[INSERT SNAPPY TITLE TO SOMEHOW ACTUALLY MAKE PEOPLE WANT TO READ ABOUT A TRADE PACT HERE]

October 2nd, 2018

Late Sunday, President Donald Trump announced that the Canadian government had given in and was joining the United States and Mexico in a revision of the NAFTA trade agreement, one of Trump’s key 2016 campaign promises.

Here are some highlights of the agreement:

  1. Canada agreed to ease protections on its dairy market, among them, it will now provide US access to about 3.5% of the market (Canada is likely to compensate dairy farmers);
  2. The US relented on its demand to eliminate the dispute settlement system on Chapter 19, a big win for Canada;
  3. Canada agreed to the terms of the US-Mexico deal, among them a de minimis of US$100 (the amount of imports without duties, which in NAFTA is US$20), stricter rules of origin for autos, a 10 year sunset clause with a 6 year revision and an update on several topics from labor to commerce to intellectual property; and
  4. The US and Canada reached an agreement to protect Canada’s autos from high auto tariffs if the US imposes them under law 232 with a quota of 2.6 million vehicles exported. The latter is similar to the “side-letter” that Mexico agreed with the US that protects 2.4 million vehicles. So far there are no exemptions from steel and aluminum tariffs.

Here’s the text of the deal itself.

What strikes me is that the most contentious ongoing U.S. Canada trade dispute issue, softwood lumber, does not seem to have been addressed. (I say “seem” because a search of the document on the ustr.gov site just brought up an error.)

The Last Refuge was quite happy about the pact:

I’m still going through the USMCA text (even speed reading, it will likely take a while); here’s the link to the AGREEMENT DETAILS. However, many people have asked about how the NAFTA loophole was being closed.

Well, the answer is exactly what it had to be – there was really no option. The U.S. now has veto authority over any trade deal made by Canada and/or Mexico with third parties. This is what Ambassador Lighthizer described as the “Third pillar”.

Last year, despite the inevitability of it, we didn’t think Canada and Mexico would agree to it. The NAFTA loophole was/is a zero-sum issue: Either Can/Mex agree to give veto authority to the U.S. –OR– President Trump had no option to exit NAFTA completely.

Well, Canada and Mexico have agreed to the former, so there’s no need for the latter.

Then they print the text of Article 32.10.

Both Canada and Mexico structured key parts of their independent trade agreements to take advantage of their unique access to the U.S. market. Mexico and Canada generate billions in economic activity through exploiting the NAFTA loophole. China, Asia (writ large), and the EU enter into trade agreements with Mexico and Canada as back-doors into the U.S. market. So long as corporations can avoid U.S. tariffs by going through Canada and Mexico they would continue to exploit this approach.

By shipping parts to Mexico and/or Canada; and by deploying satellite manufacturing and assembly facilities in Canada and/or Mexico; China, Asia and to a lesser extent EU corporations exploited a loophole. Through a process of building, assembling or manufacturing their products in Mexico/Canada those foreign corporations can skirt U.S. trade tariffs and direct U.S. trade agreements. The finished foreign products entered the U.S. under NAFTA rules.

Why deal with the U.S. when you can just deal with Mexico, and use NAFTA rules to ship your product directly into the U.S. market?

This exploitative approach, a backdoor to the U.S. market, was the primary reason for massive foreign investment in Canada and Mexico; it was also the primary reason why candidate Donald Trump, now President Donald Trump, wanted to shut down that loophole and renegotiate NAFTA.

This loophole was the primary reason for U.S. manufacturers to relocate operations to Mexico. Corporations within the U.S. Auto-Sector could enhance profits by building in Mexico or Canada using parts imported from Asia/China. The labor factor was not as big a part of the overall cost consideration as cheaper parts and imported raw materials.

If the U.S. applies the same tariffs to Canada and Mexico we apply to all trade nations, then the benefit of using Canada and Mexico -by those trade nations- is lost. Corporations will no longer have any advantage, and many are likely to just deal directly with the U.S. This is the reason for retaining the Steel and Aluminum tariffs on Canada and Mexico.

