Trump’s Real ‘MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT’ Has Nothing to do with His Pathetic Trading Cards Scam

Posted by Mark NC on December 15, 2022 at 2:36 pm. 3 Comments :

On Wednesday night Donald Trump posted a comment on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, teasing a “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT” coming on Thursday. The post declared that “America needs a superhero,” and included a picture of him as a Bizarro World cartoon crusader.

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Trump’s fantasies of himself notwithstanding, his big reveal turned out to be even more pathetic than anyone could have imagined. It was nothing more than another opportunity to pick the pockets of his glassy-eyed cult disciples with a sham offering of “Trump Trading Cards” at $99.00 a pop. But they are not even real cards, they are just digital NFT images. He starred in his own telemarketing ad to hawk his latest sucker bait…

“Hello everyone, this is Donald Trump. Hopefully your favorite president of all time. Better than Lincoln, better than Washington, with an important announcement to make.”

Come for the claim that Trump was a better president than Washington and Lincoln, stay for the "Trump digital trading cards" pic.twitter.com/qEKWYpgXL7

— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) December 15, 2022

Whereupon Trump declared that he is selling NFTs – digital trading cards that “feature some of the really incredible artwork pertaining to my life and my career. It’s been very exciting.” He further revealed that any purchase enters the buyer into a contest with “prizes” (?) like dinner with Trump, who regards himself as something just short of a messiah. However, it’s notable that these cards are produced by a third party that is not owned, managed or controlled by Trump. He is simply licensing his name and likeness in order to fleece his flock. Which is so like Trump…

That said, there was another announcement posted on his website shortly after the trading cards pitch. And it actually has more of the “majorness” that he attributed to the digital card con. In a lengthy video, Trump laid out his plan to “shatter the left-wing censorship regime.” And he would do it by imposing his own totalitarian control of free speech. What follows are annotated excerpts of his uncomfortably high-decibel harangue. He began…

“If we don’t have free speech, then we just don’t have a free country. It’s as simple as that. […] That’s why today I’m announcing my plan to shatter the left-wing censorship regime and to reclaim the right to free speech for all Americans..”

Never mind that the only free speech deniers in American politics are Trump’s Republicans. They have literally banned books in schools and libraries, and have sought to silence critics of Trump in their ultra-biased MAGA media. And notice that he doesn’t provide a single example of alleged censorship by the fearsome left-wing regime. Undeterred by reality, Trump continued…

“In recent weeks, bombshell reports have confirmed that a sinister group of deep state bureaucrats, silicon tyrants, left-wing activists, and depraved corporate news media have been conspiring to manipulate and silence the American people. They have collaborated to suppress vital information on everything from elections to public health. The censorship cartel must be dismantled and destroyed and it must happen immediately.”

What Trump is referring to here is the wholly manufactured and bogus “Twitter Files” “scandal” that was orchestrated by Elon Musk and purported to expose left-wing bias by Twitter when it suspended Trump’s account. After five data dumps, Musk and his cohorts failed utterly to achieve their goal of smearing the left. In fact, they actually proved that Twitter’s Trust and Safety team (who Musk recently fired) was exceedingly fair and conscientious in their deliberations and decision making.

Then Trump gets to the meat of his whining with the articulation of his five-point plan…

“First, within hours of my inauguration, I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organization, business, or person to censor, limit, categorize or impede the lawful speech of American citizens. I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as mis- or disinformation.”

Who wants to tell Trump that the federal government is already prohibited from “imped[ing] the lawful speech of American citizens?” Trump is merely declaring his intention to issue an executive order that essentially repeats the Constitution’s First Amendment. Except, that is, for the last part where he proposes to punish those who exercise their free speech by alerting citizens to the dangers of mis- and disinformation. Trump, a major supplier of disinformation, wants to make sure he can keep on doing that. Moving on…

“Second, I will order the Department of Justice to investigate all parties involved in the new online censorship regime, which is destructive and terrible, and to aggressively prosecute any and all crimes identified. These include possible violations of federal civil rights law, campaign finance law, federal election law, securities law, and anti-trust laws, the Hatch Act, and a host of other criminal, civil, regulatory, and constitutional offenses.”

Here Trump is threatening to force the Justice Department to – uphold existing laws? Yep. But let’s face it, when Trump makes this sort of threat, he intends that it be directed exclusively at his enemies. He and his administration are more prone to violating those laws, but he never bothered to hold any of those who violated them accountable when he occupied the White House. And there’s more…

“Third, upon my inauguration as president, I will ask Congress to send a bill to my desk revising section 230 to get big online platforms out of the censorship business. From now on digital platforms should only qualify for immunity protection under section 230 if they meet high standards of neutrality, transparency, fairness, and non-discrimination. We should require these platforms to increase their efforts to take down unlawful content such as child exploitation and promoting terrorism, while dramatically curtailing their power to arbitrarily restrict lawful speech.

First of all, Trump has no idea what Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is or does. While there is room to refine it, it is basically a protection so that online services aren’t held accountable for comments made by the public. Without it platforms like Twitter and Facebook couldn’t allow people to post comments at all.

Furthermore, Trump’s idea that platforms should have to “meet high standards of neutrality, transparency, fairness, and non-discrimination,” is an imposition on their free speech rights, as well as posing difficult questions about who sets those standards. The government? Trump wants to force private companies to allow all “legal” comments, even if they are racist, hate speech, or sufficiently vague incitements to violence. And he’s still not through…

“Fourth, we need to break up the entire toxic censorship industry that has arisen under the false guise of tackling so-called mis- and disinformation.”

