To meet the legal definition of incitement, you need statements like the above not to be in the incitement. Also, the legal incitement charge needs to show as well the continued incitement, and not calling for peace, after the understanding of violence. Even with the admission that Trump has made to Kevin McCarthy that he feels somewhat responsible for Wednesday’s event, he did not incite the crowd. In other words, both things can be true… Trump not realizing the “quality” of the crowd and the mixed intentions of it… for instance, this man and his family:
Which is my segue into an excellent post by RIGHT SCOOP quoting a Wall Street Journal article.
An interesting opinion piece ran in the Wall Street Journal yesterday by a former prosecutor who has a history of convicting protesters in Washington DC. Jeffrey Scott Shapiro wrote that while it is a crime to incite a riot in the nation’s capital, President Trump is not guilty of doing it:
The president didn’t commit incitement or any other crime. I should know. As a Washington prosecutor I earned the nickname “protester prosecutor” from the antiwar group CodePink. In one trial, I convicted 31 protesters who disrupted congressional traffic by obstructing the Capitol Crypt. In another, I convicted a CodePink activist who smeared her hands with fake blood, charged at then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a House hearing room, and incited the audience to seize the secretary of state physically. In other cases, I dropped charges when the facts fell short of the legal standard for incitement. One such defendant was the antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan.
Hostile journalists and lawmakers have suggested Mr. Trump incited the riot when he told a rally that Republicans need to “fight much harder.” Mr. Trump suggested the crowd walk to the Capitol: “We’re going to cheer on brave senators and congressmen and -women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.”
“To peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”
The president didn’t mention violence on Wednesday, much less provoke or incite it. He said, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
District law defines a riot as “a public disturbance . . . which by tumultuous and violent conduct or the threat thereof creates grave danger of damage or injury to property or persons.” When Mr. Trump spoke, there was no “public disturbance,” only a rally. The “disturbance” came later at the Capitol by a small minority who entered the perimeter and broke the law. They should be prosecuted.
The president’s critics want him charged for inflaming the emotions of angry Americans. That alone does not satisfy the elements of any criminal offense, and therefore his speech is protected by the Constitution that members of Congress are sworn to support and defend.
Someone send this to Pelosi, because I’m sure it’ll change her mind!…
Lol, in case you didn’t catch it, that last sentence I included was sarcasm. That being said, I think the Democrats and the Left saying “all white people are racist” in one of the most “inciteful” thing someone could say! (Examples here, here, here, and here — I could give hundreds of examples, but that should suffice).
However, I wanted to include some examples via Larry Elder of the hypocrisy of the Left:
This video is from Larry’s YouTube Channel (here). At the end of his small montage I add video of a larger call to violence by [hypocritical] Democrats.
Emotional beings think extraordinarily little but is swayed greatly by what they see on the boob tube.
They jump to wild conclusions as fact because corporate media says so.
They do not listen to middle-of-the-road guys who think well, like Hugh Hewitt who tempers wild conspiracies and accusations by Left and Right.
Maybe they will consider half-an-hour a day of Larry Elder to spur in them facts and thoughts from a side of the isle they have never affiliated themselves with.
Ever.
Maybe in their contemplative age they will include thoughts they never had previously.
Just for searching out another viewpoint.
What is not known by the typical cable news watcher, probably, is that both the Capital Police and the mayor of D.C. turned down offers to help secure the government areas before and as the mob of crazed Lefties and Righties descended on the Capital:
…Three days before the riot, the Pentagon offered National Guard manpower. And as the mob descended on the building Wednesday, Justice Department leaders reached out to offer up FBI agents. Capitol Police turned them down both times, according to senior defense officials and two people familiar with the matter. Despite plenty of warnings of a possible insurrection and ample resources and time to prepare, police planned only for a free speech demonstration. (WASHINGTON TIMES)
Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser told federal law enforcement to stand down just one day before a mob of Trump supporters breached the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, smashing windows, entering the chambers, and forcing lawmakers and congressional staff inside into lockdown. “To be clear, the District of Columbia is not requesting other federal law enforcement personnel and discourages any additional deployment without immediate notification to, and consultation with, MPD if such plans are underway,” Bowser wrote in a letter to acting U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, and Secretary of the Army Ryan D. McCarthy. According to Bowser, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department in coordination with the U.S. Park Police, Capitol Police, and Secret Sevice were well-equipped to handle whatever problems could come up during the Trump rallies planned for Wednesday. (THE FEDERALIST)
Biden and Harris said Thursday police would have been more aggressive in quelling Wednesday’s unrest had it been a Black Lives Matter protest instead of supporters of President Trump.
The disconnect from reality is jaw-dropping. Black Lives Matter inflicted literally hundreds of riots on this country over the past year. They were able to do this because barely a finger was lifted to stop them. Local Democrat authorities held back the police and even defunded them.
Biden went so far as to call it “totally unacceptable” that DC cops used kid gloves, allowing the rioters to breach the Capitol.
The Capitol Police used tear gas, pepper balls, pepper spray, and flashbangs. Oh, and they shot an unarmed woman to death. But they would have killed her twice as dead if she had been black….
But the TDS is large with the Left, even if Pelosi said :“No member, regardless of party or politics, comes to Congress to impeach a president,” heh. Maxine Waters and Rashida Tlaib literally came to Congress wanting that. And Nancy Pelosi said in 2019 they have been trying to impeach Trump for 2-and-a-half-years (RPT):
There was this racy headline, from Vanity Fair on Nov. 14, 2016: “Will Trump Be Impeached?”
Then this, yet another Vanity Fair piece, on Dec. 15, 2016: “Democrats Are Paving the Way to Impeach Donald Trump.”
There was this, from The New York Times, in an opinion headline from Nov. 3, 2016: “Donald Trump’s Impeachment Threat.”
Remember: Trump wasn’t inaugurated until Jan. 20, 2017. He wasn’t even elected president until Nov. 8, 2016.
