Category: Media

When CNN Quotes Everytown Troublesome Facts Kick In

Over the weekend, CNN reported on gun control laws passed so far in 2022, adding this reference, “There is a direct correlation in states with weaker gun laws and higher rates of gun deaths, including homicides, suicides and accidental killings, according to a January study published by Everytown for Gun Safety, a non-profit focused on gun violence prevention.”

However, an article in the Keene Sentinel, a newspaper serving southwest New Hampshire, reveals a small problem with Everytown’s research that might raise an eyebrow, if not some serious questions. Headlined “New Hampshire paradox: State gun laws remain loose as violence rate remains low,” the story’s lead paragraph tells a different tale.

“National rankings indicate New Hampshire has some of the weakest gun laws in the nation, and yet the state also maintains a low rate of firearm violence,” the newspaper says.

The report also quotes State Senate President Chuck Morse (R-Salem), who told the newspaper’s editorial board recently that gun-related violence is a problem of people, not guns.

“I don’t believe it’s a gun problem because look at New Hampshire.,” Morse reportedly stated. “We have more guns than probably any other state per capita. We have open carry, we passed constitutional carry, and we’re one of the safest states in the nation.”

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Google hands over home security camera footage to police without a warrant

Google and Amazon are letting the police access data from smart home cameras without a warrant, if they are told this footage is needed because of an “emergency.”

Meanwhile others who sell similar devices and services, like Arlo, Apple, Wyze, Eufy, claim their policy is the opposite, CNET writes.

It was first reported that Amazon was cooperating with law enforcement in this way, and it has now emerged that Google is treating its customers’ privacy the same way.

In the US, Amazon and Google say that “in most cases” the police have to provide some kind of legal justification to access video from their devices installed in people’s homes, be it a warrant or subpoena. Any other policy, such as making exceptions like the “emergencies” one, is not something a company can be forced to do, reports say, suggesting that Amazon and Google have chosen to adopt such an approach to users’ privacy.

Nevertheless, the two tech giants are proceeding with this policy; Amazon has revealed that it turned over data 11 times when the police submitted “emergency requests,” while Google does not provide any details in its transparency report.

The company has an information request policy that addresses this scenario, to say that if it “reasonably believes” giving footage to the authorities who have no warrant to obtain it will prevent death or serious physical harm, it “may” do so.

Some examples given of when “reasonable belief” comes into play while making these decisions are bomb threats, school shootings, kidnappings, suicides, etc.

“We still consider these requests in light of applicable laws and our policies,” Google promises.

And when Google decides to give law enforcement their data because the company believes there is an emergency, users may never learn that this happened. According to a Nest spokesman quoted by CNET, they do “try” to notify users, though.

Amazon, on the other hand, didn’t even bother to disclose, when asked by both CNET and The Verge, whether or not, and in what circumstances, it lets users know that footage from smart cameras has been shared.

This is just the latest controversy plaguing the “smart home surveillance” market, with others mostly related to security issues.

Eleven Fewer Dead People
A deep dive on the Greenwood Park Mall shooting shows a clear path to even fewer dead people than that

On Sunday July 17, 2022, some dork with two rifles and a handgun attempted to shoot up the Greenwood Park Mall food court in Greenwood Indiana. In the span of only fifteen seconds he was shot eight times by private citizen Elisjsha Dicken, an 80% hit rate from forty yards with a double stack nine millimeter handgun, whereupon the dork decided to flee to the bathroom and do us all the favor of dying there. We have much to unpack about this instance, but five key points with mathematical backing show a clear path to saving hundreds of future lives, and further show why the media doesn’t want to save them. Let’s begin.

A Tom Brady Moment

This was a seriously impressive feat of shooting. Dicken has no military or police experience and was taught to shoot by his grandfather. The local news agency WTHR approached several instructors who attempted to replicate the shot, and were able to come generally near to replicating it a range of twenty-five yards. Pistol ranges only go out to twenty five yards. Dicken put eight out of ten shots on target in fifteen seconds at almost double the maximum pistol range distance, completely unprepared, jacked full of adrenaline in a situation that would make most untrained shooters panic, facing an opponent with a rifle designed for that engagement range. This shot was heroic beyond imagination, and the gun community is tremendously impressed. As Douglas Jefferson of NAAGA said in a private channel, “That’s a B-8 drill at almost twice the distance and only 1.5 times the time.” It stresses the need for anyone who carries a firearm to train for the scenarios in which they envision using them, but it also highlights the more important point that even shooters without formalized training can save dozens of lives, as long as they happen to be carrying when something like this happens. Which brings us to the next point.

Gun Free Zones Almost Killed Eleven People

Rampage killings are only stopped by two things, the police or private citizens. Three people died in this shooting. When we perform a true analysis of “rampage killing” statistics, we find that rampage killings stopped by police carry an average of 14.29 casualties, whereas rampage killings stopped by citizen responders carry an average of 2.33 casualties. The average police response time to a 911 call is eleven minutes. Mr. Dicken responded to this shooting forty four times faster than the average police response time, saving (by averages) 11.29 lives in the process. These are facts.

This entire engagement transpired in a gun free zone. If Mr. Dicken had followed the rules on the sign, then 11.29 additional people (by averages) would be dead. The gun free zone sign did not deter the shooter, and eleven people in that food court owe their lives to the fact that Dicken also ignored the sign. This is indisputable.

Permit Carry Laws Almost Killed Eleven People

Dicken didn’t have a permit to carry his firearm, because he currently doesn’t need one. Up until July 1st of this year, Indiana prohibited concealed carry of firearms by anyone without a license. The state’s “Constitutional Carry Law,” which means no permit is required to carry a firearm, only went into effect this month. Seeing how Dicken did not have a carry license prior to the law going into effect, it’s likely that without the law he wouldn’t have been armed, and 11.29 additional people (by averages) would be dead.

