Nov 18

Today’s News 18th November 2018

  • Strip Club "Business Meetings" Not At All Affected By #MeToo Movement

    In an age of ultra-political correctness, arbitrary genders and sexual consent forms, one might think that the archetypal red-blooded American male has been reduced to a quivering, confused soy-boy afraid to express himself lest he offend a woman. And, according to Bloomberg, one would be wrong at least behind the closed doors of your average strip club. 

    Like Amish teenagers on a big-city bender, men have been conducting strip-club “meetings” in droves – perhaps because of the new progressive mandate that guys be on “best behavior” in the workplace – lest an unassuming testosterone-filled gentleman be accused of mansplaining, man-spreading, or sexually assaulting a woman with his eyes, words or thoughts.

    The past year has brought new attention to the sexist and harassing behavior women face in many workplaces, from explicitly sexual overtures to getting passed over for leadership positions and raises. After all that, the idea that a strip club is a good place to, say, bond with a client or co-workers seems especially reckless, said Marianne Cooper, a sociologist at Stanford University’s Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab. –Bloomberg

    Reckless, maybe – but live adult entertainment is a $6 billion-a-year business, according to WestPark Capital analyst Ishfaque Faruk, and the industry is experiencing what he calls “consumer-staple type growth” of around 1-2% per year. Faruk follows strip club megacompany RCI Hospitality Holdings, which tells him that business customers are “still part of the financial model.” 

    Cooper, the Stanford University Women’s Leadership sociologist has taken umbrage at men looking at naked women during business hours, insisting that “Business does not have to get done this way,” and that “It’s not that it’s central to business, but it is central to these kinds of dysfunctional toxic cultures where women aren’t seen as competent colleagues.” (A counterpoint might be that forcing men to live in a world that shuns male sexuality by labeling it ‘toxic’ will, at minimum, lower reproductive rates among societies that subscribe to hyperfeminist ideals). 

    Earlier this year, Under Armour Inc. reigned in its employees meeting at strip clubs, explicitly banning them as an allowable corporate expense. “Strip-club visits were symptomatic of practices women at Under Armour found demeaning,” according to the WSJ report of more than 12 current and former employees and executives.

    Meanwhile, strip club business is booming. 

    The Rosewood Theater, a high-end Manhattan strip club popular with Wall Streeters, is planning to expand, with pop-up clubs taking test runs in four U.S. cities next year. At clubs in Detroit, Houston and Dallas, there are still plenty of corporate cards and briefcases. And shares of RCI, which owns about 40 adult-themed clubs and restaurants, hit a record high in July. –Bloomberg

    “For guys just throwing corporate cards down, you hear more about it in bigger cities like New York and San Francisco, convention cities like that,” said Dave Manack, associate publisher for strip-club industry magazine, ED Publications. “The rank and file club in Poughkeepsie or Lubbock, Texas, that’s not their bread and butter.”

    According to an anonymous Rosewood Theater employee, around 150 customers attend each night, and hosts a “steady stream of customers until 4 a.m., when New York City’s bars have to close,” reports Bloomberg. 

    The arrangement is novel: The women who entertain the patrons aren’t formal employees — technically, they’re guests invited by management. But they do earn money, in the form of tips from customers; club management instructs them to forgo perfume, so patrons don’t return home with a telltale scent.

    Next year, Moon will take the show on the road, targeting the moneyed professionals in Silicon Valley, Miami, Los Angeles, and Austin, Texas, with pop-up events in existing clubs in those cities or at invitation-only parties in rented loft spaces.

    As it is, company expense accounts only make up a fraction of revenue, says Angelina Spencer, the executive director of the Association of Club Executives, or ACE. The organization, which represents more than 1,000 clubs, estimates it at about 10 percent. 

    “It’s dropped considerably,” said Spencer, a former club co-owner. “Companies have mostly put the kibosh on it.” 

    –Bloomberg

    And just because corporations have been cracking down on strip-club meetings, it doesn’t mean clients aren’t still wining and dining clients or high-fiving co-workers as they slip dollar bills into g-strings; people are either footing the bill themselves or lying about it, according to the report. Club names typically have an innocuous sounding name on credit card bills or expense accounts – which give employees (and husbands) the cover they need to remain in good standing. 

    Since August, RCI has announced the acquisition of clubs in Chicago, Pittsburgh, and has its eye on 500 more for potential buyouts. 

