Category: Media

Social media censorship legislation proposed in Kansas

A social media censorship bill, targeting companies like Facebook and Twitter that have been censoring and de-platforming conservative viewpoints, is being considered in Kansas.

According to Dr. Mark Steffen, the Republican State Senator from Hutchinson who is sponsoring the bill, his measure takes a unique approach to work around the Section 230 federal protections social media companies enjoy.

The Social Media Anti-Censorship Bill” SB187 targets the terms of service everyone agrees to — generally without having read them — when they create an account, under the Kansas Consumer Protection Act.

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TV Shows Push Gun Control Myths — in Sync With Biden

Last week, the Biden administration promised gun control groups that it will soon roll out a massive push for limits on firearm purchases and other measures. President Biden reiterated that promise on Sunday. And the television networks aren’t waiting to lay the groundwork for this effort.

CBS is in a full-court press for gun control on its evening entertainment television shows. The bad guys are always white supremacists who use machine guns — supposedly AR-15s — to commit mass public shootings. Criminals in Mexico supposedly get machine guns from the United States. A father’s desire to protect his family only leads to tragedy when his daughter gets into the gun safe and uses the weapon in a mass public shooting. And guns in the home pose a danger for children. Gun registration is necessary for solving crime.

NBC isn’t to be left out, showing a woman who tried but failed to use a gun to protect herself. Instead, her gun was taken from her and used to kill a police officer. The lesson is that owning a gun will only bring you grief.

And that’s just in the first six weeks of the year. Every show gives an inaccurate impression about firearms, thereby helping in this push for gun restrictions. It’s as though these shows were written by Michael Bloomberg’s gun control organizations. Indeed, the networks are working with these groups. A member of  Moms Demand Action recently wrote a Washington Post op-ed headlined: “Guns are white supremacy’s deadliest weapon. We must disarm hate.” So it isn’t too surprising that show after show portrays neo-Nazis using machine guns to commit mass public shootings. CBS’s “SWAT,” “FBI: Most Wanted,” “FBI,” and” Bull” all push this theme. They often refer explicitly to these guns as AR-15s. Others, such as “Magnum PI” and “NCIS LA,” constantly show criminals using machine guns.

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Rush Limbaugh – and the Importance of Being Hated

James O’Keefe——-

It is with great sadness that I learned my dear friend, inspirational figure, and American radio icon Rush Limbaugh has passed away.

I will never forget what Rush said when someone once asked him about how he handled being hated:

There’s a good reason for the media hating me.  And once I came to grips with that fact, that there’s a reason they should hate me, then it makes sense.  One of the toughest things I had to do was learn to psychologically accept the fact that being hated was a sign of success. 

Most people aren’t raised to be hated.  We’re all raised to be loved.  We want to be loved.  We’re told to do things to be loved and appreciated and liked.  We’re raised, don’t offend anybody, be nice.  Everybody wants total acceptance. Everybody wants respect. Everybody wants to be loved, and so when you learn that what you do is going to engender hatred you have to learn to accept that as a sign of success.  That was a tough psychological thing for me.

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In Must-Watch Clip, Trump Attorney “Michael van der Veen, Citizen” Destroys Media

Saturday night, President Trump’s attorney, Michael van der Veen, appeared on CBS News and was asked about Sen. Mitch McConnell’s comments after Trump’s acquittal. As Bonchie covered earlier, McConnell said that “President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” and that Trump is “still liable for everything he did during his period in office.” When he was specifically asked whether he was surprised to hear such a serious rebuke from the leader of the Republican party in the Senate, van der Veen’s expression, tone, and words said it all.

I’m not surprised to hear a politician say anything at all. No.

Crickets. The CBS News anchor, Lana Zak, wasn’t quite sure what to make of the reply. She decided to move forward and attempt to “gotcha” van der Veen, and it doesn’t go well for her at all. This, like Friday’s supercut of Democrats inciting violence, is a must-watch clip for two reasons: one, it’s rare that someone so articulately calls out the media, and two, it’s rare that the media have a guest they’re afraid to just cut off as they speak “their truth.”

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I’ll take ‘As A Post‘ for $500, Alex.

