Why is Today’s American Jewish Community so Fond of the Fascistic Left?

Jewish Rabbis and Disloyalty

by  Ilya Feoktistov   at  American Thinker:

Like the boy in the tale of the emperor’s new clothes, President Trump has once again spoken a taboo truth: Some American Jews seem to be more loyal to an increasingly anti-Jewish and far-left Democratic Party than they are to the Jewish people. That’s not necessarily an immoral position for most American Jews to take: As individuals, they have no concrete duty of loyalty to the Jewish people, and it is their absolute right to seek stronger allegiances through political, rather than through religious or ethnic affinity. But American Jewish leaders, picked and paid as such by the Jewish community, are in a different position. Those Jewish leaders whose fiduciary duty of loyalty is to the Jewish missions of their organizations, but whose primary loyalty is to the Tlaibanized progressive movement and the party that champions it, are betraying that duty in some truly indecent ways.

Consider Reconstructionist Rabbi Toba Spitzer. As president of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis (MBR), and as the long-time rabbi of the cultish Congregation Dorshei Tzedek, Spitzer has aggressively promoted extreme left-wing causes. Many are direct threats to the Jewish community: embracing anti-Semitic Islamist extremists like Linda Sarsour, hostility toward the U.S. government, hostility toward the Israeli government, support for the anti-SemiticOccupy Wall Street movement, support for the anti-Semitic Black Lives Mattermovement, and open border refugee policies are some examples. Yet Rabbi Spitzer and the MBR insist that these causes are Jewish religious imperatives, even as they proclaim Jew-haters like the Hamas front group, CAIR, and the terror-affiliated Islamic Society of Boston to be their friends and allies. At the same time, Spitzer and the MBR demonize in vicious terms those fellow Jews who don’t agree with their political viewpoints.

Last year, Spitzer wrote that, when it comes to Israel, American Jews should ask themselves: “Do we believe that the physical continuity of the Jewish people supersedes other Jewish values?” In other words: Should the Israelis choose to die en masse instead of committing what Rabbi Spitzer feels is the unforgivable sin of perpetuating the fight with the Palestinians? Implicitly answering in the affirmative, Spitzer challenged the “existential narrative” of Israel, arguing that Jewish sovereignty — and the Jewish lives protected by its existence — should not supersede the Jewish values of “lovingkindness” (chesed) and “mercy” (rachamim) toward “supporters of Hamas” — her words, not mine.

Rabbi Spitzer’s question, and the argument implicit in it, comes from ignorance. According to the Jewish canon, which deals with the laws of armed conflict at length, war against the likes of Hamas is literally a mitzvah. Beyond Judaism, the principle of individual and collective self-defense of life and property is a universal human value enshrined in the law of nations and in free sovereign legal systems like those of the United States. It is an inhuman demand, most often made by totalitarians, that a class of people die or submit to being robbed without putting up a fight — for the good of another class or people.

Indeed, pikuach nefesh — thepreservation of innocent life, through war if necessary — is the highestJewish value, which supersedes all other Jewish values, except for the bans on murder, sexual crime, and sacrilege. Indeed, some Jews during the Holocaust, like those victimized by the Bitch of Belsen, might have been forced to take part in all three to survive. Having not been faced with the choice, most of us have little standing to blame them. “Shabbat, Yom Kippur, Pesach, if they come in conflict with the question of survival,” said Israel’s former chief Ashkenazi rabbi and Buchenwald survivor Yisrael Meir Lau; “if they are in a clash with the desire of living, of existence — the Torah says… to live, not to die.”

This year, Rabbi Spitzer expanded on her argument in an article chillingly titled“Beyond Erasure,” in which she faulted “the American Jewish establishment” for embracing an “existential frame” of thinking that Israel “is vitally connected to Jewish survival in the modern world,” because this thinking “has led to an attempt to erase Palestinian history.” After almost four millennia of supreme religious devotion to a Jewish state in Israel, Spitzer urged American Jews in 2019 to detach themselves — emotionally, religiously, morally — from commitment to Israel’s physical continuity and to national self-determination for its Jews.

