Category: Media

Hickory Tikory Tok

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“The House ran out the clock…”

If it gets to the House, we can hope that’s what happens to Senate bill 686, the RESTRICT Act: Never put to a vote.

That bill is actually peripheral to this post, but is a perfect example of extending surveillance-state tentacles (which we’ll get to).

Ostensibly, the bill defends us against the CCP controlled TikTok spyware – beloved of goofy pre-teens and sinister trans-activists.

I also detest TikTok. Its CCP data gathering on our youth is unacceptable, and its transactivist influencer contingent is culturally corrosive. It should, at least, have age limitations applied to some of its more vile content, with solid parental locking capability. Knock, knock Jeffrey Marsh. We don’t have to respect you even a tiny bit. In fact, we despise you for your pride in being a groomer.

But the RESTRICT bill includes no such provisions; it is written without even reference to ““TikTok,” or parent company “ByteDance,” or even “social media.”” Much less the Chinese Communist Party. That mention could be problematic for Gretchen Whitmer, so I get why the bill can’t name China.

TikTok should be certainly be banned on government devices. In fact, any government employee so unaware of TikTok’s pedigree as to have it on their government device should be fired. It’s not like these people aren’t “woke”, of course they are, it’s that they’re not AWARE. But, ignorance is not only not an excuse, it’s a sign of national security cluelessness. Loose clicks sink ships.

Or, more commonsensically, all government devices could ALREADY be set up to prohibit TikTok installation and block any access to it. Do it by executive order, since it affects only employees – supposedly loyal.

However, there’s no surveillance-state advantage in something so simple.

The RESTRICT Act Would Restrict a Lot More Than TikTok

RESTRICT, as written, simply expands and cements the power of government to abrogate the First Amendment as described below.

We can’t shoot down a Chinese spy balloon while it’s actively, successfully spying, but we can extend state control over Americans watching their kids do silly dances on a Chinese spy app – which the government hasn’t absolutely banned on every device it owns.

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The rest of this post offers links to some articles which may be too long for your interest. I post them even so because they describe, without hyperbole, an imminently serious threat to the Republic of the United States. Even if you don’t want to spend the time now, they may become a reference for you when you need to provide a Progressive you know with reasoned information about the danger to a way of life they don’t even understand as their own. I have a suggestion.

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Who is doing anything about this?

Whether Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter will be successful is a question still in doubt for certain definitions of “success.” I’m looking at it as a defense of Enlightenment values, freedom of conscience being the foundational moral imperative.

I do not think the measure is whether it becomes a profitable business. Musk did not buy it for that reason.

I hope profitability eventuates, because we desperately need a continuing social media space not attached at the hip to, or gripped around the throat by, myriad US agencies forming alliances with private companies eager to subvert the First Amendment.

Significant Twitter personnel changes were a bare start in blunting the public-pirate (AKA fascist) alliance against free speech. More importantly, we have insight to the corruption from Musk’s release of internal documents (the “Twitter Files”) and source code algorithms.

The public’s glimpses into the early stages of the transformation of America from democracy to digital leviathan are the result of lawsuits and FOIAs—information that had to be pried from the security state—and one lucky fluke. If Elon Musk had not decided to purchase Twitter, many of the crucial details in the history of American politics in the Trump era would have remained secret, possibly forever.

That quote is from an important, sober – and sobering – recent history of America’s public/pirate surveillance state.

It’s also long, but if you want to better understand the stakes – and what I hope could eventually be Musk’s success – it is a must read. Incisive and insightful.
A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century – Tablet Magazine
13000 words

Mentioned in the preceding article, a scathing in depth analysis from the Columbia Journalism Review of the mendacious “Russiagate” media coverage.
The press versus the president, parts one through 4
Part 1
6200 words
Part 2
6500 words
Part 3
4800 words
Part 4
8700 words

Running List of All Twitter Files Releases (summarized with links to detail)
? words

Post traumatic press disorder

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Glenn Greenwald’s Tweets on the hissing pussycats at “Robin D’Angelo Junior High — also known as the national desk of The Washington Post” are devastatingly hilarious. It’s a left-on-left tag-team cage-match.

The fighting started when WaPo reporter Dave Weigel retweeted Cam Harless.

No idea who Cam Harless is, but he’s irrelevant after the internecine bombardments commence. Felicia Sonmez is an aggrieved WaPo reporter, who seems unaware that “believe all women” is over since Robby Mook’s implication of Hillary Clinton in the Steele dossier psy-op. Not to mention Amber Heard, for whom I’ve heard a personal “poop emoji” has been created.

