February 17, 2016 NPR’s Contempt For White Working-Class America Luke Ford No sacred cows.

NPR’s Contempt For White Working-Class America

Posted on February 17, 2016 by Luke Ford

* The host of Morning Edition. Nobody plays the part of smug East-Coast Progressive media professional better than Steve Inskeep. His two trademarks are an insincere belly-laugh when a worthy interviewee says something mildly amusing, and a tone of incredulity that comes into play when reporting on the antics of low-class flyover country whites. He and NPR are a match made in heaven.

* The coming onslaught will be vicious. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

I remind my fellow Trumpers of the words of a Great American, “Hold! Hold! Hold!”

(Well, if he had been an American and if he had actually said that.)

* Steve, how does one develop the confidence of Donald Trump? He’s unflappable. I think if I had his confidence life and work would be a constant game.

* Trump has had exactly the same distinctive personality for all the decades he’s in the limelight. He’s the anti-David Bowie, never reinventing himself.

* Guide to code words: Mr. Trump promises to fix his supporters’ problems, no matter who else is hurt. + Appalachia + Jackson = Trail of tears

* Journalists have the easiest job in the world.

Take an arbitrary part of history that makes Salon readers suck in air disapprovingly.

Then have one or two paragraphs where you put it next to the name of a guy you dislike. Words like “symbolic, redolent, represent, reminiscent, echoes, reflects” are important. Don’t make the link too logical, we’re not autistic here.

Then close with a sarky indirect dig that’s not a conclusion to any argument but nevertheless sounds like it wraps something up. Hit post.

God I wish I had no backbone, money making would be so easy.

* I don’t think genetics has anything to do with Trump’s appeal; most of my roots are with Germans and Scots Irish but it’s way too facile to suggest that Germans and Scots Irish were even on the same page when it came to things like Indians and Slavery.

What I do think that Trump does is that he has a wide populist appeal, and that’s something most Americans, can relate to, as long as their American identity is not “trumped” by some special interest group agenda or grievance.

Jackson had notorious popular appeal, in fact he was the first real “man of the people” to become president. Trump has popular appeal. Full stop. That’s where the comparisons should end, in fact, I think the guy who made the comparison is making an invidious one: “Don’t want Jackson on the $20? You won’t want Trump either!”

Actually, the one former president that Trump reminds me of in some ways is Teddy Roosevelt.

Jackson was famous for the huge cheese wheel (about 1,400 lbs) he offered at a White House party, that was open to call citizens. I hope if Trump is elected he will have the good sense to make it a pizza, and at least half pepperoni.

* I suspect that the popularity of Trump is indicative that he is in sync with the majority of Americans.

* Try The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale:

http://www.christianpost.com/news/trump-the-power-of-positive-thinking-and-american-evangelicalism-143903/

Also see the New Thought Movement:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Thought_Movement

The self-help genre, American business and salesmanship culture, Christian Science, “dianetics” in Scientology, hypnosis, the Prosperity Gospel and other forms of Evangelicalism, etc., were influenced by the New Thought Movement.

Trump uses classic sales and hypnosis techniques from this genre:

https://theweek.com/articles/600497/donald-trump-hypnotizing-gop-literally

* I would say there’s far more similarity to Teddy Roosevelt, from the pugilism to the trust-busting protectionism he espoused. Who do these quotes sound like, minus the Victorian-speak:

“Thank God I am not a free-trader. In this country pernicious indulgence in the doctrine of free trade seems inevitably to produce fatty degeneration of the moral fiber.”

“In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.
But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. […] We have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”

“If the minority is as powerful as the majority there is no use of having political contests at all, for there is no use in having a majority.”

Jackson was a true populist in both the good (decentralizing banks) and bad (manifest destiny to an extreme and cruel degree) senses of the word. I’d say Trump is more play-acting the populist — he supports eminent domain for private interests after all — but at core he’s a nationalist, with support and sympathy for the working and middle class backbone of the country.

Trump could certainly use more of the “speak softly and carry a big stick” approach, however.

* Scott Adams summarized the responsibility of the POTUS a month or two ago:

“The job description says the president needs to protect citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic. It is silent on the questions of hurting people’s feelings and protecting non-citizens.”

It is illuminating how some people feel hurting non-citizen’s feelings trumps protecting citizens.

“The people Mr. Trump favors are to be protected from all harm. Nobody else matters. …”

* Pundits seriously underestimate Trump’s appeal to Blacks and Hispanics.

