This is not ‘journalism’. This is theater. And it’s deceitful theater at that.
Can you count how many lies were told?
Category: Media
If any of the January 6 Commission’s hearings are again scheduled to take place in prime time, it’s entirely possible that the networks will take a “hard pass” next time:
Context: The evening newscasts on CBS, NBC & ABC average anywhere from 18 to 20 million viewers combined on a typical night. Those newscasts do not air in primetime. The January 6 hearings airing in primetime Thursday took in just 11+ million viewers on those three same networks. https://t.co/KcdsM5sx3Z
— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) June 10, 2022
The Real Reason Why Fox Isn’t Airing the J6 Show Trial (and Why CNN and MSNBC Must).
*****
The dirty little secret that Bump and others of his ilk refuse to admit is that Fox, CNN, and MSNBC are all partisan networks. Every one of them. Anyone who can’t see that is being willfully ignorant or outright lying. CNN and MSNBC want the Democrats and their leftist ideology to prevail, and Fox wants the same for conservative ideals. Yet left-wing media outlets like the Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC continually perpetuate the myth that they are pure as the newly fallen snow and would never, ever, EVER stand for biased news, all the while laughing at their dwindling number of viewers who fall for the ruse………………
Take out “The” and “of ‘assault weapons’” and it would still be right.
The Reality of ‘Assault Weapons’ is Far Too Boring and Inconvenient for the Media.
We’re hearing a lot of claims and counter-claims about modern sporting rifles right now. While these “modern” guns are more than half a century old, honest gun owners still buy and use them every day. Occasionally, criminals use them as well, but that’s rare. About one-out-of-eight gun owners have a modern sporting rifle today. And as we’d expect, rifles are used in armed defense situations about an eighth of the time.
Semi-automatic, magazine-fed rifles were introduced to the civilian market here in the US in 1905. The US military adopted them about three decades later for use in World War II.
The civilian version of the modern sporting rifle, the AR-15, was introduced in 1956 so it has been with us for over six decades. In addition to its low recoil and plastic stock, the AR platform’s real innovation is its modularity. The AR can be adjusted to fit people of almost any stature in seconds, which is why it’s so popular. It’s the gateway rifle, the volksgun. I think that is why the democrats want it banned.
Here are two recent news stories that involve the use of a modern sporting rifle . . .
Homeowner with an AR stops two home invaders
It was mid-morning when a homeowner in Brownsboro, Texas heard the sounds of breaking glass coming from inside his home. The homeowner grabbed his AR rifle and went to see what was happening. The homeowner saw two strangers in his house. The defender told the intruders not to move. The second intruder, a female accomplice, ran away. The defender let her go and called 911.
Police arrested the male intruder. The homeowner pointed out the broken glass near his front door. Police arrested and searched the neighborhood for the second robber.
The defender was not charged with a crime.
The homeowner never pulled the trigger as he defended himself. That’s the usual outcome and happens in over 80 percent of defensive gun uses. There are exceptions, of course.
Woman with concealed carry license stops felon with an AR
A woman with a concealed carry permit was attending a graduation/birthday party at an apartment complex in Charleston, West Virginia. The party had spilled out into the parking lot with about 40 people at the celebration. At about 10 at night, a man drove through the parking lot and people shouted for him to slow down.
The driver took offense and came back a half hour later. He climbed into the back seat of his car and started shooting at the crowd with an AR rifle. The woman shot back several times, stopping the attacker in what would have been a mass shooting. No one else was injured.
She called 911 and remained at the scene. Emergency medical services declared the shooter dead from multiple gunshot wounds. The attacker was a convicted felon with a long criminal record. Police are investigating how he got his firearm.
Gun control laws don’t stop criminals from acquiring and using guns. They never have. But there is more we can learn from these two news accounts. AR rifles don’t turn honest homeowners into enraged murderers and they don’t make criminals into unstoppable killers. Modern sporting rifles are actually mundane. And as we’d expect, our neighbors only use lethal force as a last resort.
The reality is, however, that honest reporting about ordinary citizens defending themselves doesn’t make much money for the mainstream news media. They find it more clickworthy to say that a particular piece of steel, plastic and aluminum is horribly frightening and unusually deadly. Apparently that’s the only thing that keeps us watching through the commercials.
