Joe Biden's Ukraine Scandal

Things are usually not what they appear to be as told by the leftist media.

Althouse has a big roundup, "'In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees...'"

And the left's desperation is sickening, at WaPo, via Memeorandum, "Trump has done plenty to warrant impeachment. But the Ukraine allegations are over the top."

And polls show this is a losing issue for the idiot Dems.

At Politico, "Poll: Voters largely unswayed by House Dems’ push for impeachment."

Erica Thomas Hate Hoax

She made the whole thing up.

At BuzzFeed, "This State Lawmaker Says She Was Told To Go Back To Where She Came From. The Man Who Yelled At Her Denies It."

As true today as when I said it at my #hatehoax lecture at Oberlin in 2006! #NeverStandWithHateCrimesHucksters https://t.co/yFuY0sC5xb

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) July 21, 2019

ICYMI ==> ‘Shocking’! Georgia State Rep accelerates walk-back of story about ‘white man’ that ‘verbally assaulted’ her at grocery store https://t.co/QD4L4w2y0g

— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) July 21, 2019

White man who verbally assaulted Georgia State Rep is Cuban Democrat who says Trump needs to go back to his Nazi roots https://t.co/NBsIlCPoMn

— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) July 21, 2019

Paul Joseph Watson Also Banned in Facebook Purge (VIDEO)

Following-up from yesterday, "Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones, Laura Loomer, and Milo Yiannopoulos."

Big tech controls the new public square, and conservatives have to be ready to fight back, and yes, that includes President Trump leading the call to regulate leftist social media giants.

Watch:

Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones, Laura Loomer, and Milo Yiannopoulos

It's no surprise, although it raises the long-standing questions of whether the social media giants should be the speech police of American society. Obviously, the answer is no, but leftists control the industry.

What's the solution? More conservative media outlets, especially new outlets focused on building massive scale of participation and membership to rival the power of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

At the Washington Post, "Facebook bans far-right leaders including Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos for being “dangerous”":

The bans are a sign that Facebook is more aggressively enforcing its hate speech policies under pressure from civil rights groups https://t.co/xRY2Ggjyha

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 2, 2019

Facebook said on Thursday it has permanently banned several far-right figures and organizations including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Infowars host Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Laura Loomer, for being “dangerous,” a sign that the social network is more aggressively enforcing its hate speech policies under pressure from civil rights groups.

Facebook had removed the accounts, fan pages, and groups affiliated with these individuals after it reevaluated the content that they had posted previously, or had reexamined their activities outside of Facebook, the company said. The removal also pertains to at least one of the organizations run by these people, Jones’ Infowars.

“We’ve always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology. The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today,” Facebook said in a statement.

Jones, for example, recently hosted Gavin McInnes, the leader of the Proud Boys, which Facebook designated as a hate figure in December. Yiannopoulos, another alt-right social media star, publicly praised McInnes this year, and Loomer appeared with him at a rally. Jones has been temporarily banned before by Facebook as well as other social media platforms including Twitter.

But Facebook and its counterparts have largely resisted permanent bans, holding that objectionable speech is permissible, so long as it doesn’t bleed into hate. Facebook has also been wary of offending conservatives, who have become vocal about allegations that the company unfairly censors their speech.

The move is likely to be welcomed by civil rights activists, who have long argued that these individuals espouse violent and hateful views and that Silicon Valley companies should not allow their platforms to become a vehicle for spreading them...

More.

For one thing, Farrakhan isn't "far-right," and frankly, "far-right" is a slur to demonize conservatives anyway, especially highly effective ones.

That said, I brook no tolerance for any racism, so if some of these folks are dallying with genuine Nazis, that's a no go for me.

And finally, McInnes and Yiannopoulos are examples of canaries in the coalmine, and if they're going down, the big social media sites, with their diabolical "civil rights" safety commissars, will go after the next group of successful conservative activists.