  • Major Syrian Army Assault On Southeast Idlib As Sochi Deal Unravels

    The Syrian Army unleashed a major assault across the southeastern part of Idlib province on Saturday, a military source told Middle East news site Al-Masdar in a breaking report. According to the source, government forces pounded jihadist defenses across the southeast Idlib axis with a plethora of artillery shells and surface-to-surface missiles. 

    This latest exchange between the Syrian military and jihadist rebels comes as the Sochi Agreement falls apart in northwestern Syria, and in response to a Friday attack by jihadists which killed 22 Syrian soldiers near a planned buffer zone around the country’s last major anti-Assad and al-Qaeda held region. The jihadist strikes resulted in the highest number of casualties for the army since the Sochi Agreement was established on September 17th.

    Though the Syrian war has grown cold in terms of international spotlight and media interest since September, it is likely again going to ramp up dramatically over the next few months. 

    The Al-Masdar source said the primary targets for the Syrian Army were the trenches and military posts for Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham in the towns of Al-Taman’ah, Khuwayn, Babulin, Haish, Jarjanaz, Um Jalal, and Mashirfah Shmaliyah. In retaliation for the Syrian Army assault, the jihadist rebels began shelling the government towns of Ma’an, Um Hariteen, and ‘Atshan.

    Damascus has been critical of the Sochi deal from the start as it’s criticized Turkey’s role in the Russian-brokered ceasefire plan, especially as a proposed ‘de-militarized’ zone has failed due to jihadist insurgents still holding around 70% of the planned buffer area which they were supposed to withdraw from by mid-October. Sporadic clashes have rocked the “buffer zone” since.

    Russia itself recently acknowledged the on the ground failure of the Sochi agreement even as parties officially cling to it. During a Thursday press briefing by Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova admitted the following: 

    We have to state that the real disengagement in Idlib has not been achieved despite Turkey’s continuing efforts to live up to its commitments under the Russian-Turkish Memorandum of September 17.

    This followed Russia also recently condemning  “sporadic clashes” and “provocations” by the jihadist group HTS (the main al-Qaeda presence) in Idlib. 

    Likely due to Moscow seeing the writing on the wall that all-out fighting and a full assault by government forces on Idlib will soon resume, Russian naval forces continued a show of force in the Mediterranean this week.

    Russian military and naval officials announced Friday that its warships held extensive anti-submarine warfare drills in the Mediterranean. Specifically the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s frigates Admiral Makarov and Admiral Essen conducted the exercise in tandem with deck-based helicopters near Syrian coastal waters. 

    Notably, according to TASS, the warships central to the drill are “armed with eight launchers of Kalibr-NK cruise missiles that are capable of striking surface, coastal and underwater targets at a distance of up to 2,600 km.”

    Since September when what was gearing up to be a major Syrian-Russian assault on Idlib was called off through the Russian-Turkish ceasefire agreement, possibly in avoidance of the stated threat that American forces would intervene in defense of the al-Qaeda insurgent held province (also claiming to have intelligence of an impending government “chemical attack”), the war has largely taken a back-burner in the media and public consciousness. 

    But as sporadic fighting between jihadists and Syrian government forces is reignited and fast turning into major offensive operations by government forces, the war could once again be thrust back into the media spotlight as ground zero for a great power confrontation between Moscow and Washington. 

  • DARPA, Army Select These Three Companies For Hypersonic Missile Propulsion 

    A joint program by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA)/ US Army Operational Fires (OpFires) has picked a total of three defense companies to develop and demonstrate a novel ground-launched system enabling hypersonic boost-glide weapons to penetrate the world’s most advanced air defenses and quickly and accurately engage critical time-sensitive enemy targets.

    Aerojet Rocketdyne, Exquadrum, and Sierra Nevada Corporation have each received contracts to immediately start work on design and development for the next generation of propulsion systems that will power America’s hypersonic weapons, DARPA announced on Friday.

    DARPA/OpFires program manager US Army major Amber Walker said: “OpFires represents a critical capability development in support of the Army’s investments in long-range precision fires.”

    “These awards are the first step in the process to deliver this capability in support of US overmatch,” Walker added.

    DARPA/OpFires program plans for a mobile ground-based launch system, plus propulsion systems that will launch hypersonic missiles at land-based targets.

    The proposed system would be able to fire various payloads at several ranges depending on the mission specifications.

