Below is my column in the New York Post on the recent remarks of former Secretary of State John Kerry to the World Economic Forum, the latest in an array of powerful American politicians warning about the dangers of free speech and calling for government controls. He joins his fellow former Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton in reaching out to the global elite for help in censoring their fellow Americans.
Here is the column:
If you want to know how hostile the global elite are to free speech, look no further than John Kerry’s recent speech to the World Economic Forum.
Rather than extol the benefits of democratic liberty versus dictatorships and oligarchs, Kerry called the First Amendment a “major block” to keeping people from believing the “wrong” things.
The former secretary of state and aide to the Biden-Harris administration told the sympathetic audience:
“You know, there’s a lot of discussion now about how you curb those entities in order to guarantee that you’re going to have some accountability on facts, etc. But look, if people only go to one source, and the source they go to is sick, and, you know, has an agenda, and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence.
“So what we need is to win the ground, win the right to govern, by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change.”
Free rein on social media
The “freedom” to be won in this election is to liberate officials who like himself can set about controlling what can be said, read or heard. Kerry insisted that the problem with social media is that no one is controlling what they can say or read.
“The dislike of and anguish over social media is just growing and growing. It is part of our problem, particularly in democracies, in terms of building consensus around any issue,” he said.
“It’s really hard to govern today. The referees we used to have to determine what is a fact and what isn’t a fact have kind of been eviscerated, to a certain degree. And people go and self-select where they go for their news, for their information. And then you get into a vicious cycle.”
Kerry continued: “Democracies around the world now are struggling with the absence of a sort of truth arbiter, and there’s no one who defines what facts really are.”
It is not clear when in our history we allowed “referees” to “determine what is a fact.”
Since the First Amendment has been in place since 1791, it is hard to imagine when referees were used in conformity with our Constitution.
The Founders would have been repulsed by the idea of a “truth arbiter.”
Yet it was a pitch that clearly went over big with the crowd at the World Economic Forum.
Located in Geneva, Switzerland, it is funded by over 1,000 member companies around the world. It is the perfect body for the selection of our new governing “arbiters.”
The greatest irony was that, after fearmongering about this supposed parade of horribles that comes from free speech, Kerry insisted, “If we could strip away some of the fearmongering that’s taking place and get down to the realities of what’s here for people, this is the biggest economic opportunity.”
It was like Ed Wood denouncing cheesy jump scares in horror movies.
Kerry is only the latest Democratic leader or pundit to denounce the First Amendment.
In my book on free speech, I discuss the growing anti-free speech movement being led by law professors and supported by both politicians and journalists.
They include Michigan law professor and MSNBC commentator Barbara McQuade, who has called free speech America’s “Achilles’ heel.”
Columbia law professor Tim Wu, a former Biden White House aide, wrote an op-ed declaring “The First Amendment Is Out of Control.”
He explained that free speech “now mostly protects corporate interests” and threatens “essential jobs of the state, such as protecting national security and the safety and privacy of its citizens.”
George Washington University Law’s Mary Ann Franks complains that the First Amendment (and also the Second) is too “aggressively individualistic” and endangers “domestic tranquility” and “general welfare.”
‘Will we break the fever?’
Kerry hit all of the top talking points for the anti-free speech movement.
He portrayed the First Amendment as hopelessly out of date and dangerous.
He argued that citizens would be far better off if an elite could tell them what was information and what was disinformation.
Other political contemporaries are working on the same problem.
Hillary Clinton has called upon Europeans to use the Digital Services Act to force the censoring of Americans.
She has also suggested the arrest of Americans who she views as spreading disinformation.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D.-Mass.) has called for companies like Amazon to use enlightened algorithms to steer readers to “true” books on subjects like climate change to protect them from their own poor reading choices.
Kerry explained how the true heroes are those poor suffering government officials seeking to protect citizens from unbridled, unregulated thoughts:
“I think democracies are very challenged right now and have not proven they can move fast enough or big enough to deal with the challenges they are facing, and to me, that is part of what this election is all about. Will we break the fever in the United States?”
The “fever” of free speech is undeniably hard to break. You have to convince a free people to give up part of their freedom. To do so, they have to be very angry or very afraid.
There is, of course, another possibility: that there is no existential danger of disinformation.
Rather there are powerful figures who want to control speech in the world for their own purposes.
These are the same rationales and the same voices that have been throughout our history for censorship.
Give me liberty
Each generation of government officials insists that they face some unprecedented threat, whether it was the printing press at the start of our republic or social media in this century.
Only the solution remains the same: to hand over control of what we read or hear to a governing elite like Kerry.
In 1860, Frederick Douglass gave a “Plea for Free Speech in Boston,” and warned them that all of their struggles meant nothing if the “freedom of speech is struck down” because “Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist.”
Douglass denounced those seeking to deny or limit free speech as making their “freedom a mockery.”
Of course, Douglass knew nothing of social media and he certainly never met the likes of John Kerry.
