Tag Archives: Elon Musk

Some Of The Spending Cuts Are Obvious

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On Wednesday, The Epoch Times posted an article about some of the federal budget cuts that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) could investigate.

The article reports:

In a letter sent on Monday to DOGE advisors Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) outlined her “instruction manual” of ways to eliminate government waste.

“With $3 billion of interest being added to our national debt every day, the longer we delay tackling the problem, the further away the finish line gets,” Ernst wrote in the letter. “To give you a head start, here are a trillion dollars’ worth of ideas for trimming the fat and reducing red ink.”

Ernst pointed out that the cost of maintaining and leasing government buildings costs $8 billion every year.

She noted that the federal workforce still works remotely and “not a single headquarters of a major government agency or department in the nation’s capital is even half full.”

Ernst targeted the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in her blueprint of cost-cutting targets. She cited her audit of the tax collection agency which revealed that 5,800 employees and contractors owe nearly $50 million themselves.

The lawmaker also called for the DOGE to act as the “Grinch” on the government’s end-of-year “use it or lose it” spending spree which she called “Christmas in September.” The senator said that Sept. 20 every year marks the deadline for the federal government to spend money left over at the end of a fiscal year.

Part of the problem is baseline budgeting–your budget for next year starts with this year’s spending as the bottom line–thus the rush to spend all of your budget. Therefore, if you ask for a 10 percent increase and only get a 5 percent increase, you can say that you budget was cut 5 percent even though your budget grew. It’s very similar to the wife who goes shopping, spends $300, and tells her husband she saved $100.

There is hope that we will finally see government spending cut in the upcoming Trump administration.

There Will Be A Price On Ignoring The Will Of The People

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Sometimes the Republicans in Congress are bigger obstacles to a Republican President than the Democrats. Unfortunately, that may describe the current situation. There does not seem to be a price paid by Republicans who choose to support the deep state rather than the people who elected them. However, that may be about to change.

On Sunday, The Gateway Pundit reported:

Elon Musk fired off a warning shot at dirty Senate RINOs on Sunday afternoon.

The squishy Trump-hating RINOs in the US Senate are already pushing back against the will of the American people and refusing to approve of President Trump’s cabinet nominees.

It should be noted, as Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) reminded the American people last week. NOT ONE SINGLE DEMOCRAT voted against ANY of Joe Biden’s radical America-hating nominees in 2020!

…Yet, five Republican Senators forced Matt Gaetz to withdraw his nomination for Attorney General after they announced they would not vote for him.

Elon warned the RINOs on Sunday that we would not give you a pass this time!

The article concludes:

We have two years to enact the Trump agenda. We will not forget the RINOs who refused to stand with Trump and his voters.

The only time a Republican Congress ever accomplished anything was under the leadership of Newt Gingrich. The reason the Republicans were not able to undo Obamacare was the pettiness of Senator John McCain. If Republicans expect Americans to vote for them, they had better start listening to what the voters want and acting accordingly.

Is Anyone Surprised By This?

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There has been some serious hand wringing about the creation of a new government department–the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) headed by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. I am sure there are many bureaucrats in Washington that will say it is completely unnecessary. However, the numbers tell the story.

On Sunday, Red State reported:

It was reported on Friday that the Pentagon, the nation’s largest government agency, failed its seventh audit in a row, still unable to fully account for its more than $824 billion budget. Worry not, suggested Pentagon officials, who stressed that they’re making “good progress” toward a clean audit in 2028.

Two thousand twenty-eight? Something tells me that in the minds of Elon and Vivek, more than four years isn’t good enough.

According to reports, the Department of Defense — led by often-under-fire Secretary Lloyd Austin –technically earned a disclaimer of opinion, meaning it failed to provide sufficient information to auditors to form an accurate opinion. 

First question: Why? I’ll venture a guess that the answer is because sufficient information was nowhere to be found, which raises the second question: Why not?

The article concludes:

Incidentally, the Pentagon has never passed an audit since the agency became legally obligated to conduct them in 2018. 

Without mentioning names, as I suggested earlier, I have a feeling that the Defense Department will be held fully accountable for both its expenditures and its initiatives long before 2028.

I think I’ll just leave it here, for now.

The next two years are going to be very interesting.

The Hypocrisy Is Amazing

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On Friday, BizPacReview reported that the paragon of unbiased reporting, The Washington Post, is alleging that Elon Musk illegally worked in the United States in the 1990’s and should be deported. I wish every ‘illegal immigrant’ who came to America worked as hard as Elon Musk.

The article reports:

Billionaire X owner Elon Musk has triggered the powers that be, so much so that they are now going after his American citizenship.

Legal experts claim that if Musk were to have lied on his immigration forms, he could have his citizenship stripped and be denaturalized. The Washington Post, which has had a leftist lean as of late, alleged he illegally worked in the United States in the 1990s. Their claims are allegedly backed up by “former business associates, court records and company documents,” and claim that when he was accepted to Stanford in 1995, Musk began working on a startup that would later be known as Zip2 instead of enrolling in classes.

The outlet further reported claims that one year later in 1996, investors addressed concerns about Musk and his brother Kimbal’s immigration status by hinging their funding agreement on the brothers obtaining legal licenses to work in the United States.

