The Bloody Failed Experiment of Gun-Free “Death” Zones

After watching senseless killings in Gun Free Zones time and time again, logical-thinking people start to consider the fact that deaths occur in these locations because people can’t defend themselves when under attack. Mainstream media, in coordination with the Democrat party, is highly tuned in to this awareness and works effortlessly to counteract that thought process through an endless stream of propaganda, rhetoric, and gun-blaming.

They know that logical-thinking people are aware of their anti-gun fear campaign. Still, they also know that there is a good portion of Americans who can be easily manipulated into believing the anti-gun lies.

We wonder how, if they know that they are putting good people in danger with their false narrative, Gun Free Zones, and dangerous gun restrictions, they can continue this experiment in unnecessary loss of human life?

The biggest culprit of unnecessary and preventable death is the Gun Free Zone. It is also becoming quite apparent that the Gun Free Zone is a valuable tool for gun restrictions. At a certain point, the gun-grabbers start to look foolish for continuing dangerous policies with no remorse, but the Gun Free Zone brings with it death, and an excuse to blame guns for human violence. This is the main driver for gun-restriction support.

Don’t believe me? Ask yourself why it is that left-wing media and politicians will start blaming firearms, with total disregard to the suffering families and loss of life before the victims are even removed from the scene.

There are several reasons for this immoral behavior, including the fact that a good portion of our Country values politics over morality.

This could be a result of the demonization of Judaism and Christian values in our society. It could also be the fact that there is a concerted effort to teach people to devalue human life if it doesn’t benefit them.

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Anti-Semitic Nuts are Coming Out of the Woodwork in California, New York.

We’ve seen this sort of thing happen before. Just a couple years ago there was a wave of anti-Semitic attacks with notable incidents in New York City and Los Angeles. Now it seems to be happening again.

Last night a deranged man broke into a Jewish family’s home in Studio City, CA and threatened to kill them. The couple’s four children were home at the time.

The break-in happened around 5:20 a.m. in the 3000 block of Laurel Canyon Boulevard, according to Los Angeles Police.

The victim, who is nine months pregnant, told KTLA’s Ellina Abovian that the intruder first kicked in the door to their master bedroom. Her husband fought with him while she called 911.

“[He said] I’m going to kill you because you are Jewish … Israel kills people,” she said in broken English.

Was this guy trying to reenact the murder of Jewish families is Israel? Fortunately, the husband forced the man outside where police found him still ranting when they arrived. He was armed with a kitchen knife and kept shouting “Free Palestine!” as he was arrested. Reporters (see below) said he was shouting other things during his arrest that couldn’t’ be aired in a televised report.

As for how the suspect targeted this particular family, Yashar Ali reported that the home had “Mezuzahs on the door,” identifying them as Jewish.

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Biden’s Real Meeting With An Israeli PM, And His Support Of Israel In Hamas War

Twice since the Israeli war with Hamas began, Joe Biden falsely claimed that he met with Golda Meir just before the 1967 Six-Day War. However, Biden’s story was a lie. Levi Eshkol was Prime Minister until Feb. 1969, when he had a fatal heart attack. Golda Meir became PM a month later, in March 1969, a year and 8 months after the Six-Day War. President Biden got his law degree in 1968 and was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1969, almost two years after the Six-Day War.

During the Israeli war to protect herself against Hamas, President Biden has been an excellent ally of Israel, but there are reasons to wonder how long that will last. During his Senate career, Biden was not a great friend. He even refused to participate in easy ways to look pro-Israel. He refused to sign his name to non-binding pro-Israel letters most of his senate colleagues supported.

As a young senator, Biden did get some time with an Israel Prime Minister.

On June 22, 1982, PM Menachem Begin testified before the  Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  

During that committee hearing, at the height of the Lebanon War, Sen. John Biden (Delaware) had attacked Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria and threatened that if Israel did not immediately cease this activity, the US would have to cut economic aid to Israel.

“Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”

When Begin said, “Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens.” He wasn’t talking about the American heroes and those of our allies who put their lives on the line or lost their lives fighting Hitler. He discussed that FDR could have saved up to 200,000 of Hitler’s victims but didn’t want more Jews in the US. Churchill could have saved tens of thousands but lacked the courage.

Not learning his lesson, Senator Biden Senator raised his voice at Begin and banged twice on the table. Begin responded.