While the local Greenwood Police Department has been glowing over the efforts of Mr. Dicken, the Indiana effort to pass this law was opposed most publicly by law enforcement officials, such as Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter who testified against it. If Doug Carter had gotten his way 11.29 additional people would be dead. This is indisputable.

Uvalde Comparison

May be a cartoon of text that says '376 UVALDE POLICE OFFICERS STANDING AROUND ONE 22-YEAR-OLD TAKING ACTION washingt n t'

This cartoon from the Washington Post doesn’t even begin to describe the contrast between these two rampage shooting incidents. Not only did the Uvalde police response do nothing for almost an hour, they actively prevented multiple private citizens from responding on their own. They were very specifically acting as a security detail for a rampage shooter. They arrested parents to prevent them from entering the building. They even intercepted one police officer whose wife was dying in her classroom, disarmed him, and escorted him off scene. A more accurate version of this political cartoon would have 376 police officers surrounding the rampage shooter on a pile of bleeding yet not yet dead bodies, with their backs to him preventing citizens from saving the pile of injured people from dying. That is not an exaggeration.

The official inquiry into Uvalde is not complete as of the writing of this piece. It could be that the Uvalde failure was due to chicken shit cops. It could be due to the fact that all government of all kinds moves at the speed of molasses infused mud. It could be some secret tinfoil hat conspiracy. It could be something else, or some or all of the above. We don’t know. But what we do know is response time differences matter, and we know that 11.96 people are saved when the cops aren’t involved, 11.29 in this case.

I am not someone who lives in fear of rampage shootings. I understand the statistics, which show that these things are as rare as shark attacks, and I do not live in fear of sharks. But some people do live with this fear, because different people have different risk tolerances. It seems to me that some people who live with this fear have some significant overlap with ACAB (“all cops are bastards”) messaging. If you are a rational person within either or both of those groups, and compare Uvalde to Greenwood, you must conclude that absent a non-existent magic gun evaporation fairy the best alternative is ubiquitous citizen concealed carry. This is indisputable.

Mass Media Social Contagion

HWFO has discussed at length how media organizations such as Vox and CNN make millions of dollars by pushing freakoutery for clicks, and how their rampage shooting coverage approach increases the incidence of rampage shootings by one third because of copycat effects which are mathematically shown to be media driven. As of July 20th, CNN.com had nine articles about the Greenwood Park Mall shooting, including one opinion piece devoted to “debunking” the idea that good guys with guns can stop rampage shootings even though one just did. Currently they have two hundred and twenty nine articles about Uvalde. That’s twenty five times more coverage.

I will not claim that CNN’s stated goal is to glorify rampage shooters, but that’s the exact effect CNN’s behavior has in the mind of a potential rampage shooter. If CNN reversed its behavior and gave twenty five times more coverage to Dicken instead of Uvalde, then the psychological effects would dampen rampage shooters instead of inciting them. This very rampage shooter may have been spurred on by CNN’s behavior, and CNN gets 30% more rampage shootings to farm for clickbait money because of their behavior.

If the United States were to string together three consecutive incidents of rampage shooters getting plugged by private citizens within seconds, as happened in Greenwood Park Mall, and CNN were to give each of them the sorts of coverage they give to Uvalde, the rampage shooter dorks would be too scared to try it. They’d stay in their basement playing XBox instead of shooting people, and the second order effects of constitutional carry would exceed 11.96 saved per incident, because there would be fewer incidents. CNN not covering rampage shootings at all would reduce rampage shootings by one third. If they elevated coverage of failed rampage shootings stopped by citizens, they’d probably reduce them by an additional third.

But they don’t want to do that, because they’re hemorrhaging money. They need as many of these things to transpire as possible to make their bottom line. They are beholden to Moloch, trapped in a cycle that gets people killed, and the only way I can figure out of this cycle is to produce a lot more citizen shooters like Dicken.

The only way out is to shoot our way out and it’s CNN’s fault.

BBC asks what’s next for gun control in the US

The United States has just passed a gun control bill. It doesn’t do all that much, though it’s still an infringement on our right to keep and bear arms.

However, for many, it’s nothing but a first step, a good start toward still more regulations imposing on our right to keep and bear arms.

Over at the BBC, they ask

what’s next for gun control here in the US.

Last month, US President Joe Biden signed a landmark gun-control bill into law.

While the legislation, which was passed with bipartisan support, has many limits, it was a step in America’s efforts to tackle escalating gun violence. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court issued a decision that cast the future of more strict limits on gun ownership in doubt.

So where does gun control go from here? Here’s a look at some solutions that gun-control advocates and gun-rights proponents say could help stop escalating gun violence – and our North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher assesses their chances.

The future of red flag laws

Red flag laws, also known as Extreme Risk Protection Orders, allow police to temporarily seize legally owned guns from people who a judge has ruled to be a danger to themselves or others.

A judge’s emergency order can be issued even in cases where a gun owner has no criminal record or history of mental illness.

Opponents say this violates the right to due process, as the orders can be issued by a judge without the subject present to object.

They go on to bring up things like assault weapon bans, gun buybacks, new rules for younger gun buyers, and a bunch of other things.

Now, in fairness, they also mention arming teachers and hardening schools as well, but not until the very end and even then, the story drips with bias and disdain.

However, all of this ignores the political realities gun control measures face here in the United States.

In other words, it’s easy for the BBC to ask what’s next, but the truth is that the Biden administration has gotten all they’re going to get. You know the gun control side asked for much more, but what they got was the totality of what they were going to get. There’s nothing left on the table.

Even Sen. John Cornyn, who sold us out, has said there’s  nothing more that will be done.

