My opinion is anything is better than trump. I’ve known about him and his criminal ways since the 80’s. Ripping off regular folk of their wages and screwing them over when they attempt to recoup what is owed them speaks volumes about the man to me. Suppression of free speech is most concerning especially after Ketanji Brown Jackson supported it under certain circumstances, which is arbitrary. I also detest that many doctors and scientists were censored and ridiculed for opposing views on the “acceptable” narrative. Had I been given the chance to hear what they had to say without the press smearing their reputations, I may have chosen to pass on the shot and saved myself from all this grief over the injuries I sustained. I also suspect that pHARMa played a huge roll in the suppression of speech. Doctors with esteemed careers who spoke out were/are targeted around the world. That would take a lot of power to pull off worldwide. Also, the people who chose to refuse the shot had a bull’s eye painted on their backs. Weaponized terms like anti vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, anti science. How did this take down repeat around the world? Then you have pharma acolytes like Hotez with the ear of the White House. Trump uses anybody and anything if it’s to his advantage. He won’t be extolling the virtues of free speech if it gets him what he wants.
We've got the actual track record of the Biden administration with its increasing authoritarianism and censorship, to compare with the suppression of legitimate scientific discourse which started under the Trump administration. I'm not one to defend Trump, but that could've largely been the doing of the people advising Trump about Covid—we know he's pretty scientifically illiterate, and at those early Covid press conferences it was apparent that the "experts" like Fauci were contemptible of Trump.
I look at it this way: if Trump's in charge he's got a lot of the rest of the government arrayed against him so he can't act like a dictator, which is the point of checks and balances. This is not so much the case for the Democrats, who aside from a little judicial pushback are pretty much having their own way. They've been running roughshod over not only the First Amendment but also democratic processes (the primary, the lawfare). If Trump is elected there's at least a chance that RFK Junior will play some part in the administration, which I view as a good thing.
I’m reading a book right now called “The Occasional Human Sacrifice” medical experimentation and the price of saying no, by Carl Elliot. I realize what is going on today was going on yesterday. It’s a real eye opener. The cover ups, the protection of institutions doing nefarious research etc. To tell you the truth, I feel very disillusioned right now. I hate politics and all the lies and deceptions. I would like to see RFK try and expose the criminality that’s rampant in politics on both sides. As far as trump, I’m not sure if he could be reigned in this time, that scares me. I hate the censorship, I’m understandably angry about it. Also, I’m Canadian. Trump treated Canada like an enemy rather than the close relationship that has always been enjoyed on both sides of the border. We have a shared economy, we are each other’s largest trading partners. Throwing tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum was a stupid move. It costs Americans as they ultimately pay the tariffs. He forbade IBM to send masks to Canada (back when masks were believed to stop transmission) but that was a problem because the raw materials used in mask making came from Canada. There were other insults which he should have thought through. I obviously can’t vote.
I was going to vote for RFK and now the best I can do is to vote for Trump, who I mostly loathe but still view him as less evil than the Democratic offerings. We may also have a better chance of avoiding more wars—Dick Cheney's endorsement of Kamala should make people think pretty hard.
My second choice would be Giant Meteor (SMOD), whose campaign seems to be more or less languishing, although I still have a bumper sticker from 2020.
As far as I can tell, the comment was with respect to global freedoms. Regardless, I would love to see a post on what you think about equal justice under the law and the recent Supreme Court decision on. Presidential immunity.
I saw that claim a few days ago, that Kamala said free speech is a "privilege". I found a little longer archived clip of the same interview which includes more of the lead-in—they're discussing kicking Trump off Twitter—and it sounds to me like she's saying Donald Trump being able to *use Twitter* or Facebook is the privilege, not the content of his tweets. I am not a lawyer and this difference might be subtle, but it seems to me that this may be indeed lacking context (much as it pains me to agree with a fact-checker). And of course we have the much more recent example of Tim Walz claiming hate speech is not protected. Has he never heard of Skokie?
Leaving that point aside, it seems much more dangerous to me that she's arguing independent corporations like Twitter and Facebook should be using the *same rules* in enforcing their respective "Community Guidelines". That would perforce require a government oversight of those platforms. And that's what we are getting with the burgeoning fact-checking industry and associated subscription "services" like NewsGuard that purport to "rate" various news sources for acceptability.
As we've learned from the Twitter Files, documents released through Missouri v. Biden, and Zuckerberg's latest apology, it's a bit of a distinction w/o much of a difference. Biden administration people were running to social media to shut down the things they didn't like--censorship by proxy.
I just added an update, noting that a follower claims this also happened to them, as well.
As I've said many times and will say again "who's fact checking the fact checkers"?
Imagine My Shock!
