Tag: Media

Government, Politics

The Real Debate Takeaway

It was obvious going way back to the 2020 election. The DNC kept Biden in the basement under the pretext of Covid. They didn’t let him answer press questions, he had virtually zero rallies, and wasn’t allowed to interact with the public other than to offer commentary on ice cream. From day one it was obvious to EVERYONE that Joe Biden was a doddering old man incapable of a quick trip to the grocery store, let alone running the country. If you didn’t think so, you’re lying. As his term progressed, Captain Applesauce’s decline has accelerated. It’s been impossible to ignore. Trump derangement syndrome may have prevented you from saying it out loud, but deep down you knew. Joseph Biden has not been the one running the country. So the frightening takeaway from the debate is the complicity of the media.

For three and a half years the mainstream media has ignored, hidden, and otherwise looked the other way as Biden’s Parkinson’s and dementia rapidly advanced. Literally every other day there’s been a new video of Biden walking like a robot, freezing up, mumbling incoherently, and getting lost on stage. It’s been impossible to ignore. Yet the media chose to pretend it wasn’t happening. Again as a reminder, Trump walked gingerly down a ramp after giving a speech and the media en masse contemplated for days if he was still fit enough to remain president. The difference in media coverage couldn’t be more stark.

Following the debate I tuned into the CNN panel to see what the reaction would be. To watch the phony shock at suddenly seeing Biden’s condition for the first time was performance art at its finest. Every single panelist pretended like they had no idea Biden’s cognitive state was so bad. Van Jones was practically in tears. HOW COME NOBODY TOLD US THE PRESIDENT WASN’T FUNCTIONAL?!?!

These people in the media are scum. They knew damn well what the state of his condition was and happily obfuscated it while it served their allegiance to the DNC. Now that the bat signal has gone out, everyone clutches their pearls and says he can no longer remain the candidate… and maybe needs to step down now. How do these “journalists” look at themselves in the mirror each morning? Just evil.

So the question you have to ask yourself, if the media is perfectly fine with actively hiding the mental and physical condition of the president of the United States while it supports their political leaning… what else are they willing to hide? Why should I trust anything the media reports on? (hint, you shouldn’t)

So as we move forward with the removal of the assisted living patient from the Oval Office, remember what the media did. They lied and actively obscured the physical and mental state of the president for years because of party loyalty. Anything they say about the president or whomever is selected as the new candidate will be nothing more than talking points handed down from the party apparatchiks.

However much you hate the media, it’s not enough.

Daily Life, Government, Solving the wrong problem

The Future Is Information Mining

Way back in the horse and buggy days when I went to school, the focus was still on the three “R’s”. Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic. The learning methodology was still based upon the Prussian public school system. Be quiet and obedient. Listen to the lesson. Do the homework. Rote memorization. Take a test to prove you’ve memorized the material. I don’t think we’ve evolved much beyond that. Oh sure there’s been technological advances and challenges, but that’s nothing new. I’m old enough to remember when the pocket calculator became affordable. Teachers were petrified that students would “cheat” by using a calculator. We were admonished to not use one at home because you won’t really learn and you won’t get to use one for the test.

Smart phones and the internet brought new challenges for teachers. The answers to everything are a click away. How do you keep kids from cheating? A number of years ago I went back to school and had a number of online classes. The teachers solution to test taking in that environment was to have timed tests. You were given just enough time to answer all the questions, assuming you understood the material. If you tried to look things up you’d run out of time.

And now we have AI, smart watches, and the new Apple Vision Pro spatial computer. The challenge for teachers today to ensure the student is learning and not cheating is almost insurmountable. The question is, should they even bother any more? Is rote memorization still the appropriate way to teach and learn?

With the entirety of human knowledge a click away, why do I need to memorize the times tables or what the names of the generals in the civil war were? I can get an AI-generated summary of any subject or question I might have, instantly. I can find a video to teach anything I might want to know for free. There’s entire catalogs of free courses on just about anything. I learned more from the online Khan Academy videos teaching chemistry than the college professor I paid $$$ to sit in front of for months. What role does school play now that all knowledge is instantly available to everyone?

I’d argue that the future is not learning information – it’s learning how to find information. And perhaps more importantly, how to evaluate and present information. As we saw with Google’s disastrous Gemini image generation roll-out, machine learning is still influenced by humans with bias. Teaching kids to evaluate and think about what they see is probably the most valuable skill we could give them. And we’re failing miserably at it.