Rashida Tlaib, New Muslim Democrat in Congress, Vows to 'Impeach the Motherf—er!' (VIDEO)

Video at CBS News 4 Boston, "Rep. Rashida Tlaib Not Apologizing After Call Trump an Expletive."

And from Vodka Pundit, at Instapundit, "GREAT MOMENTS IN TOTAL LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS: New Muslim Congresswoman Vows to ‘Impeach the Motherf**ker!’."

Senior Dems, now the majority leadership in Congress, were not pleased. There goes the impeachment messaging, oops!

At Politico, "Dems livid after Tlaib vows to ‘impeach the motherf—er’: Party leaders fear such explosive talk only gives ammunition to the GOP":

From @politico: 'Dems livid after Tlaib vows to ‘impeach the motherf—er.'' Even the guy who filed articles of impeachment on Day 1 is mad at her. But didn't she just say, perhaps in more colorful language, what some of them have said privately? https://t.co/3Znshs0Igi pic.twitter.com/AdRi2D9aNx

— Byron York (@ByronYork) January 4, 2019

This is a bit lame. Can’t be unapologetic about the comments then run away from the press when asked about them https://t.co/YP3udse950

— Sam Stein (@samstein) January 4, 2019

House Democrats are furious that an incoming freshman’s expletive-riddled statement about impeaching Donald Trump has suddenly upended their carefully crafted rhetoric on their plans to take on the president.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats have long argued that impeachment is a last resort that would come at the end of exhaustive oversight and investigations. But on the second day of the new Congress, the news was jammed with talk of Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, who told a crowd of progressive activists Thursday night that “we’re gonna impeach the motherf---er.”

Rank-and-file Democrats, immediately fearful of the damage the comment could cause, unloaded on their new colleague Friday morning. Republicans, they argued, would hold it up as proof that Democrats are playing politics rather than pursuing genuine oversight of the president — even if the GOP never showed interest in investigating Trump scandals while it was in power.

“Mueller hasn’t even produced his report yet!” said Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. “People should cool their jets a little bit, let the prosecutors do their job and finish the investigation.”

“Inappropriate,” added Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.). “As elected officials I think we should be expected to set a high bar… It’s not helpful.”

Even Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), who introduced an impeachment resolution earlier this week, was shocked. His eyes bulged in disbelief when a reporter read him Tlaib’s comments and he was speechless for several seconds.

After he regained his composure, Sherman said that kind of language is detrimental to the cause: “That’s not language I would use … I think the office of the presidency should be treated with respect.”

Party elders also sought to calm talk of impeachment without criticizing Tlaib directly. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the new chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, called Talib’s comments “inappropriate” and said, “We need to be patient.”

“You can’t accomplish very much of anything unless you have civility and show respect for your colleagues,” Cummings said. “Those kind of comments do not take us in the right direction.”

Pelosi said while she didn’t agree with the language, she also didn’t think anyone “should make a big deal” about the expletive, noting the president is also known for having a foul mouth sometimes.

“I'm not in the censorship business. I don't like that language, I wouldn't use that language, but I wouldn't establish language standards for my colleagues,” Pelosi said during an MSNBC town hall Friday morning.

She added that impeachment is “very divisive“ and shouldn’t be taken “without the facts.”

Meanwhile, Republicans were already seizing on the comment to accuse Democrats of showing their true goal — removing Trump from office...

Buh-Bye 2018 LOL!

From Roger Simon, at Pajamas, "Bye-bye, 2018 —The Year of Living Hatefully":

Bye bye, 2018 The Year of Living Hatefully https://t.co/CFSq8POwnq #RogerLSimon via @pjmedia_com

— Roger Simon (@rogerlsimon) December 31, 2018

In 1982 Peter Weir and Mel Gibson made a film adapted from a 1978 Christopher Koch novel, The Year of Living Dangerously, about an attempted coup in Indonesia in 1965.