How many Mexican men are going to vote for Hillary? Close to zero, Mexicans hate harridans, women who don’t know their real place is in the kitchen. As for Sanders, they don’t know what to make of a old style effete Jewish Liberal. Sanders might appeal to Asians, though. Hispanics like colorful personalities and they have a soft spot for big men. Men with cojones. Actually, Trump’s their kind of man. A white boss they’d like to have a beer with. Except for some Hispanic professional activists, they don’t give a damn about illegals. And close to half of Hispanic ladies secrectly dream of bearing a son for Trump. He’s the big man in the hacienda, after all.

Most Blacks also respect an unapologetic white man . I really can’t see Black men rushing to vote for a Jewish dweeb like Sanders or an obnoxious feminist and/or carpet muncher like Hillary. Black men will stay home. Not sure about the sistahs.

* Trump favours Americans. Many Americans seem to appreciate this sentiment and would like to see it in their president.

* Reuters-Ipsos has an ongoing daily tracking poll that allows users to create their own cross tabs.

Trump’s strongest showing among self-identified Republicans is in New England, followed by the mid-Atlantic and then the Southeast. These census regions don’t quite allow for the Appalachian McCain Belt to be zeroed in on, but while he’s doing okay in states like West Virginia and Tennessee, he’s really crushing it in states like Massachusetts. It’s probably important to distinguish between total population support, and support among people who are likely to ultimately vote for the Republican nominee. In the case of the former, NPR would appear to have us write off Republican appeal in blue states.

There is also a huge East-West divide, as Agnostic from Face-to-Face first made me aware of. In the Mountain West and West Coast, Trump’s lead over Cruz is in the single digits in the R-I poll. In New England, by contrast, it’s nearly 40 points, with Trump in first at 48% and Cruz at a very distant second at under 10%.

* Take a look at the internals of some of the polls. One of the things that jumps out is just how broad based Trump’s support is compared to any one else. The beautiful people like to say Trump is riding a wave of angry white losers, but the data says otherwise. His support with college grads(winners), for example, is the same as with high school grads (losers). He polls better with NAM’s than any of the other Republicans.

The fun thing about the Trump Effect is what it exposes about his critics. The great bogeyman of the ruling class these days is the meth addicted white guy living in Boone County. We know that because they associate this character with the monster currently tormenting them, Donald Trump. The Professional Right and the Professional Left share this same nightmare.

Posted in America, Donald Trump, NPR | Comments Off

The Onion Loses Steam

Posted on February 17, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Ever since the Onion apologized 3 years ago, for saying that Quvenzhane Wallis was “kind of a c*nt”, they’ve been going downhill in terms of being politically correct.

With the exception of a few articles mocking political correctness on college campuses, there’s very little that’s even amusing coming out of them now, since anything they write about politics, gender, sexuality, or any kind of minority POV always takes the SJW viewpoint for granted. And, let’s face it, nothing but jokes about entitled Republicans gets old very soon.

The Onion is sort of the parody version of the parody version of the SJW mindset, that is, The Atlantic. It’s very hard to tell them apart.

In fairness, I should say, that following the Onion since its inception (it functioned sort of like Mad magazine or National Lampoon for my kids) the humor was hit and miss and always tended to take a funny premise and run it into the ground.

I’m tuning out the Onion, if they ever publish an article critical of Hilary Clinton and/or Israel, let me know. I’m guessing ….. not.

* Has she thought about releasing a sex tape? Presumably with Huma. That might get the youth interested.

Posted in Humor | Comments Off

Canada’s Idiot Prime Minister

Posted on February 17, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* For all intents and purposes, Canadians chose Kim Kardashian as prime minister. Further proof that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

* That boxing match and the video of Trudeau doing some Indian dancing are enough to make me believe that Canada has reached idiocracy ahead of the US, but then I remember that Barack Obama gave us his March Madness bracket and I’m reassured.

Trudeau insisted on having a cabinet that was 50/50 male/female. When asked why his entirely sensible response was “because it’s 2015.”

He’s a clown. If he ran a real country that would be of more consequence. Since Canada is a country of no significance they’re free to remind us of that fact by electing imbeciles like Justin Trudeau.