If you weren’t already aware, the CIA and NSA have been conducting massive disinformation campaigns here in the US, as well as across the world. The monitor every word written in social media and build machine learning heat maps of trending topics and words. They work with the big social media companies to suppress topics they don’t want to give voice to. They then plant stories with news agencies and bot farms to trend more favorable topics.

The vast majority of the public is not terribly tech savvy and we seem to have lost the ability to think critically. We simply consume whatever information is in front of us and take it as the gospel truth. We mindlessly scroll through our social media, taking our “knowledge” in one or two sentence chunks. Our TV news consists of 30 second “hits” crafted to fit the bias of whatever your cable news channel of choice is. I don’t think most people really understand how curated the information they consume has become. The days of watching Walter Cronkite tell us what happened in the world today are long gone.

Perhaps scarier is our loss of attention span. There’s a reason Facebook/Instagram Reels and YouTube shorts are the most popular formats out there. It’s like crack. 10-20 second videos designed to keep you scrolling like a zombie. How many of you know that that Facebook/Instagram tracks exactly how long you spend looking at a post? They know how fast or slow you’re scrolling through the feed and serve up the content that you linger the longest over. The algorithm is constantly learning how best to keep feeding you content that keeps you scrolling.

The things you like, the products you buy, and the political views you have are all now driven by machine learning artificial intelligence. The older generation, the byproducts of traditional learning, are simply not equipped to evaluate the information they consume in a critical way. If we’re to survive the AI revolution, we need a new generation of kids who are taught how to navigate information warfare. Young adults who know how to find information, think critically, and navigate the brave new world without becoming digital slaves.

Right now our tech overlords are winning. Our school system is hopelessly outdated and is being kept that way on purpose. A new generation of kids with 15 second attention spans, incapable of human conversation and lacking any curiosity or sense of adventure are the future. They have no sense of history and assume whatever MSNBC tells them is true. DEI ensures that mediocrity is the norm. The CIA/NSA/Facebook/Google/Media cabal are shaping them into whatever they want. They are being turned into obedient little soldiers who will become the future leaders of the country. It’s pretty bleak if you think about it.

I’m not sure what the answer is. We need more Elon Musks in the world. Twitter/X is one of the last bastions of free speech and we need to ensure it survives. We need someone to create a school system/curriculum that teaches kids how to think, not what to think. A system that teaches them how to mine for information and fight back against the establishment.

Rather than the old Prussian system, perhaps we’ll call it… The Contrarian School. A nationwide group of homeschools, networked and sharing a common set of values towards learning. I can already see the conversation. Two moms at a playground. One mom asks the other, “So which school does your child go to?” The other mom replies, “Well, we’re Contrarians so we homeschool.” The first mom gathers up her kids and tells them to stay away from the Contrarian kids. They’re dangerous.

Hmmm. That has the makings of a novel. If only people still read books. Sigh.

Daily Life, Government, Politics

It’s All About Equilibrium

equilibrium noun a state of rest or balance due to the equal action of opposing forces.

Our world will do everything in its power to achieve equilibrium. Fluids, gases, nature, economics, politics, relationships – everything needs balance. Fluids move in and out of cells due to unequal pressures. Remove all the predators from a habitat and the deer population will explode. Our financial markets can’t survive extreme highs or lows indefinitely. Humans don’t thrive without a healthy work/life balance. The world constantly strives to be at a steady state. It’s one of the immutable laws of nature.

The 1950’s ushered in an unbelievable level of prosperity in the United States. That prosperity trickled out to the rest of the world and raised the economic prospects of most nations. The political world, broadly speaking, does everything possible to maintain that prosperity and balance. How it does that is the subject of untold numbers of history books. The Deep State, The Enterprise, The Cabal – whether you think there’s a coordinated group that controls the levers of power or just simply individuals hungry for power and money, the end result is the same. The desire to enforce US hegemony has resulted in a hundred years of the United States pulling the strings and levers of the world.

