Tag: President Trump

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Meet the OVERSIGHT BOARD… Ooooooooo scary

Former President Trump and currently Facebook de-platformed Donald J. Trump received a review from the OVERSIGHT BOARD.

Facebook Inc. was justified in banning then-President Donald Trump, the company’s independent oversight board ruled Wednesday, but didn’t appropriately explain if or why the former president should be permanently locked out of the social-media platform.

The board gave Facebook six months to determine whether Mr. Trump should be permanently banned and, if so, to explain that decision more fully.

The decision, which is binding, largely ratifies a choice personally approved by Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg in the wake of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot and could have far-reaching implications for how technology companies police political speech.

Wall Street Journal

Who the fuck are these people? If you’re on Facebook and prize your presence there they are your judge, jury, and de-platformer. Please… come meet the OVERSIGHT BOARD.

Cadre of douchebags

This is a group of 20 people from all over the world that have the final say on whether or not you can speak your mind on Facebook. My favorite people in this group are the ones with “Freedom of Speech”, “Free Speech”, and “Freedom of Expression” in their backgrounds.

The first chick in the list (I say chick to purposely be sexist) is the founder of the “Digital Rights Foundation”. What the fuck are digital rights? You have rights to zeroes and ones?

Here’s the opening paragraphs from their web site.

As its community grew to more than 2 billion people, it became increasingly clear to the Facebook company that it shouldn’t be making so many decisions about speech and online safety on its own. The Oversight Board was created to help Facebook answer some of the most difficult questions around freedom of expression online: what to take down, what to leave up, and why.

The board uses its independent judgment to support people’s right to free expression and ensure those rights are being adequately respected. The board’s decisions to uphold or reverse Facebook’s content decisions will be binding, meaning Facebook will have to implement them, unless doing so could violate the law.

OVERSIGHT BOARD

The answer to freedom of expression online is to adhere to the principal of legal speech. Nothing President Trump said was illegal. If it were he would have been prosecuted. Lord knows he’s been prosecuted for everything else. If he in fact was promoting the killing of people or destruction of property then they are justified in removing him from their platform. If he is giving his opinion on the 2020 election then the OVERSIGHT BOARD is a bunch of elitist assholes that should themselves be de-platformed.

To make matters even more absurd the OVERSIGHT BOARD, in their ruling today, have this little gem as the opener to their information “about the case”.

Elections are a crucial part of democracy. On January 6, 2021, during the counting of the 2020 electoral votes, a mob forcibly entered the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. This violence threatened the constitutional process. Five people died and many more were injured during the violence. During these events, then-President Donald Trump posted two pieces of content.

OVERSIGHT BOARD

This needs to be flagged as fake news. Five people did not die during the January 6th protest. One person, maybe two, died. The rest were maybe only tangentially related to the events of that day. But, other than that their opening description is fake news in and of itself. Therefore, the premise of their entire case is false.

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Thoughts

Is rural MAGA country the utopia the progressives profess to want?

If you look at the statistics the answer is yes. The article below is very hard to argue against.

According to the Department of Justice, out here where I live in rural North Carolina, throughout all of 2019, there were a total of only 20 hate crime allegations in our 13 rural counties where the population adds up to 668,000. That means that throughout 2019, there were only 2.9 hate crime allegations per 100,000 people.

Guess what the hate crime number is in some of the most progressive, left-wing cities in America? Well, you don’t have to guess, because I have those numbers for you….

Portland, OR = 5.75 reported hate crime incidents per 100,000

Boulder, CO = 7.9 incidents per 100,000

San Francisco, CA = 7.2 incidents per 100,000

Alexandria, VA = 3.1 incidents per 100,000

Arlington, VA = 4.7 incidents per 100,000

Seattle, WA = 40 (not a typo) per 100,000

Washington DC = 29 (not a typo) incidents per 100,000 (this is where the elite media live LOL)

I think you are starting to get the point, but let’s close with my personal favorite…

Berkeley, CA = 6.5 per 100,000

Golly, gee, will you look at that! It is two and three times — and even ten times safer for a minority to live in Rural MAGA Country than it is in a oh-so progressive city populated and governed by Democrats.

