Government Regulation Of Social Media Would Kill The Internet

By William Teach August 12, 2019 – 10:45 am

A very interesting piece by Daniel Ortner, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, which is a conservative/libertarian organization

Government regulation of social media would kill the internet — and free speech

Social media companies have been criticized for disproportionately restricting content that offends political progressives. For example, a Pinterest insider recently leaked documents showing that the platform censors pro-life speech as “pornography.” Popular “classical liberal” YouTuber Dave Rubin has complained that his videos are flagged and discriminated against because of alleged “right-wing” content. And Twitter got into hot water last week for suspending the campaign account of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for posting a video of angry protestors assembling outside the senator’s home.

In response, conservative politicians have advocated for greater government regulation and oversight of social media. Last week, reports surfaced that the White House is developing an executive order directed at tech companies such as Facebook and Google, demanding that these sites eliminate “anti-conservative bias.” The exact contours of the executive order are not yet known, but if it in any way resembles recent proposals, anyone who values the free exchange of ideas should run far away from this latest effort to place government oversight on social media and curtail freedom of speech in the name of “fairness.”

Why shouldn’t the government require these companies to allow access to everyone? Because social media companies are private companies, not government actors, and these companies have their own First Amendment right to exclude anyone from their platforms for any reason at all. The government cannot force these companies to open up their sites and associate with viewpoints that their owners and shareholders find objectionable, any more than it can force you to display government-approved speech on your private property.

It is a good point: these are private companies. Should government actually be regulating how they operate and allow content on their sites?

But anyone with even a modicum of skepticism of government bureaucrats should see that this is a truly awful and unconstitutional idea. It would mean that social media companies would be required to cozy up with these regulators to secure a permit. And control of the board fluctuates based on who controls Congress or the White House, so the continued viability of social media players would be up for reexamination every time the political winds change. Aggrieved members of the public would be allowed to submit complaints and the burden would be on social media companies to refute their claims — placing the companies in the impossible position of having to prove their innocence of every charge.

Even worse, we would be trusting these unelected commissioners to determine whether a particular policy has a disproportionate impact on a “political viewpoint.” Maybe you like the idea of President Trump’s appointees deciding what must or must not be posted on social media — but how will you feel if it’s President Sanders, President Warren, or President Biden?

And there’s the rub. Democrats are super excited about Net Neutrality. Would they like that, among all the other problems, it would be controlled by whomever is in power? Daniel might be over-doing it in his piece, because, let’s face it, these tech companies are acting in bad faith, and often seem to violate their own terms of service, as well as applying them arbitrarily, however, once you start down the Government road, it’s almost impossible to get off. And that road is constantly getting bigger.

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Climate Cultists Wants To Know When Republicans Will Come Out Of The Climate Closet Or Something

By William Teach August 12, 2019 – 8:21 am

Hyper-warmist Justin Gillis rears his head up in the NY Times (which got rid of its climate section years ago), likening climate change to gays coming out of the closet

The Republican Climate Closet
When will believers in global warming come out?

….

What exactly is going on here?

I got my first clue a decade ago, over lunch in Washington. I had just sat down with an eminent figure in the Republican Party to discuss global warming. As a condition of the chat, he made me pledge I would never print his name in association with the remarks he made.

We ordered our iced teas, and he looked me in the eye.

“We know this problem is real,” he said, or words to that effect. “We know we are going to have to do a deal with the Democrats. We are waiting for the fever to cool.”

He meant the fever in the Republican base, then in full foaming-at-the-mouth, Tea Party mode. Denial of climate change was an article of faith in the Tea Party, and lots of Republican officeholders who had been willing to discuss the problem and possible solutions just a few years earlier had gone into hiding.

Very Brave! Said “Republican” won’t say it on the record. And, yes, it is an article of faith, because climate cultists never seem willing to practice what they preach, and, further, all their policy proposals are about taxation, control of individual lives, and Big Government.

The fever never really cooled, of course. It transmuted into the raging xenophobia and nativism that put Donald Trump in the White House. Racist demagogy about foreign invaders is his stock in trade, but he has also become the climate-denier in chief, filling federal agencies with toadies for the fossil fuel industry and crackpot scientists.

