If you work in the media and you made a big deal when Trump walked down a slippery ramp a little slower than usual so he would *not* fall and you are not making a big deal of Biden falling 3 times today trying to walk up some steps, you are the reason people don't trust the media
So when is Saturday Night Live going to rehire Chevy Chase to play Joe Biden the way he played Gerald Ford? Chase is one year younger than Biden. (Of course, we all know the answer to that: Never. Because SNL hates making fun of Democrats. And Lorne Michaels hates Chase. Plus, at age 77, I doubt Chase is doing many pratfalls these days…)
Last month, President Biden signed a series of executive orders undermining fossil fuels, on the grounds the âclimate crisisâ forced his hand. âWe canât wait any longer. We see with our own eyes. We know it in our bones. It is time to act.â
Within days, most of the country was seeing âwith our own eyesâ and feeling âin our bonesâ a cold wave so severe that five million people lost electricity and, in a special irony, nearly half of the ballyhooed wind turbines in Texas, which had risen to supply 23% of her energy, were left frozen (and inoperable).
This constituted a double whammy to the huge global warming establishment. First was the cold, when the âscienceâ had confidently predicted a steadily warming Texas. Second was the failure of renewables, vastly exacerbating the problems for the energy grid.
Within hours the mainstream media had risen to the challenge. Journalists employed their familiar word games, quickly substituting âclimate changeâ for global warming. Readers might be a tad confused if they read âThe brutal cold striking Texas is emblematic of a world facing more unpredictable weather due to the rising impact of global warmingâ but substitute âclimate changeâ for the last two words and presto, the sentence works. To be sure, thatâs only because âclimate changeâ is a meaningless term.
Snip.
For the global warming establishment, the disastrous performance of renewables was more upsetting than the cold spell itself. The New York Times, in a lengthy article on the Texas energy blackout (Feb. 16) simply ignored the freezing wind turbines while Bloomberg buried a mention. When other media outlets took notice, it was generally to minimize the role of the turbines in the energy shutdown, putting most of the blame anywhere and everywhere else. ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, responsible for managing the electric grid, weighed in to support the minimizers, putting most of the blame on gas generators.
Snip.
Why does the media (and entire global warming establishment) find it so important to blame global warming for the current cold spell? Why is it so important to exonerate green power for the debacle in Texas? The inhabitants of this country, from kindergarten on, are being indoctrinated to believe in the supposed existential crisis of a warming planet. Evidence that cooling means warming has to be quickly marshaled lest the public come to credit its lying eyes and, a terrifying prospect, start to question the unfalsifiable dogma it has been told is ârock solid science.â It might even ridicule the now decades old claims by climate scientists, like David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia that snow would all but vanish in a few years.
If the public could be reassured that the cold spell was merely another manifestation of global warming, believers in the prevailing doomsday scenarios would have their faith reinforced and possible doubters derailed before their doubts crystallized.
As for deflecting blame from green power, this is a crucial moment in the battle to phase out fossil fuels. The Biden administration talks of mandating a total reliance on renewables within a few decades. The public must consider this a promising goal, offering a better life. If people decide it means unreliable energy, sitting in the cold and dark for days or weeks, energy prices through the roof (the price of gas rose by 100 times in Texas at one point), they may clamor to prevent an existential crisis around the corner in preference to avoiding one forecast in a far future by unproven computer models.
Most worrying to climate elites, people are angry. In Texas, reporters found the man in the street incredulous that in the number one energy producing state, he was not only without electricity and heat but without safe drinking water. The media, so heavily invested in global warming, recognizes it is essential that the average citizen âseeking answersâ find a target for his wrath. Heaven forfend that he should blame the media, politicians, even the scientific community, for foisting man-made global warming on him, with its insistence that man must change the climate by substituting unreliable renewables for tried and true fossil fuels.
That the entire Russiagate storyline itself was a fraud and a farce is conclusively demonstrated by one decisive fact that can never be memory-holed: namely, the impetus for the scandal and subsequent investigation was the conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign had secretly and criminally conspired with the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election, primarily hacking into the email inboxes of the DNC and Clinton campaign chief John Podesta. And a grand total of zero Americans were accused (let alone convicted) of participating in that animating conspiracy.
The New York Timesâ May, 2017 announcement of Robert Mueller as special counsel stated explicitly that his task was âto oversee the investigation into ties between President Trumpâs campaign and Russian officialsâ and specifically âinvestigate âany links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.ââ
The related secondary media-created conspiracy theory was that the Kremlin clandestinely controlled U.S. political institutions by virtue of sexual and financial blackmail held over President Trump, which they used to compel him to obediently obey their dictates. âI donât know what the Russians have on the president, politically, personally, or financiallyâ was the dark innuendo which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her media allies most loved to spout. âPrestige newsâ outlets created their own Q-Anon-level series of art designed to implant in Americansâ minds a slew of McCarthyite imagery showing the Kremlin (or an iconic Moscow cathedral they mistook for the Kremlin) having fully infiltrated Washingtonâs key institutions.
