‘They’re just bad people’ – NYT columnist on Trump supporters

‘They’re just bad people’ – NYT columnist on Trump supporters

President Trump meets young black Republicans at an event in October © Reuters / Cathal MacNaughton

Why would anyone work for President Donald Trump? Aside from a shared ideological vision, advancing one’s own career, or chasing a sniff of political power, one New York Times columnist has a better explanation: They’re just bad people.

In a failed attempt to understand life outside the morally superior left coast, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg argues that many Trump supporters are simply “bad people,” of two kinds: “the immoral and the amoral.”

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Goldberg wasn’t writing about the MAGA-hat wearing middle-Americans who turn out in droves for Trump’s rallies, nor the conservative-leaning average Joe who would have voted for a kick in the head before Hillary Clinton. Instead, she was talking about the revolving cast of aides, officials, and lawmakers who’ve worked for the Trump administration or lent political support to his policies.

They’re the Steve Bannons (a “quasi-fascist with delusions of grandeur”), and the Anthony Scaramuccis ( a “political cipher who likes to be on TV”), the Ivanka Trumps and the Lindsey Grahams. Out of them all, Goldberg finds the apolitical figures, the ones only in it for the paycheck, the worst.

“Trump is unique as a magnet for grifters, climbers and self-promoters,” she wrote. “In part because decent people won’t associate with him.”

Of course, all of this is predicated on the belief that ‘Orange Man Bad,’ a belief that many of the New York Times’ readers likely share with Goldberg. The columnist ponders out loud how these people could work for Trump without feeling “shame or remorse” at his “belligerent nationalism and racist conspiracy theories.” What exactly these conspiracy theories are, however, Goldberg does not explain. Instead, we’re expected to know instinctively that Trump is, for whatever reason, bad.

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The idea that anyone who works for Trump is “bad” by association is simplistic and no doubt appealing to many in the media and the #Resistance. However, reality is more complicated. Trump aides and officials have their own careers to advance, their own dreams and ambitions, and their own car payments to make. The institutions of Washington, DC will endure long after Trump leaves office, and many of these bureaucrats will still need work.

Take Mary Kissel, named this month as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s new foreign policy adviser. Kissel is a former Wall Street Journal reporter who has been sharply critical of and even openly hostile to Trump’s policies before. Is Kissel’s move to the State Department a surrender of her anti-Trump media credentials, or simply a career upgrade?

What about the officials who served in past administrations? Surely the New York Times fretted over the 29 Google employees who took up jobs in the Obama White House? After all, Obama presided over the largest expansion of mass surveillance in history, and defended the National Security Agency even after it emerged that it gathered vast amounts of call, email and internet data from millions of Americans.

Some moves through the revolving door that existed between Google and the Obama White House were reported, but the morals of the employees themselves were never questioned. Because, while these moves raised questions about the cosy relationship between Washington, DC and the tech industry, they were at an individual level, career moves. Besides, they were working for Obama, who came with a tacit seal of approval from much of the mainstream media.

Things are different in 2018, however. Trump (who Goldberg actually called “the orange emperor” in her previous column) is bad, and anyone who works for him is bad and should feel bad. Life sure is black and white on the pages of the Gray Lady.

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Wait–Did Twitter’s CEO Just Share A Post Calling For ‘Civil War,’ Wiping Out The GOP, And How We Should Be Like CA?

By Matt Vespa

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Well, if there were any lingering doubts about Twitter’s perceived bias against conservatives, look no further than what CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted out last night. Apparently, a “good read” is a post co-written by a Center for American Progress senior fellow that calls for “civil war,” the destruction of the GOP, and the adoption of how California runs everything from sea to shining sea. Yeah, bipartisanship is dead, so mob rule is what’s needed.

Now, to be fair, the “civil war” will be won at the ballot box and demographic shifts, namely through the  so-called emerging Democratic majority, but the overall theme is quite explicit: conservative Republicans are not welcome until they reform. In other words, until they break to the power of progressivism. First, if California’s politics is the future of the country, I’d rather chug bleach.

Second, the whole post, which was written by Ruy Teixeira and Peter Leyden on Medium, is what you’d expect from the coastal elite. They say the tax bill is not popular; it is. Even BET’s founder said the bill has helped bring black workers back into the work force. Over 250 companies have doled out bonuses to their workers. Over three million workers have benefitted from this legislation. It’s a tax cut for the middle/working classes of America that Democrats universally opposed.

