Lefties Mourn End To Facebook Censorship

January 12th, 2025

As when Elon Musk dismantled the censorship apparatus at Twitter, leftists are bemoaning Meta/Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg ending “fact checking” at Facebook as though it was the end of some sort of golden age. What they are actually bemoaning is that they will no longer be able to suppress political opinions they disagree with.

Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan to spell out just how the Biden Administration’s censorship regime worked.

I don’t necessarily trust Zuckerberg’s assertions that Facebook’s original intentions were pure as the driven snow when he started putting fact checkers in place (and that’s one reason I’m not editing out things like “um,” “like,” and “you knows,” as these may be verbal tells when he’s glossing over or eliding information rather than just verbal throat clearing), but I think his depiction of how government pressure for censorship came down is probably accurate.

  • Mark Zuckerberg: “We’re just going to have the system where these these third party fact checkers and they can check the worst of the worst stuff right, so, um, things that are very clear hoaxes…so so that was sort of the original intent we put in place the system, and it just sort of veered from
    there.”

  • MZ: “I think to some degree it’s because some of the people whose job is to do factchecking, a lot of their industry is focused on political factchecking so they’re just kind of veered in that direction.” Left unsaid is that everywhere in the MSM, that “fact checking” is slanted to the left and has been for a long time.
  • MZ: “I think people just felt like the fact checkers were too biased. Not necessarily even so much in what they ruled, although sometimes I think people would disagree with that a lot of the time, it was just what types of things they chose to even go in fact check in the first time, in the first place.”
  • MZ: “After having gone through that whole exercise, it, um, I don’t know, it’s something out of, like, you know, Nineteen Eighty-Four. One of these books where it’s just, like, it really is a slippery slope, and it just got to a point where it’s just ‘OK, this is destroying so much trust, especially in the United States, to have this program.” Maybe it’s just me, but I kind of feel that when the guy forced to institute the censorship regime compares the censorship regime instituted under his watch to Nineteen Eighty-Four, maybe we ought to consider taking him at his word and not automatically write it off as hyperbole.
  • MZ: “Covid was the other big one, where that was, that was also very tricky, because you know at the beginning it was, you know, it’s like a legitimate public health crisis.”
  • MZ: “We didn’t know at the time how dangerous it was going to be, so at the beginning it kind of seemed like, OK, we should give a little bit of deference to the government and the health authorities on how we should play this.”
  • MZ: “But when it went from, you know, two weeks to flatten the curve to, um, you know, in…like in the beginning, it was, like, OK, there aren’t enough masks, masks aren’t that important to then it’s like oh no you have to wear a mask and, you know, all, the like, everything was shifting around.”
  • MZ: “It just become very difficult to kind of follow, and this really hit the most extreme, I’d say, during the Biden Administration, when they were trying to roll out um the vaccine program.”
  • MZ: “I’m generally pretty pro rolling out vaccines. I think, on balance, the vaccines are more positive than negative. But I think that while they’re trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who was basically arguing against it, and they pushed us super hard, um, to take down things that were honestly were true.”
  • MZ: “They basically pushed us and said, you know, anything that says that vaccines might have side effects you basically need to take down.”
  • Joe Rogan: “Who’s ‘they?’ Who’s telling you to take down things that talk about vaccine side effects?”
  • MZ: “It was people in the in the Biden Administration.”
  • Rogan talks about the difficulty of moderating at scale. Zuckerberg says one-third to one-half of the planet use one of Meta’s services on a daily basis.
  • Zuckerberg says that he wasn’t directly involved in these discussions, or in moderation (again, grains of salt here), but that a lot of the Biden Administration censorship demands are “documented. I mean, because, uh, you know, Jim Jordan and the the house had this whole investigation and committee into into the the kind of government censorship around stuff like this, and we produced all these documents, and it’s all in the public domain.”
  • MZ: “They wanted us to take down this meme of Leonardo DiCaprio looking at a TV, talking about how 10 years from now or something, um, you know, you’re going to see an ad that says OK, if you took a Covid vaccine, you’re eligible [for] this kind of payment, like this sort of like class
    action lawsuit type meme. And they’re like ‘No you have to take that down.’ We just said no, we’re not we’re not going to take down humor and satire. We’re not going to take down things that are that are true.”

  • MZ: “It flipped a bit. Biden, when he was, he gave some statement at some point, I don’t know if it was a press conference or to some journalist, where he basically was like these guys are killing people and, and um, and I don’t know. Then, like, all these different agencies and branches of government basically just like started investigating and coming after our company it was it was brutal it was brutal.”
  • Rogan slamming government supressing basic disease recovery mechanisms to boost the vaccine snipped. That “red-pilled a lot of people.”
  • MZ: “Trust in media has fallen off a cliff.”

    • Should we trust Zuckerberg? To quote Omar Little from The Wire, “I trust his fear.” As I noted in Friday’s LinkSwarm, the MAGA winds must be blowing very strong indeed for Zuckerberg to flip so quickly and completely. Zuckerberg probably had misgivings while these things were going on, but unlike Musk, would never have voiced them so openly had Trump not won.

