Washington Post spirals out of control after a writer retweets a ‘reprehensible’ joke about women
https://www.theblaze.com/news/wapo-dave-weigel-sexist-joke
Washington Post spirals out of control after a writer retweets a ‘reprehensible’ joke about women
By Carlos Garcia
June 3, 2022
A spokesperson for the Washington Post issued an apology after a writer retweeted a sexist joke and other writers at the news outlet objected vocally on Twitter.
Dave Weigel retweeted a joke about women on Friday and immediately regretted it after he was criticized heavily for joking on Twitter.
Weigel deleted the tweet, but it was saved for posterity by random people on Twitter and other writers at the outlet, like Felicia Sonmez, who objected to the sexist message.
https://twitter.com/feliciasonmez/status/1532763318804439047
“Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual,” read the tweet.
“Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!” replied Sonmez sarcastically.
“Or perhaps @daveweigel the correct diagnosis: they’re just not that into you,” responded Stephanie Ruhl, the MSNBC host.
Kristine Coratti Kelly, a Wapo spokesperson, quickly issued an apology for the offensive joke tweet.
“Editors have made clear to the staff that the tweet was reprehensible and demeaning language or actions like that will not be tolerated,” said Kelly.
Weigel also apologized.
https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1532771139323211776
For some on the left, it wasn’t enough.
“You are still misogynistic trash. Can’t believe @washingtonpost still employs someone with such deep-seated sexist beliefs. Definitely clouds his ability to report unbiased facts,” responded liberal activist Amy Siskind.
According to a report by CNN’s Oliver Darcy, WaPo national editor Matea Gold addressed the controversy with the outlet’s employees on a channel on Slack.
“I just want to assure all of you that The Post is committed to maintaining a respectful workplace for everyone. We do not tolerate demeaning language or actions,” Gold wrote.
The whole bizarre episode was mocked and ridiculed by many on social media.
“Seriously? The Washington Post had to issue a statement about a retweet of a dumb joke? Nearly a dozen journalists in Mexico have been murdered since the start of the year and here we have people freaking out because Dave Weigel retweeted something. Goddamned babies,” said editor Jay Caruso.
The Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, wrote: “Musk’s appointment to Twitter’s board shows that we need regulation of social-media platforms to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication.”
This is hilarious!
Jeff Bezos, the second richest person in the world, owns the Washington Post.
The Washington Post just wrote:
“[Elon] Musk’s appointment to Twitter’s board shows that we need regulation of social-media platforms to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication.”
This is hilarious, and extremely hypocritical!
The Washington Post said the Waukesha massacre was “caused by a SUV”
The Washington Post said the Waukesha massacre was “caused by a SUV.”
The original tweet has been deleted. This is the link where it originally was:
https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1463686399123730443
Fortunately, the internet archive has a copy of the tweet at this link:
The tweet says:
“Here’s what we know so far on the sequence of events that led to the Waukesha tragedy caused by a SUV.”
Here’s a screenshot taken from the archive:
Also, since “SUV” is pronounced as “ess yoo vee,” the correct article is “an,” not “a.” At least, that’s what I remember being taught when I was in elementary school back in the 1970s. Was my teacher wrong? Is my memory wrong? Have the rules of grammar been changed? Or is the Washington Post being run by people who don’t know the basic rules of grammar?
Liberal media FINALLY admit they made a mistake dismissing Wuhan Lab leak theory just because Trump backed it: Washington Post, New York Times and ABC pundits say some ‘have egg on their face’
Liberal media FINALLY admit they made a mistake dismissing Wuhan Lab leak theory just because Trump backed it: Washington Post, New York Times and ABC pundits say some ‘have egg on their face’
Reporters and pundits for ABC and The New York Times admitted on television news that journalists were wrong to dismiss the lab leak theory
They claimed the journalists refused to consider the theory because it was being espoused by former President Donald Trump and Senator Tom Cotton
A columnist for the Washington Post, meanwhile, slammed the mainstream media for not ‘owning up’ to the fact they made an error in dismissing the theory
The lab leak theory has gained traction in recent weeks as more scientists and political officials question the origins of COVID-19
By Melissa Koenig
May 30, 2021
Liberal media reporters and pundits admitted over the weekend they were wrong to dismiss the Wuhan lab leak theory just because it was espoused by former President Donald Trump.
Mainstream reporters had pushed back at the idea that COVID-19 may have originated in a virology lab in Wuhan, China, and openly ridiculed the idea as Trump spoke openly about it in the early days of the pandemic.
But now, those same reporters have admitted that it is possible that the virus came from a lab leak — as more scientists and political officials openly question the virus’ origins.
‘I think a lot of people have egg on their face,’ ABC News’ Jon Karl told Martha Raddatz Sunday morning.
‘This was an idea that was first put out by Mike Pompeo, secretary of state, [and] President Donald Trump,’ he continued on ABC’s This Week, ‘and some things may be true even if Donald Trump has said them.’
He noted that the idea was widely dismissed at the time, but now ‘serious people are saying it needs a serious inquiry.’
New York Times reporter David Leonhardt also said on CNN that he thinks people ‘leapt to dismiss’ the theory too quickly because it was being espoused by then-President Trump and Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who has also said that the 2020 election was stolen.
‘I think a lot of people on the political left and people in the media made this mistake and said ‘Wow, if Tom Cotton is saying something it can’t be true,’ Leonhardt said. ‘Or they assumed that. And that’s not right.
