Month: July 2016

The Leftward Shift at Fox News.

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I have not been a big fan of Fox News but it was the only source of relatively neutral political reporting on TV for years. Some years ago, Charles Krauthammer famously said, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes found a “niche market ” with 50% of the population.

I said some years ago that the genius of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes was to have discovered a niche market in American broadcasting — half the American people. The reason Fox News has thrived and grown is because it offers a vibrant and honest alternative to those who could not abide yet another day of the news delivered to them beneath layer after layer of often undisguised liberalism.

What Fox did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality.

A few years ago, I was on a radio show with a well-known political reporter who lamented the loss of a pristine past in which the whole country could agree on what the facts were, even if they disagreed on how to interpret and act upon them. All that was gone now. The country had become so fractured we couldn’t even agree on what reality was. What she meant was that the day in which the front page of The New York Times was given scriptural authority everywhere was gone, shattered by the rise of Fox News.

Now, in a trend that has become depressingly common, the heirs of Murdoch are taking over and shifting the programming left. Roger Ailes has been named by a disgruntled ex-employee in a fairly laughable sexual harassment suit. Carlson was fired and then, after being fired, sued alleging harassment.

Ailes, predictably, dismissed the charges as false.

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Melania Trump’s Speech Was Intentionally Sabotaged

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Melania

This story is more interesting and important than people seem to realize.

What do we know happened?

Melania Trump gave a speech at the Republican National Convention. The speech was long-anticipated, and long in preparation. It was considered by the Trump campaign to be a significant moment, where Melania Trump would be introduced to the public and her speech would humanize and soften the image of Donald Trump.

The speech, during and immediately after Melania Trump gave it, was considered a success. She is not a professional politician or otherwise a public speaker by profession. So, her smoothly delivered and well-received speech was a solid success for the campaign.

It was in the interests of Hillary Clinton’s campaign to undermine that success if possible. Denigrating Melania Trump for her looks, for the banality of the speech, and so on, were expected, and such mocking and insulting responses were of course under way during and immediately after the speech.

Soon after the speech, how soon exactly is a point worth of investigation, the word began to circulate that Melania Trump had plagiarized language from a speech by Michelle Obama. In fact, there were some phrases which were identical. “You work hard for what you want in life, your word is your bond, you do what you say” and “you treat people with respect”.

These phrases are not particularly noteworthy.

They are boilerplate, even banal.

Yet Melania Trump repeated them word for word.

These are all undisputed facts.

What are the open questions?

What possible advantage was there for Melania Trump to repeat Michelle Obama’s speech word for word?

None. Zero.

Michelle Obama’s words could be restated equally effectively with other phrasing. Using identical words makes no sense.

There is no motive here.

Nonetheless, it is barely possible that Melania Trump knowingly repeated those words from Michelle Obama’s speech, thinking no one would notice, even though tweaking a few words would have removed any hint of plagiarism.

Perhaps Melania Trump is lazy, dishonest, and very stupid, and so indifferent to the success of her husband’s campaign that she knowingly plagiarized Michelle Obama’s language.

That is one possible explanation.

It is not convincing.

However, there is more.

There is also a passage in Melania Trump’s speech which is a direct quote from a Rick Astley song.

In other words, Melania Trump’s speech was Rickrolled.

To those who do not recall the fad from 2008 or so, Rickrolling was providing a link which purported to be something else, but in fact linked to a Rick Astley video, in fact, the very video whose lyrics were included in Melania Trump’s speech.

The only plausible explanation for the presence of these lyrics is that someone who participated in the drafting of Melania Trump’s speech intentionally included the Rick Astley lyric, apparently as a signal the speech had been “hacked.”

The Rick Astley lyric is a mocking gesture, a flipped bird from the saboteur.

There is no rational explanation for Melania Trump knowingly or intentionally including the Rick Astley lyric in her speech.

Someone who knew what the Rick Astley lyric represented included it in the speech.

Others have suggested that the so-called plagiarism might have been intentional sabotage by someone involved in the speech-writing process, e.g. this article.

In fact, there is no other plausible explanation.

Either Melania Trump knowingly included the plagiarized Michelle Obama quotes in her initial draft — or she did not.

It is barely possible she did, though highly unlikely.

Either Melania Trump “Rickrolled herself” — or she did not.

That is impossible.

It makes no sense at all.

Melania Trump’s speech was intentionally sabotaged.

What no one seems to have pointed out is that the production of this speech, like any important written work product, is a heavily documented process.

Melania Trump and the Trump campaign claim that she wrote the speech. What precisely that means is not clear. What it likely means is that she drafted it, or prepared an initial draft. What is certain is that whatever draft Melania Trump prepared was then circulated for comment and editing. That is the standard process. It is inconceivable that she wrote something in private and then gave the speech to the Republican National Convention with no input or review by anyone else. To the contrary, we know that the speech was the result of a long drafting process and was rehearsed repeatedly, and probably revised and refined during that process as well. Some number of other persons were involved in the process.

The documentary evidence within the Trump campaign, including email traffic and draft versions of the speech, will show with certainty at what point in the drafting process the Michelle Obama language was added, and when the Rick Astley language was added.

The documentary evidence within the Trump campaign will also with certainty identify the person who added each of these items to Melania Trump’s speech.

If Melania Trump’s initial draft did not include this language, when was it added?