While it isn't clear yet whether we had an attempted coup in the USA in 2018 (or earlier), we did have a year in which people despised each other seemingly as never before in our country -- sometimes with reason but quite often not.

2018 was The Year of Living Hatefully -- one of them anyway.

Practically no one was happy. Or if they were, they didn't show it. All they wanted to do was vilify the opposition or even their neighbors.

Democrats hating Republicans (see the new movie "Vice") and vice versa were just the tip of a rancid iceberg. Never Trumpers hate Trumpers and the reverse, Sanders supporters hate Beto supporters, Antifa hate the bourgeoisie, the Proud Boys hate Antifa, FOX hates CNN and MSNBC hates FOX...It goes on and on. Families and friends split from each other. People shut up at work for fear they'll be fired. Thanksgiving is a festival of hostility, Christmas (when we're allowed to speak its name) is only slightly better.

Twitter has become axis mundi for hurling vicious insults at people you never met, or don't even know, while our college campuses -- suffused with reactionary "intersectionality"  -- have become ground zero for the promotion of competitive victimhood, another perfect excuse to hate the other without knowing him or her or "zhe."

That all this is happening in a country awash in affluence, also as almost never before, with close to full employment for all ethnic and racial groups, even some salaries rising after decades, is the cliché about not being able to stand prosperity on steroids. The way we are going utopia would be Hell.

So what's behind all this?

Before all Democrats scream Donald Trump and all Republicans shout The Media, allow me to remind everyone this has been going on for a long time. Calling 2018 The Year of Living Hatefully (or, perhaps more accurately, living in or through hate) is but the culmination of a trend that has been going on for many years.

There is and has been an emptiness in American society and I am going to suggest a cause I never thought I would, not because it is unique to me -- it hardly is -- but because I have, until relatively recently, been a rather typical agnostic of my generation.

It is the absence of God, augmented by the ongoing secularization of our culture largely perpetrated by that same generation (mine). We now almost have in America what the French call laïcité. It doesn't work there (they hate each other more than we do) and it won't here.

And before you go after to me to remind me that church- and synagogue-going people can be just as bad as everybody else, I will say, "Yes, of course," then continue on to say that the majority of believing religious people, especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition (I don't know the others well enough to comment), tend not to live lives as dominated by hate.

They are the people we see in the old Hollywood movies that we like to watch over the holidays. They are Americans from an era that may never have existed but may actually have more than we realize. (Excuse the Zen-ish  deliberate contradiction.) It's Jimmy Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life" or "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." You can bet he went to church. Why can't we be like that now?

As for whether 2019 will be any better in this regard -- most likely not...

Still more.

How Many Times Can You Justify the Murder of Jews before CNN Fires You?

At FrontPage Magazine, "Marc Lamont Hill’s Years of Anti-Semitism Finally Catch Up to Him."

And here it is, Marc Lamont Hill calling for a "free Palestine from the river to the sea" (video via @bennyavni) pic.twitter.com/E7ugrByKyf

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) November 28, 2018

The Marc Lamont Hill speech is such an easy test for my friends on the left but they’re gonna fail it and I will go on loving them just as much but drinking a bit more

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) November 29, 2018

Using "Palestine from the river to the sea," is a fairly strong analogy to dropping a "1488" into your Twitter account in terms of what its import is intended to mean to its target audience. Any person who act differently reveals themselves to be an idiot or...worse.

— Jeff B. (@EsotericCD) November 29, 2018

On Tuesday @CNN aired a devastating report on antisemitism in Europe. Today CNN's @marclamonthill echoed Jihadist calls for Israel's violent annihilation, calling for "resist[ance]" to achieve "a free Palestine from the river to the sea." Not a great look. pic.twitter.com/r26Q1BU0lR

— Avi Mayer (@AviMayer) November 29, 2018

I'm shocked, shocked to find you burying your company's scandal again.

