Archive for November, 2020

Ach-ptooie, Twitter and Facebook hate conservatives–Hello Parler

Posted: November 8, 2020 by John Ruberry in business, culture, elections, News/opinion, politics
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

By John Ruberry

I’ve had my fill of Facebook and Twitter blocking friends of mine from posting there and having their accounts suspended. These two social media giants unapologetically back liberal political figures while using their might to crush conservative leaders–as well as rank-and-file supporters of the right side of the political spectrum.

The most recent victim of Twitter bumptiousness is Da Tech Guy himself, simply because he questioned the veracity of the presidential recounts in swing states. It happened today.

Meanwhile there is another social media site, Parler, where free speech is encouraged. I’m @marathonpundit there. Please follow me. While I haven’t deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts–I’ll be spending much less time there. Besides, I don’t want someone to steal my handles there.

On his show radio show Friday night Mark Levin announced his social media transition. Today on the platform he announced, “Hurry and follow me at Parler. I’m trying to encourage as many of you as possible to immediately join me there as I may not stay at Facebook or Twitter if they continue censoring me. And one day I’ll have left their platforms. Parler is a wonderful alternative and is growing, and we need you there ASAP. It believes in truly open speech. Thank you!”

In his well-deserved grilling by the US Senate last month, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey couldn’t come up with a solid answer on why he continually blocks President Trump’s Tweets about controversial COVID-19 treatments and election fraud. Meanwhile, a post from the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, questioning whether the Holocaust occurred, remains on the microblogging platform. When asked about if any other world leader, besides Trump, has had Tweets blocked, Dorsey couldn’t come up with any examples. 

Twitter is a Trump-hating and a conservative-hating site. I can’t think of a single incident of a liberal–famous or not–having their posts deleted or their accounts blocked. Just last week, for instance, reputed comedian Kathy Griffin reposted on Twitter her notorious photo where she holds the bloody head of President Trump. Don’t forget, threats of violence against the president violates federal law. What would happen to my Twitter account if I posted a similar shot with Joe Biden?

It’s not just “the guy in his pajamas” Tweeting at home who gets bullied. The New York Post, America’s oldest daily newspaper and its fourth-most read, saw its Twitter account suspended for 13 days because of stories it wrote and Tweeted regarding email revelations alleging graft gleaned from Hunter Biden’s laptop. The Twitter “gods” deemed these reports unsubstantiated–even though the Biden-Harris campaign never denied the Post’s stories. Another reason given by Twitter for the Post’s suspension was its claim that the paper was publishing “hacked” information. But Hunter’s laptop was obtained legally.

Contrast that behavior with Twitter’s non-response to the New York Times’ stories on President Trump’s federal income tax returns. Those returns were possibly retrieved by hacking–and that tax information was almost certainly illegally obtained by somebody.

Facebook isn’t quite as bad as Twitter in regards to censorship but it has a shameful free speech record too. Many of my friends have ended up in “Facebook jail” for pushing the envelope a bit as they challenge the leftist dogma. I’ve never hear about liberals being tossed into “Facebook jail.” And yes, I have liberal friends.

Twitter makes money on ads, mainly thru “Promoted Posts” that appear on its feed. If I am not on Twitter, I don’t see them. Just as when my television is switched off I don’t see commercials there. 

Facebook is downright creepy in its ad strategy. If I click “like” on a story for a sports team, shortly afterwards I’ll see ads on my Facebook page promoting hats and shirts for that team. A few hours after I arrived in Alaska this summer for a vacation this T-shirt ad on my FB page. “I may be in Anchorage but my heart is with the Chicago White Sox.” Does Facebook know when I use the men’s room? It gets worse. A couple of years ago–just five minutes after leaving the wake for a friend of mine–I was requested to write a review on Facebook for the funeral home that hosted the wake.

Facebook takes the predilections and overall activities of its users and essentially sells them to advertisers. In fact they are selling you to advertisers. Yep, you.

But if I’m not there, or not there very much, Facebook and Twitter will suffer. If millions of conservatives follow the same action they’s suffer a lot more.

Let’s think of social media hatred of conservatives this way. Imagine you are a member of an ethnic group that is disliked by the proprietors of the only two restaurants in town. You still eat at these places because sometimes you are hungry and you just don’t have the energy to prepare your down dinner. That is, until you find out that the cooks always spit into your sandwiches. 

Ach-ptooie! 

That’s what Facebook and Twitter is doing to conservatives. Spitting on them. 

Over 70 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. Let’s see if Facebook and Twitter can endure angering such a large segment of America. 

Patriots, it’s time to spit back.

Ach-ptooie!

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit. You can follow him on Parler @marathonpundit.

To Twitter: NUTS! DaTechGuyblog

Posted: November 8, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Got this notice from twitter in tweetdeck.

I checked my account and saw this

While I haven’t checked my email, I’ve determined that it’s over this tweet

Which linked to this Instapundit post

FACEBOOK WON’T ALLOW THIS LINK TO BE POSTED: Joe Biden’s votes violate Benford’s Law. It didn’t work when I tried.

They won’t let the shortened bit.ly version be posted either. Maybe the story’s wrong, maybe it isn’t, but this is bullshit.

I haven’t checked my email and I don’t intend to. If they let me back in after 12 hours fine. If they won’t unless I delete that tweet which didn’t like. I simply don’t care.

If it means I don’t do twitter, let me put it bluntly

As it says at the top of Stacy McCain’s site:

“One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up.” — Arthur Koestler

I had to be talked into joining twitter, I lived a whole life without it for decades, if I live my final 20 years without it that’s fine too.

