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In The News there is no truth and in The Truth there is no news

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That was the old soviet joke when the two major papers of record were Izvestia [The News] and Pravda [The Truth]. Nowadays our own equivalent is Fake News which is everywhere. We are living in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four which for most people seems quite a comfortable way to travel. We get our three-minute hate and we re-calibrate by the day who our enemies supposedly are and on we go. The Emmanuel Goldstein of our time is Donald Trump, and everywhere I go, these same three-minute hate sessions show up, with my main effort to try to contain them to three minutes. Truth, what truth? We live in a post-modern age where no such thing any longer exists. So why all this? Because this has just shown up today: ‘Junk News’: Russia Report Done By Anti-Conservative Academics:

A new study has claimed Russia’s online interference tried to aid the conservative movement and Donald Trump. There’s a big problem with that assessment. It comes from a left-wing operation that previously classified more than 11 different conservative outlets as “junk news.” And two of those authors were also involved in this report.

The study was released by the Oxford University Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika. It argued that fake accounts, ads, and tweets “all clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party — and specifically Donald Trump”

The Oxford University Computational Propaganda Project had attacked several conservative outlets as “junk news” in previous studies. Those targeted outlets include Drudge Report, NewsBusters, CNSNews, MRCTV, Breitbart, the Daily Caller, Free Beacon, LifeNews, National Review, the Federalist, and the Red State. (Three of those are operated by the Media Research Center, which runs NewsBusters.)

So here it is reported as straight news by the venerable Associated Press and no doubt everywhere else: Russia social media influence efforts ongoing, report says.

Russia’s sweeping political disinformation campaign on U.S. social media was more far-reaching than originally thought, with troll farms working to discourage black voters and “blur the lines between reality and fiction” to help elect Donald Trump in 2016, according to reports released Monday by the Senate intelligence committee.

And the campaign didn’t end with Trump’s ascent to the White House. Troll farms are still working to stoke racial and political passions in America at a time of high political discord.

The two studies are the most comprehensive picture yet of the Russian interference campaigns on American social media. They add to the portrait investigators have been building since 2017 on Russia’s influence — though Trump has equivocated on whether the interference actually happened….

The reports were compiled by the cybersecurity firm New Knowledge and by the Computational Propaganda Research Project, a study by researchers at the University of Oxford and Graphika, a social media analysis firm.

And so on and so forth. And to cap it off we have this: Why ‘Truth’ Is James Comey’s Word of the Year. It’s that very same Mr Comey formerly of the FBI who wrote this:

The media has been working, in fits and starts, to report the truth, and the lies. Their reward has been a constant stream of attacks from the President, attacks designed to destroy the media’s credibility and the very idea that truth is knowable, but they have kept at it. In part, the media has stayed on the case because the American people have kept at it. Rather than withdrawing, numb, they have stepped forward. An overwhelming majority support the work of a special prosecutor to find out what is true about the conduct of the President and his associates. More people voted in the 2018 midterm elections than in any similar election in memory. Those voters handed control of the House of Representatives to the opposition party. The design of the Founders — that crashing of interests to get at truth — will work to protect our democracy.

In 2018, we defended our values. And that’s the truth.

Not even Orwell could have imagined it, and that was just fiction. This is the real thing, and if you are not actually astonished by just how brazen and corrupt this is, perhaps you too are now part of the problem.

“For whatever reason, the EU wants to become an Islamic state”

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To have been born after WWII and in the West means I have lived my life in the best time and best place in World History. I doubt those who come next will be so fortunate. From Last Days of the European Christmas Markets.

The EU honchos knew — from experience — that periodic terror attacks would be part of their refugee mandate. I contend that this is a feature and not a bug in their plan. They don’t “lack the will” to do anything about it; what we are seeing is their will.

The Christmas Markets will disappear, as will all the other even nominal acknowledgments to the God of the Bible. For whatever reason, the EU wants to become an Islamic state.

The socialist mafia think they can improve on our Judeo-Christian ethic and civilisation. They cannot, and to adapt a phrase from the past, they shall inherit the whirlwind.

NOT TO MENTION THIS: Newly Elected Muslim Congresswomen Ridicules VP Pence’s Christian Faith.

It appears that the two newly elected Muslim Congresswomen are already bringing anti-Christian hate into our federal government with a broadside directed against Vice President Mike Pence’s Christian religion.

The two Muslims ridiculed Pence with a Tweet containing a photo of the VP along with a snide caption reading, “Jesus take the wheel!”

