NY Times: Social Media Sites Really Need To Censor More

By William Teach October 20, 2018 – 7:33 am

Does anyone else think it’s rather reckless, and dangerous, for the editorial board of one of the world’s leading newspapers to call for censorship, even of things they call disinformation?

The Poison on Facebook and Twitter Is Still Spreading
Social platforms have a responsibility to address misinformation as a systemic problem, instead of reacting to case after case.

A network of Facebook troll accounts operated by the Myanmar militaryparrots hateful rhetoric against Rohingya Muslims. Viral misinformationruns rampant on WhatsApp in Brazil, even as marketing firms there buy databases of phone numbers in order to spam voters with right-wing messaging. Homegrown campaigns spread partisan lies in the United States.

The public knows about each of these incitements because of reporting by news organizations. Social media misinformation is becoming a newsroom beat in and of itself, as journalists find themselves acting as unpaid content moderators for these platforms.

It’s not just reporters, either. Academic researchers and self-taught vigilantes alike scour through networks of misinformation on social media platforms, their findings prompting — or sometimes, failing to prompt — the takedown of propaganda.

Funny, they aren’t worried about the disinformation coming from the actual news media. Regardless, they spend a lot of time on the subject, even patting “journalists” on the back for “exposing” this stuff.

The companies have all the tools at their disposal and a profound responsibility to find exactly what journalists find — and yet, clearly, they don’t. The role that outsiders currently play, as consumer advocates and content screeners, can easily be filled in-house. And unlike journalists, companies have the power to change the very incentives that keep producing these troubling online phenomena.

In other words, they want the platforms to censor the hell out of the content posted to the sites.

But throwing light on the coordinated misinformation campaigns flaring up all around us is a matter that is much bigger than the death of print — it’s essential to democracy. It can change the course of elections and genocides. Social media platforms are doing society no favors by relying on journalists to leach the poison from their sites. Because none of this is sustainable — and we definitely don’t want to find out what happens when the merry-go-round stops working.

But, what happens when they constantly censor the content? Is not free speech essential to democracy?

In fact, the Times’ editorial mentions Alex Jones, and was upset that Twitter refused to ban him initially. People should be very, very careful when they start calling for bannings and censorship, because they could be the next target.

Read: NY Times: Social Media Sites Really Need To Censor More »

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Washington Post Asks When Murders Matter

By William Teach October 20, 2018 – 7:16 am

Like so many media outlets, the Washington Post is in high dudgeon over the murder if a journalist. But, only one specific journalist, and puts an editorial in the straight news section

Analysis: The world has a question for the White House: When do murders matter?

For nearly three weeks, the world has watched President Trump downplay the disappearance and apparent slaying of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and waited for the most powerful man in the world to act. They are waiting still.

Trump’s inconsistent and cautious remarks about the case have renewed questions about U.S. credibility and complicated the global response, emboldening adversaries such as Russia and China and discouraging a robust response from traditional allies, according to analysts and former U.S. officials.

“This is a drastic break from American practice,” said Vali R. Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “It signals a very different foreign policy that does not hold governments accountable for things that are outside normal legal or ethical parameters.”

“In effect,” he added, “The U.S. is setting a new standing for itself” — and in so doing, may be setting a new standard for the world.

We can stop there. We know where this is going. Trump Derangement Syndrome. And, really, if it had been Jeb!, Marco, Ted, Chris, or any other Republican, they would have been able to do no right. Consider

(Breitbart) Let’s assume the terrible rumors are true, that an unsuspecting Jamal Khashoggi walked into a Saudi consulate in Istanbul only to be tortured and killed.

While there is no question that is an awful thing and we should all feel terrible for him and his family, in the overall, existential scheme of things, it is time to turn off CNN and stop playing pretend.

These things happen pretty much every day in that part of the world, and now we are being conned… Conned by the establishment media with a shiny piece of fake news.

According to the media, over the likely death of Khashoggi, we are now supposed to get twisted into all sorts of knots and drop our support of Donald Trump and want to blow up America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia (our most important ally in the fight against Iran) and give up a $100 billion arms sale that will benefit America and Americans because … a non-American was killed not on American soil.

In fact, the Washington Post has an article on just that, a call to end those arms sales.

What is flat-out immoral, though, is the establishment media trying to gaslight us into believing a journalist’s life is more sacred than that of a truck driver, construction worker, schoolteacher, or — God forbid — a child.

