Rough On The Joints That Be!

Donald Trump and the blue-tick pricks

Elon Musk’s overturning of woke censorship is a wonderful thing.

BRENDAN O’NEILL
CHIEF POLITICAL WRITER

21st November 2022

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Topics FREE SPEECHPOLITICSUSA

So Elon Musk has done it. He’s brought back Trump. After conducting a Twitter poll on whether Trump should be unbanned – by far the most transparent thing the Twitter company has ever done – Musk and his minions pressed a few buttons and The Donald was back online.

Whether or not he’ll actually tweet again is another matter (he says he won’t). Regardless, Musk’s reinstatement of Trump’s account is a great blow against the tyrannical meddling of the worthy, woke, censorious fainthearts of Silicon Valley who have bizarrely come to exercise such extraordinary power over what may be thought and said in the 21st century.

The usual suspects are agog, naturally. There’s been a great relapse into Trump Derangement Syndrome. Trump’s return will ‘plunge Twitter deeper into chaos’, says CNN. Jack White has melodramatically fled the Twitter hellscape. ‘Absolutely disgusting, Elon’, wept this rocker who’s strangely scared of other people’s words.

Sadiq Khan, London’s pint-sized Torquemada, issued a statement saying Trump ‘must not be allowed to use social media’. Mate, who do you think you are? Mayor of the world? ‘Freedom of speech is vital’, said Khan, ‘but’ – there’s always a massive, unsightly but – ‘it must be balanced against keeping other people safe to protect our democracy and society’. Do we really need to remind folk, in 2022, of Benjamin Franklin’s words, about how those who would ditch liberty for safety deserve neither? Khan would have banned Franklin, too. A free-speech extremist? Deplatform.

Against all these unhinged demands to keep Trump banned – forever, one presumes – we should remind people of just how undemocratic and outright imperious Silicon Valley’s banning of Trump was in the first place. It was the most sinister act of social-media censorship to date. And that’s saying something.

It followed last year’s ‘January 6’ riot on Capitol Hill. Twitter’s haughty overlords, never voted for by any American, decreed that Trump’s tweets about not attending Joe Biden’s inauguration and about how his supporters should not be disrespected were sly, secret incitements to violence. On that comedically thin basis they expelled from the modern public square the then sitting president who had been voted for by Americans. Sixty-three million of them.

It was intolerable corporate interference in democracy. The most shocking thing in January 2021 was not Trump’s daft tweets but leftists’ and liberals’ ecstatic cheering as unaccountable billionaires banned a man who had been voted into office by the people. Empowering the capitalist oligarchy to dictate what we’re allowed to say online just to get one over on Bad Orange Man? It’s one of the dumbest things the ostensible left has done in decades.

Yes, Trump’s ceaseless bleating about how the election was stolen was undemocratic. But the censorship of him for saying these things, by a new priestly elite that is beyond the reach of the mere mortals of the electorate, was a far graver erosion of democratic principles. It was an assault on that most fundamental right in a democracy: the right of people to see and hear and judge the ideas of their political leaders.

For reversing this revolt of the virtual elites against the liberties of the masses, Musk should be congratulated. And he hasn’t only brought back Trump. He’s brought back a Trump hater, too: Kathy Griffin, the comedian who was banned for doing an ISIS-style photo shoot in which she held up the bloodied head of evil Trump. If Twitter is now a place where Trump is free to speak and others are free to fantasise about Trump no longer being alive, that’s good, no? Balanced and liberal.

Musk has also reinstated Jordan Peterson, whose speechcrime was to say ‘her breasts’ in reference to the time that actress Elliot Page had, erm, her breasts removed. The Babylon Bee is back, forgiven for its blasphemy of giving its ‘Man of the Year’ award to the trans Biden official, Rachel Levine. Even Kanye is back. ‘Don’t kill what ye hate / Save what ye love’, Musk advised him.