‘Tom Cotton does deal in misinformation about things like election fraud, he’s said some things that are just wrong,’ Leonhardt continued.
‘But that doesn’t mean that everything he says is wrong, and it seems like a lot of people, including a lot in the media, leaped to dismiss the lab leak theory because of where it was coming from, and the reality is we don’t yet know how COVID started.’
In a series of tweets on Saturday, Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin slammed journalists for making a sudden U-Turn on their coverage of the lab leak theory.
‘Most MSM reporters didn’t ‘ignore’ the lab leak theory, they actively c****** all over it for over a year while pretending to be objective out of a toxic mix of confirmation bias, source bias (their scientist sources lied to them), group think, TDS [Trump Derangement Syndrome] and general incompetence,’ Rogin wrote in his first tweet Saturday morning.
He added that the lab leak theory has not changed and ‘suddenly become credible.’
‘The theory has always been the same,’ Rogin wrote. ‘The people who got it wrong changed their minds. They are writing about themselves, with zero self awareness.
‘All these reporters scrambling to defend their own records on the lab leak theory are exposing their own hypocrisy and ignoring their basic error,’ he continued. ‘Just report the facts. Don’t act like its your job to tell us what’s OK to think or talk about.
‘Own up to it when you fail your readers,’ he wrote.
The Twitter thread was re-tweeted more than 1,000 times, garnering several thousand likes.
The lab leak theory has gained traction over the past few weeks, as more and more politicians and scientists start to question the origins of the virus and how it mutated to infect humans.
The Huanan wet market, where scientists say the first cluster of infections were officially reported, is just a few hundred yards from the Wuhan Centers for Disease Prevention and Control and only a few miles from the the Wuhan Institute of Virology Lab, where scientists were reportedly conducting experiments on bats before the pandemic began.
The lab is one of only a handful in the world that is cleared to handle Class 4 pathogens — dangerous viruses that pose a high risk of person-to-person transmission.
Three researchers from the institute sought medical care in November 2019, before the virus began to spread, according to a recent report from the Wall Street Journal.
The newspaper said the report – which provides fresh details on the number of researchers affected, the timing of their illnesses, and their hospital visits – may add weight to calls for a broader probe of whether the COVID-19 virus could have escaped from the laboratory.
It reported that current and former officials familiar with the intelligence about the lab researchers expressed a range of views about the strength of the report’s supporting evidence, with one unnamed person saying it needed ‘further investigation and additional corroboration.’
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has since said he was ‘not convinced’ that COVID-19 developed naturally and called for an open investigation.
‘I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened,’ he said at a PolitiFact event on May 11 entitled: United Facts of America: A Festival of Fact-Checking.
President Joe Biden has also called for an investigation into the origins of the virus.
The former head of the Food and Drug Administration said on Sunday that the likelihood COVID-19 originated in a lab is growing while the odds that the coronavirus was transmitted from animals to humans grow longer.
‘The challenge is that the side of the ledger that suggests that this could have come out of a lab has continued to expand,’ Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who served as then-President Trump’s FDA commission from 2017 until 2019, told CBS News.
‘And a side of the ledger that suggests that this could have come from a zoonotic source, come out of nature, really hasn’t budged.’
Gottlieb said that there is enough evidence to rule out the earlier theory that coronavirus originated from a ‘wet market’ in Wuhan.
Gottlieb added: ‘And if anything, you can argue that that side of the ledger has contracted because we’ve done an exhaustive search for the so-called intermediate host, the animal that could have been exposed to this virus before it spread to humans.
President Joe Biden has ordered the government’s leading research laboratories to join the search for the true origins of the COVID-19 pandemic by sifting through a massive trove of previously unexamined data, according to new reports.
Biden on Wednesday ordered the 17 National Labs run by the Department of Energy to assist the intelligence community in a 90-day sprint to examine whether the virus leaked from a lab in China.
The labs have been tapped ‘because of their ability to crunch massive amounts of data’ with their advanced supercomputers, a White House official told CNN.
The government is not revealing exactly what kind of data is being submitted for analysis, but experts say it is likely previously gathered intelligence such as signal intercepts or biological evidence.
Intelligence agencies regularly collect more raw data than their analysts are able to effectively pore through, and the application of advanced algorithms to seek patterns in the massive data set could offer new breakthroughs.
‘We want the science to be a big part of this,’ the White House official told CNN. ‘We are going to use the full resources of our intelligence and scientific community to try to get to the bottom of this.’
Biden is also urging U.S. intelligence agencies and those of allies to hunt for new information that could shed light on whether China covered up a lab leak.
Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, said the Biden administration’s response was ‘better late than never, but far from adequate.’
‘Our intelligence community has been looking at this now for 15 months. They’ve done good work on it, but in the end the answer lies in the hands of Chinese communists, not people working for American intelligence agencies,’ he told the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
Cotton said that officials in Beijing have not been forthcoming about how the pandemic began. ‘We should be insisting that they come clean, that they provide us a clear and unvarnished look at what was happening in the Wuhan labs,’ he said.
Circumstantial evidence has long raised questions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers were known to be conducting experiments on bat coronavirus strains similar to the one responsible for COVID-19.
China insisted early and often that the virus did not leak from the lab, claiming that crossover to humans must have occurred at a ‘wet market’ in Wuhan that sold live animals.
Perhaps driven by animosity for Donald Trump, who embraced the lab leak theory early on, the mainstream U.S. media and academics heaped scorn on the possibility, calling it an unhinged conspiracy theory.