In all, the post notes the similarities between our first civil war and this one. We had two separate Americas. Two separate economic models in each sphere. Trump is apparently the harbinger of the GOP’s doom. How many times have people said this only to be proven incorrect? Remember when (now) two-time presidential loser Hillary Rodham Clinton was supposed to win 2016 in a landslide? Also the post cites California as the basis for this GOP collapse argument. California Republicans are a different breed; they’re not really conservative. It’s a deep-blue state. Are we shocked that the GOP doesn’t do well in such environments. And Arnold Schwarzenegger is hardly a prime example of those leading the conservative movement, though Terminator and Predator are some of my favorite movies of all time.

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Nothing alarming about social media mogul advocating to eliminate an entire side https://t.co/kULzaAr8CT

— Amy (@AmyOtto8) April 7, 2018

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In California, the GOP is pretty much a lighter version of the Democratic Party. So, if there is a liberal Republican and a liberal Democrat on the ballot, or a conservative Democrat and a Republican in a red state scenario, the latter in both cases will usually win. Why should a GOP voter entertain voting for a Democrat when there is a solid conservative running in an election?

Just look at Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. He was a very liberal Republican Senator; so liberal that he’s now a Democrat. Yet, in 2006, Sheldon Whitehouse booted him because Democrats had a hard-core liberal on the ballot (and RI is a blue state), despite both Chaffee and Whitehouse being pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, and strongly against the Bush tax cuts. Yet, beyond this—there are many ways to skin the electoral cat. The Democratic base was not enthused by Clinton. I don’t think they will be enthused by their 2020 choices, many of which are no-names and have rigid regional appeal. And the so-called emerging permanent Democratic majority (because public opinion doesn’t change *eye roll*) was turned off by Trump—and he still won.

Well, here are parts of the post. Debate amongst yourselves:

Trump is doing exactly what America needs him to do right now. He’s becoming increasingly conservative and outrageous by the day. Trump could have come into office with a genuinely new agenda that could have helped working people. Instead, he has spent the past year becoming a caricature of all things conservative?—?and in the meantime has alienated most of America and certainly all the growing political constituencies of the 21st century. He is turning the Republican brand toxic for millennials, women, Latinos, people of color, college-educated people, urban centers, the tech industry, and the economic powerhouses of the coasts, to name a few.

The Republican Party is playing their part perfectly, too. They completely fell for the Trump trap?—?and that’s exactly what America needed them to do.

[…]

Now the entire Republican Party, and the entire conservative movement that has controlled it for the past four decades, is fully positioned for the final takedown that will cast them out for a long period of time in the political wilderness. They deserve it.

[…]

America is desperate for a functioning political supermajority that can break out of our political stasis and boldly move ahead and take on our many 21st-century challenges. The nation can’t take much more of our one step forward, one step back politics that gets little done despite the need for massive changes.

America today has many parallels to America in the 1850s or America in the 1930s. Both of those decades ended with one side definitively winning, forming a political supermajority that restructured systems going forward to solve our problems once and for all. In the 1850s, we fought the Civil War, and the Republican Party won and then dominated American politics for 50 years. In the 1930s, the Democratic Party won and dominated American politics for roughly the same amount of time.

America today is in a similar position. Our technologies, our economy, our geopolitics are going through fundamental changes. We are facing new challenges, like climate change and massive economic inequality, that must be addressed with fundamental reforms.

America can’t afford more political paralysis. One side or the other must win. This is a civil war that can be won without firing a shot. But it is a fundamental conflict between two world views that must be resolved in short order.

California, as usual, resolved it early. The Democrats won; the Republicans lost. The conservative way forward lost; the progressive way forward began. As we’ve laid out in this series, California is the future, always about 15 years ahead of the rest of the country. That means that America, starting in 2018, is going to resolve it, too.

Whatever the case, the conclusion to all of these posts about the end of conservatism/GOP should always be wait and see. We don’t know—and frankly for the people who thought the Obama years realigned the country, brought about a high mark for liberal politics, and the marked the end of conservatism were dead wrong. In 2010, the GOP retook the House. In 2014, they recaptured the Senate—all while expanding their power at the state and local level.

Enthusiasm is surely with the Democrats—and they could do well in 2018. But Democrats have tons of candidates and division among the Left. Civil wars erupting during primaries can happen. In Texas, it already has, showing the gulf between the establishment and progressive (i.e. Bernie-ite) wings of the party is wide and the wounds are still raw. It’s quite possible the Left fumbles the ball at the goal line come Election Day. We’re over 200 days way from the midterms. I’d take this with a grain of salt, but say you do read the whole piece and blood pressures go through the roof—I redirect you to Mr. Kurt Schlichter.