    • Phase I of the program will be a 12-month effort designed on early development and demonstration of booster rockets that provide thrust propulsion for hypersonic missiles.
    • Phase II will enhance designs and demonstrate performance with live and static fire tests, which are anticipated to be performed in late 2020.
    • Phase III will focus on weapon system integration, will then be followed by flight tests in 2022.

    JP Morgan released a report back in September that outlined the hypersonic weapons industry, and identified all the defense companies as key players in the sector, with Lockheed Martin in the lead.

    “While sales are still modest, we see substantial growth potential by the mid-2020s to [greater than $5 billion], perhaps significantly more,” J.P. Morgan analyst Seth Seifman said in a note. Seifman cited Michael Griffin, under secretary of Defense for researching and engineering, saying Griffin “believes that hypersonics development is currently the highest technical priority for the Pentagon.”

    A hypersonic missile can travel Mach 5 or higher. That is more than five times the speed of sound, which means the projectile can penetrate the world’s most advanced air defense systems.

    “Today’s cruise missiles generally reach speeds near but not greater than Mach 1, while ballistic missiles accelerate to supersonic speeds but fly on predictable paths,” Seifman said. “Hypersonic weapons, however, are maneuverable and cruise at lower altitudes, making them more difficult to counter.”

    Russia and China are the global leaders in hypersonic development, Air Force General John Hyten told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March.

    “We [US] don’t have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us,” Hyten warned.

    And While DARPA/OpFires race to develop hypersonic technology by selecting three companies that could have a working missile by 2022, it seems that Russia and China are light years ahead in development. 

  • San Fran Uber Drivers Selling Respirator Masks As Wildfires Destroy Air Quality

    As California’s deadliest wildfire continues to ravage the northern half of the state, San Francisco residents are choking on some of the unhealthiest air in the world. 

    In order to provide a solution to choked out locals, one Uber driver was spotted selling N95 respirator masks for $5 each, way above the market rate of $1.39 each from Home Depot. That said, the masks are sold out at many local stores according to Recode, so passengers may be more than happy to shell out the extra money to protect their lungs. 

    Shirin Ghaffary

    Others aren’t so keen on the idea.   

    This isn’t the first time drivers for ride-sharing apps have sold products out of their cars. Uber even facilitates it in some cities.

    But unlike the selling of candy or iPhone chargers, some could argue there’s a sinister aspect to profiting from the chaos of environmental catastrophe — a case of what author Naomi Klein famously termed disaster capitalism. Others would say it’s a smart example of entrepreneurism by people just trying to make a living — especially considering that half of Uber drivers in the U.S. make less than $10 an hour after expenses, according to a recent study. –Recode

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    Not all Uber drivers have the same entrepreneurial spirit, however, as Recode‘s Shirin Ghaffary notes that at least one Uber driver reportedly gave a rider a mask for free. 

    Bay Area air quality levels during the Camp Fire have been in the “unhealthy” range of 151-200 on the US EPA’s Air Quality Index, which means that prolonged exposure can harm even healthy people. 

    As of Saturday morning, the death toll in the Camp Fire stood at 71, making it the deadliest fire in California state history. Meanwhile, over 1,000 people remain unaccounted for. The blaze is currently 55% contained and has scorched 148,000 acres. 

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  • The Botox Index: When Do Botox Appointments Surge?

    Submitted by Priceonomics

    The holidays can be a stressful and busy time – coordinating schedules among friends, seeing the family, and preparing food to feed extra people can sap just about all of your time and energy.

    As a result, healthy habits may fall by the wayside: Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, research shows, we go hard on treats, light on exercise and heavy on erratic sleep patterns. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we don’t really make time for doctor’s appointments either.

    We wanted to know – are there spikes or declines in medical appointment visits around the holidays? We analyzed millions of anonymized medical appointments booked on Zodoc, a Priceonomics customer. We analyzed our database of medical appointment bookings over a one-year period (April 2017 to March 2018) to see if people are more likely to visit their doctor around the holidays.

    Overall, we found that appointments were either steady or slowed around the holidays, with a notable exception—Botox.

    When we looked at various specializations, we found that Botox appointments spiked around Thanksgiving and Christmas, with bookings rates 35-45% higher than normal. 

    People in their 40s and 50s are most likely to use Botox versus other services on the Zocdoc platform. San Jose and Seattle are the places in the United States with the highest rate of Botox treatments.