Along with detaching American Jews from Israel, Spitzer seeks to detach them from their money. In a 2017 interview, Rabbi Spitzer echoed the insidious economic anti-Semitism that is one of the unifying hallmarks of socialism: “The Jewish community in Boston is — certainly with exceptions — disproportionately well-off. I think that real change is going to require that we give up some of that economic privilege.” Ironically, Spitzer’s Massachusetts Board of Rabbis is largely funded by the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Boston, whose new president, Rabbi Marc Baker, pledged in his inaugural speech to make the Boston Jewish community’s continued existence, prosperity, and connection to Israel among his top priorities.

While making common cause with anti-Semites and attacking fellow Jews, Spitzer conveniently ignores the threats facing the Jewish community. As shetold her congregation in 2010: “Jews in modern America face little to none of the hatred and pressure that gays and lesbians and transgender people continue to face.” Spitzer is empirically wrong, but politically correct. In 2010, Jews were statistically almost one-and-a-half times more likely to be victims of hate crimes than LGBT persons. Within the leftist moral universe, however, Jews often exist as privileged millionaire fat-cats, Wall Street ‘banksters,’ and murderous baby killers committing genocide against the Palestinians. The implications of contemporary Jewish victimhood therefore make leftist Jews like Spitzer uncomfortable, unless they can be used against Donald Trump.

Even if hate crime against both Jews and LGBT persons entirely disappeared, and even if Hillary Clinton was in the White House, Spitzer’s true issues with “modern America” would remain. America is “the belly of the beast,” Spitzer complained about our capitalist society. “Like the ancient Israelites,” sheprophesized about entitlement cuts under President Obama in 2011, “our failure to acknowledge the covenantal obligations that we owe one another as American citizens… is sure to bring in its wake a Deuteronomic list of curses,” unless we “end the travesty of poverty in a country — and a world — in which we have so much.” As Newmann quips: “For all their condescension toward the Christian Right, in their own way, liberal Jews affirm no less strongly the principle that voting for certain politicians can seal your place in Heaven or Hell.”

Writing about why a leading Jewish rabbi – the president of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis, no less — is so sanguine about Jewish life, property, and religious values requires brutal bluntness:

Rabbi Spitzer is a secular radical who dresses up in a kippah and tallit to exploit the Jewish religion in the name of leftist politics. The Jewish values that she preaches are not Jewish. They are nothing more than tired 19^th-century socialist totalitarianism clothed in the postmodern garb of social justice and “Tikkun Olam.” Rabbi Spitzer is willing to sacrifice Jewish money and lives at the altar of Marxist envy, and to blend the sanctity of her people’s religion with the profanity of her own politics. The Jews must not let her.

I was born into poverty in the Soviet Union, of the kind that Rabbi Spitzer would certainly deplore in the United States, after my Jewish family’s wealth was redistributed by Spitzer’s ideological kith and kin some sixty years prior. My great-great-grandfather, a wealthy gem merchant, sympathized with his Bolshevik employees, and allowed them to meet secretly at night in the dark corners of his warehouses. His sympathies saved his own and his family’s lives, though not his wealth; but those sympathies also destroyed his country and the lives of many others. I hope that the Massachusetts Jewish community and its donors understand the consequences of Rabbi Spitzer’s sympathies; and the plans that her comrades have in store for Jewish wealth and physical continuity — in Israel, America, and anywhere else.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/08/jewish_rabbis_and_disloyalty.html

Note from ghr:   I was born and raised K through Eighth grade, 1939 to 1948 in an American Christian urban community   school district whose only minority was Jewish.   Despite the overwhelming mix and share during World War II they were exceedingly clannish, cold, unfriendly as  were the two Jewish  families living on our block.   Not once did they join the wartime gatherings twice a year of  all  the 16 families always invited to the neighborhood picnics.  Nor did they in anyway respond…..

I was the welcoming  boy who delivered the invitations all four years.   I still remember during these picnics the disappointments stated by those Christian neighbors who always invited the Jewish families.

The same coldness occurred among the Jewish students in the local grade school I attended.

Why during the President GW Bush years did one of my Jewish clients of over 30 years who always had to be secretive of the couple’s  conservative persuasions, experience a sudden total guest walk out while hosting their turn in the  twelfth year of the group’s Jewish Holiday gathering for lunch and  afternoon drinks together?