However, if we embrace our new arbiters of truth we deserve to be mocked as a people who held true freedom only to surrender it to a governing elite.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Jonathan: There’s an UPDATE: Tina Peters was just sentenced to 9 years in prison, That’s because she was unrepentant. Judge Matthew Barrett observed: ” You are no hero. You abused your position–and you’re a charlatan who used, and is still using your prior position, to peddle a snake oil that’s proven to be junk time and time again. Your lies are well documented and these convictions are serious. I’m convinced you’d do it all over again if you could”.
What did Peters do that was so egregious? She allowed a third party ally of Mike Lindell to access passwords and other files from a secure voting system and post them online, exposing the machines to hackers–no doubt to try to change the 2020 vote count.
Peters is 68. She will get out of prison when she is 77 and because she is unrepentant she may have to do all the time. Peters should have learned her lesson but apparently hasn’t. If you tie your star to the greatest “charlatan” in American history bad things can happen to you. The Q has to be asked: Will DJT visit Peters in prison on visiting days to show his solidarity? We all know the answer to that one!
Wait, she proved someone could easily access the vote machines (after the election, btw)? What a menace to those needing to confirm their biases that biden got 81M voters to consciously vote for him. lolol
If Kerry hadn’t married well, he’d be nothing; he’s the American example of the French aristocrats who couldn’t understand why the peasants rose up
Aristocrats and intellectuals, particularly lawyers, were the mainspring of the French Revolution and they manipulated the lower orders of society much as the Democrats and Deep State do with Antifa and BLM today.
It’s a mindset. The self coronated of the world don’t believe that the plebs (deplorables in a basket) should be allowed to hear anything other than what they think they should hear. The mindset is the same as those who believed that only land owners she be allowed to vote because they were a superior caste. Stalin, Hitler and Mao were of the same opinion. We must not forget that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have voiced exactly the same sentiments. Walz says that no one should be allowed to holler fire in a crowded theatre but he has not once condemned the host on MSNBC when they say someone should give Trump a knuckle sandwich or someone should put a bullet in him. Walz has no problem with the theatre burning down as long as it’s full of his political enemies. It’s a simple fact that all of the censorship is being called for by members of one political party. If you live in California you are subject to incarceration if you post a meme that Gavin Newsom doesn’t like. When John Kerry says bring the hammer down he means bring the hammer down on you.
Go to any WalMart, McDonald’s, Target look to your left look to your right. Is there anyone you see that even looks like they may know something about our history? Our three branches of government, our Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence or Constitution?
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Those would be model Trump supporters. Easy marks for a sleazy salesman like Trump. If they could, they’d buy Trump’s $150 watch for $100,000.
A common side effect of chronic TDS, MAGA is everywhere. Your perception is wrong yet you make my point.
Traveler,
They truly are unhinged. They always have to resort to six year old mentality in lame attempts to insult people when it is they who put on full display their low level IQ and insult themselves.
I know US, they have some pretty weak sauce. I come here because I love my country and the freedom and liberty it has provided for me to do for myself. I see it slipping away, someone has to scream in their face and sometimes at the same level. I do try not to succumb to temptation 😜
John and Hillary, living the grift since the 1960s.
In other news: (1) First-Gentleman wannabe Doug Emhoff struck female date, MSM ignores, although it’s unclear if his violence against women occurred before or after he impregnated his kids’ nanny and then abandoned her while married to another woman; (2) armed intruder holds rabbi and 20 Jewish students at gunpoint at the University of Michigan; (3) FEMA has nothing left to give American citizens suffering from Hurricane Helene’s effects, since it spent all its money on illegal invaders invited by Biden/Harris.
(4) our unelected criminal regime continues to propagate war in Europe and the Middle East, inching us closer to Regional or World War. (5) and accordingly, we are at risk of nuclear war than during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Old man: it is a violation of federal law to use any FEMA funds for undocumented immigrants, so whoever told you that lied to you.
wrong again, gigi. was it Air Dog who accused you of “just making things up?” WOW, and for a NURSE and LAWYER to do that!!!!! Why don’t you try to read and understand this:
https://www.fema.gov/assistance/individual/program/citizenship-immigration-status
It’s all over the News GiGi, they didn’t use them on undocumented immigrants, they used them on illegal immigrants.
$364 million in fiscal year 2023
$650 million in 2024, “Sheler Services Program” to provide humanitarian services to noncitizen migrants following their release from DHS.
Unbelievable they’d tell East Palestine chemical spills are not in their job description, they only do natural disasters, yet opt to give money to illegals. If this isn’t an “in your face” to Republicans I don’t know what is. “Pay us, we hold human lives hostage. And cross the aisle while you’re at it because we’re using those dollars to buy votes and only aid those efforts we find politically advantageous.” Meanwhile they’ve probably energized every possible federal agency, papered exigency top to bottom, in some maximum CYA, while doing exactly nothing for Helene victims. Equally outrageous that the FCC had opted in 2023 to cancel Starlink’s award, denying internet to rural areas, for wholly political reason, which may have actually cost lives in this storm. I don’t know if federal government and national politics could possibly be more broken than they are today.
Always entertaining to read the Trumptarded comments by Turley’s fans.
