalator . . . to announce his candidacy,” New York Times columnist Jim Rutenberg wrote in August 2016.

Three years later, the holiday continues. Slate last month published a leaked transcript of a staff “town hall” at the Times. “We built our newsroom to cover one story,” executive editor Dean Baquet told employees, explaining that the paper’s narrative “went from being a story about whether the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia and obstruction of justice to being a more head-on story about the president’s character.” The new story, he said, “requires deep investigation into people who peddle hatred.”

Mr. Baquet makes the Times sound like an advocacy organization working against Mr. Trump’s re-election. Such organizations are regulated by campaign-finance statutes. So are other corporations, for-profit or nonprofit, that engage in electioneering speech. But those laws exempt media organizations, provided they are not owned by a political party, committee or candidate.

The justification for this favored treatment is the media’s “unique” role in public discourse and debate. But that has changed—and not only because the media have become more partisan. “With the advent of the Internet and the decline of print and broadcast media,” the Supreme Court observed in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), “the line between the media and others who wish to comment on political and social issues becomes far more blurred.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/08/30/24_hours_of_media_malpractice.html

In the Trump era, it increasingly appears that journalistic standards are on life support. Consider, if you will, what a day in the life of contemporary journalism now looks like.

Late Tuesday afternoon, some conservatives on Twitter started grumbling about an article the Washington Post published that morning. The op-ed in question accused best-selling conservative author J.D. Vance of being racist, and otherwise tried dubiously to connect the dots between mainstream pro-life advocates and white supremacists. At a speech in July, Vance said the following: “Our people aren’t having enough children to replace themselves. That should bother us.” Washington Post contributor Marissa Brostoff characterized the remark by saying, “Vance did not spell out exactly who was included in the word ‘our.’ He didn’t need to.” Her clear implication was that Vance was referring to the fact he only wanted to have white children. This would be news to Vance, since he’s married to a woman of color, and his best-selling “Hillbilly Elegy” ­– a movie version, directed by Oscar winner Ron Howard, is in post-production – is a very critical look at the mores of poor white Americans.

And Vance did, in fact, spell out exactly what his pronoun referred to. A couple of sentences earlier in his remarks, which Brostoff didn’t bother to read closely, he makes it clear he’s referring to all Americans. Low birth rates are a serious concern in Western countries for many reasons, including the need to sustain liberal welfare policies, which have nothing to do with racism.

President Donald Trump’s personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, is no longer part of the administration as of Thursday, according to reports.

The 27-year-old’s sudden resignation reportedly came after the president discovered that she shared details about the Trump family and Oval Office operations at a recent off-the-record dinner with reporters in New Jersey, according to a New York Times report that cited two anonymous sources familiar with the departure. Politico later confirmed the exit.

Westerhout was reportedly deemed a “separated employee” immediately after Trump learned of her actions and would not be allowed to return on Friday to the White House, the Times reported.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the director of Oval Office operations’ departure. Westerhout’s desk sat outside the Oval Office since the first day of Trump’s presidency, according to the Times.