I would like to point out that The Washington Post has never done anything that would negatively impact the citizenship of George Soros.

The article includes screenshots of a number of X responses to the idea of deporting Elon Musk. Here are a few:

X is so much fun now that it is not being censored!

Another Accomplishment By The Private Sector

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On Thursday, The American Thinker posted an article about the latest accomplishment of SpaceX. The company captured a massive 20-story booster as it broke away to return to the launch pad for reuse. The government space program has never done that. A private company is more likely to want to save money by reusing the booster. Although the government bids out contracts, it is not genuinely concerned with cost cutting.

The article reports:

The consequences of such a brilliant endeavor is truly revolutionary. A reporter for a T.V. program from India called “The Breakfast Club,” saw that right away.

Sonal Mehrotra Kapoor of “The Breakfast Club” excitedly reported on Elon Musk’s scientific and engineering accomplishment in capturing a 20-story reusable booster rocket.

…The reporting on the event is truly thoughtful fact-based journalism that accurately describes the massive achievement of SpaceX ambitious plans.

What is noteworthy is the clip also shows the SpaceX team’s heartfelt pride in their accomplishment. In essence, a team led by a visionary consisting of a diverse crew of scientists, engineers and technicians, all a product of a meritocracy-based selection process, made history and were joyous in that moment.

Meanwhile, The Daily Breeze reports:

Elon Musk‘s SpaceX rocket company has sued the California Coastal Commission, alleging in federal court that the panel’s members are biased because of the billionaire owner’s conservative political views, according to papers obtained Wednesday.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Los Angeles, alleges “unconstitutional overreach” by the commission after members criticized Musk’s political leanings during a meeting about whether to approve more frequent SpaceX launches off the California coastline.

“Rarely has a government agency made so clear that it was exceeding its authorized mandate to punish a company for the political views and statements of its largest shareholder and CEO,” SpaceX alleges in the 45-page lawsuit.

Driving Elon Musk out of California is not going to help California balance its budget.

The Government Relief Efforts For Hurricane Helene Are Not Being Handled Well

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On Saturday, Townhall posted an article about the government relief efforts for the victims of Hurricane Helene. Unfortunately, the government is being more of a hindrance than a help.

The article reports:

Into this hellscape of destroyed cities, overturned cars, and shattered lives have parachuted the Presidential “nominee” of the Democratic Party—the one nobody actually voted for—Kamala Harris. Conservative estimates of the cleanup in Helene’s wake exceed $ 300 billion…but the tone-deaf Harris put on her cheeriest face and announced that victims would be getting reparations from Washington. In an October 2nd speech in Augusta, GA (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/10/02/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-on-response-and-recovery-efforts-following-hurricane-helene-augusta-ga/) Mrs. Time To Turn The Page stunned onlookers with these words:

“…And the federal relief and assistance that we have been providing has included FEMA providing $750 for folks who need immediate needs being met, such as food, baby formula, and the like. And you can apply now.”

Wow! Your home has been leveled, your car is crushed under tons of rubble, your streets are closed, and your cell phone is useless. But it isn’t all bad news: you can “apply” for a $750 gift card from Kamala Harris.

And where’s the Federal Emergency Management Agency? FEMA—according to its inept and impeached head Alejandro Mayorkas, speaking on Air Force One–“…does not have the funds to make it through the hurricane season.”

The article notes:

What rubbish. FEMA—crying crocodile tears about not having enough funds—isn’t mounting any substantial operations in many stricken areas. In fact, FEMA left hundreds of thousands of Helene victims without even cellphone communications until Donald J. Trump stepped in and tapped Elon Musk to provide StarLink™ trucks which are now operating in areas where cell towers collapsed during the hurricane.

This is not to diminish in any way the heroic work of the National Guard, state and local authorities and private citizens who have worked tirelessly in the wake of Helene’s fury to rescue people in their communities. Additionally, we all are blessed that groups like Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse, The Salvation Army and Team Rubicon immediately rolled up their sleeves and mobilized to literally save lives throughout the hurricane’s path. God bless every one of them.

The private sector always does it better! On August 12th, 1986, US President Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” He was right.

 

Bringing Aid Without Government Red Tape

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On Tuesday, Hot Air posted an article about communication is being restored in the areas of the country that were devastated by Hurricane Helene. It’s ironic that the very organization that the government prevented from creating an internet infrastructure is the organization that has come to the rescue.

The article reports:

Residents hit by Hurricane Helene are getting internet through Starlink because no other service is working, and in many cases won’t be for weeks or months.

In fact, there are regions with no access to communications at all, but for Starlink, which is why Elon Musk and Donald Trump are rushing in Starlink terminals.

What most people don’t know is that, originally, Starlink was approved as part of Kamala Harris’ plan to connect hundreds of thousands of rural homes to the internet at broadband speeds.

You know, that program that has yet to connect a single home…

I say originally because the FCC–for obviously political reasons–decided to cut Starlink out of the program due to bogus claims that it hadn’t proven that it could provide the service reliably, and there is no way on Earth that the government would spend money on something that wasn’t 100% bulletproof.

As Joe Biden would say, no joke.

Now individuals, local government units, and soon Elon Musk himself will rush into the stricken areas RELIABLE Starlink terminals to provide communications services to people, first responders, and the National Guard. Without Starlink, tens or hundreds of thousands of people would be completely cut off.