But new evidence, including reports of three workers at the Wuhan lab who fell seriously ill with COVID-like symptoms in November 2019, has forced a sober reassessment among doubters.
Frustration with China increased this week after Beijing said that it would not participate in any further investigations by the World Health Organization.
Biden rebuked China in his announcement of the new intelligence review, calling on allies to help ‘press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence.’
UK intelligence agencies are assisting in Biden’s new 90-day intelligence review, a senior Whitehall security source told The Telegraph.
The source told the publication: ‘We are contributing what intelligence we have on Wuhan, as well as offering to help the American to corroborate and analyze any intelligence they have that we can assist with.’
British intelligence agencies have generally been skeptical of the lab leak theory, while Australia’s spies have been more open to it.
While Britain and Australia already share intelligence with the U.S. as part of the Five Eyes partnership, Biden’s new probe could prod them to redouble their focus on sharing evidence related to a possible lab leak.
Meanwhile, House Republican Whip Steve Scalise and more than 200 of his GOP colleagues have also called for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to direct her Democrat-led committees to investigate China’s complicity in causing the COVID pandemic.
In a letter to the Democratic House Speaker, the Republicans said there is ‘mounting evidence the pandemic started in a Chinese lab’ and the Chinese Communist Party ‘covered it up’.
‘If that is the case, the CCP is responsible for the deaths of almost 600,000 Americans and millions more worldwide. These questions about the CCP’s liability are not a diversion, as you falsely claimed,’ the letter reads.
COVER-UP: WaPo Edits Fauci Op/Ed to Obscure His Support of Making Viruses More Dangerous in Lab Experiments
COVER-UP: WaPo Edits Fauci Op/Ed to Obscure His Support of Making Viruses More Dangerous in Lab Experiments
May 22, 2021
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Dr. Anthony Fauci once gave a full-throated endorsement of gain-of-function research in a 2011 Washington Post op/ed that was later edited to obscure Fauci’s role in promoting this psychotic mad science.
In his original op/ed pushing gain-of-function research, Dr. Fauci stated that “much good can come from generating a potentially dangerous virus in the laboratory.” It was later changed to “insights can come” by fake news editors at Jeff Bezos’ lobbying rag, but reprints of the op/ed in other outlets kept the original language.
“Safeguarding against the potential accidental release or deliberate misuse of laboratory pathogens is imperative,” Fauci wrote in the op/ed.
However, Fauci did not implement these safeguards when he was working with the communist Chinese and funding our foreign adversaries’ performance of this dangerous research.
Big League Politics reported on Fauci’s tremendous dishonesty with regards to his support of gain-of-function research in a recent Senate hearing:
“Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) blasted National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Dr. Anthony Fauci at a Senate hearing on Tuesday for funding controversial and dangerous research at a virology lab in Wuhan, China.
Fauci continues to defend the controversial research, which involves strengthening viruses in mad science experiments, even after the COVID-19 pandemic has rocked the world.
“Gain-of-function research, as you know, is juicing up naturally-occurring animal viruses to infect humans. To arrive at the truth, the U.S. government should admit that the Wuhan virology institute was experimenting to enhance the coronavirus’ ability to infect humans,” Paul said.
Predictably, Fauci does not want the feds to engage in such transparency. He wants to keep pushing lies so his Big Pharma-approved bureaucrats can skirt culpability.
“You are entirely and completely incorrect that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan institute,” he said.
Paul correctly noted that the NIH was funding gain-of-function research through a partnership with the Wuhan virology institute and a North Carolina facility. Fauci also attempted to deny that the feds were funding research at the Wuhan institute, and Paul would not take Fauci’s fibbing lying down.
“Do you support sending money? We did, under your tutelage, we were sending it through ECO Health. It was a sub-agency and a sub-grant,” he said.
“It would have been irresponsible for us if we did not investigate the bat viruses and the serology to see who might have been infected in China,” Fauci responded.
This is when the exchange became combative, and Fauci tried talking over Paul in his great frustration over being exposed on a national stage.
“Government defenders of gain of function, such as yourself, say that COVID-19 mutations were random and not designed by man. But interestingly, the technique that [Dr. Ralph Baric] developed forces mutations by serial passage through cell culture that the mutations appear to be natural,” Paul explained, adding many other expert sources who have stated that COVID-19 was likely created in a lab.
“Will you in front of this group categorically say that COVID-19 could not have occurred through serial passage in a laboratory?” Paul asked Fauci.
“I do not have any accounting for what the Chinese may have done, and I am fully in favor of any further investigation of what went on in China,” Fauci responded before once again denying that the feds have funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan.
“You’re fooling with mother nature here. You’re allowing superviruses to be created. With a 15 percent mortality, it’s very dangerous, and it was a huge mistake to share this with China, and it’s a huge mistake to allow this to continue in the United States, and we should be very careful to investigate where this virus came from,” Paul said.”
The public is finally realizing Fauci’s role as the American Mengele, likely causing the deadly COVID-19 pandemic and pushing mass hysteria to cover his tracks. Fauci deserves to be behind bars.
Washington Post and New York Times publish corrections after being fact checked by the Gateway Pundit
I just want to let all of you know that the Gateway Pundit convinced the Washington Post and New York Times to issue corrections in one of their recent articles.