I reached out to Vance Ginn of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, who is much more of a fan of the original NAFTA than President Trump, and asked him a few questions about the new agreement:

1. How big a win for President Trump is this, if it is indeed a win?

I’m cautiously optimistic about the USMCA because even though certain industries, like producers of autos and dairy products, will likely benefit, the provisions related to the auto sector will cost Americans more for autos along with potentially reducing profitability of the auto sector as higher priced cars reduce the number consumed. People prosper from trade so the focus should be on reducing trade barriers, which the USMCA may have done but we won’t know until all details are available. Based on what we do know, it appears that there is reason to believe the original NAFTA should have remained intact.

2. What do you see as the most important provision for increasing free trade?

Most important is that there aren’t many changes to the original, beneficial NAFTA. However, the USMCA provision to ban tariffs on digital trade appears to be the most important. In addition, removing trade uncertainty is a big plus, though there is now a 60 day waiting period before it can be voted on by Congress.

3. The summaries I’ve seen don’t cover the longest-running and thorniest US/Canadian trade dispute, namely softwood lumber subsidies and tariffs. What, if anything, does the agreement do to address that dispute?

I haven’t seen anything. Mostly covers the trade dispute of dairy products. One of the things to look for when the details are revealed.

4. How applicable will the 2018 NAFTA precedent be for President Trump’s other trade disputes?

The USMCA could provide a framework to get marginal gains while protecting specific sectors, like manufacturing, comes at a cost. The takeaway shouldn’t be that tariffs are a good bargaining chip because taxes aren’t a reasonable tool to use for that purpose. Taxes should be used to only collect revenue to fund limited government spending. Instead of looking at trade deficits and fair trade rhetoric, there should be a focus on making the U.S. and states as competitive as possible in the global market by instituting sound policies while working to eliminate barriers to trade.

My own impression is that President Trump scored a solid single here thanks to his unorthodox negotiating style, and probably increased his trade negotiating leverage somewhat with other countries.

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Posted in Economics | 2 Comments »

Kavanaugh Kavanaugh Kavanaugh Kavanaugh

October 1st, 2018

So the already prolonged Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings are going to drag out through Friday thanks to Republican Senator Jeff Flake demanding it.

I have two competing theories for the reason behind the delay:

  1. We’ve all died and gone to Hell, and for our sins we’re required to witness the ever-more-rage-inducing hearings FOR ALL ETERNITY!
  2. Sen. Majority leader Mitch McConnell realizes that every week the senate has to stay in session is a week vulnerable Democrats can’t concentrate on fundraising and campaigning back home.

So this week, like last week, is going to sound an awful lot like the “Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich” scene of Being John Malkovich, only with “Kavanaugh” instead of “Malkovich.”

Some links:

  • Andrew Sullivan weighed in on the unfairness of the whole thing:

    At first, I was shocked by what seemed to me to be his shouting and belligerence. But then he drew me in. Of course he was angry. Wouldn’t you be if you were innocent or had no idea where this allegation suddenly came from? He wasn’t being accused of sexual harassment, or sexual abuse as an adult in a way he could have refuted or challenged. His long-lost teenage years as a hard-drinking jock were now under the microscope. Even his yearbook was being dissected. Stupid cruelties and brags from teenage boys were now being used to define his character, dismiss his record as a judge, his sterling references, his respected scholarship, his devoted family, his relationship with women in every capacity. He had to fend off new accusations, ever more grave and ever more vague.

    And there were times, it seems to me, that he simply couldn’t win. If he hadn’t hired and mentored many women, it would be proof he was a misogynist and rapist. But the fact that he did hire and mentor many of them was also proof he was a misogynist and a rapist, who only picked the pretty ones. If he hadn’t shown anger, he would have been obviously inhuman. When he did express rage … well, that was a disqualifying temperament for a judge. It didn’t help that the Democrats made no pretense of having an open mind, or that any glimpse at mainstream media — let alone media Twitter — revealed that it had already picked a side. This was, for the major papers, especially the New York Times, a righteous battle against another white straight male, and the smug, snarky virtue-signaling on Twitter was in overdrive. Even Kavanaugh’s choking-up was mocked — just another contemptible “bro-crier.”

