Last month, we covered the story of an attempted mass shooting at a Kroger in Louisville, KY.

The article I wrote was based on media reporting that said that the killer told one of his victims “whites don’t kill whites”.   The killing was later ended by a good guy with a carry permit.

As John Lott points out (in an article I’ll be revisiting later this week), the media left out a key fact of the story:

National media outlets such as ABC and NBC covered the attack, noting that the alleged gunman told another white man that: “Whites don’t kill whites.” It sounded as if the gunman was merely reassuring a bystander that he had nothing to worry about. But reporters left out the crucial first part of the quote. The killer said: “Don’t shoot me. I won’t shoot you. Whites don’t shoot whites.” The other white person was pointing a permitted concealed handgun at the killer.

The killer ran, murdered another (black) woman, before being engaged by Dominic Rozier, a good guy with a gun and a family to defend.

There’s a lot of other good stuff in the article; more later this week.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Once someone has been given a White House press pass, they have a First Amendment liberty interest in keeping that pass. Under the Fifth Amendment, that liberty interest cannot be taken by the government without due process of law including notice and an opportunity to be heard. Taking it without the hearing causes irreparable harm to the person whose rights were violated; hence, Acosta gets his badge back.

1977 case provides precedent. Here’s the case.

The judge followed the law correctly but the law is stupid. The First Amendment right to speak your mind doesn’t require a White House pass, else everybody from every newspaper down to the Roseville Review would be entitled to one and how could you decide who gets into the building? Entering the White House must be a privilege, it cannot be a right, regardless of your job, and that’s outside the control of the courts. Any why should freedom of speech be limited to credentialed journalists? Why don’t the guys at Powerline have White House Press Passes – they did more investigative reporting on Ilhan and Ellison than any other media in the Twin Cities this election cycle.

Trump’s administration is working on standards of conduct to decide who gets ejected from press conferences. That’s a mug’s game, it plays into reporters’ hands and leaves the final decision in the courts where Trump has no control.

Two possible solutions:

Announce we’ll move the press conferences to a different, larger, modern building with seating for every journalist who wants to attend, as soon as it’s built, probably on the site of a former football stadium to accommodate all comers. For fairness to the journalists presently excluded for lack of space, no press conferences will be held until the new facility is built. Meanwhile, every newsman will be given notice we intend to revoke their White House press passes on the grounds it’s no longer necessary for them to enter the White House to have access to the press conference. Give selected leaks to selected favored journalists until the stadium is built. Sorry, CNN, no leaks for you.

Option B: hold a press conference tomorrow, announce at the beginning that we welcome back Mr. Acosta, and in deference to the judge’s decision, he gets the first question. Okay, second question, I see the reporter for Fox News here, but your organization joined in the lawsuit to insist Mr. Acosta be able to ask questions, so i’m giving your time to him. Jim, what’s your second question? Okay, third question, I see the reporter for the New York Times here, your organization also joined the lawsuit insisting Mr. Acosta ask the questions, so Jim what’s your third question? Okay, that’s all the time we have for today. Thanks for coming.

Joe Doakes

Ever notice how “Journos” only care about their freedom of speech?

A friend of the blog writes:

So, a group of black men video a Chipotle manager refusing service to them. Video goes viral. Good Morning America is all over it. Manager fired.

Except, we find out these guys dine and dash all the time. Brag about it on Twitter… 

Corporate virtue signaling has become more important than, well, corporate virtue.

Jon Stewart – the former TV host, not the former Twin Cities blogger – has a few words for the media – and they’re mighty close to the words I have for them, as luck would have it.

Stewart calls them narcissists.  I’ll stick with “whiners”:

Amanpour pushed back against Stewart’s suggestion, saying journalists react to Trump’s attacks this way because it’s “hard for us to be dispassionate when words from the White House are aggressive against us.”

“You’re not used to it,” Stewart replied, saying journalists should keep in mind the other struggling communities in U.S. before making the fight all about themselves.

“Think of the communities of color, think of Muslims, think of the black community. When journalists rise to this outrage of ‘How dare you say that about us,’ think of the lives that they’ve been leading under this and what they’ve been put under,” he said.

The problem with the media in recent years is their mission has morphed to “Afflicting those who are comfortable afflicting the media, and comforting those who comfort the media’s afflictors”.

….you see it in black and white:  Big Left’s “elites” really, really don’t understand the Constitution, federalism, checks and balances…representative republican government.

I don't think people are ready for the crisis that will follow if Democrats win the House popular vote but not the majority.

After Kavanaugh, Trump, Garland, Citizens United, Bush v. Gore, etc, the party is on the edge of losing faith in the system (and reasonably so).