And yet, in a terrible world where every day in this country innocent children go missing, young black men are gunned down in Chicago, women are raped and murdered, the media demand we pour all of emotional energy and empathy, not to mention our government’s diplomatic resources, into the murder of a journalist because … journalism.

Of course, the same media have ignored the 30 Mexican journalists murdered since 2016. They’ve ignored murders of other journalists around the world. What makes this one so big? It’s right back to harming relations with Saudi Arabia (which they didn’t care about when Obama was in office, you know). The same media shrugged their shoulders when at least 200 Mexicans, including children, were shot and some were killed by rifles coming from Obama’s Fast and Furious gun running scheme. Nor did they care much about the Americans murdered with those guns. Nor have they cared about murders by MS-13 and other illegal aliens, because that helps Trump.

The same media was rather blase’ over the horrible things ISIS was doing in the Middle East, because their rise made Obama look bad.

Further, where were the complaints against Iran from the Leftist media when Obama was doing his Iran deal thing? A horribly repressive government which murders its own citizens willy nilly. The same media never had a problem with Iran being implicated in the killing of U.S. military members, primarily through Iran bringing IEDs into Iraq. There was no care among the leftist media that Iran had the blood of our troops on their hands, because they wanted Obama to have a win.

And who could benefit from all this Khashoggi stuff? Iran. And the media can use the murder to bash Trump, in a hope to help out Democrats in the midterms.

Read: Washington Post Asks When Murders Matter »

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Strange: “Cities Account For Over 70% Of Carbon Emissions Globally”

By William Teach October 19, 2018 – 4:08 pm

CityLab is super excited to tell us about what local climate actions would have the greatest effect, which include several ideas from different Warmist

  • Focus on transit and transportation (forcing people to take mass transit while regulating away fossil fueled vehicles (except for big wigs and celebs, of course))
  • Create ‘go zones’ (which is about implementing massive fees for using fossil fueled vehicles in cities)
  • Take pressure off the central business district (limiting where businesses can be so every can (and will be forced) to take mass transit, walk, ride a bike, take an e-scooter, etc)
  • Mandate clean energy (implementing by government force alternative energy sources that aren’t ready for primetime)
  • Require buildings to be carbon-zero (massive government regulation that dramatically increases housing and business costs)

In the go zones one we learn

But if cities consume more than two-thirds of the world’s energy and account for over 70 percent of carbon emissions globally, they are also key to the climate change solution. Immediate steps by cities to make themselves more sustainable and resilient are possible, and many are already acting: committing to renewable energy, setting emissions targets, and pledging to stick to the Paris climate agreement goals.

Well, there you go. Big cities which tend to be run by leftists who are manmade climate change Believers are bad for ‘climate change’. Huh. When will they all give up their own use of fossil fueled vehicles and go to strictly alternatives to provide them with the power to run 30 story buildings?

Oh, and notice that this is all about government forcing people to do the things that Warmists refuse to voluntarily do.

Read: Strange: “Cities Account For Over 70% Of Carbon Emissions Globally” »

Posted in AGW Socialism, Global Warming | 2 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach October 19, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…is an ocean soon to rise dozens of feet, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Daley Gator, with a post on realistic looking BB guns.

Read: If All You See… »

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Trump Failing To Join The Cult Of Climastrology Is A Crime Against Humanity

By William Teach October 19, 2018 – 12:00 pm

Remember, folks, this is all about Science! Here we have CNN publishing Jeffrey Sachs, professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia Universit, losing his mind

Trump’s failure to fight climate change is a crime against humanity

President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Rick Scott, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and others who oppose action to address human-induced climate change should be held accountable for climate crimes against humanity. They are the authors and agents of systematic policies that deny basic human rights to their own citizens and people around the world, including the rights to life, health, and property. These politicians have blood on their hands, and the death toll continues to rise.

As the Earth warms due to the continued burning of coal, oil, and gas, climate-related disasters that include high-intensity hurricanes, floods, droughts, extreme precipitation, forest fires, and heat waves, pose rising dangers to life and property. Hurricanes become more destructive as warmer ocean waters feed more energy to the storms. Warmer air also carries more moisture for devastating rainfalls, while rising sea levels lead to more flooding.