This is another example of a person who knows how to get things done vs. a politician who has no idea how the world outside his bubble works. President Trump and Elon Musk are businessmen. Their profits depend on problem solving. Generally speaking, the only way politicians solve problems is to throw more money at them.

This Is Not Acceptable

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Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina very hard. It will be a long time before the Blue Ridge Parkway and the roads along the Tennessee border are up and running.  It will be a long time before the area recovers economically. There will be a significant death toll by the time the rescue efforts are done. This is a serious blow to our country. So what is the response from the White House?

On Tuesday, The Gateway Pundit reported the following:

According to Grok, the United States has committed approximately $175 billion in aid to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

This figure includes both military and financial aid.

Here’s a brief breakdown from Grok AI:

    • Military Aid: The bulk of the aid has been in the form of military support, which has been crucial for Ukraine’s defense against Russian forces. This includes a wide array of equipment from artillery and ammunition to more advanced systems like anti-aircraft missiles and tanks.
    • Financial Aid: While the exact financial aid amount varies slightly depending on the source, there have been mentions of around $33.3 billion in “budget support” or direct financial aid, although some posts claim a lower figure like $10 billion when considering solely financial support.
    • Contextual Comparison: Critics and supporters alike have noted that this aid, while significant, represents a relatively small percentage of the U.S. annual budget or GDP. For instance, one comparison highlighted that the aid to Ukraine constitutes about 0.25% of the U.S. GDP for the year it was measured.
    • Public Sentiment and Debate: On platforms like X, there’s a mix of support for the aid, citing reasons like maintaining global security and supporting democracy, and criticism, often focusing on domestic spending priorities or the perceived effectiveness of the aid.

How much is the White House willing to give the victims of Hurricane Helene?

On Monday Joe Biden told suffereing Americans in the flood disaster zone, “No,” there won’t be more resources coming… “We’ve given them all we can.”

Joe Biden also snapped at reporters, saying, “I was commanding!” when he was asked why he was away from the White House and DC all weekend amid the catastrophic flooding.

And then later, during a live video feed from the White House, Joe Biden told the American public they need to help the recovery in North Carolina and, “It’s gonna take a hell of a lot of money.”

Meanwhile President Trump and Elon Musk are doing all they can to help restore communications in the area and to bring in relief supplies.

About That Pesky First Amendment

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The First Amendment states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Our Founding Fathers had enough faith in the American people to allow them to distinguish the fake news from the real news.  Evidently at least one of today’s newspapers does not share that view. Washington Post reporter Cleve Wootson asked an amazing question at Monday’s press conference with Karine Jean-Pierre.

On Monday, The Gateway Pundit quoted the question:

“One more, Elon Musk is slated to interview Trump tonight on X. I don’t know if the president is going to — feel free to say if he is or not — but I — I think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue. It’s a — you know, it’s an America issue. What role does the White House or the President have any sort of stopping that or stopping the spread of that or sort of inter — intervening in that. Some of that was about campaign misinformation, but you know it’s a wider thing, right?” Washington Post reporter Cleve Wootson asked Karine Jean-Pierre.

Karine Jean-Pierre went along with the far-left reporter and agreed that social media companies have the responsibility to shut down so-called misinformation.

Who determines misinformation? The Washington Post shared a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on Russiagate. All of that reporting turned out to be false. Was that misinformation?

The article notes:

It’s all hands on deck right now to silence Trump ahead of his blockbuster interview with Elon Musk.

The globalist tyrants in control of the European Union sent a letter to Elon Musk on Monday demanding the X owner censor President Donald Trump during their interview tonight.

Why is the mainstream media so afraid to let President Trump speak?

Be Careful What You Say About Your Political Opponent

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The internet is awash with responses to the Democrats’ referring to J D Vance as weird. Considering some of the Democrat antics in the past four years, J D Vance is simply an average American with a wife, a few children, and an impressive academic record. I won’t post some of the pictures I have seen of Democrat antics here because I try to keep this site rated “G,” but the tweets remind us of a transgender person exposing breasts on the White House lawn, naked cavorting in a conference room in the Capitol building, a transvestite cabinet member convicted on stealing other people’s luggage on airplanes and more. The list is very long.

On Tuesday, American Greatness reported the following:

In an uncanny display of synchronicity, the Harris campaign, Democrat lawmakers and their allies in the media have in the past couple of days all settled on one word to describe Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio):  “Weird.”

The Democrat-media propaganda campaign kicked into full gear over the weekend, with liberal talking heads robotically using the same talking point over and over again to smear the Republican vice presidential nominee over his past comments on childless women.

If you wonder why the mainstream media sometimes seems to use the same words, look up Operation Mockingbird. You will find contradictions in what you find, so look at what the news is doing and draw your own conclusions.

The article also notes:

“They should mix up the propaganda more. This is way too obvious,” billionaire Elon Musk commented on X in response to the supercut. “Just like when they were parroting before the debate that Biden was ‘sharp as a tack.’”

“Democrats are using the Mean Girls strategy of labeling Republican candidates as ‘weird’ because Democrat policies poll so poorly,” cartoonist Scott Adams explained on X. “It is a solid strategy for pleasing their base. Everyone can play because it requires no actual knowledge.”