In other words, Trump wants to prohibit private Internet platforms from refusing to post purposefully false information that has the potential to cause real harm. He wants fake COVID cures and anti-vaccine propaganda to be readily available. He wants lies about election fraud to stir up civil unrest. He even explicitly brought up his own fixation with phony election fraud saying that “Once you lose those elections … you no longer have a country.” Which brings us to his fifth point…

“Fifth, the time has finally come for congress to pass a Digital Bill of Rights. This should include a right to digital due process. In other words, government officials should need a court order to take down online content, not send information requests such as the FBI was sending to Twitter.” […] In addition, all users over the age of 18 should have the right to opt-out of content moderation and curation entirely, and receive an unmanipulated stream of information, if they so choose.”

To be clear, Trump is proposing the first law that would allow government – with a court order – to censor content, which would be unconstitutional. Remember, this is his plan for free speech and to end censorship. And while the FBI did inform Twitter about certain content that was false (and so did Trump and the GOP), they never had the right to force it to be removed. That’s Trump’s idea. And so is his suggestion that adults can “opt-out of content moderation,” effectively forcing private Internet platforms to post content that they regard as harmful, offensive, or otherwise contrary to their standards. Then Trump closed saying…

“The fight for free speech is a matter of victory or death for America and for the survival of Western civilization itself. When I am president, this whole rotten system of censorship and information control will be ripped out of the system at large. There won’t be anything left. By restoring free speech we will begin to reclaim our democracy and save our nation.”

The problem with Trump’s initiative is that it produces the polar opposite of what he claims is his intention. It would permit censorship, allow the government to force private businesses to post content they disapprove of, and shred the First Amendment. Which is all pretty much precisely what is expected of an aspiring authoritarian tyrant like Trump who has openly advocated banning websites he doesn’t like, such as Twitter and Facebook. America would be better off if his “major announcements” were all about trading cards and other snake oil ventures.

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The Sham ‘Twitter Files’ Exposé Actually Proves that Trump’s Coup Plot was Appropriately Muted

Posted by Mark NC on December 10, 2022 at 12:24 pm. 21 Comments :

The new regime at Twitter has been engaging in what it calls an “exposé” of alleged censorship of conservatives in general – and Donald Trump in particular – on the part of Twitter’s prior management team. However, their efforts thus far have been pitifully underwhelming and have failed to prove any of their outrageous and unfounded allegations.

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When Elon Musk took control over Twitter he portrayed himself as a “free speech absolutist” who aspired to bring a dialogue to the service that was unfettered by bias and censorship. In reality, Musk just inserted his own personal biases and revealed that he has no grasp of what free speech really means. He also demonstrated that his absolutist approach only permits unfettered hate speech. Consequently, despite his instance that Twitter would not become a “free-for-all hellscape,” that’s precisely what it became shortly after he took the reins.

Last week Musk put out the first of what he promised would be a series of revelations exposing the bias of Twitter. That first release was pathetically devoid of any of the bombshells they teased. Although it succeeded in doxing private citizens and putting them at risk for harm.

Now the latest release of Musk’s multipart melodrama was posted Friday night. It consisted of 67 tweets by his protégé/puppet, Matt Taibbi, that ostensibly unveiled a vast conspiracy against conservative tweeters. Suffice to say that it was another nothingburger that failed utterly to prove its predetermined point.

To the contrary, Taibbi actually proved that the staff at Twitter acted responsibly to prevent Trump from inciting further violence during the January 6th insurrection in Washington, D.C. For example, the seventh tweet explicitly laid out how carefully considered any decisions were to tag or suspend potentially violating tweets and users…

7. Twitter executives removed Trump in part over what one executive called the “context surrounding”: actions by Trump and supporters “over the course of the election and frankly last 4+ years.” In the end, they looked at a broad picture. But that approach can cut both ways.

This tweet included a screenshot of the remarks by Twitter moderation staff…

“[H]ere is our quick take: the decision on whether to pull that particular tweet or use that as the last straw for trump depends on many factors including: (1) The overall context and narrative in which that tweet lives – we currently analyze tweets and consider them on a tweet-by-tweet basis which does not appropriately take into account the surrounding context – you can use the telling fire into a crowded theater example – context matters and the narrative that trump and his friends have pursued over the course of this election and frankly the last 4+ years must be taken into account.”

How Taibbi can regard this as evidence of bias is puzzling. It shows a respect for analyzing tweets that takes into consideration the context and the tweeter’s prior comments in order to fully understand their intent. It’s exactly how content moderation should be done. But Taibbi exhibits his bias in the tweets that followed…

8. The bulk of the internal debate leading to Trump’s ban took place in those three January days [6-8]. However, the intellectual framework was laid in the months preceding the Capitol riots.

9. Before J6, Twitter was a unique mix of automated, rules-based enforcement, and more subjective moderation by senior executives. As @BariWeiss reported, the firm had a vast array of tools for manipulating visibility, most all of which were thrown at Trump (and others) pre-J6.

10. As the election approached, senior executives – perhaps under pressure from federal agencies, with whom they met more as time progressed – increasingly struggled with rules, and began to speak of “vios” as pretexts to do what they’d likely have done anyway.

Taibbi is making a wholly manufactured assessment about what he calls the preceding “intellectual framework,” whatever that means. Then he complains that Twitter responsibly employed “rules-based enforcement,” that he baselessly calls subjective, and he whines that their moderation tools were “thrown at Trump.” Maybe that’s because Trump had violated Twitter’s rule innumerable times in the weeks and months that preceded January 6th.