CNN: “Washington Post, New York Times retract reports on Giuliani”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/01/media/washington-post-new-york-times-retraction-giuliani/index.html
Gateway Pundit: “WashPost Complicit in Giuliani Smear, Alleges FBI Warning last fall that Rudy Completely Denies”
Gateway Pundit: “The Washington Post hit piece was previously debunked by a TGP Factcheck article posted at this link.”
Two months after publication, Washington Post admits that it was wrong when it reported that Trump had said “Find the fraud” in phone call
On January 9, 2021, the Washington Post reported that Trump had said, “Find the fraud.”
Here’s the Internet Archive of the original version of the article:
Two months later, the Washington Post published this correction:
Correction: Two months after publication of this story, the Georgia secretary of state released an audio recording of President Donald Trump’s December phone call with the state’s top elections investigator. The recording revealed that The Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call, based on information provided by a source. Trump did not tell the investigator to “find the fraud” or say she would be “a national hero” if she did so. Instead, Trump urged the investigator to scrutinize ballots in Fulton County, Ga., asserting she would find “dishonesty” there. He also told her that she had “the most important job in the country right now.” A story about the recording can be found here. The headline and text of this story have been corrected to remove quotes misattributed to Trump.
Washington Post Removes Horrible Kamala Harris ‘Joke’ Comparing Campaigning To Starving In Prison [18 months after its original publication]
Washington Post Removes Horrible Kamala Harris ‘Joke’ Comparing Campaigning To Starving In Prison
By Ashe Schow
January 22, 2021
Update: Washington Post Vice President of Communications, Kris Coratti, released a new statement regarding the altered article.
“As part of our Transfer of Power coverage and special sections produced on Biden and Harris, we repurposed and updated some of our strong biographical pieces about both political figures. The profile of Maya Harris was updated with new reporting, and while the original story remained available on The Lily (a separate section of The Post), we should have kept both versions of the story on The Post’s site (the original and updated one), rather than redirecting to the updated version. We have now done that, and you will see the link to the original at the top of the updated version,” Coratti told The Daily Wire in an emailed statement.
Original article:
Eighteen months ago, Vice President Kamala Harris was still campaigning to be the Democratic presidential nominee. At one point, she sat down with The Washington Post for a feature about her close relationship with her sister, Maya. The opening anecdote, however, cast Harris in an unfavorable light, as she “joked” about starving inmates and compared their conditions to what it was like campaigning for president.
That awful anecdote has now disappeared from the internet, as the Post replaced it with a comparison of the Harris sisters to John and Robert Kennedy, Reason’s Eric Boehm reported. The original article was published on July 23, 2019, but has since been “updated” and now carries a published date of January 11, 2021. The original opening paragraphs, posted by Boehm, are as follows:
It was the Fourth of July, Independence Day, and Kamala Harris was explaining to her sister, Maya, that campaigns are like prisons.
She’d been recounting how in the days before the Democratic debate in Miami life had actually slowed down to a manageable pace. Kamala, Maya and the rest of the team had spent three days prepping for that contest in a beach-facing hotel suite, where they closed the curtains to blot out the fun. But for all the hours of studying policy and practicing the zingers that would supercharge her candidacy, the trip allowed for a break in an otherwise all-encompassing schedule.
“I actually got sleep,” Kamala said, sitting in a Hilton conference room, beside her sister, and smiling as she recalled walks on the beach with her husband and that one morning SoulCycle class she was able to take.
“That kind of stuff,” Kamala said between sips of iced tea, “which was about bringing a little normal to the days, that was a treat for me.”
“I mean, in some ways it was a treat,” Maya said. “But not really.”
“It’s a treat that a prisoner gets when they ask for, ‘A morsel of food please,’ ” Kamala said shoving her hands forward as if clutching a metal plate, her voice now trembling like an old British man locked in a Dickensian jail cell. “‘And water! I just want wahtahhh….’Your standards really go out the f—ing window.”
Kamala burst into laughter.
The new opening now reads:
Finding people to trust in politics — a field full of mercenaries with their own interests at heart — can be a tough thing to do. It is no wonder so many people turn to family members: John F. Kennedy had Bobby, Joe Biden’s sister, Valerie, once ran his campaigns and Ivanka Trump has been one of the 45th president’s most visible advisers.
Kamala D. Harris has her younger sister, Maya Harris. The two are not only extremely close; during Kamala’s year-long presidential run, Maya served as her campaign chairwoman.
It is a job she for which she was uniquely qualified: She had been a senior adviser for Hillary Clinton in 2016, knows her sister better than anyone else and, professionally, is something of a yin to Kamala’s yang.
The partnership, however, did not yield the desired results, and Harris dropped out of the primary months before any votes were cast. Now, Maya Harris is stepping back from her sister’s career — at least officially, at least for now.
She has been far less visible in her sister’s public life since the elder Harris was named to the Democratic ticket in mid-August. Aides to the Vice President-elect have gone out of their way to emphasize that Maya will have no official role in the Biden-Harris administration, and Maya hopes to remove herself from the spotlight — in part to avoid even the tiniest semblance of the nepotism that defined the Trump era.
As Reason reported, the new version of the article also includes a new byline for political reporter Chelsea Janes, “who has authored several fawning pieces about Harris” in the past week alone.
Reason reached out to the Post about the update and whether there were any other examples of such changes. The Post’s communications manager told the outlet they “repurposed and updated some of our strong biographical pieces about both political figures,” but did not point to any other examples where this had been done. The Post also did not answer Reason’s question about “whether Harris’ team had requested the change.”