So while the BBC can ponder the future of gun control, it’s nothing more than journalistic navel-gazing. It’s an exercise in what might have been and nothing else, because we’re not interested in giving up more ground and the gun control side is only interested in gun control. They don’t care about kids, they care about taking away our rights.

If they were, they’d at least be open to hardening schools. The fact that they’re not tells you they don’t care about dead kids, they care about taking away your guns.

The BBC can ask the question all they want, but we all know the real answer here.

BLUF
So within a few months, we should know what Missouri and Louisiana find under the hood of the Biden administration’s collusion with the big social media and tech companies.

Judge: States Will Get ‘Expedited Discovery’ On Biden Admin Collusion With Big Tech To Censor Conservatives
Missouri AG Eric Schmitt: “No one has had the chance to look under the hood before – now we do.”

There has been much public evidence that the Biden administration has pressured large social media and tech companies to censor political opponents under the guise of designating such speech “disinformation” or “misinformation.”

On May 5, 2022, the states of Missouri and Louisiana filed a Complaint alleging that such collusion violated, among other things, its citizens first amendment rights. The defendants included not only senior administration officials, but also the head of the administrations planned and then disbanded ministry of information, Nina Jankowicz [see featured image].

The Complaint asserted:

2. A private entity violates the First Amendment “if the government coerces or induces it to take action the government itself would not be permitted to do, such as censor expression of a lawful viewpoint.” Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia Univ., 141 S. Ct. 1220, 1226 (2021) (Thomas, J., concurring). “The government cannot accomplish through threats of adverse government action what the Constitution prohibits it from doing directly.” Id.

3. That is exactly what has occurred over the past several years, beginning with express and implied threats from government officials and culminating in the Biden Administration’s open and explicit censorship programs. Having threatened and cajoled social-media platforms for years to censor viewpoints and speakers disfavored by the Left, senior government officials in the Executive Branch have moved into a phase of open collusion with social-media companies to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content on social-media platforms under the Orwellian guise of halting so-called “disinformation,” “misinformation,” and “malinformation.”

* * *

6. As a direct result of these actions, there has been an unprecedented rise of censorship and suppression of free speech—including core political speech—on social-media platforms. Not just fringe views, but perfectly legitimate, responsible viewpoints and speakers have been unlawfully and unconstitutionally silenced in the modern public square. These actions gravely threaten the fundamental right of free speech and free discourse for virtually all citizens in Missouri, Louisiana, and America, both on social media and elsewhere.

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What the News Media Gets Wrong About Guns and Armed Defense

We know that the news media distorts our view of the world. We see it every day in the way the mainstream media selects and edits their stories. I’m sure you see unusual things in the news that I miss. That is because each of us sees this media distortion most clearly in the individual subjects we know best. For the last decade, I’ve studied what our neighbors do with guns. I see where the news media dangerously twists the truth about armed defense. As ordinary citizens, we need to know more about the world than to be simply fed a copy of the police report after a crime. In fact, ordinary citizens keep their families safe every day but the media sells us a different story. Here is what the mainstream media won’t say.

Evil exists. We face real dangers. The world is simply not the way we want it to be. On average, someone in our family will be the victim of a violent crime during our lifetime. Merciless criminals use force to take what they want and the police are not there to stop them. It is not safe to be defenseless, not even at home. To begin, we face about 30 thousand home-invasion robberies a year, and two thirds of sexual assaults begin with a home invasion. Being unable or unwilling to defend the people we love is not a virtue. Those truths sound obvious to me, but they are absent from our contemporary news.

The media wildly over-reported stories where we were victims of violent crime. At the same time, the media horribly under-reported the many stories where we successfully defended ourselves. It is almost as if the news media didn’t want us to know that we faced dangers and saved lives.

Violence is sometimes the best answer. Your armed neighbor faced an unfair fight when three thugs broke into her home late at night and tried to rob her. She wasn’t out for vengeance or revenge when she grabbed her gun. She didn’t use a gun because she wanted to be famous, but so she wouldn’t be seriously injured or killed. She defended herself with a firearm until the criminals run away. Our neighbor grabbed her gun so she could safely call 911 and get help on the way.

Time and again we saw our neighbors use the threat of deadly force to defend themselves. That is the real pattern of armed defense that is repeated.. and unreported.. thousands of times a day. If the media presented the truth, then we’d know that we defend ourselves with a firearm over a million times a year. That works out to over 45-hundred cases of justified armed defense a day here in the United States. That is real news and somehow we don’t hear it from news media. We’d know that if the media reported the facts.

Armed defense is common. Our neighbors did a remarkably good job of defending themselves and their family. Firearms accidents by legal gun owners were wonderfully rare. Times have changed, and half of new gun owners are women. The bad guys ran away when they realized our neighbor wasn’t the unarmed victim the robbers hoped to find. Our neighbors didn’t shoot very often because the threat seldom rose to the level where it demanded the use of lethal force. When they were forced to shoot, then the good guys usually stoped shooting as soon as they could.

Together, we’ve faced over a million violent crimes a year. Despite that threat, armed citizens were forced to shoot and kill only a few hundred criminals each year, virtually the same number that the police were forced to kill. That is an amazing tribute to our character under very difficult circumstances.

We are wonderfully reluctant to take a life if there is any alternative. We also know who belongs in our home. That explains why armed citizens shoot the wrong person much less often that the police do. Since armed defense happens every day, you and I would know facts like these if the media actually reported the news.

Media distortion is dangerous. Because of biased reporting, we think that mass murder is common and that armed defense is rare. In fact, the reverse is true. We think our armed neighbor was a danger when she was in fact an armed savior. That truth has real world consequences. Since armed defense is so frequent, it is unbelievably hard to restrict the use of firearms without doing more harm than good. Gun control laws disarmed the victims of crime rather than disarming the perpetrators. That puts all of us at risk. Media bias costs lives, but not everywhere.