We’ve initiated coups, fostered wars, manipulated the media, tweaked monetary policy, and controlled industry. All of that is neither good nor bad. It is what it is. It’s a system trying to maintain what it considers as equilibrium. It’s the nature of the world – if we weren’t in control, someone else would be. You and I have been massive beneficiaries of that system. You may not like how the sausage is made, but most people don’t complain about how good it tastes (sorry vegans). There’s a reason a million people a year are streaming illegally across our borders.

So, here’s what’s interesting. Despite the States never ending efforts to prevent you from seeing the sausage making process and maintain what it considers the status quo… we have just enough freedom to question things without fear of the Stasi showing up in the middle of the night and disappearing you (mostly). Recently, the fourth generation of the internet, coupled with Moores law, has enabled the population to share pesky, unpopular, information outside of the mainstream press at a level and speed never before imagined.

We’ve seen it in fits and starts. Alternative, fringe, conspiracy blogs. The Drudge Report (early days). Alex Jones. But now… now we’re seeing non-traditional views carve out a sizable chunk of the mainstream information landscape. I’d argue Joe Rogan was the pioneer. A source of information and views from every side of the spectrum. Uncensored and fed to a massive audience. It’s fair to say he spawned the podcast revolution. More recently, Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter further changed the information landscape. A sudden, shocking dismantling of what was a government influenced censorship tool, to something that has quickly evolved into what looks like a true public square of discourse.

You may not like the discourse – but it’s hard to argue against it being much closer to multiple sides freely shouting whatever they think is the truth (or whatever version of the truth they want to push). I want you to be able to scream whatever cockamamie theory you have at the top of your lungs. What I don’t want is a Ministry of Truth deciding what truth I get to hear.

And now we have the climactic moment of this film. A recent grand trifecta of events. First up is Tucker Carlson. Fox fires him. He quickly starts a new “show” on Twitter. Now you may not like him or anything he says. But his first episode has 110 million views. His just released second episode is at 30+ million views in the first nine hours. Fox News, the highest rated cable show for years, rarely hit more than 2.8 million views for any show. That’s a staggering difference in reach.

Next the FBI just released, under threat of a congressional contempt order, info about allegations that indicate President Biden took a 5-million-dollar bribe from Ukraine. Prior to the new Twitter, that would have been memory holed out of existence instantly (see Hunter Biden laptop). And finally, cough, cough, coincidentally on the same day as that FBI release, former president Trump and the current leading presidential candidate, was indicted for the same thing Hillary and Biden did (possessing classified documents). Hmmm nobody’s above the law, right? The avalanche of online outrage right now is at a level I haven’t seen before.

So what’s my point? I don’t care if you do or don’t agree with Tucker, Trump, DNC, RNC, Elon Musk, the FBI, or the DOJ. Up until this point the State has been able to exert enormous pressure to control the narrative. That dam has been breached. Tucker’s new platform signals the official end of the mainstream media as the primary information source for millions upon millions of people. Tucker and/or his new platform may or may not survive, but it’s a clear sign we no longer have to rely exclusively upon the various news talking heads to feed us the official party line.

The State, and the mainstream media, have pushed the scale of information control so far out of whack, something is going to happen. A very large portion of the population are angry. They’re tired of a narrative being forced upon them. They’re tired of being lied to. I think we’re about to see an absolute flood of information reach the population that is different than what they’ve been told. An angry populace is craving to hear something closer to the truth. You are about to see the field of “non-traditional” journalists explode. Thousands of people jockeying to leak the latest bit of government overreach and corporate manipulation without fear of censorship.

Truth, rumor, scandal, targeted misinformation – all of it is going to be sucked up by millions of people craving something closer to the truth like a dry sponge in a glass of water.

An angry, unsettled population is a dangerous population. The more details about how the sausage is made are made public, the more there will be shouting for accountability and lashing out in frustration. And the more unsettled the population becomes, the more likely it is for the State to crack down. The State will not give up its power and control without a fight. And that my friends, is a recipe for scary times. There might be one or two historical precedents for such scenarios if you wanted to look.

Part of me craves the idyllic 80’s and 90’s of my youth. Oh, the same crap went on behind the scenes… we were just mostly oblivious to it. If Ted Koppel or Dan Rather didn’t say it, it didn’t happen. But now – as the famous saying goes, do you want the blue pill and wake up happy in your bed, or do you want the red pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes?

Nature craves equilibrium. People are slowly waking up to how unfairly the game is rigged. A whole lot of folks are about to take the red pill for the first time. For good or bad, the scale will eventually find a way to swing the other way.