But that all came crashing down on their heads in April, 2019, when Mueller announced that he was closing his investigation without charging even a single American with the criminal conspiracy that launched the entire spectacle: criminally conspiring with the Russian government to interfere in the election. Again: while Mueller â like so many Washington special counsels before him â ended up snaring some operatives in alleged process crimes committed after the investigation commenced (lying to the FBI and obstruction of justice) or unrelated crimes (Manafortâs financial sleaze), the 18-month aggressive, sprawling investigation resulted in exactly zero criminal charges on the core claim that Trump officials had criminally conspired with Russia.
If that were not sufficient to make every person who drowned the country in this crazed conspiracy theory feel enormous shame (and it should have been), the former FBI Directorâs final Report explicitly stated that âthe investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election.â In many cases, the Report went even further than this âdid not establishâ formulation to state that there was no evidence of any kind found for many of the key media conspiracies (âThe investigation did not identify evidence that any U.S. persons knowingly or intentionally coordinated with the IRAâs interference operationâ; the âevidence does not establish that one campaign officialâs efforts to dilute a portion of the Republican platform was undertaken at the behest of candidate Trump or Russiaâ; âthe investigation did not establish that [Carter] Page coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential electionâ). The Report also barely even dignified let alone confirmed the long-standing, utterly deranged Democratic/media conspiracy theory that the Kremlin had taken over U.S. policy through blackmail.
For a few weeks following the issuance of the Mueller report, Democrats and media figures gamely attempted to deny that it obliterated the conspiracy theories to which they had relentlessly subjected the country for the prior four years. How could they do otherwise? They staked their entire reputations and the trust of their audience on having this be true. To avoid their day of reckoning, they would hype ancillary events such as Paul Manafortâs conviction on unrelated financial crimes or Michael Flynnâs guilty plea for a minor and dubious charge (for which even Mueller recommended no prison time) or Roger Stoneâs various process charges to insist that there was still a grain of truth to their multifaceted geopolitical fairy tale seemingly lifted straight from a Tom Clancy Cold War thriller about the worldâs two largest nuclear powers.
But even they knew this was just a temporary survival strategy and that it was unsustainable for the long term. That the crux of the scandal all along was that key Trump allies if not the President himself would be indicted and imprisoned for having conspired with the Russians was too glaring to make people forget about it.
That was why former CIA Director John Brennan assured the MSNBC audience in March â just weeks before Mueller closed his investigation with no conspiracy crimes alleged â that it was impossible that the investigation could close without first indicting Trumpâs children and other key White House aides on what Brennan correctly said was the whole point of the scandal from the start: âcriminal conspiracy involving the Russians . . . . whether or not U.S. persons were actively collaborating, colluding, cooperating, involved in a conspiracy with them or not.â Brennan strongly insinuated that among those likely to be indicted for criminally conspiring with the Russians were those âfrom the Trump family.â
As we all know, literally none of that happened. Not only were Trump family members not indicted by Mueller on charges of âcriminal conspiracy involving the Russians,â no Americans were. Brennan believed there was no way that the Mueller investigation could end without that happening because that was the whole point of the scandal from the start. To explain why it had not happened up to that point after eighteen months of investigation by Muellerâs subpoena-armed and very zealous team of prosecutors, Brennan invented a theory that they were waiting to do that as the final act because they knew they would be fired by Trump once it happened. But it never happened because Mueller found no evidence to prove that it did.
In other words, the conspiracy theory that the media pushed on Americans since before Trumpâs inauguration â to the point where it drowned out most of U.S. politics and policy for years â proved to have no evidentiary foundation. And that is one reason I say that the sectors of the media pretending to be most distraught at the spread of âdisinformationâ by anonymous citizens on Facebook and 4Chan are, in fact, the most aggressive, prolific and destructive disseminators of that disinformation by far (nor was it uncredentialed YouTube hosts, Patreon podcasters or Substack writers who convinced Americans to believe that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear weapons and was in an alliance with Al Qaeda but rather the editor-heavy prestige outlets such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, NBC News and The Atlantic).
ï»ż
More on the same theme:
Itâs absolutely fucking nutty to me. Spend months calling lab leak hypothesis a âconspiracy theoryâ or calling the laptop story âdisinfoâ … none of it true, all of it ultra high stakes, v important. Just fake narrative after fake narrative. Dangerous for schools to open. Fake.
Trump told them to âfind fraud.â Fake. Jussie Smollett. Fake. Covington. Fake. Hands up, donât shoot. Fake. Jacob Blake was unarmed. Fake. Alfa bank. Fake. Cohen in Prague. Fake. Don Jr Wikileaks. Fake. Michael Avenatti. Holy fake. Russia dossier. Ffffffucking fake.