What’s surprising is that she hasn’t deleted all of this in the usual attempt at making believe it really never happened.

How Dumb Are Reporters?

Years ago, I had a lot of fun with the New York Times Corrections section, which documented the fact, day after day, that the paper’s reporters and editors had little knowledge of mathematics, science, literature or history. The gaffes that appeared in the Times were stunning to anyone with a halfway-decent education.

I have been off that beat for a while, but our reporters’ educational deficiencies continue to amaze. Thus we have NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who tried to one-up Ted Cruz. Bad decision. Cruz described the Democrats’ farcical impeachment proceeding as “like Shakespeare, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Mitchell sought to correct Cruz:

Heh. Cruz and many others explained that Faulkner got the line from Shakespeare, a writer of whom Mitchell apparently is unaware. Mitchell tried to retire from the field with her ego intact:

Here’s the thing, though. No one who studied Faulkner even superficially could fail to understand that the title of The Sound and the Fury was a Shakespearean reference. This was explained in every freshman English class where Faulkner’s book has been taught.

Here’s why: The full Shakespeare quote, from MacBeth, says that life “is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Why did Faulkner choose that Shakespeare quote for the title of his book? Because the first section of The Sound and the Fury is, in fact, a “tale told by an idiot.” It is a narrative by a character named Benji who lacks normal mental capacity. He describes many things that he does not understand–other people playing golf, for example–and the art of that section of the book is for Faulkner to write it so that Benji doesn’t understand what he is seeing, but we do.

This is all undergraduate English stuff, and no one could study Faulkner in college without the origin and significance of The Sound and the Fury being explained. And, if you didn’t take English classes in college, as Andrea Mitchell perhaps did not, you could just Google it.

In short, by trying to match wits with Ted Cruz, Andrea Mitchell revealed herself as a person who knows little or nothing about either Shakespeare or Faulkner. That isn’t necessarily disgraceful, except that 1) she shouldn’t have picked a fight with a very smart guy from a position of ignorance, and 2) her fallback position, claiming to be a Faulkner scholar, made her look dumber than ever. Deservedly.

This is all trivial, except for one fact: the politicians, reporters, writers, editors, “intellectuals,” college professors and so on who try to intimidate you with their claim to be smarter and more knowledgeable than you, are, with only occasional exceptions, frauds.

UPDATE: I am sorry to report that Andrea Mitchell (who is allegedly noteworthy only because she is married to Alan Greenspan, maybe we should return to describing her that way) majored in English literature at Penn. So she has no excuse for being ignorant of both Shakespeare and Faulkner. Maybe she skipped class a lot, I don’t know. But one way or another, she failed to get the most basic education. And now she is trying to export her ignorance to the rest of us.

That is pretty much the story of the 21st century.

Here’s BLM and Antifa chanting “burn it down” in D.C. over the weekend. Wanna take bets on how many news outlets covered it?

 

On Saturday night, BLM and Antifa took to the streets of D.C., threatening to “burn it down” if their demands weren’t met.

After shouting for a bit and giving speeches on New Racism™, the crowd began heckling patrons enjoying their dinner.

Apart from its incendiary rhetoric, the demonstration stayed largely in “mostly peaceful protest” territory and no arrests were made despite some scuffles with police.

With that being said, approximately this👌 many news networks covered the news that a large mob of angry peeps were marching through D.C. saying they want to “burn it down:”

Considering the continuing National Guard presence in the city, the installation of permanent fencing, and non-stop rhetoric about the bad actors who broke into the Capitol last month…

Why do you think the media is being silent about this?

Las Vegas Sun Finally Releases Biden’s Anti-Gun Interview

Those who stay involved in the efforts to defend the Second Amendment have always known President Joe Biden is, to put it lightly, no friend to gun owners. During his campaign for the White House last year, the legacy media did everything they could to conceal that fact. The Las Vegas Sun recently revealed that it went so far as to bury an interview with candidate Biden that showed not just his disdain for our right to keep and bear arms, but his utter lack of comprehension of reality.

The interview took place on January 11, 2020, and was published last week—more than one year later—with the paper noting they “felt the interview was worth publishing to give readers a better idea of where Biden will lead the country.” Perhaps it would have been more helpful to their readers to have published the information BEFORE the 2020 election, rather than after, so they actually knew the views of Biden when they cast their ballot for President.