What the fellow told me that day still holds true: Lots of Republicans know in their hearts that this problem is real. I hereby posit the existence of something you might call the Republican climate closet.

I posit the existence of something you might call the Warmist climate closet. It’s the one where they refuse to come out and walk the talk, make their own lives carbon neutral, starting with a refusal to use fossil fuels.

For those Republicans still cowering in the closet, I have a question: If we really decided to commit the nation in all its might to solving this problem, do you not believe that American ingenuity and American industry could get the job done?

Sure, there are a few Big Government type Republicans who’ve bought into what the Cult of Climastrology is selling. The rest of us realize that this is all a scam. Heck, even if the climatic change since the end of the Little Ice Age was/is mostly or solely caused by the actions of Mankind, we aren’t going to buy into it, due to said massive Big Government policies, taking away our freedom, choice, and skyrocketing our cost of living, while also making us more dependent of government with their silly carbon tax schemes.

And climate cultists still won’t practice what they preach.

Read: Climate Cultists Wants To Know When Republicans Will Come Out Of The Climate Closet Or Something »

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Sleepy Joe Biden Wants To Ban Scary Looking Rifles Because It Totally Worked Last Time

By William Teach August 12, 2019 – 7:56 am

It’s time for Joe Biden to pander to the hard-left, apparently, on firearms. He never seemed to have a problem with his boss, Barack Obama, running over 2,500 firearms into Mexico during Operation Fast and Furious, which were involved in hundreds of Mexicans, including children, being wounded and killed, as well as used to kill to U.S. Border Patrol agents, and even showed up during a terrorist attack in Paris.

Banning Assault Weapons Works

We have a huge problem with guns. Assault weapons — military-style firearms designed to fire rapidly — are a threat to our national security, and we should treat them as such. Anyone who pretends there’s nothing we can do is lying — and holding that view should be disqualifying for anyone seeking to lead our country.

I know, because with Senator Dianne Feinstein I led the effort to enact the 1994 law that banned assault weapons and high-capacity magazines for 10 years. Those gun safety reforms made our nation demonstrably more secure.

I fought hard to extend the assault weapons and high-capacity magazines bans in 2004. The Republicans who allowed these laws to expire asserted that they were ineffective. But, almost 15 years after the bans expired, with the unfortunate benefit of hindsight, we now know that they did make a difference.

Many police departments have reported an increase in criminals using assault weapons since 2004. And multiple analyses of the data around mass shootings provide evidence that, from 1994 to 2004, the years when assault weapons and high-capacity magazines were banned, there were fewer mass shootings — fewer deaths, fewer families needlessly destroyed.

The ban was a failure. It didn’t reduce crime. It didn’t reduce shootings. All it caused to happen was that law abiding citizens couldn’t purchase a weapon that was lighter and easier to use than a standard rifles which had the exact same rate of fire and used the same round. And those non-scary looking rifles were used more often by criminals in crimes.

We have to get these weapons of war off our streets.

Gotta get those talking points in.

And if I am elected president, we’re going to pass them again — and this time, we’ll make them even stronger. We’re going to stop gun manufacturers from circumventing the law by making minor modifications to their products — modifications that leave them just as deadly. And this time, we’re going to pair it with a buyback program to get as many assault weapons off our streets as possible as quickly as possible.

He doesn’t explicitly state it, but, that sure looks like he plans on banning people who currently own them from having them, does it not? Why else have a “buyback”? Because most owners will not sell them back, unless they are old and worn out, and they want the money to get a new rifle. I’ll believe Joe is serious when he forces the law enforcement that protects him and other elected officials to stop carrying real weapons of war, since they often have ones which you and I cannot have, including automatic rifles.

I won’t stop there. I’ll get universal background checks passed, building on the Brady Bill, which establishing the background check system and which I helped push through Congress in 1993. I’ll accelerate the development and deployment of smart-gun technology — something gun manufacturers have opposed — so that guns are keyed to the individual biometrics of authorized owners.