    Also, as Tim Pool noted, “Facebook built a portal for Feds to log into their system to flag ‘misinformation.’ For more than a decade, the federal government, the FBI, the CIA, I think the NSA, had backdoor access to Facebook as well as other companies.”

    Time for an update to this old classic

    The Jim Jordan report Zuckerberg references is the final committee report on the weaponization of the American government to censor opposing political viewpoints. The report is not only hard to find online (it’s not in the first page of Google results), it is so large (17,014 pages) that it seems to be literally unreadabe in Firefox, as whatever Acrobat window thing they have wants to jump back when you scroll to the second page. As a partial remedy, I have (with a bit of difficulty) captured the introduction and posted it here, though the paragraph breaks may not be exact.

    The founding documents of the United States articulate the ideals of the American republic and guarantee to all American citizens fundamental rights and liberties. For too long, however, the American people have faced a two-tiered system of government—one of favorable treatment for the politically-favored class, and one of intimidation and unfairness for the rest of American citizens. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, the contrast between these two tiers has become even more stark.

    To stand up for the American people, the House of Representatives authorized the creation of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government within the Committee on the Judiciary. During the 118th Congress, the Select Subcommittee worked to “bring abuses by the Federal Government into the light for the American people and ensure that Congress, as their elected representatives, can take appropriate action to remedy them.”2 The mission of the Select Subcommittee has been to protect and strengthen the fundamental rights of the American people.

    By investigating, uncovering, and documenting executive branch misconduct, the Select Subcommittee has taken important steps to ensure that the federal government no longer works against the American people. This work is not complete, but it is a necessary first step to stop the weaponization of the federal government. From its inception, the Select Subcommittee sought to protect free speech and expand upon the constitutional protections of the First Amendment. Throughout the Biden-Harris Administration, multiple federal agencies, including the White House, have engaged in a vast censorship campaign against so-called mis-, dis-, or malinformation.

    The Select Subcommittee revealed the extent of the “censorship-industrial complex,” detailing how the federal government and law enforcement coordinated with academics, nonprofits, and other private entities to censor speech online. The Select Subcommittee also revealed how the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Election Integrity Partnership—created “at the request of” the Department of Homeland Security3—urged Big Tech to censor Americans online.

    The Select Subcommittee’s oversight has had a real effect in expanding the First Amendment. In a Supreme Court dissent, three justices noted how the Select Subcommittee’s investigation revealed “that valuable speech was . . . suppressed.”4 In a letter to the Committee and Select Subcommittee, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the Biden-Harris Administration “pressured” Facebook to censor Americans.5 Facebook gave in to this pressure, demoting posts and content that was highly relevant to political discourse in the United States. In response to the Select Subcommittee’s oversight, universities and other groups shut down their “disinformation” research and federal agencies slowed their communications with Big Tech.

    Pursuant to its mission, the Select Subcommittee also examined the weaponization of federal law-enforcement resources. Many FBI whistleblowers have disclosed to the Select Subcommittee examples of waste, fraud, and abuse at the FBI. When these whistleblowers came forward, the Bureau brutally retaliated against many of them for breaking ranks—suspending them without pay, preventing them for seeking outside employment, and even purging suspected disloyal employees. Through its oversight, the Select Subcommittee revealed how the FBI abused its security clearance adjudication process to target whistleblowers, with the FBI even admitting its error and reinstating the security clearance of one decorated FBI employee.

    The Select Subcommittee also investigated the executive branch’s actions in intruding on and interfering with Americans’ constitutionally protected activity. The Select Subcommittee revealed and stopped the FBI’s effort to target Catholic Americans because of their religious views, detailed the Justice Department’s directives to target parents at school board meetings, stopped the Internal Revenue Service from making unannounced visits to American taxpayers’ homes, caused the Justice Department to change its internal policies to respect the separation of powers and limit subpoenas for Legislative Branch employees, and highlighted the vast warrantless financial surveillance of Americans by federal law enforcement.

    The Select Subcommittee has examined the federal government’s efforts to interfere in our elections, highlighting the FBI’s fervent efforts to “prebunk” a story about the Biden family’s influence peddling scheme in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. The Select Subcommittee’s work also demonstrated how the Biden campaign colluded with the intelligence community to falsely discredit this story as “Russian disinformation.”

    This report accumulates and presents the findings of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government during the 118th Congress. The federal government must work for all Americans, not just the favored few. As the country moves forward from the disastrous policies of the Biden-Harris Administration, it is important that policymakers ensure that the federal government can no longer be weaponized against American citizens. “Freedom is fragile thing,” Ronald Reagan warned in 1967, “it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.”6 The Select Subcommittee’s work in the 118th Congress has been a start to a long and difficult process to better protect Americans’ fundamental freedoms. But our work is not the end. More must be done to ensure that our fundamental liberties and cherished rights continue for Americans to come.

