Here’s Why Trump’s Constant Criticism of the Media Resonates With Americans

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Americans aren’t fans of their media.

A recent poll shows that while many Americans find President Donald Trump divisive, even more find the media to be divisive.

A Politico/Morning Consult poll showed that 56 percent of Americans think Trump has done more to divide the country, while 64 percent of Americans think the media has done more.

Only 17 percent of respondents said that they thought the national media has done more to unite the country.

There were sharp partisan divisions over whether Trump has worked to unite or divide the country, but Americans across the political spectrum gave the media low marks.

Reinforcing this poll about the media is another survey by Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog, that says media coverage of Trump and Republicans has been overwhelmingly negative and partisan.

The study found that 92 percent of the broadcast network coverage of Trump was negative, compared to only 8 percent being positive.

While much of the division in America may be natural and intractable, it is telling that the media, which has been so strongly negative toward the president, is being blamed even more for heightening conflict in this country.

If anything, the polls show that the media needs to examine themselves before labeling Trump as the cause of a climate of hate in this country. Perhaps there is much blame to go around, but it’s clear that the media has been a driver of this toxic environment.

There’s perhaps no better example of this than recent comments by CNN anchor Don Lemon to CNN host Chris Cuomo on Monday.

“We have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right,” Lemon said, breathlessly. “We have to start doing something about them. There is no travel ban on them. There is no white guy ban. So what do we do about that?”

It’s no wonder that polls show eroding confidence in the media as a whole. Some of the biggest personalities in news have revealed themselves as hopelessly partisan and vindictive toward wide swaths of ordinary Americans.

The people have noticed, and their faith in the fourth estate is waning.

As Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner wrote, this perhaps explains why Trump’s attacks on the media have been so effective. Trump’s rhetoric, Klein wrote, “not only works as a way of firing up the base, but it doesn’t really cost him much among the general public, which is sympathetic to the idea that journalists play a large role in dividing the country.”

Lack of trust in media predates the Trump administration, but as I wrote in October, it’s worse now. Polls show that Americans think the media intentionally publishes fake or misleading news—particularly about Trump.

During the hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, in which allegations of sexual assault were lobbed at the now-Supreme Court justice, the media was in rare form, publishing numerous, poorly sourced stories that seemed timed for maximum damage.

Then, as soon as the Senate confirmed Kavanaugh, the media stopped pursuing the story altogether, suggesting that it was part of an agenda rather than the pursuit of the truth.

So, despite the fact that there are still excellent journalists at the local and even national level—and despite the genuine need for a serious press to keep people in power honest—many Americans are outright hostile to what the media has become. And this lack of faith in the media will not be repaired by a media establishment that sees itself as the resistance to Trump and the sole bearer of the truth.

Perhaps the solution is to get back to listening to the American people, and to accept that some of Trump and others’ criticism of the media rings true for large swaths of the population.

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This article has been republished with permission from The Daily Signal.

[Image credit: Gage Skidmore CC BY-SA 2.0]

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When Laws Are Not Enforced, Anarchy Follows

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What makes citizens obey the law is not always their sterling character. Instead, fear of punishment—the shame of arrest, fines or imprisonment—more often makes us comply with laws. Law enforcement is not just a way to deal with individual violators but also a way to remind society at large that there can be no civilization without legality.

Or, as 17th-century British statesman George Savile famously put it: “Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen.”

In the modern world, we call such prompt, uniform and guaranteed law enforcement “deterrence,” from the Latin verb meaning “to frighten away.” One protester who disrupts a speech is not the problem. But if unpunished, he green-lights hundreds more like him.

Worse still, when one law is left unenforced, then all sorts of other laws are weakened.

The result of hundreds of “sanctuary cities” is not just to forbid full immigration enforcement in particular jurisdictions. They also signal that U.S. immigration law, and other laws by extension, can be ignored.

The presence of an estimated 12 million or more foreign nationals unlawfully living in the United States without legal consequence sends a similar message. The logical result is the current caravan of thousands of Central Americans now inching its way northward to enter the United States illegally.