Again, people reading this already knew how anti-gun Biden is, but many others did not. We always thought that one of the purposes of the media was to get information that may not be widely known out to the public, especially when that information may better inform voters about candidates they may be considering supporting.

When seeking the Democrat nomination, Biden and his fellow candidates did everything possible to try to position themselves as the most anti-gun candidate. But after securing the nomination, Biden stopped talking about his anti-gun agenda, and most in the media stopped mentioning it. The Biden-Trump debates didn’t bring up guns, and neither did the vice-presidential debate.

The failure to discuss such an important topic seems odd, considering the Sun’s contention that “public sentiment for (gun control) is growing and support for the NRA is weakening.” If that were true, wouldn’t it be important to note the stark difference between Biden—an avowed anti-gun politician with a decades-long record of opposing the Second Amendment—and Donald Trump—a strong supporter of the right to keep and bear arms?

The truth is, most Americans do not believe in Joe Biden’s agenda of targeting lawful gun owners, and the media knows it. That’s most likely the reason this Sun interview didn’t see the light of day until now.

It may also explain why anti-gun lobbying groups spent millions on electing candidates while rarely actually mentioning gun control until they got called out on it.

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The Left Eats Itself: Petition Inside NPR Accuses Them of a ‘White Supremacist Culture.’

We’ve seen some of the nation’s largest liberal newspapers boil over in internal turmoil over race, so it’s only natural it would happen at National Public Radio. Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner cited a manifesto for an “antiracist future” and the “transformation of public media” published at Current, a website for public broadcasting employees and insiders.

Organizer Celeste Headlee boasted on Twitter on Friday that she has over 450 signatories to this “vision” statement, which declares, “White supremacist culture and anti-blackness shape the policies, norms, and standards of public radio.”

It added, “They determine whose opinions are valued, whose voices are heard, whose stories are told and taken seriously, who is promoted, and whose resume never gets a second glance. Historically, black on-air talent are told their dialect and speaking voices do not fit the public radio prototype. There is a strong bias against journalists who have a distinct ethnic or regional tone in their vocal delivery.”

NPR’s All Things Considered had black co-anchor Michelle Morris and then black co-anchor Audie Cornish. Weekend All Things Considered stars black anchor Michel Martin. NPR added a “Code Switch” project in 2013 to pacify the desire to talk endlessly about race, and that included a promotional interview in August with the author of the book In Defense of Looting. But go ahead, suggest NPR is hopelessly “white supremacist.”

“It’s time for a new kind of journalism: anti-racist journalism. We hope to tear down public radio in order to build it back up,” it said. The media coverage should “center the most marginalized” and serve those who “have been traditionally underserved by corporate media.”

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Collaboration Between Government and Big Tech Giving Rise to Totalitarianism, Experts Warn

The formation of a totalitarian state is just about complete in America as the most powerful public and private sector actors unify behind the idea that actions to stamp out dissent can be justified, according to several experts on modern totalitarian ideologies.

While many have warned about the rise of fascism or socialism in “the land of the free,” the ideas have largely been vague or fragmented, focusing on individual events or actors. Recent events, however, indicate that seemingly unconnected pieces of the oppression puzzle are fitting together to form a comprehensive system, according to Michael Rectenwald, a retired liberal arts professor at New York University.

But many Americans, it appears, have been caught off guard or aren’t even aware of the newly forming regime, as the idea of elected officials, government bureaucrats, large corporations, the establishment academia, think tanks and nonprofits, the legacy media, and even seemingly grassroot movements all working in concert toward some evil purpose seems preposterous. Is a large portion of the country in on a conspiracy?

The reality now emerges that no massive conspiracy was in fact needed—merely an ideological alignment and some informal coordination, Rectenwald argues.

Despite the lack of formal overarching organization, the American socialist regime is indeed totalitarian, as the root of its ideology requires politically motivated coercion, he told The Epoch Times. The power of the regime is not yet absolute but it’s becoming increasingly effective as it erodes the values, checks, and balances against tyranny established by traditional beliefs and enshrined in the American founding.