    1 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE para.
    2 (U.S. 1776). 2169 CONG. REC. H130 (daily ed. Jan. 10, 2023) (statement of Rep. Tom Cole).
    3 STAFF OF SELECT SUBCOMM. ON THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE FED. GOV’T OF THE H. COMM. ON THE JUDICIARY, 118TH CONG., THE WEAPONIZATION OF ‘DISINFORMATION’ PSEUDO-EXPERTS AND BUREAUCRATS: HOW THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PARTNERED WITH UNIVERSITIES TO CENSOR AMERICANS’ POLITICAL SPEECH (Comm. Print Nov. 6, 2023) [hereinafter “NOV. 6 REPORT”].
    4 Murthy v. Missouri, 603 U.S. 43, 78 (2024) (Alito, J., dissenting).
    5 Letter from Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Exec. Officer, Meta, to Rep. Jim Jordan, Chairman, H. Comm. on the Judiciary (Aug. 26, 2024).
    6 Governor Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address (Jan. 5, 1967).

    And remember this was all part of a coordinated international censorship regime. The recently shut down Center for Global Engagement, started under Obama, was a a key proponent of this censorship regime.

    When lefties bemoan the change in Facebook, this is what they’re lamenting: The ability to censor the free speech of fellow Americans under the direct mandate of federal government agencies working on behalf of the Democrat Party to suppress the speech of their ideological opponents.

    Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, video | 4 Comments »

    Prager On Why California Is Burning

    January 11th, 2025

    Much of this Prager U video on why California wildfires are burning out of control will be familiar to you, but this succinct six minute overview does a good job of hitting the highlights.

  • “In 2018 [government owned Pacific Gas & Electricity] spent $2.4 billion on renewables. By comparison, in 2017, it spent $1.4 billion on existing infrastructure.”
  • “The forests grow ever more dense [because California Democrats have all but outlawed logging].”
  • “Brush builds up because controlled burns are not permitted.”
  • “Developers build in wilderness areas.”
  • “The dominant power company chases its renewable energy mandate at the expense of nuts and bolts line maintenance.”
  • “PG&E is in bankruptcy, sued into oblivion, with no viable plan to fix the grid.”
  • “Instead of bringing vital infrastructure into the 21st century, California is voluntarily turning itself into a third world country. That’s what happens when progressives and environmentalists run things.”
  • “The Golden State isn’t going green, it’s going broke and it’s going dark.”

    • Bonus Babylon Bee: “Nation Gets Preview Of Gavin Newsom Presidency.”

    As the entire nation watched in horror at the devastation being unleashed on California by multiple wildfires, the American people were treated to a preview of what a Gavin Newsom presidency might look like.

    As fires raged throughout Los Angeles and surrounding hills this week and forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their homes. Gavin Newsom surveyed the fires as Americans saw firsthand what a Newsom presidency might look like.

    “A flaming hellscape? Ok, good to know that’s what we’d have to look forward to,” North Dakota resident Mark Larsen said. “Add in rampant taxes, thousands of illegal aliens pouring across the border, and no prosecution for criminals? The country’s future has never looked brighter. Brighter because of fire.”

    Many critics have linked the wildfires to Newsom’s governance, or lack thereof, and are grateful to know now what the entire country would look like if he were president. The governor was quick to defend his record.

    “My results speak for themselves,” Newsom said to reporters. “And when I am president, I can assure every American that the United States will look exactly like California.”

    Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Democrats, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, video | 5 Comments »

    LinkSwarm For January 10, 2024

    January 10th, 2025

    Trump is sentenced to nothing, Los Angeles burns, the Rotherham scandal boils, Biden flips off the nation (twice) before leaving office, Trudeau to go, and Germany starts disarming people who disagree with the government. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Obviously Biden felt he hadn’t screwed Americans enough before leaving office, so he made sure to strike a blow against low gas prices one more time on the way out.

    President Joe Biden will ban new offshore oil and gas drilling in more than 625 million acres of federal waters, the White House announced Monday, striking a final blow against domestic energy production just two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

    The outgoing president is set to use his authority under the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect offshore areas along the East Coast, West Coast, eastern Gulf of Mexico, and additional portions of the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska from future oil and gas leasing.

    Snip.

    The move comes on the same day that Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris is set to be certified by Congress. Trump has vowed to increase oil and gas production on a simple three-word energy policy: “Drill, baby, drill.” Biden’s latest action, however, poses an obstacle to the incoming president’s energy plans.

    Asked about the ban during a Monday radio interview, Trump told host Hugh Hewitt he would “unban it immediately.”

    “It’s really our greatest economic asset,” Trump said.

    Established 72 years ago, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act governs energy leasing activities in submerged lands under U.S. jurisdiction that extend three miles beyond the shoreline. An open-ended provision in federal law gives a president the authority to permanently withdraw portions of the Outer Continental Shelf without providing a way for a succeeding president to reverse course.

    Therefore, the solution may not be as simple as Trump signing an executive order on his first day in office to undo the action. Congress would need to take legislative action. Or if Trump decides to revoke Biden’s withdrawal, that action may prompt legal challenges.

    Democrats seem bound and determined to keep Americas broke for the sake of their environmental virtue signaling.