Let’s just hope we don’t overcorrect.

Daily Life

No More News

Decade after decade without a natural predator to trim the deadwood has turned Americans into herd animals. All they want to do is chew their cud and watch television.

Clay Martin, Wrath of the Wendigo

It used to be a routine. Read the paper in the morning. Sundays were the best. A full three pounds of newsprint (I still remember delivering those big boys on my bike as a little kid). Hours of reading. Plenty of longer form content, opinion pieces, the comics, Parade magazine, sports. Evenings was a half hour of local news (mostly watched for the weather), followed by an hour of a “serious” evening news program so you’d know what happened in the world. If you were a real news junkie, you’d subscribe to at least a few other national newspapers as well as some monthly magazines. Throw in a few publications like Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Powder Magazine (Ski Magazine wasn’t cool enough) so you could be hip, and boom – you’re reasonably in touch with the world.

Then came CNN. 24 hours of news? Who in the world would watch that? I distinctly remember watching Bernard Shaw reporting from Iraq at the start of the first gulf war. Wow. We were seeing war in real-time. What the news industry could morph into was mind-blowing and exciting. Fast forward to today and 95% of all news media, video and print, is now basically a news version of the early Maury Povich or Morton Downey Jr. trash TV shows.

The point of “news” today is to generate clicks, likes, and engagement. Like Maury Povich’s “who’s the daddy” segments, the point is to get that gasp or cheer from the audience. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not as long as you capture the eyeballs. Turn on any of the alphabet news channels and you’ll see one of two formats. The most popular is to give a twenty second intro, to a hopefully controversial topic, and then turn to a panel of media personalities that yell at each other. Your other option is a thirty second description of a story, then bring on an “expert” calling in via Zoom from their living room and give them twenty seconds to babble before cutting them off. Whoo hoo, journalism bitches!

It is becoming exceedingly rare for me to watch any sort of news channel. It’s pointless. Not only for the aforementioned trash TV format, but because I’ve already read or watched anything news related that day via Twitter. Twitter, as Elon has said, truly has become the public square for information. Anything that happens in the world shows up on Twitter long before the mainstream media outlets begin reporting on it. Want long form opinion? It seems everyone with a pulse now has a Substack or podcast. I can read opinions on any subject under the sun.

The beauty of Twitter? I get to curate what I see and have the freedom to decide what I think is truth, opinion, or tin-foil-hat conspiracy. If you are sad enough to only consume CNN… you get a slick used car salesman, Joy Behar version of the news.

So, here’s the million-dollar question. Is the media doing it because that’s what they think we want, or have we truly become that dumb? Have we reached the start of the Idiocracy era? I’m not naive enough to think the early versions of the news I grew up with didn’t have an agenda. Government absolutely attempted to influence the nightly narrative we were fed by Walter Cronkrite. But at least back then, they had to tread somewhat lightly… people still practiced journalism from time to time. Today, the government has an actual private pipeline to all the social media platforms (as revealed by the Twitter file dumps).

My gut feeling? We (the US) have become that dumb. We all want nothing more than to be Instagram influencers, buy cheap shit from Amazon, and binge the latest celebrity expose series on Netflix. If the government tells us we all need to subscribe to a national digital ID, well super! It will make everyday life so much easier. Just make sure I know what the latest thing is, so I can post my solidarity flag on Facebook.

Clearly, I’m feeling a bit cynical today. But for good reason. The crash is coming. Deglobalization is happening, and the Ukraine conflict will produce ripple effects in oil prices, energy scarcity, fertilizer supply, and food prices that are going to hurt. Very quickly, everything that comes from someplace else… is going to be harder to get and more expensive. Oh, Don Lemon isn’t talking about this on CNN? Hmm. The gap between the haves and have-nots in this country is going to accelerate rapidly. Throw in a non-stop media barrage of racial division and, well, you get unrest. People who can’t afford to buy eggs or fill up their cars will want to vent their anger towards someone. And when you split the country like we are now… whoever the other side is a perfect target.

Or maybe not. Maybe we’ll defeat Putin (whatever that means). Everyone will have an electric vehicle. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion rules will solve all those pesky social issues. We’ll tax the rich enough to solve our budget and inflation problems. We’ll finally get around to replacing the police with conflict therapists. AI will free us from the mundane of day-to-day jobs. Peace. Love. Harmony.

