Tag: hypocrisy

It’s Not Just Elon: The Left Whines ‘Threat To Democracy’ Whenever There’s A Threat To Their Regime

The same people who relentlessly insisted that Big Tech’s censorship campaign was totally fine are now screaming that a potential buyout of Twitter by Elon Musk poses a certified Threat to Democracy. But we’ve heard this absurd routine before, and it’s not really democracy they’re worried about. The Big Tech, big media, and big government cabal just whine about democracy being under siege when their own power conglomerate is threatened.

“I am frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon Musk acquires Twitter. He seems to believe that on social media anything goes,” fretted The Washington Post’s Max Boot last week, after the Tesla and SpaceX CEO offered to buy the entirety of Twitter stock. “For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.”

Former New York Magazine writer Jesse Singal had the very intelligent take that even the possibility of Musk buying out Twitter was “America’s very first 9/11,” while Salon’s Matthew Rozsa blared that “Elon Musk’s attempted takeover of Twitter is a threat to the free world.”

The idea of losing some power to silence opposing viewpoints on social media is terrifying to these people — so terrifying that in their panic they don’t even realize they’ve admitted their own gluttony for control.

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Democrats who claim white supremacy is top problem ignore black racist killers

Top Democrats claim that nothing in America is more dangerous than white racism.

As President Joe Biden said Oct. 21, “According to the United States intelligence community, domestic terrorism from white supremacists is the most lethal terrorist threat in the homeland.”

“In the FBI’s view,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said June 15, “the top domestic violent-extremist threat comes from . . . those who advocate for the superiority of the white race.”

House Armed Services Committee member Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) complained that the federal government insufficiently screens “servicemembers and other individuals with sensitive roles for white-supremacist and violent-extremist ties.”

So where is all the damage from this white-nationalist army? Where are the wounds of those they have maimed and the cadavers of those they have killed?

“Charlottesville!” Biden and the Democratic left shout in unison.

Yes, James Alex Fields Jr. weaponized his car and murdered protester Heather Heyer during Charlottesville, Va.’s race riots in August 2017 — nearly five years ago.

Anybody else?

The sound you hear is grass growing.

As Team Biden searches furiously for those touched by this supposedly ubiquitous white threat, black racists scream hatred and inflict dozens of casualties, some fatal.

The NYPD says that Wednesday, a black man named Frank James unleashed a smoke bomb on a Brooklyn subway train. He then fired 33 rounds from a Glock pistol. James allegedly shot 10 commuters, and 13 suffered other injuries. Five were hospitalized in critical condition. Amazingly, no one was killed.

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Twitter’s Chickens Come Home to Roost

Elon Musk has reportedly attempted to purchase Twitter, and I have no idea whether his influence on the company would be positive or not.

I do know, however, what other media figures think Musk’s influence on Twitter will be. They think it will be bad — very bad, bad! How none of them see what a self-own this is is beyond me. After spending the last six years practically turgid with joy as other unaccountable billionaires tweaked the speech landscape in their favor, they’re suddenly howling over the mere rumor that a less censorious fat cat might get to sit in one of the big chairs. O the inhumanity!

A few of the more prominent Musk critics are claiming merely to be upset at the prospect of wealthy individuals controlling speech. As more than one person has pointed out, this is a bizarre thing to be worrying about all of the sudden, since it’s been the absolute reality in America for a while.

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Cori Bush surpasses $300K spent on private security as she continues calls to defund the police

Rep. Cori Bush poured tens of thousands of dollars more into private security during the first quarter of 2022, pushing her security bills to more than $300,000 as she continues calls to defund the police. 

The Missouri Democrat’s campaign reported spending $70,489 on security services between Jan. 1 and March 31, Federal Election Commission filings show. The payments include $50,489 to Peace Security, $15,000 to Cortney Merrits and $5,000 to Nathaniel Davis.

Bush’s newest security checks follow the $233,663 her committee spent on the services in 2021, FEC records show. She has now paid out $304,152 for security this election cycle. 

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‘Censorship is free speech’ is the establishment’s Orwellian line on Elon Musk’s Twitter crusade

“Democracy Dies in Darkness” is the motto of the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post. It may sound like a warning, but more and more it seems like a summary of the left’s aspirations to control debate and shut down any opposition.

A recent example of those aspirations appeared in a column by former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich on Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s big buy of Twitter stock. The original headline — changed after widespread mockery — was this: “Elon Musk’s vision for the Internet is dangerous nonsense: Musk has long advocated a libertarian vision of an ‘uncontrolled’ internet. That’s also the dream of every dictator, strongman and demagogue.”