How is that possible when we’re told that we are the racists? How is it possible that where all of America’s so-called racists live, where we all congregate, gather, own guns, and govern ourselves, there is less racism — and in most cases — MUCH less racism, than there is in cities filled with Democrats?

Breitbart.com
Image by David Mark from Pixabay
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Thoughts

Judge James Chiun-Yue Ho on diversity and the judiciary

We need more judges like Judge Ho on the bench. He is a prime example of accomplishments made by President Trump on his judicial appointees. Judge Ho doesn’t see color or race when adjudicating cases. He sees the law. This is more important than ever.

The video below is from his testimony at a House Judiciary Committee hearing entitled, “The Importance of a Diverse Federal Judiciary” on March 25, 2021.

Here is a transcript of his statement.

Thank you for inviting me to testify. I am honored to join my distinguished colleagues from the judiciary. Our remarks today are akin to what we judges sometimes all concurring in the judgment. We agree on certain core principles, but I would like to offer my own reasoning. equality of opportunity is fundamental to who we are, and to who we aspire to be as a nation. And to my mind, that means two things. It means that we must do everything we can to ensure that everyone truly has the opportunity to succeed. And it means we must never bend the rules to favor anyone. Dr. King had it right. Choose people based on who they are, not what they look like. Let me begin by explaining how I began. I came to America from Taiwan, at a very young age. So you know, most kids grow up learning English from their parents, I grew up learning English from a bunch of Puppets from a place called Sesame Street. My classmates brought a kid’s lunchbox to school, I brought a bento box to school. My food seemed normal to me. But it smelled funny to my classmates, or so they were telling me. And I remember racial slurs and jokes on the playground, and on the football field. But I also learned that if you work hard and prove yourself, you can find your place in America. equality of opportunity is not something to be passive about. It’s something we should be passionate about. We must make sure that everyone has the opportunity to learn and to succeed, so that when Lose or Draw, at least you got a chance, no matter who you are. This is not just a talking point to me. It’s why I was honored to serve as co chair of the Judiciary Committee of the national Asian Pacific American Bar Association. It’s why I love talking to young lawyers and law students of every race and ideological stripe. It’s why I always say that if anyone is willing to forego other opportunities in their careers in order to enter public service, call me. I’ll take them to lunch and share what I know. But here’s the kicker. Once everyone has a full and fair opportunity to be considered, you pick on the merits. Both the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act make clear that it is wrong to hire people based on race. That’s the law for a wide range of jobs. But it would be especially wrong, I would submit to select judges based on race. It is true, I am the only Asian American on my court. I’m also the only immigrant on my court. But I would never suggest that a wise Asian would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white judge. That would be antithetical to our legal system and poisonous to civil society. No one should ever assume that I’m more likely to favor Asians or immigrants or anyone else, or that my colleagues are less likely to everyone should lose or when based on the law, period. That’s why Lady Justice wears a blindfold. That’s why judges wear black robes. And I don’t say this because I think race is no longer an issue in our country. I have received racist hate mail and racially disparaging remarks. Because of positions I’ve taken in my legal career. I’ve been treated differently because of the race of the person I’m married to. And I also remember back in high school, my college admissions advisor, tell me that my grades, sa t scores and activities were all strong enough to get me into my top choice of schools. If I was an agent, Now, I’m not saying any of this here to complain, whatever negative experiences, iPad, they pale, in comparison to the many blessings I’ve had living in this great country. I was not born an American. But I thank God every day, but I will die an American. My point is just that I don’t come to my views because I think racism is behind us. Rather, I come to my views precisely because racism is not behind us. Because the last thing we should do is divide people by race. The last thing we should do is to suggest that the racists are right. We don’t achieve equality of opportunity by denying it to anyone. We achieve it by securing it for everyone. So make no mistake, it would be profoundly offensive and un-American to tell the world that you’re restricting a judgeship to members of only one race, it’s offensive to people of other races. And it’s offensive to people of that race. Because you’re suggesting that the only way they’ll get the job Have you rigged the rules in their favor? as a judge, I have the profound honor of presiding over a naturalization ceremony every year. I do this to celebrate my own naturalization. Now, 39 years ago, people from all around the world come together in one room for one purpose to become an American. And it reminds me that what binds our nation is not a common race or religion or philosophical point of view. what unites us is not a common past, but a common hope for the future. A shared love of freedom and a mutual commitment to the Constitution, under the principle of equality of opportunity. Thank you.