You clowns are really getting desperate, aren’t you?
The October Surprise is hitting hard, right?
Kommie’s “gentleman” has committed violence against women, adultery, abortion or abandonment, coverup, and evidence tampering, all while reshaping the perception of masculinity.
WHERE is the proof? Trump’s sexual assault of Carroll is based on sworn testimony. His bragging about sexual assault is on tape. Stormy Daniels’ story is also under oath. What proof do you have?
will. you. just. get. over.Trump.
GiGi
You are not worthy …
Maybe Trump just pet EJean Carrols dog. Vagina and it’s all a misunderstanding!
Where is it on tape? “Grabbing ’em by the pussy. And they let us!” What hetero male in America has not done this? And I tell you what, I don’t believe Trump was ever all that good at it. Because this isn’t typical guy talk. There’s a certain obvious lack of experience or naivete to his “guy talk.”
Stellar achievements in the Democratic Party, a badge of honor!
Always predictable that anonymous commie cowards will come here spewing Soviet Democrat loathing and hatred, because the words “Marxist Useful Idiot Bolshevik Birthing Persons” have never been more true in the last century.
Always entertaining to read the retarded comments by those experiencing TDS.
Thank goodness for free speech. But unfortunately for poor Rudy, using that free speech to outline your crimes is not so smart. Perhaps trump shouldn’t have used the Keystone Cops to effectuate his coup.
“So I need you to pass a joint resolution from the legislature that states the election is in dispute, there’s an ongoing investigation by the legislature, and the Electors sent by Governor Whitmer are not the official electors of the state of Michigan and do not fall within the Safe Harbor deadline under Michigan law,” Giuliani texted.
FLYOVER: Incoherent and entirely bereft of any raison d’etre.
But unfortunately for poor Rudy, using that free speech to outline your crimes is not so smart.
Poor Rudy’s crime was that he was working for Trump while exposing the commie Biden lie that the Biden Bribery Laptop WASN’T “Russian election disinformation” as the FBI lied that it was to help fix the 2020 election by hiding the crimes of Biden White House Crime LLC (trademark).
If Rudy would have been one of Obama’s lawyers, serving as Obama’s Attorney General or FBI Director, he could have repeatedly perjured himself to FISA courts, uttered false documents to those courts, and he wouldn’t have even been charged – much less disbarred.
If Rudy had even been one of Obama’s DoJ underlings, he could have taken a document that exonerated a Navy veteran, Carter Page of treason, and changed it to read that instead Carter Page was guilty of treason.
And then like that lawyer, after attempting to criminalize an innocent man and perjuring himself by uttering false documents to that court, Rudy would only have gotten what that Obama lawyer got: a few hours of community service with absolutely no jail time – and not even disbarred.
Isn’t communist justice just GREAT if you’re a Democrat criminal? Especially one of the criminals attempting to first rig an election, and then take out the elected president with a coup after he’s elected.
BTW, you Anonymous coward, how’s that Democrat Memory Hole working for you, making normal Americans forget the history of what you’ve been doing the last eight years or so?
Almost everything our soi disant ‘experts’ in government, academia, and media told us about Covid was wrong.
They said it had nothing to do with the Wuhan lab, but nealy everyone accepts it came from there and that we helped finance its creation.
They said masks were essential, but they don’t work with this virus and they cause infections in their own right.
They said HCQ and Ivermectin are not effective. In actual practice they are and have saved many lives.
They said the 6 foot distancing rule was scientific and effective. Even Fauci now admits it was neither.
They said the Covid vax was safe and effective. It is neither. Nobody like me who refused to get it regrets that decision while many who did get it do. Even if they were not injured many sense they may be harboring a medical time bomb they can’t get rid of.
They said resveratrol was a effective treatment. It isn’t and is known to cause organ damage.
Why trust people who have been wrong or compromised with just about everything? They certainly shouldn’t be vetting our information.
True that!
Apparently a number of super fit young people are having heart attacks since Covid vaccines became ‘the thing’ for so many of them.
Experts puzzled, of course,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13920613/Alarming-rise-super-fit-slim-young-people-suffering-heart-attacks-experts-reveal-theories-surge.html
One hint is in the Pfizer Fact Sheet about their vaccine–the notice that it can cause heart problems.
Yet the people who want to control ‘misinformation’ assured us the vaccine was perfectly safe… and effective.
Jonathan: Predictably, DJT had a swift response to Jack’s Smith’s filing. He called it “another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to INTERFERE IN THE 2024 ELECTION”. For DJT everything that has happened to him is “election interference”, including the two E Jean Carrol judgments and the 34-count conviction in NY. Nothing that has happened to DJT is not connected to an election. If he losses the election this year it will only because it was “rigged”. And DJT’s solution to the problem? If he gets back into the WH there will be no more elections. Who will he blame then?
It’s rich that DJT would complain about “election interference” when he is the guy who tried to violently overturn the last one–probably the largest election interference case in the history of the country! DJT is all about projection.