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Brett Blomme was arrested Tuesday on tentative charges of possession of child pornography, the state Department of Justice announced.
Blomme, 38, was taken into custody by special agents with the state Division of Criminal Investigation “following an investigation into multiple uploads of child pornography through a Kik messaging application account in October and November 2020,” according to a statement.
Snip.
Before being elected, Blomme was the head of the board of zoning appeals for the City of Milwaukee, appointed to the post by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, and head of the Cream City Foundation, which provides grant money to LGBTQ groups in the Milwaukee area.
A longtime LGBTQ activist, Blomme previously was director of major gifts at the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin for 18 months, following a stint at the Madison City Attorney’s Office. From 2011 to 2015, he practiced criminal defense with the State Public Defender’s Office.
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Brett Blomme, who was charged Wednesday with seven counts of possession of child pornography, is a popular and influential figure among elected Democrats in Milwaukee. A very close ally of the city’s longtime mayor, Tom Barrett, Blomme was supported and endorsed by nearly every major Democrat and left-wing group involved in Milwaukee politics when he ran for a seat on the court last year.
“I support Brett because, like me, he is committed to making Milwaukee a better place for all of us,” said U.S. Congressman Gwen Moore when she endorsed Blomme’s judicial run last winter. “Brett is the change we need to help fix our broken criminal justice system.”
Blomme called this a “key endorsement” that helped propel him to a win over incumbent Paul Dedinsky. Blomme was seated on the bench in August and was serving in Children’s Court at the time of his arrest.
On this particular evening, my wife and I found ourselves at a roundtable with the CEO of a large hotel chain on our left, and a large communications conglomerate on our right. The Republicans, we’re often told, are the party of the rich and famous. Yet nearly everyone assembled at this dinner simply loathed Donald Trump. He was the focus of nearly every conversation. And then the hotel CEO announced, ‘Trump has no idea how much his policies are hurting business. I mean, we can’t keep people for $18 an hour in our hotels. If we’re not paying $20, we’re understaffed. And it’s all because of Donald Trump’s immigration policies.’ Let’s pause for a second to appreciate one of the wealthiest men in the world complaining about paying hard-working staff $20 an hour. The only thing he was missing was the Monopoly Man hat and cane. His argument, while vile, was at least intellectually honest: ‘Normally, if we can’t find workers at a given wage, we just get a bunch of immigrants to do the job. It’s easy. But there are so few people coming in across the border, so we just have to pay the people here more.’ This is why the American labor movement opposed immigration expansion for much of the past centuryâuntil recently, when many labor unions decided that being woke took priority over protecting workers. My wife is not a political person, and I’ve never seen her as animated by a conversation about politics as she was at this ‘masters of the universe’ dinner. ‘OK,’ she told me later. ‘I can understand why you can’t stand these people.’… Nearly every major business and financial leader in this country is a supporter of the Democratic Party. They love illegal immigration for the simple reason that their livelihoods are subsidized by illegal immigrationâwhile illegal aliens themselves are subsidized by the taxpayer. It’s a redistribution scheme from the poor to the rich.
Houston police chief Art Acevedo leaving for Miami. As Dwight notes: “He decided to leave town before he got run out on a rail behind the narcotics scandal.”
Most Americans hate woke politics â and most minorities donât share âwokeâ priorities. Indeed, according to pollster David Shor, woke excesses are causing black voters to flee the Democratic Party. Despite endless charges of âracism,â former President Donald Trump took the biggest share of minority voters of any Republican in my lifetime.
Itâs happening not because anybody voted for it, but because a small but determined and vicious minority is bullying people to go along, relying on cowardice and groupthink to achieve ends that could never happen via majority vote: How do you think Dr. Seuss would have done in a referendum?
Snip.
They need to be deprived of the thing that is most important to their self-image: moral credibility.
The woke think of themselves â and want everyone else to think of them â as deeply moral. If they have a flaw, itâs that they just care too much. Theyâre too idealistic, too empathetic, too eager to make the world a better place.
Historically, itâs not the good guys who are out burning books and censoring speech. It isnât the caring, empathetic people who try to destroy lives based on something someone said years ago, often while young, often taken out of context. It isnât the good guys who take undisguised glee at the ruining of lives, families and careers.
You know who does these things? Horrible, awful people. Selfish people. People with serious mental and emotional problems who seek some sort of vindication for their deficient characters by taking power trips while imposing suffering on others.
Treat these tyrants as what they are: awful people who shouldnât be listened to and who need to work hard on joining the better half of the human race. And remind them of it, over and over. Because itâs true.
“In California, Your Church or Your Small Business Still Receives the Hammer of the State, While Grammy Entertainers Party Without Penalty.” It angries up the blood it does….