The mockery was understandable. “Libertarian visions” of “uncontrolled” speech haven’t actually been the stock-in-trade of dictators, strongmen and demagogues. Typically, those authoritarian figures want to silence their opponents and ensure that their own voices, and those of their satraps and sycophants, are the only ones heard.

Reich’s defenders, to the extent he has any, might claim the headline is a poor summary of his real argument, which is this: “In Musk’s vision of Twitter and the internet, he’d be the wizard behind the curtain — projecting on the world’s screen a fake image of a brave new world empowering everyone. In reality, that world would be dominated by the richest and most powerful people in the world, who wouldn’t be accountable to anyone for facts, truth, science or the common good.”

The thing is, what Reich describes is what we have now: a world in which unaccountable oligarchs like Amazon’s Bezos and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg — people who are in fact “the richest and most powerful people in the world” — use opaque algorithms to mute criticism and disagreement.

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Moscow Blasts US Genocide Label From Country That’s Committed “Well-Known” War Crimes

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was quick to back Joe Biden’s Tuesday remarks which labeled what Putin is doing inside Ukraine as “genocide”. Biden had followed his use of the label for the first time, which marks a serious escalation in the United States’ rhetoric by explaining, “It’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is trying to wipe out the idea of being Ukrainian.”

Zelensky then said on Twitter: “Calling things by their names is essential to stand up to evil,” and made clear he agrees with the definition: “We are grateful for U.S. assistance provided so far and we urgently need more heavy weapons to prevent further Russian atrocities.” 

The Kremlin has responded, on Wednesday calling the genocide label “unacceptable” and a distortion of the conflict, which the Kremlin has previously described as a battle against NATO expansion imminently threatening Russia’s legitimate security interests.

“We consider this kind of effort to distort the situation unacceptable,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov responded, according to Reuters. He emphasized the hypocrisy of a US military machine which has committed “well-known crimes” in the recent past.

“This is hardly acceptable from a president of the United States, a country that has committed well-known crimes in recent times,” Peskov described.

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BLM Co-Founder Says She Gets ‘Triggered’ by Charity Transparency Laws

Patrisse Cullors, the Black Lives Matter co-founder who cashed out and got millions of dollars in media contracts, says that the recent scrutiny of BLM’s “charitable” finances upsets her.

Black Lives Matter is embroiled in several scandals involving the $90 million they raised in 2020 to end police brutality and racism. The most recent eyebrow-raiser was the revelation that the group purchased a $6 million mansion in California that has rarely been used for the purposes they say.

There’s also the matter of the $60 million in funds that no one at BLM Global appears to be in charge of.

Cullors says she gets “triggered” when anyone mentions the IRS form 990 — the form charities must complete that reveals donors and sources of money.

Washington Examiner:

“I actually did not know what 990s were before all of this happened,” Cullors said, an apparent reference to the Washington Examiner’s reporting in January about BLM’s lack of financial and leadership transparency that led multiple states, including California, to order the charity to cease raising funds until it discloses what it did with the $90 million it raised in 2020.

Cullors said activists suffer trauma and that their lives are put at risk when charities under their control are required to disclose publicly what they did with their tax-deductible donations.

“This doesn’t seem safe for us, this 990 structure — this nonprofit system structure,” Cullors said. “This is, like, deeply unsafe. This is being literally weaponized against us, against the people we work with.”

The system that was designed to prevent fraudsters like Cullors from fleecing people is “deeply unsafe”? Isn’t that sort of like a bank robber complaining that it’s too difficult to open the safe and questioning why the cash can’t just be laid out in the open so it can be easily grabbed?

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Barack Obama Suggests Social Media Anonymity Should Be Stripped From People Who Are “Rude” or “Lie”

Barack Obama has suggested that people who are “rude,” “obnoxious,” or “lie” on social media should have be stripped of their online anonymity.

Yes, really.

The former president made the comments during a keynote conversation with The Atlantic’s Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg at the ‘Disinformation and Erosion of Democracy’ conference.

After Obama initially claimed he was “close to a First Amendment absolutist,” his response to Goldberg asking him how he would regulate social media companies “to make sure that they’re not privileging anger, privileging division and polarization through their algorithms,” suggests otherwise.

Obama argued that online anonymity protections should be removed when it comes to speech of which he doesn’t personally approve.

“In some circumstances, it’s important to preserve anonymity…so that there’s space in repressive societies to discuss issues but as we’ve all learned, it’s a lot harder to be rude, obnoxious, cruel, or lie when somebody knows you’re lying and knows who you are and I think that there may be modifications there that can be made,” said Obama.

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