MEDIA Comments turned off

Rhetoric, Lies, and the Media: A Quintilian Perspective on Modern Journalism The media distorts reality, twisting Trump’s actions into tyranny while excusing its own abuses—an artful exercise in deception and bias. By Roger Kimball

Posted By on March 30th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/30/rhetoric-lies-and-the-media-a-quintilian-perspective-on-modern-journalism/

Where’s Quintilian when you need him? The author of the twelve-volume Institutio Oratoria (c. AD 95) knew all there was to know about rhetoric, “the art,” as Aristotle said, “of persuasion.” Quintilian’s chief concern was with turning out able and virtuous orators. But in the course of his inquiries, he also analyzed the workings of deceitful or fraudulent oratory. What a rich hunting ground our dishonest media today would have given the old Roman!

It is amusing to speculate on what Quintilian might have made of The New York Times, for example, a recent story in our former paper of record titled “Elon Musk Is South African. We Shouldn’t Forget It.” Musk left his native South Africa in the late 1980s. He never looked back. But according to the Times, Musk was irredeemably tainted by the racial policies of South Africa. He is, the Times  informed its readers, “a distinctly ideological figure, one whose worldview is inseparable from his rearing in apartheid South Africa.” Really?

What follows is an extraordinary web of half-truths, innuendo, and outright lies. Quintilian would have delighted in explaining how it all works.

He would also have found much to work with in “Trump’s Assault on Elites Encompasses Almost Every Aspect of American Life,” Stephen Collinson’s recent essay for CNN. Considered simply as an exercise in mendacious rhetoric, it deserves some sort of prize. I think of it as Mary McCarthy thought of Lillian Hellmann. When asked by Dick Cavett what she found to be dishonest about Hellmann, McCarthy said, “Everything. I once said in an interview that everything she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’”

So it is with Collinson’s flaccid but scuttling effort to attack Donald Trump.

POLITICS Comments turned off

The AOC Train Wreck is Coming, and it’s Going to Be Spectacular Nationwide rallies are spurring “Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez 2028” whispers, and it’s already clear: the CIA couldn’t do a better job of discrediting the American left Matt Taibbi

Posted By on March 30th, 2025

https://www.racket.news/p/the-aoc-train-wreck-is-coming-and

From the New York Times Sunday article, “As the Left Looks to 2028, It Waits on Ocasio-Cortez’s Big Decision.”

As Democrats find… their party’s popularity at a generational low, progressives are also staring down the prospect of a post-Bernie future… The 83-year-old Mr. Sanders has signaled that he does not intend to run for president again. The question now is who will lead the network he built from scratch into the next presidential election…

Virtually everyone interviewed said there was one clear leader for the job: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

Hoo, boy. Making Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (a.k.a. Vogue’s “Consummate Power Dresser”) the face of a left populist movement is the latest episode of the longest-running television show in history, How Will the American Left Screw Up This Time? It’s an instant entrant in the Hall of Fame of Bad Ideas, on par with a Hitler bobblehead day promotion or training orangutans to pack flatware. This will not end well:

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

John Garnett Trump Was Right to Kill the EV Mandate Scrapping the EPA’s draconian tailpipe-emissions rule will boost competition, benefit consumers, and strengthen national security.

Posted By on March 30th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trump-epa-electric-vehicle-mandate-tailpipe-emissions-rule

In his March 4 address to a joint session of Congress, President Donald Trump celebrated terminating Joe Biden’s “insane electric vehicle mandate.” A year ago, the Biden Environmental Protection Agency had finalized a rule, nominally about tailpipe emissions, that would have required 30 percent to 56 percent of all new light-duty consumer cars sold in the United States to be electric vehicles (EVs). Trump announced his intention to undo Biden’s EV overreach in his first week in office, as part of his executive order entitled “Unleashing American Energy.”

Biden’s rule would have brought chaos to the automotive industry, caused significant economic harm to millions of Americans, and put U.S. national security at risk. Repealing it will level the playing field in the EV market in ways that will benefit American consumers. According to Kelley Blue Book, the cheapest gasoline car available in America in 2025, the Nissan Versa, costs $18,300. The cheapest EV, the Nissan Leaf, costs $29,280—a staggering 60 percent more expensive.