After months of stalling, Google finally revealed how much personal data they collect in Chrome and the Google app. No wonder they wanted to hide it. â° Spying on users has nothing to do with building a great web browser or search engine. We would know (our app is both in one). pic.twitter.com/lJBbLTjMuu
1. Drive loaner Beamer to bank. 2. Rob bank. 3. Try to use money from bank robbery to buy Beamer.
High flying lawyer and Democratic Party fundraiser Tom Girardi marries trophy wife. Result? Bankruptcy:
When Joe Biden came to Los Angeles to raise money for his presidential campaign, Tom Girardi filled a dining room at the Jonathan Club with wealthy attorneys. . . . The 2019 breakfast fundraiser at the private downtown club was in many ways the end of an era. By the time Biden was elected last fall, Girardiâs life and legal empire were unraveling. His wealth, once estimated north of $250 million, has vanished and with it his reputation as one of the nationâs most connected and respected lawyers. With Girardi facing bankruptcy, divorce and a criminal investigation, his days as a political insider and power broker appear over. For decades, though, politicians were happy to take his money and put up with his requests for something in return. Along with his family and employees, Girardi contributed more than $7.3 million to candidates.
If you study the pathetic tale of Girardiâs downfall â the Los Angeles Times ran a 4,000-word story about this shabby tragedy in December â you realize that the primary source of his problems was his third wife, a blonde bimbo gold-digger more than 30 years his junior. A native of Atlanta, Erika Chahoy moved to New York as soon as she turned 18.
To underwrite his new wife’s musical career, Girardi set up a Ponzi scheme. Also this: “Although Girardi was in the midst of an acrimonious dispute over dividing assets with his second wife, he opted not to sign a prenuptial agreement.” Oh, she also released a song called “Xxpen$ive” and starred in Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. And then filed for divorce.
“Twenty years ago, Tom Girardi was worth more than $50 million, and now at age 81, heâs on his way to bankruptcy and disbarment.
He will probably die in prison. Way to go, top Democrat donor!”
President Donald Trump had implemented effective polices to control the flow of illegal aliens coming across the border, so naturally Slow Joe had to undo that so as to amnesty more future Democrats.
Here Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick on the border crisis:
“We were able to relax under the Trump Administration because he actually did his job and we were in good shape on the border, before Biden got elected. We were in good shape. The protocols were working, keeping the asylum seekers in Mexico.”
“This is not a crisis, this is a full-blown disaster that they’ve created.”
“What they need to do is close the border. It’s wide open.”
“This is the worst I’ve seen.”
“President Biden is no more than a prop of the left. He has no idea what’s going on down there.”
The US State Department’s former lead investigator who oversaw the COVID-19 task force into the origins of the virus believes SARS-CoV-2 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and may have been the product of bioweapons research, according to Fox News.
“The Wuhan Institute of Virology is not the National Institute of Health,” David Asher – now a senior fellow at the Hudson institute – told Fox News in an interview, adding: “It was operating a secret, classified program. In my view, and Iâm just one person, my view is it was a biological weapons program.”
Asher has long been a “follow the money” guy who has worked on some of the most classified intelligence investigations for the State Department and Treasury under both Democratic and Republican administrations. He led the team that uncovered the international nuclear procurement network run by the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, AQ Khan, and uncovered key parts of North Korea’s secret uranium enrichment. He believes the Chinese Communist Party has been involved in a massive cover-up during the past 14 months. -Fox News
“And if you believe, as I do, that this might have been a weapons vector gone awry, not deliberately released, but in development and then somehow leaked, this has turned out to be the greatest weapon in history,” Asher told a Hudson Institute panel discussing the origins of the pandemic. “You’ve taken out 15 to 20 percent of global GDP. You’ve killed millions of people. The Chinese population has been barely affected. Their economies roared back to being number one in the entire G20.”
According to Asher – who interfaced with the Chinese government as the State Department’s lead representative during the 2003 SARS outbreak – the CCP’s behavior surrounding COVID-19 reminds him of criminal investigations he’s overseen.
“Motive, cover-up, conspiracy, all the hallmarks of guilt are associated with this. And the fact that the initial cluster of victims surrounded the very institute that was doing the highly dangerous, if not dubious research is significant,” he said.
One wonders who it was that first gave the MSM their marching orders: “Never say ‘China virus!’ Never say that it might have come from the giant viral lab researching coronavirus in the same city it originated in!” The fact that they continue to label this very logical inference a “conspiracy theory” after Trump has left the White House suggests a desperate need to please China among our so-called media elites.
So tremendous is Austin City Council stupidity that the Texas legislature is considering a statewide camping ban:
In a not-so-subtle broadside against its capital city, the Texas legislature will consider legislation to ban camping in public places and creating a criminal offense for violation of it.
Austinâs national renown for its live music has been all but supplanted by the notoriety for its homeless situation â featuring a nebulous inverse relationship between music venues still operating and tent encampments dotting the roadside.
