Tag: 2020 elections

Joe Biden: 8-Year-Olds Should Be Allowed to Decide They’re Transgender

Former Vice President Joe Biden said during a town hall hosted by ABC News on Thursday night that eight-year-olds should be allowed to decide that they are transgender.

Mieke Hacke, a voter from Pennsylvania, asked Biden the following “question”:

Haeck: I’m the proud mom of two girls, eight and ten. My youngest daughter is transgender. The Trump administration has attacked the rights of transgender people, banning them from military service, weakening nondiscrimination protections, and even removing the word “transgender” from some government websites. How will you, as president, reverse this dangerous and discriminatory agenda and ensure that the lives and rights of LGBTQ people are protected under U.S. law?

Biden: I will flat-out just change the law. Eliminate those executive orders, number one. You may recall, I’m the guy who said — I was raised by a man who, I remember, I was being dropped off, my dad was a high school-educated, well-read man who was a really decent guy, and I was being dropped off to get an application in the center of our city, Wilmington, Delaware, the corporate capital of the world at the time, and these two men are getting out to get an application to be a lifeguard in the African-American community, because there was a big swimming pool complex. And these two men, well-dressed, leaned up and hugged one another and kissed one another. I’m getting out of the car at the light, and I turned to my dad, and my dad looked at me, he said, “Joey, it’s simple. They love each other.” The idea that an 8-year-old child, a 10-year-old child, decides, you know, “I want to be transgender, that’s what I think I’d like to be, it’d make my life a lot easier” — there should be zero discrimination. And what’s happening is, too many transgender women of color are being murdered. They’re being murdered. I mean, I think it’s up to now 17, don’t hold me to that number. But — it’s higher now?

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No, Joe Biden, Cops Can’t Just Shoot People in the Leg

During ABC’s town hall event with former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate provided a garbled response to a question about criminal justice reform. In particular, he wrongly suggested that when police fire their weapons at suspects, they could shoot to wound instead of shooting to kill.

“You can ban chokeholds, but beyond that you have to teach [the police] how to de-escalate circumstances,” said Biden. “So instead of anybody coming at you and the first thing you do is shoot to kill, you shoot them in the leg.”

This was just one line in a very long, rambling answer to a question about police violence—but it stuck out for its sheer absurdity. The suggestion betrays a total lack of understanding about how guns work.

Note that it was not some slip of the tongue: Biden has previously proposed this exact idea. Contrary to the former veep’s repeated assertions, neither the cops nor anyone else—except perhaps James Bond—could plan to shoot people in the leg as a matter of routine practice. It would take an expert marksman to accomplish that feat consistently. Unless a target is at close range, standing perfectly still, it’s very difficult to hit a specific location on the body. In reality, people are often moving during shootouts, which means that legs and arms can be the hardest part of the body to hit.

“An average suspect can move his hand and forearm across his body to a 90-degree angle in 12/100 of a second,” wrote Bill Lewinksi in a paper for the Force Science Institute. “He can move his hand from his hip to shoulder height in 18/100 of a second. The average officer pulling the trigger as fast as he can on a Glock, one of the fastest- cycling semi-autos, requires 1/4 second to discharge each round.”

If an officer’s life is actually threatened, hitting the suspect in the leg is no guarantee the threat will be neutralized. People who have been hit in the leg or arm are not immediately incapacitated, which is why the police keep firing until a suspect is down. Real life is not like an episode of 24, or a Mission: Impossible movie!

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Facebook and Twitter Cross a Line Far More Dangerous Than What They Censor

Even more astonishing still, Twitter locked the account of the New York Post, banning the paper from posting any content all day and, evidently, into Thursday morning. The last tweet from the paper was posted at roughly 2:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday. 

And then, on Thursday morning, the Post published a follow up article using the same archive of materials, this one purporting to detail efforts by the Vice President’s son to pursue lucrative deals with a Chinese energy company by using his father’s name. Twitter is now also banning the sharing or posting of links to that article as well.

In sum, the two Silicon Valley giants, with little explanation, united to prevent the sharing and dissemination of this article. As Los Angeles Times reporter Matt Pearce put it, “Facebook limiting distribution is a bit like if a company that owned newspaper delivery trucks decided not to drive because it didn’t like a story. Does a truck company edit the newspaper? It does now, apparently.”

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Twitter, Biden and the New York Post – Social Media Censorship Kicks up a Gear

Yesterday, the New York Post published several articles claiming to show evidence of corruption on the part of Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

The charges are varied but not really surprising. One article claims Hunter introduced his father to a Ukrainian energy magnate who asked the family to use their influence to shut down an investigation into his company.