“This desk is designed for writing, not for fists. Don’t threaten us with slashing aid. Do you think that because the US lends us money it is entitled to impose on us what we must do? We are grateful for the assistance we have received, but we are not to be threatened. I am a proud Jew. Three thousand years of culture are behind me, and you will not frighten me with threats. Take note: we do not want a single soldier of yours to die for us.”

The NY Times reported on the aftermath of the meeting

After the meeting, Mr. Begin said: ”I enjoyed the session very much. I believe in liberty, that free men should freely discuss problems and if they have differences of opinion they should voice them in sincerity.”

”I said it was a lively discussion,” he said. ”If you want to use other adjectives. …” He paused, then said, ”Lively is enough.”

Biden began his Presidency by selecting Israeli haters and/or Iran apologists to join his team.

However, since October 7, 2023, the war with Hamas, Biden changed his opinion about the Jewish State. So far, the war has been a great friend of Israel. Changed his policy, not just the speeches but also arms, warships, and other military equipment. Next year, in Nov. 2024, there will be a Presidential election in the United States. It is expected to be close, perhaps, even less than one percent. Will Biden change his pro-Israel strategy to solidify the support of his supporters, will he be the man who banged his desk attempting to intimidate Menachem Begin, or will he remain the Joe Biden he’s been since October 7? Well, we will know soon.

BLUF
The corporate media refused to correct the President’s lies. Now, Democrat politicians, anti-gun billionaires, and the mainstream media think that ordinary people like you should be disarmed because you’re too dangerous. I have to ask, too dangerous to whom?

Lies My President Told Me

I understand the graft and corruption that are President Biden’s normal mode of business. What I can’t accept are the President’s lies about us. We are far better than he claims, and I refuse to let my neighbor’s be blamed for our President’s failings.

-President Biden said that more children die from being shot than from all other causes. That isn’t true. What the President refused to say is that honest gun owners like you and your neighbors prevented over 30-thousand murders a year because they had a firearm to defend the people they love. Did the President ignore the lives you save because he is too forgetful, or because he is too bigoted against us?

-The President said we have to stop the epidemic of gun violence we hear and see on the news. The President refused to say that the nightly violence we see and hear is from our failing Democrat controlled cities. The president refused to mention that most counties won’t have a single murder this year. He ignored that the worst 2-percent of our counties account for over half of our murders. The worst 5-percent account for about two-thirds of our murders. Even within those failed Democrat controlled cities, most of the murders are within a few zip codes. What our President can’t say is that we are seeing an epidemic of political failure and corruption on the nightly news. Democrats destroyed our once beautiful cities like Detroit, Baltimore, and Washington DC. Now those politicians need to blame you.

-The President said that modern rifles were the cause of this violence. He didn’t tell you that the overwhelming majority of murders, even mass-murders, are committed with handguns. He ignored that more of us are beaten to death with hands and feet than are killed with modern rifles. The President didn’t mention that you and your neighbors use a “modern rifle” to protect yourself thousands of times every month. You didn’t know that because the corporate media refused to correct the old man’s lies.

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My comment:
So called mandatory ‘safe storage’ laws (unloaded and locked away, with the ammo also locked away in a different container) have been found unconstitutional and applicable to the states by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Heller and McDonald cases.
It’s not unusual for gun control advocates to ‘forget’ and neglect mentioning this fact.
I’ll be interested to see if this comment makes it past your ‘filters’.


In Missouri, 66% Of Suicides Come With a Gun. So Groups Want Firearms a Little Farther Out of Reach

​​Even in Missouri — where politicians risk their careers talking about rules around guns — people will listen to your thoughts about firearm safety.

In a place where two-thirds of the rising number of suicides come with a gun, people trying to reduce that statistic in Missouri expected resistance when it came to suggestions about gun safety.

But amid a mounting mental health crisis, what the organizations found surprised them: Communities across the state were open to talking about how to store their guns and ammunition differently if it meant keeping their family or friends safe. That meant wading into conversations about firearms in the context of suicide prevention through conversations about mental health and community well-being.

“Just launching the conversation with firearm suicides was probably not a good idea,” said Dr. Meenakshi Bhilwar, a project analyst at the Randolph County Caring Community Partnership. “We should sort of lay the ground, talk about mental health, talk about suicides in general and when the audience gets comfortable talking about those, then we bring in the topic of firearms.”