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Washington Post Pushes Extreme Fear Porn Claiming Super Secret FBI Report of Mass QAnon Hordes Planning to Invade Washington DC

They have to come up with some ridiculous reason to justify their 25,000 military troops in Washington DC to install JoeBama, but the Qanon invasion is just, well, a little silly.

According to the Washington Post, the FBI has shared super-secret, non-specific, possible-threat assessments to include militant Qanon supporters posing as National Guard during the inauguration of JoeBama.  Abject silliness has now turned to the structurally absurd.   Of course the evidence is anonymous and denied in the middle of the article… but still, pushed by WaPo.

[Washington Post] – The FBI privately warned law enforcement agencies Monday that far-right extremists have discussed posing as National Guard members in Washington and others have reviewed maps of vulnerable spots in the city — signs of potential efforts to disrupt Wednesday’s inauguration, according to an intelligence report obtained by The Washington Post.

The document, a summary of threats that the FBI identified in a Monday intelligence briefing, warned that both “lone wolves” and adherents of the QAnon extremist ideology.

[…] The FBI on Monday declined to characterize the credibility or gravity of the threats it outlined for law enforcement in advance of the inauguration.

The agency instead pointed to remarks FBI Director Christopher A. Wray made last week, when he said the agents were monitoring a “extensive amount of concerning online chatter” and noted the challenge of “trying to distinguish what’s aspirational versus what’s intentional.”

Masked midgets running amok would be more believable than Qanon adherents planning a domestic invasion of Washington DC…. but, whatevs.

Facebook bans ads for gun accessories in run-up to inauguration

CNET
Facebook bans ads for gun accessories in run-up to inauguration
Edward Moyer 23 hrs ago

Facebook is temporarily prohibiting ads for military gear and gun accessories in the US until after the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration, the company said Saturday.

“We are banning ads that promote weapon accessories and protective equipment in the US at least through January 22, out of an abundance of caution,” the company said in an update to a Monday blog post about the social network’s preparations leading up to the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.

“We already prohibit ads for weapons, ammunition and weapon enhancements like silencers,” the company said. “But we will now also prohibit ads for accessories such as gun safes, vests and gun holsters in the US.”

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DE-PLATFORMING OF GUN SITES IS A DARK HARBINGER

Throughout history, censorship has occurred whenever government or private groups attempt to impose their political or moral values on others. One would imagine that this could never happen in the most free and prosperous country in the history of the world. This type of activity clearly seems incongruous with the founding principles – not to mention the Constitution.  In fact, our nation, our national ideals and our very democracy thrives on vigorous debate of strongly-held beliefs. The key element in this process is the debate. We, as Americans have always valued a spirited debate, whereafter the best ideas come to the fore, are refined, and people can support them because they are confident that they have had input into that process.

We, the members of the firearm industry, are certainly no stranger to the vigorous debate needed to defend our constitutionally-protected freedoms. Our industry is perennially targeted for encroachments to limit and chip away at Second Amendment rights. Those attacks come from all directions, including politicians, activists and even sitting and retired U.S. Supreme Court justices. This is familiar ground for us.

But, what’s happening now is different. De-platforming, canceling and outright censoring of speech by some in big tech is something entirely different. It’s Orwellian. It’s un-American, and it’s a dark omen for where we are headed as a nation.

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Quite open with their wanna-be tyranny aren’t they?

CNN Trying To Deplatform OAN and Newsmax

“We have to turn down the capability of these Conservative influencers to reach these huge audiences.”

Amazon Bans Parler for “Violence” But Allows Kill Trump Merchandise

Always Remember: The Left is projecting on you what they are doing in spades.

Last week the tech giants colluded together in an attempt to destroy social media alternative Parler.
The final straw came when far left Amazon banned Parler from using its cloud service.

This shut down the popular app after millions of conservatives flocked to Parler after Twitter began purging top conservative thought leaders including the President of the United States.

Amazon said it was due to “violence” on the app which is an excuse and a lie.

Ryan Fournier later pointed out that Amazon is selling “Kill all Republicans” on its website.

Amazon has since taken this product down.

And as Newsbusters reported earlier this week they found 204 examples of products promoting violence against conservatives and President Trump.