This election season is going to need a LOT of popcorn.

Unfortunately, The Government Spying On Americans Isn’t New

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On Wednesday, Just the News posted an article about our government spying on Americans. According to a whistleblower, this is not anything new.

The article reports:

The public-private efforts to restrict and suppress purported “mis-, dis- and malinformation” across tech platforms started almost immediately after the surprise election of Donald Trump in 2016, ramped up a year before the COVID-19 pandemic, and included U.S. and U.K. military contractors and plans to cut off financial services to dissenters and sue them.

That’s according to a “highly credible whistleblower” who says they were recruited to participate in the Cyber Threat Intelligence League (CTIL) “through monthly cybersecurity meetings hosted by” the Department of Homeland Security, independent journalists who reviewed the Twitter Files at new owner Elon Musk’s invitation said Tuesday.

We are at a point that if an American says that two plus two equals four and the government wants it to equal five, the American is charged with spreading misinformation or disinformation. That is not a good place to be–particularly for a representative republic.

The article concludes:

Breuer (U.S. military contractor Pablo Breuer) told a podcast the duo’s work involved getting “nontraditional partners into one room,” such as social media companies, “special forces operators” and DHS employees, “to talk in a non-attribution, open environment in an unclassified way.”

He explained how the “in-group and out-group messaging have to be often different” when trying to sell Americans on a domestic version of the “Great Firewall of China.”

While Chinese citizens believe this censorship is to “protect the citizenry,” Americans “would absolutely lose our minds” if the feds “tried to sell that narrative,” Breuer reportedly said.

The reporting trio said they would present the underlying documents from the whistleblower to congressional investigators in the coming weeks and “make public all of the documents we can while also protecting the identity of the whistleblower and other individuals who are not senior leaders or public figures.”

The FBI declined to comment on the report to Just the News, and DHS and CISA did not respond to queries. Neither did Terp (U.K. defense researcher Sara-Jayne Terp) and Breuer.

The Washington swamp is a danger to all free Americans.

What Did You Get Done This Week?

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On Wednesday, The Federalist  posted an article about the federal budget discussions. Personally, I am not opposed to a government shutdown. During the rather drawn-out election of Kevin McCarthy, one of the things that was discussed (and I thought agreed to) was a return to the budget process requiring individual votes on the 12 appropriations bills that make up what’s known as the “omnibus package. This supposedly would be the end of the omnibus packages and the threat of government shutdowns.

On March 10, 2022, I posted the following:

Someone asked the website Quora when the last federal budget was passed using the conventional budget process.

The website posted the following answer:

Usually a President’s first year in Office is under the previous President’s budget. However knowing that Barack Obama was winning, the Congressional Democrats used Continuing Resolution to push the budget forward. With Obama in Office, they passed the full budget in April 2009. I think since then we have only operated in a world of continuing resolutions and an omnibus budget. After gaining the control of the congress in 2014, Republican promised to return to regular order and it hasn’t happened yet.

To answer your question, the 2007–08 budget was probably the last regular budget passed.

The Federalist reports:

While we gleefully await the federal government’s bankruptcy at the end of the month, here’s my favorite Elon Musk quote: “What did you get done this week?”

Every Republican in Congress should have to answer that question to the American taxpayer (you and me) before even thinking about giving another cent to Ukraine, the Pentagon, the DOJ, Health and Human Services, and every other department that is, at best, useless, and at worst, packed with paper pushers overtly harassing the people who pay their outsized salaries (you and me).

The Musk quote came in a strikingly similar context. In a text chat, some overpaid Twitter executive lectured him about the “internal distraction” that Musk’s public comments about the company had made after he purchased a large portion of its shares. “Next time we speak, I’d like to provide you perspective on the level of internal distraction right now and how it [sic] hurting our ability to do work,” the executive said.

“What did you get done this week?” Musk replied.

What makes it so good is that there is no answer to the question. Just some Twitter nerd versed only in talking about “optimization” (meaningless) and “company culture” (zero productivity value) blankly staring in a freeze.

The article concludes:

Members of Biden’s own party are dogging his open-border policies. Health and Human Services melted its own credibility on “science,” then recently flirted with recommending public masking again. The Justice Department is found out over and over again to be hostile toward the rule of law and the will of the people.

Which of the seven heads on this monstrosity is even bothering to smile at me? Why would I care if the federal government is funded when it does nothing for me? What’s worse, it functions in ways that make clear it deeply resents me.

Tell me, Republicans. What did you get done this week?

That’s a really good question.

 

 

A Police State?

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Matt Taibbi is a journalist who has been reporting on the Twitter files released by Elon Musk. Matt Taibbi is not a conservative and is considered an objective journalist. As anyone who has followed the story is aware, the Twitter files show a lot of illegal activity in the collaboration between Twitter and a number of government agencies. Obviously, the deep state is not happy about this information being revealed to the public. Telling the truth has consequences.

On Monday, The Gateway Pundit reported:

An IRS agent showed up at the home of ‘Twitter Files’ journalist Matt Taibbi on the same day he testified before Jim Jordan’s Committee on Weaponization of the Federal Government.

How convenient.