* As a plaid-shirted, redneck Canadian nationalist, I should take umbrage at your cruel words and challenge you to a bake-off or a snow-angel contest in no-holds-barred Canuck fashion but, unfortunately, what you say is true. Our very own Sunny Boy Trudeau, he of the red shorts, declared to the world a few months back that Canada is now officially a “post-national state with no core values”, whatever that Orwellian concoction is. BC now stands for Becoming Chinese and there is even a prof at UBC who teaches that English is a white supremacist language and the Chinese are one of the founding people of our nation, make that post-nation. Ironically, any hope we have of salvaging our pre-post-nation may lie in the Quebec separatist movement and a revival and re-legitimization of ethnic nationalist sentiment. Quebeckers have traditionally not been as PC-whipped as Anglos but, unfortunately once again, even they are being swamped by French-speaking immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. And I suppose that if ever the shit hits the fan in your low-boil three-way race war in the US, we’ll pick up all the Blacks and Hispanics who feel unloved down there and figure that the welfare and other government programs more than compensate for the cold and the snow. Toronto is already a self-declared sanctuary city and Vancouver is itching to become one, though I imagine they’ll only be unmulticulturally interested in Asian refugees. Oh Canada.

* Peter Brimelow wrote a wonderful book about Canada called The Tangled Skein(?). He wrote about Pierre (whom he loathed), saying this: “Pierre Elliot Trudeau was not a great Prime Minister of Canada. Indeed, he was not even a good Prime Minister of Canada. But he was a great man. Unquestionably the greatest man who has ever been Prime Minister of Canada.”

He then went on to write in open admiration of the man’s sheer physical courage.

Item: He’s 70. A trucker walks into a bar and starts giving him the gears. Pierre throws down, says, “Let’s go right fucking now.” Trucker backs off. Lots of other incidents. Sheer physical courage.

Item: (my favourite): Pierre’s on a stage with Quebec Liberal pols in the 60s, an angry ugly time in Quebec. A group of radical separatists charge the stage, throwing material at the pols. What material? Tomatoes? Rotten eggs? Uh-uh. Slabs of concrete. Bottles.

The pols flee, instantly. Except one. Guess who? Pierre, of course! He’s sitting in a folding chair, rock and stone and glass exploding all over the stage…and he doesn’t budge. He adopts the Cicero pose, musing, Rodin’s thinker, but with a sneer of contempt for his assaulters…and sits there, not moving an inch. There’s a pic out there if you want to find it.

Courage. Sheer physical courage. I knew his son had the same quality, and the parasitical (Native) thug Brazeau (a corruptoid kinda-Indian who is living the life today to which he was born) with his martial arts training and his bullshit rodomontade, didn’t stand a chance.

Justin’s his father’s son. Combative chip off the old fearless block.

* Steve, How can you ignore Trump? Why won’t you seriously write about him? What is your deal with him? You make a tangential reference to him now and then but overall you’re ignoring the most important candidate vis-a-vis your views to ever come along. It’s absurd and you’re letting your readers down.

* This is ironic, as disgraced Canadian radio host Jian Ghomeshi was just on trial here for allegedly punching his lovers in the head. It’s been everywhere in the news.

Ghomeshi was known for being uber-progressive, so the lefties in the Canadian media have been in a quite a tizzy, especially when all three of the complainants basically collapsed on the witness stand, most of them being caught in blatant lies.

* I heard Rush Limbaugh talking about the Trump yesterday; his analysis was very apt.

Rush says that Trump is appealing to blue collar whites not just with his policies but with his speech patterns and brash boisterous in-your-face Noo Yawk persona. By talking and behaving like a working glass joe sixpack white guy Trump is signalling that he is one of them or at least understands their concerns. The recent debate performance yelling and calling other candidates liars being prime examples of this. Rush says that since this group still represents some 40% of the population this can be a winning strategy.

Made me realize that underneath the folksy nice guy manner Rush is a actually a very intelligent guy and that perhaps he’s been reading some of iSteve’s material.

* How did the Bushes become such a dynasty? I once saw them described as the WASP Corleones. They’re more extended-family-oriented than is normal among northern Europeans.

How did the old European royal families become established? By someone conquering a lot of land? Wrong. That’s not enough. Northern Europeans are nuclear-family-oriented, but politics is a team sport. The larger and more disciplined your team is, the more chances you have. Most of the conqueror types did not found lasting dynasties because they lacked the desire or the ability control who their kids married and what they did with their time. But, as with any trait, some are going to be more willing and able to do this than others.

The Bushes aren’t much smarter than most people of their background. But they’re much more familial. That’s probably the key.