Jack Smith’s filing is a confluence of other events where DJT’s co-conspirators are being brought to account. In Arizona a number of them, like Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, both of whom have lost their law licenses, have been charged with election crimes. And in today’s news another one is facing the consequences for her role in trying to subvert the 2020 election. Her name is Tina Peters. She is the former Colorado Mesa county clerk who was found guilty in August of conspiring with the “My Pillow” guy Mike Lindell to breach Mesa county’s election system. She is being sentenced today.
After almost 4 years many of DJT’s co-conspirators are being held accountable in state courts. That now leaves DJT to face Jack Smith in DC and his 4 count conspiracy. In November we’ll find out whether DJT will have to face the music!
🤢🤢🤢🤢💩💩💩💩🤮🤮🤮🤡🤡🤡🤡🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑🤡🤡
It’s Dennis and GiGi, they’re digging hard for first place. Can GiGi out lie Denny or will Dennis pull a nozzle out of his pocket for a win?
Come on Dennis! You Can Do It!
Traveler: EVERY WORD Dennis wrote is true–and YOU know it. Attacking Dennis, myself or anyone else who tells the truth about your hero does not change facts.
🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡
Annnd it’s GiGi with another whopper…
Come On GiGi
You Can Do It!
If “attacking” is so wrong or objectionable, why do you, every single day, crudely, childishly, and falsely engage in attacks on Trump and his “MAGAts.?” As some others have advised, “go seek help.”
Pardon me Anon
Oh Gigi, I am not attacking you, I am openly mocking you as well as Dennis, Fish dip, Sammy and all the other clowns you use!
Two bucks on Gidget!
I got an Obama three dollar bill says it’s Dennis by 3 inches.
Hilarious that poor Donald claims it’s so unfair to have the evidence of him trying to rig an election while he’s running in an election, lol. What an assclown.
accusations are not evidence. Evidence is presented during the trial and then is evaluated by the Jury to see if they believe it.
Oh, the precious knucklehead you are, read the filing. It’s replete with quotations from grand jury testimony. Yes, bra, that’s evidence.
Jonathan: Predictably, DJT had a swift response to Jack’s Smith’s filing.
Predictably, Dennis McIntyre is practically orgasmic that his fellow commie police state fascist, Jack Smith, is attempting one last bit of election interference as courts systemically shut him down.
‘No white knight’: Jack Smith’s record rife with mistrials, overturned convictions, judicial condemnation
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jul/4/jack-smiths-record-rife-mistrials-overturned-convi/
Special counsel Jack Smith, who has brought federal charges against former President Donald Trump, is an overzealous prosecutor who relies on unethical tactics, including media leaks and coercing witnesses, say those who have watched his investigations and trials.
Mr. Smith headed the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section during the Obama administration from 2010 to 2015. He led a team of 30 prosecutors pursuing public corruption cases against major political figures, including Obama’s most formidable potential Republican foes in the 2012 election campaign.
Mr. Smith and other prosecutors — some now working on the Trump case — have followed a familiar playbook. The script earned Mr. Smith a hollow reputation as a hard-driving, intense prosecutor, but a string of mistrials and overturned convictions led to sharp rebukes from federal judges, including U.S. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
Let’s also predict that when SCOTUS (or another court outside of the police state fascist courts helping Jack Smith) shoots Jack Smith’s convictions down again, naming him “a threat to our separation of powers” yet again… Dennis McIntyre will ignore that and move on to lying about something else.
Because Dennis McIntyre is a Democrat seagull: he flies in, dumps a load on the surroundings out of one of his two anal orifices, and then flies away to disappear rather than staying to deal with the shyte he left behind.
Get real, Jack Smith doesn’t even have the authority to create that filing. It’s meaningless!
Jack Smiths filing was BS. There is a big difference between someone trying to overturn an election that was legitimately won by the other candidate & an someone trying to correct the record for an election that was rigged with voting machines that flipped the votes dishonestly when the lights went, out allowing the real loser to be illegitimately named as the winner. It was the latter & all of these indictments ARE being used as lawfare to punish him for stupid things like saying his property is worth more than someone else thinks it’s worth. That’s the bank’s job to assess this, or punishing someone for the work of his accountant. So you are correct, all that’s been done to Trump IS “election interference”.
The laughable Carol judgements were part of a fake propaganda story based on a lying hooker with false accusations who couldn’t even name the year of when the supposed crime took place (just like Blasey-Ford). Rallies alone demonstrate that if he loses, it will have been “rigged” (again). Kaballah Harris the Communist has no support, so she has to use AI fabricated crowds as propaganda & to pay random people to attend her events.
You can’t expect to get any truth from the news. Tina Peters has more than demonstrated that she uncovered real evidence showing that the illegally internet connected voter machines cheated. She is being made an example of, to bully anyone else who dares to uncover & expose the crimes committed by the cheaters, into silence. This is similar for the made-for-TV Alex Jones trials, which were designed to scare anyone from speaking out who dares to identify & expose the numerous FEMA drills being passed off as legitimate “news”. It has never been considered to be “defamation” for someone to simply express their opinion about the legitimacy of a fabricated event.