Bhilwar works with a handful of other clinicians across the state through the Missouri Foundation for Health on preventing suicides by storing guns in ways that create as many barriers as possible for someone who is in crisis.

“Over this period of three years, we have seen an increase in how the community is responding to our project and how the community members are responding to firearm suicides,” Bhilwar said.

Public health groups in Missouri partnered to pitch the power of gun locks, safes and having tough conversations about gun safety through schools and community health initiatives.

They also know that a potentially life-threatening crisis can come and go within minutes. And a few minutes of delay in acting on a suicidal thought — spurred from struggling to bypass a gun safety lock or having bullets and firearms stored in separate locations — could mean the difference between pulling the trigger or letting a self-destructive thought pass.

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Group to host “die-in” to push guns as public health issue

Violent crime is an unfortunate fact of life. From the time Cain slew Abel, violence has just been a part of the world. Some people don’t know how to live without trying to hurt others, either out of anger, greed, or some other base emotion.

Guns were never required for people to be horrible to one another.

Just go on X, formerly Twitter, for a glaring example.

Yet many want to change that. In and of itself, this is a noble goal. The problem is that they push narratives that seek to punish the innocent and do nothing to inhibit those who represent the actual problem.

For example, we have this stunt out of Iowa.

Cardboard tombstones with the names of real victims and demonstrators laid out, covered in what looks like blood, filled Washington Park in Dubuque on Wednesday. Demonstrators from the Dubuque Coalition for Non-Violence hosted the event, calling it a ‘die-in’. They say it’s meant to highlight the dangers gun violence presents.

“[Gun violence] is at least as much of a public health issue as for dying for lack of seatbelts,” Tim Moothart, President of the Coalition, said. “Or dying with tobacco and we were able to change our culture in order to correct those issues.”

*sigh*

OK, here we go yet again.

Both the lack of seatbelts and tobacco involved people making unwise choices. They believed they were making a smart one, though, or they figured they weren’t hurting anyone else so who cared? Making an effort to teach them the error of their ways so as to reduce negative health outcomes such as, you know, death makes a great deal of sense and sure, can constitution a public health issue.

The problem with so-called gun violence is that the violence is something one person does to another. They do it knowing what the results will be. Those results are the intention, in most cases. Guns aren’t killing by themselves or because bad things just happen that are beyond someone’s control. Guns are used to kill by people who are seeking to kill someone else.

That’s a whole different matter.

Now, is there room for public health approaches to violence? Yeah, there really are. Interventions designed to break the cycle of violence, for example, can make a huge difference and yes, reduce violent crime. Breaking the revenge cycle is a big step in the right direction.

Especially as it doesn’t focus on guns exclusively and looks at the underlying issue.

And this group could work toward that end without their silly “die-in” that simply tries to make people feel bad.

Yet that’s not what they really want.

Dubuque state senator and Senate Minority Leader Pam Jochum stopped by the park during the event. She says events like this highlight the importance of gun control.

“I do support the effort to bring about common sense gun safety measures in our state and throughout our country,” Senator Jochum shared. “Clearly this shows us that far too many people die every day because of gun violence.”…

However while they want to bring awareness to the issue, Moothart says the battle for gun control in Iowa is one they’re losing.

Rather than focus on something that might actually work, Moothart and his buddies are going to try and infringe upon your right to keep and bear arms. They want to restrict guns because they can’t seem to separate guns and violent crime.

As such, they’re not worth taking seriously.

It’s easy to fact-check Al. All he does is lie.

Fact Check: Al Sharpton Says No Mass Killings Without ‘Mass Instruments’

CLAIM: During a Friday appearance on MSNBC, Al Sharpton bemoaned the inability to secure more gun control and claimed there would be no mass killings without “mass instruments.”

VERDICT: False.

Breitbart News reported Sharpton suggested gun control can be pursued under the banner of “civil rights.”

He went on to say that whether gun control is pursued as a civil right or “just on guns, people cannot do mass killings unless they have mass instruments.”

Sharpton focused on AR-15s and suggested he is shocked by people who say, “No, we’re not giving up our AR-15s.”

He did not mention the work done via a partnership between Northeastern University, the Associated Press, and USA Today, which traces “mass killings” back to 2006 and shows “semiautomatic handguns are far more common in mass killings than guns that are typically characterized as assault weapons, such as the AR-15.”