* Richard Ben Cramer’s big book on the 1988 Presidential candidates makes the point that the Bush-Walker clan was super-competitive internally, with constant sports and games waged among cousins at a very high level of intensity. But it eventually emerged as clear within the extended family that George H.W. Bush was The Guy, the member of that generation who could go the furthest, so the clan’s resources coalesced behind him.

* Jeb’s voice is excellent, deep and warm, and should be a huge asset for him — but somehow it’s not; he alternates between sounding halting and petulant. And his physical presence should also be an advantage, because he’s a tall man who’s also quite well-proportioned.

You’d also think, as a younger son in his family, he’d have grown up quite scrappy and confident, after a childhood of trying to keep up with and compete against his older brother, but it doesn’t seem to have turned out that way.

Jeb strikes me as a big man who was a big kid who was likely clumsy and self-conscious about it, and who’s been trying to diminish himself his whole life in order to fit in better.

I’m two inches taller than Jeb, and went through much of my adolescence wishing I were more ‘normal’. Later on, though, I started to enjoy being tall and saw how it could be a positive. That feeling never seems to have kicked in for Jeb.

* You take this alpha beta stuff way too seriously. That’s a very omega thing to do. Look, as far as ideology vs blood goes, we can look at libertarians. They’re ideological as hell. What good has that done them? All their ideologies have been turned against them. 99.99% of libertarians are white males and they support open border and free trade policies that dispossess and weaken the only segment of the population from which future libertarians can come. They have to choose between common sense and liberty above all else, and they choose liberty because they are in an ideological straight jacket. How could they still call themselves libertarians if they allowed sanity to triumph over sanity? The only thing that matters is blood, faith and soil. Trump knows that and you need to figure it out quick.

Posted in America, Canada, Donald Trump | Comments Off

The Replication Crisis

Posted on February 17, 2016 by Luke Ford

Steve Sailer writes:

Why a Repetition Crisis? Dissident social psychologist Jonathan Haidt of NYU’s Stern School of Business, author of The Righteous Mind, pointed out in a freewheeling interview with John Leo how the ever-growing list of sacred cows in American life restricts what social scientists can allow themselves to discover about important issues:

For many years now, there have been six sacred groups. You know, the big three are African-Americans, women and LGBT. That’s where most of the action is. Then there are three other groups: Latinos, Native Americans…and people with disabilities. So those are the six that have been there for a while. But now we have a seventh—Muslims.

One could argue that there are more sacred groups than seven, but Haidt’s next point was illuminating:

Something like 70 or 75 percent of America is now in a protected group. This is a disaster for social science because social science is really hard to begin with. And now you have to try to explain social problems without saying anything that casts any blame on any member of a protected group. And not just moral blame, but causal blame. None of these groups can have done anything that led to their victimization or marginalization.

For example, in discussing crime or poverty, social scientists are allowed to imply that the dirt that white people live upon is inherently magic while the dirt under black people is obviously tragic. But anything smarter and more interesting could get them furiously denounced by angry know-nothing students (or Watsoned out of their jobs if they lack tenure). So it’s safest just to blame everything and anything on white people.

Still, as the generations roll by, that’s increasingly sounding like a senile conspiracy theory. In 2016, blaming white privilege for everything you don’t like isn’t quite as lame as blaming the Bavarian Illuminati, but the gap is closing.

As the range of acceptable insights narrows, boredom stalks the social sciences.

Haidt notes:

Anthropology and sociology are the worst—those fields seem to be really hostile and rejecting toward people who aren’t devoted to social justice.

Today, for example, it seems astonishing that 60 years ago cultural anthropologists like Margaret Mead could be celebrities. The educated public now assumes that cultural anthropologists are pedantic and petulant, best avoided.

COMMENTS:

* The ‘Jason Richwine’ affair a few years back – worthy research involving big, ultimately overwhelmingly important questions concerning the future society of the USA, and the economic/fiscal implications, is an obvious case-in-point.

But, apparently, such questions – few can be more important in US social science – cannot be explored by academics due to taboo – yes, taboo is the right word – reasons.

* I rang a radio ‘talk show’ recently to tell the broadcaster that he really shouldn’t keep referring to stats as ‘facts’. But it’s too late, the majority population have no idea how stats are compiled and they are being used by MSM as some form of new religion.

*I hate DC politics as much as I hate social science statistics, so I stay on the periphery of them and pick up bits and pieces here and there, but yes its obvious that they’ve both basically destroyed each other. The Selling of The Presidency marked the beginning. Now the media says stuff like, “Well they told us they’re only gonna stay on message, and so far they have, and haven’t lost yet, and look to be about ready for the victory lap. Back to you!”