After refusing to answer questions about it on the debate stage Tuesday night, the GOP’s vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), falsely claimed Thursday that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, as well as refused to say if he’ll accept a loss.
All right, if you vote for trump/JD you are voting for an insurrectionist. Say what you will about out Demos, they did not foment an insurrection like trump did. And now JD has indicated he is all in to grab the election even if he loses.
Mark my words, trump/JD will lose by a yuuuuuuge margin this November. People are sick and tired of his juvenile name calling and his lying mouth, JD is now full on lying with him.
And JT is part of this disgusting state of affairs we find ourselves in.
Go ahead, call me all sorts of juvenile names, you cult leader will be so proud.
After refusing to answer questions about it on the debate stage Tuesday night, the GOP’s vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio
Posted an Anonymous Democrat liar, trying to claim it wasn’t the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee, Command Sergeant Major Walz, who refused to answer why he lied about his rank, serving in combat, carrying an AR-15 in combat, and lying he was in Communist China at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre of students.
As just one tiny example:
Walz Digs Himself Even Deeper as He Tries to Explain Why His China Story Lie Unraveled During Debate
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/tim-walz-digs-himself-even-deeper-as-he-tries-to-explain-why-his-china-story-unraveled-during-debate/ar-AA1rC2eL
48 hours later, he’s digging in deeper trying to explain away his lies to the sympathetic and supportive mainstream media.
Mark my words, trump/JD will lose by a yuuuuuuge margin this November. People are sick and tired of his juvenile name calling
Oh yeah! Trump and Vance have been accusing Democrats of being Putin stooges since at least 2016. And Trump and Vance have been calling earlier Democrat presidents “literally Hitler” since Carter was running for re-election against Reagan. And then Republicans were doing it again, accusing Democrats of being Hitler during the Clinton administration and both Bush administrations. Even though Trump and Vance weren’t even involved in politics during those presidencies – Vance wasn’t even born yet! (Vance will probably start voting Democrat after he’s dead, as well!)
And nothing shows Trump is more of a threat to democracy than when, as president, he illegally commissioned and paid foreign spies including a Russian under investigation for espionage to write a “Russia Dossier”. And then in a threat to democracy, Trump sent his Attorney Generals and FBI Directors to perjure themselves to FISA courts, swearing that it was all US intelligence agency product, and all verified by them before being used as the evidence to give his STASI Attorney Generals and FBI spy warrents to spy on his Democrat challengers.
Go ahead, call me all sorts of juvenile names, you cult leader will be so proud.
I’ll happily call you what adult Americans called people like you and your commie police state fascist Commissars Biden, Harris, and Vance that you pimp for are: you’re stone cold liars who blame others for what you’ve been doing since long before Trump (or Vance) were in politics. Meanwhile feebly telling normal Americans “Please don’t believe your lying eyes – believe us!”
And because you’re so pathetically inept, cowardly, and a waste of skin and rations, the only way you will post your drivel is hiding behind the username “Anonymous”.
Silence the face of slimy filth like you is consent. You want to term being named what you are “juvenile”… fill your boots.
What will you do when trump loses in November?
Suffer with America for another four years as they destroy the country.
Of course we could just get vaporized, watch the American dollar go to nothing, watch our wealth be taxed to oblivion, starve to death, die waiting for competent healthcare, be displaced by illegal immigrants, leave for Central or South America….so many choices and considerations. Pray to God that’s not going to happen.
What will you do when you don’t get Obama’s Fourth Term in November? Buy a lifetime supply of Midol?
Yowza
Vance avoided the question because the finger banging orange rapist was watching.
Kerry is wrong that the 1st Amendment stands in the way of challenging deliberate falsehoods pushed out onto the public for political effect.
The 1st Amendment only rules out govt. prosecution (criminalization) of such deceitful infowarfare. It leaves us a much safer means….civil lawsuit. That is how we should be confronting political-whoppers-of-consequence (e.g., the Hunter laptop cover-up crafted with CIA expertise, Trump’s massive manipulative fraud about losing the 2020 election due to vote cheating).
Looking back on how:
• Nicholas Sandmann made CNN/WaPo pay for framing him as an Indian hater
• Dominion Voting Systems made Fox News pay for publishing lies about hacked election software
• Alex Jones was stripped of the crooked wealth he made off of “Sandy Hook was a staged hoax”
I’m proud of the civil lawsuit system we have to confront deceitful infowarriors. I wish it had been used to stop the lead up to the Iraq War, stop Trump’s big lie, and stop Biden’s coverup of Hunter’s laptop.
The 1st Amendment allows this way of dealing with the problem. It’s a very clever system.
You have either lifted text, or been HUGELY inspired by an article on the Web last week, saying the same and citing the exact same three examples.
Just scrolled up past a 30,000-word hysterical rant complete with straw men and childish name-calling. Scrolling past it took me 25 minutes and as I was waiting I took a guess that it was by Gigi. I wasn’t wrong.