Graphs used by Northeastern/AP/USA Today show handguns are used in “mass killings” almost twice as much as “long guns,” the latter being a category which includes shotguns, rifles of every kind, etc.

During the MSNBC segment, Sharpton pointed to the August 26, 2023, Jacksonville, Florida, shooting in which a man with an AR-15 killed three people at a Dollar General store. He did not mention the April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech shooting, in which an attacker with two handguns killed 32 people.

Sharpton also omitted the November 21, 2021, incident in which Darrell Brooks Jr. drove over people during a Milwaukee parade, killing six.

He left out the July 14, 2016, attack in Nice, France, in which a terrorist used a truck to kill 86 people and failed to mention the September 11, 2001, attacks, in which airplanes were weaponized to kill nearly 3,000 people.

Sharpton’s claim is false.

Bill Gates Says ‘Brute Force’ Climate Policies Won’t Work
Speaking at a live event at The Times Center in New York, the billionaire philanthropist argued for a pragmatic, technology-driven approach to global warming.

“Are we the science people or are we the idiots?” asked Bill Gates, during a discussion about his pragmatic strategy to fighting climate

Bill Gates, the multibillionaire founder of Microsoft, argued for a pragmatic, technology-driven approach to fighting climate change on Thursday.

“If you try to do climate brute force, you will get people who say, ‘I like climate but I don’t want to bear that cost and reduce my standard of living,’” Mr. Gates said at the Climate Forward event hosted by The New York Times. “Without innovation, it’s unlikely, particularly in middle-income countries, that the brute force approach will be successful.”
Mr. Gates also said winning more bipartisan support was needed in order for policy to actually stick. “Republicans for climate change action are gold, you know,” he said. “That’s got to be a number that somehow we manage to increase over time.”

“You can’t have a climate policy that when one party is in charge goes full speed ahead and stops cold,” he added. “These are 30-year investments in steel factories, new ways of making meat.”

Mr. Gates, who in recent weeks has espoused an everything-will-be-fine approach to the climate crisis, was asked whether he could reconcile that stance with the reality of extreme weather around the globe.

“I’m the person who is doing the most on climate in terms of the innovation and how we can square multiple goals,” said Mr. Gates, a co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major donor to health- and climate-related causes. “There’s very limited money for causes to reduce inequity in the world. And no temperate country is going to become uninhabitable.”

Instead, he said, he is taking a more pragmatic approach and drawing a line at untested remedies like planting a trillion trees.
“Are we the science people or are we the idiots?” he said. “Which one do we want to be?”

God-Hating Group Threatens Auburn University With Lawsuit Over Student Baptisms

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) is threatening to sue Auburn University after some 200 students participated in a spontaneous and unscripted mass baptism at a “Unite Auburn” worship event Tuesday night.

The “Unite Auburn” event featured performances by Christian worship band Passion and included speakers such as Jennie Allen, a Christian author, and Rev. Jonathan Pokluda, lead pastor of Harris Creek Baptist Church in Waco, Texas.

Following the event, one individual reportedly wanted to be baptized, but a tub was not available for use. Seeking a solution, students began gathering at the lake.

Photographs and video footage from the event showed hundreds of college students lining the banks of the lake as students waded into the water to be baptized one by one over a two-hour period.

About 200 students chose to be baptized from a crowd of over 5,000.

According to the godless twits at FFRF, the First Amendment requires public universities to suppress all religious activity.

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An Assault on Bill of Rights

The people of New Mexico — and, we fear, the people of the United States — owe Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina a real debt of gratitude.

Medina has stated unequivocally that his department will not enforce an unconstitutional “emergency order” by Michelle Lujan Grisham, the governor of New Mexico, to suspend the right of her constituents to lawfully carry firearms.

The governor’s order is in response to a spate of shootings in New Mexico’s largest city.

“A child is murdered, the perpetrator is still on the loose, and what does the governor do? She … targets law-abiding citizens with an unconstitutional gun order,” state Sen. Greg Baca, the ranking Republican in New Mexico’s state Senate, told the Associated Press.

“I don’t know what her thought process was that she suddenly thought she could trample the Second Amendment,” state Rep. Stefani Lord told KOAT Channel 7 of Albuquerque at a protest against the governor’s order.