Here’s another take on the moronic crap-for-brains CBS article about Japanese gun control laws. And an interesting statistic
Why comparing gun violence here to Japan is stupid
Japan and the United States don’t have a lot in common. Culturally, we’re quite different, though not necessarily incompatible. After all, while legions of Americans consume bits of Japanese culture as if it were the greatest thing ever, other legions in Japan do the same thing with American culture.
But there are profound differences between the United States and Japan.
You wouldn’t really know that if you saw this story going on about their low rates of gun homicides.
As the U.S. gun control debate intensifies, some Americans are looking overseas for ideas on how to prevent mass shootings. Japan has one of the lowest rates of gun violence in the world. There were more than four firearm homicides in the U.S. per 100,000 people during 2019, compared to almost zero in Japan.
As CBS News senior foreign correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports, Japan’s strict laws on private gun ownership have surprising origins in the United States. She met Raphael, a well-known Japanese YouTuber who decided to take skeet shooting lessons. Despite being ex-military, he had to jump through all the same hoops that any Japanese civilian must clear to get a gun license.
There’s mandatory training. You have to pass a written exam, plus a physical and mental health evaluation. Even then, the police will go and ask your family and friends whether you have any violent tendencies.
The point, of course, is very clear. Japan good, America bad. (The article later goes on to point out the irony in the fact that their gun laws are the result of American occupation following World War II.)
However, for all of Palmer’s questions, she never bothered to dig beyond the surface level.
Japan’s total homicide rate is 0.3 per 100,000 people. That’s for all weapons, and yes, that is incredibly low by anyone’s standard. It’s easy to see why some would look to Japan and try to see what they’re doing in hopes of replicating it here.
If our gun homicide rate were only 0.3 per 100,000, that would probably be a rate we could live with, right?
Except, our non-gun homicide rate is 1.6 per 100,000. That’s more than [5] times greater than Japan’s total rate.
In other words, whatever is making Japan so relatively safe has little or nothing to do with their gun laws. After all, the Japanese government can’t ban knives, hammers, sticks, or body parts–all of which are used to kill plenty of people here in the United States.
Instead, whatever has created such a low homicide rate is likely something that has nothing to do with weapon restrictions and more to do with culture or, at least, some other regulation.
Unfortunately, that’s beyond the modern media to delve into. That’s a question they never bother to think to ask because they’re apparently conditioned to not think of homicide as anything other than a gun issue.
The thing is, though, if you managed to make all guns go away overnight from every hand in the country, we’d still have a higher homicide rather than Japan–at least five times higher, though I suspect it would increase since you have to assume a large percentage of those who kill with guns would simply shift to another weapon.
So yeah, Palmer skimmed the surface and never dug any deeper, which is par for the course in this day and age.
Observation O’ The Day
“Our ‘elites’ are now promoting the kind of history one would impose on a conquered nation, to break its people’s spirit.”
Common Sense? CBS Urges U.S. Adopt Japan’s Occupation-Era Gun Control
On Monday’s CBS Mornings, the network continued their series globetrotting for gun control laws. This time they left Europe and jetted over to Japan where senior foreign correspondent (and friend to the Iranian regime) Elizabeth Palmer touted their oppressive system where a citizen could wait a year or longer to get a gun license as authorities prod their lives and a gun shop owners need to get permission to buy ammo. All imposed on them during the post-WWII occupation.
So much for “common sense” gun laws.
“As the U.S. gun-control debate intensifies, some Americans are looking overseas for ideas on how to prevent mass shootings. Japan has one of the lowest rates of gun violence in the world,” co-host Nate Burleson announced at the top of the segment. “Seems like it’s about time we adopt some of those laws,” he pushed at the end.
Hanging out with Japanese YouTuber Raphael at a skeet shooting range, Palmer praised the “mandatory training” citizen had to go through, in addition to a “written exam, a physical and a mental health evaluation, and even then the police can go and ask your family and friends whether you’ve got any violent tendencies.”
“It took me a year,” Raphael told her. She also noted, “the police had even interviewed his wife.”
She also touted how Japanese citizens were only allowed to buy firearms from three categories and the ridiculous fact that gun store owners needed permission to restock ammunition:
He’s proud of the buck he shot in northern Japan with a rifle, one of only three types of guns a civilian can own. Air guns are also allowed, he said, as shotguns, but that’s it.
I’ve heard that there’s very strict control on ammunition, as well. I see you have some rounds here in the cabinet.