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) November 5, 2018

There are times the idea of complete national divorce – preferably peaceful – sounds almost dreamy.

NBC’s Chuck Todd on Sen. Grassley’s referral of Julie Swetnick and her “teenage rape gang” story to the FBI:

Was this an intentional attempt to mislead our reporters? Evidence points that way… https://t.co/MOxE8WiGK4

— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) October 26, 2018

Mr. Todd: Isn’t it your job to figure that out?

Perhaps – radical thought, here – before you run the story?

Jim Geraghty writes in NRO about how the blue Tsunami might in fact be a leaky diaper.

The whole piece is worth a read – but this bit in particular caught my attention, vis-a-vis polling and dire-sounding media coverage:

Folks on the right get used to hearing that they’re going to lose, how the Democrats have all the advantages, and they develop the ability to just keep plugging away in a tough environment. GOP grassroots activists are used to bad news, critical coverage, and ominous poll results. They’ve seen their candidates give amazing debate performances and then watch the coverage declare the Democrat the big winner. They’re used to having their attack ads denounced as vicious and unfair while the Democratic candidate’s ads are merely “hard-hitting” or “tough.” They’re used to seeing unflattering photos of candidates on the front page, comments taken out of context, fact-checkers that get the facts wrong, headlines that leave the wrong impression, and glowing editorial-page endorsements of the opposition. They’re used to having their yard signs stolen.

And they get up every morning and knock on doors and make the calls and participate in get-out-the-vote efforts anyway.

Of course, this rings true for Minnesota Republicans; if you didn’t get used to ignoring Dave Schultz and mocking the Minnesota Poll, you’d never get out of bed…

It’s that time of election season when everyone who, for any reason or no reason at all decides not to vote Republican will get their Warhol – mandated 15 minutes of fame.

Is it a “gun owner” “resisting tthe NRA? Is it an evangelical congregation where a few members have broken with conservatism?

Or is it a republican “Leader” with impeccable moderate credentials of whom nobody has heard for 10 years, loudly and theatrically leaving the party?

Belly up to the media bar!

In the article, the “X Republican”, Randy Johnson, says he has retained his same conservative principles. So I did a little digging – and it turns out that with “Conservative principles”like Randy Johnson’s, why would anyone need the Minnesota DFL? One of his great “achievements”on the Hennepin county board was inflicting Target Field on the voters.

The only faster way to become a household name (for 15 minutes) is to be an exceptionally obscure “Republican” with an outlandish view on something. For 15 minutes, you will be more famous than Justin Bieber.

Glad we could settle that.

Whenever you figure that there’s nothing you can count on, and all the constants are evaporating, just remember this absolute truism:

The City Pages can always get dumber.

…I don’t suspect – but I will:

#MNgov:
Walz (D) 47% (+3)
Johnson (R) 44%#MNsen:
Smith (D) 46% (+3)
Housley (R) 43%@ChangePolls 10/12-13https://t.co/opaASE7TU1

— Political Polls (@Politics_Polls) October 14, 2018

The governor’s race is inside “Statistical Noise” levels.   Ditto Housley and Smith.   (Klobuchar is shown nine up over Newberger, which is closer than other polls as well).

Last week, an NBC/Marist poll claimed Walz and Smith were pulling away – this being the same poll that showed Tim Pawlenty and Lori Swanson winning the gubernatorial primaries in landslides.   Was that a media/Democrat attempt to “bandwagon” Republicans into staying home?

Maybe, maybe not.

But don’t get bandwagoned anyway.

NBC/Marist poll shows DFL Senate Candidates leading by biblical margins in the upcoming election.

The glum picture for the GOP comes as both parties point to the state’s four competitive House races as bellwether contests in the race for control of the lower chamber. The poll finds that 53 percent of likely voters prefer a Congress controlled by Democrats after the November midterm elections, while 41 percent prefer Republicans.

Unmentioned: this same showed Lori Swanson winning the DFL primary fairly easily, and Tim Pawlenty clobbering Jeff Johnson. They were off 28 points in that matchup.

But then the point of these October polls isn’t accuracy. It’s “bandwagoning“.

Susan Rice has been gratified by the response to her trial balloon about running for the Senate:

So much so that she had to be replaced by former Secretary of State Rice.

Michael Moore’s ex-wife Suing the filmmaker for allegedly squirreling away profits from movies on which they collaborated:

Earlier this month Glynn filed a lawsuit against Moore in Manhattan Supreme Court claiming that he was stiffing her on profits from their joint movie projects.

Moore’s lawyer, Kenneth Warner, wrote in court papers filed Friday that Glynn sued in order to publicize information that would have remained sealed and confidential if their case had stayed in the Michigan court.