“[T]he decision to remove that specific passage—and to replace it with a puffy opening about how Maya has “been a constant companion along Kamala Harris’s journey into history”—is questionable at best. Yes, Harris’ inauguration as America’s first female vice president is historic, but that’s no reason to ignore or erase her troubling history as a cop and politician. It also raises questions about the Post’s approach to covering Harris going forward. At a time when legacy publications are increasingly seen as playing for one political “team” or the other, this type of editorial decision will not do anything to fix that perception—is there any doubt that the Post would not have treated an inartful comment from Mike Pence in the same way?” Reason wrote.
Here’s proof that the Washington Post, CNN, NPR, Politico, and MSNBC all lied about Hunter Biden’s laptop before the election, in order to help Joe Biden get elected. After the election, all of them finally admitted the truth.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
December 19, 2020
The New York Post was founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1801.
On October 14, 2020, it published an article titled:
“Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad”
Original: https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad/
Before the election, the mainstream media repeatedly claimed that the New York Post article was bogus.
But after the election, the mainstream media admitted that the article was true.
Here are some headlines that show how the mainstream media lied about this before the election, in order to help Joe Biden get elected. I’m also including headlines from the mainstream media from after the election, where they finally admitted the truth.
Washington Post, October 14, 2020:
“Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop: An explainer”
Original: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/14/hunter-bidens-alleged-laptop-an-explainer/
Washington Post, October 15, 2020:
“Trump’s fake new Biden scandal has a deeper purpose. Bannon revealed it.”
Washington Post, October 16, 2020
“The truth behind the Hunter Biden non-scandal”
Washington Post, December 9, 2020:
“Hunter Biden confirms he is under federal investigation”
Christiane Amanpour on CNN, October 22, 2020:
“I’m a journalist and a reporter and I follow the facts. And there has never been any issues in terms of corruption.”
Original: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/2010/22/ampr.01.html
And because this one was on CNN, here’s the video of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSB_fQHbSiA
CNN, December 10, 2020:
“Federal criminal investigation into Hunter Biden focuses on his business dealings in China”
Original: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/09/politics/hunter-biden-tax-investigtation/index.html
NPR, October 22, 2020:
“Why haven’t you seen any stories from NPR about the NY Post’s Hunter Biden story? We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”
Original: https://twitter.com/NPRpubliceditor/status/1319281101223940096
NPR, December 9, 2020:
“Hunter Biden Says He Is Under Federal Investigation For Tax Matter”
Politico, October 19, 2020:
“Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say”
Original: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276
Politico, December 9, 2020:
“Justice Department’s interest in Hunter Biden covered more than taxes”
Original: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/09/justice-department-interest-hunter-biden-taxes-444139
MSNBC, October 18, 2020:
“Hunter Biden story an ‘obvious Russian plot’ McFaul believes”
MSNBC, December 9, 2020:
“DOJ reportedly probing Hunter Biden after Trump called for Biden probe”
Why Are the Mainstream Media Ignoring Tara Reade’s Sexual Assault Accusation Against Joe Biden?
https://reason.com/2020/03/30/joe-biden-tara-reade-sexual-assault-media/
Why Are the Mainstream Media Ignoring Tara Reade’s Sexual Assault Accusation Against Joe Biden?
So far, it’s been silence from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and others.
March 30, 2020
On September 14, 2018, The New York Times reported the existence of an unverified sexual misconduct allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The story cited three people who had read a letter sent by the accuser—Christine Blasey Ford—to Sen. Diane Feinstein (D–Calif.). Ford was not interviewed for the story; indeed, she wasn’t named.
Unconfirmed reports of a teenaged Kavanaugh assaulting a teenaged Ford evidently merited coverage from The Times. This prompts an obvious question: Why is the paper of record now declining to publicize a very troubling allegation against former Vice President Joe Biden?
The Times is hardly alone in this regard. The mainstream media have remained bafflingly silent about Tara Reade, a former member of then-Senator Biden’s staff who claims that he sexually assaulted her in 1993. Reade’s name has only appeared twice in The Washington Post, and both were quick asides: A news roundup from April of last year briefly acknowledged an earlier, milder version of Reade’s accusation, and a recent rapid-fire Q&A asked a Post political reporter to weigh-in on the political ramifications “of the Tara Reade bombshell.” (The nature of the bombshell is not described.)
And while the coronavirus pandemic is obviously dominating news coverage, CNN has made plenty of time for Biden. Chris Cillizza is still ranking Biden’s potential veep choices, and the network conducted a virtual townhall event with the candidate last Friday. Reade’s name didn’t come up, and it has never appeared at CNN.com. At NBC, it’s the same story: Chuck Todd interviewed Biden but didn’t ask about the allegation.
Reade’s story has garnered some coverage elsewhere, most noticeably from The Hill and The Intercept. Some left-leaning news sites—The Huffington Post, Vox—have written about it, and of course conservative media are all over the story. But the biggest mainstream print and TV outlets are, at present, silent.
I am not the only one to notice this. The Columbia Journalism Review notes that “media outlets on both the left and the right have covered Reade’s claim, yet mainstream news organizations have mostly avoided it.” That article links to a piece in The Guardian—part of a recurring feature called “The Week in Patriarchy”—that suggests the media may be ignoring the story because Reade’s accusations will be “difficult to prove.” To its credit, the Guardian piece acknowledges that this would be inconsistent with how the Kavanaugh accusation was handled.