And Meghan Murphy’s back. The Canadian feminist and spiked contributor was banned for saying ‘him’ in relation to Jessica Yaniv, the trans activist who tried to get immigrant beauticians to wax his bollocks and who lodged discrimination complaints against them when they refused to do so. The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal threw out Yaniv’s complaints and ruled that he had racist motives. He was driven by an urge to ‘punish racialised and immigrant women’, the tribunal said. And yet for calling this nasty man a man, Murphy was permanently suspended, while Yaniv carried on with his dick-swinging tweeting.

Murphy’s case was the perfect example of how morally destitute social-media censorship had become. If you think the outrage is Musk unbanning people like Murphy and not the fact that Murphy was banned for ‘disrespecting’ a prejudiced twat who tried to get poor brown women to touch his testicles, then I cannot help you. If you think the bigot here is the feminist who understands biology and not the man who tried to crush working-class women’s small businesses because they refused to go near his girldick, then your moral compass is sadly beyond repair.

And yet that is exactly what the thoughtpolice of Twitter believed. That is the twisted ideology to which they subscribed. Those are the absurd prejudices they’d imbibed. The 21st-century town square was overseen by zealous moral guardians so corrupted by the credo of wokeness that they believed it was legitimate to punish women for calling men men. How mad is that? The idea that it’s Musk who’s plunging Twitter into chaos is surreal. Twitter was in chaos already – the chaos of a Kafkaesque spiral of evermore egregious acts of censure – and now Musk seems determined to restore some normalcy.

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve seen just how ruthless the blue-tick pricks of Twitter have been. Not only are we reminded that they supported the undemocratic censorship of politicians and the misogynistic censorship of women. We now also know that they were fully aware of how devastating such censorship would be for those on the receiving end.

‘We’re only helping Twitter to enforce its community standards’, said the Twittermob. ‘We’re not censoring anyone, they can always go somewhere else’, they said. They were lying. And we now know they were lying. In the past fortnight the liberal press has been full of articles by blue-tick pricks fretting over how they will cope if Twitter collapses. Twitter was a ‘vital place for connection’, says AOC. Twitter has been a ‘career accelerator’, says one writer. Another says the ‘power of Twitter’ gave her clout because ‘information is a powerful force indeed’. One journalist wrung her hands over Musk’s shortlived proposal to allow people to buy a blue tick on the basis that the old system of ‘verification’ conferred an ‘elite status’ on certain writers, boosting their cultural power. ‘Without Twitter, where else would they turn?’, she asks.

So they knew. The blue-tick people knew that Murphy and other gender-critical feminists would suffer by being banned. They knew the censored would struggle to connect and communicate. They knew that expulsion from Twitter was a grave punishment indeed in the 21st century. They knew they were engaged in the construction of a new moral hierarchy in which those blessed with blue-tick ‘elite status’ would be free to speak while those damned as bigots and expelled from virtual society would struggle to be heard and possibly even to make ends meet. They knew it was a witch-hunt. And you want me to be mad at Elon Musk? Get a grip.

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy

A Note From The Bible….

(Sent by Mark Waldeland)

David Guzik commentary:

Acts 19: 26 — This Paul has persuaded and turned away many people, saying that they are not gods which are made with hands: The opposition of Demetrius and the other idol makers was a great compliment to the effectiveness of Paul’s work in the region. Paul was not on a campaign to close down the temple of Diana; he just did the Lord’s work. As people came to Jesus, they naturally stopped worshipping Diana and buying shrines associated with the temple.

i. Christianity should affect the economy – not just personally, but in a community as well. This effect will not always be welcomed. In Ephesus, business was down at the pagan shrines because of the transforming work of the Jesus Christ. This happens again and again as Jesus does His work. For example, a Roman official named Pliny later wrote a letter to another official named Trajan, describing how people were not going to shrines anymore because of Christian influence. Pliny wanted to know what he should do about it.