Maybe.

Or, become a Contrarian. Question everything. Become ungovernable. Oh, and prepare. You’ve been forewarned.

Confirmation bias

Scammed By A Headline
  • Brace yourselves – I’ve discovered some shocking information… the news is dishonest. I know, hard to believe right? While I’m certainly not the sharpest crayon in the box, I feel like I have a pretty good sense of what’s garbage and what’s not when it comes to the news. Unless it’s something you’re predisposed to believe is true because you’ve seen it day in and out. Confirmation bias. If it’s what you expect to hear, then it’s easy to blindly believe the words in front of you.
  • Here’s the backstory. I have been a longtime cycling fan. Starting in high school I dabbled in a few races and briefly thought I was a “real” cyclist. Reality set in pretty quickly and I evolved to a weekend rider and TV race fan. I watched the grand tours religiously year after year. There were days I’d be late to work because I got up early to watch the Tour de France in real time. I was, and continued to be, a big fan of Lance Armstrong through every tour and even after his fall from grace. A few years ago he started a podcast on YouTube with George Hincapie that gave the best race analysis you could find. Lots of “inside the tour” details and great tactical discussions. Every day of the tour I’d watch the recorded replay of the stage and then Lance’s podcast. As the big names all started retiring, I began slowing down on following cycling. Lance’s podcast revived my interest again. And then last year we had all the BLM protests. Sure enough, what pops up in the news headlines?
    • “Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong goes “woke,” cancels bike shop’s contract with Austin police”.
    • “Lance Armstrong’s Bike Shop Cancels Police Contract – Still Wants Cops To Protect Them From Threats”.
    • “Lance Armstrong’s Texas bike shop cuts ties with Austin police”.
  • God Damnit! Why can’t these celebrities just stay in their lane? I watch/follow them for their athletic ability or acting, not their politics. Why do they have to ruin things with their woke opinions? That was it, I was done with watching the tour and Lance’s podcast. I did not follow a minute of cycling last year or this year. I didn’t even realize the Tour de France had started this year until I saw the headline about the idiot spectator that caused that huge crash.
  • I was telling someone why I no longer followed the tour and was looking for one of the articles about Lance. Suddenly an article I hadn’t seen before appeared. Turns out Lance found out about the bike shops decision while he was on vacation and didn’t agree with it. He contacted the Austin police chief and brokered a thirty minute meeting with the chief and the bike shop to try and work something out.
    • Armstrong said ” the shop’s decision to cancel the contract is “not a situation that I support.” He also said he was “sick and tired of everybody screaming” at each other over the issue, which pitted the business against the police and some members of the public in a war of words”
  • Turns out Armstrong is a sworn sheriff’s deputy in Colorado. So… I got suckered into some sensationalist news headlines and made a snap judgement about something without making much of an effort to research further. What’s that old saying about assuming something? I lost a few Contrarian street cred points over this one. So what’s the lesson learned? The news lies. Media will always go for the sensationalist headline without bothering to do much, you know, actual journalism. Don’t let yourself be so easily swayed by “popular” opinion. Oh, and this year’s Tour de France is shaping up to be a really good one!

Song of the day: The Clash-Police And Thieves 1977

Government, Politics

You Don’t Need To Know

While there may be some exceptions, for the most part I don’t believe people in power are inherently evil. I honestly don’t think politicians and CEO’s have malicious intentions. I do think that people in power become so wrapped up in their own bubble and authority they lose sight of the big picture.

For example, take the mayor of my little city. At the beginning of the pandemic, public officials were panicking. For that I don’t blame them. The “experts” were publishing dire information and basically we were all going to die. Our mayor never actually made any tough decisions, only echoed whatever the state and CDC did. Three or so weeks after shutting down all private businesses, the grumblings from the citizenry started. The cities economy was cratering and job loses were huge. On several occasions, via an online forum, I asked the mayor what metrics the city would use to open back up? I received two answers. The first was “the city will follow the guidance of the health district, state, and CDC”. The second was “all our data is posted to the heath district’s web site” (it wasn’t).

