RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/elon-musks-twitter-files-demand-answers-from-the-government/

The “Twitter files” Elon Musk released to two journalists have produced a cloud of confusion. So far, we have not seen the files themselves, only what one journalist, Matt Taibbi, has reported about them.

The main findings reinforce what we have known all along: Twitter’s former management strongly favored Democrats and used its powerful platform to aid them. It was far more likely to suppress the speech of conservatives and Republicans than of progressives and Democrats. Twitter’s systematic bias went far beyond its most famous instance, when it killed the New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. Freddy Gray makes these important points in his recent piece here at The Spectator.

Bias like this can harm free, open, and robust political discourse in a democracy, especially if the bias is pervasive and hidden. But before criticizing Twitter, it is important to understand how our First Amendment protects free speech and what its limits are. Its protections do not require every media source to be fair and balanced. Each one can be as partisan as it wishes. Moreover, private entities, whether they are individuals, corporations, or nonprofits, are free to say whatever they wish, so long as they don’t directly threaten others. (If they libel or defame someone, then of course they can be sued.) These aspects of free speech reinforce each other. They encourage many voices to be heard, perhaps on different platforms, so citizens can judge for themselves.

That means Twitter, under Musk today or under the previous management, is perfectly free to say whatever it likes as a corporation, and free to encourage or discourage different political viewpoints from its users. Newspapers, TV stations, and podcasts can do the same thing. So can Donald Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social. Trump doesn’t have to broadcast the views of Rachel Maddow, and MSNBC doesn’t have to broadcast his. These platforms are also free to take whatever advice and guidance they wish from other private entities. If the Democratic National Committee wants Twitter to plug certain stories and deemphasize others, they are free to collaborate — or refuse to do so.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/12/06/now-we-know-while-twitter-was-busy-silencing-conservatives-it-let-child-porn-fester/

Since Elon Musk took over, Twitter has been kicking more people off its network. Except this time around it isn’t conservatives getting the boot. It’s those trafficking in child porn.

This is what the left and woke companies are freaking out about?

Cybersecurity firm Ghost Data reported over the weekend that Twitter had nearly doubled the number of accounts it’s suspending each day that were sharing child pornography.

“In the past 24 hours, Twitter started to step up its efforts and took down 44,000 suspicious accounts, including over 1,300 profiles that tried to bypass detection using codewords and text in images to communicate. Zero tolerance,” said Ghost Data founder Andrea Stoppa, who has been monitoring this, in a tweet.

“Twitter is now fighting vigorously against child sexual exploitation content, it’s thanks to one person that set it as the #1 priority: Elon Musk,” she tweeted.

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Each year, lexicographers at Merriam-Webster, Britain-based Collins Dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary, and others, select a “word of the year,” often a neologism, but not always. Gaslighting[1] (a form of psychological abuse) was the choice at M-W, while Collins chose permacrisis. The former was chosen because of the increase in lookups (up 1,740%), while the latter was selected, as it was applicable to a year that saw the first war in Europe in seventy-seven years, China’s increased aggression, and world-wide inflation. The OED selected three words, including my favorite – more a phrase than a word – goblin mode, which was also cited by Ben Zimmer in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. It refers to behavior that is “unapologetically lazy, slovenly, greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms.” It is often assigned to those who spend inordinate amounts of time on social media, as in my grandchild is in goblin mode.

I have been thinking of words and phrases – their origins, meanings, and appropriation by political opportunists, often leaving their opponents with the etymological dregs. Over the past few years, we have created a political alphabet soup: CRT, DEI, ESG, and BLM, reminding one of Roosevelt’s “alphabet soup agencies’ from the 1930s. But, unlike FDR’s agencies which actually put people to work, today’s alphabet soups have more in common with Humpty Dumpty: “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

Words have assumed new meanings. Yesterday’s environmentalists have become today’s climate warriors. Information to some is misinformation to others. Should it be the state that decides what is accurate and what is not? Is it too much to ask Twitter users to be personally wary of conspiracy theories and to look out for offensive language – offensive to some but not to others? And what, for example, does the European Union means when it tells Twitter that it must apply “content moderation” to the posts it allows?

When I read of Larry Fink pontificating as to being socially responsible, I picture a greedy John Bull with a smirk on his face and a halo above his head. And the scam artist Samuel Bankman-Fried, a promoter of progressive fads, bills himself as an effective altruist. Is not an altruist already effective? Certainly, his investors and depositors who lost millions of dollars do not see him as altruistic.

https://jonathanturley.org/2022/12/04/six-degrees-from-james-baker-a-familiar-figure-reemerges-with-the-release-of-the-twitter-files/

Below is my column in the New York Post on the reemergence of James Baker, the former FBI general counsel, at the center of the Twitter suppression scandal.