The move by Grisham is excessive. It violates the Bill of Rights and it is exactly the sort of escalation that Americans who defend the Second Amendment fear and warn their friends, neighbors and family about when other measures to curtail gun owners’ rights are debated.

Even proponents of gun control, including activist David Hogg and U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., recognizes that Grisham’s order tramples Constitutional rights.

“I support gun safety laws,” Lieu said on social media, according to a Fox News report. “However, this order from the Governor of New Mexico violates the U.S. Constitution. No state in the union can suspend the federal Constitution.”

We appreciate the congressman speaking out against this violation of the Second Amendment just as we appreciate the police chief’s recognition that his department has no authority to join the governor in violating the Constitution. We hope the rebukes and reprimands are swift and severe enough that this infringement does not spread from the Land of Enchantment to our other 49 states.

Never, ever place any trust in “The Internet of Things” “IOT”

BLUF
If we ponder that relationship for a moment, we might conclude that many of the things that we believe we control are really on loan as a means of controlling us.

The Man Amazon Erased.

On Thursday, May 25, Brandon Jackson, a software engineer in Baltimore County, Maryland, discovered that he was locked out of his Amazon account. Jackson couldn’t get packages delivered to his home by the retail giant. He couldn’t access any files and data he had stored with Amazon Web Services, the company’s powerful cloud computing wing. It also meant that Jackson, a self-described home automation enthusiast, could no longer use Alexa for his smart home devices. He could turn on his lights manually, but only in the knowledge that Amazon could still operate them remotely.

Jackson soon discovered that Amazon suspended his account because a Black delivery driver who’d come to his house the previous day had reported hearing racist remarks from his video doorbell. In a brief email sent to Jackson at 3 a.m., the company explained how it unilaterally placed all of his linked devices and services on hold as it commenced an internal investigation.

The accusations baffled Jackson. He and his family are Black. When he reviewed the doorbell’s footage, he saw that nobody was home at the time of the delivery. At a loss for what could have prompted the accusation of racism, he suspected the driver had misinterpreted the doorbell’s automated response: “Excuse me, can I help you?”

Submitting the surveillance video “appeared to have little impact on [Amazon’s] decision to disable my account,” Jackson explained on his blog on June 4. “In the end, my account was unlocked on Wednesday [May 31, six days later], with no follow-up to inform me of the resolution.” By now, many months later, Amazon’s investigation into the matter appears to have concluded though the issue remains far from resolved. Contacted for a response, the company wrote: “In this case, we learned through our investigation that the customer did not act inappropriately, and we’re working directly with the customer to resolve their concerns while also looking at ways to prevent a similar situation from happening again.”

It was only Jackson’s technical skills and particular automated home setup that saved him from what could have been a larger lockout. “​​My home was fine as I just used Siri or [a] locally hosted dashboard if I wanted to change a light’s color or something of that nature,” he explained. His week of digital exile amounted to a frustrating inconvenience only because, as a tech-savvy user and professional software engineer, he had the ability to set up his own locally hosted network that acted as a failsafe. But Jackson’s experience is a warning to the vast majority of Alexa users and smart home dwellers who, lacking his particular skills and foresight, are increasingly at the mercy of the tech they have embedded into their lives and bedrooms.

“I came forward,” Jackson told Tablet, “because I don’t think it’s right that Amazon could say, ‘I know you bought all these devices, but we think you are racist. So we’re going to take [you] offline.’” On one side, critics lambasted Jackson as a dupe for having smart devices in the first place; others said his criticisms of Amazon implied that he didn’t support a company protecting its employees. “People missed the main point,” he said. “I don’t really care who you are, what you do, or what you believe in. If you bought something, you should own it.”

Jackson’s story of being temporarily canceled by the tech behemoth spread across the internet after it was discussed in a YouTube video by Louis Rossman, a right-to-repair activist, independent technician, and popular YouTube personality. Right to repair, or fair repair, is a consumer-focused movement advocating for the public to be able to repair the equipment they own instead of being forced to use the manufacturer’s repair services or upgrade products that have been arbitrarily made obsolete. In the early 20th century, fair-repair advocacy began with automobiles and heavy machinery, but its tenets have spread as computer chips have come to undergird contemporary life.