Pupppetts who play their own strings and talk about the script their reading from on the stage called a debate. I mean, we’ve forgotten its all so sinister.

When I see that statistic from Haidt, seems obvious to me its almost worse what he does not say next. Which is that we are literally succumbing to a national psychosis of self-delusion, and its not funny at all anymore. Stopped being funny a certain emergency ago. And btw, is Frank Luntz not the most insidious snake-oil salesman since the first?

So the Republican Crisis then is this: How do you defeat the guy who’s been oblivious to what we’ve been conditioning the public to believe while he’s been out and about making deals worth billions?

You call him a conspiracy theorists about 9-11, and see if he blinks.

Trump builds towers. He knows what happened. And he’s only saying what they can’t deny. Bush was reigning, it was his watch and he fell asleep. Don’t tell anybody, but this is the most historic election in American history.

I expect the convention to be very interesting indeed.

* Are you suggesting that there is a religion other than Islam that is above criticism. Certainly not the Catholics, most of the protestants ( except maybe for the SJW Episcopal Church ) are easily mocked. Criticizing the Amish is a waste they ignore you. I am at a loss.

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Is Obama Queer?

Posted on February 17, 2016 by Luke Ford

From the Chateau:

It’s only a split-second long, but about halfway through this video of president Three Snaps taking a selfie he reveals what has got to be the GAYEST looking expression possible from a putatively heterosexual man.

The coy half-smile and chin dip need a sassy hand on the hip to complete the picture and send Three Snaps into DEFFAG 1 territory.

In one hundred years, Americans will either look back on this period as shockingly callow and degenerate, or America will have been long gone and thus left with no non-pozzed Americans to look back with clear eyes on anything.

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Florida teen arrested after posing as doctor, opening medical practice

Posted on February 17, 2016 by Luke Ford

Seven out of eight black doctors depended upon affirmative action to get into medical school. Do you want an affirmative action doctor?

Black doctors suffer from huge rates of malpractice.

REPORT: WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A Florida teen was arrested on suspicion of practicing medicine without a license after he allegedly performed a physical exam on an undercover agent on Tuesday.

Malachi Love-Robinson, 18, was taken into custody after the undercover operation, during which he gave medical advice, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office announced.

Authorities had received a complaint earlier in the month about Love-Robinson, who had been cited by the state health department for practicing medicine without a license in October 2015.

Love-Robinson opened a medical office in West Palm Beach and was presenting himself as a doctor, the Sheriff’s Office said.

A Facebook page for Dr. Malachi A. Love listed a medical office at the same address — 4700 N. Congress Ave. — as the one given by the Sheriff’s Office, calling the business “New Birth New Life Holistic and Alternative Medical Center & Urgent Care.” A website and Facebook page were also set up for the center.

Photos on the center’s Facebook page showed “Dr. Love” posing with two older women described as the center’s “staff.” And on the website Healthgrades.com, a first-person description of Dr. Love-Robinson read:

“I am a well rounded proffessional that treats, and cares for patients, using a system of practice that bases treatment of physiological functions and abnormal conditions on natural laws governing the human body. I utilize physiological, psychological, and mechanical methods, such as air, water, light, heat, earth, phototherapy, food and herb therapy, psychotherapy, electrotherapy, physiotherapy, minor and orificial surgery, mechanotherapy, naturopathic corrections and manipulation, and natural methods or modalities, together with natural medicines, natural processed foods, and herbs and nature’s remedies.”

Love-Robinson was booked on suspicion of practicing medicine without a license, and the Florida Department of Health served him notice to cease and desist along with several other citations.

Posted in Abuse, Blacks | Comments Off

Man Arrested in Scotland for Facebook Posts About Refugees

Posted on February 16, 2016 by Luke Ford

The ADL will be happy.

From Breitbart: Police have arrested a 40-year old man in Scotland over a number of allegedly “offensive” Facebook posts about refugees.

Police in Scotland said that a man had been held under the Communications Act, which bans “grossly offensive” and “menacing” posts on online platforms.

The Facebook posts in question, which were not released to the media, allegedly concerned comments about Syrian refugees from Rothersay, on the Scottish Island of Bute, where several refugee families have settled as part of the UK government’s settlement program.

A spokesman from the the Dunoon police station in Argyll said, “I hope that the arrest of this individual sends a clear message that Police Scotland will not tolerate any form of activity which could incite hatred and provoke offensive comments on social media.