The cityâs camping and laying ordinance rescission of July 2019 created an impassioned reaction from Austin citizens across the political spectrum. But the city council has remained largely resolute behind its policy.
Reinstatement of the camping ban will appear before voters in May, but it will effectively become a formality if state Republicans have their way.
Two bills to explicitly ban public camping statewide have been filed. Rep. Giovanni Capriglioneâs (R-Southlake)House Bill 1925 and Sens. Dawn Buckingham (R-Lakeway), Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston), and Charles Schwertnerâs (R-Georgetown)Senate Bill 987.
âA person commits an offense,â the identical bills read, âif the person intentionally or knowingly camps in a public place without the consent of the officer or agency having the legal duty or authority to manage the public place.â
It establishes a Class C misdemeanor for violation of the law, which is a fine-only charge.
The bill carves out the ability of a state agency to establish designated camping areas, like Camp R.A.T.T. located near the Highway 183-Ben White Boulevard intersection.
It would also explicitly prohibit contradictory local orders, stating, âA local entity may not adopt or enforce a policy under which the entity prohibits or discourages the enforcement of any public camping ban.â
If this passes and makes it to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk, I would fully expect him to sign it:
If Austin doesn't reinstate the ban on homeless camping the state will do it for them.
Contrary to what Austin leaders think no one has a right to urinate & defecate wherever they want.
A lawsuit has been filed against the City of Austin in an attempt to stop the sale of the Candlewood Suites hotel, which the City intends to convert into a supportive housing facility for Austinites experiencing homelessness.
Lawyer and Hampton Inn and Homewood Suites CFO Rupal Chaudhari said her âChaudhari Partnershipâ business filed the suit on Thursday, seeking injunctive relief, monetary relief and a declaratory judgment preventing the finalized purchase âwithout proper notice and compensation for the loss of value of its properties and easement.â
âThe City has engaged in a regulatory taking, constitutional due process violations and is in violation of deed restrictions on an easement jointly held with Chaudhari Partnership,â Chaudhari said in a release.
Candlewood Suites is located near State Highway 45 and U.S. 183 in Austin and partially in Williamson County. It is adjacent to Chaudhari’s business.
Williamson County leaders have said they were caught off guard when they learned the Austin City Council was even considering buying Candlewood Suites to house the homeless at the end of January.
Commissioners asked Austin councilmembers to delay the purchase and vote by six months so they could have more time to work with Austin leaders and discuss the matter.
But on Feb. 4, the Austin City Council bought Candlewood Suites for up to $9.5 million, making it the fourth hotel Austin plans to use to house the homeless. The City is now in a 90-day due diligence period.
In addition to Thursdayâs lawsuit, Williamson County commissioners gave the green light to their general counsel to start interviewing law firms last month, propelling the county toward a lawsuit against the City of Austin, including the potential involvement of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
âNegotiating in secret, never engaging citizens and taxpayers until the deal is essentially complete, disregarding community feedback and taking a pre-determined vote â that is not how any trustworthy City or organization operates,â Chaudhari said. âTheir behavior and current process is more than unprofessional â itâs irredeemable.â
Maintaining public order to secure the life, liberty and property of citizens is one of the first duties of government. The Austin City Council and Mayor Steve Adler have not only ignored this duty in repealing the camping ban in 2019, they’ve actually gone out of their way to subvert it. It’s high time both Austin citizens and the legislature reign in their madness.
Instapundit readers have been complaining that they get 404 errors when Instapundit links a post. So I’ve been meaning to put up caching software for quite a while now. But since all caching software reviews said things like “Awesome! Really speed up my blog!” (98%) and “It completely destroyed my blog and erased everything!” (2%), I wanted to export/back up my blog and then do a complete backup of my Mac in Time Machine. Unfortunately, my old backup HD flaked out late last year, replacements were back-ordered for a while, and the first two replacements HDs I picked up also flaked out. (I am hoping that this new 5 TB Seagate portable external hard drive remains error free.)
With all those safe-keeping measures in place, I have finally installed WP Fastest Cache. Let me know below if the site seems faster, or if you’re still getting errors.
So let’s post some random content to test the new cache. Since Bill Burr trended last night over his appearance at the Grammys (which evidently still exist) triggering the usual suspects, here’s a short NSFW video where he take on political correctness:
And here are some tweets on the subject:
Identity politics enables that sort of ugly and crazy – what a warped bunch of delusional babies social media has created, enabled, and even empowered.
Bill Burr and his lovely wife enjoying watching âwokeâ Gen Z on Twitter âcancellingâ him cause heâs racist might be the highlight of my week. pic.twitter.com/IVxPZy2C9o
The Sunday after they’ve sucked an hour out of our lives seems like a good time to do a Blogroll update.