Following Rossman’s initial video about Jackons’s case, Amazon alleged that Rossman had abused its affilate marketing program and placed restrictions on the YouTuber’s business account, leading him to speculate in a follow-up video that the corporate giant was retaliating against him for covering Jackson’s travails. Rossman alleges that this was the first time Amazon made any allegation against him of abusing its affiliate marketing program since he enrolled in the marketing program 7.5 years ago.

Jackson’s experience is a warning to Alexa users and smart home dwellers who are increasingly at the mercy of the tech they have embedded into their lives and bedrooms.

The number of households adopting smart home devices in the United States is expected to reach 93 million by 2027 and most consumers rely on cloud services for their daily online use. But the cloud is not just a metaphor to explain a connected network; it describes the complete reorganization of digital life under the power of remote centralized databases. Light switches, lightbulbs, locks, thermostats, coffee makers, air conditioners, speakers, exercise equipment, and virtually every other piece of equipment you can find in the average home can now all be operated as interconnected pieces of a single digital network, run by an outside host, such as Amazon, which operates the massive server banks that make up “the cloud.” For consumers, this arrangement offers convenience and optimization. You can turn on the heat in your house from another state, or reorder a household good with a simple voice command. But the cost of that convenience is that consumers no longer independently control how their tech—or their homes, since the two are increasingly integrated—is operated. As Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit and another right-to-repair activist put it, “Who really owns our things? It used to be us.”

Brandon Jackson

Brandon Jackson

Alexa’s terms of use includes a clause stating that Amazon is permitted to terminate “access” to Alexa at the company’s discretion without notice. Jackson was told by a customer relations executive over the phone that he needed to assure the company that he would not ridicule or put future delivery drivers in harm’s way. Nearly a month later, Amazon admitted no wrongdoing, only apologizing for “inconveniences.” Given absolute power over its users, there is no pressure on Amazon to explain its decision. Indeed, the company used the same statement Tabletreceived for an earlier June Newsweek article regarding Jackson’s lockout.

Amazon’s claims of being concerned about the safety of blue-collar workers strain credibility. According to a 2021 article published in Vice, when minority delivery drivers faced violent threats and racial harassment, the company’s penchant for efficiency took priority over worker safety. Unsustainable demands from delivery drivers have translated to drivers peeing in bottles and defecating in garbage bags, a problem Amazon internally acknowledged even as it publicly denies the allegations. Inside its “fulfillment centers”—the term the company uses for its warehouses—workers suffer 5.9 serious injuries for every 100 workers, an 80% greater injury rate than competitors. Indeed employee turnover is so high in these facilities that a leaked company memo from 2022 warned that the company was on track to deplete its number of available workers by 2024.

Amazon’s intrusion into Jackson’s life, then, should not be understood within the context of protecting workers—which might begin by giving them adequate time to use the restroom—but rather as part of an emergent regime of technological control. The culmination of years of debate about political and civic norm moderation on social media and in public discourse has created a new normative standard in which “innocent until proven guilty” is now viewed as an oppressive and antiquated relic. As the new unelected masters of public discourse, tech giants like Amazon, Google, Twitter, and Facebook, have been encouraged to execute summary punishments of users for mere accusations of racism or “disinformation.”

Amazon’s enormous power in the global economy and ubiquitous presence in the U.S. supply chain and cloud computing sectors allows the company to take the power of surveillance and cancellation even further. Unlike purely social media companies like X (formerly known as Twitter), Amazon’s suite of smart home gadgets and services gives it a direct physical presence inside of people’s homes. That means that when Amazon wades into cultural issues, or decides to punish people based on offensive speech, its political values are mapped onto objects and processes used in the real world.

In Jackson’s case, in order to regain access to things he had already paid for, he was forced to submit the surveillance video from his home to Amazon to prove his innocence. Somehow, in the new cloud-based networked world these corporations are building for us, the solution to every problem always involves individuals handing over more of their private data.

Debates over censorship, free speech and its limits typically revolve around social media use. But Hayley Tsukayama, a senior legislative activist for Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, suggested to Tablet that Jackson’s case shared a similar architecture to conversations around content moderation. Companies can choose not to allow certain forms of speech, but in doing so they can no longer be treated as neutral platforms. Tsukayama argues that social media users are offered a recourse, even if the process is stacked against them. “If [Amazon] is going to look at customer behavior as being part of the terms of service,” she said, “they [should] make that clear and set up a process that’s perhaps not unlike what we see at Facebook, YouTube or others who deal with content takedown.”