Who put it in?

What was that person’s motive?

Did this person act alone?

Was this a dirty trick done in collusion with others?

If so, with whom?

Did the person who added the language send email or text messages which can be examined to determine whether that person tipped off anyone to break the plagiarism story?

Did that person breach any confidentiality agreement or other agreement with the Trump campaign?

Is that person subject to a lawsuit?

How did someone hostile to Trump, willing and able to sabotage Melania Trump’s speech, penetrate the campaign organization undetected?

Are there other moles in the campaign organization?

These are all questions that need to be answered.

Determining precisely who was responsible, what their motives were, and how they did it, would be the kind of questions a real news media would be asking.

Instead, they are acting like the Democratic operatives they are, presenting the consensus anti-Trump narrative, while failing to note that it makes no sense.

Bottom line: A calculated attack was made on Trump’s campaign, his wife’s speech was hacked and an important success was turned into a circus and an embarrassment for the campaign.

We need to know what really happened.

We may be in for a season of more serious dirty tricks.

This episode should be thoroughly investigated.

UPDATE:

A speechwriter has come forward claiming the Michelle Obama language was included in error.

This does not explain the Rickroll, however.

My Big Fat Hillary Problem

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So, it looks like Her Inevitableness is tottering on the way to her coronation, attended by throne-sniffing, lickspittle courtiers like Chris Matthews of MSNBC, who most notably got bent out of shape last night by Patricia Smith (the mother of former SEAL Sean Smith, killed in the 2012 mob attack on the US consular office in Benghazi) calling Her Inevitableness a liar. Such “lese majeste!” harrumphs the egregiously offended Mr. Matthews, whom I assume followed this up with a demand that those kids get off his lawn.

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Seth Barrett Tillman: The Libertarian/Popperian Case for Brexit: A Response to Professors Somin, Levy, Norberg et al.

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The so-called libertarian case against Brexit works like this. Nations do bad things. E.g., tariffs. And the European Union (“EU”) blocks some (perhaps many of) those bad things. Indeed, the EU has set up a tariff-free free trade zone. That’s a good thing. Therefore EU-good & Brexit-bad. This position is not entirely wrong, but it is only half the story.
 
First, the EU (and EFTA) free trade zone extends to EU (and EFTA) member states and their dependencies, and also to a few nearby non-member political entities (e.g., San Marino, Andorra, etc). This tariff-free free trade zone does not extend to the world. So when foreign goods are imported into the “tariff-free free trade zone” across the EU’s external borders, EU law mandates a “Common Customs Tariff”. In other words, hand-in-hand with the absence of tariffs among member states is an EU-imposed tariff against non-members’ exports. Whether this situation is a net gain for the people of Europe is a complex empirical question. That question is not answered merely by parroting the EU’s line: we promote tariff-free free trade. No, that question is not so easily answered because although the EU promotes some free trade, it positively discriminates against non-members’ exports.

Read the rest.

This is a long and well reasoned post that is worth reading in full. The gist of Seth’s argument is that the political phenomena lumped together as “Brexit” should be evaluated empirically rather than according to someone’s interpretation of libertarian doctrine; there are good reasons for supporters of freedom and open societies to favor Britain’s exit from the EU.

UPDATE: Ilya Somin responds. The reader is invited to evaluate Somin’s full response for himself, but I was struck by this line: “Tillman’s discussion of immigration is notable for its implicit assumption that we can assess immigration policy while completely ignoring the freedom and interests of potential immigrants themselves.” Has there ever been a country that framed its immigration policy in any terms other than its own self-interest?

Another BLM Related Ambush & Mass Murder of Police in Baton Rouge, LA?

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Seven Baton Rouge area law men have been shot and three are dead in an ambush near Police H.Q. in Baton Rouge.  There was as single perpetrator in a black outfit, with a hoodie or other face covering, with a long rifle. He was engaged by Police and shot in the exchange. The USA Today won’t say his race.

The best one-stop place to cover the shooting seems to be this “The Conservative Tree House Blog” thread.

Odds are 9-to-1 that this perpetrator was a single black male with some connection to the Black Lives Matter’s protest movement.

Excerpt from USA Today below —

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Report: 3 police officers in Baton Rouge shot dead

, USA TODAY 12:02 p.m. EDT July 17, 2016

 

Three police officers have been shot dead in Baton Rouge, La., and others may have been wounded, authorities said Sunday.

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The three officers were shot near the department headquarters, Baton Route Mayor Kip Holden told MSNBC. At least four others were injured in the shooting, he said.

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“They are investigating,” he said. “Right now we are trying to get our arms around everything.”

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Two Baton Rouge police officers and one East Baton Rouge sheriff’s deputy are dead, according to WBRZ-TV’s Michael Vinsanau.

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The gunman was shot, a Louisiana State Police spokesman said, but his condition was not immediately clear.

 

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A witness told WBRZ-TV that a man was dressed in black with his face covered was shooting indiscriminately when he walked out between a convenience store and car wash across from Hammond Air Plaza. Police closed the streets between the police department’s headquarters and Interstate 12.

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Vinsanau of WBRZ tweeted that more than a dozen marked and unmarked police cars have sped to the scene, and that a SWAT team is on location. State police armed with rifles are posted blocks away, Vinsanau tweeted.

UPDATE:

Perpetrator Description —