BEST ARTICLES on these issues recently penned are here:
There Will Be No Unity: Some Inconvenient Reminders About How Dems Treated Trump During 2016 Transition, By Sister Toldjah (RED STATE)
How Democrats Tried To Handcuff Trump From The Start, by Rowan Scarborough (WASHINGTON TIMES)
The above is all sedition. Not Trump’s or Republicans actions. Others actions are more seditious than the GOP’s actions.
Alan Dershowitz also notes impeachment cannot happen:
“The case cannot come to trial in the Senate, because the Senate has rules, and the rules would not allow the case to come to trial until, according to the majority leader, until 1 p.m. on January 20th, an hour after President Trump leaves office,” (FOX)
He pointed out for the lame-brains (read here the cable news network watcher) that you cannot impeach a private citizen.
Some quotes I like:
Wednesday was not a coup. It was a bunch of weird people making a scene at the capital. Nancy Pelosi asking the military to depose Trump? That’s a coup. And treason. — Joshua P.
Over the past 20 years, Democrats have on three separate occasions objected to the validity of electoral votes on the floor of Congress. Wednesday, Jan. 6, will mark the first time Republicans chose do so in the past two decades. — DAILY WIRE
Larry takes calls from two individuals who attended Trump’ speech on Wednesday. According to these two individuals, the tone was peaceful.
We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections, but whether or not they stand strong for our country, our country.
In a powerful monologue deserving recognition, Fox News host Greg Gutfeld Thursday not only called out the hypocrisy of left media when it comes to rioting, he also reiterated the fundamental ethics that many on the left overlooked during months of summer rioting, saying definitively that “Americans do not need lectures from hypocrites in hair and makeup who pick and choose their favorite protesters.”
JUST THE NEWS notes the jump to #1 of 1984 on Amazon
As “big tech” companies have moved to silence conservative voices on the Internet, mega-marketer Amazon reports on Sunday that its overall top-selling book is 1984, a decades old novel that portrays a society completely controlled by government “Thought Police.”
The spike in sales comes amid a rush of shutdowns in which these moves occurred in rapid succession:
Twitter on Friday booted Donald Trump from its platform and erased the entire history of his tweets;
Facebook deleted a grassroots organization for disenchanted Democrats, WalkAway;
Apple and Google banned the messaging platform Parler from its app stores;
and Amazon said it imminently will ban Parler, which is used by many conservatives, from company servers.
As of Sunday morning, Amazon book sales showed that the top-selling book is the dystopian novel published by George Orwell more than 70 years ago. The classic novel, published in 1949, depicts how government Thought Police eavesdrop on citizens in their own homes, searching for heresy of any kind. Anyone whose beliefs deviate from the official norm are declared “unpersons” who never existed.
Reviewers on Amazon drew parallels between the book’s plot and current events in the United States.
“Born and living in communist Romania I went through the same ordeal described in 1987,” wrote Constantin Turculet, who is listed as making a verified purchase. “After 40 years I managed to escape to America, only to find after 35 years of living in freedom that this country is pushed toward the same horror scenario I thought mankind will never forget.”…
CLICK TO ENLARGE
Later ages are always surprised by the casual brutality of totalitarian regimes. What those innocent ages neglect is the unshakeable (though misguided) conviction of virtue that animates the totalitarians. The historian John Kekes, writing about Robespierre in City Journal some years ago, touched on the essential point. If we understand Robespierre, “we understand that it is utterly useless to appeal to reason and morality in dealing with ideologues. For they are convinced that reason and morality are on their side and that their enemies are irrational and immoral simply because they are enemies.” That is the position of conservatives in American culture today. (AMERICAN GREATNESS)
A former Twitter CEO took measures to ensure messages critical of President Obama wouldn’t circulate too widely on the platform during a 2015 question-and-answer session, according to a new report.
The incident allegedly occurred during a May 2015 “#AskPOTUS” event on the platform, when former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo purportedly ordered the creation of an algorithm to suppress the messages and used employees to manually scrub any critical content missed by the software.
Costolo kept the decision secret from company executives for fear that someone might object, several sources told Buzzfeed….
Over the past 20 years, Democrats have on three separate occasions objected to the validity of electoral votes on the floor of Congress. Wednesday, Jan. 6, will mark the first time Republicans choose do so in the past two decades.
My sons and I have discussed the January 6th issues, and, some historical aspects as well. Firstly, people saying Trump should be impeached are just as radical as the people breaking into the Capital. The throwing around of the “sedition” label is funny, and shows how people are not aware of the recent history of the lawful process of debate in Congress about just such topic. Here is one blogger noting Chuck Todd’s biased lack of awareness:
…NBC host Chuck Todd, who is always in the running to overtake CNN’s Brian Stelter as the dumbest newsman in the news media, had it out with Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) over a number of Republican members of Congress who are planning to dispute the certification of Joe Biden winning the 2020 election due to questions of massive election fraud.
After being accused of trying to thwart the democratic process, Johnson hit back by telling sleepy eyes Todd that they are trying to protect it.
“We are not acting to thwart the democratic process, we are acting to protect it,” Johnson said to Todd.
[….]
Todd and others in the Fake News media are acting like the Republicans contesting the election results is an unprecedented affair.
Let me remind them that the last three times a Republican won a presidential election the Democrats in the House brought objections to the Electoral votes the Republican won.
Lest they forget that the House Democrats contested both elections of former President George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 and President Trump’s win in 2016.…
PJ-MEDIA however has an excellent notation of this history when they point out Democrats outrage that Republicans objected to the certification of electoral votes. “It’s ‘conspiracy and fantasy,’ says Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.” PJ further states,
“The effort by the sitting president of the United States to overturn the results is patently undemocratic,” the New York Democrat said. “The effort by others to amplify and burnish his ludicrous claims of fraud is equally revolting.”
“This is America. We have elections. We have results. We make arguments based on the fact and reason—not conspiracy and fantasy,” he added.