357 Magnum: Solid gun and politics blog that’s been sending some traffic my way.
Austin Network: Good Austin news source, including a lot about the Austin City Council-created “Let’s make Austin bumsville” homeless crisis.
New Discourses: James Lindsey’s ongoing, in-depth dissection of social justice warrior thinking and tactics.
Not The Bee: I already had The Babylon Bee in my blogroll, but their non-satirical sister site is also proving an essential source as well.
The Texan: Daily Texas news source. Not free, but worth the modest monthly fee if you’re interested in Texas news and want to avoid subsidized the MSM.
I also pruned a few dead links or blogs that hadn’t been updated in three years…
Glenn Greenwald appeared before the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law yesterday on the threat big tech monopolies pose to free speech. Here’s his opening statement
Over the last several years, my journalistic interest in and concern about the dangers of Silicon Valleyâs monopoly power has greatly intensified– particularly as wielded by Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple. The dangers posed by their growing power manifest in multiple ways. But I am principally alarmed by the repressive effect on free discourse, a free press, and a free internet, all culminating in increasingly intrusive effects on the flow of information and ideas and an increasingly intolerable strain on a healthy democracy.
The three incidents he sites are the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, the de-platforming of President Trump following the January 6 riot, and the abusive use of monopoly power to suppress Parler:
Critics of Silicon Valley power over political discourse for years have heard the same refrain:if you donât like how they are moderating content and policing discourse, you can go start your own social media platform that is more permissive. Leaving aside the centuries-old recognition that it is impossible,by definition, to effectively compete with monopolies, we now have an incident vividly proving how inadequate that alternative is.
Several individuals who primarily identify as libertarians heard this argument from Silicon Valleyâs defenders and took it seriously.They set out to create a social media competitor to Twitter and Facebook — one which would provide far border free expression rights for users and, more importantly, would offer greater privacy protections than other Silicon Valley giants by refusing to track those users and commoditize them for advertisers. They called it Parler, and in early January, 2021, it was the single most-downloaded app in the Apple Play Store. This success story seemed to be a vindication for the claim that it was possible to create competitors to existing social media monopolies.
But now, a mere two months after it ascended to the top of the charts, Parler barely exists. That is because several members of Congress with the largest and most influential social media platforms demanded that Apple and Google remove Parler from their stores and ban any further downloading of the app, and further demanded that Amazon, the dominant provider of web hosting services, cease hosting the site. Within forty-eight hours, those three Silicon Valley monopolies complied with those demands, rendering Parler inoperable and effectively removing it from the internet (See âHow Silicon Valley, in a Show of Monopolistic Force, Destroyed Parler,â Glenn Greenwald, Jan. 12, 2021).
The justification of this collective banning was that Parler had hosted numerous advocates of and participants in the January 6 Capitol riot. But even if that were a justification for removing an entire platform from the internet, subsequent reporting demonstrated that far more planning and advocacy of that riot was done on otherplat forms, including Facebook, Google-owned YouTube, Instagram and Twitter (See The Washington Post, “Facebookâs Sandberg deflected blame for Capitol riot, but new evidence shows how platform played role,” Jan.13, 2021; Forbes, “Sheryl Sandberg Downplayed Facebookâs Role In The Capitol Hill SiegeâJustice Department Files Tell A Very Different Story,” Feb.7, 2021). Whatever else one might want to say about the destruction of Parler, it was a stark illustration of how these Silicon Valley giants could obliterate even a highly successful competitor overnight, with little effort, by uniting to do so. And it laid bare how inadequate is the claim that Silicon Valleyâs monopolies can be challenged through competition.
Lefties: Liberals are simply better people than those evil conservatives! Science: Not so much:
According to recent studies, when it comes to how people are treated, conservatives are more likely to treat people equally.
You read that correctly.
According to a recent article on Psychology Today, âseveral recent studies over the past few years cast doubt onâ the idea that liberals treat individuals and groups more equally than conservatives despite liberalsâ âself-reported support for equality.â
On Twitter, âliberals were more likely to amplify the successes of female and Black athletes than male and White athletes, whereas conservatives treated the successes of groups more similarly,â one study found.
Other studies showed that âwhite liberals presented less self-competence to black than white interaction partners, whereas white conservatives treated black and white interaction partners more similarly. And in another set, liberals had stronger desires to censor passages that portrayed low-status groups unfavorably than identical passages that portrayed high-status groups unfavorably, whereas conservatives treated the passages more comparably.
If you think really hard, perhaps you can imagine more disastrous policies than throwing open our countryâs southern border and abandoning criminal-law enforcement in city after city. The consequences are already emerging, and they are grim. It is important to examine them without ideological blinders so we can change course before more damage is done.
Snip.
The most consequential effect of open immigration and lax criminal enforcement is to undermine the safe, stable environment law-abiding citizens need to go about their lives, free from predation. Providing that environment — and signaling clearly that you intend to provide it — is the first responsibility of government.