Evil to the core

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These people are savages and beyond disgusting, but they are on a mission to destroy the president that, if successful, would also destroy their very own country.

On CNN’s “New Day” Saturday, hosts Victor Blackwell and Christi Paul put up a graphic showing every Trump-related entity known to be under investigation. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

CNN

The half-dozen entities include the Trump Foundation, the Trump Organization, the Trump presidential campaign, the Trump transition team, the Trump inaugural committee and the Trump administration itself.

Every one a fishing expedition with no actual identified wrong-doing being looked into. Just hoping that something will turn up. People evil to the core since they are undermining everything they supposedly stand for as ethical and just in a free and democratic society.

Meanwhile: Trump’s Accomplishments. These are the ones listed under The Economy.

  • Decreased black and Hispanic unemployment to a record low.
  • Decreased jobless claims at the lowest level since 1969.
  • Black business ownership jumped 400 percent.
  • Increased consumer confidence to the highest level in 18 years.
  • Decreased youth unemployment to 52-year low.
  • Increased median income to highest in history.
  • Increased business investments 39 percent.
  • Decreased food stamp use by 500,000 in one month.
  • Increased homebuilding permits to the highest since 2007.
  • Increased oil production to 10 million barrels a day for the first time since 1970.
  • Increased the stock market to an all-time high.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “In one and a half years, President Donald Trump and his policies have been done more to advance life, religious liberty, the economy, deregulation, government reform, and Israel in the history of America. More pro-life and pro-religious liberty policies have been implemented in this short time than all previous presidents combined. It is no wonder certain segments of the media would rather focus on a negative narrative than these accomplishments.”

 

Marrakesh express derailed

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Migration is not a solution to world poverty. Economic growth and development is the only solution. Make poor countries less poor, not make wealthy countries also poor. This is the final para in a post by Judy in The Weekend Oz: World in no hurry to board the Marrakesh Express on migration.

The principal roles of a sovereign government are to protect the nation’s borders and to act in the best interests of its own citizens. To do otherwise is to invite internal dissent, something Macron is beginning to learn. There are lessons for other world leaders.

Such as our own! A few more quotes for those who are paywalled out.

Individual countries are more than capable of sorting out the size and type of immigrants they require….

The final version was belted out across 18 months of expensive consultations. But note that many ­parties who made suggestions to rework the document — to ­emphasise the importance of countries’ sovereignty, for example — essentially were ignored.

Last week, a spokesman for the US government summed up that country’s refusal to sign the compact by labelling it “an effort by the United Nations to advance global governance at the expense of the sovereign right of states”….

The central aim of the compact is to convert illegal migration into regular migration, with all the ­assoc­iated privileges accorded to legal migrants…. Economic migration is seen as an inalienable human right….

The compact then dives into equally dangerous water by stating that one objective is to “eliminate all forms of discrimination and promote evidence-based public discourse to shape perceptions of migration”. In other words, descriptions of migration that are not positive and fulsome should not be permitted….

If we look at the attitudes of ­ordinary citizens to migration around the world, it is clear that a rising proportion is opposed to high migrant intakes. Indeed, in many countries, the largest proportion of citizens would prefer ­reduced or zero migration.”

One is too old and the other is too young and both are mortal dangers

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One is too young to think of herself as president. But she does. The other is too old to take on the job but wants it anyway.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez has not spent so much as a second in a legislative role anywhere, and will only enter the House as a junior Democrat in January, the youngest female ever elected. Do you therefore think she is out of the running come 2024? Ha!

Meanwhile: Too old to run? Biden wrestles with age as he eyes 2020 run.

As he considers running for president, Joe Biden is talking with friends and longtime supporters about whether, at 76, he’s too old to seek the White House, according to several sources who have spoken with the former Democratic vice president.

The real issue is this: Don’t Underestimate Dumb Voters’ Appetite For Idiot Leftist Politicians. From which:

Of course, Ocasio-Cortez blabs about “socialism,” but her rantings are straight out of Marxism for Dummies. Nothing she says threatens the rice bowl of the zillionaire donor base Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have cultivated. Free college, free medicine, free this, free that – it’s all just more graft for the Democrats to distribute, and it will all come from the pockets of people like you. Do you think the people who write the checks to the DNC are going to end up paying the bill for this nonsense? Really?