However, the worst part of this screed was Taibbi’s claim that when senior executives “began to speak of ‘vios'” [violations] it was “perhaps under pressure from federal agencies.” Really? He could have just as credibly have said that it was “perhaps under pressure from Martians.” He provided zero evidence of anything resembling pressure by federal agencies or any other entity, terrestrial or otherwise.

That is representative how carelessly and dishonestly Taibbi put together this sham. His only purpose was to create a store of material that Republicans and Trump cultists could link to in order to advance their crackpot conspiracy theories and yammer about conservatives being victims of evil “Big Tech” liberals. The truth is that Twitter long ago admitted that their algorithms favored right-wingers. And near the end of the 67 tweet harangue was one that expressly outlined the situation with regard to Trump’s hostile incitements…

“An update on actions we’re taking as a result of what’s happening in DC today. We have removed (bounced) 3 tweets from @realDonaldTrump on 6 January 2020 [sic] for making unfounded claims of voter fraud and election theft, which must be viewed in the context of the violence in Washington DC today and reasonably can be expected to continue to incite and inspire violent acts around the country. We are requiring a 12-hour timeout following the removal of these tweets. We also have tweeted so there’s transparency in our actions and making it clear that future violations of the Twitter Rules will result in permanent suspension.”

That message completely negates virtually everything that Taibbi had falsely framed prior to it. But he still maintains that his work proves there was a bias at Twitter against Trump and other conservatives. If there was, it was a bias against allowing a treasonous, twice impeached, wannabe dictator from staging a violent coup. And Musk’s rush to reinstate Trump’s account further affirms that he couldn’t care less about the welfare of this nation or its people.

UPDATE: The next installment of Musk’s phony “Twitter Files” fiasco make a ludicrous accusation against Michelle Obama, saying that she “pressured” Twitter to ban Trump.

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HUH? Senior Fox News Misinformer, Tucker Carlson, Declares that ‘Misinformation Can Be True’

Posted by Mark NC on December 6, 2022 at 12:19 pm. 7 Comments :

Since it’s inception, the mission of Fox News has been to advance the propaganda and lies of the Republican Party and its ultra-rightist agenda. Their management, editors, and program hosts are all chosen for, and devoted to that mission. And in recent years their extremist political evangelism has fervently pledged to the Cult of Donald Trump.

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Leading the wingnut evangelical crusade at Fox News is their top-rated host, Tucker Carlson. His program has become the most popular media destination for America’s white supremacists, misogynists, homophobes, and many other hate groups.

On Monday’s episode of Carlson’s hate-fest, he joined the conservative media’s embrace of Elon Musk’s Twitter nothingburger that purported to reveal an ingrained bias in favor of Democrats and then-presidential candidate Joe Biden. Suffice to say that the entire alleged “bombshell” was a spectacular dud that produced nothing but rank speculation, fabrication, and the disturbing doxing of private Twitter communications and staff.

Nevertheless, Fox News and Carlson were determined to further brainwash their audience with flagrant falsehoods. And apparently aware that their deceits were too obvious to disguise, they endeavored to frame lies as truths. Carlson literally defined falsehoods as facts. And not even “alternative facts” as previously dubbed by his Fox News colleague, and Trump toady, Kellyanne Conway. Carlson confabulated that…

“Misinformation is a new word. It’s been around the intel world for a long time but it’s never been used in common conversation until recently. The distinction between misinformation and lying is that misinformation can be true. It doesn’t have to be untrue to be censored. It used to be truth is a defense. If you’re telling the truth, you can say it. Not anymore. With mis- and disinformation, if I don’t like it, if I’m in power, I can censor you.”

"Misinformation is a new word. … The distinction between misinformation and lying is that misinformation can be true." pic.twitter.com/eYzadS2d2w

— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) December 6, 2022

For the record, misinformation cannot be true. It is, by definition, untrue. If it were true there would be nothing amiss in it. And only in the perverse world of Carlson and Fox News could such a ludicrous contention be made or taken seriously. But then again, it was Carlson who was actually defended in a defamation lawsuit by his own Fox News lawyers who told the court that “no reasonable person” would believe anything he said.

In the same program, Carlson elaborated on his adoption of the Musk Twitter files non-scandal. He complained about Twitter’s decisions to moderate the content on their platform in order to prevent Russia from spreading propaganda that was intended to benefit Trump and to sow distrust of American elections. Never mind that Musk’s pathetic exposé failed to reveal any wrongdoing or bias. Carlson was outraged at what consumed his imagination, or at least what he wanted to consume the imaginations of his viewers. He huffed that…

“Twitter did this with the help of the FBI committing censorship on behalf of one candidate while working to hurt the other candidate. It is hard to imagine a more brazen attack on our democracy than this. This is not how our system is supposed to work. In fact, it’s illegal. What Twitter did is in violation of the First Amendment, as well as established campaign finance law. They never declared those contributions to the Biden campaign. That’s a crime.”

Tucker: It is hard to imagine a more brazen attack on our democracy than this… pic.twitter.com/rIxVLyFRQg

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 6, 2022

First of all, Twitter didn’t do anything with the FBI. The internal messages that Musk published proved that all of the decisions about what disinformation to suppress were made solely by Twitter “safety and trust” staff. No government entity or personnel were involved, other than to flag tweets that potentially violated Twitter’s rules. And those came from both Democrats and Republicans. Also, at the time, Biden wasn’t president. It all took place during Trump’s administration with his appointees heading the FBI and the Justice Department.

Yet Carlson thinks that there was something nefarious going on for which he found it “hard to imagine a more brazen attack on our democracy.” Really? More brazen than the attempt to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021? More brazen than trying to undermine the election for two years and install the loser as dictator? More brazen than calling for the “termination” of the Constitution.