America is faced with a unique challenge not only to the democracy we now have, but whether we will have a democracy in the future. We have the most-unqualified presidential candidate in US history, a convicted criminal who is under indictment for serious crimes against the United States, including the theft of classified documents, lying about returning them, and starting an insurrection to try to stay in power. He has been adjudicated liable for fraud for soliciting donations to his foundation, liable for falsifying business records, and is an adjudicated sexual assaulter, someone who brags about sexually assaulting women and getting away with it, a racist, anti-Semite, xenophobe, chronic liar, someone, according to the evidence disclosed yesterday, who KNEW he lost the previous election but decided to go on a campaign to seize power after getting voted out of office by simply saying he won anyway. So, he induced his fans to try to stop the certification of Biden’s victory–and when told that Pence’s life was in danger, he replied “So what”? He tried to bully Secretaries of State to award votes he didn’t get and got fake electors to falsify Electoral College votes saying he won when he didn’t. This person is actually competitive to get into office again. You have to ask yourself: how could this even be possible? The answer really isn’t that complex–MAGA media and social media putting out endless lies, pandering to white supremacy and the resentment of non-college educated whites over the sucess of America’s first black president and now, a female presidential candidate of color, all aided and abetted by Evangelical Christians who believe they are carrying on some kind of holy war to save those “unborn babies”, plus the gullibility factor–those people who rely on MAGA media and believe whatever lies and conspiracy theories they are fed, and not only that, who will fight against anyone who challenges the slop they are served. Just look at the daily attacks on this blog against people like me, who point out inconvenient facts, cite multiple sources of counter facts, resulting in the name-calling, false accusations and other non-substantive responses–because they cannot handle facts and have been indoctrinated to attack anyone who says something counter to the MAGA narrative.
No one can seriously argue that Trump is fit to serve, or that he was successful after he cheated his way into office in 2016, that Americans didn’t die unncessarily because of his lack of leadership skills because he didn’t know how to handle the pandemic, he refused to follow the pandemic playbook left by the Obama administration, and refused to defer to communicable disease experts. The lies and misinformation alone about COVID alone resulted in hundreds of thousands of Americans dying unnecessarily–like pushing for horse de-wormer and Hydroxychloroquine quack “cures”, refusing to wear a mask and lying about the seriousness of COVID. Trump’s botching of COVID alone should be disqualifying–so why isn’t it? MAGA MEDIA and the lies they spread. Thanks to MAGA media, there are still people who believe that COVID wasn’t real, that even if it was real, it was no worse than the flu, even though it is 10Xs more lethal, and that the acute illness and death statistics are falsified just to make Trump look bad. This MAGA-media induced doubt has resulted in COVID spreading faster and further than it had to, along with distrust of educated people and scientists.
Then there’s his attacks on NATO and our EU allies–our alliances with them are keeping Putin at bay. Putin attacked Ukraine because he believed that Trump had so weakened our ties with NATO that an effective resistance could not happen–but he was wrong–Biden’s longstanding associations with world leaders and their respect for him has made NATO even stronger and Ukraine, Sweden and Finland want to join. Trump brags about “settling” the war with Ukraine in 24 hours–such BS! What he would do is cut off all aid to Ukraine and try to force it to accept Russsia stealing part of its land–which would serve as a reward to Putin because Putin’s hackers helped him cheat in 2016–why would the US reward a murderous dictator for invading a peaceful country to steal it’s land? You would really have to be stupid to believe that Putin would stop there.
Then, there’s Project 2025, described as the “playbook for the next Republican President” written in part by Vance and over 40 of former members of Trump’s administration–he lies when he says he knows nothing about it. The Project would provide unprecedented power to a Republican President to fire 50,000 civil servants and replace them with syncophants loyal to him instead of the American people. All abortions and IVF would be banned–and Vance lied about his position on this–he’s on video saying he supported a national total abortion ban. The FBI and DOJ would be weaponized to go against anyone Trump perceived as his enemies, and if they refused–they’d be fired. Clean energy initiatives would go away-replaced by support for the fossil fuel industry that is helping cause climate change that is killing people. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and school lunch programs would receive massive cuts, and the wealthiest would get more tax cuts. Then, there’s the tariffs that most economists say would be a disaster–the American family would pay thousands more each year just to buy the same things they are buying now.
Turley is part of the MAGA media that is helping spread lies and disinformation–according to Turley, MAGA media should be permitted to publish anything, even things they know are not true– because of “free speech”. That so-called “freedom of speech” has been weaponized by MAGA–Trump’s campaign is financed by wealthy people and corporations that don’t want to pay their fare share of taxes and Christian Nationalists who want to shove their religion down everyone’s throats, and is our greatest threat–along with the gullibility of people who are willing to believe lies.
Didn’t read but some readers might have read your comment had you copy/pasted the Book of Reveleations in Latin or Beowulf in Old English
America is faced with a unique challenge not only to the democracy we now have, but whether we will have a democracy in the future.
Good thing we don’t have Democrats acting like police state fascists since at least Obama’s first election. You’d have to call it a “threat to democracy” if a president and his party commissioned and illegally paid foreign spies (including one of Putin’s spies they knew was being investigated for espionage) to write a political smear job like a “Russia Dossier” – and then have their Attorney Generals and FBI Directors take that fraudulent document before FISA courts, perjure themselves to those judges that it was all verified intelligence agency evidence to get spy warrants.