ii. This is how we should endeavor to change society. “I wish the gospel would affect the trade of London; I wish it might. There are some trades that need affecting, need to be cut a little shorter…Not by an Act of Parliament! Let Acts of Parliament leave us alone. We can fight that battle alone. But may it come to an end by the spread of the gospel…I have no faith in any reformation that does not come through men’s hearts being changed.” (Charles Spurgeon)

. . . It has often happened in the history of Christianity that when God moves among His people and they become very serious about their Christianity, that it affects the livelihood of those who trade in vice or immorality. For example, in the early years of the Salvation Army, they were so effective that pimps and bar owners organized a “Skeleton Army” to oppose them with threats and violence – and even a few Salvation Army workers were murdered.

“Yet the only mystery will be why Republicans will still be shocked by deja vu”.

The Same Old, Same Old Deja Vu

By Victor Davis Hanson at RealClearPolitics

November 22, 2022

Attorney General Merrick Garland has just announced the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith.

But Smith’s team will not look into the Biden family quid pro quo syndicate nor its incriminating confessionals on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Instead, it will further investigate Donald Trump’s possession of presidential records that were hauled off from Mar-a-Lago, as well as his purported role in the January 6 “insurrection.”

We know the script that will follow because we suffered through it for 22 months and spent $40 million for it under Robert Mueller’s special counsel team.

First, the Smith investigation will bear no resemblance to special counsel John Durham’s probes. The media ignored Durham. His team did not leak to the press. And neither a Washington, D.C. nor northern Virginia jury was ever likely to convict any perceived enemy of Trump.

Second, upon the announcement of Smith’s legal staffers, the media will grow giddy that their resumes portend another “dream team,” “all-stars,” or “a hunter-killer team.”

Puff pieces will blanket the media. They will attest, just like “good Ol’ Bob Mueller,” that the former Obama Justice Department public integrity unit lawyer Smith is “an old hand,” “tough but fair,” “nonpartisan,” and a “prosecutor’s prosecutor.”

Weeks into the investigation, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, or MSNBC will darkly inform their audiences that “unnamed sources close to the investigation tell us that “a bombshell” is about to go off.

Perhaps the “stunning development” will be similar to the fake “walls are closing in” scoop about the conspiratorial pinging in Trump tower from the Alfa Bank in Russia, or the “game-changer” Christopher Steele-fed, pee-pee, Moscow hotel room fable.

Yet one thing that will be different this time around is that the Biden administration is in power. Garland remains an unapologetic, embittered partisan. He is fresh off siccing a now-weaponized FBI on school kids’ parents and various MAGA enemies of the state.

After two prior failed impeachment trials, a failed special counsel’s investigation, and a failed and biased January 6 committee probe, Washington government lawyers know that their last and only Wile E. Coyote chance of catching the Roadrunner and now presidential candidate Trump is to get at least something into the hands of a Washington, D.C. jury.

We also know the script of the 2024 election from the last two elections. Election Day 2004 will be an afterthought. Election Night will be an introduction to Election Month.

Sudden ballot “drops” will start pouring in during the wee hours. Voters who went to bed watching many Republican candidates with sizable leads will awake to magical Democratic “comebacks.”

We will again suffer through early voting, mail-in voting, ranked-choice voting, and majority-only voting. The more who vote, the more we will be warned of “voter suppression” and “election deniers.”

“Get out the vote” left-wing, electronically fueled projects like this year’s “Mind the Gap” involving Sam Bankman-Fried’s family, or Mark Zuckerberg’s 2020 $419 million de facto absorption of balloting collection in key precincts, will merely be replaced by new names.

There will be new, even richer virtue-signaling billionaires. But otherwise, the same old Silicon Valley-Wall Street font will vastly out-raise pathetic Republican efforts.

Unfortunately for Americans, the 2024 economy will likely still be wounded by nearly four years of inflation. High-interest rate correctives will still have choked off the housing market.

Unemployment and stagflation will still be termed “transitory.” Growth will continue to be slow but dubbed “steady.” High gas and energy prices will be near permanent but “coming down.” A wide-open border will still be termed “secure.” Talk of historic crime rates will still be “racist.”