Two complete non-answers. So either the mayor had no idea, or she didn’t want to be held to specific numbers in a rapidly shifting scenario. Either way, as a person in a position of authority she decided that as mere citizens we didn’t need to know what the governments plan or thought process was. She single handedly shut down private businesses and then wouldn’t be transparent about when they could open back up again. I think it’s easy for people in positions of power to get all wrapped up in the feeling of we’re doing what’s best for the public, so they don’t really need to know the details. Like parents telling a ten year old “because I said so, that’s why”.

The ultimate example is to watch any president’s press secretary give a briefing. Every single word is parsed and nuanced. Nothing is said that doesn’t advance the political messaging. The people rarely get to see or hear anything resembling reality. Are these people evil? No. But they are so caught up in their power and authority they’ve completely lost sight of the fact that they work for us. Or that’s the theory anyway.

The private sector is no different. I’ve been watching an interesting development with a YouTube channel I subscribe to. This channel has half a million subscribers and suddenly was removed from the partner program, which means it can no longer monetize the videos. No explanation, no warning, nothing. The channel creator has no idea why his channel was removed. The worst part is that once removed from the partner program you also lose all means of contact with YouTube. He has no way to actually contact them to try and find out what he’d done wrong. Now, Google is a private company and they can do whatever they want. But it is certainly the ultimate in power and authority when a company has the opinion they can treat their customers any way they want and feels no obligation to offer any explanation. I’m sure they justify it internally under the guise of “protecting” us vulnerable members of the public from something harmful. (see also, Twitter) Irony in full bloom from the company who’s slogan once was “Don’t be evil”.

I have little point to this other than to remind you that you probably shouldn’t accept anything the government, experts, or most authority figures tell you at face value. Timothy Leary in the ’60’s had it right with his slogan “Question Authority”. As this last year has proven time and time again… they are most likely wrong, lying, obscuring, or hiding the truth. But it’s ok – it’s for your own good.

Government, Politics

Weekend At Bernie’s

Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump. I don’t care what you thought of them personally. I don’t care what you thought of their policies or political bent. What is undisputable is that all of these men were leaders. Type A CEO’s. When they came into a room it was clear who was in charge. You cannot with a straight face tell me that Grandpa Joe falls into that same category. Yesterday’s press conference was an embarrassment. The few answers he actually gave he read directly from prepared notes given to him. When he tried to speak extemporaneously he wandered off on tangents and lost track of what he was saying or what point he was trying to make. The hand picked press core (complete with a handy dandy cheat sheet. With pictures!) were complicit in this farce by lobbing a few softballs at him. A stark difference from a Trump press conference. I have two thoughts about this disaster.

The first is an observation about the reaction on social media and by the press. I have a fair number of links to fairly liberal folks on social media. The last year (and more) my feeds have been inundated with a non-stop barrage of Orange Man Bad postings. Daily I’d see postings from various friends lamenting the outrage of the day that Trump had committed and dear god will we ever return to a time when we had a “real” president? Well… that time, in theory, is now. And what do I see on my social medias? Nothing. Crickets. Radio silence. I expected to see never ending, nausea inducing, praise of how eloquent, smart, and serious a president Biden is. I was sure I’d see non-stop memes comparing how well Biden is doing vs Trump. There’s nothing. It’s refreshing, but I find it odd the folks so desperate for him to win are so quiet. CNN, as of this morning, did not have a single story about the press conference on the top of their site. I find that strange. Where are all the liberals singing the daily praise of Biden?

My second thought is one I’ve posited before. Given that Grandpa Joe is clearly not in charge, who is? Who’s really running the show at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave? It’s not Kamala, she came to the game late and was selected by whoever’s in charge. Is it Klain the chief of staff? That would make the most sense since he was a long time “senior advisor” during the campaign. Is it Susan Rice? Perhaps it’s a coalition of them plus the DNC brass and Obama in the background? Doesn’t it seem like something the public should know?

Independent of “who’s in charge” I do find in odd that there’s almost zero coverage of the overall White House staff and cabinet. During the Trump administration there was wall to wall coverage of virtually every member of the administration and how evil/incompetent/racist/etc… they were. Many in the administration were household names. Now, I’d wager that many of you had never heard the name Klain or even knew that Susan Rice was part of the administration. I bet, until the China meeting gone bad, you had no idea who the new Secretary of State was. Why is that? The only reporting seems to be around the edges, mostly centered on the diversity aspect of some rarely seen cabinet post.