But, of course, we now know that millions of social media users had their accounts censored or banned without explanation or recourse for posts, including many that were classified as “disinformation” at the time of the alleged offense but contained statements that authorities later acknowledged as true. In that light, placing more trust in a content moderation model seems like a dangerous gamble. It could also lead to even more surveillance online as companies like Amazon claim a need to monitor their customers’ every move so they can judge them “fairly.”

Like many digital technologies, the smart home offers connectivity at a steep price—it makes individuals passive subjects of the products that surround them, including the things they own. Few of us have any real understanding of the “terms of service” on the devices and services that we rely on. Consider how streaming services replaced physical media and how the arrival of smartphones, with all their wonders, also meant that the owners of such phones became incapable of replacing their own batteries, SIM cards, and physical storage. If we ponder that relationship for a moment, we might conclude that many of the things that we believe we control are really on loan as a means of controlling us.

Republicans push ahead with attempt to impeach governor over Albuquerque gun ban

A pair of Republican lawmakers are pushing ahead with an effort to impeach Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham over a gun ban that has been called unconstitutional and thrust New Mexico into the national debate on gun violence.

The effort, however, faces an uphill battle in the state Legislature, where Democrats control both chambers.

Reps. John Block of Alamogordo and Stefani Lord of Sandia Park this week launched a certificate form for lawmakers to sign calling for an extraordinary session to impeach Lujan Grisham over an executive order prohibiting carrying open or concealed firearms in public in Albuquerque and across Bernalillo County.

The governor ordered the 30-day gun ban, part of an effort to stem gun violence in New Mexico’s most populous city, after the shooting death of an 11-year-old boy — another casualty in a city beset by crime. The ban also triggered widespread criticism of the governor, who said no constitutional right, in her view, is intended to be absolute.

“The U.S. Constitution is absolute and designed to protect the rights of the people against tyrannical decisions like Governor Lujan [Grisham] attempted to do,” Lord, a staunch gun rights advocate, said in a statement.

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Rep. John Block, R-Alamogordo, at the Capitol in January during the legislative session.

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Markey, Ocasio-Cortez ask Biden to create Civilian Climate Corps by executive order

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), two of Congress’ most vocal proponents for aggressive climate action, on Monday called for President Biden to establish a Civilian Climate Corps.

The CCC had been a key element in early versions of the Build Back Better Act, the sweeping environmental and infrastructure bill. It was not ultimately included in the slimmed down Inflation Reduction Act, which was nonetheless the largest climate bill in U.S. history.

Biden was a vocal backer of the Climate Corps early in his presidency, comparing it to the Civilian Conservation Corps introduced during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The original legislation called for $10 billion to launch the new program.

In the letter, timed to the 30th anniversary of the bill that created Americorps, Ocasio-Cortez and Markey cited polling indicating the idea has more than 60 percent support. The two have also reintroduced a bill to establish a corps legislatively, although the measure will almost certainly not be given a vote in the Republican-majority House.

“A central coordinating body, overseen by the White House, will be essential to create a successful and cohesive Civilian Climate Corps,” they wrote. “Through interagency collaboration, as well as coordination with state climate corps, other state entities, and local non-profit organizations, your Administration can realize the vision of a Civilian Climate Corps that establishes a unified front in the face of climate change — one that looks like America, serves America, and puts good-paying union jobs within reach for more young adults.”

The letter is also signed by members of Democratic congressional leadership like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).

Also on Monday, a coalition of more than 50 progressive and environmentalist groups sent a separate letter calling on Biden to establish the CCC, citing its popularity among younger voters in particular.

“While previous Executive Orders and legislation under your administration demonstrate tremendous progress toward meeting our Paris climate goals and your campaign promises, this summer has made clear that we must be as ambitious as possible in tackling the great crisis of our time,” they wrote.

“We encourage your administration to create a Civilian Climate Corps through existing authorities, with existing climate funding, that can coordinate across relevant federal agencies.”

 

‘Battle of Sacred Cow Groups’ Begins in MI After All-Muslim City Council Bans Pride Flag on City Property.

BLUF:
“We welcomed you. We created nonprofits to help feed, clothe, find housing. We did everything we could to make your transition here easier, and this is how you repay us, by stabbing us in the back?”