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) November 29, 2018

"Free Palestine from the river to the sea"

I get that it's hard to spin your call for genocide but this is just a sorry effort https://t.co/ey38YYPS5S

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) November 29, 2018

And there it is: Marc Lamont Hill appears out at CNN https://t.co/Dh2vrvk7qo

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) November 29, 2018

Lamont Hill called for the elimination of the State of Israel from the map. Previously he expressed his admiration for antisemite Louis Farrakhan. MLH is a racist, a bigot, an antisemite. The fact that he is all this while in the payroll of @CNN and @TempleUniv is appalling

— Dani Dayan (@AmbDaniDayan) November 29, 2018

You said Palestine should be "from the river to the sea," not that Israel should return to the 1967 borders alongside a Palestine. You didn't call for an Israel and a Palestine. You said Israel should be replaced by Palestine. It is on video. This is what we call "gaslighting." https://t.co/TQJH5J99cH

— (((Yair Rosenberg))) (@Yair_Rosenberg) November 29, 2018

"River to the sea" isn't the point, @MarcLamontHill. It's a free country; you can call for anything you wish.
But have the integrity to stand by your words. You have repeatedly justified murderous #Palestinian violence against #Israel. Don't pretend now to be a champion of peace. https://t.co/455TVpzAO0

— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) November 30, 2018

Millennial Poll: America is Racist

Well, what else is new?

46% of younger Americans agree that “America is more racist than other countries.”

A nation cannot long survive if it’s institutions and elites propagate the idea that it is evil and unjust. We’re at a crisis point, and the future looks grim. https://t.co/DnGHcHdorG

— David Reaboi (@davereaboi) November 27, 2018

Perpetual War Over Political Culture

The big question is who's to blame?

Both sides?

I don't think so, personally. It was back in 1992 when Pat Buchanan that America had entered a state of cultural warfare to determine the "soul" of the country.

What's different today is the breakdown of the old media hierarchy and the institutionaliztion of the demonizing, destructive, anti-American ideologies of the campus left inside America's top ranks of cultural, educational, and economic power.

But see Politico:

How Everything Became the Culture War https://t.co/01J8gAA398

— POLITICO (@politico) November 4, 2018

Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes Mulls Retirement

Heh.

Serves her right.

At Instapundit, "THE DEMOCRATS MUST HAVE TOLD HER THEY COULDN’T PROTECT HER ANYMORE."

#DeleteFacebook

Well, I rarely use it, so deleting my account won't affect me much either way. I guess I'd lose a few connections to people that are valuable. Maybe I could message my important contacts, get their cellphone numbers, and then delete the monstrosity.

I hadn't really thought of it until now, and that sounds pretty good actually, heh.

In any case, Jacob Weisberg reviews two books that I've promoted here, Siva Vaidhyanathan's, Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy, and Jaron Lanier's, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.

At the New York Review, "The Autocracy App":

"By training its users to elevate feelings of agreement and belonging over truth, Facebook has created a gigantic 'forum for tribalism.'" https://t.co/Ll1dnaTTtw via @nybooks

— Sarah V. Schweig (@sarahvschweig) October 16, 2018

Facebook is a company that has lost control—not of its business, which has suffered remarkably little from its series of unfortunate events since the 2016 election, but of its consequences. Its old slogan, “Move fast and break things,” was changed a few years ago to the less memorable “Move fast with stable infra.” Around the world, however, Facebook continues to break many things indeed.

In Myanmar, hatred whipped up on Facebook Messenger has driven ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya. In India, false child abduction rumors on Facebook’s WhatsApp service have incited mobs to lynch innocent victims. In the Philippines, Turkey, and other receding democracies, gangs of “patriotic trolls” use Facebook to spread disinformation and terrorize opponents. And in the United States, the platform’s advertising tools remain conduits for subterranean propaganda.