President Joe Biden will still shake imaginary hands, talk of passing legislation through the Congress that he bypassed with executive orders, and still claim gas was $5 a gallon when he entered office. Fact-checkers will ignore all that mythology and still obsess over Republican “lies.”

The left-wing nexus will still warn of back-alley abortions that threaten millions of women, of children still likely to die if “Mega-MAGA” voters win, of yet another January 6 in the wings, and of the dangers of “semi-fascist” Trump.

There will be more pre-election October surprises, such as the spurious narrative that the man who assaulted Paul Pelosi — David DePape — was a captive of right-wingers. Who knew that the hemp-jewelry maker, illegal alien, nudist, and resident of a BLM/Pride-flagged commune was supposedly addled by “un-American” Trumpism?

There will also be more post-election, November surprises — like the mysteriously sudden discovery just days after the voting that Sam Bankman-Fried was a multibillion-dollar con artist and huge Democratic Party donor, and the appointment of special counsel to investigate Trump.

Who would have known that prior to November 8, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago presidential papers proved neither “nuclear secrets” nor designed for his personal sale after all?

Yet the only mystery will be why Republicans will still be shocked by deja vu.

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Case for Trump. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.

Chuck Schumer: America’s Greatest Scum Bag!?

November 21, 2022

Schumer on immigration—lies, damn lies

By Anony Mee at American Thinker:

“Now more than ever, we’re short of workers. Uh, we have a population that is not reproducing on its own with the same level that it used to. The only way that we’re gonna have a great future in America is if we welcome and embrace immigrants — the DREAMers and all of them. ‘Cause our ultimate goal is to help the DREAMers, but get a path to citizenship for all 11 million or however many undocumented there are here.” Chuck Schumer (D-Powerful New Evidence)

New York Chuck is at it again. Stringing short, pithy statements together as though they are related, and not telling the truth. Let’s look at the facts. And while you’re at it, take a look at this excellent history and analysis of these issues by Arthur R. Anderson, Resident Fellow for Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.

Chuck says we’re short of workers. Well, from certain perspectives, maybe. Biden did mandate the potentially deadly mRNA shots for the military at the same time that the Pentagon went totally woke. Then they got rid of those who didn’t play along. Inevitably, the parents of the American citizen population that normally fills out the military’s ranks withheld them, as they should. Now we are woefully understaffed.

But does Schumer truly believe that criminals using false personal identification, with limited English language skills, who are potentially uneducated, and having no loyalty to a country that elevates the rule of law will be effective as part of our community of warfighters? Democrat-sponsored bill H.R. 9052 would allow DREAMers into the military. These are people with no legal status under ordered, but deferred, departure from the United States. Effectively they would be mercenaries.

Image: Chuck Schumer (edited). YouTube screen grab.

How about finding among illegal aliens the nurses, medical technicians, pharmacists, and school counselors that we seem to need? How many of them does he think are paying the cartel thousands of dollars to be abused as they are forced to smuggle drugs in their long walk to enter the United States? I bet none.

Or how about skilled tradespeople and manufacturing workers?  In this country, they have lived and worked with workplace safety rules, construction codes, and material handling requirements that are completely absent in many parts of the developing world. How many OSHA inspections does Chucky think American businesses are willing to fail?

Does Schumer think illegal aliens will provide agricultural workers? Sorry, sir, most of these folks come from urban areas, so they’re not going to go to the fields. In any case, giving them asylum will release potential agricultural employers from the requirements to provide housing, reasonably-priced meals, transportation, and all the time and onerous paperwork to get the workers in the first place. Besides, perhaps the quarter million techies just laid off could move to the (central) valley and learn to pick fruit.

Here’s what we can do: Have the businesses work with and subsidize local school districts and trade schools to train up the workers they need out of our own people. If we need more immigrants, let’s stay within the parameters of existing law and increase number of legal relatives and worker immigrants. That’s easily done under the purview of Congress. There are millions patiently waiting their turn.