Carlson also appears to have no idea what the First Amendment says. It is a constraint on government from imposing censorship. It has no authority over private individuals or businesses, such as Twitter.

Finally, Carlson really needs to think twice before bringing up in-kind contributions to political campaigns. Because if that were a concept that were upheld, Fox News would have have to declare billions of dollars in donations that it made to Trump and other GOP candidates for the past quarter century.

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Trump Literally Calls for Termination of the Constitution and FREAKS OUT Over Bogus Fox News Story

Posted by Mark NC on December 3, 2022 at 11:59 am. 18 Comments :

The unsettling totalitarian tendencies of Donald Trump have long posed an imminent threat to American democracy and freedom. From the outset of his political pursuits he has demonstrated a sinister aspiration to tyrannical rule. It’s a symptom of his malignant narcissism that puts the nation – and world – at risk.

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Now, more than two years after he was unceremoniously evicted from his occupation of the White House by the American people, Trump continues to peddle his “Big Lie” that the election was “rigged” and “stolen” from him. And although it’s a flagrantly false figment of his diseased imagination, he persists in pushing it out to his glassy-eyed cult disciples, despite his rapidly declining approval and influence.

However, if you thought that he had exhausted his store of preposterous allegations and infantile rage, you don’t know Trump. On Saturday morning he unleashed an avalanche of absurdity in service of his severely acute psychosis. This temper tantrum manifested in multiple posts on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social. The tedious tirade culminated in the following hysteria…

“So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

REALLY? So Trump is now insisting that the Constitution be terminated in order to satisfy his election fraud fantasies and his voracious lust for power. It’s not especially surprising that Trump would hold that view. But it is unusual for him to so forthrightly express it.

The story that Trump regards as a “revelation,” and is so frantically flustered by, came from Fox News. It concerned a couple of Republican attorneys general from Missouri and Louisiana who are suing the Biden administration alleging censorship and suppression of speech by “Big Tech” and the FBI. Their complaint is wholly based on reports that the FBI held regular and normal meetings with the media to alert them to Russia’s attempts to interfere with the 2020 election. But even Fox’s reporting doesn’t assert what Trump and the GOP AGs are twisting these facts to conclude…

“During the deposition, [FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis] Chan said that he, along with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and senior Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency officials, had weekly meetings with major social media companies to warn against Russian disinformation attempts ahead of the 2020 election, according to a source in the Missouri attorney general’s office. […] According to a source, Chan testified that in those multiple, separate meetings, the FBI warned the social media companies that there could be potentially Russian ‘hack and dump’ or ‘hack and leak’ operations.”

So even according to Fox News there was no conspiracy between the government and “Big Tech” to censor or suppress free speech. It was all just an effort to keep the social media outlets apprised of the Russian disinformation campaign. Also, it’s interesting that Trump is readily accepting this reporting based on allegations by an unnamed source when he has previously dismissed them all as fake.

What Trump, and most of the right-wing echo chamber, is distorting into another pseudo-scandal is an already debunked story. It featured false claims that Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, told podcaster Joe Rogan that the FBI had ordered him to suppress news about – what else – Hunter Biden’s stolen laptop. Which is not what Zuckerberg said, or what the FBI was doing at all.

In reality, the FBI was doing their job to protect social media platforms, and thus the nation, from Russia’s election interference and fake news manipulation. Which is precisely what Russia was, in fact, doing. But that didn’t stop Trump from demanding that 2020 election be declared invalid, and that he be “declared the rightful winner.”

The Fox News story also reported that “the FBI regularly sends social media companies lists of internet URLs and social media accounts” that distribute “disinformation” from “malign foreign influence operations.” The story falsely implies that this amounts to censorship. Except that the evidence shows that the FBI never imposed any actions to be taken on the social media sites. They merely supplied the sites with information and let them determine for themselves what to do with it. In other words, free speech and the free markets prevailed. Not that Fox News or Trump would recognize it.

Ignoring the obvious facts in this affair, Trump ranted furiously in half a dozen successively incoherent posts that it represented “total corruption” and demanded that someone should “DO SOMETHING as our Country Melts!!!” He didn’t say who, or under what authority, this alleged melting should be halted. It was just more of his now familiar impotent whining and pathetic victimhood. And if the past is any indication, we should expect it to continue – and escalate – as he sinks farther into despair and desperation.

UPDATE I: Trump followed up his alt-tweet storm with another post saying that “UNPRECEDENTED FRAUD REQUIRES UNPRECEDENTED CURE!” He doesn’t specify what that “cure” is, but considering that a short while ago he called for terminating the Constitution, it’s hard not surmise that he’s now calling for another coup attempt or other violent upheaval on the part of his treasonous cult.

UPDATE II: Two days later Trump denied ever calling for the termination of the Constitution, despite his words calling for exactly that, verbatim.

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UH-OH: Marjorie Taylor Greene Fears ‘Corporate Communism’ of Advertisers Leaving Musk’s Twitter

Posted by Mark NC on November 27, 2022 at 1:15 pm. 7 Comments :

There appears to be a congenital defect in conservatives in general, and in the Donald Trump brand of wingnut Republicans in particular. They seem to have an inability to express a thought that doesn’t exhibit profound ignorance. And they do it without the slightest hint of shame.

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On Sunday morning Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-QAnon) displayed some of the notable symptoms of this defect in a tweet that aimed to malign both liberals and the world’s biggest corporations, because she believes that they have so much in common. But what’s truly troubling is that her steaming stupidity is taking over the Republican Party as it prepares to assume the majority in the House of Representatives.

