A: Because he is a Democrat.

Gianno Caldwell asks a sensible question. "Why isn’t Hunter Biden being condemned for unacceptable use of the N-word?" Well, I condemn him, and you condemn him, and Caldwell obviously condemns him, and many others doubtlessly do. What he means is why is he not being vociferously condemned by the entire mainstream media establishment with the accompanying outrage that, you know, never seems feigned at all when they do it to Republicans?

As an African American, I don’t just take issue with this; I am repulsed by it. Why? Racism knows no party. Indeed, both parties are guilty of racism. But I must admit, when Republicans encounter someone who has said or done something racist, that person is usually punished and often expelled from the party — or, at the very least, there’s an attempt to strip them of power.

This has happened many times. Former Rep. Steve King, for example, was stripped of his committee assignments by House Republican leadership in Congress after it was reported that King said in an interview, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”

I am glad that many people like Caldwell who are graced with common sense are also graced with fortitude. Because otherwise people calling out hypocrisy would have given up pointing out this double standard long ago, faster than you can say "Corp Pop was a bad dude."

Hunter Biden can use the N-word all he wants and never have to pay for it, whereas someone like Donald Trump who, according to the many who hate him, probably kicks puppies and probably drinks human blood, only has to probably have said it to be condemned for it without any evidence.

During his presidency, the media endlessly reported rumors that Donald Trump used the N-word while filming his hit TV show “The Apprentice” even though no proof of these comments existed. Meanwhile, the text messages from Hunter Biden are clear as day and have received little to no press coverage — media malpractice at its height.

Yes, it is malpractice, Mr. Caldwell, but it is also standard practice with the media. They are not interested in accuracy in reporting. They switch from outrage and histrionic demands for apologies to "see no evil, hear no evil" depending on which will further their agenda. Right now Hunter Biden is a sacred cow who could probably survive anything short of a child snuff flick surfacing involving him. The guy may as well have a "Blackmail me" sign taped to his back.

The Trumps: "We are not done". They're right

Donald Trump and his son rightly characterize what is going on now as a movement "against the elites". And that is why I've been in ever since, oh, around October of 2016 when I decided to take Trump's advice of "what have you got to lose?" and vote for him. Excerpt:

The former president’s son moved on to speak about how fact checkers on social media appear to be biased against conservatives while lenient toward “the other side.” Drawing from his personal experience, he said that his content is fact checked “even if there’s even a little bit” of irregularity.

“When I look at things that I put up on my social media that are totally objective or that are satire, one or the other, that [social media content] gets fact checked so that they can use that to knock my platform, to prevent me from getting any kind of reach,” he said. “I see that stuff on a daily basis, I don’t see that on the other side. I don’t see Joe Biden getting fact checked when he said he’s not going to ban fracking, when he bans fracking.”

He added, “If there’s even a little bit of ambiguity they get the benefit of the doubt, whereas if there’s even a little bit, a modicum, something like I said, subjective, who’s to know what the fact checker’s thinking, but certainly I know what I’m thinking and I can come up with a parameter that makes everything correct but the fact checkers can say that it falls outside of those lines.

“Joe Biden, not one tweet—as many incorrect ones that they’ve put out—has been fact checked. It’s truly sick,” Trump Jr. expressed.

Yep. We're sick of it.

Mark Shea's Celebration of the Heroic Sanctity of the Leftwing Media

I know, that headline is really over the top, right? But one good hyperbole deserves another, and if "The Feast of the Holy Child Martyrs of Covington" isn't hyperbole, I don't know what is. No parent I know says "I don't mind if people assault, abuse, falsely accuse or threaten my child and his reputation; he's no saint." However I have seven children, none of whom are saints, and my job is to protect them from all these ills. Here's an excerpt from his laughable post:

The MSM got a story wrong and feel bad about it and are trying to atone by providing balance. All the major media have published hand-wringing, soul-searching articles poring over how they got it wrong and the dangers of rash judgment and so forth. The supposedly “smug” liberal media that always allegedly knows they are right and never allegedly listen to anybody outside their effete liberal bubble have spent the last week in minute self-examination and self-flagellation. That’s why the Today Show has Nick Sandmann on (but not Nathan Phillips).

