Posts Tagged ‘Trump’

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.

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
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
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.

The presidents and the press

Posted: September 1, 2020 by chrisharper in media
Tags: ,

By Christopher Harper

President Trump probably wouldn’t rank in the top five opponents of the media among U.S. presidents.

That’s the verdict of The New York Times in a review of a recent book, “The Presidents vs. the Press: The Endless Battle Between the White House and the Media — From the Founding Fathers to Fake News” by Harold Holzer. 

Yes, that assessment appeared in DaTimes, albeit from Jack Shafer, the media analyst of Politico.

The book’s author is no fan of President Trump. Holzer worked for U.S. Rep. Bella Abzug and New York Gov. Mario Cuomo. 

John Adams signed sedition acts into law and used them against his critics in the media. George Washington even supported Adams’ anti-media tendencies. In his post-presidential years, Adams lamented that people read only Federalist or Republican newspapers—not both—leaving them with a one-sided view of the government in power. Sounds like a prelude to Fox and MSNBC.

Abraham Lincoln, arguably the best president in the nation’s history, imprisoned editors during the Civil War, banned newspapers from using the mail, and even confiscated printing presses. “Altogether, nearly 200 papers would face federally initiated subjugation during the Civil War,” Holzer writes. 

The Roosevelts enjoyed some of the best press among the presidents. But even they took aim at recalcitrant reporters. Theodore Roosevelt rebuked investigative journalists as “muckrakers,” or those who could only look down into the muck. He also filed a libel suit against Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, which finally was dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court. 

During World War II, Franklin Roosevelt ordered massive censorship of news organizations, including a government Office of the Censor. His administration also penalized any news organization that reported about his paralysis or his ill health in his final years.

President Woodrow Wilson imposed censorship during World War I in a heavy-handed manner, and his Espionage Act still stands as a repressive law against whistleblowers. 

The battle between President Richard Nixon and his press critics is well documented here—as it has been elsewhere. 

Although Holzer batters Trump for his attacks on the press, the author doesn’t hold back on Barack Obama. Holzer recalls the analysis of former Washington Post managing editor Leonard Downie Jr. that Obama’s “war on leaks and other efforts to control information” were the worst Washington had seen since Nixon.

All told, the book analyzes the 18 of the 45 presidents, with many nuggets about the various administrations.

For example, one journalist confides that the press was as much responsible for the New Deal as was FDR because of the glowing media coverage. That sounds about right!

Moreover, the press ignored JFK’s extra-marital affairs because journalists didn’t think the private doings affected public business. That, of course, ignored at least one affair that straddled a mistress and the Mob. One reporter referred to the president as the “swashbuckler in chief.”

Despite JFK’s tryst with the media, he targeted some enemies, including Henry Luce of Time and David Halberstam of DaTimes.

Although I’ve never been a fan of Lyndon Johnson, the saddest tales come from his administration. LBJ had a massive mandate from the voters in 1964–more than 61 percent–and an excellent rapport with the press. He managed to lose both public and the media’s support by misleading them about the war in Vietnam in what became known as the government’s credibility gap.

Quinnen Williams and another opportunity to change the gun narrative

Posted: March 7, 2020 by ng36b in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,
Gun Case, from eBay

Democrat presidential candidates continue to dominate the news with calls for increasing gun control measures. They are quick to cite fake statistics about gun violence and use every tragedy to maximum extent. While President Trump has remained pro-Second Amendment, he hasn’t pushed much in terms of a counter-narrative recently. The recent arrest of New York Jets player Quinnen Williams provides a great opportunity to strike back.

Quinnen was arrested recently in LaGuardia Airport for gun possession. Most of the headlines would have you believe he walked into the airport with a loaded weapon and attempted to board a flight. That’s not what happened. Quinnen brought an unloaded firearm in his checked luggage into the airport. He had a permit for the weapon, but it was from Alabama, not New York. In typical New York fashion, he was immediately arrested and faces a felony possession charge.

New York gun laws are ridiculous. Even if you aren’t a state resident, the state of New York requires regularly attempts to enforce local laws on you. This is key because LaGuardia is particularly notorious for violating the Federal Owners Protection Act (FOPA), which allows transportation of firearms between states. But as noted at NRA’s website:

Special advisory for New York & New Jersey airports: Despite federal law that protects travelers, authorities at JFK, La Guardia, Newark, and Albany airports have been known to enforce state and local firearm laws against airline travelers who are passing through their jurisdictions. In some cases, even persons traveling in full compliance with federal law have been arrested or threatened with arrest. FOPA’s protections have been substantially narrowed by court decisions in certain parts of the country, particularly in the Northeast. Persons traveling through New York and New Jersey airports may want to consider shipping their firearms to their final destinations rather than bringing them through airports in these jurisdictions.

NRA-ILA website

Personally, I hate flying through New York anyway, and unless I have to, I won’t use their airports. Perhaps a long-term boycott by gun owners would be in order?

Quinnen obviously attempted to follow the law. He wasn’t walking into an airport with a loaded weapon. His story shows that attempting to follow the rules doesn’t matter to New York, where its OK to pick and choose what federal laws you follow. This makes him the perfect person to hold up and challenge the ongoing gun narrative. His case may be one to help challenge, and ultimately change, some of New York’s onerous rules on gun transportation.

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.

Older Entries
Newer Entries