Mark Zuckerberg now spends much of his time apologizing for data breaches, privacy violations, and the manipulation of Facebook users by Russian spies. This is not how it was supposed to be. A decade ago, Zuckerberg and the company’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, championed Facebook as an agent of free expression, protest, and positive political change. To drive progress, Zuckerberg always argued, societies would have to get over their hang-ups about privacy, which he described as a dated concept and no longer the social norm. “If people share more, the world will become more open and connected,” he wrote in a 2010 Washington Post Op-Ed. This view served Facebook’s business model, which is based on users passively delivering personal data. That data is used to target advertising to them based on their interests, habits, and so forth. To increase its revenue, more than 98 percent of which comes from advertising, Facebook needs more users to spend more time on its site and surrender more information about themselves.

The import of a business model driven by addiction and surveillance became clearer in March, when The Observer of London and The New York Times jointly revealed that the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had obtained information about 50 million Facebook users in order to develop psychological profiles. That number has since risen to 87 million. Yet Zuckerberg and his company’s leadership seem incapable of imagining that their relentless pursuit of “openness and connection” has been socially destructive. With each apology, Zuckerberg’s blundering seems less like naiveté and more like malignant obliviousness. In an interview in July, he contended that sites denying the Holocaust didn’t contravene the company’s policies against hate speech because Holocaust denial might amount to good faith error. “There are things that different people get wrong,” he said. “I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong.” He had to apologize, again.

It’s not just external critics who see something fundamentally amiss at the company. People central to Facebook’s history have lately been expressing remorse over their contributions and warning others to keep their children away from it. Sean Parker, the company’s first president, acknowledged last year that Facebook was designed to cultivate addiction. He explained that the “like” button and other features had been created in response to the question, “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” Chamath Palihapitiya, a crucial figure in driving Facebook’s growth, said he feels “tremendous guilt” over his involvement in developing “tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.” Roger McNamee, an early investor and mentor to Zuckerberg, has become a full-time crusader for restraining a platform that he calls “tailor-made for abuse by bad actors.”

Perhaps even more damning are the recent actions of Brian Acton and Jan Koum, the founders of WhatsApp. Facebook bought their five-year-old company for $22 billion in 2014, when it had only fifty-five employees. Acton resigned in September 2017. Koum, the only Facebook executive other than Zuckerberg and Sandberg to sit on the company’s board, quit at the end of April. By leaving before November 2018, the WhatsApp founders walked away from $1.3 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. When he announced his departure, Koum said that he was “taking some time off to do things I enjoy outside of technology, such as collecting rare air-cooled Porsches, working on my cars and playing ultimate Frisbee.”

However badly he felt about neglecting his Porsches, Koum was thoroughly fed up with Facebook. He and Acton are strong advocates of user privacy. One of the goals of WhatsApp, they said, was “knowing as little about you as possible.” They also didn’t want advertising on WhatsApp, which was supported by a 99-cent annual fee when Facebook bought it. From the start, the pair found themselves in conflict with Zuckerberg and Sandberg over Facebook’s business model of mining user data to power targeted advertising. (In late September, the cofounders of Instagram also announced their departure from Facebook, reportedly over issues of autonomy.)

At the time of the acquisition of WhatsApp, Zuckerberg had assured Acton and Koum that he wouldn’t share its user data with other applications. Facebook told the European Commission, which approved the merger, that it had no way to match Facebook profiles with WhatsApp user IDs. Then, simply by matching phone numbers, it did just that. Pooling the data let Facebook recommend that WhatsApp users’ contacts become their Facebook friends. It also allowed it to monetize WhatsApp users by enabling advertisers to target them on Facebook. In 2017 the European Commission fined Facebook $122 million for its “misleading” statements about the takeover.

Acton has been less discreet than Koum about his feelings. Upon leaving Facebook, he donated $50 million to the Signal Foundation, which he now chairs. That organization supports Signal, a fully encrypted messaging app that competes with WhatsApp. Following the Cambridge Analytica revelations, he tweeted, “It is time. #deletefacebook.”