  • Those 34 hush money “felonies” were so serious that President Trump was sentenced to serve no jail time.
  • LA wildfire toll: “10 Dead, 10,000 Structures Burned In Los Angeles Area Inferno As Fire Damage Could Exceed $150 Billion.”
  • During the fire, hydrants ran out of water because nobody in the Democrat-dominated state could be bothered to fill the reservoir.
  • How badly does Los Angeles Democratic mayor Karen Bass suck? Just look at this timeline. She thought it was more important to jet off the Ghana than stay around when LA was faced with wildfire weather.
  • It gets better: A man apprehended setting fires with a blowtorch around LA won’t be charged with arson. Because I guess burning people’s homes is social justice or something.
  • Canadian Prime Minister and all-around tool Justin Trudeau is resigning, though not until his successor is chosen in general elections. Canadian citizens enjoyed rough per-capita GDP economic parity with U.S. citizens when he took office. Now? “The gap between the Canadian and American economies has now reached its widest point in nearly a century.” And workers in Canada earn less than workers in even the poorest U.S. states. Heck of a job, Justin!
  • After an Elon Musk tweet brought up the Rotherham child gang rape scandal again, Keir Starmer’s Labour government went into full denial mode.

    Gangs of predominantly Pakistani men have been raping and torturing vulnerable underage girls over the past three decades, with several independent inquiries having indicated systemic failures to investigate the crimes (because it would be ‘racist’). Three separate reports, published in 2013, 2014 and 2015 revealed that local politicians and police covered up the rapes.

    Of note, foreigners are three times as likely to be arrested for sex offenses vs. British citizens.

    In response Elon Musk launched an attack on Starmer, accusing him of failing to properly investigate and prosecute the gangs, which he called a “state-sponsored evil,” and alleging that Starmer was “complicit in the RAPE OF BRITAIN.”

    And as The Telegraph notes, the state “had to bury the story.”

    Denial about the extent of the problem is rooted deep in Britain’s political system. At times, it appears that the government’s approach to multiculturalism is not to uphold the law, but instead to minimise the risk of unrest between communities. Confronted with gangs of predominantly Pakistani men targeting predominantly white children, the state knew exactly what to do. For the good of community relations, it had to bury the story.

    In Rotherham, a senior police officer told a distressed father that the town “would erupt” if the routine abuse of white children by Pakistani heritage men became public knowledge. One parent concerned about a missing daughter was told by the police that an “older Asian boyfriend” was a “fashion accessory” for girls in the town. The father of a 15-year-old rape victim was told the assault might mean she would “learn her lesson”.

  • Islamist MP Naz Shah just stated outright that raped girls should “shut their mouths for the good of diversity.” Just as with Democrats and illegal aliens, a little child rape is considered a small price to pay for all that glorious multiculturalism…
  • UK’s Labour-dominated parliament really doesn’t want anyone investigating Rotherham.

    So, British MPs have voted against making a national inquiry into grooming gangs, in a 364-111 vote.

    Man, when the “ruling class” of public servants don’t want something discussed, they really let us know about it. Big shots in England, who have no problem discussing American issues of governance, and even were fine with some of their citizens coming over the pond to campaign during our last election, are really, really annoyed that Americans are beginning to talk about the “grooming gangs” (read rapist gangs) who have operated in Rotherham and elsewhere who have been doing their thing for years, and with seeming impunity.

    They’re really very annoyed about the American intrusion, you know. So much so, some are saying if the Americans don’t shut up about it, England should come cold all over its relationship with the USA.

    Well, that’s gobsmacking, isn’t? It’s basically saying, “Shut up, stop talking about all the raping we did nothing to address or nip in the bud, or we won’t be your friends, anymore. We’ll take our soccer ball and go home, we will!”

    I shouldn’t be so surprised. I’ve seen, and noted, in the past that for some there are two classes of sexual abuse/rape victims. The justly and properly acknowledged victims of priests, ministers, rabbi’s and religious — anything that involves church-centered abuse) and then the abused and raped people whose victimhood appears to be a lesser ken: Non-minor vulnerable adults; victims of public school teachers and staff; victims in state-run facilities. And now, apparently, English girls.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Fortunately, here in the U.S., the rule of law still actually means something. “Federal Judge Blocks Biden Administration’s Title IX Rewrite Protecting ‘Gender Identity.’”
  • Zuckerbot looks like he’s serious about purging wokeness from Facebook/Meta root and branch.

    Meta is immediately ending its DEI programs days after enacting sweeping changes to promote free speech on its platforms ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

    Meta vice president of human resources Janelle Gale sent an internal memo Friday announcing the company’s decision to terminate its DEI programs, Axios first reported, making it the latest large corporation to put an end to progressive workplace initiatives.

    A Meta spokesperson confirmed Axios’s reporting when NR asked for comment. NR has reached out for additional comment.

    “The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing,” Gale said in the memo, echoing the justifications given by other companies in walking back DEI.

    “The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI,” the memo adds.

    “The term ‘DEI’ has also become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.”

    Meta is getting rid of its DEI team and changing the role of chief diversity officer Maxine Williams. Additionally, Meta is ending its equity and inclusion programs, and its supplier diversity goals.