    We also found that the busiest days of the year to book Botox occurred around the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. November 20th was the busiest day of the year, with booking rates 79% higher than average, followed closely by December 4th and 21st, which both had Botox booking rates around 75% higher than average. 

    * * *

    Botox appointments spike around Thanksgiving and Christmas

    Once we found the Botox appointment spikes, we started by investigating when people book their Botox visits, and whether this booking behavior is similar to overall appointment bookings. 

    In the chart below, 100% represents the average booking rate. Percentages above or below 100% represent how many more (or fewer) appointments are booked for Botox throughout the year. The grey line represents the average booking rate for all other medical appointments. Here, it serves as a baseline to compare appointment bookings for Botox.

    As the chart above shows, there is a spike in the amount of Botox appointments booked near Thanksgiving and again in December. Around Thanksgiving, Botox appointments bump up to 35% higher than the normal booking rate, and move up again at the beginning of December to 42% and 45% higher than average at the beginning of Christmas break. In comparison, all other appointments remain steady, at right around that 100% rate.

    Now that we know that Botox is so popular around the holidays, we wanted to know who is booking all these appointments? We decided to look at who books Botox appointments by age group.

    The chart below breaks down overall Botox appointment bookings by age ranges. In red, we see the average amount of all medical appointments booked by each group, while the blue represents the percentage of each age group that books Botox appointments.

    It turns out that people between the ages of 40-49 are over 2.4-times as likely to book a Botox appointment as would be expected given their prevalence in overall bookings. People 50-59 years old are the next most likely group to book appointments, with an appointment booking rate just over 2 times as likely as would be expected given their overall appointment bookings. The two tails of the age ranges, people 29 and younger, and those 60 and older, don’t book Botox appointments at particularly high rates.

    Now that we have a handle on who is booking Botox appointments around the holidays, we wanted to know in which cities do people book the most Botox appointments?

    Compared to overall medical appointments, San Jose is the most popular city for booking Botox. We found that Botox appointments overall continue to make up a small portion of medical appointments booked within each city – roughly half a percent of overall appointments for the popular cities, and around a tenth of a percent for the less popular cities. San Jose, Seattle, and Denver have the most Botox appointment booking rates compared to overall medical appointments. 

    At the bottom we see that Washington, D.C., Houston, and New York have some of the lowest Botox appointment rates. Compared to overall booking rates, Washington books about one-sixth as many appointments for Botox as San Jose.

    If you’re going to book a Botox appointment for the holidays, it might be helpful to avoid the holiday rush. Just for you, we compiled a list of the busiest days leading up to Christmas. If you need to book your appointment for one of the days below, be sure to book far in advance so you’re not left scrambling.

    November 20th is the most popular day of the year for Botox appointments. At 79% higher than average, the 20th of November is the busiest day of the year for booking an appointment. December 4th and 21st are tied for second place, both boasting booking rates 75% higher than the average booking rate. Out of the top 15 days for booking a Botox appointment, 12 of them, or 80%, occur in either November or December.

    * * *

    The Takeaway

    The pre-holiday Botox appointment is real. Overall Botox appointment booking rates move from the average to up to 45% higher than the typical appointment rate around the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. 

    People between the ages of 40-49 and 50-59 were between 2-2.4 times as likely to book a Botox appointment as would be expected given their overall prevalence in medical appointment bookings. 

    Given all we found, we wanted to leave our readers with a list of days to avoid (or plan far in advance) the doctor’s office for your next Botox appointment. November 20th (179%), December 4th (175%) and 21st (175%) were the busiest days of the year to go in for Botox. Be sure to either book months in advance or choose another day if you need to squeeze in a session prior to your break.

  • Deal Gives China Access To War Room Mapping Software Used By NATO

    It’s considered the “Ferrari of war room software” which gives the United States and European military planners and operational commanders a distinctive edge. And it’s just been handed over to China. 

    The big screen software that allows for “real time” military operational awareness relied upon by NATO and the Pentagon to make instant decisions while troops are in the field conducting live operations has been obtained by Beijing as part of a deal with the defense contractor Luciad, a Belgian-based company. With such technology, according to the story revealed in a South China Morning Post (SCMP) exclusive based on accessing Chinese government contractor sources, this will put the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) “on an equal organizational footing with some of the West’s elite military operations.”

    Screenshot from Luciad demo video.