“Yes,” he tells me. “When a gun owner runs out he needs police authorization to buy more.”
“Does he think the law goes too far? Not a bit. Like most Japanese, he supports it as the price for almost zero gun violence,” she boasted.
Palmer was absolutely giddy to note that the reason Japan had such strict gun control laws was because of the United States. “And how’s this for ironic? Japan owes its strict gun laws to America,” she mocked. “When the U.S. occupied Japan after World War II it disarmed the country.”
She even threw in a soundbite from an old documentary where the narrator proclaimed: “To the scrap heap went the guns.” Palmer conveniently omitted the part where the U.S. also banned Japan from having a military.
“Americans shaped the legislation that took firearms out of the hands of civilians, and to this day, that means getting hurt or killed by a gun in Japan is an extremely long shot,” she jabbed as she wrapped up the report.
Palmer is essentially praising the American confiscation of firearms for there to be a smoother occupation and pacification of a citizenry, the exact opposite of what the founders intended. And given the fact that the Democratic Roosevelt administration put Japanese-American citizens in internment camps, perhaps looking to that era for guidance is ill-advised.
NY Times gets it right: polls showing support for gun control doesn’t mean the votes are there
How many times have you seen a news article talking about how most people support gun control? I know I’ve seen it a ton over the years. The media and politicians latch onto poll numbers as if they’re sacrosanct, telling us this proves the public supports them.
Then the election rolls around and gun control doesn’t seem to make a blip on the radar.
Over at the New York Times, they decided to delve into just why that is.
It’s one of the most puzzling questions for Democrats in American politics: Why is the political system so unresponsive to gun violence? Expanded background checks routinely receive more than 80 percent or 90 percent support in polling. Yet gun control legislation usually gets stymied in Washington and Republicans never seem to pay a political price for their opposition.
There have been countless explanations offered about why political reality seems so at odds with the polling, including the power of the gun lobby; the importance of single-issue voters; and the outsize influence of rural states in the Senate.
But there’s another possibility, one that might be the most sobering of all for gun control supporters: Their problem could also be the voters, not just politicians or special interests.
Oh, blaming the voters, right?
Not really.
You see, the argument being made isn’t that the voters are somehow wrong, but that issue polling is, well, useless.
The @AP reached out to us for an interview on gun control. This is all we had to say: pic.twitter.com/aIqZnCHYGC
— GhostGuns.com (@GhostGcom) June 3, 2022
When did NPR start putting free crack in their breakroom https://t.co/5km0ZBzIx3
— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) June 1, 2022
Again, it’s nice when they supply the means for positive identification.
This, right there in black and white, is what the Bill of Rights is all about. The protection of minority rights over the tyranny of a majority that the founders knew from the lessons of history were all too commonplace in a ‘democracy’ where the masses could be swayed (like this airhead) into advocating riding over the rights of the populace in the search for their version of Utopia that has always turned into Hell.
Preventing “The Tyranny of the Majority”
People often refer to the United States as a democracy, but technically speaking, that’s not true. It’s a republic.
Big deal, you say? If you care about your rights, it is. The Founding Fathers knew their history well, so they knew better than to establish the U.S. as a democracy.
In a democracy, of course, the majority rules. That’s all well and good for the majority, but what about the minority? Don’t they have rights that deserve respect?
Of course they do. Which is why a democracy won’t cut it. As the saying goes, a democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner.
The Founders were determined to forestall the inherent dangers of what James Madison called “the tyranny of the majority.” So they constructed something more lasting: a republic. Something with checks and balances. A system of government carefully balanced to safeguard the rights of both the majority and the minority.
That led, most notably, to the bicameral structure of our legislative branch. We have a House of Representatives, where the number of members is greater for more populous states (which obviously favors those states), and the Senate, where every state from Rhode Island and Alaska to California and New York have exactly two representatives (which keeps less-populated states from being steamrolled).
Being a republic, we also don’t pick our president through a direct, majority-take-all vote. We have an Electoral College. And a lot of liberals don’t like that.
Their attacks on the College are nothing new, but the defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016 renewed their fury. After all, as they never tire of pointing out, Mrs. Clinton captured more of the popular vote than Donald Trump did. They see the Electoral College as an impediment to their political victories, therefore it’s got to go.