    “We believe there are other ways to build an industry-leading workforce and leverage teams made up of world-class people from all types of backgrounds,” Gale said.

    Likewise, Meta is abandoning its diversity hiring approach and its corporate representation goals to prevent the impression that the company is hiring solely based on demographic characteristics.

    “It’s important to us that our products are accessible to all, and are useful in promoting economic growth and opportunity around the world. We continue to be focused on serving everyone, and building a multi-talented, industry-leading workforce from all walks of life,” the memo concludes.

    Earlier this week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company will be replacing its fact-checking program with a “community notes” style approach mimicking Elon Musk’s X. The “community notes” feature on X allows for crowdsourced fact checking and demonetizes posts that get slapped with a note for misleading information.

    Zuckerberg conceded that the fact-checkers Meta partnered with following the 2016 election were too politically biased, a nod to a longstanding complaint among conservatives. Meta is also reducing its “content moderation” policies to allow for greater freedom of speech on Facebook and Threads on controversial topics such as immigration and gender ideology. On that note, Meta is bringing back its promotion of political posts and moving its content moderation teams to Texas to prevent political insulation.

    Well, Austin, anyway…

    In August, Zuckerberg admitted that Meta was wrong to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story and criticized the Biden administration for pressuring Facebook into suppressing certain content related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Online censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story and skeptics of stringent Covid-19 policies was a priority for congressional Republicans in their investigations over the past two years.

    He also went on Joe Rogan and added UFC head Dana White to Meta’s board. If Zuckerberg is a weather-vane, the MAGA winds must be very strong indeed…

  • “In 2024, seven states signed legislation against DEI or stripped funding for it at universities — Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Utah, and Wyoming. Those states join Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and North Dakota, all of which moved against DEI before last year.”
  • Biden’s letting 11 terrorists out to fly to Oman because of course he is. All 11 are Yemanis. At least he’s not letting Khalid Sheikh Mohammad go. Yet…
  • Remember how in The Prisoner, one security device was a giant rolling ball? China evidently took inspiration from that, but there version is made out of metal.
  • Global warming does it again. “Rare snow blankets Sahara dunes in Northern Africa.”
  • Amish farmer wins lawsuit to keep selling raw milk.
  • Ukraine hits another oil storage facility, this one in Engels, Saratov.
  • Meanwhile, in Germany: “Saxony-Anhalt begins disarming AfD members. AfD members in many German states are stripped of many of their rights, including the right to privacy and lawful gun ownership.” You know, I get the feeling I’ve seen this movie before… (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • The mystery of the Syrian-Jordanian border.
  • Remember how we were supposed to “Believe All Women”? Well, here’s yet another case of a woman lying about a male coworker sexually harassing her.
  • “Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to s—” BLAM! (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • To paraphrase Mel Brooks, tragedy is when I have a toothache, comedy is when you fall down an open manhole.
  • How car theft rings are stealing exotic cars by posing as legitimate car transport companies.
  • I don’t often cover New York sports teams or link to ESPN, but this story about how the “New York Football Giants” (to use Dwight’s preferred nomenclature) went 3-14 puts the fun in dysfunctional, including asking their starting cornerback to take a pay cut…right before a game.
  • “Women’s sports bar shuts down just five months after opening.” Why, it’s almost as if the two sexes are different in the degrees of their affinities for sports…
  • How allied vehicles got white stars in World War II.
  • Soundgarden now has a fat female lead singer for some reason. She decided to go crowd-surfing, and the audience went “Nah, we’re good.” Thump ensues.
  • Adam Savage goes down a rabbit hole of ridiculously small cassette tapes.
  • Borepatch points us to a pretty awesome RasberryPi-driven Christmas lights display.
  • “Biden Honors Kamala Harris With Presidential Medal Of Participation.”
  • “Biden Online Store Clearance Sale Now Offering Presidential Medals Of Freedom For $9.99.”
  • FBI Baffled Terrorist Attack Occurred As They Imprisoned All Jan 6 Attendees.”
  • “Trudeau To Be Humanely Euthanized.”
  • “British Man Arrested For Making Meme Offensive To Child Rapists.”
  • “Guy Who Said Facebook Was Not Suppressing Free Speech Announces Facebook Will Stop Suppressing Free Speech.”

    • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Jihad, Military, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 4 Comments »

    Banks Zero Out NetZero

    January 9th, 2025

    Before social justice was the ruling religion/scam of the far left, The Church of Global Warming held sway in their hearts. They still mutter the catechisms, and lots of Democratic Party bigwigs still have their fingers in the green scam pie, but the world as a whole, freed from their bondage to Big Green thanks to shifting political sands, is jumping off the “carbon neutral” bandwagon while the jumping is good.

    In Texas, scrutiny from Attorney General Ken Paxton has caused several big banks to pull out of NetZero pacts.

    Attorney General Ken Paxton has revealed that three major United States-based banks have withdrawn from the United Nations-led Net-Zero Bank­ing Alliance.

    Launched in April 2021, the group comprises banks “committed to aligning their lending, investment and capital markets activities with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050,” according to the alliance’s website.