Hoaxed: The ‘Illegal Alien Mom with Barefoot Kids’ Photo was a Setup – Another Staged #FakeNews Production

by Jim Hoft November 26, 2018

Yesterday’s Headline is today’s hoax. The illegal alien mother ‘fleeing’ from the border wall was all a lie. It was a setup.

After further review, yesterday’s ‘horrific’ picture of a woman with barefoot children running from the US border wall was a hoax. In the background of the picture a group of men are posing for one camera man and another is running towards another camera man. In other areas, people are just standing around. The woman with the children was just a photo-op:

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The high resolution picture shows guys in the background posing for a cameraman proving again that liberals are easily fooled:

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Facebook & Google could face huge fines in Russia over future legal violations – report

Facebook & Google could face huge fines in Russia over future legal violations – report

Moscow may start imposing hefty fines on tech giants, including Google and Facebook, over failing to comply with Russian legislation. The new fines will reportedly be equal to one percent of a firm’s annual revenue in the country.

Russian authorities are planning to amend the current legislation to implement the measure, according to unnamed sources and a copy of the document reportedly seen by Reuters.

Under the current regulations, Russian authorities may impose fines of just a few thousand dollars or block the online services that violate the rules. This option is sometimes fraught with technical difficulties. Under current legislation the maximum fine Google may face in Russia is 700,000 rubles ($10,595). If the proposal is pushed through, Russian telecoms watchdog will be able to impose fines of at least $7 million.

Apart from the bulky fines, the pending measure will reportedly retain the state power to block the company’s websites. The new legislation also allows the Russian government to impose several fines on the same company over various violations.

In 2017, Google’s Russian subsidiary reportedly earned 45.2 billion rubles ($687 million).

“For a foreign company, that’s already a significant amount,” a source at one of the foreign tech firms working in Russia said, stressing that it was still unclear how the fines would be collected from companies with no legal entity in Russia.

Facebook is reportedly negotiating the issue with Russian authorities, as the social networking giant hasn’t moved servers storing its Russian users’ data to Russia, as is required by the current legislation which obliges companies to keep data on Russian users in the country.

Last year, business social network website LinkedIn was blocked in Russia after the company failed to comply with the law. Apart from not moving servers to Russia, LinkedIn reportedly collected and sent information about people who are not users of the network without their consent. In 2017, Russia also banned several messaging apps, including BlackBerry, Line, and Imo messengers, as well as Vchat video service.

In April, a district court in Moscow ordered access to popular internet messenger Telegram to be blocked after the company repeatedly refused to hand over encryption keys to its messages to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). However, the procedure of blocking became stalled due to technical issues. The company replied with a counter-suit that was rejected.

Soros foundation takes aim at Facebook, calls for congressional oversight

The head of billionaire George Soros’ foundation called for congressional oversight of Facebook, after the social media giant finally took some responsibility for hiring a PR firm to smear its critics as agents of Soros.

“So @facebook decides to drop a turkey on Thanksgiving eve, with admission that Definers was tasked by company leadership to target and smear George Soros because he publicly criticized their out of control business model. Sorry, but this needs independent, congressional oversight,” Open Society Foundations head Patrick Gaspard tweeted on Wednesday night.

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Gaspard was responding to an admission by Facebook’s outgoing Head of Communications and Policy Elliot Schrage, who owned up top hiring a PR firm – Washington, DC-based Definers – to attack Facebook’s critics and label them agents of Soros, a billionaire and prominent liberal donor.

In a blog post, Schrage admitted that he tasked Definers with pushing the Soros angle, namely that the billionaire was funding the activist group ‘Freedom from Facebook.’

After learning that Soros did in fact fund some of the group’s members, Schrage said Definers “prepared documents and distributed these to the press to show that this was not simply a spontaneous grassroots movement.” Schrage maintained that Facebook did not ask Definers to create ‘fake news,’ despite a former employee telling NBC that Definers had its own “in-house fake news shop” to spread its message.

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The relationship was revealed in an explosive New York Times report last week that accused Facebook’s senior leadership of mismanaging a multitude of scandals, from ‘Russian interference’ in the 2016 election to the Cambridge Analytica privacy debacle earlier this year.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg both denied any knowledge of the company’s hiring of Definers, despite an official statement describing the relationship between Facebook and Definers as “well known in the media.”