The logistics of owning an EV are also complicated and time-consuming. EV chargers need to be installed at homes and apartment complexes, and charging a car can take more than 12 hours, compared with the less than five minutes it takes to fill up a tank of gas. The Leaf EV can travel 149 miles on a full charge; the Versa can go more than 375 miles on a full tank of gas, over 150 percent farther.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Heather Mac Donald Columbia’s President Resigns, But the DEI Battle Is Just Beginning The campus diversity regime, at the Ivy League school and elsewhere, won’t go down without a fight.

Posted By on March 30th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/columbias-president-resigns-but-the-dei-battle-is-just-beginning

With the resignation of Columbia University’s interim president, the academic-diversity complex seems to have sent out a warning shot: cooperation with the Trump administration will be punished. Outgoing president Katrina Armstrong claimed in her resignation letter, submitted Friday, March 28, that she had always “planned” to return to her various bureaucratic positions in Columbia’s medical schools. Quite possibly true. But the question is: For when was that return planned?

The timing suggests that the decision was forced by external pressure. Armstrong had been facing a faculty revolt for over a week, as well as a lawsuit from eight Columbia students. The faculty objected to Armstrong’s decision to comply—more or less—with a set of Trump administration demands issued as a precondition for avoiding a $400 million cut in federal funds.

The Columbia faculty, or at least its most left-wing, pro-Palestinian bloc, had also revolted against Armstrong’s predecessor, Minouche Shafik. According to her critics, Shafik had failed in Congress to sufficiently defend Columbia’s pro-Hamas campus protests,. Then she failed to protect those illegal protesters from arrest.

Now the faculty appear to have taken another scalp.

Th irony is that Armstrong had outmaneuvered the Trump administration in some of its demands. Contrary to press reports, that outmaneuvering was not a concealed stratagem; she merely used clever drafting. In so doing, she had served a reminder that the president’s team had better start reading the fine print if it wants to secure its counterrevolution. Other recent developments in academia confirm how wily the Trump administration’s diversity-industry opposition is.

IMMIGRATION, MEDIA Comments turned off

Trump Secured Border for Only 0.2% of the Cost of the Border Crisis Media hypes cost of securing border, refuses to discuss the cost of open borders. by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on March 30th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/trump-secured-border-for-only-0-2-of-the-cost-of-the-border-crisis/

The media has some big news.

Southwest border mission has cost $330M so far — with over $40M for Guantanamo Bay alone – ABC News

Interesting. Let’s even for the moment assume that those numbers are accurate. What was the cost of the border crisis?

The House Budget Committee estimated the cost of the crisis at $150 billion. Others put it at $200 billion or even higher.

$330 million would be around 0.2% of $150 billion.

Some estimates set the annual cost of illegal migration at $150 billion as well.

To put that $330 million into context, under Biden, DHS allocated $380 million for migrant-infested areas through FEMA in August 2024.

We’re spending a fraction on an ounce of prevention here to secure the border.

The media hypes the cost of securing border, but refuses to discuss the cost of open borders.

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Snow White is Dead Disney is having a very bad time at the box office. by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on March 30th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/snow-white-is-dead/

There’s bad news in fairyland. Snow White isn’t white. The Queen is the fairest of all. And after eating from the woke apple, Snow White is so dead that all the mocap CG dwarves in the Mouse House can’t begin to raise her. Neither can Prince Charming who now identifies as a woman.

After last weekend’s poor opening, there was a scramble in Hollywood to deny that wokeness was the cause, followed by prognostications that this weekend would fix all. The Friday numbers are in and while the weekend numbers aren’t set yet and certainly not final, they’re catastrophically bad

A Working Man, the latest Jason Statham male-skewed action movie, walloped Snow White Badly. To make matters worse, Friday numbers actually have Snow White behind ‘The Chosen: Last Supper Part 1’.

While Snow White may not actually end up in third place, it was struggling to keep pace even with The Woman in the Yard horror movie.