Greenwald’s commentary caught my attention because of his victim point scoring comments (below). Because, in a 2019 post – Victimhood competence hierarchies – I attempted to describe the tools needed for sorting out the victimhood pecking order. A slice from that post:

Let’s consider the complexities via example. Rate a black, homosexual male, wealthy actor; vs. a white, trans-female, wealthy former Pentathlon champion; vs. a brown, female, anti-semitic, Islamist congressional member; vs. a white, 1/1024th Amerind, biological female, wealthy United States Senator. It’s not easy, and those are only a few of the factors. The enterprise seems very difficult.

This is the type of analysis intersectionalists demand as a principle of governance. And, that’s just a poor preliminary attempt to begin to capture the variables currently driving the SJW power struggle. It doesn’t include anywhere near the required profile information. I tried filling it in for a couple of people I thought would help refine scoring. Maybe you can guess who they are.

Complicating this further, just when you might think you have a workable algorithm, someone gets offended by something you did not expect. For example, here’s an example of a lesbian, trans, Leftist, female academic in the Humanities you’d expect to score moderately well even if she is white: A concrete example against which to test our calculation of the victim/oppressor ratio.

If you think the Progs would by now have established their own official scoring system, you’re missing the point. They all aspire to be Thomas Wolsey or Torquemada in a quest to adjudicate their own martyrdom. Any reference to a set of rules could inhibit the exercise of power.

E.g., constitutional law.

I noted the victimhood ranking problem 5 other times (now 6) under the tag ‘victimhood competence.’

I do not have a Twitter account, and I had to temporarily drop my browser shields to even see Greenwald’s thread. It is worth reading. It’s not like you have to log in.

Anyway, this is the snippet that caught my eye:

After WPost reporter @Feliciasonmez publicly accused multiple Post reporters and editors — including @jdelreal — of supporting misogyny against her, Del Real retorted that he was the only Mexican American on the national desk and also gay. Experts are tabulating the outcome.
…
For those scoring the various victimhood points at home, among the starring marginalized actors in the WPost oppression drama, 2 are graduates of Harvard University (Sonmez and Del Real) while the other was raised in Greenwich, CT, and educated in Swiss boarding schools (Lorenz).

Glenn Greenwald
@ggreenwald

Bees, fish, lions, corn, masking toddlers, women, and Marine Corps readiness

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We are all socialists fish now. If the Babylon Bee identified as a fish, could it get its Twitter account back?

It’s OK: It identifies as a bee. Err… fish.

Taco Bell hardest hit. Or maybe movie theaters.
Archer Daniels Midland will be fine. So I bought a little.

Face swaddling. Follow the science.

Speaking of science: What is a woman? Apparently it’s complicated.

But not as complicated as a newly minted SCOTUS Justice who is female, but is not a biologist, thinks. A woman who IS a biologist and a woman has an answer.

Looks like tactical lipstick.

Ghouling

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Urban Dictionary has a definition of “Ghouling”

The act of an individual, mostly persons involved in the media, who exploit a tragedy to further their own gain. In the case of the media, persons often indulge in inappropriate acts to ‘flesh out’ a story.

…which sufficed before Michael Hiltzik at the LA Times said, “Hold my beer!”

Post Hiltzik, we need a new definition. Perhaps: “An exclusively hateful form of trolling exemplified by the publicly expressed desire for, or celebration of, the death of others on a political basis. Thought to originate in the many images and fantasies celebrating the slow, humiliating, and painful demise of Donald Trump. (See Kathy Griffin)”

Or we find a new word. The contest is open in the comments section.

(The following link deliberately broken. Can be easily fixed, if you must.)
Given the headline: Mocking anti-vaxxers’ COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes — but may be necessary

It may be not a little ghoulish to celebrate or exult in the deaths of vaccine opponents. And it may be proper to express sympathy and solicitude to those they leave behind.

But mockery is not necessarily the wrong reaction to those who publicly mocked anti-COVID measures and encouraged others to follow suit, before they perished of the disease the dangers of which they belittled.

Nor is it wrong to deny them our sympathy and solicitude, or to make sure it’s known when their deaths are marked that they had stood fast against measures that might have protected themselves and others from the fate they succumbed to.

One wonders why a healthy 46 year old female should be posthumously mocked because she conducted a rational risk analysis. Do you think saying “I told you so,” after that makes her feel stupid? No. Spitting on her grave is click bait posing as Hiltzik’s edgy righteousness.