There’s only one problem with Chucky’s “argument based on fact and reason.” Democrats have been challenging the electoral vote certification for two decades.
The last three times a Republican has been elected president — Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004 — Democrats in the House have brought objections to the electoral votes in states the GOP nominee won. In early 2005 specifically, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., along with Rep. Stephanie Tubbs, D-Ohio, objected to Bush’s 2004 electoral votes in Ohio.
Illinois Senator Dick Durbin appears to be even more incensed at Senator Josh Hawley’s plan to object to the Electoral College vote.
“The political equivalent of barking at the moon,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said of Hawley joining the challenge to electoral slates. “This won’t be taken seriously, nor should it be. The American people made a decision on Nov. 3rd and that decision must and will be honored and protected by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.”
Brave Sir Dick seems to forget he was singing a different tune in 2005. Then, it was Democrats questioning the results of the Ohio vote, which went narrowly for George Bush.
Durbin had words of praise for Boxer then:
“Some may criticize our colleague from California for bringing us here for this brief debate,” Durbin said on the Senate floor following Boxer’s objection, while noting that he would vote to certify the Ohio electoral votes for Bush. “I thank her for doing that because it gives members an opportunity once again on a bipartisan basis to look at a challenge that we face not just in the last election in one State but in many States.”
In fact, the Ohio electoral vote challenge was only the beginning. Rumors and conspiracy theories swirled around the outcome on election night that saw Bush winning Ohio by a close, but the surprisingly comfortable margin of 120,000 votes. So why are so many of these headlines familiar to us today?
Mother Jones: “Recounting the Election: Was Ohio stolen?”
And THE BLAZE also referenced it’s readers to the same issues in their post (BTW, these are the two videos I used for my upload):
TheBlaze’s Chris Enloe noted this weekend that while Democrats are rebuking Republicans for planning Wednesday to oppose the Electoral College certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory due to fraud concerns, Democrats themselves have a robust history of doing that very thing.
And a damning, resurfaced video underscores what’s already on the public record.
The video is a compilation of clips from congressional sessions following the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, both won by Republican George W. Bush — and in the clips Democrats launched protests against Bush’s electoral votes.
[….]
That wasn’t all. The Washington Post reported that during the January 2001 session, words such as “fraud” and “disenfranchisement” were heard above Republicans calling for “regular order.”
More from the paper:
The Democratic protest was led by Black Caucus members who share the feeling among black leaders that votes in the largely African American precincts overwhelmingly carried by [then-Democratic presidential nominee Al] Gore were not counted because of faulty voting machines, illicit challenges to black voters and other factors.
“It’s a sad day in America,” Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) said as he turned toward Gore. “The chair thanks the gentleman from Illinois, but . . . ” Gore replied.
At the end of their protest, about a dozen members of the Black Caucus walked out of the House chamber as the roll call of the states continued.
Larry Elder plays a question to Biden on the campaign trail and then the Sage responds how Democrats expect others to think regarding Biden’s Presidency. For more on Trump being tough on Russia, see here: Trump, Tougher On Putin Than Obama
This is the last portion of a larger audio, to follow. Larry Elder discusses new studies – but included one from the 1970s… this is the first time I have heard this particular study:
This is from yesterdays show (1/7/2021), and is a large sample of why The Sage is great at what he does. I add some video which radio only allows audio to play, as well as adding some of the video from @The Larry Elder Show — Enjoy, it is a stitching of large sections from all three hours.
I have always said that the Left are “totalitarians,” and that is because they want “total thought” — in other words, homogenized thinking through the filter of Leftism (race, class, sex: the “unholy trinitarian” goal of the Left). Here is the latest on this fight for societal freedom.
This is the excuse the totalitarians are looking for, PJ-MEDIA has a must read:
….While conservatives rightly denounced the violence this week, this response bodes ill for conservative speech not just on social media, but in the public square and even in private organizations.
In the aftermath of the Capitol riots, Twitter suspended President Donald Trump’s account for the first time and Facebook permanently banned the president. After Trump deleted the tweets Twitter had flagged and had his account restored, Twitter proceeded to ban him entirely on Friday, and then it banned the official President of the United States (POTUS) account.
Facebook throttled the great Rush Limbaugh, notifying him that his “Page has reduced distribution and other restrictions because of repeated sharing of false news.” Limbaugh left Twitter in protest after the platform banned Trump. Apple and Google attacked Parler, claiming that the new haven for conservatives had allowed people to plan the violence of the Capitol riots on its platform.
House Democrats filed articles of impeachment that explicitly blame President Trump for the Capitol riots, even though he never told his supporters to invade the Capitol. While the president’s exaggerated rhetoric inflamed the rioters, Democrats repeatedly did the same thing this summer. Before and after Black Lives Matter protests devolved into destructive and deadly riots, Democratic officials repeatedly claimed America suffers from “systemic racism” and institutionalized “white supremacy.”
Big Tech did not remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s accounts when she called for “uprisings” against the Trump administration. Facebook and Twitter did not target Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when she claimed that allegedly marginalized groups have “no choice but to riot.” These platforms did not act against Kamala Harris when she said the riots “should not” stop.
This week, Joe Biden condemned the Capitol rioters, saying, “What we witnessed yesterday was not dissent, it was not disorder, it was not protest. It was chaos. They weren’t protesters, don’t dare call them protesters. They were a riotous mob, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists. It’s that basic, it’s that simple.”
Yet he refused to speak in those terms when Black Lives Matter and antifa militants were throwing Molotov cocktails at federal buildings, setting up “autonomous zones,” and burning down cities. Instead, he condemned Trump for holding up a Bible at a church — without mentioning the fact that that very church had been set on fire the night before.