    The group’s first commitment statement provides more details, pledging to “transition all operational and attributable GHG emissions from our lending and investment portfolios to align with pathways to net-zero by mid-century, or sooner.”

    In October 2023, Paxton opened a review of the statuses of Bank of America, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and other financial institutions pursuant to Senate Bill 13, first passed by the Texas Legislature in 2021.

    The law prohibits governmental entities from entering into contracts with companies that boycott oil and gas companies. The financial institutions’ membership in the NZBA raised questions about their compliance with this law.

    His review specifically focused on companies required to provide letters detailing their compliance with SB 13. Those already known to be a part of NZBA—like Bank of America, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo—are listed in the letter.

    Other financial institutions listed are Barclays, DNT Asset Trust, Fidelity Investments, RBC Capital Markets, the Royal Bank of Canada, State Street, and TD Bank.

    “Any company submitting a standing letter to us in the future must inform us if it or any affiliate is a Net Zero Alliance Member. To the extent we learn that a company with a current standing letter, or its affiliate, is a Net Zero Alliance Member, the company will be treated similarly to the companies identified on the attached list,” explained Paxton’s letter on the review process.

    Wells Fargo announced it was leaving the alliance on December 20, followed shortly thereafter by Bank of America on December 31. Morgan Stanley left NZBA on January 2, and JPMorgan exited on January 7.

    “More and more financial institutions are taking a major step in the right direction by leaving the radical and anti-energy Net-Zero Banking Alliance. The NZBA seeks to undermine our vital oil and gas industries, and membership could potentially prevent banks from being able to enter into contracts with Texas governmental entities,” explained Paxton. “I am glad that Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan have terminated their NZBA membership.”

    In addition to the four banks pursued by Paxton, financial giant Citigroup left the alliance on December 31. Goldman Sachs left on December 10, kicking off the mass exodus.

    It turns out that the vast majority of Americans are far more interested in such frivolous objectives as “feeding my family” and “paying rent” than paying $120 trillion to theoretically drop the temperature of the globe by 1.5°C three-quarters of a century hence. Banks, now free of having to curry favor with radical “environmental justice” warriors in Biden’s ghost administration, are following suit and backing away from pie-in-the-sky decarbonization goals.

    Sooner or later, reality always reasserts itself…

    Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Democrats, Global Warming, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 1 Comment »

    Why Is Diet Root Beer Up 131% Even Though Aluminum Is Down?

    January 8th, 2025

    This may count as an “old man yells at cloud” moment, but before the Flu Manchu lockdowns and the resultant supply chain breakage, HEB’s house brand of Diet Root Beer went for $2.25 a 12-pack. Now, here in early 2025, it’s going for $5.20. I calculate that as a 131% inflation rate over five years, considerably above the official 21.9% phony baloney “let’s lie for Biden” rate. So what gives?

    My first thought was “Well, aluminum prices must have gone through the roof again.” Nope.

    Aluminum shot way up in 2022, and then came right back down, and has been essentially flat for two years.

    As one of the biggest costs in soft drinks 12-packs, you’d think prices might be stable for that, but no. The prices for name brand soft drinks have gone up as well.

    Even if we can all agree that the real inflation rate is much higher than admitted, why are soft drinks up so much more than even the unofficial rate?

    If you have any idea, please feel free to share in the comments below.

    Tags: , , ,
    Posted in Economics | 24 Comments »

    Tom Homan: We’re Deporting Venezuelan Illegal Aliens. Venezuela: We Don’t Want Them Back. Homan: Tough.

    January 7th, 2025

    The incoming Trump Administration is serious about deporting illegal aliens, and isn’t about to let any failed socialist dictatorships stop them.

    President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming border czar, Tom Homan, said during an interview over the weekend that the administration will be deporting illegal aliens from Venezuela regardless of whether or not Venezuela takes them back.

    Homan made the remarks during a Sunday interview on CBS News’ “Face The Nation” with Margaret Brennan, when asked about countries like Venezuela that are not accepting deportations back from the U.S.

    “Well, first of all, we got President Trump coming to the Oval Office, and he’s proven during his first administration, his leadership on illegal immigration was a game changer, because, for instance, El Salvador wouldn’t take back MS-13 members when I was the ICE Director,” he said. “It took President Trump 48 hours to get El Salvador to take back their criminal aliens into their prisons.”

    “And Mexico didn’t want to do the Remain in Mexico program,” he continued. “But President Trump was able to get Remain in Mexico established in Mexico. He was able to get Mexico put military on the southern and northern border.”

    Homan noted that President Joe Biden was so weak that countries simply refused to take their criminal illegal aliens back and the administration never “forced these countries to take them back.”

    “If for instance, Venezuela don’t take their people back, there’s other ways we can do it,” he said. “There’s other countries be willing to accept them. We’re hoping that President Trump will work with Venezuela and like he did with Mexico and El Salvador, and get these countries take them back. If they don’t, they’re still gonna be deported. They’re just gonna be deported to a different country.”