I wish it were only money at stake. I’m afraid the future will just have to take care of itself, since you may be sure that these are the sorts of people who will continue to rise to the top on the left. If there is going to be an actual resistance, preventing such people from rising to the top is where it will have to be found.

Gary North’s Keynes Project

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Not to be missed: The Keynes Project: A Critical Analysis of the Economics of John Maynard Keynes from an Austrian School Perspective.

John Maynard Keynes was the most influential economist of the twentieth century. This speaks poorly of the twentieth century. 

In October 2009, I wrote an article for Lew Rockwell in which I outlined a plan to refute Keynes, line by line. Austrian economists are not found on major university campuses. I wrote it for a younger, untenured academic economist at some private college or obscure university who is willing to devote his career to the task. I still hope such a person takes up my challenge. I am not optimistic, however.

I have shifted focus here. The Keynes Project is a model for a multimedia effort. It focuses on his 1936 book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, but it is not limited to this volume. It considers his earlier writings as a prelude to The General Theory.

The Keynes Project project will be both offensive and defensive, as any comprehensive critique should be. It will show what was wrong with Keynes’ economic theory, but it will use these critiques to provide an introduction to what is correct in economics — specifically, Austrian School economics.

The project must be guided by a single principle, a single theme: to refute Keynes’ single theme. The project must ask two questions.

1. If the problem is insufficient demand, where does the state confiscate the resources necessary to increase demand?
2. What would the original resource owners have done with these resources?

Keynes made the mistake that Bastiat warned against: the fallacy of the thing not seen. It is the broken window fallacy.

It goes back to one source: Bernard Mandeville’s poem, The Grumbling Hive (1705). This is why Keynes in The General Theoryquotes from it. Refute it. Start here: //www.garynorth.com/public/13333.cfm.

Then go to J. B. Say. Defend him. Show that Keynes misrepresented Say’s law.

Then go to the classic refutation of Keynes: Henry Hazlitt’s The Failure of the “New Economics” (1959).

Always return to these two questions. Never let the reader forget these two questions.

This project is governed by this presupposition: You can’t beat something with nothing. It is not just that Keynes was wrong. It is that he was wrong in specific ways, violating specific insights of generations of previous economists, but especially those of Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek, Keynes’ chief rival in 1935.

Death where is thy sting?

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The back cover of a book I picked up on the weekend titled, The Dying Generations. It is filled with doom and gloom about our ecological future and published in 1971, not only before global warming came on the scene but even before global cooling. These people are psychos, looking for a cause and a meaning in life. Pathetic, sad, but extremely dangerous.

Nancy Pelosi sexist

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Is what Nancy Pelosi said intended to be an insult: Pelosi Mocks Trump: ‘As If Manhood Could Ever Be Associated With Him’?

Let’s get this parsed correctly.

1) Pelosi is trying to insult the President.

2) In intending to insult the President, she says: “It’s like a manhood thing for him. As if manhood could ever be associated with him. This wall thing.”

3) This is only insulting if manhood is a positive attribute which Pelosi denies is present in PDT.

4) The intended insult is that the President lacks manhood, whose absence diminishes PDT’s being since its presence is positive.

5) Thus “manhood” is understood by Pelosi to be preferable to its absence.

6) Manhood is an aspect of “the patriarchy”, almost by definition.

7) There are therefore aspects of the “patriarchy” whose presence is a positive feature in any male.

8) Such aspects of the patriarchy, such as manhood, are useful features in a president.

9) Can a woman show “manhood”?

10) Is Nancy Pelosi being a blatant sexist?

A modern libertarian discusses the problems of immigration

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This is from Gary North in the Journal of Libertarian Studies: The Sanctuary Society and its Enemies

In the United States today, the waiting period for citizenship is as short as five years. The waiting period is similar in other democratic nations. This, not the threat of economic competition, is the problem of immigration for the free society. Because the citizen authoritatively declares the law and seeks to impose it on others, he can become a threat to the free society. The problem is the moral content of his confession of faith and his possession of civil sanctions, not his productivity and his possession of economic sanctions. Mises was short-sighted here: a nineteenth-century, anti-clerical, would-be value-free analyst, i.e., a liberal. It is not the welfare state as such that creates the problem of immigration; rather, it is the confession of faith of the would-be immigrants. If their confession inherently threatens the moral and judicial foundations of the free society, then immigration is a problem, with or without the presence today of a welfare state. Freedom is based on more than private contracts. It is based on a moral vision, which includes a vision of the moral boundaries of the state.

This is the single most important issue of our time. Read it all.