Despite this hypocrisy, Biden’s speech on Thursday proved instructive. Biden used the Capitol riots to condemn Trump’s entire presidency, accusing Trump of having “unleashed an all-out assault on our institutions of our democracy from the outset.” Biden twisted Trump’s actions into an attack on “democracy.” He claimed Trump’s originalist judges were a ploy to undermine impartial justice — when they were truly the exact opposite. Biden claimed Trump’s complaints about the Obama administration spying on his campaign were merely an “attack” on America’s “intelligence services.” Biden said Trump’s complaints about media bias constituted an attack on the “free press,” when the Obama administration actually attacked the free press.….
UPDATED post via PJ-MEDIA… who points out that these social media tech giants think they are the arbiter of speech as well as the type of information you consume. What is the free market solution? To start your own “companies,” or outlets of free speech. However, as PARLER is succeeding against Twitter and Facebook as a place to speak freely, Big Tech is going after those, too. More via PJ in a minute.
Many #NeverTrumpers love David French’s views — as he is the intellectual leader of the rational side of the movement. This article by THE FEDERALIST needs to be gone through, here is the portion I think is most relevant, but the entire thing should be read (I linked to it in a conversation I just had with a #NeverTrumper):
….National Review writer David French has criticized the bill for attempting to regulate free speech. He argues that this invites a dangerous level of government involvement in public discourse. Subjecting social media companies to government scrutiny may sound appealing with a Republican president in power and a predominantly Republican Senate, but this could backfire if Democrats take control: “Will a Kamala Harris administration decide that disproportionate conservative success violates political neutrality?”
Bad Examples Abound
Besides taking a rather Pollyannaish view on conservative success on social media—never bothering to mention the blatant partisan censorship of conservative voices like Steven Crowder, Prager University, or Live Action—this argument from French and those of other like-minded critics rests on two counterexamples where government cannot regulate speech without violating the First Amendment: a controlled forum like a college classroom, and a public utility like a telephone service.
However, these two examples do not have any bearing on what is meant by free speech. In the case of regulating a public utility, this does not involve actual speech. Speech, in the First Amendment sense, consists of arguments made to a public audience. A telephone service is a means of communication, not a platform for facilitating speech. Therefore, the federal government cannot demand a company like AT&T refuse service to pathological liars or criminals because they perpetuate harmful speech.
Furthermore, if AT&T executives did start to do this, on the grounds that they work for a private company and can do what they want, customers could rightly charge them with discrimination (violating the 14th Amendment). They must provide phone service to all who agree to pay them, not just those who meet their speech guidelines—again, because their service does not pertain to speech, but basic communication, a utility.
In the case of a college lecture hall, the speech in question is not actually free. The professor can make his arguments and say whatever the school permits him to say. He also sets the rules for what students can say. If Dr. Kevin Sorbo tells his students that God doesn’t exist, as he does in the Pure Flix movie “God’s Not Dead,” his students are not free to debate him unless he allows it—which he foolishly does, much to his demise. Nevertheless, they do have the right to free speech outside his class (unless they attend Harvard University) and can complain about their atheist professor all they like.
This is different from students who request government action when they feel their free speech rights are somehow violated because a professor has an opinion that they dislike. Hawley’s bill would not require the fictional Dr. Kevin Sorbo or the real Dr. Fang Zhou to change their views or speech policies to uphold political neutrality in their classroom. It only applies to large social media companies and is meant to prevent silencing any particular view, conservative or progressive.
It’s Naive to Think Big Tech Companies Will Die Out
Given that these social media platforms have billions of users altogether, and will simply buy up any worthy competitor if it stumbles on a new idea (which is the ongoing plotline of the television series “Silicon Valley”), it is misguided to assume that they will pass away like the social media companies of yesteryear (Myspace, Friendster, etc.). The Big Tech platforms are less like a few popular channels on television and more like the whole cable and basic television package. The truth is that they won’t need to change; conservatives who try to create content on their sites will.
Without any laws to check them, Big Tech companies are removing conservative voices and clearing the way for the Democratic narrative that Trump is terrible and more government can save America. Heard often enough, this narrative will convince Americans who have no way of knowing better to vote for Democrats. And it is not a stretch to assume that the first order of business for any Democratic president will be to impose speech laws that suppress conservative ideas or grant greater authority to the Big Tech thought police.
In this, French is right to ask what a Harris administration would do to free speech if given the chance, but wrong to conclude that she would exploit Hawley’s law to do it. She doesn’t need to. Speaking for most Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposes taking away social media’s legal protection (Section 230), considering it a “gift.” She recognizes that Democrat politicians will continue to benefit from the bias dominating all media and only stand to lose if conservatives compete on a level playing field.
It is nonetheless worth noting that even with numerous obstacles put in place, conservatives still dominate the internet because most Americans recognize that they have the better argument and discuss more relevant issues. By contrast, leftist publications depend on skewed narratives and bad arguments and tend to focus on tired topics like the Mueller report, Trump’s tax returns, and Joe Biden.
When given the chance, viewers will watch the watch Crowder over Vox’s Carlos Maza because Crowder is funnier, smarter, and doesn’t rely on people’s sympathy for his success. Of course, if Crowder stops producing his show because YouTube demonetizes his videos, viewers will not have a choice anymore.
In light of this fact, it is probably more accurate to frame the issue of regulating social media as more a matter of a free market than one of free speech, although one depends on the other. Many people on the left want to eliminate competition online and stop losing to conservative content creators. Allegations of hate and radicalization are merely a pretext to this.…
….After the social media platforms nixed Trump, people appeared to leave platforms in droves.
Nancy Pelosi, Ayanna Presley, and other Democrats have egged on rioters in the streets. Their social media accounts are still intact.
Conservative Americans have left the platforms in the understandable belief that if they could cut off the most powerful man in what used to be known as the free world, then they stood no chance.
They’re right.
To avoid the speech police, Americans have been leaving those platforms for Rumble and Parler, social media sites that promise to have few filters on speech. Parler does not allow illegal activity on its site under its terms of service.
But even as conservatives fled Facebook and Twitter for Parler, Big Tech decided to censor the site.