That means punishing crimes. The goal is not vengeance. Nor is it solely to provide justice for the victims, important as that is. It is also to send a strong message to would-be criminals: Donât do it. Itâs not worth it. Right now, we are sending the wrong message and, by doing so, we are encouraging law breaking on a massive scale.
That encouragement is the unifying theme behind these policy disasters, one on the border, the other in our cities. The other unifying theme is their justification under the fashionable rubric of âsocial justiceâ and âequity.â What those feel-good arguments ignore is that our criminal laws are democratic efforts to preserve personal safety and community integrity. Failing in those responsibilities harms all law-abiding citizens.
Six weeks before yesterday was Tuesday, January 26. On that day, Texas reported 22,796 new cases of COVID-19 and 332 new deaths from the pandemic.
One month before yesterday was Tuesday, February 9. On that day, Texas reported 13,282 new cases of COVID-19 and 303 new deaths from the pandemic.
Two weeks before yesterday was Tuesday, February 23, Texas reported 10,090 new cases of COVID-19 and 258 new deaths from the virus.
Yesterday was Tuesday, March 9. The state of Texas reported 5,119 new cases of COVID-19, and 168 new deaths from the virus.
Itâs not quite a straight or smooth line, but you can see a steady decline in cases, followed by a similar decline in deaths. This doesnât mean the pandemic is over. But it does suggest that the worst is over. Hospitals across the state now report a significant amount of unused capacity. âState health officials in Texas reported to the federal government that 75 percent of inpatient beds and 80 percent of ICU beds in hospitals across the state were still occupied as of March 6. Around 9 percent of beds statewide were filled by COVID-19 patients, they reported.â (Unused hospital beds are good for emergencies, but not good for the long-term financial health of the hospital.)
Texas ranks second in the country in the number of vaccine shots administered, with nearly 7.3 million, but it also ranks second in the number of shots received from manufacturers, because doses are allocated to states by population size. As of this morning, the state has used 75 percent of its delivered supply, which is not an impressive percentage. (It is worth keeping in mind that as more doses get delivered, every stateâs percentage-used figure is declining a bit; North Dakota and Minnesota lead the country at 87 percent.) Fifteen percent of Texans have received one shot, and 8.2 percent are fully vaccinated. (We used to use the term âreceived both shots,â but now the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine is rolling out.) Obviously, getting hit with a terrible winter storm and experiencing widespread power outages does not help a state accelerate its vaccination program.
This week, another million doses have arrived or are scheduled to arrive in Texas. A week ago, Texas made all school and child-care workers eligible for the vaccine.
With the rise of gig economy jobs such as driving for Uber and other forms of independent work enabled by the digital era, more than 57 million Americans now work as freelancers in some capacity. But President Biden just endorsed a radical labor law that endangers their livelihood.
House Democrats recently reintroduced the PRO Act, which, among many sweeping reforms, would make many commonplace forms of independent contractor (freelance) arrangements illegal. Itâs based on a California law that was so dysfunctional even voters in the very blue state voted to change it.
“He literally forgets the name of his Secretary of Defense, forgets the position, as well as the name of the Pentagon, calling him ‘the guy that runs that outfit over there.'”
Slow Joe is not big on news conferences. “Biden has gone longer without facing extended questions from reporters than any of his 15 predecessors over the past 100 years.”
Entire Nevada Democratic Party staff quits after Bernie Bros sweep every seat.
Not long after Judith Whitmer won her election on Saturday to become chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, she got an email from the partyâs executive director, Alana Mounce. The message from Mounce began with a note of congratulations, before getting to her main point.
She was quitting. So was every other employee. And so were all the consultants. And the staff would be taking severance checks with them, thank you very much.
On March 6, a coalition of progressive candidates backed by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America took over the leadership of the Nevada Democratic Party, sweeping all five party leadership positions in a contested election that evening. Whitmer, who had been chair of the Clark County Democratic Party, was elected chair. The establishment had prepared for the loss, having recently moved $450,000 out of the partyâs coffers and into the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committeeâs account. The DSCC will put the money toward the 2022 reelection bid of Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a vulnerable first-term Democrat.
Democrats: We must destroy coal! Coal workers: Hey, we’re starting to take this personally. “Within two decades, your profession goes from being championed by the Democratic Party and labor officials to one that they want to destroy.”
Bad cop: “Dallas police officer allegedly hired hitmen to kill two people.” “Officer Bryan Riser, 36, was arrested Thursday in the unrelated slayings of Liza Saenz, 31, and Albert Douglas, 60, after one of the men charged in Saenzâs death told investigators he kidnapped and killed them at the officerâs direction.”
ï»ż
NYT‘s Maggie Halberstam just admits that Trump drove her crazy. Why does anyone think ordinary Americans will ever trust MSM outlets like New York Times ever again?