No, I don’t think it’s some giant conspiracy. I simply think it’s a press corps that’s reluctant to give negative coverage to team Biden. They tread carefully around the edges and don’t press too hard so they can tell themselves they’re providing fair and equal coverage. Maybe that’s for the best. If the majority of the public loses confidence in their government, bad things tend to happen. The most worrisome part of this, in my opinion, is that world leaders respond to strength and confidence. They will take advantage and exploit any signs of weakness, as bullies and strong nations are prone to do. We will be tested. Who is going to make the decisions about how we respond? Two months in and this administration has been already been steamrolled and/or thrown shade by China, Russia, North Korea, and Mexico. We finally wheeled out our President in an attempt to show he’s mentally sharp and in command. What came across is that he’s a confused old man who clearly does not belong there. This does not bode well. The next four years do not fill me with confidence. But hey, at least we will have sorted out the proper pronouns and saved the climate!

Uncategorized

The Purge
  • The tech takeover is complete. They waited until democratic control of all three branches of government was official, then on Jan 8th 2021 began purging any speech that doesn’t match the party line. The President has been permanently banned from every social media platform. Any government official or associate that attempted to tweet out a message from the president had their account suspended or removed. Google removed Parler from their app store and Apple gave them 24 hours to put a moderation policy in place or they’ll be removed. YouTube began removing multiple conservative channels, deleting Steve Bannon’s podcast mid-stream. Sidney Powell and General Flynn had their accounts on most platforms deleted. Reddit removed a popular Trump discussion thread. Twitter is stripping followers from conservative accounts. People are reporting losing tens of thousands of followers a day. Facebook and Instagram continue to suspend or delete prominent conservative accounts. The message is clear – voice an opinion contrary to the views of the left and big tech and you risk being shut down. Most of the media are giddy over this. Ironically (there’s that word again) Biden yesterday compared Sen Cruz and Hawley to Nazi propaganda minster Goebbels for spreading Trump’s “big lie”. Tech and the media have now taken away the main communication platform we have in this country from anyone they don’t agree with. It’s hard to overstate how frightening this is. Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple, and the major media outlets will now freely modulate and control with impunity what news and speech you’re allowed to hear. Continuing with the irony, the left used to be the champions of free speech, speaking out against McCarthyism and the evil authoritarian right. The left warned Trump was going to be a fascist authoritarian and the hashtag #notmypresident spread across social media. Trumps inauguration spawned multiple protests, with DC turning into a scene of chaos. Cars were torched, windows broken, and police used tear gas, pepper spray, and stun grenades. 217 people were arrested and six officers were injured by flying bricks and bottles. On his first day in office we had the million women march in DC to protest the Nazi, white supremacist, pussy grabber that had been elected to office. All of that was ok by the left. Such short and selective memories we have. I don’t see this going well. 75 million people voted against the left’s octogenarian puppet. A very large portion of them are very upset right now. I truly don’t think the establishment appreciates the level of anger they’ve spawned. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the tech pacification program will work. Give it a few months without being able to spread counter opinion and the people will turn back into passive sheep, happy to answer the latest Facebook quiz while waiting for their monthly stimulus check. But as I’ve said before, squeeze people hard enough, long enough, and bad things tend to happen.

Song of the day: Pharrell Williams – Happy (Official Music Video)