Notice that he provides no links whatsoever. I, too, missed the "trying to atone by providing balance", as did most people I know. But balance is not required in this situation. What is required is complete and utter retraction of the story. You can see repentance in the attitudes of some pieces outside the MSM, such as this one in the Atlantic. But even Julie Zimmerman, while contrite, misses the larger point of this story with the starry-eyed deep-though "the truth is sometimes unknowable." That truism most certainly does not apply to this case.

In fact there is one truth which is dictating many of the main stream media's though processes at this moment, and that truth is the impending libel lawsuits. Here's a rewrite of Shea's MSM paragraph, free of charge, reflecting the way most Catholics and sensible people view the situation with the Main Stream Media with regard to Covington:

The MSM got a story horribly wrong because their initial rush to press was based on the impression that it made Trump supporters look bad. They now are worried that it hurt their credibility and are terrified of law suits. They've pretended to feel sorry for their bias via articles which allegedly represent their hand-wringing and soul-searching — as if they had a soul. When the name of libel expert Attorney L. Lin Wood was initially whispered, the usually smug, effete liberal media began a crash course in minute self-examination and self-flagellation. The Today Show avoided inviting Nathan Phillips on after they realized that providing more exposure of his lies and craziness would hurt rather than help their devastated credibility. But they did have Nick Sandmann on hoping he'd screw up (he's just a kid after all) and hurt his case; alas, he didn't.

Further in Shea's self-embarrassing article, he spews some stuff about David Hogg and his completely different circumstance where he actually put himself forward and used a tragedy for self-promotion. The situations are in fact so dissimilar you can hardly even accuse Shea of "whataboutism", which is what he is seemingly attempting.

Mark Shea being pretty much a hold-out on this clear-cut issue shouldn't be that surprising to anyone. He has been trending this way for three or four years. But it seems like he is still in the stage of his leftism which requires him to prove how loyal he is, so he's sticking to his guns even when they are completely empty. Burning his credibility on this issue is noteworthy and will go "down on his permanent record" so to speak. I can imagine a future scene: Mark will refer to a normal Catholic writer as a Francis-hating, rad-trad, MAGA-cult bully. My reply to the raised eyebrows of someone who has never heard of him will be "He is one of the people who not only believed that Justice Brett Kavanaugh was a rapist on discredited evidence, but also believed that the Covington kids were guilty in the face of contrary evidence."

And that's all that needs to be said about him to provide an accurate estimate on the value of his work, unless and until he wakes up and rids himself the writhing hatred for people with different viewpoints. The saints are a minority. But not all minorities are holy. Some are just stubborn, pretentious and silly.

At Trump's most horrible moments, the left is always worse

David Griffey, a new friend of this blog, more or less echoes my thoughts on Trump's Helsinki performance by referencing this tweet.

I think I've seen you say it, @JamesHasson20, as have many others - all they have to do is not be insane. This Pearl Harbor, 9/11, "attack" and "war" stuff is nuts - Trump opened himself up to legit criticism today, and they can't help but to bury it in crazy. https://t.co/4kT8aqvoZT

— Jason Beale (@jabeale) July 17, 2018

Hasson's remark is in response to the comparison of the Helsinki Summit to Kristallnacht and the Pearl Harbor attacks by former Watergate Prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks.

The sound of Trump's voice is often to me about as pleasant as the sound of a glass breaking. And often his rhetoric is damaging; I agree with Pikkumatti that Trump could do more to unite the country. But to inflate Trump's unpleasantness or even his damage to Kristallnacht is to violate the rule no one talks about anymore because everyone on the left breaks it everyday. Hitler analogies, Kristallnacht comparisons and labeling everyone a fascist are doled out with absolutely straight faces by people accounted serious.

This is just one example of the media overreaction to the Helsinki Summit. Don Lemon gives us the standard brain-dead "not my president" guitar solo after turning the amp up a notch. Beale also takes a shot at Michael Moore's fake righteous anger reminding the left of their conveniently forgetting that Moore accused the entire American intelligence apparatus of deception in order to warmonger in Iraq. By making a documentary! Oh, weren't those the days... But in 2018, even during Trump's most horrible moments, the left and their media is always worse.