On March 9, Matt Taibbi dropped a Twitter Files ahead of his testimony to Congress: THE CENSORSHIP-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

Journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger appeared before Congress later that day.

The FTC had already been harassing Elon Musk and demanding he “identify all journalists” granted access to the Twitter files.

The article notes:

The IRS agent just showed up to the journalist’s home unannounced!

The Wall Street Journal reported:

Democrats are denouncing the House GOP investigation into the weaponization of government, but maybe that’s because Republicans are getting somewhere. That includes new evidence that the Internal Revenue Service may be targeting a journalist who testified before the weaponization committee.

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter Monday to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen seeking an explanation for why journalist Matt Taibbi received an unannounced home visit from an IRS agent. We’ve seen the letter, and both the circumstances and timing of the IRS focus on this journalist raise serious questions.

The article concludes:

Mr. Taibbi has provided the committee with documentation showing his 2018 return had been electronically accepted, and he says the IRS never notified him or his accountants of a problem after he filed that 2018 return more than four-and-a-half years ago.

He says the IRS initially rejected his 2021 return, which he later refiled, and it was rejected again—even though Mr. Taibbi says his accountants refiled it with an IRS-provided pin number. Mr. Taibbi notes that in neither case was the issue “monetary,” and that the IRS owes him a “considerable” sum.

There is a desperate need to clean house in Washington.

 

 

Bias Is What You Report As Well As How You Report It

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On Sunday, The New York Post posted an article about the mainstream media’s reporting of the Twitter files that Elon Musk has been releasing. The mainstream media has pretty much chosen to ignore the story totally. When they actually report it, their reporting is not accurate.

The article reports:

Whatever happened to “All the news that’s fit to print,” and “Democracy dies in darkness,” the respective mottos of the two most influential newspapers in the country, the New York Times and the Washington Post?

Every morning, these august organs set the narrative for newsrooms across the country, and yet, time and again, we see them ignore stories that don’t suit their own agenda as propaganda purveyors for the Democratic Party and the security state.

This has been obvious in their non-coverage of Elon Musk’s Twitter Files, four batches over 10 days so far, which have revealed a chilling censorship regime at the social media giant, which no doubt is replicated across Big Tech, including at Facebook and Google.

We see evidence of what we long suspected, despite Twitter former CEO Jack Dorsey’s lies to Congress: Conservatives and medical professionals were silenced, as part of a crackdown on effective dissent against the government. From The Post’s Hunter Biden laptop stories and criticism of the Biden administration’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s bogus edicts on masks, lockdowns and the origins of COVID, censorship has been the order of the day. That should be a story of interest to journalists at the Times and WaPo.

The article cites a few examples of how the information has been treated:

Over at the Washington Post, resident disinformation expert Taylor Lorenz went on TV to falsely claim that Elon Musk had laid off the staff who monitored child sexual exploitation material. The opposite is the case. On taking over Twitter, Musk declared his “priority #1” was to remove such material and, in two weeks, did more to cleanse Twitter of child abuse content than previous management had done in a decade.

The WaPo also reported that Musk was being investigated by San Francisco authorities for creating makeshift bedrooms at Twitter HQ for employees to sleep in, which he denied.
It was the same ignore-and-smear game across the leftie media-sphere.

“Old news” was how The Atlantic dismissed the Twitter Files.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is discouraging to know that the people who depend on the mainstream media for their news are either uninformed or misinformed. Since China owns large portions of American media, profit is no longer a motive–loss of viewers or readers is not an issue, so the mainstream media is no longer subject to the rules of the marketplace. That is not a good thing.

More Intrigue At Twitter

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On Wednesday, The Western Journal posted an article about a recent comment by Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter. Whenever you read anything about the current goings on at Twitter, it is probably a good idea to go to The Conservative Treehouse and read the articles related to Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop. The articles explain the relationship between Twitter and the Department of Homeland Security.

The Western Journal notes:

The dramatic revelations coming out of the “Twitter Files” haven’t stopped yet, and the developing side stories are a look at just how far the Democratic National Committee and other powerful forces wielded their influence over social media platforms to shape narratives and influence elections.

The most recent evidence that there is something yet to be uncovered came in a peculiar request from Twitter’s founder, Jack Dorsey, to its new CEO, Elon Musk. Dorsey suggested that instead of releasing a limited number of internal documents over a period of weeks, it would be better to release them all now.

“If the goal is transparency to build trust, why not just release everything without filter and let people judge for themselves? Including all discussions around current and future actions? Make everything public now,” Dorsey tweeted Wednesday.

The article notes:

An investor group called Elliott Management, which Dorsey described as an “activist” group, tried to force him out of Twitter starting in 2020.

In a series of text messages between Dorsey and Musk that were released as part of Twitter’s previous lawsuit against Musk when he backed out of the purchasing deal earlier this year before eventually going through with it, Dorsey expressed great interest in getting Musk on Twitter’s board.

“Back when we had the activist come in, I tried my hardest to get you on our board, and our board said no,” a March text from Dorsey to Musk read.

Dorsey explained in another text why he believed the board wouldn’t go for it. “I think the main reason is the board is just super risk averse and saw adding you as more risk, which I thought was completely stupid and backwards,” Dorsey wrote.