Trump remains in willful denial of the thousands of deaths caused by his government’s inept, under-funded, and under-motivated response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last year. The image that will remain in history is of the President gleefully throwing paper towels for a photo op as the people of Puerto Rico around him suffered and died of neglect. Last month, Hurricane Florence claimed at least 48 deaths, with more likely to come in its aftermath. This past week Hurricane Michael has claimed at least 32 lives, with more than a thousand people reportedly still missing. The final death toll will likely soar in the months ahead as the residual consequences of the storm become more clear.

Yet Trump and his minions are the loyal servants of the fossil-fuel industry, which fill Republican party campaign coffers. Trump has also stalled the fight against climate change by pulling out of the Paris Agreement. The politicians thereby deprive the people of their lives and property out of profound cynicism, greed, and willful scientific ignorance.

The first job of government is to protect the public. Real protection requires climate action on several fronts: educating the public about the growing dire risks of human-induced climate change; enacting legislation and regulations to ensure that families and businesses are kept out of harm’s way, for example by stopping construction in flood plains, and investing in sustainable infrastructure to counteract rising sea levels; anticipating the rising frequency of high-intensity climate-related disasters through science-based preparedness following through on properly scaled disaster-response during and after storm events; and most importantly for the future, spearheading the rapid transition to zero-carbon energy to prevent much greater calamities in the years ahead.

This unhinged screed goes on for a while, but, really, if we want to talk about those who have committed crimes against humanity, wouldn’t that involve all those who say they believe the climatic changes are mostly/solely caused by Mankind refusing to give up their own use of fossil fuels and make their lives carbon neutral?

While dozens died during the storm, thousands more died as a result of the residual effects of the storm. Maria downed electricity and wreaked havoc on the ability of Puerto Ricans to meet their life-sustaining needs by disrupting access to health services, safe water, and transportation. They died, in short, from the storm, and ultimately from inadequate disaster prevention, preparedness and response.

Well, really, wouldn’t all those deaths from the hurricanes (which have always happened) be Obama’s fault? He had eight years to “stop” climate change, yet, really did nothing. I mean, the Democrats and their media were blaming things on Bush 4 years into Obama’s first term. So, this would be considered an “inherited problem”, would it not? Not that this is real. Anywhere between 6,000 and 12,000 lost their lives during the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900. Back when CO2 levels were well under the “safe” level of 350ppm, and fossil fueled vehicles weren’t widespread.

And let’s not forget that the Democrats who run Puerto Rico were completely incompetent. And that Obama left Trump with a FEMA that wasn’t up to the job!!!!!! Except they were. They did the job as they are supposed to. Management. That’s what they do. They aren’t there to rescue, and they can’t make governments do anything.

The huge bills for Hurricanes Florence and Michael will now start rolling in: funerals, suffering, sorting through debris, and perhaps $30 billion in losses that could have been reduced dramatically through science-based planning and foresight. The American people are paying a heavy cost for the cynicism and cruelty of politicians in the pocket of the fossil-fuel industry. It is time to hold these reckless politicians to account.

What does he mean by that? Sounds violent.

Read: Trump Failing To Join The Cult Of Climastrology Is A Crime Against Humanity »

Posted in AGW Socialism, Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

Bummer: Trump Amps Up Immigration Fight For Midterms

By William Teach October 19, 2018 – 7:11 am

How dare President Trump attempt to enforce federal law and protect the sovereignty as dictated by the U.S. Constitution!

Trump amps up immigration fight for midterms

President Trump is stepping up attacks on some of his favorite targets — immigrants, Mexico and Democrats — amid reports that a “caravan” of Honduran migrants is headed to the U.S. border.

With the midterms less than three weeks away, the president is demonizing the band of approximately 4,000 Central Americans as a direct threat to public safety and U.S. national security, amplifying a law-and-order message that helped propel him to the White House.

“I am watching the Democrat Party led (because they want Open Borders and existing weak laws) assault on our country by Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, whose leaders are doing little to stop this large flow of people, INCLUDING MANY CRIMINALS, from entering Mexico to U.S.,” Trump tweeted on Thursday.

The message appears timed both to energize the Republican base ahead of the Nov. 6 elections and shift the political dialogue away from a series of controversies dogging the White House heading into Election Day, not least Trump’s defense of Saudi Arabia amid growing evidence the kingdom’s leaders are behind the disappearance, and apparent murder, of a Saudi columnist for the Washington Post.

Immigration experts, advocates and political operatives widely view Trump’s latest attacks as a messaging tactic designed to rally conservative voters to the polls, as Republicans are scrambling to protect majorities in the House and Senate.