Most counties in the US did not have a single murder all year. Most criminal violence is localized to our failed cities. We see criminal violence explode where we’ve robbed young men of their future. We’d know that if the media didn’t spin their stories to fit their political agenda. Media bias cost the lives of young urban men.

The truth is out there and we have alternatives to the mass media. We can do our own reporting. We must do it because the mainstream US news media failed us so badly.

The story was a lie. Ginned up by one person for political effect.

WASHINGTON POST LATE TO THE PARTY ON FACT-CHECKING POORLY SOURCED ’10-YEAR-OLD RAPE VICTIM’ ABORTION TALE, But Proves Us Right.

The Washington Post’s fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, finally tried to fact-check the highly suspicious tale of the 10-year-old reported to have had to travel to Indiana for an abortion due to abortion restrictions in Ohio. The story first appeared in the Indianapolis Star and quickly went viral. Why did he wait so long? I had the story on July 5 in a tweet showing my research into the story that relied on one highly biased source named Dr. Caitlin Bernard.

 

Today is July 9, and the WaPo finally decided to weigh in.

“Patients head to Indiana for abortion services as other states restrict care,” the article was headlined. That was a benign headline. But it was the anecdotal beginning that caught the attention of other news organizations.

Kessler didn’t bother to name those “other news organizations,” which were literally me, myself, and I. After my tweet showing my research into this story that didn’t add up went viral, the only news about it linked to my research. Kessler didn’t bother to give me any credit for that. It probably hurt too much to admit that a conservative news outlet and an independent journalist smoked the Washington Post.

On the same day as my research into what I believe is a political hit job, the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin (who, unbelievably, used to work here) wrote a hysterical opinion piece on the “forced births” that furthered its spread. Kessler didn’t bother to fact-check the story at that time. He let Rubin’s piece run without question as she relied on the thin tale to spread her pro-abortion propaganda.

Two Republican governors, Kristi L. Noem of South Dakota and Tate Reeves of Mississippi, were asked on Sunday news talk shows about the case of a 10-year-old girl impregnated by her rapist. Are they really insisting that, regardless of the physical harm that giving birth could cause someone so young, the child be further tormented and forced to have the baby? Yes…The monstrous cruelty of such bills shows how little many conservatives care about the well-being of women and girls who have already experienced the unbelievable trauma of sexual violence.

It took four more days, my viral tweet, Joe Biden weighing in, and a RealClearPolitics reporter asking the White House press secretary about it for Kessler to get interested in fact-checking this story. He didn’t do a terrible job. With the headline that says “A one-source story about a 10-year-old and an abortion goes viral,” Kessler threw cold water on Dr. Bernard’s claims.

The only source cited for the anecdote was Bernard. She’s on the record, but there is no indication that the newspaper made other attempts to confirm her account. The story’s lead reporter, Shari Rudavsky, did not respond to a query asking whether additional sourcing was obtained. A Gannett spokeswoman provided a comment from Bro Krift, the newspaper’s executive editor: “The facts and sourcing about people crossing state lines into Indiana, including the 10-year-old girl, for abortions are clear. We have no additional comment at this time.”

Rudavsky never responded to me either; nor did Krift. Krift’s response to the Post is pretty revealing. He refused to answer direct questions about how the information was vetted. I can’t resist: Clearly, Bro, the info isn’t “clear,” or you wouldn’t have the WaPo, Snopes, and a hundred other outlets asking you to clarify your vetting process. 

New York Tells Supreme Court ‘Thank You, Sir. May I Have Another?’

New York has made a return appointment for Constitutional scrutiny of their gun-carry laws.

Almost immediately after the Supreme Court struck down the state’s previous law over the subjective nature of its “proper cause” clause, New York is back with a beefed-up and even more subjective “good moral character” clause. In addition to requiring multiple references, the newly-passed standard for issuing gun-carry permits includes a social media review. Instead of relying on objective standards, such as an applicant’s record of convictions or mental health commitments, the state is doubling down on the subjective judgment of its permitting officials.

Instead of judging whether somebody has “proper cause” to carry a gun based on specific threats to their life, state officials will now judge whether or not they are of “good moral character” based on their tweets and Facebook posts. It’s difficult to see how the outcome will be any different.

It’s difficult to see how the legal fight will be any different either. Except, perhaps, how quickly New York loses.

New York is defying the Supreme Court. And it’s not trying to hide that fact.

“With this action, New York has sent a message to the rest of the country that we will not stand idly by and let the Supreme Court reverse years of sensible gun regulations,” Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado said in a statement.

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Sounds Like Japan Needs Some Gun Laws.

Shinzo Abe was 67.

I really don’t want to hear that this sort of thing only happens in America. Japan has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, and none of those laws stopped this lunatic from making his own gun and shooting a politician with it. Laws mean nothing to the evil and the insane.

The NRA didn’t do this, unless there’s a Nipponese Rifle Association.

And once again, our media is a disgrace. Here’s how NPR decided to remember Shinzo Abe:

The man who was just assassinated was divisive and arch-conservative, huh?

And here’s their second attempt, after they deleted that one:

“Ultranationalist.” Well, maybe the third time will be the charm.

And of course, the worst president in the history of the United States had to say something stupid:

Shinzo Abe was assassinated on Japanese soil with a homemade gun, and now this moron and his staffers are using it to push gun control in America. I can’t wait for November……..

Another J6 Trump ‘Bombshell’ Outed as a Hoax!

On Tuesday, the liberal media soiled themselves over the so-called bombshell story that on January 6, 2021, President Trump grabbed the steering wheel of the presidential limo and then lunged at a Secret Service agent because he wanted to join the protesters at the Capitol.