Matthew McConaughey teases a run for Texas Governor again. I don’t know enough about his politics to consider him a viable candidate (though he’s probably more viable than Beto O’Rourke on day 1), but the idea of him beating Greg Abbott isn’t nearly as far-fetched as it was a year ago, before Abbott maintained the coronavirus lockdown long after data said it was ineffective.
In a Wednesday evening Twitter video, with State Reps. Craig Goldman (RâFort Worth) and Phil King (RâWeatherford) on either side of him, Abbott claimed Big Tech competitor Gab was âantisemiticâ and that such companies âhave no place in Texas and certainly do not represent Texas values.â
He offered no evidence to back up his claim against Gab. He also praised legislation from Goldman and King âthat fights antisemitism in Texas.â
âIâm not on Gab a lot but I wouldnât consider the platform as âanti Semiticâ âŠand Iâm a Jew,â a citizen named Lisa replied to Abbottâs tweet. âStop this nonsense.â
Gab recently skyrocketed in popularity, claiming more than 2 million new users in January after Twitter permanently banned then-President Trump and Amazon, Apple, and Google teamed up to shut down conservative social media app Parler.
Abbottâs attack on the free speech platform contradicts his words from last week when he defended free speech and berated Facebook and Twitter for their censorship.
âThey are choosing which viewpoints are going to be allowed to be presented,â Abbott said at the time. âTexas is taking a stand against Big Tech political censorship: Weâre not going to allow it in the Lone Star State.â
Mainstream media coverage of Gab has attacked its free-speech approach to moderation, labeling it a haven of âQAnon conspiracy theories, misinformation and anti-Semitic commentary [âŠ] .â
âGab is not an âanti-semiticâ platform,â the company replied to Abbottâs tweet. âWe protect the political speech of all Americans, regardless of viewpoint, because in this age of cancel culture nobody else will.â
âThe enemies of freedom smear us with every name in the book because they hate America and they hate free speech,â Gab continued. âItâs a shame to see a GOP politician fall for this trap when conservative values are under sustained attack all over the country.â
Behind the Covid19 news, outside the 1619 wars, far more important than Dr Seuss, and much more far-reaching than dismantling the classics, a real line is being crossed in American education, and therefore American society as a whole. Itâs the accelerating abandonment of standardized tests, the one objective measurement of studentsâ ability and potential in our society and culture: 77 percent of high school seniors sent in SAT scores in 2019-20; only 44 percent this year; and many schools want to keep it that way. What was initially a temporary suspension of tests because of Covid has become an opportunity to tear down the entire system.
The rationale for the SAT abolition movement is â surprise! â critical theory, which insists that any measurement that results in different outcomes among ethnic or racial groups is a priori racist. (Except for all cases when non-whites and non-Asians do better than whites or Asians, in which case, never mind.) In the words this week of Congressman Jamaal Bowman of New York: âStandardized testing is a pillar of systemic racism.â
His argument is pure Kendi: the results are solely and exclusively what determines if a test is racist. Not the test itself; not evidence about its fairness or otherwise; not data about how it is constructed; not studies that examine its effects alongside every other way of measuring academic potential. Just the results.
There is no countering this argument because it is not an argument. It is a threat. All it tells us is that the power of the term âwhite supremacistâ will be ruthlessly deployed to shut down anyone who dares to argue that the SAT is, in fact, the least culturally biased of all measurements, the one thing wealthy kids cannot buy, and the most helpful tool in discovering the potential of poor, first-generation immigrant, black and Hispanic children, and rescuing them from the restrictions of class as well as race.
Portland Antifa is at it again, trying to storm banks and break into the federal courthouse again. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Milo Yiannopoulos now says he’s ex-gay. “I was never wholly at home in the gay lifestyle â Who is? Who could be? â and only leaned heavily into it in public because it drove liberals crazy to see a handsome, charismatic, intelligent gay man riotously celebrating conservative principles.” Whatever. His agent provocateur pose has worn pretty thin over the years. But I suspect this is one “lifestyle choice” liberals won’t be celebrating.
Local man Craig Trudeau gave thanks to the good Lord above today that he’s an American so he doesn’t have to pretend to care about the royal family at all.
Trudeau said he is extremely humbled and grateful to have been born in the best country ever created by God, especially because it means he doesn’t have to care about Meghan Markle or Prince Harry.
“Lord, thank you that I was born in your chosen country of America, so that I don’t have to give a wooden nickel about whoever this prince and princess or king or duke or whoever they are,” he said Monday as he cleaned his AR-15 and shot off fireworks in front of his house, because he lives in America and so can do whatever he wants.
I’ve been watching entirely too many Top Gear/Grand Tour videos on YouTube. This one struck me as just barely justifiable for posting here as an example of idiot government regulation at work: a look at idiot street signs.
These are all from the UK. Feel free to share examples closer to home in the comments.