Good thing we don’t have Democrats threatening our democracy by having their FBI STASI inside social media telling them who to remove from their platforms and censor newspapers writing about the Biden Bribery Laptop.
Good thing we don’t have Democrats threatening our democracy by coercing Americans to take an experimental vaccine – while others lost their jobs if they wouldn’t take that experimental vaccine. Like the Border Patrol who were fired for refusing – while being told they were obligated to allow Illegal Aliens into the country who weren’t vaccinated.
Because as Democrats always remind us: “My body, my choice”.
One could go on… but Gigi and Gigi’s Famous Firehose Of Lies have no interest in Democracy and the only threat they fear is anyone and anything that stands in the way of their march to totalitarian rule in Washington DC.
Gigi deeply regrets that she was born too late to serve as a murderous vassal for either Hitler or Stalin – either one would have received Gigi’s adulation.
Remember, silence in the face of Gigi’s Firehose Of Lies is consent.
Everything you say about Trump is true. We know his negatives. Those don’t count as positives for Harris, and she has a slew of negatives (mostly inauthenticity, and blissful, joyful ignorance of macroeconomics).
The serious issues: foreign policy (facing down the new “resistance alliance” (Russia, China, Iran, NoKo). The American economy and faltering US$. Affordability. Jobs. AI. Restoring a “can do” mentality, and positive attitude. Immigration (out of control, enriching criminal cartels). Escapism! Pretending a problem doesn’t exist
when it looks too daunting to solve (chem pollution, crappy food supply, atmospheric/ocean warming, the debt,
daily ransomware attacks on US companies/non-profits, the slow collapse of the family and childraising).
Who has accomplished more in life, Trump or Harris? Who is a doer, and who is a talker?
I believe personality defects will not decide the election, but the serious issues. The foreign situation is deteriorating rapidly. I think the fear and desire for a safe future will occupy the minds of the voters. There are real threats, and there are hyped-up, manufactured threats. Americans know the difference.
pbinca wrote: Everything you say about Trump is true.
Trump is far, far from perfect as a human being. That is also true of Trump as a president. Certainly wasn’t my first choice as candidate in either election.
But claiming that what they posted about Trump is all true… you sir, are either a pathetic moron or a liar of the same quality of the one you said was completely truthful.
🧔🏻♀️🧔🏻♀️🧔🏻♀️🧔🏻♀️🧔🏻♀️🧔🏻♀️🧔🏻♀️💩💩💩🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤑🤑🤑🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡👽
It’s GiGi down the home stretch, head to head with Dennis. Fishdip is flopping about and Sammy seems to have gone to pasture. Come on GiGi You Can Do It!
Rottenfishwings and Dennis Smackintire will be delighted to to know that the Dunceocrat leadership is already planning their next dream team:
Ray “We Must Go Into The Capitol” Epps and Timothy “Knucklehead” Walz in 2028! Only they can save America. John Kerry will fly around the world for 24 hours in his ultra-high-carbon emission jetplane in celebration of the event; although he’ll be doing it to save the planet from “climate change” for official tax-deductible purposes.
Dunceocrats, this is your time to rejoice!
* In search of the golden fleece.
OT, and for a diversion, this is hilarious, MSNBC anchor definitely didn’t see this coming:
https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1841867004975649122
lolol. oopsie. Boy, that “journalist” was not happy…
ari melber (MSNBC host) is one of the worst on television. Couldn’t have happened to a worse person, who carefully and strategically selects his anti-Trump, anti-Republican guests, then gets hit with a home-run ball.
And to think this fascist a’h0le came within a hair’s breadth of the presidency … makes one shudder just to think about.
This is what happens when you don’t prosecute torturous war criminals like Bush/Cheney.
*The same people running U.S. foreign policy under Biden, Blinken, Sullivan, Nuland etc., got their start working for Dick Cheney.
I have deep suspicions about anybody that calls both Bush/Cheney and Israelis war criminals.
While deliberately omitting Bolshevik Barack Obama from their list of horrible war criminals.
You literally praised a fascist politician (Meloni) earlier this week…
Better to have a POTUS who would cheat and break the law, like Trump did.
Yeah, because unlike Trump who supposedly cheated and broke the law, we were so lucky to get Biden. President Daddy-Daughter Inappropriate Incest Showers (not against the law in Democrat America).
No breaking the law when you steal classified documents for 40+ years – as long as your chosen employee to be your Special Counsel says his Ouiji Board tells him no jury would convict his boss if he indicted him for that four decade long crime wave. (Not to mention, he wouldn’t be booted out of his job, blackballed, and probably disbarred if he had indicted his boss)
No breaking the law when Biden White House Crime LLC racks up 150+ Suspicious Activity Reports for money laundering and bribes. Can’t be breaking the law when Biden’s boss, Obama, declined to prosecute his Vice President.