    And so when Lindsey Graham suddenly unloaded on the Democrats, I felt a wave of euphoria. “Yes,” I said to myself. “Go get ’em, Butters!” When Senator Blumenthal got all self-righteous about a single lie destroying someone’s credibility, I actually LOL-ed. Then I remembered all those op-eds and essays that decided to judge one moment in one man’s teens as somehow deeply revealing about … white privilege, toxic masculinity, white supremacy, toxic homosociality, bro culture, alcoholism, patriarchy … you name it, Kavanaugh was suddenly its foul epitome. He was an instant symbol of all the groups of people the left now hates, by virtue of their race or gender or orientation. And maybe he is. But did any of that necessarily make him guilty of anything, except by association?

    Snip.

    To the extent that the hearing went beyond the specifics of Ford’s allegations and sought to humiliate and discredit Kavanaugh for who he was as a teenager nearly four decades ago (a dynamic that was quite pronounced in some Democratic questioning of the nominee), it was deeply concerning. When public life means the ransacking of people’s private lives even when they were in high school, we are circling a deeply illiberal drain. A civilized society observes a distinction between public and private, and this distinction is integral to individual freedom. Such a distinction was anathema in old-school monarchies when the king could arbitrarily arrest, jail, or execute you at will, for private behavior or thoughts. These lines are also blurred in authoritarian regimes, where the power of the government knows few limits in monitoring a person’s home or private affairs or correspondence or tax returns or texts. These boundaries definitionally can’t exist in theocracies, where the state is interested as much in punishing and exposing sin, as in preventing crime. The Iranian and Saudi governments — like the early modern monarchies — seek not only to control your body, but also to look into your soul. They know that everyone has a dark side, and this dark side can be exposed in order to destroy people. All you need is an accusation.

    The Founders were obsessed with this. They realized how precious privacy is, how it protects you not just from the government but from your neighbors and your peers. They carved out a private space that was sacrosanct and a public space which insisted on a strict presumption of innocence, until a speedy and fair trial. Whether you were a good husband or son or wife or daughter, whether you had a temper, or could be cruel, or had various sexual fantasies, whether you were a believer, or a sinner: this kind of thing was rendered off-limits in the public world. The family, the home, and the bedroom were, yes, safe places. If everything were fair game in public life, the logic ran, none of us would survive.

    And it is the distinguishing mark of specifically totalitarian societies that this safety is eradicated altogether by design. There, the private is always emphatically public, everything is political, and ideology trumps love, family, friendship or any refuge from the glare of the party and its public. Spies are everywhere, monitoring the slightest of offenses. Friends betray you, as do lovers. Family members denounce their own mothers and fathers and siblings and sons and daughters. The cause, which is usually a permanently revolutionary one, always matters more than any individual’s possible innocence. You are, in fact, always guilty before being proven innocent. You always have to prove a negative. And no offense at any point in your life is ever forgotten or off the table.

    Naturally, the mob made him issue a partial mea culpa for daring to say rational things about their designated hate object…

  • “When Brett Kavanaugh admitted that he’d been a virgin in high school and the mob took it as corroboration that he was a rape-gang impresario, that’s when I knew we were looking at the madness of crowds.”
  • Step 1: Determine if something is true. Democrats just aren’t interested in that.
  • The Democratic Media Complex is going after Kavanaugh’s kids.
  • This American Thinker piece contends the Kavanaugh fight isn’t over Roe vs. Wade, it’s over the future of gun control.
  • “This may be a watershed moment in Identity Politics.”

    This was a great example of how identity has been weaponized for political gain. Don’t think this is the end of Identity Politics, though. The Democrats need identity to survive. Mao’s Cultural Revolution relied on hearsay and Identity, and was implemented shortly after the Great Leap Forward had failed to propel the nation forward economically. The Democrats are failing massively. They are launching their own Cultural Revolution. I’ve warned friends of mine who are sympathetic to the ’cause’ to be careful. Movements like this eat their young.