Why did nearly all of the visiting explode with screams and curses against the generous host and hostess for an “atrocity” one of their  female guests had claimed to have discovered?……

One of the gal guests went into the hostess’ kitchen to seek a drinking glass… She opened a  cupboard door seeing not a glass but an eleven by eight inch picture of then Republican President George W. Bush.   She cursed and screamed,  shouting noises of all kind, I was told by my wonderful client of 30 years.    Whereupon the lefty group, shocked as if electricity had burned them, left the house and dinner, never to  see these conservatives again.

Perhaps that is all yesterday, but I doubt it.

Today we Americans do have  our precious Dennis Prager.   May God Bless Him and His Followers.   Our civilization may recover from those fascistics and fascists now attempting to destroy our freedom-loving America forever.

Who will win the 2020 Presidential election?

Will America’s Lefty Universities, News and Television Press Secure Fascist Dem Victory in 2020?

How We Re-Elect Trump in 2020

By Lloyd Marcus    at   American Thinker:

Democrats, fake news media, and Hollywood are desperate to block Trump’s reelection in 2020. Their problem is that Trump has been awesome for America. Our economy is booming. Blacks, Latinos and women are experiencing unprecedented prosperity as Trump continues to restore power back to We the People. Trump’s swiftly growing list of achievements towards making America great again is extraordinary.

Democrats hope to win the presidency with their usual lies, addicting voters to government dependency, and convincing everyone that they are victims. Therefore, the Democrats’ presidential campaign is built upon falsely branding Trump as a racist white supremacist, promising free everything to everyone without anyone having to work, and criminalizing speaking the truth.

Because Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives spoke the truth that our country is being invaded by illegals, progressives absurdly claim that Limbaugh and conservative media are responsible for the El Paso shooting and must be silenced.

Frustrated over progressive domination of mainstream and social media, patriots have asked, how do we fight back, insuring a Trump victory in 2020?

Brother and sister Americans, we must fight back by using our God-given gifts, talents, ideas, and resources to spread the truth about Trump’s remarkable long list of achievements beneficial to all Americans. We must counter progressive lies. St. Augustine said, “A minority of truth will prevail as long as it is heard.” In other words, despite progressives’ attempts to bully us into silence, we must stand tall and continue spreading truth. This is how we defeat our anti-American enemies within. Do not think whatever you can do is too small or insignificant. Your little becomes much when you place it in the Master’s (God’s) hand.

I am using my gift as a singer/songwriter to fight back by recording my new Trump Train 2020 song. Singers from across the country will gather September 7^th in Silver Spring Maryland to sing in the choir. Interested singers may email me at: mr_lloydmarcus@hotmail.com

Hollywood filmmaker Robert Kirk is a patriot brother who is using his gifts, talents and personal funds to fight back. Though as rare as Bigfoot sightings, Robert really is a conservative writer/director Trump supporter in Hollywood. Robert spent $70,000 out of his own pocket to produce an award-winning hilarious promotional episode of his conservative comedy, “Alien Anthropologists.” Film festival audiences laughed hysterically as Robert poked fun and exposed all the bad players of the deep state’s silent coup against Trump’s presidency. “Alien Anthropologists” is a much-needed salvo in the culture war raging in our country.

Because Robert is not taking a salary for writing, producing, and directing the movie, he only needs $500,000 to make “Alien Anthropologists” a full-length feature film. Still, raising funds has been a struggle. Robert will pursue crowd funding, but he still needs investors. Where are the conservative billionaires to fund a movie spreading truth in an ocean of Hollywood’s lying propaganda films?

Why do progressives always have so much funding to spread their lies? When Beto O’Rourke challenged Ted Cruz’s senate seat in Texas, my wife Mary and I flew to Texas to be boots on the ground, campaigning several months for Cruz. I was blown away by the disproportionately high number of O’Rourke TV ads compared to Cruz ads. O’Rourke had $38.1 million in his war-chest to spread lies about Cruz. Cruz only had $4.2 million. By the grace of God, Cruz defeated O’Rourke.

Progressives spend mega-millions releasing a plethora of propaganda movies which rewrite history, demonize American heroes, and poke a finger in the eye of traditions and values which have made America great.

Progressives always find funds to trash Christianity and America. Remember when the National Endowment for the Arts awarded an artist with a $15,000 grant to place a crucifix in a jar of urine? The celebrated blasphemous art piece was titled, “Piss Christ.” A portrait of the Virgin Mary painted in elephant dung sold for $4.6 million.

Meanwhile, Robert struggles to raise a mere $500,000 to produce his acclaimed conservative comedy full-length feature film.