Most of these mass shooters passed a background check, excepting those who are running around the streets of Democratic Party run cities with gun control that disarms law abiding citizens who want to protect themselves while doing nothing about the actual criminals. So, won’t make a difference. Joe should arm his security detail with smart guns. They’ll be thrilled with the .22 caliber ones, right? Perhaps he should talk to NJ, which stalled development.

This is all about pushing the emotionalism to grab guns and making it harder for law abiding citizens to engage in their Constitutional right, particularly those who want to protect themselves. None of this effects criminals in the least. Why is it that Democrats always want to punish people who had nothing to do with a crime?

(Red State) What’s worse, in the greater scheme of things, rifles as a category of weapons, used in the commission of a murder constituted just 403 out of a total 15,129 according to the 2017 DOJ/FBO Uniform Crime Report (UCR). That’s 2.67 percent. One study claims that semi-automatic rifles were used in just 25 percent of mass shootings.

According to the UCR the following instruments were used more often to kill people than rifles of any type: Knives (1,591); Blunt objects, hammers, bats etc (467); and finally, Hands/Fists & Feet (696).

One more little data point. There are somewhere between 15 and 20 million Modern Sporting Rifles in America. Using the low number and assuming for the sake of argument that all the rifles in the 2017 UCR were Modern Sporting Rifles, 403 divided by 15 million means that less than 3 thousandths of a percent of the Modern Sporting Rifles in these United States, were used in the commission of a murder.

Yeah, but gun grabbers gotta gun grab.

Read: Sleepy Joe Biden Wants To Ban Scary Looking Rifles Because It Totally Worked Last Time »

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NY Times Really Wants To Talk About Your Manicured Lawn And ‘Climate Change’ Or Something

By William Teach August 11, 2019 – 3:01 pm

So, does this mean we have to get rid of Central Park? How about The Mall in D.C.?

From the link

America’s manicured front lawns represent the pride of homeownership, and the cultivation of community. But the ways we maintain them risk hurting the environment and contributing to climate change. So why do we even have lawns in the first place? We traced their history, starting with early European colonists.

Below, you’ll find some of the sources that helped us the most and other tidbits we weren’t able to fit into the video.

The video is absurd climate cultists nutbaggery. Seriously, these wankers have to link everything to ‘climate change’. Nice lawns predate the United States itself. But, they have to drag Hotcoldwetdry in because that’s what cultists do.

  • Speaking of climate data, in 2005, NASA published this report on a quest to quantify how much area lawns take up in the United States.
  • The Times’ “Climate Fwd:” newsletter published some tips on how to lessen your lawn care’s environmental impact.

Piss off.

BTW, you have to wonder as to how many employees of the Times have nice lawns.

Read: NY Times Really Wants To Talk About Your Manicured Lawn And ‘Climate Change’ Or Something »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach August 11, 2019 – 1:00 pm

…is a world flooded by carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Don Surber, with a post on using Biden’s own words to beat him.

It’s ladies with guns week.

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Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

By William Teach August 11, 2019 – 9:13 am

Patriotic Pinup EB Segner

Happy Sunday! Another gorgeous day in America. The Sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the lizards are sunning on my deck. This pinup is by E.B. Segner, with a wee bit of help.

What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. Legal Insurrection delves into the Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theories
  2. Mahablog (one of my favorite lefty blogs) also dives deep into Epstein’s death and how it stinks
  3. Chicks On The Right discusses who the guy asking for a gun to kill 200 at Walmart is
  4. Free North Carolina covers liberal Trump haters making politics entirely too personal
  5. Geller Report News notes women fleeing “moderate” Morocco over threats of beheading for wearing shorts
  6. Jihad Watch discusses Palestinians handing out candy after the murder of an Israeli civilian
  7. Moonbattery covers raising a generation of disoriented degenerates
  8. neo-necon says that Biden’s gaffe is the Left’s truth
  9. Pacific Pundit notes Castro’s doxxing backfire
  10. Powerline covers Jew hater Rashida Tlaib meeting with Janna Jihad
  11. Raised On Hoecakes notes that the data on racism doesn’t support the hypothesis
  12. Say Anything wonders how Democrats can reach out to rural voters when they hate rural voters
  13. The Daley Gator covers The Truth being meaningless to the Left
  14. The First Street Journal says Tulsi Gabbard is the least worst of the Democrats running
  15. And last, but not least, The Deplorable Climate Science Blog covers the climate crisis vs weather

As always, the full set of pinups can be seen in the Patriotic Pinup category, or over at my Gallery page (nope, that’s gone, the newest Apache killed access, and the program hasn’t been upgraded since 2014). While we are on pinups, since it is that time of year, have you gotten your “Pinups for Vets” calendar yet? And don’t forget to check out what I declare to be our War on Women Rule 5 and linky luv posts and things that interest me

Don’t forget to check out all the other great material all the linked blogs have!