If the border was secure, immigration laws enforced and illegal residence phased out, deterrence would be re-established and there would likely be no caravan.

Campus protests often turn violent. Agitators shout down and sometimes try to physically intimidate speakers with whom they disagree.

Most of the disruptors are upper-middle-class students. Many have invested up to $200,000 in their higher education, often to ensure well-paying careers upon graduation.

Protesters assume that ignoring laws about peaceful assembly poses no consequences. Usually, student disruptors are right. College administrators will typically shrug at even violent protests rather than call the police to make arrests.

Yet if a few bold disruptors were actually charged with misdemeanors or felonies and had arrests tarnishing their otherwise sterling resumes, there would likely be far fewer illegal and violent protests.

In the last two years, a number of celebrities have openly fantasized about doing physical harm to the president of the United States. Madonna, Kathy Griffin, Johnny Depp, Robert De Niro, Snoop Dogg, and other stars have expressed their wishes that Donald Trump might be beaten up, blown up, cut up or shot up.

Their shared premise is that they are too famous, influential or wealthy to expect consequences that ordinary citizens might face for making threats to the safety of the president of the United States. If the next time a Hollywood icon tweeted or voiced a threat to the president he or she was subsequently put on a no-fly list, the current assassination chic would quickly stop.

Every person assumes the freedom to eat safely in a restaurant, to walk to work without disturbance and to relax without fear of violence. Now, that is now always the case, at least not if one is deemed politically influential and conservative.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Sens. Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell, and Rep. Devin Nunes must worry that when they venture out in public, protesters will scream in their face, attempt to bar their passage or disrupt their meal—and do so without legal ramifications.

There are many causes of the current legal laxity.

Trump is a polarizing president, and his critics have decided that extraordinary and sometimes extralegal measures are morally justified to stop him. Supposedly high-minded ends are seen as justifying unlawful means. Helping undocumented immigrants evade the law, stopping the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh or otherwise thwarting Trump all warrant special immunity.

The problem with ignoring laws is that it is contagious—and can boomerang.

Sanctuary cities could in theory birth conservative sanctuary zones. Would today’s protesters wish for other jurisdictions to nullify federal laws and court rulings concerning abortion, gun registration, and gay marriage?

If thousands of Hondurans in a caravan are deemed above the law, then why not exempt future mass arrivals of Chinese or South African immigrants?

If Cruz and other Republican politicos can’t eat in peace, will Barack Obama, Dianne Feinstein, and Nancy Pelosi soon face the same disruptions—the illegality justified by higher moral concerns?

If students can block a right-wing speaker or storm a diner, will they also object when anti-abortion protesters bar the passage of a pro-choice campus guest?

German philosopher Immanuel Kant noted that “anarchy is law and freedom without force.”

Translated to our current context, Kant might say that all our high-minded talk about the Bill of Rights means absolutely nothing without the cop on the beat and the local district attorney.

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This article has been republished with permission from American Greatness.

[Image Credit: Flickr-Magaharebia CC BY 2.0]

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CIA secretly intercepted Congressional communications about whistleblowers | Sharyl Attkisson

https://sharylattkisson.com/2018/11/02/cia-secretly-intercepted-congressional-communications-about-whistleblowers/

Roseanne Reboot Flops Without Roseanne; "The Conners" Dead Last In Ratings

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ABC's reboot of the Roseanne show is a total flop - coming in dead last in ratings this week, according to Showbiz 411, which adds that just one more episode has been ordered. 

In the nightly ratings battle. the “Roseanne” spin off continues to trend downward.

Last night, “The Conners” was beaten by everything- “NCIS,” “The Voice,” etc. This was their first really objective run, no World Series, nothing to distract potential viewers.

But the key demo sank, which isn’t a good sign. And the total viewers were down by 180K, which is a lot, frankly. People are leaving and they’re not coming back. 

