No Matter How Much You Disdain The Mainstream Media

It's probably Not Enough.

After the attempted bombing in new York City of an anti-Islamic demonstration by two Islamists, the mainstream media hasn't just bent over backwards but twisted themselves in knots to obfuscate, downplay, confuse, cover-up and outright lie about the attack.

CNN started off by depicting the two Muslim attackers as "Pennsylvania men" who just happened to be going to New York City but whose trajectory somehow took a dark turn:

 No mention at all of them yelling "Allahu Akbar" prior to throwing the devices, and in reading the glowing description of them, you would think they threw the bomb as part of an anti-Muslim protest rather than AT an "anti-Muslim protest". No mention of them making the ISIS Islamic salute after they were captured, either.

CNN then doubled down, as noted by Instapundit, reporting falsely that the bomb was thrown at Muslim Mayor of New York Mamdani. 

If your news source is CNN, you have simply no clue as to the actual facts of this occurrence (and likely any other news of import that a journo would not wish to shade to favor progressives or Islamists), at all. 

How A Journo Can Tell Me She Doesn't Know WTF She's Talking About, Without Telling Me She Doesn't Know WTF She Is Talking About

The trouble with Leftist Journalists is not so much their ignorance as the tremendous number of things they know that ain't so.  But their ignorance doesn't help, either. 

Let's take this intrepid Washington Post (as rebroadcast in the Detroit News) correspondent, who in the very first sentence of her article shows she has no idea what she is talking about:

Q: Why are Republicans not reading the sentiment of the country and cobbling together a bill to make automatic weapons of war illegal for civilians?

Yep, read that over again.  So much ignorance and smugness to unpack in one short sentence.  

The combination of the smug assumption as to "the sentiment of the country" combined with the pure ignorance of urging Republicans to support "a bill to make automatic weapons of war illegal for civilians" is rather indicative. Not sure she could have fit in another narrative-approved buzz-word about semi-automatic firearms that are lawfully possessed by millions of Americans for legal purposes if she tried.

It's a great way for the journo to let us know she has no clue what she is talking about, and to count her opinion accordingly. The problem is that she influences people who who have infinitely more things they know when it comes to crime, firearms, and firearms law in this country that ain't so.

More Lies And Half-Truths From Journos About Firearms And NRAAM

Journalists continue to repeat the false statement that attendees at the NRA Annual Meeting are not allowed to carry at the convention.

This is false, they know or darn well should know by now it's false, yet they keep running this falsehood every year and each year they get called out for lying about it yet again.

The Detroit News: Juggling Act: If lawmakers don't act on gun laws now, then when?

The National Rifle Association, meanwhile, will hold its annual convention this weekend 4 ½  hours east of Ulvade in Houston. Attendees, ironically, won't be permitted to carry firearms during the convention, according to USA Today.

This is simply false, and this journo is simply passing along the falsehood from USA Today when she could, you know, fact check it herself assuming she doesn't already know she's lying.

The fact is, Attendees and NRA members can and do carry at the NRA Annual meeting.  

The only limitations to carry at NRA Annual Meeting events is when the US Secret Service declares an area of the convention a gun-free zone due to a dignitary being present such as former President Trump or others, and then it is only for a defined area and not the entire convention hall.   Or, it for example if it is for an ancillary concert at a facility separate from the convention hall that does not permit firearms, then you can;t break the rules of that facility. 

Otherwise, you absolutely can carry at the NRA Annual Meeting and convention.

Would be nice if journos stopped lying about that, as well as so many other things they lie about or tell half-truths when it comes to firearms.

Detroit Free Press Finds No News That Looks Bad to Democrats Fit To Print

No news that makes Biden and his Dem supporters look bad graces the pages of the Detroit Free Press these days.

First, just like CNN, the Detroit Free Press couldn't find the Bobulinski interview and story revealing Joe Biden's rather corrupt goings on with his son and foreign governments if their lives depended on it:

Riots happening in Philadelphia?  What Riots In Philadelphia?

Biden's statement in the debate on ending the oil industry? - forget it Jake, it's the Freep.

Yep, it's truly Iowahawk's world:

What Is This Strange Ceremony You Speak Of?

When your race card limit hits it's maximum, I suppose all you have left is the ability to start writing stupid opinion pieces.