Can you imagine a politicians doing this? Shocking! But, Trump actually means what he says, and attempts to do something about it, not just talk about it. And he’s managed to get Mexico to send hundreds of riot police to the Mexica-Guatemala border for that caravan of low skill, low wage people who would immediately be sucking up safety net resources that would be better off going to actual U.S. citizens.

(Canada Free Press) In a startling revelation, Guatemala’s president announced in the country’s largest newspaper that nearly 100 ISIS terrorists have been apprehended in the impoverished Central American nation. Why should Americans care about this?

A caravan of Central American migrants is making its way north. Let’s not forget that Guatemala is one of the countries that bombarded the U.S. with illegal immigrant minors under Barack Obama’s open border free-for-all. They came in droves from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala through the Mexican border and for years Uncle Sam rolled out the welcome mat offering housing, food, medical treatment and a free education.

A terrorist could have easily slipped in considering the minors, coined Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), were not properly vetted and some turned out to be violent gangbangers who went on to commit heinous crimes in their adopted land of opportunity. In fact, the nation’s most violent street gang, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), was energized by the barrage of UACs.

Huh.

Read: Bummer: Trump Amps Up Immigration Fight For Midterms »

Posted in Donald Trump, Illegal Immigration | 28 Comments | Trackback URL

Washington Post: Republicans Are Running Mean Ads Against Democrats Or Something

By William Teach October 19, 2018 – 6:53 am

This is completely shocking. No one ever runs criticism of the opposing political party. Not ever!

GOP war room blasts endless stream of criticism at Democrats, with Warren its latest target

The Republican Party’s research director, Mike Reed, found out about Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test before he got out of bed Monday. From his bedroom, the GOP attack machine started whirring.

At the White House, President Trump and his aides initially downplayed the news. Adviser Kellyanne Conway told reporters “that doesn’t interest me” and Trump said “Who cares?” when asked about the new evidence that the Massachusetts Democrat had Native American heritage.

But the Republican story began to change at 9:46 a.m., when Reed blasted out his first email to thousands of reporters and allies, laying out new talking points for his side — that Warren’s test result showed a “minuscule” percentage of native heritage in her DNA and would not end the political problems that had beset her since opponents suggested she had advanced her career by claiming such ancestry. (snip)

And it was another trophy for a team of about 60 GOP researchers, bookers and attack dogs who spend their time churning out the ammunition that conservative media and Trump supporters use daily to pummel the president’s foes.

The relentless stream of carefully curated — and sometimes misleading — political hits has been throwing Democrats off message for months while steadily stoking the daily fires of conservative outrage that power Trump’s political movement.

OMG, this is horrible! Now do the Democrat war room.

See, the problem here is that Democrats are not used to Republicans fighting back hard in essentially the same manner as Democrats. Though no one has run a commercial where granny is literally being thrown off a cliff.

“Democrats don’t have the benefit of the conservative media echo chamber emanating out from Fox News, so it will always look a bit different on our side,” he added. (that’s Josh Schwerin of the ultra-leftist Priorities USA)

Right, right, they don’t have NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN (in every airport), NY Times, LA Times, Time, USA Today, Newsweek, etc and so on. Oh, and the Washington Post.

Democratic consultants expect the public attacks on Trump over social media to increase dramatically after the midterm. “Come November 7, it will fall on the shoulders of the Democratic Party to run interference for its field of potential nominees,” Brad Woodhouse, who was the communications director for the party in the 2012 cycle, said in an email. “Daily, relentless and no holds barred.”

Huh. So…..Dems do it too, and it’s no big deal?

That point was underscored when the Boston Globe, which broke news of the DNA test, corrected its own story to report that Warren’s test suggested that as little as 1/1024 of her genome might come from Native American heritage.

“We went from shrugged shoulders to raised eyebrows,” Kelly Conway said. “What our rapid response has been able to do is break through the noise.”

And it’s about damned time that Republicans are fighting back in a sustained manner.

Read: Washington Post: Republicans Are Running Mean Ads Against Democrats Or Something »

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Nancy Pelosi Promises Collateral Damage To Those Who Don’t Agree With Democrats

By William Teach October 18, 2018 – 6:58 pm

This does not sound threatening in the least, does it? Dare I say this is the type of thing you read about in 3rd world nations when the opposition takes control? Or, to use the Libs favorite, something that would emanate from Nazis?