The latest attack comes via new lawsuits filed in federal courts in four states (Massachusetts, California, South Carolina and Texas). “Under the winner-take-all system, U.S. citizens have been denied their constitutional right to an equal vote in presidential elections,” said David Boies, an attorney who represented former Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 election.
I doubt Mr. Boies and his fellow attorneys are really ignorant of why we have an Electoral College. But it’s important that the rest of us know.
Classic gaslighting
Morning Joe: It’s ‘Paranoid’ To Say Gov. Coming For Guns, But Praises Beto Who Said Just That!
Can Joe Scarborough and the Morning Joe crew really be this clueless? On Thursday’s show, Scarborough and Willie Geist repeatedly claimed that it was “paranoid” for people to think that the government could be coming for their guns. But there’s just one problem: in that same segment, Scarborough praised Beto O’Rourke, who said just that, for the political stunt he pulled yesterday, in which he interrupted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott during his press conference on the Uvalde school shooting.
Beto O’Rourke, Joe. Surely you remember that in a Democratic presidential debate in 2019 during his failed, short-lived run, O’Rourke said:
“Hell yes! We’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”
As you’ll see in the linked clip, that line drew huge cheers from the Democrat crowd in attendance.
Yes, O’Rourke subsequently backed away from that statement when it became politically untenable. But does anyone doubt that if he and his fellow Democrats could, they would take guns away from law-abiding Americans?
Responding to a person on the stage with Abbott who called O’Rourke a “sick son of a bitch” for his stunt, Scarborough claimed that the real sick sons of bitches were Abbott and others who won’t pass more gun-control legislation. For good measure, Scarborough twice called Abbott and those with him “freaks.”
So, is Joe Scarborough suffering from short-term memory loss? Or was he consciously covering up that Beto O’Rourke, the object of his praise, had boasted that “hell yes,” he would be taking guns away from lawful owners? Remind us again, Joe: who’s the SOB and the freak?
BLUF
I don’t think we have anywhere near enough information to judge what actually happened and what the police did right or wrong. Inflammatory videos tell only a tiny part of the story, and I don’t rely on them for an understanding of what actually happened except in regard to the tiny part they are telling. In this case, we know that desperate parents were angry at what they perceived as police inaction, and the police restrained some of them. The rest will emerge as time goes on – but for many people, the takeaway will be “the police are awful and they didn’t care.”
That is by no means clear right now.
On that report that police in Uvalde were just standing around
Here’s the story as it now stands. I caution everyone to ask questions, though, before jumping to conclusions.
For example:
Video emerging online from Tuesday’s schoolchildren massacre in Uvalde, Texas shows local police more concerned with stopping parents than stopping the killer…
Here are my questions in response to that sentence:
–Were these all the police that were at the school at the time, or were there other police in the building trying to get in and who were communicating with those outside? Were these police we see in the video stationed outside in case the killer ran out and tried to escape, or in case he had an accomplice?
–Were the killings of children and students still going on, or were they over by this time? Were there cameras in the classroom or halls? Were police inside the building aware of what was going on at that point?
–What would have happened if the parents were let in and they ended up being killed as well? Was that not very much a concern of the police – sort of like the way firefighters restrain parents from running back into a badly burning building?
Nina Jankowicz, the self-proclaimed “Mary Poppins of Disinformation” who was up until recently supposed to become the chief of Joe Biden’s Orwellian and ominous Disinformation Governance Board, can’t seem to stop herself from stepping on rakes. She has complained, now that the Board has been “paused,” that the Board itself was a victim of “disinformation,” which casts into question how effective it could possibly have ever been, if Jankowicz couldn’t even manage to counter false statements about what it was supposed to be doing. On Monday, she made matters even worse by remarking off-handedly that the Board was meant to do something that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had said it would not be doing: countering “disinformation” not just from foreign sources, but from Americans.
Jankowicz tweeted that she was “thinking a lot the past few weeks about the paper I co-authored in the US Army War College Quarterly in 2020,” and she provided the link. “It lays out a government strategy,” she continued, “for dealing with disinformation based on 3 Cs- capability, coordination, and cooperation.” She added: “Since this piece was published in summer 2020, the spread and effects of disinformation on American society have only worsened and become entrenched in domestic politics (as the last few weeks of my life have shown).” And: “This is the type of work I had hoped to do at DHS, and the type of work the USG sorely needs to invest in. This is the type of work that I have built my career on—not a few contextless tweets. And this is the type of work I will continue in the public sphere.”