    And with China continuing to aggressively build-up both its defense technology and special forces capabilities, as its recently been keen to display to the world and especially rival armies, the software will allow commanders to process real-time data and visuals with incredible instantaneous speed and accuracy, allowing for fluid and rapid response. 

    According to the SCMP report the software is the most advanced available in terms of systems visual integration: 

    Planners use data from sources such as drone feeds, satellite imagery, radar, sensor plots, weather forecasts and platoon status. Traditional software can introduce errors as large as 500 meters (1,600 feet) in the positioning of moving targets from different datastreams.

    And further the advances system will allow military planners to assess target information in real time while instantly changing or updating parameters where needed:

    Luciad’s software can analyse data and generate seamless visuals at a speed of 100 calculations a second, 75 times faster than its closest competitor, with accuracy to within 3cm (one inch) and on a global scale, according to American graphics technology company Nvidia.

    Notably it is the exact same software relied upon by the United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida.

    SOCOM used the exact software for the raid on Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan compound in 2011. 

    Given the way Chinese law is configured to gain access to trade secrets out of Western companies seeking to sell to China, it is likely that Beijing will soon have to capability to replicate the technology itself. 

    The SCMP report confirms that in the case of computer software, no matter how sensitive, the law requires every line of code to be accessible: 

    Under Chinese law, a foreign vendor supplying software to the Chinese government must disclose every line of source code to authorities for a security check. It was unclear whether Luciad has complied with that requirement. The company did not respond to requests for comment.

    The report also speculates over the possibility that China could be exposing itself to a “Trojan horse” backdoor of sorts, or hidden codes in the software that could “lead to unauthorized infiltration of the brain of Chinese military operations” by NATO intelligence, according to one researcher cited in the report. 

    The Belgian maker of the software produced the following brief demo:

    But crucially, it is more likely China could gain insight into NATO countries’ own methods and war room operations by studying the software at the source code level, according to the report. “Sometimes a comment [an explanation or annotation in the source code of a computer program] can tell a story,” one analyst was cited in the report as saying. 

    Currently China has implemented the most advanced domestic integrated spying system in the world as part of its Orwellian “social credit system”.

    And now it’s increasingly likely that the military software technology accessed as part of its deal will not only make its elite military units more efficient in potential future operations abroad, but will bolster Beijing’s totalitarian capabilities at home. 

  • Racist Note Left On Kansas Student's Door… Was Written By Himself

    Kansas State University students were horrified after a student posted a picture of a racist note on the door frame of his home at Jardine Apartments. The note read, “Beware n***ers live here! Knock at your own risk.”

    Immediately the calls went out (metaphorically speaking) to track down any Trump-supporters, MAGA-hat-wearers, or generally right-leaning members of the student community who MUST have been guilty of this horrible act.

    WIBW reports that campus police began investigating the note, presumably with an open mind, and investigators say the student has admitted making the sign and hanging it.

    Prior to the police determining the note was a hoax, Jeff Morris, K-State’s Vice President of Communication and Marketing, said acts like this are unacceptable and not tolerated at the University.

    “We’re rallying behind the students to make sure they know their supported and apart of the K-State family,” Morris said.

    “At this time we don’t know who did this, or why, or what their motivations were, and we don’t want to speculate until we finish the investigation.”

    The school says they will handle the situation “in accordance with applicable disciplinary procedures.”

    As WIBW noted, officials did not define what that entailed, but we are sure it will involve group hugs, safe-spaces, and “it’s-the-environment-that-did-it” excuses.

  • McMaken: The White House Press Pass Has Nothing To Do With The First Amendment

    Submitted by Ryan McMaken of Mises.org

    A federal judge on Friday ruled the White House must temporarily re-instate the press pass of CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s, who had been barred after an argument with Donald Trump in the press room. The judge ruled the White House had violated due process by banning Acosta.

    CNN, however, had requested a ruling saying that Acosta more or less had a constitutional right to a press pass, and that the First Amendment guaranteed CNN and its reporters access to the White House press conference room.

    Judge Timothy Kelly disagreed. According to the Washington Post:

    In explaining his decision, Kelly said he agreed with the government’s argument that there was no First Amendment right to come onto the White House grounds. But, he said, once the White House opened up the grounds to reporters, the First Amendment applied.

    On the due process issue, Kelly is mostly right on this one. But Kelly gets it wrong when he says that the First Amendment potentially applies wherever the White House has opened up access to reporters overall. 

