Tag Archives: culture

Integrity Redux

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I wrote about the level of integrity in the Manafort trial a bit ago as it concerned an accountant who sold her testimony to Mueller’s prosecutors for immunity from her confessed crimes (or who was browbeaten into it with the potential charges as cudgel).  Here’s another example of the level of integrity in Mueller’s case against Manafort, this time involving Mueller’s prosecutors’ star witness, Rick Gates.

Gates, long prior to the start of the Manafort trial, pled guilty to a count of conspiracy against the United States and a count of lying to the FBI.  As part of the plea, Mueller dropped 22 other charges against Gates.  Also on the table are the sanctions ensuing from the deal: a reduction of his likely jail sentence from 100 years (!) to 5-6 years—and potentially to just probation—and a reduction of his fine from $500,000 to as little as $2,000.

Another part of the plea deal is the kicker: to get those reductions, he must cooperate with Mueller’s prosecutors in their investigation and trial of Manafort.  That cooperation, with the Manafort trial underway, clearly centers on how well he testifies to the prosecutors’ satisfaction.

Since so much of Mueller’s case against Manafort depends on witnesses who’ve sold their testimony so blatantly, or who were browbeaten into giving the testimony those prosecutors demanded, how can this case have any credibility at all?

Free Speech According to the Progressive-Democratic Party

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Senator Chris Murphy (D, CT) wants to spread censorship about and vastly broaden it.  All in the name of democracy—Progressive-Democrat style.

Infowars is the tip of a giant iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to tear our nation apart. These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our democracy depends on it[.]

Censorship.  Because the only speech that should be free is that speech approved by our Betters.  Because ordinary Americans are just too grindingly stupid to be trusted with deciding for ourselves what to say, what to hear, and how to evaluate what we hear.

This is the “freedom” that the Progressive-Democratic Party will allow us.

An Oxymoron

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Apple has chosen to conceal accesses to Infowars by removing links to it from Apple’s podcast facility because Apple thinks Infowars is too far right for Apple’s taste and because the site pushes bad speech.

This is rank censorship.

Eliminating easy access to Infowars podcasts marks a rare, prominent foray for Apple into an issue confronting many major internet companies: how to remove hateful or conspiratorial messages from their platforms without infringing on free speech.

This is an impossible task to achieve legitimately.  Our 1st Amendment is explicitly intended to protect unpopular or disgusting or hateful speech as well as “approved” speech.  The Amendment recognizes the ability of individual American citizens to think for themselves and to evaluate for themselves what speech they choose to hear, free from Government “advice.”

It’s true enough that the Amendment enjoins Government and not private enterprise.  However, the principle the Amendment protects is a universal one; it applies to all of us, individuals and enterprises alike.

Apple’s MFWIC, Tim Cook, clearly thinks he’s above all of this.  His attaboy for resisting the FBI’s demand that Apple destroy individuals’ ability to encrypt effectively their private communications has been used up.

NLMSM

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They’ve completely thrown in the towel on their job and on their highly self-touted role as the Fourth Estate.  Even Fox News‘ Jon Scott, on his Sunday 1700CST/1800EST program, made the conscious decision to make pressmen’s hurt feelings from President Trump’s picking on them the lede and centerpiece of his “reporting.”

Our economy is going gangbusters after years of doldrums, our immigration situation is in flux, there’s a tariff conflict in progress, there’s an election later this week in a key Congressional district, the Russians are doing things, the PRC is doing things, northern Korea is doing things, Iran is doing things, the EU is doing things, and the Trump administration is doing things about all of those.

Scott, though, chose to wallow—at the top of his lungs while quoting persons of the NLMSM from other media outlets who were wallowing at the tops of their lungs—in the misery of his hurt feelings.

Because pressmen are the center of our nation’s doings, and not those doings themselves.

It’s disgusting, and it would be shameful, except the pressmen of the NLMSM don’t have the grace to know shame.

Department of YGTBSM Department

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Recall the California (and others) foolishness in banning plastic straws.  Now there’s a company, FinalStraw, that makes metal straws.  They’re steel.  They’re collapsible.  And they come with a carrying case.

What’s next—”cigarette” holders for vapers?

Some people’s children.  Jeez.