The story came courtesy of Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

“So when the president had gotten into the vehicle with [Secret Service agent] Bobby [Engel], he thought that they were going up to the Capitol. And when Bobby had relayed to him, ‘We’re not, we don’t have the assets to do it, it’s not secure, we’re going back to the West Wing,’ the president had a very strong and very angry response to that.

Tony described him as being irate. The president said to him something to the effect of, ‘I’m the f—ing president, take me up to the Capitol now.’ To which Bobby responded, ‘Sir, we have to go back to the West Wing.’ He then reached up front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel. Mr. Engel grabbed his arm, he said, ‘Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel. We’re going back to the West Wing, we’re not going to the Capitol.’ Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel.”

Any reasonable person would conclude this story was dubious. The liberal media, however, not so much. CNN gleefully described it as a bombshell, yet, like so many other Trump bombshells, it appears this incident didn’t happen at all, and is yet another hoax to add to the pile of bogus anti-Trump stories.

According to Peter Alexander, the chief White House correspondent for NBC News, sources close to the Secret Service dispute the story.

“A source close to the Secret Service tells me both Bobby Engel, the lead agent, and the presidential limousine/SUV driver are prepared to testify under oath that neither man was assaulted and that Mr. Trump never lunged for the steering wheel,” Alexander tweeted Tuesday evening.

 

Trump’s former acting director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell, slammed the committee for allowing this testimony to go unchallenged.

“So a junior staffer was pressured by @Liz_Cheney to lie under oath,” he tweeted. “Why wasn’t there a single committee member asking her if she had proof? This performance collapsed in an hour.”

“The DC media is corrupt and sick,” he concluded.

 

Soon after Alexander revealed that his sources challenged the story, Hutchinson’s lawyer, Jody Hunt, quickly attempted to walk back her testimony.

“Ms. Hutchinson testified, under oath, and recounted what she was told,” Hunt tweeted. “Those with knowledge of the episode also should testify under oath.”

 

How many more bogus bombshells are we going to get from these hearings?

The Liberal Media’s ‘Rising Stars’ Always Seem to Crash and Burn

Those who’ve been around more than five minutes know that the mainstream media is little more than a collection of homogeneous, biased hacks that do little more than support the Current Thing(TM) being pushed by Democrats and leftist activists.

It’s great for Democrats who enjoy uncritical coverage of their nonsense, but often outlets such as The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, et al. get a little too far out over their biased skis when they begin to fall in love with their latest object of obsessive attention.

Take a walk down memory lane with Townhall as we look at some of the mainstream media’s recent “rising stars” — who get treated as saviors — only to fall on their faces.

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I’m An MD Suspended By Twitter For Tweeting A Link To A Scientific Article On COVID-19 Vaccine Lowering Sperm Counts
My suspension is yet another example of Twitter’s arbitrary, Lysenkoist breaches of informed public discourse on covid-19. The suspension must be reversed, and my account restored fully intact, immediately. Please take notice and intervene Elon Musk (@elonmusk).

I am a physician currently affiliated with the Brown University Center For Primary Care and Prevention, and was an Associate Professor of Medicine and Family Medicine at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University from 1997 until June, 2021. My CV lists my many medical and scientific accomplishments.

Among other things, as a clinical trialist and epidemiologist, I designed and completed the largest randomized, controlled trial ever conducted in chronic kidney transplant recipients.  I have 115 scholarly, peer-reviewed publications focused on epidemiology and clinical trials. I have testified as an expert witness in lawsuits pertaining to the Covid-19 pandemic—specifically on vaccine and mask mandates—while researching and writing extensively on those subjects. I recently contributed to an amicus curiae brief to the United States Supreme Court for the covid-19 vaccine mandate case NFIB v. Dept. of Labor, OSHA, et al./Ohio v. Dept. of Labor, OSHA, et al. which was cited by the Washington Post .

Until this morning, I had a very active Twitter account with a large following through which I shared scientific information, as well as my personal views.

[Andrew Boston Twitter Banner As Of February 16, 2022]

 This morning (6/22/22) I awakened to learn that overnight Twitter had summarily and simultaneously locked, and then suspended my account for this “offending” tweet from Father’s Day, 6/19/22:

As of this writing, my Twitter account is suspended. I have received no response so far to my appeal.

The Journal Andrology is highly respected and published through a joint effort of American and European scientific associations:

The study was a straightforward, serial analysis of young male Israeli semen donors evaluating the potential impact of Pfizer’s covid-19 mRNA vaccine on their sperm concentration (count), and related functional measures, “15-45 [Time 1],75-120 [T2], and over 150 days after [T3] vaccination.”

What did the investigators find?

Again, quoting their publication, verbatim, based upon what the authors defined, a priori, as the primary statistical analysis (i.e., “ [a] 1) generalized estimated equation model (GEE) was used for repeated measures analysis,” which is indeed the most appropriate method!):

 “sperm concentration was significantly lower due to decrease of -15.4% (confidence interval -25.5%–3.9%) compared to [Time zero/baseline] T0 (p=0.01). Moreover, [total motile count; how sperm moved] TMC percentage change reduction of 22.1% was significantly lower compared to T0 (confidence interval -35% – -6.6%, p=0.007) as well. Although concentration and TMC were reduced also on T3, these values did not reach statistical significance.”

If anything the text of my 6/19/22 tweet understated the evidence of a possible longer term, ~ 5-month follow-up decline, calling it a “rebound” when “concentration and TMC were reduced also on T3, [though] these values did not reach statistical significance.” In other words, the trend was toward a persistent decline, although it did not “reach statistical significance,” but may well have been evident, and “statistically significant,” merely by studying more subjects.

Finally, my offending tweet added the truthful observation that no data were presented on the effects of booster vaccinations, and asked whether boostering might cause another cycle of decline in the sperm counts and functional measures only studied in relation to the initial vaccination.