    How Can Press Room Access be a “Right” If Only Allowed to a Privileged Few?

    It’s difficult to see, though, how something so limited and so unavailable to nearly everyone could be called a right. After all, not even all reporters can hope to secure a White House press pass. And non-reporters have even less chance of ever getting access. Access to White House media facilities and forums are a privilege reserved for a select few —and most of those few are wealthy operatives of extremely powerful media corporations.

    A press pass is clearly not a right in the same sense as a trial by jury, a right to be secure in one’s personal property, or a right to peaceably assemble. In theory at least, those rights apply to everyone unless voluntarily waived, or unless revoked through some sort of public due process.

    Nor is it the case that just anyone who is recognized as a journalist gets access to the White House press room. The room, of course, is of a finite size — there are 49 seats — and access is limited. Only a select group of people is allowed in, and the credentialing process is controlled in part by the White House Correspondents’ Association which hardly hands out credentials as if they were a human right.

    Thus, if the First Amendment guarantees access to the White House press room, how is it that the overwhelming majority of journalists in the country can never hope to enjoy this right?

    Moreover, government judges and officials have refused to rule with finality on the idea that anyone can be a journalist. This leaves open the opportunity for governments themselves to define who gets to be a journalist and who doesn’t. Not surprisingly, US Senator Dianne Feinstein has suggested that only paid, professional journalists ought to be considered “real” journalists.

    If access to the White House is to rise to the level of a right, though, it certainly can’t be reliant on the whims of Senators and judges as to who gets to exercise that right. Nor could the White House Correspondents’ Association, or any other group, be allowed to limit this right to a few influential reporters.

    If CNN is going to insist in court that a press pass is a right, is the organization willing to take this idea to its logical conclusion? If that were the case, we’d be hearing about how CNN thinks the press room ought to be opened up to any small-time blogger who wants to ask the president a few questions.

    The Press Room Exists for the Benefit of the President

    But even if everyone who wanted it were somehow magically given space in the White House press room, it’s hard to see how hobnobbing with the White House communications staff forms a pillar of a free press or free inquiry.

    In other words, the very premise that a White House press pass is a critical component of a free press is questionable at best.

    After all, the press room, the communications staff, and the entire White House media apparatus exists to make the president look good. It’s not there to offer a frank exchange of information, or to divulge any information the White House doesn’t want released.

    To find that sort of information, one would have to engage in real investigative journalism in which journalists uncover facts that powerful government officials would rather not be uncovered. That, of course, is what Julian Assange has done. But you won’t find many establishment American journalists defending him. No, in the minds of the Jim Acostas of the world, “journalism” consists of repeating the official talking points released at official press conferences.

    And this is a lucky thing for presidents, many of whom have long understood that the purpose of White House communications is to manipulate the press.

    In his book Who Speaks for the President, The White House Press Secretary from Cleveland to Clinton, W. Dale Nelson examines the history of press relations between the president since the late nineteenth century.

    According to Nelson, press relations were considerably more informal in the nineteenth century, with presidents inviting reporters to have occasional conversations in various areas of the White House.These meetings eventually took on a more recognizable modern form with Theodore Roosevelt, who as a master propagandist, used reporters skillfully to his advantage. According to Nelson, “Roosevelt, who had seen reporters twice daily while in Albany, realized that the news columns of newspapers were what mattered, as much as the editorial columns, if not more.”

    Roosevelt thus introduced a custom in which reporters were welcome to see him while he was being shaved just before lunch. “The sessions,” Nelson writes, which “came to be called presidential séances … were limited to a favored few correspondents known to their colleagues as ‘the fair-haired.'”

    Overall, though, Roosevelt was happy to spread his own opinions around promiscuously, and as former Roosevelt aide Archie Butt remembered it: “Mr. Roosevelt understood the necessity of guiding the press to suit one’s own ends…”

    Roosevelt was slowly inventing the concept of the presidential press conference, and he understood that its purpose was to advance his own interests.  After all, the very concept of the press conference has always been primarily founded on the idea of one-way communication. This is true for every organization that holds a press conference. Private companies, of course, only hold press conferences to get out the word of a new product or to do damage control. In any case, the purpose of these events are to manipulate and shape the news.