    “We’re not gonna be held up on removing public safety trust in this country,” he continued. “We gotta put the safety of the American people first. We’ve had too many young women murdered and raped and burned alive by members of Venezuelan gangs. They need to be a priority under this administration. They’re gonna be a priority starting day one, and they will be deported.”

    One of those Venezuelan gangs is Tren de Aragua, which we’ve talked about here, here, here, here, here, and here.

    Just a week ago, four Tren de Aragua members were caught trying to sneak into Texas.

    Homan says he’s going to send them all back, no matter what the Caracas commies say.

    It’s funny what you can accomplish when your biggest concern is protecting the American people rather than currying favor with transnational political elites, or trying to advance the electoral chances of the Democratic Party…

    Tags: , , , , ,
    Posted in Border Control, Crime | 11 Comments »

    UBI Hurts Recipients

    January 6th, 2025

    It’s almost impossible to kill a bad lefty idea, and Universal Basic Income is one of the worst. The idea that government agencies should fork over taxpayer dollars to random people for breathing goes against the basic American ethos of freedom and hard work, so naturally lefties are in love with the idea as it being a down-payment on full-bore socialism. But it’s been tried, and failed, many times before, so much so that Charles Murray’s Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980 back in 1984 covered the colossal failure of the SIME/DIME experiments back on pages 148-152.

    But mere historical failure has never deterred the radical left from pursuing their utopian schemes (“And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire“), so they tried to test UBI, yet again, and the result, yet again, was discouraging failure.

    In October, I reported on the release of the largest research project ever on universal basic income (UBI). The study’s results were disappointing for advocates of the idea. In short, the research showed that many people who received the income reduced their hours working and increased leisure time. Furthermore, people didn’t use their leisure time in any of the productive activities advocates often claim (e.g., self-improvement, entrepreneurship, time with family).

    In December, a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) study on UBI authored by economists Sidhya Balakrishnan, Sewin Chan, Sara Constantino, Johannes Haushofer, and Jonathan Morduch was released.

    The study examined 2,097 households in Compton, California. They gave around one-third of the households a guaranteed monthly income of an average of $487 and examined how recipient households acted relative to the non-recipients.

    The most obvious impact of a guaranteed income is going to be on a recipient’s work decisions. Predictably, many people who received the guaranteed income reduced their working hours.

    The researchers found that part-time workers (those who worked less than 20 hours per week) reduced their time working by 13 percent. Less time working means less money. How much less? The paper states:

    The negative impacts on labor market participation translate into negative impacts on household income. While the average monthly cash transfer amount for the treatment group is $487… the net impact on total monthly household income over the past 30 days including the cash transfer was just $92 and not significantly different from zero.

    This means that these part-time worker households who received a nearly $500 transfer ended up only being $100 richer overall, because they reduced their working hours. Furthermore, this $100 difference was not statistically significant, which means it’s unclear whether the transfer really leaves people with more income than before!

    It should be noted that full-time employees did not significantly change their working habits. This fact also does not bode well for UBI advocates. Why?

    Ask yourself, why would part-time employees work less, but full-time employees work the same amount? One explanation is that it is generally easier to pick up part-time work than it is to find a full-time job. As such, full-time workers were likely reluctant to leave behind their stable full-time jobs for a temporary guaranteed income. Additionally, an income of $500 per month is likely not enough to make up for the loss of a full-time job. So it’s unsurprising that this program didn’t affect the decisions of full-time employees.

    However, if this program were a permanent government program, I would expect that some full-time employees would also leave their jobs or cut back hours. If you expect to get a guaranteed monthly stipend for two years, you aren’t going to quit your job, because you’re going to have to take on the cost of finding a new full-time job when it ends. However, if you’re going to get it forever, you’re more likely to do so.

    So it turns out that paying people for breathing meant they actually did less work.

    Alert the media.

    Also this: “To give a stipend to every adult would be more than a trillion dollars every year.”

    UBI’s a failure, and UBI will always be a failure, and this latest failure will do nothing to prevent leftists from trying it again somewhere else.

    And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
    When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
    As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
    The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

    Tags: , , , , , ,
    Posted in Welfare State | 9 Comments »

    Apple CEO Tim Cook Donates $1 Million To Trump Inauguration

    January 5th, 2025

    If you’re looking for a sign that Trump Derangement Syndrome is finally breaking across America, the news that Apple CEO Tim Cook is donating $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration is a pretty good sign.

    Apple CEO Tim Cook plans to donate $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, reports Axios. The donation will be a personal donation directly from Cook rather than a donation from Apple.

    Following Trump’s win, Cook congratulated him on social media site X, and in December, Cook had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Cook aimed to maintain a relationship with Trump during Trump’s first term as president, and it appears Cook plans to continue on with that plan going forward.

    Sources that spoke to Axios said that Cook is donating to the inauguration “in the spirit of unity.” Apple is not expected to make a donation.

    Trump is taking office as Apple faces regulatory pressure both in the United States and in other countries. In March 2024, Apple was sued by the United States Department of Justice for allegedly violating antitrust law in multiple ways with its platforms. The Apple vs. DoJ legal battle will play out during Trump’s term.