Here is a link to the full hearing. It’s incredibly boring. Judge Ho’s statement is the highlight.

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Tim Pool breaks down the “find the votes” hoax

All the media purposely mislead the public with the other phone call when they accused Trump of telling investigators to “find the votes”. Listen to the audio of that call and you’ll see the reports of him strong arming investigators to illegally produce votes was all bullshit.

I didn’t have the patience to go find all this stuff. Thanks to Tim Pool now I don’t have to.

Here is a link to the Washington Post retracting their baloney story.

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Washington Post incites violence on pending impeachment vote

How is this not a threat on the public, the government, and civil society? Is this an attempt to threaten or coerce Senators into voting to convict? If anything happens in this country upon a Trump acquittal Jeff Bezos should be sued for damages and the Washington Post editorial board brought up on charges.

The above is a screenshot for posterity incase they remove the link to their actual tweet below.

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NIH purposely misled Trump Administration on COVID-19 testing

Meet NIH Director Francis Collins. He likes to keep information from the White House when he feels like it.

What is it with Time Magazine, of all publications, uncovering and outing how the “deep state”, that we were told didn’t exist by major media, repeatedly sabotaged the Trump Administration? They are totally unafraid of any backlash for their collaboration with career bureaucrats to undermine the authority of a duly elected President of the United States.

In May 2020, Dr. Francis Collins, the longtime head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was called to the White House to meet with Jared Kushner, the then President’s son-in-law and adviser, and Dr. Deborah Birx, the head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. A few weeks earlier, Congress had given the NIH $1.5 billion to try to speed up the process of developing new diagnostic tests for COVID-19, and the White House, which was dubious about increasing the rate of testing, wanted to know more about what the NIH was doing.

Collins is technically the boss of Dr. Anthony Fauci, but during the pandemic he has mostly taken a back seat to America’s most prominent epidemiologist when it comes to media. It’s not that Collins is not a great communicator; he’s known for his ability to talk about science at any level. But he did not wish to become an object of White House attention. So when he met with Kushner, “I did my best to try to describe what we were doing in a way that it wouldn’t attract a lot of desire on their part to interfere,” says Collins. “It was really technical and really geeky.”

In June, Kushner visited the NIH to hear about the new plan, known as RADx (Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics), from other points of view. This time Collins’ engineering staff went into nerd-overdrive detail. “And that was the last we heard of White House interest in what we were doing for diagnostics,” says Collins. “To this day I have never done a briefing about RADx in the White House task force. And that was just fine.”

Time Magazine

I don’t pretend that this doesn’t happen to every President, Governor, or other executive that wins election. We should all be concerned that people being paid by our tax dollars take it upon themselves to undermine the people we elect to represent us and spend that money. What is the point of electing anyone if the regulatory agencies run roughshod without oversight?

This fawning article about Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, paints him as a hero. But, if you read comprehensively it’s not hard to see he is more a politician than a scientist. Like Fauci you don’t stay in a job like this without being a politico.

Keeping exactly the right height of profile is one Collins’ less-appreciated talents, the kind that has kept him at the head of a government agency through three presidential administrations, including the current one, to which he was reappointed in January. Republican Congressman Tom Cole of Oklahoma calls him “the best politician in D.C.”