ABC has ordered 1 extra episode to the original order of 10. Sounds to me like a finale. Someone wakes up and says they dreamt Roseanne died. There’s a cackle from the next room. Fade to black. -Showbiz 411

In an addendum, Showbiz 411 notes that Variety reported the salaries of John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf and Sara Gilbert at $375,000 per episode, while the other cast members can't be cheap either. "The Conners’ has to be added to “Roseanne”‘s syndication package eventually– it will never reach 100 episodes and have its own package. So Werner TV is in trouble, with millions going out and not enough coming back. “The Conners” is doomed," Showbiz 411 added. 

The Roseanne reboot - which quickly grew to become ABC's #1 top-rated series in April, was canceled after the network suddenly fired star Roseanne Barr after she compared former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to if the "Muslim brotherhood & Planet of the Apes had a baby." Her comments were condemned as "abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values." 

Barr, 65, was fired before a single advertiser pulled out, just three months into the show's return. Her co-stars immediately turned on her, publicly shunning Roseanne, while ABC initially cancelled the show - before bringing it back as The Conners. 

Roseanne issued an immediate apology:

And yet, MSNBC host Joy Reid was allowed to keep her job despite making anti-gay, anti-Muslim blog posts several years ago over a sustained period - and then lying about it. 

CNN's Don Lemon, meanwhile, just called white people the "biggest terror threat" to America, with nary a peep from his network. 

We wonder if ABC still feels their kneejerk reaction was worth the tens of millions in lost revenue? According to anonymous ABC executives earlier in October, the network has had serious regrets, according to the Daily Mail. 

"We didn't think it through properly. What Roseanne did was wrong but we shouldn't have rushed to fire her. It was almost a knee-jerk reaction by Ben [Sherwood] and Channing [Dungey] who should have launched an investigation," said one insider, who added "This would have given them more time to listen to the public, advertisers and cast members to determine the best decision." 

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Silence of 'the lambs': The deafening quietude of the FISA court and John Roberts | TheHill

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/413854-silence-of-the-lambs-the-deafening-quietude-of-the-fisa-court-and-john

Weeks after the fact, an NBC report further muddles the Kavanaugh saga

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/10/31/weeks-after-the-fact-an-nbc-report-further-muddles-the-kavanaugh-saga/

Silence of 'the lambs': The deafening quietude of the FISA court and John Roberts | TheHill

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/413854-silence-of-the-lambs-the-deafening-quietude-of-the-fisa-court-and-john

Organic food consumption lowers overall cancer risks in large-scale study of French adults

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The results are in on one of the first, large-scale studies on organic food consumption and cancer risks and they are significant and encouraging.  It is widely recognized we need to do much more in preventing cancer, as opposed to treating it, and this study suggests that organic food may be an important piece of the puzzle.A team of French government scientists analyzed 68,946 citizens in the NutriNet-Santé cohort. Individuals were surveyed to determine if those who ate more organic foods had ...

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A Brief History Of Leftist Political Violence This Year

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Authored by Daniel Greenfield via Sultan Knish blog,

On September 9, Rudy Peters, the Republican running for Congress in the 15th District in California, was attacked by a knife-wielding man shouting, "F___ Trump".

The attacker, Farzad Fazeli, an Iranian Clinton supporter, had previously posted, “Don Trump won’t clean his own house, so he’s too dirty to know right from wrong. Impeach/incarcerate him before more children die. P.S. complacency is worse than being the shooter.”

The next month, Shane Mekeland, a Republican running for the Minnesota House of Representatives, suffered a concussion after being punched in the face at a restaurant. “You f____g people don't give a s___ about the middle class,” his assailant had shouted at him.

Mekeland is back on the campaign trail, while still recovering from the assault. “The media and the likes of Maxine Waters, Hillary, and Eric Holder as of late is driving this behavior," he warned.

"If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, at a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere," Rep. Maxine Waters had urged an angry leftist mob.