Government, Politics

Are You Ok With Censorship?
  • Scott Adams is the creator of the Dilbert comic. He also has a YouTube (Google) channel with about 90k subscribers and does a daily show. Yesterday they shut him down, demonetized and pulled down his video. His crime? He mentioned the lawsuits about alleged voter fraud in the election. Here is YouTube’s reason: “Content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of the U.S. 2020 presidential election is not allowed on YouTube.” I don’t care what you think of the claims. I don’t care if you’re the most lefty, leftist, left leaning person around. This should make you mad and frightened. The freedom to speak your mind is a basic tenet of this country. It doesn’t matter if you think it’s conspiracy theory being spouted by a tinfoil hat wearing prepper living in a bunker somewhere in Wyoming. They have the right to say it. Today, the outlets we have where we can speak our mind are Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the mainstream media. ALL of them are actively censoring content they don’t approve of. Other content creators are talking about this story but are having to be very careful to not mention certain “trigger” words so YouTube won’t take down their videos as well. This is not ok. As the old saying goes, you may be ok with this today because it fits your political narrative but tomorrow – they may come after something important to you. Do we really want thought police? I don’t know what the answer is. I do know this shouldn’t be a left/right thing. I’d hope that as a thinking person you’d believe in the whole “I do not agree with what you have to say, but will defend to the death your right to say it”. The influence of big tech on how and what we think is going down a dangerous path.
  • New York just shut down indoor dining with no end date. Kiss the restaurant industry by-by. LA and New York are in a race to see who can crater their economies faster. At least LA is protecting essential business… like Hollywood. Somehow the Hollywood lobby was able to score an exemption and be declared an essential business. I wonder how that happened? The little taco shop around the corner? Not so essential. I guess it’s a worry, if we’re locked down and there’s nothing new to watch on Netflix what are we to do?
  • We have a local produce place that bakes amazing pies. Family is in town for the holidays (A.K.A. superspreader event). I’ve eaten a lot of pie. There’s no point to this other than I’m still wearing the fat pants and haven’t been able to get out and ski. This scenario is not moving in the right direction. Fortunately the storm window looks to be open the next few weeks and the pie is almost gone. There’s hope.
  • This is horrifying. A couple is kicked off a flight and left stranded with no luggage or car seat because they couldn’t get their two year old to wear a mask. Is this really what we want?
  • Struggling to find something good today. We’ll go with a dog who stole a GoPro and filmed his chase.

Song of the day: Bobby McFerrin – Don’t Worry Be Happy

Daily Life, Government, Health, Politics

Basic Dude Stuff
  • I’m sure I’ll be accused of perpetuating “toxic masculinity“, but oh well. Pat Mac is clearly on the far end of the masculinity spectrum, but his general message should be shown to the youth of today. He started posting some silly clips to his Instagram titled “Basic dude stuff”. Quick little clips of general stuff most guys of older generations knew. Tying knots, gardening, taking care of your tools, chivalry, cooking, driving skills, exercise, shooting, etc… Things that I took for granted, but seem to be lost on the current generation of youth. I look at my younger nephews and just shake my head. I love ’em to death, but worry for them and their generation. Even though they’re of driving age they have no interest in getting a drivers license. No interest in being active in the outdoors. It’s all about gaming. They’ve never had a job. By the time I was their age I’d had paper routes, mowed lawns, and been getting on a Greyhound bus each summer and traveling across the state to work as a lifeguard for months – alone. No parental supervision, no cell phone, and had to walk across town to the laundromat each week to do laundry. Thirteen years old. I couldn’t wait to turn sixteen, be able to drive and explore. I honestly don’t know how my nephews will survive and what kind of men they’ll grow up to be? Maybe the online gamer, manbun, intellectual is what women want today? And speaking of women… I think “basic dude stuff” should apply equally. Actually I think the young women of today are becoming more badass than the boys. It’s a brave new world.
  • A laundry list of voting infractions in Georgia was presented yesterday. Most shocking was video footage showing suitcases of ballots being revealed from under desks in Georgia vote counting facilities after poll workers were reportedly told to leave the room. Yawn. Nobody cares. Almost zero media coverage. How is this even possible? It’s frightening to think about what sheep we’ve become.
  • Speaking of sheep, the Governor of CA, apparently worried that the LA mayor was upstaging him in the unchecked power department, shut down the entire state. I still don’t understand how one man or woman has the power to unilaterally destroy businesses and livelihoods like this?
  • If you still think the mandatory mouth diapers everyone wears are the magic anti-covid solution, you should read Alex Berenson’s investigation into mask research. He’s busy doing what journalists used to do in a bygone era.
  • Was Covid here much earlier than we have been lead to believe? Eh, who knows. Maybe we’ll find out in 2026 when the Durham report comes out.
  • Sorry if I’m sounding a little cynical today. I was pulling my dogs tail in the shower, tripped over him and broke my foot. Hmm, ok. No, you’re an eighty year old man who tripped getting out of the shower. We’re one broken hip or getting the ‘rona away from President Harris.
  • If you’ve ever worked in a tech company, the Work Chronicles comic will make sense to you. This is why I no longer work in tech.

Song of the day: 311 “All mixed up (live)”