And it’s certainly not cheating to have Anthony Blinken from your Obama/Biden administration become the Secretary of State by getting 51 former intelligence officials to give you cover by signing a letter claiming that the Biden Bribery Laptop is merely “Russian election disinformation”. Or the FBI and DoJ to cover the crime wave that the now First Felon Crackhead Son engaged in while you were Vice President so Americans wouldn’t know about it before they voted.
Look at The Big Guy’s presidency! Why in the hell did Harris work so hard to avoid answering the question “Are Americans better off today than they were four years ago”.
We are getting to the point that we can be pretty succinct: if you don’t see there is an unelected, globalist, elitist cabal that wants to take control of your life, or that the modern left is thick as thieves in the mix, IO don’t know what to tell you. Robespierre 2.0. If you are not voting against the DNC in 2024, you are voting against your right to exist as you wish, and that is all there is to it. I am talking to you, former JFK dems. Wake up. We have about a month to try to straighten things out. Do not forget that not a single person voted for Kamala as the dem candidate. Not. A. Single. One. I am hoping there is enough left of your conscience to see how f***ed up that is. There is no question that the silent majority is real, and any privileged little piece of crap thinks they ‘deserve’ to control everyone else is a big, big problem. Stop them, our courts still, miraculously, still work, and the UN, WEF, WHO can bite me. I agree with the memes that are going around: vote for Trump/Vance/RFK/Gabbard and take at least ten people with you. We have to vote in numbers they cannot dispute, this time. John Kerry would have fit right in with Heinrich Himmler.
PS – kinda lets you know that the prominent beatniks/hippies of the past were largely themselves privileged (white) idiots that didn’t have to worry about the basic concerns of life (they were the original trust fund babies). Would Kerouac have been Kerouac if he had to pay an electric bill every month? Would William Gibson have been able to be strung out and yet miraculously not homeless if someone weren’t paying his way? No one talks to William Gibson’s parents.
Not a god damn thing has changed in 50 or even 250 years on the left. They have always been elites, they have always been the party of slavery and the KKK, and now they are wanting to do it to YOU. Quite clearly, and quite out in the open. Are you really so foolish you will say, ‘Yes, please. More of this.’. ?????
Winner winner!!! You are correct. There is a war going on against the people of the USA and most do not have any idea they are under siege.
Your diet, your health care, your economy, your individual rights are F’ed and it is because foreign and domestic (dnc/neo-cons) actors find your individual freedoms and constitutional rights stand in the way of their power and profit. It is that simple.
Not IO, just ‘I’. Would love an edit button.
“Would love an edit button.”
I’ve had that thought too, but… Can you even imagine how the trolls here would go back and edit their posts after their assertions had been proven false by others? The piles of troll feces here are more than difficult enough to navigate as it is. I’m very anal about what I write, and I become quite angry with myself when I fail to catch a typo before submitting, but the alternative could be much worse,
There is more than a few pieces of blog software that will not only show you a post was edited – but show you all previous versions as well.
Requiring to register a username so those posting owned everything they ever posted in that blog would go a long way towards dragging Anonymous cowardly trolls out into the sunlight.
Wouldn’t get rid of Dennis, FishAnus, and Gigi Round Heels. But why would we want to? If they want to come here to be overwhelmingly mocked and jeered at, at least give them credit for posting under a username so their stench clings to them forever.
“ABOLISH, INSTITUTE, THROW OFF, AND PROVIDE”
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
– Declaration of Independence, 1776
““But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government”
Is it suspicious that those who repeatedly advocate violent revolution because they claim the government is so abusive have never themselves managed to find the courage to enlist and fight for that country in the 20 years after America was attacked on 9/11?
America Last: After Spending $640 Million On Migrants And Billions Abroad, FEMA Suddenly ‘Broke’
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/america-last-after-spending-640-million-migrants-and-billions-abroad-fema-suddenly-broke
“The Biden-Harris administration’s ‘America Last’ policies have left the country vulnerable. Between draining the strategic petroleum reserve, sending hundreds of billions in cash and equipment to Ukraine (such as electrical transformers that are now needed for Hurricane Helene), and FEMA spending $640 million to help migrants, the agency tasked with emergency preparedness is now ‘broke,’ and doesn’t have enough money to get through hurricane season which typically lasts through November.”
Article 1, Section 8
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes…to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States…
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Understanding that FEMA is neither Debt nor common Defense, that general is defined as all or the whole, and that there are 50 states, I don’t read any power enumerated in Article 1, Section 8, that allows Congress to tax for FEMA to rescue the same individual, specific, and particular two or three states every year.
Certainly, the free markets of the private sector include national non-profit charitable organizations that exist to provide assistance in all 50 states.
Please cite the Constitution for any power by Congress to tax for and fund FEMA.
Meanwhile a federal judge allows Biden’s bribery plan of student loan forgiveness to proceed. So every American sucks it while Biden gives billions to Ukraine and Israel, gives a billion to help fund the invasion by illegal immigrants, and right before the election gives away billions to deadbeats that we funded to attend college.
Trump 2024
Yeah, and they have trillions upon trillions banked away in Geneva.