Eric Holder, Obama’s attorney general and a possible 2020 candidate, had urged, “When they go low, we kick them." He had tweeted at Democrats, urging them to, “Use the rage.”

Hillary Clinton had told CNN, "You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about."

Senator Hirono had refused to condemn the harassment of Republicans, telling CNN, "This is the kind of activism that occurs and people make their own decisions. If they violate the law, then they have to account for that.”

That same month, also in Minnesota, State Rep. Sarah Anderson, a Republican, was punched by a man when she tried to stop him from vandalizing her campaign signs.

Also in October, Kristin Davison, the campaign chief for Adam Laxalt, the Republican candidate for governor in Nevada, was left with pain and bruises after a confrontation with a Democrat operative. Her alleged assailant faces a charge of misdemeanor battery.

Three violent attacks on Republican political figures in just one month alone earned almost no coverage in the media.

Instead the media egged it on. Even the country’s leading leftist papers urged greater displays of rage.

October editorials, columns and op-eds in the New York Times included headlines such as, "Get Angry, and Get Involved," "Tears, Fury or Action: How Do You Express Anger?", “Fury Is a Political Weapon And Women Need to Wield It.”

The explosion of violence against Republicans in October was the culmination of a climate of crazed hatred, which lead to death threats, and when those were unaddressed, to actual physical violence.

In the two months from May to June, 30 Republican members of Congress were attacked or threatened.

These included, Christopher Michael McGowan who warned Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s staff, "I am not making a joke. I will kill him." It included Steve Martan, a "pacifist", who threatened to shoot Rep. Martha McSally.

E. Stanley Hoff was arrested for leaving a message for Rep. Steve Stivers warning the Ohio Republican, "We're coming to get every g_____n one of you and your families. Maybe the next one taken down will be your daughter."

Messages aimed at Rep. Tom Garrett threatened, "This is how we're going to kill your wife", and "This is what I'm going to do to your daughters."

And Rep. David Kustoff was nearly run off the road.

In the middle of June, James Hodgkinson, a passionate Bernie Sanders supporter, opened fire at a Republican charity baseball practice, seriously wounding Rep. Steve Scalise, and Zack Barth, an aide to Rep. Roger Williams. Even though Hodgkinson had a hit list of conservative Republicans, Rep. Mo Brooks, South Carolina Rep. Jeff Duncan and Arizona Rep. Trent Franks, Rep. Jim Jordan, Tennessee Rep. Scott DesJarlais and Virginia Rep. Morgan Griffith, the FBI denied that it was a political assassination.

In August, Carlos Bayon was arrested for threatening House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and House Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers. “We are not going to feed them sandwiches, we are going to feed them lead,” he declared.

Law enforcement found bomb and assassination manuals in Bayon’s house.

Around the same time, DeReal Finklin, a registered Democrat, was charged for sending death threats to Rep. Christopher H. Smith. DeReal had also posted, "Anybody outside of my blood in Monmouth or Ocean County on my Facebook account, you are dead."

In June, Laurence Wayne Key, a Democratic Party of Marin County volunteer, was arrested for threatening to kill Rep. Brian Mast’s three children.

"I’m going to find the Congressman’s kids and kill them. If you’re going to separate kids at the border, I’m going to kill his kids,” the Planned Parenthood supporter threatened.

In Florida, in June, Steve St. Felix was charged with threatening to kill Rep. Jose Felix Diaz.

“Ill kill your ass and you better not show up to the next rec meeting,” St. Felix, who can be seen grinning widely in his booking photo, warned.

In July, in Tennessee, Clifton Ward was indicted for threatening to kill Rep. Diane Black. In New York, Martin Astrof allegedly tried to run over one of Rep. Lee Zeldin’s campaign workers who had been recognized for feeding rescue workers at Ground Zero after 9/11.

Ian Nicholas Nix was arrested for threatening to kill South Carolina state Rep. Steven Long. Nix called Long “right-wing scum” and warned him, You’re a ____ dead man.”