Another wonder is the LA Times headline writer’s evident islamaophobia and cultural appropriation.

The earliest stories of the ghouls emerge from Arabic legend. The myth of the ghoul predates Islam, but because the ghoul is mentioned in the Koran the creature is still a source of terror in Arabic culture today.

The headline person had better click bait in the original title. The URL originally pointed to something titled “why-shouldnt-we-dance-on-the-graves-of-anti-vaxxers.” This is almost certainly the author’s working title, which tends to belie his weaseling double negatives and “may be propers”. Whatever, it’s a clumsy attempted cover up of somebody’s macabre delight in the death of people who contract a disease they had little reason to fear.

(Next link is broken deliberately, also.)
In other words, The unvaccinated cherish their freedom to harm others. How can we ever forgive them?
Heather Mallick, Toronto Star

Will we ever forgive the deliberately unvaccinated for having helped spread a disease that killed and disabled so many, devastating the economy, leaving many of us jobless and wretched?

Will we ever look on them gently when their casual choices left us unable to hold a loved one as she died? When a young woman with stage 4 colon cancer had her surgery postponed for the third time because hospitals are packed with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients at death’s door? Death has an open-door policy, never more so than now.

And will your children forgive you?…

Can a little girl tell people that her unvaccinated dad died of COVID-19?

For each unvaccinated American death, Kuper says, about nine people lose a grandparent, parent, sibling, spouse or child. But a child’s suffering is greatest. Children come first with all of us. Don’t they?

I’m sure you can think of several objections to Ms. Mallick’s treacly whining. I’ll give you some.

1- Economic devastation can be laid primarily on the ongoing authoritarian incompetence of politicians and bureaucrats.

2- That little girl can simply say, “My Dad died from the CCP virus.” And, if asked whether her Dad was vaccinated she should be diligently coached to respond, “None of your f*cking business, ghoul!”

3- For each American death from any cause (including vaccination) about nine people lose a grandparent, parent, sibling, spouse or child. (I’m taking her word for the number.)

4- Where’s the question about forgiving the people who kicked off vaccination hesitancy, and are presently holding up momo-clonal antibody distribution – Joe and Kamala? Or about those who stuffed elder care facilities full of active cases – Mario and Gretchen?

Agar Agar

Hershblogger2 Comments

…is a medium used to grow bacteria in petri dishes. Facebook is the social media equivalent.

Personally, I detest Facebook. But the recent spew of Maim Scream Media™ stories about the company are not what they seem.

These are based on “shocking” revelations, which are neither new nor surprising. Is there really anyone who believes that Facebook does not exploit its users? Does anyone imagine Facebook is not biased toward leftwing politics? Did anyone think that Facebook invented teenage angst?

Before you look at the following links, there are a couple of things you need to know about the Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen. Most important is the fact that as a member of Facebook’s internal Civic Integrity team she was likely involved in the decision to suppress the New York Post‘s Hunter Biden laptop story. Adding credence to the idea that she’s fine with corporate censorship as long as it favors leftists, is her choice of friends: Jen Psaki’s PR firm and Eric Ciaramella’s legal team. Ciaramella is the execrable Adam Schiff’s fake whistleblower regarding Trump’s Ukraine phone conversation – of which Ciaramella had NO direct knowledge.

It is reasonable to suppose that Haugen, a heavy donor to leftist causes and politicians, is not looking to provide balanced information about Facebook’s political censorship. The following links are probably more than you want to read, but if you are interested in Huagen’s motives you should read a couple. Her ‘whistleblowing’ is part of a plan to convert Facebook to a wholly owned subsidiary of Progressive propaganda.

Democrats and Media Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook, Just Commandeer its Power to Censor
-Glenn Greenwald, Substack

Human Events Exclusive: Fmr. Facebook Official Frances Haugen Plans to Testify to EU, Called Her Friend Conspiracy Theorist After Becoming a Men’s Rights Advocate/Red Pill Supporter
-Jack Posobiec, Human Events

Facebook ‘operating in the shadows’ says whistleblower, lawmakers demand probes
– David Shepardson and Diane Bartz, Reuters

The point of these next two is that our politicians want the powers other governments are already exercising. It can happen here if politicians are successful in this attempt. Speech is violence, after all, and school boards need spaces safe from parents.

