Biden Corruption: Trickle Of Information Becomes Flow Becomes Flood Becomes Avalanche

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  • Kindly give the Manhattan Contrarian some credit for calling this one correctly at the very earliest stages. On the other hand, this was not a difficult call to make; you had to be either blind or braindead or corrupt or all three not to call it correctly. The category “all three” applies to the entirety of the progressive, Washington and mainstream media blob. . . .

  • By October 6, 2019, I was already ready to make the call, which I did in a post titled “The Bidens: ‘Stone Cold Crooked.’” That post covered in considerable detail the facts as to the Bidens and Ukraine as then known; but really, this was not complicated. Dubious Ukrainian energy companies in the crosshairs of prosecutors do not pay $1 million per year for attendance at two annual board meetings to people with Hunter Biden’s background (no experience in the energy industry) supposedly to get the benefit of their business acumen. . . .

  • The intervening year has seen mostly only a trickle of new information about Biden family corruption, with a new tidbit or two coming out every now and then. . . .

  • Now, suddenly, in just the past ten days, the trickle of information about Biden corruption has gone to a flow, and then to a flood, and just today to an avalanche. . . .

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Manhattan Contrarian Quiz: New York Times 2016 Versus 2020?

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  • You are probably aware that all mainstream media have been shrinking their staffs for years, in the face of declining circulation and advertising revenue. The New York Times has not been spared. According to MacroTrends here, the number of employees at the New York Times Company has shrunk from almost 12,000 in 2005 to only about 4,500 in 2019 (although that 2019 figure does represent a small uptick from a low in 2014)

  • But have things gotten so bad at Pravda that they have been reduced to re-running stories from four years ago as if they were news today, hoping no one will notice?

  • As you consider that question, I ask you to take today’s Manhattan Contrarian Quiz. I will post below long excerpts from two New York Times stories, one of which ran in October 2016, and the other yesterday. Your task will be to see if you can determine which one of these stories is four years old, and which is supposedly “news.” You will not be surprised to learn that both stories concern the Trump campaigns for President, focusing on how Trump is doomed to lose disastrously in a matter of a mere days.

  • New York Times Story Number 1

  • Donald J. Trump’s support has plunged across the swing-state map. . . . Having muted their criticism of Mr. Trump in hopes that he could at least run competitively through Election Day, Republicans must decide in the next few days . . . whether to seek distance from his wobbly campaign. . . .

  • Mr. Trump has already slipped perceptibly in public polls, trailing widely this week in Pennsylvania and by smaller margins in Florida and North Carolina — three states he cannot afford to lose. But private polling by both parties shows an even more precipitous drop, especially among independent voters, moderate Republicans and women. . . . [A] Republican strategist involved in several House races in swing states, said she was dismayed by a sudden exodus of independent voters in more diverse parts of the country. “They are really starting to pull away from Trump,” said [the strategist], describing his soaring unpopularity with independents as entering “uncharted territory.” . . .

  • [A] petroleum executive and Republican donor from Illinois, said his fellow contributors were no longer optimistic that Mr. Trump will win, and they have lowered their sights. . . . Sensing new opportunity, Democrats intend to redouble their efforts to tie Republican candidates to Mr. Trump in states and districts with large numbers of college-educated voters and minorities. . . .

  • New York Times Story Number 2

  • In public, . . . Trump and his campaign team project a sense of optimism and bravado. When they meet with Republican donors and state party leaders, . . . aides insist they are fully capable of achieving a close victory. . . . On television and in campaign appearances, Mr. Trump and his children dismiss public polls that suggest that his prospects are bleak. . . . Away from their candidate and the television cameras, some of Mr. Trump’s aides are quietly conceding just how dire his political predicament appears to be, and his inner circle has returned to a state of recriminations and backbiting. . . .

  • Less than three weeks before Election Day, there is now an extraordinary gulf separating Mr. Trump’s experience of the campaign from the more sobering political assessments of a number of party officials and operatives, according to interviews with nearly a dozen Republican strategists. . . . Among some of Mr. Trump’s lieutenants, there is an attitude of grit mixed with resignation. . . .

  • Mr. Trump’s advisers have not given up hope for a reversal in fortune. Facing a financial crunch, his campaign appears to be concentrating its advertising on a handful of states that provide a slim route to an Electoral College victory. . . . “The reality is they are probably out of time,” said . . ., a California-based Republican strategist.

  • OK, cast your vote. Answer below the fold.

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The Bidens: Media Selling A Preposterous Alternate Reality

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  • It was Wednesday October 14 that the New York Post broke its big story about the Hunter Biden laptop and emails, confirming Joe Biden’s personal involvement in Hunter’s Ukraine/Burisma corruption.

  • The big news the following day was the efforts of social media giants Facebook and Twitter to limit the circulation of this story on their platforms.

  • But how about the rest of the media? Clearly, they were all aware of this story. So, how would they report it? Could they really just ignore a story of this significance in the final stages of a presidential election campaign?

  • With the passage of a few days, the answer to that question is now in. An official talking point was developed, and somehow got adopted by every single organ of the Democrat media. . . .

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The Bidens: Corruption Of Progressive Media Rises To A Whole New Level

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  • Yesterday, the New York Post broke its big story sourced from Hunter Biden’s emails, headlined “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad.” Probably, every regular reader of this blog is already familiar with that story.

  • I congratulate the Post on getting and breaking this story. The Post has now revealed definitive evidence of criminal conduct that VP Biden has previously denied.

  • But recognize that the new documents that the Post has uncovered aren’t anything that you didn’t already know had to exist. The chance that a Ukrainian oligarch hired Hunter Biden a month after his father took charge of US/Ukraine relations, and then paid Hunter $3+ million just to be friendly, was always exactly zero.

  • So the significance of these new documents is not that they reveal corruption that you didn’t already know about, but rather that they add the additional element of specifically contradicting previous lame attempts at denials by the candidate, which are now demonstrated to be incontrovertibly false.

  • And then there’s the even bigger story of the corruption of the media. . . .

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The Washington Post Does George Floyd: Toxic And Patronizing

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  • Over at the Washington Post, they are in the midst of running a big six-part series with the title “George Floyd’s America.” The subtitle is “Examining systemic racism and racial injustice in the post-civil rights era.” So far, two of the pieces have run.

  • On October 8 it was “Born with two strikes: How systemic racism shaped Floyd’s life and hobbled his ambition”; and on October 12, it was “Looking for his ticket out.” Forthcoming pieces, it appears, will cover the subjects of housing, criminal justice, healthcare, and the police.

  • In this post, I’ll take a somewhat detailed look at the first entry in the series, “Born with two strikes.” This is as good a place as any to get some insight into what currently passes for thinking on topics relating to race at the Washington Post and other woke media.

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The Difference That A "Packed" Supreme Court Would Make

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  • The impending confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court promises to bring us a Court with a 6-3 “conservative” majority. As a result, Democrats could be facing decades in the Supreme Court wilderness.

  • Even if Biden wins the election for President, the only member of the Court likely to retire in the next few years is Justice Breyer, who recently turned 82; but since Breyer is one of the Court’s “liberals,” Biden’s replacing of Breyer would not change the Court’s ideological balance. The next oldest Justice is Clarence Thomas, currently 72, which is youthful by today’s Supreme Court standards.

  • But there’s another possibility. Congress could potentially increase the number of Justices, giving Biden as President the ability theoretically to add four, or six, or even more Justices in an attempt to cement a permanent Democratic majority.

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