Also in July, a man who threatened to chop up Senator Rand Paul and his family with an axe was arrested.

After months of this, the media did not relent. It poured more fuel on the fire. The death threats of summer then became the violent assaults of fall.

The media called this “activism”. It denounced Republicans for warning of “angry mobs”.

And now the very same media has suddenly decided that threatening and assaulting people whose politics you disagree with is wrong. As long as the political figures being assaulted are Democrats.

But it doesn’t work that way.

Democrats and their media allies have sanctioned violence against Republicans. They’ve defended harassment and even assaults as activism. They have embraced and celebrated hate groups. The mob culture they have brought forth is fundamentally changing the rules of American politics.

Once political terror is unleashed, it can’t be controlled or compartmentalized.

Leftists, who have written a bloody history of political terror from Europe to South America, from the Middle East and across Asia, and right back to America, ought to know that better than anyone else.

The Left has made it its mission to destroy America. This is what destroying a country looks like.

In academia, there is glib talk of overturning Western civilization. But without civilization, there is only savagery.

The mad toll of death threats and assaults, of shootings and harassment was unleashed by the Left. The hectoring media has made millions from it. Fortunes have poured into the war chests of radical Democrats. They can make it stop. Or they can go on feeding the beast while blaming conservatives.

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Rickards: China's Debt Bomb Is Ready To Explode

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Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

The great Chinese growth slowdown has been proceeding in stages for the past two years. The reason is simple. Much of China’s “growth” (about 25% of the total) has consisted of wasted infrastructure investment in ghost cities and white elephant transportation infrastructure.

That investment was financed with debt that now cannot be repaid. This was fine for creating short-term jobs and providing business to cement, glass and steel vendors, but it was not a sustainable model since the infrastructure either was not used at all or did not generate sufficient revenue.

China’s future success depends on high-value-added technology and increased consumption. But shifting to intellectual property and the consumer means slowing down on infrastructure, which will slow the economy.

In turn, that means exposing the bad debt for what it is, which risks a financial and liquidity crisis. China started to do this last year but quickly turned tail when the economy slowed. Now the economy has slowed so much that markets are collapsing.

But doesn’t China have over $1 trillion of reserves to prop up its financial system?

On paper, that’s true. But in reality, China is “short” U.S. dollars. The Chinese may have $1.4 trillion of U.S. Treasury securities in its reserve position, but they need those assets possibly to bail out their banking system or defend the yuan.

Meanwhile, the Chinese banking sector, which in many ways is an extension of the state, owes $318 billion in U.S. dollar-denominated deposits of commercial paper.

From a bank’s perspective, borrowing in dollars is going short dollars because you need dollar assets to back up those liabilities if the original lenders want their money back. For the most part, the banks don’t have those assets because they converted the dollar to yuan to prop up local real estate Ponzis and local corporations.

There’s not much left over to bail out the corporate, individual and real estate sectors.

This is all part of a global “dollar shortage” attributable to Fed tightening, both in the forms of higher rates but also a reduction in base money.

A dollar shortage seems implausible in a world where the Fed printed $4.4 trillion. But while the Fed was printing, the world borrowed over $70 trillion (on top of prior loans), so the dollar shortage is real. The math is inescapable.

So the Chinese debt bomb that has been a long time in the making is finally getting ready to explode. The economy is slowing, debt is exploding and the trade war with Trump has hurt China’s exports needed to earn dollars to pay the debts.

The defaults are beginning to pile up. Several large corporations and regional governments have defaulted recently.

China’s leaders have panicked at the slowdown and have started the credit flow again with lower interest rates, higher bank leverage and more debt-financed, government-directed infrastructure spending.

Of course, this solution is strictly temporary. All it does is postpone the day of reckoning and make the debt crisis worse when it does arrive.

With every passing day, a Chinese financial collapse draws closer. The rest of the world will not escape the consequences.

When the crisis strikes in full force, possibly in 2019, the rest of the world will not be spared.

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