Blocked but not Shocked

This morning J-Carp alerted me to this laughable post with the short and apropos quip "This is rich." I noticed this post was being pimped on Twitter, so I decided to weigh in.

First this happened:

@roddreher sort of like those who gleefully & relentlessly chronicle the scandals in the #Catholic #Church. #WhoseOxIsGored #CircleTheWagons
— Ⓔⓢⓣ⋅Ⓠⓤⓞⓓ⋅Ⓔⓢⓣ (@estquodest) February 9, 2015

Then this happened:

So I've been "blocked from following @roddreher and viewing @roddreher's tweets." Oh, misery. Too bad I don't have more than one email and more than one Twitter account ever again. That way I'd be able to see and respond to his wonderful Tweets. Oh, wait....

I'll let others find and post links to Dreher's gleeful bashing of Rush Limbaugh for his scandals and high-horse posing about Dan Rather and Memo-gate. We get "now-now-but-for-the-grace-of-God-there-go-we" whenever a journalist is caught with his pants around his ankles telling outright lies and "Ha! What a horrible hypocrite!" when a Catholic bishop or mainstream conservative blunders in any way, shape or form.

But I want to point out two things. First, there is a lot of projection going on here with this accusation of envy being the big explanation as to why people are goofing all over Brian Williams. I'm a sinful man who is by no means immune to the sin of envy, but I'm sorry—the objects of my covetousness are people who are wayyy cooler than some news guy named Brian Williams. I mean, I can imagine that if my calling in life was to be a second rate blogger for a paleocon rag with a small cult following I might be envious of the smooth talking, good looking anchorman with an enormous megaphone, national name recognition and a matching salary.

The second thing is that it would appear that Mr. Dreher is in somewhat of a quandary with regard to using Twitter. He needs to use it in order to pimp posts and be a part of the modern media universe, but he has to relinquish his normal control in order to do so. Yes, he blocked me and I can't comment anymore under my normal email/Twitter account, too bad so sad. On the other hand, it doesn't appear that he can delete (de-Tweet?) my Tweet which is still there for anyone who wants to see the replies.

The obvious solution for this would be a Benedict Option version of Twitter.com where you could pimp your worthy commentary but there would be a central moderator—a Benedictator—who would delete unworthy Tweets so as not to harsh the mellow of your brilliance. Or point out obvious inconsistencies.

UPDATE: Check this out. I can still comment/reply on @roddreher tweets. I simply just pull them up under a different account in a different browser then cut-and-paste the address to the browser where my @estquodest account is logged in. Twitter allows me to reply to posts that way. Security hole? Maybe. Next move for OWB: report @estquodest for "cyber-stalking".

New York Times starts crying

Oh, the agony! Such a deep, deep sadness has come over Jay Sullivan and David Schanzer that they are compelled to write this article: CANCEL THE MIDTERMS. Here's the key paragraph, in my opinion:

The realities of the modern election cycle are that we spend almost two years selecting a president with a well-developed agenda, but then, less than two years after the inauguration, the midterm election cripples that same president’s ability to advance that agenda.

How absurd. Could it be that the crippling of the agenda is possibly the fault of selected president? If the star receiver is selected to catch the ball on the final play and he drops it, should we cancel the football game? I'm pretty sure there was no similar article written for the Times in 2006.

Republican wonks like to talk about political capital, but I think the concept of the Divine Right is operative among liberals and democrats. The way most of us see it is that Obama has burnt all his capital, squandered his good will and used most of his trump cards. If you are one of the leftists at the New York Times you shout "Not fair! He gets a do over!" If you're a conservative you simply say "Well, time to punt, big guy."

Good News is No News

Apart from going unreported, good news is also a relative term in the world of the mainstream media; that's why we must turn to alternative media like the Media Report for coverage on Catholic clergy abuse reports when the drive-bys go silent.