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Email marketing service cuts ties with pro-2nd Amendment nonprofit in latest tech censorship
MailChimp cut off Virginia Citizens Defense League from its newsletter service

Mailchimp, the email marketing firm, has dropped a pro-Second Amendment nonprofit from using its platform to reach members, in a move critics see as another attempt in the tech industry to stifle conservative speech.

The Virginia Citizens Defense League has been using the Mailchimp service to send updates to its members.

The nonprofit’s president, Philip Van Cleave, told Fox Business on Friday that Mailchimp ended the service without warning.

“It just came out of the blue,” he said. “They said we just think it’s too big of a risk, and we’re just canceling your account. The timing was suspicious too, just a few days before our lobby day.”

VCDL’s annual Lobby Day calls on Second Amendment supporters to rally against gun control legislation at the state’s capital. Van Cleave said it has gone on peacefully for the past 25 years. This year, because of COVID-19, the group plans to drive through the city in separate caravans from different parts of the state, rather than gather together at the Capitol Square. And Van Cleave said they were coordinating to spread the drives out to try not to cause any traffic jams.

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POLITICO STAFF IN UPROAR OVER BEN SHAPIRO APPEARANCE:

Politico, which publishes a popular morning newsletter, yesterday had left-wing commentator Chris Hayes on as a “guest editor,” which appears to mean guest columnist. I doubt celebrities who are asked to contribute are made to do any actual editing.

Today, Politico featured Ben Shapiro in the same slot, and the staff had a meltdown. Hayes is unquestionably a controversialist on the left, and seems like a rough equivalent of Shapiro on the right, but the staff of this supposedly nonpartisan or bipartisan media outfit obviously leans well to the left.

Media reporters were on Twitter breathlessly reporting about the staff objections to Shapiro’s appearance, which culminated in an all-hands Zoom meeting that apparently drew a breathtaking 225 participants. According to New York Times columnist Ben Smith, Politico editor in chief Matt Kaminsky told staff that the outlet would not be issuing an apology for inviting Shapiro into their club. Many staffers complained on the Zoom call, according to Smith and others.

To its credit, Politico issued the kind of statement that is rare whenever the woke Left makes a fuss: It told the wokesters to stuff it. “We have taken great care to assemble a roster of guest authors who are prominent thinkers and writers and represent a range of perspectives,” read the statement.

“What sets Politico apart in this intense political and media moment is that we rise above partisanship and ideological warfare — even as many seek to drag us into it. It’s a core value of the publication that is unchangeable.” Politico has, perhaps, grokked something that those of us who have been through a few high-dudgeon cycles know very well: Outrage doesn’t last. It can be ignored. Really. A few tweets — even a few hundred tweets — mean nothing.

If you have any integrity, simply stick to your guns instead of cringing and begging forgiveness. In 48 hours, the mob will move on. It always does.

Shapiro had, as usual, a deft response to the hubbub:

Liberal Media Scream: CNN wants conservative media squelched in ‘national emergency.’

This week’s Liberal Media Scream features CNN’s senior media reporter demanding the targeting of conservative media outlets who ignored their anti-Trump bias in reporting on the president and his administration.

On Sunday’s Reliable Sources, Oliver Darcy demanded conservative news sources be “held accountable,” clearly suggesting that they must be squelched, an expansion of the so-called “cancel culture” imposed with glee by outlets such as Twitter and Facebook on conservatives and even President Trump.

He cited Fox News and “TV providers that beam OAN and Newsmax into homes, or Rush Limbaugh. There are a lot of people profiting off of lies and conspiracy theories.”

He insisted, “this informational environment” must be “cleaned up.”

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Who’s Promoting A Civil War? The Media.

We Need a New Media System
If you sell culture war all day, don’t be surprised by the real-world consequences

The moment a group of people stormed the Capitol building last Wednesday, news companies began the process of sorting and commoditizing information that long ago became standard in American media.

Media firms work backward. They first ask, “How does our target demographic want to understand what’s just unfolded?” Then they pick both the words and the facts they want to emphasize.