    • Last week was a crazy, stupid week in politics. Chance are, this week will be even crazier and stupider…

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    Posted in Democrats, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court | No Comments »

    SDF Fight Against the Islamic State Update

    September 30th, 2018

    There are multiple problems reporting on the ongoing war against the Islamic State. First, the mainstream media hates reporting on any success that might give credit to President Donald Trump. Second, related to the first, none of the national media even seem to have reporters “in theater” where the Syrian Democratic Forces are slowly crushing the life out of the remnants of the Islamic State, and even the international press seems to have curtailed their coverage in the last few months. Third, everything seems to have three or four different names (Baghuz vs. al-Baghuz vs. al-Baghuz Fawqani, etc.), depending on the Arabic transliteration method used. Fourth, the war has reached the stage of “SDF has taken [village you’ve never heard of] from the Islamic State, has met stiff resistance in [another village you’ve never heard of], while also moving into [still a third village you’ve never heard of].”

    As of now, the SDF has taken al-Baghuz Fawqani, has met stiff resistance in Marashidah, and moved into the town of Sosah. Those lie (respectively) south-to-north in the Haijin pocket along the Euphrates just north of the Syrian-Iraqi border, in Deir ez-Zor province.

    Here’s an SDF video on the investment of Sosah, AKA Sousse, which shows footage of the SDF combat bulldozers that have evidently played a key roll in the fight.

    More video showing the liberation of Al-Shajla, a small village between Baghuz and Sosah:

    The general plan seems to be to roll up the pocket south-to north supported by coalition artillery and air support.

    Earlier combat footage:

    Expect more grinding combat in tiny villages you never heard of as the last Islamic State pocket in Syria is slowly, methodically destroyed.

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    Posted in Jihad, Military, video | No Comments »

    Library Additions: Two Books Related to Islam

    September 29th, 2018

    I usually catalog these over on my other blog, but given the subject matter I’ll do the initial cataloging here. Both are books I’m interested in the subject matter, but I was also interested in picking up both to fight efforts to “deplatform” the respective authors.

  • Fawstin, Bosch. My Mohammed Cartoons Vol. 1. Oink Comics, 2018. First edition trade paperback original, a Fine copy, signed by Fawstin on the cover. Mohammed cartoons by the winner of the Draw Mohammed Contest in Garland. Evidently I got one of the last copies.

  • Spencer, Robert. The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS. Bombardier Books, 2018. Presumed first edition hardback (no additional printings listed), a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket.

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    Posted in Jihad | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for September 28, 2018

    September 28th, 2018

    We have survived Kavanaugh Week and made it to fall. On to the LinkSwarm:

  • Republican senate insiders are saying they have the votes to confirm Kavanaugh.
  • Alan Dershowitz: Kavanaugh has “more corroboration on his side”:

  • Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office gets respectful messages opposing Kavanaugh. Ha! Just kidding! “I hope you get raped.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Why are Democrats so violent?” (With examples.)
  • The Kavanaugh attacks were so vile they turned Lindsey Graham into Phil Gramm.
  • Entire nail salon full of women agree: “I’m disgusted at the whole thing. It’s totally political.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
    ​

  • Russian collusion theory: sad as a wrinkled little balloon.
  • Tweet:

  • “Dem Rep Brings Convicted Money Launderer onto Full-Time Staff.”

    Democratic representative Alcee Hastings (Fla.) has officially brought a convicted money launderer onto his full-time staff after paying the individual for “part-time” work over the past several years.

    Dona Nichols Jones, who has received compensation from Hastings since April 2014 for what was listed as “part-time” employment as an aide and community liaison out of his Palm Beach County office, is now listed as a “staff assistant” in his office, Legistorm filingsshow.

    Dona Nichols Jones is married to Mikel Jones, who worked for Rep. Hastings from 1993 to 2011 as a district administrator. The couple was convicted of money laundering, conspiracy, and fraud in 2011 after they had used hundreds of thousands of dollars from a business loan for personal use.