In a newly released annual audit of abuse by independent experts, it was reported that there were only ten contemporaneous abuse allegations made against priests even deemed "credible" in all of 2013 (out of some 40,000 active priests) and that the "fewest allegations and victims" ever were tabulated since annual reports were first compiled in 2004.

This is obviously good news. But predictably, the mainstream media is notably silent about this very positive report, even though in years past when the numbers were less encouraging, the media fell over themselves to breathlessly report any unflattering statistics which they could dig up.

A search of news coverage about the Church's new annual report found that not a single secular news outlet (e.g., the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune etc.) reported on the study.

Someone recently told me I should feature more links to alternative media where we could get the facts not reported anywhere else. So this article couldn't be more timely. The Media Report is an excellent source for coverage of what is really going on vis-à-vis the soon to be defunct scandal industry. You can sign up for their newsletter near the bottom right of the site page, and I suggest that all EQE readers do so.

Here are some good bullets points listed in the piece to fire at those who still clutch at the abuse scandal like Linus with his security blanket.

• 40% of all identified priests who were accused in 2013 were already long deceased;
• 78% of all identified priests who were accused in 2013 are either already deceased, already removed from ministry, already laicized, or simply missing; and
• 90% of all abuse accusations last year allege incidents from at least 25 years ago.

It is obvious that the abuse narrative is now merely a media obsession as the article states. Unfortunately, too often obsessing leads to lying, and the lies continue to do harm:

The facts are the facts: Bogus accusations abound

And a closer look at the study further uncovers another issue that the mainstream media adamantly refuses to report: that bogus accusations against Catholic priests are rampant, and the vast bulk of accusations are either demonstrably untrue or simply unprovable.

According to this year's numbers, a staggering 80% of the 2013 cases in which an investigation had been completed fell into the categories of either "unable to be proven" or "unsubstantiated." Only a mere 14.6% of all 2013 cases were even deemed "substantiated" by the liberal standards of review boards.

Indeed, we have long reported on the pervasiveness of false accusations against priests, but no one in the mainstream media has the courage to pursue a counter-narrative story. The time is long overdue.

Check out the Falsely Accused Priest tag link. It's a gold mine for truth-seekers on this topic. It references the link to the WSJ article by Dorothy Rabinowitz The Trials of Father MacRae, a must read to provide balance and to unmask the predators who pretend to care about actual victims of real crimes. If these criminals and ambulance chasers really cared about the victims of abuse, they would move their operation to a place in which there was evidence that abuse was actually occurring.

"If it's trouble you're looking for you're going to get it."

Carol McKinley takes a well-aimed blast at self-proclaimed "à la carte Catholics" like Kevin Cullen from the Boston Globe. She hits her mark, as always. Read the whole thing; here's an excerpt:

This is the stupidest caricature of Catholics who reject Church teaching, and consequently their own salvation, I have ever read. All Catholics sit in the pews and struggle with Church teaching.

Some struggle with accepting the teaching. Others accept the teaching but struggle with practice.

That's what we are all doing there.

What Catholics will not accept is when a struggling Catholic uses their presence to encourage others to reject Church teaching, tempt and draw them into celebrating and taking pride in immorality and sin. The Unitarians down the street love that kind of stuff and you are most welcome there. You're not welcome to do it where our families sit to learn how to make choices that affect their salvation. If it's trouble you're looking for you're going to get it.

Thanks, Carol. Reading your stuff is always a breath of fresh air, with just a hint of napalm.

Smells like... victory.

Kermit Gosnell Special To Air On Fox News

This is from an email I just received.

Help break the media silence about this case.

Please forward to all your contacts.

Fox News To Air One-Hour Special this Sunday (4/28) on the murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell.

http://www.lifenews.com/2013/04/24/fox-news-will-air-one-hour-special-sunday-on-kermit-gosnell/

Other than Fox News, the major media have almost totally ignored this trial. The  atrocities that have been brought to light in the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell have been compared to the "Jack the Ripper" Story of the 19th centaury, and to the horrors of the Nazi death camps of WW II.  