My opinion is anything is better than trump. I’ve known about him and his criminal ways since the 80’s. Ripping off regular folk of their wages and screwing them over when they attempt to recoup what is owed them speaks volumes about the man to me. Suppression of free speech is most concerning especially after Ketanji Brown Jackson supported it under certain circumstances, which is arbitrary. I also detest that many doctors and scientists were censored and ridiculed for opposing views on the “acceptable” narrative. Had I been given the chance to hear what they had to say without the press smearing their reputations, I may have chosen to pass on the shot and saved myself from all this grief over the injuries I sustained. I also suspect that pHARMa played a huge roll in the suppression of speech. Doctors with esteemed careers who spoke out were/are targeted around the world. That would take a lot of power to pull off worldwide. Also, the people who chose to refuse the shot had a bull’s eye painted on their backs. Weaponized terms like anti vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, anti science. How did this take down repeat around the world? Then you have pharma acolytes like Hotez with the ear of the White House. Trump uses anybody and anything if it’s to his advantage. He won’t be extolling the virtues of free speech if it gets him what he wants.
We've got the actual track record of the Biden administration with its increasing authoritarianism and censorship, to compare with the suppression of legitimate scientific discourse which started under the Trump administration. I'm not one to defend Trump, but that could've largely been the doing of the people advising Trump about Covid—we know he's pretty scientifically illiterate, and at those early Covid press conferences it was apparent that the "experts" like Fauci were contemptible of Trump.
I look at it this way: if Trump's in charge he's got a lot of the rest of the government arrayed against him so he can't act like a dictator, which is the point of checks and balances. This is not so much the case for the Democrats, who aside from a little judicial pushback are pretty much having their own way. They've been running roughshod over not only the First Amendment but also democratic processes (the primary, the lawfare). If Trump is elected there's at least a chance that RFK Junior will play some part in the administration, which I view as a good thing.
I’m reading a book right now called “The Occasional Human Sacrifice” medical experimentation and the price of saying no, by Carl Elliot. I realize what is going on today was going on yesterday. It’s a real eye opener. The cover ups, the protection of institutions doing nefarious research etc. To tell you the truth, I feel very disillusioned right now. I hate politics and all the lies and deceptions. I would like to see RFK try and expose the criminality that’s rampant in politics on both sides. As far as trump, I’m not sure if he could be reigned in this time, that scares me. I hate the censorship, I’m understandably angry about it. Also, I’m Canadian. Trump treated Canada like an enemy rather than the close relationship that has always been enjoyed on both sides of the border. We have a shared economy, we are each other’s largest trading partners. Throwing tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum was a stupid move. It costs Americans as they ultimately pay the tariffs. He forbade IBM to send masks to Canada (back when masks were believed to stop transmission) but that was a problem because the raw materials used in mask making came from Canada. There were other insults which he should have thought through. I obviously can’t vote.
Being Canadian, all that is very understandable.
I was going to vote for RFK and now the best I can do is to vote for Trump, who I mostly loathe but still view him as less evil than the Democratic offerings. We may also have a better chance of avoiding more wars—Dick Cheney's endorsement of Kamala should make people think pretty hard.
My second choice would be Giant Meteor (SMOD), whose campaign seems to be more or less languishing, although I still have a bumper sticker from 2020.
As far as I can tell, the comment was with respect to global freedoms. Regardless, I would love to see a post on what you think about equal justice under the law and the recent Supreme Court decision on. Presidential immunity.
I saw that claim a few days ago, that Kamala said free speech is a "privilege". I found a little longer archived clip of the same interview which includes more of the lead-in—they're discussing kicking Trump off Twitter—and it sounds to me like she's saying Donald Trump being able to *use Twitter* or Facebook is the privilege, not the content of his tweets. I am not a lawyer and this difference might be subtle, but it seems to me that this may be indeed lacking context (much as it pains me to agree with a fact-checker). And of course we have the much more recent example of Tim Walz claiming hate speech is not protected. Has he never heard of Skokie?
https://archive.org/details/CNNW_20191016_030000_CNN_Debate_Post_Analysis_Ohio/start/3420/end/3480
Leaving that point aside, it seems much more dangerous to me that she's arguing independent corporations like Twitter and Facebook should be using the *same rules* in enforcing their respective "Community Guidelines". That would perforce require a government oversight of those platforms. And that's what we are getting with the burgeoning fact-checking industry and associated subscription "services" like NewsGuard that purport to "rate" various news sources for acceptability.
As for the Italian angle—mystifying.
As we've learned from the Twitter Files, documents released through Missouri v. Biden, and Zuckerberg's latest apology, it's a bit of a distinction w/o much of a difference. Biden administration people were running to social media to shut down the things they didn't like--censorship by proxy.
Exactly, which is absolutely a First Amendment violation.
I do follow Matt Taibbi very closely. And you :)