  • Multi-deported illegal alien arrested for multiple baseball bat murders.
  • More on Linus Torvalds caving to Social Justice Warrior demands.
  • Online voting: Why you should be terrified:

    Online voting is a persistently bad idea, one that is only liked by people who are completely ignorant of the security issues, and yet one that seemingly will not go away. If you are suspicious that Stalin’s dictum of it’s not who cast the vote that matters, what’s important is who counts the vote is in play here, you’re not the only one.

  • Did three unnamed UT officials just pull a dirty sex smear on Republican State Senator Charles Schwertner? (Schwertner​ is my state senator, though I do not know him personally.)
  • Cop: “Pull over!” Driver: “No! I drive a Prius!.”
  • A San Antonio Baptismal Book from 1703.
  • “Denton, Denton! You’ve got (clap) baby punching!” (Hat tip: Dwight. You’ll just have to figure out the obscure tagline reference on your own…)
  • “Delay Tactics: The Democrats Just Demanded The Senate Watch All 639 Episodes Of ‘The Simpsons’ Before Kavanaugh Vote.”
  • The Finalists for the Wildlife Comedy Photo Awards.

    (Hat tip: Amy Alkon on Twitter.)

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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Republicans, Supreme Court, Texas, video | No Comments »

    Kavanaugh Smear Twitter Roundup

    September 27th, 2018

    The idea of writing yet another article on why the Kavanaugh smears are transparent garbage is mind-numbing, so here’s a tweet roundup to accomplish the same thing:

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    Posted in Democrats, Supreme Court | No Comments »

    A Smear Too Far

    September 26th, 2018

    There is a growing sense that the Democratic Media Smear Machine Complex has finally overreached with the latest unsubstantiated smear against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Far from demoralizing Republicans our getting Kavanaugh to withdraw, instead it’s stiffened senate spines and galvanized Republican voters heading into midterms.

    Describing earlier calls with other conservative leaders, [Family Research Council president Tony​] Perkins said there is growing dissatisfaction with the manner in which the GOP has treated the accusations, while cautioning that in his own view McConnell and Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley have handled the situation as best they could.

    “There’s a sense that the Republicans have bent over backwards to accommodate only to be kicked in the process,” he told TheDCNF.

    Elsewhere in the interview, Perkins warned that Republican lawmakers would pay an electoral price in the November election should Kavanaugh’s nomination fail. (RELATED: Kavanaugh Addresses His Encounter With Parkland Dad In Written Supplement To Testimony)

    “Conservatives want the Republicans to fight for this,” he said. “This is what the election in 2016 was about and that’s what I believe the midterm election will be about as well.”

    Carrie Severino, chief counsel of the Judicial Crisis Network, detected similar enthusiasm in her own conversations with conservative groups and Kavanaugh allies following the appearance of the Ramirez allegations.

    “Conservatives have been galvanized by the coordinated smears of the Democrats and especially outraged at the publication of discredited allegations.”

    Not only has it galvanized conservatives in general, but some who were resolutely #NeverTrump in 2016 are now falling in line:

    The last-minute ambush validates key assumptions of Trump’s supporters that fueled his rise and buttress him in office, no matter how rocky the ride has been or will become. At least three key premises have been underlined by tawdry events of the last couple of weeks.

    First, that good character is no defense. If you are John McCain, who genuinely tried to do the right thing and carefully cultivated a relationship with the media over decades, they will still call you a racist when you run against Barack Obama.

    If you are Mitt Romney, an exceptionally earnest and decent man, they will make you into a heartless and despicable vulture capitalist, also for the offense of campaigning against Obama.

    If you are Brett Kavanaugh, a respected member of the legal establishment who doesn’t have a flyspeck on his record across decades of public service in Washington, they will come up with dubious accusations of wrongdoing from decades ago when you were a teenager.