The Detroit News: Bankole: Pandemic robs blacks of public mourning

Caring for the dead has been an essential part of the black experience in America going back to the early days, when burial societies were formed to plan proper funerals. . . .

Verily, this thing you call a funeral dear Bankole, what is it? In truth, a non-Black person has never heard of such a strange ceremony and concept of caring for the dead. Do tell us more.

That centuries-old heritage and practice, a sacred ritual of black life, is now being upended by the pandemic, as African Americans are not allowed to congregate in large numbers to mourn those lost to the coronavirus.

Verily, women and minorities must be hardest hit by this pandemic dear Bankole. Is it true that African Americans to the exclusion of everyone else are not allowed to congregate in large numbers to mourn the dead in a sacred ritual?

Trust race-baiter Bankole to make what is a universal experience under the coronavirus lock-down - the inability of anyone - Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, or whatever - to have a funeral with more than 10 mourners present to someone be uniquely affecting Blacks either especially or differently than anyone else.

Perhaps The Best Example Of Fallacious Journalism You'll See Today

Journalism used to be about getting to the facts and reporting on them. Now it's far more about political correctness and feelings, and the facts be damned.

Here's a lovely example of a journalist looking at facts and imposing her ideological world view with a whopper of a logical fallacy right off the bat, never-mind the facts, she had an agenda to push, facts be damned:

The Toronto Star: Blowback to the word genocide proves the national inquiry report was right

Basically a progressive, politically-driven report by the "National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls" was recently issued that named violence against Canadian indigenous women over the years to be an act of genocide.

Analysis of the facts indicate otherwise, and many people pointed out the facts and how these varied and separate acts of violence, while reprehensible, simply do not amount to any actual established definition of genocide.

The journo decided the existence of opposition to the report's findings proves the report's findings was correct.

It really doesn't work that way.

The argument is sort of a combination of the Fallacy of Opposition and Kafkatrapping - any denial of the assertion apparently proves the assertion.

Instead of declaring if others oppose her position that must mean its right, simply by virtue of the existence of people opposing it, she could have looked at the facts, which are pretty well known.

Instead of acts of genocide, indigenous women over the time period looked at were almost all killed or murdered in either of the following situations:

1. Killed by their domestic partner, which while reprehensible and plainly wrong, isn't genocide, it's spousal abuse that the government of Canada does in fact prosecute and punish the murderers when possible; or

2. Killed by an unknown sexual partner/opportunistic killer. Most of those who were killed were murdered while working in the sex trade, which unfortunately exposed them to potential killers by nature of the fact that they were plying an illegal trade that involved getting into vehicles with unknown persons, going to unknown places, not letting other people know where they were going or who they were with, and being in an extremely vulnerable position all the while and unfortunately being murdered. Again, reprehensible and wrong, but still not an act of genocide, nor does blaming colonialism work for either situation, but since leftists now believe Canada is a colonial nation and therefore bad, it's better to blame the nation collectively than the wrongdoers themselves, many if not most of whom are indigenous peoples.

Considering the fact that Canada's indigenous population is growing and expected to almost double by 2036, if this is genocide, Canada has done a piss-poor job of it, because well, Canada is simply not committing genocide against its indigenous population and these women's murders are not acts nor evidence of genocide no matter how much the progressives wish to believe them to be.

While its an important act to seriously prosecute those who commit crimes against indigenous peoples and devote resources towards prosecuting such crimes, to call random acts of murder and spousal abuse leading to death genocide is simply inappropriate and an attempt to mischaracterize a very real problem to get attention, and it completely devalues the word genocide and victims of actual genocides.

Detroit News' Dale Hansen Falls For Mother Jones' Anti-Gun Debunked Study

Dale Hansen, the Detroit News' reliably leftist columnist, falls for another lefty fraud that reinforces leftists' preconceptions about gun control:

The Detroit News: Better an unarmed survivor than a dead hero

He accepts without question Mother Jone's already debunked study that alleges a "good guy with a gun has never stopped a massacre".

Um, no, even the Weekly Standard points out this Mother Jones study is bunkum.

Is it True Armed Civilians Have Never Stopped a Mass Shooting?