The question remains: Does Dorsey want something from that turbulent time to be released for public consumption? It sure sounds that way.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. There seems to be (and to have been) a lot going on behind the scenes at Twitter.

Knowing Who The Players Are

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On Tuesday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article about Elon Musk’s firing of Twitter’s general counsel James A. Baker.

The article reports:

Chief Twit Elon Musk has fired Twitter’s general counsel James A. Baker, citing his alleged involvement in suppressing the release of internal documents regarding Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.

‘In light of concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue, he was exited from Twitter today,’ Musk wrote in a tweet on Tuesday.

Musk added that Baker’s explanation of the events surrounding the laptop saga was ‘unconvincing.’ 

Journalist Matt Taibbi, who released the first batch of internal files about the Hunter saga on Friday, claimed that Baker had been fired in part for ‘vetting the first batch of ‘Twitter Files” – without knowledge of new management.’ 

The article notes some of the previous work of James Baker:

Before joining Twitter, Baker was former FBI general counsel under Director James Comey, and played a key role in the saga surrounding the Bureau’s controversial probe into possible collusion between Russia and Donald Trump‘s 2016 campaign. 

The article also notes:

James Baker has long been in the crosshairs of Elon Musk, who on October 27 became his boss.

Baker played a key role in a series of events that led to Democrat lawyer Michael Sussmann going on trial in May, accused of lying to the FBI.

He was not accused of giving the FBI false information, but rather lying about who he worked for.

The saga began when Sussmann was given information from a group of data scientists who analyzed odd internet data they thought might suggest clandestine communications between a server for the Trump Organization and a server for Alfa Bank, a Kremlin-linked Russian financial institution.

Sussmann then texted Baker, at the time the bureau’s general counsel, to say he had information the FBI should be aware of.

‘I’m coming on my own — not on behalf of a client or company — want to help the bureau,’ Sussmann wrote in his text to Baker.

Baker testified that he was certain Sussmann was acting as an individual, and would likely not have met him were he working for the Clinton campaign.

Sussmann, a cybersecurity specialist, had worked for the Democratic Party in the context of Russia’s hacking of its servers, and Russia publishing emails from the servers.

Sussmann was also connected to the Democrats via one of his partners at the law firm Perkins Coie, Marc Elias, who was representing the Clinton campaign and hired Fusion GPS.

Yet multiple people – including Elias – testified that Sussmann was indeed acting on his own accord, and argued that actually going to the FBI was not in the interests of the Clinton campaign, which would have preferred a New York Times story drawing attention to the assertions.

The FBI later decided the allegations of links between the Trump campaign and the Russian bank were unfounded.

Musk tweeted during the trial that he thought Sussmann had ‘created an elaborate hoax’ about Russia, in a bid to help Clinton.

I wonder if Elon Musk understood how much housecleaning needed to be done when he bought Twitter.

The Threat Of Disinformation

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On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal posted an article about Elon Musk’s release of Twitter’s documents showing censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

The article reports:

Elon Musk’s release of internal emails relating to Twitter’s 2020 censorship is news by any definition, even if the mainstream media dismiss it. There will be many threads to unspool as more is released, but a couple of points are already worth making.

The first is that Mr. Musk would do the country a favor by releasing the documents all at once for everyone to inspect. So far he’s dribbled them out piecemeal through journalist Matt Taibbi’s Twitter feed, which makes it easier for the media to claim they can’t report on documents because they can’t independently confirm them.

A second point is an huzzah for Rep. Ro Khanna, the California progressive Democrat, who warned Twitter in 2020 about the free-speech implications and political backlash of censoring the New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. That was good advice, even if Twitter didn’t take it.

A third point is the confirmation of the central role that former spies played in October 2020 in framing the Hunter Biden story in a way that made it easier for Twitter and Facebook to justify their censorship.

Recall that former Democratic intelligence officials James Clapper and John Brennan led the spooks in issuing a public statement suggesting that the laptop may have been hacked and its content was Russian disinformation. On Oct. 16, 2020, Mr. Clapper told CNN that “to me, this is just classic textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft at work.” On Oct. 19, 51 former spooks released their statement claiming that the arrival of the emails “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” (The statement and signers are published nearby.)

The article at the Wall Street Journal concludes:

The partisan foray by current and former U.S. intelligence officials in the last two elections should be deeply troubling to Americans on the left and right. They have authority by dint of access to information that isn’t confirmable by the press, which takes their spin as gospel. This is a form of political corruption that needs to be exposed, and perhaps the Twitter documents will help to unlock the story.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is very possible that the former and current U.S. intelligence officials working to get Joe Biden elected didn’t want President Trump looking into the domestic activities of our spy agencies. It seems that a thorough examination of those domestic activities is long overdue.

 

Misplaced Blame?

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On Saturday, The Daily Wire posted the following headline:

Ex-Twitter Executive: Elon Musk Is Putting Us ‘In Harm’s Way’ By Showing How We Censored Content

So wait a minute; I’m just curious. When the FBI puts up a wanted poster, are they putting the person on that poster in harm’s way? So doing something illegal is not the problem, pointing it out is?

The article notes:

Twitter’s former head of trust and safety claimed Friday night that Twitter CEO Elon Musk was putting people’s lives in danger by revealing internal company documents showing how employees censored conservatives and a negative news story about then-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son.

Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former Sr. Director, Head of Trust & Safety, complained about Musk’s decision to release internal company communications through journalist Matt Taibbi about the company’s censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election.

…“Publicly posting the names and identities of front-line employees involved in content moderation puts them in harm’s way and is a fundamentally unacceptable thing to do,” Roth posted on Mastodon.

Publicly posting the names and identities of those who broke the law might actually prevent others from breaking the law, but I guess Mr. Roth doesn’t see it that way.

James Woods was one of the people impacted by the censorship. He appeared on Tucker Carlson last week.

The article reports his comments:

Woods joined Fox News host Tucker Carlson as Taibbi was releasing the internal information from Twitter.

“I’ve been a target of these people for six years. They have destroyed my career,” Woods said. “They have destroyed my livelihood. They’ve destroyed my faith in this country that my family has defended in the military since the Revolutionary War.”

“I can guarantee you one thing, more than anything else you’ll ever hear in your life, I will be getting a lawyer. I will be suing the Democratic National Committee. No matter what, whether I win or lose, I am going to stand up for the rights of every American,” he said. “I’m not a celebrity, I’m hardly recognizable anymore because my career has been destroyed by these very people.”

This is not acceptable behavior in a supposedly-free nation.

The Dangers Of Biased Social Media

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I am writing this article as someone who has been routinely ‘shadow banned’ on Facebook, fact checked incorrectly, and restricted. Some of our social media has decided that they are the sole arbiters of what is truth and they are not open to opposing viewpoints. This is dangerous to a society that supposedly embraces free speech.

Yesterday, Townhall reported that Elon Musk has confirmed that Twitter did interfere in the 2020 election.

The article reports:

Newly minted Twitter CEO and owner Elon Musk revealed Wednesday that under previously leadership, the social media giant did in fact interfere in elections. Musk promised “Twitter 2.0” will change course and operate transparently on the issue. 

…Most infamously, Twitter banned any mention of Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election. By default, they also censored Joe Biden’s deep involvement and shady business dealings with foreign adversaries. 

At the time platform executives, including then CEO Jack Dorsey, justified the multi-month banning of the account belonging to the New York Post — the nation’s oldest paper — whose reporters broke the laptop story in October 2020. They also banned White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany after she shared the story, along with countless others who did the same. 

During testimony on Capitol Hill in 2021, Dorsey admitted the social media platform had no factual basis for censoring the story. 

The article notes that a recent poll showed a significant number of voters would not have cast their ballots for Biden if they had known about the contents of the laptop.

The article includes the following quote:

Nearly four of five Americans who’ve been following the Hunter Biden laptop scandal believe that “truthful” coverage would have changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, according to a new poll.

A similar percentage also said they’re convinced that information on the computer is real, with just 11% saying they thought it was “created by Russia,” according to the survey conducted by the New Jersey-based Technometrica Institute of Policy and Politics.

And an even higher number — 81% — said US Attorney General Merrick Garland should appoint a special counsel to investigate matters related to the first son’s infamous laptop, the existence of which was exclusively revealed by The Post in October 2020.

Actually, Twitter is not entirely to blame. What about Americans who didn’t bother to do their own research but instead depended strictly on the mainstream media? We cannot maintain our republic without informed voters. We need more voters willing to be informed.

Popularity On Twitter

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Popularity on social media is a bit questionable at best. It’s like sitting at an imaginary ‘cool kids’ table in high school–and I do mean imaginary. However, there are those who use the number of followers on Twitter as a gauge of something. What, I don’t know, but something. At any rate, the question is, “How many people on Twitter are actually real people?”

Breitbart posted an article on Wednesday reporting that nearly half of President Joe Biden’s 22.3 million Twitter followers are fake accounts. One wonders who set up these fake accounts and why they were set up.

The article reports:

Software company SparkToro found that 49.3 percent of accounts following the official @POTUS Twitter account are “fake followers” or inauthentic accounts known as bots, according to a report by Newsweek.

The same analysis reportedly also found that more than 14 million accounts that follow Biden’s personal @JoeBiden Twitter account are either fake or insufficiently active. Therefore, a crackdown on fake Twitter accounts could see users like Biden lose a huge number of followers.

SparkToro reportedly defines fake followers as “accounts that are unreachable and will not see the account’s tweets (either because they’re spam, bots, propaganda, etc. or because they’re no longer active on Twitter).”

The news of Biden’s fake Twitter followers comes after Tesla founder Elon Musk, who is currently trying to buy Twitter, expressed concerns about the number of bots on the social media platform.

Musk has since announced that his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter cannot move forward until the number of bot accounts on the platform is independently confirmed.

The SpaceX CEO tweeted that his offer was based on “Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate,” and he believes bots could account for 20 percent of the platform “or *much* higher.”

All of this has come to light because of Elon Musk’s plan to purchase Twitter. The article at Breitbart notes that uncovering these numbers may actually be part of Elon Musk’s negotiation process to acquire Twitter. Knowing that Elon Musk is a successful businessman who knows how to negotiate, that is entirely possible.

The Fight For Free Speech Continues

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On Wednesday, The Daily Wire reported that the U.S. government has opened an investigation into Elon Musk’s business dealings.