(Breitbart)  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told a gathering at the 92nd Street Y in New York on Sunday that there may have to be “collateral damage” to those Americans who do not agree with the Democratic Party agenda.

Pelosi was being interviewed onstage by Paul Krugman, the left-wing New York Timescolumnist and Nobel economic laureate who predicted, the day Donald Trump won the presidency, that Trump would trigger “a global recession, with no end in sight.”

In a long, rambling monologue, during which she stumbled on her words and appeared to lose her train of thought, Pelosi said:

We have to have total clarity about what we do, when it comes to everything — a woman’s right to choose, gay marriage … whether it’s about immigration, whether it’s about gun safety, whether it’s about climate … I think that we owe the American people to be there for them, for their financial security, respecting the dignity and worth of every person in our country, and if there’s some collateral damage for some others who do not share our view, well, so be it, but it shouldn’t be our original purpose.

What does she mean? Breitbart’s Joel Pollack doesn’t want to go down the hole beyond noting that Dems have vowed to go after those who are not believers in man caused climate change, but, really, we see what they’re doing now. The violence, assaults, harassment, doxing, and so forth. They have zero tolerance for anyone who doesn’t share their viewpoints, and have hardened their position for quite some time, but especially since Trump won. When Democrats say things like this, don’t discount it as hyperbole. They usually mean it, especially when it is an off-the-cuff remark.

Read: Nancy Pelosi Promises Collateral Damage To Those Who Don’t Agree With Democrats »

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If All You See…

By William Teach October 18, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…are leaves dying from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Other McCain, with a post on what Dems are doing now that the Blue Wave is collapsing.

Read: If All You See… »

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Trump’s Hotcoldwetdry Denial Is A War On Our Health Or Something

By William Teach October 18, 2018 – 10:30 am

We’re totally doomed or something

Said headline has also changed for this long, long, long screed by David Wallace-Wells

Trump’s Climate Denial Isn’t Just a War on Our Coastlines. It’s a War on Our Brains.

The list of crimes Donald Trump has committed against the planet, in just two years, is already so impeachably long that his slippery-fish climate denial registers as hardly more than a footnote. “I have a natural instinct for science,” the president bragged to the Associated Press Tuesday, a week after the U.N.’s IPCC raised the alarm on global warming that is much faster, and more horrifying, than it had acknowledged before. “And I will say that you have scientists on both sides of the picture,” said Trump. On Sunday, Lesley Stahl pressed the president on his contention that there were scientists saying that extreme weather had been worse in the past: “Who says that? ‘They say’?” Trump responded, defensively, “People say. People say.”

It was an especially grotesque demonstration of bad faith, given that just weeks ago, his administration had announced that, as a matter of climate policy, it was now assuming a worst-case global warming scenario — four degrees Celsius this century, an assumption suggesting that any effort to regulate American emissions would be effectively pointless. In the blink of an eye, the Republican Party seemed to pass directly from insisting that global warming isn’t happening to taking for granted a climate hellscape so inevitable that there’s nothing we can, or should, do about it.

It’s so umpeachably long that those offenses weren’t included. But, lots of doomy prognostications were included

This is very bad. The term “small-particulate” suggests a trivial form of pollution, but while the particles are small, the effects are actually enormous. About 9 million people die each year, globally, from small-particulate pollution — that is one out of every six deaths everywhere on the planet. This year, scientists estimated that the death toll from particulate pollution in a world two degrees warmer would be 150 million higher than at 1.5 degrees. In the U.S., the numbers are smaller, but not that much smaller: a 2013 study found 200,000 preventable deaths each year, in the U.S., from air pollution. And “lesser” effects are pervasive, too, and horrifying: small-particulate pollution causes dramatic drops in cognition, significant increases in the prevalence of mental illness, and is “strongly correlated” with dementia.

Well, yes, it does cause artificial dementia, well, let’s just call it insanity, in the membership of the Cult of Climastrology. We witness this daily. Of course, in this case, what they’re trying to do is link actual pollutants with trace amounts of carbon dioxide, a trace gas necessary for life on Earth. Wallace-Wells goes down the rabbit hole in mentioning that brain functions went up in China as they attempted to reduce pollution, which is certainly true. But, it was actually real pollutants that are “small particulate”. The same has occurred when lead particulates are reduced. But that isn’t CO2, and the doomsaying has been out of control for a long, long time.

If CO2 is so bad, then why

Read: Trump’s Hotcoldwetdry Denial Is A War On Our Health Or Something »

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