Of course Mother Jones cooks the books right off the bat - 4 people have to be dead before any good guy can stop it to count as a good guy stopping a mass shooting according to their methodology. So, if you prevent any deaths from happening, or stop the bad guy after only 1 to 3, it doesn't count.

Think about the inanity of that qualifier.

Hansen of course could have found this out in 5 seconds or less using teh Google, but he has an agenda to push, not facts.

He then ends his idiotorial with another bald faced lie, this time of his own making:

You don’t have to support a repeal of the 2nd Amendment to recognize that in most states you are required to present more information to vote or own a car than you need to purchase a gun.

Wait a minute, I thought even the idea of showing ID before voting was verboten to Hansen and those like him. Clearly, Hansen has never heard of things like Form 4473, NICS checks and the like, nor the fact that you can indeed privately buy a car from someone without any id at all, and that you can register to vote with nothing more than a copy of a utility bill - by mail.

Just a few less lies and untruths next time Mr. Hansen, ok?

Your Captain Obvious Headline Of The Day

Gaze on past the defensive and petulant Obama headline of "I don't need permission" (otherwise known as: Don't try to stop me), and look down a bit and you'll find your Captain Obvious headline of the day:

No, really?

Yes, CNN's headline on the missing Flight 370 really is "Experts: Flight 370 is in a different spot."

Brilliant deduction there Sherlock. If it wasn't in the spot, it has to be in a different spot, right?

Sheesh, journalists today.

What Do You Get When You Combine An Ignorance Of History, Etymology, An Agenda, And A Left-Wing Bias?

A Journalist.

The fail on this is rather strong indeed.

Gawker: The GOP Just Named its Hot New Innovation Lab After a Nazi Pistol

The Republican National Committee today excitedly announced the launch of a new startup lab to bring techies and creatives together, Silicon Valley-style, to get Republicans elected. Oh, and they named it for a Nazi gun, a type of ammo, and a philosophy that puts war before peace.

Actually no, no they didn't. To claim they did is to ignore history, etymology and common sense.

You see the reporter is rather ignorant of history, Latin, and firearms nomenclature and uses this ignorance to tar Republicans with an ideology and outcome far more associated with the Left.

Really, most Americans, until Mr. Weinstein of Gawker, did not go around calling the Pistole 08, or P.08, invented by Luger "Parabellums".

Instead most everyone called them Lugers, and still do. Indeed many person just call every German pistol a Luger, including the Walther P-38, which is not a Luger.

Weinstein confabulates the origin of the term Parabellum and tries to tie it to the Nazis.

Look, Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, known to us these days as Vegetius, coined the phrase para bellum in his work De Re Militari, which was written around 430-435 AD, or a solid 1500 years before the Nazis came to power.

Clearly, Vegetius was just a Nazi before his time.

Furthermore, Vegetius' philosphy, expressed as Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum - If you wish for peace, prepare for war. However, it did not place war before peace but instead advocated that without a strong and capable military, a nation would be at risk of attack from its opponents. It's pretty clear Weinstein has never actually read Vegetius before egregiously slandering the greatest extant military manual from ancient times as "a philosophy that puts war before peace".

Much later then Vegetius writing, the parabellum cartridge was developed in Germany, so at least he's geographically closer. But, they did it in 1902, again predating the Nazi era, though by not quite so considerable an amount. The Luger pistol itself was invented in 1908, again predating the Nazis rather nicely. To call it a Nazi cartridge and pistol is quite the stretch and a gross inaccuracy,

Of course, you know who uses the 9mm Parabellum today - The US Armed Forces. Therefore according to Weinstein the US Army would be . . . . ?

Contra Weinstein, the term "parabellum" has no "Hitlerite baggage", at least not outside his fevered imagination anyways.

In other words, Mr. Weinstein is stretching and confabulating the truth, and stretching it rather badly to try and score cheap political points.

I certainly hope Mr. Weinstein doesn't drive a Volkswagen, as after all that car company was actually created by, you know, the Nazis. Not that if he ever owned or ever drove one would make Mr. Weinstein a Nazi supporter or anything...

Don't Let The Facts Get In the Way Of An Anti-NRA Concern Troll Editorial

“Never take advice from a donkey.”
― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

Brian Dickerson of the Free Press puts on his concerned face worrying Does today's NRA still speak for gun owners?