Time Magazine

In the paragraph below I highlight Mr. Collins’ true ability at the NIH. He is adept at taking your money and doing with it what he deems appropriate while keeping vital information from those we elect to oversee these agencies.

Collins has had to use every one of those abilities as he has tried to manipulate the levers of scientific mastery and money to confront the pandemic in the U.S. at a time of political instability. If Fauci and his team have been at the forefront of the fight against the coronavirus, Collins has been their staunchest supporter, championing Fauci as he kept hammering the scientific facts home, and creating battle plans that may become the blueprints for the way the U.S. addresses its most besetting diseases in the future.

Time Magazine

Are all our presidents geniuses? No. Most of them are not even “stable geniuses”. But, it’s not the job of unelected employees of the people to just do what ever they want because they don’t like or don’t trust our elected representatives.

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How to rig an election without rigging the election

The conspiracy is now known and admitted. This article in Time Magazine breaks down how “The Swamp” and allies of The Swamp colluded to rig the election against Trump. The conspiracy is real. They call it exactly that but they frame it as if the conspiracy was altruistic to save the country. Instead I think they may have broken the back of our republic.

They changed the method of voting and poured hundreds of millions of dollars for the effort.

Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. 

Time Magazine

Naked admission of a quest to have a “proper outcome” to the election.

This is the inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election, based on access to the group’s inner workings, never-before-seen documents and interviews with dozens of those involved from across the political spectrum. It is the story of an unprecedented, creative and determined campaign whose success also reveals how close the nation came to disaster. “Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy

Time Magazine

Fortifying is the new rigging. You can rig an election as long as you say you’re fortifying it.

That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.

Time Magazine

COVID-19 was used to suppress in-person voting and push not only absentee voting but mail-in voting. Mail-in is far different from absentee and this group knew this was the key to beating Trump. $300 million was also funneled into the effort by Facebook… or rather the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Should a person investing that much into the election also be allowed to de-platform the person running for election?

In March, activists appealed to Congress to steer COVID relief money to election administration. Led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, more than 150 organizations signed a letter to every member of Congress seeking $2 billion in election funding. It was somewhat successful: the CARES Act, passed later that month, contained $400 million in grants to state election administrators. But the next tranche of relief funding didn’t add to that number. It wasn’t going to be enough.

Private philanthropy stepped into the breach. An assortment of foundations contributed tens of millions in election-administration funding. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative chipped in $300 million. 

Time Magazine

Progressive operatives figured out they couldn’t argue their ideas online and started their de-platforming campaign. They would use social media companies’ terms of service to find the hammer to smash the nail of wrong think.

The solution, she concluded, was to pressure platforms to enforce their rules, both by removing content or accounts that spread disinformation and by more aggressively policing it in the first place. “The platforms have policies against certain types of malign behavior, but they haven’t been enforcing them,” she says.

Time Magazine

They flooded traditional media to push the narrative that mail-in voting is not subject to fraud.

Beyond battling bad information, there was a need to explain a rapidly changing election process. It was crucial for voters to understand that despite what Trump was saying, mail-in votes weren’t susceptible to fraud and that it would be normal if some states weren’t finished counting votes on election night.

Dick Gephardt, the Democratic former House leader turned high-powered lobbyist, spearheaded one coalition. “We wanted to get a really bipartisan group of former elected officials, Cabinet secretaries, military leaders and so on, aimed mainly at messaging to the public but also speaking to local officials–the secretaries of state, attorneys general, governors who would be in the eye of the storm–to let them know we wanted to help,” says Gephardt, who worked his contacts in the private sector to put $20 million behind the effort.

Time Magazine

They had a feeling Trump’s support was bigger than they feared. So the conspirators shared their data with the media so they would be aware to keep pushing stories that would suppress the Trump vote. They knew votes by mail would be the key to defeating him.