Robert’s promotional episode of “Alien Anthropologists” has won top awards at film festivals including at one of the most respected and longest running, the 51^st Annual WorldFest Houston International Film Festival, where his film was awarded their top Special Jury Remi Award for original comedy.

Please view the three-minute trailer for “Alien Anthropologists” or the 25-minute promotional episode.

Folks, Robert really needs your support to make his film for us a reality. If you are interested in participating in making this movie, please contact him.

As I stated, it is imperative that each and every one of us do our part to reelect President Trump by spreading the truth about his remarkable presidency. Be creative. Write books, movies, plays, songs and so on. Those with political skills, use them.

Our airwaves are overflowing with darkness; insidiously evil, hate-generating lies about possibly the greatest president in U.S. History. Every time we spread truth, we are lighting a candle in the darkness. Remember, your little becomes much when you place it in the Master’s (God’s) hand.

Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American

 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/08/how_we_reelect_trump_in_2020.html

Monty Python Time in Loony Lefty Minneapolis

TROUBLE IN DYSTOPIA, CONT’D

by Scott Johnson  at PowerLine:

.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and “American Indian leaders” met yesterday with denizens of the open air drug den cum encampment on Hiawatha Avenue at Cedar just outside downtown Minneapolis. The Star Tribune reports that the meeting was “hastily called in response to complaints of harassment and intimidation of humanitarian aid workers at the large homeless camp in south Minneapolis.” Also in attendance was the harassment/intimidation crew from Natives Against Heroin.

We’ve got trouble right here in river city. The trouble is attributable in part to idiotic municipal authorities and to the culture of lawlessness they have abetted.

In this installment of the saga, we have the mayor begging for good behavior. We have Indian leaders from four reservations sitting at a large round table “with the smell of burnt sage” in the air. At least we think it was sage.

Convicted drug dealer/burglar/thief and American Indian Movement cofounder Clyde Bellecourt was in attendance. The Star Tribune reports that he “shared decades of experience advocating for American Indian rights.” The Star Tribune omits any mention of Bellecourt’s criminal history or his possible role in the murder of American Indian Movement member Anna Mae Aquash in 1975. See Mike Mosedale’s City Pages story “Bury My Heart” (more here).

The meeting did not go down as the mayor must have hoped. The Star Tribune has done its best to put a smily face on the drug den ever since it initiated coverage of the encampment, yet it gives up here: “Discord permeated the gathering and emotions ran high, despite a few positive moments.”

Despite the burning of sage to dispel the negativity. And despite the group of women who “raised their voices in prayer to calm the room” whenever discussions became too “combative,” as the Star Tribune puts it.

The Star Tribune story concludes on a philosophical note:

A point of contention was whether Indians who are homeless should receive priority, being allowed to move into the large heated tents and receive other services before non-Indians.

Some argued that the ethnicity of those getting help wasn’t important.

Others, like White Earth Nation member Dawn LaRoque, said she hoped Indians would receive aid first. LaRoque also brought up safety at the navigation center, including whether people will still be able to use drugs there.

Frey said residents wouldn’t be tested for drugs upon admittance, but that they couldn’t do drugs on site.

A new idea emerged from discussions: creating a space where people could share disagreements in front of a neutral third party. Frey said it was an excellent idea.

Sam Strong, tribal secretary of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa, said the camp had already spurred change simply by forcing officials to address homelessness head-on.

“There’s hope in that facility that we have over there,” Strong said. “When has anybody ever done anything for homeless people?”

In this installment of the saga we have elements of comedy begging for satire. Sam Strong’s concluding question awaits its Monty Python moment.

 

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/12/trouble-in-dystopia-contd.php

Zuckerberg Is Abusing You, America!?!

Facebook is the villain and we all finally know it

by Liberty Vittert  at Fox News:

Facebook is the villain and finally people know it.

About 250 pages of highly confidential documents and company emails that shed light on Facebook’s attitude towards its customers, were released by a British lawmaker this week. But before we dive into that, let’s take a step back and remember Facebook’s first big public scandal.

Last March, the New York Times, along with the Guardian and the Observer in London, uncovered documents proving that the political data firm Cambridge Analytica had improperly acquired data from Facebook. Aleksandr Kogan, a data scientist, had developed an app and given the user data information to Cambridge Analytica. Facebook allowed this app to not only collect data from the app users, but also their friends, resulting in Cambridge Analytica acquiring data from millions of different Facebook users.