Of course, this is not The kind of “abuse”, much less “assault”, that’s been in the news lately.

But it does, perhaps (very, very perhaps), highlight another fact that the social justice pimps would just as soon not I have us talking about; a lot of what is reported as “abuse” – and what the heck, let’s call this “alleged financial abuse”– Is actually maneuvering in court.

That court might be a court of law, or a court of public opinion, but the tactic is the same.

To:  Entire US Senate GOP Caucus
From:  Mitch Berg, Cranky Peasant
Re:  A Big Lie

Senators,

Confirm Brett Kavanaugh.  Now.

The allegations against him are of a piece with nearly every leftist narrative today – utter crap.  It’s transparent BS.  Like most lefty memes – “gun violence”, the “War on Women”, the $15 minimum wage and on and on, it is largely a set of chanting points that aren’t intended to convince the intelligent.  They are intended solely to leverage the tribalist ignorance of the masses of entitled would-be elitists who make up Big Left’s voting bloc; they don’t fact check jack; they hear things on the media, and the left’s alt-media, and parrot it like the obedient little schnauzers most of them are.

Confirm Brett Kavanaugh.  Now.

Nothing reinforces a tactic like success.  If Big Left manages to scuttle Kavanaugh, you can expect every single conservative – I almost added “male” to the list, but as we saw with Sarah Palin and MIchele Bachmann, the left hates conservative women even more – will meet the same scabrous, defamatory treatment.

Every one.

Confirm Kavanaugh.  Now.

And if Big Left tries to call out the schnauzers of “The #Resistance”, then yes, let’s meet them – in court if they choose wisely, at the barricades if they don’t.

But confirm Kavanaugh.  Now.

If you fail to do this, you will get brutalized this November.

And you will have it coming.

Confirm Kavanaugh.  Now.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Remember Dan Rather, who insisted the letters showing President Bush lied about his military service were “fake but accurate?”

Remember the Cindy Sheehan, the Code Pink lady who protested at President Bush’s ranch because her son died in the war in Iraq?

Remember David Hogg, the kid who hid in the closet during the school shooting and became a national spokesman for gun control?

They were hot topics, media sensations, invited on all the news shows.  Their every utterance was treated as having absolute moral authority and cited by Democrat politicians as proof of the urgency to enact Liberal policies.  But none of those people are in the news anymore.  It’s as if they never existed.  They were used as props and discarded the moment they were no longer useful.

And now we have Christine Blasey Ford, who accuses Judge Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were teenagers.  That’s enough to temporarily resurrect Anita Hill, the woman who accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his confirmation hearings.  She won’t be in the limelight long.  She’s old news, too.

What is wrong with those people, that they’re willing to be exploited and later abandoned, merely to get a few seconds of attention?  Have they no pride?

What is wrong with those people who are willing to exploit and later abandon innocents who merely want a few seconds of attention?  Have they no shame?

Joe Doakes

Because it’ll be different with them…

Last week, it was the NYTijmes sticking Nikki Haley with her Obama-era predecessor’s Marie-Antoinette-like taste in draperies.

This week?  A hatchet job on Trump that, well, didn’t cut it:

“The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Latinos along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown,” the paper wrote.

But the Post withheld key data, mischaracterized information and lobbed an allegation of fraud at a deceased doctor without speaking to his family members, who complained publicly, HuffPost has found. The piece has been substantially altered three times, including Thursday after multiple queries from…

…from whom?

…HuffPost.

When even the Huffpo has your bias dialed in, you know it’d be time to dial it back a notch.

If you had any other frame of reference, I suppose…

Liberals and apologists for Big Media hailed last week’s correction by the NYTimes of their hatchet piece against Nikki Haley as a sign that the mainstream media is, unlike the hack partisian media, “Accountable”.

You may recall the story – which debuted last Friday to yuge headlines:  State Department Spent $52,701 on Curtains for Residence of U.N. Envoy.   Buried seven columns deep was the incidental factoid that the decition to buy the draperies was taking during Obama’s term, long before Governor Haley was nominated.

The Times ran a correction – after the internet blew up in a firestorm of mockery and invective:

An earlier version of this article and headline created an unfair impression about who was responsible for the purchase in question. While Nikki R. Haley is the current ambassador to the United Nations, the decision on leasing the ambassador’s residence and purchasing the curtains was made during the Obama administration, according to current and former officials. The article should not have focused on Ms. Haley, nor should a picture of her have been used. The article and headline have now been edited to reflect those concerns, and the picture has been removed.