It’s why Fox News uses the term, “Pro-Trump protesters,” while New York and The Atlantic use “Insurrectionists.” It’s why conservative media today is stressing how Apple, Google, and Amazon shut down the “Free Speech” platform Parler over the weekend, while mainstream outlets are emphasizing a new round of potentially armed protests reportedly planned for January 19th or 20th.

What happened last Wednesday was the apotheosis of the Hate Inc. era, when this audience-first model became the primary means of communicating facts to the population. For a hundred reasons dating back to the mid-eighties, from the advent of the Internet to the development of the 24-hour news cycle to the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the Fox-led discovery that news can be sold as character-driven, episodic TV in the manner of soap operas, the concept of a “Just the facts” newscast designed to be consumed by everyone died out.

News companies now clean world events like whalers, using every part of the animal, funneling different facts to different consumers based upon calculations about what will bring back the biggest engagement kick. The Migrant Caravan? Fox slices off comments from a Homeland Security official describing most of the border-crossers as single adults coming for “economic reasons.” The New York Times counters by running a story about how the caravan was deployed as a political issue by a Trump White House staring at poor results in midterm elections.

Repeat this info-sifting process a few billion times and this is how we became, as none other than Mitch McConnell put it last week, a country:

Drifting apart into two separate tribes, with a separate set of facts and separate realities, with nothing in common except our hostility towards each other and mistrust for the few national institutions that we all still share.

The flaw in the system is that even the biggest news companies now operate under the assumption that at least half their potential audience isn’t listening. This leads to all sorts of problems, and the fact that the easiest way to keep your own demographic is to feed it negative stories about others is only the most obvious. On all sides, we now lean into inflammatory caricatures, because the financial incentives encourage it.

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Missouri Media Blaming Gun Laws For Violence

Everywhere you go, you tend to find violence exploding in this country, The violence surge isn’t isolated to one or two places; just about every major city has seen an increase. Almost no one is reporting a reduction in violence over the year, and that’s despite months of people being locked down in their homes. That suggests that when they got out, they made up for lost time.

In Missouri, they’re having the same problem as most everywhere else. That’s not surprising. St. Louis, for example, is a city that’s been plagued by violence in recent years.

Yet, it seems that once again, the media has to trip over themselves to lay at least some of the blame on gun rights.

To understand the full scope of gun violence across the state, The Kansas City Star interviewed experts, gathered information about dozens of shooting victims from families and obituaries, and analyzed data from police and the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks gun incidents across the country. Because no complete official record exists, the numbers are preliminary, sourced from thousands of media outlets and public agencies.

The effort was undertaken as part of the Missouri Gun Violence Project, a two-year, statewide solutions journalism collaboration supported by the nonprofits Report for America and the Missouri Foundation for Health. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has also been a part of the collaboration.

In an extraordinary year, the people across the state grappling with violence — criminologists, health care professionals, violence interrupters, law enforcement officials — say the coronavirus pandemic’s disruptions aggravated gun violence, putting individuals more at risk and hampering prevention efforts.

But even before the pandemic, Missouri was primed to see worse violence after more than a decade of rolling back gun restrictions and a longstanding lack of trust between police and the most at-risk communities in the state’s largest cities.

Yet the publication acknowledges that the violence in Missouri is primarily driven by St. Louis and Kansas City, their two largest municipalities.

The problem I have is that if gun laws were the problem, then why wasn’t the problem more spread out? Why wasn’t it a problem for much smaller communities? These towns were under the authority of the exact same gun laws, after all. If the gun laws were responsible, then you’d think you’d see an uptick in violence across the board.

Before 2020, you didn’t.

In 2020, most people did acknowledge that the pandemic played some kind of role in the increased violence. It would be impossible not to acknowledge that fact simply because it’s right in front of our eyes.

But elsewhere, we didn’t see the problems being associated with gun laws anywhere else until the pandemic. If lax gun laws are the culprit, then we should see an increase across the board, and we simply don’t.

What that tells me is that it’s not the gun laws that are the problem. Again, if they were, the problems would be everywhere and they’re simply not. No, the problems reside somewhere in the cities themselves.

Yet the media prefers to scapegoat gun rights and gun ownership because it’s convenient and their readers lap it up. Heaven forbid they ever try to look a little deeper at the issue.