Ho-Ho-Holidays!

No doubt you've all been waiting for the latest from renowned world-affairs analyst Piers Morgan on America's newfound return to international respectability:

... Trump also praised China for out-smarting America in business.

They don’t hear that very often, and certainly not from US presidents.

But it’s true, they have, and Trump’s made it clear he’s not going to make it so easy for them going forward.

Knowing the Chinese mentality a bit from filming a documentary in Shanghai a few years ago, I’d say this a very good strategy.

They respond well to a respectful carrot-and-stick approach, as indeed does Trump.

Let's zoom in for a moment on the cutline, though:

In Vietnam, Trump offered to mediate in the South China Sea dispute, and made encouraging noises about ‘fair and reciprocal’ two-way trade deal, both vitally important issues. Here is* Trump and Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang in front of a statue of Ho Chi Mihn. The President managed to not criticize his hosts

My, my, my. Uncle Ho doesn't usually get off so lightly when American heads of state are involved. Indeed, the whole business of casually posing within camera range of icons of communist mass mayhem seems -- how's that, The Fox Nation?

As the Weekly Standard notes, "the Obama-Che photo was even worse than it looked":

President Obama boasted on his trip that he wasn't going to tell Cubans to "tear something down," a reference to President Reagan's famous exhortation to tear down the Berlin wall. Of course, there's no wall - only ocean - separating Cuba from the rest of the world to tear down. But Obama could have at least told Castro to tear down the monument to repression that he was happily photographed in front of.

Because that's what real presidents do! Right, Piers Morgan?

Throughout his tour, Trump avoided publicly criticizing any of his hosts.

For a man who delights in criticizing absolutely everyone, this must have taken quite extraordinary self-control.

But it paid off. The press coverage from this trip, both in the countries concerned and in the US, is the best Trump’s enjoyed since becoming President.

That must have been a relief. Just consider what happened when ...

Say it ain't so, The Washington Times! Did the Kenyan usurper indulge in another selfie?

For a President who wants to stand on the “right side of history” – posing in front of a mural of an Argentinian Marxist revolutionary during his trip to Cuba probably wasn’t the best choice.

In a photo-op Monday, President Barack Obama and his delegation stood near a massive mural of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, a faithful follower of Karl Marx, and solider** feared by many for his brutality. Mr. Guevara personally oversaw the butchering of Cuba’s Catholics.

So he "snapped" the photo by either -- posing or standing, take your pick.

It's probably true that we overreacted to the vermin press a little bit in 1942. A more appropriate remedy is public ridicule. Please, consider it your constitutional duty to go forth and make fun of these folks. Justice Brandeis wants you to!

* They is?

** [sic], if you're scoring along at home

The party press: Circular firing squad

The "buh-buh-buh-HILLARY!" storm hasn't quite blown over yet -- the top story at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network is still "Pressure mounts on Mueller to resign over FBI ties to dossier scandal"* -- but the evening's No. 2 story introduces an entertaining twist:

The opposition research project that ultimately produced the controversial Trump-Russia dossier was initially backed by the conservative Washington Free Beacon website, it was revealed** late Friday.

Free Beacon editor Matthew Continetti said in a statement that the publication had retained Fusion GPS to "provide research on multiple candidates in the [2016] Republican presidential primary," as well as Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

Continetti's statement denied that the Free Beacon "had contact with, knowledge of, or provided payment for any work performed by Christopher Steele," the former British spy who produced the now-infamous dossier. 

So who did all the revelating, anyway?

... Free Beacon's connection with Fusion GPS was first reported by the Washington Examiner. According to the Examiner's report, lawyers for the Free Beacon told the House Intelligence Committee that the website funded the opposition research project between the fall of 2015 and the spring of 2016.

At some point after that, Fusion GPS was retained by Mark Elias, an attorney representing the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. Fusion GPS then hired Steele to compile the dossier.