    Second, that the media is an unremitting political and cultural adversary. In the Kavanaugh controversy, the press has been wholly on the other side, presuming his guilt and valorizing his accusers and their supporters, including Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono, whose most famous contribution to the debate was telling men to “shut up.” The advocacy isn’t limited to cable networks or the Twitter feeds of journalists. It reaches all the way up the food chain.

    The New Yorker, which imagines itself an upholder of the finest standards of American journalism, which sports a refined monocle-wearing dandy as its mascot, which was once edited by that famous paragon of editorial care, William Shawn, happily published a new accusation against Kavanaugh even though the accuser herself had doubts about it (she only became convinced of it after days of consideration and talks with her lawyer).

    The New York Times passed on the story when it couldn’t find any first-hand corroboration of it. The New Yorker didn’t allow that to become an obstacle.

    Third, that politics isn’t just rough-and-tumble; it’s red in tooth and claw. Process and norms are nice, but they go out the window as soon as something important is at stake, like a potential fifth vote on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

    Senate Democrats may delicately talk about the importance of norms and civility on Sunday shows, but watch how they act. They sat on an accusation throughout an extensive process of vetting and questioning a nominee, then declared it dispositive evidence against his confirmation when it leaked at the 11th hour. They delayed a hearing with Christine Blasey Ford long enough to allow time for the second accuser to be persuaded to come forward.

    All of this plays into Trump’s support. Surely, a reason that the president appealed to many Republicans in the first place, despite his extravagant personal failings, was that they had decided that virtuous men would get smeared and chewed up by the opposition’s meat grinder, so why be a stickler for standards?

    Widespread disgust over the sheer nastiness of Democratic tactics may be (along with a booming economy) why Republicans have passed Democrats in generic favorability polls, the GOP’s highest ratings since 2010, a year that was not notably kind to Democrats at the ballot box.

    Republican lawmakers have a stark choice: confirm Kavanaugh or get slaughtered out in November:

    The rubber is about to meet the road for Senate Republicans. They have a simple choice: they can vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, thereby ending the baseless and unsubstantiated Democrat- and media-fueled smear campaign against him, or they can kiss House and Senate majorities goodbye for the next decade, if not longer.

    In case the election of one Donald J. Trump was not enough to compel the D.C. Republican establishment swamp creatures to wipe the muck from their eyes and see what’s happening with their own constituents, Republican voters have had enough of feckless do-nothings whose careers consist of little more than not doing everything they promised to do.

    Give us the House, the Senate, and the White House, they said, and we’ll repeal Obamacare. Give us power across the major elected branches, and we’ll secure the border, they promised. With a Republican president in the White House and a Republican majority in the Senate, we’ll confirm the most conservative Supreme Court nominees you can imagine, they claimed.

    Snip.

    Republican lawmakers have to understand that their voters have zero patience for their excuses for not doing what they promised. It’s why they elected Trump in the first place. Republican senators failed to repeal Obamacare after promising to do so for years. That was strike one. They’ve steadfastly refused to secure the border, let alone build a barrier along the most porous sections of the nation’s border with Mexico. That was strike two.

    A refusal to vote to confirm Kavanaugh in the face of a blatantly obvious Democrat smear campaign, orchestrated in concert with a compliant and obscenely partisan national media, will be strike three, and there will be no more at-bats. I have spent a career working in and covering politics, and I have never witnessed the kind of anger among rank-and-file GOP voters generated from a combination of the unsubstantiated Democrat attacks on Kavanaugh and the flaccid response of emasculated Republicans.

    Snip.

    If Kavanaugh is not safe from reputation- and career-destroying smears, no one is. Not you. Not your husband. Not your son, father, or brother. If they can destroy Kavanaugh, they can do it to anyone you love and trust, regardless of any mountains of facts or evidence to the contrary.

    Snip.

    if GOP lawmakers show that they do have a spine and are no longer willing to let the other side get away with reputation murder, they might actually keep both their House and Senate majorities in November. As Trump has shown, even discouraged Republican voters are willing to stand behind somebody who’s willing to stand up for them.