I will write what I want. If they decide to lock me out fine, if they decide to ban me, fine.

I will not submit.

Update: Check my email and it said I’ve posted or shared:

“privately produced/distrubted intimate media of someone without their consent”

I literally have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. The tweet in question has no intimate media I presume it is simply a lie and pretense.

Because that’s what dishonorable people do.

Update 2: It just hit me that there are those who might not get the historical context behind my reply the story is here

The surrender demand from the Germans was as follows:

“December 22nd 1944

To the U.S.A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne.

The fortune of war is changing. This time the U.S.A.
forces in and near Bastogne have been encircled by strong
German armored units. More German armored units have crossed
the river Ourthe near Ortheuville, have taken Marche and
reached St. Hubert by passing through Hompre-Sibret-Tillet.
Libramont is in German hands.
There is only one possibility to save the encircled
U.S.A troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable
surrender of the encircled town. In order to think it over
a term of two hours will be granted beginning with the
presentation of this note.
If this proposal should be rejected one German
Artillery Corps and six heavy A. A. Battalions are ready
to annihilate the U.S.A. troops in and near Bastogne. The
order for firing will be given immediately after this two
hours’ term.
All the serious civilian losses caused by this
artillery fire would not correspond with the wellknown
American humanity.

The German Commander.”

The response:

“December 22, 1944

To the German Commander,

N U T S !

The American Commander”

Update 4: Well the time is up and apparently they demand the tweet to the Bedford Law’s piece be removed I’ve filled out the appeal saying the following:

You claim I posted or shared ” intimate media of someone with out their consent.” This is patently false as I linked to a statistical analysis concerning Bedford’s law found here

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/412499/

They say they can usually reply in a few days.

Either way the tweet is not going to be removed by me, particularly when their statement is patently false and in my opinion defamatory.

I will not submit

Did “Never Trumpers” have an effect on the election?

Posted: November 7, 2020 by ng36b in blogs, elections
Tags: , , ,

As the election counting, and soon to be recounting, rages on, there are plenty of people that tell me they just “couldn’t vote for Trump,” even though in theory they are conservatives. Personally, I vote based on what a candidate says they support, or has demonstrated they support, for policies that I care about, ranging from foreign policy and gun control to right to life and taxes, and then on a scale of how much I care about each. For example, I care more about foreign policy and abortion than taxes because I’m directly affected by foreign policy and I’ve seen first hand how pervasive abortion theory is in hospitals, but I’m not making enough money to care if the tax rate jumps significantly.

I also know that while I’m a policy voter, many people have an emotional connection to voting, and they have to “like” the candidate they are voting for. We can discuss whether that makes sense in another article, but we should recognize that candidate likeability does matter to many people. It’s likely what got Bill Clinton elected. But is likeability enough that it mattered to Trump’s election?

Although the data isn’t complete yet, I pulled Reuters election data and used Wikipedia for 2016 election data to try and answer the question: Did people not vote for Trump that would have voted for another Republican Presidential candidate that was more likeable? I sampled data by looking at states that had Senate races. My theory was that if someone was a “Never Trumper,” they would likely still vote for the Senate Republican in their state. I also looked at Libertarian votes to see if they made a difference. The states I ended up picking were Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, New Mexico, Alabama, Georgia, Minnesota and Colorado, in what I think is a pretty decent spread.

First, was their a surge in Libertarian votes? Not at all.

Just looking at raw numbers, Libertarian votes went down, in many cases drastically. 2016 was a banner year for Libertarian and Green Party vote, but this year they just did not have the turnout, despite running Jo Jorgenson, a very likeable candidate.

Second, was there a noticeable Never Trump vote? I calculated the difference between Presidential votes and Senate votes between parties and then compared them. The numbers aren’t 100% aligned. I calculated a scaling factor to multiply the Senate votes by to balance numbers. Then I took the difference from Senate Republicans vs Trump votes to see if there were “Never Trumper” votes. If there were, I then calculated if the difference mattered.

The results are interesting. In Arizona and Alabama, the number was negative, meaning Trump had more votes than the Senate Republican. In the 6 states where there was Never Trump votes, only one, Georgia, would have mattered.

While not 100% scientific, we can reach a few conclusions:

  1. The Never Trump vote is real, but not everywhere.
  2. Where there is a Never Trump vote, it mostly doesn’t always matter, even in swing states.
  3. Libertarian vote didn’t appreciably go up this year.

For Republicans, this is good and bad news. It means that the Never Trump faction isn’t nearly as big as the media might make it out to be. Better still, when people had a choice between a more likeable candidate (Jo Jorgensen), they actively chose not to vote for her, far more than the 2016 election would have indicated.

The bad news is that Biden wins in key states can’t be attributed to candidate hatred. Democrats ran a relatively weak, bland candidate, and he is either coming out on top or close to it. That means that overall people are looking favorably on Democrat candidates. Whether its the biased news media, demographics, vote rigging or policies, Republicans are not in a good spot, because short of major changes, they don’t have a chance at capturing the Presidency in the future.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

The Simple Test for Democrats / Media on Election 2020

Posted: November 7, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

There is a lot of Rhetoric going on concerning the late election, particularly on social media but no matter how much talk you spit out everything really comes down to one statement that should be asked of everybody:

After every legal and legitimate ballot is counted and every illegal an illegitimate ballot is eliminated the candidate, no matter if it is Trump or Biden, who has won enough states to acquire 270 or more electoral college votes should be sworn in as President of the United States on Jan 20th 2021?

Any person who can’t or won’t answer: “Yes” to this question should be ignored.

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