The Trump campaign employed Cambridge Analytica in 2016 and it therefore has been painted as some dark ops firm that stole Americans’ privacy for the benefit of the highest paying conservative candidate, who then used it to steal victory from Hillary Clinton through manipulation, fraud, hacking and mystery.

Please.

While the people running Cambridge Analytica did seem on the shady side, and I certainly wouldn’t put my trust in them, they have been used as a scapegoat for Facebook’s unethical, hostile and underhanded behavior.

Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of app developers were using the features that Facebook itself created, to do precisely the same thing that Cambridge Analytica was doing. To be clear, there was no “hack” of Facebook. This kind of work is not rocket science, and in my opinion, everyone gave Cambridge Analytica way too much credit. They weren’t magicians. I promise.

If Cambridge Analytica had been a company that sold people refrigerators, or did anything unrelated to Donald Trump for that matter, no one would have cared about its data consumption. But Cambridge Analytica was hailed as the election usurper – Trump’s secret weapon in his battle for the White House.

Again, please.

Yes, Trump won. But he won against the most unpopular Democratic candidate in modern history, who was vying for a third Democratic term – something which has not been achieved since the 1940s. Furthermore, he won by a very slim margin and actually lost the popular vote. If Cambridge Analytica was really a bunch of election-rigging wizards, practicing their dark art of black box data mining, wouldn’t you have expected a more crushing defeat?

The government has had at least 10 years to get on top of big tech companies’ exploding growth and power, but so far they’ve been allowed to act with free rein.

What we really should have taken away from the Cambridge Analytica scandal last spring is that Facebook is the villain and we need to know more. And this week we’re learning yet again that we the public are in big trouble with not just Facebook, but all the other big companies that have troves of data on practically each and every one of us.

Despite repeatedly denying that Facebook sells its users’ data, the company emails released this week show that in fact it effectively did – that it leveraged our data to reward developers who spent a lot of money on the platform, and ice out its competitors, all the while making sure we, the users, never found out.

And let’s not kid ourselves that it’s just Facebook doing this. Five of the most valuable companies in the world today – Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Google’s parent company Alphabet – have all commodified our data and used it to take over their respective sectors.

What’s equally unsettling is our government’s response. The questions that senators asked Zuckerberg during his April hearing clearly showed how little they understand about the basic workings of his company. The government has had at least 10 years to get on top of big tech companies’ exploding growth and power, but so far they’ve been allowed to act with free rein.

Sure, we the consumers bear some of the responsibility. I certainly have freely given up my data to various apps, companies and websites. And boy do I love Amazon’s suggestions – it always seem to know just what I need! Advertising isn’t coercive. I know what I’m choosing to buy, just like I know what candidate I’m choosing to vote for. I’m not being tricked in either case.

But at the same time, these companies have been allowed to run amuck, and the laws haven’t been keeping up. For the entire Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook was fined a little over $600,000. Facebook makes that in less than 8 minutes.

I’m not so worried about Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t scare me. What terrifies me is the next villain, who has more nefarious end goals. If the government doesn’t get its act together and start creating and enforcing laws to regulate these powerful companies, we are in real trouble.

The leaked documents this week shouldn’t be a surprise, but they should be a wake-up call. We have become complacent with our personal privacy, myself included.

What’s scary isn’t the data violation, it’s who’s doing it. There will always be a Bond villain, but if James Bond doesn’t have Q giving him the technology that keeps him a few steps ahead of the villain, he may not escape alive one day.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/facebook-is-the-villain-and-we-all-finally-know-it

The Fickled and the Fixed in Leftist’s Political World

LOOSE ENDS (53)

by Steven Hayward  at PowerLine:

 

• Elizabeth Warren is the gift that keeps on giving:

• But running a close second is this theme from the left, as is expressed in this tweet by a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin:

You can see why political “science” is in such trouble these days. Law professor David Bernstein makes quick work of this stupidity:

Though I have to say, runner-up in the stupid tweet-take department has to be this one:

Remind me again who the Hispanic candidate was in that race? Oh yeah . . . the guy named Cruz. The other guy was whiter than the inside of a snowball. Oh, and how do you “beard” an argument? Is this some kind of new hipster talent I haven’t heard of?