Here is the column:

As thousands of Twitter documents are released on the company’s infamous censorship program, much has been confirmed about the use of back channels by Biden and Democratic officials to silence critics on the social media platform. However, one familiar name immediately popped out in the first batch of documents released through journalist Matt Taibbi: James Baker. For many, James Baker is fast becoming the Kevin Bacon of the Russian collusion scandals.

Baker has been featured repeatedly in the Russian investigations launched by the Justice Department, including the hoax involving the Russian Alfa Bank. When Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann wanted to plant the bizarre false claim of a secret communications channel between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, Baker was his go-to, speed-dial contact. (Baker would later testify at Sussmann’s trial). Baker’s name also appeared prominently in controversies related to the other Russian-related FBI allegations against Trump. He was effectively forced out due to his role and reportedly found himself under criminal investigation. He became a defender of the Russian investigations despite findings of biased and even criminal conduct. He was also a frequent target of Donald Trump on social media, including Twitter. Baker responded with public criticism of Trump for his “false narratives.”

https://nypost.com/2022/12/04/fbi-warned-twitter-of-hunter-biden-hack-before-censoring-the-post/

The FBI warned Twitter during “weekly” meetings before the 2020 election to expect “hack-and-leak operations’’ by “state actors” involving Hunter Biden, and “likely” in October, according to a sworn declaration by Twitter’s former head of site integrity, Yoel Roth. 

The warnings were so specific that Twitter immediately censored The Post’s scoop about Hunter Biden’s laptop on Oct. 14, 2020, citing its “hacked materials” policy, a move described on Saturday as “election interference” by Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk. 

The extraordinary revelation for the first time lays bare how the FBI was involved in pre-bunking the story of the laptop, which had been in the bureau’s possession for almost a year. 

“I was told in these meetings that the intelligence community expected that individuals associated with political campaigns would be subject to hacking attacks and that material obtained through those hacking attacks would likely be disseminated over social media platforms, including Twitter,” said Roth in a Dec. 21, 2020 declaration to the Federal Election Commission. 

“I also learned in these meetings that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden.” 

Roth’s signed declaration formed part of Twitter’s defense against a complaint by the Tea Party Patriots Foundation that its censorship of The Post was an “in­ kind” campaign contribution to then-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/12/will_we_see_justice.html

In January of 2021, I penned a blog post highlighting America’s transition from being a God-centered nation to becoming a Left-centered one.  I wrote:

Our [nation’s] existence was founded on: equal justice, freedom to speak, assemble and worship, freedom to redress grievances in our elected officials through the ballot box, freedom to own personal property, freedom to earn an honest living and provide for our families, freedom to defend ourselves against the rise of a tyrannical state, freedom from false imprisonment, freedom of conscience, and more. These freedoms are deemed inalienable rights. 

As Elon Musk follows through on his commitment to expose the underhanded and (now blatant) illegal nature of Twitter’s censorship of persons and facts surrounding the Hunter Biden laptop prior to the 2020 election, I am struck by this: by what measure shall these revelations be judged?

By our Constitution and Founding principles or by our new left-centered reality?

Sadly, I don’t hold much hope that “justice” will be meted in Twitter’s cover-up or, more pertinently, in Hunter (Joe) Biden’s blatant illegalities.

We live in a post-justice, post-righteous, left-centered reality.

Last week, the left denied wrongdoing.

Today, they will proclaim, “Yes, we censored speech.  So what?  What are you going to do about it?”

In a just society, this matter would be dealt with one way or another.  In our new left-centered society, the left will thumb its nose at our protestations and challenge us to use the systems that they now all but control (the courts, the media, the military, the police, social media) to seek justice.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/12/03/art-museums-and-impermanence/

The biggest story as I write revolves around Elon Musk’s decision to reveal the truth about how Twitter, largely at the behest of Democrats, intervened in the 2020 presidential campaign to quash damaging news about Joe Biden and thus influence the course of the election. Twitter wasn’t the only entity to put its finger on the electoral scale, but it was a very prominent one. Remember, Twitter shut down the account of Donald Trump, a sitting president of the United States, as part of the media frenzy in the aftermath of the January 6 protests at the Capitol. Twitter shut down the accounts of many other prominent conservatives around the same time. The company also went to extraordinary lengths, ahead of the election, to bury the story, first aired by the New York Post, about Hunter Biden’s laptop. 

As I say, this whole story is the hottest thing going right now, and for those interested in pursuing it I recommend James Woods’ interview with Tucker Carlson and the long thread that the journalist Matt Taibbi has begun to publish at the request of Elon Musk. If prior to this you thought that the 2020 election was on the up-and-up, these revelations might well change your mind. 

But I am not going to say another word about that sordid subject today. Instead, I thought I would step back and consider a different sort of scandalous story, one that involves the fate of the art museum in an age of identity politics. 