This follows news in late January that police in the Netherlands were visiting the homes of citizens who made posts that were deemed overly-critical of the Dutch government’s policies towards refugees. It also follows Facebook’s announcement that it would work with European governments, particularly Germany, to track and clamp down on hostility towards migrants on the platform.

Posted in Censorship | Comments Off

Twitter’s Jihad Against Conservatives

Posted on February 16, 2016 by Luke Ford

From Breitbart: umours that Twitter has begun ‘shadowbanning’ politically inconvenient users have been confirmed by a source inside the company, who spoke exclusively to Breitbart Tech. His claim was corroborated by a senior editor at a major publisher.

According to the source, Twitter maintains a ‘whitelist’ of favoured Twitter accounts and a ‘blacklist’ of unfavoured accounts. Accounts on the whitelist are prioritised in search results, even if they’re not the most popular among users. Meanwhile, accounts on the blacklist have their posts hidden from both search results and other users’ timelines.

Our source was backed up by a senior editor at a major digital publisher, who told Breitbart that Twitter told him it deliberately whitelists and blacklists users. He added that he was afraid of the site’s power, noting that his tweets could disappear from users’ timelines if he got on the wrong side of the company.

Shadowbanning, sometimes known as “Stealth Banning” or “Hell Banning,” is commonly used by online community managers to block content posted by spammers. Instead of banning a user directly (which would alert the spammer to their status, prompting them to create a new account), their content is merely hidden from public view.

For site owners, the ideal shadowban is when a user never realizes he’s been shadowbanned.

However, Twitter isn’t merely targeting spammers. For weeks, users have been reporting that tweets from populist conservatives, members of the alternative right, cultural libertarians, and other anti-PC dissidents have disappeared from their timelines.

Among the users complaining of shadowbans are sci-fi author and alt-right figurehead Vox Day, geek culture blogger “Daddy Warpig,” and the popular pro-Trump account Ricky Vaughn. League of Gamers founder and former World of Warcraft team lead Mark Kern, as well as adult actress and anti-censorship activist Mercedes Carrera, have also reported that their tweets are not appearing on the timelines of their followers.

The pattern of shadowban reports, which skews towards the alt-right, the populist right, and cultural libertarians, follows close on the heels of Twitter’s establishment of a “Trust and Safety Council” packed with left-wing advocacy groups, as well as Islamic research centre the Wahid Institute.

It also follows my prediction that Twitter would use its influence to interfere in the 2016 presidential election by muffling conservative voices on the platform.

For close to a year now, Breitbart has covered Twitter’s march towards political censorship. In May 2015 Allum Bokhari reported that the site had begun to experiment with shadowbans, ostensibly to protect users from abuse. Then, as now, it was suspected that “protecting users from abuse” was an excuse to implement a system that would later be used for political censorship.

With shadowbans now confirmed by an inside source, there is little room for doubt that the platform is intent on silencing conservatives. Furthermore, it has demonstrated a complete lack of regard for transparency, concealing its shadowbanning system from users and hiding its political bias behind a veneer of opposition to online abuse. (In reality, the site turns a blind eye to abuse from left-wingers.)

Posted in Censorship, Conservatives, Twitter | Comments Off

LAT: L.A. County judge killed while crossing the street in Pico-Robertson

Posted on February 16, 2016 by Luke Ford

Los Angeles Times: A Los Angeles County judge who also was a recognized expert in communications law was killed Monday when he was stuck by a vehicle while crossing a West L.A. street, police said.

The judge, identified as Daniel L. Brenner by a court spokeswoman, was walking across Beverwil Drive near Pico Boulevard about 6 p.m. when a driver heading northbound struck him, said Los Angeles police Officer Tony Im.

The driver remained at the scene and is not under a criminal investigation, Im said. Brenner was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He was 64.

Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Brenner to the bench in 2012, and the jurist had most recently heard civil matters in the Chatsworth Courthouse, according to court spokeswoman Mary Hearn.

At the time of his appointment, Brenner had been a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Hogan Lovells LLP after spending about 17 years as the vice president of the regulatory department at the National Cable and Telecommunications Assn., an industry group.

Posted in Pico/Robertson | Comments Off

Failed Messiah Is Toast

Posted on February 16, 2016 by Luke Ford

Since Scott Rosenberg retired from FailedMessiah.com a few weeks ago, the new people have run the site into the ground.

Posted in Blogging | Comments Off