Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

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

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

Who Are You going to believe on Lincoln US the University of Wisconsin Student Government or Some Ignorant Uneducated Slaves That he freed?

Posted: November 1, 2020 by datechguy in culture, education, News/opinion
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On the left U of Wisconsin students on the right a black slave

We seem to have a difference of opinion on whether or not Abraham Lincoln was “anti black”.

On one side you have the highly educated Student government of the University of Wisconsin, a prestigious organization at a prestigious University full of students who have paid tens of thousands of dollars to be educated with the knowledge of the ages.

We previously discussed the effort at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to have the famous statue of Abraham Lincoln removed as racist.  The student government has now voted unanimously in favor of a resolution that calls for the removal of the Abraham Lincoln statue on campus. The students declared that the president who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, advocated for the 13th Amendment, and led the war against the South and slavery was “not pro-Black”

Well that certainly sounds definite! After all you have a bunch of highly educated people voting on this an not only voting on it agreeing with complete unanimity. And what kind of argument do we have against?

Leaving their squalid houses and their tar-paper shacks, an impenetrable cordon of newly freed blacks followed Lincoln down the rubble-strewn streets, starting with a handful and swelling into a thousand. “Bless the Lord!” they shouted. “The great Messiah! I knowed him as soon as I seed him. He’s in my heart four long years. Come to free his children from bondage. Glory hallelujah.” And Lincoln replied, “You are free. Free as air.” “I know I am free,” answered one old woman, “for I have seen Father Abraham and felt him.”

One of Lincoln’s aides asked the mass to step aside and allow the president to proceed, but to no avail. “After being so many years in the desert without water,” a man said happily, “it is mighty pleasant to be looking at las’ on our spring of life.” Weeping for joy, they strained to touch his hand; dizzy with exultation, they brushed his clothing to see that he was real; fearing that it was only a dream, they wiped their tears to make sure they were in fact looking out upon his face. Moved, Lincoln ignored his bodyguards and waded deeper into the thickening flock.

One black man, overcome by emotion, dropped to his knees, prompting the president to conduct a curbside colloquium on the meaning of emancipation. “Don’t kneel to me,” said the president. “That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank Him for the liberty you will enjoy hereafter.”

Well there you have it. Take a good look at that extract. Do you expect to take the opinion of a bunch of uneducated people living in “squalid houses and their tar-paper shacks” living near “rubble strewed streets” who can’t even speak proper English over college educated scholars? Cripes even Lincoln himself notes that he doesn’t deserve any credit saying: “You must kneel to God only and thank Him for the liberty you will enjoy hereafter”

I mean really those college students have the sum of human knowledge at their fingertip while those slaves only knew what they saw in front of them. They didn’t even have phones let alone the internet and we’re supposed to trust their opinion into account on if Lincoln was anti black over these elites just because they happen to be there?

The very idea!

Update: I just remember this clip from Ken Burns Classic The Civil War

That’s how crazy it has gotten. The opinion of the Woke student government of the University of Wisconsin on Abraham Lincoln has no converged with the opinion of Nathan Bedford Forest on Abraham Lincoln whose family didn’t like Lincoln’s name mentioned with one of the early leaders of the KKK.

And people actually mortgaged houses to pay to have their kids taught this.

Under the Fedora: Amy Without Objection, Democrats watching the Ark, Pope Adopts the Sullivan Rule, A Monty Python Irony, Mel’s all in for Biden and Biden’s Kick me sign

Posted: October 23, 2020 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, catholic, comedy, culture, elections, entertainment, News/opinion, politics
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Democrats decided to play one last stunt with the Amy Coney Barrett nomination replacing themselves with cardboard cutouts for what became a unanimous vote to send Amy Coney Barrett to the full senate with a positive recommendation.

Under the Committee rules you have to have at least two senators of the minority party to have a quorum allowing a vote but alas to have a quorum call you have to have at least one senator suggesting the absence of a quorum and that would have required at least one of them to abstain from their exercise in performance art.