Podhorzer, meanwhile, was warning everyone he knew that polls were underestimating Trump’s support. The data he shared with media organizations who would be calling the election was “tremendously useful” to understand what was happening as the votes rolled in, according to a member of a major network’s political unit who spoke with Podhorzer before Election Day. Most analysts had recognized there would be a “blue shift” in key battlegrounds– the surge of votes breaking toward Democrats, driven by tallies of mail-in ballots– but they hadn’t comprehended how much better Trump was likely to do on Election Day. “Being able to document how big the absentee wave would be and the variance by state was essential,” the analyst says.

Time Magazine

If Trump won they planned to flood the streets with massive protests. Does anyone think these protests would be peaceful? They would have been conducted by the same groups that rioted and burned buildings in all the major cities in the United States.

Activists began preparing to reprise the demonstrations if Trump tried to steal the election. “Americans plan widespread protests if Trump interferes with election,” Reuters reported in October, one of many such stories. More than 150 liberal groups, from the Women’s March to the Sierra Club to Color of Change, from Democrats.com to the Democratic Socialists of America, joined the “Protect the Results” coalition. The group’s now defunct website had a map listing 400 planned postelection demonstrations, to be activated via text message as soon as Nov. 4. To stop the coup they feared, the left was ready to flood the streets.

Time Magazine

“As long as all the votes were counted…” I take this to mean, “As long as they were able to keep counting votes”. Trumps numbers were surging running up to the election and the cabal to defeat him knew they had to manufacture votes.

Election night began with many Democrats despairing. Trump was running ahead of pre-election polling, winning Florida, Ohio and Texas easily and keeping Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania too close to call. But Podhorzer was unperturbed when I spoke to him that night: the returns were exactly in line with his modeling. He had been warning for weeks that Trump voters’ turnout was surging. As the numbers dribbled out, he could tell that as long as all the votes were counted, Trump would lose.

Time Magazine

“TV anchors were bending over backward to counsel caution and frame the vote count accurately.” Frame the vote count? The word accurately is thrown in there to make it seem legit. But if the vote is accurate and you’re reporting it accurately then there is nothing to “frame”. All you have to do is report.

While he was talking, Fox News surprised everyone by calling Arizona for Biden. The public-awareness campaign had worked: TV anchors were bending over backward to counsel caution and frame the vote count accurately. 

Time Magazine

They basically threatened GOP leaders in Michigan with endless investigations should they even seem to agree with Trump that there were problems with the vote in Michigan.

If Trump were to offer something in exchange for a personal favor, that would likely constitute bribery, Bassin reasoned. He phoned Richard Primus, a law professor at the University of Michigan, to see if Primus agreed and would make the argument publicly. Primus said he thought the meeting itself was inappropriate, and got to work on an op-ed for Politico warning that the state attorney general–a Democrat–would have no choice but to investigate. When the piece posted on Nov. 19, the attorney general’s communications director tweeted it. Protect Democracy soon got word that the lawmakers planned to bring lawyers to the meeting with Trump the next day.

Time Magazine

The 2020 election was a shit show. Our elections were not and still are not transparent. All electronic voting machines should have open source code. The tally should be public information and not solely available to the Associated Press and other media outlets. De-platforming and flagging posts should be illegal unless you’re posting illegal content. Social media companies should not be allowed to discriminate content otherwise they are publishers and not platforms and should be regulated as such.

Trump was right. The election was rigged. The powers-that-be, both Republican and Democrat, the “deep state” if you will, all could not stand that an outsider got to the top of their club. They were determined from the moment he won in 2016 to make sure he would be gone and it didn’t matter what they had to do to the fabric of our nation. This “Secret Bipartisan Campaign” wanted the virus of Trump gone and they used COVID-19 as their carrier to push through changes to how we vote. They infected the nation and our republic may die because of it.

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What kind of country are we now?

Read the following story and tell me if you think this is reasonable.

Authorities in the U.S. have taken elaborate measures to curb protests against the impeachment of former President Trump, planned by his supporters for Saturday in more than 60 U.S. cities. 