To answer you question Brian: Yes, yes it does. Perhaps not as strongly, nor as eloquently, nor as artfully as we might prefer, but it does.

But you see, Brian is concerned and considers a grass-roots group with 4.5 million-plus members to just be a front for the firearms industry.

Isn't it time we stopped acting surprised every time the organization reprises the more-guns-equals-less-crime theme its paid mouthpieces have been promoting for decades and started inquiring more closely into who's pulling the NRA's strings, and for what purpose? Because the more you know about today's NRA, the less credible its claim to be the voice of American gun owners seems.

Nice, when you can't contest the facts, attack the speaker and try to attack their credibility.

The NRA likes to paint itself as a grassroots organization whose political influence can be traced directly to the depth and breadth of its membership -- a roster of ordinary Americans that stands, according the organization's own figures, at a robust 4.5 million. The organization's promotional materials have long disavowed any forma affiliation with companies that manufacture or sell firearms or ammunition.

I'd think 4.5 million plus members entitle it to be called grassroots, don't you?

Also, Note the spelling error in that paragraph. Layers of editorial oversight and as he's deputy editorial page editor, so he should know.

Oh, and 4.5 million members as opposed to say the Brady campaign with all of at most 28,000 members?.

But although the NRA says its populist strength continues to grow, demographic data show a long-term contraction in the number of gun-owning households in the United States.

Really Brian, you're going to use that worn out lie that gun ownership is on the decline. Really now?

And especially since 2005, when it launched an aggressive campaign to recruit corporate sponsors for its pro-first-amendment message, the NRA often has appeared more responsive to the priorities of manufacturers and retailers than to those of firearm owners.

Any bets its yet another example of editorial excellence and he meant Second Amendment here?

An April 2011 study published by the non-profit Violence Policy Center found that corporate donors had contributed between $19.8 million and $52.6 million in the first five years of the NRA's Ring of Freedom fundraising campaign, and that 74% of that total -- $14.7 million to $38.9 million -- came from companies involved in the manufacture and sale of firearms or shooting-related products."

Seriously now, Brian is going to be using the anti-NRA Violence Policy Center as a source for this? The same VPC that lies, damned lies, and false statistics? Talk about your reliable and unbiased sources that would have no interest in making up lies about the NRA there Brian.

Next, he uses the sterling and unbiased statistics of Mayors Against Illegal Guns - the group with convictions for criminal conduct above both the gun-owning and the average population of the country.

At the same time, the NRA's aggressive solicitation of corporate sponsors suggests we all should be more skeptical of its self-described mission -- and its claim that constitutional principles are at that mission's core.

Nice attempt to demonize the NRA by association and innuendo there Brian. I'd give it a solid D-.

On A Stunning Example Of Leftist Historical Ignorance

The Detroit Free Press carries an article that is a collaboration of a number of journalists on the Emancipation Proclamation.

The Detroit Free Press: 150 years later, Lincoln's Emancipation still sparks debate

It has plenty of the same racially-based leftist tropes, like the emphasis on the existence of a collective African-American consciousness, but one statement really stood out as a demonstration of leftist belief and how it is so at odds with historical reality.

Of course, history, even fairly recent history from living memory, is not exactly these journalists' strong suit. Even as they pontificate on history, we get some amazingly ignorant and politically biased statements in the article such as this one:

The nation has just re-elected an African-American president who hangs in his Oval Office a signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation. This, the executive order's 150th anniversary, is the first major one when black people can fairly be called free.

Seriously now?

It takes the re-election of a black president for black people to fairly be called free? I guess in 1972 for the 110th anniversary and in 1987, the 125th anniversary of the Proclamation, blacks were still being sold into slavery or something?

The mind boggles at the need for lefty journalists to ignore history and pretend that black people in America somehow only achieved becoming "free" upon the election of Barack Obama.

On the upside, at least these journalists can finally say they are proud of their country.