All right. So on Monday, Jankowicz would have us believe that she had hoped to spend her time as chief of the Disinformation Governance Board, which was part of the Department of Homeland Security, countering alleged disinformation that had “become entrenched in domestic politics.” Now, wait a minute. On May 1, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Mayorkas, “Will American citizens be monitored?” Mayorkas’ answer was unequivocal and reassuring: “No. The board does not have any operational authority or capability. What it will do is gather together best practices in addressing the threat of disinformation from foreign state adversaries from the cartels and disseminate those best practices to the operators that have been executing in addressing this threat for years.”
But how could Jankowicz counter disinformation that was supposedly “entrenched in domestic politics” if her Disinformation Governance Board were only dealing with the “threat of disinformation from foreign state adversaries”? Pluribus editor Jeryl Bier noticed the anomaly and tweeted, “Need clarification, because I thought the Disinfo Gov Board had nothing to do with domestic politics?” Journalist and political commentator Noam Blum added, “As @JerylBier points out, Jankowicz cites disinformation in domestic politics even though DHS said outright that the governance board would specifically focus on *foreign* disinformation from Russia and from human traffickers regarding border migration.”
Jankowicz fired back with a claim that Bier and Blum were — you guessed it — spreading disinformation: “The thread you’re citing—which you’ve removed the initial context to—is in reference to a paper about *hostile state disinfo.* You can disagree w/ my assessment that it affects domestic politics/discourse, but the strategy described in the paper is the work I’m referring to.” Blum, however, was having none of it, responding, “I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what ‘context’ means. Speaking of something being entrenched in domestic politics necessarily means combating domestic sources of disinformation, which is not what you were hired to do. Not to mention that by disabling replies to your tweets, you are preventing people from introducing any context that might show you are wrong or otherwise refute your claims, so please don’t lecture me on the best practices of informational discourse, Nina.”
To that, Jankowicz replied, “Nope, it doesn’t- Take a look at the recent work to prebunk [apparently she means pre-debunk] Russian narratives about Ukraine. It focused on raising awareness of the falsities coming out of the Kremlin so Americans wouldn’t buy into them. It worked. No ‘combating’ domestic sources anywhere in the mix.” But what if “domestic sources” had repeated these allegedly false narratives? What then?
Certainly the Disinformation Governance Board was going to spend all its time countering the lies of the evil Putin, and never, ever interfering with Americans or the freedom of speech at all. Or maybe Jankowicz offhandedly let slip that what Mayorkas had said about the Board’s scope wasn’t the whole story, and then hastily had to cover for what she had revealed. How can we ever know for sure? If only we had a Disinformation Governance Board to sort it all out for us! But in the meantime, Jankowicz’s longstanding taste for repeating genuine disinformation should lead us to regard her words with more than a little skepticism.
There’s a reason why gun control fails after mass shootings
In the wake of any mass shooting, we hear a lot about gun control. Proponents of it argue we simply need to embrace it to make such shootings a thing of the past. It just hasn’t worked out for them.
Over at Axios, they decided to lament this fact by pointing out all the times gun control failed to materialize after a mass shooting.
What they miss is that there’s a reason it didn’t pass in pretty much all of those cases.
Sandy Hook, December 2012
- After the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, in which 26 victims — including 20 children — were killed, Congress proposed a bipartisan bill expanding background checks for gun buyers, a ban on assault weapons and a ban on high-capacity gun magazines.
Part of the reason that didn’t pass was that the killer didn’t purchase his gun. He murdered his own mother and took an AR-15 that she lawfully purchased–and underwent and passed a background check for–to use it to carry out that particular atrocity.
Expanding background checks wouldn’t have prevented such an attack.
Charleston church, June 2015
When a white man opened fire at a Black church congregation in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine people, Democrats proposed legislation to tighten background checks.
Democrats sought to eliminate what became known as the “Charleston loophole,” which allows people with incomplete background checks to purchase guns after three days, Politico reports.
And that remains because going beyond those three days is too much of an infringement on people’s Second Amendment rights.
What people have to remember is that the three-day window was put in place to appease gun rights advocates who worried that people could be long-term denied the ability to purchase a firearm simply because their background checks never came back.
The three-day window remains because no one trusts the government enough to take it away.
San Bernardino, December 2015
A shooting at a San Bernardino County Department of Public Health holiday party killed 14 people and injured 22 others.
