This is going to be only one post when it ought to be about five. I’m restraining myself; here is another example of a story that has me in a self-flagellating mood because I have so mismanaged my life, time, opportunities and talents that I am reduced to fulminating futilely on an obscure blog that does nothing to effect any substantive change, at a period in our culture’s journey when ignorance and malevolence threaten the nation’s essence.  Meanwhile, the likes of Alyssa Milano, Milo Yiannopoulos, and social media “influencers ” have millions of followers who heed their “wisdom.” Continue reading →

So far, not surprisingly, the mainstream media isn’t covering the story encompassed by Musk’s internal records about how Twitter helped bury the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election. It is continuing to concentrate on Kanye West’s Nazi affection and his banning by Musk as its Twitter story of the day. This reflects poorly on Trump, you see. Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!

Today Musk sent the relevant Twitter records to ex-Rolling Stone substack journalist Matt Taibbi, who tweeted lengthy Twitter-burst about what they show. I hate reading those 10 part Tweet-streams, so here is what they say put together:

“Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters. Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: ‘More to review from the Biden team.’ The reply would come back: ‘Handled.'”

As in this attachment, from Musk’s documentation:

Taibbi continued,

“Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However… This system wasn’t balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right. The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you’re about to read. However, it’s also the assessment of multiple current and former high-level executives…there’s no evidence – that I’ve seen” that the federal government had a role in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop …the decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde [That’s her above] playing a key role. …Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.” They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography. White House spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of her account for tweeting about the story, prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign staffer Mike Hahn, who seethed: “At least pretend to care for the next 20 days.” This led public policy executive Caroline Strom to send out a polite WTF query. Several employees noted that there was tension between the comms/policy teams, who had little/less control over moderation, and the safety/trust teams: Strom’s note returned the answer that the laptop story had been removed for violation of the company’s “hacked materials” policy. 

They just freelanced it,’ is how one former employee characterized the decision. ‘Hacking’ was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.”

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You’re up, ’cause I’m down….

I’m preparing the annual Ethics Alarms Christmas music post, and thus thinking about holiday songs and performances. I think my top three performances in this realm of all time would be, first, Judy Garland’s rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” in “Meet Me in St. Louis,” then Bing Crosby’s recording of “Do You Hear What I Hear?,” and Harry’s contribution to the Christmas canon above. I had a long drive last week and listened to the Sirius “Christmas Traditions” station. It’s depressing—I know I’ve mentioned this before—everyone you hear is dead. That can’t be a good thing for getting people into the Christmas spirit. I started playing a game: how many songs with dead singers would play before a currently living singer would show up? Fourteen songs went by, and then jazz artist Nancy Wilson popped up. Oooh! I was pretty sure she was still alive! Nope. I checked; Nancy checked out in 2018. The one living singer who has been played repeatedly so far is Johnny Mathis. He’s 87.

Hang in there, Johnny.

1. It’s really kind of amazing…these people flagrantly display their double standards and cynicism, and pay no price for it. Integrity? What integrity? House Democrats just picked a new leader in the House, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi stpping down (finally!) at the end of this term. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) is the new power. Apparently the fact that he has been an outspoken “election denier” in the past (at least that’s what Democrats call it when Republicans question an election’s legitimacy) and Jeffries has been tapped immediately after the party made “election denial” a litmus test for fascism going into the midterm elections doesn’t bother anyone at all. Jeffries repeatedly denied the results of the 2016 presidential election, claiming that it was illegitimate and stolen.

“The more we learn about 2016 election the more ILLEGITIMATE it becomes,” Jeffries tweeted in 2018, referencing Trump defeating Hillary Clinton. “America deserves to know whether we have a FAKE President in the Oval Office.” In 2020, he called out Trump, saying, “history will never accept you as a legitimate President.” That the Republican Party couldn’t wipe the metaphorical floor with these liars and incompetents last month shows its rank incompetence. No wonder Democrats don’t even try to hide their hypocrisy.

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The report from ABC News is rife with significance and illumination. Sayeth the network, a bulwark of the biased mainstream media propaganda machine, in its headline, “Twitter ends enforcement of COVID misinformation policy: Twitter is no longer enforcing its policy against misinformation about COVID-19.”

If one had to choose a single topic about which it is ridiculous and hypocritical for the news media to complain about alleged “misinformation,” I can’t imagine a more perfect one than the pandemic. The ABC story is unintentionally hilarious in its resolute refusal to acknowledge reality, thus qualifying as misinformation, disinformation, or perhaps just “typical unethical journalism deception” itself. ABC’s self-own is also useful, as it provides one more example, as if more were necessary, of how desperately the Axis of Evil (you know by now, I hope: “the resistance”/ Democratic Party/ mainstream media” anti-democracy team) needs to see Elon Musks mission to rescue free speech and the dissemination of non-conforming opinions and embargoed information fail.

Some highlights:

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