My suspension is yet another example of Twitter’s arbitrary, Lysenkoist breaches of informed public discourse on covid-19. The suspension must be reversed, and my account restored fully intact, immediately.

Please take notice and intervene Elon Musk (@elonmusk).

Everytown Calls for Censorship on How to Work on Firearms

This correspondent has repeatedly written the First and Second Amendments of the US Constitution are intertwined and support each other. A power-craving government cannot effectively keep a population disarmed unless it censors information on how to make and use arms.

Billionaire Bloomberg supported Everytown for Gun Safety understands they cannot disarm the population, as long as people are free to transmit information on how to make, modify, and use firearms.

Their solution is clear. Forbid the knowledge of how to make, repair, and use firearms. From everytownsupportfund.org:

Based on our review of the writings by the shooter in the Buffalo mass shooting, it appears that he honed his knowledge of firearms and firearm modifications on YouTube. Just days before his attack, posts attributed to the shooter on Discord read, “I’ve just been sitting around watching youtube and **** for the last few days. I think this is the closest I’ll ever be to being ready. I literally can’t wait another week to do this.”

Technology platforms, such as YouTube, have a responsibility to users and the public-at-large to insure that posts do not incite violence or promote extremist content.

This correspondent, contrary to what Everytown posits, claims Technology platforms, such as YouTube, have a responsibility to users to protect and support their First Amendment rights of free expression.

Everytown admits they request that videos on how to modify guns be taken down. They say they have requested YouTube take down videos on how to make guns (which they call “ghost guns”).

YouTube has policies that censor some content on how to make or modify some guns and accessories.  From nbcnews.com:

YouTube’s firearms policy says users can’t post videos that show how to install certain gun accessories, including high-capacity magazines. In a statement on Friday, the company said the videos that the suspect allegedly used to modify his rifle don’t violate those policies.

It is more dangerous to people’s freedom to control the information they are allowed than to control their access to arms. Both are important. If the control over information is extensive enough, people will never attempt to use the arms they may have; they will consider themselves in the best of all possible situations, no matter how badly they are abused. This is the warning in George Orwell’s novel, 1984. It is even more difficult for the people to rise up if the abuse is carefully contrived and increasingly applied over generations, allowing the population to become accustomed to it.

Fortunately, the oligopoly of Big Tech’s control over information appears to be on the edge of collapse. Alternative platforms dedicated to free speech, such as Truth Social and Rumble, are becoming popular. Elon Musk may reform Twitter, from a means of directing cancel culture against its victims to a worldwide sanctuary for free speech.

In a famous case, the US government gave up attempts to restrict the publication of how to build a hydrogen bomb. The First Amendment clearly protects the publication of technology that is already in the public sphere.

What Everytown seeks to do is to convince the distributors of information to censor information it deems to be dangerous.

Everytown is unlikely to succeed.

In the Fifth Circuit, Defense Distributed’s lawsuit against New Jersey’s AG, Gurbir Grewal, was allowed to continue, on the grounds that Grewal violated Defense Distributed’s First Amendment rights when when he threatened to prosecute them for publishing computer code on how to print firearms parts.

It would be a short step for the newly proposed Bureau of Disinformation to censor information they deem “dangerous” to the public.

Unless the Progressive left succeeds in its Supreme Court-packing scheme, it is unlikely the Supreme Court would allow such an egregious violation of the First Amendment, when the inevitable court challenge is effectuated.

Everytown seems to agree with this quote, attributed to Stalin, but disputed:

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?

One of the most important effects of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, in the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, is the physical embodiment and clear demonstration the power of the government has limits. There are things it is not allowed to do, by law. An openly armed man, in public, is a clear and present demonstration of a Constitutional limit on government.

Progressives hate the idea of limits on government with a passion. It is part of Progressive DNA.

Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, had a view the opposite of Stalin’s supposed quote. In a private letter, shortly before becoming president, he wrote this:

 “for I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”1

It is clear those who wish for a disarmed public are closer to Stalin’s philosophy than to Thomas Jefferson’s.

Author Stephen Hunter makes valid point about guns

Author Stephen Hunter is best known for his Bob Lee Swagger books. He was also a film critic for the Washington Post until he retired in 2008.

While he writes thrillers, his career might make you think he’s anti-gun.

Well, he’s apparently not. In fact, he made a very good point about guns and massacres.

Possibly you’re old enough to remember the great massacre spree of 1964? Classrooms shot up, strip malls decimated, scout troops blown away, fast food restaurants turned into mortuaries.

And all because, in its infinite stupidity, the U.S. government dumped 240,000 high-capacity .30 caliber assault rifles into an otherwise innocent America.

The weapons clearly had a demon-spirit to them. Compared to anything else in the market, they had that murder-most-easy look. One glance at the sinister gleam of the walnut stock which caressed the military-gray receiver and barrel of the weapon, its magazine wickedly boasting of many cartridges ready and waiting, its photo- and Hollywood associations with war, and some went screwball. They had the overwhelming desire to use it as it was meant to be used. It was not powerful enough for deer and not accurate enough for vermin. It existed only to kill human beings.

Except there was no massacre spree of 1964, despite the fact that in 1963 the United States Army surplussed 240,000 M1 carbines via the NRA. They were available through the mail at $20. Not an NRA member? Eighty bucks, then, from any sporting goods store. Denver’s Dave Cook’s–“Guns Galore at Prices to Score”– had them by mail order, magazine and sling included, postage, $1.25.

The M1 carbine was a semi-automatic rifle with a detachable magazine that could fire pretty much as fast as an AR-15 and used a much larger round, from a pure diameter standpoint.

It was a recipe for disaster by today’s standard and yet, nothing. Not a single mass shooting with such weapons.

