Free Republic

When you let your political obsessions dominate you, what you end up with is a rather negative review of a fine documentary that isn't really about politics. Such was the case with Wednesday's Vox review by Alissa Wilkinson of the Netflix documentary Fear City: New York vs. the Mafia. So what bothered Wilkinson about the documentary? Well, because it prominently featured Rudy Giuliani, because he was instrumental in bringing down the mob in New York. The problem for her was that many years later, Giuliani ended up as President Donald Trump's lawyer as well as friend. Oh, and the fact...

Key Points Vox Media has informed its unions that it plans to cut jobs as advertising revenue has slumped in the first and second quarters. Vox Media is preparing staff cuts to both unionized and non-union workers. Vox was 40% off its revenue forecast for the second quarter and plans to miss its full-year target by 25% ============================================================================ Vox Media, the owner of media properties including New York Magazine, The Verge, SBNation and Eater, has informed its worker unions to prepare for company-wide layoffs, according to people familiar with the matter. Vox spoke with union leaders Monday to inform them...

Vox Media, the owner of media properties including New York Magazine, The Verge, SBNation and Eater, has informed its worker unions to prepare for company-wide layoffs, according to people familiar with the matter. Vox spoke with union leaders Monday to inform them of their plan to cut staff, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. Vox furloughed about 100 employees in April, or 9% of its staff, until July 31 as Covid-19 affected advertising budgets. Many of the furloughed workers who haven’t already taken buyouts will be laid off, according to a person...

Several staffers at Vox have taken to Twitter after journalist Matthew Yglesias signed the open letter decrying "cancel culture." Yglesias was one of 150 signatories including other liberal writers, professors and activists who came together to defend civil debate in the face of social media callouts that have become ubiquitous in recent years. However, Vox critic at large Emily VanDerWerff released a letter of her own that she had written to Vox editors voicing her concerns of Yglesias' inclusion in the anti-cancel culture letter.

I think what differentiates fascism from other ideological movements is the use of violence and anger to achieve political ends. What you almost always see in fascist regimes is propaganda being used to set people against each other without any potential solutions to any of the problems. Fascism is always, in the end, about stirring people up and giving them someone to hate.... ... I don’t call him a fascist. He’s certainly anti-democratic, and I say so in the book, but I don’t call him a fascist because he isn’t violent. If he ends up declaring an emergency at the...

The recent spate of protests against police brutality have changed the way the left thinks about rioting. The old liberal idea, which distinguished between peaceful protests (good) and rioting (bad), has given way to a more radical analysis. “Riots work,” insists George Ciccariello-Maher in Salon. “But despite the obviousness of the point, an entire chorus of media, police, and self-appointed community leaders continue to try to convince us otherwise, hammering into our heads a narrative of a nonviolence that has never worked on its own, based on a mythical understanding of the Civil Rights Movement.” Vox’s German Lopez, while acknowledging...

Last week Oracle co-founder and Chairman Larry Ellison held a fundraiser for President Trump’s re-election campaign at his Rancho Mirage estate near Palm Springs, Calif. At the time the fundraiser was announced, there was silence from The Resistance, which is unusual given the reality of today’s political environment – public figures who support Trump must be shamed and shunned. It turns out about 300 employees of the American multinational computer technology corporation protested Ellison’s fundraiser but they did so the day after the event which seems like an odd way of going about it. Oracle employs about 136,000 people, so...

Last week Oracle co-founder and Chairman Larry Ellison held a fundraiser for President Trump’s re-election campaign at his Rancho Mirage estate near Palm Springs, Calif. At the time the fundraiser was announced, there was silence from The Resistance, which is unusual given the reality of today’s political environment – public figures who support Trump must be shamed and shunned. It turns out about 300 employees of the American multinational computer technology corporation protested Ellison’s fundraiser but they did so the day after the event which seems like an odd way of going about it. Oracle employs about 136,000 people,...

Employees at software giant Oracle are demanding that the company’s Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison cancel a fundraiser for President Donald Trump set to take place this week. Recode reports that following Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison’s decision to host a fundraiser for President Trump this week, employees at the company have demanded that Ellison cancel the event. Breitbart News reported that President Donald Trump is expected to attend a campaign fundraising event at Ellison’s Rancho Mirage estate on Wednesday, just two weeks before California’s Super Tuesday primary. Ellison will be hosting supporters on a golf outing at his home on...

The left went bonkers on Twitter when news broke that Big Tech billionaire Larry Ellison was hosting a pro-Trump fundraiser. Lefty outlet Vox Recode characterized the billionaire founder of Oracle Corporation's decision to support President Donald Trump as "unthinkable for a tech titan" and “a major coup for the Trump team." Recode continued: "Ellison is, after all, the country’s fifth-richest person, with a net worth of almost $70 billion.” Vox Recode also issued a harbinger in its Feb. 12 report: “[T]he fundraiser [to be held in Ellison’s estate] is sure to expose the flamboyant 75-year-old billionaire [Ellison] to a new...