Instead of landing a blow on her targets, Greene succeeded only in embarrassing herself, as usual. In her crackpot commentary she sought to defend Elon Musk as he endeavors to destroy the $44 billion toy he bought by permitting rampant hate speech and disinformation. She is very upset that, as a result, many companies that advertised on Twitter are temporarily declining to do so. So in that vein she unleashed the following lunacy…

“This is Corporate Communism. Corporations using their economic power to force their political agendas. They need to go back to the ‘Customer is King’ mentality, not corporations are king. @elonmusk opening Twitter for everyone’s speech doesn’t promote one side.”

This is Corporate Communism.

Corporations using their economic power to force their political agendas.

They need to go back to the “Customer is King” mentality, not corporations are king.@elonmusk opening Twitter for everyone’s speech doesn’t promote one side,

Cont’d https://t.co/Que4WwOV3W

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene?? (@RepMTG) November 27, 2022

WOW! That’s quite a shipload of cow manure. To begin with, the phrase “Corporate Communism” makes no sense. There are no corporations in a communist economy, where all means of production are controlled by the state. That’s not an agenda advocated by liberals. She might be thinking of fascism, which is also known as corporatism, where corporations have power over the government. Which is precisely the agenda of the Republican Party.

Greene is also criticizing private corporations for exercising their right to conduct business in a manner that best serves the interests of its customers and shareholders. And for some reason, she thinks that linking to a list of fifty of America’s biggest companies that are repulsed by overt expressions of hate, supports her argument.

If a company chooses not to advertise on a certain platform because it doesn’t want to be associated with the repugnant people and ideas that it promotes, that’s their prerogative. Generally, when a company makes such a decision, it’s because of, not contrary to, what their customers want.

Elon Musk has promised to restore all suspended accounts, except those that violated the law or disseminated spam. That means that accounts that engaged in overt bigotry and dangerous disinformation regarding pandemics and elections, are free to resume their hostile activities. Never mind that the American people have communicated to Twitter’s advertisers that they will not patronize businesses that support such maliciousness. Greene doesn’t believe that companies should have the right to accommodate their customers wishes.

In Green’s world – and in Musks’s – “opening Twitter for everyone’s speech” is simply free speech. But that absolutist standard as referenced in the Constitution only applies to the government. And even there it isn’t absolute. Private companies can set there own standards, and be driven by the values of their customers. But Greene would rather the government force companies and other institutions to advance her values and those of the ultra-right GOP.

Greene went on to condemn Democrats as the party that “mandated unnecessary vaccines [and] drag queen shows in schools.” That’s the sort of asinine speech that she wants to permeate online dialogues. And if anyone disagrees with her they are communists who favor censorship.

However, it is Greene’s positions that hew more to those allegations of censorious state tyranny. Furthermore, she must not have noticed that corporations have “[used] their economic power to force their political agendas” for as long as there have been corporations. Many of them donate to her campaigns. And let’s not forget the “Citizens United“ decision that defined corporations as “persons,” allowing them to advance their political agendas with unlimited amounts of funding. None of that never seemed to bother her.

Now Greene wants to prohibit companies from freely conducting their own business, and to muzzle the American people who want to express their opinions to those companies. But she is too stupid to recognize just how hypocritical she is. And sadly, as Greene goes, so goes the GOP.

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Why Elon Musk Restoring Trump’s Twitter Account is Ignorant, Dangerous, and Hypocritical

Posted by Mark NC on November 20, 2022 at 9:37 am. 8 Comments :

Nearly two years ago Twitter suspended Donald Trump’s account due to his reckless and relentless lies about election fraud. Twitter imposed the ban on January 8th, two days after Trump’s deadly insurrection on Capitol Hill, saying that “we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Now Elon Musk has personally intervened to restore the account.

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Musk has contradicted his prior promise not to restore Trump, or anyone else, until after his “content moderation council” (whatever that is) met. But this reversal is wrong for many reason: 1) It’s pitifully ignorant. 2) It’s predictably dangerous. And 3) It’s flagrantly hypocritical. Let’s drill down into each of these reasons…

IGNORANT:
Musk tweeted that Trump’s account would be restored because “The people have spoken.” He was referring to a poll that he previously posted asking whether the account should be reinstated. The results were pretty close, with “Yes” besting “No” 51.8% to 48.2%. However, it is extraordinarily idiotic to take such a poll seriously. For one thing, Musk knows that the votes could be rampant with bots.

In addition to that, it isn’t a scientifically valid survey with a representative sampling of either Americans or Twitter users. It is merely the opinion of people who happened to come across Musk’s tweet and chose to click on a response. And with only 15 million votes, it isn’t even a representative sample of Musk’s 117 million followers. If Barack Obama (who has 5 times the followers of Musk) posted the same poll, you would have a completely different outcome. So for Musk to revive Trump’s account on the basis of this poll proves that he doesn’t have even the most basic grasp of what it means in reality when “the people have spoken.”

DANGEROUS:
When Twitter suspended Trump’s account, they did so in recognition of the imminent threat that his tweets posed to the country and the American people. He was openly and repeatedly inciting violence and encouraging the hostile tendencies of his cult followers. His toxic rhetoric contributed to the anti-American riots on Capitol Hill on January 6th that resulted in more than 140 law enforcement officers being injured.

Trump’s advocacy of such violence continued on other platforms after he was booted from Twitter. Apparently Musk believes that fomenting violence is acceptable free speech and protected by the Constitution. It isn’t. And given Trump’s predilection for sedition and bigotry, Musk clearly doesn’t care who gets hurt.