Alboms in Glass Columns Shouldn't Throw Editorial Stones

Mitch Albom in his column In the Sherrod controversy, do shoot the messenger is in high dudgeon over the Brietbart / Shirley Sherrod matter:

Andrew Breitbart is the conservative blogger who posted the edited video of Sherrod. He put it on one of his five Web sites. Breitbart, a former Matt Drudge groupie, onetime E! Entertainment employee, and a guy who called Sen. Edward Kennedy, hours after his death, "a special pile of human excrement," hoisted that clip as evidence of reverse racism by the NAACP. He claimed the audience applauded such sentiments. The video showed no such thing. [Actually it does show them murmuring approval to those statements long before her speech gets to any redemptive statements]

But Breitbart lit the fire. He blew on the flames. As Sherrod would later tell CNN, "He knew exactly what would happen."

So Breitbart is where this sad story begins, where the blame lies and where the punishment should be doled out -- if there were any you could dole out.

Sadly, how do you punish a blogger like Breitbart? He simply slithers back into the muck that some confuse with journalism. Who does he have to answer to?

Nobody.

....

Some people have called this incident a referendum on racism. I don't think so. It was a referendum on editing. A referendum on Internet blogging. A referendum on our blazing desire for explosive moments -- even out of context -- and our creeping slowness to see the full picture.

This is the same Mitch Albom that back in 2005 got caught making up a story on a NCAA Final 4 Basketball game that he didn't even attend: Will Albom's woes taint journalism?

But Albom, who has been with the Free Press for 20 years, is taking a lashing from fellow journalists. They say he has revived the question of journalistic integrity after instances of deception by staffers at several major news outlets, including USA TODAY, The New York Times and CBS News.

In a column April 3, Albom described two former Michigan State basketball players, both now in the NBA, attending an NCAA Final Four semifinal game on Saturday. The players told Albom they planned to attend, and Albom, filing Friday before the game, wrote as if the players were there, including that they wore Michigan State green. But the players' plans changed and they never attended.

Free Press editors didn't change Albom's copy. Now they and Albom are under investigation by the newspaper.

Albom apologized in an April 7 piece in the Free Press. He wrote that the mention of Mateen Cleaves and Jason Richardson "was hardly the thrust of the column. ... Perhaps it seems as a small detail to you ... but details are the backbone of journalism, and planning to be somewhere is not the same as being there."

Albom could not be reached for comment.

The incident "has put the entire paper under a microscope. I think he was trying to do too much as a multimedia guru and took shortcuts, which was easy because he knew no one was going to challenge him," says Tom McPhail, a journalism professor at the University of Missouri. "Perhaps it is time to contemplate a journalism rehab institute. It looks like a growth industry, unfortunately."

So here we have a columnist who has on at least one occasion been caught inventing facts castigating a blogger that ran the only video he could get showing the NAACP audience endorsing Sherrod's tale of her past racially-tinged views / activities of the past.

Mitch Albom was probably the worst possible choice in the MSM to run a column castigating a blogger for not having editors to fact-check him. You'll note Mr. Albom is still working for the same paper where he got caught making up facts so perhaps he too is in his own words:

not held to any standard.

And that's the problem.

Why Detroit Will Continue To Suck

It's because of the lousy attitudes of its residents with their City v. Suburbs mentality, exemplified today by Detroit Free Press Columnist Jeff Gerritt.

The Detroit Free Press: Torments and tickets in the D

As a proud and loyal Detroiter, I'm down for anything -- short of triggering a federal indictment -- that puts paper in the city's tapped-out till. That includes parking tickets, which last year netted the city $10.5 million. The city would have gotten even more, except a lot of people don't pay. In fact, unpaid parking fines amount to $50 million.

With cuts in state revenue sharing and plummeting property values, parking tickets may soon become Detroit's only steady income. I'm even happy that some of those getting tagged are smug suburbanites who make bad jokes about my city while speeding back to subdivisions and gated communities where everything looks the same. They can dog-out the D, but no one can dodge its parking platoon.

Way to put out the welcome mat there Jeffy. As if the ever-present crime and corruption that is the "D" wasn't enough, as well as Detroiters constantly demanding money from the state and suburbs while refusing to be transparent in how the money is spent or changing their ways to actually spend that money in a manner that doesn't put cash in corrupt politicians pockets, now we get a dose of self-righteous smugness on top of all that.

As Gerritt bemoans the lack of revenue coming into the "D" perhaps he should quit trying to drive more of it away, lest it be afraid to park there.