Friends, there's a theme to today's top headlines (as chosen by me): the declining scope for "free speech" in America and beyond. Be afraid! Be VERY afraid!
First, in what appears at first glance to be a victory for free speech, President Trump has decided to resume posting on Twitter (a.k.a. "X"), where he was a major presence before his eviction from the platform early in 2021 (for reasons all too familiar). DJT has apparently decided that Truth Social won't cut it if he's to make effective use of social media in the 2024 election cycle. So what's the downside, free speech-wise? Just read this NPR article about Trump's return to Twitter. It's dripping with contempt for Trump, Twitter, and Elon Musk. It's part of an elaborate, global campaign to delegitimize one of the most popular social media sites going -- and ultimately to destroy it, because it has dared to deviate from establishment orthodoxy. Demonetizing Twitter, by intimidating most advertizers into abandoning it, is just step one. As the EU and the U.S. Department of Justice have made clear, sooner or later the app faces punitive lawsuits, adversarial prosecutions, and even outright bans. It's all part and parcel of the global Left's campaign to monopolize control over the terms of public discourse...and it's working!
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/25/1139061784/trump-twitter-tweets-return
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1695005568661147937
As if to confirm my analysis (and how!), a German court has just pronounced sentence against a German judge. You heard right: a judge was put on trial for making a ruling that was considered, by leftists, a "perversion of the law". His crime? He found against mask mandates and social distancing and virus testing requirements for schoolchildren. Can you imagine? He not only questioned COVID orthodoxy -- he ruled that the law protected the rights of schoolchildren not to comply with fascistic governmental edicts on public health. What cheek! That the judge would be overruled is, of course unsurprising. That his career would be ruined, and that he would face the loss of his pension and possible prison time, all for doing his job, as he saw it, is outrageous. It speaks to the determination of the modern Left to criminalize dissent. Trump is Exhibit A, sure, but there are plenty of others in the same boat.
https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1694758026690056555
Finally, at least one poll shows that Ron DeSantis is the biggest beneficiary of the recent Republican presidential debate. I'm pleased to hear it, although it's looking increasingly likely that all these bogus prosecutions of Trump will achieve their main objective: they will ensure that Trump is the GOP nominee, so that the Dems can (they expect) pick him apart and sail to victory in 2024. We'll see about that last part.
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/iowa-poll-gop-debate/2023/08/25/id/1132092/
RAY TO NICK
ReplyDeleteWhat is your opinion about Ramaswamy? If I'm not mistaken, he did pretty well in the debates. Frankly, I like the man.
In any event, I guess we will all know who the nominee is going to be by the Republican Convention in July 2024. If it's not Trump, then I would favor a ticket of DeSantis and Ramaswamy as VP, although I doubt the latter would settle for a subordinate position or vice versa.
One thing for sure, I firmly believe that if we don't get a Republican president again in 2024, we won't have one again for a very long time, as the country descends into a Left-wing dictatorship, which it already is in many ways.
RAY TO NICK AND JACK
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to be optimistic, I really am, but "the power of negative thinking" is overtaking me, and I predict a BidenISTA victory in 2024.
I think the DemoNISTAS will use any method to "capture" the 2024 elections. Convince me that I am wrong, and that there is nothing at all to worry about.
RAY TO NICK
ReplyDeleteDon't think you will have to worry about Trump anymore (if you ever were) as a "threat" to DeSantis, since there is an effort underway, to disqualify Trump from being on the ballot in key states. Don't know if that can or will happen, but it sure shows how much the American Leftists hate him, ably assisted by more RINOs than we could ever possibly realize. But let's say that DeSantis becomes the next president, then you can be sure that once in office, the DemoNISTAS will go after him just like they did Trump, without mercy. I'm sure DeSantis knows this, of course.