As I reported at PJ Media, Google Play cut off the Parler app from its app store and Apple followed suit in short order.
On Friday, a group called the “Amazon Employees for Climate Justice” wrote a screed to management demanding the tech behemoth boot the Parler app from its servers.
[….]
On Saturday, Amazon capitulated to the leftist rage mob and informed Parler it was getting rid of the social site from its servers.
Parler CEO John Matze announced that at midnight Sunday, Amazon would expunge the app content from its servers. Furthermore, he alleged that the tech giants conspired to orchestrate their moves to make it harder for Parler to stay afloat.
Sunday (tomorrow) at midnight Amazon will be shutting off all of our servers in an attempt to completely remove free speech off the internet. There is the possibility Parler will be unavailable on the internet for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch. We prepared for events like this by never relying on amazons [sic] proprietary infrastructure and building bare metal products.
We will try our best to move to a new provider right now as we have many competing for our business, however Amazon, Google and Apple purposefully did this as a coordinated effort knowing our options would be limited and knowing this would inflict the most damage right as President Trump was banned from the tech companies.
This was a coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the market place. We were too successful too fast. You can expect the war on competition and free speech to continue, but don’t count us out.
#speakfreely
This is tyranny. This is groupthink.
To sum up:
Big Tech censored you and the president on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter
You left to go to other social media sites such as Parler, MeWe, Minds
Big Tech didn’t want you to leave for more freedom
Big Tech refused to let another social media platform, Parler, use their app stores
Big Tech then booted the social media site Parler from their servers
Double standards abound. No one on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram was tossed off those platforms for protesting, rioting, looting, and vandalizing on behalf of Black Lives Matter and antifa. Lobbing Molotov cocktails wouldn’t get a group booted off a platform.
Ayatollahs and the Chinese death camp operators are held in higher regard than the president of the United States of America – and his supporters – because of Wednesday’s siege on the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.
The line is drawn.
UPDATE!
RED STATE and WEASEL ZIPPERS notes the latest attack on free-markets and free speech by the Tech Giants:
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Mocks Parler after Coordinated Big Tech to Take Down His Competition
…So with this coordination to take down the right and any other alternative to Twitter, you would think that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey would be standing up for free speech, right? Just kidding.
Not only are they cool with booting off folks on the right from their site and removing the followers from virtually every right leaning account on Twitter, they’re also cool with their competition being stomped on. Indeed, if we were looking into antitrust questions in the coordination of all this, what Jack just posted would be Exhibit #1 in that action.
Here’s Jack celebrating that instead of Parler being the number 1 App on the App Store, his Signal App private messenger is instead. With a little help from his friends.
WEASEL ZIPPERS continues:
Amazon Kills Parler Server
You are not allowed an alternative either. They’re pulling them down tonight at 11:59 p.m. so Parler is looking for a new server.
Calling it a “coordinated attack,” Parler CEO John Matze informed the social media platform’s users Saturday that Amazon kicked Parler off their web hosting service, which will wipe them off the internet until they find a new host.
This devastating blow coming after Parler was removed from Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store.
The narrative employed to justify the Big Tech attack on Twitter’s biggest competitor is to link Parler, a free speech site being billed by the corrupt media as a “pro-Trump” site, to last week’s U.S. Capitol protest, claiming they allowed “calls for violence.”
….Then Rush gets into the events of the day more specifically.
“Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of people — Americans who have gotten tired of being ignored, and lied about, and smeared as racists by these very Democrats in the media and the popular culture. Americans who have gotten fed up with having elections stolen from them by the Democrats, including the White House. Now they think two more Senate seats have been stolen, and they thought they were going to be stolen even before the election. And these people went to Washington. They weren’t protestors paid by George Soros or the Democrat party. The overwhelming majority of these Americans were well-behaved and respectful.”
He’s right. And he continued to be right all the way through this clip. THAT’S WHY they’re attacking him. Not because they’re outraged. Because he’s right and they know it.
A friend and I had a quick soiree that was based off of my OP (original post) that read thus:
BIG TECH PURGE: Facebook permanently bans Conservative #WalkAway group because it supported Trump
Just as we said they would, Facebook is using the Capitol riot as an excuse to begin purging conservatives from their platform, especially the ones who supported President Trump:
All conservatives are being treated as pariah… this is only the beginning. Already a majority of Democrats believe Trump and Republicans are “racist/bigoted/sexist,” which is why social platforms feel like they can shut down businesses and ban conservative ideas from their platforms. While this maligning is historical:
From Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Donald Trump, the Tea Party, the NRA and Republicans everywhere, Democrats have played the race card to tattered, unrecognizable bits. They have all but destroyed the ability to even have a constructive conversation about race. (REVOLUTIONARY ACT)
Like telling Jews they cannot do business in society. The storefront is literal as well as digital in today’s world. Conservatives are the current bogeyman:
49% of Democrats think Trump voters are racist — July 2019
83% of Democrats think Trump is racist — June 2020
Here is the conversation with some visual editing for increased access. I post a Rick Wilson Tweet to remind Jim of the people he admires and how far from being a “Reaganite” [whom Jim invoked] he and his peeps are, as, he is a fan of the Lincoln Project. So, this is where we left off, and really the response after it is for everyone to get a feel for what is coming.
So, my response is simple, Biden and Harris (Harris is the MOST LEFTIST senator available — showing Joe Biden is not moderate. See below as well). And Trump lies, but crowd size and ego building lies is a sign of a politician… and? But Trump’s lies are not equal to the administration Biden was in previously:
LIES
IRAN DEAL & Ben Rhodes:
Remember that time the White House deceived those gullible Americans about the Iran deal? Haha, good times!
That was the undeniable tone of a recent New York Times profile of President Barack Obama‘s national security advisor Ben Rhodes. In the profile, Rhodes goes on at length about his failed attempt to become a novelist, and how he sees his work at the White House as essentially the same kind of storytelling and narrative-weaving. And when crafting his non-fictional storylines involved selling the American people fiction, well, Rhodes was more than up to the task.