Though Democrats have blamed conservative Republicans for the growing outcry from the Muslim community over the radical LGBTQ agenda being forced on children in public schools, the belief still exists among woke leftists that if they continue to play nice they can coexist with—and win over—devoutly religious, socially conservative Muslims who have become disaffected with Democratic Party.

It’s almost an understatement to say that theory has been put to the test in one city in Michigan, which saw an all-Muslim city council and mayor unanimously vote to ban the Pride flag and some other flags from being displayed on city property, a vote they held during ‘Pride Month’:

 

From the Washington Post‘s report:

And last year, a Muslim who emigrated from Yemen as a teenager became mayor — the city’s first leader in nearly a century with no Polish roots — alongside what is believed to be the nation’s only all-Muslim city council.

Many residents in this tiny enclave just north of downtown Detroit saw these changes as a sign of the Hamtramck’s progressiveness. The Muslim community that had previously experienced discrimination, including voter intimidation and resistance to mosques’ public call to prayer, had finally taken its seats at the table.

Yet the ethnic, cultural and religious diversity that made Hamtramck something of a model is being put severely to the test. In June, after divisive debate, the six-member council blocked the display of Pride flags on city property — action that has angered allies and members of the LGBTQ+ community, who feel that the support they provided the immigrant groups has been reciprocated with betrayal.

“We welcomed you,” former council member Catrina Stackpoole, a retired social worker who identifies as gay, recalls telling the council this summer. “We created nonprofits to help feed, clothe, find housing. We did everything we could to make your transition here easier, and this is how you repay us, by stabbing us in the back?”

The only flags that can be displayed on city property, per the WaPo‘s report, are “U.S., state, city and POW/MIA banners.”

My first thought when I read this was “What the heck did they expect?” My second was to remind myself that the far left always expects mindless subservience from their core voting blocs.

Though there seemed to be general agreement from Twitter conservatives with the vote to only allow the American flag and related flags on city property, some other observations were made about the widening political rift in Hamtramck which ranged from serious to downright hilarious:

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Anti-gunners really don’t understand concept of freedom

Fort v. Grisham: 2A Challenge to New Mexico Governor’s Carry Ban

Summary: Federal lawsuit challenging the New Mexico Governor’s total carry ban.

Plaintiffs: Zachary Fort, Firearms Policy Coalition, Second Amendment Foundation, and New Mexico Shooting Sports Association.

Defendants: New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, New Mexico Department of Health Cabinet Secretary Patrick Allen, New Mexico Department of Safety Cabinet Secretary Jason Bowie, New Mexico State Police Chief W. Troy Weisler.

Litigation Counsel: Jordon George

Docket: D. NM case no. 1:23-cv-00778 | CourtListener Docket

Key Events & Filings:

Libs Vow to Never Leave You Alone – Ever.

Americans are staying away from liberal media in droves. Except for a handful of blinkered midwits on the literal fringes of the country — let’s call them “elites” who are “coastal” — most people no longer care what’s on network TV or CNN. Why should we watch it anymore, when we already know what they’re going to say? Long gone are the days when a few provincial idiots set the tone for the entire country.

But our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters aren’t giving up without a fight! Here are a couple of examples from the past week.

What have the late-night talkshow hosts been doing during the Hollywood strike?

  1. Who cares?
  2. But also: This.

 

Yes, the four current network hosts, and one guy on HBO, just started a podcast together while their shows are in reruns. Why not? Beats sitting around the mansion all day.

In theory, I like the novelty of this. It’s nice to see competitors being friendly. Imagine if David Letterman and Jay Leno had been able to put aside their differences and work on a project together.

On the other hand, imagine if they hadn’t made you laugh in 15-20 years. That’s what this is to me. If I can’t sit through just one of these guys for an hour, why would I want to subject myself to all five at once? And without any writers to give them interesting things to say.

What a bunch of dickheads. But at least the proceeds are going to their striking writers, so they can pay the bills until they can get back to making the same Trump joke over and over.

But wait, there’s more! Those aren’t the only liberal buttholes who refuse to go away and leave us alone.

Remember CNN+? You know, the streaming service that made Quibi look like Netflix. It lasted for 30 glorious days in the spring of 2022, and it was only the first time within the next three months that Brian Stelter would lose a job.

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