RAY TO NICK AND JACK
ReplyDeleteJust saw where President Biden (vacationing at Lake Tahoe) has requested more funds from Congress to develop a new Covid vaccine. Better get those masks out again, don't you think? Hope a renewed pandemic doesn't get in the way of elections next year, perish the thought.
Let's see, is there some way (constitutional of course) that next year's presidential elections can be delayed/postponed in the wake of some sort of emergency? Surely, that imagination of mine is just running wild, just wild. I have these nightmares, where Trump is found guilty of everything, and sent to the federal maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado, and then I wake up. Things like that would just be impossible here, don't you think?
Dr.Waddy , Ray et al from Jack: The antiamerican left is blithe to refer to Americans as Nazis. Yet the totalitarian methods of those defeated subhumans are brought to mind in the proceedings of that, of all places,German court. What it did and more, ALOT more, is firmly intended by the incipient tyrants on the American left.Determination to suppress free speech is readily obvious in the fields they already dominate, like the academy and the leftist automatons it deploys to secondary education to paralyse the minds of youth. And yes, it is invading, disgracing and weaponizing our legal system. The "law "enabled onslaught on DJT and the now 50 years of casual widespread "professional"dismissal of a legality which is the painfully evolved product of centuries of experience, exhaustive examination and sincere intent to work justice ,stands in evidence. Smugly substituted for creditable legal reason is emotion, fashionable trendiness and incidental,intellectually unsupported and fleeting constructions of good and right. Since anything goes, the door is wide open to neo nazi neo marxist neo fascist antiamerican leftist presumption. You are on point when you term it a real and frightening prospect.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Only because I make a point of trying to read all the articles you make the considerable effort to seek and post did I control the disgust I harbor for NPR. "National Public. . ."?! Takes a real crust to arrogate that name to an organization which imperiously preempts taxes to sneer at many millions of Americans who cannot but pay them. Sheesh!
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Would that these presumptuous snobs were sent packing on Inauguration Day. " 'Tis the way to be simple. . ."; so NPR defenders lugubriously quoted and bleated when it's vicious bias was cited and it's founding threatened. What s - - tful humbug!
ReplyDeletefunding threatened
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: I think I misworded the quote from above, which may have originated with the Quakers or Shakers but I'm probably close. At any rate, it's oh so self righteous protestation by the left was laughably narcissistic and predictably smacked of victimhood. In that sense it was simple (minded).
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: I know, let's steal a march on those enabling the prosecution of DJT by encouraging them to consider the advantages of emigration to the German state of Thuringia, where their kind of justice obtains. With luck it would turn on them by and by.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Several NY prisons are now closed, though the physical plants remain. They may simply be mothballed to await an expected influx of those "who dare to thwart the revolution!" (that consoling justification seen posted in one of the myriad cells enjoyed in the "fundamental transformation" of Cambodia by promethean Pol Pot). Since NY is a very active proving ground for the regime intended for what is now America by the antiamerican left, these used joints are most suitable.After all, the left is expert in transforming entire nations into prisons. The normalization of politics by prosecution now obvious in our country must then generate convicts and they must be housed, at least until "fundamental transformation" regularizes more, ehh, decisive sentences for insolent political heresy.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Buchenwald, established in 1937, housed lots of German commies. The Nazis, follow ing Hitler's lead, reserved an especially vicious animus for marxists so I would guess they were handled very badly there. Of course those marxists, had they achieved power, would have proved typical marxist subhumans. After 1945 they had their chance in E. Germany and stayed true to form. There are discernable differe nces between nazi and commie oppression but they amount to the same execrable injustice. That fact, I think, condemns modern marxists, who tragically wield much power. Modern nazis are a powerles rump.
ReplyDeleteWell, Jack, the fascists oppressed communists, and the communists oppressed fascists, but I would remind you that six million Germans voted for the KPD in 1932, and only a tiny percentage ever spent time in a concentration camp. The vast majority of German communists kept their mouths shut under Nazism, served in the military and/or in war industries, paid their taxes, and were left alone.
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