HYPOCRITICAL:
Musk pretends that his intention is to bring free speech back to the masses by relaxing the moderation policies of Twitter. However, it’s notable that the only accounts Musk has seen fit to restore are those of well known politicians, celebrities, and others in the elite class. He is demonstrating that his true intent is to pander to wealthy right-wingers, like himself. So while he reinstates only privileged conservatives like Trump (and Kanye West, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Babylon Bee, Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, and James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas), the accounts of all the non-aristocrats remain shuttered. That’s hardly a restoration of free speech for the masses.

[Full Disclosure: News Corpse is one of the banned commoners. And another appeal to be reinstated was denied just prior to this article being published]

Adding more soap to this opera, is the fact that Trump has stated repeatedly that he would not return to Twitter even if his account were restored. Earlier this year Trump told Fox News that “I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on TRUTH.” That’s his shorthand for his own floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social. He reiterated his rejection of Twitter as recently as yesterday in post wherein he linked to Musk’s poll and said “don’t worry, we aren’t going anywhere. Truth Social is special!”

Trump’s animosity toward Twitter is complex and extends way beyond his stated reluctance to rejoin the platform. That’s partly because he has an obligation to promote Truth Social. Although it’s hard to imagine that Trump wouldn’t jump back into the Twitterverse where he had 80 million followers. He has only about four million on Truth Social. His ego would compel him to reconcile, despite having previously raged that “Twitter is a disgrace to democracy. They shouldn’t be allowed to do business in this Country.” And he has sued Twitter, albeit without any legal basis or coherent allegation to support his case. Which is why it was so quickly thrown out of court.

SEE ALSO:

This is the guy that Musk is going out of his way to suck up to. Perhaps it’s because Musk is so badly managing Twitter that he is desperate for the (intensely negative) attention that Trump would produce. Since his acquisition of Twitter a couple of weeks ago, Musk has fired half its staff. Hundreds more have resigned. Advertisers are fleeing in droves. Hate speech has skyrocketed. And the operation is struggling just keep from falling of its own weight.

Meanwhile, Musk has been posting some bizarre and offensive tweets, including one that promoted a callous conspiracy theory about the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband. So, good work, Elon. You’re doing a great job of proving how superior you upper-crusters are to the rest of us.

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Trump is Outraged Over the DHS Disinformation Board – Because He Spreads So Much of It

Posted by Mark NC on May 1, 2022 at 11:26 am. 3 Comments :

Last week the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, announced to Congress that the DHS had established a new working group whose purpose is to monitor foreign sources of disinformation that pose a threat to national security. And within minutes Republicans and Fox News pundits blasted the Disinformation Governance Board (an admittedly discomforting name) as an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth” that would suppress free speech.

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The predictably alarmist and fact-free response by the GOP and their own Ministry of Propaganda (aka Fox News) deliberately misrepresented the mission of the new group. Their response was, in fact, disinformation, although not the sort that this group would be involved with. For the record, the group’s purpose was accurately described in a report by the Associated Press:

“The Department of Homeland Security is stepping up an effort to counter disinformation coming from Russia as well as misleading information that human smugglers circulate to target migrants hoping to travel to the U.S.-Mexico border. […] DHS said in its statement that the board will ‘protect privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties’ as part of its duties.”

Clearly the role of this operation is focused on foreign sources of disinformation and has explicitly ruled out any activities that would infringe on anyone’s civil liberties. Donald Trump, however and as always, was undeterred by reality, He was also afraid of being left out of any opportunity to grasp at media attention over manufactured crises. So Trump unleashed his own hysterically over-the-top criticism saying that…

“Just revealed that the Biden administration, on top of all the other horrible things happening to our Country, will be putting a longtime political operative in charge of censoring Free Speech. They don’t go after Facebook, Instagram, China’s TikTok, or any of the others that are so unhinged, corrupt, or Radical Left. Our Fake News Media refuses to cover the facts as our Country spirals into Hell!”

Trump’s complaint was posted on his TRUTH Social twitter clone and reposted by a cult follower on Twitter. Presumably because he knows that such disinformation will be eagerly embraced there. So he’s comfortable slandering Nina Jankowicz, who will be heading the Disinfo Board.

Jankowicz has a distinguished record as a disinformation expert. Her resume on Wikipedia notes that she “was a Fulbright fellow in Kyiv, working with the foreign ministry of Ukraine. She has also served as a disinformation fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and as supervisor of the Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute.”

White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, was asked about Jankowicz in a decidedly loaded question by Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich. Psaki defended her noting that the Board she is heading was “a continuation of work that began at the Department of Homeland Security in 2020 under former President Trump.” She also reiterated that the Board has a mandate to protect privacy and civil rights.

WH Press Secretary Jen Psaki Asked About Nina Jankowicz & DHS's "Disinformation Governance Board" Amid Concerns That The Biden Administration Is Setting Up A "Ministry Of Truth"

WH Defends Nina & The Board pic.twitter.com/GqR3dsjaVP

— The Columbia Bugle ?? (@ColumbiaBugle) April 29, 2022

None of that, however, will prevent the disinformation disseminated by right-wing propagandists and professional liars like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who tweeted “Now that the Biden regime has a Ministry of Truth, what’s next?” Or Tulsi Gabbard who tweeted that “Biden is just a front man,” asserting that Barack Obama is behind all of this. She was parroting Tucker Carlson who recently ranted about a speech Obama gave that warned against the perils of disinformation.