Singapore Passes Foreign Interference Law Allowing Authorities To Block Internet Content
– msmash, Slashdot

Canadian government’s proposed online harms legislation threatens our human rights
– Ilan Kogan, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (Canada already bribes subsidizes journalists)

These tell you what’s already happening here:

Democrats’ push for $50,000-per-year journalist tax credit sparks GOP ‘media collusion’ accusations
– Haris Alic, The Washington Times

Accidental leak reveals US government has secretly hit Google with ‘keyword warrants’ to identify ANYONE searching certain names, addresses, and phone numbers
– Natasha Anderson, Dailymail.com

So. I am not on the current bandwagon to pass legislation affecting Facebook. Yeah, social media in general is a leftist shithole, but any Democrat inspired bill is merely intended to cement that.

I do not want the people blocking stories about Hunter Biden, suppressing discussion of alternate CCP virus therapy, banning a former President of the United States for life, or otherwise manipulating opinion, to be taken over by the Feds.

For (targeting) the children

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Chinese regulators call on gaming companies to protect kids’ physical, mental health

China is concerned about Chinese children’s exposure to Chinese social media apps like TikTok…

TikTok Faces EU Data Probes Into Children’s Safety, China Link
Bloomberg, Sep 14

How TikTok Serves Up Sex and Drug Videos to Minors
WSJ (paywall), Sep 8
Alternate sites here, summary; and here, archive.

…then maybe we should be concerned about our kids exposure to it, too. As well as exposure to our own ‘social’ media.

Facebook under more scrutiny after own research shows Instagram is harmful to teens
CNet, Sep 15

Deworming Rolling Stone

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Rolling Stone describes ivermectin as a “horse dewormer” despite 35 years of primarily human treatment.
Rolling Stone Issues ‘Update’ After Horse Dewormer Hit-Piece Debunked

How did curiosity about potential drugs for CCP virus prophylaxis become so politicized that stupendously obvious lies are a journalistic norm? And defending the lies a rite of passage?

Joe Rogan must be suppressed because of ‘Progressives’ need for control and status? Because he is dangerously popular and might encourage narrative questioning? And because this sort of distortion gets clicks for RS from the elect, elite, anointed cadre wannabes who represent its shrinking audience?

Ivermectin, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, is a wonder drug on the order of penicillin and aspirin:

…ideal in combating two of the world’s most devastating and disfiguring diseases which have plagued the world’s poor throughout the tropics for centuries. It is now being used free-of-charge as the sole tool in campaigns to eliminate both diseases globally. It has also been used to successfully overcome several other human diseases and new uses for it are continually being found…

There are few drugs that can seriously lay claim to the title of ‘Wonder drug’, penicillin and aspirin being two that have perhaps had greatest beneficial impact on the health and wellbeing of Mankind. But ivermectin can also be considered alongside those worthy contenders, based on its versatility, safety and the beneficial impact that it has had, and continues to have, worldwide—especially on hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people.

The world’s horse population may be around 60 million: Ivermectin is primarily a human drug, unless those horses are each being dosed… very frequently.

And ivermectin is less dangerous to humans than omeprazole (Prilosec), another human drug used in horses. As are most all drugs given to horses. Should omeprazole be called “horse gastritis preventer?” After all, the NCBI speculates that omeprazole could have a role in CCP virus treatment.

RS doesn’t even have enough respect for their audience to use a stock “people queued up” photo appropriate to the season. Which is probably fair enough for people convinced no one but them can understand the words “proper dosage.”

These are same nanny-statists who think no-fly lists are appropriate for unvaccinated American citizens; and simultaneously excuse spewing illegal aliens country-wide without testing for CCP virus. Where’s Biden’s “infrastructure project” to at least force the illegals to mask up?

Aside from sheer perversity in forcing others to wear masks and the smug satisfaction they find in pretending only they “follow the science,” they also see an opportunity to impoverish humans in the name of Gaia – as noted in this Nature article. It’s the same shit sandwich, on slightly different bread.

Making every day “Earth Day.” AKA, “Energy Poverty Day.” It’s virtue beaconing.

We haven’t built the nukes that would have solved their CO2 problem because they wouldn’t allow it. Having precipitated the problem, their “solution” is for the rest of us to freeze in the dark or bake in the sun; drying clothes and cooking on their schedule. I think we can be sure this only applies to flyover country.

They won’t be applying the carbon allowance to air conditioning in DC any time soon. No, there will be conditions. Those people have to be kept comfortable enough to plot the Afghanistan withdrawal, and the next phase of money printing.

Meanwhile, here in Michigan, Consumers Energy offers incentives to reduce the 50% summer surtax they’ve imposed on electricity between 2PM and 7PM because their windmills and solar panels are inadequate, and because they’ve decommissioned some nuclear plants. Control my thermostat? Two words.