    Amazon, Meta, Uber, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Coinbase, Toyota, Ford, GM, AT&T, Black & Decker, and Charter Communications are also making donations to Trump’s inauguration fund.

    Some will point out that Cook is not a Republican, and in fact donates to Democrats. Yes, that’s the point. Big executives used to routinely donate money to a President’s inauguration to curry favor. That Cook, the CEO of one of the largest corporations in the world, one with a granola-crunching lefty reputation to boot, would donate to Orange Cheeto Hitler, is a sign that the fear of being dragged by social justice warriors for daring to deal with Trump is finally dissipating.

    Like an evil spell being lifted, the online shrieking of purple haired radicals is no longer enough to keep ordinary people from working with Trump. The demonization of Trump as a figure beyond the pale was one of the left’s biggest efforts in systemic preference falsification. That it’s now collapsing, just like the fake popularity of “defund the police” and “sex is a social construct” collapsed, is a sign that social justice is finally losing what power it had over the general public, and the radical left can no longer maintain the illusion of popularity and inevitability they tried to cultivate for so hard and so long.

    It turns out that the social justice left is the one on the wrong side of history…

    Tags: , , , ,
    Posted in Republicans, Social Justice Warriors | 3 Comments »

    I Have Heard The Bots Singing, Each To Each

    January 4th, 2025

    If you look at some of the key ills plaguing America over the last ten years, Facebook has certainly had a hand in perpetuating some of them. Wokeness, censorship, echo chambers, commodification of user information and spam are just some of the evils Facebook (AKA Meta) has helped inflict on the citizenry.

    Now Facebook is inflicting AI-generated profiles on its users.

  • Kneon: “Facebook is experimenting with AI generated profiles on Facebook and Instagram.”
  • K: “it’s going to be pretty scary because I mean you already don’t know who you’re dealing with on the internet, and I’ve heard some pretty convincing or seen some pretty convincing video. They actually had uh one of the uh AI video generators doing like an influencer video for Tik Tok and you couldn’t tell it wasn’t a real person.” If you’re doing influencer videos on Tik-Tok, I’m already halfway convinced you’re not a real person…
  • K: “It’s going to make it a lot harder to tell who you’re dealing with on the internet.”
  • Is one of the profiles woke? Of course it is. Geeky Sparkles: “‘Proud black queer mama of two, truth teller.’ It’s a truth teller, but it’s an AI, so it’s already not real but it’s going to tell you the truth. ‘Your realest source for life’s ups and downs.’ Uh, but it’s not real, it’s an AI who doesn’t know about life’s up and ups and downs, but you know it’s a black queer, it identifies as ‘a black queer mama.'”

  • K: “Their parent company Meta company is rolling out a wide array of AI products, including one that helps users create AI characters on Instagram and Facebook.”
  • GS: “Why? Why do you need an AI character?” Why indeed?
  • K: “From someone who worked in marketing for years, and as a business owner, we have had some interesting things happen with Facebook advertising, and I don’t think all your money is going to ads being seen by real people.”
  • GS: “If advertisers are upset, and bots are a problem and bots and fake accounts are a problem because advertisers are getting scammed, they feel like they’re getting scammed and it’s an issue and we have to stop bots, why would flooding the market with generative AI characters and make your own make sense?”
  • K: “Meta hopes to attract a younger audience in a face off with competitors like Tik Tok and Snapchat.” First, why would Meta think younger users are all like “Hey, you know what I love? Fake profiles!” Second, if you’re taking your cues from Tik-Tok and Snapchat, you’ve already lost.
  • GS: “It’s hard to be a Tik tocker and make content all the time, or it’s hard to have enough content to keep going, but these AI can generate it indefinitely, so we’ll just tell people on Tik Tok to buy your shit.”
  • Maybe the goal is to create Ai influencers who pimp one company’s product and slam competitors.
  • Or create fake women on OnlyFans to make a mint.
  • In fact, there are already AI influencers earning money.
  • GS: “They’re talking about the Dead Internet Theory. And Dead Internet Theory, for those who don’t know is [basically] more and more accounts and activity on the internet are done by computers and fake people than real people.”
  • K: “Facebook feels dead now. Like endstage MySpace.”

    • In the wake of these revelations, there are conflicting accounts in different MSM sources as to whether Facebook has shut these accounts down or not.

    Maybe different MSM writers are talking to different AI bot pretending to be “inside sources.” Or maybe the MSM “writers” are bots as well.

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    I’m sure a lot is advertiser driven, but I wonder if some of the investment boom in AI is coming from lefty executives watching the collapse of their systemic preference falsifaction falling away due to events like Trump’s election (all of them) and Brexit and thinking to themselves “Shit, we need to fool the rubes even harder” by using social justice bots to give The Narrative the illusion of popularity.

    Fortunately for us, I think it’s too late for them to pull it off. Maybe Bluesky could finally surpass Twitter/X in user base, if we ignore that 98% of them are bots…

    But still, caution seems to be in order. More than ever, everything you see online should be treated with a degree of skepticism, even if you agree with it.

    Especially if you agree with it…

    Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Communism, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors | 2 Comments »

    « Older Entries