Soros’ associates have been relentless in calling for change at Facebook, even since before the New York Times’ story broke. In January, Soros himself called Facebook and other Silicon Valley tech “monopolies” a “menace” to society whose “days are numbered.” Last week, Michael Vachon, an adviser to the chair at Soros Fund Management, called on Facebook to undertake an audit of all of its lobbying and PR relationships.

Nor were they buying Zuckerberg’s protestations of innocence.

“I find it hard to believe that one would go after someone like George Soros…without some clearance at the highest levels,” Gaspard told CNN on Tuesday night.

Zuckerberg appears to be holding firm, though. In his own interview with CNN on Tuesday, the 34-year-old CEO issued his trademark style of meandering, deflective denial when host Laurie Segall asked if he knew anything about the affair.

“Well…uhh…I learned about this when I read the report as well…I don’t think this point was about a specific PR firm, it was about how we act. That’s why I think it’s not just important what we’re doing with this one firm, but that we go through and look at all of the different PR firms and folks we work with,” Zuckerberg replied.

After spending much of the year apologizing for one privacy screw-up after another, Zuckerberg is once again back in the spotlight. Despite falling stock prices, shareholder moves to oust him, and now Soros’ wealth and influence pushing against him, Zuckerberg was defiant.

Asked whether he’d ever step down as Facebook’s chairman – Zuckerberg is both chairman and CEO of the company – he replied “that’s not the plan.”

“There are certainly going to be issues that we need to work through over time,” Zuckerberg continued. “But I think that while we are doing that, we can’t lose sight of all of the really positive things that are happening here as well.”

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TOP DEM SEN. MARK WARNER: GOOGLE MUST DO MORE TO CENSOR YOUTUBE

Top Dem Sen. Mark Warner: Google Must Do More to Censor YouTube

Warner is the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and his threats hold a lot of sway

Information Liberation – NOVEMBER 19, 2018

Democrat Senator Mark Warner on CNBC Friday lambasted Google for not doing enough to censor YouTube, which he said is a hotbed for “radicalization,” but offered praise to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for being “aggressive in moving to work with us.”

Warner is the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and his threats hold a lot of sway.

From the Free Beacon:

Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.) on Friday criticized tech companies for providing a platform for radicalization and foreign interference.

The social media network Facebook has come under scrutiny recently for how, according to multiple reports, it failed to address Russian interference in the 2016 election. Asked about whether Facebook’s issues overshadowed other tech companies’, Warner said the worst problems stem from Google and its subsidiary YouTube.

“The real disappointing company, as well, has been Google,” he said. “Google didn’t even send a senior leadership person to our committee.”

“As more and more evidence comes out that the real place where fake accounts are manipulating, where a lot of the foreign activity–not just Russian, but Chinese, Iranian and others–have headed is on the YouTube platform, where more radicalization goes on than, frankly, on Facebook,” he added.

Though he wouldn’t let Twitter off the hook, Warner said he gives Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey “credit” because “he’s in recent months been more aggressive in moving to work with us on policy solutions.”

As I reported earlier this month, just days before the midterms Jack Dorsey banned some 10,000 accounts at the request of the partisan Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

report in The New York Times last week said that Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) — whose daughter Alison works at Facebook — told Warner to “back off” of Facebook:

Back off, [Schumer] told Mr. Warner, according to a Facebook employee briefed on Mr. Schumer’s intervention. Mr. Warner should be looking for ways to work with Facebook, Mr. Schumer advised, not harm it. Facebook lobbyists were kept abreast of Mr. Schumer’s efforts to protect the company, according to the employee.

Earlier this year, Democrat Chris Murphy reacted to Big Tech’s coordinated banning of Infowars by demanding more censorship across the board, insisting “the survival of our democracy depends on it.”

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“Infowars is the tip of a giant iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to tear our nation apart,” Murphy wrote August 6 on Twitter. “These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our democracy depends on it.”

Democrat Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, while claiming to support free speech, also cheered the banning of Infowars and made up fake news that Alex Jones was “inciting violence,” despite every site saying they banned him for his speech.

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The Democrats’ plan for internet censorship, which was written by Warner, leaked in late July and it showed they wanted to effectively eliminate all anonymity on the internet.

Warner and other Democrats appear to have effectively pressured Facebook and other Big Tech companies to censor right-wing voices by threatening to regulate them into the ground. Meanwhile, Republicans did nothing to stop their blatant election interference — which may have lost them the House as a result — and despite threatening action on Twitter President Trump has failed to issue any executive orders to secure free speech online.

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