Journalists missed a reference to a Biden gaffe Monday after the Trump campaign launched a new website titled “Truth Over Facts.” President Donald Trump’s campaign launched what appears to be a joke website they described as “an investigative website aimed at uncovering the truth behind [former Vice President] Joe Biden’s never-ending, seemingly incomprehensible statements during his third, plodding campaign for president.” The “Truth Over Facts” title is, in fact, a reference to one of Biden’s public gaffes, where he made the comment during a 2019 campaign speech in Iowa. This seemed to go over many journalists’ heads as they attacked...

What is the difference between liberty and freedom in the eyes of many Americans? Absolutely nothing. And therein lies not only the problem driving the culture war around coronavirus shelter-in-place orders but also arguably the crux of all fronts of America's culture wars, from guns to religion to speech to - now, it seems - haircuts. It is a slippage skillfully leveraged by conservatives. This week in Michigan, armed protesters are heeding the call. But the petulant rallying cries echo across the United States. "Give me liberty or give me death!" - so goes the universal whine, lifted from Patrick...

Beijing has lied about the coronavirus from the start, while here in the West our corporate media has actively and enthusiastically spread its lies to households across the free world. But now that news of China’s lies is beginning to seep out, will it make a difference? Will there even be corrections? Don’t count on it.Even before reports on incinerators “working around the clock,” massive orders for urns, government bribes to keep mourners quiet, and total government censorship, China’s lies were obvious. Even before China concealed the outbreak, blamed the U.S. military, and expelled foreign reporters, their lies were obvious.Their...

China, Chinese Virus, CNN, Corona virus, In an article and TV segment yesterday, CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh and Vasco Cotovio argued that the Chinese virus pandemic was not the fault of China’s communist government or bats, but “human activity.” The big winner in this bizarre way of telling the story is China, which is launching a furious disinformation campaign to distance itself from blame for the pandemic.According the CNN theory, the real problem is a global one. Through climate change and other means, natural habitats are being destroyed. This displaces animals such as bats. When the bats are displaced (and...

The Washington Post and Vox are two left-wing media outlets that published stories this week claiming that a Montana-based NIH scientist is appealing to the Trump administration to end its ban on federal funds for research that uses fetal tissue from the body parts of aborted babies so he can develop a treatment for the infection caused by the coronavirus.

The other matchup that jumps out at me is the possibility of Jennifer Rubin matching up with her Washington Post teammate Max Boot with the Final Four on the line.This is a parody. This is not meant to reflect any beliefs or statements of ESPN or the personalities named in this parody, nor any of the actual mannerisms of such people. Scott Van Pelt: So one of the most eagerly awaited moments of the 2020 election year has finally arrived. The selection committee revealed its brackets for the Comfortably Smug #LiberalHack tournament, sponsored as always by the private equity firm...

The Associated Press (AP) described the matter of Joe Biden’s leveraging of U.S. foreign aid to pressure Ukraine to fire a prosecutor investigating corruption at Burisma — a Ukrainian energy company upon whose board of directors Hunter Biden sat — in order to protect his second son as a “false narrative.” The AP echoed similar news media outlets’ mischaracterization of the above-mentioned event, including the New York Times, Snopes, NPR, USA Today, Vox, and the Washington Post. In a column identifying differing perceptions of political goings on being related to varying news media consumption patterns, the AP dismisses Joe Biden’s...

A journalist for Vox was mocked on Thursday for suggesting that President Trump purposely itches his face with his middle finger in order to subtly insult Democrats and other opponents. Vox associate editor Aaron Rupar shared a video clip of the president touching his face with "the bird" on two separate occasions. One instance was while Trump was on speakerphone with what Rupar described was an "uppity woman"; the other was of him at a press conference responding to a question about whether he thought Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Hunter Biden should testify as part of the impeachment inquiry.

Boomers: It’s not too late. You can be heroes in the story of climate change. You might not like to hear it, as many of you have long told pollsters you consider yourselves environmentalists, but collectively you have exacerbated the climate crisis more than any other generation. Fossil fuels were cheap as you came of age and you burned too much of them. Your lifetime carbon footprint is so high you’re forcing kids born today to emit eight times less than you just to hit a modest goal. And you’ve never taken climate change as seriously as the generations behind...

Not every mainstream movie critic hates Clint Eastwood's highly affecting Richard Jewell.  But the critics who hate it hate it an awful lot.  The story of how an out-of-control FBI and a "completely irresponsible press" ruined the life of the heroic security guard whose quick action saved many lives during the 1996 Centennial Park bombing is legitimately viewed as Eastwood's take on what's happening in America right now.  The irony that the movie was released the same week as the I.G. report exposing the FBI's lawlessness in Crossfire Hurricane must be particularly galling for mainstream journos who staked their reputations on...