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media and media people

Another Contagious Disease

“When Republican Sen. Tom Cotton speculated that the coronavirus outbreak might have come out of a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan,” Timothy Carney wrote for the Washington Examiner on Friday, “he was roundly pilloried, mocked, and chastised by politicians and journalists.”

“Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked,” declared a Washington Post headline. Only problem? What the Post’s “experts” debunked, if anything, was that COVID-19 was man-made. 

That’s not what Sen. Cotton said at all. Cotton simply noted that the Wuhan lab did work with bats and coronaviruses and that this contagion may have come from that lab, possibly by accident.

“[I]t turns out that Cotton might have been correct,” informs Carney, “and the very expert the media used to attack Cotton as some kind of conspiracy theorist now admits as much.”

In his column last week for The Washington Post, David Ignatius quoted Rutgers University microbiologist Richard Ebright, the “biosafety expert” used in earlier stories blasting Sen. Cotton, explaining that “the first human infection . . . could have occurred as a laboratory accident, with, for example, an accidental infection of a laboratory worker” — even noting that the Wuhan lab “provides only minimal protection” against such a dangerous event.

As Carney points out, “the idea that the virus accidentally came out of that lab may seamlessly move from ‘fringe opinion’ to respectable — even to consensus.”

“The first question,” argues Carney, “should be whether the folks who attacked that notion in February” — including The Washington Post and the Huffington Post — “will explain why they were unwilling to consider it.”

Media narratives — which Carney skewers regularly — are easy to come by. 

Objective news? Not so much.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Senator Tom Cotton, media, coronavirus, Covid, epidemic, China,

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free trade & free markets ideological culture media and media people

Dead Economists Walking?

Zombies don’t exist. Not like in the movies.

Or like in the pages of The New York Times.

The Times’s economist Paul Krugman has a new book out, Arguing with Zombies, and, if I ever had the tiniest margin of utility nudging me towards reading it, John Goodman’s review in Forbes has dissuaded me. For Krugman doesn’t argue with anyone — he argues against economists whom he mischaracterizes.

No, that’s apparently too kind. He argues against, says Goodman, economists who don’t exist. “Zombies are economists who believe that every tax cut pays for itself with increased revenue,” Goodman explains. “They hate the poor. They are closet racists. They do the bidding of billionaire puppet masters who pay their salaries and fund their research. Their goal in life is to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.”

Goodman concludes by noting that Krugman knows better, for “if you are thinking that Krugman has never met a Republican, you might be inclined to cut him some slack.” But no, “it turns out Krugman actually worked in the White House during the Reagan administration. That means he knows the tax cuts weren’t devised by economists whose motivation was to make the rich richer. He knows his fellow economic advisors to the president weren’t puppets, doing the bidding of billionaires. He knows they weren’t closet racists. He knows they didn’t hate the poor.”

Krugman — a Nobel Laureate — calls his enemies the worst names imaginable. Yet, Krugman the Zombie Hunter is one reason our political culture is so monstrous right now.

Not zombie-monstrous, partisan-monstrous. 

Meanwhile, the two sides that hate each other are united at least in one way, in creating another monster: the $2.2 trillion bailout, and the record new deficit.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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media and media people national politics & policies

In, Over and About

Sometimes losing track of a story pays off.

Last week, Facebook and Twitter and that minor player, the “major” news media, erupted with Democrats glorying in and gloating over and harrumphing about a story from Reliable Liar & Leaker Adam Schiff — I think that may be his semi-official position in the House of Representatives. 

Schiff’s office confirmed that the House Intelligence Committee — which, in fact, Schiff chairs — had been briefed on February 13th to the effect that Russia favors the Trump Administration and will again, this year, ‘interfere’ in U.S. presidential elections. 

Meanwhile, Senator Bernie Sanders, who is running for the presidency as a Democrat but who calls himself a ‘democratic socialist’ (but of whom Nobel Laureate in Amnesia Paul Krugman dubs a mere ‘social democrat’) . . . well, he got in the news with the story that he had been briefed with “intelligence” that Russia was trying to throw the race towards him. Sanders sputtered his protests.

In 2016, it has been determined, Russian operatives had placed lame social media ‘memes’ into the political mill, impressing no one at the time, but scandalizing Democrats after the ‘inexplicable’ loss of their much-hated candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Perhaps they are priming their Excuse Reservoir for another ignominious defeat?

Anyway, last week I was so distracted that I did not comment on the whole story. Which, conveniently, has now received enough “pushback,” denials and contradictions to close the chapter on it.

In record time, it was over.

That’s about it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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general freedom ideological culture media and media people Snowden

The Whistleblower Who Shall Not Be Named

“YouTube — Google, one of the largest, most powerful companies on the planet — has just censored political discourse from a U.S. senator on the Senate floor,” reports independent, online journalist Tim Pool. 