    In fact, according to historian Daniel Boorstin, press conferences aren’t really news events at all. They’re a “pseudo-event” — a 20th-century invention — which is a manufactured event designed by a certain person or organization to create news that is favorable to those who plan them.

    US presidents have been among the most effective pioneers behind the psuedo-event, although some have been better than others. According to Boorstin:

    In recent years our successful politicians have been those most adept at using the press and other means to create pseudo-events. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom Heywood Broun calls “the best newspaperman who has even been President of the United States,” was the first modern master. While newspaper owners opposed him in the editorials few read, F.D.R. himself, with the collaboration of a friendly corps of Washington correspondents, was using front-page headlines to make news read by everybody. He was making “facts” — pseudo events — while editorial writers were simply expressing opinions. It is a familiar story how he employed the trial balloon, how he exploited the ethic of the off-the-record remarks, how he transformed the Presidential press conference from a boring ritual into a major national institution which no later president dared disrespect, and how he developed the fireside chat. Knowing that newspapermen lived on news, he helped them manufacture it. And he knew enough about news-making techniques to help shape their stories to his own purposes.

    Needless to say, repeating what is said at these events was never “journalism.” It was simply repeating what the president wanted repeating. Nor have reporters been much troubled by this fact.  If anything, they’ve become even more reliant on it as news has become a 24-hour-per-day business. Thus, in recent decades, reporters have begun to rely more and more on interviews, press conferences and other types of pre-packaged “pseudo events” that could give media outlets something new to report on. And then, of course, the politicians themselves — and the public relations people who work for them — are more than happy to supply the media with “pre-cooked” news, press conferences, prepared statements, and opinions.

    In other words, the presidential media event has always existed for the benefit of presidents. Reporters who fancy themselves as people getting a “scoop” by taking notes at a press conference greatly overvalue their own work. But it’s not hard to see why they imagine the First Amendment describes a special “right” applicable only to them and their friends.

  • California Democrat Threatens "Nukes" If Americans Don't Hand Over Their Guns

    Well that escalated quickly…

    Just days after taking back the House, a Democratic Congressmen has proposed outlawing “military-style semi-automatic assault weapons” and forcing existing owners to sell their weapons or face prosecution.

    In a USA Today op-ed entitled “Ban assault weapons, buy them back, go after resisters,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., argued Thursday that prior proposals to ban assault weapons “would leave millions of assault weapons in our communities for decades to come.”

    Swalwell proposes that the government should offer up to $1,000 for every weapon covered by a new ban, estimating that it would take $15 billion to buy back roughly 15 million weapons – and “criminally prosecute any who choose to defy [the buyback] by keeping their weapons.”

    As NBC News reports, this is a major departure from prior gun control proposals that typically exempt existing firearms; as in the past, Democrats and gun safety groups have carefully resisted proposals that could be interpreted as ‘gun confiscation’, a concept gun rights groups have often invoked as part of a slippery slope argument against more modest proposals like universal background checks.

    And sure enough Swalwell’s egotistical over-reach – going full “Australia” – prompted anger across social media. But it was one particular thread that caught our eye…

    John Cardillo, ‘America Talks Live’ host on Newsmax, tweeted in response: “Make no mistake, Democrats want to eradicate the Second Amendment, ban and seize all guns, and have all power rest with the state. These people are dangerously obsessed with power.”

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    Which prompted a further response from Joe Biggs, a combat vet, “So basically @RepSwalwell wants a war. Because that’s what you would get. You’re outta your fucking mind if you think I’ll give up my rights and give the gov all the power.”

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    To which Rep. Swalwell decided to reply – in a not tyrannical-sounding way at all… “And it would be a short war my friend. The government has nukes. Too many of them. But they’re legit. I’m sure if we talked we could find common ground to protect our families and communities.”

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    “So our government would nuke its own country in order to take guns? Wow,” Biggs responded.

    “Don’t be so dramatic. You claiming you need a gun to protect yourself against the government is ludicrous. But you seem like a reasonable person. If an assault weapons ban happens, I’m sure you’ll follow law,” Swalwell tweeted back.

    And after the furor exploded, Swalwell quickly resorted to the “it was sarcasm” excuse.

    *  *  *

    Now the question is – who will Twitter ban? The conservative-leaning 2nd Amendment-protector raising his ‘social media’ above the pulpit; or the liberal politician who is threatening to unleash nukes on domestic soil in order to ensure the citizenry follow his demands and hand over their means of defense?

    To be continued…

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