Trump’s associates in D.C. and other regions have been detained in the lead-up to the rallies. Supporters and independent journalists have been approached by police officers with official warnings against protesting. 

Universities and colleges in different states have urged students not to attend rallies, with some saying they may be subject to disciplinary action, including expulsion.

Biden spokesperson Jen Psaki said Friday that “it is only natural that there are warnings … about the possible consequences related to noncompliance with the law,” since there are calls for “unauthorized, unlawful events.”

Sounds all too plausible in the United States today doesn’t it? Especially with stories like this one.

President Joe Biden has directed his intelligence community to study the threat of domestic extremism in the United States, an undertaking being launched weeks after a violent mob loyal to Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol.

The disclosure Friday by White House press secretary Jen Psaki is a stark acknowledgment of the national security threat that officials see as posed by American extremists motivated to violence by extremist ideology. The involvement of the director of national intelligence, an office created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to prevent international terrorism, suggests that American authorities are examining how to pivot to a more concerted focus on violence from radical extremists at home.

Chicago Tribune

Here is the actual text of the real story from the PBS News Hour. What have we become?

Authorities in Russia have taken elaborate measures to curb protests against the jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, planned by his supporters for Saturday in more than 60 Russian cities.

Navalny’s associates in Moscow and other regions have been detained in the lead-up to the rallies. Opposition supporters and independent journalists have been approached by police officers with official warnings against protesting. 

Universities and colleges in different Russian regions have urged students not to attend rallies, with some saying they may be subject to disciplinary action, including expulsion.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that “it is only natural that there are warnings … about the possible consequences related to noncompliance with the law,” since there are calls for “unauthorized, unlawful events.”

PBS News Hour
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What are we allowed to say?

I posted the quote below on Facebook last night. I found it after the Internet seemed to explode over calls for President Trump to resign or be impeached and after he was banned from Twitter’s platform. Glenn Greenwald is referencing a case when white merchants filed suit against the NAACP alleging they advocated the use of “force, violence, and threats” to effectuate a boycott of their businesses. The U.S. Supreme Court rightly decided that while you can punish people for the consequences of actual violence you cannot punish people for expressing their thoughts about violence or even discussing it.

These calls for censorship, online and official, are grounded in the long-discredited, oft-rejected and dangerous view that a person should be held legally accountable not only for their own illegal actions but also for the consequences of their protected speech: meaning the actions others take when they hear inflammatory rhetoric. That was the distorted mentality used by the State of Mississippi in the 1970s to try to hold NAACP leaders liable for the violent acts of their followers against boycott violators after hearing rousing pro-boycott speeches from NAACP leaders, only for the Supreme Court in 1982 to unanimously reject such efforts on the ground that “while the State legitimately may impose damages for the consequences of violent conduct, it may not award compensation for the consequences of nonviolent, protected activity,” adding that even “advocacy of the use of force or violence does not remove speech from the protection of the first amendment.

Glenn Greenwald on Substack

What did Trump tweet that finally got him removed from Twitter?

On January 8, 2021, President Donald J. Trump tweeted:

“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

Shortly thereafter, the President tweeted:

“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”

blog.twitter.com

Here is Twitter’s analysis of those tweets:

We assessed the two Tweets referenced above under our Glorification of Violence policy, which aims to prevent the glorification of violence that could inspire others to replicate violent acts and determined that they were highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

This determination is based on a number of factors, including:

President Trump’s statement that he will not be attending the Inauguration is being received by a number of his supporters as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate and is seen as him disavowing his previous claim made via two Tweets (1, 2) by his Deputy Chief of Staff, Dan Scavino, that there would be an “orderly transition” on January 20th.
The second Tweet may also serve as encouragement to those potentially considering violent acts that the Inauguration would be a “safe” target, as he will not be attending.
The use of the words “American Patriots” to describe some of his supporters is also being interpreted as support for those committing violent acts at the US Capitol.
The mention of his supporters having a “GIANT VOICE long into the future” and that “They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” is being interpreted as further indication that President Trump does not plan to facilitate an “orderly transition” and instead that he plans to continue to support, empower, and shield those who believe he won the election.
Plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021.

blog.twitter.com

Twitter is a private sector entity and they can and should be able to do what they want with their platform… within reason. They should not be allowed to discriminate on the basis of ideology or thought. They should not be able to project thoughts onto tweets as interpretation is highly subjective. If they are calling their service a platform then either they allow people to speak their minds or they do not. Once they have policies that editorialize they cease being a platform and now are a publisher. They should now be held accountable for any tweet that any reasonable person believes caused a harm.