The growing consensus is that Facebook’s power needs checking. Fewer agree on what its greatest harms are—and still fewer on what to do about them. When Mark Zuckerberg was summoned by Congress in April, the toughest questioning came from House Republicans convinced that Facebook was censoring conservatives, in particular two African-American sisters in North Carolina who make pro-Trump videos under the name “Diamond and Silk.” Facebook’s policy team charged the two with promulgating content “unsafe to the community” and indicated that it would restrict it. Facebook subsequently said the complaint was sent in error but has never explained how that happened, or how it decides that some opinions are “unsafe.”

Democrats were naturally more incensed about the twin issues of Russian interference in the 2016 election and the abuse of Facebook data by Cambridge Analytica in its work for Trump’s presidential campaign.

Keep reading.

The Left is Your Enemy (VIDEO)

A great, great new video from Dennis Prager:

Twitter Struggles to Police Bad Actors

If there were a decent alternative I'd use it.

But that alternative is not Gab.ai, which is the home to white supremacists mostly (AFAICT).

Twitter is so bad, though, I doubt it can continue to grow and maintain viability. It's too partisan and hideously biased against conservatives.

It's a joke frankly.

But like I said, it's the place for politics on social media until a genuine alternative emerges.

At WSJ, "Inside Twitter’s Long, Slow Struggle to Police Bad Actors":

Twitter soon plans "to start showing users a picture of a tombstone in the place of a tweet that has been taken down as a way to signal that a user has violated a company policy” https://t.co/nBwoDH5TrS

— Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) September 3, 2018

When Twitter Inc. Chief Executive Jack Dorsey testifies before Congress this week, he’ll likely be asked about an issue that has been hovering over the company: Just who decides whether a user gets kicked off the site?

To some Twitter users—and even some employees—it is a mystery.

In policing content on the site and punishing bad actors, Twitter relies primarily on its users to report abuses and has a consistent set of policies so that decisions aren’t made by just one person, its executives say.

Yet, in some cases, Mr. Dorsey has weighed in on content decisions at the last minute or after they were made, sometimes resulting in changes and frustrating other executives and employees, according to people familiar with the matter.

Understanding Mr. Dorsey’s role in making content decisions is crucial, as Twitter tries to become more transparent to its 335 million users, as well as lawmakers about how it polices toxic content on its site.

In a hearing Wednesday morning before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. Dorsey will appear alongside Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg to discuss how foreign actors can use the social-media platforms to spread misinformation and propaganda. Later in the day, the House Commerce Committee will question Mr. Dorsey individually in a Republican-led look at how Twitter treats conservative voices.

The latter hearing “is about pulling back the curtain on Twitter’s algorithms, how the company makes decisions about content, and how those decisions impact Americans,” said Rep. Greg Walden (R., Ore.), the chairman of the House Commerce Committee.

Twitter and rival Facebook are increasingly caught in a Catch-22 situation—criticized by some users for allowing hateful posts, but blasted by others for removing content because it curtails free speech.

Twitter has taken a different approach than Facebook, which has hired thousands of content reviewers in the last couple of years to review posts and built out technology to flag inappropriate content. Twitter has far less staff and typically only investigates harassment and abuse that has been reported by users.

Last month, after Twitter’s controversial decision to allow far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to remain on its platform, Mr. Dorsey told one person that he had overruled a decision by his staff to kick Mr. Jones off, according to a person familiar with the discussion. Twitter disputes that account and says Mr. Dorsey wasn’t involved in those discussions.

Twitter’s initial inaction on Mr. Jones, after several other major tech companies banned or limited his content, drew fierce backlash from the public and Twitter’s own employees, some of whom tweeted in protest.

A similar chain of events unfolded in November 2016, when the firm’s trust and safety team kicked alt-right provocateur Richard Spencer off the platform, saying he was operating too many accounts. Mr. Dorsey, who wasn’t involved in the initial discussions, told his team that Mr. Spencer should be allowed to keep one account and stay on the site, according to a person directly involved in the discussions.