That’s what’s most frustrating about this lack of mainstream coverage. Ideally, all media outlets—mainstream or otherwise—would tread carefully with respect to decades-old accusations. They would not rush to publish unverified rumors, instead carefully vetting them to the best of their ability. They would consider whether every salacious or scandalous detail of an important person’s past is worth revisiting.
Perhaps that’s what reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other outlets are doing. (I have heard it third-hand that various stories might be in the works, but nobody at those publications would confirm anything to me.) But Reade has already come forward. She has already identified herself and told her story. At this stage in the process of the Kavanaugh accusation’s public reveal, the mainstream press was already actively covering it.
As I wrote last week, there’s a case for taking Reade’s accusation more seriously than Ford’s, since the behavior described by Reade (penetrative sexual assault during Biden’s Senate years) is even worse than what was described by Ford.
And while it’s certainly true that there’s currently a global pandemic unfolding, that isn’t a good excuse to avoid discussing Reade. In fact, there’s some reason to proceed quickly: The Democratic Party will soon nominate Joe Biden to be its presidential candidate, but Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) is technically still in the race, and he is still making the case that he should be the one to face President Donald Trump in November. Whether or not Biden is credibly accused of sexual assault is extremely relevant to this rapidly approaching decision point. This seems only slightly less urgent than covering Kavanaugh’s alleged misbehavior during the period immediately before his confirmation to the Supreme Court.
If the media’s rule is this—We’re going to proceed extremely cautiously when revisiting unverified sexual misconduct allegations that are several decades years old—then fine. But that’s a new rule, isn’t it?
Washington Post gives Hillary Clinton four Pinocchios for saying “… in Wisconsin, where the best studies that have been done said somewhere between 40 and 80,000 people were turned away from the polls because of the color of their skin…”
Hillary Clinton is not a stupid person.
However, much of the audience that she targets is stupid, which is why she recently, knowingly said the following lie:
“I was the first person who ran for president without the protection of the Voting Rights Act, and I will tell you, it makes a really big difference. And it doesn’t just make a difference in Alabama and Georgia; it made a difference in Wisconsin, where the best studies that have been done said somewhere between 40 [thousand] and 80,000 people were turned away from the polls because of the color of their skin, because of their age, because of whatever excuse could be made up to stop a fellow American citizen from voting.”
The Washington Post gave her four Pinocchios – its worst possible rating – for her statement.
Who would be stupid enough to believe such a ridiculous lie?
The same people who were stupid enough to believe that Jussie Smollett (or anyone, for that matter) would leave a noose around his neck for 45 minutes.
What Clinton, Smollett. and the many, many, many people who commit fake hate crimes (you can see a whole bunch of fake hate crimes documented here) are showing to the rest of the country is that the demand for racism, homophobia, etc., in the United States greatly exceeds the supply.
And that demand is not coming from Republicans, conservatives, or libertarians.
Instead, this massive demand for racism, homophobia, etc., is coming from liberals, progressives, social justice warriors, and others on the political left.
To normal people, it’s considered a good thing when people are happy and get along with each other.
But not to the social justice warriors.
To the social justice warriors, the worst possible thing that could ever happen is for people to be happy and get along with each other.
Which is why the social justice warriors are constantly making up so many fake hate crimes.
I’m publicly asking the Washington Post to please either confirm or debunk PJ Media’s “evidence” that Ilhan Omar married her brother in order to commit immigration fraud
PJ Media is a right wing website. It’s not considered to be part of the mainstream media, and you certainly can’t cite it as a source when adding content to wikipedia.
That being said, I am a long term reader of PJ Media, and I tend to view most of what it publishes as being credible. I certainly don’t have anything against the website.
PJ Media has published what it claims are photographs, school records, and other documents which, when taken together, “prove” that Ilhan Omar married her brother in order to commit immigration fraud.
You can read these PJ Media articles and look at their “evidence” here, here, here, here, and here.
I don’t know if these alleged photographs, school records, and other documents are real or fake.
If they are real, then the public deserves to know.
If hey are fake, then whoever created them deserves to be sued for defamation.
As far as I know, Omar has not filed any defamation lawsuits regarding these alleged photographs, school records, and other documents.
I am publicly asking the Washington Post to please investigate these alleged photographs, school records, and other documents, and either confirm or debunk the claim that Omar married her brother in order to commit immigration fraud.
So far, the only thing the mainstream media has been willing to report is that Omar says she never married her brother.
But I don’t care what Omar says.
Instead, I want to know if this “evidence” is real or fake.
According to the Washington Post, lawyer and presidential contender Elizabeth Warren lied on her registration card for the State Bar of Texas
Elizabeth Warren lied on her registration card for the State Bar of Texas.
The Washington Post just reported:
Elizabeth Warren apologizes for calling herself Native American
Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Tuesday that she was sorry that she identified herself as a Native American…
… Using an open records request during a general inquiry, for example, The Post obtained Warren’s registration card for the State Bar of Texas, providing a previously undisclosed example of Warren identifying as an “American Indian.”
Warren filled out the card by hand in neat blue ink and signed it. Dated April 1986, it is the first document to surface showing Warren making the claim in her own handwriting. Her office didn’t dispute its authenticity.
The same Washington Post article also included this image of her registration card for the State Bar of Texas:
Here’s my response to a Washington Post article called “Ocasio-Cortez says the world will end in 12 years. She is absolutely right.”
I know that manmade global warming is real.
I know that as we burn fossil fuels, we increase the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and this makes the atmosphere’s temperature increase.
I am not a denier of global warming.