One day after the shooting, the Senate rejected two gun control proposals introduced by Democrats on background checks, the Washington Post reports.
California pass universal background checks in 1991. The killers in this case still acquired weapons illegally and without undergoing a background check.
Why pass more of what clearly didn’t work?
Pulse Nightclub, June 2016
The proposed bills would have prevented people on the federal terrorism watch list from buying guns and closed loopholes in background check laws, per the Times.
And that one failed because there’s no due process on the terrorism watchlist. You can be added for any reason and aren’t told you’re on it. Getting yourself removed is a nightmare.
Plus, the terrorism watch list is a list of names. There are no other identifiers. So if a terrorist named Tom Knighton exists somewhere on Earth, I don’t get to purchase a firearm under this rule.
Yeah, it’s an absolute mystery why this didn’t pass.
Look, you’re starting to see how this goes, and Axios does continue.
For example, they bring up Atlanta and how background check bills didn’t pass despite President Biden calling for just that, but the shooter in that one actually passed a background check. They tie this to Boulder, but he also passed a background check.
Time and time again, there’s a mass shooting, then lawmakers make demands for laws that wouldn’t do anything to stop the attack, but would do wonders for infringing on people’s rights.
Look, gun control isn’t the answer to this. Especially since the two high-profile attacks we saw last weekend were both in heavily gun-controlled states.
Gun control doesn’t pass because, in each of these cases, it’s clear that the laws proposed wouldn’t have done a damn thing. Further, each of these is actually something of a black swan event, meaning they’re not the norm, despite people trying to pretend they are.
So I’m actually OK with inaction from Congress on this. Frankly, I prefer inaction in Congress on most things, but especially here.
There are better ways to handle mass shootings than infringing on the rights of the non-shooters, especially when it’s clear that infringement wouldn’t have stopped diddly.
“There’s a bigger problem here about how we’re going to control the channels of communications in this country.”
Bingo.
That’s what this is all really about. All of the leftist demoncraps sitting there aren’t concerned about ‘online harassment’ or ‘disinformation’.
This is about who controls the narrative.
CNN's David Zurawik: "Dangerous" with Elon Musk buying Twitter, we need to look to Europe.
"You need regulation. You cannot let these guys control discourse in this country or we are headed to hell. We are there. Trump opened the gates of hell and now they’re chasing us down." pic.twitter.com/QubyKZwVCQ
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) May 1, 2022
Adolf Hitler had a Ministry of Truth.
Joseph Goebbels had a Ministry of Truth.
Joseph Stalin had a Ministry of Truth.
Joseph Biden has a Ministry of Truth.
— Errol Webber (@ErrolWebber) April 28, 2022
WH Response on ‘Disinformation Board’ Shows Just How Desperate for Control They Are
It was not a coincidence that you had Elon Musk buying Twitter and then all of sudden, the Biden team found the need to form a Ministry of Truth run by the DHS — otherwise known as a creepy-sounding “Disinformation Governance Board.”
Now, the first reaction to such an effort by the Biden Administration that most people would have to this is how incredibly Orwellian it is. The second might be that it’s exactly what the First Amendment was designed to protect against. The third might be to take notice this says “governance,” and is being run by the Department of Homeland Security, which usually is pursuing threats and crimes.
So, can fully-declared speech crimes be far away, when you start to have things like this? And finally, this was formed specifically “ahead of the midterms” to deal with “misinformation” peddled to minority communities — which sounds like they’re going to do all they can to try to shut down speech that they think might hurt their chances, just as they did in 2020. And how typical of the Biden Administration to treat minorities as though they can’t make a judgment about the information they receive themselves — this is treating minorities like children to whom the government needs to explain things.
The very people who were upset about President Donald Trump calling media false stories “fake news” are just cool with the government now weighing in and determining what is “true” or not true. These are also the same folks who promoted the Russia collusion hoax for years, as well.
But when asked, White House Press Secretary (soon to be MSDNC propagandist) Jen Psaki acted as though no one could have an issue with their agenda.
PSAKI: "It sounds like the objective of the board is to prevent disinformation and misinformation from traveling around the country in a range of communities. I'm not sure who opposes that effort." pic.twitter.com/Z4xOv46RLT
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) April 28, 2022
“It sounds like the objective of the board is to prevent disinformation and misinformation from traveling around the country in a range of communities,” Psaki said. “I’m not sure who opposes that effort.”