It’s ironic that Republicans are so zealously opposed to the Biden administration working to counter disinformation, and falsely labeling it censorship. They are the ones who are actually passing laws to ban books, prohibit protesting, and roll back civil liberties. And they, along with their media accomplices, are the ones spreading so much disinformation about everything from COVID, to Russia, to immigration, to the economy, etc.

Perhaps the real reason they are so worried about this Disinfo Board is that they know that without disinformation they really have nothing to say.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly.

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Only on Fox News: Russian Foreign Minister Praises the Network’s Pro-Putin Propaganda

Posted by Mark NC on March 18, 2022 at 1:52 pm. 7 Comments :

For anyone who wasn’t previously convinced that Fox News is serving as the U.S. bureau of the Kremlin’s Ministry of Disinformation, we now have concrete evidence that Russia has adopted the far-right network and exploits its anchors and guests to advance their propaganda mission.

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Fox’s roster of right-wing ranters have abandoned any pretense to patriotism as they shill unabashedly for Russia. Their Senior Putin Apologist Tucker Carlson, stands out for his fealty to Vladimir Putin and his cheerleading for a Russian victory in its genocidal war on Ukraine.

That devotion to an editorial ideology that favors America’s enemies has now earned Fox News the admiration of Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov. In an interview on the Kremlin sponsored RT cable channel, Lavrov lavished praise on Fox News as a singular voice for Russia’s interests (starts at 3:35):

“We understood long ago that there is no such thing as an independent Western media. You could take the United States, only Fox News is trying to present some alternative point of view. But when you see, you watch other channels, and when you watch, read social networks and Internet platforms, when the acting president was blocked. as you know. And this censorship continues in very big way.”

Sergey Lavrov, during an English-language interview on RT, says that "only Fox News is trying to represent some alternative points of view" while calling the rest of the US press propaganda because "there is no such thing as an independent Western media." pic.twitter.com/0kNIHZy0uv

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) March 18, 2022

Lavrov’s tribute to Fox’s fawning over Russia was driven by the constant drumbeat of pro-Putin programming that dominates Fox’s schedule. When Lavrov says that “only Fox News is trying to present some alternative point of view,” what he means is that only Fox News will toe the official Kremlin line that Russia is the beleaguered party in the conflict with Ukraine, and that only Fox News will lie to advance that so-called “alternative point of view.” Apparently Lavrov has bought into the “alternative facts” theme made famous by former Trump White House Director of Newspeak, Kellyanne Conway.

What’s more, for Lavrov to complain about censorship in the U.S. is utterly bizarre. First of all, he doesn’t bother to document any censorship by the U.S. government whatsoever. The decisions of private companies to moderate their own websites is actually an affirmation of freedom in a democratic society. The government is not permitted to force those companies to act according to some official mandate.

In Lavrov’s country, however, the government just passed a law that prohibits news organizations from reporting factually about the war Russia is waging against Ukraine. Media companies are being forced out of Russia, and journalists are being arrested and threatened. And what the heck does he mean by “the acting president was blocked”? Does Lavrov think that Trump still holds some official position in the U.S. government?

Lavrov went on to criticize CNN, saying that…

“If you take CNN, they they prefer to avoid analytical materials, and they more and more concentrate on some reports, which would be made of slogans. Russia is an aggressor. Russia is murdering civilians.”

Of course, the allegations of Russia being an aggressor and murdering civilians are not slogans. They are what free people refer to as facts. And Lavrov’s complaints about CNN avoiding “analytical material” makes about as much sense as Donald Trump complaining about U.S. cable companies that have ceased to carry openly pro-Russian propaganda outlets like One America News (OAN) and RT, the channel that Lavrov was interviewed on.

The harmony between the commentaries by Russia and Trump shouldn’t surprise anyone. Because they have long shared the same political objectives of suppressing free thought, destroying liberal democracies and supporting authoritarian dictatorships. No wonder Lavrov is so fond of both Trump and Fox News.

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Trump Orders His Cult To ‘Drop Off of Twitter’ and Calls For It To Be Outlawed

Posted by Mark NC on January 4, 2022 at 12:24 pm. 10 Comments :

The brazenly anti-American and anti-democratic compulsions of Donald Trump continue to be exhibited with each new public pronouncement he issues. His aspirations for authoritarianism, and his affinity for brutal dictators, was recently affirmed with his “endorsement” of Hungary’s fascistic Viktor Orbán.

On the heels of that gushing embrace of tyranny, Trump is now giving voice to another of his noxious notions that negates the liberties that define America. In a tweet reacting to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s well deserved suspension from Twitter, Trump lashed out in his typically incoherent and infantile fashion, saying that…

“Twitter is a disgrace to democracy. They shouldn’t be allowed to do business in this Country. Marjorie Taylor Greene has a huge constituency of honest, patriotic, hard-working people. They don’t deserve what’s happened to them on places like low-life Twitter and Facebook. Everybody should drop off of Twitter and Facebook. They’re boring, have only a Radical Left point of view, and are hated by everyone. They are a disgrace to our Nation. Keep fighting, Marjorie!”

If you had to catalog everything that Trump has said is a “disgrace” it would require a bookshelf that spanned the length of Great Wall of China. Which would be convenient because he’s also a big fan fan of Xi Jinping. Due to his pitifully limited vocabulary, Trump has overused the word so much that is has ceased to have any meaning. And as for “democracy.” we’ve already established that that word has no meaning to Trump.