But I am someone who rejects the ridiculous scaremongering that is going on regarding global warming.
The Washington Post recently published this article, which is called, “Ocasio-Cortez says the world will end in 12 years. She is absolutely right.”
Here’s video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez making her statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHk8nn0nw18
I would now like to propose my own hypothesis: Even if we were to do absolutely nothing to reduce our emissions of carbon dioxide in the next 12 years, our release of carbon dioxide will not cause the world to end in 12 years.
My hypothesis is based on the following four scientific observations:
1) According to this article from Live Science, back when the dinosaurs were alive, carbon dioxide levels in the air were five times as high as they are today. But the world did not end. On the contrary, life thrived, and the world had its biggest land animals of all time.
2) According to this article from the BBC, back when the dinosaurs were alive, global temperatures were so high that there were no polar ice caps. But the world did not end. On the contrary, life thrived, and the world had its biggest land animals of all time.
3) According to this article from the Ontario Ministry of Agricultural, Food, and Rural Affairs, the owners of commercial greenhouses deliberately pump extra carbon dioxide into the air inside their greenhouses. But this has not caused the world to end. On the contrary, it makes the plants inside the greenhouses grow better.
4) According to this article from NASA, humans’ burning of fossil fuels has caused an increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. But the world did not end. On the contrary, the title of the NASA article is “Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds.”
So there we have four different real world examples – all verified by scientists – that show that having higher levels of carbon dioxide causes an increase, not a decrease, in plant life.
Animals eat plants.
And other animals eat the animals that eat plants.
Carbon dioxide is plant food.
Carbon dioxide if the bottom of the food chain.
Therefore, to repeat my hypothesis: Even if we were to do absolutely nothing to reduce our emissions of carbon dioxide in the next 12 years, our release of carbon dioxide will not cause the world to end in 12 years.
One of the great things that we learn from the scientific method is that if an event is based on science, then that event can be repeated. Given the four scientific observations that I have posted above, science tells us that having more carbon dioxide in the air makes things better for life, not worse.
Another great thing about the scientific method is that over time, we can find out if our hypothesis turns out to be true or false.
So all we have to do now is to wait 12 years, and we’ll find out who is right and who is wrong about the world ending in 12 years due to our emissions of carbon dioxide.
Ocasio-Cortez says the world will end in 12 years. She is absolutely right.
January 24, 2019
Apparently all anyone has any strength or enthusiasm for is applying a literalism test on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)’s all-too-accurate warnings. She said recently that if we don’t start to address climate change aggressively right now, the world will end in 12 years. I know, let’s feign alarm that she has exaggerated instead of having genuine alarm about the genuine problem she is raising the red flags over.
Here’s another idea. Why don’t we apply the same exactitude of judgment on some other things that have been said about climate change? Here’s a sampler:
“Climate change is a hoax.” “The science is unclear.” “If there were warming, we’d see it.” “If we saw it, we’d do something.” “Maybe it’s cooling.” “It’s too soon to act.” “There’s nothing we can do.” “If this is climate change, I’ll take it!” “It’s arrogant to think humans could change the climate.” “It’s cold today, so climate science is wrong.” “Yes, there’s a problem but hardly a crisis.”
That last position is where the Washington consensus currently resides (President Sir Lies-a-Lot notwithstanding), and it is that position that is dangerously wrong, and what AOC is (correctly) fighting against. The last word on the subject from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could not have been more dire.
We need to start NOW, to cut carbon emissions aggressively, or by 2030 we may have passed a tipping point beyond which the planet, and yes you people living on it, is in for a world of possibly permanent hurt. So let’s quibble that AOC said the world will end instead of the world as humans and current species have known it and depended on it will end, forever.
Meanwhile, your friendly corporations believe in climate change, all right. They are planning to bleed your last coins into their pockets selling you generators when the climate disasters wipe out your power grid.
Now tell me who is getting this crisis right and in your best interests.
Here’s my response to Suzanna Danuta Walters, the feminist studies professor who complained that “Women are underrepresented in higher-wage jobs”
Suzanna Danuta Walters is a feminist studies professor at Northeastern University. In a recent Washington Post opinion column titled, “Why can’t we hate men?” she wrote:
“Women are underrepresented in higher-wage jobs”
So here’s my response: We should abolish feminist studies. And we should encourage more women to major in subjects that will get them higher-wage jobs, such as electrical engineering, petroleum engineering, computer science, physics, chemistry, applied mathematics, business, medicine, and law.
The reason Facebook said Diamond and Silk were “unsafe” is because Facebook is run by social justice warriors who demanded “safe spaces” when they were in college
According to this article from the Washington Post, Facebook recently sent the following message to Diamond and Silk: (the bolding is mine)
“The Policy team has came to the conclusion that your content and your brand has been determined unsafe to the community… This decision is final and it is not appeal-able in any way.”
The same Washington Post article went on to say:
“Facebook has not explained what, if anything, the sisters have done to violate its terms of service or be considered ‘unsafe’… their videos are not violent or especially incendiary.”
When regular people use the word “unsafe,” they are referring to things that are physically dangerous, such as falling off a 500 foot cliff and landing on the jagged rocks below, or riding a motorcycle at 200 mph without a helmet, or getting one’s arms chopped off by a maniac with a machete.
But Facebook is not run by regular people.
Facebook is run by social justice warriors who – when they were in college just a few years ago – demanded “safe spaces.” But these “safe spaces” that they demanded had nothing whatsoever to do with physical safety. Instead, they wanted to be “protected” from ideas that did not conform to their own social justice warrior beliefs.
