Tag: New York Times

Introducing the Argumentum ad Mutationem

 

If I had a hat, I’d tip it to Michael Spielman.

Spielman is some Bronx resident who published an op-ed in today’s New York Times. The op-ed contains one of the finest imaginable examples of a rhetorical tactic that’s been on my mind lately — the argumentum ad mutationem. What is the argumentum ad mutationem (or argument from change, as the name means in Latin)? Well, you won’t find a definition in a rhetoric textbook, since I made the term up. But the argumentum ad mutationem is perhaps the most popular weapon in the left’s culture-war armory. It’s as ubiquitous and versatile as the AR-15. You may know one of its many permutations — the infamous phrase, “Get on the right side of history.”

New York Times: Let’s Abolish the Constitution

 

The TL;DR version of this editorial is “The US Constitution is an impediment to our grand socialist utopia. We should get rid of it and decide everything by majoritarian rule.”  It’s behind a paywall, just so you know. I’ll put an excerpt at the bottom. Under this scheme, there would be no Bill of Rights; nothing to stop the Government from censoring speech, banning religion, or even breaking down your door in the middle of the night and making you disappear. Nothing except the presumed goodness and decency of elected politicians.  This is how the left wants it to be.

This article was actually cited by Trump-Hating NRO contributor Dan McLaughlin in an argument with Bull-worker Stephen Hayes Jim Swift. Swift was arguing that Never-Trumpers like McLaughlin were wimps because they refuse to vote for Democrats to spite Trump. McLaughlin countered that voting for Democrats is voting to empower radical positions like the one espoused in the New York Times. “Sorry, I’m not gonna sign up with the people who argue that we need to get rid of the United States Constitution.” He is correct on this point.

Member Post

 

Imagine if Pete Seeger, and subsequently The Byrds, had modified Ecclesiastes to include cannibalism for a folk song…or a folk rock song. They would have been ahead of their time, even if they weren’t progressive enough to mention eating bugs. From the proponents of bug-eating at the New York Times comes a thought piece of […]

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Member Post

 

Wiser leaders and editorialists would focus on the growing crisis of mental illness, not pursue political advantage, when pontificating on at least several tragic shootings this past week. It’s a statement that Rahm Emanuel, former partisan Democratic congressman, Clinton White House Chief of Staff, and spectacularly failed ex-mayor of Chicago, claims is taken out of […]

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Each morning The New York Times “The Morning” email is delivered to my inbox. Each morning I scan the news the Old Gray Lady is willing to print. I realize going in that there will be a certain slant to the coverage. One event will be promoted for observation, another will be unobserved altogether. A further point […]

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Jim and guest host Chad Benson cheer on the New York Times as they publish a new op-ed detailing the evidence for the lab leak theory in a fair way. They also try to understand why the GOP is willing to make a lose-lose compromise with Senate Democrats on infrastructure spending. Lastly, they marvel at another New York Times op-ed by X-Files creator Chris Carter in which he states why he is skeptical of the Pentagon UFO report.

Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah: Mickey Mouse Plans to Shove the 1619 Project Down America’s Collective Throat

 

I’m going to tip my hand here: I work for the Walt Disney Company. And the Walt Disney Company is easily the most Leftist, politically correct company on the planet. The only difference between working for Disney and the DNC is the characters at Disney are slightly less cartoonish.

Just when I thought things could not become more unbearable – and this is after nearly a year of sniveling, pandering e-mails, and virtual town halls about social justice and how the company is resolved never to give another white man another promotion ever again – today’s Zoom call began with coworkers talking about how “proud” and “emotional” they are to be a part of bringing the New York Times’ race-baiting, historically discredited 1619 Project to the masses as a series of propaganda programs across its television and online platforms.

Truth Wars, an Update on This Week’s Skirmishes

 

“…deeply felt sense of personal truth and facts that are at odds with it.”

That quote above isn’t mine. It comes from the New York Times, and a story entitled, “Inside a Battle Over Race, Class and Power at Smith College.”

I suspect you’ve heard the story by now, at least parts of it. It is about a young black student at Smith College who was eating a meal alone in a closed dorm when she was visited by an unarmed campus security officer and took offense. Turns out the dorm was closed and she wasn’t supposed to be there, but that didn’t stop accusations of racism to fly, or prevent Smith’s woke president from apologizing to her profusely for her victimhood and take all kinds of actions to make up for it. You should read the whole story. Smith College is considered one of America’s most elite women’s colleges with tuition, fees, and board adding up to more than $78,000 per year.

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, The Federalist staff give awards to the worst corporate media performances of 2020. Whether it was the New York Times controversy over Sen. Tom Cotton’s summer opinion editorial, Chris and Andrew Cuomo’s tone-deaf attempt at a brotherly comedy session on CNN, or the Pulitzer Prize committee for awarding Nikole Hannah-Jones for the revisionist and historically inaccurate 1619 Project, there are and will continue to be plenty of media blunders to go around.