• Echoing what I said yesterday about how environmental initiatives mostly failed at the ballot Tuesday, Tyler Cowan writes that the carbon tax is dead:

Often the most important results of any election come in the initiatives and referendums. And one striking result from Tuesday’s election is that voters in Washington state, a Democratic stronghold, soundly rejected a proposed carbon tax by a margin of 56 to 44 percent. This raises the prospect that the carbon tax may be dead as a policy for the time being, including at the state level. As my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Liam Denning writes: “We can debate the magnitude of the vaunted blue wave, but there was definitely no green wave.” . . .

I don’t view the unpopularity of the carbon tax as merely reflecting the influence of special interests. The American people apparently feel that government ought to be able to solve this problem without imposing a new tax burden on them.

For all the talk about disillusionment and cynicism in American politics, this view represents a strange kind of optimism. If this issue really is so important,some voters must be thinking, surely you politicians can find a way to solve it without making us pay for everything. Don’t we give you enough money already?

Economists should not give up our analytical arguments for a carbon tax. But maybe it’s time for a change in tactics. These new approaches might start with the notion that we can address climate change without transferring more money from voters to politicians.

I like Tyler’s work a lot, but in this last point he is simply naive: raising taxes is the main point for many climatistas. Fixing a crisis without expanding government is no fun at all. I hope Tom Steyer keeps spending millions on behalf of such initiatives. Someday he’ll run out of money.

 

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/11/loose-ends-53.php

Note:  In my lifetime here in Minnesota about 70% of America’s  Jewish voters have without fail  been  “religiously” glued to the Democrat Party regardless of the decade or cause.

Last Tuesday  they and their  Democrat party elected a first class antiSemite as the state’s Attorney General.  “Law” Professor David Bernstein has a very Jewish name.

Political Science Professor, Mark Copelovitch’s name is only about 80% Jewish male title.   And then there’s the public Carl Bernstein, George Soros, Bill Kristol,  Charles Schumer, Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Dianne Feinstein,  Richard Blumenthal,  used to be Senator Al Franken,  the New York Times and Washington Post and  countless  folks like Joy Behar on and behind television a dime a dozen who blab their hate of President Trump  boldly and religiously.

Thank God for Dennis Prager!!   Where would America be without him, AD 2018?

Hate Speech According to Facebook

Facebook’s Definition Of “Hate Speech” Grows Even More Bizarre

by Jazz Shaw  at HotAir:

We’ve touched on this story here already but it’s since spiraled a bit further outside the boundaries of reality. Facebook recently deleted a post from William Gheen, of the Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee (ALIPAC). The post had to do with the murder of Mollie Tibbetts by an illegal alien (who actually was an illegal alien, despite coverage you may have seen in the MSM to the contrary) and how it related to problems with our current immigration law enforcement efforts. The social network giant eventually apologized for doing so, and for suspending Gheen’s account in the process, but their explanation of how the “mistake” took place actually seemed to make things worse. (Washington Times, emphasis added)

The admission came hours after William Gheen, head of Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee, said he’d had his post removed and been slapped with a 24-hour ban for posting what Facebook said was “hate speech.”

Mr. Gheen was surprised by the move because his post had talked about illegal immigration but he didn’t think it crossed any lines.

Facebook now agrees.

“We mistakenly removed a comment by William Gheen and restored it as soon as we were able to investigate because it did not violate our community standards,” the company said in a statement to The Washington Times. “Our team processes millions of reports each week, and sometimes we get things wrong. We are sorry this happened.”

Keep those last two sentences in mind for a moment. We might write this off as a simple clerical error (or the digital equivalent thereof) but it would be a mistake to look at this incident in a vacuum. Consider also the question of what happened to Salena Zito’s column at the New York Post.

Within two hours I started receiving a handful of notes from people who are friends on my personal Facebook page that their posting of my piece, entitled “Why Trump’s supporters won’t care about Cohen and Manafort,” telling me it had been removed.

Sometimes the removal was accompanied by a message from Facebook. “Spam” was the most common reason given, but a couple of people were told Facebook removed the post because “it did not follow our Community Standards.” …

The post was gone.

Posts and links to Zito’s column were also later restored after people complained. But in each case, it was reported that these deletions for “violations of community standards” were not carried out by an algorithm, but rather when some other Facebook user flagged the message and an employee of Facebook removed it after determining that it qualified as “hate speech.”