Re the population not reproducing, welcome to the world, Senator. Imagine tossing a ball up in the air. The ball slows then stops just as it hits its peak, then begins to fall. 8 billion seems to be our peak as reproduction rates have been declining globally for decades. Effective life extension (better health and death control) has kept the numbers growing, until now (something I wrote about previously).

Our next step is facing the truth. We must prioritize the critical activities our country requires as the population ages and numbers declines. It’s imperative to significantly shrink the size and cost of government. Just because something sounds like a good idea, doesn’t mean the taxpayer has to fund it. People must be more self-sufficient. Marketplace economics will take care of the rest.

We must embrace migrants. Check. Legally, we take in a million immigrants, plus additional refugees and asylees every year. The United States today has 4.25% of the world’s population, and about 20% of all international migrants. I think we’ve done our part.

What about the DREAMers? There are 650,000 DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program participants. Maybe another 2 million might qualify. Obama had Congress, and they did nothing. Biden has Congress for a few more weeks. H.R. 9261 was introduced on November 3. It will remove the illegal presence ineligibility for immigration from those who have been in the United States continuously since they were 10 years old. That’s not a path to citizenship; it just removes a stone from any future path.

My solution is to build a path to a green card, but not citizenship, ever, for these former child smugglees. I would impose these requirements:

(1) DREAMers must acquire a passport in their real name, with their real date and place of birth, from the country of their real citizenship.

(2) They must admit to all the false identities, including social security numbers, they ever used, or that were used on their behalf, for education, work, law enforcement, government benefits, and medical care, including social security numbers. That way, correct records can be developed, and anyone cheated out of benefits by those who stole their identity can be made whole.

(3) If they have had no other criminal activity for 10 years let them apply for provisional legal permanent residency. Committing a crime would lose it for them. Citizenship, and all the benefits that accompany it, would not be available to them but would be to their children born in the United States. See more here and here.

Eleven million illegals—Nope. DHS’s website stops counting illegal aliens in the United States as of 2018 when we had 11.4 million. No need to wonder why. I’d guess we’re up to around 17 million at a minimum now. Schumer wants to grant asylum to 17 million criminals.

From the day that status is granted, they will be eligible for international travel documentation (essentially a new identity if they have not provided true information on who they really are), to work, to petition to be joined by a spouse and minor children, and to apply for permanent residency within a year, then for citizenship after another five years. They can receive refugee resettlement cash, medical assistance, employment preparation, job placement, and language training from HHS. They are eligible for need-based government assistance such as welfare, Medicaid, SSI disability, and food stamps. How many more billions does Senator Schumer want to add to the cost of government, plus 40% overhead for managing these programs?

There’s a simple solution: Follow the law. Defend the border. Deny entry to anyone without verifiable identification. Exercise good sense discretion and deny obviously fraudulent applications for asylum. Deport the illegals as fast as DHS can manage it. We’d be far better off adding 87,000 enforcement agents to ICE than to the IRS. Maybe the 118th Congress can shift that funding line between agencies.

Anony Mee is the nom de blog of a retired public servant.

Truth Beginning To Scalp The Bidens!?

 NOVEMBER 21, 2022 BY SCOTT JOHNSON at Power Line:

CBS REPORTS: INSIDE HUNTER’S BIDEN’S LAPTOP

I learn via Twitter that CBS News has a big announcement. It has retained digital forensic analyst Mark Lanterman to authenticate the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop. This just in, as they say in the business: CBS News reports that the contents are what they purport to be!

Clay Travis comments that this breaking news comes “[t]wo years after anyone with a functional brain realized the Hunter Biden laptop was 100% real.” In this case would I amend that to say “only two years.”

This all must come as a great shock to anyone who gets his “news” from CBS News. No one involved in delivering the “news” here seems to have any idea how absurd he or she sounds.

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