Twitter says Mr. Dorsey doesn’t overrule staffers on content issues. The company declined to make Mr. Dorsey available...

Keep reading.

Capitol Gazette's Selene San Felice Drops F-Bomb During Interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN (VIDEO)

At Variety, "CNN Airs Uncensored F-Word During Interview With Annapolis Shooting Survivors."

She's bleeped on the YouTube upload, and on Twitter:

I guess this is what people thought I meant when I said I want more than thoughts and prayers. Thanks! pic.twitter.com/G3LQesVkRo

— Selene News Network 💁🏽‍♀️ (@seleniepanini) June 29, 2018

Jarrod Warren Ramos

I was really busy with family errands yesterday, although between trips to the doctor and what not I was able to follow the story out of Annapolis, Maryland, on the horrific quintuple murders at the Capitol Gazette newspaper.

What always strike me a vicious and evil is the premature speculation on the shooter, and it's almost exclusively leftists who engage in it. The Daily Caller had a great early roundup:

A sickening amount of people rushed to blame Trump for the shooting at the Capital Gazette yesterday despite knowing nothing about the shooter or his motives. We now know the shooter had a personal dispute with this paper. https://t.co/tp38zt1hhY

— Amber Athey (@amber_athey) June 29, 2018

Featured there is Lauren Duca, a nasty wench:

The shooting today in the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland cannot reasonably be separated from the President's mission to villainize the press as "the enemy of the American people."

— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) June 28, 2018

It turns out the shooter was Jarrod Warren Ramos, who was the subject of a Capital Gazette profile in about 2011. It turns out the suspect had harassed a woman he knew from high school, and after the newspaper covered his harassment as a news story he sued for defamation and lost. He held a vendetta against the newspaper ever since.

See the Other McCain for the full story.

#JarrodRamos Identified as Shooter in Maryland Newspaper Mass Murder: https://t.co/axkX9CELPA … via @PatriarchTree #Annapolis #CapitalGazette #CapitalGazetteShooting 😢 pic.twitter.com/8hTtr5zvJA

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 29, 2018

Freezing Weather is Creating Energy Shortages in the Northeast

I just saw this at Watts Up With That?, "Frigid cold is why we need dependable energy."

Which reminded me of the East Coast natural gas shortages causing problems this last few weeks, not the least of which some folks couldn't heat their homes. Thanks radical left-wing anti-human environmental psychos!

At the Hartford Courant, "Cold Wave Puts Pressure On Energy Suppliers":

Energy industry officials have for years warned that inadequate pipeline capacity limits the amount of natural gas coming into New England during peak demand periods like this one. Several multi-billion-dollar proposals for new pipelines have been blocked or withdrawn in the last two years as a result of financing issues and opposition from environmental and consumer groups.

Herb said the current cold spell’s inadequate gas supply problems have triggered increased demands for heating oil.

“We’ve absolutely seen huge [institutional and industrial] users switching to fuel oil,” Herb said. He said big schools like the University of Connecticut, Yale University and Fairfield University, as well as a number of big industrial plants, are now using oil to power their heating systems.

Steve Sack, of Sack Energy, a major Connecticut fuel oil wholesaler, said those major users are now looking to purchase fuel oil on the spot market.

In some areas of the northeast, including portions of Pennsylvania and New York, major demand for fuel oil is creating shortage worries. But wholesalers and retail home heating oil suppliers say Connecticut isn’t experiencing the same problems.

The primary reason for Connecticut’s comfortable supply situation is that most of this state’s fuel oil comes into New Haven by barge and then is pumped up through the Buckeye pipeline to major portions of Connecticut. That avoids the kind of problems New York is having getting oil barges up the ice-choked Hudson River, Herb said.

“Right now, we’re having no issues with supply,” Sack said. He said areas of Connecticut that aren’t along the pipeline that runs from New Haven up through Springfield, Mass., are being supplied by tractor trailer trucks from the port or terminals along the pipeline.