The bigger question is, what are we now allowed to say? Is everything I wrote above an endorsement of what happened in the protest at the capitol? Are my writings an endorsement of President Trump? How do you know exactly what is in my mind and what my thoughts are?

I think freedom of speech is fundamental to our a free people. Anyone should be able to speak their mind regardless of what another interprets those words to mean. People should be allowed to say even the most repugnant things. The rest of us should be allowed to rebut those words.

Words are what they are… just words. Even if those words inspire someone else to take a heinous action. It’s the action that is prosecutable. That’s where the line has to be drawn. It is a crime to kill your neighbor because you hate them but it is not and should not be a crime to hate them.

Am I allowed to say any of this?

Image by 愚木混株 Cdd20 from Pixabay
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The tragedy and lost opportunity that was the Trump Administration

President Donald Trump is leaving the Office of the Presidency exactly as he came in, unapologetic, obstinate, and hated equally by Republicans, Democrats, and the media. The funny fact is he was perhaps the most malleable of all people to hold that office in the last 200 years. Here was a man interested only in his own legacy and would have done anything to have been great and to be loved. Too bad members of congress were just as selfish and narcissistic as the man they hated to see the opportunity before them.

Some of the goals of the Democrat Party were universal healthcare, a path to citizenship for illegal aliens, redistribution of wealth from people with high incomes (not wealth) to low incomes, and Green New Deal levels of socialism. I believe they could have accomplished almost all of this under a President Trump. He would have been loved to be perceived as the President that provided for the citizens of this country. He has never believed in “conservatism”.

Instead the Democrats hated him so much that they had to create scandals out of thin air. The Russian collusion hoax, the “very fine people” hoax, the Ukraine impeachment, and on and on and on. For four years the Democrats with a complicit media wasted time and opportunity attacking someone they could have used. They ended up with less than nothing. For half the country they bred distrust in our media fostered the feeling that they are to be ignored. They helped to create a wide chasm between the large urban parts of the country and the rest of the nation. They never sought to inform the public or address their concerns. They only offered disdain and condemnation.

The Republicans are just as reprehensible. There was a sizeable contingent of Republicans that could not stand that such a crass individual defeated their long roster of “qualified” candidates. Trump berated them during the primary of 2016 and showed them to be the weak paper tigers the public already knew in their hearts they were. Trump could not be forgiven for his off-the-cuff insults and they did all they could to make sure he would not get the adoration he wanted. The Republicans were smarter than the Democrats in that they knew they had someone they could use. They rammed through more judicial appointments than maybe any other time in history. They were able to tip the balance of the Supreme Court for at least the next decade. They didn’t totally lose sight of their agenda.

And now, what is the United States to do with this fractured nation? Trump is finally out. He knows he’s out. Yet the Democrats and the media continue their blind hatred and want to force a resignation or another impeachment with 12 days to go in the Trump Administration. Joe Biden called out the protesters as domestic terrorists. What end does this serve other than their narcissism? Do they expect to bring the country together with this? Do they care? Nearly half the country support President Trump and the Democrats will again waste the opportunity to use this moment to win them over.

The last four years exposed us for not having the courage of our convictions. We no longer believe in freedom of speech and liberty and justice for all. We give lip service as long as people do what we want them to do and say what we want them to say. The last four years have been shameful. Shameful that the hatred of one man prevented what could have been the most enlightening four years in United States history.