Making matters even more depressing, Captain Un-America, Brave New World, fell 91% to a miserable 7th place.

Again those numbers may not end up holding, but at the moment Disney’s spring is off to a really bad start.

It’s not just about the numbers, which are bad enough, but the per theater average which registers enthusiasm.

Disney’s Snow White had the highest number of theaters, monopolizing 4,200 theaters, but its per-theater average was below $1,000, putting in 5th place for public enthusiasm. And Captain Un-America in 9th place with a $306 per theater average and still short of $200 million.

Disney’s IP spam is no longer looking like a solid bet for theater owners and that’s really bad news for the mouse.

BOOKS Comments turned off

“Communism, China & Senator Cotton’s New Book” Sydney Williams

Posted By on March 30th, 2025

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

“I have seen the future, and it works” – words written by Lincoln Steffens following a visit to the newly formed Soviet Union in 1918. Last year, while in Shanghai for a store opening, Apple CEO Tim Cook was obsequious in his praise of China: “I think China is really opening up…it’s so vibrant and so dynamic.”

For more than a hundred years many, supposedly perceptive Western geopolitical analysts, journalists and business leaders, have chosen to ignore the evil that is Communism. In his 1919 book, Ten Days that Shook the World, American journalist John Reed, scion of a wealthy Oregon family, wrote sympathetically of the Russian Revolution that he had witnessed in Petrograd. Warren Beatty turned the book into a 1981 film, Reds, nominated for an Academy Award. In 1937, after spending months with Mao Tse Tung’s Red Army, American journalist Edgar Snow wrote Red Star Over China, a glowing portrait of life in Communist areas. He contrasted his experience with Mao and his Communist followers with his depiction of the gloom and corruption of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang’s government, which relocated to Taiwan in 1949.

For Americans, Communism has never approached the revulsion felt for Nazism, yet the similarities are far greater than their differences. In the February 5, 2018 issue of The New York Review of Books, Ian Johnson responded to an earlier article by Timothy Snyder, “Who Killed More, Hitler or Stalin?” Johnson wrote that the question was slightly off: “…it should have included a third tyrant of the 20th Century, Chairman Mao. And not just that, but that Mao should have been the hands-down winner, with his ledger easily trumping the European dictators’.” According to his research, Stalin killed somewhere between 6 and 9 million people, Hitler between 11 and 12 million, and Mao between 35 and 45 million, most during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Nazism and Communism both practice(d) genocide, are (were) authoritarian, and have (had) no regard for individual rights or human life.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Never forget: Never again: When will we ever learn? Diane Bederman

Posted By on March 30th, 2025

https://dianebederman.com/never-forget-never-again-when-will-we-ever-learn/

For centuries, for millennia we have always had Jews who believed if they just lay low, acculturate, assimilate, they would be liked and respected.

Today, those Jews are found in the Democrat Party in America.

When will we ever learn?

Let’s go back to recent history and take another look at Nazi Germany and the Jews.

Jews had lived in Germany since the Middle Ages. And, as in much of Europe, they faced widespread persecution there for many centuries. It was not until the 19th century that Jews in Germany were given the same rights as Christian Germans. By 1933, when the Nazis came to power, Germany’s Jews were well integrated and even assimilated into German society. Despite their integration, Germany’s Jews still maintained a discernible identity and culture.

In 1933, the Jewish population of Germany numbered about 525,000. This was less than one percent of the total German population at the time.

Most Jews in Germany (about 400,000 people) held German citizenship. Many of these Jews came from families who had been in Germany for centuries. These families spoke German as their primary language. Most considered themselves German. In some cases, they had intermarried with non-Jews.

Many Jews saw themselves as a religious group. They were Germans who practiced Judaism. Others saw themselves as an ethnic group. They were Jews who lived in Germany.

Despite being integrated into German society, Jews faced discrimination in Germany. For example, not all Germans believed that Jews could be German. Some groups, including many university student clubs, banned Jews from membership. Some political parties, including the Nazi Party, were openly anti-Jewish. Negative stereotypes of Jews appeared in the press. 

NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

No Time Left: China and Russia Making Sure Iran Goes Nuclear Before End of Trump’s Ultimatum by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on March 30th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21507/nuclear-iran-no-time-left

Now, with Trump’s ultimatum delivered on March 7 to Iran— giving the regime a two-month deadline either to give up its nuclear and missile programs or face severe consequences — Beijing and Moscow have simply been accelerating Tehran’s efforts to join the nuclear club and to possesses at least six nuclear bombs before Trump’s deadline expires.

A meeting between Iranian and Chinese officials in Beijing, followed by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s outright rejection of Trump’s warnings, could signal a dangerous development: Iran has likely received guarantees from China and Russia that they will protect the regime, support its nuclear program, and ensure that it acquires nuclear weapons before the possibly-too-generous deadline Trump has set, no matter the consequences.

Iran’s bold rejection of Trump’s threats may not be based on internal strength but on external guarantees. Beijing and Moscow have likely calculated that if Iran regime joins the nuclear club and possesses nuclear bombs before Trump’s deadline expires and he takes direct action, then the West will be forced to accept a nuclear-armed Iran, just as it has had to accept a nuclear North Korea.

With Trump’s ultimatum in place, these adversaries are racing against the clock to ensure that Iran becomes a nuclear-armed state. If the US and its allies fail to act immediately, the balance of power could shift permanently, and the West could lose the war before realizing it had even begun.

Talk surrounding Iran’s nuclear ambitions has long focused on the ruling ayatollahs and their determined pursuit of nuclear weapons. The West’s primary focus has been mainly on Iran’s domestic leadership: the Supreme Leader, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Iran’s nuclear scientists. What remains overlooked is the significant role that China, North Korea and Russia have been playing to make sure that Iran achieves nuclear weapons breakout before US President Donald J. Trump’s “two-month ultimatum” runs out.

NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

China Is Taking War to Earth Orbits: A ‘Space Pearl Harbor’ Is on the Way by Gordon G. Chang

Posted By on March 28th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21510/china-space-pearl-harbor

“Communist China has now taken war to the heavens, to low earth orbit, and very likely, will take war to the moon, Mars, and beyond. The heavens are no longer safe for the democracies.” — Richard Fisher, International Assessment and Strategy Center, to Gatestone, March 2025.

“Rising powers, notably China and Russia, saw how reliant we were on space—and how poorly defended our systems were. Our access to the strategic high ground is now more threatened than ever before.” — Brandon Weichert, author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, to Gatestone, March 2025

China is making fast progress in building space weapons. “The Chinese ISR”—intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance—”capabilities are become very capable,” said Gen. Guetlein. “They have gone from what we used to call a ‘Kill Chain’ to a ‘Kill Mesh.'” A Kill Mesh combines ISR satellites with an array of weapons systems.

“The recent demonstration of Chinese ‘dogfighting’ capabilities in space is an indicator that Beijing means to use force on earth. By targeting sensitive U.S. military satellites, the People’s Liberation Army can render us deaf, dumb, and blind, long before it strikes.” — Brandon Weichert, to Gatestone, March 2025.

The Chinese are evidently planning to blind not only America’s military but also America’s civilian society, which is heavily dependent on space assets. Almost nothing modern in America will work when the Chinese are finished attacking in the heavens.

“With our commercial assets, we have observed five different objects in space maneuvering in and out and around each other in synchronicity and in control,” the U.S. Space Force’s Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein told the 16th annual McAleese Defense Programs conference in Arlington, Virginia on March 18. “That’s what we call dogfighting in space. They are practicing tactics, techniques and procedures to do on-orbit space operations from one satellite to another.”

Guetlein’s stark comment about China signals a break with the past. “This marks the end of the Western-American-liberal dream of nations leaving wars on Earth so they can cooperate in space to advance humanity,” Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center told Gatestone after the general’s widely publicized remarks. “Communist China has now taken war to the heavens, to low earth orbit, and very likely, will take war to the moon, Mars, and beyond. The heavens are no longer safe for the democracies.”