Hunter goes on to point out that in the summer of 1964, there were tons of inexpensive semi-automatic, magazine-fed rifles on the open market that could be mailed right to you, but there weren’t people like the Buffalo or Uvalde shooters.

It’s a very valid point and a great example of how the problem isn’t the availability of firearms. They were easier to acquire in 1964 than they are today and they were just as deadly. They could be discharged at a high rate of fire, too.

These were actual weapons of war, even, not something that just looks like one.

And yet, as Hunter notes, no massacres. No school shootings. None of the things we’re told result from “easy” access to firearms.

That suggests strongly that the problem here is something else, something else entirely. We, as a society, would be better off if we could stop blaming guns for five minutes and start looking deeper into why this is happening and why this continues to be an issue.

Yet that’s apparently not allowed by some in our world. They’ve got a vested interest in blaming the guns rather than in solving the actual problem.

Part of that, of course, is also blaming others for not agreeing that guns are the problem despite clear evidence that they’re not.

Breaking: Project Veritas Leaks Video From Twitter’s ‘All Hands’ Meeting With Elon Musk

In footage obtained by Project Veritas of Thursday’s meeting with Twitter employees, Elon Musk stressed the importance of having free speech on the platform he is in the process of purchasing.

The Latest Wave of New Firearm Owners Shreds Another Anti-Gun Narrative

First, I’m shocked NBC News would write a story like this about gun owners. Second, it’s about yet another hurdle anti-gunners have to scale when pushing their ‘take all the guns’ initiatives. This isn’t necessarily a new trend. Nonwhite Americans and women have flocked to gun shows and concealed carry permit classes. In fact, there are so many female concealed carry holders that they’re changing the industry. Female participation in shooting sports spiked during the Obama presidency. That alone is a problem for anti-gunners and Democrats. It’s never a good idea to go against what middle-class women like—that’s a long-established political reality. You’re gambling there.

Now, you have to factor in that the latest wave of new gun owners are black Americans—and you have to tread carefully about the silly talking points about gun ownership and the Second Amendment (via NBC News):

Two days after a white man shot and killed 10 Black people in Buffalo last month, Michael Moody reversed his thinking about possessing a firearm. He had watched the aftermath of the carnage on the news, the anguish of the victims’ families, and decided he “needed a gun. Needed, not wanted,” he said……

Moody’s sentiments represent one reason the sale of guns to Black Americans rose 58 percent in 2020 — the year George Floyd was murdered by a Minnesota police officer, sparking a nationwide social justice movement — according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms trade association. It was the highest bump in gun sales of any ethnic group that year.

Further, in the first quarter of 2021, another NSSF report revealed 90 percent of gun retailers reported a general increase of Black customers, including an 87 percent increase among Black women.

“And you wonder why?” said Moody, who works for the federal government. “You look at Buffalo and the feeling of ‘This could have been me’ is there. We could be the next target. And when it’s you, what are you going to do? Are you going to run and hide? Or are you going to be able to protect yourself? Protect your family? I didn’t want a gun; I’m not a gun person. But this world has made me get one. Getting one for my wife next.”

The foundation said 40 percent of the overall gun sales in 2020 were to first-time gun purchasers. Black gun owners, old and new, say the rise is a byproduct primarily of a heightened fear they could be targeted like those in Buffalo or at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, when nine Black church members were killed by a white supremacist.

To that point, anti-Black hate crimes rose nearly 40 percent in 2020, the latest year available, according to FBI statistics. There were 2,755 reported incidents targeting Black people in the U.S. that year, the most besieged racial group by a large margin.

Two weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on the Capitol in Washington, Destiny Hawkins, a divorced mother of one who lives near Atlanta, waited in line to purchase her first gun, a Glock 43. “It wasn’t the gun I wanted because their selection was so low; people were buying guns like crazy,” she said……

This increased interest in firearms delights Philip Smith, who started the National African American Gun Association in 2015. A human resources executive in Atlanta, Smith said he owns “about 30” weapons, including the lethal AR-15-style rifles used in the Buffalo mass shooting and the Uvalde elementary school massacre in Texas on May 24.

The increased number of Black gun ownership represents “an awakening,” Smith said. “It’s a value-add to their family household, as opposed to, let’s say, 10 years ago or six years ago. This is a movement in a certain direction, and I think it’s a good direction.”

His organization has 48,000 members nationwide, he said, and has gained more than 1,000 or more each month since 2020. It has nearly 107,000 followers on Facebook.

Sure, there are differing opinions about possession in this piece, but it’s clear that Black Americans are exercising their Second Amendment rights which is a good thing. Ideally, everyone should. Ideally, every household should have a firearm.

Whether the reasoning is a stalker, Antifa, terrorism, a spike in crime, and yes—a crazy white nationalist shooting up a market, you have the right to own a firearm in this country and use it for self-defense. That’s what is so great about the Bill of Rights. They’re all connected. They’re all equally important with regards to upholding the other amendments. There is no graduated scale here; only liberals think that way. There’s no cafeteria support for the Bill of Rights either. It’s either you support them or don’t. There’s no filleting of the first ten amendments. The notion that the Second Amendment is for white Americans only is dead. The notion that the Second Amendment was meant to maintain white supremacy was never real, but it’s obviously not an old white man’s game anymore. Women and minorities are all packing heat. Americans of all stripes are buying guns.

It’s a homemade American apple pie, with a side of 9mm I guess. That’s fine. What we need to worry about is Democrats and Republicans now working to set the foundation that could strip those rights down the line.

“FACT CHECKERS” FAIL TO ADDRESS CRITICAL CHANGE IN DEFINITION OF RECEIVER, INADVERTENTLY PROVE “FALSE CLAIM” TRUE

Washington, D.C. – So-called “fact checkers” and Big Tech inadvertently validated Gun Owners of America’s concerns while targeting a tweet as disinformation for censorship.