Apologies for the long block quote, but it really does need to be read to be believed:
Rhodes’s innovative campaign to sell the Iran deal is likely to be a model for how future administrations explain foreign policy to Congress and the public. The way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal presented — that the Obama administration began seriously engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a new political reality in Iran, which came about because of elections that brought moderates to power in that country — was largely manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal. Even where the particulars of that story are true, the implications that readers and viewers are encouraged to take away from those particulars are often misleading or false. Obama’s closest advisers always understood him to be eager to do a deal with Iran as far back as 2012, and even since the beginning of his presidency…
In the narrative that Rhodes shaped, the “story” of the Iran deal began in 2013, when a “moderate” faction inside the Iranian regime led by Hassan Rouhani beat regime “hard-liners” in an election and then began to pursue a policy of “openness,” which included a newfound willingness to negotiate the dismantling of its illicit nuclear-weapons program. The president set out the timeline himself in his speech announcing the nuclear deal on July 14, 2015: “Today, after two years of negotiations, the United States, together with our international partners, has achieved something that decades of animosity has not.” While the president’s statement was technically accurate — there had in fact been two years of formal negotiations leading up to the signing of the J.C.P.O.A. — it was also actively misleading, because the most meaningful part of the negotiations with Iran had begun in mid-2012, many months before Rouhani and the “moderate” camp were chosen in an election among candidates handpicked by Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The idea that there was a new reality in Iran was politically useful to the Obama administration.
By obtaining broad public currency for the thought that there was a significant split in the regime, and that the administration was reaching out to moderate-minded Iranians who wanted peaceful relations with their neighbors and with America, Obama was able to evade what might have otherwise been a divisive but clarifying debate over the actual policy choices that his administration was making. By eliminating the fuss about Iran’s nuclear program, the administration hoped to eliminate a source of structural tension between the two countries, which would create the space for America to disentangle itself from its established system of alliances with countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel and Turkey. With one bold move, the administration would effectively begin the process of a large-scale disengagement from the Middle East.
It’d be one thing if the New York Times dug through archives, spoke with anonymous government officials in hushed tones, and independently came to the conclusion that the White House was lying to Americans about the purpose and history behind the Iran deal. That factoid alone ought to be the front page headline in papers across the country rather than consigned to page 44 of the Sunday magazine.
To say nothing of that last paragraph, where we learn that the long-term policy goal of the administration is to “disengage” from Israel and our Arab allies and wash our hands of the Middle East. In line with that policy, the purpose of the Iran deal is not to protect our allies, but to abandon them…..
This old story reminds me of talking to millennial’s who listed to comedy shows as their source of political moral guidance on what is the case in our body politic. Here is the WASHINGTON TIMESnoting the gullibility of these younger persons who really haven’t read much or watched much outside of what they had to for their bachelors in literature of psychology or business administration:
…Ben Rhodes, the man who majored in creative writing and then ended up the Deputy National Security Adviser for President Obama, told The New York Times about the “echo chamber” he was able to create and feed:
In the spring of last year, legions of arms-control experts began popping up at think tanks and on social media, and then became key sources for hundreds of often-clueless reporters. ‘We created an echo chamber,’ [Rhodes] admitted, when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted experts cheerleading for the deal. ‘They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.’
“The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. … They literally know nothing,” Rhodes bragged.
And the know-nothing millennials loved him for it. And, apparently, they still do….
KEEP YOUR DR. & HEALTH CARE PLAN
I don’t know how crowd size compares to that, but let’s continue. Can you name a lie that Trump made that is as big as a lie made to take over a large portion of the economy (one-sixth, some say one-fifth) comparable to Obama/Biden? “If you like your health plan, you can keep it.” “If you like your doctor, you can keep him/her.” That was a lie that captured MORE government control of the economy.
POWERLINE has a good link fest to various “Obamacare Lies.”
…For the past two and a half years this nation has been roiled by the incessant drumbeat of accusations that its newly elected President, Donald Trump, was a clandestine agent of Russia and colluded with them to alter the outcome of the 2016 election. On their face, these accusations were so preposterous that anyone with a modicum of common sense would have thought them totally unbelievable.
Nonetheless, within 7 months after Trump’s inauguration 54% of all Americans believed he had acted illegally or unethically in his dealings with Russia (80% of Democrats). Within 14 months after the inauguration 66% of Democrats believed Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Trump elected and 59% accepted the premise that there were improper relations between the Trump campaign and Russia before the 2016 election.
In what was a staged and unnecessary inquiry, and despite turning over every marginally relevant leaf and conducting a dogged 22-month investigation using partisan prosecutors, Robert Mueller was unable to link Donald Trump or his campaign to even the minutest degree of collusion with the Russian Government. Nonetheless the drumbeat of lies and insinuations was a major factor in the Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives in 2018.
The American citizenry now definitively knows that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians during the presidential campaign of 2016. Further, based on the testimony of Rod Rosenstein and others involved in the Special Counsel probe, the Russians did not tamper with any vote tallies.
How were the Democrats, and their allies in the mainstream media able to suspend rationality and manipulate the emotions of so many Americans for so long?
[….]
From January 20, 2017 (Inauguration Day) through March 21, 2019 (791 days), the major networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC evening newscasts produced a combined 2,284 minutes of “collusion” coverage. During this period no other issue received more than 10% of this level of attention. Further, the spin of the overall network coverage of Donald Trump was 92% negative.
Two cable networks, CNN and MSNBC, each devoted, on the average, nearly 2 to 3 hours per day on Trump and Russia collusion, or an estimated 1,978 hours (118,700 minutes) since the inauguration. Virtually all the coverage was negative with innumerable false and misleading reports, accusations of treason, supposed imminent arrests and the unabashed reporting of any salacious or unproven rumor or allegation.