The case refers to the alleged “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella, around whom hangs a sort of hush-hush infamy regarding the Ukraine phone call that became the centerpiece of the Democrat’s impeachment of Donald Trump. YouTube, under a self-imposed/tribe-imposed gag order not to mention the man’s name, takes down all videos that dare breach this rule. YouTube just took down a C-Span video featuring Senator Rand Paul discussing Mr. Ciaramella on the Senate floor — in which he defended whistleblower protections, but notes that they do not enforce anonymity.*

“Think about how dangerous that will be.”

“It is a chilling and disturbing day in America when giant web companies such as YouTube decide to censure [sic] speech,” the senator was quoted in The Washington Examiner after YouTube removed the clip. “Now, even protected speech, such as that of a senator on the Senate floor, can be blocked from getting to the American people.”

Rand Paul has been demanding full disclosure of possible conspiracy on the part of Ciaramella — working with Representative Adam Schiff, who led the impeachment push — but has not been getting very far. During the Senate impeachment trial, presiding officer Chief Justice Roberts declined to read a question (“as written”) by the senator that had specified the Unnamable Name without identifying him as the “whistleblower.”

Google is free to play censor, of course, but who wants an information age without the information?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* The senator also expressed some incredulity about the near-universal proclamations in support of whistleblower laws, calling Edward Snowden “the greatest whistleblower of all-time” but noting that half the Senate wanted Snowden put to death and the other half to plunk him “in jail forever. So it depends on what you blow the whistle on whether or not they’re for the whistleblower statute.”

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media and media people Second Amendment rights

Self-Defense Is for Everybody

Last week, Virginia’s infamous black-face governor claimed to possess “credible intelligence . . . of threats of violence surrounding” Monday’s “Lobby Day” gun rights rally in Richmond, including “extremist rhetoric similar to . . . Charlottesville in 2017.” 

Major media outlets went on a rampage, repeating his linkage between gun rights supporters and “white nationalists” faster than semi-automatic fire.

“Big media and mainstream media be damned,” announced a Virginia man recorded at yesterday’s event, and tweeted by social media entrepreneur Michael Coudrey. 

The unidentified but obviously black demonstrator jested, at first, that he was “out here because I got roped into it by the group of guys you see standing to my right.” But then he explained his opposition to “Governor Northam and the Democrats’ gun control” as well as “every news piece you’ve seen on this this weekend. . . .”

He objected especially to the incessant race angle — “as if it’s nothing but white rednecks and hillbillies out here who care for the Second Amendment. I work at a gun store part-time and I can’t tell you the number of customers I see of all races, all colors, all creeds who care about the Second Amendment.”

His account was corroborated by Julio Rosas, a senior writer at Townhall.com, who tweeted “pictures of people carrying rifles at the #VirginiaRally and more evidence that debunks the narrative that the rally is filled with racists and white supremacists.”

Yesterday, more than 22,000 pro-gun people of all races descended on the capitol in a completely peaceful exercise of First Amendment rights in defense of Second Amendment rights . . . making Richmond the safest city in America. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


NOTE: There was only one arrest at the rally, a woman charged with violating a 1950-era law against wearing face masks (like Hong Kong’s law). Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) voiced her displeasure that there weren’t more arrests.

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media and media people national politics & policies

Stranger Things 2019

On Tuesday, I seconded George F. Will’s judgment that the biggest story of 2019 was the Hong Kong protest movement.

In America, though, 2019’s top news story must be how the anti-Trump movement morphed from Russiagate, which fizzled upon release of the Mueller Report, to the quasi-impeachment bit over the most yawn-inducing scandal of all time, Trump’s Ukraine Phone Call.

It is certainly a strange story, but there are stranger big stories from last year. I am tempted to assert that the year’s biggest news is actually the Biggest Non-Story: trillion-dollar deficits and ever-increasing debt.

No protest over that enormity. Getting anyone to talk about it is like getting the government to come clean on . . . UFOs.

Which brings us to the absolutely weirdest story of 2019. During this last swing ‘round the sun, multiple sources associated with (and inside) the federal government, admitted that, within the corridors of our un-beloved Deep State, artifacts from crashed ‘and landed’ UFOs were being studied.

After decades and decades of ridicule, eye-rolls, stonewalling, lying, and disinformation about ‘flying saucers,’ several important government bodies — including the Army and Navy — now admit that they almost regularly encounter astounding . . . crafts . . . that are not part of our nation’s official sea and air technology inventory. 

These admissions amount to ‘disclosure.’ But it is not an information dump — disclosure is just a trickle, so far.*

Why? Perhaps the idea is that we cannot handle the truth.

Or perhaps they can’t.

Which isn’t really unlike ever-increasing deficits and debt, now that I think about it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* Still, even with a mere handful of official and near-official admissions of retrieved UFO tech, the story looms large indeed.

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UFO, debt, deficit,

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