    Even the famously calm/embalmed majority leader Mitch McConnell was showing signs of irritation at the sheer dishonest on display from Democrats

    Early on it looked like McConnell was letting Democrats walk all over him by bending over backwards to accommodate their “witnesses” and ever-changing demands. Now it appears he may just have been playing possum while Democrats reeled out enough rope to hang themselves.

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    Posted in Democrats, Republicans, Supreme Court | No Comments »

    James Woods Refuses To Delete Tweet

    September 25th, 2018

    Here’s a follow-up to Sunday’s story about Twitter locking actor James Woods’ account:

    Actor James Woods has been locked out of his Twitter account over a two-month-old tweet that was found to be in violation of the tech company’s rules.

    The tweet, posted July 20, included a hoax meme that said it came from Democrats and encouraged men not to vote in the midterm elections.

    Woods said he received an email from Twitter on Thursday saying the tweet “has the potential to be misleading in a way that could impact an election.”

    The email said Woods can use his account again if he deletes the tweet, but would be suspended from the social media platform permanently if there are repeated abuses.

    Woods told The Associated Press Sunday he interpreted the message to mean he’ll be allowed back on Twitter only if he decides to do what Twitter says.

    “Free speech is free speech — it’s not Jack Dorsey’s version of free speech,” Woods said, referring to Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey.

    “The irony is, Twitter accused me of affecting the political process, when in fact, their banning of me is the truly egregious interference,” Woods said. “Because now, having your voice smothered is much more disturbing than having your vocal chords slit. If you want to kill my free speech, man up and slit my throat with a knife, don’t smother me with a pillow.”

    Good for him. Twitter’s ramped up banning conservative to atone for their own “sin” of not preventing Donald Trump from beating Hillary Clinton in 2016.

    If Twitter insists on banning a famous actor with 1.7 million followers over an obvious parody meme, they’ll ban anyone for any reason.

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    Posted in Media Watch | No Comments »

    Pat Condell on “Brexit Morons”

    September 24th, 2018

    Pat Condell is in fine form over the continued contempt the remain camp displays towards Brexit supporters:

    “We understand now very clearly how despised we are by the political class and by the wider progressive intelligentsia who have shown that they really do regard us as a lower order whose opinions shouldn’t count.”

    “The privileged minority who behave like a majority, and who feel entitled to steer the whole of society from inside their little progressive bubble as if by divine right. These are the people who have divided us. All the anger and all the bitterness is coming
    from them, and it’s being stoked daily in the media by them the people who won’t accept the result and who are now pushing for a second referendum.”

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, video | No Comments »

    Twitter Suspends Actor James Woods

    September 23rd, 2018

    Being a famous actor with over 1.7 million followers isn’t enough to keep Twitter from suspending your account if you post a satirical meme making fun of Democrats:

    Outspoken conservative actor James Woods was suspended from posting to Twitter over a two-month-old satirical meme which very clearly parodies a Democratic advertisement campaign. While the actor’s tweets are still visible, he is unable to post new content.

    The offending tweet from July 20, features three millennial-aged men with “nu-male smiles” and text that reads “We’re making a Woman’s Vote Worth more by staying home.” Above it, Woods writes “Pretty scary that there is a distinct possibility this could be real. Not likely, but in this day and age of absolute liberal insanity, it is at least possible.”

    According to screenshots provided by an associate of Woods’, Twitter directed the actor to delete the post on the grounds that it contained “text and imagery that has the potential to be misleading in a way that could impact an election.”

    In other words, James Woods, who has approximately 1.72 million followers, was suspended because liberals who don’t identify as women might actually take the meme seriously and not vote.

    In a statement released through associate Sara Miller, Woods said “You are a coward, @Jack,” referring to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. “There is no free speech for Conservatives on @Twitter.”

    The meme in question:

    Not only is Twitter’s staff desperate to protect Democrats during the midterms, they must actually believe in their heart of hearts that male feminists are complete idiots.

    Some tweets:

    ‘

    Who’s next to be suspended for tTweeting While Conservative?

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    Posted in Media Watch | 2 Comments »

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