The print media went down the same path as their counterparts in the electronic media. The NewYork Times and The Washington Post between them published nearly 1,000 front page articles on the subject and had to issue numerous retractions days later after the damage was done. That process was repeated by news services such as the Associated Press and Reuters, pumping out to its newspaper, radio and television station subscribers throughout the United States daily stories negative to Trump regarding collusion.
On a near daily basis, so-called celebrities in Hollywood and the entertainment establishment unabashedly regurgitated to their untold millions of followers on social media virtually all the false stories and innuendos promulgated by the media and the Democratic Party.
The illegal and unethical maneuvering of the upper echelon of the FBI and Department of Justice immediately after the inauguration to appoint a special counsel added gravitas to the accusations regarding Trump and the Russians, as well as a means of finding anything that would either implicate Donald Trump in any potential criminality, or misbehavior outside of the Russian matter that could lead to impeachment. Further, their willing accomplices in the media breathlessly reported, without hesitation or confirmation, any leak or innuendo from these same denizens of the deep state.
The Democrats in Congress, undeterred by ethics or the laws of slander and defamation, were free to fabricate or leak stories regarding Russian collusion that were accepted at face value by their allies in the media….
Hugh Hewitt and Generalissimo Duane read the phone call Trump had with the Ukrainian President. One debunked position people attribute to the call was that President Trump used military aid as a bargaining chip to get what he wanted from Ukraine. However, the far Left magazine, The Nation, notes this about the issue:
Democratic leaders and media pundits are convinced that Trump extorted Ukraine by delaying military aid to compel an investigation into Biden. Their theory may prove correct, but the available evidence does not, as of now, make for a strong case. Trump had held up military aid to Ukraine by the time of his call with Zelensky, but if the public transcript is accurate, it did not come up during their conversation. According to The New York Times, Zelensky’s government did not learn that the military aid was frozen until more than one month later. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who met with Zelensky in early September, said that the Ukrainian president “did not make any connection between the aid that had been cut off and the requests that he was getting from [Trump attorney Rudy] Giuliani.” It will be difficult to prove extortion if Trump’s purported target was unaware. (THE NATION)
Another big lie from the Left/Democrats is that Gender is assigned, and not inherent to our nature.
Another charge made over and over by the left — the mainstream media, academia and the Democratic Party — that the Trump election had unleashed an unprecedented amount of anti-Semitism was proved to be yet another left-wing hysteria based on a left-wing lie.
NEWSBUSTERS Notes CNN’s Fareed Zakaria admitting to what I have argued for a long time, that is — if Trump were in cahoots with Putin, whay was he tougher on him than Obama?
“I think in general, there isn’t going to be as much difference as people imagine. The Biden folks are pretty tough on Russia, Iran, North Korea. You know, the dirty little secret about the Trump administration was that while Donald Trump had clearly had a kind of soft spot for Putin, the Trump Administration was pretty tough on the Russians. They armed Ukraine, they armed the Poles. They extended NATO operations and exercises in ways that even the Obama Administration had not done. They maintained the sanctions.So I don’t think it will be that different.”
Wait a second! It was a “dirty little secret” that Trump was tough on Russia? WHY?? Who kept it a secret and for what purpose??
And the obvious answer is that the liberal media/Democrats were intent on pushing Russia Russia Russia. Admitting that President Trump was in fact tough on Russia would undermine that line of attack. And so they buried it: kept it a “dirty little secret.”
Besides Trump cutting Federal programs, getting rid of regulations that held back small business, factories, and agriculture — he also added t he fewest laws to the Federal Registry:
The Trump administration issued the fewest new regulations during 2019 than in any year since the government began keeping track more than four decades ago, as President Trump cuts away at Obama-era red tape.
The Federal Register for Dec. 31 has published 2,964 final rules in its pages, the lowest number since records began in 1975, said Clyde Wayne Crews, policy vice president of the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute think tank.
Mr. Trump’s previous low for new rule-making was 3,281 in 2017.
“It is a notable achievement that all three of the lowest-ever annual rule counts belong to Trump,” Mr. Crews wrote in his blog on Forbes’ website. “This an even more significant development given that some of Trump’s ‘rules’ are rules written to get rid of or replace other rules.”
Biden and Harris will outdo themselves to break spending and regulatory records.
FARMERS (WOTUS):
Biden will reimplement regulation that will retake (under fiat) 247 Million Acres of Farmland. Among other regulatory increases. What it is….
WOTUS gave the federal government effective authority over water use on 247 million acres of American farmland.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, together with Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Douglas Lamont, signed a proposed regulatory rescission of WOTUS. As soon as the proposed rule change can be published in the Federal Register, under Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OW-2017-0203, the public will have a 30-day comment period to “review and revise” the definition of “waters of the United States.”
The EPA took to Twitter at #WOTUS to call its action a significant step to return power to states and provide regulatory certainty to the nation’s farmers and businesses. The EPA added that its decision is consistent with the Executive Order signed by President Trump on February 28, aimed at “Restoring the Rule of Law, Federalism, and Economic Growth by Reviewing the ‘Waters of the United States’ Rule.”
The Obama administration’s WOTUS regulatory expansion cleverly redefined the term “navigable waters” to include “intermittent streams.” Environmental activists hailed the WOTUS’s expansion of federal jurisdiction over land and water use as an essential common-sense-rule to protect water for wildlife and drinking water supplies for 117 million Americans….
The Biden Administration has all but promised a rescinding of this huge shrinking of government intrusion into the lives of the individual. Here is a small excerpt of a wonderful resource via RED STATE:
….Who is looming EPA Chief Michael Regan? All you have to know is – Leftists LOVE him:
“Several environmental advocacy groups lauded the selection….Regan…is known for prioritizing environmental justice, which…’helped win him the post.’”
“Climate change is the most significant challenge humanity faces. We’ll make meaningful progress together by listening to every voice—from our youth & frontline communities to scientists & our workforce. I will be honored to be part of that work as EPA Administrator.”