I was recently asked to contribute an introduction to “The Museum of Art: Challenge and Response,” a conversation in Melbourne, Australia, between Gerard Vaughan, former Director of the National Gallery of Victoria, and David Bomford, former curator at several museums and now a Trustee of the Victoria and Albert in London. What follows is an adaptation of that introduction. 

Every age, I noted, has its architectural master projects, those programs that not only attract the signal architectural talent of the time but also, in the reach of their tentacles, seem to epitomize the civilizational ambitions of a culture. At one time in the West, that node of interest centered around the Church, at another the palace, at another the town square and attendant civil structures.

Today, there is a good argument to be made that for some time now the apogee of architectural ambition has centered around the art museum. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/12/your_feelgood_video_of_the_day_pushing_back_against_woke_corporations.html

One of the things we reliably expect from Harvard professors nowadays is that they’re as intellectually bereft as people like Elizabeth Warren, a mediocre leftist law professor who got her gig by falsely claiming to be Native American. Aside from being a leftist, her ideas are just wrong (as, for example, her claim that Biden can magically erase voluntarily incurred student debt.) But there are still sane minds at Harvard, one of whom is Arthur Brooks. Every normal person watching his short “man up” speech to corporate leaders, will find it incredibly refreshing and even worth a few Huzzahs!

Lately, I’ve noticed a despairing tone in conversations with conservatives. It’s not just gamed elections, open borders, a decaying military, attacks on fossil fuel (the foundation for modern life), the martyrdom of the January 6 prisoners, the transgender mafia’s bullying, continued vaccination pressures, or any of the other horrors the left is inflicting on America. What has left them despairing to the point of inertia is the sense that there are no battles that they can fight because the leftist victory is total.

A large portion of that sense of defeat comes about because we’re no longer just fighting at the political level. We’re not even fighting Hollywood and the TV news anymore. What’s really terrifying is that America’s major corporations have gone completely woke. The examples are everywhere, from Disney to airlines telling their flight attendants that it’s fine to be a bearded man with make-up and a dress, to the myriad corporations that have bought into Critical Race Theory, to the tech tyrants and their biased search engines and free-speech crackdowns. We’re tired and feel that it’s just impossible to fight both city hall and main street.

Arthur Brooks, a business and leadership professor at Harvard, as well as a well-known author and speaker, thinks we can fight Main Street because it’s not the monolithic leftist bastion we believe it’s become.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/12/what_if_maga_shrugged.html

Congressional lizards posing as “leaders” met with China Joe in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, and the wretched gerontocracy that rules over us looked happy as clams to be reunited after the political theater of the midterms.  Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Kevin McCarthy, and Turtle McConnell all sported sly, devilish grins that suggested they got exactly what they wanted in last month’s elections.  

In undermining MAGA candidates, Turtle’s iron-fisted control over his Republican minority remains absolute.  Up-Chuck and Child-Sniffer Joe still hold the Senate and retain the power to ram more lawless federal judges through confirmation (with Lindsey Graham’s obedient assistance, of course).  Middling McCarthy has such a weak House majority that he will end up playing so much ball with Democrats in the name of “compromise” that “selling out” will continue being Republicans’ favorite sport.  And wicked witch San Fran Nan gets to booze off into the sunset, looking like a winner whose political expertise is so uncanny that she nearly managed to keep her majority during a foretold “red tsunami” election when roughly 70% of the country has consistently demanded a drastic change of course.

The “woke” Marxist puppeteers actually dictating policy from the Oval Office are so giddy with what they have managed to pull off with this new voting system of anonymous and unsecured mail-in ballots that they actually announced “We the People” as the official White House theme for holiday decorations this year — a fairly direct kidney punch against the broad MAGA coalition of voters who use that appellation from the Constitution’s Preamble to rally support for taking back the country from the China-appeasing, World Economic Forum–devoted, anti–free speech communists long in control of the bureaucratic levers of government.  Sorry, “We the People,” only atheists, oligarchs, globalists, and commies welcome at the White House for now!

Watching the Uniparty’s cabal of corruptocrats flaunt their shared victory is downright nauseating.  It’s such a kick in the teeth to see the same people we’ve been trying to cashier for over a decade still in charge.  Even after a Tea Party revolt against Obama’s socialist overreach that ended up securing strong Republican congressional control (before corporate RINO Paul Ryan and the Turtle Tyrant threw those victories away), the election of MAGA Warrior Donald Trump in 2016, and a 2020 election turnout that brought over ten million new voters into MAGA’s ranks, the same swamp creatures who ran roughshod over the stinking, rotten system back then still manipulate the decaying, rancid system yet today.  Uff da!  This is what a hamster on a wheel must feel like.  No wonder our Tribe of Totalitarian Elders looked so spitefully smug for the cameras.  The wishes of the people have been crushed and discarded once again.