And yet it did focus on Haley, and the photo did run, and the entire tone did try to paint Haley as a modern-day Marie Antoinette – until they got caught peddling…

…wait for it…

…fake news.

Journalistic ethics:   the art of rationalizing a lack of ethics after you get caught.

“Garage Logic” is signing off for the last time next month.

It was not mutual – Soucheray’s salary while KSTP’s have spiraled has to have been a pig in a python for the once-wealthy station – but it sounds amicable enough anyway:

It’s highly unusual for a broadcast personality to be fired, but given another month on the air. The move allows Soucheray and his staff one final opportunity to cover the Minnesota State Fair.

“It’s a sign that the station has had great respect for the show and it’s more than generous they’re allowing us to end it this way,” Soucheray said. “The usual way it happens is you are told ‘Your last show was yesterday.’ They’ve told us we can handle this any way we want.

I haven’t listened to Garage Logic in probably 10 years – the endless inside jokes grated on me.   But I always liked Soucheray and his on-air persona, and the fact that a show like that could become a local institution.   Having run the board for Soucheray a few times back in the eighties, I always thought he was a stand-up guy, especially given the rampaging egos and dubious social skills of many in the broadcast industry.

I figured “GL” was doomed eight years ago when KSTP-AM went sports.   I guess I was right, eventually…

Check out the tone in this tweet from Monday:

That’s an American newspaper, writing about a dictator whose government is holding an American hostage – and who has strongarmed most of the formerly independent Turkish media into submission, which normally is a big deal to, y’know, America’s ruggedly independent media, as well – with a tone usually reserved for a plucky single mom saving her home from greedy corporate raiders who want to use eminent domain to build a toxic waste dispenser.

Because Trump.

…is frequently nearly impossible to tell apart from reality.

Michelle Wolf’s really awful Netflix show canceled after three months:

The move comes just a couple of weeks after BET announced it was cancelling The Rundown with Robin Thede after its first season. That cuts the number of late-night-style shows hosted by women in half, with only TBS’ Samantha Bee and Hulu’s Sarah Silverman left standing.

And with a little luck, Bee’s wretched show will be dying from apathy before too long.

It’s not all good news: The Joel McHale Show With Joel McHale also got tubed.

Walter Hudson calls this the editorial cartoon of the year:

Walter’s a sharp guy.

It’s a pet peeve of mine; whenever someone – usually a smug little twerp who’s beein trained to think of themselves as smarter than everyone else, regardless of actual merit – starts out a soliloquy with “Actually…”, I usually want to smack them.

Hard.

So with a piece from earlier in the week from the Washington Post, by Christopher Ingraham – who is, more or less, the person I described in the first paragraph.   But he’s at the WaPo, so I repeat myself.

And, er, “actually”,the article actually takes a radical departure – revealing a bit of the truth:

The study analyzed data on 221 gun homicides and 1,012 nonfatal shootings that happened in Boston between 2010 and 2014. On first glance, the numbers provided a confirmation of the depressing demographics of shooting cases: “Most gunshot victims and survivors were young minority men with prior court arraignments,” Braga and Cook found. “Most attacks occurred in circumstances where gangs or drugs played an important role.” Most occurred outdoors in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

This?  In the WaPo?

It seems too good to be true.  And it is exactly that, eventually.

But Ingraham thinks he’s onto something:

The results undercut the idea that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” That catchy turn of phrase is often used by gun rights supporters to emphasize the human role in gun violence rather than the gun itself.

And this revelation that “undercuts” the absolute truism – the notion that perpetrators, not hardware, is responsible for crime (emphasis added)?

Analyzing data on hundreds of shootings in Boston from 2010 to 2014, Anthony Braga of Northeastern University and Philip J. Cook of Duke University found that on a bullet-per-bullet basis, shootings committed with a large-caliber firearm are much more likely to result in a fatality than those with a smaller-caliber gun.

In other words – bigger guns are more lethal.

This is what you get from America’s most respected journalistic outlet.

No word on whether large calibers make a firearm self-animating.

Maybe that’ll be on NPR…

Support for stricter gun control is down sharply…

Public support for more stringent gun-control legislation has decreased significantly after surging in the wake of the February mass shooting that claimed 17 lives in Parkland, Fla., according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

The number of respondents who support “stricter gun control laws” has fallen ten percentage points after peaking at 66 percent on February 20, just six days after the Parkland massacre.

…now that the media has moved on to misrepresenting other topics.

I was about to writre “Sharyl Artkisson lists fifty times the media has botched reporting on President Trump“…

…but I suspect it was more like “Sharyll Atkisson lists the first fifty examples before she got tired, looked at the backlog, and gave up”.