Hard to tell about "first reported" -- the Examiner's report says 6:47 p.m., and I don't see a time stamp on the Times's version, which is sourced to "people briefed on the conversation." (One of the reporters involved tweeted a link to it an hour ago, by Twitter's reckoning, which would be around 7:20, and the Free Beacon's non-apology was posted at 7:02.) But either way, we have Fox fronting a report by one right-wing outlet calling out an even more reprehensible right-wing outfit, about which process you have to admit there's a certain charm. Back to Fox:

... "We stand by our reporting, and we do not apologize for our methods," Continetti added. "We consider it our duty to report verifiable information, not falsehoods or slander, and we believe that commitment has been well demonstrated by the quality of the journalism that we produce."

Can't wait to see what comes around on the guitar next.

Anyway, if you don't keep up with outfits like the Free Beacon, here's its editor a few months ago, holding forth on The Media at the National Review:

Pro tip? If you can't "separate the signal from the noise" in survey research, you shouldn't be writing about it in the first place.

* The tamer inside hed, "Mueller facing new Republican pressure to resign in Russia probe," demonstrates yet again that verb voice isn't the only thing affecting the demonstration of agency in headlines.
** The dummy-subject passive strikes me as especially British; UK visitors, is this the natural way of handling the attribution here?

Pronouns: The reunion tour

The Fabulous Pronouns are back on the road! Take it away, The Washington Examiner:

President Trump referred to himself during his first speech to a joint session of Congress at a much lower rate than former President Barack Obama did in his first address in February 2009, roughly half as often.

Trump used the word "I" 40 times and said "my" 12 times during his speech at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday evening. During Obama's first such address eight years earlier, he said "I" a total of 68 times and "my" on eight occasions.

Sigh. I'm not seeing a "rate" here (or a significance test, though that claim was echoed as the story spread to the Fox Nation). If your interest is in first-person singular pronouns as a proportion of total words, rather than per speech, per day or something, you'll have to calculate it yourself. Going by the figures the Examiner provides for Trump and CNN's transcript, we have 52 FPS pronouns in 4,828 words, or a little less than 1.1%. The Kenyan usurper (transcript from the Washington Post) had 76 FPS pronouns in 5,940 words, or a little less than 1.3%, in his 2009 address.

Why didn't the Examiner count "me"? Interesting question! (Apparently "pronoun," like "significant," means whatever the Washington Examiner wants it to mean.) Adding "me" to the mix, I get 1.4% for Obama, 1.2% for Trump. But before we worry about whether one difference or another is significant, meaning unlikely at a predetermined confidence level to have come about by chance, it might be worth looking at the distribution of pronouns in various State of the Union addresses. A significance test would help understand whether this comparison is more like LBJ to Nixon or like Bush Jr. to his (apparently quite uppity) dad. It wouldn't explain why this speech feature was related to the underlying social condition it purports to explain or what it might say about broader political circumstances.
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Today in redneckery

Good thing your standard Fox reader doesn't get beyond the headline. First, though, enjoy this bit of Fair 'n' Balanced copyediting:

Bill Clinton suggested this week that GOP nominee Donald Trump's base is comprised mostly of "rednecks."

The story is credited to the Washington Examiner, where the lede is a hair different:

Bill Clinton suggested this week that GOP nominee Donald Trump's base comprised mostly "rednecks."

By their prescriptivism shall ye know them, but the question here is how we got from what the former president said to the Examiner hed:

... to Fox's "new tag for Trump fans." Here -- according to the Examiner -- is the quote itself:

"The other guy's base is what I grew up in," the former president said during a campaign stop in Fort Myers, Fla. "You know, I'm basically your standard redneck."

By the time things reach Drudge, of course, the circle is unbroken:

I suppose there has to be some way to pass the time while waiting for the next explosive email shoe to drop: OMG Clinton thought it would be nice to "see Putin be less defensive toward a relationship with the United States so that we could work together on some issues"! OMG Clinton staffers questioned Master Murdoch's ostentatious piety! OMG somebody called Chelsea a "spoiled brat"! The overall prize, I think, goes to culture war correspondent Todd Starnes:

Mr. President,  I know some rednecks. And you, sir, are no redneck.

Todd? So do I, and yes he is. And if you bring up sweet tea and the Bible again, people might start asking why you and your stablemates listened when Master Trump told you to stop covering a massive slow-onset natural disaster.