Anyone else have a link or hotty-fest going on? Let me know so I can add you to the list. And do you have a favorite blog you can recommend be added to the feedreader?

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Washington Post Has Ideas On Solving Mass Shootings Or Something

By William Teach August 11, 2019 – 8:05 am

They end up missing the mark on what’s going on and how to solve it by a tiny bit a mile

Mass shootings are becoming routine. It doesn’t have to be this way.

THE TIME of mourning for the victims of mass shootings in America, including those a week ago in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, may never end. The time for policymaking action, though, has definitely arrived. It is long overdue.

The United States faces a grave threat to public safety. The Post reports that mass shootings took place roughly twice a year between 1966 and the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in 1999. Between Columbine and the slaughter at a predominantly African American church in Charleston, S.C., in June 2015, the pace was roughly five times a year. Since the white-supremacist attack in Charleston, there’s been one almost every six weeks. And these data reflect a restrictive definition of mass shootings: those that claimed at least four lives, not including perpetrators, in public places or large private gatherings. GunViolenceArchive.org’s broader definition, which encompasses a wider-range of multiple-victim shootings, fatal and nonfatal — including those tied to such crimes as robbery and domestic abuse — produces 254 just this year, through last Wednesday.

The majority of those “mass shootings” actually occur in the streets of Democratic Party run cities and states with heavy gun control.

Background checks and so-called red-flag laws, the subject of another bill backed by Sens. Lindsey O.Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), represent only the bare minimum of reform. To tackle the specific, acute problem of mass public shootings, Congress must address the actual hardware: assault-style firearms, along with large-capacity magazines. Both should be banned, as assault weapons were at the federal level between 1994 and 2004, and as the law in several states already provides.

Would this include banning the weapons and mags currently owned after being purchased legally? They don’t say. If history is to be believed, there would be a blanket ban on “large” magazines for current owners, like in California and New York. And when those bans do not work? What’s next? Ban all semi-autos, including handguns and hunting rifles? Perhaps with almost impossible to get permits? The Australia/New Zealand solution? New Zealand banned pretty much all semi-autos excluding .22 rimfire rifles. So, cannot even have a big hunting rifle unless it is bolt action. No semi-auto handguns. Even pump-action shotguns holding more than 5 shells are banned.

What’s next? Revolvers? Because criminals will just go with those next. How about those .22’s, when they are used for crime. The gun grabbing never ends.

In emphasizing measures to stop mass public shootings, we do not forget that the vast majority of gun-related death occurs in — alas — more ordinary contexts. Suicide, street crime and domestic violence are chronic problems, and they also cry out for intelligent response. But what we must refer to as “conventional” homicide has waned even as mass public shootings have increased. Swift action aimed specifically at this socially destabilizing phenomenon is a must, lest our public spaces become places of permanent latent anxiety, subject to random lethal attack — or, as occurred in Times Square the other day, panicked stampedes at the sound of a motorcycle backfire.

So, what are they going to do about those? Taking away guns will not stop suicides. Democrats have been uber-soft on crime for decades. The last one who cared was Bill Clinton. Since then, their policies are like over-cooked pasta or ice cream in the sun. And, again, if “gun violence” has increased tremendously in super-gun restrictive areas like Baltimore, Chicago, New Jersey, and California, among others, how does taking lawfully purchased items away from law abiding citizens, turning them into criminals if they possess them, make a difference?