Moving on, Trump grumps that Twitter “shouldn’t be allowed to do business in this Country.” How he proposes to outlaw it isn’t explained. But it’s something that he regretted not doing when he was still occupying the White House. He is currently suing Twitter and other Internet services because that’s just what you’d expect from the King of Cancel Culture. But he is too mentally feeble to grasp that calling for a ban on the constitutional rights of social media platforms that he doesn’t like contradicts his intended, albeit disingenuous, message of free speech.

Defending Greene and her constituency of like-minded Trump cultists, Trump commands his glassy-eyed disciples to “drop off of Twitter and Facebook.” Because surrendering opportunities to express oneself is Trump’s idea of open discourse. He wants his klan to be free of any contrary opinions that might contain some kernal of truth. More likely, he just wants to harm Twitter and Facebook for not kowtowing to his supreme dictates.

However, as usual Trump is lying about Twitter having “only a Radical Left point of view, and are hated by everyone.” All of the objective studies show that these platforms actually favor conservatives. As reported by the Guardian…

“Republicans including Donald Trump have raged against Twitter and Facebook in recent months, alleging anti-conservative bias, censorship and a silencing of free speech. According to a new report from New York University, none of that is true.

“Disinformation expert Paul Barrett and researcher J Grant Sims found that far from suppressing conservatives, social media platforms have, through algorithms, amplified rightwing voices, ‘often affording conservatives greater reach than liberal or nonpartisan content creators’”.

These findings have been confirmed by repeated studies including this one by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and this one by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Finally, if Twitter is “hated by everyone,” then everyone has a funny way of showing it. The platform currently has more than 200 million users. That’s far more than anything Trump will ever have on his yet to be launched (and bona fide scam), TRUTH Social. Although if Trump wants to herd his devotees into his own disease-ridden corral, we’re all for it. A study conducted after Trump was banned from Twitter showed that “online misinformation about election fraud plunged 73 percent.” So the departure of Trump and his crackpot crusaders can only make the Internet better.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly.

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Rittenhouse Judge Schroeder Bans MSNBC from Courtroom in Violation of the First Amendment

Posted by Mark NC on November 18, 2021 at 3:40 pm. 1 Comments :

The trial of teen vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse has produced some bizarre and legally questionable moments. Many of those moments relate directly to the behavior of Judge Bruce Schroeder whose rulings have overwhelming favored the defense and been openly hostile to the prosecution.

On Thursday this tendency of Schroeder to put his right-wing prejudices on display crossed another line of propriety for a jurist. Responding to a report that a reporter allegedly working for MSNBC News was following a bus that was transporting the jurors, Schroeder interrupted the proceedings to make this alarming declaration:

“I have instructed that no one from MSNBC news will be permitted in this building for the duration of this trial. This is a very serious matter and I don’t know what the ultimate truth of it is, but absolutely it would go without much thinking that someone who is following a jury bus, that is an extremely serious matter will be referred to the proper authorities for further action.”

NBC News denies that its journalists contacted, or intended to contact, jury members in the Rittenhouse trial: https://t.co/JWAG22XXFm

— The Recount (@therecount) November 18, 2021

This is indeed a “very serious matter,” but not for the reasons that Schroeder suggests. There are several problems with how the Judge reacted to this report. First of all, in his statement he admits that he “I don’t know what the ultimate truth of it is.” But he issues his prohibition against MSNBC News anyway. What if the truth is that the reporter was not from MSNBC? What if there was nothing untoward taking place? Then Schroeder punished the network despite it having done nothing to warrant it. That is the definition of government censorship and violates the First Amendment of the Constitution.

What’s more, Schroeder may have gotten the network wrong. Reports variously describe the reporter as having been associated with MSNBC or NBC, two different networks. So it’s pretty sloppy of the Judge to impose such severe penalties when he doesn’t even know who the suspected offender is affiliated with. In addition to that, it is ridiculous to ban MSNBC from the courtroom when reporters from NBC, who were not covered by the order, are still permitted to cover the trial. They can then appear on MSNBC to give their account of the proceedings.

Finally, Schroeder took the extreme measure of banning the entire MSNBC network, rather than just the alleged offender. At best he could have argued that the reporter who was involved should have his courtroom privileges suspended, not for the duration of the trial, but until the facts were ascertained. But Schroeder didn’t take that rational step. Instead he punished everyone at MSNBC, despite the fact that none of them had done anything wrong. It also needs to be remembered that the reporter in question wasn’t found to have done anything wrong either. NBC News released a statement saying that…

“Last night, a freelancer received a traffic citation. While the traffic violation took place near the jury van, the freelancer never contacted or intended to contact the jurors during deliberations, and never photographed or intended to photograph them”

Rittenhouse’s defense attorney has already filed a motion for a mistrial, which Schroeder has yet to rule on. But if anyone is entitled to a mistrial, it’s the prosecution. And Schroeder should be cited for judicial misconduct. He has shown bias throughout this trial. And his disrespect for the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of the press makes his malfeasance on the bench all the more reprehensible.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. And you can follow this surrogate Twitter account here. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

The Internet's Chronicle of Media Decay

Censorship

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HUH? Senior Fox News Misinformer, Tucker Carlson, Declares that ‘Misinformation Can Be True’

Trump Literally Calls for Termination of the Constitution and FREAKS OUT Over Bogus Fox News Story

UH-OH: Marjorie Taylor Greene Fears ‘Corporate Communism’ of Advertisers Leaving Musk’s Twitter

Trump is Outraged Over the DHS Disinformation Board – Because He Spreads So Much of It

Only on Fox News: Russian Foreign Minister Praises the Network’s Pro-Putin Propaganda

Rittenhouse Judge Schroeder Bans MSNBC from Courtroom in Violation of the First Amendment

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