Last week CBS Devoted Just 13 Seconds to Gosnell Trial; ABC, NBC Ignore It altogether. ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today on Wednesday failed to cover any developments in the case. Neither broadcast network has aired one second of reporting on the Gosnell trial on their morning and evening newscasts. See:

http://www.lifenews.com/2013/04/25/cbs-devotes-just-13-seconds-to-gosnell-trial-abc-nbc-ignore-it/

http://www.lifenews.com/2013/04/24/jury-will-consider-hundreds-of-counts-against-abortionist-gosnell/

Don't know if this is Google bias or not

If you Google "potatoe" the results page has oodles of Dan Quayle references. There's no self-correction. On the other hand, Googling "Oiho" gives you the standard auto-correction, with the option to actually search on the Oiho misspelling which, at this point, yields 577,000 results.

My guess is that they are not going to relax their auto-correct to allow for this meme. At least not until the effect blows over. It is not cool to make fun of The Chosen One's many gaffes among the cool kids. Here's another good one from Free Republic's page:

Pantone Numbers

Here's an idea just in case you have to make a 911 call because you are being attacked. If you carry around Pantone color gauges like this one you can just give the 911 operator the Pantone color code for your attacker's skin color. That way when the media replays the 911 tape it will sound sort of like this: "Skin color is PANTONE 18-1142, or maybe closer to 18-1140." That way you can identify the perps coloration in a precise manner without using any language which could be construed to be racial or racist in any way.

Just saying.

Donohue: "Guess liberals can't get anything right these days"

Does anyone have an answer to this brilliant observation from William Donohue? I don't think so.

Every now and then the media go into a spasm about one or another Catholic teaching they object to, and their latest outrage is fixated on women's ordination. They do not object that Orthodox Jews do not ordain women. They do not object that Islam has no role for female clergy. They only get upset when the Catholic Church doesn't do what they demand. This not only goes to show how phony they are, it proves how they delight in taking another swipe at Catholicism.

I like Jack Cafferty at CNN, but does he really have the guts to slam Orthodox Jews or Islam over this issue? And if he does it now, why didn't he include them in his commentary last night? Even better, why didn't Jack nail Jews and Muslims and give Catholics a pass?

The New York Times has also editorialized on the subject, singling out Catholicism. TV stations have polled their viewers asking them what they think. And to think that these same people can say with a straight face that they really believe in diversity—it's just too much to bear.

America is awash in religions, and the great thing about it is that we don't force them to adopt the same strictures. Sadly, there are those who do believe in one-size-fits all, and if they had it in their power, they would do what comes natural to them—they would impose their secular will on all religions.

Finally, if the critics are right that the Catholic Church oppresses women because it does not permit women priests, then it should be dying and the mainline Protestant religions should be spiking. Yet the evidence shows that just the reverse is true. Guess liberals can't get anything right these days.

One possible answer for this could be my Droid/Wookie theory.

Feisal Adbul Rauf, Daisy Khan: "beneficiaries of a compliant and un-inquisitive media"

The media compliance with Feisal Adbul Rauf and Daisy Khan is really well demonstrated in this piece. Excerpt:

For who can honestly begrudge Rauf and Kahn their inability to reconcile Rauf’s post-911 assertion that America was an “accessory” to the terrorist slaughter of 3,000 of her own; their refusal to disclose the sources of the $100 Million they are raising; or their malleable condemnation of “terrorism?” And is their apparent condemnation of terrorism conditional, such as it is with many who identify with political Islam? Also, what about Rauf’s refusal to denounce the violent terrorist group Hamas as a terrorist organization?

These would seem the salient questions…and yet, these queries are never made during the “interviews” to which these two submit. If only their “mainstream” inquisitors would dig as deep within the Muslim community as they do looking for any trace or nuance that could be construed as “racism” among the “tea parties.” And to those who argue that the mosque isn’t “at ground zero,” we say, you are right, it’s not actually perched on top of the hole, but if you had been there on Sept. 11, 2001, you would have had a front row seat to the carnage, and debris would have rained down upon you.

Later on the authors bring up 4th Generation Warfare which is a theory I think is a little bit off, but they're larger point is obvious and one with which I agree, viz., that planting Mosques is a strategy to take over, not build cultural bridges.