COVID-19 Confusion

 

A scientific study attracted national attention last week by taking the dramatic position that the “excess deaths” from COVID-19 exceeded those observed with the Spanish Flu of 1918, at least for New York City. The absurdity of the claim is symptomatic of the imperfect understanding of the pandemic by this nation’s elites. To be sure, the letter correctly notes that the state of healthcare today is far better and more advanced than that of a century ago given the widespread availability of such impressive treatments as “standard resuscitation, supplemental oxygen, mechanical ventilation, kidney replacement therapy, and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.” Indeed, those technological advances indicate that the true severity of COVID-19 is even greater than the raw numbers suggest.

With that said, the study is flawed in several key ways. The estimated number of total U.S. deaths from the Spanish Flu was 675,000 in a population of about 100 million people. Assuming there have been about 169,000 U.S. COVID-19 deaths in 2020 in a population of over 330 million people, the COVID-19 death rate is roughly one-twelfth of the Spanish Flu rate. That number could well increase before the pandemic runs its course. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), the U.S. death toll of COVID-19 could reach 300,000 by December, at which point the ratio would be about 7.5 to 1.

Mueller Suffers Sudden Strzok

 

Former FBI Agent Peter Strzok

I hear Tubular Bells playing.

Sharyl Attkisson writing at Just in the News shares information on two documents released by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsay Graham about government surveillance of now President Donald Trump in 2016.

First, there is a summary of the 57-page, three-day interview transcript with Steele’s primary source for his notorious dossier originally assembled for hire for the Clinton campaign.

Join Jim and Greg for one of the craziest Three Martini Lunches we’ve ever had! First, they dissect the ludicrous push to defend and dismantle police departments and react to Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender suggesting crime victims who would normally call the cops need to understand their privilege by not having police come. They also hammer public health “experts” for declaring that the racial justice protests are more important than stopping the coronavirus, but other protests should not go forward, and stay-at-home protests are rooted in white nationalism. And they chronicle the New York Times fully surrendering to the woke mob.

Buy Physical Media

 

A generous helping of shutdown-induced free time has allowed me to catch up on my ridiculous backlog of movies on disc.

Note “movies on disc.” I think it’s safe to say that I don’t personally know anyone who owns as many movies as I do in a physical form. I also own a healthy number of television shows on disc, as well as myriad sports-related selections. In all, I would estimate that I have something like 2,000 discs worth of content, all of which I keep in simple albums for the sake of efficient storage, allowing all of this material to occupy only two small shelves on a bookcase in my den.

Why do I own so many discs in an era in which streaming is now the preferred format?

Join Jim and Greg as they cheer a May jobs report that was more than 10 million jobs better than the experts predicted. They also groan as the New York Times leadership continues to grovel to its millennial and Gen Z staffers who remain traumatized that an opinion column they don’t agree with ended up in the paper. And they use pop culture and common sense to explain why the plans of some Minneapolis City Council members to “dismantle” the police are insane and counterproductive.

Join Jim and Greg as they react to former Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis slamming President Trump’s use of the military in response to massive protests in recent days, with Jim contending Mattis shouldn’t be able to drop a rhetorical bomb like that and slip away without scrutiny. They also fire back to the fierce condemnation against the New York Times – including from Times staffers – because the editors ran an opinion piece from Sen. Tom Cotton that they don’t like. And they fume as so many athletes and others invoke cancel culture against New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees after Brees suggested that kneeling during the national anthem was disrespectful.

Back to the usual format day with good, bad, and crazy martinis. Join Jim and Greg as they applaud Sen. Perdue for pointing out how stunningly weak the Democrats’ charge of obstruction of Congress against President Trump truly is. They also hammer the media for horribly biased coverage of Monday’s pro-second amendment rally in Virginia, including CNN’s assertion that gun rallies are fertile ground for white supremacists to recruit new members. And they have fun with the New York Times ending its insanely hyped endorsement process by backing two different candidates before Jim explains why they probably did it.

More Unforced Errors?

 

Rats. . . Or is this more evidence of panic on the left? Are the Democrats, the Deep State, and their media minions freaking out, racking up penalties on both offense and defense, because of increasingly effective pressure from the Trump team? Consider their responses in the first 48 hours after American special operators successfully raided the rat hole of the now dead terror chief of ISIS, a man who would be caliph.

WaPo: “Watch me burn my journalism card.”

The laughs are even more abundant than usual today on the Three Martini Lunch!  Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America begin by applauding CBS for reporting the real headline from the new books on the Kavanuagh fight – that one of Christine Blasey Ford’s supposed witnesses was pressured to lie to support Ford’s story.  They also enjoy seeing poll after poll showing Sen. Kamala Harris is slipping badly from her position as a top tier candidate.  And as liberal critics wring their hands over Andrew Yang joking that he knows a lot of doctors because he’s Asian, Jim and Greg suggest everyone lighten up and have some fun with their own ethnicities.

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America welcome word that a federal investigation will be opened into how a prominent Indiana abortion provider allied with Pete Buttigieg ended up with more than 2,000 fetal remains in his home.  They also shake their heads as Kamala Harris not only calls for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to be impeached but also contends that Christine Blasey Ford was “treated like a criminal” and that the Kavanaugh confirmation created a “crisis of confidence” in the Supreme Court.  And Jim has plenty to say as the two New York Times reporters behind the latest Kavanaugh allegation insist their original article included the fact the supposed victim has no memory of the incident but their editors took it out of the story.