The article reports:

“The Securities and Exchange Commission is probing Mr. Musk’s tardy submission of a public form that investors must file when they buy more than 5% of a company’s shares,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “The disclosure functions as an early sign to shareholders and companies that a significant investor could seek to control or influence a company.”

The report said that Musk’s April 4 disclosure filing was at least 10 days late, a move that is believed to have saved him more than $140 million because share prices could have been higher if the public knew about his ownership of 5% of the company.

“The case is easy. It’s straightforward,” Daniel Taylor, a University of Pennsylvania accounting professor, said. “But whether they’re going to pick that battle with Elon is another question.”

The report noted that a lawsuit against Musk from the SEC would likely not stop him from taking over Twitter since the company’s board of director’s unanimously approved to be acquired by Musk and the SEC may lack the power to do so. Musk’s purchase of Twitter is also reportedly being reviewed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Elon Musk has also stated that he would reinstate the account of President Trump.

The article notes his comments on the banning of President Trump:

“I think that was a mistake because it alienated a large part of the county, and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice,” Musk said, adding that the decision was “morally bad.”

“That doesn’t mean that someone gets to say whatever they want to say,” Musk said. “If they say something that is illegal or destructive to the world, then there should be perhaps a timeout, temporary suspension or that particular tweet should be made invisible or have very little traction.”

“I would reverse the permanent ban,” Musk added.

Musk indicated that action could be taken against an account if there were tweets that violated platform policy, which he said “should be either deleted or made invisible, and a suspension—a temporary suspension—is appropriate, but not a permanent ban.”

Musk said that permanent bans “should be extremely rare and really reserved for accounts that are bots, or scam, spam accounts.”

President Trump has stated that he would not return to Twitter but focus on his own social media site, Truth Social.

Stay tuned.

Blocking Free Speech

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A politically neutral Twitter is a threat to Democrat success at the voting booth. If people had been allowed to know more about Hunter Biden’s laptop, it might have changed their votes. There are still some people who because of their primary news sources don’t know about the information on Hunter Biden’s laptop or the efforts to suppress the news about the laptop. That is not healthy for our Republic. There will be a fight to prevent Elon Musk from turning Twitter into a free speech platform because that is a threat to the Democrats’ monopoly on the American media.

Fox News reported Wednesday on a letter sent from Representative Jim Jordan to Federal Trade Commission chief Lina Khan regarding the sale of Twitter.

The article reports:

“The day after Twitter’s board of directors agreed to sell Twitter to Mr. Elon Musk, the Open Markets Institute (OMI), an extreme left-wing political advocacy organization, called on Biden regulators at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the Justice Department to ‘block’ the purchase,” Jordan, R-Ohio, wrote in a letter sent to Khan on Wednesday and obtained by FOX Business. 

“We are concerned that OMI – where you were previously employed as Legal Director – may be trying to leverage its close relationship with you to take action to further limit free speech online,” Jordan told Khan.

Open Markets Institute Director Barry Lynn issued a statement on April 26 saying the group believes Musk’s purchase of Twitter “poses a number of immediate and direct threats to American democracy and free speech.”

Lynn went on to say that Open Markets “believes the deal violates existing law,” and that the FCC, DOJ and FTC “have ample authority to block it.”

Jordan wrote in his letter to Khan that “OMI appears to believe that the FTC will be receptive to its cavalier effort to influence a federal agency that is run by its former employee.”

The article concludes:

Khan has a lengthy history of urging the federal government to go after Big Tech firms and regulate their power. After she became head of the FTC, tech behemoths Facebook and Amazon both asked that she be removed from any involvement in the agency’s antitrust litigation against the companies, alleging that she has a clear bias against them that is well documented.

I am not convinced that the people saying that Elon Musk buying Twitter is a threat to free speech actually understand what free speech is.

Very Subtle Blackmail

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On Monday, The Epoch Times reported that  Russia has announced that it plans to withdraw from the International Space Station (ISS) amid Western sanctions designed to cripple Moscow’s economy, the head of the space program confirmed.

The article reports:

Rogozin (Dmitry Rogozin, the chief of Roscosmos) noted that the agency doesn’t feel obligated to provide an exact date of its withdrawal, but confirmed it will warn partners on the space station within the stipulated one-year notice period.

“The decision has already been made, we are not obliged to speak about it publicly. I can only say one thing: in accordance with our obligations, we will warn our partners a year in advance about the end of work on the ISS,” he told the Russian state-owned TV channel.

In March, Rogozin announced in a storm of since-deleted posts on Twitter that Roscosmos would suspend all cooperation with international partners on joint projects like the ISS with NASA and the European Space Agency, citing Western economic sanctions imposed on Russia over its attack on Ukraine.

“I believe that the restoration of normal relations between partners in the International Space Station and other joint projects is possible only with the complete and unconditional lifting of illegal sanctions,” he said at the time.

The article concludes:

Last year, Russia already announced plans it wants to halt operations on the ISS, citing concerns about the station’s aging structure. Around the same time, Moscow claimed it is working on a new space station named the Russian Orbital Space Station, which is set to be operated entirely by Roscosmos.

Thank God for Elon Musk. At least we can make sure none of our astronauts are stranded on the Space Station. However, this sounds like blackmail to me.