And that is why Facebook labeled Diamond and Silk as being “unsafe.”
Washington Post opinion columnist Elizabeth Bruenig wants the U.S. to adopt the same policies that are currently causing Venezuelans to starve to death
Washington Post writer Elizabeth Bruenig recently wrote this opinion column.
She writes,
“I think the problem lies at the root of the thing, with capitalism itself.”
Capitalism merely means that property is privately owned. So she has a problem with private ownership of property.
She writes,
“Americans appear to be isolated, viciously competitive, suspicious of one another and spiritually shallow; and that we are anxiously looking for some kind of attachment to something real and profound in an age of decreasing trust and regard — seem to be emblematic of capitalism.”
I think these are things of human nature, and would exist regardless of the kind of economic system that we had.
She says that capitalism
“… encourages and requires fierce individualism, self-interested disregard for the other.”
I wonder how many repeat customers a business would have if the business owner had “disregard” for those customers.
She writes,
“As a business-savvy friend once remarked: Nobody gets rich off of bilateral transactions where everybody knows what they’re doing.”
When I buy a loaf of bread at the supermarket, it’s a win-win situation. There are no losers. And the owner of the supermarket is rich.
She said she supports
“decommodifying labor”
So she would let herself be operated on by a surgeon who gets paid no more than a janitor who dropped out of high school?
She said she supports
“reducing the vast inequality brought about by capitalism.”
In the capitalist U.S., where inequality is huge, poor people make $15,000 a year, while rich people make $15 million a year.
In Cuba, where there is equality, all government employees make $20 a month.
Bruenig wants the U.S. to adopt the same policies that are currently causing Venezuelans to starve to death. Everything that Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro have done was done because they hate capitalism just as much as Bruenig does. There is no basic difference between her views and theirs.
The anti-Trump bias at NBC is so strong that even the Washington Post is calling it out
NBC recently published this article about a Trump Tower meeting with Russians which had happened during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The Washington Post later published this article, in which it quoted the following correction from the NBC article. The NBC correction states:
CORRECTION (Aug. 31, 6:30 p.m.): An earlier version of this article used an incorrect quotation in describing Paul Manafort’s notes. According to a spokesman for Sen. Charles Grassley, whose committee staff has reviewed them, the notes did not include the word “donation.” A source who provided the information said the notes used a word that referenced political contributions, and another source said the notes used the word “donor.”
The Washington Post, commenting on both the original and corrected versions of the NBC article, wrote:
Both before the correction and after the correction, in other words, this story provides only fodder for innuendo and conspiracy, not for sound conclusions about what happened.
For the Washington Post to say something like that about NBC is quite stunning.
The anti-Trump bias at NBC is so strong that even the Washington Post is calling it out.
I hope the Washington Post will either confirm or debunk these statements by the Southern Poverty Law Center about Jason Kessler, the organizer of the alt-right rally in Charlottesville
Jason Kessler is the organizer of the alt-right rally that recently took place in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The Southern Poverty Law Center wrote of Kessler:
Rumors abound on white nationalist forums that Kessler’s ideological pedigree before 2016 was less than pure and seem to point to involvement in the Occupy movement and past support for President Obama.
At one recent speech in favor of Charlottesville’s status as a sanctuary city, Kessler live-streamed himself as an attendee questioned him and apologized for an undisclosed spat during Kessler’s apparent involvement with Occupy. Kessler appeared visibly perturbed by the woman’s presence and reminders of their past association.
Regardless of Kessler’s past politics, the rightward shift in his views was first put on display in November, 2016 when his tirade against Wes Bellamy began.
If this had been posted by some right wing conspiracy blog, I would dismiss it as being fake news.
But this was published by a highly reputable left wing source.
I hope the Washington Post will investigate this to either debunk it or confirm it.
If it is true, then Kessler is a left wing nut job masquerading as a right wing nut job.
After Rudy Giuliani said 93% of black murder victims were murdered by other blacks, the Washington Post said his statement was accurate, but then they gave it two Pinocchios anyway!
After Rudy Giuliani said that 93% of black murder victims were murdered by other blacks, the Washington Post said his statement was accurate, but then they gave it two Pinocchios anyway!
You can read the Washington Post’s lengthy and ridiculous attempt to justify their two Pinocchio rating for a statement that they admit is accurate here.
Washington Post: “I’m an Obama supporter. But Obamacare has hurt my family. Obamacare has been far more frustrating than I’d ever dreamed.”
The Washington Post recently wrote:
I’m an Obama supporter. But Obamacare has hurt my family.
Obamacare has been far more frustrating than I’d ever dreamed.
By Catherine Keefe
December 10, 2014
Obamacare brought us new health insurance options, but cost us our more affordable plans.
In November 2013, Jim learned his small-business policy would be canceled because it didn’t comply with the new mandate to cover pediatric dentistry and maternity care.
The individual plan I had with Blue Cross was canceled, too.
We learned patience, but we couldn’t keep our doctors.
We had applied online and sent copies of our passports to California Covered for verification, but we received no bill, no confirmation of our coverage, no insurance cards. Jim spent an hour and a half on hold once before getting disconnected. He tried again the next day, waiting another two hours before getting disconnected.
… the urologist wouldn’t accept our new Blue Shield plan – even though the Blue Shield website said he did.
We have no choice to opt out of the required pediatric dentistry or maternity coverage we’ll never use…
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 