Read: Washington Post Has Ideas On Solving Mass Shootings Or Something »

Posted in 2nd Amendment, Current Affairs | 7 Comments | Trackback URL

Climahypocrisy: Head Of Flight Attendant’s Union Super Concerned Over Climate Scam

By William Teach August 10, 2019 – 3:47 pm

Sarah Nelson, President of the Association of Flight Attendants, is not concerned enough to stop her own high flying ways, but, she does seem adamant about putting all her Comrades out of a job

Flight Attendants President says ‘We Know Climate Change Is a Huge Threat’

Sara Nelson, who will open the first panel at the LNS Labor Convergence on Climate in June, is international president of the Association of Flight Attendants representing 50,000 workers across 20 airlines. In a recent article for Vox, Nelson writes that flight attendants and airline workers have been told by some pundits that the Green New Deal, will ground all air travel. But Nelson says, “That’s absurd. It’s not the solutions to climate change that kills jobs. Climate change itself is the job killer.”

“Extreme turbulence” she writes “is on the rise around the world. It isn’t just nauseating or scary — it’s dangerous.” Severe turbulence is becoming more frequent and intense “due in part to climate change.” For flight attendants, “these incidents pose a serious occupational risk.” And as extreme weather events become more common, more and more flights never take off at all. When the polar vortex plunged most of the US into a deep freeze in January, airlines canceled more than 2,000 flights. Heatwaves, thunderstorms, and other effects of climate change similarly make it impossible for airplanes to fly. “Grounded flights mean lost pay for flight attendants, who earn an hourly wage while we’re in the air.”

Nelson says, “Our federal government must spearhead a national mobilization that brings these efforts together, harnesses American ingenuity, creates millions of well-paying union jobs, and saves the planet for our children. That is the vision of the Green New Deal resolution. It’s the moonshot of our time.”

When is she giving up her own fossil fueled flights world killing ways?

Read: Climahypocrisy: Head Of Flight Attendant’s Union Super Concerned Over Climate Scam »

Posted in Climahypocrites, Global Warming | 7 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach August 10, 2019 – 1:00 pm

…is a fish made gigantic due to carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Bunkerville, with a post on California preferring free range rats over humans.

Read: If All You See… »

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Who’s Up For A Green New Deal “Climate Corps”?

By William Teach August 10, 2019 – 10:32 am

It would be great having a bunch of government funded green shirts running around telling you how to live your life, right?

(Washington Post) Democrats running for president on promises to slow climate change are asking young people to do more than just vote for them. Many White House hopefuls are laying out plans to put teenagers and 20-somethings to work guarding the country against the worst effects of global warming.

Core to a number of Democrats’ climate plans is the creation of a “climate corps.” Akin to the Peace Corps launched in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy as a soft-power check against Russia, a climate-focused national service program would tackle what many presidential candidates see as this generation’s greatest challenge by putting young Americans to work planting trees, restoring wetlands and aiding victims of natural disasters.

The latest Democrat to propose such a program is Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who with Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) on Thursday will unveil a bill that would establish a new civilian corps focused on environmental stewardship.

Inspired by the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal-era work-relief program, Booker’s proposed Agriculture Department program would train, house and deploy youths from low-income and minority communities during two-year stints in the restoration of U.S. forests and wetlands.

Right, right, we totally need people who are triggered so badly by words that they have to go to safe rooms, freak out over improper use of pronouns, and melt-down over differing points of view to be involved in helping victims of disasters. I don’t see these city slickers doing well out in the wilderness, either. Besides the bugs and snakes and, well, nature, what if there’s no mobile service and/or wifi? How will they get a selfie to upload everytime they dig a hole? And, I don’t think the corps would allow them to wear a bathing suit or their underwear while working (because those are necessary while taking a selfie in nature, you know.) And constantly staring off into the woods to get a selfie would certainly be frowned upon, and wouldn’t get much done.

Eric Seleznow, former deputy assistant secretary at the Labor Department under President Barack Obama, cautioned administrators of any future climate corps to ensure that it gives participants marketable skills if they are going to promote it as a job-training program.

I don’t think planting trees, nagging people, and sexy selfies are really marketable skills. But, this is a good way to further indoctrinate kids into the climate cult.

Read: Who’s Up For A Green New Deal “Climate Corps”? »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Democrats, Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL
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