Tag: 2020 elections

USA Today Refused To Publish Hunter Biden Scandal Op-Ed, So Here It Is

SO USA TODAY DIDN’T WANT TO RUN MY HUNTER BIDEN COLUMN THIS WEEK. My regular editor is on vacation, and I guess everyone else was afraid to touch it. So I’m sending them another column next week, and just publishing this one here. Enjoy! This is as filed, with no editing from USAT.

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In my 2019 book, The Social Media Upheaval, I warned that the Big Tech companies — especially social media giants like Facebook and Twitter — had grown into powerful monopolists, who were using their power over the national conversation to not only sell ads, but also to promote a political agenda.

That was pretty obvious last year, but it was even more obvious last week, when Facebook and Twitter tried to black out the New York Post’s blockbuster report about emails found on a laptop abandoned by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

The emails, some of which have been confirmed as genuine with their recipients, show substantial evidence that Hunter Biden used his position as Vice President Joe Biden’s son to extract substantial payments from “clients” in other countries. There are also photos of Hunter with a crack pipe, and engaging in various other unsavory activities. And they demolished the elder Biden’s claim that he never discussed business with his son.

That’s a big election-year news story. Some people doubted its genuineness, and of course it’s always fair to question a big election-year news story, especially one that comes out shortly before the election. (Remember CBS newsman Dan Rather’s promotion of what turned out to be forged memos about George W. Bush’s Air National Guard service?)

But the way you debate whether a story is accurate or not is by debating. (In the case of the Rather memos, it turned out the font was from Microsoft Word, which of course didn’t exist back during the Vietnam War era.) Big Tech could have tried an approach that fostered such a debate. But instead of debate, they went for a blackout: Both services actually blocked links to the New York Post story. That’s right: They blocked readers from discussing a major news story by a major paper, one so old that it was founded by none other than Alexander Hamilton.

I wasn’t advising them — they tend not to ask me for my opinion — but I would have advised against such a blackout. There’s a longstanding Internet term called “the Streisand effect,” going back to when Barbara Streisand demanded that people stop sharing pictures of her beach house. Unsurprisingly, the result was a massive increase in the number of people posting pictures of her beach house. The Big Tech Blackout produced the same result: Now even people who didn’t care so much about Hunter Biden’s racket nonetheless became angry, and started talking about the story.

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Biden Won’t Give An Answer On Court Packing Until At Least 180 Days After Becoming President

Former Vice President Joe Biden announced Thursday that he won’t give an answer on court packing until at least 180 days after he becomes president and he receives a recommendation from a “bipartisan” commission on changing the Supreme Court.

Biden made the announcement during an interview with “60 Minutes,” saying the commission of bipartisan constitutional scholars would investigate various means of changing the court system, which Biden says has become a political football.

“If elected, what I will do is I’ll put together a national commission – a bipartisan commission … and I will ask them to, over 180 days, come back to me with recommendations as to how to reform the court system … it’s not about court packing,” he said. “There’s a number of alternatives that go well beyond court packing.”

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‘SICK TO MY STOMACH’

Joe Biden lied about my dad being drunk in crash that killed his wife and daughter… he’s got a nerve calling out Trump

Biden has made several public references to Curtis “allegedly” being drunk when his truck-trailer and another car collided, tragically killing the politician’s first wife Neilia, 30 and their one-year-old daughter, Naomi, in December 1972. The incident left Biden heartbroken.

The couple’s other children, Beau and Hunter Biden, aged four and three at the time, were also seriously injured but survived the crash.

“A tractor-trailer, a guy who allegedly – and I never pursued it – drank his lunch instead of eating his lunch, broadsided my family and killed my wife instantly and killed my daughter instantly and hospitalized my two sons,” Biden told a crowd in 2007.

In 2001, the week following the September 11 attacks, Biden delivered a speech at the University of Delaware to a crowd of more than 2,700.

He told them not to be afraid and that he felt for the people who had received a call saying their loved ones were dead, just like that, there in the morning, now gone forever, Politico reports.

Once, he said, he had gotten that call.

“It was an errant driver who stopped to drink instead of drive and hit – a tractor-trailer – hit my children and my wife and killed them,” he said.

Delaware Superior Court Judge Jerome O. Herlihy, who oversaw the police investigation as chief prosecutor, said there was no evidence supporting Biden’s claim and Dunn was cleared of any wrongdoing.

“The rumor about alcohol being involved by either party, especially the truck driver (Dunn), is incorrect,” Herlihy said in 2008.

One of Dunn’s seven children, Pamela Dunn Hamill, previously told CBS that Biden called her the following year and “apologized for hurting my family in any way.”

“So we accepted that – and kind of end of story from there,” she said in 2009.

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MIT Tech Review: Tech Censorship Nearly Doubled Attention for NY Post Biden Bombshell

The attempt by the social media Masters of the Universe to stop the spread of the New York Post bombshell article about Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s alleged dealings with Burisma, has nearly doubled the level of attention the story gained.

What is known as the “Streisand Effect” — a social phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to censor information has the unintended consequence of further publicizing it instead — went into overdrive after social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter attempted to suppress a NY Post article about Hunter Biden, according to data published in the MIT Technology Review.

Social media companies reduced the distribution of a New York Post story containing bombshell information indicating that — contrary to his previous denials— Joe Biden allegedly did meet with an adviser to the board of Burisma while he was vice president, arranged by his son Hunter, who was then working as a lobbyist for the company.

Data provided by the media intelligence firm Zignal Labs shows that shares of the bombshell NY Post article have actually “nearly doubled” following Twitter’s attempt at suppressing the story.

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Struggling Bar Owner In Biden Ad Revealed To Be Wealthy Angel Investor

A Michigan bar owner featured in a Joe Biden campaign ad saying his business may fail because of President Donald Trump’s COVID-19 response is a wealthy tech investor who made it big after receiving a large family inheritance.

Joe Malcoun, the co-owner of The Blind Pig, said in the ad his bar was nothing more than an empty room because of Trump’s inaction against the virus. “This is the reality of Trump’s COVID response,” Malcoun said.

“We don’t know how much longer we can survive not having any revenue. A lot of restaurants and bars that have been mainstays for many years will not make it through this,” the bar owner said. “My only hope for my family, this business and my community is that Joe Biden win this election.”

However, the Washington Free Beacon reported Monday that the odds that Malcoun falls under financial hardship are slim.

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