I’ve written before about the duplicity of Facebook and its MFWIC Mark Zuckerberg.
Here’s another example, even more blatant than that last.
Facebook Strikes Again, Again
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Tag Archives: politics
Chicago Mayhem
Recall the bloody mayhem going on in Chicago these days while its mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) fiddles. Over 80 people were killed or injured one recent weekend alone.
Last year, President Donald Trump told Emanuel to get things under control, or else the Feds would. That was a year-and-a-half ago and so greatly predates the recent weekend.
Trump’s own mistake was in not following through on his implied threat.
Here’s President Hines’ solution, and it’s not too late to implement it; although the bloody cost of sitting on the sidelines is rising. Since Emanuel has chosen to do nothing but natter on about how terrible things are, Hines would get on to Governor Bruce Rauner and tell him he has one week to get the Illinois State Police deployed in Chicago in place of the city’s police (who are pouting like toddlers over their mistreatment by Emanuel—a justified beef, but no excuse for shirking their duty) and beginning to restore order to the city. In the same notice to Rauner, Hines would Federalize the Illinois National Guard. If Rauner said his State police didn’t have the resources, Hines would tell Rauner that if he needs Guard support, Hines would authorize it.
The bottom line is this: if the city and State governments can’t be bothered to bring Chicago under control, the Federal government has to.
I grew up in Illinois. It’s more than irritating to see a once great State descend into such bloody chaos, especially when it’s occurring because the State and local governments won’t do their jobs.
Free Speech
Christopher Mims had a piece up in his Thursday Tech column concerning the “usefulness” of good-guy bots to help combat filter bubbles, hate speech and harassment, and state-sponsored disinformation, along with other troll-ish speech.
Mims, unfortunately, is operating from the false premise that speech should be censored. Apart from obvious attempts to incite criminal violence, of course it should not be. Free speech must be free, bad speech—whatever that is; the definition varies from person to person and time to time—can only be answered with more speech.
As one commenter on Mims’ piece noted further,
The idea of algorithms controlling which information is disseminated to the people strikes me as the fast lane to the Orwellian world of Big Brother or perhaps Wells’ future in the Time Machine.
…
Ensuring that our political and educational systems prepare people to maintain their common sense and independence is probably a better defense than leaving it to the machines.
Climate Change and Wildfires
Much is being made about how anthropogenic global warming is causing all those wildfires in California. Cliff Mass had a different view [emphasis in the original].
there is a lot misinformation going around in the media, some environmental advocacy groups, and some politicians. The story can’t be a simply that warming is increasing the numbers of wildfires in California because the number of fires is declining. And area burned has not been increasing either.
And [emphasis added]
[N]ow we get into the real interesting questions that many are not considering. What is driving the ups and downs in wildfires? There are so many factors that must be considered, such as:
- The fact that extensive fires are a natural historical part of the ecology of the region
- The impacts of a huge increase of human population, creating increasing vulnerability while humans are starting most of the fires.
- Climate change that causes warming and changing the precipitation patterns (both wetter and drier) that influence fire frequency and size.
- Mismanagement of our forests and wild areas, allowing tree and debris-choked landscapes
- Invasive and often highly flammable non-native species brought in by man (e.g., cheatgrass and Eucalyptus)
Clearly, climate change is only one possible factor in controlling fire frequency and may not be the most important.
Indeed, our climate has been warming for the 4.5+ billion years of Earth’s existence. Our sun has been heating up for the 4.5++ billion years of its existence.
But the, actual facts have never interested global not-warming deniers.
Courage of One’s Convictions
Ben Shapiro offered to donate ten stacks to Progressive-Democratic Party candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign for a House seat from a New York district if she would debate him on “all the topics under the sun.” Shapiro also offered to debate her for charity.
Ocasio-Cortez’s response was to call Shapiro a cat-calling man with bad intentions and to refuse to debate him.
It seems the face of the Progressive-Democratic Party hasn’t the courage of the Party’s convictions.