Sack said wholesale fuel oil prices at New York’s harbor are now running at about $2.06 per gallon, which are “down a little bit right now” from earlier price levels.

Herb said his office is constantly monitoring the supply situation. He said he recently got a call from U.S. Department of Energy officials asking if the federal regional petroleum reserve should be released to help the energy situation.

“We told them no. … We did not need that,” Herb said.

Heating oil company drivers are being pushed to the max to keep getting fuel deliveries to residential customers who need them.

RTWT.

Silicon Valley Women Open-Up About Sexual Harassment

Leftist tech progressives are the biggest hypocrites.

At NYT, "Silicon Valley Women, in Cultural Shift, Frankly Describe Sexual Harassment":

Their stories came out slowly, even hesitantly, at first. Then in a rush.

One female entrepreneur recounted how she had been propositioned by a Silicon Valley venture capitalist while seeking a job with him, which she did not land after rebuffing him. Another showed the increasingly suggestive messages she had received from a start-up investor. And one chief executive described how she had faced numerous sexist comments from an investor while raising money for her online community website.

What happened afterward was often just as disturbing, the women told The New York Times. Many times, the investors’ firms and colleagues ignored or played down what had happened when the situations were brought to their attention. Saying anything, the women were warned, might lead to ostracism.

Now some of these female entrepreneurs have decided to take that risk. More than two dozen women in the technology start-up industry spoke to The Times in recent days about being sexually harassed. Ten of them named the investors involved, often providing corroborating messages and emails, and pointed to high-profile venture capitalists such as Chris Sacca of Lowercase Capital and Dave McClure of 500 Startups.

The disclosures came after the tech news site The Information reported that female entrepreneurs had been preyed upon by a venture capitalist, Justin Caldbeck of Binary Capital. The new accounts underscore how sexual harassment in the tech start-up ecosystem goes beyond one firm and is pervasive and ingrained. Now their speaking out suggests a cultural shift in Silicon Valley, where such predatory behavior had often been murmured about but rarely exposed.

The tech industry has long suffered a gender imbalance, with companies such as Google and Facebook acknowledging how few women were in their ranks. Some female engineers have started to speak out on the issue, including a former Uber engineer who detailed a pattern of sexual harassment at the company, setting off internal investigations that spurred the resignation in June of Uber’s chief executive, Travis Kalanick.

Most recently, the revelations about Mr. Caldbeck of Binary Capital have triggered an outcry. The investor has been accused of sexually harassing entrepreneurs while he worked at three different venture firms in the past seven years, often in meetings in which the women were presenting their companies to him.

Several of Silicon Valley’s top venture capitalists and technologists, including Reid Hoffman, a founder of LinkedIn, condemned Mr. Caldbeck’s behavior last week and called for investors to sign a “decency pledge.” Binary has since collapsed, with Mr. Caldbeck leaving the firm and investors pulling money out of its funds.

The chain of events has emboldened more women to talk publicly about the treatment they said they had endured from tech investors...

Keep reading.

Conservative Student Lexie Kaufman Flees Emerson College After Year of Harassment

It's sad she had to flee. Folks need to stand up and fight back, but it's hard.

At Legal Insurrection, "Conservative Student Flees Emerson College Over Harassment."

The Arrogance of Blue America

From the excellent Joel Kotkin, at the Daily Beast:

The arrogance of blue America https://t.co/oY5RV81AdE pic.twitter.com/4J41gCmSs2

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) May 1, 2017

Baby Hippo Fiona

A great story, but notice how all the animal keepers are like granola-crunching enviro-leftists. It's like a religion to these people. Your commitment is to the god of nature. The hippo is divine, a child of the supreme being, Gaia, in this case.

At USA Today:

Baby hippo's keepers learn to live with bruises https://t.co/54OIPyk3Dv

— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) April 30, 2017