How about any sane person who believes in the Constitution? Every American should oppose this — it violates everything for which we are supposed to stand.
The government is so afraid of Elon Musk owning Twitter that they literally created a real life Ministry of Truth less than a week after he bought it
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) April 28, 2022
BREAKING: Biden Admin Department of Homeland Security to create a 'Disinformation Governance Board' dedicated to 'countering misinformation'
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) April 27, 2022
Another Government Agency Is Being Weaponized to Go After Conservatives
I don’t mean to be the wet blanket here. We should celebrate liberals freaking out over Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter purchase. We should be celebrating the end of censorship and a new era of free speech on the platform. It’s a huge win for conservatives, but the war is far from being over. As with these victories, we face another, larger battle on the horizon. The enemy is not new; it’s the government again. Yet, this time they’re taking the Twitter ethos regarding “disinformation” national.
Rebecca touched upon this last night, but the warning flares must be fired again. Load the magazines, clean the guns, and sharpen the bayonets because Goliath is coming. The Department of Homeland Security is creating a “Disinformation Governance Board.” I’m sure this will be a smooth operation, right? Let’s be frank about this because you all know what’s going on here. This Thought Police department is being created to help Democrats ahead of the 2022 midterms. It’s a Democratic attack machine within the DHS funded by our tax dollars. Like the IRS, FBI, and DOJ before them, another government institution has been weaponized by the Left to attack people they don’t like (via Fox News):
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testified Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security is creating a “Disinformation Governance Board” to combat misinformation ahead of the 2022 midterms.
Mayorkas appeared before the House Appropriations Subcommittee to discuss the fiscal 2023 budget for the Department of Homeland Security.[…]
Mayorkas said a “Disinformation Governance Board” had recently been created and will be led by Undersecretary for Policy Rob Silvers co-chair with principal deputy general counsel Jennifer Gaskill.[…]
Hours later, Politico reported that Nina Jankowicz, who previously served as a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, will head the board as executive director.
Jankowicz was part of a band called the Moaning Myrtles. She also said armed Trump supporters would show up at the polls to intimidate voters. And she’s a Russian collusion peddler. That alone is the disqualifying factor.
Ammal Hassan
April 26, 2022
What The Hell Does Elon Want With Twitter Anyway?
Really? Musk has repeatedly said it’s because Twitter has been hostile to free speech. He has literally said:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519073003933515776
By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.
I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.
If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.
Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2022
🚀💫♥️ Yesss!!! ♥️💫🚀 pic.twitter.com/0T9HzUHuh6
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022
If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 21, 2022
And authenticate all real humans
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 21, 2022
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507777261654605828
Despite all that, this bozo Hassan can’t imagine free speech being the real reason.
From reading some the comments to various threads about the buyout it is very clear that many people are vehemently opposed to free speech. They come close to predicting the end of the world if people are allowed to spread “disinformation, conspiracy theories, and hate speech.”
This is incredibly willful ignorance or, more likely in many cases, deliberate evil.
The “end of the world” is much more likely to occur if we don’t have free speech. The suppression of free speech is the mark of authoritarianism. It enables corruption, gulags, and genocide.
This is why we have the 2nd Amendment. It protects the 1st Amendment.
I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022
Elon Musk’s buying Twitter is good for free speech. And a ‘nightmare’ for progressives
“A brave new nightmare.” Those words from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich described the threat created by Elon Musk’s bid to restore free speech values by buying Twitter.
Yet, despite warnings that censorship is necessary “for democracy to survive,” neither the Tesla CEO and billionaire nor ordinary citizens appear to be sufficiently terrified of free speech. Twitter confirmed Monday that Musk will acquire the company in a deal worth $44 billion. Once the deal is complete, Twitter will become a privately held company.
Progressives, in the meantime, have adopted a dangerous shift in their strategy of calling for corporations to censor speech.
Last week, former President Barack Obama made this shift clear in his much covered speech at Stanford University. Just days after Musk re-enforced his bid for Twitter with the support of many in the free speech community, Obama warned that social media was “tilting us in the wrong direction.” He called for more censorship of disinformation while calling himself “pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist.”
Obama has never been viewed as an ally on free speech by those of us who have been attacked for our “absolutist” views. Moreover, calling for censorship as a free speech absolutist is like claiming to be a vegetarian while calling for mandatory meat consumption.