This means that there are two avenues for the removal of “offending” content on Facebook. They’ve already admitted to algorithm alorithm which scans the billions of updates every day looking for certain keywords and phrases. But there are also customer service employees manually looking at items flagged by the community and making the determination as to whether or not the content is offensive and worthy of suppression. Neither of these methods is worth a hill of beans and I’ll tell you why.

Taylor wrote about this alleged algorithm problem on Friday, but I think he was being a bit too generous. True, some of these issues may have been caused by a new automated function, but the high profile articles and links that draw a lot of traffic shouldn’t have been caught in that trap. Taylor also mentioned that human monitors would be better than algorithms. True in theory, but they could only (at most) handle entries which are drawing massive numbers of complaints and flags. The number of new updates on Facebook each day would require roughly 91% of the population of the planet to work for Facebook screening content full time to keep up.

I think we’ve been able to glean enough information from Facebook’s frequently cryptic responses to complaints to verify what I was guessing at above. There are two channels to handle “hate speech.” One is automated and one requires human agents responding to complaints to evaluate the content. But there’s zero question that the amount content being flagged and the number of users being suspended skews wildly toward conservative voices. If you hire coders who build the algorithm to primarily squelch conservatives and you hire liberal “customer service” people to handle complaints, that’s a wholly predictable result.

It’s not that Facebook’s code is flawed. It’s not that their monitors are somehow innocently ignorant. It’s that the company is populated by liberals with an agenda, regardless of what Mark Zuckerberg attempts to claim to the contrary. They’re using content monitoring systems which could, perhaps, work if they could somehow be made ideologically neutral. But under the current leadership, it’s destined to fail from the start. And at the risk of being a bit too harsh, this failure isn’t a bug. It’s a feature.

https://hotair.com/archives/2018/08/25/facebooks-definition-hate-speech-grows-even-bizarre/

(I believe Prager University is presently suing prejudiced Facebook censors for zapping dozens of Prager University five minute lessons from its world of “communication”.   Prager University  underscores traditional American values,  learnings, and freedoms apparently foreign to Zuckerberg Facebook leftist fascistics.)

Gophers Are Closely Related to Rats….In Politics They Seem Kin to California… It’s NOT the Weather.

Could it be the Scandinavian living among the Ten thousand Lakes?  Are we  tired of fishing? of honesty, knowledge, decency, of working?  We certainly aren’t tired of foul ball Democrats…..

Have we become so feminized that what matters in today’s Goopherland government has become our MASTER ala Canada, Sweden, China, and the Good Old Soviet Union still stirring  in the State of Russia?

Is problem causing replacing problem solving in the homes of the free and the brave?

Are there homes anymore or merely  structures for the mindless and University educated ditsies?   Is it ‘SAN FRANCISCO HERE WE COME’…or VENEZUELA..WE LOVE YOUR FUTURE?

Please read the following review of Lessons from Minnesota’s Primaries:

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/08/lessons-from-minnesotas-primaries.php

Zuckerberg Talks in Circles Regarding Facebook’s Political Bias

Ted Cruz Grills Mark Zuckerberg Over Facebook’s Political Bias, Censorship

(Article  from the Stream  sent by Mark Waldeland.)

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spared over political bias and censorship during the Senate’s hearing Tuesday. Lawmakers questioned Zuckerberg about the social media company and its handling of user data. Cruz specifically asked if Facebook considers itself a neutral public forum. A full transcript of their exchange is below.

Cruz: “Thank you Mr. Chairman. Mr. Zuckerberg, thank you for being here. Mr. Zuckerberg, does Facebook consider itself a neutral public forum?”

Zuckerberg: “Senator, we consider ourselves to be a platform for all ideas.”

Cruz: “Let me ask the question again. Does Facebook consider itself to be a neutral public forum? And representatives of your company have given conflicting answers on this. Are you a First Amendment speaker expressing your views, or are you a neutral public forum allowing everyone to speak?”

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Zuckerberg: “Senator, here is how we think about this: I don’t believe that — there is certain content that clearly we do not allow. Right? Hate speech, terrorist content, nudity, anything that makes people feel unsafe in the community. From that perspective, that’s why we generally try to refer to what we do as a platform for all ideas.”