I swear the left is entirely made up of failed wanna be actors.

Watching how this election process has turned out reminds me of the biblical tale of Noah’s Ark with Trump & his supporters as Noah. For a solid year the left / media have spent their time pointing and laughing at him and now as election day comes closer and closer the rain has started to fall and they are getting more and more nervious.

Election day will be like them watching the ark float away while they seek higher ground.

Speaking of the Bible and scripture The Pope latest actions of this week reminded of this quote:

He said to his disciples, “Things that cause sin will inevitably occur, but woe to the person through whom they occur.

It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.

Luke 17:1-2

Andrew Sullivan’s plan of working to redefine sin rather than struggling to overcome it has found a buyer in Rome. No word yet if he is going to apply this same standard to other mortal sins like having a mistress or other things.

As a Catholic I never realized how spoiled I was by a lifetime of Saintly Popes until Francis came along.

The real irony in watching Facebook determine this Monty Python Joke by the Babylon Bee

is an incitement to violence is that the Monty Python Crew was always fighting censorship from their TV show to the Life of Brian and even in their final performance when Eric Idle wrote a special skit to replace a censored scene on TV which made fun of said censorship.

Of course given that Eric Idle and John Cleese are both steadfastly against this president perhaps they don’t see this censorship of a joke hitting Trump opponents problematic.

(I’m not aware of any public position by Michael Palin or Terry Gilliam nor has any mystic produced a comment from beyond the grave from Terry Jones or Graham Chapman so I can’t comment on what they might think).

Update: After I wrote this post Facebook reversed itself claiming it was an automated system what done it:

I guess it all depends on what the word “manual” means.

Speaking of Comic genius Mel Brooks has in his 94th year decided to come out with a video endorsing Joe Biden and hitting Donald Trump before the election hitting him over COVID.

What I find really ironic and in fact comical is the timing Brooks investment of political capital. Not only is it unlikely to change any minds but at this point the battle is already lost. (and if he didn’t know it before the debate he likely knows it now. It’s sort of like jumping on a horse to join the Charge of the Light Brigade or Picket’s charge just at the moment when it’s clear they have failed. You’d think a comic genius would recognize when something is a joke.

Of course in fairness to Mel he’s likely deep in the Hollywood bubble and at his age he likely past the point of having to worry about offending the customers.

Although I’m wondering if this is a crazy as a fox move to make the left decide not to censor his movies after he’s gone to keep the Royalties coming for his son.

I was going to finish with Mel but I just watched the Debate and I can’t believe what I saw. Joe Biden could have just put a “kick me” sign on this rear and be done with it. What kind of idiot denies he ever opposed fracking and suggests that Trump put on his web site if he did?

Ignoring all else, nobody that stupid should be leading the US.

Big Media and Big Tech, the left-wing parents who adopted us, believe they know what is best for you

Posted: October 20, 2020 by John Ruberry in abortion, culture, elections, elections, entertainment, media, News/opinion, politics
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Bea Arthur as “Maude.”

By John Ruberry

I was raised by parents who kept a close eye on what my brothers and sisters and I watched on television. As we only had two TV sets, that was a very easy task for them as my folks didn’t socialize outside our home much. Until the early 1970s it was especially easy for them as television fare for the medium’s first 25 years was mostly G-rated fare. Otis Campbell’s drunkeness on the Andy Griffith Show was as bad as it got in the 1960s, although interestingly, the character was rarely shown consuming alcohol. 

So in 1972 when Bea Arthur’s eponymous character in Maude, in a two-episode storyline became pregnant–she pondered an abortion and then went through with it–my parents made sure that our televisions were tuned to a different station those nights.

Abortion was not only very controversial in 1972, it was illegal in most states, although Arthur’s character lived in New York, where it was not. At that time I didn’t even know what abortion was.

Nearly five decades later, Big Tech and Big Media are trying to control what I see on my computer and portable devices. And because broadcast and cable news often takes its lead from what they view as “elite” media, their decisions effect what I see on my TV.