I’m quite sure Regan won’t actually be listening to any farmers’ voices at all.
Can you feel the EPA mojo coming back? Farmers certainly can – and they’ll hate it.
Who is looming Interior Chief Deb Haaland? All you have to know is – Leftists LOVE her:
“Even before her selection, Haaland was drawing broad support from environmental groups, indigenous peoples’ advocates and members of Congress, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who released a statement on Wednesday saying ‘Haaland knows the territory, and if she is the President-elect’s choice for Interior Secretary, then he will have made an excellent choice.’”
“Haaland’s selection positions Biden’s Interior Department to build on the budding alliances between tribes and environmental groups that have been formed in recent years to battle fossil fuel projects like the Dakota Access pipeline, expand land conservation and keep water in overdrawn rivers.”
“(T)he Waters of the U.S., or WOTUS, rule…could be a top priority should the former vice president win the White House in November — right after reinstating President Obama’s Clean Power Plan and reining in President Trump’s revisions to a rule for National Environmental Policy Act compliance.
“‘I think there’s going to be considerable pressure to deal with the Waters of the U.S. mess,’ said Vermont Law School professor Pat Parenteau, referring to the regulation that defines the scope of the Clean Water Act. ‘I think what he really has to do is what Trump did, in reverse, and flip the script.’”
Farmers yet again hardest hit…..
PARIS CLIMATE ACCORD
If power corrupts, as it is said, Americans are going to feel a jolt of degeneration when Joe Biden plugs back into the climate-change network. Rather than save the world from global warming, a President Biden would force Americans to spend more of their hard-earned dollars just to keep the wheels turning and the lights burning. One pledge the presumptive Democratic president-elect has chiseled in stone is that when he first sets foot in the Oval Office, he would rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, from which President Trump’s 2019 withdrawal became final on Election Day 2020: “Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement,” Mr. Biden tweeted. “And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it.” (WASHINGTON TIMES)
Executive Orders
On January 20, 2021, Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States. As soon as his first day in office, Biden plans to sign at least five executive orders that could reverse several of President Donald Trump’s policies. He’ll also focus on addressing the Covid-19 pandemic, improving the economy and providing financial stimulus. These executive orders may include:
1. Paris Climate Accord
Biden wants the U.S. to rejoin the Paris climate accord.
Biden said he would build upon President Barack Obama’s efforts to fight climate change.
As part of his plan, Biden proposed $2 trillion in clean energy and infrastructure spending. Biden also wants net zero emissions by 2050.
…Pulling us out of this bad deal is good news. As it was negotiated under the prior administration, this agreement imposed a goal of reducing U.S. carbon emissions by nearly 30 percent over a decade. The so-called “Obama pledge” accompanied a host of related federal regulations that would have damaged the economy, killed jobs, and driven up energy prices for families across the country.
Sticking with the deal could have cost 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025, according to a National Economic Research Associates study. And the effects would be widespread, including a loss of 440,000 manufacturing jobs, according to NERA’s numbers. Meanwhile, according to proponents’ own data, the agreement would have no discernible effect on global temperatures.
And the longer the agreement ran, the worse it would get, according to NERA’s data. By 2040, production (and thus employment) would be decimated in a host of industries, including a 38 percent cut in iron and steel, 31 percent in natural gas, and 86 percent for coal. At that point, the total economic cost to the U.S. would approach $3 trillion in lost gross domestic product and 6.5 million industrial jobs.
Speaking last week, Trump correctly noted that the damage is not spread evenly across the globe, noting that China and India can proceed with adding coal-fired capacity well into the future. “The agreement doesn’t eliminate coal jobs, it just transfers those jobs out of America and the United States and ships them to foreign countries,” he noted.
Other good news from last week is stopping future U.S. payments to the Green Climate Fund, part of what Trump rightly described as “a massive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries.” The federal government has already sent $1 billion of U.S. taxes to prop up energy projects in foreign countries.
Taxpayers and ratepayers have seen firsthand how green energy subsidies fail to deliver on promises of long-term job creation and energy affordability — it makes little sense to repeat these mistakes abroad. The Green Climate Fund is essentially an international version of Solyndra, the solar panel manufacturer that took $535 million in taxpayer money before going belly-up.
Exiting the agreement means the U.S. can lead with strength in promoting energy and environmental policies, protecting U.S. jobs and easing the costly regulatory burden across the country. Now the Trump administration can push ahead with a plan that conserves the environment while protecting economic competitiveness and promoting affordability and reliability. He should keep these priorities in mind as he engages in future negotiations with international stakeholders on energy and environment policies.
What is on the horizon for more tax-payer expenses
….It was the heavy burden on the American economy compared to the easy terms given to industrial powerhouses like China and India that convinced Mr. Trump to bail. U.S. participation in the pact would cost the average family of four $20,000 and the national GDP $2.5 trillion by 2035, according to The Heritage Foundation. The resulting reduction in global temperatures: a nearly unmeasurable 0.015 degrees Celsius in 2100.
It’s unsurprising, then, that environmental extremists argue a Biden return to Paris won’t cut it. “Paris is a good starting point, but we need to go well beyond Paris now to achieve the reductions that are necessary,” climate activist and climatologist Michael Mann tells NBC News. That means reaching even deeper into American pockets.
A Biden administration would queue up a modified version of the $93 trillion Green New Deal that environmental firebrands like Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez favor. The Biden plan would build the nationwide infrastructure for “clean, American-made electricity to achieve a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035.” With it would come a transition to electric vehicles….
This is from yesterdays show (1/7/2021), and is a large sample of why The Sage is great at what he does. I add some video which radio only allows audio to play, as well as adding some of the video from @The Larry Elder Show — HERE: Enjoy, it is a stitching of large sections from all three hours.
Last segment of the above is a great shorter listen. This is the last portion of a larger audio, HERE. Larry Elder discusses new studies – but included one from the 1970s… this is the first time I have heard this particular study