Immediately following passage of the “Untraceable Firearms” section of H.R. 7910, Gun Owners of America tweeted that the bill would “criminalize disassembling, cleaning, and re-assembling your gun without a firearm manufacturer’s license.”

Despite labeling the tweet “false,” the Associated Press’ source presumes Gun Owners of America’s interpretation might be valid, acknowledges that the bill’s language is “confusing and ambiguous,” and instead claims that no one is likely to “ever be charged under this statute.”

The Supreme Court usually declares such laws “void for vagueness” under the 5th Amendment, but that hardly makes policy analyses of unconstitutionally vague legislation untrue!

In fact, GOA was merely pointing out that the definition of a “ghost gun” was so vague that it included many unserialized parts on guns in circulation today, like a slide on a handgun or an upper receiver on a rifle or shotgun.

With “assembling” a “ghost gun” criminalized by H.R. 7910, gun owners would no longer be able to disassemble their firearms, clean them, and “assembl[e]” them back into “a functional firearm” if even one unserialized part meets the new definition of a “ghost gun.” The fact-checkers claim that this only applies to manufacturers, but the bill states “it shall be unlawful for any person to manufacture…a ghost gun.”

That is why all of the Associated Press’ sources lean heavily on the qualifier “serialized.”

For example, the “AP’S ASSESSMENT” emphasized that the ban didn’t apply to “firearms [with] serial numbers” and a Giffords gun control activist emphasized that the law wouldn’t affect “a firearm that is serialized.”  Again, they must have intentionally skipped over the other portion of the same bill that changes the current definition of parts that would be subject to serialization or otherwise be classified as “ghost guns.”  Our research indicates that several parts of most modern firearms would meet this new definition (see examples mentioned above).

Therefore, if most guns today are made up of multiple unserialized “ghost gun” parts, as the bill proposes, then you won’t be able to clean your gun without violating the law unless you have a firearm manufacturer’s license.

Big picture: these anti-gun Democrats didn’t even do their own research, because when ATF tried the same definition change last year, GOA and our activists fought back, and ATF later acknowledged and backtracked [Page 24727] this change.

-GOA-

Maher: The Times buried the Kavanaugh assassination story because he’s a conservative

“They just wear their bias on their sleeves,” he says here of the paper, “and if it’s not part of something that feeds our narrative, f— it, we bury it.”

I’m sticking with my bet that Joe Rogan ends up fully red-pilled before Maher does. But I admit, clips like this make me wonder.

Apologies for the odd French-language embedded tweet but it’s the only one I could find with the full exchange between him and his guests.

His point is true beyond a shadow of a doubt and has been for a long time. It’s a neat follow-up to yesterday’s post about media gatekeeping, in fact. Partisan media aggressively filters the news it covers to shield its audience from information that might shake their faith in “the team.” But big media filters too, even when it feels obliged to pay some attention to major developments that disfavor their own side. A gunman showing up outside Sonia Sotomayor’s home would be big news, illustrating a right-wing “climate of hate.” Whereas a gunman showing up outside Brett Kavanaugh’s home is a page-20 curio about a random lunatic.

Katrina Trinko remembers how the Gabby Giffords shooting, perpetrated by a genuine random lunatic, was immediately and egregiously coopted by the media as an indictment of tea-party agitation against Democrats. But the supreme example of the double standard will forever be the attempt by an ardent Bernie-loving progressive to mass-murder Republican congressmen on a baseball field in 2017, news that would have been treated as a national trauma on the order of a major terrorist attack had the partisan roles been reversed. As it is, the story fizzled after a few days and probably would have fizzled sooner if not for the subplot of Steve Scalise fighting for his life in the hospital. Trinko:

[W]hen it comes to political violence in the United States today, here’s a maxim you can always rely on: If the victim or likely victim is on the right, the perpetrator is simply a lone wolf. But if the victim or likely victim is on the left, the perpetrator was fueled by dangerous rhetoric…

Sure, the justices have been given some additional security. But where is the outrage from top liberal lawmakers and activists? Where are the calls for people to remember that at the end of the day, no matter how vehemently we disagree on certain policies, we are all Americans who should be working together to resolve our differences?…

Here’s the reality: Corporate media and liberal lawmakers probably aren’t going to rush to highlight the horrific assassination attempt on Kavanaugh. They know that moderates will be horrified to discover how commonplace it has become for Supreme Court justices to face protests at home. (Notice how little coverage the corporate media has given to these protests, despite the fact that they are publicly announced ahead of time.) And they don’t want to risk alienating the extremists on their own side by focusing on this.

Left-wing agitators understand that they operate free of scrutiny from major media. It’s why the same group that doxxed the Court’s conservative members last month felt no compunction about advertising a new protest at Amy Coney Barrett’s home even after the news broke about a threat to Kavanaugh.

 

Because they’re of the left, by definition they can’t be part of a “climate of hate” that places anyone at risk. If anyone takes a shot at Barrett, the takeaway will be nothing more profound that that there are some crazy people in America. It’s the progressive version of the strategy some righties engage in after mass shootings, complaining about poor treatment for mental health in order to steer the debate away from gun policies favored by Republicans. When your side is on the political hot seat, you can’t go wrong changing the subject to the unfathomable nuances of a murderer’s mental illness.

In lieu of an exit question, read Jonah Goldberg today on a glaring example of politically motivated gatekeeping by major conservative media. Or read this, about Trump’s “free speech” platform allegedly refusing to allow certain topics to be broached. Taken together with the Times’s inexcusable downplaying of the Kavanaugh story, they help explain why the GOP is in the state that it is. Conservatives justifiably distrust major media due to its biases, they place their trust in partisan media instead, and then partisan media grossly abuses that trust by distorting or outright suppressing information that conservatives should have.