Our “betters” in the media, working for CNN, MSNBC, as well as onetime somewhat fair but left-leaning print outlets such as the New York Times, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and Vanity Fair, are attempting to limit what information we consume. And in control of the metaphoric off switch is Big Tech, led by Twitter and Facebook. 

Stories that are harmful to the reputation to President Donald Trump blare across the media, such as reports on Trump’s tax returns. The New York Times did not publish those returns, but it reported on them. The Old Gray Lady won’t say how it got them, but assuming reports on the returns are accurate, who ever gained access to them and gave them to the Times broke the law. The stories on Trump’s tax returns, where it was reported that he paid as little as $750 in federal taxes, were reported pretty much everywhere by the media, and posted, reposted, Tweeted, and re-Tweeted on Facebook and Twitter.

“Kids, kids, come to the living room! You need to see this news story on TV!” 

Contrast Trump’s taxes to reports from the New York Post about the emails it accessed from a laptop that once belonged to Joe Biden’s troublesome son, Hunter. Because Hunter dropped of the computer at a repair shop and never bothered to pick it up, that computer became property of the shop’s owner. Emails found on that computer confirm accusations that Hunter used that Biden name to for influence peddling. Illegal? Maybe not. Sleazy? For sure. And the shop owner did not break the law.

And the media, with the exception of Fox News and other conservative news sources such as Breitbart, ignored or minimized coverage of Hunter Biden’s emails. Last week a Democratic Party shill masquerading as an ABC journalist, former Bill Clinton staffer George Stephanopoulos, didn’t ask Biden about the New York Post revelations. Yeah, I get it, the format was a town hall, but ABC chose the participants and it knew what questions they would ask. Contrast Biden’s friendly treatment to the grilling Trump received from Savannah Guthrie at the NBC town hall the same night. Guthrie is married to Michael Feldman, the traveling chief of staff for Al Gore in the 2000 election. Guthrie brought up Trump’s tax returns, among other things. 

That’s bad but what is worse is that Twitter and Facebook for a while blocked the posting and sharing of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden email revelations. And it wasn’t yokels like me who suffered the indignity. Trump’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, saw her Twitter account briefly suspended for Tweeting the Post’s Hunter story. The twisted explanation from Big Tech is that the Hunter Biden’s emails were hacked–they weren’t–and that the story was unverified. Remember, the NY Times never actually published Trump’s federal tax returns, which may have been hacked. But the Post did show images of some of Hunter’s emails. Even the New York Post’s Twitter account was suspended for a short time on the day it published the Hunter story.

“Kids…turn off that TV and go to your room!” 

Of course these media and tech big shots are our “betters.” Jeffrey Toobin, a CNN analyst and New Yorker writer, a product of Harvard University, is one of them. But yesterday Toobin was suspended by CNN and the New Yorker after exposing himself and more–click here for the X-rated details–during a Zoom call simulating election night scenarios. Toobin is a scumbag. He had an extramarital affair with Casey Greenfield, the daughter of journalist Jeff Greenfield. Okay, I know, Trump has been unfaithful while married too. But Greenfield bore his child, which Toobin only acknowledged after a DNA test, and only then began paying child support. And while pregnant Toobin offered to pay for her abortion.

American media can do much better than Toobin and his fellow “betters.” I will write another entry on the sad state of the media after the election.  

But right now we’re headed to Chinese government-style control of the media by the left.

A free press and free association are two things that French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville saw as two key safeguards in his landmark 19th-century work, Democracy in America. 

But Big Tech and Big Media, as well as the increasingly far-left Democratic Party, are trying to minimize both. 

We live in a perilous time.

UPDATE 7:30pm EDT: Correction, the New York Post Twitter account was “not suspended for a short time” as I wrote earlier. There are no new Twitter entries from @nypost since October 14. If the account has been suspended it clearly has been locked out. This is censorship.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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