Another story suggests Hunter Biden used his family name to secure a high-paid job and stock interests in a Chinese company.

The NYP evidence these claims with emails and documents allegedly retrieved from a laptop left at a computer repair store in Delaware. The owner of the store alerted the FBI to the computer’s existence when no one came forward to pay for the repairs and he could not contact the owner.

According to the NYP, both the hard drive and laptop were then seized by the FBI. They have a copy of the grand jury subpoena, which is certainly solid evidence, if genuine.

The owner of the store claims he, prior to it being seized, made a copy of the hard drive and sent it to Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s lawyer.

While this is potentially intriguing, if true, it’s not really “news”. Biden’s corruption in Ukraine has been evident since his son was appointed to the board of the largest energy company in Ukraine within weeks of the US-backed coup in 2014 (a decision so obviously dodgy even the Guardian made a joke out of it). Joe Biden himself has even admitted to applying financial pressure to get a Ukrainian State Prosecutor removed from office.

None of this is really “big news”. Corruption is rampant in the halls of power, that is as certain as death and taxes, and will continue to be so, whether or not these specific allegations are accurate.

The big news, the part of this story that should concern everyone, is that Twitter has completely blocked this material on their platform.

And we’re not talking a “soft block”, we at OffG are more than familiar with twitter’s use of “warnings”, no they literally made it impossible to share the links, even in DMs. If you try, you get his warning:

We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful. Visit our Help Center to learn more.”

We’ve talked about twitter’s “partners” before, and they are suspect. As for being “potentially harmful”, well isn’t that subjective? Fire is vital at times, but certainly “potentially harmful” at others. Water, in sufficient quantity, is “potentially harmful”.

If you’re a liar, the truth is “potentially harmful”.

Facebook has followed suit, if in less sweeping fashion. The social media giant’s spokesperson Andy Stone announced that they would be:

“…reducing its distribution on our platform. This is part of our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation.

This decision is pending approval by their “independent fact-checkers”, which we have also covered in detail before.

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So what are the social media companies’ excuses reasons for blocking this content?

Well, it depends who you ask.

Twitter claims that since the emails are potentially “hacked”, posting them violates their policy regarding illegally gathered material. (Interestingly this policy was never applied to Trump’s leaked tax returns.)

Facebook, on the other hand, claim to have blocked these stories because they might be “misinformation”. A truly ludicrous precedent to set. You can’t block something that might not be true, because that applies to literally almost everything.

You do have to admire the strategy though. The pincer movement is brilliant.

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Senate Judiciary To Subpoena Jack Dorsey After Twitter Suspends Trump Campaign, House GOP Accounts Over Biden Scandal

After yesterday’s cross-platform social media embargo on a New York Post exposé detailing explosive evidence against Joe and Hunter Biden, Twitter is at it again on Thursday – suspending the Trump campaign’s official account for sharing a video accusing the former Vice President of being a “liar who has been ripping off the country for years.”

According to emails obtained on a laptop reportedly abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop (which also contained photos of Hunter smoking crack and an alleged sex tape), Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at Burisma – a Ukrainian energy giant paying Hunter upwards of $50,000 per month to sit on its board.

“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” reads the email.

In another email from May 2014, Burisma board adviser Vadym Pozharskiy asked Hunter for “advice on how you could use your influence” on the company’s behalf.

In response to the allegations, Twitter and Facebook aggressively censored anyone sharing the Post story on Wednesday – suspended the Post itself while claiming that it was distributing ‘hacked material.’

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New York Post Publishes Photo Of Hunter Biden Sleeping With Crack Pipe In His Mouth

A laptop originally sent for repair by Hunter Biden but then never picked up was the source of a trove of photographs and emails published today by the New York Post, among them are emails that show Hunter and Joe Biden did discuss the younger man’s business interests, proving Joe lied about knowing nothing about Hunter’s business when speaking to reporters, and one photograph that appears to show Hunter asleep with a crack pipe in his mouth.

As Media Right News reported, “The New York Post released a report this morning that revealed emails that were reportedly recovered from Joe’s son, Hunter Biden’s Macbook,” that was repaired in a Delaware computer store then never retrieved. “One of the emails,” sent to Hunter, Media Right explains, is from Vadym Pozharskyi, who Hunter was was doing business with. Pozharskyi was specifically “thanking him for setting up a meeting between him and Joe, who was Vice President at the time.”

In addition to these scandalous emails, New York Post also published a series of photographs retrieved from the laptop. Among them is a photo that appears to show Hunter, unconscious, with a used crack pipe in his mouth.

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