Tag Archives: culture

Abuse and Disinformation

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Facebook is claiming to be adding a new tool for fighting these on its platform.

The Ad Archive API will allow researchers, journalists, publishers, and watchdog groups to efficiently analyze and search for ads to determine if anything untoward is happening.

Who, though, are going to be authorized access to the databases—which researchers, journalists, publishers, and watchdog groups, and what selection criteria will be used?  We’ve already seen how Facebook, under the guise of identifying what it’s pleased to call fake news, has selected “fact checkers” almost exclusively from the Left (a few tokens from the right have been invited)—Associated Press, Snopes.com, ABC News, and Politifact—as a mechanism for making the identification and then deleting the allegedly fake material.

We’ve also seen how, using this new capacity, Facebook censors and deletes Conservative posts and suspends Conservative accounts, and on being caught claiming “mistake” and undoing the deeds.  And continuing to make those “mistakes” apace.

Given Facebook‘s history of this, on what basis would we think this latest move has value?

Voting and Respect

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I received a text message from a representative of Beto O’Rourke, Texas’ Progressive-Democratic Party US Senate candidate:

Hi Edward, this is [the rep] volunteering w/ Beto O’Rourke’s campaign for US Senate. We’re texting Texas voters today about the upcoming November election. Will you be voting for Beto O’Rourke or Ted Cruz for Senate?

I texted her back:

I’ll be voting for the one who respects our flag, our national anthem, and generations of veterans who have fought, been maimed, and killed to defend the rights of others, in the words of John Kerry, to be stupid.

You might find my blog interesting: APlebesSite.com.

“Nothing More American”

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Texas Senate Progressive-Democratic Party candidate Beto O’Rourke has said, in response to a question about NFL players kneeling during our national anthem

I can think of nothing more American than to peacefully stand up, or take a knee for your rights anytime, anywhere, any place.

It’s the American thing to do to kneel and disparage our national anthem, to deprecate our flag, to insult generations of veterans who have fought, been maimed, and been killed for the right of folks like this…candidate…and those NFL personages to insult of the symbol and defenders of that right.

Right.

Remember the Progressive-Democrat’s version of respect and of patriotism this fall.

Accountability

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Fr James Connell, of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, had a thought on the recently exposed massive child abuse perpetrated by priests and bishops of the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania.

Civil governments must take the lead, as was done in Pennsylvania, and do what the church won’t do. Many more grand juries need to be impaneled and empowered to find and declare the truth. Without truth, there can be no justice, and without justice, there will be no healing.

Take the lead?  Maybe yes, maybe no.  Certainly, civil authority must deal with the secular crime aspect of this.

However, the Church must act too, not just write pretty letters.  The priests who committed these atrocities should, at the least, be removed from the priesthood and sent to isolated monasteries to contemplate their sins and set about atoning for them.  The Bishops and Cardinals who covered up the priests’ atrocities should be excommunicated; they did monstrous evil.  They lied and covered up the heinous sins of the priests: they abandoned those children, and they helped sell the souls of the priests to Satan.

Only the Church can exact those consequences.  Forgive these thugs (with apologies to thuggery)?  Of course, even (especially) the Bishops and Cardinals.  But forgiveness neither demands forgetting nor obviates punishment.  Without punishment in addition to the truth, there can be no justice, and without justice, there will be no healing.  And if we forget, these crimes will happen again.

Once Again

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And still: the Veterans Administration is not up to the task.

Hundreds of thousands of veterans face yearslong delays in their appeals of disability rulings because of a backlog of cases choking the Department of Veterans Affairs….

This backlog causes a number of problems…. Rushed rulings on initial claims can be riddled with errors. Veterans who appeal their cases typically wait between three and seven years for resolutions to their appeals, according to the Government Accountability Office. An inspector general report also found that one in 14 veterans dies while awaiting a decision on their disability claim appeal.

Against this backdrop, “VA officials say they have worked hard to process disability claims—and appeals to those claims—faster.”  Stipulate that.  The VA still is failing, no matter the amount of hard work.

The VA must be disbanded and its once and future budgets converted to vouchers for our veterans so they can get the care they need from the doctors they choose at the facilities they choose.

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.