Cruz: “Because the time is constrained, it’s just a simple question. The predicate for Section 230 immunity under the CDA is that you are a neutral public forum. Do you consider yourself a neutral public forum, or are you engaged in political speech? Which is your right under the First Amendment.”

Zuckerberg: “Well, Senator, our goal is certainly not to engage in political speech. I’m not that familiar with the specific legal language of the law that you speak to, so I would need to follow up with you on that. I’m just trying to lay out how broadly I think about this.”

 

Cruz: “Mr. Zuckerberg, I will say there are a great many Americans, who I think are deeply concerned that Facebook and other tech companies are engaged in a pervasive pattern of bias and political censorship. There have been numerous instances with Facebook. In May of 2016, Gizmodo reported that Facebook had purposefully and routinely suppressed conservative stories from trending news, including stories about CPAC, including stories about Mitt Romney, including stories about the Lois Lerner IRS scandal, including stories about Glenn Beck. In addition to that, Facebook has initially shut down the ‘Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day’ page, has blocked a post of a Fox News reporter, has blocked over two dozen Catholic pages, and most recently, blocked Trump supporters Diamond and Silk’s page with 1.2 million Facebook followers, after determining their content and brand were, ‘unsafe to the community.’ To a great many Americans, that appears to be a pervasive pattern of political bias. Do you agree with that assessment?”

Zuckerberg: “Senator, let me say a few things about this. First, I understand where that concern is coming from because Facebook and the tech industry are located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely Left leaning place. And this is actually a concern that I have and that I try to root out in the company is making sure that we don’t have any bias in the work that we do, and I think it is a fair concern that people would at least wonder about.”

Cruz: “So let me ask this question. Are you aware of any ad or page that has been taken down from Planned Parenthood?”

Zuckerberg: “Senator, I’m not. But let me just, can I finish?”

Cruz: “How about MoveOn.org?”

Zuckerberg: “Sorry?”

Cruz: “How about MoveOn.org?”

Zuckerberg: “I’m not specifically aware of those.”

Cruz: “How about any Democratic candidate for office?”

Zuckerberg: “I’m not specifically aware. I mean, I’m not sure.”

Cruz: “In your testimony, you say that you have 15,000 to 20,000 people working on security and content review. Do you know the political orientation of those 15,000 to 20,000 people engaged in content review?”

Zuckerberg: “No, Senator. We do not generally ask people about their political orientation when they’re joining the company.”

Cruz: “So as CEO, have you made hiring or firing decisions based on political positions or what candidates they supported?”

Zuckerberg: “No.”

Cruz: “Why was Palmer Luckey fired?”

Zuckerberg: “That is a specific personnel matter that seems like it would be inappropriate to speak to here.”

Cruz: “You made a specific representation that you didn’t make decisions based on political views. Is that accurate?”

Zuckerberg: “I can commit that it was not because of a political view.”

Cruz: “Do you know of the 15,000 to 20,000 people engaged in content review, how many, if any, have ever supported financially a Republican candidate for office?”

Zuckerberg: “Senator, I do not know that.”

Cruz: “Your testimony says, ‘It is not enough that we just connect people. We have to make sure those connections are positive.’ It says, ‘We have to make sure people aren’t using their voice to hurt people or spread misinformation. We have a responsibility not just to build tools, but to make sure those tools are used for good.’ Mr. Zuckerberg, do you feel it’s your responsibility to assess users whether they are good and positive connections or ones those 15,000 to 20,000 people deem unacceptable or deplorable?”

Zuckerberg: “Senator, you’re asking about me personally?”

Cruz: “Facebook.”

Zuckerberg: “Senator, I think that there are a number of things that we would all agree are clearly bad. Foreign interference in our elections, terrorism, self-harm. Those are things…”

Cruz: “I’m talking about censorship.”

Zuckerberg: “Oh, well, I think that you would probably agree we should remove terrorist propaganda from the service. So that I agree, I think is clearly bad activity that we want to get down and we are generally proud of how well we do with that. Now, what I can say, and I do want to get this in before the end here, is that I am very committed to making sure that Facebook is a platform for all ideas. That is a very important, founding principle of what we do. We’re proud of the discourse and different ideas that people can share on the service, and that is something that as long as I’m running the company, I’m going to be committed to making sure is the case.”

Cruz: “Thank you.”

https://stream.org/ted-cruz-grills-mark-zuckerberg-facebooks-political-bias-censorship/